The Full Belmonte, 6/30/2023
© The Associated Press / Mariam Zuhaib | The Supreme Court attracted demonstrators on Thursday with its 6-3 ruling against affirmative action in college admissions.
Affirmative action ruling triggers frenzy; student loans up next
“A conservative majority on the Supreme Court blasted through decades of precedent Thursday to put an end to affirmative action in university admissions and is expected today to conclude the term by blocking President Biden’s program to forgive student loan debts.
Since last year, right-leaning justices have issued constitutional reinterpretations that are reshaping cultural, privacy and economic aspects of American life, including overturning Roe v. Wade a year ago. They are clashing with liberals over racism, equality and religion.
The impacts will be felt for decades, reinforcing the contemporary image of the Supreme Court as political, stirring voters left and right to mobilize ahead of the 2024 elections and encouraging culture warriors to shop their legal challenges to the six justices in the majority who were appointed by Republican presidents.
‘I think they may do too much harm,’ Biden said during a Thursday interview with MSNBC when asked about the justices’ rulings. Earlier in the day he told reporters, ‘This is not a normal court’ (The New York Times).
Reacting to Thursday’s 6-3 decision that struck down college admissions programs that are based on race at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and Harvard University, the president said, ‘The truth is, we all know it: Discrimination still exists in America. ... It’s a simple fact’ (The Hill, NBC News).
The New York Times: The Supreme Court’s supermajority continued to redefine key aspects of American life.
The Hill: What will colleges do in the way of the high court’s affirmative action ruling?
The New York Times: The court’s decision may mean a sharp drop in admissions among Black and Latino students, based on outcomes seen among nine states that already ban race-conscious college admissions at their public universities.
The Washington Post: State affirmative action bans helped white and Asian students and hurt others.
‘I do not expect universities to take this decision lightly. [Diversity, equality and inclusion] DEI has become one of the highest, if not the highest, priority at many schools and I expect universities to look for loopholes and workarounds,’ Brian Fitzpatrick, Vanderbilt University professor of law, said Thursday.
The Supreme Court ruled that programs at Harvard and UNC violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and are therefore unlawful. The vote was 6-3 in the UNC case and 6-2 in the Harvard case, in which liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was recused (The New York Times).
Reactions from members of Congress, advocacy groups and former President Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama generally fell along partisan lines. Republicans celebrated the affirmative action decision as a win for fairness. Liberals saw it as activist extremism. The Congressional Black Caucus accused the court of laboring to ‘deny young people seeking an education equal opportunity in our education system.’
Former President Trump, who appointed three of the justices in the majority, called the ruling ‘a great day for America’ in a short message to supporters. GOP presidential primary rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, tweeted that ‘merit’ had been restored and would end ‘discrimination by colleges and universities.’
Writing for the conservative majority, Chief Justice John Roberts did not explicitly say that former precedents were overruled, but in a concurring opinion conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, only the second Black justice to serve on the court, said a 2003 opinion from the court that race could be weighed as a factor in admissions was ‘for all intents and purposes, overruled.’
Jackson, nominated by Biden and the first Black woman to serve on the court, wrote in a dissenting opinion that the ruling was ‘truly a tragedy for us all.’
ABC News: Jackson blasted ‘let-them-eat-cake obliviousness’ in her dissent.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, another liberal and the first Hispanic justice, wrote that the court ‘stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.’
Selective schools with competitive admissions programs are the most affected by the court’s opinion. Those schools anticipate a drop in the enrollment of minority students following the ruling, which will require admissions officers to experiment with new race-neutral plans intended to counteract the impact and to encourage a diverse student body, NBC reported. Most colleges accept almost all applicants and do not expect to be as impacted. Historically Black colleges and universities said they’ll see more applications. Medical schools lamented they will see fewer Black students enroll to be doctors.
Schools are expected to try to circumvent the ruling in two ways: by encouraging discussion of race or ethnicity in applicants’ essays and perhaps constructing non-race-based preferences for certain zip codes, high schools or applicants who are the first in their families to apply to college.
