Featured
“He was bigger and blocking the way”: Stormy Daniels takes the stand and reminds people who Trump is. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
Daniels tells a story that echoes what E. Jean Carroll told the jury in Trump’s sexual assault trial
Mostly, however, Daniels matters for reasons outside of the courtroom and the specifics of this hush-money trial. Daniels’ story is yet another reminder of what may prove to be Trump’s electoral downfall: His bottomless misogyny. Read more
Related: Trump’s Misogyny and Stormy Daniels. By David A. Graham / The Atlantic
Related: Stormy Daniels Offers Grim Look At Transactional Trump. By Josh Kovensky / TPM
Related: Trump’s hush-money trial: The personal is truly political. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Political / Social
Biden speech condemns antisemitism in Holocaust Remembrance ceremony. By Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy / USA Today
President Joe Biden gave an impassioned speech on the horrors of forgetting the past atrocities committed against the Jewish people and his commitment to the security of Israel at a Holocaust memorial ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.
“Now, here we are, not 75 years later, but just seven and a half months later, people are already forgetting. They’re already forgetting, and Hamas unleashed this terror,” Biden said. “It was Hamas that attacked the Israelis. It was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages. I have not forgotten, nor have you and we will not forget.” Read more
Related: Why Joe Biden Is Correct to Denounce Campus Antisemitism. By Jonathan Chait / New York Intelligencer
Harris is making unprecedented Black outreach efforts as Biden campaign looks to her to bolster support. By
Voters in focus groups are showing “a strongly held belief about the value of having a woman of color in national office, and it is a positive insight about President Biden that he embraces that value as well,” said Geoff Garin, who has been conducting some of the research for the campaign.
On Monday, Harris will give what’s expected to be a hard-hitting speech in Detroit on the next stop of her economic opportunity tour. Then, on Wednesday, she’ll be in the Philadelphia suburbs with “Abbott Elementary” star Sheryl Lee Ralph for an event on abortion rights. These events are in addition to frequent appearances in Black media that have often gone under the radar, with many more planned as the campaign ramps up. Read more
Tim Scott Refuses To Say If He’ll Accept 2024 Election Results Regardless Of Who Wins. By
Sen. Tim Scott wouldn’t give a straight answer when asked if he would commit to accepting the result of the 2024 presidential election ― no matter who wins.
During a Sunday appearance on “Meet the Press,” the South Carolina Republican repeatedly deflected questions about the election outcome, telling MSNBC moderator Kristen Welker there won’t be any issues since Donald Trump is already the inevitable victor. Read more
Fani Willis Calls Investigation Into Her ‘Unlawful.’ By Kate Plummer / Newsweek
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has called a Georgia state Senate investigation into her “unlawful” and said she would not testify before it.
Earlier this year, Georgia state Senate Republicans established a special committee to “thoroughly investigate the allegations of misconduct” against Willis, who is prosecuting former President Donald Trump and 18 others accused of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Read more
Related: Ex-Fulton County Prosecutors Defends Workplace Romance As ‘American As Apple Pie.’ By
Black voters won a big victory in Louisiana. Some White voters said it violated their ‘personal dignity.’ By and Schouten / CNN. The Louisiana Capitol is seen, April 4, 2023, in Baton Rouge, La.
Nearly two years after a federal judge said that Louisiana’s congressional map diluted Black voting power, Black voters are at risk of voting for a second time in an election under a plan that likely violates the Voting Rights Act.
In response to the judge’s ruling, the state’s Republican legislature had created a second majority-African American district in the state’s six district congressional plan. But now, a different federal court has said that adding the second majority-Black district is unconstitutional. Read more
Kim Godwin steps down suddenly as president of ABC News. By Jeremy Barr / Wash Post
The first Black woman to head a major network news division recently saw her role weakened, but had also signed a contract extension.
Kim Godwin, who three years ago became the first Black woman to run a broadcast television news division, announced late Sunday that she is leaving the network and retiring from the news business. Her sudden departure comes about two months after the network’s parent company, Disney, appointed a veteran executive in a newly created role just above her to oversee the news division, essentially stripping Godwin of oversight over ABC News. At the same time, however, Godwin signed a contract extension to remain president of the network. Read more
Is the corporate DEI panic finally over? By Taylor Nicole Rogers / Financial Times
In the US, the diversity, equity and inclusion push has quietly rolled on despite political backlash
While conservative lawmakers and billionaires try to undo the inclusion programmes that US corporations rolled out after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, nearly every one of the dozen executives I have interviewed recently tell me they are not altering their diversity plans. Read more
Related: How ‘Diversity’ Became the Master Concept of Our Age. Nicolas Langlitz / Chronicle of Higher Ed.
Why is cancer deadlier in Black women? A new study seeks to find out. By Karen Weintraub / USA Today
A cancer diagnosis is terrifying for anyone, but Black women have an extra reason to be afraid. Although Black women have a slightly lower risk of developing cancer, once they’ve been diagnosed they are more likely to die and die faster than non-Black women.
“We always say cancer affects everyone, but it doesn’t affect everyone equally,” said Alpa Patel, a senior vice president at the American Cancer Society. To understand why, the American Cancer Society Tuesday is launching the largest-ever study of cancer risk and outcomes in Black women. Read more
Related: First Patient Begins Newly Approved Sickle Cell Gene Therapy. By Gina Kolata / NYT
Unemployment Rates For Black Americans Fall As It Rises For Others. By Mary Spiller / Black Enterprise
Despite this, Black Americans still have a higher unemployment rate.
The fall in unemployment rates for Black Americans highlighted in April of this year is against the overall trend nationwide. According to new data released on May 3 by the Department of Labor, white Americans’ unemployment rates are slowly rising. Read more
California Will Have Its First HBCU This Upcoming School Year. By Editor / Global Grind
The first historically Black college is headed to California this year. National College Resources (NCR) and Huston-Tillotson University partnered to bring two satellite campuses to the state.
This upcoming school year will be exciting for the sunshine state. NCR partners with Austin-based Huston-Tillotson University to establish two satellite campuses in San Diego and Los Angeles County. The San Diego County Office of Education and University of La Verne has also joined this venture in a historic move to bring the first HBCU to California. Read more
World News
Putin sits at the heart of the West’s illiberal axis. By Ishaan Tharoor / Wash Post
Two years into his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin cast the war as part of a grander civilizational struggle. The conflict across the border was not just about territory or the political dispensation in Kyiv, Putin argued, but the tip of the spear in a larger clash between the corrosive effects of liberalism and the more traditional values supposedly embodied by his regime.
“We can see what is taking place in some countries where moral standards and the family are being deliberately destroyed and entire nations are pushed to extinction and decadence,” Putin said. “We have chosen life. Russia has been and remains a stronghold of the traditional values on which human civilization stands.” Read more
How 360,000 Haitians Wound Up Living in Empty Lots and Crowded Schools. By Frances Robles / NYT
In a worsening humanitarian crisis, Haitians have been forced to flee their homes in the face of gang onslaughts, but the international response has failed to keep up.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti are on the run from rampant gang violence and have abandoned their homes, a worsening humanitarian crisis that the United Nations describes as “cataclysmic.” Masses of homeless families dodging gang members who burned down their houses and killed their neighbors have taken over dozens of schools, churches and even government buildings. Many places have no running water, flushing toilets or garbage pickup. Read more
Nigerian artist Dotun Popoola’s stunning metal sculpture shows ‘the beauty of Black women all over the world.’ By Leah Collins / CNN
Celebrating the beauty of Blackness and protesting “environmental decadence” for a cleaner, waste-free future: that’s the vision of award-winning Nigerian metal sculptor and visual artist Dotun Popoola.
Popoola has carved a niche for himself by transforming scrap metal into colorful sculptures of animals and people, which tackle issues including waste management and the importance of recycling. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
The Christian vote is flocking to Trump, the least likely leader of Christians. By William S. Becker / The Hill
One of the great mysteries of the Donald Trump era is why so many Christians view him positively.
Of the 46 men who have been president, only three were not associated with a Christian religion. But none of the 46 — except Donald Trump — has so regularly and openly violated bedrock Christian teachings. So far as we know, none of the others has gone on record, as Trump did in his book “Think Big,” denouncing Christians as “fools,” “idiots” and “schmucks.” Read more
Duke Ellington Read His Bible in the Bath. By Larry Tye / Christianity Today
A 1960 poll found that, among Black preachers, just 1 in 5 wanted to let jazz or blues into their services. Decades before, a religion editor at the Pittsburgh Courier had denounced Louis Armstrong’s “sacrilegious desecration of Spirituals.”
Duke Ellington’s music was “considered worldly,” counseled the Rev. John D. Bussey, explaining why the local 1966 Baptist Ministers Conference had unanimously passed his resolution opposing a performance. But whatever commandments they were breaking—and there were plenty, from slighting the Sabbath to serial adultery—Duke, Louis, and king of swing Count Basie all seemed to take the Christian faith they’d been raised in seriously. And that faith found its way into their music. Read more
Film on Oblate Sisters of Providence’s Cuban ministry now streaming. By Nate Tinner-Williams / NCR
A still from the first chapter of “Hermanas de Corazón” (Sisters of the Heart), a Spanish-language documentary on Venerable Mary Lange and her Oblate Sisters of Providence’s work in Cuba (Black Catholic Messenger)
Hermanas de Corazón” (Sisters of the Heart), a Spanish-language docuseries on Venerable Mary Lange and her Oblate Sisters of Providence, is streaming online with English subtitles for the first time. The three parts, first released sequentially beginning in 2021, were directed by Afro-Cuban cinema stalwart Gloria Rolando. Her mother was educated by the Oblates — America’s oldest surviving Black Catholic religious order — during their time serving on the island before the infamous 1959 revolution. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Her Name Was Ella Watson. By Salamishah Tillet / The Atlantic
Gordon Parks’s most famous photograph, American Gothic, was of a cleaning woman in Washington, D.C. She has a story to tell.
More than half a century later, Parks recounted making this first portrait of Ella Watson, the 59-year-old African American cleaning woman who, like him, worked at the Farm Security Administration offices in Washington, D.C. “So it happened that, in one of the government’s most sacred strongholds,” he wrote, “I set up my camera for my first professional photograph.” “On the wall,” he continued, “was a huge American flag hanging from the ceiling to the floor.” Parks asked Watson “to stand before it, placed the mop in one hand, a broom in the other, then instructed her to look into the lens.” Read more
Black Twitter: A People’s History Proves That “American Culture Is Black Culture.” By Erin Vanderhoof / Vanity Fair
The docuseries’ director, Prentice Penny, explains the throughlines between a platform, its Black users, and the way that confluence forever changed politics and culture.
Penny saw Parham’s work identifying the regular people whose posts inspired memes and Urban Dictionary entries, and thought it laid the foundation for a documentary that would be as funny as it was definitive. Penny’s raucous and informative series adaptation, Black Twitter: A People’s History—produced with support from Disney’s Onyx Collective and Wired Studios (which is owned by Condé Nast)—premieres May 9 on Hulu. Read more
One Man’s Mission to Make Video Games a Little Less White. By Jamal Michel / Mother Jones
They might not know his name, but millions of video gamers have encountered narrative designer Evan Narcisse’s handiwork in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which showcases more Black and Brown characters in its first few minutes than most popular games do in their entirety.
The action-packed 2020 release opens on a Harlem street scene where our biracial Gen-Z hero (Miles is half Black, half Puerto Rican) makes the rounds before donning his Spidey suit and heading out with Peter Parker to protect locals against the evil Roxxon Corporation and its minions. “I definitely brought my own lived experience and philosophical energy to that game, where they’re fighting corporate encroachment,” Narcisse told me. Read more
Sports
A Black trainer saddles a horse in the Kentucky Derby for the second time since 1951. By AP and NBC News
“My motto is, ‘I don’t buy cheap horses. I buy good horses cheap,’” the Bahamian trainer said ahead of the race. Trainer Larry Demeritte is heading into his first Kentucky Derby with horse West Saratoga.
