Featured
American democracy is in peril. And racism will be the sledgehammer that destroys it. By Kimberlé W Crenshaw / The Guardian
The ‘war against woke’ is not just a war against critical race theory and Black history. It is a war on our democracy.
Racism has been the achilles heel of American democracy since its founding as a racialized project, predicated on theft of land, of labor and of the reproductive autonomy of Black women. These are truths that Maga extremists want to erase.
But it is not just history that Maga wants to silence and it isn’t just Maga that has acquiesced. Because we have not normalized the important conversation about our racial history and its present consequences, the dangerous nexus between anti-democratic forces in our nation and its racist foundations is among the least talked about dimensions of our slide into fascism. Read more
Political / Social
How Kamala Harris Is Preparing for Trump at the ABC Debate. By
It’s the stuff of #Resistance dreams: Kamala Harris, the prosecutor, gets onstage in Philadelphia next Tuesday across from Donald Trump, the felon, and proceeds to brutally expose him as a racist and sexist con man who’s been lying to the American people ever since his famous escalator ride nine years ago.
Only that’s not how she or her debate-prep team sees her main objective for the debate — at all. In mock-debate sessions in Pittsburgh, planning meetings in Washington, and briefing-book cram sessions between public events on the campaign trail, the vice-president and her aides have kept much of their focus on fine-tuning ways to keep presenting her as representative of a new political era for the benefit of curious voters who are still interested in learning more about her — and who may swing the race come November. Read more
Related: The Ancient Roots of Trump’s Attacks on Harris.
Historian who accurately predicted 9 of last 10 presidential elections makes his 2024 pick. By Sudiksha Kochi and Rachel Barber / USA Today
Allan Lichtman, the historian who correctly predicted the outcome of 9 out of the 10 most recent presidential elections, has made his guess on who will reclaim the White House this year.
Spoiler alert: it’s Vice President Kamala Harris. Lichtman said in a video, first reported by The New York Times, that he based his prediction on thirteen keys or “big picture true-false questions that tap into the strength and performance of the White House Party.” Read more
Related: Poll: Harris is leading Trump among Catholic voters. By Sudiksha Kochi / USA Today
Related: What we know about Trump and Harris’ views on education policy. By Cory Turner / NPR
Former Vice President Dick Cheney to vote for Kamala Harris: Liz Cheney. By Griffin Eckstein / Salon
The ultra-conservative Vice President under Bush is backing Democrats after fiercely condemning Trump as a “threat”
Former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney will vote for Democrats Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, according to his daughter Liz Cheney. “Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” the former Wyoming Congresswoman told reporter Mark Leibovich during a panel on Friday. “My dad believes — and he’s said publicly — there’s never been an individual in our country that is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump.” Read more
Related: Dozens of business leaders endorse Kamala Harris for president. By and
Justice delayed is political: Trump’s election interference case must continue ahead of the election. By Praveen Fernandes and Donald K. Sherman / Salon
The federal trial of Donald Trump on January 6-related charges must proceed without further delay
The Supreme Court conservative majority’s opinion in Trump v. United States has rightly drawn considerable criticism. Its conclusion that former presidents enjoy presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts committed during their presidency is flabbergasting. As legal scholars across the ideological spectrum have explained, this immunity finds no support in the Constitution’s text and history, or the Supreme Court’s own precedent. A blistering dissent by Justice Sotomayor (joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson) exposes this rootlessness and expresses “fear for our democracy.” Read more
Related: Judge Delays Trump’s Sentencing Until Nov. 26, After Election Day. Ben Protess Kate Christobek and William K. Rashbaum / NYT
Related: Donald Trump’s incoherence makes the media’s double standard hard to hide. By Heather Digby Parton / Salon
How Elon Musk Is Influencing Donald Trump. Ryan Mac , Theodore Schleifer and Maggie Haberman / NYT
Their fast-evolving political friendship has become a potential minefield, as Mr. Musk’s sprawling businesses may present conflicts of interest if Mr. Trump is elected in November.
In a live-streamed conversation on X with former President Donald J. Trump last month, Elon Musk raised the idea of a “government efficiency commission.” Such a council could ensure that taxpayers’ money was “spent in a good way,” Mr. Musk said during their more-than-two-hour talk. “I’d love it,” Mr. Trump replied. Read more
‘Nobody in Politics Is Able to Say It’: The Truth About Latino Voters. By Ryan Lizza / Politico
Everyone knows the Latino vote will be decisive in this presidential election year. But Mike Madrid says most of what people think about Latino voters and how to win them over is wrong.
