Politics

Tavis Smiley, known for his unrelenting criticism of Barack Obama, recently told the Huffington Post that his commentary is rooted in holding the president accountable as the nation’s leader. “As Cornel West and I said many years ago; I respect the president; I will protect the president against white supremacist attacks or anything else he’s…

Since President Obama has decided not to move forward with any immigration-reform work until the midterm elections are over, voter-advocacy groups are finding it hard to get disappointed Latinos to the voting booths this fall. “It’s hard,” Sonia Marquez, a director for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, told Al-Jazeera. Of Obama’s postponement of his promised deportation relief for undocumented…

Despite polls this week showing that the public is losing confidence in President Barack Obama’s handling of foreign policy, you can put me down in that dwindling category of folks who, up to now, actually think that his handling of the threat from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria—ISIS for short—has generally been about…

President Barack Obama has a problem. Just when he thought he was getting out of the Middle East, he keeps getting pulled back in. After declaring the successful conclusion of two wars initiated by his predecessor, the centerpiece of his foreign policy, external events have backed the president into a proverbial corner. And Wednesday night…

There’s no shortage of calls for racial healing or proposals for community initiatives in slowly back-to-normal Ferguson, Mo. But as the dust settles and the tear gas cannisters pile up in recycle bins, a malignant return to that special brand of Ferguson status quo may be what’s really happening. After everything that’s happened over the…

In an effort to avoid a repeat of last year’s partial government shutdown, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are promising action as they return to Capitol Hill after summer break, the Associated Press reports. At the same time, they hope to define their parties for the fall campaign. Last fall, Republican House leaders…

Going into the final stretch of President Barack Obama’s presidency, as Americans—and particularly African Americans—begin to form opinions about his legacy on issues of race (that is, what he’s done for black people), they’ll look back to a couple of great rhetorical moments and key policy successes, but they’ll also remember that he was perhaps…

In politics, getting even 60 percent of the vote is considered a landslide. But in the 2012 presidential election, 93 percent of black voters cast their ballots for President Barack Obama—politics doesn’t even have a word for that kind of margin. So it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that a young, African-American woman like…

President Barack Obama doubled down on his vow to eliminate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—the terrorist group responsible for the recent beheadings of two American journalists—Wednesday during a press conference in Estonia. According to an Al-Jazeera report, Obama, using an alternative acronym for the group, issued this declaration: “Our objective is clear, and…

Every so often, an incident symptomatic of deeper issues triggers a release valve for collective despair. The killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., sparked a movement much larger than concerns about the aggressive policing of black men. The marches and protests are a larger commentary about the economic and societal disenfranchisement of black people…