Featured
From Plains to the Presidency, Jimmy Carter Remembered at National Funeral. By Harvest Prude / Christianity Today
After a week of remembrances, the nation bid farewell to its longest-living president, former president Jimmy Carter, in a hymn-laden, Scripture-laced service that stretched an hour past its expected end.
Carter, a progressive Baptist who described himself as born-again and who elevated evangelicalism to the public eye during his campaign, arranged for faith to be front and center in his state funeral. Read more
Related: Jimmy Carter Funeral Eulogy: Read Andrew Young’s Tribute. By Editor at NewsOne
Related: Jimmy Carter honored for humility and service at funeral. By Bill Barrow and Chris MeGerian / AP
Political / Social
As a Felon, Trump Upends How Americans View the Presidency. By Peter Baker / NYT
President-elect Donald J. Trump has worked for years to discredit any and all criminal and civil cases against him as nothing more than politically motivated witch hunts.
And so the nation will soon witness the paradox of a newly elected president putting his hand on a Bible to swear an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” the supreme law of the land, barely a week after being sentenced for violating the law. Read more
Related: GOP eyes axing popular programs to cut taxes for the rich. By Emily Singer / Daily Kos
Related: Congress to Trump: Yes to removing criminals, no to mass deportations. The Editorial Board / Wash Post
Elon Musk is a monster bully on the loose, but he can only get his way if we let him. By Martin Kettle / The Guardian
The democratic order has faced down tyrants and megalomaniacs before. The name of the game for liberals for 2025 and beyond must be survival
Donald Trump knows the US’s allies’ nerves are jangling as his second presidency approaches – and he wants to keep it that way. Elon Musk is similarly glorying in his power to provoke and misinform without suffering penalty or reprimand – least of all from most of Britain’s politicians and press. Both men are bullies. And this is what bullies do. However, there is no disputing that this is also their moment. The Trump inauguration on 20 January will be an in-your-face celebration of America First power. It will also be a requiem that consigns large parts of the rules-based postwar global settlement to the grave. Read more
How could Trump’s second term affect DEI initiatives in the US? By Lauren Aratani / The Guardian
The president-elect has disparaged DEI. As Meta and Walmart drop diversity goals, here’s how others may follow.
Even before Donald Trump won the election in November, multiple companies with announced they were ending their diversity initiatives. After the election, some of the country’s largest companies announced they too were sunsetting some of their corporate programs. Though some of the announcements followed conservative pressure on social media, some came unprompted, suggesting that companies who were quick to trumpet their desire to broaden their workforce after the backlash to the murder of George Floyd have cooled on an idea that seeks to increase opportunities for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups. Read more
Related: Which US companies are pulling back on diversity initiatives? By AP
Related: Elon Musk Blames LA Wildfires on Black Firefighters and DEI. The Byte
Joe Biden: What Americans should remember about Jan. 6. By Joe Biden / Wash Post
We should not forget. We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago.
An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day. To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes. To dismiss concerns about it as some kind of partisan obsession. To explain it away as a protest that just got out of hand. Read more
DA Fani Willis appeals her disqualification from Trump’s Georgia election interference case. By Olivia Rubin / ABC News
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Wednesday filed an appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court asking them to reverse her disqualification from the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and others.
The Georgia Court of Appeals last month disqualified Willis from her prosecution of Trump and his co-defendants due to a “significant appearance of impropriety,” leaving the question of who takes over the case — and whether it continues — to the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia. Read more
Black and Hispanic student enrollment in medical schools plummeted last year, according to a new report. By Kay Wicker / The Grio
The data represents the first medical school class since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in June 2023.
According to a new report published on Thursday by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC ), enrollment in medical schools for Black and Hispanic students plummeted last year. The report’s data shows that Black enrollees dropped by 11.6% while Hispanic enrollees fell by 10.8%. Even more troubling, the report found that the number of American Indians or Alaska Natives fell by 22.1%. Meanwhile, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders fell by 4.3%. Read more
World News
Musk, Thiel and the shadow of apartheid South Africa. By Simon Kuper / Financial Times
The parallels between South Africa then and the US today are striking. Image by News24
Elon Musk lived in apartheid South Africa until he was 17. David Sacks, the venture capitalist who has become a fundraiser for Donald Trump and a troll of Ukraine, left aged five, and grew up in a South African diaspora family in Tennessee. Peter Thiel spent years of childhood in South Africa and Namibia, where his father was involved in uranium mining as part of the apartheid regime’s clandestine drive to acquire nuclear weapons. And Paul Furber, an obscure South African software developer and tech journalist living near Johannesburg, has been identified by two teams of forensic linguists as the originator of the QAnon conspiracy, which helped shape Trump’s Maga movement. (Furber denies being “Q”.) In short, four of Maga’s most influential voices are fiftysomething white men with formative experiences in apartheid South Africa. Read more
Related: Elon Musk and far-right German leader Alice Weidel endorse each other in interview. By Kate Brady / Wash Post
Related: Elon Has Appointed Himself King of the World. After helping Trump win the election, the world’s richest man is turning his attention to Europe. By Ali Breland / The Atlantic
Haitians in the U.S. under temporary protection in anxious limbo amid shifting immigration policies. By
Haitians who are in the U.S. legally under temporary programs say they are concerned about their ability to remain in the country as President-elect Donald Trump plans to end the programs and carry out mass deportations on Day One of his administration. Read more
Slavery, tax evasion, resistance: the story of 11 Africans in South America’s gold mines in the 1500s. By Paola Vargas Arana / The Conversation
As a scholar of African history, I have dedicated my research to recovering the individual histories of these enslaved people and their cultural contributions.
My archival research in several continents has revealed antique maps, sale and criminal records, and accounts that uncover complex narratives of survival. From the 1500s to the 1800s around 12 million Africans were enslaved by Europeans and their descendants in the Americas. My recent research illuminates the experiences of 11 of them. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
How Jimmy Carter’s so-called betrayal of evangelicals led to MAGA. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
Evangelicals loved Jimmy Carter — until his anti-racism turned them against him
One of the most important legacies he’ll leave behind is a complex one, though it is rooted in one of Carter’s best traits, his commitment to anti-racism. During his presidency, Carter inadvertently revealed a fundamental truth about white evangelical culture: its guiding star is not faith or morality, but racism. Hard as it may be to believe, Carter won the majority of evangelical voters in 1976. Being a white evangelical Christian from the South, he read to many as one of theirs. Things shifted in 1978, however, over an issue that seems obscure now, but was a big deal to white evangelicals at the time: school desegregation. Read more
White Christian nationalists are poised to remake America in their image during Trump’s second term, author says. By John Blake / CNN
Under Trump, Christian nationalists will have unprecedented access to the power of the federal government. Trump’s GOP has unified control of Congress. And a conservative supermajority, which has already blurred the line between separation of church and state in a series of decisions favoring Christian interests, controls the US Supreme Court.
Trump has not been shy about what comes next. He ran a presidential campaign that was infused with White Christian Nationalist imagery and rhetoric. He vowed in an October campaign speech to set up a task force to root out “anti-Christian bias” and restore preachers’ power in America while giving access to a group he calls “my beautiful Christians.” Read more
Related: Christian Nationalism and Hate Violence: What Can We Do? By Ray Kirstein / RNS
A Conversation with Pulitzer-Winning Poet Natasha Trethewey. By Russell Moore / Christianity Today Podcast
The former Poet Laureate talks about despair, desire, and the divine.
Natasha Trethewey, a Pulitzer Prize winner who has authored several books and served two terms as the Poet Laureate of the United States. Trethewey and Moore discuss their respective familial connections to the state of Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina, and the Gulf Coast. They talk about Trethewey’s lifelong desire to write, her experience as a mixed-race person, and her thoughts on belonging, grief, and faith. Listen here
An Andraé Crouch Song Has Kept Me From Sin. By Maina Mwaura / Christianity Today
The gospel great earned plenty of awards and accolades. His legacy also had quieter impacts on individual believers like me.
This month marks ten years since the death of singer, songwriter, and pastor Andraé Crouch. He was nominated for 20 Grammy Awards, winning 7, and 4 Dove Awards; his musical career produced hits like “The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power” and his all-time smash “My Tribute (To God be the Glory).” From the time he wrote his first gospel song at the age of 14, he’d lead a life that few Black men born in his time could access. Read more
Historical / Cultural
A look at Tallahassee’s first Black landowners after the Civil War. By Ana Goñi-Lessan / Tallahassee Democrat
Before there was Whole Foods and Lululemon, and even before that, when there was a Miracle 5 movie theater and a Tomato Land produce stand, the land was owned by Henry Watson.
