A 19th-century legal case and why it matters today
Get Starting Point
A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday.
Enter Email
Sign Up
'A lot of people think that the 13th Amendment created a new form of slavery, a new form of forced labor,' she adds. 'In fact, what it did was it allowed an older form of forced labor to continue, and that is to say carceral slavery, and that form of forced labor has its origins not in the South, but instead in the North.'
What happened to William Freeman during his five years at Auburn didn't end with forced labor; he endured brutal beatings, including one that left him permanently disabled with hearing loss and likely cognitive deficits. Six months after his release, Freeman went to the house of a white family and killed four people.
His crime, and the public reaction to it, spurred debates about retribution and race. It contributed, as Bernstein details, to a widespread belief among whites that Black youth were inherently criminal. It did not, however, have any effect on the challenge Freeman himself had raised as a teenager. The use of incarcerated labor to produce profits for prisons — the system against which 'he had an entirely rational claim,' Bernstein says — has persisted.
Advertisement
Telling Freeman's story, Bernstein adds, 'was a really hard needle to thread. One of the commitments I made to myself was that I was going to take everybody's pain very seriously. I was not going to trivialize or dismiss anybody's pain, and that applied to William Freeman, and it also applied to the people that he murdered.'
Robin Bernstein will read at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 19, at the
.
And now for some recommendations . . .
Haley Mlotek grew up surrounded by marital strife and divorce — as a kid, she helped out at her mother's marital counseling practice, even typing up couples' complaints against each other as they got ready to split up. But her own divorce forced her to confront the pain she hadn't quite understood as a child. In '
The poet Robert Frost is too often seen these days as a simple sage of rural New England, a bard of snowy roads and not much else. But in Adam Plunkett's new biography, '
Academia, feminism, and affairs of the heart intertwine in Michelle de Kretser's '
Advertisement
Kate Tuttle edits the Globe's Books section.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
23 minutes ago
- The Hill
GM's quarterly results illustrate the folly of tariffs
General Motors, a cornerstone of American industry, is suffering the consequences of President Trump's unconstitutional 25 percent tariffs on imported vehicles and auto parts. In the second quarter of 2025, GM suffered a $1.1 billion tariff blow to its operating income, slashing the company's profit margin from a healthy 9 percent to just 6.1 percent. Net income plunged by 36.1 percent from the prior quarter and by a staggering 40.7 percent compared to a year ago. Although the estimated tariff impact for the full year of $4 billion to $5 billion is less than 3 percent of GM's overall revenue, that cost represents more than half of the typical annual income for the company over the past decade. The consequences extend far beyond GM's balance sheet. Tariffs, paid by importers to the federal government, are partly absorbed by companies and partly passed to consumers. We've especially seen this in import-sensitive sectors including furnishings, appliances, clothes and toys. Men's shirts and sweaters, for instance, rose 4.9 percent in June alone. When businesses 'eat' the cost, as GM tried to do last quarter, the fallout is no less severe. Diminished earnings mean less capital for investment in better technology or expanded operations, slowing broader economic growth, fewer resources for pay raises or new jobs — hardly the boon for workers that tariff advocates promise. The data confirms this. Nationwide, 14,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared in the past two months, erasing all gains in 2025. In June, real average weekly earnings dropped by 0.4 percent, an annualized loss of nearly 5 percent. Shareholders are also feeling the pinch. Stock valuations track a company's expected future earnings. Since 2012, GM's stock price increased by more than 200 percent. GM's price-to-earnings ratio today stands at 6.83, almost identical to 2012 levels. Stock prices increased alongside earnings. A sustained $5 billion annual hit, wiping out over half of GM's annual net income, could erase more than $20 billion in market capitalization if valuations adjust. With tariffs eroding profits, is it any wonder that GM's stock has slid 8 percent since its post-2024 election peak and now languishes 13 percent off its 2021 highs? This affects millions of middle-class Americans and retirees with pensions and savings invested. More broadly, lower dividends and diminished returns discourage investment, starving companies of the capital needed to expand. The result: slower growth, fewer jobs and weaker wage gains. GM, to its credit, is fighting to offset 30 percent of this burden by boosting U.S. production, cutting costs and increasing