Soraya Nadia McDonald

@sorayanadiamcdonald.com

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some lady. she/her | sorayanadiamcdonald.com

Screenshot text from NOTUS
Dr. Evil doing "allegedly!" finger quotes
A big ole love bug of a black dog (Beamer) gazing lovingly at the camera lens.
A gray tabby with a creamsicle belly sitting in a window sill, looking over her shoulder like one of your lil French pussies.
Ukrainian president and creator and star of "Servant of the People" Volodymyr Zelenskyy
From page 79 of Sarah J. Jackson's A SECOND SIGHT: Across generations, black media makers have exposed how narrow definitions of Liberty in the United States serve to undermine it for some while preserving it for others. They argue that Liberty is not a static inheritance, nor a gift bestowed by the state, but something that must be seized—again and again—by individuals and communities who refuse to accept conditions of unfreedom. Their second sight does not only take lessons from the past or critique the present. It also imagines a future where liberty is not the privilege of a few, but the shared condition of all, offering visions of freedom that are as aspirational as they are urgent. Running For Freedom In a 2018 episode of the Peabody Award-winning podcast, Uncivil, journalist Chenjerai Kumanyika welcomed historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar as a guest. Dunbar narrates a story about our nation's most famed founder, George Washington, almost no one was taught: the saga of Ona Judge. In the episode titled "The Fugitive," Kumanyika and Dunbar delve into the extraordinary courage of Judge, an enslaved woman who escaped from George and Martha Washington in 1796. Despite being relentlessly pursued by the most powerful man in the country, Judge was never recaptured. As the episode reveals, Washington spared no effort in his pursuit—deploying federal officials, leveraging his political influence, and using every available resource to try to reclaim her. Kumanyika underscores the deep irony at the heart of this history: "After writing some of the fundamental documents professing the American value of liberty, George Washington spent the rest of his life trying to prevent Ona Judge from attaining just that.
My black cat, Radamès, luxuriating on his fuzzy white cat tree in front of a bookshelf
Mr. Glassel and Mr. Scharpf are concerned that President Trump’s planned expansion of ICE, in particular, could make it an ideal venue for “detouring” by ambitious underperformers who could be deployed for anti-democratic purposes. The worry is especially profound given the storming of the Capitol at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term, albeit by a less organized band of loyalists. The playbook for a leader to create a loyal security service, they said, is to set up or repurpose an institution that can become a “second ladder” for career promotions, resource it generously and ensure that the barriers to getting hired there are low, signaling that it offers career opportunities to those who cannot find them elsewhere. (Cutting other government jobs or squeezing budgets can create a larger pool of potential recruits.) The leadership then signals impunity for people on that second ladder, to assure them that they won’t face consequences for wrongdoing.
Big ass trojan horse in the middle of the street on the UWS
Soraya standing in front of a big ass trojan horse in the middle of the street at an Odyssey press screening
Screenshot text from The City Reporter “Disproportionately higher rates of unemployment for Black New Yorkers is, in many ways, a constant; it’s not a new phenomenon,” said Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, an antipoverty advocacy organization. But the current rise in Black unemployment rates, Austin said, is symptomatic of a cultural rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, policies under the second Trump administration. “It is tied to where we are, the political climate and the acceptance that it is OK to no longer try to build greater equity and opportunity for Black people and other people of color,” she said. Labor market inequality has deepened, with the New York City metro Black-white unemployment rate gap the widest among major U.S. metro areas, at 5.6 percentage points as of the third quarter of 2025, according to the Center for New York City Affairs. Los Angeles, which had the highest Black unemployment rate at 9.6% in that quarter, had a smaller gap, with white unemployment at 5.4%, for a gap of 4.2 percentage points. Other cities, including Chicago, Dallas and Houston, had much smaller Black-white unemployment rate gaps.
Screenshot from Ruwa Romman on X. RT Ruwa: I'm a Palestinian. I don't cheer on death. But thanks for outing yourself as a bigot. OP Rachel: I'm starting to hate the Gaza people with the passion of a thousand suns. Y'all get that the average Palestinian would cheer your death?? Rachel response to Ruwa: You're running for office in Georgia, not Palestine. Ruwa response: oh you mistook this for an invitation to talk to me. It's not. Take your bigotry somewhere else. If you think you can "you're one of the good ones" me, you're mistaken. I have family who don't live here, and they have better morals and ethics
Politico screenshot text Black lawmakers and activists across the Deep South argue they have been abandoned by the Democratic Party to fight an existential crisis on their own. They say they’ve been let down by nearly all corners of the party: would be-presidential hopefuls who have flocked to early and swing states but don’t bring their megaphones elsewhere; congressional leadership focused on majority-making battlegrounds while safe Black seats are drawn out; and years of chronic underfunding that has allowed local party apparatus to wither away.
