Featured
Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force. By Ezra Klein / NYT Podcast
I see men in masks refusing to identify themselves and pulling people into vans. I see armed U.S. troops in camo, some on horseback, riding through MacArthur Park in Los Angeles like they’re an occupying army. I see Trump sending in armed forces to take over the American capital.
I see Trump creating crisis and disorder so he can build what he has wanted to build: an authoritarian state, a military or a paramilitary that answers only to him — that puts him in total control.
Radley Balko is a journalist who has written about policing and criminal justice for decades. He’s the author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces,” and he writes the terrific Substack The Watch, where he has been tracking the militarization and the escalation of law enforcement under Donald Trump. Read more and listen here
Related: Like dictators of the past, Trump is building a private army. By C.J. Atkins / People’s World
Related: Trump calls for new Guard units tasked with quelling civil unrest. By Anne Flaherty / MSN
Related: We Are Not ‘Property of Donald Trump. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
Governor Pritzker Challenges Trump’s Threat to Send Troops to Chicago. Julie Bosman / NYT
The Illinois governor pointed out that eight of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans.
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois has a message for President Trump: Keep the military out of Chicago. Mr. Pritzker, a Democrat, stood alongside the Chicago River on Monday afternoon, flanked by Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago, pastors, business leaders and community organizers, to push back on Mr. Trump’s offhand declaration that he would send the military into the city, as he had done in Los Angeles and Washington. Read more
Related: Of course Trump is going to invade Chicago. He’s a lawless president. By Rex Huppke / USA Today
Related: Crime Gone in a Week? The Politics Behind Trump’s Federal Crackdown. Luke Broadwater / NYT
Political / Social
Republicans are trying to ensure we’ll never have another fair election. By Judith Levine / The Guardian
From an executive order and redistricting to seeking to kill mail-in ballots, the party is conducting an all-out assault on voting rights
Christians, get out and vote, just this time,” Donald Trump exhorted the audience at a campaign event organized by the conservative Turning Point Action in July 2024. “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” Republicans’ aim is permanent control of the US government. Trump’s is the crown. As their assaults on voting rights – and the institution of elections itself – escalate, their success begins to look, if not inevitable, alarmingly possible. Read more
Related: Of Course the Voting Rights Act Would Die at This Moment. Linda Greenhouse / NYT
Related: Why Voting Is Becoming Harder for Black Americans in Southern States. By Brandon Tensley / Capital B
Related: NAACP asks court to block new Texas congressional map. By Brianna Tucker / Wash Post
Judge Orders New Map to Empower Black Voters in Mississippi. By Aallyah Wright / Capital One
On Aug. 19, a federal judge ruled the state must redraw the map that it uses to elect its Supreme Court justices.
No Black candidate has won statewide office in Mississippi in the 140 years since Reconstruction. When it comes to the Mississippi Supreme Court, in particular, only four Black people have ever served — and never more than one at a time. Unlike other positions, these justices were never elected, but appointed by the governor. Read more
Trump says he’s removing Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook, citing his administration’s allegations of mortgage fraud. By
Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s board, said that Trump has no authority fire her and her lawyer said that they would file a lawsuit challenging “this illegal action.”
Trump cites a “criminal referral” from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte, in which Pulte accused Cook of mortgage fraud. In a statement, Cook responded by saying: “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022. Read more
Related: Fed governor’s firing shows that Trump is beyond all restraint. By Heather Digby Parton / Salon
Related: Where’s Your Evidence, Mr. President? The Editorial Board / NYT
Homesteading Hate: Arkansas Group Is a Lesson in Legalized Racist Exclusion. By Terrance Sullivan / The Progressive Magazine
Cultural and political regressions, as well as legal ambiguities, have allowed for a ‘whites only’ community to develop and expand. A highway in Ravenden, Arkansas.
In the rural heart of northeast Arkansas, an insidious experiment in modern segregation is unfolding in the form of a self-proclaimed whites-only settlement known as “Return to the Land” (RTTL). The group has taken shape under the guise of self-reliance, faith, and community sovereignty, but is in fact determined to build a settlement for white people. Read more
Education
College-Age Jews Are Heading South. By Rose Horowitch / The Atlantic
Even before the Ivy League upheavals of the past two years, Jewish students had been slowly drifting away from the elite campuses of the Northeast.
Now, as some seek respite from the protest movement that erupted after the Israeli response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of southern Israel, the drift has become more like—sorry—an exodus. And selective colleges outside the Northeast, sensing an intensifying disdain for Ivy League schools among Jewish teens and their parents, are tripping over one another to recruit these students. Read more
The Leader of Trump’s Assault on Higher Education Has a Troubled Legal and Financial History. By Peter Elkind and Katherine Mangan / ProPublica
In January, Leo Terrell was rewarded for his loyalty when President-elect Trump, praising him as a “highly respected civil rights attorney and political analyst” with an “incredibly successful career,” named him senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Justice Department. Terrell assumed his marquee role a month later: as head of the multiagency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.
