04-19-2024  7:01 am   •   PDX and SEA Weather
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4

NORTHWEST NEWS

Don’t Shoot Portland, University of Oregon Team Up for Black Narratives, Memory

The yearly Memory Work for Black Lives Plenary shows the power of preservation.

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.

NEWS BRIEFS

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 ...

Bank Announces 14th Annual “I Got Bank” Contest for Youth in Celebration of National Financial Literacy Month

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

The new 14,000-square-foot literary center will serve as a community and cultural hub with a bookstore, café, classroom, and event...

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

Performing at the festival are acclaimed artists Joshua Redman, Hailey Niswanger, Etienne Charles and Creole Soul, Camille Thurman,...

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. ...

University of Missouri plans 0 million renovation of Memorial Stadium

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The University of Missouri is planning a 0 million renovation of Memorial Stadium. The Memorial Stadium Improvements Project, expected to be completed by the 2026 season, will further enclose the north end of the stadium and add a variety of new premium...

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...

OPINION

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...

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

Chicago's response to migrant influx stirs longstanding frustrations among Black residents

CHICAGO (AP) — The closure of Wadsworth Elementary School in 2013 was a blow to residents of the majority-Black neighborhood it served, symbolizing a city indifferent to their interests. So when the city reopened Wadsworth last year to shelter hundreds of migrants, without seeking...

US deports about 50 Haitians to nation hit with gang violence, ending monthslong pause in flights

MIAMI (AP) — The Biden administration sent about 50 Haitians back to their country on Thursday, authorities said, marking the first deportation flight in several months to the Caribbean nation struggling with surging gang violence. The Homeland Security Department said in a...

Hillary Clinton and Malala Yousafzai producing. An election coming. ‘Suffs’ has timing on its side

NEW YORK (AP) — Shaina Taub was in the audience at “Suffs,” her buzzy and timely new musical about women’s suffrage, when she spied something that delighted her. It was intermission, and Taub, both creator and star, had been watching her understudy perform at a matinee preview...

ENTERTAINMENT

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

Celebrity birthdays for the week of April 21-27: April 21: Actor Elaine May is 92. Singer Iggy Pop is 77. Actor Patti LuPone is 75. Actor Tony Danza is 73. Actor James Morrison (“24”) is 70. Actor Andie MacDowell is 66. Singer Robert Smith of The Cure is 65. Guitarist Michael...

What to stream this weekend: Conan O’Brien travels, 'Migration' soars and Taylor Swift reigns

Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver” landing on Netflix and Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” album are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you. Also among the streaming offerings worth your time as...

U.S. & WORLD NEWS

12 students and teacher killed at Columbine to be remembered at 25th anniversary vigil

DENVER (AP) — The 12 students and one teacher killed in the Columbine High School shooting will be remembered...

Staff and shoppers return to 'somber' Sydney shopping mall 6 days after mass stabbings

SYDNEY (AP) — Shoppers and workers returned to a “really quiet” Sydney mall Friday, where six days earlier...

5 Japanese workers narrowly escape suicide bombing that targeted their vehicle in Pakistan

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — A suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden vest near a van carrying Japanese...

2 suspects detained in Poland for attack on a Navalny ally in Lithuania

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Two men have been detained in Poland on suspicion that they attacked Russian activist...

Ukraine claims it shot down a Russian strategic bomber as Moscow's missiles kill 8 Ukrainians

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s air force claimed Friday it shot down a Russian strategic bomber, but Moscow...

AP PHOTOS: For the world's largest democratic exercise, one village's polling officers are all women

CHEDEMA, India (AP) — The line was orderly at Government Middle School as people waited patiently to vote...

In this May 26, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in Billings, Mont., Thursday, May 26, 2016. Donald Trump’s best liaison to Republicans is turning out to be Hillary Clinton. Trump overcame a “Never Trump” campaign aimed at stopping him from clinching the Republican nomination. Now the businessman is benefiting from a wave of GOP donors, voters and conservative issues groups uniting under a new banner: Never Hillary. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)
BILL BARROW, SERGIO BUSTOS, Associated Press

 

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump calls his presidential campaign a mass movement, but he must show he can coax enough support from voters who twice delivered the White House to Barack Obama.

The billionaire businessman depended almost exclusively on conservative and GOP-leaning whites — a majority of them men — to secure the Republican nomination. Now he must look ahead to a wider, more diverse voting population in his likely general election matchup with Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

His ability to seize on marginal shifts in the electorate may determine whether he can pull off a victory once unthinkable. Trump's task is critical to flipping back into the GOP column some of the most contested states that Obama won twice.

This challenge is perhaps best evident in Florida, a culturally, racially and ideologically varied state where Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney four years ago by fewer than 75,000 votes out of more than 8.4 million cast.

That means small shifts anywhere in the electorate could make a difference — from turnout changes among white small-town and rural Republicans or urban, nonwhite Democrats to partisans, embittered by contentious nominating bouts, choosing third-party candidates or declining to vote at all; and if Trump can't close the gaps in Florida, he has little shot of winning key Rust Belt and Great Lakes states where Obama's advantages were greater.

"We still elect presidents using the Electoral College ... depending on states that are made up of diverse electorates," cautions GOP pollster Whit Ayres. "There aren't enough angry white people to create a majority in the new America of 2016, (and) running up your numbers with white males in Mississippi doesn't get you one more electoral vote than Mitt Romney."

One of Trump's vanquished primary rivals, Sen. Marco Rubio, told reporters this week Trump can win Florida, which has gone with the winner in every presidential contest since 1996, as long as he can "continue to be Donald."

That brash outsider pitch has sewn up support from white men like Jack Oliver, a 66-year-old construction worker from West Palm Beach, Florida, and 84-year-old Frank Papa, a retired grocery manager from Clearwater, Florida.

Oliver cites Trump's hard line on immigration and calls him a leader "who will finally give a damn about people like me." Papa, a New Jersey native, says Trump "speaks my language, talks and thinks like me."

But Trump must expand his reach.

"If he can't unify Republicans, there really isn't enough votes for him to make up elsewhere," said Steve Schale, who ran Obama's 2008 campaign in Florida. He said Florida elections have been close for decades, noting 41 million combined presidential votes have been cast since 1992, with fewer than 131,000 votes separating the combined totals of Democratic and Republican nominees.

Trump gives lip service to the electorate's diversity, suggesting "the Mexican people" will "vote for me like crazy" and that he can win 25 percent of African-Americans. The highest won by any GOP nominee since 1980 is about 12 percent. He said recently he could lure "40 percent" of voters backing Clinton's primary opponent, Bernie Sanders.

Some nonwhite Floridians mock Trump's claims about his own appeal.

"I haven't heard any of my (black) friends say they'll vote for Trump," said Tanisha Winns, 39, a black Democrat in Lakeland, located along central Florida's Interstate 4 corridor that twice helped give Republican George W. Bush the statewide victory before swinging in Obama's favor. "If anything, I'm hearing my white friends say they won't," Winns added.

For now, Florida polls suggest Trump and Clinton are running about even, with about 15 percent undecided. But there are variables that should give Trump pause.

In 2012, nonwhites accounted for almost a third of all votes cast in Florida, compared to 28 percent nationwide. But population growth, driven by Hispanics, suggests both numbers could be higher come November.

Obama beat Romney with Florida's black vote with 95 percent. The president won Hispanics by a 60-40 margin, closer than his 71-27 advantage nationally, with many of Florida's conservative Cuban-American voters accounting for the difference.

Those numbers still left Romney too reliant on whites. He managed 61 percent of Florida's white vote — better than his 59 percent nationally — but he needed to get closer to 63 percent to win the Sunshine State's 29 electoral votes.

Demographers and pollsters from both parties say Trump likely would have to push into the mid- to high-60s with whites — a level no candidate has reached since Ronald Reagan's 1984 landslide — to have a chance nationally. That's even more daunting considering an AP-GfK poll, taken in April, that found two out of three white women view Trump negatively.

Among them are Republicans the nominee absolutely must get.

In Clearwater, Republican Barbie Sugas says she's always voted for the GOP nominee, but the 47-year-old surgical technician said she's "kind of leaning toward Clinton" because she doesn't "trust Trump" with international affairs.

To be sure, Clinton also must shore up her Democratic base, still divided with Sanders in the race. Jennifer Perelman, a Sanders supporter, says she won't back the former secretary of state. But she won't vote for Trump either. Her plan: to vote for Sanders as a write-in candidate.

Ayres, the Republican pollster, affirmed that it's "not impossible" for Trump to fashion a winning coalition. But, he says, "You're basically arguing that somehow, a constant 20-year-plus demographic trend is just going to magically stop."

___

Associated Press writer Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report.

The Skanner Foundation's 38th Annual MLK Breakfast