Featured
Alfred Street Baptist Church Worship Service. The DEI of Grace. By Rev. Dr. Howard John Wesley / You Tube
Dr. Wesley connects the attack on DEI to the story of David in scripture. He points out the hypocrisy of calls for meritocracy in the name of DEI. Watch here (Sermon starts at 1: 37)
Related: What comes after the DEI backlash? By Abdallah Fayyad / Vox
Political / Social
Trump reverses decades of civil rights advances. By Peter Phillips / Salon
We are witnessing a reversion back to Jim Crow
DEI and affirmative action have been strongly eschewed by conservatives who believed white-based urban legends that reported tales of gender and minority preferences and the passing over of better qualified white applicants for jobs or promotions. It is these urban myths that underly Donald Trump’s efforts to suppress all DEI. There is a desire by many businesses to deregulate government interference with a company’s hiring practices and Donald Trump is the ideal president to oversee such efforts. As a country we cannot allow a reversion back to Jim Crow racism and discrimination. We must stand firm in support of affirmative action and DEI efforts and resist Trump’s racist policies. Read more
Related: Education Dept. Gives Schools Two Weeks to Eliminate Race-Based Programs. Zach Montague / NYT
Related: A West Virginia HBCU Reviews Programs After Anti-DEI Order. By Sara Weissman / Inside Higher Ed.
Harris Has Scrambled the California Governor’s Race Without Entering It. Laurel Rosenhall / NYT
The possibility of a run by the 2024 Democratic flag-bearer looms over the race for California’s top job.
The former vice president, after a stinging defeat in the presidential race last year, has shaken up the 2026 governor’s race by her mere presence in California. Speculation has grown each week since her return from Washington: Will she or won’t she enter the race? Read more
Trump’s Black Supporters Gave Up Everything To Get Nothing. By Jason Johnson / NewsOne
Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, we saw a lot of Black and Brown people make the Thanos choice; they sacrificed everything to associate themselves with Trump, but in the end, it got them nothing.
In fact, in many cases, they’re worse off than before they dared associate themselves with the now 47th president of the United States. They all went out to battle for Trump and ended up losers. They sacrificed everything and ended up with an empty hand. They’re like the opposite of the Avengers. In fact, let’s call them the Surrenderers because they certainly gave up any scraps of dignity, integrity and cultural loyalty a long time ago. And now let’s look at who they are: Read more
Department of Education Halts Thousands of Civil Rights Investigations. By Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen / ProPublica
Since Inauguration Day, the Office for Civil Rights has only opened about 20 investigations focused on Trump’s priorities, placing more than 10,000 student complaints related to disability access and sexual and racial harassment on hold.
At the same time, there’s been a dramatic drop in the number of new cases opened by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights — and the few that attorneys have been directed to investigate reflect some of Trump’s priorities: getting rid of gender-neutral bathrooms, banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports and alleged antisemitism or discrimination against white students. Read more
To these Black retirees, the federal civil service now under attack was a path to the middle class. By Gary Fields / AP
Evelyn Seabrook was able to buy a home even though she had only a high school diploma. Glenn Flood worked his way up the career ladder to become a public affairs officer for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And Calvin Stevens had a dual military and federal service career that took him to high levels in both.
Now in their late 70s and early 80s, the three retirees are part of a generation of Black Americans who used the military and federal civil service to pursue the American dream. The result was a rise in the Black middle class, especially in places like Washington, D.C., where workers entered the system in lower-level jobs but rose through the ranks based on performance, he said. “At one point, DC had the highest median income for African Americans in any city in the country,” Morial said. Read more
World News
Watch “Malcolm Nance Declares a National Security Emergency” on YouTube
Malcom Nance, a career US navy terrorism intelligence collector, code breaker, and interrogator with wide-ranging field and combat experience, sounds the alarm of a national security “nightmare.” Watch here
Trump’s misguided South Africa policy. By The Editorial Board / Wash Post
While cutting aid to the continent’s largest democracy, he invites Afrikaners to America as refugees.
When South Africa’s African National Congress lost its parliamentary majority in elections last year, voters cited a litany of grievances, from widespread poverty to a breakdown in public services. One frequent complaint was that, after 30 years in power, the party had failed to address one of the most glaring vestiges of apartheid: the unequal ownership of land. Seventy-three percent of South Africa’s usable farmland is still owned by the White minority, only 7 percent of the population. Read more
Trump’s Pivot Toward Putin’s Russia Upends Generations of U.S. Policy. By Peter Baker / NYT
As peace talks opened in Saudi Arabia, President Trump made clear that the days of isolating Russia are over and suggested that Ukraine was to blame for being invaded.
For more than a decade, the West has faced off against the East again in what was widely called a new cold war. But with President Trump back in office, America is giving the impression that it could be switching sides. Read more
Gaza Must Be Rebuilt by Palestinians, for Palestinians. Mosab Abu Toha / The New Yorker
Palestinians returning after the ceasefire confront the destruction of their homes and the horror of President Trump’s proposal to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” by committing ethnic cleansing.
My friend Ahmad, from Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza, told me that people have returned to their neighborhoods not to resume their old lives but “to live over the rubble of their houses.” But even the rubble in Gaza has meaning to us. It is where our loved ones lived and died. When the time comes, we are the only people who will be removing what must be removed, only to reuse it to rebuild. Read more
In Haiti, Trump’s assault on foreign aid is ‘a gift to the gangs.’ By Amanda Coletta / Wash Post
The history of U.S. aid in Haiti is complicated. But even critics say Trump’s broad assault on foreign assistance will do more harm than good.
Few countries are as dependent on U.S. aid as Haiti. The United States is the Caribbean nation’s largest donor, having provided about 60 percent of all humanitarian aid last year, according to U.N. data. In health care, the aid is especially critical: The U.S. Agency for International Development supports 40 percent of primary-care services and 170 clinics. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
“His mission is to eradicate ‘woke Jesus'”: How money, lies and religion are abused to gut democracy. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
Journalist Katherine Stewart’s “Money, Lies, and God” takes readers into Trump’s movement to end America
In her new book “Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy,” Stewart offers a grounds-eye view of the machine that led so many Americans to vote against themselves and their democracy. She spoke with Salon about her experiences and how it is that disinformation has gotten its hooks into so many Americans. Read more
Black faith leaders call for Target boycott for backing off diversity initiatives. By Deborah Barfield Berry / USA Today
Black faith leaders called on pastors to urge their congregations Sunday to join a 40-day boycott of Target in a campaign to push back against companies that have ditched diversity initiatives.
“We’ve got to tell corporate America that there’s a consequence for turning their back on diversity,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson. “So let us send the message that if corporate America can’t stand with us, we’re not going to stand with corporate America.” Read more
Christian nationalism is rising. So is the Christian resistance. By Benyamin Cohen / Forward
‘It’s a gross distortion of the teachings of Jesus,’ said one advocate
Christian nationalism — the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation and should be governed accordingly — has always been woven into the country’s DNA. But in recent years, it has moved from the margins to the mainstream, carried by Trump’s presidency and a base that sees his political survival as divinely ordained. For decades, opposition to Christian nationalism came mostly from secular organizations, civil rights groups and religious minorities. Now, Christians themselves are leading the charge. Read more
Historical / Cultural
How Baylor Is Facing Its Slavery History. By Emily Belz / Christianity Today
The Christian college is building a memorial to enslaved people, despite a national backlash against diversity initiatives.
Amid the oak trees of Baylor University’s Founders Mall, a beautiful green corridor that stretches down the center of campus, a memorial is under construction. The oaks have their own history as part of a tradition of students planting trees on campus, and now Baylor is adding to the landscape a reminder of some of its darker history. Going up is a memorial to the enslaved people who helped build the school’s original campus in Independence, Texas. It is slated for completion this year. Read more
Amid the throngs at the ‘Blacksonian:’ They can handle the truth. By Robin Givhan / Wash Post
Americans are not as fragile as President Trump seems to believe. They can survive the hard lessons about this country. Even as they rejoice in the victories.
In the dimly lit, subterranean galleries of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, some of this country’s most devastating truths are revealed in a manner that is neither gentle nor blurred. It’s here that individual Americans face the artifacts of their shared story, one that includes freight ships brimming with human cargo, freedom-seeking patriots who once shackled and tormented children with less regard than we now afford livestock, and a foundational system of governance and economics that was rooted in the dehumanization of Black people. Read more
Andrew Young on the current political moment and his life of service. By Geoff Bennett and Kaisha Young / PBS
Andrew Young is a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a two-term mayor of Atlanta. The nation last saw him as he delivered a heartfelt homily at the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter. Geoff Bennett spoke with Young in Atlanta for his insights on the current political moment and his reflections on his extraordinary life of service.
Few lives have so clearly traced the arc of the civil rights movement as that of Ambassador Andrew Young. Activist, diplomat, mayor, and statesman, his journey has both shaped and been shaped by the fight for equality. Your life is a chronicle of civil rights progress in this country. What does this current moment feel like to you? Read more
The Women Who Are Reinventing R&B.
A group of young singer-songwriters have transformed the genre by looking backward, without getting stuck in the past. To accompany this article, Adam Bradley created a playlist of the songs that define R&B’s new era.
That new R&B era is here, with women artists leading the way. Born between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, this generation of artists came of age when the music’s stars needed no last name: Whitney and Mariah, Brandy and Monica, Aaliyah and Beyoncé, all chart-topping performers with gifted, even generational, voices who steered R&B through a period defined by male-dominated rap. Today’s stars — SZA and Summer Walker, Normani and Arlo Parks, Raye and Tems, to name just a few, along with the women photographed here — are defying industry formats and fans’ expectations. Read more
Who Inherited James Brown’s Wealth? By Finance Monthly
James Brown, the legendary Godfather of Soul, amassed a fortune through his revolutionary contributions to music, his business ventures, and his long-standing career in the entertainment industry.
However, when Brown passed away on December 25, 2006, his estate and the distribution of his wealth became a highly complicated matter. With over $100 million in assets at the time of his death, the battle over his fortune has sparked significant legal and familial conflicts. The details surrounding who inherited James Brown’s wealth and the controversies involved have become a topic of ongoing intrigue. Read more
Sports
The man who traded Luka Dončić: How Mavericks GM Nico Harrison operates. By C. Clark, M. Vorkunov and F. Katz / The Athletic
Just over two weeks ago, a stunning trade launched an NBA executive relatively unknown outside basketball circles into the wider public consciousness.
Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison’s decision to send 25-year-old Luka Dončić to the league’s glitziest franchise on Feb. 2 was largely unprecedented in sports history, and reaction was swift and deafening: crowds mourning in front of the team’s home arena with a casket, others pledging to cancel season tickets and unfollow the team on social media in droves. Read more
How an unlikely alliance changed baseball for good. By John W. Miller / Wash Post
The 1968 Major League Baseball season was delayed after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis on April 4. But after two days of rioting, the national pastime resumed, and a seed of racial progress was planted that summer in Baltimore via an unexpected alliance between two very different characters:
Foulmouthed rookie manager Earl Weaver and Hall of Fame right fielder Frank Robinson. Their teaming up would lead to Robinson becoming baseball’s first Black manager, a milestone he achieved almost 50 years ago with the Cleveland Indians on April 8, 1975. Read more
Stephen A. Smith for President. By Jay Caspian King / The New Yorker
If the Democratic Party has a problem drawing young men who believe that the excesses of wokeness have left them behind, could there be a more appealing figure than the guy they’ve been watching argue about sports for the past decade?
“They need to cleanse the Democratic Party as we know it,” Smith told me in a phone call on Wednesday. Career politicians and consultants should still have some say in how future campaigns should be run, but he believed the Party, as a whole, had adhered to a litany of failed ideas and practices. Read more
NBA scouts are flocking to Howard to see a zero-star recruit. By Candace Buckner / Wash Post
Blake Harper has gone from a high school role player to one of the top scoring freshmen in college basketball.
The answer to this college basketball season’s most surprising trivia question plays at Howard University inside a gym that holds fewer than 3,000 but, over the past several months, has hosted scouts from all 30 NBA teams. And he plays in a conference that has rarely witnessed such superiority from first-year players. Read more
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