Politics

President Obama apparently is also commander in chief of Twitter. Burson-Marsteller’s annual Twiplomacy report shows that (@BarackObama) surpasses second-place Pope Francis (@Pontifex) for the most followed world leader on Twitter with 33,510,157 followers as of July 1, Politico reports. Despite his large following, Obama’s tweets are on average only retweeted 2,309 times versus Pope Francis’s 11,116 retweets…

President Barack Obama plans to give a series of back-to-back speeches over the next two days aimed at pushing for policies to expand the middle class. The goal is to help people he says are still struggling years after the financial crisis, the Associated Press reports. The talks come as Congress prepares to leave Capitol…

(The Root) — Reduced to its very essence, the contention over immigration reform is about numbers, meaning how many immigrants of color will further alter the complexion of America and how they might vote. For that reason, African Americans should care about the outcome of the current debate in Washington, D.C., because it is about…

In the wake of President Obama’s speech about the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial, Democracy Now talked with outspoken Obama critic Cornel West on Monday to get his thoughts on the president’s comments, the Huffington Post reports. The professor cited the killing of innocent people during U.S. drone strikes and called the president a…

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson acknowledges that he could not have been more wrong a week ago when he wrote that President Barack Obama would not be able to address effectively the issues of race that the George Zimmerman trial raised. Robinson is encouraged by the degree to which Obama explained what it’s like to be…

First lady Michelle Obama is a known advocate for healthy living. Now she’s tackling another issue: gun violence. The Associated Press reports that she met with high school students from a gang-infested neighborhood in Chicago to talk about Congress’ gun control debate. As a mother raising children herself, Obama says that part of the debate…

(The Root) — Barack Obama passed a crucial test of presidential leadership this past Friday by directly and forthrightly addressing the crisis of race and democracy that has gripped the nation’s attention in the wake of the George Zimmerman trial. In an impromptu address to the White House press corps, Obama adopted the role of…

(The Root) — If the state of Florida’s prosecution of George Zimmerman was an uphill battle, any Department of Justice effort to prove that he violated Trayvon Martin’s civil rights would face the legal equivalent of Mount Everest. The federal government faces intensifying pressure to indict the former neighborhood-watch volunteer on civil rights charges that…

(The Root) — Though, like so many others, I was moved by President Barack Obama’s insightful remarks at Friday’s White House press briefing, I stand by my view that the president would have been better served in the long run if he’d let his original comments on the George Zimmerman verdict stand on their own.…