Featured
Lots of medals. Lots of skin colors. See the connection? By Michele Norris / Wash Post
Diversity shows its value in the makeup of Team USA
Right-wing warriors can rail against diversity, equity and inclusion all they want. But the same so-called patriots who aggressively wrap themselves in the flag and claim America as their country cannot be blind to what is on display for all the world to see at the Paris Olympics. Diversity is now a core part of America’s brand. In gymnastics and swimming. In fencing and rugby. In skateboarding, tennis, boxing, basketball and so much more.
You cannot cheer for the United States in this moment without also cheering on the diversity born of merit. And that is an important point because the ammunition used to instill fears about diversity in a changing America are based on the false notion that Black and Brown people are getting something they don’t deserve. Diversity is not about lowering standards. It’s about widening the aperture to make sure an organization can find the best talent available. It’s about reaching beyond one’s comfort zone or personal network to look for talent and potential in areas that might be unfamiliar.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t cheer on Team USA without cheering on the diversity that makes Team USA great. Read more
Related: How grievance splintered American sports. By Jerry Brewer / Wash Post
Political / Social
New poll shows Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump in three key swing states. By Sudiksha Kochi / USA Today
A new poll released Saturday shows Vice President Kamala Harris leading former President Donald Trump in three key swing states.
The New York Times/Siena College poll, conducted between Aug. 5 and Aug. 9, found that if the election were held today, 50% of voters among the likely electorate in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania each said they’d choose Harris while 46% of the electorate in each state said they’d choose Trump if the two candidates were in a head to head matchup. Read more
Related: LULAC endorses Harris-Walz ticket, first endorsement for oldest Latino civil rights group. By
Related: Harris is beating Trump by transcending him. By E.J. Dionne Jr. / Wash Post
Related: Harris campaign rally draws massive crowd of 20,000 in Arizona. By Griffin Eckstein / Salon
Racism Is Why Trump Is So Popular. By James Risen / The Intercept
To understand the rise of Donald Trump, you don’t need to go to a diner in the Midwest or read “Hillbilly Elegy,” J.D. Vance’s memoir.
You just need to know these basic facts: In 1980, white people accounted for about 80 percent of the U.S. population. In 2024, white people account for about 58 percent of the U.S. population. Trump appeals to white people gripped by demographic hysteria. Especially older white people who grew up when white people represented a much larger share of the population. They fear becoming a minority. Read more
Related: Trump’s Campaign Is Drowning in Rage. By Susan Milligan / TNR
Related: The Darkness on the Edge of Trump. By David Firestone / NYT
Related: Donald Trump, Prince of Self-Pity. By Frank Bruni / NYT
Tim Walz and the Lessons of High-School Football. By Louisa Thomas / The New Yorker
The Vice-Presidential nominee was the defensive coördinator for a team that won the state title. His players say that he taught them more about togetherness than tactics.
As Kamala Harris introduced Tim Walz as her running mate to the public for the first time, at a rally in Philadelphia last week, she ran through his titles: Governor, husband, dad. He was Representative, Sergeant Major, and Mister Walz—that’s what his students called him, back when he was a social-studies teacher. “And to his former high-school football players,” Harris said, building toward the payoff, “he was Coach.” She flashed her biggest smile. Read more
Why JD Vance Is Unpopular and Project 2025 Has Gone Underground. By Jeet Heer / The Nation
The Heritage Foundation’s attempt to produce an intellectual and wonkish Trumpism turns off voters.
It was the grassroots outcry against Project 2025, soon echoed by elected Democrats, that made the right-wing policy agenda both widely known and unpopular. A forthcoming book by Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation—which will carry a foreword by Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, another factor making it harder for the ticket to disavow the effort—fell victim to the fact that Project 2025 has become politically toxic. On Wednesday, PBS reported: Read more
Right-Wing Activists Are Challenging Tens Of Thousands Of Voter Registrations. By Matt Shuham / HuffPost
Election officials and voting rights experts are worried about the impact on 2024.