Long-shot West Saratoga is staying in Barn 42 at Churchill Downs, the same location where Seattle Slew was before he won the 1977 Derby and went on to sweep the Triple Crown. It was the first Derby that Demeritte attended. Now, he is the second Black trainer since 1951 to be saddling a horse in the big race, which has its 150th running on Saturday. The other, Hank Allen, finished sixth with Northern Wolf in 1989. Read more
WNBA legend Candace Parker earned her stripes in long partnership with Adidas. By Brandon Richard / Andscape
Candace Parker, one of the most decorated players in WNBA history, recently announced her retirement after 16 seasons. She called an end to a career that included two MVP awards, championships at every level, and two Olympic gold medals. Parker leaves a sneaker legacy with Adidas, which ranks among the longest-running brand partnerships in the sport. And it’s only just beginning.
On Wednesday, Adidas announced Parker will become the new president of Adidas Women’s Basketball. Parker’s new position will involve “overseeing pretty much everything,” she told Fast Company. The role will allow her to help the brand in a range of capacities, from new product development and deciding which athletes to add to the roster to assisting in developing grassroots growth strategies. Read more
How coach Deion Sanders wins a social media war without really trying. By Brent Schrotenboer / USA Today
Two social media posts from Colorado coach got more than 37 million views, plus discussion on national TV shows.
No other major college football coach could get that kind of free marketing on a Wednesday in May, four months before the start of the season. For Colorado, that’s the reward of having Sanders as head coach after being mostly irrelevant in football for the previous 20 years. In this case, there’s also risk, depending on the viewpoint, which varies widely. Read more
Victor Wembanyama lives up to outrageous hype: ‘He’s a one-off as a player.’ By Mike Monroe / The Athletic
Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich’s reaction was like that of everyone else when Victor Wembanyama first arrived in The Alamo City after the San Antonio Spurs made the French teenager the No. 1 pick in the 2023 NBA Draft.
Even as a 15-year-old, Wemby was doing things that Buford, a visionary judge of talent who was twice named the league’s executive of the year, had never seen. “The skill level was ridiculous,” Buford said in a recent interview, the images still vivid in his mind after five years. “Nah, not ridiculous. I mean, he was 15 years old. But he was playing a different game than a typical 6-11 15-year-old. He was already shooting perimeter shots. He was already taking the ball off the glass and moving the ball up the court. I had never seen anything like it.” Read more
Philadelphia 76ers forward Tobias Harris and his brother are bringing affordable housing to Los Angeles. By Marc J. Spears / Andscape
Philadelphia 76ers forward Tobias Harris and his brother and former G League forward Terry Harris never got to play with or against each other in the NBA. But they are teaming up to bring much needed affordable housing to Los Angeles.
The Harris brothers said they are currently in development to bring 270 affordable housing units in three locations to the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The projects include a 33-unit development, 93-unit development with retail, and a 190-unit development. The goal is to have 1,000 units in development in neighborhoods across the city by the end of the year. Read more
Olympic water polo star Ashleigh Johnson makes a splash as a role model for Black children. By Curtis Bunn / NBC News
Her family and working to inspire others have helped buoy the national team’s goalkeeper, as she heads to her third Olympic games.
In 2016, she became the first Black athlete to make the U.S. Olympic team in water polo — and earned a gold medal. She backed it up with another gold in the Tokyo Games four years later. At 29, Johnson is widely considered the best at her position in the world. Read more
Life is different for Shohei Ohtani. But his on-field dominance remains. By Chelsea Janes / Wash Post
The Ohtani who arrived at Nationals Park was different from the Ohtani who arrived in the United States in 2018, who toiled with the Los Angeles Angels for six years. He is different, even, from the person who signed the largest contract in North American sports history to join the Dodgers in December.
This version of Ohtani is a month removed from the biggest — and only — scandal of his professional career, a few weeks removed from learning that his longtime friend and former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, was charged with bank fraud, accused of stealing more than $16 million from the two-way star to pay off gambling debts. Read more
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