Community

Environmental Activist Rhea Suh Named New President, CEO of Marin Community Foundation

Suh spoke at the 2017 Women’s March on Wash., D.C., and has also appeared as a media commentator for the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, NPR, and other news outlets.

Published

5 years ago

August 21, 2021

Isabelle Price

Rhea Suh rallies the crowd at the Women March on Washington, D.C.; Photo Courtesy of NRDC

Rhea Suh, who was the past president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) from 2015 to 2019, has been hired as the president and CEO of the Marin Community Foundation (MCF). Dr. Thomas Peters, MCF’s longstanding president, announced his retirement in June 2020. Suh was selected in June of 2021 and will assume the position on Sept. 7, 2021.

According to the MCF’s press releases, Suh was born and raised in Boulder, Colo., by Korean immigrants who left the country after the Korean War. Suh’s father, Chung Ha Suh, worked as automotive engineering specialist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and her mother, Young Ja Suh, was a homemaker. She also has two sisters, Betty and Maggie.

Suh graduated with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Barnard College of Columbia University in 1992. While a student at Barnard, Suh taught earth science at Stuyvesant High School. After receiving a Fulbright fellowship to South Korea where she studied environmental movements, she attended Harvard Kennedy School and earned a master’s degree in education, administration, planning, and social policy. Her graduate school project focused on helping the U.S. National Park Service by establishing a formal education program at schools around the country.

Suh served as the assistant secretary for policy, management, and budget at the U.S. Department of the Interior from 2009 to 2014. She was nominated for this position by former President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2009.

She successfully developed a diversity program for the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and guided the Administration’s successful effort to have the Native Hawaiian community become a federally recognized tribe. This allows them to have a government-to-government relationship with the United States, with the responsibilities, powers, limitations, and obligations attached to that designation, and is eligible for funding and services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Suh also worked at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation where she developed a $200 million program dedicated to environmental conservation and clean energy in the West and helped to establish the first-ever collaboration among nonprofit organizations to coordinate conservation efforts across the Colorado River Basin.

Rhea was the president of the NRDC from 2015 to 2019. The organization grew to more than $50 million and increased its membership by more than 40%. She led nearly 500 scientists, attorneys, and policy experts and made NRDC one of the country’s most effective environmental action organizations. She led the creation of a 10-year strategic plan, reorganized the NRDC, helped steer the discussions that led to the historic global climate agreement in Paris.

Suh championed the settlement for the residents of Flint, Mich., regarding the drinking water crisis.

Suh spoke at the 2017 Women’s March on Wash., D.C., and has also appeared as a media commentator for the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, NPR, and other news outlets.

The Marin Post’s coverage of local news in Marin County is supported by the Ethnic Media Sustainability Initiative, a program created by California Black Media and Ethnic Media Services to support community newspapers across California.

Isabelle Price

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#NNPA BlackPress

Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

1 week ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Oakland Post: Week of February 25 – March 3, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – February 25 – March 3, 2026

Published

1 week ago

March 1, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

2 weeks ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke