Featured
America Loves to Celebrate ‘Firsts’ Like Hakeem Jeffries. It Doesn’t Always Make It Easy for Them to Lead. By Janell Ross / Yahoo News and Time
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, was elected the first Black House Minority Leader, making him the first Black person to lead a major party’s caucus in either chamber of Congress.
As the new Congress begins its work on Tuesday, he will take up a key role in everything from setting caucus priorities to making committee assignments. Had Democrats won just a few more seats in the midterms, Jeffries might have been elected the first Black Speaker of the House, second in line to the presidency and one of the most influential roles in American politics—a position it seems he is likely to pursue should Democrats gain a majority in the next election.
“Like President Obama, the image of Hakeem Jeffries, leader, could represent to some that they are losing what they think is their country—as opposed to our, in the collective sense, country,” Read more
Related: Who is Hakeem Jeffries? By Nicholas Fandos / NYT
Political / Social
A Comprehensive Guide to Why a Ron DeSantis Presidency Would Be as Terrifying as a Trump One. By Bess Levine / Vanity Fair
His bigoted policies and authoritarian behavior make him just as bad a pick for the top job in Washington.
A former college teammate, who simultaneously praised DeSantis’s intelligence, described him thusly to The New Yorker: “Ron is the most selfish person I have ever interacted with. He has always loved embarrassing and humiliating people. I’m speaking for others—he was the biggest dick we knew.” We’ll repeat that for emphasis: “He has always loved embarrassing and humiliating people.” Great qualities to have in an elected official! Read more
Related: Welcome to Ron DeSantis’s 2024 Campaign Against “Wokes.” By Melissa Gira Grant / The New Republic
Related: Muzzled by DeSantis, Critical Race Theory Professors Cancel Courses or Modify Their Teaching
Related: Trump-DeSantis Showdown Could Supercharge Latino Evangelicals’ Influence. By Jennifer Medina / NYT
The Billionaire Kingmaker (Still) Dividing the Nation. By Nancy MaClean and Lisa Graves / The Progressive
Despite a rebrand, Charles Koch won’t stop until U.S. democracy is dead.
Koch, the single most influential billionaire shaping American political life, never changed course. And the head fake he pulled off in 2020 succeeded in securing for his vast donor network—and the hundreds of organizations they underwrite—the freedom to operate, virtually without scrutiny, over the two years since. Read more
The lie won’t stop: Trump doubles down on attacks against innocent election workers. By Brandi Buchman / Daily Kos
It is happening again: Former President Donald Trump is attacking innocent Americans and smearing them with dangerous lies.
After the committee published transcripts from its interviews with Freeman and Moss, on Jan. 3 Trump took to his social media platform TruthSocial and picked up right about where he left off with the women. “Wow! Has anyone seen the Ruby Freeman ‘contradictions’ of her sworn testimony? Now this is ‘BIG STUFF.’ Look what was captured by Cobb County police body cameras on January 4, 2021….” Trump wrote. He followed it up with two more posts sputtering similar lies about “suitcases” packed with ballots. Investigators have determined those “suitcases” were standard issue boxes used to transfer ballots. Read more
New Year’s message from Republicans: Yes, the cruelty is still the point. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Greg Abbott’s Christmas Eve migrant “stunt” was more like sadistic white supremacist theater, with more to come
Once again, the cruelty is the whole damn point. Today’s Republican Party and “conservative” movement are committed to what has been described as “sado-politics,” meaning a political worldview and strategy in which causing pain, misery, death and other suffering is both a means to win power and control and also a goal in and of itself. Sado-politics is also an extension and reflection of fascism, authoritarianism and other forms of illiberal and corrupt power. Read more
Md. attorney general-elect wants power to sue civil rights violators. By Ovetta Wiggins / Wash Post
Former congressman Anthony Brown sets an agenda focused on equity
Maryland Attorney General-elect Anthony G. Brown, who will be sworn in on Tuesday, wants more authority than his predecessors to go after civil rights violators and to investigate police departments for patterns of misconduct. Brown, Maryland’s first Black attorney general, will serve alongside Gov.-elect Wes Moore, also the first Black person in his role, and Comptroller-elect Brooke Lierman, the first woman in the position. All have promised to attack systemic problems to make Maryland fairer and more just. Read more
FBI offers $10,000 reward for information on vandalism at historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. By , and
Ebenezer Baptist Church, its sanctuary and the home of Martin Luther King Jr. are all part of the national historic park located in Atlanta.
