Featured
Why Did Republicans Become So Extreme? By Paul Krugman / NYT
Many political analysts have spent years warning that the G.O.P. was becoming an extremist, anti-democratic party.
Long before Republicans nominated Donald Trump for president, let alone before Trump refused to acknowledge electoral defeat, the congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein declared that the party had become “an insurgent outlier” that rejected “facts, evidence and science” and didn’t accept the legitimacy of political opposition.
It’s a puzzle. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately looking for historical precursors — cases in which right-wing extremism rose even in the face of peace and prosperity. And I think I’ve found one: the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Read more
Related: We need to talk about whiteness — and then we need to dismantle it. By Baynard Woods / Salon
Abortion
Poor women of color will bear brunt of abortion bans following Roe reversal: Expert. ByRachel Scott, Tenzin Shakya, and Amanda Su / ABC News
Forty-nine percent of abortion patients have an income below the poverty line, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, women in states that now outlaw abortion have scrambled to cobble together piecemeal solutions, including traveling across state lines, an expert told ABC News. However, for many that won’t be an option, according to Deon Haywood, executive director of New Orleans women’s health organization Women with a Vision. Read more
Related: The Three Biggest Implications For Black Women From Roe V. Wade’s Fall. By Jared Council and Haniyah Philogene / Forbes
Related: Jemele Hill: Why I’m Talking About My Abortion / The Atlantic
Related: Black abortion providers wonder what’s next for them after Roe v. Wade. By Char Adams / NBC News
Related: No, Justice Alito, Reproductive Justice Is in the Constitution. By Michele Goodwin / NYT
Related: Where are our post-Roe reforms? It’s about the children, right? By Petula Dvorak / Wash Post
Related: The Dobbs Decision Isn’t Just About Abortion. It’s About Power. By Ezra Klein Show / NYT Podcast
Political / Social
Val Demings Is on a Mission. By Rita Omokha / Vanity Fair
The former police chief helped impeach Donald Trump and survived an insurrection—now the third-term congresswoman has her eyes on the Senate. “In Val there’s hope,” says fellow representative Robin Kelly, “that we can move closer to that promise of America.”
There was sure to be drama at the Lake County campaign stop. That’s expected for any Democrat entering a rural Florida town that went to Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, let alone a Black woman. It was a hot spring morning. The pine trees were full, the sky clear, and Representative Val Demings pulled up on her red Harley-Davidson with her biker crew, 30 deep, engines revving. People stared. Some stuck out phones. Read more
Georgia showdowns: Warnock leading Walker by 10 points, Kemp and Abrams tied, according to new poll. By Paul Steinhauser / Fox News
Senate and gubernatorial elections in Georgia are considered two of nation’s most crucial contests
Warnock leads Walker 54%-44% among Peach State registered voters, according to the poll which was conducted June 23-27. That’s a dramatic swing from Quinnipiac’s last poll in the Georgia Senate race, which indicated the contest was basically tied in January. An East Carolina University survey, conducted in early June, also pointed to a dead heat. The survey indicates that Warnock’s overall 10-point lead is fueled by a 62%-33% advantage over Walker among independent voters, and a double-digit lead among females compared to Walker’s single-digit margin among males. Warnock leads 88%-10% among Black voters, while Walker wins the support of White voters 62%-35%. Read more
Thomas Says Critics Sought to Make Him ‘Repulsive’ Amid SCOTUS Nomination: Book. By John L. Dorman / Business Insider
Justice Clarence Thomas in a recently released book said that his opponents tried to turn him into “something that is repulsive” after he was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1991, comparing them to the gnats that were part of his formative years in Georgia. In the book, “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” co-edited by Michael Pack and Mark Paoletta, the jurist sat down with Pack for over 30 hours between November 2017 and March 2018, in what became an expanded companion to the 2020 documentary of the same name. Read more
The Supreme Court just reinstated a racially gerrymandered map that slashes Black representation. By Ian Millhiser / Vox
Ardoin v. Robinson could foreshadow a new age of widespread racial gerrymandering
The Supreme Court handed down a brief order Tuesday evening that effectively reinstates racially gerrymandered congressional maps in the state of Louisiana, at least for the 2022 election. Under these maps, Black voters will control just one of Louisiana’s six congressional seats, despite the fact that African Americans make up nearly a third of the state’s population. Thus, the Court’s decision in Ardoin v. Robinson means that Black people will have half as much congressional representation as they would enjoy under maps where Black voters have as much opportunity to elect their own preferred candidate as white people in Louisiana. Read more
Related: Ketanji Brown Jackson joins a Supreme Court in turmoil. By Ariane de Vogue / CNN
As inflation soars, Black families bear the brunt of rising grocery, gas and housing prices. By
Some research suggests that Black households are more susceptible to inflation changes than White households.
A study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis found that necessities such as groceries, electricity, and wireless phone service make up a larger share of Black families’ budgets. Black households are also spending a larger portion of their income on goods and services with prices that change more often, the study said. Read more
Related: How America’s racial divisions have echoes in the coronavirus pandemic. By Philip Bump / Wash Post
Military-Grade Surveillance in Schools Won’t Stop the Next Mass Shooting, but It Will Increase the Policing of Black Students. By Sidney Fussell / New Republic
Congress is planning to throw more money at school “security” as part of the bipartisan gun deal.
Student advocates have warned that hardening schools doesn’t make schools less vulnerable to shooters, it makes them less safe for the most vulnerable students. Especially for Black students, who are already disportionately punished in schools and face even greater risk as schools turn to high-tech surveillance and intensified security measures. Read more
Ethnic media was devastated by Covid. Now publishers are struggling to self-fund. By Anuz Thapa / NBC News
Bikash Raj Neupane, left, founder of Himalaya Khabar.Courtesy Bikash Raj Neupane
While the pandemic has dealt a blow to the entire journalism industry — more than 100 local newsrooms have closed since — it’s been especially tough on small, ethnic news outlets that may not have the resources to stay afloat. Of the four Nepalese newspapers in New York City — Vishwa Sandesh; Everest Times, a biweekly; Khasokhas, a weekly; and Nepalaya, a biweekly — all have been forced to close their print editions and turn entirely digital. Read more
‘Hip-Hop Minister’ Conrad Tillard Is Running For State Senator: 5 Things To Know. By Ann Brown / The Moguldon Nation
A former high-ranking Nation of Islam leader known in New York City as the “Hip-Hop Minister” has announced he’s running for a state Senate seat. Conrad Tillard, who once ran the Nation of Islam’s famed Harlem Mosque No. 7 before leaving to become a Christian minister, tweeted that wants to represent New York’s 25th District as a state senator. District 25 covers part of eastern and north-central Brooklyn, including the neighborhoods of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Greene, Boerum Hill, Red Hook, Sunset Park, Gowanus, and Park Slope. The population of the district is 40.6 percent Black and 33.3 percent white. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Pro-Life Black Christians Don’t Focus on Abortion Alone. By Amethst Holmes / Christianity Today
Overturning Roe v. Wade draws attention to what they’ve known all along: There’s much more to upholding life than banning abortion.
As the founder of Pro-Black Pro-Life, Cherilyn Holloway sees how Black Christians may agree with valuing life from a theological standpoint and are open to a “whole-life” perspective yet they reject politically conservative policy stances. For them, the racial disparities and injustice impacting abortion need to be prioritized too. Read more
Related: The heart of the abortion debate: What is human life? By Henry Olsen / Wash Post
The Episcopal saint whose journey for social justice took many forms, from sit-ins to priesthood. By Sarah Azaramsky / The Conversation
July 1 is the annual feast day for Episcopal saint Pauli Murray, the first Black woman to be ordained by the denomination: an affirmation of her many contributions not only to the church, but to social justice in the United States. Saints exemplify “what it means to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and make a difference in the world, and Pauli Murray is one of those people,” Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry said when Murray gained the status of a saint in 2012. I am a scholar of religion and ethics and have written a biography of Murray and her faith. Throughout her life as an activist, author, lawyer and priest, Murray developed new ways of thinking about justice and identity – ideas important in the U.S. today. Read more
Supreme Court wrong about Bremerton coach Kennedy’s coercive prayer. By Frank Lambert / USA Today
As a rookie with the Pittsburgh Steelers, I objected to the pre-game prayers. How I prayed was my decision and mine alone.
In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the court upheld the coach’s right to pray on the 50-yard line and invite players to kneel with him. In doing so, I believe the court violated the players’ free exercise of religion. Rather than letting the individual players decide if, when and how they pray, the justices empowered coaches to inflict their prayers on their teams. And high school coaches exert far more influence on their players than our defensive captain did on me. Read more
When is it time to leave America? Martini Judaism / RNS
We Jews have been here before, and we have learned from our history.
The state that giveth rights can become the state that taketh those rights away. That is precisely what Americans learned this past week. You can lose your rights, or your rights can become relativized and localized, varying from state to state. Which brings me to my second point. If Jews know, better than anyone else, what it can mean for a country to change, and for rights to change and disappear, Jews also know that when it gets too much to bear, it is time to leave. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Court: Harvard can be sued for distress over slave photos. By AP and NBC News
Tamara Lanier at a news conference in New York on March 20, 2019,
A Connecticut woman who says she’s descended from slaves who are portrayed in widely published, historical photos owned by Harvard University can sue the school for emotional distress, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled Thursday. The state’s Supreme Judicial Court partly vacated a lower court ruling that dismissed a complaint from Tamara Lanier over photos she says depict her enslaved ancestors. The images are considered some of the earliest that show enslaved people in the U.S. Read more
Remembering A Renaissance Man. Jamal Eric Watson / Diverse Issues In Higher Education
By all accounts, Dr. William E. Cox was a renaissance man. An advocate for education, Cox’s business acumen and creative mind would prove beneficial in the creation of one of the nation’s most successful minority-owned publications, Diverse: Issues In Higher Education. Along with his business partner Frank L. Matthews, he set out to dramatically transform the higher education landscape with the founding of Black Issues In Higher Education, later renamed Diverse: Issues In Higher Education in 2005. Read more
Grain Elevator Project Could Destroy African American Historical Sites, Preservation Agency Says. By Seth Freed Wessler / Propublica
Willow Grove Cemetery is one of the historic sites near where the grain elevator would be constructed.Credit:Akasha Rabut, special to ProPublica
The federal agency charged with overseeing historic preservation policy has expressed concern that a Louisiana industrial project could inflict harm on African American historic sites. The move follows a ProPublica investigation that found an archeological consulting firm had gutted a report to the Army Corps of Engineers that originally detailed that harm. Read more
Taraji P. Henson Hosted the BET Awards. Danielle Cohen / New York Magazine
If you were trying to count Taraji P. Henson’s outfit changes at Sunday night’s BET Awards, don’t bother. Even Henson doesn’t remember exactly how many outfits she had onstage, and that’s not including the corset and YSL net dress she wore to Diddy’s after-party. (The official count is 14.) Every look came with new hair and nails — Henson has her own home salon, so if you thought she wasn’t going to use this chance to turn out upwards of ten wigs, think again. Read more
Mishael Morgan is the first Black actor to win a lead category at the Daytime Emmys. By AP and NPR
Mishael Morgan of “The Young and the Restless” won as lead drama actress, becoming the first Black actor to win in a lead category at the Daytime Emmys on Friday night. Morgan was previously nominated in the supporting category. The 35-year-old from Trinidad and Tobago plays Amanda Sinclair on the CBS soap. “I am being honored regardless of the color of my skin, regardless of my passport, for being the best at what I do,” Morgan said. “Now there are little girls all around the world and they’re seeing another step forward and they know that no matter their industry, no matter their vocation, no matter what, they can strive to be the best at what they do. Not only can they achieve it, but they will be celebrated.” Read more
R Kelly is sentenced to 30 years in prison for sex crimes and racketeering. By Andrew Limbong and Anastasia Tsioulcas / NPR
He was sentenced in New York by federal Judge Ann Donnelly, who spoke at length before issuing the sentence. At one point, she quoted a victim impact statement from a woman known in court as Stephanie, who told Kelly, “No price was too high for someone else to pay for your happiness.” “This case is not about sex,” the judge said. “It is about violence, cruelty and control.” Read more
Sports
Russian Court Says Brittney Griner’s Trial Will Begin on Friday. / NYT
A Russian court said the trial for the U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner will begin on Friday and she will remain in custody until it ends, her lawyer, Aleksandr Boikov, said on Monday. Ms. Griner appeared in the Khimki city court near Moscow for a preliminary hearing. She did not speak following her court appearance, according to a video from outside the courtroom that was posted by the official state news agency TASS. The W.N.B.A. star, who had played for a Russian team during the off-season, was detained in a Moscow airport on Feb. 17, ensnaring a U.S. citizen’s fate in the confrontation between Russia and the West over Ukraine. Read more
Marlin Briscoe, Pioneering Black Quarterback, Dies at 76. Ken Belson and
He became the first Black starting quarterback of the Super Bowl era in the 1960s, but prejudiced thinking by coaches stifled his trajectory at the position.
Marlin Briscoe, a pioneering scrambling quarterback who had to overcome prejudice against Black athletes playing that position during the 1960s, and who later won two Super Bowl rings as a wide receiver with the Miami Dolphins, died on Monday in Norwalk, Calif., outside Los Angeles. He was 76. Read more
How a Tennis Nerd Gave Serena and Venus Williams a New Lease on the Game. / NYT
Already coaching one American tennis icon, Eric Hechtman added another: logging the extra miles and the extra hours to try to help both Venus and Serena Williams get the most out of however many matches or seasons they have left. “If they are both good with it, I’m absolutely good with it,” Hechtman said in an interview at Wimbledon last week. “They are family. They are super close with each other. It’s been great so far.” Hechtman, a 38-year-old club professional and father of three from Miami, jokes that he is “old” but he is younger than both his star pupils. Read more
Related: At Wimbledon, Serena Williams loses 1st match she’s played in nearly a year. CBS News
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