Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Most of us don’t spend time watching hearings like those of the House Committee on Rules, though they are available online. I don’t either, so when I saw this article by Charles Pierce in Esquire last month I thought it was a parody.
The Rules Committee Has So Much Important Stuff to Do, Will Be Doing This Instead
Come for the Refrigerator Freedom Act, stay for the Liberty in Laundry Act.
I know. I know. We’re all concentrating most of the day on a courtroom in New York City. However, that’s probably going to wrap up before 4:00 p.m., at which time the blogging gods have bestowed upon us a further gift. Allow me to present Monday’s agenda for the meeting of the Rules Committee of the United States House of Representatives. To be discussed and voted to the floor are the following:
H.R. 7637: The Refrigerator Freedom Act.
H.R. 7645: The Clothes Dryers Reliability Act.
H.R. 7673: The Liberty in Laundry Act.
H.R. 6192: The Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act.
This reads less like a legislative calendar and more like a prize package on The Price Is Right.
WTF?
Then I saw Rep. Joe Neguse’s tweet which made it real:
Well, the idiotic Republican hearings actually happened and I watched the whole thing (It’s here on YouTube). For my money, the star of the show was Neguse, which you should take 4 minutes to watch. He posted:
I grinned at this tweet:
While new Black Democratic Congressfolk like Jasmine Crockett and Maxwell Alejandro Frost have attracted a lot of media attention — do not sleep on Jim Clyburn’s successor.
Rep. Joe Neguse elected assistant House Democratic leader
House Democrats on Wednesday elected Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) to replace Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) as assistant House Democratic leader.
[...]
What he's saying: "I am deeply grateful to my colleagues for electing me to serve as the Assistant Democratic Leader," Neguse said in a statement.
- "My office intends to hit the ground running, and will work to uplift and amplify every member of our diverse and talented Caucus, while bolstering resources and services for Members and their staff."
What we're hearing: Neguse, who ran unopposed for the role, was elected by acclamation at a closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting, according to several sources in the room.
- Neguse, 39, has served in the House since 2019. He is the first Eritrean-American member of Congress, as well as the first Black member from Colorado.
His bio from the Colorado Encyclopedia :
Early Life
Joseph D. Neguse was born on May 13, 1984, in Bakersfield, California, to Debesai and Azeib Neguse. His parents were both Eritrean; they had separately fled Eritrea in the early 1980s, when the country was fighting for independence from Ethiopia. Both ended up in Bakersfield, where they were introduced through mutual Eritrean friends and married. The couple had two children, Joseph and Sarah. The family soon moved to Colorado so Debesai, an accountant, could pursue a master’s degree at the University of Denver. Azeib, meanwhile, attended the University of Colorado–Denver. The Neguse family lived at various times in Aurora, Littleton, and Highlands Ranch. Joe attended Thunder Ridge High School in Highlands Ranch, graduating in 2001. In 2002 Neguse moved to Lafayette, in eastern Boulder County.
Neguse attended the University of Colorado and was politically active in college. He served as co–student body president, and he founded New Era Colorado, a group that worked to organize, engage, and amplify the voices of young voters. New Era is credited with helping register more than 150,000 young voters since 2006. He also championed a successful 2005 ballot measure, Referendum C, that increased public education funding. He graduated with a degree in economics and political science in 2005, and in 2009 he completed his education with a JD from the university’s law school.
Political Career
Neguse credits his time in Colorado with stoking a passion for environmental protection and better health care, which he sees as interconnected. Neguse has also said his political career was influenced by his parents’ immigrant experience, as they had fled their war-torn homeland, moved halfway across the world with nothing, and were able to earn advanced degrees in the United States. The example of his parents drove Neguse to work for improved education and young-voter turnout so that today’s young people could have the same opportunities he had.
In 2009, fresh out of law school, Neguse was elected to represent Colorado’s Second Congressional District on the University of Colorado’s Board of Regents—a university supervisory body consisting of members from the state’s seven congressional districts, plus two statewide officials. At the same time, he also began his career in labor law, working for the Denver firm Holland & Hart. A failed campaign to become Colorado’s secretary of state in 2014 nevertheless put Neguse on the state Democratic Party’s radar. In 2015 Governor John Hickenlooper appointed Neguse as head of the state’s consumer protection agency.
This critical political experience enabled Neguse to make a bid for Congress in 2018, at the age of just thirty-four. On November 6, 2018, the district’s reliably Democratic counties propelled Neguse to a fifty-seven-point victory over Republican Peter Yu, making him the first African American congressman from Colorado.
After his selection as the new assistant House Democratic leader, he did this interview with Lawrence O’Donnell on The Last Word:
Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse joins MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell in his first interview after being elected Assistant Democratic Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Neguse’s election comes as the Republican-led House Oversight Committee holds an impeachment inquiry into President Biden
If you haven’t been following him — you should.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Friday set a July primary and a September general election to fill the Newark-based U.S. House seat that opened after Rep. Donald Payne Jr.'s recent death.
