Featured
What Democrats Can Learn from America’s First Black Voters. By J. Jacob Calhoun / Time
Following Kamala Harris’ defeat and the GOP’s congressional successes in the 2024 elections, many Democrats are expressing not only rage and frustration, but fear. 1870: A print celebrating the passage of the 15th Amendment, which made it illegal to deny a vote to anyone on racial grounds. MPI/Getty Images
While concerning, these threats are far from novel. Indeed, they mirror what conservatives did in the aftermath of the Civil War. Ex-confederates during Reconstruction levied claims of fraud, enacted de-registration campaigns, and even destroyed the physical ballots of their opponents. The most devastating tool conservatives had in 1868, however, was the susceptibility of white Americans to racist rhetoric, a power that remains an animating force in American politics today.
Similar to their counterparts in the civil rights movement a century later, Black Americans during Reconstruction manifested a stalwart, united front in the face of racist rhetoric and political violence. They used their solidarity to their advantage, strategized on how to resist their disenfranchisement, and most importantly, refused to allow themselves to succumb to defeatism. Rather than allow themselves to be demoralized by the assassination of their leaders, the constant attacks on their communities, and the tepidness of their white allies’ support, America’s first Black voters saw each of these obstacles as yet another reason to stay politically engaged. Read more
Political / Social
Trump and the Dictators’ Playbook. By Chris Edelson / The Progressive
How the former and next President could borrow from the example of others to sideline democracy.
Aspiring dictators have a well-worn playbook, as Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt describe in How Democracies Die. First, authoritarians set out to “capture the referees.” In other words, they seek to undermine, delegitimize, threaten, and replace non-partisan government actors—such as judges, prosecutors, generals, scientists, ethics watchdogs, and intelligence officials—with people who will be personally loyal to them. Read more
Related: From Trump opponent to Trump loyalist: The evolution of Marco Rubio. NPR
Related: How Trump’s Administration Will Possibly Impact Black Americans. By Mitti Hicks / Black Enterprise
Donald Trump Is Preparing to Use the Military to Carry Out Mass Deportations. By Eric Lutz / Vanity Fair
Legally, the president-elect could see his anti-immigration plan get a big stamp of approval. Logistically, it will likely be beset by major challenges.
Donald Trump said Monday that he would use emergency powers and the United States military to carry out his mass deportation plan—a centerpiece of the immigration crackdown he promised in his 2024 campaign. Though he provided no additional details, it would be an extreme move, and draw immediate legal challenges from immigration groups. Read more
Related: Pentagon Officials on Trump’s Deportation Plan: “Absolutely Insane.” By Nick Turse / The Intercept
How the Right Triumphed Over Social Media and Helped Elect Trump. By Julia Angwin / NYT
The red tide that swept across the nation in our recent election marked many things. One of them was a right-wing triumph over social media.
Under heavy pressure from the right, and with the help of X owner Elon Musk, the leading tech platforms opened the floodgates for propaganda to spread unchecked. The result was a flood of lies and distortions flowing through our social media feeds. That led to possibly the most misinformed electorate we’ve ever seen. Read more
Related: 1 in 5 U.S. adults get their news from social media influencers, according to Pew report. By
Democrats Can Become the Party of Insurgency Again. By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
There have been repeated clashes between the left and the center of the Democratic Party over the past 50-plus years, especially in the presidential nomination contests of 1968, 1972, 1984, 1992, 2016 and 2020. The post-election debate is now in full flower, with left-wing and centrist Democrats blaming each other for the loss.
The selection of Kamala Harris, a woman of Black and South Asian ancestry as the nominee, may have accentuated the perception of the Democratic Party as more progressive on race and gender and made some voters feel alienated or concerned about the direction of the party. Read more
Related: For Minority Working-Class Voters, Dismay in Democrats Led to Distrust. Jennifer Medina / NYT
Related: Is This the End of the White Working-Class Democrat? Katie Glueck / NYT
Idiots Sold Your Souls’: Black GOP Tim Scott, Byron Donalds and Ben Carson Take Heat After Being Left Out in the Cold of Donald’s Trump’s New Cabinet. By A.L. Lee / Atlanta Black Star
Black Republicans who fiercely supported Donald Trump’s reelection now find themselves sidelined as his new administration takes shape, with his cabinet dominated by a sea of white appointees, not one of them Black.
Notably, some of Trump’s most vocal Black campaign advocates, including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, former HUD Secretary Ben Carson, and ex-NFL star Herschel Walker, have been glaringly excluded from Trump’s circle of trust in the lead-up to his second term. Read more
White Women and Reactionary Politics. By Denise Lynn / AAIHS
Every election cycle we see the same shock and outrage that once again, most white women voted Republican. This shock comes from a deep-rooted hope that women vote as a progressive block; after all, conservatism is grounded in misogynous assumptions of women’s inferiority. But progressives and leftists must learn, as conservatives have, that white women most often side with reactionaries, even when it is their own interests on the line.
