Featured
Hate + Impunity = Violence. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
For generations, American policing has followed a brutal equation: hate plus impunity produces violence. This logic can be traced from the slave patrols and Jim Crow enforcement to the modern carceral state. The killings of African Americans at the hands of police — most infamously George Floyd — revealed how structural racism and unaccountable force combine to terrorize communities of color. Read more
The Week’s Top Stories
Political / Social
The Logical End Point of Trump Saying He Could Shoot Somebody on Fifth Avenue. By Jonathan Chait / The Atlantic
On January 23, 2016, Donald Trump notoriously declared, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
That statement was understood at the time as a metaphorical expression of the depth of Republican voters’ commitment to him. Ten years and one day later, his administration’s agents shot a disarmed man on the street in full view of the public. Perhaps we should have taken him not only seriously but also literally. Read more
Related: Trump’s Neediness Is Transforming America.
Related: Why Trump Won’t Stop Until Everything Is Destroyed: Wolff. By William Vaillancourt / Daily Beast
How Kristi Noem turned ICE into the Proud Boys. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security used a song beloved by white supremacists in a recruitment ad for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The self-pitying “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” which equates living in a diverse community with being oppressed, has long been an anthem for racist terrorists, neo-Nazi groups and, crucially, the Proud Boys — one of the paramilitary organizations that led the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. As a local journalist in California reported at the time, the Proud Boys covered their faces and sang the song at a November 2020 Sacramento event, vowing to “put ourselves on the line” to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 election. Read more
Related: The Cruel Conditions of ICE’s Mojave Desert Detention Center. By Oren Peleg / The New Yorker
Related: Why GOP voters still love ICE. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Related: Support for Abolishing ICE Is Surging Among Republicans. By Rebecca Schneid / Time
Jeffries slams Stephen Miller as ‘hateful bigot’ and ‘architect’ of DHS ‘brutality.’ By Sarah Fortinsky / The Hill
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) labeled White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller a “hateful bigot” for his role in shaping immigration policy and called into question Miller’s future in the Trump administration.
Amid mounting scrutiny of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s handling of the fatal officer-involved shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Jeffries pivoted his attention onto Miller — who also serves as the president’s homeland security adviser and is credited with crafting some of the administration’s most hardline immigration policies. Read more
Related: Administration Social Media Posts Echo White Supremacist Messaging. Evan Gorelick / NYT
Related: Trump team issues unhinged demands as his thugs terrorize America. By Oliver Willis / Daily Kos
America has reached a tipping point on fascism – and on opposition to it. By Robert Reich / The Guardian
One of the few advantages of being as conspicuous as I am is that many people come up to me whom I don’t know, to talk about what’s happening in America. It’s like a free-floating focus group.
On Monday morning, I was at a restaurant counter finishing my breakfast when a middle-aged man sat down next to me and said he didn’t want to intrude. (He just had, so I put down my knife and fork, wiped my mouth with my napkin, and turned toward him.) He wanted me to know that although he’d been a lifelong Republican, the events of the past weeks had caused him to leave the Republican party. Read more
Attack on Ilhan Omar Follows Years of Trump’s Targeting Her. Annie Karni / NYT
President Trump has spent years demonizing and dehumanizing the Somali-born Democrat from Minnesota, fueling escalating threats against her.
At her own event in North Minneapolis, Ms. Omar was attacked by a man who rushed the lectern where she was speaking, spraying her with a strong-smelling liquid. The scene, which unfolded as Ms. Omar was calling for the resignation of Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who has carried out Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, was shocking but hardly surprising. Read more
Harry Enten Says 1 Key Group Has Sharply Flipped On Donald Trump.
CNN’s chief data analyst Harry Enten said Wednesday that new polling shows “there has been a massive backlash” against Donald Trump among Latino voters.
Trump’s net approval rating with Latinos stood at -5 percentage points at the start of his second term, Enten noted. It’s a number that “a lot of Republicans would really like,” he said. But it has since plunged to -28 points, a drop Enten said is significantly steeper than the decline seen among the overall electorate. Enten put much of the freefall down to Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda and deportation program. While Trump was polling evenly on deportations when he returned to office, he is now -34 points in net approval rating on the issue. Read more
New evidence shows how discrimination shortens lives in Black communities. By Akilah Johnson / Wash Post
A biological marker bolsters the “weathering hypothesis” that links systemic racism to health disparities.
Nearly half of the mortality gap between Black and White adults can be traced to the cumulative toll of a lifetime of stress and heightened inflammation, a new study published Monday shows. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, bolsters the body of evidence showing that chronic stress takes a biological toll that shortens lives. Read more
Related: Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science.’ Mike McIntire / NYT
Education
So-Called “Intellectual Freedom Centers” Spread Right-Wing Ideologies on Campus. By
Related: Trump has sued universities for billions. Here’s what the strategy tells us. By Bill Chappell / NPR
HBCU could soon have federal funding restored after 105 years. By Stephen J. Gaither / HBCU Gameday
Hampton University could regain a piece of its history — and unlock new federal research support — if Virginia lawmakers approve a bill aimed at restoring the HBCU’s land-grant status after more than a century.
Senate Bill 274, introduced by Sen. Mamie Locke (D-Hampton), would recognize and restore Hampton University as both an 1862 and 1890 land-grant institution in Virginia. Supporters say the change would reconnect Hampton to the national land-grant system and expand access to federal programs tied to agriculture, engineering and other applied sciences. The measure also calls for a dedicated state fund to support the restoration. Read more
Virginia Democrats target military college’s funding after anti-DEI push. By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Erin Cox and Ian Shapira / Wash Post
The nation’s oldest state-supported military college may face losing public funding as newly empowered Virginia Democrats seek to determine whether it has done enough to root out racism and sexism at the school.
A resolution filed Tuesday in the House of Delegates would establish a task force with broad authority to investigate whether Virginia Military Institute should continue to receive state tax dollars. Read more
World
Trump Threatens Iran With ‘Massive Armada’ and Presses a Set of Demands. David E. Sanger, Tyler Pager and Farnaz Fassihi / NYT
President Trump sharply intensified his threats against Iran on Wednesday, suggesting that if it did not agree to a set of demands the administration had made of the country’s leaders, he could soon mount an attack “with speed and violence.”
Mr. Trump’s threat of a second direct attack on Iran by U.S. forces in eight months came as the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, along with other naval ships, bombers and fighter jets, took up positions in the region in striking distance of the country. Read more
What we know about the US-proposed Gaza community. By Soraya Lennie / Aljazeera
Israeli and US officials are preparing to build Gaza’s first experimental community.
Blueprints describe a ‘case study’ under monitoring, where residents are handpicked by Israel. Al Jazeera’s Soraya Lennie explains why it’s causing concern. Watch here
Related: Gaza is not a real estate fantasy. By Sultan Barakat / Aljazeera
Families of 2 men killed in Caribbean boat strike sue U.S. government. By Stefan Becket / CBS News
The October strike was part of the Trump administration’s campaign against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, mostly targeting boats coming from Venezuela.
The families of two Trinidadian men who were killed in a U.S. missile strike on a boat in the Caribbean in October sued the Trump administration in federal court, arguing the “premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification.” Read more
Is Trump Going to Let Venezuela Starve? By James North / TNR
The country is rapidly tipping into a dire food emergency caused in part by the U.S. blockade.
Venezuela is in an underreported hunger crisis that is getting worse by the day, and the Trump administration’s de facto alliance with the unelected and unpopular Chavismo government is only adding to the risks of a disaster. Francisco Rodríguez, the respected Venezuelan economist who has sounded the alarm, warns: “Food stocks are running dangerously low. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Catholic Church emerges as a bulwark of resistance. By Avery Lotz / MSN
President Trump‘s immigration crackdown and aggressive foreign policy has put him on a collision course with one of the oldest institutions in the world: The Catholic Church.
Why it matters: Faith leaders and scholars tell Axios that Trump’s agenda conflicts with the Church’s commitment to safeguarding human dignity. With an American Pope at its helm for the first time, the Vatican is positioned to be a unique foil for the president. Read more
Related: Churches Are on the Front Lines in the Fight Against Mass Deportation. By Hunter Walker / TPM
Related: In a Tense Minnesota, Christians Help Immigrant Neighbors. By Emily Belz / Christianity Today
The pioneering path of Augustus Tolton, the first Black Catholic priest in the US – born into slavery, he’s now a candidate for sainthood. By Annie Selak / The Conversation
The first publicly recognized Black priest in the United States, Augustus Tolton, may not be a household name. Yet I believe his story – from being born enslaved to becoming a college valedictorian – deserves to be a staple of Black History Month. “Good Father Gus” is now a candidate for sainthood. Attendees at the 1892 Colored Catholic Congress included the nation’s first openly Black priest, Augustus Tolton, who stands in the middle of the front row.
My forthcoming book, “The Wounded Church,” examines ways that the Catholic Church has excluded people during different chapters of its history, from women to African American people. One chapter of history that many Americans may not know about was how the U.S. church barred Black men from becoming priests – a chapter that ended with Tolton’s ordination in the late 19th century. Read more
Young Christians Can Stay in the Black Church. By Michael Lyles II / Christianity Today
If you go to a Sunday service at many Black churches, you won’t find a lot of young people there. Pew Research Center confirmed this generational gap, which has also attracted media attention. Congregations that once served as the political, social, and economic nerve centers of their neighborhoods face uncertain futures as millennial and Gen Z Christians opt for online services, seek membership in multiethnic churches, or ditch church altogether.
There are many reasons young people are stepping out of the pews. Some just don’t want to go to church or to be affiliated with one religion. Others think the Black church is not involved enough in contemporary political and cultural issues. And a subset of young Black Christians distrust spiritual leaders, feel that they don’t fit in at church, or have had upsetting experiences they often call church hurt. Read more
Historical / Cultural
What ICE Should Have Learned from the Fugitive Slave Act. By Jelani Cobb / The New Yorker
Americans took to the streets to defend their neighbors in the nineteenth century, too.
The significance of this history is twofold. The Fugitive Slave Act was rhetorically useful for a certain element of the political class, but for most people it took an issue that they may have felt ambivalent about—or hadn’t much thought about at all—and gave them a direct, visceral reason to feel very strongly about it. Slavery might have been an abstract national concern, but the fate of a neighbor, whom people may have depended upon as a part of their community, was very much a personal one. Read more
America Keeps Trying to Clean Up George Washington’s History, But We Won’t Forget the Nine He Enslaved. By Wayne Washington / The Root
He will also forever be the man who enslaved or rented more than 300 slaves for his profit and ease. He will forever be the man who made it known the sun must not rise with his slaves still in bed. And he will forever be the man who subverted Pennsylvania’s anti-slavery laws, which granted freedom to those in bondage who resided in the state for longer than six months.
George Washington— vaunted warrior, venerable Father of his Country— yes, that George Washington, did this multiple times. He did this knowingly. He wrote about doing this and urged secrecy about his actions. Read more
Related: The Politics of Hiding Black History. By Clay Banks / Level Man
ASALH Marks Century of Black History Month Celebrations in 2026. By Walter Hudson / EduLedger
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History will commemorate 100 years of Black history celebrations next month with a series of events marking the centennial of “Negro History Week,” founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson in 1926.
The organization announced “A Century of Black History Commemorations” as the national theme for Black History Month 2026, which begins Feb. 1. Shown is ASALH National President Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead. Read more
Celebrating Black Military Service Is Not “DEI Shit.” It’s Essential to America’s Defense. By Matthew Delmont / Mother Jones
This article is adapted from Until the Last Gun Is Silent: A Story of Patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the Fight to Save America’s Soul. US riflemen from the 173rd Airborne Brigade charge toward Viet Cong positions in War Zone D on March 21, 1967. US Army/Getty
More than 8 million Americans served in the armed forces during the Vietnam era, with about 3 million deployed in Southeast Asia, including more than 300,000 Black Americans. Read more
What America Lost When It Lost Mother Fletcher. By Caleb Gayle / The Atlantic
With nearly all of the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre now dead, the country must find other ways to rectify its wrongs.
