Featured
How MAGA Is Already Justifying The Use Of Military Force At Home If Trump Wins. By Josh Kovensky / TPM ( Image Jakart)
Many MAGA influencers have an apocalyptic story to tell about the country, the political divide, and where we’re all headed, and they’re already using it to lay the groundwork for crossing what has long been a red line: deploying the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.
In this MAGA fever dream, everyone has their part to play. They believe that they’ll be caught up in it; you might be, too. It goes something like this: If Donald Trump wins in November, people will protest. Riots will break out. The left, they theorize, will go all-out to stoke organized violence around the country, clearing the way for a newly inaugurated Trump administration to step in and make unprecedented, widespread use of the U.S. military to restore law and order. Read more
Political / Social
Kamala Harris Begins to Sketch a New Economic Vision. By Jen Harris / NYT
Kamala Harris is beginning to offer the first definitive clues of a new economic vision — one with the potential not only to offer a unifying vision for the Democratic Party but also to serve as the foundation for a governing philosophy that crosses party lines.
This new story has two themes — call them “build” and “balance.” The first focuses on pointing and shaping markets toward worthy aims; the second corrects upstream power imbalances so that market outcomes are fairer and need less after-the-fact redistribution. Read more
Related: How busing, school desegregation shaped Kamala Harris’s views of race. By Laura Meckler / Wash Post
More than 200 former Bush, McCain and Romney staffers endorse Harris. By
More than 200 Republicans who worked for both Bush presidents, the late Sen. John McCain and Sen. Mitt Romney declared their endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign in an open letter released Monday.
The letter comes after several Republicans who are openly critical of former President Donald Trump delivered remarks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week. n their letter, which was first reported by USA Today, the former staff members noted that they had come out against Trump during the 2020 election cycle and said they “jointly declare that we’re voting for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz this November.” Read more
Related: Will Harris or Trump win military vote? Democrats are gaining ground. By Marla Bautista / USA Today
Dems Mount Legal Challenge Against Trump-Backed Georgia Election Board’s New Rules. By Khaya Himmelman / TPM
Democrats are suing to block a series of new rules recently enacted by the Trump-endorsed Georgia State Election Board.
The lawsuit was filed in Fulton County on Monday by the Democratic National Committee, the Georgia Democratic Party and Democratic members of several election boards. The plaintiffs are asking the court to pause enforcement of the rules and to declare that, according to Georgia law, election board members do not have the power to delay certification or to not certify results at all. Read more
The Conservatives Who Sold Their Souls for Trump. By Tom Nichols / The Atlantic
The rage and shame of the anti-anti-Trumpers is getting worse.
Some of the conservatives who rejected Trump stayed the course and became the Never Trump movement. Others, apparently, decided that never didn’t mean “never.” Power is power, and if getting the right judges and cutting the right taxes has to include stomping on the rule of law and endangering American national security, well, that’s a price that the stoic right-wingers of the greater Washington, D.C., and New York City metropolitan areas were willing to pay. Read more
Related: Infiltrating the Far Right. By David D. Kilpatrick / The New Yorker
Texas AG Ken Paxton raids homes of Latino civil rights members, setting up a voting rights showdown. By and
Raids on the homes of several Democrats in South Texas, in what the state attorney general said is an ongoing election integrity investigation, has set off a showdown with the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights group. LULAC leaders and others whose homes were raided protest Monday in San Antonio.
The Aug. 20 raids targeted Manuel Medina, chair of the Tejano Democrats, several members of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a state House candidate and a local area mayor. Read more
Related: Latino Civil Rights Group Demands Inquiry Into Texas Voter Fraud Raids. Edgar Sandoval / NYT
This powerful labor leader thinks he should run New Jersey. By Daniel Han / Politico
New Jersey Education Association President Sean Spiller is running for governor with the backing of his deep-pocketed, 200,000-member teachers’ union
It’s not Spiller’s first time running for public office. He most recently served one term as mayor of suburban Montclair, where he implemented a local rent control ordinance that could earn plaudits from progressives. But his tenure as mayor was also marked with controversy; the town’s chief financial officer accused Spiller of retaliating against her after she filed a whistleblower complaint against Montclair officials. Read more
“How Many More?” Attorney Ben Crump on Latest in Breonna Taylor, Tyre Nichols & Roger Fortson Cases. Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
A federal judge in Kentucky has thrown out felony charges against two former Louisville police officers for their roles in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in 2020. Taylor was a Black 26-year-old emergency medical technician and aspiring nurse. Since then, only one officer has been found guilty of playing a role in Taylor’s death, admitting to falsifying a no-knock warrant that claimed police had evidence of drug dealings taking place in Taylor’s home. No drugs were ever found and the two cops who fatally shot Taylor have never been charged.
This lack of accountability is part of a “systematic pattern of disrespect” of Black women, says civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Breonna Taylor’s family. Crump also discusses the latest developments in the cases against police officers accused of excessive force in the widely publicized deaths of Tyre Nichols in Tennessee and Roger Fortson in Florida. Read more
Report Identifies Decline in Black Male HBCU Enrollment. By Johnny Jackson / Diverse Issues in Higher Ed.
Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) experienced a drastic decline in Black student enrollment during the decade between 2010 and 2020, according to a new report from the non-partisan research group, American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM).
While Black males accounted for 38% of students at HBCUs in 1976, they now represent only 26% (which is also fewer in number compared to 1976), according to the report. Notwithstanding, the steady increase in non-Black students — now up to 26% of HBCU enrollments — has offset Black male declines. Read more
Heman Bekele Is TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year. By Jeffrey Kluger / Time
Heman Bekele whipped up the most dangerous of what he called his “potions” when he was just over 7 years old. He’d been conducting his own science experiments for about three years by that point, mixing up whatever he could get his hands on at home and waiting to see if the resulting goo would turn into anything.
These days, a whole lot of people are paying him a whole lot of attention. Last October, the 3M company and Discovery Education selected Heman, a rising 10th-grader at Woodson High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, as the winner of its Young Scientist Challenge. His prize: $25,000. His accomplishment: inventing a soap that could one day treat and even prevent multiple forms of skin cancer. Read more
World News
Russia warns the United States of the risks of World War Three. Guy Faulconbridge and Vladimir Soldatkin / Yahoo News
Russia said the West was playing with fire by considering allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with Western missiles and cautioned the United States on Tuesday that World War Three would not be confined to Europe.
Ukraine attacked Russia’s western Kursk region on Aug. 6 and has carved out a slice of territory in the biggest foreign attack on Russia since World War Two. President Vladimir Putin said there would be a worthy response from Russia to the attack. Sergei Lavrov, who has served as Putin’s foreign minister for more than 20 years, said that the West was seeking to escalate the Ukraine war and was “asking for trouble” by considering Ukrainian requests to loosen curbs on using foreign-supplied weapons. Read more
“Colonial Process”: How U.S.-Led Ceasefire Talks Are Latest Erasure of Roots of Arab-Israeli Conflict. Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri responds to the latest exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah and the drawn-out ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, which Khouri calls a “fictitious political dynamic” that is primarily used as diplomatic cover for Israel’s warfare.
“The ceasefire talks should not be taken very seriously as an effort to bring about a ceasefire,” he says. “It’s pretty clear now that the ceasefire negotiations today are the equivalent of the so-called peace process in the bigger Arab-Israeli conflict over the last 40 years.” Read more
Related: The US diplomatic strategy on Israel and Gaza is not working. By Daniel Levy / The Guardian
Related: Is a New Palestinian Movement Being Born? By Arash Azizi / The Atlantic
Africa’s Debt Crisis Has ‘Catastrophic Implications’ for the World. Patricia Cohen / NYT
Crushing obligations to foreign creditors that have few precedents have sapped numerous African nations of growth and stoked social instability. Proposed tax increases resulted in deadly protests in Kenya this summer.
The continent’s foreign debt reached more than $1.1 trillion at the end of last year. More than two dozen countries have excessive debt or are at high risk of it, according to the African Development Bank Group. And roughly 900 million people live in countries that spend more on interest payments than on health care or education. Read more
Why is Europe so far ahead of the US in women leaders? By Lenora Chu / CSM
No woman has ever been president of the United States. And Kamala Harris is only the second in history to be a major political party’s nominee for the post.
However, Germany has already been led by Angela Merkel and the United Kingdom by Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May, and Liz Truss. Giorgia Meloni, Mette Frederiksen, Ingrida Šimonytė, and Evika Siliņa are the current heads of government for Italy, Denmark, Lithuania, and Latvia, respectively. And Ursula von der Leyen was just tapped for another term in one of the European Union’s most powerful positions, president of the European Commission. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Kamala Harris’ heritage draws attention to Hinduism’s complex history in Caribbean. By Richa Karmarkar / RNS
For many who claim Indo-Caribbean heritage, Vice President Kamala Harris’ spotlight is the perfect chance to dive into the community’s lesser-known past: where indigenous faiths and cultural traditions found more in common than not.
