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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gives a speech
Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash
Fierce Urgency of Remembering
Jan 08, 2026
The floorboards of American democracy creak under the weight of our collective amnesia. Every January, the image of Martin Luther King Jr. is polished and presented, made to appear harmless and easily shared. This is no more than another federal holiday, with his famous dream reduced to a recurring line or two and an oft-repeated photograph, both stripped of their original challenge. But in 2026, this custom feels different. The air feels tighter. There is a sense that something threatening lies beneath the commemorations—a growing worry that the democracy King strove to protect is not just vulnerable but on the verge of failing, struggling to survive during Trump’s second presidency.
America has always lived in urgent tension with itself. King understood this better than most. His moral and spiritual imagination pierced patriotic veneers, exposing the greed and violence woven into American life, the ways whiteness functioned as inheritance for some and dispossession for many others. Even amid technological marvels and global ambition, the questions King posed half a century ago remain not just unanswered, but pressing: Who belongs? Who bears the cost of our prosperity? Can a genuine moral community exist without truth-telling and repair?
To invoke King now is an act of urgent necessity. He was never a comforting figure, despite how often he is portrayed as one. King compelled America to look at itself without myth or nostalgia. He practiced a double vision that was both tender and unrelenting, able to grieve what had been while demanding the courage to imagine something more just. That task is even more urgent today, in a moment when history itself is under organized assault. Not only Black history, but the plural, untidy story of anyone who has struggled to breathe at the margins is being narrowed, edited, or erased altogether.
From the pulpit, King called this tension 'the fierce urgency of now.' For him, it was never a catchphrase but a demand for immediate attention, both a warning and an invitation. He believed that democracy was more than running elections or following laws—it depended on a shared agreement built on memory, repentance, and hope. Democracy lasted only if people insisted that it include and protect those who were most likely to be overlooked. Without that continual insistence, democracy became empty at its core.
Today, we are governed again by a politics hostile to that vision. Trump’s return to the presidency represents more than policy reversals or rhetorical cruelty. It signals something deeper and more corrosive: an aggressive form of forgetting. Painful truths about who we have been are treated as inconveniences to be discarded. The record of protest and sacrifice is relegated to banned books, defunded programs, and shuttered classrooms. Across the country, attempts to tell a fuller American story are attacked, histories are censored, and ethnic identity is flattened into something manageable and nonthreatening. This is not merely a partisan struggle. It is a spiritual crisis.
King’s theology, radical as it was, was profoundly democratic. He believed the nation’s wounds required what Reinhold Niebuhr called a spiritual discipline against resentment, a discipline that did not deny injustice but refused to let bitterness have the final word. Democracy, for King, became real only when it was saturated with love, when the son of a tenant farmer and the daughter of a sharecropper could recognize themselves in the promises of the Constitution. This was not idealism divorced from reality. It was forged in the Black church, where hymns doubled as political declarations, and testimony became an act of resistance, where hope was cultivated in the shadow of humiliation.
Where is that practice now, when “We the People” seems to shrink by the day? Its erosion demands our immediate attention. It is happening in the marrow of public life. Voting rights are weakened. Protest is criminalized. Citizenship is rendered transactional, offering security and belonging to some while withholding it from others. This is not accidental drift. It is the systematic unraveling of the civil and moral compact that once made democracy imaginable.
What King offers us still is a politics of memory, a disciplined refusal to let lies harden into permanence. Not for the sake of shame, but because truth, he believed, had the power to liberate. In the current political moment, memory has been weaponized. It is reduced to slogans and fantasies of a greatness that never belonged to everyone. The histories of Black, brown, Asian, Indigenous, and queer communities are either trimmed to serve a narrow nostalgia or erased altogether.
The struggle over history is, at its core, a struggle over the soul. Efforts to ban books, dismantle ethnic studies, and intimidate educators are not simply about curriculum. They are about shaping the moral imagination of the future. They declare that only certain people are entitled to full personhood, that only some stories matter, and that the image of God itself can be selectively honored. This is the theological crisis beneath our political one.
