Terrance Heath Archive

Donald Trump’s response to a well deserved rebuke form the parents of a Muslim-American war hero should lead Republicans to ask whether their candidate has, at long last, no sense of decency.

It was a moment that shook the Democratic convention. With his wife Ghazala by his side, 65-year-old immigration lawyer, Khizr Khan, of Charlotte, Va., delivered the stinging rebuke that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has had coming since the moment he kicked of his presidential bid with an attack on immigrants, and called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, following the terrorist attack in San Bernardino. The Khans mere presence on the stage, with the image of their son Humayun — a posthumously decorated Army captain, killed by suicide bomber in Iraq 12 years ago — looming on the screen above them was an effective repudiation of Trump’s rhetoric.

Then, with no written speech nor the guidance of the Teleprompter, Kahn spoke from the heart about his family’s emigration from the United Arab Emirates in 1980, and his memories of a son who sacrifice his life in the service of his country. Khan then delivered a blistering response to Trump’s xenophobic, fear mongering rhetoric. “Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery?” he demanded. “Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”

More than 400,000 Americans signed a petition calling on Donald Trump to release his tax returns. On Tuesday, progressive activists delivered those signatures to Trump Tower.

Progressive activists showed up at Donald Trump’s doorstep on Tuesday with a simple demand for Trump: Release your tax returns. It’s a pretty simple request, and not all that unusual. For the last 40 years, every major presidential nominee has done it. In 2012, Trump even went on Fox News to prod Mitt Romney to release his returns, saying “Mitt has to get this returns out.” Hillary Clinton released forms for every year going back to 1977 — 39 years.

On the eve of the Republican National Convention, thousands of progressive volunteers are going door-to-door to counter politics of hate, and build support for economic and racial justice.

As Republicans gather to nominate their candidate for president, major progressive organizations will conduct a National Doorstep Convention, on July 15 – 17. Thousands of volunteers in more than 20 states and 29 cities will go door-to-door, to have conversations with voters, urging them to reject the politics of hate sown by Donald Trump and the GOP. Volunteers aim to talk with more than half-a million people over three days. The National Doorstep Convention is part of a multi-racial, nationwide push that includes the Center for Community Change Action, People’s Action, MoveOn.org, and scores of state-based groups.

The National Doorstep Convention will counter the division sown by Trump and the GOP, by reaching out to white working-class voters and urging them to oppose Trump’s hate-fueled agenda, and support a progressive economic agenda. “We believe the National Doorstep Convention is an important step in the democratic process; that the best way to make progress is for neighbors to have conversations with neighbors,” said LeeAnn Hall, co-executive director of People’s Action. “We can’t solve serious problems with more division and more hate,” Hall added. “We need to move a real economic agenda that takes power away from corporations and the wealthy elite, and puts it back in the hands of working people.”

Earlier this month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau revealed new rules to rein in payday lenders and their outrageous fees. Now, the CFPB needs to take the next step to protect Americans from these corporate loan sharks.

People’s Action is calling on the CFPB to take action. Sign the petition, and tell the CFPB to close the debt trap by only letting payday lenders make a loan when they are sure the borrower can afford to pay it back.

Once upon a time, when the financially desperate couldn’t get help from traditional sources and institutions — due to poor credit or lack of collateral — they sought out loan sharks; unlicensed lenders, who charged exorbitant fees, and charged penalties in the form of threats, intimidation, and broken bones. Like their oceangoing namesake, these predators relied on their innate ability to sense distress to find their prey, and showed little mercy to anyone they put the bite on. Usually connected to organized crime, they frequented the dark back alleys of finance.

Today, loan sharks have gone corporate, and they’re easy to find. They’ve gone legit, and set up storefronts in American neighborhoods across the country. In some neighborhoods, they’re more ubiquitous than banks. They’re called “payday lenders,” because they typically require borrowers to write a check dated for their next payday. The lender cashes the check on that payday, before the borrower can pay for necessities and other expenses. Payday loans cause about 50 percent of borrowers to be hit with overdraft fees, as a result of lenders’ automatic withdrawals; 42 percent had their accounts closed by their banks, when their payments failed due to lack of money in their accounts.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), has called Donald Trump “a loser” who made his money by “cheating people with scams.” A look into Trump University’s records, as well as Trump’s other business deals suggests that Warren was right on the money.

A reunion of Trump University alumni is most likely to take place in a courtroom, and unlikely to be a happy occasion. Founded in 2005, and defunct by 2011, Trump University promised to teach students the real estate “secrets” that supposedly made Donald J. Trump a billionaire mogul, for anywhere rom $1,500 to $35,000. That promise turned out to be worth about as much Trump’s promise to be a “self-funding” candidate.

