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Racial Justice and Gospel Hope. A Conversation with Latasha Morrison. The Russell Moore Show / Christianity Today

Do we believe in redemption?

That’s the question that Latasha Morrison, author and founder of Be the Bridge, encourages listeners to consider. On this episode, Morrison and Moore discuss the issues of race, culture, and history’s impact on the present. They talk about what it’s like to listen, lament, and act on behalf of the oppressed—surrendering our work to the Lord as we walk the path of justice, righteousness, and reconciliation. Listen here

Political / Social

Kamala Harris surges ahead of Donald Trump in 2024 election poll. By Susan Page, Savannah Kuchar and Sudiksha Kochi / USA Today

Democrat Kamala Harris has surged ahead of Republican Donald Trump, 48%-43%, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll found.

The findings reflect an eight-point turnaround in the presidential race from late June, when Trump had led President Joe Biden in the survey by nearly four points. The vice president’s small lead was fueled by big shifts among some key demographic groups traditionally crucial for Democrats, including Hispanic and Black voters and young people. Among those with annual incomes of less than $20,000, in the biggest change, a three-point Trump edge over Biden in June has become a 23-point Harris advantage over Trump in August. Read more

7 Takeaways From Harris’s First Major Interview. By Reid J.
Epstein / NYT

The main reason CNN’s interview with Vice President Kamala Harris turned out to be remarkable was that it was the first one she had done since President Biden bowed out and tapped her as his successor.

Seated alongside her running mate, the quietly supportive Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris parried questions from Dana Bash on Thursday without causing herself political harm or providing herself a significant boost. She was methodical and risk-averse in the 27-minute interview, performing like a top seed in the early rounds of the U.S. Open tennis tournament trying to hold serve, survive and advance to the next round — in this case, her Sept. 10 debate with former President Donald J. Trump. Read more

Why Trump’s Arlington Debacle Is So Serious. By Michael Powell / The Atlantic

The former president violated one of America’s most sacred places.

The section of Arlington National Cemetery that Donald Trump visited on Monday is both the liveliest and the most achingly sad part of the grand military graveyard, set aside for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Section 60, young widows can be seen using clippers and scissors to groom the grass around their husbands’ tombstones as lots of children run about. Read more

If Trump loses, expect a Republican civil war. By Myra Adams / The Hill

But Trump can never lose!

So, if he does, expect a 2020 post-election replay with much ranting, raving and contrived evidence. Team Trump will launch accusations of a corrupt, stolen election, cheating, judicial weaponization, illegal voters, foreign interference and rigged voting machines, resulting in legal challenges perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court. Our enemies will be watching for signs of electoral instability, democratic unrest and perhaps even a national security crisis. That aside, a Trump loss inevitably means an internal civil war within the Republican Party. I believe a “war” is inevitable between the all-powerful Trump forces and those who want to move on from the Trump era and win the White House in 2028 without any Trump family members on the ticket. Read more

America Needs Georgia Republicans to Defend Democracy Again. By Mara Gay / NYT

Four years ago, it was a Republican official in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whose refusal to cooperate with Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election by trying to “find” 11,780 votes helped ensure the integrity of the state’s results, and democracy itself.

This year, Georgia Republicans — Gov. Brian Kemp, State Attorney General Christopher Carr and Secretary of State Raffensperger — must defend democracy again. Far-right elements within their own party have gained control of the State Election Board and could make it impossible to hold a free and fair election unless other Republicans stop them. Read more

Election workers ask court to seize Rudy Giuliani’s luxury apartment. By Aysha Bagchi / USA Today

Accountability!

Two election workers who secured a nearly $150 million legal victory against Rudy Giuliani are asking a Manhattan federal court Friday to order the former New York City mayor to hand over his cash accounts, jewelry, and ownership of a luxury Madison Avenue apartment. Read more

Conservative opponents of DEI may not be as colorblind as they claim. By Abigail Folberg, Laura Brooks Dueland and Mikki Hebi / The Conversation

Critics of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, commonly referred to by the acronym DEI, are increasingly using boycotts and bans to fight against their use. People often argue that this anti-DEI backlash is motivated by race-neutral concerns – for example, that DEI practices are irrelevant to work performance or are too political.

But our recent research, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, suggests that conservative critiques of DEI often boil down to one thing: anti-Black racism. As psychology researchers, we wanted to understand why people react to DEI the way they do. So, we recruited more than 1,000 people to take part in three related studies. Read more

Elite US colleges see Black enrollment drop after affirmative action strike-down. By Léonie Chao-Fong / The Guardian

Enrollment for Black students fell at two elite US colleges in the first class since the supreme court’s decision last year to strike down affirmative action in college admissions and upend the nation’s academic landscape.

Amherst College and Tufts University, both in Massachusetts, reported a drop in the share of Black first-year students, an early sign that the high court’s ruling could negatively affect racial diversity in the US’s more selective colleges and universities, according to the New York Times. Read more

World News

In an unheroic age, Putin, Trump and Netanyahu are sick parodies of great men. By Simon Tisdall / The Guardian

These successors to Stalin, Hitler and Mao are the ones making history in an unhappy, warring world

The 19th-century idea that great men – exceptionally talented, courageous, charismatic individuals – direct and change the course of history by the sheer force of their genius and personality is hard to shake. It has persisted despite the rise of egalitarian and Marxist social theory and the advent in the 1960s of EP Thompson’s levelling up school of “history from below”. Read more

As Haitians flee the capital, fears rise that the gangs will follow. By Widlore Mérancourt and Amanda Coletta / Wash Post

Unrelenting gang warfare in Port-au-Prince is fueling an exodus of people from Haiti’s capital, overwhelming already impoverished cities and towns and sparking fears that the gangs will follow.

More than 578,000 Haitians, or 5 percent of the population, have fled their homes since 2021, according to the U.N. migration agency. The number jumped 60 percent from March through May this year alone, the International Organization for Migration reported, as heavily armed paramilitary gangs attacked the international airport and the main seaport, busted prisons open and rampaged through the capital. Read more

Gaza, Lebanon, West Bank: Why Is Israel Fighting So Many Wars? By Patrick Kingsley / NYT

As well as its conflict with Hamas, Israel is battling along its border with Lebanon, waging a counterinsurgency in the occupied West Bank and exchanging sporadic fire with Iran and its regional proxies.

Despite the destruction of much of Hamas’s military infrastructure and tens of thousands of deaths, there is no end in sight to the war in Gaza, partly because Israel has set itself a high threshold for victory: the eradication of the Hamas leadership and the rescue of roughly 100 hostages still held by the group. By contrast, Hamas has a low threshold: It seeks to survive the war intact, a modest goal that allows it to weather a level of devastation that might have caused other groups to surrender. Read more

Battling Mpox in the Outbreak’s Epicenter in Congo. Visuals by Arlette Bashizi. Text by Elian Peltier / NYT (Image PBS)

Children wailed as their mothers washed their frail bodies covered with lesions. Adults coughed repeatedly, their throats so swollen that they could barely speak.

Mpox is spreading largely unchecked in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The New York Times visited a remote hospital in Kavumu overwhelmed with patients. Cases have reached African countries like Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, and as far as Sweden and Thailand. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency. Read more

Ethics / Morality / Religion

Harris and Emhoff highlight different faiths on the campaign trail. By Sarah McCammon / NPR

At the Democratic National Convention, second gentleman Doug Emhoff wanted to show another side of his wife.

“Kamala has connected me more deeply to my faith, even though it’s not the same as hers,” he said, highlighting his interfaith marriage to Vice President Harris. Emhoff is Jewish and Harris is Christian. He said she attends High Holiday services with him, and he attends Easter services with her. And, he said, they share their food traditions. Read more

“Downright strange”: How Trump’s warped litmus test for MAGA Christians spread beyond abortion. By Chauncey Devega / Salon

Bradley Onishi, expert on Christian nationalism, explains Trumpism has supplanted traditional Christian orthodoxy

Bradley Onishi is President of the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement and the Founder of Axis Mundi Media. In 2023 he published, “Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism.” Onishi is also a faculty member in Religion and Philosophy at the University of San Francisco. In this conversation, Onishi explains how Trumpism is a de facto type of right-wing “Christian” religious political movement and the ways that White Christianity has made support for right-wing extremism a litmus test for being members of that faith community and therefore real “Christians.” Read more

In new book, journalist Joshua Leifer offers a scathing take on American Judaism. By Yonat Shimron / RNS

Tablets Shattered’ is a sweeping historical account of a fractured and contentious religious establishment — much of it hampered by its embrace of Zionism.

