By Staff of Daily Kos
Martin County, nestled in northeast North Carolina, had 24,500 residents in 2010. By 2020, that number had dropped to 22,000. Like much of rural America, its population is steadily declining.
Politically, it’s followed a familiar trajectory. President Barack Obama carried the county twice by 5 points. In 2016, President Donald Trump edged out Hillary Clinton, 49.2% to 48.8%. And by 2020, Trump’s margin grew to 52% to President Joe Biden’s 47%. Last year, he won it by 55% to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 45%.
Now the county faces a very different kind of loss: its only hospital shut down in August 2023 due to financial strain, making the nearest emergency room 22 miles away—a 30-minute drive that, for some, is fatal. It’s even farther for more advanced medical services.
There were plans to reopen the hospital, but then Trump’s proposed cuts to Medicaid—framed as a crackdown on “fraud and waste”—shattered that possibility.
According to The New York Times, the impacts are felt acutely by Martin County residents, more than a quarter of whom are older than 65. The nearest hospital is in Greenville 40 minutes away.
Verna Marie Perry, 66, a former worker in the county’s adult and aging services department, told the Times that she now fields calls from friends in medical crises.
“Neighbors have called me crying moments after someone close to them died while being transported to the nearest hospital,” she said.
It’s a tragic reality made worse by the fact that some residents still can’t—or won’t—see the connection between their vote and the disaster now unfolding.
Cathy Price, 72, a lifelong Williamston resident and former nurse at the shuttered Martin General, told the Times that while she still backs Trump’s efforts to trim Medicaid, “we’re in a life-and-death crisis. People’s lives are on the line because of the hospital not being here.”
There it is: She voted to hurt other people, not herself. And even now, she clings to the fantasy that all of that “fraud and waste” must be happening somewhere else.
But the harsh reality is that there’s nothing remotely efficient about a hospital serving just 22,000 people. Rural hospitals aren’t profitable. They can only exist because of subsidies from urban areas—in effect, from liberals.
And for years, that was the deal: Blue America paid the bills so red America could have hospitals, schools, broadband, and clean water. In return, rural voters have voted to burn the country down.
Okay, then.
We feel for the 45% of Martin County voters who backed Harris. They tried to do what was best for their country and their county. As for Price and her fellow Trump voters? We hope that they get exactly what they voted for.
Tag: President Barack Obama
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Newswire : Lilly Ledbetter, a pay equality pioneer,dead at 86
Lilly Ledbetter
By: Mary Claire Wooten, Alabama Political Reporters
Lilly Ledbetter, a notable women’s equality activist, died on Saturday at 86. According to her family, Ledbetter died of respiratory failure.
Ledbetter worked at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden for 19 years before receiving an anonymous note and discovering that her male counterparts with similar experience and seniority were paid as much as $2,000 more monthly for their work. She had worked there from 1979 until her retirement in 1998.
She successfully sued Goodyear, receiving back pay and the cost of compensatory and punitive damages. Still, the judgment was reversed on appeal by the Eleventh Circuit since she had not filed within the 180-day window.
The lawsuit eventually reached the Supreme Court in 2007, which ruled against her. The Supreme Court upheld the appeal court ruling that Ledbetter had not filed the suit within the 180-day window. As a result, Ledbetter never collected any kind of settlement from Goodyear.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, “once again, the ball is in Congress’s court.” This ignited activist groups, who saw the court’s decision as a setback for women and civil rightsIn 2009, the 111th United States Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to make filing pay discrimination claims easier. It was the first bill then-President Barack Obama signed into law after taking office in 2009.
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act allows workers to file a complaint 180 days after the last pay violation and not only 180 days after the initial pay disparity.
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Newswire : Biden makes historic strides in diversifying Federal judiciary
President Biden and VP Kamala Harris stand with Supreme Court Justice Katanji Brown-Jackson
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
President Joe Biden has set a historic precedent by appointing more non-white and female judges to the federal judiciary than any other president in U.S. history, a significant achievement in his first three and a half years in office. According to a published analysis of self-reported data from the Federal Judicial Center, only 13 percent of Biden’s Senate-confirmed judicial appointments are white men.
“I’m particularly proud that these judges reflect the diversity that is our country’s strength, Biden said in February following the confirmation of his 175th judge.
As of mid-May, Biden remains the only president to have appointed more women than men to the federal bench, with over 60 percent of his judges being female. This surpasses the previous record set by former President Barack Obama, who appointed 138 female judges during his eight-year presidency. Biden is on track to surpass this figure as he nears the end of his first term.
The Senate is set to confirm more of Biden’s judicial nominees this week, including Seth Aframe of New Hampshire, who will serve as a Circuit Court Judge on the First Circuit. “This is a big deal,” White House Deputy Communications Director Herbie Ziskend asserted. “These highly qualified individuals have diverse professional backgrounds: they’ve been labor lawyers, civil rights lawyers, public defenders, served in the U.S. military, and more,”Ziskend continued, noting that over 60 percent of women and 60 percent of individuals of color have been included in Biden’s appointments. “These men and women will rule on issues critical to fundamental freedoms: reproductive healthcare, the freedom to cast ballots, whether workers have the freedom to unionize, whether children have the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water,” Ziskend declared.
Aframe’s confirmation will mark the 198th judge confirmed under Biden. “This week, the Senate will confirm more of President Biden’s outstanding judicial nominees for lifetime appointments to the federal bench, and we will hit a major milestone along the way,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) stated. “Later, the Senate will vote on the confirmation of Aframe.”
Schumer praised Aframe as an exceptional addition to the First Circuit, highlighting his unanimous “well-qualified” rating by the American Bar Association and extensive experience in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Hampshire.
“I expect that the Senate will reach the significant milestone of 200 judges under Senate Democrats and President Biden,” Schumer continued. “That is a figure we can all be proud of and shows how intensely focused we are on filling the bench with jurists who will make our democracy stronger and uphold the rule of law.”
Despite being locked out of a Supreme Court majority, Biden, with the support of the Democratic-majority Senate, has made substantial changes to the federal courts by emphasizing diversity. The absence of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) due to his corruption trial and the opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has pledged to support only nominees with bipartisan backing, poses challenges for Schumer in advancing more controversial judges.
Notably, Biden’s appointments have generally garnered bipartisan support. Many have received voice votes, and some have the support of moderate Republicans like Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who backed a procedural vote on Aframe’s nomination.
The racial and ethnic breakdown of Biden’s judicial appointments reveals a diverse slate: 36 percent white, 27 percent Black, 16 percent Hispanic, 14 percent Asian, 5 percent multi-racial, 1 percent Native American, and 1 percent Middle Eastern.
In contrast, 65 percent of Trump’s judicial appointments were white men. Biden has appointed 125 non-white judges compared to Trump’s 37 and Obama’s 120.
As Biden aims to match Trump’s record of 237 federal judicial appointments, including three Supreme Court justices, his administration will require significant Senate cooperation in the coming months. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022 was a prime example of the conservative influence that Trump’s administration and a Republican-controlled Senate had on the judiciary.
Reflecting on the importance of judicial diversity, Schumer concluded, “We are intensely focused on filling the bench with jurists who will make our democracy stronger and uphold the rule of law.” -
Newswire: Biden applauded for prioritizing civil rights amidst growing Artificial Intelligence Technology
By Hazel Trice Edney
(TriceEdneyWire.com) – President Joe Biden is receiving wide applause among Black leadership for his executive order that attempts to assure that artificial intelligence (AI) remains within boundaries that respect civil rights and adhere to principles of democracy. But the question remains whether the executive order goes far enough to protect Black people – particular from abusive law enforcement.
