Featured
Donald Trump Is As Self-Obsessed As Ever, And Other Takeaways From His Inauguration. By and
Flanked by tech billionaires, Trump previewed a presidency marked by culture wars, testing the limits of his constitutional power and a zero-sum approach to foreign policy.
When Donald Trump was sworn in for his first term eight years ago, he offered a famously pessimistic characterization of the country. He painted a picture of “American carnage”: a crime- and poverty-plagued, post-industrial wasteland that is home to “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.” Former President George W. Bush reportedly reacted by saying to Hillary Clinton, “That was some weird shit.”
Ahead of his inauguration this time, Trump promised he would focus on “bringing our country together.”
But Trump’s remarks in his official inauguration speech ended up being dour, divisive and self-aggrandizing. Read more
Related: Trump Promoted This Disputed Racial Theory In His Inaugural Speech. Here’s Why It Doesn’t Work. By
Related: Trump Dreams of a New American Empire. By Greg Grandin / NYT
Related: Donald Trump Is at War with America. By Jonathan V. Last / The Bulwark
Political / Social
U.S. Orders Federal D.E.I. Efforts to Shut Down by Wednesday Night. By Erica L. Green / NYT
Staff members overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts were to be placed on paid administrative leave by 5 p.m. Wednesday.
The directive was a swift attempt to carry out elements of President Trump’s Day 1 executive order dismantling federal diversity efforts. In a new executive order on Tuesday, Mr. Trump encouraged the private sector to follow the federal government’s lead and “end illegal D.E.I. discrimination and preferences and comply with all federal civil-rights laws.” His order also directed agencies to investigate the compliance of corporations and foundations with those laws. Read more
Related: What is DEI, and why is it dividing America? By Nicquel Terry Ellis / CNN
Related: At King Day rally, Sharpton leads oath to support DEI as Trump opposes it. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
Related: Trump slashing DEI. How Democrats are fighting back. By Jessica Guynn / USA Today
The Irony: Trump Pardons Jan. 6 Rioters Despite Condemning BLM. By Zack Linly / NewsOne
Trump spent virtually his entire first term as president condemning the Black Lives Matter movement. He even advocated for the military to shoot George Floyd protesters in the streets. It didn’t matter that the overwhelming majority of anti-police racism protests that erupted in the summer of 2020 were nonviolent. Because riots did break out, anyone who was even loosely associated with the movement was considered a thug and at least a potential terrorist.
Donald Trump is pretending to usher in a new era of law and order, but, really, it’s an era where crimes committed by him, on his behalf or in service of MAGA nationalism aren’t really crimes at all. This is America — once again. Read more
Related: Trump kills 1965 anti-segregation order in blizzard of racist actions. By Oliver Willis / Daily Kos
How Tyranny Begins. Kiana Cole and
Exile. Imprisonment. The end of elections. We know what tyranny looks like once it’s underway. But how does it start?
In the Opinion Video, you’ll meet people from around the world who missed the warning signs of tyranny taking root in their home countries. They can see the red flags, in retrospect. And they have a word of caution: The rule of law doesn’t break down overnight, and checks and balances don’t collapse in an instant. Tyranny takes time. Watch here
Related: Yes, Trump is back. Yet I remain hopeful about America. By Robert Reich / The Guardian
What is the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship? James Powel and Kinsey Crowley / USA Today
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Monday evening targeting automatic citizenship for U.S.-born children of immigrants in the country illegally, contrary to the 14th Amendment.
“The federal government will not recognize automatic birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens born in the United States. We are also going to enhance vetting and screening of illegal aliens,” said a Trump official in a briefing on Monday . The executive order is part of a strict immigration strategy from the second Trump administration, which suspended the CBP One app that allowed migrants to apply for immigration appointments. Read more
The tech billionaire war on “woke” is really targeting workers. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
Like Musk before him, Zuckerberg appears to resent the people who work for him and make him rich. Zuckerberg’s raving about how he wants more “masculine energy” and complaints that corporate culture is “neutered” are being celebrated by MAGA as a swipe at diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
In his farewell speech to the nation Wednesday, President Joe Biden compared the “rise of a tech-industrial complex” to the robber barons of the 19th and 20th centuries. He warned that “the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultrawealthy people” threatens not just democracy, but the basic rights of workers “to earn their fair share.” The increasingly ugly attitude that tech billionaires take towards their own employees is a troubling indicator of this. Read more
Related: It’s time to ditch toxic social media platforms. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Trump appoints Commissioner Andrea Lucas to oversee EEOC. By Julian Mark / Wash Post
The Republican, a vocal critic of corporate DEI initiatives, will lead an agency that holds sway over policy for a vast swath of U.S. employers.
