Featured
‘Hitler and the Nazis’ Review: Building a Case for Alarm. By Mike Hale / NYT (Image by Vox)
Joe Berlinger’s six-part documentary for Netflix asks whether we should see our future in Germany’s past.
Hitler’s project: “Making Germany great again.” The Nazis’ characterization of criticism from the media: “Fake news.” Hitler’s mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden: “It’s sort of like Hitler’s Mar-a-Lago, if you will.”
Donald Trump’s name is not mentioned in the six episodes of “Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial,” a new historical documentary series on Netflix. But it dances just beneath the surface, and occasionally, as in the examples above, the production’s cadre of scholars, popular historians and biographers can barely stop themselves from giving the game away. Read more
Related: A leading Holocaust historian just compared the US to Nazi Germany. By Zack Beauchamp / Vox
Political / Social
Biden knows ‘exactly what he is doing’: German Chancellor conveys strong support for Biden. By Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing and Jan Philipp Burgard / Politico
In an interview on the sidelines of the G7 summit, Olaf Scholz made assurances that Biden can provide critical leadership as the group of global leaders faces a complex web of mounting issues.
In an interview with Axel Springer media outlets on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Italy on Saturday, Scholz made assurances that Biden “knows exactly what he is doing,” and can provide critical leadership as the group of global leaders faces a complex web of issues, including multiple conflagrations and hotly-contested elections that threaten to upend the international status quo. Read more
Let’s Talk About Trump’s Gibberish. By Tom Nichols / The Atlantic
What the former president’s shark tirade says about American politics and media
Perhaps the greatest trick Donald Trump ever pulled was convincing millions of people—and the American media—to treat his lapses into fantasies and gibberish as a normal, meaningful form of oratory. But Trump is not a normal person, and his speeches are not normal political events.
For too long, Trump has gotten away with pretending that his emotional issues are just part of some offbeat New York charm or an expression of his enthusiasm for public performance. But Trump is obviously unfit—and something is profoundly wrong with a political environment in which he can now say almost anything, no matter how weird, and his comments will get a couple of days of coverage and then a shrug, as if to say: Another day, another Trump rant about sharks. Read more
Related: Under Trump, the DOJ Will Become the Legal Wing of the MAGA Movement. By Elie Mystal / The Nation
The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started. Charlie Savage, Reid J. Epstein, Maggie Haberman and
An emerging coalition that views Donald J. Trump’s agenda as a threat to democracy is laying the groundwork to push back if he wins in November, taking extraordinary pre-emptive actions. Kica Matos with the National Immigration Law Center standing under an archway.
Opponents of Donald J. Trump are drafting potential lawsuits in case he is elected in November and carries out mass deportations, as he has vowed. One group has hired a new auditor to withstand any attempt by a second Trump administration to unleash the Internal Revenue Service against them. Democratic-run state governments are even stockpiling abortion medication. Read more
Justice Alito Is Right About One Thing. By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
Justice Samuel Alito is right. Not about the Constitution or the use of history or whether Donald Trump has total immunity for crimes committed in office. No, Justice Alito is right about the fact of unresolvable conflict in American political life.
As he told Lauren Windsor, a liberal documentary filmmaker who surreptitiously recorded their conversation at a dinner held by the Supreme Court Historical Society, “One side or the other is going to win.” He continued, “There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.” Read more
Supreme Court opinions: Clarence Thomas legalizing bump stocks is indefensible. By Mark Joseph Stern / Slate
The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority carved a huge loophole into the federal prohibition against machine guns on Friday, striking down a bump stock ban first enacted in 2018 by the Trump administration.
Its 6–3 decision allows civilians to convert AR-15–style rifles into automatic weapons that can fire at a rate of 400–800 rounds per minute. One might hope a ruling that stands to inflict so much carnage would, at least, be indisputably compelled by law. It is not. Read more
Related: How the bump stock ban overturn could affect machine guns in the U.S. By Martin Kaste / NPR
Fani Willis Appears to Fire Back at Rudy Giuliani’s “Ho” Attack. By Arianna Coghill / Mother Jones
“I’ve lived the experience of a Black woman who is attacked and over-sexualized.”
