Rihanna, Beyoncé send Megan Thee Stallion flowers following shooting

The rapper posted photos on Instagram of her modeling lingerie from the Savage x Fenty line.

Megan Thee Stallion is receiving an outpouring of love and support from her fellow female artists after she was allegedly shot in the feet by rapper Tory Lanez.

Beyoncé sent a note and flowers to the Houston native, which Megan shared on Instagram, along with the sales data of their “Savage (Remix).” 

“Queen, Sending You All My Love. God Bless,” Beyoncé wrote.

On Tuesday, Megan posted photos on Instagram of her modeling lingerie from Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty line. Back in May, she was named brand partner, and will appear in the summer 2020 social media campaign, called #SavagexTheeStallion, Complex reports.

Read More: Draya Michele reportedly dropped from Fenty after mocking Megan Thee Stallion shooting

“Meg is the energy we were looking for,” Rihanna said in a statement. “She is a risktaker with an attitude, character, and personality.” 

https://ift.tt/3ffouzQ

Of the Savage x Fenty collaboration, Megan Thee Stallion said: “I’m so excited to work with a brand that embodies diversity and celebrates women in all their glory. In my Savage x Fenty, I feel sexy, comfortable, and confident. We want all the hotties around the world to feel good about themselves exactly as they are.”

The rapper’s post on Tuesday included a photo of the flowers and a card RiRi  sent her. 

“Wishing you a full and speedy recovery, Meg!” the note read. “Just know you’ve got a whole crew over here sending good vibes your way! Love, Rihanna and The Fenty Corp gang.”

Meanwhile, Lizzo sent over a large dog stuffed full of sweet treats, while celebrities like Lil Yachty, 21 Savage, and Wale have expressed their support on social media.

Read More: Rihanna, Jay-Z demand DOJ reopen case of college student killed by cop

https://ift.tt/2XbwATU

On Tuesday, Megan opened up about the July 12 shooting in an emotional Instagram Live. 

“I was shot in both of my feet, and I had to get surgery to get the shit taken out, get the bullets taken out, and it was super scary,” Meg said during the stream. 

She then began to tear up, saying “I didn’t think I was gonna cry. But yeah I had to get surgery, it was super scary, it was just the worst experience of my life … it’s nothing for y’all to go and be making fake stories about,” she said.

Megan doesn’t mention Lanez during the stream, but made clear: “I didn’t put my hands on nobody. I didn’t deserve to get shot … I just want y’all to know a b*tch is alive and well and strong as f*ck and ready to get back to my regular programming with my own hot girl sh*t.”

Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast “Dear Culture”? Download our newest episodes now!

Loading the player...

The post Rihanna, Beyoncé send Megan Thee Stallion flowers following shooting appeared first on TheGrio.

from TheGrio https://ift.tt/2P4yMID

Intelligence disputes fuel rare public acrimony among Gang of Eight

The group of congressional leaders responsible for reviewing the nation’s most closely held secrets is engaged in an unusual and bitter partisan fight over how much information to share with the public about election interference — all while lawmakers and administration officials seek to prevent 2016-style meddling from foreign countries.

The public spat between the Democratic and Republican sides of the so-called Gang of Eight, less than 100 days before Americans go to the polls, is highly unusual for the group, whose obligations normally rise above the political fray and rarely descend publicly into the partisan squabbles that define Capitol Hill.

“When those things start to become politicized and publicized, it’s not just a bad look — it’s bad for the country. It’s harmful,” said acting Senate Intelligence Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the Gang of Eight, which includes the top party leaders in both chambers and the heads of the Senate and House intelligence committees.

The infighting has intensified so rapidly that Rubio even suggested this week that his committee’s annual hearing on global threats might not go on as planned, citing “heavy politicization.” The hearing allows members of the House and Senate intelligence panels to hear directly from the heads of the CIA, National Security Agency and other agencies about the dangers posed by countries like Russia, Iran and China.

“It’s become harder to get to an agreement on a forum that doesn’t turn into a political circus,” Rubio said.

“Why would a career professional intelligence official at any level at this point want to be dragged into being turned into a political pretzel to further the narrative of one side or the other?” he added. “You would hope intelligence matters could be above it, but right now it isn’t.”

As the election nears, concerns about Russian interference via Ukrainian actors are coming to a head among Democrats, who see an ongoing effort by the Kremlin to damage presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Recent revelations about Moscow’s intentions are causing Democrats to push the Trump administration for more direct, specific statements about the foreign-influence campaign.

