The chant began at Vice President Harris’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., on Monday as she prepared to kick off her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Washington
Who is Doug Emhoff? Harris’s husband could be the first first gentleman.
After almost four years of upending centuries-old gender stereotypes, Emhoff told the enthusiastic crowd he was ready for the next challenge: “Now I get to support my wife, Kamala Harris, running for president of the United States.”
Emhoff, who could become the first first gentleman of the United States, set aside his 30-year career as a high-profile Los Angeles entertainment lawyer when Harris assumed office. He has spoken candidly about the difficulties of leaving the work he loved to support Harris’s political aspirations — including at Monday’s event, where he paid credit to President Biden, who Emhoff said “had my back personally in some of my toughest moments as second gentleman.”
“It was always the president who came up to me and said: ‘Look, I know, kid, you’re a great lawyer. I know this must be tough, but what better way to leave that and to support your wife, who you love so much and your country that you love so much,’” an emotional Emhoff said, as Biden — who was unable to make the event as he recovers from covid-19 — listened in.
Emhoff, 59, was born in Brooklyn and raised in Matawan, N.J., before he moved with his parents and two siblings to the Los Angeles area in his teens. He attended college and law school in California and went on to build a successful entertainment litigation practice, which he folded into a large law firm, Venable.
A former colleague, Alex Weingarten, described Emhoff in 2021 as someone who specialized in building teams. On cases, the two partners would assume the roles of good cop and bad cop: Emhoff was always the good cop, Weingarten told The Washington Post.
Emhoff later became a partner at DLA Piper but left in 2020 to avoid potential conflicts of interest between that firm’s lobbying portfolio and Harris’s political career.
Harris and Emhoff’s story is one of later-in-life love — written, literally, in Hollywood. Harris’s close friend, Chrisette Hudlin, set the pair up in 2013 after she met Emhoff at a business meeting.
Emhoff made his introduction to Harris in part through a lengthy voicemail — which he worried was “disastrous,” the vice president wrote in her memoir. But Harris, then living in San Francisco and working as California’s attorney general, was charmed and flew to Los Angeles for their first date.
The morning after, Emhoff shared his availability for another date, writing in an email that he was “too old to play games or hide the ball. I really like you, and I want to see if we can make this work,” he said.
He told CBS in a recent interview: “It was love at first sight, and we’ve been together ever since.”
They married in 2014 at a small ceremony in Santa Barbara that involved smashing a glass in honor of Emhoff’s Jewish background and in which Emhoff wore a flower garland to celebrate Harris’s Indian heritage. Emhoff’s children from his first marriage, Cole and Ella, call the vice president “Momala” — and Harris has forged a friendship with Emhoff’s first wife, film producer Kerstin Emhoff, who is vocal online about her support for the vice president.
Emhoff and Harris’s relationship would ultimately lead him to the unprecedented role of the nation’s first second gentleman and the first Jewish vice-presidential spouse.
During the past three and a half years, Emhoff has carved out a multifaceted role for himself. He has visited coronavirus vaccine clinics, worked to expand access to legal aid services, advocated for gender equity and become a leading voice in the White House’s efforts to combat antisemitism, including by taking a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2023 to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day. He has also embraced his Jewish heritage by celebrating Passover at the White House.
After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, he told the Los Angeles Times that, despite feeling “sheer pain and shock … I’m still going to keep doing what I’m doing — focus on fighting against hate and antisemitism and Islamophobia.”
Emhoff also teaches at Georgetown Law School, which described him as “one of the nation’s leading intellectual property and business litigators.” He took up the role after stepping away from his position at DLA Piper.
And while he has discussed the attendant difficulties, he told Glamour in 2020 that “I’m humbled, I’m honored to have put it all on hold — my career, family life, everything” to help the Biden-Harris campaign.
In his White House biography, Emhoff is quoted as saying that he hopes to “inspire the next generation of supportive spouses.”
“I’m the first man to take this role,” he said, “but I definitely don’t want to be the last.”
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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