Featured
Why Tim Walz Will Be a Potent Weapon for Kamala Harris. By Ross Barkan / NYT (Image ABC)
Mr. Walz’s strengths are clear: He spent over a decade as a public-school teacher and football coach and served in the Army National Guard; in 2006, he flipped a Republican-held House district in rural Minnesota and beat back G.O.P. opposition in several trying election cycles. He’s relatively progressive and a gun owner.
Two other factors work in his favor: Progressives like him, and he performs well on television. The latter may have mattered even more to Ms. Harris’s team. Mr. Walz rocketed to prominence by lashing Republicans as “weird,” which became something of a rallying cry after the criticism of JD Vance’s comment about “childless cat ladies.” Read more
Related: Democrats Have Needed Someone Like Tim Walz for Decades. By Sarah Smarsh / NYT
Related: Kamala’s V.P. Pick Sparks Major Endorsements That Should Scare Trump. By Paige Oamek / TNR
Political / Social
The Willful Amnesia Behind Trump’s Attacks on Harris’s Identity. By Nicole Hannah-Jones / NYT
Suggesting that there is something contrived about a mixed-race person identifying as Black assumes that the choice wasn’t already made for her.
I cannot say exactly how I knew I was Black before my dad sat us down, but I knew. Everyone knew. With my white family I was not white but part white. With my Black family and in the rest of America, I was Black. In American society, this race rule is so embedded that it is not even questioned. Read more
Surprise Poll Reveals a Key Trump Weakness Against Kamala Harris. By Greg Sargent / TNR
A new survey finds Harris substantially ahead of Trump among Latinos, a sign that she may be rebuilding the Democratic coalition—which is essential to defeating him.
Now a new poll—apparently the first large-sample poll of Latinos since Harris became presumptive Democratic nominee—provides fresh grounds for that optimism. It finds that Harris holds a nearly 20-point lead over Donald Trump among Hispanics in the battleground states, a surprisingly large expansion of Biden’s ailing support among them—and that her candidacy has room to grow that lead, suggesting she may be putting back in play Sun Belt states that appeared lost under Biden. Read more
Related: This Bill Aims to Strip Trump’s Immunity. By Elie Mystal / The Nation
The Clarence Thomas Saga Won’t Stop. By Eric Lutz / Vanity Fair
The Clarence Thomas ethics scandal has deepened again, giving Democrats yet another reason to push for Supreme Court reform.
In a letter Monday, Democrat Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said the Supreme Court justice had failed to disclose even more travel paid for by conservative donor Harlan Crow—this time, private jet trips for Thomas and his wife between Hawaii and New Zealand in 2010. Read more
Cori Bush loses St. Louis primary in race defined by Israel criticism. By Karissa Waddick / USA Today
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., suffered a bruising defeat in her St. Louis district on Tuesday night, becoming the second member of the progressive group of House lawmakers known as “the Squad” to lose a Democratic primary to a more moderate opponent this year.
Bush, a second-term lawmaker, was bested in the Democratic race for Missouri’s 1st District by St. Louis prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell, who was backed by a major pro-Israel group. The race was the second most expensive House primary in U.S. history, taking a back seat only to the contest earlier this year for Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s Bronx-area seat, according to the group ad impact. Read more
Democrats call for answers on Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation. By Kiara Alfonseca / ABC News
At least 38 Democratic members of Congress signed a letter sent Monday to the president of the Heritage Foundation requesting he meet with lawmakers to discuss Project 2025 and release the undisclosed fourth pillar of the project called the “180-Day Playbook.”
“Our offices are increasingly hearing from constituents worried about the impact of Project 2025 on the future of our nation,” read the letter obtained exclusively by ABC News. “A growing number of Americans are concerned that Project 2025, which you describe as ‘a second American revolution,’ poses an unprecedented threat to our democracy, reproductive freedoms, public education, LGBTQIA+ rights, our economy, environment, public health and more.” Read more
Racism and discrimination lead to faster aging through brain network changes, new study finds. By Negar Fani and Nathaniel Harnett / The Conversation
Racism steals time from people’s lives – possibly because of the space it occupies in the mind. In a new study published in the journal JAMA Network Open, our team showed that the toll of racism on the brain was linked to advanced aging, observed on a cellular level.
Black women who were more frequently exposed to racism showed stronger connections in brain networks involved with rumination and vigilance. We found that this, in turn, was connected to accelerated biological aging. Read more
Historically Black Medical Schools Land a $600 Million Donation. Anemona Hartocollis and Alan Blinder / NYT
Bloomberg Philanthropies gives what are thought to be record-breaking gifts to the endowments of Meharry Medical College, Morehouse and Howard University.
Through his charitable organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Mr. Bloomberg is giving $175 million each to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta and Howard University College of Medicine in Washington. These donations are believed to be the largest ever to any single H.B.C.U., surpassing the $100 million gift that Spelman College in Atlanta announced in January. The foundation is also giving $75 million to Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles and an additional $5 million to help start a new medical school at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans. Read more
D’Vontaye Mitchell death: Four people are charged with felony murder. By and
Four hotel workers were charged Tuesday with felony murder in connection with the June death of a Black man who authorities say was pinned to the ground outside a downtown Milwaukee hotel in an encounter partially captured on video, court documents show.
The charges relate to the June 30 death of 43-year-old D’Vontaye Mitchell, who was held down for about eight to nine minutes outside the Hyatt Regency, according to the charging documents. Arrest warrants have been issued for the four people charged in the case, the office of Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said Tuesday. Read more
World News
What Tim Walz Could Mean For Kamala Harris’s Stance on Gaza and Israel. By Jonah Valdez / The Intercept
Walz allows for Harris to “turn a corner” in her policy on the war in Gaza, said James Zogby, president of Arab American Institute.
Walz, who has the support of prominent progressive members from his state, Rep. Ilhan Omar and Attorney General Keith Ellison, showed a softer approach to protesters critical of Israel’s war that aligns more with Harris, Zogby noted. Read more
Middle East Braces for Possible Wider War as Tensions Boil After Israeli Attacks on Lebanon, Iran. By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
President Biden met with his national security team Monday, and the U.S. CENTCOM commander arrived in Israel earlier today. Foreign embassies are evacuating their citizens from Lebanon and the region.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “We are engaged in intense diplomacy, pretty much around the clock, with a very simple message: All parties must refrain from escalation. All parties must take steps to ease tensions. Escalation is not in anyone’s interests. It will only lead to more conflict, more violence, more insecurity.” Read more
She Thought Her Grip Was Unbreakable. Bangladeshis Would Prove Otherwise. Mujib Mashal / NYT
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who once brought democratic hope to Bangladesh, turned increasingly autocratic and met her downfall in a crackdown on protesters.
Ms. Hasina’s hasty exit comes just months after she had secured a fourth consecutive five-year term in office and thought her grip on power was unbreakable. In her wake she leaves a Bangladesh plunged back into the chaos and violence that have marked the country from the beginning, when her father helped bring the nation into being. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Trump’s ‘beautiful Christians’ are not the only ones whose values matter. By Ministers of Middle Church / RNS
The former president’s suggestion that he alone can fix our problems should raise alarms for any believer.
Last week, speaking at the Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit, former President Donald Trump urged the crowd of conservative evangelical Christians to show up for him at the ballot in November, saying, “In four more years, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” But whatever Trump’s intent, American Christians should be gravely offended by Trump’s exhortation, which violates core tenets of our faith, and by his implication that we would ever abandon our robust engagement with how we are governed. Read more
Five faith facts about Harris pick Tim Walz, a ‘Minnesota Lutheran’ dad. By Jack Jenkins / NCR
If elected, Walz would be either the first or second Lutheran vice president of the United States, depending on how you count it
Walz is Lutheran, as is more than 20% of the Minnesota population according to Pew Research Center, making it one of if not the most Lutheran state in the U.S. thanks to a wave of Scandinavian Lutherans who settled in the region in the 19th century. He does not often discuss his faith publicly but has posted about attending worship during Christmas and other services at various Lutheran churches. Walz refers to Pilgrim Lutheran Church in St. Paul — a congregation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a mainline denomination — as “my parish.” Read more
A new movement aims to remake evangelicals’ relationship to politics. By Michelle Boorstein / Wash Post
Over the past decade, Clint Leavitt saw different models of how to mix his evangelical faith and politics, none of them — to his mind — good. His family’s dinner table was consumed with debate over whether Barack Obama was the Antichrist. Even as his Phoenix church avoided political issues, he saw Christians around the country turn Donald Trump into a religious idol.
So Leavitt, preparing for a bruising 2024 election season, joined a new national group of theologically conservative pastors who talk weekly about how to reject polarization and religious nationalism and to defend democracy. Read more
Two Paths for Jewish Politics. By Corey Robin / The New Yorker
In America, Jews pioneered a way of life that didn’t rely on the whims of the powerful. Now it’s under threat.
History seldom offers any lessons, but this one is clear. American Jews pioneered a new way of being Jewish and democratic. They did it in coalition with other subjugated groups. In the twentieth century, their lodestar was a multiracial egalitarian society. The fading of that vision is a symptom not of rising fascism or even increasing antisemitism but of regression—to an early, eerie, European way of doing things. It’s not good for democracy. And it’s never been good for the Jews. Read more
Historical / Cultural
As the Voting Rights Act Nears 60, Conservative Judges Are Gutting It From Every Angle. By Ari Berman / Mother Jones
“Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield,” President Lyndon Johnson declared 59 years ago today, as he signed the Voting Rights Act into law at the US Capitol. The landmark civil rights law transformed American politics, enfranchising millions of voters of color, but as it nears 60-years-old, the Voting Rights Act is under attack from every angle by a conservative-dominated judiciary.
The most serious blow came from the Supreme Court in the 2013 decision Shelby County v. Holder, which ruled that states with a long history of voting discrimination no longer needed to approve their election changes with the federal government. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that “things have changed dramatically” in the South, but since the ruling nearly 100 restrictive voting laws have been passed in at least 29 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In the decade since Shelby, Trump appointees on the nation’s lower courts have taken a wrecking ball to what remains of the VRA. Read more
A century after Tulsa Race Massacre, city creates reparations committee. By Kyle Melnick / Wash Post
A commission will study how reparations could be made to victims of the 1921 violence, while Oklahoma archaeologists discover new sets of human remains.
More than a century after one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history left scores of Black people dead in Tulsa, the mayor announced Thursday that the city would form a commission to study how reparations could be made to survivors and their descendants. The announcement was followed Friday by news that an Oklahoma archaeology team had exhumed another set of human remains with a gunshot wound — a haunting reminder of the mob violence that ripped through 35 square blocks of what was once a wealthy Black community. Read more
What unites Trump and Hitler: “Fierce determination and self-imposed blindness.” By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Why the lies and bluster keep working: For both Hitler and Trump, says Timothy Ryback, “the medium is the message”
This is the second part of my recent interview with historian Timothy Ryback, director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague and the author, most recently, of “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power.” (Read the first part here.) His earlier books on the Third Reich include “Hitler’s First Victims,” “Hitler’s Private Library” and “The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau.” Read more
Related: How Trump and Black Lives Matter Combined to Change American Politics. By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
Related: Musicians Who Object To Donald Trump Using Their Music. By Phenix S. Halley / The Root
How Tribal Nations Are Reclaiming Oklahoma. By Rachel Monroe / The New Yorker
After the Supreme Court ruled in favor of tribal interests, suddenly nearly half of the state was Native territory. What exactly does that mean? Chuck Hoskin, Jr., the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, said, “There’s plenty of people waiting on us to fall short, so they can say, ‘See? They can’t handle it.’ ”
In McGirt v. Oklahoma, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a nineteenth-century treaty between the Muscogee Creek Nation and the U.S. was still in effect. The 5–4 decision ultimately resulted in the restoration of land to eight tribes and the conclusion that nearly half of Oklahoma, including most of the city of Tulsa, seventy miles northwest of Tahlequah, was tribal territory. Read more
The Last Survivors of an Atomic Bomb Have a Story to Tell. By Kathleen Kingsbury, W.J. Hennigan and Spencer Cohen / NYT
When the United States dropped an atomic weapon on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, the entire citizenries of both countries were working feverishly to win World War II. For most Americans, the bomb represented a path to victory after nearly four relentless years of battle and a technological advance that would cement the nation as a geopolitical superpower for generations. Our textbooks talk about the world’s first use of a nuclear weapon.