In his book, which spans an entire century, Leifer, 30, now a Ph.D. candidate in history at Yale University, describes how many 20th-century Jews, escaping pogroms in Europe, settled in America and for the most part shed their religious traditions and embraced Americanism, becoming highly successful hyphenated Americans. After 1967, they increasingly found in Zionism and support for Israel a substitute for religious faith and tradition. Read more

Religion Is Harming Public Schools In The U.S. By William T. Orr Jr. / Patheos

Public schools cannot do the job they are required to do if religious schools take their money

This simple, almost simplistic statement, cannot be made any more plain. At the present time: Funds are being shifted from public schools to private and religious schools in many states. States are requiring religious education in public schools Politicians are blaming public schools for social problems. If public schools are to do what we demand of them, the states must put the needs of the children and their families first and stop catering to the loudest bleating voices. Read more

Historical / Cultural

Alabama’s First Official Black Town Celebrates 125th Founder’s Day. By Jeroslyn JoVonn / Black Enterprise

Hobson City, Alabama, recently celebrated a major anniversary as the state’s first official Black town

The town, located between Oxford and Anniston, held its 125th Founders Day along with recognizing two Anniston natives, the 16th U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. David Satcher, and Alabama Rep. Barbara Bigsby Boyd (D-Anniston), Alabama News Center reports. Hobson City was founded on August 16, 1899. Read more

Black people were once expelled from Forsyth County, Georgia. Can a scholarship make amends? By Marquise Francis / NBC News

Teenagers Oscar Daniel, seated, second from left, and Ernest Knox, seated, far right, were hanged in Forsyth County, Ga., as part of a dayslong campaign to expel all Black people from the area in September 1912. Spearheaded by a group of pastors, a scholarship for descendants of a racial cleansing in Forsyth County in 1912 aims to right a multigenerational wrong.

In 1912, a small population of Black residents, dozens of whom were land and business owners, were violently expelled from the county, their livelihoods stripped from them. Three Black men were lynched and the remaining Black residents were ordered to leave and told never to return. For many Black Georgians, even those unaware of the details of that incident, it’s universally understood to generally avoid the county.“The history of Forsyth County is literally a case study of racism in American history,” said Nafeesa H. Muhammad, an associate professor of history at Spelman College in Atlanta. Read more

Abandoned beach, once segregated, revitalized by community activists. By Lakeia Brown / ABC News

An abandoned New Orleans beach originally created for Black beachgoers during segregation is being resurrected. This time, it is for everyone.

Lincoln Beach, named after the “Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln, is a 15-acre site in New Orleans that opened in the late 1930s. It was created to uphold Jim Crow, keeping Black people from visiting the then white-only Pontchartrain Beach. Located in the east, miles from the center of the city, Lincoln Beach would become a safe space for Black residents. The haven was adorned with swimming pools, carnival rides, a bathhouse and restaurant, and even featured live entertainment from performers like Fats Domino and Nat King Cole. Read more

Controversial Trump film ‘The Apprentice’ finally gets a release date. By Jada Yuan and Samantha Chery / Wash Post (Image NBC)

After months of delays and threatened legal action by the former president, the movie starring Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong will open before the election.

“The Apprentice,” the controversial film centered on Donald Trump’s origin story that was met with legal threats and a months-long distribution delay, now has a pre-election U.S. release date set for Oct. 11, according to two sources close the production and a social-media post by screenwriter Gabriel Sherman. In the film’s most appalling scene, Trump is shown raping his first wife, Ivana, played by Maria Bakalova, during a fight. According to the 1993 book “Lost Tycoon,” Ivana made the rape accusation in a 1990 sworn divorce deposition. She later clarified her earlier statement, saying that she didn’t mean those words in “a literal or criminal sense.” She added, “As a woman, I felt violated.” Trump has denied the allegation. Ivana died in 2022. Read more

Black Music Sunday: Singing about those ‘Black jobs.’ By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos

It’s Labor Day weekend and I’m here doin’ my “Black job,” which is a labor of love exploring Black music.

Lots of folks are attending barbecues or events celebrating unions and the history of the labor movement here in the U.S. I’ve been sitting here thinking about all the different songs that we have featured in this series highlighting Black workers and jobs. We’ve looked at music made by enslaved people, workers in coal mines and on chain gangs, and some music played at Labor Day weekend family gatherings. Read more and listen here.

John Legend Wants His New Album To Be A Timeless Classic For Families. By

The legendary singer and father of four reflects on his 20-year career — and shares why he decided to make a children’s album.

For the last 20 years, John Legend has built a legacy on love. The EGOT winner has several classic romantic ballads and wedding-worthy songs, but nowadays, he’s taking cues from the love of his family, as evidenced by his new album, “My Favorite Dream.” The father of four’s new project, his first children’s offering, was spurred last November after he posted a viral Instagram video of him performing a cover of “Maybe,” his 1-year-old daughter Esti’s favorite Fisher-Price song. Read more

Sports

NFL records come and go, but Eric Dickerson’s 1984 rushing mark lives on. By Scott Allen / Wash Post

Dickerson broke O.J. Simpson’s single-season rushing record 40 years ago. It seems unlikely to fall anytime soon.

With a nine-yard run in the fourth quarter of a 27-16 win over the Houston Oilers on Dec. 9, 1984, Los Angeles Rams running back Eric Dickerson broke O.J. Simpson’s single-season rushing record of 2,003 yards, which the former Buffalo Bills star set in 14 games in 1973. Read more

Caitlin Clark, Indiana Fever dispatch Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky in battle between rookie phenoms. By Homero De La Fuente / CNN

Caitlin Clark scored a career-high 31 points to lift the Indiana Fever past Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky 100-81 in a battle between the WNBA rookies on Friday night in Chicago’s Wintrust Arena.

Considered the two front-runners for the WNBA Rookie of the Year award, the league’s assist-per-game leader Clark has cemented herself as the favorite since the return from the Olympic break, leading the Fever to five wins in their last six games while setting records along the way. Read more

Chris Paul’s Parents Arranged Loans ‘Every Year’ to Fuel NBA Legend’s $160 Million Success. By Subhajit Chowdhury / MSN

CP3 worked at his grandfather’s gas station during his high school days. That gives an assessment of the humble background he came from. While Paul was working to save for pocket money, and concentrating on his game, his mother, Robin Jones, was trying to make ends meet to raise her two sons. Chris and his older brother Charles were talented enough to go to college and education didn’t come for free.

So when Chris Paul graduated from Wake Forest and was selected 4th overall in the 2005 NBA Draft, it was a moment of fulfilment for Robin. Behind the beaming smile, while seeing CP3 holding the New Orleans Hornets jersey, she knew her days of applying for loans were over. Read more

Deion Sanders is a clumsy ringleader, but there’s merit to his circus. By Steven Godfrey / Wash Post

Three weeks ago during a news conference, Colorado Coach Deion Sanders refused to answer a question from a reporter for a local CBS affiliate because of an unspecified issue Sanders cited against the national CBS Sports editorial outfit. Last week, the university banned Denver Post columnist Sean Keeler from asking Sanders questions during media events.

So Sanders pseudo-banning Keeler because of columns that were critical of Sanders’s program isn’t an attempt to suppress freedom of the press. At Sanders’s level, as with Saban and so many others before him, the media is like any other facet of the non-football tasks of coaching: a series of binary decisions. Can this be exploited to help me win games? Read more

Steph Curry, Warriors agree to one-year extension worth $62.58 million. By Jeff Zillgitt / USA Today

Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry agreed to a one-year, $62.58 million extension that will keep him with the Warriors through 2026-27.

Curry, 36, will make $177.9 million over the next three seasons, and the final year of the deal will push him over $500 million in career earnings from NBA contracts with the Warriors. Read more

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