Featured
Frank Luntz: Booker marathon speech ‘may have changed the course of political history.’ By Ashleigh Fields / The Hill
Longtime GOP pollster Frank Luntz said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) “may have changed the course of political history” with his marathon speech breaking the Senate’s record for the longest floor speech in its history.
“I want to emphasize what Cory Booker did over the last 24 hours may have changed the course of political history. I watched a lot of it. I listened to words. I listened to phrases,” Luntz said during a Tuesday evening appearance on NewsNation’s “On Balance.” He confirmed that Booker’s unprecedented feat “struck a tone” with Americans in the midst of the Trump administration’s controversial policies. “He struck the kind of tone that grassroots Democrats are looking for. He gave them a reason to fight. He gave them a reason to stand up and say, this is my country too,” Luntz told anchor Leland Vittert. Read more
Related: Watch “Senator Cory Booker Concludes His Historic Senate Speech” on YouTube
Related: Cory Booker set a historic example for other Democrats to follow. By Perry Bacon Jr. / Wash Post
Political / Social
Liberal Judge Wins Wisconsin Supreme Court Seat, Defying Musk’s Millions. By Kevin Robillard / HuffPost
Susan Crawford, a liberal running with the backing of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, won a seat on the state’s Supreme Court on Tuesday night, fending off millions of dollars in spending from right-wing billionaire Elon Musk.
Crawford, a judge in Dane County, focused her campaign on protecting abortion rights and portraying her opponent, former state Attorney General Brad Schimel, as a corrupt politician who would do the bidding of Musk and other large donors. Read more
Related: ‘Big Psychological Boost’ for Democrats in String of Elections. By Katie Glueck / NYT
Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived. By M. Gessen / NYT
“It’s the unmarked cars,” a friend who grew up under an Argentine dictatorship said. He had watched the video of the Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil’s abduction. In the video, which Khalil’s wife recorded, she asks for the names of the men in plainclothes who handcuffed her husband.
“We don’t give our name,” one responds. “Can you please specify what agency is taking him?” she pleads. No response. We know now that Khalil was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security. Read more
Related: We Are Sleepwalking Into Autocracy. By David Remnick / The New Yorker
Sen. Chris Murphy says mass nonviolent protests opposing President Trump are increasingly likely. By Eddy Martinez / CT Public Radio
Sen. Chris Murphy said Democrats would most likely need to start planning for mass demonstrations in order to oppose President Donald Trump. Murphy made the remarks during a town hall at Westhill High School in Stamford on Friday. (Image from Emanuel Cleaver’s article Wash Post)
“I think the threat to our democracy is real,” Murphy said. “It is acute. I think it is very likely you are going to need hundreds of thousands of people engaged in mass-scale mobilization.” Read more
Related: Americans know how to defeat a tyrant. By Emanuel Cleaver II / Wash Post
DEI was never for us anyway. By Oneya Fennell Okuwobi / Salon
I’ve spent the past 10 years researching the negative unintended consequences of diversity initiatives. This perspective has allowed me to recognize that DEI wasn’t built with me, or other people of color in mind. My work began in an unlikely place, the church.
When so many workplaces have broken faith by doing away with DEI commitments they claimed were central to their core values, I am encouraging employees of color too to say good riddance to current workplace diversity programs, in favor of organizational justice and workplace equity. Read more
Related: University of Michigan Students Lose Scholarships as DEI Programs Roll Back. By Tabie German / BET
Related: Amid plummeting diversity at medical schools, a warning of DEI crackdown’s ‘chilling effect’
Republicans Want Voters To Provide Proof Of Citizenship To Vote. Millions Could Be Impacted. By Matt Shuham / HuffPost
Despite data showing tens of millions of Americans don’t have ready access to proof of citizenship documents, Republicans are now pushing hard to require those records nationwide for voter registration.
They haven’t been able to make it happen yet. But two efforts, one each from the White House and congressional Republicans, have made the prospect of a national proof of citizenship requirement a real possibility. Read more
Pam Bondi Tells Justice Department To Drop Legal Challenge To Georgia Election Law. By Kate Brumback / HuffPost
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Monday instructed the Justice Department to dismiss a lawsuit challenging a sweeping election overhaul that Georgia Republican lawmakers passed in the wake of President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state.
