Trump administration proposes dramatic overhaul of 2030 census that changes who counts as living in America - POLITICO

The changes, if approved and implemented for 2030, would have enormous political consequences. Census results determine how the 435 seats in the House are apportioned among states and form the basis for redrawing congressional maps. Race and ethnicity data collected through the census are also used to produce population data states receive for redistricting and to help enforce the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights laws…

 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/09/trump-administration-2030-census-citizenship-count-01068927

 

The Fear of Black Greeks - The Atlantic

But Greece is not as far from Africa as the North American continent is, and the modern construct of race, a pseudoscientific product of the Atlantic slave trade, would not be invented until thousands of years after Homer. Black people are depicted in Greek art. Egypt, Libya, and “Aethiopia” are frequently referenced in ancient writings. As the Black classics scholar Frank Snowden Jr. wrote in the 1970s, at least one of the characters in The Odyssey, Eurybates, is specifically described as “black-skinned and woolly-haired.” As the Stanford classics professor Sarah Derbew notes in her book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity, Black people are referenced in plays by Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. They also appear in the writings of Hesiod and Herodotus. One of the lost epic poems is The Aethiopis, in which Memnon, the Aethiopian king and an ally to Troy, plays a major role. 

 Black people were not as uncommon in the ancient Mediterranean world as Nolan’s critics seem to imagine. But even if they had been, color-blind casting makes sense as an artistic choice for portraying the classics precisely because race as it exists today did not exist when The Odyssey was written. And no contemporary actor can actually claim the same descent as Helen, who hatched from a swan’s egg…

 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/odyssey-race/688058/

 

US appeals court strikes down key part of Florida law restricting campus race and gender discussions

A federal appeals panel struck down a significant chunk of Ron DeSantis’s so-called Stop Woke Act on Tuesday, delivering another rebuff to the Republican Florida governor’s efforts to stifle free speech in higher education. 

 In a scathing order, judges of the 11th circuit court of appeal said by a 2-1 majority that the higher education component of the law – which prevented college and university professors teaching or sharing thoughts on concepts of race and gender – breached the free expression rights guaranteed under the US constitution’s first amendment. I

t accused the state of “puppeteering”: making the educators their mouthpieces by controlling what they can say or teach...

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/07/stop-woke-act-appeal-florida-desantis 

 

The white working class knows the American project isn’t working. Here’s why that will never matter to them

Du Bois understood that the racial order required by capitalism could only be maintained if white elites successfully manipulated the white masses against their class alliances with other races. They needed to be goaded into loyalty to a white supremacist planter class that struggled to keep its chokehold on the postwar south. Convincing poor white farmers to side with the wealthy land owners they otherwise begrudged required posing newly enfranchised African Americans as a threat to even the lowest white man’s standing...

 https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/ng-interactive/2026/jun/21/american-racial-anxiety-white-working-class-rights 

 

Voices of the Jim Crow South (1965) | Restored and Colorized

In 1965, filmmakers traveled through Lafayette County, Mississippi, recording interviews with local residents, educators, law enforcement officials, historians, and community leaders during one of the most turbulent periods in American history. These interviews capture firsthand perspectives on segregation, race relations, education, local politics, and daily life in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ3qDpJKcfo

As the U.S. turns 250, this historian has blunt advice: 'America has to grow up' : NPR

"America has to grow up. It can no longer hide in its adolescence," he says. "America imagines itself at once as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic. And to hold those two things together ... deposits the kind of madness at the heart of the country."…

 https://www.npr.org/2026/06/15/nx-s1-5856348/america-250-eddie-glaude 

Monster of 2025: Kavanaugh Stops – Mother Jones

The opinion argued that the administration's decision to use race as one proxy for immigration status likely didn't run afoul of the Fourth Amendment or the court's precedents. But, to make these arguments, his concurrence contradicted both daily news reports and the evidence in the very case he was ruling on. Boldly, Kavanaugh let neither the law nor the truth stop him from writing many stupid sentences defending the indefensible...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/01/monster-of-2025-kavanaugh-stops/ 

 

Trump’s focus on race backfires as voters punish economic failings

Work years ago by the economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote concluded that racial barriers – fear, contempt, mistrust – are a big reason the United States did not develop the rich safety net that the more ethnically homogeneous democracies of western Europe built to protect their people from economic calamities. Indeed, when he started building the American safety net, FDR tailored New Deal programs to exclude Black Americans in order to get white southern Democrats onboard. On the day he signed the Civil Rights Act into law, President Lyndon Johnson, a southern Democrat, adroitly observed to his aide Bill Moyers: "I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime – and mine." 

In any event, ethnic resentment has become the central focus of Trump's domestic policy…

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/18/trump-race-inflation

 

In blow to Trump, federal judges block new Texas congressional map - POLITICO

"The map ultimately passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor — the 2025 Map — achieved all but one of the racial objectives that DOJ demanded," U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Galveston-based Trump appointee, wrote for the panel majority… 

According to the court, the letter selected the four districts "based entirely on their racial makeup" and was the key factor that spurred Texas Republicans to take up the extraordinary redistricting effort. The bulk of Brown's 160-page opinion delves into the mindset of the state lawmakers and advisers who drew the new maps, suggesting that their motives clearly aligned with DOJ's race-based push and that their characterization of the new maps as based only on race-blind partisanship were not believable…

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/18/federal-judges-block-new-texas-congressional-map-00656680

 

Latino, Black students often blocked from algebra classes linked to good jobs - The Washington Post

"Because of implicit biases, racial biases, and mindsets about who is and who isn't a math person, Black and Latino students and students from low-income backgrounds — even when they demonstrate that they are ready and they are very clear that they are eager for those courses — are still shut out," Socol said. "Across the U.S., in every state, students of color and students from low-income backgrounds are often shut out of rigorous courses."…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/11/18/algebra-racial-disparities/

Weekly Roundup: Iran, the End Times, and Christian Nihilism + Appeal to Heaven Flag at the SBA (Bradley Onishi and Daniel Miller; Straight White American Jesus podcast)

Is Trump Preparing for a Holy War?

