Opinion

After more than 300 newspapers across the country united to denounce President Donald Trump's claim that the media is "the enemy of the people," the commander-in-chief unsurprisingly could not help but bite back at an industry that has long been considered to be the cornerstone of American democracy. Now his minions in the media, namely Fox News figures, are following suit.

Congressional midterms can deal a major blow to a president, from Ronald Reagan in 1982 to Barack Obama in 2010 to Bill Clinton in 1994. Two years after being elected president, Reagan, Obama and Clinton all watched their parties suffer significant losses in Congress. And according to professional pollster G. Terry Madonna—director of the Franklin & Marshall Poll and head of public affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania—Republicans have much to worry aboutwhen it comes to the 2018 midterms.

For generations, race studies scholars—historians, literary critics, social scientists—believed that race and its pernicious spawn racism were modern-day phenomena only. This is because race was originally defined only in biological terms, and believed to be determined by skin color, physiognomy, and genetic inheritance. The more astute, however, came to realize race could also be a matter of cultural classification, as Ann Stoler’s 1977 study of the colonial Dutch East Indies makes plain: “Race could never be a matter of physiology alone. Cultural competency in Dutch customs, a sense of ‘belonging’ in a Dutch cultural milieu … disaffiliation with things Javanese … domestic arrangements, parenting styles, and moral environment … were crucial to defining … who was to be considered European.”

On Thursday, Politico ran an article channeling Donald Trump's supporters in the political class as they tried to put a positive spin on the anticipated shellacking the Republican Party may get in the midterms after electing a historically unpopular president. The argument these politicos make is that it's somehow good for Trump if the Democrats win a House majority this year, because they'll overplay their hand by pursuing impeachment him, which will only end up making Trump more popular.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, openly admitting that he did so for political reasons.

Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin—who battled pancreatic cancer and other severe health problems—has died, her publicist told the Associated Press Thursday.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s name will live in infamy for many reasons, not the least of which was his admission late in life that he knew the war in Vietnam couldn’t be won even while he sent thousands of American troops to their needless deaths and ordered the bombing of North Vietnam. In an interview with the Washington Post when his memoir was published in 1995, McNamara admitted that “as far back as December of '65 I said to the president, I think we have only a 1-in-3 chance to win militarily, at best 1-in-2.' He said: Are you saying the war can't be won militarily?' I said yes."

We’ve been complacent.

Spike Lee’s powerful new film, “BlacKkKlansman,” tells the true story of Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer who infiltrates a local branch the Ku Klux Klan in 1979.

Last weekend's Unite the Right rally in Washington — scheduled to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the white supremacist gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, that culminated in the murder of one woman and injuries to many others — was supposed to be a massive show of white nationalist power. Instead, the event was a whiff, with only a couple of dozen attendees, who bailed out early after realizing what a failure the whole thing turned out to be.

During this year’s 26th annual DEFCON convention, a massive event organized by and for hackers, an 11-year-old girl was able to successfully hack into a ES&S M650 Optical Scan Tabulator, the machine used in Florida elections to tabulate votes, in just 10 minutes. Yeah. Sleep tight, America. People who believe the Russians aren’t trying -- and succeeding -- to do the same in real life are lying to themselves. That includes the president.

MSNBC's Katy Tur interviewed Omarosa Manigault-Newman on Tuesday afternoon, and the whistleblowing former White House official did not hold back.