So why is the decision a blockbuster? Because studies suggest, and Democrats argue, that non-elite students get pushed into less prestigious institutions, which creates long-term implications for incomes and job prospects while promoting inequality.
The court’s decision also may affect K-12 schools and could lead to future challenges to racial diversity programs used by employers. Similar arguments could be made under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in employment.
Roberts noted that the ruling does not address the consideration of race in military academies. The Biden administration had warned that a ruling curbing affirmative action would detrimentally affect the U.S. military, which depends on a ‘well-qualified and diverse officer corps.’
© The Associated Press / Evan Vucci | President Joe Biden at the White House on Thursday.
Related Articles
The Hill: The Supreme Court will rule on student debt relief today.
The Associated Press: The Supreme Court on Thursday bolstered protection for workers who ask for religious accommodations.
The Hill: Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), a presidential contender who entered college on a football scholarship, told Fox News that he wants universities to end legacy preferential admissions.
The Hill: Harvard and UNC on Thursday said they will comply with the high court’s ruling outlawing affirmative action. Harvard added in a statement that it ‘must admit and educate a student body whose members reflect, and have lived, multiple facets of human experience.’
The New Republic: Ahead of today’s likely ruling in 303 Creative v. Elenis, ‘The mysterious case of the fake gay marriage website, the real straight man and the Supreme Court.’
Justices' raw nerves
Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios
“The end of affirmative action was a lot more personal and emotional — a lot more raw — than Americans are used to seeing from the Supreme Court.
Why it matters: There have always been impassioned dissents. But it's rare for the justices to argue, out in the open, the way regular people argue, Axios court-watcher Sam Baker writes.
What's happening: The justices might write incandescently about the holes in another justice's legal reasoning, but they rarely make it personal. They rarely invoke anecdotes from their own lives to make or bolster a point. They rarely draw assumptions about each other's motives.
But in 237 pages worth of opinions yesterday, it was clear — in ways the justices rarely allow to be clear — that the disagreements here were rooted in the real world, not simply competing interpretations of the equal protection clause.
It was clear that the court's three justices of color were drawing on personal experience, not just legal formalism.
And it was clear, frankly, that some of them were mad at each other.
Zoom in: Justice Clarence Thomas seemed to be mad at Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote a stinging dissent accusing the court's majority of ‘let-them-eat-cake obliviousness’ — and an ‘ostrich-like’ hope that ignoring race would make racial inequities disappear.
Thomas wrote his own opinion, as he often does — ostensibly to agree with the majority ruling, but also to take on Jackson.
‘As she sees things, we are all inexorably trapped in a fundamentally racist society,’ Thomas wrote. He said Jackson set out to ‘label all blacks as victims,’ adding: ‘Her desire to do so is unfathomable to me.’
Jackson's dissent focused on the majority opinion, addressing Thomas only in a footnote — but a brutal one.
‘Justice Thomas' prolonged attack responds to a dissent I did not write in order to assail an admissions program’ that does not exist and ‘ignites too many more straw men to list, or fully extinguish,’ she wrote.
A final zinger: Justice Sonia Sotomayor responded with what she called ‘the most obvious data point available to this institution today.’
‘The three Justices of color on this Court graduated from elite universities and law schools with race-conscious admissions programs, and achieved successful legal careers,’ she wrote.” [Axios]
Supreme Court limits LGBTQ protections in dispute over services for same-sex weddings
The high court ruled that a Christian web designer has a right to offer design services for opposite-sex weddings while refusing those services for same-sex weddings.
“A Christian web designer has a First Amendment right to refuse to create websites for same-sex weddings, the Supreme Court ruled Friday in a decision that dilutes legal protections for LGBTQ people.
