Featured
Reimagining Racial Categories: Moving Beyond “White People” in Our Lexicon. By Chat GPT (AI generated)
Racial categories have played a significant role in shaping social, political, and economic dynamics throughout history. Among them, the term “white people” stands as a deeply entrenched construct with origins in colonialism and systemic hierarchy.
In recent years, scholars and activists have questioned the utility and consequences of maintaining such racial labels, particularly when they reinforce divisions and obscure shared humanity. This essay explores the idea of moving beyond the term “white people” in our lexicon—not to erase history or identity, but to challenge the power structures embedded in racial categorization and foster a more equitable and inclusive society. Read more
Related: Editor: My take on the same subject
Related: Can We End Racism by Ending the Idea of Race Itself? By Rachel Ferguson / Reason
Political / Social
Trump seeks a return to America’s racist roots — and he’s moving fast. By Cara McClellan / Newsbreak and The Hill
The Trump administration is fighting against diversity, equity and inclusion and for a return to extreme racial exclusion, inequality and white supremacy.
This was evident from the first few weeks of his presidency, when President Trump adopted a series of executive orders and guidance seeking to end affirmative action, eliminate efforts to address discriminatory hiring practices in the federal government, and to no longer prohibit segregation for government contractors. Read more
Related: For Trump, Civil Rights Protections Should Help White Men. Erica L. Green / NYT
NYT’s Peter Baker Breaks Down ‘Breathtaking’ Ways Trump Has Profited From Presidency. By Joe Depaolo / Mediaite
On the heels of the heavily-criticized dinner hosted by President Donald Trump for the top investors of the $TRUMP meme coin, a top New York Times reporter has come out with a stunning breakdown of how Trump has monetized his office.
In a piece published Sunday, New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker dove deep on Trump’s various financial gambits and concluded that they are without rival in American history. “The Trumps are hardly the first presidential family to profit from their time in power, but they have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House,” Baker wrote. “The scale and the scope of the presidential mercantilism has been breathtaking.” Read more
Related: How Donald Trump won the 2024 election. By Eric Levitz / Vox
Related: Joy Reid speaks truth to power about Trump’s tariffs and tax cuts. Facebook
New to Congress, She’s in the Cross Hairs of Trump’s Justice Department. Tracey Tully / NYT
Representative LaMonica McIver faces assault charges after a clash outside a migrant detention center in Newark, the city where she rose to political power.
According to a criminal complaint, Ms. McIver “slammed her forearm” into an immigration agent and “tried to restrain” him. Ms. McIver has maintained her innocence and dismissed the charges as “political intimidation.” Read more
Corporate America’s retreat from DEI has cut thousands of jobs. By Maria Aspan / NPR
The anti-DEI “political climate” has been slowly bubbling up for years — even before President Trump was re-elected, and set things to a hard boil by immediately signing executive orders banning what he calls “illegal DEI.” Now scores of employers are in all-out retreat from anything adjacent to the word “diversity” — including the experienced DEI specialists who were once in high demand.
This retreat is decimating the job market. Since early 2023, U.S. employers have eliminated more than 2,600 jobs with words including “diversity” or “DEI” in the titles or descriptions, according to a data analysis conducted for NPR by the workforce analytics firm Revelio Labs. Read more
Related: The Era of DEI for Conservatives Has Begun. By Rose Horowitch / The Atlantic
Uncle Sam’s new message to young Black Americans: I don’t want you. By Phillip E, Thompson / Wash Post
Is it worth it for them to serve an institution that is openly contemptuous of them and their history? Left: The writer’s grandfather, Army Private O.D. Woods, on his way to France in 1917. Right: The writer’s father, Marine Cpl. Walter Thompson Jr., in 1943 at Montford Point Marine Base in North Carolina. (Family photos courtesy of Phillip E. Thompson)
As I look at today’s political environment — at President Donald Trump, his allies and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — I’m forced to ask a question I never thought I’d have to pose: Should young Black Americans serve in a military led by people who seem openly hostile to them and the legacy of those who came before them? Read more
White Supremacist Group Takes Over Kansas City For Memorial Weekend March. By Black Information Network
According to KCTV, Patriot Front, a white supremacist hate group, convened in downtown Kansas City wearing white face masks, hats, and sunglasses to obscure their faces along with matching khaki and navy outfits.
In a video shared on X, Thomas Rousseau, the rally’s leader, delivered a speech during which he claimed that a “war was being waged” against white people. “We are disenfranchised, demoralized, and downtrodden people,” he added. Read more and watch here
Education
The New Dark Age. By Adam Serwer / The Atlantic
The Trump administration has launched an attack on knowledge itself.
The warlords who sacked Rome did not intend to doom Western Europe to centuries of ignorance. It was not a foreseeable consequence of their actions. The same cannot be said of the sweeping attack on human knowledge and progress that the Trump administration is now undertaking—a deliberate destruction of education, science, and history, conducted with a fanaticism that recalls the Dark Ages that followed Rome’s fall. Read more
As Trump targets elite schools, Harvard’s president says they should ‘stand firm.’ By Steve Inskeep, Obed Manuel and Reena Advani / NPR
With elite U.S. universities in President Trump’s crosshairs, the leader of Harvard University says institutions need to double down on their “commitment to the good of the nation” and be firm in what they stand for.
The Trump administration, acting on its claims that Harvard has failed to stamp out antisemitism on campus, froze more than $2 billion in research grants and contracts in April and attempted to revoke the school’s ability to enroll international students last week. The university is suing the federal government for both actions. Read more
Related: Trump’s Fury at Harvard Gets More Deranged—and Exposes a Big MAGA Scam. By Greg Sargent / TNR
Related: Trump administration seeks to end all federal contracts with Harvard. By , and
Vice President JD Vance says universities are racially discriminating against whites and Asians. By Gerren Keith Gaynor / The Grio
Vice President JD Vance accused American universities of racially discriminating against whites and Asians and echoed calls from the Trump administration for campuses to eliminate DEI policies and so-called liberal bias.
“Our universities could see the policies of the Trump administration as a necessary corrective to these problems, change their policies, and work with the administration to reform,” Vance wrote in a post on X on Saturday, adding, “Or, they could yell ‘fascism’ at basic democratic accountability and drift further into irrelevance.” Read more
The Gutting of the Department of Education Is Worse Than You Think. By Elsie Carson-Holt and Adelaide Parker / The Nation
Four experts on public education in the US spoke to The Nation about how the dismantling of the Department of Education will hurt students immediately and in the years to come.
Since the Department of Education was formed by Congress in 1979, gutting it has been an enduring priority for the conservative movement. Ronald Reagan promised to shutter the year-old department when he became president in 1980, and Donald Trump, with a sweeping executive order signed on March 20, effectively achieved this when he dismantled its key functions. The move jeopardizes services for students across the United States, including administering federal funds for public schools, managing student loans, and overseeing how grants are managed by state governments. Read more
Pete Hegseth Has Banned 3 of My Books From the US Naval Academy. By George Yancy / Truthout
Censorship is an act of cowardice and a direct refusal of the mirror I hold up to the US’s racist past and present.
Naval students and sailors must feel insulted by Hegseth’s lack of confidence in their intellectual ability to read challenging material that encourages self-examination and renders visible the subtle ways in which racism manifests itself. My books lay a foundation for the capacity to think critically and compassionately about those suffering under the toxicity of racism. Navy sailors need to be able to think for themselves and not be immobilized by fear of speaking out against forms of social injustice. Read more
World
The United States and South Africa, With Reuben Brigety / Council on Foreign Relations Podcast
Reuben Brigety, President of Busara Advisors and U.S. Ambassador to South Africa from 2022 to 2025, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss relations between Washington and Pretoria in the wake of last week’s meeting between President Donald Trump and President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Reuben, let’s begin with the Oval Office meeting last week between Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa. The discussion between the two presidents got heated at times. What do you make of it? Read more and listen here
Related: Cooperative Baptists Welcome Afrikaners to North Carolina. By Vonat Shimron / RNS
A genocide is happening in Gaza. We should say so. By Shadi Hamid / Wash Post
We can no longer avoid these uncomfortable truths.
