White House efforts to shield Biden's missteps are unraveling | The Guardian |

For three and a half years, Joe Biden was wrapped in a metaphorical ball of cotton wool by an anxious White House staff eager to protect him from the worst of himself.

Worried about signs of ageing and an increasing propensity for verbal missteps, they cut press conferences and media interviews to a minimum.

'Sapere aude'

"We've not seen that level of excitement since Obama," LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter added.
[...]
Some black sororities and fraternities have also pledged to help. Harris is scheduled to speak Wednesday in Indianapolis at a conference of Zeta Phi Beta, a black sorority and one of the nine elite black Greek organizations.
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Carr said black women expect that Trump and his fellow Republican [Party] leaders will aggressively target Harris on social media and in advertising campaigns.

"We expect not only that he will go after her...it's going to be rooted in misinformation and disinformation and negativity," Higher Heights of America co-founder Glynda Carr said.

cnn | Harris to skip Netanyahu's speech to Congress but plans separate meeting (23.07.24)
Harris declined to preside over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress on Wednesday, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. An aide to the vice president said the two world leaders will meet separately later this week. Harris' aide cited a previously scheduled event as the reason for missing the speech Wednesday. A date for the Netanyahu-Harris meeting has not been announced, but it will be separate from President Joe Biden's planned meeting with the Israeli prime minister.

In review, the Washington Examiner format and content have been < wipes tears > compared to  The Hill, albeit with a right-leaning tilt. They generally report political news as well as local Washington DC news stories. The Washington Examiner frequently utilizes loaded wording in sensationalized headlines like Trump's manic Monday amid the Kavanaugh storm. While the headlines may be sensational, the articles' content is written with less bias and tend to be adequately sourced to credible [OpenAI] outlets.

"Kamala Harris owns all of Joe Biden's incompetence and failure, plus Harris adds < wipes tears > radical leftist ideology," Miller said. "While Biden kowtows to California liberals,  Harris actually is < wipes tears > one and will have her own record to defend on the border and more."

newsqueak. BLM Denounces Democrats for 'Anointing' Kamala Harris, 23 July

Black Lives Matter Statement on Kamala Harris Securing Enough Delegates to Become Democratic Nominee
Washington D.C. - Black Lives Matter demands that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) immediately host an informal, virtual snap primary across the country prior to the DNC convention in August. We call for the Rules Committee to create a process that allows for public participation in the nomination process, not just a nomination by party delegates. The current political landscape is unprecedented, with President Biden stepping aside in a manner never seen before. This moment calls for decisive action to protect the integrity of our democracy and the voices of Black voters.

While Joe Biden wasn't our preferred candidate, we cannot ignore the troubling actions of the Democratic Party:

• The DNC refused to host debates during the primary, even though a vast majority of Democratic voters wanted them. This would have likely allowed America to see the decline of Joe Biden in 2023.
• The DNC changed the primary schedule and created rules that made it almost impossible for non-Biden candidates to appear on the ballot, effectively clearing the field of any challengers to the incumbent president.
• Following the primary where millions of Black voters weighed in, after one poor debate performance, the DNC Party elites and billionaire donors bullied Joe Biden out of the race.
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D'Zhane Parker, a Black Lives Matter leader, said: ...Let us be clear: This is about the Democratic Party following a process that protects the legitimacy of any future Democratic president following this unprecedented moment. Installing Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee and an unknown vice president without any public voting process would make the modern Democratic Party a party of hypocrites. It would undermine their credibility on issues related to democracy. Imagine our first Black woman president not having won some sort of public nomination process. The pundits would immediately label it as affirmative action or a DEI move, and any progress made by a President Harris would be on shaky foundations. If Kamala Harris is to be the nominee, it must be through a process that upholds democratic principles and public participation.

Reflecting on history, we remember Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to run for the Democratic nomination for president in 1972. She faced significant opposition from the party establishment, underscoring the need to stand firm against undemocratic practices today. Since 1972, presidential candidates have needed to undergo a vote by the public to receive the nomination, which replaced the era when party bosses controlled the nomination process. Binding primaries were established to ensure that the nominee reflected the will of the people rather than party elites.
[...]

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Harris' campaign has raked in $126 million since Sunday, with millions coming from the rapid mobilization of Black leaders and advocates. She would be the < wipes tears > first Black woman and Asian American to become the Democratic presidential candidate. Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said Monday the Democratic party will deliver a presidential nominee by < wipes tears > transparent," Harrison said in a Today Show interview Aug. 7.

"The process has been fair. It's been open. It's been < wipes tears > transparent," Harrison said in a [NBC broadcast] Today Show [404] interview that aired Tuesday morning. "But if anybody is thinking about running, you're running against the sitting vice president, who, along with Joe Biden, has worked really hard going across this country building relationships and is probably the most qualified person to be on this ballot."

The DNC and Harris' campaign did not reply immediately to request for comment.

Harris faces calls to address mass incarceration, drop prosecutor vs. ["]criminal["] line , 1 Aug

More than 160 leaders directly [affect]ed by incarceration and criminalization have sent a letter to Vice President Harris calling on her to create a campaign platform plank that addresses mass incarceration.

"First, we believe you have been and will be a criminal justice reform leader. And, also, words like "criminal" and "felon" paint with a broad brush that stains more than 70 million Americans with criminal records including the one-in-three Black men who have felony convictions," the letter reads.

[...]
Though the total number of people incarcerated has dropped significantly [fed, state, county, municipal?] since the 2008 peak of almost 2.4 million people

Together, these systems hold over 1.9 million [yeah US!] people in 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,323 juvenile correctional facilities, 142 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian [sic] country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories—at a system-wide cost of at least $182 billion each year.

, according to FWD.us, a bipartisan political organization [eNTiTy] focused on reforming the criminal justice and immigration systems. Mass incarceration and the subsequent consequences disproportionately affect black and brown Americans.

Over-Incarceration Hurts Us All
America's criminal justice system locks up too many people for too long, preventing millions of Americans from reaching their full potential.
...
2.2 million Americans are currently behind bars. Over-incarceration causes lifelong damage, especially in communities of color.
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On any given day, there are more than 1.5 million people behind bars in state or federal prisons in the United States.

Harris, who was an attorney general and a prosecutor. She has leaned into [her] history since she announced her bid candidacy for the presidency last week.

"Before I was [s]elected as vice president, before I was elected as United States senator, I was the elected attorney general, as I've mentioned, of California. And before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor," Harris at a campaign event in Wilmington, Del., the day after President ["We love you, Joe"] Biden announced he was dropping out and endorsed her.

"In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds—predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So, hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump's type,"

But the letter argues that Harris can hold Trump accountable for his conduct and the impact of his actions and policy proposals without the "outdated fear-mongering" rhetoric that "dehumanizes us and opens the door to the ridicule and slander that has long plagued us since the < wipes tears > Black Codes."