#Tennessee Secretary of State

[svalleynow]

Tennesseans Warned About Donation Scams Claiming to Support Hurricane Victims

Secretary of State Tre Hargett As northeast Tennessee continues to recover from Hurricane Helene’s devastating impacts, Secretary of State Tre Hargett wants to remind citizens to remain vigilant about potential scams claiming to support victims. “National data shows Tennesseans are among the most generous givers to charitable causes. However, too often, we see bad actors targeting the good faith…

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #36

September 27-October 4 2024

President Biden and Vice-President Harris have lead the federal response to Hurricane Helene. President Biden's leadership earned praise from the Republican Governors of South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia, as well as the Democratic Governor of North Carolina and local leaders. Thousands of federal workers are on the ground in effected communities having given out to date over 8 million meals, over 7 million letters of water. Both President Biden and Vice-President Harris have been on the ground in resent days meeting with effected families. During her trip to Georgia Vice-President Harris announced that the federal government will reimburse state and local government 100% of the costs from Hurricane Helene.

A strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association that briefly shut down ports on the East Cost and Gulf ended in a tentative deal. Both sides thanked Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for helping push the deal through. President Biden and Vice-President Harris had expressed solidarity with the works when the strike was announced and President Biden directed Secretary Buttigieg to take the lead in pressuring management to make a deal with the Longshoremen. The ILA got a 62% raise as part of the agreement.

Vice President Harris announced new actions to help those struggling with medical debt. This actions include new standards from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on debt collection. the CFPB plans on requiring debt collectors to confirm debts are valid and accurate before engaging in collection actions. As well as cracking down on debt collectors that collect on debt that is not owed by patients. Other actions included an announcement by the DoD that it was reducing pricing for civilians who get medical treatment at DoD hospitals and a track down on tax-exempt hospitals who are required by law to offer financial assistance but often do not. These steps come after Vice President Harris in June announced plans to remove medical debt from credit scores. Following the Vice President's call to action North Carolina moved forward a plan to eliminate medical debt for 2 million people in the state. President Biden's American Rescue Plan funds have been used by state and local Democrats to eliminate $7 billion dollars in medical debt.

The Department of Transportation announced $62 Billion in infrastructure funding for 2025. Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by President Biden this will be $18 billion dollars more than was spent in 2021. The Biden-Harris Admin has helped support over 60,000 infrastructure projects across all 50 states, rebuilding roads and bridges, breaking ground on America's first high speed rail, updating ports and airports, and breaking high speed internet to rural communities.

The Department of Transportation announced $1 Billion dollars of investment in America's passenger rail future. This comes on top of $8.2 billion in investments announced in December 2023. The funds will help expand and modernize intercity passenger rail nationwide.

The Departments of Energy and Agriculture announced a $2.8 billion joint project to bring 100% carbon pollution-free energy to the rural midwest. The DoE is investing $1.5 billion into helping bring the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan back on-line. Shut down in 2022 plans to refit and reopen it to allow the plant to keep generating clean energy till 2051. Once back online the Palisades Nuclear Plant will help stop an anticipated 4.47 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year, or 111 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over its lifetime. The USDA is investing $1.3 billion in two rural electric cooperatives, Wolverine Power Cooperative and Hoosier Energy, which cover rural communities in Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. This investment will help Wolverine and Hoosier connect to the Palisades Plant, reduce prices for customers, and reduce climate pollution, putting Wolverine Power on the path to be 100 percent carbon-free energy before 2030.

The Treasury and the IRS announced that 30 million Americans, across 24 states will qualify for free direct filing of their taxes in 2025. The IRS says that the average American spends $270 dollars and 13 hours filing their taxes. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by President Biden with Vice President Harris' tie breaking vote, Americans will be able to file their taxes quickly and for free directly with the IRS. Tax payers in Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming will in 2025 be able to use direct file.

The USDA announced $7.7 billion in funding for Climate-Smart Practices on Agricultural Lands. This represents the single biggest investment in these programs in USDA history. Since implementation began in 2023 this conservation assistance has helped over 28,500 farmers and ranchers apply conservation to 361 million acres of land.

The Department of Energy announced $1.5 billion in investments in transmission infrastructure to help ensure our grid is reliable and resilient. This will help support nearly 1,000 miles of new transmission lines across Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. These lines will bring 7,100 MW of new capacity and create 9,000 good paying union jobs. Studies find to keep up with growth and meet our climate goals of carbon free energy the US will need to triple the 2020 transmission capacity by 2050. This is an important step to meeting that goal.

[yourreddancer]

FROM PUBLIC CITIZEN

On Friday night, 50 United States senators — all of them Republicans — voted to put our nation’s security in the hands of a man who is laughably unqualified.

Except it could not be less funny.

With a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance, Pete Hegseth will now be Secretary of Defense.

Pete Hegseth isn’t qualified to be shift leader at a Dairy Queen (nothing against Dairy Queen). Putting him in charge of the entire United States military is a perversion — and every one of the 50 senators who voted for him knows it.

So why did they do it?

Because they were afraid that if they did the right thing and rejected Hegseth, Donald Trump would back someone else in their next election, and assistant president Elon Musk would spend millions to defeat them.

That’s why Trump defended his nominee so aggressively once news reports indicated how horrible Hegseth’s record is. It was a test. “Look how much they fear me.” “Look how willing they are to prostrate themselves at my feet.” “Look what I’ve turned them into.”

It’s really quite pathetic how craven and insecure they are.

Especially considering that even if they did lose their seats, ex-senators do pretty well. There are cushy positions on corporate boards or as high-paid lobbyists. There are deals to be had for books, podcasts, and speaking gigs. There are roles as pundits and hosts on Fox “News.” There are shady right-wing nonprofits and “think tanks” to run. There are car dealerships and cryptocurrencies to profit from. And on and on and on.

But no, these 50 senators were so afraid of Trump and so addicted to the illusion of political power (we say “illusion” because in reality they have forsaken any actual power in abject fealty to Trump) that they were willing to put Hegseth in charge of the $900 billion Pentagon, its 3 million employees, and all its warfighting capacity.

This is a man who has shown himself unable to run a small nonprofit. A man about whom there are credible reports of excessive drinking and out-of-control behavior. And a man against whom there are multiple allegations of sexual assault and domestic violence.

This is also a man who refused in his confirmation hearing to renounce the use of torture. A man who at his hearing was unaware of a major international alliance. And a man who has argued that women should not serve in combat roles.

Let’s not forget that for generations, it is Republicans who have held themselves out as the party that supports the military and is “strong on defense.”