Democrats have even suggested that senior intelligence officials might be facing politically motivated pressure on what to say in public statements and when to say it, so as to not anger President Donald Trump.

The fundamental disagreement between the Democratic and Republican sides of the Gang of Eight centers on how much information about foreign threats should be made public. While Democrats have urged more transparency, Republicans have warned about the potentially dangerous precedent that would set. As a result, the Democratic and Republican sides of the group have issued dueling statements and demands on subjects on which they are normally unified.

In 2016, the group clashed over whether to issue a statement denouncing Russia early on for its interference in the presidential campaign. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Gang of Eight member, reportedly refused to sign on to it, and the statement was never released.

The latest dispute began after the Democratic half of the Gang of Eight, which includes Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, released a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray last week demanding a briefing for all lawmakers centering on unspecified threats to the integrity of the 2020 election.

POLITICO later reported that those threats mentioned in a separate, classified letter included concerns about Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) investigations targeting Biden and his son Hunter, and efforts by Russian-aligned Ukrainians to influence GOP lawmakers with Kremlin-backed disinformation. Johnson has since responded to the claims, accusing Democrats in a scathing letter of running their own disinformation campaign to undermine and discredit his investigations.

Republicans dismissed the Democratic letter as a partisan effort and said they were never asked to join the Democrats’ calls for a congressional briefing. Democrats have a political incentive to speak up, given that their presidential candidate is allegedly the target of a Russian disinformation campaign.

The House Intelligence Committee voted on Wednesday to give all House members access to the classified portion of the Democrats’ letter to Wray.

Biden last week threatened to hold the Kremlin and other foreign governments accountable for any interference if he is elected president, reflecting a growing concern not only about Trump’s unwillingness to commit to not accepting foreign help in the election, but also about what his campaign and members of Congress view as an escalating disinformation campaign emerging out of Ukraine.

Later in the week, William Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and the country’s top counterintelligence official, released a “100 days” statement on Friday warning of foreign election interference. This statement became yet another point of contention between Democrats and Republicans on the Gang of Eight.

“With just over 100 days until the election, it is imperative that we also share insights with the American public about foreign threats to our election and offer steps to citizens across the country to build resilience and help mitigate these threats,” the statement read.

It cited unspecified influence operations and disinformation campaigns being waged by China, Russia and Iran and encouraged Americans “to consume information with a critical eye,” “practice good cyber hygiene and media literacy" and “report suspicious election-related activity to authorities.”

The statement provoked an immediate reaction from Democratic half of the Gang of Eight — which also includes House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of California — who, along with their Republican counterparts, had been briefed by Evanina on the foreign interference intelligence two days earlier.

Some Democrats were skeptical to begin with about the usefulness of a 100 days statement, said people familiar with their thinking, and urged Evanina to be specific about the Russia threat if he insisted on making public comments about the interference campaign. They were ultimately disappointed and thought the statement failed to reflect the acuteness of the Russians’ efforts that Evanina had conveyed to the Gang of Eight privately, the people said.

That led the Democratic half of the Gang of Eight to issue another joint statement, slamming Evanina’s declaration as “so generic as to be almost meaningless” and giving “a false sense of equivalence to the actions of foreign adversaries by listing three countries of unequal intent, motivation and capability together.”

Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.), who supported Evanina’s Senate confirmation to his current role, suggested that Evanina might be facing politically motivated pressure on what to say in public statements.

“I think [Evanina] is somebody who really wants to do the right thing,” Warner said. “I think there’s pressure inside the administration about how much information to reveal. … I want to make sure that he is fully empowered to do his job, which means we need to make sure the Senate and the American public are informed.”

Representatives for Warner and Schumer declined to comment on the senators’ interactions with Evanina.

Rubio and McConnell quickly pushed back on the Democrats’ characterization of Evanina’s statement, calling their response an attack that “baselessly impugns” Evanina’s character “and politicizes intelligence matters.”

The back-and-forth only helps adversaries trying to exploit partisan divisions in the U.S., while depriving the intelligence community of comprehensive oversight, said former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who was a member of the Gang of Eight in his capacity as House Intelligence Committee chairman from 2011 to 2015.

“The truth is we have nation states who are looking at this dysfunction and engaging in activities that could threaten our election and they're not going to pick a team,” Rogers said. “When the committees get this dysfunctional and when these people decide to litigate in public, you have to ask yourself, who are they helping?”

“You don't try to fight out these issues in dueling press releases,” Rogers said. “You bring it up in a classified setting. And this is exactly why the IC isn’t getting proper oversight — no one in the community wants to brief these committees because it's a revolving door to the public.”

Martin Matishak contributed to this report.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/3jUk5Wv
via 400 Since 1619

‘The odd couple’: Mnuchin and Meadows struggle to make a deal

On Tuesday afternoon, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows were getting grilled by GOP senators during a closed-door lunch in the Hart Senate Office Building.

A number of Republicans, including John Kennedy of Louisiana, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, and David Perdue of Georgia, among others, were pressing them about exactly how much federal money for a new coronavirus relief package they were willing to spend as part of bipartisan negotiations.

Was the White House prepared to agree to a bill costing more than $1 trillion, the price tag of the newest Senate GOP proposal? And if so, how much more?

Then Meadows stood up and told the senators he was ok with shutting down Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s most outrageous requests.

“I’m comfortable saying no and being the skunk at the garden party,” Meadows insisted.

Meadows and Mnuchin hail from different corners of the GOP. One was a hard-line House conservative who regularly tanked spending bills pushed by his own party leaders; the other previously had a foot in Wall Street and Hollywood and has been deeply enmeshed in enacting legislation doling out trillions to respond to the coronavirus crisis.

But during the last few weeks, the self-described “odd couple” have emerged as central players in a Washington drama that could decide whether Donald Trump can save his presidency, as well as how far the U.S. economy sinks amid the coronavirus pandemic.

So far, the Meadows-Mnuchin combo hasn't gotten anywhere. The White House and Senate Republicans wasted a week piecing together their own relief plan. Despite hours of private sessions with Pelosi and Schumer, there doesn’t seem to be any progress at all. Lawmakers in both parties have also rejected an offer by Trump and Mnuchin for a short-term extension of federal unemployment benefits that expire this week, in addition to keeping an eviction moratorium in place.

“We’re nowhere close to a deal,” Meadows complained to reporters on Wednesday afternoon. “Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer have made it very clear they’re not going to do that. They’d much prefer enhanced unemployment [payments] expire.”

Meadows and Mnuchin, however, insist there will be an agreement hammered out at some point before Congress leaves town for the August recess. The only question is when.

The two didn’t have that close of a relationship before Meadows was tapped as Trump’s fourth chief of staff in early March, although they knew each other from the Trump orbit and Capitol Hill. Now both say they’ve developed a strong bond, something that isn’t always easy in this White House.

"Secretary Mnuchin and I have an outstanding relationship,” Meadows said during an interview Wednesday. “I’d probably best describe it as the odd couple.”

“I had one impression of him as a member of Congress and I can tell you that getting to work with him on a daily basis has transformed not only my opinion but increased my appreciation for his ability to actually try to be responsive to members in both the House and the Senate,” Meadows added.

Mnuchin is equally effusive in his praise for his new partner. "I couldn't be happier working with [Meadows]. I think he's a fabulous chief of staff and serves the president well,” Mnuchin told POLITICO in a phone interview.

Yet despite the friendly comments, the challenges — both political and policy wise — the pair face are huge, and the ramifications for their own careers potentially enormous.

With fewer than 100 days left before the election, they’re trying to hammer out a coronavirus relief deal with Pelosi and Schumer, who hold a far stronger negotiating position. Democrats want trillions of dollars more in spending than the White House or Senate Republicans are willing to sign off on. With more than 150,000 Americans dead and tens of millions out of work, Trump's political standing has been weakened by his handling of the crisis, which has hurt the administration's bargaining power.

Trump, as is his style as the CEO-in-Chief, isn’t involved in the discussions, leaving the details for others. While it gives Trump's aides some freedom to operate, there's also a huge vulnerability — if Mnuchin, Meadows or any White House official agrees to something that upsets Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, or other conservative pundits, Trump is liable to reverse course and reject a position he agreed to only hours or days earlier.

Mnuchin has come under fire from a number of Republicans over his involvement in crafting the Cares Act this spring and other coronavirus-related packages, as well as the multi-trillion-dollar budget agreement last year, although most critics prefer to whisper their critiques rather than go public. Some Republicans complain Mnuchin got outmaneuvered by Democrats or was more willing to cut a deal than he should have been.

The Mnuchin-bashing isn’t entirely fair; Republicans loved the Cares Act when it was put together, and the legislation saved millions of jobs while staving off economic collapse. But the Republican Party is in trouble now and some lawmakers will lash out in any direction rather than point the finger at themselves. Others are remembering their concerns about deficits only now, after years of ignoring rising red ink under Trump.

