Featured
Maybe Trump and Miller Don’t Understand Americans as Well as They Think They Do. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
Most everyone other than apologists and professional contrarians would agree at this point that President Trump aims to make the United States a personalist autocracy, where his whims are policy and his will is law.
Both the crackdown by ICE and the calling up of the military to suppress protests were supposed to rally the public to the administration, in opposition to alleged crime and disorder. The president’s military parade — meant to mimic the ornate processions seen in Russia, North Korea and other dictatorships — was similarly meant to be a show of Trump’s popularity: a demonstration of the almost-spiritual connection he is supposed to have with the American people.
Except it’s the opposite. Far from galvanizing the public to his side, Trump’s ambitious effort to impose his will on the country has only generated discontent and backlash. Read more
Related: When Rights Erode for Some of Us, Something Corrodes in All of Us.
Related: Trump takes aim at states’ rights, and the Constitution. By Heather Digby Parton / Salon
Related: Obama, Back in Public Eye, Offers a Careful Warning of a Democratic Slide. By Lisa Lerer / NYT
Political / Social
Trump has become an easy mark — and so has America. By Heather Digby Parton / Salon
The president’s erratic behavior has left him — and us — open to manipulation from allies and enemies alike
To say that Donald Trump‘s second term is more chaotic and volatile than his chaotic and volatile first term is, at this point, a cliché. There are no guardrails to stop him from making destructive decisions. By “guardrails,” most people generally mean serious, experienced hands who can advise him of a more sensible and judicious course in his decision-making, and who are perceptive enough about his psychology to understand how to handle him with misdirection and diversions to focus his attention on a safer path than he would otherwise choose on his own. Read more
Related: Trump Is Daring Us to Impeach Him Again. Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
Trump Orders ICE Vengeance on ‘No Kings’ Protest Cities. By Cameron Adams / Daily Beast
Donald Trump ordered ICE officers to prioritize deportations in Democrat-run cities in a wild Truth Social rant Sunday night.
The president issued the unprecedented, politically motivated orders just hours after millions of protesters gathered in major American cities, calling for Trump’s megalomania to be curbed. Trump told ICE staff to “do all in their power” to detain and deport undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. Read more
Related: Trump Sent Them To Hell. Now He’s Erasing Them Altogether. By and
Related: Abolishing ICE Is the Bare Minimum. By Jack Mirkinson / The Nation
NAACP won’t invite Trump to convention, breaking a 116-year tradition. By Sarah D. Wire / USA Today
For the first time in 116 years, the sitting president of the United States will not be invited to the NAACP National Convention NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson announced June 16. The National Convention is July 12-16 in Charlotte.
“We’re nonpartisan and always welcome those who believe in democracy and the Constitution,” Johnson said in a statement. “But right now, it’s clear — Donald Trump is attacking our democracy and our civil rights.” Read more
Virginia’s governor’s race could be a barometer for how voters feel about Trump. By Margaret Barthel / NPR
Democrat Abigail Spanberger (left) and Republican Winsome Earle-Sears are the candidates for governor of Virginia.
The major-party candidates in the race for governor are already set; neither faced a serious primary challenge. The race pits Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who previously represented Virginia’s 7th Congressional District on Capitol Hill, against Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the current lieutenant governor. Read more
Trump’s Cuts to N.I.H. Grants Focused on Minority Groups Are Illegal, Judge Rules. By Zack Montague / NYT
The judge accused the Trump administration of discriminating against racial minorities and L.G.B.T.Q. people and ordered the government to restore much of the funding.
Ruling from the bench, Judge William G. Young of the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts delivered a damning assessment of the Trump administrations’ motives in targeting hundreds of grants that focused on the health of Black communities, women and L.G.B.T.Q. people. He ordered the government to restore much of that funding for now, pending an appeal. Read more
Women’s Health Care Has a Racism Problem. Trump’s War on DEI Is Making It Worse. By Madison Pauly / Mother Jones
“How are we going to implement these things…[when] you can’t even say the words ‘disparity,’ ‘inequity,’ ‘women,’ ‘race’?”
Five years on, that burst of energy and determination has turned into immense strain, as the women’s health system confronts a barrage of Trump 2.0 attacks against initiatives for patients of color and research more broadly. With the White House and state governments denying the very idea of systemic racism and targeting anything that smacks of diversity, equity, and inclusion, structural change seems further away than ever, and recent gains are at risk of being stalled or erased. Read more
Education
DeSantis ally set to lead Florida’s only public HBCU, sparking backlash. By Niquel Terry Ellis / CNN.
A telecommunications executive with close ties to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is on track to become the 13th president of Florida A&M University, despite opposition from thousands of students and alumni.The Florida Board of Governors will vote on Marva Johnson’s appointment at its June 18 meeting, just one month after the FAMU board of trustees voted 8-4 to hire her as president of the state’s only public historically Black college. Student leaders say they plan to speak out at the meeting. Students, alumni groups, and faculty members say they are largely concerned about Johnson’s alignment with DeSantis-backed policies. The governor banned funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Florida colleges and blocked advanced placement African American studies curriculum in Florida high schools. Read more
Naval Academy Seeks Dismissal of Lawsuit After Dropping Race-Conscious Admissions. Anemona Hartocollis / NYT
The academy had argued for years that a diverse officer corps was essential to strong troop morale and national security.
The U.S. Naval Academy has stopped considering race or ethnicity in its admissions, in response to a Trump administration executive order, the academy told a federal appeals court on Monday. As a result, a lawsuit seeking to stop its use of race-conscious admissions is moot, the academy said in court papers, and should be dismissed. Read more
Black Educators Warn Students Will Suffer Most If Trump Dismantles Department of Education. By Daniel Johnson / Black Enterprise
Donald Trump’s multiple threats to eliminate the Department of Education concerns teachers in states with a well-documented history of inequitable funding and racial disparity.
Donald Trump’s repeated threats to dismantle the Department of Education are sparking concern among educators—particularly in states like Mississippi, where longstanding issues of unequal funding and racial disparities persist. Some Black teachers in the state recently told the Pulitzer Center they’re feeling added pressure as a result. Read more
Related: US school year ends under shadow of Trump DEI orders. By Bianca Flowers and Rich McKay / Reuters
World
The real reason Israel attacked Iran. By Ori Goldberg / Aljazeera
There was nothing preemptive about the Israeli assault on Iranian military and civilian infrastructure and officials.
A number of justifications have been broadcast to the Israeli public, but none explains the true reasons why the Israeli government decided to carry out the unilateral, unprovoked assault. The Israeli government claims that the strike was a “preventive” one, meant to address an immediate, inevitable threat on Iran’s part to construct a nuclear bomb. There appears to be no evidence for this claim. Israel’s strike was undoubtedly meticulously planned over a long period of time. A preventive attack must carry an element of self-defence, which, in turn, is generated by an emergency. No such emergency appears to have occurred. Read more
Related: Israel says Iran was racing toward a nuclear weapon. US intel says it was years away. By and
Iran warns of ‘irreparable consequences’ as Trump weighs U.S. role in conflict. By Rebecca Rosman and Franco Ordonez / NPR
President Trump on Wednesday declined to say whether the United States is moving closer to a decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, after Iran’s supreme leader warned the U.S. against an attack and rejected Trump’s call to surrender.
Earlier Wednesday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned in a nationally broadcast address, “The Americans must understand — any U.S. military incursion will undoubtedly lead to irreversible consequences.” Their comments came during nearly a week of fighting between U.S. ally Israel and Iran, and amid signals from U.S. and Israeli officials that Trump could be considering an attack on Iran. Read more
Donald Trump Is Hurtling America Into a Catastrophic Middle Eastern War. By Jeet Heer / The Nation
The president is fickle, feckless, and easily swayed—which makes him an easy mark for militarists. An excavator removes debris from a residential building that was destroyed in an attack by Israel in Tehran, on June 13, 2025.
As I’ve repeatedly argued, while Trump’s words are a salutary rejection of the hubris of the bipartisan foreign policy elite, there’s little in Trump’s record to show that he knows how to redirect American foreign policy toward a more peaceful direction. Quite the reverse is true: Trump’s own limitations as a leader—his fickleness, lack of deep commitments, and desire to placate different factions in his political coalition—make him an easy prey to militarists who want to push for new conflicts. The current outbreak of hostilities against Iran initiated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a clear case in point. Read more
Related: Bomb Iran? Trump needs to think about what happens next. Editorial Board / Wash Post
Only one American can start a nuclear war: The president. By Mackenzie Knight-Boyle / Wash Post
The American president has the sole authority to order a nuclear strike, even if every adviser in the room is against it.
