Black expats say living abroad is cheaper, safer and more inclusive

Black Americans who moved abroad say they're happier outside the U.S.: 'It is truly a more fulfilling, richer life'

"For many Black Americans, moving abroad has been the key to an easier way of life — one where their skin color isn't cause for concern.

"[Black expats] really see a kind of oasis for them to really create the life that they dreamed of in a way that's financially feasible, safe and a bit more inclusive than what they found in the United States," says Darcel Duncan, senior brand manager at Travel Noire, a website dedicated to Black travel experiences.

Aborisade doesn't feel the need to stick to a strict budget but ensures her financial priorities, such as rent and utilities, are taken care of.

Tasia Jensen and Beatriz Bajuelos for CNBC Make It

While racism still exists in other countries, many of the Black expats CNBC Make It has spoken to report fewer experiences with discrimination while living abroad.

"I think I have found and ultimately achieved the American dream outside the U.S.," Adalia Aborisade, who moved to Mexico City in 2017, said in 2023.

'American first'

While the U.S. has made progress toward racial equality since periods like the Jim Crow era, Black Americans still routinely experience racism in social interactions, financial transactions and work environments. But when living abroad, some Black expats say they're seen as simply American, rather than being defined by their skin color.

"As I've traveled around the world, I'm typically an American first," Jamal Robinson, who lives in Dubai, said in January 2025. "Quite often people are not as used to Black people traveling and being in whatever the space is. So it's almost like you're celebrated, and people will come up to you and they want to talk and engage with you."

Jamal Robinson started working when he was 14 and quickly decided he wanted to retire early. He quit his corporate tech career at age 39 with $3.5 million shored up.

Jacqueline Nassour | CNBC Make It

In the U.S., Cara West experienced common forms of discrimination, like store owners or associates following her around or keeping a watchful eye as she shopped. But she says that hasn't happened since she left the country. West and her family lived in several different countries before moving to Greece in 2024.

"I'm not worried about someone following me around at the store or treating me differently because of my skin color," she told Make It in 2024. "I'm just seen as an American here."

Like Robinson, some Black expats also report celebrations of their diversity.

"In Costa Rica, I feel that people are treated as humans first, because that's not always been my experience in the United States," Kema Ward-Hopper, who left the U.S. in 2018, said in 2024. "I feel like I'm seen as a Black woman first [in the U.S.] and that doesn't have the positive connotation that it does here in Costa Rica."

'I've gained my family back'

Many Black expats are also taking advantage of better economic opportunities and work-life balance.

"In the U.S., we are thinking that everything is due right now. Everything is urgent. Everything is kind of a house on fire," says Wanida Lewis, who lives in Accra, Ghana. "Here in Ghana it's like, 'OK, you know what? Yes it's important, but also I need to take care of myself and figure out what's more important before I get there.'"

Nicholas Hopper, Ward-Hopper's husband, agrees their family is "definitely happier" living in Costa Rica. He owns a logistics business and Ward-Hopper works several part-time jobs, including as an author. They quit their corporate jobs in the States to pursue a life in Costa Rica.

Working for themselves has given the couple more flexibility to choose how they spend their time. While they're earning less money, they're "still living pretty comfortably … our money definitely goes further here than in the U.S.," Ward-Hopper said. 

"I've gained my family back," Hopper said. "I've gained the opportunity to spend time with them and create more freedom in myself, but also freedom within our family to explore our dreams and our passions."

Cara West and her husband live as digital nomads based in Syros, Greece.

Vicky Markolefa for CNBC Make It

In addition to having more time and money, some expats appreciate the ease with which they can see even more of the world.

"It is truly such a more fulfilling, richer life abroad," West said. "The experiences that we've been able to have as a family abroad, just being able to see the world, to meet new people, to experience a new language, cultures, traditions, it's just so special and something that we aren't really exposed to enough in the United States."

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Black expats say living abroad is cheaper, safer and more inclusive

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Americans Fought Off This Awful Idea in Trump’s Bill

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“Americans successfully fought off a proposal by Senator Mike Lee to sell up to 1.225 million acres of public lands. The proposal, which aimed to address the housing crisis, was widely opposed by conservation groups, public lands advocates, and various stakeholders. The outpouring of opposition, fueled by love for these lands, demonstrated the importance of protecting America’s public commons for future generations.

