blogging the beltway

After an outbreak of tornadoes ripped through the Southeast this week, killing more than 300 people in seven states, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama visited Alabama to see firsthand the extent of the damage. With at least 210 fatalities, Alabama was hit hardest by the storms. “We can’t bring those who have…

With Congress on spring recess and President Obama darting in and out of Washington for town hall meetings and DNC fundraisers, it had been relatively quiet in the nation’s capital (except for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s press conference on the economy, the announcement that CIA Director Leon Panetta is poised to succeed Robert Gates…

The sun-drenched south lawn of the White House underwent a playground renovation on Monday morning, as the president and first lady kicked off the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. Pastel-dressed families from all 50 states (30,000 visitors in total are expected) milled about the grassy landscape, with the Marine Corps brass band playing nostalgic…

On the second leg of a three-day town hall tour, President Obama visited Facebook’s Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters for a conversation with “the youth.” Fielding questions from both Facebook users around the country and staffers at the office, he touched on a broad range of subjects, including the deficit, health care and the housing crisis.…

On the one-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, President Obama released a statement marking the occasion. Noting his administration’s efforts to hold BP accountable for the catastrophic damage wreaked on the Gulf Coast, he admitted that the job is far from done. “Today we remember the 11 lives lost as a result…

In January, I talked to Congressional Black Caucus chairman Emanuel Cleaver about the CBC’s then pending budget. “It is extremely important to have a budget proposal that comes from the vantage point of poor people,” Cleaver told The Root at the time, adding that even if the document died in Congress, Americans would at least…

Before President Obama presented his debt-reduction plan in a speech at George Washington University on Wednesday, he first offered a scathing critique of the Republican proposal, introduced last week by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. Ryan’s plan aims to trim $4 trillion from the deficit over 10 years, mostly by cutting programs that serve the poor,…

It’s been a rocky week for President Obama in general, but particularly concerning his connection to African Americans. After kicking off his re-election campaign with a well-received speech at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network conference, the same event culminated with a televised shouting match between Sharpton and Dr. Cornel West over whether the…

I called it. At literally the 11th hour, Democrats and Republicans reached a tentative deal on this year’s budget, averting a government shutdown. The agreement came despite a day largely marked by Republicans’ refusal to drop their demands to ban funding for Planned Parenthood (which represents less than 1 percent of federal spending, none of…

I recently wrote a piece on what the Affordable Care Act does about racial and ethnic health disparities, a long-standing problem that had never been addressed by federal legislation before the law’s passage. The law takes important steps to improve health care access and quality for low-income communities of color, but its efforts to confront…