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How Harris Roped a Dope. By David Frum / The Atlantic

Vice President Kamala Harris walked onto the ABC News debate stage with a mission: trigger a Trump meltdown. She succeeded. Former President Donald Trump had a mission too: control yourself. He failed.

Trump lost his cool over and over. Goaded by predictable provocations, he succumbed again and again.

Trump was pushed into broken-sentence monologues—and even an all-out attack on the 2020 election outcome. He repeated crazy stories about immigrants eating cats and dogs, and was backwards-looking, personal, emotional, defensive, and frequently incomprehensible.

Harris hit pain point after pain point: Trump’s bankruptcies, the disdain of generals who had served with him, the boredom and early exits of crowds at his shrinking rallies. Every hit was followed by an ouch. Trump’s counterpunches flailed and missed. Harris met them with smiling mockery and cool amusement. The debate was often a battle of eyelids: Harris’s opened wide, Trump’s squinting and tightening. Read more

Is America ready to elect a Black woman president? By Emma Shortis / The Conversation

It’s the big question that has loomed over Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign from the start: is the United States ready for a Black woman president?

I get asked this almost every time I speak about American politics. And it’s a question that pundits, observers and experts keep asking, without ever landing on an answer. That’s because the question is, in the end, unanswerable. It’s so heavily loaded that answering it requires too much history, cultural knowledge, judgment and speculation. While the question hints at the deeply ingrained racism and sexism that is built into the structures of American politics and culture, it doesn’t directly address these things, leaving assumptions about just how sexist and racist the country might be unresolved. Read more

Political / Social

Hypocrisy, Spinelessness, and the Triumph of Donald Trump. By Mark Leibovich / The Atlantic

He said Republican politicians would be easy to break. He was right.

I was struck by one theme that Trump kept pounding on over and over: that he was used to dealing with “brutal, vicious killers”—by which he meant his fellow ruthless operators in showbiz, real estate, casinos, and other big-boy industries. In contrast, he told me, politicians are saps and weaklings. “I will roll over them,” he boasted, referring to the flaccid field of Republican challengers he was about to debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library that September. They were “puppets,” “not strong people.” He welcomed their contempt, he told me, because that would make his turning them into supplicants all the more humiliating. Read more

The End of Democracy Has Already Begun. By Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomeranrtsev / The Atlantic

The corruption of democracy begins with the corruption of thought—and with the deliberate undermining of reality. Stephen Richer, an election official in Arizona, and Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman, learned firsthand how easily false stories and conspiracy theories could disorient their colleagues. They talk with hosts Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev about how conformism and fear made it impossible to do their jobs.

This is the first episode of Autocracy in America, a new five-part series about authoritarian tactics already at work in the United States and where to look for them. Read more and listen here

Republicans Are a Party of Blatant Racists. By Inae Oh / Mother Jones

From JD Vance to Ted Cruz, the GOP’s gleeful embrace of a lie is what happens when a party funnels its ambitions into bigotry.

To start, it’s critical to note that the origins of these posts, from some of the highest levels of the US government, can seemingly be traced to a single falsehood. Here’s what happened. A participant of a random (exceedingly obscure) Facebook group that discusses local criminal activity in Springfield, Ohio, warned that a friend of their neighbor’s daughter had recently lost her cat, before describing an unfounded trend of Haitians eating cats they had found on the street. From there, a rumor started claiming that Haitian immigrants kidnapping and eating cats—a claim police have since roundly debunked. Trump reiterated this lie during the debate. Read more

How Project 2025 Would Change the Country. By Steven Rattner / NYT

When Donald Trump takes the debate stage on Tuesday, he will doubtless again try to disavow Project 2025, the radically conservative blueprint spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation for the next Republican administration. He did! We shouldn’t let him.

Seventy-eight percent of the contributors to the effort were members of his last administration and many of them are likely appointees to his next team if he’s re-elected. As the old Washington saying goes, “personnel is policy.” Based on Mr. Trump’s campaign utterances and Project 2025’s proposals, expect far more radical actions from a second Trump presidency. Relying on analysis by the Center for American Progress and others, below are eight examples of how Project 2025’s proposals could alter American life. Read more

Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears announces her candidacy for governor. By Laura Vozzella and Gregory S. Schneider / Wash Post

Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears will seek her party’s nomination for Virginia governor next year, she announced Thursday, kicking off a historic bid to become the first woman to lead the state and the first Black woman to serve as governor anywhere in the nation.

