We begin this Juneteenth holiday with Jazmyne Owens of the New America blog and the urgency of protecting the Juneteenth holiday and the history behind it.
On June 19, 1865, a Union army under the leadership of General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and announced that all enslaved African Americans were free—two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed, and two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered, ending the Civil War. Despite the enormous economic and social impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the United States, Juneteenth only became a federal holiday in 2021. The first Juneteenth celebration, however, took place in 1866 and Black communities have been celebrating it on a yearly basis ever since. [...]
False distortions of history, especially to serve a political agenda, are not new. During the Civil War, propagandists across the South referred to the war as one “of Northern Aggression,” or “the War Between the States,” ignoring the role that slavery played in the Confederacy’s secession from the Union. While wholly untrue, that version of history, now known as “the Lost Cause of the Confederacy”—or simply “the Lost Cause”—took deep root in the South. [...]
Reframing history to erase acts of violence against African Americans and other groups is seeing a resurgence today. In President Trump’s first term, his administration created the 1776 Commission to promote politicized narratives that historians have called inaccurate. In his second term, the administration is committed to weakening the public education system by dismantling the functionality of the Department of Education in an attempt to close it, and slashing funding for vital public education programs. It is also worth mentioning that the administration is currently receiving a lot of legal pushback against their actions, including over several executive orders that embody alarming government overreach by undermining civil rights enforcement and asserting federal oversight in schools and classrooms.
Former President Joe Biden will attend a Juneteenth celebration at the historic Reedy Chapel A.M.E. Church in Galveston, Texas later today.
Elizabeth Bumiller of The New York Times looks at the “specter” of the Iraq War weighing over the indecisive tacky shoe salesman’s decisions on whether to enter into Israel’s war with Iran.
The specter of Iraq now hangs over a deeply divided, anxious Washington. President Trump, who campaigned against America’s “forever wars,” is pondering a swift deployment of American military might in Iran. This time there are not some 200,000 American troops massed in the Middle East, or antiwar demonstrations around the world. But the sense of dread and the unknown feels in many ways the same. [...]
There are many similarities. The Bush administration and its allies saw the invasion of Iraq as a “cakewalk” and promised that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators. There were internal disputes over the intelligence that justified the war. A phalanx of neoconservatives pushed hard for the chance to get rid of Saddam Hussein, the longtime dictator of Iraq.
And America held its breath waiting for President George W. Bush to announce a final decision.
Today Trump allies argue that coming to the aid of Israel by dropping 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs on Fordo, Iran’s most fortified nuclear site, could be a one-off event that would transform the Middle East. There is a dispute over intelligence between Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, who said in March that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon, and Mr. Trump, who retorted on Tuesday that “I don’t care what she said.” Iran, he added, was in fact close to a nuclear weapon.
Alex Hinton, writing for The Conversation, has an answer for a persistent question within the comment section of cbastian’s rec list diary: There are no “lone wolves.”
After decades of research on numerous attacks that have left scores dead, we have learned that extremists are almost always part of a pack, not lone wolves. But the myth of the lone wolf shooter remains tenacious, reappearing in media coverage after almost every mass shooting or act of far-right extremist violence. Because this myth misdirects people from the actual causes of extremist violence, it impedes society’s ability to prevent attacks. [...]
This was true long before the social media age. Take Timothy McVeigh. He is often depicted as the archetypal lone wolf madman who blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995.
In fact, McVeigh was part of a pack. He had accomplices and was connected across the far-right extremist landscape.[...]
How did the lone-wolf metaphor come to misinform the public’s view of extremists, and why is it so tenacious?
Part of the answer is linked to white supremacist Louis Beam, who wrote the essay “Leaderless Resistance” in 1983. In it, he called for far-right extremists to act individually or in small groups that couldn’t be traced up a chain of command. According to his lawyer, McVeigh was one of those influenced by Beam’s call.
Sara Talpos of Undark points to a Civil War-era law called The False Claims Act that hangs over NIH funding for universities.
In conversations with Michigan scientists, and in internal communications obtained by Undark, administrators explained the reason for the delays: University officials were concerned about new language in NIH grant notices. That language said that universities will be subject to liability under a Civil War-era statute called the False Claims Act if they fail to abide by civil rights laws and a Jan. 20 executive order related to gender.
For the most part, public attention to NIH funding has focused on what the new Trump administration is doing on its end, including freezing and terminating grants at elite institutions for alleged Title VI and IX violations, and slashing funding for newly disfavoredareas of research. The events in Ann Arbor show how universities themselves are struggling to cope with a wave of recent directives from the federal government.
The new terms may expose universities to significant legal risk, according to several experts. “The Trump administration is using the False Claims Act as a massive threat to the bottom lines of research institutions,” said Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan, who served as general counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services during the Biden administration. (Bagenstos said he has not advised the university’s lawyers on this issue.) That law entitles the government to collect up to three times the financial damage. “So potentially you could imagine the Trump administration seeking all the federal funds times three that an institution has received if they find a violation of the False Claims Act.”
Such an action, Bagenstos and another legal expert said, would be unlikely to hold up in court. But the possibility, he said, is enough to cause concern for risk-averse institutions.
University of Rhode Island President Marc Parlange pens an oped for Science that public land-grant colleges and universities are as threatened (if not more so) by the Trump regime’s attack on academia as the Harvards, Columbias, Berkeleys, and Michigans.
Today, there are 105 public and 7 private land-grant institutions, serving students in every state, the District of Columbia, and 5 inhabited US territories. This network includes 19 Historically Black and 35 Tribal Colleges and Universities. These institutions continue to embody the land-grant research mission, educating nurses who staff community hospitals, teachers working in public schools, and engineers translating research into companies. Students in land-grant schools are often the first in their families to attend college, and faculty research is tied to both local industries and national priorities. Defunding these universities doesn’t punish a few—it hurts working families, veterans, immigrants, and young people striving for something better. In attacking these institutions, critics irreparably harm the people and the nation that these universities were built to serve.
Public research institutions are as vital to the national research enterprise as their billion-dollar–endowed private counterparts. These schools are the lifeblood of local communities and are especially vulnerable to budget cuts and federal policy shifts. There are 187 universities designated “R1”—a distinction given to schools that conduct the most intensive and high-impact research in the nation. They include universities like URI, whose impact far outpaces limited research budgets, and schools that invest billions each year in research. But keeping national research efforts strong means supporting all R1 universities. These universities are where research shapes teaching and where solutions are developed by directly addressing local needs. When they falter, there is a ripple effect on everyday lives.
Unfortunately, we are seeing this now. For example, URI—Rhode Island’s flagship research university—has received termination notices on more than 25 awards totaling $49 million. Critical initiatives have been halted, including coastal resiliency efforts and Department of Defense projects. Public health research programs have been eliminated, including those focused on community health and infectious disease prevention. Awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that support students in biomedical research have been canceled. Grant-funded jobs have been cut, affecting the employment of local residents.
Will Pattiz and More Than Just Parks report for the “More Than Just Parks” Substack that one of the Big Oo-gly Budget Bill contains provisions that would result in a massive loss of public lands.
The Senate budget bill includes two provisions that would trigger the largest loss of public land in modern history.
First, it mandates the sale of 3 million acres of federal land. This land will be sold, full stop. There is no requirement for public input, environmental review, tribal consultation, or resource assessment. It will be auctioned off whether the public wants it or not.
Second, it grants the Secretary of the Interior authority to sell an additional 253 million acres at their discretion. That amounts to 40 percent of all federal public land.
There are no rules on how much land can be sold, how fast it can be moved, or who can buy it. There is no guarantee of public review. There is no conservation filter. There is nothing in the bill that protects ecologically sensitive areas, sacred sites, or places used for hunting, fishing, or recreation.
The language sounds sterile.
“Disposal.”
“Divestment.”
“Asset management.”
But make no mistake. This is a plan to break apart the public estate and transfer it to private hands.
Finally today, James Thomas of The New York Times writes about the cultural significance of the “peacock chair” to the Black experience.
Many cultural groups make a chair part of their rites. An Israeli version of the hora folk dance, where honorees are hoisted high above the crowd in chairs, is often done at Jewish weddings and mitzvah ceremonies. There’s often a thronelike seat reserved for the guest of honor at a quinceañera, the coming-of-age gala that celebrates Latino girls (and increasingly in the United States, boys), as they turn 15.
But in Black social traditions, there’s no singular event for the [peacock] chair, though it’s been a fixture in baby showers, prom celebrations and nightclub foyers. “I can put it in the middle of the street and people come to me asking if they can sit in it,” said Scheherazade Tillet, an artist who uses the chair in the girls’ leadership and visual arts trainings she co-founded in Chicago. As a prop in her portraiture classes, she observes that sitters seldom need coaching to look regal. “There’s something about it that allows them, without explanation, to naturally reflect self love and majesty.”
It also instantly signals community pride and dignity, especially among people who were moved by Newton’s photo. The funk maestro George Clinton recreated this scene when he wanted to summon ideas of solidarity and strength for the cover of Funkadelic’s 1979 album “Uncle Jam Wants You.” “Huey Newton in that chair or that chair period, you know, had culturally become kind of a leader’s throne or a sign of power, of unity,” he said in an interview.
Yes, I know of a couple of peacock chairs owned by family members but...you (well, we) can't sit on them for too long!
Try to have the best possible day everyone!
