Featured
It Didn’t Start with Trump: The Decades-Long Saga of How the GOP Went Crazy. By David Corn / Mother Jones
The modern Republican Party has always exploited and encouraged extremism.
Both Pelosi and Biden have bolstered the notion that the current GOP, with its cultlike embrace of Trump and his Big Lie, and its acceptance of the fringiest players, is a break from the past. But was the GOP’s complete surrender to Trumpism an aberration? Or was the party long sliding toward this point? About a year ago, I set out to explore the history of the Republican Party, with this question in mind. What I found was not an exception, but a pattern.
Since the 1950s, the GOP has repeatedly mined fear, resentment, prejudice, and grievance and played to extremist forces so the party could win elections. Trump assembling white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists, QAnoners, and others who formed a violent terrorist mob on January 6 is only the most flagrant manifestation of the tried-and-true GOP tactic to court kooks and bigots. It’s an ugly and shameful history that has led the Party of Lincoln, founded in 1854 to oppose the extension of slavery, to the Party of Trump, which capitalizes on racism and assaults democracy. Read more
Related: How Donald Trump excuses his bigotry. By Dahlia Lithwick / Slate
Political /Social
Hakeem Jeffries Elected To Lead House Dems’ Next Generation. By Lisa Mascaro / HuffPost
New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries has been elected House Democratic leader and will become in the new year the first Black American to lead a major political party in Congress.
Emboldened House Democrats ushered in a new generation of leaders on Wednesday with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries elected to be the first Black American to head a major political party in Congress as long-serving Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her team step aside next year. Showing rare party unity after their midterm election losses, the House Democrats moved seamlessly from one history-making leader to another, choosing the 52-year-old New Yorker, who has vowed to “get things done,” even after Republicans won control of the chamber. The closed-door vote was unanimous, by acclamation. Read more
Herschel Walker Once Said He Was the Target of Racism. Now He Claims It Doesn’t Exist. By David Corn / Mother Jones
The GOP candidate has a history of making curious, confusing, and bizarre statements about racism.
Not too long ago, Herschel Walker said he had experienced racism, having been stopped and harassed by the police because he was a Black man. And he expressed his fear that police will abuse his son because he’s Black. Yet during his campaign for Senate in Georgia, Walker, the Republican now in a December 6 runoff against Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock, has repeatedly declared that racism does not exist in the United States. This is all part of a confusing series of remarks about American racism that Walker has made in recent years. Read more
Related: Ten Things the GOP Loves About Herschel Walker. By Bill Lueders / The Bulwark
Related: Early voters in Georgia head to the polls Saturday for Senate runoff. By Dylan Wells / Wash Post
In a Trump v. DeSantis Matchup, Latinos Could be the Decider. By Adrian Carrasquillo / Newsweek
Tucked away in a survey conducted for Bienvenido by the noted Washington D.C. polling firm WPA Intelligence, which accurately predicted the improvement Republicans made with Hispanics in the midterm elections, is a finding that indicates Latinos could be critical in deciding who comes out on top of a Trump-DeSantis clash. The survey showed that DeSantis had a higher net favorability rating among Latino voters, at 5%, while Trump’s was the lowest of those polled, at -13%, an 18-point differential. A grassroots Latino progressive group in Florida came up with similar results in their own pre-midterm poll. Mi Vecino surveyed 500 Hispanic Republicans via text, asking if they preferred DeSantis or Trump. The results showed that 41.7% were pro-DeSantis and anti-Trump, 29% supported Trump and viewed DeSantis as an usurper, and only 15% were supportive of both. Read more
Senate passes bill to protect same-sex and interracial marriage in landmark vote. By and
The Senate on Tuesday passed legislation to protect same-sex and interracial marriage, called the Respect for Marriage Act, in a landmark bipartisan vote.
The final vote was 61-36. The bill was supported by all members of the Democratic caucus and 12 Republicans, the same dozen GOP members who backed the bill for a procedural vote earlier this month. The House will now need to approve the legislation before sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law. The House is expected to pass the bill before the end of the year – possibly as soon as next week. While the bill would not set a national requirement that all states must legalize same-sex marriage, it would require individual states to recognize another state’s legal marriage. Read more
FBI and DHS failing to address threat of domestic terrorism, according to new Senate report. By Areeba Shah / Salon
A new investigation by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee into the rise of domestic terrorism has found that the federal government is failing to adequately address domestic terror attacks, which are predominantly perpetrated by white supremacists and anti-government extremists.
The 128-page report is the culmination of a three-year investigation, which relies on public testimony and interviews with federal law enforcement officials and executives from Meta (formerly Facebook), Twitter, YouTube and TikTok, as well as more than 2,000 “key documents” that offer insight into the most significant terror threats facing the U.S. The report also identifies the role social media companies have played in amplifying extremist content, and says that both DHS and the FBI still fail to track and report data on domestic terrorism, despite a provision in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act that requires them to do so. Read more
Related: Right-wing White men are not usually convicted of seditious conspiracy. By Phillip Bump / Wash Post
Related: Buffalo Shooter Pleads Guilty To Murder And Terrorism Charges. By Phillip Jackson / HuffPost
Across the US, Native Americans are fighting to preserve sacred land. By Alejandra Molina and Emily McFarland Miller / NCR
Several hundred people took part in a prayer walk on Sept. 14, 2016, from the Oceti Sakowin camp near Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota to the site up the road where Dakota Access began digging over Labor Day weekend for construction on a nearly 1,200-mile pipeline project. (RNS/Emily McFarlan Miller)
Many Americans prize land they consider beautiful, dramatic or awe-inspiring, but Indigenous people view it not only through a physical lens but a spiritual lens. LaPier said Indigenous scholars like herself often are asked, “Why is this place in the middle of nowhere that’s an ugly hill with a rock on it — why is this like a sacred place?” Some places may be a pilgrimage site, some a traditional backdrop for a ritual or ceremony. “When we’re protecting a natural space, we’re also protecting the supernatural space,” she said. But because many Americans don’t recognize Indigenous beliefs as a real religion, and because dominant European American religions are not tied to a specific place on the landscape, they don’t always understand that Indigenous beliefs are “place based,” according to LaPier. Read more
US justice department sues city of Jackson over water crisis. By Erum Salam / The Guardian
City and Mississippi health department sign order agreeing to federal oversight of the failing water system
The US justice department has taken drastic action regarding the crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, that has affected drinking water for its 150,000 residents for several months. On Tuesday, the city of Jackson and the Mississippi health department signed an order agreeing to federal oversight of the failing water system, in an attempt to restore clean and safe drinking water. The justice department filed a complaint on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) against the city, for failing to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act. In a statement, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said he was “taking action in federal court to address longstanding failures in the city of Jackson’s public drinking water system. Read more
There’s A Mental Health Crisis Among Black Students. What Are HBCUs Doing To Help? By Glyniss Wiggins / HuffPost
Depression and anxiety have been increasing at a staggering rate among Black students. It’s time to examine the systems that are holding us back from sound health.
The collective trauma of COVID-19 paired with heightened racial tension in the wake of the George Floyd protests has had a profound impact on Black students. Many counselors at Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs) are noticing this effect in their students and the heavy toll that it is taking on their mental health. After a little digging, I found that not only has the need for counseling increased among Black students, but the severity of certain mental illnesses might have too. Read more
Veterans Affairs has denied benefits to Black people at higher rates for years, lawsuit alleges.
Yale Law School’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic sued in federal court on behalf of a Vietnam War veteran alleging he was denied benefits because he is Black.
Obtaining benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs has been disproportionately more difficult for Black Americans for decades, a federal lawsuit filed Monday alleges. “The results of VA’s racial discrimination has been to deny countless meritorious applications by Black veterans, depriving them and their families of care and support that their faithful service has earned,” the lawsuit reads. Filed in federal court by Yale Law School’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic on behalf of Conley Monk Jr., a Vietnam War veteran, the suit claims Monk was repeatedly denied home loan, education and medical benefits because he is Black. Monk is far from alone, the filing alleges. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Antisemitism’s March Into the Mainstream. By Michelle Goldberg / NYT
Credit…Mark Peterson/Redux
At this point, there is no excuse for being shocked by anything that Donald Trump does, yet I confess to being astonished that the former president dined last week with one of the country’s most influential white supremacists, a smirking little fascist named Nick Fuentes. There’s nothing new about antisemites in Trump’s circle, but they usually try to maintain some plausible deniability, ranting about globalists and George Soros rather than the Jews. Fuentes, by contrast, is overt. “Jews have too much power in our society,” he recently wrote on his Telegram channel. “Christians should have all the power, everyone else very little.” Read more
Related: The inside story of Trump’s explosive dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes. By Marc Caputo / NBC News
Related: Jewish Allies Call Trump’s Dinner With Antisemites a Breaking Point. By Jonathan Weisman / NYT
Related: To those Jews who still support him. By Jeffrey Salkin / RNS
How to be one church in divisive times. By Charles C. Camosy / RNS
Remember the great gift of the exhortation, ‘Be the first to love.’
Very often, our failure to see the other fully goes well beyond losing sight of the dignity of our perceived opponent; sometimes their dignity is the very thing explicitly being questioned or attacked. Descriptions of fellow Catholics as “monstrous” or “diabolical” are, unfortunately, a dime a dozen in what passes for Catholic discourse today in the United States. Though fear and anger can blind us to our own biases and cut us off from a real exchange with someone else, there may be good reasons to be profoundly angry with a fellow Catholic. Our disappointment with another can and should be fully honored, even while we acknowledge that the fundamental reality of the person in front of us is the starting point for any serious exchange. Read more
LeRoy Woodson’s Black Church. By E. James West / AAIHS
“Sixth Avenue Baptist Church- NARA 545484,” captured by LeRoy Woodson in July 1972 (Courtesy of Environmental Protection Agency / Wikimedia Commons)
Of particular interest to Woodson was the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church, which had been founded in 1881 on the corner of Sixth Avenue, South and Sixteenth Street. Under the leadership of the Reverend John Thomas Porter, Sixth Avenue played a prominent role in the Birmingham campaign and hosted the funerals of three of the four girls killed in the bombing of its sister church. In 1969, Sixth Avenue broke ground on a new church on Montevallo Road in southwest Birmingham, and its first ceremony was held in the Spring of 1970. This impressive new facility features in a number of Woodson’s DOCUMERICA images, with the photographer alternating between wide-angle shots emphasizing the size of Sixth Avenue’s congregation— and, by extension, its continuing importance as a community hub – and more intimate shots of individual worshippers. Read more
Historical / Cultural
The Supreme Court’s Obsession with Whitewashed History. By Rann Miller / The Progressive Magazine
Influenced by the far-right originalist doctrine, the conservative-controlled Supreme Court is poised to plunge us back decades.
The basis for affirmative action isn’t actually found in the constitution. It wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the text, directly or indirectly, by the founders—and why would it be? The founders were only concerned with one group of people: white, Protestant, male landowners. That matters because, of the nine judges on the Supreme Court, six of them—Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas—are all influenced by “originalism.” Originalism, a method of constitutional interpretation, demands that judges be bound by the exact words of the Constitution, and the meaning of those words should be determined solely based on how they were understood when they were added to the Constitution. With six originalist judges on the Supreme Court, it is not unreasonable to expect that affirmative action will be ruled unconstitutional, in the same way that it wasn’t unreasonable to expect the overturning of Roe v. Wade, prior to the actual ruling. Read more
Florida city reckoning with its past as paved over Black cemeteries uncovered. By Scott Pelly / CBS News
In the first half of the 20th century, Clearwater Heights, Florida, was a Black neighborhood — thriving, proud and anchored by faith. But being in the segregated south, African Americans couldn’t stay at the White hotel, walk on the beach or swim in the bay. In death, they were laid to rest in segregated graveyards.
Those cemeteries were sacred ground until the ground became valuable. In the 1950s, headlines announced that the city of Clearwater made a deal on moving a “Negro” cemetery. Hundreds of African American bodies were to be reburied to make way for a swimming pool. A department store was planned for the site of another Black cemetery, where again, the bodies were to be moved. But O’Neal Larkin remembers, many years later, his first revelation that something was terribly wrong. Read more
New clinic planned where enslaved women were tortured in medical experiments. By Sydney Page / Wash Post
Michelle Browder has plans for a museum and clinic where 19th-century physician J. Marion Sims conducted cruel medical trials on Black women
Unsettled by the image, she began researching. According to the illustration’s description, the painting portrays Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey — three of about a dozen women and girls whom Sims experimented on repeatedly from 1844 to 1849. The women simultaneously were servants and patients, catering to Sims’s every whim during a five-year period as he conducted excruciating procedures on them. The more information Browder gleaned about the doctor’s torturous experiments, the more the history haunted her. She learned that Sims is lauded in medical journals for groundbreaking techniques in women’s reproductive health, and he is credited with inventing the standard vaginal speculum as well as a surgery for vesicovaginal fistula, then a “catastrophic complication” of childbirth. He was once the president of the American Medical Association and the American Gynecological Society. There are still several statues valorizing him across the country. Read more
Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s journey from the segregated South to the United Nations. By Jonathan Capehart / Wash Post Podcast
Opinion writer Jonathan Capehart talks with newsmakers who challenge your ideas.
