What separates him from many stars is the feeling he brings onto the screen. Some actors entertain people. Denzel reaches something deeper. Young brothers watch him closely because he carries intelligence without sounding preachy. Older men respect the discipline in the way he speaks and moves. Mothers trust the characters he portrays because there is usually some sense of responsibility tied to them even when flaws exist. A lot of young Black males have searched for examples during these years. Some had fathers guiding them daily while others learned from music, streets, church elders, or athletes. Denzel quietly became part of that learning process for countless homes across America.

When Malcolm X reached theaters, the impact inside Black communities felt immediate. Brothers who normally skipped historical discussions suddenly wanted to know more about Malcolm X. That alone says everything. Denzel gave the role spirit and fire. You could feel the transformation taking place through every stage of Malcolm’s journey. The early hustle. The prison years. The sharpening of the mind. The discipline. The growth into leadership. Young Black men connected with that because many understood what it means to struggle with identity while trying to become something stronger.

The performance never felt stiff or overly polished. That was the beauty of it. Malcolm came across like a living, breathing man dealing with pain, mistakes, purpose, and change. Plenty of brothers walked out theaters feeling inspired afterward. Some started reading more seriously. Others became more conscious about how they carried themselves in public. Certain men even changed the way they spoke to family members after watching the film. That role planted seeds. A lot of people may never admit it openly, but Denzel helped push many Black men toward self reflection during that era.

Years later, The Hurricane brought another unforgettable performance. The story of Rubin Carter struck nerves because Black men already understood what it feels like to be viewed unfairly. Denzel captured exhaustion in a way that felt painfully real. There are scenes where he barely raises his voice, yet audiences can still feel the anger sitting inside the character. That quiet frustration connects deeply with many viewers because countless Black men spend years swallowing emotions just to survive daily life.

What makes that role stand out is the dignity Denzel gives the character. Even while trapped inside terrible circumstances, Rubin Carter still carries pride and mental toughness. Black men recognize that spirit immediately. Some brothers have experienced unfair treatment from schools, jobs, police, or society in general. Watching somebody refuse to mentally collapse despite enormous pressure feels powerful. Denzel does not overplay the role with dramatic tricks. He trusts the emotion to speak naturally through his face and body language. That honesty makes the performance hit harder.

Then came Training Day, which shocked many people because audiences had never really seen Denzel step into darkness like that before. Alonzo Harris feels dangerous from the moment he appears on screen. Every city has men carrying that same energy. Charismatic individuals who know how to control rooms through fear, manipulation, and confidence. Denzel plays the role so naturally that viewers almost forget they are watching an actor. Black men especially understand the deeper message hiding underneath the character.

Alonzo represents what happens when power consumes somebody completely. Beneath the swagger sits insecurity, paranoia, and spiritual emptiness. Older brothers watching the film see warnings inside the performance. A man can have money, influence, respect on the streets, and still lose himself entirely. Denzel gives the character layers instead of turning him into some simple villain. That complexity makes the movie unforgettable. Young men learn that leadership without integrity eventually collapses under its own weight.

Not long afterward, John Q touched Black fathers in a completely different way. That film reflects everyday pressure many working men know all too well. Bills stacking up. Jobs wearing you down. Feeling helpless while trying to protect your family. Denzel brings raw emotion into the role because the desperation feels believable. There is nothing glamorous about John Q. He looks like countless fathers waking up before sunrise every day trying to hold everything together with limited resources.

A lot of Black men connect with the frustration in that movie because they understand sacrifice. Hollywood has spent years pushing ugly ideas about Black fatherhood, yet John Q shows a man willing to risk everything for his child. That hits home. Brothers sitting in theaters see reflections of themselves, uncles, cousins, and friends inside that story. Some viewers walk out emotional because they rarely see working class Black fathers shown with that level of humanity and love.

When Fences arrived years later, Denzel gave audiences another role that felt painfully familiar inside many Black households. Troy Maxson reminds people of older fathers and grandfathers shaped by hard living and disappointment. Men from certain generations were taught survival before softness. They carried pain quietly because life demanded toughness from them constantly. Denzel understands that world deeply, and it shows throughout the performance.

Troy frustrates many viewers, but that is the point. He loves his family while still hurting them emotionally. Black men recognize that contradiction because some grew up around older relatives who struggled expressing affection properly. The role sparked conversations between generations because younger brothers finally started seeing how unresolved pain can travel through families for years. Denzel never tries making Troy overly likable. He allows him to feel human with all the rough edges still attached.

