Category: Features

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The National Institute for Early Education Research reports that a robust and growing body of international research shows that too many children across the globe are not receiving nurturing care in their second 1,000 days of life.

A year after its release, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Overcoming the 500-Year Legacy stands not only as a record of history but as a warning to the present. When Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. and this writer published their searing exploration of slavery’s enduring impact, they were documenting centuries of pain and resistance. Today, under the Trump administration, the book feels like a mirror held up to an America slipping backward into the shadows it once pretended to escape.

By 8:30 p.m. on election night, the story was unmistakable. America had spoken, not with a whisper but with a roar that swept from Richmond to Atlanta, from Newark to New York City. The message was clear. The nation had seen enough of the cruelty, chaos, and conspiracies that marked the Trump years. What followed was not a trickle of blue, but a flood.

They said it would never happen here. Yet here we are. Forty-eight percent of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s fascist playbook for dismantling American democracy, has already been put into motion. Nearly half of this regime’s roadmap to erase civil rights, gut public programs, and reimpose racial hierarchy has been realized, with Black America once again standing at the edge of the abyss.

In a political season defined by distrust, Californians did something rare on Tuesday night. They stood up for democracy. Proposition 50, approved by a wide margin, was more than a ballot measure. It was a statement of intent. Voters sent a message that when the system begins to fracture, citizens still have the power to restore it.

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Before the federal government shutdown became imminent — and before the risk of a hunger crisis was clear — Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins (D-La Mesa) introduced a bill aimed at preventing any reduction in CalFresh benefits, if federal funding were ever cut.



Today is an all-day board meeting for the Smithsonian Regents. Advocates and lawyers are advocating for this quarterly meeting to save over a million artifacts and specimens, particularly at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. A group forming a broad-based coalition called America’s History SOS is presenting over 70,000 signatures to members of Congress who serve on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to save artifacts at what is affectionately called the Blacksonian (NMAAHC), which opened in September 2016.

The term “back in the day” is often used as nothing more than a throwaway line. But for Black children growing up in the 1970s, 1980s, and even the 1990s, it was real life. It meant freedom, friendship, and community. It meant the smell of barbecue in the summer air, the sound of jump ropes hitting concrete, and the laughter of children echoing through the neighborhood. “Back in the day” was not just a time. It was a feeling. The Root recently explored what Black kids once did for fun before the world went digital, but we’ve gone a little further.

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ProPublica’s in-depth investigation reveals that Russell Vought, Donald Trump’s former budget director, is the real power inside this White House. Vought is the principal author of Project 2025, a racist and authoritarian blueprint that reshapes government around a single goal: to make America a white Christian nation.

Tish James, the New York Attorney General, will be arraigned in Norfolk, Virginia, today on one count of bank fraud. Advocacy groups are at the courthouse in support of James to deliver a strong message against intimidating strong Black Women.