Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Newswire: Biden’s re-election announcement to test resolve of Black voters

Posted on by

Voter holding Black Voters Matter sign


 

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

The news that President Joe Biden will seek re-election has many curious about how well he will perform among African American voters.
According to the results of a recent poll conducted by TheGrio and KFF, Black people had a positive opinion of both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
There remains some debate among Black Americans about whether or not they will support Biden for president in 2024.
According to the results of the poll of one thousand Black voters who were contacted between August 24, 2022, and September 5, 2022, 69% of respondents were pleased with Biden’s performance.
When asked whether the Democrats should select someone other than Biden in the next presidential election, 58% of Black voters answered that they would rather see another candidate run than Biden.
Additionally, the results of the survey suggested that an astounding seventy percent of Black voters would cast their ballots for Harris if she were to run for president, revealing the possibility that African Americans would offer more support to Harris than Biden.
Further, there remains a greater degree of disagreement among Black voters who identify as Democrats or who lean toward the party.
The poll reveals a consensus among respondents (49%) that the party ought to put forward Biden as its candidate for another term.
The remaining half of voters have indicated that they would want the Democrats to select a different candidate for president in 2024.
Even among Black voters, there’s a wide range of viewpoints about the question of whether Biden should be the nominee.
Those under the age of 50 and those who lean Democratic are more likely to seek a different candidate than those over the age of 50 who want Biden to run for a second term.
This is especially true of Black Democrats. Fifty-seven percent of Black Democrats and Democrats-at-heart aged 50 and over want Biden as the nominee, however only 42% of all Democrats and Democrats-at-heart want the party to choose someone else.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party has struggled to win Black voters, and the poll shows that this pattern hasn’t changed.
The anger and obstruction that Republicans have shown toward Barack Obama throughout the years, in addition to their resistance to a voting rights law in Congress, make gaining the Black vote an uphill battle for the GOP.
By identifying themselves with Christian nationalists and organizations with roots to white supremacy, some Republicans have made it impossible to gain the support of Black voters.
The track record that Biden has on racial issues has also been debated in the Black community.
His efforts to pass a comprehensive voting rights package and reduce gun violence have been unsuccessful, but he has honored campaign vows to select a Black woman as his vice president and appoint one to the Supreme Court.
Biden also must overcome the problems caused by some of his supporters privately and publicly bashing Harris, an issue that has alienated some Black voters.
Four years after announcing his campaign for the 2020 election that finally resulted in the defeat of the criminally indicted and twice-impeached Donald Trump, Biden again seeks to beat back a run by the MAGA leader.
Reportedly, Biden’s most prominent supporters have been invited to a financial summit in Washington, D.C, in the days running up to his planned announcement, which has kicked off a wild race to stock the president’s war chest.
The meeting, planned for Friday, is viewed as an important first step in a campaign that is going to try its best to fly under the radar for at least one year.
After that, Biden expects to start the process of hiring a team that will be able to function independently of the White House.
The team will include a campaign manager, communication assistants, state campaign directors, pollsters, finance managers, volunteers, and others.
According to reports, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a top White House adviser and the granddaughter of the late American labor leader Cesar Chavez, is in the running to oversee the re-election campaign. Chavez counted as a prominent figure in the labor movement in the United States.

Newswire: Barack Obama, other celebs tip caps to Negro Leagues’ 100th Anniversary

Posted on by

By: Jim LItke, AP

Former President Barack Obama tips his cap

Barack Obama tipped his cap. So did three other former U.S. presidents and a host of prominent civil rights leaders, entertainers and sports greats in a virtual salute to the 100-year anniversary of the founding of baseball’s Negro Leagues.

The campaign launched Monday with photos and videos from, among others, Hank Aaron, Rachel Robinson, Derek Jeter, Colin Powell, Michael Jordan, Obama and fellow former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter at tippingyourcap.com.

On the receiving end of those tributes are many of the Negro Leagues’ greatest alumni: Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, “Cool Papa” Bell and Jackie Robinson, who began with the Kansas City Monarchs and went on to break the color barrier in the major leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Not long after, with many of its best players gradually following Robinson’s path, the Negro Leagues ceased operations.

Singer Tony Bennett, showing his heart, tips a San Francisco Giants cap. Californian Billie Jean King opts for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Clinton said he chose a Chicago Cubs cap in honor of Ernie Banks, the late Hall of Famer who got his start in the Negro Leagues.

But, Clinton added: “This cap is for Hillary, too, when finally, the Cubs won the championship. Long before that, the Negro Leagues made baseball better and America better.”

The celebration was moved online after a major league-wide tribute to baseball’s Black pioneers scheduled for June 27 was shelved — along with the games — because of the coronavirus pandemic. At first, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick worried that his longstanding plan to honor the men and women who battled long odds for a game of their own would have to be postponed, at best.

