Featured
Trump’s Power Feeds on White Demographic Fears. By James Risen / The Intercept
Paranoid about losing their majority status and the power it confers, white Americans keep backing Trump’s racist anti-immigrant policies.
The Trump phenomenon and the surge of right-wing extremism in America has never really been about economic anxiety, as so many pundits have claimed. True, many swing voters, including some minorities, have supported Trump by wrongly thinking that he would be good for the economy. But for Trump’s MAGA base, it has always been about race and racism.
Today, MAGA also fears the future: It fears that America will soon become so diverse that white people will lose their power over politics and society. Here is the figure that freaks out MAGA the most: In 2025, only about 47 percent of American children under five years old are white. It explains his draconian anti-immigration and deportation policies and his attempts to end birthright citizenship. It also explains the anti-abortion movement and the right-wing pro-natal movement, both of which represent flailing attempts to increase the white percentage of the population. Read more
Related: White House Assesses Ways to Persuade Women to Have More Children. Caroline Kitchener / NYT
Related: Team Trump Drafts Dystopian Plan to Get Women to Have More Babies. By Malcolm Ferguson / TNR
Related: MAGA Pronatalism Is Doomed to Fail. By Michelle Goldberg / NYT
Related: Stephen Miller Unveils Bizarre New Attack on Birthright Citizenship. By Edith Olmsted / TNR
Political / Social
Trump Is Insatiable. By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
As President Trump’s assault on America’s civic institutions approaches its 100th day, the question is whether those charged with maintaining the integrity of Congress, the law, the courts, the media, academia and the civil service recognize the seriousness of the threat they face.
What appears to be happening is that recognition of the fact that making even small concessions will only encourage the administration to keep asking for more is spreading. Why? Because Trump is insatiable. Read more
Related: Trump Wants You to Think Resistance Is Futile. It Is Not. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
Related: Which Past Fascist Does Trump Most Resemble? The Incompetent One. By Alexander Stille / TNR
Target rolled back DEI efforts. A boycott ensued – and traffic dropped. By Auzinea Bacon / CNN
When Target announced on January 24 that it would scale back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) commitments, customers reacted swiftly, upset that a company that had so loudly touted its diversity initiatives appeared to be backtracking.
For 10 consecutive weeks, foot traffic at Target stores has declined — down 9% year-over-year in February and 6.5% year-over-year in March, according to data from analytics firm Placer.ai. While Placer.ai notes a variety of factors were likely to blame, like weather and a drop in post-holiday spending, Rev. Jamal Bryant has driven another reason for a drop-off: a fast — from shopping. Read more
A Ticking Clock on American Freedom. By Adrienne LaFrance / The Atlantic
Look around, take stock of where you are, and know this: Today, right now—and I mean right this second—you have the most power you’ll ever have in the current fight against authoritarianism in America.
If this sounds dramatic to you, it should. Over the past five months, in many hours of many conversations with multiple people who have lived under dictators and autocrats, one message came through loud and clear: America, you are running out of time. Read more
Related: Can the Courts Force Trump to Comply. By Thomas P. Schmidt / The Atlantic
Rubio makes Republicans’ biggest dream come true — but kills America’s soft power in the process. By Heather Digby Parton / Salon
The GOP has tried to take down the State Department for decades
This is just the beginning of massive, unimaginable suffering that’s going to happen over the next year as America betrays its values and abandons the most vulnerable people in the world. Read more
Sen. Tim Scott stays silent as his minority business legacy crumbles under Trump. By katherine Hapgood / Politico
Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) has spent years boosting a federal program to support minority-owned businesses. President Donald Trump’s administration dismantled it in a matter of weeks.
“They are watching this happen, and they are doing nothing. That’s cowardice. And it cuts especially deep when the people you once believed were your champions turn their backs in silence,” the Commerce Department employee said of Scott’s and other Republicans’ silence on cuts to the program. Read more
“We stand for truth”: Harvard sues Trump admin over federal funding freeze. By Alex Galbraith / Salon
The nation’s oldest university is up for a fight. Harvard filed a lawsuit against the administration of President Donald Trump on Monday, alleging that a funding freeze put forth by Trump’s Department of Education was violating the institution’s constitutional rights.
The lawsuit is the latest salvo in a weeks-long battle between the school and the Trump admin. The Department of Education put a list of conditions on the university’s federal funding— ones meant to give the school’s faculty and curriculum a more conservative bent — and announced a $2.2 billion cut in grants when Harvard refused to comply. The lawsuit follows the announcement of another proposed $1 billion cut to the university’s research funding. Read more
Related: Trump’s destructive war on academia. The Editorial Board / Wash Post
Another Blackout Forces the Question of Puerto Rico’s Political Future. Yarimar Bonilla / NYT
During last week’s Holy Week observations, Puerto Rico was plunged once more into darkness.
