US Imposes Unprecedented Sanctions on Four International Criminal Court Officials

On August 20, 2025, the United States imposed targeted sanctions on four International Criminal Court (ICC) officials, escalating an ongoing campaign to obstruct international judicial proceedings into potential war crimes.

Key Details:

• Four officials sanctioned: Two judges (Kimberly Prost and …

Trump Administration Dramatically Weakens Independent Hatch Act Enforcement

Trump eliminated the independent board overseeing Hatch Act violations by removing Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger and replacing OSC leadership with partisan appointees like Doug Collins and Jamieson Greer. The administration rescinded prior enforcement policies, weakening accountability for …

Obama Signs PROMESA Creating Unelected Fiscal Control Board to Govern Puerto Rico's $72 Billion Debt Crisis

President Barack Obama signed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) into law, establishing a seven-member Financial Oversight and Management Board with sweeping powers over Puerto Rico’s government. The board, appointed by the U.S. President rather than …

Robert F. Kennedy Assassinated in Los Angeles After California Primary Victory

On June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after declaring victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. He died 26 hours later on June 6, 1968. Kennedy’s assassination, coming just two months after the …

Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated in Memphis While Supporting Striking Sanitation Workers

On April 4, 1968, at 6:01 PM Central Standard Time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 39 years old. King had traveled to Memphis to support Black sanitation workers who were striking for better pay, …

FBI COINTELPRO Launches Black Nationalist Hate Groups Program Targeting Civil Rights Leaders

On August 25, 1967, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover authorized the expansion of the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) to create a new initiative targeting “Black Nationalist–Hate Groups.” This program represented a systematic effort by the nation’s premier law enforcement …

Freedom of Information Act Signed After Decade of Executive Branch Opposition

On July 4, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson reluctantly signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), establishing for the first time a legal right for citizens to access federal agency records. The legislation overturned the presumption of government secrecy that had prevailed since the founding, …

Senate Invokes Cloture to End 72-Day Filibuster Against Civil Rights Act for First Time in History

On June 10, 1964, the United States Senate invoked cloture by a vote of 71 to 29, ending a 72-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act—marking the first time in Senate history that cloture had been successfully invoked to break a filibuster on civil rights legislation. The Southern Bloc of 18 …

Attorney General Robert Kennedy Authorizes FBI Wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr.

On October 10, 1963, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy signed an authorization permitting the FBI to wiretap the telephones of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference offices in New York and Atlanta. The authorization, requested by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, …

Bull Connor Orders Fire Hoses and Police Dogs Against Children in Birmingham Campaign

On May 3, 1963, Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor ordered police and firefighters to unleash high-pressure fire hoses and attack dogs on more than 1,000 young students, some as young as eight years old, who were marching downtown to protest segregation. The previous day, on May 2, …

Freedom Riders Firebombed in Anniston as Police Allow KKK Attack Without Intervention

On May 14, 1961, the first Freedom Ride bus—a Greyhound carrying civil rights activists challenging segregated interstate transportation—arrived in Anniston, Alabama, where an angry mob of approximately 200 white people, including Ku Klux Klan members, surrounded it. Local authorities had given the …

Prince Edward County Virginia Closes Entire Public School System for Five Years Rather Than Integrate

On June 26, 1959, the Prince Edward County, Virginia Board of Supervisors refused to appropriate funds to the County School Board, effectively closing the entire public school system rather than comply with federal court orders to integrate. This action represented the most extreme manifestation of …

Eisenhower Sends Federal Troops to Little Rock After Governor Uses National Guard Against Integration

On September 24, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 and issued Executive Order 10730, federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and dispatching 1,000 paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas. This dramatic federal intervention became …

FBI Director Hoover Launches COINTELPRO to Target Communist Party and Domestic Dissent

On August 28, 1956, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover formally established COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), a covert and illegal program designed to surveil, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt domestic political organizations. Initially targeting the Communist Party USA, the program would …

Rosa Parks Arrested for Refusing to Give Up Bus Seat Sparking Montgomery Bus Boycott

On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American seamstress and NAACP secretary, was arrested for violating Chapter 6, Section 11 of the Montgomery City Code, which upheld racial segregation on public buses. Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a …

Emmett Till Murdered in Mississippi After Accusation from White Woman

On August 28, 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Louis Till, an African American boy visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, was abducted from his great-uncle’s home and brutally murdered by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, two white men. Till had allegedly whistled at or made remarks to Carolyn …

Brown II Orders Desegregation with "All Deliberate Speed," Enabling Decade of Resistance

On May 31, 1955, one year after declaring school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court issued Brown II, its implementation ruling. Rather than setting firm deadlines or providing specific remedies, the Court ordered desegregation proceed “with all …

Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision Declares School Segregation Unconstitutional

On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Court declared that racial segregation in public schools violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, …

Compromise of 1877: Wormley Agreement Abandons Black Americans

Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats meet secretly at Wormley’s Hotel in Washington to negotiate the Compromise of 1877—an unwritten political deal settling the disputed 1876 presidential election by abandoning federal protection of Black civil rights. Southern Democrats agree to accept …

Hamburg Massacre: Red Shirts Murder Black Militia to Suppress Voting

Over 100 armed white men—members of paramilitary “rifle clubs” called the Red Shirts—attack approximately 30 Black National Guard servicemen at the Hamburg, South Carolina armory on July 8, 1876, killing seven men (six of them Black) in what becomes the first of a series of planned civil …

Slaughterhouse Cases Gut Fourteenth Amendment Protections

The Supreme Court issues a 5-4 decision in the Slaughterhouse Cases, its first major interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, drastically narrowing the Privileges or Immunities Clause to exclude most individual rights. The ruling upholds Louisiana’s grant of a slaughterhouse monopoly to one …