Murphy signed a writ of election, required under state law. The July 16 primary will be about a month after the state’s regularly scheduled June 4 contest, followed by the general election Sept. 18.
The special election will determine who serves out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends Jan. 3, 2025, while the regular election process held in parallel will be for who fills the seat after that.
It’s not yet clear who will be running in the heavily Democratic and majority-Black district, which is unlikely to flip as registered Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
Payne had already filed paperwork to run for reelection this year and is set to appear uncontested on the ballot for the regular June 4 primary. Should he win the nomination, Democratic Party committee members in his district could choose a replacement to run in the November general election.
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When the graduates of Fordham University’s School of Law walk across the stage later this month, a formerly incarcerated Black woman — who happened to just pass the bar exam on the first try — will be among them.
Afrika Owes, a single mom based in New York, has gone viral after sharing the news on TikTok that she passed the New York bar exam early on her first try.
In the video, which opens with the text, “POV: You’re a formerly incarcerated single mom who passed the bar early on the first try,” Owes filmed her live reaction as she logged in to check her results online. Finding her results after a few tense moments, Owes immediately shouted, “I passed! I passed!”, bursting into tears as a member of her background support team embraced and congratulated her.
According to the New York Times, in 2011, Owes, 17 at the time, was charged as part of a gang-related conspiracy case. She pleaded guilty to the felonies of conspiracy and weapons possession and was later sentenced under the New York Youthful Offender program, serving six months on Rikers Island with five years of probation after her release. However, she explained to People she “only wound up doing two years of probation.”
During her sentence, Owes studied for her GED and the SAT. After she was released, she finished high school and enrolled in college, completing the first two years during her probation.
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The UK is again preparing to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda after Parliament created a workaround to enact a policy the high court declared unlawful.
Authorities have begun detaining migrants to deport to Rwanda under the revamped plan. But the policy faces major logistical issues, humanitarian concerns, and the likelihood that a future Labour government will scrap it.
Former Home Secretary Priti Patel initially proposed the controversial law in 2022 as a way to reduce irregular migration, particularly via small boats across the English Channel, which is on the rise in the UK. Her successor, Suella Braverman, also advocated for the plan until she was fired in 2023; Prime Minister Rishi Sunak then vowed to “stop the boats” and promised that the policy would become law.
Sunak succeeded on the latter front. Following legal challenges that saw the UK Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights declare the proposal unlawful, a bill declaring Rwanda safe for migrants and that limits the courts’ ability to adjudicate the country’s safety was approved as law by King Charles in late April, despite heavy opposition from the House of Lords. The government published a video on May 1 showing law enforcement authorities detaining people to send to the East African country as soon as July.
The law has been resoundingly criticized by human rights advocates, immigration lawyers, and Labour politicians who say it violates international law and is, to quote shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, “an expensive gimmick.”
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The threat of invasion darkens the daily struggle for life in El Fasher, the main city in Sudan’s western Darfur region and the last major urban centre still under the army’s control. “We all live in absolute fear and constant worry of what awaits us in the coming days,” says Osman Mohammed, a 31-year-old English teacher.
Mohammed Ali Adam Mohamed, a 36-year-old grocery shop owner with five children, has no doubt what a full-scale battle would mean.
“If clashes occur between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the army inside the city, we civilians will be the victims,” he tells the BBC.
Sudan’s brutal civil war began just over a year ago, after the country’s two leading military men who had staged a coup together – one the head of the armed forces, the other the head of the RSF – fell out over the future of the country.
Until now El Fasher has been spared the worst of the violence and ethnic killings that have taken place across Darfur, the stronghold of the RSF.
But since the middle of last month, the paramilitary force has been besieging El Fasher, a humanitarian hub which hosts hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including those who have fled other areas seized by the group.
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When Arkansas lawmakers decided five years ago to replace the statues representing the state at the U.S. Capitol, there was little objection to getting rid of the existing sculptures. The statues that had stood there for more than 100 years were obscure figures in the state’s history.
“I remember giving tours to constituents from Arkansas, to young people, and I would point out the two representatives in Statuary Hall in our United States Capitol from Arkansas,” said former Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who also served in Congress. “And they would say, ‘We’ve never heard of them.’”
Instead of two little-known figures from the 18th and 19th centuries, the state will soon be represented by the “Man in Black” and a woman who was instrumental in the fight over school desegregation.
Officials plan to install statues of civil rights leader Daisy Bates this week and musician Johnny Cash later this year.
Bates, who headed the state NAACP, mentored the Black students known as the Little Rock Nine, who integrated Central High School in 1957. She is a well-known civil rights figure in Arkansas, where a downtown street in the capital, Little Rock, is named in her honor. The state also marks Daisy Bates Day on Presidents Day.
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