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Racism in a Time of War: The Double V Betrayed. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America

In a time of war, a nation reveals not only its strength, but its character. For African Americans, that test has long carried a contradiction: to fight for democracy abroad while being denied it at home. From the Civil War to the present, Black Americans have answered the call to serve—even when the nation they defended failed to fully defend them. That contradiction is not merely historical. It shadows the present.

Read complete essay: Racism in a Time of War: The Double V Betrayed

The Week’s Top Stories

Political / Social

Trump is something worse than a fascist. By Heather Digby Parton / Salon

We’ve been using the wrong word to describe the president and his approach to ruling

Many Americans have finally wrapped their minds around the idea that we are dealing with a presidency and political movement that can be defined as authoritarian, and even fascist. But after observing Trump over the past year and seeing how he responds to an interview in which the reporters have the time and opportunity to ask follow-up questions, it is clear that those are not the underlying principles that are guiding this presidency. The better definition for Trumpism is an ancient word that should nonetheless be familiar to anyone who recalls the founding ideals of this country: tyranny. Read more

What Republicans don’t want you to know. By Thom Hartman / MSN

The 150+ billionaires who bankrolled Donald Trump’s return to the White House now own the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House, and enough of our nation’s media to make their threat feel like it’s simply inevitable. As I’ve pointed out before, they’ve spent decades and billions of dollars building a media and think-tank infrastructure to keep working people confused, divided, and willing to believe whatever bull—- they’re fed.

But what these wannabe fascists don’t own yet, at least not completely, is your right to vote. And, looking at the prospect of a Blue Tsunami, that’s exactly what hard-right Republicans are working to fix before November. Read more

The ‘No Kings’ Protests May Be the Turning Point We Desperately Need. By David Rothkopf / The Daily Beast

The estimated 9 million people who took to the streets across the U.S. on Saturday for the largest public protest in American history sent a message of hope.

Beyond their chants, banners, placards, and speeches calling for “No Kings,” an end to the abuses of ICE, and a halt to the illegal war in Iran, the demonstrators conveyed a deeper message: we are increasingly coming to understand the meaning of historian Timothy Snyder’s observation that democracy is not a noun but a verb. Read more

How Trump’s EEOC is attacking DEI and emphasizing white people. By Andrea Hsu / NPR

In late February, Andrea Lucas sent a letter to the leaders of Fortune 500 companies. She directed the CEOs, general counsels and board chairs to guidance she’d issued last year warning that a company’s DEI policies or practices may be illegal if they lead to employment decisions based even just in part on a person’s race, sex or other protected characteristic.

“The EEOC stands ready to combat such discrimination,” she wrote, adding for emphasis: “We are the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, not the Equitable Employment Outcomes Commission.” While not her first missive about DEI, the letter underscored how radically Lucas is changing the priorities of an agency that had long focused its efforts on protecting vulnerable and underserved workers. Read more

Civil rights groups sue Trump administration over order to limit mail-in voting. By Sam Levine / The Guardian

The coalition of organizations says Trump’s executive order restricting who can receive mail ballots is unconstitutional.

The order, which Trump signed on Tuesday, instructs the federal government to come up with a list of eligible citizens who can vote in each state. It also instructs the US Postal Service to only transmit mail-in ballots to people on that list. “In effect, the Order seeks to interpose a federal screening regime between voters and the ballot box by empowering a federal mail carrier to withhold those voters’ ballots,” says the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts. Read more

Cory Booker Says Democrats ‘Have Failed This Moment,’ Calls For ‘Generational Renewal.’

The New Jersey senator called for “a new vision of our country that’s far more uniting” while refusing to rule out a 2028 presidential run.

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Booker offered blunt criticism of his own party during a lengthy discussion of his new book, “Stand.” When asked about a segment in the book in which he argues Democrats have become quick to “cancel everyone who fails a purity test,” the lawmaker did not hold back. Read more

Donalds dominates Florida GOP gubernatorial race: Poll. By Max Rego / The Hill

A new Emerson College survey has Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) well out in front in the GOP primary for Florida governor, and he is also the favorite in a hypothetical matchup with Democratic frontrunner David Jolly.

The poll, released Thursday, found that 46.4 percent of 465 likely Republican primary voters backed Donalds. Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, entrepreneur James Fishback and former Speaker of the Florida House Paul Renner are well behind, garnering 4.1 percent, 3.8 percent and 2.7 percent support, respectively. Read more

The Supreme Court Fight That Could Unravel Who Gets to Be American. By Brandon Tensley / Capital B

A case could upend a constitutional guarantee rooted in Reconstruction, raising concerns about rights long seen as settled.