“In our game, there’s nothing more honorable than tipping your cap,” Kendrick said. “And once I realized that national day of recognition was going to fall by the wayside, I thought, ‘OK, maybe we can do it next year.’ But that didn’t really do it.

“So then I thought, ’How about a virtual tip of the cap?‴ Kendrick paused, then chuckled. “And let me say here and now, there is no way I could have done this myself. I could not be more proud of the response.”

Kendrick got the lift he was looking for from communications specialist Dan McGinn and longtime NLBM supporter Joe Posnanski, a sports writer for The Athletic and author of “The Soul of Baseball,” chronicling his yearlong road trip promoting the Kansas City-based museum and the stories behind it with legendary Negro League star, the late Buck O’Neil.

O’Neil was the driving force behind the museum for decades. The NLBM has expanded several times since Rube Foster, as skilled an executive as he was a baseball pitcher, founded the first Negro National League at a YMCA on the same site in 1920.

Kendrick said his personal favorite tribute came from Jackie Robinson’s family.

“It’s Rachel tipping her cap, but there’s four generations of Robinson women in that video talking about our common cause and it evokes the kind of emotion at a time when our country really needs it,” he said.

“And you know,” he added a moment later, “it’s funny how this whole thing worked out. I always felt if there was going to be conversations about race in sports, the Negro Leagues should be at the center, because that’s the story: They triumphed over adversity.

“I got to know so many of them, and not a single guy that I met ever harbored ill will, at least to the point where they let it block their path. Everybody else thought the major leagues were better, but you couldn’t convince them,” he concluded. “They just wanted the chance to prove they could play this game as well as anybody else.”

They did, forging a rich legacy that will echo with a new generation thanks to something as simple as the virtual tip of a cap.

Newswire: Trump levels racist attack on Congresswomen of Color in latest social media screed

Posted on by

By Lauren Victory Burke, NNPA Newswire Contributor

Four Congresswomen: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA).


President Donald Trump went on a racist screed on Twitter and attacked Democratic congresswomen of color and their ancestry. The 45th President, who succeeded the first African American President of the United States, Barack Obama, has often attacked Black female elected officials, such as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Black athletes, immigrants, and other women of color.
As is his general habit, Trump lies in his communications and brands places where people of color reside as dangerous. President Trump has a long history of racism as does his late father, Fred Trump. Fred Trump was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens, New York on May 30, 1927 when he was 21.
Their company, Trump Properties, was sued by the Justice Department for housing discrimination against Blacks in 1973. On May 1, 1989, Donald Trump took out ads in several of New York’s major newspapers demanding that the Central Park Five be given the death penalty. Even though the five have been exonerated, Trump has never admitted he was wrong or apologized.
A hint of Trump’s racist views now on international display in The White House, was seen in 1989 as Trump linked the Central Park Five case to an overall decline in society.
“At what point did we cross the line from the fine and noble pursuit of genuine civil liberties to the reckless and dangerously permissive atmosphere which allows criminals of every age to beat and rape a helpless woman and laugh at her family’s anguish? And why do they laugh? The laugh because they know that soon, very soon, they will be returned to the street to rape and maim and kill once again,” Trump said in a 1989 interview.
On July 14, 2019, Trump wrote, “So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……” read one communication on Twitter the morning of July 14.
Consistent with his racist attacks and communications both verbal and on social media, President Trump attacked three Congresswomen of color who have gained national prominence as they oppose Trump’s policies: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA).
Trump implied in a series of consecutive messages on Twitter on July 14 that the Congresswomen weren’t born in the United States and added, “they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Rep. Illan was born in Somalia and her family arrived in New York on 1992 and secured asylum in the U.S. in 1995. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx, New York and Rep. Pressley was born in Chicago, Ill. Another Congresswoman Trump has attacked before, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), was born in Detroit, Michigan.
Though Trump did not name who specifically he was referring to, the context of his communication on Twitter was clear to political observers. Earlier in July, Trump referenced the three women. All three, as well as many other members, have been outspoken about Trump’s immigration policies.
The conditions of detention facilities at the Mexican border came into stark light after Vice President Pence visited a center on June 12. Video from the visit showed a large group of Mexican men grouped in a fenced in enclosure with no cots, food and few signs of running water or other basic needs.
Trump’s direct messages or racism and xenophobia to his base have increased as the 2020 presidential campaign gets fully underway. The Iowa Caucuses are 203 days away as of July 14.


Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent journalist and writer for NNPA as well as a political analyst and strategist as Principal of Win Digital Media LLC. She may be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on Twitter at @LVBurke

Newswire : Vanishing Joshua Trees: Climate Change will ravage US National Parks, study says

Posted on by

 By Emily Holden, Guardian UK

 

Joshua Tree National Park

America’s national parks have warmed twice as fast as the US average and could see some of the worst effects of climate change, according to a new study. Most of Joshua Tree National park could become uninhabitable for its eponymous trees, glaciers will continue to melt away at Glacier national park, and many other of America’s most treasured beauty spots could be rendered virtually unrecognizable by climate change, Patrick Gonzalez, the lead author of the study, writes in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Even the tiniest of creatures are at risk in the worst-case predictions: the American pika, a small alpine mammal, may no longer be able to survive on park land. “We are preserving the most remarkable ecosystems, and they happen to be in extreme environments,” said Gonzalez, a climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Gonzalez is also the principal climate change scientist for the US National Park Service but conducted and spoke about the research in his university capacity. The study finds that temperatures in national parks could go up 3 to 9C by 2100, under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s worst-case scenario, which shows what could happen without policies to decrease greenhouse gas pollution. With lower emissions, temperatures could still increase more than 2C (3.6F) for 58% of park land, compared to 22% of the US as a whole, according to the study. They are particularly vulnerable because most US park land is in areas that are heating up quicker: in the mountains, the Arctic and the dry south-west. Alaska parks would see the most extreme heat increases, and the US Virgin Islands parks face 28% less rainfall by the end of the century. In Glacier Bay national park, the Muir Glacier melted 640 meters between 1948 and 2000. In Yellowstone national park, trees are dying because bark beetles are thriving in warmer winters. Yellowstone will also become far more vulnerable to wildfires. The area burned could be up to three to 10 times higher by 2100. Joshua Tree national park in California could lose up to 90% of the habitat suitable for its namesake trees. Gonzalez explained that parks at a higher elevation have a thinner atmosphere that warms faster. Higher temperatures are also melting snow cover and making the ground darker so that it absorbs more heat. Parks in California and the south-west US have seen both high temperatures and record-low rainfall, he said. The research is the first comprehensive look at climate change impacts on national parks, Gonzalez said. He said he has been using the climate impacts research to develop plans for parks to adapt and reduce the greenhouse gas pollution they contribute. The Trump administration has rescinded government efforts to slow climate change. The interior department, where the National Park Service is housed, nixed a policy that would have urged management decisions based on science, including climate change research. Park officials in New England scrubbed references to climate change and flooding risks in a report this summer, according to Reveal. The National Park Service did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the study or climate change policies for parks. Jonathan Jarvis, the National Park Service director under Barack Obama who now works at UC Berkeley, said he relied on climate change projections to decide where to relocate and bolster structures in the Everglades national park in Florida, an area that has been hit by hurricanes and faces sea-level rise. Jarvis said he worries that under Trump parks won’t be able to plan long-term for climate change. “The park service manages these assets, these places, for the benefit of the American people, and they should be based on the best available sound science in the long-term public interest, not for some short-term political agenda,” Jarvis said.