Since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and falsely blamed widespread voter fraud, right-wing activists have sought to “clean” the election system by deleting tens of thousands of their neighbors from voter rolls. Read more
Related: How Elon Musk is disrupting US elections to boost Trump. By Alex Woodward / Independent
Americans want to rein in Supreme Court justices, poll finds. By Dan Morrison / USA Today
Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of reforming the Supreme Court along lines proposed by President Joe Biden, even as approval for the high court is marked by a sharp political divide, according to a new USA TODAY-Ipsos election year poll.
A large majority – 76% of Americans – support a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court, according to the poll. The result comes after more than a year of revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose receiving millons of dollars’ worth of free luxury trips and other gifts. Read more
Sonya Massey’s death: Race, police, mental health collide in heartland. By Trevor Hughes, Michael Loria, N’dea Yancey-Bragg and Steven Spearie / USA Today
In addition to the trauma for her family, Massey’s death has triggered a fresh wave of anger, frustration and exhaustion in her hometown and across the country as the United States continues to grapple with its long history of racist treatment of Black residents, systemic inequality, and lack of access to mental health care.
Experts say Massey’s death reflects a longstanding reality in many police departments: A shoot-first mentality when it comes to interactions with the Black community. Read more
Related: Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell stepping down in wake of Sonya Massey shooting. By , and
Black US voters’ economic priorities revealed in new advocacy agenda. By Melissa Hellmann / The Guardian
Black Americans strongly support initiatives that would increase the minimum wage to $17, make affordable housing more accessible and create an equitable tax system, according to Black to the Future Action Fund, a political advocacy thinktank.
On Thursday, the group released a 55-page economic agenda based on its 2023 survey of 211,219 Black people across all 50 states. The organization hopes that the report will serve as a roadmap for elected officials to address policy holes, and for advocates to generate campaigns that hold politicians accountable. Read more
World News
Sidestepping Deployed Kenyan Forces, Haiti Gangs Continue Reign of Terror. David C. Adams and Andre Paultre / NYT
Weeks after the arrival of a United Nations-backed international security force in Haiti, the gangs who have brought the capital, Port-au-Prince, and other regions in the country to their knees show no signs of letting up.
The international effort to reinforce the Haitian police and a transitional government has alleviated conditions in some sections of Port-au-Prince, experts say, but gang members have refocused their attacks on the outskirts, marauding towns that had escaped their campaign of killings, kidnappings and rape. Read more
Related: Haiti MSS: Inside the foreign mission to battle Haiti’s gangs. By , and
US, other leaders call for Israel and Hamas to hammer out cease-fire deal. By Michelle Stoddart / ABC News
There are “significant gaps” but a U.S. official said they can be bridged.
President Joe Biden along with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar are jointly calling for Israel and Hamas to return to the negotiating table and reach an agreement that would free hostages and end the war in Gaza. The urgent maneuvering comes as the already-high tensions in the region have reached a fever pitch in the wake of two high-profile assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, including one inside Iran. Israel is bracing for counterattacks from Iran and fears have been raised of a wider war. Read more
Iran uses fake news sites to interfere in U.S. election, Microsoft says. By Joseph Menn / Wash Post
Company’s threat report cites efforts of different Iranian groups to run influence campaigns aimed at political extremes.
The Iranian-built news networks include a site launched in October, Nio Thinker, which focused on the Israel-Gaza war and has started to publish articles on the coming U.S. election. It takes a liberal slant, calling GOP nominee and former president Donald Trump an “opioid-pilled elephant in the MAGA china shop,” according to the report from Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center. Read more
Venezuela shows democracies must rethink how to fight global autocracy. By the Editorial Board / Wash Post
The world’s dictators have a playbook to crush dissent. Democracies need new ways to fight back. Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado in Guanare, Venezuela, last month. (Andrea Hernández Briceño/for The Washington Post)
Dictators have increasingly learned how to squelch civil society and electoral democracy. They are short-circuiting the will of voters and protesters and are clinging to power with potent techniques of their own, from physical coercion and punishment to the use of media, technology and kleptocracy, a package of shared methods sometimes called the “dictator’s handbook.” Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Lessons from MLK for a contentious political season. By Daniel P. Horan / NCR
One of the pairs of readings I assign during the unit on race and civil rights includes Martin Luther King Jr.’s well-known “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and Merton’s “Letters to a White Liberal” (in Seeds of Destruction). King’s 1963 letter in response to southern clergy who were urging restraint and cautioning King not to push too hard or too quickly in his nonviolent movement for civil rights led Merton to engage in some profound reflection.
