One woman was putting her toddler to bed in Baltimore when her phone pinged. Another in Washington saw it while doom-scrolling. A third sat on the deck of her Connecticut home talking about chores with her husband when the WhatsApp message came.
Washington
After Biden’s exit, Zoom led by Black women mobilized 44,000 for Harris
More than 44,000 people logged onto a Zoom call to support Harris and raised more than $1.5 million for her campaign in three hours, according to Win With Black Women founder Jotaka Eaddy.
“Anybody that does not think that Black and Brown women are the backbone of this party, they don’t know us,” Star Jones, the lawyer and former talk show host, told The Washington Post. “[Harris] has already been leading by example. We are going to support her, we’re going to raise money for her, and we’re going to get out the vote for her.”
The call shows the ways in which Black women, a key Democratic voting bloc, plan to galvanize and organize to support Harris. The call, which attracted several celebrities and political figures, was off the record and everyone spoke in their personal capacities, but many attendees described to The Post that it felt like church, a family reunion, a rally or the online hangouts from the height of quarantine.
Even though they were told not to, people streamed the Zoom on other sites such as Clubhouse, Twitch and YouTube.
Eaddy organized the Zoom call the same way in which she has hosted most Sunday night calls for Win With Black Women since August 2020. The organization says it aims to elect Black women nationwide and speaks out against racism and sexism. At the height of the 2020 election, she said the most attendees she had on one Zoom call was 1,500 people. Eaddy was expecting a few hundred last night.
But she realized something was different around 2 p.m., when she got a message that 50 people were in the Zoom waiting room. The call was set to start at 8:30 p.m.
By 7:50 p.m., the Zoom was at capacity with 1,000 people. Members contacted Zoom, which moved the group to a webinar, giving them unlimited capacity to expand their attendees.
“I am forever grateful to the leadership of Zoom for what they did,” Eaddy said.
She said “allies” who identify as Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Black men joined the Zoom to show their support. But the majority of the call focused on Black women’s collective power to elect Harris.
“What happened last night was historic,” Eaddy said. “It really is the culmination of so many Black women for years and years and years that have been working, cultivating and creating for this moment. And last night was also a homage, a work to them and their sacrifice.”
Bernice King, the youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr.; 85-year-old Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the most senior Black woman in the House; and Donna Brazile, the two-time acting chair of the Democratic National Committee, each spoke during the call. Jones, actress Jenifer Lewis, first lady of Maryland Dawn Moore, radio host Angela Rye, U.S. Senate hopeful Angela D. Alsobrooks and author Luvvie Ajayi Jones also joined.
Many representatives of the nine Black sororities and fraternities that exist under the National Pan-Hellenic Council, known as the Divine Nine, also spoke. Alpha Kappa Alpha, of which Harris is a member, formed the first Black sorority in 1908.
Naima Cochrane, a music industry executive and writer, spent the early part of her Sunday afternoon shocked about Biden’s announcement. She said she was not confident in American voters, though she was confident about Harris. But the call lit a fire under her.
“There was no conversation about doubt. There was no ‘what if we can’t’; it was ‘this is what we’re about to do,’” Cochrane said. “People needed to know directives. That there is a strategy, that we’re unified in messaging, and their next steps. We can go forward confidently and strongly now to combat misinformation and combat naysayers.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who has endorsed Harris, said she got at least 10 messages from people telling her about the Zoom call. Bowser told The Post on Monday that she was at an event celebrating Washington’s restaurant scene when she joined the call. When other women heard she was stepping out to log on, they asked if they could come. So a dozen women huddled around an iPhone outside the event and listened.
Bowser said there was “collective anxiety about what is coming.” She said the women are expecting sexist attacks against Harris from political opponents. She logged on again on her way home. After putting her daughter to sleep and walking the family’s dog, she logged on for a third time. The call, Bowser said, “is indicative of what these women are going to do over the next several months.”
The founder of Black Girls Vote, Nykidra “Nyki” Robinson, said she received the Zoom link about 15 times, starting at 3 p.m. After putting her 2-year-old to sleep, she joined the call at 9:40 p.m.
“Sometimes we work in silos, but I felt a sense of community being on the call and feel better equipped to mobilize young voters,” she said.
“I hope Joe Biden feels the love. We’re grateful for him,” Robinson said. “We’re also really excited to support Harris in this moment in history. The call was very much about sisterhood, unity and love.”
Jane, a Black woman in Connecticut who spoke to The Post on the condition that only her first name be published because she feared retribution from her employer, spent last night watching the Zoom call from her kitchen island on speakerphone as one of her 11-year-old sons listened in. He asked her whether Harris would be president, and she explained to him how the nomination process works.
She said she was glad her son saw a group of Black women come together so quickly to support each other.
“This is a message to the world,” she said. “Don’t underestimate Black women in this country and the reach we have. Sometimes we’re ignored, but you would want to be our friends because that’s how fast we were able to get that information out. It was lightning speed.”
Mariam Sarr logged on to the Zoom at 10 p.m. determined to make sure the Democratic Party does not “skip over Harris.”
“As a young Black woman in corporate America, I know what it feels like to be passed over. I feel energized in a way like I did in 2008. I actively campaigned for Obama when I was in college and hit the streets campaigning. Last night felt like the same way.”
On Monday night, political commentator Roland Martin will host his own online discussion with the Win With Black Men group.
Star Jones, who has known Harris for several years and is a founding member of Win With Black Women, was tasked with fundraising. As the creator of the Brown Girls Fundraising Collective, Jones told The Post that she spent last night at a dinner with people working to see how they could fund Harris’s campaign. She got a fundraising link together but had no graphics. Leaders of the Zoom call told her to join around 11:43 p.m.
She told the attendees the challenge was to raise $1 million over the next 100 days. She dropped the fundraising link at 11:50 p.m. “Within 100 minutes we raised $1 million,” Jones said.
The money will go directly to the Harris presidential campaign, according to Jones.
“People don’t tend to think we actually have the power of the pocketbook,” Jones said. “So in addition to what we spend as consumers, we actually do give in a political climate when we feel we have skin in the game.”
As of 1:30 p.m. Monday, Jones said they had raised more than $1.6 million dollars from more than 13,000 donors.
Washington
New Washington law reaffirms ban on voting more than once in an election
A new state law aims to erase any confusion about Washington’s ban on voting more than once in an election.
Its approval follows a court decision that officials warned could incite voter fraud.
Longstanding Washington law makes it illegal for a person to cast more than one ballot in any election in the state, or to vote in any election in this state and another state during the same period.
But a state appeals court in January overturned the felony conviction of a Lewis County resident found guilty of voting twice in November 2022 — once in Washington and once in Oregon. The court concluded that because the candidates and measures differed on the two ballots, one could interpret them as different elections under Washington law.
“This fixes an ambiguity in state law,” Gov. Bob Ferguson said Tuesday before signing Senate Bill 6084. It contains an emergency clause and took effect immediately.
“Voting more than once in an election is an affront to everyone who participates in our democracy,” Ferguson later wrote on X. “This bill makes it clear that double voting is illegal.”
The legislation sponsored by Sen. Adrian Cortes, D-Battle Ground, adds language to existing law to spell out that “election” refers to any general, primary, or special election.
“An election is the ‘same election’ if the election date is the same, regardless of the candidates, offices, issues, or measures on the ballot and regardless of the date on which ballots are mailed or returned,” reads the bill.
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs asked lawmakers to act swiftly, worried the court ruling opened the door to the potential of voters casting more than one ballot in November.
“This legislation helps to ensure that Washington’s elections remain secure, accurate and fair,” Hobbs said in a statement.
In Washington, voting more than once in an election is a class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Meanwhile, Lewis County is appealing the January decision to the Washington Supreme Court.
This story was originally published by the Washington State Standard.
Washington
Trial for murder at Catholic University stalls after detective charged with misconduct
The murder trial of a man accused of killing a teacher on the campus of Catholic University in 2023 was supposed to start Wednesday. But that case has been thrown into turmoil after defense attorneys say the lead D.C. police detective was removed from the case and charged with misconduct.
New court documents reveal the detective is accused of having sex on the job and recording it on a police-issued cellphone.
In a hearing one of the supervisors admitted was highly unusual, the judge and the defense attorneys wanted to know why the U.S. Attorney’s office did not disclose until last week that the lead detective in the murder of 25-year old Maxwell Emerson was removed from the case just weeks after an arrest was made and placed under investigation for alleged misconduct.
In a motion filed Tuesday, the defense said, in part “The government withheld evidence that its lead detective, Detective Thomas Roy, had engaged in conduct so concerning that the Metropolitan Police Department proposed his termination, removed him as a lead detective, transferred him out of the homicide section and instituted a last chance agreement”.
The defense attorneys wrote in their motion that Roy neglected his duties in Aug. 2022 “when he engaged in sexual intercourse with another homicide detective in his unit at her home while on duty and recorded two videos of their sexual encounter on an MPD issued cell phone.”
According to the motion filed by the defense, the detective was not placed under investigation until after Jaime Macedo was charged with the murder that occurred on catholic university campus back in July 2023.
News4 reported extensively on the case at the time. Police say Macedo is accused of following Emerson from the Brookland metro station on the morning of July 5. Surveillance video released by police show Emerson at one point walking with his hands raised in the air before the two ended up in a park near Alumni Lane.
Police say the two got into a struggle before Macedo is accused of shooting Emerson one time in the abdomen.
Emerson was a Kentucky teacher visiting D.C. for a conference at the Library of Congress Teacher Institute.
In the motion filed by the defense, in which they argue the indictment should be dismissed, the attorneys cite an internal affairs document that says, “Detective Roy’s misconduct had cast a shadow over his credibility and reputation as a law enforcement officer.”
It’s unclear when this case may go to trial. The judge still must rule on the motion by the defense.
D.C. police say Roy was disciplined and lost his job in homicide but is still employed as a detective.
Washington
FAA mandates radar separation for helicopters and planes after deadly DC midair collision
Air traffic controllers will use radar, not just visual checks, to ensure that helicopters maintain a safe distance from arriving and departing airplanes in the wake of last year’s fatal midair collision near Washington, D.C., federal officials announced Wednesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration said recent near-misses show that previous guidelines for pilots to maintain visual separation between helicopters and airplanes have failed to provide adequate protection around busy airports.
Under the new guidelines, air traffic controllers must use radar to keep helicopters and airplanes apart by specific lateral or vertical distances. The new requirement applies to more than 150 of the nation’s busiest airports, extending a restriction already put in place at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
“Today, we are proactively mitigating risks before they affect the traveling public,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said in a news release. “Following the mid-air collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), we looked at similar operations across the national airspace. We identified an overreliance on pilot ‘see and avoid’ operations that contribute to safety events involving helicopters and airplanes.”
Officials also specifically mentioned a Feb. 27 near-miss in which a police helicopter had to turn to avoid an American Airlines flight that was landing at San Antonio International Airport in Texas. A similar close call happened on March 2, when a helicopter had to turn away from a small aircraft that had been cleared to arrive at California’s Hollywood Burbank Airport, officials said.
The January 2025 collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter killed 67 people, making it the deadliest plane crash on U.S. soil since 2001. Among other factors contributing to the crash, investigators said controllers in the Reagan tower overly relied on asking pilots to spot aircraft and maintain visual separation.
The night of the crash, the controller approved the Black Hawk’s request to do that twice. However, investigators say the helicopter pilots likely never spotted the American Airlines plane as the jet circled to land on the little-used secondary runway.
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