By a 6-3 vote, the justices sided with Lorie Smith, an evangelical Christian and Colorado web designer who opposes same-sex marriage. Colorado law bars businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, but Smith argued that the free speech guarantee of the federal Constitution entitles her to an exemption from that law…..” Read more at POLITICO
“WASHINGTON–The Supreme Court sided with a Colorado web designer’s claimthat the First Amendment entitles her to refuse commissions for same-sex wedding announcements, providing a victory for religious conservatives still smarting from the court’s 2015 ruling granting marriage equality to gay and lesbian couples.
Lorie Smith, an evangelical Christian who runs 303 Creative, a web-design company in Littleton, Colo., filed suit in 2016 to get a federal court order declaring her business exempt from state antidiscrimination law should any same-sex couple seek her services. A federal appeals court in Denver, like other federal and state courts confronting objectors to same-sex marriage, found no constitutional right to disregard state law requiring that businesses open to the public treat customers equally without regard to sexual orientation.
Writing for the court, Justice Neil Gorsuch said Smith’s First Amendment free-speech rights—in this case, the right to not express a view supportive of same-sex marriage—took priority over a Colorado law forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined the opinion.
Smith appealed to the Supreme Court, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian advocacy group that also argued against same-sex marriage in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Smith said she views her work for hire as an artistic expression of her own beliefs rather than those of the client alone, and considers compliance with the antidiscrimination law as akin to the state compelling her to declare support for same-sex marriage.
The case involved a long-brewing contest between two lines of recent Supreme Court decisions: those that give priority to religious expression rights over secular public interests and those extending civil equality to LGBTQ Americans. Several cases posing that conflict have reached the court since the Obergefell decision, but at each juncture the justices either have turned down the appeal seeking exemption from nondiscrimination law, or issued a relatively narrow decision in favor of the objector to same-sex marriage without issuing a broader pronouncement on whose rights must yield.
At oral arguments in December, the court’s liberal and conservative wings read the court’s precedents to point to significantly different outcomes.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that the court paid no heed in the 1960s when segregationists raised religious objections laws and court orders prohibiting discrimination.
Some Southerners had opposed interracial marriage on religious grounds, but in the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that such prohibitions were ‘directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the 14th Amendment.’ In another unanimous decision, the court in 1968 dismissed as ‘patently frivolous’ a South Carolina restaurant owner’s argument that permitting Black people to eat barbecue on premises ‘contravenes the will of God.’
Justice Samuel Alito said opposition to same-sex marriage shouldn’t be compared with racial prejudice. When the court, over Alito’s dissent, found a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in 2015, the majority opinion spoke respectfully regarding those who held traditional moral beliefs opposed to such unions, he said. During the civil-rights era, in contrast, the court gave no credit to racist views when overturning segregation laws, he said.” [Wall Street Journal]
Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s student debt relief plan
In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority ruled that Biden’s effort to erase roughly $400 billion of student debt was an illegal use of executive power.
By MICHAEL STRATFORD and JOSH GERSTEIN
“The Supreme Court on Friday blocked the Education Department from canceling up to $20,000 of student debt owed by tens of millions of Americans, thwarting a major domestic priority of President Joe Biden as he campaigns for reelection.
In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority ruled that Biden’s effort to erase roughly $400 billion of student debt was an illegal use of executive power. The court rejected the Biden administration’s argument that it could enact mass debt forgiveness by using emergency powers tied to the Covid-19 pandemic….” Read more at POLITICO
The heat is just beginning
Data: NOAA HRRR, GFS. (Smoke is as of 2 p.m. ET yesterday.) Map: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals
“This week's scorching heat wave, along with dangerously poor air quality because of wildfire smoke, is a preview of the compound climate disasters that experts fear will become increasingly common as the planet warms, Axios' Andrew Freedman writes.
The big picture: The U.S. heat wave — and heat and wildfires throughout Canada — come as multiple global climate indicators, from ocean temperatures to surface air warmth, set all-time records.
This month is likely to be the world's hottest June on record by a large margin — leading into July, which tends to be the planet's hottest month.
What's happening: Since early May, the weather pattern across North America has been unusual, with hallmarks of a warming climate.
