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Tag: african americans

  • How to Beat Heart Disease Before It Starts | NutritionFacts.org

    Why might healthy lifestyle choices wipe out 90% of our risk for having a heart attack, while drugs may only reduce risk by 20% to 30%?

    On the standard American diet, atherosclerosis—hardening of the arteries, the number one killer of men and women—has been found to start in our teens. Investigators collected about 3,000 sets of coronary arteries and aortas (the aorta is the main artery in the body) from victims of accidents, homicides, and suicides who were 15 to 34 years old and found that the fatty streaks in arteries can begin forming in our teens, which turn into atherosclerotic plaques in our 20s that get worse in our 30s and can then become deadly. In the heart, atherosclerosis can cause a heart attack. In the brain, it can cause a stroke. See the progression below and at 0:35 in my video Can Cholesterol Get Too Low?.

    How common is this? All of the teens they looked at—100% of them—already had fatty streaks building up inside their arteries. By their early 30s, most already had those streaks blossoming into atherosclerotic plaques that bulged into their arteries. From ages 15 through 19, their aortas had fatty streaks building up throughout them, but no plaques yet, on average, as seen below and at 1:15 in my video.

    The plaques started appearing in their abdominal aorta in their early 20s and worsened by their late 20s, by which time fatty streaks had infiltrated throughout. By their early 30s, their arteries were in bad shape, as seen below and at 1:25 in my video.

    But that’s just the abdominal aorta, the main artery running through the torso that splits off into our legs. What about the coronary arteries that feed the heart?

    Researchers found the same pattern: fatty streaks in teens, early signs of plaque in early 20s that progress with age, and by the early 30s, most people already had plaques in their coronary arteries, as seen below and at 1:47 in my video.

    Atherosclerosis starts as early as adolescence.

    That’s why we shouldn’t wait until heart disease becomes symptomatic to treat it. If it starts in our youth, we should start treating it when we’re youths. If you knew you had a cancerous tumor, you wouldn’t want to wait until it grew to a certain size to treat it. If you had diabetes, you wouldn’t want to wait until you started going blind before you did something about it. So, how do you treat atherosclerosis? You lower LDL cholesterol through a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol—a diet that’s low in eggs, meat, dairy, and junk.

    If we want to stop this epidemic, we have to “alter our lifestyle accordingly, beginning in infancy or early childhood. Is such a radical proposal totally impractical?” (Eating more healthfully? Radical?!) It would take serious dedication to change our behavior, but atherosclerosis is our number one cause of death. In the case of cigarettes, we did pretty well, slashing smoking rates and dropping lung cancer rates. And, yes, healthy eating is safe. According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the largest and oldest association of nutrition professionals in the world, even strictly plant-based diets are appropriate for all stages of life, starting from pregnancy. (NutritionFacts.org is among the websites recommended by the Academy for more information.)

    The title of an important study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology declares: “Curing Atherosclerosis Should Be the Next Major Cardiovascular Prevention Goal.” What evidence do we have that a lifelong suppression of LDL will do it? There is a genetic mutation of a gene called PCSK9 that about 1 in 50 African Americans are lucky to be born with because it gives them about a 40% lower LDL cholesterol level their whole lives. Indeed, they were found to have dramatically lower rates of coronary heart disease—an 88% drop in risk compared to those without the genetic mutation, despite otherwise terrible cardiovascular risk factors on average. Most had high blood pressure and were overweight, almost a third smoked, and nearly 20% had diabetes, but that highlights how a lifelong history of low LDL cholesterol levels can substantially reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, even when there are multiple risk factors.

    This near-90% drop in events like heart attacks or sudden death occurred at an average LDL level of 100 mg/dL, compared to 138 mg/dL in those without the genetic mutation. This means LDL can drop below even 100 mg/dL. Why does a drop in LDL cholesterol by about 40 mg/dL from a lucky genetic mutation lower the risk of coronary heart disease by nearly 90%, while the same reduction with statin drugs lowers it by only about 20%? The most probable explanation? Duration. When it comes to lowering LDL cholesterol, it’s not only about how low it is, but how long it’s been low.

    That’s why healthy lifestyle choices may wipe out about 90% of our risk for having a heart attack, while drugs may reduce it by only 20% to 30%. If you’re getting treated with drugs later in life, you may have to get your LDL under 70 mg/dL to halt the progression of coronary atherosclerosis. But if we start making healthier choices earlier, it may be enough to lower LDL cholesterol just to 100 mg/dL, which should be achievable for most of us. That’s consistent with country-by-country data that suggested death from heart disease would bottom out at a population average of about 100 mg/dL, as seen below and at 5:21 in my video.

    But that’s only if you can keep your LDL cholesterol down your whole life.

    If you’re relying on medication later in life to halt disease progression, you may need to get your LDL below 70 mg/dL, and if you’re trying to use drugs to reverse a lifetime of bad food choices, you may not get to zero coronary heart disease events until your LDL drops to about 55 mg/dL. If your heart disease is so bad that you’ve already had a heart attack but you’re trying not to die from another one, ideally, you might want to push your LDL down to about 30 mg/dL. Once you get that low, not only would you likely prevent any new atherosclerotic plaques, but you’d also help stabilize the plaques you already have so they’re less likely to burst open and kill you.

    Is it even safe to have cholesterol levels that low, though? In other words, can LDL cholesterol ever be too low? We’ll find out next.

    Doctor’s Note

    Didn’t know atherosclerosis could start at such a young age? See Heart Disease Starts in Childhood.

    For more on drugs versus lifestyle, check out my video The Actual Benefit of Diet vs. Drugs.

    Want to learn more about so-called primordial prevention? See When Low Risk Means High Risk.

    Does Cholesterol Size Matter? Watch the video to find out.

    Michael Greger M.D. FACLM

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  • Sacramento region celebrates Kwanzaa with unity and cultural festivities

    BY MOSCOW AND KYIV. WELL, TODAY MARKS THE FIRST DAY OF KWANZAA. IT’S A CELEBRATION THAT HONORS AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE. THE ANNUAL CELEBRATION HAS DEEP ROOTS HERE IN CALIFORNIA. KCRA 3’S CECIL HANNIBAL IS LIVE IN RANCHO CORDOVA, WHERE THE COMMUNITY IS GATHERED TONIGHT. DEEP ROOTS IS FOR SURE. THIS IS THE FIRST DAY OF KWANZAA, OF COURSE, AND IF YOU DIDN’T KNOW, IT WAS ACTUALLY CREATED IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NEARLY 60 YEARS AGO. NOW, THIS SEVEN DAY CELEBRATION, THIS HOLIDAY IS CELEBRATED BY PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD OF AFRICAN DESCENT. THIS EVENT IS STILL GOING ON RIGHT NOW. FOR A CLOSER LOOK INSIDE, I WANT TO SHOW YOU THIS VIDEO. IF YOU CAN TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR SCREEN FOR ME REAL QUICK. EVERYONE IS WELCOME TO THIS EVENT, REGARDLESS OF RACE OR CULTURAL BACKGROUND. IT’S A CHANCE TO, OF COURSE, COME LEARN, BUT ALSO TO BUY THINGS FROM HANDMADE NECKLACES TO CLOTHING AND EVEN BOOKS THAT TEACH ABOUT BLACK HISTORY IN THE PAN-AFRICAN MOVEMENT. THERE’S A NUMBER OF SPEAKERS TONIGHT FROM THE MAYOR OF RANCHO CORDOVA. RIGHT NOW, A PASTOR IS SPEAKING. WE ALSO HEARD FROM THE ORGANIZER, MICHAEL HARRIS, WHO SAYS HE STUDIED UNDER THE ORIGINAL CREATOR OF KWANZAA, DOCTOR MAULANA KARENGA, AND EXPLAINED WHY THIS HOLIDAY IS SIGNIFICANT TO THE BLACK COMMUNITY AND HIS NOTION OF A HOLIDAY THAT CELEBRATED AFRICAN CULTURE IN A TIME WHERE BLACK FOLKS DIDN’T HAVE NO CLUE WHO THEY WERE. WITH NO BLACK STUDIES PROGRAM, AND FOR PEOPLE OF AFRICAN DESCENT TO DO A DEEP DIVE AND ASK THOSE QUESTIONS. WHO ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU REALLY? ARE YOU? WHAT IS AFRICA TO YOU? WHAT IS AMERICA TO YOU? SO BACK OUT HERE LIVE. THEY ARE ALSO HAVING LIVE CULTURAL PERFORMANCES, REFRESHMENTS AND ARTS AND CRAFTS FOR KIDS. NOW THERE ARE SEVEN DAYS OF KWANZAA. TODAY IS UMOJA, WHICH STANDS FOR UNITY. SO THE HOPE OF THIS EVENT IS TO REALLY BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER ALL IN ONE ROOM AND TO CELEBRATE THIS HOLIDAY TOGETHER. RANC

    Sacramento region celebrates Kwanzaa with unity and cultural festivities

    Sacramento region celebrates Kwanzaa with unity and cultural festivities

    Updated: 12:20 AM PST Dec 27, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    The city of Rancho Cordova celebrated the first day of Kwanzaa with a cultural event inviting people from across Sacramento County to city hall on Friday.It’s part of the 27th Annual California State Capitol Kwanzaa celebration, organized by Michael Harris, president and CEO of the California Black Agriculture Working Group.Harris, who studied under Kwanzaa’s original creator, Dr. Maulana Karenga, emphasized the holiday’s significance to the Black community. “We carry the oldest, largest, most accurate notion of authentic California Pan African Ancestry,” Harris said. The event, which began on the first day of Kwanzaa, Dec. 26, features a variety of activities, including live cultural performances, arts and crafts for children, and a “Farm to Fork Friday” event offering samples of Pan African cuisine. The celebration includes speeches from notable figures such as Pastor Carl Dee Amattoe and Rancho Cordova Mayor Garrett Gatewood, along with other regional community leaders.Guests can also purchase handmade items like necklaces and Afrocentric clothing. The event aims to bring people together from diverse backgrounds to honor African culture and the seven principles of Kwanzaa, starting with Umoja, which means unity. The celebration continues throughout the week, offering a chance for reflection, dialogue, and shared creativity in the spirit of unity.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif. —

    The city of Rancho Cordova celebrated the first day of Kwanzaa with a cultural event inviting people from across Sacramento County to city hall on Friday.

    It’s part of the 27th Annual California State Capitol Kwanzaa celebration, organized by Michael Harris, president and CEO of the California Black Agriculture Working Group.

    Harris, who studied under Kwanzaa’s original creator, Dr. Maulana Karenga, emphasized the holiday’s significance to the Black community.

    “We carry the oldest, largest, most accurate notion of authentic California Pan African Ancestry,” Harris said.

    The event, which began on the first day of Kwanzaa, Dec. 26, features a variety of activities, including live cultural performances, arts and crafts for children, and a “Farm to Fork Friday” event offering samples of Pan African cuisine.

    The celebration includes speeches from notable figures such as Pastor Carl Dee Amattoe and Rancho Cordova Mayor Garrett Gatewood, along with other regional community leaders.

    Guests can also purchase handmade items like necklaces and Afrocentric clothing.

    The event aims to bring people together from diverse backgrounds to honor African culture and the seven principles of Kwanzaa, starting with Umoja, which means unity.

    The celebration continues throughout the week, offering a chance for reflection, dialogue, and shared creativity in the spirit of unity.

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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  • The New Orleans That Hurricane Katrina Revealed

    Everybody loves New Orleans. It’s only the fifty-fourth largest city in the United States—down from fifth largest two hundred years ago—but it occupies a much larger place in the national mind than, say, Arlington, Texas, or Mesa, Arizona, where more people live. There’s the food, the neighborhoods, the music, the historic architecture, the Mississippi River, Mardi Gras. But the love for New Orleans stands in contrast to the story that cold, rational statistics tell. It ranks near the bottom on measures such as poverty, murder, and employment.

    None of this is new. If one were to propose an origin story for New Orleans as it is today, it might begin in 1795, when a planter named Jean Étienne de Boré held a public demonstration to prove that he could cultivate and process cane sugar on his plantation, which was situated in present-day Audubon Park—just a stone’s throw from where I grew up. This was during the years of the Haitian Revolution, which made the future of slavery on sugar plantations in the Caribbean look uncertain. De Boré’s demonstration set off a boom in sugar production on plantations in southern Louisiana. Within a few years, as a newly acquired part of the United States, New Orleans was on its way to becoming the country’s leading marketplace for the buying and selling of human beings.

    This history feels ever-present in New Orleans, but it was perhaps most visible after Hurricane Katrina, which occurred twenty years ago this week. Two documentary film series timed for the anniversary—Traci Curry’s “Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time,” and Geeta Gandbhir, Samantha Knowles, and Spike Lee’s “Katrina: Come Hell and High Water”—make for an excellent reminder not just of the terrible suffering the storm inflicted but also of how it showed New Orleans to be a place not at all like its enchanting reputation. Both series re-create day-by-day details of the week the storm hit, substantially through the testimony of a cohort of eloquent witnesses. They vividly remind us of what we already knew: that, with the notable exception of General Russel Honoré, the head of the military relief effort, public officials—the mayor, the governor, the President, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency—proved incompetent. New Orleans’s flood-protection was completely inadequate. The order to evacuate the city came far too late. After the storm, attempts to rescue people trapped in their homes and to get them out of town were inexcusably slow.

    Both documentaries make obvious how much the story of Katrina—and New Orleans—is about race. New Orleans’s subtropical, swampy location makes it susceptible to recurring catastrophes, and these have periodically entailed the mass displacement of Black people. “Rising Tide,” John Barry’s book about the 1927 Mississippi River flood, memorably recounts an earlier example. The neighborhoods that flooded most severely after Katrina were the ones built during the twentieth century, when the city erected a pumping system that was supposed to keep its low-lying areas dry. Many of these were Black neighborhoods.

    In the days after the storm, tens of thousands of refugees, the vast majority of them Black, jammed into the Louisiana Superdome, the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, and the elevated sections of the local highways. During that terrible week after the storm, white observers—including, the documentaries remind us, members of the national press—often voiced the suspicion that these crowds would inevitably turn to theft, violence, and revenge. Such sentiments also have very deep roots in Louisiana, going back to the days of slave uprisings and, later, Black political activity during Reconstruction, which whites often chose to see as “riots” that needed to be violently, often murderously, dispersed.

    Racial injustice wasn’t the only reason for the catastrophic aftermath of Katrina. The storm made it clear that New Orleans was unusually susceptible to general system failure. Katrina was not a world-historically severe hurricane, but it caused New Orleans to cease functioning almost completely for months: just about everybody, of all backgrounds, had to leave town. Flood control—the idea that the disaster happened simply because the levees broke—is also too narrow a frame to explain Katrina fully. The storm demonstrated the fragility that comes from being an extraction economy. Beginning in the days of plantation slavery, New Orleans and its surrounding area had no strong motive to develop a substantial middle class or high-functioning institutions, and, compared with most American cities, it never has. Low-skill industries such as sugar, and then oil and chemicals, and then tourism—by now sugar has faded, but the others, along with the port, still power the local private economy—seemed to provide what Louisiana needed. Local politics were historically corrupt and hostile to the participation of the federal government. Only one of the thousand largest companies in the country is headquartered in New Orleans. An extensive rebuilding of the levees prevented disastrous flooding after Hurricane Ida, in 2021, but the power in some areas was out for weeks and the streets were full of uncollected debris for months. Most American places work better than New Orleans does.

    The city’s population peaked in 1960, at nearly six hundred and twenty-eight thousand. Today, it’s a little more than half of that. More than two hundred and fifty thousand people relocated after Katrina, and the city has continued to see a long, slow, steady population decline. Neighborhoods such as the Lower Ninth Ward, the area worst hit by the storm, are still full of empty lots. In Katrina’s immediate aftermath, it seemed as if every good-hearted national organization promised to come and help over the long term. That wave receded not too long after the flood waters did. A smaller-scale movement into the city by community organizers, artists, writers, musicians, and chefs has been more durable and has produced many achievements—most of New Orleans’s best restaurants and some of its liveliest neighborhoods are the fruit of post-Katrina efforts—but it hasn’t changed the city’s over-all situation. New Orleans is one of those declining cities where the local universities and hospitals are among the largest employers. It’s a place where you’re more likely to be asked who your people are than what you do for a living. It aims for your heart, not your head. By all means, visit. New Orleans needs you. But don’t deceive yourself about whether the city’s undeniable magic represents the level of its civic health. ♦

    Nicholas Lemann

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  • Kamala Harris Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    Kamala Harris Fast Facts | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of Vice President Kamala Harris.

    Birth date: October 20, 1964

    Birth place: Oakland, California

    Birth name: Kamala Devi Harris

    Father: Donald Harris, economics professor

    Mother: Shyamala Gopalan Harris, physician

    Marriage: Douglas Emhoff (2014-present)

    Education: Howard University, B.A. political science and economics, 1986; University of California, Hastings College of the Law, J.D., 1989

    Religion: Baptist

    First African American, first woman and first Asian American to become attorney general of California.

    First South Asian American attorney general in the nation.

    First Indian American and second African American woman to serve as a senator.

    First African American woman to represent California in the Senate.

    She is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants.

    Grew up attending a Black Baptist church and a Hindu temple.

    Her name comes from the Sanskrit word meaning “lotus” flower.

    1990-1998 – Serves as deputy district attorney for Alameda County, California.

    1998 – Is named managing attorney of the Career Criminal Unit of the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.

    2004-2011 – District attorney of San Francisco.

    2009 – “Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer” is published.

    2011-2016 – Attorney general of California.

    January 3, 2017-January 18, 2021 – Serves in the US Senate.

    December 5, 2018 – Accepts the resignation of Larry Wallace, a senior aide, after accusations of harassment surface from the time that he worked with her at the California Department of Justice.

    January 8, 2019 – Harris’ memoir, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” and picture book, “Superheroes Are Everywhere,” are published.

    January 21, 2019 – Announces she is running for president in a video posted to social media at the same time she appears on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

    October 30, 2019 – In a memo to staff and supporters, Harris’ campaign manager says the campaign will cut staff and expenses to focus on strategy in Iowa. It will lay off staffers in her Baltimore headquarters and deploy staff from New Hampshire, Nevada and California to Iowa.

    December 3, 2019 – Harris ends her 2020 presidential campaign.

    March 8, 2020 – Harris endorses Joe Biden for president.

    August 11, 2020 – Biden names Harris as his running mate, making her the first Black and South Asian American woman to run on a major political party’s presidential ticket.

    November 7, 2020 – Days after the election on November 3, CNN projects Harris is elected vice president, making her America’s first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president.

    January 20, 2021 – Is sworn in as vice president of the United States.

    May 28, 2021 – Harris gives the commencement speech at the United States Naval Academy addressing the 2021 graduating class. She is the first woman to give a commencement speech at the school.

    November 19, 2021 – Biden temporarily transfers power to Harris while he is under anesthesia for a routine colonoscopy. Harris becomes the first woman with presidential power.

    April 26, 2022 – The White House announces that Harris has tested positive for Covid-19. She is exhibiting no symptoms. She will isolate and work from the vice president’s residence.

    May 27, 2023 – Becomes the first woman to deliver a commencement address at the graduation ceremony at the US Military Academy in West Point, New York.

    March 14, 2024 – Harris visits a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota, the first time a sitting US president or vice president is believed to visit an abortion provider.

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  • How FDR emasculated the black press in World War II

    How FDR emasculated the black press in World War II

    With the notable exception of the internment of Japanese Americans, World War II still has a reputation as a “good war” for civil liberties. In 2019, for example, the authors of a leading history survey text declared that “Franklin Roosevelt had been a government official during World War I. Now presiding over a bigger world war, he was determined to avoid many of the patriotic excesses.”

    But President Roosevelt’s civil liberties abuses extended far beyond the internment camps. There are few better examples of this than the government’s campaign against the black press. Historian Patrick Washburn, the leading authority on that topic, concluded in A Question of Sedition: The Federal Government’s Investigation of the Black Press During World War II that “the black press was in extreme danger of being suppressed until June 1942.”

    The government’s motive was no mystery. The black press had tirelessly documented Jim Crow conditions in the military, federal medical facilities, and defense industries, as well as acts of violence against black troops. These were stories their readers wanted. When William Hastie, the law school dean at Howard University, asked 56 black leaders soon after Pearl Harbor to summarize the general attitudes of African Americans, a stunning 36 said that most did not completely support the war effort.

    A leading outlet for this criticism was the Pittsburgh Courier, best known for publicizing the Double V campaign (fighting for democracy simultaneously at home and abroad). A vigorous supporter of this effort was the libertarian writer Rose Wilder Lane, who contributed a regular column for the paper. The Courier was not an outlier in its willingness to question government policy. During this period, the New Deal loyalist Archibald MacLeish, who served as both Librarian of Congress and director of the War Department’s Office of Facts and Figures, forwarded to Attorney General Francis Biddle “seditious” articles from the Washington, D.C., Afro-American and suggested “a very useful preventive effect, if your department could somehow call attention to the fact that the Negro press enjoys no immunity.” A month later, the president urged both Biddle and Postmaster General Frank C. Walker to personally admonish black editors to cease “their subversive language.”

    Matters came to a head in June 1942, when Biddle summoned John H. Sengstacke—the publisher of The Chicago Defender and the president of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), an African American group—to his office. Placed on the table before Sengstacke were copies of several leading black papers, including the Defender, the Courier, and the Baltimore Afro-American. Biddle declared them seditious, and warned that the government was “going to shut them all up.” Sengstacke suggested a compromise: The newspapers might be willing to tone it down if the government agreed not to issue indictments—and agreed to give black journalists more access.

    Biddle verbally assented, and thereafter black publishers muted their willingness to question wartime abuses. A federal study of content in the Pittsburgh Courier, for example, showed that the paper devoted considerably less space to the Double V campaign in April 1943 than in August 1942. Moreover, the main targets of negative coverage over that period shifted away from the federal government and to local governments and private businesses. A postal inspector identified a noticeable weakening in “the vigorness [sic] of its complaints” about discrimination.

    But despite Biddle’s promise, the authorities did not become more cooperative in sharing information with black journalists. This bureaucratic stonewalling led a frustrated Sengstacke to question if “the government really wants sincere cooperation or whether there are clandestine forces working against the interest of a section of the Negro Press.”

    While federal authorities did not bring legal charges against the black press for the balance of the war, that doesn’t mean they shifted to a hands-off approach. Instead, they ratcheted up both intense monitoring and informal pressure. In the first half of 1942, FBI agents visited leading black newspapers that had carried critical stories about the federal government. Moreover, postal inspectors admonished two leading papers that the “benefits of citizenship” carried an obligation not to “‘play up’ isolated and rare instances in such a fashion as to obstruct recruiting and in other ways hamper the war effort.”

    Federal officials seemed particularly upset about the articles of George S. Schuyler, an editor and columnist at the Courier. Rated as particularly offensive were his arguments that the status quo offered no hope for “liberty, equality, and fraternity” and that the “Negrophobic philosophy, originating in the South, had become the official policy of the government.” An official at the Department of Justice reacted to these statements by urging the Office of War Information to take “action” against the paper.

    Schuyler was especially forceful in challenging the internment of Japanese Americans: “This country probably has as many of its citizens in concentration camps as has Germany.” He rejected accusations that those interned, whom he described as industrious and thrifty, presented any sort of genuine national security threat. Schuyler admonished African Americans to look beyond their own grievances, because “if the Government can do this to American citizens of Japanese ancestry, then it can do this to American citizens of ANY ancestry….Their fight is our fight.”

    Schuyler was exceptional in depicting the plights of African Americans, Japanese Americans, and right-wing sedition defendants as analogous and interdependent. The Roosevelt administration, he concluded, was persecuting the latter for what they “said and wrote,” and had presented no evidence of collusion or participation in a conspiracy. If these individuals could be put on trial for opposing the administration’s policies, he asked, “then who is safe? I may be nabbed for speaking harshly about Brother [Secretary of War Henry L.] Stimson’s treatment of Negro lads in the Army.”

    In the end, informal pressure suited the government’s purposes far better than direct legal punishment. As a Department of Justice analysis pointed out, the likely result of taking legal action against “a paper as prominent and as respected by the Negro population as the Pittsburgh Courier” would be “further unrest and possibly [arousing] a spirit of defeatism among the Negro population.” It also would have almost certainly alienated many black voters from Roosevelt in key Northern states: The Courier had the highest circulation of all black newspapers and had provided past support for Roosevelt. So instead of indulging in politically risky sedition prosecutions of the black press, the government relied on more indirect methods of behind-the-scenes manipulation and intimidation to quiet criticism. 

    David T. Beito

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  • A timeline of Elijah McClain's death and the trials of the officers and paramedics accused of wrongdoing | CNN

    A timeline of Elijah McClain's death and the trials of the officers and paramedics accused of wrongdoing | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Three police officers and two paramedics have faced juries on charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide stemming from the 2019 death of Elijah McClain in Aurora, Colorado.

    But the path to court was anything but straightforward.

    McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, was confronted by police officers on August 24, 2019, after someone reported seeing a person wearing a ski mask who “looks sketchy.” After officers wrestled him to the ground and paramedics injected him with a potent sedative, McClain suffered a heart attack on the way to a hospital and died days later, authorities said.

    Prosecutors initially declined to bring charges in his death, but the case received renewed scrutiny following the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in spring 2020. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis appointed a special prosecutor to reexamine the case, and in 2021 a grand jury indicted three officers and two paramedics in McClain’s death.

    The defendants have now faced juries in three separate trials in 2023, to different results. Officer Randy Roedema was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and assault, while officers Jason Rosenblatt and Nathan Woodyard were acquitted of all charges. Paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec will soon learn their fate.

    Here’s a timeline of McClain’s death, the resulting investigation, the protests that brought renewed attention to the case and the criminal trials.

    Three White officers stopped McClain in Aurora on August 24, 2019, while he was walking home from a convenience store in the Denver suburb after 10:30 p.m., according to a police overview of the incident.

    Carrying iced tea in a plastic bag, McClain eventually was in a physical struggle with the officers after, police say, he resisted arrest.

    Early in the encounter, an officer told McClain to stop, and when McClain kept walking, two officers grabbed his arms, the overview reads. McClain says, “Let me go … I’m an introvert, please respect the boundaries that I am speaking,” according to body camera footage from one of the officers.

    After an officer asked him to cooperate so they could talk, McClain tells officers he had been trying to pause his music so he could hear them, and tells them to let him go, the overview reads.

    Eventually, one officer is heard telling another that McClain tried to grab his gun.

    All three officers tackled McClain to the ground, and Woodyard placed him in a carotid hold – in which an officer uses their biceps and forearm to cut off blood flow to a subject’s brain – police said in the overview document. McClain briefly became unconscious, and Woodyard released the hold, the document reads, citing the officers.

    Body camera video of the encounter shows McClain at some point saying he couldn’t breathe.

    Because the hold was used, department policy compelled the officers to call the fire department for help, authorities said. Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics arrived and saw McClain on the ground and resisting officers, the overview says.

    Paramedic Cooper diagnosed McClain with “excited delirium” and decided to inject him with the powerful sedative ketamine, the overview says.

    McClain suffered a heart attack on the way to a hospital, authorities said. Three days later, he was declared brain-dead and taken off life support.

    The Adams County coroner’s office submitted an autopsy report on November 7, stating the cause and manner of death were “undetermined.” The report cited the scene investigation and examination findings as factors leading to that conclusion.

    Roughly two weeks later, the Adams County district attorney, Dave Young, declined to file criminal charges against any of the first responders. In a letter to the Aurora police chief on November 22, Young referred to the undetermined cause of death as one of the factors.

    “The evidence does not support a conclusion that Mr. McClain’s death was the direct result of any particular action of any particular individual,” Young wrote. “Under the circumstances of this investigation, it is improbable for the prosecution to prove cause of death beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury of twelve. Consequently, the evidence does not support the prosecution of a homicide.”

    Also on November 22, after the district attorney’s decision, Aurora police released the officers’ body camera videos.

    “We certainly recognize and understand that this has been an incredibly devastating and difficult process for them over these last several weeks,” then-Police Chief Nick Metz said.

    A police review board concluded that the use of force against McClain, including the carotid hold, “was within policy and consistent with training.”

    City officials announced on February 6 they would hire an independent expert to review the case.

    George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was fatally restrained by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25. Bystander video of the encounter sets off outrage and leads to widespread protests, including in Aurora, under the Black Lives Matter movement.

    In early June, the three officers who confronted McClain were assigned to administrative duties, primarily due to safety concerns because police and city employees were receiving threats, a police spokesperson said.

    On June 9, Aurora police and city officials announced changes to police policies, including a ban on carotid holds.

    Ten days later, Gov. Polis signed police accountability legislation into law, requiring all officers to use activated body cameras or dashboard cameras during service calls or officer-initiated public interactions. The measure also barred officers from using chokeholds.

    Polis also signed an executive order appointing Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser to investigate McClain’s case, the governor announced on June 25. More than 2 million people had signed a petition urging officials to conduct a new investigation.

    Demonstrators carried a giant placard during protests on June 27, 2020, outside the police department in Aurora.

    On June 27, protesters in the Aurora area gathered on Highway 225, temporarily shutting it down in a demonstration calling for justice in McClain’s death.

    On June 30, the US attorney’s office for Colorado, the US Department of Justice’s civil rights division and the FBI’s Denver division announced they have been reviewing the case since 2019 for potential federal civil rights violations.

    Aurora police on July 3 fired two officers who they say snapped selfie photographs at McClain’s memorial site, located where he was killed, while they were on duty.

    Officer Rosenblatt also was fired, with police saying he received the photo in a text and replied, “ha ha,” and did not notify supervisors. The photos were taken on October 20, 2019.

    A third officer seen in the photos resigned days before a pre-disciplinary hearing, police said.

    On July 20, the Aurora City Council approved a resolution for an independent investigation of McClain’s death to proceed.

    A mural of Elijah McClain, painted by Thomas

    The McClain family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Aurora on August 11.

    “Aurora’s unconstitutional conduct on the night of August 24, 2019, is part of a larger custom, policy, and practice of racism and brutality, as reflected by its conduct both before and after its murder of Elijah McClain, a young Black man,” the lawsuit stated.

    On the same day, Aurora city officials announced the police department would undergo a “comprehensive review” by external experts on civil rights and public safety.

    Aurora city officials released a 157-page report on February 22, detailing the findings of the independent investigation it commissioned into McClain’s death.

    The report asserted that officers did not have the legal basis to stop, frisk or restrain McClain. It also criticized emergency medical responders’ decision to inject him with ketamine and rebuked the police department for failing to seriously question the officers after the death.

    01 elijah mcclain

    Elijah McClain’s mom has watched the bodycam video ‘over and over’

    Sheneen McClain, Elijah’s mother, cried while reading the report.

    “It was overwhelming knowing my son was innocent the entire time and just waiting on the facts and proof of it,” Sheneen McClain told CNN at the time. “My son’s name is cleared now. He’s no longer labeled a suspect. He is actually a victim.”

    Elijah McClain’s father said the report only confirmed what the family already knew. “The Aurora police and medics who murdered my son must be held accountable,” LaWayne Mosley said after the report’s release.

    In response to the report, city officials began work on establishing an independent monitor to scrutinize police discipline, Aurora City Manager Jim Twombly said.

    “I believe the investigative team has identified the issue that is at the root of the case: the failure of a system of accountability,” Twombly said after the report’s release.

    On September 1, the state attorney general announced a grand jury indicted officers Roedema, Rosenblatt and Woodyard and paramedics Cichuniec and Cooper.

    Each was charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide as part of a 32-count indictment.

    The five people charged in the case are (clockwise, from top left): Randy Roedema, Nathan Woodyard, Jeremy Cooper, Peter Cichuniec and Jason Rosenblatt.

    Roedema and Rosenblatt also were indicted on one count of assault and one count of crime of violence. Cooper and Cichuniec were further indicted on three counts of assault and six counts of crime of violence.

    “Our goal is to seek justice for Elijah McClain, for his family and friends and for our state,” Weiser, the state attorney general, said. “In so doing, we advance the rule of law and our commitment that everyone is accountable and equal under the law.”

    The charges brought McClain’s parents to tears. “I started crying because it’s been two years,” Sheneen McClain said. “It’s been a long journey.”

    “Nothing will bring back my son, but I am thankful that his killers will finally be held accountable,” Mosley, his father, said through the attorney’s release.

    On September 15, the Colorado attorney general’s office released a 112-page report that found the Aurora police had a pattern of practicing racially biased policing, excessive force, and had failed to record legally required information when interacting with the community. The report also found the police department used force against people of color almost 2.5 times more than against White people.

    The state investigation also revealed the fire department had a pattern and practice of administering ketamine illegally, the attorney general’s office said.

    The state attorney general’s office and the city of Aurora agreed November 16 on terms of a consent decree to address the issues raised in the office’s report two months earlier.

    On November 19, the city finalized an agreement to pay $15 million to McClain’s family to settle the federal civil rights lawsuit.

    The cause of death in McClain’s case was changed in light of evidence from the grand jury’s investigation, according to an amended autopsy report publicly released September 23.

    The initial autopsy report had said the cause of death was undetermined. But the amended report listed “complications of ketamine administration following forcible restraint” as the cause of death.

    The manner of death remained undetermined in the amended report.

    “Simply put, this dosage of ketamine was too much for this individual and it resulted in an overdose, even though the blood ketamine level was consistent with a ‘therapeutic’ concentration,” pathologist Dr. Stephen Cina wrote in the amended autopsy report. “I believe that Mr. McClain would most likely be alive but for the administration of ketamine.”

    Cina could not determine whether the carotid hold contributed to the death, but “I have seen no evidence that injuries inflicted by the police contributed,” he wrote.

    On September 20, Roedema and Rosenblatt, two of the officers who arrested McClain, stood trial on charges of manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and assault.

    Prosecutors said they used excessive force on McClain, failed to follow their training and misled paramedics about his health status. In contrast, defense attorneys placed blame on McClain for resisting arrest and on the paramedics who treated him.

    Roedema was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and assault. Rosenblatt was acquitted of all charges.

    On October 16, the third officer, Woodyard, stood trial on charges of reckless manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Like in the earlier trial, prosecutors argued he used excessive force on McClain, while defense attorneys argued the force was necessary and blamed the paramedics.

    Woodyard was found not guilty on all charges.

    McClain’s mother Sheneen told CNN affiliate KUSA she no longer has faith in the justice system after Woodyard’s acquittal.

    “It lets us down, not just people of color, it lets down everybody,” she said. “They don’t do the right thing, they always do the bare minimum.”

    Cooper and Cichuniec, the paramedics who treated McClain, stood trial on charges of reckless manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.

    Both paramedics testified they believed McClain was experiencing “excited delirium” during his confrontation with Aurora police officers, and their treatment protocol was to administer a ketamine dose they believed was safe and would not kill a person.

    Prosecutors said the paramedics “didn’t take any accountability for any single one of their actions” while testifying at their trial.

    “They both stood there while Elijah got worse and worse and did nothing,” Colorado Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson said. “They are both responsible.”

    Cooper and Cichuniec were found guilty of criminally negligent homicide Friday.

    Cichuniec was also found guilty of a second-degree unlawful administration of drugs assault charge.

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  • 2023 In Review Fast Facts | CNN

    2023 In Review Fast Facts | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look back at the events of 2023.

    January 3 – Republican Kevin McCarthy fails to secure enough votes to be elected Speaker of the House in three rounds of voting. On January 7, McCarthy is elected House speaker after multiple days of negotiations and 15 rounds of voting. That same day, the newly elected 118th Congress is officially sworn in.

    January 7 – Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, is pulled over for reckless driving. He is hospitalized following the arrest and dies three days later from injuries sustained during the traffic stop. Five officers from the Memphis Police Department are fired. On January 26, a grand jury indicts the five officers. They are each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. On September 12, the five officers are indicted by a federal grand jury on several charges including deprivation of rights.

    January 9 – The White House counsel’s office confirms that several classified documents from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president were discovered last fall in an office at the Penn Biden Center. On January 12, the White House counsel’s office confirms a small number of additional classified documents were located in President Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.

    January 13 – The Trump Organization is fined $1.6 million – the maximum possible penalty – by a New York judge for running a decade-long tax fraud scheme.

    January 21 – Eleven people are killed in a mass shooting at a dance studio in Monterey Park, California, as the city’s Asian American community was celebrating Lunar New Year. The 72-year-old gunman is found dead the following day from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

    January 24 – CNN reports that a lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered about a dozen documents marked as classified at Pence’s Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI.

    January 25 – Facebook-parent company Meta announces it will restore former President Donald Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack.

    February 1 – Tom Brady announces his retirement after 23 seasons in the NFL.

    February 2 – Defense officials announce the United States is tracking a suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental United States. On February 4, a US military fighter jet shoots down the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean. On June 29, the Pentagon reveals the balloon did not collect intelligence while flying over the country.

    February 3 – A Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derails in East Palestine, Ohio. An evacuation order is issued for the area within a mile radius of the train crash. The order is lifted on February 8. After returning to their homes, some residents report they have developed a rash and nausea.

    February 7 – Lebron James breaks the NBA’s all-time scoring record, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

    February 15 – Payton Gendron, 19, who killed 10 people in a racist mass shooting at a grocery store in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo last May, is sentenced to life in prison.

    February 18 – In a statement, the Carter Center says that former President Jimmy Carter will begin receiving hospice care at his home in Georgia.

    February 20 – President Biden makes a surprise trip to Kyiv for the first time since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago.

    February 23 – Disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly is sentenced to 20 years in prison in a Chicago federal courtroom on charges of child pornography and enticement of a minor. Kelly is already serving a 30-year prison term for his 2021 conviction on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a New York federal court. Nineteen years of the 20-year prison sentence will be served at the same time as his other sentence. One year will be served after that sentence is complete.

    February 23 – Harvey Weinstein, who is already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York, is sentenced in Los Angeles to an additional 16 years in prison for charges of rape and sexual assault.

    March 2 – SpaceX and NASA launch a fresh crew of astronauts on a mission to the International Space Station, kicking off a roughly six-month stay in space. The mission — which is carrying two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates — took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

    March 2 – The jury in the double murder trial of Alex Murdaugh finds him guilty of murdering his wife and son. Murdaugh, the 54-year-old scion of a prominent and powerful family of local lawyers and solicitors, is also found guilty of two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the killings of Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh on June 7, 2021.

    March 3 – Four US citizens from South Carolina are kidnapped by gunmen in Matamoros, Mexico, in a case of mistaken identity. On March 7, two of the four Americans, Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown, are found dead and the other two, Latavia McGee and Eric Williams, are found alive. The cartel believed responsible for the armed kidnapping issues an apology letter and hands over five men to local authorities.

    March 10 – The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announces that Silicon Valley Bank was shut down by California regulators. This is the second largest bank failure in US history, only to Washington Mutual’s collapse in 2008. SVB Financial Group, the former parent company of SVB, files for bankruptcy on March 17.

    March 27 – A 28-year-old Nashville resident shoots and kills three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter is fatally shot by responding officers.

    March 29 – Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is detained by Russian authorities and accused of spying. On April 7, he is formally charged with espionage.

    March 30 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges. On April 4, Trump surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs.

    April 6 – Two Democratic members of the Tennessee House of Representatives, Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson, are expelled while a third member, Rep. Gloria Johnson, is spared in an ousting by Republican lawmakers that was decried by the trio as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated. This comes after Jones, Pearson and Johnson staged a demonstration on the House floor calling for gun reform following the shooting at the Covenant School. On April 10, Rep. Jones is sworn back in following a unanimous vote by the Nashville Metropolitan Council to reappoint him as an interim representative. On April 12, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners vote to confirm the reappointment of Rep. Pearson.

    April 6-13 – ProPublica reports that Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, have gone on several luxury trips involving travel subsidized by and stays at properties owned by Harlan Crow, a GOP megadonor. The hospitality was not disclosed on Thomas’ public financial filings with the Supreme Court. The following week ProPublica reports Thomas failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal he made with Crow. On financial disclosure forms released on August 31, Thomas discloses the luxury trips and “inadvertently omitted” information including the real estate deal.

    April 7 – A federal judge in Texas issues a ruling on medication abortion drug mifepristone, saying he will suspend the US Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of it but paused his ruling for seven days so the federal government can appeal. But in a dramatic turn of events, a federal judge in Washington state says in a new ruling shortly after that the FDA must keep medication abortion drugs available in more than a dozen Democratic-led states.

    April 13 – 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard is arrested by the FBI in connection with the leaking of classified documents that have been posted online.

    April 18 – Fox News reaches a last-second settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, paying more than $787 million to end a two-year legal battle that publicly shredded the network’s credibility. Fox News’ $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history involving a media company.

    April 25 – President Biden formally announces his bid for reelection.

    May 2 – More than 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) go on strike for the first time since 2007. On September 26, the WGA announces its leaders have unanimously voted to authorize its members to return to work following the tentative agreement reached on September 24 between union negotiators and Hollywood’s studios and streaming services, effectively ending the months-long strike.

    May 9 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.

    June 8 – Trump is indicted on a total of 37 counts in the special counsel’s classified documents probe. In a superseding indictment filed on July 27, Trump is charged with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts, bringing the total to 40 counts.

    June 16 – Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, is convicted by a federal jury on all 63 charges against him. He is sentenced to death on August 2.

    June 18 – A civilian submersible disappears with five people aboard while voyaging to the wreckage of the Titanic. On June 22, following a massive search for the submersible, US authorities announce the vessel suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” killing all five people aboard.

    June 20 – ProPublica reports that Justice Samuel Alito did not disclose a luxury 2008 trip he took in which a hedge fund billionaire flew him on a private jet, even though the businessman would later repeatedly ask the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf. In a highly unusual move, Alito preemptively disputed the nature of the report before it was published, authoring an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which he acknowledged knowing billionaire Paul Singer but downplaying their relationship.

    June 29 – The Supreme Court says colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for granting admission, a landmark decision overturning long-standing precedent.

    July 13 – The FDA approves Opill to be available over-the-counter, the first nonprescription birth control pill in the United States.

    July 14 – SAG-AFTRA, a union representing about 160,000 Hollywood actors, goes on strike after talks with major studios and streaming services fail. It is the first time its members have stopped work on movie and television productions since 1980. On November 8, SAG-AFTRA and the studios reach a tentative agreement, officially ending the strike.

    July 14 – Rex Heuermann, a New York architect, is charged with six counts of murder in connection with the deaths of three of the four women known as the “Gilgo Four.”

    August 1 – Trump is indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, in the 2020 election probe. Trump is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

    August 8 – Over 100 people are killed and hundreds of others unaccounted for after wildfires engulf parts of Maui. Nearly 3,000 homes and businesses are destroyed or damaged.

    August 14 – Trump and 18 others are indicted by an Atlanta-based grand jury on state charges stemming from their efforts to overturn the former president’s 2020 electoral defeat. Trump now faces a total of 91 charges in four criminal cases, in four different jurisdictions — two federal and two state cases. On August 24, Trump surrenders at the Fulton County jail where he is processed and released on bond.

    August 23 – Eight Republican presidential candidates face off in the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign in Milwaukee.

    September 12 – House Speaker McCarthy announces he is calling on his committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden, even as they have yet to prove allegations he directly profited off his son’s foreign business deals.

    September 14 – Hunter Biden is indicted by special counsel David Weiss in connection with a gun he purchased in 2018, the first time in US history the Justice Department has charged the child of a sitting president. The three charges include making false statements on a federal firearms form and possession of a firearm as a prohibited person.

    September 22 – New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is charged with corruption-related offenses for the second time in 10 years. Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, are accused of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes” in exchange for the senator’s influence, according to the newly unsealed federal indictment.

    September 28 – Dianne Feinstein, the longest-serving female US senator in history, dies at the age of 90. On October 1, California Governor Gavin Newsom announces he will appoint Emily’s List president Laphonza Butler to replace her. Butler will become the first out Black lesbian to join Congress. She will also be the sole Black female senator serving in Congress and only the third in US history.

    September 29 – Las Vegas police confirm Duane Keith Davis, aka “Keffe D,” was arrested for the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.

    October 3 – McCarthy is removed as House speaker following a 216-210 vote, with eight Republicans voting to remove McCarthy from the post.

    October 25 – After three weeks without a speaker, the House votes to elect Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

    October 25 – Robert Card, a US Army reservist, kills 18 people and injures 13 others in a shooting rampage in Lewiston, Maine. On October 27, after a two-day manhunt, he is found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

    November 13 – The Supreme Court announces a code of conduct in an attempt to bolster the public’s confidence in the court after months of news stories alleging that some of the justices have been skirting ethics regulations.

    November 19 – Former first lady Rosalynn Carter passes away at the age of 96.

    January 8 – Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro storm the country’s congressional building, Supreme Court and presidential palace. The breaches come about a week after the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in a runoff election on October 30.

    January 15 – At least 68 people are killed when an aircraft goes down near the city of Pokhara in central Nepal. This is the country’s deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years.

    January 19 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announces she will not seek reelection in October.

    January 24 – President Volodymyr Zelensky fires a slew of senior Ukrainian officials amid a growing corruption scandal linked to the procurement of war-time supplies.

    February 6 – More than 15,000 people are killed and tens of thousands injured after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes Turkey and Syria.

    February 28 – At least 57 people are killed after two trains collide in Greece.

    March 1 – Bola Ahmed Tinubu is declared the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election.

    March 10 – Xi Jinping is reappointed as president for another five years by China’s legislature in a ceremonial vote in Beijing, a highly choreographed exercise in political theater meant to demonstrate legitimacy and unity of the ruling elite.

    March 16 – The French government forces through controversial plans to raise the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64.

    April 4 – Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO.

    April 15 – Following months of tensions in Sudan between a paramilitary group and the country’s army, violence erupts.

    May 3 – A 13-year-old boy opens fire on his classmates at a school in Belgrade, Serbia, killing at least eight children along with a security guard. On May 4, a second mass shooting takes place when an attacker opens fire in the village of Dubona, about 37 miles southeast of Belgrade, killing eight people.

    May 5 – The World Health Organization announces Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency.

    May 6 – King Charles’ coronation takes place at Westminster Abbey in London.

    August 4 – Alexey Navalny is sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, Russian media reports. Navalny is already serving sentences totaling 11-and-a-half years in a maximum-security facility on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up.

    September 8 – Over 2,000 people are dead and thousands are injured after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake hits Morocco.

    October 8 – Israel formally declares war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after it carried out an unprecedented attack by air, sea and land on October 7.

    November 8 – The Vatican publishes new guidelines opening the door to Catholic baptism for transgender people and babies of same-sex couples.

    November 24 – The first group of hostages is released after Israel and Hamas agree to a temporary truce. Dozens more hostages are released in the following days. On December 1, the seven-day truce ends after negotiations reach an impasse and Israel accuses Hamas of violating the agreement by firing at Israel.

    Awards and Winners

    January 9 – The College Football Playoff National Championship game takes place at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The Georgia Bulldogs defeat Texas Christian University’s Horned Frogs 65-7 for their second national title in a row.

    January 10 – The 80th Annual Golden Globe Awards are presented live on NBC.

    January 16-29 – The 111th Australian Open takes place. Novak Djokovic defeats Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets to win a 10th Australian Open title and a record-equaling 22nd grand slam. Belarusian-born Aryna Sabalenka defeats Elena Rybakina in three sets, becoming the first player competing under a neutral flag to secure a grand slam.

    February 5 – The 65th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles at the Crypto.com Arena.

    February 12 – Super Bowl LVII takes place at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. The Kansas City Chiefs defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35. This is the first Super Bowl to feature two Black starting quarterbacks.

    February 19 – Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wins the 65th Annual Daytona 500 in double overtime. It is the longest Daytona 500 ever with a record of 212 laps raced.

    March 12 – The 95th Annual Academy Awards takes place, with Jimmy Kimmel hosting for the third time.

    March 14 – Ryan Redington wins his first Iditarod.

    April 2 – The Louisiana State University Tigers defeat the University of Iowa Hawkeyes 102-85 in Dallas, to win the program’s first NCAA women’s basketball national championship.

    April 3 – The University of Connecticut Huskies win its fifth men’s basketball national title with a 76-59 victory over the San Diego State University Aztecs in Houston.

    April 6-9 – The 87th Masters tournament takes place. Jon Rahm wins, claiming his first green jacket and second career major at Augusta National.

    April 17 – The 127th Boston Marathon takes place. The winners are Evans Chebet of Kenya in the men’s division and Hellen Obiri of Kenya in the women’s division.

    May 6 – Mage, a 3-year-old chestnut colt, wins the 149th Kentucky Derby.

    May 8-9 – The 147th Annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show takes place at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York. Buddy Holly, a petit basset griffon Vendéen, wins Best in Show.

    May 20 – National Treasure wins the 148th running of the Preakness Stakes.

    May 21 – Brooks Koepka wins the 105th PGA Championship at Oak Hill County Club in Rochester, New York. This is his third PGA Championship and fifth major title of his career.

    May 22-June 11 – The French Open takes place at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris. Novak Djokovic wins a record-breaking 23rd Grand Slam title, defeating Casper Ruud 7-6 (7-1) 6-3 7-5 in the men’s final. Iga Świątek wins her third French Open in four years with a 6-2 5-7 6-4 victory against the unseeded Karolína Muchová in the women’s final.

    May 28 – Josef Newgarden wins the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500.

    June 10 – Arcangelo wins the 155th running of the Belmont Stakes.

    June 11 – The 76th Tony Awards takes place.

    June 12 – The Denver Nuggets defeat the Miami Heat 94-89 in Game 5, to win the series 4-1 and claim their first NBA title in franchise history.

    June 13 – The Vegas Golden Knights defeat the Florida Panthers in Game 5 to win the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.

    June 18 – American golfer Wyndham Clark wins the 123rd US Open at The Los Angeles Country Club.

    July 1-23 – The 110th Tour de France takes place. Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard wins his second consecutive Tour de France title.

    July 3-16 – Wimbledon takes place in London. Carlos Alcaraz defeats Novak Djokovic 1-6 7-6 (8-6) 6-1 3-6 6-4 in the men’s final, to win his first Wimbledon title. Markéta Vondroušová defeats Ons Jabeur 6-4 6-4 in the women’s final, to win her first Wimbledon title and become the first unseeded woman in the Open Era to win the tournament.

    July 16-23 – Brian Harman wins the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, Wirral, England, for his first major title.

    July 20-August 20 – The Women’s World Cup takes place in Australia and New Zealand. Spain defeats England 1-0 to win its first Women’s World Cup.

    August 28-September 10 – The US Open Tennis Tournament takes place. Coco Gauff defeats Aryna Sabalenka, and Novak Djokovic defeats Daniil Medvedev.

    October 2-9 – The Nobel Prizes are announced. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

    November 1 – The Texas Rangers win the World Series for the first time in franchise history, defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-0 in Game 5.

    November 5 – The New York City Marathon takes place. Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola sets a course record and wins the men’s race. Kenya’s Hellen Obiri wins the women’s race.

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  • Civil Rights Undone

    Civil Rights Undone

    In late 2020, even as the instigators of insurrection were marshaling their followers to travel to Washington, D.C., another kind of coup—a quieter one—was in the works. On December 21, in one of his departing acts as attorney general, Bill Barr submitted a proposed rule change to the White House. The change would eliminate the venerable standard used by the Justice Department to handle discrimination cases, known as “disparate impact.” The memo was quickly overshadowed by the events of January 6, and, in the chaotic final days of Donald Trump’s presidency, it was never implemented. But Barr’s proposal represented perhaps the most aggressive step the administration took in its effort to dismantle existing civil-rights law. Should Trump return to power, he would surely attempt to see the effort through.

    Explore the January/February 2024 Issue

    Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

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    Since the legislative victories of the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, legal and civil rights for people on the margins have tended to expand. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 were followed by voting provisions for Indigenous people and non-English speakers, a Supreme Court guarantee of the right to abortion, increased protections for people with disabilities, and formal recognition of same-sex marriage. The trend mostly continued under presidents of both parties—until Trump. Though his administration could be bumbling, the president’s actions matched his rhetoric when it came to eroding civil-rights enforcement.

    From the March 2021 issue: American democracy is only 55 years old—and hanging by a thread

    Under Trump, the Justice Department abandoned its active protection of voting rights. The Environmental Protection Agency ignored civil-rights complaints. The Department of Housing and Urban Development scaled back investigations into housing discrimination. Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court, for their part, have whittled away at landmark civil-rights legislation and presided over the end of affirmative action.

    In a second term, the most effective way for Trump to continue rolling back protections would be to dismantle disparate-impact theory. Under the theory, the federal government can prohibit discriminatory practices not just in instances of malicious and provable bigotry, but also in cases where a party’s actions unintentionally affect a class of marginalized people disproportionately.

    The theory is important because discrimination can be perpetuated without ill intent; even seemingly benign or neutral policies can perpetuate a legacy of bias, or create new inequities. But disparate impact is also essential because landlords, business owners, and municipal officials who do wish to discriminate have learned how to operate without expressing overt bigotry. Under disparate impact, the government’s burden is not to prove that these actors intended to discriminate, only that their actions resulted in discrimination.

    For decades, lawyers have invoked disparate impact as a means of fighting discrimination. The standard has been applied across the federal government. After the housing crisis of 2008, the DOJ brought a series of lawsuits against banks that had charged higher mortgage rates and fees to minority borrowers, winning hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements from the lenders. In 2015, the DOJ released a damning report on the practices of the police department in Ferguson, Missouri, after an 18-year-old Black man, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by a police officer. Disparate impact was mentioned at least 30 times in the report, including in its main takeaway: “African Americans experience disparate impact in nearly every aspect of Ferguson’s law enforcement system.”

    Adam Serwer: Trump is making it easier to get away with discrimination

    Many conservatives have long been suspicious of disparate impact. The most principled objections center on the claims that it invites government overreach and inefficiency, that it impedes state and local policy development, and that it always entails some degree of ghost-chasing—in a country as unequal as America, discerning what exactly contributes to a disparate outcome can be difficult.

    But these philosophical and practical objections to the theory have always served to disguise a more visceral disdain. Many conservatives simply believe that ensuring equality is not a legitimate federal priority. In the Trump era, as the Republican Party has embraced white nationalism, its leaders have been emboldened to abandon the guise. They edge closer to the line once held by the architects of Jim Crow: Equality is undesirable because people are not equals; some of us might not even be people.

    Trump himself has always had a preternatural gift for identifying and channeling grievance; white backlash against civil-rights legislation was one of the major forces behind his advancement to the presidency, and that backlash can be traced directly to disdain for civil-rights legislation and enforcement. Once Trump was in office, one of his early targets was HUD. In 2020, the department finalized a rule that demolished its discriminatory-effect standard, which had been the basis for enforcement at the department for at least 40 years. Trump’s HUD secretary, Ben Carson, said that the move would spur efficiency at the local level without undermining the department’s antidiscrimination work. But Carson has long been a skeptic of desegregation; during his 2016 presidential campaign, he described desegregation efforts in cities as “failed socialist experiments.” Ultimately, Carson’s attempt to undermine the discrimination standard was stymied by lawsuits. But the cause of fighting bias suffered nevertheless. In 2020, at the end of Carson’s tenure, the number of secretary-initiated complaints had gone from several dozen in 2015 to three.

    Trump did serious damage to disparate impact as president; there’s little question that he would finish the job if given another chance. A second Trump administration could go beyond simply abandoning the theory, perhaps even bringing lawsuits seeking to declare the entire concept unconstitutional. Trump could thus attack civil-rights law from both sides, sabotaging the government’s capability to adjudicate cases while also arguing that it should not have that capability in the first place. If this two-pronged strategy succeeds, it will be difficult for any future administration to undo the changes. With today’s conservative-dominated judiciary and high levels of political polarization, any substantive changes Trump makes to civil-rights enforcement could effectively become permanent.

    Without disparate impact, the DOJ would lose its primary tool for addressing brutality in police departments, and current efforts to finally enforce environmental laws in communities of color and hold cities accountable for creating slums in Black and Latino neighborhoods would be stalled. Given the damage that has already been done by the courts, there is a future—perhaps a likely future—in which the remaining foundations of the civil-rights era are undone. If Trump were to win in 2024, he would see the victory as a mandate to tear everything down now.

    This article appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “Civil Rights Undone.”

    Vann R. Newkirk II

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  • How John F. Kennedy Fell for the Lost Cause

    How John F. Kennedy Fell for the Lost Cause

    John F. Kennedy took George Plimpton by surprise after a dinner party one evening when he pulled his friend aside for a word in the Oval Office. The president had Reconstruction on his mind—really, though, he wanted to discuss Plimpton’s grandmother.

    Plimpton was lanky and lordly, famous for his patrician accent and his forays into professional sports. The Paris Review founder did everything and knew everyone. He might edit literary criticism one day and try his hand at football or boxing the next. Plimpton had known Jackie Kennedy for years, and he had been friends with Robert F. Kennedy since their Harvard days.

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    He also had another, and very different, Kennedy connection. Plimpton’s great-grandfather Adelbert Ames, a New Englander, had been a Civil War general and Mississippi governor during Reconstruction. He was an ardent supporter of Black suffrage. Kennedy had soiled Ames’s reputation in his best-selling 1956 book, Profiles in Courage, which had won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography the following year. The book ushered the junior senator from Massachusetts onto the national stage, effectively launching his bid for the presidency.

    Kennedy’s book presented a pantheon of past U.S. senators as models of courageous compromise and political pragmatism. One such man, Kennedy claimed, was Ames’s racist Democratic rival, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II. A slaveholder, drafter of the Mississippi Ordinance of Secession, and Confederate colonel, Lamar later became the first ex-Confederate appointed to the Supreme Court after the Civil War.

    Lamar and Ames were the preeminent politicians of Mississippi Reconstruction. They hated each other. (At one point, Lamar threatened to lynch Ames.) Profiles in Courage had relied heavily on the work of influential Dunning School historians—disciples of the Columbia University professor William A. Dunning, who scorned Black suffrage and promoted the mythology of the Lost Cause. Kennedy may have been genuinely misled by these historians, but he also aspired to higher office and needed to appeal to white southern voters. His book denounced Reconstruction, casting Ames as a corrupt, carpetbagging villain and Lamar as a heroic southern statesman.

    From the June 2021 issue: Why Confederate lies live on

    Ames’s daughter Blanche—Plimpton’s grandmother—was incensed. She sent meticulously researched letters to Kennedy, demanding that he correct his book. Some of the letters had footnotes. Some had appendixes. Blanche would not let up, chasing Kennedy from the Senate to the presidency.

    In Plimpton’s telling, as Kennedy took his guests on an informal tour of the White House that evening, he motioned to Plimpton for a word. “George,” he said, as Plimpton would recall, “I’d like to talk to you about your grandmother.” Kennedy begged him to persuade Blanche Ames to stop writing, complaining that her correspondence “was cutting into the work of government.”

    Plimpton promised to try, but he knew it would be no use. “My grandmother was a Massachusetts woman,” he later explained, and when Kennedy refused to amend Profiles, Blanche “did what any sensible Massachusetts woman would do: she sat down and wrote her own book.”

    Blanche Ames was born in Massachusetts in 1878, the year after Reconstruction ended in a political deal that awarded Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, the disputed presidential election in exchange for withdrawing federal troops from the South. Blanche had the Civil War in her blood. Benjamin F. Butler, a Union general, was her maternal grandfather; he had commanded Fort Monroe, in Virginia, and had designated fugitive slaves as “contraband of war,” using a legal loophole that allowed refugees to seek protection behind Union lines. He later became governor of Massachusetts. Adelbert Ames, her father, won the Medal of Honor at First Bull Run and fought at Antietam and Gettysburg. After serving as the military governor of Mississippi, Ames became the state’s senator and then its civilian governor. He was a champion of racial rights, embracing a personal “Mission with a large M ” to support Black citizens.

    Blanche, too, was a principled fighter, willing to risk her social privilege for the causes that she championed. Adelbert encouraged his daughters to attend college. Blanche went to Smith, where she became class president. At commencement, she delivered a forceful address promoting women’s suffrage, with President William McKinley in the audience. Blanche helped spearhead the Massachusetts women’s-suffrage movement, working as a political cartoonist for Woman’s Journal. She founded the Massachusetts Birth Control League. Once, Blanche sauntered onto Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue carrying a hand-carved wooden penis to demonstrate proper condom use; she was arrested, but police released her after realizing she was the daughter of one governor and the granddaughter of another. “If she was a man,” one historian has observed, “there would be five books” about her already.

    Blanche Ames Ames acquired her distinctive, double-barreled name upon marrying the prominent Harvard botanist Oakes Ames, who came from an unrelated dynastic strand of Ameses. A talented painter, Blanche illustrated some of Oakes’s books about orchids. The Ames mansion at Borderland, their 1,200-acre estate outside Boston, was built entirely of stone to ensure that the library—the filming location for the 2019 movie Knives Out—would be fireproof. Adelbert Ames’s and Benjamin Butler’s Civil War–era swords can still be seen in the foyer. George Plimpton once used one to cut a cake at an anniversary party.

    Profiles in Courage roused Blanche from her Borderland retirement. Eight decades had elapsed since the end of Reconstruction. The modern civil-rights movement was gaining momentum, with its promise of a second Reconstruction. Kennedy was not only taking the wrong side, but he was doing so by maligning Blanche’s father:

    No state suffered more from carpetbag rule than Mississippi. Adelbert Ames, first Senator and then Governor … [admitted] that only his election to the Senate prompted him to take up his residence in Mississippi. He was chosen Governor by a majority composed of freed slaves and radical Republicans, sustained and nourished by Federal bayonets … Taxes increased to a level fourteen times as high as normal in order to support the extravagances of the reconstruction government.

    Lamar, meanwhile, was cast as a “statesman” for whom “no partisan, personal or sectional considerations could outweigh his devotion to the national interest and to the truth”—a selfless patriot who had helped reconcile the nation.

    The truth of the matter was very different. Reconstruction-era Mississippi under Ames’s leadership arguably held more political promise for newly enfranchised Black people than any other southern state. Before the Civil War, Mississippi had contained some of the richest counties in the nation, but most Mississippians—some 55 percent—were enslaved. After the war, Mississippi was the poorest state in the Union. But the new state constitution worked to overturn the Black Codes—laws designed to limit the rights of newly freed African Americans—and Mississippi’s Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce became the country’s first Black senators. Ames himself shared his gubernatorial ticket with three Black candidates.

    Democrats swept the 1874 national midterm elections in what the historian Eric Foner has called a “repudiation of Reconstruction.” Mississippi Democrats saw an opportunity: By seizing control of the legislature in upcoming state elections, they could pass measures that would essentially end Black suffrage. The year 1875 became a struggle between Ames, the elected governor, and Lamar, who was then in Congress. Ames’s administration had the support of Black voters. Lamar, meanwhile, embraced the so-called Mississippi Plan, which aimed to disrupt a legitimate election, by force if necessary. Lamar insisted that the Democrats had to win control of the state legislature to ensure the “supremacy of the unconquered and unconquerable Saxon race.” On Election Day, paramilitary terrorists called White Liners obstructed polling places, destroyed ballot boxes, and threatened to kill Black citizens who voted, as the journalist Nicholas Lemann has written in Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War. Counties that were once overwhelmingly Republican saw the Republican vote drop to single digits. “A revolution has taken place,” Ames wrote to his wife, prophesying a bleak future for Mississippi. “A race are disenfranchised—they are to be returned to … an era of second slavery.”

    From the December 2023 issue: Eric Foner on Confederate general James Longstreet

    Democrats, elected by terrorism and led by Lamar, now threatened Ames with impeachment. They accused him of financial impropriety—including the high taxes that Profiles decried—despite his administration’s relative frugality. To avoid impeachment, Ames resigned and fled the state. A U.S. Senate committee investigated the Mississippi elections and produced a 2,000-page document known as the “Boutwell Report.” It concluded that Ames was blameless and that his resignation had been forced “by measures unauthorized by law.” No matter: Ames’s reputation lay in tatters.

    The following year, during the presidential deadlock, Lamar helped broker the Compromise of 1877, which gave Hayes the presidency over Samuel Tilden in exchange for the return of “home rule”—rule by white-supremacist Democrats—to the South, effectively destroying national Reconstruction.

    Profiles in Courage evades easy categorization. It is a historical work, written by a political team, heavily assisted by historians, and published for political gain. The book features eight senators, strategically distributed across time, space, and party. Five of the profiles focus on questions of slavery, the Civil War, or Reconstruction, and none of the featured senators took a progressive approach to Black rights. Three, including Lamar, were slaveholders. Questions about authorship arose early: Kennedy’s speechwriter Theodore Sorensen was rumored to be the true author. (He did, in fact, write most of the book.) Archival drafts reveal that the Georgetown University history professor Jules Davids helped overhaul the Mississippi chapter. The book’s historical vision, though, came from Kennedy.

    Historians in recent years have acknowledged that the real problem with Profiles is not authorship but substance. As a critic, Blanche Ames got there first. Her personal copy of the book, a first edition, overflows with annotations. She drew arrows and corkscrew question marks around the paragraph about her father, her anger visible on the page. When Kennedy insisted that Lamar had written Mississippi’s Ordinance of Secession only after losing hope that “the South could obtain justice in the Federal Union,” Blanche thundered in the margins: “Lamar had sown the seed in 1861. He was sowing it again in 1874.”

    In June 1956, Blanche sent a nine-page letter to Senator Kennedy, introducing herself as his friend Plimpton’s grandmother and urging “corrections of errata for your own sake as well as mine.” She recognized diplomatically that, “in a work as ambitious as ‘Profiles in Courage’ … there are bound to be some viewpoints to arouse controversy.” Nevertheless, she argued, ambition did not excuse historical inaccuracy.

    Kennedy replied the next month. He was cordial, admitting that Reconstruction was “one of the most difficult sections” to write, not because of lack of material, but because of an abundance of “emotion-packed and strongly partisan” readings. It was a politician’s apology, suffused with qualifiers. He insisted that he had relied on “reputable authorities,” but granted that “it is possible, of course, that in so doing a particular individual or incident is slighted or inadequately or inaccurately described.” He added, “If such is the case in connection with my mention of your father … I am indeed sorry.” He assured Blanche that her message “succeeded in stimulating me to further research,” but warned that he did not expect Profiles to be reprinted, so there would be no correction.

    Kennedy did, in fact, do further research. According to Plimpton, during that Oval Office conversation after the dinner party, Kennedy asked Plimpton what he knew about his great-grandfather, apparently eager to demonstrate his own knowledge. He reenacted how Ames would inspect his Civil War soldiers and shout “For God’s sake, draw up your bowels!,” causing White House personnel to burst in, worried by the uproar. The president had found this obscure detail in an equally obscure book, The Twentieth Maine, which was published a year after Profiles.

    But between 1956 and 1963, Profiles was reprinted more than 30 times. Kennedy did not change his account of Adelbert Ames and L. Q. C. Lamar.

    Kennedy’s intransigence only fueled Blanche’s campaign. She forwarded her letters to Harper & Brothers, giving the publisher “the first opportunity” to rectify where Profiles in Courage “falls short of the Code of Historians.” The publisher declined, claiming that too much time had elapsed for readers to be able to understand any corrections. Blanche combed through Kennedy’s acknowledgments and wrote to the professors who assisted with drafting or editing Profiles, hoping that the historians might put pressure on him.

    They did not. There is no evidence that Davids, architect of the Lamar chapter, ever bothered to reply. Allan Nevins, at Columbia, backpedaled, claiming that the introduction he had written for Profiles “carried no endorsement of all details … I am sure the Senator will make correction where correction is proper.” Arthur Holcombe, at Harvard, patronizingly suggested that Blanche had “misunderstood Senator Kennedy’s meaning.” Some of these academic historians may simply not have taken Blanche seriously: She was old, she was a woman, and she lacked scholarly credentials.

    Blanche contacted a second circle of scholars, seeking a historian “free from bias” who might serve as an impartial biographer of Adelbert Ames. She steeped herself in the historiography of Reconstruction, coming to understand how closely Profiles followed the neo-Confederate historians Wirt Armistead Cate and Edward Mayes. “Cate copies Mayes and Kennedy copies Cate,” she wrote to the eminent Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison. “Now, unless corrected, modern and future historians may copy Kennedy! This method of writing history leads around in circles of quotations of half-truths. It is a false method.”

    Morison suggested a few military scholars as potential Ames biographers, but mainly recommended “Negro historians” such as John Hope Franklin, Rayford Logan, and Alrutheus Ambush Taylor. “Adelbert Ames’ career as Governor was, I believe, more important than his military career,” Morison reasoned, “and he was the champion of the Negroes.” Blanche contacted a host of prominent academics, including C. Vann Woodward, whose books had criticized the Dunning School and challenged the myth that Reconstruction governments with Black elected officials were simply incompetent or ignorant. The Profiles team had paid no attention to this scholarship. Despite her efforts, no historian would commit to the project. So Blanche resolved to write a biography of Adelbert Ames herself.

    Borderland became Blanche’s archive and fortress while she spent six years—1957 to 1963—researching and writing. When her granddaughter Olivia Hoblitzelle visited Borderland, she marveled at the piles of Civil War maps and books in the library. On one trip, Hoblitzelle recalled, her father asked, “How long is it now?” “Five hundred pages,” Blanche replied. When Hoblitzelle’s father asked, “Isn’t that enough?,” Blanche “looked him straight in the eye, and said, ‘Well, if Tolstoy could do it, so can I.’ ” When she finished, she was 86 years old.

    Blanche’s research drew significantly on the work of Black historians, who had been publishing trenchant studies of Reconstruction for decades. White historians had largely ignored this work, dismissing it as second-class scholarship. Blanche thought otherwise. Her bibliography cited W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America, Franklin’s The Militant South, John Lynch’s The Facts of Reconstruction, Merl Eppse’s The Negro, Too, in American History, and George Washington Williams’s History of the Negro Race in America. Kennedy, meanwhile, had not cited a single Black author on Mississippi Reconstruction.

    From the March 1901 issue: W. E. B. Du Bois on the Freedmen’s Bureau

    The stakes, Blanche believed, included not only her father’s reputation but the very meaning of Reconstruction. Her final chapter, “Integrity and History,” is a scathing condemnation of the traditional Reconstruction historiography Kennedy had parroted. Throughout the book, she linked Adelbert Ames’s promotion of racial rights in the 1870s with the modern civil-rights movement—the second Reconstruction:

    In this fateful year of 1963, our Congress has a unique opportunity with its overwhelming Democratic majorities … Congress seems to hold the practical power to do away with the disgraceful suppression of Negro suffrage rights … A hundred years has been too long to wait for application of these long-standing laws of equity.

    Blanche Ames’s book was published at the worst possible moment. In September 1963, she finished correcting page proofs for Adelbert Ames, 1835–1933: General, Senator, Governor. The book was lovingly bound in Sundour cloth and stamped in gold. It sold for $12.50, about $120 today—an old-fashioned, costly volume. Kennedy’s mass-produced paperback, meanwhile, sold for less than a dollar. On November 22, 1963, as Blanche’s book was going to press, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed Kennedy in Dallas.

    With the president’s tragic death, Profiles in Courage got a second life, landing back on the New York Times best-seller list. As Americans evaluated Kennedy’s legacy, his prizewinning book seemed a natural place to start. A televised adaptation of Profiles had been in production at NBC before Kennedy’s death. At that time, Blanche had urged Kennedy to use television as an opportunity to “bring your views into accord with the trend of modern historical interpretation of the Reconstruction Period.” After the assassination, the network pressed ahead, framing the series as “one of the finest living memorials to President Kennedy.” But Blanche may have gotten through to Kennedy’s team in the end, at least as far as the television series: When it premiered, a year after Kennedy’s death, the planned segment on Lamar had been quietly dropped. It was the only original profile not to be featured on television.

    But there was still the book. Blanche wrote to Sorensen in early 1964, trying to strike a tone of mutual interest: “Must we not find a way of correcting these obvious misstatements inadvertently restated by President Kennedy? Otherwise they will be perpetuated with greater force than ever, and I do not believe that he would have wished this. Do you?” There is no record that Sorensen replied.

    Blanche lived to see the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Born a year after the end of the first Reconstruction, she was able to witness the start of the second. But when she died at Borderland, in 1969, a belittling New York Times headline read: “MRS. OAKES AMES, BOTANIST’S WIDOW; Illustrator of Her Husband’s Works on Orchids Dies.” Despite Blanche’s best efforts, her book sold only a few thousand copies.

    In 2010, a few years before efforts to remove Confederate monuments gained traction across the country, a life-size statue of Lamar was erected outside his former home in Oxford, Mississippi. The L. Q. C. Lamar House Museum’s public-outreach efforts generally commemorate Lamar not as a white supremacist or an architect of the Mississippi Plan, but as the embodiment of Kennedy’s redemptive arc: “Southern secessionist to American statesman,” as the museum describes it. Ames is not mentioned at all; Profiles is highlighted throughout the museum.

    In 1980, George Plimpton donated a copy of Blanche’s book to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, in Boston. “President Kennedy would know,” he said, “that a Massachusetts woman will eventually have her way.” But Blanche Ames Ames has not had her way quite yet. At the library’s gift shop, visitors can buy a 50th-anniversary edition of Profiles in Courage, published in 2006, with an introduction by Caroline Kennedy. The book has never been corrected.

    This article appears in the December 2023 print edition with the headline “Kennedy and the Lost Cause.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

    Jordan Virtue

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  • Controversial Police Encounters Fast Facts | CNN

    Controversial Police Encounters Fast Facts | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at controversial police encounters that have prompted protests over the past three decades. This select list includes cases in which police officers were charged or a grand jury was convened.

    March 3, 1991 – LAPD officers beat motorist Rodney King after he leads police on a high-speed chase through Los Angeles County. George Holliday videotapes the beating from his apartment balcony. The video shows police hitting King more than 50 times with their batons. Over 20 officers are present at the scene, mostly from the LAPD. King suffers 11 fractures and other injuries.

    March 15, 1991 – A Los Angeles grand jury indicts Sergeant Stacey Koon and Officers Laurence Michael Powell, Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno in connection with the beating.

    May 10, 1991 – A grand jury refuses to indict 17 officers who stood by at the King beating and did nothing.

    April 29, 1992 – The four LAPD officers are acquitted. Riots break out at the intersection of Florence and Normandie in South Central Los Angeles. Governor Pete Wilson declares a state of emergency and calls in the National Guard. Riots in the next few days leave more than 50 people dead and cause nearly $1 billion in property damage.

    May 1, 1992 – King makes an emotional plea for calm, “People, I just want to say, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?”

    August 4, 1992 – A federal grand jury returns indictments against Koon, Powell, Wind, and Briseno on the charge of violating King’s civil rights.

    April 17, 1993 – Koon and Powell are convicted for violating King’s civil rights. Wind and Briseno are found not guilty. No disturbances follow the verdict. On August 4, both Koon and Powell are sentenced to 30 months in prison. Powell is found guilty of violating King’s constitutional right to be free from an arrest made with “unreasonable force.” Koon, the ranking officer, is convicted of permitting the civil rights violation to occur.

    April 19, 1994 – King is awarded $3.8 million in compensatory damages in a civil lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. King had demanded $56 million, or $1 million for every blow struck by the officers.

    June 1, 1994 – In a civil trial against the police officers, a jury awards King $0 in punitive damages. He had asked for $15 million.

    June 17, 2012 – King is found dead in his swimming pool.

