Kamala Harris Separates Herself From The Pack In 2nd Dem Debate [VIDEO]

MIAMI (AP) — Democratic divisions over race, age and ideology surged into public view in Thursday night’s presidential debate, a prime-time clash punctuated by a heated exchange between former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris.

There was a little girl in California who was bussed to school. That little girl was me. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/XKm2xP1MDH

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 28, 2019

It was one of several moments that left the 76-year-old Biden, who entered the night as his party’s fragile front-runner, on the defensive as he worked to convince voters across America that he’s still in touch with the Democratic Party of 2020 — and best-positioned to deny President Donald Trump a second term.

“I do not believe you are a racist,” Harris said to Biden, though she described his record of working with Democratic segregationist senators on non-race issues as “hurtful.”

Biden called Harris’ criticism “a complete mischaracterization of my record.” He declared, “I ran because of civil rights” and later accused the Trump administration of embracing racism.

The debate marked an abrupt turning point in a Democratic primary in which candidates have largely tiptoed around each other, focusing instead on their shared desire to beat Trump. But the debate revealed just how deep the fissures are within the Democratic Party eight months before primary voting begins.

Thursday’s debate, like the one a night earlier, gave millions of Americans their first peek inside the Democrats’ unruly 2020 season.

The showdown featured four of the five strongest candidates — according to early polls, at least. Those are Biden, Sanders, Pete Buttigieg of Indiana and Harris. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who debated Wednesday night, is the fifth.

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There are so many candidates lining up to take on Trump that they do not all fit on one debate stage — or even two. Twenty Democrats debated on national television this week in two waves of 10, while a handful more were left out altogether.

The level of diversity on display was unprecedented for a major political party in the United States. The field features six women, two African Americans, one Asian American and two men under 40, one of them openly gay.

Yet in the early days of the campaign, two white septuagenarians are leading the polls: Biden and Vermont Sen. Sanders.

Thursday’s slate of candidates — and the debate itself — highlighted the unprecedented diversity of the Democratic Party’s 2020 class.

South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a 37-year-old gay former military officer, is four decades younger than Sanders, and has been framing his candidacy as a call for generational change in his party. Harris is the only African American woman to qualify for the presidential debate stage. Any of the three women featured Thursday night would be the first ever elected president.

Buttigieg faced tough questions about a racially charged recent police shooting in his city in which a white officer shot and killed a black man, Eric Logan.

Buttigieg said an investigation was underway, and he acknowledged the underlying racial tensions in his city and others. “It’s a mess,” he said plainly. “And we’re hurting.”

One of the lesser-known candidates on stage, California Rep Eric Swalwell, called on Buttigieg to fire his police chief, even though the investigation was only beginning.

Swalwell also took a swipe at Biden’s advanced age. Either Biden or Sanders would be the oldest president ever elected.

“Joe Biden was right when he said it was time to pass the torch to a new generation of Americans 32 years ago,” Swalwell jabbed.

Biden responded: “I’m still holding on to that torch.”

The party’s broader fight over ideology played a back seat at times to the racial and generational divisions. But calls to embrace dramatic change on immigration, health care and the environment were not forgotten.

Sanders slapped at his party’s centrist candidates, vowing to fight for “real change.”

Biden downplayed his establishment leanings. For example, the former vice president, along with the other candidates on stage, raised his hand to say his health care plan would provide coverage for immigrants in the country illegally.

Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper predicted that an aggressive lurch to the left on key policies would ultimately hurt Democrats’ quest to defeat Trump.

“If we don’t clearly define we are not socialists, the Republicans are going to come at us every way they can and call us socialists,” he warned.

Others on the stage Thursday night included Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Michael Bennet of Colorado, New York businessman Andrew Yang and author and social activist Marianne Williamson.

The showdown played out in Florida, a general election battleground that could well determine whether Trump wins a second term next year.

Biden sought to sidestep the intraparty divisions altogether, training his venom on Trump.

“Donald Trump thinks Wall Street built America. Ordinary middle-class Americans built America,” said the former vice president. He added: “Donald Trump has put us in a horrible situation. We do have enormous income inequality.”