Over Mexico and Texas, an unusually powerful heat dome is only just now weakening, after shattering all-time heat records.
‘Climate change makes U.S. heat waves about 5°F warmer’ than they would be in a preindustrial world, Michael Wehner, a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told Axios via email.” [Axios]
Photo: Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP
“Former Broward County Sheriff's Deputy Scot Peterson wept when a jury in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., acquitted him yesterday of failing to confront the gunman during the 2018 Parkland school massacre.
Why it matters: It was the first trial in U.S. history of a law enforcement officer for conduct during an on-campus shooting, AP reports.” [Axios]
Trump probe
“New developments are unfolding in former President Donald Trump’s various legal battles. The special counsel’s office is continuing to investigate Trump’s handling of classified documents after his presidency ended, despite the former president’s indictment last month. That includes continued grand jury activity in Florida and inquiries of witnesses, though it is not yet clear what aspects of the investigation prosecutors are still pushing toward. In general, it’s not unheard of for investigators working a case to continue asking questions following the filing of initial charges — though it is unusual since Trump is still vying for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Top Trump aide Susie Wiles has met numerous times with federal investigators involved in the probe and was allegedly shown a classified map by Trump after he left office. Meanwhile, former Trump campaign official Mike Roman is cooperating with prosecutors in the ongoing criminal probe related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.” [CNN]
Biden market gains trail Trump, Obama
Data: Yahoo! Finance. Chart: Jared Whalen and Thomas Oide/Axios
“All three major U.S. stock indices have increased during President Biden's time in office. But the gains are smaller than those of his last two predecessors, Axios' Dan Primack and Thomas Oide report.
Why it matters: Biden this week signaled plans to run for re-election on his economic record, embracing the term "Bidenomics."
By the numbers: The S&P 500 has climbed 15.7% since Biden's inauguration. That trails Trump's 40% and Obama's 53.8%, at the same point in their presidencies.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average grew 10.3% for Biden, 34.8% for Trump and 48.06% for Obama.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq is where Trump came out on top, at a whopping 161.7%. Obama hit 70.2%. Biden oversaw a tech sector correction that put his Nasdaq performance at just 3%.
Reality check: Stock market performance isn't necessarily a gauge of economic health.
More meaningful metrics include GDP, employment and real wages.
That said, the market partially reflects how investors view the economy. And most American adults have money in the market, directly or indirectly.” [Axios]
Christian legal nonprofit funds US anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion organizations
Alliance Defending Freedom distributes hundreds of thousands of dollars to fringe groups attacking trans, gay and abortion rights
“A rightwing Christian ‘hate group’ which is behind a host of legal efforts to roll back abortion rights, remove LGBTQ+ protections and demonize trans people has seen a huge increase in its funding and has funneled some of that money to a slew of smaller anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion groups across the US, the Guardian can reveal.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a registered nonprofit behind the ongoing 303 Creative supreme court case which could chip away at LGBTQ+ rights, saw its revenue surge by more than $25m between 2020 and 2021, a period in which a rightwing obsession with transgender rights and sexual orientation saw almost 200 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in states around the US.
The surge in funding to the ADF, which has been termed an ‘anti-LGBTQ hate group’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center, saw it record revenue of $104.5m in 2021, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service.
It has handed over hundreds of thousands of dollars of that newfound wealth to fringe organizations which have sought to diminish the rights of trans students in schools and the right for trans people to participate in sports, an investigation by the watchdog group Accountable.US has found.
The ADF, which was founded in 1994 by a group of ‘leaders in the Christian community’, according to its website, has also given money to groups involved in efforts to ban books which address LGBTQ+ topics, and to organizations which seek to ban abortion.
It comes as Republican politicians and commentators continue to wage a culture war in the US. In June the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the country’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group, declared a ‘state of emergency’ for LGBTQ+ people in the US, citing ‘an unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year’.
