One year later, California's system to find missing Black people is working through its challenges

LOS ANGELES — La’Tannya Banks is still reeling from the near two-day disappearance of her 15-year-old daughter Lelah, who seemingly vanished from their Los Angeles apartment one morning in July.

“I thought she’d been abducted,” said Banks. “I immediately started freaking out.”

Banks said she worked around the clock for 37 hours to find her only child. She called every hospital in the area to see if Lelah had been admitted. She brought Lelah’s photo to every nearby hotel she could find and posted her daughter’s photos online, pleading for help from friends, family and youth advocates. 

But when she went to the Los Angeles Police Department for help, Banks said they responded with little urgency and told her that Lelah’s disappearance did not meet the requirements for an Amber Alert. She said it took more than 24 hours after she first contacted them to even allow her to file a police report.

“I told them that the 48 hours are critical for missing people,” said Banks, who previously worked with a medical examiner’s office. Banks said she was hardly given updates and her dozens of calls and emails to officers were passed along from officer to officer.

But, Banks said, “I just kept putting pressure on them.” With the help of an advocate, Banks asked authorities to issue an Ebony Alert, California’s new notification system to inform the public about missing Black youths.

Two hours after issuing the Ebony Alert, officers pinged the teen’s phone, allowing them to geolocate the device. An hour later, Lelah was reunited with her mother, who credits the alert with saving the teen’s life, despite the lengthy process.

“I don’t know how I ever would have found her,” Banks said.

The alert was put in place to address the disproportionately high number of Black children who go missing or are abducted in California. A year after the system was approved by lawmakers statewide, the Ebony Alert has been deployed 31 times, recovering 27 people, according to the California Highway Patrol, which ultimately issues the alerts. While missing persons advocates like Jasmine Lee, CEO of the Dock Ellis Foundation, say it is a powerful tool, she also is concerned that it’s not deployed nearly enough, and that local law enforcement officers lack proper training to use it. 

“I’ve seen it work, but … where is the ongoing training for law enforcement to guarantee they even understand what to do?” Lee said. She said she has helped a dozen families, including Banks’, demand an Ebony Alert for their missing children. 

A spokesperson for LAPD told NBC News that an Ebony Alert was issued in Lelah’s case only after it appeared to be necessary.

“LAPD officers take all necessary steps based on the information available at the time to locate missing persons,” a statement from the LAPD read in part. “In this case, the phone tracing and alert issuance were handled through standard investigative procedures, and the timing was dependent on evolving factors in the investigation.”

It turned out Lelah was two miles away from home, outside of a homeless shelter on Skid Row, a part of Los Angeles that has become synonymous with crime, homelessness and poverty. She said she had felt suddenly overcome with loneliness and sadness and wandered out of their home early on July 6, walking until her feet hurt. She stayed in the shelter after lying about her age but had to leave the next day. Months later, Lelah is home and seeing a counselor.

What is an Ebony Alert, and how does it work?

Signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and put into effect on Jan. 1, Ebony Alert is a resource for law enforcement to help find missing Black youths and women, ages 12 to 25, who represent a high proportion of missing people in the state and the country. At least 40% of children reported missing in the United States in 2022 were Black, according to the Black and Missing Foundation, despite Black youths making up just 16% of all kids in the U.S.

Once contacted by a law enforcement agency, the California Highway Patrol works with them to determine whether the criteria has been met for an Ebony Alert. If uncertain, the CHP will issue an alert out of caution. Once issued, an Ebony Alert notification with information about the missing person is posted on CHP’s social media pages and sent to phones within a specific geographic area. Similar to an Amber Alert, Ebony Alerts are permitted to be displayed on highway signs and billboards.

To qualify for an Ebony Alert, the missing person must be Black, between the ages of 12-25, suffering from a mental or physical disability and missing under unexplained circumstances. An Amber Alert, on the other hand, requires confirmation that an abduction has happened. In Lelah’s case, she has low blood sugar.

Ebony Alert in action

State Sen. Steven Bradford, who first proposed the alert in the spring of last year, called the program’s rollout a success thus far, given the current data.

“Many times when young Black kids disappear, they’re labeled as runaways,” he said. “So just looking at the data, we thought it was very important that we move forward with a piece of legislation like this.”

However, youth advocates believe the current numbers only reflect part of Ebony Alert’s story and don’t account for individuals who could have been the subject of alerts but weren’t. 

According to state data on “Missing and Unidentified Persons” analyzed by NBC News and the Dock Ellis Foundation, a nonprofit that provides education and resources to families of missing people of color, as of Sept. 20 at least 134 Black youths under the age of 18 went missing in California this year, all of whom could qualify for an Ebony Alert, yet only 31 alerts were issued. This means that just 23% of those who could qualify for an alert did benefit from one.

Lee, of the Dock Ellis Foundation, said that the Ebony Alert has saved lives, but thus far it’s suffered from the same shortcomings of the Amber Alert. Because officers determine whether to issue the alert, Lee said the cases of missing Black youth are often not met with the same level of urgency. 

“Here’s the thing — you can change the name, but if you have the same people who are approving it then we’re going to end up in the same place,” Lee said.

Other missing victims’ families that Lee’s organization has worked with shared similar frustrations with the Ebony Alert process. Some even have had to tell local police that the alert existed. Then, Lee said, they often feel they have to jump through hoops to finally get it sent out.

That was the experience for Adrienne Hutchinson, whose 19-year-old daughter, Sanai Singh, went missing for three days in February. After contacting police about her daughter’s disappearance, Hutchinson worked with Dock Ellis to understand the Ebony Alert and push police to issue one.

“The police officers on the desk said that they didn’t know what the Ebony Alert was,” Hutchinson said. “I went to another police station and same thing.”

Officers “brushed it off” as if her daughter ran off to “become a prostitute or go to a boyfriend’s house,” she added.

Hutchinson said that only after telling officers that her family would have a news conference that following Monday was an alert sent out. It was issued three days after Singh, who has mental health challenges and was without her medication, first went missing. Just a few hours later, the teen’s phone was pinged by police and her location was identified. A family member — not police — went to recover the teen, Hutchinson said.

When asked about Ebony Alert’s rollout and whether there were plans in place to improve training for law enforcement, a spokesperson for CHP told NBC News that they will continue to work with investigators to determine if a case meets the criteria for an Ebony Alert.

“The CHP knows that when an individual goes missing, time is of the essence,” said Jaime Coffee, director of communications for CHP. “When we are contacted by an investigating agency, our officers work with them to determine the appropriate course of action.”

Future of Ebony Alert

Other states, including Massachusetts, are considering adopting their own version of the Ebony Alert. 

While Lee is an advocate for the program, she believes it works best in tandem with community organizations that can ensure that, once a person is found, they have the resources available to remain safe and not go missing again.

In Banks’ and Hutchinson’s cases, two dedicated mothers stayed up looking for their daughters and called on their communities to pitch in. But for others, who don’t have the outreach or the knowledge that the Ebony Alert is a resource, Lee said, the outcomes are often very different.

“They get a police report number,” she said. “They go into the database and that’s it.”

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/ebony-alert-one-year-later-helping-find-missing-black-youth-rcna174561

Trump Called Harris 'Retarded,' Railed Against Jews Supporting Her: Report

Former President Donald Trump called Vice President Kamala Harris “retarded” at a recent dinner in New York City, where he also railed against Jewish voters supporting her amid the White House race, according to a new report.

Trump made the comments during the event last month at Trump Tower in Manhattan, The New York Times reported Saturday. As the GOP presidential nominee complained about the number of Jewish voters backing his Democratic rival, he reportedly said that they needed their heads examined for not standing with him despite his support for Israel.

Trump has previously sought to put the blame on Jewish voters for a potential election loss this year.

The dinner event, where Trump also suggested that contributors to his campaign needed to do more for him, was attended by high-profile donors including billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer. Billionaire investment banker Warren Stephens was present as well, along with former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her husband.

The Times, citing seven people with knowledge of the dinner who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Trump suggested that donors should be grateful to him, with the former president boasting about giving them tax breaks.

The Times’ report comes as Trump has seemed to exhibit increasingly erratic behavior ahead of Election Day. On Thursday, Trump gave a long, rambling speech in Detroit, where he trashed the city he was speaking in, attempted to define the word “grocery” and got defensive about the crowds at his events.

“The whole country’s going to be like — you want to know the truth?” Trump said in Michigan as he discussed a potential Harris win. “It’ll be like Detroit. Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president. You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”

On the same day in September when Trump suggested donors should increase their support, Harris was busy holding a campaign event in Los Angeles. She raised $28 million during the event.

Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-reportedly-called-harris-retarded-complained-jewish-support_n_670a8c57e4b0c2f4a135376f

A Stern Obama Tells Black Men to Drop ‘Excuses’ and Support Harris

Former President Barack Obama traveled to Pittsburgh on Thursday to urge voters there to choose Vice President Kamala Harris in November, aiming a message at one group in particular: Black men.

The decision voters have between the vice president and former President Donald J. Trump, her Republican opponent, “isn’t a close call,” Mr. Obama said as he visited with a group of campaign volunteers and officials at a field office just ahead of his appearance at a Harris rally. His message was for Black male voters whom he said might not be yet on board with Ms. Harris.

Citing “reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities,” he called out what he said was flagging enthusiasm for Ms. Harris compared with the support he received when he was running for the presidency in 2008.

“You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses,” Mr. Obama said. “I’ve got a problem with that.

“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” Mr. Obama continued, adding that the “women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time.

“When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting.”

The stern words from the former president were meant to address worrying signs for Ms. Harris, including that her support among Black voters is still lower than what President Biden received when he won the state in 2020, according to a poll last month from The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College. Ms. Harris’s advisers and a raft of Democratic strategists believe that if anyone can lift Black voter turnout, it is Mr. Obama.

“He’s got, obviously, tremendous appeal to Black voters,” the Democratic strategist James Carville said. “He has tremendous appeal to suburban whites, which is another big part of the coalition. And he drives Trump nuts.”

Early voting has already begun in Pennsylvania, which Ms. Harris must almost certainly win to defeat Mr. Trump. She holds a narrow lead in the polls there, having overcome the significant deficit she inherited from Mr. Biden. Democrats are hoping for high voter turnout in the state’s biggest cities, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Mr. Obama remains adored by Democrats, making him a natural surrogate for Ms. Harris on the campaign trail. More than 90 percent of Democrats and many independents view him favorably, according to an August survey by The Economist and YouGov — well above other Democrats, including Mr. Biden, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.

Ms. Harris was an early supporter of Mr. Obama, flying to Iowa in 2007 to knock on doors for the junior senator from Illinois when she was the district attorney of San Francisco.

The Pittsburgh rally kicked off Mr. Obama’s plans to return the favor. The former president plans to barnstorm battleground states in the final weeks of the election to emphasize the importance of voting.

On Thursday night before over 4,500 people at the University of Pittsburgh’s Fitzgerald Field House, Mr. Obama largely made the case for Ms. Harris by delivering a searing takedown of Mr. Trump. He mocked Mr. Trump as unable to relate to everyday Americans — quipping, to jeers, that he has most likely never changed a diaper or a tire. The attacks turned serious, too, as Mr. Obama upbraided Mr. Trump’s response to the deadly hurricanes that have devastated Southeastern states.

Mr. Obama pointed to a Trump rally after Hurricane Helene devastated the Carolinas and Georgia, where Mr. Trump made a series of false claims. He contrasted it with visits Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden made to the states in the days after, where they met with emergency workers and comforted families.

“Donald Trump, at a rally, just started making up stories about the Biden administration withholding aid from Republican areas and siphoning off aid to give to undocumented immigrants,” he said. “Just made the stuff up.”

“Everybody knew it wasn’t true,” he said. “Even local Republicans said it was not true.”

Mr. Obama said Mr. Trump’s allegations carried grave consequences because the claims could discourage people from seeking help.

“The idea of intentionally trying to deceive people in their most desperate and vulnerable moments,” he said, “and my question is: When did that become OK?”

Mr. Obama acknowledged the frustration that people are feeling after a pandemic that gutted the economy — which has been a vulnerability for Ms. Harris’s campaign.

“I get why people are looking to shake things up,” he said. “What I cannot understand is why anybody would think that Donald Trump will shake things up in a way that is good for you, Pennsylvania.”

“There is absolutely no evidence that this man thinks about anybody but himself,” he added.

Mr. Obama also used Mr. Trump’s record to broaden his call to all men to support Ms. Harris.

“And by the way, I’m sorry, gentlemen, I’ve noticed this, especially with some men who seem to think Trump’s behavior of bullying and putting people down is a sign of strength,” he said. “And I am here to tell you that is not what real strength is. It never has been.”

“Real strength is about working hard and carrying a heavy load without complaining,” he continued, his voice rising into a shout. “Real strength is about taking responsibility for your actions and telling the truth even when it’s inconvenient. Real strength is about helping people who need it and standing up for those who can’t always stand up for themselves. That is what we should want for our daughters and for our sons, and that is what I want to see in a president of the United States of America.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/us/politics/obama-harris-pittsburgh-democrats.html

Why Some Black Folks Won't Evacuate for Bad Weather Until Waffle House Closes. If You Know, You Know

You might be wondering why were so many of your Black friends and relatives in Florida unfazed by the potential deadly wave of Hurricane Milton. Could it be they were waiting for Waffle House to make a statement?

For decades, Waffle House has remained the to-go place, especially for southern Black folks to congregate after football games, night clubs, and where politicians of all races sit down for grits, hash browns, eggs and shop talk.

If you’ve never been to one, know that Waffle House is open 24 hours, 365 days a year, 99 percent of the time. But it’s the one percent of the time the chain closes its doors that gets people all worked up.

Let us explain. Waffle House is more than just your typical, cheap diner, though. Believe it or not, the southern staple created its own storm center and weather index which allows the company to manage and track all weather disasters. According to the Waffle House Storm Index, Hurricane Milton’s path is a code red. As of Oct. 10, several Waffle House locations across the coast of Florida— mostly in Tampa— reportedly closed.

The Waffle House Storm Index was born in 2004 after former FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said, “If you get there and the Waffle House is closed? That’s really bad. That’s where you go to work,” according to Quartz. The index operates on a color coded system. Green means the restaurant is running as normal. Yellow means because of the weather, the store will have a limited menu and might not have power. Red means the location is completely closed for business.

Long before it became an official weather barometer, the restaurant has been deeply embedded into southern American culture for sometime. There are more than 1,600 restaurants across the country, with 433 of them located just in Georgia alone, according to the World Population Review. The restaurant chain prides itself on serving the public, even in times of crisis.

Back in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Waffle House opened its doors to hurricane victims who couldn’t go anywhere else for a hot meal, according to Quartz. After seeing the need for a dining experience like Waffle House, the company fully embraced it’s responsibility to serve local southern communities, and in order to properly do so, they came up with a fool proof game plan.

“Senior executives developed a manual for opening after a disaster, bulked up on portable generators, bought a mobile command center and gave employees key fobs with emergency contacts,” according to the restaurant’s website. But that’s not all. Waffle House also created its own storm center and weather index which allows the company to manage and track all weather disasters.

The index has continued to be recognized as a key source of weather monitoring. In the wake of the recently devastating Hurricane Helene, Ga. Gov. Brian Kemp even visited Waffle House’s storm center himself. On X, he wrote “Thank you to the Waffle House Operations Team for your great work to prepare and inform the public during times like this.”

So, the next time you visit Waffle House, remember you’re dining at a key scientific hub. If Waffle House goes down, you know you’re in trouble!

Source: https://www.theroot.com/if-you-know-you-know-why-black-folks-delay-evacuating-1851670188

Kamala Harris Has Raised $1 Billion Since Entering 2024 Presidential Race

No presidential candidate is believed to have ever raised so much money so fast after entering a race. The campaign has stopped trumpeting its fund-raising totals to keep Democrats from becoming complacent.

Vice President Kamala Harris has raised $1 billion in less than three months as a presidential candidate, according to three people with knowledge of her fund-raising haul, a remarkable sum that has remade the race against former President Donald J. Trump.

The $1 billion haul, which encompasses money raised for her campaign and affiliated party committees, including the Democratic National Committee, is being spent on a wave of television and digital advertising and an expansive operation of offices and staff in the seven battleground states and beyond. The historic sum does not include money donated to allied super PACs.

The Harris campaign declined to comment. The campaign has yet to announce how much it raised in September, partly out of concern that bragging about the gush of donations could diminish donor interest in the race’s final weeks, people briefed on the strategy said. The Harris campaign also remains concerned about the ability of billionaire-funded Republican super PACs to impact the race.

The federal reports detailing the fund-raising totals for September are required to be made public later this month.

The $1 billion threshold is more than Mr. Trump has announced raising in all of 2024. He has raised around $853 million this calendar year in concert with the party, according to a tally of his campaign’s public statements.

Past presidential candidates, including Joseph R. Biden and Mr. Trump four years ago, have raised more than $1 billion together with their parties. Mr. Trump announced that he had surpassed that mark in July 2020, after he had been raising funds for his re-election for multiple years.

It is the sheer speed with which Ms. Harris has reached the $1 billion threshold that is notable. No presidential candidate is believed to have ever raised so much so fast after entering a race. Of course, no one in modern political history has replaced a party’s presumptive nominee in the middle of the general election.

Ms. Harris more than doubled Mr. Trump’s cash haul in both July and August. She raised $361 million in August compared to his $130 million. And her campaign and the former Biden campaign combined to raise $310 million in July compared to $139 million for Mr. Trump.

She is expected to easily double the $160 million that Mr. Trump raised in September. She raised $72 million in just three events late last month:$27 million at a single event in New York and then $55 million across two California events.

The sums are so large because both candidates are raising funds into jumbo committees that can collect checks of more than $900,000 by including state parties nationwide and the national party.

After she replaced President Biden as the de facto Democratic nominee on July 21, the outburst of online donations was organic and enormous. Ms. Harris raised $200 million in her first week — more than Mr. Biden had raised with the party in the last six months of 2023.

In fact, Ms. Harris has raised so much money that, in an unusual move in early September, she directed her joint accounts with the party to send $25 million to other party committees focused on down-ballot races for the House, Senate, governor and even state Legislatures.

Much of the funding has come from online contributors.

In the 80 full days since she declared her candidacy, the Democratic donation platform ActBlue has processed about $1.5 billion in contributions to Democratic candidates and causes, more than double the $587 million ActBlue had received in the preceding 81 days, according to the site’s online tracker.

Ms. Harris’s fund-raising has been led by the same team that had been previously raising money for Mr. Biden.

Colleen Coffey and Michael Pratt are her finance co-directors, focusing on raising money from larger donors. Jessica Porter is her grass-roots fund-raising director, who oversees the online operation. Rufus Gifford is the finance chair for the Harris-Walz campaign and Chris Korge is the finance chair for the Harris Victory Fund with the party.

Ms. Harris has supplemented that team with several new fund-raisers with close ties to her, including Stephanie Daily Smith, Stefanie Roumeliotes and Kristin Bertolina Faust, who she named a co-finance chair with Mr. Gifford.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/us/politics/harris-billion-dollar-fundraising.html

Harris Campaign Names Republicans Who Voted Against FEMA Funding

Kamala Harris's campaign has publicly named 99 Republicans who voted against Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding two weeks ago.

The vote was part of a $20 billion package on September 25. The bill passed both the House and Senate, however 82 representatives and 18 senators voted against the bill, all of whom are Republicans.

These included legislators for some of the areas most affected by Hurricane Helene, such as Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

On October 7, the Kamala Harris campaign account on X, formerly Twitter, posted a list of the lawmakers' names and states, along with the caption, "These are the Republicans who voted against FEMA funding two weeks ago."

The post received over 2 million views and a mixed response from commenters. The RNC has been contacted via email outside of work hours for comment.

Detractors have a variety of reasons for opposing FEMA funding, namely a belief that the money is mismanaged.

One of legislators who voted against the bill was the Chairman of the Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Subcommittee, Representative Scott Perry.

As part of his opening remarks on September 5 to the subcommittee that he chairs, Representative Perry said that FEMA spends taxpayer money on "amplifying climate science messaging to increase public demand for building codes and standards," which he believes should be the purview of individual states.

Representative Perry has been contacted via email outside of work hours for comment.

Some Republican legislators, including Texas Governor Greg Abbot, have also accused FEMA of aiding migrants instead of helping American citizens. FEMA has disputed this claim, saying, "no money is being diverted from disaster response needs."

FEMA has been coordinating a force of almost 7,000 federal workers to provide meals, water, generators, tarps, and other supplies and equipment on the ground across North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia which were declared disaster zones following the devastation left by Hurricane Helene on September 24.

Florida is currently bracing for Hurricane Milton which is expected to make landfall in Florida today.

FEMA has also had to brace against a tide of disinformation on the organization. A page on its website called Rumor Response fact-checks stories being spread about the organization's work.

According to its website, "FEMA provides assistance to survivors regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, English proficiency or economic status."

Florida Representative Gus Bilirakis, who voted against the bill, told Newsweek: "I have traveled throughout my district in recent days and witnessed the devastation my constituents have endured as a result of Hurricane Helene.

"It is unfathomable that before these residents have even begun to rebuild that we are having to prepare for another potentially catastrophic hurricane. I am very concerned for my district and for all Floridians as we brace for a very dangerous storm. I encourage my constituents to heed the advice of local emergency professionals and to stay as safe as possible during the coming days. This is a time when we need to be uniting in support of one another.

"I support returning to Washington as soon as possible to vote on a stand-alone bill that ensures FEMA and NFIP are funded at necessary levels to respond to Milton and future disasters without being tied, as the CR was, to disastrous policies and wasteful spending.

"Right now, I am working with federal, state and local officials to determine the specific amounts that need to be included as well as programmatic language that will give enhanced flexibility to reimburse for activities that have allowed the state and local governments to respond to these back-to-back emergencies."

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-republicans-voting-against-fema-1965493

Kamala Harris on The View writing notes to teachers excusing students who skipped class to see her

Oskar Schindler—credited with saving 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust—dies

German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, dies at the age of 66.

A member of the Nazi Party, he ran an enamel-works factory in Krakow during the German occupation of Poland, employing workers from the nearby Jewish ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated, he persuaded Nazi officials to allow the transfer of his workers to the Plaszow labor camp, thus saving them from deportation to the death camps. In 1944, all Jews at Plaszow were sent to Auschwitz, but Schindler, at great risk to himself, bribed officials into allowing him to keep his workers and set up a factory in a safer location in occupied Czechoslovakia. By the war’s end, he was penniless, but he had saved 1,200 Jewish people.

In 1962, he was declared a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official agency for remembering the Holocaust. According to his wishes, he was buried in Israel at the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion.

Source: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/oskar-schindler-dies

Miss Black America Visits Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, Partners With Mentoring in Medicine to Inspire and Empower Students

Nationwide — Frederick Douglass Academy (FDA I) located in Harlem, New York was buzzing with excitement as students gathered for a remarkable event—an inspiring visit from the Reigning Miss Black America, Ashley Marie Myatt. The event was held on September 16, 2024, in conjunction with the Mentoring in Medicine program. A collaboration that brought a unique blend of empowerment, education, and mentorship to the students, aiming to foster both academic excellence and personal growth.

A Joint Mission to Empower

Miss Black America’s presence at Frederick Douglass Academy was more than just a ceremonial appearance. Partnering with Mentoring in Medicine, a non-profit dedicated to supporting students from underrepresented communities in pursuing medical and healthcare careers, the visit focused on cultivating leadership, self-confidence, and academic ambition among students.

The event began with a captivating keynote address by Miss Black America, whose words resonated deeply with the audience. She shared her personal journey, one that included overcoming obstacles and maintaining an unwavering focus on her goals. Ms.Myatt is an accomplished Veterinarian Technician with over ten years of experience. While addressing the students, Ms.Myatt shared that her goal is to become a Veterinarian and that she would like to open a one-stop animal hospital that would allow for integrated management of animals.

“You have the power to change the world,” she told the students. “With determination, education, and the right support, you can achieve anything—whether it’s becoming a veterinarian, an entrepreneur, or the next Miss Black America.”

“The Miss Black America organization is dedicated to uplifting and inspiring young Black women and men to pursue their dreams unapologetically,” added Aleta Anderson, Executive Producer of Miss Black America. “Our goal is to provide representation, foster confidence, and help them break barriers, knowing they are powerful, capable, and deserving of success in every aspect of life.”

Mentoring in Medicine: Guiding Future Healthcare Leaders

Representatives from Mentoring in Medicine also spoke on the importance of Healthcare professions, especially for students of color. They highlighted the disparity in representation within the medical field and the need for more Black and Latino professionals to help address health inequities in underserved communities.

Students were introduced to various healthcare career paths, ranging from doctors and nurses to biomedical engineers and public health advocates. They were also informed about mentorship programs, internships, and scholarships available through Mentoring in Medicine to help them on their academic journey.

Interactive Workshops on Animal Care

After the main presentation, Miss Black America surprised students with a hands-on lesson in animal care by introducing them to a gentle rabbit, lovely named Hershey Fullerton Douglass. She demonstrated how to properly hold and care for the rabbit, explaining the importance of being calm and gentle when handling small animals. Students learned to support the rabbit’s body securely while making sure it felt safe and comfortable.

Miss Black America emphasized the responsibility that comes with caring for animals, teaching the students how regular feeding, grooming, and providing a safe environment are essential for the rabbit’s well-being. Through this experience, she not only imparted practical skills but also instilled a sense of empathy and compassion in the students.

The rabbit was ultimately donated to the school, where it now resides under the care of librarian Mr. Ma. “I couldn’t be more excited about the rabbit joining our library family,” said Mr. Ma. “It’s going to spark curiosity and give our students a hands-on experience with animal care. I think it’s a wonderful way to blend learning and nurturing, and I can already see how much joy it will bring to everyone who visits.”

Real-World Inspiration: Student Testimonials

Students from Frederick Douglass Academy were deeply impacted by the event. Many expressed newfound interest in the healthcare field, as well as a stronger sense of purpose regarding their future.

“I never thought about becoming a veterinarian before today,” one student admitted. “But hearing from both Miss Black America and the people from Mentoring in Medicine made me realize that it’s possible. They really made me feel like I can achieve something great.”

Another student, already set on pursuing a career in healthcare, said the event gave her the motivation to push even harder. “Seeing so many people who look like me succeeding in medicine, and hearing Miss Black America talk about overcoming obstacles—it just made me realize that nothing is impossible.”

A Legacy of Empowerment

The collaboration between Miss Black America and Mentoring in Medicine proved to be a powerful combination for the students of Frederick Douglass Academy. Both organizations brought a message of hope, resilience, and opportunity, reinforcing the school’s mission to uplift and empower its students including the school motto “nothing is impossible”

As students left the event, many with new goals and aspirations, the impact of Miss Black America’s visit and Mentoring in Medicine’s mentorship was clear. It wasn’t just a day of inspiration; it was the start of a journey toward success for many students—one filled with the promise of brighter futures, guided by mentorship, education, and the belief that anything is possible.

“Having Miss Black America at Frederick Douglass Academy is a truly transformative experience for our students,” said Principal Fullerton. “Her message of resilience and empowerment resonates deeply, reminding them that they have the potential to be leaders and change-makers. We’re grateful for the opportunity to foster such meaningful connections.”

This event will undoubtedly leave a lasting legacy at Frederick Douglass Academy, as students continue to strive for greatness in both their academic and personal lives, emboldened by the knowledge that they have the support of their community behind them.

If you would like Miss Black America to make an appearance at your next event please visit MissBlackAmerica.com. You can learn more about Mentoring in Medicine at MedicalMentor.org

Source: https://blacknews.com/news/ashley-marie-myatt-miss-black-america-visits-frederick-douglass-academy-harlem-partners-mentoring-in-medicine-inspire-empower-students/

Ron DeSantis is refusing to take Harris' call on Hurricane Helene

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is not taking calls from Vice President Kamala Harris about storm recovery just over a week after Hurricane Helene hammered parts of his state.

A source familiar with the situation said he was dodging the Democratic presidential nominee’s calls because they “seemed political,” according to a DeSantis aide. 

“Kamala was trying to reach out, and we didn’t answer,” the DeSantis aide told NBC News. 

DeSantis has been in direct contact with Federal Emergency Management Director Deanne Criswell.

At a press conference Monday afternoon, DeSantis denied that he refused to take Harris' call.

"I didn't know that she had called," he said. "I'm not sure who they called. They didn't call me. Their characterization of it was something that they did. It wasn't anything that anybody in my office did, in terms of saying it was political."

Asked about NBC News' report Monday afternoon and whether politics was seeping into the hurricane response, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, "That's really for the governor to speak to, right?"

She said the White House invited DeSantis to survey the storm damage with President Joe Biden.

"It was his decision ... to not attend or not be there with the president. ... It is up to him," she added. "We are doing our part, in the Biden-Harris administration, working — obviously FEMA is work — is on the ground, all hands on deck, whole of government. Robust approach here. And so, again, that's for Gov. DeSantis to speak to."

Later in the day, Harris also addressed this report, saying, "Moments of crisis, if nothing else, should really be the moment that anyone who calls themselves a leader says they're going to put politics aside and put the people first. People are in desperate need of support right now and playing political games with this moment in these crisis situations, these are the height of emergency situations, it's just utterly irresponsible and it is selfish."

On Monday evening, the White House put out a statement saying the president had spoken to both DeSantis and Tampa Mayor Jane Castor about Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Last week, DeSantis said Biden had called him, but he was flying at the time so could not take the call. Biden was in north Florida last week to survey storm damage, but DeSantis was holding a press conference that had already been scheduled in another part of the state, so they did not meet. A source familiar with the planning said that the Biden team had invited DeSantis to the event in north Florida. 

Biden "asked the Governor and the Mayor to call him directly if there is anything that can be done to further support the response and recovery efforts," the White House said in its statement.

Hurricane Helene made landfall on Florida’s Big Bend region on Sept. 27, devastating some of the state’s rural north Florida counties and swamping cities along the Gulf Coast with storm surge. Many of those cities, including the heavily populated Tampa region, are still dealing with significant flood damage and debris removal.

After landfall, remnants of Helene continued to cut a path through the Southeast, leaving more than 200 dead and swamping the region, including historic flooding in western North Carolina. 

In Helene’s immediate aftermath, DeSantis said that “we have it handled” in reference to storm cleanup and that the federal government should focus on North Carolina.

Other governors have offered more praise for the federal response, with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp saying he had spoken to Biden and thanked him for the assistance, and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, also a Republican, saying it had been “superb.”

In what he dubbed Operation Blue Ridge, DeSantis also sent Florida resources to North Carolina, including members of the Florida National Guard and officials from several state agencies. 

Over the weekend, DeSantis said those assets are now returning to Florida as the state expects a midweek landfall of Hurricane Milton, a major storm that is expected to affect huge swaths of the state, including coastal cities flooded by Hurricane Helene. 

That storm is expected to make landfall in the central portion of Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday. 

Two other officials with DeSantis’ office said that so far, there has been no effort by Biden to reach out to the governor on Hurricane Milton.

Former President Donald Trump has talked about Hurricane Helene at length, and at times in overt political terms — including pushing false information. At one point he claimed on social media that a photo Harris had posted on social media getting a storm briefing was “FAKE and STAGED.”

Trump visited Georgia in the days after the storm and appeared at an event with Kemp. He also launched a GoFundMe to help organizations doing relief work in the region.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/kamala-harris/ron-desantis-harris-call-hurricane-helene-political-rcna174276

Alexander Pushkin was a famous Russian writer. He was born in the year 1799. Many people think he was the greatest Russian writer ever. However, what is especially interesting about Pushkin is that his great-grandfather was from Africa.

Pushkin’s great-grandfather was the revered Russian General and Engineer; Abram Petrovich Gannibal.

Pushkin was very proud of his African origins. He was so proud of it, that he wrote about it in his books. In his novel called ‘Evgenii Onegin’, he mentiòns his African roots twice right at the start. He even talks about ‘my Africa’ in it sometimes. Evgenii Onegin is a very famous book. Some people think it is the best thing Pushkin wrote. Pushkin also wrote a novel about his great-grandfather Abram. He did not finish it, but it is still famous. The book has even been turned into a film.

It is very interesting that today one of Russia’s best, most famous writer ever was partly African. It shows the impact African people have had around the world, even in places and times we might not have expected. Pushkin never forgot about his great-grandfather Abram and we should not forget about him either.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/blackhistorystudies_pushkin-blackhistory-blackhistorymonth-activity-7248698574102761472-GUqs

Find out what’s really going on!

Veteran FEMA Inspector Has a Dire Warning about Accepting the $750

READ EVERY WORD OF ANY FEMA CONTRACT, WITH WHICH YOU ARE PRESENTED, BEFORE ALLOWING THE FEMA INSPECTOR TO PROCEED WITH THE INSPECTION! BETTER YET, HAVE YOUR LAWYER READ IT.

