Tag: Sen. Harris
Kamala Harris, Daughter of Immigrants, Is the Face of America’s Demographic Shift
Her parents’ arrival to Berkeley as young graduate students was the beginning of a historic wave of immigration from outside Europe that would change the United States in ways its leaders never imagined.
When Kamala Harris’s mother left India for California in 1958, the percentage of Americans who were immigrants was at its lowest point in over a century.
That was about to change.
Her arrival at Berkeley as a young graduate student — and that of another student, an immigrant from Jamaica whom she would marry — was the beginning of a historic wave of immigration from outside Europe that would transform the United States in ways its leaders never imagined. Now, the American-born children of these immigrants — people like Ms. Harris — are the face of this country’s demographic future.
Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s choice of Ms. Harris as his running mate has been celebrated as a milestone because she is the first Black woman and the first of Indian descent in American history to be on a major party’s presidential ticket. But her selection also highlights a remarkable shift in this country: the rise of a new wave of children of immigrants, or second-generation Americans, as a growing political and cultural force, different from any that has come before. Continue reading.
Paul clashes with Booker, Harris over anti-lynching bill
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) clashed with Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calf.) on Thursday, deepening the stalemate on anti-lynching legislation.
Paul tried twice to amend House-passed legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime, saying that as currently written it would designate “any bodily injury including a cut, an abrasion, or a bruise, physical pain, illness or any other injury to the body” as lynching.
“I take it seriously and this legislation does not. … The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act should be adopted with my amendment which would apply the criminal penalties for lynching only and not other crimes,” Paul said. Continue reading.
Kamala Harris burns down Trump intelligence nominee over the president’s well-documented effort to minimize COVID-19 risk
Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) was peppered with questions about how President Donald Trump has handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
At his Senate confirmation hearing for Director of National Intelligence, Ratcliffe was asked what he would do if Trump downplayed future threats as he had done with the coronavirus pandemic.
“Do you think President Trump has accurately portrayed the threat of COVID-19 to the American people?” Harris wondered. Continue reading.
Why Bill Barr couldn’t answer a simple question from Kamala Harris
By Tuesday night, after the four prosecutors who were involved with the Roger Stone case resigned, NBC News reported that William Barr had basically taken control of Justice Department matters that are of personal interest to Trump. As I suggested previously, that flushes the standard of an independent attorney general down the drain.
While Trump celebrated that fact on Twitter, Barr knows that when the president does things like that, it undermines his ability to carry out what Trump wants him to do—which is basically to protect the chief executive and punish his enemies. That is why Barr agreed to an interview with ABC News, where he criticized the president for those tweets and suggested that he won’t be bullied.
But this whole question of Barr’s independence as attorney general has been an issue since before he was even nominated for the job. As a reminder, back in 2017, Peter Baker contacted 10 former attorneys general to ask them how they would respond to pressure from a president to open an investigation on a political rival. The only one who responded was William Barr. Continue reading.
Harris asks Graham to bring in Barr over Stone sentencing
She wants an explanation of the handling of the Roger Stone case.
Sen. Kamala Harris demanded Tuesday that Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) bring in Attorney General William Barr to testify about the Justice Department’s handling of the sentencing of former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone.
The California Democrat’s request comes after the Justice Department backed off a previous recommendation for a seven-to-nine-year sentence for Stone for impeding federal investigations into connections between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. The DOJ’s revised sentencing recommendation occurred after President Donald Trump tweeted that the initial recommendation was “horrible and very unfair,” though a Justice Department official speaking on condition of anonymity insisted the decision to retreat was made before Trump took aim at the initial proposal.
The revised recommendation appears to have prompted the withdrawal of the four prosecutors handling Stone’s case. Continue reading.
Booker, Harris Add Historic Diversity to Senate Judiciary
The following article by Todd Ruger was posted on the Roll Call website January 10, 2018:
2020 hopefuls are second and third black senators to serve on panel
The addition of Democrats Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday gave the two potential 2020 presidential hopefuls a big platform, but also a spot in the panel’s history.
Booker becomes the first black man to sit on the committee, which oversees civil rights, voting rights, housing discrimination and other Justice Department enforcement efforts that are seen as crucial to African-Americans. Harris, who is biracial, becomes the second black woman to serve on the panel, after Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, who left the Senate in 1999.
In one move by Democrats, Booker and Harris become the second and third black senators to serve on the committee and its first black members in nearly two decades. It will be the first time two black senators have been on the panel at the same time, and it comes as minority communities express concern at moves by President Donald Trump and his administration, specifically those by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Continue reading “Booker, Harris Add Historic Diversity to Senate Judiciary”