Contributing Writers

Hurricane Laura has slammed ashore as an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm, bringing sustained winds of 150 miles per hour to the Gulf Coast. The strongest storm to hit Louisiana in over a century, Laura made landfall near the border of Louisiana and Texas. At least six people have been killed. Residents near Lake Charles were told to stay indoors with windows and doors shut when a chemical fire broke out at a Biolab plant.

President Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican Party’s nomination on Thursday before a crowd of about 1,500 on the South Lawn of the White House. In defiance of social distancing guidelines, attendees sat shoulder-to-shoulder with few people wearing masks. Trump spoke as the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus neared 180,000 — by far the highest total in the world — and repeatedly defended his administration’s handling of the pandemic.

In light of the police shooting of unarmed African American father Jacob Blake, we look at the past misconduct of the Kenosha police department. In 2004, Kenosha police killed white 21-year-old Michael Bell in front of his mother and sister. The Kenosha Police Department conducted its own review of the incident, and within two days completely exonerated the officers. Bell’s father, Michael Bell Sr.

The ACLU of Wisconsin is calling for top Kenosha law enforcement officials to resign in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, who was left paralyzed below the waist after a white officer shot him in the back seven times. The shooting has sparked mass protests in Kenosha and around the U.S., bringing renewed attention to racism and violence in the Kenosha police force.

As President Trump is set to accept the Republican Party’s formal renomination for president amid ongoing scandals and multiple crises, we speak with John Dean, who served as the White House counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973. His testimony during the Watergate scandal helped bring down Nixon. His new book is “Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers.” “I worked for the last authoritarian president we had,” Dean says.

Vice President Mike Pence headlined the third night of the Republican National Convention, focusing largely on preserving law and order and attacking Joe Biden. We play excerpts of the comments made by Pence, who made no mention of police brutality or the recent police shootings that have sparked protests across the U.S. Pence also failed to mention the white gunman accused of killing two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Professional athletes are taking part in unprecedented collective action in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and against police violence, bringing basketball, baseball and soccer leagues to a grinding halt. The protests and calls to recognize systemic police brutality also extended across tennis arenas. Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation and host of the “Edge of Sports” podcast, says the actions constitute “a sports strike wave” for racial justice.

The police shooting of Jacob Blake has sparked massive protests across the country and in Kenosha, where a white teenager opened fire on Black Lives Matter protesters and killed two people. Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old self-declared militia member and avid Trump supporter, was apprehended in Antioch, Illinois, after fleeing Wisconsin. He has been charged with murder.

As climate-fueled wildfires engulf California, tens of thousands of firefighters have been deployed across the state to combat the blazes amid a record heat wave and deadly pandemic.

A new book on Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s unprecedented attack on immigrant communities and the immigration system, describes the White House adviser as a dangerous man bringing white nationalist ideology to the highest levels of government. “This is what shapes the immigration policy,” says Jean Guerrero, author of “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda.

At the second night of the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, speakers largely ignored the devastating public health and economic crisis facing the country as the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus nears 180,000 and tens of millions of Americans are out of work and struggling to pay for food and housing.