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COMMENTARY: Remembering the Silver Linings of 2020

NNPA NEWSWIRE — So, as the calendar turns to 2021, and many wish friends, family and associates, “Happy New Year!” we’ll place an overwhelming emphasis on the “New Year” portion of the sentiment.

Published

4 years ago

January 3, 2021

Oakland Post

While some might argue that detecting a silver lining over the past 365 days is difficult, there was good news. (Photo: iStockphoto / NNPA)

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

There was little to celebrate or be happy about in 2020, particularly for Black America. So, as the calendar turns to 2021, and many wish friends, family and associates, “Happy New Year!” we’ll place an overwhelming emphasis on the “New Year” portion of the sentiment.

The year began with devastating news as the world learned that a helicopter carrying NBA legend Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi, had crashed into a mountainside just outside of Los Angeles. Bryant, his young daughter, the pilot and six other passengers were all killed in the accident.

In unfortunate, but anticipated news, 2020 headlines continued to report on two areas of disproportionate death tolls for Blacks: Police killings of unarmed African Americans, and the novel coronavirus pandemic, or COVID-19, which disproportionately affected communities of color.

While some might argue that detecting a silver lining over the past 365 days is difficult, there was good news.

The outgoing year saw many firsts and accomplishments for African Americans, including many from the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), representing the Black Press of America.

Presidential candidates Joe Biden, Tom Steyer, and Michael Bloomberg all sat for interviews with NNPA President and CEO Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr.

Chavis, a civil rights icon, also helped raise the profile of the Black Press when he launched The Chavis Chronicles, a national television show with American Public Television.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation continued a campaign with the NNPA to raise awareness about education barriers for students of color and bridging the learning gap for minorities. That partnership has proven even more vital during the pandemic.

The United States, and much of the world, underwent an awakened awareness that Black Lives Matter now more than ever in 2020.

Following the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, major sports leagues, corporations, and others began acknowledging their responsibility in the fight for social justice and civil rights.

Led by LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers, NBA players exerted their popularity and authority by successfully demanding that the league honor the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Because of the players’ actions, the NBA opened its arenas to use as polling places, and the league agreed to promote social justice and civic engagement.

Major League Baseball and the National Football League also instituted initiatives with promises to do more for minorities at all levels.

The Google News Initiative (GNI) Innovation Challenge awarded Black Voice News (BVN) $300,000 in support of “Save the Black Press,” a bold call to action to innovate revenue and sustainability solutions at Black news organizations through the creation of the Data Access and Content Discovery Hub (DACDH).

Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts announced that Comcast would fight injustice and inequality against race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or ability. With that, Roberts committed $100 million to a three-year plan to advance social justice and equality. The initiative includes a $75 million cash commitment and $25 million in media.

Facebook announced that 15 member publishers of the NNPA would receive $1.288 million in grants through the Facebook Journalism Project’s relief fund for local news.

The social media giant said more than 200 news organizations would receive nearly $16 million in grants, which stem from $25 million in local news relief funding announced in March as part of Facebook’s $100 million global investment in the news.

MSNBC named Rashida Jones the first Black person and Black woman president of the network. Jones, who quickly becomes the most prominent woman in cable news, is scheduled to step into the top role on Feb. 1, Black History Month, replacing Phil Griffin, who had been at the cable news channel for more than 25 years.

Mellody Hobson, a Princeton graduate who, in 2019, earned the Woodrow Wilson Award, the university’s highest honor, was named Chairwoman of the Board of Starbucks.

With the promotion, Hobson became the only African American woman to chair a Fortune 500 company.

Midshipman First Class Sydney Barber, a mechanical engineering major from Illinois, was named Brigade Commander for the spring semester at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Barber, a track star with a stated desire to work as a Marine Corps ground officer, becomes the first Black woman to lead the Naval Academy’s student body.

The Brigade Commander heads the Academy’s day-to-day activities and trains the class of approximately 4,500 midshipmen. Barber becomes the 16th woman to serve in that role.

There were significant changes in the world of entertainment as Valeisha Butterfield Jones, a leader, global influencer, and culture shifter, who co-founded the Women in Entertainment Empowerment Network (WENN) and served as the National Youth Vote Director for President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, was named the Recording Academy’s first Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer.

While the traditional annual festival which hosts more than 350,000 people on Los Angeles’ Crenshaw Boulevard wasn’t in the cards because of the pandemic, Bakewell Media and the Los Angeles Sentinel found a new way to bring even more people together. The 15th annual Taste of Soul, the largest one-day street festival in Southern California, took place virtually in October.

Carol H. Williams received Ad Age’s Vanguard Award during this year’s Women to Watch Awards event. Williams, the CEO of Carol H. Williams Advertising, was honored for a lifetime of significant achievements, including being named to the AAF Advertising Hall of Fame.

2020 also answered the question, “What do Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Delores Tucker, Roland Martin, Gayle King, and Brent Staples have in common?” Each has made the Ebony Power 100 List, which annually recognizes leaders in their respective fields whom the iconic publication’s editors say have, “positively impacted the African American community.”

Retired NBA Star Junior Bridgeman announced the purchase of Ebony for $14 million. Ebony’s archives were previously sold for more than $30 million.

With death and hospitalizations piling up from the pandemic, a Black woman, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, was at the forefront of a National Institutes of Health’s team that worked with Moderna on its coronavirus vaccine.

Corbett, an expert on the front lines of the global race for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, will go down in history as one of the key players in developing the science that could end the pandemic.

Many others on the front lines of the fight to educate and advocate for African Americans are also celebrated. African American physicians at the University of Virginia, including Drs. Ebony Hilton, Leigh-Ann Webb, Taison Bell, Rochanda Mitchell and Cameron Webb all proved to be trusted and vital sources of objective information throughout the pandemic.

Critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay, an African American in New York, became the first person in the country to receive Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

In November, the ticket of Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris earned 306 electoral college votes and recorded more than 81 million popular votes to defeat President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Harris will become the nation’s first African American and first woman vice president.

In December, L+M Development Partners formally announced financing for a $349 million development project on the Bronx Harlem River waterfront in New York, including the Universal Hip Hop Museum. Construction is scheduled to commence in January.

The NNPA embraced online video and went “viral.”

With the goal of presenting each of the NNPA member media companies via an online panel format, the NNPA entered into online streaming aggressively under the theme, “Save Local Journalism.” Each of the streams featured up to four publishers who were able to share valuable insights, creativity, challenges and solutions.

Live audience interaction, in the form of questions and comments from those viewing the streams verified that the series of NNPA livestreams with African American newspaper publishers were an instant hit.

Other livestreams included interviews with superstars and legends like Ice Cube, Stephanie Mills, Ziggy Marley, Sugar Ray Leonard, Isiah Thomas, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and LL Cool J.

Because of the livestreams, the NNPA gained new followers on all of its social media platforms and a dramatic increase in visitation to the BlackPressUSA.com website.

The 2020 Virtual NNPA Annual Convention — a first completely online event for the NNPA — proved wildly successful with several hundred thousand attendees viewing the event live and over the days that followed.

NNPA Livestream guests included a host of Congress members, including Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass (D-Calif.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), and many others.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin, and Meharry Medical College President and CEO Dr. James Hildreth also appeared on livestreams with the NNPA.

Live broadcasts also included several from the 2020 Afro-Comic Con, including a special broadcast featuring comedian Sinbad. The NNPA’s Dr. Nsenga Burton hosted a series of livestreams on the future of higher learning post COVID featuring the presidents of America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). America was also introduced to the NNPA’s newest livestream series: “Ask Alma,” an interactive advice show.

The NNPA plans to broadcast even more live events in 2021.

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Recently Approved Budget Plan Favors Wealthy, Slashes Aid to Low-Income Americans

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The most significant benefits would flow to the highest earners while millions of low-income families face cuts

Published

1 week ago

March 21, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown

BlackPressUSA.com Senior National Correspondent

The new budget framework approved by Congress may result in sweeping changes to the federal safety net and tax code. The most significant benefits would flow to the highest earners while millions of low-income families face cuts. A new analysis from Yale University’s Budget Lab shows the proposals in the House’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Resolution would lead to a drop in after-tax-and-transfer income for the poorest households while significantly boosting revenue for the wealthiest Americans. Last month, Congress passed its Concurrent Budget Resolution for Fiscal Year 2025 (H. Con. Res. 14), setting revenue and spending targets for the next decade. The resolution outlines $1.5 trillion in gross spending cuts and $4.5 trillion in tax reductions between FY2025 and FY2034, along with $500 billion in unspecified deficit reduction.

Congressional Committees have now been instructed to identify policy changes that align with these goals. Three of the most impactful committees—Agriculture, Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means—have been tasked with proposing major changes. The Agriculture Committee is charged with finding $230 billion in savings, likely through changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. Energy and Commerce must deliver $880 billion in savings, likely through Medicaid reductions. Meanwhile, the Ways and Means Committee must craft tax changes totaling no more than $4.5 trillion in new deficits, most likely through extending provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Although the resolution does not specify precise changes, reports suggest lawmakers are eyeing steep cuts to SNAP and Medicaid benefits while seeking to make permanent tax provisions that primarily benefit high-income individuals and corporations.

To examine the potential real-world impact, Yale’s Budget Lab modeled four policy changes that align with the resolution’s goals:

A 30 percent across-the-board cut in SNAP funding.
A 15 percent cut in Medicaid funding.
Permanent extension of the individual and estate tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Permanent extension of business tax provisions including 100% bonus depreciation, expense of R&D, and relaxed limits on interest deductions.

Yale researchers determined that the combined effect of these policies would reduce the after-tax-and-transfer income of the bottom 20 percent of earners by 5 percent in the calendar year 2026. Households in the middle would see a modest 0.6 percent gain. However, the top five percent of earners would experience a 3 percent increase in their after-tax-and-transfer income.

Moreover, the analysis concluded that more than 100 percent of the net fiscal benefit from these changes would go to households in the top 20 percent of the income distribution. This happens because lower-income groups would lose more in government benefits than they would gain from any tax cuts. At the same time, high-income households would enjoy significant tax reductions with little or no loss in benefits.

“These results indicate a shift in resources away from low-income tax units toward those with higher incomes,” the Budget Lab report states. “In particular, making the TCJA provisions permanent for high earners while reducing spending on SNAP and Medicaid leads to a regressive overall effect.” The report notes that policymakers have floated a range of options to reduce SNAP and Medicaid outlays, such as lowering per-beneficiary benefits or tightening eligibility rules. While the Budget Lab did not assess each proposal individually, the modeling assumes legislation consistent with the resolution’s instructions. “The burden of deficit reduction would fall largely on those least able to bear it,” the report concluded.

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#NNPA BlackPress

A Threat to Pre-emptive Pardons

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — it was a possibility that the preemptive pardons would not happen because of the complicated nature of that never-before-enacted process.

Published

1 week ago

March 21, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

President Trump is working to undo the traditional presidential pardon powers by questioning the Biden administration’s pre-emptive pardons issued just days before January 20, 2025. President Trump is seeking retribution against the January 6th House Select Committee. The Trump Justice Department has been tasked to find loopholes to overturn the pardons that could lead to legal battles for the Republican and Democratic nine-member committee. Legal scholars and those closely familiar with the pardon process worked with the Biden administration to ensure the preemptive pardons would stand against any retaliatory knocks from the incoming Trump administration. A source close to the Biden administration’s pardons said, in January 2025, “I think pardons are all valid. The power is unreviewable by the courts.”

However, today that same source had a different statement on the nuances of the new Trump pardon attack. That attack places questions about Biden’s use of an autopen for the pardons. The Trump argument is that Biden did not know who was pardoned as he did not sign the documents. Instead, the pardons were allegedly signed by an autopen. The same source close to the pardon issue said this week, “unless he [Trump] can prove Biden didn’t know what was being done in his name. All of this is in uncharted territory. “ Meanwhile, an autopen is used to make automatic or remote signatures. It has been used for decades by public figures and celebrities.

Months before the Biden pardon announcement, those in the Biden White House Counsel’s Office, staff, and the Justice Department were conferring tirelessly around the clock on who to pardon and how. The concern for the preemptive pardons was how to make them irrevocable in an unprecedented process. At one point in the lead-up to the preemptive pardon releases, it was a possibility that the preemptive pardons would not happen because of the complicated nature of that never-before-enacted process. President Trump began the threat of an investigation for the January 6th Select Committee during the Hill proceedings. Trump has threatened members with investigation or jail.

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Reaction to The Education EO

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Meanwhile, the new Education EO jeopardizes funding for students seeking a higher education. Duncan states, PellGrants are in jeopardy after servicing “6.5 million people” giving them a chance to go to college.

Published

1 week ago

March 21, 2025

Oakland Post

By April Ryan

There are plenty of negative reactions to President Donald Trump’s latest Executive Order abolishing the Department of Education. As Democrats call yesterday’s action performative, it would take an act of Congress for the Education Department to close permanently. “This blatantly unconstitutional executive order is just another piece of evidence that Trump has absolutely no respect for the Constitution,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) who is the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee. “By dismantling ED, President Trump is implementing his own philosophy on education, which can be summed up in his own words, ‘I love the poorly educated.’ I am adamantly opposed to this reckless action, said Rep. Bobby Scott who is the most senior Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Morgan State University President Dr. David Wilson chimed in saying “I’m deeply concerned about efforts to shift federal oversight in education back to the states, particularly regarding equity, justice, and fairness. History has shown us what happens when states are left unchecked—Black and poor children are too often denied access to the high-quality education they deserve. In 1979 then President Jimmy Carter signed a law creating the Department of Education. Arne Duncan, former Obama Education Secretary, reminds us that both Democratic and Republican presidents have kept education a non-political issue until now. However, Duncan stressed Republican presidents have contributed greatly to moving education forward in this country.

During a CNN interview this week Duncan said during the Civil War President Abraham “Lincoln created the land grant system” for colleges like Tennessee State University. “President Ford brought in IDEA.” And “Nixon signed Pell Grants into law.” In 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush which increased federal oversight of schools through standardized testing. Meanwhile, the new Education EO jeopardizes funding for students seeking higher education. Duncan states, PellGrants are in jeopardy after servicing “6.5 million people” giving them a chance to go to college. Wilson details, “that 40 percent of all college students rely on Pell Grants and student loans.”

Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC) says this Trump action “impacts students pursuing higher education and threatens 26 million students across the country, taking billions away from their educational futures. Meanwhile, During the president’s speech in the East Room of the White House Thursday, Trump criticized Baltimore City, and its math test scores with critical words. Governor West Moore, who is opposed to the EO action, said about dismantling the Department of Education, “Leadership means lifting people up, not punching them down.”