With birthright citizenship — which was enshrined in the 14th Amendment to clarify the legal status of Black Americans following the Civil War — on the chopping block, civil rights groups are on high alert for threats to all rights, even those long seen as safe. There’s concern that a decision undermining birthright citizenship “could open the door and create a kind of slippery slope,” Morenike Fajana, senior legal counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told Capital B during a recent press call. She was referring to a growing fear: If birthright citizenship isn’t sacred — if the U.S. Supreme Court allows President Donald Trump to rewrite the U.S. Constitution through executive order — then nothing is. Read more

Trump’s MAGA allies have a new plan for mass deportations. It could splinter the coalition. By Samuel Benson / Politico

Surpassing 1 million deportations this year hinges on worksite enforcement — which would enrage farm and construction groups (and possibly voters).

The plan from the Mass Deportation Coalition — an organization led by some prominent Trumpworld veterans, immigration restrictionist groups and hawkish policy experts — rests on one crucial pillar: A major immigration enforcement crackdown on workplaces, modeling the strategy that former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration used to deliver the nation’s largest deportation initiative in history. Read more

Who Is Victor Glover, the Black Astronaut NASA Is Sending to the Moon. By Phenix S. Halley / The Root

Victor Glover will be the first Black American astronaut to reach the moon… And he’s the pilot!

After graduating from Ontario High School in 1994, Glover went on to earn his Bachelor of Science in engineering from California Polytechnic State University, according to his NASA bio. He also picked up three masters degrees along the way. Read more

Education

Why the Proposed Legislative Takeover of Kentucky State University Should Alarm Every Public Institution in the U.S. By Autumn A. Arnett / The EduLedger

The EDU Ledger is following a developing story out of the Kentucky state legislature, where on March 26, the state senate voted 38-0 to pass a bill that would significantly restructure – and restrict – Kentucky State University.

Kentucky State is the state’s only public historically Black institution and has been plagued in recent years by fiscal and governance collapse following the resignation of former President M. Christopher Brown II in 2021 that has left the university with very few allies in the state capitol. Read more

Watch “Prof Doesn’t Know Black Student Is Math Prodigy — Sets ‘Impossible’ Equation to Mock Him, Regrets It” on YouTube. By BEAT Stories

A tenured professor singles out the quiet Black kid in Advanced Number Theory, mocking him with an “impossible” equation meant to break him. But Isaiah isn’t who he seems—and the chalkboard challenge awakens a buried legacy that could shake the whole campus, before the system turns on him. Will he stay invisible? Watch here

How Faith and Education Are Joining Forces to Support Students with Disabilities at Alfred Street Baptist Church. By Antonio L. Ellis / EduLedger

On the morning of Sunday, March 21, the sanctuary at Alfred Street Baptist Church was full, not just with worship, but with possibility.

This partnership between American University School of Education and Alfred Street Baptist Church was born out of that tension. It is a deliberate effort to reimagine where and how inclusion happens. Through this collaboration, students in our undergraduate special education program and Master of Arts in Teaching program are serving as Inclusion Interns, supporting children with disabilities across ministries. Read more

The slow death of academic freedom. By Tracy Kuo Lin / Salon

State legislatures restricting what faculty can teach about race or gender — banning discussions on transgender and nonbinary identities. Public health scholars facing political retaliation for vaccine research and guidance. Legally mandated-national climate assessment reports disappearing from government websites.

These are not hypotheticals — this is what universities and research communities are facing right now. To see how quickly academic freedom can erode when legislatures meddle, look at the University of Texas. Faculty senates have been dissolved, courses are subjected to political approval, leadership appointments are based on ideology and professors are quietly changing syllabi out of fear. Read more

World

Stocks recoil and oil surges after Trump vows to continue hitting Iran. By Aimee Picchi and Mary Cunningham / CBS News

Stocks fell on Thursday, while oil prices surged more than 8% after President Trump vowed to continue strikes on Iran and offered no new plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

During his address, Mr. Trump repeated his previous assertions that U.S. objectives are nearly met and Iran’s offensive capabilities are “essentially decimated” after more than a month of fighting. He offered no new information about those objectives or any plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers, vowing only to continue U.S. strikes on Iran for two to three more weeks. Read more

Trump Isn’t Taking Cuba. He’s Starving It. By Ricardo Zúniga / NYT

Cuba is undergoing its worst economic and humanitarian crisis in over a century. After nearly seven decades of authoritarian rule, much of the country’s population lives in extreme poverty, the power grid is collapsing, and people are fleeing the island in droves. Cuba is hurtling not toward socialism or capitalism but toward ruin.