On Tuesday, Lucas reaffirmed her opposition to race- and gender-based diversity initiatives. “We must reject the twin lies of identity politics: that justice is measured by group outcomes and that civil rights exist solely to remedy harms against certain groups,” Lucas said in her statement, adding, “I am committed to ensuring equal justice under the law and to focusing on equal opportunity, merit, and colorblind equality.” Read more
I Was Kamala Harris’ Videographer. The Experience Completely Changed Me. By Azza Cohen / Slate
Today, at the entrance of the White House, they took down the official portrait of Vice President Kamala Harris. It was the first time a woman’s face had hung there. As I walk out of the White House for the last time, I worry that this will be forgotten, that history will write her historic achievement out of the frame. I worry that Americans aren’t being given the chance to celebrate what she accomplished.
Over the past few years, as the official videographer and director of video to Vice President Kamala Harris, I traveled the world with her, watching her navigate the White House and the world stage. I observed and documented nearly everything she did every day through my trusty White House–issued Sony FX3. I filmed her in 11 countries and in 91 cities across 27 U.S. states. Read more
World News
Spain calls on world to fight against Trump’s ‘Silicon Valley techno-caste.’ By James Badcock / The Telegraph
Pedro Sanchez accuses ultra-Right wing American billionaires of threatening democracy in Europe with their stranglehold on social media
Speaking on Monday as Donald Trump was sworn in as US president for a second time, Pedro Sanchez accused American tech billionaires of “trying to use their absolute power over social media to control public debate and, therefore, government action, in the entire Western world”. Read more
Trump UN nominee backs Israeli claims of biblical rights to West Bank. By Joseph Gedeon / The Guardian
Elise Stefanik’s comments at Senate hearing align her with Israeli far right and highlight US-UN rifts over Israel policy
And while the position puts Stefanik at odds with longstanding international consensus and multiple UN security council resolutions regarding Israeli settlements in occupied territories, it remains sharply in line with widespread Trump administration posturing. “It’s going to be very difficult to achieve peace if you continue to hold the view that you just expressed,” Van Hollen said. Read more
Three Israeli hostages and 90 Palestinians freed as Gaza ceasefire takes hold. / Wash post Update
Israel released 90 Palestinian prisoners and detainees early Monday, concluding the first, critical steps in a long-awaited ceasefire that included the return of three Israeli hostages and a halt to airstrikes on Gaza.
Thousands of displaced Palestinians in parts of the besieged enclave began to return to their bombed-out neighborhoods and homes, some searching for the bodies of relatives. The first day of the truce also brought a surge of desperately needed humanitarian aid, with more than 630 trucks entering Gaza, according to U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher. Read more
Kenya sends another 200 police to fight gangs in Haiti. By Reuters
Kenya sent more than 200 police officers to Haiti on Saturday, providing backup to an understaffed security mission in the Caribbean country where rampant gang violence has displaced more than a million people.
Some 10 countries have together pledged over 3,100 troops for Haiti as part of a U.N.-backed anti-gang force, but few have so far deployed. Kenya’s Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said the new group comprised 217 police from Kenya, who would join about 400 officers sent last year. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Bishop pleads for Trump to ‘have mercy’ on LGBTQ+, migrants. By Darlene Superville, Tiffany Stanley and Gary Fields / NBC News
President Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded an apology from the Episcopal bishop of Washington after she made a direct appeal to him during a prayer service marking his inauguration to have mercy on the LGBTQ+ community and migrant workers who are in the United States illegally.
Referencing Trump’s belief that he was saved by God from assassination, the Right Rev. Mariann Budde said, “You have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” Read more and watch here
On Donald Trump and the Inscrutability of God. By Esau McCaulley / The Atlantic
Promising prosperity and declaring a secret knowledge about the purposes of God have always been ways to gain applause, power, and money, but they are also dangerous and potentially heretical. Shown is Franklin Graham.
I was surprised, then, to hear the invocation at the inauguration attribute the outcome of the 2024 election to God’s positive will for America, and as an occasion for praise. That strikes me as hubris because it assumes the ability to know God’s opinion on an event in history. Read more
Related: Donald Trump Plays Church. Vinson Cunningham / The New Yorker
The Unrecognized Great Awakening. By Jonathan Tremaine “JT” Thomas / Christianity Today
Americans talk about Civil Rights as a political movement. But as MLK well knew, it was more than that. It was a revival.
