WASHINGTON — As a young Black woman, Kaylei Thomas has always been urged by her parents to be careful when out in public. The 18-year-old has learned to avoid causing “unnecessary problems” that might attract the attention of the police. Thomas, a student at Howard University, was reminded of this warning earlier this week, after President […]
Brandon Tensley
Brandon Tensley is Capital B's national politics reporter.
Posted inPolitics & Policy, Voting
The Voting Rights Act Turns 60. Its Future Has Never Looked More Fragile.
Khadidah Stone will never forget the day in 2023 she learned that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld voting rights in her home state of Alabama. She was in a store when her phone buzzed, flooded with messages. “I was standing in the aisle crying,” she recalled. “And the guy at the front of the store […]
Posted inEducation, Federal Overhaul, Politics & Policy
Shuttering Civil Rights Offices Could Affect Students’ Ability to Address Discrimination
Federal Overhaul is a multipart series that explores the impact of the Trump administration’s restructuring of the federal government on Black communities. Black teenager Ja’Liyah Celestine said that last year at her Texas high school, an officer pepper-sprayed her, grabbed her by hair, and kneed her in her face. A federal civil rights complaint was […]
Posted inHealth
RFK Jr.’s Public Health Overhaul Could Disproportionately Put Black Lives at Risk
Alarm bells are ringing again for health advocates. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. scrapped a meeting for a federal advisory task force charged with making recommendations for which preventive care treatments must be covered by insurance companies, including cancer screenings and tests for sexually transmitted infections. The future of the task […]
Posted inCourts, Politics & Policy
Justice Jackson Warns Supreme Court Is Hastening Democracy’s Downfall
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson continues to break the fourth wall as the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. And she has made one thing plain: There are moments when she sees the majority opinion as an “existential threat to the rule of law.” Jackson has often been a unique voice of dissent when […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Targets Medicaid, SNAP, and Student Loans
President Donald Trump’s nearly 900-page piece of legislation that he calls his “big, beautiful bill” will likely have major ramifications for Black Americans and other marginalized communities. Trump signed the bill last Friday, after Republicans muscled it through Congress. The president had given his allies on Capitol Hill the arbitrary deadline of July 4 to […]
Posted inHistory
New National Park Signs Threaten the Future of Black History
WASHINGTON — A few years ago, Blake Spencer explored the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in Washington with two of his friends. The Howard University graduate wanted to check out the area and learn more about the abolitionist who, some 150 years ago, had been a towering figure on the school’s board of trustees. Their […]
Posted inLGBTQ, Voices of Change
WorldPride 2025: Finding Joy During a Season of Political Backlash
On a cloudy June afternoon along 14th Street in Washington, baton-twirling marchers strutted in thigh-high boots and rainbow fans clacked and snapped in revelers’ hands. Hundreds of thousands had flocked to the nation’s capital — or, as D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser recently boasted, the “gayest city in the world.” Welcome to WorldPride, where for several days […]
Posted inPolitics & Policy
After Her Killing, Speaker Melissa Hortman’s Legacy on Rights and Equity Endures
As Minnesotans prepare to pay their final respects to Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman, lawmakers remembered her as an advocate for a range of causes that improved the lives of Black and other marginalized people. Hortman, 55, was gunned down at her home in a Minneapolis suburb on June 14 in what the authorities said […]
Posted inCriminal Justice
Some Mother Emanuel Families Say the Focus on Forgiveness Has Cost Them Justice
Malcolm Graham says that his sister’s body was still in the morgue when he noticed that people were rallying around the importance of forgiving her killer. A librarian who loved her community, Cynthia Graham Hurd was one of the nine Black worshippers who were fatally shot on June 17, 2015, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal […]