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Kim Kardashian Is Releasing a Documentary About Her Fight for Criminal Justice Reform


In 2018, Kim Kardashian turned her massive platform toward an unexpected cause: criminal justice reform. That year, Kim Kardashian petitioned President Trump to commute the prison sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a woman who’d been incarcerated since 1996 for a nonviolent drug charge. Kardashian’s lobbying led to Johnson’s full pardon, but her fight for criminal justice reform hasn’t stopped since then—and audiences will soon get a much closer look at her work.

The reality star is releasing a documentary, Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project, that will take viewers behind-the-scenes of her work in criminal justice reform. Viewers will follow Kardashian and a team of legal experts as they examine four cases in which prisoners may have been unfairly sentenced. The two-hour documentary premieres on Oxygen on April 5 at 8 p.m.

“There are a lot of people who deserve a second chance, but many do not have the resources to make it happen,” Kardashian said in a statement released by Oxygen. “I want to help elevate these cases to a national level to effect change, and this documentary is an honest depiction of me learning about the system and helping bring tangible results to justice reform.”

From what we’ve seen so far, the documentary is a revealing look at the effort that goes into pardoning unfair sentences, and how far Kardashian has gone to learn about the issue. In the trailer, the KKW mogul speaks with prisoners who had been handed life sentences for nonviolent offenses. She also lobbies public officials and collaborates with legal teams to facilitate earlier releases. (You’ll have to watch to find out if she’s successful.)

The documentary is only two hours, but it covers a life-changing experience for Kardashian. “I went into this knowing nothing, and then my heart completely opened up,” she says in the trailer. “People deserve a second chance.”

This documentary won’t be the last we see of the star’s work in criminal justice reform. In an interview with Vogue last April, Kardashian revealed that she plans to become a lawyer and will take the bar exam in 2022. She made the decision to pursue law after seeing a “really good result” with her work on Johnson’s case. “I’ve always known my role, but I just felt like I wanted to be able to fight for people who have paid their dues to society,” she told Vogue. “I just felt like the system could be so different, and I wanted to fight to fix it, and if I knew more, I could do more.”

Watch the trailer for Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project below.



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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Voted on Trump's Asylum Reform From Her Hospital Bed


On Friday, immediately following surgery to remove two cancerous nodes from her left lung, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted against President Donald Trump’s proposed immigrant asylum restrictions from her hospital bed. Hers was the decisive vote in the 5-4 decision to strike down the proposal, NPR reported.

The proposal, NBC explained, would have automatically denied asylum to people who enter the United States from Mexico without going through official border crossings. Trump said the proposal was in direct response to the migrant caravan making its way toward the southern border.

Beyond being able to cast her vote, it appears the Notorious RBG is also on the up and up with her health. In November, the Supreme Court justice was hospitalized following a fall that left her with several broken ribs. According to a statement from the Supreme Court, doctors discovered her cancerous nodes while undergoing routine care for her injury. Following the surgery, doctors announced they were able to remove all of the cancer, and it appears it did not spread.

“According to the thoracic surgeon, Valerie W. Rusch, MD, FACS, both nodules removed during surgery were found to be malignant on initial pathology evaluation,” a statement by her physicians read. “Post-surgery, there was no evidence of any remaining disease. Scans performed before surgery indicated no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body. Currently, no further treatment is planned. Justice Ginsburg is resting comfortably and is expected to remain in the hospital for a few days. Updates will be provided as they become available.”

As NPR noted, by Friday evening, the 85-year-old was sitting up in her hospital room’s chair calling friends and sounding “chipper.” She apparently even hopes to be back in the courtroom for the next argument session, which begins in early January—and that’s entirely possible, according to Dr. Douglas Mathisen, chairman of thoracic surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, who told NPR that recovery from an operation like hers typically ranges from two to four days in the hospital. And because RBG seems to get a lifetime’s worth of work done in an hour, we’re confident we’ll see her back in her robe in January.

Related Content:

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The Notorious RBG Got the Epic Rap Tribute She Deserves on SNL



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Kim Kardashian Is Planning To Meet With President Donald Trump To Discuss Prison Reform


After weeks of planning, Kim Kardashian will reportedly meet with Donald Trump and Jared Kushner at the White House Wednesday to discuss the case of Alice Johnson, a 62-year-old grandmother who has been serving a life sentence without parole for a non-violent drug offense.

Kardashian has been an advocate of Johnson, who has been in prison for 21 years, since coming across her story through a video published on Mic.

“I’ve been in communication with the White House and trying to bring her case to the president’s desk and figure out how we can get her out,” Kardashian told Mic. “That’s such a huge step from where we started with that not even being on their radar.”

According to a person familiar with the meeting, Kardashian will ask Trump to pardon Johnson, who was imprisoned for drug conspiracy and money laundering, Vanity Fair writes. Johnson’s story has resonated with many criminal justice reform leaders; she’s previously shared that she became involved with drug dealers after losing her job, her son, her home, and her marriage. According to Mic, she did not sell drugs or make deals, but became an intermediary who passed along messages to those involved in the drug trade. She was featured in an ACLU campaign to end mass incarceration, and her story went viral after multiple outlets picked it up.

“I felt like a failure,” Johnson told Mic. “I went into a complete panic and out of desperation, I made one of the worst decisions of my life to make some quick money. I became involved in a drug conspiracy.”

Kardashian tweeted about the Mic story back in October 2017, writing “This is so unfair.” In November, she brought in a team of lawyers to examine Johnson’s case. According to Vanity Fair, she also reached out to Ivanka Trump and was connected with Jared Kushner, who has been supportive of prison reform. According to reports, he’s been trying to pass a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill that has co-sponsorship from lawmakers, including Doug Collins (R-Ga.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). Sources say Kardashian will not bring the Keeping Up with the Kardashians camera crew or her publicist to today’s meeting.

Kardashian’s trip to the White House comes after her husband, Kanye West, released a string of controversial statements and tweets about supporting Donald Trump. Kardashian reportedly supported Hillary Clinton in the last election and has never publicly embraced Trump, but has suggested she is willing to work with his administration for Johnson, despite facing backlash on social media.

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“I’m just focused on criminal-justice reform and helping one person at a time. And so far, the White House has been really receptive to my calls, and I’m grateful for that,” she said. “And I’m not going to stop that because people personally don’t like Trump.”

Kim Kardashian’s advocacy efforts have also included Cyntoia Brown, a young woman serving a 60-year prison sentence for killing a man she says solicited her for sex at 16.

“Where I’m at in my life right now, just like, to go and spend my money buying material things just doesn’t satisfy me the way that it used to,” she said. “To save someone’s life and do that once a year, then that would make [my] heart fuller.”





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