There were hip gyrations from the stage. The playlist included “Girls in the Hood,” “Mamushi,” “Savage,” and “Body.” The candidate quoted Quavo.
Washington
Harris events: Not your father’s campaign rallies (or Biden’s)
In Atlanta, the baton was fully passed to Kamala Harris. This was now her party. Her campaign. Her playlist.
In fact, Joe Biden never came up.
From the music to the outfits — and, most tellingly, the crowd size — it was clearer than ever that the shift to a new Democratic generation was complete.
By and large, it is the same campaign aides who were putting on Biden events that are now in charge of Harris ones. But the types of crowds interested in attending Harris events — and the musicians willing to perform at them — are very different. The new playlist, even if controlled by the same staffers who curated Biden’s soundtrack (a mix including Whitney Houston’s “Higher Love,” Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” and Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom”), has a certain Harris flair, and is put together based on her personal input.
Campaign aides say they are still thinking about how Harris events will be different, and they are determined to not only do large-scale rallies but want to put her in smaller settings as well. The coming days will provide more of a test case as Harris picks a running mate and launches a seven-state tour that will probably include a range of venues.
Harris is attempting to harness the surge in organic enthusiasm to display a show of force around her campaign launch. Aides want to do so in ways that are not only helpful to the vice president’s case but also work to get under Trump’s skin (The Trump campaign has scheduled a rally on Saturday in the same Atlanta arena that Harris filled on Tuesday).
The crowds to date in the Harris for president campaign are simply more energized. They’re bigger and louder. And it is a different tapestry than the Democratic Party has presented to a general electorate since at least 2016.
Biden is the candidate who works rope lines and owns small rooms, but has never been known as the one who can fill large arenas. Filling a middle school gymnasium, as he did last month, was reason for boasting, and success for him is the amount of time he spends on a rope line after the event rather than the number of total supporters who attend it. And four years ago, during the height of a global pandemic, the closest the president came to having large rallies was events where cars gathered, at a social distance, and honked their horns.
Harris, at least in the opening weeks of her candidacy, is drawing the kind of energy and excitement that Barack Obama drew in 2008 or that Donald Trump brought in 2016.
While Democrats have long had strong ties to the entertainment industry — attracting actors as donors and musicians as opening acts — the octogenarian who spent half a century as a politician and rarely dips into pop culture was not a source for inspiration. Biden’s prized possession is a car built in 1967 (a Corvette Stingray) and his favorite movie was made in 1981 (“Chariots of Fire”)
Biden often quotes Abraham Lincoln or Irish poets in his speeches. On Tuesday night, Harris was quoting hip-hop artists in hers.
“Trump … Does not walk the walk,” she said. “Or as my friend Quavo would say: He does not walk it like he talks it.”
Biden often says the Black community was among those that “brung me to the dance.” But he most definitely did not have the playlist, or energy — or the dance — that came from Atlanta.
The rally marked a debut of sorts for Megan on C-SPAN, which streamed the event live. She took the stage amid flashing strobe lights, and was dressed in a blue pantsuit, a white shirt with exposed midriff, and a blue tie. She riffed on one of Harris’s strongest campaign planks: abortion rights.
“Our future president — let’s get this done, Atlanta,” she told the cheering crowd. “We’re about to make history with the first female president. The first Black female president. Let’s get this done, honey.”
As she sang her song “Body” she told the crowd: “Now, I know my ladies in the crowd love their bodies — and if you want to keep loving your body, you know who to vote for.”
Harris’s remarks were stylistically different from Biden’s, with her own cadence and without verbal digressions and the storytelling that Biden often relishes. But at the core, many of her policy aims did not significantly diverge from the ones that Biden promotes.
“Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” she said. “When our middle class is strong, America is strong.”
She talked about the need to tame inflation, and she spoke in sharp tones about immigration.
“He tanked — tanked — the bipartisan deal because he thought it would help him win an election,” Harris said. “Which goes to show, Donald Trump does not care about border security. He only cares about himself. I will bring back the border security bill, and I will sign it into law and show Donald Trump what real leadership looks like.”
She mocked Trump’s policy positions — called some of the things from him and his running mate “just plain weird” — and poked fun at her GOP rival for not fully committing to a debate. While Biden also often mentions Trump, she seemed to take more glee in poking at her new rival.
“Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider, to meet me on the debate stage,” she said, looking into the cameras. “Because as the saying goes, ‘If you got something to say, say it to my face.’”
Harris also echoed what has been a signature line in her brief time as a candidate, as she recalled her time as a prosecutor taking on “predators who abused women; fraudsters who ripped off consumers; cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.”
“So hear me when I say,” she added, pausing for effect. “I know Donald Trump’s type.”
In Atlanta and elsewhere, there are calls-and-response. There is a rollicking feeling that often doesn’t exist amid polite applause at Biden’s events. When Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) on Tuesday night chided Trump for being “too scared to debate Vice President Harris,” the crowd began chanting, “Too scared! Too scared!”
When Harris referenced Trump’s legal problems and guilty verdicts, the crowd yelled, “Lock him up! Lock him up!”
Biden has acknowledged his milquetoast taste.
“Isn’t it really dull when you have a president known for two things: Ray-Ban sunglasses and chocolate chip ice cream?” he said last month during a gathering in Harrisburg, Pa., as he sought to inject life into his reelection campaign.
Two weeks later, he was out of the race. And now he’s hoping to propel to victory a president known for things far less dull.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), “on behalf of the Department of Education (ED),” on Monday released a Notice Inviting Grant Applications for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program. Applications are due by May 29.
Last November, ED announced that it had entered into an interagency agreement with HHS to administer the CCAMPIS program. This is the first CCAMPIS competition conducted under this arrangement.
Approximately $73.5 million will go to institutions of higher education that awarded at least $250,000 in Pell grants to enrolled students in FY 2025. HHS will award about 148 grants, ranging from $150,000 to $1 million.
The terms of the grant competition are not significantly different than prior competitions. As before, there are two absolute grant priorities that every application must address – leveraging non-federal resources and utilizing a sliding-fee scale for low-income parents.
This year’s competition includes only one invitational priority that reflects the Trump administration’s general educational policy. The new priority, entitled “Expanding Education Choice in Early Learning Settings,” encourages applications that “expand access to education choice … including by empowering parents in choosing the early learning setting that best meets their family’s needs.” Flexible childcare programs that include drop-in care and care during nontraditional hours are also encouraged.
One other notable difference from prior competitions is an expanded “Terms and Conditions” section that not only requires compliance with applicable civil rights laws, but also refers to Trump administration Executive Orders and guidance on racial discrimination that clarify “the application of federal antidiscrimination laws to programs or initiatives that may involve discriminatory practices, including those labeled as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”) programs.” This includes any “discriminatory equity ideology [as defined in Executive Order 14190] in violation of a federal antidiscrimination law.”
The exact scope of these terms is unclear because courts have not found many of the practices described in these Executive Orders and guidance documents to be violations of federal law.
The Newsfeed
This week, the team brings you stories about how communities including Filipino immigrants, Sephardic Jews and Somalis arrived in the Pacific Northwest
Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.
Group hopes to boost recognition for Seattle’s Filipinotown
By Venice Buhain
The group Filipinotown Seattle hopes to make sure that the legacy of Filipino Americans in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District isn’t forgotten.
One of the group’s current projects is pushing for a Filipinotown placemarking sign in the CID.
“Filipino Americans have had a presence here for over 100 years in Seattle,” said Filipinotown Seattle Executive Director Devin Israel Cabanilla.
He said that the signage is important to remind people that “the International District is not just Chinatown. Japantown. Filipinotown is here as well.”
The group held a poll on what signage might look like and where it might be located. It would be similar to the Chinatown sign on South Jackson Street and Fifth Avenue South, or the Wing Luke Museum
In the early 20th century, the area now known as the CID was a hub full of businesses, entertainment, social groups and housing that served Seattle’s growing immigrant population from Asia and elsewhere. The communities all intermingled throughout the CID.
“This area was a central place for Asian Pacific immigrants simply because of segregation,” Cabanilla said.
Because the Philippines was a U.S. territory from 1898 to 1946, Filipino immigrants were unaffected by laws in the 1920s that restricted immigration from Japan or China. Many Filipinos came to study at the University of Washington or to work in burgeoning industries, like lumber, farming, canneries and factories.
While the physical Filipino presence in terms of buildings and storefronts in the CID dwindled in the later 20th century with redevelopment, Seattle Filipinos and Filipino Americans continued to make impacts locally, regionally and nationally.
“It may not have been in terms of storefronts, but our presence has always existed in terms of politics, culture as well,” Cabanilla said.
The Seattle Department of Transportation said it is aware that the group is working on its signage request, but the Department of Neighborhoods has not yet received a formal request. They are also working to develop a clearer process for this and other similar neighborhood signage proposals.
Filipinotown Seattle said it hopes that the sign helps remind Seattle of the CID’s unique designation as a neighborhood shaped by many immigrants and migrants to Seattle.
“Is it Chinatown? Is it Japantown? Is it Little Saigon? It’s all those things. And I think re cultivating that this is a multicultural district, Filipinotown is helping establish: Yes, it’s more than one thing,” Cabanilla said.
Venice Buhain is a multimedia journalist at Cascade PBS. She previously was the Cascade PBS’s associate news editor and education reporter. Venice has also worked for KING 5, The Seattle Globalist and TVW News.
Venice Buhain is a multimedia journalist at Cascade PBS. She previously was the Cascade PBS’s associate news editor and education reporter. Venice has also worked for KING 5, The Seattle Globalist and TVW News.
The state of Washington is getting a seventh temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Marysville Washington Temple was announced Sunday night during a devotional in the Marysville Washington Stake by Elder Hugo E. Martinez, a General Authority Seventy in the church’s United States West Area Presidency.
“We are pleased to announce the construction of a temple in Marysville, Washington,” the First Presidency said in a statement. “The specific location and timing of the construction will be announced later. This is a reason for all of us to rejoice and express gratitude for such a significant blessing — one that will allow more frequent access to the ordinances, covenants and power that can only be found in the house of the Lord.”
The other temples in Washington are the Columbia River, Moses Lake, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma and Vancouver temples.
The church has 214 temples in operation. Plans for another 170 temples have been announced; many of those temples are in various stages of planning and construction.
Sunday’s temple announcement follows the new practice of the church’s First Presidency, which determines where temples will be built — and when and how they will be announced.
The First Presidency directed a General Authority Seventy to announce the first temple in Maine at a fireside there in December.
In January, church President Dallin H. Oaks said the Maine announcement set the pattern for future temple announcements.
“The best place to announce a temple is in that temple district,” he told the Deseret News.
The First Presidency will continue to decide where future temples will be built. It then will “assign someone else to make the announcement in the place where the temple will be built,” he said.
This pattern came to him as a strong impression after he assumed leadership of the church in October, following the death of his friend, President Russell M. Nelson.
This came as a strong impression to him shortly after he assumed the leadership of the church, President Oaks said.
The church remains in the midst of an aggressive temple-building era. President Nelson announced 200 new temples from 2018 to 2025. All but one were announced at general conference.
Five dozen temples are now under construction.
President Oaks now has overseen the announcement of two temples, neither at a general conference.
At the October conference he said that “with the large number of temples now in the very earliest phases of planning and construction, it is appropriate that we slow down the announcement of new temples.”
Ten new temples are scheduled to be dedicated in the next six months.
- May 3: Davao Philippines Temple.
- May 3: Lindon Utah Temple.
- May 31: Bacolod Philippines Temple.
- June 7: Yorba Linda California Temple.
- June 7: Willamette Valley Oregon Temple.
- Aug. 16: Belo Horizonte Brazil Temple.
- Aug. 16: Cleveland Ohio Temple.
- Aug. 30: Phnom Penh Cambodia Temple.
- Oct. 11: Miraflores Guatemala City Guatemala Temple.
- Oct. 18: Managua Nicaragua Temple.
Two-thirds of the 170 temples still to be built are outside the United States.
Temples are distinct from the meetinghouses where Latter-day Saints worship Jesus Christ each Sunday. Temples are closed on Sundays, but they open during the week as sanctuaries where church members go to find peace, make covenants with God and perform proxy ordinances for deceased relatives.
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