Racism

Rolling Stone reports: The disinformation operation was christened “Project Clintonson.” It brought together two notorious figures in Republican political circles, Blackwater founder Erik Prince and Trump adviser Roger Stone. Their objective couldn’t have been more explicit. “We do not need to make major gains among African American voters,” said a 13-page proposal for Project Clintonson that Prince sent to unnamed …

The Associated Press reports: Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner says the president wants to help Black people succeed but that they have to want to be successful. “But he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful,” Kushner said on “Fox & Friends” on Monday. Kushner also criticized people who raised their voices …

CNET reports: Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have made names for themselves on the internet as vocal far-right conspiracy theorists and orchestrating over-the-top media stunts. Over the past couple of months, as the election has neared, the duo has worked to deter Black voters from casting ballots. Wohl, 22, and Burkman, 54, reportedly created and funded a robocall campaign that …

The Washington Post reports: Madison Cawthorn, a House Republican candidate in North Carolina, created a website attacking his Democratic opponent that made a racist characterization of a watchdog reporter as someone who works “to ruin white males.” The website, MoeTaxes.com, about Cawthorn’s Democratic opponent Moe Davis, alleged that local journalist Tom Fiedler was working with Davis allies and described Fiedler …

NBC News reports: First lady Melania Trump appeared to express astonishment over Vogue magazine’s decision to feature Beyoncé on the cover of its September 2018 issue and to give her editorial input, according to a secretly recorded phone conversation shared with NBC News. “Anna gave the September issue of Vogue cover — complete, complete, complete, everything — to Beyoncé,” Trump, …

The Hill reports: More than 150 business and nonprofit groups are calling on President Trump to withdraw his executive order that prohibits the federal government, as well as its contractors, subcontractors and grantees, from offering diversity training programs on racial and gender biases, according to the Wall Street Journal. The group, which includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and dozens …

The New York Times reports: Amy Cooper, the white woman who called the police on a Black bird-watcher in Central Park, made a second, previously unreported call to 911 in which she falsely claimed that the man “tried to assault her,” a prosecutor said on Wednesday. Ms. Cooper, who appeared in court remotely to answer misdemeanor charges that she had …

The Washington Post reports: Normally, state troopers accompany Pennsylvania’s second lady whenever she leaves the house. But on Sunday, when Gisele Barreto Fetterman realized it was her last chance to get golden kiwis on sale at her neighborhood grocery store, she decided to run out for a few minutes on her own. While she waited in line, she said, a …

NBC News reports: Facebook said Wednesday that it had taken down ads from the Trump campaign that claimed without evidence that accepting refugees from abroad would increase risks related to the coronavirus pandemic. “We rejected these ads because we don’t allow claims that people’s physical safety, health, or survival is threatened by people on the basis of their national origin …

Britain’s Channel 4 reports: Channel 4 News has exclusively obtained a vast cache of data used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on almost 200 million American voters. It reveals that 3.5 million Black Americans were categorised by Donald Trump’s campaign as ‘Deterrence’ – voters they wanted to stay home on election day. Tonight, civil rights campaigners said the evidence …

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports: A door-to-door COVID-19 testing survey has been halted due to multiple incidents in greater Minnesota of residents intimidating and shouting racial and ethnic slurs at state and federal public health survey teams. The CDC pulled its federal surveyors out of Minnesota this week following reports of verbal abuse and intimidation, including an incident in the Iowa …

The Washington Post reports: In unguarded moments with senior aides, President Trump has maintained that Black Americans have mainly themselves to blame in their struggle for equality, hindered more by lack of initiative than societal impediments, according to current and former U.S. officials. After phone calls with Jewish lawmakers, Trump has muttered that Jews “are only in it for themselves” …

The Hill reports: President Trump on Tuesday extended his administration’s ban on training involving race- and sex-based discrimination to include federal contractors, doubling down on an issue to appeal to his base, and white voters in particular. The order applies to executive departments and agencies, the U.S. military, federal contractors and federal grant recipients. The president announced the order via …

The Austin Statesman reports: Williamson County sheriff’s office leaders rewarded deputies who used force on the job with steakhouse gift cards, according to two former employees, one of whom made the admission to Texas Rangers investigating the agency’s aggressive tactics. Among the deputies who received gift cards to places such as Logan’s Roadhouse were J.J. Johnson and Zach Camden, the …

Forbes reports: President Trump on Thursday announced several measures aimed at promoting what he called “patriotic education” while blasting progressive efforts at re-examining American history through a race-critical lens as “toxic propaganda.” At the White House Conference on American History, Trump took aim at the 1619 Project, a series of essays in the New York Times re-examining America’s legacy of …

The Washington Post reports: The 50,000 Baptist churches in the convention are autonomous and can still choose to refer to themselves as “Southern Baptist” or “SBC.” But in his first interview on the topic, convention president J.D. Greear said momentum has been building to adopt the name “Great Commission Baptists,” both because of the racial reckoning underway in the United …

Religion News Service reports: Leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the pastor of an AME congregation in Wilmington, Delaware, are condemning a Trump-Pence campaign ad that uses footage of Joe Biden kneeling in the sanctuary of a Black church, describing it as racist and demanding an apology. The Rev. Silvester S. Beaman, pastor of Bethel AME church that …

The New York Daily News reports: An irate woman called one worker in a Manhattan Verizon store a “fat ugly n—-r” and hurled a trash can at another — all because they asked her to wear a mask, shocking video shared on social media shows. Employees at the Upper East Side store on E. 69th St. store near Third Ave. …

Religion News Service reports: President Donald Trump’s campaign released a digital advertisement late Wednesday (Sept. 9) extending its argument that Americans “won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America” with images of angry or violent protest. But the ad, titled “Meet Joe Biden’s Supporters,” ends not with an image of violence, but with slow-motion footage of former Vice President Biden kneeling …

The Guardian reports: The NFL season on Thursday night got off to a dismal start, and exposed the pernicious sentiments of many in America, when some fans jeered what the league described as “a moment of silence dedicated to the ongoing fight for equality in our country.” The incident was particularly striking because it was meant as a show of …