Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-06-29 Monday

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Democracy Now! Monday, June 29, 2026

From New York, this is Democracy Now. Well, America has to confront in its 250th year. It's ghosts. It has to really kind of come to terms with whether or not it's going to be a beacon of freedom or whether or not it's going to double down on its ugliness that has haunted it since its founding. So in this 250th year, the nation is facing an existential crisis. We shall see what kind of choices we make. As we head into the nation's 250th anniversary, we speak to Eddie Glaw, public intellectual, Princeton professor of African-American studies about his new book, America, USA, How Race Shadows the Nation's anniversaries.

Then to a new StoryCorps NPR oral history project, Connect 250. We're pairing strangers from across the country. country to record a 40-minute conversation to learn about each other's lives. These recordings will be archived at the Library of Congress, creating a time capsule of who we are right now. We'll speak to StoryCorps founder, Dave Isay. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now.

Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. In Venezuela, nearly 50,000 people remain missing, five days after a pair of massive earthquakes struck near the capital Caracas. The confirmed death toll is fast approaching 1,500 expected to soar as the window for finding survivors closes. There are reports of several aftershocks, rattling nerves of survivors, many of whom narrowly avoided being buried in the of collapse buildings. I feel very sad because of the loss of our neighbors, the loss of our neighbors.

At least I was lucky enough to save my own life. But our neighbors, young people, full of life, were left in the rubble. And I imagine that if I hadn't left my room, I too would have been in that rubble and wouldn't have survived. The Trump administration says the U.S. and Iran have agreed to end attack. in the Persian Gulf, after the two sides traded fire throughout the weekend. The renewed violence began Thursday when Iran fired on a Singapore flag container ship

near the Strait of Hormuz. The Pentagon countered Friday with attacks on what it called Iranian missile and drone storage locations and radar sites. Iran responded with drone and missile attacks on a U.S. naval base in Bahrain and a Kuwaiti air base. Axios reports the two sides plan to meet Tuesday in Qatar to work out their dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran's deputy foreign minister later said there were no currently scheduled meetings with U.S. diplomats. Meanwhile, many Democrats are accusing Trump of violating a war powers resolution passed by the House earlier this month and approved by the Senate last week. California Congress member Rochana wrote,

these strikes are a blatant violation of the war powers resolution we passed. Trump must stop this war now or we will take him to court to compel him to do so, Kana wrote. Israeli forces continue to strike southern Lebanon over the weekend, defying terms of the U.S. Iran ceasefire, Lebanon's health ministry reported at least one person was killed Saturday just a day after Israeli and Lebanese diplomats in Washington, D.C., signed a U.S. brokered framework agreement on a peace deal. Hezbollah was not a party to the talks, and the deal does not require Israel withdraw from the vast

stretches of southern Lebanon. It now occupies. In Gaza, Israeli air strikes an artillery fire if killed at least four of Palo, Palestinians over the last 24 hours. Among the dead is Eileen Al-Farra, a 13-year-old girl struck by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell that fired on Chayunis. This follows deadly strike Saturday on makeshift tents in Almwasi, an area Israel had designated as a safe zone. Those attacks left several wounded and killed two siblings, 15-year-old Islamusa and her 30-year-old brother. Abdullah Abdullah. The Palestinian Health Ministry reports Israel's killed at least 1,045 people in Gaza since it agreed on paper to a U.S. brokered ceasefire last October. Meanwhile, the so-called Board of Peace set up by President Trump to govern Gaza is planning a sweeping grant of legal immunity for itself. That's according to the Guardian, which reports a draft. A draft of the resolution would also let the Board of Peace obtain public property in Gaza, quote,

free of charge. Authorities in eastern Libya have released 10 Palestine solidarity activists who were arrested in May as they attempted to break Israel's siege on Gaza. Members of the Global Samud Convoy were detained outside the city of Sert, as they attempted to bring ambulances, mobile homes and, humanitarian aid to Gaza. Several countries across Europe have shattered temperature records as a deadly heat wave puts over 150 million people under extreme heat advisories.

Germany, Hungary, Czechia, Poland, and Denmark have all set records for their highest ever recorded temperatures. French authorities report more than 1,000 Xionkia, deaths due to the heat, with a mortality rate expected to rise even further. Here in the U.S., three firefighters were killed along the Colorado-Uta border over the weekend as they battle blazes that have scorched nearly 30,000 acres. They're among three dozen major wildfires burning across the U.S. as forecasters warn central and eastern states face dangerous and potentially record-breaking heat over the July 4th holiday. A federal appeals court has struck down the Trump administration's rollback of Biden-era limits to soot pollution from coal-fired power plants.

The EPA had sought to reverse a 2024 rule change, limiting the amount of four-fired power plants, limiting the amount of fine particulate matter from power plants, factories, and vehicles. Kenya's Human Rights Commission says at least six activists were brutally tortured by police in Nairobi following their arrest at an anti-government protest last week. They were among more than 350 people arrested across Kenya last Thursday as the government cracked down on demonstrations, commemorating the second anniversary of a 20-24 protest where 60 people were killed by security forces. This is Kenyan activist Hussein Khalid.

We are telling the government compensation is not enough, and they will not hoodwink us with money. This is a call for justice, because every time there's a protest, innocent Kenyans are killed, because these killer cops are not being arrested. They are not being held to account. President Trump has nominated a former Oklahoma state trooper to serve as the next director of ICE, that's immigration and customs enforcement. Lance Schroyer currently serves as an advisor to Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen. Schroyer's nomination comes after former ICE director Todd Lyons resigned in May amidst growing scrutiny over the agency's violent crackdown on protesters and immigrants. Schroier has no previous experience with ICE.

Trump wrote in a truth social post quote, the Senate must confirm Lance immediately. Do not delay, Trump wrote. Another immigrant has died in ICE custody. Felix Elkhorta Rodriguez is at least the 20th reported ICE death this year. The 63-year-old Mexican immigrant was found unconscious the night of June 19th, while detained at the Webb County Detention Center in Laredo, Texas. He was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.

ICE has listed no cause of death. The Webb County Detention Center is operated by the for-profit prison company Core Civic. Deaths in ICE custody have skyrocketed during Trump's second term with the United Nations calling for prompt and independent investigations. In a statement, UN human rights chief, Volker Turk, said, quote, those responsible for violations of the law must be held to account and the rights of the victim's families to truth, justice, and reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence must be upheld, Volkerkirk said.

Millions of people took to the streets of cities around the world over the weekend for pride celebrations. Here in the U.S., LGBT-plus groups faced a conservative backlash led by the Republican governors of Indiana and Tennessee, who declared June Pride Month as Nuclear Family Month. In Hungary, tens of thousands of people braved triple-digit heat to march through Budapest in the city's first pride event since longtime far-right leader, Victor Orrubes. Orban lost re-election. The march came a year after Orban's government rammed through a constitutional amendment to outlaw pride events.

It's much more relaxed than last year. Last year was a protest, more or less. But this year is like celebration of freedom. People are much more optimistic right now. Like, probably it's because of the political change. But everyone is just so much more uplifted at the moment. And three agents of former U.S.-backed Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinnishez, secret police, have been sentenced to 15 years in prison for their role in the 1976 murder of Ronnie Muffet in Washington, D.C.

On September 21st, 1976 Pinnishette's agents planted a car bomb that killed former Chilean ambassador Orlando Lattelier, along with his assistant, Bonnie Moffitt, a U.S. citizen who worked at the Institute for Policy Studies. The bombing took place on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C., blocks from the White House. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. DemocracyNow.org, the War and Peace Report. Coming up as we head into the nation's 250th anniversary, we speak to Eddie Glaude, public intellectual, Princeton, historian of African-American studies about his new book, America, USA, How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries. Stay with us. And Blue.

Composed by Joel Thompson, performed by U.C. professor Leah Claiborne, the song commissioned for the book America, USA, How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries, commissioned by its author, Eddie Glaude. audio courtesy of Crown. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. This week is the United States is getting ready to celebrate its 250th anniversary. We begin our series on reckoning with the dark legacies of this country's history with a new book by the public intellectual Princeton University African American Studies Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. The book is called America, USA, How Race Shadows the Nations Anniversaries, a blistering look at the stories we tell ourselves about our past and present. The book centered around the major celebrations of the United States milestone birthdays from 1876, 1926, 1976, now the 250th in 2026. and in each time an enduring refusal to face its true history, Eddie Glaude is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.

As previous books include Begin Again, James Baldwin's America and its urgent lessons for our own and democracy in black, how race still enslaves the American soul. Professor Glaude's latest book, America, USA, How Race Shadows the Nation's anniversary. anniversaries, opens with the words, I do not love America and never have, especially now. Professor, God, welcome to democracy now. It's great to have you with us. It's such a pleasure to be back and see you. So start with those words. Talk about why you opened your book in that way.

Yeah, you know, it was an initial moment of fear and trepidation, and I had to say it. I wanted to announce that I have no interest in the idolatry of the state, that I'm more interested in loves closer to the ground, ordinary people. But I also had to foreground the wound, my own interior experience. You know, my dad was the second African-American hired at the post office in Pascagoula, Mississippi. And he moved his family in Moss Point from one side of town to the other. And I'm playing, I've told this story in democracy in black. I'm playing with my Tonka truck and with my new friend and his dad came out and said, stop playing with that N-word.