A standard feature in any biography of Kamala Harris is the fact her parents — one a Hindu from India, the other a Baptist from Jamaica — met at the University of California, Berkeley, where they were both students in the 1960s. In this sense the vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee embodies a heritage shared by millions across the Caribbean basin and the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, many of whom are now talking about the sudden possibility that the next U.S. president could be of Indian and Jamaican heritage, and a person who claims to “know the lyrics to nearly every Bob Marley song” to this day. Read more
Trump’s Evangelical Supporters Just Lost Their Best Excuse. By Peter Wehner / The Atlantic
The pro-life justification for supporting the former president has now collapsed.
The most common argument made by former President Donald Trump’s evangelical supporters in defense of their support is that although Trump may not be a moral exemplar, what matters most in electing a president is his policies. And for them, abortion is primus inter pares. But the pro-life justification for supporting Trump has just collapsed. Trump, who described himself as “strongly pro-choice” in the 1990s—including support for so-called partial-birth abortion—has returned to his socially liberal ways. “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” he recently declared on Truth Social. Kamala Harris couldn’t have stated it any more emphatically. Read more
Related: Anti-Trump evangelical Christians make the case for Harris. By Katherine Stewart / RNS
National Baptist Convention, USA: What to know about largest Black Protestant group in US. By Liam Adams / The Tennessean
The National Baptist Convention, U.S.A. (NBCUSA) is gathering in Baltimore for its 2024 annual session and most importantly will decide on new leadership.
The National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., which often is known as the NBCUSA, is one of four major Black Baptist denominations in the U.S. and is the oldest and largest of the four. Though reports on statistics about the denomination have been inconsistent for the past decade, the NBCUSA says on its website its estimated total membership is 7.5 million. An external reporting citing the most recently available data, which is from 2010, estimates total membership at 5.2 million and total churches is 10,358. Read more
Historical / Cultural
The Rights of American Slaves. By Jerusalem Demsas / The Atlantic
The hidden history of how some enslaved people exercised legal rights
There’s a traditional narrative about the history of Black people and the law. It describes how slaves were entirely shut out of the legal system, disenfranchised and bereft of even a modicum of legal know-how or protection. The UC Berkeley professor Dylan C. Penningroth upends this narrative in his book Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights, which traces the forgotten history of how slaves used the law—how they forged contract and property rights and other “rights of everyday use.” Read more
Journalist withheld information about Emmett Till’s murder, documents show. By Gillian Brockell / Wash Post
William Bradford Huie’s newly released research notes show he suspected more than two men tortured and killed 14-year-old Emmett Till, but suggest that he left that out when it threatened his story.
A journalist whose 1956 article was billed as the “true account” of Emmett Till’s killing withheld credible information about people involved in the crime, according to newly discovered documents. William Bradford Huie’s article in Look magazine helped shape the country’s understanding of 14-year-old Till’s abduction, torture and slaying in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. The article detailed the confessions of two White men who previously had been acquitted by an all-White jury in the killing. The men told Huie they had no accomplices. Yet Huie’s own research notes, recently released by the descendants of a lawyer in the case, indicate his reporting showed that others were involved and suggest he chose to leave that out when it threatened the sale of his story. He also was seeking a movie deal about the killing and had agreed to pay the two acquitted men, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, part of the proceeds. Read more
How Raleigh once demolished a Black neighborhood and displaced more than 1,000 people. By John Shaffer / News Observer and Yahoo News
In 1971, Raleigh began destroying one of its oldest and largest Black neighborhoods when Mayor Seby Jones smacked the first house with a gold-plated sledgehammer.
By the time it finished, Raleigh had wiped out roughly 600 homes and 60 businesses just south of downtown, toppling Church of Christ and mowing down the Blue Front Grocery. Battle Street, Grape Street, Jamaica Street and Cuba Street all disappeared. An estimated 1,600 people, nearly all of them Black, packed up and left the century-old community known as Fourth Ward — the disowned child of Oak City history. Read more
Why people stay after local economies collapse − a story of home among the ghosts of shuttered steel mills. By
Between 1875 and 1990, the employment offered here by eight steel mills created a dense network of working-class neighborhoods on the marshlands 15 miles south of downtown Chicago. For the tens of thousands of employees who lived and worked in this region, steel was a rare breed of work: unionized, blue-collar jobs that paid middle-class wages, with starting salaries in the 1960s at nearly three times the minimum wage.
