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Kamala Harris Hosts Exclusive In-Person Interview with The Courier
NNPA NEWSWIRE — For more than 100 years, Pittsburgh’s African American community has counted on The Courier to cover the most important stories that affect the Black community, and it was obvious that fact wasn’t lost on the vice president.
The post Kamala Harris Hosts Exclusive In-Person Interview with The Courier first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Rob Taylor Jr. | Courier Staff Writer

Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, spent about 10 minutes on Tuesday, Feb. 20, speaking to a crowd of supporters at the Kingsley Association in East Liberty, adamant about replacing lead pipes in Pittsburgh, the state of Pennsylvania, and all around the country, in the fight for clean water, free of toxins.
To a hail of applause, Harris announced that $5.8 billion in funding, including more than $200 million specifically for Pennsylvania, was being allotted for clean water infrastructure from President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda. The announcement brought the total amount of clean water funding announced by the Environmental Protection Agency from President Biden’s Infrastructure Law to $22 billion. Overall, the Infrastructure Law will invest over $50 billion in total to upgrade America’s water infrastructure, the largest investment in clean water in American history.
“Hello Mr. Doss, how are you?” Harris said. “It’s good to be with you.”
Rod Doss, the longtime executive editor and publisher of The Courier, greeted Harris and told her, “I’m staring at history. This is truly a moment for me.”

Vice president of the United States Kamala Harris, with New Pittsburgh Courier editor and publisher Rod Doss, left, and Courier managing editor Rob Taylor Jr. Harris held an in-person exclusive interview with The Courier on Feb. 20, 2024, at the Kingsley Association in East Liberty.
Harris told Doss that she was glad to have some time to talk, “because your paper, and what you do in terms of the voice that it represents, and a trusted voice, is so important.”
For more than 100 years, Pittsburgh’s African American community has counted on The Courier to cover the most important stories that affect the Black community, and it was obvious that fact wasn’t lost on the vice president.
No questions were out-of-bounds. No questions were shared with Harris beforehand. Courier managing editor Rob Taylor Jr., who was also part of the exclusive interview, told Harris she seemed passionate and driven to tackle the lead pipes and clean water issue head-on, particularly in Black communities.
“As I said earlier, lead pipes were standard for construction across the country, but then it became increasingly obvious that the water coming out of those lead pipes was toxic which results in health impacts, in terms of health well-being, but also learning impacts for children,” Harris told The Courier. “In communities where the resources were there, in homes where there was a homeownership or people (had) the resources, they can remove the lead pipes. But not in communities that didn’t have the extra, or didn’t have savings, or didn’t own their home and rented. What you ended up seeing is that while the lead pipes affected everyone, not so equally.”
Speaking specifically to the Infrastructure Law, officially signed into law by President Biden in November 2021, Harris said that the funding to fix sidewalks or replace lead pipes not only creates jobs, or in her words, “an economy around the upgrades,” but the “other piece of the lead pipes issue is absolutely about public health. It’s about the physical well-being, about the well-being of families and we have to take that seriously. And as I said earlier, government has a few specific responsibilities and one of them is to address the public health needs of the community. That’s how I think about the lead pipe issue; what do we need to do to get the resources into the community to take those lead pipes out, knowing it will benefit our children, it will benefit families and it will uplift communities.”
Doss then addressed the issue that has been permeating throughout the nation, brought more to light by a popular Black radio personality, Charlamagne Tha God. The radio personality said on Feb. 18 on ABC News’ “This Week” that he felt there was a general apathy from younger voters about either of the presidential candidates, Donald Trump or President Biden. Moreover, Charlamagne Tha God called President Biden “an uninspiring candidate.”
Doss pressed Harris on that perceived growing lack of enthusiasm from young voters as it relates to supporting the Democratic Party and the Biden/Harris ticket.
