The Trump administration’s actions to undermine forums at the UN designed to promote the rights and equality of people of African descent will be a stain on our nation’s history, writes @desireecsmith.bsky.social.
Meet Jeremy Carl, Trump’s nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations.
Even he knows his racist and antisemitic comments make him unqualified to serve as an American diplomat — he tried to delete them. 1/2
The U.S. is making history again - but not in a good way. For the first time, a UN member state is withdrawing from the Universal Periodic Review, one of the core human rights instruments…and it’s the U.S.
@catherinepowellesq.bsky.social,
Beth Van Schaack & I wrote about this dangerous move 👇🏾
I wrote this with two brilliant colleagues because what is happening at the State Department should concern every American.
“We fear that America’s retreat from human rights and democracy on the global stage is a preview for more repression to come here at home.”
www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...
America is beautiful, contradictory, unfinished. I am proud of our country even as we constantly strive to make it better, to protect and deepen our democracy, to fulfill its promise for each and every person who calls it home.
Happy Independence Day. No Kings in America.
There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they'll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they'd tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead. No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.
One of many moments in Omar El Akkad’s new book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” that will stop you in your tracks.
Background is a photo of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery. Text on the photo: Panel Discussion “The Past is Never Dead”: U.S. Perspectives on History, Memory, and Current Challenges. Amerikahaus Munich, Friday, March 28, 2025 at 7 p.m. Panelists: Magaret Huang, President and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama Jim R. Grossmann, executive director of the American Historical Association Kama B. Pierce, Chief Program Officer for the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta Desirée Cormier Smith, first Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice for the United States State Department Moderator: Andreas Etges, Amerika-Institut, LMU Munich A row of logos of the event organizers, namely the Bavarian American Academy, Amerika-Institut at LMU Munich, the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, Leibniz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam, Southern Poverty Law Center. Also featuring logos of the two supporters: Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (EVZ), The Halle Foundation
Join us on Friday, March 28, 2025 at 7pm (CET) for a hybrid panel discussion on U.S. perspectives on history and memory, feat. @desireecsmith.bsky.social, @margarethuang.bsky.social, et al.
Free registration for Munich:
t1p.de/k0t8r
Or follow the livestream:
www.youtube.com/live/MyqxcSs...
#SaveTheDate On March 28, 2025 Lonnie Bunch, Desiree Cormier Smith, Margaret Huang and Jim R. Grossman will discuss different perspectives on history, memory, and current challenges in the U.S. – a joint event with @amerikahaus.bsky.social
www.nsdoku.de/programm/akt...
everyone should listen to this in its entirety but journalists should listen to it multiple times. this is how you ask questions. you just keep asking simple, easily answerable stuff and the evasiveness becomes that much more glaring
The attack on DEI shows why liberals should stop arguing about "strategic" use of language forever. DEI stands for three uncontroversial virtues that most every American accepts, and the right still turned it into a vile slur. It doesn't matter what you say - they will poison it because YOU said it.
👏🏾 👏🏾 👏🏾 👏🏾
A perfect example of the justice system working for the American people!
apnews.com/article/dei-...
NEW --There's this guy in the executive branch who in less than a month has already spent NEARLY 11 MILLION DOLLARS of taxpayer money playing golf.
Yet the whole thing has flown under the radar of the crack waste/fraud/abuse squad over at DOGE somehow.
www.huffpost.com/entry/donald...
If the administration was actually serious about rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, it would want fully empowered Inspectors General rather than the amateurs of DOGE.
t? Elon Musk reposted Cernovich & @Cernovich • 1d The human rights cause of our lifetimes is the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Afrikaners. E US Embassy SA# © @USEm.... 1d U.S. Mission Acknowledges Petition on South Africa's Land Policies: @POTUS @StateDept #SouthAfrica #Expropriation #HumanRights U.S. MISSION SOUTH AFRICA The U.S. Embassy in South Africa received a petition this morning addressed to President Donald Trump, seeking U.S. support to change policies and laws affecting the Afikaner community in South
Elon Musk retweeted a conspiracy theory about white people being ethnically cleansed from South Africa, a lie spread by white nationalists.
Not only that, the person he RTed said this is the “human rights cause of our lifetimes.”
You shouldn’t need a salute to know that this man is a Nazi.
“The thing that I can’t get over is that the actual richest man in the world directed my fucking firing. I make $50k a year and work to keep drinking water safe. The richest man in the world decided that was an expense too great for the American taxpayer.”
Every day is chaos. Every fucking day.
If you understand that apartheid was an economic system first, and a brutally violent system of social segregation second, you'll understand how Elon Musk is trying to update the principles from his homeland, and bring about a neo-apartheid system in the US.
My latest in @thenation.com
How much Elon Musk makes from the government a day: $8 million.
How much a senior on Social Security gets a day: $65
Guess which budget Musk and Trump want to cut?
NEW: USAID's Inspector General somehow just released a report on the impact of the Musk-Trump-Vance admin's aid freeze & cuts to the agency.
Says $489 million of food aid was put at risk.
BHA – which provides aid (food, water, shelter, healthcare) – had 90% of staff furloughed or put on leave.
So after promising to focus on safety, they’ve gotten right down to work… on gender terminology?
“And yes, I know many are afraid. We have seen the vindictiveness of Trump. But we will either act now or wait until autocracy has become so unyielding that we will no longer be able to exercise our basic rights.“
Rubio's state dept appointee is a white supremacist and a misogynist. I remember not too long ago when a Republican who said this would be disqualified from high profile federal jobs forever.
Murphy: "This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today. Let's call it what it is."
@indivisible.org just concluded a great zoom call tonight, attended by 50,000+ people. They urged everyone to visit the local offices of our US Senators—whether your Senators are Dems or Republicans—to make them feel the heat & pressure them to fight back against Trump & Musk. Talking points here:
okay but you aren’t
again, you could be shutting down all senate business by denying every single unanimous consent request, you could be down at Treasury with cameras, you could be doing something other than issuing strongly worded statements
your actions have to match what’s happening
This is illegal. These are crimes!