Its collapse was devastating to people living in the neighborhood, Simonetta told me. As mill after mill shuttered in the last two decades of the 20th century, people began to leave to find new work – mostly service jobs – located far from southeast Chicago’s economic depression. As we stared at the silent street, I asked them, “Why did you stay?” For many long-term residents, moving elsewhere was economically impossible. Depressed housing values meant they couldn’t recoup their investments by selling, and the process of moving is itself expensive. Yet they also argued that owning their house offered them a little piece of stability in the early years of unemployment. Read more
Prison drama ‘Sing Sing’ captures faith of the formerly incarcerated. By Zachary Lee / RNS
The new prison drama “Sing Sing” points the camera at the humanity of men who have been imprisoned, touching on themes of faith, hope, love, confession and redemption — and employs those formerly incarcerated to play on-screen versions of themselves. Colman Domingo, left, and Clarence Maclin in “Sing Sing.”
Based on the real-life story of the maximum security prison’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program, founded in 1996, the film follows inmates who form a theater troupe while serving their sentences, processing their emotions through musical performance and acting. The cast includes Academy Award-nominated actors Colman Domingo and Paul Raci. Domingo plays John “Divine G” Whitfield, one of the founding members of RTA, imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. Raci plays Brent Buell, a playwright and theater director who volunteered at the RTA program at Sing Sing for more than a decade. Read more
Sports
The King’s co-sign: Why LeBron James’ presidential endorsement matters. By Justin Tinsley / Andscape
The history and weight of what James’ political voice means
James has been a public figure for more than two-thirds of his life. For much of that time, his voice, as it relates to political, social and cultural matters, has been as polarizing as his nearly 25-year NBA career. That attention carries a cachet that very few in the world can mimic. James has yet to endorse a candidate this year, but if history is any indicator, one shouldn’t expect it to be former president Donald Trump. The relationship between them in the last decade has been contentious. A month after Trump’s victory in 2016, James was asked if his decision not to stay in Trump’s SoHo hotel, the usual Cavaliers’ residence when the team played in New York, was a political declaration. “It’s just my personal preference,” James said. Read more
Molly Qerim preventing First Take becoming ‘war zone’ behind the scenes as Stephen A. Smith tensions rise again. By Steve Brenner and Bob Williams / The U.S. SUN
The ESPN star is not afraid to stand up to Stephen A. and Shannon Sharpe. Qerim is playing the role of peacemaker – both in front of and behind the camera – to keep the ESPN debate show a huge success.
There is a heated environment backstage at the daily ESPN debate show, with staff and on-air talent not seeing eye-to-eye. According to an insider, workers are reportedly fed up with the behavior and attitude of Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe, which is creating a huge gap and tensions inside the show. Meanwhile, there is a feeling that Chris “Mad Dog” Russo is taking Stephen A.’s side behind the scenes, which has only served to inflame bad feelings even more. Read more
Jalen Hurts and the pursuit of perfection. By Martenzie Johnson / Andscape
The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback has a lot to live up to this season. No matter the obstacle – offseason talk, a rocky 2023 season – his discipline, purpose remain.
Constantly seeking perfection can be somewhat of a fool’s errand. Making mistakes is a way of life, a learning experience in and of itself. Hurts likes to say that “you either win or you learn.” No quarterback has ever finished a season with a 100% completion percentage or perfect passer rating. Only the 1972 Miami Dolphins finished a season undefeated — and that was back when the NFL played a 14-game regular season. Read more
The ‘skill’ beef: Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas fire back at Anthony Edwards over dig at older generation. By Mark Puleo / The Athletic
“I didn’t watch it back in the day so I can’t speak on it,” Edwards, who was born in 2001, said. “They say it was tougher back then than it is now, but I don’t think anybody had skill back then. (Michael Jordan) was the only one that really had skill, you know what I mean? So that’s why when they saw Kobe (Bryant), they were like, ‘Oh, my God.’ But now everybody has skill.”
That chirp didn’t land well on Johnson’s ears. The Los Angeles Lakers legend, who won five titles in the 1980s, told ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith that Edwards needs a ring of his own before he can start making such claims. “I don’t never respond to a guy that’s never won a championship,” Johnson said. “There’s not nothing to really say. He didn’t win a college championship, I don’t know if he even won a high school championship.” Read more
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