The latest islandwide blackout is not just a technical failure; it is the most recent sign that Puerto Rico’s colonial bargain has collapsed. For over half a century, its commonwealth status — under U.S. federal control but lacking full political rights — was justified by promises of security, stability and the material comforts of modern life. Read more
Abortion Care Is Central to Black Maternal Health. By Latonia Giwa / The Nation
I am still haunted by some of the maternal death cases I reviewed as a member of the Louisiana Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review Committee.
It’s been five years, and I remember like it was yesterday: the Black pregnant woman who visited three different emergency rooms in multiple parishes trying to get medical help before she ultimately died. Then, like now, Black pregnant people were dying at disproportionate rates compared to their white counterparts, and too often after pleading for help. Read more
World News
Judge blocks Trump administration plans to dismantle Voice of America. By Emily Feng / NPR
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from dismantling Voice of America, the government funded broadcaster, at least temporarily.
It’s a dramatic turn in a series of legal cases revolving around the limits of executive power and the strength of the Constitution’s protection of free speech. Read more
Vance Threatens U.S. Will ‘Walk Away’ Unless Trump’s Ukraine Deal Is Agreed. Michael D. Shear and Mark Landler / NYT
Vice President JD Vance said the cease-fire plan would freeze territory along the current front lines of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and that the U.S. would “walk away” if both parties did not agree.
It was the first time a U.S. official had publicly laid out a cease-fire deal in such stark terms and the comments appeared designed to increase pressure on Ukraine, which has long refused to accept Russia’s claims on its lands, particularly in Crimea. Read more
Mexico Is Becoming a Beacon. By Lydia Polgreen / NYT
For decades, many of its ambitious citizens sought to leave, part of a vast tide of migration across the country’s northern border with the United States, a nation many Mexicans saw as a beacon of opportunity.
These days, Mexico City is itself a beacon, drawing millions of visitors from across the world. It is a pulsing center of global culture that rivals any of the great European capitals. Its historic parks and plazas have been reborn. It is a culinary juggernaut, where securing a seat at top restaurants requires ingenuity and once-obscure taco stands garner viral, TikTok-fueled fame. Read more
Related: After Trump’s Win, More Black Americans Are Leaving for Mexico. By Adam Mahoney / Capital B
Erdoğan Sets His Sights on Israel. By Reuel Marc Gerecht / The Atlantic
In turning against Israel and in favor of Hamas, Erdoğan is riding a wave of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism that has been rising in Turkey since at least the 1980s, especially on the secular left.
Now that Erdoğan has spurned the West and set his sights on Israel, Turkey could prove more worrisome for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than virtually any other country. Its armed forces are large, well equipped, relatively well trained, and backed by a GDP of more than $1 trillion. Read more
I’m in Denmark’s Parliament. Here’s Why America Has Us So Stunned.
There are moments in history that are difficult to forget, that change the course of events. Danes have experienced several such moments in the past few months, but to me, the most defining one occurred a few weeks ago, when Vice President JD Vance said Denmark is “not being a good ally” to the United States.
Danes were stunned and stung. Our country has been nothing less than a stalwart ally of America. Many of us felt as if we were losing a longtime friend — almost as if a brother were abandoning us: The United States has been Denmark’s closest ally for 80 years. We have followed American presidents into wars that many Danes felt were not ours to fight. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Francis, the First Latin American Pope, Dies at 88. Jason Horowitz and Jim Yardley / NYT
After decades of conservative leadership, Francis tried to reset the course of the Roman Catholic Church, emphasizing inclusion and care for the marginalized over doctrinal purity.
Pope Francis, who rose from modest means in Argentina to become the first Jesuit and Latin American pontiff, who clashed bitterly with traditionalists in his push for a more inclusive Roman Catholic Church, and who spoke out tirelessly for migrants, the marginalized and the health of the planet. Read more
Progressive Christianity’s Bleak Future. By Elizabeth Bruenig / The Atlantic
Pope Francis leaves behind a Church that is moving away from the faith he championed.
In his final Easter address, Pope Francis touched on one of the major themes of his 12-year papacy, that love, hope, and peace are possible amid a rising tide of violence and extremism: “What a great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day in the many conflicts raging in different parts of our world!” His observations about the revolutionary truth of Christianity with respect to global political affairs were often rejected, sometimes bitterly, by the world leaders he meant to exhort. Read more
White supremacy and the Latino vote: A review of Defectors. By Tony Tian-Ren Lin / The Christian Century
Journalist Paola Ramos takes a nuanced look at the world of right-wing Latinos, revealing the logic behind their ideology. Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America. By Paola Ramos
Defectors divides the logic for Latino far-right affiliation into three categories: tribalism, traditionalism, and trauma. On the surface, some of the people profiled in the book align with popular stereotypes of typical Trump supporters. But Ramos’s reporting pushes us to reconsider simplistic narratives, and a careful reading reveals the complexities behind their attraction to right-wing politics. Read more
The Trump administration hasn’t attacked religious schools and seminaries—yet. By Colton Bernasol / The Christian Century
Today, as I page through my copy of God of the Oppressed, now nearly eight years old, I am one year into a PhD in theology, and still, Cone’s insight feels urgent: “For theologians to speak of … God, they too must become interested in politics and economics, recognizing that there is no truth about Yahweh unless it is the truth of freedom as the event is revealed in the oppressed people’s struggle for justice in the world.”
