Politics

In a who-woulda-thunk-it scenario, about half of Washington, D.C.’s elected city officials are under one kind of cloud or another, a situation that has left residents angry, embarrassed, racially divided and fearful for the political future of their shaky and shaken local government. The controversies include the two top leaders of the district government —…

I didn’t have to be in the room or even in the country — which I am not right now — to have anticipated the rousing reception for Michelle Obama when she visited with young women and girls in South Africa’s black township of Soweto. Reading the White House pool reports, as even most reporters…

Throughout first lady Michelle Obama’s trip to Africa, The Root will be running selected press pool reports. FLOTUS POOL REPORT 2 — THURS., 6/23/11 At the University of Cape Town, the first lady began her conversation with girls and boys selected from nearby townships at about 2 p.m. The 55 students all attend high school. There…

Throughout first lady Michelle Obama’s trip to Africa, The Root will be running selected press pool reports. FLOTUS POLL REPORT 1 — THURS., 6/23/11 Cape Town, South Africa — Before the District 6 museum visit, FLOTUS met with local Embassy officials at her hotel on the waterfront. At the museum she and her family took a…

Things have not been working out for the Congressional Black Caucus. Between its 43 members, this year the organization has introduced 40 different jobs bills to address the national unemployment rate of 9.1 percent (and 16.2 percent for African Americans in particular). They’ve met twice with President Obama on the issue. But their legislative efforts…

As states grappled with ways to reinvigorate the flagging public education system, charter schools were offered up as an attractive alternative: a way to break outside the mold and offer the kind of innovative learning environment and accountability for results that is more often associated with private schools. Some critics fear that this alternative is…

Throughout first lady Michelle Obama’s trip to Africa, The Root will be running selected press pool reports. FLOTUS POLL REPORT 1 — WED, 6/22/11 Johannesburg — Speaking from a Soweto church thrust onto the front lines of the fight against apartheid, first lady Michelle Obama urged young South Africans to conquer hunger and AIDS and…

The Washington Post is reporting that President Obama will face a stiff political challenge Wednesday in presenting his plan for a gradual end to the U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan. His prime-time address must remind a skeptical electorate and a concerned Congress that the country’s longest war remains worth fighting — and funding — for…

Yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Wal-Mart v. Dukes (pdf) — the largest employment-discrimination suit ever filed in the United States — reflects precisely the kind of overreach that makes so many of the decisions by the court’s five-member conservative majority sweeping and regressive. It’s not as though experts expected that a majority of the…