Madrid is one of the country’s leading political strategists when it comes to Latino voters. He was a senior operative for the California Republican Party who rubbed shoulders with the likes of George W. Bush and his generation of GOP officials, but he was repulsed by Donald Trump and co-founded the Lincoln Project to oppose him. In an interview for the Playbook Deep Dive podcast, Madrid talked about his new book, The Latino Century, and laid out a breadcrumb trail for both Republicans and Democrats to win this decisive block of voters, who he believes are very much up for grabs this year. Read more
Related: How John Roberts reshaped the law — and gutted the Voting Rights Act. By David Daley / Salon
The rise and fall of the DEI movement : Consider This from NPR. By Scott Detrow / NPR Podcast
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, protests erupted across the country, calling for an end to police brutality and systemic racism. As tens of thousands took to the streets some of America’s largest corporations joined the call for racial justice and reacted by incorporating the goals of diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring, retaining and promoting talent. But the backlash against DEI has been growing.
NPR’s Scott Detrow talks with David Glasgow, the executive director of the Meltzer Centre for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at the NYU School of Law. They discuss why DEI has become a lightning rod in the culture wars and what happens when DEI programs are lost. Listen here
HBCU Enrollment Update: Surge Follows Affirmative Action End. By Bruce C.T. Wright / Newsone
Jackson State University’s one-stop-shop welcomes families, friends, and incoming freshmen and transfer students for registration during the official “Welcome Home to THEE” Move-In Day on Aug. 10, 2024
It’s back-to-school season, with an asterisk. Enrollment rates at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been surging while the opposite has proven to be true for Black students at the nation’s most competitive institutions of higher learning, according to reports. The fact that both of these truths are occurring in the aftermath of last year’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to bar race-based college admissions is, of course, no coincidence. Read more
Related: Black enrollment drops at UNC after ruling; other schools vary. By Susan Svrluga / Wash Post
Colt Gray White Privilege Displayed After Georgia School Shooting. By Zack Linly / Newsone
Here’s the thing: White people are going to roll their eyes when Black people call out the white privilege that tends to be on display when white mass shooters get taken in alive and receive what appears to be preferential treatment while they’re being processed through the system, and when the media feels compelled to report every detail it gets ahold of regarding the suspect’s mental health, family background, experiences with bullying, etc.
Many thought we were being petty when we complained about Dylann Roof being treated to Burger King by police fresh off of his arrest for going on a murder spree at a Black church. We’re called “race-baiters” when we point out that violent Black people are called “thugs” and violent Muslims are called “terrorists” while white male mass shooters are granted a descriptor with a positive connotation like “lone wolf,” as if he were the protagonist in a classic Western. Read more
Progressive New Orleans DA wants to address “sins of the past.” Republicans are trying to stop him . By Tatyana Tandanpolie / Salon
Jason Williams is among dozens of progressive reformist prosecutors who have come under fire from the right
Republican state lawmakers in Louisiana have launched an investigation into the New Orleans district attorney over concerns that he’s abusing his power by making use of criminal justice reform policies intended to address prosecutorial and police misconduct. But legal experts warn that the pushback against the D.A. threatens to undermine the results of those efforts. Read more
World News
Israel Continues Assault on West Bank, Leaves Devastating Scenes After Attacking Jenin and Tulkarm. By Wasfiya Rahaima / Democracy Now
Israeli forces are continuing their deadly raids in the occupied West Bank, including in Nablus, Balata, Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah. In Jenin and Tulkarm, Israeli troops withdrew after a 10-day raid which killed a reported 36 people and left a trail of destruction. This is Wasfiya Rahaima from the Tulkarm refugee camp.
Earlier today, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to include the defeat of Hamas and other groups in the occupied West Bank as part of Israel’s war objectives. Ben-Gvir has repeatedly called for Israel to annex the occupied West Bank. Read more
White Nativism, Haitian Immigrants, and Black Solidarity. By Willie Mack / AAIHS
Members of Black Lives Matter protest outside Federal Building in Los Angeles to denounce the segregationist immigration policies of the Biden administration in 2021 (
When Haitian immigrants began migrating to the U.S., they brought with them different understandings of race, class, and ethnicity that did not conform with beliefs already incorporated into U.S. society. Haitians could not simply assimilate into the pre-existing definition of Blackness in the U.S. Also, maintaining an identity as a Haitian worked to differentiate Haitians from other Black people. In this way, few Haitians immigrants identified with Black Americans and other Afro-Caribbeans. Sometimes, Haitians even viewed Black Americans as racially and socially inferior. Read more
U.S. prepares for possible arrival of more severe strain of mpox. By (Image The Nation
There have been nearly 25,000 cases of the clade 1 version of mpox in Africa so far this year.
Senior Biden administration officials said Friday that the United States is preparing for the possible arrival of a more severe version of mpox, which has taken off in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries in Africa resulting in more than 600 deaths there. The Jynneos mpox vaccine, given in two doses, is effective against both clade 1 and clade 2 of mpox. The CDC’s vaccine recommendation remains limited to anyone who is considered at high risk of catching the virus, mainly gay and bisexual men. Most people with health insurance can get the vaccine at major pharmacy retail chains including CVS and Walgreens, the officials said. The vaccine is also available for free at public health departments and community health centers. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Post-evangelicals shift away from faith tied to Republican politics. By , and
Over the last few decades, a growing number of Christians have left traditional, predominantly White evangelical churches. Some have left Christianity altogether, while others have joined communities that preach inclusivity, are affirming of LGBTQ rights, and take a social justice approach to the major moral issues of the times – from racial equality to the plight of refugees. Larissa Miller speaks to CNN during an interview.
The post-evangelical movement predates former President Donald Trump’s political rise, but has been accelerated by his alliance with White conservative evangelical leaders. It’s also part of a broader community of Christians who’ve been turned off by mainstream evangelicalism’s embrace of Republican politics – a group Democrats are hoping to make inroads with in November in battleground states. Read more
Related: Trump’s abortion pivot hasn’t shaken evangelical Christian leaders’ support. By Jack Jenkins / RNS
Black church leaders brought religion to politics in the ‘60s – but it was dramatically different from today’s white Christian nationalism. By Tobin Miller Shearer / The Conversation
Fifty-eight years ago in the summer of 1966, a group of Black church leaders took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times titled “Black Power.” Their densely worded statement called on national leaders, “white churchmen,” Black citizens and the mass media to correct the country’s racial power imbalance. In essence, they asked their fellow citizens to support Black power.
Like many white Christian nationalists in 2024, these Black church leaders believed that God was punishing their beloved country. Both groups called for repentance and fundamental change. And like white Christian nationalists, the 1966 Black Christian activists asserted that their faith had something to say on matters of racial identity and power politics. Read more
For God and country: why the choice of next US president is a religious choice, too. By Robyn J. Whitaker / The Conversation
Americans face a stark choice this November between two very different political visions. As I watched the recent Democratic National Convention (DNC), it struck me that it is also a choice between two very different kinds of Christianity.
Donald Trump has positioned himself as a defender of the Christian faith, and found somewhat unlikely bedfellows in American evangelicalism. This seems a politically expedient choice for someone who has previously shown no interest in faith nor has a record of attending church. A Christian nationalist agenda is one that seeks to dominate and shape the community according to a narrow set of “biblical” values. These are the kind of values outlined in Project 2025, which claims to be a blueprint of “biblical principles” for the nation. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Enslaved Women’s Resistance to Slavery and Gendered Violence. By Sean Gallagher / AAIHS
Slaves Waiting for Sale,” 1861 (Eyre Crowe, Wikimedia Commons).
In the past decade, scholars of Early America have produced a series of subaltern studies on enslaved women before the law. Books by Jessica Millward and Martha Jones have shown how enslaved women used local courts to flesh out legal standing for Black kinship ties and Black citizenship prior to emancipation. Emily A. Owens’ study of enslaved women and sexual assault in antebellum Louisiana in particular asks us to consider how the slave society that created our legal definition of consent has influenced legal recourse for women today. Tamika Y. Nunley’s The Demands of Justice: Enslaved Women, Capital Crime & Clemency in Early Virginia is the latest addition to this community of ground-breaking legal histories of enslaved women’s resistance to slavery and its gendered violence. Read more
Montgomery County shouldn’t pave over a Black community’s past. By the Editorial Board / Wash Post
A Maryland Supreme Court decision continues the battle over a historic cemetery in Bethesda. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, president of the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition, at a protest Wednesday in Bethesda, Md. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
When the Macedonia Baptist Church opened more than a century ago in Bethesda, its presence there was far from incongruous. Surrounding it was a small but vibrant Black community originally established by formerly enslaved people in the later half of the 1800s, in an area defined first mostly by small farms, then by light industry and, eventually, by the nearby suburban developments with racially restrictive covenants. The Moses Cemetery was — and is — a sacred burial place for the members of this River Road community: Today, drivers along that busy thoroughfare see a McDonald’s where they once would have seen the dirt road leading to a grassy plot dotted with simple grave markers. Read more
Trump campaign ordered to stop using Isaac Hayes song at rallies after family sues. By Tesfaye Negussie / ABC News
A judge issued a temporary injunction stopping the use of “Hold On, I’m Coming.”
The song “Hold On, I’m Coming,” published in 1966, was played at Trump rallies and can be heard in campaign videos that were posted online, according to court documents reviewed by ABC News. The judge did not order that these videos be taken down, according to a statement from Trump representative Ronald Coleman. Read more
Related: The Real Reason Trump Keeps Getting Dragged For Using Songs. By Njera Perkins / HuffPost
Kamala Harris’ purported ancestry highlights complicated backstory of Irish identity and enslavement. By Christine Kinealy, Kimberly DaCosta and Miriam Nylan Grey / The Conversation
When Barack Obama was elected president, the people of Moneygall in Ireland celebrated. Birthplace of Obama’s great-great-great-grandfather on his white mother’s side, the village commemorated the victory – and a later visit from the 44th president – with pints of Guinness and a kitschy trade in “O’Bama” memorabilia.