“We believe in the potential for AI to be a powerful tool to help advance our vision of opportunity and prosperity for Black and Brown people. But we cannot let the tools of the future reinforce the mistakes of the past. Guardrails must be implemented now to ensure that this emerging technology centers equity at every step of development and implementation,” said Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCR), in a statement issued following Biden’s signing of the executive order. “This executive order is a critical step to help guard against algorithmic bias and discrimination. It can be the beginning of a pathway to a future where AI empowers instead of oppresses.”
Hewitt says the executive order prepares the federal government “to prevent and address bias and discrimination in new technologies; but more action is needed to fully address harmful AI used by law enforcement.”
Tech experts have pointed out that abusive AI tactics have been racially biased, especially against Black people.
An article titled, “Racial Discrimination in Face Recognition Technology,” written by Harvard University biotech consultant, Alex Najibi, points out that face recognition technology, a form of AI often used by police departments and in airport screening, as well as employment and housing decisions, has been known to involve “significant racial bias, particularly against Black Americans.”
Najibi adds, “Even if accurate, face recognition empowers a law enforcement system with a long history of racist and anti-activist surveillance and can widen pre-existing inequalities.”
He writes that “despite widespread adoption, face recognition was recently banned for use by police and local agencies in several cities, including Boston and San Francisco” because face recognition “is the least accurate” of all recognition technologies such as fingerprinting.
While applauding the Administration on its initial steps to direct agencies to determine how AI is used in criminal justice, the LCCR says Biden’s executive order does not go far enough to actually address “harmful uses of AI by law enforcement agencies, such as the discriminatory use of facial recognition technologies.”
President Barack Obama, who also released a statement, pointed out that he asked his staff seven years ago to study “how artificial intelligence could play a growing role in the future of the United States.”
He pointed out additional problems that could occur, including national security threats.
“We don’t want anyone with an internet connection to be able to create a new strain of smallpox, access nuclear codes, or attack our critical infrastructure. And we have to make sure this technology doesn’t fall into the hands of people who want to use it to turbocharge things like cybercrime and fraud,” Obama states.
He credited organizations such as the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Upturn to the Alignment Research Center for “tackling these questions, and making sure more people feel like their concerns are being heard and addressed.”
The Leadership Conference, led by Maya Wiley, president, wrote a letter to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on August 4, urging the Administration to focus Biden’s executive order on “protecting the American public from the current and potential harms of this technology— including threats to people’s rights, civil liberties, opportunities, jobs, economic well-being, and access to critical resources and services.” That letter was co-signed by LCCR, the NAACP, and the Center for American Progress among others.
The Executive Order directs the following requirements for organizations using AI:
Require that developers of the most powerful AI systems share their safety test results and other critical information with the U.S. government.
Develop standards, tools, and tests to help ensure that AI systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy.
Protect against the risks of using AI to engineer dangerous biological materials by developing strong new standards for biological synthesis screening.
Protect Americans from AI-enabled fraud and deception by establishing standards and best practices for detecting AI-generated content and authenticating official content.
Establish an advanced cybersecurity program to develop AI tools to find and fix vulnerabilities in critical software.
Order the development of a National Security Memorandum that directs further actions on AI and security.
The focus of the executive order is primarily to assure a fair and safe future while using AI, Biden says. But the LCCR insists the order needs more work and vows to continue working with the Administration to that end.
Hewitt concluded, “To make that future a reality, civil rights-focused protections must apply to every aspect of our lives touched by AI technology, including the harmful use of AI by law enforcement. We look forward to working with the Biden Administration on how we can address the full scope of this challenge and fully leverage the opportunity before us.” -
Newswire: U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to oversee former President Trump’s election interference case
Federal Judge Tanya S. Chutkan
By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
Judge Tanya S. Chutkan will preside over the case of former President Donald Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This decision comes after Chutkan’s previous involvement in key motions related to the January 6 committee’s investigation. Chutkan has a history with Trump. She denied his 2021 motion to prevent records from being given to the January 6 committee. In her decision, she emphasized that “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not president.” This ruling showcased her commitment to upholding the principles of democracy and the rule of law. A trailblazer in her own right, Chutkan’s background is impressive. She was born in Kingston, Jamaica and moved to the United States to pursue higher education. She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from George Washington University and later graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Chutkan began her law career working in private practice and later at the District of Columbia Public Defender Service. After that, she joined the law firm Boies, Schiller, & Flexner LLP, where she specialized in white-collar criminal defense for a total of 12 years. Legal experts described Chutkan as incredibly dedicated to justice and fair representation as a public defender. They said her commitment to ensuring equal access to justice was evident. Her colleagues said her extensive experience in complex legal matters and criminal defense undoubtedly contributed to her well-rounded understanding of the law. Chutkan was appointed to the District Court for the District of Columbia by former President Barack Obama in 2014. Chutkan has a reputation for being a fair and committed judge. Still, she hasn’t shied away from imposing harsher sentences than the Justice Department initially requested in cases involving January 6 defendants. When federal prosecutors suggested that Matt Mazzocco serve three months of home confinement and probation after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Chutkan insisted that there must be consequences “beyond sitting at home” for individuals involved in an attempted violent overthrow of the U.S. government. “If Mr. Mazzocco walks away with probation and a slap on the wrist, that’s not going to deter anyone trying what he did again,” Chutkan asserted from the bench. “It does not, in this Court’s opinion, indicate the severity – the gravity of the offenses that he committed on Jan. 6.” Ultimately, she sentenced Mazzocco to 45 days in jail and 60 hours of community service. Many observers said her stance reflects a belief in the importance of holding individuals accountable for their actions during the insurrection. The judge has refused to bow to political pressure or executive privilege. In addition to denying Trump’s emergency motion in 2021, attempting to prevent the National Archives from turning over his administration’s records to the January 6 committee, she has remained steadfast in upholding the law. “For a lot of people, I seem to check a lot of boxes: immigrant, woman, Black, Asian. Your qualifications are always going to be subject to criticism and you have to develop a thick skin,” Chutkan was quoted as saying in a February 2022 profile posted by the federal judiciary. -
Newswire: Black Americans are being vaccinated at far lower rates
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
Black woman being vaccinated
When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved two new vaccines to combat the coronavirus, the initial concern was whether African Americans would accept vaccination.
The rollout of the medicine from Pfizer and Moderna featured heavy promotion.
High-profile African Americans like former President Barack Obama, National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) Coronavirus Task Force Member Dr. Ebony Hilton, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson received their shots publicly.
An African American nurse in New York earned distinction as the first person in the country to receive a vaccination, and Meharry Medical College President Dr. James Hildreth, a Black man, sat on the FDA board that approved the vaccines.
Now, concern has shifted from whether African Americans will accept the vaccine.
Many now wonder whether doses would be available to the Black community.
A new Kaiser Family Foundation report has revealed that African Americans are getting vaccinated at much lower rates than whites. The report, released on Saturday, Jan. 16, shows that in 16 U.S. states where the vaccine is available, white residents are being vaccinated by as much as three times higher than African Americans.
One example is Pennsylvania, where 1.2 percent of white residents had been vaccinated, compared with just 0.3 percent of African Americans in the Keystone State.
Kaiser Family Foundation researchers noted that vaccine distribution is supposed to align with healthcare and frontline workers’ demographics, presumably making the vaccine equally available to all races.
Some have hinted the lack of vaccine access is rooted in racism – not an unwillingness of minorities to get vaccinated.
Dr. Taison Bell, of the University of Virginia, told NBC News that he was “horrified to discover that members of environmental services — the janitorial staff — did not have access to hospital email. ”Hospital staff receives its vaccination information via email, Dr. Bell stated.
“That’s what structural racism looks like,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told NBC. “Those groups were seen and not heard — nobody thought about it.”
As of Jan. 25, the U.S. had surpassed more than 25 million total cases and 413,000 deaths due to the pandemic, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported.
According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis, African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans are dying from COVID-19 nearly three times the rate of white people. “With the country’s coronavirus pandemic continuing unabated as cases and deaths increase, and a more contagious variant of the virus spreads, there is a greater focus on vaccine distribution troubles,” Kaiser Family Foundation President and CEO Drew Altman wrote.
The covid-19 vaccine distribution effort is in trouble, Altman demurred. According to federal data, only 15 million of the more than 40 million doses distributed nationwide have been given to people. “Hundreds of different distribution programs are being organized across states and counties for frontline health workers, residents of long-term care facilities, the elderly and others that states are prioritizing in different sequences,” Altman continued.
“The country needs a distribution strategy that our fragmented, multilayered healthcare system can effectively implement. This will require more federal direction, a simpler priority structure, and a different role for the states.” -
Newswire : Obamacare Sign-ups at High Levels Despite Trump Saying It’s ‘Imploding’
By ROBERT PEAR, New York Times
People protesting for Obamacare
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Thursday that 8.8 million people had signed up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s federal marketplace, a surprisingly large number only slightly lower than the total in the last open enrollment period, which was twice as long and heavily advertised.
The numbers essentially defied President Trump’s assertion that “Obamacare is imploding.” They suggested that consumers want and need the coverage and subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act, even though political battles over the law, President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement, are sure to continue in Congress and in next year’s midterm election campaigns.
Seema Verma, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, reported the total in a Twitter post on Thursday. She said her agency had done a great job to “make this the smoothest experience for consumers to date.”
The number of people who signed up this year was 96 percent of the 9.2 million who selected health plans or were automatically re-enrolled through the federal marketplace in the last sign-up season.
“It’s a very, very strong number,” said Joshua Peck, who was the chief marketing officer for HealthCare.gov in the Obama administration. “It implies that the final week of open enrollment this year was very big.”
Republican efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act this year had an unintended effect: They heightened public awareness of the law and, according to opinion polls, galvanized support for it among consumers who feared that it might be taken away.
“It’s incredible how many people signed up for coverage this year,” said Lori Lodes, an Obama administration official and a founder of Get America Covered, a nonprofit group.
But the strong demand for insurance through the Affordable Care Act could set off new efforts to dismantle the law.
The tax cut that Mr. Trump will soon sign repeals the Affordable Care Act’s tax penalties for most Americans who go without insurance, starting in 2019. The president said Wednesday that with elimination of the individual mandate, the health law is being effectively repealed, a statement that is untrue given the law’s expansion of Medicaid, the continued guarantee of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and the subsidies still available to millions of people with low or moderate income.
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The sign-up numbers seemed to indicate that despite all the politics, millions need the insurance. Nearly half of all plan selections this year — 4.1 million of the 8.8 million — occurred in the last week of open enrollment. More than one-fourth of the people who signed up this year — 2.4 million — were new customers, and 6.4 million people returned to HealthCare.gov to select plans or were automatically re-enrolled.
Those large numbers came in the face of big challenges. Before the enrollment period, which ran from Nov. 1 to Dec. 15, many insurers announced big rate increases for 2018. The Trump administration cut the budget for advertising to promote enrollment and greatly reduced grants to insurance counselors, known as navigators, who help people sign up for coverage.
In the first nine months of this year, Republicans tried repeatedly to repeal the Affordable Care Act, continually criticized it and asserted that health insurance markets were collapsing. Mr. Trump highlighted huge increases in premiums without noting that many consumers were eligible for federal subsidies that help cover the extra cost.
The report Thursday shows sign-ups by people in 39 states that use HealthCare.gov. It does not include activity in 11 states that operate their own insurance exchanges and are also reporting strong enrollment. In some of those states, consumers have more time to sign up. The deadline is Jan. 14 in Minnesota, Jan. 15 in Washington State and Jan. 31 in California and New York.
In addition, people losing coverage because their insurer withdrew from the marketplace may qualify for a special enrollment period providing 60 additional days to sign up for a health plan.
More than 80 percent of people buying insurance through the marketplace qualify for subsidies to help pay premiums. The Trump administration said in October that the average subsidy in states using the federal marketplace would be $555 a month next year, up 45 percent from this year.
Among states using the federal exchange, the largest numbers of sign-ups this year were in Florida (1.7 million), Texas (1.1 million), North Carolina (524,000), Georgia (483,000), Virginia (403,000), Pennsylvania (397,000) and Illinois (340,000).
Federal officials reported a huge surge of activity near the end of open enrollment. In Florida, more than 700,000 people selected plans or were automatically enrolled in the final week, and in Texas, the number was more than 550,000.
Ms. Verma tried over the summer to persuade Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but on Thursday, she boasted about how well the law’s insurance marketplace — under new management — was meeting the needs of consumers.
The Trump administration, she said, spent only $10 million on marketing and outreach to consumers, or just over $1 for each person who signed up. By contrast, she said, the Obama administration spent a total of $100 million last year, or nearly $11 for each person who signed up.
Moreover, Ms. Verma said, the Trump administration “took a more cost-effective approach” that emphasized the use of digital advertising and email to reach consumers.
While cutting the budget for navigator groups, the Trump administration encouraged the use of insurance agents and brokers, saying it wanted to “shift away from the government selling a private product.” -
No clues yet as to Trump’s Policy for Africa, but theories abound
Young African Leaders in (YALI) DC, an Obama program on the chopping block.(TriceEdneyWire.com/Global Information Network) – If U.S. President Donald Trump has an Africa policy in the works, he’s keeping the details close to his chest. So far, there is neither an assistant secretary of state for Africa nor an ambassador. The incumbent secretary, Linda Thomas Greenfield, retires on March 10.
Peter Pham, vice-president and Africa director of the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC. Is reportedly seeking a position. In a strategy paper prepared for the Trump administration, Pham proposed an initiative he calls “earned engagement.”
The US, he says, should grant diplomatic recognition only to governments with legitimate sovereign control over their countries. Somalia, for example, would not be among those countries having had 15 transitional governments following the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in 1991. None of these were recognized by Republican or Democratic administrations.
Recognition might also be withdrawn from the Democratic Republic of Congo if President Joseph Kabila fails to honor his commitment to retire this year after elections.
More resources would be channeled into Africom, according to Pham, not only to address insecurity directly, but also to continue to beef up African militaries.
Other clues as to the President’s Africa plans appeared last month in a New York Times article which revealed a retreat from development and humanitarian goals while pushing business opportunities across the continent.
New executive orders are reportedly being prepared with drastic funding cuts to U.N. peacekeeping operations – now almost a third of which are funded by the US – the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Population Fund, which oversees maternal and reproductive health programs.
Anton du Plessis, head of the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies fears that Trump will “securitize” US policy, funding and engagement in Africa, focusing heavily on security problems such as Boko Haram, while ignoring efforts to create stability in the long term through democracy, good governance and sustainable development.
Among such efforts would be one of former President Barack Obama’s most successful programs – the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) which brings several hundred young African professionals and entrepreneurs to the US for six weeks each summer.
“It is possible that Trump’s term in office will surprise us on Africa,” observed former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson. “Republican administrations have outperformed on this front before. President Bush certainly did, and his two landmark initiatives – PEPFAR and the Millennium Challenge Corporation – remain extremely popular.”
But given the absence of any serious White House interest in Africa, Secretary Rex Tillerson, with limited knowledge of Africa having dealt mainly with corrupt and authoritarian leaders as head of ExxonMobil, may become the key American player on Africa. -
Obama cuts sentences of hundreds of drug offenders
By Kevin Liptak, CNN White House Producer
President Barack Obama on Tuesday, January 17, 2017 reduced or eliminated the sentences for hundreds more non-violent drug offenders.
The move brings Obama well beyond his most recent predecessors, who used their commutation powers more sparingly. He’s now reduced sentences for 1,385 individuals, the vast majority of whom are serving time for crimes related to distribution or production of narcotics.
Many of those whose punishments he’s reduced were incarcerated for crimes involving crack cocaine, which came with mandatory sentences that were longer than those for the powdered version of the drug. The discrepancy — a facet of a decades-long war on drugs — overwhelmingly affected African-Americans.
Obama had hoped for legislation to permanently end the disparities in sentencing laws. While an unlikely group of activists have pushed in Congress for a bill that would alter mandatory minimums and reform the prison system, a rancorous political climate during last year’s presidential campaign prevented progress.
Instead, Obama encouraged Americans serving lengthy terms to apply for clemency, prompting a flood of applications to his Justice Department. A group of legal aid groups established the Clemency Project to help screen applicants and complete the required paperwork.
An onslaught of requests required Obama’s aides to establish a process for vetting applications, which began backing up in the Pardon Attorney’s office.
At the beginning of 2017, 13,568 petitions for clemency were still pending. The Obama administration has received more than 30,000 petitions over eight years.
The power to grant pardons and commutations is written into the US constitution as one of the president’s clearest unilateral prerogatives. With large batches often coming in the final weeks of an administration, an act of clemency cannot be challenged in court or overturned by Congress.
President George W. Bush granted 189 pardons and 11 commutations, including reducing the prison term for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators in the probe of the leak of the name of a CIA operative.
President Bill Clinton issued a flurry of pardons on his final day in office, including for financier Marc Rich and the president’s half-brother Roger Clinton. In sum, Clinton ordered 396 pardons and 61 commutations.
No recent commander-in-chief, however, has used the powers as liberally as Obama to enact a criminal justice reform agenda. Writing in the Harvard Law Review earlier this month, Obama said his push toward eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and offering clemency to non-violent drug offenders was informed by his own history.
“This is an effort that has touched me personally, and not just because I could have been caught up in the system myself had I not gotten some breaks as a kid,” Obama wrote, recalling meetings at the White House with recipients of his clemency grants who had turned their life around.
“By shifting the narrative to the way clemency can be used to correct injustices in the system — and reminding people of the value of second chances — I worked to reinvigorate the clemency power and to set a precedent that will make it easier for future presidents, governors and other public officials to use it for good,” Obama wrote.
While President-elect Donald Trump has yet to detail his planned use of clemency powers, there’s little optimism about criminal justice reform advocates that he’ll continue Obama’s efforts. Trump ran on a “law and order” platform, though rarely addressed issues of clemency or sentencing on the campaign trail.
“I’m looking at various predictors to try and decide where he might go. He wants to make America safe again. We know based on data that locking up low-level offenders won’t make America safe,” said Jessica Jackson Sloan, the national director and co-founder of #cut50, a group committed to reducing the US prison population by half. “I’m hopeful that we’ll be surprised,” Sloan said.
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Obama offers optimism — and warnings – in farewell address
By Kevin Liptak, CNN White House Producer
President Barack Obama
Chicago (CNN) Popular but politically humbled, President Barack Obama said goodbye to the nation Tuesday night, declaring during his farewell address that he hasn’t abandoned his vision of progressive change but warning that it now comes with a new set of caveats.
His voice at moments catching with emotion, Obama recounted a presidency that saw setbacks as well as successes. Admitting candidly that political discourse has soured under his watch, Obama demanded that Americans renew efforts at reconciliation.
“Democracy does not require uniformity,” Obama said. “Our founders quarreled and compromised, and expected us to do the same. But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity — the idea that for all our outward differences, we are all in this together; that we rise or fall as one.”
In a concession that, for now, his brand of progressive politics is stalled in Washington, Obama admitted “for every two steps forward, it often feels we take one step back.”
He implored his backers to be vigilant in protecting basic American values he warned could come under siege. “Democracy can buckle when we give in to fear,” he said. “So just as we, as citizens, must remain vigilant against external aggression, we must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are.”
