As Trump Picks Unfit Cabinet, Dems Tell Black Advocates to Shut Up; Virginia Voter Turnout Lowest in 20 Years; Carlos Clanton Wins Norfolk City Council Seat
🚩 51 days: The Virginia General Assembly convenes on Jan. 8, 2025.
🚩 63 days: Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025 will take place.
Black Virginia News is giving you vital news and information on the Black community in Virginia. We give you facts others ignore. Thank you to our subscribers! Please support unbossed indy news in Virginia. Thank you!
As Trump Picks Clown Show Cabinet Dems Tell Black Advocates to Shut Up
Predictably Shocking Choices. Last week President-elect Donald Trump announced his selections for his cabinet and other positions in his administration. Trump named anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, who has been denounced by his own famous family, is making noise about dismantling parts of HHS.
Trump selected former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to be his Director of National Intelligence. The choice was roundly criticized and Gabbard was called a “likely a Russian asset” by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz.
The week ended with the announcement that Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who has been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee and the Department he could run (DoJ) for allegations of drug use and sex trafficking as Trump’s pick for U.S. Attorney General. Gaetz promptly resigned from Congress last week, days before the planned Nov. 15 release of the report on him by House Ethics.
Even with all that controversial news, which included an unconfirmed report that Trump’s nominee for Secretary Defense may have a white supremacist tattoo on his arm, some Democrats found something else to focus on: Criticizing Black Democrats and their issues. The predictable first rounds were shot off by Clinton-era consultant Jim Carville. In what has now become informal tradition, some Democrats are blaming Harris’ loss on the party’s connection to parts of the Black agenda.
“I’ll give Harris credit she didn’t use any of the woke language. But this is like trying to wash clothes that have smoke all over them. You can’t get the stench out,” Carville said on CNN on Nov. 12.
Carville then went on to imply that Democratic U.S. Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV), Bob Casey (D-PA), Jon Tester (D-MT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) lost their U.S. Senate seats and will departing in January 2025 because of “woke” politics.
Manchin announced he would not run for re-election on Nov. 9, 2023. Senators Casey, Tester and Brown won re-election at the height of “woke” politics and protest in 2018, four years after Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson killed teenager Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, which re-launched the term “woke” in the Black community. Though the phrase has a nine decades long history, the term was often used by Black Lives Matter activists after Brown’s violent and unresolved 2014 killing.
“…. this stench off of the Democratic Party.”
“My God it was so stupid no one one wanted to bring it up three years later but the residue of it just stuck with us,” Carville said on CNN. “It’s gonna take more than one cycle to get this stench off of the Democratic Party and it’s a stench of the highest order,” Carville concluded on CNN speaking on the term “defund the police.”
The term “defund the police” was created by the Minnesota not-for-profit Black Visions Collective and then popularized by Black Lives Matter activists following the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd’s agonizing nine minute murder included him begging for his mother under the knee of Chauvin as other officers stood by. Floyd’s murder was captured on an iphone video by bystander Darnella Frazier, 17.
The video touched off national and international condemnation and calls for a closer look at policing in America along with a short-lived “racal reckoning.” Regardless, in his State of the Union speech in 2022, President Biden stated, "we should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police. It's to fund the police."
The policy emphasis behind “defund the police” was a call to push for more money to fund community social services, youth services, housing, education and healthcare. But Republicans skillfully flipped the term into a way of accusing Democrats of attacking police and law and order. An essential cornerstone of the GOP’s southern strategy is to claim crime is always on the rise — even when it isn’t — and claim Democrats are to blame for it.
In 2020, Rep. Abigail Spanberger and many other Democrats, were the target of this strategy, which has been used by Republicans in every election cycle for over 50 years. Whether the Democrat candidate uses the phrase or not, Republicans attack Democrats as “soft on crime” and “radical” and against police as Democrats continuously fail to make a counter argument. Whether crime is high or low, the GOP runs ads attacking Democrats on crime. The strategy has worked as Democrats either run to the center to become “republican-lite” or fail to make the policy arguments related to the millions in police funding that is now an uncontested feature in city budgets..
Six months after Floyd’s murder, Spanberger complained about defund and crime issues being used by her GOP opponent, Del. Nick Freitas, on a conference call with U.S. House Democrats. The moments was captured on audio and published by The Washington Post.
🚩 Centrist House Democrats Lash Out at Liberal Colleagues, Blame Far-Left Views for Costing the Party Seats - Washington Post, Nov. 5, 2020
Though the Democrats won the White House and maintained the majority in the U.S. House, Spanberger said, “we lost members who shouldn’t have lost,” and “if we are classifying Tuesday as a success from a congressional standpoint — we will get fucking torn apart in 2022. Excuse the profanity but that’s the reality.”
“The number one concern that people brought to me is defunding the police. I’ve heard from colleagues that ‘it’s the language of the streets and we should respect that.’ We’re in Congress. We’re professionals. We are supposed to talk about things in a way where we mean what we’re talking about. If we don’t mean we shouldn’t defund the police then we should say that,” Spanberger, who is running for Governor in Virginia in 2025, added during the Nov. 2020 call.
In Spanberger’s next run for the U.S. House in 2022 she branded heavily with law enforcement. She ran against law enforcement officer Yesli Vega and won.
RELATED: ‘That was a terrible idea': Spanberger Wants a Policing Reboot for House Dems, Politico, April 20, 2022
But the lingering on-camera police murders of Tyre Nichols (2023), Walter Scott (2015), Eric Garner (2014) and Floyd (2022) that went viral in the media along with other police killings that were not on video, such as Michael Brown (2014). Freddie Gray (2015), Philando Castile (2016) and Breonna Taylor (2020) have spiked an ongoing concern among elected officials in Congress and on the state level who focus on justice reform.
Virginia's jail incarceration rate of 349 per 100,000 has been above the national average of 236 per 100,000 for years.
In the late 1960s Roger Ailes, who would later found Fox News, was an aide to President Richard Nixon and created a messaging strategy that linked Black Americans to crime as a way to win white voters, particularly in the South. Republicans have been using the same strategy since 1968. Driving a divisive wedge between white and Black voters was a central strategy after President Lyndon Johnson ushered the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Donald Trump used the same strategy in 2016, 2020 and 2024 by linking crime to Mexican immigration.
But despite Trump’s unqualified cabinet selections, out-in-the-open racism by close associates such as Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, some Democrats, like the anti-woke Carville, are focused on Black Democrats.
“This shit has to stop. Opposing DEI initiatives does not make you a white supremacist. Conversations and demonization like this are a big part of the reason we got our asses kicked,” wrote former Jill Biden Press Secretary and current Biden Administration staff member Michael LaRosa on Nov. 15.
Jill Biden’s former aide was responding to something said on MSNBC by attorney Sherrilyn Ifill regarding Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth.
Ifill, a civil rights lawyer and the former President of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, had a pointed response.
“In these times (and the coming challenging times), I’m not going to be allowing this. Because this policing of how we talk about what is happening in this moment is part of a new agenda of some Democratic Party folks who want progressives and Black people to lie about this country and Trump’s agenda, to try and appease the “center,” Ifill responded.
“Holding the truth and sounding the alarm on dangerous people is a critical aspect of surviving this thing. I’m not pre-forfeiting my voice for some half-baked “Party” strategy of appeasement,” Ifill added.
Democrats have always, “paid a price for standing up for and centering policy related to marginalized groups,” whether it’s Blacks, immigrants, the LGBT community or women, a Virginia Democrat told Black Virginia News.
Black Democrats remain the most loyal voting block for the Democratic Party. In Virginia, Democrats who run statewide can not compete without a high level of Black voter support.
Can the party find the messaging to win in 2025 and 2026 after losing power in 2021 in Virginia and on the federal level in 2024? It may take a considerable realignment in messaging and policy.
2024 Voter Turnout in Virginia Lowest Presidential Cycle Turnout in 20 Years
“Voter turnout in Virginia this year was at its lowest level for a presidential election since the 2004 race between George Bush and Al Gore,” the Virginia Public Access Project reported last week.
69% Turnout?!
Low presidential cycle. Though all of the numbers are not in yet, and Vice President Harris’ popular vote totals continue to rise as Trump’s percentage dips slightly below 50 percent nationally, one stat in Virginia is getting attention: Low turnout — the lowest in 20 years.
🚨 Cities with high Black population feature prominently on Virginia’s low turnout list. The entire chart can be seen here.
By congressional district, the lowest turnout in Virginia was in the third. Even though there were competitive races for Congress in Virginia CD2 and Virginia CD7, the turnout was still unimpressive.
Carlos Clanton Wins Seat on Norfolk City Council
“I am thrilled to share some incredible news—after the final count of all provisional ballots and votes, I have officially been declared the Councilman-Elect for Norfolk City Council, Superward 7!” Carlos Clanton announced in a press statement last week. The race was one of the closest in Virginia and the counting lasted almost two weeks after Election Day.
“I want to extend my gratitude to all the candidates in this race who brought their ideas and passion to the table. I also want to express my deep appreciation for Councilwoman Danica Royster’s service and commitment to our ward. The real work begins now,” Clanton added.
Previous to his election to the Norfolk City Council, Carlos Clanton has served as Chair and Vice Chair on the Norfolk City School Board.
➡️ SUBSCRIBE TO BLACK VIRGINIA NEWS. “One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.” —Ida Wells. 👨🏽💻 Send your press releases, submissions, tips, pitches, comments and corrections to BlackVirginiaNews@gmail.com.
I vote in every election from county up, I’m ashamed of democrats who couldn’t be bothered!