Candidacy of VP Kamala Harris Catches Fire as Biden Bows Out of Presidential Race By Hazel Trice Edney

Biden Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden during their first year in the White House.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – President Joe Biden has shocked the nation by withdrawing from his bid for a second term in the White House and immediately endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

The move has electrified the base and the backbone of the Democratic Party – Black voters and especially Black women. A level of enthusiasm and excitement have caught fire, drawing major endorsements for Harris as Biden support had seriously fizzled among party leaders.

At this writing, Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.); former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); former President Bill Clinton and former Senator Hillary Clinton are just a few of the string of power houses in the Democratic Party who have joined Biden in his endorsement of Harris. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Monday that he would be meeting with Harris and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) before likely announcing an endorsement of Harris. Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama had not made an endorsement on Monday.

Within the first 48 hours of Biden’s announcement on Twitter that he was bowing out of the race against former President Donald Trump, at least $80 million in grassroots donations had poured into Harris’ campaign. That includes more than a million dollars raised during a Zoom call with more than 40,000 people Sunday night, reportedly to stress the importance of Black women in the get out to vote effort.

According to the Washington Informer, speakers on the call included Reps. Joyce Beatty, Maxine Waters, and Jasmine Crockett. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, civil rights leader Bernice King, and Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown were also on the call, according to the Informer.

A similar call with Black men was held Monday, July 22, 35,000 people. They reportedly raised over $1.2 million in just under three hours. The #WinWithBlackMen call was led by talk show host Roland Martin.

President Biden stunned the nation with his mid-day Sunday announcement of his withdrawal. He said he would have more to say this week. Still healing from a case of COVID-19 on Monday, he had not spoken publicly since releasing the letter amidst increasing pressure to drop out of the race. The pressure began following his poor CNN debate performance against Trump, who told a series of lies during the live broadcast June 27. Democrats had also increasingly complained that Biden, 81, is too old to run again although Trump, at 79, is not that much younger.

In Biden’s letter, declaring he was leaving the campaign, he listed a few of his major accomplishments, including appointing the first Black woman to the U. S. Supreme Court, gun safety legislation, affordable health care and climate legislation. He then stated, "It has been the greatest honour of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”

Biden continued in a separate statement to fellow Democrats, “I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this."

Biden received praises and applause across the nation from fellow Democrats and others who called his decision selfless. The announcement from Biden, who had been rapidly losing support among fellow Democrats and prospective funders, appeared to set a fire that spread quickly at the prospects of the first Black woman president of the United States. Of African-American and South Asian decent, Harris is a former two-term state attorney general from California and a former U. S. senator who ran an unsuccessful race for president against Biden and a string of other candidates. So far, no serious Democratic contender has announced a challenge to Harris who graciously accepted the nomination.

Support was growing so fast this week that Harris has already received enough Democratic support to win the nomination as the Democratic candidate. Unless another candidate enters and succeeds, Delegates at the Democratic National Convention, to be held Monday, Aug. 19-Thursday, Aug. 22, must cast ballots to confirm her official candidacy. Her big decision now is who will run with her as a vice presidential running mate.

The Harris candidacy comes on the heels of a Republican National Convention the week of July 16 that was deemed majorly successful largely due to an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump July 14. A bullet, shot from a high-powered rifle, by a 20-year-old White man, reportedly grazed his ear and killed another man in the crowd.

Harris spoke publicly for the first time on Monday since Biden’s endorsement. During a White House celebration of the 2023-2024 NCAA Championship Teams, she said, “Joe Biden’s legacy of accomplishment over the past three years is unmatched in modern history. In one term, he has already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who have served two terms in office.”

Harris continued, “I first came to know President Biden through his son, Beau. We worked together as attorneys general in our states. And back then, Beau would often tell me stories about his dad. He would talk about the kind of father and the kind of man that Joe Biden is. The qualities that Beau revered in his father are the same qualities that I have seen every day in our president: his honesty, his integrity, his commitment to his faith and his family, his big heart, and his love -- deep love -- of our country. And I am firsthand witness that every day our president, Joe Biden, fights for the American people. And we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to our nation.”

Trump Chooses Running Mate Who Once Called Him 'America's Hitler' By Hamil R. Harris

July 16, 2024 TrumpandVance

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Former President Trump and his vice presidential running mate Sen. JD Vance are all smiles sitting together at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week.

But some may call them the odd couple as Vance has not been his friend in his short political career. In a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose Vance identified himself as a ”Never Trump Guy,” while promoting his book "Hillbilly Elegy." He also said of the then future President, "I never liked him."

Vance, is former Marine who speaks his mind. He not only once said "I can't stomach Trump;" but he wrote an op-ed column in the New York Times titled: "Mr. Trump Is Unfit For Our Nation's Highest Office."

Vance not only said he didn't vote for Trump in 2016, but his former roommate shared images of a text message in which Vance called Trump "cynical" who could be "America's Hitler."

Yet, in Trump's selection of the 39-year-old former Marine, the mood among Republicans and Trump supporters quickly shifted from concern about the assassination attempt to a spirit of joyful defiance.

Vance has said after getting to know Trump and observing his presidency, he simply changed his mind about him. He now praises the former President although he is more conservative on some issues than Trump himself.

“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

Trump met with Vance at his Florida home before he flew to Butler, Pa. for a campaign rally Saturday where he was shot by a 20-year-old man who was killed by law enforcement but not before the bullet that pierced Trump killed another man in the audience and injured a third person.

The FBI is investigating how Thomas Matthew Crooks, a dietary aide, known as a loner, could lie on a roof and graze Trump’s ear with a bullet that killed the firefighter, husband and father of two.

“There is no place in America for this type of violence in America, it's sick, it's sick,” said President Biden during a Sunday afternoon address from the White House. “This is one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot be like this.”

Biden called and spoke to Trump after the incident. Trump said he has changed his convention speech, apparently based on their agreement to lower the vitriol and promote unity and more civil political discussion.

Before Trump traveled to Milwaukee on Sunday, he posted a message on social media where he said, “Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”

Trump said that he wanted to be in Milwaukee on the first day of the Republican National Convention because, “We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.”

The FBI and members of Congress are investigating circumstances around the assassination attempt while President Biden has kept in touch with Trump less than two weeks after their debate.

According to a statement released on Sunday, “The FBI has identified Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the subject involved in the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump on July 13, in Butler, Pennsylvania.”

As Trump spoke at the Pennsylvania rally he had no idea that Crooks had climbed to the roof of a nearby building and waited to take a shot. After he fired Crooks was taken down by a sniper team.

“This remains an active and ongoing investigation, and anyone with information that may assist with the investigation is encouraged to submit photos or videos online atfbi.gov/butler or call 1-800-CALL-FBI.”

While both campaigns were relatively quiet on Sunday, Trump arrived in Wisconsin with delegations from across the country for a four-day convention that is turning into a festive occasion.

According to a Brittanica.com citation, James Donald Bowman Vance was born in Middleton, Ohio. After his parents divorced he took his mother's middle name, Vance. He wrote a best-selling memoir called “Hillbilly Elegy” where he wrote about growing up poor as the son of a drug addicted mother who was partially raised by his gun toting grandmother.

The citation continues, “After graduating from Middletown High School in 2003, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. During his service in the Marines, he was deployed to Iraq serve in the Iraq War. He later attended the Ohio State University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy in 2009. He then studied at Yale Law School, earning a law degree in 2013. He worked for the multinational law firm Sidley Austin LLP and forinvestment firms in California and elsewhere.”

In an initial reaction to his contender's choice as vice president, President Biden posted on X Monday, "Here’s the deal about J.D. Vance...He talks a big game about working people. But now, he and Trump want to raise taxes on middle-class families while pushing more tax cuts for the rich."

"I’m a Never Trump guy,” Vance said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2016, a clip used in both the new ads. “I never liked him.”

Both ads also feature a screenshot of a Vance tweet from October 2016. “My god what an idiot,” he wrote, referring to Trump.