And at that moment, America told me what it thought about me. And then I took my truck and went inside and my parents went to work to keep me from believing what the world said about me. How did they do that? Oh, they put a crown above my head. You know, they told me that, you know, I come out of a grand tradition, that my life was my own to create. that it's something wrong with them in a way. And that was affirmed when I went to Morehouse and the like. So I'm always puzzled when people think I should love the country.

They expect gratitude when I'm more interested in loving the people who make the country what it is. So let's talk first about the title. America, USA, how race shadows the nation's anniversaries. Why America, USA? Well, you know, I'm a professor. I have all of these folks coming, you know, I read all the time. And, you know, you and I were talking about John Das Passos. Is it Das Passos or Dos Passos?

And, you know, his trilogy, his classic trilogy, USA, where he looks at 42nd parallel in 1990, and big money. It's supposed to be this epic account of the country, and it fails when it comes to the issue of race during that period. But also I'm trying to think about the division, the divided soul of the country, the comma instead of the hyphen, this split, this, this, idea that America imagines itself as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic. And the comma represents that contradiction between these two different versions of the nation and how it deposits,

Amy, a kind of madness at the heart of the country that we experience in these cycles repeatedly over and over again. Let's go back to 1776. What does it mean to you? What do you teach in class? Now, this is this extraordinary explosion of democratic energy at a certain level, right? It's this idea that explodes onto the scene, that everyday people don't have to be subject to monarchical rule that they can engage in self-governance. But it's also deeply contradictory because it's wrapped in the horrors of slavery. And so 1776 for me is this moment. of profound complexity and contradiction, where you have this idea that everyday ordinary people

can engage in self-governance, but it happens alongside of the horrific relationship between the trafficking of black bodies and the introduction of the modern world. And these things are happening all at once. Colonial settlers, all this stuff is happening at once. So we have to unpack that date for what it represents.

in so much. So you talk a lot about Philly. You've spent a lot of time there. You were a Princeton University professor in New Jersey, and I was just in Philadelphia. A National Park Service exhibit about slavery has been the subject of months-long court battle between the city of Philadelphia and the federal government. Following President Trump's quote, restoring truth and sanity to American history, executive order, the National Park Service removed a display from a historic site known as the President's House along Independence Mall in Philadelphia. Of course, the President's House was the first White House as it was for George Washington. The exhibit describes the lives of nine enslaved men and women who lived in one of the homes George Washington occupied as president.

Philadelphia sued the federal government over the exhibit's removal in February and initially won. But earlier this month, an appeals court panel of three judges unanimously sided with the federal government, saying Philadelphia has no authority over a federally owned site. The Department of Interior has proposed a new exhibit that would contain fewer references to enslave people and place less emphasis on George Washington's history as an enslaver. Philadelphia mayor, Parker, has vowed to continue pursuing legal avenues to reverse the decision. It's unclear what might appear at the President's House site on the July 4th weekend when the city's expecting a rush of tourists.

Since the exhibit's removal, however, volunteers in Philadelphia have been standing at the site and sharing the original text that was removed from the exhibit with visiting tourists. It's like they're reading the Emancipation Proclamation. So they did this in the middle of the night. They came in with pickup trucks. They took down the written history of George Washington as an enslave. This is very specific but also emblematic of what's happening right now. There is this insistence on a kind of storybook version of the countrybook version of the

country, that America's perfection was founded, it was evident in its founding, that there's no need to talk about a more perfect union. These people, Donald Trump and his minions, they don't even agree with more perfect union talk because it calls into question, right, the very virtue of the nation itself. And so, you know, in the context of the aftermath of the Civil War, we talk about redemption, that moment in which the South reasserts itself, to retain power, to reclaim power, after the horrors of the Civil War. Well, that's the violent part, the disenfranchisement. But there's also something that happens at the level of history.

We call it the lost cause. There's an assault on the very story we tell about reconstruction, the very story we tell about the aftermath of the Civil War that produced the Civil War Amendments 13, 14th, and 15th. We're in a second lost cause. It's an epistemic assault. What do I mean by that? That's an old professor phrase, right, or a word.

An epistemic assault. It's an assault on what we know. know and how we know what we see and how we see. Because at the end of the day, Amy, Donald Trump and his supporters, they want to be white without judgment. They want to be white without judgment. And if that's true, if I'm right in that description, that means that history, right, is a battleground because history, of course, holds them to account. So let's talk about reconstruction. And especially, especially for young people. We have a vast young people audience. I mean, the effect of this

erasure of history is that people don't even know the terms, and it's not their fault. I want to talk with you about W. E.B. Du Bois. I want to talk about John Dos Pos and others. But what about reconstruction? What does that episode in American history? What lessons can be learned today? You talk about the Civil War and then what was that period? And then the Gilded Age and beyond. Right. So, you know, you get the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson is a vice president from Tennessee who wants to just simply bring the Rebellion South back into the foe with no accountability. Congress then asserts itself and then we have radical reconstruction. Now, in the course of the Civil War, we get the emergence of the modern nation state, an expansion

of the notion of the federal government, notions of taxation. We get the, a notion of citizenship that comes out of the Civil War with the Civil War amendments. The 14th Amendment is absolutely critical to understanding our modern versions of citizenship. Explain what the 14th Amendment is. Well, it has everything to do with due process. It had everything to do with both. Right. Citizenship and the like, right? So we get all of this in this moment. And immediately, Amy, there is a backlash. There's an assault on the country that is being imagined in the context of radical reconstruction. I should also say this. Radical reconstruction is important to these black folk, these former slaves, because it's something that's happening that hasn't been seen in the world. These enslaved people are actually being brought into the body politic, moved from slaves to citizens, given the burden and responsibility of citizenship. You have folk coming down into places like Tennessee, Fisk University, places like Atlanta, Morehouse, places like Washington, D.C., Howard University, all out of salt.

in the centennial year, that rebellion continues. 1874, the violence of Kofax, Louisiana, white former Confederates trying to seize power. Vicksburg, black folks celebrating the Fourth of July in the fall of Fixburg, extraordinary violence. Hamburg, South Carolina, extraordinary political coup taking place. Centennial, this massive ritual of disremembering to use Tony Morrison's language.

The country doesn't tell a story about the horrors of the Civil War. Instead, it tells the story about its technological innovation, its material wealth. It tells a story that sets the stage for these oligarchs who have seized power, the beginning, the dawning of the gilded AIDS that Martin Twain skewered. I was just in Newport and Providence, Rhode Island, this week. And I took a Black History tour yesterday in Newport and also learned about the news news. paper that would, you know, make some of its money by ads for runaway slaves. You focus on that story of people ultimately who were freed, who are then taken back. I mean, just interestingly, Rhode Island is not just the confederacy of the North,

but it was one of the most significant states when it came to slave holding. You know, as Malcolm X used to say that as long as you're south of the Canadian border, you're in the south. So we can't exceptionalize that region, right? But I tell the story of Moses Gordon. Moses Gordon was enslaved in California in North Carolina by a Quaker slaveholder, Caleb Trueblood. He was manumitted three months after the Declaration of Independence. What is manumitted me? He was freed.

Caleb True Blood, consistent with his Quaker commitments, also with the principles of the revolution. freed, manumitted. But this colony of North Carolina passed a statute saying that you cannot manumeture slaves without them having served in the Revolutionary War of Meritory Service. So for two years, Moses Gordon lived as a free man. Two years later, he was captured, sold back into slavery, sold ironically to the Brigadier General William Skinner, who actually fought for North Carolina in the Revolutionary War. And so he spent, Moses Gordon freed for two years, is enslaved. He freedom dreamed to use Robin Kelly's wonderful phrase. He escaped. He escaped to Philadelphia. And for 10 years, he lived as a free man. But because of

the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution, because of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1793, he had to live a life with his looking over his shoulder. He got married. He had four kids, but he was captured, shackled, and was to be extradited back to North Carolina to William Skinner, because William Skinner believed Moses Gordon was a thief, Amy. Why? Because he stole himself. Right. And so this is a story of freedom snatching, right? Because in this country, because of that divided soul we talked about, white Americans finesse the division between America as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic by believing that they are the owners, the possesses of freedom to give and to take away.

And so Moses Gordon's story for me in the book kind of telescopes that contradiction, that he experienced freedom, it's taken away, and then on the back of his manumission papers, in the archive at Haverford College of John Parrish, or Quaker abolitionist, Parrish wrote on the back of Moses Gordon's manumission papers, he committed suicide rather than to return to slavery.

Freedom snatching versus freedom seeking. Exactly. I wanted to go to Frederick Douglas. Every July 4th holiday at Democracy Now, we play the late great James Earl Jones reading Frederick Douglass's speech. But you go much further, and I learned so much, the words of Frederick Douglass, born into slavery on 1818, he becomes a key leader of the abolitionist movement. Interestingly, we were just in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and there was yet another statue to Frederick Douglass, who was in Ireland speaking.

Well, on July 5th, 1852 in Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass gave one of the most famous speeches. In fact, one of the names of your chapters is what to the slave. it was your 4th of July. He was addressing the Rochester's anti-slavery, and I was just in Rochester. I always say Rochester Anti-Slavery Society, Women's. They said it's the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Sewing Society, the legendary late actor, yes, James Earl Jones. I want to play just a little part of that as a precursor to what you're going to hear on Friday.

And this was during a performance of voices of a people. history of the United States based on the late great Howard Zinn's iconic book. This is an excerpt. What to the American slave is your 4th of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham. Your boasted liberty, an unholy license, your national greatness, swelling vanity. Your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless, your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence. Your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.

Your prayers and hymns, your sermons. and thanksgivings with all your religious parade and solemnity are to him mere bombast fraud deception

impiety and hypocrisy a thin veil to cover up crimes that would that would disgrace a nation of savages there is not a nation of the earth

guilty that practices more shocking and bloody, then are the people of these United States at this very hour. What to the slave is your 4th of July? That was James Earl Jones reading Frederick Douglas to hear the whole speech, which is remarkable. You'll hear it on Friday at Democracy Now. Go to DemocracyNow. Go to DemocracyNow.org. Now, what I learned from you, Eddie, Professor Eddie Gleod, was the date. I just thought it was a July 4th weekend. It's when, he went to Frederick Douglass went to Rochester, July 5th, 1852. But you said, no, that date is key.

Yeah, so July 5th, even though, you know, the reasons for the July 5th, 1852 address may have to do with Sabbath and the like, but July 5th fits within the context of the history of black commemorations of freedom. So because, you know, there's this rumor that John Adams told King George at the moment of the founding, we will not be your Negroes. At the moment in which he's giving voice to an idea of freedom, It's based on this intimate understanding of unfreedom. So as the nation imagines itself as a beacon of freedom, as it imagines itself as the city on the hill, you have these black folk offering a counter story. So we used to celebrate January 1st, 1808. Why?

The abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. A different story of freedom. Another date, August 1st, 1834. Why? West Indian Emancipation Day. That's it. July 5th. Why is July 5th so important? It's New York abolition day. It's the date that New York ended slavery.

And so that used to be the most expansive of the commemorations. Then June 10th came, you know, June 19th, right? And so this is this tradition of black gatherings. Used to be preaching sermons, picnics, prayers, to give a counter story to freedom over and against a nation that supposedly imagines itself as the whole. of freedom for the world. Some people feared President Trump could cancel Juneteenth, or maybe make June 14th his birthday rather than June 19th. And for people who aren't familiar with

the history, explain the significance of June 19th. So June 19th, 1865 is delayed freedom. Here in Galveston, Texas, under a tree, right? A general from the Union Army tells these slaves that they have been manumitted from 1863 with Lincoln's signature of the Emancipation. Two years later. It's an example of delayed freedom. And so it's also a moment people seem to suggest, and I think this is true, that it's a moment in which the country can imagine itself untethered from the institution of slavery. That's why it's so significant for the nation. But I want to be clear, even if Donald Trump had decided to cancel. Juneteenth, it wouldn't have mattered. The state's recognition of the holiday, it wasn't the point. The celebration of Juneteenth by the United States as an example of its virtue isn't the point. The point is that these particular folk, this tradition, signified on the hypocrisy of the country. And I think this is really important that we don't need Donald Trump or J.D. Vance or Trumpist, right, to, to, to, um,

celebrate the extraordinary history of our journey in this place. Because oftentimes the nation invokes it just simply to feel good about itself, even though it's doing terrible things and horrible things and practice. Let's talk about W.E.B. Du Bois, the souls of black folk. And also it allows us to talk about the music that you commissioned for this book. And so it's a great reason to listen to the book because you get to hear. the music, and I like to just hear your voice. Not everyone, by the way, reads their own books, but you do.

And you hear the power and the meaning of it and the way you express yourself. But talk about the souls of black folks. Talk about double consciousness and more. You know, it's one of the conceits of the book. I'm in conversation with Du Bois. He's haunting me. I'm thinking with him, along with James Baldwin, these two figures are in my head. But tell us who W.E.B. Du Bois is the first African American

to receive a PhD from Harvard University, but he's also in so many ways one of the most important intellectuals, black intellectuals in black letters, in American letters. He is in so many ways, Amy, the founder of American sociology with his first book,

The Philadelphia Negro. He engages in this mixed methodology of assessing and thinking about the black community in Philadelphia, introducing methods that would define the field of sociology here, trained in Germany and Harvard, one of the most educated Americans of his time. He wrote an important book in 1903 entitled The Souls of Black Folk.

And it's a genre, mixed genre. It has sociology. It has history. It has fiction. It includes music. Each chapter is prefaced by bars of music of the sorrow songs, the slave spirituals. He's trying to suggest methodologically in that moment that in order to understand black life, in order to understand the complex relation of race and democracy,

we're going to have to draw on a wide range of material. And in that text, Du Bois introduces the concept of double consciousness. This veil that separates the white world and black world results in black folks seeing themselves through the eyes of those who despise us. That veil, that double consciousness, then orientes us to the country in a particular sort of way. It gives us a particular understanding.

of its contradictions. I'm saying in America, USA, that the double consciousness that Du Bois attributes to black folk is really a consequence of the double consciousness of the nation, that America experiences a kind of its divided soul, precisely as I said earlier, because it imagines itself at once as a beacon of freedom and as a white republic. And you can't hold those two things together without contradiction, without depositing a kind of madness at the heart of the country, which sends us spiraling through these cycles every generation, where we kind of think of ourselves at once as a place of freedom and, in another instance, as a white republic. So talk about the music you commissioned.

Well, you know, I woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning, haunted that witching hour, warning music. I said, I need music in the text. But I don't want to just simply copy Du Bois. I want something that doesn't show the music and then Western prose, but shows the complexity of who we are. So I had worked with the classical composer Joel Thompson before at the Colorado Music Festival. He had me reading Baldwin's words with a full symphony behind me. It was one of the most sublime experiences I've ever had. And so I texted him in this god-awful hour.

He responded, and I said, I want you. That's when I wake up every day. I said, I want you to respond to the, I want your music in my book. He said, sure, we can look at some people. He said, no, no, no. I want you to respond to the thesis of the book in music. And he gave me, and Blue. And it's extraordinary.

It's an extraordinary argument. And describe it in words. We're going to play it again. Yeah. We're playing it in both our music groups. It opens with a blue sonarity, this ambivalence, where you count sadness and possibility there. And then you hear kind of America's songbook.

But then it's kind of, you know, feel like a motherless child is in there. And then the upper registers and lower registers with the piano are going at each other. And whenever I hear it these days, I'm thinking about all of the bodies, all the dead, the consequence of America's craziness, of its madness. And then the last movement, it sounds hopeful, has the spiritual feeling. But then it ends with the blue sonarity again, ambivalence at the crossroads. It's the thesis of the book. The opening epigraph to the book is from T.S. Eliot.

It's East Coker. In My End is my beginning. And Joel found it with the blue sonarity in the beginning and in the end. We're talking to Eddie Glaude, author of America, USA, how race shadows the nation's anniversaries. In fact, it is the ending third book of a trilogy. Yeah. I began, if I don't know if you recall,

But I came on this show to talk about Democracy and Black. And that's when I introduced the blankout campaign. I think I was on with Michael Eric Dyson, and we were going back and forth. And Democracy and Black inaugurates my thinking. I introduced the value gap there. With my distant talk of Baldwin and begin again, I introduced the lie there. Here I'm trying to say that the value gap, this belief that some people, because of the color of their skin, ought to be valued more than others,

and the lies we tell in order to justify that value gap, all emanate from the divided soul of the country, America, USA. And here we are in the 250th year, and we have to grapple with this madness still. As we speak, the birthright citizenship Supreme Court decision has yet to be handed down. It might happen today. But I want to talk about what happened last week. The Supreme Court ruled six to three that the Trump administration can strip away protected status from 350,000 Haitians and over 6,000 Syrians who've been living and working lawfully in the United States under TPS, temporary protected status.

In her dissent, Justice Kagan wrote, quote, The evidence they've offered include statements by the president so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print. the majority briefly replies that those remarks are not overtly racial, but it is hard to know what that means. Haitians are black, Norwegians and Swedes, not so much. The references of filth, disease, and primitiveness are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes. It's hard to imagine the statements being made today of any white community. The statements fairly shout in their racial undertones and overtones alike that race entered into the president's resolve to remove Haitians from this country, end quote. And now I want to play a clip from White House Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, who spoke to reporters right after the Supreme Court ruling. He's responding to a reporter's question on whether Haiti is a safe country for Haitians to return to.

For Haitians, absolutely. Yes. So, I mean, yes, Haitians live in Haiti. It's not a position that Haitians should leave Haiti. I mean, it would be crazy for us to say that Haitians couldn't live in Haiti. It's their country. Of course, Haitians should live in Haiti. So the State Department has issued a warning for people not to go to Haiti.

And here they are sending, perhaps if they get their way, hundreds of thousands of Haitians, many who've lived here for decades. You extensively talk about this issue. whether we're talking about birthright citizenship, TPS, or stopping people from seeking political asylum on the U.S.-Mexico border. We have to name the devil that has us by the throat. Stephen Miller is a racist. It's a white nationalist. White nationalists have seized the federal government.

Great replacement theory, right, motivates this immigration policy. It is, in fact, part of the justificatory language of the so-called legal decision or opinion that justice. Alito laid out. We need to call them for what they are. And in so many ways, this is an echo of the 1920s. Oftentimes, the United States, in order to secure its virtue, will say the monster is over in German, not understanding that the German monster was looking to the U.S. in the 1920s. Explain. So what I mean is that here is the moment. The clan is reborn in 1915. Its basic motivation is rooted in the kind of nativism, a kind of true 100% Americanism, right? They want Nordic, immigration, not those folk from the swarthy, the asshole countries of Europe, the Italians,

the suspicious Irish papists and the like, they are really in so many ways, right, thinking of the country as a white republic. Their seminal piece of legislation of the clan, the one that they claimed most, they were most proud of, was the Johnson Reed Immigration Act of Nationality Act of 1924, which laid clear the quotas keeping the country white. So much so, 1926, the 150th anniversary of the nation, the clan was approved to have its annual convocation, its annual convention, convocation, on the grounds of the Philadelphia exposition, they're going to celebrate the American flag in its 150th anniversary and burn across at the same time. These people are the inheritors of that legacy.

They believe the country should be white. And what, We see with TPS, what we see with the immigration policies is an all out of salt, a twinned assault, Amy, on two fundamental pieces of legislation that changed the trajectory of the country. One, of course, was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It's been gutted. The other, of course, is the Hartseller Act, Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which overturned the quotas of 1924, Immigration Act. This is a white nationalist agenda, and Stephen Miller and all of these folks.

are just simply rabbit, racist, and we need to call them for who they are. And yet often Latinos are pitted against African Americans when it comes to immigration. Right, and it has something to do with the proximity to whiteness. Baldwin writes about this in search of majority. You know, how can I put this? I say this in the book, that, and I'm using Derek Bell's language, Amy, oftentimes black folk are at the bottom of the well. We function like gold to money.

What do I mean by that? Because we're at the bottom, we now know what whiteness means. We now know what white racial hierarchy means. And so it's one's proximity to the bottom that everyone is trying to say we're not them. And so there's a sense in which the way in which the racial hierarchy in the United States works. You have some folk who believe that some kind of being adjacent to whiteness will somehow, shall we say, protect one from its more ugly. implications. As we begin to wrap up, Professor Glawed, what do you want people to think about this week as we move into the 250th anniversary? Yeah, you know, first of all, let me just thank you

for giving me so much time. I really appreciate it. And I'm so honored because I've been watching you for so long. And you just do such amazing work. What do I, what do I want? It's not complex. Oftentimes we think of these issues as complex. It's just like, you know, it's basic. You don't kill babies. You don't bomb innocent babies. That's not a complex political issue, right? This isn't complex. You've got to make a choice. Either you're going to be a beacon of freedom, and we can debate what that means, or you're going to be a white republic. It can't be both. So just make a choice. And finally, you have been researching this book for years. What surprised you most, or you can talk about a few surprises? It's just the repetition, the haunting. You know,

Moses Gordon surprised me. The Klan. There's a piece in the North American Review published by the Grand Wizard of the KKK in 1926. Scholars are responding to the grand wizard of the KKK. Synod, Princeton professor in politics, rabbis from Jewish synagogue, W.B. Du Bois. And what you see are the parallels. The KKK Grand Wizard is saying, we can't teach our kids what we want. These folks are. are diluting America. Sounds exactly like what we're hearing today. And Du Bois writes a response entitled, The Shape of Fear. And in the Shape of Fear, he says, the power of the KKK resides in its lies.

And he argues the lies are choking the life out of democracy. And here we are in 2026 in the 250th year, drowning in lies. Finally, you are a university professor. Do you think universities can recover For example, when we're talking about issues of DEI and explain what that is and what has been taken away. Diversity, equity, inclusion, the idea that the university should reflect the vast diversity of the population of the United States, that we should give people, no matter their class, race, or gender, or ability, you know,

the possibility to acquire a kind of capital to make their dreams of reality. There's been all out of salt on that. A lot of these universities, Amy, are using Trumpism as a cover to roll back things. that they wanted to roll back. They're capitulating. They're the great, I call it in the book the great capitulation. It's an echo of what Frederick Douglass saw when he saw the American Missionary Association suddenly finding itself in cahoots with those who were former slaveholders. He called them the apostles of forgetfulness. And here we are in this moment. So unless they find courage, unless they make a choice, right, we will, we will, we will, we will, we

will have to bear the brunt or the burden of their decisions. Professor Eddie Glaude, African-American Studies historian at Princeton University. His book is Just Out, America, USA, How Race Shadows the Nations Anniversaries. Required reading for this weekend. Coming up, a new StoryCorps NPR oral history project. It's called Connect 250. We'll speak with StoryCorps founder Dave Ise. But first, a little more of the music commissioned by Professor Glaude for America, USA.

And Blue, composed by Joel Thompson, performed by U.C. professor Leah Claiborne, the song commissioned for the book America USA, commissioned by Eddie Glaude, Jr., audio courtesy. of Crown. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. Critics are accusing President Trump of exploiting the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence from Britain for his own personal advancement. So far, he's hosted a UFC Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the White House lawn that raised questions of political profiteering and conflicts of interest. Last week, Trump kicked off a bonanza on the National Mall in Washington. called a great American state fair featuring a gleaming portrait of himself.

And on Friday, Trump unveiled an updated design for a proposed commemorative U.S. passport with a large image of himself superimposed on the Declaration of Independence. Well, our next guest is celebrating the nation's independence a little differently. StoryCorps founder Dave Isay's latest effort asks Americans to do something increasing rare connect with someone they've never met and have a real conversation. The initiative is called Connect 250, created by StoryCorps and partnership with NPR's Morning Edition and invite strangers from across the country to interview each other about their lives, families, and formative life experiences. Here's a video explaining how it works. We're pairing strangers from across the

country to record a 40-minute conversation to learn about each other's lives. These recordings will be archived at the Library of Congress, creating a time capsule of who we are right now as America celebrates its 250th birthday. With our digital platform, connect 250, you can participate in a self-guided conversation. Select your partner from personalized matches, schedule a meeting, and then record a conversation using our video platform. Every step of the way, we provide you with a meeting, and then record a conversation using guidance so you can have a successful conversation. First, fill out a short form and opt in to connect 250. Next, follow the directions you'll receive through emails and on our website to complete the process.

From being matched to scheduling your video call to having your virtual conversation. We hope it'll be the first of many. America, get ready to meet America. Well, pre-registrations open now. The recording portal opens July 7th. For more, we're joined by Dave, I say. The Peabody Award-winning radio producer, MacArthur Genius Fellow, founder of Storycar, author of numerous books on The Power of Listening and Oral History, got his start at WBAI, Pacifica Radio in New York. Dave, welcome back to democracy now. If you can just explain what connection. 250 is. Sure. And I just want to clarify, got my start with Amy Goodman, not just at BAA. So Connect 250 is, as we were underwhelmed by everything that was going on for 250, kind of like what you said, and decided to try to do something that was built to last. So we are building, this is all very recent, which started about a month ago, and we're building a platform very quickly, as you said,

Connect 250, where you can come and meet a stranger. It's kind of like a dating app, and then record an interview for 40 minutes, it goes to the Library of Congress. So it's a standard story court interview. Do you have to have the stranger with you? They wouldn't be a stranger if you did. You just sign up. You sign up. And you sign up. And you match yourself with a stranger. You can see a whole bunch of different bios and the first name and where they live. And then you say, okay, I want to talk to this person. And then if they want to talk to you, you're paired up and you do this video interview on a protected platform. Like I could imagine that people would think there's a little bit scary, but it's unbelievably fun. As you know, you know, I was thinking, I was talking to the guy who founded

StoryCorps with me, who saw you in Providence over the weekend. And he reminded me that when, when I started StoryCorps, he said, why are you doing this? And I said, I want other people. I want everybody to know what it feels like to get to interview someone, to have that, like, amazing feeling of honoring someone by listening to their stories. So this is kind of the ultimate expression of that. And we are open for pre-registration now. So we want everybody who listens democracy now to pre-register at connect250.org. We've had thousands and thousands of people pre-register so far. And we want to create something that's going to last until 350. So for people who don't know what StoryCorps is, explain, and the fact that it's being

archived now by the Library of Congress, is that also true for Connect 250? Everything goes to the Library of Congress. Yeah, we've had about 750,000 people participate. And again, very much in the spirit, this whole thing is very much in the spirit of Amy Goodman. We have booths across the country where you can come and listen to a loved one. Booths, not boos. Booths, yes, not booths. And you have a conversation with, say, your grandmother for 40 minutes, and at the end of the interview, it goes to the Library of Congress.

So this is a little bit different because it's strangers talking to each other. But as you know, it's a beautiful thing. I mean, why are we alive, if not to take a little bit of a risk and to get to know people who we might not otherwise get the chance to talk to? And isn't it equal? You interview each other. Yes. Yeah. And you ask those great StoryCorps questions. You know, who is kindest to you in your life? How do you want to be remembered? It's actually a very hopeful project. StoryCorps as a whole, 750,000 people across the country. And we have these facilitators who bear witness to these interviews. And to a person, if you ask them what they've learned, they give a version of the Anne Frank quote that people are basically good. So it's something we have to hold on to hope. We have to hold on to hope. And StoryCorps, I think, is a whole.

hope machine and a love machine. And I just hope everybody participates. And they go to, they go to Connect250.org to pre-register right now. And then you'll get the portal opens on July 7th, and you'll get to do your interview July 7th through the end of July. Dave, thanks so much for coming in and for your creativity and all of your work. Dave, I say founder of StoryCorps. The new problem, project is called Connect 250. Oh, and Democracy Now is job openings. Go to Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.