And that is why the distance between Howard Stern’s microphone and a Black Medicare patient being steered toward a lower-rated hospital may not be as great as it first appears.

Once, not so long ago, the United States promised to place Harriet Tubman’s face on the $20 bill. It was more than a design change; it was to be an act of national recognition, an admission that greatness in America has never belonged solely to those who wrote its laws or commanded its armies, but to those who broke its chains.

Republican lawmakers across the South are moving rapidly to redraw congressional maps, dismantle Black voting districts, and reshape political power before the 2026 midterm elections, triggering a sweeping legal and civil rights battle that advocates say threatens some of the most important gains secured since passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Donald Trump’s second presidency is littered with the firing of Black leaders, the dismantling of civil rights protections, the gutting of federal jobs that helped build the Black middle class, attacks on Black history and diversity programs, and even the public circulation of racist imagery depicting America’s first Black president and first lady as apes.