Editorial
These are dark times in Washington. It's no secret that President Trump and his team are working overtime to turn back the clock on our rights and divest from our communities.
If you want to know where the President stands on the welfare of the African American community, look no further than his immoral budget. It eliminates programs that feed hungry kids, support veterans and help families buy their own home.
Republicans are slamming the doors of opportunity for our youth. For people of color, those doors appear to be barricaded, chained and padlocked.
About seven years ago, President Barack Obama issued an urgent plea while speaking with Sandy Hook Elementary School families in Newtown, Connecticut. He said America was failing to protect our nation's most valued treasure—our children.
We had thought gun violence was unthinkable in wealthy, suburban communities and that our children would have some moral protection. Sadly, after 26 people, including 20 children between 6 and 7 years old, were killed in Newtown, we've seen tragedy after tragedy in all American communities. It is now clear that no child is safe.
"A New Foundation for America" is a peculiar title for President Trump's new budget because it erodes the very foundation of our great nation: our farming communities.
At the 30,000-foot level, Trump's budget cuts $38 billion from Farm Bill programs that help Illinois farmers feed our nation and the world. It also includes a more than 20 percent cut to the Department of Agriculture, meaning higher crop insurance premiums and less marketing support.
Farmers now can join the long list of Americans President Donald Trump and his policies have attacked.
Just more than a year ago, rural voters helped propel candidate Trump to the presidency, but since then, his budgets and policies have failed farmers and rural communities. The Trump administration's new budget proposal mindlessly guts $265 billion from agriculture and other programs that are crucial to the survival of rural communities.
The United States is the global leader in artificial intelligence. We have an innovative private sector, world class universities and remain the top destination for international AI talent. However, American leadership is no longer guaranteed. In fact, Eric Schmidt and Bob Work, the chairman and vice chairman of the congressionally established National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI), wrote, "[T]he United States is in danger of losing its global leadership in AI and its innovation edge."
For more than a year, Americans, Congress and the world have discussed Russia's attempts to influence our elections. However, some of their most dangerous and well-documented attacks against state-level voting systems have been a mere footnote.
That needs to change, and change fast. Let's start with the facts and when we learned them.
WASHINGTON — On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives authorized public hearings in our ongoing impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump. I voted for this measure alongside 231 of my colleagues.
As a student of history, I firmly believe that our Founding Fathers were deeply and rightfully concerned about this exact situation. A President pressured a foreign government to intervene in our domestic affairs for his own personal and political gain.
Across the United States, women die of pregnancy-related complications at a higher rate than in any other similarly large, wealthy country in the world. Expanding Medicaid will save the lives of women and babies and save money in our health care system. But the two states that we represent in the U.S. House of Representatives – Illinois and Florida – have taken very different approaches to this national crisis.
The recent article titled "Gunrunner bought guns in Arkansas to sell to Chicago gangs" shows, yet again, that guns from outside Illinois are spilling blood in our streets.
This time, the trafficker was Klint Kelley buying guns in Arkansas. In March, it was Willies Biles buying guns in Indiana, and the list goes on and on.
For money, people are willing to cross state lines, buy guns and directly fuel the slow-moving massacre that is claiming the lives of Chicagoans each and every day.
Nearly every day, I pick up this paper and read about gridlock and partisanship gripping Congress. The 24-hour TV news cycle reminds us of it by the second and magazines aren't much better.
To any extent, they are right. Washington is caught in a partisan bind but at the end of the day, the American people want Congress to do our job, work together and get things done.