Ignacio Ellacuría, the Spanish Salvadoran liberation theologian and president of the University of Central America (UCA) in El Salvador vision of the university speaks directly to this observation. And if Christian institutions of higher education are to remain Christian amid Trump’s repressive educational policies, it is this truth to which they are utterly accountable. Read more
Historical / Cultural
The Very American Roots of Trumpism. By Ezra Klein / NYT Podcast
My guest today is Steven Hahn, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at New York University. His book “Illiberal America: A History” tracks this threat of American politics back to our founding and even before.
The interplay between liberalism and illiberalism has always been with us. It will always be with us. Accepting that helps bring both its power and its vulnerability into clearer focus. Read more and listen here
When the Supreme Court Spoke With One Voice.
In an extraordinary, if perhaps temporary, rebuke to the Trump administration, the Supreme Court issued an order at around 1 a.m. on Saturday forbidding the government to deport a group of Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act.
The federal judiciary is being forced to confront a fundamental question: what to do when its orders are defied. This is not the first time that the court has confronted this question. A case from another point in American history — the postwar effort to desegregate America’s schools — offers a guide for the justices as they move forward. Read more
The Long Struggle of Jewish Americans Over Their Country’s Crises. By Benjamin Moser / NYT
In the midst of ongoing war and protest, politicians and journalists explore the complexities of Jewish American responses to global and national conflicts. Peter Beinart confronts this dilemma in the opening pages of BEING JEWISH AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF GAZA: A Reckoning. Pro-Israel protesters outside Columbia University in New York on Oct. 7, 2024
“We must now tell a new story to answer the horror that a Jewish country has perpetrated, with the support of many Jews around the world,” Beinart writes. “Its central element should be this: We are not history’s permanent virtuous victims. We are not hard-wired to forever endure evil but never commit it. That false innocence, which pervades contemporary Jewish life, camouflages domination as self-defense.” Read more
Georgia university receives $500,000 grant to preserve Gullah Geechee heritage. By Adria R. Walker / The Guardian
A new $500,000 Mellon grant will allow Georgia State University to develop archival, historical and cultural research to protect Gullah Geechee heritage and communities in Georgia and South Carolina. The Baptist church on Sapelo Island in Georgia, in 2022.
Using the grant, GSU will establish the Gullah Geechee Sacred Land Project (GGSLP), which will be “dedicated to maintaining African American burial grounds by recovering communities’ spiritual, genealogical and spatial lineages and safeguarding the places where those communities interred their ancestors”, according to a statement by the college. Read more
How synthetic braiding hair may be putting Black women’s health in jeopardy. By Zoie Lambert, Kaisha Young and Ali Rogin / PBS
For years, Black women have used synthetic braids to help style their hair. But a recent study by Consumer Reports found that these fake hair strands can contain dangerous chemicals that pose a health threat.
Ali Rogin reports on the history of braiding in Black culture and speaks with Adana Llanos, co-leader of the Cancer Population Science Program at Columbia University, to learn more. Read more
Sports
Missouri’s Jocelyn Moore: ‘It’s OK to not have the … stereotypical gymnastics look.’ By Arielle Chambers / Andscape
After Missouri qualified for the NCAA women’s gymnastics championship finals on Thursday for the first time in program history, senior gymnast Jocelyn Moore and her teammates will compete for a national championship on Saturday.
Moore sat down with Andscape and ESPN commentator Ari Chambers to discuss finding joy in her gymnastics career and how she finds power and freedom through expressing herself in the sport. Listen here
Cam Ward was a pudgy, zero-star QB. Now he’s the likely No. 1 pick. By Adam Kilgore / Wash Post
After a modern college football journey that included stops at Incarnate Word and Washington State, Cam Ward is expected to be the first pick in the NFL draft.
Before the final game he played at Incarnate Word, back when only he knew how far his right arm could take him, Cam Ward approached Coach Eric Morris. They were preparing for a playoff game against Sam Houston State, annually one of the best defenses in the Football Championship Subdivision. “If you let me throw it 60 times,” Ward told Morris, “we’ll win this game.” Read more
Travis Hunter wants to play both offense and defense. Will the NFL let him? By
The top draft prospect, a star at both receiver and cornerback, wants to be the first in many years to never leave the football field.
Colorado’s Travis Hunter has a message for the NFL and the team that plans to select him in Thursday’s draft: Don’t tell me I can’t do it. Hunter made history at the University of Colorado last season not just for his unicorn role — starting at both cornerback and wide receiver — but for his prolific success doing so. And he has the hardware to show it, having won the prestigious Heisman Trophy, as well as awards for most outstanding receiver and defensive player of the year. Read more
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