Cagle World

Donald Trump’s long history of denigrating women was on full display this week.

On Air Force One a few days ago, Trump pointed his finger at young female reporter Catherine Lucey’s face and snapped, “Quiet, piggy,” after she asked him about the release of the so-called Epstein Files. Among the trove of emails Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released was a message where Jeffrey Epstein, a child sex trafficker and convicted pedophile, accused Trump of “knowing about the girls” involved in his criminal operations.

Trump denied possessing any such information.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt gave a less than suitable response to a question about what prompted Trump to casually insult a female reporter. Instead of directly explaining what the president meant, Leavitt defended Trump and said he was elected because of his “frankness.”

Lucey’s inquiry was certainly sensible;. She was asking for clarification about the release of Epstein’s files, a topic of considerable public interest. Why had the president been stonewalling, she asked, “if there’s nothing incriminating in the files?”

Trump’s response was disrespectful, juvenile, and sexist. He pointed straight at Lucey and told her to stop doing her job. “Quiet. Quiet, piggy,” said the president of the United States. What was even more surprising — and, quite frankly, incredulous — was none of her fellow colleagues rose to her defense despite such a brazen attack. It was very disturbing to witness their silence.

Trump similarly berated ABC News’s well-regarded reporter Mary Bruce, who asked germane questions about late Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the Epstein files. “I think you are a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions,” Trump said. He called ABC a “crappy company” and said its license “should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and it’s so wrong.”

Sadly, Trump’s outbursts have become par for the course during his second term.

The president’s most shameless supporters acclaim and applaud such verbally reductive jibes. To this crowd, Trump’s antics are just part of his many demonstrations of the use of the power of the presidency to sock it to and own the supposedly liberal elite. Trump’s attacks on the media are hardly new. He adamantly referred to the press as the “enemy of the American people” shortly after first taking office in 2017, an era marked by routine attacks on journalists and their “fake news.”

However, Elisa Lees Muñoz of the International Women’s Media Foundation remarked the fact that the two recent incidents occurred back to back was “chilling,” especially given the timing of Trump’s meeting with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

This isn’t a first for Trump. Alicia Machado, the winner of the 1996 Miss Universe pageant, alleged Trump once called her “Miss Piggy” and made other demeaning comments about her weight. Additionally, the president’s longtime feud with Rosie O’Donnell has involved much public sexism, including descriptions of her as a “big, fat pig” in 2006. In 2015, he stated that Fox News host Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever.”

Trump has a particular animosity toward Black female reporters, and he has often clashed with them. He frequently targeted first-rate journalist Yamiche Alcindor, who covered the White House for the PBS NewsHour. Trump condemned her purportedly “nasty” questions. Most recently, he pronounced Alcindor, who currently works for NBC, “second rate” and demanded that she, too, “be quiet.” Further, he chastised CNN journalist Abby Philip for her apparently “stupid” questions. He publicly called April Ryan, a veteran White House reporter, “a loser.”

Crass and blunt as his prior comments have been, “Quiet, piggy” takes his rancor to entirely new levels. His rancid commentary should be confronted and challenged.

One can only imagine what the reaction would have been if the majority, or even the minority, of the press corps had voiced their protest and confronted and censured him for spewing such retrograde language. At minimum, Catherine Lucey might have felt supported and the corps members might have experienced renewed solidarity.

Unfortunately, they missed the opportunity to speak up. Perhaps they feared that the president’s personal wrath would be directed at them and they would lose access to future White House press briefings and other perquisites. Their cowardice and lack of unity does not bode well.

The United States needs a vibrant, robust press corps today, and will continue to need one after Trump.

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

Earlier this week, Princeton professor Robert George resigned from the conservative Heritage Foundation board, citing being “very disturbed” after the think tank’s president, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson for interviewing antisemitic commentator Nick Fuentes.

Several million viewers watched Carlson’s discussion with Fuentes, a white supremacist who has a long history of anti-Semitic comments. Roberts defended Carlson, saying the former Fox News host “remains . . . and always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”

Fuentes  —  who, until recently, was anathema to mainstream conservatives for his repellent views  —  has suddenly gained political currency with a growing number of young right-wing members of Gen Z, referred to by some as zoomers. He is also considered part of the alt-right, and his mainstreaming among some conservatives forces a disturbingly troubling examination of the enthusiastic embrace of white nationalism and antisemitism by the ideological right in America.

American right-wing extremism did not emerge overnight. It’s lengthy and intense history starts with the genesis of the modern American conservative movement during the New Deal era in the 1930s. Notable figures such as H. L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, Father Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh, and Henry Ford, known for their rabid and abhorrent anti-Semitic views, led the first cohort of anti-New Deal activists (often labeled the Old Right).

Once Europe was plunged into war in late 1939, some of these men became vocal proponents of the pro-isolationist movement, which included people from across the political spectrum who harbored no degree of antisemitism. In contrast, an antipathy toward Jews consumed the anti-interventionist faction that made up the Old Right.

A few decades later, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Robert Welch, another avowed racist and anti-Semite and head of the infamous John Birch Society, managed to successfully populate the movement. William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the conservative publication National Review, harbored complex attitudes toward race and publicly challenged Welch’s more extremist views. Buckley managed to purge many Birchers from the magazine and the larger conservative movement.

After their disastrous and humiliating defeat in November 1964, the right-wing segment of the Republican Party —  who by this time had wrestled control of the party away from the more moderate wing during the 1964 Republican Nation Convention that summer —  was shell-shocked and even more determined to have its collective voices and ideas represented on the national stage. Additionally, motivated by the passage of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964, a mass exodus occurred from the Democratic to the Republican Party of conservative Dixiecrats, such as South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond.

Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign brazenly trumpeted the racially unambiguous message of “law and order” as part of his infamous southern strategy.

A dozen years later, former California governor and B-list actor Ronald Reagan continued this strategy of appealing to right-wing, segregationist-minded whites by launching his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and pledging support for states’ rights. Philadelphia is in Neshoba County, where White supremacists murdered three civil rights workers  —  two White Jewish men, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, and one Black man, James Chaney  —  in 1964.

Racially coded messages  —  welfare queens, crime, forced busing  —  were widely disseminated by the Reagan campaign, which was also enormously successful in garnering the religious right’s fierce support. This assorted grouping of largely reactionary conservative republicans of varied strands  eagerly endorsed the Reagan campaign’s far-right platform during the 1980 presidential election. Right-wing resistance toward racial, political, and social equality came as no surprise.

Similarly, the racial and religious drama that occurred in Charlottesville in 2017, when hundreds of primarily preppy young white men and a few women with tiki torches marched on the University of Virginia campus chanting, “You will not replace us. Jews will not replace us,” did not play out overnight.

There has always been a segment of white Americans who have, whether overtly or covertly, harbored rabid levels of hostility and hatred toward individuals they view and perceive as “the other.” Up until recently, rheir outpourings were confined to secret conferences – white supremacist communications, underground newsletters, obscure far-right magazines, and radio programs. Technology and the current political climate has emboldened many of these people to publicly and brazenly espouse their rancid opinions.

The Old Right’s conspiracist and racist fantasies had been beyond the pale for Republicans since the 1960s, but the New Right has adopted the Old Right’s platform:  restrictive isolationism, reactionary racism, irrational anti-Semitic paranoia, and suspicion of the federal government.

As the first quarter of the 21st century draws to a close, traditional conservatives, and the evangelical wing of the Republican Party especially, face a challenge similar to what their counterparts in the 1960s did. Will they shun and shift aside the more decadent and degenerate elements of the right wing or endorse and embrace them?

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

Despite the rampant rage at the recent surrender of several Democratic senators to end the government shutdown, the larger story lies in the political results of November 4.

Voters delivered an old-fashioned shellacking to Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The results were more impressive than Democrats themselves likely anticipated. Zohran Mamdani thundered to an impressive victory over the Trump faction and segments of the Democratic-establishment-endorsed Andrew Cuomo to become the first Muslim as well the youngest mayor of New York City in over a century. Additionally, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger won the governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia by commanding percentages. This marks the first time Democrats have won three consecutive gubernatorial elections in New Jersey since 1961.

The blue wave continued. California voters decisively approved new congressional-district boundaries as Democrats seek to halt Republican redistricting efforts ahead of next year’s battle for the House of Representatives. Democrats also retained three pivotal seats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In Virginia, House Democrats flipped 13 seats for their biggest majority in nearly four decades.

Below the Mason–Dixon line in the Deep South, Democrats switched two seats on Georgia’s statewide Public Service Commission by sizable margins. It’s the first time Democrats have won a nonfederal statewide office there since 2006, fueled by soaring energy costs and displeasure with incumbents. In ruby-red Mississippi, Democrats switched two seats held by the GOP for decades.

What was notable was Mamdani, Spanberger, and Sherrill reigned victorious in three very diverse campaigns. Mamdani defeated an older, flawed opponent in a very blue city. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, Spanberger handily won over an admittedly eccentric, politically problematic Republican candidate in a state that landed in the center of government job cuts. Mikie Sherrill, whose race was supposed to be close, emerged the winner in New Jersey by a 15-point margin.

Certain right-wing personalities were quick to voice their disdain at fellow conservatives. “We got our a–es handed to us,” said Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in a video on the social platform X, arguing Republicans need to focus more on affordability and less on identity politics in their messaging. Right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza opined, “A very loud group on the Right said, ‘Indians go home,’ and so many of them did — to the Democratic Party.” Conservative commentator and podcaster Tomi Lahren said on X, “The Republican Party is gonna have to learn how to close the gender gap and Republicans are not gonna like when I say this but . . . Stop lecturing women on how they should stay home and be wives and mothers. It’s not your business. Focus on what women VOTERS actually care about, the economy and safety.”

House speaker Mike Johnson dismissed the Democratic wins as entirely predictable. “There’s no surprises… I think people are frustrated and angry as we are. I am. The president is, and we express that in different ways.”

Johnson is correct. Voters across the political spectrum are angry over the seemingly callous shenanigans and indifference that appears to have paralyzed the government (largely due to the actions of Republicans). This has rendered the legislative body impotent in its ability to assist the millions of Americans who are in desperate need of help.

Another factor that solidified every victory was the Democratic candidates’ ability to turn the issue of affordability into a major source of concern against the current president, dissolving a November 2024 Republican advantage into a 2025 liability. New York Times columnist Shane Goldmacher argued: “Democratic victories in New Jersey and Virginia were built on promises to address the sky-high cost of living in those states while blaming Mr. Trump and his allies for all that ails those places. In New York City, the sudden rise of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist with an ambitious agenda to lower the cost of living, put a punctuation mark on affordability as a political force in 2025.”

The results were in part a referendum on Trump, whose approval rating has never been lower. His authoritarian grandstanding is a show of weakness rather than strength. From ICE raids to frustratingly high grocery prices, tariffs, stubborn inflation, and other anxiety-inducing factors, including the $300 million White House ballroom and Trump arrogantly hosting Gilded Age, Great-Gatsbyesque parties, recent developments demonstrate a searing level of tone deafness on his part.

In the simplest terms, his presidency is immensely unpopular, and such a resentful climate does not bode well for Republicans in 2026.

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

Some degree of belated justice prevailed late last month when former Illinois sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson, who shot and killed Sonya Massey, was found guilty of second-degree murder.

The verdict, which the Massey family referred to as “providing some measure” of justice for Sonya, is yet another unyielding reminder of the horrors of police brutality in America. Although it is reassuring Grayson was found liable for his misdeeds, the intersection of police brutality and racism is far too commonplace in American law enforcement.

On July 6, 2024, bodycam footage revealed Grayson, a 30-year-old member of the force, ordered Massey to her kitchen to turn off a pot of boiling water. She complied. Rather than attempt to calm the situation, Grayson escalated it by screaming and spewing a tirade of profanity-laced threats. Grayson then shot her in the face at close range as she ducked behind a counter saying she was sorry.

The first words she uttered when the officers arrived at her residence was, “Please don’t hurt me.”

My heart almost froze and my ears rang as I watched the footage of Grayson ruthlessly pumping six bullets into Massey’s petite body. He murdered her as she was holding her pot. Afterward, he informed other law enforcement officials that he had been afraid of her.

As I saw it, the possibility that a 6-foot-8, 235-pound man would or could view a 5-foot-4, 125-pound unarmed woman as a physical threat was ludicrous.

Immediately after the murder and during the trial, police department records revealed Grayson had a history of misconduct. This raises the question of why he was not disciplined earlier.

What was notable was how members of Massey’s family responded to the verdict. Understandably disappointed with their failure to secure a first-degree murder charge, they did not hesitate to publicly express their displeasure. No attorneys issued statements of gratitude on behalf of the family, and neither was there the routine litany of appreciative commentary bestowed upon the legal institutions that neglected to protect their loved one. Instead, Donna Massey looked directly into the camera and responded, “I can’t wait until he goes to hell.”

By voicing such understandable outrage, Donna essentially redefined and rewrote the standard narrative of how many Black people have responded whenever addressing pervasive and penetrating grief.

