Featured
Trump Is Not Done With Us. By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
The damage inflicted on the nation during Donald J. Trump’s first term in office pales in comparison to what he will do if he is elected to a second term. How can we know this? The best evidence is Trump himself. He has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to tear the country apart.
“Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters,” Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton, writes in a forthcoming article in Liberties: They have made it clear that they will not accept defeat in November any more than they did when Trump lost four years ago. They believe that Trump is the one true legitimate president, that those who refuse to accept this fundamental fact are the true deniers, and that any result other than Trump’s restoration would be a thwarting of history’s purpose and a diabolical act of treason. The authoritarian imperative has moved beyond Trumpian narcissism and the cultish MAGA fringe to become an article of faith from top to bottom inside the utterly transformed Republican Party, which Trump totally commands. Read more
Related: What Polls Are Telling Us as Democrats Convene in Chicago.
Related: Harris vs. Trump Polls: Kamala Surges in Battleground States. By Ed Kilgore / New York Intelligencer
Related: The Harris poll surge is driven heavily by women and younger voters. By Phillip Bump / Wash Post
Political / Social
Democrats Say They’re the Party of “Freedom,” Not Republicans. By Eric Lutz / Vanity Fair
Freedom” has been a running theme here at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. For years, Republicans have styled themselves as the party of freedom. But Democrats this week are reclaiming the word, particularly around the issues of abortion and gun safety.
During his remarks on opening night at the United Center, Congressman Jamie Raskin called this year’s DNC the “democracy convention” and the “freedom convention.” Senator Raphael Warnock warned in a rousing address that “antidemocratic forces are at work right now in Georgia and all across our country.” And Kamala Harris, who came out to “Freedom” by Beyoncé, vowed to “fight for the ideals we hold dear” in a surprise appearance on the convention stage. Read more
Related: Biden’s emotional goodbye launches a new era for Democrats. By Jennifer Rubin / Wash Post
Michelle Obama: The office Trump seeks ‘might just be one of those Black jobs.’ By Jonathan Allen / NBC News
The former first lady ripped into Trump and implored her party to dig in to do the hard work needed to deny him the presidency and elect Kamala Harris.
On the second night of this year’s Democratic convention on Tuesday, here in her native Windy City, the former first lady pivoted to a more direct confrontation with the Republican nominee that better aligns with Vice President Kamala Harris’ slogan: “When we fight, we win.” “His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black,” Obama said of Trump’s treatment of her and her husband, former President Barack Obama. Alluding to her hope that Harris will win — and Trump’s repeated use of the term “Black jobs” — she chided him. “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?” she said. Read more
Related: Barack Obama DNC 2024 speech: What it was really about. By Zack Beauchamp / Vox
Related: Why did this conservative US judge endorse Kamala Harris? By Margaret Sullivan / The Guardian
The Con at the Core of the Republican Party. By Nina Burleigh / The New Republic
The conservative movement’s total abandonment of even the appearance of principles has been decades in the making.
In his bracing history of American conservative hustlers, The Longest Con, veteran political writer Joe Conason proposes that the American right has for more than a half century been increasingly OK with “politicized larceny.” After decades of professional fearmongers, scammers, and grifters chipped away at the line between right and wrong, the right was ready to support the idea, as Gordon Gekko put it, that greed is, actually, good. The ends always justify the means, if you can make bank on the way. A crucial representative of this attitude, according to Conason, was Roy Cohn, the red-baiting Joe McCarthy aide, New York power broker, and Mafia lawyer whose “philosophy of impunity” was so successful that it shaped right-wing politics for decades to come. His most apt pupil was Donald Trump, whom he represented in his later years. Cohn taught the younger Donald that “it was not only possible but admirable to lie, cheat, swindle, fabricate, then deny, deny, deny—and get away with everything,” Conason writes. Read more
Related: Former Trump voter: Trump is ‘lying about pretty much everything.’ By Yash Roy / The Hill
The Small-Town Nebraska Tim Walz Put Behind Him, but Never Fully Left. Matt Flegenheimer / NYT
A political persona forged on the prairie: self-assured but rarely self-serious; puckish when possible, stoic when necessary.