And he warned against turning inward, telling Democrats that only by involving themselves in a real political discourse could they hope to renew the hopeful vision he brought to the White House eight years ago. “After eight years as your President, I still believe that,” he went on. “And it’s not just my belief. It’s the beating heart of our American idea — our bold experiment in self-government.”
Obama’s speech is the capstone of a months-long farewell tour, manifested in extended magazine interviews, lengthy television sit-downs, and the White House’s own efforts to document the President’s waning administration. Through it all, Obama has sought to highlight the achievements of his presidency using statistics showing the country better off now than eight years ago.
As he spoke before a rowdy crowd of supporters, Obama was interrupted often with screams of “I Love you Obama.” When a protester holding a “Pardon All of Us” sign, chants of “four more years” drowned out the shouts.
Obama sought to corral his crowd, listing the accomplishments of the last eight years ranging from health care to marriage equality, all while insisting that his work isn’t finished.
He recognized his successor Donald Trump, saying he was committed to a peaceful transition of power. But he warned that going forward Democrats shouldn’t fall in line with their commander-in-chief.
Obama, who has addressed race with varying degrees of force during his time in office, used his farewell to insist Americans work harder to understand each other’s struggles. After presiding over eight years that saw race relations enter a fraught new era, Obama demanded that differences be identified and reconciled.
“Brown kids will represent a larger share of America’s workforce” in the years ahead, Obama proclaimed, calling for better rules that will help the children of immigrants succeed.
He warned that “laws alone won’t be enough” in resolving persistent differences between Americans. “Hearts must change,” he said. He called on African-Americans and minorities to view with empathy “the middle-aged white man who from the outside may seem like he’s got all the advantages, but who’s seen his world upended by economic, cultural, and technological change.”
And he urged whites to regard the protests of minorities as a fight “not demanding special treatment, but the equal treatment our Founders promised.”
“Regardless of the station we occupy, we have to try harder,” Obama said. “To start with the premise that each of our fellow citizens loves this country just as much as we do; that they value hard work and family like we do; that their children are just as curious and hopeful and worthy of love as our own.”
In coming to Chicago, Obama hoped to capitalize on a well of goodwill that’s expanded in the final year of his tenure. He discarded the staid Oval Office or East Room for his last formal set of remarks, choosing instead the city where his political rise began and where he declared victory in 2008 and 2012.
Inside a vast convention hall packed with more than 20,000 of his most ardent supporters and former staffers, the mood was wistful. Ahead of his address, aides described the normally unsentimental commander in chief as nostalgic.
Over the past several weeks, Obama has offered a rational view of Trump’s election and rarely let on to any apprehension about his future as an ex-president.
First lady Michelle Obama has articulated a more candid view in a scaled-back version of her own farewell. She sat for an hour-long interview with Oprah Winfrey, frankly admitting that Democrats were now “feeling what not having hope feels like.”
And she became emotional during her final set of formal remarks at the White House Friday, her voice quaking and eyes welling with tears as she told a crowd of educators: “I hope I made you proud.”
During his speech Tuesday, Obama voice quaked when describing his wife’s service. “You took on a role you didn’t ask for and made it your own with grace and grit and style and good humor,” he said. “You made the White House a place that belongs to everybody.”
The President had been planning his speech for months, aides said, formulating the broad themes while on vacation over the holidays in Hawaii and developing drafts starting last week.
He told aides months ago that he preferred to deliver his farewell address in his hometown, a first for a departing President. George W. Bush, unpopular and facing a financial crisis, delivered his final prime-time address in the White House East Room to a crowd of 200 supporters and aides.
Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter all used the Oval Office — a setting Obama has long spurned for formal remarks. George H.W. Bush traveled outside of Washington to West Point for a departing address after failing to secure a second term, though he didn’t actually bill it as a farewell.
The tradition extends back to George Washington, who issued warnings against unchecked power and partisan entrenchment in a written address to the nation in 1796.