Harris prefaced her response by saying she hadn’t seen the Charlamagne Tha God interview on ABC News. But in general terms, “we are up for re-election, and any candidate up for election or re-election has to earn the votes, and I’m very, very clear about that. Which is why I’m here in Pittsburgh, which is why I’m traveling around the country to make sure that people know what we have accomplished in response to what they asked us to do in 2020, because people turned out in record numbers, young voters turned out in record numbers…and they said, ‘fix the lead pipes.’ They said in the Black community, ‘we are 60 percent more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes, bring down the cost of insulin for our seniors,’ and we’ve now capped the cost of insulin at $35 dollars a month. Folks said deal with the fact that HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) are centers of academic excellence, but don’t necessarily have the kind of endowments that other universities do…we have now dedicated over $7 billion to HBCUs.”

Vice President Kamala Harris makes a stop in Pittsburgh’s Elliott neighborhood to witness lead pipe replacement at work, Feb. 20, 2024. (photo by Rob Taylor Jr.)
Harris continued: “People said deal with Black unemployment; we now have the lowest Black unemployment in the history because of the work that we have done. That’s about building jobs and creating opportunities for not only employment, but for wealth building. People said deal with the fact that Black businesses don’t get federal contracts in the same way that other businesses do. We have made a pledge which we are on track now to achieving, increasing federal contracts by 50 percent to minority-owned businesses. So, this is some of the work that we have done, and it is incumbent on us in an election season to let people know that we heard them, we have delivered and therefore believe that we have earned a re-election.”
Harris is the first HBCU graduate to work in The White House as President or Vice President. Harris graduated from Howard University, in Washington, D.C., in 1986. And she and President Biden obviously want to continue working in The White House for another term, though the former President, Trump, is lurking. While he hasn’t officially been named the Republican nominee for president, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion barring a miracle from opponent Nikki Haley.
Harris told Doss and Taylor that she and President Biden have to do “the hard work” in reminding people about what they’ve done as President and Vice President. “On the one side, you got the former president who admires dictators, who openly has talked about his pride in taking away freedoms. On the other hand, you have our re-election in Joe Biden who has been a champion for what we need to do around equity, what we need to do around resources to com munity, around working people, around bringing down the cost of prescription drugs and taking on big pharmaceutical companies. So, the closer we get to the election, I think the more people are going to start tuning in to the fact that you’ve got one of two choices, and I think the biggest decision that people are going to make this election is, deciding what kind of country we want to live in.”

Vice President Kamala Harris takes a group photo with lead pipe replacement workers in Pittsburgh’s Elliott neighborhood, Feb. 20, 2024. Also pictured at far left is EPA Administrator Michael Regan. (photo by Rob Taylor Jr.)
Taylor then reminded Harris that Pennsylvania is a “critical” state in this election season, as it seems to be in each presidential election.
“Allegheny County made all the difference,” Harris responded to Taylor and Doss. “The voters here turned out in record numbers and it is why I am Vice President of the United States as the first woman and the first Black woman. Why do I keep coming back to Allegheny County and coming back to Pittsburgh? First and foremost, it’s to thank everybody, because it is the people here who, in large part, did the work of helping to create history around this position, and so I’m here to thank folks and to remind them of their power and ask them to please, let’s do it again.”
The 10-minute interview concluded between Harris and The Courier representatives. Photos were then taken, and Harris was about to be whisked away to an on-site meeting with workers from the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority and other contractors as they removed a lead pipe from under the ground in the Elliott neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
But before she left the Kingsley Association, Taylor jokingly asked her one final question.
“The real H-U?”
Harris responded: “You know.”
The post Kamala Harris Hosts Exclusive In-Person Interview with The Courier first appeared on BlackPressUSA.
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PRESS ROOM: Top Climate Organizations React to Trump’s Executive Orders Attacking Health, Environment, Climate and Clean Energy Jobs
NNPA NEWSWIRE — Climate Action Campaign (CAC), along with partners and allies, voiced strong concerns about the executive orders and the confirmation of Lee Zeldin as the 17th Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

Voice concerns about the New EPA Administrator
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump wasted no time implementing the Project 2025 playbook. Within his first hours as the 47th President, he issued executive orders aimed at dismantling crucial climate, health, and economic protections, which could have dire consequences for the country and the environment. His actions of disservice to our communities on the first day of his presidency coincided with Martin Luther King Jr. Day which was meant for service and reflection. The policies introduced by President Trump, along with his new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, stand in stark contrast to the spirit of Dr. King’s commitments to service others and improve society.
