Featured
Lies About Immigration Help No One. By Caitlin Dickerson / The Atlantic
A growing number of Americans are pointing to immigration as a top concern heading into the election. But a substantive debate on the issue has become impossible, given that Donald Trump and his vice-presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, are only escalating their use of outright lies and xenophobia in lieu of anything resembling fact-based policy solutions.
On the campaign trail, Trump has said that immigrants are “animals” and “not human,” and implied that millions are crossing the border each month; publicly available data show that the real number has never exceeded 200,000 a month this year. When Vance took to X to declare that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets, and Trump repeated the lie in a nationally televised debate the next day, those of us who have studied the United States’ history of dehumanizing immigrants felt as if the clock had turned back 150 years, to when the same specious claim was used to justify vigilante violence against Chinese Americans, and laws including the Chinese Exclusion Act. Read more
Related: Local Republicans reject Trump’s claims about Haitian immigrants in their towns. By
Political / Social
Harris Hits Core Campaign Themes in Emotional Forum With Oprah Winfrey. By Erica L. Green / NYT
Vice President Kamala Harris spoke off the cuff, as guests included a teenager shot at her school and the family of a woman in Georgia who died as a result of the state’s abortion ban.
Vice President Kamala Harris harnessed the star power of one of her most powerful surrogates — and one of America’s foremost interviewers — to lay out a pitch for her campaign on Thursday, as she confronted a range of pressing issues during a livestream forum with Oprah Winfrey. The event, “Unite for America,” was hosted by Ms. Winfrey and drew hundreds of thousands of viewers, bolstering a strategy that Ms. Harris’s campaign sees as crucial to reaching voters in battleground states and beyond in November. Read more
Related: Former Longtime Teamsters President Blasts Successor For Not Backing Harris. By
Related: More than 700 high-ranking national security officials endorse Harris. By Joanne Haner / The Hill
The Trump Guide to Civil Discourse. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT (Image Seattle Times)
The classic example of chutzpah is that of the child who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy as an orphan. With the 2024 presidential election, we have a new way to illustrate the point: the candidate who condones violence, dehumanizes his opponents and whips his supporters into a frenzy, then turns around to condemn the harsh rhetoric of his opponents and call for peaceful discourse.
Following the second attempt on his life in two months, Trump blamed Democrats for casting him as a threat to American democracy. Read more
Related: Trump’s Alarming Use Of A Word With A Deep Fascist History. By
Mark Robinson Is a Poster. By David A. Graham / The Atlantic
Mark Robinson is many things: the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, the Republican nominee for governor, and a bigot. But the key to understanding him is that he is a poster. The question is, why is he also a candidate for governor?
The poster is an internet creature—the sort of person who just can’t resist the urge to shoot off his mouth on Facebook or Twitter or in some other online forum (for example, the message boards on the porn site Nude Africa). These posts tend to be unfiltered and not well thought out. Sometimes they’re trolling. Sometimes they’re a window into the soul. The imperative is just to post. Read more
Related: Why a “Black Nazi” Fit Right in With the Modern GOP. By Jeet Heer / The Nation
Pro-Trump Georgia Election Board Invites Chaos By Requiring Hand Count Of Ballots. By
A 3-2 Republican majority on Georgia’s State Election Board voted Friday to require local election offices to hand count the state’s millions of ballots, inviting chaos as experts warned the task would prove impossible in the state’s largest counties, which lean Democratic.
The rule was just the latest in a string of partisan votes from the board, members of which Donald Trump praised by name at a rally in Georgia last month. A few weeks ago, the board empowered county election officials — many of whom have challenged election results in the past — to personally investigate election results and demand reams of election-related documentation, potentially delaying the certification of the state’s results. Read more
Under Georgia’s Abortion Ban, She Died After Delayed Care. By Kavitha Surana / ProPublicaAt least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state, ProPublica has found. This is one of their stories.
In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat. She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C. Read more
Jonathan Holloway Was Far More Than Rutgers’s First Black President. By Jim Sleeper / TNR
The Haitian Question. By Roxane Gay / The New Yorker
Israel’s Pager Bombs Have No Place in a Just War. By Michael Walzer / NYT
By Robyn Dixon and Michael Birnbaum / Wash Post
Washington and the West struggle for a way forward with Putin’s Russia.In the United States and Europe, there is growing uncertainty about how to counter Putin’s aggression without stoking a direct conflict with Russia.
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Related:
Related: Should Christian men run America? Hell no, say abuse survivors in new documentary. By Bob Smietana / RNS
What you might miss in news coverage about Latino voters and faith. By Aleja Hertzler-McCain / RNS
There are more Latino voters in the U.S. than ever. As reporters and pundits seek to understand this important voting bloc, they’re digging into the faith of Hispanic communities. But as this election cycle brings yet another flurry of trend pieces about Latino evangelicals, some narratives distort the big picture of Latino faith. Others are just myths.
Here’s what you may not know about Latino voters and their faith: Read more
A bold guide to confronting racism in white Christianity. RNS Press Release
Fire in the Whole explores the anger of Black Christians who feel betrayed by white Christianity’s complicity of perpetuating racism.
In this transformative work, author Robert Callahan not only empathizes with this pain, giving words to strong and powerful emotions, but also provides guidance for healing church-related wounds. Read more
200 Christian leaders across denominations call defending democracy a ‘test of faith.’ By Jack Jenkins / RNS
A diverse group of influential Christian leaders is calling on their fellow faithful to protect democracy, arguing that American Christians are compelled to defend voting freedoms as a “test of faith.”
