Featured
What Trump’s Kamala Harris Smear Reveals. By Adam Serwer / The Atlantic
The former president is suggesting that Harris became Black only when it was obvious that being Black conferred social advantage.
The first iteration of birtherism was a synthesis of conservative ideology aimed at the first Black president, Barack Obama. It said that immigrants and nonwhite people had usurped the birthright of real Americans, who were white, and inverted the natural hierarchy of the nation.
The second iteration of birtherism, directed at Kamala Harris, who would be America’s second Black president, is similarly ideological. But it tells a different story, one in which Black identity confers an unfair advantage over white people—an advantage that is doubly unfair for Harris to seize because she is not truly Black. Read more
Related: Trump’s Racist Attack on Kamala Harris Was No Accident. By Susan B. Glasser / The New Yorker
Related: Larry Wilmore: There’s No Turning Back Once You ‘Turn’ Black / The Daily Beast
Political / Social
It’s Official! Kamala Harris Secures Democratic Presidential Nomination. By Capital B Staff
The vice president has made history as the first Black woman and Asian American to head a major party ticket.
In less than two weeks, Vice President Kamala Harris has ascended to launching a record-breaking presidential campaign and gaining enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination for president. Harris’ campaign made the announcement on Friday, days before the Aug. 7 deadline, multiple news outlets reported. Read more
Related: Trump agrees to debate on Fox News – but Harris insists on ABC. By Edward Helmore / The Guardian
Trump Is Suddenly Running Scared. By David A. Graham / The Atlantic
From the beginning, the campaign was going his way. Not anymore.
Somehow, it was just two weeks ago that Donald Trump headed into the Republican National Convention looking like a juggernaut. That all feels like a long time ago. As his campaign enters its final three months, Trump looks like a man off balance. His polling lead has evaporated, his campaign strategy is obsolete, and he’s flaunting his most offensive tendencies. “I want to be nice,” Trump said Saturday at a rally in Minnesota. “They all say, I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him. No, I haven’t changed—maybe I’ve gotten worse, actually.” Read more
Related: Donald Trump’s Divide-and-Conquer Scheme for Black America. By Jeet Heer / The Nation
Related: Trump is wrong about immigrants taking ‘Black jobs,’ economists say. By Max Zahn / ABC News
JD Vance Is An Investor In A Far Right Video Platform Filled With Neo-Nazi Content. By Hunter Walker / TPM
Vance has had a six-figure stake in Rumble, an online video platform.
The company has played host to Russian propaganda and to far-right personalities like Stew Peters and Tim Pool. It has also featured even more extreme content, including explicitly neo-Nazi images and themes like this song touting the “Reich” and calling for Jews to be placed in ovens from a “dissident rapper” with a dedicated page on the site. The site features a plethora of channels and videos dedicated to the concept of “white genocide,” which is a core belief for white supremacists. It also hosts channels for explicitly white supremacist organizations including VDare and Patriot Front, which has led masked demonstrations around the country. Read more
Joe Biden Issues a Stinging Dissent. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
The Supreme Court is caught in a crisis of its own making. We have, in other words, a corrupt and lawless court that, led by its conservative majority, has put itself above the constitutional system as the exclusive arbiter of constitutional meaning. The Constitution means whatever the Roberts court says it means, even when that meaning conflicts with the basic principles of American democracy.
It is against this backdrop of institutional dysfunction and judicial arrogance that President Biden, fresh from his decision to leave the campaign trail in favor of his vice president, introduced his three-point package of Supreme Court reforms. Biden is asking Congress to impose new ethics rules on the court, to deal with corruption. “Justices should be required to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest,” he writes. He is calling for a system of term limits in which “the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court.” Read more
Sonya Massey’s Killing Is Black America’s Sorrow. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
In the days before she was killed, Sonya Massey was having death premonitions. She kept telling her family that she was going to die, that someone was going to kill her. On July 6, a local sheriff’s deputy became the incarnation of her fears: He shot her in the face in her own kitchen.
The Washington Post has been tracking fatal police shootings since 2015. As The Post reports, these shootings have risen in recent years and in 2023 “police killed the highest number of people on record.” A disproportionate number of those killings were of Black people. According to The Post, Black Americans “are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans.” Read more
D’Vontaye Mitchell, who died after being pinned to the ground in Milwaukee, died from asphyxia and drugs, autopsy report says. By and
D’Vontaye Mitchell, the 43-year-old man who was pinned to the ground in June by security officers outside a Hyatt Regency hotel in Milwaukee, died from “restraint asphyxia and toxic effects of cocaine and methamphetamine,” according to an autopsy report released Friday by the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s office. The manner of death is homicide, the report states.
Mitchell died June 30 after he was pinned down by hotel security guards in an incident partially captured on video. Hotel employees have been fired since the incident, and police have referred four charges of felony murder in Mitchell’s death, Milwaukee police said in a statement to CNN at the time. A homicide investigation is ongoing. Read more
USDA issues payments to address discrimination against Black farmers. By Ximena Bustillo / NPR
Black farmers got $2 billion in USDA payments to address discrimination in farm loans. For decades, Black farmers and others have argued that they’ve been left behind by the USDA’s lending programs.
This week the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the rollout of a long-awaited program aimed at addressing past discrimination. For decades, Black farmers and others have argued that they’ve been left behind by the USDA’s lending programs. When running for president in 2020, Biden vowed to fix that and bring more equity to farming. Read more
World News
How Could Maduro’s Reign in Venezuela End? By Jack Nicas / NYT
History has shown that authoritarians often fall when security forces betray them. What does that mean for Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro?
President Nicolás Maduro, the authoritarian leader who has been in power since 2013, has declared himself the winner of another election that international observers have called undemocratic. His security forces have arrested hundreds of political opponents. And new protests against him appear to be losing steam. Read more
Key Black Muslim group backs Kamala Harris for president over Gaza stance. By Erum Salam / The Guardian
Black Muslim Leadership Council Fund says Harris has ‘shown more sympathy towards the people of Gaza’ than Biden or Trump
Kamala Harris has won the backing for her presidential bid of a key US Muslim organization that had declined to endorse Joe Biden before he withdrew from his re-election campaign. The switch to Harris was a sign that those who voted “uncommitted” instead of actively voting for Biden in the primary, because of their objections to his response to Israel’s war on Gaza, may have found an ally in his vice-president. Read more
Illegal border crossings hit Biden-era low. By Sergio Martínez-Beltrán / NPR
Many migrants in Mexico who have made the dangerous trek from Central America and South America, have had to wait months to get an asylum appointment because appointments are being distributed via a lottery system. The thousands of migrants in this border city face a choice: a long wait for an appointment, or attempt to cross the border illegally. But since last month, the latter option has become harder.
President Biden issued executive actions severely restricting asylum claims at the border, and migrants who cross are more likely to be removed from the country expeditiously. Under the new policy, the processing of most asylum claims at the southern U.S. border is suspended when the seven-day average of unauthorized crossings exceeds 2,500. The restriction could be suspended 14 days after the seven-day-average drops to 1,500 per day. Due to this rule and Mexico’s beefed-up enforcement, unauthorized crossings in June hit the lowest level since President Biden took office in 2021. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Indian and Black, Hindu and Baptist: The multiplicities of Kamala Harris. By Richa Karmarkar / RNS
Kamala Harris’ hyphenated identity has become a chance for Americans to discuss how one person can represent multiple religions and races at once.
The former president and current GOP candidate’s accounting of Harris’ racial identity was curious, given that American Hindus have at times felt that the vice president has muted her Indian and Hindu heritage in favor of her identity as a Black Baptist, wishing perhaps that Harris would take to heart a reminder she’d heard her immigrant mother, Shyamala Gopalan, that she did not “fall out of a coconut tree.” But many Americans have long been conscious of Harris’ racial background, as well as her religious identity as a Baptist in an interfaith marriage with a Jew, and regard it as exemplary of modern American religious belonging. Read more
Black Christian Leaders Find Hope with Kamala Harris. By Harvest Prude Christianity Today
Harris hasn’t shied away from talking about her deep roots in the Black church tradition. In a 2022 speech at the Annual Session of the National Baptist Convention, USA, the largest traditionally Black denomination in the country, Harris connected her faith and politics, crediting her childhood church experiences for giving her a framework for action.
“I was raised to live my faith,” Harris said. “Marching for civil rights, my parents pushed me in a stroller. That was faith in action.” Now her candidacy is motivating other Black Christians to action. Read more
Related: What the Talmud says about why men laugh at Kamala Harris’ laugh. By Joshua Hammerman / RNS
The Christian Case Against Trump. By Eliza Griswold / NYT (Image Rolling Stone)
In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, a video with images of Jesus crowned with thorns, blood running down his face, followed by photos of the former president circulated on social media. Days later, at the Republican National Convention, the evangelist Franklin Graham endorsed Mr. Trump from the stage, saying that “God spared his life.”
But the idea of Mr. Trump as chosen by God has infuriated those evangelicals who believe that he stands in direct opposition to their faith. Their existence highlights an often-overlooked fact about the American religious landscape: Evangelicals are not a monolith. Read more
Historical / Cultural
New book chronicles the formerly enslaved man crucial to creating Jack Daniel’s. By Geogg Bennett, Stephanie Kotuby and Alexa Gold / PBS
Jack Daniel’s is a famous whiskey brand, but Daniel didn’t create the method for distilling Tennessee whiskey.