Earle-Sears, 60, acknowledged the historic nature of her run in a written campaign announcement that also touted her nearly three years of work with the “Youngkin-Sears Administration,” a period she argued steered Virginia “back on course toward prosperity.” Read more

New rules from GOP-majority election board could cause disarray in battleground Georgia. By Sara Murray and Jason Morris / CNN

The once-wonky Georgia State Election Board has burst into the limelight this year as a new Republican majority – made up of a retired obstetrician, a former state senator who put out feelers for a Trump administration job and a right-wing media personality – push ahead with new rules that could create chaos in November.

The reshaping of the election board in one of the most critical battleground states of 2024 highlights how some Republicans who cast doubt on the 2020 presidential election results have now taken on prominent roles driving election rules and, in some areas, overseeing elections. Read more

Black Caucus issues new guidelines for DEI policies and urges firms to help reduce racial wealth gap. By Matt Brown / AP News

Corporate policies meant to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace are legal and should be expanded to promote broad economic prosperity and reduce racial wealth inequities, according to a new report by the Congressional Black Caucus.

The report released Monday offers guidelines to corporations on the best practices to adopt to advance diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the workplace and calls on companies to recommit to advance racial justice in the workplace. The document also includes a roadmap for advancing wealth creation in Black communities and closing the racial wealth gap. Read more

How Tennessee Keeps Nearly Half a Million People From Voting. Video by Emily Holzknecht and Taige Jensen / NYT

The Opinion video above takes viewers to Tennessee, the Volunteer State, the capital of country music and the birthplace of Davy Crockett and the Moon Pie — and a national leader in voter disenfranchisement.

The state has come about that last claim to fame through its handling of voting access for people convicted of felonies. While nearly all states suspend or withdraw people’s right to vote when they are convicted of felonies, most allow restoring that right after they have served their sentences. Watch here

World News

How Harris and Trump answered foreign policy questions during the debate. By Rachel Pannett. Niha Masih, and Kelly Kasulis Cho / Wash Post

Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump debated China ties, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war in Gaza and the exit from Afghanistan.

Vice President Kamala Harris accused former president Donald Trump of taking a soft tack with Xi Jinping, the leader of China, and other strongmen during Tuesday’s presidential debate. Trump sought to paint those relationships as a strength, baselessly claiming that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Gaza conflict would not have happened if he had won in 2020. Focusing her foreign policy answers by promising to stand by allies, Harris said that, as president, she would ensure that the United States retain its role and responsibility in the world order. Here is what the candidates said on foreign policy during their debate. Read more

The Black, Jewish and Palestinian liberation struggles are intertwined. By Lily Greenberg Call and Henry Hicks IV / The Guardian

We must commit to the coalition work that might bring freedom for some of the most vulnerable among us. Palestinians, Jews, Black folks and others held hands, sang together, mourned, and slept on the pavement outside of the United Center.’ Photograph: Seth Herald/Reuters

There exists a long history of Black and Jewish solidarity in the fight for collective liberation. The 1964 Mississippi murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were attacks on both Black and Jewish organizers doing the work of realizing multi-racial democracy during the civil rights era. The inheritance of their solidarity work, as well as the overlapping targeting that Black folks and Jews face simultaneously, should be just as clear to us today. Read more

Let’s Be Clear: Putin Is Again Trying to Put Trump in the White House. By David Corn / Mother Jones

More evidence emerges of Russia’s covert assault on American democracy.

“I hate saying, ‘I told you so.’” That is one of the biggest lies. I, for one, enjoy saying it. That is, on the right occasions. And I’d like to point out that in recent months I have repeatedly warned that Russian tyrant and war criminal Vladmir Putin intended to mess with the US election to help Donald Trump once again. (See here, here, and here.) This week, in a pair of actions, the Justice Department outlined elaborate schemes mounted by covert Moscow operators to influence the 2024 campaign. But in each instance, the feds declined to explicitly state the obvious: The Kremlin efforts have been designed and mounted to aid Trump’s bid to regain power. Read more

Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States. By Michael Lawrence Dickinson / AAIHS

Anonymous engraving of the Battle of Vertières that ended the Haitian War of Independence.

“What happened in Haiti between 1791 and 1804 contradicted much of what happened elsewhere in the world before and since..But what happened in Haiti also contradicted most of what the West has told both itself and others about itself,” observed Michel-Rolph Trouillot in his significant work Silencing the Past. Trouillot further noted that “The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination.”¹ In many ways, his words encapsulate Leslie Alexander’s critical contribution in Fear of a Black Republic, as she works to tell the complex story of Haiti and its struggle to survive as an inspiration for Black Americans amidst global pressures invested in the republic’s failure. Read more

Ethics / Morality / Religion

Evangelicals rally behind statement that hopes to combat polarization with revival. By Jack Jenkins / RNS

‘I see this statement as a very important call to teaching,’ said Richard Mouw, a theologian and former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, who signed a statement urging evangelicals to reject ‘political idolatry.’

A group of evangelical Christians hoping to reclaim their tradition from the culture wars put out a call Monday (Sept. 9) for a broader understanding of evangelicalism urging a rejection of “political idolatry and its messengers” as well as the “false idols of power, wealth, and strength rather than the true God.” Read more

It’s time for Christians on all sides to talk — even debate — about what divides us. By Jim Wallis / RNS

How can we find ways to have conversations together about the values of faith that should be shaping our political participation and even our voting in the most important election in our lives and perhaps since the Civil War?

People who feel left out, left behind and disrespected are easily drawn to authoritarianism and extremism. We cannot simply reject those we disagree with; we should instead respect their faith and try to help bring them back to the values at the heart of our shared religion. Read more

Why Many Leaders Of America’s Black Churches Are Worried About Future Of Faith-Based Organizations. By Aria Bell / Blavity

Black churches across the U.S. are seeing a decline in attendance.

“Bedside Baptist Church” members, a term coined to name people who virtually watch church in their bedrooms, became a thing during the pandemic. Still, many are choosing to not attend in-person services, according to Black Enterprise. “While 13% of Protestants who belong to historically Black churches say they attend church in person and don’t regularly watch services virtually, most say they join services both in person and virtually (37%) or only watch remotely on screens (20%),” research from a Pew Research Center’s June 2023 report reported. Read more

Catholics urge emphasis on church’s social teachings — not just abortion — in election. By Heidi Schlumpf / NCR

An online group of Catholics also called on church leaders to speak out against Christian nationalism and political violence

The Catholic Church must bear witness to its values in the political square, with more focus on its social justice teaching and not only the issue of abortion, according to a gathering of more than 200 Catholic voters who met online Sept. 7 to discuss the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The group also called on church leaders to speak out against Christian nationalism and political violence and urged all Catholics to model respectful dialogue with fellow citizens who have different opinions. Read more

Historical / Cultural

Kamala Harris’ purported Irish ancestry highlights complicated backstory of identity and enslavement. By Christine Kinealy , Kimberly DaCosta and Miriam Nylan Grey / The Conversation

In 2018, the Black father of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, the Jamaican-born professor Donald Harris, wrote that the family was descended from white enslaver Hamilton Brown. Brown was born in Ireland in 1776 before moving to the then-British colony of Jamaica.

If Donald Harris’ account of his family history is correct, it is likely that, as was true with American abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass, the Black mother in question – and Harris’ ancestor – was a woman on one of Brown’s plantations. In such cases, mothers and children were often separated shortly after birth. The ramifications of Harris’ Irish links have mostly been greeted with shame or silence in Ireland. Read more

Project 1619 loses ‘a force of nature’ with death of founder Calvin Pearson. By Josh Janney / The Virginia-Pilot

Peninsula native and renowned historian Calvin Pearson, who friends describe as a huge force in educating Hampton Roads on the history of enslaved Africans, died last week at 73.

