Pete Hegseth removes all women and some Black service members from navy promotion list

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, stripped nine navy officers including women and Black service members from a promotion list last month, according to a person familiar with the matter, resulting in an all-male, overwhelmingly white slate of 22 advancing as nominees to become one-star admirals...

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/03/pete-hegseth-navy-promotion-list

 

Weekly Roundup: The Qanon FBI Director and the Would Be King (Bradley Onishi and Daniel Miller; Straight White American Jesus podcast)

This episode of the Straight White American Jesus weekly roundup, sponsored by the American Humanist Association, tackles critical issues including:

• the nomination of Kash Patel as FBI director, 
• SCOTUS hearings on trans discrimination, and 
• the historical parallels to the current threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump. 

Brad and Dan discuss whether the current political climate is unprecedented or if similar struggles have been faced by marginalized communities throughout American history. The episode also highlights recent events, such as federal judges deciding not to retire to prevent Trump from filling their seats, and reflects on how to strategize against a potential decline into illiberalism.

Interview: 

https://www.straightwhiteamericanjesus.com/episodes/weekly-roundup-the-qanon-fbi-director-and-the-would-be-king/

Covid pandemic disproportionately affected younger Americans of color, says study

It's "really devastating, because these are individuals who could be contributing to our society and, more importantly, contributing to their families", said Utibe Essien, an assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, a primary care physician and one of the co-authors of the study. 

"The disparities happen in this working-age population where the implications are so much longer-lasting – that, to me, was the shocking thing," said Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the study...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/21/covid-younger-americans-of-color

Republican Tim Scott falsely claims Biden policy resegregates public schools | US elections 2024 | The Guardian

In fact, charter schools, which are publicly funded but which operate outside state school systems, are backed by federal government grants through the Charter Schools Program to the tune of $440m a year – a level that has remained unchanged since 2019 under the Trump administration. Scott's argument that charter schools create more diversity is also open to question. 

New research carried out by sociologists at Stanford University and the University of Southern California to mark 70 years of the landmark US supreme court ruling outlawing segregated schools, Brown v Board of Education, reveals that segregation has been creeping back up for the past 30 years. One of the main drivers of the revival, contrary to Scott's claim, has been the rise of charter schools, the academics discovered...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/26/trump-black-minority-voters-tim-scott

Ex-RNC Chair Michael Steele Rips 'Putz' Tucker Carlson After Racist Meltdown | HuffPost Latest News

The Fox News host is livid over the number of Black women being appointed to the overwhelmingly white and male federal judiciary...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-steele-tucker-carlson_n_63e1f82fe4b01a436396bc22

Opinion | Biden's judicial appointments are his biggest unnoticed success - The Washington Post

Biden has had 75 judges confirmed, more than any president at this point in his term since John F. Kennedy. - Seventy-six percent of Biden's confirmed judges are women, more than any president in history. Obama ended up with 42 percent women among his appointees; Trump had only 24 percent, while Bill Clinton had 28 percent. - A full 65 percent of Biden's appointees have been non-White, compared to 40 percent for Obama and 12 percent for Trump at this stage…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/09/biden-courts-judges-appointments-his-biggest-unnoticed-success/

New administration, new crisis over what kids are being taught - The Washington Post

… Rufo argued that the right had "frozen" perceptions of the term and were "steadily driving up negative perceptions." 

"We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category," he continued. "The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think 'critical race theory.' We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans."…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/26/new-administration-new-crisis-over-what-kids-are-being-taught/

The economic recovery isn’t lifting everyone – Center for Public Integrity

…For example, Black and Latino workers were more likely to lose their jobs during the pandemic, but they were also less likely to qualify for unemployment aid because many live in states that have made it harder to access the benefit…
https://publicintegrity.org/inside-publici/newsletters/watchdog-newsletter/economic-recovery-not-lifting-everyone/

Stephen Miller's 'America First Legal' wants courts to endorse white supremacy

… The suit takes aim at some $5 billion earmarked in federal aid for socially disadvantaged farmers — specifically Black, Native and Hispanic farmers who have been excluded from prior federal aid packages — alleging that the policy discriminates against white farmers...

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/stephen-miller-s-america-first-legal-wants-courts-endorse-white-n1266336

Opinion | The hidden scam behind Tucker Carlson and the right’s ‘replacement’ game - The Washington Post

...With or without immigration, the White share of the population will decline in the coming decades, census projections show. But if immigration is reduced or eliminated, America will grow older, with many fewer working-age adults available to support an exploding number of retirees. 

And that would not only slow overall economic growth, multiple projections have found, but also would increase pressure for cuts in the Social Security and Medicare benefits that provide a lifeline to the older Whites most drawn to the right's anti-immigrant arguments...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/23/tucker-carlson-replacement-rhetoric-scam/

Opinion | What an analysis of 377 Americans arrested or charged in the Capitol insurrection tells us - The Washington Post

... the people alleged by authorities to have taken the law into their hands on Jan. 6 typically hail from places where non-White populations are growing fastest...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/06/capitol-insurrection-arrests-cpost-analysis/

PolitiFact | COVID-19 relief for minority farmers not a ‘bonus,’ it’s for past discrimination

...The COVID-19 relief plan signed into law in March 2021 includes an estimated $5 billion, mostly to pay off debt, for socially disadvantaged farmers — those in groups such as Blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans whose members have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice...

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/mar/30/facebook-posts/covid-19-relief-minority-farmers-not-bonus-its-pas/

Trump blames low-income people, minorities for 'ruining' suburbia - POLITICO

A month out from Election Day, Trump is appealing to the voting groups that shored up his base in 2016 while Biden chips away at them.....
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/01/how-white-grievance-politics-informs-trumps-campaign-playbook-424590

Abrupt change to census deadline could result in an undercount of Latino and Black communities - The Washington Post

Census experts and advocates warn that the Trump administration’s decision to end the decennial count a month earlier than expected will result in a dramatic undercount of Black and Latino communities across the country, which could have grave effects on federal funding and political representation in their neighborhoods.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/abrupt-change-to-census-deadline-could-result-in-an-undercount-of-latino-and-black-communities/2020/08/09/1d074eb6-d8b7-11ea-930e-d88518c57dcc_story.html

‘Long overdue’: lawmakers declare racism a public health emergency

Long before a white police officer killed George Floyd and sparked nationwide outrage, long before Covid-19 began killing Black people at twice the rate of their white counterparts, doctors and health experts were raising alarms that systematic racism is itself a pervasive, deadly pandemic – one that kills both instantaneously and insidiously, burdens Black and Brown Americans with generational trauma, contributes to higher rates of infant mortality and heart disease, and even speeds up the ageing process.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/12/racism-public-health-black-brown-coronavirus

'All the psychoses of US history': how America is victim-blaming the coronavirus dead

Why do Americans represent less than 5% of the world’s population but nearly a third of the known coronavirus death toll? Not because of government incompetence, the Trump administration is arguing, but because Americans are very unhealthy.....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/all-the-psychoses-of-us-history-how-america-is-victim-blaming-the-coronavirus-dead

Republicans Keep Blaming Workers for Coronavirus Outbreaks at Meat Plants – Mother Jones

Trump’s HHS secretary Alex Azar said the virus was linked to the “home and social” lives of workers.
https://www.motherjones.com/food/2020/05/republicans-keep-blaming-workers-for-coronavirus-outbreaks-at-meat-plants/

AP poll: Hispanic, black Americans taking bigger financial hit from coronavirus | TheHill

Hispanic and black Americans have faced harsher economic impacts from the coronavirus pandemic than white Americans have, according to a new survey. Thirty-seven percent of Hispanic Americans and 27 percent of black Americans said they have been unable to pay at least one bill because of COVID-19, while only 17 percent of white Americans said the same in the Associated Press-NORC poll released Wednesday.
https://thehill.com/homenews/news/496497-ap-poll-hispanic-black-americans-taking-bigger-financial-hit-from-coronavirus

Black-Owned Businesses Could Face Hurdles in Federal Aid Program - The New York Times

Minority business owners have always struggled to secure bank loans. Now, many banks want to deal only with existing customers when making loans through the government’s $349 billion aid package.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/business/minority-business-coronavirus-loans.html

Texas closes hundreds of polling sites, making it harder for minorities to vote

Guardian analysis finds that places where black and Latino population is growing by the largest numbers experienced the majority of closures and could benefit Republicans ....
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling-sites-closures-voting