Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

LeBron's group donates $100,000 to pay off Florida felons' fees

Lebron James, felons' voting rights

More Than a Vote, created by LeBron James and other basketball stars, is giving $100,000 to help ex-felons in Florida pay off their fees and fines so they can have their voting rights restored.

Getty Images

Basketball superstar LeBron James' new voting rights group is donating $100,000 to help pay fines and fees for ex-felons in Florida so they can register and vote.

More Than a Vote was founded in June by the Los Angeles Lakers' small forward and other current and past basketball stars including: former NBA player Jalen Rose; Sklyar Diggins-Smith of the WNBA; and young NBA phenom Trae Young.


In 2018, voters in Florida overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative restoring voting rights to convicted felons who had served their terms. But the GOP-controlled Legislature passed a bill, signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, that required ex-felons to pay all of their outstanding fines and fees before being allowed to vote. They argued that paying these fees and fines constituted completion of their sentences.

Opponents said requiring people to pay fees and fines was equivalent to the poll taxes that had been used to block Blacks from voting in the South after the Civil War.

Udonis Haslem, a former teammate of James' and a member of More Than a Vote, said the fees and fines are "a barrier we all have to come together and break down together" in a video posted on the More Than a Vote Facebook page.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The group is calling on others to donate to pay the fees and fines through the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.

A federal district judge in May struck down the law requiring fees and fines be paid before voting rights would be restored. The state appealed and earlier this month the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request from DeSantis to put the trial judge's decision on hold until the full appeals court could hear arguments on Aug. 18.

An estimated 1.4 million Floridians could be eligible to have their voting rights restored. There are no hard numbers, but ex-felons in Florida owe upward of hundreds of millions dollars in fines and fees.

In announcing the donation, a news release from More Than a Vote indicated that more announcements about the group's partnership with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition would occur in the coming weeks.

One already announced: James' group will host public screenings of "John Lewis: Good Trouble," with the proceeds going to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition fund.

The coalition already has raised a total of $1.8 million toward a goal of $3 million.

Read More

Rainbow sign that reads "All Are Welcome Here"
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

It is time to rethink DEI

In August 2019 I wrote: “Diverse people must be in every room where decisions are made.” Co-author Debilyn Molineaux and I explained that diversity and opportunity in regard to race/ethnicity, sex/gender, social identity, religion, ideology would be an operating system for the Bridge Alliance — and, we believed, for the nation as a whole.

A lot has happened since 2019.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump
Brandon Bell/Getty Images

How to approach Donald Trump's second presidency

The resistance to Donald Trump has failed. He has now shaped American politics for nearly a decade, with four more years — at least — to go. A hard truth his opponents must accept: Trump is the most dominant American politician since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

This dominance unsettles and destabilizes American democracy. Trump is a would-be authoritarian with a single overriding impulse — to help himself above all else.

Yet somehow he keeps winning.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kamala Harris greeting a large crowd

Vice President Kamala Harris is greeted by staff during her arrival at the White House on Nov. 12.

Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Democrats have work to do to reclaim the mantle of change

“Democrats are like the Yankees,” said one of the most memorable tweets to come across on X after Election Day. “Spent hundreds of millions of dollars to lose the big series and no one got fired or was held accountable.”

Too sad. But that’s politics. The disappointment behind that tweet was widely shared, but no one with any experience in politics truly believes that no one will be held accountable.

Keep ReadingShow less