A Desperate Haiti Turns to Erik Prince, Trump Ally, in Fight Against Gangs. David C. Adams, Frances Robles and Mark Mazzetti / NYT
The Haitian government has signed a contract with Mr. Prince, the private military contractor who founded Blackwater, a company notorious for a civilian massacre in Iraq.
Erik Prince, a private military contractor and prominent supporter of President Trump, is working with Haiti’s government to conduct lethal operations against gangs that are terrorizing the nation and threatening to take over its capital. Read more
Trump softens on Putin as Russia’s military edge weakens, officials say. By Karen DeYoung, Catherine Belton and Mary Ilyushina / Wash Post
Moscow’s advantage on the Ukraine battlefield is waning, experts say. But President Donald Trump seems disinclined to ramp up pressure on the Kremlin to engage in ceasefire talks.
In recent days, Trump appears to have abandoned the threat of harsh financial sanctions he repeated as recently as two weeks ago if Moscow doesn’t agree to a ceasefire with Kyiv. Instead, after a two-hour phone call Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he touted potential new trade deals with Russia. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Another killing springs from an old well of hatred. By Colbert I. King / Wash Post
Antisemitism took two young lives in D.C. this week. When will it end?
Embassy workers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim were in the prime of their lives and planning to get married. But they fell victim to something especially malicious: hatred and cruelty drawn from the well of antisemitism. Read more
Faith, Power, And Political Allegiance. By Patheos
Faith & Politics 2025–2026: How Belief Shapes the Ballot is an ongoing editorial series from Patheos that brings together diverse religious voices to explore how belief shapes civic life. Through articles, podcasts, videos, and commentary, the series equips readers to think faithfully and engage thoughtfully with the people, issues, and choices that define our shared political landscape.
Today’s Topic: How should people of faith understand power, nationalism, and loyalty to government? Read more
Tim Keller Preached the Superiority of Christianity, not Christians. By Marvin Olasky / Christianity Today
A new book shows how he contended for a faith whose followers are always seeking substitute saviors.
Matt Smethurst has written a clear and concise book on Tim Keller, who died two years ago today. Its title—Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel—summarizes well what made a non-shouting pastor exceptionally effective in reaching the ears of educated and elite New Yorkers for nearly three decades. Read more
Historical / Cultural
We Are Not Being Asked to Run Into Cannon Fire. We Just Need to Speak Up.
“What shall men remember?” Douglass asked. We need this year more than ever to be reminded of the meaning of the day. At a moment of national crisis that is frequently compared to the divisiveness and destructiveness of the Civil War era, we should look anew at the responsibilities Douglass and Lincoln handed down to us.
Between 1861 and 1865, some 2.7 million men, almost all volunteers, took up arms to preserve the Union as a beacon of democracy at a time when representative government seemed to be fading from the earth. Today democracy is once again under worldwide threat, assailed as disorderly and inefficient by autocratic leaders from Budapest to Moscow to Beijing, leaders our own president openly admires. Yet in 1861, ordinary men from even the remotest corners of the Union risked their lives because they believed, as Lincoln articulated for us all, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Read more
Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation. By Bennett Parten / Amazon
A groundbreaking account of Sherman’s March to the Sea—the critical Civil War campaign that destroyed the Confederacy—told for the first time from the perspective of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who fled to the Union lines and transformed Sherman’s march into the biggest liberation event in American history.
In the fall of 1864, Gen. William T. Sherman led his army through Atlanta, Georgia, burning buildings of military significance—and ultimately most of the city—along the way. From Atlanta, they marched across the state to the most important city at the time: Savannah. Read more
How Should We Remember Attica? By Charlotte Rosen / The Nation
Orisanmi Burton’s Tip of the Spear uncovers the obscured and radical demands of the inmates who staged the 1971 prison uprising—a world without prisons.
Orisanmi Burton would argue that much of what we know about Attica might be defined by such obfuscations. Prisoners at Attica and elsewhere had a “rational and pragmatic class of demands,” he acknowledges. But these were, as Burton writes in his recent study of Attica, Tip of the Spear, “the prison movement’s minimum demands: calls for bare survival amid genocide.” Read more
Charles B. Rangel, Longtime Harlem Congressman, Dies at 94. Sam Roberts / NYT
The first Black chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, he was a political force for decades, only to be tarnished by an ethics violation.
“Charlie was born on 132nd Street between Lenox and Fifth, and when he became successful he moved to 135th Street between Lenox and Fifth,” Mr. Williams said. “He used to joke about moving up — three blocks.” A mainstay of Harlem’s Democratic old guard, Mr. Rangel was first elected to Congress in 1970, toppling the raffish civil rights pioneer Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a 13-term incumbent. He went on to serve in the House longer than any other New Yorker but one: Emanuel Celler, who represented Brooklyn for nearly 50 years until his defeat in 1972. Read more
Related: Charles B. Rangel: A Life in Pictures. By Alyce McFadden / NYT
Sports
Shannon Sharpe Makes Major Announcement Regarding His Media Career Amid $50 Million Sexual Assault Lawsuit. By Lou Flavius / TPS
Shannon Sharpe has announced a curious career decision following the $50 million lawsuit lodged against him alleging multiple incidents of rape.
Sharpe, whose media brand includes ‘Club Shay Shay’ and ‘Nightcap,’ was recently accused of sexual assault by a former lover, who’s looking to rid him of the aforementioned sum, rejecting an offer of $10 million to pursue a bag five times larger. The 56-year-old planned to embark on a ‘Nightcap’ summer tour with co-host Chad Johnson, but has postponed it for another year. “We’ve decided to postpone the Nightcap tour,” he said during a recent ‘Nightcap’ episode (H/T Awful Announcing). “We look forward to seeing you guys in the summer of 2026. It’s going to be even bigger, even better. Read more
Emotional Deion Sanders Has a Hard Time Grasping Reality as Colorado Coach Ends $5.5M Texas Chapter. By Utsav Jain / Essentially Sports
Coach Prime Deion Sanders is the legendary yardstick against which greatness is measured in the NFL and even in College Football.
The Colorado Buffaloes have just signed a $54 million contract extension. The mission is for Sanders to guide the students through the 2029 season. And as Coach Prime waits to spring back in action, he’s getting a little emotional, too. Read more
The Greatest Sports Photo Ever Made Turns 60.
When Muhammad Ali knocked down Sonny Liston on May 25, 1965, a 22-year-old photographer named Neil Leifer was ringside. Decades later, the image he captured still has our attention.
It remains surprising that the image we think of when we think of Muhammad Ali, among the most photographed athletes the world has ever known, was made in a youth-center hockey rink in Lewiston, Maine, in front of fewer than 4,000 fans. It’s even more surprising that Leifer’s photograph has, over the years, gone from ignored to iconic. Read more
NBA Players Whose Net Worths Were Never the Same Post-Retirement. By Thalia Oosthuizen / Gadget Review
The NBA has had plenty of superstars throughout its history. From Jordan to LeBron, these players often enjoy as much success off the court as on. Of course, not all of them manage to stay afloat following their retirement.
But you might be surprised just how many – and who – struggled to pay the bills once their time on the court came to an end. Keep reading to see if one of your favorite NBA stars makes the list. Read more
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