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Despite repeated warnings from Donald Trump to North Korea, the adversarial country fired a ballistic missile early Sunday. In a statement late Saturday, the WH said, “North Korea has been a flagrant menace for far too long... Let this latest provocation serve as a call for all nations to implement far stronger sanctions against North Korea.” This week, the House returns after a week-long recess to get to work on tax reform. The House Ways and Means Committee will hold its first hearings on tax reform on Thursday. There’s action in the Senate as the upper chamber works to hash out an agreement on healthcare. And Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will meet with senators during a closed-door briefing this week over his role in Comey’s firing. Here’s what’s on tap for the Monday read:- Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) warns Trump on the H1-B visa program.
- An HBCU says no thanks to Senator John Cornyn (R-TX).
- Michelle Obama has words on Trump rolling back school lunch policies.
- HRC names Latino Obama alumnus to the team.
- Eric Holder says AG Jeff Sessions bringing back mandatory minimums is "dumb on crime."
- Bipartisan bill calls for Congressional Gold Medal for Chinese American WWII Vets.
- Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) gives a call to action at Howard University.
- Tribal voices help stop Senate from rolling back Obama-era environmental protections.
- American Airlines calls police on commentator Symone Sanders.
- Mel Watt has an exchange with Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) before the Senate Banking Committee.
- Debra Lee leaves DC.
- Sony Pictures Entertainment named Tony Vinciquerra as its CEO.
- Former senator Bob Dole is helping the president of the Congo stay in power.
- The Hill Latino will soon host Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and other Latina leaders. Want to join in? Be sure to RSVP in FOMO below.
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Soledad O'Brien celebrating Mother's Day with her children on Sunday, posting this older photo of them. | |  |
Miichelle Obama tweeted her mother this Mother's Day message, "I strive to be the kind of mother to my girls that you have always been to me." | |
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Former Employees Say Trump Taped Conversations, Congressman Krishnamoorti Wants the Tapes
After accusing President Barack Obama of wiretapping him during the 2016 election sans any evidence at all, a tweet from Donald Trump on Friday suggests that he is the one who might have taped conversations. “James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump tweeted. A WSJ article says that as a businessman, Trump taped phone conversations with associates and others from his Trump Tower office in NY, according to three people who say they have direct knowledge of the recordings. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), a member of the House Oversight Committee, has requested the WH Counsel’s Office provide the committee with “all tapes of the president’s communications” with Mr. Comey, as well as any tapes of Mr. Trump’s meeting with Russian officials Wednesday and of conversations concerning former national security advisor Mike Flynn. More here.
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Michelle Obama Slams Trump School Lunch Policy
On Friday, former First Lady Michelle Obama slammed the Trump administration's decision to delay a federal requirement aimed at upping nutritional standards for school lunches. "You want to talk about nanny state and government intervention, well, 'You just buy the food and be quiet and you don't need to know what is in it,'" Obama said at the Partnership for a Healthier America conference (click image to play video). "That is essentially what a move like this is saying to you moms." Without mentioning Donald Trump, she said parents should stop and "think about why someone is OK with your kids eating crap." More here.
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Jorge Ramos poses with students in the Bay area on Friday. | |  |
Gwenn Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, joins Rev. Al Sharpton giving out flowers to mothers at the NAN House of Justice on Saturday. | |
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Senator Returns to Where it All Started
Howard University alumna Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) returned to the school Saturday, delivering the commencement keynote address at one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious HBCUs, accepting the President’s Medal of Achievement. "You are graduating into a time when we see a revival of the failed War on Drugs and a renewed reliance on mandatory minimum prison sentences," she said. "A time when young people who were brought to America as children fear a midnight knock on the door. A time when throwing millions of working people off their health insurance to give tax breaks to the top one percent is considered a victory to some. A time when we worry that a late-night tweet could start a war. A time when we no longer believe the words of some of our leaders, and where the very integrity of our justice system has been called into question." Before congratulating the grads, Harris implored, "We need you. Our country needs you. The world needs you." Harris graduated from Howard in 1986. More here from NBCBLK.
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American Airlines Calls Police on Commentator Symone Sanders
Political commentator Symone Sanders is the latest to have an incident with an airline. On Friday, Sanders was leaving LAX. After being given incorrect information about her flight, she says she was trying to get answers when two customer service agents walked away from her. In a moment of frustration, she raised her voice. That’s when a customer service agent with American Airlines replied, “I’m calling the police.” Four police officers showed up and one attempted to grab Symone’s passport. She says they didn’t ask her name or any questions about what happened. They simply stated that the agent felt threatened. Eventually, she was allowed to board her flight. When she deplaned in DC she said someone from the American Airlines corporate office met her to attempt to address the situation. But Symone vows to pursue the issue. Her full account of what happened here.
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S. Epatha Merkerson, Joe Morton aka Papa Pope, and NYC restaurateur Alexander Smalls at the Harlem Stage last Thursday. | |  |
Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) celebrating her mom on Sunday. | |
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| The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Today Hears Arguments Trump’s Revised Travel Ban
A federal appeals court will hear arguments today on whether Trump’s revised travel ban violates a constitutional prohibition against religious discrimination. Judges Michael Daly Hawkins, Ronald M. Gould, and Richard A. Páez, all appointed by President Clinton, will decide the case: State of Hawaii vs. Donald Trump. The hearing in Seattle before the panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled for one hour and will be broadcast live on C-SPAN and streamed from the court’s website. More here.
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| The Beat DC Podcast
The Beat DC's Jamal Simmons speaks with former DOJ official NAACP-LDF's Melanie Newman on the voter suppression efforts coming out of the Trump administration. The full podcast will be live tomorrow. Tune in!
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Judge Orders Trump To Turn Over Rudy Giuliani’s ‘Muslim Ban’ Memo
A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the Trump administration must turn over a memo and other documents from a commission led by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani that is believed to have laid out ways to “legally” ban Muslims from entering the country. U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts issued the ruling as part of an ongoing lawsuit in the Eastern District of Michigan against Donald Trump’s second executive order banning travelers from several Muslim-majority countries and suspending the refugee resettlement program. The ban has been blocked in the courts. More here.
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Congressman Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) joined his siblings on Sunday to celebrate his mom. | |  | Hundreds of demonstrators spelled out the word “RESIST!” at Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, California on Saturday. | |
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Holder Calls Sessions Dumb on Crime
Former AG Eric Holder on Friday released a statement blasting AG Jeff Sessions' memo directing prosecutors to "charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense" in all cases going forward. The Sessions memo reverses one issued by Holder in 2013 that encouraged federal prosecutors to seek the harshest punishment only for "serious, high-level, or violent drug traffickers" instead of lower-level offenders. "The policy announced today is not tough on crime. It is dumb on crime. It is an ideologically motivated, cookie-cutter approach that has only been proven to generate unfairly long sentences that are often applied indiscriminately and do little to achieve long-term public safety," Holder said in his statement. Read it in its entirety here.
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ICE Already has Direct Lines to Law Enforcement Databases with Immigrant Data
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) documents show that for years, law enforcement in hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide, including major sanctuary cities like Seattle, DC, and Los Angeles, are feeding information into regional databases that can be combed through by ICE. When ICE needs information on residents for raids or criminal investigations, these regional databases can give ICE crucial information, such as phone numbers, addresses, and comments about individuals' scars, marks, and tattoos that may not have made it into federal records. Such locally specific information can be helpful for ICE agents, especially in sanctuary cities where ICE often conducts immigrant raids in lieu of formal cooperation with local authorities. More here.
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Jayapal Warns Trump Admin to Not Act in Haste on H1-B Visa Program
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) has cautioned the Trump administration against hasty changes in the H1-B visa regime, saying this should be done via the legislative route rather than through a presidential executive order. Jayapal, who is now in India as part of a congressional delegation headed by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, believes that there is bipartisan support for continuing the H1-B visa program "perhaps with some changes." "You can't just stop processing when people have been waiting in line for three years to get those H1-Bs and then put a barrier there and then say you are not going to get these," Jayapal told IANS in an interview. More here.
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Congressman Hank Johnson (D-GA) wishing his mother a Happy Mother's Day on Sunday. | |  |
Congresswoman Terri Sewell (D-AL) giving the commencement address at Trenholm State Community College on Saturday. | |
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The DREAMer Who Works in the Senate
One day earlier this year, then-Senator Jeff Sessions passed through the cafeteria in a Senate office building to buy lunch on the day he was slated to become the Attorney General. Having railed for years against undocumented immigrants, Sessions signaled a new hard-line approach to deportations in the Trump era. The Senate cashier who rang up Sessions that day was a 26-year-old mother of three from El Salvador and a DREAMer, Ana Gómez Ramírez. She greeted him with a hello. Sessions politely asked her how she was doing. “He was nice,” Gómez Ramírez recalled after a recent shift. “Even though he doesn’t want us here.” As a DACA recipient, she has felt the whiplash of the government’s shifting policy toward immigrants -- all while serving and cleaning up after the very politicians who will determine her family’s future here. More of her story here from HuffPo.
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Ben Carson Learns Government Employees Are Dedicated
Last week, at a Capitol Hill breakfast honoring federal employees, government neophyte HUD Secretary Ben Carson said he heard that government employees “didn’t work very hard.” But once he actually learned about them -- after he became head of a major federal agency -- he found the workers “are extremely dedicated” to their jobs. WaPo points out that unfortunately, the love Trump administration officials show with words is not demonstrated with money. Trump’s proposed fiscal 2018 budget would seriously undercut many federal agencies, not to mention the 19 it proposes to eliminate. More here.
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Watt Appears Before Senate Banking Committee
The Senate Banking Committee, looking to reduce the government’s role in the $10 trillion mortgage market heard from Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director and former Congressman Mel Watt (D-NC) on Thursday. He and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) engaged in a tense back-and-forth over a 2016 program started by Watt to reduce the balances of some delinquent borrowers with home loans greater than the value of their houses, a program that Warren says has not done enough to help homeowners. The Massachusetts senator's accusations were "unfair and untrue and unjust and all of the 'uns-' that I can think of," Watt replied. Meanwhile, The Leadership Conference commended Watt in a statement saying, “Congress should heed Director Watt’s warning and support his continued efforts to protect taxpayers and to operate Fannie and Freddie in a sound and responsible manner.” More here.
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American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar Stan Veuger, Friends of the American Latino Museum Executive Director Estuardo Rodríguez (center), and Diana Castañeda of NTN24. | |  | Congresswoman Michelle Luján Grisham (D-NM) celebrates four generations with her mom, daughter, and grandduaghter on Mother's Day. | |
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Sony Names Latino CEO
Last week, Sony Pictures Entertainment named Tony Vinciquerra as its CEO. The veteran executive has spent more than 30 years in the television business. He ran one of the nation’s largest TV station networks, Hearst-Argyle, before joining Fox, where he helped transform a hodgepodge of cable channels into a multibillion-dollar empire. Since leaving Fox in 2011, Vinciquerra has been a senior advisor to the private equity firm Texas Pacific Group, evaluating media properties and helping to launch media company STX Entertainment. He also serves on the boards of Spanish-language Univisión Communications, Pandora Media, Qualcomm and other companies. More here.
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Debra Lee Bids DC a Farewell -- But Not Because of Trump
After 37 years, BET CEO Debra Lee is trading the Beltway for La La Land. However, Lee insists that the timing has nothing to do with the Trump administration. She has seen presidents come and go in her 37 years in the district. “I’m not down on Washington,” she says, though she describes the Obama years as “magical” for her and her network’s viewers. “Politics are really only part of what this town has to offer.” Lee leaves behind a designer-stiletto footprint in Washington that includes not just those parties, but charitable endeavors, most notably the annual gala for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater she co-chaired, which raised $1 million this year. Lee says she plans to stay involved with her DC causes and friends. “I’ll continue to fight for causes I believe in -- racial equality, the rights of women and girls -- and that brings you to Washington.” More here.
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Cheryl Boone Isaacs Leaves the Academy
Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the departing President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said on Friday that she would also leave the organization’s board, where she has served for 24 years. Aside from Ms. Boone Isaacs’s decision not to seek re-election to the board -- she has told friends that the academy’s serial controversies have exhausted her. Boone Isaacs, 67, said, “It will be a privilege to provide the opportunity for new voices to have a seat at the table,” she said in a statement. But her decision was also viewed by some people in the industry as a victory for the academy’s chief executive, Dawn Hudson. Boone Isaacs and Hudson have sometimes been at odds as they have contended with one academy crisis after another, including #OscarSoWhite and the epic envelope bungling that marred the most recent Oscars ceremony. More here.
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Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-NY) at the Jamaica Muslim Center in Queens on Saturday, taking part in a community discussion on immigration and hate crimes. | |  | Tara Setmayer stopped in Kennebunkport, ME to see President Bush's family compound her way, back from delivering a speech at Bates College. | |
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Bill Calls for Congressional Gold Medal for Chinese American WWII Vets
A bill to honor Chinese American veterans who served in World War II with a Congressional Gold Medal was introduced in Congress last week. The Chinese American WWII Veterans Congressional Gold Medal bill is the result of a national campaign organized by the Chinese American WWII Veterans Recognition Project, which aims to celebrate the unrecognized Chinese American servicemen and women who volunteered or were drafted in WWII when the Chinese Exclusion Act was still in place. The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress and has been awarded in recent years to other WWII units that activists said have been overlooked, including Native American code talkers, the Monuments Men, and Filipino WWII veterans. The Congressional Gold Medal legislation must be co-sponsored by at least two-thirds of the House and at least two-thirds of the Senate to be considered. The bill was introduced in the Senate by Senators Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Thad Cochran (R-MS), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and in the House by Congressmen Ed Royce (R-CA) and Ted Lieu (D-CA), and Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-NY). More here.
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National Native American Veterans Memorial to be Erected in DC
A memorial to Native American veterans will be erected on the grounds of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall. The anticipated dedication of the National Native American Veterans Memorial is Veterans Day, Nov. 11th, 2020. Former Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell (D-CO) of the Northern Cheyenne nation and Chickasaw Nation Lt. Gov. Jefferson Keel, President of the National Congress of American Indians, are leading an advisory committee of tribal leaders and veterans in assisting with outreach to Native American nations and tribes and advising on plans for the memorial. More here.
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|  | LULAC Director of Development David M. Pérez receiving the Award for Excellence in Service to the DC Center for the LGBT Community. | |  |
Collective PAC's Stefanie Brown James visists the statue of W.E.B. DuBois at Fist University last week. | |
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HRC Names Obama Latino Alumnus to Team
The Human Rights Campaign named Alejandro Avilés as the Director of Outreach and Engagement. Avilés was previously the Director of Public Affairs at HUD, the Arkansas State Director for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and a former Housing Graduate CHCI Fellow. “From his early organizing days in Arkansas to his incredible service in the Obama Administration, Alejandro leads with purpose, forges powerful connections and has achieved concrete victories for LGBTQ equality, economic justice, immigrant rights and more,” said Mary Beth Maxwell, HRC Senior Vice President for Programs, Research, and Trainings. More about Avilés here.
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Tribal Views Influence Vote on Obama-era Protections for the Environment
Republicans have been dealt a setback in their efforts to roll back protections for the environment, and the views of tribes in North Dakota are seen as playing a role in the national debate. Since January, Republican lawmakers have pushed to repeal more than a dozen Obama-era regulations under the provisions of a law known as the Congressional Review Act. But the campaign faltered on Wednesday as the Senate was unable to repeal a regulation that impacts Indian Country. The outcome was extremely close -- if just one member had changed his or her vote, Vice President Mike Pence could have been called in to break a tie. Two Dems from Trump-friendly states were on the fence about the Methane and Natural Gas Waste Rule. In the end, both Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Joe Manchin (D-WV), refused to vote for a resolution that would allow for continued excessive methane pollution and waste to be released from oil and gas facilities on public lands surrounding national parks. See how tribal voices influenced their vote here.
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Jarvis Stewart and Sinclair Holmes cheering on the Wizards as they clenched a win against the Celtics on Friday night. | |  |
Nats minority owner Paxton Baker and CNN's Wolf Blitzer were among the many celebrating the Wizards win on Friday. | |
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HBCU Rescinds Invite to Senator John Cornyn
After a successful petition, students at Houston’s Texas Southern University will not be hearing Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) speak. The students’ petition referenced Cornyn’s support of stricter voter-ID laws, as well as his low rating with the NAACP. The AP reports that the university released a press release stating, “Every consideration is made to ensure that our students’ graduation day is a celebratory occasion and one they will remember positively for years to come. We asked Sen. Cornyn to instead visit with our students again at a future date in order to keep the focus on graduates and their families.” It was announced late last week that Cornyn is on the short list of candidates to lead the FBI. More here.
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ACLU Brings Lawsuit in Mississippi Claiming Blacks Are in Constant State of Siege
The residents of Madison County, Mississippi, are 57 percent white and 38 percent Black. According to a minister, an army veteran, a law student, a stay-at-home mom, a youth T-ball coach, a carpenter, and five other plaintiffs in a civil rights lawsuit, Black residents are abused by local cops so often that they live in “a permanent state of siege.”According to the complaint filed by the ACLU, sheriff’s deputies operate roadblocks and pedestrian checkpoints so that some Black people cannot even enter or exit their homes without getting searched, violating “the law as well as the most basic norms of decency.” And deputies allegedly enter the homes of some black residents without warrants or consent, sometimes using excessive force and seizing their property. More here.
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Tumbling the Confederacy in Nawlins
The NYT reports on deconstructing the confederacy in New Orleans. Workers, wearing helmets and bullet-resistant vests, have worked at night in New Orleans. Protesters have been kept at a distance, streetcars have sometimes been stopped and traffic has been rerouted. Litigation and outrage have not been in short supply. New Orleans is halfway through a bitterly contested plan to remove four Confederate monuments from public spaces in the city. A monument to a Reconstruction-era insurrection was taken down last month. This past week, workers dismantled a statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. The city intends to remove two other monuments soon -- statues of the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and P. G. T. Beauregard. More here.
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Dolores Huerta and P. Kim Bui at the Define America Film Festival last week. | |  |
By Friday, Dolores Huerta had touched down in DC to wish PODER PAC's Delia García a happy 40th birthday. | |
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Congolese Leader is Refusing to Step Down and Former Senator Bob Dole is Helping Him
Joseph Kabila, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, refused to step down from power after his second five-year term ended in December. Earlier this month, the country’s government signed a $5.6 million contract with an Israeli-based consulting firm known as Mer Security. Mer is divvying up the large contract among U.S. firms, which will plan meetings with lawmakers and members of the Trump administration. Enter the DC law firm Alston & Bird, which received a $500,000 contract set to last three months, according to documents signed by former Senator Bob Dole (R-KS), who serves as the firm's special counsel. Dole and the firm will be helping Mer Security coordinate the DC visit of the DRC's special envoy, the forms say, in addition to advising on "U.S. policy and political concerns regarding African security issues." More here.
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Congresswoman Lucille Roybal Allard (D-CA) meeting with PETA activists in LA on Saturday. | |  |
Francella Chinchilla, Esperanza scholar Blossom Ojukwu, Cecilia Muñoz, and Stephanie Valencia at the Mexican Cultural Institute on Friday night for the 8th Annual Benefit Concert. | |
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Doctors Without Borders Calls Migration from Central America to U.S. a Humanitarian Crisis
A report from Doctors Without Borders found that migrants from Central America's violence-plagued Northern Triangle region endure harrowing abuses while trying to make their way through Mexico toward the United States. The group called the situation a "humanitarian crisis" that demands the U.S. and Mexican governments do more to process applications for asylum and humanitarian visas. The report found that nearly 70 percent of those entering Mexico reported suffering violence during transit toward the United States, and nearly a third of women reported being sexually abused. More here.
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W.H.O. Candidate Accused of Covering Up Epidemics
A leading candidate to head the World Health Organization was accused this week of covering up three cholera epidemics in his home country, Ethiopia, when he was health minister -- a charge that could seriously undermine his campaign to run the agency. The accusation against Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was made by a prominent global health expert who is also an informal advisor to Dr. David Nabarro, a rival candidate in the race for W.H.O. director general. More here.
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| BLAH BLAH BLOG Why Korean companies are forcing their workers to go by English names (WaPo) One Man Traces His Path From Solitary Confinement to Magna Cum Laude (NYT)
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| FOMO Thursday, May 18th, 3P: A congressional briefing on "Middle Neighborhoods," community areas on the edge between growth and decline. 2360 Rayburn.
Wednesday, May 24th, 9A: A policy breakfast with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). The Raben Group, 1341 G St, NW. Click here to RSVP.
Wednesday, May 24th, 6:45P: CAMBA sponsors an Asian Pacific American Heritage Month event at the Washington office of Hogan Lovells, featuring Khizr Khan, noted speaker at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. The event will also feature a panel discussion focusing on the challenges facing the Asian American community. Click here to register. Thursday, May 25th: Vote It Loud sponsors the second annual Multicultural Media Correspondents Dinner at the National Press Club. By invitation only.
Thursday, June 15th, 8A: The Hill sponsors a Latina Leaders Summit. Participants include Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). Click here to RSVP.
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