​

July 6, 2025, 6:00 a.m. ET

Wildnerpix/Getty Images

By Terry Tempest Williams

Ms. Williams is a writer who lives in southeastern Utah.

It’s easy to become smug and believe the great outdoors exists only west of the 100th meridian.

As a child growing up in Salt Lake City, I was half a day’s drive from America’s Red Rock Wilderness and Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Arches national parks. We camped in Utah’s national forests — from the Wasatch Mountains to the Uintas.

But my Western land bias was shattered this spring, when I made a pilgrimage to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. Known by some as the “People’s Wilderness,” these 1.1 million acres of lakes framed by boreal forests and wetlands is a liquid landscape unlike any other, wild with wolves, lynx, loons, moose and an astonishing variety of warblers.

To a desert dweller, the Boundary Waters are dizzying and blinding with a brilliance of light that I have not encountered elsewhere. When it rains, water bodies appear as a book’s marbled end sheets with swirls of gunmetal gray, indigo and silver.

With Becky Rom, the 76-year-old founder of Save the Boundary Waters, an environmental advocacy group, as my guide, the wild bounty offered solace to my weary soul in these wrought times. The locals’ love of these lands inspired me in a way I hadn’t been since my days as a young activist in the American West. What I knew then and feel more deeply now is that open lands inspire open minds. This is the open space of democracy.

America’s public lands are safe — for now. A provision proposed by Senator Mike Lee of Utah in the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill that would have required the Bureau of Land Management to sell as much as 1.225 million acres of public lands is dead. It died when Mr. Lee raised a white flag in defeat. It died because, in addition to Democrats, four Republican senators from Montana and Idaho refused to vote for it. It died because five Republican House representatives from Western states said it was a “poison pill.” And it died because over 100 conservation groups and public lands advocates, as well as hunters, anglers, ranchers, recreationists and right-wing influencers said no.

Mr. Lee claimed in each of his many revisions of the proposal that disposing of our public lands was a way to address the housing crisis. But that was a ruse; housing experts have said it wouldn’t have made a dent in the problem. What the senator wanted was to establish a precedent — to normalize selling off our public lands to generate cash to pay for tax cuts. Open that door, and the open space of democracy closes. That is what conservation groups, such as Save the Boundary Waters and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, understand and have been fighting for decades.

In the outpouring of opposition, members of Congress learned once again that if they don’t support public lands, they risk being voted out of office, especially in the American West. What we saw was collective outrage fueled by love — energy we must nurture and draw on in the months and years to come.

Mr. Lee shared on X that his plan for the Bureau of Land Management land sales would create “Freedom Zones” for families to live, but many of the places he targeted, and will target again in future legislation, are largely desert lands and range lands. What they lack in green foliage they have in bare-boned austerity necessary when seeking the long view, wild and unobstructed.

These lands are an inheritance of all Americans that is shared with the world. They are ancestral lands of tribal nations that have been prayed over for eons.

When Mr. Lee was planning to put these lands up for sale, he disregarded Native people who were not offered first right of refusal to bid on them. Public lands house many of their cultural sacred sites and hold their medicines for ceremonies, lands where the songs of their ancestors can still be heard on the wind.

As we consider the future of our public lands, and when they again come under threat from hellbent leaders such as Mr. Lee, we cannot forget that they are intertwined with the wild lives that inhabit them, from the mule deer herds inside Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah to the porcupine caribou herds inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska that have sustained the Inupiat and Gwich’in people through time.

We have a history of bravery in our country and we must call it forward now. If we allow Mr. Lee’s vision to take root, we will risk losing the ecological integrity of these wild lands and their wildlife.

On June 14, over five million people took to the streets to participate in “No Kings” rallies across the country. In Utah, a red state, about 10 percent of the population of my hometown Moab was marching down Main Street. This county has 1.8 million acres of public lands, many of which Mr. Lee had eyed for development. They are loved for their countless hiking, biking and horseback riding trails, for the river running and the off-road-vehicle roads. What I felt at that protest was the passion that has been protecting these sacred lands through the generations.

