Featured
A New Year, and the Shape of Hope (2026-2028). By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
The turning of the year invites both reckoning and resolve. It asks us to take stock of what has been lost, what has endured, and what remains possible. In a moment when cynicism often masquerades as realism, hope can feel naïve—or worse, irresponsible.
Yet history suggests otherwise. Periods of democratic strain have often been followed by renewal, not because outcomes were guaranteed, but because citizens, institutions, and moral voices refused to abandon the future.
What follows is not prophecy. It is an exercise in historical imagination—rooted in trends, informed by experience, and animated by the belief that decline is not destiny. If the American experiment is to endure, it will do so not by accident, but by choice. Read my predictions here.
The Week’s Top Stories
Political / Social
Donald Trump’s Golden Age of Awful. By Susan B. Glasser / The New Yorker
A damage assessment of the President’s first year back in the White House.
No matter how low one’s expectations were for 2025, the most striking thing about the year when Donald Trump became President again is how much worse it turned out to be. A partial catalogue of the horrors of 2025 that not even the most prescient Trump-watcher could claim to have fully predicted: Read more
Related: Trump Feels No Guilt and Has No Qualms. By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
Related: Trump 2.0’s first year marred by racist rants and attacks on women: By Sarah K. Burris / AlterNet
Stephen Miller Is The New Republic’s 2025 Scoundrel of the Year. Greg Sargent / TNR
He was counting on a nation of haters. He was wrong.
True, Miller has amassed unprecedented power for a deputy White House chief of staff. He exerts extraordinary influence over an unusually large swath of the government, from immigration to criminal justice to even the military’s operations on American soil. Much of what defines public life in the Trump era—masked kidnappings on U.S. streets, standoffs between ICE goons and protesters, military patrols in U.S. cities—has been authored by Miller. His ever-present unctuous smirk suggests he’s visibly relishing the violent hatreds all this has unleashed. Read more
Related: The man pulling the strings for Donald Trump. By Justin Bergman / The Conversation
Related: Why Russell Vought Is Worse Than Watergate. By Timothy Noah / TNR
Trump’s crackdown on the left has decades of precedent. By Heather Digby Parton / Salon
The Justice Department’s plans to target leftist organizations is taking alarming shape
As the Washington Post reported, Thursday “marked the first deadline for all the federal law enforcement agencies to ‘coordinate delivery’ of their intelligence files” to the FBI, which will be drawing up lists of “leftist networks,” Americans and foreigners to investigate. Attorney General Pam Bondi‘s order defined “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” “opposition to law and immigration enforcement,” “radical gender ideology” and “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality” as the kind of ideology requiring investigation by federal authorities. Those are elastic enough terms that it could cover at least half the population. Read more
Related: America Is Still Living in the Backlash to Obama’s Presidency. By Perry Bacon / TNR
Why Trump’s EEOC wants to talk to White men about discrimination. By Taylor Telford / Wash Post
Armed with a quorum and GOP majority, Chair Andrea Lucas is pressing new priorities — such as dismantling DEI — that critics say have turned the agency’s mission “on its head.”
In mid-December, the nation’s leading workplace civil rights enforcer took to social media to pose a question: “Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?” Andrea Lucas, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, appeared in the video, urging those who have to contact the agency “as soon as possible.” Read more
MAGA will soon ‘be relegated to the dustbin of history’: Nobel economist. By Sarah K. Burris / AlterNet
In a Tuesday column, Thomas Krugman noted that even the most powerful organizations, like the Heritage Foundation, can fall and it’s emblematic of what could also happen next to MAGA.
The anti-fan of Heritage, Krugman noted that the far-right group has gotten far worse over the past several months with the group’s embrace of neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. Read more
Related: Americans are waking up. A grand reckoning awaits us. By Robert Reich / The Guardian
Over 20M Americans Set to Lose Healthcare Coverage Jan. 1 After Congress Goes on Recess. By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
Tens of millions of Americans are set to see their health insurance costs soar when subsidies under the Affordable Care Act expire at the end of this year. Health insurance premiums are expected to more than double or even triple for some 20 million people, pricing many out of healthcare coverage entirely.
“We’ve done nothing as a country to control healthcare costs,” says Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society of New York and member of New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team. She discusses how premiums will work, how to seek help, what to watch for in alternative plans, and more. Read more
Keisha Lance Bottoms Enters Georgia Governor’s Race, But Can She Succeed Where Stacey Abrams Did not? By Angela Wilson / The Root
Look out Georgia, the Peach State politics got a whole lot more interesting.
After a stint in the Biden administration and a season away from the front lines, former mayor of Atlanta Keisha Lance Bottoms is back– but don’t call it a comeback (she’s been here for years). Bottoms officially entered the 2026 governor’s race, and she’s looking to do what no Black woman and no Atlanta mayor has ever done…move from City Hall to the Georgia State Capitol building. Read more
4 takeaways from NYC Mayor Mamdani’s inauguration speech. By Marcia Kramer and Mark Prussin / CBS News
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani started the new year with a speech making bold promises for his administration.
At his inauguration on Thursday, Mamdani promised to have the courage and conviction to follow through on his vows to change the culture of City Hall. Here are four things we learned about Mamdani’s plans for the city from his inaugural address. Read more
Education
Trump’s Attempts to Control Higher Education Follow a Familiar Fascist Playbook. By C.J. Polychroniou / Truthout
The United States is on the road to a form of neofascism that, if allowed to complete its course, will have long-lasting impacts on all aspects of society.
How successful has Trump’s fascist takeover of higher education been so far? How are universities responding? In the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows, Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), offers insights on the battle for the soul of American higher education in the age of Trumpism. Wolfson is an associate professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. Read more
UMES President and Former Professor Battle Over Plagiarism, Race, and Retaliation Claims. By Walter Hudson / EduLedger
The University of Maryland Eastern Shore finds itself at the center of a contentious legal battle that highlights ongoing tensions around race, academic integrity, and diversity in higher education.
UMES President Dr. Heidi Anderson, who is Black, and former professor Donna Satterlee, who is white, are engaged in dueling lawsuits involving allegations of plagiarism, defamation, and racial discrimination. The case is scheduled for its first court appearance next week, according to The Washington Post. Read more
Dr. Michael Joseph Brown, Renowned Biblical Scholar and Seminary President, Dies. By Jamal Watson / EduLedger
Dr. Michael Joseph Brown, an internationally recognized biblical scholar, minister, and public intellectual who served as president of Payne Theological Seminary, has died.
Brown’s distinguished career bridged rigorous academic scholarship with theological education and ministry, establishing him as one of the most influential voices in contemporary biblical studies. His pioneering work examining scripture through African American and African perspectives reshaped how generations of scholars and ministers approached sacred texts, challenging traditional interpretive frameworks while illuminating overlooked dimensions of early Christianity. Read more
World
How Oil, Drugs and Immigration Fueled Trump’s Venezuela Campaign. Edward Wong , Tyler Pager, Charlie Savage, Julian E. Barnes and Maria Abi-Habib / NYT
On a spring night in the Oval Office, President Trump asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio how to get tougher on Venezuela.
It was just before Memorial Day, and anti-leftist Cuban American lawmakers whose votes Mr. Trump needed for his signature domestic policy bill were urging him to tighten a vise on Venezuela by stopping Chevron’s oil operations there. But Mr. Trump did not want to lose the only U.S. foothold in Venezuela’s oil industry, where China is the biggest foreign player. Read more
Related: Venezuelan ‘Threat’ Is All Trumped Up. By Carmen Rojas / The Progressive Magazine
Related: Trump bombs Venezuelan land for first time: Is war imminent? By Usaid Siddiqui / Aljazeera
“Whatever Israel Wants”: Trump Backs Netanyahu’s “Colonial” Wars in Gaza, Iran & Beyond. By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
We speak to journalists Gideon Levy and Rami Khouri about President Trump’s meeting Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump supported Israel’s threats to launch new attacks on Iran and warned Hamas to disarm during the second stage of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement.
Khouri, a Palestinian American journalist, called the meeting a “continuation of the American-Israeli drive, that’s been going on for some years now, to reconfigure the Middle East … into a new colonial arrangement, whereby the U.S. and Israel dominate what goes on in the region.” Read more
As Russia’s war grinds on, its society is fraying. By Francesca Ebel / Wash Post
The Kremlin presents the country as strong, united and on an inevitable path to victory, but as peace negotiations drag on, Russian society is deteriorating.
“We’re fighting for fields that we cannot even take,” interjected a fellow soldier, Kirill, also in his 20s, laughing wryly. “This war will never end. … It feels like it’s only just begun.” Scenes like this one remain invisible to most Russians, erased by state propaganda and glossy government projects supporting returning veterans. But inside the country, fatigue and resentment are festering beneath the suppression of dissent. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
In Mamdani’s New York, Muslims become a political and demographic force. By Tim Craig / Wash Post
Muslims and immigrants formed the backbone of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral election victory, ushering in a new era for the city’s changing demographics.