Rereading King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” I was struck this time by his dire assessment and warning to the Christian community in the paragraphs near the end of his prophetic epistle. Contextualizing within Christian history the calls for caution and preference of other ministers for the status quo, King observes: Read more
Progressive National Baptist Convention leaders hail Harris, pan Trump, urge voting. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
The Progressive National Baptist Convention focused on get-out-the-vote efforts during its annual meeting and celebrated Vice President Kamala Harris becoming a presidential candidate. President David Peoples addresses the Progressive National Baptist Convention annual meeting, Aug. 7, 2024, in New Orleans.
“We need everyone to register,” PNBC President David Peoples said at a news conference on Wednesday (Aug. 7), adding that members of his denomination should encourage “our friends and our frenemies and our entire family to vote.” Read more
Walz’s Brand Is More Left than Lutheran Among Minnesota Evangelicals. By Harvest Prude / CT
Despite his folksy Midwestern dad persona, conservative Christians say the governor has alienated the Right with his policies on abortion, transgender youth, and COVID restrictions.
“He’s touting himself as the everyday Midwestern dad,” but his administration has been far more polarizing in the state, according to Julie Johnson, a fourth-generation Minnesotan and a member of an Evangelical Free congregation in a Minneapolis suburb. She said that, under his leadership, Walz has swung the state to the left on basically every issue, alienating religious conservatives along the way. Read more
Choctaw Bibles Connect Christians with Native American Heritage. By Hannah McClellan / CT
Kenny Wallace doesn’t have a lot of people to talk to in Choctaw. Wallace, an African American Choctaw Pawnee, said his family was cut off from their Indigenous heritage by racism and geographic distance. He officially started the journey to reclaim his heritage in 2008, beginning with language. To know where he came from, he knew he wanted to understand Choctaw.
But he does have a Bible app with a new translation of Scripture in the Indigenous language that his ancestors spoke. And it has an audio sync feature that allows him to listen to the words aloud, to hear how they sound. “Sometimes, that’s the only Choctaw voice I ever hear,” Wallace told CT. “Not only is it feeding my soul, but it’s actually feeding me culturally as well.” Read more
Historical / Cultural
Black hospitals vanished in the U.S. decades ago. Some communities have paid. By Lauren Sausser / NPR
Nurses attend to patients in this historical photo of the children’s ward inside Wheatley-Provident Hospital, a Black hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. It opened in 1918, but, like most Black hospitals, it closed following the federal campaign to desegregate hospitals in the 1960s.
A similar scenario has played out in hundreds of other rural communities across the United States, where hospitals have faced closure over the past 40 years. In that regard, the story of Mound Bayou’s hospital isn’t unique. But there’s more to this hospital closure than the loss of inpatient beds, historians say. It’s also a tale of how hundreds of Black hospitals across the U.S. fell casualty to social progress. Read more
Ferguson 10 Years Later: How Protests Gave Way to Politics and Policy. Audra D. S. Burch / NYT
When Michael Brown Jr., an unarmed Black teenager, was fatally shot in 2014 by a white police officer and his body left in the street under the August sun, the small St. Louis suburb of Ferguson roiled and plunged into crisis
And at a more grass-roots level, it created a political incubator of emerging local leaders: A new generation of young protesters who came of age during the Ferguson uprising have found ways to chip away at the racial disparities in Ferguson and nearby St. Louis, shifting from protests to politics and policies. Read more
Black History Museum And Cultural Center Of Virginia Designated As A Historic Site. By Mary Spiller / Black Enterprise
According to the definition created by the Congress-conceived African American Civil Rights Network, historic sites are spots that tell the history of the civil rights movement and highlight the enriching sacrifices and activism of those who participated in it. The Richmond-located museum was added to the classification along with seven other sites this spring, VPM reports.