Public lands are our public commons, breathing spaces in a country that is increasingly holding its breath. There we are free to roam and wander and believe in what we see: rock, water, sky; pronghorn in sagebrush, eagles in flight, a night sky of stars above a silhouette of mountains. These are places of peace and renewal, where landscapes of beauty become landscapes of our imaginations. We stand before a giant sequoia and remember the size of our hearts instead of the weight of our egos.

If we allow these lands to be developed in the name of profits, we will lose the wide open spaces that define us as Americans.

Over the next year, as we prepare to celebrate the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence, we can honor what unites us: the beauty of the places we call home. Our wealth as a nation is held in these wild lands. They are worthy of our protection and patriotism and must remain free as we choose to sing to, not desecrate, America the beautiful.“

As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas

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“Staff shortages at the National Weather Service’s San Angelo and San Antonio offices, including positions crucial for coordinating with local emergency managers, may have complicated flood response efforts in Central Texas. While the Weather Service issued timely flash flood warnings, the absence of experienced staff hindered communication with local authorities. The Trump administration’s efforts to reduce federal employee numbers, including at the Weather Service, have led to vacancies and limited resources for coordination and training with local officials.

​

Some experts say staff shortages might have complicated forecasters’ ability to coordinate responses with local emergency management officials.

July 5, 2025

Texas officials have blamed the Weather Service for issuing forecasts on Wednesday that underestimated how much rain was coming. But the staffing shortages present a more complicated picture.Carter Johnston for The New York Times

By Christopher Flavelle

Christopher Flavelle has written about the National Weather Service since 2019. He reported from Washington.

Crucial positions at the local offices of the National Weather Service were unfilled as severe rainfall inundated parts of Central Texas on Friday morning, prompting some experts to question whether staffing shortages made it harder for the forecasting agency to coordinate with local emergency managers as floodwaters rose. 

Texas officials appeared to blame the Weather Service for issuing forecasts on Wednesday that underestimated how much rain was coming. But former Weather Service officials said the forecasts were as good as could be expected, given the enormous levels of rainfall and the storm’s unusually abrupt escalation.

The staffing shortages suggested a separate problem, those former officials said — the loss of experienced people who would typically have helped communicate with local authorities in the hours after flash flood warnings were issued overnight. 

The shortages are among the factors likely to be scrutinized as the death toll climbs from the floods. Separate questions have emerged about the preparedness of local communities, including Kerr County’s apparent lack of a local flood warning system. The county, roughly 50 miles northwest of San Antonio, is where many of the deaths occurred. 

In an interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive, and local residents are resistant to new spending. 

“Taxpayers won’t pay for it,” Mr. Kelly said. Asked if people might reconsider in light of the catastrophe, he said, “I don’t know.”

The National Weather Service’s San Angelo office, which is responsible for some of the areas hit hardest by Friday’s flooding, was missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster and meteorologist in charge, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents Weather Service workers.

The Weather Service’s nearby San Antonio office, which covers other areas hit by the floods, also had significant vacancies, including a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer, Mr. Fahy said. Staff members in those positions are meant to work with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn local residents and help them evacuate.

That office’s warning coordination meteorologist left on April 30, after taking the early retirement package the Trump administration used to reduce the number of federal employees, according to a person with knowledge of his departure. 

Some of the openings may predate the current Trump administration. But at both offices, the vacancy rate is roughly double what it was when Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January, according to Mr. Fahy. 

John Sokich, who until January was director of congressional affairs for the National Weather Service, said those unfilled positions made it harder to coordinate with local officials because each Weather Service office works as a team. “Reduced staffing puts that in jeopardy,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the National Weather Service, Erica Grow Cei, did not answer questions from The New York Times about the Texas vacancies, including how long those positions had been open and whether those vacancies had contributed to the damage caused by the flooding.

“The National Weather Service is heartbroken by the tragic loss of life,” she said in a statement, adding that the agency “remains committed to our mission to serve the American public through our forecasts and decision support services.”