The church’s sanctuary was vandalized in the late hours of July 3, when a group spray painted the following message on the side of the church: “if abortions arent safe neither are you.” The vandalism came just days after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed the federal, constitutional right to an abortion. Surveillance video appears to show a group of 10 individuals dressed in all black walking away from the church. The group walked to a concealed area, then re-emerged in surveillance footage without the black clothing, the FBI said. Read more
“Latinos, Race and Empire”: Juan González Challenges the Cooptation of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
González is an award-winning journalist and investigative reporter who spent 29 years as a columnist for the New York Daily News. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award and author of many books, including the classic “Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America,”
We’re spending the hour with Democracy Now!‘s Juan González. He recently gave three farewell addresses in his hometown of New York, before moving to Chicago. We turn now to part of a speech he gave called “Latinos, Race and Empire.” He was speaking at the CUNY Graduate Center. That’s the City University of New York. Just before he spoke, New York City Councilmember Alexa Avilés presented Juan with a New York City proclamation, recognizing his remarkable achievements. Read more
Judge slashes millions owed by hate groups for 2017 Charlottesville rally. By Ellie Silverman / Wash Post
A federal judge has cut by millions of dollars the damages that some of the nation’s most prominent white supremacists and hate groups owe for their role in 2017’s deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
She Says Doctors Ignored Her Concerns About Her Pregnancy. For Many Black Women, It’s a Familiar Story. By Duaa Eldeib / Propublica
Black women in America are more than twice as likely as white women to have a stillbirth. Getting physicians to take their concerns seriously is one reason for this disparity, they say: “If you’re a Black woman, you get dismissed.”
One 2019 study that looked at people’s experience during their pregnancy and childbirth lamented the “disturbing” number of patients who reported a health care provider ignored them, refused their request for help or failed to respond to such requests in a reasonable amount of time. The study found pregnant people of color were more than twice as likely as white people to report such “mistreatment.” Read more
People of color face discrimination in farming. New farm bill can help. By Martice Scales / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
We believe that policies implemented through the 2023 Farm Bill can help to ensure that valuable agricultural land is not lost and that access to it is equitable for my generation and those to come.
As a Black farmer in Milwaukee, and a Land Advocacy Fellow with the National Young Farmers Coalition, I recognize that the 2023 Farm Bill will likely dictate U.S. land policy more than any other policy decision over the next decade. It will set the stage for how communities use the land they are rooted in and will decide who has access and how they work that land. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Is America a Christian nation? Yes and no. By Justin Dyer / Wash Post
Justin Dyer is executive director of the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. This essay was adapted from his 2022 book, “The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics.”
“Their Christian-inflected philosophy has been a high ground on which Americans of all stripes have stood in claiming the mantle of justice. As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. put it in his celebrated “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.” Though we are increasingly disconnected from our philosophical and theological foundations, whenever we speak of American ideals, we invoke the ideas and language of natural law.” Read more
Shapiro’s big win is a high note amid antisemitism surge. By Peter Smith / RNS
Josh Shapiro will be taking office as Pennsylvania’s next governor in January after running a campaign in which he spoke early and often about his Jewish religious heritage.
At a time of rising concern about overt expressions of antisemitism, some observers are seeing a bright spot in his decisive victory, particularly coming in a presidential battleground state in which he was competing with a starkly contrasting opponent who deployed Christian nationalist themes. Read more
Debunking myths about Latino vote involves examining religious ideologies. By Eli Valentin / NCR
It is my contention that, contrary to the conventional thinking of many political scientists and other political observers, these ideological differences are largely driven by religious leanings, not economic ones.
On myriad social issues, the differences between Latino Catholics and Latino evangelicals are quite stark. According to Pew Research, 70% of Latino evangelicals believe abortion should be illegal, while 54% of Latino Catholics subscribe to the same belief; and 66% of Latino evangelicals oppose same-sex marriages, while only 30% of Latino Catholics oppose them. Hence, it may be safe to assume that in many ways what has driven the move from Democrat to Republican among some Latino voters is largely Latino evangelicals rather than Latino Catholics. Read more
Historical / Cultural
White contractors wouldn’t remove Confederate statues. So a Black man did it. By Gregory S. Schneider / Wash Post
Devon Henry stands near the former site of the Robert E. Lee statue, which his company was hired to remove, on Monument Avenue in Richmond on Dec. 6. (Parker Michels-Boyce for The Washington Post)
Over the past three years, as the former capital of the Confederacy has taken down more than a dozen monuments to the Lost Cause, Henry — who is Black — has overseen all the work. He didn’t seek the job. He had never paid much attention to Civil War history. City and state officials said they turned to Team Henry Enterprises after a long list of bigger contractors — all White-owned — said they wanted no part of taking down Confederate statues. Read more
“They got Daddy”: Reckoning with my grandfather’s kidnapping, racial terror and our family’s trauma. By Sharon Tubbs / Salon
My grandfather was brutalized for suing a white cop in Jim Crow Alabama. Here’s what reporting the story taught me. Shown is Israel Page and Margaret (Warren) Page, Sharon Tubbs’s maternal grandparents, and the house in Uniontown, Alabama, where the Tubbs family traveled from Fort Wayne, Indiana, each summer to visit grandparents. (Photo illustration by Salon/Photos courtesy of author/Getty Images)
In the end, I embraced my grandfather by filling the voids left in my childhood memories. He was not the Martin Luther King Jr. I wrote about in a middle-school essay. He was no Medgar Evers or Thurgood Marshall. He was a Black man in suspenders who wanted to take care of his family and live his life in a small country town, a man who believed strongly in a God much bigger than us all. He was this guy living at a time when an unjust system threatened to use his skin color to steal his greatness and hope, in much the same way that injustice threatens us all. That same threat never stopped breathing through my grandfather’s children. It still breathes in me today. Yet, learning the fullness of his story — our story — has allowed me to exhale. Read more
In George McCalman’s Dazzling New Book, Black History Is Everyone’s History. By Emily Hofstaedter / Mother Jones
The artist’s portraits of Black luminaries are “as individual as the people” they depict.
The book contains 147 portraits of Black luminaries, hand-illustrated by McCalman and accompanied by his biographies of their lives. It feels partly graphic novel, partly anthology, and even partly magazine—indeed, McCalman spent years working in magazines as an art director, including at Mother Jones. Read more
Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle set to play third co-headlining tour. By John Beifuss / Memphis Commercial Appeal
Comedians Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle will co-headline a concert Jan. 23 at FedExForum.
Two of the most lauded and innovative comics of their generation, Rock and Chappelle built on the foundation of such predecessors as Richard Pryor and George Carlin with comic routines that cannily exposed, diagnosed and lampooned political, racial and cultural hypocrisy and identity. The Comedy Central sketch series “Chappelle’s Show” was particularly groundbreaking. Read more
5 Songs You Didn’t Know James Brown Wrote for Other Artists. By Tina Benitez-Eves / American Song Writer
One of the first 10 inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, Brown’s influence marked everyone from The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Sly and the Family Stone, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, The Temptations, and beyond. Earlier in his career, Brown worked closely with a number of singers and musicians within his community. Here are five songs he wrote or co-wrote for other artists in the 1960s through ’70s. Read more
In 2022, Usher once again proved he’s far more than a ‘Superstar.’ By Justin Tinsley / Andscape
It’s hard to deny that Usher had one hell of a year. Nearly 30 years after his debut album dropped, 2022 was an unexpected, but well-deserved, victory lap for one of the true kings of R&B.
While many were debating whether R&B was dead, Usher almost single-handedly proved the genre was not only alive, but thriving. The singer experienced his own “renaissance” (shout out to Beyoncé) this year. He returned to Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, thanks to the City Girls’ bouncy “Good Love.” The feature was his 52nd charting single, and his first since Summer Walker’s 2019 smash “Come Thru.” He delivered an electric set at Pharrell’s Something In The Water festival in DC. Weaving in and out of his vast collection of hits, the performance was a masterclass. And his Las Vegas residency has been so popular, it’s been extended multiple times. Read more
Snoop Dogg Launches Death Row Cannabis. By Kiara Washington / Atlanta Black Star
Snoop Dogg just took his newest ownership of Death Row Records to a whole other level on Thursday, Dec. 29 after announcing the record label’s expansion into the weed industry.
Snoop Doog has been a huge advocate in supporting the safe usage of cannabis, in 2015 he created his own line of “medial and recreational marijuana-related products,” Leafs by Snoop, which launched in Denver, Colorado. Read more
Earth, Wind & Fire drummer Fred White dies at age 67. By AP and NBC News
He joined the band in the mid-1970s, and his work helped set the stage for songs like “Boogie Wonderland” and “September” to instant favorites.
Earth, Wind & Fire began in 1970 under the leadership of Maurice White, who created a band that could combine elements of jazz, funk, R&B, soul, dance, pop and rock, and celebrated African musicianship and spiritualism. Driven by their horn section the Phenix Horns and a reputation for energetic live performances, the group’s popularity grew after they moved to Columbia Records, which was then under the leadership of Clive Davis. Read more
Take A Guess At How Few Women And People Of Color Directed Top Movies Last Year. By Marina Fang / HuffPost
Hollywood’s recent promises on diversity may have been largely symbolic, suggests a new study from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative.
In 2022, just 9% of the directors behind the year’s top 100 fictional films were women, and 20.7% were people of color, according to the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Both numbers are far below proportional representation in the U.S. Now in its 16th year, the group’s annual report, “Inclusion in the Director’s Chair,” examines the number of women and people of color helming the top 100 movies at the box office. Among the most glaring findings: From 2007 to 2022, only 21 of the highest-grossing movies (out of a total of 1,488) were directed by women of color. Read more
Sports
Damar Hamlin’s Collapse Is Stark Reminder of NFL’s True Cost. By Stephanie Holland / The Root
Damar Hamlin’s family has released a statement thanking fans, first responders and the Cincinnati Bengals.
The sports world was shocked during the Monday Night Football game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals when Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field after taking a hard hit. Players and viewers were stunned to then see medical teams and paramedics administer CPR and AED on the field. Thankfully, they were able to revive him and he was taken by ambulance to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. After temporarily suspending the game for some time, the NFL officially postponed it around 10 p.m. ET. Read more
Donovan Mitchell scores 71 points, taking scoring boom to new heights. By Ben Golliver / Wash Post
Donovan Mitchell took the NBA’s season-long scoring boom to new heights Monday, pouring in a career-high 71 points in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 145-134 overtime victory over the Chicago Bulls.
The three-time all-star guard became just the seventh player in history to score at least 70 points, joining Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, David Thompson, David Robinson, Kobe Bryant and Devin Booker. At 6-foot-1, Mitchell became the shortest player in history to top the 70-point threshold, and his 71 points are the most scored in an NBA game since Bryant’s 81-point effort against the Toronto Raptors in 2006. Mitchell eclipsed Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic’s 60-point explosion against the New York Knicks last week for the most points in a game this season. Read more
Sports Scumbag of the Year: Brett Favre. By Prem Thakker / The New Republic
The former NFL player is embroiled in what may be Mississippi’s biggest corruption scandal ever: the misuse of welfare funds for ego projects that did nothing to help the state’s poor people.
The gravitational center of Favre’s misdeeds involved a massive pool of more than $77 million in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, funding, which the federal government distributes to the states through grants. Perhaps no other state needs such assistance more than Mississippi, which has the highest poverty rate in the nation, with about one-fifth of its population living below the poverty line. Fifteen percent of the population is food insecure, and the state has the nation’s lowest life expectancy. Read more
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