    November 5, 1992 – Two white police officers approach Malice Wayne Green, a 35-year-old black motorist, after he parks outside a suspected drug den. Witnesses say the police strike the unarmed man in the head repeatedly with heavy flashlights. The officers claim they feared Green was trying to reach for one of their weapons. Green dies of his injuries later that night.

    November 16, 1992 – Two officers, Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn, are charged with second-degree murder. Sgt. Freddie Douglas, a supervisor who arrived on the scene after a call for backup, is charged with involuntary manslaughter and willful neglect of duty. These charges are later dismissed. Another officer, Robert Lessnau, is charged with assault with intent to do great bodily harm.

    November 18, 1992 – The Detroit Free Press reports that toxicology tests revealed alcohol and a small amount of cocaine in Green’s system. A medical examiner later states that Green’s head injuries, combined with the cocaine and alcohol in his system, led to his death.

    December 1992 – The Detroit police chief fires the four officers.

    August 23, 1993 – Nevers and Budzyn are convicted of murder after a 45-day trial. Lessnau is acquitted. Nevers sentence is 12-25 years, while Budzyn’s sentence is 8-18 years.

    1997-1998 – The Michigan Supreme Court orders a retrial for Budzyn due to possible jury bias. During the second trial, a jury convicts Budzyn of a less serious charge, involuntary manslaughter, and he is released with time served.

    2000-2001 – A jury finds Nevers guilty of involuntary manslaughter after a second trial. He is released from prison in 2001.

    August 9, 1997 – Abner Louima, a 33-year-old Haitian immigrant, is arrested for interfering with officers trying to break up a fight in front of the Club Rendez-vous nightclub in Brooklyn. Louima alleges, while handcuffed, police officers lead him to the precinct bathroom and sodomized him with a plunger or broomstick.

    August 15, 1997 – Police officers Justin Volpe and Charles Schwarz are charged with aggravated sexual abuse and first-degree assault.

    August 16, 1997 – Thousands of angry protesters gather outside Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct to demonstrate against what they say is a long-standing problem of police brutality against minorities.

    August 18, 1997 – Two more officers, Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder, are charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

    February 26, 1998 – Volpe, Bruder, Schwarz and Wiese are indicted on federal civil rights charges. A fifth officer, Michael Bellomo, is accused of helping the others cover up the alleged beating, as well as an alleged assault on another Haitian immigrant, Patrick Antoine, the same night.

    May 1999 – Volpe pleads guilty to beating and sodomizing Louima. He is later sentenced to 30 years in prison.

    June 8, 1999 – Schwarz is convicted of beating Louima, then holding him down while he was being tortured. Wiese, Bruder, and Bellomo are acquitted. Schwarz is later sentenced to 15 and a half years in prison for perjury.

    March 6, 2000 – In a second trial, Schwarz, Wiese, and Bruder are convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice by covering up the attack. On February 28, 2002, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturns their convictions.

    July 12, 2001 – Louima receives $8.75 million in a settlement agreement with the City of New York and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

    September 2002 – Schwarz pleads guilty to perjury and is sentenced to five years in prison. He had been scheduled to face a new trial for civil rights violations but agreed to a deal.

    February 4, 1999 – Amadou Diallo, 22, a street vendor from West Africa, is confronted outside his home in the Bronx by four NYPD officers who are searching the neighborhood for a rapist. When Diallo reaches for his wallet, the officers open fire, reportedly fearing he was pulling out a gun. They fire 41 times and hit him 19 times, killing him.

    March 24, 1999 – More than 200 protestors are arrested outside NYPD headquarters. For weeks, activists have gathered to protest the use of force by NYPD officers.

    March 25, 1999 – A Bronx grand jury votes to indict the four officers – Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy – for second-degree murder. On February 25, 2000, they are acquitted.

    January 2001 – The US Justice Department announces it will not pursue federal civil rights charges against the officers.

    January 2004 – Diallo’s family receives $3 million in a wrongful death lawsuit.

    September 4, 2005 – Six days after Hurricane Katrina devastates the area, New Orleans police officers receive a radio call that two officers are down under the Danziger vertical-lift bridge. According to the officers, people are shooting at them and they have returned fire.

    – Brothers Ronald and Lance Madison, along with four members of the Bartholomew family, are shot by police officers. Ronald Madison, 40, who is intellectually disabled, and James Brisette, 17 (some sources say 19), are fatally wounded.

    December 28, 2006 – Police Sgts. Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius and officers Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso are charged with first-degree murder. Officers Robert Barrios, Michael Hunter and Ignatius Hills are charged with attempted murder.

    August 2008 – State charges against the officers are thrown out.

    July 12, 2010 – Four officers are indicted on federal charges of murdering Brissette: Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon and Villavaso. Faulcon is also charged with Madison’s murder. Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon and Villavaso, along with Arthur Kaufman and Gerard Dugue are charged with covering up the shooting.

    April 8, 2010 – Hunter pleads guilty in federal court of covering up the police shooting. In December, he is sentenced to eight years in prison.

    August 5, 2011 – The jury finds five officers guilty of civil rights and obstruction charges: Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman.

    October 5, 2011 – Hills receives a six and a half year sentence for his role in the shooting.

    April 4, 2012 – A federal judge sentences five officers to prison terms ranging from six to 65 years for the shootings of unarmed civilians. Faulcon receives 65 years. Bowen and Gisevius both receive 40 years. Villavaso receives 38 years. Kaufman, who was involved in the cover up, receives six years.

    March 2013 – After a January 2012 mistrial, Dugue’s trial is delayed indefinitely.

    September 17, 2013 – Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman are awarded a new trial.

    April 20, 2016 – Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman plead guilty in exchange for reduced sentences.

    November 25, 2006 – Sean Bell, 23, is fatally shot by NYPD officers outside a Queens bar the night before his wedding. Two of his companions, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, are wounded. Officers reportedly fired 50 times at the men.

    March 2007 – Three of the five officers involved in the shooting are indicted: Detectives Gescard F. Isnora and Michael Oliver are charged with manslaughter, and Michael Oliver is charged with reckless endangerment. On April 25, 2008, the three officers are acquitted of all charges.

    July 27, 2010 – New York City settles a lawsuit for more than $7 million filed by Bell’s family and two of his friends.

    2009 – Oakland, California – Oscar Grant

    January 1, 2009 – San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer Johannes Mehserle shoots Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old, in the back while he is lying face down on a platform at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland.

    January 7, 2009 – Footage from station KTVU shows demonstrators vandalizing businesses and assaulting police in Oakland during a protest. About 105 people are arrested. Some protesters lie on their stomachs, saying they are showing solidarity with Grant, who was shot in the back.

    January 27, 2010 – The mother of Grant’s young daughter receives a $1.5 million settlement from her lawsuit against BART.

    July 8, 2010 – A jury finds Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter. At the trial, Mehserle says that he intended to draw and fire his Taser rather than his gun. On November 5, 2010, Mehserle is sentenced to two years in prison. Outrage over the light sentence leads to a night of violent protests.

    June 2011 – Mehserle is released from prison.

    July 12, 2013 – The movie, “Fruitvale Station” opens in limited release. It dramatizes the final hours of Grant’s life.

    July 5, 2011 – Fullerton police officers respond to a call about a homeless man looking into car windows and pulling on car handles. Surveillance camera footage shows Kelly Thomas being beaten and stunned with a Taser by police. Thomas, who was mentally ill, dies five days later in the hospital. When the surveillance video of Thomas’s beating is released in May 2012, it sparks a nationwide outcry.

    May 9, 2012 – Officer Manuel Ramos is charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, and Cpl. Jay Patrick Cicinelli is charged with involuntary manslaughter and felony use of excessive force. On January 13, 2014, a jury acquits Ramos and Cicinelli.

    May 16, 2012 – The City of Fullerton awards $1 million to Thomas’ mother, Cathy Thomas.

    September 28, 2012 – A third police officer, Joseph Wolfe, is charged with involuntary manslaughter and excessive force in connection with Thomas’ death. The charges are later dropped.

    July 17, 2014 – Eric Garner, 43, dies after Officer Daniel Pantaleo uses a department-banned chokehold on him during an arrest for allegedly selling cigarettes illegally. Garner dies later that day.

    August 1, 2014 – The New York City Medical Examiner rules Garner’s death a homicide.

    December 3, 2014 – A grand jury decides not to indict Pantaleo. Protests are held in New York, Washington, Philadelphia and Oakland, California. Demonstrators chant Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe!”

    July 14, 2015 – New York settles with Garner’s estate for $5.9 million.

    August 19, 2019 – The NYPD announces Pantaleo has been fired and will not receive his pension.

    August 21, 2019 – Pantaleo’s supervisor, Sgt. Kizzy Adonis, pleads no contest to a disciplinary charge of failure to supervise, and must forfeit the monetary value of 20 vacation days.

    August 9, 2014 – During a struggle, a police officer fatally shoots Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old.

    August 9-10, 2014 – Approximately 1,000 demonstrators protest Brown’s death. The Ferguson-area protest turns violent and police begin using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. Black Lives Matter, a protest movement that grew out of the Trayvon Martin shooting in 2012, grows in visibility during the Ferguson demonstrations.

    August 15, 2014 – Police identify the officer as 28-year-old Darren Wilson. Wilson is put on paid administrative leave after the incident.

    August 18, 2014 – Governor Jay Nixon calls in the Missouri National Guard to protect the police command center.

    November 24, 2014 – A grand jury does not indict Wilson for Brown’s shooting. Documents show that Wilson fired his gun 12 times. Protests erupt nationwide after the hearing.

    November 29, 2014 – Wilson resigns from the Ferguson police force.

    March 11, 2015 – Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson resigns a week after a scathing Justice Department report slams his department.

    August 9-10, 2015 – The anniversary observations of Brown’s death are largely peaceful during the day. After dark, shots are fired, businesses are vandalized and there are tense standoffs between officers and protestors, according to police. The next day, a state of emergency is declared and fifty-six people are arrested during a demonstration at a St. Louis courthouse.

    June 20, 2017 – A settlement is reached in the Brown family wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Ferguson. While the details of the settlement are not disclosed to the public, US Federal Judge Richard Webber calls the settlement, “fair and reasonable compensation.”

    October 20, 2014 – Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shoots and kills Laquan McDonald, 17. Van Dyke says he fired in self-defense after McDonald lunged at him with a knife, but dashcam video shows McDonald walking away from police. Later, an autopsy shows McDonald was shot 16 times.

    April 15, 2015 – The city agrees to pay $5 million to McDonald’s family.

    November 19, 2015 – A judge in Chicago orders the city to release the police dashcam video that shows the shooting. For months, the city had fought attempts to have the video released to the public, saying it could jeopardize any ongoing investigation. The decision is the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by freelance journalist, Brandon Smith.

    November 24, 2015 – Van Dyke is charged with first-degree murder.

    December 1, 2015 – Mayor Rahm Emanuel announces he has asked for the resignation of Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

    August 30, 2016 – Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson files administrative charges against six officers involved in the shooting. Five officers will have their cases heard by the Chicago Police Board, which will rule if the officers will be terminated. The sixth officer charged has resigned.

    March 2017 – Van Dyke is indicted on 16 additional counts of aggravated battery with a firearm.

    June 27, 2017 – Three officers are indicted on felony conspiracy, official misconduct and obstruction of justice charges for allegedly lying to investigators.

    October 5, 2018 – Van Dyke is found guilty of second-degree murder and of 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, but not guilty of official misconduct. Though he was originally charged with first-degree murder, jurors were instructed on October 4 that they could consider second-degree murder. He is sentenced to six years and nine months in prison. On February 3, 2022, Van Dyke is released early from prison.

    January 17, 2019 – Cook County Associate Judge Domenica Stephenson finds three Chicago police officers not guilty of covering up details in the 2014 killing of McDonald. Stephenson’s ruling came more than a month after the officers’ five-day bench trial ended.

    July 18, 2019 – The Chicago Police Board announces that four Chicago police officers, Sgt. Stephen Franko, Officer Janet Mondragon, Officer Daphne Sebastian and Officer Ricardo Viramontes, have been fired for covering up the fatal shooting of McDonald.

    October 9, 2019 – Inspector General Joseph Ferguson releases a report detailing a cover-up involving 16 officers and supervisors.

    April 4, 2015 – North Charleston police officer Michael Slager fatally shoots Walter Scott, 50, an unarmed motorist stopped for a broken brake light. Slager says he feared for his life after Scott grabbed his Taser.

    April 7, 2015 – Cellphone video of the incident is released. It shows Scott running away and Slager shooting him in the back. Slager is charged with first-degree murder.

    October 8, 2015 – The North Charleston City Council approves a $6.5 million settlement with the family of Walter Scott.

    May 11, 2016 – A federal grand jury indicts Slager for misleading investigators and violating the civil rights of Walter Scott.

    December 5, 2016 – After three days of deliberations, the jury is unable to reach a verdict and the judge declares a mistrial in the case. The prosecutor says that the state will try Slager again.

    May 2, 2017 – Slager pleads guilty to a federal charge of using excessive force. State murder charges against Slager – as well as two other federal charges – will be dismissed as part of a plea deal. On December 7, 2017, Slager is sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

    April 12, 2015 – Police arrest 25-year-old Freddie Gray on a weapons charge after he is found with a knife in his pocket. Witness video contains audio of Gray screaming as officers carry him to the prisoner transport van. After arriving at the police station, Gray is transferred to a trauma clinic with a severe spinal injury. He falls into a coma and dies one week later.

    April 21, 2015 – The names of six officers involved in the arrest are released. Lt. Brian Rice, 41, Officer Caesar Goodson, 45, Sgt. Alicia White, 30, Officer William Porter, 25, Officer Garrett Miller, 26, and Officer Edward Nero, 29, are all suspended.

    April 24, 2015 – Baltimore police acknowledge Gray did not get timely medical care after his arrest and was not buckled into a seat belt while being transported in the police van.

    April 27, 2015 – Protests turn into riots on the day of Gray’s funeral. At least 20 officers are injured as police and protesters clash on the streets. Gov. Larry Hogan’s office declares a state of emergency and activates the National Guard to address the unrest.

    May 21, 2015 – A Baltimore grand jury indicts the six officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray. The officers face a range of charges from involuntary manslaughter to reckless endangerment. Goodson, the driver of the transport van, will face the most severe charge: second-degree depraved-heart murder.

    September 10, 2015 – Judge Barry Williams denies the defendants’ motion to move their trials out of Baltimore, a day after officials approve a $6.4 million deal to settle all civil claims tied to Gray’s death.

    December 16, 2015 – The judge declares a mistrial in Porter’s case after jurors say they are deadlocked.

    May 23, 2016 – Nero is found not guilty.

    June 23, 2016 – Goodson is acquitted of all charges.

    July 18, 2016 – Rice, the highest-ranking officer to stand trial, is found not guilty on all charges.

    July 27, 2016 – Prosecutors drop charges against the three remaining officers awaiting trial in connection with Gray’s death.

    August 10, 2016 – A Justice Department investigation finds that the Baltimore Police Department engages in unconstitutional practices that lead to disproportionate rates of stops, searches and arrests of African-Americans. The report also finds excessive use of force against juveniles and people with mental health disabilities.

    January 12, 2017 – The city of Baltimore agrees to a consent decree with sweeping reforms proposed by the Justice Department.

    2016 – Falcon Heights, Minnesota – Philando Castile

    July 6, 2016 – Police officer Jeronimo Yanez shoots and kills Philando Castile during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, live-streams the aftermath of the confrontation, and says Castile was reaching for his identification when he was shot.

    November 16, 2016 – Yanez is charged with second-degree manslaughter and two felony counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm.

    December 15, 2016 – The Justice Department announces it will conduct a review of the St. Anthony Police Department, which services Falcon heights and two other towns.

    February 27, 2017 – Yanez pleads not guilty.

    June 16, 2017 – A jury finds Yanez not guilty on all counts. The city says it will offer Yanez a voluntary separation agreement from the police department.

    June 26, 2017 – It is announced that the family of Castile has reached a $3 million settlement with the city of St. Anthony, Minnesota.

    November 29, 2017 – The city of St. Anthony announces that Reynolds has settled with two cities for $800,000. St. Anthony will pay $675,000 of the settlement, while an insurance trust will pay $125,000 on behalf of Roseville.

    September 16, 2016 – Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby fatally shoots Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old unarmed black man, after his car is found abandoned in the middle of the road.

    September 19, 2016 – The Tulsa Police Department releases video of the incident captured by a police helicopter, showing Shelby and other officers at the scene. At a news conference, the police chief tells reporters Crutcher was unarmed. Both the US Department of Justice and state authorities launch investigations into the officer-involved shooting.

    September 22, 2016 – Officer Shelby is charged with felony first-degree manslaughter.

    April 2, 2017 – During an interview on “60 Minutes,” Shelby says race was not a factor in her decision to open fire, and Crutcher “caused” his death when he ignored her commands, reaching into his vehicle to retrieve what she believed was a gun. “I saw a threat and I used the force I felt necessary to stop a threat.”

    May 17, 2017 – Shelby is acquitted.

    July 14, 2017 – Shelby announces she will resign from the Tulsa Police Department in August. On August 10, she joins the Rogers County, Oklahoma, Sheriff’s Office as a reserve deputy.

    October 25, 2017 – A Tulsa County District Court judge grants Shelby’s petition to have her record expunged.

    June 19, 2018 – Antwon Rose II, an unarmed 17-year-old, is shot and killed by police officer Michael Rosfeld in East Pittsburgh. Rose had been a passenger in a car that was stopped by police because it matched the description of a car that was involved in an earlier shooting. Rose and another passenger ran from the vehicle, and Rosfeld opened fire, striking Rose three times, Allegheny County police says.

    June 27, 2018 – The Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, district attorney charges Rosfeld with criminal homicide.

    March 22, 2019 – A jury finds Rosfeld not guilty on all counts.

    October 28, 2019 – A $2 million settlement is finalized in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Rosfeld and East Pittsburgh.

    September 1, 2018 – During a traffic stop, O’Shae Terry is gunned down by an Arlington police officer. Terry, 24, was pulled over for having an expired temporary tag on his car. During the stop, officers reportedly smelled marijuana in the vehicle. Police video from the scene shows officer Bau Tran firing into the car as Terry tries to drive away. Investigators later locate a concealed firearm, marijuana and ecstasy pills in the vehicle.

    October 19, 2018 – The Arlington Police Department releases information about a criminal investigation into the incident. According to the release, Tran declined to provide detectives with a statement and the matter is pending with the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office. Tran is still employed by the police department but is working on restricted duty status, according to the news release.

    May 1, 2019 – A grand jury issues an indictment charging Tran with criminally negligent homicide. On May 17, 2019, the Arlington Police Department announces Tran has been fired.

    March 13, 2020 – Louisville Metro Police officers fatally shoot Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, after they forcibly enter her apartment while executing a late-night, no-knock warrant in a narcotics investigation. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, is also in the apartment and fires one shot at who he believes are intruders. Taylor is shot at least eight times and Walker is charged with attempted murder of a police officer and first-degree assault. The charges are later dismissed.

    April 27, 2020 – Taylor’s family files a wrongful death lawsuit. In the lawsuit, Taylor’s mother says the officers should have called off their search because the suspect they sought had already been arrested.

    May 21, 2020 – The FBI opens an investigation into Taylor’s death.

    June 11, 2020 – The Louisville, Kentucky, metro council unanimously votes to pass an ordinance called “Breonna’s Law,” banning no-knock search warrants.

    August 27, 2020 – Jamarcus Glover, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend and the focus of the Louisville police narcotics investigation that led officers to execute the warrant on Taylor’s home, is arrested on drug charges. The day before his arrest, Glover told a local Kentucky newspaper Taylor was not involved in any alleged drug trade.

    September 1, 2020 – Walker files a $10.5 million lawsuit against the Louisville Metro Police Department. Walker claims he was maliciously prosecuted for firing a single bullet with his licensed firearm at “assailants” who “violently broke down the door.” In December 2022, Walker reaches a $2 million settlement with the city of Louisville.

    September 15, 2020 – The city of Louisville agrees to pay $12 million to Taylor’s family and institute sweeping police reforms in a settlement of the family’s wrongful death lawsuit.

    September 23, 2020 – Det. Brett Hankison is indicted by a grand jury on three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree. The other two officers involved in the shooting are not indicted. On March 3, 2022, Hankison is acquitted.

    April 26, 2021 – Attorney General Merrick Garland announces a Justice Department investigation into the practices of the Louisville Police Department.

    August 4, 2022 – Garland announces four current and former Louisville police officers involved in the raid on Taylor’s home were arrested and charged with civil rights violations, unlawful conspiracies, unconstitutional use of force and obstruction. On August 23, one of the officers, Kelly Goodlett, pleads guilty.

    May 25, 2020 – George Floyd, 46, dies after pleading for help as Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneels on Floyd’s neck to pin him – unarmed and handcuffed – to the ground. Floyd had been arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit bill at a convenience store.

    May 26, 2020 – It is announced that four Minneapolis police officers have been fired for their involvement in the death of Floyd.

    May 27, 2020 – Gov. Tim Walz signs an executive order activating the Minnesota National Guard after protests and demonstrations erupt throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul.

    May 27, 2020 – Surveillance video from outside a Minneapolis restaurant is released and appears to contradict police claims that Floyd resisted arrest before an officer knelt on his neck.

    May 28-29, 2020 – Several buildings are damaged and the Minneapolis police department’s Third Precinct is set ablaze during protests.

    May 29, 2020 – Chauvin is arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter, according to Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman.

    June 3, 2020 – Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announces charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder for the three previously uncharged officers at the scene of the incident. According to court documents, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng helped restrain Floyd, while officer Tou Thao stood near the others. Chauvin’s charge is upgraded from third- to second-degree murder.

    October 21, 2020 – Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill drops the third-degree murder charge against Chauvin, but he still faces the higher charge of second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter. On March 11, 2021, Judge Cahill reinstates the third-degree murder charge due to an appeals court ruling.

    March 12, 2021 – The Minneapolis city council unanimously votes to approve a $27 million settlement with Floyd’s family.

    April 20, 2021 – The jury finds Chauvin guilty on all three counts. He is sentenced to 22 and a half years.

    May 7, 2021 – A federal grand jury indicts the four former Minneapolis police officers in connection with Floyd’s death, alleging the officers violated Floyd’s constitutional rights.

    December 15, 2021 – Chauvin pleads guilty in federal court to two civil rights violations, one related to Floyd’s death, plus another case. Prosecutors request that he be sentenced to 25 years in prison to be served concurrently with his current sentence.

    February 24, 2022 – Lane, Kueng and Thao are found guilty of depriving Floyd of his civil rights by showing deliberate indifference to his medical needs. The jurors also find Thao and Kueng guilty of an additional charge for failing to intervene to stop Chauvin. Lane, who did not face the extra charge, had testified that he asked Chauvin twice to reposition Floyd while restraining him but was denied both times.

    May 4, 2022 – A federal judge accepts Chauvin’s plea deal and will sentence him to 20 to 25 years in prison. Based on the plea filed, the sentence will be served concurrently with the 22.5-year sentence tied to his murder conviction at the state level. On July 7, Chauvin is sentenced to 21 years in prison.

    May 18, 2022 – Thomas Lane pleads guilty to second-degree manslaughter as part of a plea deal dismissing his murder charge. State and defense attorneys jointly recommend to the court Lane be sentenced to 36 months.

    July 27, 2022 – Kueng and Thao are sentenced to three years and three and a half years in federal prison, respectively.

    September 21, 2022 – Lane is sentenced to three years in prison on a state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death.

    October 24, 2022 – On the day his state trial is set to begin on charges of aiding and abetting in George Floyd’s killing, Kueng pleads guilty.

    December 3, 2022 – Kueng is sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for his role in the killing of Floyd.

    May 1, 2023 – A Minnesota judge finds Thao guilty of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter, according to court documents. He is sentenced to four years and nine months in prison.

    June 12, 2020 – Rayshard Brooks, 27, is shot and killed by Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe outside a Wendy’s restaurant after failing a sobriety test, fighting with two officers, taking a Taser from one and running away.

    June 13, 2020 – Rolfe is terminated from the Atlanta Police Department, according to an Atlanta police spokesperson. A second officer involved is placed on administrative leave.

    June 14, 2020 – According to a release from the Fulton County, Georgia, Medical Examiner’s Office, Brooks died from a gunshot wound to the back. The manner of death is listed as homicide.

    June 17, 2020 – Fulton County’s district attorney announces felony murder charges against Rolfe. Another officer, Devin Brosnan, is facing an aggravated assault charge for standing or stepping on Brooks’ shoulder while he was lying on the ground. On August 23, 2022, a Georgia special prosecutor announces the charges will be dismissed, saying the officers acted reasonably in response to a deadly threat. Both officers remain on administrative leave with the Atlanta Police Department and will undergo recertification and training, the department said in a statement.

    May 5, 2021 – The Atlanta Civil Service Board rules that Rolfe was wrongfully terminated.

    November 21, 2022 – The family of Brooks reaches a $1 million settlement with the city of Atlanta, according to Ryan Julison, a spokesperson for Stewart Miller Simmons Trial Attorneys, the law firm representing Brooks’ family.

    April 11, 2021 – Daunte Wright, 20, is shot and killed by Brooklyn Center police officer Kimberly Potter following a routine traffic stop for an expired tag.

    April 12, 2021 – During a press conference, Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon announces Potter accidentally drew a handgun instead of a Taser. According to Gannon, “this was an accidental discharge, that resulted in a tragic death of Mr. Wright.” Potter is placed on administrative leave. According to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office, Wright’s death has been ruled a homicide.

    April 13, 2021 – Gannon submits his resignation. CNN is told Potter has also submitted a letter of resignation.

    April 14, 2021 – Potter is arrested and charged with second degree manslaughter. Washington County Attorney Pete Orput issues a news release which includes a summary of the criminal complaint filed against Potter. According to the release, Potter shot Wright with a Glock handgun holstered on her right side, after saying she would tase Wright. Later, the state amends the complaint against Potter, adding an additional charge of manslaughter in the first degree.

    December 23, 2021 – Potter is found guilty of first and second-degree manslaughter. On February 18, 2022, she is sentenced to two years in prison. In April 2023, Potter is released from prison after serving 16 months.

    June 21, 2022 – The city of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, agrees to pay $3.25 million to the family of Wright. The sum is part of a settlement deal the family struck with the city, which also agreed to make changes in its policing policies and training, the Wright family legal team said in a news release.

    2022 – Grand Rapids, Michigan – Patrick Lyoya

    April 4, 2022 – Patrick Lyoya, 26-year-old Black man, is shot and killed by a police officer following a traffic stop.

    April 13, 2022 – Grand Rapids police release video from police body camera, the police unit’s dashcam, a cell phone and a home surveillance system, which show the police officer’s encounter with Lyoya, including two clips showing the fatal shot. Lyoya was pulled over for an allegedly unregistered license plate when he got out of the car and ran. He resisted the officer’s attempt to arrest him and was shot while struggling with the officer on the ground.

    April 19, 2022 – An autopsy commissioned by Lyoya’s family shows the 26-year-old was shot in the back of the head following the April 4 encounter with a Grand Rapids police officer, attorneys representing the family announce. The officer has not been publicly identified.

    April 21, 2022 – Michigan state officials ask the US Department of Justice to launch a “pattern-or-practice” investigation into the Grand Rapids Police Department after the death of Lyoya.

    April 25, 2022 – The chief of Grand Rapids police identifies Christopher Schurr as the officer who fatally shot Lyoya.

    June 9 ,2022 – Schurr is charged with one count of second-degree murder in the death of Lyoya. Benjamin Crump. the Lyoya family attorney says in a statement, “we are encouraged by attorney Christopher Becker’s decision to charge Schurr for the brutal killing of Patrick Lyoya, which we all witnessed when the video footage was released to the public.” On June 10, 2022, Schurr pleads not guilty.

    January 7, 2023 – Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, is hospitalized following a traffic stop that lead to a violent arrest. Nichols dies three days later from injuries sustained, according to police.

    January 15, 2023 – The Memphis Police Department announces they immediately launched an investigation into the action of officers involved in the arrest of Nichols.

    January 18, 2023 – The Department of Justice says a civil rights investigation has been opened into the death of Nichols.

    January 20, 2023 – The five officers are named and fired: Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith.

    January 23, 2023 – Nichols’ family and their attorneys view police video of the arrest.

    January 26, 2023 – A grand jury indicts the five police officers. They are each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, according to both Shelby County criminal court and Shelby County jail records.

    January 27, 2023 – The city of Memphis releases body camera and surveillance video of the the traffic stop and beating that led to the Nichols’ death.

    January 30, 2023 – Memphis police say two additional officers have been placed on leave. Only one officer is identified, Preston Hemphill. Additionally, the Memphis Fire Department announces three employees have been fired over their response to the incident: emergency medical technicians Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge and Lt. Michelle Whitaker.

    May 4, 2023 – The Shelby County medical examiner’s report shows that Nichols died from blunt force trauma to the head. His death has been ruled a homicide.

    September 12, 2023 – The five police officers involved are indicted by a federal grand jury on several charges including deprivation of rights.

    November 2, 2023 – Desmond Mills Jr., one of the five former Memphis police officers accused in the death of Nichols, pleads guilty to federal charges and agrees to plead guilty to related state charges as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.

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  • Laphonza Butler says she will not seek Senate seat in 2024 | CNN Politics

    Laphonza Butler says she will not seek Senate seat in 2024 | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Sen. Laphonza Butler of California said Thursday that she would not run for a full term next year.

    “I’ve spent the past 16 days pursuing my clarity – what kind of life I want to have, what kind of service I want to offer and what kind of voice I want to bring forward,” Butler said in a statement. “After considering those questions I’ve decided not to run for Senate in the upcoming election. Knowing you can win a campaign doesn’t always mean you should run a campaign.”

    Butler told The New York Times, which first reported the news, that she would be the “the loudest, proudest champion of California” for the remainder of her term but that “this is not the greatest use of my voice.”

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Butler to fill the seat left vacant after the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Butler was sworn in earlier this month and made history as the first out Black lesbian to enter Congress. Butler is also the sole Black female senator currently serving in the chamber and the first out LGBTQ member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    Prior to her appointment, Butler served as the president of EMILY’s List, which works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights. She has a long history of working in California politics, including as an adviser to then-Sen. Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign.

    Butler’s announcement comes as the California Senate race is shaping up to be among the most high-profile 2024 races. The state will hold two Senate elections next November: one for a full six-year term and a special election for the remaining months of Feinstein’s term until January 2025.

    Several notable Democrats launched Senate campaigns earlier this year, including a trio of House members: Reps. Adam Schiff, a former House Intelligence chairman who is backed by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Katie Porter, a former deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; and Barbara Lee, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and a member of House Democratic leadership.

    Other Democrats running include tech executive Lexi Reese and TV broadcaster Christina Pascucci, who joined the race this week. On the Republican side, retired baseball star Steve Garvey and lawyer Eric Early have announced bids. As of late September, Porter and Schiff led the pack in fundraising, with more than $20 million in contributions each.

    Under California’s primary system, all candidates will run on the same ballot, with the top two candidates, regardless of party, advancing to the general election.

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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  • Weight Loss Expert JJ Smith Offers Unique Weight Loss Opportunity This Year

    Weight Loss Expert JJ Smith Offers Unique Weight Loss Opportunity This Year


    WASHINGTON, September 15, 2023 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Battling excess weight can be one of the most frustrating experiences anyone faces throughout a lifetime, but nutritionist, weight loss expert and #1 NY Times Bestselling Author JJ Smith, who is also head of Adiva Publishing, helps women take back control of their health and weight before the year ends. The Finish Strong Challenge inspires women to hit some of their weight loss goals before the New Year through a 90-day weight loss challenge, and it’s absolutely free.

    The Finish Strong Challenge (FSC) will help women finish the year strong. Many women began the year strong but fell off along the way. No need to wait until next year to start over: lock in for the next three months and drop a few pounds before 2024. Women can dedicate the next three months exclusively to their weight loss goals and see what can be accomplished. JJ says, “I mean, after all, starting strong is good but finishing strong is epic. It’s time to go be epic.”

    We start the journey to finish the year strong on October 1. So, sign up today for the Finish Strong Challenge here at no cost and receive:

    • A three-part system (F.E.D. System) that is an effective strategy for weight loss and easier than any diet on the market
    • A 90-day weight loss plan where one doesn’t have to give up all of their favorite foods to get results
    • Sample recipes of what a daily meal plan looks like
    • The motivation and support to achieve weight loss goals.

    Registering for the challenge is absolutely free, so get access to this 90-day weight loss plan today. JJ says “This free challenge focuses on coming together to encourage and support one another throughout a rewarding health and wellness journey.”

    To register for the Finish Strong Challenge today, click here!

    About JJ Smith

    JJ Smith (http://www.JJSmithOnline.com) is the author of the #1 NY Times Bestseller, 10-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse. JJ is a nutritionist and certified weight loss expert, and Chief Brand Officer for Adiva Publishing, who has been regularly featured in today’s popular print and online media, on major news networks, and on daily programs such as” The Dr. Oz Show,” “The Steve Harvey Morning Show,” “The Rachael Ray Show,” “The View,” CNN and others.  Since reclaiming her health, losing weight, and discovering a “second youth” in her 40s, bestselling author JJ Smith has become the voice of inspiration to those who want to lose weight, be healthy, and get their sexy back.

    Source: Adiva Publishing, LLC

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  • A federal hate crime investigation is underway after a racially motivated shooting left 3 people dead in Jacksonville, officials say. Here’s what we know | CNN

    A federal hate crime investigation is underway after a racially motivated shooting left 3 people dead in Jacksonville, officials say. Here’s what we know | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A federal hate crime investigation is underway after a White gunman with a swastika-emblazoned assault rifle killed three Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday, authorities said.

    The shooting, described as being racially motivated, claimed the lives of Angela Michelle Carr, 52, Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr., 19, and Jerrald Gallion, 29.

    The gunman, identified as 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter, left behind racist writings and used racial slurs, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said. He was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun, both legally purchased, and targeted Black people as he opened fire inside the store, according to the sheriff.

    The Justice Department is now investigating the shooting as a hate crime and an act of racially motivated violent extremism, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Sunday.

    As a hurting community gathered Sunday to honor the victims, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan called to an end to division.

    “The division has to stop, the hate has to stop, the rhetoric has to stop,” She added, “We are all the same flesh, blood and bones and we should treat each other that way.”

    The attack in Florida is the latest in a number of shootings in recent years where a gunman has targeted Black people, including at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, last year and a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

    It also marked one of several shootings reported in the US over two days, including one near a parade in Massachusetts and another at a high school football game in Oklahoma.

    There have been at least 475 mass shootings in the US so far in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are wounded or killed, not including the shooter.

    As investigators probe the Jacksonville gunman’s motives and history, Waters cautioned against trying to find reason in the attack.

    “Our community is grappling to understand why this atrocity occurred. I urge us all not to look for sense in a senseless act of violence,” the sheriff said. “There’s no reason or explanation that will ever account for the shooter’s decisions and actions.”

    While Jacksonville grieves those killed, here’s what we know about how the shooting unfolded Saturday, the guns used in the attack, the victims and the ongoing investigation:

    The shooter, who lived with his parents in Orange Park in Clay County, left his home around 11:39 a.m. and headed to Jacksonville in neighboring Duval County, Waters told CNN Saturday.

    At 12:48 p.m., the suspect stopped at Edward Waters University in New Town, a predominately Black area of Jacksonville, where the sheriff said the suspect put on a bulletproof vest. A TikTok video captured him getting dressed, Waters said.

    A student flagged down campus security when they saw the shooter because he “looked out of place,” President and CEO of Edward Waters University, Dr. A. Zachary Faison Jr. told CNN Sunday.

    The man immediately got in his vehicle and started to drive away after being confronted by a security officer, who followed him until he left campus, Faison said.

    “We don’t know obviously what his full intentions were, but we do know that he came here right before going to the Dollar General,” Faison said. “Members of our university security team reacted almost immediately. I think the reports are in less than 30 seconds after he made contact and drove onto our campus.”

    Faison said the campus security actions alone probably saved “dozens of lives.”

    “It’s not by happenstance, we believe, that he came to the first historically Black university in this state, first,” Faison said.

    University police followed him out of the lot around 12:58 p.m. and flagged down a sheriff’s officer, saying there was a suspicious person on campus, according to the sheriff.

    People walk past the Dollar General store Sunday in Jacksonville, Florida.

    At 1:08 p.m., the gunman shot into a black Kia at the nearby Dollar General parking lot and killed Carr, the sheriff said. He then entered the store and fatally shot Laguerre, the sheriff said.

    Others fled out the back exit of the store followed by the suspect seconds later, the sheriff said. He then came back inside and shot at security cameras.

    The first 911 call went out at 1:09 p.m., seconds before the third victim, Gallion, walked into the store with his girlfriend.

    The gunman then fatally shot Gallion and chased after another person, whom he shot at but didn’t hit, the sheriff said.

    At 1:18 p.m., the gunman texted his father and told him to go into his room, where the father found a will and a suicide note, the sheriff said.

    Officers entered the store a minute later – 11 minutes from the start of the shooting – and heard one gunshot, which is presumed to be when the gunman shot and killed himself, the sheriff said.

    The suspect’s family members called the Clay County Sheriff’s Office at 1:53 p.m., the sheriff said.

    Authorities on Sunday played two short video clips of the shooting.

    One clip shows the shooter, wearing a tactical vest and blue latex gloves, pointing his weapon at a black Kia car outside the store, and the other shows the shooter walking into the store and pointing his rifle to his right.

    “I wanted the people to be able to see exactly what happened in this situation and just how sickening it is,” Waters said.

    The shooter did not appear to know the victims and it is believed he acted alone, he said.

    “He targeted a certain group of people and that’s Black people,” Waters said at a Saturday news conference. That’s what he said he wanted to kill. And that’s very clear… Any member of that race at that time was in danger.”

    The suspect had left behind writings to his parents, the media and federal agents outlining his “disgusting ideology of hate,” the sheriff told reporters Saturday.

    The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office released a photo of a firearm used in the shooting, left, and a close-up, right, which shows several swastikas drawn on it.

    Photos of two weapons the gunman had were released by authorities, including one firearm with swastikas drawn on it.

    The shooter had no criminal arrest history, and it appears he legally purchased the two firearms earlier this year, the sheriff said.

    The shooter was the subject of a 2017 law enforcement call under the state’s Baker Act, which allows people to be involuntarily detained and subject to an examination for up to 72 hours during a mental health crisis.

    Waters did not provide details on what led to the Baker Act call in that case but said normally a person who has been detained under the act is not eligible to purchase firearms.

    “If there is a Baker Act situation, they’re prohibited from getting guns,” he told CNN Saturday. “We don’t know if that Baker Act was recorded properly, whether it was considered a full Baker Act.”

    On Sunday, the sheriff said investigators found the guns appeared to be obtained legally.

    “There was no flag that could have come up to stop him from purchasing those guns,” Waters said at a Sunday news conference. “As a matter of fact, it looks as if he purchased those guns completely legally.”

    “There was nothing indicating that he should not own guns,” he added.

    The sheriff did not provide further details on the Baker Act petition from 2017, but said Sunday it does appear that the shooter, who was 15 at the time, was held for 72 hours and then released.

    Sabrina Rozier, left, and Jerrald Gallion.

    A relative of the 29-year-old Gallion who was attending Sunday evening’s vigil in honor of the victims described him as a fun, loving young man.

    Sabrina Rozier told CNN that the family is holding up the best that they can and that they have yet to tell Gallion’s 4-year-old daughter that her father is gone.

    “It’s hurtful, I thought racism was behind us and evidently it’s not,” Gallion said

    Dollar General identified one of the victims, Laguerre, as an employee of the store in a statement to CNN Sunday evening.

    “The DG family mourns the loss of our colleague Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre, Jr., who, along with two of our customers, were the victims of senseless violence yesterday. We extend our deepest sympathies to their families and friends as we all try to comprehend this tragedy. There is no place for hate at Dollar General or in the communities we serve,” the company said.

    Residents of the Jacksonville community attend a prayer vigil for the victims Sunday.

    Jacksonville is processing the loss, said Florida State Sen. Tracie Davis, who represents the area of Jacksonville where the shooting happened.

    “I’m angry, I’m sad to realize we are in 2023 and as a Black person we are still hunted, because that’s what that was,” Davis told CNN. “That was someone planning and executing three people.”

    The attack coincided with the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, the iconic civil rights demonstration that called on the government to better protect the rights of Black people.

    “[T]his day of remembrance and commemoration ended with yet another American community wounded by an act of gun violence, reportedly fueled by hate-filled animus and carried out with two firearms,” Biden said in a written statement.

    “Even as we continue searching for answers, we must say clearly and forcefully that white supremacy has no place in America,” the president added. “We must refuse to live in a country where Black families going to the store or Black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the color of their skin.”

    Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday called on Congress to ban assault weapons and pass common sense gun safety legislation.

    “America is experiencing an epidemic of hate. Too many communities have been torn apart by hatred and violent extremism,” Harris said. “Too many families have lost children, parents, and grandparents. Too many Black Americans live every day with the fear that they will be victims of hate-fueled gun violence—at school, at work, at their place of worship, at the grocery store.”

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  • Jacksonville gunman was turned away from historically Black university before killing 3 in racist shooting at nearby store, authorities say | CNN

    Jacksonville gunman was turned away from historically Black university before killing 3 in racist shooting at nearby store, authorities say | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The gunman who killed three people Saturday at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, in what authorities said was a racist attack against Black people had earlier been turned away from the campus of a nearby historically Black university.

    The shooter, described by police as a White man in his early 20s, first went to the campus of Edward Waters University, where he refused to identify himself to an on-campus security officer and was asked to leave, the university stated in a news release.

    “The individual returned to their car and left campus without incident. The encounter was reported to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office by EWU security,” the school said.

    The suspect put on a bulletproof vest and mask while still on campus, and then went to the nearby Dollar General, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters told CNN’s Jim Acosta. Armed with an AR-15 style rifle and a handgun, the gunman opened fire outside the store and then again inside, fatally shooting the three victims before killing himself, according to Waters.

    The three victims killed, two males and one female, were all Black, the sheriff said.

    The university, which is in a historically Black neighborhood, went into lockdown Saturday and students living on campus were told to stay in their residence halls.

    The attack clearly targeted Black people, Waters said. The suspect used racial slurs and left behind writings to his parents, the media and federal agents outlining his “disgusting ideology of hate,” the sheriff told reporters.

    “This shooting was racially motivated, and he hated Black people,” Waters said at a news conference Saturday evening.

    The shooter did not appear to know the victims and it is believed he acted alone, he said.

    “This is a dark day in Jacksonville’s history,” the sheriff said. “Any loss of life is tragic, but the hate that motivated the shooter’s killing spree adds an additional layer of heartbreak.”

    The FBI has launched a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting and “will pursue this incident as a hate crime,” said Sherri Onks, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Jacksonville office.

    The Jacksonville attack was one of several shootings reported in the US over two days, including one near a parade in Massachusetts and another at a high school football game in Oklahoma, underscoring the everyday presence of gun violence in American life.

    There have been at least 472 mass shootings in the US so far in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are wounded or killed, not including the shooter. It is almost two mass shootings for each day of the year so far. The nation surpassed the 400 mark in July, the earliest month such a high number has been recorded since 2013, the group said.

    The shooter, who lived in Clay County with his parents, left his home around 11:39 a.m. Saturday and headed to Jacksonville in neighboring Duval County, Waters told CNN.

    At 1:18 p.m., the gunman texted his father and told him to check his computer, according to Waters, who did not provide details on what was on the computer.

    At 1:53 p.m., the father called the Clay County Sheriff’s office, the sheriff said.

    “By that time, he had began his shooting spree inside the Dollar General,” Waters said of the gunman.

    Officers responded to the scene as the gunman was exiting the building. The gunman saw the officers, retreated into an office inside the building and shot himself, Waters said.

    Photos of the weapons the gunman had were shown by authorities, including one firearm with swastikas drawn on it. While it remains under investigation whether the gunman purchased the guns legally, the sheriff said they did not belong to the parents.

    “Those were not his parents’ guns,” Waters told reporters Saturday. “I can’t say that he owned them but I know his parents didn’t – his parents didn’t want them in their house.”

    “The suspect’s family, they didn’t do this. They’re not responsible for this. This is his decision, his decision alone,” the sheriff later told CNN.

    Gunman’s history and access to guns being probed

    The shooter was the subject of a 2017 law enforcement call under the state’s Baker Act, which allows people to be involuntarily detained and subject to an examination for up to 72 hours during a mental health crisis.

    Waters did not provide details on what led to the Baker Act call in that case, but said normally a person who has been detained under the act is not eligible to purchase firearms.

    “If there is a Baker Act situation, they’re prohibited from getting guns,” he told CNN. “We don’t know if that Baker Act was recorded properly, whether it was considered a full Baker Act.”

    The shooter’s writings indicated he was aware of a mass shooting at a Jacksonville gaming event where two people were killed exactly five years earlier, and may have chosen the date of his attack to coincide with the anniversary, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday condemned the shooting and called the gunman a “scumbag.”

    “He was targeting people based on their race. That is totally unacceptable. This guy killed himself rather than face the music and accept responsibility for his actions, and so he took the coward’s way out. But we condemn what happened in the strongest possible terms,” DeSantis said, according to a video statement sent to CNN by the governor’s office.

    The US Department of Homeland Security is “closely monitoring the situation,” Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement on Saturday.

    “Too many Americans – in Jacksonville and across our country – have lost a loved one because of racially-motivated violence. The Department of Homeland Security is committed to working with our state and local partners to help prevent another such abhorrent, tragic event from occurring,” he said.

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  • Savannah renames historic square after Black woman who taught emancipated slaves to read and write | CNN

    Savannah renames historic square after Black woman who taught emancipated slaves to read and write | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The city council of Savannah, Georgia, voted Thursday to rename a downtown square after Susie King Taylor, a Black woman who once taught slaves to read and write.

    The change marks the first time a Savannah square has been specifically named after a woman and a person of color.

    “It’s one thing to make history, it’s another thing to make sense, and in this case, we’re making both,” Savannah Mayor Van R. Johnson II said during Thursday’s city council meeting.

    Susie King Taylor was born to enslaved parents in 1848. She moved to Savannah when she was seven to live with her grandmother, who arranged for her to receive clandestine schooling due to Georgia’s severe restrictions on education, according to the Library of Congress.

    During the Civil War, she became an Army nurse and organized a school to teach emancipated slaves to read and write. She later opened more schools for Black students and wrote a memoir about her experience during the war as an African American woman.

    The town square that will now bear her name is a popular tourist attraction in Georgia’s oldest city in the state. The square was originally named after John C. Calhoun, a former vice president of the United States who owned slaves and defended the institution of slavery.

    “What he stood for is not what Savannah stands for,” Johnson said.

    The effort to change the square’s name began in 2021, according to the Coalition to Rename Calhoun Square. The council voted to rename the square last year and considered 300 name submissions before choosing Taylor.

    In 2020, a statue of Calhoun was removed from a square in Charleston, South Carolina. Clemson University also removed his name from its honors college, CNN previously reported. The university was built on Calhoun’s plantation.

    Johnson said the city will be installing signage not only about Taylor’s accomplishments but Calhoun’s history and the reason why his name was replaced.

    “It’s important that we don’t erase history, it’s important that people who come long after us understand the time that we are in today,” Johnson said.

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  • DeSantis faces new leadership test as Hurricane Idalia barrels toward Florida | CNN Politics

    DeSantis faces new leadership test as Hurricane Idalia barrels toward Florida | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    With the eyes of the country on Hurricane Idalia as it spins toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential ambitions are also under the spotlight as he puts his campaign on hold to manage the crisis at home.

    DeSantis flew back to Tallahassee from Iowa on Saturday night and has since appeared regularly on Florida televisions with updates on Idalia’s path and state efforts to prepare for the approaching storm. From behind a lectern with the state seal, the Republican governor has matter-of-factly shared logistics and warnings.

    The coming days will present a range of tests for DeSantis to navigate during a critical juncture in his governorship and White House bid. His stewardship of the hurricane response and recovery efforts will be closely scrutinized by his political opponents and Republican voters, watching whether he can lead through difficult moments, comfort the aggrieved and learn from the lessons of past storms.

    It is not clear when DeSantis will return to the campaign trail. In a text message to supporters, his campaign said it would go dark for a few days, adding: “Before we sign off, can we ask you to chip in any amount you can to support our end-of-month fundraising push?”

    For his part, DeSantis said he will be in Florida for as long as necessary.

    “You do what you need to do,” DeSantis said Tuesday. “So that’s what we’re doing. It’s going to be no different than what we did during Hurricane Ian [last year]. I’m hoping that this storm is not as catastrophic as Hurricane Ian was, but we’re gonna do what we need to do because it’s just something that’s important.”

    While no Florida executive would publicly suggest a hurricane is an opportunity to showcase leadership chops, past storms have certainly tested governors and forged their legacies. DeSantis’ predecessor, Republican Rick Scott, dealt with Hurricane Michael just weeks before the 2018 election, when he was running for US Senate against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. Scott leaned into managing the crisis with gusto and ultimately won his race in a recount.

    Perhaps no one did more to solidify their standing among Floridians during such disasters as former GOP Gov. Jeb Bush, whose handling of eight hurricanes during a deadly two-year stretch of tropical weather is still remembered by those who experienced the devastation. One of those hurricanes, Katrina, forever altered perceptions of the presidency of Bush’s older brother, George W. Bush, showcasing how storms can also plunge an executive into crisis.

    Those past Florida governors, though, were not running for president. Rarely have incumbent state executives faced a disaster of Idalia’s potential magnitude in the throes of a White House bid.

    The most notable recent exception is Republican Chris Christie, who as New Jersey governor in 2016 returned to his home state to manage a blizzard amid criticism for putting the presidential race ahead of his elected duties. At the time, Christie was campaigning in New Hampshire, which was just weeks away from holding the first-in-the-nation primary. Christie is once again running for the GOP nomination.

    “I don’t think any presidential candidate wants to be taken off the campaign trail. But you can’t ignore your day job,” said Alex Conant, a senior adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Insufficient responses to storms have ended political careers. Every governor takes the threat of a hurricane seriously because if the response is mishandled, not only are lives at stake, but there’s political fallout.”

    In the past 24 hours, DeSantis’ team has signaled it would not shy away from showcasing the governor’s storm response to Republican voters. His aides have shared posts on social media of people praising DeSantis’ activity so far, with his office press secretary writing on X, “Find you a leader that shows up like @GovRonDeSantis.” In a memo sent Tuesday, DeSantis spokesman Andrew Romeo wrote that DeSantis is “now at the helm of Florida’s hurricane response and is working with local officials across the state to do everything necessary to ensure Florida is fully prepared.”

    “This is the strong leadership in times of crisis that Americans can expect from a President DeSantis,” Romeo added.

    Just as he did last year, when Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida amid his race for reelection, DeSantis has vowed to put partisan politics aside for the time being. Though a regular critic of President Joe Biden – including over the Democrat’s response to the Maui wildfires – DeSantis said he has spoken with the president and expects the two administrations to work in concert toward Florida’s recovery.

    “There’s time and a place to have political season, but then there’s a time and a place to say that this is something that’s life-threatening. This is something that could potentially cost somebody their life, it could cost them their livelihood, and we have responsibility as Americans to come together,” DeSantis said Monday.

    (Coming off the devastation in Hawaii, Biden is facing a separate range of questions about his administration’s response to yet another natural catastrophe.)

    DeSantis’ departure from the campaign trail comes just days after the first GOP presidential debate at a moment when his team believes voters are starting to tune into the race. He is trailing Donald Trump in GOP primary polling but is aggressively challenging the former president in early nominating states.

    The Florida governor is also staving off a field of GOP contenders, who must now also balance sensitivities around Hurricane Idalia with their attempts to overcome DeSantis in the polls.

    “DeSantis is going to get a breather in terms of attacks,” said Todd Belt, director of the political management program at George Washington University and author of “The Post-Heroic Presidency.”

    “This is similar to what we see in the rally-around-the-flag phenomena,” Belt said. “When there’s something that affects the country more generally, the other party ceases attacks on the incumbent party. It helps in the polls, at least temporarily. It would look really bad for other Republicans to criticize DeSantis during this time, and the question is how long will they wait? It’s worth noting that Florida is an extremely important electoral state.”

    Storm response has already become part of DeSantis’ pitch to voters. On the campaign trail, he has often shared the story of the swift reopening of two bridges destroyed by Hurricane Ian as evidence of his executive management. DeSantis has also asserted that he could send his “Florida people” to the southern border to build a wall.

    “Come on, Joe (Biden),” he said earlier this year. “Let us get it done. We’ll do it.”

    But Ian also generated some negative attention for DeSantis. Images of the governor wearing white rain boots and campaign gear as he surveyed storm-ravaged regions provided fodder for his political detractors and were spread widely on social media by Democrats and Trump supporters.

    DeSantis was also forced to defend the late local evacuation orders last year that left many coastal residents in Lee County unprepared for Ian’s deadly turn, despite the persistent threat of cataclysmic storm surge.

    Though DeSantis said this week that the state has not changed its evacuation protocols, he and state officials have emphasized that Idalia could bring dangerous storm surge all along Florida’s west coast, even outside the projected path of the storm. This year, he has spent time warning residents who are outside the forecasted “cone” – or the probable track of the center of the storm.

    Idalia is forecast to make landfall near Florida’s Big Bend area as a Category 3 hurricane or stronger, potentially bringing record storm surge to a part of the state’s west coast that has not experienced a storm of this magnitude in more than 150 years.

    While the storm is perhaps an opportunity for DeSantis to show strength in mobilizing his administration to respond to a storm, the expected devastation also has the potential to challenge DeSantis’ limitations as a consoler in chief, a role Biden has embraced during national tragedies.

    DeSantis’ capacity for compassion has already come under fire this week following his rushed response to Saturday’s killing of three Black people by a White gunman in Jacksonville. His office on Saturday shared a video statement from DeSantis that seemed hastily shot in front of white vinyl siding in Iowa, during which he called the racially targeted attack “totally unacceptable.” The next day he attended a vigil for the victims where he called the shooter a “major league scumbag.”

    The tone of his remarks and his appearance at the vigil drew criticism from those who wanted DeSantis to acknowledge efforts by his administration to alter how Florida students learn about race and the lived experience of Black Americans.

    “A white man in his early twenties specifically went to kill BLACK PEOPLE,” Democratic state Rep. Angie Nixon, who represents Jacksonville and was photographed next to DeSantis at the vigil wearing a “Stand with Black Women” shirt, posted on X. “The governor of our state of Florida has created an environment ripe for this.”

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  • Federal court strikes down Alabama congressional map after legislature snubbed Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    Federal court strikes down Alabama congressional map after legislature snubbed Supreme Court | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A federal court blocked a newly drawn Alabama congressional map on Tuesday because it didn’t create a second majority-Black district as the Supreme Court had ordered earlier this year.

    In a unanimous decision from a three-judge panel, which had overseen the case before it reached the Supreme Court, the judges wrote that they were “disturbed” by Alabama’s actions in the case.

    The state had snubbed the Supreme Court’s order – a surprise 5-4 decision in June – that the maps should be redrawn. White voters currently make up the majority in six of the state’s seven congressional districts, although 27% of the state’s population is Black.

    “We are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires,” wrote the judges, two of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

    Alabama officials on Tuesday filed notice that they are appealing the ruling.

    “While we are disappointed in today’s decision, we strongly believe that the Legislature’s map complies with the Voting Rights Act and the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court,” the office of Alabama Attorney General Steven Marshall said in a statement. “We intend to promptly seek review from the Supreme Court to ensure that the State can use its lawful congressional districts in 2024 and beyond.”

    Alabama officials also asked the three-judge court to freeze its opinion invalidating the congressional map but said they will formally ask the Supreme Court for a stay on Thursday.

    This redistricting battle – and separate, pending litigation over congressional maps in states such as Georgia and Florida – could determine which party controls the US House of Representatives after next year’s elections. Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority in the chamber.

    The three federal judges overseeing the Alabama case on Tuesday ordered a special master to submit three proposed maps that would create a second Black-majority district by September 25.

    The panel wrote that it was “not aware of any other case” in which a state legislature had responded to being ordered to a draw map with a second majority-minority district by creating one that the state itself admitted didn’t create the required district.

    “The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” and Alabama’s new map, they wrote, “plainly fails to do so.”

    JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, which has been fighting the case, praised the ruling: “Elected officials ignored their responsibilities and chose to violate our democracy. We hope the court’s special master helps steward a process that ensures a fair map that Black Alabamians and our state deserve.”