domestic content to comply with the USMCA trade agreement's labyrinthine rules. Yet even if successful, the net impact of $2.8 billion to $3.5 billion will devour a significant slice of GM's already thin margins. Profit margins at GM — as in most other sectors — are far less than conventional wisdom. GM's net profit margin over the past decade has averaged less than 5 percent. In other words, a $30,000 vehicle yields less than $1,500 in profit. GM's plans to shift some production to U.S. plants and rework supply chains is a testament to private enterprise's resilience. But make no mistake: These shifts sacrifice efficiency for compliance. Restructuring operations in a free market in pursuit of efficiency yields more profit, consumer benefit and economic growth. Doing so under duress to escape arbitrary tariffs may result in survival, but without these benefits. Resources that could have fueled innovation or lowered prices are now squandered on navigating artificial trade barriers. As an important sidenote, roughly half the tariff's cost stems from GM's South Korean operations, a stark reminder of the folly of taxing trade with allies. Rather than strengthening ties with democratic partners through bold free-trade agreements, these tariffs risk pushing nations like South Korea toward China, America's chief adversary. Far from economic strategy, it is geopolitical shortsightedness. Politicians sometimes prefer tariffs to other forms of taxation because they are less visible than taxes on income or sales. This makes it easier to dodge accountability by blaming 'greedy' corporations. For this reason, Trump called Jeff Bezos to deter Amazon from listing tariff costs on purchases. The White House press secretary labeled this a 'hostile and political act by Amazon.' Regardless, protectionism is not cost-free. Sustained tariffs will raise prices, shrink profits, erode real wages and slow economic growth. GM's quarterly results are a warning.
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Trump stuns Wall Street, Washington with controversial BLS nominee
President Trump's pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is breaking the mold of his predecessors and causing alarm among economists of all stripes Commissioners of the BLS are usually academics or career civil servants with decades of experience in statistics and economics. But EJ Antoni, who Trump nominated to lead the agency after firing former BLS chief Erika McEntarfer on the heels of a disappointing jobs report earlier this month, has more bona fides as a pundit and conservative advocate than he does as a statistician. The choice of Antoni to lead a statistical division whose data is scrutinized by businesses and governments all over the world is getting major backlash from the economics profession and sparking concerns about the politicization of bedrock-level economic data. 'E.J. Antoni is completely unqualified to be BLS Commissioner,' Harvard University economist Jason Furman, who worked for the Obama administration, wrote on social media. 'He is an extreme partisan and does not have any relevant experience.' Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, echoed Furman's words. 'He's utterly unqualified and as partisan as it gets,' he told the Washington Post. Who is EJ Antoni? Antoni has been the chief economist of the Heritage Foundation's center on the federal budget for the past four months. The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think tank that produced the wide-ranging Project 2025 policy agenda. Project 2025 took aim at the 'permanent political class' in Washington, and many of its budget-cutting recommendations have been carried out by the Trump administration. He held two research fellowships at Heritage prior to his current position and two other fellowships at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group led by billionaire Steve Forbes. Antoni submitted his doctoral dissertation in 2020, in which he defends positions associated with 'supply-side economics,' a conservative policy doctrine that became popular in the 1980s. Besides stints as an adjunct at a community college and as an instructor at his alma mater of Northern Illinois University, he's held no other academic posts. By comparison, McEntarfer worked for 20 years as an economist with the Census Bureau. Her predecessor William Beach was the chief economist for the Senate Budget Committee, and his predecessor Erica Groshen spent 20 years as an economist at the New York Federal Reserve and referees for about a dozen academic journals. Antoni is a frequent guest on a number of conservative media outlets. While BLS makes it a point to produce — rather than interpret — economic data, Antoni has been hitting talking points on recent BLS releases in media appearances, a stark contrast with the agency's typical cut-and-dry communications. Discussing the dismal July jobs report, he emphasized job growth among native-born Americans on former Trump adviser Steven Bannon's internet podcast. 'There was some good news in the report, too, that we should definitely highlight,' he said. 'All of the net job growth over the last 12 months has gone to native-born Americans.' The Heritage Foundation did not respond to a request for an interview with Antoni. Backlash from economists Economists aren't mincing their words about Antoni's credentials. One economist at the University of Wisconsin refuted one of Antoni's recent papers, showing it contained basic statistical mistakes and finding that it wasn't possible to replicate its results — an academic kiss of death. Alan Cole, an economist with the conservative Tax Foundation think tank, described the errors in the paper as 'stunning.' 'Stunning errors in a tweet are bad, but worse to do it in long form, where there's more time and effort involved,' he wrote on social media. Conservative economists have also been blasting the firing of McEntarfer after the July jobs report showed that a meager 106,000 jobs have been added to the economy since May. Trump accused the agency — without any evidence — of producing 'rigged' data, which many economists have said is poppycock. 'The totally groundless firing of Dr. Erika McEntarfer … sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau,' William Beach, a Trump appointee who preceded McEntarfer as head of the BLS, wrote online. Warnings to senators Antoni is expected to be easily confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate after he appears before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which will also need to approve his nomination. Antoni's critics are waging a long-shot effort to turn GOP members of the committee against the nominee ahead of his likely confirmation. Friends of the BLS, a group that advocates for the agency and that's chaired by Beach and his predecessor Erica Groshen, called out Antoni in a statement Wednesday, describing the debate about his nomination as 'contentious.' 'BLS now … faces the additional challenge of a contentious debate over the nominee for the next Commissioner, Dr. EJ Antoni,' they said. Groshen told The Hill they hope the nomination process will be 'very thorough.' 'The responsibility of the Senate HELP committee … is particularly important at this time,' she added. The Hill reached out to all Republican members of the committee about Antoni's qualifications, most of whom didn't respond. A representative for Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she wouldn't be commenting on the nomination prior to the hearing. What would politicized labor data look like? Antoni has already floated some massive changes to BLS data releases, including canceling regular monthly reports in favor of quarterly releases — a change that would alter the entire cadence of economic data output and affect nearly every private and public sector model of the U.S. economy. He told Fox News before his nomination that 'the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly jobs reports, but keep publishing more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data,' since BLS data is often subject to revision. Former BLS chiefs told The Hill they're keeping an eye on a regulatory standard known as OMB Directive No. 3, which governs the rules of BLS releases, for any sign that agency data could become politicized. 'Violations of that would be very unusual, and therefore indicative of something unusual underneath it,' Groshen said. Antoni has delivered some conflicting remarks on BLS data revisions, attributing them to 'incompetent' leadership under McEntarfer during his appearance on Bannon's podcast and then noting later that the problems pre-dated her time as agency commissioner. 'I think that's part of the reason why we continue to have all of these different data problems,' he said before adding that 'this is not a problem unique to the Trump administration.' Real problems with BLS data In fact, the downward revisions in the July jobs report that prompted Trump's firing of McEntarfer were due to the late reporting of educational employment figures by state and local governments, along with the more pronounced seasonal effects in that sector since teachers don't work in the summer. That's fairly typical for the agency, current and former employees of the BLS told The Hill. Political narratives aside, the BLS has seen a substantial drop in survey response rates in the aftermath of the pandemic, a decline that has made the data less reliable, but that has affected statistical agencies in a number of countries beyond the U.S. 'This is not a failure of the BLS … This is a phenomenon that is worldwide,' Erica Groshen told The Hill. 'This is a slow-moving train wreck,' she added, exhorting CEOs across the economy to make a priority of the surveys. 'There is no silver bullet. Believe me – people have been looking for it for a long time.' Economists have been lamenting the survey response rates for years. 'Like Orwellian newspeak, [the U.S. employment report] can often mean the reverse of what it says it means. The household and establishment surveys portray contrasting pictures of employment (and both have shocking response rates),' UBS economist Paul Donovan wrote earlier this month, having noted declines since 2023.
