Featured
The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator. By David Frum / The Atlantic
Fascist movements are secular religions. Like all religions, they offer martyrs as their proof of truth. The Mussolini movement in Italy built imposing monuments to its fallen comrades. The Trump movement now improves on that: The leader himself will be the martyr in chief, his own blood the basis for his bid for power and vengeance.
Other societies have backslid to authoritarianism because of some extraordinary crisis: economic depression, hyperinflation, military defeat, civil strife. In 2024, U.S. troops are nowhere at war. The American economy is booming, providing spectacular and widely shared prosperity. Yet despite all of this success, Americans are considering a form of self-harm that in other countries has typically followed the darkest national failures: letting the author of a failed coup d’état return to office to try again. Read more
Related: Nothing About the Attempted Assassination Redeems Trump. By Adam Serwer / The Atlantic
1932 was a pivotal year in the Nazis’ ascent. It’s a terrifying parallel for today. By Peter Frizxhe / Forward
To many, it now seems inevitable that former President Donald Trump will win this November’s election — a sense that offers a huge boost to Trump’s campaign, and makes alarmingly clear how closely the United States in 2024 resembles Germany in 1932.
Then, a Nazi victory began to seem increasingly inescapable, as election followed election through the spring and summer. Today, Trumpism is both the most significant political phenomenon in the U.S., and unpopular: Only 4 in 10 — yes, 40% — of Americans think favorably of Trump himself. What these parallels teach us: When an unpopular political movement is poised to take power it suspects it cannot legitimately maintain, democracy is endangered, with dire consequences for all of us. Read more
Political / Social
Biden Tries to Calm the Waters. By Peter Wehner / The Atlantic
The key to an effective presidential speech is saying the right thing at the right moment. By that standard, President Joe Biden’s six-minute Oval Office address last night was a success. Speaking one day after an assassination attempt against Donald Trump, Biden was gracious, eloquent, and emphatic.
“We cannot, we must not, go down this road in America,” Biden said. “There is no place in America for this kind of violence or for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.” (Biden, while rightly focusing on the effort to assassinate Trump, also listed several other recent acts of political violence.) Read more
Related: Trump’s shooting: Has it made Biden’s nomination certain? By Andrew Prokop Vox
Biden, addressing NAACP, bashes Trump in bid to move beyond age questions. By Toluse Olorunnipa / Wash Post
President seizes on recent news about Trump in an effort to return to his original plan: make the election a referendum on his opponent.
“Just because we must lower the temperature in our politics … doesn’t mean we should stop telling the truth,” Biden told hundreds of Black supporters in an animated speech that regularly bashed Trump on race issues. “Who you are, what you’ve done, what you’ll do — that’s fair game. As Harry Truman said, I’ve never given anyone hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.” Read more
Related: Biden turns focus on Trump’s rhetoric in Lester Holt interview. By
This Is the Most Extreme Presidential Ticket in Modern American History. By Andy Levy and Danielle Moody /The Daily Beast Podcast
America found out on Monday that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is former President Donald Trump’s pick for running mate. But just who is Vance? Not just a racist with a full head of hair—he’s also, after some recalibration, as MAGA as MAGA can be.
“You could probably make the argument, at least in, in modern America, that this is the most extreme presidential ticket that we have had,” Andy says. “I think you’d have to go back a really long way to maybe find an example to the contrary, and I’m not sure that works.” Read more and listen here
Related: What does J.D. Vance mean for the future of the GOP? By Megan McArdle / Wash Post
Related: The Biden campaign plans to label Trump’s running mate JD Vance as ‘extreme.’ By and
Elon Musk’s Shocking Plan to Swing the 2024 Race for Trump. By Robert McCoy / The New Republic
Elon Musk plans to donate $45 million per month to the nascent pro-Trump America PAC, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
The super PAC, formed in May, has already received millions in donations from tech giants and Musk orbiters using their fortunes to influence the democratic process in Trump’s favor in 2024. The Wall Street Journal reported that the PAC “had $8.75 million in contributions for the three-month period ending on June 30,” including from former Tesla board member Antonio Gracias, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Read more
Related: Elon Musk says he’s moving SpaceX and X out of California. By Ramishah Maruf / CNN
Judge dismisses Trump’s Mar-a-Lago classified docs criminal case. By Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein, and Betsy Woodruff Swan / Politico (Image NBC)
Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed the federal criminal case against Donald Trump charging him with amassing highly sensitive national security secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate and then obstructing government efforts to reclaim them.
Cannon, in a 93-page ruling, concluded that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. Read more
Related: Bye, bye Aileen. By Lucian K. Truscott IV / Salon
World News
Why the far right is surging all over the world. By Zack Beauchamp / Vox
The “reactionary spirit” and the roots of the US authoritarian moment. Far-right supporters and neo-Nazis gather for a rally on January 27, 2024, in Gera, Germany
This story is an excerpt from The Reactionary Spirit: How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the Worldby Zack Beauchamp. Copyright 2024. Available from PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Read more
The True Cost of Biden’s Unconditional Support for Israel. By Annelle Sheline / TNR
I resigned my State Department position over the administration’s position on Gaza. Biden’s unflagging support for Israel now risks a wider regional war, and could cost him the presidency.
Coverage of Gaza has described Israel’s genocidal actions as unprecedented: Israel has dropped more tons of explosives than fell on Hamburg, Dresden, and London, combined, in World War II; Israeli attacks have caused the fastest death rate in a twenty-first-century conflict; Israel blocking aid has caused the fastest rate of starvation ever recorded. And yet the Biden administration has made clear that there is nothing that Israel could do that would undermine U.S. support. Read more
Alarming mpox outbreaks in South Africa and Democratic Republic of Congo. By Melody Schreiber / Goats and Soda
South Africa Delegation to Lobby Against Review of US Relations. By Thando Maeko / Business Day
Bill requiring Biden administration to review US-SA relations fully still needs Senate approval and president’s assent. Parks Tau, the new trade, industry & competition minister.
The bill says: “In contrast to its stated stance of nonalignment, the SA government has a history of siding with malign actors, including Hamas, a US-designated foreign terrorist organisation and a proxy of the Iranian regime, and continues to pursue closer ties with the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation.” US-SA relations have been marked by tension for the past two years, sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The US and European governments are conducting an intensive campaign to rally African governments to oppose Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. SA chose to remain nonaligned. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
For Christian Nationalists, the Trump Shooting Proves He Was Anointed by God.
In the hours after the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump Saturday evening at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, X became an even more chaotic space than usual, incandescent with posts from Americans of all political persuasions trying to make sense of what happened—and what it portends for the upcoming presidential election.
I was watching one group in particular: the ascendant Christian nationalists who have, in the last 48 hours, become even more convinced that the event proves that Trump has been anointed by God. But their observations were wide-ranging, and here are a few of the recurring themes I’ve noticed. Read more
God did not save Donald Trump. By Shane Claiborne / RNS
I’m glad Donald Trump is alive, and I’m quite confident God is, too. But my understanding of Christian theology makes me certain that God did not save the former president from assassination.
Nearly immediately after word of the shooting broke, pastors and politicians took to social media to thank God for saving Trump. “God protected President Trump,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio posted on X. Franklin Graham chimed in. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, said it was “a demonstration of the power of Almighty God,” calling it “inexplicable apart from God.” Did God save the former president, but not those who died instead? Read more
Interfaith rally draws hundreds against Christian nationalism ahead of Milwaukee RNC. By Rory Linnane / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
As some Milwaukeeans looked to the sky Sunday to glimpse the arrival of former President Donald Trump, waiting to hear what message he will share after an apparent assassination attempt, a coalition of local faith congregations gathered in an east side performing arts center to send their own message while their city has the spotlight.
Ahead of the Republican National Convention, Milwaukee faith leaders drew more than 500 supporters to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Zelazo Center to condemn Christian nationalism, a movement that seeks to set government policy based on Christian values. Read more
Five faith facts about Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance. By Jack Jenkins and Aleja Hertzler-McCain / RNS
If Trump is elected, Vance would be the second Catholic vice president in US history — after Joe Biden.
Vance, an adult convert to Catholicism and married to a Hindu woman, has a complicated relationship with religion and, after his recent support for keeping mifepristone, an abortion pill, legal, with the GOP’s religious base. Here are five faith facts about Vance: Read more
Louisiana governor cuts $1 million for Catholic Charities homeless shelter over serving migrants. By Kate Scanlon / NCR
A Honduran man and his son, who had migrated to the U.S. without authorization and were recently released from detention, pass the time before beginning a bus journey to Louisiana at the Catholic Charities relief center in McAllen, Texas, April 6, 2018.
Gov. Jeff Landry, R-La., recently cut $1 million in state funding from Catholic Charities of Acadiana, accusing the Catholic Church’s charitable arm of having a mission “to support the influx of illegal aliens into our country,” a charge the Catholic ministry denied. (OSV News/Loren Elliott, Reuters) Read more
Historical / Cultural
The Black fugitive who inspired ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and the end of US slavery. By Susanna Ashton / The Conversation
In or around 1825, John Andrew Jackson was born enslaved on a plantation in South Carolina and trained to spend his life picking cotton.
But instead of living a life as a slave, he escaped bondage and became an influential anti-slavery lecturer and writer. He also had a key role in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s celebrated novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which historians have argued helped trigger the Civil War by its depiction of the subhuman treatment afforded Black men and women. Read more
Honoring Pioneering Journalist Ida B. Wells, Born On This Day In 1862. By Asha Bandele / Newsone
I think about the defining journalism of Ida B. Wells most often when I find myself ensnared by the clickbait that makes up so much of the coverage about Black people and Black life in America. There’s nothing wrong with the escapism of that writing. We need the respite, Lord knows. But we also need–and deserve–so much more.
We deserve the whole of our lives documented truthfully. We deserve to know the everyday of our stories, including the real and often hard on-the-ground stories, the ones that we want so badly to end, but the ones we will only be able to end if we know the truth and the power that comes in working together in the name of that truth, in the name of our deepest need for freedoms that have never been the regular feature of Black America’s lives. Ida B. Wells, born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16th 1862, anchored us almost single-handedly to that truth. Beginning at least by 1890, Wells made it her mission to accurately document the terrorism of lynching in America. Read more
The July Plot: When German Elites Tried to Kill Hitler. By Jesse Greenspan / History
Fed up with Hitler, though only partially for moral reasons, high-level German resisters nearly succeeded in assassinating him in July 1944.
Roughly 200 German resisters participated in “Operation Valkyrie,” the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime. To this day, historians debate what motivated these “men of July 20.” At least initially, Hitler’s authoritarianism, anti-Semitism and predilection for mass murder didn’t necessarily put them off. Yet as World War II rolled on, they came to share a belief that the Führer was disgracing Germany and leading it to ruin. Read more
Eric Garner’s ‘I can’t breathe’ continues to echo across NYC and the world 10 years after his death. By Arun Venugopal / Gothamist
Eric Garner’s dying declaration, “I can’t breathe,” was repeated 11 times on a Staten Island sidewalk. His utterances were muffled by an NYPD officer’s chokehold around his neck.
But the words, immortalized in an onlooker’s cell phone video, continue to echo across New York City and the globe as the 10-year anniversary of his killing approaches. Read more
Related: We’re Caught in Another Cycle of Racial Progress and Retrenchment. By Kali Holloway / The Nation
Decades after Billie Holiday’s death, ‘Strange Fruit’ is still a searing testament to injustice – and of faithful solidarity with suffering. By Tracy Fessenden / The Conversation
Sixty-five years ago, on July 17, 1959, Billie Holiday died at Metropolitan Hospital in New York. The 44-year-old singer arrived after being turned away from a nearby charity hospital on evidence of drug use, then lay for hours on a stretcher in the hallway, unrecognized and unattended. Her estate amounted to 70 cents in the bank and a roll of bills concealed on her person, her share of the payment for a tabloid interview she gave on her deathbed.
Today, Holiday is revered as one of the most influential musical artists of all time. Time magazine named her 1939 recording of “Strange Fruit” the song of the 20th century. “In this sad, shadowy song about lynching in the South,” Time wrote in 1999, “history’s greatest jazz singer comes to terms with history itself.” Read more
Jazz pianist Kirk Lightsey found respect in Paris that was missing in the United States. By William C. Rhoden / Andscape
The 87-year-old moved to Paris for good in 1994: ‘Living in Paris was very easy’
Since the early 20th century, Paris had been a welcoming magnet for African Americans who saw the country and the city as a haven from the harsh realities of racism in the United States. For generations of Black Americans, Paris presented possibilities, fresh starts, and an escape from the constant drone of racism. As a celebrated jazz musician, Lightsey also became part of a rich jazz tradition that had intoxicated Parisians since the beginning of the 20th century when jazz was introduced by regimental bands of Black American soldiers who spread the exciting new music across France. Read more
Zora Neale Hurston’s New, Posthumous Novel: What We Know So Far About The Bible-Tinged ‘The Life Of Herod The Great.’ By Tomas Kassahun / Blavity
A posthumous novel from Zora Neale Hurston, The Life of Herod the Great, is set for a 2025 release. Hurston, who died in 1960, emerged as a prominent author during the Harlem Renaissance as she centered most of her work on the lives of Black people in the South. Her most popular book remains 1937’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.
In 1939, she penned Moses, Man of the Mountain — and The Life of Herod the Great is a continuation of that novel. The never-before-published book reimagines the life of Herod, who is portrayed as a villain in the Bible, People reported. Read more
Our America: Hidden Stories with Ava DuVernay. ABC News
The ABC Owned Television Stations, in association with ARRAY Filmworks, present “Our America: Hidden Stories with Ava DuVernay.”
This compelling and educational one-hour special sheds light on the interconnected issues of caste through the lenses of racism, sexism and other various human hierarchies in America while drawing from the themes in her landmark film, “ORIGIN.” The special aims to engage, inform and inspire viewers to connect on a human level. Read more and watch here
Sports
50 years ago, Hank Aaron asked for a shot as MLB’s first Black manager. By Frederic J. Frommer / Wash Post
In 1974, the Atlanta Braves hired an interim manager without considering their home run king. ‘I think I deserved to be asked,’ Aaron said.
A half-century ago, despite growing pressure from civil rights leaders and high-profile Black baseball players, no major league team had hired a Black manager. The issue got a national airing at that year’s All-Star Game when newly crowned home run king Hank Aaron called out his own team, the Atlanta Braves, who had just bypassed him for a managerial vacancy. Read more
NFL Hall of Famer Terrell Davis says he was handcuffed and removed from flight. By
The former Denver Broncos running back said a false accusation from an airline attendant caused FBI agents to board the plane when it arrived in California.
“I am still in shock over the traumatizing events that occurred Saturday aboard a United flight from Denver to Orange County with my wife, two sons, and daughter,” Davis, the former Denver Broncos running back, said on social media. “The flight attendant either didn’t hear or ignored his request and continued past our row,” Davis said. “I calmly reached behind me and lightly tapped his arm to get his attention to again ask for a cup of ice for my son. His response and the events that followed should stun all of us.” Read more
Caitlin Clark Fans Punching Air After WNBA’s Angel Reese Rookie Award Announcement. By Grant Young / Athlon
Angel Reese produced one of the best weeks the WNBA has ever seen from a rookie.
“Chi Barbie” averaged 16.8 points, 14 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game over the past week. In addition, she made WNBA history by becoming the first person to secure 13 consecutive double-doubles in a season. All of which explains why Reese received the WNBA Eastern Conference Player of the Week Award, becoming the first rookie this season to earn the honor. And the fervent fan base of Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark is outraged about this news. Read more
Wimbledon final analysis: Carlos Alcaraz beats Novak Djokovic for second Wimbledon title. By Matthew Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare / The Athletic
Carlos Alcaraz beat Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final at the All England Club 6-2, 6-2, 7-6 on Sunday.
The No 3 seed prevailed over the No 2 seed in a one-sided victory, ultimately decided by Djokovic’s hampered movement after knee surgery, Alcaraz’s massively improved serve and his psychological edge over Djokovic in net exchanges. Read more
Why Jalen Brunson has agreed to the greatest financial favor in NBA history. By Fred Katz / The Athletic
The team was capped at how much it could pay Brunson, limited to a contract that would earn him far less than one he could sign if he were to wait until 2025 free agency and re-up with the organization then.
Brunson decided well before he became eligible that he wanted to remain in New York, that he had fallen in love with the franchise, that he valued the security of a dollar today versus more dollars tomorrow, that he wanted to continue playing for head coach Tom Thibodeau and with his Villanova buddies and that he hoped to challenge for a title on a squad that considers itself a contender this upcoming season and beyond. The extension will pay him $156.5 million over four years, $113 million guaranteed less than he could have received had he waited until free agency. No player has ever left this much money on the table — especially not one in the early part of his prime. Read more
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