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VP Mike Pence has responded to the NYT article that accuses him of a running a shadow campaign to take over in 2020. He calls the accusations “disgraceful” and “offensive.” On Saturday, there was a bomb detonated at a Minnesota mosque. There were 15-20 people inside but thankfully no one was hurt. But the media coverage that followed drew ire from viewers as a double standard. The ubiquitous term “terrorist attack” was noticeably absent and Donald Trump has yet to even acknowledge the attack. But he is tweeting. This morning’s Twitter tantrum is being directed at -- what else? -- the fake news for not reporting all of his accomplishments and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who the president is calling a con artist tweeting, “Never in U.S.history has anyone lied or defrauded voters like” Blumenthal. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council imposed sharply increased economic sanctions on North Korea worth one-third of its annual $3 billion exports, an effort to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile program. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said the vote "put the North Korean dictator on notice" and represented a "strong, united step holding North Korea accountable for its behavior." And we haven’t even gotten to the major news that happened last night! Where to begin? Jon Snow in Dragonstone, Arya’s battle with Lady Brienne, and our nerves are still bad after the Mother of Dragon’s faceoff with Jamie Lannister! Whew! Okay, apologies. Our friends at WaPo say that not everyone watches Game of Thrones and they detail the Monday morning frustrations of those who don’t. Not everyone watches GOT?? Fake news! Now, here’s the real news:- BET honored Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) on Saturday.
- Barack Obama Day becomes law in IL.
- People of color in TX are the rising majority -- can they turn the state purple? Sure. If they show up at the polls.
- Asylum seekers are leaving U.S. for Canada.
- Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) helps lead push to tell DoD to ignore Trump’s transgender ban.
- Chicago suing Trump over threats to withhold federal funds over sanctuary status.
- Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA) co-leads election delegation to Kenya.
- Roland Martin launches new show.
- Dozens of cases in Baltimore dismissed after controversial video surfaces.
- Nissan workers in Mississippi reject UAW.
- JAY-Z’s Moonlight is thoughtful dopeness. The Root breaks down the symbolism below in blogs. Check it out.
- Oh, and Idris Elba took the box office this weekend! Strictly for research purposes, some of The Beat DC team has been carefully studying pictures of him on the internet. It's hard work, people.
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The Beat DC congratulates Rokk Solutions’ Rodell Mollineau and PwC’s Sheena Arora! The couple married in a beachside ceremony at sunset on Saturday evening at The Wharf in Grand Cayman. | |  |
Roland Martin was one of the many who got to see comedian George López perform at the Kennedy Center Saturday night for an HBO special that aired live. | |
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Barack Obama Day
On Friday, IL Gov. Bruce Rauner signed a bill designating every August 4th as Barack Obama Day in the state of Illinois starting in 2018. It’s not a legal holiday -- schools and state offices will remain open -- but is intended to celebrate Obama’s career and recognize his political roots in the state. The bill passed without any opposition in both chambers of the state’s legislature. An earlier version of the bill, which would have designated Aug. 4th as a legal holiday, failed in March due to its nearly $20 million price tag. August 4th also happens to be the former president’s birthday. He turned 56. He and the former First Lady celebrated in the nation's capital by dining at Rasika, an Indian restaurant in West End. More here.
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Maxine Waters Honored by BET
BET Networks is honoring Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) during the 2017 Black Girls Rock Awards special. The congresswoman received the Social Humanitarian Award for “being a fearless and outspoken advocate for under-served population.” The event, hosted by Oscar-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson, took place Saturday at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. Accepting her award, the congresswoman said, "I want you to know, if it was not for the love and respect shown to me by Black women, those right-wing ultra conservatives … they would have me believe I’m too Black, I’m too confrontational, I’m too tough, and I’m too disrespectful of them. But now I know I’m simply a strong, Black woman.” Other honorees this year included: Insecure creator and actress Issa Rae, Grammy-winning singer Roberta Flack, Black-ish actress Yara Shahidi, financier Suzanne Shank, and community organizers Derrica Wilson and Natalie Wilson of the Black & Missing Foundation. The event will air Aug. 22nd on BET. More here.
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Karen Bass Heads to Kenya
CBC Vice Chair Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA) is heading to Kenya this week as co-leader of an election monitoring delegation to oversee Tuesday's presidential, legislative and local elections. Kenya’s elections are considered by some as the most important in Africa partly because, as The Financial Times reports, despite its searing inequalities, the country is considered an African success story. It has a diverse economy, visibly improving infrastructure, and one of the continent’s most tech-savvy and entrepreneurial business classes. Accompanied by five staffers as part of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) observation team, Bass will also be joined by former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman. The U.S. delegation will be part of an excess of 5,000 election observers and hundreds of international journalists who in the country as the global community turns its eyes on the most competitive Kenyan election yet. Bass is a member of the House Africa subcommittee. More here.
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|  | Congressman Joaquín Castro (D-TX) meeting last week with members of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition in DC. | |  | Congressman Jimmy Gómez (D-CA) on Thursday at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new sports complex in LA's Little Tokyo neighborhood. | |
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Latinos Can Turn TX Purple if They and Other POC Get to the Polls
Seriously -- what will it take to turn Texas purple? People of color now make up 43% of the state's population: 39% are Hispanic, 13% are African American, and almost 5% are Asian Americans. Still, the state remains solid red. What gives? The Hill reports that of the millions of new residents pouring into the state, a little more than half come from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and other Central and South American countries. The rest largely come from California, Florida, New York, and Illinois. Dems say this demographic change suggests the state has purple characteristics. There’s only one challenge -- getting people to go to the polls. Hundreds of thousands of people eligible to vote have not bothered to register. Millions more simply don’t show up on Election Day. And a state court has found that hundreds of thousands who might vote do not have access to the ballot box because they lack the necessary identification under a strict voter ID law passed earlier this decade. The Hill takes a deeper look here at flipping the Longhorn State.
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|  | Rockefeller Foundation's Raj Shah and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio last month at the 100 Resilient Cities summit in NYC. | |  | Armstrong Williams on vacation last month in Tuscany, Italy. | |
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Roland Martin Launches New Show
TV host and political commentator Roland Martin is adding another television show to his repertoire. In addition to his TV One show News One Now, he will now host Still in the Game with Roland Martin, which is premiering in syndication this month on Retirement Living TV. The RLTV-commissioned show focuses on the second careers of some of the top professional athletes of our time. In the premiere episode, Martin interviews former WNBA star Nancy “Lady Magic” Lieberman and NFL Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith. Martin explores their path to reinvention since leaving the pro-sports spotlight. Still in the Game with Roland Martin premieres nationwide on August 13th at 2P ET. More here.
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Sinclair Awards Diversity Scholarships While Taking Over Right Wing Media
Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the nation’s largest TV broadcaster, just announced the winners of their 2017 Broadcast Diversity Scholarship. Established in 2016, the scholarship provides promising young students from diverse backgrounds with the capital they need to earn degrees in a variety of broadcast-related fields. However, as Sinclair is expanding its conservative-leaning television empire into nearly three-quarters of American households, they have come under scrutiny amid accusations that they push right-wing propaganda. They plan to buy 42 stations from Tribune Media in cities including NY, Chicago, and LA, on top of the more than 170 stations it already owns. Politico reports that they got a critical assist this spring from Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who revived a decades-old regulatory loophole that will keep Sinclair from vastly exceeding federal limits on media ownership. The change will allow Sinclair -- a company known for injecting "must run" conservative segments into its local programming -- to reach 72% of U.S. households after buying Tribune’s stations. That’s nearly double the congressionally imposed nationwide audience cap of 39%. The company, whose value is in the billions, gave seven people of color a scholarship of $5,000 each. More about the recipients here.
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Latina Media Ventures Bank Accounts Unfrozen
The NY Post reports that Latina Media Ventures may soon have its Citibank account unfrozen now that the publisher of Latina Magazine has paid its overdue $42,000 tab to a subscription generating firm. A spokesman from Criscione & Ravala, which represented We Scribe Corp, said: “We will soon be closing this matter since our client received the full amount of funds they were seeking in their lawsuit.” According to the state court suit, We Scribe produced more than 36,765 subscriptions for the company and expected to be paid $40,957.50. No word on whether employees and freelancers, who have seen checks bounce in recent weeks, will finally be paid -- or if Solera Partners will resume publication of its flagship Latina Magazine. More here.
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|  | CA congressional candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar on Wednesday going from the campaign trail to a nature trail. | |  | AFT's César Moreno Pérez and friends on Saturday at the Immigration Education Conference in Hammond, IN. | |
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Marilyn Mosby Dismisses Dozens of Cases After Video Surfaces of Officers Planting Evidence
Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby is dismissing dozens of cases after reviewing a video that appears to show a police officer planting evidence while two other officers look on. The NYT reports that over a hundred criminal cases that would have relied on testimony from those three officers are now under review and as of Wednesday afternoon, 41 had been dropped or were set to be dropped. “The credibility of those officers has now been directly called into question,” Mosby said at a news conference on Friday. The video, released last month and recorded on Jan. 24th, shows an officer who appears to place a bag of white capsules in an alleyway before walking toward the street, as the two other officers watch. He then appears to turn on his body camera and return to the alley to retrieve the capsules.The three officers in the video had been scheduled to participate in 123 cases. More here.
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Chicago Takes Trump Admin To Court
The city of Chicago heads to federal court today to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that it is illegal for the federal government to withhold public safety grant money from so-called sanctuary cities. Mayor Rahm Emanuel says AG Jeff Sessions can’t keep the city from receiving federal grants just because the federal government says Chicago isn’t cooperating enough with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. "We find it unlawful and unconstitutional to be, as a city, coerced on a policy," he said. Chicago law prohibits police from providing federal ICE officials access to people who are in the police department's custody unless they are wanted on a criminal warrant or have serious criminal convictions, and it also forbids police from responding to ICE inquiries or talking to ICE officials about a person’s custody status or release date. More here from the Chicago Tribune.
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Nissan Workers Reject UAW
On Friday, Nissan factory in Mississippi overwhelmingly voted against joining the United Auto Workers union. The election involving some 3,700 mostly African American workers at the Canton manufacturing facility and was the most closely watched of its kind in years. HuffPost reports that a preliminary count of ballots landed at 2,244 to 1,307. The state’s Republican governor, Phil Bryant, spoke out against the union days before the vote. On Facebook, Bryant said he hoped Nissan employees “understand what the union will do to your factory in town,” posting a photo apparently depicting rotting buildings in Detroit. The UAW has filed several unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board against Nissan. More here.
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Congresswoman Mia Love (R-UT) with Nephi City Police Officer Sara Robison at her Juab town hall last week. | |  |
Congresswoman Doris Matsui (D-CA) late last week celebrating the artists and community leaders opening the Wide Open Walls mural festival preview. | |
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Show Me the Money -- Instead, Show Me Your Papers
Total U.S. buying power reached $13.9 trillion in 2016 and is forecast to hit $16.6 trillion by 2021, with minority groups making the fastest gains. But The Dallas Morning News reports that immigration laws could have a devastating impact on the economy. The retail industry and economists are already monitoring whether Hispanic shoppers are pulling back spending. Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Robert Kaplan said he's closely watching potential negative effects of policies that would reduce the affordability of and access to healthcare, and policies that could negatively influence the spending habits of immigrants. National immigration crackdowns and local legislation such as Texas' new SB4, the show-me-your-papers law that goes into effect Sept. 1st, may have an impact on how tens of millions of Americans shop. More here.
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Asylum Seekers in America Fleeing to Canada
Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, the first Somali-born Canadian elected to federal office, was forced on Thursday to issue a stern warning to people fleeing the United States in favor of friendlier immigration policy up north: Do not seek asylum in Canada. Minister Ahmed Hussen says, “We want people to claim asylum in the first country that they’re in, which in this case is the U.S.” Hussen’s plea comes after Quebec was forced to turn its landmark Olympic Stadium in Montreal into a shelter following a notable uptick in asylum seekers -- likely fleeing Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration. A Quebec government-funded organization said it received applications from 108 asylum seekers who crossed the U.S.-Canadian border into Quebec. Last month that number skyrocketed to 1,174. The organization estimates that as many as 150 people come in daily from the U.S. More here.
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Congresswoman Terri Sewell (D-AL) last Thursday talking about hosting the 6th Annual Congressional Job Fair at the University of West Alabama in Livingston. | |  |
María Hinojosa and Chris Hayes take a selfie last week while on the set of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes. | |
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Lawmakers Urge DoD Not to Comply with Transgender Ban
Congressmen John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) and Adam Smith (D-WA) -- the top Democrats on the House Armed Services and Judiciary committees -- led 53 legislators in a letter sent to Defense Secretary James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford urging them not to comply with Trump’s ban on transgender troops in the military. “As members of Congress with an abiding interest in our nation’s military and its policies towards the LGBTQ community, we write to not only express our strong opposition to President Trump’s recent tweets seeking to ban transgender individuals from the military, but to remind you not to comply with any unconstitutional directive which may ultimately be issued,” the lawmakers wrote. Signatories include members of the Armed Services and Judiciary committees and the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus. Dunford has said the Pentagon will not take any action until there is an official directive from the White House. Military officials say that while the Pentagon hasn’t received any directive from the WH, Trump officials have reached out to draft one. More here from The Hill.
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Menéndez Targets Big 5 Oil Companies
Senator Bob Menéndez (D-NJ), a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee that sets the nation’s tax policy, on Wednesday reintroduced legislation to repeal tax subsidies for the "Big 5" oil companies, and shift the $22 billion in savings over the next ten years towards deficit reduction. The Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act of 2017 would put an end to unfair taxpayer handouts to these highly-profitable companies. Menéndez says that the nation's five largest oil companies -- BP, Exxon, Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips -- took home nearly $1 trillion in profits over the past decade, with only a small percentage of those earnings going toward exploration and research. More here.
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| FOMO Wednesday, August 9th - 13th: The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) holds its annual convention and career fair in New Orleans. Click here for more information and to register.Thursday, August 10th - 13th: The Congressional Black Caucus Political Education & Leadership Institute sponsors the 2017 Mississippi Policy Conference in Tunica, MS. Click here for more information and to register. Thursday, August 10th, 7P: Jotaka Eaddy, Symone Sanders, Dr. Ikenna Myers, Waikinya Clanton, Nicholas Wiggins, and Moyer McCoy host a pool party. Penthouse Pool Club. 1612 U Street, N.W. Invite only.
Monday, August 14th, 4P: The Center for American Progress sponsors a panel discussion, "The Power of Black Media and Journalists During the Trump Administration." Click here to RSVP. Wednesday, August 16th - 17th: The annual U.S.-Mexico Border Summit. El Paso, TX & Cuidad Juárez, Chihuahua. Featured guests include keynote speaker Ana Navarro, Republican strategist and CNN analyst. Click here for more information and to register. Wednesday, August 16th - 20th: The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance holds its 14th biennial convention in Anaheim, CA. Click here for more information. Friday, August 18th: The deadline to apply for the Poynter Institute and the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) 2017 Leadership Academy for Diversity in Digital Media, to be held Dec. 3rd - 8th in St. Petersburg, FL. The tuition-free program trains journalists of color to work in digital media. Click here for more information and to apply. Friday, August 18th - 20th: A weekend on Martha's Vineyard with Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) and special guests Congressmen James Clyburn (D-SC), Cedric Richmond (D-LA), and Richard Neal (D-MA), and Congresswomen Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE). For more information and to RSVP, contact Mariko Bennett: mariko@cocobproductions.com or call 301.741.3443. Thursday, August 25th, 8P: The film Hidden Figures will be shown as the final movie of the season at the MLK Memorial. Free. Sponsored by The Memorial Foundation and MPAA. 1964 Independence Avenue, S.W. For more information, click here.
Monday, August 28th, 9A: The Collective hosts the 2017 Black Power Summit to discuss possibilities, challenges, and plans to capitalize on historic political opportunities and also economic and civil rights challenges the Black community will likely face in the 2018 and 2020 political cycles. For more information, contact Quentin James at: quentin@collectivepac.org
Thursday, September 7th - 9th: The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), the Native American Journalists Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) sponsor the Excellence in Journalism 2017 conference in Anaheim, CA. Click here for more details and to register. Sunday, September 10th: Former First Lady Michelle Obama speaks at the Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park. MN about her years in the White House. Click here for more information and to purchase tickets. Monday, September 11th - 13th: The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute annual Hispanic Heritage Month conference and awards gala. Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center,1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Click here for more information. Friday, September 15th, 9A: Dialogue on Diversity holds its 2017 Entrepreneurship and Information Technology Conference. AT&T Forum, 601 New Jersey Avenue, N.W. Click here for more information and to register. Saturday, September 30th, 8P: Join Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (D-NY) for Bruno Mars' 24K Magic Tour. The Verizon Center, 601 F Street, N.W. For more information or to RSVP, contact Sierra Kelley-Chung or Randy Broz at: 202.403.0606 or email: Sierra@ABConsultingDC.com Wednesday, November 29th, 8P: Join Congressman André Carson (D-IN) for JAY-Z's 4:44 Tour. The Verizon Center, 601 F Street, N.W. For more information or to RSVP, contact Courtney Hodges or Randy Broz at: 202.403.0606 or email: Courtney@ABConsultingDC.com
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