More important, progressives and leftists would do well to remember that white women are not passive victims of patriarchal white supremacy. They are architects and evangelicals of and collaborators in it. As Elizabeth McRae has described it in her excellent study Mothers of Massive Resistance, white women are white supremacy’s “constant gardeners.” Read more
Segregation Academies Get Millions From School Voucher Programs. By Jennifer Berry Hawes and Mollie Simon / Propublica
North Carolina offers an especially telling window into what is happening across this once legally segregated region where legislatures are now rapidly expanding and adopting controversial voucher-style programs.
Private schools across the South that were established for white children during desegregation are now benefiting from tens of millions in taxpayer dollars flowing from rapidly expanding voucher-style programs, a ProPublica analysis found. Read more
What? Nazis Storm Ohio Streets Chanting N-Word and More. By Candace McDuffie / The Root
President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t even taken office, but are we seeing the effects of the racist rhetoric that dominated the election? Last week, a white supremacist felt bold enough to say the N-word at a Senate committee meeting in Michigan. Now, Nazis are marching in Ohio.
On Saturday (Nov. 16), a group of neo-Nazis took to the streets of Columbus, Ohio waving flags covered in red swastikas and screaming the N-word. Nearly a dozen people participated in the stunt, sporting black pants, shirts and coverings that hid their faces. Read more
World News
Putin Sees America Hurtling to Disaster, With Trump at the Wheel.
The American election results were received with enthusiasm in Moscow. President Vladimir Putin, offering his congratulations, seemed genuinely pleased. But it’s not because Donald Trump is seen as a pro-Russian politician or even one of their own — those illusions faded long ago. Nor is it the prospect of an advantageous peace deal in Ukraine, ruthlessly brokered by Mr. Trump. The first reported call between the two leaders, which the Kremlin denies took place, suggests that the incoming administration will be no pushover.
Instead, the excitement comes from something else. It’s that to many in the Kremlin, a Trump presidency might bring about the collapse of the American state. Read more
Related: Biden authorizes Ukraine to strike Russia with U.S.-supplied long-range missiles. By and
Europe Can’t “Trump-Proof” Itself. By Hans Kundnani / Dissent
Following the U.S. election, European foreign policy experts are reviving ideas about strategic autonomy from 2016. They fail to understand how much has changed in the last eight years.
During the past year, as the reality gradually dawned on them that Donald Trump might be re-elected as U.S. president, European foreign policy analysts coalesced around the conventional wisdom that Europe must unite and “Trump-proof” itself. This new consensus, which essentially repeats arguments for European “strategic autonomy” that took place after Trump was elected the first time, represents an extraordinary collective failure. Read more
Related: Hungary Shows Us How a Second Trump Term Might Play Out. By M. Gessen / NYT
No more arms sales to Netanyahu. By Bernie Sanders / Wash Post
Continuing to provide Israel with the offensive weapons it uses on civilians is morally wrong.
The United States government must stop blatantly violating the law with regard to arms sales to Israel. The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Arms Export Control Act are very clear: The United States cannot provide weapons to any country that violates internationally recognized human rights. Read more
Related: Netanyahu offers $5 million and safe passage out of Gaza to anyone returning a hostage. By
Haiti’s Many Problems and Very Few Solutions, Explained. Frances Robles / NYT
A search for a solution to the crisis in Haiti is growing more urgent as gangs gain territory and thousands more flee their homes.
Haiti, a nation rocked by gang cruelty and plagued with political infighting, has — so far this year — had three prime ministers, seen at least 4,000 people killed and experienced brutality from armed groups so intense that it forced an extended closure of its international airport, twice. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
What White Christians Have Wrought. By Robert P. Jones / Time
Because elections are won and lost at the margins in a deeply divided nation such as ours, most of that analysis will rightly focus on which subgroups (like Latinos and young men) shifted most significantly away from the Democratic Party’s winning 2020 coalition. But that focus, while strategically important, will obscure the deeper peril facing our nation. Authoritarianism, when it blossoms, emerges from the deeper soil at the center.
With the Republican presidential candidate regularly spewing racist, misogynistic, and even Nazi ideology (such as claims that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country), the most remarkable thing about this election is not which groups shifted marginally in his direction, but which groups continued to provide him with supermajority support. Namely, we must talk about how thoroughly Christian nationalism has infected mainstream white Christianity. Read more
Related: Texas Education Board to Vote on Bible-Infused Lessons in Public Schools. Troy Closson / NYT
The Black Church Has Five Theological Anchors. By Claude Atcho / Christianity Today
Walter Strickland’s sweeping narrative of African American Christianity portrays a big God who is strong to deliver.
