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An ongoing media battle between the National Rifle Association and Black Lives Matter continues unabated with a new ad on the incitement of gun-toting racists.

Anger over an NRA ad with spokesperson Dana Loesch sparked a campaign by political activists in June to have it removed from social media. In addition to a planned Womens March on the NRAs headquarters for July 14, Black Lives Matter has released a YouTube video criticizing cops and racists who may be inspired by the NRA.

Were talking about our lives here. When the NRA issues a public call to their constituents inciting violence against people who are constitutionally fighting for their lives, we dont take that lightly, a narrator says in YouTube video posted July 7. We know that we are not safe, but we are not scared either. We will continue to produce media, teach students, march and protest to not only protect the First Amendment as fiercely as the NRA protects the Second [Amendment], but to protect our lives from gun-toting racists. We demand the NRA remove remove their dangerous propaganda videos narrated by conservative talk radio host Dana Loesch and Grant Stinchfield.

The ad in question features Mrs. Loesch criticizing the resistance movement against President Trump, along with activists who smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness. The only way to stop this violence of lies is with the clenched fist of truth.

Black Lives Matters video has attracted nearly 110,000 views since its debut.

Are they delusional? the firearms advocacy website Bearing Arms responded Tuesday. No officer wants to have to shoot anyone. No officer wants to put him or herself in harms way. When they have to draw their weapon theyre not just risking the other persons life, theyre also risking their own.

Freedom doesnt mean destroying your hometown and looting like a crazy banshee, Bearing Arms writer Beth Baumann continued. Freedom means having your God-given rights protected. Freedom means protecting your rights in a peaceful manner.

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Black Lives Matter claims 'gun-toting racists' incited by NRA to target minorities - Washington Times

Prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckessonsaccusations of racism againstthe creators of the upcoming film War for the Planet of the Apes quickly backfired Monday night.

In two since-deleted tweets, Mckesson slammed the movies creators for dehumanizing him and associating black people with apes. The indictment from the liberalprotester came in response to a new poster for the movie, which depicts one of the apes wearing a blue vest.

Mckesson and some other social media users assumed the vest must bea veiled reference to the Black Lives Matter leader, who is known for donningsimilar outerwear.

Another Twitter user, who describes himself as a black activist, said white supremacy is so deeply complicit in the movies America sees.

Mckesson, apparently offended at the perceived slight against his efforts as a progressive activist, shot off two tweets disparaging the summer blockbusters creators for their lack of consciousness.

Given the history of rendering black people as apes, Im offended & appalled by the lack of consciousness in Hollywood. #PlanetOfTheApes, Mckesson wrote. In associating black people w/ apes, active work is being done to perpetuate the dehumanization of black ppl in mass media.

It didnt take long for Twitter users even those friendly to the Black Lives Matter movement to suggest that accusing the movies creators of mocking Mckesson might be a bit of a stretch.

In fact, a simple YouTube search reveals that many of the apes in the original 1968 Planet of the Apes movie wore blue vests. This latest iteration of the film franchise is likely nothing more than a reference to the original movie.

Robby Starbuck, a Hollywood producer and director, was quick to point out that fact in a series of tweets.

Starbuck wenton to write: Theres some serious narcissism involved in assuming a film w/ hundreds of millions at stake would think about how they might offend DeRay.

If Mckessons claims are accurate, the Planet of the Apes franchise must have started mocking the activist all the way back in 1968, which was 17 years before he was born in 1985 and 45 years before the Black Lives Matter movement started in 2013.

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Black Lives Matter activist cries racism over 'Planet of the Apes,' and ... - TheBlaze.com

Black Lives Matter protesters march in Seattle.

For many Americans, the countrys 241st birthday last week was an unqualified cause for celebration. For many other Americans, however, this Fourth of July was a reminder that United States policy has yet to live up to the Declaration of Independences aspirational language. When the words life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were written, in fact, many groups of people were excludedincluding enslaved black Americans.

It required our bloodiest war to banish slavery. And while we elected our first black president in 2008, and while todays Congress, though still overwhelmingly white, is more diverse than its ever been, racism persists in all our institutions. A multitude of structural barriers block pathways to economic opportunity across generations of black families, imperil many black Americans physical safety, and diminish investment in black communities and businesses.

