Featured
“This is our time”: Economic blackout targets injustice. By Venessa McGrady / Salon
The one-day boycott, set for Friday, aims to remind consumers and corporations of the power of the purse
The one-day blackout, which has gone viral since its announcement in early February, is to see folks across the country spend no money at corporate retailers such as Target, Amazon and Walmart. The action includes skipping fast food restaurants, avoiding gas stations and putting away the credit cards, except for at small businesses and independent community establishments. Read more
Related: What to know about Feb. 28 economic blackout, other boycotts. By Betty Lin-Fisher / USA Today
Political / Social
Why Is Lester Holt Leaving NBC Nightly News? What We Know About His Exit — and Other Networks’ Recent Reshuffling. By Rebecca Aizin / People
On Feb. 24, Lester Holt announced he is leaving ‘Nightly News.’ The same day, MSNBC ousted Joy Reid as well as three other anchors
In addition to Reid’s ousting, Kulter announced that three more anchors’ shows were coming to an end. Ayman Mohyeldin, Katie Phang and Jonathan Capehart will reportedly have their weekend shows, Ayman Mohyeldin Reports, The Katie Phang Show and The Sunday Show With Jonathan Capehart, canceled. Read more
Related: Rachel Maddow criticizes MSNBC decision to cut Joy Reid. By Dominick Mastrangelo / The Hill
How ‘DEI’ replaced ‘structural racism’ in the national conversation. By Erika Franklin Fowler and Neil Lewis Jr / ABC News
Media framing of racial issues has changed since the George Floyd protests.
Almost five years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, there was a brief window in which Americans seemed committed to opposing racism in all its forms. Those efforts and sentiments did not last. Instead, the brief wave of racial progress in the early 2020s has been countered by successive waves of counter-messaging starting in 2021 that has escalated into a tsunami of policy backlash in 2025.
When media outlets amplify racially inflammatory rhetoric, that, too, affects viewers. They found evidence of an “emboldening effect” whereby citizens who hear political elites using prejudiced language became more likely to both express and act upon their prejudices themselves. These processes end up fueling what a team of political psychologists have recently called “trickle-down racism“—when people get the message that prejudice is socially acceptable, it normalizes racism among the broader population. Read more
Related: Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI.
Related: What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack? By Stephen Sawchuk / Education Week
The Department of Education Threatens to Pull the Plug on Colleges. By Sonja B. Starr / NYT
The Department of Education issued a threatening letter this month addressed to all educational institutions that receive federal funds. The letter offers an extreme and implausible interpretation of the law governing diversity, equity and inclusion policy. It demands that schools abandon not just affirmative-action-like programs that consider the race of individuals but also policies that are blind to individuals’ race if those policies were adopted, even in part, to promote racial diversity.
The letter also claims that federal law prohibits schools from teaching or promoting certain ideas about race that the department deems unacceptable. Read more
Dan Bongino tapped as FBI deputy director. Who is he? By Rachel Treisman / NPR
The Trump administration’s pick for FBI deputy director is Dan Bongino, a former U.S. Secret Service agent-turned-conservative commentator whose fiery support of President Trump has earned him a massive following — and seen him banned from YouTube for promoting misinformation.
The role of deputy director, which supervises domestic and international operations, has traditionally gone to a career FBI agent. Bongino has never worked for the FBI, though he served in the New York police department. Read more
Related: Before Ascending to Top Tier of F.B.I., Bongino Fueled Right-Wing Disbelief. By Devlin Barrett / NYT
Trump and Hegseth’s Pentagon purge undermines the armed forces. By Max Boot / Wash Post
How to damage military morale and recruiting? Trump and Hegseth seem to be trying to find out, alas.
In a Friday night massacre, Trump fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations, and Gen. James Slife, the vice chief of of staff the Air Force, along with the top lawyers — the judge advocates general — for the Air Force, Army and Navy. Another female officer — Adm. Linda Fagan, commandant of the Coast Guard, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security — was fired by the administration last month. Read more
Related: Say what this is: a coup. Robert Reich / Substack
Related: The Chaos Agenda Is Going Full Speed Ahead. By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
US white supremacist groups emboldened with ‘ethnic and racial hatred’ as Trump stokes immigration fears. By Stephen Starr / The Guardian
President’s anti-immigrant actions fuel a heartland battle between middle-ground Republicans and extremists
A local resident has attracted attention by using Maysville’s post office as the so-called “national office” of a Ku Klux Klan faction called the Trinity White Knights. The extremist, who is known to local police and an FBI field office in Louisville, is believed to have been involved in several flyer drops across Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and in Springfield, Ohio, in recent months, causing anger and unrest. Read more
The Future of Student Loan Repayment: Why Black Borrowers Should Worry. By Brandon Tensley / Capital B
The administration wants to eliminate the agency that oversees a $1.7 trillion portfolio of student loans.
Not only do Black borrowers owe a disproportionate amount of the national student loan debt, but compared with their white counterparts, they also are more likely to struggle to pay back their loans. Roughly 44 million Americans have student loan debt. Many are worried about what President Donald Trump’s assault on the U.S. Department of Education, which oversees a $1.7 trillion portfolio of student loans, might mean for their livelihoods. Read more
World News
U.S. votes against U.N. resolution condemning Russia for Ukraine war. By Karen DeYoung , John Hudson and Siobhán O’Grady / Wash Post
Washington’s shift on the conflict marks a major break with Europe and coincides with the Trump administration’s bid to repair relations with Moscow.
The United States voted with Russia, North Korea and 15 other Moscow-friendly countries Monday against a U.N. resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine and calling for the return of Ukrainian territory. The resolution, sponsored by representatives from Kyiv, passed overwhelmingly in the U.N. General Assembly. Read more
Related: First Thing: Macron warns Trump against ‘surrender’ in Ukraine. By Jem Bartholomew / The Guardian
Eighty Percent of Germans Voted Against the Far Right. Can That Happen Here? By Monica Bauerlein / Mother Jones
Right now, even as we mourn the last of those who remember the Third Reich and the Holocaust, Germany and other countries are electing parties that are, at the very most generous, fascist-adjacent. Twenty percent of Germans voted for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Sunday’s election, twice as many as did so four years ago. That’s the gut punch part.
But tears are not going to get us out of here. So what will? From my perch here in the US—where I arrived decades ago, thinking that having grown up in a country that experienced fascism was never going to be relevant again—here are a couple of thoughts on what we might learn from the German election. Read more
Lessons from Donald Trump’s South African doppelgänger, Paul Kruger. By Evan S. Lieberman / Daily Maverick
Paul Kruger, the second president of the South African Republic, might as well have been a prototype for Donald Trump. The echoes between their leadership styles — xenophobia, nationalism, disdain for intellectualism, and corporate favouritism — are striking.
I came to learn about Kruger and his important role in South African history, and some of those findings are particularly relevant at this moment in American history, and in the context of strained South African-American relations. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
America Loses Its Soul When It Rejects People Fleeing Danger. By Diana Nayeri / NYT
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be “civilized.” It’s not caring for one’s own; animals do that. It’s not making music and art; cave men drew and sang. It is, I believe, to live with a moral standard that takes into account our fellow man, and to ask: What do we owe one another, and what do we owe strangers?
For me, to be civilized boils down to being willing to work against our own lesser interests in order to alleviate greater suffering, no matter the sufferer’s identity or relationship to us. It is a high standard, but it is not heroism, which is putting one’s own life in real danger for another. Read more
Jesus Christ is your God. Or Trump is your god. You chose. By Rebecca Hamilton / Public Catholic
I believe that the Ten Commandments and the Gospels are binding on all of us, even Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and right-wing clergy.
Right wing Christians love to make a big deal about putting plaques with the Ten Commandments in schools, parks and government offices. There’s nothing real about this. It’s just a political brickbat. The same religious leaders who excoriate anyone who doesn’t vote to post the Ten Commandments in public places, actively preach and teach against using the Ten Commandments as a means of judging right wing politicians. Read more
“Slavery produced a genuine affection between the races”: Hegseth’s church foretold “DEI” firings. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
Defense secretary’s contempt for Black military leaders has roots in his religion’s defense of white supremacy
The levels of gaslighting and hand-waving on the right are getting to ridiculous levels, in their unconvincing efforts to deny that the firing of Brown was discrimination. So to offer more context for Hegseth’s resentments of Brown, it’s helpful to look at the church Hegseth joined a few years ago, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). The denomination is led by a pastor named Doug Wilson, whose work Hegseth has promoted in podcast appearances and his writings. Read more
The Catholic Church has played a shameful role in Black American history. By Alessandra Harris / NCR
We are living in a time when self-professed Catholics are not only turning a blind eye to evil, but have elected and are supporting President Donald Trump, who is against diversity, against immigrants, against the poor, and seeks to destroy the multiracial democracy that was hard fought and won by the sweat and blood of African Americans and progressives in the United States.
In his book The History of Black Catholics in the United States, Cyprian Davis writes that the American Catholic Church found itself “incapable of taking any decisive action or of enunciating clearly thought-out principles regarding slavery.” Read more
Historical / Cultural
To filmmaker Dawn Porter, the “Eyes on the Prize” message is plain: “We cannot wait for the savior.” By Melanie McFarland / Salon
The landmark series’ six-part continuation uses history to remind us that civil rights are won by ordinary people
If you are feeling unmoored and powerless, “Eyes on the Prize III: We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest 1977-2015” is a potent prescriptive, and extremely timely. The six-part series speaks to the power of regular people banding together in whatever way they can to create massive resistance to injustice. “Eyes on the Prize III: We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest 1977-2015” airs over three consecutive nights: Episodes 1 and 2 air back to back beginning at 9 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 25, with Episodes 3 and 4 airing Wednesday, Feb. 26 and Episodes 5 and 6 airing Thursday, Feb. 27 on HBO. All six episodes will be available to stream Tuesday, Feb. 25 on Max. Read more
Nikki Giovanni On History, Banned Books And Joy In Resistance. By Kirsten West Savali / NewsOne
Nikki Giovanni is now an ancestor. So many of us who loved her are still struggling with that reality while also understanding that she has always, always, been larger than life even as she fully reveled in it. She speaks candidly about what’s at stake during this fraught political moment when home-grown white supremacists have removed their masks in the highest halls of power. She reminds us of our sacred duty as artists in times of peril, and, perhaps, most poignantly, she shares her thoughts on what it means to be remembered. Read more
Roberta Flack, Virtuoso Singer-Pianist Who Ruled the Charts, Dies at 88. By Giovanni Russonello / NYT
With majestic anthems like “Killing Me Softly” and “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” Ms. Flack, a former schoolteacher, became one of the most widely heard artists of the 1970s.
Ms. Flack’s steady, powerful voice could convey tenderness, pride, conviction or longing, but hardly ever despair. Most of her best-known albums included at least a few funk and soul tracks, driven by a slapping backbeat and rich with observational social commentary. Read more
Alvin F. Poussaint, Pioneering Expert on Black Mental Health, Dies at 90. By Clay Risen / NYT
A psychiatrist at Harvard and an adviser to Jesse Jackson and Bill Cosby, he challenged Black Americans to stand up to systemic bigotry.
Alvin F. Poussaint, a psychiatrist who, after providing medical care to the civil rights movement in 1960s Mississippi, went on to play a leading role in debates about Black culture and politics in the 1980s and ’90s through his research on the effects of racism on Black mental health, died on Monday at his home in Chestnut Hill, Mass. Read more
Soul Singer Jerry Butler Dies At 85. By Hillel Italie / HuffPost
The singer’s hits included “For Your Precious Love,” “Only the Strong Survive” and “Make It Easy On Yourself.”
Butler’s niece, Yolanda Goff, told The Associated Press that Butler died of Parkinson’s disease at his home in Chicago. A longtime Chicago resident, Butler was a former Cook County board commissioner who would still perform on weekends and identify himself as Jerry “Ice Man” Butler, a show business nickname given for his understated style. Read more
Oscars 2025: Where to Stream These Black-Nominated Actors Now. By Mahalia Otshudy / The Root
If you haven’t had the chance yet, here is where to watch the movies nominated for the 97th Academy Awards
The Oscar awards are set to take place on Sunday, March 2nd, meaning you still have to watch the films that have been nominated and support your favorite actors. However, the awards being right around the corner, it might be hard to figure out where you can watch them. No worries, we got you covered. But first, let us tell you a little bit about the movies that are up for the awards so that you can fill out your scorecards and make your own judgments. Let the games begin! Read more
Sports
Internet Reacts to Eagles Declining Trump’s White House Invite. By Phenix S Halley / The Root
This marks the second time that the Philadelphia Eagles team has declined a visit to Trump’s White House.
This marks the second time they’ve declined the offer, and while many folks are praising the team for their strong stance against Trump and all of his antics, as you could expect, MAGA supporters are practically boiling with fury over the matter. Read more
Jayson Tatum could be the face of the NBA. He’d rather just keep winning. By Michael Lee / Wash Post
The Boston Celtics star is often discounted in discussions about the league’s best young players, so his résumé will have to speak for itself.
Previous faces of the league earned that position by frequently playing into June. That’s what Tatum is after. So, as the conversation continues around him, Tatum keeps adding to a résumé that would already usher him into the Hall of Fame — and he turns 27 next week. Read more
Ex-NFL player arrested after protesting MAGA during city council meeting. By Praveena Somasundaram / Wash Post
Kluwe is in the national spotlight once more after he was arrested during a city council meeting in Huntington Beach, California.
He gave a fiery, minute-long speech railing against President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement — comparing it to Nazism and describing it as “profoundly corrupt” and “unmistakably anti-democracy.” “You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is,” Kluwe said. During his speech, Kluwe criticized several elements of Trump’s agenda, including targeting transgender people, cutting education funding and gutting federal agencies. Read more
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