DNC vice chair compares President Trump to notorious segregationists during heated town hall event
Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, D-Philadelphia, who survived a June re-vote of DNC leadership that saw the departure of David Hogg, warmed up the crowd in America's sixth-largest city by drawing comparisons between the racial strife of the past and Trump's style of governance.
Speaking about "would-be autocrats and would-be kings," Kenyatta remarked that "these guys are a--holes, but they're not super creative."
He said such "would-be kings" – alluding to Trump – rely on "historical revisionism" in the style of 1930s book-burnings and censorship of websites to "forget who we are as Americans."
"This is not, in fact, the first time we've had to deal with a guy like the one in the White House," Kenyatta said.
He said it is key for Americans to remember the protests of female suffragists, civil rights leaders like the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and people who demonstrated at New York's Stonewall bar for gay rights.
"They found themselves in a moment just like we find ourselves where they didn't know the end of the story," the Democratic Party leader went on.
"We now benefit from knowing the end of the story – but what they all knew for certain was that there were dogs at the end of the damn bridge, that there was fire hoses at the bridge, that they were going to be losing their jobs and have to move out of their communities…"
He noted how then-Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Theophilus "Bull" Connor used fire hoses and dogs on civil rights protesters in the mid-20th century.
"That is where we are right now in our moment of the story. We can see the dogs. We can see the firehoses," he claimed.
"And we have a guy, whenever he's not hanging out on Epstein's Island, who is saying some version of 'segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever'," he said of Trump.
The latter half of Kenyatta's sentence referenced former Alabama Democratic Gov. George Wallace's campaign slogan of the 1960s.
"But I don't know about each and every one of you, but I am not bowing to a damn king. I'm certainly not kissing the ring of a king," Kenyatta fumed.
"And we have a bad relationship in Philadelphia with kings, and we're not changing that relationship now."
O'Rourke, whose last electoral effort -- to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz -- failed, told the crowd that Republicans in places like Texas feel too comfortable that they need to "show up for anything" their constituents want.
He pointed to efforts to redistrict mid-decade there, and said Democrats need to take that cue no matter how uncomfortable they might feel about violating norms.
"[S]tates that have the power to do so, that're led by Democrats right now, must also redistrict to add Democratic advantage; in California where we can pick up some seats," he said.
"And I know that there are some of you old-line, old-school Democrats -- and I used to be one of them -- who were like, hey, wait a second, this isn't right, this is how it's supposed to work."
"Well, f--- how it supposed to work, we need to win political power," O'Rourke fumed.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.
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Trump can't save Olympic sports through executive order, but he can by funding them
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And given the NCAA's role as the de facto development system for much of America's success at the Olympics every four years, a significantly smaller allotment of scholarships could mean both fewer educational opportunities for young people and an erosion of America's standing on the medal table. So here's a suggestion for the Trump Administration: Want to leave a legacy for Olympic sports? Use government money to fund them. Dan Wolken: Attempts to curb payments to college athletes keep failing. There's only one way forward. In nearly every country around the world except the United States of America, federal dollars are funding Olympic sports programs. But here, it's the responsibility of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and college athletic departments. The former is funded by corporate sponsorships and private donations. The latter is funded by college football. That system, imperfect as it may be, has worked for a long time. 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Commentary: Paramount appeased Trump — but now it has to battle Colbert and all his friends
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Trump sued the network last year as an individual, claiming the show distorted a 2024 interview with Kamala Harris, Trump's foe in the presidential election, to give her favorable treatment. Shortly after taking office in January, Trump appointed loyalist Brendan Carr to head the FCC. Then Trump converted the formerly independent agency into an arm of the White House's policy and political operations. One of Carr's first moves as Trump's FCC boss was opening an investigation into the CBS for its interview with Harris, an unprecedented effort to use government power to intimidate a news organization. 'The chairman of the FCC has cagily created a new and coercive technique for operating outside the agency's established statutes and procedures to attack corporate decisions he and Donald Trump do not like,' former FCC commissioner Tom Wheeler, now of the Brookings Institution, wrote in February. 'Prime targets are media company editorial decisions.' 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President Trump's executive order on college sports: Here's what it actually means
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Thursday morning in the nation's capital, NCAA president Charlie Baker spoke to a few dozen members and guests of the National Press Club — an operation located in Washington's downtown, just a short walk to the White House. Just hours later, the association's years-long fight for federal intervention in college sports received, perhaps, a boost from the man living just a few blocks away. President Donald Trump released his long-awaited executive order related to college athletics, announcing in a five-page order titled 'SAVING COLLEGE SPORTS' that he is directing members of his cabinet to create policy around several aspects of the industry that protect the NCAA and conferences from enforcing and creating rules to govern it. But what exactly does Trump's executive order mean? What will it change, if anything, about college sports' athlete compensation and transfer environment? The short answer, at least for now, is not very much. The longer answer is … well … there are still questions. What are the most important items in the order? Trump's executive order has been a long time coming. In fact, just last week Yahoo Sports obtained a copy of a draft of the order, which isn't wholly different to the one he signed and released on Thursday. Above anything else, the order's preamble describes the college athletics landscape as having been subject to unfair court rulings that 'created an out-of-control, rudderless system' which is 'under unprecedented threat.' 'Waves of recent litigation against collegiate athletics governing rules have eliminated limits on athlete compensation, pay-for-play recruiting inducements, and transfers between universities, unleashing a sea change that threatens the viability of college sports,' Trump writes in the order. He goes on to write critically that some schools are paying their athletes as much as $50 million this year from a combination of House settlement-related revenue share and third-party NIL. 'A national solution is urgently needed to prevent this situation from deteriorating beyond repair and to protect non-revenue sports, including many women's sports,' he writes. How he plans to do this is to direct various members of his cabinet — the attorney general, secretary of labor, secretary of education, etc. — to create policy around several concepts that the NCAA and conferences have been requesting help on from Congress for years. Among those: Protecting scholarships for non-revenue sports: The executive order, most notably, requires schools to maintain or even increase the number of scholarships they provide to non-revenue sports. This is geared to protect Olympic and women's sports that are at risk of elimination as schools direct more funding away from those and to the sports that generate the revenue like football and men's basketball. Those with $125 million or budgets (most of the power league schools) must provide more scholarship opportunities than they did last year, for instance. Those with budgets of $50 million must provide at least the same, as seen in a screen shot of the section here. Prohibit third-party, 'pay-for-play': You might call this the prohibition of booster collective pay to athletes, which, in a way, codifies the House settlement terms that prohibit collective pay to athletes if they are not deemed to be for legitimate endorsement or commercial opportunities. This issue is at the heart of negotiations among attorneys that is expected to result in a resolution soon that permits collectives to operate in a more open capacity than first thought. The executive order reinforces that provision in the House settlement. How does Trump plan to enforce these parameters? Well, that remains a bit murky, but he suggests in the order that members of his cabinet, as well as the Federal Trade Commission, have 30 days to create a plan on the enforcement of such, including potentially withholding federal funding for violators, opening up Title IX investigations, etc. Athlete employment: Trump directs the Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to 'clarify the status of college athletes' — an obvious gesture toward the ongoing debate over courts potentially deeming college athletes as employees. As stated in the order preamble, Trump is against college athletes becoming employees and is clearly, with this directive, ordering cabinet members and the NLRB — he appoints the board — to rule that college athletes are students. Ironically enough, while many college leaders fight against employment, some of them believe collective bargaining is the only solution for the industry. Limited liability protection: This is another issue the NCAA and conferences have spent millions of dollars and six years lobbying for. They want to be protected from legal challenges so they can enforce their rules over things such as transfers, roster limits, booster pay — many of which have been deemed illegal by courts. Trump clearly disagrees with these court rulings, as he notes in the preamble. The order directs the attorney general and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission to create policies to protect the 'long-term availability of college athletic scholarship and opportunities' when such is 'unreasonably challenged under antitrust' law. The attorney general and the FTC have 60 days to create such a plan, the order says. What are the immediate impacts of the executive order? The answer here is potentially … nothing. Trump's cabinet members — many of whom are quite busy with other more pressing matters — will need to make policy around these subjects. The specifics of that policy will dictate exactly how pivotal, if at all, this order is. What is a certainty is that whatever policies are created are not law and will likely be subject to legal scrutiny. Congressional action and court rulings are law in this country — not executive orders, legal experts tell Yahoo Sports. Baker even suggested this during his talk Thursday morning. 'You can't fix this stuff from executive order,' he said. 'Our focus for now really needs to be trying to get stuff dealt with through the legislative process.' As it turns out, Wednesday was a historic day for college sports with regard to congressional legislation. An all-encompassing federal college sports bill made its way out of committee for the first time since the NCAA's lobbying efforts began nearly six years ago. The SCORE Act, bipartisan but pro-Republican and NCAA-friendly legislation that many Democrats are against, received the necessary votes to advance out of committees and is eligible for debate on the House floor when members return in September from their traditional summer break. In many ways, the Score Act grants the NCAA and conferences similar protections as Trump's order. Above anything, Trump's executive order may get Congress to more urgently and swiftly push the bill across the goal line. However, if it does advance out of the House, the SCORE Act faces stiff pushback in a divided U.S. Senate, where at least seven Democrats are needed to overcome the filibuster and reach the 60-vote margin for any bill passage. The Senate, though, has been working toward the introduction of its own legislation, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, who, much like Trump, has made college sports regulation a priority. He's been in negotiations now for months with several Democrats, most notably Chris Coons, Richard Blumenthal and Cory Booker. No agreement has been reached despite more than a year of intense talks. Will Trump's executive order change that? It's one of many questions on the topic that remains a mystery.