In this conversation first recorded at the Global Women’s Summit on Nov. 15, Thomas-Greenfield discusses how her upbringing in the segregated South has affected her work as a diplomat and what it’s like being a Black women in a world dominated by White men. Listen here
Morehouse College class will teach Black history in the metaverse. By Claretta Bellamy / NBC News
Students have toured the Underground Railroad, a slave ship and other artifacts using virtual reality technology.
This spring, Ovell Hamilton, a professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, will guide students through a first-of-its-kind course in which Black history is taught entirely through the metaverse, a virtual 3D space where people can interact with one another using avatars. During class, students will don virtual reality headsets to see firsthand the brutal reality of enslaved Africans lying in chains on top of one another in a slave ship and see an enslaved person standing on the edge of the vessel, facing the harrowing choice between life in bondage or freedom in death. Read more
Elvis Mitchell: The success of Black ’70s films was “the dirty little secret of American cinema.” By Melanie McFarland / Salon
On “Salon Talks,” the film critic discusses Netflix’s “Is That Black Enough For You?!?” and celebrates Black art
Mitchell began to forge an appreciation for late ’60s and ’70s-era Black cinema early in his life, a decade that the film scholar, critic and radio program host came to realize was both highly impactful and broadly dismissed. This one of the ways Mitchell began to forge an appreciation for Black cinema early in his life. “Is That Black Enough For You?!?” is Mitchell’s way of bringing renewed attention to the groundbreaking output of Black filmmakers in that decade, linking their directing and cinematographic innovations to the work of auteur filmmakers that came after them, including Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese. Within its two hours Mitchell achieves a broad enough sweep of titles, individuals and artistic influences for the documentary to qualify as a solid primer in film history. Read more
Best Jazz Albums of 2022.
In a year of growth and reflection, the music stretched and relocated in often unpredictable ways. Shown is Cécile McLorin Salvant’s “Ghost Song” is a personal and adventurous album. Credit…Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times
At the end of the seventh album on this list (no spoilers), the poet and philosopher Thomas Stanley’s voice rises up over a clatter of drums and saxophone, offering a darkly optimistic take on the state of jazz. “Ultimately, perhaps it is good that the people abandoned jazz, replaced it with musical products better suited to capitalism’s designs,” he muses. “Now jazz jumps up like Lazarus, if we allow it, to rediscover itself as a living music.” Read more
Sports
Jerry Jones was not innocent, then or now. By Farrell Evans / Andscape
The photo of the Dallas Cowboys owner at a desegregation protest in 1957 is a reminder that even teenagers can be complicit in racism
“A curious thing.” This is what Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones called his participation in a protest against the desegregation of North Little Rock High School, where he was a student. In a photo taken on Sept. 9, 1957, a 14-year-old Jones is seen standing with a mob of white students blocking six African American students from entering on the first day of school. Jones’ plea of racial innocence as a “curious kid” growing up in a Little Rock is both a fantasy and lie that has been long perpetuated by many white people too busy to come to terms with the structural barriers for advancement in American society for African Americans. At least on this period of his life, Jones is an unreliable narrator. Read more
Tiger Woods calls for Greg Norman’s ouster in PGA Tour’s feud with LIV. By Gene Wang / Wash Post
While the playing future of Tiger Woods remains uncertain following another ailment, what’s crystal clear is the 15-time major champion’s perspective on resolving the acrimony between the PGA Tour and the LIV Golf International Series.
Woods took direct aim at Greg Norman, the outspoken CEO of the Saudi-funded series that has poached high-profile PGA Tour players, calling for the two-time major champion’s resignation before any substantive discussions could be launched amid dueling lawsuits. Read more
Victim of player dropped by Bruins speaks out on racist bullying. By Cindy Boren / Wash Post
Mike Tomlin is staring at his first losing season in 16 years with the Steelers. By Des Bieler / Wash Post
“The standard is the standard.” The phrase most closely associated with Mike Tomlin is no mere bit of coach-speak and, as immortalized on a sign outside the Pittsburgh Steelers’ locker room, has come to encapsulate his entire approach. In December 2020, Tomlin explained it means “our job is to win.”
At that time, the Steelers were well on their way to upholding a high standard of prolonged success with a 12-4 record, and last season they arguably embodied the phrase even more closely by finding a way to scrape together a 9-7-1 campaign and a playoff appearance despite having some major on-field issues. That 2021 season was the 15th straight under Tomlin in which the team finished .500 or better — an NFL record. This year’s team, however, is on pace to hand Tomlin his first losing record. Read more
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