First Latina Chair of SD Board of Supervisors Supports Lee’s Historic Campaign for Senate

Supervisor Nora Vargas, the first Latina ever to Chair the San Diego Board of Supervisors, has endorsed Barbara Lee for Senate, the Lee campaign announced.

“As a healthcare and education champion I am thrilled to support Congresswoman Barbara Lee for US Senate,” said Vargas.

“She is exactly the type of advocate Californians need in the US Senate. Her track record of always tackling the tough issues while lifting people up and making sure everyone’s voice is heard is what we need from our next Senator. I am very excited to endorse Barbara Lee for US Senate and to work with her to advance our communities.”

Vargas was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2020 and quickly became known as a champion for veterans, children, and seniors. She is also the co-chair of the county’s COVID-19 subcommittee, chair of the San Diego Association of Governments Transportation Committee, as well as of the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District, and a member of the California Air Resources Board.

“Supervisor Vargas has been an excellent example of why representation matters,” said Congresswoman Lee. “The lens she brings to the Board as the first Latina Chair has clearly helped inform her work to put families first in San Diego and made her an exceptionally effective representative. I am honored by her support in my campaign for Senate and I am eager to partner with her to deliver progressive change for San Diego.”

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Supervisor Vargas joins a growing list of high-profile current and former elected officials from around the state who have endorsed Lee’s campaign for Senate, including five of the eight statewide constitutional officers – Attorney General Rob Bonta, Treasurer Fiona Ma, Controller Malia Cohen, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.

Other national and California endorsers of Lee’s campaign include Congressmembers Jamaal Bowman, Sheila Jackson Lee, Steven Horsford, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Troy Carter, Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Nikema Williams, Jim Clyburn, Bennie Thompson, Lucy McBath, Terri Sewell, and Gregory Meeks; former Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Cedric Richmond, former Georgia General Assembly House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams; State Senators Susan Talamantes Eggman, Anna Caballero and Nancy Skinner; Assemblymembers Isaac Bryan, Mia Bonta and Corey Jackson; Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran, Redlands Mayor Eddie Tejeda, Rialto Mayor Deborah Robertson, former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, Palm Desert Mayor Pro Tem Karina Quintanilla, Dolores Huerta, California Democratic Party Asian Pacific Islander Caucus Chair Deepa Sharma, California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus Chair Emeritus Amar Shergill, California Democratic Party LGBTQ Caucus Co-Chair Emeritus Tiffany Woods. A full list of endorsements is available at barbaraleeforCA.com.

Lee also has the backing of the Alameda County Building and Construction Trades Council, the California Legislative Black Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, Feminist Majority PAC, Black Women Organized for Political Action PAC, Higher Heights for America, the San Diego County Young Democrats, Gen Z for Change, and the Working Families Party.

There are currently no Black women serving in the U.S. Senate. Since 1789, when the first Congress met, only two African American women have been in the Senate, serving a total of 10 years.

For more information on Barbara Lee and her campaign for U.S. Senate, visit www.BarbaraLeeforCA.com

By Hon. Barbara Lee

By ruling that race and ethnicity cannot be considered in college admissions, the U.S. Supreme Court sets us back more than four decades.

For generations, affirmative action has been a powerful means of lowering barriers to education for historically marginalized and underrepresented students of color. At its core, it simply aims to remedy the government-sanctioned, decades-long inequality by making race one factor in the college admissions process.

Dismantling these policies will not only have devastating implications for students of color, but for the classrooms at these institutions, which will become devoid of diversity in the lived experience and perspective needed to solve America’s toughest challenges. Higher education serves as an incubator for the brilliant ideas of tomorrow. Those ideas will now become less diverse.

I’m a graduate of Mills College, a women’s college in Oakland. There was a time when, as a Black woman, my options for higher education were limited. But because affirmative action successfully addressed the centuries-long discrimination in higher education, I was able to earn my degree while caring for my two children as a single mother on public assistance.

I met my mentor, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm; received my master’s degree in social work; became a successful small business owner; serve in Congress; and ran to be only the third Black woman in our nation’s history to serve in the U.S. Senate.

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The list of barriers to higher education is already long, and I fear that with this ruling we are turning back the clock, and a generation of talented young people of color may not be given the same opportunities that I had.

For those reasons and more, I’ve fought hard to uphold affirmative action. California’s Proposition 209, which effectively banned affirmative action across our state’s public education systems, was a harmful policy that deprived countless students of color the opportunity to study at some of the greatest academic institutions in the world.

In 2020, I fought for the reversal of Prop 209, but it sadly failed. I argued against the banning of affirmative action before the UC Board of Regents years ago, and since that policy went into effect, the share of Black, Latino and Native American students has fallen significantly.

California has a difficult relationship with race. Despite being one of the most progressive states in the country, we struggle with racial inequality of epic proportions.

Ironically, [June 29] the California Reparations Task Force completed the report they were commissioned to produce. I was the only member of Congress to testify in front of the task force, and yesterday’s ruling affirms the need for their work toward an effort to repair the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and systemic racism, and for my continued effort at the federal level to establish a Commission on Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation.

While the country mourns the end of affirmative action in higher education, let’s be clear: The Supreme Court did not strike down affirmative action for everyone. It was just taken away for everyone that’s not wealthy and white.

For many wealthy white students, it still exists in the form of legacy admissions. Justice Brett Kavanaugh knows this intimately, as a legacy admission to Yale. Judge Clarence Thomas was an affirmative action admission as well. Yet, they are denying future generations their same opportunities, and making the application of a first-generation college student from an immigrant family less notable than the child of a fifth-generation Yale graduate from a wealthy family.

In the spirit of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent on the ruling, preventing the consideration of race does not end racism, and deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. We do not live in a colorblind society.

Systemic racism is not an abstract idea. For the far right, it is intentional, deliberate and strategic. Their efforts to ban books, erase history and simply deny students of color entry into the building is a coordinated effort to uphold white supremacy.

Education has always been the great equalizer, which is why, for centuries, people of color were systematically shut out of educational opportunities. [Last] Thursday’s decision is simply one more part of this effort and, ultimately, lays the groundwork to undermine Brown v. Board of Education, which began the dismantling of Jim Crow.

The remnants of Jim Crow laws and the chains of slavery were meant to be broken, not meant to take new forms. Affirmative action is a crucial tool to not only incentivize racial diversity on our college campuses, but level the playing field for all those in pursuit of the American dream.

This opinion was originally published in the Sacramento Bee on July 1.

Washington, DC – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA-12), Co-Chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus, released the following statement on Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine et al v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration et al to side with anti-abortion hate groups and suspend the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.

Mifepristone is the first drug in a two-medication regimen that has been used safely and effectively by millions of people for over 20 years for early abortion care and for miscarriage management.

“Study after study has found mifepristone to be an exceedingly safe and effective way to end a pregnancy; in fact, unfortunately, there are statistically more risks associated with pregnancy itself – especially for Black women. Since its approval by the FDA in 2000, mifepristone has been used safely by more than 5 million Americans. It is critical to remember right now that mifepristone is still legal and accessible, and we will not stop fighting to ensure it stays that way.

“Make no mistake: if the Supreme Court upholds this extreme and dangerous ruling, it will be the greatest loss for abortion rights since the fall of Roe. This is just the next step in the decades-long coordinated effort by anti-abortion groups to ban abortion care in every form, in every state.

“We can’t let that happen. As Co-Chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus, I am working closely with our partners to respond to this egregious ruling and preserve access to mifepristone nationwide. People—not politicians—should have the freedom to make their own health care decisions, and we won’t stop fighting until they do.”

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