The lawsuit, filed in June 2021 under former President Joe Biden, alleged that the Georgia law was intended to deny Black voters equal access to the ballot. Bondi said the Biden administration was pushing “false claims of suppression.” Read more
World News
Israeli operation in Gaza expanding to seize ‘large areas,’ defense minister says. By David Brennan / ABC News
Israel‘s renewed military operation in the Gaza Strip “is expanding to crush and cleanse the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure and seize large areas that will be annexed to the security zones of the state of Israel,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Wednesday.
The minister said that a “large-scale evacuation of the Gazan population from the fighting areas” is accompanying the expanded military campaign in the strip. Read more
Related: Why Benjamin Netanyahu Is Going Back to War. Bernard Avishai / The New Yorker
My Fellow Republicans and President Trump, We Must Stand Up to Putin. By Don Bacon / NYT
Three years on, the war for Ukraine continues to burn, consuming lives and the wealth of nations.
The diplomatic rupture last month in the Oval Office beamed live around the world ignited a fierce debate about America’s allies, enemies and interests in the 21st century. Now, Vladimir Putin is dragging his feet on a full cease-fire deal, hoping the United States will cave to his demands for a complete end to military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine. Read more
How Trump Is Offering White Afrikaners Refugee Status. By Erkki Forster / The Daily Beast
The president has launched “Mission South Africa,” a program aimed at assisting white South Africans in relocating to the U.S. as refugees, according to The New York Times. (Image by Axios)
Trump has repeatedly pushed the narrative that white South Africans have faced persecution since the fall of apartheid, claiming that Afrikaners—a white ethnic minority group descended from Dutch and French colonial settlers—are “victims of unjust racial discrimination.” Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
How Donald Trump Is Teaching Christians to Abandon Empathy. By Isaac Chotiner / The New Yorker
Albert Mohler, the longtime president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is one of the best-known evangelicals in the United States. Mohler interviewed a fellow-theologian about “the sin of empathy.” The conversation occurred in February, around the same time that Elon Musk told Joe Rogan that “civilizational suicidal empathy” was destroying the West.
I wanted to hear more about Mohler’s perspective on empathy, and whether his views on American politics and the Trump Administration had evolved since we last spoke. Our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, is below. Read more
The Right Wing’s New Plot to Force the Ten Commandments on Schoolkids. By Adam Laats / The New Republic
The Supreme Court has rebuffed these efforts before, but that was nearly a half-century ago. Today’s MAGA conservatives see a more favorable legal environment—and they might be right.
America learned this lesson the hard way. No, the display of the Ten Commandments in schools across the country probably won’t lead to riots in the streets. But our nation’s history proves that there’s no way to force religion into public education without turning schools into arenas for conflict. Read more
Why America doesn’t really have separation between church and state. By Ian Milhiser / Vox
The concept of “separation of church and state” isn’t quite as ironclad as you may think.
The First Amendment prohibits laws “respecting an establishment of religion,” a provision that many Americans believe should create a firm wall of separation between church and state. But the Constitution also does not enforce itself. In the United States, we rely on judges and Supreme Court justices to determine what the Constitution means and to apply it to individual cases. Read more
Related: A battle over religion and schools in Oklahoma could decide the future of the First Amendment. By
Historical / Cultural
Descendants Of Enslaved People Who Helped Build Saint Louis University Reject Formal Apology, Calling It ‘Performative.’ By Nahlah Abdur-Rahman / Black Enterprise
“We asked them, ‘What were they going to do?’ They told us a monument, a public apology and a report, and that wasn’t in conjunction with what we all talked about,” Proudie said. “A core element of that was a way to repair in terms of financial or economic empowerment, and they told us that was totally off the table.”
The descendants, however, feel like their ancestor’s work remains unappreciated, given the school’s refusal to grant substantive reparations. The group claimed the school owed $74 billion in unpaid labor. They also referred to the commitments made during SLU’s Slavery, History, Memory, and Reconciliation Project almost a decade ago. Read more
Trump Targets DC’s African American Museum But not Other Museums. By Phenix S Halley / The Root
He’s taken an interest in the National Museum of African American History and Culture (MAAHC) but not in similar museums like the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum or the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, all of which receive federal funding.
