Browsing: National News

U.S. Senator Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) and U.S. Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.-12) today celebrated the passage of bipartisan legislation to honor the life and work of the late Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968. The Shirley Chisholm Congressional Gold Medal Act would instruct Congress to posthumously endow Chisholm with a Congressional Gold Medal – the highest award Congress can bestow – in commemoration of her accomplishments, activism, and legacy.

A Trump spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said the incoming president has made it clear that ending DEI policies is a top priority and that Americans have voted to favor these changes. Vice President-elect JD Vance has also supported efforts to abolish federal DEI programs and repeal Biden-era protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

 Cole, one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid-era South Africa, was by then mostly forgotten and penniless. Banned by his native country after the publication of his pioneering photography book House of Bondage, Cole had emigrated in 1966 to the United States. But his life in exile gradually disintegrated into intermittent homelessness. A six-paragraph obituary in The New York Times ran alongside a list of death notices.