Featured
White Ethno-Nationalism Is a Global Threat. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
White ethno-nationalism has emerged as one of the most dangerous political forces of the 21st century.
While Black and brown communities are its most immediate targets, its deeper and more enduring threat is its systematic assault on liberal democracy and universal human rights. By defining belonging narrowly, elevating one group above all others, and treating pluralism as decay, white ethno-nationalism ultimately imperils everyone—especially liberal white Europeans and Americans whose freedoms depend on democratic norms and institutions. Read more
Related: Trumpism Is Global Culture War. By David Wallace-Wells / NYT
Related: The Rise of the Far Right in Europe. By Jeet Heer / The Nation
The Week’s Top Stories
Political / Social
This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like. By Tom Nichols / The Atlantic
The president of the United States just barged into America’s living rooms like an angry, confused grandfather to tell us all that we are ungrateful whelps.
We could take apart Trump’s fake facts, as checkers and pundits will do in the next few days. But perhaps more important than false statements—which for Trump are par for the course—was his demeanor. Americans saw a president drenched in panic as he tried to bully an entire nation into admitting he’s doing a great job. Read more
Related: The Trump Mind-Set Is Not Complex. Thomas B. Edsall / NYT
Inside Stephen Miller’s Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State. By Greg Sargent / TNR
Miller’s Actions: A Meaner, and Whiter, America
He is descended from Russian Jews—you know, the kind of people who were once denounced as alien and unassimilable. Today, his project is to unleash government persecution of those he deems alien and unassimilable. How far will Miller’s sadistic designs go? Read more
Related: The Civil Rights law that Stephen Miller says ruined America. By Zachary B. Wolf / CNN
Alvin Holsey, Admiral Who Oversaw Boat Strikes Off Venezuela’s Coast, Retires. Eric Schmitt / NYT
The admiral had abruptly announced that he would step down as the head of the U.S. Southern Command. His departure leaves several issues about the strikes unanswered.
It was still not entirely clear why Admiral Holsey was departing a year into what is typically a three-year job and in the midst of the biggest operation in his 37-year career. He offered no explanation on Friday at a sun-dappled ceremony flanked by palm trees at his headquarters, near Miami. Admiral Holsey, known as Bull, made no reference to the controversy over the boat strikes in brief remarks, instead urging members of his command to press for a “secure, free and prosperous Western Hemisphere.” Read more
Related: Black Veterans Divided on Serving Under Trump Administration. By Brandon Tensley / Capital B
The EEOC Is Now Letting Workplace Discrimination Stand. By Bryce Covert / The Nation
The agency is unlawfully giving up on fighting disparate impact discrimination—meaning it’s “open season” on employees.
Disparate impact cases involve employer policies or practices that appear to be neutral but result in a discriminatory outcome without having any relevance to the job itself. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation tome that outlined priorities for a future Republican administration, called for ending the use of disparate impact, claiming that it “makes everything presumed illegal unless given special dispensation by the federal government.” Read more
Fani Willis, testifying before Georgia Senate panel, defends 2020 election probe. By Olivia Rubin and Lucien Bruggeman / ABC News
Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis defended her criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in front of Georgia lawmakers Wednesday.
Willis, appearing before a GOP-led state Senate special committee, defended her decision to bring charges against Donald Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators following Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes needed to win the state. Read more
85% of people given federal pardons or clemency this year are white, House lawmaker’s report says. By
“Donald Trump’s use of clemency and pardons has neglected many of the most marginalized and impacted communities,” the office of Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., said.
Five percent are Latino and another 8% are Black, according to the report, which was first shared with NBC News. Comparing these statistics against the makeup of the general federal prison population, Pressley’s report notes that a quarter of that population is white, 36% Hispanic and 34% Black. Read more
Related: Pardons in the Era of Mass Incarceration. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor
After a year of economic uncertainty, Black farmers look to the future. By Drew Hawkins / NPR
James Davis had the best year in his entire farming career this year. The third-generation Black row crop farmer estimated picking almost 1,300 pounds of cotton, an average of 50 bushels of soybeans, and an average of around 155 bushels of corn on 2,500 acres of his farmland in northeast Louisiana.
But with U.S. commodities facing steep retaliatory tariffs overseas, he says he and many other farmers can’t sell their crops for enough to cover the loans they take out to fund the growing season. The tariffs, Davis said, are making it almost impossible to survive. Read more
Education
White House Attacks College Essays About Race In Latest DEI Crackdown. By Nahlah Abdur-Rahman / Black Enterprise
Personal statements highlighting race have become another issue in the DEI crackdown within college admissions.
