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Shudu Gram Is a White Man’s Digital Projection of Real-Life Black Womanhood

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“It’s our time”: A record number of black women are running for office in Alabama

Nearly three dozen African-American women are running for office as Democrats in deep-red Alabama.

It’s an unprecedented number, according to Democratic party officials. And many are running for the first time.

Many of the candidates were inspired by Doug Jones’ Senate win, the #MeToo movement, opposition to President Trump and a desire to carry on former President Obama’s legacy.

Jameria Moore, an attorney, is running for a judgeship on the Jefferson County Probate Court.

“It’s so important that we step up, that we show the nation that we can lead,” she said. “That, here in Alabama, we’re ready to lead our state into the future.”

Cheri Gardner, a candidate for Jefferson County court clerk, says she felt “electrified” when Jones won.

"I don’t know if it was Doug Jones as much it was Roy Moore himself lighting the fire under African Americans and African-American women,” Gardner told NBC News.

Pamela Wilson Cousins is running for district judge in Jefferson County.

“If I ever thought there was a time for me to run, this was it,” she said.

Cassandra Gooley and Cynthia Ray, who work at the VA Medical Center, have been inspired by the number of African-American women seeking office.

“Women, and certainly black women, have been looked over in every arena,” Ray said. “It’s our time.”

Read more about the record number of black women running for office in Alabama here.

Corden | Meyers | Kimmel | Colbert | Conan

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Ugh

Tensions are rising between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s leadership team and his party’s ideological factions, with a renewed sense of pessimism creeping into the Senate GOP’s efforts to repeal Obamacare.

An amendment written by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) is fracturing the conference, with the measure taking center stage at the party’s first caucus lunch in nearly two weeks on Tuesday. Though the proposal to allow the sale of cheap, deregulated insurance plans is championed by the right, disagreements over the drafting of the amendment could delay or torpedo altogether the GOP’s healthcare bill.

“We should not be surprised if people are irritated with the Republican majority when we have been promising, and we do not deliver,” Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said on Fox News Tuesday. “I am very pessimistic.”

Privately, senators and aides offered even more dour assessments. Several said McConnell remains well short of the 50 votes needed to start debate on the bill.

Also short of support is Cruz and Lee’s amendment, which has had its future complicated by a game of telephone between GOP leaders and the two conservative senators.

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Oh dear! You might have to collaborate with those Democrats.

The biggest U.S. internet companies aim to marshal their millions of users Wednesday in the fight to preserve net-neutrality rules — a summon-the-masses strategy that successfully killed Hollywood-backed anti-piracy legislation five years ago but which may carry less power in today’s GOP-dominated Washington.

Google, Facebook, Amazon and Snapchat, along with an array of other websites and apps taking part in the “day of action,” believe a firehose of internet users can convince President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission to abandon its plan to gut the rules. The tactic mirrors the web “blackout” deployed in early 2012 to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, which lawmakers dropped after receiving a flood of phone calls and emails.

But the political winds in Washington have shifted. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has vowed to roll back the rules requiring internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon to treat all web traffic equally, and he has the commission votes he needs, along with the support of congressional Republicans and Trump. For an internet industry that until recently enjoyed a cozy relationship with the Obama administration, the odds of moving the needle are more daunting this time.

Still, activists organizing the Wednesday protest hope to make an impact.

“It was clear to us as we headed into this fight that we’re going to need one of these big moments,” said Evan Greer, campaign director at digital-rights group Fight for the Future. “It is a strategy that can make change even against what seems like insurmountable odds.”

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🚨 The internet needs you 🚨

You’re up again, Tumblr. 

Back in 2015 you demanded that the FCC adopt strict net neutrality rules and establish a free and open internet. And you won. 

That should’ve been the end of it. But apparently not.

The new head of the FCC wants to undo the net neutrality protections you fought so hard for.

His proposed changes open the door to your web traffic being slowed down, or even blocked altogether. You could be forced to pay extra to use your favorite apps. You could even be prevented from getting news from the sources you trust.

Title II protects consumers and democracy by ensuring all voices can be heard.

You know the drill. Here’s what to do:

The FCC is taking comments from the public, and dearfcc.org is making it as simple as possible for you to make your voice heard.

Go there now 👉 dearfcc.org ✌️

You’ll just need to provide a name, an address, and then say a little bit about why rolling back Title II protections is a bad idea. If you’re not quite sure what to write, here’s something to get you started:

If you need more ammo, feel free to quote these experts from our net neutrality Issue Time. TechCrunch and Battle for the Net also have some good starters.

Everyone is counting on everyone else here. Do your part and tell the FCC to keep a free and open internet under Title II. 

Do it

It’s crying funny… 

Oops

BREAKING: Major websites like Amazon, Google, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, AirBnB, Funny or Die, Dropbox, the ACLU and Kickstarter join mass day of action to save net neutrality on July 12! #NetNeutrality is essential for choice, competition, and free speech online. Find out how you can get involved at https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/

A week before Republicans gutted the filibuster to put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, nine senators gathered in John McCain’s office to see whether they could save the Senate from spiraling further into disrepair.

In the room were centrists like Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), who spearheaded the effort to recruit enough senators to avoid the collision course their party leaders were on, as well as some lawmakers who had distanced themselves from such talks but were willing to listen, such as Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).

Aides paced outside during the 30-minute midday meeting, hoping to keep away prying reporters. For several weeks, Coons had been asking himself whether the long-running tit-for-tat between the two parties over judicial nominations would ever end.

“Are we just going to sit here and pee on each others’ shoes for the rest of our adult lives?” Coons said of what spurred his bid to try and save the filibuster. “How does this ever get better?”