He’s now buried in a small cemetery off of Betton Road called The Plantation Cemetery of Betton Hill. In the back, behind several unmarked graves of enslaved people, lies Watson. Who was he? Watson was one of the first Black landowners in Tallahassee after the Civil War. Read more
Tulsa Massacre Was a ‘Coordinated, Military-Style Attack,’ Federal Report Says. Audra D. S. Burch / NYT
The Justice Department’s conclusion follows an investigation of the 1921 atrocity in Oklahoma in which up to 300 Black residents were killed.
The report, stemming from an investigation announced in September, is the first time that the federal government has given an official, comprehensive account of the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, in the Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood. Although it formally concluded that, more than a century later, no person alive could be prosecuted, it underscored the brutality of the atrocities committed. Read more
Historic Black Neighborhood Devastated By Los Angeles Wildfires. By Jovonne Ledet / Black Information Network
The Palisades and Eaton fires have collectively burned over 30,000 acres of land. The Eaton fire, burning just east of Los Angeles near Pasadena, is destroying homes and businesses in the historic Black neighborhood of Altadena, per theGrio.
Altadena is known as California’s first middle-class Black community. During the Great Migration, the area served as a refuge for Black Americans to flee the Jim Crow South. Altadena offered Black families a chance to acquire land, build homes, and create generational wealth without redlining and other forms of systemic oppression. Read more
Charles Person, youngest of the Freedom Riders, dies at 82. By Harrison Smith / Wash Post
Bruised and bloodied while traveling through the South in 1961, he challenged segregation on interstate buses and in terminal waiting rooms.
Charles Person, the youngest of the 13 original Freedom Riders, who were battered, bloodied and nearly killed as they traveled across the South in 1961, helping the civil rights movement gain momentum as they protested segregation on interstate bus lines, died Jan. 8at his home in Fayetteville, Georgia. He was 82. Read more
Sam Moore of the Dynamic Soul Duo Sam & Dave Is Dead at 89. By Bill Morris / NYT
Mr. Moore and Dave Prater stormed the R&B and pop charts with indelible hits like “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Comin’.”
At their peak in the 1960s, Sam & Dave churned out rhythm-and-blues hits with a regularity rivaled by few other performers. When “Soul Man” topped the R&B charts and crossed over to No. 2 on the pop charts in 1967 (it also won a Grammy), its success helped open doors for other Black acts to connect with white audiences. Read more
Sports
Diversity work should be a priority for universities. College football shows how. By Eboo Patel / USA Today
I’m a huge Notre Dame fan. But what I’ve learned from coach Marcus Freeman goes beyond college football.
In an era of high-profile diversity debacles in higher education, college athletics is a model of excellence in diversity work. Diversity work has two dimensions: achievement for historically marginalized groups, and cooperation across differences. Both are on impressive display in college football. Read more
Related: At long last, equal opportunity for Black college football coaches? By Jesse Washington / Andscape
Racism Caused Dominique Wilkins To Leave Hometown Before College. By Shandel Richardson / SI
Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins had planned to attend North Carolina State out of high school. He grew up nearly two hours away in Washington, N.C. Things changed when another school entered the picture at the last minute.
“Then the University of Georgia came out of nowhere,” Wilkins said during an appearance on the All The Smoke podcast. “So five other high school All-Americans, we all decided to go there together.” The decision led to Wilkins experiencing racism from the locals. “When I made that decision, all hell broke loose,” Wilkins said. “I got all Fs on my transcripts, paint poured on my mom’s car and I had a cross burn in my yard.” Read more
Meet Quincy Wilson — the Olympic gold medalist with high school homework to finish. By
Quincy Wilson, 16, made history in Paris during the summer as the youngest male U.S. track Olympian in history. Unlike his teammates, he’s still years away from graduation.
Wilson, a junior at the Bullis School in suburban Washington D.C., is already plenty fast. During the summer, he broke the under-18 world record in the 400-meter dash that stood for 42 years. That time lasted just one day — when he broke it again. He later competed as a member of the 4×400 relay team that took top honors in the Paris Games. Read more
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