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Ohio requires buses for private school kids. Public school students have to find their own ride
For about 2,000 students attending high school in Dayton, Ohio, there won’t be a bus in sight when they walk out the door for the beginning of the school year this week.Ruben Castillo, an 11th grade student at Meadowdale Career Technology Center, is one of them.Ohio law means that public school districts such as Dayton’s are responsible for transporting students who attend private and charter schools. When they fail to do so, they risk fines of millions of dollars.A shortage of drivers and buses combined with the threat of fines, means that public school districts in Dayton and around Ohio find themselves relegating their own students to the back of the transportation line.“I’m going to have to use Uber, and it’s going to cost me $25-$30 a day to get to and from school,” says Castillo. “In wintertime, when demand is higher, it’s probably going to be more.” At 180 school days over the course of a year, that’s thousands of dollars he is set to fork out from his own pocket.For the past several years, school administrators in Dayton, Cincinnati and elsewhere have been trying to get around the problem by issuing students with bus passes for public transportation.But children riding public buses have reported being subjected to a variety of dangers. Public transportation administrators have also reported difficulties trying to serve the public and thousands of students all at once.The situation came to a tragic head on the morning of 4 April when 18-year-old Alfred Hale III was shot dead at the public bus hub in downtown Dayton while en route to class at Dunbar high school. Shortly after Hale’s killing, Ohio lawmakers introduced a law making it illegal for Dayton public schools (DPS) to buy public bus vouchers for students.The burden of getting children to school now falls on students’ parents, grandparents, local churches and charities, say officials. Families who choose to continue to have their students use public buses to get to and from school will have to fork out at least $540 per high school student a year.“There seems to be an aggressive approach to the most vulnerable families and people in America,” says DPS’s superintendent, David Lawrence.“Not only is it unfair, it’s onerous that public schools have to provide transportation to non-public school students.”What’s happening in Ohio is a result of a wider effort by conservative politicians to push for more children to attend charter and private schools, many of which are run by religious organizations.Republican politicians hold a supermajority across Ohio’s legislature and have built up a $1bn fund in the form of vouchers for families who want to send their students to private and charter schools.Ohio is not alone.Republican-dominated state legislatures have been pushing for or have already enacted laws that see billions of dollars of taxpayer money directed to funding private school voucher systems in Texas, Florida, Iowa, Tennessee and elsewhere.In Pennsylvania and Minnesota, where political control is largely split between Democrats and Republicans, public schools are required to provide transportation for students attending non-public schools. In January, Donald Trump signed an executive order steering taxpayer funds from public schools to private schools.Many in Democratic-leaning cities say they are being targeted.In Cincinnati, children as young as 13 are being forced to use public transportation to get to and from school due to funding shortages that this year will see more than 100 yellow bus routes cut.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Columbus, where more than half of all students are African American, the public school system is required to bus students of 162 private and charter schools.About 1.8 million, or 80%, of all school-going students in Ohio attend public schools and nearly two-thirds of students attending Dayton public schools are African American. In July, the state passed a budget that saw the smallest increase in spending on K-12 public education in more than a decade.“It’s simple – if we did not have to bus non-public school students on our transportation, we could transport every single one of our K-12 students on yellow buses,” says Jocelyn Rhynard, a member of the Dayton public school board. DPS transports between 4,000 and 5,000 charter and private school students every school day.“It’s a direct result of the legislation from the extremist Republicans at the Ohio statehouse mandating that we must transport non-public students as well as public students in our district.”But Republican politicians disagree.“We had an 18-year-old get shot and killed. The environment for the students is not good down there. The NAACP interviewed the children, they don’t want to ride the public transportation buses, they want to ride the yellow school buses,” says Phil Plummer, a Republican party state representative who spearheaded the budget amendment banning DPS from giving its students public bus vouchers.Plummer says he and others “found 25 school buses” that DPS could purchase. “They decided not to transport their kids,” he says.DPS administrators, who pay drivers the highest rates in the region, say about 70 buses would be required to meet the need, a number that could take up to two years to procure. Lawrence says the process of buying buses and training drivers is not simple.“It’s an 18-month cycle. [Buses] are $150,000 to $190,000 each to buy, and ones with backup cameras and air conditioning are [even] more expensive. Then drivers have to take at least 10 tests before they become fully qualified,” he says.With the law coming into effect just months before the new school year, parents, students and public school managers have been left in a difficult situation.“I’m a single dad raising two kids on my own. We all have to be at school at the same time. That’s a big dilemma,” says William Johnson, an educator at DPS whose daughter is no longer able to get to school using a bus provided by or paid for the district.“I’m lucky that my 80-year-old father is going to help out taking them to school. But I ask the state [politicians] – please come up with a solution. We’re going to lose a whole generation of kids if this continues.” More
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Politicians are using social media to campaign – new research tells us what works and what doesn’t
By the time the next US election takes place in 2028, millennial and gen Z voters – who already watch over six hours of media content a day – will make up the majority of the electorate. As gen alpha (people born between 2010 and 2024) also comes of voting age, social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram or their future equivalents can play a role in political success – if political actors can capitalise on it.