A White House spokeswoman directed a request for comment to the Commerce Department, which includes the Weather Service. The department did not respond to a request for comment.

The tragedy began to unfold in the early hours of July 4, when more than 10 inches of rain fell in some areas northwest of San Antonio, including in Kerr County, where more than 850 people were evacuated by rescuers. As of Saturday evening, 27 girls from a Christian summer camp remained missing.

That night, Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, appeared to fault the Weather Service, noting that forecasters on Wednesday had predicted as much as six to eight inches of rain in the region. “The amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts,” he said at a news conference with Gov. Greg Abbott.

But what makes flash floods so hazardous is their ability to strike quickly, with limited warning. Around midnight on Thursday, the San Angelo and San Antonio weather offices put out their first flash flood warnings, urging people to “move immediately to higher ground.” The office sent out additional flash flood warnings through the night, expanding the area of danger.

It is not clear what steps local officials took to act on those warnings. A spokesman for the Kerr County emergency management department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

The amount of rain that fell Friday morning was hard for the Weather Service to anticipate, with reports in some areas of 15 inches over just a few hours, according to Louis W. Uccellini, who was director of the National Weather Service from 2013 until 2022. 

“It’s pretty hard to forecast for these kinds of rainfall rates,” Dr. Uccellini said. He said that climate change was making extreme rainfall events more frequent and severe, and that more research was needed so that the Weather Service could better forecast those events.

An equally important question, he added, was how the Weather Service was coordinating with local emergency managers to act on those warnings as they came in. 

“You have to have a response mechanism that involves local officials,” Dr. Uccellini said. “It involves a relationship with the emergency management community, at every level.” 

But that requires having staff members in those positions, he said. 

Under the Trump administration, the Weather Service, like other federal agencies, has been pushed to reduce its number of employees. By this spring, through layoffs and retirements,  the Weather Service had lost nearly 600 people from a work force that until recently was as large as 4,000.

Some forecasting offices began to close down at night, and others launched fewer weather balloons, which send back crucial data to feed forecasts. The Weather Service said it was preparing for “degraded operations,” with fewer meteorologists available to fine-tune forecasts.

Last month, despite a government hiring freeze, the Weather Service announced a plan to hire 126 people in positions around the country, in what Ms. Cei, the agency’s spokeswoman, described as an effort to “stabilize” the department. As of this week, those jobs had not been posted in the federal government’s hiring portal.

Mr. Sokich said that the local Weather Service offices appeared to have sent out the correct warnings. He said the challengewas getting people to receive those warnings, and then take action. 

Typically, Mr. Sokich said, the Weather Service will send an official to meet regularly with local emergency managers for what are called “tabletop operations” — planning ahead of time for what to do in case of a flash flood or other major weather disaster. 

But the Trump administration’s pursuit of fewer staff members means remaining employees have less time to spend coordinating with local officials, he said. 

The Trump administration has also put strict limits on new hires at the Weather Service, Mr. Sokich said. So unlike during previous administrations, when these vacancies could have quickly been filled, the agency now has fewer options.

The Trump administration also froze spending on travel, he added, making it even harder for Weather Service staff members to meet with their state and local counterparts.

That does not mean there is not room for cuts at the Weather Service, Mr. Sokich said. “But you need to do them deliberately and thoughtfully,” he said.

David Montgomery and Judson Jones contributed reporting.

Christopher Flavelle is a Times reporter covering how President Trump is transforming the federal government.“

Trump’s Politicized F.B.I. Has Made Americans Less Safe

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“President Trump’s politicization of the FBI, including the appointment of loyalists and the removal of experienced agents, has weakened the bureau’s ability to combat various threats. This politicization, exemplified by the leadership of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, has led to a loss of expertise and morale, undermining the FBI’s effectiveness and public trust. The shift in priorities, such as deprioritizing corporate corruption and white-collar crime, further highlights the Trump administration’s agenda-driven approach.

​

July 5, 2025, 7:00 a.m. ET

Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Only 11 days after President Trump was inaugurated for a second term, his administration began a purge of the F.B.I. that now threatens some of the bureau’s most important missions. His appointees ousted eight of its most experienced managers, including the division heads overseeing national security, cybersecurity and criminal investigations. Several had worked on prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters or had assisted in the various investigations of Mr. Trump, and Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, said they could not be trusted to carry out the president’s agenda.

