where science and ethics intersect with politics
What if animal liberation weren’t confined to courtrooms and campaigns—but passed quietly into law? This satirical illustration imagines a future where New York City recognizes what activists have long argued: freedom is not species-specific. As Bronx Zoo animals walk through open gates and into public life, the cartoon asks a simple, unsettling question—what changes when justice finally applies to everyone?
From a childhood moment of moral clarity to nearly two decades of vegan living and policy work, Kearney Robinson reflects on ethical awakening, sustainable activism, and the importance of community, care, and concrete action in building lasting change.
Legal scholar and policy strategist James Schultz reflects on veganism, justice, and animal liberation—examining how law, moral consistency, and collective responsibility shape a more just future.
As the winter solstice approaches, Yule’s ancient themes of renewal and protection take on renewed relevance in a time of ecological instability. Across cultures, this season has long emphasized safeguarding the vulnerable through the harshest months. Today, that ethos aligns with urgent ethical concerns—from wildlife protections to climate-driven disruptions. This feature explores how Yule’s historical roots in stewardship intersect with modern animal rights, environmental responsibility, and the Humane Party’s commitment to ethical realism.
When a New York Assembly seat opened unexpectedly, the outcome was settled long before voters had a say. The loss of the state’s only vegan legislator reveals how special election rules and party-controlled processes can quietly erase ethical representation — even in districts that once elected it.
The United States finds itself with war-level debt in peacetime, a generational burden no child asked for, and a currency system that rewards the rich and punishes the rest. If we do not restore fiscal ethics, the vulnerable will be the first to be sacrificed—human, non-human and environmental alike. The time for leadership is now.
On December 7, America remembers Pearl Harbor—but remembrance means more than ritual. The Humane Herald examines the war’s true cost: human suffering, environmental devastation, emergency powers, and the birth of a militarized state. To honor history, we must confront the systems that make war inevitable—and choose a humane alternative.
Democrats’ recent attempt to brand their proposal as the “Abolition Amendment” obscures the term’s established meaning and appropriates language created by the Humane Party years earlier. While removing the 13th Amendment’s punishment clause is necessary, it is not abolition — not when the slavery of non-human beings remains fully intact. By co-opting a name that already denotes the complete end of slavery for all creatures, the proposal risks misleading the public and diluting a central pillar of the animal rights movement.
Abolition Day marks the ratification of the 13th Amendment—an end to legal slavery, but not an end to the forces that shaped it. For the Humane Party, this day is both remembrance and responsibility, a reminder that abolition was a beginning and that the deeper work of justice remains unfinished.
A leader who kills a puppy and then proudly markets the story is not an anomaly — she is a symptom of a political culture that confuses cruelty with strength. The Kristi Noem scandal is not about a single dog; it is a mirror held up to America’s comfort with harm, hierarchy, and disposability.
December opens with World AIDS Day — a global moment of remembrance and resolve — but it also reveals a deeper reality unfolding across the United States: a federal government growing increasingly silent in the face of suffering. From HIV prevention and civil rights protections to hunger, housing, and public health, compassion is receding from national leadership at a time when communities need it most. This month’s This Month in Compassion examines where empathy is thriving at the grassroots level, where it is disappearing at the federal level, and why ethical governance demands that compassion remain at the heart of every policy decision.
A growing movement is calling for a full consumer blackout over Black Friday weekend—urging people to skip the sales and resist the hyper-capitalist pressure to buy. The blackout shines a light on exploitative labor, environmental damage, psychological manipulation, and the animal suffering embedded in the holiday retail spike. Through the Humane Party lens, it’s an act of ethical realism: choosing not to feed a system built on harm.
A reflection on Thanks-Living as a compassionate alternative to traditional holidays, emphasizing abolitionist values, ethical realism, and the Humane Party’s vision for a culture rooted in empathy rather than exploitation.
The FDA’s expanded approval of cultivated meat marks a major shift in U.S. food policy. But beneath the promise of slaughter-free protein lies a harder ethical question: Are we truly ending our exploitation of animals, or simply modernizing it? A technology that begins with the taking of another being’s cells cannot deliver liberation. It can only deliver a cleaner mirror for our existing beliefs.
HHS’s recent shift away from federally funded animal testing is a meaningful win for the animals trapped in America’s laboratories. But when progress arrives from a political figure widely regarded as unreliable, it exposes a deeper problem: true leadership was missing long before this moment. The credit belongs to public pressure, not to the man temporarily occupying the seat.
Transgender Day of Remembrance honors the lives lost to anti-trans violence and exposes the urgent need for nationwide protections. This piece reflects on the crisis facing transgender communities and highlights ERA2 as a path toward full constitutional equality.
The Humane Herald 