In case you think your senator would never jeopardize America’s national security, here are the 50 Republican senators who just sold out our troops, our veterans, and our country:

Jim Banks, Indiana John Barrasso, Wyoming Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee John Boozman, Arkansas Katie Britt, Alabama Ted Budd, North Carolina Shelley Capito, West Virginia Bill Cassidy, Louisiana John Cornyn, Texas Tom Cotton, Arkansas Kevin Cramer, North Dakota Michael Crapo, Idaho Ted Cruz, Texas John Curtis, Utah Steve Daines, Montana Joni Ernst, Iowa Deb Fischer, Nebraska Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Charles Grassley, Iowa Bill Hagerty, Tennessee Joshua Hawley, Missouri John Hoeven, North Dakota Jon Husted, Ohio Cindy Hyde-Smith, Mississippi Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Jim Justice, West Virginia John Kennedy, Louisiana James Lankford, Oklahoma Mike Lee, Utah Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming Roger Marshall, Kansas Dave McCormick, Pennsylvania Ashley Moody, Florida Jerry Moran, Kansas Bernie Moreno, Ohio Markwayne Mullin, Oklahoma Rand Paul, Kentucky Pete Ricketts, Nebraska James Risch, Idaho Mike Rounds, South Dakota Eric Schmitt, Missouri Rick Scott, Florida Tim Scott, South Carolina Tim Sheehy, Montana Dan Sullivan, Alaska John Thune, South Dakota Thom Tillis, North Carolina Tommy Tuberville, Alabama Roger Wicker, Mississippi Todd Young, Indiana

(Here are the three Republican senators who did not vote for the charlatan: Susan Collins, Maine; Mitch McConnell, Kentucky; Lisa Murkowski, Alaska.)

If you are feeling angry and/or fearful about what it will mean to have someone as devastatingly unqualified and dangerous as Pete Hegseth running the Department of Defense, join Public Citizen in a message to the 50 senators who just voted for exactly that.

Those who serve in uniform, our nation’s veterans, the hundreds of thousands of civilians who work in the military, and — most crucially of all — every single American deserve better (far better) than Pete Hegseth. You have put us all in harm’s way for no reason other than your own cowardice in the face of Donald Trump. Shame on you.

Click to add your name now.

Thanks for taking action.

For progress,

- Robert Weissman & Lisa Gilbert, Co-Presidents of Public Citizen

[xhxhxhx]

It's December 4, 2024.

Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, a challenge to Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care. The specific question presented is whether Tennessee's ban violates the Equal Protection Clause.

The challenge is to Tenn. Code Ann. § 68-33-103(a)(1). That is, it's a challenge to a bit of Tennessee's Annotated Code. Title 68, Chapter 33, "Prohibited Medical Procedures for Minors."

I don't have anything to say about Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care. Nor do I have anything to say about how the Court will treat the case. Not yet, anyways.

But I have something to say about the Code.

I.

Tennessee's laws are compiled by its code commission.

Under state law, the commission is a five-member body, consisting of the state's chief justice, attorney general, and counsel for the legislature, along with another two members appointed by the chief justice. Tenn. Code Ann. § 1-1-101(a).

The code commission supervises the official publication of the state's statutes, codes and session laws. § 1-1-105(a). The commission is empowered to commission to contract with publishers to that end, § 1-1-106(a), and obliged to inspect and certify their work. § 1-1-110(a).

When its work finished, the commission puts its certificate of approval in each volume and pocket supplement. § 1-1-110(c). But their first certificate, the one they leave with the secretary of state, § 1-1-110(b), is what gives the code the force of law. § 1-1-111(a).

Beyond that, the commission's work is ministerial. It cuts and pastes. "[T]he commission shall not alter the sense, meaning or effect of any act of the general assembly, but shall copy the exact language of the text of the statutes, codes and session laws." § 1-1-108.

The commission may "rearrange, regroup and renumber" the laws; change their "section headings"; "correct manifest misspelling[s] and typographical errors"; and "omit enacting clauses, repealing clauses, severability clauses, conditional clauses, preambles, [and] captions", § 1-1-108—and not much more.

II.

Tennessee leaves the work to Lexis, a private publisher.

Lexis's product, the Tennessee Code Annotated, is not eligible for copyright. Public.Resource.Org v. Matthew Bender & Co., No. M2022-01260-COA-R3-CV, slip op. (Tenn. Ct. App. Nov. 9, 2023). But it is not subject to compulsory disclosure, either.

Under current law, according to the state's intermediate appellate court, the Tennessee Code Annotated in the hands of Lexis is in the hands of a private contractor, not the State.

If Lexis had been the functional equivalent of a government entity, contracted to "perform a governmental or public function," it would be subject to the State's public records law. *8. But it's not.

That's what the state's intermediate appellate court says, at least. But its reasoning is less than persuasive.

III.

Lexis is merely a contractor. The commission specifies the work, and Lexis does the work. The commission may be exacting, but it isn't controlling. *9.

That's the court's argument, at least. But that strikes me as a less than complete account of the commission's duties under State law, which must inform any characterization of its contracts.

Under State law, the commission is "authorized and directed to" control each dimension of the compilation, Tenn. Code Ann. § 1-1-105(a), and must

supervise the execution of plans for the compilation, arrangement, classification, annotation, editing, indexing, printing, binding, publication, sale, distribution and the performance of all other acts necessary for the publication of an official compilation of the statutes, codes and session laws of the state of Tennessee

The commission's contractual powers, set out in the subsequent section, § 1-1-106, are an incident to its primary authority and duty to "formulate and supervise" the compilation. § 1-1-105(a).

The commission's primary authority and duty to prepare the compilation is plain on the face of the law. Under State law, the compilation is the commission's work, down to the copying and pasting, § 1-1-108(a):

In preparing the manuscript of the revised compilation (including pocket supplements and replacement volumes) for publication and distribution, the commission shall not alter the sense, meaning or effect of any act of the general assembly, but shall copy the exact language of the text . . .

This is more than the relationship suggested by the court. It's more than control over the product. It's control over production, the work of "preparing the manuscript."

To the extent that Lexis is doing the work, "preparing the manuscript," and "copy[ing] the exact language of the text," it is performing the commission's functions.

The court says "Lexis is not a stand-in for government." But that's exactly what it is. The commission is a government body. And Lexis is doing the commission's work.

That seems like a governmental function to me.

