President Biden will spend this weekend reaching out to Black voters with high-profile visits to Atlanta and Detroit. Polls suggest he’s got plenty of work to do.

• Biden kicked off the weekend at the National Museum of African American History in D.C. commemorating the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board, which ended segregation in public schools, and meeting with leaders of historically Black fraternities and sororities known as the Divine Nine. The event marked the start of a series of appearances aimed at courting Black voters at a moment when their support is wavering. Recent polling shows 23 percent of Black voters in key battleground states plan to vote for disgraced former President Trump, after only 12 percent backed him nationally in 2020. Things seem especially fraught with Black men, of whom 30 percent now say they plan to vote for Trump according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll. 

• That helps explain Biden’s commencement speech Sunday at Morehouse College, an all-male HBCU in Atlanta and Martin Luther King Jr’s alma mater. Yet this speech brings its own political risks for Biden. Some students strongly oppose his appearance in light of his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, and the school is bracing for protests. Morehouse president David A. Thomas told CNN he might shut the whole thing down “on the spot” if the event gets too rowdy.  

• Next, Biden heads to Detroit to meet with small business owners and deliver an NAACP speech. The group’s president, Derrick Johnson, has dismissed the negative polls. But other Detroit voices say the disconnect is real. Zeke Williams, the founder of a community group called New Era Detroit that links up residents in disinvested neighborhoods with badly needed resources, said his group has been ignored. “We haven’t heard anything from a Democrat or Republican,” Williams told NBC News. “You wouldn’t even be able to tell this is an election year in our communities, unless somebody flies in for a day and gives a speech. Other than that, you know, it’s business as usual.”

Biden will have the ear of leaders like the NAACP’s Johnson. But it’s people like Williams he’ll need to reach.

The share of Americans who identify as LGBTQ+ continues to rise, with 7.6 percent of U.S. adults now identifying with a sexual orientation other than heterosexual according to new polling data from Gallup. That’s up from 5.6 percent just four years ago, and 3.5 percent in 2012. It seems like a big win for inclusivity that more and more adults feel comfortable sharing information about their sexuality with some random pollster!

The two major candidates offer up a strong contrast on this topic. President Biden released a statement Friday recognizing International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia. Meanwhile, a new expose from the Guardian found a dark money group with ties to Trump’s inner circle spent $90 million on racist and transphobic ads around the 2022 midterms. Again we ask, how in God’s name is this guy polling so well?

The Israel Defense Forces said it recovered the bodies of three hostages taken by Hamas in northern Gaza on Friday. Shani Louk, 23, Amit Buskila, 28, and Itzhak Gelerenter, 57, were murdered after escaping the Nova Music Festival attack on October 7, and their remains were taken back to Gaza and found in a Hamas tunnel, the IDF said. 

The Pentagon announced that humanitarian aid to Gaza will soon begin flowing through a new temporary pier anchored to the Gaza shore. The U.N., however, has expressed concern about the availability of vehicles and fuel needed to adequately deliver supplies. 

An after-hours House Oversight Committee session turned into a now-viral verbal sparring match between far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Jasmine Crockett (D-TX). Greene made a snide comment about Crockett’s “fake eyelashes” affecting her reading skills. AOC jumped to Crockett’s defense, and MGT refused to apologize. So Crockett responded with a jab of her own, inquiring if it was within the rules to comment on a member’s “bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body.” Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-TN) seemed stumped by that one. He may want to call up Real Housewives’ own Andy Cohen to moderate the next session. 

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr. is trying his best to explain why an upside-down flag, which symbolized Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement, was spotted outside his home in the days following the January 6 insurrection. Justice Alito threw his wife under the bus, telling Fox News she hung the flag upside down after a neighbor allegedly blamed Mrs. Alito for the Capitol riots and insulted her using “the C-word.” Right, okay then. Anyone would react by hanging an anti-democratic symbol outside their home. Makes perfect sense! 

The man convicted of attempting to kidnap former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband and attacking him with a hammer was sentenced to 30 years in prison. 

NYU is forcing some students who participated in anti-war campus protests to complete ethical decision-making and morality modules and write “reflection papers.” Some students have objected, calling the assignment a coerced confession. The university calls it a “restorative practice.” One NYU law professor called the move “an intellectual embarrassment.” 

The Senate is considering a bipartisan bill that would grant national monument status to Greenwood, Oklahoma, more commonly known as “Black Wall Street.” The once thriving predominantly Black neighborhood in Tulsa is the site of a racist massacre that took place in 1921, as federal recognition for the atrocity that claimed hundreds of lives continues to grow. 

Ten HBCU student newsrooms will receive nearly $200,000 towards new technologies, business operations, audience engagement, and reporting. The grants given by the Center for Journalism & Democracy at Howard University will also be used to hire contributing writers, injecting a much-needed boost in resources into Black student journalism. Yay, First Amendment!