National News - Page 122

Virginia State to Host Historic 2024 Presidential Debate

By Isabela Espadas Barros Leal For the first time in U.S. history, a general election presidential debate will be hosted at a historically Black college or university. The Commission on Presidential Debates announced Monday that Virginia State University in Petersburg will host the second debate of the 2024 general election cycle Oct. 1. “We are honored and grateful to have been chosen as a host for a 2024 Presidential Debate,” VSU President Makola M. Abdullah said in a news release. “This is a historic moment for our university and for HBCUs nationwide.” Additional debates will be hosted at Texas State University — a Hispanic-serving institution —

Serena Williams, Ruby Bridges Join Women’s Hall of Fame

Serena Williams and Ruby Bridges will be inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame next year, the hall announced Thursday, adding the tennis great and civil rights icon to a previously announced list of women to be honored during Women’s History Month in March. “The 2024 inductee class has broken barriers, challenged the status quo, and left an impact on history,” the Hall of Fame said in its announcement. Eight other honorees were announced in the spring. Williams and Bridges became available after the date and location of the ceremony were changed, a spokesman said. Williams, 42, is a 23-time Grand Slam tennis champion

Jonathon Heyward Makes History as BSO’s First Black Director

By Sydney Haywood and Joe Fryer Jonathon Heyward’s career is full of accomplishments, but it has also been marked by what he describes as “serendipitous moments.” Heyward, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s new musical director, said he started playing the cello at age 10 because there were too many students at his performing arts school in Charleston, South Carolina, who wanted to play violin. “The violin line was completely out the door and no one was in the cello line,” Heyward said. “I was ready to go home.” Heyward said this brief moment of childhood impatience expanded into a love of the instrument, setting

Biden Signs Stopgap Bill, Avoids Government Shutdown

By Tamara Keith President Biden signed a short-term government funding bill on Thursday, avoiding a potential government shutdown and pushing into next year debates about wartime funding for Ukraine and Israel. Biden’s approval came a day after the Senate overwhelmingly approved the stop-gap spending bill. The measure, designed by new House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., funds four federal agencies until Jan. 19, 2024 and the rest until Feb 2, 2024. The goal is to give Congress more time to negotiate long-term spending bills. The president is in San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, so the bill came out West

Atlanta Protest Halts Police Training Center Construction

 Police used tear gas and flash-bang grenades Monday to halt a march seeking to stop construction of a police and firefighter training center in Atlanta. More than 500 people on Monday marched about 2 miles from a park to the site, which is just outside the Atlanta city limits in suburban DeKalb County. A wedge of marchers, including some in masks, goggles and chemical suits intended to protect against tear gas, pushed into a line of officers in riot gear on a road outside the training center site. Officers pushed back and then responded with tear gas, with one protester

Democrats Flip Central Bucks School Board in Key Win

By Emily Rizzo Meghan Budden’s family was considering moving if their Pennsylvania school district didn’t change course. She normally isn’t politically active, she said, but felt compelled to volunteer when a slate of Democrats launched bids to take back their school board in Central Bucks School District, just north of Philadelphia. Central Bucks is well known both statewide and nationally for heated board meetings over masks and Pride flags, policies banning certain books and directives to not use students’ preferred names and pronouns. Accusations of discrimination against LGBTQ students have also led to an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Department of Education. “I couldn’t have my kids in a school district where these kinds of

SCOTUS Ethics Code Lacks Enforcement, Critics Say

By Jessica Washington After an escalating series of scandals, the Supreme Court finally issued a code of conduct. But will this new code actually do anything to curb the behavior of some of the more notorious justices (**cough cough** Justice Clarence Thomas), or will it just sit there collecting dust? Not to burst any bubbles, but the first page of the justice’s statement kind of gives the whole game away. “For the most part these rules and principles are not new,” reads the statement, “The absence of a Code, however has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the

Experts Warn AI Bias Could Harm People of Color

By Claretta Bellamy More must be done to curb AI’s potential for harm or the further marginalization of people of color, a panel of experts weighing the ever-widening reach of AI warned last week. The warning came during a panel discussion here at the Obama Foundation’s Democracy Forum, a yearly event for thought leaders to exchange ideas on how to create a more equitable society. This year’s forum was focused on the advances and challenges of AI. During a panel titled, “Weighing AI and Human Progress,” Alondra Nelson, a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study, said AI

‘Enough!’ Empowers Teens to Tackle Gun Violence via Plays

By Neda Ulaby American high school students, who were born after the massacre at Columbine High School in 1999, are grimly accustomed to shooting drills and regular, if not daily, reports of gun violence on the news. It was the 2018 school shooting at Parkland, Fla., that helped catalyze Enough! Plays to End Gun Violence. The yearly contest encourages young people to write plays addressing how ongoing shootings affect American lives. But founder Michael Cotey spent most of his professional life as a theater geek, not an activist. “We’re kind of always in a state of being bruised and battered,” he

Black Voters Could Shift Mississippi Governor’s Race

By Nick Corasaniti Just three years ago, Mississippi had an election law on its books from an 1890 constitutional convention that was designed to uphold “white supremacy” in the state. The law created a system for electing statewide officials that was similar to the Electoral College — and that drastically reduced the political power of Black voters. Voters overturned the Jim Crow-era law in 2020. This summer, a federal court threw out another law, also from 1890, that had permanently stripped voting rights from people convicted of a range of felonies. (The case is currently tied up on appeal, with no

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