“Shots fired. Male down. Black male, maybe 20," said the @ClevelandPolice officer who called in the shooting, describing the wounded Tamir Rice. That was eight years ago today. Tamir would’ve been 20 years old right now had he lived. I want you to think about that for a moment. Consider everything that has happened to you, to us all, during the last eight years. It has been a lot—in every sense. That isn’t just the time robbed from Tamir and everyone who loved him. It signifies of the gap between the wider perception of black folks and our reality.

A former anti-abortion leader alleges he learned of the Hobby Lobby contraception ruling weeks before the Supreme Court released it in 2014. Alito wrote the majority opinion, and he’s implicated as the leaker. Wonder if he leaked another ruling we know of. nyti.ms/3tKDC1Y I feel the frustration from those upset this didn’t emerge before the midterms, but I also wonder how much more this would have mattered. Dobbs was motivation enough for millions, it seemed. I’m glad @jodikantor and @Jo_Becker took the time necessary to report this out properly.

A top county labor official and three Latino members of the L.A. City Council, including president Nury Martinez, uttered racist remarks and derisive statements about colleagues during a conversation last fall, per an audio recording reviewed by @latimes. latimes.com/california/sto… L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez referred to a white councilman’s young Black son as “ese changuito,” or “that little monkey.” She also described the same councilmember, Mike Bonin, as a “little bitch.” She apologized after this report went up. lat.ms/3ClanXn

The White House estimates the president’s pardon of those convicted on federal marijuana charges will affect more than 6,500 people. “As I said when I ran for President, no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana,” Biden said. latimes.com/politics/story… Perspective from @mjs_DC, a reporter who covers law and the courts.

https://twitter.com/mjs_dc/status/1578100645122691072

Whenever Clarence Thomas recovers, he needs to step down from the Supreme Court immediately. I don’t have much more to say about this. nyti.ms/3JVXnu5 Also:

https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1507340448268013601

A good start to true reparations at Bruce’s Beach. Long overdue. “As governor of California,” @GavinNewsom said at the signing of Senate Bill 796, “let me do what apparently Manhattan Beach is unwilling to do: I want to apologize to the Bruce family.” lat.ms/3A090Kz Anthony Bruce is the great-great-grandson of the couple from whom Bruce’s Beach was stolen. Writing in @latimes, he makes an important point: California authorizing the return of the land to his family shows what government can (and I’d argue, should) do. lat.ms/3milp7D

It has been nearly one month since Mikayla Miller was found dead near her home outside of Boston. There are still so many questions, but it’s clear her family doesn’t want the local authorities in charge of finding the answers. My first for @voxdotcom. vox.com/e/22181437 What happened to Mikayla Miller? Many have drawn their own conclusions along partisan lines and based upon insufficient information. Others, such as @RepPressley, demand an independent probe. Either way, more transparency in the investigation would help. vox.com/e/22181437

@Yascha_Mounk You spotlight a real problem: the lack of a serious conservative party in America at the moment, one that chooses intellectual honesty over its current propagandistic demagoguery. However, you don’t note the GOP’s actual goals, which require intellectual dishonesty to realize. @Yascha_Mounk The Republican Party is taking concerted, conscious steps to calcify a white, wealthy minority political elite—as well as to maintain the unearned privileges they currently enjoy. They can’t sell oligarchy and white supremacy to a diversifying America, so they suppress votes.

Trump’s Paycheck Protection Program is a major corruption scandal, but it isn’t being treated as such. Perhaps that’s because its major beneficiaries are corporations—and its most direct victims are some of the most invisible members of society. My latest. rol.st/3aHNsFW Nearly one-third of U.S. small businesses are owned by people of color. Yet between 75% and 95% of them, depending upon their group, couldn’t access Paycheck Protection Program loans from @SBAgov’s initial $349 billion fund. That wasn’t an accident. rol.st/3aHNsFW

Judging by the selfishness of people populating bars and restaurants like this is an ordinary Saturday night, can you imagine what is about to happen on St. Patrick’s Day? We’ll hear, “Relax—folks gotta live.” Yeah, they do, and for that to happen, they should stay the fuck home. More on this point.

https://twitter.com/sophiabush/status/1238953270615384069

Trump’s defense team has no defense. So they are now trying to use the impeachment trial to give him dictatorial powers. The very process that was supposed to be about administering accountability may help underwrite Trump’s autocracy instead. My latest. rol.st/36BAG9L Addendums to my argument.

https://twitter.com/susan_hennessey/status/1222905891663552513

Book launch day. My essay, “She Can’t Breathe,” is now out in the world—along with the rest of the new anthology BELIEVE ME: HOW TRUSTING WOMEN CAN CHANGE THE WORLD. (Thank you, @ava, for these kind words about what I wrote.) Please pick up a copy today wherever books are sold! “Our movement builds when we elect survivors.” Read @AyannaPressley’s essay from BELIEVE ME, in which she shares her own experience as a survivor of sexual assault and shares her plan for ensuring justice for all. marieclaire.com/politics/a3065…

This isn’t about “disagreements” or overpolicing someone’s politics. Rogan has been routinely misogynist and transphobic on his program, and it isn’t out of bounds to say that it is odd (or bad) for a guy pursuing the Democratic nomination to embrace that person’s endorsement.

https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1220715401337683969

I’d add, @ezraklein, that people of color have had to work with folks with whom we disagree or who don’t have a record of prioritizing our interests. That’s how politics works for marginalized populations. Those are often our only choices—and it’s often exploited by our “allies.”

The primary is supposed to be a contest of ideas rather than a coronation or "Just beat Trump," and the @nytimes editorial reflects that. That’s a lot more important to me than whether or not they selected one person. How about we engage it on that level? nyti.ms/2G7RM4i That said: I do disagree with the overall framing of Klobuchar as the “realist” candidate. Radicalism can be pragmatic. To me, it’s about who is comfortable proposing more change to the status quo than the other, and who is putting forth the strongest candidacy in each regard.

I recognize the need to govern. But why let Trump do it—right as you’ve said he shouldn’t be president anymore? Pelosi handing Trump this kind of victory at all, let alone at the moment that she announces articles of impeachment against him, is stupefying. nyti.ms/38nF12x Folks say, “It matters that Democrats show that they can get things done for the country.” But at the same time, only one House Republican voted for a fix to the Voting Rights Act and it will die in the Senate. Free and fair elections are literally what this impeachment is about!

The white terrorist massacre of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street in 1921 takes up the first eight minutes of the #WatchmenHBO series premiere. Watch—then read about it. We all should know that racial terrorism at one point involved white folks dropping bombs on black people from planes.

https://twitter.com/nmaahc/status/1120855450105331712

Tulsa, sadly, would not be the last place where black people found themselves the victims of bombing, of course—the most memorable case being the four little girls murdered at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The Philly police even dropped one from the sky on MOVE.

Trump’s conversations with Putin and with MBS, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, were both concealed in much the same way as his Ukraine call. He has tried to run this government like it is his private corporation, complete with his rules. Enough of that shit. cnn.it/2msEoS3 Ukraine was merely prologue. We have yet to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. The Trump White House was deliberately hiding his conversations with corrupt and murderous world leaders, especially those with ties to his businesses and activities that undermine American interests.

It was an outrage that Trump invited Russian officials into the Oval Office after their nation had interfered with the 2016 on Trump’s behalf. Now we learn he told them he was cool with it because he claimed America has done the same elsewhere? Traitorous. wapo.st/2lPU3uC We learned via a leak that Trump called Comey a “nut job” in front of the Russians and breathed easy about Mueller two full years before we found out about him telling those two envoys in the Oval Office that he didn’t mind their country interfering to help him win the election.

The more Trump sinks, especially on the economy, the more he appeals to the racism of his voters. Today’s special election in North Carolina will give us some indication of the degree to which that still works. @ThePlumLineGS, on why Trump is in trouble. wapo.st/2kaLrOl Republicans would have liked to consider tonight’s North Carolina special election to be an outlier. Then their president went and opened his mouth, giving it the same weight as the Democrats. This analysis @byamberphillips breaks down what all this means. wapo.st/2ZQCGwj

Judging by his tweets tonight, Trump clearly tuned into @MSNBC’s #JusticeForAll town hall about criminal justice reform expecting congratulations for the one sketchy bill he signed into law (and later, refused to fund at first). I wrote earlier about this. rol.st/2Dgnb2Q Racism is both condescending and illogical simultaneously, so it is not surprising to Trump to expect black people to fawn over him for this law. He pretends that something literally called the FIRST STEP Act accomplished the entirety of criminal justice reform in one fell swoop.

Heaven help us all if @JoeBiden is the nominee in 2020. Because if this is how he plans to run in the general, he’ll lose. His Monday Morning quarterbacking aside, he’s showing an astonishing lack of preparedness to run against a nakedly bigoted incumbent. buzzfeednews.com/article/henryg… Were Biden to emerge victorious in the primary, he’d be up against a president who—more than any other in recent memory—has put his bigoted beliefs into policy. Would he just say, “We know who Trump is” all campaign long, without engaging on the specifics of Trump’s horrors?