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. Read more
Related: The Messiness of Black Identity. By Doreen St. Felix / The New Yorker
‘The Brother From Another Planet,’ Kamala Harris And The Fallacy Of Post-Racialism. By
Forty years after the cult classic gave us a Black character from outer space who crash-lands in Harlem, it finds new relevance in today’s discussions on race.
The film barely made an impact at the box office, save for devotees of its writer-director and indie film auteur John Sayles. In its oddball, occasionally funny and eternally poignant way, it reflected the realities of race relations, immigration, police injustice, poverty and the drug epidemic that existed throughout that so-called Black “renaissance.” Read more
The Prince We Never Knew. Sasha Weiss / NYT
A revealing new documentary could redefine our understanding of the pop icon. But you will probably never get to see it.
Over a year and a half, I had observed as Edelman continued to perfect his film, working to capture the essence of Prince, even as it became slowly, painfully clear that it would most likely never air. The Prince estate had changed hands, and the new executors objected to the project. Last spring, they saw a cut and, claiming that it misrepresented Prince, entered into a protracted battle with Netflix, which owns the rights to the film, to prevent its release. As of today, there is no indication that the film will ever come out. It has been like watching a monument being swallowed by the sea. Read more
Black Music Sunday: Let’s welcome September with song. By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos
September songs span multiple genres, from R&B to funk to rock to jazz and even show tunes. Join me in a celebration of the first month of autumn and the music it has inspired.
Let’s open with a classic tune by Earth, Wind & Fire. I’m sure most of you can guess what it is, but first, some background on the group. From their website: Listen here
Sports
Deion Sanders talks loss to Nebraska, same problems for Buffaloes. By Brent Schrotenboer / USA Today
Searching for positive things to say after his team suffered a 28-10 loss here at Nebraska, Colorado football coach Deion Sanders came up with this: His team won the second half, 10-0.
“I’m just excited,” Sanders said after the game. “I mean, you gotta understand when you’re in a situation like this, you gotta find something to hold onto that you can encourage your team. And I’m truly excited about the second half of football that we played.” That’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at is that Sanders and the Buffaloes still have many of the same problems as last year despite overhauling the roster for the second consecutive year. Read more
Jayson Tatum discusses ‘debate’ over Olympic benching, Celtics’ NBA title and more. By Jared Weiss / The Athletic
Some things never change for Jayson Tatum. As his career has continued to ebb and flow, there has been one constant: Tatum finds himself at the center of conversation.
He broke onto the NBA scene as an impressive role player when he was 19, only to oscillate in the public eye between auspicious and overhyped. Leading the Boston Celtics to a title in June gave him a championship pass, a final word to put questions of his stardom to bed. But it took just a few weeks for the conversation to start again. This time, the tenor was different. As a member of Team USA, Tatum (alongside Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton) didn’t make it off the bench in the Olympics opener against Serbia. Though Tatum played in four of the other five games — he sat again against Serbia in the semifinals — his benching became one of the talking points of the tournament. Read more
Angel Reese Says ‘There’s A Lot Of Racism’ Among Caitlin Clark Fanbase. By
On an episode of her new podcast “Unapologetically Angel,” Reese praised Clark as an “amazing player” but said “there’s a lot of racism” among the Indiana Fever guard’s fanbase.
Reese said fans have sent her death threats, stalked her, and created AI pictures of her naked. “But when it comes to death threats, like, I’m talking about people have come down to my address, following me home, it’s come down to that,” she said. “Multiple occasions, people have made AI pictures of me naked, literally. They have sent it to my family members. Read more
Related: Angel Reese injury: Sky rookie suffers season-ending wrist injury. Cydney Henderson / USA Today
‘Literally all she needs’ – Serena Williams highlights what Coco Gauff is lacking after US Open exit to Emma Navarro. By Phil Spencer / Talk Sport
Tennis icon Serena Williams believes that Coco Gauff has to have more confidence if she is to take her game to the next level. Gauff was knocked out of the US Open fourth round against fellow American and 13th seed Emma Navarro 6-3 4-6 6-3.
But instead of blaming her serve for her downfall, Williams said that the youngster needs to work on her self-belief. “I wouldn’t change anything on her forehand. I’ve seen a lot of interesting forehands. And listen, if you’re just confident in whatever you have, keep it up, and just be confident about it. “That’s literally all she needs to do is just have confidence, whether she’s hitting it with her wrist or elbow. Just have confidence doing it.” Gauff is a huge talent who has the potential to dominate women’s tennis for many years. Read more
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