By Ben Jealous February is Black History Month – and Black people just made a whole lot of history. Joe Biden is our president and Donald Trump is not because Black organizers and voters decided that they would not be denied their right as American citizens to be heard at the ballot box. Kamala Harris is our history-making vice president, a Black and Southeast Asian woman and the daughter of immigrants, thanks to the millions of Black people who encouraged family, friends, and neighbors to vote. Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are senators because Black people and their allies…
Author: Ben Jealous
Washington, D.C.–Joe Biden and Kamala Harris aren’t wasting any time. When we all woke up on the morning of January 20, Donald Trump and Mike Pence were still president and vice president. By the time we went to bed, Vice President Harris had sworn in new senators Raphael Warnock, Jon Ossoff, and Alex Padilla. And President Biden had signed a dozen executive actions to reverse harmful Trump policies on the pandemic, the economy, immigration and climate change—and renew a national commitment to equality under the law. No other administration has done so much so quickly. And the flurry of executive actions…
By Ben Jealous I don’t know about all of you, but it feels to me like Christmas came early this year. Electing a new president and vice president was a gift that 81 million Americans gave to ourselves and to one another. Every court rejection of Trump’s bogus stolen election claims was one more stocking stuffer. Now the only thing left on my Christmas wish list is a victory in Georgia’s Senate races and an end to Mitch McConnell’s power-abusing, progress-obstructing reign as Senate Majority Leader. Actually, that’s not quite true. I also want a Biden-Harris administration whose vision and…
By Ben Jealous After four exhausting years of President Donald Trump and four excruciating days of vote counting, the election was called for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Saturday. Hallelujah! Those days of counting felt agonizingly slow to many of us, but the momentum was always on our side: Democratic voters—mostly Black voters—in and around Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta delivered the battleground state votes needed to deny Trump a second term. In Nevada and Arizona, Latino and Native American voters provided crucial votes. News that Pennsylvania put Biden over the top sparked dancing in the…
To Donald Trump, the violent white supremacists who descended upon Charlottesville — tiki torches in hand — are “very fine people.” It took Trump days to condemn white nationalists and neo-Nazis and, when he did, he hedged his condemnation. To Donald Trump, Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem at an NFL game to peacefully protest police brutality is a “son of a b—-.” This weekend, Donald Trump tweeted no fewer than ten times about NFL players kneeling during the national anthem. In this moment, we can’t allow Donald Trump to divide us. This isn’t about partisanship or…