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What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White

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Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.


This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.

Saturday, May 01, 2021

Manchin opposition weakens DC statehood chances The centrist Senator is the first Democrat to oppose the creation of a 51st state.

Manchin opposition weakens DC statehood chances

“The centrist Senator is the first Democrat to oppose the creation of a 51st state.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

The campaign to add Washington, DC as the 51st state always faced low odds in the Senate, but now the bill has its first Democratic detractor — Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

In a radio interview with West Virginia’s MetroNews Talkline Friday, Manchin threw cold water on the thus-far unified Democratic effort to approve DC statehood. Legislation to add the District as the 51st state passed the House last week on a strictly party-line vote, sending the bill to the Senate.

“If Congress wants to make DC a state, it should propose a constitutional amendment,” Manchin said. “Let the people of America vote.”

In the 50-50 Senate, where any bill would need 60 votes to clear procedural hurdles, the bill was likely on its way to death by filibuster anyway. But the loss of Manchin — who has also vocally stood in the way of Democrats’ plans to reform the filibuster, implement a $15 minimum wage, and President Joe Biden’s federal spending and taxation plans — stings for statehood advocates and progressives alike.

Thus far, 46 Senate Democrats have come out in favor of the bill, according to The Washington Post, as well as President Biden. Three have yet to take a stance, though one, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) previously cosponsored a DC statehood bill. And Manchin is the only Democrat in the ‘no’ column.

Republicans appear united in their opposition to the bill. In 2019, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called Democratic efforts to add DC and Puerto Rico as states “full-bore socialism.”

Manchin argued that reports from the Justice Department under the Reagan and Carter administrations demonstrate that DC must be added as a state by constitutional amendment. He pointed to the 23rd amendment, ratified in 1961, which permitted DC residents the right to vote in presidential elections and granted it three electoral votes in the electoral college, as standing in the way of statehood via congressional action.

He went on to say he would not support unilateral congressional action on the issue, and said he would “tell his friends” that the matter would end up in the Supreme Court if they pursue a congressional path.

“Every legal scholar has told us that,” Manchin said. “So why not do it in the right way and let the people see if they want to change?”

All existing 50 states were added to the union via an act of Congress.

Proponents of DC statehood, including Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), DC’s only representative — though nonvoting — in Congress, told Politico in a statement that Congress did not need to repeal the 23rd amendment in order to make DC a state.

Norton also took a shot at Manchin in an interview with The Washington Post, saying she had never counted on him for support, but instead was counting on electing more Democrats in order to diminish his influence.

Stasha Rhodes, the president of DC statehood advocacy group 51 for 51, framed the issue in a statement as one of racial justice, and pushed back against Manchin’s logic.

“No member of the Senate should deny voting rights to 700,000 mostly Black and Brown Washingtonians based on a flimsy understanding of the Constitution and American history,” Rhodes said. “A DC statehood law is clearly consistent with the Constitution and the 23rd Amendment.”

But despite the voting rights and racial justice arguments for statehood, the debate surrounding it has become about partisan power — something that Manchin surely knows. As Vox’s Jerusalem Demsas has reported:

Democrats’ narrow majority was able to pass statehood legislation when it came to the House floor but now it goes to the Senate — where bills go to die via filibuster.“

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