Featured
Trump turns civil rights upside down in ‘biggest rollback’ since Reconstruction. By Zachary B. Wolf / CNN
The government under President Donald Trump is bending the arc of US history in a new direction, away from the civil rights focus of the past 60 plus years. Addressing or even acknowledging racial injustice toward people of color is out. President Lyndon B. Johnson shakes the hand of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the signing of the Civil Rights Act.
It’s a much larger pivot than simply changing hiring practices and stopping so-called DEI efforts. “This is certainly the biggest rollback of civil rights since Reconstruction,” according to Mark Updegrove, a presidential historian and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. Trump’s policies and the way he’s orienting his government combine as an assault on the Great Society legislation Johnson pushed through in the 1960s, including the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Read more
Related: The Battle for Our Memory Is the Battle for Our Country. By Kimberle W. Crenshaw / Time
We Overcame Jim Crow by Confronting Injustice. We Can Do it Again. By Douglas H. White / The Nation
Those billy clubs striking my body strengthened my mind and convinced me that we could overcome segregation. We did so then, and we can overcome Trump’s America today. A protest against Jim Crow restrictions on voting in 1964.
Black people in America have often led change in this society because our humanity and our liberties were so long suppressed and denied. So let me tell Donald Trump a thing or two. Read more
Related: There Is a Way Forward: How to Defeat Trump’s Power Grab. By The Editorial Board / NYT
Political / Social
Donald Trump’s Cruel and Unusual Innovations. By Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic
Deporting illegal immigrants is lawful. Imprisoning them in El Salvador makes a mockery of the Eighth Amendment.
As the Trump administration rounds up people it alleges to be illegal aliens and gang members, deports them to El Salvador, and pays to imprison them there without convicting them of any crime, constitutional challenges have focused on the Fifth Amendment; the administration appears to have deprived many deportees of liberty without due process. Read more
Related: Yes, Trump’s trying to make America segregated again. By Olivaer Willis / Daily Kos
Related: The New Deal Is a Stinging Rebuke to Trump and Trumpism. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
Trump says diversity initiatives undermine merit. Decades of research show this is flawed. By Paula McDonald / The Conversation
US President Donald Trump declared earlier this year he would forge a “colour blind and merit-based society”. Framing this as restoring fairness, neutrality and strength to American institutions, Trump argued DEI programs “discourage merit and leadership” and amounted to “race-based and sex-based discrimination”.
The merit rhetoric invokes the ideal of a neutral, objective system rewarding talent and effort, regardless of identity. In theory, merit-based evaluations such as exams, performance reviews, employee recruitment processes and competitive bids, should be impartial. In practice however, there are several myths associated with the notion of merit. Read more
How Project 2025 is shaping Trump’s second term. By Dave Davies / NPR Fresh Air Podcast
Journalist David Graham says the aim of the creators of the conservative action plan Project 2025 is to push the federal government “as far to the right as they can.”
When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, news spread about his implementation of Project 2025, a nearly 1,000-page document published by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. The debates—and anxiety—surrounding this initiative have only increased as authors of the Project assume positions of power in the second Trump administration. David Graham’s new book is The Project. Read more and/or listen here.
May Day protests against Trump, Musk sweep across US. Christopher Cann and Karissa Waddick / USA Today
Protests against what organizers called a “billionaire takeover” were planned in every U.S. state.
Thousands of people marched near the White House as part of nationwide protests against the Trump administration, its policies and the billionaires supporting them in what organizers are calling “a war on working people.” Over 1,000 demonstrations and rallies were scheduled in every state and abroad, most being held May 1 – historically known as May Day or International Workers’ Day. Read more
Related: Harris Returns to Political Life, Warning of a Constitutional Crisis. Laurel Rosenhall / NYT
Related: If leaders stay silent, the US won’t survive Trump’s next 100 days. By Robert Reich / The Guardian
Police reform in Minneapolis and beyond: A review of The Minneapolis Reckoning. By David Latimore / Christian Century
Sociologist Michelle Phelps analyzes the racial and political factors in reform efforts both before and after George Floyd’s murder.
In The Minneapolis Reckoning, Michelle Phelps offers an incredibly compelling description of the many acts of resistance, and the responses prompted by that resistance, that arose from the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis. Floyd’s death at the hands of police sparked widespread protests and movements advocating for racial justice and police reform around the world. Read more
Related: Cops Are Already Unleashed. Trump Is Telling Them to Run Wild. By Radley Balko / The Intercept
Related: ‘This Is What We Were Always Scared of’: DOGE Is Building a Surveillance State. Julia Angwin / NYT
World News
As Gaza Siege Grinds On, Gazan Children Go Hungry and Patients Die. Erika Solomon and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad / NYT
The effect of Israel’s total siege has become “catastrophic,” doctors say. Food, water and medicine shortages are prompting a surge of preventable illnesses, and deaths.
It has been more than 60 days since Israel ordered a halt to all humanitarian aid entering Gaza — no food, fuel or even medicine. As the phone calls pour in, Muneer Alboursh, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, is running out of answers. The longer Israel’s total siege of the enclave grinds on, the more doctors call to ask where they can find medicine to keep patients alive. Read more
Related: Gaza’s misery only deepened in Trump’s first 100 days. By Ishaan Tharoor / Wash Post
The white Afrikaners lining up to accept Trump’s offer of asylum. By Rachel Savage / The Guardian
Thousands of South Africans are hoping to move to the US to escape crime – and what they say is discrimination against white people
White Afrikaner governments racially segregated every aspect of life from relationships to where people were allowed to live during apartheid, repressing South Africa’s Black majority while keeping the white minority safe and much better off. South Africa remains deeply unequal, more than 30 years since the system ended. The black South African unemployment rate is 46.1%, for example, compared with 9.2% for white people. Read more
After 100 days, the toll of Trump’s foreign aid cuts has begun to sink in. By Sammy Westfall / Wash Post
Here’s how programs on the ground have been upended by Trump’s swift dismantling of most U.S. international aid.
In the first 100 days of his second term as president, Donald Trump has presided over a dismantling of U.S. foreign aid so sweeping that in many areas only a skeleton remains. Aid organizations on the ground say the effects, while only just beginning, have begun to take a toll on humanitarian efforts around the world. Read more
Trump Labels Haiti’s Powerful Gangs as Terrorists. Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and
The move will enable harsh sanctions on the gangs, which control important sectors of the country’s economy, and anybody who does business with them.
A powerful alliance of armed gangs that has plunged Haiti into violence and launched attacks against state institutions was designated on Friday as a terrorist group by the Trump administration. The move is likely to worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis in Haiti, experts said, since gangs control much of the country’s economy and infrastructure, including ports and major roads, and extort businesses and the local population. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Was Jesus Christ A Real Person? Here’s Why Archaeologists And Scientists Believe He Was. By Arianna Winslow / The Travel
Many people wonder about the historicity of Christianity, a nearly 2,000-year-old religion. While many of the locations mentioned in the Bible are real, individual stories and figures from this collection of ancient texts are open to interpretation.
One of the biggest questions some people have about Christianity is whether or not Jesus, the Jewish teacher the religion focuses on, was real. Although some in the past have claimed that Jesus didn’t actually exist, scholars today agree that Jesus did exist. Why do they believe this? What led to this conclusion? Read more
The emperor’s gospel: Donald Trump and the power of Christianity. By Michael DeLashmutt / RNS
History reminds us that when Christianity is captured by empire, it may flourish in power but withers in spirit. AI-generated image of Trump as the Pope, which he posted.
Trump’s engagement with Christianity has consistently been pragmatic rather than devotional. This relationship was seen again on Thursday (May 1), when, in the company of key representatives of his religious-political base, he established a religious liberty commission by promising to rid the country of “anti-Christian bias. Read more
Related: Trump criticised after posting AI image of himself as Pope. By Max Matza / BBC
The Christian Right Is Going Extinct. By David French / NYT
The movement placed a heavy emphasis on constitutional fidelity, seeing the Constitution as a bulwark against authoritarian overreach. And during Bill Clinton’s presidency it staked out the clearest possible ground on personal character.
As Jake Meador observes in a very sharp piece called “Evangelical Political Life After the Religious Right.” Vice President Vance will make an appearance at the March for Life, President Trump will show up to the National Prayer Breakfast. But even when he does acknowledge a Christian event, it often will come loaded with hatred and vile self-aggrandizement.” Read more
Historical / Cultural
What the Reconstruction Era Can Teach Us About the Politics of Shame. By Brandon Terry / Time
There is a curious passage in W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1903 masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, that tries to capture the zeitgeist of those closing decades of the 19th century that ended Reconstruction and gave birth to Jim Crow.
Reflecting on the epochal defeat of our country’s post-Civil War experiment in Black emancipation and multiracial democracy, Du Bois characterizes the era as “the psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes, and was concentrating its energies on Dollars.” Read more
For Those Who Wish to Fight Back but Don’t Know How. By Jonathan Eig / NYT
Mr. Eig is the author of “King: A Life,” the winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for biography.
Great waves of cruelty pound us. Government officials use the law to attack the weak and vulnerable. Out of fear or indifference, citizens turn a blind eye to suffering and injustice. These were the conditions the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described in the letter he wrote from a Birmingham, Ala., jail cell. The letter struck a chord because, more than anything else, it was a love letter — a love letter written for a nation torn by hate. Read more
These activists are ‘flooding the zone with Black history’ to protest Trump’s attacks on DEI. By Gloria Oladipo / The Guardian
A placard at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, on 29 April 2025.