Last Friday, my colleague Stephanie Mencimer had the distinct honor—or misfortune—of witnessing Rudy Giuliani’s apparent attempt to convince the Christian right to help him amid his dire financial troubles. That effort saw Giuliani airing crude, conspiratorial rhetoric before the faithful which at one point, saw Giuliani calling Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney in Donald Trump’s Georgia case, a “ho.” Read more
In Texas, Right-Wing Rage Takes a Dark Turn: “War On White America.” By Greg Sargent / The New Republic
With a far-right conference in Texas set to promote Christian nationalism and “great replacement theory,” a leading scholar of the right sheds light on the darker MAGA pathologies this reveals. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
An influential group called the True Texas Project is hosting a conference in July that will actively promote Christian nationalism and the racist “great replacement theory,” the Texas Tribune reports. The group, which subscribes to the idea of a “war on white America,” has ties to many Texas GOP officials, the report says, including Senator Ted Cruz and Attorney General Ken Paxton, a major supporter of Donald Trump. Read more
Related: Man Plotted Mass Shooting in Atlanta to Incite ‘Race War,’ Officials Say.
New Study Finds Racial Discrimination Has Harmful Long-Term Effects On Black Adolescents. By Mary Spiller / Black Enterprise
The study results showed that racial discrimination can increase the risk of depression and anxiety.
A new study published by JAMA Network Open has found that instances of racial discrimination may put Black adolescents at a higher risk of depression and anxiety. The study’s results, released the week of June 9, explored the harmful long-term effects of racism. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Georgia and examined the way that Black adolescents process the traumas of discrimination, The Washington Post. Read more
Rev. William Barber’s new book on ‘White Poverty’ shows breadth of ‘an American crisis.’ By Martha Quillin / The News and Observer
As election-year ads and social media campaigns focus on politicians’ personalities, Rev. William J. Barber II and other advocates for the poor want voters to look instead at policies they say divide Americans and keep too many of them in poverty.
Barber — a North Carolina pastor, lecturer, co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign and president of Repairers of the Breach — and writer Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove released a book this week called “White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy. Read more
World News
White gold, Black bodies: how a tiny African nation shaped the world. By Kiratiana Freelon / The Guardian
The first archaeological dig of São Tomé and Príncipe’s largest sugar mill sheds light on the birth of plantation agriculture and slavery as a racial system. Maria Nazaré de Ceita, a professor at the University of São Tomé and Príncipe, gazes at the Praia Melão ruins.
Edsiley da Encarnação’s wooden stilt house stands mere steps from the ruins of an old sugar plantation on the African island of São Tomé. What remains of the 16th-century building, strategically built near a freshwater source and the sea, lies hidden among trees. Vines encircle stone walls. The former agricultural complex is now the site of the first archaeological excavation to take place in São Tomé and Príncipe, a two-island nation in the Gulf of Guinea, almost five centuries after the island’s “discovery” by Europeans. Read more
F.B.I. Director Makes Rare Visit to Africa as Terrorism Threat Grows. By Eric Schmitt / NYT
Christopher A. Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, paid a rare visit to sub-Saharan Africa this week to discuss counterterrorism strategies with regional partners at a time when both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are gaining momentum on the continent.
Mr. Wray, who met with officials in Kenya and Nigeria, repeated his warning that the United States and its allies worldwide are “operating in a heightened threat environment” that has been energized by the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Read more
5 Minutes That Will Make You Love South African Jazz.
The country has a rich, original relationship to jazz, with American techniques layered into regional traditions and rhythms. Explore 50 years of recordings picked by musicians, poets and writers.
Perhaps no country outside North America has as rich, or original, a relationship to jazz music as South Africa. In the 1950s and ’60s, as the apartheid government enforced an increasingly brutal code of racial hierarchy, South African musicians, poets, artists, radical clergy and organizers found in this music a symbol of Black cosmopolitanism, interracial experimentation and free thought — all anathema to the regime. Read more and listen here
Ethics / Morality / Religion
What does ‘Christian nationalism’ even mean? By Jonathan Tran / The Christian Century
Could it really be all the different things people say it is?
