President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are urging lawmakers to support a deal to suspend the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025, in order to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt for the first time in history. The two leaders reached a tentative agreement over the Memorial Day long weekend, but it must still be approved by Congress before a June 5 deadline, when the government is expected to run out of money to pay its bills.

We look at the largely forgotten 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, when police in Chicago shot at and gassed a peaceful gathering of striking steelworkers and their supporters, killing 10 people, most of them shot in the back. It was a time like today, when unions were growing stronger. The workers were on strike against Republic Steel, and the police attacked them with weapons supplied by the company. The tragic story is told in a new PBS documentary.

May 19 marked what would have been the 98th birthday of Malcolm X. The director Spike Lee gave the keynote address at an event marking the day at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, which is housed in the former Audubon Ballroom in New York where Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965.

As attacks on the teaching of Black history escalate in Florida and other states, we hear from The New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on “The 1619 Project.” She spoke on May 19 at the Malcolm X and Dr.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers group, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. It is the longest sentence handed down so far to any participant in the January 6 insurrection, when thousands of Trump supporters stormed the halls of Congress to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory.

Former British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and famed linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky joined others earlier this year calling on President Biden to drop charges against Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder has been languishing for over four years in the harsh Belmarsh prison in London while appealing extradition to the United States. If he is extradited, tried and convicted, Assange faces up to 175 years in jail for violating the U.S.