Politics
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Jan. 7, 2008: The Day Hillary Clinton Lost the Black Vote
It was a long time ago in an America we would hardly recognize today: Jan. 7 of 2008. The main conversation around Bill Cosby was his conservative positions, not his choice of home beverage. Tracee Ellis Ross was still Joan and not Rainbow. And Dr. Ben Carson was still just the best neurosurgeon in American history.…
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5 Things to Watch This 2016 Election Year
The first week of the New Year is the perfect time for political predictions, trend-spotting and a whole host of other prognostications about the upcoming year, only half of which will likely come true. However, 2016 won’t be like most election years. It’s an open-seat election; we’re definitely getting a new president-elect by November, unless…
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President Obama Just Made Gun Control an Election Issue in 2016
About 15 seconds after President Barack Obama delivered a heartfelt, emotional series of proposals for gun safety, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) released a statement. Within five minutes after President Obama finished speaking, Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee, released a statement. The swiftness with which these statements were released means that unless the…
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She Botched the George Zimmerman Trial, but Will Angela Corey Get Re-Elected in Fla.?
If you live in one of the 10 or so swing states for the 2016 presidential election, about 12 hours ago, you started getting bombarded with zillions of ads. Whether they’re ads suggesting that Marco Rubio is an absentee senator or ads in which Donald Trump is promising to build a wall against Mexicans or…
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Poll Finds That Americans Hold Negative Views of American Muslims
President Barack Obama weighed in recently on the storm of controversy surrounding Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s recent proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, calling such ideas a blatant appeal to Americans’ fears. “Blue-collar men have had a lot of trouble in this new economy,” Obama told National Public Radio late…
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Black and Hispanic Members of Congress Furious Over $1.1 Trillion Spending Bill
Members of both the black and Hispanic caucuses in Congress are furious about a new tax deal and spending package expected to pass the House and Senate Friday. The deal, involving over $1.1 trillion in federal spending and containing nearly $700 billion in unpaid-for tax cuts, is likely to be signed by President Barack Obama. “The…
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Do Republicans Really Want the Black and Latino Vote?
“Get him the hell out of here,” said Donald Trump. Later, Trump’s supporters shouted, “Go home, n—ger.” That’s the claim by Mercutio Southall, co-founder of the Birmingham, Ala., chapter of Black Lives Matter. Video footage of the incident, which has gone viral, shows white Trump supporters shoving, punching and kicking the black activist in response…
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Wake Up, Black People. The Supreme Court Is Poised to Drop a Bomb on You
So, there’s nothing new about a spoiled rich white dude saying crazy things so he can get a bump in a poll. On real, tell us something we don’t know about professional megaphone Donald Trump. Yet that’s all we spent much of this week munching on … while a conservative Supreme Court quietly considered how…
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Justice Scalia Questions Whether Blacks Ought to Be at Top-Tier Universities
On Wednesday, in Fisher v. University of Texas—a case about a white woman who believes she was denied admission to the University of Texas because less-qualified blacks were admitted instead via affirmative action—Antonin Scalia, a U.S. Supreme Court justice, challenged the attorneys defending the University of Texas by openly questioning whether blacks who are admitted to…
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Amid Trump Anti-Muslim Furor, Muslim Rep. André Carson Receives Death Threat
On Tuesday, Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.) told The Root that he received a death threat on Dec. 7, the same day reality-TV-star-turned-presidential-candidate Donald Trump announced that Muslims should be barred from entering the U.S. The threat against Carson was referred to the U.S. Capitol Police. Earlier this week, Trump released a statement, the first sentence of which called for “a…