Atop those miseries the Trump administration has heaped the threat of war and blocked most oil shipments to the island, bringing transportation, food distribution and other basic services to a halt. Administration officials have made clear that 2026 is the year they intend to bring down the country’s Communist government. The only thing missing is a plan. Read more

The Spectacle of War and the Struggle to Protest. By Jay Caspian Kang / The New Yorker

On social media, images of destruction in Iran are giving way to commentary from talking heads, dulling the reality of war.

The sameness of what we’re seeing has, in America, lowered the political stakes of war. Much of the public is still outraged about what’s happening, but I fear that two and a half years of images from Gaza may have built up a public immunity to the sight of smashed concrete and blown-up humans. Read more

New U.S. Diplomat Was Not So Diplomatic. South Africa Pushed Back. By John Eligon / NYT

Less than a month into his job, the new United States ambassador to South Africa, Brent Bozell, delivered some harsh words against the government.

He claimed that South Africa had more than 150 laws “aimed against whites,” and that the Trump administration was “running out of patience” with the South African government. He made veiled comments about South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, subtly accusing him of “insulting our president,” an apparent reference to Mr. Ramaphosa’s criticisms of President Trump in a recent interview with The New York Times. Read more

Ethics / Morality / Religion

Invoking faith in wartime, Pete Hegseth breaks norms and worries critics. By Michelle Boorstein / Wash Post

The defense secretary is upending decades-old norms, current and former leaders say, with some cautioning that his proselytizing violates the Constitution and undermines troop cohesion.

U.S. military leaders have long understood the power and perils of invoking faith — especially in wartime. Every month at the Pentagon, Hegseth hosts evangelical worship services that legal experts say are unprecedented. His social media profile and public comments routinely espouse his understanding of Christianity, which is one that would dominate American life and cast those who disagree with him as God’s enemies. He has brought clergy from his small Christian denomination to preach at the Pentagon, including a prominent pastor who says women shouldn’t have the right to vote. Read more

Christians Against Empathy Aren’t Who They Think They Are. By David French / NYT

A year ago this month, I wrote a newsletter warning about a new trend on the MAGA Christian right. Christian theologians and influencers had begun warning about the “sin of empathy” or “toxic empathy.”

Progressives have turned Christians’ soft hearts against hard truths. Progressives have persuaded all too many Christians that the suffering of, say, undocumented immigrants or women facing unwanted pregnancies should override their concerns about the economic and social costs of large-scale immigration, or their compassion for victims of crimes committed by immigrants, or their concerns about the plight of the unborn child. Read more

Historical / Cultural

John Brown: The White Man Who Black People Have Loved Throughout history. By Mahalia Otshudy / The Root

In a time when the world feels split, white allies seem nil, and America still refuses to vote slavery as its greatest crime, a new generation is rediscovering John Brown, the white man who gave his life for Black liberation.

John Brown is often remembered—whether from history class or recent portrayals like Ethan Hawke’s in The Good Lord Bird—as a ruthless fanatic. However, a modern perspective is challenging this conventional view. Far from being a mere “madman,” Brown was a white radical activist who demonstrated the courage to directly confront the systemic brutality of slavery, ultimately sacrificing his own life for the cause of Black liberation. Read more

New Klan Discovery Exposes Old Ties with Police. By Allison Wiltz / Level Man

Whenever a Black person discusses the role of racism in modern-day policing, pointing to parallels with South Carolina slave patrols and extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, they’re accused of spinning a yarn, of lying about the severity of the problem.

But every so often, evidence comes to light that makes these claims difficult to ignore. For example, this month, officials made such a discovery at the Jackson headquarters of the Mississippi Department of Safety while preparing to move their operations to another building. In a small blue briefcase, tucked away in a closet, they found 1960s-era Klan robes and hoods, along with “recruitment materials, propaganda, meeting notes, ledgers, and a list of members who paid or didn’t pay their dues.” Read more

The Black Veteran Who Desegregated Interstate Buses. By Chastity Hale / Mother Jones

Before Rosa Parks, before Brown v. Board, there was Sarah Keys Evans. A new book tells her story.

