By SEAN MURPHY (The Associated Press)

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit of the last two survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dampening the hope of advocates for racial justice that the government would make amends for one of the worst single acts of violence against Black people in U.S. history.

The nine-member court upheld the decision made by a district court judge in Tulsa last year, ruling that the plaintiff’s grievances, although legitimate, did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.

The suit was an attempt to force the city of Tulsa and others to make recompense for the destruction by a white mob of the once-thriving Black district known as Greenwood. In 1921 — on May 31 and June 1 — the white mob, including some people hastily deputized by authorities, looted and burned the district, which was referred to as Black Wall Street.

As many as 300 Black Tulsans were killed, and thousands of survivors were forced for a time into internment camps overseen by the National Guard. Burned bricks and a fragment of a church basement are about all that survive today of the more than 30-block historically Black district.

The two survivors of the attack, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, who are both now over 100 years old, sued in 2020 with the hope of seeing what their attorney called “justice in their lifetime.” A third plaintiff, Hughes Van Ellis, died last year at ag 102.

Cerys Davies | (TNS) Los Angeles Times

More Latinos are considering voting for a third-party candidate in the upcoming presidential election, a new poll by Voto Latino finds.

According to the survey, a fifth of Latino voters are considering voting for a candidate other than President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump. The poll, conducted by Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, surveyed 2,000 Latino voters registered in swing states such as Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

When choosing between the two leading candidates, 59% picked Biden, a Democrat, and 39% selected Trump, a Republican. But when candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein were included in the question, the support for Biden saw a larger decline.

While Trump’s support dropped by 5 points, to 34%, Biden’s previous 59% dropped to 47%.

The civic engagement organization’s poll indicates that Latino voters aren’t turning away from the Democratic Party and moving toward the Republican Party, but rather that more of them are open to the idea of electing a third-party candidate.

In presidential elections, the Latino vote has typically gone to the Democratic candidate. In 2020, Biden received a majority with 59% of Latinos’ votes; in 2016, Hillary Clinton received 66%; and in 2012, Barack Obama received 71% of the Latino vote.

Of this year’s candidates from other parties, Kennedy, an independent, had the biggest share of likely Latino voters, with 12% of respondents saying they’d consider voting for him. The remainder of voters were split among West, a progressive independent, (3%); Green Party nominee Stein (2%); and “undecided” (1%).

“The challenge is that Latinos have a percentage leaning towards Kennedy, but they don’t know this Kennedy. They know the brand of Kennedy. They think that his family brings social justice and believes in equity,” said Diana Castaneda, vice president of communications at Voto Latino.

Of the Latino voters between the ages of 18 and 49 who told the poll they were considering a third-party candidate, 62% were women.

“That just speaks to not only the opportunity that both Biden and Harris have to talk about the issues that are bread and butter to the Latino community they care about,” María Teresa Kumar, co-founder and president of Voto Latino, said during a recent interview with MSNBC. “But also demonstrates the real frustration that the economy, while for many people is doing well, for folks at the bottom it is not.”

GOP political consultant Mike Madrid sees this interest in third-party candidates as an “emergence.”

“It’s getting more pronounced every year. A lot of it is simply a function of being anti-establishment,” he said. “They are anti-party and have a loss of faith and trust in both parties. They don’t see the parties representing their interest or solving their problem.”

According to Madrid, Latinos have “both a weaker partisan anchor and the strongest disaffiliation of the two parties,” which add to the belief among them that parties are not serving anybody’s interest but their own.

According to the poll, the top categories of issues for Latinos are inflation and the cost of living (52%), the economy and jobs (28%) and abortion rights (27%).

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©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Iain Marlow | (TNS) Bloomberg News

Secretary of State Antony Blinken cast fresh doubt on the prospects that Israel and Hamas would agree to a cease-fire proposal put forward by the U.S., saying some of the terrorist group’s latest demands were unacceptable.

Blinken offered the downbeat assessment after meeting senior leaders in Qatar, who along with Egyptian officials have mediated indirect talks between the two sides in a bid to end the war, which began when Hamas stormed into Israel on Oct. 7.

Hamas had responded to a proposal backed by President Joe Biden on Tuesday, though it didn’t say publicly what changes it wants and Blinken declined to provide details.

“I’m not going to obviously characterize or describe what they’re looking for,” Blinken said. “All I can tell you, having gone over this with our colleagues, is that we believe that some of the requested changes are workable, and some are not.”

Blinken declined to say whether the U.S. would put any pressure on Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after being asked repeatedly whether Israel should show more flexibility over a permanent cease-fire that Hamas has demanded. He made clear the blame lies with Hamas, which is labeled a terrorist group by the U.S., Canada, and the European Union.

“Israel accepted the proposal as it was, as it is — Hamas didn’t,” Blinken told reporters in Doha on Wednesday alongside Qatar’s leader, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. “The longer this goes on, the more people will suffer and it’s time for the haggling to stop and the cease-fire to start — it’s as simple as that.”

The U.S. has been unable to explain why Israel, which has said it won’t stop until Hamas is destroyed, would agree to a proposal that lets the group survive. Hamas, meanwhile, has made clear it wants Israel to withdraw from Gaza for good, something Netanyahu’s government has said is off the table.

The latest impasse underscored the challenges of Biden’s approach. He laid out a three-phase peace plan on May 31 that he said was backed by Israel, even though Israeli leaders themselves have been noncommittal about whether they approve all or part of it.

Calls to end the fighting have grown amid the scale of destruction in Gaza, including more than 37,000 deaths, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, as Israel seeks to crush the terrorist group, which killed 1,200 and abducted 250 others in the October attack.

The first phase of the Biden-presented proposal calls for a cease-fire and withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas of Gaza, while the second stage includes a permanent end to hostilities. Some of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack would be released in the initial phase, and the rest in phase two.

One person familiar with the talks said earlier that Hamas wants assurances that an automatic transition will take place from one phase of the agreement to another. The New York Times reported earlier Wednesday that Hamas wants firm timetables for a short-term truce and a permanent one, as well as a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

“This is an issue we’ve been struggling with for a very long time,” Sheikh Mohammed said. “How to ensure that we bridge the gap between those two fundamental differences, between what Hamas wants — as a permanent ceasefire — and what Israel wants — the hostages returned.”

When Blinken first heard that Hamas had submitted a response on Tuesday while in Amman, Jordan, he dispatched Counselor Derek Chollet and Assistant Secretary Barbara Leaf to meet with a senior Egyptian intelligence official, Abbas Kamel, who was also in the Jordanian capital, according to a senior State Department official who spoke to reporters traveling with Blinken in the Middle East.

They got the response, spoke about it with Kamel, and then brought it back to Blinken at his hotel, with all three of them discussing it until late in the evening, the official said.

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©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.