The storming of the Capitol building by white extremists loyal to Donald Trump on January 6th, was violent, deadly and shameful. But it wasn’t unprecedented. The attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election follows a long tradition in America of white violence, aimed at undoing Democracy. At nearly every turn, where this country bent toward freedom, there was a violent backlash. And there is perhaps no clearer example than the story of the only successful coup in U.S...
Jan 15, 2021•32 min
This moment calls for us to be honest and truthful about who we are as Americans, who we’ve been and who we hope to become. And there’s no way to do that without examining the role, range and power of Blackness in America. Trymaine Lee introduces a new look that speaks to the hopes, anxieties and aspirations of Black America.
Jan 15, 2021•3 min
On the afternoon of January 6th, the nation was gripped by the images of Trump supporters charging the Capitol building as Congress gathered to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win. These scenes brought to bear what so many democracy-loving people across this country have long feared, that Trump’s final days as President would end violently. But hours earlier, attention was on the Georgia Senate races, where Democrat Reverend Raphael Warnock won his runoff election against Re...
Jan 15, 2021•26 min
In a bonus for Into America listeners, Trymaine Lee joins Joy Reid, host of the podcast Kamala: Next In Line in a roundtable discussion. Kamala Harris has been elected the 49th Vice President of the United States. So what comes next? Joy speaks with Pulitzer Prize winner, opinion writer for The Washington Post and an MSNBC contributor, Jonathan Capehart, editor at large at the 19th, and MSNBC contributor Errin Haynes and Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award winner, MSNBC correspondent and host of Into ...
Jan 15, 2021•42 min
As an outspoken sports journalist, Jemele Hill has been told to “stick to sports” in her coverage. The same has been said to professional athletes for decades. But things changed in 2020, when the pandemic and racial justice movements collided. Black athletes decided the fight was worth risking it all for. And many team owners and the leagues realized it was good for business to support their players. Trymaine Lee looks back on the year of sports and activism with Jemele Hill, contributing write...
Dec 31, 2020•26 min
From children’s books, to cartoons, to the worlds of fantasy and make believe, it can sometimes seem as if Black characters are on the side-lines, or don’t exist at all. Especially around the holidays, Black parents get creative to find toys for their kids that reflect just how beautiful and special they are. More than three decades ago, Yla Eason took matters into her own hands when her Black son said that he couldn’t be a superhero because he’s not white. Trymaine Lee talks to Yla, about why s...
Dec 24, 2020•30 min
The holidays should be the busiest time of the year, but small businesses everywhere have been crushed by the pandemic and its restrictions. The picture is especially grim for Black-owned small businesses, which closed at twice the rate of white-owned small businesses this spring. But in the city of Milwaukee, there’s a bright spot. A collective of mostly Black-owned businesses is not only surviving, it's thriving. For entrepreneurs JoAnne and Maanaan Sabir, envisioning a place where that could ...
Dec 17, 2020•28 min
In Chicago, one of the most segregated American cities, race and proximity to quality healthcare are inextricably linked, and the divide has been exacerbated COVID19 continues to infect and kill Black people disproportionately. At the same time, Black Chicagoans are seeing hospitals in their communities closing at an alarming rate. Since 2018, three hospitals have closed on the South and West sides. And now a fourth, Mercy Hospital, the oldest in the city, is slated to close next year. Host Trym...
Dec 10, 2020•32 min
Malcolm X is a towering cultural figure. Movies have been made about him, books have been written, and he’s been mythologized since his assassination in 1965. But an encounter at a cocktail party in Detroit led journalist Les Payne to realize how much more there was to understand about the man. Les Payne spent the last three decades of his life learning everything he could about Malcolm X. The result is The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X , a new book that sheds light on the people, plac...
Dec 03, 2020•30 min
Like the Blues and Jazz, the Black American culinary tradition is rooted in a specific kind of American experience. From one generation to the next, Black families have turned to traditional dishes to celebrate the holidays, to commiserate and even to mourn. This holiday season, with COVID19 and hunger rising in tandem, too many Black families will be mourning rather than celebrating. Some will be relying on the kindness of strangers to fill their stomachs and their spirits, while others will tu...