Fletcher’s life would never be the same after the massacre. She told Congress that she lost the chance to study beyond the fourth grade. She spent most of her years as a domestic worker for white families, earning so little that even at 107, she told the committee, she could “barely afford everyday needs.” Her grandson said in a radio interview that for years, his grandmother would not let him utter the word “massacre.” According to him, Fletcher spent most of her life sleeping without lying down, fearing that she might, for some reason, need to make a quick escape. What many Americans saw as a historical event, she relived daily. Read more
Dr. Gloria Wade-Gayles, 1937-2026. By Jamal Watson / The EduLedger
Dr. Gloria Wade-Gayles, a trailblazing scholar of African American literature and women’s studies whose courageous activism and groundbreaking scholarship illuminated the experiences of Black women in American culture, has died. She was 88.
Born on July 1, 1937, in Memphis, Tennessee, to Bertha and Robert Wade, Wade-Gayles would become one of the most influential voices in comparative women’s studies and African American literary criticism, building a career that seamlessly wove together scholarship, teaching, and an unwavering commitment to social justice. Read more
Wynton Marsalis, Founder of Jazz at Lincoln Center, to Step Down. Robin Pogrebin / NYT
After 40 years with the organization, the trumpeter and impresario will end his role as managing and artistic director in July 2027.
“It’s the perfect time to identify the next generation of leadership,” Marsalis, 64, said in an interview. “We want to make sure that we do what we can to nurture what we’ve already built with the understanding that this is an art form and it will continue to grow and the organization will continue to flourish.” Read more
Sports
‘Fascism is here now’: the US athletes pushing back on Trump’s America. By Nathan Kalman-Lamb and Derek Silva / The Guardian
At 6.38pm CST on Saturday January 24, Indiana Pacer star Tyrese Haliburton posted on X: “Alex Pretti was murdered.”
The NBA star was one of the first athletes to respond to what can only be described as an execution without trial by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials of 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. In this context, it is perhaps unsurprising that many current and former athletes followed Haliburton’s lead, including Victor Wembanyama, Breanna Stewart, Karl-Anthony Towns, Spencer Strider, Isaiah Thomas, De’Aaron Fox, JR Smith and John Randle. Read more
Clamor is growing in Europe to boycott Trump’s World Cup. By Ishaan Tharoor / Wash Post
This summer’s North American World Cup is inextricably tied to President Donald Trump. Some of his critics are questioning the fitness of the U.S. as a host.
He has for months cast the soccer tournament — to be held in cities across Canada, Mexico and the United States — as part of his legacy. FIFA, the sport’s governing body, has returned his embrace: Its president, Gianni Infantino, handed Trump a newly invented “peace prize” during a ceremony in December. In Europe, there’s a growing clamor from some corners to boycott the World Cup — and questioning of the fitness of the U.S. to host the tournament. Read more
Serena Williams refuses to rule out tennis comeback two months after firm denial. By Charlie Eccleshare / The Athletic
Serena Williams has refused to rule out a tennis comeback, just under two months after she definitively denied a return to the sport in which she won 23 Grand Slam singles titles.
In December, the appearance of Williams’ name in the tennis anti-doping test pool, a prerequisite for returning to the sport, raised the possibility of her playing again. Read more
LeBron James And His Business Partner, Maverick Carter, Reportedly Are In Talks Of Raising $5B For An International Basketball League. By Samantha Dorisca / Afretech
LeBron James reportedly is advocating for an international league.
ESPN reports that Maverick Carter, James’ business manager, was considering a $5 billion raise to launch an international basketball league with the help of multiple private equity funds. According to CBS Sports, the league would compete directly with the NBA. James, who is playing with the Los Angeles Lakers under a $52.6 million player option for the 2025-2026 season, has expressed interest in NBA team ownership, particularly for Las Vegas. Read more
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