Stubborn racial disparities jump out of the data. The unemployment rate for black workers has averaged about twice the unemployment rate for white workers for as long as weve been tracking it. Median income for black households has remained at about 60 percent of median income for white households since the late 1960s (and wage gaps are particularly wide for black women). When it comes to wealth, the difference is even larger and has grown in recent years; median white net worth today is about 13 times as high as median black wealth. Middle-class black families are significantly more likely than middle-class white families to live in high-poverty neighborhoods that suffer from a lack of investment in public goods.

Differences in educational attainment explain only a small fraction of the gaps noted above, but theyre also significant. While test-score gaps by race have declined in recent decades and the gap in high school completion by race has almost disappeared, black students are still much less likely than their white peers to both enroll in and complete college. Our criminal justice system, including policing practices, disproportionately oppresses black Americans: Despite being no more likely than people of other races to use or sell drugs, for example, black Americans are arrested for marijuana possession at almost four times the rates of white Americans. Less than 15 percent of the American population is black, but in American prisons, black people comprise just under 40 percent of the population.

A black child born into the bottom two-fifths of the income scale is more likely than not to end up in the bottom 20 percent as an adult; similarly, 56 percent of black children born into the middle quintile end up in the bottom 40 percent when theyre older, compared with only 34 percent of middle-quintile white children.

Policies that explicitly target some of these obstacles facing black Americans, like criminal justice reforms and the restoration of voting rights, are a key part of the racial justice agenda. Proposals to help low- and middle-income people across the board are also an important way to push back on these inequalities; since black Americans suffer disproportionate economic hardship, they are disproportionately helped by policies that improve economic security. Weve written about many such proposals on these pages. Raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2024, for instance, would be expected to give 40 percent of black workers a raise. Expansions of safety net programs like SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit, which carry long-term benefits for children in the families that receive them, would help millions of black Americans as well. Bold ideas like a federal job guarantee and Medicare for All would, if enacted and realized, substantially reduce disparities in unemployment and health outcomes by guaranteeing that every American had access to a job and health care.

Maintaining full employment conditions in the labor market is also essential for working-age black families. New research from the Federal Reserve underscores both that periods of high unemployment are particularly damaging for black employment and that persistently tight labor markets disproportionately raise black wages, employment, and incomes. In a forthcoming paper with Keith Bentele, we show that the real annual earnings of low-income, working-age black households doubled between 1994 and 2000, from about $4,600 in 1994 to about $9,600 in 2000 (2015 dollars). We estimate that two-thirds of that total earnings growth can be attributed to the tight labor market, which helped connect previously jobless or underemployed people with more work opportunities.

These findings suggest that the Federal Reserve plays a key role in shaping the condition of black lives when it decides whether to maintain full employment. Yes, the central bank must manage its dual mandate: full employment at stable prices. But especially given the low correlation between inflation and unemployment in recent decades, the Fed would do well to consider the racial impacts of its decision-making.

Still, the fact that black Americans would benefit substantially and disproportionately from the policy reforms listed above does not make them sufficient. In a widely read article from a few years ago, Ta-Nehisi Coates made a forceful case for considering reparationsthat is, some form of direct compensation to black Americans for past injustices that reverberate across centuries and remain embedded in the many institutions noted above. Both the Black Youth Project (BYP) and Movement for Black Lives have outlined reparations proposals more recently. Recognizing that more details need to be worked out and that a reparations program may well include some of the ideas mentioned aboveas the BYP argues, reparations can take many forms, including but not limited to cash payments, land, and economic development, scholarship funds, and textbooks/other educational materialsthey all recommend the passage of H.R. 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, which would set up a commission to determine the most appropriate course of action. The questions before such a commission would be complicated: How exactly does one make restitution for several hundred years of injustice? What is the appropriate scope of the injustices addressed? Dont Native Americans have a strong claim to reparations as well? But they would also surely be answerable.

Though full democracy remains an elusive goal in America, the persistence of social movements striving to make the country better is also one of Americas enduring attributes. The best way to celebrate our nations birthday is to work together to bring our reality closer to the rhetoric upon which it was founded.

Tax Cuts for the rich.Deregulation for the powerful.Wage suppression for everyone else.These are the tenets of trickle-down economics, the conservatives age-old strategy for advantaging the interests of the rich and powerful over those of the middle class and poor. The articles in Trickle-Downers are devoted, first, to exposing and refuting these lies, but equally, to reminding Americans that these claims arent made because they are true. Rather, they are made because they are the most effective way elites have found to bully, confuse and intimidate middle- and working-class voters. Trickle-down claims are not real economics.They are negotiating strategies. Here at the Prospect, we hope to help you win that negotiation.

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Does the Fed Think Black Lives Matter? - The American Prospect

On Monday evening, the local community members of Newport News, Va., held a #ShutDown757 Unity March on the anniversary of the Black Lives Matter 757 march in 2016.

The march took place within several Hampton Roads cities, including Hampton, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach, the Daily Press reports. In Newport News, the group blocked lanes on Jefferson Avenue while marching to the police station.

According to the groups website, the march was aimed at giving the concerned citizens within the Hampton Roads area a voice, a platform, a way to join in the national fight for social justice.

Sara Lareau, a member of Black Lives Matter 757, said, We need to stand as a community of all races, and we need to come together and not hate each other.

Misty Collins, a former deputy sheriff and animal-control officer with the Newport News Police Department, attended the march to support the police.

These guys, they get killed, she said while holding up a sign that said, Go away cop killers.

Newport News and Hampton dispatchers said they didnt have any reports of incidents as a result of the marchers. The only person to be pulled aside by the Hampton police for reported obstruction of free passage of others was Aubrey Dwight Jones, the organizer of the event.

Read more at Daily Press.

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Black Lives Matter Holds Unity March in Newport News, Va. - The Root - The Root

This article first appeared on the Daily Signal.

Its a movement that began before President Donald Trump was sworn into office and the drive for impeachment has gone through many iterations.

The earliest rationale was the Constitutions emoluments clause, which came amid loose talk of the Trump campaigns alleged collusion with Russia and emerged as the dominant theme.

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In lieu of a smoking gun in the Russian matter, the prevailing justification became that Trump tried to obstruct an FBI probe of his former national security adviser.

More recently, the emoluments issue re-emerged when Democratic lawmakers filed lawsuits.

MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, and other progressive or resistance groups have been advocating for it. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., appears to have gotten the most airtime of anyone in Congress talking about impeaching the president on talk shows and public events.

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, delivered the first House floor speech calling for impeaching Trump. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., called impeachment really the only way we can go.

But only Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., actually has introduced articles of impeachment. Greens speech and Shermans measure focused on allegations of obstruction of justice.

Donald Trump on the second day of the G20 economic summit on July 8, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany. Sean Gallup/Getty

The Houses Democratic leadership hasnt taken up the call, in part because such actions are unlikely, based on known facts, to go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Congress.

Before getting elected to anything, Boyd Roberts, a California congressional candidate, filed documents with the Federal Election Commission to start a political action committee called Impeach Trump Leadership PAC, as The Hill reported.

The shifting rationales demonstrate a weak argument, said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative government watchdog group.

If they had a good case based on real information, I think they would mention it by now and put their cards on the table, Boehm, a former Pennsylvania state prosecutor and former counsel for the board of directors at the Legal Services Corporation, told The Daily Signal. They dont have high crimes and misdemeanors. They dont have low crimes and misdemeanors.

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution includes high crimes and misdemeanors as grounds for impeachment, along with treason and bribery.

But impeachment is ultimately a political question and Republicans control the House of Representatives. Even if Democrats managed to flip the House and Senate in the 2018 election, it would require a majority vote in the House to impeach a president and two-thirds of the Senate to remove a president from office.

Boehm said overheated impeachment talk now will delay justice if the president is involved in a legitimate, verifiable scandal.

Democrats should save the heavy artillery for substance, Boehm said. They run the risk of being the boy who cried wolf if they say impeach about everything.

The early framework was set in December 2016, six weeks before Inauguration Day, when five Senate DemocratsElizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Chris Coons of Delaware, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon sponsored a bill that would require the president, vice president, and their family members to divest from anything that could create a conflict of interest.

The Deemocrats bill also states:

Adopting a sense of the Congress that the presidents violation of financial conflicts of interest laws or the ethics requirements that apply to executive branch employees constitute a high crime or misdemeanor under the impeachment clause of the U.S. Constitution

Before he took office, Trump put his liquid properties such as hotels and golf courses into a trust and resigned from official positions with his businesses, turning the Trump Organization over to his adult sons.

In January, a liberal watchdog group, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, began raising questions about Trumps businesses and the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which states that:

no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Essentially, the clause prohibits personally profiting from public office. Trumps children run his businesses now, but there is not a blind trust.

In February, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., filed a resolution of inquiry into Trumps investments that a Huffington Post column framed as the first legislative step toward impeachment.

Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, or CREW, filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on Jan. 22, two days after Trump took office.

We did not want to get to this point. It was our hope that President Trump would take the necessary steps to avoid violating the Constitution before he took office, CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. He did not. His constitutional violations are immediate and serious, so we were forced to take legal action.

A spokeswoman for the organization told The Daily Signal she would try to set up an interview with board Chairman Norman Eisen. However, Eisen didnt respond as of publication deadline.

However, emoluments faded as grounds for impeachment as some juicy stories about Trump and Russia emerged. After a report in The Washington Post accused Trump of talking about classified information with two Russian officials in the Oval Office, Waters said it rose to the level of impeachment.

In May, Waters referred to that alleged sharing of secrets during the Oval Office discussion at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research organization. The California congresswoman said:

We dont have to be afraid to use the word impeachment. We dont have to think that impeachment is out of our reach. All we have to do is make sure that we are talking to the American public, that we are keeping them involved, that we are resisting every day, and we are challenging every day.

Yet another major story occurred after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey while the bureaus Russia investigation was going on. Some politicians and commentators compared to President Richard Nixons Saturday Night Massacre, the multiple firings related to the investigation of the Watergate scandal.

Through a leak Comey admitted to planting, Americans learned of his accusation that the president asked him to let go of the FBIs investigation of his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for misrepresenting his pre-inaugural conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Comey said Trump told him, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.

Democrats were quick to suggest this amounted to obstruction of justice.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told CNN that Trumps request to Comey may well produce another United States vs. Nixon on a subpoena that went to the United States Supreme Court. It may well produce impeachment proceedings, although were very far from that possibility.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, was asked by CNNs Wolf Blitzer: If these allegations, Senator, are true, are we getting closer and closer to the possibility of yet another impeachment process?

King replied : Reluctantly, Wolf, I have to say yes, simply because obstruction of justice is such a serious offense.

Obstruction of justice has a significant place in impeachment history. President Bill Clinton was impeached on this charge in the House in 1998, and it was the basis of one article of impeachment passed by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 before Nixon resigned.

Obstruction of justice also is the basis for Shermans impeachment draft.

After Comeys June 8 testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee provided few revelations, and the obstruction case became more difficult to make, the focus shifted back to the emoluments clause. Democratic state attorneys general sued for information on Trumps business tiesincluding his elusive income tax returns.

Comey told the panel the president didnt order him to drop the case and, when questioned, said he knew of no prosecution based on someones hope.

Numerous legal scholars said they didnt believe there was a viable obstruction charge based on the Feb. 14 Oval Office conversation between Trump and Comey.

With an impeachment case based on Russia and obstruction of justice not as strong, emoluments made a comeback in June.

The I-word is not something you should throw around that much, and the Democrats are playing fast and loose with the emoluments lawsuits, where the merits are weak and the standing claims are laughable, John-Michael Seibler, a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation who has written about Democrats various suits, told The Daily Signal.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, both Democrats, sued over the emoluments clause, accusing the president of violating the Constitution regarding foreign governments doing business with the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

Following that, 198 congressional Democrats filed a lawsuit making essentially the same claim.

The lawsuits would define emoluments so broadly [that the provision] would be used against anyone, Seibler said. Its basically an op-ed before the court.

You look at the bill Sen. Warren sponsored, he added. The lawsuits ask for declaratory judgment to fill in very wide gaps and reasoning.

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal.

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Democrat Plans to Impeach Trump Advance on Many Fronts - Newsweek