Obama condemns Trump for ‘rejecting the future’ by exiting Paris climate deal

Posted on by

By: Sabrina Siddiqui and Lauren Gambino, Guardian
Barack Obama

Barack Obama
Barack Obama led condemnation of his successor’s decision to withdraw from the landmark Paris climate accord, which the former president’s administration painstakingly negotiated over the course of several years.
In a statement released just before Donald Trump officially announced that the US would remove itself from the deal, Obama said the administration had joined “a small handful of nations that reject the future”. He warned that the more than 190 countries that remained participants would “reap the benefits in jobs and industries created”, but he said that US states, cities and businesses “will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got”.
The rare rebuke by Obama was testament to the magnitude of Trump’s decision. The former president has commented sparingly on the new administration, weighing in only on matters he has framed as of moral significance, such as Trump’s stymied effort to impose a travel ban on refugees and citizens from several Muslim-majority countries.
Trump’s withdrawal from the accord was not just a blow to one of Obama’s signature achievements, but to an issue routinely dubbed by the Obama administration as the greatest threat to US national security and future generations across the globe.
The former secretary of state John Kerry, who represented the US in the negotiations over the Paris accord, said Trump had turned America into “an environmental pariah in the world”.
In exiting the agreement, the US joined only Syria and Nicaragua in sitting on the sidelines even as widespread condemnation poured in from foreign leaders, climate scientists and many leading US companies.
The reaction in Washington was nonetheless split on familiar partisan lines, with Republican lawmakers near unanimously throwing their support behind Trump while Democrats vowed revenge at the ballot box.
Republican leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who have long sought to thwart Obama’s environmental legacy, applauded Trump in their statements.
“The Paris climate agreement was simply a raw deal for America,” Ryan said, adding: “In order to unleash the power of the American economy, our government must encourage production of American energy. I commend President Trump for fulfilling his commitment to the American people and withdrawing from this bad deal.”
McConnell said Trump’s move followed through on congressional action “to rebuff then-President Obama’s regulatory rampage.”
“When the previous administration signed America up for this unattainable mandate, we made it clear we would fight this unilateral action any way we could, and this day could not have happened soon enough,” McConnell said. “President Trump has once again put families and jobs ahead of leftwing ideology and should be commended for his action.”
But at least some Republicans – from Florida, one of many coastal states grappling with the effects of extreme weather and rising sea levels – expressed disappointment with the president’s decision to withdraw.
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who represents south Florida, urged the US to establish a “long term-strategy against climate change”. She also noted that Thursday marked the first day of hurricane season in the state.
Democrats were uniformly scathing in their assessment of Trump’s decision, with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer declaring it “a devastating failure of historic proportions”.
“Future generations will look back on President Trump’s decision as one of the worst policy moves made in the 21st century because of the huge damage to our economy, our environment and our geopolitical standing,” Schumer said. “Pulling out of the Paris agreement doesn’t put America first. It puts America last in recognizing science, in being a world leader and protecting our own shore line, our economy and our planet.”
Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, said Trump’s position ran counter to that of Pope Francis, who during the president’s recent visit to the Vatican presented Trump with a copy of his encyclical on climate change.
Democrats would join efforts with states, cities and the private sector to make good on initiatives to mitigate the threat of climate change, she added, “regardless of the reckless and short-sighted actions that the White House takes”.
Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who made climate change a pillar of his bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, decried Trump’s action as “an abdication of American leadership and an international disgrace”. “When climate change is already causing devastating harm, we don’t have the moral right to turn our backs on efforts to preserve this planet,” Sanders tweeted.

Under Director Comey, FBI Special Agents were required to visit Dr. King’s Memorial

Posted on by

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called King a communist because of his fight for civil rights
By Frederick H. Lowe

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com

king monument - obama family.jpg

Visitors at the King Memorial in Washington, D. C.

(TriceEdneyWire.com)–Former FBI Director James Comey, who was hired by President Barack Obama and fired by President Donald Trump, ordered the FBI’s new special agents to visit the Washington D.C. memorial honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for a discussion concerning unchecked government power.
As FBI director, Comey kept a memo on his desk written by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The memo described Dr. King as a Communist, and it requested a technical surveillance on the civil rights leader. The 1963 memo was signed by Robert Kennedy, the U.S. Attorney General, Comey said during an interview on “60 Minutes” the news magazine broadcast Sunday nights on CBS Television.
Scott Pelley, a 60 Minutes reporter, who interviewed Comey, said, “there is no court order. It was a signature of the FBI director and the signature of the attorney general.”
“Yep,” Comey said. ”And then open-ended. No time limit. No space restriction. No review. No oversight.”
A 60 Minutes narrator said: “Some of the worst of the FBI’s history is its investigation of Dr. King. So, on Comey’s orders, FBI Academy instructors now bring new agents here [Dr. King’s statue] to talk about values lost in the pursuit of the man who became a monument.”
The camera then focuses on the face of an unnamed black woman who said: “Character, courage, collaboration, competence. We have to be able to call on those tools in our toolbox to be able to make sure that we are correcting some of the things that happened in the past.”
“What’s the lesson?” Pelley asks Comey.
“The lesson is the importance of never becoming untethered to oversight and accountability. I want all of my new special agents and intelligence analysts to understand that portion of the FBI’s history the FBI’s interaction with Dr. King and draw from it an understanding of the dangers of falling in love with our own rectitude. And the importance of being immersed in that design of the founders with oversight by the courts and Congress so we don’t fall in love with our own view of things,” Comey said.
President Trump fired Comey on May 9th. President Obama appointed him in 2013.

Steph Curry, Barack Obama team up to promote mentoring in PSA

Posted on by

Steph Curry and Barack Obama

Steph Curry and President Barack Obama

The President and the Golden State Warriors point guard appeared alongside each other in a public service announcement released Saturday that highlights the importance of mentoring a young person. The video is part of campaign by Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative and MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership called “In Real Life,” which aims to increase opportunity for minority youths.
In the video, Obama edits Curry’s resume (which has basketball emojis in the header), beats him at Connect Four and then celebrates by “clowning” — Curry’s teasing of his opponents on the court — and teaches him how to shoot a basket.
Curry is no stranger to the White House. The basketball star also helped with Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, joining the first lady with his wife, Ayesha Curry, holding turnips and dancing to the pop song “Turn Down for What” by DJ Snake and Lil Jon.
He also visited earlier this year with his team as 2015’s NBA champions. Obama singled him out after he scored 51 points against the Washington Wizards during a game before the visit, saying he was a “pretty good shooter.”