As a Black, Christian former Democrat with little previous engagement with Jewish causes, Terrell, now 70, seemed an improbable pick to lead the effort to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses,” as the task force announcement put it. But his zealous conversion and penchant for media bombast made him a perfect bullhorn for the task force’s actual mission: to strong-arm colleges into stripping away any vestige of “wokeness” in their hiring, admissions, classes and research. Read more
Related: Trump Isn’t Fixing America’s Campuses. He’s Bleeding Them Dry. By Frank Bruni / NYT
Some Programs for Black Students Become ‘Illegal D.E.I.’ Under Trump. By Dana Goldstein / NYT
Districts aiming to hire Black teachers, add Black history classes and talk about white privilege are increasingly under scrutiny, raising questions about what is legal, and also what works.
The White House is pursuing a reversal of the federal government’s traditional role on race and schools, going after what it calls “illegal D.E.I.,” or diversity, equity and inclusion. The administration is using the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which was established to protect racial and ethnic minority groups, to try to end programs meant to help some of those same students. Read more
World
Israel’s Gaza Campaign Is Making It a Pariah State. By Thomas L. Freidman / NYT
I will leave it to historians to debate whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. But what is absolutely clear to me right now is that this Israeli government is committing suicide, homicide and fratricide.
It is destroying Israel’s standing in the world, it is killing Gazan civilians with seemingly no regard for innocent human life, and it is tearing apart Israeli society and world Jewry, between those Jews who want to still stand with Israel no matter what and those who can no longer tolerate, explain or justify where this Israeli government is taking the Jewish state and now want to distance themselves from it. Read more
Here’s what Russia and Ukraine have demanded to end the war. By Sammy Westfall and Mary Ilyushina / Wash Post
Major questions remain over what both sides might accept after Trump held successive talks with Putin and Zelensky.
The two sides are at an impasse over key issues, including whether a ceasefire should be in place as negotiations precede, Russian demands that Ukraine cede territory and security guarantees for a postwar Ukraine. In an essay published in 2021, Putin argued that Russia and Ukraine were “one people — a single whole” and that Ukrainian sovereignty was “possible only in partnership with Russia.” He accused the West of using Ukraine as an aggressive “anti-Russia project.” Zelensky has long emphasized that Ukraine would not surrender sovereign territory. Read more
These Countries Never Trusted America. Trump Is Proving Them Right.
President Trump has announced 50 percent tariffs on India and Brazil, two of the global south’s largest economies. He wants India to cut ties with Russia, even though dozens of countries maintain similar ties without such steep consequences. And he wants Brazil’s government to drop charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is accused of trying to stage a coup after losing the 2022 election.
But while Europe, South Korea and Japan have acquiesced to many of Washington’s demands on trade, India and Brazil are charting a different path that could reshape how developing countries resist American pressure. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Historic Atlanta Church Honors 62nd Anniversary of March On Washington And MLK Speech. By Nahlah Abdur-Rahman / Black Enterprise
Big Bethel A.M.E. church in Atlanta hosted its Social Justice Sunday to celebrate the March on Washington’s 62nd anniversary.
The event encouraged church members and community members to take action in the ongoing fight for equality and justice. They remember the voices of King and fellow activists as they forge a new battle for the betterment of all. Read more
Building Up Society: The Christian Duty For Peacemaking. By Henry Karlson / Patheos
In a world filled with violence and hate, division and injustices consistently dominate society. The more such hate is solidified, the more humanity ends up fighting against itself, hindering its full potential. What is good and true must be promoted, hatred must be resisted, and injustices must be rectified, if there is to be any future for humanity.
If we look at the growing division in society around us today, it is not difficult to discern where that division is coming from: the rich and powerful, who use their wealth and power to exploit society, cause others to suffer grave injustices. The rich keep stealing from the poor; the powerful keep pressing down on society, and various groups of people, such as immigrants, are chosen to serve as a scapegoat, with the hope that society will turn on the scapegoat instead of those truly causing it harm. Read more
He was a child refugee. Now he’s a bishop navigating Trump’s deportation push. By Michelle Boorstein / Wash Post
San Diego Bishop Michael Pham, the first U.S. bishop picked by Pope Leo, is part of a new wave of clerical leaders speaking out about migrants’ rights.
When Bishop Michael Pham walks the halls of immigration court, he sees migrants facing the most intense U.S. deportation campaign in decades, and glimpses moments of his own life. Pham says he remembers being 8 years old on a packed cargo boat floating off the coast of Vietnam for days without food or water, eventually realizing the bodies across the deck weren’t asleep. And at 14, arriving in America without his parents. He recalls his eight siblings, a few years later, in a tiny, overloaded house in East San Diego, scurrying to hide when the landlord appeared. Read more
Historical / Cultural
International Day for Remembrance of Slave Trade: ‘Time to abolish exploitation once and for all.’ By United Nations
The Day is intended to inscribe the tragedy of the slave trade in the memory of all peoples.