[deadpresidents]

"Of the nomination of Mr. Polk we hardly know how to speak seriously. A more ridiculous, contemptible and forlorn candidate, was never put forth by any party...Mr. Polk is a sort of fourth or rather fortieth-rate lawyer and small politician in Tennessee, who by accident was once Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was rejected even by his own state as Governor -- and now he comes forward as candidate of the great democracy of the United States."

-- The New York Herald, on the nomination of James K. Polk as the Democratic Party's candidate for President of the United States, May 31, 1844

Despite being the first dark horse nominee for President and facing off against arguably one of the most famous living Americans of his time -- former House Speaker, former Secretary of State, former Senator, and one of the founders of the Whig Party, Henry Clay -- Polk narrowly won the 1844 election.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mira Lazine at LGBTQ Nation:

Yesterday, nearly 200 Democrats and Republicans wrote amicus briefs asking the Supreme Court to rule in favor of transgender rights in the upcoming L.W. v. Skrmetti case, which challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. It is the first such case that the Supreme Court is hearing. “While the government has a role in keeping kids safe, that role is limited, and it does not justify the State second-guessing the judgments of parents acting in good faith who are best positioned to know what their children need,” the Republican signatories wrote in their brief. “States have no business overruling the decisions of fit parents who make an informed medical choice for their children that is supported by their doctors, by the medical profession more generally, by the children themselves, and by their conscience.”

The Republican brief was signed by numerous former and current Republican politicians and notable officials like Kentucky state Rep. Kim Banta; former U.S. Reps. Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Denver Riggleman (R-VA), and Deborah Price (R-OH); former Republican National Committee National Press Secretary Kirsten Kukowski; Republican campaign manager Colin Reed; and the late Sen. John McCain’s chief of staff and advisor Mark Salter. It was also notably signed by former Rep. Ilena Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), the mother of Advocates for Trans Equality executive director Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen.

[...] 164 Democratic legislators signed their brief. The group was made up of 11 U.S. senators and 153 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and their brief stressed the discriminatory nature of Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban. “The current rash of bills targeting transgender people is merely the latest round of discrimination faced by transgender individuals. Lower courts have cataloged the “widespread private opprobrium and governmental discrimination” faced by transgender individuals,” they wrote in their brief. “But amici believe enough is enough. Tennessee has no ‘proper legislative end but to make [transgender adolescents] unequal to everyone else. This [Tennessee] cannot do.’—so the Court should reverse.” The politicians seen in this brief include Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), among others. They also argue that animosity towards trans people played a large role in passing Tennessee’s bill. They note that Tennessee is a “hotbed” for such animosity, having nearly twice as many anti-LGBTQ+ laws as any other state. They refer to hateful rhetoric from Tennessee politicians. The core argument in this brief is that there is a medical consensus that gender-affirming care is safe, medically necessary, and backed by numerous reputable organizations across the United States and the world. They argue Tennessee is discriminating against transgender individuals by blocking them from accessing safe and effective health care. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign both supported the brief.

Nearly 200 Democrats and Republicans filed amicus briefs in support of gender-affirming care in the United States v. Skrmetti (L.W. v. Skrmetti) case, with 164 of those being Democrats.

These are just two of the pro-trans amicus briefs filed in Skrmetti.

See Also:

Erin In The Morning: Families Split Apart: Families Fleeing Anti-Trans Laws File Amicus In Supreme Court Case

[minilev]

☢ Miss Patsy is the way Codsworth calls Patricia

☢ came from Tennessee few days before the bombs fell to visit her brother Nate (didn't even know about the newborn nephew)

☢ moved from state to state a lot, changed many jobs - worked as seamstress (to make a bra is not a problem!), secretary with terminals, nurse, etc because... she's a ✨serial killer✨! The family always disapproved her lifestyle (what a light-headed girl! no husband and no career!), but Patsy became quite handy and resourceful.

☢ her and Nate's father was in military - war deforms people, all the violence and screaming behind the closed doors of their seemed perfect family did something to both of them. Their mother never daring to even look up or speak without permission, forced army drillings and shooting trainings while they were kids, hazing and abuse... Patsy ran away when she was 19, her Greaser boyfrend started abusing her and so he became her first victim<3

☢ while Patsy found her own fun way to give in to their family violence tendencies, Nate became a soldier. Oh well, seems like it didn't help - there was a hole punched in a wall when she arrived.

☢ avoids Valentine - what if he remembers something from her time? Patsy has very standart features which are hard to describe the moment she hides her bright auburn hair. Who knows what leads did police have after her eighth victim...

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

DNC convention

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 18, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 19, 2024

On August 18, 1920, the Tennessee legislature ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by a vote of 50 to 49. The deciding vote came from Harry T. Burn, who supported suffrage but was under pressure to vote no. His mother had urged him to vote yes despite the pressure. “I believe in full suffrage as a right,” he said. “I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify. I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”

Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the amendment, and the last one necessary to make the amendment the law of the land once the secretary of state certified it.

The new amendment was patterned on the Fifteenth Amendment, which protected the right of Black men to vote, and it read: 

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

“Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Like the momentum for the Fifteenth Amendment, the push for rights for women had taken root during the Civil War as women backed the United States armies with their money, buying bonds and paying taxes; with their loved ones, sending sons and husbands and fathers to the war front; with their labor, working in factories and fields and taking over from men in the nursing and teaching professions; and even with their lives, spying and fighting for the Union. In the aftermath of the war, as the divided nation was rebuilt, many of them expected they would have a say in how it was reconstructed.

But to their dismay, the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly tied the right to vote to “male” citizens, inserting the word “male” into the Constitution for the first time.

Boston abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, the author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” was outraged. The laws of the era gave control of her property and her children to her abusive husband, and while far from a rabble-rouser, she wanted the right to adjust those laws so they were fair. In this moment, it seemed the right the Founders had articulated in the Declaration of Independence—the right to consent to the government under which one lived—was to be denied to the very women who had helped preserve the country, while white male Confederates and now Black men both enjoyed that right.

“The Civil War came to an end, leaving the slave not only emancipated, but endowed with the full dignity of citizenship. The women of the North had greatly helped to open the door which admitted him to freedom and its safeguard, the ballot. Was this door to be shut in their face?” Howe wondered.

The next year, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, and six months later, Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe founded the American Woman Suffrage Association.

The National Woman Suffrage Association wanted a general reworking of gender roles in American society, drawing from the Seneca Falls Convention that Stanton had organized in 1848.

That convention’s Declaration of Sentiments, patterned explicitly on the Declaration of Independence, asserted that “all men and women are created equal” and that “the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.” It listed the many ways in which men had “fraudulently deprived [women] of their most sacred rights” and insisted that women receive “immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.”