On these platforms, politics mixes with entertainment, creating fertile ground for memes and viral content that shape public opinion in real time – particularly in the US. But going viral isn’t simple, as my new research shows, and political actors have so far have struggled to make the most of it. If content doesn’t feel authentic, isn’t accompanied by clear messaging, or adapted to different platforms, then it’s unlikely to be successful.
Also, viral content spreads quickly, sometimes unpredictably, and across platforms that all behave differently. The algorithms behind viral spread are specific to each platform – and not transparent. This makes the impact of viral activity difficult to measure and hard to track. This presents a challenge to politicians and campaigns looking to capitalise on it.
My recently published research investigated this. I mapped and visualised the “Kamala IS brat” phenomenon as it moved across X, Instagram and TikTok in the run-up to the 2024 US election. The aim of the research was to investigate the anatomy of a viral movement: what made it spread on each platform, how long did it last, and who was driving it.
I found that viral political content that emerges on X spreads by a mix of strategic communication, and letting the audience do the rest. It often spreads to TikTok through catchy adaptations, and moves slightly slower on Instagram, but “explainer” content with images, for instance – often from a mix of everyday users and mainstream media outlets keeps – it visible.
Viral content moves between platforms, adapting to the environment of each as it is transformed into audio and visual forms. My research found that using audio was particularly powerful: turning quotes into soundbites and superimposing dance trends onto political backgrounds made for hugely shareable combinations, and the more surreal, the better.
Most people think that going viral is short-lived, but this study – and other research – has found that digital content has a “long tail”: it pops up, resurges and re-emerges, days, weeks, or even months later, offering new chances to reconnect with audiences.
This was particularly apparent on X, where content was re-used and re-contextualised in satirical and humorous ways. This wasn’t always positive. In the data I analysed, Republican supporters used the phrase “Kamala IS brat” to try and switch the narrative into something negative but it’s likely that this increased visibility as views are driven by influential public figures and shared by meme accounts.
Kamala Harris used social media in her 2024 campaign, but she didn’t win.
For politicians, this potential for re-emergence means that successful social media engagement is not just about strategic planning, it’s more about understanding how audiences remix and repost content in ways that can be hard to predict.
It’s not about rigidly tailoring content to each platform either, but about adapting to their styles. Effective digital strategists work with, not for, their audience, and make the most of moments that can’t always be planned in advance. Canada’s prime ministerial candidate, Mark Carney, for instance, embraced the hashtag #elbowsupCanada during his successful 2025 campaign.
The research also found that posting the right type of content is important – and short-form content works best. Social media platforms use a mix of recommender and social algorithms, that are politically intuitive. A high number of followers can still help to increase visibility, but getting the content right can extend viral reach, regardless of how many followers an account has.
Donald Trump regularly posts his decisions on Truth Social social media network.
TikTok’s algorithm in particular is set up for exploration, and Instagram’s Threads already pushes political content to users, not necessarily from accounts that they follow. Research suggests that users of any platform expect to see political content, whether they’re looking for it or not.
