Featured
The Mask as a Symbol of Force, Power, and Unaccountability. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
The fatal shooting of a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis by masked ICE agents has shocked the nation—but it should not have surprised it. What many view as an isolated tragedy is better understood as the foreseeable outcome of a governing approach that has normalized secrecy, intimidation, and force as instruments of authority. The masks worn by the agents were not incidental; they were emblematic. Read more
Related: The Trump Doctrine: Violence Is Us. By David Corn / Mother Jones
Related: The Wrath of Stephen Miller. By Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, and Nick Miroff / The Atlantic
The Week’s Top Stories
Political / Social
Donald Trump poses a threat to civilization. By Robert Reich / The Guardian
The moral purpose of civilized society is to prevent the stronger from attacking the weaker. The US was founded on that principle
Trump’s domestic and foreign policies – ranging from his attempted coup against the United States five years ago, to his incursion into Venezuela last weekend, to his current threats against Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland – undermine domestic and international law. But that’s not all. They threaten what we mean by civilization. The moral purpose of civilized society is to prevent the stronger from attacking and exploiting the weaker. Otherwise, we’d be permanently immersed in a brutish war in which only the fittest and most powerful could survive. Read more
Related: The Trump Revolution Is Going Much Further Than We Realize. By Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
Trump admin post suggests intent to kick out nonwhite citizens. By Stephen Prager / Common Dreams
The Trump administration provoked horror this week with the suggestion that the United States could be turned into a paradise if over a quarter of the people in the country were deported.
On Wednesday, the official social media account for the Department of Homeland Security posted a piece of artwork depicting a pink late-1960s Cadillac Eldorado parked on a bright, idyllic beach. Over the clear blue sky are the words “America after 100 million deportations. The post was captioned by the agency: “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.” Read more
The Supreme Court could erase decades of progress for Black voters. By Donna Brazile / The Hill
In 1965, there were only six Black lawmakers in the U.S. House and none in the Senate. There are now 60 Black voting members in the House (plus two nonvoting delegates) and five in the Senate. But this long-overdue progress could be reversed if the Supreme Court further weakens the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The looming threat to the landmark civil rights law makes it vital for Congress to pass legislation protecting the voting rights of all Americans. Measures such as the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which have been blocked by Republicans, are now needed more than ever. Read more
Eleanor Holmes Norton’s longtime staffer to run for her seat in Congress. By Olivia George / By Wash Post
Trent Holbrook, who most recently was the congresswoman’s senior legislative counsel, joins a crowded field hoping to serve as D.C.’s nonvoting delegate.
In an already crowded field, he faces two better-known candidates who have had a head start with fundraising. D.C. Council members Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) and Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) both launched their campaigns for her seat months ago. Read more
Black Families Face Financial Crisis as Affordable Care Act Subsidies Expire. By
Analysts say the expiration of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies will hit Black households hard, causing an economic ripple effect.
Losing affordable coverage could undo years of progress in closing racial gaps in health insurance. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that ending the subsidies may leave 170,000 Black Americans without insurance, make Black households pay $740 million more each year, and lead to over 200 preventable deaths annually in cities like Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and Miami. Read more
Education
Unmet Demand for Afterschool Programs Reaches Record High Among Black Families. By Chera Watson / Eduledger
The number of Black children unable to access afterschool programs despite parental interest has reached an all-time high, with three in four Black children whose parents want such programs missing out on enrollment, according to a new national survey.
The America After 3PM study, commissioned by the Afterschool Alliance and conducted by Edge Research, found that parents of nearly 5.7 million Black children want to enroll their child in afterschool programs, but only 1.3 million Black children are currently enrolled. This represents the highest level of unmet demand among Black families since the survey began tracking the data in 2004. Read more
As Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Pushes Into High Schools, Dissension Follows. Pooja Salhotra / NYT
Since Mr. Kirk’s death, chapters of his organization’s affiliate for teenagers have more than doubled in number, aided by politicians who have said they won’t tolerate opposition.
Public officials, past and present, in Texas, Florida, Tennessee and Oklahoma have pushed the expansion, vowing to discipline school administrators who try to block the organizations. Read more
Watchdog urges DOJ probe of top research university over alleged illegal DEI practices: ‘Defies common sense.’ By Andrew Mark Miller / Fox News
A conservative legal group has filed a formal complaint calling for a probe into one of the nation’s most prominent research schools, alleging it is continuing illegal race and sex-based discrimination through its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
In the 165-page complaint sent to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and obtained by Fox News Digital, America First Legal argues that Washington University in St. Louis has systematically embedded DEI ideology across admissions, hiring, curriculum, contracting and student services while at the same time receiving a significant amount of federal funding. Read more
World
Trump says Venezuela stole U.S. oil, land and assets. Here’s the history. By Tobi Raji and Leo Sands / Wash Post
The government of the oil-rich nation took control of its petroleum industry in 1976, nationalizing hundreds of private businesses and foreign-owned assets.
But U.S. companies never owned oil or land in Venezuela, home to the world’s largest proven reserves of crude, and officials didn’t kick them out of the country. “Trump’s claim that Venezuela has stolen oil and land from the U.S. is baseless,” said Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Denver. Nationalization was the culmination of a decades-long effort by administrations of both the right and the left to bring under government control an industry that an earlier leader had largely given away. Read more
Related: Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise. The Editorial Board / NYT
Related: What do Venezuelans want for their country? By Ariana Aspuru and Noel King / Vox
The US Is a Rogue State That Deserves to Be Sanctioned. By Elie Mystal / The Nation
Where is the international outrage over the US assault on Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro?
The United States of America is a rogue nation, run by a violent criminal who operates outside the rule of law. The bombing of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro, so that he can stand for a show trial in New York, is a flagrant violation of international law. It is proof positive that the United States, under Trump, is the biggest “bad guy” on the international stage and should be treated accordingly. It’s a new low point in the era of lows we call the Trump administration. And it’s a return to the imperialist posturing and interventionism that have defined this country’s garbage treatment of Latin America for two centuries. Read more
350,000 Haitians are being sent home. That’s cruel. Editorial Board / Wash Post
The Trump administration is rescinding temporary protected status for 350,000 of them on Feb. 3.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued formal notice that Haitians will be stripped of their temporary protected status (TPS) on Feb. 3. “Certain conditions in Haiti remain concerning,” the agency said. “Armed groups operate with impunity, enabled by a weak or effectively absent central government.” Read more
Why Trump Potential Cuba Overthrow Paints a Grim Picture for its Black Residents. By
Cuba and the Caribbean Sea are practically the only things separating the U.S. from Venezuela. After successfully dethroning Venezuela’s president on Jan. 3, President Donald Trump said he’s shifting his sights to Cuba; in a country with a sharp political and social divide between its white and Black residents, the latter would likely suffer the most from a U.S. overthrow.
“I think it’s just going to fall,” the president said of Cuba on Sunday (Jan. 4). “I don’t think we need any action. Looks like it’s going down. It’s going down for the count.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio — born to Cuban immigrants — shared a similar sentiment, adding that the Cuban government is “in a lot of trouble” now. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Texas A&M Bans Plato Excerpt From a Philosophy Course. Beth McMurtrie / The Chronicle of Higher Ed.
In Martin Peterson’s “Contemporary Moral Issues” course at Texas A&M University at College Station, students examine social problems such as abortion, capital punishment, and global hunger through the lens of various philosophical theories. This semester, those can’t include his planned readings of Plato.
On Tuesday Peterson received an email from the chair of the philosophy department telling him he must excise two one-day units on race and gender ideology and the Plato readings that were to be part of those. Peterson says the ban on those units didn’t surprise him, given that the system has curtailed the teaching of such topics. What did shock him was that the ban included readings from Plato’s Symposium. Read more
America needs a moral reckoning in 2026. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
America’s collapse into neofascism is more than a crisis of America’s political and social institutions. At its core, the Age of Trump — distilled in the ugliness of the president’s second term in office — is a moral calamity that demands a great reckoning if our democracy is to even survive in 2026 and beyond. This work begins by making a moral inventory of Trump’s abuses, a list that is long and still growing. It is overwhelming by design.
In a recent essay, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich explained that the second Trump administration has done great damage to America’s “moral purpose” in the world and that “the moral challenge he and his regime pose to the soul of this nation has become clear: the loss of our core ideals, the deterioration of our founding principles, and the abdication of America’s moral authority in the world.” Read more
Augustine s African heritage. By Margaret R. Miles / The Christian Century
Catherine Conybeare’s new biography reveals a bishop formed by two worlds, two languages, and a church struggling to define itself.
Generations of historians have represented Augustine of Hippo as the single most important figure in Christianity’s transition from antiquity to the medieval world. He is usually seen as an intransigent defender of classical values against the inevitable erosion caused by the spread of Christianity to multiple locations and populations. Yet Augustine was not Roman, nor was Latin his native tongue. He was born and raised in North Africa; Punic was the language of his childhood. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Trump’s assault on the Smithsonian: ‘The goal is to reframe the entire culture of the US.’ By Charlotte Higgins / The Guardian
The president has vowed to kill off ‘woke’ in his second term in office, and the venerable cultural institution a few blocks from the White House is in his sights
On 27 March an executive order was published, claiming that the Smithsonian had “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centred ideology” that “promoted narratives that portray American and western values as inherently harmful and oppressive”. The person assigned with removing this “improper ideology”, along with the vice-president, JD Vance, was Lindsey Halligan, a Trump aide in her mid-30s who had previously worked as an insurance attorney and had no experience in the arts. The executive order was titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. Read more
Related: Trump’s Kennedy Center Takeover Plunges Further Into Chaos. By Alex Nguyen / Mother Jones
The New History of Fighting Slavery. What we learn by tracing rebellions from Africa to the Americas. By Laurent Dubois / The Atlantic
In 1812, Spanish officials in Havana, searching the house of a man named José Antonio Aponte, discovered a wooden box hidden in a clothing trunk, opened it, and were stunned by what they found inside.