King never mistook unity for conformity. His vision of beloved community did not depend on the absence of conflict, but on the presence of justice amid difference. Democracy, in this sense, demands more than tolerance. It requires the discipline of living with one another, not over or against or in spite of one another. It asks us to endure ethical discomfort and to resist the temptation to simplify ourselves or our neighbors.
That demand helps explain what Trumpist politics fears most. Authoritarianism relies on oversimplifying things. It works by erasing complexity, numbing empathy, and training people to see others' suffering as either exaggerated or deserved. It takes away everything that gives democracy its essential humanity: our shared memory, moral restlessness, remorse, and the patient work of rebuilding what is broken. It restricts our sense of right and wrong until fear becomes the norm.
King refused to shrink. His faith in the arc of the moral universe was not passive optimism. It was a hard-earned conviction born of organizing, prayer, and sacrifice. He understood how much labor it took to bend that arc, how many bodies and broken hearts were required. He confronted America’s failures without treating them as an excuse for despair. The work, he knew, would grow more difficult, not less. “The greatest tragedy of this period of social transition,” he warned, “is not the glaring noisiness of bad people, but the appalling silence of good people.”
That silence is now unmistakable. It echoes in the platitudes of politicians who praise King’s dream while rejecting his moral urgency. It resonates in calls for unity that demand forgiveness before wounds are acknowledged, much less healed. It lingers in the quiet fear of communities told repeatedly that they do not count, that their histories are disposable, that their presence is conditional.
How should we answer such a moment? We do what King did. We theologize in the presence of despair. We place our bodies where our memories are. We fight for public policies that honor the fullness of human dignity, not out of sentimentality, but because democracy collapses when people are stripped of their stories. We organize for repair even when institutions resist or retreat.
And we tell the truth, especially when it is unwelcome. We tell it from pulpits and picket lines, in classrooms and living rooms, at school board meetings and city halls. We read the banned books. We sing the freedom songs. We enter spaces where our very presence unsettles the lie that only some belong.
King’s radical witness was that democracy, if it is to survive, must honor voices long silenced or shouted down. To commemorate him in 2026 is not to lay a wreath, but to accept responsibility for unfinished work. The fierce urgency of now confronts us again, not as a slogan, but as a choice. Memory or erasure. Personhood or theft. Democracy or its slow extinction. The King holiday is not a eulogy. It is a summons to the moral and civic renewal of our battered, beloved community.
Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson is a spiritual entrepreneur, author, scholar-practioner whose leadership and strategies around social and racial justice issues are nationally recognized and applied.
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Why Aren’t There More Discharge Petitions?
Jan 07, 2026
We’ve recently seen the power of a “discharge petition” regarding the Epstein files, and how it required only a few Republican signatures to force a vote on the House floor—despite efforts by the Trump administration and Congressional GOP leadership to keep the files sealed. Amazingly, we witnessed the power again with the vote to force House floor consideration on extending the Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies.
Why is it amazing? Because in the 21st century, fewer than a half-dozen discharge petitions have succeeded. And, three of those have been in the last few months. Most House members will go their entire careers without ever signing on to a discharge petition.
So why, given the many actions of the current administration that face widespread public concern, aren’t we seeing a wave of discharge petitions forcing votes on other issues with broad public support? Many such actions have nearly unanimous Democratic opposition, and even quiet dissent from many Republicans,
The answer lies in the deliberate complexity of House rules, the structure of power, and the political incentives that constrain members’ choices.
Power in Theory, Complexity in Practice
The discharge petition is one of Congress’s most intriguing procedural tools—and one of the clearest illustrations of how House rules are designed less to enable majority decision-making than to protect party leadership. In theory, a discharge petition allows rank-and-file members to bypass committee and leadership obstruction and force a vote on a stalled bill. In practice, it is rarely successful.
The discharge petition process is one of the most egregious examples of how both parties have endorsed a complicated procedure designed to frustrate what should be a method to allow widespread public opinion to overpower party politics. It is simply one of many rules that tend to encourage party control over thoughtful governing.
Once a bill has sat in committee for 30 legislative days, any House member may file a discharge petition. If 218 members—a majority of the House—sign it, the measure becomes eligible for floor consideration. Signatures are public, recorded in the Congressional Record, and must be added in person at the Clerk’s desk. Members may remove their names only before the petition reaches 218.
Even after clearing that hurdle, the petition does not go directly to the floor. It can be considered only on narrow procedural windows—the second or fourth Monday of a month—and only after additional waiting periods. Each step introduces delay, uncertainty, and opportunity for leadership intervention.
The “Special Rule” Trap
Further complicating the procedure, House members rarely use discharge petitions to bring bills directly to the floor. Doing so forces consideration under regular House rules, which means opening the measure to unlimited amendments, motions to recommit, and poison-pill provisions that can gut or derail it.
To avoid this chaos, members increasingly use discharge petitions to target “special rules”—resolutions from the Rules Committee that structure debate and limit amendments. Discharging a special rule allows supporters to protect the bill from procedural sabotage.
But even this workaround contains a built-in kill switch.
At virtually any point, the Speaker can bring the special rule to the floor and move to table it. The motion is non-debatable, requires only a simple majority, and effectively nullifies the petition. The petition may remain technically “alive,” but it has no remaining path to obtain a floor vote.
This design is not accidental. It ensures that discharge petitions succeed only when leadership fears real and overwhelming political backlash from blocking a vote. Absent that pressure, leadership control prevails.
The Politics of Public Signatures
Even with intense public pressure, procedural barriers alone do not explain the rarity of successful discharge petitions. The political risks to individual members are equally decisive.
Discharge petition signatures are public acts of defiance. Members who sign openly challenge their party leadership, exposing themselves to retaliation: loss of committee assignments, diminished legislative support, leadership-funded primary challengers, and, in today’s climate, even threats from outside interests against themselves or their families.
As a result, many members who privately support a petition’s goals or who receive extensive constituent pressure may refuse to sign it. On partisan or controversial issues, the handful of cross-party votes needed to reach 218 rarely materialize. The incentives overwhelmingly favor silence over action.
A Tool for Messaging, Not Lawmaking
Most modern discharge petitions are filed not because supporters expect success, but because they function as messaging tools. They signal commitment to constituents, interest groups, and the media, even when members know the petition will never reach the floor.
This symbolic role has value. It can shape narratives, apply pressure, and encourage negotiations. But it also underscores a troubling reality: the procedure that should empower the House as a whole has been reduced to a form of political theater.
Party Loyalty Over Country
Discharge petitions expose a fundamental tension in the House. Members are elected to represent their districts, yet are constrained by party loyalty enforced through rules, committee control, and leadership retaliation.
Even bills with broad bipartisan or public support may never receive a vote. Power is concentrated in the hands of a few leaders, protected by procedural architecture that prioritizes party unity over majority will. It is a vivid example of “party over country” embedded not just in rhetoric, but in the rules themselves.
What This Means for Democracy
The discharge petition process reveals a deeper imbalance in the House of Representatives. Legislative power does not reside primarily with the body as a whole, but with self-imposed leadership structures that are not mandated by the Constitution. Political parties and procedural rules are internal creations, designed to protect control rather than encourage deliberation and good government.
The Founders warned against concentrated power. Yet today, even when rank-and-file members, advocacy groups, and the public align, simple procedural maneuvers can block action entirely. This reality highlights why structural reform—particularly of committee power and floor rules—is essential if Congress is ever to function in the public interest.
Conclusion
Discharge petitions are among the most democratic ideas in House procedure, offering a way for members to assert themselves against leadership control. In practice, they are slow, risky, and easily neutralized. They survive less as instruments of good governance than as reminders of how tightly power is held by a few in today’s Congress.
Until House rules are reformed, even widely supported legislation will remain hostage to leadership preferences, and discharge petitions will continue to be exceptions rather than pathways to majority-driven policymaking. The rules could be changed at any time—but doing so would require the leadership's consent to the very rules those rules are designed to protect. The paradox of House rules defines the modern dysfunction in governing and explains why the party often prevails over the country. The public, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and civic leaders need to focus their energies on changing the rules rather than individual policies.
Jeff Dauphin, aka J.P. McJefferson, is retired. Blogging on the "Underpinnings of a Broken Government." Founded and ran two environmental information & newsletter businesses for 36 years. Facilitated enactment of major environmental legislation in Michigan in the 70s. Community planning and engineering. BSCE, Michigan Technological University.
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A billboard in Times Square calls for the release of the Epstein Files on July 23, 2025 in New York City. Attorney General Pam Bondi briefed President Donald Trump in May on the Justice Department's review of the documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case, telling him that his name appeared in the files.
Getty Images, Adam Gray
FBI–DOJ Failure on 1996 Epstein Complaint Demands Congressional Accountability
Jan 07, 2026
On Aug. 29, 1996, Maria Farmer reported her sexual assault by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to the New York Police Department. Ms. Farmer contacted the FBI as advised by the police. On Sept. 3, 1996, the FBI identified the case as “child pornography” since naked or semi-naked hard copy pictures existed.
It wasn’t until Nov. 19, 2025 when the Epstein Files Transparency Act became law whereby all files – including Farmer’s 1996 complaint -- were to be made public by Dec. 19. Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice (DOJ) failed to release 100% of the files as mandated by law.
Obviously, Congress should question six individuals who had access to the original 1996 file during their tenure as FBI director: Louis French, Robert Mueller, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Wray and Kash Patel. Likewise, 10 managers of America’s DOJ since 1996 should testify before Congress as to their knowledge of the case: Janet Reno, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, Michael Mukasey, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Jeff Sessions, William Barr, Merrick Garland and Pam Bondi.
Questions asked of the above FBI and DOJ leaders might include the following:
Establishing the factual record
When did you first learn of the 1996 Epstein-Maxwell complaint and through what channel (e.g., briefing, media report, internal audit, inspector general review, civil litigation, etc.)?
Second, what, if anything, did you do when you first became aware of the 1996 complaint?
Third, during your tenure was the 1996 complaint ever flagged, re-opened or re-reviewed in connection with later federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein or related sex-trafficking and child-exploitation cases? If so, what did you do about the case? If not, why not?
Decisions or non-decision on the 1996 complaint
At any time during your leadership, did you review or order a review of the 1996 complaint to assess whether FBI and/or DOJ personnel mishandled allegations of child pornography, threats or child sexual exploitation, and if not, why not?
Systematic failures in child-sex-abuse cases
During your tenure, what changes were implemented to ensure that tips involving alleged child pornography and/or child sexual exploitation were: A) logged correctly, B) assessed by specialized child-exploitation units and C) reported to state, local and tribal authorities within the required time framework?
Director-level accountability
What do you think is the proper recourse for any FBI director or DOJ leader employed since 1996 who was negligent about the child pornography-related crimes alleged against Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators?
Culture, incentives and possible favoritism
At any time in your leadership role, did you have any evidence that the complainant, Maria Farmer, was disbelieved, minimized or discredited because she was accusing a wealthy, well-connected figure?
Second, during your tenure, was there any discussion by you and/or your associates about the risks of “rocking the boat” with politically connected targets in child-sex or exploitation investigations?
Remedies for survivors, FBI reforms and DOJ reforms
Will you support a bipartisan congressional investigation on the handling of the Maria Farmer complaint and all related leads since 1996, including naming responsible federal officials who failed their duty as well as disclosing to the public the names of individuals who were involved in child pornography, sex trafficking and child-exploitation?
Second, what concrete remedies should be offered to the approximate 1,200 female survivors whose abuse might have been prevented had the 1996 complaint been properly pursued, such as expedited victim-compensation and/or formal apologies from the FBI and DOJ?
Citizens’ clarion call
First, contact each of your three elected Congressional delegates and ask if they support a complete investigation as to why six FBI directors and 10 DOJ leaders – employed since 1996 – did or did not take proper action related to the Maria Farmer complaint as well as for the 1,200 females allegedly harmed by Epstein, Maxwell and other men.
Next, contact the following legislators who have major responsibility for general oversight of the relevant federal agencies related to the handling or mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and request in-depth congressional hearings of the matter: 1) House Representatives’ James Comer (R-Ky.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Clay Higgins (R-La.), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and 2) Senators’ Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
Finally, request your three legislative representatives at the Capitol to take two additional actions: 1) eliminate the statute of limitations for criminal charges and civil lawsuits related to child pornography, sexual assault and sex trafficking and 2) revise the Epstein Files Transparency Act so that while protecting victims’ identities is crucial, the law should prevent broad redactions that shield powerful individuals or jeopardize the public interest.
