Month: July 2021

News & Observer: “One of the reasons Nikole Hannah-Jones turned down a professorship at UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media could be a problem for its future. The prominent Black journalist said she couldn’t work at a place named for the man who told UNC leaders that he doubted her suitability. Hussman was bothered by Hannah-Jones’ connection to ”The 1619…

TX Observer: “Twenty-nine years ago, Montserrat Garibay left Mexico City for Texas with her mother and sister. They were undocumented. At a public middle school in Austin, Garibay learned English. Later, she and her sister founded one of the first organizations nationwide of so-called Dreamers, young immigrants pushing for U.S. citizenship. Garibay became a citizen herself in…

WaPo: “In Louisiana, a state notorious for colorful politicians, Edwin Edwards blazed for half a century, a near-perpetual neon rainbow. The former Louisiana governor and U.S. congressman, 93, who died July 12 of respiratory problems, was a brazen practitioner of the corrupt-politics-as-theatrics style mastered by the legendary Depression-era demagogue Huey Long. Mr. Edwards served three…

NPR: “The city of Charlottesville, Va., removed a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on Saturday, toppling a symbol that was at the center of the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017. The statue — along with another of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson that was also to be removed Saturday — will remain…

Bearing Drift: “Lee Atwater’s strategy in this quotation from Alexander Lamis’s 1984 book, The Two-Party South, is on full display in the current Republican apoplectic aneurysm over Critical Race Theory (CRT). As Sir Winston Churchill is credited with saying, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”  Apparently, if there isn’t a crisis to use, the modern…

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “The voting rights group Stacey Abrams founded after losing the 2018 election to Gov. Brian Kemp, Fair Fight, reported Thursday that it has raised another $6 million in the past five months. That’s more than any candidate running for office in 2022, and puts the group over $100 million raised in the past…

NY Times: “As Texas Republicans prepare to force votes next week on far-reaching legislation that would introduce new restrictions on voting, Democrats are left facing a gnawing question: Should they fight or flee? The issue dominated internal discussions on video calls among Democrats in the Texas Legislature this week as lawmakers began a special session, with…

Political Wire: “A new video shows Virginia gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin (R) saying that he has to limit his antiabortion comments for fear of alienating independent voters, but that he would go “on offense” if he wins office and Republicans take a majority in the House of Delegates, the American Independent reports.”

WUNC: “In a detailed written statement, Hannah-Jones described her fond memories of studying journalism in Chapel Hill, but said she could not accept a professorship after how she was treated. She will instead accept a similar offer, with tenure, at Howard University, a private historically Black school. “I won the battle for tenure,” Hannah-Jones wrote. “But…

AP: “Indeed, the preacher-turned-politician spent the Independence Day recess hopscotching from an inland port in the conservative Appalachian foothills to liberal Atlanta’s urban microbreweries and sprawling public hospital, then the suburban defense contractors in between. At each stop, he highlighted the federal money he’s routed — or is trying to route — to his state…