the Web Editors

“DACA’s rescission was arbitrary and capricious because the Department failed adequately to explain its conclusion that the program was unlawful,” Bates wrote in his opinion statement released Tuesday. “Neither the meager legal reasoning nor the assessment of litigation risk provided by DHS to support its rescission decision is sufficient to sustain termination of the DACA program.”

This year Dr. Cone received the 2018 Grawemeyer Award for Religion from Louisville Presbyterian Seminary for the The Cross and the Lynching Tree which “passionately conjoins the provocative images of the first century cross and the twentieth-century lynching tree.” As he writes, “Both are symbols of the death of the innocent, mob hysteria, humiliation, and terror. They both also reveal a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning and demonstrate that God can transform ugliness into beauty, into God’s liberating presence.” His theological memoir, Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody, will be published this October by Orbis.

1. ‘We Are Heavily Armed. —the Pastors’: The Root of the Christian Right’s Embrace of Guns

“I’m reminded that at the root of much of the Christian Right’s antipathy to gun control is a sense of fear — a sense that they are the final guardians of God’s will for America, that they are being overrun by something they see as from the devil.”

2. A Short Timeline of Starbucks’ Fraught History with Race

The unwarranted arrest of two black men — who were prepping for a meeting — inside a Philadelphia Starbucks is just the latest incident in the chain’s history.

"Work requirements do not create jobs; they instead create barriers to assistance for those who need them, oftentimes when their situation is most dire," House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (M.D.) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-C.A.) said in a joint statement. "This executive order perpetuates false and racist stereotypes about certain groups supposedly taking advantage of government assistance."

The survey illustrates the intersectionality of race and environmental justice, referencing research by the NAACP that found that race is the principle indicator of the level of susceptibility to environmentally-caused negative health outcomes, as well as  economic and pyschological impacts. 

More than 500 people, including many children, were bought to medical centers showing signs of chemical attacks. Footage shows images of dead bodies with foam visible on their noses and mouths — a clear sign of a chemical attack.

After an invitation to pray with leaders at Liberty University, Shane Claiborne tweeted the university's response: A police letter threating arrest if he walks onto campus.

1. We Asked One Question at March For Our Lives. Here’s How Kids Answered
Watch this inspiring video, featuring some of the incredible young people at last weekend’s March.

2. How Evangelical Support of Trump Helped Bring Pornography into the Mainstream
“If the court evangelicals are troubled by the fact that the porn industry is getting free publicity every night on the news, they must realize that they are partly to blame.”

Sterling was shot in Baton Rouge, La., as he was selling CDs outside a convenient store. Police arrived after a resident reported being threatened outside of the store. Police found Sterling inside the store and claimed he was trying to pull a loaded gun from his pocket when one of the officers opened fire. The encounter lasted about 90 seconds.