14th Annual 900 Men Strong Scholarship and Community Service Awards Honors Mayor Phillip Jones, Lionell Spruill; GOP Pushes Restrictive SAVE Act

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14th Annual 900 Men Strong Scholarship and Community Service Awards

CHESAPEAKE, VA — The 14th Annual 900 Men Strong Scholarship and Community Service Awards took place a the Chesapeake Conference Center on April 12. The popular annual event is sponsored by the W.H Gray Men’s Ministry.

Last week it was reported that there is a decrease in of Black men at HBCUs and other colleges. The focus of 900 Men Strong is much needed in the Black community.

Above: Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones speaks after receiving his award on April 12.

In keeping with the theme and purpose of "Making a Difference through Education" the group awarded $1,500 in scholarships to male high school students “working toward achieving academic excellence on a post-secondary level.”

This year Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones, Negro Leagues star Sam Allen of Norfolk, Va,, community leader Kamron Blue and former State Senator Lionell Spruill. Norfolk Mayor Kenny Alexander delivered the keynote at the breakfast. There were 11 scholarship recipients honored at the breakfast. The MC of the breakfast was Cletus Kassady.

All proceeds go to scholarships. Click here to donate.

Above: Negro Leagues star Sam Allen of Norfolk is handed his award by Rev. Geoffrey Guns of Second Calvary Baptist Church in Norfolk.

According to their website, the group 900 Men Strong has now awarded over $82,000 in scholarships to high school boys and have awarded over 75 distinguished men who have made significant contributions to the communities and families of Hampton Roads.

The focus of the 900 Men Strong Scholarship and Community Service Awards event is an important one. Last week, the New York Times reported that HBCUs are only 30 percent men and Howard University’s student population is only 19 percent Black men. Last year, NPR reported similar news.

Above: A performance from the Norfolk State University Choir at the breakfast.

House GOP One Step Closer to a $880 billion Cut to Medicaid

From Protect Our Care: Every House Republican in Virginia’s Congressional delegation, including Rep. Jen Kiggans and Rep. Rob Wittman, joined their caucus in a vote to press forward with the Republican budget that includes $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid to fund tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations. The Republican budget threatens to rip health care away from more than 70 million Americans, including children, seniors in nursing homes, veterans, people fighting cancer, and working families.

Nearly 2 million Virginians rely on Medicaid for their health care, and more than 630,000 Virginians will be automatically disenrolled from the program if funding for Medicaid expansion drops by even 1% due to a trigger provision in Virginia law. Read entire at Protect Our Care

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SAVE Act: A New Weapon Against Black and Brown Voters

By Stacy Brown for BlackPressUSA. Since the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, Republicans have worked relentlessly to chip away at protections for voters — particularly Black Americans, other people of color, and women. Those efforts reached a fever pitch after Barack Obama’s historic victories in 2008 and 2012, which sparked what many observers say was the modern white supremacist movement and reignited GOP efforts to suppress the vote.

Voting rights advocates say this would create enormous hurdles for poor people, rural residents, Black Americans, naturalized citizens, and the nearly 70 million women whose current legal names differ from those on their birth certificates due to marriage.

Now, with Donald Trump’s return to the White House and Republicans emboldened by a far-right agenda, the House has passed one of the most aggressive voter suppression bills in decades — the so-called SAVE Act, or “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.”

The legislation, passed by a 220–208 vote, would require in-person documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote — a move voting rights experts warn will disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, especially women and people of color. What’s more, four Democrats — Jared Golden, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Henry Cuellar, and Ed Case — broke ranks and supported the bill.

More on the SAVE Act at the bottom of this newsletter.

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2028: Republicans Move to Make It Harder to Vote

Democracy Docket: For over a century and a half, the U.S. government has largely acted as a force to protect and expand voting rights — often in opposition to efforts by state or local officials to limit them. Until now, neither house of Congress had ever passed legislation to significantly restrict access to the ballot — except for rare symbolic measures, as when the House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act last year despite Democratic control of the Senate and then-President Joe Biden’s pledge that he would veto it.

But with the House’s approval of the same measure Thursday, that’s changed.

The GOP bill, a direct product of President Donald Trump’s decade-long obsession with illegal voting, would require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration, bar states from counting late-arriving mail ballots, and dramatically infringe on states’ authority to run elections.

The SAVE Act still faces a steep uphill climb to overcome a likely Democratic filibuster in the Senate. But with the GOP controlling Congress and the White House, tightening voting rules near the top of Trump’s agenda, and the party largely unified around the issue, the prospect of major voter suppression legislation becoming law nationwide is much closer to reality than probably ever before. Read entire at Democracy Docket

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