Cedric Richmond

President-elect Joe Biden has announced top White House staff positions, drawing from the senior ranks of his campaign and some of his closest confidants

President-elect Joe Biden has named U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana as Senior Advisor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Here are five things to know about the congressman.

After Kamala Harris challenged Joe Biden’s past opposition to school busing in a nationally televised Democratic presidential debate, the former vice president who prides himself on strong relationships in the black community was in an unfamiliar place, playing defense on race. But Bebe Coker had a message for the man she’s known for decades: don’t back down. The 81-year-old education...

Joe Biden is proposing to reverse several key provisions of the 1994 crime bill he helped write in an acknowledgment that his tough-on-crime positions of the past are at odds with the views of the modern Democratic Party. The former vice president is calling for an end to the disparity that placed stricter sentencing terms on offenses involving crack versus...

The contours of the Democratic presidential primary came into clearer focus this week with Texan Beto O’Rourke’s entry into the race — one of the final puzzle pieces in a contest that will be shaped by questions about race and gender, political ideology and generational change. The sprawling Democratic field features candidates ranging from 37 to 77 years old; liberals...

Former Vice President Joe Biden will headline his first public event in about three weeks on Saturday— in Munich, Germany, nearly 5,000 miles from Iowa, site of the 2020 presidential campaign’s first contest.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has added former Solicitor General Theodore Olson and former White House counsel John Dean to the list of witnesses who will testify next week in the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court....
Olson served as solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration. He’s one of the country’s best-known lawyers, having argued...

Nancy Pelosi is the chief villain of Republican campaign ads. The leader some Democrats promise to vote against. The subject of much speculation that her grip on power is coming to an end. Nevertheless, she says she’s not going anywhere — and certainly not while President Donald Trump is in the White House. “This is not anything to make a...

Speaking Friday at a historically black university, potential Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren delivered what she called “the hard truth about our criminal justice system: It’s racist … I mean front to back.” The Massachusetts senator identified some of the system’s failures: disproportionate arrests of African-Americans for petty drug possession; an overloaded public defender system; and state laws that keep...

Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California have been appointed to serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, becoming just the second and third African-Americans to serve on the committee in its 200-plus-year history. Democrats had to replace Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who resigned after being accused of sexual misconduct. They also picked up a spot...

In his three months on the job, John Kelly has been credited with bringing order to a chaotic West Wing, but don’t call him a moderate. President Donald Trump’s chief of staff was the enforcer of Trump’s controversial immigration policies, has frequently criticized the president’s enemies, and this week echoed his boss’ defense of Confederate monuments. It all suggests that...

What began more than a year ago with an NFL quarterback protesting police brutality against minorities by kneeling silently during the national anthem before games has grown into a roar with hundreds of players sitting, kneeling, locking arms or remaining in locker rooms — their reasons for demonstrating as varied as their methods.

The Congressional Black Caucus turned down an invitation to meet with President Donald Trump, telling him Wednesday they believe their concerns are falling on “deaf ears” at the White House and his policies are devastating to the millions of Americans in the nation’s black communities.

Seattle police shot and killed Charleena Lyles, 30, while responding to a burglary call Sunday. Police said Lyles, who was a mother of three with a baby on the way, confronted them with a knife.

Gerry Martin isn’t sure he will ever tell a police officer during a traffic stop that he has a concealed-weapon permit — and possibly a weapon — on him....
The acquittal of a Minnesota officer in the death of a licensed gun owner who volunteered that he had a gun seconds before being fatally shot during a traffic stop adds to...

A White House statement suggesting that construction funding for historically black colleges and universities might be unconstitutional reveals a fundamental misunderstanding that the schools favor blacks and other minorities over white students, advocates for the schools said Monday. Because they are called HBCUs “suggests to some that the institutions are for blacks and not others, or that blacks are provided...

Black members of Congress are calling for the Justice Department to help police investigate a large number of missing children in Washington, D.C....
The District of Columbia logged 501 cases of missing juveniles, many of them black or Latino, in the first three months of this year, according to the Metropolitan Police Department, the city’s police force. Twenty-two were unsolved as...

Black lawmakers emerged from a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday saying the president was at least willing to listen to their concerns that his policies and positions could hurt their African-American constituents. However, beyond a promise of future dialogue and a discussion about “divisive rhetoric,” it seemed that there was little change in either...

Attorney General Loretta Lynch steadfastly defended her decision to close the Hillary Clinton email investigation without criminal charges, insisting Tuesday that she simply accepted the unanimous recommendation of career FBI investigators and attorneys. “I saw no reason not to accept it,” Lynch told the House Judiciary Committee. “We looked at the facts, they were applied, and a conclusion was come...

Attorney General Loretta Lynch denounced the sniper attack that killed five police officers in Dallas on Thursday, urging people to reflect on “the country that we want to build and the kind of society that we are choosing to pass on to our children.”