Biden’s strategy is designed to highlight his status as the front-runner, and as such, the Democrat best positioned to take down the president at the ballot box. Above any policy disagreement, Democratic voters report that nothing matters more than finding a candidate who can beat Trump.

Their first round of debates is finished, but the real struggle is just beginning for most of the candidates.

All will work aggressively to leverage their debate performance and the related media attention to their advantage in the coming days. There is a real sense of urgency for more than a dozen candidates who fear they may not reach donor and polling thresholds to qualify for subsequent debates.

Should they fail to qualify, and many will fail, this week’s debates may have marked the high point for their personal presidential ambitions.

___

Peoples reported from Washington.

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Buffalo Bills Player To Pay For Funeral Of Girl Shot And Killed In South Carolina

A Buffalo Bills player has stepped up in the wake of a horrific tragedy near his South Carolina hometown.

11-year-old Ja’Naiya Scott was shot and killed when someone came into her family home in Anderson, South Carolina and started shooting. More than 35 shots went into the home and Scott’s 18-year-old and 11-year-old cousins were wounded, People.com reports.

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Buffalo Bills defensive end, Shaq Lawson grew up 20 miles from Scott and felt compelled to help the grieving family.

Via Greenvilleonline.com:

“It could have been my little sister,” he said late Wednesday. “I’ve got a little sister around that age, and it could have been one of my family members.”

Lawson spoke to the Independent Mail and The Greenville News late Wednesday in a telephone interview from Arizona. He said he had reached out to speak to Ja’Naiya’s mother, Marshella Rice.

“I know her heart was hurting,” Lawson said. “I was so speechless I couldn’t saying anything. I felt for her pain. I felt the pain, too. I felt like any way I could possibly help out, I was going to do that. It hit my heart.”

Ja’Naiya’s uncle Fred Rice first announced that Lawson would pay for her funeral when Rice spoke at a vigil for the little girl Wednesday evening.

The three girls were at home with a woman who was one of their mothers and a 20-year-old man.

No suspects have been named in the case.

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All The Funniest Tweets and Memes from the Second Night of Democratic Debates

"Marianne Williamson has chaotic recurring Frasier character energy."

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Politician Tweets May Have To Come With Warning Labels

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Presidents and other world leaders and political figures who use Twitter to threaten or abuse others could find their tweets slapped with warning labels.

The new policy , announced by the company on Thursday, comes amid complaints from activists and others that President Donald Trump has gotten a free pass from Twitter to post hateful messages and attack his enemies in ways they say could lead to violence.

From now on, a tweet that Twitter deems to involve matters of public interest, but which violates the service’s rules, will be obscured by a warning explaining the violation.

Users will have to tap through the warning to see the underlying message, but the tweet won’t be removed, as Twitter might do with a regular person’s posts.

Twitter said the policy applies to all government officials, candidates and similar public figures with more than 100,000 followers. In addition to applying the label, Twitter won’t use its algorithms to “elevate” or otherwise promote such tweets.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said Keegan Hankes, research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, who focuses on far-right extremist propaganda online. But, he added, Twitter is essentially arguing “that hate speech can be in the public interest. I am arguing that hate speech is never in the public interest.”

Twitter refused to comment on whether any of Trump’s past tweets violated its rules and would not say what role, if any, his Twitter activity played in the creation of the new warning-label policy.

The new stance could fuel additional Trumpian ire toward social media. The president routinely complains, without evidence, that social media sites are biased against him and other conservatives.

Twitter’s rules prohibit threatening violence against a person or group, engaging in “targeted harassment of someone,” or inciting others to do so, such as wishing a person is harmed. It also bans hate speech against a group based on race, ethnicity, gender or other categories.

Up to now, the company has exempted prominent leaders from many of those rules, contending that publishing controversial tweets from politicians helps hold them accountable and encourages discussion.

But there have been longstanding calls to remove Trump from the service over what some have called abusive and threatening behavior.

Some activists complained this week after the president threatened Iran with “obliteration” in some areas if it attacks the U.S. Trump has also tweeted a video of himself beating up a man with a CNN logo in place of his head and retweeted seemingly faked anti-Muslim videos.

“Donald Trump has changed political discourse on Twitter and everywhere else, given the level of toxic statements he has made about vulnerable communities in America,” Hankes said.

Other politicians could likewise become subject to warning labels.

In 2018, French prosecutors filed preliminary charges against far-right French politician Marine Le Pen for tweeting brutal images of Islamic State violence. Twtter prohibits material that is “excessively gory.”

And in March, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro stirred outrage by sharing a video on Twitter of a man urinating on the head of another man during a Carnival party.

Insults and mockery fall into a gray area. Calling someone a “lowlife, a “dog” or a “stone cold LOSER,” as Trump hasdone , may not in itself be a violation. But repeated insults against someone might amount to prohibited harassment.

Jennifer Grygiel, a social media expert and professor at Syracuse University, said Twitter “obviously” enacted the new policy because of Trump’s Twitter activity.

But Grygiel said the new rule doesn’t go far enough. Because of the president’s outsize ability to start wars, move stock markets or influence other world events, Twitter should instead review leaders’ tweets before they are sent out and block them if necessary, Grygiel said.

Twitter’s new policy doesn’t apply to past tweets.

Twitter said it is still possible for a government official or other figure to tweet something so egregious that it warrants removal. A direct threat of violence against an individual, for instance, would qualify.

The company said warning-label decisions will be made by a group that includes members of its trust and safety, legal and public policy teams, as well as employees in the regions where particular tweets originate.

___

AP Technology Writer Mae Anderson in New York contributed to this report.

PHOTO: Twitter

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Court Decision Sets Up Fight Over Redistricting In North Carolina

WASHINGTON (AP) — When North Carolina drew its most recent political maps, state leaders split a historically black university in Greensboro into two congressional districts that critics say diluted the voting power of African Americans on campus.

Lawmakers defended it as partisan gerrymandering — a tactic that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block Thursday. But opponents cite it as a classic example where political gerrymandering can have racial consequences.

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“It’s partisan, but it’s also based on race as well,” said Kylah Guion, a junior at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her university is one of the largest areas of black young voters in North Carolina.

Experts and advocates say the court’s decision to stay out of partisan gerrymandering decisions with its ruling on Thursday may make it more difficult to suss out and remedy illegal political line drawing meant to diminish the voting power of minorities.

Dividing voters by race is still illegal in the United States and can be banned by the federal courts. But the high court decided it could not rule on cases where lawmakers divvy up voters by party to give themselves advantages during elections.

That will leave it up to the courts to decide legal challenges from people who believe political maps were illegally drawn by race. But the blurred line between race- and political-based gerrymandering could complicate those efforts.

This will become more of an issue after the upcoming Census and lawmakers around the country start drawing new maps in 2021. Judges will have to figure out the motivations of congressional and state district line drawers.

“This decision will make it harder for courts to figure out racial discriminatory motives where they do exist, to the extent they do exist, because line drawers will be able to say that ‘All of our decisions were to gain partisan advantage,'” said Rebecca Green, co-director of the Election Law Program, a joint project of the William & Mary Law School and the National Center for State Courts. “So I think it will be very hard for plaintiffs to find evidence or to demonstrate the racial predominance that they would need to demonstrate to win a claim of racial gerrymandering.”

Jurisdictions have tried masking racial gerrymandering as political gerrymandering in the past, resulting in a mixed bag of rulings and challenges in various states.

Partisan gerrymandering is “a political tactic that has long been used to suppress political representation for black and brown voters,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, leader of the National Action Network.

Several legal challenges over racial redistricting are currently underway in the courts.

For example, a trial is scheduled for Nov. 4 on a federal lawsuit alleging the U.S. House maps approved in 2011 by Alabama’s Republican-led Legislature and GOP governor illegally limit the voting influence of black residents.

Guion, a junior at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro, North Carolina, said state courts and legislatures will have to be the focus of any change in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision.

The decision is “basically a message to the South that the Supreme Court doesn’t care much about the people. It’s about the protection of power,” she said.

PHOTO: AP

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