Three minutes, a football and a biscuit. These are all a president of the United States needs to start nuclear war. During a 1974 meeting with lawmakers, President Richard M. Nixon reportedly stated: “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.” He was correct. And since then, despite the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, little has changed. Read more
Related: The Atomic Bombs’ Forgotten Korean Victims. E. Tammy Kim / The New Yorker
Trump Administration could impose a travel ban on dozens more countries. By Tovia Smith / NPR
The Trump administration is considering a move that could nearly triple the number of countries subject to a travel ban, according to a State Department memo obtained by NPR. Up to 36 additional nations could be added to the list of 19 that were placed under full or partial restrictions earlier this month.
The memo to diplomats in about two dozen African nations, along with others in Central Asia, the Caribbean and several Pacific Island countries, demands that they detail by this Wednesday, how they will begin to address U.S. concerns and comply with new State Department requirements. Read more
South Africa Built a Medical Research Powerhouse. Trump Cuts Have Demolished It. Stephanie Nolen / NYT
The budget cuts threaten global progress on everything from heart disease to H.I.V. — and could affect American drug companies, too.
In Cape Town, South Africa, one of the world’s foremost H.I.V. researchers has been spending a chunk of each day gently telling longtime workers and young doctoral students that the money is gone and so are their jobs. When the calls are done, she weeps in her empty office. In the heart of Johannesburg, the lobby of a building that once housed hundreds of scientists is empty of people but choked with discarded office furniture and heaps of files hastily gathered from shuttered research sites. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Ten Years After Charleston. By Halleluya Hadero / Christianity Today
The massacre catapulted Mother Emanuel into the national spotlight. It set off conversations about racism, gun violence, and what the Confederate flag means in contemporary America. It also sparked debate about forgiveness—and its limits—as some family members of the victims extended forgiveness to an unrepentant Roof.
One of those family members was Chris Singleton. The night after the shooting, Singleton, then 18, told a reporter his family had forgiven Roof. It wasn’t a statement he had planned or prepared to make. “It was the Holy Spirit that placed that on my heart—and my lips,” Singleton told me during a recent interview. Read more
Related: The Heritage of Dylann Roof. Elizabeth Robeson / The Nation
The Spiritual Warfare of Vance Boelter. By Sarah Jones / NY Magazine
An accused assassin’s religious convictions are not unusual in American life.
By the time Minnesota police captured Vance Boelter, alive and ten minutes from home, he had allegedly killed a Democratic lawmaker and her husband, and injured another along with his spouse, in a personal crusade. A childhood friend and roommate told reporters that he and Boelter were prone to “fantasy” and liked to play “army men,” though Boelter had never enlisted. Boelter had found Jesus as a teenager, and his friend said he liked Donald Trump and Infowars and hated abortion. Read more
Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission meets: What to know. By BrieAnna J. Frank / USA Today
President Donald Trump has said during his second term “religion is coming back to America” and has launched a new Religious Liberty Commission in his administration.
According to the White House, the commission will advise the faith office and will reflect a “diversity of faith traditions, professional backgrounds and viewpoints.” But some groups and experts are skeptical, suggesting the commission could serve as a platform for a specific Christian agenda. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Why George Washington Integrated the Army. By Andrew Lawler / The Bulwark
The commander-in-chief initially barred black soldiers from joining the ranks, but he came to understand the value—both moral and strategic—of a diverse force.
In December, word arrived from Virginia that his former friend and the colony’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, had proclaimed freedom to any patriot-owned person who would fight for King George III. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, were said to be flocking to his banner to join what was called the Ethiopian Regiment. Within days of learning this alarming news, Washington reversed himself. Read more
Army restores the names of seven bases that lost their Confederate-linked names under Biden. AP and The Grio
To restore the original names of the additional seven bases, the Army once again found service members with the same last names to honor. Those bases are Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Pickett and Fort Robert E. Lee in Virginia, Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Polk in Louisiana and Fort Rucker in Alabama.
The decision strips names chosen in 2023 to honor top leaders, such as President Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as Black soldiers and women. No women are included in the new Army list. Read more
America had open borders until 1924. Racism and corporate greed changed that. By Daniel Mendiola / The Guardian
The primary justifications for these early immigration laws were xenophobia, eugenics, and overt racism.