To quote Dr. Stacey Patton, “Black mothers are expected to cry, to forgive, to turn the other cheek so America can feel good about itself again… America loves the spectacle of the forgiving Black mother because it restores its sense of moral order. It lets white folks cry, nod, and feel redeemed without changing a damn thing. But this mother refused to baptize the system that murdered her child.”

Since stepping foot on America’s shores, Black lives and bodies have been routinely scrutinized, objectified, sexualized, and racialized. For many in our society, Black bodies and Black people — children as well as adults — have never seemed fully human. All too often, we have been viewed as people who are largely primitive and invisible, denied any degree of humane acknowledgment from mainstream society.

Grayson is just a microcosm of the larger issue of violence against Black bodies and, by extension, Black people. The death of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement has become so commonplace and routine, many of us who are Black are simultaneously outraged and psychologically numbed. Over the past several years, we have been front-row spectators to grainy and, in some cases, graphic footage of police officers engaged in horrifically violent behavior toward people of African descent.

While it is unclear what the final sentence for Grayson will be, the Massey family has permanently lost a loved one in an act of senseless violence. Grayson’s unhinged decisions that night needlessly exacerbated a tense situation. Grayson should never have been hired, especially after his own evaluation revealed he sometimes tended to jump to conclusions. His conviction is a step in the right direction, but America has a long way to go before it convinces people to trust the police to handle mental health episodes responsibly and safely.

If white people were routinely and randomly subjected to police violence and gunned down in the street by law enforcement, there would be calls for congressional hearings and massive demonstrations. Cries of protest would reverberate so loudly and fiercely that any political entity or police force that dared to ignore them would face the prospect of political suicide. The same social outrage must become a reality for people of color as well.

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

A few weeks back, scores of people in major American cities (including where I live) and small rural towns in blue, red, and purple states participated in “No Kings” rallies and marches to adamantly defend democracy and fiercely denounce President Trump’s increasingly autocratic behavior. It was one of the largest single-day protests in the nation’s history.

In this age of chronic complaints and cynicism, the naysayers began touting their anticipated doubtful and dissuading rhetoric. Trump and his associates began complaining days before the initial protesters took to the streets. House speaker Mike Johnson referred to them as “hate America” rallies, a slogan quickly picked up by other conservative Republicans, and described the “No Kings” protests as a crucible of potential riots, representing “all the pro-Hamas wing and, you know, the antifa people.”

Tom Emmer, a Republican representative for Minnesota, described the rallies as a product of the “terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party. Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz falsely stated MSNBC’s video of massive crowds at “No Kings” was actually footage from previous 2017 protests. President Trump dismissed the protests as “a joke” and posted an obscene AI-generated video of a fighter jet with him in the cockpit dropping what looked like feces on “No Kings” marchers.

Fortunately, the violence that Trump and his minions appeared to thirst for failed to materialize.

Before the event, some seemed fearful of what might transpire — whether Trump-inspired federal law enforcement would crack down with mass arrests or pro-Trump militias would instigate a confrontation. However, the demonstrations were serene, even buoyant. Confrontational antics from either camp were virtually nonexistent. In New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and several other of the nation’s largest cities, upwards of seven million marchers participated in “No Kings” events with few reports of civil unrest or arrests.

While disdain and derision was anticipated from the right, pockets of liberals offered their own sobering analysis of the event. More than a few “What did it achieve?” postmortems kicked in. These doubting Thomases could only judge any colossal public display of dissent that fell short of instantaneously terminating Trump and his right-wing administration from the White House as an insignificant failure. Talk about instant gratification.

No rational person expected any newly crafted movement could wave a magic wand and immediately solve all the problems plaguing society. The suffrage movement, the labor movement, the modern civil rights movement, and other associated movements never hit the jackpot with their initial efforts.

Amid the challenges that besiege this current depressingly adversarial moment, a movement such as “No Kings” could represent the birth of a new political statement. In essence, the “No Kings” protesters are almost certainly united in their desire to restore the liberal-democratic environment that will afford them the opportunity to engage in a rational examination and exchange of ideas without potentially being subjected to political or legal consequences.

Almost a year into the most derelict, incompetent, vengeful, lawless, and arguably politically ruthless presidency this nation has ever endured, millions of Americans are still frantically searching for an answer. They want a rapid reversal of the status quo, hanging their hopes on Democratic and swing voters voting for the Democratic Party in next year’s midterms.

Movements such as “No Kings” provide the opportunity for people to congregate and find a like-minded community.

