Passports November 7, 2025November 7, 2025 But first . . . AT THE MOVIES I saw Nuremberg yesterday. “Fascinating and urgently important.” — Deadline Truly. Opens today. Oh, and . . . JOBS And now . . . PASSPORTS Part 1 — CAITLYN JENNER Supreme Court allows Trump to limit passport sex markers for trans and nonbinary Americans . . . to which two of my friends texted: “We can’t wait for Bruce/Caitlin Jenner (a Trump supporter) to renew his/her passport.” But wait! The 1976 Male Athlete of the Year (seen here at the YMCA) has at least partly reconsidered: Caitlyn Jenner Calls Out Trump in Video Message: ‘You Made a Promise to Protect the LGBTQ Community’. Part 2 — ANNA JULIA COOPER From The Curiosity Curator: . . . By the circumstances of her birth, she was property. The law said she had no rights, no future, no voice. Anna Julia Cooper had other ideas. When the Civil War ended and emancipation came, Anna was about seven years old. Suddenly, impossibly, she was free. And the first thing she wanted was education. . . . Women were expected to study just enough to become basic teachers or support their future husbands. Anna thought that was ridiculous. She demanded to take the advanced courses. The school initially refused. She pushed back. Eventually, they let her in—and she outperformed the male students. In 1881, at age 23, Anna enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio—one of the only institutions in America that admitted both women and Black students. She earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1884, then returned for a master’s degree in mathematics in 1887. A Black woman. With two degrees in mathematics. In the 1880s. Anna was just getting started. . . . In 1892, she published A Voice from the South, [writing]: “The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class—it is the cause of humankind.” That sentence would echo through history. But in 1892, most of America wasn’t listening. Then, in her 60s—when most people would be thinking about retirement—Anna decided to earn a Ph.D. . . . So in 1911, Anna enrolled at the Sorbonne. She studied French history and culture while maintaining her teaching career in D.C., traveling back and forth across the Atlantic. Anna Julia Cooper became the fourth African American woman ever to earn a doctoral degree—and she did it at 67, in a foreign language, while teaching full-time and raising children. . . . Anna Julia Cooper lived to be 105. . . . Today, her words—“The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class—it is the cause of humankind”—appear in United States passports, carried by millions of Americans traveling the world. → I checked my own just now. It’s true. BONUS This West Wing scene (2 minutes) just never gets old. *Nuremberg* “Fascinating and urgently important.” — Deadline