Politics

John W. Boyd Jr., the steadfast leader of the National Black Farmers Association, was in high spirits last December. President Barack Obama had just signed a bill authorizing $1.25 billion to settle a long-standing discrimination case filed by thousands of black farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The feat was hailed as a landmark…

ColorLines’ Shani O. Hilton is reporting that members of the Congressional Black Caucus are angry with President Obama’s announced budget cuts. In his press conference yesterday, Obama insisted that “just like every family in America, the government has to do two things at once: It has to live within its means and it has to…

The Associated Press is reporting that President Barack Obama has won a showdown vote in the GOP-controlled House to kill a costly alternative engine for the Pentagon’s next-generation fighter jet. A flood of Republican freshmen elected on a platform to cut the budget helped President Obama win the costly battle. Many taxpayer watchdog groups weighed…

Last week the Democratic National Committee announced that Charlotte, N.C., would host the 2012 Democratic National Convention. The Queen City wrestled the convention away from more popular cities like Cleveland, Minneapolis and St. Louis, Mo., to take its place on the world’s stage, playing host to no fewer than 30,000 delegates. By all accounts, the…

First lady of the United States Michelle Obama’s quest for the improvement of health continues. Politics Daily is reporting that Mrs. Obama will be speaking out about removing barriers to breast-feeding as a way to reduce childhood obesity. Babies that are breast-fed are less likely to be obese. This comes as the Obama administration in…

It started with H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Introduced in late January by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the bill would prevent tax benefits for health care plans that cover abortion and also change language in the Hyde Amendment that allows government funding for abortion in cases of rape, incest or endangerment…

News agency AFP is examining how the Republican Party will respond to a series of surprise setbacks, some suffered at the hands of their own “archconservative political shock troops” in the Tea Party. “We’re in a new era,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters, shrugging off his woes as the new majority’s growing pains. “That…

The Associated Press is reporting that President Barack Obama is sending Congress a $3.73 trillion spending blueprint that pledges $1.1 trillion in deficit savings over the next decade through spending cuts and tax increases. Obama’s new budget projects that the deficit for the current year will surge to an all-time high of $1.65 trillion. That…

To some it may seem as though the uprising in Egypt happened without much warning. But not for Egyptian-born scholar and author Tarek Osman, whose predictive book, Egypt on the Brink, reads like a subtle “I told you so.” Egypt on the Brink unpacks the political, social and religious tensions that led to the eventual…

As Egyptians celebrate the end of Mubarak’s 30-year reign, Nicolaus Mills, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, remembers the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. In this essay, he talks about the power of nonviolent protests when demanding change. As I watched the television footage of demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square make the decision to reduce the…