Climate Action Campaign (CAC), along with partners and allies, voiced strong concerns about the executive orders and the confirmation of Lee Zeldin as the 17th Environmental Protection Agency administrator. “The new administration has moved to undo hard-earned generational progress like Justice40 that was created to ensure every American has an opportunity to be healthy and thrive,” said Dr. Margo Browne, Senior Vice President of Justice and Equity, at Environmental Defense Fund. “These actions threaten the rights of tens of millions of Americans to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and use products free of toxic chemicals, particularly those people whose zip code or race add undue burdens.
We must stay focused. Leaders change, but our work remains the same. And we will do everything we can to uphold the progress made with our partners and allies and to uplift the people on the frontlines fighting for equity every day.” “As we enter into an era of weaponized phrases and issues, we must remember that environmental justice means that all people should have equitable access to a healthy, sustainable, and resilient environment,” said Leslie Fields, Chief Federal Officer, WE ACT For Environmental Justice. “Trump’s day one acts – including rescissions of nearly 80 vital executive orders while adding dozens of new, anti-democratic orders – roll back popular policies that promote clean, renewable, and affordable energy. These actions also place vulnerable communities in even greater danger from pollution and the dire, real-time consequences of the climate crisis. In the face of these assaults, we will not stop pursuing justice.”
“The President of the United States is elected to lead and protect all Americans,” said Ben Jealous, Executive Director, Sierra Club. “Donald Trump promised to be a president who fights for working families, but his bluster of action shows he’s fighting harder to protect corporate polluters and their profits, all at the expense of our health, our safety, and our jobs. The American people want cheaper energy bills, safe drinking water, and clean air. Donald Trump should listen and offer actual solutions instead of exploiting their pain for political gain while he further lines the pockets of the wealthiest instead of American workers.”
On the Confirmation of Lee Zeldin, 17th administrator of the EPA:
“Lee Zeldin’s confirmation as EPA administrator is a catastrophic blow to the health of Americans, the climate, and the economy,” said Margie Alt, Director, Climate Action Campaign. “Under Zeldin’s leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency will no longer protect the American people and our communities – it will protect polluters. Zeldin’s public statements and record make it clear he will implement Trump’s anti-science, anti-clean energy Project 2025 agenda, prioritizing the interests of oil and gas CEOs at the expense of the clean air, water, and energy that Americans overwhelmingly support and rely on. Americans deserve an EPA administrator who will prioritize the health and safety of families over polluter profits. Zeldin’s confirmation is a tragic failure for all Americans.”
“The new head of the EPA must ensure that neither he nor the President denies vulnerable communities their most basic rights—the right to breathe clean air, drink water free from poison, and live on land that does not make them sick,” said Mustafa Santiago Ali, Executive Vice President, National Wildlife Federation. “Environmental Justice is not a privilege; it is the foundation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To neglect it is to abandon the people who need protection the most.” “Confirming a director who normalizes baseless conspiracies, while failing to earnestly accept the facts of climate change, is a threat to the health of everyone in the United States and especially the most vulnerable Justice 40 communities,” said KeShaun Pearson, Executive Director, Memphis Community Against Pollution. “Lee Zeldin is the antithesis of environment and climate justice. We are amid a climate crisis that demands a protector, not a big oil pawn.” Climate Action Campaign is a vibrant coalition of advocacy organizations working together to drive ambitious, durable federal action to cut carbon pollution, address the climate crisis, advance environmental justice, and accelerate the transition to clean energy.
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BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2025 We Proclaim It
NNPA NEWSWIRE — In the history of this country, in the ongoing fight against racial oppression, against a white supremacist narrative, and against the racial apartheid laws that were passed and upheld, there have always been gear-shifting moments when individual people have taken a stand.

By Dr. Karsonya Wise Whitehead
Former Georgia Representative Julian Bond and Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver once said that when Rosa Parks chose to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama, somewhere in the universe, a gear in the machinery shifted, and everything changed.
A gear-shifting moment.
In the history of this country, in the ongoing fight against racial oppression, against a white supremacist narrative, and against the racial apartheid laws that were passed and upheld, there have always been gear-shifting moments when individual people have taken a stand. It happened in 1850, when Harriet Araminta Tubman, a year after her self-emancipation, chose to go back to Baltimore, Maryland, to help lead her niece and her niece’s two children to freedom. A gear shifted. It happened in 1770, when Crispus Attucks, a Black and Indigenous sailor and whaler, chose to get involved with the growing kerfuffle in Boston. In 1864, when the 22nd Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops marched from Camp William Penn through the streets of Philadelphia on their way to fight, gear shifted.
When Mamie Till told them in 1955 to leave her son’s casket open so that the world could see what those white men had done to her son, a gear in the machinery of the universe shifted, it happened again in 1966 with Kwame Ture and Mukasa Dada’s declaration of Black Power after the “March Against Fear.” In 2014, after police officers killed unarmed Eric Garner in New York and unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Black people came together under the banner and hashtag of Black Lives Matter to march, protest, and demand change. Gears shift when we choose to fight, when we choose to stand up, and when we refuse to back down. The moral arc of the universe does not bend on its own toward justice, it bends because we push it and because we are willing to continue to do it until change does happen.
In 1926, when Dr. Carter G. Woodson—the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the son of formerly enslaved parents, a former sharecropper and miner, and the second Black person to receive a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University—sent out a press release announcing the first Negro History Week, a gear shifted. He chose February because the Black community was already celebrating the historic achievements on the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (2/12) and Frederick Douglass (2/14). Dr. Woodson did not wait for the celebration of our history to be proclaimed, he proclaimed it. He did not wait for someone to permit him to celebrate what we had contributed to this country, he celebrated it. Dr. Woodson understood that Black parents had been teaching their children our history since we arrived in this country. Our stories and achievements had been carried by the wind and buried in the soil. It had been whispered as bedtime stories, spoken from the pulpits on Sunday mornings, and woven throughout our songs and poems of resistance and survival. America did not have to tell us who we were to this country; we told them.
[This post contains video, click to play]
America did not have to tell us that we built this country, our fingerprints are etched into the stone. America does not have to proclaim Black History Month, we proclaim it. We live in the legacy of Dr. Woodson, and as we have done for 98 years, we will celebrate who we are and all that we have accomplished. We stand at the intersection of the past and the future; what we do at this moment will determine how the next gear shifts. The 2025 Black History Month theme is African Americans and Labor, which focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people and the transformational work that we have done throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora. We are celebrating our visible labor—from the work we did back then to build the White House to the work we do right now to hold the White House accountable, from repairing the roads to teaching in our schools, from stocking shelves to packing and unloading trucks; from working in the federal government to our ongoing labor in the state and local offices—and, our invisible labor—from raising and teaching our children to caring for our aging family members, from finding ways to practice revolutionary self-care to finding ways to hope beyond hope in a country that frequently targets and terrorizes Black people. We bear witness to what it means to work hard every day and to get sick and tired of working so hard.
As the president of ASALH, one of the many legacy keepers of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, I am excited to proclaim and uplift the start of Black History Month 2025. I believe that ASALH is a lighthouse that you do not notice until you need it. When boats are caught in a storm or fog, they look for the lighthouse to help guide them safely back to the shore. We have been standing as a lighthouse proudly proclaiming the importance of Black History and helping people to understand that it is only through studying the quilted narrative of our historical journey that one can see the silences, blind spots, hypocrisies, and distortions of American history. We do not celebrate because we are given permission, we celebrate because we are the permission givers. We do not wait for Black History Month to be proclaimed, we proclaim it. We do not wait to be seen, we see ourselves. We do not have to be told the story of America because we are writing it, we are telling it, we are owning it, and we are pointing the way to it. We invite you to join us as we once again celebrate and center the incredible contributions that Black people have made to this beautiful and imperfect nation.
Dr. Karsonya (Kaye) Wise Whitehead is the 30th person and the eighth woman to serve as the national president of ASALH. She is a professor of Communication and African and African American Studies at Loyola University Maryland and the host of the award-winning radio show “Today with Dr. Kaye” on WEAA, 88.9 FM. She is the author of the recently released “my mother’s tomorrow: dispatches from Baltimore’s Black Butterfly” and a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She lives in Baltimore with her family.
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Black Reaction to Trump DEI Blame on The Plane Crash
NNPA NEWSWIRE — Before the completed investigation officially began, President Trump laid the blame for the accident on the Army helicopter. He felt it should have been flying at a different altitude, higher or lower, than the jet

By April Ryan
“We are dealing with a vicious adversary,” according to Rev. Al Sharpton, the head of the National Action Network speaking of President Donald Trump and his hate diatribe Thursday morning. President Trump blamed DEI, the Obama and Biden administrations along with former Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg for the deadly midair crash over the Potomac last night. 67 people died after an accident between an American Airline Plane and an Army Helicopter. When asked why President Trump thought diversity had something to do with the crash, he said,” I have common sense and most people don’t.” Reverend Al, who is investigating the impact of the Trump anti-DEI efforts in retail believes Trump is “obsessed with race” and he is a “raw, insensitive, uncaring man.”
Former Secretary Buttigieg immediately went to social media making a statement saying, Trump should be leading, not lying.” Buttigieg also fact-checked Trump saying we grew Air Traffic Control and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.” Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) / X During Trump’s rant on DEI at the White House briefing room podium, he asserted, “the FAA’s diversity push includes a focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. And then it says, the FAA says, people with severe disabilities, the most underrepresented segment of the workforce, and they want them in, and they want them. They can be air traffic controllers. I don’t think so.” Trump went on to say the prior administrations felt those departments were “too white.”
According to reports FAA staffing has been an issue since Inauguration Day January 20, 2025. Also, Elon Musk, the head of the White House Office of Government Efficiency is reported to have asked the head of the FAA to resign. Musk FAA Ax Former Black Obama Administration Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx exclusively told this reporter after the Trump statements,” I would caution against any definitive conclusions until that work [investigation] is done by trained, experienced professionals.”
Foxx, who also worked as a transportation consultant in the Biden administration admonished the Trump address saying, “There is no sugar-coating the tragic midair collision that occurred last night. In my experience, safety has always been the number one focus of the Federal Aviation Administration.” Foxx says there is a safety mission to be completed after this tragedy. “There is a well-practiced root cause process that has been taken in the past. It should be used now with competent professionals. A comprehensive, fact-based investigation will answer the many questions we all have. It would also help guard against future accidents of this type,” according to the transportation expert.
Before the completed investigation officially began, President Trump laid the blame for the accident on the Army helicopter. He felt it should have been flying at a different altitude, higher or lower, than the jet. When it comes to the president’s corrosive comments, reaction has been swift from the civil rights community. In a statement from the President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Derrick Johnson, “The NAACP is disgusted by this display of unpresidential, divisive behavior.” Johnson told this reporter in a text message, “The President has made his decision to put politics over people abundantly clear as he uses the highest office in the land to sow hatred rooted in falsehoods instead of providing us with the leadership we need and deserve.”
As Trump worked to distract with his words on DEI, the questions still abound as to what caused the deadly plane crash. Former Sec. Foxx, immediately following the fatal crash last night said. “My worst fear is that something happened with the avionics. I hope and expect that this is not the case. But most aircraft these days run in a form of GPS. Could a warning system have failed? But then, how can two systems fail? That leads to some even more grave concerns about interference with the systems. There are many other potential causes.”
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