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It took three words — “All Lives Matter” — for longtime shock jock and Sacramento Kings TV play-by-play announcer Grant Napear’s career to go up in flames, but the 60-year-old’s remorse only goes so far.

“I don’t want to call it a mistake,”

Two days earlier, he had tweeted “ALL LIVES MATTER…EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!” in response to former Kings star DeMarcus Cousins, who asked Napear his thoughts on the Black Lives Matter

After long refusing to explicitly criticize a sitting president, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis accused President Donald Trump on Wednesday of trying to divide America and roundly denounced a militarization of the U.S. response to civil unrest.

The remarks by Mattis, an influential retired Marine general who resigned over policy differences in 2018, are the strongest to date by a former Pentagon leader over Trump’s response to the killing of George Floyd, an African-American, while in Minneapolis police custody.

“Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort.

WASHINGTON - Already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and unemployment levels not seen since the Great Depression, cities across the United States smoldered on Tuesday after a seventh consecutive night of protests and civil unrest related to the death of African American George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police last week.   As business owners and residents yet again clean up the debris, there is growing concern that the economic damage to many of the communities where violence is taking place will persist long after the last window pane is replaced and the last burned out car is towed away. Businesses and neighborhoods where protests have turned violent will have to contend not just with the aftermath of the protests, but with multiple aggravating factors that will make recovery even more difficult. 

Many businesses had already been pushed to the edge of solvency by months of lockdown related to the coronavirus, and the slow and careful re-openings envisioned by many state and local leaders were not designed to allow commerce to rebound to pre-pandemic levels immediately.  Layered on top of that is the Depression-level unemployment currently afflicting the nation and the prospect of an economy that will, at the very least, be in recession for the foreseeable future. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office delivered an analysis to Congress warning that the virus will adversely impact the economy through much of the next decade, cutting some $8 trillion from Gross Domestic Product over that period. Another distinct possibility is a second wave of the coronavirus, either arising naturally or helped along by massive protests in which people have been gathering in close proximity. The understandable rage at the death of Floyd, who was handcuffed by police and died  after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, sparked protests in well over 100 cities across the country. His death has become the most potent recent symbol of a system in which black Americans are, with disturbing regularity, abused and even killed by law enforcement officers, frequently on camera. And while the vast majority of the protesters have been non-violent, in many cases there have been incidents of property destruction and looting, as well as attacks on police officers.

“It’s really a simple question: ‘Am I going to let a disease kill me or am I going to let the system — the police?” he said. “And if something is going to take me out when I don’t have a job, which one do I prefer? Folks who don’t have much else to lose — they understand that this system isn’t built for black people. And that’s why people are in the streets.”

this is an extraordinary moment of pain for the nation, especially for black Americans who are bearing the brunt of three crises — police violence, crushing unemployment and the deadliest infectious disease threat in a century — that have laid bare longstanding injustice

Public health experts, activists and lawmakers say the triple threat requires a coordinated response.

A federal contract security officer was killed and another injured in a shooting outside the US courthouse in Oakland, the FBI said on Saturday.

The shooting happened less than a half-mile from the Oakland police headquarters where demonstrators gathered to protest against the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.

Jesse and Jessica Hurtado, a husband and wife dressed in Brown Beret fatigues, joined the protest in solidarity with black protesters. They had just been to another protest in San Jose. “They’re not just killing African Americans. They’re killing black and brown together,” said Jesse.

In a speech in Philadelphia, the presumptive Democratic 2020 presidential nominee addressed systemic racism and empathized with those who are protesting across the nation in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota in ways Trump has not.

I won't traffic in fear and division. I won't fan the flames of hate. I'll seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued our country, not use them for political gain. I'll do my job and I'll take responsibility -- I won't blame others,"

Building on his campaign's core theme that the "soul of the nation" is at stake, Biden made explicit his differences in approach from Trump, who on Monday urged governors to "dominate" protesters, and bragged on Twitter Tuesday morning that "overwhelming force" and "domination" had been on display in the nation's capital.

Not long ago, the struggle between racial liberalism and racial conservatism was a battle fought inside the Democratic and Republican parties. Now it’s a battle fought between the parties.

As African-Americans and other racial minorities increasingly occupy positions of influence and authority in American society, they also face backlash from those on the right whose opposition to ceding power is fierce, whether their opposition is veiled or out in the open. This opposition is now lodged solidly in the contemporary Republican Party, and the two parties regularly confront each other with rising intensity over the issue.

the importance of ethnicity and race in American politics is growing, not diminishing.

“I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand,” said one young man, his pitch a blend of curiosity and exasperation. “What do Republicans believe? What does it mean to be a Republican?”

You could forgive a 17-year-old, who has come of age during Donald Trump’s reign, for failing to recognize a cohesive doctrine that guides the president’s party. The supposed canons of GOP orthodoxy—limited government, free enterprise, institutional conservation, moral rectitude, fiscal restraint, global leadership—have in recent years gone from elastic to expendable.

Far more difficult is answering the question of what, quite specifically, has filled it.

This isn’t the first time a light show at the building hasn’t gone over well. In 1981, to honor the 50th anniversary of its construction, the building’s owners publicized a “laser light show” to dazzle New Yorkers with a “Star Wars effect.”

Special lights marking particular occasions have been used on the skyscraper for nearly its entire history. In 1932, when it was little more than a year old, a white searchlight at the top marked the election of New York’s governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the U.S. presidency, according to the City University of New York’s Uniquely NYC blog.

During the Cold War, “Freedom Lights” were installed — four bright floodlights weighing one ton each. They were meant to symbolize “unlimited opportunities in America,”

Among the most important long-term questions in American politics, a bit less obviously, is the extent to which the anti-Trump coalition, which includes many conservatives joining people they once vigorously opposed, might continue redrawing ideological lines even after Trump is gone

It is primarily revulsion toward Trump personally — his vulgarity, his mendacity, the heedlessness and even nihilism of his approach to governance — rather than ideology that has led such prominent conservative voices as Will, Peggy Noonan, William Kristol and Bret Stephens to declare Trump a public menace and either endorse Joe Biden or express affinity for his cause.

A combination of pandemic-driven fear for the future, rage over racial inequality or backlash to racial unrest and Trump’s scab-picking style of politics has amplified radical voices across the spectrum. In such an environment, there are a host of issues on which traditional liberals and traditional conservatives generally are more in sympathy with each other than they are with the most inflamed precincts of left or right.

As the writer Jemar Tisby recently detailed in his book The Color of Compromise, white Christian leaders have promoted and excused racial bigotry throughout American history. Theologians made biblical arguments to justify slavery. Prominent southern pastors urged “moderation” in debates about segregation during the civil-rights era

As early as 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution condemning the denomination’s role in promoting racial bigotry and apologizing to “all African Americans” for condoning “individual and systemic racism in our lifetime,” whether “consciously or unconsciously.” Southern Baptist leaders have continued to push conversations on what they call racial reconciliation in recent years, and other denominations have made similar efforts.

conversations about race among evangelicals are often clouded by disagreements over where the line between racial reconciliation and political activism actually lies

Consider just one yardstick, a standard question of racial attitudes in which people are asked to agree or disagree with this statement: “It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.”

In 2012, 56 percent of white Republicans agreed with that statement, according to the American National Election Studies. The number grew in 2016 with Trump’s rise, to 59 percent. Last month, an astonishing 71 percent of white Republicans agreed,

The opposite movement among white Democrats is even more striking. In 2012, 38 percent agreed that African Americans didn’t try hard enough. In 2016, that dropped to 27 percent. And now? Just 13 percent.

The strength of the younger generation is the willingness to see more clearly certain truths that have been hidden and concealed. The courage to step forward. The willingness to be critical of charismatic models and be open to a variety of different people.

The weaknesses of the younger generation, of course, is that they grew up in the most commodified culture in the history of the world. So there's something always very superficial about spectacle in a commodified culture. It's all about what's visible. What is projected. What your image is and so forth

you can find a lot of the young brothers and sisters always talking about what they brand is. I say, I ain't got no god-dang brand. I got a cause. You know what I mean? They put a brand on enslaved Africans when they came here and kept that brand on them. But that language, that market language, is built into the culture. That's the mentality of a spectacle. So you've got to shatter the superficial to get at the substantial.

As Bailyn put it in the foreword to his most acclaimed work, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), “Study of the pamphlets confirmed my rather old-fashioned view that the American Revolution was above all else an ideological, constitutional, political struggle.”

At its core, the American Revolution was formed, fueled, and fought with ideas; ideas that would have implications for and effects on the American people and the republic they would establish. Through what Bailyn imaginatively called the “contagion of liberty,” these ideas would spread and allow other ideas concerning the abolition of slavery, the disestablishment of religion, and the expansion of democratic rights, to take root and grow.

In its spiritual prequel, The Barbarous Years (2012), Bailyn would focus on “the peopling of British North America” in the 17th century, highlighting the internal and external conflict among the British, Dutch, Swedish, Africans, and Native Americans.

(CNN)DC Mayor Muriel Bowser said Sunday that protesters have the right to exercise the First Amendment but should not "destroy our city" after the nation's capital experienced its second consecutive night of protests as well as some looting Saturday night.

The DC Fire Department extinguished two vehicle fires in the area north of the White House Saturday night, as well as several small fires in the downtown area. Some protesters also put up graffiti on some buildings.

More than 60 US Secret Service personnel were injured from Friday night through Sunday morning near the White House, according to a statement from the Secret Service.

Washington (CNN)Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on Sunday rebuked Donald Trump's rhetoric amid days of protests after the death of George Floyd, saying the President "is making it worse" and is stoking racial tensions.

Her remarks come amid ongoing protests across the country over the death of Floyd, an unarmed African American man who died after he was pinned down by a white Minneapolis police officer. In a series of tweets on Friday, Trump called protestors "THUGS" adding, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," a phrase with racist origins used by a former Miami police chief in the late 1960s in the wake of protests.

"I am extremely concerned when we are seeing mass gatherings. We know what's already happening in our community with this virus," she said. "We're going to see -- we're going to see the other side of this in a couple of weeks." She added, " We are losing sight of so many things right now."

Michael D'Antonio is the author of the book "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success" and co-author with Peter Eisner of "The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence." The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author. View more opinion articles on CNN.

The President's message early Friday morning was menacingly clear: Are you outraged that a black man died after a video showed a white cop kneeling on his neck as he yelled, "I can't breathe"? Steal something as you protest and you, too, will die.

Trump has seen this play out before. Headley was just one of several strongmen who were seen as heroes among frightened white people during the Civil Rights Movement. Frank Rizzo was another. When he was the Philadelphia police commissioner, he responded to a peaceful student protest in 1967 calling for more courses on African-American history (among other demands), by infamously urging cops to go after the students. Violence broke out, and 57 people were arrested.

I was still a child when I eye-witnessed racist behavior for the first time. It was in Algeria, the country of my birth. A “white” schoolmate of mine was harassing another schoolmate because of the darker color of his skin

And, of course, I’ve encountered racism in Germany.

Racism is everywhere, all over the world.

Eight months into the pandemic, obesity has turned out to be one of the clearest predictors of a difficult battle against covid-19, for reasons that may vary from person to person

Some experts say they consider obesity to have contributed to the stunning coronavirus death and morbidity rate in the United States, which has one of the highest obesity rates in the world.

And there is some evidence it is particularly harmful for people under 60

he inflicted on us a presidency which was ignorant, cruel, reckless, lawless, divisive, and disloyal.

Mendacity and bigotry became the mode of communication between America’s president and his party’s base.

Not only did he worsen a deadly pandemic—by immersing an angry and alienated minority in his alternate reality, he is sickening our future.