Breaking News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

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• 
• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  5/23/2022
  

  Law Prof: Securing Abortion Rights Means Finalizing the ERA

  by Kate Kelly

  The ERA would anchor a constitutional right to gender equality that could support a legal defense of abortion rights, and has already met the technical requirements for ratification. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  5/23/2022
  

  Would We Be Better Off Without Philanthropists?

  Do the gifts of the super-wealthy cancel out the damage done by the unequal system that allows them to accumulate it? 

• 
• SOURCE: Texas Tribune
  5/17/2022
  

  Texas Librarians Face Harassment as they Navigate Book Bans

  While some librarians in the state have been fired for refusing to comply with bans, many others have or are contemplating quitting over political interference with their work and social media harassment. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/16/2022
  

  Inside the Reversal of the Montpelier Board

  The board approved the appointment of 11 members nominated by the Montpelier Descendants Committee, and the resignation of the board chair who led the resistance to the appointments is pending. 

• 
• SOURCE: Salon
  5/18/2022
  

  Buffalo Shooting Draws Attention to "Ecofascism"

  The ideology links far-right authoritarianism with environmental concerns through the idea that an excess population of nonwhite and non-western people are responsible for overconsumption and waste. 

• 
• SOURCE: Associated Press
  5/14/2022
  

  Report Shows Church-State Collusion on US Native Residential Schools

  The Interior Department report, quoting a 1969 Senate investigation, acknowledges that “federal policy toward the Indian was based on the desire to dispossess him of his land. Education policy was a function of our land policy.”

• 
• SOURCE: Woodrow Wilson Center and National History Center
  5/19/2022
  

  Washington History Seminar: New Scholarship on the Wars in Vietnam-May 23

  The Washington History Seminar discusses Christopher Goscha's history of the Vietnamese war for liberation against French colonialism. 

• 
• SOURCE: African American Policy Forum
  5/18/2022
  

  African American Policy Forum Statement on Buffalo Massacre

  "Racial terrorism would die out with the generations weaned on it—or so the more hopeful among us believed."

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/18/2022
  

  "Great Replacement" Shows how Many Americans Have Embraced Whites-Only Democracy

  by Adam Serwer

  Whether they blame a secret cabal of elites or the Democratic Party, proponents of "replacement" rhetoric share a belief that legitimate citizenship is racially exclusive and that legitimate elections require white voters to get what they want, echoing anti-immigrant and eugenics rhetoric of the early 20th century.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/13/2022
  

  Margaret Atwood: I Created Gilead, but the Supreme Court Might Make it Real

  "Women were nonpersons in U.S. law for a lot longer than they have been persons. If we start overthrowing settled law using Justice Samuel Alito’s justifications, why not repeal votes for women?"

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/15/2022
  

  "Great Replacement" Rhetoric has not Historically Been Out of Place in the Halls of Power

  Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo published a book in 1947 declaring that the failure to ensure racial segregation and Anglo-Saxon supremacy would lead to the destruction of American civilization. 

• 
• SOURCE: Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star
  3/16/2022
  

  Montpelier Board Appoints 11 Members from Descendants Committee

  The move may finally deliver on the board's promise to grant parity in the governance of the James Madison estate to the descendants of persons enslaved at Montpelier. 

• 
• SOURCE: Forward
  5/16/2022
  

  Zemmour Acquitted of Holocaust Denial after Crediting Nazi Collaborator with Saving Jews

  While there is substantial disagreement on whether Vichy leader Philippe Pétain's decision to turn over foreign-born Jews to the Nazis was motivated by a desire to save French Jews, a court ruled that the right-wing provocateur did not engage in Holocaust denial by endorsing that view. 

• 
• SOURCE: Library of Congress
  5/10/2022
  

  Dig Into the History of Baseball's Negro Leagues with a Quiz from the Library of Congress

  by Mike Queen

  Now that Major League Baseball is recognizing stats from Negro League competition as Major League achievements, it's time to learn about the top players and history of the league.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  5/5/2022
  

  How the Government Aided and Abetted the Theft of Black-Owned Farmland

  A group of scholars estimates more than 300 billion dollars in lost land wealth by Black farm families over the course of the 20th century, with less tangible but still significant losses in economic security and political influence. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/15/2022
  

  A Neighborly Civil War in Virginia over Street Names

  Leaders of a group of suburban Virginia homeowners who want to change the Confederate-related street names in their community have been accused of being puppets of George Soros and threatened. 

• 
• SOURCE: ChalkBeat
  5/3/2022
  

  Where Americans Agree and Disagree on Teaching Race in School

  Polls show that 2/3 of Americans think schools need to change how much attention they give to race in the curriculum, but they are split, along party and racial lines, between those who want more and those who want less, making this likely to remain a political wedge issue.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/3/2022
  

  Is Alito's Plan to Repeal the 20th Century?

  Alito's invocation of Plessy v. Ferguson as a reason to discard precedent is galling because his opinion would destroy the kind of protection under law that Homer Plessy actually sought. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  5/5/2022
  

  Why the End of Roe Isn't Likely to Energize the Democrats

  by Natalie Shure

  Until the Democratic Party and its pro-choice supporters decide to take action to fix the fact that abortion restrictions are already harming poor and working-class women, they are unlikely to win elections based on their nominal support for abortion rights. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Grio
  5/4/2022
  

  Smithsonian Announces Plans to Return Looted, Unethically Sourced Artifacts

  Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie Bunch III announced the museum's intention to be a world leading institution on repatriating artifacts and promoting reconciliation for colonialism through museums.