Source: tumblr.com/higherlearningtvshow

HBCU Grad, Black Engineer Turned Entrepreneur Invents an Affordable Device For the Hearing Impaired

Nationwide — Justin Lee, an aerospace engineer who attended Tuskegee University is also the founder and CEO of Quantum Senses. He was inspired by his friend, Kenneth Tissot, a Vietnam veteran who struggled to hear the TV in the evenings. Lee responded to his friend’s dilemma by inventing a hearing amplifier for mild to moderate hearing loss called Earcoustic headphones. The green-friendly, lightweight, and compact option does not require electronics, batteries, or wires.

Recognizing the importance of delivering a budget-friendly, non-electronic option for individuals facing hearing loss who may struggle to afford traditional devices, Lee created the Earcoustic headphones to offer superior sound amplification at a price point of just $19.99, making them accessible to those on fixed incomes. The product is designed to complement, rather than replace traditional hearing aids.

Lee comments, “My friend Kenneth’s story motivated us to develop a competitive solution that enhances everyday listening experiences, whether watching television, attending church, participating in meetings, or enjoying a movie. People like Kenneth shouldn’t have to sacrifice quality hearing due to financial limitations.”

The CDC reports that hearing loss is the third most common chronic health condition in the United States. National Audiology Awareness Month is a prime time to pay attention to signs of hearing loss, engage in preventative hearing check-ups, and prioritize auditory health. Repeated exposures to loud sounds, or participating in activities that produce harmful sound levels, can lead to noise-induced hearing loss. When individuals have trouble hearing or understanding conversations, private health insurance coverage benefits may not always cover the cost of obtaining expensive hearing aids.

To learn more about Earcoustic headphones, visit TheEarcoustic.com.

Also, be sure to follow the brand on Facebook and Instagram for the latest updates, promotions, and events. For a live demo, be sure to contact or visit the website.

About

Founded in 2021, Earcoustic became the first product launched by the company. Quantum Senses is dedicated to enhancing life and uniting communities through hearing. The mission is to provide organic, innovative, and affordable technology solutions to enhance holistic experiences through the five senses to improve the consumer’s quality of life.

Source: https://blacknews.com/news/justin-lee-hbcu-grad-black-engineer-entrepreneur-invents-affordable-device-hearing-impaired/

Michigan State Police Troopers Forced Black Motorist To Defecate In Public in Apparent False DUI Arrest

A Black motorist has decided to sue Michigan State Police after troopers subjected him to a humiliating traffic stop. The incident was captured by police-worn body cameras. Dakarai Larriett says he was arrested on the false assertion that he was intoxicated when he was pulled over in Benton Harbor earlier this year.

Larriett, who filed his lawsuit on Wednesday, claims he was racially profiled when troopers pulled him over in his Cadillac SUV, made fun of his name, and subjected him to homophobic remarks. In the clip, Trooper George Kanyuh insists that Larriett was under the influence when they stopped him.

“I don’t know what he’s on,” Kanyuh can be heard saying to his partner Matthew Okaiye in the video. “I’m going to assume it’s weed and alcohol.” Though there was no apparent proof that Larriett was under the influence, the troopers still handcuffed him and transported him to a hospital to be tested for alcohol and drugs.

He was then taken to jail, despite his alcohol test being negative. In a statement to the Metro Times, Larriett explained how things somehow went from bad to worse. Police did a scan of his stomach, he said, before they accused him of “trying to smuggle drugs into the jail by way of ingestion of a bag of drugs.”

Larriett told the publication he also suffered “an extremely humiliating moment...where I was forced to defecate publicly while Trooper Kanyuh yelled at me not to flush.”

Larriett was initially charged with operating under the influence of a controlled substance. However, according to a federal complaint filed by his attorney Shawndrica N. Simmons, prosecutors immediately dismissed the case “due to lack of evidence and the unlawful nature of the stop and arrest.”

Simmons also said that the “actions of the Michigan State Police officers were part of a pattern and practice of racially discriminatory policing.”

Source: www.theroot.com/watch-michigan-state-police-troopers-forced-black-moto-1851665765

Tupac Mosley, a high school senior from Raleigh Egypt high school in Tennessee graduated as valedictorian with over $3 million in scholarships despite facing homelessness. His perseverance and 4.3 GPA are testaments to his strength and dedication. Tupac is heading to Tennessee State University to study electrical engineering this fall.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/TheTrueHistoryofBlackAmerica/photos/tupac-mosley-a-high-school-senior-from-raleigh-egypt-high-school-in-tennessee-gr/514527641354872/

In the 19th century, Fanny Jackson Coppin (formerly enslaved) was a renowned teacher, principal, journalist, school board superintendent, & French interpreter for Philadelphia’s courts (& also fluent in Greek, Latin, & advanced math) whose work shaped generations of students.

Source: https://x.com/ProenzaColes/status/1841819499609104560/photo/1

John Amos, Good Times Actor, Dead at 84

The post John Amos, Good Times Actor, Dead at 84 appeared first on Consequence.

John Amos, the career actor who played the adult Kunta Kinte in Roots and James Evans Sr. on Good Times, among countless other memorable roles, has died at the age of 84.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Amos passed away on August 21st of natural causes. “It is with heartfelt sadness that I share with you that my father has transitioned,” his son, Kelly Christopher Amos, said in a statement. “He was a man with the kindest heart and a heart of gold… and he was loved the world over. Many fans consider him their TV father. He lived a good life. His legacy will live on in his outstanding works in television and film as an actor.”

After a career in football stalled out, Amos pursued acting. His first major gig came as the weatherman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970 to 1973. In 1974, Amos landed the lead role as the family patriarch James Evans Sr. on Good Times. A spin-off of All in the Family and developed by Norman Lear, the CBS series marked television’s first African American two-parent family sitcom. However, Amos was fired from the show following its third season after clashing with writers over when he believed was a lack of authenticity in portraying the African-American experience.

In 1977, Amos stared as the adult Kunta Kinte in the television miniseries Roots, earning an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor.

In the years that followed, Amos appeared in films including Coming to America, Die Hard 2, Dr. Doolittle 3, and Madea’s Witness Protection. On the television front, Amos portrayed Admiral Percy Fitzwallace on The West Wing.

Amos also notably appeared in the music video for Ice Cube and Dr. Dre’s “Natural Born Killaz.”

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/john-amos-good-times-actor-181430725.html

Thousands of people purged from Georgia’s voter rolls reregistered after Kamala Harris’ rally in Atlanta

Stanlecia Johnson, 48, registered to vote when she turned 18 years old, but almost immediately lost the right when she was convicted of a felony around the same time.

She did not vote for 30 years. But after registering again last month, Johnson plans to vote in Fulton County in November.

Johnson is one of over 40,000 voters who have reregistered this year ahead of Georgia’s Oct. 7 deadline. Most of them last updated their registration after Vice President Kamala Harris joined the race, with roughly 25% doing so on the day of her July rally in Atlanta, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of the state’s voter roll.

“She seems like a strong woman,” Johnson said. “It seems like she’s for the people, for my people, regular people.”

The Georgia secretary of state removed thousands of voter registrations before the beginning of the year for varying reasons — some were removed for not voting or responding to mail from election officials in two general election cycles, others were deleted following a conviction with a felony sentence, and still others for moving to another state.

Now, many of these voters are eligible again and back on Georgia’s voter roll.

In the same period of time, the state has removed more than 100,000 names from Georgia’s list of eligible voters. Death and duplicate entries are the two main reasons for removal so far this year.

“This maintenance isn’t evil,” said Mitchell Brown, a political scientist at Auburn University. “It’s good administrative practice.”

Brown said the timing of the updated registrations could reflect increased interest in Harris as a candidate or coincide with more outreach to voters around that time.

Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of voting rights organization Fair Fight Action, interpreted the reregistrations as a sign that there is strong enthusiasm to vote this year, especially among the 60% of reregistrants who had been inactive in Georgia’s elections for several years.

“These folks were registered before. They didn’t vote for a set of years,” she said. “They decided to vote again, but they had to take that additional step and burden of reregistering.”

This burden of reregistering is made easier by voter outreach by organizations like Women on the Rise, which is dedicated to empowering formerly incarcerated women. They reached out to Johnson and informed her of her right to vote.

Greater Georgia, a Republican-led effort, said that it reaches out to voters who have not participated in elections for a long time. These voters might include those who were removed from the rolls for inactivity.

“It’s not just first-time voters who are getting involved this cycle,” said Caitlin O’Dea, spokesperson for Greater Georgia in a statement. “After making over 100,000 phone calls, we’ve helped reregister many Georgians who haven’t voted in decades.”

A voter’s registration can be updated when moving counties, getting married and changing last names, or renewing a driver’s license. Some voters listed as updating their registration in July may have reregistered earlier in the year, and then made one of these smaller changes later on.

That was the case for Alan Overton. The 58-year-old had lived in Georgia before and reregistered after moving back to the state from Florida in January. When he settled in and relocated to Cobb County over the summer, he updated his registration again.

Overton said he has been voting for 30 years and that his primary motivation is to stop former President Donald Trump from regaining power. He also said that Harris represents an opportunity for change.

“A return to intelligence, a return to logic, a return to responsibility to your neighbors, a return to inclusiveness,” he said. “All these things that we just sort of took for granted when I was growing up.”

Source: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/oct/01/thousands-of-people-purged-from-georgias-voter-rol/

Trump rejects "60 Minutes" interview; Harris accepts

Former President Trump turned down a "60 Minutes" offer of back-to-back conversations with both presidential nominees, with his campaign saying he didn't want interruptions for fact checks.

Vice President Harris will appear on the show, airing Oct. 7. "60 Minutes," the highest-rated news program on TV, says the invitation to Trump stands.

Why it matters: With Trump saying it's "too late" for another debate with Harris, the show could have been a final chance for both candidates to reach a mass audience, 29 days before Election Day.

Between the lines: CBS says Trump accepted, then pulled out. Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign communications director, told Axios:

"There were discussions but nothing was ever scheduled or locked in. They insisted on cutting out of the interview to do fact-checking."

What they're saying: "60 Minutes is scheduled to air a primetime election special on a Monday edition of the broadcast on October 7 at 8PM," the show tweeted as a "programming note" three hours before the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night.

"For over half a century, 60 Minutes has invited the Democratic and Republican tickets to appear on our broadcast as Americans head to the polls."

A "60 Minutes" spokesperson added: "This year, both the Harris and Trump campaigns agreed to sit down with 60 Minutes. Vice President Harris will speak with correspondent Bill Whitaker. After initially accepting 60 Minutes' request for an interview with Scott Pelley, former President Trump's campaign has decided not to participate. Pelley will address this Monday evening."

"Our election special will broadcast the Harris interview on Monday as planned. Our original invitation to former President Donald Trump to be interviewed on 60 Minutes stands."

What we're hearing: According to CBS News, the agreement "was that each candidate would receive two segments in the broadcast (equal time each, half of the broadcast)."

"60 Minutes" is scheduled to interview Harris and film her on the campaign trail this week. Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is expected to participate in the interview.



The intrigue: Trump also had a dispute over fact-checking before he was interviewed onstage last month at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Chicago.

The Trump campaign said CBS wouldn't give assurances the candidates would be fact-checked equally. CBS wouldn't comment on that.

Source: https://www.axios.com/2024/10/01/trump-harris-60-minutes-interview

Harris leading Trump by 2 points in Pennsylvania: Poll

Vice President Harris holds a 2-point advantage over former President Trump in Pennsylvania, a new AARP poll shows.

In the recent survey, Harris garners 49 percent support to Trump’s 47 percent. Green Party candidate Jill Stein receives 1 percent support, and Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver receives statistically no support. Another 3 percent say they are undecided.

In a head-to-head match-up, Harris’s lead over Trump ticks up by 1 point, 50 percent to 47 percent, with 3 percent undecided, the poll found.

The latest survey marks a 7-point shift from a poll conducted in April, months before President Biden withdrew from the race, when Biden trailed the former president by 5 points.

The poll reflects some broader shifts in Harris’s support, when compared to Biden’s support in April.

Harris sees a 15-point boost in the polls among voters ages 18-49, many of whom said in April they were voting for a third-party candidate or were undecided. The vice president now leads her Trump 54 percent to 40 percent among the age group.

Trump’s support in April among voters ages 18-49 was similar to his support in the latest poll, yet he still led Biden 41 percent to 40 percent. The biggest shift comes from third-party voters, which made up 13 percent of the Pennsylvania electorate in April but now makes up 3 percent. Undecided voters have also decreased, from 5 percent in April to 3 percent in September, the survey found.

Harris has narrowed the deficit among voters ages 50-64, now earning 43 percent support to the former president’s 53 percent. In April, Biden trailed Trump 53 percent to 37 percent.

The vice president has also lost ground among people 65 and older. In April, older adults favored Trump 46 percent to 45 percent, but his support has risen significantly since then, now leading Harris 52 percent to 45 percent.

Harris has made gains among independents, as well. She now leads Trump 49 percent to 40 percent, whereas Trump led Biden in April among the voting bloc 37 percent to 31 percent.

Her support has grown among women, who now support the Democratic nominee over Trump by a 57 percent to 38 percent margin, compared to Biden’s 44 percent to 41 percent lead over the former president in April.

Harris also halved the GOP nominee’s lead in rural Pennsylvania, where Trump led Biden by 36 points in April but now leads Harris 58 percent to 40 percent. In suburban Pennsylvania, Harris now leads 53 percent to 43 percent — an 11-point shift from April, when the former president led Biden by 1 point.

The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling index shows Harris with an even narrower lead in the Keystone State — 48.9 percent to Trump’s 48.3 percent.

Pennsylvania is seen as a critical battleground state for both campaigns ahead of the November election. Biden won the state narrowly in 2020.

The AARP survey conducted Sept. 17-24, among 1,398 respondents — including 600 likely voters in the state — has a margin of error that falls between 3 and 5 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4908987-kamala-harris-donald-trump-pennsylvania-survey-aarp/

Georgians get fast Hurricane aid from Biden and Harris … and it’s driving Trump crazy

Georgia’s Republican governor praised Democratic President Joe Biden for reaching out to him in the wake of Hurricane Helene’s deadly devastation as the state and surrounding areas scramble to recover from the disaster.

Former President Donald Trump told a different story when he landed there to survey the damage.

“The governor’s doing a very good job. He’s having a hard time getting the president on the phone,” Trump told reporters. “The federal government is not being responsive.”

It wasn’t true.

Here’s what Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp had to say about Biden and the feds:

“The president just called me yesterday afternoon. I missed him and called him right back and he just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’ And I told him, ‘We got what we need. We’ll work through the federal process. He offered that if there’s other things we need just to call him directly, which I appreciate that,” Kemp said.

“We’ve had FEMA embedded with us since a day or two before the storm hit in our state operating center in Atlanta. We’ve got a great relationship with them,” he said.

The death toll surpassed 100 people, with some of the worst damage caused by inland flooding in North Carolina.

In addition to being humanitarian crises, natural disasters can create political tests for elected officials, particularly in the closing weeks of a presidential campaign. North Carolina and Georgia, two of the states hit by the storm, are key battlegrounds in November’s presidential election.

The White House announced Biden spoke by phone on Sunday night with Kemp and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, as well as Scott Matheson, mayor of Valdosta, Georgia, and Florida Emergency Management Director John Louk.

During a Monday morning press conference, Kemp confirmed he spoke with Biden.

Still, Trump escalated his criticism on Truth Social, his social media website, where he said that he’s bringing “lots of relief material, including fuel, equipment, water, and other things” to Georgia.

The White House said Harris would visit impacted areas “as soon as it is possible without disrupting emergency response operations.” She also spoke with Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, and she received a briefing from Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell while she was traveling.

FEMA uses the disaster relief fund to coordinate the federal response to major disasters. It pays for debris removal, the repair of public infrastructure and financial assistance for survivors, among other things. The temporary spending bill passed and signed into law last week pumped about $20 billion into the fund and gave FEMA the ability to spend that money more quickly.

Source: https://www.nj.com/politics/2024/09/georgians-get-fast-hurricane-aid-from-biden-and-harris-and-its-driving-trump-crazy.html

Harris says she backs legalizing marijuana, going further than Biden

Vice President Harris reaffirmed her support for legalizing marijuana Monday, speaking up on the issue publicly for the first time she became the Democratic nominee. 

“I just think we have come to a point where we have to understand that we need to legalize it and stop criminalizing this behavior,” Harris said during a nearly hourlong interview on the sports and culture podcast “All the Smoke” released Monday. 

“I just feel strongly people should not be going to jail for smoking weed,” she told hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. “And we know historically what that has meant and who has gone to jail.” 

The vice president added that supporting marijuana legalization is “not a new position for me. I have felt for a long time we need to legalize it.” 

Harris’s views on marijuana have evolved over the years. 

She has been criticized for aggressively prosecuting marijuana-related crimes when she was San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general. She also spoke out against Proposition 19, the failed 2010 California ballot measure to legalize and regulate marijuana. 

As a senator, Harris co-sponsored legislation to end the federal prohibition of marijuana. When she was running for president in 2019, she called for expunging nonviolent marijuana-related criminal offenses, something the Biden administration has now implemented. 

On April 20 this year, Harris posted on the social platform X that nobody “should have to go to jail for smoking weed” and said that “we must continue to change our nation’s approach to marijuana.” 

Earlier this year, the Biden administration also announced it started on the formal rulemaking process to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I designation to a Schedule III designation. But President Biden has stopped short of calling for full legalization.

When former President Trump recently said he supported an initiative to legalize recreational use of marijuana in Florida, Harris’s campaign spokesman dismissed it as “blatant pandering.” 

But Harris had not previously mentioned marijuana since launching her campaign. There is no reference to it on her campaign website, and she avoided answering specific questions about her position as recently as last week.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz also recently dodged the question of legalization, telling Spectrum News he thinks it’s an issue that should be left to individual states.

Source: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4907402-harris-says-she-backs-legalizing-marijuana-going-further-than-biden/

Harris' team is considering keeping Biden Cabinet officials if she wins and Democrats lose the Senate

Climate is on the ballot this election season. The two presidential candidates offer vastly different scenarios for our planet’s future. Scientists have said another term led by Donald Trump, who has shopped his campaign to fossil fuel executives, would make America more reliant on energy sources that are heating up our planet at a catastrophic rate. Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, has supported legislation that will provide billions in fighting the climate crisis and — while not perfect — offers citizens a platform to champion for lifesaving environmental protections.

With the race to the White House poised to come down to the wire in key battleground states, America’s favorite science guy Bill Nye took to social media to urge Americans to vote for climate and clean energy champions.

Wearing a powdered wig and evoking the U.S. Constitution, Nye underlined that Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, states Congress shall “promote the progress of science and useful arts.”

He elaborated that the country’s founders “saw the future and knew that science would be essential to it,” but that this election season, “One side is living in an imagined past world in which we can drill, scrape, and burn the coal and oil of ancient swamps without consequence.”

“They’re bent on ignoring science, blinded to the overwhelming evidence of climate change, fires, floods, disappearing, ice, hottest summers on record,” he continued, before urging: “Let’s do something. Let’s vote. Science isn’t partisan. It’s patriotic.”

Nye’s latest election efforts are part of a collaboration with Climate Power’s Too Hot Not To Vote campaign that aims to educate and motivate voters to choose candidates who support climate and clean energy. The famed activist has publicly endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket and encouraged voters to visit TooHotNotToVote.com where they can check their registration status and learn about different candidates’ climate records.

“The stakes for our planet have never been higher and we must elect leaders who prioritize science and sustainability,” said Nye in a statement to Rolling Stone. “Acknowledging that climate change is happening is essential to our future. In this election, let’s address the urgency of the crisis. Every single vote can drive meaningful change.”

The new campaign is co-chaired by Nye, Rosario Dawson, Sophia Bush, Jack Schlossberg, Misha Collins, Sierra Quitiquit, LaTricea Adams, Piper Perabo, and Pattie Gonia — industry leaders, celebrities, and influencers who have sought to galvanize voters through their 50 million followers across various social media platforms.

Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bill-nye-harris-walz-climate-change-elections-1235112550/

Harris' team is considering keeping Biden Cabinet officials if she wins and Democrats lose the Senate

WASHINGTON — If she wins in November, Vice President Kamala Harris may face a hostile, Republican-controlled Senate in no mood to confirm the senior Cabinet officials she’ll need to run her administration.

Anticipating that scenario, Harris’ team is exploring whether to keep in place some of the Biden administration officials who’ve already been confirmed by the Senate and wouldn’t need to face the gauntlet again, four people familiar with her transition planning said.

Her aides are also looking at the option of initially retaining some current officials so that she'd have more time to make staffing decisions. With only a few months to build a campaign after abruptly replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, Harris has had little time to focus on the makeup of a new administration, the people familiar with the planning said.

Harris' transition team has been identifying Cabinet members and ambassadors who might be willing to remain in their jobs after Biden’s term ends, though no formal inquiry has gone out asking them if they would stay, the sources said.

Entering office with Biden holdovers in tow carries political risk for Harris, undercutting her message that she's a change agent who would take a fresh approach to governance.

A recent NBC News poll found that 40% of registered voters worried that a Harris presidency would be a continuation of the Biden years, versus 39% who said they were worried that a second Trump term would resemble the first.

Harris wants to leave her distinct imprint on the Cabinet, though, and would like to name the first woman to run the Pentagon as part of a broader shake-up of the national security team, allies said.

Harris also might ask some Cabinet members to remain indefinitely or put some Senate-confirmed officials into different jobs on an acting basis, according to the people familiar with the planning. (Federal law permits such moves.)

'An interesting road'

Some Democratic senators and other party officials have reached out to her transition team to ask that Harris not call for the resignation of all of Biden's appointees if she wins — just in case Republicans capture the Senate and gain control of the confirmation process, one of the people familiar with Harris’ transition planning said.

The electoral map is tough for Senate Democrats. Republicans stand a good chance of erasing the Democrats’ narrow 51-49 Senate majority in November, a hard reality that complicates Harris' transition planning.

Follow live updates on the 2024 election

In the past, the Senate has shown deference to new presidents when it comes to appointing a Cabinet, a gesture meant to allow them to put their preferred team in place. But the creeping polarization in Washington has eroded bipartisan norms.

After becoming president in 2009, Barack Obama retained Robert Gates as defense secretary, making him the most prominent holdover from George W. Bush's presidency. (Because Gates had already been confirmed, he didn't need to win Senate approval to stay on).

Years later, Gates gave an oral interview and said that Senate confirmation had become so arduous that he was reluctant to fire people at the Pentagon because it would have been too difficult and time-consuming to get a new person confirmed.

"Polarization had gotten to the point on [Capitol] Hill where any senior confirmation in the national security arena was going to be tough," Gates told the University of Virginia's Miller Center. "I just didn’t feel like we could afford the loss of time that would be involved in bringing new people on board."

If Republicans control the Senate next year, Harris nominees could face withering scrutiny from GOP senators eager to weaken her at the start.

“The question of what to do with current appointees — at all levels — is something we have to deal with,” a person familiar with Harris' transition work said.

Harris' advisers are looking to history for guidance.

It’s been more than 35 years since the nation has undergone a transfer of power in which the outgoing and incoming presidents came from the same party.

Members of Harris’ transition team have studied that one — the handoff from Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush, both Republicans, after the 1988 election. They've also examined the transition planning that took place in 2016, when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton ran to succeed Obama. She went on to lose to Donald Trump that year, so the transition never happened.

Harris' team is operating under an unusually compressed timeline and is still building the basic apparatus needed to vet potential hires and staff an administration.

She inherited much of Biden's campaign machinery when she became the presumptive nominee in July. But Biden didn't need an especially robust transition operation. As a sitting president, he already had a team in place and had set his overall policies and direction.

When he ran in 2020, by contrast, Biden's advisers were holding initial discussions about the transition that March.

No presidential campaign likes to talk publicly about transitions for fear of appearing overconfident. Yet transitions are important to a White House's success in the first 100 days, the yardstick by which modern presidents are often judged.

Overall, a president makes more than 4,000 political appointments, about 1,300 of which need to be confirmed by the Senate.

Last month, Harris' campaign appointed Yohannes Abraham to run the team that is preparing for a transfer of power. At the time, Abraham was the U.S ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), based in Indonesia. He came to his new role with direct experience, having been executive director of Biden’s transition in 2020.

Trump, too, began transition preparations relatively late. Like Harris, his campaign only named his transition team leaders in August.

“She obviously started late, but to her credit, she’s moved with dispatch in announcing her transition leadership,” said Max Stier, founding president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that helps candidates plan presidential transitions. “Now, transitions are hard and there’s not a lot of time. She has an interesting road. Harris is neither a true incumbent nor a true challenger. There’s not a lot of precedent for that. But in terms of how she started, she started well.”

Find new Cabinet secretaries

If Harris becomes the first female president, she has privately told allies that she’d like to make history again by appointing the first female secretary of defense, two people familiar with the planning said.

Potential Pentagon chiefs include Christine Wormuth, now the secretary of the Army, and Kathleen Hicks, the deputy defense secretary, the people said. Another prospective candidate Michèle Flournoy, who was a senior defense official in the Obama administration.

“She’s somebody who’s just really beloved and respected within the building,” said Rosa Brooks, who served as counselor to Flournoy in the Pentagon.

Naming a female defense secretary “sends a very powerful message that will help other women break through all those glass ceilings,” Brooks added. For women “who finally have the ability to serve in combat roles in the military, it will be incredibly encouraging to them. It will shatter that glass ceiling in a way that I hope will have a permanent effect on the military and national security culture.”

Harris’ instinct is to install a different set of national security officials, some of whom don’t need to be confirmed by the Senate, two people familiar with her approach to the matter said. One exception may be CIA Director William Burns, they said. A former diplomat who has served under six presidents, Burns could stay on or serve in a different Cabinet position, the sources said.

One difference between Harris and Biden is that she tends to be more eclectic in her personnel choices. As a former prosecutor, state attorney general, senator and vice president, she has needed to rely on people with vastly different skills over a long career in public life.

Biden, by contrast, has cultivated a small network of trusted advisers who've remained in his inner circle as he's moved from job to job.

“She understands the importance of having people who know her history and background and how she approaches the world. But she also values people who are experts in their field,” said Rohini Kosoglu, Harris’ former Senate chief of staff.

Two people whom Harris may consider for national security adviser — a White House staff position that doesn’t require Senate confirmation — are Julianne Smith, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, and Phil Gordon, who has been her vice presidential national security adviser, people familiar with the matter said.

Potential secretary of state candidates include Burns, Sens. Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, and Chris Coons, of Delaware, both Democrats; Linda Thomas-Greenfield, now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Asked for comment, an official involved in Harris’ transition wrote in an email: “The lean transition team will not be making any personnel decisions pre-election.”

“There is no transition without a successful campaign,” the official said. “The focus right now is on the Harris-Walz campaign. As envisioned by the Presidential Transition Act, the vice president’s transition team is laying the groundwork to be able to support the vice president and her senior staff after election day."

It’s unclear whether Harris would want to find jobs for other marquee Biden-era figures. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, himself a former presidential candidate, has become a familiar face in Biden's Cabinet, venturing onto Fox News with some frequency to defend the administration’s policies before a conservative audience.

A person close to Buttigieg said it’s “too early to say” whether he would leave Washington after Biden’s term ends.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has also become a fierce pro-Harris surrogate on the airwaves. She appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday in what she called her “personal capacity.”

Asked about a recent comment by Trump that he will be women’s “protector,” Raimondo said: “How did we get here? Let’s extinguish him for good.”

Clarifying what she meant by “extinguish,” Raimondo added: “Vote him out. Banish him from American politics.”

"We have an answer," Raimondo said. "We have a remarkably talented candidate who is sincere, who's pragmatic, who's open. Let's just get it done."

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/harris-team-considering-keeping-biden-cabinet-officials-wins-democrats-rcna172006

Donald Trump bizarrely claims migrants have phone app direct to Kamala Harris

Donald Trump bizarrely claimed migrants have a phone app direct to Kamala Harris during a speech at Trump Towers on Thursday (26 September).

In his conspiracy-laden remarks to the press at Trump Tower, the former president sought to blame the Biden administration for the migrant crisis.

Trump claimed: “In addition through her phone app, something totally new now, it’s a phone app for migrants, where migrants call in.

“She’s allowed them to press a button and schedule an appointment to be released into the interior of our county.”

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/donald-trump-immigration-phone-app-kamala-harris-b2619755.html

Diddy's lawyer downplays 'uncertain mental state' claims after suicide watch

Rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs' lawyer is clarifying recent reports centering around his suicide watch. The music mogul was arrested Monday night and charged with sex trafficking by force, transportation to engage in prostitution, and racketeering conspiracy.

He pleaded not guilty but remains behind bars in New York following his second bail denial and has now been placed under suicide watch. Miami getting rid of 'Diddy Day' following assault video and rapper's lawsuits. Michigan inmate wins $100M judgement against Diddy for sexual assault. When the bombshell broke news, it was unclear whether Combs was suicidal, but sources indicated that his placement on suicide watch is a preventative measure due to his shock and uncertain mental state.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice National Institute of Corrections, suicide watch involves “supervisory precautions taken for suicidal inmates that require frequent observation.” During a recent court hearing, Diddy's attorney, Marc Agnifilo, requested that the judge transfer him to a prison in Essex County, New Jersey, but the decision was ultimately left to the Bureau of Prisons.

In their motion for bail, Diddy's lawyers argued that “several courts in this District have recognized that the conditions at Metropolitan Detention Center are not fit for pre-trial detention,” as reported by The Daily Beast. “Just earlier this summer, an inmate was murdered,” the legal team noted.

“At least four inmates have died by suicide there in the past three years.” Now, Agnifilo has told Us Weekly that the placement of suicide watch is a routine procedure for “new, high-profile inmates." Diddy is “not at all suicidal,” Agnifilo added, noting that he’s “strong, healthy, confident and focused on his defense.” The rapper will remain in jail pending his trial, a New York judge ruled on September 17, denying the rapper bail.

Source: https://www.the-express.com/entertainment/celebrity-news/149309/Diddys-lawyer-mental-state-suicide-watch

Former Chicago Alderman Ed Burke reports to prison after conviction for racketeering and bribery

CHICAGO (CBS) — Former Chicago alderman Ed Burke reported to federal prison in western Illinois on Monday to serve a two-year sentence for racketeering and bribery. 

According to a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Burke is in custody at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Thomson in Thomson, Illinois. Thomson is currently a low-security prison and has about 2,000 inmates, according to Bureau of Prisons data. 

When federal agents raided Burke's office at City Hall in 2018, it was the first time the public knew the city's longest-serving alderman was under investigation. Five years later in December 2023, Burke left the Dirksen Federal Building a guilty man after a federal jury convicted him or racketeering and bribery.

He is now listed as inmate number 53698-424.

Burke will be given a health assessment, assigned to a housing unit, and provided prison-issued clothing, which includes six white T-shirts, four spruce green shirts, four spruce green slacks, a belt, six pairs of socks, a winter coat, and work boots. 

According to the prison handbook, wake-up is at 6 a.m., and beds are to be made daily with a 6—to 12-inch collar on the top sheet. 

By law, an inmate is allowed four hours of visiting time a month, but many prisons offer more. Burke may be visited by no more than 10 friends or associates. That limitation does not include visits by immediate family, attorneys, and clergy. 

"For him, it's a 180-degree turnabout from being high and mighty to listening to orders of other people every day," said CBS News Chicago Legal Analyst Irv Miller. "Everything he does will be structured. He'll be given a job assignment. He'll have to obey the rules. He could be padded down many times during the day to see if he has any types of weapons or contraband just like any other prisoner."

Burke will be expected to serve at least 85% of the 24-month sentence. With good behavior, he could be released as early as May 2026.

John "Doc" Fuller is a prison coach who provides the unique service of consulting the newly convicted on what to expect once they're incarcerated.

"That first hour is going to be a little traumatic," Fuller said. "He will be stripped search like every inmate."

While Fuller has not consulted Burke, he offered some insight on what the 80-year-old should expect.

"Forget about your title. Forget about anything that you've accomplished prior to coming into prison," Fuller said. "Your new life starts from the day that you walk behind that gate."

In June, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall also imposed a $2 million fine and one year of supervision after his release.

Burke was convicted of schemes to shake down the developers of the Old Post Office in downtown Chicago in exchange for help with tax incentives, the owners of a Burger King franchise restaurant in his ward in exchange for help with permits, and a developer who wanted help getting a pole sign approved for a new Binny's Beverage Depot store. He was also accused of threatening to hold up a fee increase for the Field Museum after learning the museum had not considered his goddaughter for an internship.

These acts occurred late in Burke's career, between 2016 and 2018.

