Featured
The Fight for Our America. By Heather Cox Richardson / The New Republic
There have always been two Americas. One based in religious zeal, mythology, and inequality; and one grounded in rule of the people and the pursuit of equality. This next election may determine which one prevails.
This crisis in American democracy crept up on many of us. For generations of Americans, grainy news footage from World War II showing row upon row of Nazi soldiers goose-stepping in military parades tricked us into thinking that the Adolf Hitlers of the world arrive at the head of giant armies. So long as we didn’t see tanks in our streets, we imagined that democracy was secure. But in fact, Hitler’s rise to absolute power began with his consolidation of political influence to win 36.8 percent of the vote in 1932, which he parlayed into a deal to become German chancellor. The absolute dictatorship came afterward. Democracies die more often through the ballot box than at gunpoint. Read more
Related: This Is Going to Be the Most Important Election Since 1860.’ By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
Related: Biden Is Old, But Trump Is Crazy (and Dangerous). By Charlie Sykes / The Bulwark
Related: The real reason why Donald Trump wants Gen. Milley to be killed. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Political / Social
Trump committed fraud: Judge rules Trump Org. loan documents “clearly contain fraudulent valuations.” By Tatyana Tandanpolie / Salon
A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years as he built up the real estate empire that bolstered his fame and vaulted him into the White House.
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron found that Trump and his company deceived insurers, bankers and others by heavily inflating his assets and his net worth in paperwork he used to make deals and secure financing. Engoron also found that Trump, his company and its key executives had repeatedly lied about his wealth on his annual financial statements in order to take advantage of favorable loan terms and lower insurance premiums. Read more
Related: Two Lawyers Rank the Severity of Trump’s Many Indictments. The Ezra Klein Show / NYT Podcast
Biden makes history by joining striking autoworkers on the picket line. By Peter Nicholas / NBC News
The United Auto Workers strike against the Big Three auto companies — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler maker Stellantis — has entered its 11th day.
President Joe Biden made history Tuesday when he visited a picket line in Michigan in a show of loyalty to autoworkers who are striking for higher wages and cost-of-living increases. Biden, who is looking to polish his pro-labor persona, is the first sitting president to appear on a picket line. Speaking through a bullhorn, he told the striking autoworkers in Wayne County, “You deserve what you earned, and you’ve earned a hell of a lot more than you’re getting paid now.” Read more
Related: Biden brushes off threat from Cornel West despite left’s warnings. By Hanna Trudo / The Hill
SCOTUS tells Alabama it meant what it said the first time. By Joan Biskupic / CNN
The Supreme Court delivered a brief but clear message to Alabama on Tuesday: When we said you defied the law, we meant it.
It rejected state officials’ plea for emergency intervention in the Republican-led effort to essentially sidestep a ruling from June and maintain an Alabama redistricting plan that disadvantaged Black voters. The brief order demonstrated that while the Supreme Court remains open to curtailing the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, as it has in the past, the justices themselves want to take the lead. Alabama had pushed too far and too fast. The justices’ action will have immediate consequences in Alabama and perhaps nationwide in the 2024 elections. The state, which is 27% Black, will now be forced to adopt a map with two Black-majority districts, among the seven congressional seats. Read more
Related: Florida redistricting trial: Did Ron DeSantis map target Black voters? By John Kennedy / USA Today
Judge allows grant program for Black female entrepreneurs to continue. By Taylor Telford and Julian Mark / Wash Post
In August, a group run by conservative activist Edward Blum, whose lawsuits prompted the Supreme Court to strike down the use of racial preferences in college admissions, sued Fearless Fund, alleging it engaged in “explicit racial exclusion” by operating a grant program “open only to Black females.”
U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash rejected arguments from his group, the American Alliance for Equal Rights, during the hearing Tuesday. He said the Fearless Fund grant program qualifies as charitable giving, which is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment. Thrash, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, is expected to file an opinion in the case later this week. Read more
Clarence Thomas Should Not Get Away With It. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
It is hard to think of a comparison point for the corrupt behavior of Justice Clarence Thomas.
We have had partisan justices; we have had ideological justices; we have had justices who favored, for venal reasons, one interest over another. But it is difficult to think of another justice, in the history of the Supreme Court, who has been as partisan and as ideological and as venal as Thomas, to say nothing of the fact that significant parts of his life have been subsidized by the largess of some of the wealthiest men in the country. Read more
Sen. Tommy Tuberville says U.S. military not an ‘equal opportunity employer.’ By Chelsey Cox / CNBC
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican and former football coach, said Tuesday that the U.S. military is “not an equal-opportunity employer.”
Tuberville went on to compare the military to a football team, saying “You can’t have different groups. Everybody’s got to be together to win.” He coached the Auburn University football team for 11 years, starting in 1998 — decades after the Alabama university desegregated in 1964 and started admitting Black students. The military began desegregating years before that, in 1948, after an executive order from then-President Harry Truman. And the Defense Department currently promotes a “diverse and inclusive mission-ready total force.” Read more
California governor signs law barring schoolbook bans based on diversity issues. By Jonathan Franklin / NPR
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law Monday prohibiting school boards across the state from banning books, instructional materials or curricula categorized as inclusive or diverse.
Under the new law, which went into effect immediately after its signing, the state can fine schools that would block textbooks and library books that allow students to learn about diverse communities. Read more
New report finds Black Americans remain deeply skeptical of news media. By Dwayne Bray / Andscape
A new survey by the Pew Research Center found that Black Americans believe the news media has gone out of its way to portray their community in a negative and stereotypical light and most don’t believe that behavior will change in their lifetimes.
The report, Black Americans’ Experience With News, builds on decades of criticism of the mainstream American news media, from the time when newspapers and magazines were the dominant sources to today when most people get their news from digital outlets, cable television or social media. The distribution methods and the dominant media companies have changed but the attitudes and perceptions of the Black news-consuming public remain the same. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
How the Faith That Arose From the Cotton Fields Challenges Me. By Esau McCaulley / NYT
Discarding a belief in God can feel like an intellectual rite of passage to adulthood. Just as our bodies develop and change, so can our relationship to things spiritual, leading us sometimes to set aside organized religion. For African Americans, in particular, adult faith is complicated by the way certain understandings of Christianity were used to justify our ancestors’ enslavement.
Before “wokeness” became a right-wing propaganda tool, it was a descriptor for Black people who learned the truth about our history and culture. In my late teens and early 20s, freshly awakened friends challenged me, declaring Christianity a white man’s religion. Read more
Hope, Faith, and Metaphor in African American History. By Nico Slate / AAIHS
In November 2022, the Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, cited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. while encouraging his fellow judges “to bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice.” That metaphor, long associated with Dr. King, was further popularized by Barack Obama.
From Parker to King, from Obama to Coates, the arc of the universe may or may not have bent toward justice, but the metaphor itself certainly traveled a wide and remarkably diverse path. Profound differences in context meant that the purpose and meaning of the metaphor varied over time. Did the metaphor itself bridge those differences? All metaphors perform a bridging function. By likening this to that, they do more than suggest similarity; they create new ways of thinking. Read more
National Association of Evangelicals launches test to assess, foster racial justice. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
The National Association of Evangelicals has launched a new resource to help Christians assess where they stand on racial justice and then take appropriate next steps to further race relations.
The online “Racial Justice Assessment tool,” posted on the organization’s website Monday (Sept. 25), is designed to provide users with suggestions of books, videos, articles and online courses to consider based on their answers to a brief survey about racism and equality. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Why separating fact from fiction is critical in teaching US slavery. By Eric Gable and Richard Handler / The Conversation
To portray enslaved people as laborers like free laborers is exactly how not to teach about slavery.
But it is a commonly used method that is called a “switching mechanism.” In this example, the story about the horrors of the slave system is transformed into a story about opportunity, success and the American dream. Read more
The History of Black Women and Violence. By Chinaza Okonkwo / AAIHS
Black women, girls, and nonbinary people’s unique experiences and encounters with racial violence are often devalued and disregarded, fueling ignorance around the complete nature of racial violence and oppression. Shown are protest held in honor of Sandra Bland.
Race is seen as the sole or primary oppressive factor in all Black people’s lives instead of acknowledging that racial violence often intersects with other unjust characteristics, like class and gender discrimination. Read more
Film academy replaces Hattie McDaniel’s long-lost Oscar. By The AP and Andscape
Hattie McDaniel’s best supporting actress Oscar in 1939 for Gone With the Wind is one of the most important moments in Academy Award history. McDaniel was the first African American to win an Oscar, and it would be half a century before another Black woman again won an acting award. But the whereabouts of her award, itself, has long been unknown.
Now, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has created a replacement of McDaniel’s legendary Academy Award that it’s gifting to Howard University. Upon her death in 1952, McDaniel bequeathed her Oscar to Howard University where it was displayed at the drama department until the late ’60s. Read more
A legal battle in Texas over a Black student’s hairstyle has renewed calls for a national CROWN Act. Here is what that means. By Chandelis Duster
The family of a Black high school student who has been suspended for weeks over his locs hairstyle have sued Texas state leaders, requesting the governor take action to protect the 17-year-old from hair discrimination.
Black natural hair advocates say the legal battle has renewed focus on the history of hair discrimination in the US and the need to pass a national CROWN Act. The CROWN Act and similar laws protect against race-based hair discrimination by making it illegal to deny employment and educational opportunities based on natural hair texture and protective hairstyles. Read more
Sports
“It Took a Lot for Me Not to Put My Hands on Him, It Actually Did” – By Mohammed Asif Ansari / Essentially Sports
Shannon Sharpe admitted he had to hold back from throwing punches. The former co-host of the popular sports talk show “Undisputed” alongside Skip Bayless, bid farewell to the show in June 2023. But what led to this abrupt departure, and was it all about Tom Brady? Read more
Colin Kaepernick writes letter to NY Jets offering to join while Aaron Rodgers says team needs to ‘grow up.’ By Ben Morse / CNN
In a letter released by the rapper J Cole on Instagram, Kaepernick – who addresses Jets general manager Joe Douglas – says he would be “honored” to join the team and “lead the practice squad” with “the sole mission of getting your defense ready each week.”
“I am sure of my ability to provide you with an elite QB option if, God forbid, QB1 goes down,” Kaepernick wrote. “However, I know that there may naturally be uncertainties from you and possibly from others about my playing abilities. “This plan, I believe, allows me to be of great service to the team as a practice squad QB, while also giving you a low-commitment chance to assess my capabilities to help in any other capacity you may see fit. Read more
Cleveland Browns running back Nick Chubb’s injury is exhibit A for fully guaranteed NFL contracts. By Jesse Washington / Andscape
The issue highlights one of the biggest moral injustices in pro sports
Fully guaranteed contracts are the norm in baseball and basketball. People who are hurt on the job still get paid if they are police officers, firefighters, or construction workers. If football players were working in factories instead of stadiums, their union would have negotiated more salary protection for them long ago. Read more
Miami Dolphins general manager Chris Grier can pick ’em. By Jason Reid / Andscape
In myriad ways, Grier has rewarded Dolphins team owner Stephen M. Ross for choosing him over Flores. The undefeated team Grier assembled is the talk of the NFL after its 70-20 drubbing of the Denver Broncos in Week 3.
Many of the players whom Grier acquired in hopes of spurring on-field improvement have shined this season, and they were in top form against Denver as Miami continued its sparkling start. Coach Mike McDaniel, Grier’s handpicked replacement for Flores, continued to deliver big-time results while being an ideal partner for the architect of the roster. Read more
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