Author: William H. Freivogel

In Conversation: Sixty years of civil rights activism by the iconic Percy Green

Sixty-one years ago, Percy Green began a hunger strike in front of the office of then-St. Louis Treasurer John H. “Jack” Dwyer to demand the city remove tax money from Jefferson Bank, which had no Black employees. Green, who had already been branded a “habitual troublemaker” by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and secretly targeted for…

100 days of chaos

In 100 days of chaos, President Donald J. Trump has violated laws, ignored time-tested norms, damaged the world’s most respected system of higher education, undermined the world’s leading network of medical and health research facilities, surrendered America’s important instruments of “soft power,” endangered the health of tens of thousands of families around the world and…

Georgetown Law says acting U.S. attorney’s campaign against DEI violates Jesuit values, First Amendment

Edward R. Martin Jr., known for decades in Missouri for his fervid devotion to Catholic values, was rebuked this month by the dean of Georgetown Law School for violating the Catholic principles in pressuring the university to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion from its curriculum. Dean William M. Treanor sent a tartly worded letter to…

Opinion: The month that shook our world

French publication Le Monde headlined this week that it was “The week the US shook Europe’s world.” Americans could justifiably say it’s the month that shook ours. There is no precedent for President Donald Trump’s massive restructuring of the government with a flurry of executive orders, pronouncements, firings and pardons that have overturned norms, violated…

Opinion: Constitutional watchdogs shrink from checking presidential abuse of power

While President Donald Trump unleashes a torrent of legally questionable exertions of power, Congress sits by compliantly, the U.S. Supreme Court remains unengaged and the Fourth Estate shrinks from its role as a watchdog of presidential abuse. Media executives even curry favor with the man they’re supposed to be watching. In short, the check and…