November, 05 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Color Of Change PAC: "Local Wins By Progressive Candidates Will Strengthen Black Communities Across the Country"
Color Of Change PAC congratulates George Gascón, Harold Pryor, Monique Worrell, Holly Mitchell, Patsy Austin-Gaston and Shalena Cook Jones, and celebrates votes on amendments and propositions in Florida and California
WASHINGTON
Today, the Color Of Change PAC released the following statement from Arisha Hatch, executive director of Color Of Change PAC, congratulating George Gascon, Harold Pryor, Monique Worrell, Holly Mitchell, Patsy Austin-Gaston and Shalena Cook Jones on their wins and celebrating votes on amendments and propositions in Florida and California:
"Across the country, Black people have made their voices loud and clear by electing leaders with strong, specific policies to strengthen our communities. We know that electing leaders with real connections to our communities who not only listen to our concerns and demands but act accordingly is key to growing our opportunities, improving our livelihoods and establishing strong foundations for future generations.
We congratulate the following Color Of Change PAC-endorsed candidates on their wins and look forward to working alongside them as they make the needs of their Black constituents and racial equity a priority once they are elected:
George Gascon, District Attorney in Los Angeles County, CA: Gascon will continue his criminal justice reform efforts, such as implementing a Crime Strategies Unit (CSU), a multi-disciplinary team of prosecutors, analysts and investigators that use a data-driven approach to resourcefully address chronic crime and repeat offenders, as he did in San Francisco.
Holly Mitchell, County Supervisor in Los Angeles, CA: Mitchell will implement a broad swath of progressive criminal justice reforms, including reducing jail phone call rates and eliminating commissary markups statewide.
Patsy Austin-Gatson, District Attorney in Gwinnett County, GA: Austin-Gaston plans to establish a conviction integrity unit within the first 100 days of her administration, as informed by her 30 years of experience as an attorney.
Shalena Cook Jones, District Attorney in Chatham County, GA: Cook Jones will bring equity to the criminal justice system, in part by expanding the use of accountability courts for nonviolent offenders with mental illness or addiction.
Harold Pryor, State Attorney in Broward County, FL: Pryor seeks to decarcerate poverty and initiate ground level criminal justice reform while not compromising the safety of communities.
Monique Worrell, State Attorney in Orange & Osceola County, FL: Worrell has pledged to implement policies to hold police officers accountable for misconduct, end the use of cash bail, expand programs to divert children and adults away from jail, partner with community programs to address mental health and substance abuse issues and advocate for resources to support the needs of crime survivors.
Deborah Gonzalez, who ran on a criminal justice platform containing much-needed innovations for a county that has had just two district attorneys in the last 48 years, is heading to a runoff in Georgia on December 1, 2020. Color Of Change PAC will continue to support Gonzalez in her bid to become District Attorney in Athens-Clarke & Oconee, GA.
Color Of Change PAC also issued judgements on amendments and propositions in California and Florida and is excited to see voters achieved the following results:
Florida
Yes on Amendment 2: The cost of living has increased, but wages haven't. Amendment 2 will increase Florida's minimum wage to $10/hour in 2021 and increase the minimum wage annually by $1 until it reaches $15/hour by 2026, resulting in a 75 percent increase of minimum wage over the next six years.
No on Amendment 4: When lawmakers fail to pass laws that reflect our values, we vote on the changes we want to see. Amendment 4 will make voter-approved changes to the constitution invalid unless the amendment is passed a second time in the next election.
California
Yes on Measure J (in L.A. County): Measure J will begin to address generations of racial inequity by investing in our community. Measure J will allocate 10% of L.A. County's local, unrestricted revenues toward alternatives to incarceration & community investment-- including affordable housing, youth development programs, community counseling, mental health services, small businesses and job creation.
Yes on Proposition 17: Voting is a right that should not be taken away for political games. Proposition 17 allows people who are still on parole for felony convictions to vote. This amendment will affect roughly 55k people with felony convictions currently on parole and make California the 19th state to no longer disenfranchise anyone who is not incarcerated.
This election Color Of Change PAC, one of the nation's largest Black-led racial justice organizations, set out to shift how the public views prosecutors and how prosecutors do their jobs is more salient today than ever before. We led an educational campaign to inform voters about the link between criminal justice and voting reform and supported our endorsed candidates by building enthusiasm and mobilizing voters who are often left out."
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Amazon Won't Display Tariff Costs After Trump Whines to Bezos
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said all companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
Apr 29, 2025
Amazon said Tuesday that it would not display tariff costs next to products on its website after U.S. President Donald Trump called the e-commerce giant's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, to complain about the reported plan.
Citing an unnamed person familiar with Amazon's supposed plan, Punchbowl Newsreported that "the shopping site will display how much of an item's cost is derived from tariffs—right next to the product's total listed price."
Many Amazon products come from China. While U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed Sunday that "there is a path" to a tariff deal with the Chinese government, Trump has recently caused global economic alarm by hitting the country with a 145% tax and imposing a 10% minimum for other nations.
According toCNN, which spoke with two senior White House officials on Tuesday, Trump's call to Bezos "came shortly after one of the senior officials phoned the president to inform him of the story" from Punchbowl.
"Of course he was pissed," one officials said of Trump. "Why should a multibillion-dollar company pass off costs to consumers?"
Asked about how the call with Bezos went, Trump told reporters: "Great. Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly, and he did the right thing, and he's a good guy."
Earlier Tuesday, during a briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Amazon's reported plan "a hostile and political act," and said that "this is another reason why Americans should buy American."
Leavitt also asked why Amazon didn't have such displays during the Biden administration and held up a printed version of a 2021 Reutersreport about the company's "compliance with the Chinese government edict" to stop allowing customer ratings and reviews in China, allegedly prompted by negative feedback left on a collection President Xi Jinping's speeches and writings.
Asked whether Bezos is "still a Trump supporter," Leavitt said that she "will not speak to" the president's relationship with him.
As CNBCdetailed Tuesday:
Less than two hours after the press briefing, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the company was only ever considering listing tariff charges on some products for Amazon Haul, its budget-focused shopping section.
"The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products," the spokesperson said. "This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties."
But in a follow-up statement an hour after that one, the spokesperson clarified that the plan to show tariff surcharges was "never approved" and is "not going to happen."
In response to Bloomberg also reporting on Amazon's claim that tariff displays were never under consideration for the company's main site, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote on social media Tuesday, "Good move."
Before Amazon publicly killed any plans for showing consumers the costs from Trump's import taxes, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the chamber's floor Tuesday that companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
"I urge more companies, particularly national retailers that compete with Amazon, to adopt this practice. If Amazon has the courage to display why prices are going up because of tariffs, so should all of our other national retailers who compete with them. And I am calling on them to do it now," he said.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) on Tuesday framed the whole incident as an example of how "Trump has created a government by and for the billionaires," declaring: "If anyone ever doubted that Trump, and Musk, and Bezos, and the billionaires are all [on] one team, just look at what happened at Amazon today. Bezos immediately caved and walked back a plan to tell Americans how much Trump's tariffs are costing them."
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As the owner of
The Washington Post, Bezos—the world's second-richest person, after Trump adviser Elon Musk—also faced intense criticism for blocking the newspaper's planned endorsement of the president's 2024 Democratic challenger, Kamala Harris, and demanding its opinion page advocate for "personal liberties and free markets."
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On Tuesday, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Debbie Dingell of Michigan reintroduced the Medicare for All Act, re-upping the legislative quest to enact a single-payer healthcare system even as the bill faces little chance of advancing in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives or Senate.
Hundreds of nurses, healthcare providers, and workers from across the country joined the lawmakers for a press conference focused on the bill's reintroduction in front of the Capitol on Tuesday.
"We have the radical idea of putting healthcare dollars into healthcare, not into profiteering or bureaucracy," said Sanders during the press conference. "A simple healthcare system, which is what we are talking about, substantially reduces administrative costs, but it would also make life a lot easier, not just for patients, but for nurses" and other healthcare providers, he continued.
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Under Medicare for All, the government would pay for all healthcare services, including dental, vision, prescription drugs, and other care.
"It is a travesty when 85 million people are uninsured or underinsured and millions more are drowning in medical debt in the richest nation on Earth," said Jayapal in a statement on Tuesday.
In 2020, a study in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet found that a single-payer program like Medicare for All would save Americans more than $450 billion and would likely prevent 68,000 deaths every year. That same year, the Congressional Budget Office found that a single-payer system that resembles Medicare for All would yield some $650 billion in savings in 2030.
Members of National Nurses United (NNU), the nation's largest union of registered nurses, were also at the press conference on Tuesday.
In a statement, the group highlighted that the bill comes at a critical time, given GOP-led threats to programs like Medicaid.
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Per Sanders' office, the legislation has 104 co-sponsors in the House and 16 in the Senate, which is an increase from the previous Congress.
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At a markup session held by a U.S. House committee on the Republican Party's recently unveiled higher education reform bill Tuesday, one Democratic lawmaker had a succinct description for the legislation.
"This bill is a dream-killer," said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) of the so-called Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan, which was introduced by Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) as part of an effort to find $330 billion in education programs to offset President Donald Trump's tax plan.
Tasked with helping to make $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans possible, Walberg on Monday proposed changes to the Pell Grant program, which has provided financial aid to more than 80 million low-income students since it began in 1972. The bill would allocate more funding to the program but would also reduce the number of students who are eligible for the grants, changing the definition of a "full-time" student to one enrolled in at least 30 semester hours each academic year—up from 12 hours. Students would be cut off from the financial assistance entirely if they are enrolled less than six hours per semester.
David Baime, senior vice president for government relations for the American Association of Community Colleges, suggested the legislation doesn't account for the realities faced by many students who benefit from Pell Grants.
"These students are almost always working a substantial number of hours each week and often have family responsibilities. Pell Grants help them meet the cost of tuition and required fees," Baime toldInside Higher Ed. "We commend the committee for identifying substantial additional resources to help finance Pell, but it should not come at the cost of undermining the ability of low-income working students to enroll at a community college."
The draft bill would also end subsidized loans, which don't accrue interest when a student is still in college and gives borrowers a six-month grace period after graduation, starting in July 2026. More than 30 million borrowers currently have subsidized loans.
The proposal would also reduce the number of student loan repayment options from those offered by the Biden administration to just two, with borrowers given the option for a fixed monthly amount paid over a certain period of time or an income-based plan.
At the markup session on Tuesday, Bonamici pointed to her own experience of paying for college and law school "through a combination of grants and loans and work study and food stamps," and noted that her Republican colleagues on the committee also "graduated from college."
"And more than half of them have gone on to earn advanced degrees," said the congresswoman. "And yet those same individuals who benefited so much from accessing higher education are supporting a bill that will prevent others from doing so."
“In a time when higher ed is being attacked, this bill is another assault,” @RepBonamici calls out committee leaders for wanting to gut financial aid.
“With this bill, they will be taking that opportunity [of higher ed] away from others. This bill is a dream killer.” pic.twitter.com/UjTYvnOEKv
— Student Borrower Protection Center (@theSBPC) April 29, 2025
Democrats on the committee also spoke out against provisions that would cap loans a student can take out for graduate programs at $100,000; the Grad PLUS program has allowed students to borrow up to the cost of attendance.
The Parent PLUS program, which has been found to provide crucial help to Black families accessing higher education, would also be restricted.
"Black students, brown students, first-generation college students, first-generation Americans, will not have access to college," said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.).
“We cannot take away access to loans, and not replace it with anything else, not make the system better. We know the outcome here—Black, brown, and poor students will not figure it out. Instead, only elite students from the 1% will continue to access education.”@RepSummerLee🙇 pic.twitter.com/oGbRH154Ed
— Student Borrower Protection Center (@theSBPC) April 29, 2025
As the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) warned last week, eliminating the Grad PLUS program without also lowering the cost of graduate programs would "subject millions of future borrowers to an unregulated and predatory private student loan market, while doing little to reduce overall student debt and the need to borrow."
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director for SBPC, told The Hill that the draft bill is "an attack on students and working families with student loan debt."
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With the proposal, which Republicans hope to pass through reconciliation with a simple majority, the party would be "restructuring higher education for the worse," said the Debt Collective.
"It's the most dangerous higher ed bill in U.S. history," said the student loan borrowers union. "It strips the Department of Education of virtually every authority to cancel student debt. Eliminates every repayment program. Abolishes subsidized loans."
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