Muhammad Ali’s refusal to sign his Vietnam-era military draft card upended the boxing champ’s life and added a powerful voice to the anti-war movement. Now that piece of history is coming up for sale.
There’s a blank line on the card where Ali was supposed to sign in 1967 but refused to do so — a polarizing act of defiance as the Vietnam War raged on. It triggered a chain of events that disrupted his storied boxing career but immortalized him outside the ring as a champion for peace and social justice.
“Being reminded of my father’s message of courage and conviction is more important now than ever, and the sale of his draft card at Christie’s is a powerful way to share that legacy with the world,” Rasheda Ali Walsh, a daughter of Ali, said Thursday in a statement issued by the auction house.
This image provided by Christie’s Auction House shows Muhammad Ali’s draft card. (Christie’s Auction House via AP)
The auction house said it will hold the online sale Oct. 10-28, adding the card came to it via descendants of Ali. A public display of the card began Thursday at Rockefeller Center in New York and will continue until Oct. 21. The document could fetch $3 million to $5 million, Christie’s estimated.
“This is a singular object associated with an important historical event that looms large in our shared popular culture,” said Peter Klarnet, a Christie’s senior specialist.
Ali, the three-time heavyweight boxing champion, died in 2016 at age 74 after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. An estimated 100,000 people chanting, “Ali! Ali!” lined the streets of his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, as a hearse carried his casket to a local cemetery. His memorial service was packed with celebrities, athletes and politicians.
The draft card, typewritten in parts, conjures memories from when Ali wasn’t universally beloved but instead stood as a polarizing figure, revered by millions worldwide and reviled by many.
For refusing induction into the U.S. Army, Ali was convicted of draft evasion, stripped of his boxing title and banned from boxing. Ali appealed the conviction on grounds he was a Muslim minister. He famously proclaimed: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”
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During his banishment, Ali spoke at colleges and briefly appeared in a Broadway musical. He was allowed to resume boxing three years later.
He was still facing a possible prison sentence when in 1971 he fought Joe Frazier, his archrival, for the first time in what was labeled “The Fight of the Century.” A few months later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction on an 8-0 vote.
The draft card was issued the day the draft board in Louisville ordered Ali to appear for induction, Christie’s said Thursday in a news release. The card was signed by the local draft board chairman but pointedly not by Ali.
The card identified him by his birth name — Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. — but misspelled his given middle name. Upon his conversion to Islam, he was given a name reflecting his faith, the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville says on its website. Meanwhile, the top of the draft card reads: “(AKA) Muhammad Ali.”
The Ali Center features exhibits paying tribute to Ali’s immense boxing skills. But its main mission, it says, is to preserve his humanitarian legacy and promote his six core principles: spirituality, giving, conviction, confidence, respect and dedication.
Now an artifact reflecting how Ali personified some of those principles will be up for auction.
“This is the first time collectors will be able to acquire a vital and intimate document connected to one of the most important figures of the last century,” Klarnet said Thursday.
Devon Price, a 15-year-old boy with autism, has attended the largest school district in North Carolina for 10 years, but he cannot read or write. His twin sister, Danielle, who is also autistic, was bullied by classmates and became suicidal.
Under federal law, public schools must provide children with disabilities a “free appropriate public education,” to give them the same opportunity to learn as other kids.
The twins’ mother, Emma Miller, and tens of thousands of other parents in the U.S. have elevated complaints to the Education Department alleging that schools and states have ignored mistreatment of their children. Those complaints are in limbo as President Donald Trump’s administration has set about dismantling the federal agency.
Trump once mocked a reporter with a disability. Earlier this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s inaccurate remarks about people with autism were criticized as perpetuating offensive stereotypes.
Now people like Miller are worried their children will be left behind.
“I want justice for my twins, and to sound the alarm so other special needs children are not suffering or being deprived,” said Miller, 53, who lives with her twins in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
Emma Miller’ s teenage twins, Devon and Danielle Price, have autism. Miller says both children are high-functioning and verbal. She says she believes they could have thrived academically if the school system in North Carolina’ s Wake County had provided them proper services. (Cornell Watson/KFF Health News/TNS)
Devon Price points to a design he created for the Beyblade toys he collects. (Cornell Watson/KFF Health News/TNS)
Emma Miller of Wake Forest, North Carolina, is among tens of thousands of U.S. parents who have filed complaints with the federal Education Department alleging that schools sometimes mistreat children with disabilities and are breaking the law. (Cornell Watson/KFF Health News/TNS)
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Emma Miller’ s teenage twins, Devon and Danielle Price, have autism. Miller says both children are high-functioning and verbal. She says she believes they could have thrived academically if the school system in North Carolina’ s Wake County had provided them proper services. (Cornell Watson/KFF Health News/TNS)
The Education Department, which was created in 1979 and helps oversee schools and colleges in the U.S., has the authority to protect students from discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or disability. Its Office for Civil Rights investigates allegations at schools and negotiates corrective actions.
As the school year begins, families throughout the country are unsure what authority will be left to intervene on their behalf if the office is shuttered, said Hannah Russell, an advocate who works with parents in North Carolina trying to obtain educational services for their children with disabilities.
“Without the Department of Education there is no accountability,” said Russell, a former special education teacher. “Everybody is scared.”
Miller described her twins as her “miracle babies” who survived despite each weighing 1 pound at birth. Danielle Price spent the first five months of her life in a neonatal intensive care unit, and her brother, Devon, the first seven months.
She has spent years fighting for them, repeatedly taking on local and state school officials. But even when she notched victories, she said, her children did not get the help they were promised.
Miller said her children are high-functioning and verbal. She said they could have thrived academically if the school system had given them proper services.
“My children have suffered,” Miller wrote in a complaint she filed in September 2024. “The most vulnerable group of children [is] being denied a basic education.”
‘Unusual and Unprecedented’
Miller says her daughter began to self-harm after classmates teased and tormented her and staff secluded her away from her bullies. The Wake County Public School System assigned Devon to a classroom with an instructional assistant who was not a licensed teacher, a violation of policy, according to state documents.
Last year, Miller filed a complaint against Wake County schools with the federal Office for Civil Rights. She alleged the district did not reevaluate her kids to determine their special education needs, did not respond for months to her records requests, and retaliated against her by wrongly withdrawing the twins from the school district.
Wake County schools violated policy when staff did not address the effects of bullying on Danielle, says an April 2024 letter from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
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The school system’s education plan for Danielle “was not appropriate considering the student’s unmet social-emotional needs, which resulted in the student’s increased anxiety,” the letter says.
State officials concluded in June 2024 that the school system failed to develop, review, and revise an education plan for Devon, assigned him to a teacher assistant instead of a licensed teacher, and did not provide technology that could help him learn, according to documents.
While the decisions validated Miller’s concerns, she said that the district continues to violate her children’s rights and that the state is now ignoring her pleas for help.
“No one is taking responsibility,” she told KFF Health News. “It has been a nightmare.”
But after she appealed to the federal government last year, the Education Department sent her a letter in March saying it would not look into the complaint.
For decades, parents and advocates for people with disabilities have said the system makes it difficult for them to win against school districts, because the process is often time-consuming, confusing, and, if a family hires a lawyer, expensive. Now they say families could soon face even bigger hurdles.
On March 11, the day the Education Department sent Miller’s denial letter, the agency announced it was firing nearly half its 4,133 employees. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the move was “a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”
Officials shuttered seven of the 12 regional offices of the agency’s Office for Civil Rights, leaving a skeleton staff to investigate thousands of complaints filed each year, according to attorneys and advocates for the disabled.
Trump, acting on a campaign promise to shrink the federal government, later signed an executive order to eliminate the Education Department, which he said had failed children and built a bloated bureaucracy.
The president instructed officials to “return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
Parents and advocacy groups say that would allow local authorities to police themselves at a time when schools remain racially segregated, some selective colleges accept male applicants at higher rates than female applicants, and students with disabilities are struggling to recover academically from the covid pandemic, more so than their peers. Also, they note, the federal laws protecting disabled and disadvantaged children emerged because of state-level failures.
Under North Carolina law, children with disabilities should be reevaluated by schools every three years to help determine their individual needs. But Miller said Wake County officials for nearly a decade refused her requests to have her kids reevaluated. She said it finally happened in late 2024.
“I never expected getting an education for my children would be such a problem,” Miller said.
The Education Law Center, the NAACP, and other advocacy groups have sued to stop Trump’s plans, alleging the changes are illegal and pose a threat to the education of students from vulnerable groups. Some 20 states and the District of Columbia sued to halt the plan, but the Supreme Court ruled in July that the Trump administration could move ahead while the case proceeded through the courts.
Russell said she has heard North Carolina school districts are promising to provide accommodations for students with disabilities, such as extra time on tests.
But families who cannot afford to hire an attorney could find themselves at a disadvantage when disagreements arise over services that cost districts more money, Russell said.
The Trump administration has decimated the Office for Civil Rights’ ability to properly investigate a backlog of thousands of complaints, said Robert Kim, who leads the Education Law Center.
The office reported receiving nearly 23,000 complaints in fiscal 2024, the highest number ever. About 8,400, or 37%, involved allegations of disability discrimination.
Black children and those with disabilities may suffer the worst consequences, since they disproportionately face harsh discipline at school, including physical restraint and isolation in seclusion rooms, Kim said.
The Education Department says children with disabilities make up 14% of students but 75% of those secluded and 81% of those physically restrained.
Black children constitute about 15% of students but 42% of those who are mechanically restrained using a device or equipment.
“Something unusual and unprecedented is happening,” Kim said about what he sees as a shift in the federal government’s responsibility to keep children safe and provide a high-quality education.
The Education Department’s press office declined an interview request for this story in an unsigned email that was copied to agency officials Madison Biedermann, Savannah Newhouse, Julie Hartman, and Ellen Keast.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not respond to a request for comment.
In a July statement, McMahon said her agency is performing all of its duties: “We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most — to students, parents, and teachers.”
‘Nothing but Problems’
Danielle and Devon Price entered 10th grade at Wake Forest High School in August. Their mother said she is uncertain what will happen to them.
Danielle wants to go to college, but her math skills are at a fourth-grade level, school records show.
Like many youths with autism, Danielle struggles with changes in routine, and her mother said she became despondent when school officials repeatedly changed her classes to keep her away from a boy who bullied her. Soon after that, Danielle started to self-harm, Miller said, adding that her daughter receives intensive therapy.
“It has been nothing but problems” with Wake County schools, she said. “It is like no one cares.”
Wake County school officials declined to answer questions about Miller’s complaints, citing privacy laws.
In a written statement, district spokesperson Matthew Dees said that “the school district has worked hard to reach agreement with Ms. Miller on many issues” and remedied complaints that were substantiated.
“The district disputes the remaining allegations in the various complaints she has raised, including the many accusations against various staff,” Dees added.
Under federal law, parents have 180 days from the time of the last alleged violation to file a complaint with the Education Department. Miller submitted her complaint Sept. 12, 2024, exactly 180 days after she says her twins were last denied a “free appropriate public education.”
But the Office for Civil Rights said that was too late. Officials declined to waive the time limit for Miller, who had asked for an exception, according to its March denial letter.
She said she spent months fighting with Wake County school officials and did not turn to federal government sooner because she hoped she could resolve the issues locally.
Miller fears for her children’s future unless something changes at school.
“I’m a single parent, and one day I won’t be here,” she said. “My kids are going to be adults soon, yet my son doesn’t know how to read and write. I’m like, ‘Wow.’ There really is no help here.”
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council is set to vote on a resolution Thursday that would once again demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages, while expressing alarm about a recent famine report and Israel’s expanding offensive in Gaza City.
All 14 other members of the council are expected to vote in favor of the resolution, which described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “catastrophic” and called on Israel to lift all restrictions on the delivery of aid to the 2.1 million Palestinians in the territory.
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The expected outcome further highlights U.S. and Israeli isolation on the world stage regarding the nearly two-year war in Gaza. The vote comes just days ahead of the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly, where Gaza will be a major topic and where major U.S. allies are expected to recognize an independent Palestinian state. It is a largely symbolic move that is vehemently opposed by Israel and the U.S., dividing the Trump administration from close allies including the U.K. and France.
The resolution, drafted by the council’s 10 elected members who serve two-year terms, goes further than previous drafts to highlight what it calls the “ deepening of suffering ” of Palestinian civilians.
It also reiterates demands from previous resolutions, including for the release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups following their Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack in southern Israel that launched the war in Gaza.
In opposing similar resolutions since November, the U.S. has complained that the demands, including a ceasefire, were not directly linked to the unconditional release of hostages and would only embolden Hamas.
Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., blasted the new resolution, saying that it would “not release the hostages and will not bring security to the region.”
“Israel will continue to fight Hamas and protect its citizens, even if the Security Council prefers to turn a blind eye to terrorism,” he said in a statement Thursday.
The resolution also expressed “deep alarm” after a report released last month by the world’s leading authority on food crises said Gaza City has become gripped by famine, and that it’s likely to spread across the territory without a ceasefire and an end to restrictions on humanitarian aid.
Israeli forces have pressed on with a new ground offensive in Gaza City. The latest Israeli operation, which started Tuesday, further escalates a conflict that has roiled the Middle East and likely pushes any ceasefire further out of reach.
The Israeli military, which says it wants to “destroy Hamas’ military infrastructure,” hasn’t given a timeline for the offensive, but there were indications it could take months.
That same day, a team of independent experts commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, issuing a report that called on the international community to end it and take steps to punish those responsible for it.
Last week, the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and urged Israel to commit to a Palestinian state.
Expectations for a U.S. veto of the resolution Thursday comes as about half of Americans say the Israeli military response in the Gaza Strip has “gone too far,” according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s up from November 2023, when 40% said Israel’s military action had gone too far.
But at the same time, Americans overall, particularly Republicans, are less likely to say that negotiating a ceasefire should be a high priority for the U.S. government than they were just a few months ago when the U.S. was holding ceasefire talks with Hamas.
It’s a sunny, September day in SeaTac, Washington, and three kids are playing in the courtyard of Connection Angle Lake, a new 130-unit affordable housing project roughly 50 feet from the last stop on Sound Transit’s 1 Line.
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Inside, the studios, one-bedroom and multi-bedroom apartments look fresh with stainless steel appliances and views that give a peek of Mount Rainier.
The proximity to the light rail is no coincidence. The site was acquired by Sound Transit in 2013 and purchased at a discount by affordable housing organization Mercy Housing in 2022. The transit-oriented housing project made a perfect candidate for Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund, which contributed a $17 million low-interest rate loan and a $2 million grant.
The 130 units, about 40% of which have been scooped up in the past few months, are part of the now 10,000 units Amazon’s cash has helped build in the Puget Sound region, most of which are required to be affordable for 99 years.
Acknowledging its role in making the Seattle area considerably less affordable, Amazon launched its fund in 2021 with an initial commitment of $2 billion in the form of loans and grants to create and preserve 20,000 affordable housing units across three metro areas where Amazon’s presence is acutely felt: Seattle, Arlington, Virginia, and Nashville, Tennessee.
The fund was supposed to stretch out over five years, but last year the company said it already exceeded the goal. The projects it funded had completed 21,000 units, 8,600 of which were in the Seattle area.
The company then committed another $1.4 billion to create an additional 14,000 homes across the three cities.
Now, it has hit 10,000 units in the Seattle area.
“Here at home, 10,000 units is a big milestone,” said Alice Shobe, global director of Amazon Community Impact. “We set out early to move quickly and we did. I think the payoff of those 10,000 units is going to show especially in decades to come when those 99 years of affordability are required and we’re not flipping over housing as quickly.”
Amazon announced an additional $1.4 billion investment to help create affordable housing units in the Puget Sound region, Arlington, Virginia, and Nashville, Tennessee. (Ivy Ceballo/The Seattle Times/TNS)
Amazon isn’t the only tech giant to commit funds to public housing. Apple, Meta, Google and Microsoft have all launched funds, most of them doing so before Amazon. But the results have been mixed. The Wall Street Journal reported in August that while some projects funded by Meta and Google in 2019 have moved forward, others have been mired by local regulation and other slowdowns in development.
Some companies have committed their own land, others have issued loans.
Amazon’s approach is to pick out local developers and housing authorities and supplement existing funding with loans and grants.
Most of the affordable housing Amazon supports has area median income ranges between 50% and 80%. Plainly, that means a tenant can’t make more than 80% of the given area’s median income to be eligible. In Seattle, the AMI is about $110,000 for an individual.
Shobe said that focus is intentional, as existing resources from the federal government historically tend to funnel toward the low end of affordable housing, below the 50% AMI mark.
“If you look at the workforce in the community, you have a lot of teacher assistant and security guards and other folks that aren’t able to meet the rents that our region has reached,” Shobe said. “So what we did is we really focused on that middle area.”
In Seattle, the tech and e-commerce giant has also funneled money toward projects in neighborhoods where residents are at risk of displacement. Beacon Pacific Village, a 160-unit apartment complex requiring 50% to 60% AMI in front of Amazon’s former headquarters in the Pacific Tower, opened last year and has been fully leased since April, mostly with community members, according to the Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority, which helped develop the units.
“Having housing led by community development organizations provides more culturally entrenched affordable housing for the community,” said Jade Yan, SCIDpda’s resident services manager. “It’s just so crucial. Housing means stability and security.”
The complex is an ideal project for Amazon’s housing fund, ticking off all of the boxes of Shobe’s vision. It’s near transit, it has units with as many as four bedrooms to support multigenerational families and it has a community preference program to push against the tide of gentrification.
The company has funded projects as far north as Everett and as far south as Tacoma, but the most development has occurred in Seattle and Bellevue, with 5,216 units and 1,486 units built so far.
Shobe said Amazon’s housing investments have resulted in a 31% increase in affordable housing stock in Bellevue.
But Amazon is pumping more units into an affordable housing market that’s in a much more awkward spot than it was when Amazon announced the fund. Flattened rents in Seattle are undercutting affordable housing rents, leaving publicly funded housing with higher vacancy rates.
The Seattle Times reported last month that while more affordable housing for the low- to middle-income tenants is built, there’s a dwindling supply for extremely low-income.
Shobe said Amazon is aware of the need for lower-income housing and manages the tension its own supply of 50% to 80% AMI housing it’s putting on the market.
“If you look at our portfolio, it’s concentrated in that 50 to 80% range, but we do have very much a mixed portfolio,” she said. “We do have a significant number of units that are helping families under that 50% median income.”