In this episode of Straight White American Jesus, Brad Onishi examines Donald Trump’s mixed messaging on U.S. involvement in Israel’s conflict with Iran—through the lens of evangelical influence. He unpacks how Christian nationalist leaders frame the conflict as a cosmic battle between good and evil, and how that spiritualized rhetoric could shape Trump’s future actions.

Brad also investigates the growing signs that the ideology behind January 6th is becoming embedded in U.S. institutions—highlighted by the presence of the “Appeal to Heaven” flag at key government sites. He then turns to the media’s uneven response to recent political violence, comparing coverage of two alleged shooters and what it reveals about race, ideology, and public perception.

The episode wraps with updates on military and judicial developments tied to the Trump era—and what they signal about where we might be headed next.
Interview: 

https://www.straightwhiteamericanjesus.com/episodes/weekly-roundup-iran-the-end-times-and-christian-nihilism-appeal-to-heaven-flag-at-the-sba/

Trump is using his executive order targeting the Smithsonian to rewrite history

…Trump, in his executive order expresses disappointment that the show "promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct."…

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/-trump-smithsonian-museum-executive-order-race-rcna198533

 

‘People will die’: alarm after US orders removal of identity references from anti-trafficking efforts

The US government has ordered law enforcement agencies, the state department, and some non-profit organizations working to combat sex trafficking to remove references to victims' LGBTQ+ identities, race and immigration status from their communications and websites, a move experts warn will endanger vulnerable minors...

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/mar/21/anti-trafficking-race-lgbt-immigration-demographics

 

 

Elon Musk blasts part of MAGA as "contemptible fools"

A virtual right-wing civil war has broken out over race, class, immigration and the future of President-elect Trump's movement, and Musk is increasingly at odds with Trump's historic base…

https://www.axios.com/2024/12/27/elon-musk-contemptible-fools-maga-doge

 

Silicon Valley Is Reviving the Discredited and Discriminatory Idea of ‘Race Science’ | Scientific American

Modern proponents of race science insist they're not motivated by racism but are simply reporting data on intelligence. This dubious claim was fostered by the publication of The Bell Curve in 1994, which propagated the idea that African Americans were intellectually inferior. 

This central thesis was eviscerated in scathing criticism by experts ranging from Stephen J. Gould to Noam Chomsky, many of whom noted the data presented were riddled with errors and spurious inferences. 

This fatal criticism however was not enough to stop even some Nobel laureates, most notably DNA double helix co-discoverer James Watson and transistor co-inventor William Shockley, from pushing discredited claims on race and intelligence. Overall their arguments about ostensible racial differences commit a statistical fallacy, ignoring extremely relevant lurking variables; while slavery was abolished in the U.S. in 1865, this did not magically alleviate massive inequality or the legacy of historical harms that persist still.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/silicon-valley-is-reviving-the-discredited-and-discriminatory-idea-of-race/

On Race, House Speaker Mike Johnson Says His Views Were Shaped By Raising a Black Child - The New York Times

"And I've thought often through all these ordeals over the last couple of weeks about the difference in the experiences between my two 14-year-old sons," he said in the PBS interview. "Michael being a Black American and Jack being white Caucasian. They have different challenges. My son Jack has an easier path. He just does."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/us/politics/mike-johnson-house-speaker-son.html

After affirmative action case, guidance explains how colleges can address race - The Washington Post

A Biden administration memorandum responds to the Supreme Court's rejection of race-based affirmative action…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/08/14/affirmative-action-college-admissions-guidance/

Opinion | The New Beneficiaries of Affirmative Action Are White Men - POLITICO

It is hard to avoid the upside-down nature of a decision that ends up privileging the very group that has historically been most advantaged. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson condemned the "perverse" nature of the SFFA decision, which reads a part of the Constitution aimed at correcting racial injustice as barring a policy that does just that. A recent challenge to Harvard's legacy admissions policy is also premised on the backwards aspect of a decision that bans express accounting of race while permitting consideration of far less worthy traits…

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/19/scotus-affirmative-action-admissions-white-men-00106595

The Supreme Court didn’t end affirmative action for white people - Vox

The Supreme Court's decision to effectively ban the consideration of race in college admissions reversed more than 40 years of precedent. It also left other kinds of admission preferences in place — ones that often benefit white students...

https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/6/30/23778906/affirmative-action-white-applicants-legacy-athletic-recruitment

Judge orders books removed from Texas public libraries due to LGBTQ and racial content must be replaced within 24 hours | CNN

Books ordered to return to shelves include "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson, "They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti and "Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen" by Jazz Jennings.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/01/us/texas-book-ban-removed-library-replaced-judge/index.html