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Donna Brazile Apologizes Over DNC Leaks At Black, Latino Caucus Meetings

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Scott Eisen / Getty Images

PHILADELPHIA — At the black and Hispanic caucus meetings late Monday morning, Acting DNC Chair Donna Brazile apologized for the content of leaked emails by party staffers that disparaged the Sanders campaign.

Appearing first at the black caucus meeting, Brazile was introduced by caucus chair Virgie Rollins. She received a standing ovation before launching into an impassioned testimony about her history with the party going back from her time as a convention floor whip, to the campaign manager for Al Gore ("I want to let you know that you won that election"), to the election of Barack Obama as president.

But then she shifted gears.

"I sincerely apologize my friends for those of you who took offense and were offended — feel betrayed and were betrayed —by the ridiculous, insensitive, and inappropriate emails from the staff of the Democratic Party," Brazile said to cheers, and shouts of "thank you!"

"Those words to not reflect the spirit of this party," she continued.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned Sunday as result of the email leak on the eve of the convention in Philadelphia. On Monday, Brazile worked the mostly-black audience into a frenzy when she said that she was putting a statement of apology out in her name "because I represent you, too!"

"We're not conducting business like this anymore," she said. "If I'm allowed to be your interim chair, my door is open. I'm leaving CNN and ABC to go back to who I really am. I'm an organizer! We're going to win this damn thing!"

"Because under Donna Brazile's leadership—" then she paused for effect, eliciting cheers.

Next, Brazile made the short walk next door to where the Hispanic caucus event was being held to do the exact same thing.

She apologized for the contents of some of the emails that were leaked and was cheered by the room for sounding serious about making changes at the DNC.

“If I have to clear out some desks to open up opportunity for some of you in this room to fill them I will,” she said to applause.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Brazile said the cause of the hack must be learned and she wants to focus on combating misinformation from the leak.

Brazile said that Wasserman Schultz made a personal decision after spending five years building the party to step down and focus on her responsibilities as a member of Congress “and I as a colleague and a friend of Debbie am going to make sure I continue to build this party.”

Afterwards, Chuy Garcia, a high-profile Latino surrogate for the Bernie Sanders campaign, said Wasserman-Schultz was right to resign.

“I think it’s about time,” he said, adding that he was troubled by the tenor of the emails concerning Sanders campaign.

“I think it’s outrageous conduct unbecoming of any political party. The dirty tricks remind me of the Richard Nixon era,” Garcia said.

After speaking forcefully at the Hispanic caucus meeting against Trump, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a prominent Clinton surrogate, spoke about the importance of Latinos voting outside. He ignored a question by BuzzFeed News about Wasserman Schultz.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, who attended both meetings, said Brazile's apology was "very important" and that while it was a less than ideal situation, he said his focus was on Trump.

"Donna showed, I think, that you can make mistakes, that you can be contrite and you can move on," he said.


Why It Matters That Tim Kaine Speaks Spanish

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Gaston De Cardenas / AFP / Getty Images

PHILADELPHIA — The interview on Univision's Al Punto, a Spanish-language Meet the Press analog, was big for Tim Kaine. He talked about building bridges between communities and police, Clinton's emails, an immigration overhaul, and the topic of the vice presidency.

At the end of the interview, the journalist, Leon Krauze, complimented Kaine, noting that not just anyone can speak Spanish like him. Kaine said that there are 300,000 Latinos in Virginia and the Hispanic vote could be the difference in the state.

That interview aired two weeks ago, before Kaine was named to Hillary Clinton's ticket.

Krauze told BuzzFeed News that it's hard to be angry in a language that is not your own, the same way it's hard to flirt in a foreign language. Talking politics and policy is pretty high up on the difficulty list, too.

"Kaine didn’t know what I was going to ask and he was eloquent," Krauze said.

One thing has been repeated ad nauseum about Kaine over the last few days: He can speak Spanish.

His language skills have just been accepted as a boon for the Clinton campaign. Less attention has been paid to why it matters and how it will manifest itself as an advantage for the campaign.

One key way Kaine's Spanish-speaking abilities matter is in contrast to what Donald Trump's campaign offers with regard to Spanish-language surrogates, which up to now, has been not much.

Trump has only recently been supported by RNC Hispanic media director Helen Aguirre who is making the rounds defending him and attacking Clinton as bad for Latinos. But Clinton has long had a robust surrogate operation on networks like Telemundo and Univision. And Trump has been beat up on the Spanish-language giants for more than a year now.

"The surrogate argument is very important for the Republican Party," said Krauze. "The party that has Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and promised four years ago that the future of the party was a different approach to immigration, just gave the convention stage to Jeff Sessions, Tom Cotton, and Joe Arpaio. And there are no Spanish-language surrogates in sight for the Trump campaign."

Still, the rush to laud Kaine for his ability to speak Spanish fluently (he has an accent and loses a word here or there that he says in English, but speaks well enough to discuss policy, as Krauze said) has also led to an immediate and forceful backlash from eye-rolling Latinos, as well.

A Washington Post analysis titled "Tim Kaine can speak Spanish but most Hispanics don’t care" argued that most Hispanics speak English and are not impressed by a vice presidential nominee that can say a few words in Spanish.

"These younger voters do not just watch Univision, listen to Spanish music, or play soccer," the Post wrote. "They dominate school systems in Arizona, California and Texas, and increasingly dominate pockets of Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Rhode Island."

Kaine's Spanish is not the same thing as having a Latino VP like Julian Castro or Tom Perez, and his cheesy at times Spanish (he and Clinton are "compañeros de alma," soulmates, he said) seems unlikely to, say, bring Latinos out in droves. Does it still matter?

"Of course it matters," said Albert Morales, a longtime Democrat who worked for the DNC. "This is the first presidential election where Spanish-language media is following it nonstop. Even eight years ago, people were engaged, but there was no boogeyman."

Morales said Mitt Romney's call to have Latinos "self-deport" themselves out of the country was nothing compared to what Trump has offered, from building a wall along the southern border, to creating a deportation force to send back 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the country.

"For the first time we have a motivating factor and it’s important that we have a person on the ticket who can articulate that message to the Jorge Ramos' and the Jose Diaz-Balart's, he said of Univision and Telemundo's top anchors.

The key to the Kaine question, Morales said, lies in the reaction from Latinos across age groups, when Trump told Ramos to go back to Univision. The video was shared everywhere, from Spanish-language media, to CNN and others. Latinos remember how different links to the video dominated newsfeeds for days. Ramos newly launched Facebook page, featuring English and Spanish, exploded during that time.

Why did that happen? Because "go back to Univision" sure sounded a lot like "go back to Mexico," to many Hispanics, across generations.

"It's about respect," Morales said.

A poll by a conservative business group, the Latino Coalition, unveiled at the Republican convention surveyed only Latino Republicans and independents, and found that respect was mentioned as important or very important by 91% of voters. Needless to say, Trump did badly even among that group.

Kaine, who gave the first-ever Senate immigration speech in Spanish in 2013, fulfills the role of the dutiful white guy working hard to communicate with viewers when he speaks Spanish during interviews. (Among bilingual Latinos, the biggest laughs often come when someone says a funny line in Spanish.)

After their interview, Krauze spoke to Kaine off the record and told him "for an American politician you speak really good Spanish."

"No soy Cervantes," Kaine shot back.

"It's a comment you would expect from a Stephen Colbert character in Spanish," Krauze said. "I was very impressed with his wit, this is a guy who is very witty in Spanish."

Kaine who has been playfully and not so playfully chided for speaking Spanglish, is actually following in a long tradition of successful companies that view it as a way of reaching bicultural Latinos.

iHeartRadio has stations it calls English with a "cultural wink" that are anywhere from 16% Hispanic listenership up to 50% Hispanic listenership. Mike Valdes-Fauli, the president of Pinta, an agency with expertise in cross-cultural marketing, counts Facebook and the NFL as clients.

When it did a Hispanic Heritage Month campaign for the NFL, the term it used was "feel the orgullo," not feel the pride. "The entire campaign was in Spanglish for this large national effort," Valdes-Fauli told BuzzFeed News at the time.

"That’s how he’s going to use it when he’s faced with a mixed crowd, an English-speaking crowd," Krauze said. "That’s how the community speaks."

Clinton campaign officials have taken this approach before, with English- and Spanish-language text messages coming to the same users who signed up for texts. It wants to hit groups in an intersectional way and might choose to do an interview with Enrique Santos, a Spanish-language radio host because he is also listened to by young Latinos.

Either because he is the new election toy or because now they can interview the vice presidential nominee, Spanish-language media has gone crazy for Kaine. Many of the Univision segments mentioned that he spoke Spanish and his missionary work in Honduras were also discussed.

And the campaign is clearly banking on making Kaine a player on Spanish-language networks. While his first interview was alongside Clinton on 60 Minutes, his first solo interviews were with Univision and Telemundo and will air Monday.

In heavily-Hispanic Miami, on the day he was announced, an energized Kaine took the microphone from Clinton to speak to a diverse crowd, of different age groups.

"Hey guys, thank you," he said.

"Hello, Miami!"

"Hello, FIU!"

"¡Y bien venidos a todos!"

