Today in History: June 22, Joe Louis knocks out Max Schmeling
In 1938, in a rematch that bore the weight of both geopolitical symbolism and African American representation, American Joe Louis knocked out German Max Schmeling in just two minutes and four seconds to retain his heavyweight boxing title in front of 70,000 spectators at New York's Yankee Stadium.
1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, a massive and ultimately ill-fated invasion of the Soviet Union that would prove pivotal to the Allied victory over the Axis Powers.
In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, more popularly known as the 'GI Bill of Rights,' which provided tuition coverage, unemployment support, and low-interest home and business loans to returning veterans.
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In 1945, the World War II Battle of Okinawa ended with an Allied victory.
In 1970, President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that lowered the minimum voting age to 18.
In 1977, John N. Mitchell became the first former US Attorney General to go to prison as he began serving a sentence for his role in the Watergate cover-up.
In 1981, Mark David Chapman pleaded guilty to killing rock star and former Beatle John Lennon.
In 1986, Argentine soccer player Diego Maradona scored the infamous 'Hand of God' goal in the quarterfinals of the FIFA World Cup against England, giving Argentina a 1-0 lead. (Maradona would follow minutes later with a remarkable individual effort that become known as the 'Goal of the Century,' and Argentina won 2-1.)
In 1992, the US Supreme Court, in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, unanimously ruled that 'hate crime' laws that banned cross burning and similar expressions of racial bias violated free-speech rights.
In 2011, after evading arrest for 16 years, mob boss James 'Whitey' Bulger was captured in Santa Monica, Calif.
In 2012, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted by a jury in Bellefonte, Pa., on 45 counts of sexually assaulting 10 boys over 15 years. (Sandusky would later be sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison.)
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USA Today
23 minutes ago
- USA Today
President Trump complains 'woke' Smithsonian is too focused on 'how bad slavery was'
Trump's remarks came after he launched a review of the Smithsonian Institution to remove "divisive or partisan" elements from its museums. WASHINGTON − President Donald Trump said the Smithsonian museums in Washington are too fixated on "how bad slavery was" and other negative aspects of United States history as he promised to take aim at the "WOKE" elements inside them. Trump's remarks, made in an Aug. 19 social media post on Truth Social, came after he last week launched a review of the Smithsonian Institution and its 21 museums to remove "divisive or partisan" elements and determine whether its materials conformed to the Trump administration's views on teaching history. "The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of 'WOKE,' " Trump said in his post. "The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been." More: Trump administration launches Smithsonian review to remove 'divisive' materials Trump added that the Smithsonian museums contain "Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future." "We are not going to allow this to happen," he said, comparing his review of the Smithsonian Institution to his administration's work to root out diversity, equity and inclusions initiatives from colleges and universities. "This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the 'HOTTEST' Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums." Federal funds make up about 62% of the annual budget of the Smithsonian, which is a public-private partnership established by Congress. The National Museum of African American History and Culture, which the Smithsonian opened in 2016, has comprehensive exhibits on the history of slavery in the United States beginning with the transatlantic slave trade. Trump's review is set to intially focus on eight Smithsonian museums. The list includes the National Museum of African American History and Culture, as well as the National Museum of American History; National Museum of Natural History; National Museum of the American Indian; National Air and Space Museum; Smithsonian American Art Museum; the National Portrait Gallery; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. More: Civil rights leaders rally around National Museum of African American History White House officials announced the review in an Aug. 12 letter to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III, writing that the initiative aims to "ensure alignment with the President's directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions." The letter stated that within 120 days, the Smithsonian is expected to begin making "content corrections where necessary, replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions." More: Trump's Smithsonian review will start with 8 out of 21 museums. Which ones? The review will focus on Smithsonian exhibits, along with the process for creating them. It is expected to be completed early next year, which is the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding. In a statement last week on the White House review, the Smithsonian said it would "continue to collaborate constructively with the White House." "The Smithsonian's work is grounded in a deep commitment to scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and the accurate, factual presentation of history. We are reviewing the letter with this commitment in mind," the statement reads. Contributing: Zac Anderson
Boston Globe
23 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Veterans' voices shape a report on the Afghanistan War's lessons and impact
Advertisement 'What can we learn from the Afghanistan War?' asked an Aug. 12 discussion session with four of the commission's 16 members. What they got was two straight hours of dozens of veterans' personal stories — not one glowingly positive, and most saturated in frustration and disappointment. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'I think the best way to describe that experience was awful,' said Marine veteran Brittany Dymond, who served in Afghanistan in 2012. Navy veteran Florence Welch said the 2021 withdrawal made her ashamed she ever served there. 'It turned us into a Vietnam, a Vietnam that none of us worked for,' she said. Members of Congress, some driven by having served in the war, created the independent commission several months after the withdrawal, after an assessment by the Democratic administration of then-president Joe Biden faulted the actions of President Donald Trump's first administration for constraining US options. A Republican review, in turn, blamed Biden. Views of the events remain divided, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered yet another review this spring. Advertisement The commission wants to understand the bigger picture of a conflict that spanned four presidential administrations and cost more than 2,400 American lives, said cochair Dr. Colin Jackson. 'So we're interested in looking hard at the end of US engagement in Afghanistan, but we're equally interested in understanding the beginning, the middle, and the end,' he said in an interview in Columbus. Cochair Shamila Chaudhary said the panel is also exploring more sweeping questions. 'So our work is not just about what the US did in Afghanistan but what the US should be doing in any country where it deems it has a national security interest,' she said. 'And not just should it be there, but how it should behave, what values does it guide itself by, and how does it engage with individuals who are very different from themselves.' Jackson said one of the commission's priorities is making sure the final report, due in August 2026, isn't 'unrecognizable to any veteran of the Afghanistan conflict.' 'The nature of the report should be representative of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine experience,' he said. Dymond told commissioners a big problem was the mission. 'You cannot exert a democratic agenda, which is our foreign policy, you cannot do that on a culture of people who are not bought into your ideology,' she said. 'What else do we expect the outcome to be? And so we had two decades of service members lost and maimed because we're trying to change an ideology that they didn't ask for.' Advertisement The experience left eight-year Army veteran Steve Orf demoralized. He said he didn't go there 'to beat a bad guy.' 'Those of us who served generally wanted to believe that we were helping to improve the world, and we carried with us the hopes, values, and principles of the United States — values and principles that also seem to have been casualties of this war," he told commissioners. 'For many of us, faith with our leaders is broken and trust in our country is broken.' Tuesday's report identifies emerging themes of the review to include strategic drift, interagency incoherence, and whether the war inside Afghanistan and the counterterrorism war beyond were pursuing the same aims or at cross purposes. It also details difficulties the commission has encountered getting key documents. According to the report, the Biden administration initially denied the commission's requests for White House materials on the implementation of the February 2020 peace agreement Trump signed with the Taliban, called the Doha Agreement, and on the handling of the withdrawal, citing executive confidentiality concerns. The transition to Trump's second term brought further delays and complications, but since the commission has pressed the urgency of its mission with the new administration, critical intelligence and documents have now begun to flow, the report says.
Boston Globe
23 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Wu stands up for cities, not just for Boston
In what was barely distinguishable from a campaign rally, Wu — backed by dozens of supporters — eloquently insisted that Boston will never back down from supporting all its residents. She added that it is the federal government, not the city, that is trampling on the law. 'The US attorney general asked for a response by today, so here it is. Stop attacking our cities to hide your administration's failures,' Wu said. Advertisement For Wu, it was an opportunity to revisit her 'We may have said this in D.C. nearly six months ago, and I'll say it again today: You are wrong on the law and you are wrong on safety,' Wu declared. 'Most of all, you are wrong on cities. 'The cities that live in your minds are totally foreign to the residents living in our cities, and we are picking up the pieces of your failures to deliver on your promises under the Trump administration.' Advertisement In typically authoritarian fashion, the White House threatened withholding of federal funds to the city if it doesn't cooperate, and even hinted at criminal charges for officials who won't toe the line. 'You are hereby notified that your jurisdiction has been identified as one that engages in sanctuary policies that thwart federal immigration enforcement to the detriment of the interests of the United States,' Bondi wrote. 'That ends now.' Resisting Trump's immigration crackdown is, of course, a proven winner for Wu. By a wide margin, Bostonians rightly Bondi's saber-rattling takes place against the backdrop of President Trump's attempted Some see these maneuvers as an attempt to distract everyone from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and that may well be a consideration. But Trump's dystopian view of American cities has long been a matter of record. At 'Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.' Advertisement Carnage is not a word that remotely applies to Boston. For a native New Yorker, Trump's contempt for the kind of places that spawned him is palpable. I asked Wu if she worried that mayors could actually face prosecution for resisting the administration. 'I try not to think about it,' she said. 'We're trying to do the next right thing, and it's a cloud or a storm of new headlines and attacks coming at Boston and cities everywhere, every single day. We know what our residents need, and we've been working really hard, making really important progress, getting it done. We're going to continue to do that.' The Trump's contempt for Boston has been a huge campaign-season gift to Wu, and the rally Tuesday was another example of that. But it reflected something darker too: an administration determined to rewrite the laws to its liking, and ruthless in enforcing its will. Boston — and Mayor Wu — are right to resist that with everything it has. Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at
