Amanda Gorman says she was racially profiled near her home
NEW YORK » Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old poet who captured hearts at the inauguration of President Joe Biden, posted to social media that she was followed home by a security guard who demanded to know where she lived because she “looked suspicious.”
“I showed my keys & buzzed myself into my building,” she tweeted of the incident Friday night. “He left, no apology. This is the reality of black girls: One day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat.”
Gorman, the nation’s youngest inaugural poet, lives in Los Angeles but did not specify where the encounter occurred. Her spokeswoman did not immediately return an email Saturday seeking additional comment.
The post was met with thousands of messages of support on Twitter and Instagram. She followed up her post with a second comment that said:
“In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be. A threat and proud.”
Gorman became an instant sensation Jan. 20 when she recited her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” at Biden’s swearing-in.
WASHINGTON » An exhausted Senate narrowly approved a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill Saturday as President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies notched a victory they called crucial for hoisting the country out of the pandemic and economic doldrums.
After laboring all night on a mountain of amendments — nearly all from Republicans and rejected — bleary-eyed senators approved the sprawling package on a 50-49 party-line vote. That sets up final congressional approval by the House next week so lawmakers can whisk it to Biden for his signature.
The huge measure — its cost is nearly one-tenth the size of the entire U.S. economy — is Biden’s biggest early priority. It stands as his formula for addressing the deadly virus and a limping economy, twin crises that have afflicted the country for a year.
“This nation has suffered too much for much too long,” Biden told reporters at the White House after the vote. “And everything in this package is designed to relieve the suffering and to meet the most urgent needs of the nation, and put us in a better position to prevail.”
Saturday’s vote was also a crucial political moment for Biden and Democrats, who need nothing short of party unanimity in a 50-50 Senate they run with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote. They hold a slim 10vote House edge.
Not one Republican backed the bill in the Senate or when it initially passed the House, underscoring the barbed partisan environment that’s characterized the early days of Biden’s presidency.
A small but pivotal band of moderate Democrats leveraged
changes in the legislation that incensed progressives, hardly helping Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DCalif., guide the measure through the House. But rejection of their first, signature bill was not an option for Democrats, who face two years of running Congress with virtually no room for error.
In a significant sign, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, representing around 100 House liberals, called the Senate’s weakening of some provisions “bad policy and bad politics” but “relatively minor concessions.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said the bill retained its “core bold, progressive elements.”
“They feel like we do, we have to get this done,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said of the House. He added, “It’s not going to be everything everyone wants. No bill is.”
In a written statement, Pelosi invited Republicans “to join us in recognition of the devastating reality of this vicious virus and economic crisis and of the need for decisive action.”
The bill provides direct payments of up to $1,400 for most Americans and extended
emergency unemployment benefits. There are vast piles of spending for COVID-19 vaccines and testing, states and cities, schools and ailing industries, along with tax breaks to help lower-earning people, families with children and consumers buying health insurance.
Republicans call the measure a wasteful spending spree for Democrats’ liberal allies that ignores recent indications that the pandemic and economy was turning the corner.
“The Senate has never spent $2 trillion in a more haphazard way,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. He said Democrats’ “top priority wasn’t pandemic relief. It was their Washington wish list.”
The Senate commenced a dreaded “vote-a-rama” — a continuous series of votes on amendments — shortly before midnight Friday, and by its end around noon dispensed with about three dozen. The Senate had been in session since 9 a.m. EST Friday.
Overnight, the chamber looked like an experiment in sleep deprivation. Several lawmakers appeared to rest their eyes or doze at their desks, often burying their faces in their hands. At one point, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, at 48 one of the younger senators, trotted into the chamber and did a prolonged stretch.
Sen. Dan Sullivan, RAlaska, missed the votes to attend his father-in-law’s funeral.
The measure follows five earlier ones totaling about
$4 trillion enacted since last spring and comes amid signs of a potential turnaround.
Vaccine supplies are growing, deaths and caseloads have eased but remain frighteningly high, and hiring was surprisingly strong last month, though the economy remains 10 million jobs smaller than prepandemic levels.
The Senate package was delayed repeatedly as Democrats made eleventh-hour changes aimed at balancing demands by their competing moderate and progressive factions.
Work on the bill ground to a halt Friday after an agreement among Democrats on extending emergency jobless benefits seemed to collapse. Nearly
12 hours later, top Democrats and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, perhaps the chamber’s most conservative Democrat, said they had a deal, and the Senate approved it on a party-line
50-49 vote.
Under their compromise,
$300 weekly emergency unemployment checks — on top of regular state benefits — would be renewed, with a final payment Sept.
6. There would also be tax breaks on some of that aid, helping people the pandemic abruptly tossed out of jobs and risked tax penalties on the benefits.
The House relief bill, largely similar to the Senate’s, provided $400 weekly benefits through August. The current $300 per week payments expire March 14, and Democrats want the bill on Biden’s desk by then to avert a lapse.
Manchin and Republicans have asserted that higher jobless benefits discourage people from returning to work, a rationale most Democrats and many economists reject.
The agreement on jobless benefits wasn’t the only move that showed moderates’ sway.
The Senate voted Friday to eject a House-approved boost in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, a major defeat for progressives. Eight Democrats opposed the increase, suggesting that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and other liberals pledging to continue the effort will face a difficult fight.
Party leaders also agreed to restrict eligibility for the
$1,400 stimulus checks for most Americans. That amount would be gradually reduced until, under the Senate bill, it reaches zero for people earning
$80,000 and couples making $160,000. Those ceilings were higher in the House version.
Many of the rejected GOP amendments were either attempts to force Democrats to cast politically awkward votes or for Republicans to demonstrate their zeal for issues that appeal to their voters.
These included defeated efforts to bar funds from going to schools that don’t reopen their doors or let transgender students born male participate in female sports. One amendment would have blocked aid to so-called sanctuary cities, where local authorities don’t help federal officials round up immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
MEXICO CITY » In a camp at the U.S.-Mexico border, some asylum seekers were told by officials that the U.S. government may reopen their cases and they would eventually be able to enter the U.S. to wait out the asylum process.
The new opening for people previously denied came as Mexican authorities worked to close the improvised camp along the banks of the Rio Grande, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, that has housed thousands of asylum seekers over the more than two years it existed.
Late Friday night, an official with Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said via Twitter that the last asylum seekers with active cases from the camp had been processed and the camp was closed. Others with closed asylum cases who were told their cases could be reopened were urged to move to a shelter. But about 50 still remained in the camp Saturday.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment Friday and Saturday.
Last month, the Biden administration began processing asylum seekers who had been forced to wait out the long process from Mexico during the administration of former President Donald Trump. The Matamoros camp was one of the most visible signs of a policy implemented in response to high numbers of asylum seekers by an administration that worked in various ways to make it more difficult to access protective status in the United States.
On Saturday, Juan Antonio
Sierra, who runs the separate migrant shelter in Matamoros confirmed that he had committed to housing asylum seekers with closed cases so that the camp could be closed.
Sierra said that the day before, the U.S. Consul in Matamoros, Yolanda Parra, met with officials from the UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute, Sierra and some migrants. She agreed that the U.S. government would evaluate the possible reopening of closed cases for the people who remained in the camp, Sierra said.
The U.S. State Department referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security.
“I was going to take them to the Casa del Migrante until it was sure they were going to cross,” Sierra said. The goal, he said, was to avoid new people arriving at the camp and assure that those who were still there would only cross the border when it was clear their cases would be reopened and avoid that they were immediately deported.
“They’re trying to reopen (the cases),” Sierra said. “You’re not going to send a person so that they deport them to their country.” But he said the migrants were so desperate they “wanted to go without guarantees.”
Asked if word of reopened cases could draw more people to the border, Rev. Francisco Gallardo, who is in charge of the shelter, said “the avalanche is already here, a lot of people are arriving.” He warned it could become more complicated, because there were signs that a new camp would form.
The shelter already has more than 200 migrants staying there.
By Friday afternoon, only several dozen asylum seekers remained in the riverside camp. Workers dismantled primitive shelters and hauled away portable toilets. Friday night, power was cut to the camp. But even with the promise that their cases could be reopened, many resisted abandoning the camp for fear that a less public space would allow their shrunken number to be more easily ignored by the U.S. government.
PORTLAND, ORE. » Elmer Yarborough got a terrifying call from his sister: She wept as she told him two of his nephews may have been shot in broad daylight as they left a bar in Portland, Oregon.
He drove there as fast as he could. An officer told him one of his nephews was heading to the hospital and the other, Tyrell Penney, hadn’t survived.
“My sister, Tyrell’s mom, was on the phone; I just said, ‘He’s gone.’ And I just heard the most horrific scream that you could ever imagine,” Yarborough said.