“The swamp should stop pretending there’s some thoughtful negotiation happening here,” said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) in a statement. “We have two big government Democrats - Secretary Mnuchin on behalf of the Trump administration and Speaker Pelosi on behalf of binge-spending politicians everywhere - playing gross games with your kids’ money.” Mnuchin donated to a number of Democrats in past election cycles — although he gave far more to Republicans — before becoming Trump’s finance director in 2016. Mnuchin also stated he’s always been a Republican.

“You know I think there’s a tendency there to be for a lot more spending of money we don’t have than most conservatives in the party would appreciate,” added Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Another senior Republican, speaking on the condition of anonymity, characterized Mnuchin and Meadows this way: “One is there to do a deal, and the other is there to blow it up.”

Meadows and Mnuchin are aware of the criticism, and they both dismiss it as inaccurate. The entire GOP leadership in the House and Senate backed the agreements coming out of earlier Mnuchin-led negotiations, as did Trump.

"I answer to the president, as does Mark. And neither one of us does anything without the president's approval," Mnuchin said when asked about criticism from the right.

Meadows, for his part, acknowledged he had a different perspective on the legislative process when he was chairman of the House Freedom Caucus — such as during the 2018-19 government shutdown he helped fuel — than he does now.

"I think there's a general impression that he's willing to spend more dollars than I may be willing to spend and that comes more from our backgrounds and how we view the constituency that I used to serve,” Meadows said of Mnuchin. “But really right now, the president has made it very clear going into this negotiation, he wants to make sure that there's adequate help for the people that are still hurting and still struggling to make ends meet in a China-induced pandemic shut down.”

On paper, Meadows and Mnuchin appear completely mismatched. Mnuchin, 57, is a Yale grad who worked for Goldman Sachs for nearly two decades before leaving to start hedge funds and finance movies. Worth an estimated $400 million, according to some media reports, Mnuchin has emerged in many ways as Trump’s most reliable Cabinet officer — he’s been able to cut deals with Democrats while retaining good relationships with corporate leaders and Wall Street. Plus, he’s still in office, a significant achievement for any Trump appointee.

Yet for any Trump administration official, even one as on solid ground with the president as Mnuchin, they always have to step carefully.

During a July 17 meeting at the White House with congressional leaders, Trump complained that Mnuchin had agreed to the enhanced federal unemployment benefits that are at the heart of the fight with Democrats. “Why did you do that?” Trump asked Mnuchin, according to two sources familiar with the incident, although the president supported those payments as part of the law’s tradeoffs.

Meadows, who just turned 61, was born on an Army base in France and grew up poor. He got an associate’s degree from the University of South Florida. He owned a restaurant, sold it, then got into real estate. Meadows moved up through North Carolina local politics, then made a huge jump in getting elected to Congress in 2012. Once in Congress, the affable Meadows joined the Freedom Caucus, and he played a starring role in toppling former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

After Trump won the presidency in 2016, Meadows was able to build a close relationship with the president. Trump tapped Meadows to replace Meadows’ former House colleague, Mick Mulvaney.

Meadows was involved in the late stages of the negotiations surrounding passage of the Cares Act, although that was still largely a Mnuchin show; Meadows was still technically a member of Congress at the time. Now the two are working closely together on this new deal, though one Republican leadership aide suggested that it appeared as though Meadows and Mnuchin had no coordinated strategy.

When House Democrats passed the $3 trillion-plus Heroes Act in May, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rejected it outright, preferring to wait until more of the Cares Act was implemented.

However, McConnell also faced strong resistance from his right-wing in the Senate GOP Conference to doing another relief package. When McConnell tried to develop a Republican alternative this month, he struggled to assemble a package that could get a majority of his own party.

There were also difficulties between the White House and Senate Republicans, delaying the release of the GOP package for a week, but Meadows and Mnuchin ultimately worked out a deal with the Senate leadership.

“Well, I wouldn’t say Batman and Robin, but so far they seem to be a pretty good tandem,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “Mark, we know his ideology, he’s been a lawmaker. That’s a big difference. Secretary Mnuchin’s been a business-person, an investor, and so his ideology is less clear.”

Meadows and Mnuchin have had less luck trying to save the extra $600-per-week federal unemployment benefits that expire on July 31. They’ve spent days shuttling between groups of senators and held daily meetings with Pelosi and Schumer. Yet no progress is being made — in part because of the still lingering divisions within the GOP.

When asked whether Mnuchin and Meadows could get a deal done, Schumer replied, “Not unless their party and its various elements can come together on something.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/2Eugyy1
via 400 Since 1619

What John Lewis Taught Me

The horse-drawn carriage transported Congressman John Lewis across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, one final time. The emotional images on my television this past weekend took me back to the humbling walk I took with him there on the 50th anniversary of the infamous Bloody Sunday attack. As a 25-year-old, Lewis had spilled his own blood so Black people would no longer be denied their constitutional right to vote in Selma and throughout the Jim Crow South. When we retraced his steps on that March day in 2015, the infamous black-and-white images of state troopers beating young nonviolent protesters like Lewis played in my mind’s eye.

We gathered at Brown Chapel just like the original marchers did before proceeding to the bridge. When you begin to cross it, the bridge’s incline is so steep that all you can see is the sky. Only at its apex can you see where the police had stood waiting in 1965, batons in hand, the threat of violence palpable. I can only imagine the fear the marchers felt, many of them in their 20s, some even younger—the full force of the state amassed against them. And yet they continued to walk. Spending time with the congressman was always akin to walking through history, but when he reached the spot where he had almost lost his life, I felt a surreal connection to the past that will stay with me forever. I think everyone there that day was inspired to redouble their efforts in fighting for social justice. I certainly was.

That was the power of John Lewis. He simultaneously reminded Americans of our history and challenged us to build on it to make the nation better, as I was lucky enough to experience firsthand.

I first got to know Congressman Lewis when the Smithsonian hired me to make real the century-long dream of a museum on the National Mall dedicated to the history and culture of African Americans. Without his persistence, the museum might never have existed. Upon his election to office in 1986, one of the first bills Lewis introduced was legislation to create the museum. He continued to champion it, building enthusiasm for the project among his colleagues and constituents for 15 years, before the National Museum of African American History and Culture Act finally passed the House and Senate and was signed into law by President George W. Bush.

Every time I met with the congressman, I was struck by his patience and perseverance, qualities one would expect from someone who had been deeply involved in the struggle for civil rights since he was a teenager. Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s radio sermons and the movement to integrate Alabama’s schools, John Lewis gave his first sermon at Macedonia Baptist Church in Troy, Alabama, when he was just 15. When he later attended the American Baptist Theological Seminary, he tried to start a campus chapter of the NAACP, only to encounter resistance from the school’s leaders, who were reluctant to lose the white support they counted on. Lewis became adept at overcoming resistance throughout his life and shared wisdom about doing so with many people—myself included. As I struggled to build the National Museum of African American History and Culture, I cannot count the number of times I looked to his example of fighting the good fight every day.

The congressman’s calm and patient demeanor belied his fierce urgency to act, a characteristic that was evident during his days as an original Freedom Rider and chairperson for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). When Lewis was set to give a fiery speech at the 1963 March on Washington, the march leaders deemed the text too confrontational for the audiences at home and on the Mall and, more importantly, for the John F. Kennedy administration. Asked to tone down the rhetoric, the young John Lewis showed political savvy beyond his years. He understood the importance of showing a unified front for the historic event, and he had immense respect for organizer A. Phillip Randolph. So, Lewis and other SNCC members agreed to edit some of the more incendiary parts of the speech. Despite the changes, the general consensus was that Lewis was a radical whom the New York Times called “the harshest of the speakers.” Throughout his career, he never stopped getting into good trouble, whether speaking truth to allies or calling out evil for what it was.

Every time I met with the congressman, it was a chance to listen and learn. I took him through the African American museum many times, first when it was under construction and later when it was finished, a testament to his vision and tenacity. We discussed one of my proudest acquisitions as a curator at the National Museum of American History: the stools and part of the lunch counter from the Greensboro Woolworth’s where four North Carolina A&T students sat to protest segregation in 1960. That protest had inspired Congressman Lewis as a student at Fisk University in Nashville to organize sit-ins at lunch counters and other segregated public spaces, as it did for other activists around the country.

Before meeting him, the picture I had of Lewis was someone with a steadfast faith in our common humanity, an unflagging optimism and a belief in the power of redemption. As I got to know him, it became obvious that my assessment was accurate. His uncommon grace led him to publicly forgive and even form a bond with Elwin Wilson, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan mob who had beaten Lewis and other Freedom Riders at the bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1961. Lewis reasoned that when people “put down the mechanisms of division and separation to pick up the tools of reconciliation, they can help build a greater sense of community in our society, even between the most unlikely people.”

I think his instinct to look for the best of us is part of the reason the congressman organized annual bipartisan pilgrimages to the South with other members of Congress, an effort to bring to life some of the milestones of the civil rights movement. He knew how moving and transformative his firsthand recollections could be, especially in the settings where they took place. There was something almost sacred about retracing his steps in Selma and seeing the site of the Montgomery bus boycott, which was accompanied by his poignant account of what it was like to face down that kind of oppression. The loss of both Lewis and civil rights icon C.T. Vivian on the same weekend earlier this month reminds us how vital it is to preserve the oral histories of people who lived through the civil rights movement and other pivotal moments in American history.

On one of the congressman’s trips, in 2014, we went to Mississippi where Myrlie Evers-Williams, Medgar Evers’ widow, showed us the house where her husband had been murdered and told us in detail about the night it happened. She spoke frankly and easily with us, likely because of Lewis’ reassuring presence. Because of his desire to bring people together, Evers-Williams and I developed a lasting friendship beginning with that visit.

The congressman then took us to Fannie Lou Hamer’s gravesite in Ruleville, Mississippi, and told stories along with Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton about how Hamer and others were beaten trying to register voters in the Mississippi Delta. As if to give us some respite from the somber tone, we then went to some blues joints in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where I sat with the congressman as he sang and tapped his toes to the blues. If you have seen the viral video of him dancing, you know he had a musical soul.

Perhaps the most touching moment for me was standing with Lewis in Money, Mississippi, where Emmett Till was brutally murdered. I got to know Emmett’s late mother, Mamie Till Mobley, several years earlier. She had talked about choosing to have an open casket at her son’s funeral so that everyone could see what had happened to him. Her wisdom and strength awes me to this day, and her example was a guiding light for me. Standing on that site with Lewis was very emotional. The congressman shared how he had marched in honor of Emmett. He helped ease the pain of that tragedy by reminding us how Emmett’s murder had been a rallying cry for justice and a turning point in the civil rights movement.

As we rode the buses back to Alabama, we stopped in a rest area and Lewis, Congressman Steny Hoyer and I went into the restroom. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, racist comments were written on the walls. It was a stark reminder that the struggle was still far from over, and that laws can be changed more easily than deeply ingrained prejudices.

There are so many lessons Congressman Lewis left us that it is hard to know which to be most thankful for. His willingness to sacrifice himself to ensure that all receive the blessings of liberty, the way he espoused non-violence and showed it to be an effective tool in the quest for justice, and his unwavering moral authority are but a few. But two parts of his legacy stand out to me: his lifelong fight for voting rights and the lesson that all of us can make a difference.

The year 2020 marks two voting-rights anniversaries: the centennial of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote, and the sesquicentennial of the 15th Amendment, ostensibly giving black men the right to vote after the Civil War.

Lewis spent much of his early life fighting to see that Black men and women were able to enjoy those constitutional rights despite the entrenched racism of Jim Crow that prevented them from doing so with poll taxes, literacy tests and violence. After the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, those rights have been slowly eroded over time by racial gerrymandering, voter ID laws, voter purges and virtual poll taxes, culminating in the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which eliminated the provision in the Voting Rights Act that required certain states to get federal pre-clearance before changing their voting rules. Since then, more than 1,600 polling places have closed, mostly in minority communities. And according to the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights, in at least 10 voting-rights decisions since Shelby, courts have found intentional discrimination.

In 2019, a Republican political operative’s plan to dilute Black voting power in North Carolina was revealed. The operative had gerrymandered adjacent districts so precisely that he drew one through the campus of a historically black university, splitting the dorms almost equally between two different districts. That university was North Carolina A&T, the alma mater of the Greensboro Four, less than two miles from the Woolworth’s where they helped start a movement and show the way for Lewis and all the other civil rights activists who followed. Clearly the need to protect the right of all citizens to vote is as pronounced today as it was during the height of the civil rights era.

The other lasting impact Lewis has had is inspiring activism. So many people have followed his example and worked to have the nation live up to its democratic ideals of justice and equality. Many today are students like he was: the young activists of Parkland, Florida, whose advocacy was activated by the plague of gun violence; the countless young people of the Black Lives Matter movement who have continued to march and protest against injustice; the students in Fairfax County, Virginia, who petitioned their school board successfully to remove Robert E. Lee’s name and rechristen the school as John R. Lewis High School, even going so far as to make plans for a “good trouble” social justice committee.

Clearly, Lewis’ story resonates with young activists today, kindred spirits who know that youth is no impediment to changing the world. To the contrary, Generation Z uses social media to mobilize massive social movements for good. When the congressman went to Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., in June, he was passing the baton to these new, fearless defenders of civil rights as surely as he had picked it up from leaders like Dr. King, A. Philip Randolph and Ella Baker. He was encouraging a whole new wave of good trouble to change the world for the better.

I think we can best honor Lewis by preserving and strengthening the voting rights that he fought for his entire life. The vote is the cornerstone of democracy. Extending it to all is paramount if we want a government that represents us. We should also embrace his hopefulness, his dedication to justice and his enduring humanity, which drove everything he did. Finally, his legacy reminds us that we, the people, have the power in this democratic republic, but we also have the obligation to stand up and speak up for the discarded, for the dispossessed, for the disenfranchised.

Any of us who had the pleasure of hearing Lewis speak knew that he was a master storyteller, someone who had the cadence of the preacher he had once planned to be and the moral authority gained from a lifetime of service to a righteous cause. When the National Museum of African American History and Culture broke ground in 2012, luminaries from former First Lady Laura Bush to President Barack Obama spoke eloquently about the importance of the moment. But none held the audience rapt like Lewis did.

He said, “This is an end, but it is also a beginning. There is still much more work to do, and as we pursue this worthy goal sent to us down through the ages, we must not shrink. We must call on the courage of those who were in this struggle long before any of us were even born.” His beautiful rhetoric matched the moment almost as well as it does this one. But I must admit, what made my heart soar most at the time was the simple fact that he thanked me.

I first came to be aware of John Lewis when I was 10 years old, watching his March on Washington speech. He was a towering figure then, but he also proved to be the rare instance of someone whose stature only grew over time, a beacon of hope who consistently fought the good fight and whose sacrifices changed a nation. So, when this titan expressed gratitude for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, I was at a loss for words. The only way I knew to reply was to thank him for allowing me and the nation to stand on his broad shoulders.

As I think back on the magnitude of his life, what he meant to me personally and professionally, and what he meant to the nation, I am still left with only this: thank you, Congressman Lewis. How fortunate we all were for your strength to carry a nation on your shoulders. You reminded us to draw inspiration and guidance from the past to dream a world yet to be and challenged us to do the work to make that dream real.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/30WTYWx
via 400 Since 1619

Opinion | The Media’s Biggest Favor to Biden Was to Ignore Him

There’s a good reason why Democrats shut Joe Biden out in 1988 and 2008 when he ran for president, and why he had the sound sense to sit out the 2016 contest. He rambles. He plagiarizes. He flip-flops. Over his long career in Washington, he has become the human embodiment of the political gaffe.

The press has documented Biden’s limitations in such detail that if the presidency was a regular occupation, and Joe’s press clips were job references, his recruiter would dump his application in a waste can without even bothering to send him an insincere note wishing him luck elsewhere. But instead of hammering him and pouring vinegar on his wounds, the press has bestowed “strange new respect” status upon Biden— strange new respect being the clever trope Tom Bethell invented to describe the press corps’ sudden shift from negative to positive coverage of a politician.

That happens often. It happened to both Clintons, to Obama, even to Trump. With Biden, though, there’s a twist. In his case, “positive” coverage—the kind of wet-kiss treatment that helps a dented and flawed candidate slide right into the White House—consists primarily of ignoring him.

This isn’t to suggest that campaign reporters blew off the assignment of covering Biden. POLITICO’s Ben Shreckinger explored “Middle-Class Joe’s family fortunes.” Everybody reprised his plagiarism scandal. The politically convenient revision of his get-tough criminal-justice policies got an airing, and the press chased the sexual assault allegations leveled against him. But especially in the early going, when he was busy losing both Iowa and New Hampsire, something a presidential candidate is not supposed to do, the coverage seemed more about writing his candidacy off than obliterating it.

For much of his political career before becoming vice president, Biden was regarded by the press as a doofus, a beamy boat that sat high in the water and took up a lot of space but wasn’t very swift. The best thing that ever happened to him besides winning a Senate seat from the hamlet of Delaware was the day Barack Obama picked him as a running mate.

For eight years, Biden perfected the art of playing the understudy, attending state funerals, representing the United States at the World Cup, campaigning in mid-term elections—all the garbage duties we assign to vice presidents. He began to accrue strange new respect points in those years spent inside Obama’s protective penumbra, and to give the man credit, he was probably a good sounding board. As my friend Timothy Noah wrote in the New Republic in 2012, “Biden is not a stupid man. He’s a smart man who often says stupid things. When you know him, apparently, you don’t feel inclined to hold that against him.”

The greatest political advantage of being vice president is that because you are so powerless, little blame can be sourced to you (unless your name is Dick Cheney) during your time as the president’s mannequin. Biden’s press honeymoon got an extension when he declined to contest Hillary Clinton in 2016 for the leading role, providing reporters with empirical evidence of Biden’s savvy. But the strange new respect that Biden had worked so hard to acquire vaporized when he entered the 2020 campaign.

He returned to his old bumbling ways, but gaffing has become so integral to his personality that he doesn’t apologize for it anymore. “I am a gaffe machine,” he conceded in December 2018. “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain't Black,” he told a Black radio host in May. Earlier this month in an interview, he displayed the sort of jargon aphasia one associates with a stroke victim: “Surplus military equipment for law enforcement—they don’t need that. The last thing you need is an up-armored Humvee coming into a neighborhood, it’s like the military invading. They don’t know anybody. They become the enemy. They’re supposed to be protecting these people.” Everybody wrote about what a horrible, out of touch campaigner he was. Some columnists, yours truly included, wrote that he was too old and scattered to be president.

My friend Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney tells me that Biden’s Obama shield weakened for a few months during the campaign as 1) he re-exposed himself to press scrutiny and 2) reporters consumed themselves in a group swoon for new arrivals Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg. But then a miracle appeared! All the lefties running for president canceled one another out, and Biden, being the candidate closest to being a centrist, sort of won the nomination by default. “Now in the general election he’s protected again!” says Carney. “It’s dizzying. Looks like even Biden is confused by all the reversals.”

As he swept through the primaries, it looked like the worst-case scenario for Biden: The press would actually have to cover him again. As he steamed toward becoming the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, the press corps prepared themselves for another Biden crack-up. But then Biden became the only lucky man of the pandemic as Covid-19, the No. 1 story of the year, demoted his candidacy from the spotlight.

As a vulnerable codger, he had a good excuse to sequester himself in his basement, burrowing so deeply that some took to calling him “Punxsutawney Joe.” And with Biden mostly in hiding, Donald Trump’s blundering response has become the only real story of the campaign. Every time Trump opens his mouth, he convinces somebody out there to vote for Biden. If campaign finance law had any teeth, Biden would be forced to report Trump’s initiatives to the Federal Election Commission as in-kind contributions.

From his lair, given the gift of almost total media invisibility, Biden has commenced spanking Donald Trump in the polls. The press, as it always does, has followed the sense of the polls in its coverage, presenting Biden as the likely winner. Who can blame them? Biden may not be a great candidate, but even Trump’s own party thinks the president is destroying himself. Perhaps, back in 1988, if Biden could have persuaded the press to ignore him completely instead of actually covering him, he’d be schmoozing through his 70s at the Joe Biden Presidential Library today instead of running, undercover, for office.

As Timothy Crouse writes in The Boys on the Bus, his 1973 classic about the presidential campaign press corps, reporters love to demonstrate their power by demolishing political lightweights like Biden who “cannot assert his authority over the national press, cannot manipulate reporters, cannot finesse questions, [or] prevent leaks.” As a public figure, Biden has always been that easily flustered, readily lampooned candidate, a continually derided campaigner. As a non-public figure, however, he’s slowly been anointed a statesman. And now-silent Biden, as long as he does nothing and he keeps away from the microphone, grows in stature and respect. That’s not true when the mics are live. Last week, Biden became a national punch line once more for calling Trump the nation’s “first racist president.” Even Symone Sanders, a senior adviser on the Biden campaign, was quick to contradict the 77-year-old candidate. “There have been a number of racist American presidents,” Sanders said, cleaning up behind him.

But don’t worry. Part of the strangeness of strange new respect is that it is never permanent. Should Uncle Joe be lucky enough to win the White House, the press corps will instantly rediscover their original view of him—and America will wonder how he ever got there.

******

President Biden plans to move the White House onto the Acela and run the executive branch in like a sequel to Snowpiercer. Send sequel ideas to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. My email alerts long for the respect of my Twitter feed. My RSS feed can’t get no respect.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/2X9nfMo
via 400 Since 1619