Featured
The world witnessed George Floyd’s murder. 5 years later, what has changed? By Michel Martin / NPR
Five years later, many of us are still trying to wrap our heads around why it happened, and just as importantly, what those tragic and frightening words and days mean to us now.
That’s why a group of us from Morning Edition spent the week in the Twin Cities, driving and walking around, listening and talking, asking people for their thoughts about what they think the events of May 2020 meant. We spoke with people from different backgrounds: ministers, activists, educators, a business owner who is still trying to make a living on the street where Floyd was killed and having a tough go of it. Read more
Political / Social
Trump’s Lie About Dead “White Farmers” Just Got Even More Grotesque. By Greg Sargent / TNR
That photo he brandished to Cyril Ramaphosa was from the Democratic Republic of Congo—whose refugees the Trump administration is pointedly not welcoming to America.
This abomination came as Trump ambushed Ramaphosa by displaying numerous printouts of web pages to illustrate a “genocide” against whites underway in his country. But Reuters now reports that one of the printouts displayed imagery taken from a Reuters video shot in Congo of humanitarian workers moving dead victims from the war with Rwanda-backed rebels. Read more
Related: “White genocide” and white guilt: Donald Trump versus history. By Andrew O’Hehir / Salon
Related: Trump Didn’t Want a Deal in the Oval Office. He Wanted a Humiliation. By Lydia Polgreen / NYT
Related: The Long History of the U.S. Backing White South Africans. By Joel Cabrita / Time
Why this diversity leader says scrapping DEI commitments without recognizing the benefits is ‘morally unjust and bankrupt.’ By Burt Morse / Fortune
Vernā Myers, diversity consultant, author, lawyer and founder of The Vernā Myers Company, joined Frericks for a discussion about the DEI landscape.
Myers, who noted she is no longer using the term “DEI,” defined diversity as “a mix of culture and identity and experience.” Inclusion is how companies make all of those differences work on behalf of employees by creating environments where people of all backgrounds feel included, respected and reflected. Myers said these themes are necessary to have at work as companies look to achieve true merit-based systems of hiring and promotion by removing unfair obstacles to equality. Read more
Trump administration is minimizing white supremacist threat, officials warn. By Tess Owen / The Guardian
Coming changes at the state department follow pattern of moving resources away from programs that focus on preventing far-right violence
In addition to the new ban on using language to refer to the threat of white supremacists, last month Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, unveiled a plan for huge cuts at the state department, which would result in the elimination of more than a hundred offices and about 700 jobs – including those whose portfolios include racially motivated violent extremism. Read more
Related: Trump wants us explode in violent outrage — here’s why. Sabrina Haake / Raw Story
Trump’s Week: Rob From the Poor, Give to the Rich, Steal Like Crazy. By Michael Tomasky / TNR
Nothing sums up the descent into authoritarian corruption of the once-republican USA like the events of May 22, 2025.
Dawn broke with the House of Representatives passing the Trump budget bill, which takes from the poor to give to the rich more bluntly and blatantly than any bill in American history. The day ended with Donald Trump hosting the most corrupt dinner a president of the United States has ever held, solely for the purpose of enriching himself, and putting himself in hock to … well, his real employers—the citizens and voters of the United States—have no idea who they are, precisely. Read more
Related: Millions Could Lose Food Stamp Benefits Under Republican Bill, Analysis Finds. Tony Romm / NYT
Related: The Republican Budget Bill Rips College Away From the Working Class. By Monica Potts / TNR
Education
Trump Is Holding International Students at Harvard Hostage. By Elie Mystal / The Nation
In its quest to wreak vengeance on Harvard, the administration may ultimately fail at punishing the university—but it will harm thousands of young people.
The current US dictator, Donald Trump, has decided to hold around 6,800 students hostage in order to settle a score with a university he wasn’t smart enough to get into. On Thursday, the puppy-murderer cosplaying as the director of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, sent a letter to Harvard telling it that DHS had revoked Harvard’s certification under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), thereby halting its ability to enroll international students under the “F” and “J” visa programs. The move would mean that Harvard’s 6,793 international students would suddenly be “out of status,” and either have to leave the country, enroll in another university, or remain at the university in violation of the terms of their visa—and risk deportation. Read more
Related: A Permanent Stain on Our History. By William Kristol , Andrew Egger , and Jim Swift/ The Bulwark
Related: Wall Street Journal rips Donald Trump’s Harvard University attacks. By Filip Timotija / The Hill
Colleges are canceling affinity graduations due to anti-DEI policies. Here is how students are preserving the traditions. By
Graduates celebrate as they participate in the Black Commencement at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 23, 2017
Harvard is among several universities across the country that have canceled affinity graduations amid threats from President Donald Trump to block medical research funding and revoke accreditation from schools that don’t end diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Trump decries these programs as “illegal and immoral discrimination.” Read more
Related: Public K-12 schools are now in crosshairs of Trump’s DEI directive. By Kayla Jimenez / USA Today
How FAMU community plans to thwart Marva Johnson’s path to president. By Tarah Jean / Tallahassee Democrat
In an emotional 8-4 vote, FAMU’s Board of Trustees recently tapped Johnson – a group vice president at Charter Communications who served as a political appointee in the administrations of Govs. Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis – to take the helm at Lee Hall.
Many view Johnson’s ascension as the latest example of DeSantis reshaping the higher education landscape in his political mold – this time at the nation’s No. 1 public HBCU. Indeed, supporters of the governor praised the selection. Read more
Yale University awards honorary degrees to five Black luminaries including Debbie Allen, Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., and Ronald Carter. By Kay Wicker / The Grio
Yale University granted honorary degrees to “individuals whose achievements in their field have benefited the common good.”
The legendary dancer and performer Debbie Allen, the host of “Finding Your Roots,” Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., and the iconic jazz musician and composer Ronald Carter are among the latest to become “doctors” this graduation season. In addition to Allen, Gates, and Carter, the five honorees include former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author Annette Gordon-Reed. Read more
Judge blocks Trump’s plan to dismantle Education Department. By Zachary Schermele / USA Today
Schools welcomed the decision, which will bring back droves of staffers on which they rely to deliver key services. But it’s not clear how many employees are even willing to return.
District Court Judge Myong J. Joun, a Biden appointee in Boston, said the White House’s decision to fire more than 1,300 workers in March has prevented the federal government from effectively implementing legally required programs and services. Read more
World
Netanyahu is turning Israel into a global pariah – the world has finally run out of patience. By Bel Trew / Independent
The joint statement by the UK, France and Canada – combined with UK sanctions and suspension of trade talks – shows the international community has finally run out of patience with Israel.
Under Israel’s total blockade, these friends struggle to eat, sometimes resorting to rotten food. They struggle to get clean water. They struggle to get nutrients to their young baby. They have lost dozens of extended family members. They have done nothing to deserve this. Read more
Russian attack in Ukraine kills 12 as Zelensky condemns ‘silence of America.’ By Siobhán O’Grady, Serhiy Morgunov and Isobel Koshiw / Wash Post
The missile and drone attack casts more doubt on the U.S.-brokered peace process. President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the “silence of America and others around the world.”
Russia launched another massive missile and drone attack across Ukraine overnight into Sunday, killing 12 people, authorities here said — casting further doubt on Moscow’s intentions in an already shaky peace process brokered by President Donald Trump. Read more
Lagos on the Way to Being World’s Largest City. By Chris Richburg / Eurweb
*It’s a long way away, but Lagos, Nigeria is on its way to becoming the world’s largest city. The Daily Express reports the African city is is projected to capture the title by the end of the century with an estimated population of approximately 100 million people.
Adding to that is Ontario Tech University, which suggests Lagos could surpass Tokyo, Delhi, and Shanghai to be the most densely populated urban area globally. Lagos may not be the largest city in the world yet, but its 20 million residents can take comfort embracing its current status as Africa’s largest city. Lagos is gaining ground among the world’s cities with a fast-growing economy. As Nigeria’s financial hub, the location has positioned itself as a significant player in the banking, technology and entertainment industries. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Meet the Evangelical Abolitionists Who Can Guide Today’s Church. By Obie Tyler Todd / Christianity Today
A new book studies three leaders who fought slavery with a comprehensive theological vision.