Nov 26, 2020•29 min
Kamala Harris has made history as the first woman, first Black and first South Asian vice president-elect. On the latest episode of Into America, Trymaine Lee explores the little-known history of a place that shaped her identity - the Rainbow Sign. The Rainbow Sign was a Black cultural center in Berkeley, California that opened its doors in 1971 and welcomed the likes of James Baldwin, Nina Simone, Shirley Chisholm, and a young Black and Indian girl from Oakland named Kamala. In her memoir, Harr...
Nov 19, 2020•27 min
When Joe Biden addressed the nation for the first time as president-elect, he singled out the Black community for helping him throughout his campaign, and he made a promise. "You’ve always had my back,” he said, pounding on the lectern. “And I’ll have yours.” Host Trymaine Lee takes a closer look at this line from Joe Biden’s speech, first by digging into how Black voters helped push Biden to victory. Brittany Smalls, statewide coordinator in Pennsylvania for Black Voters Matter talks about the ...
Nov 12, 2020•29 min
In order to win the election in less than a week, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party need to do what Barack Obama did 12 years ago: expand the electorate. In 2008, 12 percent voters were people who hadn’t previously been participating, and 19 percent of all Black voters were new to the polls. But in 2016, many of them, including Black men, stayed home. Now, a grassroots effort is building to re-engage these men. Into America heads to the swing state of Florida, where local Black elected official...
Oct 29, 2020•28 min
In the last days of the 2020 election, both campaigns are targeting a crucial demographic: Black men. While Black men do vote overwhelmingly Democratic, some polling shows President Trump has made inroads with young Black men and Republicans are hoping to capitalize on that momentum. The Biden team is making a push to get the Black men who may have sat out in 2016, and bringing out former President Barack Obama to campaign in Pennsylvania. To understand why this is a key group in 2020, and game ...
Oct 22, 2020•24 min
Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett faced tough questions from Democrats last week over her positions on abortion, religion, and how she interprets the Constitution. But Judge Barrett’s stances on race deserve attention too. Beyond acknowledging that racism exists, Judge Barrett refused to elaborate on the state of race in the country today, saying giving broader diagnoses about racism is “kind of beyond what I'm capable of doing as a judge.” Janai Nelson, Associate Director-Counsel of the N...
Oct 19, 2020•23 min
For months, the Republican party and the Trump campaign have been warning, without evidence, that voter fraud could be a deciding factor in the election. They say they are amassing an army of poll watchers to make sure that doesn’t happen. But election officials and advocates worry these tactics could intimidate Democratic voters, especially in Black and brown communities. Poll watching is legal. Voter intimidation is not. In this episode, host Trymaine Lee explores a time in the not-so-distance...
Oct 15, 2020•31 min
Rhonda Grayson is the great-granddaughter of America Cohee Webster, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. Rhonda can say America’s roll number by heart: 4661. Rhonda grew up aware and proud of her Creek ancestry, but has not been able to enroll as a member of the tribe herself. In 1979, the Creek Nation re-wrote its constitution to change the citizenship parameters so that only people who could trace their lineage by blood could be members. That meant Black people who were the descendants of th...
Oct 12, 2020•25 min
There was a little policy and a lot of politicking. There was at least a veneer of civility. There was a fly. In perhaps the most high-stakes VP debate in history, Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris made their cases to the American public for their running mate. Last night’s debate was the second most watched VP debate in history. Given that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump would the oldest presidents ever inaugurated, and that the President Trump currently has the virus, it’s no...
Oct 08, 2020•35 min
President Trump announced that he and the First Lady tested positive for COVID-19 on Twitter, in the middle of the night last week. Brandy Zadrozny spends her days sorting through the chaos of the internet for NBC News, trying to track conspiracy theories and misinformation campaigns. As soon as she heard President Trump had tested positive, she knew the internet would explode. And she was right. QAnon claimed Trump was pretending to have COVID-19 as part of some sort of plan to arrest Hillary C...
Oct 07, 2020•21 min
Over the past five days, President Donald Trump has been diagnosed with coronavirus, hospitalized at Walter Reed Military Medical Center, and discharged back to the White House. White House doctors and officials gave conflicting report on the president’s health all weekend, and there is still uncertainty about the president’s condition and how infectious he may be. Donald Trump is not the first president to become ill while in the Oval Office, so how can history help us understand what happens, ...
