Congressmembers Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver are calling on Missouri’s Republican governor to halt today’s scheduled execution of Ernest Lee Johnson, an intellectually disabled Black man. In 2008, Johnson lost about 20% of his brain during a surgery to remove a tumor. In their letter, Bush and Cleaver wrote, “Like slavery and lynching did before it, the death penalty perpetuates cycles of trauma, violence and state-sanctioned murder in Black and brown communities.”