Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp isn’t playing three-dimensional chess with the state’s new election law. He’s just being a Republican.
Late last month Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law a new election bill that would give the Republican-appointed State Election Board unprecedented powers over county election boards and put in place new restrictions on absentee voting, including new photo ID requirements, shorter periods to request an absentee ballot, and fewer drop box locations available to submit absentee ballots.
The new legislation is a direct response to Democrats sweeping the state in national elections last November and in January of this year, even though Kemp spent much of last fall being bullied by former President Trump to overturn Georgia’s results…
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The past year hasn’t given me any reason to regret quitting my journalism major in college — but I still do.
Following a record wave of layoffs in 2020 due to the covid-19 pandemic, 2021 has not been much better for the journalism industry. In February, Bloomberg News announced layoffs of nearly 100 journalists. And earlier this month Buzzfeed let go of nearly 50 employees, many of them high-profile senior reporters, at its newly acquired digital publication, HuffPost, and shuttered HuffPost’s Canadian division for good.
On top of pandemic-related revenue losses, there are growing fears that digital publications, once thought to be the all-powerful successor to the print business, are slowly being gutted by writers taking their talents and readers to…
Milo Yiannopoulos’ latest con is also a confession that there is no place for queerness in the conservative movement.
Earlier this month conservative activist-in-exile Milo Yiannopoulos announced in an interview with a Christian news site that he no longer identifies as gay and plans to rehabilitate conversion therapy, the debunked practice of “curing” same-sex attraction, by opening a conversion facility in Florida.
The announcement was met with much-deserved derision as Yiannopoulos is a notorious alt-right internet troll and provocateur, having lead the racist online harassment campaign against Black actress Leslie Jones that ended with him getting banned from Twitter. He also made a name for himself touring college campuses to give intentionally incendiary speeches against feminism and antiracism. On…
A complicated mix of privilege, race and gender double standards marks Alexi McCammond’s rise and fall as Teen Vogue’s top editor.
I’ll be honest.
When I first read that former Axios reporter Alexi McCammond had backed out of becoming the next editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue due to past anti-Asian and anti-gay social media posts, I was immediately struck not by her tweets but by how young she was. At 27, McCammond would have been younger than her predecessor, Lindsay Peoples Wagner, who made history as Teen Vogue’s youngest appointed editor-in-chief at the age of 29. And among chief editors at other Condé Nast publications, McCammond would have been the least experienced. Samantha Barry, the current editor-in-chief for Glamour, was an executive…
Once the battleground for anti-affirmative action legal efforts, the University of Texas at Austin is once again confronting White panic over its Black student population.
From Vietnam to Occupy Wall Street, American college campuses have long been at the center of left protest movements. In recent years, however, conservative activists have set their sights on college campuses in an effort to push back against what they see as creeping left-wing authoritarianism in the form of critical race theory and the suppression of conservatives speaking out against it.
This sense of campus political persecution by the right recently found its way into the controversy over “The Eyes of Texas,” the alma mater song of the University of Texas at Austin. According to an investigation by the…
Spotify’s latest plunge into the podcasting world features two giants in American liberalism that don’t quite connect with today’s left.
Last Monday Spotify announced a new podcast series “Renegades: Born in the USA” that features conversations on life, music, and politics between former President Barack Obama and heartland rock superstar Bruce Springsteen. The first two episodes released on the streaming platform introduce Obama and Springsteen’s unusual friendship (the pair met on the campaign trail in 2008 where Springsteen’s song “The Rising” became a rally staple) before diving into a longer discussion about what they see as the central divide in American life — race.
As the series’ name suggests, “Renegades” uses shared feelings of displacement as a framing device for…
The friendships that have meant the most to me in my adult life have tended to be one-sided.
The last time I messaged Adam, there was no reason for me to think it would be the last time I would make an effort to talk to him.
But after a few weeks, when he still hadn’t responded, I decided to remove him as a Facebook friend and delete his number from my cell phone. My reaction to being ghosted by my former coworker, crush, and coveted friend was intentionally dramatic. Instead of just telling myself that I wasn’t going to be the only one making an effort to reach out, I made it next to impossible for me…
NBC’s latest workplace comedy was supposed to be a spinoff of “30 Rock.” And it shows. But not in a good way.
The reviews are in for “Mr. Mayor,” NBC’s latest workplace comedy starring Ted Danson, and they aren’t good. Rotten Tomatoes gives the show an overall “rotten” rating, with critics calling it “bland,” “predictable,” and “toothless.” Rick Bentley of KGET.com goes even further by saying “Mr. Mayor” is just the latest NBC show to “waste their very talented stars” by putting them in boring projects.
“Mr. Mayor” is especially disappointing given that its producers, Robert Carlock and Tina Fey, are the same duo that brought “30 Rock” into our living rooms in the mid-2000s. And given that “Mr. Mayor” shares a…
The push by some lawmakers to target covid-19 relief checks away from upper income earners is not about making sure aid goes to the most needy.
On Tuesday, Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein announced that senior Democratic officials were considering changing the income eligibility threshold for the next round of covid-19 relief checks sent to the public. According to Stein, the payments would start to phase out for single individuals making more than $50,000; for individuals with dependents making more $75,000; and for married couples making more than $100,000. …
The 1994 romantic comedy exhibits many of the same problems as the current debate over unity in the post-Trump era.
In the days leading up to President Biden’s inauguration, he and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill were confronted with the question of how they would unite the country following a contentious presidential election in which his rival, former President Donald Trump, refused to acknowledge his victory. Throughout Trump’s only term in office, liberals were similarly tasked with figuring out ways to get along with Trump supporters in their family, at work, or even in their dating lives. …
Kimberly Joyner
Writing at the intersection of politics and pop culture. Based in Atlanta, GA. Email: kimberlyjoyner87@gmail.com.
