(CHICAGO) — It has been nearly a decade since 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was shot dead in Chicago, but the Obamas are still keeping her legacy alive in the South Side at the Obama Presidential Center.
Former first lady Michelle Obama, who attended Pendleton’s funeral in 2013, announced in a video message Friday that the Winter Garden at the Obama Presidential Center will be named after Pendleton.
“To this day, I carry Hadiya’s story with me everywhere I go,” she said. “I know that Hadiya’s loss is still raw and devastating for so many of us, especially on the South Side. But hopefully this garden can help share her light with even more people for generations to come.”
Pendleton, a Black girl who attended King College Prep High School, was shot in the back and killed on Jan. 29, 2013, about a mile away from the Obamas’ Chicago neighborhood. She was a majorette in school and one week before she was killed, her drill team performed at Obama’s second inauguration.
The then-first lady attended Pendleton’s funeral in 2013, where she met with Hadiya’s family and friends.
In the video, Obama said that while she never met Hadiya in person, she saw the “extraordinary power and potential that lay inside of this young woman” through speaking with her loved ones.
During the presidency of Barack Obama, Pendleton became a symbol for the tragedy of gun violence in Chicago, and her story became a rallying cry for gun reform around the country.
Her mother, Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton, also became outspoken about the issue of gun control since her daughter’s death and delivered an address at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 on the issue.
Lessons from a ‘violence interrupter’ as shootings continue to ravage Chicago
In a video message shared by the Obama Presidential Center, Cowley-Pendleton said that her “heart just melted” when she found out that the Winter Garden would be named in honor of her daughter, because she “knew people would be saying her name.”
Hadiya’s parents were guests of the Obamas at the 2013 State of the Union address, where the then-president mentioned Hadiya by name in a message about gun violence.
“One of those we lost was a young girl named Hadiya Pendleton. She was 15 years old. She loved Fig Newtons and lip gloss. She was a majorette. She was so good to her friends they all thought they were her best friend,” Obama said in his Feb. 12, 2013 address to the nation.
“Hadiya’s parents, Nate and Cleo, are in this chamber tonight, along with more than two dozen Americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. They deserve a vote. They deserve a vote,” Obama added, calling on Congress to pass bipartisan gun control legislation.
In August 2018, two men were charged with first-degree murder for Pendleton’s killing.
2 found guilty of murder in shooting of 15-year-old Chicago schoolgirl
Ahead of the September 2021 groundbreaking of the Obama Presidential Center, the former president reflected on the gun violence that has plagued Chicago in an exclusive interview with Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts.
“Chicago alone can’t solve the gun problem,” Obama said, adding that Congress needs to pass “common sense gun safety measures.”
The former president said that tackling the problem is a “generational project” — one that he intends to address through Obama Presidential Center programs like My Brother’s Keeper, which works to create opportunities for boys and men of color in underserved communities.
“If we’re doing that in a systemic way, year after year, then over time we can reduce these incidents of violence,” he said.
Gun violence has continued to skyrocket in Chicago, and according to a January 2022 report from the Cook County medical examiner’s office, more people were shot to death in Chicago and the surrounding Cook County in 2021 than in any other year on record.
Report paints grim picture of Chicago-area gun deaths.
Mr. Robot‘s Christian Slater has been tapped to star alongside John Cena, Alison Brie and Narcos‘ Juan Pablo Raba in Taken director Pierre Morel’s action-comedy Freelance, according to Deadline. Freelance follows Cena as an ex-special forces operator who takes a job providing security for a journalist — played by Brie — who’s hoping to salvage her career by interviewing a dictator. Things go awry when a military coup breaks out in the middle of the interview, and the mismatched duo, along with the dictator, escape to the jungle where they must survive the military and wild animals, as well as each other. Slater’s role has not been revealed…
Being the Ricardos, Don’t Look Up, The French Dispatch, King Richard and Licorice Pizza are all up for Original Screenplay trophies at the 74th annual Writers Guild Awards. CODA, Dune, Nightmare Alley, tick, tick…BOOM! and West Side Story will face off against each other in the Adapted Screenplay. In the documentary category, Being Cousteau, Exposing Muybridge and Like a Rolling Stone earned nods. The winners will be revealed March 20. The full list of nominees can be found here…
Netflix’s upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the direct sequel to the 1974 horror classic, is paying homage to the original film by bringing back John Larroquette to narrate the opening of the film, recreating the role that launched his career. “It felt important to honor the original TCM at every opportunity,” director David Blue Garcia told Variety via email, “John’s voice is iconic in the original opening and we thought it would help set the perfect tone in our own intro. It’s also a subtle way of letting the fans know they’re in good hands.” Also making a return appearance in the sequel is one of the original, working Poulan chainsaws from the original film. The 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre will launches February 18 on Netflix…
(WASHINGTON) — When word came that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was retiring, the spotlight almost immediately shifted to who might replace him — and getting a lot of attention has been Ketanji Brown Jackson, who clerked for Breyer about 20 years ago.
A Harvard Law School graduate, and now a federal appeals court judge, Jackson, despite her professional and academic accolades, considers hard work to be one of the most important factors, throughout her life, that got her where she is today.
She was born 51 years ago, in 1970, in Washington, D.C. Her parents, both public school teachers, had moved to Washington from Miami in the post-civil rights era.
She has recounted in a 2017 speech that her parents, wanting to show pride in their African ancestry, asked her aunt, who was then in the Peace Corps in Africa, for a list of African girl names.
Taking one of her suggestions, Jackson’s parents named her Ketanji Onyika, which she said they were told translates to “lovely one.”
In 2017, Jackson, in a lecture at the University of Georgia School of Law, revealed more of her personal side, reflecting not just on her legal career — but on dealing with motherhood at the same time.
“Right now, in fact, I’m in that peculiar stage of life when I experience near-daily whiplash from the jarring juxtaposition of my two most significant roles: U.S. district judge on the one hand and mother of teenage daughters on the other,” she said.
Jackson and her husband Patrick, a doctor, have two daughters, Talia who was 16 and Leila who was 12 years old at the time she told that story. During that same talk, Jackson said her family values include respecting everyone and making your best effort in everything you do.
“In our family, we have a mantra that emphasizes prioritization on work over play as one of our first principles,” Jackson said. “As the girls would testify, ‘do what you need to do before what you want to do’ is a constant refrain in our house.”
Jackson is currently serving on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, considered the most important federal court next to the Supreme Court. It has jurisdiction over cases involving Congress and the executive branch agencies.
During her confirmation hearing for her current position, Republican senators grilled her on whether she thought race would play a factor in her decision-making.
Jackson said when she considers cases, she is looking at the facts and the law.
“I’m methodically and intentionally setting aside personal views, any other inappropriate considerations,” she said. “I would think that race would be the kind of thing that would be inappropriate to inject in an evaluation of a case.”
The Senate eventually made her the first Black woman confirmed to an appellate court in a decade. Right now, there are only six Black women serving as judges on federal appeals courts.
President Joe Biden said Thursday he is committed to keeping his campaign promise to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court — and that pledge is bound to come up at confirmation hearings if he picks her.
She has noted she is “fairly certain” her ancestors were slaves on both sides of her family.
“It is the beauty and the majesty of this country, that someone who comes from a background like mine could find herself in this position,” Jackson said during her Senate confirmation hearing last year. “I’m just enormously grateful to have this opportunity to be a part of the law in this way, and I’m truly thankful for the president giving me the honor of this nomination.”
Former President Barack Obama interviewed Jackson in 2016 for the Supreme Court to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat after his death.
Before that, Jackson said during her speech at the University of Georgia, her youngest daughter, Leila, came to her and her husband and asked if they knew Justice Scalia had died, leading to a vacancy on the nation’s highest court. Jackson said Leila’s middle school friends decided she should apply.
“Getting to be on the Supreme Court isn’t really a job you apply for,” Jackson said she explained to Leila. “You just have to be lucky enough to have the president find you among the thousands of people who might want to do that job.”
Jackson then shared how her daughter decided to write President Obama, telling him to consider her mom for the Supreme Court.
She said her daughter’s handwritten note read, “she is determined, honest and never breaks a promise to anyone, even if there are other things she’d rather do. She can demonstrate commitment and is loyal and never brags.”
Maybe true to form, Jackson has had no public comment since the news broke about her old boss, Justice Breyer, and whether she might soon replace him — and make history.
(WASHINGTON) — With poll workers across the country resigning at an alarming rate, efforts to recruit their replacements have grown increasingly partisan – a troubling trend that experts fear will serve to undermine Americans’ faith in the vote.
This week, as part of National Poll Worker Recruitment Day, several state Republican parties issued rallying cries on social media meant to attract a new generation of poll workers. Their pleas included politically charged language, calling on followers to “join the fight,” “combat Democrats” and “SAVE AMERICA!”
While political parties have long engaged in recruitment efforts, experts say these latest overtures mark a “notable” escalation in the way partisans solicit interest in these critical roles.
“It’s only recently that I’ve started seeing widespread use of language that implies the other side is cheating, or that working as a poll worker could be characterized as joining a ‘fight,’ as opposed to an opportunity to serve the community and the democratic process,” said Larry Norden of the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
The politicization of poll workers reflects broader democratic challenges the country has faced in recent years. As the front line of election administration, these workers undertake the burden of ensuring a free and fair vote at polling stations in each community. The work is often described as tedious, but it is cited as among the most important jobs in a democracy.
In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, poll workers bore the brunt of false claims that the election was compromised by fraud. Many became targets of threats, and a survey from the Brennan Center for Justice found that one-third of election workers reported feeling unsafe because of their job. In some states, Republican lawmakers have proposed legislation that would impose criminal charges on poll workers for committing errors.
The fallout, combined with pandemic-related obstacles, has prompted a mass exodus of poll workers and raised questions about who would replace them.
“There is very much a coordinated effort underway to use criminalization of election officials’ jobs, intimidation and violence to drive officials from their jobs and to replace them with partisan activists,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
To offset the widespread resignations and spur recruitment efforts, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission last year dubbed Jan. 25 National Poll Worker Recruitment Day, “with the goal of encouraging potential poll workers to sign up to help America vote.”
At least 19 state Republican parties from Connecticut to California promoted poll worker recruitment this week, and at least five injected their messaging with partisan overtones.
“Join the front lines of election security by being a poll worker! As @JoeBiden just stated, it matters who counts the votes. #LeadRight,” read one tweet from the Nevada Republican Party.
In North Carolina, the Republican Party Twitter account called on supporters to “combat Democrats’ unconstitutional assault on our most basic voting protections” by signing up to become a poll worker.
Democracy advocates have warned that a new generation of poll workers may put partisan loyalties above a commitment to democracy. This week they said the rhetoric used in Republican social media channels threatens to make that nightmare scenario a dangerous reality.
“The last thing we need are partisan appeals for non-partisan positions,” said Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of IssueOne, a democracy watchdog. “Election workers may be Democrats or Republicans, but our elections work in this country because the workers who run them put voters first.”
(NEW YORK) — With the highly infectious omicron COVID-19 variant spreading rapidly across the country and overwhelming the health care system, health officials have been pleading with Americans to get vaccinated and boosted.
“The doctors and data have made crystal clear, vaccinations and boosters provide the best protection,” White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said during a press briefing on Wednesday. “Vaccines remain our single most powerful tool.”
But despite continued public urgings from the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s vaccination initiation and COVID-19 booster rate continues to lag, which experts say is particularly worrisome, as efficacy continues to wane overtime.
“Booster shots are effective against both infection and serious disease,” Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told ABC News. “If people don’t get boosted, we as a population are more vulnerable to the virus. To my mind, the biggest concern is that people who are vaccinated but not boosted may infect people who haven’t been vaccinated.”
As of Wednesday, just under half of those who are eligible to receive a booster — about 85 million Americans — have yet to receive their additional shot, and data shows that each day, fewer and fewer Americans are getting vaccinated. Since mid-December, the number of Americans receiving their booster every day has been cut in half — falling from more than 1 million people boosted every day to just over half a million people. In addition, 63 million eligible Americans remain totally unvaccinated.
Experts say several factors are to blame for the nation’s drop in booster shots being administered, including confusion with the CDC’s messaging and an uncertainty and lack of understanding from many about the urgency and need for boosters.
Last week, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky shared three new studies, all of which clearly demonstrated that unvaccinated individuals are at greater risk of severe illness, and even death, from COVID-19, compared to those who are vaccinated. The studies found that booster shots significantly increased protection against severe disease, both during the delta wave and at the beginning of the omicron wave.
“Protection against infection and hospitalization with the omicron variant is highest for those who are up to date with their vaccination, meaning those who are boosted when they’re eligible. There are still millions of people who are eligible for booster doses and have not yet received one,” Walensky said during a White House COVID-19 press briefing last week.
The first study found a third shot slashed the risk of visiting the ER or urgent care by 94% during delta and 82% during omicron. A second study found that the unvaccinated were nearly 14 times more likely to be infected and 53 times more likely to die, compared to the vaccinated and boosted, and a third study reported that although omicron was more likely to cause breakthrough infections compared to delta, even among the boosted, protection against more severe illness remained high.
“There may be a bit more pain and suffering with hospitalizations in those areas of the country that have not been fully vaccinated or have not gotten boosters,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told Martha Raddatz during an appearance on ABC News’ This Week on Sunday.
Messaging on vaccinations cause confusion
Health experts suggest the nation’s slowing booster campaign and the CDC’s unclear messaging and guidance are the reasons many Americans haven’t felt the need to get boosted.
“While the initial vaccination drive was met with clear communications, incentives and mandates, the booster campaign has had far less organization,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
Complicating matters is the fact that the virus has already mutated several times, with new variants emerging, creating additional confusion.
“The changing science of variants and boosters has required real-time adapting of public health messaging and guidance, providing less time to prepare and convince people on the value of a third shot,” Brownstein said.
Further muddling the messaging is the discussion about whether a fourth dose of a coronavirus vaccine shot will be needed to offer protection against omicron. Israel is currently administering additional boosters to residents over the age of 60, and immunocompromised individuals, among others.
When asked whether a fourth shot will be necessary, Fauci told ABC’s This Week that it is still unclear whether an additional booster shot will be recommended, as scientists are still trying to determine how much protection is provided by the first booster.
Fauci added that it’s “quite conceivable, and I hope it’s true, that the third shot boost will give a much greater durability of protection.”
Some Americans may not understand the urgency for boosters, experts say
Although researchers report that the science behind the benefit of boosters is clear, some experts say many Americans still do not fully understand the urgency of getting boosted.
“There are many who may not yet understand the importance of [the] third dose of vaccine,” said Creech. “By giving an additional dose, particularly of an mRNA vaccine several months after those initial doses, we leverage the immune system’s ability to create long-term memory. That 1-2 punch is the best way to protect quickly and protect for a longer period of time.”
For other fully vaccinated Americans, a booster may seem unnecessary, for the time being, Dowdy said.
“For those who want protection against serious disease, but don’t care if they get a mild infection, the first series is probably sufficient. For those who want to avoid any infection at all costs, they’ve come to realize that a booster shot – while helpful – is not a ‘get out of jail free’ card,” Dowdy explained.
Despite the fact that omicron has been shown to cause less severe disease, Walensky stressed this week that as a nation, we are still facing a high overall burden of disease.
“Importantly, ‘milder’ does not mean ‘mild.’ And we cannot look past the strain on our health systems and substantial number of deaths — nearing 2,200 a day — as a result of the extremely transmissible omicron variant,” Walensky said.
Hospital officials have repeatedly stressed that the sheer number of infections caused by the new variant could still overwhelm the health care system. Nationwide, there are just under 150,000 COVID-19-positive Americans receiving care — a total which has just begun to fall after hitting a record high of 160,000 patients earlier this month.
When asked whether the C.D.C. might consider changing the definition of “fully vaccinated” to encourage more Americans to get the additional shot, Walensky reiterated that at this time, the agency is working to ensure people are “up to date” with their vaccinations.
“Right now, we’re pivoting our language, we really want to make sure people are up to date. That means if you recently got your second dose, you’re not eligible for a booster, you’re up to date. If you are eligible for a booster and you haven’t gotten it, you’re not up to date,” Walensky said.
Vaccination campaign must target both the unvaccinated and the unboosted
Experts stress the vaccination campaign must not only focus on the unboosted, but also on the 63 million eligible Americans who remain completely unvaccinated.The efforts should not be perceived as an “either/or situation, but rather a “both/and,” said Creech.
“While we want to respect the personal choices that individuals wish to make, we certainly need to invest resources to address misunderstandings or misconceptions that have led them to the decision not to vaccinate,” Creech said.
Strategies to increase overall vaccine confidence, as well as to raise awareness about the value of boosters, will also be applicable to vaccines as a whole, Creech said.
“It’s not about whether we should be prioritizing boosters over the primary vaccine series, it’s about how we message these in a way that prioritizes both,” Dowdy added.
Although the omicron surge seems to be sharply declining in many areas of the country, Americans must realize the pandemic is not over yet, Fauci stressed.
“It’s vital that we all remain vigilant in the face of this virus,” Fauci said. “It’s been a long two years. However, please now do your part to lean into this current moment. Now is the time to do what we know works: Wear a mask, get vaccinated and get boosted.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Thursday’s sports events:
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Philadelphia 105, LA Lakers 87
Golden State 124, Minnesota 115
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Los Angeles 3, NY Islanders 2
Florida 4, Vegas 1
Seattle 2, Pittsburgh 1 (OT)
Anaheim 5, Montreal 4
Tampa Bay 3, New Jersey 2
Columbus 5, NY Rangers 3
Carolina 3, Ottawa 2 (SO)
Final Vancouver 5 Winnipeg 1
Final St. Louis 5 Calgary 1
Final SO Edmonton 3 Nashville 2
TOP-25 COLLEGE BASKETBALL
Gonzaga 89, Loyola Marymount 55
Purdue 83, Iowa 73
UCLA 81, California 57
Wisconsin 73, Nebraska 65
Ohio St. 75, Minnesota 64
Stanford 64, Southern Cal 61
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court will once again revisit the legality of affirmative action in higher education, after last upholding the decades-old precedent in 2016.
On Monday, the high court said it would take up a pair of cases that challenge the use of race as a factor in undergraduate admissions at Harvard University, the nation’s oldest private college, and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest public state university.
That the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the cases together is seen by some experts as an indication that the conservative-leaning body could be willing to revisit its precedents and end race-conscious admissions in higher education — which proponents say will have wide-reaching implications for schools, and beyond.
Some studies suggest the policies — which consider race as one of many factors when reviewing applicants to further a diverse student body — have had a profound effect on opportunities for minority applicants, which in turn impact their job chances and careers. And they suggest that stopping them not only decreases the number of Black and Latino students enrolling in colleges but increases those of advantaged groups.
“It is a very, very significant threat to the continued constitutionality of affirmative action,” Tanya Washington, a professor of law at Georgia State University whose research focuses on educational equity, told ABC News.
Opponents — including the conservative group Students for Fair Admissions, which has brought both cases against the universities — have argued that the policies are discriminatory and violate students’ civil rights and the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.
Since 1978, the court has said that race could be used as one factor among many in college admissions, barring the use of quotas or mathematical formulas to diversify a class.
In the landmark 2003 case Grutter vs. Bollinger, which the cases against Harvard and UNC are seeking to overturn, the court said that the goal of a diverse student body justifies the use of race, along with other factors, in admissions policies.
The court set the bar higher for schools with its 2013 decision in the case of Abigail Fisher, a white woman who attempted to end the consideration of race in the University of Texas’ admissions policies. In the majority opinion, former Justice Anthony Kennedy said that institutions must first exhaust all race-neutral means of achieving racial diversity, such as recruitment and socio-economic indicators, before considering race, Washington said.
The court last upheld affirmative action in 2016 when it again considered Fisher’s case, in a narrow vote that many at the time had expected to upend race-conscious admissions policies.
Since that decision, the makeup of the court has changed in a way that makes it seem likely the precedent could be overturned, according to Washington.
“The court has shifted to a more conservative bloc of justices — 6 to 3 — and I think there would be among that group of six a significant receptivity to overruling Grutter v. Bollinger,” Washington said, noting that the breakdown is unlikely to change with the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer.
With this latest case, the court could rule in one of several ways, according to Washington. It could say the use of race in admissions violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and overturn Grutter, ending affirmative action. It could uphold Grutter and find that the use of race in Harvard and UNC’s admissions policies was constitutional. Or it could uphold Grutter but find that the use of race in these contexts isn’t constitutional.
The court could also potentially further restrict the practice or require “higher standards” for schools to use it, Michael Olivas, the emeritus William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Houston Law Center, told ABC News.
The consolidation of the two cases signals to Washington that “a majority of the court may be ready to overrule Grutter.” That the court also appeared inclined to overrule another long-standing precedent in Roe v. Wade also might indicate the same here, she said.
Against the convention wisdom at the time, Olivas had said the court would uphold affirmative action in the 2016 case. He said he believes the same now, even with a different makeup of the court.
“The world has changed, but the common law hasn’t changed,” he said. “I would hope that 50 years of very clear law would stand.”
‘Cataclysmic’ impact
Should the court end affirmative action in higher education, the impact will be far-reaching, Washington said, as most institutions — save for those in several states where it is prohibited at public universities — are using race-conscious admissions policies.
“This is not just going to impact the elite,” Washington said. “What we are going to see, what I predict, is a cataclysmic drop in the numbers of Latino, Black and Indigenous students attending institutions of higher ed.”
A 2015 study published in the Journal of Higher Education that looked at the impact of affirmative action bans in six states found that the share of students of color in medical schools dropped after the bans went into effect.
In California, which has banned affirmative action policies at the state’s public universities since 1996, the education advocacy group EdSource found there was a double-digit enrollment gap between the percentage of Latino high school graduates and those enrolled in the University of California’s 2019 freshman class.
If Harvard were to stop considering race in its admissions process and solely use race-neutral factors, the proportion of African American students admitted to the class of 2019 would have likely dropped from 14% to 6%, and the proportion of Hispanic or “other” students from 14% to 9%, a university committee found. Meanwhile, “this decrease would produce a corresponding increase in students of other races, primarily white students,” its report said.
Disparities in admissions have implications for those who enter professional fields, like law or medicine, as well as higher education faculty, Washington said.
“I think it will make the quality of education less robust and less rigorous,” she said. “I think it will mean we also end up with fewer racially diverse professors and professionals. It’s going to have adverse and broad consequences for our society.”
For Olivas, one of the worst consequences of potentially ending affirmative action is the message it sends.
“I think it will send a signal to minority parents that their kids aren’t wanted,” he said. “I think that would be a mistake for all of us. I want a better-educated group no matter where they’re from.”
Whether or not affirmative action is upheld, disparities in admissions would still exist through policies like legacy admissions, which tend to disproportionately benefit white applicants, he added.
In the case against Harvard, Students for Fair Admissions alleges that Asian American applicants have been illegally targeted and rejected at a disproportionately higher rate in violation of the students’ constitutional rights. In the case against UNC, it alleges the university refused to use race-neutral alternatives to achieve the stated goal of a diverse study body.
“Every college applicant should be judged as a unique individual, not as some representative of a racial or ethnic group,” Edward Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions and a long-time affirmative action opponent and conservative activist, said in a statement.
In its complaint against Harvard, Students for Fair Admissions also argued that racial classifications “have a stigmatizing effect” on applicants.
“Irrespective of whether an individual African American or Hispanic applicant is admitted to Harvard because of a racial preference, so long as racial preferences exist, it will often be assumed that race is the reason for the applicant’s admission to the school,” the complaint stated. “This stigma can have a devastating effect on the psyche of impressionable students.”
In response to the Supreme Court’s decision this week, both Harvard and UNC said their admissions policies have been found to be constitutional by the lower courts.
“Considering race as one factor among many in admissions decisions produces a more diverse student body which strengthens the learning environment for all,” Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said in a statement.
Beth Keith, a spokesperson for UNC, said in a statement that its holistic admissions process “allows for an evaluation of each student in a deliberate and thoughtful way.”
Many experts, including Washington, expect the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case during its next term, which starts in October.
W. Kamau Bell is not afraid to have a tough conversation about the man once hailed as “America’s Dad.” Bell’s new docuseries, We Need to Talk About Cosby, premieres Sunday and will provide an unflinching look at Bill Cosby’s groundbreaking legacy as well as his downfall for allegedly raping dozens of women.
Speaking to ABC Audio, Bell addresses how Cosby’s camp has panned the upcoming series and called him a “PR Hack.” The 49-year-old admits the insult caught him off guard. “Of all the things I envisioned them calling me, that was not on my list. So, you know, I’ll take it,” says Bell.
While Cosby’s camp made it clear to Bell they want the upcoming docuseries to focus only on the positive, the United Shades of America host said, “I think if they watch the doc, they’ll see that we also highlight the good things he does while we have a different opinion of his innocence.”
The docuseries balances Cosby’s fall from grace with his legacy as a performer and educator. It is a “difficult” discussion, Bell admits, but says “it’s time” to have it because it’s so “hard to talk about.” He says the docuseries “reckons with his legacy and all the good he did with all the things that I’ve come to believe that he did as far as assaulting and raping women.”
“It was always a conversation about Bill Cosby, not a conversation with Bill Cosby,” Bell continued. “And after you talk to so many survivors, it just feels like it’s less and less a room for him to come in because that would feel like a betrayal to all the survivors.”
When ABC Audio spoke with Shinedown‘s Brent Smith at the end of March 2020, we asked him if the band’s next album would be called Isolation or Quarantine — then two words the world was just learning about. His response? “I don’t think anybody’s ever gonna wanna talk about this. Ever.”
Two years later, Shinedown will release Planet Zero, a record that could not help but be influenced by what’s been going on in the world since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“It ultimately was inspired by the last two years, that everybody on the planet Earth…what we’ve all dealt with,” Smith now tells ABC Audio.
Remembering back to those early days of the pandemic, Smith says that he and his band mates tried to “crystal-ball-method” writing new music.
“‘Let’s try and write three years from now,'” Smith recalls thinking. “‘No one’s going to want to talk about this, we’re going to want to move on.'”
“We attempted to do that,” he says. “But then everything just kept getting worse.”
The result became Planet Zero, a journey that reflects a world in crisis. For example, the record’s title track, which premiered earlier this week, is a reaction to media coverage of the pandemic.
“You can’t really tell who’s telling you the truth,” Smith says. “With the flip-flopping of everything that was going on, where certain outlets were, like, ‘Well it’s this.’ ‘Well, actually, no, it’s this.’ ‘Well, we thought it was this, but now it’s this.'”
“It’s about telling the truth,” he shares. “That’s what Planet Zero is about. Tell the truth.”
One thing Planet Zero does not do, though, is give up on humanity.
“There’s an empowerment to this album,” Smith says. “There’s a lot of triumph in this album.”
Glass Animals‘ “Heat Waves” has been around since June 2020, but only recently broke into the top five on the Billboard Hot 100, thanks to a late 2021 surge on TikTok. It’s also earned the band a Grammy nomination, the number-one spot on Spotify’s Global Top 50 Chart and so many other accolades that frontman Dave Bayley can barely take them all in.
“I feel like I’m kind of holding on to its coattails at the moment and trying to keep up, so much has been happening,” Dave says of “Heat Waves.” “It’s totally blowing my mind!”
Dave initially wrote “Heat Waves” about missing a close friend who’d died, but he says the song’s success has given it a whole new meaning.
As he explains, “I think seeing people have such an amazing reaction to it…saying that the song really helped them, and…the way people have responded creatively: making remixes, covers, doing amazing things in the digital space, like creating Minecraft castles and even memes…all of that just makes what was a very sad situation so positive.”
And speaking of the digital space, Dave says he really enjoys the TikToks that focus on the “Heat Waves” line “sometimes all I think about is you.”
“I made one about missing my dog while we were on tour. So I’ve seen a few of those now…adorable,” he laughs. “I’ve seen some funny ones about somebody eating a salad and then they look out the window and…they’re looking at some really unhealthy burger joint — that was hilarious.”
Best of all, Dave says, “Will Smithdid one the other day! About TheFresh Prince and kind of reminiscing about his time on that show…I love that show! Brilliant! So that was, like, super-special to me.”
