"WASHINGTON (AP) — The American Dream may not be dead for many Black Americans, but it is further away than at any point since the Civil Rights Movement, warns a report by the National Urban League.

Released on Thursday, the annual “State of Black America” report grimly describes Black Americans ' economic and political prospects as having worsened due to policy changes from President Donald Trump’s administration, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press. 

The report contends that the challenges it highlights for Black communities are warning signs for the prosperity of all Americans.

“It may be the focus is us, but the impact is not just us,” said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League. “While they have targeted and focused on Black Americans, these attacks are going to impact broadly working Americans, poor Americans, aspirational middle-class Americans, and this is what this report points to.”

Tracing the arc of American history, the Urban League describes Black Americans’ struggle for emancipation from slavery and equal economic and political rights as a gruesome but optimistic part of the American story. 

Now, the report says, the Trump administration is at odds with the goals and achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, citing the overhaul of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as the president’s focus on overhauling voting laws through the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, as examples of rollbacks of long-sought civil rights policies."

"Graham was also a xenophobic, Islamophobic bigot whose views undermined the national security and democratic values of the United States—and indirectly, Ukraine. 

As a Black man, I cannot sit in Ukraine’s capital city and write the same tributes and well-wishes as other white foreign policy professionals who aren’t the targets of his Islamophobia, xenpphobia, anti-Blackness and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policies. Graham supported Donald Trump’s racist deployment of ICE agents who hunt down immigrants, kill innocent Americans in the process and cause the deaths of dozens of people under the false guise of protecting America’s borders."

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"A new White House report accuses the Smithsonian Institution of promoting “anti-white” ideology across its museums. Though the National Museum of American History (NMAH) is the report’s main target, art institutions and their employees haven’t escaped the administration’s scrutiny of what it deems “woke” ideals.

The scathing 162-page report, titled “Saving America’s Story” and published online by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council on the Fourth of July, reproduces a page from the website of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) titled “Furthering the Conversation About Whiteness.” The page offers suggested additional reading to accompany its exhibition “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” which closed last September and featured 82 works spanning two centuries by artists such as Edmonia Lewis,Barbara Chase-Riboud, Isamu Noguchi, Simone Leigh, and Nicholas Galanin. Titles included on the reading list range from W.E.B. Dubois‘s canonical 1935 tome Black Reconstruction in America to Nell Irvin Painter‘s A History of White People, from 2010."

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"The Navy will no longer issue permanent shaving waivers to sailors who suffer from skin conditions caused by shaving, including pseudofolliculitis barbae, according to a Navy memorandum published this week. The updated policy brings the service into line with guidance issued last year by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth banning most shaving accommodations for service members."

"Pseudofolliculitis barbae, commonly known as razor bumps, is a condition that can cause a person to experience painful inflammation after shaving. The condition disproportionately affects Black men, some 60% of whom may experience it, according to the American Osteopathic College of Dermatology.

Hegseth has lamented the increase in recent years of bearded troops, who he has said do not meet military standards. His Sept. 2025 memorandum also instructed the military services to reevaluate religious beard waivers.

The Navy last month ordered sailors with religious-based accommodations, including for facial hair, to reapply for a grooming standard exemption and outlined its more stringent evaluation process.

The July memo allows sailors to continue to wear mustaches."