JD Vance’s wife faces racist online backlash from far-right social media posts
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(WASHINGTON) — The wife of Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, Usha Chilukuri Vance, and the couple’s children have become the targets of backlash for their Indian ancestry.
Chilukuri Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants who grew up in San Diego, as well as RNC speaker Harmeet Dhillon — who is Sikh and Indian – are facing anti-Asian hate from far-right figures online.
Posts appear to have spiked this week following Vance’s nomination criticizing Vance for marrying someone who is non-white, expressing concerns about an influx of Indian immigrants as a result and the so-called Great Replacement conspiracy have garnered hundreds of thousands of views according to individual post engagement figures.
Stop AAPI Hate, an advocacy group that tracks anti-Asian hate incidents, condemned the attacks, arguing that the onslaught of hate has reinforced “heightened levels of fear and anxiety Asian Americans and immigrants are currently experiencing across the country leading up to this year’s presidential election.”
The group added: “In the midst of an inflamed political climate, we continue to see the targeting of South Asians across parties, including ongoing questioning of VP Kamala Harris’ electability.”
Stop AAPI Hate has recorded thousands of potential hate-motivated incidents since 2020, when anti-Asian sentiment increased around the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The backlash comes as former President Donald Trump appeared to call for more national unity after the assassination attempt he experienced at a Pennsylvania rally last weekend.
“The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart,” Trump said during his remarks Thursday on the last day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
It’s a stark contrast from Trump’s typical tone that has been criticized as “inflammatory” and “divisive,” often when he is referring to race and immigration.
But the former president quickly fell back into his old talking points. “The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country,” Trump said, referring to undocumented migrants coming across the U.S. border.
However, encounters at the southern border have continued to drop for the fourth month straight, newly released numbers from the CBP shows.
He continued, “They are coming in from every corner of the Earth, not just from South America, but from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East — they’re coming from everywhere, and this administration does nothing to stop them,” Trump added.
However, CBP says recent measures, including President Biden’s June 4 executive order restricting access to asylum in between ports of entry, have contributed to a more than 50% drop in encounters at the border over the past six weeks.
JD Vance previously criticized Trump and his base for the rhetoric on race, a backdrop to the current onslaught of criticism facing Vance’s wife and children.
JD Vance, who previously called himself a “Never Trump guy,” has cited Trump’s “many successes in office” for changing his opinion of the former president and will now join Trump on the Republican ticket for the presidential election in November.
Vance eventually aligned with the former president around 2021, praising his time in office and apologizing for his attacks on him.
Former President Donald Trump speaks during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Aug. 8, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
(CHICAGO) — Democrats have made conservatives’ controversial Project 2025 and its education agenda a weapon in their attacks against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention.
Dismantling the Department of Education is a key issue for conservatives this election season and is mentioned in the 922-page playbook for the next conservative president. And while Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, it aligns in many ways with his Agenda 47 platform.
President Joe Biden slammed the Republican vision for education as he addressed the Democratic National Convention on Monday night.
“Donald Trump, and his Republican friends, they not only can’t think, they can’t read very well,” Biden said, adding,”Seriously, think about it. Look at their Project 2025. They want to do away with the Department of Education.”
Michelle Obama touched on the subject in her speech the following night: “Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books — none of that will prepare our kids for the future.”
Trump reiterated his plan for education in his wide-ranging X Spaces interview last week with Elon Musk.
“I want to close up the Department of Education [and] move education back to the states,” Trump told Musk’s more than one million listeners, claiming that the U.S. had fallen to the bottom of rankings among other countries and that states do a better job educating their children without federal mandates.
The U.S. is not ranked at the bottom, as Trump claimed, but due to historic learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is close to the bottom half in subjects like math in the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Nearly a third of U.S. students also ended last school year behind grade level in at least one academic subject, according to new data released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
It’s unclear whether the former president would close the agency and redistribute its funding to states or stop funding it and close it altogether. ABC News has reached out to the Trump campaign but didn’t receive a response by time of publication.
Critics of the plan say it would hurt mostly small, rural school systems, many of them in red states.
In an interview with the nonprofit More Perfect Union, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he would defend public education against defunding because it would exacerbate the “haves and the have-nots.” An Education Department official warned that if the agency were shuttered, states would lose a “large chunk” of funding from the feds and state and local governments — on average about 10%. State and local governments make up roughly 90% of public school funding.
Education finance expert Jess Gartner said school districts with the “highest need” students could take a devastating blow if the federal agency’s funding was cut because funding for school districts isn’t always equally distributed.
“Those targeted funds were being targeted for a reason,” Gartner said.
‘I can’t find the word ‘education’ in [the Constitution]’
House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., is one of the most vocal opponents of the department. She raises caregivers’ and local school board members’ concerns that they shouldn’t have to “co-parent” with the government.
Conservatives also reject what they characterize as bureaucrats infusing culture war topics into their kids’ school curriculums.
Foxx argued it’s unconstitutional for the government to handle state education issues in the first place.
“I can’t find the word ‘education’ in there [the Constitution] as one of the duties and responsibilities of Congress or the federal government,” Foxx told ABC News.
That ideology gives way for Trump to work with Foxx and congressional Republicans to pass a department closure if he wins the White House and Republicans maintain control of the House and take over the Senate in November, according to Arnold Ventures Director of Higher Education Clare McCann.
“Congress created the Department of Education,” McCann told ABC News, adding, “Congress could uncreate it if they wanted.”
In theory, McCann said, Trump could make the shift with congressional approval but it’s unlikely it would happen immediately. There would need to be a support system to dole out the money to states, but that’s something the department would be equipped to do.
“There’s a reason the Department of Education was created and it was to have this kind of in-house expertise and policy background on these issues,” McCann said. “The civil servants who work at the Department of Education are true experts in the field,” she added.
Arkansas moves against ‘indoctrinating’ students
Former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has pushed for conservative education reform since becoming the first woman elected as the state’s governor in 2022. Last year, she signed into law the state’s LEARNS Act, which calls for raising minimum teacher salaries, introducing universal pre-K, banning teaching on “gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual reproduction” before fifth grade and banning curriculum that would “indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as Critical Race Theory.”
It also instituted a universal voucher program for so-called “school choice,” which is also similar to plans in Trump’s Agenda 47 and Project 2025.
Superintendent of the Little Rock School District Jermall Wright said abolishing the Department of Education would be “catastrophic.”
Wright, who cited friction with the school board in announcing last week he was stepping down from his position after two years on the job, said such an action would hinder title and grant funding meant to supplement state funding. He also fears it would strip states of Title I funding for low-income and disadvantaged students as well as McKinney-Vento funds, which includes support for the unhoused and transient populations.
“We rely on those additional funds to provide, you know, an array of services and supports for students and families,” Wright told ABC News. “The face of homelessness has changed. It’s not just, you know, people who are living on streets. We have extremely mobile families. They move from apartments to apartments, hotels, motels, etc. We have children who may live with family members that are not their biological parents. All those types of situations.”
Before Little Rock, Wright led the Mississippi Achievement School District — which encompasses two smaller districts totaling about 5,000 students in the rural Mississippi Delta. He said he saw firsthand the amount of federal aid some districts in the poorest state in the nation rely on.
“In those small rural districts, the majority of our funding came from federal funds, which I’d never experienced that a day before in any place that I had worked,” he said, adding, “Those districts wouldn’t be able to survive, let alone, you just can’t function.”
Wright also said the federal agency plays an essential role in overseeing states’ civil rights issues.
An impact on vulnerable students
That’s a concern in other states like California, where education advocates worry abolishing the department would have an impact on vulnerable students and students with disabilities as well as general learning outcomes for students and teachers.
“There’s a critical role for the U.S. Department of Education to support states in thinking about how to meet the needs of student groups who either have been marginalized, underserved, or for whom we really haven’t had the opportunity to think about how best to meet their needs,” said Sarah Lillis, California executive director for Teach Plus.
Gartner, the education finance expert, said much of this conversation is dependent on economic opportunity, not location.
“There are very wealthy districts in California and there are very poor districts in California [and everywhere else],” Gartner told ABC News. “Wealthy districts aren’t going to be impacted very much by their Title I money being cut. They’re going to go out and pass a bond and raise that money – and then some – locally in two days. It’s the poor, rural district that’s going to be devastated by that and have no recourse to fill that gap.”
Due to their emphasis on local control, states like Texas with strong economies would virtually be unaffected, according to state policy experts.
Others say they don’t need the feds’ help.
Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield said the state doesn’t look to the U.S. Department of Education for guidance on education policy. She told ABC News that she’s fine with abolishing the agency.
“We are making decisions about education focused on our own state,” Critchfield told ABC News, adding, “It is very rare that we’re reaching out to the federal government to help us know what initiatives and goals we want to have here for our kids in Idaho.”
Critchfield believes shuttering the department would have “little impact” on her state.
“We don’t look to them [the Department of Education] to say what should we be working on,” Critchfield said. “I’m talking to leaders in the state, local school boards, parents in our state, they’re the ones telling me what I should be focused on. Outside of [the Department of Education] watchdogging, the influence on outcomes just isn’t there.”
(WASHINGTON) — A group of prominent Black Democratic leaders on Thursday unveiled Project FREEDOM, a new plan aimed at countering Project 2025, a controversial 922-page plan to overhaul the federal government led by a conservative Washington think tank and other politically aligned organizations.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly warn in campaign speeches that Donald Trump, if he wins a second term, wants to use the conservative blueprint to exert unprecedented presidential power and to do away with, among other things, the Department of Education and federal housing assistance and to cut or restrict the use of food stamps and other social welfare programs.
Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, calling some of the proposals “seriously extreme,” but its architects helped shape his Republican Party platform.
Project FREEDOM is designed to engage Black voters in four key battleground areas, the organizers told ABC News.
In the plan, first shared with ABC News, the group says in addition to policy, it aims to mobilize voters of color through town halls, community events, digital campaigns, and phone banks in Michigan, North Carolina, Las Vegas, and the Pennsylvania/Tri-State area.
Project FREEDOM, the leaders say, aims to provide voters with a substantial policy agenda for Democrats ahead of the November election in a clear and precise contrast to Project 2025.
Organizers say Project FREEDOM is based on four pillars: Freedom to Live, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Vote and Freedom to Thrive.
Freedom to Live is based on the idea that the Black community should be able to “live freely and without fear,” the group says. Organizers are calling for the passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act which was stalled by Republicans in the U.S. Senate.
Tamika Mallory, co-founder of Until Freedom, an intersectional social justice organization, told ABC News, “I think that the way to really engage voters to go to the polls, is to make sure that they know, we’re not just going for a celebratory vote. Instead, we’re going to the polls with our bag of demands with us.”
Mallory, says “We can’t sell the message of identity politics as the sole message to people who are suffering with income inequality, people who are suffering with challenges in the education system, people who just watched a video of Sonya Massey being shot in her face by a Springfield, Illinois, police officer.”
Massey, was an unarmed 36-year-old Black woman and mother of two, who was shot by former deputy Sean Grayson in her Illinois home. “What happened to Sonya Massey is probably one of the worst that I have seen in my career for 30 years,” Mallory added.
Freedom to Thrive calls for expansion of the Child Tax Credit, federal minimum wage to raise to meet inflation, and a pilot program for Universal Basic Income in low-income communities nationwide.
Freedom to Learn is focused on education, including canceling student debt and protecting Black American history in public schools.
Freedom to Vote is focused on strengthening voting rights, calling for the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and reshaping the U.S. Supreme Court.
Michael Blake, founder of Project FREEDOM and CEO of KAIROS DEMOCRACY PROJECT, a program created to mobilize and engage young voters and voters of color, Blake said in a statement to ABC News, “Our Democracy is under siege and by a man and political machine that put themselves above all those in whom they detect ‘otherness.”
Blake, a former vice chair of the Democratic Party, added, “We cannot afford to forget the pain inflicted on our people throughout Donald Trump’s administration, and we certainly cannot afford the destructiveness a second term would normalize.”
The Democratic leaders said in a joint statement, “Make no mistake: Communities of color are the frontline communities targeted by the poison that is Project 2025’s Christian Nationalist vision for the future, and Project FREEDOM is the antidote.”
Former President Donald Trump accepts his party’s nomination on the last day of the 2024 Republican National Convention, in Milwaukee, July 18, 2024. — Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
(MILWAUKEE) — After formally accepting the Republican nomination, former President Donald Trump recounted surviving Saturday’s assassination attempt.
With a bandage covering his right ear, Trump addressed the crowd at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, saying it would be the only time he would share what happened at the rally.
“You’ll never hear it from me a second time because it’s too painful to tell.”
During the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a gunman opened fire from a nearby roof, striking Trump in the ear, killing a rallygoer, Corey Comperatore, and wounding two others. Before Trump was hit, he had turned his head to the right to look at a screen and hit with a glancing blow.
“The amazing thing is that prior to the shot, if I had not moved my head at that very last instant, the assassin’s bullet would have perfectly hit its mark, and I would not be here tonight. We would not be together,” Trump said.
“Behind me and to the right was a large screen that was displaying a chart of border crossings under my leadership,” he recounted. “In order to see the chart, I started to turn to my right, and was ready to begin a further turn, which I’m lucky I didn’t, when I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me, really hard, on my right ear.”
“I said to myself, ‘Wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet,'” the former president said.
Secret Service agents swarmed Trump as he ducked behind the podium, with blood dripping down the side of his face, “Bullets were continuing to fly.”
“I’m not supposed to be here tonight,” Trump repeatedly told the crowd, to which they responded, “Yes you are!”
“Thank you. But I’m not. And I’ll tell you, I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God.”
Police are investigating the incident as an assassination attempt and potential act of domestic terrorism. The motive is unknown, but officials said that the shooter searched for images of both President Trump and President Biden as well as dates for the Butler rally and the Democratic National Convention.
The shooter was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
Trump held a moment of silence for Comperatore, a former fire chief who died when he “dove on his family” to protect them during the rally, his wife said.
Making his first public remarks since the shooting, Trump expressed his “gratitude to the American people for your outpouring of love and support following the assassination attempt.”