What truly makes Denzel important to Black men is not simply talent. It is the depth he brings into the lives of the people he portrays. Whether playing Malcolm, Rubin Carter, Alonzo, John Q, or Troy Maxson, he treats each role with seriousness and respect. Young brothers watching those films absorb lessons about pride, accountability, discipline, temptation, sacrifice, and emotional struggle without realizing it at the time.

Even away from movies, many Black men admire how Denzel carries himself publicly. No constant attention seeking. No embarrassing behavior for headlines. Just consistency, faith, professionalism, and wisdom. Older brothers respect that because dignity matters in our communities. Younger men need to witness somebody successful who does not move like a clown for validation.

As Black audiences continue searching for substance, leadership, and authenticity on screen, it raises another question worth asking. Will there ever be another actor capable of carrying Black male cinema the way Denzel Washington continues to do across multiple generations? Hollywood changes constantly, but very few men command the same respect across age groups, communities, and decades the way Denzel has managed to do.

Now before somebody mentions Glory, Remember the Titans, Philadelphia, Man on Fire, American Gangster, The Equalizer, or another classic, understand these are simply a few personal favorites that stand out to me over the years. Truthfully, Denzel’s catalog runs so deep that every brother probably has a different movie sitting close to his heart depending on what stage of life he watched it in.

What we know is true is Donald Trump,  US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with a retinue of tech, finance and business people such as  Elon Mush (Tesla, SpaceX) Tim Cook CEO of Apple, Jensen Huang CEO of Nvidia, Larry Fink CEO Blackrock, Kelly Orterg CEO of Boeing, David Solomon CEO of Goldman Sachs, Sanja Mehrotra CEO of Micron, Jane Fraser CEO of CITI, Ryan McInerney CEO of VISA, Michael Micbach CEO of Mastercard, Dina Powell McCormick President of META his son Eric Trump and several others accompanied Trump anticipating making progress in accomplishing several key goals and objectives.

Their aims were to:

1) resolve the issue of rare earth minerals. China maintains a virtual global monopoly on these minerals which are crucial to modern life providing the main components for smart devices, military and high-tech items. Unless there were some super-secret meetings and negotiations of the Deep State kind going on behind the scenes, there was no mention of rare earth agreements or MOUs following the two-day meetings. It was almost as if they went to China and came away empty handed, unless of course there were secret meetings going on behind the scenes, (wink wink).

2) Open China to additional foreign investment, gain access to China for US banking, finance and tech markets and partnerships.  Open dialogue about Chinses electric vehicles, come to an agreement on fentanyl and its components,

3)Secure help from Xi Jinping to resolve the Strait of Hormuz impasse and assistance for some type of settlement of the Iran War.

But there were no announcements about China opening up its internal markets to US banking, financial or tech companies nor was anything mentioned about Chinese companies partnering with any of these CEOs on joint ventures, collaborations or strategic partnerships! Nothing whatsoever. Trump did say China promised to invest several billions of dollars into US projects and ventures but the Chinese were strangely silent on this matter. Trump said the Chinese promised to purchase more US soybeans and agricultural products as well as two hundred US Boeing commercial aircraft. Yet no formal agreements or contracts were signed!

I hate to be a Debbie Downer but, the US is no longer China’s main supplier of soybeans. China went elsewhere after Trump imposed outrageous tariffs on China during his first administration. China refusing to be intimidated or browbeat went to Brazil and Argentina instead, for their soybeans. This forced Trump to regroup, rethink his trade and currency policies and beg the Chinese to start buying US soybeans again!

None of this is new news. All of this information is on the public record in the public domain. Nothing was announced about President Xi Jinping agreeing to help Trump settle the Strait of Hormuz deadlock nor resolving the fallout from the US/Israel aggression against Iran. So, what if anything came out of this trip? It appears Xi Jinping is not about to interrupt Trump or bail him out while he is shooting himself in the foot.

What Xi Jinping did do was remind Trump about the Thucydides Trap which was a not-so-subtle rebuke. In effect Xi Jinping was telling Trump China is a rising power on par with the US which is a declining power; as the world clearly sees following Trump’s disastrous war of choice against Iran. Jinping also warned Trump not to interfere or publicly reference China’s internal politics and Xi was adamant about China’s red line against US interference with Taiwan reunification.  Trump got spanked in front of the whole world! But both men did agree to meet later in the year in the US.

In a face-saving spin, Trump claimed China agreed to purchase more US crude oil but again, no formal agreements were signed! But even if this was true, what most Westerners don’t know is, China has diversified its energy sources, China uses more coal, it has a massive oil reserve and it is building numerous nuclear-powered plants.