All acts of resistance, regardless of their size, increase in momentum. Massive efforts to mobilize citizens are not solely about numbers – they are about persuading public perception and the larger narrative. Given the current state of affairs, we should embrace rather than forsake or ridicule such resistance.

The protests will hopefully be the genesis of a larger movement for individuals of all stripes to adopt the principles of economic fairness, equality, religious diversity, and other aspects crucial to maintaining a diverse, pluralistic, and accepting society.

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The fallout is still happening after approximately 3,000 pages of leaked Telegram messages from Young Republican leaders revealed racist slurs, antisemitic praise for Hitler, misogynistic rape jokes, and violent fantasies about political opponents.

The texts, first reported by Politico, were part of a “RESTOREYR WAR ROOM” chat of about a dozen Gen Z and millennial Republicans, some of whom held jobs in elected officials’ offices or in government posts. The exchanges mixed politics with personal matters, laced throughout with offensive language that was shocking for its volume and groupthink.

The Kansas and New York Republican Party disbanded their Young Republican organizations in response to the controversy. Vermont Republican Samuel Douglass, the only elected official who participated in the group, apologized for his xenophobic and antisemitic comments and resigned from his position. Several other participants involved in the text exchanges have either been forced out of their positions or have voluntarily resigned.

Notably, Vice President JD Vance downplayed and dismissed the scandal as young kids doing stupid things, though these “young people” ranged in age from 30 to 42 years old. Vance seemingly had no problem dismissing such antics by these bigoted young political operatives as harmless and edgy. Yet, just last month, the same JD Vance demanded people be reported to their employers for making far fewer incendiary comments about Charlie Kirk’s death. The hypocrisy abounds.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called for a congressional investigation into the “vile and offensive text messages,” noting the committee is already investigating Harvard University’s response to antisemitism on its campus. In his letter, Newsom criticized Vice President JD Vance for failing to condemn the comments in the group chat, saying this demonstrates that Trump administration agencies “cannot be trusted” to undertake such an investigation. Newsom wrote, “If Congress can investigate universities for failing to stop antisemitism, it must also investigate politicians’ own allies who are openly celebrating it.” Good points from the governor.

As MSNBC host Chris Hayes noted, this kind of virulent hatred has become all too familiar in Donald Trump’s Republican Party, and it’s becoming clear people running the GOP at the ground level are also immersed in this cesspit of bigotry.

That’s what makes such a situation so troubling. Language often whispered among like-minded people is no longer confined to groupthink – it’s strategically organized. Perverse fantasies of mass death of non-White Christians and non-heterosexual people have moved from the periphery to group chats and items on staff meeting agendas. These aren’t so-called male bravado or slips of the tongue. They are statements of intent and nothing short of a determined goal.

One can only imagine the outcry if a group of  political operatives had shared virulently anti-white, anti-heterosexual, and anti-Christian rhetoric and discussed various devious, sinister, and other untoward efforts to marginalize, humiliate, and outright harm them. The right-wing blogger sphere would have gone into 24/7 super overdrive attacking the culprits (rightly so), demanding apologies from Democratic lawmakers and immediate terminations and almost certainly expressing hostile racial commentary.

For people of color, whose bodies have historically been routinely raped, assaulted, lynched, objectified, and targeted in one manner or another, there is nothing humorous about such rhetoric. It’s the sound of a shot being fired: first the laughter, followed by “the fire next,” to paraphrase James Baldwin. Many people prefer to deflect and deny how such sinister thinking moves from private chats into the public sphere. The danger isn’t just what they say when they think no one else is watching. It is what they do and say when they think everyone around them quietly concurs.

It’s a chilling reality these same people could be your neighbor, your colleague, the man or woman who attends the same health club as you do, the “Christian” pastor (Joel Webbon, anyone? ), your primary physician, or your children’s teachers.

We currently reside in a political climate conducive, if not outright hospitable, to enforcing and ratifying such draconian policies. This unsettling state of affairs, particularly given this current political tide, will require our most stringent collective effort to stem and reverse.

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

A few weeks later, it appears conservatives are still upset about Bad Bunny being picked to perform the Super Bowl halftime show.

Bad Bunny’s selection is the perfect litmus test for America at the moment. It’s not a surprising choice, considering he and Taylor Swift are the top two most streamed artists on Spotify. But it has been a controversial one, especially among Trump’s MAGA supporters.

“So you heard about this guy, Da Bunny? Is that his name? Bad Bunny? Bad, Bad Bunny!” Newsmax’s Greg Kelly fulminated. “Now we have Da Bunny, who hates America, hates President Trump, hates ICE, hates the English language! He’s just a terrible person.”