Colfax Massacre: 150 Black Americans Murdered to Overthrow Local Government

On Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, a mob of approximately 300 armed white men—including members of the Ku Klux Klan and Knights of White Camellia—attacks the Grant Parish courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana, murdering an estimated 150 Black Americans in what becomes the deadliest single incident of …

Fourteenth Amendment Ratified: Corporate Hijacking Begins

The Fourteenth Amendment is ratified after Louisiana and South Carolina provide the necessary three-fourths majority, extending citizenship and equal protection rights to formerly enslaved people. While designed to guarantee civil rights to Black Americans, the amendment’s broad …

Andrew Johnson Impeached for Obstructing Reconstruction

The House of Representatives votes 126-47 to impeach President Andrew Johnson on February 24, 1868—the first presidential impeachment in American history. The precipitating event is Johnson’s February 21 attempt to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and replace him with Lorenzo Thomas in …

John Brown's Harpers Ferry Raid Exposes Slave Power's Armed Defense of Institutional Capture

John Brown led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, on October 16, 1859, seizing the facility with 21 followers in an attempt to spark a slave uprising by capturing weapons and distributing them to enslaved people in the region. The raid exposed how thoroughly the Slave Power had …

Lincoln-Douglas Debates Expose Popular Sovereignty as Slavery Expansion Vehicle

The first of seven Lincoln-Douglas debates took place on August 21, 1858, in Ottawa, Illinois, as Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln faced Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas in a contest focused almost entirely on slavery’s expansion into the territories. The debates exposed fundamental …

Kansas Voters Overwhelmingly Reject Lecompton Constitution Despite Buchanan Bribery

Kansas voters rejected the fraudulent Lecompton Constitution by an overwhelming margin of 10,226 to 138 on January 4, 1858, in a referendum that exposed the pro-slavery document’s lack of popular support. The constitution had been drafted by a pro-slavery territorial legislature that consisted …

Border Ruffians Steal Kansas Election Through Systematic Fraud and Violence

Kansas Territory held its first territorial legislative election on March 30, 1855, which was stolen through systematic fraud and violence by approximately 5,000 “Border Ruffians” who invaded from western Missouri. Under the leadership of U.S. Senator David Rice Atchison and other …

Pierce Inauguration Falsely Claims Slavery Question Settled While Planning Expansion

Franklin Pierce delivered his inaugural address on March 4, 1853, after defeating Winfield Scott in a landslide with 254 electoral votes to 42 as a pro-slavery Northern Democrat. Pierce expressed hope that the Compromise of 1850 had permanently settled the slavery question, stating “I …

Pierce Elected in Slave Power Landslide as Whig Party Collapses Over Slavery

Franklin Pierce won the presidency on November 2, 1852, in a devastating landslide with 254 electoral votes to Winfield Scott’s 42, as divisions within the Whig Party over slavery enforcement came to a catastrophic head. Pierce ran as a pro-slavery Northern Democrat—a “doughface” …

Log Cabin Campaign Uses Image Manipulation and Corruption Attacks to Defeat Van Buren

William Henry Harrison defeated incumbent President Martin Van Buren in the 1840 election, winning 234 of 294 electoral votes through what would become known as the first modern image-based political campaign. When a Democratic newspaper mockingly suggested giving Harrison “a barrel of hard …

Senate Censures Jackson for Pet Banks Scheme and Constitutional Overreach

The Senate voted 26-to-20 on March 28, 1834, to censure President Andrew Jackson for unconstitutionally removing federal deposits from the Second Bank of the United States and placing them in state-chartered “pet banks.” The resolution, introduced by Henry Clay, declared that Jackson …

Jefferson Denounces Corrupt Bargain as Betrayal of Democratic Principles

Thomas Jefferson and other Democratic-Republican leaders spent 1826 denouncing the Adams-Clay arrangement as a fundamental betrayal of democratic principles, helping Jackson’s supporters organize what would become the Democratic Party. Jefferson had privately expressed horror at the …

Corrupt Bargain Elevates Adams to Presidency Through House Backroom Deal

The House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams as president on February 9, 1825, despite Andrew Jackson winning both the popular vote (152,901 to 114,023) and the highest electoral vote count (99, though short of the required majority). When no candidate achieved an electoral majority in the …

House Elects John Quincy Adams in "Corrupt Bargain" After Clay Throws Support, Ending Era of Good Feelings

The U.S. House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams as president despite Andrew Jackson having won both a plurality of the popular vote (41%) and the Electoral College (99 votes to Adams’s 84), in what becomes known as the “Corrupt Bargain.” The 1824 presidential election …

Missouri Compromise Finalizes Slave State Expansion After Racial Exclusion Crisis

Missouri became the 24th state on August 10, 1821, after Congress resolved a constitutional crisis over the state’s attempt to exclude free Black citizens. The original Missouri Compromise of March 1820 had admitted Missouri as a slave state paired with Maine as a free state, drawing a line at …

Hartford Convention Federalist Secession Threat Establishes Nullification Precedent

Twenty-six New England Federalist leaders from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New Hampshire convene in Hartford, Connecticut, to discuss grievances concerning the War of 1812 and federal government overreach under Democratic-Republican control. The convention addresses fears …

Alien and Sedition Acts Criminalize Political Dissent and Democratic Opposition

The Federalist-controlled Congress passes the Alien and Sedition Acts, a set of four statutes that restrict immigration and criminalize criticism of the federal government under the guise of national security during tensions with France. The legislation increases the residency requirement for …