While many students have used personal essays to describe their academic journeys thus far, the government now deems their writings, including race, aligned with now-banned DEI practices. Many colleges require these personal statements not only to show a student’s writing ability, but also highlight a moment where they overcame adversity, proving how they exemplify and contribute to the school’s values. Read more
Only 2% of US students who study abroad are Black men. By Ira Porter / CSMonitor
He’s one of only two Black men on the busy platform at the moment – and one of relatively few in Japan. “I’m not here because I’m here on vacation,” he says. “I’m here because this is a goal that I always wanted to get here.”
Mr. Collins has just begun his first year at Temple University Japan, where about half of its 3,000 students are from the United States and roughly a quarter are from Japan. He is not simply doing a semester abroad program. He’s enrolled as a full-time student in a four-year undergraduate program. Read more
States Should Reject Federal School Voucher Scheme. By Robert Kim / The Progressive Magazine
Vouchers hurt public schools and their students.
Our public schools are already underfunded, some severely. Taking public resources and diverting them to private education is harmful for the nearly 90 percent of American students in public schools. Read more
World
A Free World Needs a Strong America. By The Editorial Board / NYT
As recently as a decade ago, it would not have been hard to unite a broad majority of Republicans and Democrats around a shared idea of what America’s military power should be for.
Defense of the homeland. Deterrence of would-be aggressors. Cooperation with treaty allies and protection of kindred democracies confronting common foes. Humanitarian aid and relief. The security of the global commons: sea lanes, air corridors, undersea cables, digital networks. Upholding the laws of war. In sum, the ability to prevent war wherever possible and win it whenever necessary — all for the sake of a safer, more open, rules-based world. Read more
Trump’s New Imperialism. By Adam Serwer / The Atlantic
Trump has interfered in foreign affairs in many ways. He has ordered the bombing of Iran and is preparing for an attack on Venezuela; “We’re gonna hit ’em on land very soon,” he told Politico on Monday. In the Caribbean, his military has committed what law-of-war experts have called murder, launching missiles at boats suspected of carrying drugs.
He embraces the wielding of American power to impose his own worldview on countries that do not share it. The attack on Europe for supposedly accepting “civilizational erasure” is nothing if not an attempt to “dispense justice” to European nations that have committed the sin of multiculturalism. This is a kind of neo-neoconservatism, premised on ethno-nationalism rather than the democracy promotion of the post-9/11 era. Read more
Related: Welcome to the ‘new world disorder.’ By Ishaan Tharoor / Wash Post
Trump’s Claim That Venezuela ‘Stole’ U.S. Oil Fields Touches Nationalist Nerve. Simon Romero / NYT
President Trump said the United States wanted to reclaim expropriated oil assets, setting off a nationalist reaction in a country where the resource holds a mythical status.
President Trump and his top advisers could not be more blunt in their claims: The United States created Venezuela’s oil industry. Venezuela stole American oil fields through nationalizations. Now, the United States wants those assets back. Those assertions have been used to justify the U.S. blockade on sanctioned tankers going to and from Venezuela. They have also pushed oil, alongside illicit drugs, to the center of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro. Read more
Related: Mapping U.S. strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. By Amaya Verde / Wash Post
Ethics / Morality / Religion
This political moment demands theology. By Douglas F. Ottati / The Christian Century
As Christians, we need to protest authoritarianism and support the people it targets. We also need to underscore the deep foundations of this work.
It is appropriate to march, demonstrate, support the legal defense funds of political targets, and remind Americans of the duties of compassion. But much of what’s at stake today also calls for appeals to foundational visions of human life that help us to understand basic institutions in our democratic society. Read more
People Who Left ‘MAGA Christianity’ Share What It Really Took To Step Away. By
“MAGA Christianity is a cult,” one former church member said. “I know because I was in it.”
MAGA Christianity’ is a complex and often challenging process. Many individuals have shared their experiences, highlighting the emotional and spiritual struggles involved. Leaving’ MAGA Christianity is a complex and often challenging process. Many individuals have shared their experiences, highlighting the emotional and spiritual struggles involved. Read more
With Dreadlocks and Yoga, Oslo’s Bishop Practices an Atypical Evangelism. Lynsey Chutel / NYT
Sunniva Gylver, the new Lutheran bishop of Norway’s largest diocese, is having success attracting younger worshipers while preaching an ancient message centered on justice.
Before donning the deep red cloak when she was ordained as Oslo’s bishop in February, Bishop Gylver, 58, often sported a T-shirt that announced PREST, or priest, which she wore instead of a collar. The dreadlocks piled high on her head, as well as a silver ring in her nose, completed the unconventional look for a member of the clergy. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Trump is whitewashing American history. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
The death of Viola Fletcher, the last survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, underscores what Trump is attacking
Viola Floyd Fletcher passed away on Nov. 24. At 111, she was the oldest known survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, a pogrom and an act of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by thousands of white people that took place over the course of two days in the spring of 1921. Black prosperity is a threat, a provocation and a collective narcissistic injury to what W. E. B. Du Bois famously described as the “psychological wages of whiteness.” More than 100 years later, in the post-civil rights era and the Age of Trump, this remains true. Read more
Maryland to consider slavery reparations after Gov. Wes Moore’s veto is overridden. By AP and NBC News
Potential reparations outlined in the bill include official statements of apology, monetary compensation, property tax rebates and social service assistance, as well as licensing and permit fee waivers and reimbursement.
Maryland will create a commission to study potential reparations for slavery after lawmakers voted Tuesday to override a veto by Gov. Wes Moore — currently the nation’s only Black governor — that disappointed many fellow Democrats. Moore said in his veto letter in May that it was a difficult decision to veto the bill, which was a priority of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland. But he wrote there has been enough study of the legacy of slavery, and it was now time to “focus on the work itself” to address it. Read more
The Mysterious Life and Afterlife of Private Fitz Lee. Carol Rosenberg / NYT
For more than a century, this Black soldier from Virginia was remembered by nearly no one. Then this year, someone at the Pentagon found a use for him.
For decades, an Army base in Virginia was named for Robert E. Lee, the defeated Civil War general who had owned slaves. In 2021, a new law mandated the removal of Confederate names from military assets. The base was renamed Fort Gregg-Adams to honor two pioneering Black Army officers who had overcome segregation in the military. But after returning to office, the Trump administration was determined to rewind history. A law prevented the restoration of Confederate names, so it did it in a most unusual way. The base is now called Fort Lee again and named — officially, anyway — for Fitz Lee. Read more
Her 1951 walkout helped end school segregation. Now her statue is in the U.S. Capitol. By Rachel Treisman / NPR
In 1951, a Black teenager led a walkout of her segregated Virginia high school. On Tuesday, her statue replaced that of a Confederate general in the U.S. Capitol.
Barbara Rose Johns was 16 when she mobilized hundreds of students to walk out of Farmville’s Robert Russa Moton High School to protest its overcrowded conditions and inferior facilities compared to those of the town’s white high school. Read more
Sports
Knicks win NBA Cup after rallying to beat Spurs; Jalen Brunson named tournament MVP. By AP and NBC News
OG Anunoby scored 28 points, Jalen Brunson had 25, and the New York Knicks rallied to beat Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs 124-113 on Tuesday night to win the NBA Cup.
Now the Knicks can hang a banner next to the 1973 NBA championship banner in Madison Square Garden, the last time they won the NBA title. But this is a championship roster — NBA Cup MVP Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges cut down the nets in college at Villanova — with high hopes of representing a weak Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals. Read more
Shedeur Sanders Might Have Played His Way Into Changing The Browns’ NFL Draft Plan. By Ben Armendariz / Colorado Buffaloes
Cleveland Browns rookie Shedeur Sanders has sparked new optimism in four starts. As the former Colorado Buffaloes star shows growth and command, league buzz suggests Cleveland may build around him—rather than start over at quarterback yet again.
For years, Cleveland has searched for stability under center, cycling through draft picks, veterans, and short-term fixes without ever fully committing to a long-term vision. But just four starts into Shedeur Sanders’ NFL career, that conversation is quietly shifting—even after the Browns selected him in the fifth round of the 2025 NFL Draft. Read more
The tragic unraveling of former Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore. By William C. Rhoden / Andscape
Wolverines’ ex-coach’s firing and arrest could do collateral damage to other Black coaches in college football
Sherrone Moore woke up Wednesday morning as the head football coach at the University of Michigan. He was an up-and-comer, a beacon of light for so many aspiring young African American coaches. By the end of the day on Wednesday, Moore was the Wolverines’ former head coach after being abruptly fired. The university issued a statement. An internal investigation “found there was sufficient evidence that Moore engaged in an “inappropriate relationship with a staff member.” Read more
Related: The shame of Sherrone Moore. By Candace Buckner / Wash Post
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