As Mr. Walz, the 60-year-old Minnesota governor, prepares this week to introduce himself to the nation from the party convention in Chicago, he and those close to him have positioned his rural Nebraska upbringing as essential to his self-conception, a skeleton key to understanding the man he became and the values he came to embrace. His experiences in this period formed the core of his future political identity — unpretentious, neighborly, a little mischievous — even as he seemed determined, ultimately, to see what life might look like somewhere else. Read more
Related: Tim Walz Praised For ‘Stunning’ Analogy Linking Football To Politics. By
“It’s blanket opportunism”: “Rural America” author on “switch between” the “two different JD Vances.” By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has chosen Senator JD Vance to be his running mate. Vance plays a powerful symbolic role in MAGA World.
Of course, like the Republican and MAGA brand of which it is now a part of, Vance’s life story also does not hold up well under close scrutiny. In all, Vance’s story of the Horatio Alger myth made real in Appalachia is actually one where he received much help and assistance along the way. Like most millionaires and billionaires, Vance’s success is less a function of hard work as it is luck, privilege, timing, assistance from others—and raw ambition and opportunism. Read more
Related: Know Your Enemy: What’s Wrong With J.D. Vance? By Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell / Dissent
Angela Alsobrooks makes a bid for Maryland’s U.S. Senate seat. By
In the Democratic primary, Alsobrooks was outspent 10-to-1 by Rep. David Trone’s self-funded campaign; she still won handily. She now faces Republican Larry Hogan, Maryland’s former two-term governor, in November’s general election to fill the seat of retiring Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin. The race has become one to watch for its potential to reshape the makeup of the Senate, where Democrats have a razor-thin majority. The polling so far has found Alsobrooks with an edge but smaller than the lead Democrats usually hold in the state, according to an NBC News analysis of available data. Read more
The movement to diversify Silicon Valley is crumbling amid attacks on DEI. By Naomi Nix , Cat Zakrzewski and Nitasha Tiku / Wash Post
The drop in support for programs that tech companies once touted as a sign of their commitment to adding women, Black people and Hispanic people to their ranks follows a right-wing campaign to challenge diversity initiatives in court.
After the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions at Harvard and other schools, advocates have levied similar legal challenges against corporations. Some prominent tech leaders have recast DEI as a discriminatory movement, turning programs into a political liability for donors. “DEI must DIE,” Elon Musk posted on X in December. The popular All-In podcast, hosted by four tech investors, called DEI “dying” the “best political trend” of 2023. Read more
Related: The Far Right Is Becoming Obsessed With Race and IQ. By Ali Breland / The Atlantic
World News
The True History Behind The Whitening Of Brazil. By Faith Katunga / Travelnoire
“Whitening” aimed to increase the proportion of white Brazilians through European immigration and interracial marriages.
Brazil’s demographic makeup has been diverse since colonial times, with indigenous populations, enslaved Africans, and European settlers forming the foundation of the country’s ethnic composition. However, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a concerted effort to “whiten” the population emerged, driven by various social, political, and economic factors. The concept of “branqueamento,” or whitening, became a central aspect of Brazilian national policy following the abolition of slavery in 1888. “Whitening” aimed to gradually increase the proportion of white Brazilians through European immigration, interracial marriages, and the promotion of European cultural values. Read more
Blinken Says Talks Are ‘Maybe the Last’ Chance for Gaza Cease-Fire. NYT
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Monday the Israeli prime minister had accepted a Biden administration proposal to close some of the remaining gaps on a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and he urged Hamas “to do the same.”
A spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, Omer Dostri, confirmed the prime minister had told Mr. Blinken that Israel had accepted the proposal, which American officials presented last week with the support of Egypt and Qatar in an attempt to stop the fighting in Gaza and avert a wider regional war. Read more
Related: Democratic Party Unites Under Banner of Silence on Gaza Genocide. By Natasha Lennard / The Intercept
Maduro Further Embeds His Regime in Venezuela. By Jeff Abbott / Progressive Magazine
Authoritarianism continues to embed itself across Latin America, most recently in Venezuela following the country’s contested July 28 elections. Both Nicolás Maduro, who has maintained a grip on power since 2013, and opposition candidate Edmundo González declared victory in the elections, but the Maduro regime continues to refuse to release the vote tallies.