    This summer, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, had affirmed an earlier decision by the three-judge panel and ordered the state to redraw congressional maps to include a second majority-Black district or “something quite close to it.”

    The Supreme Court’s surprise decision in Alabama – coming after the right-leaning high court has chipped away at other parts of the Voting Rights Act in recent years – has given fresh hope to voting rights activists and Democrats that they could prevail in challenges to other maps they view as discriminating against minorities.

    But the new map approved by Alabama’s Republican-dominated legislature – and signed into law by GOP Gov. Kay Ivey – in July created only one majority-Black district and boosted the share of Black voters in a second district from roughly 30% to nearly 40%.

    The pending cases center on whether GOP state legislators drew congressional maps after the 2020 census that weakened the power of Black voters in violation of Section 2 of the historic Voting Rights Act.

    Republicans control all statewide offices in Alabama and all but one congressional seat. The single Black-majority congressional district is represented by Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell, the state’s first Black woman elected to Congress.

    Alabama officials have argued that the map as redrawn by state lawmakers was aimed at maintaining traditional guidelines for congressional redistricting, such as keeping together communities of interest. And they have signaled that they hope to sway one of the Supreme Court justices who sided with the majority in June.

    The state’s briefs before the three-judge panel referenced a concurring opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh – one of the two conservatives who sided with the liberal justices on the high court to vote against the original Alabama map – that questioned whether “race-based redistricting” can “extend indefinitely into the future.”

    The lower-court judges weren’t convinced by the state’s arguments.

    They wrote that after reviewing the concurrence, as well as a part of the Supreme Court’s ruling which Kavanaugh didn’t join, “We do not understand either of those writings as undermining any aspect of the Supreme Court’s affirmance; if they did, the Court would not have affirmed the injunction.”

    The judges also rejected Alabama’s argument that drawing a second Black-majority district would unconstitutionally constitute “affirmative action in redistricting.”

    “Unlike affirmative action in the admissions programs the Supreme Court analyzed in [this year’s affirmative action case], which was expressly aimed at achieving balanced racial outcomes in the makeup of the universities’ student bodies, the Voting Rights Act guarantees only ‘equality of opportunity, not a guarantee of electoral success for minority-preferred candidates of whatever race,’” the panel wrote.

    “The Voting Rights Act does not provide a leg up for Black voters – it merely prevents them from being kept down with regard to what is arguably the most ‘fundamental political right,’ in that it is ‘preservative of all rights’ – the right to vote.”

    Earlier, in a letter to state lawmakers, Marshall had argued that a separate Supreme Court ruling in June – after the high court’s Alabama redistricting decision came down – that ended affirmative action in college admissions meant that using a map in which “race predominates” would open up the state to claims that it was violating the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Fact check: Trump falsely claims polls show his Black support has quadrupled or quintupled since his mug shot | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Trump falsely claims polls show his Black support has quadrupled or quintupled since his mug shot | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed Wednesday that polls show his support among Black Americans has quadrupled or quintupled since his mug shot was released.

    The booking photo was taken on August 24, when Trump was arrested in Fulton County, Georgia, on charges connected to his efforts to overturn his defeat in the state in the 2020 election.

    On Wednesday, Trump claimed in a falsehood-filled interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt that “many Democrats” will be voting for him in the 2024 election because they agree with him that the criminal charges against him in four cases are unfair. He then made this assertion: “The Black community is so different for me in the last – since that mug shot was taken, I don’t know if you’ve seen the polls; my polls with the Black community have gone up four and five times.”

    Facts First: National public polls do not show anything close to an increase of “four and five times” in Black support for Trump since his mug shot was taken, either in a race against President Joe Biden or in his own favorability rating; Trump’s campaign did not respond to CNN’s request to identify any poll that corroborates Trump’s claim. Most polls conducted after the release of the mug shot did find a higher level of Black support for Trump than he had in previous polls – but the increases were within the polls’ margins of error, not massive spikes, so it’s not clear whether there was a genuine improvement or the bump was just statistical noise. In addition, one poll found a decline in Trump’s strength with Black voters in a race against Biden, while another found a decline in his favorability with Black respondents even as he improved in a race against Biden.

    Because Black adults make up a relatively small share of the overall population, they tend to have small sample sizes in national public polls. That means the margins of error for this group are big and the results tend to bounce around from poll to poll. And even if Trump’s recent polling improvement captures a real change in voter sentiment, there is no evidence that change has anything to do with his mug shot, which no poll asked about; it could just as well have to do with, say, the summer increase in the price of gas or any of numerous other factors affecting perceptions of Biden.

    Regardless, Trump greatly exaggerated the size of the recent uptick seen in some polls. Here’s a look at what polls actually show about his recent standing with the Black population, plus a fact check of three of Trump’s many other false claims from the Hewitt interview.

    CNN identified five national public polls that: 1) included data on Black respondents in particular; 2) were conducted after Trump’s mug shot was released on August 24; 3) were conducted by pollsters who had also released polls in the recent past.

    Four of the polls showed gains for Trump among Black respondents, though much smaller gains than the quadrupling or quintupling he claimed to Hewitt.

    Trump gained 3 percentage points with Black respondents in polling by The Economist and YouGov, though within the margin of error – going from 17% against Biden in mid-August to 20% in late August. (The earlier poll asked the Trump-versus-Biden question of Black adults regardless of whether they are registered to vote, while the later poll asked the question to Black registered voters, so the results might not be directly comparable.) At the same time, Trump’s favorability with Black respondents was down 9 percentage points to 18%.

    Trump gained 3 percentage points with Black registered voters between a Messenger/Harris X poll in early July and a survey by the same pollster in late August, edging up from 22% against Biden to 25%. Trump gained 6 percentage points among Black adults in polling by the firm Premise, going from 12% against Biden in an Aug. 17-21 poll to 18% in an Aug. 30-Sept. 5 poll. He gained 8 percentage points among Black registered voters in polling by Republican firm Echelon Insights, going from 14% against Biden in late July to 22% in late August. Based on the sample sizes reported for Black respondents in each poll, all of those changes are within the margin of error.

    One of the five polls, by Emerson College, showed Trump’s standing with Black registered voters worsening after the mug shot was released, though this change was also within the margin of error. In Emerson’s mid-August poll, Trump had about 27% Black support in a race against Biden; in its late-August poll, he had about 19% support.

    In addition to looking at those five polls, we contacted The Wall Street Journal about an Aug. 24-30 poll, conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters, for which the newspaper has not yet released detailed demographic-by-demographic results. Aaron Zitner, a Journal reporter and editor who works on the poll, told us that Trump’s level of support with Black voters “didn’t change at all” between the paper’s April poll and this new poll, though Biden’s standing declined slightly within the margin of error.

    Exit polls estimated that Trump received 12% of the Black vote in the 2020 election. A post-election Pew Research Center analysis found that he received 8%.

    Mike Pence’s standing in 2016

    Trump made another false polling-related claim to Hewitt.

    This one was about how Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president and his current opponent for the Republican nomination, had performed in polls during his 2016 campaign for reelection as governor of Indiana. Pence ceased his Indiana campaign when Trump selected him as his running mate in July 2016.

    Trump said Wednesday: “I’m disappointed in Mike Pence, because I took Mike from the garbage heap. He was going to lose. You know, he was running for governor, reelection. He was running for governor again, to continue his term, and he was absolutely, you know – he was down by 10 or 15 points.”

    Facts First: Trump’s claim that Pence was trailing by “10 or 15 points” in his 2016 race is false. It’s true that Pence had faced a tough battle for reelection as governor before he ended the campaign to run nationally with Trump, but no public poll had shown him down big.

    A May 2016 poll (commissioned by a Republican group that was founded by an opponent of Pence’s right-wing stance on gay rights and other issues) had showed Pence with 40% support and his Democratic opponent, John Gregg, with 36% support; the Indianapolis Star called this a “virtual dead heat” because of the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, but nonetheless, Pence certainly wasn’t “down by 10 or 15 points” like Trump said. An April 2016 poll had showed Pence with 49% support to Gregg’s 45%, again within the margin of error but not with Pence trailing.

    “There would not be any poll that would show Pence down 10-15 points to John Gregg at that time or frankly at any point even if Pence had stayed for the reelection campaign,” Christine Matthews, the president of Bellwether Research & Consulting and a Republican pollster who conducted surveys during that 2016 race in Indiana, including the May 2016 poll mentioned above, told CNN on Wednesday. Matthews said Pence could possibly have lost the race if he had remained in it, “but no poll would have shown him down by 10-15 points in that process.”

    Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina in 2020

    Trump repeated his usual lies about the 2020 election – saying, among other things, that “it was rigged and stolen.” In support of those lies, he said: “One of the top people in Alabama said you don’t win Alabama by 45 points or whatever it is I won, and then win South Carolina in a record, nobody’s ever gotten that many votes, and then you lose Georgia by just a couple of votes. It doesn’t work that way.”

    Facts First: Trump hedged his claim that he won Alabama by “45 points,” adding the “whatever it is I won,” but the “45 points” claim is not even close to correct no matter what “one of the top people” told him; he won Alabama by about 25.5 percentage points in 2020. He lost Georgia by far more than “just a couple of votes”; it was 11,779 votes. And while he did earn a record number of votes in South Carolina, he did not win the state with anything close to a “record” margin of victory; his roughly 11.7-point margin in 2020 was about 2.6 points smaller than his own margin in 2016 and also smaller than the margins earned by numerous previous winners.

    In addition, Trump’s claim that “it doesn’t work that way” – winning some states big while losing a nearby state – is also baseless. Even neighboring states are not the same. Georgia, which Trump lost fair and square, has key demographic and social differences from South Carolina and Alabama, as we explained in a previous fact check.

    Polls and election results weren’t the only things Trump exaggerated about in the interview.

    He invoked the price of bacon while criticizing the Biden administration for speaking positively about the state of inflation, which has declined sharply over the last year but remains elevated. “They try and say, ‘Oh, inflation’s wonderful.’ What about for the last three years, where bacon is five times higher than it was just a few years ago?”

    Facts First: Trump’s claim that the price of bacon has quintupled over the last few years is grossly inaccurate. The average price of bacon is higher than it was three years ago, but it is nowhere near “five times higher.” The average price for a pound of sliced bacon was $6.236 per pound in July 2023, up from $5.776 in July 2020, according to federal data – an increase of about 8%, nowhere near the 400% increase Trump claimed.

    You can come up with a larger percentage increase if you start the clock at a different point in 2020; for example, the July 2023 average price is a 13.4% increase from the February 2020 average price. But even that larger increase is way smaller than Trump claimed.

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  • Who is C.Q. Brown, the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? | CNN Politics

    Who is C.Q. Brown, the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Charles Q. Brown builds on an already historic career in becoming the the country’s next most senior ranking military officer.

    Before being confirmed Wednesday as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Brown, who goes by C.Q., was the first Black service chief in US military history when he was confirmed as chief of the Air Force in 2020.

    Brown is only the second Black man to serve as chairman – following Gen. Colin Powell – where he will act as the principal military adviser to President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and the National Security Council.

    Brown’s confirmation also marks the first time that both of the Defense Department’s top leaders – the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs – are African American.

    President Joe Biden nominated Brown in May and described the general as “a warrior” and a “fearless leader and unyielding patriot.” But his nomination became ensnared in a monthslong blockage on Pentagon nominations by Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville in the Senate.

    The Senate ultimately voted 83-11 to confirm his nomination Wednesday.

    Commissioned in 1984 from the ROTC Program at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, Brown has commanded a fighter squadron, two fighter wings, US Air Forces Central Command and the US Air Force Weapons School, according to his official biography.

    Prior to becoming the Air Force chief of staff, Brown served as the commander of Pacific Air Forces – the air component of US Indo-Pacific Command.

    While serving as the commander of the Pacific Air Forces, the typically reserved Brown made headlines by releasing a deeply personal video in the wake of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. In the video, he said he was “full with emotion” for “the many African Americans that have suffered the same fate as George Floyd” and recalled being one of the few Black people at his school, his platoon and in leadership.

    “I’m thinking about the pressure I felt to perform error-free, especially for supervisors I perceived had expected less of me as an African American. I’m thinking about having to represent by working twice as hard to prove their expectations and perceptions of African Americans were invalid,” he said.

    He added: “I’m thinking about how I can make improvements personally, professionally and institutionally, so that all Airmen, both today and tomorrow, appreciate the value of diversity and can serve in an environment where they can reach their full potential.”

    Brown’s confirmation was held up after Tuberville said he would object to confirming military nominees as a group by unanimous consent in protest of the Pentagon’s policy providing a travel allowance for troops and their families who must travel to receive an abortion because of the state laws where they are stationed. He instead suggested that Brown and other military nominees be brought to the Senate floor one-by-one – a process that could take hundreds of hours.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Shumer ultimately caved to Tuberville’s demand and agreed to bring a handful of votes on military promotions to the floor.

    The Senate is expected to vote to confirm Gen. Eric Smith as commandant of the Marine Corps and Gen. Randy George as Army chief of staff later this week.

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  • Black creators built TikTok. But Black employees say they experienced ‘toxicity and racism’ | CNN Business

    Black creators built TikTok. But Black employees say they experienced ‘toxicity and racism’ | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Nnete Matima said she was attracted to work at TikTok because of how the social media platform was “really built upon Black culture” and the work of Black creators.

    She saw and welcomed TikTok’s public pledge of support for the Black community in the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd and applied to work for the company because she felt its corporate values “really resonated with me,” Matima told CNN.

    Shortly after she began working at TikTok-parent company ByteDance last year, however, she alleges she encountered “toxicity and racism” in the workplace. Her manager would refer to her as a “black snake” behind her back and set unrealistic and uneven expectations for her compared to her white peers, Matima claims. The mistreatment only got worse, she said, after she spoke up about it via human resources channels.

    Matima is one of two Black former ByteDance employees who together filed a formal complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Thursday. Their complaint asks the agency to investigate alleged racial discrimination and retaliation against Black workers at the social media giant.

    Corporate America has long come under fire for racism in the workplace, especially in the wake of the racial reckoning that swept through the nation in 2020. The criticism is especially pointed for technology companies, where having employees with diverse perspectives is especially crucial because tech products have faced accusations of perpetuating racial and ethnic discrimination.

    Matima, who is based in New York City, and fellow former employee Joël Carter, who is based in Austin, Texas, alleged in the proposed class action complaint that they each faced repeated instances of discrimination at work and then faced retaliation when they raised concerns about it.

    “Rather than holding anyone accountable, TikTok denied the blatant discrimination that Ms. Matima and Mr. Carter suffered, failed to stop it from continuing, engaged in sham ‘investigations’ of their complaints, took away their work, and then terminated Ms. Matima and Mr. Carter in retaliation for complaining about race discrimination and mistreatment,” the complaint states.

    “We are asking the EEOC to investigate TikTok’s pattern or practice of retaliation against workers who complain about discrimination,” the complaint adds.

    In a statement to CNN on Thursday, a TikTok spokesperson said: “We take employee concerns very seriously, and have strong policies in place that prohibit discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in the workplace. As an organization, we have a strong record of championing diversity and inclusion.”

    TikTok skyrocketed in popularity in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and as of this year has amassed more than 150 million American users. As the app has become more entrenched in American culture, it has also faced mounting scrutiny from US lawmakers over perceived security concerns due to its China-based parent company’s ties to Beijing. Talks of an outright US ban of the app have simmered in Washington, DC, since the Trump era but have largely subsided in recent months as lawmakers turn their attention to the rise of generative AI out of Silicon Valley.

    Even TikTok itself has also acknowledged the important role that Black users play on the platform — and its need to support them.

    “Black creators inspire mainstream culture and continue to define what’s next — from creating viral moments and pioneering new spaces in fashion and music, to advocating for others and organizing for a better future, they have always been at the forefront of innovation,” the company said in a statement last January.

    Two years earlier, TikTok had acknowledged concerns that Black users felt “unsafe, unsupported, or suppressed” and vowed to “actively promote and protect” diversity on the platform.

    ‘Dehumanizing and demoralizing’

    Carter, who began working at TikTok in June 2021, told CNN in an interview that experience at the company was “dehumanizing” and “demoralizing.”

    Carter was initially hired as a risk analyst responsible for managing the safety of TikTok’s ad ecosystem, but was transferred to the platform’s ad policy team as a policy manager eight months later. Shortly after starting his new role, Carter alleges, he discovered that he was being significantly underpaid compared to his colleagues. He says he raised these concerns to human resources and his department leader. Carter was at the time the only Black employee on his 80-person ad policy team, the complaint states.

    Carter’s manager prevented him from attending important meetings and took credit for Carter’s work, according to the complaint. Carter alleges that in response to his complaints, his role at the company “was changed and severely diminished,” prompting him to again alert human resources that he was concerned about discrimination and retaliation.

    The complaint filed with the EEOC shares parts of Carter’s April 2022 performance evaluation, where he was given an overall score of: “Exceeds expectations.” A reviewer described Carter as “open and humble above all” and a “great teammate.” He was “happy to provide assistance or guidance whenever needed. He never had an ego and was always open to collaboration and feedback,” the reviewer added, per the complaint.

    But after Carter began raising concerns at work about racial discrimination, he alleges he was retaliated against in a performance review in April 2023.

    He was labeled as “tense” and “angry” and accused of “slamming doors” in the office in that review, the complaint states. But Carter says he never slammed a door in the office. In fact, he says, the doors at the office were hydraulic — not even capable of being slammed.

    Carter told CNN that he felt his managers were trying “to establish this narrative of me about being the ‘angry Black man.’” Carter grew emotional as he talked to CNN about the pain and “the historic significance of using that kind of inflammatory language, especially when it’s unfounded.”

    His experience at work deeply impacted his mental health, and for the first time in his life he began seeing a psychiatrist and dealing with symptoms of depression for “months on end,” he said. “It was like overwhelming feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.”

    Matima — who worked in sales for Lark, ByteDance’s workplace communication division — similarly alleges she was treated differently from the colleagues on her team “who were nearly all white,” according to the complaint. For example, Matima says she was not given adequate time to complete required onboarding courses before being asked to start her work, so she had to finish the courses during nights and weekends. By contrast, Matima’s white colleagues “were given ample time during normal work hours to complete their training before they were required to start their sales outreach,” the complaint states.

    In January 2023, the complaint alleges, Matima was told by a colleague that her manager and other colleagues “commonly referred” to her as a “black snake.”

    “This outrageous ‘black snake’ nickname was not only racially derogatory and inflammatory, but also suggested that Ms. Matima is a deceitful, untrustworthy, and sneaky person,” the complaint states.

    Matima and Carter both allege that multiple requests to switch managers were denied and that their complaints to the company’s human resources department were not adequately investigated and managed.

    Both Matima and Carter were ultimately terminated by TikTok in August.

    Now Matima says she feels a “moral obligation” to share the experiences publicly. “When there is injustice happening, it festers in the dark and the shadows,” she said. “By going public, we can inspire others who are still suffering in there to stand up and speak out.”

    Are you a current for former employee of TikTok or ByteDance and have information to share about what it’s like to work there? Learn how to reach out journalists securely: https://www.cnn.com/tips/

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