The second-term senator circulated a proposal calling on senators in both parties to admit they’d abused the Senate rules to the detriment of the institution — and commit to not do so again in the future. It was designed to be painful and cathartic: Republicans would express regret for blocking Merrick Garland last year; Democrats would do the same for a 2013 rules change that set the stage for this year’s nuclear option.

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Helps me make sense of the unthinkable happening.

The campaign, organized by Muslim-American activists Linda Sarsour and Tarek El-Messidi, initially set out to raise $20,000 for the 124-year-old Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery by the end of March.

It exceeded its goal by more than three times in just one day. Additional funds will go towards repairing vandalism at other Jewish centers around the world, according to the campaign.

This is love. . . This is dignity. . . This is how noble we are!

Enormously important, unprecedented letter to the President from 24 United States Senators, including Bernie Sanders, outlining how defunding the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities – which is Trump’s plan – will assault creative culture and the very fabric of American society. 

Since its inception in 1965, the NEA alone has given away $46 million in grants to writers. For a writer, an NEA grant can make the difference between taking a year off to complete a book and toiling at a day job. It isn’t hard to imagine that without these grants, some of the most important writers of the past half-century may have never published the works for which they are now beloved. (Among them was Audre Lorde, who spoke up passionately for the importance of arts funding.) 

Letter scans courtesy of the Academy of American Poets, who organized the initiative.

Let's hope he reads it. . .

Sen. John McCain, to Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press”

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(via politico)

And yet, we love you, sir

Evan Osnos, staff writer for The New Yorker, speaking with Terry Gross (via nprfreshair)

Merriam-Webster poked at the Trump administration through its Twitter feed, appearing to take senior adviser Kellyanne Conway to task for saying that press secretary Sean Spicer was offering up “alternative facts” about the crowd size at the inauguration.

“A fact is a piece of information presented as having objective reality,” the dictionary company said in a pinned tweet that linked to a Merriam-Webster posting about how lookups for the word “fact” spiked after Conway’s comment.

Conway, counselor to Trump, told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday morning that Spicer was offering “alternative facts” when he told reporters Saturday night during an impromptu briefing that “this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.” (Aerial footage and Metro ridership statistics show that attendance was down significantly from President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.)

“Alternative facts are not facts,” Todd responded. “They’re falsehoods.”

Merriam-Webster also noted on Twitter on Sunday that the word “feminism” was getting a lot of attention in the wake of the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday.

“'Feminism’ is our #3 lookup right now. It’s been trending all day,” the company wrote.

After someone asked on Twitter why the company is pointing out its No. 3 lookup, and not its No. 1 lookup, Merriam-Webster had a ready comeback:

“Our #1 lookup is ‘fascism’, which has been trending consistently for the past few months. We report trends when they’re new.”

STAY ALERT, PEEPS. JEEZ. We teach our children better

Michelle Obama spreads message of diversity in her last speech as first lady

By MADELINE CONWAY

Michelle Obama extolled the value of the country’s “glorious diversity” in an emotional address on Friday, using her last speech as first lady to reiterate the outgoing administration’s message that immigrants and religious minorities add to America’s strengths.

At an annual event honoring school counselors in the White House’s East Room, Obama urged young people to take pride in their varying backgrounds and seek an education to better the country. She teared up at the end of her remarks, describing being first lady as the “greatest honor of my life.”

“As I end my time in the White House, I can think of no better message to send to our young people in my last official remarks as first lady,” Obama said. “For all the young people in this room and those who are watching, know that this country belongs to you, to all of you, from every background and walk of life.”

“Our glorious diversity, our diversity as the faiths and colors and creeds, that is not a threat to who we are — it makes us who we are,” she said, after citing immigration and religious diversity as proud American traditions. “To the young people here, and the young people out there, do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don’t matter, or like you don’t have a place in our American story, because you do, and you have a right to be exactly who you are.”

“But I also want to be very clear,” she continued. “This right isn’t just handed to you. No, this right has to be earned every single day. You cannot take your freedoms for granted. Just like generations who have come before you, you have to do your part to preserve and protect those freedoms, and that starts right now, when you’re young. Right now, you need to be preparing yourself to add your voice to our national conversation.”

Read more here

We just love you.

Secretary of State John Kerry will lay out his vision Wednesday for the future of Israeli-Palestinian peace as his time atop the State Department winds down.

Kerry’s speech will be a largely symbolic attempt at breathing life into a peace process under severe strain, compounded in recent days by the United States’ abstention during a United Nations Security Council resolution vote last week condemning settlement construction in land claimed by Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

President-elect Donald Trump, a bipartisan group of congressional Republicans and Democrats, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had urged the U.S. to veto the resolution — to no avail.

The State Department has characterized the fierce outcry as a “sideshow” and defended the U.S. decision to abstain.

“I think this is all a little bit of a sideshow, to be honest, that this was a resolution that we could not in good conscience veto because it condemns violence, it condemned incitement, it reiterates what has long been the overwhelming consensus international view on settlements, and it calls for the parties to take constructive steps to advance a two-state solution on the ground,” State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters Tuesday. “There was nothing in there that would prompt us to veto that type of resolution.”

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Brave❤️

Trevor discusses Black Lives Matter, Colin Kaepernick and more with Tomi Lahren.

Duh! Lady! Shaking my head.😢

The final cold open before the election.

SNL BROUGHT IT HOME!!!!!!!!!!❤️

Read more from our pop music critic: “Is this rap’s real golden age?“

(via washingtonpost)

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