November 14, 2019

Housing Discrimination Complaints Reach a 24-year High as HUD Rolls Back Fair Housing Rules 

By Charlene Crowell

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - As a candidate, President Donald Trump promised if elected that deregulation of the federal government would be an administration priority. Soon after taking the oath of office, he issued an executive order requiring that all departments and agencies to eliminate two existing regulations for every one new regulation proposed. In some cases, rules that were adopted prior to his term office but had not yet taken effect were either suspended or delayed.

For example, the long-awaited payday rule at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was one important consumer protection that was delayed. Similarly, at the Department of Education, two rules providing protections for student loans were also delayed. More recently, this column shared how Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson claimed that regulation was the reason for homelessness, not affordable housing.

Now new research by the National Fair Housing Alliance finds that as fair lending laws have not been aggressively enforced, a corresponding rise in hate crimes and fair housing complaints have emerged.

Defending Against Unprecedented Attacks on Fair Housing: 2019 Fair Housing Trends Report, recently released by the DC-based National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), tallied 31,202 discriminatory housing complaints filed in just one year – 2018. Moreover, this data point is the highest number ever reported since the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) began collecting data 24 years ago. America’s hate crimes jumped 14.7% last year as well.

Even when it comes to enforcing and defending legal breaches, NFHA’s report documents how few government offices are upholding laws. Some 75% of last year’s fair housing complaints were pursued by private, nonprofit organizations across the country.  Only 25% of such cases were the result of combined government actions by state, local and federal agencies.

“All the tools and resources we have been afforded by the passage of our Fair Housing Act and fair lending laws are either under attack or being gutted,” noted Lisa Rice, President and CEO of NFHA. “[W]e must concern ourselves with policies pushed by our federal, state, and local governments that are steeped in hatred and designed to inflict pain.”

Instead of strengthening federal fair housing guarantees, HUD is a prime example of how regulations are trying to reverse decades of progress. One particular HUD rule, disparate impact, is at severe risk. This long-standing legal tool has helped root out discriminatory practices and policies in both housing and lending. In 2013 and under the Obama Administration, HUD set up safeguards that assured consumers could pursue related claims while businesses were protected against claims without merit.

With disparate impact, both community banks and FDIC-insured institutions have achieved net growth profits. The rule has proven to create lending that is fairer and profits that investors desire.

Even a 2015 landmark fair housing case that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court upheld disparate impact as a cognizable claim under the Fair Housing Act. In Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., the nation’s highest court found the disparate impact rule to be an important fair housing tool to move towards a more integrated society.

So why would Secretary Carson try to roll back a rule that should be settled law?

In joint comments filed by the Center for Responsible Lending, Self-Help Credit Union, and Self-Help Federal Credit Union, the organizations advised Secretary Carson.

“Instead of creating barriers for claimants, HUD should honor its mission and work to ensure that African-American, Latino, and other communities harmed by housing and lending discrimination have every tool to stop it so that all Americans have an opportunity to thrive,” wrote the organizations.

For the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc., the Rainbow Push Coalition, and scores of other local, state and regional faith members, HUD was reminded of the immorality of its proposed rule.

“Everyday Americans are now struggling to keep and/or find homes they can afford,” wrote the clergy. “As housing prices rise faster than incomes, an increasing number of people grapple with challenges of how hard it is to keep their loved ones safe. When the additional and illegal burden of housing discrimination emerges, the lives of many people worsen.”

Here’s hoping that within government there are still public servants that support improving peoples’ lives.

Nov. 10, 2019

85 Percent of Blacks Want Trump Impeached
57 Percent of Latinos Agree in Poll, Only 41 Percent of Whites
By Richard Prince

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Journal-isms

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Eighty-five percent of African-Americans say President Trump should be impeached, the highest of any ethnic group, according to the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll.

Fifty-seven percent of Hispanics feel the same way, the poll shows.

However, only 41 percent of Whites do, according to the survey, meaning that the common conclusion that the country is evenly divided on the impeachment issue is possible only because of the intense anti-Trump feeling among people of color.

“A year out from the 2020 election, we don’t have 2020 vision, but the general dynamics of the race are coming into focus: a sitting president below 50 percent, who receives credit on the economy, speaks his mind for better or worse, but who most Americans do not trust and who is facing an impeachment inquiry that a majority of Americans support,” a summary of the poll said. “Taken together, these suggest a tough road ahead for Donald Trump. . . .”

Jeff Horwitt, a senior vice president at Hart Research and Associates, which conducted the survey for the two news organizations, told Journal-isms that the sample sizes for Asian Americans and Native Americans were too small to be valid.

He gave the racial breakdown as follows: Impeach/Not impeach

• White - 41 percent/54 percent
• African-American - 85 percent/9 percent
• Hispanic - 57 percent/40 percent

“The raw number of interviews among all adults are 117 African Americans and 99 Hispanics,” Horwitt messaged.

The poll was conducted from Oct. 27 to 30, among 900 adults of all races, with additional interviews to get to 414 interviews among Democratic primary voters, the survey takers said.

The results for Blacks and Latinos clearly contradict Trump’s frequent boasts that people of color support him.

Trump made a typical claim in July when he insulted the majority-Black city of Baltimore. “What I’ve done for African Americans, no president, I would say, has done. Now, I’ll say this: they are so happy, because I get the calls,” he told reporters as he left for a speech in Virginia that was boycotted by Black state lawmakers, as Daniel Dale reported July 30 for CNN. “They are so happy at what I’ve been able to do in Baltimore and other Democratic-run, corrupt cities.”

Trump continued later: “The African-American people have been calling the White House. They have never been so happy [at] what a president has done. Not only the lowest unemployment in history for African-Americans, not only opportunity zones for, really, the biggest beneficiary the inner city, and not only criminal justice reform. But they’re so happy that I pointed out the corrupt politics of Baltimore. It’s filthy dirty. It’s so horrible. And they are happy as hell.”

At a rally in New Mexico in September, Trump claimed, “We are working night and day to deliver a future of limitless opportunities for our nation’s Hispanic-American citizens. . . . Nobody loves the Hispanics more. We love our Hispanics, get out and vote,” Bess Levin reported Sept. 17 for Vanity Fair.

Trump also said, “At the center of America’s drug crisis, this is where the Hispanics know it better than anybody. People said, ‘Oh, the Hispanics won’t like a wall.’ I said, ‘I think they are going to love it.’ You know why? Because you understand it better than other people, but at the whole center of this crisis is the drugs that are pouring in, and you understand that when other people don’t understand it.’ . . . .”

Nov. 12, 2019

The Trump Impeachment Inquiry: What is it About and Why Should You Care? 

By Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson

U. S. Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.)

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - It’s an historic week on Capitol Hill during which hearings on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump will move from behind closed doors to must-see TV.

Millions of Americans who have not had the time or a desire to read the more than 2,000 pages of testimony from the confidential briefings released by the House Intelligence Committee will finally get to see what the fuss has been all about.

So, what is it all about, why the initial closed-door depositions, and why should you care?

President Trump is being accused of urging Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in a telephone conversation to investigate alleged corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, and to also look into debunked conspiracy theories that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 presidential election, both for his own political benefit. To gain leverage against Zelensky, Trump for a time withheld a $391 million aid package to push the foreign leader to do his bidding.

This gross abuse of power, which put at risk Ukrainian lives and our own national security, was first brought to light by a whistleblower whose initial allegations have since been corroborated by an unimpeachable group of high-level State Department officials who have devoted their careers to public service and American democracy. More important, they have first-hand knowledge of the shakedown.

This next phase comes after weeks of false accusations by GOP lawmakers that they were being squeezed out of a fact-finding process that they also claimed lacked transparency. The witnesses’ initial testimonies were delivered in a secure, confidential setting to prevent them from comparing notes and preserve the integrity of their depositions.

Now the public will have an opportunity to hear from them directly and make their own decisions about their credibility.

Republicans have for weeks complained about the process but have had little to say about the actual substance of the inquiry because of unassailable facts.

• Fact one: President Trump asked a foreign government to dig up dirt on the Bidens, who are American citizens, in exchange for money that Congress had already appropriated for Ukraine to defend itself against Russia.
• Fact two: He admitted on national television that he and Zelensky had discussed the Bidens. 
• Fact three: During a White House briefing, Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, acknowledged on national television that the aid had been withheld in part until Ukraine investigated the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the Democratic Party emails in 2016. “And that is absolutely appropriate,” Mulvaney said.

Don’t believe the hype. It is not only not appropriate; it’s extortion.

Like every member of Congress, Trump has taken an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Yet since day one in office he has broken that promise. He has in fact made more than 13,000 false or misleading claims—from the mundane, such as the size of his inauguration day crowd, to the insane, like the one about former President Barack Obama initiating the policy of separating children from their families at the border. He has even lied about me.

The president has little to no respect for the rule of law nor any for those who do. Indeed, he believes he is above the law, which to our nation’s detriment, his Republican allies reinforce daily.

Former national security advisor John Bolton has likened the pact Trump tried to make with Zelensky to a “drug deal” and it has been deeply dismaying to witness Republican lawmakers figuratively contort themselves in an effort to sell it to the American public. Clearly, they all stepped away for popcorn during that infamous scene in the movie Scarface, when Tony Montana was advised to “never get high on your own supply.” The trope is not exclusive to drug dealing and Republicans on Capitol Hill have clearly entered an alternate reality.

Donald Trump is set to become the third president in our nation’s history to be impeached by the House. It may not immediately push him out of office, but it hopefully will yank him and his allies back into the real world where no one is above the law and drive home a lesson at the polls that there’s a price to pay for those who believe that they are. A blue wave in 2020 could make the one in 2018 seem more like a ripple.

Oct. 29, 2019

Trump Is Not Alone Among Americans in Failing to Understand What a Real Lynching Is
By Jesse Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Donald Trump’s use of the term “lynching” to describe the ongoing impeachment inquiry in the House naturally sparked bipartisan outrage. The president and his shameless apologist, South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham, defended the use of the word, with Graham calling the investigation a “lynching in every sense.”

Surely Graham, who comes from a state that, the Equal Justice Initiative reports, lynched 187 Black people between 1877 and 1950, should know better. He was a member of the Senate when it voted unanimously in December 2018 to make lynching a federal crime, calling it “the ultimate expression of racism in the U.S.,” and classifying it as a hate crime.

Trump’s casual use of the word is an indication of the sad reality that America has largely failed to address the role of racial terror and violence in our history, and its legacy in distorting our criminal justice system. The myths of Black criminality that were used to justify racial terror have never been adequately confronted and are reflected in the unprecedented — and still racially skewed — mass incarceration in America. To this day, no Congress has passed, and no president has signed into law, a bill to outlaw lynching as a federal hate crime. Trump defended himself, saying that lynching is a “word that many Democrats have used.”

That’s true, but that only reinforces the need to confront the truth of the past. Lynching — and racial terror — was used purposefully after the Civil War in the former states of the Confederacy to reimpose racial subordination and segregation. In its compelling report, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” the Equal Justice Initiative compiled records of 4,075 “racial terror lynchings” of African Americans in 12 states of the South from the post-Civil War Reconstruction era to World War II. The report shows that “terror lynchings in the American South were not isolated hate crimes committed by rogue vigilantes. Lynching was targeted racial violence at the core of a systematic campaign of terror perpetrated in furtherance of an unjust social order.”

Whatever complaints Republicans may have about an impeachment hearing convened in Congress under its constitutional authority, it surely is not a lynching. Lynching in the South was not done by fringes of the society taking the law in their own hands. It was often organized by the community’s most prominent people and condoned by officials. Lynchings were often gruesome public spectacles, with victims tortured and murdered in front of picnicking spectators. Their intent was not simply to terrorize blacks, but to reinforce among Whites the myth that blacks were sub-human. They were not about controlling crime, but about racial control. Their perpetrators were celebrated, not prosecuted.

The Equal Justice Initiative reports that only 1 percent of those committing lynchings were convicted of a criminal offense after 1900. Racial terror in the South succeeded in re-establishing white rule and black subordination after the Civil War. With whites in control of the criminal justice system, lynching became less prevalent, with mass incarceration and capital punishment taking its place. Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative has led the effort to create a process for remembering and confronting this shameful past and understanding its legacies in our present. He notes that communities across the South have memorials to the leaders of the Confederacy and of the Klan, but have failed to memorialize the innocent victims of racial terror. The contrast with countries like Germany and even South Africa that have sought to learn from the horrors of their history is dramatic.

For 100 years, the NAACP campaigned to make lynching a federal crime, initially in the hope that federal intervention would bring the perpetrators to justice, and finally as an expression of truth-telling. The efforts were always blocked by filibusters organized by Southern senators. In 2005, the Senate passed a resolution apologizing to the victims of lynching for their failure to pass anti-lynching legislation. In 2018, the Senate finally unanimously passed anti-lynching legislation for the first time.

In June of this year, the House Judiciary Committee put forth HR 35, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, for a vote before the House. Trump’s egregious comment provides the occasion for truth-telling. The House and the Senate should finally act together to put the anti-lynching bill on the president’s desk for his signature, and join in a national teach-in, perhaps a joint session of the Congress, to educate Americans about the reality of lynching and the lies it spread that still need to be dispelled.