President Obama delivered a statement on the tragic shooting that took place overnight in Orlando, Florida. Watch his statement below:
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"In the face of hate and violence, we will love one another. We will not give into fear." —@POTUS https://t.co/i7fOS38GzH
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 12, 2016
The White House Office of the Press Secretary has released the following statement on the mass shooting at an Orlando, Florida night club.
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
The President was briefed this morning by Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, on the tragic shooting in Orlando, Florida. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of the victims. The President asked to receive regular updates as the FBI, and other federal officials, work with the Orlando Police to gather more information, and directed that the federal government provide any assistance necessary to pursue the investigation and support the community.
[SOURCE]
The site of an important civil rights sit-in in 1958 in Wichita will be getting a memorial for the first time.
Young black protesters sat at the lunch counter in the Dockum Drug Store in July 1958. After three weeks of sit-ins, the drug store agreed to serve the black students at the counter, the Wichita Eagle reports. It is considered one of the first successful lunch counter sit-ins in the nation that eventually helped lead to desegregation.
On Thursday, two participants in the sit-ins, Joan Williams and Galyn Vesey, attended a ceremony where the Kansas Health Foundation presented a $50,000 grant to the Kansas African American Museum and Ambassador Hotel for the memorial project. The Dockum Drug Store lunch counter stood in what is now Siena Steakhouse in the hotel.
“In the face of threats, in the face of name-calling and hate, they stayed strong,” said Steve Coen, president and CEO of the Kansas Health Foundation. Coen said that the foundation began discussing funding a memorial last fall.
Organizers have not determined what form the memorial will take, or what it will include. The memorial may include an indoor public exhibit on the second floor of the Ambassador Hotel and an outdoor recognition of the sit-in site with a plaque or statue. Tad Stricker, general manager for Ambassador Hotel Collection, says the hotel no longer has the original lunch counter and believes that it was removed during a remodel of the building in the 1970s.
According to Stricker, the hotel, which celebrated its 90th anniversary in May, has wanted to honor the sit-in since the hotel opened in January 2013. Mark McCormick, executive director of the Kansas African American Museum, said that he wants the public to help provide ideas for the memorial project and offer input about how the historical moment should be represented.
[SOURCE]
The great boxing promoter, Don King, just endorsed me. Nice!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 10, 2016
Thousands of fans, dignitaries and faithful from across the globe filled a Kentucky arena Thursday to honor Muhammad Ali at a traditional Muslim prayer service where he was remembered as a global icon who used his celebrity to promote unity among faiths, races and nations.Watch the entire service below:
President Obama has formally endorsed Hillary Clinton. Watch his endorsement video below.
Many Trump and Sanders supporters believe that Hillary Clinton has no chance at winning in November. They believe in all the negative hype that Clinton detractors have been putting over the decades, and that Trump will not just win, but win easily. That's simply not the case, here are six reasons why she will win and become the first female President of the United States.
1. Hate her or love her, she is simply the most qualified candidate ever to run for president. She has forgotten more about politics and world affairs than Sanders and Trump know combined.
2. She will have the Obama Coalition behind her and with that comes Barack Obama, The Campaigner, and Chief. He is very popular among Democrats and would energize those that sat the primary season out. Many of those supporters want to protect the Obama legacy and trust Clinton to do just that.
3. She will have arguably the greatest group of surrogates ever out there stomping for her campaign. Those surrogates would include President Obama, Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, and Elizabeth Warren. (If Bernie Sanders can stop pouting and come to his senses then he could also be on that list.) That's political star power no matter which one shows up at a rally or on television.
4. She has a superior campaign organization. She has veterans of winning presidential campaigns working for her and has ground games ready to go in toss-up states and important states such as Ohio, Florida, California, New Jersey, and Michigan.
5. She is facing a media personality, not a true candidate. Donald Trump can't help but be Trump, and he will self-implode under the stress of a presidential campaign where everything you do and say is vetted and questioned.His lack of substance will bite him in the ass.
6. Many Republicans simply can't bring themselves to vote for Trump. They will stick to their ideals and principles and take the loss this year so that they can win in 2020. They will not publicly support or endorse Hillary Clinton, but they will vote for her.
So that's my opinion Hilary Clinton will win in November. So what do you think?
George L. Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.Com
California’s first open U.S. Senate seat in nearly a quarter-century will remain in Democratic hands, as Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez outpaced 32 other candidates Tuesday to deny the state Republican Party a place in the fall runoff.
Harris, the state attorney general, clinched a first-place finish in the contest to succeed U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, more than doubling the percentage of Sanchez, a 10-term congresswoman from Orange County.
As vote-counting continued, Harris led with 39.8 percent of the vote. Sanchez had 17.3 percent, followed by Republican Duf Sundheim at 9 percent.
Read more here: Kamala Harris, Loretta Sanchez advance in U.S. Senate race
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D) easily defeated college professor Alexander Kucsma of Somerset in the NJ congressional Democratic Primary. Coleman won U.S. House - District 12 with 94% of the vote.
The final tally was Coleman 66,029 Alexander Kucsma 4,463
Brooklyn College Campus Safety Officer Hubert Evans didn’t waste much time obtaining his bachelor’s degree. After attending Medgar Evers College for just two years and 9 months, the 87-year-old achieved his long time dream and joined fellow graduates at the Barclays Center on May 24 for their commencement ceremony. Evans majored in political science and minored in physics.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Evans moved to Brooklyn to join his family in 1980. After a career in the military, he joined the Brooklyn College staff full time in 1993. He raised seven children in the process, including a son who graduated from Brooklyn College.
"I found that other officers were taking courses at the college because of the free tuition offered to us," Evans said. "It was an opportunity to achieve something I always wanted."
His colleagues also supported his endeavor.
"He’s been an inspiration to all of us," said Ursula Chase, deputy director of the Office of Campus and Community Safety Services. "We constantly encouraged him and supported him throughout as he completed his coursework.This is a man who walked to the college, from his home—quite a bit away—after a huge snowstorm, stopping once to call and say he’d be a little late; he doesn’t let anything get in the way of where he wants to go."
Evans’ goal is to begin a career as a counselor, helping others to obtain a college education. In the meantime, he has a way of keeping himself busy.
He smiled. "I’m looking at the fall course schedule to see what I want to take," said Evans.
[SOURCE]
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina condemned presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s comments about a Mexican-American judge overseeing the Trump University lawsuit as “racially toxic.”
But he said he would still support Trump as the Republican nominee, arguing that disagreeing with Trump’s remarks and continuing to endorse him were not mutually exclusive.
Trump has labeled Curiel a “hater,” “very hostile” and “Mexican,” in connection to how the case has been handled against him, alleging bias.
“I’m not living in a silo,” Scott said. “The reality of it is, we have the impact of Trump’s policies and positions compared to Hillary Clinton’s policies and positions, and I am entirely convinced the country is better off under the policies and positions of the Republican Party than they are under the Democratic Party.”
SOURCE: Charleston Post and Courier
Now I don't know if Ben Carson is more upset that Republican nominee Donald Trump has insulted both Mexicans and Muslims this past weekend or about finding out that he is not Trump's African American, but even he had words for Donald Trump about his racist comments.
In reference to Donald Trump saying that Judge Gonzalo Curiel could not do his job simply because he's Mexican, Carson released the following statement to Politico through Armstrong Williams:
"Every human being is an individual first rather than a member of an identity group. The moment we forget that is the moment we enter into a phase of moral descent,"
A Baltimore police officer charged with murder in the 2015 death of black detainee Freddie Gray waived a jury trial on Monday and will be tried by a Maryland judge instead.
Officer Caesar Goodson Jr., 46, drove the police van in which Gray broke his neck and is the third officer to face trial for his death. The April 2015 incident triggered protests and rioting and fueled a U.S. debate on police treatment of minorities.
Prosecutors are still seeking a conviction in the high-profile case, with two trials ending in a mistrial and an acquittal.
Goodson's last-minute decision to have Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams decide the case came during a pre-trial motions hearing. The trial begins on Thursday.
Tim Maloney, a Maryland lawyer who has handled police misconduct cases, said a bench trial was a good move on Goodson's part since there was a lot of pressure on jurors in the majority black city to convict someone.
Read more: Baltimore policeman charged in Freddie Gray death chooses bench trial
Donald Trump stirred up controversy by repeatedly referring to a black man at a rally in Redding, California as "My African American". That black man's name is Gregory Cheadle, and he is a Republican from Happy Valley in the running for the 1st Congressional District.
He says that he took no offense at being called Trump's African american and was happy that the Republican candidate came to Redding.
In a excerpt from an article in the Record Spotlight Cheadle explained why he took no offense:
Cheadle said African-Americans have historically been dismissed by politicians, which is why they were so quick to support President Obama, the country’s first black president.
So it was gratifying to him and he was proud that someone like Trump would acknowledge him in an audience that was 99.99 percent white, he said.
“To give the black folk the time of the day, I was happy.” Cheadle said.
“You know what I was talking about? Jobs, jobs, jobs,” Cheadle said, paraphrasing what Trump told him. “I said, ‘Yeah, jobs.’ It’s all a fog. I’m glad I’m not on the witness stand. But it means a lot to me when a person of his stature can come to Redding.”
As Doug Andreassen, the chairman of US Soccer’s diversity task force, looks across the game he loves, all he can see is a system broken in America. And he wonders why nobody seems to care.
He sees well-to-do families spending thousands of dollars a year on soccer clubs that propel their children to the sport’s highest levels, while thousands of gifted athletes in mostly African American and Latino neighborhoods get left behind. He worries about this inequity. Soccer is the world’s great democratic game, whose best stars have come from the world’s slums, ghettos and favelas. And yet in the US the path to the top is often determined by how many zeroes a parent can write in their checkbook.
Andreassen watches his federation’s national teams play, and wishes they had more diversity. Like many, he can’t ignore the fact that last year’s Women’s World Cup winners were almost all white, or that several of the non-white players on the US Copa America roster grew up overseas. The talents of some of America’s best young players are being suffocated by a process that never lets them be seen. He sighs.
“People don’t want to talk about it,” he says.
Andreassen used to dance gingerly around the topic, using the same careful code words as the other coaches and heads of leagues, trying not to push or offend only to find that little changed. He has stopped being political. He is frustrated. He is passionate. He is blunt.
“The system is not working for the underserved community,” he says. “It’s working for the white kids.”
Read more: 'It’s only working for the white kids': American soccer's diversity problem
President Obama has released the following statement on the death of The Greatest, Muhammad Ali:
"Muhammad Ali was The Greatest. Period. If you just asked him, he'd tell you. He'd tell you he was the double greatest; that he'd "handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder into jail."
But what made The Champ the greatest - what truly separated him from everyone else - is that everyone else would tell you pretty much the same thing.
Like everyone else on the planet, Michelle and I mourn his passing. But we're also grateful to God for how fortunate we are to have known him, if just for a while; for how fortunate we all are that The Greatest chose to grace our time.
In my private study, just off the Oval Office, I keep a pair of his gloves on display, just under that iconic photograph of him - the young champ, just 22 years old, roaring like a lion over a fallen Sonny Liston. I was too young when it was taken to understand who he was - still Cassius Clay, already an Olympic Gold Medal winner, yet to set out on a spiritual journey that would lead him to his Muslim faith, exile him at the peak of his power, and set the stage for his return to greatness with a name as familiar to the downtrodden in the slums of Southeast Asia and the villages of Africa as it was to cheering crowds in Madison Square Garden.
"I am America," he once declared. "I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me - black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me."
That's the Ali I came to know as I came of age - not just as skilled a poet on the mic as he was a fighter in the ring, but a man who fought for what was right. A man who fought for us. He stood with King and Mandela; stood up when it was hard; spoke out when others wouldn't. His fight outside the ring would cost him his title and his public standing. It would earn him enemies on the left and the right, make him reviled, and nearly send him to jail. But Ali stood his ground. And his victory helped us get used to the America we recognize today.
He wasn't perfect, of course. For all his magic in the ring, he could be careless with his words, and full of contradictions as his faith evolved. But his wonderful, infectious, even innocent spirit ultimately won him more fans than foes - maybe because in him, we hoped to see something of ourselves. Later, as his physical powers ebbed, he became an even more powerful force for peace and reconciliation around the world. We saw a man who said he was so mean he'd make medicine sick reveal a soft spot, visiting children with illness and disability around the world, telling them they, too, could become the greatest. We watched a hero light a torch, and fight his greatest fight of all on the world stage once again; a battle against the disease that ravaged his body, but couldn't take the spark from his eyes.
Muhammad Ali shook up the world. And the world is better for it. We are all better for it. Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family, and we pray that the greatest fighter of them all finally rests in peace."
Boxing greats such as George Foreman, Mike Tyson, Manny Pacquiao ,Oscar De La Hoya, Lennox Lewis, and Evander Holyfield have responded to the death of The Greatest, Muhammad Ali. Read their statements below.
Remembering the good old days with Ali. RIP my brother I will never forget you. #MohammedAli #Legend #TheGreatest pic.twitter.com/TU7UFBGfcj
— Evander Holyfield (@holyfield) June 4, 2016
It's been said it was Rope a dope, Ali beat me with no his beauty that beat me. Most beauty I've know loved him pic.twitter.com/G64WX3eyZC
— George Foreman (@GeorgeForeman) June 4, 2016
God came for his champion. So long great one. @MuhammadAli #TheGreatest #RIP pic.twitter.com/jhXyqOuabi
— Mike Tyson (@MikeTyson) June 4, 2016
Manny Pacquiao releases a statement on the passing of Muhammad Ali. pic.twitter.com/hRa2kM3CLr
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) June 4, 2016
RIP @muhammadali, a legend who transcended sport and was a true champion for all. #thegreatest #MuhammadAli pic.twitter.com/vjmXlXaHip
— Oscar De La Hoya (@OscarDeLaHoya) June 4, 2016
A giant among men, Ali displayed a greatness in talent, courage & conviction, that most of us will EVER be able to truly comprehend. #RIPAli
— Lennox Lewis (@LennoxLewis) June 4, 2016
He was fast of fist and foot -- lip, too -- a heavyweight champion who promised to shock the world and did. He floated. He stung. Mostly, he thrilled, even after the punches had taken their toll and his voice barely rose above a whisper.
He was "The Greatest."
Muhammad Ali died Friday, according to a statement from his family. He was 74.
Ali's funeral will be held in his hometown of Louisville, with further details expected to be released Saturday morning, spokesman Bob Gunnell said. The city has scheduled a memorial service for 10 a.m. ET Saturday, and flags there will be put at half-staff in the morning.
Read more: Muhammad Ali dies at age 74 after long battle with Parkinson's disease
