policy

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Democratic philanthropist George Soros and actor and director Denzel Washington can be presented with the nation's highest civilian honor Saturday on the White House.

President Joe Biden will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 of probably the most celebrated names in politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy and academia.

The White House said the recipients have made “exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values ​​or security of the United States, to world peace, or to other significant societal, public or private endeavors.”

Four medals can be awarded posthumously. They go to Fannie Lou Hamer, who founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and laid the muse for the Voting Rights Act of 1965; former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; George W. Romney, who served as each governor of Michigan and secretary of housing and concrete development; and Ash Carter, the previous defense secretary.

Kennedy is the daddy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary. Romney is the daddy of former Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney, certainly one of Trump's harshest conservative critics.

Major philanthropists receiving the award include Spanish-American chef José Andrés, whose charity World Central Kitchen has change into certainly one of the world's most recognized food relief organizations, and Bono, the frontman of the rock band U2 and a social justice activist.

Recognized sports and entertainment stars include skilled soccer player Lionel Messi; retired Los Angeles Lakers basketball legend and businessman Earvin “Magic” Johnson; actor Michael J. Fox, a powerful advocate for the research and development of Parkinson's disease; and William Sanford Nye, known to generations of scholars as “Bill Nye the Scientist.”

Other honorees include conservationist Jane Goodall; longtime editor-in-chief of Vogue Magazine, Anna Wintour; American designer Ralph Lauren; American Film Institute founder George Stevens Jr.; entrepreneur and LGBTQ+ activist Tim Gill; and David Rubenstein, co-founder of worldwide investment firm The Carlyle Group.

Last yr, Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 people, including the late Medgar Evers, Speaker Emeritus of the House Nancy Pelosi, Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina and actress Michelle Yeoh.

Today is Monday, October twenty eighth, the 302nd day of 2024. There are 64 days left within the yr.

Today in history:

On October 28, 2016, the FBI dropped a political bombshell on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign when it announced it was investigating whether emails were found on a tool belonging to disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of considered one of Mrs. Clinton's. Huma Abedin, his closest colleague, could contain secret information.

Also on this date:

In 1636, the Massachusetts court passed an act establishing Harvard College.

In 1886, the Statue of Liberty, a present from the French people, was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland.

In 1919, despite President Woodrow Wilson's veto, Congress passed the Volstead Act, which provided for the enforcement of Prohibition.

In 1922, fascism got here to Italy when Benito Mussolini took control of the federal government.

In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt rededicated the Statue of Liberty to mark its fiftieth anniversary.

In 1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev informed the United States that he had ordered the dismantling of missile bases in Cuba; In return, the US secretly agreed to withdraw nuclear missiles from US facilities in Turkey.

In 1991, what became generally known as the “Perfect Storm” began to form lots of of miles east of Nova Scotia. During the storm, the six crew members of the Andrea Gail, a fishing boat from Gloucester, Massachusetts, were lost at sea.

In 2001, the families of victims of the September eleventh terrorist attack gathered in New York for a memorial service stuffed with prayers and songs.

In 2012, the San Francisco Giants won their second World Series title in three years by defeating the Detroit Tigers for a four-game sweep.

In 2018, the Boston Red Sox defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the World Series in five games.

In 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company would rename itself Meta to implement its virtual reality vision for the long run while maintaining the identical name for the social network itself.

In 2022, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took control of Twitter for $44 billion after a protracted legal battle and months of uncertainty.

In 2022, Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked and severely beaten by an assailant with a hammer as he broke into their San Francisco home.

Today's birthdays:

• Jazz singer Cleo Laine is 97.
• Actress Joan Plowright is 95.
• Basketball Hall of Famer Lenny Wilkens is 87.
• Actress Jane Alexander is 85.
• Actor Dennis Franz is 80.
• Actress and singer Telma Hopkins is 76.
• TV personality and Olympic gold medal decathlete Caitlyn Jenner is 75.
• Actress Annie Potts is 72.
• Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is 69.
• Actress Daphne Zuniga (ZOO'-nih-guh) is 62.
• Actress Lauren Holly is 61.
• Talk show host and comedian Sheryl Underwood is 61.
• Football Hall of Famer Steve Atwater is 58.
• Actor-comedian Andy Richter is 58.
• Actress Julia Roberts is 57.
• Actor Jeremy Davies is 56.
• Singer Ben Harper is 55.
• Football Hall of Famer Terrell Davis is 52.
• Country singer Brad Paisley is 52.
• Actor Joaquin Phoenix is ​​50.
• Actress Gwendoline Christie is 46.
• Actor Matt Smith is 42.
• Actor Troian Bellisario is 39.
• Singer-songwriter Frank Ocean is 37.
• Tennis player Taylor Fritz is 27.
• Actor Nolan Gould is 26.

Much continues to be the identical because it was that evening eight years ago in Philadelphia, when Hillary Clinton stepped onto the stage on the Democratic Party Convention in her snow-white suit and basked within the cheers of the exuberant crowd.

The former Secretary of State and U.S. Senator was about to turn out to be the primary female president in American history, competing with first-time nominee Donald Trump, the New York real estate developer who had insulted her throughout the campaign.

“Seeing Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee was the culmination of many hopes and dreams,” said U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat from Palo Alto, sitting on the ground of the congressional chamber that night in 2016. “We had been climbing a mountain for a long, long time, so it was exciting.”

When Vice President Kamala Harris, California's former attorney general and U.S. senator, takes the stage on the convention in Chicago on Thursday night to just accept her party's nomination, the joy will certainly be the identical. But will the consequence be different in November? How is the country different now? Or will this be one other turning point that can not be turned back for Democratic women, and particularly Harris' most ardent supporters within the Bay Area?

Trump, it seems, has remained the identical. Clinton said so when she returned to the convention stage on Monday, this time in a pale yellow jacket, to support Harris in Chicago.

“He's making fun of her name and her laugh,” Clinton said of Trump, shrugging. “That sounds familiar.”

Voters elected a black man, Barack Obama, as president in 2008 and 2012, but not a girl, Clinton, in 2016. Although she won nearly all of the votes, she lost the election on account of the vote count. In fact, 45 percent of white women with college degrees voted for Trump.

Now, with national polls showing an especially close race between Trump and Harris, Democrats try to quell a sinking sense of déjà vu. Former first lady Michelle Obama addressed that creeping fear in a stirring speech Tuesday, urging convention attendees to “do something” to place her in office.

So what’s different now?

Quite so much, say loyal Democratic supporters, longtime politicians and political analysts.

In particular, the political development of girls and the growing power of young voters.

After Trump challenged the polls and won, tens of millions of girls shocked by the consequence took to the streets and huge women's marches broke out across the country. The MeToo movement struck in 2017, with Women who had secretly endured the humiliation of sexual abuse by the hands of powerful men began to inform their stories and demand justice.

In 2018, voters elected the biggest number of girls to Congress: 36 women were elected, 35 of whom were Democrats. This force shifted the House of Representatives from red to blue and was also answerable for the re-election of US Representative Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. In 2020, she prevented Trump's second term in favor of Joe Biden.

After Trump-appointed U.S. Supreme Court justices struck down abortion rights within the 2021 Dobbs ruling, voters defied a predicted red wave within the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives, but by a much smaller margin than predicted. At the identical time, newly empowered states began restricting abortion access across the country, and girls mobilized to fight back.

“The backlash against Donald Trump has activated women,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Politics and Women at Rutgers University.

These women and young people, who’re also politically committed to abortion rights, could change the course of history this time, analysts say.

In 2016, Clinton faced quite a few problems, including the continued popularity of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders amongst young voters and her own unpopularity after being embroiled in scandals dating back to her husband's presidency.

Elisa Camahort Page, a San Jose activist, creator and co-founder of Blogher, said she learned a lesson from Clinton's defeat.

“I think most of us have suppressed and muted our enthusiasm for too long in an attempt to be more acceptable in a media landscape that was so desperate to make it seem like everyone hated us,” she said, “and I don't think we're going to succeed this time.”

Trump, who desired to attack Biden as too old and weak before dropping out of the race in July, had trouble finding an efficient message against his latest opponent, a 59-year-old black woman. Hulk Hogan was a guest on the Republican convention and when Trump entered the sector he played “It's a Man's Man's Man's World.”

According to Camahort Page, it’s Trump who’s currently affected by an absence of enthusiasm.

“He certainly has his loyal supporters, but he's the one who has to convince more voters,” she said. “His act is old now… I mean, how often is a Hannibal Lecter joke funny?”

After mobilizing votes and raising record tens of millions in donations, Harris should be within the honeymoon phase of her campaign.

But between now and the November election, she is bound to face attacks from Republicans over her largely liberal policies, her shifting stances on controversial issues and her role within the Biden-Harris administration, which experienced record inflation – attacks that could be more well received than Trump's personal insults.

“Kamala Harris will put her fellow California Democrats on the front burner this week to manipulate Americans into believing they are the shining example of how to govern,” said Jessica Millan Patterson, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, pointing to the state's high housing costs, gas prices and taxes which have contributed to the state's declining population. “For more than two decades, Kamala and her party have worked tirelessly to bankrupt California.”

In an interview with PBS throughout the party's convention on Tuesday night, Pelosi said the Democratic Party wouldn’t have nominated Harris if it had not believed she could defeat Trump.

“There are people who would never elect a woman,” Pelosi said. “But we're not waiting for that to never happen. We're doing it now.”

Originally published: August 22, 2024 at 6:00 am