A radiant Lupita N'yongo in a silver mesh sheath dress with a side arm opening that reveals she don't need no side arm because her body is the weapon, okay? Okay. (Photo is from Harper's Bazaar US insta carousel and they did not include a photographer credit. Boo hiss on that)
An empty bowl that previously held 5 pounds of potato salad
A selfie of Soraya in a big sun hat, sunglasses, and a halterneck green dress with white polka dots. She's holding a big bowl of potato salad.
A photo of Soraya from behind, as she photographs the Mona Lisa with zero other people around her. Not AI!
A black cat, annoyed at off-year turnout, sitting on his cardboard window seat above an I VOTED 2026 sticker.
Atlantic screenshot text Other than perhaps Donald Trump, it’s difficult to argue anyone has been more successful at this than Musk. Musk excels not because he can’t stop winning, but because he understands that, in the financialized logic of our age, winning is less important than the perception that you will win. Speculation beats fundamentals. One way to look at Musk’s personal brand is as somebody who has borrowed obsessively against his own reputation, each loan used to invest in and service the debt of the last, until it becomes impossible to follow the money. One of the things that makes Elon Musk so valuable is how valuable he is.
A selfie of Soraya in a white blouse, jeans and sandals, leaning against a brick building. She's wearing oversized bug eye sunglasses and a shirt curly black bob.
A selfie of Soraya in big round iris apfel style tortoise shell shades and a white line blouse amidst her natural habitat (summertime Brooklyn)
Close up of my mini panther, Radamès, just doing his best, ok!
A close up shot of a gray tabby queen, a star, an absolutely iconic diva.
Event flyer text: Justin Ellis Soraya McDonald Jun 16 @ 7pm McNally Jackson Seaport
Maya Rudolph in the scene from Bridesmaids (2011) in which she squats and shits uncontrollably in the middle of the street while wearing a very poufy expensive wedding dress. Her character's guts were also introduced to a hostile pathogen.
Soraya in an MTA station rocking orange, blue and white because KNICKS IN FIVE
A still from Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis Two women in abayas are accosting a young girl who is in wearing a top that reads "PUNK IS NOT DED"
NYT screenshot text Because the world’s largest tech firms are headquartered in California, the state has generally become a petri dish for A.I. experiments in education. In early August, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed education agreements with Nvidia, Adobe, Google, IBM and Microsoft; each company agreed to provide free A.I. resources to California schools. The goal is to create the “A.I. work force of the future” by training high school, community college and C.S.U. students to use the technology. In this spirit, C.S.U.’s A.I. Initiative has been marketed as simple progress — a way to ensure that the state’s working-class students are buoyed by the A.I. economy rather than left behind. After all, many students in the C.S.U. system are first-generation immigrants or the first in their families to go to college; roughly half identify as Hispanic, and many commute to campus and work alongside their studies. With A.I.’s looming reorganization of the job market, many of these students might graduate into jobs that will no longer exist in five years. Already, recent reports estimate that roughly 40 percent of recent college graduates nationwide are underemployed.
NYT screenshot text: On Saturday evening, she also released a lengthy direct-to-camera video acknowledging that the couple had faced challenges, but saying that “our marriage counselor helps, my personal counselor helps, Graham’s personal counselor helps, and we work on our mental health every day.” “No marriage is perfect, and I don’t want a perfect marriage,” Ms. Gertner said. “I want my marriage, and I want to be married to Graham.”
A gray tabby who would not be moved by her obnoxious brother bleps in satisfaction. She's sitting on a cardboard bed suction cupped to the window enjoying the sunshine. A slightly curled black tail is visible in the foreground of the window sill, stomping off after failing to convince her to move.
Radamès, the captain of the Egyptian guard, faces the Egyptian princess Amneris in a scene from a Metropolitan Opera production of "Aida." Amneris is standing facing the camera atop steps to a tomb. She's flanked by a chorus of attendants, courtiers, and priests in white to her left and right. Radamès faces Amneris, his back to the camera, wearing a gilded cape.
A gray tabby nestled on a suspended cardboard window perch. You can see her reflection in the window. Below her is a black cat who is pissy because his efforts to dislodge her by sitting on her face and then hovering over her have failed. He is unhappy because Judge Mom will not make the gray tabby move.
The taskforce was launched last September by Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, following an executive order by Trump, who cited the persistently high rate of violent crime in Memphis. Lee promptly activated the national guard and flooded his state’s second-largest city with more than 2,000 state and federal police officers. The US marshals service declined to comment on the ACLU’s allegations that agents and officers have targeted activists attempting to monitor the taskforce. Gadyaces S Serralta, director of the service, chairs the taskforce. ‘Taken away my peace’ Hunter Demster, lead litigant in the case, alleged that police officers surveilled his home, and the homes of other activists who had been trying to observe the taskforce’s activities. He described an alleged incident in which a masked agent driving an unmarked black Ford Expedition sped up and swerved toward him while he was standing near a grassy median. The vehicle turned sharply as it approached, missing him by two inches, he said in his declaration. In another alleged incident, an agent Demster had not previously met addressed him by name from the loudspeaker of a truck. “When I am home alone and I hear a branch snap, my heart drops,” Demster said in his declaration. “The presence of these unmarked vehicles outside my home gives me a scary, uneasy feeling that has taken away my peace inside my own home.” The six plaintiffs in the lawsuit offered meticulous documentation to support their allegations of retaliation by the taskforce. US Customs and Border Protection revoked the decade-long Global Entry expedited border screening program status of James West, a retired anesthesiologist, less than a month after he began photographing the activities of the taskforce, according to his declaration. The official email notification stated he no longer met requirements because he may be “subject to a law enforcement investigation” or was suspected of “conduct related to terrorism”.
Gaurdian screenshot text: “Before Figures came along,” Jackson said, “Sewell was representing all Black people in the state of Alabama because we basically had no representation.” The cost of erasure Figures won his seat in 2024 – a direct product of the supreme court decision in Allen v Milligan a year earlier that ordered Alabama to draw a second majority-Black district. It was the first time since Reconstruction that Alabama had sent two Black members to Congress simultaneously. In his first term, Figures secured nearly $19m in community project funds, much of it going to rural counties that had never before received a direct federal appropriation. He has elevated the crisis of the district’s potential medical desert – where 22 of 26 rural hospitals are rated at immediate risk of closure, where residents in some counties wait more than 45 minutes for an ambulance and where a baby can only be delivered in two of 13 counties. Figures said he was only just beginning to get more attention on the long list of needs in rural south Alabama. “We have to give voters a reason to go vote and believe in how we will look out for their communities and their needs,” Figures said. “It’s beyond just saying we will get them healthcare. The healthcare argument looks a lot different when you don’t have a hospital.”
The cover of the June 2026 issue of The Atlantic
A screenshot of an episode of "Our Ancestors Were Messy." Episode: Nora Holt: The Lives and Loves of Harlem's Legendary Blonde Bombshell
A stack of books on a black desk: Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement Blackness in Opera And So I Sing The Tenth Muse: a historical study of the opera libretto
A photo of a curly haired black woman (Sarah) holding up a copy of her book, A SECOND SIGHT, in front of her face. She's wearing a white blouse with tiny black polka dots and is standing in front of a black and white African mudcloth wall hanging.
Radamès the Opera Kitty, caught mid blep. He's black and sitting on a black and white blanket. Behind him is a multicolor chair upholstery (teal, white, yellow, magenta) in an African mudcloth pattern. A small shelf of orange books sits behind him.
A gray tabby walking toward the camera
Emily Blunt and Tom's ex-wife Giselle Bundchen in a still from The Devil Wears Prada, in which Giselle is peering, horrified, over her glasses.
A black cat with his back and head against a black and white striped run, looking at the camera with his chin in the air.
Screenshot text One of the throughlines in your work is this fearless ownership you exhibit. There’s an instinct to treat trauma with a delicate hand, to hold back. How did you arrive at that confidence, that authority? I’m aware of those voices and those dictates. It really was when I got free of them that my writing totally changed. I was scratching at the door of something, and it wasn’t until I was like: Look, some of this reverence has gotta go. You’ve gotta let go of the idea of the kind of Black play that wins the award. You’ve gotta throw that away and be very true to your sensibilities, your sense of humor, the dark corners of your mind. You just gotta go for it.
screenshot from CURBED But the game of musical chairs hardly ends there. Across the river in Williamsburg — once Brooklyn’s answer to Manhattan’s downtown — the new residents moving into the waterfront condos are largely young professionals making piles of money in finance and tech. “It’s almost the new Murray Hill,” says Yanoff. And at the heart of the neighborhood, North 6th Street, the cool-kid retail mix is giving way to what may be the inevitable fate for all the city’s little Nolitas: a high-end luxury corridor that includes Hermès, Chanel, and, yes, even mall brands like Abercrombie & Fitch.
NYT Screenshot For the Love of Sentences Every so often I offer the psychic balm of a celebration of sentences minus politics and Trump. That’s the case this week. On the MS NOW website, Soraya Nadia McDonald chose an apt metaphor for “Michael,” the new biopic about Michael Jackson: “The movie works much like a plastic surgeon, nipping and tucking at narrative and memory, obscuring the unsavory, until what’s left is a misshapen simulacrum, one that elides what we all know comes later.” (Thanks to Fred Kraps of Prescott, Ariz., for nominating this.)
Oprah, Gayle, and their normie rental sedan from that time they did a road trip for teevee in 2006
Screenshot from The Atlantic within FBI rules and norms, which could be used to challenge their professional credibility. “Street agents know that integrity is the most important thing for their jobs,” he said. “Without integrity, you can’t testify.” Siuzdak, whose career spanned more than 20 years in the FBI as well as time in the military, has given unusual advice to current FBI employees who seek his counsel: “I tell people to run from him.” A spokesperson for Woodford Reserve said she did not have information about who had ordered the bottles or when. “Consumers who purchase Woodford Reserve occasionally have images and messages engraved on the bottle,” Elizabeth Conway, the director of external communications for the distillery’s parent company, told me. “These engravings occur after the point of purchase.” Patel’s affection for bourbon is long-standing; during the first Trump administration, he and his colleagues at the National Security Council kept a barrel of it on hand
Taylor Armstrong pointing and crying meme
A vampire who is governor of Louisiana
A black cat (Radamès) curled up on a carpet underneath a bedside table
A shot from Andrew Mountbatten's disastrous 2919 BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis.
Text from NY Post That’s rich! The Democratic Socialists of America rail against the one percent, but close to a third of them are clearing six-figure incomes a year, according to a newly surfaced internal survey. As many as 28% of DSA members made more than $100,000, and 56% have cushy office jobs in academia, tech, the public or non-profit sector, white-collar work or health care. More than 80% are college educated, with 35% holding at least a master’s or professional degree — which is more than twice the national average.
Text from NYT: If the goal of the overhaul to SNAP is to increase self-sufficiency among recipients, “we don’t have enough time to do everything that you need us to do,” she said. “We are not saying that we don’t want to, right? But we need the time to do it in a way that doesn’t become an overwhelming administrative burden for counties.” In her own county, Ms. Anderson estimated that 65 percent of some 4,000 people subject to the new work requirements would be able to meet and document their compliance. Ms. Anderson doubted that there were enough jobs or volunteer positions available for all 4,000 people and that all would be willing to make the effort to prove their eligibility. “Many of our recipients work, but to find copies of this or that paperwork — your rental agreement, your lease, your utilities, your everything — to come in for a small amount in benefits?” she said. “Some people may not feel that it’s worth it anymore.” Whether SNAP can still provide adequate food assistance will be a more difficult question to answer, given the Agriculture Department’s decision last fall to cancel its long-running food insecurity report, Ms. Roof of the University of Richmond pointed out. “We’re not even going to know how big the gap is between people who need help and people who are getting help.”
An advertisement for a chatbot therapist that has been marked with graffiti that says "AI SLOP" and "get a real therapist bro."
A sweet gray tabby lounging on a teal quilt and burnt orange patterned bedding. All four feet and her tail are ticked underneath her. She looks like a sage.
The flu epidemic is inextricably linked to World War I. The first cases in the U.S. were identified in soldiers living in close quarters in Army barracks before heading to Europe to join the war, which the United States entered in April 1917. Even the name that we use to identify the disease, the “Spanish flu,” is inaccurate, according to historian Kenneth C. Davis, author of More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War. “Fear driven by propaganda, censorship and lies were so much a powerful part of the spread of the Spanish flu. People were misled, often deliberately, by officials,” Davis said. “Newspapers were censored. The reason it is the Spanish flu is because of censorship. [During the war] Spain was a neutral country. It didn’t censor its news reports as rigorously as some of the warring countries did, so the first report of a massive epidemic comes out of Madrid in the spring of 1918 and that’s the reason it was reported by Reuters in London that Madrid was under a mass epidemic. That’s the reason it was called the Spanish flu. It certainly didn’t originate there.”
A photo of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple in the gated community who brandished guns at peaceful racial justice marchers in 2020. Patricia is a blonde white woman in a black and white horizontal striped t-shirt and black pedal pushers. She's barefoot and holding a pistol. Mark is in a light pink polo shirt, brown belt, and khakis. He's holding an assault rifle that is pointed at Patricia.