Pearson is the founder and president of Project 1619, a nonprofit that has played a crucial role in correcting the narrative about the arrival of enslaved Africans in English-speaking North America. The organization notes the first enslaved Africans, who were kidnapped from Angola, first landed at Point Comfort, today’s Fort Monroe in Hampton, not in Jamestown. Read more

James Earl Jones, Whose Powerful Acting Resonated Onstage and Onscreen, Dies at 93. By Robert D. McFadden / NYT

He gave life to characters like Darth Vader in “Star Wars” and Mufasa in “The Lion King,” and went on to collect Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys and an honorary Oscar.

James Earl Jones, a stuttering farm child who became a voice of rolling thunder as one of America’s most versatile actors in a stage, film and television career that plumbed race relations, Shakespeare’s rhapsodic tragedies and the faceless menace of Darth Vader, died on Monday at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y. He was 93. Read more

Overlooked No More: Gwendolyn B. Bennett, Harlem Renaissance Star Plagued by Misfortune. By Dan Saltzstein / NYT

She was a talented young poet and artist who was central to a fledgling cultural movement, but her life was shrouded by one tragedy after another.

On March 21, 1924, a group of artists, writers and intellectuals filled the distinguished Civic Club in Manhattan for a dinner party, one that would turn out to be a pivotal moment in the early days of the Harlem Renaissance. The event was conceived to celebrate Jessie Fauset, the novelist, poet and literary editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the N.A.A.C.P., who had just published a new novel, “There Is Confusion.” But it wasn’t Fauset who captivated the crowd with a reading. Read more

Beyoncé Receives ZERO Nominations For Country Music Association Awards Despite No. 1 Country Album. by Cedric ‘BIG CED’ Thornton / Black Enterprise

‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ held the top spot for 10 weeks on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, despite Beyonce becoming the first Black woman to have a country record on top of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs, she received zero nominations from the voting bloc. The popular songstress also held the top position on the same chart for 10 weeks, and it helped her gain nothing from the people who routinely vote on the artists and records for the awards. Read more

“It feels good . . . really, really good”: Angela Bassett wins first Emmy Award. By Gabriella Ferrigine / Salon

Bassett took home the award for outstanding narration on National Geographic’s nature documentary “Queens”

Actor Angela Bassett has won her first Emmy Award, nine nominations later. At the Creative Arts Emmys on Saturday, Bassett nabbed the win for her outstanding narration in “Queens,” a docuseries from National Geographic about matriarchies in the wild. Read more

Sports

How police treated Tyreek Hill should frighten everyone with car keys. By Sallu Jenkins / Wash Post

A minor compliance issue became a needless escalation — not because of Hill’s conduct but that of those chesty cops.

There is nothing in the law of the land that says a citizen must become a cringing knee servant to a duded-up traffic cop’s desire to stretch the handcuffs on his gun belt. Nothing says Tyreek Hill should have to touch his cheek to dirty pavement in obeisance to a police officer, whose normal duty is lane changes and parades but who can flex at any time into a cuff-brandishing brute just because he doesn’t like your tone. What’s happening in that body-cam video, what sickens, is situational thrall. Read more

Venus Williams’ new book ‘Strive’ details 8 steps she says she lives by. By Michel Martin / NPR

In her new book “Strive,” tennis legend Venus Williams outlines some of the disciplines that helped her win multiple Grand Slam championships.

If you follow sports at all, Venus Williams is a person who needs no introduction. Over a 30-year career in tennis, she’s stacked her mantel with seven Grand Slam singles titles, 14 Grand Slam doubles, four Olympic medals, among other accolades. She is also a serial entrepreneur. Along the way, she’s developed a roadmap to physical, mental and emotional health, which she wants to tell us about in a new book. It’s called “Strive,” and it details the eight steps Venus says she lives by, a program she hopes others can follow in order to find their awesome, as she puts it. And Venus Williams is with us now. Good morning. Read more and listen here

Negro Leagues legend Bill Greason’s 100th birthday: ‘Thankful to God.’ By Bob Nightengale / USA Today

The best sight in all of baseball this past week was Tuesday at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., where the city and the military celebrated the 100^th birthday of an American hero: Rev. Bill Greason.

Greason, who grew up in Birmingham with Willie Mays, is the oldest living member of the Negro Leagues and was the St. Louis Cardinals’ first Black pitcher. Read more

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