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What It Means That a Black Woman Is Leading Julián Castro’s Campaign for President
WASHINGTON, D.C.—When Maya Rupert walked into then-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro’s office with a tricky problem to solve, she expected some resistance. It was November 2015, and the agency had long been mulling a rule that would require HUD-funded shelters to accept transgender people under their proper genders, not the ones they were…
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Kamala Harris Stands By Her Time As a Prosecutor in Breakfast Club Interview
Monday morning, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris appeared on The Breakfast Club to discuss a wide range of subjects, from her time as a prosecutor, to critiques of her blackness, to her cooking skills. The interview, which had some interesting gems, was a mix of the predictable—she mostly stood by her time as a prosecutor, which…
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Maxine Waters Calls Donald Trump a 'Bluffer' Ahead of the State of the Union Address
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters has never bitten her tongue when it comes to expressing her disdain for Donald Trump, the white-supremacist-in-chief. During an interview with The Root, Rep. Waters told us how to push back against Trump’s bully tactics, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership and how she feels empowered by the new crop of black…
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Nancy Pelosi on Stacey Abrams, Black Lives Matter and Standing Up to Trump
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is known as the woman who tells Donald Trump “no” and continues to be the backbone of the Democratic Party. Her leadership was long-questioned during the midterms until her chamber enjoyed a record-setting blue wave of progressive, ethnically diverse freshman congresswomen. Pelosi spent a few minutes with The Root sharing her…
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Cory Booker to Announce Decision on Presidential Run, Would Become Second Strong Black Candidate in the Race [Updated]
Update: 2/1/2019, 10:16 a.m. ET: Senator Cory Booker is running for president of the United States, making his announcement on the first day of Black History Month. Read below his comments about running for president, among other issues, in this interview exclusive to The Root. Earlier: Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) would be one of the…
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Chuck Schumer: Trump Can't 'Take Hostages' In Negotiations Over Border Security
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was in a relaxed, confident mood when I met him in his office Tuesday afternoon—and for good reason. President Donald Trump had recently been forced to agree to the Democratic position that the government be reopened before any talks about a possible border wall—the reason Trump shut the government down—without…
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Newark Mayor to Trump: Forget the Wall! Our City’s Water Has ‘Dangerously High’ Levels of Lead
Newark, N.J., Mayor Ras J. Baraka wrote a letter to Donald Trump, urging the president to ditch his potential plan to fund his long-sought border wall with emergency funds and instead send some of that money to Newark to replace faulty lead lines that are leaking “dangerously high levels of lead” into the city’s tap…
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Rashida Tlaib, the Hypocritical Cuss Word Controversy, and the Myth of Political Civility
As a young boy growing up in Detroit during the 1980s, I remember the late Coleman A. Young, the city’s first black mayor, cussing people out—usually news reporters. If you grew up in Detroit then or in the early 1990s, one of your favorite pastimes was joking about Coleman—we called him by his first name—telling…
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Little Rock, Arkansas' Young, Black Millennial Hope for Mayor Looks to Unify the City
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Frank Scott knows he’s a black man. And he knows everyone knows he is favored to win tomorrow’s mayoral runoff. He knows black folks in Little Rock want him to represent them. But the community banking executive knows that in order to win, he needs to bring the city together and convince white…
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Mike Espy Didn't Make History in Mississippi, But He and Other Black Candidates Definitely Made Progress
JACKSON, Miss—The U.S. Senate runoff between Mike Espy and Cindy Hyde-Smith got most of the national attention, but that race may not have been the most important one in Mississippi this election cycle. That’s why it’s important to not let disappointment about Espy’s failed bid to become one of the rare black candidates to win…
