Biden apologizes for Native American children forced into federal boarding schools
ABC/Lorenzo Bevilaqua
(PHOENIX) — President Joe Biden in Arizona on Friday apologized to Native Americans for the federal government forcing their children into boarding schools where he said they were abused and deprived of their cultural identity.
“For Indigenous peoples, they served as places of trauma and terror for more than 100 years. Tens of thousands of Indigenous children, as young as four years old were taken from their families and communities and forced into boarding schools run by the U.S. government and religious institutions,” he said.
“Nearly 1000 documented Native child deaths, though the real number is likely to be much, much higher. Lost generations, culture and language. Lost trust. It’s horribly, horribly wrong. It’s a sin on our soul,” he continued.
“I formally apologize as president of United States of America for what we did,” he said, emphatically. “I formally apologize!”
The White House had called his trip to Gila River Indian Community outside Phoenix — his first to Indian Country as president — “historic.”
Beforehand, officials said he would discuss the Biden-Harris administration’s record of delivering for tribal communities, including keeping his promise to visit the swing state, which is happening close to Election Day.
“The president also believes that to usher in the next era of the Federal-Tribal relationships we need to fully acknowledge the harms of the past,” the White House said.
“For over 150 years, the federal government ran boarding schools that forcibly removed generations of Native children from their homes to boarding schools often far away. Native children at these schools endured physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and, as detailed in the Federal Indian Boarding School Investigative Report by the Department of the Interior (DOI), at least 973 children died in these schools,” the White House said.
“The federally-run Indian boarding school system was designed to assimilate Native Americans by destroying Native culture, language, and identity through harsh militaristic and assimilationist methods,” it said.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump visited Aurora, Colorado, for a campaign rally on Friday where he continued to push misleading narratives about the city’s migrant population.
“My message today is very simple,” Trump told the crowd. “No person who has inflicted the violence and terror that Kamala Harris has inflicted on this community can ever be allowed to become the president of the United States. We’re not going to let it happen.”
In the final weeks of his campaign, Trump has continued to focus on the issue of immigration, escalating his rhetoric on undocumented immigrants he often paints as violent criminals.
“I will rescue Aurora and every town that has been invaded and conquered,” Trump said. “These towns have been conquered … And we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail or kick them out of our country. And we will be very, very effective in doing it. It’s going to happen very, very fast.”
Specifically, the former president has used Aurora and Springfield, Ohio, to emphasize his point, both examples stemming from viral online stories he’s been quick to promote, often without proper context.
His false narratives on Aurora began last month when a video of armed individuals roaming around an apartment complex in Aurora went viral among right-wing social media influencers.
Trump, who has shared that video himself, has repeatedly claimed that members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang have “taken over” apartment complexes and “overrun” the city, despite the Aurora Police Department refuting allegations of the apartment complex being run by a Venezuelan gang.
Aurora’s Police Chief Todd Chamberlain has directly refuted Trump’s claims, saying in a press conference late last month that, “This is not an immigration issue. This is a crime issue.”
“We are not, by any means, overtaken by Venezuelan gangs,” he added.
The City of Aurora also provided clarity on the situation in a post on its official X account, stating that while there was a concern about a “small” presence of the Venezuelan gang members in Aurora, the city is taking the situation seriously. The city stressed that Aurora is a “safe community” and that reports of gang members are “isolated to a handful of problem properties alone.”
Mike Coffman, the Republican mayor of Aurora, has also pushed back on Trump’s “grossly exaggerated” claims.
“Former President Trump’s visit to Aurora is an opportunity to show him and the nation that Aurora is a considerably safe city – not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs,” Coffman said.
Still, Trump has continued to amplify these debunked stories to his supporters throughout the country as a rallying cry as he attacks the immigration policies of the Biden-Harris administration.
At his second campaign stop on Friday in Reno, Nevada, Trump continued to repeat baseless and debunked rhetoric on a Venezuelan gang taking over apartment complexes in Aurora even after the city’s Republican mayor denounced his rhetoric, saying his comments “unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety.”
In Reno, the former president again called the U.S. an “occupied country” and the situation in Aurora a “full-blown invasion.”
“It is a full blown invasion. Armed Venezuelan gang members storming an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado,” Trump said.
In the press release announcing Friday’s event, the Trump campaign described Aurora as a “war zone,” arguing people were crossing the border and descending upon the city “bringing chaos and fear with them.”
Similarly, Trump has repeatedly amplified debunked claims that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Springfield.
Trump’s visit is one that he has been wanting to make for a while to bring more attention to the country’s immigration policies. At recent campaign rallies, Trump has become more vocal about his desire to visit Aurora and Springfield.
While the Republican mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, discouraged visits from candidates on both sides of the aisle, Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has presented the trip as a learning opportunity for the former president.
“The reality is, Donald Trump continues to tell economically damaging and hurtful lies about Aurora,” Polis said in a statement to ABC affiliate Denver7 amid ongoing discussions of a potential visit. “If former President Trump does visit, he will find the city of Aurora is a strong, vibrant, and diverse city of more than 400,000 hardworking Coloradans and a wonderful place to live, run a business, raise a family, and retire.”
Trump has launched attacks on the local and state officials on the campaign trail, often making baseless claims that Aurora Mayor Coffman and Gov. Polis are “petrified,” saying Coffman “doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing” — and even claiming they don’t want to raise the immigration issue because they want to be “politically correct.”
Campaigning in Uniondale, New York, last month, Trump, while declaring that he planned to visit Aurora and Springfield soon, suggested that he might not make it back out after his visiting those places due to unspecified crime.
“I’m going to go there in the next two weeks. I’m going to Springfield, and I’m going to Aurora,” Trump said in Uniondale. “You may never see me again, but that’s OK. Got to do what I got to do. Whatever happened to Trump? ‘Well, he never got out of Springfield.'”
Trump’s visit to Aurora also came as he’s pledged on the campaign trail to begin his promise of mass deportations in Springfield and Aurora.
“We’re going to have the largest deportation in the history of our country,” Trump said as he took reporter questions in Los Angeles, California, last month. “And we’re going to start with Springfield and Aurora, [Colorado].”
“We’re going to take those violent people, and we’re going to ship them back to their country, and if they come back in, they’re going to pay a hell of a price,” Trump also said.
Springfield has many Haitian residents who are either legally authorized to live and work in the U.S. or are protected from expulsion by law.
(WASHINGTON) — A historic election that saw an incumbent president drop his campaign, a woman rise to the top of the Democratic ticket and multiple assassination attempts against the Republican candidate will come to an end on Nov. 5.
But the outcome may not be known on election night.
It took four days for the race to be called for President Joe Biden in 2020 as mail-in voting expansions, and other changes made to help Americans participate during a global pandemic, delayed counting in several key states.
“It can take a few days and sometimes more,” said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
An especially tight race, as expected this year, can make it even more difficult to call a winner in the hours after polls close, experts told ABC News. Polls show Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump neck-and-neck heading into Election Day.
Each state has its own rules to administer elections, including different ways to process mail ballots and deadlines for curing signatures or other issues, which means some may take longer than others to tabulate results.
538 has compiled a complete guide to poll closing times, vote counting and when to expect results in every state.
“There are a variety of things that have to be done because there are these safeguards in place to try and minimize the possibility of fraud,” said Mitchell Brown, a professor of political science at Auburn University. “And so in states that have those rules, it takes a while in order to process all the ballots.”
Trump, in 2020, prematurely declared victory before all votes were counted. Misinformation spread online about the integrity of the election as the country awaited a final result and Trump or his allies later challenged the outcome by baselessly claiming widespread fraud, particularly with mail ballots.
“Not knowing the result on election night is not an indication of election malfeasance ever,” Brown emphasized.
All eyes will be on the seven swing states that will likely determine whether Harris or Trump win the Electoral College: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In two of those states — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — mail or absentee ballots cannot even begin to be processed until the morning of Election Day. That includes opening envelopes, verifying voter information and preparing them to be scanned before they can be counted, which can lead to delays.
In 2020, Wisconsin wasn’t called for either candidate until the day after Election Day and Pennsylvania was called the Saturday after Election Day.
In other key battleground states, mail or absentee ballots may be processed but cannot be counted until Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That includes Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina.
In Arizona, a state that votes heavily by mail, mail or absentee ballots received before Election Day can be processed and counted upon receipt. But a sizable portion of those ballots get placed in drop boxes on Election Day, and those results may not be collected or counted until polls close, which may hold up a clear result depending on how close the race is.
In Nevada, another state where the presidential race wasn’t called until the Saturday after Election Day in 2020, some changes were made to help speed up vote counting — including allowing mail or absentee ballots to start being counted 15 days before Election Day.
“It’s really a product of the laws and depending where the Electoral College spotlight is in any given year, it can mean a faster count or a slower one,” Burden said.
While news organizations often call a winner based on analysis of the vote count as its reported, results are not official until states certify them. States have their own certification deadlines, some of which extend into December, according to the Election Assistance Commission.
Recounts and legal challenges, especially litigation related to certification, could arise between a race being called by media networks and the results being certified.
On Dec. 17, electors will meet in the states to vote for president and vice president.
Election officials in some key states are already warning that results may not come in on election night, and that it is normal.
“We will always prioritize accuracy and security over efficiency,” Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson recently said on CBS, estimating her state will be able to have a result by end of day on Nov. 6. “Understanding how much people will want those results, we’re still going to make sure the process is secure and accurate before we put anything out to the public.”
“We want to make sure we have an accurate count, and like we did in 2020, have a free and fair, safe and secure election,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on ABC’s “This Week.”
Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(PHILADELPHIA) — Vice President Kamala Harris will face a National Association of Black Journalists panel in Philadelphia on Tuesday where race in her campaign will be a likely topic, something she has shied away from focusing on — a stark contrast from her 2019 run for president.
At a similar NABJ panel interview in July, former President Donald Trump got into a fiery back-and-forth with reporters and falsely questioned Harris’ race.
“So I’ve known her a long time, indirectly, not directly, very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said during that heated exchange. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
Harris — the child of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, both immigrants to the United States — has not directly responded to Trump’s comments. In an August interview with CNN, after being asked to comment on the personal attacks Trump has lobbied at the vice president surrounding her racial identity, Harris dodged.
“Same old, tired playbook,” she told the network. “Next question, please.”
And when asked to comment on the same attacks during ABC News’ debate last week, instead of speaking about her own racial identity, Harris chose a more generic answer.
“I think it’s a — a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people,” she told ABC News’ David Muir.
MORE: READ: Harris-Trump presidential debate transcript Harris is not new to people questioning her so-called “Blackness.” During her presidential run in 2019, Harris faced questions about whether she was Black enough to identify as a Black candidate.
“I’m Black, and I’m proud of being Black,” Harris said on “The Breakfast Club” radio show in February of that year. “I was born Black. I will die Black, and I’m not going to make excuses for anybody because they don’t understand.”
Harris’ 2019 campaign also put a larger focus on race compared to her current run for president.
At the NBC debate in 2019, Harris strong-armed her way into the opportunity to take on then-Vice President Joe Biden on efforts to desegregate public schools, specifically school busing programs.
“As the only Black person on this stage, I would like to speak on the issue of race,” Harris said, interjecting as the moderators were moving on to someone else.
During that debate, Biden brought up his ability to work with politicians across the aisle, fondly recounting his relationship with segregationist Sens. James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman E. Talmadge of Georgia. Harris, who directly benefited from busing programs, jumped in to respond.
“It was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing,” Harris continued. “And you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”
In another departure from her time as a candidate in 2019, as vice president, and as Biden’s running mate during his bid for reelection, Harris hardly mentions one of her top issues: Black maternal mortality.
In 2020, Harris had a section on her website’s issues page devoted to “Health Justice For Black Communities,” with a commitment to “fight to end the Black maternal mortality crisis.” Now, her website only says she’ll “combat maternal mortality” more generally. She introduced the Maternal CARE Act to tackle the issue while in the Senate. The bill mentioned “Black women” 10 times.
Despite being asked multiple times by reporters about the unsubstantiated claims made by Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating residents’ pets, Harris has declined to comment.
ABC News has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment on the shift between her two presidential campaigns, and whether this is part of political calculation ahead of the general election. They have not responded by the time of publication.
The NABJ discussion will take place at the headquarters of Philadelphia’s NPR station WHYY and will be moderated by Politico’s Eugene Daniels, WHYY’s Tony Mosely, and theGrio’s Gerren Keith Gaynor.
“We look forward to our members and student journalists hearing from Vice President Harris as our panel asks the tough questions that are most pressing to the communities served by NABJ members,” NABJ President Ken Lemon said in a statement last week.
Her NABJ appearance marks her third high-profile interview since announcing her candidacy — following sit-downs with CNN and WPVI-TV in Philadelphia.