Fear over Christian nationalism is running rampant, showing up everywhere from books and podcasts about the January 6 insurrection to Sunday sermons about idolatry. But the way we talk about Christian nationalism comes with all kinds of problems. Until we resolve these problems, all this fear about Christian nationalism might amount to so much fearmongering. Read more
Here’s what the Christian right wants from a second Trump term. By Michelle Boorstein and Hannah Knowles / Wash Post
Religious conservatives see opportunities for fresh gains after a series of victories during Trump’s first term. Rights advocates see a dangerous blurring of church and state.
But far from declaring victory, those who advocate for a more pronounced role for hard-line conservative Christian doctrine in American public life are actively planning to enact a fresh wave of changes in a second Trump term. Should Trump reclaim the presidency in November, they say, it would represent a historic opportunity to put their interpretation of Christianity at the center of government policy. Read more
Catholic Bishops Finally Apologize for Church’s Role in Harming Kids at Indigenous Boarding Schools. By Samantha Michaels / Mother Jones
But they stopped short of acknowledging some of the worst traumas. Indigenous children forced to pray to god in a residential school.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which creates policies for the church in the United States, formally apologized on Friday for the church’s role in traumatizing Native American children at boarding schools until the mid-1900s. It’s “the most direct expression of regret to date” by church officials for forcibly assimilating Indigenous kids into white culture, according to the Washington Post, whose investigative reporters recently documented the widespread sexual abuse by priests and nuns at these schools. Read more
Historical / Cultural
How Harriet Tubman relied on nature to bring the enslaved to freedom. By Tiya Miles / Wash Post
Tubman’s relationship with entities of the natural world was central to her work on the Underground Railroad.
Almost 9 In 10 House Republicans Voted To Put A Confederate Memorial Back At Arlington National Cemetery. By
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries asked which tradition those lawmakers wanted to uphold: “Slavery? Rape? Kidnap?”
The vote Thursday was on an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that’s seen as a must-pass piece of legislation. It would have required the secretary of the Army to reinstall the memorial in its original location in the nation’s most celebrated military veteran graveyard and not designate it as anything other than a “reconciliation” memorial or monument. Read more
Related: Confederate names make comeback in schools, triggering lawsuits. By Lexi Lonas / The Hill
40 Acres and a Lie. A Collaboration between Mother Jones and Reveal
A government program gave formerly enslaved people land after the Civil War, only to take nearly all of it back a year and a half later. We used artificial intelligence to track down the people, places, and stories that had long been misunderstood and forgotten, then asked their descendants about what’s owed now.
Black Americans have been demanding compensation and restitution for their suffering since the end of the Civil War. 40 Acres and a Mule remains the nation’s most famous attempt to provide some form of reparations for American slavery. Today, it is largely remembered as a broken promise and an abandoned step toward multiracial democracy. Read more
Tulsa Race Massacre: Possibly the Final Insult in Reparations Fight.
The remaining survivors of the 1921 assault suffered another slap in the face on Wednesday. The Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit from the survivors of the attack on the Greenwood district known as “Black Wall Street” that killed as many as 300 people and plunged the once-thriving area into a state of disrepair. Upholding a district court ruling from last July, the justices decided 8–1 that the plaintiffs aren’t eligible for reparations under the public nuisance statute. Read more
Only 1.8% of US doctors were Black in 1906 – and the legacy of inequality in medical education has not yet been erased. By Benjamin Chrisinger / The Conversation ( Black students at Meharry Medical College in 1915)
Fueled by the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling that bans affirmative action in higher education, conservative lawmakers across the country have advanced their own state bans on diversity initiatives, especially those that might make students feel shame or guilt for past harms against people of color. This effort encompasses medical schools.