Within evangelical circles, we are currently enjoying what might be called a “retrieval revival.” Many believers are working to retrieve parts of our Christian heritage for the sake of enjoying a richer relationship with God and a deeper fellowship with his people. Read more
“Are morals still important?”: Tapper questions Johnson over Trump Cabinet picks. By Alex Galbraith / Salon
The CNN host asked the House speaker if he had any concerns with Trump’s picks as “a man of faith”
“You’re a man of faith, you’re a man of God, you’re a man of family. With some of these nominees, Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., I wonder — does it matter anymore for Republicans to think of leaders as people who are moral in their personal lives?” he asked. “Is that still important to the Republican Party?” Watch the entire chat below:
Historical / Cultural
Slavery in an Age of Emancipation. By Manisha Sinha / The Nation
Robin Blackburn’s sweeping history of slavery and freedom in the 19th century.
Robin Blackburn is undoubtedly one of the most prolific writers on the transnational histories of slavery and abolition in the Americas today. Along with essays and books on everything from the history of modern finance to the fall of communism, he has written a series of major works on enslavement in the modern age as well as its eradication. Now, in his latest formidable synthesis, The Reckoning: From the Second Slavery to Abolition, 1776–1888, Blackburn recounts the long undoing of the “second slavery” in the United States, Cuba, and Brazil. Read more
Malcolm X, MLK, and the Call for a Cultural Revolution. By M. Keith Claybrook, Jr. / AAIHS
MLK Jr., Angela Davis, Malcolm X, and Amiri Baraka. 2021 mural by Ernest Shaw, Baltimore (LOC).
Both Minister Malcolm X and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. are oftentimes referred to as civil rights activists. Peniel E. Joseph, however, refers to them as revolutionaries, arguing “that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. represent two black revolutionaries whose lives, activism, and political and intellectual thinking became blueprints for racial and economic justice advocacy around the world.” Read more
Malcolm X Suggests Cure To Racism In Newly-Discovered Handwritten Letter. By Kimberly Richards / HuffPost
A recently-discovered letter reportedly handwritten by Malcolm X in 1964 describes racism at that time as an “incurable cancer” that was “plaguing” America.
Los Angeles historic manuscript and letter dealer, Moments in Time, retrieved the six-page letter, reportedly written by the civil rights activist. It went on sale Sunday for $1.25 million. Gary Zimet, president and owner of Moments in Time, received the letter from a contact who discovered it in a storage locker in the Bronx, New York. Zimet has decided to keep the person’s name anonymous. Read more
Jon Batiste Can’t Stop Thinking About Beethoven. Javier C. Hernández / NYT
Batiste’s latest album is a return to his classical music roots — on his terms. Hear him improvise on some of Beethoven’s classics.
Long before Jon Batiste was a bandleader, television personality and Grammy- and Academy Award-winning artist, he was a classical piano student. Now Batiste, 38, is returning to his classical roots with an album called “Beethoven Blues.” It features his improvisations on masterpieces like “Für Elise” and the Fifth Symphony, as well as Beethoven-inspired compositions like “Dusklight Movement” and “Life of Ludwig.” Read more
Sports
America Refuses to Forgive Michael Strahan as Call Mounts for $65M Fox Broadcaster to Be Fired After National Anthem Outrage. By Komal / Essentially Sports
Currently in its 31st season, the No. 1 NFL pregame show continued its tradition of going live from a military base (this year, it was from Naval Base San Diego) to honor the men and women who served in the US Armed Forces. However, the focus shifted to Michael Strahan during the National Anthem. When The Star-Spangled Banner was played, the New York Giants legend was spotted standing with his hands interlocked near his waist.
The rest of his crew members, though – including Gronkowski, Curt Menefee, and Terry Bradshaw – placed their right hand over their hearts, and for many, Strahan not following the same protocol didn’t sit right. Determined to set the record straight, Strahan took to social media, sharing his heartfelt perspective and offering a candid defense of his side of the story. Read more
NFL football scores: Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin is painting his masterpiece. By Alex Kirshiner / Slate
The Steelers have no business being this good. He’s the only reason they are.
This year is Tomlin’s masterpiece, the seminal work that explains his career. The Steelers’ offense is cobbled together with duct tape, chicken wire, and a couple of QBs whose careers were circling the drain six months ago. This group wins games it should by all rights lose, and it is somehow the closest AFC peer to the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills at a time when those rosters are a million times better. The Steelers are a mediocre team that could go deep into the playoffs because of the man in charge. Read more
Related: No NFL coach is doing a better job than the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin. By Jason La Canfora / Wash Post
“I look at my son now, and the amount of money he’s making” – Gary Payton gets real about salaries in today’s NBA. By John Jefferson / Basketball Network
Gary implores old-timers not to hate today’s players because of it.
Gary Payton is one of the legends whose son is currently playing in the NBA. Admittedly, “The Glove” was dumbfounded by how much Gary Payton II is making as an NBA player, jokingly saying if he had been born later, he too could relish a massive paycheck like his son. The Hall of Fame point guard’s lighthearted comment highlights not only the generational differences in NBA salaries but also the pride he feels for his son’s achievements as a player. Read more
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