Grants Pass Anti-Camping Laws Head to Supreme Court
Grants Pass in southern Oregon has become the unlikely face of the nation’s homelessness crisis as its case over anti-camping laws goes to the U.S. Supreme Court scheduled for April 22. The case has broad implications for cities, including whether they can fine or jail people for camping in public. Since 2020, court orders have barred Grants Pass from enforcing its anti-camping laws. Now, the city is asking the justices to review lower court rulings it says has prevented it from addressing the city's homelessness crisis. Rights groups say people shouldn’t be punished for lacking housing.
Four Ballot Measures for Portland Voters to Consider
Proposals from the city, PPS, Metro and Urban Flood Safety & Water Quality District.
Washington Gun Store Sold Hundreds of High-Capacity Ammunition Magazines in 90 Minutes Without Ban
KGW-TV reports Wally Wentz, owner of Gator’s Custom Guns in Kelso, described Monday as “magazine day” at his store. Wentz is behind the court challenge to Washington’s high-capacity magazine ban, with the help of the Silent Majority Foundation in eastern Washington.
Governor Kotek Announces Investment in New CHIPS Child Care Fund
5 Million dollars from Oregon CHIPS Act to be allocated to new Child Care Fund ...
The nation’s largest Black-owned bank will choose ten winners and award each a jumi,000 savings account ...
Literary Arts Transforms Historic Central Eastside Building Into New Headquarters
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Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Announces New Partnership with the University of Oxford
Tony Bishop initiated the CBCF Alumni Scholarship to empower young Black scholars and dismantle financial barriers ...
Mt. Hood Jazz Festival Returns to Mt. Hood Community College with Acclaimed Artists
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Idaho's ban on youth gender-affirming care has families desperately scrambling for solutions
Forced to hide her true self, Joe Horras’ transgender daughter struggled with depression and anxiety until three years ago, when she began to take medication to block the onset of puberty. The gender-affirming treatment helped the now-16-year-old find happiness again, her father said. ...
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators shut down airport highways and key bridges in major US cities
CHICAGO (AP) — Pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked roadways in Illinois, California, New York and the Pacific Northwest on Monday, temporarily shutting down travel into some of the nation's most heavily used airports, onto the Golden Gate and Brooklyn bridges and on a busy West Coast highway. ...
The sons of several former NFL stars are ready to carve their path into the league through the draft
Jeremiah Trotter Jr. wears his dad’s No. 54, plays the same position and celebrates sacks and big tackles with the same signature axe swing. Now, he’s ready to make a name for himself in the NFL. So are several top prospects who play the same positions their fathers played in the...
Caleb Williams among 13 confirmed prospects for opening night of the NFL draft
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Loving and Embracing the Differences in Our Youngest Learners
Yet our responsibility to all parents and society at large means we must do more to share insights, especially with underserved and under-resourced communities. ...
Gallup Finds Black Generational Divide on Affirmative Action
Each spring, many aspiring students and their families begin receiving college acceptance letters and offers of financial aid packages. This year’s college decisions will add yet another consideration: the effects of a 2023 Supreme Court, 6-3 ruling that...
OP-ED: Embracing Black Men’s Voices: Rebuilding Trust and Unity in the Democratic Party
The decision of many Black men to disengage from the Democratic Party is rooted in a complex interplay of historical disenchantment, unmet promises, and a sense of disillusionment with the political establishment. ...
COMMENTARY: Is a Cultural Shift on the Horizon?
As with all traditions in all cultures, it is up to the elders to pass down the rituals, food, language, and customs that identify a group. So, if your auntie, uncle, mom, and so on didn’t teach you how to play Spades, well, that’s a recipe lost. But...
Kentucky lawmaker says he wants to renew efforts targeting DEI initiatives on college campuses
A Republican lawmaker has signaled plans to mount another effort to limit diversity, equity and inclusion practices at Kentucky's public universities after GOP supermajorities failed to resolve differences on the issue during the recently ended legislative session. Kentucky lawmakers...
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in US more likely to believe in climate change: AP-NORC poll
Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the United States are more likely than the overall adult population to believe in human-caused climate change, according to a new poll. It also suggests that partisanship may not have as much of an impact on this group's environmental...
North Carolina university committee swiftly passes policy change that could cut diversity staff
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The future of diversity, equity and inclusion staff jobs in North Carolina's public university system could be at stake after a five-person committee swiftly voted to repeal a key policy Wednesday. The Committee on University Governance within the University of...
Margot Robbie making ‘Monopoly’ movie and Blumhouse reviving ‘Blair Witch’
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Margot Robbie has her sights on another toy. The “ Barbie ” producer and star is making a Monopoly movie, with Hasbro and Lionsgate behind it, the companies announced Wednesday at the CinemaCon conference in Las Vegas. Robbie, and her production company...
Robert MacNeil, creator and first anchor of PBS 'NewsHour' nightly newscast, dies at 93
NEW YORK (AP) — Robert MacNeil, who created the even-handed, no-frills PBS newscast “The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour” in the 1970s and co-anchored the show with his late partner, Jim Lehrer, for two decades, died on Friday. He was 93. MacNeil died of natural causes at New...
Celebrity birthdays for the week of April 21-27
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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations appealed for [scripts/homepage/home.php].8 billion on Tuesday to provide desperately needed aid...
A storm dumps record rain across the desert nation of UAE and floods Dubai's airport
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Stephen Curry tells the AP why 2024 is the right time to make his Olympic debut
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9 are facing charges in what police in Canada say is the biggest gold theft in the country's history
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Human rights group alleges widespread torture, abuse of detainees accused of IS affiliation in Syria
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A neglected burial ground for migrants on Greek island of Lesbos has been given a drastic overhaul
LESBOS, Greece (AP) — Most drowned making the hazardous sea crossing from nearby Turkey, while others died of...
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, left, talks with Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-Covina at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Monday, April 21, 2014. Hernandez proposed a constitutional amendment that would ask voters to again allow public colleges to use race and ethnicity when considering college applicants. The proposal stalled this year after backlash from Asian Americans.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Nearly 20 years after California became the first state to ban the use of race and ethnicity in college admissions, a proposal to reinstate affirmative action has sparked a backlash that is forging a new divide in the state's powerful Democratic Party and creating opportunity for conservatives.
The debate is unfolding in the nation's most populous and most ethnically diverse state as an unrelated U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholds voters' rights to decide whether racial considerations should factor into university selections.
The California proposal would allow voters to rescind their state's affirmative action ban, but unexpected pushback from families of Asian descent who mobilized through Chinese-language media, staged rallies and organized letter-writing campaigns has all but killed the measure this year.
“I was surprised,” said Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-Covina, the author of the bill. “I didn't expect it.”
Asian-American students are enrolled at many of California's top schools in numbers far greater than their proportion of the state's population. Critics of Hernandez's plan worry that qualified students would be dismissed simply because of their ethnicity.
The ensuing debate has reopened an old fissure over the role of race in college admissions, divided Democrats along racial lines and created an opportunity for the California GOP.
California voters were the first in the nation to ban the use of affirmative action in university admissions in 1996. Hernandez's proposal was his fourth attempt to undo that action, which he says harms black and Latino students.
A similar voter-approved ban in Michigan was upheld by the nation's highest court Tuesday, but that ruling is not expected to change the discussion in California, where the prohibition is likely to remain in place independent of the court decision.
Hernandez's proposal sailed through the state Senate in January on a Democratic Party-line vote. Legislative leaders, however, pulled the bill before it could be debated in the Assembly after the harsh reaction.
The controversy highlights the complexity of racial politics in California, where the public school system has struggled for decades to improve achievement. Critics of the affirmative action ban say it's part of a school system that fails black and Latino students.
Blacks and Latinos are more likely to attend the state's lowest-performing schools than their white or Asian counterparts, affecting their ability to be accepted into four-year universities, where they are underrepresented.
Rather than debate Hernandez's proposal, lawmakers now plan to hold hearings about affirmative action and other aspects of campus equality.
The state's governing party has split along racial lines. Three Asian-American senators, all Democrats who were seeking higher office at the time, withdrew their support of the bill after being bombarded by public criticism.
Six black and Latino lawmakers have since withdrawn their endorsements of Sen. Ted Lieu, who is Chinese-American, in a Los Angeles-area congressional race where he faces another Democrat in the primary. And some black and Latino Assembly members this month withheld votes from unrelated legislation about the state's carpool program by Assemblyman Al Muratsutchi, D-Torrance, who is Japanese-American.
The Senate's Democratic leader, President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, acknowledged the animosity. He said in a statement that he wanted “a serious and sober examination” of affirmative action, adding “I am deeply concerned anytime one ethnic group turns on another.”
In recent statistics, the University of California system said 36 percent of its in-state freshman admissions offers for fall 2014 are to Asian-American students, 29 percent are for Latino students, 27 percent are for white students and 4 percent of offers are to black students.
At some campuses, including UC San Diego and UC Irvine, Asian-American students accounted for more than 45 percent of admitted freshmen last year.
Hispanics have slightly overtaken whites as the largest ethnic group in California, although both groups represent about 39 percent of the population. Asian-Americans — a population that includes Filipinos, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Vietnamese, Laotians and others — comprise about 13 percent. Blacks are less than 6 percent.
Hernandez said nothing in his proposal would impose quotas based on ethnicity, which have been ruled unconstitutional. He said race, ethnicity and gender would be added to a list of factors college admissions officers already consider, such as extracurricular activities and family income.
“Rather than create a wedge, my idea is to have a real public debate about this,” he said. “What's wrong with talking about race?”
Asian voters are a rising political force in California, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political science professor at the University of California, Riverside and director of the National Asian American Survey.
While they typically lean Democratic, the voting bloc is not strongly loyal to either party, meaning “if you're trying to either win or defeat a statewide proposition, you ignore Asian-American voters at your peril,” Ramakrishnan said.
Republicans have struggled to attract younger and non-white voters since 1994, when Republican Gov. Pete Wilson supported Proposition 187, a proposal that banned immigrants in the country illegally from access to most social services, and the constitutional amendment that prohibited the use of racial considerations in education, state hiring and contracting, Proposition 209 in 1996. Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington subsequently adopted similar bans.
Republicans are now capitalizing on the controversy by targeting upwardly mobile Asian-Americans. Peter Kuo, a Republican candidate for state Senate, has been outspoken on the issue during his campaign for an eastern San Francisco Bay Area district that is 40 percent Asian-American.
“The Democratic Party is the party using the name of equality and diversity to lower the standard and preventing us from going into higher education,” said Kuo, who came with his family from Taiwan when he was 14.
“I can't go and tell my kids, 'Hey, because you're Asian you can't get into the school you want,'“ he said.