Contributing Writers

Ahead of the July Fourth holiday and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we speak with the acclaimed scholar Robin D. G. Kelley, who examines how Black radicals have interpreted the document throughout U.S. history in a new essay for Hammer & Hope. Although the declaration famously asserts that “all men are created equal,” Kelley says that clearly did not extend to Indigenous or enslaved Black people.

In a 6-3 ruling this week that overturned nine decades of precedent, the Supreme Court granted President Donald Trump the power to fire and replace officials at independent government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. But in a separate 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook can stay in her job as she challenges Trump’s efforts to fire her.

As part of our July Fourth special broadcast, we continue our extended interview with Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. The book documents the rise of OpenAI and how the AI industry is leading to a new form of colonialism. “One of the things that you really have to understand about AI development today is that there are what I call quasi-religious movements that have developed within Silicon Valley,” says Hao.

In our July Fourth special broadcast, we revisit our interview with longtime technology reporter Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI, which unveils the accruing political and economic power of artificial intelligence companies — especially Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Her reporting uncovered the exploitation of workers in Kenya, attempts to take massive amounts of freshwater from communities in Chile, along with numerous accounts of the technology’s detrimental impact on the environment.

We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York, Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” He was addressing the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society.

The Department of Justice is attempting to sabotage a reparations initiative that compensates victims of historic housing discrimination in Evanston, Illinois. For decades, Black residents of Evanston were subjected to redlining and other forms of housing discrimination, which prevented them from obtaining bank loans to purchase property.

Ahead of the July Fourth holiday and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we speak with the acclaimed scholar Robin D. G. Kelley, who examines how Black radicals have interpreted the document throughout U.S. history in a new essay for Hammer & Hope. Although the declaration famously asserts that “all men are created equal,” Kelley says that clearly did not extend to Indigenous or enslaved Black people.

In a 6-3 ruling this week that overturned nine decades of precedent, the Supreme Court granted President Donald Trump the power to fire and replace officials at independent government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission. But in a separate 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook can stay in her job as she challenges Trump’s efforts to fire her.

New financial disclosures by President Donald Trump show that he made more than $1.4 billion from his family’s various cryptocurrency ventures last year, reaping a windfall after pulling back on regulation of the industry and promoting the United States as “the crypto capital of the world.

The Department of Justice is attempting to sabotage a reparations initiative that compensates victims of historic housing discrimination in Evanston, Illinois. For decades, Black residents of Evanston were subjected to redlining and other forms of housing discrimination, which prevented them from obtaining bank loans to purchase property.

President Donald Trump has received another setback in his ongoing quest to control U.S. elections. In a 5-4 split, the Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots do not need to be received by Election Day to be counted, as long as they were postmarked by then.

The Supreme Court has ruled that states can prohibit transgender student athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports teams, with the court’s conservative justices finding that such bans — currently introduced in Idaho and West Virginia — do not violate the Constitution, and all nine justices agreeing that they do not violate Title IX, the federal anti-sex discrimination statute.

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ … We keep that promise today.” So concludes the decision of the Supreme Court in the landmark case Trump v. Barbara, affirming the constitutional right to birthright citizenship and rejecting President Trump’s attempt to end it.

The Trump administration’s commemorations of the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding have drawn criticism for their overt partisanship and conflicts of interest for the Trump family. Surveys show widespread ambivalence and lack of enthusiasm for the semiquincentennial.

Rescue efforts in Venezuela continue as thousands of people remain missing — trapped under the rubble of flattened homes and buildings nearly a week after two back-to-back earthquakes devastated the capital, Caracas, and the nearby city of La Guaira. Rescue teams are desperately searching for survivors, with Venezuelan health officials saying Monday that over 1,700 people are confirmed dead. The toll is expected to rise dramatically as the window for finding survivors closes.

The Democratic Socialists of America’s slate dominated the New York primaries last week, with Aber Kawas winning the Democratic nomination for a New York state Senate seat in the New York City borough of Queens with a 20-point lead against progressive State Assemblymember Steven Raga. Born and raised in New York to Palestinian parents, Kawas campaigned on affordable housing, universal healthcare, immigration reform, public transit, climate action and opposition to U.S.

Ahead of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July Fourth, we speak to award-winning Cherokee author and journalist Rebecca Nagle about what’s missing from the conventional story of the American Revolution.
“The last grievance in the Declaration of Independence is about ‘merciless Indian savages,’” says Rebecca Nagle. “According to our founders, in their own words, the thing that they were most angry about was Native people.

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to restrict thousands of lawsuits claiming Bayer, the parent company of Monsanto, had a duty to warn consumers about potential cancer risks from its popular weed killer Roundup. The case before the Supreme Court began in St. Louis, Missouri, where a resident named John Durnell, who had used Roundup for decades and was later diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, sued Monsanto under Missouri state law for not putting a warning label on its product.

Thousands of Haitians and Syrians living in the United States are newly at risk of deportation after the Supreme Court ruled to allow the Trump administration to strip them of “temporary protected status,” or TPS. The program, designed for foreign citizens of countries the U.S. government believes are too unstable or dangerous to be returned to, often due to natural disasters or war, has been a major target of attack by the Trump administration and its anti-immigrant agenda.

The Trump administration’s commemorations of the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding have drawn criticism for their overt partisanship and conflicts of interest for the Trump family. Surveys show widespread ambivalence and lack of enthusiasm for the semiquincentennial.

“I do not love America, and never have, especially now.” Those are the opening words of America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, a new book from Princeton historian Eddie Glaude. Released ahead of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, the book is a critical look back at how the United States has celebrated previous milestone birthdays, including what narratives were left out of the official commemorations.

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to restrict thousands of lawsuits claiming Bayer, the parent company of Monsanto, had a duty to warn consumers about potential cancer risks from its popular weed killer Roundup. The case before the Supreme Court began in St. Louis, Missouri, where a resident named John Durnell, who had used Roundup for decades and was later diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, sued Monsanto under Missouri state law for not putting a warning label on its product.

Thousands of Haitians and Syrians living in the United States are newly at risk of deportation after the Supreme Court ruled to allow the Trump administration to strip them of “temporary protected status,” or TPS. The program, designed for foreign citizens of countries the U.S. government believes are too unstable or dangerous to be returned to, often due to natural disasters or war, has been a major target of attack by the Trump administration and its anti-immigrant agenda.

The death toll from twin earthquakes that hit Venezuela Wednesday night is expected to reach into the thousands as rescuers continue to search for bodies trapped in the rubble. Hospitals are rapidly reaching a breaking point, and thousands of survivors have been left homeless. Reporter Andreína Chávez’s building was one of the countless residences in Venezuela’s capital Caracas and its surrounding region that were damaged by the massive quakes.

The Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration in a major blow to the rights of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The court ruled 6 to 3 along partisan lines to sanction so-called metering at the southern border, which allows immigration officers at ports of entry to block asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil.

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to restrict thousands of lawsuits claiming Bayer, the parent company of Monsanto, had a duty to warn consumers about potential cancer risks from its popular weed killer Roundup. The case before the Supreme Court began in St. Louis, Missouri, where a resident named John Durnell, who had used Roundup for decades and was later diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, sued Monsanto under Missouri state law for not putting a warning label on its product.

Thousands of Haitians and Syrians living in the United States are newly at risk of deportation after the Supreme Court ruled to allow the Trump administration to strip them of “temporary protected status,” or TPS. The program, designed for foreign citizens of countries the U.S. government believes are too unstable or dangerous to be returned to, often due to natural disasters or war, has been a major target of attack by the Trump administration and its anti-immigrant agenda.

The death toll from twin earthquakes that hit Venezuela Wednesday night is expected to reach into the thousands as rescuers continue to search for bodies trapped in the rubble. Hospitals are rapidly reaching a breaking point, and thousands of survivors have been left homeless. Reporter Andreína Chávez’s building was one of the countless residences in Venezuela’s capital Caracas and its surrounding region that were damaged by the massive quakes.

The Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration in a major blow to the rights of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The court ruled 6 to 3 along partisan lines to sanction so-called metering at the southern border, which allows immigration officers at ports of entry to block asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil.