Jelani Cobb

The President’s goals were clear on the first day of his term, when he issued an executive order overruling the Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright-citizenship clause.

As the 2025 Miami Book Fair begins, the landscape of Black authorship under the Trump Administration is shifting. Broad book bans and censorship initiatives have removed books by Black authors and about Black history from the shelves; executive orders and administrative policies have targeted cultural and educational institutions for allegedly promoting divisive racial ideology; and Black researchers and college educators have faced budget cuts, funding freezes, and a rollback of their DEI protections.

The creators of the documentary, now streaming, on capturing the publication on film, why the magazine's editing process is like a colonoscopy, and landing Taylor Swift's O.K. for the soundtrack.

Donald Trump's aversion to admitting fault suggests that we will not likely see events that grapple with the nuanced nature of the nation's history this July 4th.