Oct 05, 2020•34 min
For six months, people across the country have been waiting for the same lifeline: a vaccine for the coronavirus. The U.S. government has pledged $10 billion to help drug makers develop and distribute a vaccine in record time through “Operation Warp Speed.” But the emphasis on swiftness has left some people worried about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy. California and New York have said they will assemble their own independent task forces to vet the vaccine, and recently, the National Medical ...
Oct 01, 2020•25 min
Tuesday night, Democratic nominee Joe Biden and President Trump met in Cleveland, Ohio for the first Presidential Debate of 2020. For 90 minutes, the candidates debated topics ranging from the Supreme Court to COVID-19, as well as one segment on race and policing. It was during that section that President Trump made the biggest news of the night in refusing to denounce white supremacists. He told the Proud Boys, a violent hate group, to “stand back and stand by.” Trump’s spokespeople have since ...
Sep 30, 2020•25 min
President Donald Trump has nominated conservative favorite Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court. Democrats are calling on Republicans to follow the precedent they set in 2016, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold confirmation hearings for President Obama’s pick to replace Justice Antonin Scalia when he died eight months before the election. But Republicans likely have the votes to confirm Barrett, and if they succeed,...
Sep 28, 2020•25 min
Louisville activist Hannah Drake has been fighting for Breonna Taylor since the 26-year-old’s death in March. As a speaker and author, Hannah helped elevate Breonna’s story on social media, and was part of an effort to push the city council to pass Breonna’s Law – a ban on “no-knock” warrants. The Louisville Metro Police Department had received court approval for this type of warrant in the botched drug raid at Breonna’s apartment on the night of March 13th, meaning they could enter without warn...
Sep 24, 2020•31 min
With 41 days until Election Day, voters across the country are already casting their ballots. But in Florida, thousands of former felons can’t even register to vote. The problem? They’ve served their time, but they haven’t paid the court fees, fines and restitution – and that’s considered part of their sentence. In 2018, Florida voters approved Amendment 4, a ballot measure that would allow those with felony convictions to register to vote, so long as the crime committed was not murder or sexual...
Sep 23, 2020•17 min
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg accepted President Bill Clinton’s nomination to be the 107th justice on the US Supreme Court in 1993, she dedicated the moment to her mother. She said: “I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve; and daughters are cherished as much as sons.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent her life facing discrimination because she was a woman: struggling to find work at a law firm despite being at the top of her law school cl...
Sep 21, 2020•28 min
It’s hard to comprehend the scale of the wildfires burning across the west. Millions of acres have burned, thousands of homes and structures have been destroyed. Dozens of people are dead and more are missing. Hazardous air quality and apocalyptic skies have forced millions to stay inside. Climate change is a major reason why these fires continue to get bigger, more frequent, and more destructive. But years of fire suppression means the forests are full of overgrown brush, which acts as fuel for...
Sep 17, 2020•27 min
People with mental illnesses are 16-times more likely to be killed by police compared to the general population. As deaths like those of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York gain national attention, cities are looking for alternatives to using police officers to respond to mental health emergencies. And many cities are turning to a model called CAHOOTS run out of White Bird Clinic in Eugene, Oregon. CAHOOTS stands for “Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets.” The community-based program tra...
Sep 16, 2020•30 min
When the coronavirus pushed school online, discipline went with it. Educators have been handing out Zoom suspensions and other remote consequences to keep the virtual class a safe and respectful learning environment. And for those kids who are back in the actual classroom, there are new rules about masks, even about coughing and sneezing. Some experts worry these types of disciplines will have a disproportionate impact on students of color. Before the pandemic, Black students were three times mo...
Sep 14, 2020•20 min
College football is a multi-billion-dollar industry. So even as coronavirus spread, most schools pushed forward with the 2020 season. But as the pandemic and the racial justice movement exposed inequalities across the country, college football athletes, who aren’t paid for their work and the risks they take on the field, started to speak up. Treyjohn Butler, a senior cornerback at Stanford University, was one of those students. He and other football players from his NCAA conference, the Pac-12, ...
Sep 11, 2020•24 min