A coalition of civil rights groups have launched a weeklong initiative to condemn Donald Trump’s attacks on Black history, including recent executive orders targeting the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington DC. The coalition’s affirmation read, in part: “We affirm that Black history is American history, without which we cannot understand our country’s fight for freedom or secure a more democratic future. We must protect our history not just in books, schools, libraries, and universities, but also in museums, memorials, and remembrances that are sites of our national memory.” Read more
The Jim Crow Economy Is the True Horror in ‘Sinners.’ Adam Serwer / The Atlantic
The film illustrates the near-impossibility of upward mobility during the segregation era.
Sinners is a symphony of vampire bites, gunshot wounds, people being staked in the heart and left to burn alive. Ryan Coogler’s film about twin gangsters trying to strike it rich in the Jim Crow South rapidly swerves toward supernatural horror when an ancient vampire seeks a way into the juke joint the twins have set up with their ill-gotten gains. But the true horror in the film is the economics of Jim Crow, which drives every event in the plot, including the vampire bloodbath that ultimately cuts the musical revelry—and the twins’ dreams—short. Read more
Related: The Movie Deal That Made Hollywood Lose Its Mind. By Tiana Clark / NYT
Two HBCUs Receive Emmy Nominations For Films Depicting Campus Life. By Jeroslyn JoVonn / Black Enterprise
Southern University and Alabama A&M earned Emmy nominations for films showcasing HBCU culture.
Southern University and Alabama A&M University received Emmy nominations for showcasing everything from their iconic marching bands to the intense passion and grit behind HBCU football rivalries, HBCU Game Day reported. Southern’s “Dream Team” — Verbon Muhammad Jr., Ashley Lovelace, Sydney Cuillier, Loren Sullivan, and Eric White — earned an Emmy nomination for The Hidden Sport, a documentary offering a powerful glimpse into the grit, passion, and discipline of the university’s legendary Human Jukebox Band. Read more
Sports
Serena Williams’ TIME100 Interview on Life After Tennis. By Sean Gregory / Time
Serena Williams sits back in the driver’s seat of her light blue Lincoln Navigator, as darkness turns to light one recent South Florida morning. An interview that was supposed to start close to noon got pushed up, on very short notice, to the ungodly hour of 6:20 a.m.
Something unexpected came up with her daughters—Olympia, 7, and Adira, 1—that required a pre-dawn rescheduling. Given Williams’ hectic life since she announced, nearly three years ago, that she was “evolving away from tennis”—she purposely avoided saying retirement—a last-minute request to shuffle things around didn’t come as a big surprise. But no one was thrilled with the new appointment time, least of all a bleary-eyed Williams. “Oh my God, this is the worst,” she says. Read more
Saquon Barkley can’t outrun history. By Justin Tinsley / Andscape
Barkley’s decision to cozy up to Trump is now part of his legacy
Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley came under fire recently after photos of him and President Donald Trump circulated on social media. The pair was photographed ahead of the Eagles’ visit to the White House to celebrate the team’s Super Bowl victory. “lol some people are really upset cause I played [golf] and flew to the White House with the PRESIDENT,” Barkley wrote on X. “Maybe I just respect the office, not a hard concept to understand.” Read more
LeBron James to mull NBA future after Lakers’ early exit from playoffs. By Ben Golliver / Wash Post
The 40-year-old superstar said “I don’t know” when asked after a first-round loss to the Timberwolves how many more seasons he plans to play.
LeBron James’s 22nd NBA season opened with a historic father-son moment and took a sharp turn thanks to a midseason blockbuster trade for Luka Doncic, but it ended abruptly Wednesday when the Los Angeles Lakers were eliminated from the playoffs by the Minnesota Timberwolves. Read more
Related: LeBron James, father and son. By Kevin Merida / Wash Post
Fighting Against Racist Comments Jordan Chiles Reveals True Feelings Over Simone Biles & Rebecca Andrade Moment. Disita Sikdar / Essentially Sports
Jordan Chiles might be a champion now. But during the time she was toiling hard to make her name, the gymnast had some forgettable experiences.
One of them was when history unfolded beneath the Olympic lights in Paris last August. On that podium, with skin once judged more than skill, she stood in defiance on the first all-Black podium in Olympic gymnastics history. Competing on the floor, Chiles had the honor to share the stage with Simone Biles and Rebeca Andrade. Read more
NBA legend and HBCU trailblazer dies at 88. By Steven Corder / Athlon Sports
The former HBCU great was a giant on and off the court
“Fallback, Baby.” To generations of historically Black college or university sports fans, those two words weren’t just a nickname; they were a declaration. A call to greatness. A legacy in motion. And now, that legacy says goodbye. Dr. Dick Barnett, Tennessee A&I icon and New York Knicks champion, passed away in his sleep on April 26, 2025, in Largo, Florida, at the age of 88. With his passing, HBCU basketball loses one of its most enduring legends — a player whose path broke barriers and lifted communities far beyond the hardwood. Read more
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