Featured
Historic House speaker election highlighted matters of race and representation. By Juma Sei / NPR
As protracted voting for speaker of the House ground Congress to a standstill for multiple days this week, race and history permeated debate over who can best reflect the will of the American electorate on the Hill. Democrats and Republicans alike centered Black lawmakers as officials discussed the importance of representation.
In speeches on the floor throughout the week, Democrats — for whom Black voters are a core part of the party’s base — highlighted the historic significance of New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries as the first Black person to lead a congressional caucus.
“We are prepared to nominate a leader who will open the door to the new generation of leadership,” said caucus chair Pete Aguilar of California on the first day of voting. “A Latino is nominating for leader of this chamber a Black man for the first time in our history.”
On the other side of the aisle, Republicans highlighted their own history as the party of President Lincoln and efforts toward increasing diversity. Though the caucus struggled to unite behind California Rep. Kevin McCarthy in multiple votes and for nearly a week, he was ultimately elected House speaker early Saturday on the 15th round of voting. Read more
Political / Social
Kevin McCarthy election House speaker after 15 votes and days of negotiations. By Barbara Sprunt / NPR
Kevin McCarthy is now officially speaker of the House. The California Republican eked out a victory after a historic 15 rounds of voting and a dramatic series of events on the House floor late Friday night.
The result also meant elected representatives have finally been sworn in as members of the 118th Congress, and the House can get to work. McCarthy had been in tense negotiations for days with a small but critical group of far-right conservative lawmakers who made extended demands for concessions that would essentially make it easier to depose a speaker and weaken the powers of the speaker’s office to drive the legislative agenda and assign committee posts. Read more
Republican Byron Donalds is Black. That’s basically the talking point. By Robin Givhan / Wash Post
Republican Byron Donalds (Fla.) is interviewed at the Capitol after being nominated for House speaker. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Related: Who is the GOP House speaker candidate, and what are his political views. By Curtis Bunn / NBC News
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries Gets Laughs And Cheers For Alphabet Speech After Kevin McCarthy Win. By Sara Boboltz / HuffPost
The new No. 1 Democrat in the House said his party would always pick “maturity over Mar-a-Lago.”
Jeffries handed the gavel over to McCarthy ― but first, he had a bit of fun. “I also want to make clear that we will never compromise our principles,” he said, before diving into a list that encompassed the entire alphabet. “House Democrats will always put American values over autocracy,” Jeffries began. “Benevolence over bigotry. The Constitution over the code. Watch Jefferies whole speech here
Michael Moore was right about the midterms — now he offers hope for progressives in red zones. By Kirk Swearingen / Salon
Filmmaker and activist predicted “red wave” would be a dud. His new podcast urges embattled liberals not to despair
Documentary filmmaker and activist Michael Moore wants liberals and progressives in red areas of the country to take heart — and begin planning for 2024. In his new 12-part podcast series, “Blue Dots in a Red Sea (How to Win When You’re Blue in a Red State),” which he began on Christmas Day as a set of citizen goals for the New Year, he provides advice and encouragement to those of us who live in Republican-controlled states. In each brief episode, he exhorts us to get active in our continuing defense of democracy and offers his own hard-won suggestions on how to succeed. Read more
Ron DeSantis, Republicans are at war with ‘woke’ business: This is why. By Jessica Guynn / USA Today
Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Twitter and Tesla, calls it “woke mind virus.” Populist Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis call it “corporate wokeness.”
‘Woke’ – a watchword long embraced by the Black community – has been co-opted by GOP activists, officials and lawmakers as a culture-war rallying cry against progressive activism. And conservatives across red America are using it to score political points as they try to stop corporations from taking public positions on political issues and social causes from abortion to immigration. Read more
Professors’ tenure targeted by conservatives over race, gender, and sexuality teachings: ‘This is a purge.’ By Heather Hollingsworth and The AP / Fortune
When Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.
Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.” In turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs. “Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November. It’s a sentiment being echoed by conservative officials in red states across the country. The indefinite academic appointments that come with tenure — the holy grail of university employment — have faced review from lawmakers or state oversight boards in at least half a dozen states, often presented as bids to rein in academics with liberal views. Tenure advocates are bracing for the possibility of new threats as lawmakers return to statehouses around the country. Read more
How Penn State abandoned a big pledge on racial justice. By Nick Anderson / Wash Post
Many universities have committed to a racial reckoning. But what happens when the leadership changes?
After the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, Eric J. Barron joined higher education leaders nationwide in pledging solidarity with protesters seeking racial justice. “It is past time for change,” the president of Pennsylvania State University said. Now, though, Penn State’s version is dead. Barron’s successor, Neeli Bendapudi, canceled the project in late October, avowing a commitment to equity and inclusion but saying it would be “more impactful” to enhance support for existing work on racial bias. The reversal prompted an uproar at the 88,000-student university and beyond: Students of color denounced the cancellation. Hundreds of professors signed a letter of protest asserting a pattern of “broken promises.” And Black members of the state legislature deplored decisions they said would move the “needle backward.” Read more
Mother of Sinzae Reed, Black 13-year-old killed in Ohio, demands justice. By Tesfaye Negussie / ABC News
The mother of a Black teenager who was shot and killed in October is seeking justice for her son and is asking Ohio law enforcement officials to provide answers regarding why the alleged shooter, a white man, remains free.
According to a police affidavit, a witness saw Krieg Butler, 36, shoot and kill Sinzae Reed, 13, outside of his apartment complex in Columbus, Ohio, on October 12. The witness said Butler exited his truck, fired shots at Sinzae and drove off.
Bruce’s Beach will be sold back to Los Angeles County for $20 million. By and
Bruce’s Beach, an oceanfront property in Southern California that was taken from Black owners in the Jim Crow era and returned to their descendants last year, will be sold back to Los Angeles County for nearly $20 million, county officials said Tuesday.
Family members of the original landowners, Willa and Charles Bruce, have informed the county of their decision to sell Bruce’s Beach, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Janice Hahn said in a statement. It’s unclear when the sale will be completed. “The seizure of Bruce’s Beach nearly a century ago was an injustice inflicted upon not just Willa and Charles Bruce but generations of their descendants who almost certainly would have been millionaires,” Hahn said in the statement. Read more
Diversity among diplomats will strengthen U.S. foreign policy. By Leland Lazarus / Wash Post
Shown is Ambassador Reuben E. Brigety II, US Ambassador to South Africa
In a field long dominated by White males, we were the majority in the room discussing United States-China relations and recommending how policy should be carried out. In the process, I realized that Black and Brown foreign policy professionals provide unique perspectives. Washington needs such fresh views at this crucial moment of diplomacy between the two superpowers. Black and Brown Americans are uniquely qualified to represent our country. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
William Barber points to NFL players’ humanity in prayer for Damar Hamlin. By Kathryn Post / Religion News Service
Buffalo Bills players pray for teammate Damar Hamlin during the first half of an NFL football game against the Cincinnati Bengals, Jan. 2, 2023, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
As NFL players prepare to take the field for the last Sunday of the regular season, the Rev. William Barber II, prominent pastor and activist, offered a prayer for NFL players and Damar Hamlin, the 24-year-old Buffalo Bills safety who went into cardiac arrest after making a tackle in Cincinnati Monday night (Jan. 2). His prayer also stressed the humanity of Hamlin and all NFL players as the league played its first full slate of games since Hamlin’s injury. “We pray for the league itself, the NFL, that it may never see the players as just pieces of an economic engine, but as people without whom the sport would not exist,” he said. Read more
Related: Prayers for Damar Hamlin Show Bond Between Football and Faith. By Ruth Graham / NYT
Historical / Social
American Myths Are Made of White Grievance—and the Jan. 6 Big Lie Is Just the Latest. By Anthony Conwright / Mother Jones
Let’s not lose sight of the real motivations behind the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The more a county’s white population declined, percentage wise, the more likely it was to send a would-be rioter to the Capitol. “Race is the primary factor,” Pape says, accounting for “as much as 75 percent of the energy underneath the insurrectionist movement.” It’s not that the rioters were duped by Trump, but that his lies found fertile ground amid their fears. “The word ‘disinformation’ is off,” Pape says. “It’s about demographic change and whether you’re afraid of it or not.” Read more
Popular Rule. Has the United States Ever Been a Democracy? By Sophia Rosenfeld / The Nation
In the early years of the United States, almost no one called the country’s highly unusual experiment in popular sovereignty a “democracy.” Even with most of the population excluded from the franchise by reason of race, gender, or wealth, the term suggested an effort to put into practice something that was dangerous, unstable—in short, a mess. Read more
Rosewood, Florida, marks 100 years since race massacre. Here’s what happened. By Nicole Chavez / CNN
In the years after World War I, Black people were thriving in the central Florida town of Rosewood when a White mob driven by racial animosity decimated the entire community within days.
Rosewood became the site of a horrific massacre 100 years ago, during the first week of January in 1923. This rural town was one of several Black communities in the US that suffered racial violence and destruction in the post World War I era. The acts of racial violence resulted in the loss of economic opportunity and inequality for generations of people of color. There were about 200 people living Rosewood, a town in Levy County located about an hour southwest of Gainesville and about 9 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, at the time of the massacre. Mostly Black families lived in Rosewood and were landowners, farmers and worked at a nearby sawmill. Violence broke out on January 1, 1923 when a White woman from the nearby town of Sumner claimed she was assaulted by a Black man, historians said. Read more
The Roots of Black Pain in America. By Kaitlyn Greenidge / NYT
In “Under the Skin,” Linda Villarosa disproves once and for all the theory that people of color are responsible for their own failed health care.
In 1973, two Black girls, 14-year-old Minnie Lee Relf and her 12-year-old sister, Mary Alice, were forcibly taken from their home in Montgomery, Ala., and sterilized at a clinic funded by the federal government. Their parents — who had been displaced from rural Alabama into a cardboard shanty in the city and could not read or write — were tricked into agreeing to the procedure. Two years earlier, doctors had already begun to inject their oldest daughter, 15-year-old Katie, with the Depo-Provera contraceptive, then unapproved even for adult women, never mind teenagers. Read more
Biden signs law to help preserve Japanese American WWII incarceration camps. By Kimmy Yam / NBC News
“The stories of so many who unjustly lost their freedom, lost property, and were forcibly uprooted from their homes should be a constant reminder of our duty to uphold the rights of every American,” said co-author Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.
A new law signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday will help memorialize the history of the U.S. government’s incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The legislation, spearheaded by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, would reauthorize funds that help preserve the sites in which tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were detained, including Manzanar in California and Rohwer in Arkansas. Read more
A monument to MLK and Coretta Scott King’s love. By Nancy Giles / CBS News
This past summer, workers at the Walla Walla Foundry, in the state of Washington, fashioned giant fingers, arms, hands, and a bracelet, to capture a shining moment in history. All the pieces are now assembled, and this Friday, one of the largest memorials dedicated to racial equality will be unveiled in America’s oldest public park, Boston Common. It’s called “The Embrace,” and to design it, Hank Willis Thomas pored over hundreds of images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King. “There was an intimacy that I saw that wasn’t really highlighted often,” Thomas said. “Often when you do look closely at pictures, they’re holding each other’s hands.” Read more
Happy Birthday, Max! By Janus Adams / The Janus Adams Podcast
“I am an American and the drum set is one of the few instruments native to this country,” said Max. “This is a democratic nation and jazz is a democratic music in which we all express ourselves as individuals and cooperate for the overall good. That’s good enough for the bandstand and it is good enough for the world. In music, you can make a dream come to life as a reality of design and feeling. Democracy is a dream of being able to do it better someday. I have never stopped dreaming.”
In tribute: this week’s podcast is a replay of “The Dreamer and The Drummer”—a radio show I first aired in 2017, the tenth anniversary of his death. Read more and Listen here
Black Music Sunday: Let it snow—and let’s find some music to keep you warm! By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos
Shown are Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Armstrong – “I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm”
Though much of the music associated with winter and snow here in the United States tends to be linked to the December holiday season, winter sets in in earnest in January in most places across the country that face snowstorms. So though the weather this time of year may include blizzards and bomb cyclones, we’ve got music that celebrates the season, the snow, and snuggling up to keep warm as we head toward spring. Read more and Listen here
Dionne Warwick on ‘Don’t Make Make Me Over,’ Burt Bacharach. By Josef Adalian / New York Magazine
The story of Warwick’s six decades as a singer and activist is now set to be chronicled in the CNN Films documentary Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over, which debuts New Year’s Day at 9 p.m. ET on the network. A day after her 82nd birthday earlier this month, and in between concert appearances (yes, she’s still touring), Warwick spoke to Vulture about her long career in music, discussing everything from the time Marlene Dietrich schooled her in fashion and why she balked at recording some of her biggest hits to her obsession with a classic TV network. Read more
Sports
The racial makeup of the NFL is why the games go on. By Martenzie Johnson / Andscape
Despite Damar Hamlin’s tragic injury, Black players in a majority Black league injuring each other each week isn’t hard for viewers to stomach.
Professional football consists mostly of Black bodies running full steam into one another. So, a bit of dehumanization and exploitation has to happen in order for the viewing public — which is in the millions for every single NFL broadcast — to be able to tolerate this constant series of car crashes on Sundays. There are centuries of history of Black Americans being dehumanized and exploited, so that doesn’t take much effort. Read more
Should Football Be Banned? Former NFL Player Donté Stallworth & Sports Reporter Bill Rhoden Weigh In. By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
DONTÉ STALLWORTH: My initial response when this happened, I was horrified. I was watching it live from my couch. I had actually taken a nap prior to that, and I set my alarm to make sure that I was awake to watch this huge game, two of the best teams in the NFL about to play a very important game with huge magnitude of playoff implications. When I saw this happen to Damar, I knew immediately that something was amiss. Out of all the injuries that you have in the NFL, out of all the egregious things that we’ve seen, the emotions on the players let me know that this was something traumatic that they were experiencing that was unprecedented. Read more
Damar Hamlin’s Recovery Is Rare Among Young, Black Athletes. By Margo Snipe / Capital B
In one study of deaths related to heart failure, Black athletes were nearly five times more likely to die than white athletes.
Hamlin FaceTimed with fellow players and their coaches Friday morning, saying “Love you boys,” the team tweeted. It’s a rare recovery that physicians have called “remarkable.” But for young, Black athletes, the outcome of sudden heart failure is typically far more dire. Cardiac arrest is the leading cause of sudden death in young, competitive athletes, who are often seemingly healthy until the moment they collapse. Although rare, these incidents highlight a bleak trend: Black youth are much more likely than white youth to suddenly die of heart failure. Read more
What more do we have to do?’ HBCU coaches are largely ignored. By Liz Clarke / Wash Post
Willie Simmons has compiled a 54-23 record as a head football coach at Florida A&M and Prairie View A&M, never posting a losing season. In recent years, several publications have named him among the rising prospects ready to take the reins of a Football Bowl Subdivision program. After twice being a finalist for the top job at a mid-major program, he isn’t giving up, at 42, on his goal of coaching at a higher level. But in private conversations with agents, search firms and fellow coaches at historically Black colleges and universities, Simmons, a former Clemson quarterback, is reevaluating his strategy for climbing the ranks of college coaching. Read more
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