By the 1990s, however, multinational corporations understood that closed borders – especially combined with free trade agreements freeing multinational companies to shop around for “cheap” workers, while at the same time constraining the options of workers to move around and look for better jobs – were a powerful weapon in their arsenal to squeeze ever more profit out of global supply chains. While cleverly hidden behind discourses of “security” and “sovereignty,” our immigration system is actually a scam rigged to guarantee an upward flow of wealth at the cost of human rights. Read more
The use of federal troops to quell Los Angles protests recalls militarized law enforcement during the Civil Rights Movement. By Justin Randolph / The Conversation
The last example of a president federalizing troops over the objection of a state government dates to Jim Crow segregation, a period marked by legal practices that routinely denied due process and citizenship rights to Black Americans in the South. In the 1960s, numerous Black freedom struggles took stands against this authoritarianism backed by militarized law enforcement. Gov. George Wallace is confronted by a US general.
As a scholar of U.S. history, I’ve just completed a book on Jim Crow policing and the ways Black Americans fought back against racist law and order. I think the militarization of policing in Los Angeles opens important questions about democracy and state violence. Read more
What Mavis Staples can teach us about resisting Trumpism. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Protecting democracy requires many soldiers in “the army of love”
On Sunday, June 8, I sat in a gentle rain at the Chicago Blues Festival with thousands of others, waiting for Mavis Staples to take the stage. At 85, Staples is an icon, with songs that include “Why? (Am I Treated So Bad),” “For What It’s Worth,” “Freedom Highway” and “Long Walk To D.C.” As part of The Staple Singers, she helped provide the soundtrack for the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the long Black Freedom Struggle. We must see legends like Staples while they are still with us. We are losing so many of them so fast. Read more
Schomburg Center centennial highlights large catalog of Black history. By Jaylen Green / AP
It is one of the largest repositories of Black history in the country — and its most devoted supporters say not enough people know about it. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture hoped to change that Saturday, as it celebrated its centennial with a festival combining two of its marquee annual events.
Founded in New York City during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, the Schomburg Center will spend the next year exhibiting signature objects curated from its massive catalog of Black literature, art, recordings and films. Read more
The Freedom Rides Museum Still Exists — For Now. Margaret Renkl / NYT
Among the less recognizable buildings slated for potential sale were several bearing the names of civil rights leaders, including Rosa Parks and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the building that houses the Freedom Rides Museum, which occupies the old Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery, Ala.
The Freedom Rides Museum commemorates the courage and sacrifice of a group of civil rights advocates — Black and white, young and old, female and male, Southern and Northern — who risked their lives on a series of bus rides through the segregated South in 1961. Read more
Sports
Aryna Sabalenka calls her French Open final comments about Coco Gauff ‘unprofessional.’ By Charlie Eccleshare / The Athletic
Aryna Sabalenka has said she “absolutely regrets” the “completely unprofessional” comments she made after losing the French Open final to Coco Gauff, adding that she has apologized to the American.
In her on-court interview and post-match news conference, Sabalenka, the world No. 1, repeatedly described her own performance as “terrible” and referred to the “terrible conditions,” on court, particularly the strong wind. She claimed that Gauff, the world No. 2, had gotten lucky with shots that she had mishit but that landed in. Read more
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Surpasses Michael Jordan and LeBron James’ NBA Finals Record After Game 5. By Vaibhavi Malhotra / Essentially Sports
There are moments when greatness screams, and Game 5? It was one of them. With everything on the line, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander delivered a masterpiece with 31 points, 10 assists, 2 steals and 4 blocks. The kind of poise that belongs to legends. Oklahoma City beat Indiana 120–109 and took a 3–2 lead in the NBA Finals. But if you think SGA did just that? You might want to rethink that. Because boy, did that man make history, yet again, just like that!
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander now holds the record for the most 30-point, 5-assist games in a single postseason (12), passing Michael Jordan (1990) and LeBron James (2018). Sure. No problem, read that again! Read more
Related: After Rick Carlisle adapted, his Pacers became a powerhouse. By Ben Golliver / Wash Post
Dwyane Wade wears many hats after the NBA: Father, entrepreneur, cancer survivor. By Jason Jones / The Athletic
Dwyane Wade’s résumé could have stopped at three-time NBA champion, 13-time NBA All-Star and Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer.
But his basketball success has given him access to a wide range of people and opportunities, in ventures involving sports, education, entertainment, food and wine. His post-basketball duties expanded with last month’s announcement that he would join Prime Video’s NBA coverage for the 2025-26 season as an in-game and studio analyst. Read more
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