Featured
“Red states are forming ‘a nation within a nation’ with laws that recreate ‘a pre-1960s world.’ By Brad Reed / Raw Story
Ron Brownstein, a senior editor for The Atlantic, argued that many Republican-led states are essentially creating completely different countries within the borders of the United States.
Appearing on CNN, Brownstein argued that many red states seem to be in a race to roll back a wide array of freedoms, with a particular focus on women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. “I think that they are building a nation within a nation on all sorts of issues: LGBTQ rights, voting rights, abortion rights, these book bans, classroom censorship,” he said. He then argued that these efforts have created areas of the country where many areas have vastly different legal landscapes for citizens simply depending on where they live. Read more
Political / Social
The Supreme Court could end to the affirmative action culture war. By Fabiola Cineas / Vox
The debate has long tapped into American resentments and anxieties. Its fate once again lies in the hands of the Supreme Court.
Affirmative action was meant to increase equality by countering historical imbalances. Those who were at a disadvantage due to slavery, Jim Crow, and racial discrimination would be brought up to the starting line to better compete with those who were privileged. Following Kennedy’s original mandate, university presidents by the late 1960s took steps to admit students and hire faculty of color, also making room for white women in the process. The fate of affirmative action is expected to be decided in the coming days, but the arguments that have long underpinned it are far from resolved. What remains, amid this period of backlash to progressive action, are tensions about how America should address lingering inequality and whether policies that address bias will have any place in its future. Read more
Related: Do Harvard, UNC discriminate against Asian Americans? Here’s the data. By Alia Wong / USA Today
Texas Gov. Abbott signs law shutting diversity offices at public universities. By Reuters and NBC News
The law comes as the Supreme Court later this month is widely expected to ban colleges and universities from considering race as a factor in their admissions decisions.
All state-funded colleges and universities in Texas will have to close their diversity, equity and inclusion offices under a measure signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. The law, which one of its sponsors in the Texas state Senate called the most significant ban on diversity offices in higher education in the country, comes as the U.S. Supreme Court later this month is widely expected to ban colleges and universities from considering race as a factor in their admissions decisions. Under the Texas law, signed by Abbott on Wednesday, any public college or university that does not certify it is in compliance with the measure would not be able to spend state funds allocated to it. Read more
Georgia poll workers accused in Trump-backed conspiracy theories cleared of election fraud allegations. By Lucien Bruggeman / ABC News
Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were targets of baseless claims by election deniers.
Allegations of election fraud against two Georgia election workers who became the subjects of a Trump-backed conspiracy theory in the aftermath of the 2020 election were found to be “false and unsubstantiated,” according to an investigative report released Tuesday by the Georgia Elections Board. Read more
“Decline into anocracy”: Experts outline Trump’s retaliation plan. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
“We’re all going to pay the price during the second term when Trump fully weaponizes the Department of Justice”
In all, the tumult and troubles of the Trumpocene and America’s democracy crisis are far from over – and will likely get much worse when Donald Trump’s various criminal trials begin in Miami, New York, and likely in Georgia and other parts of the country as well. In an attempt to make sense of his truly historic moment, I asked a range of experts for their reactions to last Tuesday’s events and predictions for what comes next in the Age of Trump and the country’s democracy crisis. Read more
How Hakeem Jeffries Learned to Fight Dirty. By Calder McHugh / Politico
Hakeem Jeffries (left) got his first taste of political combat when he ran two losing campaigns against 20-year Democratic veteran of the New York State Assembly Roger Green (right).
Jeffries’ two losing campaigns against Green, a savvy veteran wielding the levers of incumbency, marked his first taste of political combat. For a politician who hasn’t had a difficult race in a decade, the two early races for the New York state Assembly stand out as moments that shaped his political identity. They provided enough strategic lessons for a dozen political science degrees, featuring everything from feuds over church-based organizing to fights over union support and a messaging battle pitting youth against experience and idealism against familiarity with power. Read more
Native American Families Broken Up Despite Federal Law Meant to Keep Them Together. By Jessica Lussenhop and Agnel Philip
Update, June 15, 2023: On Thursday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of upholding the Indian Child Welfare Act. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority that the case was about “children who are among the most vulnerable” and that “we reject all of petitioners’ challenges to the statute, some on the merits and others for lack of standing.”
Unlike in the U.S. overall, in South Dakota Native American children entering foster care are more likely to face termination of parental rights than white children. Read more
Mental health: Black experts on how to heal from racial discrimination. By Kenya Hunter / Vox
There’s no cure for the effects of pervasive discrimination, but there are steps you can take to help heal.
As Black people, we are bombarded by instances of racism every day: Images of police and self-deputized citizens killing Black people. Hospitals shutting down in our communities. Negative stereotypes in media, microaggressions at work, suspicious treatment by store clerks and neighbors. All based on the color of our skin. But racial trauma is not formally recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the manual used by health care experts to diagnose mental health disorders, meaning there’s no official symptoms or guidance on how to treat them. Read more
William Spriggs Was the Economist Who Fought for the Entire Working Class. By John Nichols
From his days as a graduate student union leader, he championed an intersectional vision of economic, social, and racial justice.
Economists often talk about the role labor unions play in transforming workplaces and society, but rare is the economic scholar who has actually led a union local during a period of intense, and ultimately transformational, struggle. William Spriggs, the assistant secretary of labor in the Obama administration and former chief economist for the AFL-CIO, who died last week at age 68, was such an economist and such a leader. Read more
Related: Creating a Path for More Black Economists. By Peter Coy / NYT
Ethics / Morality / Religion
William Barber departs pulpit of Greenleaf Church with an ode to the power of disability. By Yonat Shimron / RNS
The sermon, which capped his 30-year tenure as pastor of the Disciples of Christ church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, was unusually personal.
Barber, whom some consider a successor to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for his anti-poverty activism, will devote his time to training future pastors. Late last year, he was appointed founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. Read more
Related: Poverty is a lethal epidemic. It’s time to address it. By William J. Barber II and Liz Theoharris / RNS
The sleeper legal strategy that could topple abortion bans. By Alice Miranda Ollstein / Politico
Jews, Episcopalians, Unitarians, Satanists and other people of faith say the laws infringe on their religious rights.
In Indiana, a group of Jewish, Muslim and other religious plaintiffs sued over the state’s near-total abortion ban. Their argument: that it violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act signed into law in 2015 by then-Gov. Mike Pence. A lower court judge sided with them in December and blocked the state’s ban from taking effect — the most significant win the religious challengers have notched so far. Read more
The country’s fastest-growing Christian movement helped fuel Trump’s rise—and is gearing up for spiritual battle. By Stephanie McCrummen / The Atlantic
It is called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, a sprawling ecosystem of leaders who call themselves apostles and prophets and claim to receive direct revelations from God. Illustration The New Republic
The movement is seeking political power as a means to achieving a more transcendent goal: to bring under biblical authority every sphere of life, including government, schools, and culture itself, establishing not just a Christian nation, as the traditional religious right has advocated, but an actual, earthly Kingdom of God. Read more
Mehdi Hasan Shows What A Big Phony Ron DeSantis Is When It Comes To Jesus. By Ed Mazza / HuffPost
The MSNBC host said Jesus was far too “woke” for the Florida governor.
MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan on Sunday called out Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, for his latest “transparent pitch” to win over evangelical Christian voters. During an interview with The Christian Broadcasting Network last week, DeSantis said he’d like to have been among the original disciples of Jesus Christ. “The truth is that the Jesus of the gospels and his disciples were way too left-wing for Ronald DeSantis,” Hasan told fellow MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin. Read more
Historical / Cultural
“Black History Is an Absolute Necessity.” By Indigo Olivier / The New Republic
A conversation with Colin Kaepernick on Black studies, white supremacy, and capitalism
A new anthology, Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies, co-edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, makes the case that Black Studies is a crucial tool in fighting back against a white supremacist political agenda. The anthology presents an interdisciplinary body of work that touches on feminist theory, queer studies, abolition, reparations, education, history, and more. Read more
Florida still recognizes 3 Confederate holidays, but not Juneteenth. ByJake Stofan / Action News Jax
While federal workers have the day off in recognition of Juneteenth, state workers in Florida do not. Juneteenth was recognized by Florida as a day of special observance back in the 1990′s, but it isn’t recognized as an official state holiday.
Florida does recognize some controversial state holidays including the birthdays of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis along with Confederate Memorial Day. Read more
The destruction of ‘Black Wall Street’ and its long aftermath. By Suzette Malveaux / Wash Post
“Don’t you realize that Greenwood was Wakanda before Wakanda?” The poet Phetote Mshairi posed this provocative question standing on the corner of Greenwood Avenue and Archer Street in Tulsa — the very heart of “Black Wall Street” — on the 97th anniversary of one of the worst racial massacres in American history. The analogy is fitting.
“Built From the Fire,” an exceptional new account of the massacre and its long aftermath by journalist Victor Luckerson, reminds us that the massacre, while shocking and arbitrary, was also foreseeable. Lynching and mob violence in surrounding Black towns and the “Red Summer” of 1919 (named for the blood spilled in racial massacres and riots in dozens of U.S. cities that year) foreshadowed the future. Read more
Rep. Cori Bush marks Juneteenth with push for reparations. By Nicole Killion / CBS News
Bush introduced H.R. 414, The Reparations Now Resolution, in May. The 23-page measure makes the case for federal reparations, citing a “moral and legal obligation” for the U.S. to address the “enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm” on millions of Black Americans.
The bill would support other pieces of reparatory justice legislation and formally acknowledge the momentum of state and local reparations movements. The Missouri Democrat believes ongoing efforts in Evanston, Boston, San Francisco and her hometown of St. Louis could galvanize support for reparations on the federal level. Read more
Related: The fight over reparations for Hayward, California’s Russell City. By , and
Ketanji Brown Jackson’s ancestors were enslaved. Her husband’s were enslavers. By Sally H. Jacobs / Wash Post
Hundreds of years ago, two men named John boarded ships to America to seek opportunity. One worked onboard as a barber; one was an indentured servant.
Silicon Valley hidden figures rush to preserve forgotten Black history. By Jessica Guynn / USA Today
In 2016, technology veteran Kathy Cotton made a documentary, “A Place at the Table: The Story of the African American Pioneers of Silicon Valley.”
Cotton, who started out in Silicon Valley in 1976 and worked as a recruiter and human resources administrator for Motorola and HP, says she was determined to chronicle for the first time the early African American contributions to the tech industry. Read more
Killer Mike’s new album Michael: the rapper’s strange journey. By Jack Hamilton / Slate
Michael Render’s unlikely journey from underground hero to controversial activist and fortysomething superstar.
The first time most hip-hop fans heard Michael Render, better known as Killer Mike, was on “Snappin’ & Trappin’,” the sixth track of OutKast’s 2000 multiplatinum masterpiece Stankonia. Mike took the first verse of the song and ended it with the bold proclamation “One mothafuckin’ verse and already it’s a classic,” a line he believed so fervently that he said it twice. Read more
Pharrell Williams, Louis Vuitton’s New Don. By Jon Caramanica / NYT
The American star steps into shoes once filled by Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton. His first collection debuts in Paris this week.
Earlier this month, Pharrell Williams was in the men’s atelier on the second floor of Louis Vuitton’s corporate office in Paris, sunglasses on, surveying his new perch. Since Mr. Williams’s appointment was announced in February, he has spent a great deal of his time here, in this office and in the workshops that abut it, getting accustomed to holding the reins of the huge business he had been put at the creative helm of — the first time a musician has been given such a grand platform in luxury fashion. Read more
For Black Debutantes in Detroit, Cotillion Is More Than a Ball. By Miranda Barnes and Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff / NYT
In a heady swirl of bright white silk and lace, the young ladies of the Cotillion Society of Detroit Educational Foundation are presented as debutantes.
The Society’s annual ball is the culmination of eight months of etiquette lessons, leadership workshops, community service projects and cultural events. As the girls take to the dance floor, they become part of a legacy of Black debutantes in the city and beyond. Read more
Sports
Athletes have the power to help stop nationwide acts of anti-Blackness. By Mike Freeman / USA Today
This column is extremely Black because it’s Juneteenth and its purpose is a simple one: to remind Black athletes of the extreme anti-Blackness movement they and most Black Americans face, and to ask them to use their power to fight what is an aggressive push to eliminate the exact kind of history that’s being celebrated on June 19.
This is something I’ve discussed before, but it needs to be repeated because Black Americans are facing some of the strongest white nationalist headwinds since the Reagan era. The wealth and power of athletes gives them immense advantages. In some cases, they reach more people than politicians. They can be the leading edge in what’s a battle to preserve Black history and power. Read more
Frances Tiafoe becomes third Black American to reach men’s top 10. By Ben Church / CNN
The 25-year-old matches the achievement previously accomplished by Arthur Ashe and James Blake. Frances Tiafoe celebrates with the trophy after winning the Stuttgart Open on Sunday.
Speaking to reporters after his nail-biting 4-6 7-6(1) 7-6(8) win over German Jan-Lennard Struff, Tiafoe said he was “super emotional” after moving to 10th in the world rankings. “I’m a guy who shouldn’t even really be here doing half the things he’s doing,” Tiafoe said. “And now when you say his name, you can say he’s top 10 in the world. So [that is] something that no one can take from you and I’m going to remember that forever. Read more
It’s ‘Coach Prime’ time at Colorado. By Kent Babb / Wash Post
God ‘called’ former NFL star Deion Sanders to coach at an HBCU. The money took him to Colorado. What happens next is anyone’s guess.
Now, at 55 and robbed of his once-silky gait, Sanders — or “Coach Prime,” as he prefers — is a stirring demonstration of change. He hobbles through the lounge and onto the field, his bandanna replaced by a 10-gallon cowboy hat. When recruits face him, they’re at once meeting a stranger and a man they have always known. Read more
‘Shooting Stars’ review: How LeBron James became a star with an assist from his friends. By Brian Lowry / CNN
Marquis “Mookie” Cook as LeBron James in “Shooting Stars,” premiering on Peacock.
LeBron James continues paving the way for his post-basketball media career, this time by producing a superstar origin story adapted from his book, “Shooting Stars,” about how his hoops heroism came with an assist from a close-knit group of friends. Basically “It takes a village to raise an all-star,” it’s a familiar B-level sports story about the strains of success buoyed only slightly by its talented young cast. Read more
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