China is never going to allow itself to be dependent upon any other nation especially not a Western one! As far as trade goes, China wants to trade with the whole world not just the West. Here’s the kicker, the US only accounts for about 8.8% of China’s total global trade, that’s less than 10% and Trump’s foolish tariffs and trade wars have jeopardized that! The Southeast Asian Nations block accounts for 16.5% and the EU totals 13.1% both are larger portions of China’s trading partnerships although not in total dollars compared to the US.

Trump’s trip unless there were substantive secret meetings on the side was a nothing burger. In the final analysis it was more spin (BS) than substance.

Written by Junious Ricardo Stanton

In truth, the report finds plenty of blame. That’s the problem with losing a close election — and 2024, no matter how many times President Donald Trump describes it as a landslide, it wasn’t — is that almost everything you did “wrong” could have made the difference. Which doesn’t necessarily tell you what to do right, the next time around, or address the very real divides inside the Democratic Party.

The report faults almost everyone. The Biden White House is faulted for not doing enough during the first term and the 2022 midterms to prepare Kamala Harris to lead the ticket, which, of course, would not have mattered so much had former President Joe Biden not waited so long to decide not to run, but that’s another story.

The Harris campaign is faulted for writing off rural voters, relying too much on identity politics and not being tough enough on Trump. When the other side runs a negative campaign and wins, as Trump did here, the response is always that you should have hit back harder. With what, is the question.

One of the most striking conclusions and the most troubling is about the efficacy of the ad Trump ran attacking Harris on transgender issues — in this case, on her previous statement of support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for prison inmates.

The report cites the ad as “very effective,” and says that internal pollsters believed that “if the Vice President would not change her position — and she did not — then there was nothing which would have worked as a response.”

Are Democrats in fact too far out front of voters on transgender issues?

Do Democrats rely too much on identity politics, an argument that works better with the base of the Democratic party than it does with more moderate, independent voters, whom they need to attract?

According to the report, “Harris wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate. The math doesn’t work … You can’t lose rural areas by overwhelming margins and make it up elsewhere when rural voters are a significant share of the electorate. If Democrats are to reclaim leadership in the Heartland or the South, candidates must perform well in rural turf. Show up, listen and then do it again.”

As for male voters, the report argues that “Male voters require direct engagement. The gender gap can be narrowed. Deploy male messengers, address economic concerns and don’t assume identity politics will hold male voters of color.”

The release of the autopsy and all the discussion about why it took so long to release it coincides with a new New York Times/Siena College poll showing Democrats with a strong advantage going into the midterms, but also with deep divides and disillusionment within the party. While the left is the loudest force on the Democratic side, it may not be the most popular: a majority of Democratic supporters said that they were generally happy with the party’s ideological positioning, but 52% said the next Democratic presidential candidate should move the party to the center in order to win. Only a quarter said the next candidate should move the party to the left.

The Times found that more than half of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents expressed frustration with the party: “unhappiness spanned almost every part of the party’s coalition — including young, white, Black and college-educated voters — and was especially strong among Democrats least attached to the party, who are the most likely to swing elections.”

The real issue for Democrats is not why they lost the last election, but how they are going to avoid losing the next one.

Written by Susan Estrich

When I was being considered for a job in the Reagan White House, I had to reveal every cent I had ever earned from any job or investment (which was simple since I had no money), and everyone else who worked for the administration had to do the same. It was a pain, but I was happy to do it, knowing that I would be serving in an honest government. High-ranking officials like cabinet secretaries with substantial portfolios put their assets in blind trusts during their public service. Blind, meaning the principal had no control. And though the ethics rules do not apply to the president, past presidents put their funds (with the exception of U.S. treasuries and mutual funds) into blind trusts anyway for appearances’ sake. The reason is obvious, but since this is a time of foggy ethics, let’s spell it out: Government officials are in a position to steer policy and award government contracts in ways that benefit or harm private interests. By requiring blind trusts, we minimize the chance that a decision-maker is swayed by the opportunity for private gain. (Though opportunities to affect outcomes by individual members of Congress are more limited, Congress needs to reform its own practices on this score.)

Trump, naturally, defied this ethical norm outright. This week, we learned from NOTUS that he went on a share-buying spree in the first months of this year, purchasing stock in companies that were about to get lucrative contracts. On Jan. 6, Trump purchased between $500,000 and $1,000,000 (financial disclosure forms require a range, not exact figures) in Nvidia stock. A week later, the Commerce Department announced permission for Nvidia to sell chips to China. He also purchased stock in AMD, another AI chip maker, right before they too were granted the right to sell in China. Also in January, Trump purchased between $65,000 and $150,000 in shares of Palantir, days before that company secured a billion-dollar contract to provide services to the Department of Homeland Security. Trump bought shares in Axon, a taser manufacturing firm. Coincidentally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a plan to spend $200 million over five years on new tasers.