When I started writing about Trump last year, Trump University was in the headlines. In August of 2013, New York Attorney General Eric Scheiderman filed a $40 million lawsuit on behalf of 5,000 people, charging Trump University with “persistent fraudulent, illegal and deceptive conduct.” Two years later, Trump’s newly announced candidacy for president had renewed interested in Trump U. Schneiderman’s lawsuit, which is still pending and won’t see the inside of a courtroom before the election.

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson is often credited with saying, “The government closest to the people serves them best.” Republicans in North Carolina — and elsewhere — think they know better.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, “the government closest to the people” approved Ordinance 7056, prohibiting discrimination against LGBT citizens in public accommodations and allowing transgender people to use public restrooms appropriate to their gender identity. One year prior, the ordinance failed in a 6 – 5 vote. This year is passed in a 7 – 4 vote. Two new city council members at large, elected in November, supported the ordinance.

It sounds like local democracy in action. Advocates for the ordinance kept working to persuade voters and candidates to support it, and managed to elect two more city council members who voted for it. Like over 180 cities and counties, “the government closest to the people” of Charlotte decided they were best served by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Republicans love to complain about people who get money from the government and refuse to work. That is, unless they’re doing so, by refusing to consider the president’s Supreme Court Nominee.

Tell U.S. senators to do their jobs, and give President Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, a timely hearing and an up-or-down vote to confirm or reject him.

As Jim Hightower writes, American taxpayers might justifiably ask why we should keep paying Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s salary. The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s body wasn’t even cold before McConnell announced that the Senate would not even consider a successor nominated by President Barack Obama. As justification, McConnell created from thin air a brand new precedent that president’s don’t get to name new justices to the Court in the last year in office .

That bald-faced lie would have annoyed Scalia, who would no doubt point out that the Constitution just doesn’t say that. It says that the president “shall” nominate a Justice to the Court as part of his job. There’s no exception for the last year of a president’s term. Even Scalia would admit that the drafters of the Constitution would have thought “lame duck” referred to a member of the waterfowl family Anatidae with a bum leg.

Donald Trump can’t disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke for the same reason the Republican party can’t disavow his candidacy — and it could splinter the GOP vote in 2016.

A new Democracy Corp likely voter survey of Republican base voters reveals the foundational values holding together the Republican base, as well as the fissures that threaten to splinter the GOP’s voting coalition in this election cycle. The survey finds that Moderates — who are solidly pro-choice, and done with the “culture wars” — make up about 31 percent of the GOP base. A significant percentage of them could break with the GOP, and possibly even vote Democratic, if Donald Trump is the nominee.

The survey paints a picture of a party united by fears about Democratic governance, immigration, and racial diversity. That’s not hard to believe. The GOP spent decades masterfully playing on the racial fears and anxieties of white working-class voters, and paving the way for a candidate just like Donald Trump.

This weekend, white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke announced his support for Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump. Without formally endorsing “the Donald,” Duke said on his radio program that he supports Trump. Duke asked his listeners to , “get off your duff … call Donald Trump’s headquarters, volunteer. They’re screaming for volunteers.” He warned that a vote against trump would be a “treason to your heritage.”

With one question, moderator Gwen Ifill flipped the script on race relations in America during the last Democratic presidential debate. Now, Democrats must learn how to answer it.

Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff of PBS made history at the Democratic presidential debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just by showing up. After all, they were the first all-female team to host a major presidential debate. Then veteran PBS journalist Ifill turned the conventional narrative on race relations on its head.

Moderator: When we talk about race in this country, we always talk about African Americans, people of color. I want to talk about white people, okay.

White people. I know.

Many people will be surprised to find out that we are sitting in one of the most racially polarized metropolitan areas in the country. By the middle of this century the nation is going to be majority nonwhite. Our public schools are already there. If working class white Americans are about to be outnumbered, are already underemployed in many cases, and one study found they are dying sooner, don’t they have a reason to be resentful, Secretary Clinton?

From the moment he launched his presidential bid, conventional wisdom said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wouldn’t even get close to becoming president. This week Cruz won the Iowa Caucuses, and got a little closer to the White House. Here’s why that should scare you.

Cruz’s win surprised a lot of people, especially (former?) frontrunner Donald Trump. It’s tempting to breathe a sigh of relief, and count Cruz’s win as the beginning of the end of Trump’s candidacy. But let’s not kid ourselves. Cruz is every bit as bad as Trump — if not worse. Let’s take a moment to remember what Ted Cruz wants to do to America.

Ohio governor John Kasich, the 16th candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, is neither the moderate Republican nor the “compassionate conservative” he pretends to be, but he still won’t get the Republican nomination.

This isn’t Kasich’s first time at the rodeo. He served nine terms in the House of Representatives, rising to prominence as chair of the House Budget Committee in 1997. He made a bid for the White House in 2000, after brokering a deal that balanced the federal budget for the first time since 1969, but dropped out. In 2001, Kasich left Washington for New York City, where he spent a decade working as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers. In 2010, he staged a political comeback, by defeating incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland.

Upon considering his official campaign launch (his unofficial campaign launched somewhat earlier), Kasich seems to have gotten it backwards. Kasich made empathy for struggling Americans a central theme in his launch speech at Ohio State University (from which Kasich’s campaign allegedly disinvited several liberal OSU students the night before). Typically, Republican candidates run hard and fast to the right if they want to secure the nomination, and then spend the general election trying to get close enough to the center to convince voters they’re really not that bad. That’s because, as Ed Kilgore puts it, “the dominant conservative faction in the party just cannot tolerate leaders who don’t share The True Faith.”

When Republicans finally choose their nominee for president, he or she will be already bought and paid for by one or more of the GOP sugar daddies of the 2016 election.

Never before have so many with little chance of — and even less interest in — being president, declared themselves candidates for the job. In a field of 15 candidates, it’s a given that most of the GOP hopefuls haven’t a prayer of even making the short list of potential nominees. It’s a safe bet that most of them know this.

So, why are they running? For some Republicans, it’s a no-brainer, because they win even if they lose. Running for president, or even having second billing on a losing ticket, can make one rich, famous, and influential. Mike Huckabee’s failed 2008 bid helped him get a Fox News show. Sarah Palin (and family) parlayed her failed vice presidential candidacy into realty-television stardom.

The already-famous also have something to gain, even if they miss the Oval Office by a mile. Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina are already famous, but their presidential candidacies raise their public profiles, and could raise interest for their future endeavors. Trump may return to reality television with a new legion of fans among the GOP faithful. Fiorina may be angling for a cabinet position in the next Republican administration.

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has scored the biggest sugar daddies in the GOP presidential primary, but it may not be enough to get him the Republican presidential nomination, or the White House.

Everyone knows Scott Walker has been running for president since shortly after he was sworn in as governor of Wisconsin. Today, Walker officially became the 15th candidate to squeeze into the GOP presidential primary clown car, with a tweet, and a Facebook video teasing his candidacy ahead of his formal announcement.

It’s official. Chris Christie is running for president. The only reason for Christie’s run appears to be either his outsized ego or deep delusion about his chances of winning.

Yesterday, the two most common reactions to news that New Jersey governor Chris Christie would announce his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination today were “Really?” and “Why?”

It wasn’t always this way. Not so long ago, Christie was considered the Republican to beat in the race for the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination. He was the Republican “id” unleashed, with a bullying, blustering, in-your-face manner that was tailor-made for the tea party. (However, Christie can dish it out, but he sure can’t take it.)

Christie’s “bully” image was actually carefully cultivated by his own office. Staff members armed with camcorders followed him to town hall meetings, to capture Christie dressing down and belittling citizens who had the temerity to criticize him. Christie’s staff edited the videos, and posted them to his YouTube channel, where conservatives swooned over them.

Now that the Supreme Court has one again upheld the Affordable Care Act, it’s time for Republican governors to stop denying coverage to millions and expand their Medicaid programs.

The Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision upholding federal subsidies in the Affordable Care Act doesn’t change anything. It just means that 6.4 million people who depend on federal and state health insurance exchanges for coverage won’t lose their benefits. All of the other provisions of the ACA remain in effect. The ruling represents an unqualified victory for health care reform, and peace of mind for nearly two-thirds of the more than 10 million beneficiaries of health care reform.

What has changed is that, as President Obama said in his reaction to the ruling, “the Affordable Care Act is here to stay. … This is not an abstract thing anymore. This is not a set of political talking points,” Obama said. “This is reality.”

It’s also reality that the Supreme Court’s decision doesn’t change anything for the 4.3 million Americans who are currently prohibited from gaining coverage under the ACA. According to a White House infographic, the 22 states refusing to expand Medicaid will leave 4.3 million Americans uninsured.

Two more candidates joined the race for the Republican presidential nomination on Monday. Of the two, retired brain surgeon Ben Carson is the one likely to have the most impact. That makes it frightening how much Carson just doesn’t get.

Carson went back to his roots to announce his candidacy for the nomination. On an auditorium stage in Detroit — his estranged hometown — he recounted his troubled, poverty-stricken childhood and then launched into a speech that revealed just how much he doesn’t get, for a guy who wants to be president.

What Ben Carson Doesn’t Get About The Safety Net

Carson’s humble upbringing is an important part of his narrative. His rise to becoming one of the top neurosurgeons in the country and a best-selling author is impressive because it starts in the poverty-stricken streets of Detroit and a fatherless home headed by a single mother with little education. Carson attempted to preemptively rebut those who would point out that his childhood experience of poverty doesn’t seem to inform his political positions.

For a brief, shining moment, Carly Fiorina was all over the media after announcing her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. That’s probably because she made a point of turning her presidential bid into “this weird girl fight” with Clinton, as CNN’s Carol Costello put it.

Then Ben Carson’s campaign launch sucked up all the oxygen left in the day’s media bubble, and Fiorina disappeared from the headlines in much the same way she’s destined to disappear from the presidential race. In the meantime, here are a few things you should know about Carly Fiorina while she’s still relevant.

Carly Fiorina Is No Match For Hillary Clinton (Or Anyone Else)

Hillary Clinton isn’t running against Carly Fiorina, but Fiorina is definitely running against Clinton. It makes sense, because Fiorina is already as close as she’ll ever get to facing off with Clinton. Last week, Fiorina spoke of neutralizing Clinton’s “gender card.” “If Hillary Clinton were to face a female nominee, there are a whole set of things that she won’t be able to talk about,” Fiorina said in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, “She won’t be able to play the gender card.”

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul announced last week that he is running for president. Paul is the second major Republican candidate to enter the 2016 presidential race, but what he’s running from is at least as important as the office he’s running for.

Coming on the heels of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s announcement last month, Paul’s announcement may give him a slight fundraising advantage. (Ted Cruz raised $500,000 within one day of his announcement, and $4 million just over a week later.)

It also gives Paul a chance to define — or redefine — himself as the GOP field fills up and the race really begins. That’s the advantage Paul probably seeks, because running from his record is going to be just as hard as running for president.

Rand Paul is one of the biggest flip-floppers in Congress.

If you don’t like Rand Paul’s position on any given issue, just wait a while and he’ll choose another one, and claim that it was really his position all along. Or as one Democratic strategist put it, “Rand Paul takes more positions than the Kama Sutra.”

Republicans in Congress today will vote on budget proposals that are essentially meaningless, that they lay out how the GOP would like to structure federal policy and priorities.

The White House has its own fact sheet about the House Republican budget. The National Priorities Project has created a detailed comparison of all the budget proposals up for consideration: President Obama’s budget, the House GOP budget, the Senate GOP budget, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget. And here at CAF, we put together a graphic for sharing on social networks that compares the GOP budget with the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget.

The numbers are familiar by now. The House GOP budget contains $5.5 trillion in cuts. Yet, what would $5.5 trillion in cuts to “discretionary non-military spending” mean for the day-to-day lives of American families? How would the House GOP Budget affect a hypothetical average American family? Here are five areas where families will feel the effects.

Budgets, as Rev. Jim Wallis says, are moral documents. They contain choices that reflect our priorities and define our values. The Republican-led House Budget Committee’s fiscal 2016 budget proposal, “A Balanced Budget For A Stronger America,” is a document full of immoral choices that will have devastating effects on the most vulnerable Americans.

The proposal is short on specifics and covers little new ground. House Budget Committee Chair Tom Price (R-Ga.) previewed the proposal’s focus on balancing the budget, and $5.5 trillion in spending cuts, in a speech at a Heritage Foundation event in January. Most of the rest borrows heavily from the budgets Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) proposed when he was the budget committee chair.

The Affordable Care Act

This week we learned that 16.4 million Americans have gained health insurance thanks to the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare has reduced the number of uninsured Americans by one-third in just five years, and led to a spike in health care jobs over the past year. It didn’t “bankrupt our nation,” “ruin the economy,” kill the private insurance industry, cost the economy “2.5 million jobs minimum,” bring about “the end of America as you know it,” or fulfill any of conservatives’ embarrassing predictions.

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) is the new chair of the House Budget Committee. Just who is Rep. Tom Price? What will his conservative economic ideology cost us?

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was arguably the most famous, and perhaps most-photographed, House Budget Committee chair in a long time. Maybe ever. Now, Ryan will apply his blue-eyed earnestness and “aw shucks” manner to pushing right-wing tax policy on the House Ways and Means Committee. Georgia’s Rep. Tom Price is stepping into Ryan’s shoes at the Budget Committee, as part of the GOP’s all-white, all-male slate of committee chairs.