“It was unlike any book they had ever seen,” Carrie Gibson writes in The Great Resistance: The 400-Year Fight to End Slavery in the Americas, “filled with Biblical and historical images, with many black faces, as well as cut-out bits of paper and handwritten words.” Aponte, a freeman who had once served in the local militia, was part of a group that had sought to launch an uprising among the enslaved. The goal was to overthrow slavery and make Cuba independent, but the rebellion had been quickly suppressed. Read more
Maryland recommends $100K payments to descendants of lynching victims after study. By Joshua Q. Nelson / Fox News
The Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report last month after being established in 2019. The report is described as the first state-sponsored effort in the United States to investigate, document, and “reckon with the history of racial terror lynching within its own borders.” Shown is Gov Wes Moore who explains he vetoed reparations study bill in order to focus on more immediate action.
The commission was created after then-delegate and now state House speaker, Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk, sponsored the law in 2019. “This is just the beginning, and there’s a lot of work to be done,” Peña-Melnyk said via The Daily Record. Read more
Related: Maryland studied its complicity in lynchings. Are reparations next? By Erin Cox / Wash Post
The Judge Who Sparked a Civil Rights Movement – Explore Black Charleston.
Waties Waring once argued that he was no hero.
The federal judge said his historic rulings simply affirmed the civil rights that African Americans already had as set forth in the United States Constitution. He, Waring said, had not given anyone anything. It was a proclamation of modesty. In truth, it was a bit more complicated than that. Between 1942 and 1952, Waring risked his career – and maybe even his life – to give black South Carolinians the right to vote, abolish the nation’s Jim Crow laws and integrate public schools. He was not only an early and influential leader in the civil rights movement, he was its most unlikely champion. Read more
2026 Marks The 100th Anniversary Of Black History Month — A Brief History. By Doug Melville / Forbes
2026 marks a milestone of both progress and persistence in the United States, the 100th anniversary of federal recognition for Black Americans. What began as a singular week of learning and recognition called Negro History Week in 1926 has grown into an overall cultural observance of Black History throughout the month of February.
The architect of this movement was Dr. Carter G. Woodson (shown). A historian and educator, he also holds the distinction of being the second African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University, following W.E.B. Du Bois. As the son of formerly enslaved parents, Dr. Woodson understood that denying people of their history denies them of their humanity. Read more
Related: USPS to feature Phillis Wheatley in 49th Black Heritage stamp. By Nhari Djan / The Grio
Sports
The Timberwolves should not play until ICE violence in Minneapolis is held to account. By Lee Escobedo / The Guardian
A federal enforcement operation ended with a woman dead and the facts contested. The NBA cannot treat state violence in a residential neighborhood as background noise
Minnesota is not a war zone. It is a US city where people are expected to live ordinary lives. When violence is inflicted by the state in such places, civic institutions should not behave as if nothing has happened. Yes, a boycott would disrupt TV schedules and cost the league, teams and advertisers millions. That is precisely the point. Systems change only when their uninterrupted flow is challenged. The NBA has been here before. In 2020, after police shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court for a first-round playoff game against Orlando. Read more
The Celtics weren’t supposed to win this year. Jaylen Brown doesn’t care. By Ben Golliver / Wash Post
Without injured star Jayson Tatum, Boston is flying past modest preseason expectations thanks to Brown’s emergence as one of the NBA’s top players.
Brown’s stellar all-around play in his first extended run as a singular star rather than a co-headliner has arguably turned Boston into the NBA’s biggest overachiever. The four-time all-star and 2024 Finals MVP is averaging career highs with 29.6 points and 4.9 assists, and his shooting efficiency has reached new heights despite a steep uptick in usage and shot attempts. Read more
For NFL’s only Black GM-head coach duo, firings show quarterback matters most. By Jason Reid / Andscape
However, Blank stands alone among franchise owners this hiring cycle in making a clean sweep of his top leaders. The league’s only Black GM-head coach duo this season and one of only three in NFL history, Fontenot and Morris led teams that finished 8-9 the past two seasons.
Undoubtedly, though, their mishandling of the most important position in sports played a major role in Blank’s decision to start over in the front office and on the field. Read more
Black women NFL agents struggle working at agencies — so they create their own. By Martenzie Johnson / Andscape
At least seven of the 26 Black women agents certified by the NFLPA run their own firms
Black women agents have created their own firms rather than work within agencies that diminish them. At least seven of the 26 Black women agents certified by the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) run their own agencies, according to Diverse Representation, a publication that advocates for more diversity in sports representation. Read more
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