Across the country, angry Venezuelans have protested the results of the elections, which according to the opposition and international observers were fraudulent. But the regime, which still maintains deep support within the military, has met protesters with brutal repression. Read more
Elon Musk has been predicting civil war in Europe for nearly a year. By David Ingram / NBC News
Musk has posted about an impending civil war on his social media platform X at least eight times in the past 10 months. Some warn it’s dangerous rhetoric.
Musk’s interest in the subject of a civil war poked into public view earlier this month when he weighed in on anti-immigration street riots happening across Great Britain. “Civil war is inevitable,” he wrote on X. The post received 9.8 million views and it caused a furor among some in the U.K., initiating a heated back and forth with the office of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was dismissive of Musk’s prediction, saying there was “no justification” for such comments. Other U.K. critics said Musk was only inflaming tensions by making such a dire prediction. Read more
Jomo Kenyatta, father of the nation? Kenya’s first president built up a myth which masked his faults. By Stephen Mutie / The Conversation
Kenya’s legacy as a state is deeply intertwined with Jomo Kenyatta’s influence on the nation. Kenya’s founding president died on 22 August 1978 in his sleep at State House, Mombasa.
Kenyatta is generally typecast as the “father of the nation”, guiding the newly independent Kenya onto the path of independence and development. It is an image he carefully crafted. Jomo Kenyatta was a writer. His body of work includes two historical books, a fable, essays and a semi-autobiography. In these works he employed literary strategies to construct an identity and build mystique around his administration. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
I’m an evangelical against Trump … and genocide. By Shane Claiborne / RNS
This week I was one of dozens of prominent Christian leaders invited to speak at a virtual event called “Evangelicals for Harris.” I was also invited to speak at the protests outside the Democrat National Convention, where thousands of activists are asking the Democrats inside the party’s national convention to demand an arms embargo on Israel before they lend their support to the Harris-Walz ticket.
My two invitations show the conflict I find myself facing this election season. A committed follower of Jesus, I see no way to defend Donald Trump, who has made a vocation out of the seven deadly sins. In addition, Trump promises to raise the death toll in Gaza, further fan the flames of hatred through the annexation of the West Bank and help annihilate the Palestinian people. Read more
Black praise in white pews: When your church doesn’t love you back. By J.C. Howard et al. / NPR
How do you participate in a faith practice that hasn’t had the best track record with racism? That’s what our NPR play-cousin J.C. Howard gets into in this week’s episode of Code Switch. He’s been reporting on Black Christians who, like him for a time, found their spiritual homes in white evangelical churches.
“Being a Christian has always been one of the primary ways that I identify, but finding my place in Christianity has been a journey,” J.C. says. And he wasn’t alone in making the shift to white evangelical spaces; in the past few decades, large Christian ministries have been reaching out to Black Christians to join their white-majority churches. Read more
Raphael Warnock Lights Up the Convention With a Preacher’s Fire. By Jeet Heer / The Nation
The Georgia senator showed why the Black church remains the cornerstone of the Democratic Party.
In his speech on Monday night, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock relied on the same set list as almost all the other speakers: the foulness of Trump’s January 6 insurrection, Covid-19 as a collective trauma that was overcome through solidarity, the Democrats as an inclusive party of the future that rejects “going back” to the reactionary past advocated by the GOP, the urgency of protecting reproductive freedom, the promise to fight to keep drug prices down. But if the tropes were familiar, what Warnock did with them stood out. He didn’t invent a new style but rather revived the tradition of the progressive Black preacher that has been rarely heard in national politics since the heyday of Jesse Jackson (who, as it happens, was honored that night). Read more
Tim Walz and the ‘good neighbor’ election. By Jim Mc Dermott / NCR
While Walz has a number of other appealing — and one might think more important — qualifications, what seems to be most exciting people about him and the campaign is this notion of the good neighbor.
“When you’re looking in the face of a stranger,” Harris told Walz in their conversation online, “you should see a neighbor.” No matter where we might each stand politically as Catholics, the idea that the 2024 presidential campaign may in part be fought over concerns for one’s neighbor should excite us. Love for one’s neighbor — and love understood in a very specific, active way — lies at the foundation of our ethics. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Tulsa Race Massacre victims found with gunshot wounds. By Thao Nguyen / USA Today
Three more victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, who were exhumed as part of the city’s ongoing investigation into graves from the massacre, were found with gunshot wounds, city officials said Friday.
