Something in the water ain’t clean…

If you’ve ever worked in the world of Black journalism, you likely understand how often Black reporters and publications get snubbed when it comes to opportunities to cover certain major events like, say, the first debate to decide who will be the next president of the United States.

Source: Andrew Harnik / Getty

On Thursday, ahead of the first in-person debate between incumbent President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the network that is hosting the face-off, CNN, is pushing back on accusations that it has neglected to include representatives for Black-owned media outlets among the 800 some-odd journalists who will be covering the event.

The controversy started when famed Black journalist Roland Martin, who used to be a regular CNN contributor, called the network out Wednesday, claiming that it had “not issued ANY credentials for tomorrow night’s debate to ANY Black-owned media outlets.”

On the same day Martis sounded off on the lack of Black media presence at CNN, Donnell Suggs, the editor-in-chief at the Atlanta Voice, one of the city’s oldest Black newspapers, told the Atlanta Black Star, another major Black publication based in the city, that he hadn’t received any communication from CNN regarding the event.

“It was disrespectful. I thought it was very tacky not to invite the Black newspaper,” Suggs said. “I thought that was just cheap and typical of CNN.”

Suggs has since posted video footage of President Biden’s arrival while continuing to call out CNN.

He also shared that he’s the only member of the Black press at the debate’s White House Press Pool.

Later, the Congressional Black Caucus joined the chorus line of Black people and organizations who were wondering what gives with CNN’s exclusion of Black journalists, because clearly something is awry.

From NewsOne:

Speaking on behalf of the CBC, CBCPAC Chairman and New York Rep. Gregory Meeks said it was “totally unacceptable” that Black media were apparently being singled out while granting hundreds of other outlets access, including the international press.

It was in that context that Meeks blasted CNN for the “egregious oversight” of seemingly intentionally excluding Black media. Meeks demanded at least 10 Black media outlets be credentialed for the debate.

“This afternoon we learned that CNN has credentialed 800 members of the media for the first presidential debate of the election cycle. Not one represents a Black-owned media outlet. CNN’s exclusion of Black-owned media represents an egregious oversight and is totally unacceptable,” Meeks said. “CNN must immediately credential Black-owned media outlets ahead of tomorrow night’s debate. Failure to do so is a choice, an offense to Black Americans, and cannot stand. We are calling on CNN to credential a minimum of 10 Black-owned media outlets for tomorrow’s debate.”

Source: Kevin Dietsch / Getty

So, what does CNN have to say regarding allegations that it essentially scrubbed Black journalism from the debate invite list? Well, the network appears to be insinuating that all the Black media publications were running on CP time, and that’s why none of them made the cut. (OK, the network didn’t say all that, but it’s difficult not to take it that way.)

“We are happy to welcome more than 800 journalists from around the world to Atlanta this week to cover the CNN Presidential Debate,” CNN said in a statement sent to NewsOne. “Information about how to apply for media credentials was made available to the public on May 15 in the announcement and confirmation of a debate. Unfortunately, due to size and security constraints, we are unable to accommodate additional credential requests following our June 7 application deadline.”

So, if we take CNN at face value, it appears that every Black publication missed the deadline to apply to be present during the debate.

Whether that’s the case or not, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) is urging the network to make room for local Black journalists, particularly, because of how important the Black voting bloc is to the election. (The argument can also be made that major media outlets like CNN have joined both major political parties in treating the Black vote like it’s a political commodity and the hottest of hot topics for election news, so the least the network could do is extend Black media an invitation to what are arguably the most important televised events for both campaigns ahead of the general election.)

“No matter the reason the local Black Press was not approved, in regard to guidelines, we are asking CNN to create space to ensure fair and balanced coverage so that all citizens have access to real-time content from the debate,” NABJ said in a statement. “The Black Press serves as a primary news source for many Black Americans, who are key voices in the voting process. It is critical to ensure Black-owned and operated media are present and have prime placement to record, create, and share content for their audiences.”

So, maybe the onus is on Black media outlets to ensure they have gotten their paperwork in before debate deadlines so Black-owned outlets can be represented, but also, there should be more of a sense of urgency when it comes to the inclusion of Black media.

Back in February, the Pew Research Center found that nearly 25% of Black Americans said they get their news from Black media, so it should also be important to the candidates, who are hoping to win over or maintain a majority Black vote, that Black media outlets be present during all of the debates.

It’s not enough for candidates to talk about the Black vote when it’s politically convenient, they also better make sure they’re getting their message out to as many Black voters as possible—and they really can’t do that without media outlets that are dedicated to Black news. 

Source: Tom Williams / Getty

There’s a special place in caucasity hell (so, basically Texas) for white people who think they’re in a position to speak on behalf of Black people, or, in this case, a white man who thinks he can speak for Black women.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and his Kroger brand Wolverine beard need to shut the f**k up.

In the last episode of Ted “Boy, if you don’t shave that used brillo pad off yo’ face” Cruz’s podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz, the Lone Start State senator claimed President Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman for the next Supreme Court Justice is “actually an insult to Black women.”

“The fact that he’s willing to make a promise at the outset, that it must be a Black woman, I gotta say that’s offensive,” Cuz and his sentient neckbeard said. “You know, you know Black women are what, 6% of the US population? He’s saying to 94% of Americans, ‘I don’t give a damn about you, you are ineligible’.”

First of all, in the history of the U.S. Supreme court, 108 out of the 115 justices have been white men and a Black woman has never held the position. Now, if you think that demographic breakdown happened due to merit and not because for the vast majority of America’s existence, white maleness was a prerequisite for holding political office, it’s because you’re a delusional white nationalist who views history through caucasified-colored glasses.

Secondly, it’s hardly plausible that a pledge to have a single Black woman fill a single justice seat no other Black woman in history has ever filled indicates that Biden doesn’t “give a damn about” anyone else. It’s literally just one seat.

Thirdly, STFU, CRUZ, AND GET YOUR BEARD SHAPED UP BEFORE IT RUNS AWAY FROM YOUR FACE TO JOIN DONALD TRUMP’S TOUPEE IN HOLY WHITE NAP-TRIMONY!!

Lastly, where was this energy when Trump pledged to nominate a woman to sit on the Supreme Court before appointing Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the position less than two years ago? (Also Ronald Reagan did the same when he nominated former justice Sandra Day O’Connor.)

And what was Cruz’s response to Barrett being seated?

“I think you’re an amazing role model for little girls,” he said.

Anyway, back to the part about how Black women should be offended by being considered for positions of power.

“And he’s also saying—it’s actually an insult to Black women. If he came and said, ‘I’m gonna put the best jurist on the court and he looked at a number of people and he ended up nominating a Black woman, he could credibly say, ‘OK I’m nominating the person who’s most qualified.’ He’s not even pretending to say that—he’s saying, ‘If you’re a White guy, tough luck. If you’re a White woman, tough luck. You don’t qualify.’”

For the record, Biden never once said being a Black woman would be the only qualification his nominee would need—Cruz just can’t seem to imagine that there are plenty of women who happen to be Black that would be perfectly suited for the job.

At the end of the day, Cruz never expressed issue with a president promising to nominate a woman until Blackness was involved, and now he’s projecting his own offendedness onto Black women—when his face doesn’t even have the sense to be offended by the crowd of furry spiders having a cookout on his chin.

Rep. Marilyn Strickland said it best. “The only thing insulting to this Black woman is Ted Cruz thinking he speaks for us.”

Exactly.

Just 24 hrs. after being found not guilty of all charges, Kyle Rittenhouse might be taking it back to court with a potential defamation case against President Biden. According to Fox News, the case would be over a tweet suggesting Rittenhouse was a White supremacist.

Per Fox, Todd McMurtry, who helped former Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann reach a settlement with CNN over a defamation lawsuit, said Biden could be held accountable for a September 30, 2020, social media post weeks before he was elected.

“There’s no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night,” Biden’s tweet said.

To get his point across, President Biden included a video along with the tweet. In the video, Kyle Rittenhouse can be seen holding an AR-style rifle on the night he killed two protesters and wounded a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during unrest after the police shooting of Jacob Blake a month earlier.

“What you take from that tweet is that Kyle Rittenhouse was using his rifle and engaging in White supremacist misconduct so it’s actionable,” McMurtry told Fox News. “Not necessarily going to win, but it’s actionable.”

Yesterday, a Kenosha County jury acquitted Rittenhouse of all the charges against him, including first-degree intentional homicide and recklessly endangering safety. And while he’s been acquitted of murder, he’s still a killer.

This, unfortunately, was no shock to much of the world and to the victims’ families who lost their loved ones to the teenager last year.

Anthony Huber was one of the victims who died during the third night of protests following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Huber’s mother, Karen Bloom, and his father, John Huber released the following statement after the verdict was read:

“We are heartbroken and angry that Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted in his criminal trial for the murder of our son Anthony Huber. There was no justice today for Anthony, or for Mr. Rittenhouse’s other victims, Joseph Rosenbaum and Gaige Grosskreutz. courtroom and repeatedly watch videos of our son’s murder, and because we have been subjected to many hurtful and nasty comments in the past year. But we watched the trial closely, hoping it would bring us closure.

That did not happen. Today’s verdict means there is no accountability for the person who murdered our son. It sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street. We hope that decent people will join us in forcefully rejecting that message and demanding more of our laws, our officials, and our justice system.

Make no mistake: our fight to hold those responsible for Anthony’s death accountable continues in full force. Neither Mr. Rittenhouse nor the Kenosha police who authorized his bloody rampage will escape justice. Anthony will have his day in court.

No reasonable person viewing all of the evidence could conclude that Mr. Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. In response to racist and violent calls to action from militia members, Mr. Rittenhouse travelled to Kenosha illegally armed with an assault rifle. He menaced fellow citizens in the street. Though he was in open violation of a curfew order, Kenosha police encouraged him to act violently. Kenosha police told militia members that they would push peaceful protestors toward the militia so that the militia could “deal with them.” Soon after, Mr. Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum. The police did nothing. Concerned citizens, confronted with a person shooting indiscriminately on the street, stepped in to stop the violence. Anthony was shot in the chest trying to disarm Mr. Rittenhouse and stop his shooting spree. Still, the police did nothing. Mr. Rittenhouse continued to shoot, maiming Gaige Grosskreutz. The police let Mr. Rittenhouse leave the scene freely. Mr. Rittenhouse came to Kenosha armed to kill. Kenosha police encouraged him to act violently, and our son is dead as a result.

We are so proud of Anthony, and we love him so much. He is a hero who sacrificed his own life to protect other innocent civilians. We ask that you remember Anthony and keep him in your prayers.”

While the Huber’s still grieve and process the verdict, Rittenhouse’s mother, Wendy Rittenhouse, had something to say about Biden’s past tweet.

Wendy told Sean Hannity from Fox News, last week that Biden cast her son as a White supremacist for votes.

“When I saw that I was shocked, I was angry. President Biden don’t know my son whatsoever, and he’s not a White supremacist,” she said. “He’s not a racist. And [Biden] did that for the votes. And I was so angry for a while at him and what he did to my son. He defamed him.”

Leo Terrell, a civil rights lawyer and Fox News’ token, also had something to say about Biden’s tweet.

During an appearance on Fox News’ “America Reports,” he stated:

“Let me give Joe Biden advice: Be very careful what you say because you’re subject to a possible defamation lawsuit,” Terrell said after the verdict. “This was a statement that Joe Biden is going to have to pay for and justify. When you just throw this stuff out there, you take risks,” he added.

Before the verdict, Sandmann urged Rittenhouse to pursue defamation proceedings against the media because the parallels between their cases were “impossible not to draw.”

“Kyle was 17-years-old when he became a household name after that terrible tragedy in Kenosha,” Sandmann wrote in the Daily Mail op-ed published Tuesday, “I was 16-years-old when I was catapulted into the national conversation.”

He said that Rittenhouse was the victim of trial by media in which he was “almost immediately labeled a ‘white supremacist’ and a ‘domestic terrorist.’”

The world finally heard from man of the hour Friday when Kyle Rittenhouse broke his silence.

“I believe they came to the correct verdict, and I’m glad everything went well,” the teenager said. “It’s been a rough journey, but we made it through it. We made it through the hard part.” per NBC Chicago.

He will have an exclusive with Sean Hannity on Monday night.

Did you tune into the verdict? What are your thoughts about the case?

There are certainly notable differences between Democrats and Republican and Democratic and Republican-run administrations, but when it comes to foreign occupation and the handling of any given immigration crisis at the U.S. border, the two parties often appear to be indistinguishable.

Source: PAUL RATJE / Getty

President Joe Biden promised his administration wouldn’t be Trump 2.0 when it came to the subject of immigration and, to be fair, he hasn’t quite defaulted on that promise all the way yet—but right now, under his administration, U.S. border agents in Del Rio, Texas, are rounding up thousands of Haitian migrants who had fled their nation, which suffered a massive earthquake that decimated the country’s infrastructure leaving countless human beings without food, water or power, and putting them on flights back to the homes they tried desperately to escape from.

According to CBS News, U.S. officials sent some 320 Haitian migrants between three flights to Port-au-Prince on Sunday and have moved to expel the rest of more than 12,000 migrants camped around a bridge in Del Rio who had crossed the border from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. In fact, the U.S. is planning to begin seven more of these expulsion flights daily starting Wednesday, and, since Friday, 3,300 migrants have already been removed from the Del Rio camp and either put on flights or sent to detention centers, according to U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz.

Yael Schacher, the senior U.S. advocate at Refugees International, said massive deportations of this magnitude carried out without giving migrants the opportunity to seek asylum hasn’t happened since 1992. Those deportations also primarily involved—you guessed it—Haitian refugees.

“The rapid expulsions were made possible by a pandemic-related authority adopted by former President Donald Trump in March 2020 that allows for migrants to be immediately removed from the country without an opportunity to seek asylum,” CBS reported, also noting that Biden “exempted unaccompanied children from the order.” (So, there’s that, at least.)

But the issue isn’t just that U.S. officials are doing this, it’s how they’re going about it.

By now, many of you have seen the images of border patrol agents on horseback giving off big slave patrol energy by using what appear to be whips while rounding up Black migrants for detention and/or immediate deportation.

According to the Associated Press, Ortiz and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas promised to look into the matter, but they both denied seeing anything wrong happening in the Texas town and they claimed the agents only used reigns to control their horses.

Mind you, Mayorkas is the same man who responded to the heartbreaking crisis with these words for migrants seeking refuge, according to AP:

“If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned. Your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your family’s life.”

Imagine lecturing people who are already risking all to escape the imminent dangers of their homeland by warning them they are “endangering your life and your family’s life” by fleeing to somewhere that is clearly safer.

Meanwhile, the White House is doing its best not to look callous by being somewhat critical of what is happening at the Del Rio camp.

The Guardian reported that White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the agents on horseback and she responded saying;

“I have seen some of the footage. I don’t have the full context. I can’t imagine what context would make that appropriate. I don’t think anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate.”

Has Psaki even met Ortiz, Mayorkas or the millions of conservative Americans who have always met immigration news with contempt and apathy?

Source: PAUL RATJE / Getty

When MAGA enthusiast Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by a police officer during the January 6 World War White People attack on the U.S. Capitol, conservatives across America proved that if they have nothing else, they have the nerve. Ex-President Donald Trump, pundits for Republicans OnlyFans network Fox News and other right-wingers all immediately jumped on the Babbitt bandwagon.

Source: NBC News / Fair Use

All of a sudden team “Blue Lives Matter” was condemning the officer as a “murderer” and the rioter became a martyr because riots are suddenly great again as long as they’re being carried out by idiot Caucasians looking to cancel democracy and not Black Lives Matter advocates looking to cancel systemic racism.

Anyway, the Capitol cop who shot Babbitt, Lt. Michael Byrd, has spoken out about the riot and the shooting in an exclusive interview with NBC News.

“I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd said in the interview. “I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”

Byrd—who was cleared of all wrongdoing in the shooting earlier this year—explained to NBC that during the Rage Against the Voting Machines at the Capitol, 60 to 80 House members and staffers were hiding out in an area of the building he and other officers had barricaded with furniture in order to protect them from the mob.

“Once we barricaded the doors, we were essentially trapped where we were,” he said. “There was no way to retreat. No other way to get out. If they get through that door, they’re into the House chamber and upon the members of Congress.”

Byrd said Babbitt and other rioters were smashing the glass doors in an effort to break into the area he was guarding—which can be seen in video footage of the shooting—but because of the barricade, “It was impossible for me to see what was on the other side.”

What he said he could see was Babbitt trying to climb through the broken glass.

“I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions are,” Byrd said. “But they had shown violence leading up to that point.”

Source: Anadolu Agency / Getty

He also said he shouted at Babbitt and others several times to back away from the area, but they didn’t comply. (Sound familiar?)

“I tried to wait as long as I could,” he told Holt. “I hoped and prayed no one tried to enter through those doors. But their failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.”

Source: NBC News / Fair Use

This, of course, is a departure from claims made by Terry Roberts, an attorney representing Babbit’s family in a wrongful death lawsuit, who described the shooting as an “ambush” and said Babbitt was shot without warning.

But again, in any other situation where a cop said they had to shoot because their victim wouldn’t comply with their orders, caucasity-infused conservatives would have no issue taking that at face value.

And none of those unarmed Black people who were shot even attempted to overthrow the government.

Go figure.