Featured
One nation on two divergent paths. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Joe Biden and Donald Trump offer two very different lessons about America
Political leaders are teachers. This is true even if they do not intend it. They are role models, both good and bad, for the public. Political leaders also educate the public about specific policy issues and matters of national concern.
Healthy societies produce healthy leaders; unhealthy societies produce unhealthy leaders. In that way, the leader as a type of teacher is a way of judging the values, collective beliefs, and future direction of a community. Several American presidents, for example, were former schoolteachers. Of note, President Lyndon Johnson was a public school teacher in rural Texas. His experiences there inspired him to support such landmark legislation as Project Head Start.
As exemplified by their recent behavior, President Biden and Donald Trump are two very different types of leaders and teachers. Read more
Related: How MAGA Corrupts the Culture of the White Working Class. By David French / NYT
Related: A Fox host suggests that the answer to divisions is war, not voting. By Phillip Bump / Wash Post
Political / Social
Liz Cheney Warns On What Jim Jordan Becoming Speaker Could Mean For The Constitution. By Martha Viachou / HuffPost
The Ohio Republican “knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6th than any other member of the House of Representatives,” she said.
In a speech at the University of Minnesota on Wednesday, the former vice chair of the House Select Committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection said Jordan was the leader among those who were aware of former President Donald Trump’s plans to cling on to power despite losing the 2020 election. Read more
Related: Trump’s Pick for Speaker Is a Nightmare Waiting to Happen. By John Nichols / The Nation
A bipartisan coalition is the way forward for the House. By Hakeem Jeffries / Wash Post
Over the past several weeks, when it appeared likely that a motion to vacate the office of speaker was forthcoming, House Democrats repeatedly raised the issue of entering into a bipartisan governing coalition with our Republican counterparts, publicly as well as privately. It was my sincere hope that House Democrats and more traditional Republicans would be able to reach an enlightened arrangement to end the chaos in the House, allowing us to work together to make life better for everyday Americans while protecting national security. Read more
Related: If Moderate Republicans Were Brave, They Could Save the House. By Michelle Goldberg / NYT
“The Donald Trump show is over”: Trump’s attempt to turn his trial into a campaign spectacle fails. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
Sorry, Donald: Trump wanted to look tough, but instead New York Attorney General Tish James ran him out of town
The civil trial to determine how much Donald Trump will be punished for decades of fraud in New York kicked off this week, and one thing became immediately clear: The former reality TV host really thought he’d be able to turn this into a campaign spectacle.”The Donald Trump show is over,” New York Attorney General Letitia James told reporters Wednesday. “This was nothing more than a political stunt.” Read more
Mississippi Democrat Brandon Presley aims to rally Black voters in governor’s race. By Michael Goldberg / ABC News
Mississippi’s gubernatorial election could hinge on turnout among Black voters, who haven’t wielded political influence commensurate to their share of the state population, the Democratic nominee said Friday.
At a campaign event in the 80% Black state capital of Jackson just over one month before Election Day, Brandon Presley said Black voters could help carry him to victory. He also accused incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, who is seeking reelection, of hoping they stay home. Read more
US Naval Academy’s affirmative action policy challenged in court. By Zachary Schermele / USA Today
Yet another top military academy is the target of a lawsuit challenging its use of race in its admissions process.
Students for Fair Admissions, the same group that has crusaded against affirmative action for years, filed a lawsuit Thursday in a federal court in Maryland alleging the U.S. Naval Academy is violating the constitution by considering applicants’ races in admissions decisions. Just a few weeks ago, SFFA brought a similar challenge in the Southern District of New York against the U.S. Military Academy, also known as West Point. Read more
More people of color are voting Republican. That’s not all bad news. By Perry Bacon Jr. Wash Post
People of color aren’t voting against the Trump-era Republicans as much as I hoped and once expected.
In fact, the Trump version of the party is getting more support from voters of color than the McCain-Romney one did. That’s disappointing in a big, obvious way: Some voters of color are helping the Republican Party remain electorally strong as it becomes increasingly radical and right-wing — including banning Black studies classes and proposing to end birthright citizenship. Read more
Court picks Alabama congressional map likely to mean Democratic gain. By Maegan Vazquez and Amy B. Wang / Wash Post
A panel of three federal judges on Thursday chose a new Alabama congressional map that maintains a Black-majority district in the state and establishes another near-Black-majority district that could flip a House seat for Democrats in 2024.