Besides being a southern transplant from Michigan, a former orthopedic surgeon, and a fan of both Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift, Price is a fervent believer in a conservative economic ideology that will lead Republicans to undermine a recovery that hasn’t even reached most Americans.

In an otherwise dismal election, progressive populist victories on state ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage reveal a way forward for Democrats who are paying attention.

Going into the 2014 mid-term election, the odds — and deep-pocketed billionaire donors — favored Republicans. Yet, one issue defied trends and conventional wisdom: increasing the minimum wage. After efforts to raise the federal minimum wage stalled, voters went over the heads of their own elected officials, and voted to raise wages themselves.

Minimum wage initiatives were on the ballot in five states — four of them “red states.”

The GOP is rolling out a list of “principles” and pretending to have a “positive agenda,” because Republicans can’t tell Americans what they really want to do.

Twenty years after Newt Gingrich launched the “Contract With America,” Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus presented a pablum of 11 vague “principles.” There’s a reason Republicans have gone milquetoast. It’s not that Republican’s aren’t for anything. It’s that Republicans can’t tell Americans what they are for — not if they want to have a shot at governing.

Here are the five worst things Republicans have promised to do to Americans.

Fifty-one years ago, thousands of Americans gathered for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Today, events in Ferguson, Mo., and North Carolina show how much work remains, and how we can carry on the mission of the March.

America has made tremendous progress since thousands marched for “civil and economic rights”, and Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech before the Lincoln Memorial. As I wrote last year, on the fiftieth anniversary, we have undoubtedly come a long way:

• We are more educated. Seventy-five percent of African-Americans complete high school now, compared to 15 percent in 1963. There are 3.5 times more African-Americans attending college, and five college graduates for every one in 1963.

The latest “Libertarian Moment” is upon us, and will expire once it runs headlong into its own inherent shortcomings and the reality of a populist majority. Blink, and you’ll miss it.

Robert Draper, in the New York Times, asks “Has the Libertarian Moment Arrived?”, and answers by asserting that “the age group most responsible for delivering Obama his two terms” is poised to become a political “wild card.” Turned off by the Iraq war, “reflexively tolerant of other lifestyles,” and appalled by NSA-style invasions of privacy, Draper claims that voters between the ages of 18 and 29 — also known as Millennials —  are uncommitted to either major party, and thus are ripe to be lured into libertarianism.

Sen. Rand Paul mocked President and Mrs. Obama for wanting their daughters to experience working for minimum wage. My own experience taught me “the value of work,” and to value the workers for whom earning a paycheck isn’t always fun, stimulating, or fair.

In a Parade magazine interview last month, President and Mrs. Obama said they wanted their daughters to experience working for minimum wage, to  “get a taste of what it’s like to do that real hard work.” President Obama added that there is value in learning that “[G]oing to work and getting a paycheck is not always fun, not always stimulating, not always fair. But that’s what most folks go through every single day.”

By killing a key requirement that lawmakers disclose which lobbyists pick up the tab for their “all-expenses-paid trips around the world,” Republicans prove they can get things done when they really want to. Meanwhile, issues like immigration reform and infrastructure languish.

Republicans on the House Ethics committee couldn’t have picked a better moment to act. While the rest of the country focused on the Supreme Court’s devastating rulings for women and workers, members of the GOP-led committee quietly killed off a requirement that members of Congress who are treated to lavish, all-expenses-paid, global junkets must disclose it in their annual financial disclosure forms.

The White House will hold a Summit on Working Families today, as part of Democrats’ efforts to craft an economy that works for working families. Here are five policies with broad popular support that could make a family-friendly economy a reality.

1. Livable Wages

Contrary to conservative rhetoric, minimum wage workers are not just teenagers working at summer jobs.

• More than seven million children in America, almost one in 10, have parents who work for minimum wage — parents whose income would go up if the minimum wage went up.
• Most minimum wage workers are women, and many are mothers; 39 percent of low-income households are headed by working mothers.

More than seven million Americans have enrolled in health insurance through Obamacare, meeting the goal set by the Congressional Budget Office. Meanwhile, support for Obamacare has surpassed opposition, with 49 percent supporting, and 48 percent opposing the law in a Washington Post/ABC News poll; 47 percent support Republican “repeal and replace” efforts, while 49 percent oppose them.

In Charlie Daniel’s 1979 hit, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” looking for a soul to steal. Last week, the Moral Mondays movement brings its brand of righteous progressivism to the Georgia state capitol, to demand accountability from Georgia lawmakers and better lives for Georgians — and to deliver a special message to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal.