James Blake

Former Professional Tennis Player, NYT Best Selling Author, and proud Husband and Father. Founder of the James Blake Foundation.

[Tom Morello @tmorello]

Apparently some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses.

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

This is so perfect. Honestly, I thought "Tommy" was a plant by the way he walked off at the end. Abdul El-Sayed just looks too good here.

But after looking it up, I learned he was a former Josh Hawley staffer.

This is the most inspiring performance by an American politician that I can remember seeing.

El-Sayed was faced with a bigoted question. He didn't hide from it or pander. He broke down why it was a bigoted question, and gave a stirring defense of American principles and the Constitution.

At the end, his interlocutor wouldn't condemn Christian Nationalism! El-Sayed has a perfect response to this, and "everybody clapped."

A lot of us have had this experience of arguing with right-wingers, questioning them, and then finding out that they have no principles, they're just bigots. A Hawley staffer will talk about the US Constitution and freedom of religion to attack a Muslim politician, and sing a completely different tune when it comes to Christian fundamentalists.

Again, the "everybody clapped" nature of this, followed by Tommy walking off in shame, made me think that he was a plant.

But no. This was a real-life rightoid, getting exposed as the hateful, hypocritical bigot that he is in front of the entire world.

Abdul El-Sayed's rise in American politics has made me a lot more optimistic about our future.

[Black Journals @blackJournals01]

A Harvard professor came home from a trip to China and found his front door jammed.

He forced it open. A neighbour called the police.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested on his own porch, in his own house, holding his own ID.

He is one of the most famous historians in America.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 16 July 2009. Gates, 58, had just flown back from China. His front door would not open. He and his driver shouldered it.

A passer-by called it in as a possible break-in.

Sergeant James Crowley arrived. Gates was inside his own house by then. He produced his Harvard ID and his driver's licence with that address on it.

What happened next is disputed by both men and always will be. Crowley said Gates was uncooperative and loud. Gates said he was asked to step outside, understood exactly what was happening, and said so — including asking the officer for his name and badge number, repeatedly, and not getting it.

He was arrested for disorderly conduct. On his own property. A fifty-eight-year-old man walking with a cane.

The charge was dropped within days. Cambridge later acknowledged the arrest was regrettable.

Barack Obama was asked about it at a press conference and said the police had "acted stupidly," which caused a political firestorm large enough that he convened the famous "beer summit" at the White House with Gates and Crowley to defuse it.

And that is where the story usually stops, with three men and some beer on a lawn.

Here is what it is actually about.

Henry Louis Gates has a MacArthur fellowship, dozens of honorary degrees and a chair at Harvard. He has made television series about tracing Black ancestry. He is about as protected as a Black man in America can be.

And none of it worked on his own porch.

Every Black professional who has ever been told that respectability is the shield watched that arrest and understood what it meant.

Gates said afterwards that the experience changed what he thought he knew about his own country, and he has spent some of the time since working on criminal justice.

If it does not work for him, it does not work.

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say. But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old. Five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen. If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately. But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically.

Congresswoman Omar went on to graduate from college, work as a community organizer, become the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S., and win a seat in Congress. There, she has been one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics, which has led the president to repeatedly single her out as someone who he believes does not belong in this country.

Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen. Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case.

Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.

In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota.

The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.

[James Blake @JRBlake]

Two of my favorite memories from the tour. And with such a close friend and amazing team atmosphere. So proud to be part of the Davis Cup for so many years.

[Randy Walker @TennisPublisher]

This Davis Cup series between the USA and India in Winston-Salem was postponed due to the 9/11 attacks on the USA. @JRBlake made his Davis Cup debut and Andy Roddick played his first "live" Davis Cup matches... Six years later, the two would lead the USA to the Davis Cup title

[James Blake @JRBlake]

@MikeGarciaFWTX If you are offended by someone putting personal gain ahead of his party or his country, let me tell you a little story about the guy in the Oval Office.

[claire de lune @ClaireMPLS]

i will never fathom how anyone didn't find the first shooting at an elementary school to be the beginning and end of the gun control debate. semi automatic weapons should not exist. it should not be easy to get a gun of any kind. we are failing our children

[James Blake @JRBlake]

Amplifying this as it’s a good message from a high school teammate of my daughter. https://t.co/KzA2nrjftO

[Covie @covie_93]

So a Black woman who is one of the most qualified people to ever serve on the US Supreme Court is a "DEI hire" but a white woman who can't read was hired to be press secretary based on 'merit'??????

[Everett Stern @EverettStern1]

Dear Secretary Bessent @SecScottBessent,

My name is Everett Stern. In 2010 I was a compliance officer at @HSBC. From a back office in New Castle, Delaware, I watched billions of dollars move to drug cartels, sanctioned regimes, and terrorist organizations. The enemies of the United States. I documented it, I escalated it, and when the bank would not act, I took it to the @FBI, the @CIA, and eventually the @SECGov.

The result was a $1.92 billion settlement. At the time, it was one of the largest in American history. It was also about five weeks of the bank’s profit. Not one banker was charged. Not one went to prison.

I paid a different price. I lost my career, my savings, and my place in the industry I had trained for. I was blacklisted. Every door in American finance closed at once. I slept on a camping cot in a 300 square foot apartment because I could not afford a bed, and I waited tables at @PFChangs to eat. I tell you this not for sympathy, but so you understand that I know exactly what it costs to do the right thing in American finance, and exactly how little the system does in return.

I made that sacrifice because I believed it would change something.

Yesterday, your department fined @BankofAmerica $1.2 billion for failing to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, some of it tied by your own findings to Chinese laundering networks, narcotics, and the southwest border, alongside 475 apparent sanctions violations touching Russia, Iran, and global terrorism. The bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act.

Fourteen years after HSBC. A bank with “America” in its name. And once again, not one individual charged.

Secretary Bessent, I want to say plainly what I believe you already know. The fines are not working.

A fine is paid by shareholders, absorbed by the balance sheet, and forgotten by the next earnings call. Bank of America reported earnings this morning. Nobody who set the alert thresholds, nobody who decided the 2024 cease and desist could wait, nobody who chose the backlog over the law will lose a single thing they value. Their lives are untouched. That is the entire reason the behavior repeats.

This is money laundering. This is blood money. Money that reaches a cartel buys fentanyl that kills Americans. Money that reaches a terrorist organization buys the next attack. This country has fought a war on drugs and a war on terror for decades, at enormous cost in lives and treasure, and all the while we have allowed the financing to flow through institutions we charter and regulate. Cut off the money and we win. We have never seriously tried.

There is also a question of equal justice that I cannot let go.

Before I walked into the FBI building to report HSBC, I stopped in front of the Great Seal on the wall and read the words engraved beneath it: “Justice is the defense of our liberty.” I believed that. I still want to. But every day in this country, people go to prison for crimes that are nothing next to moving money for the people who want Americans dead. A suit, a title, and a corporate badge should not be a shield from the consequences that apply to everyone else. If a street dealer goes to prison for what he sells, the banker who moved the cartel’s money should be standing next to him.

I also want to raise something that is rarely said in these conversations. Why has no one inside Bank of America come forward the way I did? The answer is that everyone in American banking knows what happened to me, and to the whistleblowers who came after. The last person who spoke up is the only policy anyone believes. That is a culture problem, and it starts with leadership, in the banks and in the agencies that regulate them.

This is not a political issue. It has spanned administrations of both parties. It is a national security issue, and I am asking you to treat it as one.

Three things would change the math overnight.

Refer individuals for criminal prosecution. Not the analyst in the queue. The executives who set the thresholds and chose the risk. One banker in handcuffs would do more than every fine in Treasury’s history combined.

End “too big to jail.” An institution cannot be too big to fail and too big to jail at the same time. If it is the first, it must be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.

And if Bank of America will not act as America’s bank, review its charter. A national charter is a privilege granted on behalf of the American people. It should be conditioned on not moving money for the people trying to kill them.

Secretary Bessent, you said yesterday that these actions send a clear message that even the biggest institutions are not above the law. With respect, the institution was never the problem. The people inside it are above the law, and they know it. Until that changes, I will keep writing letters like this one, and the next bank will keep paying the next fine.

I gave up everything I had to stop this. I am asking you to use the power you have to finish it.

Respectfully,

Everett A. Stern
HSBC Whistleblower
Founder and Intelligence Director, Tactical Rabbit

[Captain Mark Kelly @CaptMarkKelly]

Any single individual having this amount of influence in our elections does not lead to a healthy democracy. It doesn’t matter if they are supporting Democrats or Republicans. We need a serious effort at campaign finance reform and have to overturn the Citizens United decision.

[Qasim Rashid, Esq. @QasimRashid]

The “mass shooting” in Erie, PA was in fact a family annihilation event. A 45-year-old man with a registered firearm killed a 22-mo-old girl, a 5-year-old boy, 2 women, & 5 men.

He killed himself.

We still don’t know his name or the names of his victims. No one will ask ‘where was he radicalized?’ Media will move on. A reminder that every 5 days a man annihilates his family in the USA & men kill 2400+ women annually in gender based violence. Beyond horrific. My God.

[Lance Cooper @lmauricecpr]

The United States has had over 160 years to label the Ku Klux Klan a terrorist organization and still hasn’t. The government dismantling the Black Panther Party while the head of the Klan is currently giving interviews tells you everything you need to know about this country.

[Cory Booker @CoryBooker]

Listen to @JayBilas . College athletes create enormous economic value for schools, conferences, the NCAA, broadcasters, media companies, and more. It’s fundamentally unfair to restrict athletes’ rights while leaving other powerful actors in the college sports ecosystem largely unconstrained.

op: @YouthInc

[Sung Jinwoo @2cooltroy]

The fact that the head of the Ku Klux Klan can casually do an interview without being arraigned by the FBI for Hate Crimes and Domestic Terrorism is truly a slap in the face to all people of color in America

[James Blake @JRBlake]

Easiest answer. The great one.

[HAWK @HawkEmDownChris]

Name the greatest athlete nickname of all time.

I’ll start: Prime Time.

[James Blake @JRBlake]

The dome is the mvp of that game?

[James Blake @JRBlake]

@jon_wertheim @WTA I thought of this during the open and it’s shocking to me that it is practically never brought up anymore.

[John O'Farrell @johnofa]

Some thoughts on the California wealth tax:

[James Blake @JRBlake]

@darrenrovell Comical