At the time of the sentencing, Kendall said there was "no mitigation" for the seriousness of Burke's crimes, and his actions were "unfortunately an erosion of faith in public officials."

Kendall also admitted she had never seen so many letters written on a defendant's behalf as she did for Burke.

"I have never seen someone go to as many funerals as I've seen in this book. That is such an important moment in someone's life," Kendall said. "He goes to all of them. Not only goes to them, but these handwritten notes to give people hope when they're down."

For much of his time in office, Burke was chairman of the powerful City Council Finance Committee.

After his conviction, Burke – who was the longest-serving alderman in Chicago City Council history – retired as an Illinois attorney, weeks after the Illinois Supreme Court was left unable to act on a bid to disbar him due to a lack of a quorum.

"He knows a lot of people," Fuller said. "Bribery, corruption in Chicago is nothing new."

Indeed, more than 30 members of the Chicago City Council have been tied to corruption cases since the early 1970s.

For just a few relatively recent cases, in 2013, former Ald. Sandi Jackson (7th) pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns in connection to a scheme by her then-husband, Jesse Jackson Jr. She served 11 months.

That same year, a federal jury found Cook County Commissioner and former Ald. William Beavers (7th) guilty of tax evasion. He failed to report more than $225,000 in campaign cash he used for personal expenses, including gambling sprees at a Hammond Casino.

Former Ald. Ed Vrdolyak (10th) was convicted twice—both times many years after he had left the Council and had twice run for mayor and lost. In 2011, Vrdolyak served 10 months for a real estate kickback scheme, while in 2020, her was sentenced to 18 months for another scheme—but did not report to prison until a year later due to his health.

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/former-chicago-alderman-ed-burke-to-report-to-prison-monday/

Harris Widens Lead over Trump to 47％-40％, Reuters/Ipsos Poll Finds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump 47% to 40% in the race to win the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, as she appeared to blunt Trump’s edge on the economy and jobs, a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Tuesday found.

Harris had a lead of six percentage points based on unrounded figures – which showed her with support from 46.61% of registered voters while Trump was backed by 40.48%, according to the three-day poll that closed on Monday. The Democrat’s lead was slightly higher than her five-point advantage over Trump in a Sept 11-12 Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The latest poll had a margin of error of about four percentage points.

While national surveys including Reuters/Ipsos polls give important signals on the views of the electorate, the state-by-state results of the Electoral College determine the winner, with seven battleground states likely to be decisive.

Polls have shown Harris and Trump are neck-and-neck in those battleground states, with many results within the polls’ margins of error. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed Trump with marginal leads in three of these states – Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina.

Asked which candidate had the better approach on the “economy, unemployment and jobs,” some 43% of voters responding to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll picked Trump and 41% selected Harris. Trump’s two-point advantage on the topic compares to his three-point lead in an August Reuters/Ipsos poll and an 11 point lead over Harris in late July shortly after she launched her campaign.

Harris entered the race after President Joe Biden folded his reelection effort following a poor debate performance against Trump in June. Trump at the time was widely seen as the frontrunner, partly based on his perceived strength on the economy after several years of high inflation under the Biden administration.

Reuters/Ipsos polling between April and June also showed voters picked Trump over Biden on the economy, unemployment and jobs by between five and eight points.

Trump has still had wide leads in some measures of confidence in his economic stewardship. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from August asked voters which candidate had a better approach on the “the U.S. economy” – without specific reference to jobs or unemployment – and Trump led Harris by 11 points, 45% to 36%.

Both candidates are focusing campaign pledges on the economy, which the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showed was the No. 1 issue for voters. Trump on Tuesday said he would create special manufacturing zones on federal lands. He has also promised to raise tariffs on imported goods.

Harris has pledged tax breaks for families with children as well as higher taxes for corporations. She is expected to unveil new economic proposals this week, even though some advisers acknowledge time is running out to convince voters with pitches on policy.

The polling average maintained by FiveThirtyEight.com shows a close race at the national level, with Harris leading Trump 48.3% to 45.8%.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 1,029 U.S. adults online, nationwide, including 871 registered voters. Among these, 785 were considered the most likely to turn out on Election Day. Among these likely voters, Harris led 50% to 44%, though similar to her lead among all registered voters, her advantage was only five points when using unrounded figure

Source: https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/news-services/reuters/20240925-213194/

Harris Calls Trump ‘One Of The Biggest Losers Ever On Manufacturing’

Vice President Kamala Harris called Donald Trump a “loser” who failed to grow domestic manufacturing under his watch in one of her strongest speeches yet against the former president.

“All told, almost 200,000 manufacturing jobs were lost during his presidency, starting before the pandemic hit, making Trump one of the biggest losers ever on the economy,” Harris said in remarks Wednesday that channeled Trump’s own hyperbole.

Harris painted Trump as an out-of-touch rich guy who’s only looking out for himself and his rich friends.

“And as Andrea said,” Harris said, referring to a previous speaker at the event, “not everybody was handed, on a silver platter, $400 million and then filed for bankruptcy six times.”

“Oh, I said that,” she interjected. “I actually said that.”

These were some of the vice president’s most direct attacks on Trump since becoming the Democratic nominee — on a key issue that’s weighing on swing voters.

Harris was in western Pennsylvania to lay out her plans for bolstering the middle class, which she called “the defining goal of my presidency.”

Her vision for an “opportunity economy” includes a $6,000 tax credit for new parents and $25,000 in down-payment assistance for first-time homebuyers to get their footing in a challenging housing market. She also pledged tax credits for steel and other manufacturing sectors and investments in apprenticeship programs for the skilled trades.

Harris presented herself as a product of the middle class, recalling her mother “sitting at that yellow Formica table, late at night, cup of tea in hand, with a pile of bills in front of her, just trying to make sure she paid them off at the end of the month.” Whereas Trump, Harris noted, used family money to launch a real estate empire that went under a handful of times.

“You see, for Donald Trump, our economy works best for those who own the big skyscrapers, not those who actually build them, not those who wire them, not those who mop the floors. Well, I have a very different vision,” Harris said.

Harris knocked Trump on his lofty campaign promises about bringing factories roaring back to life, a key part of his pitch in 2016. The coronavirus pandemic set back Trump’s progress on that front — he rode a steady climb in manufacturing-sector job growth that began under former President Barack Obama, but which reversed in the pandemic, resulting in a net job loss of 188,000 jobs in this area under Trump’s watch.

Trump’s campaign ignored the remarks about manufacturing in its statement on Harris.

“Personal savings are down, credit card debt is up, small business optimism is at a record-low, and people are struggling to afford homes, groceries, and gas. Every time Kamala speaks, it becomes increasingly clear that ONLY President Trump will Make America WEALTHY Again,” said Trump’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-kamala-harris-manufacturing-economy_n_66f4791fe4b0bcdae0fd4634

Vesta Williams' Cause of Death Revealed

It’s been fourth months since singer Vesta Williams, 53, died in her hotel room in Los Angeles, and today we’re finally learning the cause of death. Family friend and singer Norwood Young confirmed with the family that she passed away due to complications of an enlarged heart.

According to EURweb, Young said, “Although it’s a sad situation overall, it’s great news to find that Vesta’s death, as I said from the very beginning, was not drug related. Vesta did indeed die from an enlarged heart. As we know, an enlarged heart can remain undetected in the body for many, many years.”

Williams was responsible for hits like “Congratulations,” and “Sweet, Sweet Love.”

Most recently it was the singer’s dramatic weight loss that made headlines, after she dropped over 100 pounds, going from a size 26 to a 6. She had become an advocate for the prevention of childhood obesity.

Williams was laid to rest on Tuesday, October 4th at West Angeles Church of God in Los Angeles.

Source: https://www.essence.com/news/vesta-williams-cause-of-death-revealed/

Kamala Harris Says Anyone Who Breaks Into Her House Is ‘Getting Shot’

Vice President Kamala Harris defended her gun ownership and said she would use a firearm to protect her home in a conversation with Oprah Winfrey on Thursday night.

Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, appeared at an event called Unite for America in Michigan, where she spoke with Winfrey about a slate of policy issues, including immigration, access to reproductive health care and her support for commonsense gun reform. During a candid moment, Winfrey asked Harris about her remarks during the debate last week against Donald Trump when she confirmed she is a gun owner.

“I’m a gun owner; Tim Walz is a gun owner,” Harris said.

“I did not know that,” Winfrey replied.

“If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,” Harris added. “Probably should not have said that. But my staff will deal with that later.”

Her remarks came after a segment featuring families affected by gun violence and school shootings. The vice president said she could be both a gun owner who supports the Second Amendment as well as a politician calling for gun law reforms.

“Look, I think for far too long on the issue of gun violence, some people have been pushing a really false choice to suggest you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away,” Harris said. “I’m in favor of the Second Amendment, and I’m in favor of assault weapons bans, universal background checks, red flag laws. And these are just common sense.”

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to questions about the vice president’s comments or how long she has been a gun owner. Reuters noted she said she was a skilled shooter during an interview with Politico in 2015. She added at the time she had shot a gun “many times.”

She also told reporters in 2019 that she owned a gun.

“I own a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do — for personal safety,” she said at the time. “I was a career prosecutor.”

You can watch Harris’ full remarks on her gun ownership here.

Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-gun-ownership-oprah-winfrey_n_66ecd25be4b07a173e50d8c2

America's Black Holocaust Museum

Julia was a groundbreaking American television sitcom that aired in color on NBC from September 17, 1968, to March 23, 1971. It starred Diahann Carroll, making history as the first weekly series to feature an African-American woman in a non-stereotypical role. Unlike previous African-American characters on TV, who often played servants, Carroll's character, Julia Baker, was a widowed nurse working at a large aerospace company. Julia was the first television show to depict a Black middle-class family and the first since the 1950s sitcom Beulah to star a Black woman. The show ran for 86 episodes.

Initially titled Mama's Man, Julia was notable for its lack of a laugh track, though one was added for later syndication and cable rebroadcasts. Julia featured Julia Baker, a nurse and single mother, whose husband had been killed in Vietnam. Julia's romantic interests were portrayed by Paul Winfield and Fred Williamson, while her young son, Corey, was played by Marc Copage. Corey's best friend, Earl J. Waggedorn, was a recurring character, living with his family in the same apartment building.

The show was an instant hit, winning actress Diahann Carroll the Golden Globe Award for best actress in a comedy in its first season. On the show, Julia sewed her own clothes, and fans could buy patterns of Julia’s outfits to make at home. Tie-in merchandise such as a paper doll set and Julia lunch boxes helped to promote Carroll’s glamorous image. In 1969, the Julia Barbie doll became the first Black doll fashioned after a Black woman icon.

The series was originally praised for its representation but faced criticism for its perceived apolitical stance and lack of engagement with African-American social issues. Despite high ratings in its first two seasons, Julia fell out of the top 30 in its third season and was canceled in 1971, partly due to Carroll and creator Hal Kanter's interest in other projects. 

hashtag#OnThisDay hashtag#Remembrance hashtag#TVHistory

More info:

https://buff.ly/3BgRnMG 

https://buff.ly/3B0Rufh 

Images:

1) Diahann Carroll as Julia. 1968. Wikimedia.

2) Diahann Carroll as Julia, with Marc Copage as her son Corey Baker. 1968. Wikimedia.

3) The hit show "Julia" made the cover of Ebony. Nov. 1968

4) The Julia Barbie doll. Mattel. 1969

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dr-james-cameron-legacy-foundation-inc/posts/?feedView=all

Harris soars to record 6-point lead over Trump in post-debate poll

Vice President Kamala Harris leapt to a six-point lead over former President Trump in the wake of last week's presidential debate, according to a Morning Consult poll published Tuesday.

Why it matters: Most polls before last Tuesday's debate that saw Harris rattle Trump on a range of topics had the pair locked in a virtual dead heat.

"A majority of likely voters — including 1 in 5 Republicans — believe Harris won the debate, and performance appears to be crystalizing her national lead over the former president," said Eli Yokley, political analyst at Morning Consult, in an emailed statement.

Driving the news: Morning Consult pollsters surveyed 11,022 likely U.S. voters from Sept. 13-15 in the poll, which had an unweighted margin of error of +/-1 percentage point.

Morning Consult notes that its survey showing support for Harris at 51% compared to 45% for Trump was a "new record" for the Democratic presidential nominee.

"Her 51% of support among likely voters, which is also at a record high, is driven largely by her best figures to date among Democrats, Biden 2020 voters, liberals, women, 18- to 34-year-olds and millennials," it said.

How it works: Morning Consult's voter criteria includes any registered voters who say they're highly likely to vote in the November election.

A 1-10 scale was used to identify likely voters, with a "1" meaning the respondent noted they will definitely not vote in the November 2024 presidential election and a "10" meaning they definitely will. Only respondents who rated themselves an "8" or higher were considered likely voters.

The results don't include responses among voters who were initially undecided and were asked to pick which candidate they're leaning toward.

Between the lines: Both Harris and Trump are courting young adults voters, whom Axios' Noah Bressner notes are one of the largest groups of undecideds and persuadables left in this presidential election.

Trump is aiming for the "bro" vote with appearances on podcasts and at UFC fights, while Harris is appealing to young women, who've been moving steadily left in recent years amid a surge in activism on issues like abortion in the face of conservative policies.

Harris enjoyed a boost moments after the debate when Taylor Swift endorsed her on the singer's Instagram account, which has 284 million followers. Swift linked to Vote.gov in her Instagram story and directly drove some 338,000 visits in 15 hours to the federal voter registration site.

The bottom line: Harris "is enjoying a positive news cycle among the likely electorate this year that's earning her positive marks and aligns with her best numbers yet in the head-to-head contest" against Republican presidential nominee Trump, Yokley said.

Source: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/17/harris-leads-trump-poll-after-debate-record

US Secret Service says it is aware of Musk post about Biden, Harris

WASHINGTON, Sept 16 (Reuters) - The U.S. Secret Service said on Monday it was aware of a post by billionaire Elon Musk on the X social media platform musing about an absence of assassination attempts on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Musk, who owns the platform, formerly known as Twitter, put up the post after a man suspected of planning to assassinate Republican former President Donald Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach was arrested on Sunday.

A Trump supporter and the CEO of Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab, Musk wrote on Sunday: "And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala," a post he ended with an emoji of a face with a raised eyebrow.

He was quickly criticized by X users from the left and right, who said they were concerned his words to nearly 200 million followers could incite violence against Biden and Harris.

Musk deleted the post but the Secret Service, tasked with protecting current and former presidents, vice presidents and other notable officials, took notice.

"The Secret Service is aware of the social media post made by Elon Musk and as a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence," a spokesperson told Reuters in an email. "We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees."

The spokesperson declined to specify whether the agency had reached out to Musk, who seemed to suggest in follow-up posts that he had been making a joke.

"Well, one lesson I've learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn't mean it's going to be all that hilarious as a post on X," he wrote. "Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don't know the context and the delivery is plain text."

Harris, a Democrat running against Trump in the Nov. 5 presidential election, issued a statement on Sunday night as did Biden expressing relief and gratitude that Trump had not been harmed and condemning political violence.

The White House criticized Musk for his post.

"Violence should only be condemned, never encouraged or joked about. This rhetoric is irresponsible," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said on Monday.

Source: www.reuters.com/world/us/us-secret-service-says-it-is-aware-musk-post-about-biden-harris-2024-09-16/

Frankie Beverly Dedication on Monday Morning Mindfulness!

Another Angel has departed from Mother Earth, but his presence is still felt everywhere, all over the world! Join myself and colleagues as we share our stories on how his music affects us all.

Joy and Pain is what we all feel right about now, after Frankie Beverly made his transition. We Are One, as we gather to salute this musical genius. Before I Let Go, we gather to salute your greatness and your generosity!

Updates on tumbler.com/higherlearningtvshow

Harris seen as debate winner while maintaining slight lead over Trump: POLL

Americans broadly pick Kamala Harris as the winner of last week's widely watched presidential debate – yet neither she nor Donald Trump moved the needle in terms of trust on the issues, ratings of the candidates' personal attributes or vote preferences in the 2024 election.

Even Taylor Swift shows little impact: Just 6% in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll say the pop star singer-songwriter's endorsement of Harris makes them more likely to vote for her; 13%, instead, say it makes them less likely to support her, with 81% saying it makes no difference. Those responding negatively are overwhelmingly Trump supporters, according to the poll.

Americans by 58-36% say Harris won the debate – a reversal from the Biden-Trump match in June, which Trump was seen as winning by 66-28%. Biden's performance intensified questions about his cognitive health, precipitating his departure from the race.

The poll of 3,276 adults, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates with fieldwork by Ipsos, finds that Harris did firm up some of her personal appeal: Thirty-seven percent say the debate made them feel more favorably toward her, vs. 23% less favorably. There was no such benefit for Trump: People by nearly 2-1 say the debate made them see him less favorably.

See PDF for full results.

The benefit for Harris occurred almost exclusively in her base, potentially helping her turnout efforts. Sixty-nine percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents say the debate made them see her more favorably. Only half as many Republicans and GOP-leaning Independents, 34%, say the debate made them see Trump more favorably. One factor may be that Harris, a walk-on candidate, has had less public exposure until now.

The poll also finds a slight dip in the share of Trump supporters who back him strongly – 56%, vs. 60% at the end of August. Sixty-two percent of Harris' supporters now are strongly behind her, the first meaningful difference in strong support between the two.

That said, Trump shows an advantage in another gauge: while 42% call him too conservative, 47% call Harris too liberal, one of his debate themes.

Preferences

Vote preferences haven't moved meaningfully. This poll finds the race at 51-46%, Harris-Trump, among all adults; 51-47% among registered voters; and 52-46% among likely voters. Each is within a percentage point of its pre-debate level in ABC/Ipsos polling.

Results are essentially identical when including third-party or Independent candidates Chase Oliver, Jill Stein and Cornel West; they get at most 1% support apiece. State-to-state ballot access for these candidates is a work in progress; ABC News estimates that as of now Oliver likely is on the ballot in about 36 states, Stein in about 27 and West in about 15.

It's important to note that this poll measures preferences nationally, an effort to better understand how all Americans are coming to their choices in the presidential election. It doesn't assess the contest at the state level, which determines the winner of the Electoral College.

The absence of movement in vote preferences, despite a 22-point tilt to Harris as having won the debate, marks the sharply polarized nature of the electorate. Almost everyone has a preference between Harris or Trump, and among those who do, few say they'd even consider the other. This is especially true among likely voters, with just 3% potentially persuadable to switch.

Another result also shows the entrenched divisions in attitudes. Seventy-three percent of Trump's supporters say they've backed him all year. Of the rest, 17% were undecided at some point but settled on Trump; just 9% moved to Trump from another candidate – mostly, other Republicans or the former Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Barely 2% of Trump's supporters came to him after previously preferring Harris or Biden.

It's similar on Harris' side of the ledger. Two-thirds of her supporters say they've been with her since she got into the race. A quarter were undecided at some point. Just 2% of Harris supporters have moved to her from Trump.

Movable voters can matter – as everyone matters – in a tight race. But these results suggest that the biggest pickings for Trump and Harris alike are in motivating turnout among their existing support groups.

Groups

Harris leads Trump by nine points among women while running virtually even with him among men, and by a slight nine points among 18- to 29-year-olds, entirely due to her support from women that age. She improves among young adults who are more likely to vote.

While younger women are important to Harris, the Swift endorsement doesn’t show a positive impact even in this group. Eight percent of women younger than 30 say the endorsement makes them more likely to support Harris, while 13% say it makes them less likely to do so. Most, 78%, say it makes no difference.

Her position among suburban women, an often-watched group, is similar to her support among women overall. More tellingly, she's +12 points among independents, often a swing voter group in presidential elections.

Trump, for his part, leads by a vast 79-18% among white evangelical Protestants, with this core GOP group seemingly unfazed by his layered position on abortion. He's roughly on par with past performance, having won white evangelical Protestants by 74-25% in 2020 and 81-16% in 2016.

In other groups, Trump leads by 12 points among white people, growing to 28 points among those who don't have a four-year college degree, a mainstay of his support. Despite suggestions that he's denigrated the military, he leads by 29 points among veterans, 63-34%.

Voters

Many of these results – but not all – hold steady when moving from the general public (relevant because there's still time to register) to registered voters and then to likely voters. But there are a few notable exceptions.

Harris advances from +9 points among all adults aged 18-29 to +19 points among those identified as likely voters. This is fueled by young women, a cornerstone group in her campaign: Harris goes from +23 points among all women under 30 to +38 points among those likely to vote.

There's a stark contrast with men aged 18-29 who are likely to vote: Just 51% in this group back Harris, with virtually as many, 48%, for Trump.

Trump, for his part, remains closer than usual to Harris among Hispanic people, now trailing her by 17 points among those who are likely voters. That's better than usual for Trump compared with past elections: Biden won Hispanic people by 33 points in 2020; Hillary Clinton won them by 40 points in 2016, per ABC News exit polls.

Issues and attributes

While overall vote preferences are stable, so are views on issues and attributes. The economy and inflation continue to dominate as the top issues in the election, and Trump leads by 7 points in trust to handle each of them.

In the next most important issues, Harris responds with a 7-point lead on "protecting American democracy" and a 9-point lead on handling health care. The two remain evenly matched on crime and safety.

It's clear, too, why Trump keeps doubling down on immigration as an issue: He leads Harris by 10 points in trust to handle it. She leads him by 14 points on abortion and by 16 points on handling race relations, although both rate lower in importance.

There are differences among groups in issue importance. In notable gender gaps, women are 14 points more apt than men to cite abortion as a top issue in their vote, 68% vs. 54% – a difference that holds regardless of age. Women also are 11 points more likely than men to cite health care as a top issue, 82 vs. 71%. Still, the economy and inflation top the issues list among women and men alike.

Harris' best results vs. Trump continue to be on personal attributes, explaining her effort to lean in on this domain. She leads him by 32 points in having the physical health it takes to serve effectively, 17 points in honesty and trustworthiness, 10 points in mental sharpness, 10 points in understanding the problems of people like you and 7 points in better representing your personal values. All, again, are essentially the same as they were before the debate.

Overall favorability also is essentially unchanged: Forty-seven percent have a favorable impression of Harris, vs. 35% for Trump. Still, they're close in being seen as qualified for office – Harris by 53%, Trump by 49%. The difference widens, however, among independents; 56% see Harris as qualified vs. 48% who say the same of Trump.

Debate

Lastly, on the debate, it's notable that 95% of Democrats say Harris won, while fewer Republicans, 75%, say Trump won. (Among independents, 61% pick Harris.) Similarly, among Trump's own supporters, 78% say he won the debate, while among people backing Harris, 97% give her the win. (These results include people who initially called the debate a tie, then leaned toward Harris or Trump as the winner.)

While 58% overall say Harris won, this rises to 64% of those who watched all or some of the debate. That reflects the fact that Harris supporters are 8 points more likely than Trump supporters to have watched. Harris supporters are even more apt to have read, watched or listened to follow-up news coverage or commentary about the debate – 75% have done so, vs. 59% of those who support Trump.

Methodology

This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted online via the probability-based Ipsos KnowledgePanel® Sept. 11-13, 2024, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 3,276 adults. Partisan divisions are 29-29-30%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. Results have a margin of sampling error of 2 percentage points, including the design effect, for the full sample. Sample sizes are 2,772 for registered voters and 2,196 for likely voters, with a 2-point error margin for each. Sampling error is not the only source of differences in polls.


Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-debate-winner-maintaining-slight-lead-trump-poll/story?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dhfacebook&utm_content=app.dashhudson.com/abcnews/library/media/452633181&id=113673862

Long before gay marriage was popular, Kamala Harris was at the forefront of the equal rights battle

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two decades ago, when a Democratic presidential nominee wouldn’t dream of endorsing gay marriage, a newly elected district attorney named Kamala Harris was performing one of the first same-sex unions in the United States.

It was the so-called Winter of Love in San Francisco. The mayor at the time, Gavin Newsom, had directed the county clerk to approve gay marriages even though there was no law on the books recognizing them. His act of rebellion prompted a bipartisan political backlash, but Harris had no hesitation.

“You could tell she was so overwhelmed and had so much joy about performing this ceremony,” said Brad Witherspoon, whose marriage to Raymond Cobane was officiated by Harris on Valentine’s Day 2004.

The moment represents a stark difference between Harris and all previous Democratic presidential nominees, who didn’t begin their political careers as gay marriage supporters. Four years after the Winter of Love, the issue was still off the table during the party’s primary. And it took another four years for Democratic President Barack Obama, running for reelection against Republican Mitt Romney, to back gay marriage.

For LGBTQ leaders, Harris’ history validates their deep support for the Democratic nominee.

“It’s not just that she held a position in support of fundamental equality for gay and lesbian couples. A lot of politicians take positions and hold positions,” said Chad Griffin, former head of the Human Rights Campaign, who is on Harris’ national fundraising committee. “Fewer actually roll up their sleeves and use their power to make lives better.”

Her decision to officiate was made in the moment

In her book, “The Truths We Hold,” Harris writes that her decision to officiate the weddings was spur-of-the-moment. She was on her way to the airport before she decided to stop by City Hall. She and other local officials were sworn in and performed marriages in “every nook and cranny” of the building, Harris recalled.

“I was delighted to be a part of it,” she wrote. “There was all this wonderful excitement building as we welcomed the throngs of loving couples, one by one, to be married then and there. It was unlike anything I had ever been a part of before. And it was beautiful.”

Witherspoon recalls that it wasn’t only him and his new husband who were caught up in the excitement.

“She was as well,” he said. “We were both crying and hugging each other.” Witherspoon said Harris told them, “I really wanted to be a part of this.”

All the marriages performed during that month in San Francisco were invalidated later that year, a move that Harris described as “devastating.”

Harris’ early embrace of gay marriage is rooted, at least in part, in geography. She grew up in California’s liberal Bay Area and started her political career in San Francisco, a city with a vibrant gay community.

Sean Meloy, a top operative at Victory Fund, a political committee aimed at increasing LGBTQ representation in politics, calls Harris’ story an example of why “representation matters.”

“A lot of people didn’t know LGBTQ people,” Meloy said of the atmosphere nationally during the Winter of Love. “In San Francisco, (LGBTQ people) were already a political force and also out, so she understood we are just people much earlier.”

Some of Harris’ earliest political advisers were gay, including Jim Rivaldo, who had worked with Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California as a San Francisco supervisor. During a recent fundraiser, Harris recalled that after Rivaldo fell sick with AIDS, her mother helped take care of him before he died.

When you grow up in the Bay Area, “almost everybody knows a gay couple that has been together for a long time,” said Debbie Mesloh, who served as Harris’ communications director when she was district attorney.

Mesloh said Harris paid particular attention to legal and criminal issues involving gay people, and she organized a national symposium to train prosecutors how to handle the “gay panic” defense that was used in Wyoming by the two men who killed Matthew Shepard in 1998. The defense tactic, which suggested that suspects could be goaded into violence by the victim’s overt sexuality, “just enraged Kamala,” Mesloh said.

Supporting gay rights was not without political risk for ambitious politicians, a lesson that Newsom, now California’s governor, learned after beginning the Winter of Love. He did not get a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 as Republicans, led by President George W. Bush, turned gay marriage into a wedge issue with voters.

Nonetheless, Harris was eager to participate in and officiate weddings, Mesloh recalled.

“There wasn’t an assessment or an analysis,” Mesloh said. “She wanted to do it. She was excited. She loved it.”

Harris was an early supporter when it was politically fraught

Witherspoon and Cobane, the couple married by Harris, assumed she would want to climb the political ranks one day, which boosted their admiration for her.

“That adds to the bravery of her stance to come out and perform a gay wedding,” Witherspoon said. “It is one thing to say I support gay marriage, but it’s another thing to put yourself on record and perform gay marriages, knowing at some point you want to move to a national level.”

“She had national ambitions, but she supported it ahead of the time and before anyone else,” Cobane said. “And I give her credit for that.”

The issue of gay marriage resurfaced when Harris ran for California attorney general in 2010, just two years after the state’s voters banned same-sex unions with Proposition 8.

“To her, it was not an academic issue. It was also a personal issue — people whose lives she knew up close,” said Brian Brokaw, a Democratic consultant who worked for Harris on the campaign.

Harris said she would not defend Proposition 8 as the state’s top law enforcement officer. But she said she would defend the death penalty despite her personal opposition to it.

“She took a lot of heat for that,” Brokaw said, and she faced accusations that she was picking and choosing which laws to support. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually overturned Proposition 8 in 2013.

When Griffin heard a rumor that same-sex marriages would soon be allowed in San Francisco, he called Harris as Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, two of the plaintiffs in the case, headed to City Hall so that she could marry them.

“‘Say no more — I will meet you there,’” Griffin recalled Harris saying. “I bet you the call was less than 30 seconds,” he said. “She didn’t jump in a car and have a driver take her. She walked to City Hall.”

The Democratic Party more broadly embraced gay marriage in 2012, when Obama became the first presidential nominee to endorse the right. His announcement was precipitated by Joe Biden, then the vice president, disclosing his own support. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in 2016, did not endorse same-sex marriage until 2013, after she stepped down as secretary of state.

Now gay marriage is a cornerstone of the party’s platform, and it even has occasional support from Republicans too. But some Democrats still view Harris as a trailblazer on the issue because of her early involvement.

“It’s not lost on me, in a very personal way,” said Malcolm Kenyatta, Pennsylvania’s Democratic nominee for auditor general. He married his partner, Dr. Matthew JM Kenyatta, in 2022. “Whether that is popular at the time or not, she does what is right.”

Source: https://apnews.com/article/kamala-harris-gay-marriage-california-democrats-fddf134333112ed1ae2b87b548b54435

Harris is promoting her resume and her goals rather than race as she courts Black voters

Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned through Pennsylvania’s conservative interior on Friday, aiming to shave a few percentage points off former President Donald J. Trump’s winning margins in parts of the state where he remains popular.

At a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, the largest city in a county where Mr. Trump won 57 percent of the vote in 2020, Ms. Harris said she would remove “unnecessary degree requirements” for some federal jobs, a pitch to Mr. Trump’s base of voters without a college education in a part of the state where he expects to perform well.

Ms. Harris also emphasized her work in California prosecuting Mexican drug cartels, and said as president she would continue to go after them “for pushing poisons like fentanyl on our children.”

The vice president’s Trump-country pitch amounted to a continuation of her attempt to appeal to moderate and right-leaning voters that began at the Democratic National Convention last month and continued during Tuesday’s debate with the former president.

No longer burdened by the apathy among elements of the Democratic base that characterized President Biden’s re-election campaign, Ms. Harris has begun trying to cut into Mr. Trump’s margin among Republicans. In her remarks on Friday, she reminded the crowd that she had endorsements from some 200 officials who had worked in recent Republican presidential administrations and campaigns.

But her most direct appeal came on policy.

“For far too long our nation has encouraged only one path to success, a four-year college degree,” Ms. Harris said. “Our nation needs to recognize the value of other paths, additional paths such as apprenticeships and technical programs. So as president, I will get rid of the unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs, to increase jobs for folks without a four-year degree, understanding that requiring a certain degree does not necessarily talk about one’s skills. And I will challenge the private sector to do the same.”

The Wilkes-Barre rally, which drew 6,000 people, according to the campaign, followed a stop in Johnstown, Pa., alongside Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat who for months has urged first President Biden’s campaign, and now Ms. Harris’s, to spend time with Pennsylvania voters outside the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh regions, which are both heavily Democratic.

In Johnstown, which is about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh, Ms. Harris told voters at a cafe and bookstore that she was “feeling very good about Pennsylvania because there are a lot of people in Pennsylvania who deserve to be seen and heard.”

In between events, Ms. Harris recorded an interview with the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia — the first solo television interview she has sat for since she replaced President Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Her campaign has made clear how much it values winning Pennsylvania, which, with 19 electoral votes, is the most valuable battleground state. Ms. Harris has spent six of the last seven days making public appearances in Pennsylvania. Her campaign has devoted nearly 25 percent of its television ad spending through Election Day to Pennsylvania, according to the media-tracking firm AdImpact. Mr. Trump’s likeliest path to victory involves flipping Pennsylvania, which Mr. Biden narrowly won in 2020.

Harris campaign aides have said that she must win over some swing voters in red counties, thus lowering her margin of defeat in those areas, in order to claim the state. While Ms. Harris was in red territory in Pennsylvania on Friday, Mr. Trump held a news conference in deep-blue California, a state he lost in 2020 by more than five million votes and was certain to lose again.

“I feel very strongly that you’ve got to earn every vote, and that means spending time with folks in the communities where they live,” Ms. Harris said on Friday in Johnstown. “That’s why I’m here, and we’re going to be spending a lot more time in Pennsylvania.”

Johnstown is in Cambria County, which is overwhelmingly white and working-class. In 2008, Barack Obama barely won there. But by 2020, the political realignment brought about by Mr. Trump was complete. He beat Mr. Biden with 68 percent of the vote. Luzerne County, where Wilkes-Barre is, had a similar trend. Mr. Obama won the county by nine percentage points in 2008, but Mr. Biden lost Luzerne by 14 points in 2020.

The Harris campaign said on Friday that 16 of its 50 offices in Pennsylvania were in rural counties Mr. Trump won by double digits in 2020. That on-the-ground presence is meant to limit the damage in parts of the state the vice president is unlikely to win.

Last month, Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, spent a day campaigning in conservative-leaning Beaver County outside Pittsburgh. Mr. Walz, a former football coach, represented a rural Minnesota district during his time in Congress, and Democrats believe he can help them with voters outside major cities.

Some Pennsylvania Democrats had hoped that Ms. Harris would choose their state’s popular Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate over Mr. Walz. Despite not being picked, Mr. Shapiro spoke at the Democratic National Convention and has campaigned frequently for Ms. Harris.

Mr. Shapiro spoke before Ms. Harris at the rally in Wilkes-Barre. On Sunday, he will headline the Harris campaign’s bus tour on abortion rights when it stops in Philadelphia.

Mr. Fetterman was not among those calling for Mr. Shapiro to be selected as Ms. Harris’s running mate. He and the governor have clashed over pardons and engaged in what is mostly a one-way feud, with Mr. Fetterman trying to shun Mr. Shapiro. They have barely appeared at campaign events together for Ms. Harris. Mr. Fetterman was not in Wilkes-Barre with the vice president.

And when they have, as at a rally in Philadelphia last month where Ms. Harris announced her selection of Mr. Walz, Mr. Fetterman did not stand when Mr. Shapiro spoke.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/us/politics/harris-pennsylvania-rally.html

Harris is promoting her resume and her goals rather than race as she courts Black voters

WASHINGTON (AP) — While President Joe Biden was hosting a celebration of Black excellence at the White House with lawmakers, advocates and celebrities this past week, Kamala Harris was instead headed off to campaign in Pennsylvania.

The nation’s first Black vice president spoke with voters there about supporting small businesses, building more housing and expanding the child tax credit. She said the country “needs a president of the United States who works for all the American people.”

What she did not do was spend time talking about her race or gender or the prospect that she would be the nation’s first Black and South Asian woman to be president if she defeated Republican Donald Trump.

As Harris courts voters, she embodies her identity as a woman of color rather than making it an overt part of her pitch, choosing instead to emphasize her policies and resume.

She’s making her case to minority voters in a number of key settings in the coming days. On Saturday at a Washington awards dinner sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, she told the crowd that as president she would work to build a strong middle class economy and protect freedoms including the right to vote and the right for a “woman to make decisions about her own body.”

“We have some hard work ahead of us. But hard work is good work. Hard work is joyful work,” she said. “Generations of people before us led the fight for freedom; now the baton is in our hands.”

Biden, meanwhile, speaking to the crowd right before her, talked about Harris as the first Black and South Asian woman vice president, and said “God willing, she will become the first woman president of the United States of America.”

On Tuesday, she’ll sit with members of the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia. On Thursday, she’ll attend a livestream rally headlined by Oprah Winfrey and involving groups such as “Win with Black Women,” “White Women: Answer the Call,” and ”South Asians for Harris.” On Friday, she campaigns in Wisconsin.

Throughout her career, Harris has been “many different firsts, and has never really led with that as a descriptor,” said Brian Brokaw, who managed Harris’ winning campaign for California attorney general in 2010.

“Her life story and her identity and her background and her job experience have all been critical parts of her campaigns,” he said. But he added that “becoming the first — that has never actually been part of her core rationale for why she should be elected a office. It just happens to be a important result of her elections.”

Harris’ identity, too, is evident in how she chooses to engage with voters. A member of a historically Black sorority while attending Howard University, Harris spoke this summer in Houston at the annual assembly of another sorority, where she told the women “it is so good to be with you this evening, and I say that as a proud member of the Divine Nine. And when I look out at everyone here, I see family.”

It’s a different approach from Hillary Clinton’s in her 2016 Democratic campaign for president, when she put front and center her potential to break the glass ceiling. Harris’ aides and allies say with no time to lose in a compressed campaign this year, it is perhaps more valuable to focus on voters rather than herself.

North Carolina’s Crystal McLaughlin, who attended a Harris rally in Greensboro this past week, acknowledged Harris’ candidacy as an important “historical moment” but added that what is more important is to look at “who wants to do what’s right.”

Still, she said Harris’ identity matters even if it is not the focus on her campaign.

“It’s important, not only for Black young girls, but for girls period,” said McLaughlin, 53, who is Black. “If you can see it, you can actually be it.”

So far, it’s been Trump who has brought up race in the campaign, falsely claiming that Harris belatedly “turned Black.” During the presidential debate this past week, he again said he had read she was “not Black” and then she was.

Harris did not mention herself once in her response, saying instead: “I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people.”

After Biden dropped out of the race in July, polling indicated that Black Americans were more excited about Harris as the Democratic nominee. In late July, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll showed that about 7 in 10 Black adults said would be satisfied with Harris as the Democratic nominee. That was a marked increase from earlier in July, when about half of Black adults and 15% of Hispanic adults felt that way about Biden.

Another AP-NORC poll conducted in August found that about half of Black adults said that “excited” would describe their feelings “extremely” or “very” well if Harris was elected president. Only about 3 in 10 had said the same about Biden in March.

Although Black Americans overwhelmingly identify as Democrats and about 9 in 10 Black voters supported Biden in the 2020 election, according to AP VoteCast, there are some signs that older Black voters may be more supportive of Harris than younger Black voters are. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that about 9 in 10 Black voters over age 50 were supporting Harris, compared with three-quarters of Black voters 18 to 49.

Civil rights organizations focused on mobilizing Black voters say they have seen an uptick in enthusiasm and engagement since Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket.

The NAACP has been circulating messaging with allied groups that its researchers believe will especially resonate with Black voters, including protecting the rights of Black Americans and appealing to their responsibility to vote.

On economic questions, the civil rights group is urging organizers and campaigns to listen to Black voters’ concerns.

“Black voters want policy solutions,” said Phaedra Jackson, vice president of unit advocacy and effectiveness at the NAACP. But she added: “Representation matters. Folks are excited to see a Black women vying for the highest office in the land” and they care more about institutions when they are represented within those institutions.

The NAACP has focused much of its voter turnout efforts in battleground states where they believe issues like voter suppression will be a potential issue come November.

At a packed fundraiser with a predominantly Black audience ahead of Saturday night’s black-tie gala, Harris gave a version of her standard campaign speech, placing added emphasis on the importance of fighting back against what she called a “full-on attack on the freedom to vote.”

She also called out efforts to divide Americans, “create fear” and “pit the people of our country against each another.”

“This is what we’re up against,” she said.

At the Greensboro rally, John Spencer, a 58-year-old geographer from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, said he wants Harris to stay focused on her plans for the future rather than her race and gender. Identity, unlike policies, is something you can tell just by looking at her, he said.

“Ideally in this country, a politician should be judged about their positions and not about anything other than who they are and their character and their positions,” said Spencer, who is white.

He said Harris’ positions matter more to him because he said they will ultimately impact his 11-year-old daughter Leah, who attended the Greensboro rally with him.

When Harris takes a stage, said 66-year-old Sheila Carter, the Democratic presidential candidate’s identity is “self-explanatory.” Discussion about her race and gender are secondary to what she offers as a candidate, said Carter, a Black retiree from Durham, North Carolina, who attended the rally.

“You see who she is,” Carter said. “And as she says, ‘Why bother to even address whether or not I’m Black or Indian or whatever? I am who I am. You see it, I see it, the world sees it.‘”

Source: Seminera reported from Greensboro, North Carolina. Associated Press writer Ayanna Alexander and Polling Editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed to this report.

Harris sits for first solo interview as nominee

Vice President Kamala Harris sat for a one-on-one interview with a local station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Friday, sharing how she offers a "new generation of leadership."

The big picture: It's the first formal, solo interview Harris has done since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, per Action News 6 ABC.

Zoom in: It was a taped interview with anchor Brian Taff. 

Harris and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz did a joint interview with CNN late last month.

What she's saying: Asked about her plan for the economy, Harris pointed to her plans to provide a tax credit for starting a small business and give first-time homebuyers assistance on a down payment.

"When I talk about building an opportunity economy, it is very much with the mind of investing in the ambitions and aspirations and the incredible work ethic of the American people, and creating opportunity for people, for example, to start a small business," she said.

Harris said she believes Americans want a leader that brings them together, "and not someone who professes to be a leader who is trying to have us point our fingers at each other."

She continued: "I, based on experience, and a lived experience, know in my heart, I know in my soul, I know, that the vast majority of us as Americans have so much more in common than what separates us."

What's next: Harris is set to sit down with the National Association of Black Journalists for a real-time, fact-checked and live-streamed interview on Tuesday at WHYY public radio station in Philadelphia.

She previously criticized former President Trump for an interview he gave during NABJ's convention in July.

Source: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/14/kamala-harris-solo-interview

Kamala Harris is focusing on ‘blue wall’ states in an effort to strengthen her support

Vice President Kamala Harris has upcoming events scheduled in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as her campaign focuses spending on the “blue wall” states with the Nov. 5 election nearing.

On Tuesday, Harris will sit for an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia. Two days later, she is joining Oprah Winfrey in Michigan at her “Unite for America” livestream event with 140 different grassroots organizations. Harris’ visit to Wisconsin on Friday will be her fourth since she launched her White House run in July.

Harris’ campaign has a large operation in the states with hundreds of staff and on-the-ground outreach efforts. Supporters in Wisconsin have knocked on more than 500,000 doors and that since last week’s debate with Trump, the campaign has signed up more than 3,000 new volunteers.

Overall, Harris’ team is on pace to outspend Republican Donald Trump’s campaign 2-to-1 in television advertising over the next two months. Even before Democratic President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign and made way for Harris, the Democrats wielded superior campaign infrastructure in battleground states.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/harris-wisconsin-battleground-trump-walz-8effbe881a537be789a08005a8cea573

Kamala Harris Leads Donald Trump In Six Post-Debate National Polls

Kamala Harris is leading Donald Trump in the popular vote according to six opinion polls conducted either after or during Tuesday's presidential debate between the two rivals in Philadelphia.

The Democratic candidate had a lead of between two and five percentage points according to the survey, although several were within the margin of error.

On Tuesday, Harris and Trump clashed in a series of heated exchanges which covered abortion, illegal immigration and the attendance at their respective rallies. A flash poll published by CNN immediately after the debate found that 63 percent of viewers thought Harris emerged as the victory, against 37 percent for Trump. Harris also saw her odds of victory in November improve markedly with leading bookmakers after the debate, many of which concluded she was now the favorite.

A Morning Consult survey of 3,317 likely voters conducted on September 11, the day after the debate, put Harris ahead with 50 percent against 45 percent for Trump. The poll had a margin of error of two percentage points.

Ipsos surveyed 1,405 registered voters for Reuters over September 11-12, which found Harris had a five-point lead with 47 percent of the vote against Trump's 42 percent. The survey came with a three percent margin of error.

Between September 11 and 13 YouGov polled 1,755 U.S. adults for Yahoo News. Among the registered voters included in the sample Harris led Trump by 50 percent of the vote against 45 percent. The survey had a margin of error of 2.9 percent.

This survey was a noted improvement for Harris on a previous YouGov/Yahoo News poll, which took place after the Democratic National Convention from August 22 to 26. In the August survey Harris had a popular vote lead of just one point, with 47 percent against 46 percent for Trump.

RMG Research polled 2,756 likely voters between September 9, the day before the debate, and September 12, on behalf of The Napolitan Institute. The poll gave Harris a four-point lead with 51 percent of the vote, against 47 percent for Trump.

Finally Redfield & Wilton Strategies polled 1,952 likely voters on September 12. This survey found Harris had a two point lead with 44 percent of the vote against 42 percent for Trump, whilst eight percent said they were undecided.

It should be noted that Harris could win the popular vote but lose the contest overall thanks to the Electoral College system. This happened to Hillary Clinton, who was defeated in 2016 despite a popular vote win of just over two percentage points.

Newsweek contacted representatives of the Kamala Harris and Trump presidential campaigns for comment via email on Saturday outside of regular office hours.

An analysis of recent polls published by election website FiveThirtyEight on Saturday found Harris had a 2.7 percentage point lead over Trump, with 48.1 percent of the vote against 45.4 percent.

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-leads-donald-trump-six-post-debate-national-polls-1953871

Frankie Beverly, the Maze singer who inspired generations of fans with lasting anthems, dies at 77

Frankie Beverly, who with his band Maze inspired generations of fans with his smooth, soulful voice and lasting anthems including “Before I Let Go,” has died.

NEW ORLEANS — Frankie Beverly, who with his band Maze inspired generations of fans with his smooth, soulful voice and lasting anthems including “Before I Let Go,” has died. He was 77.

His family said in a post on the band’s website and social media accounts that Beverly died Tuesday. In the post, which asked for privacy, the family said “he lived his life with a pure soul, as one would say, and for us, no one did it better.” The post did not say his cause of death or where he died.

Beverly, whose songs include “Joy and Pain,” “Love is the Key,” and “Southern Girl,” finished his farewell “I Wanna Thank You Tour” in his hometown of Philadelphia in July. That same month, the Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans included a special tribute to Beverly and Maze, who closed out the event for its first 15 years. His performances at the festival — the nation’s largest annual celebration of Black culture — would turn the crowd into a sea of dancing fans, many wearing white clothing like Beverly himself often donned.

“Frankie Beverly’s artistry wasn’t just about sound; it was the very thread that stitched together our collective memories and moments of joy,” the festival’s organizers said in a statement. “His melodies will forever echo in our hearts and continue to inspire.”

Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League and a former mayor of New Orleans, said Maze’s 1981 album “Live In New Orleans” cemented the city’s relationship with Beverly. Morial said he always sat in the front row for Maze’s closeout show at the festival and remembers turning around and seeing a crowd that was “joyful like a choir” singing all of the words with Beverly.

“His music had feeling. It had positive themes of love, happiness, family and togetherness,” Morial said. “It was just electrical and magical and it’s what made us fall in love with him.”

Beverly’s songs have become interwoven into celebrations in Black communities. The band’s 1981 song “Before I Let Go,” which has been covered by Beyoncé, can be heard everywhere from clubs to cookouts, sure to get people on their feet.

“When the song comes on, it’s time to dance,” said Hakeem Holmes, vice president of the Essence Festival.

He said the band’s music brings such comfort and joy that there’s a “healing aspect” to it. And, he said, songs like “We Are One” bring people together as everyone sings along.

In an interview published over the summer in Essence magazine, Beverly called music “the love of my life.” He said in the interview that he didn’t know exactly why his music appealed across all ages, but that he believed “God made a path for my music to reach each generation.”

Howard Stanley Beverly, born Dec. 6, 1946 in Philadelphia, was so taken with the 1950s R&B group Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers that he changed his name to Frankie.

Maze started out in Philadelphia the early 1970s as Raw Soul before heading to the San Francisco Bay Area. It was Marvin Gaye who convinced him to change the band’s name to Maze and, in 1977, helped them release their first album, “Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly.”

On the title track of his 1989 album “Silky Soul,” Beverly paid tribute to Gaye, remembering the singer who thrived on the romantic soul and protest songs that Maze was also known for.

“That kind of faith, you’re talking ’60s, hippie generation,” Beverly told The Associated Press in 1990. “It’s missing and I personally feel bad about that. We grew up in the ’60s — we’re ex-hippies.”

Among those mourning Beverly was Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, who wrote on X: “His timeless music, his powerful words and his lasting impact. I’m devastated to hear about this one.”

New Orleans resident Sedrick T. Thomas, 64, a lifelong fan of Beverly and his music, said Beverly’s passing “leaves a chasm in the world of R&B.”

“I feel myself in mourning,” Thomas said. “Frankie was a great entertainer who made sure we, as fans, walked away with an incredible experience. I grew up on his music. I thank him for ‘Joy and Pain,’ for ‘Southern Girl,’ for ‘Happy Feelin’s, and for ‘Before I Let Go.’ I thank him for the time and energy he put into his performances. And though the music will live on, he will be greatly missed.”
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/09/11/frankie-beverly-dies-maze/15d5b806-7081-11ef-ad92-518728118b4a_story.html

Harris is preparing for potential volatile moments in her first debate against Trump

Vice President Kamala Harris has been poring over briefing books and workshopping answers to policy questions while huddling with aides at a Pittsburgh hotel to get ready to face off against former President Donald Trump, according to multiple sources familiar with her preparations for Tuesday’s debate.

Harris has been devising ways to weave her biography into her answers to try to introduce herself to Americans who may still not know much about how she grew up or her career before she ascended to the vice presidency, the sources said. They said she’s even strategized how to approach possibly shaking hands with Trump onstage (the result: it’ll likely be a game-time decision).

But Harris also is preparing for a variety of potential unscripted — and perhaps history-making — moments, including the possibility that Trump makes derogatory comments about her, according to the sources familiar with her preparations, some of whom are directly involved.

“It’s not beyond the pale that he will mumble ‘this b----,’” one of the sources said. “That’s not unreasonable to assume. You have to be prepared for anything.”

Asked for comment for this story, spokesman Steven Cheung said, “Why are they even thinking about that word associated with her?”

The New York Times has reported that two people have heard Trump use that word to describe Harris privately, although Cheung has denied that account.

Harris, who arrived at a Pittsburgh hotel on Thursday for some five days of debate preparation, has not participated in a debate in four years, and she’s done few media interviews since announcing her candidacy. Trump, however, is more practiced in fielding unscripted questions. The sources familiar with Harris’ debate preparations said her aides are being diligent about preparing her for Tuesday because they don’t want to underestimate Trump.

Those involved in the process include Harris’ close ally Minyon Moore, as well as the vice president’s national security adviser, Phil Gordon and former domestic policy adviser, Rohini Kosoglu, sources familiar with the preparations said. They said former Hillary Clinton’s aide Philippe Reines, who is playing Trump in mock debates, has dressed up for the sessions in the former president’s signature navy blue suit and red tie.

Part of the intense focus on preparation also derives from the belief among some of Harris’ aides that Trump had a better-than-average performance in his June debate with President Joe Biden.

Yet one of the sources familiar with Harris’ debate preparations expressed concern that Harris might be overpreparing and could risk having a wonky, policy-heavy performance like then-President Barack Obama’s infamous one in 2012.

“My anxiety, it’s just high, because my fear is that they’ll overcook her,” the source said of Harris. “I hope they just prepare for 15 questions with Harris and work on style and substance.”

Two sources familiar with Harris’ debate preparations said that since Thursday she’s been participating in extended mock debate sessions that are focused on specific subject matters, and that will continue through Monday. As of Friday morning, she had not done full a run-through of the 90-minute debate, sources said.

Part of what Harris has been preparing for is to try to create moments in which Trump might lash out as he has in the past, the sources familiar with her preparations said.

Two of them said the vice president also is planning to needle Trump if he doesn’t tell the truth or gets information mixed up, stumbles on his words or goes off on a tangent. Harris has never spoken with, or been face to face or side by side with Trump, though one person familiar with her debate preparations said she feels like she knows him given how much she has had to watch him and study him recently.

Part of her provocation strategy is to bring up Project 2025, a conservative governing agenda developed by the Heritage Foundation and at least two dozen Trump allies that the former president has tried to distance himself from, NBC News has reported.

Harris’ aides are adamant that if a moment occurs in which Trump speaks derogatorily of her, Americans should see and hear it. That is partly why Harris’ aides continue to urge the debate host network, ABC News, to open the candidates’ microphones whenever there is over-talk or exchange between them. Currently the debate rules are that the candidates’ microphones will only be live for the candidate whose turn it is to speak and muted when the time belongs to the other.

When it is her turn to speak, the sources familiar with her debate preparations said Harris plans to try showcase her experience in elected office and as a prosecutor to make the case that she’s qualified for the job of president. And she’s planning to stress her middle-class background, particularly her mother’s work ethic and efforts to save to buy their family home — details her aides hope draw a contrast with Trump’s background as the child of a wealthy real estate developer, the sources said.

Harris intends to show some daylight between her domestic or economic policies if elected and those that Biden has advocated for, sources familiar with her preparations said. But she will not differ from Biden on foreign policy, they said, adhering to the axiom that there is only one president at a time when it comes to those issues.

Choosing a key battleground state for multiple days of debate preparations has some added value for Harris, the sources said, and it mirrors what previous presidential nominees have done — from George W. Bush preparing for a 2000 debate in Florida to Barack Obama doing the same in Nevada in 2012.

Harris also is likely to make some unannounced political stops while there, the sources familiar with her preparations said. And her team hopes that just by being there she’ll get some additional media coverage in an important market.

They said her plan is to remain in Pittsburgh until Tuesday, when she’ll travel directly to Philadelphia for the debate.

Source: This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Preparation, pitfalls and breaking the fourth wall: Takeaways from a decade of Harris debates

Vice President Kamala Harris has been thinking about Tuesday’s debate against former President Donald Trump for a long time.

“What we need is someone who is going to be on that debate stage with Donald Trump and defeat him by being able to prosecute the case against four more years,” Harris said in July 2019 during a CNN Democratic presidential primary debate. “And let me tell you, we’ve got a long rap sheet,” she added.

When it comes to political debates, Harris herself has over a decade of priors. Tuesday’s ABC News debate will be the first time Harris and Trump come face-to-face, and only the third time she will face a Republican. But the Democrat’s past debate appearances going back to 2010 provide some clues on how she plans to make her case against Trump and for her own candidacy — what techniques and tics she leans on, potential vulnerabilities and other common threads stretching across years of state and national debates.

She previewed some of her go-to Trump criticisms during the 2020 presidential race, calling the then-president “corrupt” and “unpatriotic,” chiding his “weird” obsession with erasing former President Barack Obama’s accomplishments, and saying that Trump “doesn’t understand what it means to be honest” while looking directly at Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, during the vice presidential debate.

“I’m speaking,” Harris repeated during that debate as Pence spoke over her.

And she often appears to come prepared with memorable one-liners and scores of statistics to make her case — and to make a moment that might get attention long after the debate finishes.

Harris has been diligently preparing for Tuesday’s debate between campaign stops and her White House duties, strategizing how to derail Trump and how to navigate his expected attacks.

“She knows that every word matters, every facial expression matters and the stakes are very high at this level,” said Brian Brokaw, a former Harris campaign aide.

“You can have the smartest people around you prepping you for weeks or months,” Brokaw later added, “but ultimately there is only one person standing under the bright lights with the microphone and she has to be the one in the moment to know how to capitalize.”

Preparation is key

One key theme across Harris’ past debates: It’s clear how much she prepares, often coming armed with highly specific policy and statistical details or attacks on her opponents.

That preparation has paid off with some big moments for Harris — as well as some that have fallen flat.

During her Democratic debates, she sought to separate herself by laying out specific pieces of her policy platform, she regularly rattled off key statistics to reinforce her point, and repeated catchphrases and quotable lines.

Asked during her first appearance on the Democratic presidential debate stage in June of 2019 to name her specific plans on immigration, Harris was ready.

“Immediately on January 20th of 2021, I will — first of all, we cannot forget our DACA recipients, and so I’m going to start there. I will immediately, by executive action, reinstate DACA status and DACA protection to those young people,” she said. Then she continued, ticking off plans for other deportation deferrals, asylum review, improving conditions in detention centers and getting rid of private detention centers altogether.

During her 2020 debate with Pence, Harris jumped on the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, calling it “the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” before rattling off a series of stats about deaths, contractions, shuttered businesses, effects on front-line workers and the unemployment race.

Brokaw, who ran Harris’ campaign for California attorney general and advised her 2016 Senate campaign, noted her attention to detail.

“She would want to spend a lot of time having a thorough conversation on the substance,” Brokaw said. “That can be frustrating for the people doing the prep because the point we were trying to make is look, you just need to have a good, punchy sound bite in order to best make your point. But she actually wants a thorough understanding of every issue that could possibly come up.”

Brokaw acknowledged that overpreparing comes with its own risks, but he stressed that Harris is also quick on her feet, stemming from her experience in a courtroom as a prosecutor.

Still, on multiple occasions, Harris took clear stances or landed clear punches on her rivals that may have helped her in the moment, but ultimately backfired.

The most prominent example of that came in that first 2019 Democratic presidential debate, where she took then-rival Joe Biden to task for his opposition to using federal funds to desegregate schools through busing.

“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me,” Harris said, in a moment that reverbated on the stage.

Harris’ campaign immediately launched merchandise and fundraising pitches around the comments, and it appeared to give her candidacy a jolt of energy as she sought to separate herself in a crowded field. But a muddier message in subsequent days on the issue blunted her momentum, and the issue — and Harris’ primary campaign — both faded.

"It's clear she has those things rehearsed and ready to go as she looks for that viral moment," said Marc Short, Pence's former chief of staff and a NBC News contributor. He added that might be one reason why Harris' campaign pushed, unsuccessfully, to keep the microphones unmuted for the whole debate, in the search of a viral moment pushing back on Trump.

A related issue also surfaced during a review of her 2019 debates: Many of the positions she took while trying to appeal to a Democratic primary electorate will be exactly the kinds of policies Trump may point to onstage next week.

It was a tactic Pence used in 2020, and one that Short said could work well for Trump, too.

"It would play even better for Trump because she's now repudiated all those positions. The border is one of the best issues for Trump," he added, noting Harris' 2018 call to "critically re-examine ICE and its role."

"The question is: Can Trump actually prosecute a policy case?" Short asked.

Breaking the fourth wall 

Some of the most notable moments from Harris’ past debates came when she effectively broke the fourth wall, reacting to opponents in real time and trying to bring the crowd onto her side.

Toward the beginning of her first presidential primary debate, Harris took advantage of a moment to address her fellow candidates, and the audience, to paint herself as above the fray of a group of politicians talking over each other.

“Hey, guys, you know what? America does not want to witness a food fight, they want to know how we are going to put food on their table,” she said to applause that set her up to deliver an answer about economic inequality.

In her 2010 debate for California attorney general, one such moment became a key part of her victory against Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley.

With the debate nearly over, a moderator asked Cooley whether he planned to “double dip” and take both a pension and a salary if elected, and Cooley responded that he did plan to do so, knocking the “incredibly low salary” for state attorney general.

Asked if she had anything to add, Harris simply gestured to Cooley and said, “Go for it, Steve,” and laughed. Her campaign quickly turned Cooley’s answer into a TV ad in L.A. County, cutting into his base of support.

Six years later, Harris’ opponent for Senate, then-Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez “dabbed” after her closing statement. The dance move was not caught on the debate stream but went viral afterward, when a local news reporter shared the video online.

Although Sanchez’s dance move was not initially clear to viewers, Harris reacted, her eyes widening. She let out a laugh and proceeded to paint herself as a more serious candidate than Sanchez, starting, “So, there’s a clear difference between the candidates in this race.”

“She’s good at knowing when to strike and when to perhaps let your opponent inflict damage on themselves,” Brokaw said.

Harris broke the fourth wall more often in her debate against Pence, looking right into the camera to speak directly to viewers, at one point saying, “America, you deserve better,” after ticking through Trump’s controversial comments about Mexican immigrants, Proud Boys and the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Harris has also made references to the historic nature of her candidacies, sending a signal to viewers to think of women in these positions. From her 2010 debate for state attorney general to her 2019 presidential debates, Harris made a point of using the pronouns “she” and “her” when referring to those officeholders.

Navigating criticism

Harris has navigated moments of criticism in past debates often by jotting down notes. While the ABC News debate rules don’t allow candidates to bring pre-written notes, they will be provided a pen and a pad of paper, the network announced Thursday.

And her past debates offer a preview for how Harris might respond to attacks on her record. In 2020, Pence criticized her past support for the so-called Green New Deal, her vote against a trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada, and offered an analysis that deemed Harris the most liberal senator.

In some instances, Harris deflected the criticism onto the Trump administration. But when pressed on her support for the Green New Deal, Harris looked right into the camera and said, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact.”

Some of her most memorable and direct debate clashes in 2019 came with former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who is now backing Trump. After Gabbard criticized the Democratic Party during the November 2019 debate, Harris sought to prosecute her record.

“It’s unfortunate that we have someone on this stage who is attempting to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, who during the Obama administration spent four years full time on Fox News criticizing President Obama,” she said, before admonishing Gabbard for cozying up to Trump.

After Gabbard pushed back, Harris didn’t take the bait. Instead, she pivoted to her campaign’s elevator pitch and her slogan: Kamala Harris for the people.

Source: This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Harris faces her 'toughest' battleground fight against Trump in Pennsylvania

The entire presidential election may come down to just one state: Pennsylvania.

And it’s setting up to be the trickiest battleground for Vice President Kamala Harris to win.

“It’s going to be the toughest swing state,” said J.J. Abbott, a Democratic strategist in the state working on an outside effort to boost Harris. “Of the three blue wall states, it’s the most diverse in terms of the kinds of places” a candidate must compete in to be successful.

A second Democratic operative in the state simply said the race there will “be a nail-biter.”

Democrats and Republicans have dumped more advertising dollars into Pennsylvania than any other battleground state, underscoring its importance. Polling there shows a tighter contest now than at this time in 2016 between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, or in 2020 between Trump and Joe Biden. Trump significantly outperformed polling averages both cycles, narrowly beating Clinton and losing to Biden by a similarly slim margin.

Harris is facing a couple of other headwinds. Biden — the person she replaced at the top of the ticket — was born in Scranton and had deep, long-standing personal and political ties throughout the state. Harris, however, is just beginning to foster those connections. The Keystone State is also the only front-line battleground state where a woman has never won a race for president, governor or senator, nor has a woman been appointed to such a position.

“I think that she can win,” the second Pennsylvania Democratic operative said, calling the state a “fickle place.” “I see a lot of Democratic excitement right now. But that doesn’t mean the Republican enthusiasm won’t bounce back or isn’t really there. If the former president decides he’s going to stop being erratic, he has the same shot that he did in the last few cycles. And from a macro standpoint, it can’t get worse for Trump than it did in 2020, coming off the heels of a pandemic, all of the civil unrest.”

NBC News spoke with more than 20 Democratic and Republican operatives, candidates, officials and party insiders to gain a sense of how the fight for Pennsylvania is materializing as the post-Labor Day sprint begins.

An 'everywhere' campaign

The spending tells a story of just how important each campaign views Pennsylvania. Through the end of August, the Philadelphia media market saw the most ad spending of any in the country, with more than $82 million dropped there, according to data from the firm AdImpact.

Democrats this year have spent $114 million statewide, while Republicans have spent $102 million. That total has ramped up considerably in recent weeks, with Democrats spending more than $56 million last month and Republicans spending north of $52 million. Looking ahead, Democrats already have more than $84 million reserved for the fall there, while the Republican total tops $74 million.

Trump and his allies’ ads have, in part, focused on hitting Harris on the economy, while Harris’ have sought to boost her biography and talk up elements of her economic agenda.

Acknowledging how difficult a fight the state will be this fall, Democrats pointed to several reasons for optimism that they will be able to pull through. For starters, no MAGA-aligned candidate has won a top-of-the-ticket race in Pennsylvania since Trump in 2016. Losses included celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz and state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who both suffered crushing defeats for Senate and governor, respectively, last cycle.

They also see a large number of voters who cast ballots in the state’s Republican primary for Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who are ripe to be picked off, even though Haley has endorsed Trump.

The Harris campaign also feels it’s far better organized than Trump is — pointing to 350 staffers on the ground and 36 campaign offices across the state, mostly in Democratic-leaning ares but also in several rural or Republican places. Unlike in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Democrats feel freer to ramp up their ground game and have their candidates blitz the state.

Harris, who has made 10 visits to the state this year, is currently camping out in Pittsburgh as she prepares for her first presidential debate, while her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, made multiple stops along a two-day tour of Pennsylvania this week.

A Harris campaign official, who described Pennsylvania as “the most important state,” said their strategy is to campaign throughout the commonwealth, not limit appearances to Philadelphia, the collar counties, Pittsburgh and its close-in suburbs — the state’s Democratic strongholds.

“The Harris campaign is very committed to the idea we’re going to compete everywhere,” this person — who requested anonymity to speak candidly — said before pointing to the campaign’s preconvention bus tour through the western part of the state. “The fact they went not only just to blue Allegheny, but to places like Beaver County — Rochester, Beaver Falls, Aliquippa — shows that we are on offense.”