Despite Criticism of His Debate Performance, Support for Biden Remains Strong Among Black Leaders By Hamil R. Harris

July 1, 2024

BidenandTrump

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - President Joe Biden and the First Lady spent Sunday at Camp David with their grandchildren after his debate performance. At the same time, the media and a growing chorus of Democrats speculate on the 81-year-old leaders' future.

But Sen. Rafael Warnock (D-Ga.) sounded more like a preacher than a politician Sunday on Meet the Press as he defended Biden on a Sunday when the Atlanta Constitution joined several major news outlets to call for Biden not to run for re-election after his June 27 CNN debate performance was admittedly poor.

“As a pastor, there have been more than a few Sundays that I wished I had preached a better sermon,” Warnock said. “After the sermon, it was my job to embody the message.”

Warnock continued, “To show up for the people that I serve, and that is what Joe Biden has done his entire life,” Warnock said in an interview with NBC’s Laura Jarrett. “Over the last four years, he has been showing up for the American People…Joe Biden has demonstrated over the last four years the character and metal of the man that he is. He is a life of public service baptized in sorrow. As for Trump How do you stand and lie every 90 seconds?”

The most vital voices calling for Biden not to run for re-election come from media outlets and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. At the same time, progressives and African-American leaders remain committed to the President.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said Sunday on Face the Nation that he didn't see President Biden getting out of the race despite his poor performance.

“I got a chance to see the President challenged; I have seen in him in times of trial,” said Moore, referring to the crisis when a ship collided into a Baltimore bridge, and he called Biden at 3:30 am. “But when we get knocked down, we get back up.”

Political operative Rev. Jamal Bryant, pastor of the New Birth Baptist Church, said, ‘I'd rather have Joe Biden in a wheelchair than Donald Trump on both of his feet. There is too much focus on personality when it should be on policy.”

Bryant said he and Rev. Freddi Haynes held a conference call with 100 black preachers last weekend to sure up support for Biden. “As quiet as it is kept, Joe Biden did more to advance the Black community than Barack Obama.”

Melanie Campbell, President of the National Coalition of Black Voter Participation, a non-partisan organization, said talk of Biden leaving the race is premature. “The people voted for these two nominees. There is too much cynicism in this country. More seats are on the ballot than just who will be in the White House.”

President Obama tweeted after the debate, “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”

Obama tweeted, “Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight - and someone who lies through his teeth for his benefit. Last night didn’t change that, and it’s why so much is at stake in November.”

A more forceful Biden spoke in North Carolina the day after the debate, where he acknowledged that his debate performance didn't go well. But he also said to wild applause, “I know when you get knocked down, you get back up!”

Supreme Court Decision Seizes Power to Decide Federal Regulations By Charlene Crowell

July 15, 2024

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Supreme Court issued several consequential rulings in its recently concluded term. One such decision reversed a 40-year precedent commonly known as the Chevron doctrine, that gave federal agencies the authority to write rules that enforced and implemented laws passed by Congress.

But on June 28, a sweeping majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts ignored judicial precedent to hold that only the courts would decide regulation. In the SCOTUS majority view, judges alone would now decide highly specialized rules crafted to maintain reliable consumer safety standards governing our food, public health, occupational safety, clean water, higher education and more, bypassing the high-level expertise of civil servants in affected agencies.

Roberts’ opinion included: “Perhaps most fundamentally, Chevron’s presumption is misguided because agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do… Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.”

For Black and Latino Americans, this power-grab by the court throws into doubt and potentially weakens current agency rules that sought to bring us closer to the nation’s promises of freedom and justice for all. In two particular areas – fair housing and financial regulation – many hard-won victories aimed at addressing inequalities could be opened up to review and reversal.

In a scorching dissent, Associate Justice Elena Kagen, joined by Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown-Jackson, outlined the consequences of the majority ruling.

“In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue—no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden—involving the meaning of regulatory law,” wrote Kagen. “As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar…Today’s decision is not one Congress directed. It is entirely the majority’s choice.”

For example, the 1968 Fair Housing Act was strengthened by a HUD rule known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH). Originally a 2015 initiative of the Obama administration, an updated version was proposed in 2023 by the Biden administration that according to HUD would “achieve integrated living patterns, overcome historic and existing patterns of segregation, reduce racial and ethnic concentrations of poverty, increase access to homeownership, and ensure realistic and truly equal access to opportunity and community assets.”

Central to the rule was the development of written local ‘Equity Plans’ that incorporated citizens’ concerns into a meaningful plan of action.

Similarly, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created by 2010’s Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform & Consumer Protection Act, implemented in 2017 a payday lending rule that required requiring lenders to determine whether consumers had the ability to repay before approving predatory loans like payday, vehicle title and certain other high-cost installment ones.

But two years later, a change in administration and agency director led to a court-ordered stay in rule implementation. In response, a coalition of advocates that included the Center for Responsible Lending wrote then-CFPB Director Kathleen Kraninger with warnings of how the agency was abandoning its consumer protection mission.

“[S]ince its 2017 leadership change, the CFPB has repeatedly failed to support the August 19, 2019, compliance date the agency established for these important provisions,” the coalition wrote in part. “The Rule’s payments provisions will protect consumers from significant harm by restricting an unfair and abusive practice: payday and vehicle-title lenders’ repeat attempts to debit borrowers’ bank accounts, after two consecutive withdrawal attempts fail due to insufficient funds… These safeguards are important under any circumstance, but even more so because the agency has delayed and is proposing to undo the ability-to-repay protections.”

With yet another change of administration, in 2020 and under current President Joe Biden, CFPB updated the rule, to include emerging predatory loans like longer-term loans with balloon payments, and other consumer loans that charged 36 percent annual percentage rates (APR) or higher.

Strong and swift reactions to the Chevron reversal came from academicians and advocates.

“When I went to law school, the most conservative legal scholars railed against just such creep of judicial policymaking,” said Deborah A. Sivas, a chaired professor at Stanford Law School in a recent Q&A blog. “Now they basically embrace it.”

“Beyond the SAVE repayment plan and student loan forgiveness, this ruling could also have an impact on other regulations from the Education Department including gainful employment,” according to a statement by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA).

“This is a seismic shift,” noted Senator Amy Klobuchar, a member of that chamber’s Judiciary Committee. “Congress passes laws and then federal agencies use their deep knowledge and expertise to implement them. In overturning decades of settled law, this extreme Court has given itself the power to second guess even the most complex regulatory decisions. This decision will result in chaos and undermine our ability to protect the health and safety of all Americans.”

Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Congress ‘Has a Role to Play’ in Setting National Voting Rights Standards By Mark Hedin

June 25, 2024

Justice Gavel

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Ethnic Media Services

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A series of contradictory rulings by the Supreme Court in cases involving redistricting highlight the need for Congress to set national voting rights standards.

The first shots in America’s Civil War were fired in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Four years later, former slaves in the city honored Union soldiers who had died in captivity there, initiating the annual Memorial Day holiday.

Today, Charleston is again at the crossroads of the struggle for civil rights with a recent Supreme Court decision that effectively dilutes Black voting power.

The May 23 ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito allows South Carolina’s Republican-dominated state legislature to “crack and pack” Charleston’s Black voters.

The ruling allows 62% of Charleston’s Black voting population, about 30,000 voters, to be shifted – or “cracked” – out of the state’s tightly contested 1^st Congressional district and packed into the neighboring 6^th district, represented for 31 years now by Black Democrat James Clyburn.

At the same time, the 1^st district will become 86% white as it is expanded into rural regions where white, Republican-leaning voters have been more dominant.

The South Carolina ruling concludes a dizzying array of gerrymandering cases nationwide that will help shape this year’s elections.

Two weeks prior, the Court took a different tack on another gerrymandering case, Landry v. Callais, where it handed what appeared to be a win for Louisiana’s Black voters, representing almost a third of the state’s population, greenlighting the creation of a second majority-Black district.

Partisan divides

Why the discrepancy in the two rulings?

Both the South Carolina and Louisiana rulings involved 6-3 majorities in which the Justices appointed by Republican presidents voted in the majority, and the three Democrat appointees opposed.

In South Carolina, Alito reasoned that the Court had to take the word of the state legislators that the change was made not over racial considerations, but to gain partisan advantage, something the Court has allowed states to do since its Rucho decision in 2019.

In Louisiana, the Court relied on the “Purcell principle,” established in a 2006 case, that encourages courts to not intervene when there’s an election on the horizon, although the specific time frame has never been established.

Kathay Feng is vice president of programs with the advocacy organization Common Cause. She says the seesawing of gerrymandering rulings reflects the country’s growing partisan divide over protecting voter rights.

“Democrats and Republicans used to agree that it was important for us to have laws that protected minorities against discrimination,” Feng told Ethnic Media Services. “There has been a change.”

She described how the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), perhaps the signature achievement of that era’s civil rights movement, used to enjoy bipartisan support. “In 2006, the last time the VRA was reaffirmed (by the U.S. Senate), it was bipartisan, near unanimous,” she said. “Twenty years later, there’s a deep divide that falls along partisan lines.”

A series of decisions in the past decade or so by the John Roberts-led Supreme Court has eroded protections under the VRA that sought to end “Jim Crow” era rules denying Black and brown citizens the right to vote as guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment.

The dam broke in 2013, when the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County (AL) v. Holder that racial discrimination had subsided to the point that it was no longer necessary for jurisdictions with a history of racist voting rules to obtain “preclearance” from the federal Justice Department before making any changes to how their elections were run.

That “preclearance” had been stipulated by Section 5 of the VRA.

Modernizing voting rights legislation

The decision set off a nationwide torrent of new rules in one state after another, some within hours of the decision being announced, and lawsuits challenging them. In the ensuing tumult SCOTUS issued seemingly contradictory rulings, for instance allowing the use of maps in Louisiana’s 2022 midterm elections that a lower court had found to be discriminatory against Black voters, while it considered a similar case out of Alabama. In 2023, it ruled that both states had tried to restrict Black voting power, which in Louisiana’s case set more cases in motion, finally ending with the May 14 ruling.

More than anybody, Congress has the power to bring some order to the court’s actions, and nearly did so just a few years ago with two pieces of legislation, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Both faced universal opposition from Republican legislators and almost complete support from Democrats.

Still, insists Feng, Congress has a role to play in setting national voting rights standards. “We can still rely on the VRA as good law,” she said, “but we need to modernize, strengthen and restore it.”

Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice agrees. “There’s still a lot of momentum behind the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act,” he said just before the South Carolina decision was announced.

Both measures have been reintroduced in the current Congress. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named in honor of the late civil rights leader and Congressman, would restore the “preclearance” requirement of the 1965 VRA.

Its current iteration in the House is H.R. 14, sponsored by Rep. Terri Sewell, of Alabama. Dick Durbin of Illinois has introduced it as S. 4 in the Senate.

The Freedom to Vote Act, among other things, would make Election Day a holiday, ban partisan gerrymandering by requiring independent redistricting commissions, and mandate at least 15 days of early voting for federal elections.

Implications for the South

Those two measures came close to being enacted in 2021 but were sunk by Republican filibustering and by the refusal of Democrat Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to exempt the proposals from filibuster rules that require at least 60 votes to pass the chamber, as had been allowed in 2017 for Supreme Court nominees, paving the way for Justice Neil Gorsuch’s ascension.

The Freedom to Vote Act has been reintroduced in the House as H.R. 11, sponsored by Maryland Rep John Sarbanes, and in the Senate by Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, as S.1.

Neither measure is likely to pass the current Republican-controlled House, which raises some tricky questions for the South, now the fastest-growing region in the country where partisan loyalties often run parallel with racial identities.

“If you’re talking about doing fair representation for people of color in the South,” said Li, “you’re going to have to do something federally. The South has never changed without some federal assist.”