In a city famous for its ethnic diversity, where power has been held by successive waves of Dutch, Irish, Italian, Jewish and Black residents, Muslims are now rising to prominence and becoming a distinct political force. In November, they formed the backbone of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral election victory, ushering in a new era for New York and the city’s changing demographics. Read more
Pope starts 2026 with prayer for countries “bloodied by conflict.” By CBS News
In Leo’s first Christmas homily last week, he condemned the “rubble and open wounds” left behind by wars and singled out the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. He also urged Russia and Ukraine — in a Christmas blessing — to find the “courage” for direct talks to end their war.
Leo noted that Jan. 1 marks the church’s World Day of Peace and used the occasion to issue a prayer. “Let us all pray together for peace: first, among nations bloodied by conflict and suffering, but also within our homes, in families wounded by violence or pain,” he said. Read more
Richard Smallwood, contemporary gospel musician known for ‘Total Praise,’ dies at 77. By Adelle M. Banks / RNS
His hit song ‘Total Praise’ was included in the group Destiny’s Child’s a capella “Gospel Medley,” performed by a cantor at New York’s Carnegie Hall and sung by a choir when President Barack Obama welcomed Pope Francis to the White House.
Smallwood was 77. He died of complications of kidney failure at a rehabilitation and nursing center in Sandy Spring, Maryland, his publicist announced. Nominated eight times for a Grammy Award, the Stellar and Dove awardee was known for combining Black gospel and classical genres of music. Read more
More Than New Year’s Eve: Black Churches Nationwide Mark Freedom’s Eve With Sacred Watch Night Service. By Kandiss Edwards / Black Enterprise
Morris Brown AME Church Freedom’s Eve Midday Watch Service on Dec. 31 in Charleston, South Carolina, continues a tradition that traces its roots to Dec. 31, 1862, when African Americans, specifically those held in enslavement in Confederate states, gathered in prayer and anticipation for the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect at midnight.
Historical / Cultural
How Trump is Threatening to Erase the Legacies of World War II’s Black Soldiers. By
After Trump’s anti-DEI policies rocked the nation, a WWII museum in Europe is facing backlash for removing Black soldiers’ memorials.
George H. Pruitt was only 23 when he sacrificed his life to save a comrade. After Pruitt’s death, he became one of over 150 Black American soldiers buried at the American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten, Netherlands. But now, their legacies and contributions to the war effort are being erased all because of President Donald Trump’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) agenda. Read more
Related: Visitors revolt as Trump removes Black veteran honors from cemetery. By Thomas Kika / AlterNet
Albert Einstein’s Brilliant Politics. By Joshua Bennett / The Atlantic
The physicist fought for the promise of a diverse, meritocratic America. We need his optimism today.
As Albert Einstein wrote elegantly about our experience of time and space, he also devoted his days to the process of social transformation: the question of how one world becomes another. He was concerned about not just the perils of progress—including modern science’s role in the creation of apocalyptic weapons—but also the promise of a more just society. From his very first years in the United States, Einstein wrote powerfully in opposition to American segregation, drawing on his personal experience of Nazi persecution as well as his ties to the long-standing African American community in Princeton, New Jersey, where he lived. Read more
Through the Eyes of Little Crow. By Julian Brave Noisecat / The Progressive Magazine
An excerpt from We Survived the Night by Julian Brave NoiseCat.
Little Crow was one of the leaders of the Dakota Uprising of 1862, a conflict that began, as so many Indian wars did, because treaty rights were being ignored. Payments promised under the 1851 Treaty of Traverse des Sioux were late. The Dakota were plagued by corrupt American traders and agents who siphoned off money, charged exorbitant prices for food and other goods, and put the Dakota into debt. Settlers encroached on Dakota lands in the Minnesota River valley. Game grew scarce. Read more
The Lost Negroes of North America. By Ronald E. Scott / Amsterdam News
The Lost Negroes of North America has sparked conversation and immediate reflection by viewers with rave review and critical acclaim from many historians (both Black and white), since it first premiered in Minneapolis in 2023. The independent journalist and documentary film producer Ralph L. Crowder III (shown), based in Minneapolis makes his way to New York to premiere his unique silent film on December 14 at Symphony Space.