What’s more, this person said there aren’t regrets over Biden leaving the race. This person said they could’ve been convinced before the switch at the top of the ticket that Biden was better positioned to win Pennsylvania but since seeing the explosion of Democratic enthusiasm they said: “I think we’d all agree it has been a net positive.”

But Republicans here say they’re much more excited to run against the California Democrat than “Scranton Joe,” even though he was far less of a presence on the trail.

“Biden had a legitimate connection to Pennsylvania,” said Tim Murtaugh, a senior Trump campaign adviser and Pennsylvania native. “Kamala Harris can lie about a lot of things in her record, but she would be hard pressed to transform herself into a Scranton native.”

Frack, baby, frack

For the Trump campaign, Pennsylvania is a top priority, too, though its in-state footprint is not as large as Harris’, which was built up substantially earlier this year when Biden was still running.

Two developments a Trump campaign official made a point of highlighting were the recently launched “SwampTheVoteUSA” website they’ve built to help supporters request mail-in ballots. This person also said the campaign is engaging in volunteer trainings at its field offices as part of a broader effort to target “low propensity voters” in their communities — a plan to “meet people where they’re at,” this person said. The campaign has also put a focus on registering new voters and has been encouraged by recently released Pennsylvania registration numbers showing Republicans have made gains in some key counties.

But a major focus for the Trump campaign is to define Harris in the minds of voters who are already quite familiar with the former president. The Trump campaign has pointed to her past positions on fracking — a key economic driver in the state — and immigration as areas where it wanted to expend particular energy in defining Harris.

“She cannot get away from that — that was and is her position,” Murtaugh said of Harris’ previous support for a ban on fracking. “And Pennsylvania voters will know all about it.”

In 2019, Harris was supportive of a federal ban on fracking. But in a CNN interview last week, she pledged not to ban the practice as president, saying her perspective was shaped by clean energy gains that were made in the Biden administration without the passage of such a ban.

“I have made it clear that in our state, this is both a jobs issue and energy issue,” Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said in an interview, adding, “There’s no question it’s a significant issue in the state. And I was heartened when, right after her campaign was launched, her campaign made it clear that she wasn’t going to have a policy of banning fracking. That’s a consensus position.”

'A high-risk situation'

Harris has recently taken a position on another hot-button issue in the state, joining Biden, Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, in coming out against Nippon Steel’s offer to acquire Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel. The nominees in both parties have pledged to keep the company in American hands while the steelworkers union has opposed the acquisition. But others in western Pennsylvania — on both sides of the aisle — have expressed concerns that scuttling the deal could deal a big blow to the region’s economy.

“Leaning into the kind of populist streak of the electorate is really smart,” Abbott, the Democratic strategist, said of Harris’ strategy and messaging in the state. “One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot is there’s just a lot of parallels between some of the things that she’s leaning into in her campaign that are so parallel to what [Pennsylvania Gov. Josh] Shapiro was doing in 2022.

That year, Shapiro’s and John Fetterman’s campaigns made a very targeted effort to campaign in pro-Trump counties and in rural areas — which bore fruit for both as they were able to cut into the margins there. It’s clear the Harris campaign is interested in taking that approach.

Harris and Walz made multiple stops in Beaver County — where Trump won by 18 points in 2020 — on their bus tour to the convention last month. It was a series of stops that caught the attention of Democrats and Republicans in the state.

“So much in Pennsylvania is a margins game,” a second Harris campaign official said.

Casey said that in places like Beaver County, Democrats should talk about how investments from the American Rescue Plan and the infrastructure package have benefited areas outside of densely populated cities and suburbs.

“No one’s predicting a blue wave there,” Casey said of Beaver County. “But I thought it was a sign of respect, and also a sign that they’re going to compete in those communities.”

One Trump ally didn’t think the stop was particularly meaningful, saying it appeared to simply be on her path to leave the state and head toward Chicago, the site of the Democratic National Convention.

“She didn’t go out of her way to do that,” this person said. “I mean, if she starts showing up in Johnstown and starts showing up in Bethlehem, maybe I’m going to have some different takes here.’

Whether Harris is taking any page out of the Shapiro playbook, multiple Pennsylvania Republicans said they were thrilled she did not pick him to be her running mate.

“The reason why I was so adamant and against him is I believe if she would have picked Shapiro, that would have locked Pennsylvania up for her,” Allegheny County GOP Chairman Sam DeMarco said. “I was elated when she picked Walz.”

The Trump ally, who said Harris “still has the advantage” in the state that goes Democratic more often than not at the statewide level, said it “literally boggles the mind” that she did not pick Shapiro.

“He’s the most popular politician in that state, and it’s not close,” this person said. “It makes no sense.”

Shapiro has publicly praised the Walz selection and hinted in his statement following Harris’ veepstakes that he may have had some misgivings about taking the role.

In his interview with NBC News, Casey said either Shapiro or Walz would’ve been “a very strong choice” but ultimately “most voters are focused on the presidential candidate, and that’s why I don’t want to get too animated by what’s happening with the vice presidential pick.”

On the other hand, some Republicans here said they wanted to see a sharper focus from Trump on the core issues they think will get him and other Republicans across the finish line in the state this fall. There was appreciation for Vance being someone who was seen as doing exactly that.

“If Donald Trump can stick to issues and litigate the case against Kamala Harris, he will smoke her in Pennsylvania,” said state Rep. Josh Kail, who is heading the state House Republican’s campaign effort. “But that’s a big if.”

“It’s a great opportunity,” he added. “But it’s a high-risk situation.”

Source: This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

With coat drives and concerts, Harris and Trump tackle winning over swing voters

Former President Donald Trump's campaign hopes to sway persuadable voters at personal finance workshops and concerts. Vice President Kamala Harris' political aides think a coat drive may help their candidate do the same.

With two months left until Election Day, the two camps are spending cash, time and energy on one of the most difficult tasks in modern elections: finding and winning over the tiny fraction of voters who live in one of the seven battleground states and haven't yet picked a side — or, in some cases, haven't even decided whether to vote.

"It's a small but critical piece of the electorate," said Nick Trainer, who was political director on Trump's 2020 campaign. "In battlegrounds, it's tens of thousands of voters, not hundreds of thousands."

That could be all it takes to determine who is sworn in as president in January.

There's no silver bullet that can move them all in one direction — they are hard to herd, like millions of cats, because they have different reasons for being undecided — but both campaigns see the economy as a pivotal issue of concern that crosses subgroups within the set of swing voters.

"These persuadable voters in many ways have a less fragmented issue matrix than is typical," said one senior Trump campaign official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about strategy and tactics. "And that is because of the outsized concern about the economy."

The official said some persuadable voters list other topics as their primary concern, but "a much larger share fall into economic and affordability concerns."

That helps explain why Trump is vowing to bring about a "national economic renaissance" if he's elected, and why he's hammering Harris.

"She wants four more years to enforce the radical left agenda that poses a fundamental threat to the prosperity of every American family and America itself," Trump said Thursday in remarks to the Economic Club of New York.

At the same time, Harris is racing to define herself as a champion of people who have been hit hard by rising prices. Of the handful of proposals she has made since becoming the Democratic Party's pick to take on Trump, most have been aimed at providing government assistance — for parents, small-business owners and first-time homebuyers.

A source familiar with the Harris campaign’s efforts to appeal to undecided voters said a large part of the strategy will be focused on economic messaging and economic proposals.

Part of that strategy means pushing back on Republican attempts to paint Harris as a liberal who will be more worried about “increasing the social network for immigrants and other people who aren’t working” rather than on working on many Americans’ inability to pay their bills and meet their basic needs financially.

"A campaign focused on big philosophical issues like ‘democracy’ wasn’t succeeding because people couldn’t relate it to themselves,” the person said, referring to a major theme of President Joe Biden's campaign before he dropped out of the race July 21. “Freedom succeeds when people are thinking about how it affects them personally. Freedom to not live in poverty is a great message.”

The person also said Harris talking about how she will better people’s lives — rather than the history-making nature of her campaign — is part of an effort to appeal to undecided voters and those who may be hesitant to cast ballots for a woman who is Black and South Asian.

“I think people are going to break later than one would expect because, let’s step back for a second, she’s got two things working against her: She’s a woman and she’s black," the person said. "And, I think this country, particularly, for some reason, has a hard time seeing a woman in that role. It feels like this is one of those ‘get in the voting booth’ moments for the people who remain on the fence.”

Focus on swing voters is coming back into vogue after a few election cycles that were all about the two parties' bases. Two big reasons for the renewal: the closeness of recent presidential elections and the abundance of political money.

It is much more expensive to identify persuadable voters, convince them and turn them out than it is to simply get voters who already back a candidate to go to the polls.

For the Trump campaign, that means an ongoing collection of data about potential voters, according to the Trump campaign official. From early data sets, the campaign built models designed to predict which voters would be persuadable based on various traits and tendencies.

"Then you pressure test that by asking the modeled audience ... the same sort of information that goes into [the model] to see if it validates," the aide said. "We're in a constant revalidation process."

Harris campaign officials said "relational" organizing — which includes supporters participating in community events — is the most effective way to reach undecided voters. That's the kind of thinking that puts Harris campaign aides at a coat drive in Milwaukee and Trump allies at financial seminars.

Source: This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Harris campaign to launch a big 'weekend of action' around Trump and Project 2025 ahead of the debate

Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign is planning to launch a weekend of action focused on what it calls the dangers of a potential second Trump presidency and Project 2025, a conservative governing agenda that Harris has repeatedly criticized on the campaign trail and plans to bring up during the presidential debate on Tuesday, according to campaign officials who shared the plans first with NBC News.

As part of the effort, which Harris’ aides said was the campaign’s biggest weekend of action to date, the campaign will have more than 2,000 events that it expects will reach more than 1 million voters. Volunteers, who plan to work more than 20,000 shifts, and key campaign surrogates will talk to voters “about Trump’s extreme plan to ban abortion nationwide, cut Social Security and Medicare, and spike taxes by $3,900 each year for middle-class families,” according to officials.

The efforts are also aimed at appealing to swing voters who may be drawn in by the recent endorsements of Harris by former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Jimmy McCain, the youngest son of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

“With hundreds of offices and thousands of staff across the battlegrounds, we are able to harness all the buzz around the debate and break through to hard-to-reach voters on Project 2025,” said Dan Kanninen, the Harris campaign battleground states director, in a statement provided to NBC News. “We are speaking to those Americans who are turned off by Trump’s extremism and making sure they know there’s a home for them in Vice President Harris’ campaign.”

“Gaining Representative Cheney’s and First Lieutenant McCain’s support this week was a powerful signal to swing voters,” he added. “This weekend, we are building on that momentum and taking our message directly to the voters who will decide this election in our largest ever campaign mobilization.”

The Harris campaign also plans to host virtual and in-person “Project 2025 message trainings” in battleground states. According to the campaign, to date, it has held more than 60 such training sessions to help volunteers talk about Project 2025 with their friends and neighbors. The weekend of action will also feature canvass launches, phone banks and cookouts.

The move by the Harris campaign comes just days before the first presidential debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump, scheduled for Tuesday in Philadelphia. Harris plans to bring up Project 2025 on the debate stage as she makes her case that she is more qualified and better suited to be president than Trump, according to a campaign official.

The Harris campaign also launched a new ad focused on “Project 2025” Thursday, taking aim at the far-right policy proposals created as a blueprint for the next Republican president and developed by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and at least two dozen Trump allies.

Meanwhile, Trump has tried to put some distance between himself and Project 2025, which includes a 900-plus page policy road map and personnel database gathered by the Heritage Foundation. But many of Trump’s key allies have been directly involved in producing the project whose website bills it as a “governing agenda” that would “pave the way for an effective conservative Administration.”

On the campaign trail, Harris has often criticized Project 2025 and tied it to Trump. In New Hampshire on Wednesday, Harris said Trump would sign a national abortion ban and create a “national anti-abortion coordinator” who would force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions as part of the project. And, as she has done in the past, Harris said of Project 2025, “Can you believe they put that thing in writing?”

Source: This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Harris raised over $300 million in August, extending cash windfall

Vice President Kamala Harris' political operation raised more than $300 million in the month of August — more than twice as much as former President Donald Trump's operation gathered in the same period — two sources familiar with the Harris fundraising numbers told NBC News.

The sources did not specify the exact fundraising haul, but the more than $300 million figure, which includes the campaign and related entities, signals that the breakneck pace of fundraising has not slowed since money began gushing in upon President Joe Biden’s July 21 announcement that he would step aside from seeking the Democratic nomination.

The next campaign finance disclosure deadline for Harris' campaign is Sept. 20.

The two sources also said plans are in the works to hold several fundraisers for Harris this month. One of the sources said that included possible events in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

NBC News has asked the Harris campaign for comment.

Harris’ campaign hit major benchmarks in the month of August, including choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and holding a four-day, star-studded convention in Chicago.

After the convention, Harris campaign officials said they had raised more than $540 million since Harris took the reins of the campaign.

The whopping fundraising numbers for Harris come just after the Trump campaign reported it and related entities raised $130 million in the month of August, with nearly $300 million cash on hand. Trump’s campaign reported that 98% of the month’s donations came in at less than $200.

“These fundraising numbers from August are a reflection of that movement and will propel President Trump’s America First movement back to the White House so we can undo the terrible failures of Harris and Biden,” Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes said.

Source: This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

'A dogfight': Harris and Trump enter the final election stretch after Labor Day

WASHINGTON — An unprecedented summer has turned the presidential race on its head with two months to go until Election Day, showing a dead heat in key states between Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump as both candidates gear up for a final blitz after the Labor Day holiday weekend.

A race that was slipping away from President Joe Biden is competitive again after he withdrew July 21 and passed the baton to his vice president, who has captured support from key groups that had soured on him, most notably young and Black voters.

Harris, 59, has turned the issue of age from a potentially fatal liability to an asset for Democrats against the 78-year-old Trump. The former president, who was running with confidence against Biden, has appeared rattled at times by Harris, launching personal and racial attacks against a rival who would be the first woman and the first Indian American to be president. She has brushed them off.

“It’s a toss-up race,” Republican strategist Brad Todd said, cautioning that the GOP's fortunes are not as bright as they were when the Democratic nominee was the 81-year-old Biden.

Todd urged Trump to stay focused on defining Harris as a “far-left candidate” by highlighting the smorgasbord of positions she took during her 2020 campaign — on health care, energy, immigration and more. Harris has since sought to pivot to the center, while saying that her “values haven’t changed” in the last five years.

“To win, Donald Trump has to hold her accountable for the things she said she believes,” he said. “But thus far, he’s not shown a lot of interest in that.”

The summer of 2024 has delivered a sequence of events unseen in modern times, including an unusually early debate that proved fatal for Biden’s already fading re-election hopes, an assassination attempt on Trump and a GOP convention that came across as a Trump victory party. Biden turned the race on its head by dropping out, passing the buck to Harris who quickly locked up the nomination — and rapidly surged in the polls to a dead heat. The late-August Democratic convention revealed a jubilant and rejuvenated party, just before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended his independent bid and endorsed Trump. Harris and Trump are scheduled for their first one-on-one debate next week on Sept. 10.

'Fundamentally a dogfight'

Despite their momentum, Democrats say the race is far from over.

“I still think it’s fundamentally a dogfight,” said Bill Burton, a political consultant who worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, praising Harris for running a “perfect” campaign so far.

Burton said it’s difficult to imagine this level of Democratic excitement if Biden were still the candidate. “She has peaked at the exact right moment,” he said. “As long as she keeps her rudder steady, I think that she’s going to do well.”

Harris leads Trump by 4 points in a USA Today/Suffolk poll and by 2 points in a Wall Street Journal survey. Recent polls of key states that Biden narrowly won in 2020 — including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — show a close race with a narrow Harris edge. In addition to being competitive in those “blue wall” states, Harris has put the Sun Belt states of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina, which were falling away from Biden, back in play.

In a memo Sunday, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote: “[M]ake no mistake: we head into the final stretch of this race as the clear underdogs. Donald Trump has a motivated base of support, with more support and higher favorability than he has had at any point since 2020.”

Burton said Harris still has work to do in bringing home key constituencies, most notably Black voters, as Trump seeks to peel off a slice of younger Black men.

“I think some of the support with white voters” that’s showing up in the polls today “is going to be a little superficial, and she’ll have to make up for it,” Burton said.

“Watch Black voters,” he said. “That is the place where I think there’s the most opportunity and most concern.”

Both candidates are seeking to reduce their vulnerabilities by reversing their unpopular positions from the past. Harris has disavowed left-wing ideas she backed in 2019, such as Medicare for All and decriminalizing migration. Trump, while bragging about his anti-abortion record, is backtracking on his support for federal abortion restrictions and suggesting he won’t try to repeal “Obamacare” after fighting to do so as president.

Unique dynamics in the fight for Congress

The tightening presidential race has narrowed the battle for Congress, which comes with unique dynamics: The Senate majority runs through red states such as Ohio and Montana, while the race for the House goes through blue states such as California and New York.

In the closely divided House, a few-dozen battleground districts are poised to decide which party is in control. The playing field has narrowed dramatically in recent cycles because of partisan gerrymandering and regional polarization, where urban areas vote Democrat and rural areas vote Republican.

The “generic ballot” — voter preferences on which party they want to see in control of Congress — has improved slightly for Democrats since Biden dropped out, but it’s still tight. Democrats led by 1 point in a Wall Street Journal poll, by 1 point in a Reuters poll and by 2 points in an Economist poll — all within the margin of error.

The Senate map has gifted Republicans a golden opportunity to capture control, even if Democrats have a strong year. Democrats currently hold 51 seats and have conceded that they’ll lose West Virginia with the retirement of Sen. Joe Manchin. That means Republicans can clinch the majority by defeating Democrats in one of two red states where Trump is coasting to victory: Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

Most public polls show Tester trailing — unlike 2018, when he led his GOP opponent and won — while Brown is narrowly ahead.

Todd, the GOP strategist, said 51 seats was “a certainty” and argued the party should aim for a bigger majority like 53 or 54 seats.

“Jon Tester is literally as dead as the Thanksgiving turkey,” he said.

A national Democrat working on Senate races disputed that view, saying: “This is a tight race that’s within the margin of error — that’s the kind of race Tester always faces and knows how to win.”

Unlike in 2022, when Republicans were talking up a red wave and a large majority that famously failed to materialize, some insiders say they’ll be content even with a narrow majority this year.

“The goal is to flip the Senate,” a GOP strategist working on Senate races said. “To that end, Tim Sheehy [in Montana] is the most important man in the country, with Bernie Moreno [in Ohio] also being in contention.”

There are five ultracompetitive states where Democrats are also defending seats: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada. Polls show Democratic candidates have the advantage in all five, and Republicans admit they’re underdogs in each of them.

“The growing view among Republican strategists is that Michigan is the best pickup opportunity in the country, of the purple states,” the GOP strategist said, referring to an open seat vacated by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.

Democrats see glimmers of hope in Florida and Texas, two red-leaning states where GOP Sens. Rick Scott and Ted Cruz are favorites to hold on, although some surveys show their leads are narrow.

“If I were a Republican I would be very nervous about what we’re starting to see in some of the polling out of Texas and Florida,” Burton said. Colin Allred in Texas and Debbie Mucarsel Powell in Florida "are running great campaigns … They very well could be on defense [and that] could get in the way of them getting a majority,” he said.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/harris-trump-final-election-stretch-labor-day-rcna168887

Thanks to Contributor Pastor Gary Hunter for his photos !

Dr. Wallace "Gator" Bradley Addresses Youth on Violence

Dr. Wallace "Gator" Bradley, political consultant and TV Talk show host, addresses the youth after a tragic mass shooting at 71st and Woodlawn in Chicago. Unity among adults in nurturing and protecting young people is the key to transforming broken communities. Parents and police must be on one accord and need guidance, nurturing and opportunities to excel in life. Anger and frustration eplodes into gun violence in neighborhoods where economic opportunities are absent and families are fractured. (Video by Birds Eye View Productions 2) 

"We are fathers, grandfathers, some of us like myself are great grandfathers," declared Dr. Wallace "Gator" Bradley to the grief stricken crowd that gathered in the Woodlawn community after a tragic shooting at 71st and Woodlawn Thursday July 4, 2024 that claimed the lives of two women and a child and left two children in critical condition. Dr. Bradley, political consultant and TV Talk Show host of The Bradley Report airing on Cable TV 19 in Chicago, addressed the acts of violence that keep residents in a state of fear.

"This is a message to those that feel they can continue to shoot our women and children," he said, pledging to organize men to form a united front, along with the police, to protect the community. 

Founder of the organization United in Peace, Dr. Bradley encourages youth to resolve differences rather than resort to gun violence. He works with elected officials to encourage the passage of laws and policies that alleviate the suffering of residents living in economically distressed communities.

Mayor Brandon Johnson urged community residents to come together so that acts of violence don't "become normalized." 

Members of the community cried and prayed as they listened to the hurt and pain of family members of the victims. Community Safety Brothers Keepers is the organization that evolved out of this 4th of July weekend tragedy, and  residents, elected officials, clergy, and police pledged to work together to stop violence and to reveal those involved without fear of revenge.

"We speak through TikTok," Dr. Bradley said to the youth, letting them know that the elder adults can also communicate effectively through social media. 

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/election

DNC Skillfully Uses Media To Deliver A Message To America

The Democratic National Convention was without a doubt a well-organized professionally prepared production, complete with all the Hollywood glitz of music, song, and and carefully crafted speeches, accentuated by polished video presentations. One could not have asked for a better show to influence the American people to support a political party. 

ON AIR Daily News Reporter and Social Media Influencer Audrey Blair Mack gives her take on the Convention on The Female Solution Global Radio TV Show, discussing the power of the major television networks as well as Social Media to influence voters. Did the Democrats make a strong case against Republican Donald Trump? Will young people be motivated to participate in the upcoming election?

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/election

Oprah: “When we work together, there’s nothing we can’t do!”

The Queen of Talk Shows, and owner of the OWN TV Network, Oprah Winfrey fired up the crowd Wednesday night August 21, 2024.



“I am so honored to have been asked to speak on tonight’s theme about what matters most to me, to you and all of us Americans: Freedom,“ she said. “There are people who want you to see our country as a nation of ‘us‘ against ‘them,’ people who wanna scare you, who want to rule you, people who’d have you believe that books are dangerous and assault rifles are safe, that there’s a right way to worship and a wrong way to love, people who seek first to divide and then to conquer. But here’s the thing: when we stand together it is impossible to conquer us!”

Quoting the late Congressman John Lewis, who said, “Freedom is not free,“ she said “America is an ongoing project, it requires commitment, it requires being open to the hard work and the ‘heart‘ work, of Democracy. And every now and then it requires standing up to life’s bullies.” 

Recalling that she has both seen and been the recipient of racism and sexism, she said she has also seen people, both conservatives and liberals, who wouldn’t hesitate to help a neighbor in need. She also reminded the crowd of the little black girls who were first to integrate public schools in the South.

”They paved the way for another little girl who nine years later became part of the second class to integrate the public schools in Berkeley, California.“ she said of Kamala Harris. “And soon, and very soon, we’re going to be teaching our daughters and sons about how this child of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, two idealistic, energetic immigrants, how this child grew up to become the 47th President of the United States!”

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/home

Gov. Tim Walz: “Never underestimate a Public School Teacher!”

Former high school teacher and football coach Governor Tim Walz stole America’s heart Wednesday night when he described his experiences as a father, a teacher, a coach and a good neighbor, painting a warm and fuzzy picture , in stark contrast to Republican Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance, who many have described as rude and insensitive.

“I grew up in Butte, Nebraska, a town of 400 people. I had 24 kids in my high school class. And none of them went to Yale,” he quipped, a subtle dig at his opponent, Yale graduate JDVance. ”Growing up in a small town like that you learn how to take care of each other. That family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do, but they’re your neighbors and you look out for them and they look out for you. Everybody belongs and everybody has a responsibility to contribute.” 



He described his decision to sign up for the National Guard at 17 and proudly serve his country, and how his father, a Korean War Veteran, suffered with lung cancer, resulting in huge hospital bills left behind after his death.

“Thank God for Social Security Survivor Benefits and thank God for the GI Bill that allowed me and my Dad to go to college.” Gov. waltz declared.

After serving in the military, he said he fell in love with teaching, and became a football Coach, leading his team to win a State Championship. He was widely recognized as a community leader, one who instilled high values and principles in his students and team members. He recalled how his students and neighbors encouraged him to run for public office. He ran and won a seat in Congress. After serving in Congress for 12 years, he ran for Governor of the State of Minnesota and won a decisive victory.

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/home

Accepting The Nomination: “Kamala Harris for the People”

Vice President Makes A Strong Case For A Democratic Victory

Bt Naimah Latif

CHICAGO - The United Center was filled to capacity Thursday night, August 22nd as Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris made her acceptance speech while laying out the case for a Democratic victory in November over Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump, citing his being found guilty of fraud and sexual abuse and his failure to discourage participants in the January 6 riots. After describing her childhood and the humble beginnings with an Indian mother and Jamaican father who raised her and her sister Maya with values and principles of hard work, honesty, fairness and justice, she took the audience through a journey of her education and law practice, in which she prosecuted perpetrators of assault as well as large corporations that took unfair advantage of consumers.wrongdoers on behalf of the people.

”Every day I stood before the judge and said five words. ‘Kamala Harris, for the People.”

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/home

People Who Take Ozempic, Wegovy 45% More Likely to Have Suicidal Thoughts

People who take the popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy are 45% more likely to have suicidal thoughts than people taking other drugs, according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Researchers from the Zucker School of Medicine in New York reviewed a World Health Organization global database of adverse drug effects between November 2000 and August 2023.

They compared reporting rates for semaglutide — the active ingredient in the blockbuster drugs — to other similar weight-loss drugs and all drugs in the database. They found that semaglutide was associated with “disproportionately increased reporting of suicidality.”

“Authorities should consider issuing a warning to inform about this risk,” the authors concluded, particularly given the increasing off-label use of the drug. They said in half of the cases where suicidal thoughts occurred, the drug was being taken off-label.

The signal “warrants urgent clarification,” they added.

The researchers also found a higher risk for suicidal thoughts among people on antidepressants or benzodiazepines, likely prescribed for depression or anxiety, who were also taking semaglutide.

They recommended that physicians who prescribe semaglutide inform patients of the risk and assess their psychiatric history and mental state before prescribing the drug.

‘If you want to check if a drug causes suicidality, you have to interview people’

In more than half of the cases the researchers studied, suicidal thoughts stopped when people stopped taking the drugs.

Dr. David Healy, a psychiatrist who was not involved in the study, told The Defender this was one of the more significant findings. The overall number of suicidal thoughts reported was small, he said, but the proportion of cases where the thoughts stopped when the drug was stopped was high.

This is telling, he said. However, he said investigations must happen at the clinical level to determine causality. “If you want to check if a drug causes suicidality — you have to interview people,” he said.

The researchers also found a slight increase in reports of suicidal ideation in the database for the earlier version of the weight loss medication, liraglutide — sold under the brand name Victoza and Saxenda.

Liraglutide is in the same broader class of glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist drugs as semaglutide.

Accompanying commentary by authors Francesco Salvo, M.D., Ph.D., of the Université de Bordeaux and Jean-Luc Faillie, M.D., Ph.D., of the Université de Montpellier in France, affirmed that GLP-1 receptor agonists should be prescribed with “great caution in patients with a history of depression or suicidal attempts.”

They added that the drug should be discontinued if new depression symptoms occur when on the drugs.

FDA and EMA claim no evidence of link

The injectable prescription drugs were originally developed to manage blood sugar levels in the treatment of Type 2 diabetes, but they became wildly popular over the last several years for their ability to help people lose weight.

GLP-1 receptor agonists are chemicals derived from lizard venom that can change people’s metabolism and eating behaviors as long as they continue to take the drugs.

When people stop taking the drugs, they typically regain most or all of the weight they lost.

The drugs have been touted by Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities as a key to overcoming the obesity epidemic.

Mainstream health publications like StatNews have advocated for increasing access to the expensive obesity drugs in the name of racial justice, and there has been growing pressure for the drugs to be covered without restrictions by Medicare.

And medical organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics rushed to recommend the drugs for children as young as 8, just weeks after they were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for children.

And in October 2023, Novo Nordisk announced that it is testing semaglutide in children as young as 6.

The drugs are new to the market. Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical company that makes Ozempic, Wegovy and Saxenda only published its clinical trial showing weight loss effects of semaglutide in February of 2021 and the FDA approved Wegovy for weight loss in June 2021.

Between 2020 and 2023, GLP-1 receptor agonists use increased by 594% in young people, particularly among women.

Despite the hype, serious concerns have been raised about the safety of the drugs. They’ve been linked to cancers in the digestive system, thyroid cancer, stomach paralysis, a wide range of other gastrointestinal disorders, among other issues and the drugs pose a serious but little-known risk for pregnant women.

Last year, suicidal ideation linked to Ozempic and Saxenda, and one case of self-harm ideation linked to Saxenda were reported in Iceland, which led to an investigation by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Similar reports were also made to the FDA.

The EMA reported in April that its follow-up investigation, which reviewed non-clinical studies, clinical trials and postmarketing surveillance data, “does not support a causal association” between GLP-1 drugs and suicidal or self-harm thoughts.

The FDA reported in January that its investigation of reports to the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) showed no safety signal for the drugs and that it had a meta-analysis underway.

A study published in Nature in January found no link between the drugs and suicidal thoughts

The EMA continues to maintain that no warning is warranted, but in U.S. labeling, the product information for semaglutide does list thoughts of suicide as a possible side effect.

Novo flagged “several limitations” of the new study and maintained that it will continue to work with the FDA and other regulators to monitor the safety of the drugs, Fierce Pharma reported.

“We stand behind the safety and efficacy of all of our GLP-1RA medicines when they are used as indicated and when taken under the care of a licensed healthcare professional,” the spokesperson said. “The known risks associated with use of these medicines are reflected in their current FDA- and EMA-approved product labeling.”

Suicidal thoughts and suicides occurred in clinical trials

Despite the EMA and FDA’s continued claims of safety for GLP-1 agonists, in the clinical trials for liraglutide there was a higher incidence of suicidal thoughts versus the placebo, although the number was not statistically significant, the Japanese journal MedCheck reported in its overview of the drug, recommending against its use.

In another liraglutide trial, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, of 125 trial participants, there were three reported suicidal cases — two attempted and one completed suicide. The suicide was judged by the clinicians not to be related to the drug.

In its reporting to the FDA for Wegovy approval, Novo Nordisk also reported a slightly higher rate of suicide, which they said was not statistically significant, among participants in the semaglutide group.

They also reported four fatal events of suicide — one serious attempt and three completed suicides — in blinded data. Because the data were blinded, they reported that it could not be assessed whether the suicides were linked to the drugs.

Some argue that obese people have a mental illness that leads to an increased risk of suicidal ideation, but research doesn’t support that theory. One recent study showed that obese men in the U.S. actually have lower rates of suicidal ideation.

The issue of suicidal thoughts linked to weight-loss drugs has been a major hurdle to the drug industry’s ability to develop lucrative weight-loss drugs.

An earlier weight-loss drug — Sanofi’s Acomplia (rimonabant) — was pulled from European markets because it caused suicidal ideation. It never won approval in the U.S.

Diet pills Contrave by Currax Pharmaceuticals and Qsymia by Vivus, approved in the U.S. in 2014 and 2012, respectively, also carry warnings on their labels about the increased risk of suicidal thoughts.

Source: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/semaglutide-ozempic-wegovy-depression-suicide-study/

FDA Approves New COVID Vaccines — for Virus Strains ‘Largely Faded From Circulation’


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna which target the currently dominant Omicron variant KP.2 strain of SARS-CoV-2, the agency announced Thursday.

The new shots are recommended for all people ages 6 months and older. However, according to the FDA, the new vaccines remain under emergency use authorization (EUA) for people between ages 6 months and 11 years.

According to NBC News, the new vaccines could be available within days.

The vaccines were approved even though their clinical trial data have not been released. Manufacturers claim that “testing in animals shows the shots trigger neutralizing antibodies,” The Epoch Times reported.

According to MedPageToday, the new vaccines “are manufactured using a similar process as previous formulas of these vaccines” and “the FDA assessed manufacturing and nonclinical data” in its approval process.

NBC News quoted a Pfizer spokesperson who said the data the company submitted to the FDA indicates a “substantially improved” immune response against the currently circulating COVID-19 variants.

Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in the FDA’s statement, “Vaccination continues to be the cornerstone of COVID-19 prevention.”

“These updated vaccines meet the agency’s rigorous, scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality,” Marks said.

Pfizer, Moderna not liable for kids’ injuries from EUA vaccines

Physicians and scientists who spoke with The Defender criticized the FDA’s decision.

