Politics
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Should Black People Meet With Donald Trump?
If President-elect Donald J. Trump contacted you for a meeting, would you take it? Is any and every black person who acquiesces to meeting with Trump a sellout? Would you be a coon, would I be an Uncle Tom, for giving Trump my time? These questions have been floating around since a few of “the…
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Obama Has Set a Record for Commuting Sentences, but Advocates Push for More Before Trump Takes Office
President Barack Obama granted another round of commutations and pardons Monday, commuting the sentences of 153 people and pardoning 78 others. Among them is Kendrick Tyshawn Akins of Coppell, Texas, who was sentenced to life for conspiracy to manufacture, distribute or possess cocaine, cocaine base or marijuana. Obama commuted his sentence to 240 months of…
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Black Federal Workers in ‘Wait and See’ Mode Over Looming Trump Presidency
Black federal workers in Washington, D.C., are used to working under Democratic administrations and Republican administrations, all while acknowledging that even if a president’s policies differ from their own, they have a duty to their agencies to keep the government humming along. But what if the new president is thought to be a racist, who…
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Donald Trump, Racist-in-Chief: Here Are the 10 Most Racist Things He’s Done So Far
We know that President-elect Trump is a racist—or, at the very least, racist-adjacent. Like no other before him, Trump won the 2016 presidential election because much of white America underestimated the level of white supremacy on which this country was founded. It is this supremacy that allowed Trump to claim that he didn’t know David…
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Donald Trump’s Empathy Chip Is Missing, and That’s a Problem
There’s a multitude of reasons that Donald Trump is not qualified to be president: He has zero foreign policy experience; he has repeatedly been accused of sexual assault; he has countless failed businesses and questionable business practices, and the temperament of an indignant 8-year-old. The list is endless. But for me, the reason is much…
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Trump Has Threatened to Roll Back US Ties With Cuba, but Will He?
Marla Recio Carbajal got her master’s degree in international business this year from the University of California, San Diego. But now she’s the founder and president of Havana Reverie, an upscale event-planning firm that caters to Americans visiting Cuba for everything from corporate events to weddings. She traveled from Havana to Washington, D.C., last week…
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Trust but Don’t Verify: How WikiLeaks Became the World’s Pawnshop
After a slow trickle of stories over the better part of 2016, the CIA has released a statement claiming that the Russians used cyberwarfare to attack the U.S. election. Russian agents spread disinformation through “fake news” and pro-Donald Trump Twitter bots, attacked Democratic congressional candidates, attempted to hack voter information in various states, and funneled information from hacked emails…
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Canaries in a Coal Mine: Black Communities Could Suffer Under Trump’s Energy and Climate Policies
President-elect Donald Trump dropped a lump of coal into the stockings of environmentalists with his nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency. The selection of Pruitt, who joined a coalition of state attorneys general in suing the agency he’s been nominated to lead over its Clean Power Plan, and…
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Ex-Congressman Chaka Fattah Sentenced to 10 Years, but His Supporters Still Question the Case Against Him
Typically, when elected officials are accused of high crimes, convicted and sentenced, their colleagues, friends and former staff vanish. But the road that brought a powerful political career to a devastating halt has been slightly different for former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.). Some are still questioning the prosecution of the former congressman, who was sentenced…
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Trevor Noah, Tomi Lahren and When Black Twitter Gets It Wrong
In the summer of 2007, I spent time in Johannesburg, South Africa, working with government officials and activists to improve local elections. South Africans were generally friendly, but I was struck by how optimistic they were about the future of the country even though apartheid had only ended, like, 15 minutes ago (1991, to be exact).…