Tuesday, July 23, 2024
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A View From the Ground
News and information about politics, government, civic participation and engagement from URL Media's network of Black and Brown publishers.
President Joe Biden on Sunday, July 21, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidential nominee after announcing he would no longer continue with his presidential bid. Photo from Shutterstock
#WinWithBlackWomen rallied 44,000 Black women to raise over $1 million for Kamala Harris: Just hours after President Joe Biden announced the end of his presidential campaign, tens of thousands of Black women gathered virtually and raised more than $1 million for Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden endorsed as the presidential nominee.
The group organized under #WinWithBlackWomen and included an “intergenerational and intersectional network of Black women,” that as TANTV noted, “serves as a powerful reminder of the pivotal role Black women continue to play in shaping America’s political landscape.” Prominent leaders present were U.S. Reps. Maxine Waters, Jasmine Crockett, and Joyce Beatty, Capital B reported.
This gathering sheds further light on how Black women are shaping the Democratic party. Capital B referenced a recent survey from The Cut that found 64% of Black women said they’d vote for Biden, whereas only 18% said they’d vote for former President Donald Trump, the confirmed Republican Party nominee. The event, according to TANTV, also amplified “the need for intersectional allyship, with members of Latino and Asian communities joining in solidarity.”
News spread Monday that Harris’ team raised more than $81 million in the 24-hour period since Biden’s announcement.
TANTV has more here with further Capital B reporting here →
Fact-Check: How accurate is Harris on abortion, economy, criminal justice, Trump?: As Vice President Kamala Harris intends to “earn and win” the presidential nomination, staff writers at PolitiFact — a partner of Capital B — are amplifying their fact-checking history of Harris (nearly 50 times since 2012) in her roles as California attorney general, U.S. senator, and vice president.
With Harris emerging as a leading Democratic voice on abortion rights, PolitiFact highlights how “she often talks about the stakes for American women.” While she has correctly stated that “1 in 3 women of reproductive age live in a state with an abortion ban,” she has also mischaracterized Republicans’ stances on abortion, according to PolitiFact.
While running in the 2020 presidential primary, PolitiFact found that Harris — as attorney general — brought forth “notable criminal justice reform-minded victories, including efforts to reduce recidivism and eliminate bias in law enforcement.” Meanwhile, criminal justice reform advocates labeled her as “cautious,” when refusing to take public positions on decriminalizing marijuana or abolishing the death penalty as attorney general. Harris, however, has shifted, with PolitiFact noting in 2020 that she favored legalizing marijuana and placing a moratorium on the federal death penalty.
PolitiFact has also fact-checked her stances on education, gun violence and “Republicans' misleading attacks against Harris’ border responsibility.”
More in Capital B →
Florida cuts references to climate change from science textbooks: Eliminating DEI programs and removing critical race theory from school textbooks is not enough for Florida state leaders. Now, they’re aiming to remove a 90-page section of a high school chemistry book describing causes and effects of climate change, according to Pulso.
They’re also calling for the author of a middle school biology textbook to remove an excerpt that urges government action to combat climate change “because it constituted a ‘political statement.’”
“Instead of preparing future generations to meet this threat, the governor is instead focused on denying its existence,” writes Pulso’s Andrew Otazo.
Otazo cited a National Climate Assessment report showing how extreme weather such as heat waves and hurricanes associated with climate change cost Florida $90 billion between 2018 and 2022. The state is projected to lose at least an additional $619 billion in the assessed values of property due to increased flooding by the end of the century, according to the report.
At the Democratic Convention, how will Democrats respond to Republicans’ inaccurate message on immigration?: It’s clear that undocumented immigrants were maligned and demonized at the GOP convention, where Trump supporters waved signs declaring “Mass Deportations Now!” and chanted “send them back!” as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lambasted the Biden administration for standing against his efforts to secure the border.
To dig into the Republicans’ messages on immigration, Documented spent time with Aaron Reichlin-Melnick — policy director at the American Immigration Council — who answered a range of questions, like “how open is the border?” and “how can immigration rhetoric during the 2024 elections be grounded in facts rather than fear?”
Reichlin-Melnick said there’s no such thing as open borders “because a person who crosses them without permission is arrested, and they’re potentially sent to jail.” He gives context as to why many Republicans see it differently, explaining how their definition of open is “physically open.” There is no wall, he said, and “any border in which any person can cross and have any possibility of not being immediately turned back is to them open.”
He also stressed to always check facts. “A lot of what was said at the RNC was completely wrong. A lot of that is in part due to the fact that immigration is enormously confusing."
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