Despite clear and persistent gaps between white and Black doctors – and recent efforts to reckon with racial disparities within the medical profession – lawmakers have tried to advance policies to prohibit diversity initiatives in medicine. Read more
‘This Whole Idea Makes My Teeth Itch’: Morgan Freeman Doubles Down on Why He Hates Black History Month. By Nicole Duncan-Smith / Atlanta Black Star
In an interview with Variety to promote his upcoming Civil War series, “The Gray House,” which premiered at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, Freeman says he is not a fan of having a single month to commemorate Black history and that it feels alienating to him as a full-blooded American.
According to Freeman, he believes that Black history is American history and should be recognized as such throughout the entire year. Read more
Related: The Internet Supercharged the Exploitation of Black Culture. By Kaila Philo / The New Republic
The Harlem Renaissance Was Bigger Than Harlem. How Black artists made modernism their own. By Susan Tallman / The Atlantic
Organized by Denise Murrell, who, as the Met’s first curator at large, oversees projects that cross geographical and chronological boundaries, this exhibition has a lot on its to-do list. Billie Holiday with Ben Webster and Johnny Russell (Image USA Today)
It wants to remind us of Harlem’s role as a cultural catalyst in the early 20th century, while showing that those creative energies extended far beyond the familiar reading list of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, beyond literature and music, beyond the prewar decades, and beyond Upper Manhattan. It wants us to understand that Black American artists were learning from European modernists, and that European modernists were aware of Black contributions to world culture. Read more
Related: Harlem Renaissance ushered in new era of black pride. By Matthew Daneman / USA Today
How a College Landed Kendrick Lamar as Its Surprise Commencement Speaker. Amelia Benavides-Colón / The Chronicle of Higher Ed.
Every year, Compton College administrators make a wish list of potential commencement speakers. This spring, when President Keith Curry saw Kendrick Lamar’s name on the list, a light bulb went off.
Lamar, a Compton native whose rap lyrics frequently allude to the city’s impact on his life, is known for his complex and “vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism,” drawing on the Black experience. His résumé boasts Grammy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, though not a college degree. Read more
Sports
‘Satchel’ recalls the iconic pitcher who helped integrate Major League Baseball. Dave Davies / NPR
Hall of Famer Satchel Paige started his career pitching in the Negro leagues and later became a major league star. Author Larry Tye tells his story in Satchel. Originally broadcast in 2010.
This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies. A recent New York Times sports page headline reads, did Paige throw nearly eight times as many no-hitters as Ryan? That would be Negro Leagues pitcher Satchel Paige and Major League pitcher Nolan Ryan. That’s the kind of a question that’s come up recently since Major League Baseball announced it would, for the first time, officially include player statistics from the Negro Leagues in its historical record. Read more and listen here
Did Celtics Lose on Purpose? Mark Jackson Debates Whether Luka Magic Really Gave Mavs New Life. By Pranav Kotai / Essentially Sports
After all the criticism thrown at the Dallas Mavericks, they won 122-84, with a 38-point lead. It’s the highest in 50 years! Even Boston Celtics star Jrue Holiday had plenty of praise for the Mavs.
“I think they came out desperate, and I think they punched us in the mouth and we couldn’t kind of recover the way we wanted to.” The performance was so breathtaking that even the esteemed analyst had to chew their words. Read more
Serena Williams Says Challengers is “Pretty Accurate.” By Eve Batey / Vanity Fair
After watching the erotic sports film, the record-breaking tennis champ has some questions for Zendaya.
In an interview with the New York Times, Williams says that watching a new ESPN+ docuseries, the eight-part In the Arena: Serena Williams, was the first time she’s been able to look objectively at her career, after decades in the grind. “I actually refused to go down memory lane during my career, because I always said that’s when you get satisfied,” she says. Read more
The N.B.A. Sees Its Future in Africa. By Tania Ganguli / NYT
The league has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to cultivate an immense potential fan base in Africa and develop future stars.
Much of the league’s work is concentrated in Senegal, where it operates an academy for high-school-age players, an N.B.A. Africa office and the headquarters of the Basketball Africa League. N.B.A. Africa’s investors include former N.B.A. players and former President Barack Obama (who also has an equity stake). The B.A.L. was announced in 2019 with FIBA, the sport’s international governing body. Its first season was in 2021. Read more
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