A few blocks from the DNC a pop-up art exhibition from Rock The Vote, called Truth to Power, showcased artists such as Banksy, Michael Murphy, Amy Elkins, and GILF! Here is a sampling of the striking paintings, installations, and others.

"Flags"

Banksy / Truth to Power

"False Profits"

Mear One / Jonathan Levine Gallery / Truth to Power

"The Talk"

Michael D'Antuono / Truth to Power

"And Counting"

GILF! / Truth to Power

"Kimmy"

Casey Rae Poehlein / Truth to Power

Truth to Power

Debt

FK Productions / Truth to Power

"Icy Signs"

Truth to Power

"Parting Words"

Amy Elkins / Truth to Power

"Summer 2015"

Bill Dunlap / Truth to Power

"#GOVOTE"

FK Productions / Truth to Power

"Elemental Crisis"

Beau Stanton / Truth to Power

"Tahrir"

Lmnopi / Truth to Power

"Identity Crisis"

Michael Murphy / Truth to Power

All photos of the art were taken by Christian Hansen for BuzzFeed News with permission of the gallery.

Sue Ogrocki / AP

After a grand jury investigation found carelessness, secrecy, and ignorance led the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to multiple botched execution attempts, a department spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that a new prison warden’s execution experience was “immaterial” to his selection for the job.

Oklahoma officials pointed to no experience in the new warden's past with executions, and BuzzFeed News has been unable to find any evidence that the new warden has any experience with carrying out or overseeing death sentences.

On Wednesday, corrections head Joe Allbaugh, himself new to the position, announced the selection of Terry Royal to run the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Both the warden and the director have many responsibilities under the state's current execution procedures.

Neither Allbaugh or Royal appear to have any experience with executions.

When asked if Royal had any experience carrying out executions, a corrections spokesperson responded that "[t]he execution question is and was immaterial to his hiring."

Royal, who most recently ran the Lake Correctional Institution in Florida, has 25 years of corrections experience — but none in any prison that had responsibilities for carrying out executions.

Warden Terry Royal

via Oklahoma Department of Corrections

Royal's appointment will still have to be approved by the Oklahoma Board of Corrections, which will meet in September. The Board is also expected to discuss the grand jury's findings at the meeting.

Asked why the department believed Royal’s experience or lack thereof was “immaterial,” spokesperson Terri Watkins told BuzzFeed News, "The warden under the protocol doesn’t have a role in executions. That is why execution experience is immaterial to the hiring."

Under the current protocol, however, the warden has significant responsibilities overseeing executions. The warden, along with another corrections employee, chooses which execution team members are retained and which are replaced.

The 34-page execution protocol closes out by stating that "[t]he wardens of Oklahoma State Penitentiary and Mabel Bassett Correctional Center are responsible for compliance with" the procedures.

Previously, the warden had also received the execution drugs, and was supposed to verify their contents. In fact, the grand jury report singled out the previous warden, Anita Trammell, who stepped down during the investigation into how the wrong execution drug was used in the 2015 execution of Charles Warner.

Earlier, in 2014, Oklahoma took 45 minutes to execute Clayton Lockett in what Trammell described as "a bloody mess." After an investigation run by the Department of Public Safety, which reports to the governor, the state was allowed to carry out another execution.

The state changed the protocol, however, giving the warden fewer responsibilities.

This time, in January 2015, they used the wrong drug with Warner. The mistake only became public when the state nearly used the same wrong drug in the following scheduled execution, in September of that year.

This time, the investigation into execution mistakes was conducted by a grand jury. The grand jury report placed much of the blame at the feet of Trammell and former corrections director Robert Patton.

Before the grand jury, Trammell also tried to argue that it wasn't her responsibility.

"Warden [Trammell] further testified [s]he was not responsible for what happened at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary facility as it related to executions, despite being the Oklahoma State Penitentiary's warden, because it was the Director's job," the grand jury wrote.

"There are just some things you ask questions about, and there's some things that you don't," Trammell told the grand jury. "I never asked questions about the process" of getting the drugs.

Trammell also told the grand jury that "there were lots of things that took place at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary that wasn't in the policy."

The grand jury report found that "Warden [Trammell] did not do [her] job and, consequently, failed the Department and the State as a whole."

The grand jury also wrote that "the Execution Protocol explicitly states the Warden of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary is responsible for compliance with the Preparation and Administration of Chemical provisions of the Execution Protocol."

Royal will inherit Trammell's execution responsibilities, provided the protocol isn't changed.

"With the director’s leadership and the rest of talented staff at the department, we will face challenges head-on to ensure the goals and mission of the facility and agency are met," Royal said in a statement. "I appreciate Director Allbaugh’s confidence in me to lead the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.”

None of the prisons Royal has worked at carried out executions. The Florida Department of Corrections did not respond to repeated questions about his experience, and the Indiana Department of Corrections, where Royal started his career, would not answer questions about its execution personnel.

Royal also spent time in Arizona, working at a minimum security private prison. Patton, the Oklahoma corrections director that resigned in the middle of the grand jury investigation, was the Division Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections while Royal was in Arizona. As such, Patton was overseeing a variety of things — including overseeing security assessments of the prison were Royal was warden.