“With no clinical data released at all, the FDA and Marks are saying ‘trust us’ where they have not earned their trust,” said Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD).

“The COVID shots have no benefit whatsoever,” said Steve Kirsch, founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation. “They actually increase your risk of infection. They don’t reduce your risk of hospitalization or death. They do increase your all-cause mortality. They are all downside.”

Kirsch called it “astonishing” that public health agencies have not evaluated “all the evidence in plain sight” regarding the risks and adverse effects of the vaccines.

Dr. Peter McCullough told The Defender, “FDA approval of these vaccines is reckless and reprehensible. The new COVID-19 shots are not medically necessary nor clinically indicated. Pfizer and Moderna have not done cumulative dose toxicity studies or said how much mRNA and spike protein build up in the body with each shot.”

Pediatrician Dr. Michelle Perro said children and pregnant women are at risk from the new vaccines. She said the vaccines have “caused innumerable harms to children, including neurologic, immunologic, and cardiac toxicity.”

“There is never a time women or children should receive this genetic engineered product which has been shown to contain contamination with DNA fragments that are potentially genotoxic,” Perro said.

Because the new vaccines remain under an EUA for children under 11, they are still subject to the immunity shield manufacturers enjoy under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act).

“There are still no licensed COVID-19 vaccines available for children,” said Ray Flores, senior outside counsel for CHD. Even though the White House ended the COVID-19 public health emergency in May 2023, the PREP Act’s liability protections were extended through the end of 2024 — and may be extended again.

“The fact that COVID-19 vaccines are still being approved and authorized gives me pause,” Flores said. “The FDA’s announcement concerning these late-model vaccines all but guarantees that PREP Act liability protection will continue well into 2025 and beyond,” Flores said.

Flores noted that both the Pfizer and Moderna contracts allow distribution in the U.S. only if these vaccines are covered by the PREP Act.”

Waning efficacy, risk of injury among reasons cited for low uptake rates

In an interview with NPR Thursday, Marks appears to have hedged concerning the effectiveness of the new vaccines.

“The vaccine is not intended to be perfect,” Marks said. “It’s not going to absolutely prevent COVID-19. … But if we can prevent people from getting serious cases that end them up in emergency rooms, hospitals or worse — dead — that’s what we’re trying to do with these vaccines.”

Marks suggested people recently infected with COVID-19 should wait two to three months before getting the new vaccine, in a nod toward natural immunity.

But other experts argued immunity makes it unnecessary to get vaccinated.

“By now, almost everyone has had a bout of COVID — more than 87% of Americans according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] — so most everyone has some degree of natural immunity, making new infections much less worrisome than in the past,” said Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D., professor emeritus and senior research scientist in epidemiology (chronic diseases) at the Yale School of Public Health.

NBC News and The Epoch Times both noted that the protection offered by previous versions of the COVID-19 vaccines quickly waned.

Citing the New England Journal of Medicine, NBC News reported that protection from prior versions of the vaccine peaked “about a month after the shot” before waning, “even when the vaccine is well matched to the circulating strains.”

The Epoch Times cited CDC figures noting that protection against hospitalization afforded by prior COVID-19 vaccines “plunged to 4 percent after several months.”

Yet, Marks told NPR the new vaccines will reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19 by 60%-70% and will cut the risk of serious illness by 80%-90%.

Despite these safety assurances, there are indications that many people are wary of the shots. Citing CDC data, NBC News reported that 22.5% of adults and 14.4% of children ages 6 months through 17 years received last year’s version of the updated vaccines.

According to MedPageToday, even in the high-risk group of seniors ages 75 and over, less than half — 42% — received the COVID-19 vaccines in 2023-2024.

The FDA also claimed a low risk of serious adverse events connected to the COVID-19 vaccines.

“Serious side effects, such as the life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis,” following COVID-19 vaccination, “are rare,” the FDA stated.

According to NBC News, “Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines have been associated with a small but increased risk of myocarditis,” adding that “Most people make a full recovery.” The FDA’s announcement makes little mention of potential adverse reactions, but says the vaccine’s “benefits outweigh the risks.”

But Perro told The Defender, “For individuals who have unfortunately developed cardiac toxicity, recovery is difficult due to persistent circulation of spike protein.”

New vaccines target strains that ‘have largely faded from circulation’

According to NBC News, this is “the third time the vaccines have been updated to match circulating strains since the original series,” noting that the new vaccines are being released amid an uptick in positive COVID-19 cases, emergency room visits and hospitalizations related to the disease.

The FDA said it advised vaccine manufacturers in June that new versions of the COVID-19 vaccines should target the JN.1 variant. However, the FDA later revised its recommendation, advising manufacturers to target the KP.2 strain.

Yet, according to NPR, both of the new vaccines “target strains that have already been overtaken by even newer variants.”

According to a June 13 NBC News article, “As of Saturday, a sister strain called KP.3.1.1 accounts for about 36% of all new Covid cases, while another sister strain, KP.3, accounts for about 17%.”

“JN.1 and KP.2 have largely faded from circulation,” NBC News said in December 2023, citing the CDC COVID Data Tracker.

The FDA is also reviewing an application from Novavax for its own updated COVID-19 vaccine — which targets JN.1, according to NPR.

Yet, according to Marks, “Given waning immunity of the population from previous exposure to the virus and from prior vaccination, we strongly encourage those who are eligible to consider receiving an updated COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variants.”

Experts questioned these claims.

“Introduction of this ‘new’ vaccine designed for evolving strains is flawed science. By the time they are developed, the virus will have again evolved,” Perro said.

“By the time that the vaccine is received and new immunity developed, it will be mostly gone, with KP.3 variants in the great majority,” Risch said. “At this point, the benefit of another dose of COVID vaccine is pretty doubtful,” Risch said.

Source: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fda-approves-new-covid-vaccines-virus-strains-faded-circulation/?utm_source=luminate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defender&utm_id=20240823

Breaking: RFK Jr. Suspends Presidential Campaign, Will Join Forces With Trump to ‘Save Millions of Children’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today suspended his campaign for president of the United States as an independent, telling the media he no longer saw a path forward to victory “in the face of relentless censorship.”

Kennedy said that following discussions with former President Donald Trump, he has agreed to join forces with Trump in a unity party, which will allow the two to work together on “existential issues,” including ending the war on Ukraine, censorship and the childhood chronic disease epidemic.

“I believe I have a moral obligation to use this opportunity to save millions of children,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy, founder and chairman on leave from Children’s Health Defense — whose campaign defied the odds by gathering more than 1 million signatures in a drive to get on the ballot in all 50 states — said he will remain on the ballot except in a handful of battleground states.

Kennedy delivered a scathing rebuke to the Democratic Party and the DNC, which he said “dragged us into court, state after state after state” in a campaign of “legal warfare” to keep him off the ballot.

He promised that if Trump is elected, in addition to ending chronic disease in children, he will work with Trump to clean up corrupt agencies and the “corrupt food system.”

Kennedy said he reached out to the Harris campaign in an attempt to engage them on issues he believes are critical to the country’s future, but the campaign didn’t respond.

Calling it a difficult choice to join the Trump campaign Kennedy said, “I have the certainty that this is what I’m meant to do. … Ultimately the only thing that will save our country and our children is if we choose to love our kids more than we hate each other.”

Kennedy launched his campaign on April 20, 2023, with a nearly two-hour speech in Boston, during which he vowed to reduce chronic disease in children.

He reminded the audience of the obligation America’s leaders have to protect children — from toxic pesticides, from dangerous pharmaceuticals and from the “corrupt merger of state and corporate power” that robs future generations of their health and of their ability to achieve financial security.

On Oct. 9, 2023, Kennedy said he would no longer challenge President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president, announcing that he instead would run for president as an independent.

He told a crowd in Philadelphia that most Americans are tired of divisive politics and that they agree more than they disagree when it comes to issues like the environment, education and the economy.

“We agree that we want a clean environment and wholesome communities for our kids,” Kennedy said.

He accused both parties of being beholden to corporate donors.

Source: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/robert-kennedy-jr-campaign-announcement-trump/?utm_source=luminate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=defender&utm_id=20240823

Perimeter Fencing Removal and Street Opening to Begin as the Democratic National Convention Concludes


Perimeter Fencing Removal and Street Opening to Begin as the Democratic National Convention Concludes

CHICAGO: The City of Chicago is working with partners to reopen the area around the United Center and McCormick Place as the convention concludes on Thursday, August 22. The security infrastructure will be removed as quickly as possible, and residents should expect temporary street impacts due to structure removal in and around the secure areas. It is anticipated that removal of United Center and McCormick Place security infrastructure will begin in the early morning hours of August 23.

McCormick Place Perimeter Reopening Timeline

(all times subject to change)

Thursday, August 22

· 6 p.m. Perimeter take-down set to begin.

Friday, August 23

· 3 p.m. All major intersections cleared. I-55 off-ramp will be open.

Sunday, August 25

· 6 a.m. – Cermak from Michigan to Indiana will be clear.

· 8 a.m. – All area open and 75% of assets cleared off curbs.

Monday, August 26

· 6 a.m. – 100% of assets removed – area completely reopened.

United Center Perimeter Reopening Timeline

(all times subject to change)

Friday, August 23

· 1 a.m. – Takedown to begin (subject to change)

Saturday, August 24

· Noon – Damen, Wood, and Adams open (if possible)

· Most major intersections cleared for traffic.

Sunday, August 25

· 11:59 p.m. – All areas open & 75% of assets cleared off curbs

Monday, August 26

· 11:59 p.m. – All assets removed, reopen complete.

Community Impacts

· Access to Henry Horner Homes will continue to be through the parking lot off Paulina the same way they have come in over the DNC. Access to their area prior to the DNC will be available as of 23:59 Sunday August 25.

· Churches on Washington Blvd and on Damen will be accessible as usual by 6 a.m. Sunday August 25.

· The priority will be to open the Vehicle Check Point:

o At Damen & Jackson for regular traffic, at the same time Damen & Michigan at Warren, Washington, and Damen.

o East access during strike will be open at Madison & Paulina.

o South access will be open at Damen & Jackson

Motorists in the areas around McCormick Place and the United Center during the breakdown should be prepared for possible lane closures to ensure public safety.

Emergency Alerts for Residents and Businesses

OEMC will continue to monitor events and weather and will issue any emergency alerts and notifications as necessary. Get alerts and notifications from OEMC to keep residents and businesses up to date on weather and traffic conditions as well as emergencies:

· DNC 2024 Alert: To opt in, TEXT “DNC” to 2-2-6-7-8-7

· Notify Chicago: Sign up for emergency alerts at notifychicago.org

· CHILAKE: For lakefront notices, TEXT “CHILAKE” to 7-8-0-1-5

· CHIBIZ: Business updates, TEXT “CHIBIZ” to 6-7-2-8-3

For additional information on emergency preparedness information, visit OEMC’s website at Chicago.gov/OEMC. Follow the Office of Emergency Management and Communications on Facebook, X/Twitter (@ChicagoOEMC) and Instagram (chicago_oemc_911) using the hashtags #ChicagoOEMC

Source: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/oem.html

Attention NABJ: Is The Vice President Indian, AmerAsian, Black, Asian or People of Color?


After shaking hands with former President Donald Trump, ABC Correspondent Rachel Scott came out swinging at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Convention on Wednesday, July 31, 2024 at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago in front of a packed crowd, where there were cheers and jeers.

Scott was one of three Black women from three major networks interviewing Trump, the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States. She said, "Let's address the elephant in the room." Some people think it's not appropriate for you to be here and why should Blacks vote for you when you have said things like "Go back to where you came from," "stupid," "crazy," "animals," "loser," language like that.

His response: He had never been asked a question in such a horrible manner. He sai it was not a question, it was a statement, and he was there because he was invited. He was told his opponent would be there, too, so that was under false pretense, he said. They are going to allow her to be interviewed on Zoom.

He said President Biden was removed because he was osing and it was like changing a fighter in the middle of a fight. He said they (NABJ panel organizers) were 35 minutes late because the equipment was of poor quality and he could hardly hear the questions from Harriet Faulkner of Fox News. He had a lovely interview with her, he said. He said ABC was "fake news."

He was asked if he thought he had made a mistake by choosing J.D. Vance as his running mate because of some of the things he had said about how families with children should have more power. His answer was Vance is a family man, a success and he admired people like himl However people vote for the President, not the Vice President. 

The crowd reacted when Trump said he was the greatest President for Black people since Abraham Lincoln and he cited the long term financing for Historically Black Colleges and Opportunity Zones. 

He didn't mention Public Law 115-102, enacted by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives January 6, 2018. It's called the 400 Years of African American History Commemoration Act. 

It's purpose is to plan, develop, and carry out programs and activities throughout the United States to recognize and highlight the resilience and contributions of African Americans, since 1619, and to acknowledge the impact slavery and laws that enforced racial discrimination had on America. The Commissioners were to educate the people about the arrival of AfricanAmericans to the United States before 1776.

The Commissioners were to encourage civic participation, historical, educational, artistic, religious, economics and other organizations or individuals.

The First Step Act was not mentioned either. It addressed the Crime Bill, which was written by Joe Biden (when he was a Senator) with early release of returning citizens tht disproportionately impacted African Americans because of mandatory jail time and three felonies and you are in jail for life. It added $100 million a year for housing, job development and child care.

Trump blamed inflation as the reason families were having problems buying groceries and gasoline. He said illegal immigrants were taking Black jobs, Hispanic jobs. All jobs are black jobs and he said he was going to stop it. He said he had no problems with legal immigration, but the worse were coming in illegally.

The name of Sonya Massey came up. She was one of three Black mothers murdered in their homes in Illinois, in less than 2 weeks during the 4th of July weekend that he said 117 were shot and 19 killed, When he ws President he sent a letter, dated June 26, 2020, asking Governor J. B. Pritzker and former Mayor Lori Lightfoot to forget partisan views to hep the citizens of Chicago have the safe city they deserve. During that time, 18 murders in 24 hours, a Sun Times article detailed how 85 people were shot and 24 killed in the previous weekend.

He said violence and death was disproportionately harming young African Americans. He cited millions in federal funds each year sent to Chicago. In 2018-2019, Chicago benefited from $136 million in funding from the Urban Area Security Initiative Grant Program.

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/editorial%2Fcommentary

44th U.S. President Barack Obama Says "Yes She Can!"


He joked that he hadn't aged a bit, but the grey hairs on his once full head of black hair reminded the audience that he served 8 years in perhaps the world's most stressful, highly pressurized job - President of the United States. As the crowd waved signs and chanted his signature phrase "Yes We Can!" America's 44th President Barack Obama declared"I am feeling fired up. I am'm feeling ready to go!" He joked that he was the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama, acknowledging the brilliance of his wife's address that brought the audience to its feet with thunderous applause over and over again.

"I am feeling hopeful, because this convention has always been good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible, because we have a chance to elect someone who has spent her entire life trying to give people the same chances America gave her. Someone who sees you, and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you, the next President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris."

He spelled out the benefits of a Kamala Harris Presidency. "Kamala knows if we want to help people get ahead, we need to put a college degree within reach of more Americans. But she also knows college shouldn't be the only ticket to the middle class. We need to follow the lead of Governors like Tim Walz who said, 'If you've got the skills and the drive you shouldn't need a degree to work for state government.' And in this new economy, e need a President who actually cares about the millions of people all across this country, who wake up every single day to do the essential often thankless work, to care for our sick, to clean our streets, to deliver our packages. We need a President to stand up for their right to bargan for better wages and working conditions, and Kamala will be that President.  Yes, She Can. Yes, She Can."

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/

News coverage and analysis of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The Chicago 2024 Host Committee on Wednesday announced the locations of the three giant parties it is throwing to kick off the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The convention runs Aug. 19-22, with thousands of delegates and journalists expected to begin arriving the weekend before.

The events are highlighting Chicago eateries and products made in the city. Eli’s Cheesecake, a company with a long history in Chicago, is making 1,000-pound “mega cheesecakes” for the parties.

Aug. 15: Volunteer appreciation rally

Thousands of volunteers have been recruited for the convention. About 6,000 to 8,000 are expected at an event for them Aug. 15, at a party and rally at Wrigley Field.

The host committee said in a statement: “The rally will be an opportunity for volunteers to receive a briefing on assignment information, meet their fellow volunteers and get energized for the monumental week ahead.

“Attendees will have the chance to stand on the home plate of the Chicago Cubs and snag a photo with the 2016 World Series trophy. The event will also feature performances by local talent, including the Kenwood Academy Marching Broncos and Majorettes.”

Aug. 17: Media welcome party

The Republicans in Milwaukee never threw a party for thousands of visiting journalists.

The Chicago Host committee is planning a bash at Navy Pier for about 8,000 to 10,000 reporters from the U.S. and international outlets at the Aon Grand Ballroom at the east end of the pier. That’s the same place the 1996 Chicago Host Committee booked for the media party for the last Democratic convention in the city.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speak at a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) ORG XMIT: PAMR387

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, at a campaign rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday.Associated Press

The party is underwritten by the United Association, which is the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry.

The Paramount Group, a Chicago-based, a catering company owned by women, is overseeing the food operation. The host committee said the menu will include items from Chicago companies, including Yum Dum Truck, Brown Sugar Bakery, Antique Taco, Sanders BBQ Supply Co., Demera Restaurant, Saigon Sisters and more.

Jeff Wang, owner of Yum Dum Truck, which is serving a media outlet during the DNC, poses for a photo on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. | Peyton Reich/Sun-Times

Jeff Wang, owner of Yum Dum Truck, is one of the local vendors serving food at the upcoming DNC.Peyton Reich/Sun-Times

Choose Chicago, the main Chicago tourism agency, is a sponsor of the entertainment. The party “will feature a performance by a super group of Chicago blues and house music talent: Billy Branch, Wayne Baker Brooks, Lori Branch and DJ Chip E. Attendees will also get to experience the acclaimed Navy Pier fireworks, the committee said.

Aug. 18: Delegate welcome party

This party, for 8,000 to 10,000 delegates, will also be at Navy Pier.

The underwriters are the National Education Association and United Association.

The host committee said: “The event will also feature performances by Chicago guitarists and vocalists. The evening will end with a special Sunday night fireworks show sponsored by Pyrotecnico Fireworks Inc., Phantom Fireworks Inc. and TNT Fireworks Inc.

“Chicago knows how to party, and we can’t wait to welcome thousands of volunteers, delegates and members of the media to some of the most memorable locations our city has to offer,” stated Christy George, Chicago 2024 host committee executive director.



“Navy Pier was proud to play an instrumental role in the 1996 convention, and we are thrilled to once again welcome delegates and members of the media back to our incredible venue,” Arnie Rivera, chief administrative and equity officer of Navy Pier, stated. “We look forward to showing the world what our city can do.”

Remembering the Maroon Resistance: A Hidden Chapter of American History

Between August 15 and August 17, 1768, though exact dates are debated, maroons fiercely fought British forces in the swamps and forests outside Charleston, SC, defending their camp, a refuge for fugitive slaves. On October 3, 1768, the Boston Chronicle published a letter dated August 16 from the South Carolina colonial government, describing a bloody conflict with a group of maroons—"a large assembly of outcast free negroes, mulattoes, and mustees."

During colonial slavery, runaway African and Indigenous captives were known as maroons. Maroons in the British colonies that became the US, like their Caribbean and Latin American counterparts, resisted and rebelled against colonial injustices to form free communities. While the history of Caribbean and Latin American maroons is well documented, their American brothers and sisters receive less attention.

Historians have identified at least fifty maroon communities in the U.S. between 1672 and 1864, particularly in sparsely settled regions of South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. In South Carolina, maroon communities were found near rivers like the Savannah and Congaree, and in Lowcountry parishes such as St. John’s and St. James Goose Creek.

The "Back Swamp Maroon Camp" on the Savannah River islands conducted raids into modern-day Allendale, Barnwell, Hampton, and Jasper Counties, targeting plantations and freeing African and Indian slaves. Despite raids in 1765, 1771, and 1786-1787, few maroons were captured; most vanished into the swamp.

Typically, maroons were young men who escaped alone, though about 30% fled in groups. Runaway groups often consisted of Africans with shared backgrounds, numbering two to eight. Women and children also joined maroon settlements as family units.

Maroon communities had complex relationships with Native Americans, sometimes receiving aid or shelter but also being captured for rewards.

After the American Revolutionary War, maroons who had been persuaded to fight alongside with the British were pursued by state militias. In the late 1780s, major clashes with a large maroon group on the Savannah River led to the abandonment of their settlement. Captured maroons were often executed, while survivors retreated further inland. Despite ongoing conflicts, maroons resisted into the Civil War, with an attack near Marion, SC in June 1861 highlighting their presence until emancipation. 

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Images:

1)ABHM produced Illustration depicting self-emancipated Black people living

in the swamps and forests across the US before the Civil War. 

2) Rutgers produced map of maroon communities and major slave revolts.

3) "Fugitive Slaves in the Dismal Swamp", Virginia, 1888, oil on canvas, 17 x 14 in., on display at the New-York Historical Society.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dr-james-cameron-legacy-foundation-inc/posts/

Vice President Kamala Harris Reportedly Surges In Polls With MN Governor Tim Walz As Running Mate

Democratic Party leaders and government officials have praised Vice President Kamala Harris' selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, and popular support for her candidacy has reportedly surged in the polls.

Capturing the southern rural vote was a key part of the Vice President's strategy in selecting Tim Walz, observed Anderson Clayton, North Carolina Democratic Party Chair. Clayton, who is part of the group Rural Americans for Harris, said Gov. Walz's background as a teacher and a veteran from the Midwest would appeal to that group which has tended to support Republican candidates.

"The Harris-Walz ticket will be a powerful voice for working people and America's great middle class," President Biden stated.  Endorsements for the Harris-Walz ticket have been pouring from a variety of national organizations, demonstrating a diverse base of support. 

Amidst the controversy over immigration policies, the nation's oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) has endorsed the Kamala Harris for President. Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc., the sorority of which Vice President Harris is a member, has formed a political action committee which will allow the country's oldest Black sorority to raise money in support of a political candidate.

Democratic National Convention Chair Minyon Moore on the op-ed page of The Grio stated "It's hard to overstate the significance of this moment, for the first time ever - a Black woman has secured the presidential nomination of a major party. But history doesn't just happen - it's made. And it's important for us to remember how we got here."

She called the decision of President Biden to step out of the race "courageous" and said, "If Donald Trump's first term in office taught us anything, its that the decision we make at the ballot box will define not just the next four years, but the next 50."

Former President Bill Clinton said Walz was a "terrific" choice for Vice President and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her post on X, "From providing free meals for school kids to implementing paid family leave in Minnesota, he's about doing good in all the ways you can."

Vice President Harris recently launched the group "Republicans For Harris" in New Hampshire and picked up the endorsement of the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, John Giles. Former Green Beret Jim Steiner is reportedly leading the charge in New Hampshire for electing Vice President Harrusm abd told Boston.com, "I think there are a lot of Republican voters who are less than enchanted with Donald Trump."

All eyes are on Chicago for the week of Monday August 19 through Thursday August 22, 2024, when the Democratic Party will make the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris official and the battle for the White House is on. The next big event is the highly anticipated debates between Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump.

In her article in The Grio, DNC Chair Minyon Moore said, "From inside the United Center, we will introduce our nominees to the country. We will hear directly from the people who know them best. We will showcase stories from Americans across the country whose freedoms hinge on this election. We will give Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz a stage to lay out their bold vision for the future. It's a vision of hope, freedom and possibility - and it stands in stark contrast with the vision that Donald Trump is trying to drag us back to."

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/home

Kamala Harris economic plan to focus on groceries, housing and healthcare

Kamala Harris will announce plans to tackle high grocery costs by targeting corporations in the food and grocery industry, as she previews her economic agenda ahead of the November election.

She will also tackle prescription drug and housing costs, drawing a contrast with Trump on tariffs and taxes, according to a Harris campaign statement.

Harris is expected to lay out some details of her economic plan in a speech in North Carolina on Friday.

“Same values, different vision,” said one aide, describing how Harris’s economic agenda will compare with that of Joe Biden, who stepped aside as the Democratic presidential candidate last month.

man wearing black suit and red tie behind podium and two microphones points with right hand

Tim Walz agrees to vice-presidential debate against JD Vance on 1 October

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“She’s not moving far away from him on substance, she will highlight the ones that matter most to her.”

In July, inflation fell to below 3% for the first time in nearly three and a half years, the labor department said on Wednesday, but high prices of groceries and consumer goods remain well above their pre-pandemic levels, and are front of mind for voters.

Among the plans from the Harris campaign is a federal ban on price-gouging in the industries. Most states currently have such bans in place. The ban will apply to corporations in the food and grocery industries, stopping them “from unfairly jacking up prices on consumers”.

Harris will single out meat prices, and in particular the meat-processing industry. Her first 100 days will also see support for small businesses, a “crack down on unfair mergers and acquisitions” among food corporations.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the Democrats want to ban red meat. Speaking in Pennsylvania on 31 July, he said that Harris wants to “get rid of your cows” and wants to “slash consumption of red meat”.

The Harris campaign has so far centred healthcare and abortion rights, with the first campaign ad focused on gun violence, reproductive freedom, child poverty and affordable healthcare.

Harris no longer supports measures from her short-lived 2020 presidential bid such as a fracking ban or Medicare for All, advisers told Reuters. Not all of the elements of Harris’ economic agenda will make it to the Friday speech, a draft of which is still in the works. Her campaign said it wanted to avoid dividing voters and attracting attacks from business groups over granular details, and will be “strategically ambiguous” in areas such as energy.

She will push plans to cut costs of rental housing and home ownership, including funding more affordable housing and building climate resistant communities.

“She does have a focus on housing because we know and she knows very, very clearly that housing is a crisis in this country,” said Marcia Fudge, a Harris adviser and the former housing and urban development secretary under Biden.

Harris will also draw contrasts with Trump on tax policy and tariffs and maintain Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on people who make $400,000 or less a year, advisers said. Trump slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and implemented other tax breaks that are set to expire next year.

The Trump campaign has been mulling new tax cuts for middle-class households, and has proposed eliminating taxes on tipped wages – something Harris also recently said she supported.

Trump has promised to make the tax cuts permanent and suggested new, across-the-board tariffs on imports, an idea Harris rejects.

In a campaign speech in Asheville, North Carolinawhich was billed as an address on the economy, Trump veered off topic, saying his advisers had wanted him to focus on economic concerns. He was “not sure”, however, that the economy is the most important issue of the election, he said.

Trump used a “travel-sized” box of Tic Tacs to make a point about inflation.

“This is Tic Tacs,” he said, holding up a standard-sized box of the mints. “This is inflation,” he said, holding up the smaller box. He called it the “greatest commercial they ever had”.

The Guardian contacted Ferrero, the company that makes Tic Tacs, for comment.

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Reuters: “America cannot afford another four years of Kamala’s failed economic policies. President Trump has a proven track record of making this country prosperous and affordable, and Americans can trust him to put more money back in their pockets again.”

Biden was briefed on the economy on Thursday by the US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, commerce secretary Gina Raimondo, national economic adviser Lael Brainard and others. “The group discussed the resilience of the US economy, with inflation falling below 3%, strong business investment and consumer spending, and a healthy job market,” according to a pool report.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/14/kamala-harris-economic-policy-aides

Alex Haley

Alex Haley, born Alexander Murray Palmer Haley on August 11, 1921, in Ithaca, New York, was a prominent writer known for his groundbreaking works on African American history. After serving in the U.S. Coast Guard for 20 years, Haley transitioned to writing, starting with a series of interviews for Playboy magazine. His big break came with "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" (1965), which he co-authored with Malcolm X, establishing Haley as a major literary figure.

In 1976, Haley's monumental work, "Roots," traced his ancestry from Gambia to American slavery, blending fiction and historical research. The book was a cultural phenomenon, winning the Pulitzer Prize and inspiring a 1977 miniseries that captivated a record-breaking television audience. Despite facing controversies, "Roots" significantly influenced American perspectives on race and history.

Haley's early life included a challenging educational journey. He attended Alcorn A&M College and Elizabeth City State Teachers College before joining the Coast Guard in 1939. There, he developed his writing skills, producing articles and stories that eventually led to his journalistic career.

Following the success of "Roots," Haley continued to explore his family's history with the sequel "Roots: The Next Generation" (1979) and other works like "Queen" (1993). His efforts in documenting Black experiences and advocating for racial understanding left a lasting legacy.

Haley passed away on February 10, 1992, in Seattle, Washington. He is credited with inspiring a mass interest in genealogy and contributing to a larger awareness of the horrors of racism and slavery. His work remains influential in American literature and history, celebrating the resilience and heritage of African Americans. 

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ABHM produced portrait of Alex Haley, developed from an undated black & white image published of him in the African American Registry.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dr-james-cameron-legacy-foundation-inc/posts/

Harris cautiously rolls out policy, aiming to outmaneuver Trump and address 2020 liabilities

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to outmaneuver former President Donald Trump and address old vulnerabilities on her policy positions as she starts to fill in how she would govern if elected in November.

Vice presidents rarely have policy portfolios of their own — and almost always set aside any views that differ from those of the Oval Office occupant. Now, after four years of following President Joe Biden’s lead, Harris is taking a cautious approach to unveiling a policy vision in her own right.

But her surprise ascendance to the top of the ticket after Biden dropped his reelection bid also means her policy platform is being pulled together just as quickly.

When Harris inherited Biden’s political operation in late July, the campaign’s website was quietly scrubbed of the six-point “issues” page that framed the race against Trump, from expanding voting protections to restoring nationwide access to abortion. Instead, Harris has peppered her speeches — so far heavy on biography for herself and her running mate — with broad goals like “building up the middle class.” She has called for federal laws to provide abortion access and ban assault-style weapons, but has been thin on the details of what specifically they would entail or how she would convince Congress to make progress on some of the most hot-button political issues.

Her team has offered few clues of what it will include. But the first major window into her thinking came this past weekend, with a proposal pulled not from the policy backwaters of the Biden administration or the cutting-room floor of the legislative process but from her rival: Trump.

Harris announced that she, like Trump, wants to end federal taxation of tipped earnings for workers — with the added caveat that she would limit the plan to those in the lower- and middle incomes. The idea has drawn bipartisan support in recent months and is particularly salient in service industry-heavy Nevada.

It’s also one of the few new ideas embraced by Trump in his 2024 bid to get back into the White House — a bonus in the view of the Harris camp, which has tried to needle the Republican into making unforced errors.

The Republican was none too amused by Harris endorsing the idea, complaining on his social media platform that “This was a TRUMP idea - She has no ideas, she can only steal from me.”

Trump continued on the matter in an interview with Elon Musk on Monday night, criticizing Harris for adopting his idea after what he claimed was harassment by the Biden administration of tipped workers.

On Monday, the White House said that Biden backed the plan too, though White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wouldn’t address why Biden and Harris didn’t push for it during their first three-and-a-half years in office.

“Obviously, it’s a new idea,” she said, but added later in response to criticism from Trump, “Why didn’t they pass it during the last administration?”

In her first weeks as a candidate, Harris’ most pronounced policy moves have been to back away from liberal stances she took in her failed 2020 bid for the White House, including proposals to ban fracking, establish a single-payer healthcare system and decriminalize illegal border crossings. Harris dropped out of that heated race before a single vote had been cast but recognizes that voters now could punish her for those stances if not quickly addressed.

Another complication for Harris comes from her relationship with Biden, who quickly endorsed her and handed her the keys to his political operation after he dropped out.

“The last three and a half years, they’ve been in sync,” said Jean-Pierre. “They have been certainly on the same page. And I presume that that will continue from here.”

Biden himself only began outlining detailed policy ideas for a second term during his final, frenzied effort to salvage his candidacy after his disastrous June 27 debate against Trump. He advocated for restoring abortion access, raising the federal minimum wage and passing a new surtax on billionaires. Harris has largely embraced all those priorities, including the incumbent’s call for changes to the Supreme Court.

But all those plans would require congressional support, which proved elusive even when Democrats held unified control of Washington during the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration.

Harris’ campaign, meanwhile, suggested that her attempted shifts to the center are reflective of how she would try to bring consensus to government.

“While Donald Trump is wedded to the extreme ideas in his Project 2025 agenda, Vice President Harris believes real leadership means bringing all sides together to build consensus,” said Harris spokesman Kevin Munoz. “It is that approach that made it possible for the Biden-Harris administration to achieve bipartisan breakthroughs on everything from infrastructure to gun violence prevention. As President, she will take that same pragmatic approach, focusing on common-sense solutions for the sake of progress.”

While Trump in recent weeks has resorted to personal and racially tinged attacks on his new rival, his campaign has been working to put Harris’ policy aims front and center, aiming to paint Harris as a radical liberal, pointing to old videos of her discussing policy positions during the 2020 Democratic primary.

“Kamala Harris has flip-flopped on virtually every policy she has supported and lived by for her entire career, from the Border to Tips, and the Fake News Media isn’t reporting it,” Trump posted Sunday. “She sounds more like Trump than Trump, copying almost everything. She is conning the American public, and will flip right back. I will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! There will be no flipping!!!”

Source: https://apnews.com/article/harris-policy-economy-tips-workers-middle-class-e606b41cce817e69a38663cc68ce7ad6

Trump falsely claims a crowd photo from Harris’ campaign rally in Detroit was created using AI

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been spreading false claims that an image of thousands of people waiting at Detroit’s airport as Democrat Kamala Harris arrived for a campaign rally was fabricated with the help of artificial intelligence.

Reporters, photographers and video journalists representing The Associated Press and other news organizations who either traveled with Vice President Harris or were on the airport tarmac documented the crowd size last Wednesday as she arrived on Air Force Two. Harris’ campaign also denied the photo in question was manipulated and posted about it on social media.

Fifteen thousand people attended the Detroit airport rally, Harris’ campaign said. Harris and Walz spoke from inside a hangar where people were packed in. The crowd also spilled out onto the tarmac. The Wayne County Airport Authority, which oversees the airport, referred questions about the size of the crowd to Harris’ campaign.

Thousands of people have been showing up at her campaign rallies.

By the Harris campaign’s count, 12,000 people turned out for rallies in Philadelphia and Eau Claire, Wisconsin, last week, followed by 15,000 in Glendale, Arizona. In Las Vegas on Saturday, more than 12,000 people were inside a university arena when law enforcement halted admission because people were getting ill waiting outside in the extreme 109-degree heat. About 4,000 people were waiting in line when the doors were closed.

An Associated Press reporter who covered the Harris events in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada, witnessed the throngs of people in attendance.

Trump pushed his false claims in back-to-back posts on his social media site on Sunday.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!.” he wrote. He included a post from another individual who made similar allegations about photo manipulation.

A minute later Trump posted, “Look, we caught her with a fake ‘crowd.’ There was nobody there!” He included a photo of the crowd that was partly shaded and partly exposed to the sun.

Harris’ campaign confirmed on Monday that the photo being questioned was taken by a staff member and was not in any way modified using AI.

Hany Farid, a University of California, Berkeley, professor who focuses on digital forensics and misinformation, analyzed the photo using two models trained to detect patterns of generative AI and found no evidence of manipulation. The models were developed by GetReal Labs, a company Farid co-founded.

Farid, responding Monday in an email, said he compared several versions of the photo and the only alteration he detected was some simple change to brightness or contrast, and perhaps sharpening. He said many other images and videos from the event last Wednesday show the same basic scene.

Trump started pushing false theories about the Harris campaign photo a few days after he held a news conference at his Florida estate on Thursday and was asked about the crowds at his Democratic rival’s rallies. Trump said no one draws crowds as big as he does.

“I’ve spoken to the biggest crowds. Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me,” Trump claimed at the news conference, his first since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee.

He went on to falsely compare the crowd at his speech in front of the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, to the crowd at Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial.

But King drew far more people. Approximately 250,000 people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which King gave his speech, according to the National Park Service. The Associated Press reported in 2021 that there were at least 10,000 people at Trump’s address.

Some of Trump’s top advisers and supporters have been urging the former president to focus his criticisms on Harris’ policies and talk more about the border and the economy.

“Stop questioning the size of her crowds,” was the advice former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., offered during a Fox News appearance on Monday.

The Harris campaign needled Trump on a variety of issues in an email Monday titled “9 Days Since Trump’s Last Swing State Event.” The note included a bullet point that said, “he’s very mad about crowd sizes, claiming it’s all fake and AI-generated. (Maybe if he campaigned he’d get crowds too?)”

Source: https://apnews.com/article/trump-harris-detroit-crowd-size-photo-ff54a66d8e3197c90068ba94847297cf

Trump Meets Black Journalists - Did He Answer Questions?

Amid organization controversy, Former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump was invited to address the National Association of Black Journalists at its National Convention, kicking off Wednesday July 31 at the Hilton Hotel, 720 S. Michigan Avenue.

Posed questions by NABJ members ABC Senior Congressional Correspondent for ABC News Rachel Scott, Semafor Political Reporter Kadia Goba, and anchor of the Faulkner Focus and co-host of Outnumbered on Fox News, Harris Faulkner, Former President Trump stated that he was "The best President for Black people since Abraham Lincoln.

Asked to comment on issues such as police immunity from prosecution despite killing innocent citizens, pardoning those participating in the January 6 riots, and his choice of JD Vance as his Vice President,Trump gave answers that some said were his typical non-answers.

Challenged to explain his statements that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the Democratic ticket because she is a Black woman, a DEI hire (which stands for the policy Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), the former President made remarks about Vice President Harris' ethnic background and whether she is Black or Indian.

"I've known her for a long time indirectly or directly, very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage," Trump said. " I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. So I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?

I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't, because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made the turn and she became a Black person." 

Audience members laughed at the remark, while Rachel Scott sharply reminded Trump that Vice President Harris attended an HBCU, indicating her identification with her Black heritage.

Other issues addressed included the recent killing of Sonya Massey in Illinois, the woman shot to death by police after calling 911 for help.

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/election

The War On Weeds

On July 31st, Republican candidate Donald Trump came to Chicago to appear in a three-way interview at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference. The Conference was at the Chicago Hilton Hotel on Michigan Avenue. The members of NABJ are Black journalists employed with major mainstream media, such as The New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and the like. Independent, Black-owned media are not members. Excluded from NABJ membership are Black-owned media. This needs to be fixed for the organization. So, ask about the difference between Black-owned and Black-employed media. The difference is “freedom.” The difference is employment vs. ownership.

I want to emphasize the following: On July 31st, I received numerous phone calls asking if I was present. I explained to many people that it was not my event and that Black independent media was largely absent. Black media is influential and significant in Chicago, including WVON, Chicago Defender, Chicago Crusader, NDIGO, TBT News, and others. Generally, NABJ mainly represents members from white media and serves as an excellent career fair.

It was risky to invite Trump to NABJ. He is a fool and was bound to do or say something offensive and questionable. That’s Mr. Trump's manifesto. He is a fool in simple language. But he is also a media master and knows how to strike. Indeed, he did. He made a news cycle for about a week with commentary from many who never knew about NABJ. From a public relations stance, NABJ received coverage it had never received.

He claimed he was insulted that he was not greeted with a pleasant hello; how are you? ABC political journalist Rachel Scott opened up with a tough question about Black issues. She was letter-perfect in her manner and style. The staged interview was conducted by three women: Harris Faulkner from Fox News and Kadia Goba, a reporter at Semafor.

’Trump’s team resisted and did not like or agree that the interviewers there would instantly fact-check his answers. This was challenging and unnerving because he would be held accountable for lies and wild statements. There was confusion behind the stage regarding the audio equipment. The audience of 2,000 waited patiently as the interview was threatened with cancellation.

The elephant statement that Trump made was questioning Vice President Kamala Harris’s ethnicity.

He said, “I didn’t know she was Black until several years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or Black?”

Trump seems to be obsessed with Black ethnicity as he displays a profound ignorance. First of all, you don’t “turn Black.” You are, or you aren’t.’ He questioned President Barack Obama’s birth in this country, promoting to see Obama’s birth certificate. And now, with Kamala, he raises her identity.

Black in America is complex and complicated. For the most part, ethnicity in America is determined by skin color. Therefore, both Obama and Harris are Black. However, if we examine birth history, maybe not. Obama’s parentage is that his father is Kenya/African, and his mother is White. Therefore, with brown skin, he is Black. Karmla was born to two immigrant parents: a father who is Jamaican and a mother who is Indian. She, too, is a brown child raised in Oakland. She was raised and identified as Black. Her mother was quite conscious of how her children would be racially identified living in America.

There, there is a purer Black American who is probably mixed with White blood that comes from white slave masters via an unwanted or undesirable relationship. Also, from Black African parentage. Biracial is not new to the Black Americans. It is the norm. So, what are you? At this point in American history, there are few to no pure “Black Americans.”

Depending on your skin tone, Black Americans can have light to dark skin tones, a wide variety of features, and disheveled hair. Internally, we really are a rainbow alliance. Most of the time, when we say someone is Black, we associate them with slavery and Southern heritage. Obama and Harris don't have any family history of slavery. Thus, are they to be regarded as "Black" or not? The rule in the South during the Jim Crow era and for those who were slaves was "one drop" of Black blood, which established your race. There is no direct parental relationship between Obama and Harris. But they could only be Black in America due to the color of their skin. They might have been regarded as "mulatto," which means mixed, in a different century.

So, let’s flip the script. I would love to see Dr. Henry Louis Gates—who conducts genealogy research on “Finding Your Roots” for Donald Trump.

Courtesy of N'Digo Magapaper - Dr. Hermene Hartman

The War On Weeds

When are you gonna get rid of those weeds, my father would ask every time he visited my Vermont lawn. Splotched with purple thyme, yellow dandelions and white clovers, the lawn attracted honeybees and, later in the season, fireflies. He and I saw the same plants, but we had learned to see differently. Where my father saw interlopers, I saw residents.

For most of my childhood, my father was at war on his quarter-acre plot, my childhood backyard. In some of my most vivid memories, he struggles with the lawnmower, sweat beading on his arm hair. He curses the crabgrass, he drenches dandelions and clovers with chemicals from white spray bottles he got at the hardware store down the street. It was an endless battle.

My father was a Vietnam veteran and a lifelong Republican. He liked to say that women belong in the kitchen. I had become an environmental studies professor, a member of the East Coast liberal elite, a daughter he was ashamed to introduce to his friends at the Post.

He died a few years ago of multiple myeloma, a brutal cancer that riddled his bones with holes. Until the end, he was convinced that being exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam had caused the disease. He had lived half a century longer than many of the young men he’d served with, and he felt ashamed, I think, of the extra time.

In the weeks after his death, I looked up the logbooks of his aircraft carrier, hoping to piece together whether he would have been exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. I later realized he’d been exposed to it in our backyard.

Source: https://www.noemamag.com/the-war-on-weeds/    

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota here. Vice President Harris just asked me to be her running mate. I had three words for her: I'm all in!

As a former social studies teacher and football coach, I'll say it feels like the first day of school. Kamala Harris is showing us the politics of what's possible, and she'll lead with that same joy and grace as our next president.

But the only way we win this thing is if we stick together, so please allow me to ask…

Will you pitch in to help elect our team and Democrats nationwide? Every dollar allows our team to hire more organizers to talk to voters across the country and remind them what’s at stake in this election.

https://kamala-harris.us/7dCf4H

Trump's billionaire buddies on Wall Street are predicting we'll come up short. That's one bad bet.

Time to prove them wrong,

Tim

Friend, it’s Kamala Harris. I’m pleased to share that I’ve made my decision: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will join our campaign as my running mate.

Tim is a battle-tested leader who has an incredible track record of getting things done for Minnesota families. I know that he will bring that same principled leadership to our campaign, and to the office of the vice president.

Now, would you pitch in to welcome Tim to our ticket and support Democrats nationwide? We are relying on your immediate support to defeat Donald Trump and JD Vance.

https://kamala-harris.us/7b62N9

It means the world to me, to Tim, and to our families to have you in our corner.

– Kamala

Ihekweme Chidiegwu



We were taught Queen Elizabeth of England in school but we were never taught our own Queens in Afrika.

7 greatest African queens you should learn about them.

1)- Queen Amina of Zaria, Nigeria 🇳🇬

2)- Queen Makeda of sheba, Ethiopia 🇪🇹

3)- Queen Kandake, Sudan 🇸🇩 

4)- queen Nefertiti of ancient kemet, Egypt 🇪🇬

5)- Queen Asantewa of Ashanti kingdom, Ghana 🇬🇭

6)- Queen Nandi of Zulu kingdom, South Africa 🇿🇦 

7)- Queen Moremi of Ile-Ife kingdom, Nigeria 🇳🇬.

These are queens that existed, but I was never thought about them in school history.

Follow Ihekweme Chidiegwu

Source: https://www.facebook.com/chidiegwu.ihekweme.1           

America's Black Holocaust Museum

When the US began only property-owning white men aged 21 and older had the right to vote. The 15th Amendment in 1870 abolished racial voting restrictions, but states still discriminated against Black voters. White women gained voting rights in 1920, but it wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965—after years of violence and advocacy—that Black Americans finally gained fair access to the voting booth. 

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, a landmark moment in American history. Following a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda, President Johnson, along with congressional leaders, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and other key figures, gathered in the President's Room near the Senate Chamber for the signing of the bill. This momentous occasion underscored the support and the historic nature of the legislation, reflecting a collective commitment to advancing civil rights.

Voting can be profound, as it empowers individuals to choose representatives, hold officials accountable, and influence policies that affect their lives. The Voting Rights Act was a crucial step in ensuring that every citizen could exercise this fundamental right equally. This pivotal legislation aimed to dismantle the systemic barriers that had long disenfranchised Black and brown voters. By enforcing the 15th Amendment's guarantee that voting rights should not be denied based on race, the Act sought to eliminate discriminatory practices such as literacy tests and poll taxes.

Despite its transformative impact, recent efforts have sought to undermine the Act’s protections. The Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision invalidated the pre-clearance requirement of Section 5, leading to new restrictive voting laws. Furthermore, the 2021 ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee made it more challenging to bring lawsuits under Section 2, further weakening the Act's effectiveness. 

As we commemorate the signing of this vital law, it is essential to acknowledge both its profound impact and the ongoing challenges it faces. Strengthening and modernizing the Voting Rights Act remains crucial to ensuring that every American’s right to vote is protected and that the nation remains inclusive and equitable for all. 

hashtag#OnThisDay hashtag#AmericanHistory hashtag#Remembrance hashtag#VotingRights

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Images:

1&2) President Lyndon Johnson with Martin Luther King, Jr. and others at the signing of the Voting Rights Act. August 6th, 1965. Johnson Library and Museum.

3) Photograph of Leaders at the head of the March on Washington, D.C. August 28, 1963.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dr-james-cameron-legacy-foundation-inc_onthisday-americanhistory-remembrance-activity-7226558290925682688--Cqq?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

NABJ's Conversation with Donald Trump Gets Laughs and Anger

CHICAGO - The National Association of Black Journalists continued its tradition of meeting with Presidents and Presidential hopefuls during election years, hosting "A Conversation With Donald Trump" on the first day of the NABJ National Convention Wednesday July 31, 2024.

Former President Donald Trump was drilled by a panel of journalists, ABC Senior Congressional Correspondent for ABC News Rachel Scott, Semafor Political Reporter Kadia Goba, and anchor of the Faulkner Focus and co-host of Outnumbered on Fox News, Harris Faulkner, who asked questions about his policies during his Presidency and the public statements he has made that many found offensive.

"A lot of people did not think it was appropriate for you to be here today," Rachel Scott began. "You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals from Nicki Haley to former President Barack Obama, saying that they were not born in the United States (which is not true), you have told four Congresswomen of color who were American citizens to "go back to where they came from," you have used words like "animal" and "rabid" to describe Black District Attorneys, you attacked Black journalists, calling them "losers" saying the questions that they asked were "stupid and racist", you had dinner with a White Supremacist at your Mar-A-Lago Resort. So my question, Sir, now that you are asking Black supporters to vote for you, why should Black voters trust you, after you have used language like that?" 

Donald Trump responded, "Well, first of all, I don't think I've ever been asked a question so, in such a horrible manner, firstly." The audience laughed as he continued, " You didn't even say, 'Hello, how are you?' Are you with ABC? Because I think they're a fake news network. And I think it's disgraceful that I came here in good spirit, I love the Black population of this country, I've done so much for the Black population of this country, including employment, including opportunity zones with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, which is one of the greatest programs ever for Black workers and Black entrepreneurs. I've done so much and, you know, and I say this, that Historically Black Colleges and Universities were out of money, they were stone cold broke, and I saved them and I gave them long term financing and nobody else was doing it. 

Former President Donald Trump faced tough questions from journalists that some say he never really answered at the National Association of Black Journalists convention that kicked off Wednesday July 31, 2024 at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago. Photo by Marcus Robinson/ON AIR Daily News

"I think it's a very rude introduction, I don't know exactly why you would do something like that, and let me go a step further, I was invited here, and I was told my opponent, whether it was Biden or Kamala, I was told my opponent was going to be here. It turned out my opponent isn't here. You invited me under false pretenses. And then you said, "You can't do it with Zoom." Well, you know, where's Zoom? She's going to do it with Zoom, and she's not coming. And then you were a half an hour late, just so we understand, I have too much respect for you to be late, they could n't get their equipment working or something, I think it was a very nasty question, I have answered the question, I have been the best President for the Black people since Abraham Lincoln."

And so the tone was set for this interview with former President Donald Trump, scheduled to last one hour but abruptly cut short after 35 minutes. NABJ members reacted to what they heard.

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/home

NABJ Chicago Chapter Hosts National Convention

The National Association of Black Journalists Chicago Chapter is hosting this year's NABJ Convention and Career Fair Wednesday July 31 through Sunday August 4, 2024, an event which will attract industry leaders, innovators and influencers in journalism, media, technology, business, government, community service, health, arts, entertainment, and academia.

The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) was formed to empower those in the media business to remove racial bias in news reporting. Demands for diversity in Network news organizations resulted in jobs for Black journalists across the country, who often challenged the mainstream message in the news by bringing a different perspective. 

NABJ Chicago Chapter President Brandon Pope, who is a reporter and anchor at WCIU, and Host of On The Block powered by Block Club Chicago, said, "NABJ was a mentorship and guide and a navigation for me that powered my career." He stated in an interview on Monday Morning Mindfulness with host Zelda Robinson on The Female Solution Global Radio TV Show, "Ultimately, when it comes to Black journalists we definitely face challenges when we work for corporate entities in tines where you do need the Black voice. That's why it's important that we're in there." 

He observed that Black journalists often have to speak up when they believe something isn't being reported fairly, even if it means risking their jobs. By forming a national organization with chapters in cities across the country, Black journalists have made the power of their voices felt and have welded influence when it comes to commanding an audience with national leaders. 

Brandon Pope noted that at past NABJ National Conventions, special guest speakers have included then-Senator Barack Obama (who later became America's first Black President, President George W. Bush, President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden (who is the current U.S. President) and Vice President President Kamala Harris, who is now the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for U.S. President. 

The NABJ National Convention is being held two weeks before the Democratic National Convention and two weeks after the Republican National Convention, and Presidential candidates from both parties have been invited to take advantage of the opportunity to address thousands of the nation's best and brightest journalists, media executives, journalism educators, communications and marketing professionals and students at this impactful convention. The DNC will also have a mixer with Black Journalists during the NABJ Convention, however the RNC reportedly will not. Convention attendees may register for specific events or may attend the entire convention. Some events require an RSVP and may already be filled to capacity.

NABJ Chicago Chapter President Brandon Pope appears on Monday Morning Mindfulness on The Female Solution Global Radio/TV Show Monday July 29, 2024 to explain how the National Association of Black Journalists has empowered Blacks media professionals to influence the communications industry. NABJ members from across the nation will attend the National Convention which begins Wednesday, July 31st in Chicago. The interview with Brandon Pope is below.

NABJ 2024 Convention & Career Fair will be held at the Hilton Chicago, 720 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago. All sessions, workshops, plenaries, forums, networking activities, meal events, and our high-demand career fair will be held on-site.

The NABJ24 Career Fair will draw hundreds of recruiters from top media companies, businesses and journalism schools from across the country and around the world. This is a great opportunity for journalists seeking career advancement and journalism students to make connections in the industry.

Emerson College of Boston Journalism Professor Cheryl Charles, who is accompanying two Emerson College Journalism students to the NABJ Convention, said, "We're looking forward to the Job Fair and Career Fair and getting out and learning more. They are both intelligent and engaging young women. One of them will be attending grad school in Chicago, she'll be able to learn more about the city where she'll be attending school, and the other is a rising Junior who is currently an intern at the Boston Globe. I'm excited to be chaperoning them and being there as they learn how to network and hone their craft. There are plenty of workshops and panel discussions for them to attend."

Chicago is a vibrant city where the Black community has had a lasting impact on culture and history worldwide, including a legacy of thriving Black owned businesses and cultural institutions. As a multi-cultural city that thrives on the harmony and diversity of its neighborhoods, it offers a unique, enjoyable experience for conference attendees.

To register for the 2024 NABJ National Convention, go www.nabj.org

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/business

America's Black Holocaust Museum

On July 27, 1919, Chicago was enduring a brutal heatwave, and thousands sought relief at the beaches along Lake Michigan. Among them was 17-year-old Eugene Williams, who accidentally drifted into the white-only section of the 29th Street Beach on a raft. A white beachgoer, angered by this, began throwing rocks, causing Eugene to fall into the water and drown. His death sparked one of the most violent race massacres in U.S. history.

This terrorizing event was part of the broader "Red Summer" of 1919, a period marked by racial violence across the country. In Chicago, the unrest had been brewing for years due to rapid demographic changes. African Americans, fleeing the South's racial violence and seeking better opportunities, had moved in large numbers to Northern cities like Chicago. This influx strained resources and fueled resentment among existing residents, including European immigrants who felt their job prospects were threatened.

The return of Black World War I veterans, who had experienced a degree of equality abroad, intensified tensions as they were met with renewed racial discrimination at home. The riot was exacerbated by police inaction, leading to further violence.

The Chicago massacre lasted almost a week. The aftermath "officially" saw 38 people dead, over 350 injured, and about 1,000 Black homes destroyed with many more looted and damaged. The violence extended to other cities, including Washington, D.C., and Elaine, Arkansas, where around 200 were killed.

The Red Summer's legacy is still relevant today. The cycle of racial violence and injustice continues to echo in current struggles for equality. Chicago is commemorating the centennial with events aimed at understanding and preventing such tragedies in the future. 

hashtag#OnThisDay hashtag#Remembrance hashtag#AmericanHistory hashtag#RedSummer

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Images:

1) Chicago Daily Tribune, July 29, 1919

2) Beginning of the massacre. People leaving the 29th St. beach after the drowning of Eugene Williams. Library of Congress

3) Mob running through neighborhood with bricks looking for Black Americans during Chicago race massacre of 1919.

4) White children raiding a Black American family's house after they were forced out during the 1919 Chicago race massacre. Chicago History Museum 

5) A group of men and armed National Guard during the race massacre in 1919. Chicago History Museum

6) Published map of the initial "hot spots" during the Chicago race massacre of 1919.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7222988975630618624/

Trump Meets Black Journalists - Did He Answer Questions?

Amid organization controversy, Former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump was invited to address the National Association of Black Journalists at its National Convention, kicking off Wednesday July 31 at the Hilton Hotel, 720 S. Michigan Avenue.

Posed questions by NABJ members ABC Senior Congressional Correspondent for ABC News Rachel Scott, Semafor Political Reporter Kadia Goba, and anchor of the Faulkner Focus and co-host of Outnumbered on Fox News, Harris Faulkner, Former President Trump stated that he was "The best President for Black people since Abraham Lincoln.

Asked to comment on issues such as police immunity from prosecution despite killing innocent citizens, pardoning those participating in the January 6 riots, and his choice of JD Vance as his Vice President, Trump gave answers that some said were his typical non-answers.

Challenged to explain his statements that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the Democratic ticket because she is a Black woman, a DEI hire (which stands for the policy Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), the former President made remarks about Vice President Harris' ethnic background and whether she is Black or Indian.

"I've known for a long time indirectly or directly, very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage," Trump said. " I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. So I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?

I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't, because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made the turn and she became a Black person." 

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/election

Houston Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee dies at 74

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat who represented much of Houston in Congress for nearly 30 years, has died, according to a statement released by her family Friday night. She was 74.

"Today, with incredible grief for our loss yet deep gratitude for the life she shared with us, we announce the passing of United States Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of the 18th Congressional District of Texas," the statement read.

Jackson Lee had announced in early June that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer but was continuing to campaign for what would have been her 16th term in office. At the time of her death, she was one of the two longest-serving members of the Texas congressional delegation, along with Austin Congressman Lloyd Doggett.

"Known for her relentless advocacy, the congresswoman dedicated her life to public service, advancing civil rights, healthcare reform, and disaster recovery," said Texas Democratic Party chairman Gilberto Hinojosa in a statement. "And in the spirit of Sheila Jackson Lee's legacy, we will march forward in our fierce commitment to fighting for justice, equality and opportunity for all."

Jackson Lee's legislative accomplishments included establishing the Juneteenth federal holiday and reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

Former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner also paid tribute to Jackson Lee in a statement, saying, "her work on the ground, in some of the poorest and under-resourced communities; the channeling of billions of federal dollars back to her district; her presence at someone's bedside, giving words of comfort to families who lost loved ones; her appearances at places of worship and events showcasing the global diversity of our City; and her uncanny ability to be everywhere, working every day for those who needed a champion, made her truly exceptional."

Tributes also came in from across the aisle. Republican Houston-area Congressman Wesley Hunt wrote, “In these divided times, Congresswoman Lee and I were able to partner on several legislative initiatives for the city of the Houston. Her steadfast commitment to serving the people of Houston and her tireless work have left an indelible mark on our community and our nation.“

Jackson Lee, born in Queens, New York, represented Texas' 18th Congressional District longer than anyone since the district was established more than a century ago. She was only the fourth member to hold the seat since the district was redrawn to represent Downtown Houston in 1972 – preceded by Barbara Jordan, Mickey Leland, and Craig Washington.

Jackson Lee served Houston in elective office for close to 35 years, first as a Houston City Council member before winning election to the U.S. House in 1994. For much of her tenure in Congress, she faced minimal opposition for reelection. Last year, she made an unsuccessful bid to succeed Turner as Houston's mayor, ultimately losing to John Whitmire in a runoff. She then pivoted to reclaim the Democratic nomination for her congressional seat, beating back a fierce challenge by former Houston City Council Member Amanda Edwards.

Jackson Lee is the third member of the Congressional Black Caucus to die of pancreatic cancer in just over four years, following Congressmen John Lewis and Alcee Hastings.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Copyright 2024 Texas Public Radio

Source: https://www.keranews.org/texas-news/2024-07-22/houston-congresswoman-sheila-jackson-lee-dies-at-74

James Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, in New York City and passed away on December 1, 1987, in Saint-Paul de Vence, France. 

As an essayist, novelist, and playwright, Baldwin's profound and impassioned voice on race and identity made him a pivotal figure in 20th-century literature. His writing, known for its clarity and emotional depth, tackled complex issues of race, sexuality, and society with both elegance and fierce critique.

Baldwin grew up in Harlem, the eldest of nine children, in a household marked by poverty. His mother, Emma Berdis Jones, was a single parent who later married David Baldwin, a Baptist minister. James Baldwin’s upbringing was marked by both hardship and complexity. He was deeply influenced by his father’s strict religious views and even served as a preacher in a Pentecostal church. His experiences in Harlem, combined with the struggle to reconcile his identity as a Black gay man in a predominantly white society, became central themes in his work. 

His early literary work included the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) and the play The Amen Corner (1954), reflecting his profound personal and social observations. Bladwin's first non-fiction work, Notes of a Native Son (1955) is deeply personal and reflective, offering his insights into the social and psychological impacts of racism. 

In 1948, Baldwin left the U.S. for Paris, seeking to escape the pervasive racism and homophobia of his homeland. His move to Europe marked the beginning of a prolific period during which he published influential works like Giovanni’s Room (1956), which explored queer themes, and The Fire Next Time (1963), a powerful critique of racial injustice.

Baldwin's activism was intertwined with his writing. He was deeply involved in the civil rights movement, befriending leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and participating in events like the March on Washington. His work continues to resonate today, particularly with movements for justice, and his exploration of identity remains a vital part of contemporary discussions on race and sexuality. 

hashtag#OnThisDay hashtag#Remembrance hashtag#LiteraryLegend hashtag#AmericanLiterature

More info:

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Images:

1) ABHM produced portrait art of James Baldwin, developed from a photo of Baldwin in Holland in 1974. Dutch National Archives.

2) Baldwin in 1969. Public domain.

3) Baldwin in Los Angeles, 1964. Public domain.

Source: Linkedin, https://www.linkedin.com/company/dr-james-cameron-legacy-foundation-inc/posts/

CBC members real family moments respect and love for congresswoman

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Stevie Wonder with Gary Hunter

Source: Facebook, www.facebook.com/gary.hunter.982292/

Election 2024: Harris VP search narrows; Trump continues attacks on Harris' race

Former President Donald Trump falsely said yesterday that Vice President Kamala Harris "became Black" for political purposes.

Former President Donald Trump has continued attacking Vice President Kamala Harris over her racial identity, posting a photo of her wearing a sari and resharing a post purporting to show her birth certificate.

Harris, whose mother is Indian and father is Jamaican, criticized Trump's remarks yesterday, saying, "The American people deserve better." Trump's allies, including his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, have defended his attacks.

Vance today visited the southern border, where he went after Harris for the Biden administration's record on immigration and border security.



Harris' search for a running mate is nearing its end. Her vetting team has met with six potential running mates: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/live-blog/harris-trump-presidential-election-live-updates-rcna164124

President Joe Biden's Exit From Presidential Race Raises Questions For Upcoming DNC

President Joe Biden, seen here exiting Air Force One as he arrives for a rally with Democratic supporters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (file photo) announced Sunday July 21, that he is dropping out of the race for President and stepping aside for Kamala Harris to be the Democratic nominee. (Photo by John L. Alexander.)

Since the sudden twist of events, when President Joe Biden, battling COVID and under pressure from Democratic Party leaders, announced Sunday July 21 that he is dropping out of the race for President, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to the Democratic Presidential nominee, the strategy for selecting Vice President is now the focus of attention as the Nation anticipates the upcoming Democratic Convention in Chicago Monday August 19 to Thursday August 22, 2024.

President Biden's immediately endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement prompted a number of prominent Democrats to follow suit. Former President Bill Clinton and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued immediate statements of support and while some leaders appeared to be cautiously waiting for public opinion. 

Former President Barack Obama issued an immediate statement thanking President Biden for his service.  Some suggested that President Biden, due to health reasons, should resign as President and ensure that Kamala Harris, as the incumbent President , will automatically receive the Party's nomination. 



President Biden stated that he is not resigning and his focus will be handling his duties during his remaining time as President. Meanwhile, with just weeks before the Convention, Democrats are organizing resources for Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee who must choose an effective running mate to help her stand against the Trump/Vance ticket in November.

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/home

Vice President Kamala Harris As Presumptive Nominee Seeks An Effective Running Mate

Vice President Kamala Harris, seen here greeting Democratic leaders as she lands in Chicago earlier this year (file photo) was endorsed by President Biden to head the ticket as the Democratic nominee to face Republican nominee Donald Trump in November in the race for U.S. President. (Photo by John L. Alexander)

President Biden issued his statement to voters that he is dropping out of the race reportedly just an hour after informing Vice President Harris of his decision. Just weeks earlier the President insisted he was in the race until the end, but his recent diagnosis of COVID along with noticeable struggles with speech prompted Democratic Party leaders to begin looking for alternative candidates. 

Over the past several weeks polls have been sent out to Democratic voters asking if they still support Joe Biden and if they would support Kamala Harris as the nominee. Based on the responses to these polls, Democratic Party leaders could determine there was sufficient support for a Kamala Harris Presidency. The question remains, who would be an effective running mate?

President Biden's announcement via social media set a bit of a historic precedent, sending a written message to voters via e-mail and text as opposed to making a statement on national television.

Coming on the heels of the drama of what appeared to be an assassination attempt aimed at former President Trump, this latest turn of events sets an unusual stage for the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Security will be tight in anticipation of protests over the ongoing war between Israelis and Palestinians as well as issues such as immigration and abortion. 

Immediately after President Biden's announced endorsement, a groundswell of national grassroots organizing and fundraising efforts began, particularly among women. A noticeable surge of interest occurred among young voters to create a network of support for Kamala Harris as the next U.S. President.

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/home

NABJ Chicago Chapter Hosts National Convention

Courtesy Of HLN Affiliate On Air Daily News

The National Association of Black Journalists Chicago Chapter is hosting this year's NABJ Convention and Career Fair Wednesday July 31 through Sunday August 4, 2024, an event which will attract industry leaders, innovators and influencers in journalism, media, technology, business, government, community service, health, arts, entertainment, and academia.

The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) was formed to empower those in the media business to remove racial bias in news reporting. Demands for diversity in Network news organizations resulted in jobs for Black journalists across the country, who often challenged the mainstream message in the news by bringing a different perspective. 

NABJ Chicago Chapter President Brandon Pope, who is a reporter and anchor at WCIU, and Host of On The Block powered by Block Club Chicago, said, "NABJ was a mentorship and guide and a navigation for me that powered my career." He stated in an interview on Monday Morning Mindfulness with host Zelda Robinson on The Female Solution Global Radio TV Show, "Ultimately, when it comes to Black journalists we definitely face challenges when we work for corporate entities in tines where you do need the Black voice. That's why it's important that we're in there." 

He observed that Black journalists often have to speak up when they believe something isn't being reported fairly, even if it means risking their jobs. By forming a national organization with chapters in cities across the country, Black journalists have made the power of their voices felt and have welded influence when it comes to commanding an audience with national leaders. 

Brandon Pope noted that at past NABJ National Conventions, special guest speakers have included then-Senator Barack Obama (who later became America's first Black President, President George W. Bush, President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden (who is the current U.S. President) and Vice President President Kamala Harris, who is now the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for U.S. President. 

The NABJ National Convention is being held two weeks before the Democratic National Convention and two weeks after the Republican National Convention, and Presidential candidates from both parties have been invited to take advantage of the opportunity to address thousands of the nation's best and brightest journalists, media executives, journalism educators, communications and marketing professionals and students at this impactful convention. The DNC will also have a mixer with Black Journalists during the NABJ Convention, however the RNC reportedly will not. Convention attendees may register for specific events or may attend the entire convention. Some events require an RSVP and may already be filled to capacity.

NABJ Chicago Chapter President Brandon Pope appears on Monday Morning Mindfulness on The Female Solution Global Radio/TV Show Monday July 29, 2024 to explain how the National Association of Black Journalists has empowered Blacks media professionals to influence the communications industry. NABJ members from across the nation will attend the National Convention which begins Wednesday, July 31st in Chicago. The interview with Brandon Pope is below.

NABJ 2024 Convention & Career Fair will be held at the Hilton Chicago, 720 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago. All sessions, workshops, plenaries, forums, networking activities, meal events, and our high-demand career fair will be held on-site.

The NABJ24 Career Fair will draw hundreds of recruiters from top media companies, businesses and journalism schools from across the country and around the world. This is a great opportunity for journalists seeking career advancement and journalism students to make connections in the industry.

Emerson College of Boston Journalism Professor Cheryl Charles, who is accompanying two Emerson College Journalism students to the NABJ Convention, said, "We're looking forward to the Job Fair and Career Fair and getting out and learning more. They are both intelligent and engaging young women. One of them will be attending grad school in Chicago, she'll be able to learn more about the city where she'll be attending school, and the other is a rising Junior who is currently an intern at the Boston Globe. I'm excited to be chaperoning them and being there as they learn how to network and hone their craft. There are plenty of workshops and panel discussions for them to attend."

Chicago is a vibrant city where the Black community has had a lasting impact on culture and history worldwide, including a legacy of thriving Black owned businesses and cultural institutions. As a multi-cultural city that thrives on the harmony and diversity of its neighborhoods, it offers a unique, enjoyable experience for conference attendees.

To register for the 2024 NABJ National Convention, go www.nabj.org

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/business

Red Summer In Chicago: 100 Years After The Race Riots

Exactly 100 years ago today, Chicago was in the throes of a brutal heat wave. Thousands flocked to the beaches lining Lake Michigan for some relief. Among them: a group of black boys that included 17-year-old Eugene Williams. Eugene, who was on a raft, inadvertently drifted over the invisible line that separated the black and white sections of the 29th St Beach. One white beachgoer, insulted, began throwing rocks at the black kids. Eugene Williams slipped off his raft and drowned.

That incident ignited a race riot that would go down in history as one of the country's bloodiest, and least-known, to date.

And Chicago wasn't the only place this happened. What would come to be referred to as the country's Red Summer was a series of race riots that occurred for several months in different places around the country. In Chicago, Eugene Williams' death was what sparked the city's riots, but kindling for that fire had been building for at least a few years.

For one thing, the city's demographics were changing very quickly. 100-year-old Timuel Black Jr. is a historian, educator and activist who has lived most of his long life in Chicago. He came to the city with his parents as an infant a few months after the riot, but stories from relatives and neighbors made it very clear why so many black folks were streaming into Chicago.

People, Black said, "wanted to move forward and break the barriers of segregation." According to Black, three major factors were propelling black Southerners forward: "to escape the tyranny and violence of the Ku Klux Klan, to be able to vote without fear and to get better education for their children," he says.

So many newcomers at once strained the city's resources. "At the time, people in Northern cities—especially Chicago—saw it as an invasion," says John Russick of the Chicago History Museum.

The South Side neighborhoods to which black Chicagoans had been traditionally relegated were bursting at the seams. There was fierce competition for the existing apartments and homes, even though many of them were substandard.

Adding to the tension: soldiers were returning home after serving in Europe during World War I. Black soldiers, in particular, had experienced being treated as complete citizens while they fought abroad. Returning to an America that barely recognized their service and wanted them back in their assigned, segregated places was not something they were willing to accept.

Adding to the tension was fierce competition over jobs. The black newcomers readily accepted jobs in the city's slaughterhouses and meatpacking companies because the pay was better than what they'd received in the South. That outraged the European immigrants—Irish, Italian, Czech and Polish—who'd traditionally held those jobs and who wanted to unionize the companies they'd worked for.

So pressure was building, and Eugene Williams' tragic death at the beach was the final straw. Liesl Olson is director of the Chicago History project at the Newberry Library, and says, to add insult to the injury of Eugene's death, "a white policeman refused to arrest the white man who'd caused an African American teenaged boy's death."

The police's inaction doesn't surprise John Russick. "The white police were a tool of white supremacy in Chicago at this time," he explains. "All of the tools of power were in the hands of white people in 1919, and we can't lose sight of that."

Anger escalated on the black side of the beach when it became apparent that no arrest would be made. More police arrived. One especially distraught black beachgoer pulled out a gun and fired into a knot of police. He was shot dead immediately.

The tale of Eugene's death and the shooting that followed angered groups of young white men. Some climbed into cars and began racing through major streets in the city's black neighborhoods, randomly firing at homes and businesses. Others armed themselves with guns, sticks and rocks and began marching up 35th street, assaulting any black person unfortunate enough to cross their path.

Juanita Mitchell had just come to Chicago with her family. They were staying with relatives until they found their own place. Mrs. Mitchell is 107 now, but still clearly recalls her terror as the eight-year-old girl she was then.

"I remember how afraid my mother was, how afraid my aunt was," she says. "I remember my uncle standing in the window and I heard him say 'here they come'—which meant the race riot was coming down 35th and Giles."

Her uncle was armed "with the biggest gun I had ever seen," Mitchell recalls. He was prepared to protect his family. So were many of the returning black veterans. A group of National Guard reserve men who'd returned from France after fighting valiantly there, broke into an armory and grabbed guns and other weapons, determined to protect black lives and property.

That resistance was a watershed, says Timuel Black Jr. "I understand that this was the first time these Northern Negroes fought back from an attack and been successful."

So successful, in fact, that the riot soon wound down.

"From what I've been told by my family who was here, the riot was soon over, because the Westside rioters felt they were in danger, now that these Negroes returning from the war had weapons equal to their weapons."

When the smoke cleared and the ashes cooled, 38 people—23 black, 15 white—were dead. More than 350 people reported injuries.

And it wasn't just Chicago: more than two dozen cities throughout the country had their own Red Summers—in Washington DC, Houston and Charleston all experienced racial violence. In Elaine, Arkansas, some 200 people were presumed dead.

"The struggle over jobs, the return of black soldiers from the war and not being treated with respect and not finding employment - those tensions were in so many places," says Liesl Olson.

In Chicago, some 1,000 black homes had been burned down. None of the white participants in the riot ever faced consequences for their involvement.

"It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, looking back 100 years later, that the response to the violence perpetrated upon African Americans in the wake of the incident at the beach wasn't aggressively prosecuted or even investigated after the fact," says John Russick.

And although that was true in the immediate aftermath, a commission, established by the governor, released a report three years later: The Negro In Chicago: A Study on Race Relations and a Race Riot. The commission members, six black men, six white men, looked at the root causes behind the riot and concluded, as would the Kerner Commission Report 50 years later, that racial inequality was a major reason for the violence.

That was then. What about now? Is the Red Summer relevant to us today?

John Russick thinks so. "We think these things can't happen again," he says. "We think of the past being past, but at this moment, the race riots are with us still. We're still struggling with how to get along with each other."

Eve Ewing teaches at the University of Chicago and has just published a new book, 1919, which retells the cataclysmic events of the Red Summer through poems. Past, says Ewing, is, sadly, prologue.

"What does it mean to have the story of Eugene Williams, 17 year-old black boy, which then becomes the story of Emmett Till, which ten becomes the story of Laquan McDonald?" she asks. "What does it mean for us to be constantly living this recurring nightmare?"

Chicagoans have been examining just that all year long, in an effort to better understand Red Summer. This weekend, there will be services, lectures, even a walking tour of some Red Summer sites, in an effort to learn from--and not repeat--this chapter of the city's history.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/07/27/744130358/red-summer-in-chicago-100-years-after-the-race-riots

How A Black Man Drove For A Place In A White Man’s Sport

You have surely never heard of a black race-car driver named Dewey Gatson, who often raced under the name of Rajo Jack — whom you have surely never heard of, either. But you should know about him, and you can during these slow times by reading a new biography.

“The Brown Bullet: Rajo Jack’s Drive to Integrate Auto Racing,” by the veteran journalist Bill Poehler, will be released May 5 by Chicago Review Press. (Pre-order here.) The bio tackles a topic that has dogged auto racing for decades: racial discrimination. Rajo Jack battled it every mile of his journey.

The driver who became known as Rajo Jack (he took his first name from a brand of cylinder heads to soup up Model-T’s) often had to pose as Portuguese or as a Native American when he became a race-car driver in the 1920’s. One of his first aliases was “Jack DeSoto.”

Rajo Jack never was allowed to drive in the Indianapolis 500, then overseen by the American Automobile Association, but he became a West Coast star by winning more than 30 so-called “outlaw races,” gaining the respect and admiration of peers and fans. He predated Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier, and Wendell Scott, a black driver in the NASCAR Hall of Fame, by decades.

Rajo Jack, who died in 1956 at the age of 50, was inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame in 2003. The hall’s webpage notes he “won in everything he drove — stock cars, midgets, big cars and even motorcycles. He also did stunts on motorcycles, and it was one of these stunts that resulted in an accident, which blinded him in one eye.”

The AAA cited his blindness when it prevented him from driving in the Indy 500, but Rajo Jack knew he was excluded because of his race. He was a friendly, engaging man who was a wizard around engines, but he came along well before black drivers took even the small role in national auto racing that they have now. His wife had to be with him when he won because she had to kiss him instead of the trophy girl.

Willy T. Ribbs became the first African-American driver in the Indianapolis 500 — in 1991, a quarter-century after Rajo Jack died. Bubba Wallace now races a stock car owned by Richard Petty, but he is the first full-time black driver in the series since Scott in the 1960’s.

And Rajo Jack was prevented from racing — along with all other Americans — during World War II, when he was near the end of the peak of his career.

“The mystery is what drew me to the story of Rajo Jack,” Poehler, a reporter for The Statesman Journal in Salem, Ore., wrote in an email. “Dating back to when I was in high school, I have consumed every reference to Rajo Jack I could find. I was surprised no one had written a book about him, but in my research, I learned why as the tales he spun in his lifetime made for a complicated web that would be difficult for anyone to untangle.

“I didn’t comprehend how successful a driver Rajo Jack was until I researched him or how many great drivers he raced against and beat,” Poehler added. “And yet, the same thing for which Rajo Jack was frequently celebrated, that he was African-American, is what prevented him from racing in the Indianapolis 500, though nothing stopped him from trying.”

As a news release for “The Brown Bullet” notes, “Jack always found a way to spin setbacks into motivation, turning tragedy into captivating stories that endeared him to his fans.” Now those stories are on paper, and Rajo Jack is worthy of some of your extra free time before we get to fire up the engines again.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davecaldwell/2020/04/09/the-brown-bullet-a-biography-about-a-race-car-driver-and-race/

Red Summer In Chicago: 100 Years After The Race Riots

Exactly 100 years ago today, Chicago was in the throes of a brutal heat wave. Thousands flocked to the beaches lining Lake Michigan for some relief. Among them: a group of black boys that included 17-year-old Eugene Williams. Eugene, who was on a raft, inadvertently drifted over the invisible line that separated the black and white sections of the 29th St Beach. One white beachgoer, insulted, began throwing rocks at the black kids. Eugene Williams slipped off his raft and drowned.

That incident ignited a race riot that would go down in history as one of the country's bloodiest, and least-known, to date.

And Chicago wasn't the only place this happened. What would come to be referred to as the country's Red Summer was a series of race riots that occurred for several months in different places around the country. In Chicago, Eugene Williams' death was what sparked the city's riots, but kindling for that fire had been building for at least a few years.

For one thing, the city's demographics were changing very quickly. 100-year-old Timuel Black Jr. is a historian, educator and activist who has lived most of his long life in Chicago. He came to the city with his parents as an infant a few months after the riot, but stories from relatives and neighbors made it very clear why so many black folks were streaming into Chicago.

People, Black said, "wanted to move forward and break the barriers of segregation." According to Black, three major factors were propelling black Southerners forward: "to escape the tyranny and violence of the Ku Klux Klan, to be able to vote without fear and to get better education for their children," he says.

So many newcomers at once strained the city's resources. "At the time, people in Northern cities—especially Chicago—saw it as an invasion," says John Russick of the Chicago History Museum.

The South Side neighborhoods to which black Chicagoans had been traditionally relegated were bursting at the seams. There was fierce competition for the existing apartments and homes, even though many of them were substandard.

Adding to the tension: soldiers were returning home after serving in Europe during World War I. Black soldiers, in particular, had experienced being treated as complete citizens while they fought abroad. Returning to an America that barely recognized their service and wanted them back in their assigned, segregated places was not something they were willing to accept.

Adding to the tension was fierce competition over jobs. The black newcomers readily accepted jobs in the city's slaughterhouses and meatpacking companies because the pay was better than what they'd received in the South. That outraged the European immigrants—Irish, Italian, Czech and Polish—who'd traditionally held those jobs and who wanted to unionize the companies they'd worked for.

So pressure was building, and Eugene Williams' tragic death at the beach was the final straw. Liesl Olson is director of the Chicago History project at the Newberry Library, and says, to add insult to the injury of Eugene's death, "a white policeman refused to arrest the white man who'd caused an African American teenaged boy's death."

The police's inaction doesn't surprise John Russick. "The white police were a tool of white supremacy in Chicago at this time," he explains. "All of the tools of power were in the hands of white people in 1919, and we can't lose sight of that."

Anger escalated on the black side of the beach when it became apparent that no arrest would be made. More police arrived. One especially distraught black beachgoer pulled out a gun and fired into a knot of police. He was shot dead immediately.

The tale of Eugene's death and the shooting that followed angered groups of young white men. Some climbed into cars and began racing through major streets in the city's black neighborhoods, randomly firing at homes and businesses. Others armed themselves with guns, sticks and rocks and began marching up 35th street, assaulting any black person unfortunate enough to cross their path.

Juanita Mitchell had just come to Chicago with her family. They were staying with relatives until they found their own place. Mrs. Mitchell is 107 now, but still clearly recalls her terror as the eight-year-old girl she was then.

"I remember how afraid my mother was, how afraid my aunt was," she says. "I remember my uncle standing in the window and I heard him say 'here they come'—which meant the race riot was coming down 35th and Giles."

Her uncle was armed "with the biggest gun I had ever seen," Mitchell recalls. He was prepared to protect his family. So were many of the returning black veterans. A group of National Guard reserve men who'd returned from France after fighting valiantly there, broke into an armory and grabbed guns and other weapons, determined to protect black lives and property.

That resistance was a watershed, says Timuel Black Jr. "I understand that this was the first time these Northern Negroes fought back from an attack and been successful."

So successful, in fact, that the riot soon wound down.

"From what I've been told by my family who was here, the riot was soon over, because the Westside rioters felt they were in danger, now that these Negroes returning from the war had weapons equal to their weapons."

When the smoke cleared and the ashes cooled, 38 people—23 black, 15 white—were dead. More than 350 people reported injuries.

And it wasn't just Chicago: more than two dozen cities throughout the country had their own Red Summers—in Washington DC, Houston and Charleston all experienced racial violence. In Elaine, Arkansas, some 200 people were presumed dead.

"The struggle over jobs, the return of black soldiers from the war and not being treated with respect and not finding employment - those tensions were in so many places," says Liesl Olson.

In Chicago, some 1,000 black homes had been burned down. None of the white participants in the riot ever faced consequences for their involvement.

"It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, looking back 100 years later, that the response to the violence perpetrated upon African Americans in the wake of the incident at the beach wasn't aggressively prosecuted or even investigated after the fact," says John Russick.

And although that was true in the immediate aftermath, a commission, established by the governor, released a report three years later: The Negro In Chicago: A Study on Race Relations and a Race Riot. The commission members, six black men, six white men, looked at the root causes behind the riot and concluded, as would the Kerner Commission Report 50 years later, that racial inequality was a major reason for the violence.

That was then. What about now? Is the Red Summer relevant to us today?

John Russick thinks so. "We think these things can't happen again," he says. "We think of the past being past, but at this moment, the race riots are with us still. We're still struggling with how to get along with each other."

Eve Ewing teaches at the University of Chicago and has just published a new book, 1919, which retells the cataclysmic events of the Red Summer through poems. Past, says Ewing, is, sadly, prologue.

"What does it mean to have the story of Eugene Williams, 17 year-old black boy, which then becomes the story of Emmett Till, which ten becomes the story of Laquan McDonald?" she asks. "What does it mean for us to be constantly living this recurring nightmare?"

Chicagoans have been examining just that all year long, in an effort to better understand Red Summer. This weekend, there will be services, lectures, even a walking tour of some Red Summer sites, in an effort to learn from--and not repeat--this chapter of the city's history.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/07/27/744130358/red-summer-in-chicago-100-years-after-the-race-riots

Black Twin Sisters From Detroit Make History, Turn 100 Years Old

Nationwide — Meet Doris Ward and Loris Pryor, African American twin sisters from Detroit who recently made history as they celebrated turning 100 years old.

“All I can say is that it’s a blessing to be here at 100 years old,” Doris told Fox 17.“To live this long, I never thought it would happen or not happen. I never thought about it,” Loris said.

Together, the sisters have 9 children and several generations of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Their family and friends recently gathered to celebrate their centennial milestone.

“The good Lord blessed us to still… see our family and that was a blessing,” Doris said.

Throughout their lives, they’ve been inseparable. Loris said, “We are always together with everything — everything. She ain’t go without me… I ain’t go without her. (We were) always together.”

Even now, they still share activities like trips to the casino. However, their most cherished memory is dancing. Though they couldn’t get up and dance on their birthday, they still enjoyed the music by tapping their feet while their family celebrated around them.

For Doris and Loris, reaching this age is a treasured gift.

“Life is very precious, or I wouldn’t be here,” Loris said. “It’s just precious to live this long.” 

Source: https://blacknews.com/news/doris-ward-loris-pryor-black-twin-sisters-detroit-turn-100-years-old/

40K Black Women Raised Over $1.5M For Kamala In Under 3 Hours

Black women to the rescue, again! 

This weekend, the nation was shook up when President Biden announced that he was rescinding his bid for presidential reelection. The news came unexpectedly and amid calls for Biden to step aside due to what seems to be ailing health challenges. A defining end and an affirmation of what many in the administration have said is Biden’s selfless and patriotic nature, he swiftly endorsed VP Kamala Harris as the presidential candidate to take his place. 

“My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duty as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats – it’s time to come together and beat 

Trump. Let’s do this!,” wrote President Biden.

Many flooded the President’s comments with praise, gratitude, and thanks for his service. VP Harris also gracefully accepted the endorsement, thanking Biden and promising to unite the party.

“I am honored to have the President’s endorsement, and my intention is to earn and win this nomination…I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party – and unite our nation – to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” wrote VP Harris. 

The think pieces began rolling in, and near minute-by-minute reports of what this meant for the impending election and what action the Democratic Party needed to take next were rolling out. But in the midst of the media frenzy, one organization called Win With Black Women broke through the noise and immediately began organizing. 

Founded in 2020 by business executive, social impact strategist, and investor Jotaka Eaddy, they first gathered on a Zoom call to mobilize around the 2020 election, with 90 women gathering to strategize around the road to the White House. Since then, they’ve grown to an organization of more than 4,000, the “collective of intergenerational, intersectional Black women leaders throughout the nation,” meeting every Sunday. 

This Sunday was no different, and after President Biden’s announcement to drop out of the race was made, the call was put out. This time, attendance ballooned, with more than 40,000 Black women organized on the call. An impressive feat, in just 3 hours, the group had raised more than $1.5 million as a show of support for VP Kamala Harris.

“We made history together tonight and raised over $1.5 million in just 3 hours! Have you given yet?,” the org posted after the historic accomplishment.

With grassroots organizing like this and the sheer will and determination of Black women, we know that despite America seemingly being in flux, we gon be alright! 

Source: www.becauseofthemwecan.com

Remembering Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee & Her Lifelong Legacy of Leadership

She will be deeply missed!

In the annals of American history, certain figures emerge not just as lawmakers but as champions of justice, voices for the voiceless, and architects of progress. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, whose recent passing has left a void in the halls of power and in the hearts of many, exemplified these ideals throughout her illustrious career.

Born from humble beginnings in Queens, New York, Sheila Jackson Lee’s journey to becoming a powerhouse in Congress was marked by unwavering determination and an unyielding commitment to her community. Her story resonates deeply, not only because of her remarkable achievements but also because of the barriers she broke and the paths she paved for countless others.

Sheila Jackson Lee’s tenure as a congresswoman spanned over three decades, during which she fearlessly advocated for civil rights, education reform, healthcare access, and criminal justice reform. Her legislative prowess was matched only by her compassion and dedication to ensuring that every voice, regardless of background or circumstance, was heard and respected.

A trailblazer in every sense, Sheila Jackson Lee was a staunch advocate for women’s rights and gender equality, fighting tirelessly to dismantle systemic inequalities that persist in our society. Her leadership extended beyond legislation; she inspired a new generation of leaders, particularly women of color, to embrace their power and strive for excellence in every endeavor.

Sheila Jackson Lee’s legacy is not merely defined by the laws she helped pass or the policies she championed. It lives on in the communities she uplifted, particularly the 18th Congressional District of Texas that she represented. The lives she touched and the principles she embodied helped her stand firm in the face of adversity, with Jackson Lee unwavering in her quest for an equitable and just society. 

The beloved Houston Congresswoman lost her battle with pancreatic cancer this weekend, passing at the age of 74. Her family issued a statement, speaking to her enduring legacy, CNN reports. 

“Today, with incredible grief for our loss yet deep gratitude for the life she shared with us, we announce the passing of United States Representative Sheila Jackson Lee…Her legislative victories impacted millions, from establishing the Juneteenth Federal Holiday to reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. However, she impacted us most as our beloved wife, sister, mother, and Bebe (grandmother). She will be dearly missed, but her legacy will continue to inspire all who believe in freedom, justice, and democracy,” her family said via statement.

Hundreds of tributes have poured in for Jackson Lee, many sharing fond memories of her time in office, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries calling her a “giant.” President Biden also praised Jackson Lee’s service, sending her condolences to her family and “beloved colleagues of the Congressional Black Caucus,” where she previously served as an official.

“Congresswoman Jackson Lee was a patriot and a fighter to the very end. Words cannot express the sense of loss our Caucus feels for our beloved friend. She will be deeply missed by all who knew her,” said Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Steven Horsford and fellow members of the caucus via statement. 

As we reflect on Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee’s life and legacy, we are reminded that her impact transcends politics. It is a testament to the power of perseverance, the importance of representation, and the enduring spirit of hope. Because of Sheila Jackson Lee, we can envision a future where equality and justice are not just ideals but realities for all. In honoring her memory, let us carry forward her legacy by continuing the work she so passionately pursued. Let us advocate for those whose voices are often silenced, uplift those who are marginalized, and strive for a more perfect union. 

Source: www.becauseofthemwecan.com

Purrfect: Halle Berry Celebrates 20th Anniversary of “Catwoman” By Posing Topless With Her Cats

Catwoman is widely regarded as one of THE WORST comic book films of all time, but that isn’t stopping Halle Berry from celebrating the film’s 20th anniversary in the most pearl-clutching way possible.On Tuesday, the Oscar-winning actress took to social media to celebrate the DC Comics film anniversary with a series of photos of herself topless with her newly adopted kittens.

In the photos, Berry can be seen rocking a Catwoman mask, a bikini bottom, and her adorable kittens.

In the caption for the post, the actress wrote:

And STILL… meow!

It’s been 20 years today since I had the honor of bringing this iconic character to life. She will always be close to my heart and I will forever be Patience Phillips aka CATWOMAN!

Thank you @missjee79! When these black beauties showed up in my yard searching for their mother, Jee helped us through the rescue process. Forever grateful!

Halle Berry Took The Catwoman Criticism In Stride

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Berry touched on the negative response to the film, “I didn’t love [the backlash]. Being a Black woman, I’m used to carrying negativity on my back, fighting, being a fish swimming upstream by myself. I’m used to defying stereotypes and making a way out of no way.”

Berry handled the film’s criticism like a champ. She even attended the Razzie Awards to accept the “Worst Actress” award for her performance in the movie. She also made sure to bring her Oscar with her.

Berry also spoke about her experience at the Razzies, “I didn’t want to be casual about it, but I went and collected that Razzie, laughed at myself, and kept it moving. It didn’t derail me because I’ve fought as a Black woman my whole life,” Berry said. “A little bad publicity about a movie? I didn’t love it, but it wasn’t going to stop my world or derail me from doing what I love to do.”

Fans have also warmed up to Catwoman lately, defending the film while praising Berry for taking on the role.

Source: www.becauseofthemwecan.com

50k Black Men Raised Over $1.3m For VP Kamala Harris On Roland Martin’s Black Star Network

The fight continues! 

With just four months until the election and an unprecedented move after President Biden announced he was dropping out of the race, Black communities across the nation have begun to mobilize. In what’s shaping up to be a pivotal election year in the fabric of American history, we’re making sure that we’re the ones who save ourselves. 

After President Biden’s announcement, he quickly endorsed VP Kamala Harris as the new Democratic Party presidential candidate. The group Win With Black Women then organized more than 40,000 Black women via Zoom, raising over $1.5 million in just three hours in a huge show of support for the VP. 

A day later, the brothers showed up, Roland Martin organizing a “Black Men For Harris” call on his Black Star Network via YouTube. Martin hosted the call alongside Attorney Bakari Sellers, Khalil Thompson, executive director of Win With Black Men, Kairos Democracy Project founder Michael A. Blake, and Quentin James, president of Collective PAC & Vote To Live Action Fund. 

With a host of special attendees, including Maryland Governor Wes Moore, more than 50,000 men joined the call. Together, the group raised $1.3 million in support of Vice President Harris, a necessary show of support and affirmation that Black women and men are in this fight for democracy together. 

“I have no words. And not just because I’m tired. My [Black Star Network] just told me that 53,862 people registered for our #WinWithBlackMen video call. We raised $1.3M and counting from 17,000 donors. Props to fellow co-hosts…AMAZING! Brothers, Y’ALL SHOWED UP AND SHOWED OUT!,” wrote Martin. 

Catch the recap of the #WinWithBlackMen discussion below. To join in on the support and donate to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.

Source: www.becauseofthemwecan.com

This month, we celebrate a historic milestone for the Southland of Cook County with the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the first Restorative Justice Community Court (RJCC) in Sauk Village, Illinois.

This groundbreaking initiative, led by the esteemed Judge Ieshia E. Gray, marks a new chapter in our community's pursuit of justice and equity. Spearheaded by Chief Judge of the Circuit Court, Timothy Evans, and supported tirelessly by Commissioner Donna Miller and her team over the past five years, the RJCC embodies a transformative approach to justice, prioritizing rehabilitation, reconciliation, and healing over traditional punitive measures.

The RJCC is more than just a court; it is a beacon of hope and a testament to our commitment to addressing the root causes of conflict. By focusing on restorative practices, the RJCC aims to support individuals in finding pathways to resolution and positive change. This approach not only benefits those directly involved but also strengthens the fabric of our community, fostering an environment of understanding, empathy, and mutual respect.

This monumental achievement would not have been possible without the unwavering dedication and collaborative efforts of many key individuals and organizations. We extend our deepest gratitude to Derrick Burgess, Mayor of Sauk Village, and the Trustees, whose leadership and vision have been instrumental in bringing this court to our community. Special thanks go to Chief Judge Timothy Evans and his committed team for their pioneering efforts in redefining justice. We also acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx and Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell, whose advocacy and support have been crucial in this endeavor.

Moreover, we recognize the tireless work of countless community members, volunteers, and stakeholders who have poured their hearts and souls into making this vision a reality. Commissioner Donna Miller's dedication and persistence over the years to bring RJCC to the Southland of Cook County have laid the foundation for a system that truly serves the people and works towards equitable outcomes for all.

As we move forward, let us continue to champion the principles of restorative justice in all facets of our lives. By supporting and uplifting one another, we can build a community that is not only more just but also more compassionate and resilient. The establishment of the RJCC is a significant step towards this goal, and we are confident that its positive impact will be felt for generations to come.

Together, let us embrace this opportunity to create lasting change. Let us celebrate this momentous occasion and look ahead with hope and determination. The future of Cook County is brighter because of the Restorative Justice Community Court, and it is up to all of us to ensure its success and sustainability.

Thank you once again to everyone who has contributed to this historic achievement. Your efforts have made a profound difference, and we look forward to continuing this journey towards a more just and restorative future for our community.

Read the Full Article in the Chicago Tribune!

RJCC - Overview

Restorative Justice Community Courts (RJCC) are aimed at young adults, aged 18-26, charged with non-violent felony or misdemeanor crimes. Part of the court’s mission is to end the harmful cycle of revenge and recidivism.

The courts resolve conflict through restorative conferences and peace circles involving participants, victims, family members, friends, others affected by the crime, and the community.

The purpose of the circle process is to ultimately reach an agreement between the participant and members of the community called a Repair of Harm Agreement, in which the participant agrees to complete certain tasks, such as perform community engagement, write a letter of reflection, undergo substance abuse treatment, and other tasks.

The Repair of Harm Agreement is a contract between the participant and the community. If the participant successfully completes all the tasks set out in the agreement, his or her case will be dismissed, the offense expunged, and the participant will be invited to attend a graduation ceremony celebrating this milestone in his or her life.

Click here to learn more about RJCC!



BREAKING NEWS! Biden Steps Aside & Endorses Kamala Harris for President of USA

Breaking News!

This is a strategy we all need now!

With the Roe vs. Wade issue happening now, here's our chance to do something to help everyone in America.

We will also discuss the plight of our unhoused neighbors.

The Poor People's Army has decided that America can no longer ignore the human rights of its people, spending BILLIONS on WAR, and nothing on it's people.

It's a poor peoples economic/human rights campaign for the people, by the people.

Galen Tyler - Veteran Human Rights Organizer

Joins the conversation on Monday Morning Mindfulness!

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Updates of blog

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Former President Trump Assassination Attempt: Courtesy By Naimah Latif

Managing Editor

ON AIR Daily News 

Source: https://onairdailynews.com/editorial%2Fcommentary

How Do You Relieve The Pain of A Life Gone? 

What do you do in a body riddled with pain?

Will you continue to suffer?

Which will you do?

Let's do something different this Memorial Day Week!

Join the conversation on Monday Morning Mindfulness! 7-9am CST

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OR 727-731-5192

Source: https://www.tumblr.com/higherlearningtvshow

"Give your first salary to your father for his blessings not your pastor" - Kanayo O. Kanayo

Source: https://twitter.com/AfricanHub_/status/1789097447345517041/photo/1

Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, lawyer & PhD in economics, helped draft anti-discrimination law in 1935. When her law partner & spouse Raymond Alexander was appointed judge, she started her own practice. She served on the 1946 Federal Committee on Civil Rights.

Source: https://twitter.com/ProenzaColes/status/1788182276414583058

In 1957, Dedan Kimathi - the Kenyan guerrila warrior who fought against British colonialism- was tagged a terrorist and executed by British soldiers. To the west, those who have dared to fight for our freedom are terrorist.

Source: https://twitter.com/AfricanHub_/status/1788289518480527553/photo/1

This Ghanaian Aerospace Engineer, Ave Kludze Jr is the first African to fly a NASA spacecraft in the orbit from a mission control center.

He is also a Senior Scapecraft System Engineer at US space agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Source: https://twitter.com/AfricanHub_/status/1787964024581161418/photo/1