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Oakland Protesters Rally to Defend Haitian Immigrants and TPS

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The Haiti Action Committee traces its roots to the international movement that emerged following Haiti’s 1991 military coup, which overthrew the nation’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Political violence sent thousands of Haitians fleeing the country, while U.S. policies resulted in refugees being intercepted at sea, repatriated, or detained at Guantanamo Bay.

Activists Gerald Smith and Romaine Charite at 14th and Broadway in downtown Oakland near City Hall protest in support of Haitian immigrant rights. Photo by Carla Thomas

By Carla Thomas | Oakland Post

Protesters gathered in downtown Oakland near City Hall at 14th Street and Broadway on Thursday, Aug. 13, calling for protections for Haitian immigrants and an end to deportation policies affecting Haitian communities across the United States.

Organized as a call to action by the Legalization for All Network and supported by the Haiti Action Committee and other community organizations, the demonstration carried a clear message: “Defend TPS! Legalization, Not Deportation!”

Participants focused attention on the termination of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for Haiti and immigration policies protesters described as continuing attacks on Haitian immigrants under the Trump administration.

Haitian Romaine Charite of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization urged demonstrators to stand with Haitian families and led chants:

“When Haitians are under attack, what do we do? We fight back.”

Injustice to one is an injustice to us all.”

“Dump Trump!”

Charite and other protesters condemned the federal government’s treatment of Haitian immigrants, describing the policies as an attack on a population already facing extraordinary hardship.

Haiti’s TPS designation was terminated effective July 27, 2026, removing temporary deportation protections and work authorization for hundreds of thousands of Haitian beneficiaries who lacked another legal basis to remain in the United States.

Gerald Smith, a protester and former member of the Black Panther Party during the 1970s, said Haitians were being unfairly targeted and warned that ending TPS would have a devastating impact on Haitian families and communities.

“These policies are racially motivated and unfair,” Smith said. “Everyone deserves the right to self-determination and protection from persecution.”

The Haiti Action Committee cited the continuing political, economic and humanitarian crisis in Haiti as evidence that returning large numbers of immigrants to the country could place already vulnerable people at greater risk.

The Oakland gathering, which drew about 20 participants, reflected a decades-long history of Bay Area activism surrounding Haitian democracy, refugee rights and U.S. immigration policy.

The Haiti Action Committee traces its roots to the international movement that emerged following Haiti’s 1991 military coup, which overthrew the nation’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Political violence sent thousands of Haitians fleeing the country, while U.S. policies resulted in refugees being intercepted at sea, repatriated or detained at Guantanamo Bay.

Those policies sparked protests involving Haitian communities, Black activists, artists, college students, churches, labor organizations and human rights advocates. Prominent figures, including dancer and activist Katherine Dunham, tennis champion Arthur Ashe, and TransAfrica leader Randall Robinson, joined campaigns challenging the treatment of Haitian refugees.

In 1992, Haiti Action Committee joined other Bay Area organizations in a dramatic demonstration on San Francisco Bay. Boats carrying Haitian participants were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard while supporters gathered along the waterfront and reportedly chanted, “Let Them Land!”

More than three decades later, protesters have returned to the streets of Oakland,  centering on protecting Haitian immigrants, opposing deportation and pressing for immigration policies that provide families with a pathway toward permanent legal residency.

For more information, visit Haitisolidarity.net.

Car Wash Workers Cope with Lingering Impacts of ICE Raids

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Hundreds of car wash workers across Southern California have been detained in federal immigration raids, leaving lingering impacts on families and communities. Mario, a 33-year U.S. resident and father of three, was arrested at a Santa Ana car wash last August and held for two months.

iStockphoto / NNPA

By Ernesto Ureno, Contributing Writer

Source: Black Press USA Wire

LOS ANGELES — Mario relied on his job in the car wash industry to raise his three children. It was during a shift at a Santa Ana car wash last August that he was arrested by federal agents, taken to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center and held for two months.

“They made me sleep on the cold floor for a week without a blanket, a toothbrush or basic medical care for the injured man next to me,” Mario, a 33-year resident of the United States, said at a news conference earlier this summer at Inglewood’s Crenshaw Imperial Car Wash, which is now closed after being raided by federal agents.

Mario, who is being identified only by his first name for safety reasons, is among hundreds of car wash workers detained across Southern California in the year since the Trump administration began an aggressive immigration crackdown in the region, according to the CLEAN Carwash Worker Center.

News of raids by masked agents has faded from the headlines, but the effects still linger for those caught in the crosshairs. Family members have been deported or left to languish in detention, and many who remain live with the fear of being hunted down by immigration officers.

At least 373 car wash workers have been detained at car washes across Southern California since the raids began last summer, according to figures compiled by CLEAN. The group’s data also shows federal agents raided or attempted to raid at least 106 car washes in communities across Los Angeles, Orange County and surrounding areas, including Inglewood, Culver City, Westchester, Bell and Whittier.

CLEAN, an advocacy group founded in 2007, has been fighting to protect car wash workers from exploitation and unsafe conditions. When the raids began last year, the group sprang into action, working around the clock to help detained workers and provide their families with legal and financial support.

“We gathered our information from workers, managers, and owners of the car washes that were being raided,” CLEAN Deputy Director Andrea Gonzalez said. “We also gathered information from rapid response teams who were on the ground responding to the raids.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on the group’s findings.

Mario said he was one of seven workers at the Harbor Blvd Car Wash detained on the same day last August, but the only one who has been released. He said he refused to sign deportation papers and is fighting to stay in the United States, a process that has drained his family emotionally and financially.

“Being released is not the same as being free,” he said.

During Mario’s detention at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, his wife and children struggled to cope with his sudden absence while fighting for his release, his wife Alejandra said.

“The employer gave us a video showing my husband being taken away under arrest, treated worse than a common criminal, with chains binding his legs, arms and waist,” Alejandra said. “It wasn’t right.”

The experience of a car wash worker named José was recounted at the news conference by the Rev. Andy Schwiebert of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, who said agents “took him” from the La Cienega Car Wash last August.

José’s wife is a U.S. citizen, Schwiebert said, and José had a pathway to gaining citizenship before he was detained. By the time a judge ordered his release on bond, the car wash had shut down, Schwiebert said, leaving José without a job.

“These raids did not just target workers; they destabilized families, congregations, workplaces and entire communities,” Schwiebert said.

The administration’s aggressive enforcement operations have continued across the nation in the months since José’s and Mario’s detention, with ICE arrests in July surging to their highest rate so far under President Donald Trump.

Last month, ICE agents shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three in Houston. Less than a week later, an immigration officer fatally shot 26-year-old Johan Sebastián Duran Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine.

Back in Inglewood, Mario said he was grateful to share his story and that, even though he was released, his experience in detention stays with him.

“I still feel frustrated and traumatized,” Mario said, “because my life is no longer the same as it used to be.”

Ernesto Ureño is a Loyola Marymount University journalism major and intern at Capital & Main, a nonprofit publication focused on inequality. It is published here with permission.

Based on reporting by Wave Community Newspapers.

Originally published by Black Press USA Wire — https://wavepublication.com/car-wash-workers-cope-with-lingering-impacts-of-ice-raids/

 

Fate of Civil Rights Office Unknown as Trump Continues to Dismantle Department of Education

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Department of Education

By Lauren Burke

A busy news week heading into the Thanksgiving holiday has distracted from a continuing effort by the Trump Administration to relocate, and in some cases end, the U.S. Department of Education. It has long been known that Trump and his policy advisors want to dismantle the department — but the acceleration over the last week has taken some by surprise.

The U.S. Department of Education was established in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter. It was created to unify and elevate federal efforts to support public schools and protect students’ civil rights. It has also been the department that has amplified the national education policy.

“The Trump Administration cannot close a federal agency without an act of Congress. Nevertheless, the Trump Administration is intent on breaking the law and dismantling the Department of Education,” Rep. Bobby Scott, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Education and Workforce, said in a written statement on Nov. 20.

“Today’s announcement is part and parcel of the Trump Administration’s larger agenda to reduce federal enforcement of civil rights laws and eliminate support for low-income communities. A core function of ED is to protect and defend students’ civil rights,” Rep. Scott added.

Since taking office again in January, the Trump Administration has made its central focus to dismantle civil rights policies passed in the 1960s. The undoing of civil rights protections and a theme of anti-Blackness is now a cornerstone policy during Trump’s second term in office.

Trump has reversed the 2015 “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) rule, a civil-rights tool aimed at reducing segregation and racial disparities in housing. Trump has also ended disparate-impact liability in civil-rights enforcement, and in 2025, Trump signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to deprioritize enforcement of “disparate-impact” theory — a legal standard used to challenge policies that, while neutral on their face, disproportionately harm protected groups. Trump has also ended key DEI and affirmative-action programs in federal hiring and rescinded Executive Order 11246 (initially signed in 1965), which required federal contractors to maintain affirmative-action programs to promote diversity in hiring.

“The federal government must retain its central role in enforcing students’ civil rights, because historically, when states had no federal oversight, we saw segregation of public schools, a refusal to educate students with disabilities, and a lack of resources for low-income communities,” Rep. Scott also pointed out in his Nov. 19 statement.

At a committee hearing on the morning of November 20, Rep. Summer Lee, who represents parts of Pittsburgh, made a pointed observation. As Republicans held a hearing on career and technical education, Rep. Lee pointed out the irony of the Department of Education being dismantled by President Trump in the background.

“Republicans can’t simultaneously hold a hearing about how to strengthen students’ skills through career and technical education while also allowing this administration to dismantle the sole agency tasked with expanding the same students’ educational opportunities and protecting their civil rights,” Rep. Lee said.

One of the remaining mysteries of the Trump Administration’s efforts to destroy the Department of Education is what will happen to the civil rights division within the department. Will the work of the office be destroyed completely or moved to another department in the government? That remains an open question.

Inside the Mind of Russell Vought: Trump’s Enforcer

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Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem meets with Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., Sept. 18, 2025. (DHS photo by Tia Dufour) (Wikimedia Commons / Photo by DHSgov)

By Stacy M. Brown
Senior National Correspondent, Black Press of America

Russell Vought wakes each morning with the cold precision of a man who has learned to confuse faith with power. His pen is a weapon, and his calculations are not about progress or prosperity. They are about punishment. He has taken the language of government and turned it into a vocabulary of cruelty. Each budget cut is an act of vengeance. Each withheld dollar is a message to the poor, to the vulnerable, to the people who dare to believe that America still belongs to them. Long before his name became a headline, Vought said that federal workers should be “traumatically affected.” He said he wanted them to wake up, dreading their jobs because he saw public service as an enemy of his mission. That mission has now become law. Through his control of the Office of Management and Budget, Vought has used the machinery of government to dismantle everything that serves the public good.

In cities like New York, Baltimore, Boston, and San Francisco, billions of dollars in Army Corps of Engineers projects have been frozen or canceled. He called it efficiency. Others called it sabotage. The agency’s own records show that nearly all its employees were funded through resources that did not expire when the government shut down. Yet Vought ordered them to stop work, punishing communities that did not vote for his president. “The Democrat shutdown has drained the Army Corps of Engineers’ ability to manage billions of dollars in projects,” he wrote online. That was not true. The shutdown did not drain anything. It was a political hit job on Democratic-led cities, a financial assault dressed up as fiscal restraint. Representative Rosa DeLauro said that what Vought is doing is “illegally stealing taxpayer funding in a unilateral, partisan act.” Her statement is not hyperbole. Congressional investigators and federal courts have already found that Vought has tried to impound or cancel money that Congress legally appropriated. He has blocked research funding for disease prevention, canceled grants for public transit, and withheld small business aid meant to keep communities alive. His so-called “pocket rescissions” have defunded law enforcement programs and cut food assistance for families already hanging by a thread.

In Chicago, $2.1 billion in public transit funds were terminated. In New York, $18 billion for rail modernization vanished without warning. These were not economic decisions. They were political punishments. DeLauro said, “It seems each morning, Russ Vought wakes up determined to abuse his authority to the detriment of working-class families, middle-class families, and vulnerable Americans.” Her words describe a man who believes compassion is weakness and that cruelty is proof of strength. Inside Washington, his reach extends far beyond the budget office. Russell Vought is the silent architect of this government. He has fired or forced out more than 200,000 civil servants under the pretext of so-called reductions in force. A court was forced to step in to block his latest round of firings after evidence showed he was using the Trump shutdown as cover for an illegal purge of federal employees. Congressman Joe Neguse called him “the Grim Reaper.” It is a name that fits. For every program that dies under his orders, another piece of the American safety net disappears. These are not faceless numbers. They are people who tested drinking water for toxins, monitored public health during disease outbreaks, and ensured that disaster recovery funds reached those in need. Their dismissal is not the byproduct of bureaucracy. It is the plan. The fewer people protecting the public, the easier it becomes to destroy what remains of democracy.

Vought calls himself a Christian nationalist. He says America was meant to be a Christian nation. But the Christianity he invokes is not about mercy or justice. It is a creed of domination. When he ordered the cancellation of federal diversity training and removed references to systemic racism from government documents, he was not correcting waste. He was rewriting the story of this country. He was erasing the blood, the struggle, and the truth that built the modern American promise. For Black America, his policies are not abstract. They are a direct blow. His freezes and cancellations have wiped out funding for housing, education, and medical research. Over $400 billion in programs that once served as lifelines to low-income and minority communities are now gone. The cuts have dismantled the very protections that generations fought and died to achieve. This is not the government. It is punishment disguised as policy. Vought’s cruelty is not a side effect. It is the design. Even inside Trump’s inner circle, some quietly admit that it is Vought who holds the real power. He writes the orders, drafts the memos, and decides which programs live or die. What the president says in anger, Vought turns into law. What began as a movement to “shrink government” has become a crusade to starve it, to leave nothing but power in the hands of men who look and think like him.

He once said he wanted bureaucrats to wake up in pain. And that pain has spread far beyond the walls of Washington. It reaches into classrooms without textbooks, into homes without heat, and into clinics where the doors have closed for good. This is what happens when one man’s ideology becomes national policy. It is what happens when faith is twisted into a weapon. Russell Vought has taken the name of God and written it across a ledger of suffering. He has mistaken cruelty for conviction. But America has seen this kind of righteousness before. The men who built segregation, the men who burned crosses, and the men who called their hate holy all believed they were saving the nation. They were not. They were destroying it. History does not forget men like this. It writes their names in shame. As one congressional staffer said, “Russell Vought doesn’t just cut budgets. He cuts people out of democracy.” And that is the truest line ever written about him.

The Silence of Black Wealth: When the Billionaires Turned Their Backs on the Black Press

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A detailed close-up of tightly rolled bundles of US dollar banknotes, suggesting accumulated wealth or savings. However, in the context of inflation, this image subtly conveys the idea that even significant amounts of money can lose their real value over time. It represents the quiet erosion of purchasing power, making it a compelling visual for discussions on long-term financial planning, investment strategies, the impact of rising prices on accumulated capital, and the challenge of preserving wealth in an inflationary economy.

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

Two months ago, famed civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump stood before a ballroom filled with the echoes of history. He did not whisper. He thundered. “If you’ve been blessed,” he said, “you got to pass the blessing on. You just can’t keep it to yourself.” Then he pledged fifty thousand dollars to the Black Press of America. It was not an act of charity. It was an act of faith. A declaration that the oldest voice of Black truth must live to speak again. Crump said he made his gift public because he wanted others to follow. He said he hoped those who had been lifted by the love and loyalty of Black people would remember who gave them their first breath of recognition. He hoped they would remember that the Black Press was not a charity case but a lifeline. Two months later, the silence has been deafening.

Magic Johnson’s people said “no.” David Steward, founder of World Wide Technology, said “no.” Jay-Z’s team didn’t bother to return calls. Janice Bryant Howroyd of the Act-One Group did not respond. Richelieu Dennis of Sundial Brands did not respond. Daymond John, Thomas Moorehead, and Tristan Walker did not respond. Tyler Perry, Robert Smith, and Oprah Winfrey did not respond. Dr. Dre, Spike Lee, and Michael Jordan each have also ignored multiple attempts to have conversations. Even across the ocean, Africa’s wealthiest men—Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Patrice Motsepe, Strive Masiyiwa, and Abdulsamad Rabiu—have people working for them who won’t acknowledge the Black Press with a simple response. Let the record show what was asked of them. The Black Press did not beg for charity. The Black Press asked to advertise their companies, their products, and their services. We asked to build relationships that honor the communities they came from. Many of them, like Magic, Oprah, and Jordan, have foundations that could have given grants if their hearts were so moved. The Black Press only asked that they see its worth.

Even the Democratic Party, carried to power by Black faith and Black votes, has turned away. The same party that claims to speak for equality now walks quietly in step with Trump’s anti-diversity crusade. They have shut the Black Press out of advertising dollars while funneling millions into white-owned mainstream media. It is hypocrisy dressed in progress to preach inclusion while starving the very storytellers who gave them the language of struggle.

This abandonment comes at a time when Trump has declared war on the lives and livelihoods of Black people. His administration has terminated more than three hundred thousand Black women from federal jobs that once sustained families. His policies against diversity have closed doors for hundreds of thousands of other Black men and women. Companies, emboldened by his rhetoric, continue to lay off and fire workers, many of them Black. And in the middle of this storm stands the Black Press — the last institution that still employs and uplifts hundreds of Black men and women who have families to support. Each of the more than two hundred newspapers and media companies in the Black Press represents not only truth on paper, but food on a table, tuition paid, rent covered, and the dignity of work preserved. The Black Press has been here before. It has stood when Frederick Douglass told a nation built on lies that truth would not die. It stood when Ida B. Wells printed the names of the lynched. It stood when Mamie Till demanded that the world look at her child. It stood when Dr. King wrote from Birmingham Jail. It stood when Malcolm X spoke the raw truth America refused to face. It stood when the white press would not. And it still stands today, two centuries strong, built by two brave souls – John B. Russwurm and Samuel Cornish during slavery – and, now, carried mostly on the backs of Black women. The Chicago Defender. The New Pittsburgh Courier. EBONY. The Amsterdam News. The Philadelphia Tribune. The Afro American. The St. Louis American. The Los Angeles Sentinel. The Michigan Chronicle. The Washington Informer. These are not relics of a fading past. They are the pulse of a people who refuse to vanish.

Many of these newspapers live in the same cities that raised the icons now silent. Chicago, where Jordan and Oprah became legends. Los Angeles, where Magic Johnson built his empire. Brooklyn, where Spike Lee found his voice. Philadelphia and New York, where Jay-Z and Will Smith found theirs. The irony is sharp. These newspapers gave many of them their first headlines, their first interviews, their first measure of respect. Remember EBONY? JET? How about Right On! Yet now, as the Black Press struggles for air, those it once lifted act as if they never knew its name. So it is that in this moment of trial, a civil rights attorney and a white businessman stand nearly alone. Mark Cuban, through his Cost-Plus Drugs company, reached into his own pocket and gave one hundred thousand dollars to the Black Press without hesitation. He did not wait to be convinced. He saw the need and answered it. Two hundred years of truth are hanging by a thread. The presses still turn. The ink still flows. But for how long? If the Black Press falls, so does the record of our struggle, our triumph, and our faith.

And when that day comes, history will not say the Black Press was destroyed by white supremacy. It will say it was abandoned by its own.

“We are going to save ourselves,” Crump declared. “We are all we need.” His words were not sentimental. They were a warning. Because a people without storytellers are a people without memory.

The Hunger Line: America’s Most Vulnerable Face a Crisis of Cruelty

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Close up American flag

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

There are moments when a nation shows its soul. This is one of them.

Across America, millions are waiting for food assistance that will not come. The Trump administration’s refusal to release federal contingency funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — known as SNAP — has triggered what many are calling a man-made famine. For the first time in history, the federal government has deliberately stopped food aid during a shutdown. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul stood before cameras, surrounded by advocates and families, and called the situation what it is: cruel. Nearly three million New Yorkers stand to lose benefits. She announced $30 million in state funds to cover 16 million meals, calling it a desperate measure to soften the blow of what she described as “the destruction Republicans in Washington are inflicting on our state.” “I am doing everything in my power to ensure New Yorkers do not go hungry this holiday season,” Hochul said. “No state can backfill these devastating cuts, but I am taking action to support families suffering the consequences of Republicans’ cruelty.”

The federal government’s refusal to act, she added, “is not a matter of policy, it’s a matter of humanity.” Her words echo across the country. From Boston to Baton Rouge, from Cleveland to Compton, governors and mayors are preparing for hunger on a scale unseen in decades. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey called it historic for all the wrong reasons. “President Donald Trump is the first president in U.S. history to cut off SNAP benefits to people in America,” she said. In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser said the city cannot cover the $30 million shortfall to continue food benefits. “We need the federal government to do its part,” she said. Councilmember Christina Henderson described residents facing “death by a thousand cuts” as federal layoffs and social service reductions take hold. Virginia’s Governor Glenn Youngkin took a different path. He declared a state of emergency, blamed Democrats, and thanked Trump for his “continued support,” promising to use state funds to keep benefits flowing. Critics called it political theater. His order provided no clear plan for how the funds would reach the 850,000 Virginians who rely on SNAP each month.

In Maryland, officials have money in the treasury but refuse to spend it without a guarantee that Trump’s Department of Agriculture will reimburse them. “We are not going to gamble billions of taxpayer dollars while this administration turns its back on working families,” one official said. North Carolina Governor Josh Stein accused the administration of “a cruel abdication of responsibility.” His state has 1.4 million residents who depend on SNAP, including 580,000 children. “As temperatures cool and the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, refusing to use available funds is unconscionable,” he said. The numbers tell the rest of the story. Forty-two million Americans rely on SNAP every month. At least 25 states have already notified recipients that their benefits will stop on November 1. The list includes California, Arkansas, Mississippi, and New Jersey. Food banks are preparing for a surge they cannot handle. The New York Times reported that demand has already exceeded supply, with donations down and costs up. “When that social safety net breaks above us, we will be there to do as much as we can,” said Andrea Williams of the Oregon Food Bank. “And it will not be enough.”

ProPublica revealed that the Trump administration earlier canceled nearly 94 million pounds of food aid, including meat, eggs, and dairy, that were supposed to reach food banks nationwide. For those on the front lines, it was an invisible theft — food promised but never delivered. At the same time, the USDA has confirmed that it will not release $6 billion in federal contingency funds, claiming the money can only be used for “unforeseen events” such as natural disasters. The shutdown, apparently, does not qualify. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said, “Republicans in Congress have needlessly shut down the government, and now they’re refusing to work with Democrats to maintain the benefits that put food on the table for millions of Americans.” Senator Peter Welch of Vermont was blunt. “This is all Trump,” he said. “He’s not engaged. He could care less.” Senator Mark Warner of Virginia agreed, calling it “outrageous” that the president is overseas while millions at home face starvation. “Stay in America. Put America first. Sit down with us and work this out,” Warner said.

Private companies have started doing what the government will not. DoorDash announced it would waive fees for food banks and deliver free groceries to families in need. “No one should go hungry in America,” said Max Rettig, the company’s vice president for public policy. “We know this is a stopgap, not a solution. But doing nothing isn’t an option.” In the Bronx, Representative Ritchie Torres said the effects are not theoretical. “SNAP is the difference between hunger and stability for over 150,000 families,” he said. “When Republicans in Washington threaten to cut food assistance, they are threatening to take meals off the tables of children, seniors, and working parents.”

The country is watching as food banks brace for impact, as parents skip meals to feed their kids, as a government chosen by the people turns away from them. The shutdown has now lasted more than four weeks. The lights in the Capitol still burn through the night, but the refrigerators in millions of homes do not. And as one food bank worker in New York put it, staring at a half-empty warehouse before the holidays, “They aren’t numbers on a page. They’re people. And they’re about to be hungry.”

White America Faces Reality of Trump’s Cruel Shutdown as SNAP Benefits Vanish

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USA shutdown and United States government closed and american federal shut down due to spending bill disagreement between the left and the right pas a national finance symbol with yellow hazard tape in a 3D illustration style.

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

America is being strangled by its own government. Forty million people who depend on food stamps to survive are about to lose them because Donald Trump decided that his personal power trip was more important than keeping the government open. The shutdown has cut deep, and this week, those cuts reach the dinner tables of the working poor.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, has always been a mirror to this nation’s soul. We give 40 million people food stamps because corporations refuse to pay a living wage. Most recipients work. They bag groceries, stock shelves, clean offices, and pour coffee for executives who earn more in a day than they will in a lifetime. But because the country’s biggest companies pay starvation wages, taxpayers are forced to step in. SNAP has become corporate welfare, a subsidy for greed. If those same corporations paid a living wage, that 40 million number would plummet. Yet the outrage is not over the imbalance of wealth or the rising cost of survival. Instead, it’s aimed at the people who need help just to feed their families. The question is why anyone would lose their mind over 40 million Americans having access to food, but not blink at the $40 billion Trump just sent to Argentina. Nobody wants to talk about that money.

Because legislators refuse to raise the minimum wage to a livable level, people are drowning. Rent is too high. Health insurance is skyrocketing. Home insurance premiums have doubled in some states. The working class is crushed under a system designed to make poverty permanent. It’s not getting better when career and hobby politicians—some who treat public office like a pastime—keep playing with the economy for personal gain. The president himself has turned governing into a hustle. He’s out here levying tariffs when he’s angry and playing insider trader when he’s not. The rich man’s talking points never change. Starbucks’ CEO made $95.8 million in salary last year. The average barista earns between $12,000 and $23,516 annually. Does that make any sense? Approximately 1.3 million workers earn the federal minimum wage, and 2.7 million earn below it. Those are the people Donald Trump has abandoned.

At the same time, Trump has seized control of the mainstream media. CNN’s CEO Mark Thompson reportedly told his staff to ease off coverage of Trump demolishing the East Wing of the White House to build his $300 million ballroom after a visit there. It’s a depressing spectacle watching major outlets obey a would-be dictator before he even demands it. If they won’t hold him accountable for corruption, the weaponization of the Justice Department, or the Epstein connections, what chance do Americans have for real truth?

Meanwhile, Trump continues to work very hard to make sure this nation will never again have free or fair elections. It sounds dramatic to people who avoid hearing his words, but the man keeps saying them himself. Trump doesn’t act like the President of the United States. He acts like a New York real estate huckster still hustling for the next sale, weighing in on every petty, meaningless issue that keeps his name in headlines. As one social media user put it, “Not one good word is ever uttered except in self-adulation. There are so many horrid people in America, in his opinion, it’s amazing that he abides living in such a godforsaken country. If it weren’t for the acolytes, he’d run away in a trice… Argentina, maybe?”

Another wrote, “With all these unhinged histrionics from the Mango Mussolini, I wonder when pawn shops will start being major holders in Treasury bonds?”

That’s where we are. A nation where people who work full-time can’t buy groceries, where corporate America hoards billions while blaming the poor for needing help, and where the president lives like a king and calls it patriotism. The USDA says the SNAP money is gone. Trump says it’s the Democrats’ fault. But the truth is simpler. The man in the White House would rather starve his own people than admit that his cruelty and corruption have bankrupted more than the Treasury. They’ve bankrupted the soul of this nation.

“This is cruelty, and it is deliberate,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro.

The Clash: Museum Advocates Vs The Smithsonian Board of Regents

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Washington D.C., USA – February 10, 2023: The National Museum of African American History and Culture at night with the Washington Monument in downtown Washington DC.

By April Ryan

Yesterday was an all-day board meeting for the Smithsonian Regents. Advocates and lawyers are advocating for this quarterly meeting to save over a million artifacts and specimens, particularly at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. A group forming a broad-based coalition called America’s History SOS is presenting over 70,000 signatures to members of Congress who serve on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to save artifacts at what is affectionately called the Blacksonian (NMAAHC), which opened in September 2016.

America’s History SOS says We Demand:

– That the NMAAHC and the Smithsonian remain free from political interference.

– That Congress and the Smithsonian Board of Regents act to protect the Museum’s independence.

– That President Trump immediately rescind Executive Order 14253. Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History – The White House

– That all efforts to censor or sanitize African American history be met with unified, unflinching resistance.

Questions circulate as to why there has been no legislation this year to preserve the history at the museum. A person familiar with the Congressional Black Caucus emphasized “that the caucus is ready, willing, and able to help.” However, the CBC has received “cautionary direction from the Museum hierarchy about how to support.” Even before the government shutdown, a general sense of fear had already been prevalent among Smithsonian Museum workers. A source, who wishes to remain anonymous at the Smithsonian, has warned that emails are now being monitored. The question is, why and by whom?

However, in March of this year, Congresswoman Nikema Williams led the Call for Protection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Also, a letter in May, led by Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley, announced the Democrats’ probe into Trump’s Executive Order on Museums, asking the Smithsonian Inspector General to investigate the EO’s implementation. The CBC source also states that this year, Black federal lawmakers have “not had any official conversation with the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie Bunch.”

As far as today’s meeting, the regents include Chief Justice John Roberts. The Chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution Board of Regents will preside over a meeting. Vice President J.D. Vance is also an ex officio member of the Board of Regents. The meeting is typically public, unless the Regents enter into an executive session, in which case the meeting will then go into a secret session. Concerns have arisen regarding the anticipated intense scrutiny of Secretary Bunch’s job performance since Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2025. The Trump administration’s request for the itemization of all the specimens and artifacts has been one of several sticking points. The president’s Executive Order specified a specific time period for compliance.

In Trump’s New Confederacy, Slavery Wasn’t Sin

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Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C (Wikimedia Commons/ Photo by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America)

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

In Donald Trump’s America, they are no longer whispering their love for slavery; they are preaching it from the pulpit. Far-right Christian nationalist Joshua Haymes, a self-anointed prophet of white supremacy, declared in a recent video that slavery “is not inherently evil,” demanding that every Christian “affirm and defend” the right to own another human being. His words vividly remind many of the crack of the overseer’s whip, the theology of the lash, and the perverted gospel that baptized centuries of Black pain in the name of God. Haymes, who hosts a podcast with Pastor Brooks Potteiger of Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship near Nashville, is no internet outcast shouting into the void. The church aligns with Douglas Wilson, the father of modern Christian nationalism, and counts Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth among its members. This isn’t fringe, it’s the foundation of a rising white Christian theocracy that sees slavery as “biblically justified” and domination as divine will.

In his rant, Haymes insisted, “The institution of slavery is not inherently evil. It is not inherently evil to own another human being.” He demanded that “every Christian affirm what I just said,” claiming America’s Founding Fathers weren’t “living in grave sin” for enslaving people. He called it “chronological snobbery” to condemn them. That is how far they have sunk, defending the whip as righteousness, calling the chains holy. This ideology is not confined to Tennessee pews or online podcasts. It has a home in Washington, in the halls of power, where Trump and his disciples are rewriting history—literally—by government order. As previously reported, the Trump administration has directed the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution to remove exhibits that “disparage” America’s founders by mentioning slavery. They’ve ordered the deletion of a photo of a man’s scourged back. Yes, the scarred flesh of a freed Black man who endured the lash, because it made America “look bad.”

At Fort Pulaski in Georgia, the order came down to strip away the image that defined the brutality of the Civil War era. The image that showed what the Confederacy did to the human body has now been banned by the new Confederates in suits. Trump called the Smithsonian “OUT OF CONTROL” for “talking about how horrible slavery was,” and promised to send lawyers to “go through the museums” and cleanse the content. “This country cannot be WOKE,” he declared. Translation: America cannot be honest. At historic sites like the President’s House in Philadelphia, where George Washington enslaved nine men and women and rotated them out of state to avoid Pennsylvania’s gradual emancipation law, Trump’s order has demanded that panels describing those crimes be “reviewed” or removed. A panel describing Washington’s actions as “profoundly disturbing” has been flagged for revision. Another that said slavery “mocked the nation’s pretense to liberty” is on the chopping block. They want to make the father of the country look clean again by erasing the blood on his hands. “This is truth; it’s American history,” said retired Philadelphia attorney Michelle Flamer, who helped create the original exhibit. “There’s good and there’s bad, and it’s just like life itself.”

But Trump’s America wants only the “good.” A fantasy built on denial. The administration’s censorship is a campaign of amnesia, designed to blind a generation to the crimes that built this nation. Historian Michael Coard, who helped lead the effort to memorialize the enslaved at the President’s House, said, “If George Washington got all that attention, then we need to get some attention now.” Trump’s order calls this honesty “unpatriotic.” His followers call it “anti-American.” What it really turns out to be is fear. Fear of the truth, fear of the record, fear of the descendants of the enslaved demanding to be seen and heard. And this is not happening in isolation. Across the far-right ecosystem, white Christian nationalists are rising to defend the indefensible. Haymes and his co-conspirators are not simply talking about theology; they are providing moral cover for tyranny. They are laying the groundwork for a new Confederacy, one that cloaks its racism in scripture and its hatred in hymns. Even as the administration censors history, young Republicans in private Telegram chats have been caught calling Black people “monkeys” and “watermelon people,” joking about gas chambers, and celebrating rape and torture as political tactics. The Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair used the N-word repeatedly. Leaders of the New York State Young Republicans laughed about “epic rape” and fantasized about “physiological torture.” This is not political discourse; it is the language of fascism.

When the President of the United States orders museums to stop teaching the truth, when his followers call slavery “biblical,” and when young white conservatives talk about gas chambers like punchlines, it is not a coincidence. It is a movement, a coordinated, cultural counterrevolution against truth, equality, and the very notion of freedom for Black people. The evidence is clear that this government is engaged in historical sterilization. It is erasing the crimes of slavery, suppressing the truth of genocide, and criminalizing those who dare to remember. This is the same spirit that banned books in the Jim Crow South, that burned Black schools in the Reconstruction era, and that murdered truth-tellers from Mississippi to Minnesota.They want to make America forget so they can do it again. But history has a way of fighting back. The scars remain. The names remain. Oney Judge, Hercules, and the countless others who refused to stay in chains, even when the first president of this country was their master. Their stories are our inheritance, our resistance, our unbreakable testament. If Trump and his prophets of whiteness believe they can sanitize the past, they underestimate the people who live its consequences. They forget that truth has a pulse, and that it beats strongest in the descendants of the enslaved. As Alan Spears of the National Parks Conservation Association said, “We can handle the truth.” And most believe America will. Because the truth is not Trump and his new Confederacy to rewrite. It was written in blood, and it will be remembered in fire.

New Social Security Rules Could Leave Black Retirees Further Behind

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By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

The country’s most dependable safety net is changing again, and this time, many fear it will fall hardest on the people who have always leaned on it the most. Across the nation, millions are bracing for the next wave of Social Security changes taking effect this fall and into 2026. What Washington calls modernization and reform, others see as a tightening noose around the necks of working people, especially Black Americans, who for generations have been shut out, shortchanged, and forced to survive on the margins of a promise that was never fully kept.

For those born in 1960 or later, the age to receive full retirement benefits will rise to 67. Disability rules are being rewritten to make it harder to qualify, and paper checks, the only reliable method of payment for many seniors and the unbanked, are being eliminated. All of this is happening under an administration that claims it is saving Social Security. The people who depend on it most say otherwise. Rutgers Law School professor Jon C. Dubin wrote in The Color of Social Security: Race and Unequal Protection in the Crown Jewel of the American Welfare State that the program was never colorblind to begin with. “The original Act’s complete exclusion of disproportionately Black agricultural and domestic workers from old age insurance programs was grounded in the badges and incidents of slavery and a desire to preserve the plantation-sharecropping economy,” he noted.

That exclusion, born of the Depression years, still echoes today. The data shows that Black retirees receive smaller checks and fewer years of benefits because their work lives are shorter, their wages are lower, and their health gives out earlier. Dubin warned that raising the retirement age again “will have a foreseeable racially disparate impact on Black workers due to shorter Black life expectancy and resulting shorter temporal benefit-receipt windows.” For those already close to retirement, the new rules are clear. Claim early, and your check shrinks for life. Wait longer, and you may die before you see the benefit of waiting. That is not reform. That is punishment by policy.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that the Trump administration is preparing what could become the largest cut to Social Security Disability Insurance in U.S. history, potentially slashing eligibility by 20 percent. The rule zeroes in on older workers, removing age as a major factor in assessing whether someone can still work. Kathleen Romig of the Center warned that rejecting older applicants “will cause more hardship for people who would be eligible for benefits under the existing rules.” Most of those workers are 50 or older, many living in the South and Midwest, where the jobs wear down bodies before minds, where the work is with the hands and on the feet. The cut will hit them the hardest.

The government says it is also saving money by ending paper checks. On September 30, Treasury stopped mailing Social Security payments. Officials call it a modernization effort. But to the five million Americans who still rely on those checks—many of them elderly, disabled, or without bank accounts—it feels like being cut off from the world. “Some people are just not going to be able to manage the steps,” Romig told The Washington Post. A 2024 report by the Center for Retirement Research found that Black retirees receive 19 percent less in Social Security benefits than white retirees. The reason is no mystery. Lower pay, fewer years in the workforce, and health disparities that shorten life all lead to smaller checks. The report concluded that “changing Social Security alone seems unlikely to narrow existing racial and ethnic gaps substantially” and that “achieving equity for Black and Hispanic retirees would have to start with expanding opportunity for workers and increasing pay equity.”

So, for Black America, this is not just about benefits. It is about justice. The check at the end of a lifetime of work should not depend on the color of the hands that earned it. Yet here we are again, watching the promise of fairness bend beneath the weight of policy. As Dubin put it, “Our fellow Americans deserve no less than a more equitable means for addressing the consequences of economic insecurity.”