In the news today: Texas Democrats were able to stall a racist bill again targeting voting rights in the state, but without federal action such victories will be short lived. After Senate Republicans refused, as “favor” to Sen. Mitch McConnell, to allow a special prove of the January 6 insurrection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi intends to push a probe forward by other means.

Lauren Hough’s deeply honest, moving, and original essay collection Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Part tackles a subject Hollywood loves—both living in and leaving a cult—from the perspective of someone who survived cult life during adolescence. Hough defies reader expectations, however, by focusing much more on what her life was like after the cult rather than during it.

The media has focused a lot of attention on those few Republicans—Liz Cheney, for example—who have spoken out publicly as the GOP transformed itself before our eyes into an authoritarian Trump cult, committed to overturning fair elections while disenfranchising as many Americans as possible in the process.

Systemic and structural racism are, unfortunately, and disturbingly, long integrated into life in the United States. In recent years, mainstream media and elected officials have spoken openly about police violence against people of color—and specifically, Black Americans—as well as the intersection of race with a number of issues, like wage equality, job opportunities, and unhoused populations.

A Black security guard hired to protect journalists covering protests after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis is suing the Minnesota State Patrol after troopers arrested him and bypassed white members of the media.