Echoing the goals of UNESCO’s intercultural project The Routes of Enslaved Peoples, it should offer an opportunity for collective consideration of the historic causes, the methods and the consequences of this tragedy and for an analysis of the interactions to which it has given rise between Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean, said the UN agency, which leads the annual commemoration. Read more
Related: Real Truth and Lies About Slavery You Must Know. By Phenix S. Halley / The Root
How the Irish Liberator helped liberate America’s enslaved. By Christian E. O’Connell / Wash Post
Daniel O’Connell’s eloquence offered a moral example that inspired Frederick Douglass and others.
O’Connell’s story is a lesson about the way the model of nonviolent resistance can travel across borders — and how moral authority still has the power to shape our public life today. O’Connell’s influence carried far beyond Ireland. August also marks the 180th anniversary of the voyage that took American abolitionist Frederick Douglass to Europe on a journey that would set up his meeting with the Irishman — an encounter that would reverberate through the anti-slavery movement. Read more
An Unconstitutional “Jim Crow Jury” Sent Him to Prison for Life. A New Law Aims to Keep Him There. by Richard A. Webster / ProPublica
When Lloyd Gray stood trial for rape in 1980, two jurors didn’t believe he was guilty and voted to acquit. Today, a split-jury verdict would mean a mistrial and possibly Gray’s freedom. But back then, in Louisiana, it resulted in a life sentence for the 19-year-old from Tunica, a rural community nestled on the banks of the Mississippi River.
Gray, who has always maintained his innocence, spent the next four decades in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. That same year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that nonunanimous jury verdicts, legal in only Louisiana and Oregon, were unconstitutional and based on an inherently racist law designed to uphold white supremacy. Going forward, there would be no more Lloyd Grays. But in fact, there are more than 1,000 people in Louisiana like Gray, convicted by split juries and still imprisoned, according to the Promise of Justice Initiative, a New Orleans-based nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform. Read more
Trump Wants to Make Art Into a Tool of the State. By Barry Schwabsky / The Nation
In ordering a review of the Smithsonian, the White House wants to use its power to remake our culture—or to reinvigorate a strain in the culture that has been dormant for a long time.
The White House, however, wants to rewrite “the American story” to create a new identity for this country. It wants to remake our culture because it follows Andrew Breitbart’s dictum that culture is upstream of politics, but those in power have come to realize that the stream is circular, and that political action can be upstream of culture too. It wants to use its power to remake our culture—or rather, to reinvigorate a strain in the culture that has been dormant for a long time. Read more
Related: Trump Sees Whitewashed U.S. Past and Dystopian Present. By Ed Kilgore / Intelligencer
Related: Why Trump’s attack on the Smithsonian matters. By Kimberlé Crenshaw and Jason Stanley / The Guardian
Sports
2025 US Open a celebration of Althea Gibson. By Jerry Bembry / Andscape
To celebrate both the 75th anniversary of her debut in Queens and what would have been her 98th birthday, the US Open will celebrate Gibson on Monday in a ceremony at Arthur Ashe Stadium and throughout the two-week tournament. Althea Gibson (left) with Louise Brough (right) with in Forest Hills, New York on Aug. 30, 1950.
“I think the most important part is that we are celebrating it and recognizing it,” Venus Williams, who will play at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Monday night, said of Gibson being celebrated. “Althea accomplished so much, and a lot of it has not been given the credit it deserves and the attention and the praise.” Read more
Related: Venus Williams’ net worth will make your eyes water. By Nova M. Bajamonti / Hello Magazine
A Kobe Bryant Movie Is In The Works About His Draft Day. By Bruce Goodwin II / Cassius
While professional athletes continue to go the vlogging, podcasting, and docuseries route, things are going a bit differently now that it’s time to tell Kobe Bryant’s story.
According to Variety, Warner Bros Pictures got its hands on a script based on a dramatized story of how Bryant joined the Los Angeles Lakers. The script was written by screenwriters Alex Sohn and Gavin Johannsen and is tentatively titled, With the 8th Pick? Read more
Letter From DC: Goodbye to John Wall, Hello to Celebrating His Rebel Spirit. By Dave Zirin / The Nation
The former Washington Wizards point guard retires from the NBA, but the anti-Trump protests embody his swaggy defiance.
As summer ends, masked, badgeless ICE thugs and red-state National Guard militias stalk an unnaturally quiet Washington, DC. Five years ago, the city was different. After the 2020 police murder of George Floyd, massive multiracial demonstrations filled the streets. While these protests were constant, there was one we should be remembering this week. It started downtown at the Capitol One Arena, home of the NBA’s Washington Wizards, and was led, bullhorn in hand, by Wizards captain John Wall. Read more
Venus Williams’s comeback was about playing healthy again. Call it a win. By Ava Wallace / Wash Post
At 45, the seven-time Grand Slam champion showed she belonged at the U.S. Open. Call it a comeback.
Venus Williams returned to Grand Slam singles tennis for the first time in two years with a 6-3, 2-6, 6-1 loss to No. 11 seed Karolina Muchova on Monday in a first-round match that was notable for two reasons. It made her the U.S. Open’s oldest competitor since 47-year-old Renee Richards in 1981. And it demonstrated remarkable improvement from the beginning of her four-match comeback that began July 24 and ended a 16-month layoff. Read more
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