Given the potential for viral activity to reach a huge – and increasingly politically significant – audience, the challenge remains for political actors to turn social media engagement into electoral gain.
Many are trying, with varying levels of success. Harris’s digital-first strategy took an innovative approach – giving creative licence to a rapid response team of 25-year-olds. The digital campaign itself was considered a blueprint for PR success, but it ultimately failed to translate into votes. This was probably because it wasn’t accompanied by clear, concise messaging.
Other political hopefuls, such as Arizonan activist Deja Foxx and Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, are also capitalising on social media engagement. While Foxx recently lost in her bid to become the first gen Z woman to be elected to Congress, her approach, based on catchy content and influencer tactics, turned a long-shot candidacy into a very competitive campaign.
Mamdani has had more tangible success. His effective use of social media visuals, and multilingual engagement expanded his reach, and were credited with helping him win New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary in June.
So, if politicians can get it right, there is growing evidence that capitalising on going viral can influence political success.
Social media won’t win an election on its own, but looking ahead to 2028, it’s increasingly likely to be a part of a winning campaign. Young voters are far from a monolith, but what they do have in common is where they spend their time: on social media. TikTok remains the fastest-growing platform among this age group. Far from just providing entertainment, many use it to get their news, and engage in politics. Campaigns can’t afford to ignore it. More
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Trump news at a glance: Epstein case haunts administration even as Vance blames Democrats for mishandling
Vice-president JD Vance’s attempt to deflect attention away from the Trump administration’s handling of the case against convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has backfired, triggering renewed calls for transparency.In an interview with Fox News broadcast on Sunday, Vance tried to brush off criticism of the administration’s refusal to release documents related to the scandal, accusing Joe Biden of doing “absolutely nothing” about it when he was in the White House.Within minutes of the Fox News interview being broadcast, social media began to hum with renewed cries of “release the files!”The White House has been caught in a bind over the Epstein affair, which spawned conspiracy theories among many of Donald Trump’s supporters which now senior figures in the administration had actively encouraged during the 2024 campaign.Here are the key US politics stories at a glance:Vance’s attempt to link Democrats to Epstein renews calls to ‘release the files’Four days after JD Vance reportedly asked top Trump administration officials to come up with a new communications strategy for dealing with the scandal around the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the vice-president appears to have put his foot in it, sparking a new round of online outrage even as he tried to defuse the furor.Read the full storyNvidia and AMD reportedly agree to pay 15% of China chip sale revenues to USNvidia and AMD have agreed to give the US government 15% of their revenues from chip sales in China, under an unprecedented arrangement to obtain export licenses for the semiconductors, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.Read the full storyTexas redistricting fight ‘could last years’, threatens Greg AbbottThe Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has stepped up his war of words with Democratic lawmakers who have left the state to foil an aggressive redistricting plan aimed at giving his Republican party five additional seats in Congress, saying on Sunday that the fight “could literally last years”.Read the full storyCourt overrides Trump officials’ rollback and blocks fishing in Pacific Islands monumentA federal judge in Hawaii has ruled that commercial fishing is illegal in the Pacific Islands Heritage marine national monument, a federally protected area in the central Pacific Ocean.Read the full storyTrump orders homeless he passed en route to golf course to leave Washington DCIn a social media post on Sunday, the president demanded homeless residents of Washington DC leave the country’s capital or face eviction, and again promised to use federal officers to jail criminals, even though violent crime in the city was at a 30-year low when he took office in January.Read the full storyCompanies aiding Trump’s immigration crackdown see ‘extraordinary’ revenuesThe technology, surveillance and private prison providers arming Trump’s massive expansion and weaponization of immigration enforcement are running a victory lap after reporting their latest financial results.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:
Ahead of the a meeting between president Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin scheduled for Friday, our correspondent Shaun Walker has written this analysis about how confusion over the summit shows Putin still calls the shots.
Trump’s second term has seen a sustained assault on democratic institutions – political, judicial, media, cultural and academic – that appears to be only accelerating, writes David Smith in this feature.
Catching up? Here’s what happened 9 August 2025. More - in US Politics
Nvidia and AMD reportedly agree to pay 15% of China chip sale revenues to US
Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the US government 15% of their revenues from chip sales in China, under an unprecedented arrangement to obtain export licenses for the semiconductors, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.The revenue share applies to Nvidia’s H20 chips and AMD’s MI308 chips, the report said, citing a US official, noting that the Trump administration had yet to determine how to use the money.The chipmakers agreed to the quid pro quo arrangement as a condition for obtaining export licenses for the Chinese market that were granted last week, according to the unnamed official.According to export control experts, no US company has ever agreed to pay a portion of their revenues to obtain export licenses, the newspaper reported. But Donald Trump has encouraged firms, and countries, to make investments in the US to, in his words, “buy down” the tariff rates he imposes.Nvidia follows rules the US government sets for its participation in worldwide markets, an Nvidia spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement. “While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide.”AMD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The US commerce department started issuing licenses to Nvidia to export its H20 chips to China last week, removing a significant hurdle to the artificial intelligence bellwether’s access to a key market.The US in July reversed an April ban on the sale of the H20 chip to China. The company had tailored the microprocessor specially to the Chinese market to comply with the Biden-era AI chip export controls.Nvidia’s chips are a major driver of the AI boom, and in July the company became the first ever to have its market value surpass $4tn.Complications facing the company are not necessarily over, however, with growing scrutiny of Nvidia by Chinese authorities. Late last month China’s cyberspace watchdog summoned Nvidia to a meeting to discuss whether the chips had any “backdoor” security risks which would allow remote access or control. Nvidia said they did not.But Chinese state media has continued to raise concerns. In a commentary earlier this month, the People’s Daily said Nvidia must produce “convincing security proofs” to eliminate Chinese users’ worries over security risks in its chips and regain market trust. And On Sunday a state media account on Chinese social media platform WeChat said the H20 chips posed a security risk for China. The account, Yuyuan Tantian, claimed Nvidia chips could achieve functions including “remote shutdown” through a hardware “backdoor”. Nvidia has not responded.With Reuters More
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JD Vance’s attempt to blame Democrats
Four days after JD Vance reportedly asked top Trump administration officials to come up with a new communications strategy for dealing with the scandal around the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he appears to have put his foot in it, sparking a new round of online outrage even as he tried to defuse the furor.In an interview with Fox News broadcast on Sunday, the vice-president tried to deflect criticism of the administration’s refusal to release the Epstein files by blaming Democrats. He accused Joe Biden of doing “absolutely nothing” about the scandal when he was in the White House.“And now President Trump has demanded full transparency from this. And yet somehow the Democrats are attacking him and not the Biden administration, which did nothing for four years,” he said. Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse multiple minor girls and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison during the Biden administration.If Vance’s attempt to switch public blame onto Democrats was the big idea to emerge from his strategy meeting with attorney general Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel, which according to CNN he convened at the White House last week, then their labours appear to have backfired. (Vance denied to Fox that they had discussed Epstein at all, though he did acknowledge the meeting took place.)Within minutes of the Fox News interview being broadcast, social media began to hum with renewed cries of “release the files!”Clips of Vanc smearing Democrats quickly began to circulate on X. “We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of connections with leftwing politicians and leftwing billionaires … Democrat billionaires and Democrat political leaders went to Epstein island all the time. Who knows what they did,” he said. Vance also repeated Trump’s previously debunked claim that Bill Clinton had visited Epstein’s private island dozens of times. Clinton has acknowledged using Epstein’s jet, but denied ever visiting his island.“Fine. Release all the files,” was the riposte from Bill Kristol, the prominent conservative Never Trumper who urged the documents to be made public with “no redactions of clients, enablers, and see-no-evil associates”.Jon Favreau, Barack Obama’s former head speechwriter, replied: “Release the names! Democrats, Republicans, billionaires, or not. What are you afraid of, JD Vance?”Favreau added that Trump’s name “is in the Epstein files”. That was an apparent reference to a report in the Wall Street Journal last month that a justice department review of the documents conducted under Bondi had found that the president’s name did appear “multiple times”.Other social media users used the Fox News interview as an excuse to re-run video of Trump in the hosting Epstein and Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago.Epstein died in August 2019, during Trump’s first presidency, while the financier and socialite was awaiting trial in a Manhattan jail; the death was ruled a suicide.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe White House has been caught in a bind over the Epstein affair which spawned conspiracy theories among many of Trump’s supporters, which now senior figures in the administration had actively encouraged during the 2024 campaign.In July the justice department announced that there was no Epstein client list and that no more files would be made public, a decision that clashed with earlier statements from top Trump officials, including Bondi’s statement in February that a client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review”. The decision triggered an immediate and ongoing uproar that crossed the partisan political divide.Among the most viral clips in the aftermath of that reversal was video of Vance himself telling the podcaster Theo Von, two weeks before the election: “Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list, that is an important thing.”In his Fox News interview Vance also warned that “you’re going to see a lot of people get indicted” after Trump accused Obama of “treason” and called for his predecessor to be prosecuted.The director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has passed documents to the justice department that she claims show that the Obama administration maliciously tried to hurt Trump by linking Russian interference in the 2016 election to him.Obama has dismissed Trump’s call for his prosecution as weak and ridiculous. More
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Court overrides Trump officials’ rollback and blocks fishing in Pacific Islands monument
A federal judge in Hawaii has ruled that commercial fishing is illegal in the Pacific Islands Heritage marine national monument, a federally protected area in the central Pacific Ocean.The decision from judge Micah WJ Smith overturns an April letter released by the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) – also known as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) Fisheries – that allowed fishing in parts of the monument that Barack Obama had protected during his presidency. The letter came about a week after Donald Trump’s presidential proclamation to reverse fishing regulations across the national monument, a world heritage site that includes archeological treasures, marine mammals, seabirds and coral reefs.Regulations banning commercial fishing in the area remain in effect, according to Friday’s ruling. The court said “no commercial fishing operators may reasonably rely on” the April letter, meaning fishing in waters 50 to 200 nautical miles around Johnston Atoll, Jarvis Island, and Wake Island must halt immediately.“The Fisheries Service cannot ignore our perspectives as the native people who belong to the islands and to the ocean that surrounds us,” said Solomon Pili Kaho’ohalahala, founding member of the non-profit group Kāpaʻa, the Conservation Council for Hawaii and the Center for Biological Diversity. “The law guarantees a process where we can advocate for protecting the generations of our children’s children who are yet to be born.”The environmental conservation group Earthjustice, representing the non-profits in Hawaii, filed its lawsuit in May and argued NMFS violated federal law by bypassing the formal process for changing fishing rules, which requires public notice and comment.“The court forcefully rejected the Trump administration’s outrageous claim that it can dismantle vital protections for the monument’s unique and vulnerable species and ecosystems without involving the public,” Earthjustice attorney David Henkin said.Then president George W Bush created the marine monument in 2009. It consists of about 500,000 sq miles (1.3m sq km) in the remote central Pacific Ocean south-west of Hawaii. Obama expanded it in 2014.As part of his push to make the US the “world’s dominant seafood leader”, Trump called the regulations “so horrible and so stupid” – and claimed they force US fishers “to go and travel four to seven days to go and fish in an area that’s not as good”.The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument is about 370,000 sq nautical miles (1,270,000 sq km), or nearly twice the size of the state of Texas. It is managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Noaa and the defense department. The monument is home to one of the largest collections of deep ocean coral reef, seabird, and shorebird protected areas on the planet. It provides refuge for species threatened by the climate crisis and other stressors caused by humans.Kingman Reef, considered one of the most pristine coral reefs in US waters, is also part of the monument. Unesco reports it has the highest proportion of apex predators of any studied coral reef worldwide.Its waters are home to several shark species, including grey reef, oceanic whitetip, hammerhead and silky sharks, all of which play an important role in maintaining ecological balance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlong with the ecological value, the islands and ocean areas in and adjacent to the monument hold great value to Indigenous Pacific Islanders and researchers. The lawsuit says allowing commercial fishing in the monument expansion would harm the “cultural, spiritual, religious, subsistence, educational, recreational, and aesthetic interests” of a group of Native Hawaiian plaintiffs who are connected genealogically to the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific.“This is a huge win for the Pacific’s irreplaceable marine life and for the rule of law,” Maxx Phillips, staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said about Friday’s ruling. “These sacred and irreplaceable ecosystems are home to endangered species, deep-sea corals, and rich cultural heritage.”Associated Press contributed to this report More
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Trump orders homeless he passed en route to golf course to leave Washington DC
In a social media post on Sunday, Donald Trump demands homeless residents of Washington DC leave the country’s capital or face eviction, and again promised to use federal officers to jail criminals, even though violent crime in the city was at a 30-year low when he took office in January.“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Sunday morning, shortly after being driven from the White House to his golf club in Virginia. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”View image in fullscreenThe post was illustrated with four photographs, all apparently taken from the president’s motorcade along the route from the White House to his golf course. Two of the images showed a total of 10 tents pitched on the grass along a highway on-ramp just over a mile from the White House. The third image showed a single person sleeping on the steps of the American Institute of Pharmacy Building on Constitution Avenue. The fourth image showed the line of vehicles that whisk Trump to his golf course passing a small amount of roadside litter on the E Street Expressway, near the Kennedy Center.Trump’s post promoted a previously announced news conference on Monday, which he has promised, “will, essentially, stop violent crime” in the capital district, without explaining how. In a subsequent post, he said that the news conference at 10am Monday, “will not only involve ending the Crime, Murder, and Death in our Nation’s Capital, but will also be about Cleanliness”.The Free DC movement, which advocates for self-determination, immediately scheduled a protest on Monday to coincide with Trump’s news conference.Despite Trump’s claims, there is no epidemic of homelessness or violent crime in the capital.According to the Community Partnership, which works to prevent homelessness in Washington DC, on any given night there are about 800 unsheltered persons sleeping outdoors in the city of about 700,000 people. A further 3,275 people use emergency shelters in Washington, and 1,065 people are in transitional housing facilities.Trump’s repeated claims that it might be necessary to federalize law enforcement in the city to make it safe also ignores data collected by the Metropolitan police department, released in January by the federal government, which showed that violent crime in Washington DC in 2024 was down 35% from 2023 and was at the lowest level in over 30 years.“We are not experiencing a crime spike,” Washington DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, told MSNBC on Sunday. “We have spent over the last two years driving down violent crime in this city, driving it down to a 30-year low.” She added that Washington DC police statistics show that violent crime is down a further 26% so far this year.“Federal law enforcement is always on the street in DC, and we always work cooperatively with them” Bowser said, adding the the Washington DC national guard, which Trump has threatened to deploy, is under the control of the president.Earlier this week, Trump ordered a surge of federal officers from a variety of agencies to increase patrols in Washington DC, pointing to the assault on a young federal worker who came to Washington to work with Elon Musk as evidence that the city’s police force was failing to combat violent crime. Washington DC police, however, had stopped the assault Trump focused attention on, and arrested two 15-year-old suspects at the scene.Asked by Reuters, the White House declined to explain what legal authority Trump would use to evict people from Washington. The president controls only federal land and buildings in the city.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US Congress has control of the city’s budget but the DC Home Rule Act, signed into law in 1973 by Richard Nixon, gives Washington DC residents the right to elect the mayor, council members, and neighborhood commissioners to run day-to-day affairs in the district.Trump told reporters on Wednesday that White House lawyers were “already studying” the possibility of legislation to overturn the law granting the Washington DC self-rule and imposing direct federal control of the capital.“Even if crime in D.C. weren’t at a historic low point, President Trump’s comments would be misguided and offensive to the more than 700,000 people who live permanently in the nation’s capital,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents DC as a nonvoting delegate in congress said in a statement. “D.C. residents, a majority of whom are Black and brown, are worthy and capable of governing themselves without interference from federal officials who are unaccountable to D.C.”“The only permanent remedy that will protect D.C.’s ability to govern itself is enactment of my D.C. statehood bill into law,” the 88-year-old congresswoman added.Reuters contributed reporting More
