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: Vice
  1/12/2021
  

  Archivists Are Mining Parler Metadata to Pinpoint Crimes at the Capitol

  Before it was removed from Amazon Web Services, researchers archived a significant number of the posts on Parler, the network favored by many on the far right. That data could prove useful in figuring out what happened around and inside the Capitol on January 6. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/13/2021
  

  ‘World’s Greatest Athlete’ Jim Thorpe Was Wronged by Bigotry. The IOC Must Correct the Record

  A fellow Olympic winner contends that the IOC must restore medals and recognition stripped from Jim Thorpe; his violation of amateurism rules was encouraged officials of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and the American Olympic Committee who made the Native American athlete a fall guy. 

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  1/10/2020
  

  Black Southerners are Wielding Political Power that was Denied their Parents and Grandparents

  While the voter mobilization efforts that tipped Georgia's senate races to the Democrats have been much-discussed, they capitalized on a long-term shift in the Black population to the urban and suburban south, a "reverse great migration" that will be politically consequential for years to come. 

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• SOURCE: CNN
  1/12/2021
  

  Israeli Rights Group: Nation Isn't a Democracy but an "Apartheid Regime"

  B'Tselem declared that "the traditional view of Israel as a democracy operating side-by-side with a temporary Israeli occupation in the territories 'imposed on some five million Palestinian subjects ... has grown divorced from reality'." The Israeli embassy in London dismissed the finding.

• 
• SOURCE: Reckon South
  1/11/2021
  

  Capitol Riot: The 48 Hours that Echoed Generations of Southern Conflict

  Hours after Mississippi legislators took the final step of removing a Confederate emblem from their state banner, a violent white mob waved the Stars and Bars as it ransacked the U.S. Capitol. 

• 
• SOURCE: Politico
  1/11/2021
  

  Yes, It Was a Coup. Here’s Why

  Former Trump National Security Council staffer Fiona Hill says the events of January 6, in the context of Trump's refusal to accept the election results, meet the practical standard of a coup. 

• 
• SOURCE: Vox
  1/7/2021
  

  Are We Entering a New Era of Political Violence?

  Political scientist Nathan Kalmoe is interviewed about parallels to the political climate of the Civil War era.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/7/2021
  

  South Korean Court Orders Japan to Pay Compensation for Wartime Sexual Slavery

  A South Korean court ordered the Japanese government to pay direct restitution to 12 women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military. Japan has rejected the court's authority.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/8/2021
  

  We Need a Second Great Migration

  by Charles M. Blow

  Times Columnist Charles Blow relocated from New York to Atlanta and says that American democracy would be healthier if younger African Americans migrated en masse to the South. 

• 
• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  1/11/2021
  

  A Fraught Balancing Act

  Questions of free speech and incitement, plus the demonstrable falsity of many claims made by pro-Trump student activist groups, makes for complicated choices for university administrators who may decide on disciplinary actions against students believed to incite violence. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/12/2021
  

  The Respectables

  by Adam Serwer

  The history of racist political violence in the United States means no one should be surprised by the presence of the economically comfortable and professionally accomplished among the Capitol rioters, who believe their right to rule, rather than their subsistence, is threatened. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/8/2021
  

  The Smithsonian Is Collecting Objects From the Capitol Siege

  Smithsonian Director Lonnie Bunch III discusses the necessity of preserving evidence of the riot at the Capitol. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/11/2021
  

  Invasion of the Hippos: Colombia is Running Out of Time to Tackle Pablo Escobar’s Wildest Legacy

  Colombian officials failed to castrate the large and potentially dangerous animals when their numbers were small. Now the country faces a potential invasive species calamity. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/7/2021
  

  Now It Can Be Told: How Neil Sheehan Got the Pentagon Papers

  Award-winning journalist Neil Sheehan told an interviewer the story of how he got the Pentagon Papers, on the condition that the story could not be published while he was alive. His passing this week opens up new knowledge in the history of press freedom and the Vietnam war.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/7/2021
  

  The Far Right Told Us What It Had Planned. We Didn’t Listen

  The author of a book on white nationalist women argues that grievances voiced by Wednesday's Capitol building mob have long been clearly delineated in white supremacist literature. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/5/2021
  

  You Think This Is Chaos? The Election of 1876 Was Worse

  “I don’t really imagine Ted Cruz knows that much about the election of 1876,” said Eric Foner, an emeritus history professor at Columbia University and a leading Reconstruction scholar.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/28/2020
  

  The Complicated Racial History of the High School D.C. is Renaming

  Renaming Woodrow Wilson High after Edna Burke Jackson, who taught history as one of two Black faculty members in the years after desegregation, is an obvious choice. 

• 
• SOURCE: WBUR
  1/5/2021
  

  Pence Under Pressure To Follow Vote Certification Procedure But Also Please Trump

  Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer joins Here & Now's Peter O'Dowd to discuss the difficult position that Vice President Mike Pence is in ahead of the formal Electoral College vote certification in Congress.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  1/5/2020
  

  Josh Hawley Dodges Question During Fox News Grilling on Election Challenge

  Senator Josh Hawley's demands that Congress intervene in the electoral vote certification depends on ignoring that A: Congress formed such a commission in 1877 after three states failed to certify their vote and B: the resulting compromise forfeited the politial and civil rights of Black Americans. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1/5/2020
  

  The Senators Who Were Expelled After Refusing To Accept Lincoln’s Election

  by Gillian Brockell

  Not since the crisis of secession and the Civil War has the U.S. Senate expelled a member.