Featured
On Juneteenth, Freedom Came With Strings Attached. By Charles M. Blow / NYT
Last week at a Juneteenth concert on the South Lawn of the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris said that on June 19, 1865, after Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, “The enslaved people of Texas learned they were free.” On that day, she said, “they claimed their freedom.”
But more important, emancipation was not true freedom — not in Texas and not in most of the American South, where a vast majority of Black people lived. It was quasi freedom. It was an ostensible freedom. It was freedom with more strings attached than a marionette. Read more
Political / Social
Biden ramps up push to end Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, highlighting the choice in the 2024 election. By Sahil Kapur / NBC News
President Joe Biden is gearing up to raise taxes on wealthy people in the U.S. if he’s re-elected this fall, picking a fight with Republican rival Donald Trump, who is promising even deeper tax cuts if he returns to the White House.
Major parts of the 2017 Trump tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025, splitting the two parties over whether to extend or end them. Keeping them would add $3.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Democrats are unifying behind a push to raise taxes on upper earners, while Republicans want to keep the tax breaks. The outcome will be decided by the winners of the White House and Congress. Read more
Trump unleashed: This is the calm before the storm. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Following his historic felony conviction in New York for election interference, the former president has become even more dangerous. As the 2024 election approaches and he feels more pressure from the potential of time in prison for his crimes, Trump’s violent and antisocial behavior will only escalate.
In the last few days and weeks, Donald Trump has, again, threatened to have President Biden and other leading Democrats put in prison. Trump has also threatened them with execution for “treason.” During a recent interview with TV personality Dr. Phil, Trump plainly stated that he would have to seek revenge on President Biden and his other so-called enemies.“Well, revenge does take time, I will say that….And sometimes revenge can be justified, Phil, I have to be honest. Sometimes it can.” Read more
Related: The Chilling Reason You May Never See the New Trump Movie. By Michelle Goldberg / NYT
Is the Supreme Court Running Out the Clock on Trump’s Immunity Case? By Leah Litman / NYT
For those looking for the hidden hand of politics in what the Supreme Court does, there’s plenty of reason for suspicion on Donald Trump’s as-yet-decided immunity case given its urgency.
There are, of course, explanations that have nothing to do with politics for why a ruling still hasn’t been issued. But the reasons to think something is rotten at the court are impossible to ignore. Read more
Maryland governor pardons 175,000 marijuana convictions in sweeping order. By Erin Cox , Katie Shepherd and Katie Mettler / Wash Post
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore issued a mass pardon of more than 175,000 marijuana convictions Monday morning, one of the nation’s most sweeping acts of clemency involving a drug now in widespread recreational use.
GOP pick for N.C. governor downplayed Weinstein allegations, assault by Ray Rice. By Patrick Svitek and Maegan Vazquez / Wash Post
Mark Robinson, the firebrand Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina, has for years made comments downplaying and making light of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Robinson has drawn scrutiny for his incendiary remarks on other issues, including about LGBTQ+ people, religion and other political figures. But his comments on domestic violence and sexual assault stand out for their tone and frequency, as well as Robinson’s repeated questioning of accusers. While Robinson is, in some ways, emblematic of the Republican Party’s turn under Donald Trump toward rewarding inflammatory, sexist language, his dismissals of women threaten to test Robinson’s appeal with voters troubled by that history, in particular female voters. Read more
Most Americans approve of DEI, according to Post-Ipsos poll. By Taylor Telford, Emmanuel Felton and Emily Guskin / Wash Post
Despite rising tensions over diversity, equity and inclusion programs, about 6 in 10 Americans said they are a “good thing” for companies to adopt.
A Supreme Court decision last year striking down affirmative action in college admissions unleashed a broad conservative attack on corporate efforts to achieve diversity. Dozens of companies, including giants like Meta and Pfizer, are fighting lawsuits over their corporate diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs, many of them brought by conservative activists. Republican-led state legislatures across the country are considering scores of anti-DEI bills, and such efforts are poised to become a wedge issue in this year’s presidential election. Read more
Related: Scholarships For Minorities Impacted by New Texas DEI Ban. By Thinktank / Baller Alert
Related: How DEI rollbacks at colleges and universities set back learning. By JT Torres / The Conversation
Sen. Tim Scott fashions himself a Christian. Why does he lie about Trump and crime? By Issac Bailey / Charlotte Observer
Over the weekend, a man recently convicted of 34 felonies decided to lie to Black people about crime. One of his top sycophants did the same.
One took to what was described as a Black church, and the other to TV news to sell the falsehood that violent crime has gotten worse over the past four years. “Under Joe Biden, we’ve seen the movement to defund the police, leaving communities like the one I grew up in devastated and ravaged by a wave of violent crime that we have not seen, literally, in five decades,” South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott told ABC News. Read more
Trumpworld keeps overstating Trump’s support among Black voters. By Phillip Bump / Wash Post
Attendees applaud as former president Donald Trump speaks during an appearance a church in Detroit on Saturday. Trump sat at a long table at the front of the room that was flanked by dozens of chairs in which Black audience members sat. But the rest of the audience, sitting in the nave, was much more heavily White.
It is true that current polling shows Trump faring better than he did with Black voters in 2020 and that the gap between his support and support for President Biden is far narrower than it was four years ago. But — as is the case with other apparent shifts since 2020 — that’s more a function of apathy about Biden than enthusiasm about Trump. Read more
World News
Israel grows more polarized as Gaza war cabinet dissolves. By Brad Dress / The Hill
The formal loss of the wartime Cabinet this week revealed how polarized Israel has become over the war in Gaza, with a once-united coalition now battling over the conflict’s direction, the return of hostages and a growing threat from Hezbollah.
The exit of opposition leader Benny Gantz from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet leaves the Israeli leader relying more on his far-right party allies, which could complicate efforts to secure a deal to release hostages and reach a cease-fire. Read more
Related: Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries split on Benjamin Netanyahu speech. By Mike Lillis / The Hill
As Haiti crumbles around us, we hold our communities together. By Monique Clesca / Wash Post
Haitians from all walks of life must take ownership of the political transition.
Nearly 580,000 Haitians have been displaced from their homes, many making do with minimal food, water and hygiene in makeshift camps in parks or other open spaces, schools and government offices. Cholera is on the rise. Thousands continue to head for the seas or to trek through Latin America in hopes of reaching the United States. Along with the shock, fear and humiliation I felt the day the gangs came to my neighborhood was the fury that it had come to this. The nation of Haiti had failed me and its 11.5 million people. Read more
Related: Juneteenth, Haiti and the power of reinvention. By Nadine Pinede / CNN
A Massacre Threatens Darfur — Again. Lauren Leatherby, Declan Walsh, Sanjan Varghese and
A civil war is ripping apart Sudan, one of Africa’s largest countries. Tens of thousands have been killed, millions scattered and an enormous famine looms, setting off one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises.
The city of El Fasher, home to 1.8 million people, is now at the center of global alarm. If it falls, officials warn, there may be little to stop a massacre. Fighters battling Sudan’s military for control of the country have encircled the city. Gunfights rage. Hospitals have closed. Residents are running out of food. Read more
Anti-Blackness is inherent in our immigration system, Biden’s executive order makes it worse. By Kica Matos and Nana Gyamfi / Salon
President Biden’s recent executive order severely limiting access to asylum for people seeking safety at the U.S.-Mexico border further imperils those fleeing dangerous conditions and betrays Biden’s campaign promises to restore asylum.
This anti-immigrant executive action resembles failed immigration policies that only worsen a dire situation that already leaves migrants seeking asylum in continually perilous conditions – especially Black migrants who are the most unlikely to attain asylum while also being the most likely to need asylum in the first place. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Episcopal Church grapples with ‘transformative role’ in Native American residential schools. By G. Jeffrey MacDonald / RNS
Pupils at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, circa 1900. (Photo courtesy of Creative Commons)
For most Native American children in the late 19th century and early 20th, education was neither a right nor a privilege. Indigenous children from Florida to Alaska were taken away, sometimes by force, to residential schools run by the government and often by denominations that operated under government contracts. Now the Episcopal Church, which was involved in running at least 34 of the schools, has begun to reckon with the outsized role it played in this history. Read more
Does white supremacy animate our rituals? By RNS Press Release
A pastor in San Diego questions the often-hidden histories and power structures within liturgy.
What if the logic of white supremacy that organizes society around whiteness has also infected worship liturgy? This is the subject of the book Listening as Hosts: Liturgically Facing Colonization and White Supremacy by Sam Codington, an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Read more
Political Scientists Want to Know Why We Hate Each Other This Much. By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
Who among us are the most willing to jettison democratic elections? Which voters not only detest their political adversaries, but long for their destruction? These questions are now at the heart of political science.
Five scholars have capitalized on new measurement techniques to identify “partisan sectarian” voters, a category that “does indeed predict anti-democratic tendencies.” Read more
Arizona is sending taxpayer money to religious schools — and billionaires see it as a model for the US. By , and
One of the factors behind Dream City’s success and Paradise Valley’s struggles: In Arizona, taxpayer dollars that previously went to public schools like the ones that closed are increasingly flowing to private schools – including those that adopt a right-wing philosophy.
Arizona was the first state in the country to enact a universal “education savings account” program – a form of voucher that allows any family to take tax dollars that would have gone to their child’s public education and spend the money instead on private schooling. Read more
‘Rattlesnakes Don’t Commit Suicide. By Justin Giboney / Christianity Today
This Juneteenth, the life of unsung civil rights hero Fred Shuttlesworth should be a clarion call to the biblical activism we still need to advance racial justice in America.
Shuttlesworth is an unsung hero of the civil rights movement. A cofounder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he faced and ultimately outwitted Birmingham’s infamous commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, to advance racial justice in one of America’s most obstinately segregated environments. Read more
Richard Smallwood, ‘Total Praise’ composer, to receive Juneteenth tribute in D.C. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
For decades, Richard Smallwood has been on stages from Carnegie Hall to churches, at the piano or at the microphone, performing music that features his distinctive genre-bending blend of gospel and classical.
Now, as a way to mark both his 75th birthday and Juneteenth, Smallwood is getting the Kennedy Center treatment: The Grammy nominee and Stellar and Dove awardee will get a special seat in the premiere concert hall in the nation’s capital as other gospel luminaries such as Dorinda Clark-Cole and Marvin Winans join choir members to perform in his honor. Read more
Historical / Cultural
The legacy of a last name: A new memorial park honors the last names of the formerly enslaved. By and
A new sculpture park that memorializes African Americans’ centuries-long fight for freedom – from slavery to modern day – has opened in Montgomery, Alabama, the original capital of the Confederacy.
The Freedom Monument Sculpture Park honors the millions of people who were enslaved in the United States and their descendants’ ongoing fight for equality. The 17-acre park features sculptures hewed by a mix of world-renowned and emerging artists chosen by Bryan Stevenson, the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Read more
What Frederick Douglass learned from an Irish antislavery activist: ‘Agitate, agitate, agitate.’ By Christine Kinealy / The Conversation
Even before Douglass arrived in Ireland in 1845, he was aware of the rich tradition of Irish men and women involved in the transatlantic movement to bring an end to the U.S. system of enslavement.
In particular, he was an admirer of the Irish nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell. A vocal critic of enslavement, O’Connell had played an important role in bringing it to an end in the British Empire in 1833. Read more
Mexico was a destination for escaped slaves — one woman risked everything to get them there. By
A Texas exhibit honors the life and work of Silvia Hector Webber, who became known as the “Harriet Tubman of Texas” for helping enslaved people flee the States.
“Silvia Hector Webber was a remarkable person,” exhibit curator Sarah Sonner said. “We know that her home offered a place of refuge on the path to freedom via Mexico for the Underground Railroad. We also know the steep price that she and John were asked to pay to achieve the freedom for Silvia and their three children.” Read more
Ebony Reed Discusses Her New Book Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap. Rainy Day Books
Fifteen Cents on the Dollar is a comprehensive, deeply human look at Black-white wealth-gap history, told through the lives Black Americans as well as through the development of a new bank intended to help close the Black-white wealth gap.
Seasoned journalist-academics Louise Story and Ebony Reed provide crucial insights on American economic equity, Black business ownership, and political and business practices that leave Black Americans behind. In chronicling how these staggering injustices came to be, they show how and why so little progress on the wealth gap has been made and provide insights Americans should consider if they want lasting change. Read more
How Black Librarians Helped Create Generations of Black Literature. / NYT
In 1925, the New York Public Library system established the first public collection dedicated to Black materials at its 135th Street branch in Harlem, now known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.Credit…New York Public Library
Today, figures like Schomburg and the historian and activist W.E.B. Du Bois (another collector and compiler of Black books) are hailed as the founders of the 20th-century Black intellectual tradition. But increasingly, scholars are also uncovering the important role of the women who often ran the libraries, where they built collections and — just as important — communities of readers. Read more
The American Election That Set the Stage for Trump. Isaac Chotiner / The New Yorker
David Duke, a former Klansman and neo-Nazi, lost the race for governorship in Louisiana but won a majority of the white vote.
In a new book, “When the Clock Broke,” the writer John Ganz examines how the politics of the Trump years were seeded in the early nineteen-nineties. This strange period included a brief but powerful recession, civil unrest in Los Angeles following the acquittal of police officers who brutally beat Rodney King, and the rise of unlikely political figures such as the neo-Nazi David Duke and the paleoconservative nationalist Pat Buchanan. Read more
Denzel Washington wanted to ‘protect’ Whitney Houston on ‘The Preacher’s Wife.’ By Lisa Respers France / CNN
Denzel Washington is reflecting on his relationship with the late Whitney Houston. The pair costarred together in the 1996 film “The Preacher’s Wife” and developed a friendship. Houston died from an accidental drowning in 2012 at age 48.
“I always felt like I wanted to protect her,” he said. “You know? She wanted to be so tough, but she really wasn’t.” Read more
Sports
Boston’s star duo deserves this Celtics celebration. By Jerry Brewer / Wash Post
In the NBA Finals, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown finally secured the only win that matters to their franchise.
It was a long wait for an early celebration. With a minute left in the championship-clinching blowout, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown stood on the sideline and hugged. Tatum patted Brown on the head, and they shared a few congratulatory words, the stars looking relieved and fulfilled. At last, the Jays had captured the only W that truly matters when you represent the Boston Celtics. Read more
Jordan Chiles almost quit gymnastics over racism — now she’s vying for Olympic gold. By
“I wanted to be done because I didn’t think … the sport wanted me,” Chiles said on NBC’s “My New Favorite Olympian” podcast.
But Chiles chose to persevere. Instead of quitting, she continued embracing her true self and embarked on a journey of empowering women of color. Now, as Chiles looks ahead to the 2024 Olympics in pursuit of success, she’s leaning into inspiring the younger generation to do as she did. “I’ve cried a couple times,” she said. “I’ve had times where I look at them in their faces and I’m just like, ‘You are the most beautiful human being that God has created.’ I definitely enjoy the fact that the younger generation has someone to look up to that’s like me.” Read more
Negro Leagues baseball was even greater than the record books can say. By Bob Kendrick / Wash Post
Those of us dedicated to telling the great civil rights story of Negro Leagues baseball relished the recent triumph of seeing baseball’s record books integrated at last. Major League Baseball officially recognized the statistics of more than 2,300 athletes who played from 1920 to 1948 in the various professional leagues open to Black and Hispanic men.
But alongside the joy I felt at seeing such prolific hitters as Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston and Jud Wilson take their rightful places alongside Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Ted Williams, I also felt a little unease. We must not allow the integrated record books to dim the memory of the segregated playing fields. Read more
Willie Mays: One of baseball’s most electrifying and complete players has died at 93. By and
Willie Mays, the dynamic baseball Hall of Famer who shined in all facets of the game and made a dramatic catch in the 1954 World Series, died Tuesday at the age of 93, the San Francisco Giants announced.
Mays passed away “peacefully and among loved ones,” his son, Michael Mays, said in a release from the Giants, the Major League Baseball franchise with which Mays was most associated. Mays led the National League in home runs and steals in four seasons and in slugging five times. He hit over .300 ten times and had a career average of .301. Read more
Related: Remembering Willie Mays as Both Untouchable and Human. By Kurt Streeter / NYT
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