He learned it from a formerly enslaved man named Nearest Green. Fawn Weaver created Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey to honor and preserve Green’s legacy and it’s now the most successful Black-owned liquor empire. Geoff Bennett sat down with Weaver to discuss her book, “Love and Whiskey.” Read more
White woman who wrongfully accused ‘Groveland Four’ of rape in Jim Crow-era South dies at 92. By , and
Norma Padgett Upshaw claimed the four men – Ernest Thomas, Samuel Shepherd, Charles Greenlee and Walter Irvin – sexually assaulted her in Groveland, Florida, about 30 miles west of Orlando, when she was 17. The group, who came to be called the “Groveland Four,” became the faces of the case considered one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Jim Crow-era Florida.
In 2019, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued full posthumous pardons to the Groveland Four. “For seventy years, these four men have had their history wrongly written for crimes they did not commit. As I have said before, while that is a long time to wait, it is never too late to do the right thing,” DeSantis said in the statement at the time. Read more
How a Supreme Court decision kept school segregation alive. By Michelle Adams / Wash Post
20 years after Brown — 50 years ago this summer — the Supreme Court decided another case that effectively stopped the promise of Brown in its tracks. Milliken v. Bradley is far less famous than Brown, but it should be better known, since it’s one of the primary reasons schools are, in practice, still so segregated today.
In the South, schools were segregated on the basis of race through state and local legislation; that was what Brown v. Board of Education was all about. That wasn’t the case in Detroit, but the schools were segregated anyway. Why? School authorities simply incorporated residential segregation right into the schools. Requiring a child to attend school in her neighborhood effectively determined the racial composition of the schools. It was this kind of rule, which on its face seemed innocuous but in operation was anything but, that was the essence of northern Jim Crow. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that suburban school districts that had not formally engaged in racial discrimination themselves could not be included in a larger, metropolitan integration plan. Read more
Reflections on James Baldwin 100 years after his birth. By Wallter Ray Watson / NPR
James Baldwin was born 100 years ago, on Aug. 2, 1924, in Harlem Hospital.
He wrote in 1955, “I love America more than any other country in this world and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” Baldwin died on Dec. 1 at the age of 63 at his home in the south of France. NPR asked four people for their reflections on the writer. Read more
Related: James Baldwin Legacy Of Influencing Musicians Endures. By Matthew C. Allen / Newsone
Related: The Brilliance in James Baldwin’s Letters. By Vann R. Newkirk II / The Atlantic
Related: James Baldwin’s unrequited love affair with Hollywood. Bob Mondello / NPR
White House chef, first woman and person of color in role, retires after nearly 30 years. By AP and NBC News
First lady Jill Biden thanked Cris Comerford, who is Filipina American, for her decades of service to five presidents.
Cris Comerford is the first woman to hold the job, and is also the first person of color to be executive chef. Her last day was Friday. First lady Jill Biden thanked her for her service in a statement on Tuesday. “I always say, food is love. Through her barrier-breaking career, Chef Cris has led her team with warmth and creativity, and nourished our souls along the way,” Jill Biden said in a statement. “With all our hearts, Joe and I are filled with gratitude for her dedication and years of service.” Read more
Sports
St. Lucia gets its first gold medal, thanks to the world’s fastest woman. Ben Shpigel Talya Minsberg Chang W. Lee Gabriela Bhaskar and Daniel Berehula / NYT
Julien Alfred, the fastest woman in the Caribbean nation of Saint Lucia, blitzed the field in the 100-meter dash Saturday night at the Paris Games to earn a far more awesome title — the fastest woman in the world.
She swiped the distinction from Sha’Carri Richardson of the United States, who claimed it at the world championships last year but could not retain it at these Olympics. In a driving rain in Saint-Denis, France, Alfred finished in 10.72 seconds, 0.15 clear of Richardson, who was slow off the starting block and never seriously threatened. Read more
Related: Can we stop trying to control Black Olympians’ hair? By Nardos Haile / Salon
Black Women in Sports You Should Be Watching. By Noah A McGee / The Root
With the 2024 Paris Olympics here, Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles, and many other Black women are in the middle of the sports world.
With the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics officially here, it’s only right that we showcase some of the Black women in sports who are demonstrating their skills to the world. You already know names like Simone Biles and A’Ja Wilson, but here are some others you should be paying attention to. Read more
Dream Team dreaming: How great can this U.S. men’s basketball team still be? By Joe Vardon / The Athletic
As the U.S. men’s team starts its Olympic run Sunday, it begins with a roster that has drawn countless comparisons to the Dream Team. The link arrived even before formal selections were made, with a spot for the Paris Games an alluring draw for top NBA talent because of the commitments of megastars like LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant.
The most likely scenario is the U.S. battles through six games in France and emerges with a fifth consecutive gold medal. Durant wins an Olympic-record fourth gold in men’s basketball. James gets his third medal; Curry and Embiid get their first in their first Olympics. Maybe none of them play again for the U.S. team. At this tournament, they deliver U.S. fans fond, lasting memories through clutch performances in tight games. Read more
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