“It’s so shameful they’ve decided to pick somebody who seems to hate America so much to represent them at the halftime show,” Corey Lewandowski, a longtime confidant of President Trump who currently advises the Department of Homeland Security, told conservative podcast host Benny Johnson. “We should be trying to be inclusive, not exclusive. There are plenty of great bands and entertainment people who could be playing at that show that would be bringing people together and not separating them.”

The outrage grew so intense conservatives announced an alternative choice of country singer Lee Greenwood for the Super Bowl.

It is disingenuous to argue Bad Bunny (real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is anti-American, given the fact Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. He’s also the winner of multiple Grammys and has four No. 1 albums on the American Billboard pop charts. He even has Super Bowl experience – he performed during halftime back in 2020 with Jennifer Lopez and Shakira.

Bad Bunny has been a passionate and vocal spokesperson on issues affecting Puerto Rico and its relationship with America. In a recent interview, he stated he did not include the continental United States within his latest tour because he was concerned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement would target his fans. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said immigration agents would be “all over” the Super Bowl, confirming the Trump administration’s heightened focus on immigrants. Her special assistant, Corey Lewandowski, was even more explicit: “We will find you, we will apprehend you, we will put you in a detention facility and we will deport you.”

Such rhetoric by top government officials proves that Bad Bunny’s concerns are well-founded.

NFL chose Bad Bunny for the same reason Jimmy Kimmel’s return to his late night talk show after his suspension resulted in record ratings, that “South Park” is experiencing some of its most robust and solid ratings in years, and that Target’s sales have plummeted since it dropped its DEI efforts. Despite what many right-wingers would have you believe about “go woke, go broke,” the truth is going woke is good for business! There is a lesson here for Democrats trying to sell themselves to an increasingly skeptical America that doubts the party’s ability to move the ball down the field, much less win the big game. Get proactive, not defensive!

Bad Bunny is not the only music star under siege. Country music star Zach Bryan has found himself in the political crosshairs for his attacks on ICE agents in his songs. The backlash against Bad Bunny and Zach Bryan resembles previous controversies, such as the boycott of Bud Light following its partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney and The Chicks’ (previously known as the Dixie Chicks) experience after speaking out against the Iraq War. In The Chicks’ case, the controversy attracted an entirely new set of fans both domestically and globally, and helped expand their music base to pop music. They won multiple Grammy Awards at the 2006 Grammys.

Any reasonable person would realize that a bunch of woke, politically correct liberals do not run the NFL. It may be safely argued that the majority of NFL fans are politically right leaning, in the center, or nonideological and apolitical. In fact, most team owners tend to lean MAGA, having donated $23 million to Republicans in the 2024 election, versus $2.5 million to Democrats.

Bad Bunny has made political commentary a centerpiece of his performances for years. He seemed to relish the recent blowback when he hosted the season opener of “Saturday Night Live.” His mere selection as halftime performer has elicited such controversy that it has likely animated people from across the political spectrum to tune in to view his hotly anticipated performance next year.

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

Do Boricua College, Bluefield State University, Elizabeth City State University, and Mississippi University for Women sound familiar to you?

They are all part of Washington Monthly’s list of the best 25 colleges and universities in 2025.

Over the past two decades, Washington Monthly has published rankings with the intent of avoiding what the most prestigious rankings seek to reward: an institution’s wealth, prestige, and exclusivity. This tendency causes most lists to include the same top 10 or 20 elite universities, most of which are private.

For example, when the U.S. News & World Report published its 2026 college rankings last month, the results were predictable. Ivy League schools such as Princeton and Harvard remained in their top five, with administrators obsessively following and simultaneously derided the rankings.

This year, Washington Monthly integrated four-year colleges and universities — public and private, large and small — into a linear roster of more than 1,400 institutions. The publication also reworked its methodology to focus on the current needs of the American public. Not surprisingly, that includes schools which best assist students of modest economic means to obtain degrees without suffocating amounts of debt.

Since the 1990s, the college admissions game has morphed into an emotional and financial battle where parents and students are encouraged to engage in wanton acts of aggression in an effort to secure a spot at the nation’s most prestigious institutions.. Among the wealthy in particular, the obsession with college admissions has often been frenzied. Recall the 2019 varsity blues college admissions scandal that exposed the numerous prominent CEOs, celebrities, and athletes who were willing to break the law to ensure that their children secured admission to the nation’s elite schools.

As a graduate student in my mid-twenties, I worked in an admissions office at a land grant institution. Although I was not an actual admissions officer, my work afforded me the opportunity to hear stories from such officers. They described what stood out about applicants that led to their unpredictable admissions decisions. One student who gained admission was a first-rate violinist, another grew up on a pig farm in Kansas, and a third was an outstanding poet who happened to be disabled. Hearing such stories was a revelatory experience.

Washington Monthly, in compiling its data for the list, similarly considered a variety of factors that make an institution socially, academically, environmentally, and financially feasible for both students and parents.

The list comes at a time when the Trump administration has targeted elite higher education institutions by threatening to withhold funding and issuing other ultimatums. The issue of campus speech has become a political football that many right-wing politicians are kicking around to pursue their own agendas. The assumption that academia is far more liberal than society overall is dubious. While some educational departments may lean in a leftward directions, donors, alumni, boards of trustees, and the majority of stakeholders tend to be conservative.

Even in this depressingly adversarial political climate, we must congratulate those young people who manage to achieve their dream of going to college. We can only hope their four years will be happy and productive. As for those who are not as fortunate, it is not the end of the world. Their parents need to step in and suggest vocational education, apprenticeships, and internships as just a few of the alternative paths that they can pursue.

In his national bestseller “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be,” New York Times columnist and Duke University journalism professor Frank Bruni made a convincing case that too many people frequently overemphasize prestige when choosing a college, as if it is the only vital factor. Even though it was published almost a decade ago, Bruni’s book remains relevant today. Not everyone is cut out for the traditional college journey.

Adults are already aware of the hard reality that life doesn’t always turn out the way one expects it to. You may not get that coveted job or promotion. You may lose a dear friend or parent to an untimely death. You may endure a bitter divorce. You may become afflicted with a life-altering disease. These are the sort of experiences that can make rejection from one’s first-choice school seem trivial.

The vast majority of young people will likely get past their initial disappointment and, by fall, be happily settled into campus life at whichever school they attend. For parents of children facing the predicament of not being selected by their preferred college, my sagacious advice would be that life will go on.

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

It appears no one was more taken aback over Donald Trump’s victory than former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose tight political circle had been enraptured with confidence on election night.

“It says a lot about how traumatized we both were by what happened that night that [my husband] Doug and I never discussed it with each other until I sat down to write this book,” Harris reveals in her new memoir, 107 Days, which functions as a reflective and candid postmortem.

The former Vice President Harris said the Biden team were cautious of her from the outset, due partly to the dynamic between the president and the vice president coupled with the fact that she challenged Biden about his opposition to federally mandated school bussing during a 2019 democratic candidate debate. As a result, Harris said getting Biden’s inner circle to publicly say anything positive about her work “was almost impossible” and even seemed to encourage negative stories about her.

“Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well,” Harris wrote. “That given the concerns about his age, my visible success as his vice president was vital. It would serve as a testament to his judgment in choosing me and reassure me that if something happened, the country was in good hands. My success was important for him.”

Harris was more than candid in discussing what she perceived as the intersection of race, gender and religion. She explicitly stated former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is gay, was her “first choice” as running mate and he “would have been an ideal partner — if I were a straight white man.”

“We were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man,” Harris wrote, noting adding a gay man to the ticket would’ve been “too big a risk.”

A sizable percentage of voters harbor conservative positions on homosexuality and abortion. Many who declare they have no problem with interracial or gay marriage in public make all sorts of derogatory remarks behind closed doors. We reside in a politically correct society that is nevertheless rife with hate, deception, and hypocrisy, on view every night on Fox News.

“When Fox News attacked me on everything from my laugh, to my tone of voice, to whom I’d dated in my 20s, or claimed I was a ‘DEI hire,’ the White House rarely pushed back with my actual résumé,” Harris wrote. Her husband, former second gentleman Doug Emhoff, made his displeasure at what he perceived to be the shabby treatment of his wife well known. As Emhoff saw it, Joe Biden’s staff sidelined his wife and handed her “impossible, s– jobs.”

To her credit, Harris concedes to making mistakes, particularly a damaging appearance on The View last fall where she failed to offer a single thing she would have done differently than Biden. The truth is she was less articulate than one might expect from a politician with her experience.

The most revelatory and disturbing parts of the book are Harris’s recollections of being part of an administration that too often viewed her as a burden. Like many things in life, being the first is often challenging and burdensome. Kamala Harris was the first woman, Black person, and Asian American to be selected vice president.

