Featured
Navigating James Baldwin s legacy: A review of The Gospel According to James Baldwin. By Jon Mathieu / The Christian Century
Greg Garrett provides a road map for the terrain of the prophetic writer’s work and thought.
In preparation for this book, Garrett read everything Baldwin ever wrote, in addition to watching his recorded interviews and the movies about him or based on his work. Garrett also went on a pilgrimage through the most important locations on Baldwin’s journey: Harlem, Paris, and a small village in Switzerland. While this globe-trotting plays only a tiny role in The Gospel According to James Baldwin, Garrett’s close and astute reading of Baldwin’s catalog of writings comes through on nearly every page.
The topics he discerned Baldwin teaching him about are culture, faith, race, justice, and identity. These five chapters are worth the price of the book, and they are ordered in a way that allows Baldwin’s insights to build upon each other. Read more
Political / Social
President warns new army officers to be ‘guardians of American democracy.’ By Oliver Milman / The Guardian
President entreats graduates at commencement to ‘hold fast’ to oath to US constitution in veiled reference to Trump’s threat to democracy
Joe Biden has called newly graduating US military officers the “guardians of American democracy” at a commencement speech in New York state, where the US president, without mentioning Donald Trump by name, gave strong warnings of unprecedented threats to US freedom. Biden told the West Point military academy graduating class of 2024 that it is being called upon to tackle threats across the globe as well as preserve America’s ideals at home. Read more
Related: In Georgia, Biden’s coalition has frayed since his narrow win in 2020. By Asma Khalid / NPR
Trump’s fascist talk is what’s ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ By Dana Milbank / Wash Post
No, Trump isn’t Hitler. But his copycat words lead nowhere good.
The former president’s Truth Social account posted a video posing the question “What happens after Donald Trump wins?” and providing a possible answer: In the background was the phrase “unified Reich.” This follows Trump’s echoing Adolf Hitler in campaign speeches, saying that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and calling his opponents “vermin.” Read more
Related: Trump’s Taste for Tyranny Finds a Target. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
Related: Trump’s Stop-and-Frisk Agenda. By Ronald Brownstein / The Atlantic
This Supreme Court Term Was All About Undoing Democracy. By Pema Levy / Mother Jones
The justices made racist gerrymandering easier—and that’s just the start.
In the coming weeks, the Supreme Court will wrap up a consequential term and issue decisions that are expected to undercut bedrock assumptions about each branch of government and create a new balance of powers—one that tips the scales toward an unassailable executive and an all-powerful judiciary. It began on Thursday, as the court gave states new leeway to discriminate against minority voters. The justices may soon add women’s right to healthcare to the list of privileges that a state may deprive its citizens, another step that would turn the clock back to a time when the Constitution viewed states rights as more sacrosanct than the rights of its people. Read more
Related: Everything’s Political, Including a South Carolina Map. By Brandon Tensley / Capital B
“A formula for civil war”: Second flag flown by Supreme Court Justice Alito dire sign for democracy. By Lindsay Beyerstein / Salon
What every American should know about Alito’s Appeal to Heaven flag
The inverted United States flag is a mainstay in MAGA circles. When hoisted by a ship at sea it indicates that the vessel is in grave distress. The Tea Party flipped the flag to symbolize the distress inflicted upon the right by progressive taxation and a Black president. After the 2020 election, the Stop the Steal Movement made it a shorthand for their conspiracy theories of a stolen election. We don’t know how Alito, a devout Catholic, came to display a “Appeal to heaven “flag so closely linked to Protestant supremacy, but he’s not alone in Washington. Speaker Mike Johnson displays it outside his office. Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society has also flown the flag at his home. After Jan. 6, some Neo-Nazi groups started marching with the flag. Read more
Related: Alito flag scandal: The second one is even scarier than the first. By Molly Olmstead / Slate
The Soulless Hypocrisy of Nikki Haley. By John Nichols / The Nation
Haley has abandoned her opposition to Trump for political expediency. Joe Biden should use Haley’s words against her—and Trump.
The thing to understand about Nikki Haley is that she has always been an extreme right-wing Republican. Like her ideological soulmate former House Republican Conference chair Liz Cheney, Haley genuinely believes in the anti-union, anti-choice, anti-fairness agenda that has been the defining premise of the Republican Party since the days of Ronald Reagan. But, above all, Haley is a political hack who has never tempered her overarching ambition with moral clarity. That explains why she quietly endorsed Trump on Wednesday. Read more
Why Republicans Want and Need a Permanent Economic Underclass. By Thom Hartman / The New Republic
Ever heard of the “mudsill theory”? Well, it goes back to the slaveholding South. And it explains a lot.
Odds are you’ve never heard of the “mudsill theory of labor,” but everybody in this country really should learn about it. It explains a whole spectrum of Republican behavior that otherwise seems baffling and self-defeating. On March 4, 1858, slave plantation owner and South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond rose to speak before his peers in the U.S. Senate. Hammond asserted that for a society to function smoothly, it must have a “foundational” class of people who, like the way a mudsill stabilizes the house that rests atop it, bear the difficult manual labor from which almost all wealth is derived. “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties,” Hammond proclaimed, “to perform the drudgery of life.” Read more
Racism was supposed to change after George Floyd. Backlash followed. By Phillip M. Bailey, Terry Collins, Deborah Barfield Berry and Sam Woodward / USA Today
Millions protested in the streets after George Floyd’s death, hoping to improve America’s race relations. Then the backlash began. Image AP
When George Floyd was killed, on May 25 2020, during America’s coronavirus lockdown, Crudup remembers a downpour of commitments too numerous to count. Fortune 500 corporations were making gigantic financial pledges and tiny arts groups were hired to install Black Lives Matter murals on public spaces, all vowing that this tragedy represented a spark to eliminate racial disparities. Now instead of historic achievements, she lists more setbacks. That fatigue and frustration is being echoed by dozens of voters, community activists, civil rights leaders, scholars and elected officials who spoke with USA TODAY four years after Floyd was suffocated by a white officer’s knee to the neck. Read more
Why Are New York City Schools Still So Segregated? By Errol Lewis / New York Intelligencer
The 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools, came and went in New York with little official notice. Perhaps our leaders were embarrassed by the fact that our city has been cited for more than a decade as having the nation’s most racially segregated schools and has done little or nothing to implement dozens of reasonable proposals to move in the direction of integration.
“We have the outline, we have the blueprint. Integration is feasible. It’s within our reach,” says Nyah Berg, the executive director of New York Appleseed, a nonprofit organization that advocates for integrated schools around the state. Read more
The South can be a dangerous place to be Black and pregnant. By Lauren Sausser and McKenzie Beard / Wash Post
In much of the developed world, dying while pregnant or delivering a child is practically unknown. In Australia, for example, there were just 3 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births in 2021. But that’s not the case in the American South. And especially not for Black women.
In South Carolina, Black women were more than four times as likely to die of a pregnancy-related cause in 2020 than White women. And discrimination was a factor in more than a third of the state’s 18 pregnancy-related deaths of women of all races, according to a recently published legislative report by the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control. Read more
A Black rising star lost his elite orchestra job. He won’t go quietly. By Geoff Edgers / Wash Post
Josh Jones thought the Kansas City Symphony dismissed him unjustly — and took his complaints public. Supporters say he’s exposing an antiquated system that thwarts promising young talent.
Josh Jones wasn’t expecting to lose his dream job that day. He had heard some grumbling during his time as the principal percussionist with the Kansas City Symphony, but everyone agreed that he was a stunning performer — not to mention the first Black musician in the orchestra’s history to land a leadership position. In his first season, his marimba solo in a Vivaldi performance prompted the maestro himself to send a handwritten note: “I am so happy to make music with you,” Michael Stern wrote, “and there’s no doubt everybody onstage agrees.” Read more
World News
After the Populist Moment. By Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell / DissentBy looking at right-wing politics around the world, we can better understand conservatives’ abiding preoccupations and priorities, and how they might be thwarted.
While we are paying a lot of attention to U.S. conservatives this election year, it is also an auspicious time to publish a special section on the global right. Just under a decade ago, we passed through a “populist moment,” so-called because of Brexit, Trump’s election, and the rise of Marine Le Pen as a serious contender for the French presidency, all in rapid succession. It seemed like the beginning of a new era of politics, one emerging from the dashed hopes and profound failings of the neoliberal order—and in many ways it has been. Read more
International Court of Justice Orders Israel to Immediately Halt Military Offensive in Rafah. By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to halt its military offensive in Rafah. The court ruled today that Israel must immediately cease its military actions and other operations in the area, citing the immediate risk to the Palestinian people.
For more, we’re joined by two people. Here in our New York studio, Hossam Bahgat is with us, Egyptian human rights activist, founder and executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, EIPR, in Cairo. And we’re joined by Reed Brody, human rights attorney, war crimes prosecutor, author of To Catch a Dictator. Read more
Haiti’s Sin of Resistance. By Rann Miller / The Progressive
Many of the tragedies befalling the island nation trace back to colonial interventions.
As Frederick Douglass said of Haiti in 1893, “Haiti is Black, and we have not yet forgiven Haiti for being Black or forgiven the Almighty for making her Black.” And today, the West still has not forgiven the descendants of the Haitian revolutionaries for showing the world the first truly free nation in the hemisphere. Numerous reports and pictures of what’s happening in Haiti would have one believe that the Haitian people are incapable of running their own country and that an intervention from the “international community” is necessary. However, clarity comes by way of understanding history; history explains why, as Douglass said, Haiti has not yet been forgiven. Read more
Related: Foreign Interventions in Haiti: A Brief History. By Frances Robles / NYT
US calls for swift police deployment to Haiti after missionaries killed. By Aljazeera
US official says ‘Haiti cannot wait’ as Washington pushes for Kenya-led mission to help country tackle gang violence.
The administration of United States President Joe Biden has called for the rapid deployment of a Kenyan-led security force to Haiti following the killing of three missionaries working with a US group in the violence-hit Caribbean country. Read more
Related: Biden Plans to Give Kenya Key Ally Designation During Its Leader’s Visit.
Is the Party That Ended Apartheid Losing Its Grip on South Africa?
The African National Congress has long rested on its legacy. But increasingly that isn’t enough to persuade voters to keep it in power. President Cyril Ramaphosa on the campaign trail in April in Maluti-a-Phofung.Credit…Andile Buka for The New York Times
The campaign to keep the African National Congress in power kicked off, unofficially, under a scorching January sun in a packed soccer stadium. Addressing the crowd was Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa and the A.N.C., Africa’s oldest liberation movement, which was at the forefront in the battle against apartheid and has governed the country since the first fully democratic elections in 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected president. Ramaphosa had reason to worry. National elections are scheduled for May 29, and polls suggest that the A.N.C. may slip below 50 percent of the national vote for the first time. Read more
Chelsea Manalo: First Black Filipina crowned as Miss Universe. By
Filipino American Chelsea Manalo became the first Black woman to be crowned Miss Universe Philippines on Wednesday. Image Miami Times
Does Memorial Day have its origins in defeated Confederates? By Gillian Brockell / Wash Post
The man who ordered the first nationwide “Decoration Day” holiday was responding to reports of Southern towns decorating the graves of dead Confederates. Members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy at the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in 1922
Idris Elba on why Second World War docuseries on black stories matters today. By Lotte Brundle / Independent
The Luther star narrates their unsung stories in a documentary for National Geographic.
British actor Idris Elba has said the stories of black people who fought during the Second World War matter today from an “education” and “cultural appropriation perspective”. The Luther star, 51, narrates the National Geographic documentary Erased: WW2’s Heroes Of Colour, which premieres ahead of the 80th anniversary of D-Day on June 6. Read more
How Residents in a Rural Alabama County Are Confronting the Lasting Harm of Segregation Academies. B
In Wilcox County, Alabama, many people say they want to bridge racial divides created by their segregated schools. But they must face a long and painful history. Downtown Camden, Alabama, is home to an antebellum courthouse, several popular restaurants and a monument to military veterans.
In a place with a history of hate, an unlikely fight against GOP extremism. By Hannah Allam / Wash Post
A once-enslaved man’s music was hidden for centuries. Go on a journey to rediscover his melodies. By Diane Orson / CPR
A few years ago, when Americans nationwide began on a path of racial reckoning, parishioners at a small Connecticut church started to explore their community’s past — and discovered historical ties to slavery.
Volunteers from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Essex searched through old archives. They eventually discovered a 1777 probate record. It listed an enslaved boy named Sawn or Sawney. Then came another clue: a 1790 newspaper ad from a local farmer, offering a reward for the return of an enslaved musician who’d run away. Sawney was not only a fiddler. He was also a composer. Read more
Walter Mosley again shows why he is a master of crime fiction. By E.A. Aymar / Wash Post
In Mosley’s new Easy Rawlins novel, “Farewell, Amethystine,” his hero is pulled into a missing-persons case that turns into much more.
In major change, college athletes set to be paid directly by schools. By Jesse Dougherty / Wash Post
Exposure, popularity and stars. Is college softball on the brink of a breakthrough? By Jayna Bardahl and Stewart Mandel / The Athletic
On a steamy Thursday afternoon at Stanford’s Smith Family Stadium, every Cardinal player and coach not on the field stands against the dugout rail, shouting encouragement at someone. Including, between every pitch, a chorus of “Yeah, NiJa!”
NiJa is Stanford pitcher NiJaree Canady, a 6-foot sophomore, who finds herself in a bind against rival Cal. She began the top of the fifth inning with a walk, a passed ball and a single. Now, the Bears have executed a double steal to pull within 4-2. There are no outs and a runner at second. It’s a 2-2 count. With the NCAA Tournament opening this week, college softball has steadily increased in popularity over the past decade. Viewership for the Women’s College World Series finals reached a record 1.85 million viewers in 2021. Read more
Shota Imanaga has the best fastball in MLB. It’s also one of the slowest. By Neil Greenberg / Wash Post
One major driver of his success has been his fastball, which has been the most effective in the majors. But what’s even more fascinating is that it has also been one of the slowest. According to MLB’s Statcast data, Imanaga’s four-seam fastball has saved 13 runs so far this season. No other four-seamer has saved more than nine. Yet his average fastball velocity is just 92.0 miles per hour, about 2 mph slower than average. Read more
Amid TV uncertainty, ‘Inside the NBA’ continues to be an entertainment blueprint. By Jason Jones / The Athletic
Coco Gauff, tennis star, criticizes Florida’s political environment. By Lorenzo Reyes / USA Today
In an interview with the Associated Press that published Tuesday night, Gauff expressed pointed criticism about some of the policy decisions made by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, including a state law ratified in 2023 that allows for books to be challenged and removed from public libraries. “We aren’t happy with the current state of our government in Florida, especially everything with the books and just the way our office operates,” Gauff told the Associated Press last week from the Italian Open in Rome. Read more
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