Many today in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the United States detonated a bomb just three days later, talk about how those horrible events must be the last uses of nuclear weapons. Read more
Women Of Color Face An ‘Epidemic Of Invisibility’ On Screen — And It’s Not Getting Any Better. By
In 2023, of the top 100 highest-earning movies at the box office, just 14 featured women of color as leads or co-leads, down from 18 in 2022.
The entertainment industry’s persistent intransigence on racial and gender equity is a perennial finding of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which has annually examined diversity in front of and behind the camera since 2007. The group’s latest report warns that this abysmal cycle is likely to continue as Hollywood companies roll back their previously lauded diversity initiatives, cut costs and prioritize risk-averse choices — despite mountains of research showing that diversity is essential to Hollywood’s survival. Read more
The Dark Delight of Being Strange. Black Stories of Freedom / By James B. Haile III
An ambitious genre-crossing exploration of Black speculative imagination, The Dark Delight of Being Strange combines fiction, historical accounts, and philosophical prose to unveil the extraordinary and the surreal in everyday Black life.
In a series of stories and essays, James B. Haile, III, traces how Black speculative fiction responds to enslavement, racism, colonialism, and capitalism and how it reveals a life beyond social and political alienation. Read more
Sports
Noah Lyles gives U.S. sprinting its swag back with Olympic gold in the 100 meters.
With its first gold medal in the event since 2004, the confident Lyles ended a 20-year American drought
It’s probably time to stop the handwringing about the state of sprinting in the United States. On Sunday, three U.S. sprinters reached the finals of the 100 meters. In one of the closest finals in Olympic history, the leader of the pack—Noah Lyles—pulled out a victory with nothing left to spare. It took a near-perfect race and a dip at the end, but the 27-year-old Lyles edged out Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson with a personal best time of 9.784 seconds. Thompson also ran a 9.79, but Lyles finished 0.005 of a second faster. Lyles’s teammate, Fred Kerley, won the bronze. Read more
We came for a mic drop. Simone Biles gave us a fitting final bow. By Jerry Brewer / Wash Post
After winning three gold medals at the Paris Olympics, the gymnast managed just a silver in two event finals yet somehow grew her legacy.
In perhaps the final memory of Simone Biles on an Olympic podium, she bowed. Her motivation was not to acknowledge an adoring crowd, though she forever will be adored. For a rare time, she stood next to the highest perch, not on it, in second place waiting along with third-place finisher Jordan Chiles for Rebeca Andrade to be introduced as the gold medalist of the women’s gymnastics floor exercise. Read more
Charles Barkley not retiring, staying with TNT Sports long term: ‘This is the only place for me.’ By Andrew Marchand / The Athletic
Charles Barkley will not retire and instead remain with TNT Sports even after it loses the NBA following this upcoming season, TNT announced Tuesday.
Barkley will continue on his 10-year, $210 million contract. He is in the third season of the deal. “I love my TNT Sports family,” Barkley, 61, said in a statement. “My #1 priority has been and always will be our people and keeping everyone together for as long as possible.” Read more
Russia, with its athletes mostly banned, ignores Olympics. By Fred Weir / CS Monitor
The colors of most of the world’s nations have been on display at the Summer Olympic Games in Paris, with one notable exception: Russia. Due to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been officially banned, and only 15 of its athletes are allowed to compete as individuals without national identification.
Moscow’s official reaction to the Olympic ban of most Russian athletes has been furious denunciation. The state media are full of derisory commentary about the alleged hypocrisy, decadence, and even blasphemy that is supposedly on display in Paris. No Russian TV station is broadcasting the Games. Read more
Deion Sanders chaotic culture turns into locker room violence in Colorado. By Steve Corder / Athlon Sports Nation
Coach Prime keeps it cool on the outside, but inside, it seems to be boiling over
The turmoil within the Colorado Buffaloes locker room underscores the challenges of Coach Prime’s leadership style. While the desire for instant success is understandable, the associated instability and violence reveal deeper issues within the program. As the season progresses, it remains to be seen how these internal conflicts will impact the Buffaloes on the field. Read more
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