Prophet or activist? Pastor or social reformer? In the six decades since his death, the testimony and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. has been so extensively documented and analyzed that it seems almost asinine to imagine posing a new question about his life and work or the Civil Rights era more broadly. But I want to propose that King has been mislabeled—or, more precisely, that even many of his admirers have missed a title he deserves: revivalist. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Biden Posthumously Pardons Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey. By Colleen Long / HuffPost
President Joe Biden on Sunday posthumously pardoned Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, who influenced Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders and was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s.
Congressional leaders had pushed for Biden to pardon Garvey, with supporters arguing that Garvey’s conviction was politically motivated and an effort to silence the increasingly popular leader who spoke of racial pride. After Garvey was convicted, he was deported to Jamaica, where he was born. He died in 1940. Read more
The Great Migration and Black Women’s Political Work. By Katie Singer / AAIHS
Marion Thompson Wright (center) and two unnamed people. From the Marion Thompson Wright Papers, Pepperdine Libraries Special Collections and Archives.
There will never be too much written on the role of Black women in American activism. We are far too behind to ever make that the case. It is glaring enough how infrequently “ordinary” Black men are spotlighted when discourse around civil rights takes shape; imagine how many people only recently learned of Bayard Rustin, for example. But when it comes to African American women, well, their stories are sometimes just plain invisible. Read more
At Trump’s Rally, the Contradictions Are in the Music. Jon Caramanica / NYT
The president-elect danced along with Village People as his rally closed with a live performance of “Y.M.C.A.,” after Kid Rock and Lee Greenwood played.
A onetime foulmouthed white rapper remade as an icon of right-wing country rebellion. An iconic disco-pop outfit with a crossover hit often understood to be about gay cruising that has become a global sports-and-bar-mitzvah anthem. So maybe it’s not a surprise, then, that even onstage at President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Make America Great Again Victory Rally on Sunday afternoon at the Capital One Arena — seemingly a place inhospitable to these narratives of collaborative difference — these tugs of war persisted. Read more
Sports
What would MLK think of college football’s exploited Black workforce? By Kevin B. Blackistone / Wash Post
As college football’s title game arrives on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, its disproportionately Black employees still aren’t compensated for their labor.
There is irony around this season’s college football championship game. It is scheduled to be played in Atlanta on Monday at $1.6 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium, less than three miles from the birth and resting places of Martin Luther King Jr., for whom this third Monday in January is a national holiday. In 1963 the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” demanded a higher minimum wage and fairer employment treatment for Black laborers. Six decades later, the Black laborer known as the college football player — and college football players remain disproportionately Black — is still awaiting equitable treatment. Read more
Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner elected to Baseball Hall of Fame. By Tyler Kepner / The Athletic
Sabathia and Suzuki — teammates for three seasons with the Yankees — are now linked forever in baseball’s hallowed gallery of immortals. Both were elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot Tuesday, with Billy Wagner joining them on his 10th and final try.
“I don’t think anybody in this whole world thought that I would be a Hall of Famer,” Suzuki said, but the Mariners — who were bleeding superstars from their late-1990s heyday — believed he could be the first high-impact hitter from Japan. Read more
Why a simple 3 x 5 notecard with two words explains Andy Reid’s leadership style. By Rustin Dodd / The Athletic
When Andy Reid was the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, he would pass messages to quarterback Donovan McNabb via notecards. Reid called them nuggets. They were usually short, just a thought or goal or a few words of motivation. They weren’t supposed to be life changing.
When John Harbaugh became Reid’s special teams coach in Philadelphia in 1999, he noticed the “Don’t Judge” card in Reid’s office almost every day for nine years.“I always took it as, ‘Don’t judge someone because of their skin color,” McNabb said. “Don’t judge because of what other people may say about you. … Don’t judge because someone may be a little bit different than you.” Read more
Byron Leftwich was on track to become an NFL head coach. Why did he fall off the radar? By Rick Stroud / Tampa Bay Times
The former Bucs offensive coordinator isn’t ready to be a footnote in NFL history. “I’m ready to coach.”
The former Jaguars and Steelers quarterback, who began his coaching career alongside Bruce Arians in Arizona, called plays for some of the most prolific offenses in NFL history for three of his four seasons with the Bucs. Read more
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