In an executive order, Trump said the (MAAHC) located in Washington D.C. is “under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.” Because of this, Trump wants to end funding to the African American Museum as well as other Smithsonian museums honoring the expansive history of the nation. This means the fate of Black history and culture is up in the air. Read more
Related: Trump Cannot Win His War on History.
Related: Taking Aim at Smithsonian, Trump Wades Into Race and Biology. By Zachary Small / NYT
Civil rights leader’s family gets roasted in new play. By Michael Martin and Olivia Hampton / NPR
Purpose, a new play now on Broadway, has all the trappings of the classic family drama: A powerful and aging patriarch, wayward sons, a strategizing wife and a watchful outsider. It could be about monarchs.
Instead, the latest work from Tony-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins trains its lens on a family with deep roots in the American civil rights movement grappling with the impact of that very history on them and on society at large. Purpose dives head on into the hypocrisy of a family led by a a highly imperfect religious-political leader. The Jasper family is not unlike that of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, though Jacobs-Jenkins is wary of drawing parallels. Read more
‘Number One on the Call Sheet’ celebrates Hollywood’s Black A-listers. By
The Apple TV+ documentary is “a story about triumph,” says director Reggie Hudlin. “It’s a story about making dreams come true.”
His installment includes some of the biggest names in the business, such as Denzel Washington, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Idris Elba and more. Jamie Foxx and Kevin Hart, who are interviewed, also produced the documentaries. Hudlin explores how these dreams came true and if they were ever dreams each man consciously pursued. The breadth of answers show how there is no single path to becoming a successful Black leading man in Hollywood. Read more
Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Snubbed By Academy Of Country Music Awards. By Tonya Pendleton / Cassius
You would think that winning a Grammy for Best Country Album would merit acknowledgment by the Academy of Country Music Association. Well, think again. The venerated organization that hands out the most prestigious awards in the genre declined to nominate Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter… for anything.
The 2025 Academy of Country Music nominations were announced and Beyoncé was not on the list, despite winning both Album of the Year and Country Album of the Year at the 2025 Grammys. Beyoncé was the first Black woman to hit the top of the country charts with her single “Texas Hold ‘Em.” Read more
Sports
Billionaires Michael Jordan & Magic Johnson to Lead NBA Project Despite Donald Trump’s Resistance Against Adam Silver, Reports Claim. By Khelendra Kumar Yadav / Essentially Sports
“Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson have officially announced their takeover of BC Mess, with the intention of making it the first European NBA franchise starting in the 2027/28 season,” the post read. Now, you’d think this kind of groundbreaking move would be met with universal excitement—and locally, it has been. The people of Luxembourg are thrilled, seeing this as a golden opportunity to put their country on the global basketball map. But not everyone is celebrating.
As per the post by B.C. Mess, President Donald Trump has expressed strong opposition, reportedly calling this expansion “another threat to America’s trade deficit with Europe.” In other words, he’s worried that bringing an international team into the NBA could have economic setbacks for the US. Read more
‘It’s his time’: Hunter Greene joins special group as Black starting pitcher on MLB Opening Day. By Branson Wright / Andscape
Cincinnati Reds All-Star one of only 40 Black pitchers to start on Opening Day in league history
The Reds open the season at 4:10 p.m. ET today at Great American Ball Park against the San Francisco Giants. At 25 years old, it’s Greene’s second career Opening Day start. He’s the youngest Reds player to make multiple Opening Day starts, the only Black Opening Day starting pitcher this season in MLB, and only the 40th Black pitcher to start on Opening Day in the history of the league. Read more
LeBron James and Stephen A. Smith are shouting over their insecurities. By Sally Jenkins / Wash Post
LeBron James is a baller. Stephen A. Smith is a bawler. And neither of them can help themselves.
They are large public figures with the wealth of pharaohs, and yet LeBron James and Stephen A. Smith display the egos of eggshells. Their yah-yahing has gone on for a month now, first Stephen A. with his armchair braying and now LeChosen One on a show with an even louder rasp, Pat McAfee’s, trading what we are to understand as manly barbs in an argument over honor. Read more
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