Steve Corbin is a professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
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Congress's productive 2025 (And don't let anyone tell you otherwise)
Jan 07, 2026
The media loves to tell you your government isn't working, even when it is. Don't let anyone tell you 2025 was an unproductive year for Congress. [Edit: To clarify, I don't mean the government is working for you.]
1,976 pages of new law
At 1,976 pages of new law enacted since President Trump took office, including an increase of the national debt limit by $4 trillion, any journalist telling you not much happened in Congress this year is sleeping on the job.
Using rules that exempt certain bills from the filibuster, Congress passed (and President Trump signed into law) the 330-page "reconciliation" bill which included tax breaks adding $500 billion to the deficit; new limits on Medicaid, SNAP, federal student loads, and green energy; and $171 billion for immigration enforcement, making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in the United States. Also exempt from the filibuster was the "rescissions" bill which slashed most funding for foreign aid (saving about $800 million and potentially causing 1 million deaths world-wide and a geopolitical vacuum that China is ready to fill) and public broadcasting (saving about $100 million).
Those were perhaps the most controversial bills ever enacted, with senators voting yes on the reconciliation bill representing just 44% of the country's population. I don't think that's ever happened before and really captures the political climate. (For comparison, the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, passed the Senate with the yea votes representing 62% of the country’s population.)
Earlier this month, Congress passed the 1,259-page National Defense Authorization Act, a yearly bill that sets military and related policies. This year, the NDAA incorporated 40 other bills on a range of topics, including police first aid kits and reuniting Korean American families with family members in North Korea. It also included a provision intended to force the Secretary of Defense to provide more information on the military strikes on Venezuelan civilian boats.
Using a rarely-used rule to override the Speaker of the House, legislators passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act to force the Trump Administration to release Epstein files. It's incredibly significant any time the Speaker loses control over the floor since setting the floor schedule is the Speaker's most important job.
Congress also quashed numerous Biden Administration regulations.
And the Senate confirmed 341 Trump nominees, which is a fairly fast pace.
196 bills enacted
196 bills were enacted. The mainstream media will tell you it's only 61 because they don't look at what's inside omnibus bills. Fewer bills are getting a vote and presidential signature, but they are getting longer and longer and often bundle a number of other bills. (That's a trend that started decades ago.)
The 1,976 pages Trump signed into law is on the low side: More than Reagan (1,528) and GW Bush (1,024) did by this point in their terms, less than the first Bush (2,518), Clinton (2,705), Obama (3,478), Trump in his first term (2,236), and Biden (2,450).
But more isn't better, and not every page of legislation enacted is actually important.
The reverse is also true. The just two pages cutting foreign aid has enormous domestic and geopolitical consequences.
What Congress hasn't done
It's also true that there are things that Congress hasn't done. Like not being in session. House Republicans took their chamber out of session for some 40 days vowing to not negotiate with Democrats to end October's government shutdown, only to come back into session to approve a bill negotiated with Democrats in the Senate.
They could have used that time to figure out agency funding levels for the remainder of the fiscal year after January. Instead, another government shutdown may be around the corner. (Congress is supposed to have figured this out before the fiscal year began on October 1.)
Nor has Congress done much for government efficiency, allowing Trump to fabricate cuts and fire Inspectors General, the abuse watchdogs at federal agencies. Republicans also hope to downsize Congress's abuse investigators at the Government Accountability Office. These cuts would cost taxpayers billions of dollars by allowing waste, fraud, and abuse to go unchecked. Or more likely, abuse would be checked just when it advances the President's interests.
Congress has also been silent on Trump's tariffs, despite the power to tariff being reserved to Congress. Congress could also address the Trump Administration's illegal deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois, or the swirling conflicts of interest in the Trump family.
Congress's productive 2025 (And don't let anyone tell you otherwise) was originally published by GovTrack and is republished with permission.
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