Featured
Public health expert: Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” will cause misery and death. By Chauncey Devega / Salon (Image by CBS)
A government’s budget is about much more than numbers: It’s a moral document that reflects a nation’s values. Chief among those should be providing for the most vulnerable. This includes guaranteeing health care for Americans; shoring up Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act; providing food assistance to needy people, including the elderly and children; funding science and medical research; and requiring the very richest to pay their share of taxes.
Within this framework, it’s clear that Donald Trump and the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is a moral failure in the making, where values of greed, cruelty and sociopathy masquerade as responsible public policy. Read more
Related: Poorest Americans Dealt Biggest Blow Under Senate Republican Tax Package. By Tony Romm / NYT
Related: A Big, Bad, Very Ugly Bill. By Annie Lowrey / The Atlantic
Related: The Disaster That Just Passed the Senate. By Ezra Klein / NYT Podcast
Trump’s Big Bill Is Building a Big Police State. By Chris Lehmann / The Nation
The bill, which emerged out of its Senate reconciliation session in a blizzard of votes to amend it on Monday, also erects a permanent immigration police state.
With more than $150 billion in outlays to expand the horrific surveillance, detention, and rendition regime created under the Laken Riley Act, the measure will carry out Trump’s pledge to make the terror wreaked by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, alongside federal and National Guard troops, in Los Angeles the standard operating procedure for immigrant roundups going forward. Read more
Political / Social
Supreme Court rules Trump can rapidly deport immigrants to Libya, South Sudan and other countries they aren’t from. By Eleanor Paynter / The Conversation
For the past several months, the Trump administration has been trying to deport immigrants to countries they are not from – despite an April 2025 federal ruling that had blocked the White House from doing so.
A divided Supreme Court decided on June 23, in a brief emergency order, that the Trump administration can, for now, legally deport immigrants to countries they were not born in – known as “third countries” – without giving them time to contest their destination. The third countries that President Donald Trump has recently prioritized, including El Salvador, South Sudan and Libya, are known for being dangerous places with weak rule of law and routine human rights violations. Read more
Related: Trump’s Task Force Sought to Clear an MS-13 Leader While Pursuing Abrego Garcia. By Alan Feuer / NYT
Related: The Abominable Sadism of “Alligator Auschwitz.” By Joan Walsh / The Nation
Colin Allred launches 2026 campaign for US Senate. By Riley Beggin / USA Today
Former Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, will again run to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate, his campaign announced on July 1.
Allred is the first notable Democratic candidate in a Senate race that is likely to garner national attention and funding. The former NFL linebacker previously ran for Senate in 2024 against Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who won by 8.5 percentage points. If Allred wins the primary in March, he would be up against the winner of a bruising GOP primary battle between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Read more
Trump-backed Byron Donalds makes his campaign debut in the 2026 race to replace Gov. Ron DeSantis. By Stephany Matat / AP
U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds — backed by President Donald Trump — opened his campaign Friday evening at a rally in his hometown of Bonita Springs in southwest Florida.
Donalds spoke to local residents at Sugarshack, a live music venue and restaurant in downtown Bonita Springs, and he outlined his top priorities he’d message to voters on the campaign trail: addressing Florida’s insurance crisis, building new roads, restoring the Everglades, making Florida the “financial capital of the world” and ensuring children in schools “master math, reading, writing and reasoning.” “This is the free state of Florida, and as your next governor, it will remain the free state of Florida,” Donalds said. Read more
Attempts to kill DEI have inadvertently made corporate diversity stronger. By Andrew Behar / Fortune
Critics say these programs are discriminatory and leave white workers behind. Executives and board directors have had to walk a fine line, but ultimately, they report to shareholders. As this year’s proxy voting season approached, the business community wondered: Would investors vote to dismantle or defend DEI?
The answer was unequivocal. Over 20 shareholder resolutions were filed this year asking iconic companies to end DEI programs, including at Visa, Deere, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Levi’s, American Express, Coca-Cola, Berkshire Hathaway, McDonalds, Amazon, Netflix, Walmart, Alphabet, American Airlines, Caterpillar, Best Buy, and Mastercard. Across these annual meetings, over $9.8 trillion in share value voted with management to continue DEI policies and programs. Read more
Joy Reid Got Fired-Then Got Free. By Jasmine Browley / BET
Joy Reid has never been one to follow the rules. And after her abrupt firing from MSNBC earlier this year, she’s once again showing the world exactly how to pivot with purpose—and power.
In less than a month, her self-funded YouTube show has racked up more than 165,000 subscribers and 1.4 million streams. “We literally went up on June 9, and in two weeks, we’ve gotten over a million streams,” Reid told BET. “It’s grown so fast. I was definitely surprised—pleasantly so.” Read more
Uterine cancer projected to rise in US by 2050, Black women likely to be hit hardest. By Adeiyewunmi (Ade) Osinubi / ABC News
Uterine cancer cases in the U.S. will rise significantly by 2050, with Black women three times more likely to die from it, a study published by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) projects.
Uterine cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer in the U.S. In 2024, there were almost 70,000 cases, according to the National Cancer Institute. Over the past 30 years, uterine cancer cases and deaths have jumped. NCI data shows that between 2015 and 2019, there was about a 2% increase in new cases per year, the highest for any cancer in women. Read more
Education
Trump Administration Finds Harvard Violated Civil Rights Law. Michael C. Bender and Alan Blinder / NYT
The Trump administration said Monday that Harvard University violated federal civil rights law by failing to address the harassment of Jewish students on campus, increasing the pressure on the Ivy League school as it negotiates a possible settlement with the White House.
In a letter to Harvard’s president, Alan M. Garber, on Monday, officials from four federal agencies said that the university was “in violent violation of Title VI,” a portion of federal civil rights law that bars discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin. In recent years, government officials have interpreted the provision to include “shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics” as within the law’s protections. Read more
What the University of Virginia Should Have Done.
On Friday, Jim Ryan stood on the lawn of Carr’s Hill, the residence of the president of the University of Virginia, alone in the center of a crowd of supporters. He offered brief remarks about his inability to fight the forces arrayed against him, including the Trump administration. No one stood alongside him — it was just the university president, Mr. Ryan, explaining why he had made the difficult decision to quit.
The moment perfectly illustrated how Mr. Ryan was abandoned by the same people who were supposed to protect the university. Under investigation by the Justice Department, the university had a strong defense, if only it had the courage to assert it. Read more
Florida HBCU Sees Highest Application Numbers In 158-Year History. By Kandiss Edwards / Black Enterprise
Edward Waters University, a historically Black college or university, is receiving a record number of applications for the upcoming Fall 2025 academic term.
The HBCU announced it has received 11,500 applications so far. The figure marks the highest volume of applications in its 158-year history. This is a significant milestone for the university as Edward Waters is one of the HBCUs that does not receive the same public acclaim as its counterparts. Read more
World
74 dead in Gaza as Israel strikes a cafe, shoots aid seekers. By AP and NPR
Israeli forces killed at least 74 people in Gaza on Monday with airstrikes that left 30 dead at a seaside cafe and gunfire that left 23 dead as Palestinians tried to get desperately needed food aid, witnesses and health officials said.
One airstrike hit Al-Baqa Cafe in Gaza City when it was crowded with women and children, said Ali Abu Ateila, who was inside. “Without a warning, all of a sudden, a warplane hit the place, shaking it like an earthquake,” he said. Dozens were wounded, many critically, alongside at least 30 people killed, said Fares Awad, head of the Health Ministry’s emergency and ambulance service in northern Gaza. Read more
3 in 4 Americans worry Iran will retaliate for U.S. strikes. By Joshua Barajas / PBS
Three in 4 Americans are concerned about further retaliation from Iran following U.S. military strikes last month, according to a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll.
Seventy-five percent of U.S. adults said they were concerned or very concerned that Iran would lash out against the United States for the June attacks on three of its nuclear sites. That sentiment held true with majorities across party lines, including among 88% of Democrats, 63% of Republicans and 74% of independents. Read more
Related: Trump Issues Blistering Response After Iran Threatens U.S. By Time Staff / Time
USAID cuts may cause 14 million more deaths in next five years, study says. By Kelsey Ables / Wash Post
The analysis, published in the Lancet, estimates the agency’s programs saved 91 million lives worldwide over two decades, playing a vital role in global health.
Funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by the Trump administration could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths globally over the next five years, according to a new study, as the toll of the government’s dismantling of one of the largest aid agencies worldwide unfolds. Read more
Justice is coming for Vladimir Putin. By Vladimir Kara-Murza / Wash Post
A new tribunal targets the act that made all subsequent Russian war crimes in Ukraine possible.
It is not often that one gets a front-seat view on history as I (literally) did last week, sitting in the visitors’ gallery at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and listening to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as he addressed European lawmakers on the establishment of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. The agreement setting up the new court was signed minutes earlier by Zelensky and Alain Berset, secretary general of the Council of Europe, on behalf of its 46 member states. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
The Conservative Attack on Empathy. By Elizabeth Bruenig / The Atlantic
Five years ago, Elon Musk told Joe Rogan during a podcast taping that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit.” By that time, the idea that people in the West are too concerned with the pain of others to adequately advocate for their own best interests was already a well-established conservative idea.
But the current ascendancy of this anti-empathy worldview, now a regular topic in right-wing social-media posts, articles, and books, might be less a reasonable point of argumentation and more a sort of coping mechanism for conservatives confronted with the outcomes of certain Trump-administration policies. Read more
Related: Faith leaders arrested while protesting GOP mega bill. By Sara D. Wire / USA Today
The Decline and Fall of Christianity in America. By Daniel N Gullotta / The Bulwark
WHILE TOURING THE UNITED STATES in the early 1830s, French aristocrat and author Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the American republic depends on the mores of the American people to survive, and that these mores were largely the result of “religion and liberty [becoming] . . . intertwined.” So, what happens to those mores—and our democracy—when Americans decide they have no more practical use for religion? Abandoned church in Coaldale, Pennsylvania
Gallup data from 2020 revealed that, for the first time in U.S. history, fewer than 50 percent of Americans belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque. Confidence in organized religion has also plummeted dramatically, as clergy, once among the most trusted professionals, seem increasingly to be the targets of suspicion. Read more
The Radical Past and Future of Christian Zionism. By Sarah Jones / NYMag
Days before the Trump administration bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas tried to defend his unblinking support of Israel by telling Tucker Carlson that the Bible gives him no other choice and that Zionism is part of his Christian faith, though he could not recall the precise verse that bolsters his arguments.
Christian Zionism is not a new phenomenon, and it can’t take all the credit for the United States’s bloody foreign policy. But it is once again salient as Donald Trump surrounds himself with Evangelicals who profess the ideology and he pays lip service to it, as he does to other popular Evangelical convictions. Read more
How Religious Pluralism Lost at the Supreme Court. By Matt Ford / TNR
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution requires public school districts to allow parents to opt out of any curriculum or instructional material for their child that runs counter to the parents’ religious beliefs. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for a 6–3 majority in Mahmoud v. Taylor, drafted an expansive rule for lower courts to enforce against school districts.
It held that the mere presence of the books was enough to justify a court’s intervention. In Yoder, the case cited by Alito, the Supreme Court held that the state of Wisconsin could not require Amish children to attend school beyond the eighth grade, deferring to their parents’ assertions that vocational education at home was a core tenet of their faith. Read more
Historical / Cultural
How Harriet Tubman led Civil War spies — and earned her military honors. By Edda L. Fields-Black / Wash Post
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is wrong to consider stripping her name from the USNS Harriet Tubman.
Many Americans know Tubman for her courage and sacrifice as conductor of the Underground Railroad, but fewer recognize her as a Civil War spy and military leader. Tubman was the first woman to lead a combat regiment during the Civil War, and in an opinion issued this year, the U.S. Army Office of the General Counsel acknowledged her as one of the few women who served as a soldier in the Civil War. Those contributions merit her the honor of her namesake, the USNS Harriet Tubman. Read more
Daughter of assassinated civil rights leader sees painful echoes of political violence in America. By AP and The Grio
At a centennial tribute for Medgar Evers’ birthday, daughters of slain civil rights leaders warn of renewed threats to democracy and echo calls to confront America’s violent past.
Now, experts say the level of political violence in America over the past few years is likely the highest it’s been since the 1960s and 1970s. The past year alone has seen the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband, the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers, and two assassination attempts on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Read more
The ongoing fight to replace racist monuments in the US: ‘requires a lot of perseverance.’ By Briana Ellis-Gibbs / The Guardian
Now, a 2025 executive order signed by Donald Trump mandating that the secretary of the interior restore monuments removed in the last five years puts in jeopardy the already fragile progress made by past laws to diversify the public landscape in the US. City workers remove a statue of J Marion Sims in 2018.
This debate on the rise and fall of monuments dates back to the 1870s. In 1876, Frederick Douglass called into question the making of the Emancipation Memorial, built by artist Thomas Bell in Washington DC. The creation of the statute was funded using donations from recently freed people. Read more
Sports
In 1975, Arthur Ashe Made His Point.
He won Wimbledon over the favored Jimmy Connors, who was not only suing the ATP, but also Ashe himself.
Two nights before he played one of the most important tennis matches of his life, Arthur Ashe had dinner with three of his best friends. They devised a game plan to disrupt Connors, shake up his rhythm and allow Ashe to control points rather than be controlled by an opponent nearly 10 years his junior. It was all antithetical to the big serving, groundstroke-pounding, sometimes reckless style Ashe was accustomed to playing. Read more
Candace Parker Returns To LA To Have Her Jersey Retired. By Cedric ‘BIG CED’ Thornton / Black Enterprise
According to ESPN, the Sparks retired Parker’s No. 3 jersey during halftime of the team’s contest against the Chicago Sky. She is the third Sparks player to be given the honor, following Lisa Leslie (No. 9) and Penny Toler (No. 11).
“When I got drafted out here, it’s become home,” Parker told the crowd. “I’ve lived here longer than anywhere else. It’s super important to see this jersey in the rafters before any others because my 13 years here were super special.” Read more
Achilles injuries have vexed the NBA. A Hall of Famer reflects, and doctors analyze. By James Jackson / The Athletic
When Haliburton’s injury was confirmed the following Monday, it further established a season-long trend around the league: players are tearing their Achilles more frequently and at younger ages.
There is no singular variable increasing the rate at which basketball players are routinely rupturing — at the bare minimum compromising — the longest, strongest tendon in the body. Bodily attrition plays a distinct role, which Wilkins noted as he reflected on AAU basketball being more popular than ever as players enter the NBA with more mileage than those from prior generations. Read more
Tiger Woods, 49, is Nearly Unrecognizable in Latest Public Appearance. By Kevin Borba / Athlon Sports
While fans are more used to Woods being the main event whenever he sets foot on a course, he is now in dad mode. He was spotted earlier this month at the Eagle Trace Golf Club qualifier in Coral Springs, Florida, as he watched his 16-year-old son, Charlie, qualify for the U.S. Junior Amateur.
Fans took notice of Woods’ legs, with many expressing that they looked scrawny. “Sad to see, Tiger has chicken legs,” wrote a poster. “His lower body looks 90 years old,” claimed another. “No his leg it totally (expletive).. I mean, look at it,” commented another. “Bro both of his legs look like twigs compared to the rest of his body. Don’t think he’ll be able to fully come back anymore to playing PGA Tour events and contending,” added another. Read more
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