The Black History Museum’s executive director, Shakiea Gullette told VPM, “It means a great deal to the BHMVA as we endeavor each day to tell the stories of African Americans here in the Commonwealth, and it also gives us an opportunity to expand what the Civil Rights movement means here in Virginia.” Read more
Beyoncé Among Big Celebs Rumored to Boost Kamala Harris at DNC. By Mary Ann Akers and Matt Wilstein / Daily Beast
A month ago, Hollywood was largely uninterested in this month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Now, celebrities are crawling out of the woodwork to join Kamalapalooza—including Uma Thurman, John Legend, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Kerry Washington.
And if the Democratic Party planners’ dreams come true, Beyoncé herself will be there to sing “Freedom” live as Kamala Harris formally accepts the nomination that delegates to the convention have already bestowed upon her. Queen Bey has already granted the Harris campaign permission to make her 2016 hit the theme song for the first Black female presidential nominee, and she is widely rumored to be the headliner on Thursday, Aug. 22, the last night of the convention, when Harris will take the stage to make her acceptance speech. That type of star power would have been a big stretch for a Biden-fronted convention. Read more
Sports
USA basketball wins Olympic gold behind KD, LeBron and Steph Curry. By Jeff Zillgitt / USA Today
LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant hugged. They celebrated, laughed and smiled. They made sure they were pictured together holding gold medals.
The reason they hatched this plan to play in an Olympics together — the three biggest American stars of the past two decades, future Hall of Famers, all-time greats — was for that moment. A gold-medal moment at the 2024 Paris Olympics. To say they did it side by side by side. It was a modern-day version of Bird-Magic-Jordan’s 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and it will be a while before we see a collection of stars like that on a U.S. Olympic team. Read more
Related: U.S. men’s basketball was tested. Stephen Curry had the answer. Scott Cacciola and James Hill / NYT
U.S. outlasts France to win 8th straight women’s hoops gold. By Michael Voepel and Alexa Phillippou / ESPN
The stage was set for an epic upset: France led by as many as 10 points in the second half over the heavily favored United States women’s basketball team, with the Olympic gold medal on the line. The home-country crowd was going wild, the play was brutally physical, the stakes were sky-high and history was on the line. The Americans rallied to take the lead, but the game’s outcome was going to come down to the final buzzer.
And by a single point, the Americans battled through one of the toughest games they have faced in the Olympics. They won their eighth consecutive gold medal — dating back to the 1996 Games — winning 67-66. It’s the most consecutive Olympic titles for any nation in basketball, women’s or men’s. Read more
On the night Noah Lyles was to become a legend, he became a reminder. By Jerry Brewer / Wash Post
After U.S. sprinter finishes third in his signature event, he reveals his covid diagnosis, an unsettling indication that these Paris Olympics are open, not free.
Noah Lyles, energy personified, collapsed on the track after his double-gold quest ended. He stayed on his back for a disturbing while. He rolled over on his left side. He struggled into a sitting position. As he gasped for air, the man seemingly with caffeine in his veins — the one who claimed the crown as world’s fastest by a whisker-thin margin Sunday — moved like a snail wearing a weighted vest. Read more
From Snoop to Flavor Flav and breaking, American hip-hop is winning the Paris Olympics.
More than half a century after its birth, hip-hop’s ambassadors Snoop Dogg and Flavor Flav are hyping up viewers
The hip-hop statesman gifted NBC one of the few ticks in the win column of its disastrous coverage of the 2021 summer games in Toyko when he and Kevin Hart freestyle riffed on clips from the day’s competition. None were as memorable as Snoop’s outstanding reaction to the equestrian competition known as dressage, with its horses dancing rhythmically to music. It was love at first sight for the rap star. “This horse is off the chain! I gotta get this [expletive] in a video,” adding that its sideward steps resembled his signature crip-walk. Read more
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