By Sikivu Hutchinson, The Humanist — On the bustling streets of Kensington in London last week, one of the Black women I asked to comment on the recent election of…
By Igor Derysh, Salon — The FBI ranked black nationalists and animal rights activists as bigger threats than white supremacists and terror groups like al-Qaida among their official counterterrorism priorities, according to leaked FBI documents obtained by The Young Turks. The documents show that the FBI’s official Consolidated Strategy Guide, which lists the bureau’s counterterrorism priorities, continues to focus on “black identity extremists,” well after the bureau assured Democrats in Congress that it would stop using…
The author, Burt Neuborne, is one of America’s top civil liberties lawyers, and questions whether federal government can contain Trump and GOP power grabs. By Steven Rosenfeld — A new…
By Barbara Rodriguez, Des Moines Register — U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris says she supports studying reparations, but she’s not sure what any resultant program would look like. The senator from California and Democratic presidential hopeful said Sunday during a Des Moines Register editorial board meeting that the idea, which would grant compensation to individuals impacted by slavery and racial discrimination, is complex and deserves to be examined carefully. “This stuff…
By Timothy Robustelli and Andrew Hagopian — On Wednesday the USDA will hold a listening session to seek public input on the issue of heirs property, the leading cause of…
The same anxiety that drives white supremacists has motivated Republicans to disenfranchise populations that don’t vote for them. By Luke Darby, The Guardian — Before he opened fire on an…
By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout — In the immediate aftermath of the massacres in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton, Donald Trump actually began to contemplate doing a tiny sliver of the right thing. In doing so, he ran straight into the teeth of the Second Amendment, without doubt, the most lethally misunderstood corner of the U.S. Constitution. On the Sunday after the attacks, Trump reached out to Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Sen.…
By R. Drew Smith, RNS — American religion and politics have been stubbornly connected — except where we pretend they aren’t. Despite constitutional separations between church and state, religion has been more closely tied to politics and politics more closely tied to religion than most care to admit. And yet, advocates for international religious freedom often treat religious freedom and political freedom as totally separate and distinct domains. This separation…
By Dr. Keith Magee — America is experiencing the most perilous of times in recent history as the result of its president, Donald Trump. Even though Monday morning he stepped…
In theory, a president can offer comfort at times like these. But this one would prefer to hurl insults. By Richard Wolffe, The Guardian — In normal American mass murders – because such horrors have become so astonishingly normal – the president usually plays the role of some great but helpless comfort blanket. He may be unable to break the NRA’s cold, dead grip on the Republican party, but he…
By Paul LeBlanc, CNN — Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Thursday said “systemic racism” in the US is a “white problem” in the wake of two mass shootings in the US last weekend — one of which involved a white supremacist suspect. Speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Miami, Buttigieg said, “We are by no means even halfway done dealing with systemic racism in this country.…
WASHINGTON — Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-43) released a statement in response to the escalation of Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Donald Trump announced last week that he will impose…