The grand jury report noted that there was significant overlap between Arizona and Oklahoma's execution methods. Patton molded Oklahoma's protocol after Arizona's, and also hired the Arizona warden that ran the prison where a two-hour execution occurred.

Allbaugh, the head of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, also has no execution-related experience. This is his first job in corrections, in fact. Allbaugh previously served as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President George W. Bush.

When Allbaugh was selected earlier this year, the chair of the Board of Corrections, Kevin Gross, said it “might be interesting” to have someone without direct corrections experience run the prison system, according to the Tulsa World.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

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Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona says chants of "lock her up" at the Republican National Convention hurt the party's case against Hillary Clinton.

"On the Republican side, I had a bit of trouble with some of the chants, the 'lock her up' and what not," Flake said on WSL-AM 890 radio in Chicago. "I don't think that while it certainly appeals inside that room, it doesn't appeal much on the outside."

"There's a very strong case that should be made against Hillary Clinton, and I'm afraid that people don't take our argument seriously if we're just chanting 'lock her up.' I was a bit concerned about that," he added. "Overall, a lot of good speeches and lot of it was inspiring."

Flake confirmed that he still doesn't support Trump.

"I just can't support him while he is making the kind of statements he is about Hispanics and other groups and demeaning John McCain and his service and what says to POWs," Flake said. "I hope to be able to support him but he's got to change some positions."

North Carolina NAACP president, Rev. William Barber, center at podium gestures as he is surrounded by supporters during a news conference at the Third Street Bethel AME Church in Richmond, Va., Tuesday, June 21, 2016.

Steve Helber / AP

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court struck down several voting restrictions passed by North Carolina's lawmakers in 2013, finding that the provisions were enacted with "racially discriminatory intent" in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.

Among the provisions in the North Carolina law that the appeals court has ordered the state not to enforce are limits on the type of photo ID required for voting; reductions to the amount of early voting in the state; and elimination of same-day registration, out-of-precinct provisional voting, and preregistration that allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to indicate an intent to register when they turned 18.

"The only clear factor linking these various 'reforms' is their impact on African American voters," the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals held on Friday.

The court ruled that "the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision," with the effect of taking away their "opportunity [to vote] because [they] were about to exercise it."

In particular, the court looked to the fact that "the legislature requested and received racial data as to usage of the practices changed by the proposed law" before passing the law.

Looking at the facts underlying the enactment of the law, Judge Diana Motz wrote for the court, "[W]e can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent."

North Carolina can accept the ruling, seek review from the full 4th Circuit, or ask the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the decision.

The ruling follows a decision from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last week in which that court — in a divided, en banc decision — held that Texas' voter ID law had a discriminatory effect. The appeals court there sent the case back down to the district court to determine the appropriate remedy.

In Friday's decision, the 4th Circuit went further, finding that the law was motivated by a discriminatory intent — not just that it had a discriminatory effect. Motz's decision for the court took particular and repeated aim at the district court judge's findings in the case.

"[T]he district court apparently considered [the law] simply an appropriate means for one party to counter recent success by another party," the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote of the Republican-led legislature. "We recognize that elections have consequences, but winning an election does not empower anyone in any party to engage in purposeful racial discrimination."

The court found that there was no need to send the case back down to the district court because its review of the record in the case "permits only one resolution of the factual issue" — a finding that race was a "but-for" cause of the passage of the provisions, in other words, the provisions would not have been passed but for race considerations.

As such, the court permanently enjoined the state from enforcing any of the five provisions "regarding photo ID, early voting, same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting, and preregistration" under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The court did not, however, issue the remedies requested by the plaintiffs under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, putting poll observers in place during elections and putting the state under preclearance obligations — a provision "rarely used," the court noted, and "not necessary here in light of our injunction."

Motz did not join the court's opinion as to the issuance of the permanent injunction for the photo ID provision. That portion of the opinion was written by Judge James Wynn Jr. — who, along with Judge Henry Floyd, had joined the remainder of Motz's decision.

Motz wrote, in dissenting to that one issue, that a later amendment to the photo ID provision — providing for a "reasonable impediment exception" to the photo ID requirement — raised enough of a question about whether that remedied the unconstitutionality of the photo ID provision that she would have issued a temporary injunction as to that provision with a remand to determine the appropriate remedy.

Update at 6 p.m.: Legislative leaders respond to the 4th Circuit's ruling.

Read the opinion:

Mark Makela / Reuters

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Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell praised Hillary Clinton on Friday for her speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, but said that it "wasn't outstanding" as a piece of poetic rhetoric.

“Although the secretary isn’t the type of orator that the president is or the vice president, I think after the smoke cleared last night, nobody was thinking about Joe, as good a guy as he is, or anybody else," said Rendell, the chairman of the Philadelphia Host Committee for the Democratic National Convention, referring to Joe Biden.

"I think the thought was we have the right person," he continued. "Although from a standpoint of poetic rhetoric, Secretary Clinton’s speech wasn’t outstanding in that regard, I thought she looked and sounded as presidential, as determined, as forceful, and as stable as anybody ever could. I thought you had no trouble closing your eyes and thinking that Hillary Clinton was president of the United States.”

Rendell made the comments on the Chris Stigall Show on 1210 WPHT Philadelphia radio after the host asked if Vice President Biden's speech on Wednesday night caused Democrats to regret nominating Clinton instead of him.

“Well, I think that may have occurred to a couple of people," Rendell initially replied. "But look, campaigns don’t always reflect how a candidate’s gonna do in office."

He continued, "But the Clinton folks, and I didn’t have anything to do with this part of it, we just did the logistics of the infrastructure and all that. But what happened at the podium for 4 days was as well-planned and as well executed as any convention I can remember and I’ve been to 8 and I’ve seen at least 20 in my lifetime. And I never saw anything better done and better organized than that.”

Michael Dalder / Reuters

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Sen. John McCain said this week that if Russia is behind the hack on the Democratic National Committee, the American public should be deeply disturbed. The Arizona senator added that he is considering holding hearings on Russia's involvement in the hack.

"The question is on these emails, what is the Russian involvement? I'm seriously considering, and I haven't reach a conclusion yet, that maybe we ought to have a hearing on whether the Russians hacked into the emails and then released them in an attempt to affect an American election," McCain told NewsTalk 550 KFYI this week. "I'm not saying it's true, but it is certainly coincidental at best."

"If indeed the Russians are the ones who did the hacking, if they're the ones that released it, this raises serious questions," added McCain.

McCain said Russians have the best hacking capabilities out there, followed by China.

"This should disturb us, if indeed the Russians have been involved in this. It should be extremely disturbing to all of us," McCain said. "I think it is Congress' role to look into it, including the Senate Armed Services Committee."

Gary Cameron / Reuters

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Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a Donald Trump supporter, says Trump needs to stop making unwise comments that show a lack of self-control.

Santorum, speaking on the Laura Ingraham Show Friday, also said if Trump was serious when he asked Russia to hack and release Hillary Clinton's private server, then it "raises serious questions" about his judgement.

Trump has said he was joking when he made the comments.

"Trump's biggest obstacle is he's gotta show to a lot of voters who are skeptical about trusting someone who's an agent of change that he's someone who can they trust to be president," Santorum said.

He added, "He can't be a traditional candidate, it's not who he is and he has to be a little shoot from the hip, but he has to avoid saying the things, like Russia's hacking the email accounts. He has stay away from the things that just look, frankly, intemperate, and that are really a policy risk, that are just not wise ideas. You say it as a joke, that's one thing, but if you say it in a serious manner, I think that raises serious questions."

"I think he was being sarcastic, I wouldn't have said it," Ingraham interjected.

"I hope so," Santorum said. "Trump has to be much more responsible, but he can't abandon the shoot from the hip. I mean, there's a halfway point that works and hopefully he'll find it."

On Friday, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals held that North Carolina violated the Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment when it passed several voting restrictions in 2013.

Steve Helber / AP

For decades, most voting changes in North Carolina had to be submitted to the Justice Department before going into effect under a Voting Rights Act-required process called "preclearance."

In 2013, however, the Supreme Court effectively ended that process in a case called Shelby County v. Holder by striking down the formula used to decide which changes were subject to preclearance.

That's when North Carolina decided to pass these changes:

In a remarkable section of the 4th Circuit's decision, Judge Diana Motz lays out the five provisions at issue and how race was used to make the decision to pass the provision.

1. The photo ID requirement:

2. The reduction in early voting:

3. The elimination of same-day registration:

4. The elimination of out-of-precinct, provisional voting:

5. The elimination of preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds:

LINK: Read the BuzzFeed News report on Friday's decision.

LINK: Read the full decision here.

George Frey / Getty Images

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Former Republican nominee Mitt Romney said earlier this month he thought Donald Trump could win the presidency, citing Hillary Clinton's high unfavorable numbers and the unpredictability of the race.

Romney was speaking with Republican consultant Mike Murphy's Radio Free GOP podcast released two weeks ago when he made the comments.

"You have to give Donald Trump credit, he was able to bring a rhetoric and a style that he had perfected over his career to the political sphere and connect with people and become the nominee," Romney said. "Despite the fact that I and a lot of other people thought he would not be an ideal nominee, he is. At this stage, it's rougher going, but I can't predict what's gonna happen."

"To be honest, it's very possible in my view that Trump wins," continued Romney. "I wouldn't think it'd be by a landslide, but I think he could win. I think he could lose, I think he could lose by a landslide. But, I don't know which it's going to be and a lot of that depends on what happens to Hillary Clinton. Is there a meltdown moment, or some implosion of some kind?"

The former governor said he wouldn't vote for Trump or Clinton and would look at the other candidates running to see who he would vote for. Romney also said he could write in the name of another Republican if unhappy with choices.

Later in the interview, Romney said he never thought Trump would win the primary, but that because of the crowded field of candidates he missed being scrutinized in a way that might have kept him from winning the nomination.

"It was an ideal setting for him, and he was successful going through it, you've got to give him credit for that," said Romney.

Romney stated Clinton was viewed as inauthentic, and she was trying to act like her husband former President Bill Clinton.

"You can't forget that Hillary Clinton is a player as well, and she's an awful candidate. People don't trust her, they don't like in my view she comes across as not being at all authentic. I don't understand why it is she can't be what I had expected her to be, which is Angela Merkel or Kathleen Sebelius," said Romney. "There are serious women leaders who don't go into an audience and put their arms up in the air and make a big guffaw kind of smile. It's almost like she's acting like she's Bill Clinton and she's not Bill Clinton. Nonetheless, it doesn't come across well."

"I think she's a really challenged candidate and the unfavorables numbers that she has suggest that it is not going well for her, so, she could lose this. Right now, Donald Trump has momentum, but he's facing some tough headwinds, but Hillary Clinton is also facing headwinds."

Jessica Kourkounis / Getty Images

For 57 minutes on Thursday night, America saw Hillary Clinton deliver a polished primetime acceptance speech, interrupted only by positive chants from the hall.

And for two weeks leading up to those 57 minutes, the most pivotal of the Democratic National Convention, a tightly organized hierarchy of delegates, floor "whips," floor captains, and regional coordinators honed a system unseen by viewers at home to counter hecklers in real-time and intercept rumored protests, aided in secret by allies in the ranks of agitated Bernie Sanders delegates.

The whip operation relied on the same strict preparation and careful execution that Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook has made his trademark, according to details provided by two operatives involved, including a state floor captain.

Some Sanders delegates were recruited to act as moles, sniffing out plans for demonstrations on various pro-Sanders email and chat threads, the floor captain said. Over GroupMe, a messaging app, alerts went out about what to look for, including rumored plots to disrupt Clinton’s speech by ringing cowbells, throwing toilet paper, blocking doors, and lying down in the aisles of the Wells Fargo Center.

The floor captains for each state briefed their delegates on what to do in the case of near every possible protest: banners stashed under chairs to block disruptive Bernie-or-Bust delegates, signs distributed across the floor to outnumber anti-Clinton posters and t-shirts in the crowd.

“None of it was intimidation or muscular or silencing. It was all just preparation,” the floor captain said. “You’re gonna chant? We’re gonna chant louder. You’re gonna have a banner. We’re gonna have a bigger banner.” A lone heckler? “We had them surrounded.”

The orders came from regional coordinators stationed in the boiler room, the campaign's headquarters for the duration of the convention, down to each state's floor captains, the supporters tasked with managing delegates, maintaining the best visuals in their section of the hall, and running a team of floor whips. In the lead-up to Thursday's speech, floor captains were subjected to surprise dress rehearsal drills, testing out each state's response to a disruptive pro-Sanders scenario.

Delegates were told to respond immediately to boos or heckling with chants, prompted by a phonetic GroupMe command: chant “HILL-A-REE," it read.

“As soon as it started, we knew what we must do, and every delegate knew what they must do,” the floor whip said. Instantly, the Clinton delegates in the state nearest the heckler received the text, raised their signs, and chanted.

In the arena, the effect of the operation was a series of chants from small pockets of the crowd at random and occasionally ill-timed points in Thursday’s speech, causing Clinton to pause as the chants caught on across the hall.

Many of the loudest hecklers came from Sanders’ California delegation. To prepare, the campaign sent 50 Clinton delegates to the Wells Fargo Center to stand in line and reserve seats, ensuring the section had a heavy Clinton presence up front.

The campaign employed a similar operation during the Rules Committee meeting last weekend, implementing three tiers of safeguards to ensure delegates voted according to plan: a GroupMe chat, a system of hand signals (two fingers for yes, one for no), and a code word embedded in the testimony Clinton supporters gave on behalf of every amendment.

The whip team was put together by David Huynh, the campaign's director of delegate operations and ballot access, with help from the Sanders campaign aides, who repeatedly encouraged the senator’s supporters to soften their protests amid tensions over the leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee.

On at least one occasion during the convention, floor whips had to unveil a “Stronger Together” banner, blocking a group of progressives holding “Oligarch” signs. In the end, the campaign did not have to deploy its largest banner.

"It's not that we were expecting anything," the floor captain said. "It was that we prepared for anything."

Alex Wong / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Rev. Dr. William Barber II said he thinks Donald Trump is trying to "dehumanize" the Khan family as part of an effort to relaunch the Southern Strategy.

"Trump is so committed to this strategy he has to speak out and try to dehumanize Brother Khan because the strategy can't work if you humanize or embrace somebody among those whom you need others to fear for your own political exploitation," Barber said in an email to BuzzFeed News.

The Southern strategy was a tactic of appealing to racism against blacks for political gain; the strategy is most often associated with Richard Nixon's campaigns. Barber, the North Carolina NAACP president, said Trump is relaunching the tactic against Muslims "in a way we haven't seen since George Wallace's run for the presidency... A key part of the strategy [is] find out who hates who and exploit it."

Trump mocked Ghazala Khan, the mother of a fallen soldier, for not saying anything during her husband's address to the DNC. "If you look at his wife, she was standing there," Trump said on ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "She had nothing to say. Maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me." (Ghazala Khan said on Friday that she remains overcome by grief and could not speak.)

Barber addressed the DNC on the fourth night of the convention in a well-received speech just before Hillary Clinton spoke. Barber argued that when America fights for the Voting Rights Act, a $15 minimum wage, and protects immigrant and LGBQT rights, "we are reviving the heart of our democracy."

"What is probably worse than Trump are the number of those in society go along with him and refuse to stand against him and his slander," he said.

Evan Vucci / AP Photo

Donald Trump responded to the father of Muslim American soldier killed in the line of duty who criticized him for lack of sacrifice for country at the Democratic National Convention, telling ABC News "I've made a lot of sacrifices."

The Republican presidential nominee was responding directly to a moving speech given by Khizr Khan at the DNC, in which he looked directly into the camera to address Trump.

“You have sacrificed nothing and no one,” he said.

Khan’s son, Humayun, was killed by a car bomb in Iraq.

Khizr also asked Trump if he had ever read the Constitution or visited Arlington Cemetery.

In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Trump rebuffed Khan’s remarks.

Khizr and Ghazala Khan at the Democratic National Convention on July 28, 2016.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo

“I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard,” he said. “I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs.”

When asked if those should be considered sacrifices, Trump pointed to his business experience once again.

“I think when I can employ thousands and thousands of people, take care of their education, take care of so many things, even in military," he said.

He also mentioned his role in advocating for the Vietnam Memorial, and said that he had raised “millions of dollars” for military veterans.

Trump also commented on Ghazala Khan, Humayun’s mother, who appeared on stage with her husband.

“If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say,” he said. “Maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say, you tell me.”

People have pointed out that she did not speak because she was overcome with grief, and that she has indeed spoken publicly about her son’s death.

In an interview Saturday, Ghazala Khan told ABC she didn't speak at the convention because she was in pain.

"Please. I am very upset when I heard when he said that I didn't say anything," she said. "I was in pain. If you were in pain you fight or you don't say anything. I'm not a fighter, I can't fight. So the best thing I do was quiet."

Her husband said he asked her to speak, but she declined because she knew she would become too emotional.

"She said, 'You know how it is with me, how upset I get,'" he said.

In a statement issued Saturday night, Hillary Clinton praised her later speaking about the loss:

This is a time for all Americans to stand with the Khans, and with all the families whose children have died in service to our country. And this is a time to honor the sacrifice of Captain Khan and all the fallen.

Captain Khan and his family represent the best of America, and we salute them.

After a rally in Pittsburgh later that night, part of a three-day bus tour through Pennsylvania and Ohio, Clinton declined to elaborate when asked to directly address Trump’s comments about the Khans.

Clinton's husband and running-mate, however, both stopped on the ropeline to rebuff Trump as fundamentally uncaring and unfit for office.

"If you don’t have any more sense of empathy than that, then I’m not sure you can learn it," said Kaine, appearing alongside his wife, Anne Holton, and Bill Clinton at their sixth event of the joint bus tour over the weekend.

"Can you believe that he would criticize a mother for not speaking about her son?" said Kaine, whose eldest son Nat serves in the Marines. "That he was kind of trying to turn that into some kind of ridicule — I mean, it just demonstrates a kind of temperamental unfitness."

"I cannot conceive of how you could say that about a Gold Star mother," Bill Clinton added later. "I think the remarks stand for themselves."

LINK: The Father Of A Slain American Muslim Soldier Offered Trump His Copy Of The Constitution

Andrew Harnik / AP Photo

Bernie Sanders’ former national press secretary says she experienced repeated incidents of racism on the campaign trail, and at one point broke down in tears in her car.

In an interview for Lenny, an online newsletter co-founded by Lena Dunham, 26-year-old Symone Sanders (no relation to the Vermont senator) spoke with writer Mikki Halpin and described several instances in which felt she was discriminated against as a high-ranking black female campaign worker.

Symone Sanders: There were multiple instances. There were places where I literally I couldn't get in. I would go to the door, the staff entrance, and people would say, "This is staff only." I'd have to explain to them that I was staff, and they would question me. I would have to say, "I'm the national press secretary. Did you watch me on the news the other day?" It was consistently happening. There was one week where it happened the entire week.

My breaking point was a time when I had let the event staff know I was having trouble getting in places and asked them if they could just really make an extra effort for this particular day, because it had been a long week. Like, "Could you please just let folks know that I'm coming and that I'm black?"

You don't think you'd have to say those things, but I said, "Let them know there's going to be a black girl that's going to come to the front and please let her in."

Symone Sanders also described one incident in which a man came running up to her car at a campaign building yelling and banging on the window, "telling me to get the F out of here, this is for staff, and that I didn't belong back here."

"I broke down in the car. I cracked my window down and I said, 'I'm the national press secretary!'" Symone Sanders said. "I was just crying. Eventually someone came down and let me in."

She added that when she told the presidential candidate about what happened, he and his wife were horrified.

"They knew it was plain old racism and nothing else," she said.

Symone Sanders tweeted Saturday to reiterate that the experiences of racism that she experienced came from venue staff while on the road, and not from the campaign staff that she worked alongside in the Sanders campaign.

Symone Sanders left the campaign on June 26 to work for the Democratic National Campaign Convention.

BuzzFeed News has reached out to a Bernie Sanders spokesperson for comment.

Read the full Lenny interview here.

D Dipasupil / Getty Images

PHILADELPHIA — A man called to DeRay Mckesson from across the street. “The young icon!” he yelled, wanting a picture.

He also wanted to know what Mckesson thought of the election, a touchy subject for activists in the movement for which Mckesson is seen as a de facto spokesperson. Mckesson obliged. He offered a solemn analysis of the political landscape, punctuating it with a final flourish: “And Trump is gonna screw us all over.”

In Philadelphia, home to this year's Democratic National Convention, people (mostly young) greeted Mckesson everywhere. They were curious about his thoughts on policing problems, Hillary Clinton, and his recent arrest in Louisiana. They wanted to know what to do next.

But mostly, they wanted to talk politics. They wanted to engage. And Mckesson — if tired after a long week — was happy to engage.

Mckesson has remained a neutral observer and refuses to endorse a candidate. He was annoyed at a story that emerged out of the Wikileaks DNC leak, in which a DNC operative ask he be vetted to become a surrogate. "I am not being vetted for anything," he said, slung back in the back of an Uber.

Politically-connected black Democrats — perhaps Clinton's most united force — would love to see him endorse her. But as one of them said of high-profile BLM organizers, nobody really expects them to endorse her and its unclear if Clinton will again meet with activists from the Black Lives Matter movement. Mckesson has said that her racial platform is not enough, and that they'll continue to push her.

In Philadelphia, his presence and ubiquitous vest, instead, reflected a new kind of political blackness. Mckesson has assumed an inside/outside posture both in politics and within the movement. Critics feel that because he does belong to the larger activist network, Mckesson is trying to evade accountability. To this, Mckesson likes to answer that he knows there is more than one way to organize, and no one way is more valid or important than another.

Regardless, young black Democratic operatives see the movement, and by extension, Mckesson, as extremely important — the reason why they are in the seat of power.

"In 2016, if you don't support the Black Lives Matter movement, you're on the wrong side of history," said Kouri Marshall, a black millennial and Democratic operative who's used his platform as the head of Democratic GAIN, a national progressive political organization, to highlight the movement and its causes. "I have been pushing the marriage of BLM and electoral political activism because it is one way to bring about the kind of change we all desperately need that will release young black and Latino men and women from the grips of systemic racism."

Mckesson's own foray into electoral politics is also a sensitive subject for the movement and political establishment. During a panel discussion in Philadelphia about black millennials in the election sponsored by Revolt, Terrance Woodbury, an analyst with brilliant corners Research and Strategies, brought up Mckesson's fundraising success — touting that the financial support came from all over the country.

"Yeah, but that ended up hurting him in the election!" someone from the audience called out over murmurs, a commonly held opinion, which sparked an exchange.

For all of his admirers in politics, these are the some of the same young black Democrats who did not want him to run for mayor of Baltimore. They predicted he couldn't win, and thought it could end up being seen as a loss for the movement. At best, they felt, it would just be a loss for him. Based on his popularity at the DNC, anyway — and the movement's standing in the current political climate — it's neither.

But his relative anonymity amongst the the DNC's more established leaders is symbolic of the generational gap inside black political leadership, of the strangeness the older generation feels toward the younger generation's lack of conventions, unwillingness to wait.

Inside the Uber tent at the convention, on the night of President Obama's speech, a white woman asked Mckesson to take a picture, saying her daughter “would just die.” After the picture, Mckesson politely called out to Deval Patrick to say hello. About 10 feet away, an older black man was doing the same with Rev. Jesse Jackson, who, turning around to exit, looked right at Mckesson, passed him, and said nothing.

Unbothered, Mckesson took out his phone and opened Twitter.

Jason Connolly / AFP / Getty Images

The National Football League is denying that they sent a letter to Donald Trump complaining about the presidential debate schedule, something Trump claimed in an interview with ABC News this weekend.

"While we would obviously wish the Debate Commission could find another night, we did not send a letter to Mr Trump," NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy told BuzzFeed News in a statement. CNN's Brian Stelter first reported that the NFL did not send a letter to Trump.

In an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, Trump complained that two of the debates are up against NFL games, and claimed that the organization sent him a letter calling the schedule "ridiculous."

"Well, I'll tell you what I don't like. It's against two NFL games," Trump said. "I got a letter from the NFL saying, 'This is ridiculous. Why are the debates against—' 'cause the NFL doesn't wanna go against the debates. 'Cause the debates are gonna be pretty massive, from what I understand, OK? And I don't think we should be against the NFL."

Trump initially raised issues with the debate schedule in a tweet on Friday, in which he accused Hillary Clinton and the Democrats of rigging the debate schedule.

The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates determined the debate schedule in September 2015.

Joshua Lott / Getty Images

COLORADO SPRNGS, Colo. — Frustrated Americans are looking “in the wrong places; they’re looking to politicians,” Charles Koch said Saturday evening in a veiled shot at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“Most people are focused on the worst of times...on our stagnant, two-tiered economy, with the rich and politically connected doing well, while most everyone else is stuck down below,” he said, referring to Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

“So people are looking for answers. Unfortunately, by and large, they’re looking in the wrong places; they’re looking to politicians. And the answers they’re getting are frightening. Because by and large most of those answers would make make matters worse."

Koch’s comments at a mountain resort in Colorado were part of his opening remarks to about 400 donors at the annual summer meeting of the vast political and policy network affiliated with the billionaire industrialists.

As the network sits out the 2016 presidential election, Koch told donors that “politics must be a piece of this strategy, but you got to keep in mind — one piece” to “unite people from all walks of life to work for a free and open society.”

“It would be great if politicians were helping us move down this path. But, by and large, they aren’t. The good news is we have built this network for just such a condition. So we are in position to make progress in spite of the political situation."

"If we focus just on politics, we're going to continue to lose, continue to deteriorate."

BuzzFeed News was one of 11 news organizations to accept an invitation to cover the event after agreeing to a set of ground rules proposed by the Kochs’ political network, including not identifying the donors attending unless they agreed to an interview. With Democrats increasingly attacking the brothers for their political giving, the network has made an effort to be more transparent, opening up parts of their meetings — known as “seminars” — to a few reporters for the first time last year.

Before Koch’s remarks, aides affiliated with political operation repeatedly said the network was going to stay focused on Senate races and had no intention of backing Donald Trump, who tweeted Saturday afternoon that he had turned down an invitation to meet with the Kochs while he was campaigning and raising money in the area on Friday.

Network officials declined to comment on whether that was accurate. When asked if the Trump campaign had made any contact with network officials, Mark Holden, chairman of Freedom Partners — the umbrella organization that hosts the gathering — said: "None that I am aware of."

Holden previously met with Trump's team in June. "It was a good discussion," he told reporters Saturday. "We talked about the issues we care about — free speech, criminal justice reform, regulatory reform... and that was it.”

Calling Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Mike Pence, “a great guy,” Holden said Pence’s addition to the ticket had not changed their plans about engaging on the presidential level. Pence has attended past network seminars.

Instead, the Koch network will focus on its plans to spend on ads and on grassroots efforts in at least six Senate races — Ohio, Nevada, Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Indiana.

Although they are sitting out of the presidential — saying on Saturday that they don’t have plans to run anti-Hillary Clinton ads either — they're not ruling out including Clinton in their messaging by tying Senate Democratic candidates to their presidential nominee.

"We're going to very much focus on policy as we always do. We're going to tie the Democratic Senate candidates to Hillary Clinton and the failed policies she supports," Holden told reporters.

The strategy would be similar to what Democrats have been doing for months in linking Trump and his controversial comments to vulnerable GOP senators.

A number of elected officials are attending the gathering this weekend including House Speaker Paul Ryan; Sen. John Cornyn of Texas; Sen. Cory Gardner and Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado; Sen. Mike Lee of Utah; Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; and Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin.

The Koch network is made up of 700 donors who give at least $100,000 annually. It has 1600 paid staffers and 2.8 million activists across 38 states.

Patrick Doyle / Reuters

WASHINGTON — The Movement for Black Lives conglomerate will put forth a series of policy goals on Monday, framing the proposals as an end to the "war on black people."

The platform, which is titled "A Vision For Black Lives: Policy Demands For Black Power, Freedom, and Justice," outlines a series of very liberal proposals. The group will call for reparations; an end to the death penalty, mass incarceration, and deportations; and added rights for trans people under current civil rights protections in a new policy paper to be released Monday. Movement organizers also call for drastic changes to U.S. educational policy, including free tuition and retroactive forgiveness of federal student loans.

In recent weeks, the movement has come under media scrutiny as a series of police deaths have posed questions about what goals activists have beyond police violence. Organizers said the policy platform offered 40 "comprehensive and visionary" policy demands beyond police killings of black people that had become the movement's calling card.

Organizers describe the policy paper as the result of a year-long process by the United Front of organizations and the Movement for Black Lives Policy Roundtable, that drew on the expertise of local and national organizations and hundreds of others "through research, surveys, convenings and national calls" a spokesperson said.

The groups include: Alliance for Educational Justice, Baltimore Bloc, BIG: Blacks in Green, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Black Leadership Organizing Collaborative, Black Women's Blueprint, Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), BlackBird, The BlackOut Collective, Center for Media Justice, Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, Dignity and Power Now, Dream Defenders, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota, Freedom Inc., Highlander Research and Education Center, Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, National Black Food and Justice Alliance, Open Democracy Project at Crescent City Media Group, Organization for Black Struggle, Organization for Black Struggle, Philadelphia Student Union, Project South, Southerners On New Ground, SpiritHouse Inc., The Worker's Center for Racial Justice.

"In recent years we have taken to the streets, launched massive campaigns, and impacted elections, but our elected leaders have failed to address the legitimate demands of our Movement. We can no longer wait," a release reads.

Movement organizers said a website was on deck, featuring action items for leaders at the local, state, and federal level, including guidance for groups to act on legislation and key messages.

"We also stand with descendants of African people all over the world in an ongoing call and struggle for reparations for the historic and continuing harms of colonialism and slavery," the statement reads. "We also recognize and honor the rights and struggle of our Indigenous family for land and self-determination."

"We are dreamers and doers and this platform is meant to articulate some of our vision."

Jason Connolly / AFP / Getty Images

In an interview on ABC's This Week on Sunday, Republican nominee Donald Trump denied, despite his own repeated claims, that he has a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump's praise of Putin has raised questions about his connections to the Russian president. Hillary Clinton's campaign and Democrats have tried to paint Trump as Putin's candidate of choice, and have implied that the Trump campaign could have played some role in Russia's hacking of the Democratic National Committee's servers.

"I have no relationship with Putin. I have no relationship with Putin," Trump said in the interview when asked about the nature of the relationship.

Anchor George Stephanopoulos pushed back, saying, "But if you have no relationship with Putin, then why did you say, in 2013, 'I do have a relationship,' in 2014, 'I spoke...'"

"Because he has said nice things about me over the years," Trump responded. "I remember years ago, he said something, many years ago, he said something very nice about me."

Trump added that over the years, he has said nice things about Putin on television, and Putin has said nice things about him as well. When asked by Stephanopoulos why he would say he had no relationship with Putin after saying for years that he did, Trump answered that it depends on the meaning of "relationship."

"Well, I don't know what it means by having a relationship," Trump said. "I mean, he was saying very good things about me. But I don't have a relationship with him. I didn't meet him. I haven't spent time with him. I didn't have dinner with him. I didn't go hiking with him. I don't know, I wouldn't know him from Adam except I see his picture, and I would know what he looks like."

Trump was also asked about his position on the Russian annexation of Crimea and the change in the Republican platform striking any mention of arming Ukraine. Trump said he wasn't involved in his party's platform on Ukraine, but that he has his own ideas.

"He's not going into Ukraine, okay, just so you understand. He's not gonna go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down," Trump said. "You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want."

When Stephanopoulos pointed out that Russia is already in Ukraine, Trump said, "Well, he's there in a certain way. But I'm not there. You have Obama there. And frankly, that whole part of the world is a mess under Obama with all the strength that you're talking about and all of the power of NATO and all of this. In the meantime, he's going away. He takes Crimea."

Trump, when pressed on his comments that he might recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea, said, "I'm gonna take a look at it. But you know, the people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were. And you have to look at that, also."

John Moore / Getty Images

Donald Trump defended hiring foreign workers for his Palm Beach club in an interview Sunday, telling ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that it's difficult to find employees in the US during the "Palm Beach social season."

BuzzFeed News reported last week that Trump filed applications this month for temporary visas to bring in 78 workers for his Mar-a-Lago club and his golf course.

"Mar-a-Lago's a very successful club in Palm Beach, Florida, the Mar-a-Lago Club. And during the season, it's very, very hard to get employees," Trump said when asked about BuzzFeed News' reporting on ABC News.

He continued, "We interview. And we have a lot of people. We come with a lotta people. But it's very, very hard to get people in Palm Beach during the Palm Beach season. It's called the 'Palm Beach social season.' And what we do is we sometimes have to bring people in."

Pressed on the number of foreign workers he has hired, Trump said, "I don't hire the people. But if you look at all of the other places in Palm Beach, they're all doing exactly the same thing because you can't get people, George."

Trump has made bringing jobs back to the United States and putting American workers first a major part of his campaign message. Trump said, though, that he thinks voters understand why he hires foreign workers for his own businesses.

"I think the voter understands it," he said. "Because they understand that I, you know, you're not reinventing the wheel here with these questions. These questions get asked all the time. I've been asked about Mar-a-Lago. I have many places where I don't have to do that because you have a normal season."

LINK: Trump Seeks More Foreign Guest Workers For His Companies

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Hillary Clinton on Sunday placed blame squarely on Russia for hacking the Democratic National Committee's servers and said Donald Trump's praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin raises "national security issues."

"We know that Russian intelligence services, which are part of the Russian government, which is under the firm control of Vladimir Putin, hacked into the DNC," Clinton said on Fox News Sunday. "And we know that they arranged for a lot of those emails to be released."

Clinton then turned her attention to Trump, saying, "And we know that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin, whether it's saying that NATO wouldn't come to the rescue of our allies if they were invaded, talking about removing sanctions from Russian officials after they were imposed by the United States and Europe together because of Russia's aggressiveness in Crimea and Ukraine, his praise for Putin, which is, I think, quite remarkable."

Experts have pointed to Russia as the most likely culprit behind the cyber-attack on the DNC, which led to WikiLeaks releasing the organization's emails. Clinton's campaign and the Democrats have attempted to tie Trump's praise of Putin to the hack. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said last week he wasn't ready to pin the hack on Russia.

Asked in the interview Sunday if she was suggesting that Putin wants Trump to be president over her, Clinton responded that she wouldn't jump to that conclusion.

"But I think, laying out the facts, raises serious issues about Russian interference in our elections, in our democracy," Clinton said. "We would not tolerate that from any other country, particularly one with whom we have adversarial positions. And for Trump to both encourage that and to praise Putin despite what appears to be a deliberate effort to try to affect the election, I think, raises national security issues."

She added, "I think if you take his encouragement that the Russians hack into American email accounts, if you take his quite excessive praise for Putin, his absolute allegiance to a lot of Russian wish list foreign policy positions, his effort then to try to distance himself from that backlash, which rightly came not just from Democrats, but Republicans, independents, national security, and intelligence experts, leads us, once again, to conclude he is not temperamentally fit to be president and commander-in-chief."