Rising Black Republican running for Senate actually calls out Trump

John James, a Republican candidate for the US Senate, spoke out against President Donald J. Trump in a private video conference with Black community leaders last week. When asked whether he disagreed with the president on anything, James responded, “Plenty, plenty of issues.”

“Everything from cutting Great Lakes funding to ‘sh*thole countries’ to speaking ill of the dead,” James, continued, referencing Trump’s comments about late Senator John McCain. “I mean, where do you want to start?”

READ MORE: Lone Black Republican Senator Tim Scott votes to advance the nomination of Trump’s problematic judicial pick

The Michigan native is an Iraq War veteran, who added that “there’s gonna be places that I disagree with the president and those are just a couple.”

In 2018, James unsuccessfully ran for Senate despite support from the president. Last month, Trump tweeted that James would be “a GREAT Senator for Michigan.”

John James will be a GREAT Senator for Michigan! https://t.co/yGiWzZ9nR0

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2020

In an interview with WWMT, a news station out of West Michigan, James denounced the stay-at-home order from Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer which has kept him off the campaign trail. “We have to make sure that we do everything we can to keep both our family and friends health and safe,” he said, “But we — I believe — are owed a coherent strategy for how we relaunch our economy in both a fact, science-based approach that doesn’t neglect common sense.”

His campaign has tried to connect with what he sees as American values.

In the same interview, James said that he thought Trump has “done everything that he has thought was best” in response to the federal government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

READ MORE: Black Republican state rep from Florida wants to protect Confederate memorials

According to Politico, James said in April that Trump “doesn’t need less black folks around him, he needs more.” He reiterated that he would advocate for African Americans with the current administration, “Hopefully you’ll see through my actions that I am for you, that I am for Black people, and that we share the same destiny. And hopefully, as the result of that, you give me the benefit of the doubt.”

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Anti-Lockdown Demonstrators Walk Into North Carolina Subway Armed With Guns and Rocket Launchers

In today’s episode of, “Are...Are White People OK?”—a group of 11 anti-lockdown demonstrators walked into a Subway sandwich shop in Raleigh, N.C., Saturday carrying an array of weapons, ranging from pistols to whole ass rocket launchers.

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Princeton names its first Black valedictorian in Ivy League’s history

Nicholas Johnson has made history at the prestigious Princeton University becoming the university’s first Black valedictorian.

Johnson is an operations research and financial engineering major from Montreal, Canada. In a statement from the university, he states that he appreciates the encouragement he has received at Princeton in developing his academic interests.

READ MORE: Barack and Michelle Obama to give 2020 commencement speech on YouTube

During his time at the university, Johnson participated in international internships and cultural immersion trips to Peru, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom. Last summer, he interned at Google’s headquarters in California as a software engineer in machine learning.

Following his graduation, Johnson plans to spend this summer interning as a hybrid quantitative researcher and software developer at the D. E. Shaw Group before beginning Ph.D. studies in operations research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in fall 2020.

Nassau Hall on Princeton University’s campus (princeton.edu)

According to the statement, Johnson also pursued certificates in statistics and machine learning, applied and computational mathematics, and applications of computing.

His senior thesis, “Sequential Stochastic Network Structure Optimization with Applications to Addressing Canada’s Obesity Epidemic,” focuses on developing high-performance, efficient algorithms to solve a network-based optimization problem that models a community-based preventative health intervention designed to curb the prevalence of obesity in Canada.

Johnson says that his time spent with his fellow colleagues was central to his success, “My favorite memories of my time at Princeton are memories of time spent with close friends and classmates engaging in stimulating discussions — often late at night — about our beliefs, the cultures and environments in which we were raised, the state of the world, and how we plan on contributing positively to it in our own unique way.”

READ MORE: Michelle Obama on being told she didn’t belong at Princeton

Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.

Princeton is also the alma mater of former First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama.

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Obama calls out Trump’s response to pandemic: ‘Chaotic disaster’

In a private call obtained by Yahoo News, former President Barack Obama made his strongest criticism yet of the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It would have been bad even with the best of governments,” Obama said privately. “It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government.”

READ MORE: Barack Obama surprises educators on video chat for National Teacher Appreciation Week

The comments were made during a 30-minute call with the Obama Alumni Association, a group of former Obama staffers. The former POTUS spoke with the group to encourage them to become more engaged with the presidential campaign of Joe Biden —the presumptive Democratic nominee.

U.S. President elect Barack Obama (L) and Vice-President elect Joe Biden acknowledge their supporters after Obama gave his victory speech during an election night gathering in Grant Park on November 4, 2008 in Chicago, Illinois. Obama defeated Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by a wide margin in the election to become the first African-American U.S. President-elect. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

“This election that’s coming up — on every level — is so important because what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party,” Obama urged. “What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy — that has become a stronger impulse in American life.”

The comments are the clearest and harshest that Obama has been in response to the federal government’s handling of the pandemic.

Obama told the group that he plans to be heavily active in campaigning for Biden saying, “I am hoping that all of you feel the same sense of urgency that I do.”

READ MORE: Barack Obama endorses Joe Biden for president in video message

The former president also addressed the recent decision by the Department of Justice to drop all charges against former National Security adviser, Michael Flynn.

“And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free,” he said, “That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”

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Ahmaud Arbery Updates: Georgia Attorney General Asks for Federal Help, Surveillance Footage From Construction Site Emerges

Newly surfaced surveillance video showing Ahmaud Arbery at a construction site shortly before he was fatally shot confirms there was no reason for him to be pursued as a burglary suspect, Arbery’s family attorneys say.

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