The Hill
2 hours ago
- The Hill
Russiagate scandal demands prosecutions, overhaul of the FBI and CIA
Once again, newly released documents and damning evidence conclusively substantiate what many Americans have long suspected. Russiagate was a conspiracy — hatched, implemented and relentlessly promoted by top officials in the CIA, FBI and across the Obama-Biden-Clinton political machine to rig a presidential election and undermine a duly elected president. It also corrupted the very institutions essential to protecting American liberty. Despite the mountain of evidence and exhaustive investigations, those responsible for this travesty remain unpunished. Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, among other intelligence officials, have lied to Congress and the American public about their reliance on the discredited Steele dossier — a report paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC — while simultaneously engineering different versions of critical intelligence assessments to cover their tracks. Although the intelligence community and its leaders publicly maintained that the notorious dossier played no role in the official assessment concerning ' Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections,' newly declassified oversight reviews flatly contradict these claims. The record shows that Brennan and Clapper prepared a classified, compartmented version of the assessment specifically for President Obama and senior officials, which cited the dossier to bolster key judgments about Russian election interference. Later, when sanitized versions were released to Congress and the public, all references to the dossier had been scrubbed away. Special Counsel John Durham's investigation verified that Brennan, Clapper, then-Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey were all briefed, even before the 2016 election, on the Clinton campaign's plan to concoct a false Trump-Russia narrative. Still, the FBI — with full knowledge that the Steele dossier was riddled with falsehoods — deployed it to secure baseless FISA warrants against Trump advisor Carter Page and launch the Crossfire Hurricane investigation (the FBI'S codename for the operation), with the intent of sabotaging Trump's campaign and subsequent presidency. Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act litigation exposed much of this corruption years before the Durham report. Court-obtained documents, such as the 'electronic communication' that launched Crossfire Hurricane, revealed the flimsy and third-hand nature of the intelligence used as pretext. Other records uncovered by Judicial Watch showed how high-ranking Justice Department officials, such as Bruce Ohr, maintained close ties with Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, acting as a conduit for anti-Trump smears even after Steele was fired as an informant by the FBI for leaking to the media. Ohr's communications disclosed that so-called 'intelligence' on Trump-Russia ties was being laundered to the Clinton campaign and other government insiders. It goes deeper. Declassified supplements to the Durham report lay out how activists tied to George Soros' Open Society Foundations, aided by operatives within the Obama FBI and intelligence community, sought to plant and spread the bogus narrative about Trump colluding with Russia even before the FBI operations officially began. Hacked emails and foreign intelligence corroborated this extraordinary collusion between campaign operatives, federal law enforcement, and the media — a clear case of government being weaponized for partisan ends. Leaders at the FBI — Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok — and at the CIA, and their superiors in the Obama White House, knew precisely what was unfolding. They were using the intelligence community's credibility to spread what they knew to be their own fiction as if it were truth. Yet, they pressed ahead anyway, smearing Trump and creating excuses to spy on his campaign. Their collusion made a mockery of the rule of law, resulting in illegal warrants, fabricated evidence, and years of phony investigations. Recent Judicial Watch lawsuits have further exposed how shamelessly courts and legal systems were deceived, with virtually no oversight or meaningful hearings. For all it revealed, the Durham investigation resulted in one modest plea deal and few and failed prosecutions. If no one is held to account, Americans' confidence in government will be shaken by the toxic message that in Washington, the bigger the crime, the less likely it is to be punished. The FBI and Justice Department, and their enablers in the Obama White House, engineered the most egregious abuse of power and corruption in modern American history. The public deserves justice — not just in the form of reports and hearings, but through criminal prosecution of the officials who orchestrated and covered up this conspiracy. Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and every enabler involved must be brought before a court of law. No spin can excuse years of perjury, abuse, and violations of civil liberties. It is not enough to claim that 'mistakes were made' or offer platitudes about trust. Laws were broken. Rights were trampled. Our democracy was threatened. News of criminal referrals for perjury by some of the players is a good start, but only that. Nor will prosecution alone suffice. The FBI and CIA need fundamental reform. Trump's recent executive orders aimed at ending the 'weaponization of government' are steps in the right direction. These agencies have proven incapable of policing themselves. From rubber-stamp FISA courts to politicized counterintelligence and persecution of whistleblowers, these agencies are built on unaccountable power. Significantly cutting back the Justice Department and dismantling the FBI should be on the table. America is a republic, not a banana republic. It's time for accountability, reform and a sharp reminder to the deep state: in America, the people are sovereign, not unelected bureaucrats.