While the National Woman Suffrage Association excluded men from its membership, the American Woman Suffrage Association made a point of including men equally, as well as Black woman suffragists, to indicate that they were interested in the universal right to vote and only in that right, believing the rest of the rights their rivals demanded would come through voting.

The women’s suffrage movement had initial success in the western territories, both because lawmakers there were hoping to attract women for their male-heavy communities and because the same lawmakers were furious at the growing noise about Black voting. Wyoming Territory granted women the vote in 1869, and lawmakers in Utah Territory followed suit in 1870, expecting that women would vote against polygamy there. When women in fact supported polygamy, Utah lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to take their vote away, and the movement for women’s suffrage in the West slowed dramatically.

Suffragists had hoped that women would be included in the Fifteenth Amendment and, when they were not, decided to test their right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment in the 1872 election. According to its statement that anyone born in the U.S. was a citizen, they were certainly citizens and thus should be able to vote. In New York state, Susan B. Anthony voted successfully but was later tried and convicted—in an all-male courtroom in which she did not have the right to testify—for the crime of voting.

In Missouri a voting registrar named Reese Happersett refused to permit suffragist Virginia Minor to register. Minor sued Happersett, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision in 1875, the justices decided that women were indeed citizens but that citizenship did not necessarily convey the right to vote.

This decision meant the fat was in the fire for Black Americans in the South, as it paved the way for white supremacists to keep them from the polls in 1876. But it was also a blow to suffragists, who recast their claims to voting by moving away from the idea that they had a human right to consent to their government, and toward the idea that they would be better and more principled voters than the Black men and immigrants who, under the law anyway, had the right to vote.

For the next two decades, the women’s suffrage movement drew its power from the many women’s organizations put together across the country by women of all races and backgrounds who came together to stop excessive drinking, clean up the sewage in city streets, protect children, stop lynching, and promote civil rights.

Black women like educator Mary Church Terrell and journalist Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, publisher of the Woman’s Era, brought a broad lens to the movement from their work for civil rights, but they could not miss that Black women stood in between the movements for Black rights and women’s rights, a position scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw would identify In the twentieth century as “intersectionality.”

In 1890 the two major suffrage associations merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association and worked to change voting laws at the state level. Gradually, western states and territories permitted women to vote in certain elections until by 1920, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, California, Oregon, Arizona, Kansas, Alaska Territory, Montana, and Nevada recognized women’s right to vote in at least some elections.

Suffragists recognized that action at the federal level would be more effective than a state-by-state strategy. The day before Democratic president Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated in 1913, they organized a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., that grabbed media attention. They continued civil disobedience to pressure Wilson into supporting their movement.

Still, it took another war effort, that of World War I, which the U.S. entered in 1917, to light a fire under the lawmakers whose votes would be necessary to get a suffrage amendment through Congress and send it off to the states for ratification. Wilson, finally on board as he faced a difficult midterm election in 1918, backed a constitutional amendment, asking congressmen: “Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?”

Congress passed the measure in a special session on June 4, 1919, and Tennessee’s ratification on August 18, 1920, made it the law of the land as soon as the official notice was in the hands of the secretary of state. Twenty-six million American women had the right to vote in the 1920 presidential election.

Crucially, as the Black suffragists had known all too well when they found themselves caught between the drives for Black male voting and women’s suffrage, Jim Crow and Juan Crow laws meant that most Black women and women of color would remain unable to vote for another 45 years. And yet they never stopped fighting for that right. Women like Fannie Lou Hamer, Amelia Boynton, Rosa Parks, Viola Liuzzo, and Constance Baker Motley were key organizers of voting rights initiatives, spreading information, arranging marches, sparking key protests, and preparing legal cases.

In 1980, women began to shift their votes to the Democrats, and in 1984 the Democrats nominated Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York to run for vice president alongside presidential candidate Walter Mondale. Republicans followed suit in 2008 when they nominated Alaska governor Sarah Palin to run with Arizona senator John McCain. Still, it was not until 2016 that a major political party nominated a woman, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, for president. In 2020 the Democrats nominated California senator Kamala Harris for vice president, and when voters elected her and President Joe Biden, they made her the first female vice president of the United States.

Tonight, on the 104th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, delegates are gathered in Chicago, Illinois, for the Democratic National Convention, where they will celebrate Harris’s nomination for the presidency.

It’s been a long time coming.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[stupittmoran]

Top 10 headlines the media didn't tell you this week, Repost & FoIIow for more.

Governor Greg Abbott signs a bill making it a state crime to enter Texas illegally.

Fulton County counted 20,713 votes that did not exist in the 2020 election; Trump "lost" by 11,779 votes.

Senate staffer fired after filming gay sex tape in Senate hearing room; apparently, we're not the only ones getting f*cked by the government.

Dismantling of a Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery was halted by Trump appointed Federal judge.

Vivek Ramaswamy to withdraw from the Colorado GOP primary until Trump is allowed to be on the ballot.

The State of Tennessee is suing BlackRock, the world's largest financial asset manager, for misleading investors about their money being used to fund ESG policies.

California Lieutenant Governor demands Secretary of State remove former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot, the last US president to be removed from ballots was Abraham Lincoln.

A second Democratic candidate joins Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., claiming the left is rigging the primaries for Biden.

New Supreme Court filing claims Jack Smith was never properly appointed as Special Counsel, declaring all of his legal acts null and void.

A Federal judge ordered more than 150 names linked to Jeffrey Epstein to be unsealed, 3 of the names will remain sealed, who do you think they are?

If you appreciate this Top 10 recap, remember to Repost and FoIIow me for another week in a clown world 🤡🌎

From

TaraBull𝕏

@TaraBull808 on Twitter/X

[mariacallous]

Although much of the commentary about U.S. President Donald Trump continues to revolve around the ways that he upends traditional Republican Party politics, much of his success, in fact, stems from the opposite—the ways in which he champions policies that have been at the core of the GOP for decades.

It was not a surprise that Trump’s inaugural address included the words “drill, baby, drill,” a catchphrase that gained popularity with vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in her 2008 campaign for vice president, eight years before Trump first ran. And when Palin injected the phrase into the popular bloodstream, it already reflected decades of Republicans shifting from environmental concerns and promoting higher rates of fossil fuel production.

Every time that Trump utters the phrase, he reminds Republicans that regardless of his behavior, much of what he is fighting for is exactly what they have desired since the 1970s. He is the party’s path to political power and achieving key policies, as he demonstrated with passage of a massive supply-side tax cut in 2017.

Trump is the battering ram that Republicans have been looking for in their efforts to weaken or dismantle the regulations that environmentalists have struggled to put into place over the decades. Whenever the president says “drill, baby, drill,” he offers a not-so-subtle reminder to Republicans that yes—he is, in fact, one of them.

There was a time when Republicans were not unilaterally opposed to environmentalism. Between 1964 and 1976 were what writers Gregg Coodley and David Sarasohn called “the Green Years,” when most of the movement’s major federal policy initiatives, including the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, were created with bipartisan support.

Numerous Republicans—such as President Richard Nixon—grudgingly went along with legislation to protect the environment. Or—as was the case with Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker and Pennsylvania Rep. John Saylor—they even enthusiastically championed this particular expansion of federal power.

Since Nixon’s presidency, though, many leading Republicans have attempted to push back against efforts to curtail the United States’ thirst for oil. With the environmental movement gaining strength in the 1970s, as historian Meg Jacobs argues in her book Panic at the Pump, prominent Republicans within President Gerald Ford’s administration worked within the executive branch to undercut attempts to redirect national policy toward conservation.

President Ronald Reagan likewise cast doubt over efforts to deal with issues such as acid rain, and he deployed executive muscle to roll back regulations that did make it onto the books. He appointed cabinet secretaries such as James Watt at the Department of Interior and Anne Gorsuch at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—people who had no interest in implementing the policies that were under their jurisdiction.

“It was eight lost years—years of lost time that cannot be made up and where a lot of damage was done that may not be reparable,” lamented the then-president of the Wilderness Society, George Frampton Jr., in 1989.

As environmentalism gained strength within the Democratic Party, Republicans doubled down on the fight.

Within Congress, a new generation of Republicans that entered into Capitol Hill in the 1980s and 1990s likewise shifted to the right on environmental regulation. The “Contract With America,” a 1994 policy proposal in which Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich and his allies developed as a platform to nationalize the midterms, did not mention the environment and called for policies that would handcuff regulatory bodies.

Gingrich, who often could express broader concern for the health of the environment, blasted the EPA as the “biggest job-killing agency in inner-city America” in a speech in 1995, just one month into his term as speaker of the House. In his mind, the EPA was a “highly centralized command bureaucracy artificially trying to impose its judgment with almost no knowledge of local conditions and with a static rather than dynamic view of itself.” He called the 1980 Superfund law, aimed at cleaning up toxic waste sites, a “national disgrace.”

One of President George W. Bush’s first acts in 2001 was to remove the United States from the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement from 1997 aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions. The administration repeatedly cast doubt on scientific reports indicating a consensus about the problem of rising global temperatures.

Bush also established the Energy Task Force, headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, which worked with executives from the oil industry to issue a report that acknowledged the need for efficiency and conservation but simultaneously proposed strengthening the existing infrastructure for oil production and increasing fossil fuel production until alternative energy sources were more realistic. The report also called for expanding the sources of foreign oil to achieve stability at home.

Though, to his frustration, Bush and the GOP failed to open up drilling in the Alaska Arctic Wildlife Refuge, he rolled back many environmental regulations. In other areas, the story was the same. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the president reversed regulations on mining metals, blocked rules to reduce the discharge of raw sewage into water, and more. Under Bush, the Office of Management and Budget gained significant power to dismantle or avoid implementing existing rules.

The phrase “drill, baby, drill,” which boiled the entire shift of the ideological outlook of Republicans down to the essence, is credited to Michael Steele, who served as the lieutenant governor of Maryland and the chairman of the 2008 Republican National Convention (and is currently a prominent anti-Trump host on MSNBC), in response to gas having reached $4 a gallon.

“So, do you want to put your country first? Then let’s reduce our dependency on foreign sources of oil and promote oil and gas production at home,” Steele told the delegates gathered in St. Paul, Minneapolis, at the 2008 convention. “In other words: Drill, baby, drill! And drill now!” The crowed instantly burst out repeating what Steele, who later expressed regret for his statement, had said.

Steele was the inventor, but it was 2008 vice presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Palin who gave it juice. After the late Sen. John McCain selected Palin as his running mate, the governor quickly proved that she knew how to rile up a crowd. From her acceptance speech through her fall rallies, Palin had a number of breakthrough talking points, including railing against the “lamestream media” and boasting of being “your average hockey mom.” There were also all kinds of slights and insinuations against the Democratic candidate, then-Sen. Barack Obama, whom Palin made a point of emphasizing his middle name, “Hussein.”

But one of the lines that did best was when she turned to the subject of oil. “Drill, baby, drill!” she liked to say from the podium while the audience repeated her words as if they were joining in during the “shoot interviews” that professional wrestlers conduct from the squared circle.

During her debate with then-Sen. Joe Biden on Oct. 2, 2008, Palin stood firm as her opponent lit into McCain’s record on solar and wind energy. It was almost as if she had been waiting for Biden to criticize her by saying, “the only answer is drill, drill, drill.” Palin’s face lit up as she corrected him: “The chant is ‘drill, baby, drill.’ And that’s what we hear all across this country.”

Writing in the New York Times, Bob Herbert quipped: “The credit markets are frozen. Our top general in Afghanistan is dialing 911. Americans are losing jobs by the scores of thousands. And Sarah Palin is making sure we know that the chant is ‘drill, baby, drill’ not ‘drill, drill, drill.’”

When speaking in Colorado in late October, the crowd was euphoric when Palin brought up the issue, engaging in a call and response with the candidate. The line, according to energy reporter Clifford Krauss, looking back four years later, was “among the best lines of the 2008 presidential campaign, colorfully capturing the desire of many Americans for cheap, reliable energy produced at home rather than in unpredictable places like Iran or Venezuela.”

Two years after she and McCain were defeated, Palin hadn’t backed down from her slogan. Following the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, when some Republicans backed away from the term for fear that their record would make the party look terrible, she argued on social media that “Extreme Greenies: see now why we push ‘drill, baby, drill’ of known reserves & promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?” Her argument was that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was safer than offshore drilling. In 2016, she used the phrase in her endorsement of Trump—though in that case, senior party members would be on the receiving end: “No, we’re not going to chill. In fact, it’s time to drill, baby, drill down, and hold these folks accountable and we need to stop the self-sabotage and elect a new and independent candidate who represents that.”

During the 2022 midterms, Palin reappeared as she traveled to back Republican candidates, bringing back the phrase to wildly enthusiastic crowds.

When Trump first emerged on the political scene, he was treated like a total renegade, outside the Republican tradition and bringing down the establishment. But on many core policy issues, including energy, climate change, and the environment, he and the GOP were on the same page. During his first term, Trump rolled back hundreds of environmental measures and vastly expanded the opportunities for drilling.

With a constant eye on Pennsylvania and other top energy-producing states, he made certain that voters knew his vision for “making America great again” including a lot of fracking. “I applaud and strongly support President Trump’s continued support for the oil and gas industry,” proclaimed Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma, in 2020.

For Trump, the phrase “drill, baby, drill” is more than mere rhetoric. During the 2024 campaign, he reportedly met with oil executives in May, asking them for a billion dollars in campaign funds as he listened to a list of their demands.

Then, in his blitzkrieg of executive orders during week one of his term, Trump issued many decisions that touched on fossil fuel production, including boosting oil and gas production in Alaska, removing a pause that Biden had imposed on approving applications to export liquified natural gas operations, and revoking an order from his predecessor that would have required half of the new cars being sold by 2030 to be electric. He pulled out of the Paris climate agreement. More decisions are certainly on the way.

Some of the biggest concern, ironically, is coming from the oil and gas companies that, despite their enthusiasm for the new administration’s position, don’t want to produce more unless they can also raise oil and natural gas prices—something that would be antithetical to Trump’s promise to bring down inflation. Many of these companies, according to the New York Times, are also focused on tightening their belts right now, which means diminished investment in fracking. The United States is already enjoying extremely high levels of oil and natural gas production. Nonetheless, the concerns have not overridden the satisfaction of having a president who is on their side.

Calling for drilling for oil is as Republican as it gets. With this emphasis, Trump connects easily with all sorts of Republicans—young, old, establishment, anti-establishment—and everything in between. He reminds the party, and many of its most important economic interests, that he is with them through and through.

The coalition between MAGA Republicans and the rest of the party is a coalition built around power and policy. Trump survived the aftermath of the 2020 election not because he has some kind of superhuman power, but because he never veered very far from where the rest of Republicans were.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

"In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed cutting the state’s public health funding by $300 million. And the Department of Health in Washington state slashed more than 350 positions at the end of last year and more than 200 this year." Tell me again that the Democrats are damage control: They can't even do the right thing in the states where they have absolute majorities. You should be livid, not complacent or complicit.

Analysis by Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez and McKenzie Beard

Good morning. I’m Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez, a KFF Health News correspondent based in Elko, Nev., which is about as high in elevation as Denver, the Mile-High City. Email me about your experiences with health care in rural America at jorozco@kff.org.

Today’s edition: The Harris-Walz campaign rolled out a plan to improve rural health care. Nebraska voters are set to weigh in on two conflicting abortion-related ballot initiatives. But first …

The boom-and-bust funding cycle for public health hits states

During the coronavirus pandemic, states received a rush of funding from the federal government to bolster their fight against the disease. In many cases, that cash flowed into state and local health departments, fueling a staffing surge to handle, among other things, contact tracing and vaccination efforts.

But public health leaders quickly identified a familiar boom-and-bust funding cycle as they warned about an incoming fiscal cliff once the federal grants sunset. Now, more than a year since the federal Department of Health and Human Services declared the end of the coronavirus emergency, states — such as Montana, California and Washington — face tough decisions about laying off workers and limiting public health services.

In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed cutting the state’s public health funding by $300 million. And the Department of Health in Washington state slashed more than 350 positions at the end of last year and more than 200 this year.

Public health experts warn that losing staff who perform functions like disease investigation, immunization, family planning, restaurant inspection and more could send communities into crisis.

“You cannot hire the firefighters when the house is already burning,” said Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, an organization that advocates for public health policy.

In late September, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra declared a public health emergency for states affected by Hurricane Helene, allowing state and local health authorities in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee to more easily access federal resources. Last week, ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall in Florida, Becerra declared another public health emergency to aid the state’s response.

If states don’t have robust public health resources ready when disasters like this hit their communities, it can have devastating effects.

Local health department staffing grew by about 19 percent from 2019 to 2022, according to a report from the National Association of County and City Health Officials that examined 2,512 of the nation’s roughly 3,300 local departments. The same report found that half of those departments’ revenue in 2022 came from federal sources.

But in some places, the pandemic cash did little more than keep small health departments afloat. The Central Montana Health District, a public health agency serving five rural counties, received enough money to retain a staff member to help handle testing, contact tracing and rolling out the coronavirus vaccines. It wasn’t enough to hire extra workers, but it allowed officials to fill a position left empty when a staffer left the department, said Susan Woods, the district’s public health director.

Now, five full-time employees work for the health district — enough to scrape by, Woods said.

“Any kind of crisis, any kind of, God forbid, another pandemic, would probably send us crashing,” she said.

Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs for the national health officials’ group, said she expects layoffs and health department budget cuts to intensify. Those cuts come as health officials work to address issues that took a back seat in the pandemic, such as increases in rates of sexually transmitted infections, suicide and substance misuse.

And rural health departments deserve more attention, Casalotti said, as they are likely to be the most vulnerable and face compounding factors such as hospital closures and the loss of services including maternity and other women’s care.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism.

[svalleynow]

Secretary Hargett encourages Tennesseans to register to vote as part of National Voter Registration Day

Secretary Hargett encourages Tennesseans to register to vote as part of National Voter Registration Day...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – As National Voter Registration Day approaches, Secretary of State Tre Hargett is encouraging all eligible Tennesseans to register to vote. “It has never been easier to register or cast a ballot in Tennessee,” said Secretary Hargett. “If you have not already registered, National Voter Registration Day is a great opportunity to do so.” National Voter Registration Day is Tuesday,…

[whencyclopedia]

Henry Knox

Henry Knox (1750-1806) was a Boston-born bookseller who became a general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and served as the army's Chief Artillery Officer. After the conflict, he was appointed the first Secretary of War of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1794 in the Washington administration.

Knox first distinguished himself in January 1776, when he guided his 'Noble Artillery Train' of 58 artillery pieces on a harrowing 300-mile trek across the snowy and mountainous terrain of New York State and Massachusetts; this effort helped the Continental Army win one of its first major victories at the Siege of Boston. Henry Knox commanded the Continental artillery for most of the American Revolution and was one of George Washington's most trusted subordinates. When Washington became President of the United States in 1789, Henry Knox was put in charge of the War Department. In this capacity, he sought to strengthen the military and helped create the Legion of the United States, a standing army of professional soldiers, while simultaneously overseeing the Northwest Indian War. In 1795, he retired to his estate in Thomaston, Maine, where he died in October 1806, at the age of 56. Today, many American towns, cities, counties, and military bases are named in his honor, including Knoxville, Tennessee, and Fort Knox in Kentucky.

Early Life

Henry Knox was born on 25 July 1750 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the seventh of ten children born to William Knox and Mary Campbell, both of whom were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who had emigrated to Boston in 1729. William Knox was a shipbuilder who, in 1759, was spurred on by financial troubles to abandon his family and move to Sint Eustatius in the West Indies to start a new life; his new life would not last long, however, as he died three years later of unknown causes. Henry, who was only nine years old when he was abandoned by his father, was now responsible for caring for his mother and younger siblings, and he eventually found a steady job as a clerk in a Boston bookstore.

The shopkeeper, Nicholas Bowes, became something of a father figure to Knox, encouraging the young clerk to take home books from the shop's extensive library to furnish his self-education. Knox soon became a voracious reader; with the help of the books in Bowes' shop, he educated himself in the topics of philosophy, mathematics, and even French, and spent his free time reading the works of classical literature. Yet Knox also took a special interest in military theory, reading everything he could get his hands on about tactics and military engineering. When he came of age in 1771, Knox opened a bookstore of his own called the London Book Store, which boasted a "large and very elegant assortment" of the newest books and magazines from London (McCullough, 58). Since Henry Knox's store offered a large selection of fashionable English products, it soon became a popular "morning lounge" for the Boston elite; the store, and Knox himself, soon became well-known throughout the city.

Continue reading...

[vague-humanoid]

Debunking conspiracy theories takes time away from recovery efforts

As rescue work continues and authorities try to separate fact from fiction, the conspiracy theories are not helping. Elected leaders from both parties have had to set the record straight and urge people not to give into fear and rumor.

“If everyone could maybe please put aside the hate for a bit and pitch in to help, that would be great,” posted Glenn Jacobs, the retired professional wrestler known as Kane, who is now the Republican mayor of Knox County, Tennessee. Jacobs’ post was intended to rebut rumors that workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were seizing relief supplies from private citizens.

Many of the conspiracy theories focus on hard-hit North Carolina, a state key to winning the White House. Rumors circulated that FEMA was raiding storm donations and withholding body bags, forcing local hospitals to stack the bodies of victims. One claim suggested federal authorities would condemn the entire town of Chimney Rock and prohibit resettlement in order to commandeer a valuable lithium mine nearby.

False claims of blocked relief flights and aid withheld from Republicans

Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, X and SpaceX, posted that private relief flights to North Carolina were being blocked by the Federal Aviation Administration, a claim dismissed as false by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Despite the tradition of Democrats and Republicans putting aside politics for disaster response, many conspiracy theories suggest Democrats such as President Joe Biden or North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper are intentionally withholding aid from Republicans. Trump has pushed the claim, as has North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, the embattled GOP nominee for governor.

“They’re being treated very badly in the Republican areas,” Trump told Fox News, ignoring reports and photo and video evidence of recovery efforts underway throughout the region. “They’re not getting water, they’re not getting anything.”

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones endorsed Trump’s fact-free allegation. Jones, the founder of InfoWars, popularized the idea that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut that killed 20 children in 2012 was faked. “Exclusive: Victims of Hurricane Helene Confirm The Federal Government is Purposely Blocking Rescuers and Stealing Aid In an Attempt to Keep Deep Red Areas From Voting,” Jones posted Thursday on X.

Disinformation campaigns by China and Russia amplify the misleading claims

State-run media and disinformation campaigns run by China and Russia have amplified false and misleading claims about the response to the storm. Both countries have used social media and state news stories to criticize responses to past U.S. natural disasters, part of a larger effort to stoke division and distrust among Americans.

State and local officials from both parties have condemned the conspiracy theories as rumors, saying the focus should be on recovery, not political division and hearsay. Responding to the hoaxes is taking up time that should go toward assisting victims, said North Carolina state Sen. Kevin Corbin, a Republican who urged his constituents not to give into hoaxes.

“Friends can I ask a small favor?” Corbin posted Thursday on Facebook. “Will you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet... Please don’t let these crazy stories consume you.”

After Robinson, the GOP candidate for North Carolina governor, posted that state officials had not prepared for the storm, a spokesman for the governor accused Robinson of mounting “an online disinformation campaign.” North Carolina officials say the response to Helene is the largest in state history, including thousands of members of the National Guard and other recovery workers, millions of meals, dozens of aircraft and more than 1,000 chainsaws.

Trump has tried to tie the hurricane’s aftermath to immigration, a leading issue of his campaign. He falsely claimed that FEMA had run out of money because all of it had gone to programs for undocumented immigrants.

The agency’s funding for disaster aid is stretched, but that is because of the many parts of the country dealing with the effects of hurricanes, wildfires and other calamities. Disaster aid is funded separately from other Department of Homeland Security programs that support immigration-related spending.

Far-out tales of space lasers, fake snow and weather control technology

Bizarre stories proposing that the government used weather control technology to aim the hurricane at Republican voters quickly racked up millions of views on X and other platforms.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., endorsed the idea, posting Wednesday on X: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

Far-out tales of space lasers, fake snow and weather control technology -- sometimes tinged with antisemitism — have spread after recent natural disasters, including a snowstorm in Texas and last year’s wildfire in Maui.

Experts who study conspiracy theories say big events like disasters — or the Sept. 11 attacks or the COVID-19 pandemic — create perfect conditions for conspiracy theories to spread because large numbers of anxious people are eager to find explanations for shocking events.

Responding to the volume of false claims about Helene, the Red Cross urged people to consult trustworthy sources of information and to think twice before reposting conspiracy theories.

“Sharing rumors online without first vetting the source and verifying facts ultimately hurts people — people who have just lost their homes, neighborhoods, and, in some cases, loved ones,” the organization wrote in a public plea.

[shewhoworshipscarlin]

Thomas Fountain Blue

Thomas Fountain Blue, the first African American to head a public library in the United States, was also a civic, educational, and religious leader. Blue was born in Farmville, Virginia, on March 6, 1866, to Noah Blue, a carpenter, and Henry Ann Crawley Blue. They were parents of two other children, Alice Blue and Charles Blue.

Blue enrolled in Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, in 1885 and graduated in 1888. In 1894, he enrolled in Richmond Theological Seminary (now Virginia Union University) in Richmond, Virginia, finishing in 1898 with a Bachelor of Divinity degree. One week later, when the United States declared war on Spain after the sinking of the USS Maine off the coast of Cuba, touching off the Spanish-American War, Blue joined the Sixth Virginia Volunteers battalion comprising African American soldiers and was stationed first in Camp Poland in Tennessee and later at Camp Haskell in Georgia.

In 1905, Blue was selected to lead the Western Branch Library of the Louisville Free Public Library on South 10th and Chestnut Street, the first Carnegie Library in the nation to serve African American patrons with an exclusively African American staff. The facility cost $31,024.31 to build and when completed had over 4,000 books and 53 periodicals.

In 1914, Blue opened Louisville’s second Carnegie Library for African Americans, the Eastern Branch Library. During World War I, Blue was drafted, left the branch, and was appointed the Education Secretary at Camp Zachary Taylor in Louisville, one of sixteen national Army training camps created across the nation. Blue worked with Black troops who mostly had supporting and laboring roles in the United States.

After the war ended in 1918, Blue returned to Louisville, and a year later, in 1919, he was named head of the “Colored Department” for the city’s public library system and supervised eight African American assistants. The Colored Department was the first in the United States to have a staff which served multiple Black library branches.

In 1922, Blue was a presenter at the American Library Association Conference in Detroit, Michigan, where he gave a paper titled, “Training Class at the Western Colored Branch,” and led the subsequent discussion with the Negro Roundtable composed of other African American Library staffers from across the nation.

On June 18, 1925, Blue married Cornelia Phillips Johnson from Columbia, Tennessee, and they parented two children, Thomas Fountain Blue, Jr., and Charles Blue (named after his younger brother). Two years later, in 1927, Blue founded the Negro Library Conference and conducted its first meeting at Hampton Institute.

Later becoming a minister, Reverend Thomas Fountain Blue—who held membership in the American Library Association, the Special Committee of Colored Ministers of Louisville on Matters Interracial, and was a charter member of the Louisville Chapter of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History—died on November 10, 1935, in Louisville, Kentucky. He was 69.

At the 2003 joint conference of the American Library Association with the Canadian Library Association Annual Conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Blue was posthumously honored when the organization passed a resolution recognizing his leadership in promoting professionalism among the staff of African American libraries across the United States. In 2022, a headstone honoring Blue and his wife, Cornelia Phillips Johnson, was placed at Eastern Cemetery in Louisville by the Frazier History Museum.

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/people-african-american-history/thomas-fountain-blue-1866-1935/

[deadpresidents]

Have any Vice Presidents later run for Governor or other office besides President after their terms?

Yes. Not counting those who served as President or ran for President following their time as Vice President, or the seven Vice Presidents who died in office (George Clinton, Elbridge Gerry, William R. King, Henry Wilson, Thomas A. Hendricks, Garret Hobart, and James S. Sherman), here are the VPs who sought other offices post-Vice Presidency:

•Aaron Burr (1801-1805): Lost race for Governor of New York in 1804 during his Vice Presidency. •Daniel D. Tompkins (1817-1825): Lost race for Governor of New York in 1820 during his Vice Presidency. •John C. Calhoun (1825-1832): Resigned the Vice Presidency to join in the U.S. Senate from South Carolina (1832-1843); Served as Secretary of State (1844-1845) in the last stretch of the Tyler Administration; Elected again to the U.S. Senate from South Carolina (1845-1850) after serving as Secretary of State.

•Richard M. Johnson (1837-1841): Lost race for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky in 1842; Served two separate terms in the Kentucky House of Representatives (1841-1843; 1850) after his Vice Presidency. Died two weeks into his second post-Vice Presidential term in the state legislature.

•John Tyler (1841): After serving as Vice President and President, and following Virginia's secession from the Union in 1861, Tyler was elected as a delegate to the Provisional Confederate Congress. Tyler was also elected to a full term in the Confederate House of Representatives but died just before taking his seat in February 1862.

•George M. Dallas (1845-1849): Appointed U.S. Minister to Great Britain (1856-1861) by President Pierce and served under Presidents Pierce and Buchanan before being replaced early in the Lincoln Administration.

•John C. Breckinridge (1857-1861): Elected to a U.S. Senate seat from Kentucky while still Vice President. After administering the oath of office to his successor as Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin, Breckinridge was immediately sworn into the Senate by Hamlin. Although Kentucky remained neutral during the Civil War, Breckinridge supported the Confederacy and joined the Confederate military while still a sitting Senator, resulting in treason charges in November 1861 and, a month later, unanimous expulsion from the Senate. Breckinridge became a general in the Confederate Army and served as Confederate President Jefferson Davis's final Secretary of War.

•Hannibal Hamlin (1861-1865): Briefly served as Collector of the Port of Boston (1865-1866) after being appointed by President Andrew Johnson. Elected U.S. Senator from Maine (1869-1881). Served as U.S. Ambassador to Spain (1881-1882) under Presidents Garfield and Arthur.

•Andrew Johnson (1865): After his brief Vice Presidency and nearly four years as President, Johnson lost races for the U.S. Senate (1869) and U.S. House of Representatives in Tennessee. Elected as U.S. Senator from Tennessee in 1875 and died in office.

•William A. Wheeler (1877-1881): Wheeler was considered as a candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York on several occasions following his Vice Presidency but never made a serious bid for election.

•Levi P. Morton (1889-1893): Served as Governor of New York (1895-1896).

•Adlai E. Stevenson (1893-1897): Lost race for Governor of Illinois in 1908.

•Charles W. Fairbanks (1905-1909): Fairbanks was the Republican nominee for Vice President on a ticket alongside Presidential nominee Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 but they lost to incumbent President Woodrow Wilson and Vice President Thomas R. Marshall.

•Charles G. Dawes (1925-1929): Served as U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain (1929-1931), appointed by President Hoover.

•Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945): After being dumped as Vice President in favor of Harry Truman when Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a fourth term in 1944, FDR appointed Wallace Secretary of Commerce where he served from 1945-1946 under Roosevelt and Truman

•Alben W. Barkley (1949-1953): Elected to the U.S. Senate from Kentucky after his Vice Presidency and served from 1955 until dying in office in 1956.

•Richard Nixon (1953-1961): After losing his first bid for the White House in 1960, Nixon also lost a race for Governor of California in 1962 after leaving the Vice Presidency before making a remarkable comeback to win the Presidency in 1968.

•Hubert H. Humphrey (1965-1969): Elected to his former seat in the U.S. Senate from Minnesota and served until dying in office (1971-1978).

•Walter Mondale (1977-1981): U.S. Ambassador to Japan (1993-1996), appointed by President Clinton. In 2002, Mondale lost a race for U.S. Senate from Minnesota when he was the last-minute replacement on the ballot after Senator Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash.