Since it became clear that the president was losing in the polling and that a global pandemic was pushing more and more folks towards mail-in voting, President Trump and his merry band of Trumpesticles have consistently claimed that mail-in voting is open to massive fraud.

With days left before he was set to graduate from high school, Devin Freelon and his friends decided to visit Sterling State Park in Michigan, a recreational park on the lip of Lake Erie, just an hour away from Detroit. They were playing music in the parking lot when a white man they had never met before began…Read more...

Amy Cooper—the Becky of all Karens whose hit single “I’m Not a Gentrifier, I Just Shoo Away the Blacks a Lot,” who went viral earlier this year when she called the police on Black bird watcher Christian Cooper—made two separate 911 calls on that fateful day in New York City’s Central Park, according to prosecutors.Read more...

Los Angeles Lakers forward Jared Dudley will never make an All-Star game in his life, but if we’re picking an All-Star squad of the best personalities in the entire league, he’s absolutely a lottery pick.Read more...

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the green light to halt the 2020 census count ahead of schedule. While the order technically only pauses the count while a federal appeals court decides whether or not the count should be stopped early, experts say the ruling effectively shuts down the count…Read more...

Emmy-Award winner and 2020 The Root 100 honoree Yahya Abdul-Mateen II certainly steals my attention for superficial reasons, but his pure talent cannot be denied in his incredible portrayal of Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale in Netflix’s upcoming sociopolitical flick, The Trial of the Chicago 7.Read more...

From NASCAR to social media and beyond, Black folks have once again proven to be the nation’s ultimate game changers and cultural icons. And 2020’s The Root 100 list is a perfect reflection of how we influence and shape American society for the better.Read more...

Jasmyn Lawson is Black Twitter’s best friend.Read more...

There is nothing simple—or easy—about divorce.Read more...

President Trump was never going to show his taxes.

The Root staff knows all about the struggle that is finding the right stock photo as the main art for a news story. You enter a search term like, “Black man contemplating imploding during a long-term lockdown” and you can’t find shit because the library is congested with white folks contemplating imploding during a…Read more...

A mayor, a legal titan and Hollywood royalty—Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, NAACP Legal Defense Fund president and director-counsel Sherrilyn Ifill, and Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress Regina King are just three of the incredible women named Glamour magazine’s 2020 Women of the Year, each honored…Read more...

When a group of racist agitators crashed Connecticut Rep. Jahana Hayes’ virtual listening session on Monday, the congresswoman’s first instinct was to calmly press on, then check on everyone else and make sure they were OK.Read more...

President COVID-45, the same man who refused to host a Zoom debate, will now take part in a NBC News town hall event in Miami on the same day and same time as Joe Biden is set to have his town hall.

It’s no secret that Latinidad has a fraught relationship with Blackness.Read more...

It seems like just yesterday that Ms. Tina Knowles Lawson was giving us details on how she’d been staying productive and politically active during this prolonged pandemic. That’s because it was—and if you didn’t get the very pointed message she gave us on Big Beauty Tuesday, it was simple: Vote.Read more...

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Once upon a time, there was a majestic stallion who strutted across the music industry, dominated the charts and secured several business opportunities, including branding deals and gigs on major sketch comedy shows. The stallion did all of this even though a misogynistic miniature horse attempted to dull her shine by…Read more...

Gisele Barreto Fetterman is the wife of Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. The 38-year-old was born in Brazil and used to be an undocumented immigrant but is now a proud American citizen enjoying good old-fashioned American racism as a woman of color.Read more...

I’m not sure if y’all knew this, but we’re in the middle of a pandemic right now. Look,I’m sure you haven’t forgotten this, but Republican lawmakers in Texas seem to need a reminder as they tirelessly work to prevent every effort to make voting safer during this unprecedented time.

1. PestilenceRead more...

Strip clubs have never in life been my ministry, and it’s stories like these that remind me why I choose to abstain.Read more...

High-key, if I just won my fourth championship ring after spending months away from my family, I’d probably sit my happy ass down for a beat. LeBron James, fresh from winning his fourth ring and (probably) beating his son’s ass, has teamed up with former First Lady Michelle Obama to encourage folks to vote early.Read more...

Eddie Murphy’s Prince Akeem came to America many years ago in the aptly titled Coming to America—and it looks like its sequel is coming to...your crib!Read more...

As Senate confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s Supreme Court candidate Amy Coney Barrett began on Tuesday, her record on big-ticket issues will come under increased scrutiny as people on both sides of the aisle try to discern exactly what kind of Justice she might be. While the confirmation hearings themselves may…Read more...

My dad emailed me about a week ago, with a barrage of questions: “Did you watch Saturday Night Live? Did you see the musical artist? What did you think of her performance?”Read more...

Jada Pinkett Smith, Adrienne “Gammy” Banfield-Norris and Willow Smith talked mom-shaming on the latest episode of Red Table Talk.Read more...

As The Root’s resident sports junkie—who moonlights as its sports, culture and music writer—I can’t help but take tremendous pride in fellow Black reporters and commentators like Malika Andrews, Maria Taylor, Jemelle Hill and Cari Champion every time they drop gems on some of my favorites sports shows.Read more...

She may have come into our consciousness as the costume and fashion-designing, hairstyling matriarch of the star-laden Knowles clan—now expanded to include the Carter and Lawson surnames—but Tina Knowles Lawson, better known as ”Ms. Tina” to followers, is indisputably a star in her own right. Whether telling “mom…Read more...

Let me first just say that porcupine lives matter.Read more...

Calling Ibram X. Kendi, Ph.D., “accomplished” is quite the understatement.Read more...

Christopher Columbus is considered a hero of racists, and rightfully so. He was an inept sailor who stumbled upon an inhabited land, claimed it as his own and then had the police, who traveled with him, kill everyone who lived there over small infractions including jogging, jaywalking and sleeping, and those they…Read more...

Less than an hour before the Game 6 of the NBA Finals showdown between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat, the Heat gave me a glimmer of hope:Read more...

Last week, former Wolfe City, Texas, Police Officer Shaun Lucas was charged with murder in the fatal shooting of 31-year-old Jonathan Price on October 3. Now, Black residents in Wolfe City are speaking out and claiming that even before that the night of the shooting, Lucas had already earned a reputation of being a …Read more...

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Master P has been making ‘em say “ughhhhh” for years—and now, he’s going to make his acceptance speech at the 2020 BET Hip Hop Awards for a major reason. The rapper, actor and record producer has been named the recipient of the “I Am Hip Hop” Award and will be honored at this year’s upcoming ceremony.Read more...

I bet you miss her.

The next episode of “Zoom Where it Happens,” the online live table reading series launched by Black women to entertain viewers and encourage them to vote this year, will feature Black entertainers from the fields of sports and comedy portraying characters from the iconic Black sitcom Sanford and Son.

The President has returned to his campaigning activities despite his coronavirus diagnosis, delivering a speech from the White House on Saturday in which he called on the surprising number of Black and Latino people in attendance to vote Democrats “into oblivion.”Read more...

Nigeria’s Police Force says it has disbanded its Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), in response to a wave of protests online and in the streets of the African nation this week decrying the unit as an arm of corruption and rampant police brutality.

The presiding judge in the criminal case facing Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer captured on camera kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes–ultimately killing him—has adjusted the terms of Chauvin’s recently posted bail so the defendant can leave Minnesota and live in another state.

Philanthropist and co-CEO of Ariel Investments, Mellody Hobson, has gifted her alma mater Princeton University with a major donation to construct a new residential college on the site of one previously named after Woodrow Wilson.

If you were browsing Twitter on Friday, you may have noticed that #LindsayGrahamHasCOVID was trending.

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State lawmakers in Louisiana have moved to make it easier for students to appeal expulsions after a Black child was suspended last month for having a BB gun in his room.Read more...

Karens don’t matter.Read more...

Howdy, folks! It’s Friday, which means it’s time to save y’all some money. This week sees the continuation of Sony’s Games of a Generation Sale and Xbox currently has a Warner Bros., publisher sale along with the standard deals with gold. It’s not a particularly stacked week but there were some gems to be found.Read more...

This year has had some soul-crushing moments in all aspects of life and the movie theater industry has definitely taken a super-hard hit.Read more...

In Florida, State Attorney Aramis Ayala has launched a program to reduce the amount of people prosecuted for non-violently resisting arrest.

If you’ve never been Black surrounded by a constant overwhelm of White—at school, your place of work, in your neighborhood—just know there can never be enough memoirs, screenplays or comedies to exhaust the complex experience. You are ever a racial ambassador, an explainer of non-white culturisms, a human Google for…Read more...