Weeks after Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump, Harris became the first woman of color to be a major American political party’s presumptive nominee for president. If we are being honest, much of the derision directed toward the former vice president was rooted in the dual demons of racism and sexism. Many people, including white liberals, resented the fact that a woman of color had obtained the position of vice president, let alone garnered the nomination of her party for president. As many of them saw it, a white woman should have been the first choice for such an opportunity.

Vice president is a paradoxical position. It is one heartbeat from the presidency yet a considerable distance from much of the vital action. They linger in obscure shadows. Up until the early 1960s, the phone number of the vice president was printed in the phone book.

Throughout his presidency, Biden often said that choosing Harris as his running mate was “the best decision I made in my whole career.” That sounded like Biden’s endorsement of Harris as the natural successor to the oldest president in American history. Whether she decides to make another run for public office remains to be seen.

Regardless of her plans, Harris has accomplished more than most people and has no reason to feel inadequate.

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

Recently, a Texas minister has found himself under fierce and frantic fire after informing white parents they’re “failing” their kids if they don’t warn them to stay away from Black people.

Joel Webbon, a self-described Christian nationalist who heads the Covenant Bible Church in suburban Austin, Tx., made the remarks on his Right Response Ministries podcast. He insisted a crowd of Black strangers is “30 times more dangerous,” than white parents,  and any parent who teaches children to be loving and accepting of all races is feeding them a lie that could put their lives in danger.

Not surprising, the response has been vociferous and swift. Civil rights advocates and journalists called the sermon out for what it is — rabid, racial fear mongering packaged as parental advice — while researchers warned that preaching bogus “crime math” fuels division and can green-light discrimination in everyday life. The truth is the disingenuous rhetoric Webbon spouted serves to create white supremacist talking points, and as intended, they comments spread quickly on social media.

The usual criminal databases that bigoted white people receive their “Black-on-Black crime” statistics from, and the data that show Black people commit crimes disproportionately (while completely ignoring or downplaying the structural and systemic reasons for why such circumstances might exist), demonstrate that violent crime has been diminishing downward for decades. The overwhelming majority of Black people (like people of all races and ethnicities) do not commit violent crimes in any given year.

Such indisputable realities do not satisfy deeply bigoted individuals and nationalists like Webbon, President Trump, and your average Fox News host, who are obsessed with embracing their dishonest and perverse narratives about Black people. Eventually and consistently, these narratives render all of us hostage to the aggrieved, spiteful, and unhinged whims of white supremacists.

When white people start reciting Black criminality statistics to deflect from the subject of systemic anti-Black racism, there is only a remote likelihood they are speaking with one of those supposedly “belligerent and dangerous” Black people who are responsible for such grim statistics. To add insult to injury, Webbon is blatantly urging his fellow whites to pass down their discriminatory racism to their children, while strongly urging white people to stay away from people like me, similar to the manner in which Dilbert creator Scott Adams declared Black people are a “hate group.”

Additionally, Webbon has argued that women shouldn’t have the right to vote when asked to describe one aspect of a “Christian nation” during a 2023 podcast. His ministry says it deems homosexuality as immoral.

Webbon, for his part, has remained steadfast in his position. He has interacted with conservative influencers who cheer him on and frame the outrage as proof he’s telling uncomfortable truths. Specifically, he points to the online support he has received from the Hodge twins — Black, biracial brothers Keith and Kevin Hodge — a stand-up comedy and conservative political commentary duo with more than three million subscribers on their Conservative Twins YouTube channel. The twins are Trump supporters and have allowed Webbon to resort to the “there, Black people agree with me, thus I am not racist” stance.

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of solid Black support or something absolving him of racial prejudice.

Christian nationalists understand themselves to be playing a character. They are drawn into a narrative that says, “You are at the last battle. You have a chance to do something that is much bigger than you. Will you answer that call? Will you come to D.C. on January 6? Will you ride with us to the southern border? Because these are the moments, these are the battles that will shape our country. This is the cosmic war between good and evil. Are you really going to sit on the sidelines?”

Some of you can decide to laugh that off. We can think this is a fringe ideal, but January 6 was not something to dismiss lightly. Many events that have transpired since then — the swatting of judges’ houses, the evacuations of capitals due to bomb threats, so many more examples, little fires everywhere —are not things we can laugh off.

Authoritarian fascism is a malignant social cancer. Christian nationalism is a significant symptom and source of such a repressive and sinister movement that must be ruthlessly defeated for the sake of preserving our democracy.

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.