When Penney was killed last summer, unrest was roiling liberal Portland as protesters took to the streets nightly to demand racial justice and defunding police. At the same time, one of the whitest major cities in America was experiencing its deadliest year in more than a quarter-century — a trend seen nationwide — with shootings that overwhelmingly affected the Black community.
Responding to the calls for change in policing, the mayor and City Council cut several police programs from the budget, including one Yarborough believes could have saved his nephew. A specialized unit focused on curbing gun violence, which had long faced criticism for disproportionately targeting people of color, was disbanded a month before Penney, a 27-year-old Black man visiting from Sacramento, California, was killed on July 25.
Yarborough and some other families wonder if ending the unit is partly to blame for Portland’s dramatic spike in shootings, but officials and experts attribute increased gun violence in cities nationwide to the hardships of the coronavirus pandemic, unemployment, economic anxiety and stress on mental health.
“Without a doubt, I think it is a possibility that my nephew could still be alive if (the Gun Violence Reduction Team) was not dissolved,” said Yarborough, a crisis response volunteer for Portland police who responds to shootings to support victims’ families.
“I cannot say for sure if he would, but what I will tell you is had it not been my nephew that was saved, it probably could have saved the life of someone else,” he said.
More people died of gunfire last year in Portland —
40 — than the entire tally of homicides the previous year. The number of shootings — 900 — was nearly
2 ½ times higher than the year before. The spike has continued this year, with more than 150 shootings, including 45 people wounded and 12 killed so far.
Police had warned of possible repercussions of ending the unit, pointing out
cautionary tales in other cities that had made a similar choice.
Portland police quoted former Salinas, California, Police Chief Kelly McMillin: “Not to be overly dramatic, but if you lose the unit which focuses on removing firearms from the hand of violent offenders, people will die. It’s really just that simple.”
Stockton, California, began
disbanding and defunding police units dedicated to gun violence in 2010. In 2011 and 2012, the city’s homicide rates reached record highs. After the city restored the units, homicides significantly declined, according to data reported by police.
While policing has been refocused in Portland, experts and officials say it’s unlikely those changes caused spikes in gun violence.
“I believe if (the Gun Violence Reduction Team) were (around) today, we would still see a substantial, if not identical increase, in shootings in Portland,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said in January. “This is clearly part of a larger national trend.”
Wheeler, who is also police commissioner, announced the unit’s disbanding last June and reassigned its 34 officers to patrol. He described it as an opportunity to reimagine policing and redirected $7 million in police funds toward communities of color.
WASHINGTON » No news conference. No Oval Office address. No primetime speech to a joint session of Congress.
President Joe Biden is the first executive in four decades to reach this point in his term without holding a formal question and answer session. It reflects a White House media strategy meant both to reserve major media set-pieces for the celebration of a legislative victory and to limit unforced errors from a historically gaffeprone politician.
Biden has opted to take questions about as often as most of his recent predecessors, but he tends to field just one or two informal inquiries at a time, usually in a hurried setting at the end of an event.
In a sharp contrast with the previous administration, the White House is exerting extreme message discipline, empowering staff to speak but doing so with caution. Recalling both Biden’s largely leak-free campaign and the buttoned-up Obama administration, the new White House team has carefully managed the president’s appearances, trying to lower the temperature from Donald Trump’s Washington and to save a big media moment to mark what could soon be a signature accomplishment: passage of the COVID-19 bill.
The message control may serve the president’s purposes but it denies the media opportunities to directly press Biden on major policy issues and to engage in the kind of back-and-forth that can draw out information and thoughts that go beyond the administration’s curated talking points.
“The president has lost some
opportunity, I think, to speak to the country from the bully pulpit. The volume has been turned so low in the Biden White House that they need to worry about whether anyone is listening,” said Frank Sesno, former head of George Washington University’s school of media. “But he’s not great in these news conferences. He rambles. His strongest communication is not extemporaneous.”
Other modern presidents took more questions during their opening days in office.
By this point in their terms, Trump and George H.W. Bush had each held five press conferences, Bill Clinton four, George W. Bush three, Barack Obama two and Ronald Reagan one, according to a study by Martha Kumar, presidential scholar and professor emeritus at Towson University.
Biden has given five interviews as opposed to nine from Reagan and 23 from Obama.
“Biden came in with a plan for how they wanted to disseminate information. When you compare him with Trump, Biden has sense of how you use a staff, that a president can’t do everything himself,”
Kumar said. “Biden has a press secretary who gives regular briefings. He knows you hold a news conference when you have something to say, in particular a victory. They have an idea of how to use this time, early in the administration when people are paying attention, and how valuable that is.”
The new president had taken questions 39 times, according to Kumar’s research, though usually just one or two shouted inquiries from a group of reporters known as the press pool at the end of an event in the White House’s State Dining Room or Oval Office.
Those exchanges can at times be clunky, with the cacophony of shouts or the whir of the blades of the presidential helicopter idling on the South Lawn making it difficult to have a meaningful exchange.
“Press conferences are critical
to informing the American people and holding an administration accountable to the public,” said Associated Press reporter Zeke Miller, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. “As it has with prior presidents, the WHCA continues to call on President Biden to hold formal press conferences with regularity.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday defended the president’s accessibility to the media and suggested that a news conference
was likely by the end of March.
“I would say that his focus is on getting recovery and relief to the American people and he looks forward to continuing to engage with all of you and to other members of the media who aren’t here today,” Psaki said. “And we’ll look forward to letting you know, as soon as that press conference is set.”
The president’s first address to a joint session of Congress — not technically a State of the Union address but a speech that typically has just as much pomp — is also tentatively planned for the end of March, aides have said. However, the format of
the address is uncertain due to the pandemic.
The president has received high marks for two major scripted addresses, his inaugural address and his speech marking the
500,000th death to COVID-19.
Having overcome a childhood stutter, Biden has long enjoyed interplay with reporters and has defied aides’ requests to ignore questions from the press. Famously long-winded, Biden has been prone to gaffes throughout his long political career and, as president, has occasionally struggled with off-thecuff remarks.
His use of the phrase “Neanderthal
thinking” this week to describe the decision by the governors of Texas and Mississippi to lift mask mandates dominated a new cycle and drew ire from Republicans. That created the type of distraction his aides have tried to avoid and, in a pandemic silver lining, were largely able to dodge during the campaign because the virus kept Biden home for months and limited the potential for public mistakes.
Firmly pledging his belief in freedom of the press, Biden has rebuked his predecessor’s incendiary rhetoric toward the media, including Trump’s references
to reporters as “the enemy of the people.” Biden restored the daily press briefing, which had gone extinct under Trump, opening a window into the workings of the White House. His staff has also fanned out over cable news to promote the COVID-19 relief bill.
And while Biden’s own Twitter account, in a sharp break from Trump’s social media habits, usually offers rote postings, his chief of staff Ron Klain has become a frequent tweeter, using the platform to amplify messages and critique opponents.
Delaying the news conference and joint address also,
symbolically, have kept open the first chapter of Biden’s presidency and perhaps extended his honeymoon. His approval rating stood at 60% in a poll released Friday from The Associated PressNORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Tobe Berkovitz, a professor at Boston University’s college of communications, said Biden’s “rope-a-dope” strategy was right for the moment.
“Presidential press conferences are not on the top of the agenda for Americans who are worried about COVID and the economic disaster that has befallen so many families,” he said.
To the Times:
In Pennsylvania thousands of coyotes and other wildlife are tortured in gruesome, merciless killing contests just for thrills and prizes, and most of their fur are used as hood liners in winter coats.
These contests are antithetical to the way most Americans believe animals should be treated, and many states have outlawed these horrific killing contests. Investigators from The Humane Society of the United States observed chilling scenes of participants dragging the bodies of dead animals, grinning next to the bloodied animals and sharing gruesome jokes about their kills. Children played among the dead, seemingly inured to the violence.
Wildlife management professionals and scientists stress that killing coyotes will not reduce coyote numbers, reduce conflicts with farm animals, or yield more deer and turkey for hunters. Shoot or poison coyotes and you will have just as many again within a year or two. Kill one or both members of the alpha pair and other pairs will form and reproduce. Wild carnivore species like coyotes and foxes do not “overpopulate.” They self-regulate their own numbers based on available habitat and food supply.
A growing number of citizens are calling on their communities and states to pass laws banning this cruel blood sport. As of September 2020, seven states have banned killing contests.
Contact the Pennsylvania Game Commission to encourage them to ban Wildlife Killing Contests pgccomments@ pa.gov Express your opposition to the contests to your state lawmakers, and encourage your city or county council to pass a resolution or your mayor to issue a proclamation opposing wildlife killing contests.
These contests are not “wildlife management,” but simply a cruel blood sport, and should not be encouraged in the name of “recreation.”
For more information go to https://www.humanesociety. org/.../HSUS_Wildlife-Killing...