An HRC report this month found that 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were signed into law in the first five months of 2023 – more than double the entire amount passed in 2022…..” Read more at The Guardian
New Mexico State Settles Basketball Hazing Lawsuit
“New Mexico State University has settled a lawsuit brought by two former basketball players who alleged that they were sexually assaulted by their teammates, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. The university agreed to pay the plaintiffs a total of $8 million.
The settlement releases the university, as well as two coaches and three other basketball players named in the suit, from liability. New Mexico’s attorney general could still bring criminal charges against individuals involved in the case, however.
The two victims claimed in the lawsuit that coaching staff and administrators failed to act after they reported the assaults, which they said took place amid hazing incidents that went on for months.
Eventually, one of the victims went to campus police to report the incident, leading the university to cancel its 2022–23 basketball season and fire head coach Greg Heiar.” [Inside Higher Ed]
France
Mounia, mother of the French teenager killed by police, (C) reacts as she attends a memorial march for her son Nahel on June 29, 2023 in Nanterre, France.
Abdulmonam Eassa, Getty Images
“More than 400 people were arrested across France Thursday as a wave of protests swept the country for a third night following the fatal police shooting of a teenage boy that was captured on video. Unrest broke out Tuesday just hours after a police traffic stop in Nanterre resulted in the killing of a 17-year-old named Nahel. The incident has raised questions about whether racism played a role in his death, and whether the police officer who shot him was acting illegally. Also Thursday, an estimated 6,000 people joined a march to honor the teen. President Emmanuel Macron will reportedly hold a crisis meeting today for the second day in a row following the violence and has urged citizens to let the justice system handle the situation.” [CNN]
The Chinese balloon that floated over the U.S. early this year was crammed with American surveillance technology.
“The commercially available gear, interspersed with specialized Chinese sensors and other equipment, collected photos, videos and other information to transmit to China, U.S. officials said, citing preliminary findings. The craft didn’t appear to send that information back to Beijing. Defense and intelligence agencies, along with the FBI, have analyzed the debris retrieved after the U.S. military shot down the balloon. The incident derailed a fledgling attempt at rapprochement between the two countries. China has expressed concern that should the investigators’ balloon report become public, it will be forced into a strong reaction.” [Wall Street Journal]
Russia reducing its presence at nuclear plant, says Ukraine
Staff at Zaporizhzhia told to relocate, says Ukrainian intelligence, as Moscow accused of explosion plot
“Russia is reducing its presence at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate (GUR) has claimed, with staff told to relocate to Crimea and military patrols scaled back.
The agency’s chief, Kyrylo Budanov, has alleged Moscow has approved a plan to blow up the station and has mined four out of six power units, as well as a cooling pond. Last week Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Russia was plotting a ‘terrorist attack’.
According to the GUR, several representatives of Russia’s state nuclear energy agency, Rosatom, have already left. Ukrainian employees who stayed at the plant and signed contracts with Rosatom had been told to evacuate by Monday, preferably to Crimea, it said.
The intelligence agency named three senior individuals – the plant’s chief inspector, the head of the legal department and the deputy in charge of supplies – who had already departed. It said the number of Russian soldiers at the station and in the nearby town of Enerhodar had been reduced.
Since seizing the plant last year, the Russian army has turned it into a military base. It moved hardware into the turbine halls, including armoured vehicles and ammunition. Soldiers used the territory to bombard Ukrainian towns across the Dnipro reservoir….” Read more at The Guardian
Ukraine’s top general, in rare interview, says counteroffensive needs weapons, ammunition and modern fighter jets to progress faster
Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top uniformed officer, expressed annoyance at suggestions that the long-anticipated counterattack to oust Russian forces from occupied territory is moving more slowly than expected. ‘This is not a show,’ he said. ‘Every day, every meter is given by blood.’
Read more at Washington Post
Russia and Ukraine
“Documents shared exclusively with CNN suggest that Russian General Sergey Surovikin was a secret VIP member of the Wagner private military company, the group whose leader headed up a recent short-lived insurrection that plunged Russia’s military forces into uncertainty. It's unclear where Surovikin has been since the rebellion ended. Meanwhile, former Vice President Mike Pence visited Ukraine on Thursday and told CNN’s Erin Burnett it’s an ‘open question’ whether Putin is in full command of his military following the revolt. Meanwhile, the White House is strongly considering approving the transfer of controversial cluster munition warheads to Ukraine to aid its counteroffensive despite the risk such weapons could pose to civilians.” [CNN]
“Britain’s deportation plan. A U.K. court has deemed the British government’s plan to send tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to Rwanda “unlawful,” fueling uncertainty about the future of the policy. The plan was already subject to multiple legal challenges, but the latest ruling deals a political blow to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court. Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson first announced the policy last year; Sunak’s administration has continued the controversial campaign.
Last year, journalist Andrew Connelly argued in Foreign Policy that the policy was a ‘cruel, expensive, and pointless spectacle.’ ‘It is a crude gimmick to provoke endless disputes and avoid grappling with the reality of how and why people move,’ he wrote.” [Foreign Policy]
“Meta’s content moderation. The Oversight Board of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has urged the social media giant to suspend Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s accounts on the platforms for at least six months, citing a January video in which he issued threats against political opponents. The Oversight Board also asked Meta to remove the video.
Hun Sen, who has held power in Cambodia for nearly four decades, is gearing up for a general election next month. The recommendation marks the first time the Oversight Board has asked Meta to block a head of government. This month, Fiona Kelliher wrote in Foreign Policy that Hun Sen’s case was a litmus test for Meta.” [Foreign Policy]
Chart of the Week
“Foreign-policy practitioners and international relations scholars may butt heads on some global issues, but when it comes to the future of NATO, they’re in agreement. New polling published in Foreign Policyshows that they overwhelmingly see eye-to-eye on the importance of enlarging NATO—and on which country could be the next to join.” [Foreign Policy]
Women who interviewed for jobs at Bill Gates’s private office were asked sexually explicit questions.
“Some people described going through an extensive screening process, including being questioned by a security firm called Concentric Advisors about their sexual histories and past drug use that might indicate they were vulnerable to blackmail. A Gates spokeswoman said his private office, Gates Ventures, hasn’t heard about such questions being asked during background checks done by third-party contractors. Concentric said its protocols comply with applicable laws.” [Wall Street Journal]
NFL suspends more players for 2023 season for gambling violations
“The NFL on Thursday suspended three players for at least a full season and another for six games in the latest batch of punishments for violations of the league's gambling policy. Indianapolis Colts cornerback Isaiah Rodgers and defensive end Rashod Berry, along with free agent defensive tackle Demetrius Taylor, are all indefinitely suspended and must sit out at least the 2023 season before seeking reinstatement. All three were found to have placed wagers on NFL games last season, the league said in a statement.” Read more at USA Today
McDonald’s new purple shake has gone viral.
“The shake: A berry-flavored drink named after Grimace, the fast-food chain’s furry purple mascot. It was released this month for Grimace’s birthday.
The trend: People on TikTok are filming horror-movie-like scenes of themselves drinking the shake, then dying. Sales have skyrocketed since the trend took off last weekend.”
Read this story at Washington Post
$65 million Nashville mansion is most expensive in state history
“If Twin Rivers Farm sells for anything close to its $65 million listing price, the colossal luxury homestead deep in the Nashville suburbs could become the most expensive property deal ever made in Tennessee. The space features modern sculptures, paintings and geometric lighting and adds luxurious touches to wooden floors, marble kitchen furniture and rustic bedrooms.” Read more at USA Today
A golf course outside the pool house.
Jay Winter
Oscar-winning actor Alan Arkin, 'Kominsky Method' and 'Little Miss Sunshine' star, dies at 89
Alan Arkin, the Oscar-winning actor whose eclectic career spanned seven decades, has died at 89.
READ FULL STORY at USA Today
”Lives Lived: Christine King Farris supported her brother the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement and promoted his legacy after he was assassinated. She was King’s last living sibling. King Farris died at 95.” [New York Times]