NNPA NEWSWIRE — Don Lemon, a veteran broadcaster and longtime critic of President Donald Trump, was arrested late Thursday night in Los Angeles after livestreaming an anti-ICE demonstration connected to a January protest at a St. Paul, Minnesota, church. A short time later, Fort, a respected Minnesota-based journalist, was arrested by federal agents in her home state for reporting on the same protest, according to public statements and court records. Famed journalist Don Lemon may draw the headlines, but Emmy-winning independent reporter Georgia Fort and Trahem Jenn Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy were also taken into custody as federal agents moved…
Author: Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire
NNPA NEWSWIRE — In a 2008 oral history interview, Watkins described himself as a capitalist without hesitation. Ownership, he said, was not optional for Black advancement. Newspapers were economic engines as much as civic institutions, and advertising dollars spent in Black communities should remain there. Thomas H. Watkins built a daily Black newspaper in New York City when few believed it could survive and even fewer wanted it to succeed. Watkins, who died in December at 88, founded the New York Daily Challenge and made it the first Black-owned daily newspaper in the city’s history. From its headquarters in Bedford-Stuyvesant,…
A quiet clarification by the United States Postal Service is drawing renewed scrutiny after health care advocates and voting rights observers warned that the change could carry serious consequences for millions of Americans who rely on postmarks to meet legal deadlines. Under new USPS guidance that took effect late last month, the date printed on a postmark no longer reflects when a letter or ballot is dropped into a mailbox. Instead, the postmark now reflects the date the mail is first processed at an automated sorting facility, which can occur days after the item is mailed. The Postal Service says…
NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent The bombs came before dawn, while the country slept, and Congress was cut out of the conversation. Early Saturday morning, the United States launched military strikes on Venezuela, killing civilians in and around Caracas and seizing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, flying them out of the country, according to Venezuelan officials. By midday, Washington was already talking about indictments, oil, and who would rule next. By 1 p.m., the streets in front of the White House were filled with people who called it exactly what it was. An illegal war. “All Out to the…
Everton Blair Jr. says the first place he learned how power works was not in Washington, but inside the classrooms where he grew up. Those same schools, Blair says, once labeled him a problem child. Later, he was labeled gifted. “Same kid, same brain, different labels,” Blair said during his appearance on “Let It Be Known.” “And I watched how those labels determined who got investments and who got written off.” Now, as Blair launches his bid for Congress in Georgia’s 13th Congressional District, that lived experience is colliding with new national momentum. Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has endorsed Blair, giving…
The U.S. labor market showed further signs of strain in November, with new federal data revealing rising unemployment, steep losses in government jobs, and worsening conditions for Black workers, particularly Black men, according to an analysis of the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report and a review by the National Women’s Law Center. Employers added 64,000 jobs nationwide in November, a modest gain following months of data disruptions caused by the federal government shutdown. The unemployment rate rose to 4.6 percent, up from 4.4 percent in September, the last month for which a full labor force survey was completed. The increase…
BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe that can only be described as state-engineered cruelty. The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe that can only be described as state-engineered cruelty. Reports from The New Yorker, KFF, ABC News, and humanitarian groups reveal a grim portrait of what happens when governance becomes an instrument of vengeance rather than stewardship. President Trump’s second term began not with promises of compassion but with an executive order freezing all foreign…
There are moments in American life when truth steps forward and refuses to be convenient. MacKenzie Scott has chosen such a moment. As political forces move to strip diversity from classrooms, silence Black scholarship, and erase equity from public life, she has gone in the opposite direction. She has invested her wealth in the communities this country has spent centuries trying to marginalize. Her most recent gifts to historically Black colleges and universities have surpassed $400 million this year alone. These are not gestures. They are declarations. They say that the education of Black students is not optional, not expendable,…
BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Former President Barack Obama has stepped back into the political arena, delivering some of his sharpest critiques yet of President Donald Trump as the Democratic Party struggles through one of its weakest moments in modern history. Former President Barack Obama has stepped back into the political arena, delivering some of his sharpest critiques yet of President Donald Trump as the Democratic Party struggles through one of its weakest moments in modern history. With the party’s leadership approval at historic lows and its ties to Black-owned media nearly nonexistent, Obama’s renewed visibility has exposed both the vacuum and…
MAGA Republicans have shut down the government once again after lawmakers failed to strike a deal to keep the lights on, leaving hundreds of thousands of workers without pay and millions of Americans facing the possibility of losing affordable health care. At the center of the crisis is a dispute over Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Democrats are demanding that subsidies be extended and that deep Medicaid cuts be reversed. Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, have rejected those calls and pushed ahead with a funding bill that excludes the protections. The result is a standoff with devastating consequences.…