What Donald Trump’s conviction says about our two-tiered justice system
🗳️ 105 years ago today, the U.S. Senate passed the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. (Each state would still have to approve it; Wisconsin and Michigan were first.) Senators voted 56–25, with 14 abstentions.
Issue #90: words of wisdom from Michelle Obama’s mom, AI-generated smiles, and DIY watercolors
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Last week, Donald Trump became the first former U.S. President convicted of a felony. He’s far from the first president to be convicted of a crime globally; Nicolas Sarkozy of France was sentenced to prison in two separate trials over the last four years — one for bribing a judge and another for illegally financing his campaign. (Instead of prison, he’ll instead be wearing an electric bracelet.)
Trump will be sentenced on July 11, though his lawyers plan to appeal. And, yes, convicted felons can still run for president.
“Donald Trump has long bemoaned being the victim of a two-tiered justice system,” explains
in The Polis, a Medium publication for stories about philosophy and politics. , a law professor on Medium, sees this as Trump’s go-to move: undermining the legitimacy of our judicial system. Last Friday, one day after being convicted, Trump did just that, publicly calling Judge Merchan “crooked” and “a devil.” Republican congresspeople have invoked the “two-tiered justice system,” too, using the phase to make the charges against Trump seem political instead of lawful.“While I agree with Donald Trump that America has a two-tiered justice system,” Nave explains, the two tiers are based on money and race, not political affiliation. According to the NAACP, 65% of Black adults have felt targeted by police on the basis of race; 35% of Latinx and Asian adults have felt the same way — and over five times more Black men are sent to prison than white men. “Poor people and minorities,” Nave concludes, “have always been the greatest victims of the two-tiered justice system in America.”
What else we’re reading
- “Don’t worry about whether anybody else likes you. Come home. We’ll always like you here.” — Michelle Obama’s mom, Marian Lois Shields Robinson, who passed away last Friday at 86, quoted in a moving tribute posted by the Obamas.
- If you work from home and have kids, maybe you’ve experienced what describes here: Work can seem to your kids like less of a firm commitment and more of a personal choice because your schedule is so nebulous (one minute you’re chained to a desk, the next you’re chatting in the kitchen). This part made me think: “If I’m choosing work over playing a board game with [my son], in a sense I am saying that work is more important in that moment. Not more important than him as a person, but more important than what he would like me to do.”
😄 From the archive: AI and the “American smile”
Essayist and UX designer Jenka Gurfinkel lays out how AI-generated imagery flattens and misrepresents global culture (and history) by giving everyone the same cheesy “American smile.” “How we smile, when we smile, why we smile, and what it means is deeply culturally contextual,” she explains. Gurfinkel immigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union as a child and remembers having to adjust to the U.S.’s extreme smiling standards (smile big, smile often, smile to everyone).
🎨 Your daily dose of practical wisdom: about DIY paint kits
Cook up your own paint at home with vinegar, cornstarch, baking soda, water, and a few drops of food coloring. Here’s how.
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