In the summer of 1952, 23-year-old Sarah Keys (later Sarah Keys Evans)was making her first trip home from the Army hospital where she worked in Trenton, New Jersey, to North Carolina since joining the Women’s Army Corps the year before. Awoken around midnight, the private first class was ordered to give up her seat to a white Marine. When she refused, Evans was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Read more

Baldwin by Nicholas Boggs review – the relationships that drove a genius. By Ralph Webb / The Guardian

A new biography puts Baldwin’s sexuality – and the men he loved – front and centre

Boggs separates his study into four “books”, each named after the men who represented Baldwin’s central relationships: Beauford Delaney, the modernist painter and his “spiritual father”; Lucien Happersberger, his first great love; Engin Cezzar, the Turkish actor whose “eroticised fraternal bond” with Baldwin enticed him to Istanbul; and the French artist Yoran Cazac, whose relationship to Baldwin has, until now, gone relatively unremarked upon. Read more

‘In 20 years most of the world could be racist dictatorships’: Ibram X Kendi on book bans and far-right fear-mongering. By Steve Rose / The Guardian

How have the rich and powerful convinced so many voters that the reason they are struggling is the poor and powerless? The American historian talks about the weaponising of divisiveness.

I think I’ve had at least seven books that have been banned in the United States,” says Ibram X Kendi, in a tone that carries no bitterness but stops just short of pride. It’s proof, he says, that his works on racism, which extend from deep, scholarly histories to a biography of Malcolm X for children, are getting through to the right people – and annoying the right people. Read more

Remembering Pearl Bailey, an early queen of stage and screen. By Denise Oliver Velez / Daily Kos

Pearl Mae Bailey was born in the small town of Newport News, Virginia, in 1918. Her father was an evangelical minister, and from her earliest years she sang and danced during his church services.

Her 1952 recording, “Takes Two to Tango,” was one of the top songs of the year. In 1946 Bailey made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman where she played the role of Hagar in a cast that also included Mahalia Jackson, Eartha Kitt and Nat King Cole. Although Bailey performed on stage she still performed in concert tours. On November 9, 1952, Bailey married jazz drummer Louie Bellson in London. Here’s a 30-minute YouTube biography from Shakeera about Bailey’s life, politics and career: Read more

Books By Black Authors We Can’t Wait to Read in April 2026. By Angela Johnson / The Root

Spring has officially arrived with a great new list of books by Black authors. A touching memoir from Blair Underwood, a book of rare photos of Prince, and a guide to decluttering your home and your life are just a few titles on our reading list.

Don’t miss these books by Black authors set to hit the shelves in April 2026. Read more

Sports

Could This Brilliant Morehouse Student Become The Next Mike Tyson? By Phenix S. Halley / The Root

A top-ranked boxer and a star student, Morehouse junior Chad Pitts is changing the narrative about what a Morehouse man can be.

Atlanta’s Morehouse College has a strong reputation for producing some of the world’s greatest Black thinkers and professionals. But one college junior is looking to put the school on the map for something else: boxing. Chad Pitts discovered the sport as a nine-year-old boy growing up in Alabama, the state that produced boxers like the legendary Joe Louis and Deontay Wilder. But while Pitts showed interest in the sport early on, he explained to UATL that resources in his childhood were very limited. Still, that didn’t slow him down one bit. Read more

Will We Ever See Another Black NBA MVP? By Lawrence Ware / The Root

For the better part of two decades, the NBA’s MVP race felt familiar. Oftentimes a Black American superstar would dominate, collect the trophy, and we would argue about where he ranked over all time. That is what we did with Steph, KD, and LeBron. Lately, that script has flipped. The award has become an international one.

The last American-born Black man to be named Most Valuable Player in the NBA was James Harden. The year? 2018. Let me do the math for you. There has not been a Black American winner of the MVP in eight years. The winners since then have been Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokić, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. In other words, they are all from another country. It is a quiet but striking shift for a league long defined by American stars. Read more

Kobe Bryant Helped Make Life-or-Death Decision on Lamar Odom, Per New Documentary. By Caroline John / Essentially Sports

The real ones know that Khloe Kardashian wasn’t always the strong decision-maker she is today. Her journey there was extremely painful. One of the most important decisions in her life occurred during the breakdown of her marriage to Lamar Odom. During her most vulnerable moments, she had to make a decision that would determine whether the Lakers star lived or died. In that moment, Kobe Bryant stepped in for his former teammate.

In a chilling revelation from the new Netflix documentary Untold: The Death and Life of Lamar Odom, Khloe Kardashian describes the nightmare reality of Odom’s 2015 overdose and the critical role the late Kobe Bryant played in his survival. Bryant and Odom had not been teammates in nearly five years when LO went through the most terrifying period of his life. Nonetheless, their bond remained, with Bean frequently looking out for his old friend. Read more

Tiger Woods says he’s stepping away after car crash to seek treatment and focus on health. CBS News

Golf legend Tiger Woods said on Instagram that he’s “stepping away for a period of time to seek treatment” and focus on his health following his DUI arrest after a car crash in Florida last week.

His announcement comes as court documents reveal new details about his arrest. Nicole Valdes reports. Watch here

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