The three additional gunshot victims were exhumed along with eight others during the latest excavation in Oaklawn Cemetery, according to state archaeologist Dr. Kary Stackelbeck. Nearly 50 graves have been exhumed – including the most recent excavation – since officials in Tulsa, Oklahoma, announced the 1921 Graves Investigation almost six years ago. Read more
60 Years Ago, Courage Confronted Racism at the Democratic Convention. By Margaret McMullian / The Bulwark
Aaron Henry, chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegation, speaks before the credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 22, 1964.
WHEN VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS takes the stage in Chicago on Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention to accept her party’s nomination for president of the United States, I will raise a glass to my grandmother from Newton, Mississippi and remember again the year she stood up to powerful, undemocratic white men. Thelma McMullan arrived as an alternate delegate at the 1964 Democratic convention in Atlantic City. She was a 57-year-old white woman from Mississippi. Her husband, Milton, 60 and white, was an official delegate of the Mississippi Democratic Party. Read more
Related: Fannie Lou Hamer: Maxine Waters Likens Kamala Harris At DNC. Editor at NewsOne
Beyonce’s foundation commits $500K to Black cowboys, Bill Picket Rodeo. By Cache McClay / USA Today
Beyoncé Knowles-Carter is not only highlighting Black cowboys and equestrian culture in her music, the superstar is is continuing to champion them through her foundation.
Most recently, the “Cowboy Carter” creator teamed up with the annual Bill Picket Rodeo and committed $500,000 in grants through her BeyGood foundation and its Black equestrian program, which supports programs that amplify Black cowboys, cowgirls and ranchers. Read more
Sports
Olympic gold medalist Noah Lyles challenged to race by Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill. By
Hill challenged Lyles to a 50-yard race Sunday, the latest in a series of barbs between the former Super Bowl champion and the American sprinter.
The feud began this month when Hill was asked on the “Up & Adams” podcast about Lyles’ comments that champions in American sports leagues shouldn’t be considered world champions. Lyles made the comments about NBA players last summer, drawing ire from those athletes and making him somewhat of a polarizing figure for a decorated Olympian. Hill, asked what would happen if they were to race, then added: “I would beat Noah Lyles. I wouldn’t beat him by a lot, but I would beat Noah Lyles.” Read more
Gabby Williams re-signs with Seattle Storm after stellar Paris Olympics. By AP
Gabby Williams is back with the Seattle Storm.
Williams, who helped France win a silver medal at the Olympics earlier this month, signed a rest-of-season contract with the Storm on Tuesday. She will start play next week when the Storm return from their current road trip. It’s her third season with Seattle after being acquired in a trade with Los Angeles prior to the start of the 2022 season. Read more
Brutal Reality Check Forces Coco Gauff to Accept Defeat and Step on the Backfoot – ‘Put Too Much Pressure..’ By Sayantan Roy / Essentially Sports
What’s the real pressure in life? To find this answer, let’s knock on the doors of someone who defeated Venus Williams at the age of 15 in Wimbledon and won the US Open title at 19. With those two emphatic triumphs at such a young age, Coco Gauff became one of the biggest names in the American tennis world.
The road to success brings in a lot of expectations, and expectations bring in a lot of added pressure. Although she has figured out a way or two on how to manage all these things, at times even Gauff feels that it’s too much pressure on herself and it’s time to take a step back. Read more
NBC’s ‘The Irrational’ Star Maahra Hill Shares Her Great-Grandfather William DeHart Hubbard’s Olympic Legacy. By Brenda Alexander / Blavity
While the world has had eyes on the Black excellence of Simone Biles, Noah Lyles, Gabby Thomas and more at 2024 Paris Olympics, another Black family has much to celebrate and reflect on as well.
NBC’s The Irrational star Maahra Hill’s great-grandfather, William DeHart Hubbard, was the first Black American to win gold in the long jump at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Now, the games are in Paris once again, 100 years later. Hill recently spoke to us about what her great-grandfather’s achievements mean for the legacy of Black athletes competing for the United States and more. Read more
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