Today, it has become almost cliché to frame the antislavery figures from 19th-century America as prophets. David W. Blight’s 2018 biography of Frederick Douglass bore the title Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. According to Blight, a “guiding theme” of Douglass’s life was his “deep grounding in the Bible, especially the Old Testament.” Harriet Tubman has been called the “Fugitive Prophet” and Sojourner Truth the “Prophet of Social Justice.” In Bearing Witness: What the Church Can Learn from Early Abolitionists, Daniel Lee Hill draws on the language and themes of Old Testament prophets, Hill, a theology professor at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary, gives the movement against slavery a distinctively New Testament framing. Read more
Christian nationalists decided empathy is a sin. Now it’s gone mainstream. By Aja Romano / Vox
It’s a provocative idea: that empathy — that is, putting yourself in another person’s proverbial shoes, and feeling what they feel — is a sin.
Yet as stunning as it may sound, “empathy is a sin” is a claim that’s been growing in recent years across the Christian right. It was first articulated six years ago by controversial pastor and theologian Joe Rigney, now author of the recently published book, The Sin of Empathy, which has drawn plenty of debate among religious commentators. Read more
The Supreme Court Rules Against Religious Public Charter School, For Now. By
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday against allowing Oklahoma’s first religious public charter school, in a case that has significant implications for religion in public life. The court ruled 4-4 in Oklahoma State Charter School Board v. Drummond, after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself. The unsigned ruling offered no opinion on the merits, saying only that Justice Barrett took no part in the decision. Read more
Five years after George Floyd’s murder, church leaders say race relations face retrenchment. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
Bishop W. Darin Moore of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church remembers what it was like in the days after the 2020 murder of George Floyd. “You saw initiatives being taken by churches, by governmental entities or by corporations to acknowledge first, and then to confront and then to improve racial relations,” he recalled.
Now, said Moore, the leader of eastern North Carolina churches of his historically Black denomination, most of the work to ensure Black history is taught appears to be happening in Black churches. That’s in part due to backlash against what he termed the “bogeyman” critics created as they opposed diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and critical race theory — two concepts that have become politically polarizing terms in recent years. Read more
Historical / Cultural
The Battle for Our Memory Is the Battle for Our Country. By Kimberlé W. Crenshaw / Time
From the vantage point of the summer of nationwide protests following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Lewis’ appearance on Black Lives Matter Plaza felt like a coda to the unfinished business of the civil rights movement, a symbolic christening of the nation’s renewed journey to a more equitable future.
The removal of Black Lives Matter Plaza was but one example of the erasure that has been the hallmark of the fraught history of African Americans in the United States. In fact, the abandonment of the reckoning it symbolized in less than five years is surprising only because of the speed at which the denouement of the movement arrived. Read more
Times Sq. Sculpture Prompts Racist Backlash. To Some, That’s the Point. By Andrew Keh / NYT
A 12-foot bronze statue of an anonymous Black woman has become a lightning rod in a fraught American debate about race, representation and diversity.
A columnist for Fox News wondered why a statue of an “angry Black lady” had been displayed in the same city where a contentious monument of Theodore Roosevelt had been removed a few years back, while a writer for The Federalist described the work as “leftist cultural warfare.” Read more
NAACP Honors 3 Mississippi Civil Rights Trailblazers: ‘These Folks Sacrificed Everything.’ By Jeroslyn JoVonn / Black Enterprise
Jackson, Mississippi’s NAACP chapter honored Medgar Evers, Winson Hudson, and Aaron Henry last week.
“In Mississippi, we faced many hurdles as people of color, and these folks sacrificed everything,” said Allytra Perryman, deputy director of the NAACP Conference. “Medgar Evers lost his life in a fight to make sure that Black people had the right to vote. So we carry on that spirit of grit and determination to make sure that everyone has a voice and that what happens in their lives.” Read more
The Root’s Summer 2025 Reading List Books by Black Authors. By Angela Johnson / The Root
Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer, and we can’t think of anything better to do on a summer day than to relax in the park or on the beach with a good book – except maybe relax with a good book and a nice glass of wine.
NPR wants to hear from interracial couples for Loving Day. By Brittney Melton / NPR
Loving Day is on June 12. The day commemorates the landmark case that overturned U.S. state laws against interracial marriage.
Less than 60 years ago, interracial marriage was illegal in some parts of the U.S. In 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving were arrested for being married, as they were an interracial couple living in Virginia. Their landmark case, Loving v. Virginia, reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where their lawyers argued that such bans were rooted in white supremacy and slavery laws. The Lovings won their case on June 12, 1967, invalidating all state laws against interracial marriage in the country. Read more
Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Confirms She’s Our Greatest Live Performer. By Kevin Fallon / The Daily Beast
There is only one person worth one of the world’s most harrowing experiences: going to New Jersey. I did it to see Beyoncé.
Beyoncé is a dynamo on stage. She is peerless, uncorking some volcanic force of magnetism and personality from the first second of the show that never relents over the course of three hours. She’s in the lineage of Prince and Tina Turner when it comes to that kind of artistry and energy in live performance. She is so good, a person will even go to New Jersey to see her. Read more
Sports
Maya Moore and Carmelo Anthony: Sports Can Advance Justice. By Rachel Sonis / Time
When news broke of George Floyd’s murder, athletes across the sports world stepped up. They participated in walkouts and protests, signaled their support for Black Lives Matter, and engaged in conversation about creating racial equity.
WNBA star Maya Moore was working to free family friend Jonathan Irons, who spent 23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and used her platform to talk about the need for change. (Moore and Irons eventually married.) Meanwhile, Carmelo Anthony helped create the Social Change Fund United, a philanthropic effort to invest in organizations that support people of color. Five years later, the former basketball stars—both class of 2025 inductees of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame—reflect on that period in separate interviews and share insights about how sports can inspire younger generations to lead. Read more
Basketball legend Dawn Staley reflects on successes and challenges in ‘Uncommon Favor.’ By Amna Nawaz and Courtney Norris / PBS
Dawn Staley is a woman of many titles: five-time WNBA all-star, Olympic gold medalist, head coach and now an author.
In her first book, Staley reflects on the lessons that made her who she is today. Amna Nawaz spoke with Staley about her love of basketball and her new memoir, “Uncommon Favor: Basketball, North Philly, My Mother, and the Life Lessons I Learned from All Three.” Read more and listen here
Former NBA Star Booed Upon Arrival At Trump’s Crypto Dinner. By
Former NBA star Lamar Odom was booed and heckled Thursday night when he arrived for an ethically dubious dinner President Donald Trump hosted for the top investors in his $TRUMP meme coin. “Lamar, you’re better than this,” someone shouted outside the dinner venue at Trump’s luxury golf club in Northern Virginia as Odom moved through a crowd of booing protesters. “Lamar, what are you doing? Shame on you, Lamar.” Read more
If the Hall of Fame is open to Pete Rose, it should find a spot for Curt Flood. B
In two years, Rose, a Hall of Fame official assured me, could be joined on the ballot by Curt Flood. That would provide the committee a chance to calm some of the nauseousness Trump and Manfred helped induce. It was 55 years ago this week that Flood walked into a federal court in New York City to stand up to Major League Baseball’s absolute control of its players in Flood v. Kuhn, the latter referring to then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn. Flood was the first witness. Weeks later, Flood lost. And he lost and lost again, right up the judicial ladder to the Supreme Court. Read more
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander wins MVP award after leading Thunder to NBA’s best record. By Joe Vardon / The Athletic
In a sport dominated by soaring point totals, Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was the NBA’s leading scorer and the best player on the league’s top team. What could be more “valuable?”
Gilgeous-Alexander, 26, was named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player on Wednesday on TNT from Madison Square Garden, ahead of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals between the Knicks and Pacers. He averaged a league-best 32.7 points per game for a Thunder team that won 68 games and claimed the league’s No. 1 seed heading into the playoffs. Read more
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