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The series, titled “Let’s Learn,” features a drag queen going by the name “Lil Miss Hot Mess.” The drag queen, née Harris David Harris, is a media personality from San Francisco, California, and bills himself as one of the first drag queens to host a reading hour for kids.

Don’t you dare compare the ideologically motivated mobs attacking and destroying shops and other property in Seattle with the ideologically motivated mobs that attacked and destroyed Jewish-owned shops in Nazi Germany during Kristallnacht in 1938! Not if you work for NPR affiliate KNKX in Tacoma, WA. KNKX has permanently booted University of Washington Professor Cliff Mass from his weekly weather segment for daring to make such a comparison on his personal blog. Reaction came swiftly from the left on social media accusing Mass of anti-Semitism and exaggerating what was going on in riots in Seattle. This led to KNKX removing...

Black Lives Matter activists cite Douglass’s 1852 speech ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’ as proof America is evil. They utterly miss his point. Last week on CNN, as contributor Angela Rye accused White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnaney and President Trump of failing to understand the history of black America, she referred to the legendary Frederick Douglass. “Frederick Douglass said about Independence Day in this country, what to the slave is the Fourth of July?” she said. “And I would invite them to even start there, as a reading principle, to see how different we see...

New White House strategic communications director Alyssa Farah already has her work cut out for her. One of her first orders of business was to correct fake news reports that Surgeon General Jerome Adams was "sidelined" from public appearances after some comments he made last week about how the coronavirus affects minority communities. "Avoid alcohol, tobacco and drugs,” Adams told minorities during a coronavirus task force briefing. "We need you to do this, if not for yourself, then for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy. Do it for your Big Mama. Do it for your Pop-Pop." PBS reporter Yamiche...

“If they don’t change the statute… they should be shot.” Based on the liberal mainstream media’s usual narrative you might guess those words were said by some mean conservative; however, you would be wrong. Those violence-inciting words were proclaimed with apparent pleasure by a leftist pundit on a taxpayer-funded PBS channel—and to make it worse, the PBS host, Ted Simons, not only failed to rebuke the comment, he can be heard chuckling at it. Watch the exchange here. Leftist activist and political commentator, Chris Herstam, was speaking about Republican lawmakers when he decided to threaten them. Many of our state...

If you have kids, or if you ever were a kid, you know about the television show Sesame Street. It’s been around for more than 50 years and it’s been appropriately described as an American institution, with lovable characters, entertaining stories, and unique music. It was the first television show to base its content on educational goals and a curriculum, and for so many children (and their parents), it made learning fun. Indeed, if there’s one street that always felt safe for children, it was Sesame Street. And why not? It features a plethora of friendly puppets, an 8-foot tall...

Planned Parenthood’s decision to withdraw Monday from a federal grant program aimed at family planning services is the result of a ruling from an unlikely source: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The historically liberal court allowed a Trump administration rule blocking federal funding from organizations that refer patients for abortions to move forward, and Planned Parenthood chose to lose the money rather than stop the referrals. The case is one signal that President Donald Trump’s judicial nominations may be shifting one of the nation’s most liberal courts further to the right, blunting what many consider his opponents’ most effective...

After reading a “guidance reminder” posted last week by NPR, it’s become even more obvious why those in favor of abortion and those opposed to it are increasingly at odds with one another. Mark Memmott, supervising senior editor of standards and practices for NPR, put together the guide after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed into law the most stringently pro-life legislation in the country and not long after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed a bill into law barring abortion after a heartbeat is detectable, which usually occurs around six weeks into pregnancy. The style guide makes one thing...

PBS Kids decided to drop a bombshell on unsuspecting viewers. During the 22nd season of Arthur, the episode rolled out a sociopolitical shocker: Mr. Ratburn is gay. But the shock drops didn’t end there, PBS decided to push even further… Mr. Ratburn got married to his gay partner. The news has gone viral online following an article from TVLine.com, which recounts how the moment occurs, writing… "[…] the gang spots Mr. Ratburn having lunch with an uptight woman (voiced by special guest star Jane Lynch), who tells Mr. Ratburn that he’s “too soft” and needs to “toughen up.” They decide...

(RNN) – What’s wrong with our eyesight and hearing? We’ve got some serious issues. First, it was “the dress.” Was it black and blue or white and gold? Then, there was the whole Yanni vs. Laurel thing. Which did you hear? Warning: This story contains a Twitter post that some may find offensive. Now, folks are flipping out because they think they heard loveable Grover drop the F-bomb on “Sesame Street.” Just remember, we’re talking about a children’s TV show here.

This is the third federal government shutdown this year. And this one comes at a particularly hard time — during the holidays. How are you and your family faring? Is there a specific consequence you're facing this time compared with others? NPR's Weekend Edition is working on a story about federal workers during the shutdown. If you are affected, please share your story with us in the form below, or here. A producer may contact you to follow up.

....concepts that still help me make sense of the world, like the "racial nadir" — the downturn in American race relations, starting after Reconstruction, that saw the rise of lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan. In doing so, Lies My Teacher Told Me overturned one assumption embedded in the history classes I'd been sitting through all my life: that the United States is constantly ascending from greatness to greatness. "I started out the new edition with the famous two photographs of the inaugural crowds of this guy named President Obama, his first inauguration, and this guy named President Trump, his...

The documentary "RBG" is a look at perhaps the most unlikely rock star Washington has ever seen: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Tracing her roots, education and career, it's her early and continuing fight for gender equality that winds through the film. Jeffrey Brown talks with directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen. Read the Full Transcript John Yang: Finally tonight, she is largely known for issuing stinging dissents from the Supreme Court bench. But a new documentary, out today in select theaters, provides an intimate and rare look inside the life of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Jeffrey Brown has...

In February 2009, Samantha Pierce became pregnant with twins. It was a time when things were going really well in her life. She and her husband had recently gotten married. They had good jobs. "I was a kick-ass community organizer," says Pierce, who is African-American and lives in Cleveland. She worked for a nonprofit that fought against predatory lending. The organization was growing, and Pierce had been promoted to management.

In name and in aim, it's a bill for our political moment. Ladies and gentlemen, Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois presents: the Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement, or COVFEFE Act. As Congress has taught us time and again, any legislative priority can be pretzeled into an acronym if you simply toss away the conventions of standard American English. But like the best legislative acronyms, the Covfefe Act's title points to its content. If you've forgotten, or you called in sick to the national conversation on May 31, President Trump tweeted simply, "Despite the constant negative press covfefe", which...

Beyoncé didn't bring back the Black Panthers when she and an Afro-frizzed dance team donned black leather jackets and berets during Super Bowl 50's halftime show. That's because the Black Panthers never actually left. The Panthers were more than militants; they were pioneers in American pop and political culture. The Black Lives Matter movement, the rise of social media, music and sports, even Donald Trump -- all were shaped by the Panthers in some way, historians and ex-Panthers say. On the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, people are taking a second look at the group....

Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton spoke Tuesday at the University of Minnesota to outline her strategy for keeping the United States safe and preventing future terror attacks. Thumbs up or thumbs down.

New posters featuring Hillary Clinton seem to be trying to make her "high flying, adored" with voters. The new images appeared at a campaign stop in San Antonio, Texas, where Clinton wooed Latino voters on Thursday. But according to NPR's Tamara Keith, the campaign says they don't know where the likeness came from. Banners were plastered all over the venue along with smaller signs and t-shirts. The image of the black-clad Clinton profile may seem familiar to those who love either Argentinean history or musical theater — specifically Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Evita." The 1978 musical told the story of Eva...

Here's what we know: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for selling U.S. nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union after one of the most sensational Cold War-era espionage trials. They were convicted in 1951 owing, largely, to the testimony of David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother. Here's what we don't know: How credible Greenglass' testimony was in court. Greenglass himself spent nearly a decade in prison for his role in the conspiracy. The Army sergeant stole nuclear intelligence from Los Alamos, N.M., and said he passed it on to the Rosenbergs. At the trial, he said Ethel Rosenberg typed...

PBS revealed yesterday that it would be postponing the third season of Finding Your Roots after it was discovered that producers succumbed to pressure from Ben Affleck last year to leave out details of his slave-owning ancestors. According to emails released in the Sony hack by WikiLeaks, Affleck urged producers and host Henry Louis Gates not to include these relatives in his episode of the show, which traces back the ancestry of celebrities. While Mr. Gates claimed, after WikiLeaks, that these ancestors were only left out to make room to include more interesting ones—a Revolutionary War soldier and a mystic—most...