That was just the beginning. Over the past five months, many F.B.I. agents, including other top managers and national security experts, have been fired, pressured to leave or transferred to lesser roles. Hundreds have resigned on their own, unwilling to follow the demands of the Trump administration. Their absence has left a vacuum in divisions that are supposed to protect the public. These losses have “obliterated decades of experience in national security and criminal matters at the F.B.I.,” Adam Goldman of The Times wrote.

Mr. Trump’s playbook for the F.B.I. is plain to see. He is turning it into an enforcement agency for MAGA’s priorities. He is chasing out agents who might refuse to play along and installing loyalists in their place. He is seeking to remove the threat of investigation for his friends and allies. And he is trying to instill fear in his critics and political opponents. Among his many efforts to weaken American democracy and amass more power for himself, his politicization of the F.B.I. is one of the most blatant.

These developments should unsettle all Americans, regardless of party. As one former Justice Department official told NBC News, the decimation of the bureau’s senior ranks has left it “completely unprepared to respond to a crisis, including the fallout from the current conflict in the Middle East.” Mr. Trump’s politicization of the F.B.I. has left it less able to combat terrorism, foreign espionage, biosecurity threats, organized crime, online scams, white-collar crime, drug trafficking and more.

The F.B.I. has a flawed history, of course. J. Edgar Hoover abused his power as the bureau’s director for decades, and Richard Nixon used it to conduct surveillance of political opponents. Yet after the Watergate scandal forced Mr. Nixon’s resignation, the F.B.I., like the rest of the Justice Department, reformed itself to become more independent from the president.

Every president since the 1970s has at times chafed against that independence, wishing that the Justice Department would be more loyal to the White House’s political interests. But those presidents, from Gerald Ford through Joe Biden, largely respected the bureau’s autonomy. As a result, Americans — from the political left, center and right — tended to trust the F.B.I.

Mr. Trump has taken a radically different approach. He has made clear that he considers the F.B.I.’s first priority to be loyalty. Consider the Signal scandal from this spring, when senior officials disclosed sensitive information in a group chat. In any other administration, the F.B.I. probably would have investigated. Under Mr. Trump, the bureau looked the other way.

To carry out this agenda, he chose as its director Kash Patel, whose main qualification is his unquestioning fealty to Mr. Trump. In 2022, Mr. Patel published a children’s book, “The Plot Against the King,” in which a wizard named Kash saves the day by exposing a conspiracy against King Donald. The next year, Mr. Patel published a book titled “Government Gangsters.”

His mission at the F.B.I. is to politicize it. He is dismantling key operations and reshaping the bureau into an instrument of Mr. Trump’s political will. Mr. Trump spent years baselessly accusing the F.B.I. and the Justice Department of being weaponized against him; now he is turning federal law enforcement into the very thing he claimed it was: a political enforcer. Under Mr. Patel, the bureau has assigned agents to pursue long-running MAGA grievances. One example: Mr. Patel had his agents dig through documents searching for evidence to support one of Mr. Trump’s and the online right’s favorite conspiracy theories, that China somehow helped manipulate the results of the 2020 election.

Among the people whom Mr. Patel has scapegoated are the agents he now oversees, which damages the bureau’s morale and its effectiveness. Before taking office, he called the bureau “an existential threat to our republican form of government.” He has described its employees as “political jackals” who tried to “suffocate the truth” in order to rig the 2020 election for Mr. Biden. Mr. Patel has promoted theories that the F.B.I. paid Twitter to censor conservatives and that it used confidential informants to stir up the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. There is no evidence to support any of this.

For his deputy director, Mr. Patel hired Dan Bongino, a longtime right-wing podcaster. Mr. Bongino has called the bureau “the single most corrupt law enforcement institution” in America and a “full-blown leftist political action committee.” Together they began singling out agents who had worked on prosecutions of the Jan. 6 rioters or the federal indictment of Mr. Trump for improperly removing documents from the White House. Many of these agents were fired, pushed to resign or transferred.

Several of the bureau’s most experienced managers have been driven out simply because they angered members of Mr. Trump’s coalition. Bureau leaders ordered the transfer of Spencer Evans, who ran the F.B.I.’s field office in Las Vegas, after Mr. Trump’s supporters accused him of denying religious exemptions for the Covid vaccine within the bureau. Michael Feinberg, a longtime counterintelligence agent who served as a deputy in the Norfolk, Va., field office, resigned after being threatened with demotion simply because he was a friend of a counterintelligence agent who had sent a text message disparaging Mr. Trump.

The resulting loss of expertise and experience is chilling. The bureau today has fewer people with the skills to prevent crime, political corruption and foreign espionage.

Under Mr. Patel, the F.B.I. has also reassigned agents from valuable work to showy efforts that bolster Mr. Trump’s political interests. This pattern is clearest with immigration. We acknowledge that an increased focus on border security and deportations is a legitimate change for Mr. Trump’s F.B.I. He won election last year partly because of public dissatisfaction with Mr. Biden’s loose border policies, which contributed to the most rapid surge of immigration in American history, much of it illegal.

Presidents rightly have the authority to shape the bureau’s priorities. But the approach of the Trump F.B.I. is nonetheless alarming because of its extremity. The administration is pulling agents away from areas that present true risks to the country and assigning them instead to search for undocumented immigrants who have no criminal record. The effort is part of a governmentwide effort to meet Mr. Trump’s arbitrary quota of 3,000 arrests a day. “They have cannibalized field offices to create these immigration squads,” one former agent told us in an interview. “They’re taking highly trained agents, many with advanced degrees and military experience, and using them for perimeter security on ICE roundups. And that means fewer people working to prevent foreign influence or public corruption.”

The Trump administration has gone so far as to brag about its decision to deprioritize corporate corruption and white-collar crime. The head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Matthew Galeotti, has said that a crackdown on corporate crime burdens U.S. businesses. This shift is another example of Mr. Trump’s effort to protect people he considers his allies — namely, corporate executives. He has been particularly aggressive about reducing investigations into cryptocurrency scams while he has ignored decades of White House precedent by using his office for the profit of his businesses, especially in crypto.

Understandably, the combination seems to be undermining bureau morale. More than 650 bureau employees recently filed for early retirement.

All law enforcement agencies require foundations of public trust, but because of its troubled history and the ease of political manipulation from Washington, the F.B.I. has a particular need to demonstrate that it deserves the nation’s confidence. Agents, for their part, need to know that their managers and civilian leaders have their backs and don’t consider them to be jackals. They need to know that they are enforcing the law fairly, not being used for a personal or ideological agenda. The public — on which the bureau relies for tips and cooperation — has to trust that agents operate without political bias.

By abusing that trust, Mr. Trump, Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino have put the reputation and effectiveness of the F.B.I. at risk. In doing so, they are risking the safety of the American public.

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.“

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How Enslaved Men Who Fought for the British Were Promised Freedom | HISTORY

American Revolution

How Enslaved Men Who Fought for the British Were Promised Freedom

While the patriots battled for freedom from Great Britain, upwards of 20,000 formerly enslaved people declared their own personal independence and fought on the side of the British.

When American colonists took up arms in a battle for independence starting in 1775, that fight for freedom excluded an entire race of people—African Americans. On November 12, 1775, General George Washington decreed in his orders that “neither negroes, boys unable to bear arms, nor old men” could enlist in the Continental Army.

American Revolution History

Did you know that Paul Revere didn't ride alone, and there were women on the Revolutionary War battlefields? Find out more about the war's lesser-known patriots.

Two days after the patriots’ military leader banned African Americans from joining his ranks, however, Black soldiers proved their mettle at the Battle of Kemp’s Landing along the Virginia coast. They captured an enemy commanding officer and proved pivotal in securing the victory—for the British.

After the battle, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia who had been forced to flee the capital of Williamsburg and form a government in exile aboard the warship HMS Fowey, ordered the British standard raised before making a startling announcement. For the first time in public he formally read a proclamation that he had issued the previous week granting freedom to the enslaved workers of rebels who escaped to British custody.

Dunmore’s Proclamation Pledges Freedom in Return for Service

Library of Congress

Dunmore’s Proclamation was “more an announcement of military strategy than a pronouncement of abolitionist principles,” according to author Gary B. Nash in The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America. The document not only provided the British with an immediate source of manpower, it weakened Virginia’s patriots by depriving them of their main source of labor.

Much like Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, however, Dunmore’s Proclamation was limited in scope. Careful not to alienate Britain’s white Loyalist allies, the measure applied only to enslaved workers whose masters were in rebellion against the Crown. The British regularly returned enslaved people who fled from Loyalist masters.

Dunmore’s Proclamation inspired thousands of enslaved people to risk their lives in search of freedom. They swam, dog-paddled and rowed to Dunmore’s floating government-in-exile on Chesapeake Bay in order to find protection with the British forces. “By mid-1776, what had been a small stream of escaping slaves now turned into a torrent,” wrote Nash. “Over the next seven years, enslaved Africans mounted the greatest slave rebellion in American history.”

The Roles of 'Black Loyalists' in the War

Among those enslaved people making a break for freedom were eight belonging to Peyton Randolph, speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and several belonging to patriot orator Patrick Henry who apparently took his famous words—“Give me liberty, or give me death!”—to heart and fled to British custody. Another runaway who found sanctuary with Dunmore was Harry Washington, who escaped from Mount Vernon while his famous master led the Continental Army.

Dunmore placed these “Black Loyalists” in the newly formed Ethiopian Regiment and had the words “Liberty to Slaves” embroidered on their uniform sashes. Since the idea of runaway enslaved people armed with guns stirred terror even among white Loyalists, Dunmore placated the slaveholders by primarily using the runaways as laborers building forts, bridges and trenches and engaging in trades such as shoemaking, blacksmithing and carpentry. Women worked as nurses, cooks and seamstresses.

As manpower issues grew more dire as the war progressed, however, the British army became more amenable to arming formerly enslaved people and sending them into battle. General Henry Clinton organized an all-Black regiment, the “Black Pioneers.” Among the hundreds of runaway enslaved people in its ranks was Harry Washington, who rose to the rank of corporal and participated in the siege of Charleston.

Philipsburg Proclamation Expands Call

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Colonel Tye

Colonel Tye, pictured left from the center, depicted fighting with the British in the painting The Death of Major Peirsons.

Universal History Archive/Getty Images

On June 30, 1779, Clinton expanded on Dunmore’s actions and issued the Philipsburg Proclamation, which promised protection and freedom to all enslaved people in the colonies who escaped from their patriot masters. Black men captured fighting for the enemy, however, would be sold into bondage.

According to Maya Jasanoff in her book Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World, approximately 20,000 Black enslaved men joined the British during the American Revolution. In contrast, historians estimate that only about 5,000 Black men served in the Continental Army.

After the War: Restricted Freedom

As the American Revolution came to close with the British defeat at Yorktown in 1781, white Loyalists and thousands of their enslaved people evacuated Savannah and Charleston and resettled in Florida and on plantations in the Bahamas, Jamaica and other British territories throughout the Caribbean. The subsequent peace negotiations called for all enslaved people who escaped behind British lines before November 30, 1782, to be freed with restitution given to their owners.

In order to determine which African Americans were eligible for freedom and which weren’t, the British verified the names, ages and dates of escape for every runaway enslaved person in their custody and recorded the information in what was called the “Book of Negroes.”

With their certificates of freedom in hand, 3,000 Black men, women and children joined the Loyalist exodus from New York to Nova Scotia in 1783. There the Black Loyalists found freedom, but little else. After years of economic hardship and denial of the land and provisions they had been promised, nearly half of the Black Loyalists abandoned the Canadian province.

Approximately 400 sailed to London, while in 1792 more than 1,200 brought their stories full circle and returned to Africa in a new settlement in Sierra Leone. Among the newly relocated was the formerly enslaved worker of the newly elected president of the United States—Harry Washington—who returned to the land of his birth."

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‘A dark day for our country’: Democrats furious over Trump bill’s passage | Democrats | The Guardian

‘A dark day for our country’: Democrats furious over Trump bill’s passage

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez condemned bill’s expansion of immigration enforcement and cuts to social benefits

George Chidi

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside the Capitol on Wednesday. Photograph: Ken Cedeno/Reuters

Democrats have erupted in a storm of outrage over the passage of the Donald Trump’s budget bill, delivering scathing critiques that offered signs of the attack lines the party could wield against Republicans in next year’s midterm elections.

Party leaders released a wave of statements after the sweeping tax and spending bill’s passage on Thursday, revealing a fury that could peel paint off a brick outhouse.

“Today, Donald Trump and the Republican party sent a message to America: if you are not a billionaire, we don’t give a damn about you,” said Ken Martin, the Democratic National Committee chair.

“While the GOP continues to cash their billionaire donors’ checks, their constituents will starve, lose critical medical care, lose their jobs – and yes, some will die as a result of this bill. Democrats are mobilizing and will fight back to make sure everybody knows exactly who is responsible for one of the worst bills in our nation’s history.”

The bill’s narrow passage in the House on Thursday, with no Democratic support and only two no votes from Republicans – which came from Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania – is “not normal”, wrote congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Ocasio-Cortez highlighted the contradictions in the bill that Democrats can be expected to campaign on over the next two years, pitting its spending on immigration enforcement against the loss of social benefits for working-class Americans. She noted that Republicans voted for permanent tax breaks for billionaires while allowing a tax break on tips for people earning less than $25,000 a year to sunset in three years.

She also noted that cuts to Medicaid expansion will remove tipped employees from eligibility for Medicaid and remove subsidies for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and reduce Snap food assistance benefits.

“I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did with Ice,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Bluesky. “This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion – making Ice bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, [the] DEA and others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.”

Many critics referred to choice remarks made by Republicans in the run-up to the bill’s passage that displayed an indifference to their voters’ concerns.

Senator Mitch McConnell was reported by Punchbowl News to have said to other Republicans in a closed-door meeting last week: “I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid. But they’ll get over it.”

And Republican senator Joni Ernst, of Iowa, speaking at a combative town hall in Parkersburg in late May, responded to someone in the audience shouting that people will die without coverage by saying, “People are not … well, we all are going to die” – a response that drew groans.

Cuts to Medicaid feature prominently in Democratic reaction to the bill.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib described the bill as “disgusting” and “an act of violence against our communities”.

She said: “Republicans should be ashamed for saying, ‘Just get over it’ because ‘We’re all going to die.’ They are responsible for the 50,000 people who will die unnecessarily every year because of this deadly budget.”

“There is no sugarcoating this. This is a dark day for our country,” wrote senator Raphael Warnock.

“Republicans in Washington have decided to sell out working people. As a result, millions will lose their healthcare and many millions more will see their premiums go up. Rural hospitals and nursing homes across Georgia will be forced to close. Children will be forced to go hungry so that we can give billionaires another tax cut.”

But budget hawks on the left and the right have taken issue with the effects this budget will have on the already considerable national debt.

“In a massive fiscal capitulation, Congress has passed the single most expensive, dishonest, and reckless budget reconciliation bill ever – and, it comes amidst an already alarming fiscal situation,” wrote Maya MacGuineas, the president of the oversight organization Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in reaction to the House’s passage of the bill.

“Never before has a piece of legislation been jammed through with such disregard for our fiscal outlook, the budget process, and the impact it will have on the wellbeing of the country and future generations.”

“House Republicans just voted – again – to jack up costs, gut health care, and reward the elite with tax breaks,” wrote the House Majority Pac, a Democratic fund.

“They had a chance to change course, but instead they doubled down on this deeply unpopular, toxic agenda. They’ll have no one to blame but themselves when voters send them packing and deliver Democrats the House majority in 2026.”

“Republicans didn’t pass this bill for the people,” wrote Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat. “They passed it to please Trump, protect the powerful and push cruelty disguised as policy.”

‘A dark day for our country’: Democrats furious over Trump bill’s passage | Democrats | The Guardian