A White House spokesman helpfully explained that “President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public … President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest.” That is the definition of a conflict of interest. What do they take us for?

Remember the special forces guy who was caught betting on Polymarket before Nicolas Maduro’s capture? This dishonest master sergeant participated in the operation and apparently used his inside knowledge to bet $30,000 on the timing of Maduro’s fall, netting more than $400,000 because, lucky guess, he was right.

There were other suspicious bets placed on Polymarket just before major developments in the Iran war. Almost inexplicably well-timed bets were placed just before Israel’s attack on Iran, before the United States started bombing, before a ceasefire was announced and at other key moments. Many accounts, some opened only hours before, made tidy sums. Who else in the Trump government may have made these bets? Did the president, ever grasping for lucre, take advantage of this ultimate form of insider trading?

It’s worth noting that there was no “swamp,” at least not in the way Trump claimed. There are huge inefficiencies in the federal government, along with redundancies, waste and overspending. But the main issue was never that the “swamp” denizens were siphoning off government funds for their private yachts. The chief corruption in Washington before Trump came along consisted of elected representatives unwilling to make tradeoffs between tax cuts and spending, thus creating ballooning deficits.

Old-school corruption was comparatively small-scale. In 2015, the United States scored 76 (where 100 is clean and zero is totally corrupt) on Transparency International’s ratings, the 16th-least-corrupt nation in the world. Today, we are ranked 64th and dropping. There was corruption — no nation is without it — but Trump’s constant howls about America being a “third world nation” were not remotely true before he came to dominate our politics. Yet under his maladministration, we are making rapid progress in that direction. He crows that the United States is “respected” in the world now. Does he really believe that people respect kleptocracies? We are becoming more loathed than respected.

The American Bar Association offered a partial list of the pay-to-play transactions in the first few months of Trump’s second term. Coinbase contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, while its major investors, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, together contributed another $6 million to the MAGA Inc. super PAC. In the early days of Trump’s second term, the SEC dropped an enforcement action against Coinbase. Other crypto players — Ripple, Robinhood and Gemini — apparently seeing how the game is played, also made large contributions to Trump’s super PAC and were also rewarded by the SEC dropping charges. Ditto for Justin Sun, who purchased $75 million worth of World Liberty Financial tokens (putting money directly in the Trump family’s pockets). Not only were criminal charges against Sun dropped, but he was invited to a private White House dinner for top purchasers of WLF tokens.

When it’s too late to drop charges, pardons are for sale. A woman who donated $3.5 million to the MAGA super PAC was able to get a pardon for her father, who faced charges of bribing Puerto Rico’s governor. A healthcare executive who attended a $1 million-a-plate fundraising dinner with Trump secured a pardon for her son, Paul Walczak, a nursing home owner who pleaded guilty to tax crimes. The pardon freed him from prison and also from the obligation to pay $4.4 million in restitution to his victims. There are many others: Changpeng Zhao, Trevor Milton, Joseph Schwartz, Lawrence Duran and David Gentile — thieves, fraudsters and swindlers all. A whole cottage industry has sprung up consisting of grifters taking fees for getting pardon petitions to Trump’s desk. You may not have thought of Rod Blagojevich lately, but having received a pardon from Trump himself, he’s now in the business of lobbying Trump on others’ behalf. So are Keith Schiller, George Sorial, Jack Burkman, Jacob Wohl and Ches McDowell.

Which brings us to the putrid “deal” that is apparently in the works to “settle” Trump’s lawsuits against the U.S. government. Recall that Trump brought a suit against the Department of Justice for the Mar-a-Lago search and the Russia investigation, and against the IRS for the unauthorized release of his tax returns (which wasn’t the IRS’s doing). His original ludicrous ask in the IRS suit was $10 billion (two-thirds of the IRS’s annual budget) along with $230 million for the other inconveniences. As the judge in the IRS case observed, Trump was sitting on both sides of the table, and thus there is no actual case, just an undisguised attempt to loot taxpayers. She asked for briefs on this question due by May 20. Rushing to beat the deadline in which sanity might prevail, the administration announced that a deal is in the works to avoid the court altogether and hand Trump $1.7 billion in taxpayer dollars for a gargantuan slush fund. Under the terms of this deal with himself, Trump would agree to drop the $10 billion and $230 million suits in exchange for $1.7 billion to compensate anyone who claims to have been injured by what Trump considers the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department.

It’s just as grotesque as you imagine. Trump is reaching his grubby hands into the largest till in the world, the U.S. Treasury. Along with an apology from the IRS, the arrangement would also guarantee that the IRS would never audit any member of the Trump family ever again. As The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger described it:

“The members of the commission overseeing disbursements (of the $1.7 billion) would serve at Trump’s pleasure, and he’d be able to remove them without cause at any time. The commission would have no obligation to disclose its decision-making process for how to disburse the money.

“And then, of course, there’s the unbearable rottenness of the purported settlement fund itself: the shamelessness of Trump keeping a backdoor way to profit from it personally, the utter absence of any oversight controls that would even allow him to plausibly argue that the money will be spent justly, and the completely topsy-turvy travesty of creating a slush fund for January 6ers and other MAGA villains in the first place.”

The Trump administration already gifted $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbit. Michael Flynn and Carter Page received $1.25 million each. We can see where this is headed. The Jan. 6 rioters, all pardoned, will now cash in, among others. Will it include those who’ve subsequently been convicted of other offenses including possession of child porn? That will probably depend upon whether they can make large purchases of Trump cryptocurrency.

The damage to our civic culture is incalculable. Nations with high levels of corruption suffer from a suite of pathologies from crime to inequality to low growth to unhappiness. And what can’t be measured but is no less real is the deep sense of shame that living in a corrupt country engenders. The achievement of a well-run, honest government is something to be cherished. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we are witnessing the trashing of a carefully constructed, hard-won system. The United Arab Emirates is no less corrupt than the United States. So is Uruguay. And that was before the latest orgy of plunder.

Each and every act of theft and corruption is bad in itself and damaging to our national project. It’s something else, too — an offense against those who desperately need government help.

If Trump succeeds in looting $1.7 billion from the Treasury, consider what that money could have been spent on. In round numbers, that cash could:

— Fund vaccines for children in developing countries for 33 years.

— Fund PEPFAR for two and a half years.

— Restore funding cut by DOGE for medical research on deadly pathogens like hantavirus and Ebola.

— Restore Medicaid funds that were cut in the Big Beautiful Bill.

— Pay the salaries of 7,000 immigration judges for a year.

— Employ 40,000 home health care aids for one year.

— Buy replacements for some of the munitions Trump burned through in the feckless Iran war.

— Purchase 2,600 Stinger missiles or about 6,000 Javelin anti-tank missiles.

— Fund research to expand the use of mRNA vaccines (cut by RFK Jr.) which have shown promise against RSV, HIV and flu (in addition to the aforementioned Ebola).

— Fund studies or demonstration projects on mitigating the effects of climate change.

— Invest in biotechnology and defenses against future pandemics.

The list of worthy projects that would benefit the public, not just the kleptocrat in the White House, is nearly endless.

Trump’s claim that he would “drain the swamp” is a cosmic joke. His administration is an ongoing shakedown of the American people.

Written by Mona Charen

Official website; http://twitter.com/monacharenEPPC

All the while, a large sign that read “Jesus Saves” hung on the wall above the choir section. I told my mentor, who is a retired white pastor, my thoughts about the disturbing picture. I told him it was impossible for them to be Christians despite being in church. I asked my mentor for his thoughts because he has always helped me understand controversial issues from a white pastor’s perspective. He said they were Christians, but they were not Christ-like Christians. He went on to explain that the Black church not only sees Jesus as a savior but also as a liberator. I told him that while this photo was taken in the 1920s, the same spirit is present in many white congregations today.

The picture presents two contrasting messages within a building considered a place of service and worship to God. On the one hand, the symbolic meaning of the “Jesus Saves” sign is that it promotes the message of Christ as savior. On the other hand, the presence of the Ku Klux Klan in a house of worship exposes the unwillingness to accept the teachings of Jesus, which contradict their own culture of racial and religious intolerance. The Lord’s Prayer is a foundational Christian prayer taught by Jesus to his disciples as a model for how to pray.

The first two words of this powerful prayer are: “Our Father.” “Our Father” is an inclusive term that not only denotes the idea of family sharing a common spiritual father but also unifies all Christians, regardless of race, under one God, thereby making inclusion a biblically grounded doctrine. I agree with my mentor, they are not Christ-like disciples, but rather Judas-type disciples. Like Judas, they were, in some ways, close to Jesus but ultimately chose to betray him. In their case, betrayal came by rejecting Christ’s core message of love and compassion. By welcoming the presence of the Ku Klux Klan in a worship service, it confirms they are not Christ-like, but Christians in name only. Klansmen were established as defenders of white and Protestant superiority. The core belief behind white supremacy is that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are a superior race, and Protestants are a superior religion, making the ideal American citizen both white and Protestant. Even though Klansmen considered themselves followers of Jesus Christ, they were violent enforcers of racial and religious intolerance against Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and Black people.

When President Trump is joined by top administration officials and conservative Christian clergy in coming together on the National Mall in Washington for a prayer gathering, I have no problem with prayer. As a Christian, I have no problem calling on God to heal our land. I have a problem with Christian nationalism, whose supporters believe that the United States was founded as and should be a Christian nation. This belief is another example of how history has been reframed in ways to support conservative agendas and political ideology, which are actually exclusive of “others” and un-American. To say America should be a Christian nation eliminates the constitutional protection against government-established religion.

While a Christian may not agree with those of the Muslim or Jewish faiths, we have a Constitutional First Amendment to abide by. The First Amendment addresses the rights associated with freedom of religion by prohibiting the Congressional establishment of one religion over another and protecting the right to the free exercise of their chosen religion. Christian nationalism attempts to redefine the definition of what makes a “true American.” It is simply denying individuals their rights to be seen and accepted as equal Americans if they choose to practice any faith other than Christianity. It becomes an example of how Christian rhetoric does not automatically translate into sincere Christ-like actions.

“What should be a broadly unifying celebration has been politically hijacked and wrapped up in this MAGA narrative that tries to rewrite our history and promote the president’s agenda,” said U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. This divisive MAGA narrative erases the religious diversity of America and threatens the constitutional separation of church and state, framing what could be a unifying national celebration with a divisive MAGA political agenda. The daylong Rededicate 250 program is Christian nationalism, and Christian nationalism is white supremacy. When I see the Rededicate 250 event, I am reminded of the photo with a church displaying a “Jesus Saves” sign, and filled with people who embrace hatred and division. When I see the Rededicate 250 event, I don’t see true Americans, nor do I see true Christ-like Christians.

Written by David W. Marshall

Official website; https://davidwmarshallauthor.com/

One may purchase his book, which is titled; God Bless Our Divided America: Unity, Politics and History from a Biblical Perspective.

Indeed, as Nana Mwalimu Julius Nyerere stresses, our central and sustained efforts must be for the liberation and upliftment of our people. Thus, he states that “all the reasons for African unity can be summed up in one phrase – the welfare of the people of Africa”. And this refers to all Africans everywhere, throughout the global African community, continental and diasporan Africans. And I note and reaffirm the goals and goods, as Mwalimu put forth, of freeing our people from oppression, poverty, internal war and conflicts, and creating a context of security and peace infused and undergirded with justice, are still to be achieved and enjoyed.

The 1960s were decades, as we say, when the fires of freedom raged with revolutionary intensity on the continent and in the diaspora and around the world. And we were confident that Nana Frantz Fanon was right, that we were morally compelled to dare achieve a new history for Africa and humankind, “set afoot a new human being” and create a new context for their flourishing. Certainly, we were conscious of the power, perversity and missing human parts of  the oppressor, but we believed a people united and conscious of its enemy and itself could not be defeated. We reasoned that yes, a people in revolutionary motion could be interrupted, delayed, and even experience devastating setbacks, often interpreted as defeats. But ultimately, if they embraced a radical refusal to be defeated, they could not and would not be defeated and would eventually be victorious.

It is here that the concept and practice of audacious assertiveness is so essential and it is this spirit that we must recapture if we are, as Haji Malcolm said, “liberate ourselves from the bonds of white supremacy” and build the good world we all want and deserve to live in. When we speak of audaciousness and audacious assertiveness, we mean being self-consciously daring, defiant, fearless, innovative, risk-taking, outrageously in opposition to oppression, and again irreversibly committed to a radical refusal to be defeated. And it means daring to believe in our people and their capacity to be themselves and free themselves, and create and share goodness in the world. It perhaps will seem more aspiration than reality to talk of defeating the international corporate system of oppression and predation involving various forms of anti-human activity, i.e., imperialism, enslavement, colonialism, settlerism, genocide, ecocide and the savagery that accompanies them. But this has been the nature of our struggle to defy all odds and refuse to be disarmed, dispirited or diverted from the ultimate goal of liberation and ever higher levels of human life.

Here, I think of Nana Harriet Tubman, her courage and commitment, her refusal to be deterred by the odds against her and our people, remembering and daring to regain the freedom of our people who supported her and the freedom struggle. I think of Nana Jacob Marenga of Namibia, master strategist and tactician, uniting the ethnic groups into a fighting force and liberation movement and defying and defeating the genocidal German oppressors whenever and wherever they could in over 50 battles. And I think of our mother and father and all our mothers and fathers who were not declared soldiers, but in countless ways, contributed to the liberation struggle, kept the faith and held the line on the good, the right and the possible.

Clearly, we must love and serve our people, especially if we emerge as leaders. For as Nana Dr. Mary Mcleod Bethune taught us, “the measure of our progress as a (people) is in precise relation to the depth of faith in our people held by our leaders”. Nana Amilcar Cabral teaches us that “We must practice revolutionary democracy in every aspect” of our lives, i.e., shared power, inclusive participation, respecting each other, each other’s work and our shared responsibilities. And in doing the work and waging the struggle for liberation, he says, we must “Mask no difficulties; tell no lies; and claim no easy victories”.

As I have maintained since the 60s, following Nana Fanon, everything depends above all on the consciousness, capability and commitment of the masses of our people and our relationship with them. So all programs for African liberation must place their needs at the top of any agenda worthy of the name. And always and everywhere maximum participation of the people in building their own lives and future and choosing their ways and movement forward is indispensable. For the needs of the people are real and they deserve and have a right to a good, meaningful and fulfilling life.

In addition, we must continue to demand and achieve from our former enslavers and colonizers and current oppressors: long overdue reparations; debt cancellation; the end of resource robbery by corporations through predatory proxy armies, dictators and corrupt officials; return of riches stolen and compensation for those unrecoverable; and the end of violation of the sovereignty and self-determination of the countries of Africa, Haiti and throughout the world African community.

Also, we must continue to build and expand global pan-Africanism, stand in solidarity with all African peoples and other oppressed and struggling peoples of the world. Especially must we oppose the genocidal war armed by the UAE and others in Sudan; the savage imperialist oppression of Haiti; the genocide, ecocide and land theft by Israel against the Palestinian people; the wars of aggression against Lebanon and Iran by Israel and the US, in criminal partnership; and the Trump regime’s immoral and illegal blockade and its gansta threats to Cuba’s welfare, sovereignty and self-determination.

These positions are rooted in our self-understanding and resultant self-assertion as a world encompassing people who know themselves as a key moral and social vanguard in the world. Our task, then, is to know our history and honor it, as our ancestors, in any ways we can in this our time and place and dare to lay the basis for a future worthy of the name and history African.

Written by Dr. Maulana Karenga

Official website; https://www.maulanakarenga.org/

If the president wants to help himself and his party ahead of this year’s midterm elections, the most effective thing he can do is eliminate the tariffs. The evidence in favor of this move is overwhelming, and it comes from his own tenure.

As an obligatory reminder, tariffs are levied on American importers who pass the costs on to American businesses and consumers. Those insisting tariffs are “paid by foreigners” must now dispute not just history but the present.

The Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome and colleagues reviewed a year of data from Trump’s tariff regime and found that “the higher costs from tariffs passed through to prices paid by Americans at a rate as high as 96 percent.”

Using daily price data from major U.S. retailers, economists from Harvard Business School found that the 2025 tariffs raised consumer prices almost immediately, with imported goods rising roughly twice as fast as domestic ones and adding nearly a full percentage point to the overall Consumer Price Index by October 2025.

This finding isn’t unique. My colleague Jack Salmon examined 56 quantitative studies produced over the last 30 years and found 19 showing tariffs raise prices and zero showing tariffs lower prices.

This reality has a real impact on Americans. The Tax Foundation put the cost of the tariffs at roughly $1,000 per American household in 2025, with another $700 coming in 2026 from the Section 232 and Section 122 levies, which were left unaffected by Supreme Court’s recent rebuke. It shows up in grocery bills, appliance prices and clothing costs — routine purchases for working-class households.

The damage goes beyond prices. Salmon’s literature review finds 25 studies documenting negative effects of tariffs on productivity and economic output. None of those studies show positive effects. Across Chile, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Hungary, Canada and the United States, the pattern is the same: Lower tariffs raise productivity; higher tariffs reduce it.

What about revenue? The Tax Foundation projects $956 billion from the remaining tariffs over a decade, falling to $697 billion once the economic damage, including the uncertainty and foreign retaliation, is counted. That’s a sign of a bad policy.

To be fair, some supporters of Trump’s tariffs were honest about their impact. Isn’t that the whole point? Raise prices and hurt the businesses reliant on foreign goods and inputs to help domestic manufacturers. We’re told that conceding to the working-class white voters who demand protectionism is worth the price.

The political results are now available for inspection too. A new CBS News poll shows that Trump’s approval is underwater with most voters, including white voters without college degrees, among whom his approval rating fell from 68% last year to 46% today. This is unsurprising. The supposed beneficiaries of economic nationalism are instead its most exposed victims.

It didn’t help that manufacturing employment, which was promised to boom, kept declining throughout 2025. And economic growth decelerated despite the major investment and energy around AI.

The tariffs also produced a final insult: They energized the very Washington insiders the president promised to defeat when he first entered the White House in 2017. When tariffs are numerous, arbitrary and have an exemption process attached, every affected business must hire a lobbyist to survive.

Data from Lincicome and his coauthors show that “the number of registered clients for tariff-related lobbying increased by 218 percent in 2025 with respect to the previous year. … Meanwhile, trade-related lobbying expenditures reached more than $900 million in the first half of 2025 alone and were 28 percent higher than in the first half of 2024.”

All that lobbying pays off, as evidenced by how the global tariffs have become riddled with exemptions. It’s also good for lawyers. More than 2,000 importers have now rightfully filed suits (an expensive process) seeking refunds on over $160 billion in tariffs the Supreme Court ruled were illegally collected.

The swamp was not drained. It was fed. Small businesses, who usually do not have the luck or resources to access the right people in the administration, pay the full tariff while their larger competitors petition for relief.

The president still has time to change course. The economic case for dropping the tariffs is airtight. The political case is increasingly urgent.

Written by Veronique de Rugy

Official website; http://twitter.com/veroderugy

I went looking.

What I found was a paradox written in blood.

The man Thomas Jefferson called “the most learned and logical” of the founding generation was my fifth great-grandfather. In 1766 he wrote that Parliament’s fleets and armies might give it power, but not right. He wrote that shackles, however nicely polished, would never sit easy on free men. He was Jefferson’s cousin and political mentor. He helped invent the American argument.

He owned thirty human beings.

In 1769, in Jefferson’s first session in the House of Burgesses, the young man asked his old mentor to do one brave thing: introduce a bill making it easier for masters to free the people they enslaved. Bland did as Jefferson asked. He was denounced as an enemy to his country. In Jefferson’s words, he was “treated with the grossest indecorum.”

He kept his thirty slaves. He died still holding them.

That is the strange courage of the founding. A man who understood that government without consent is tyranny could not break the shackles in his own house. He indicted himself with his own argument. So did Jefferson. So did every Virginia patriot who signed his name to natural rights while holding the title to another human being.

They wrote the creed anyway. They knew it would destabilize them. And the argument they could not finish was picked up by the people they would not free.

A hundred years later, the great-great-grandson of the man they would not free left the place of his enslavement as a teenager and never looked back. He cobbled shoes. He preached. He kept a lighthouse on the same point of land where the patriot’s plantation once stood. In 1879 the people of Prince George and Surry Counties elected him to the Virginia House of Delegates as part of the most successful biracial coalition in the nineteenth-century South.

They abolished the poll tax. They tore down the public whipping post. They founded what is now Virginia State University. They rebuilt the colleges the war had broken. They funded free public schools for every Virginia child, Black and White. They built, for one bright moment, the Virginia the patriot could have written into law and would not.

The Danville Massacre of 1883 ended that coalition with bullets. The argument went unfinished again.

It is unfinished still.

Read the grievances in the Declaration of Independence one more time. Standing armies in our streets without the consent of our legislatures. The military rendered superior to the civil power.

Quartering armed troops among us. The protection of armed men, by mock trial, from punishment for murders committed against us.

Last June the President federalized California National Guardsmen and active-duty Marines and sent them into Los Angeles over the governor’s objection. A federal judge ruled it violated the Posse Comitatus Act. Patrick Henry warned of exactly this in 1788. He used almost the same words.

The Fourth Amendment was written because British officers used general warrants — blank checks to search any home, any paper, any person. In 2024 the Fifth Circuit ruled that geofence warrants, which sweep up the data of everyone near a crime scene, are “modern-day general warrants” forbidden by the Constitution. The court named the colonial writs of assistance.

Section 702 of FISA lets the government query Americans’ communications — swept up in surveillance of foreign targets — without a warrant. The 1033 Program has poured seven billion dollars of military gear into ten thousand local police departments. Breonna Taylor was killed in her bed. Amir Locke was killed in his sleep. Both by officers serving no-knock warrants. Both, in the language of 1776, victims of armed troops quartered among us, protected from punishment by a mock trial.

This is not a left issue. It is not a right issue. Ron Wyden and Rand Paul wrote the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act together. The ACLU and Cato agree. The grievances are not partisan because the grievances are not new. They are the same grievances written in the same hand against the same kind of power.

The patriot understood the principle and could not live by it. His descendant lived it and was outvoted by force. My grandmother carried the weight of that unfinished business her whole life and never put it down.

It was unfinished in 1776. Unfinished in 1865. Unfinished in 1965.

It is unfinished now.

And it is ours to finish.

Written by Ben Jealous

Official website; https://twitter.com/BenJealous