Thursday’s decision is the latest in a long legal battle that pitted Alabama’s GOP-led legislature against Democrats and civil rights groups that argued that Republicans were illegally diluting the power of Black voters in the state. About 27 percent of the state’s voting population is Black. Read more
The future of the auto industry will have an outsized impact on Black America. By
Black workers have long relied on union auto jobs as a crucial route to financial stability in America. Job by job, plant by plant, Black people forced open the auto industry and built seniority, using it to break into higher paying jobs they had previously been denied. The percentage of Black workers in the auto industry today is more than double their share of the workforce overall. Read more
Police Killings of Black & Brown People May Be Double Previous Estimates: La Raza Database Project. By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
Statistician and demographer Jesus Garcia explains how the team merged data sets from independent research projects on police violence to more accurately determine the ethnicities of victims.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn to a shocking new report that estimates 35,000 people have been killed by law enforcement in the U.S. since the year 2000 and that the number of Brown and Black people killed by police may be more than double the amount widely reported. Read more
Opinion: Why we should all care about Black men’s mental health. By Keith Magee / CNN
The theme of this year’s World Mental Health Day observed on October 10 is “Mental health is a universal human right.” I want myself and my fellow Black American men to claim this right, for the sake of ourselves, our families, our communities and our society.
Men are nearly four times as likely as women to die by suicide. White men are the group most likely to take their own lives, but from 2014 to 2019, Black people had the largest percentage increase of any ethnic group in suicide death rates – a rise of 30% – putting Black males at particular risk given the greater proclivity towards suicide among men. Read more
Morgan State shooting prompts university to historically cancel homecoming. By Zoe Wells / USA Today
Morgan State University has canceled its homecoming for the first time in school history after a campus shooting that injured five people.
The shooting occurred Tuesday after a homecoming event on the Baltimore campus, when Mr. and Ms. Morgan State were crowned at the school’s event center. All five injured were expected to make full recovery, but with suspects still at large and prior experiences with gun violence around homecoming events, the university decided to cancel most homecoming festivities. Read more
Dr. Melissa Gilliam to Lead Boston University as Historic First. By Arrman Kyaw / Diverse Issues in Higher Ed.
Dr. Melissa L. Gilliam, a physician and higher education leader, will take on the mantle of president of Boston University, effective Jul. 1, 2024. In doing so, she will become BU’s first woman and first Black president.
Gilliam, 58, is no stranger to firsts. She is currently executive vice president and provost at The Ohio State University, the first Black to hold that role in the school’s history. There she oversees all aspects of academic affairs, ranging from education to diversity and inclusion. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Churches confess and repent for sins against Native and Indigenous people. By Jason De Rose / NPR
Earlier this year, the Vatican responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which has its origins in 15th-century papal bulls, or decrees
Each Sunday, Culver City Presbyterian Church Pastor Frances Wattman Rosenau begins the worship service with these words: “As we gather for worship this day, we acknowledge that the land on which we gather was for many generations stewarded by the Tongva, Kizh and Chumash people. We recognize the enduring presence of indigenous peoples connected to and on this land.” Read more
White Georgia Pastor Goes Viral with Sermon Justifying Slavery | WATCH. By Ny MaGee / Eurweb
*A Georgia-based white pastor went viral for his sermon that justified slavery and proclaimed that “a lot” of Africans were better off as slaves.
In the video posted to TikTok on Sept. 24, “Brother” Deven Rogers delivered a disturbing message at Strong Hold Baptist Church in Norcross, about “Christian Privilege” and the white savior mentality. “This is how God works. This what God does in the Bible,” he stated, MadameNoire reports. “What would have been better? For them to have lived their entire life in Africa, free, doing their voodoo or whatever, and then dying and going to hell, or what happened, and then they go to heaven?”’ Read more and watch here
Supreme Court is increasingly putting Christians’ First Amendment rights ahead of others’ dignity and rights to equal protection. By Paulina Jones and Andrew Murphy / The Conversation
When the Supreme Court ruled in 303 Creative v. Elenis in 2023 that a businessperson could not be compelled to create art that violates their religious beliefs – specifically, a wedding website for a same-sex ceremony – supporters of the decision celebrated it as a victory for freedom of religion and expression.