“We write in a moment of fierce urgency, as the people of God animated by faith, hope, and love,” said the statement, which was provided to RNS ahead of its formal release on Thursday (Sept. 19). “It is in this spirit that we reaffirm Christian support for democracy and invite all Christians and people of moral conscience to do the same.” Read more
Historical / Cultural
An extraordinary new history of Emmett Till, Mississippi and America. Review by Aram Goudsouzian / Wash Post
Wright Thompson’s deep meditation on the notorious murder in his home state revolves around an artifact hiding in plain sight: the barn where Till was killed.
For Wright Thompson, the murder still matters in part because so many facts have stayed buried, and because those silences have widened the cracks in our democratic bedrock. His extraordinary new book, “The Barn,” is not only an intimate history of the tragedy, but also a deep meditation on Mississippi and America. It revolves around an artifact hiding in plain sight: the barn where Till was beaten and killed. Read more
The Influence Of Black Culture On The 2024 Election. By NewsOne Staff / NewsOne
As the 2024 election approaches, the impact of Black culture on political discourse is more pronounced than ever.
From social activism to the influence of Black celebrities, the dynamic interplay between culture and politics is shaping the campaigns and agendas of candidates across the board. Here’s a closer look at the key factors contributing to this influential role. Read more
Related: Stevie Wonder announces U.S. tour leading up to presidential election. By Variety and NBC News
Why Earth, Wind & Fire’s ‘September’ sustains. By Dan Charnas / NPR
If you’ve ever been to a wedding reception in the U.S., you know there’s one question that can get a whole family on the dance floor: “Do you remember the 21st night of September?”
The story of the song begins in 1978. Allee Willis was a struggling songwriter in LA — until the night she got a call from Maurice White, the leader of Earth, Wind & Fire. White offered her the chance of a lifetime: to co-write the band’s next album. Willis arrived at the studio the next day hoping it wasn’t some kind of cosmic joke. “As I open the door, they had just written the intro to ‘September.’ And I just thought, ‘Dear God, let this be what they want me to write!’ Cause it was obviously the happiest-sounding song in the world,” Willis says. Read more
Sports
Aces’ A’ja Wilson becomes second unanimous MVP in WNBA history. By Michael Voepel / ESPN
Aces center A’ja Wilson became the second player in WNBA history to win the league’s MVP as a unanimous choice Sunday, collecting all 67 first-place votes for 670 points from a media panel.
The only other unanimous MVP was Houston guard Cynthia Cooper in the WNBA’s inaugural season in 1997. Read more
Related: A’ja Wilson wins unanimous WNBA MVP; Caitlin Clark was fourth. By Lindsay Schnell / USA Today
Related: No, dude, Monica McNutt does not need your WNBA take. By Ben Strauss / Wash Post
Deion Sanders, Colorado survive wild game: `God answered the prayer.’ By Brent Schrotenboer / USA Today
The fans stormed the field before the game was even over.
It was wet. It was wild. And now the Colorado Buffaloes are on the march again after an incredible series of clutch plays at the end of a 38-31 overtime win at home against Baylor. Cue the celebration in the locker room under head coach Deion Sanders. “It was a party, man,” Colorado receiver LaJohntay Wester said of the postgame scene. “I loved it, man… Ain’t nothing like here, man, especially after a win. There’s nothing like it.” Read more
The History and Future of the Black Quarterback. By Dave Zirin / The Nation
Doug Williams of the Washington Redskins scrambles with the ball during a 1987 NFL season game.
On this episode of Edge of Sports, we speak to Dr. Louis Moore about his groundbreaking new book: The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback. You won’t want to miss this episode. Listen here
Film reveals Morehouse alum Edwin Moses’ imprint on the track and field stars of today. By Mia Berry / Andscape
Looking back on his life, Morehouse College alumnus Edwin Moses could never imagine that the self-proclaimed nerd from Dayton, Ohio, who didn’t earn an athletic scholarship to college would go on to win two Olympic gold medals and a bronze.
Moses ran his first 400-meter hurdles race several months before the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, and in one year he transformed how track and field athletes would run the 400-meter hurdles. Morehouse will host the world premiere of MOSES-13 Steps, a documentary examining Moses’ life and legacy, at 7 p.m. Saturday in the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel. Read more
Related: Otis Davis, Who Overcame Racism to Win Olympic Gold, Dies at 92. Richard Sandomir / NYT
Shohei Ohtani’s latest extraordinary feat can hardly be believed. By Jerry Brewer / Wash Post
As usual, Shohei Ohtani couldn’t keep his greatness simple. There is nothing standard about his high standards, nothing typical about the way he infiltrates every facet of a complicated game. So of course he made history in the most sublime manner possible.
It wasn’t sufficiently thrilling for Ohtani to become the first MLB player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season. Baseball’s renaissance man also needed to fold the achievement into perhaps the greatest single-game performance the sport has seen. It was as if Ohtani accepted an Oscar by winning an Emmy. Read more
Joel Embiid, 76ers agree to three-year, $192.9M extension. By Jeff Zillgitt / USA Today
Embiid, the 2022-23 NBA MVP, is under contract with the Sixers for the next five seasons for just more $300 million. The Sixers announced the signing without releasing terms of the deal.
“Joel has cemented himself as one of the greatest Sixers of all time and is well on his way to being one of the best players to ever play the game,” Sixers owner Josh Harris said in a statement. “We’re ecstatic that this extension keeps him and his family in Philadelphia for years to come. Read more
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