The last one got him the biggest cheer.

David Duke: Trump Left The Door Open To Supporting My Candidacy

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Christine Grunnet / Reuters

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White nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke says Donald Trump "did as much as he could" to leave the door open to supporting his Senate bid.

On Meet The Press on Sunday, Trump was asked if he would support a Democrat over Duke. Trump answered, "I guess, depending on who the Democrat, but the answer would be yes."

During his radio show on Monday, Duke noted that Trump didn't rule out support for his candidacy.

"'Would you vote for a Democrat against David Duke' and Trump says, 'well, I guess it depends who the Democrat will be so the answer is yes,'" Duke said. "You know, like maybe if there's a good Democrat. But that's not the answer they wanted and the headlines there were all over the place, you know, Trump basically said he could possibly vote, he could vote for David Duke if he was running against a liberal Democrat. So he did something, I think he felt like he did as much as he could do."

Duke said earlier in the program that he's never in his political career seen his support as high as it was when he announced his candidacy for Senate as a Republican last week.

"Since my declaration, I've never ever seen the level of overwhelming support in my whole political life as I received when I announced my candidacy for the United States Senate in Louisiana," Duke said.

Duke also reaffirmed his support for Trump in the broadcast.

"I said to my people that they should support Donald Trump, I believe that absolutely with all my heart today because we have no other alternative than Donald Trump and I think he's doing some great things for the party and for our people," said Duke.


After Breakfast Booing, California Democrat Is Hosting "Unity Reception"

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Paul Morigi / Getty Images

PHILADELPHIA — California Rep. Barbara Lee is hosting a “Unity Reception” bringing together delegates from both sides on Tuesday afternoon, multiple sources confirm to BuzzFeed News.

Lee, who has passed out the invitations to operatives, high-profile delegates, and VIPs herself, is stressing the need for sides to come together on the second day of a convention notable thus far more for its dysfunction than togetherness.

Lee, sources close to her say, was taken aback by the reception she got at the California delegation breakfast.

Lee, a liberal stalwart seen as squarely in the same progressive wing as Bernie Sanders, received a less than warm welcome by rowdy members of the California delegation. Multiple outlets reported cheers of “Bernie! Bernie!” as she spoke, while others noted that there were jeers and even some boos.

Those are the likely the same Bernie supporters who wanted to see an endorsement from Lee, who withheld her support from either candidate. She was, however, careful to distinguish that a February endorsement of Clinton was from the CBC political action committee and not the CBC.

Lee has invited the Castro brothers, as well as Sanders hardliners Danny Glover and Rep. Raúl Grijalva (one of the first Bernie hardliners to endorse Clinton), and Ben Jealous, according to a source familiar with the planning for the gathering.

Bernie Sanders Team Disavows Idea Of Challenging Tim Kaine Pick

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Gustavo Caballero / Getty Images

PHILADELPHIA — Bernie Sanders' campaign manager repudiated a fledgling grassroots effort by progressive activists at the Democratic National Convention to challenge Sen. Tim Kaine as the party's vice presidential nominee.

“It’s very divisive," said Jeff Weaver, the top strategist, as he walked the floor of the hall at the Wells Fargo Center where Sanders is set to speak Monday night.

"She’s the presidential nominee. If Bernie were the nominee, would you want the conservatives trying to nominate our vice president? So, that’s what I would say.”

Rumblings of a possible anti-Kaine effort came to light on Monday morning amid a splintering Democratic Party: On Sunday, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned after leaked emails revealed a pro-Clinton bias among party officials, and on Monday, Sanders supporters booed their own candidate as he tried to rally his base toward Clinton and Kaine in the name of defeating Donald Trump.

Since Clinton announced Kaine as her running-mate, progressives have raised concerns about a number of his positions — namely, his support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and for easing some regulations on community banks.

"He's as uninspired a centrist as you know," said Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate whose bid has seen an uptick in support from Sanders voters. "A Wall St. proponent and a proponent of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Say no more."

Activists from the Bernie Delegates Network, a newly formed effort boasting 1,250 Democratic delegates, first floated the idea of challenging Kaine on Monday.

Norman Solomon, the group's national coordinator, told reporters on Monday morning that he would be working to gather 300 delegate signatures to introduce a new vice presidential nominee, but also acknowledged that the effort has no chance of success.

“We’re not delusional,” Solomon said. “We know Tim Kaine will be the nominee.”

— Additional reporting by Mary Ann Georgantopoulos

Live Updates: Democrats Search For Unity The Morning After A Rowdy Convention Night

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Reporting from Philadelphia: Ruby Cramer, Bim Adewunmi, Evan McMorris-Santoro, Darren Sands, Adrian Carrasquillo, Mary Ann Georgantopoulos, Tracy Clayton, Jim Dalrymple, Dominic Holden, Emma Loop, Ryan Broderick, and John Stanton.