The Supreme Court’s decision does not protect the freedoms of all Americans. Rather, it represents the culmination of a decadelong strategy by conservative Christians – known sometimes as the Christian right – to use the courts to limit the freedoms of groups of Americans of whom they disapprove. Read more
Black churches play a key role in connecting communities to broadband internet. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
The Rev. Barbara Williams-Skinner, center, teaches local clergy about the Affordable Connectivity Program during a training event in Jacksonville, Fla. Photo courtesy of Williams-Skinner
Early in the pandemic, Black churches often struggled to make the switch to remote services for lack of broadband in their area. Even if a church had the wherewithal to livestream services or hold meetings on video platforms, congregants lacked the connections to take advantage. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Columbus Day celebrates an ongoing threat to American democracy. By Robert P. Jones
A federal holiday day at odds with our identity as a pluralistic democracy. A depiction of Christoper Columbus arriving in the Americas, by Gergio Deluci, circa 1893. Image courtesy Library of Congress/Creative Commons
Christopher Columbus has only a tenuous connection to what became the United States. Although many of us were erroneously taught that “Columbus discovered America,” he never set foot on soil within our national borders and famously didn’t comprehend that he had encountered lands unknown to Europeans until his third voyage in 1498. Read more
Smithsonian Acquires Major Collection About Enslaved Poet.
In September 1773, Phillis Wheatley, a young enslaved woman from Boston, boarded a ship home from London, where she had gone to promote her forthcoming book of poems — the first ever published by an American of African descent. It was not the first time Wheatley had sailed to Boston. Twelve years earlier, she had arrived from Africa as a child captive and was sold to a prominent family, the Wheatleys, who named her after the slave ship. Read more
The Life and Activism of Rosa Parks: A CBFS Interview. By Lucien Baskin / AAIHS
A shared resting place for Pharoah Sanders. By Harmony Holiday / NPR
A reissue and a requiem exhibit the late saxophonist’s capacity for communion. In Pharoah Sanders’ final years, Luaka Bop expressed interest in doing a proper reissue of Harvest Time. The label chose to release it as a box set alongside Sanders’ final recorded album, Promises.
Chris Rock and Steven Spielberg to collaborate on Martin Luther King Jr. biopic. By Variety / NBC News
Universal Pictures is backing the biographical drama after optioning Jonathan Eig’s biography “King: A Life.” Eig’s book has been called the definitive biography of the late civil rights icon. It uses new FBI information and hundreds of interviews to paint a portrayal of King as a “courageous but emotionally troubled individual who demanded peaceful protest while grappling with his own frailties and a government that hunted him.” Since it’s early in the development process, casting has not been announced. Read more
Spike Lee has power. He’s still fighting it. By Yada Yuan / Wash Post
Ahead of a new Brooklyn Museum exhibit of his personal memorabilia, the director talks his Oscars favorites, his forthcoming Colin Kaepernick series and the heroics of ‘Black Aquaman.’
There’s no mistaking which office belongs to Spike Lee in a sunny corner of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he’s a tenured film professor and has been teaching for 30 years.
Cynt Marshall Is The First Black Woman To Lead An NBA Team. The Dallas Mavericks CEO Vows Not To Be The Last. By Jabari Young / Forbes
BREAKING: Colorado Announces More Major Spikes Resulting From The “Deion Sanders Effect.” By Lou Flavius / MSN
According to a report from Front Office Sports, merchandise sales from Colorado’s online store have increased by a whopping 1,220 percent from a year ago to September while year-to-date sales – January to September – are up 51 percent. The university has also earned over $45 million due to media and viewership while it’s also attracted a 42 percent year-over-year increase in sponsorship money. Read more
Simone Biles wins 6th Worlds title, becomes most decorated gymnast in history. By Angeline Jane Bernabe / ABC News
Colin Kaepernick appears to have two options if he wants to return to football, but QB doesn’t seem interested. By John Breach / CBS
The XFL and CFL are interested in having the QB as part of their leagues
An N.B.A. Power Broker, Growing Up and Finding Peace. By Tania Gaguli / NYT
For the past two decades, Mr. Paul, 42, has been a polarizing force in basketball. A power broker in a specialized world, he is slim, 5-foot-8 and sharply dressed, often appearing on the margins of photos snapped at marquee events. Many saw him as LeBron James’s confidant, and later as his agent. But as he built a sports agency, Klutch Sports Group, that rivaled and irritated more established companies, he has worked to separate his identity from that of Mr. James’s. Read more
With Victor Wembanyama in the limelight, Spurs embark on a new era. By Mike Monroe / The Athletic
The official media attendance at Monday morning’s San Antonio Spurs media day event was an even 100. By unofficial consensus, it was the largest throng of media ever for the team’s pre-training camp Q&A fest.
Not even in the 20-year, four-championship era of the team’s Big Three — Tim Duncan, Manu Ginóbili and Tony Parker — had so many reporters, photographers, broadcasters and bloggers shown up to quiz Spurs players and coaches. Read more
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