Crowder’s film examines northern family and community life in South Minneapolis from 1945-1955. The decade following the conclusion of World War II is a rich period in American history and progress but still is also a time when African American contributions to family, education, social institutions, and collective wealth are often overlooked. Watch “The Lost Negroes of North America: NYC Premiere with Ralph L. Crowder III (Part Four)” on YouTube
Related: Harlem civil rights museum highlights the North’s forgotten history. By Delano Massey / Axios
Japanese American National Museum Is Standing Up to Trump’s Attacks on History. By Robert Ito / Capital and Main
Days after starting his second term, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders that targeted DEI programs and policies for elimination, decrying them as illegal and immoral. Museums across the country scrambled to react — and in many cases, comply.
But the Japanese American National Museum, a relatively small institution in downtown Los Angeles, chose a different path. Founded in 1992 at the site of a historic Buddhist temple in L.A.’s Little Tokyo, the museum took a stand against Trump and his anti-DEI edicts while other museums acquiesced. Read more
Book excerpt: “Black Moses” by Caleb Gayle. By CBS News
“Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State” (Riverhead Books) is the latest book by award-winning journalist Caleb Gayle, author of “We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power.”
Gayle recounts the rise of Edward McCabe, an activist who, during Reconstruction, lobbied for a Black-governed state, fighting racism and greed as he sought to create a “promised land” for newly-freed Blacks in the Oklahoma Territory. Read more
Beyoncé Is Now A Billionaire. By Matt Craig /Forbes
She now joins an elite group of celebrities who have recently crossed the three-comma threshold—of the 22 billionaire entertainers Forbes has identified, nearly half were added in the last three years—and she becomes just the fifth musician, joining her husband, Jay-Z, as well as Swift, Bruce Springsteen and Rihanna. Read more
Sports
In a Year of Violent Tumult, the Sports World Was Silent. By Dave Zirin / The Nation
When the country needed them to speak out, most athletes kept mum—and a few openly embraced Trumpism.
The great sports sociologist Dr. Harry Edwards has described athletes as “the canary in the coal mine,” meaning that the politics and struggles in sports prefigure what will come elsewhere in society. Think of Jackie Robinson integrating baseball nearly a decade before the Montgomery bus boycotts or Billie Jean King signaling the coming of Title IX legislation by standing for women’s liberation in a traditionally male and hostile space. Gay athletes like Glenn Burke and David Kopay showed that LGBT visibility was coming to the broader society. While I still believe the Edwards rule, I also believe that 2025 will be remembered as the exception: This year the canaries were rare. Read more
The Rise of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. SI Sportsperson of the Year. By Chris Mannix / SI
There’s a palpable self-assuredness to Gilgeous-Alexander. He doesn’t see anything about his success as all that complicated. (“Nothing about him boils down to like an epiphany or an anecdote,” says Thunder coach Mark Daigneault.) He ties his rise to NBA superstardom to what earned him a scholarship to Kentucky or turned him into a lottery pick.
“The way I saw it was when I was in ninth grade, nobody saw me and was like, ‘He’s going to be the 11th pick in the NBA draft,’ ” says Gilgeous-Alexander. “And I did it, so why can’t I just implement the same thing on a different scale, on a different level using the same process?” Read more
Related: Thunder vs Spurs rivalry makes NBA better with Wemby against OKC. By Lorenzo Reyes / USA Today
Venus Williams gets wild card for Australian Open at age 45. By CBS News
Seven-time Grand Slam singles champion Venus Williams will return to the Australian Open in Melbourne for the first time in 5 years. And at age 45, the tournament said she is set to become the oldest woman ever to compete in an Australian Open main draw.
“I’m excited to be back in Australia and looking forward to competing during the Australian summer,” Williams said. “I’ve had so many incredible memories there, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to return to a place that has meant so much to my career.” Read more
The intellect of LeBron James. By Kevin Merida / Wash Post
“Mind the Game” is a cerebral podcast, as its title might suggest, an astute, contemplative listen about the strategies and vagaries of professional basketball. It stars LeBron James, who is in the epilogue of his marvelous career, still in contemplation on how to end it.
“Mind the Game” is more than a podcast in the global ether of 4.5 million such shows. It’s a showcase for LeBron’s hoops knowledge, a window into his mind. Impressively co-hosted by NBA Hall of Famer Steve Nash, “Mind the Game” tells you a lot about how one of the world’s greatest athletes thinks and interacts. Read more
Site Information
On Race in America is published every Saturday. Some articles may be AI-assisted. Articles appearing in On Race in America are archived on our home page. A collection of Books, Podcasts, and Video Favorites can also be found there.
On each page you can register your email to receive notifications of new editions of On Race in America.
Click here for earlier Editions
The site is fully searchable by name or topic—see the Search option at the top of the page. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find custom share buttons that let you email the edition or post it directly to your Facebook, LinkedIn, or X (formerly Twitter) accounts.