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Just Photos Of Some Very, Very Emotional Bernie Sanders Supporters

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Democratic National Cryvention 2016.

Matt Rourke / AP

Mark Terrill / AP

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People Still Have Chills From Michelle Obama's DNC Speech

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“Do you think Michelle Obama is Beyoncé’s Beyoncé?”

Discussing her children and husband in what was an intensely personal speech, she made an emotional case for Hillary Clinton.

Discussing her children and husband in what was an intensely personal speech, she made an emotional case for Hillary Clinton.

Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images

"That is the story of this country, the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves," she said, growing visibly emotional.

"And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.

"And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States."

Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images


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RNC Chair: I Bet More DNC Emails Are Coming Shortly

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John Moore / Getty Images


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Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus says he thinks there's going to be more emails from the Democratic National Committee dumped on Wikileaks.

"I think this is just the beginning, I think there's going to be more emails coming out," Priebus said on the Sean Hannity Show on Tuesday. "These folks don't just dump everything they have on one shot. They're gonna come back over and over and over again."

Wikileaks released a vast array of nearly 20,000 DNC emails on its website on Friday. The FBI has said they they are investigating the alleged Russian-led hacking into the DNC's servers.

Priebus said he thought the emails showed that Bernie delegates had a right to be angry at the DNC. He added that he believed there was evidence that would soon be released showing collusion between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, even though both parties have denied it.

"My guess is that Wikileaks or these folks have emails to prove that wrong, that's my guess, I don't know it, but I also understand how these folks operate and they're gonna come out again with something shortly, I imagine," he said.

Here's Mike Pence's 3-Part Test To Determine If Someone Is A "Conservative Crank"

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Sara D. Davis / Getty Images

In a June 1993 column, Mike Pence came up with a three-part test for distinguishing commentators "from what can be defined as the conservative crank."

The current Indiana governor was a talk radio host at the time he wrote the op-ed in The Indianapolis Star. It was a critique of fellow radio host Stan Solomon, whom Pence said, "doesn't speak for me."

In it, Pence laid out the following three questions to ascertain whether someone met his standard for a conservative commentator:

“1. Does the host insist that policy debate is a broad road, easy to understand once the listener becomes enlightened to a few ‘simple’ truth? Or does the host concede that the route to reasoned policy is a narrow, difficult one of work, research and understanding?

2. Does the host traffic in information, or opinion? That is, does the host impart verifiable information that may be confirmed by friend and foe alike? Or does the host simply promote an opinion about facts and controversies on which he may or may not be fully informed?

3. Does the host engage in name-calling?

By that is meant assailing individuals and organizations that differ with him without providing any basis for the characterization. Or does he identify the players in the debate with verifiable reference to their public statements and actions, a necessity for informed debate?”

Pence went on to argue that "negative, personal attacks have no place in the public debate." Pence is now Donald Trump's running mate.

The Indianapolis Star


If Clinton Wins, Black Caucus Members Want Bobby Scott To Replace Tim Kaine

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Gustavo Caballero / Getty Images

PHILADELPHIA — One of the new open questions in politics: If Hillary Clinton gets elected, who will be appointed to fill Tim Kaine’s Senate seat in Virginia?

Congressional Black Caucus members have a candidate in mind: Rep. Bobby Scott.

Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver told BuzzFeed News that the CBC contacted the Clinton campaign a day or two before the vice presidential decision to make sure she understood that the caucus fully backs Scott. “We told the secretary that he had already expressed interest on his own, so that's who we'd like them to consider.” Multiple sources close to Scott confirmed to BuzzFeed News that Scott is open to the idea, and has signaled to the Clinton campaign he'd accept if selected by McAuliffe.

A source familiar with the inner-workings of the CBC said members what will impact Scott’s chances more than anything is his fundraising numbers. “He's brilliant, but not political,” the source said.

Rep. Bobby Scott.

Evan Vucci / AP

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Scott said he was "very flattered" that his colleagues in the CBC had pushed his name forward, but that the first priority has to be electing the Clinton-Kaine ticket.

"If we don't do that, there's nothing to speculate about," Scott said shortly after addressing an audience at a criminal justice panel hosted by the 20/20 Club at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. "That needs to be our focus."

Scott said he believed his home state and Pennsylvania were in good shape, and that it bodes well for the ticket nationally, putting "the arithmetic almost out of reach." Scott said he'll deal with the question of his interest in the seat after the election.

"Scott has been a champion for working people and would be a great addition to the Senate," Will Jawando, a former Maryland Congressional candidate who is close to many members said. "He's experienced and frankly, more diversity is needed."

CBC political action committee chair Gregory Meeks is also privately campaigning for Scott, several sources say. Currently, there are only two black senators: Democrat Cory Booker and Republican Tim Scott.

Kaine’s seat is an important one and, if he vacates it, whoever is appointed to fill it would face a challenge: The new senator would serve for about a year, then run in a special election, then run in a traditional election the next year. With control of the Senate at stake, Democrats would be very sensitive to retaining the seat.

Some choices on McAuliffe’s shortlist are said to include Northern Virginia Democrats Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, Don Beyer, and Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring.

Democratic Senator: DNC Leak "Shouldn't Have Happened," DWS Had To Go

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Bill Pugliano / Getty Images

Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow said Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to step down after Wikileaks released a batch of almost 20,000 DNC emails on its website on Friday.

"Yes, she did, the emails shouldn't have happened and she needed to step down and I appreciate the fact that she did that for party unity," the Michigan senator said on SiriusXM radio's The Michael Smerconish Program.

Take a listen:

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Democratic Senator: Emails Suggest Sanders Was Right That DNC Wasn't Neutral

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Yuri Gripas / Reuters

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Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said on Monday that Democratic National Committee emails leaked last week suggest that Bernie Sanders was right that the DNC wasn't neutral in the Democratic primary.

“It is clear that there were some differences between her and the Sanders campaign," Durbin said of ousted DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. "Bernie said for a long time, he didn’t think the DNC was staying neutral. Well, the emails came out, wherever they came from, and suggest that he was right. And so Hillary Clinton said, ‘We’re moving quickly, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, thank you for your service, we’re gonna have Donna Brazile take over the Democratic National Committee until the election.'”

In the interview on WGN radio's Steve Cochran Show, Durbin also addressed speculation that he may be the next DNC chair, saying he wasn't seeking the position.

Isiah Thomas Glad Michael Jordan "Joined The Party"

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PHILADELPHIA — After the person many consider the greatest basketball player ever put his name and considerable fortune behind a social cause, Isiah Thomas has a message for Michael Jordan: "Welcome."

Thomas is a Hall of Famer, a two-time NBA champion, Finals MVP 1990 — and also has the distinction of being one of the most socially-conscious athletes of his era.

On Tuesday, he told BuzzFeed News that he was happy that Jordan finally "joined the party" in doing work he and other athletes have been doing their entire careers.

Jordan donated $2 million to causes and submitted a lengthy statement to ESPN's The Undefeated saying he could no longer stay silent about what was happening in the world.

"I thought it was great," Thomas said.

In 1986, at his prime, Thomas organized a walking tour through some of Detroit's poorest neighborhoods, urging young people to curb violence in their communities. "It makes no sense to have a situation where people are killing each other, taking each other's lives," Thomas said then, according to the Los Angeles Times. "If one less guy or girl gets shot, if one less mother has to cry, then it's the most successful program ever run in Detroit, because one less person died. I think we've convinced at least one person not to do anything."

"If you really want to be technical about it, I started in 1968 when my mother was marching in Chicago and she was walking me down the street with her," Thomas told BuzzFeed News.

Thomas said that on the NBA stage he'd organized a march to bring attention to — and spoken out against — poverty and violence in Detroit in the 1980s. In concert with then Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, he was a figure in organizing Nelson Mandela's visit to Detroit. Pistons players gifted Mandela with a hat and jacket that he donned in this iconic photo.

He also helped put on the Peace Basketball Tournament in Chicago and in New York.

As president of the New York Liberty, Thomas said he was proud of the WNBA players who stood up for justice in light of the killing of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling.

"Most of our women are four-year educated, multicultural, and have vastly different experiences than just the American experience," Thomas said of WNBA players. "Many of them are speaking two or three languages. So they speak with an international perspective and cultural understanding of the world which gives them a unique voice in this space."

Thomas applauded Knicks star Carmelo Anthony for lending his voice to the movement, saying he didn't think his good friend and Knicks owner James Dolan had a problem with players speaking out.

"I don't think our league has a problem with it. Who can argue with equality? That's all anyone's asking for is equality."

Bernie's Best-Known Latina Staffer Set To Join Post-Campaign "Our Revolution" Group

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Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

PHILADELPHIA — Erika Andiola, who played a role in shaping and drawing attention to the Bernie Sanders campaign's leftward policy shift on immigration, is set to join "Our Revolution," the Sanders-inspired post-election group created to harness the energy of his campaign, two sources told BuzzFeed News.

Andiola, who was the Latino press secretary for Sanders, looks to join the communications team of the new group.

It "will be no different from the goal of our campaign: We must transform American politics to make our political and economic systems once again responsive to the needs of working families," an email to supporters said Monday night.

As would be expected of a sharp-elbowed group with policy goals, the organization is a 501c4, which means it can engage in political activity for and against candidates. (That also means the group can accept big donations, something Sanders has railed against as a candidate.)

Andiola, a deeply respected activist in the national immigration movement, has blended on the ground work with undocumented immigrants in Arizona and across the country, with a willingness to battle Democrats, including President Obama and Hillary Clinton before and during the primary.

She has declined to discuss whether she would endorse Clinton, and argues that the media and Democratic Party were too easy on Clinton on issues that matter to Latinos.

Operatives in Sanders orbit said the addition of Andiola would be a big deal for the direction of Our Revolution.

Deputy political director Arturo Carmona disputed that Andiola had already joined Our Revolution but added that she would be a "fabulous asset" to the group.

Chuck Rocha, a consultant for the Sanders campaign, said a lot of work is still to be done in the progressive movement.

"Hiring the most prolific immigration activist in the country would be a clear signal to the Latino and immigrant community that 'Our Revolution" intends to pay attention to their issues," he said.

Andiola would not comment because she said the hiring was not yet official. She said she is going on vacation to Puerto Rico to assess what she wants to do next.


Elizabeth Warren Fans Tell Bernie Booers To Get Over It

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Drew Angerer / Getty Images

PHILADELPHIA — Two die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters arrived early here on Tuesday afternoon to attend a powerpoint presentation on the American economy, delivered by the party’s big-name progressive hero, Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

While waiting, they debated whether this liberal icon was now a sellout.

"She's a turncoat, not backing Bernie,” said 58-year-old Georgette Chalker. “She's going where the money is." Her friend, George Dusichka, 40, disagreed. The Bernie-or-Busters, Dusichka argued, are missing the forest for the trees.

This was the question among devout progressives the day after Warren was loudly booed by Sanders fans packed into the Wells Fargo Center for the first night of the convention here in Philadelphia. At one point during her vociferously pro-Hillary primetime speech, chants of “We Trusted You!” echoed through the hall.

If Warren’s June endorsement of Clinton came as a disappointment, the speech seemed to come as a betrayal amid tensions this week over the DNC email leak.

Twenty four hours later, the senator from Massachusetts was back to the kind of wonky, professorial progressivism that made her a star in the first place.

Across town from the convention, Warren stepped to the lectern on an unadorned stage and delivered a presentation complete with bar graphs, charts, and statistics in nearly every slide. “This is a little bit of an experiment,” the former Harvard Law professor admitted. “Once a teacher always a teacher.”

There was no fanfare or introductory speaker. A playlist of woman-driven pop music, including staples of Clinton’s campaign soundtrack, filled the ballroom before the music cut off, Warren came out, and began to lecture.

Several hundred came to hear it. Some wore Bernie buttons and Bernie t-shirts. None booed. And many said Sanders fans simply had to look forward, just like Warren.

Susan Gillespie, a 67-year-old Warren fan who supports Clinton, recalled doing the same after she campaigned her heart out for Eugene McCarthy in 1968.

“I’d just say, we got over it,” Gillespie said.

Two Sanders voters in the front row said the Warren boo-ers were refusing to acknowledge the “terrifying” prospect of a victory for Donald Trump.

Jessica Herring, 32, said she was as pro-Sanders as the next progressive. “And then it didn’t work out — and now I’m a grown-up,” she said. “And I think the Bernie or Bust people need to deal with reality and move forward.”

“That’s it,” said her friend, 33-year-old Brandon Solstad, who argued that Warren would not be damaged inside progressive circles by her Clinton endorsement.

Still, there those like Georgette Chalker, weren’t happy.

The New Jersey resident plans to write in Sanders’ name on the ballot this fall — and though she wasn’t in the Wells Fargo Center when Bernie fans booed Warren, she said that if she had been, she would have booed right along with them.

“You have to make compromises in life,” her friend tried saying.

Chalker cut him off.

“Why should there be a compromise when we find out two days ago that the whole election was a fraud and there was voter suppression going on?” she said.

“Why should we compromise?"

What Peter Thiel Was Doing In Cleveland

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If you want to understand what Peter Thiel was doing in Cleveland, you won’t get much from reading his brief and quickly delivered convention speech, which was focused in surprisingly large part on the sort of thing political hacks expect technologists to talk about: the sad state of federal government IT.

The tame speech left everyone who has been reading and listening to the creative, iconoclastic Thiel for years scratching their heads and wondering why he really endorsed Trump. And Thiel didn’t just fly in and out of Cleveland. He arrived early and held court in the ritzy Cleveland neighborhood of Shaker Heights. There, his guests included, among others who declined to be identified, the longtime conservative columnist Michael Barone. And Barone emerged from Cleveland with a column asking, “Is America Ready for a Disruptive President?”

You can always tell when East Coast media types — Barone is a veteran observer of American electoral politics and longtime editor of The Almanac of American Politics— have been hanging out with Silicon Valley seers, because they start throwing around the word “disruption.” (I wish I was immune from this habit.) I emailed Barone about my suspicion that he was channeling Thiel in his column. He replied that indeed, “It's based on a number of interactions with him, and on reading his book and other writings and watching his conversation with Tyler Cowen.”

And his column, needless to say, is not about fixing government IT. It’s about blowing the whole thing up.

The case for Trump, he argues rather loosely, is that “America has mostly been built by disruption.” The instances he cites are the American Revolution, industrialization, and the New Deal. (OK.)

“As tech billionaire Peter Thiel argued Thursday, disruption is a good thing when old ways -- and especially government -- aren't working well,” Barone concludes.

Here’s the thing: Thiel actually didn’t really say that in his speech. In fact, he didn’t use the word “disruption” — and it seems unlikely he’d use it that way. It’s drawn from a Harvard Business School theory about how incumbent companies respond to upstart challengers, a theory that Thiel no doubt knows well, and about which he’s written dismissively. I first noticed Barone’s column, in fact, when another Silicon Valley luminary started making fun of it.

Andreessen (an old Thiel friend whose firm is an investor in BuzzFeed) didn’t respond to my request for comment.

But Barone is a lucid writer when he stays away from the Silicon Valley jargon, and so it’s worth taking his case for Trump on its face, and as the best explanation we’ve got for what Peter Thiel was doing in Cleveland, sandwiched between Reince Priebus and Donald Trump's smooth old friend Tom Barrack.

By Barone's interpretation, Thiel — anti-college activist and pioneer of stateless seabound colonies — sees in Trumpism not any particularly appealing feature, but just the prospect of destruction, which might turn out to be creative.

Now Donald Trump is an actual conservative, in the literal sense of the word. He’s looking backward, trying to “make America great again.”

Peter Thiel is a conservative only in a newer American sense; his views are, in fact, quite radical. And the political approach Barone seems to be translating here is basically revolutionary. It’s the style of argument you more usually see on the Marxist fringes about refusing to palliate the masses. The only other public figure to make that line of argument this cycle is Susan Sarandon, who suggested to Chris Hayes that "Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in, things will really explode.”

A spokesman for Thiel, Jeremiah Hall, did not respond to a request for an interview with Thiel, or for a clearer explanation of what he was doing in Cleveland. So Barone's explanation — and Sarandon's — may be the best we've got.

At The DNC, Black Women Activists Will Talk About Turning Grief Into Action

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Fulton, McBath, and McSpadden

Paras Griffin / Getty Images

PHILADELPHIA — On Tuesday night, eight women will take the stage in Philadelphia and tell stories of grief.

The Mothers of the Movement — black women whose children died as a result of police or racial violence, and whose children’s deaths helped spark a new generation of activism — will speak on behalf of Hillary Clinton and make the case that that grief can be transformed into purpose.

According to interviews with nearly a dozen people around the mothers and the Clinton campaign, they will frame Clinton as a devoted, big-hearted vehicle for change in policing and the justice system, a candidate who reached out to them when it wasn't politically gainful, spoke directly to them, and invited them to share their stories with the nation. A spokesperson for Clinton said the mothers will focus on their personal narratives and children; discuss policing, systemic racism; and argue Clinton is the best candidate to stem gun violence.

Some of the mothers have chosen to write their speeches themselves, a Clinton campaign official said. They are often asked to speak, and even though they will hew closely to the theme of turning pain into purpose, there is a certain level of uncertainty as to what to expect when Sybrina Fulton, Geneva Reed-Veal, will be joined by Lucy McBath, Gwen Carr, Cleopatra Pendelton, Maria Hamilton, Lezley McSpadden, and Wanda Johnson, walk on the stage.

"For some of them the pain is more recent… some of them are remembering anniversaries," Minyon Moore, a longtime Clinton confidant told BuzzFeed News. "So there are phases and each time they tell their story they have this internal steeliness and resolve but it's still painful. Every time I don't think there's any [worse] pain that a woman can experience than losing her child."

"We can never take for granted that every time they tell their story to us they're opening up that wound again," she said. "But we're grateful because it gives us a chance to help them and and share with them and say, 'We're here for you.'"

The task of introducing the mothers to Clinton was handled by LaDavia Drane, the campaign's director of black outreach, during the Democratic primary. In April, the New York Times reported that Clinton met them for dinner in Chicago in November. Since then, the mothers have criss-crossed the country as surrogates for her.

Many of the young activists involved in the Black Lives Matter cause are either skeptical of electoral politics or supported Bernie Sanders. But throughout the Democratic primary, the mothers were strong surrogates for Clinton, who did extremely well with black voters, especially older voters and black women. And while the mothers’ advocacy for Clinton has drawn the attention of black voters, senior Clinton aides and friends believe their stories transcend race.

"When you're talking about people who have lost a child,” senior spokesperson Karen Finney said, “there's a shared experience there that opens the door to hear a story from someone they thought they might not have anything in common with."

Benjamin Crump, the civil rights attorney who has represented several families who lost people due to police violence said about their control their emotion on stage.

"I'll be praying that they don't lose their ability to communicate their thoughts clearly as they want to the world,” Crump told BuzzFeed News in an interview. “It's obviously going to be emotional because any parent that has a child immediately puts themselves in that situation and says, 'My God, what if that happened to my child?' Especially people of color — but any parent can feel that. It's the most horrific any parent can imagine. You would rather die than your child die.”

Moore said the connection between the mothers and Clinton was palpable, particularly around wanting to do something together to create changes in society.

"I remember Trayvon's mother saying, 'She saw me,’” Moore recalled. “And it's very unique that you have mothers who have suffered from tragedy, especially with young black men and they have been elevated in way that people know that they have pain that has been hidden. But these mothers that you'll see [Tuesday], there's thousands of them. They're black, they're white, they're brown.”

Spokesperson For Pro-Sanders Walkout Group Compares Protest To March On Washington

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Dominic Holden / BuzzFeed News

PHILADELPHIA — A spokesperson for a contingent of the Bernie Sanders supporters who stormed out of the Democratic convention on Tuesday compared their walkout to the March on Washington of 1963, a massive demonstration that served as a catalyst to passing landmark civil rights laws.

“The March on Washington was an example of a movement at a high point, and I’d say this is one of those,” Shyla Nelson, a Sanders delegate from Vermont, told BuzzFeed News in an interview.

Shyla Nelson

Dominic Holden / BuzzFeed News

Nelson added that she believes the movement to elect Sanders and Tuesday’s walkout from the Wells Fargo Center exhibited a “tipping point” in the movement for a more equitable country.

As it become numerically apparent that Clinton had secured the Democratic nomination on Tuesday evening, Bernie Sanders supporters filtered off the convention floor and into the halls of the Wells Fargo Center.

They chanted “Walk out!” — and then their chants shifted to include “This is what democracy looks like!” and later “Black lives matter!” Dozens of protesters gathered inside and around media tents populated by reporters. (The tents are located just outside the convention center.)

Dozens of protesters wore tape over their mouths. Nelson and other Sanders delegates said she had been selected to speak for the “silent” walkout. In an interview, Nelson said that other contingents of protesters had joined in, and not all the protesters were of the same effort.

Dominic Holden / BuzzFeed News

Asked by BuzzFeed News what the walkout sought to achieve, Nelson struggled to identify what, precisely, it was. “The fundamental difference between [Sanders and Clinton] is the sense of urgency to address the nation’s crisis,” she began.

Pressed for goals of the protest or hopes to reform the Democratic National Committee, Nelson said several planks “to democratize the party platform were shot down” by the party’s platform committee.

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, attended by roughly a quarter million people, was more than eight months in the planning. (The march had precise demands, including calls for higher minimum wage and better job training, along with voting rights and protections from discrimination for people of color.) It is widely considered a catalyst for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The walkout Tuesday was organized on a concentrated timeline. Michelle Mahon, a Sanders delegate from Ohio, said news of the protest spread by word of mouth among delegates midway through the roll call over a period of minutes. Jan Kanagy, also from Ohio, said Sanders delegate planned the walkout during the roll call vote “like playing a game of telephone.”

“It was in flux as the roll call was happening,” Nelson said. Explaining why the protest was organized, she explained, “We don’t think the voices of the grassroots, everyday Americans have been heard in this election.”

Live Updates: After Democrats Make History, Obama Looks To Secure His Legacy

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Reporting from Philadelphia: Ruby Cramer, Bim Adewunmi, Evan McMorris-Santoro, Darren Sands, Adrian Carrasquillo, Mary Ann Georgantopoulos, Jim Dalrymple, Dominic Holden, Emma Loop, and John Stanton.


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