Reprinted from the prepared remarks of Hillary Clinton in Reno, Nevada on Thursday. Thank you, Reno! It’s great to be back in Nevada… My original plan for this visit was to focus on our agenda to help small businesses and entrepreneurs. This week we proposed new steps to cut red tape and taxes, and make it easier for small businesses to get the credit they need to grow and hire. Because I believe that in America, if you can dream it, you should be able…
It is illegal for clergy to support or oppose political candidates from the pulpit. Houses of worship can host candidate forums and voter-registration drives; pastors and rabbis and imams can even bend the rules a little to advocate “as individuals” at conventions or other events. But for more than 60 years, religious groups have been forbidden from electioneering. Apparently, a lot of pastors don’t pay attention to this rule. According to a newsurvey from Pew Research Center, roughly 9 percent of people who have attended…
This was supposed to be the post-Barack Obama presidential election when Republicans regained a modest share of the black vote, but Donald Trump has watched support among these voters fade nationwide and in battleground states where minorities could play a decisive role. The Republican presidential nominee is missing a golden opportunity to make inroads to black communities. Worse yet for the New York real estate mogul, he is driving black voters to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — in one survey he attracted just 1 percent…
Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson has been making a heavy play for left-leaning voters in his second run for the White House. On Wednesday, he turned that effort up a notch when asked about racial issues, a subject that has long been a difficult one for libertarians given their tendency to support almost no role for the federal government in ending private racial discrimination. Asked by a questioner during a televised town hall discussion about his thoughts concerning the “Black Lives Matter movement,” the former…
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign effectively bucked what the political scientists Donald Kinder and Lynn Sanders adroitly termed the Republican Party’s electoral temptation of race — using implicit racial appeals to win over racially conservative voters without appearing overtly racist. Trump’s play instead was to make several explicitly hostile statements about minority groups. Trump has been willing to go where most Republican presidential candidates haven’t. That might have made anti-minority sentiments a more potent force in the 2016 GOP primaries than in primaries past. That’s plausible, because campaign appeals…
To maintain loyalty, the Democratic party incites anxiety about discrimination and exclusion. A form of reverse race-baiting, perhaps best thought of as bigot-baiting, has become crucial for sustaining the Democratic coalition, which is why we hear so much about “hate” these days. At the recent gay pride parade in New York, a few weeks after the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, marchers held aloft an avenue-wide banner that read, “Republican Hate Kills!” It’s important to remember a first law of politics for…
After a Baltimore jury convicted him for shooting a man during a 1996 traffic stop, Sgt. Stephen R. Pagotto said he became a pariah in the community and with top police brass. The Baltimore Police Department fired him, and he became a car salesman in Harford County, where he moved from his Northeast Baltimore home after vandals tagged his van with “killer cop.” When Maryland’s highest court reversed his conviction in 2000, he wanted to get back to policing but said command staff made it…
Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby is going from prosecutor to civil defendant in connection with the case of the death of Freddie Gray. On Wednesday, Mosby announced that charges against three officers still facing trial were being dropped. Mosby gave only a statement, but had to leave without taking questions because five of the officers in the case have filed lawsuits against her. Officers Garrett Miller, Edward Nero and William Porter as well as Sgt. Alicia White and Lt. Brian Rice are suing Mosby and…
A majority of black Americans say that at some point in their lives they’ve experienced discrimination or were treated unfairly because of their race or ethnicity, but blacks who have attended college are more likely than those without any college experience to say so, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. About eight-in-ten blacks with at least some college experience (81%) say they’ve faced discrimination or been treated unfairly because of their race or ethnicity, compared with 59% of blacks who have never attended…
Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has been under fire. Now she could potentially face being disbarred, WJZ’s Meghan McCorkell reports. A new complaint filed with the Maryland Bar Counsel calls Mosby “a runaway prosecutor” and alleges she violated ethics rules, claiming she never had probable cause to charge six officers in the death of Freddie Gray. “I think Marilyn Mosby has harmed the city of Baltimore. And if she continues, that harm will get worse,” said law professor John Banzhaf, George Washington University. Banzhaf,…