“What he has done and will continue to do leading up to the speech is to listen very carefully to all the concerns that are raised and make sure that he raises them in the speech or separately and beyond the speech,” said Stephen Benjamin, senior adviser to President Biden and director of the Office of Engagement Public White House. He added: “The war is clearly a very important topic of dialogue… across the country. This is maybe most evident on college campuses now.

Because Morehouse President David A. Thomas announced President Biden as keynote speaker at the all-male college’s a hundred and fortieth commencement on May 19, many students, faculty and alumni expressed opposition to the Biden administration’s policy of supporting Israel’s military operation in Gaza against Hamas, a U.S.-designated organization terrorist attack that killed over 34,000 Palestinians.

Outrage at the war and Biden’s role in it was expressed at a campus town hall between Morehouse students and President Thomas, and a letter was circulated amongst Morehouse graduates calling the president’s invitation “a moral disaster and an embarrassment to the university.” “

“The president is also concerned about civilian casualties, the Palestinian people and their safety,” added Richmond, who noted that the president has “criticized” the way Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is conducting the ground operation in Gaza and has “dedicated significant resources” to Palestinians in Gaza.

A former Biden White House adviser said the president will “continue efforts” for a “long-lasting peace and two-state solution” between Israel and Palestine.

Despite the Biden administration’s actions and campaigns to bring a few peaceful resolution in the Middle East, some alumni see the president’s visit as a direct conflict with the legacy of Morehouse’s most enlightened alumnus: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Dr. King was famous not only for his leadership in the Civil Rights Movement, but also for risking his reputation (and) relationships to speak out against the Vietnam War at the end of his life,” said Edward Mitchell, Morehouse alumnus and deputy director nationally at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “The legacy of speaking out against an unjust war is one that students across the country are living today.”

Mitchell, who signed the letter sent to Morehouse graduates, said that while he understands why the university would normally welcome the president of the United States to deliver the commencement address, the timing is “horrible.”

“When I was at Morehouse, there was no way they would have invited George W. Bush to speak after Hurricane Katrina or at the height of the Iraq War,” he explained. “So why is this acceptable?”

Mitchell said the Biden administration is “living in an alternate reality if it thinks it can speak out” at Morehouse and is “not facing serious criticism from young black men who overwhelmingly oppose the genocide ongoing in Gaza.”

He said that until Biden stops “enabling an unjust, genocidal war,” Morehouse “is not the place he should be,” adding: “His presence is an actual distraction from what ought to be a student- and parent-centered celebration, without the specter of protest or disruption.”

He added: “I know students are angry and frustrated and may decide that speaking up is more important than a peaceful ceremony. The decision is theirs alone.”

Controversy aside, Benjamin and Richmond, two of the most distinguished Black men advising Biden in the White House and on the campaign, say the president selected to attend Morehouse’s graduation ceremony to honor HBCUs’ wealthy history in developing Black male leaders.

“When a president agrees to speak at a school, he is recognizing the value of the school, the value of the students, and in Morehouse’s case, the impact and legacy that the school has had on the history of this country,” said Richmond, an authority on former U.S. congressman from New Orleans, Louisiana.

“Whether it’s being a teacher, an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor, or being Secretary of Homeland Security like Jeh Johnson. At school, we educate people who change communities and the world.”

When President Biden delivers his speech on the Morehouse campus in the heart of Atlanta, he’ll develop into the second sitting U.S. president to accomplish that. The first was President Barack Obama, the country’s first black commander-in-chief, for whom Biden was his vice president.

“I think it raises the profile of Morehouse again,” Richmond said of President Biden’s upcoming visit.

While some critics dismissed the president’s Morehouse speech as a campaign stoppage intended to shore up Black voters in the battleground, Biden officials rejected that suggestion. Instead, they argue that the president has a real relationship with the campus and understands its legacy.

“He considers Dr. King his personal hero … and his bust is only on display with a few other people in the Oval Office,” said Benjamin, who also noted that “several” Morehouse graduates work in the White House executive office, in the one in the West Wing. He added: “He considers the Morehouse connection to be genuine.”

Richmond, who remembers talking about Morehouse with Biden during his 2020 campaign, said the Biden-Harris administration “respects” Morehouse and the larger Atlanta University Center, which incorporates Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University and Morris Brown. Richmond said that’s why the president delivered one among “his most important civil rights and voting rights speeches” on campus in 2022, and why Vice President Kamala Harris last yr invited Morehouse to her “Fighting for Our Freedoms” campus tour.

A Biden campaign official said the president saw the inaugural address as a chance to remind 2024 graduates of “all the things he accomplished specifically for the Black community” because “(they) were involved” in the last presidential election.

“It’s more about making sure they understand the impact that they have had, that they will have and that we need,” Richmond noted, “and not necessarily in a political context, but in a community context, a national context.”

Benjamin said President Biden’s upcoming address to a whole lot of Black male graduates will give attention to students and their families.

“When the president speaks, it will be a memory for a lifetime,” he said. “I have the impression that he will talk about what unites us rather than what divides us.”

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A federal judge sentenced a Massachusetts lawyer to 10 years in prison for paying a hitman to murder his ex-wife.

Allen Gessen, 49, was convicted of murder for hire after evidence revealed he tried to hire an undercover FBI agent, whom he believed to be a contract killer, to murder his former partner and mother of his two children, Priscilla Chigariro.

He and Chigariro were embroiled in a long-running dispute that led to a contentious custody proceeding, federal prosecutors said.

Gessen’s murder plot began to take shape in the summer of 2022, when he began dating the undercover agent and sharing details of his failing co-parenting relationship. He thought the agent was an assassin with extensive government connections that he wanted to use to get rid of Chigariro and gain full custody of his children.

Gessen originally planned to illegally deport Chigariro from the U.S. and wanted to pay the agent $100,000 to arrange the deportation. He then realized that murder was a “cheaper way to get rid of her” and a more everlasting solution.

He admitted to the agent that he had already tried to hire someone to kill Chigariro once. Prosecutors said he paid a hit team from a foreign country to go to Massachusetts, conduct reconnaissance and surveil her. When the team told him it might cost one other $210,000 to commit the murder, Gessen called it off.

Gessen paid the secret agent a deposit of $25,000 in the form of a $2,000 gold coin and an amount of $23,000 by wire transfer to a checking account in San Francisco. He planned to pay one other $25,000 after carrying out the murder. He entered into a written agreement with the agent detailing false “advisory services” to mask the true nature of the funds, after which sent the agent details of his former partner’s whereabouts, schedule and lifestyle.

A federal grand jury indicted Gessen in July 2022. He was a licensed attorney in New York at the time. Chigariro said she was shocked when FBI agents arrived at her home after Gessen was charged.

“I can’t even describe how I felt in that moment,” Chigariro said in January 2023. a series of videos on YouTube tells the story of his marriage. “I just remember this feeling… I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like I stopped feeling anything. I was very confused. I couldn’t digest it. I couldn’t understand it. You didn’t want to sink into it.”

In the five-episode vlog series, Chigariro said that she and Gessen lived in Zimbabwe, where she was a model for a time, and in Russia after they were together. She indicated that there was violence on this relationship and recalled one time when Gessen hit her so hard that she “passed out.” There were also longer periods when Gessen kept her son away from her.

After a week-long trial in May 2023, a federal jury found Gessen guilty. After serving his sentence, he’ll spend three years on supervised release.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Without wielding a gavel and holding a proper role outlined in the Constitution, Republican Hakeem Jeffries could be the most powerful person in Congress today.

Jeffries, the Democratic House Minority Leader, secured the votes needed to maintain the government running despite opposition from House Republicans to avert a federal government shutdown.

Jeffries, who made sure Democrats honored their commitments and sent $95 billion in foreign aid to Ukraine and other U.S. allies.

And Jeffries, who, with the entire House Democratic leadership behind him, decided this week that his party would help Speaker Mike Johnson stay in office quite than be forced from office by far-right Republicans led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“How powerful is Jeffries now?” said Jeffery Jenkins, a public policy professor at the University of Southern California who has written extensively about Congress. “That’s significant power.”

The decision by Jeffries and a team of House Democratic leaders to forged votes to stop Johnson’s ouster marks a powerful turning point in a protracted political season of dysfunction, gridlock and chaos in Congress.

By declaring that it’s enough that it’s time to “turn the page” on the Republican confusion, the Democratic leader is flexing his power in a really public and timely way, trying to point out lawmakers and everybody else who watches in horror at a broken Congress that there can be alternative approach to governance.

“From the very beginning of this Congress, House Republicans have witnessed chaos, dysfunction and extremism among the American people,” Jeffries said Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Jeffries said that since House Republicans are “unwilling or unable” to take control of “extreme MAGA Republicans,” “a bipartisan coalition and partnership will be necessary to achieve this goal. We need more common sense in Washington and less chaos.”

In the House, the minority leader is commonly viewed as the speaker in waiting, the highest-ranking official of a celebration out of power, biding his time in hopes of regaining the majority — and with it the speaker’s gavel — in the next election. Elected by his own party, it’s a job without much formal basis.

But in Jeffries’ case, the position of minority leader has gained enormous strength, filling the political void left by the real speaker, Johnson, who governs a fragile, thread-thin Republican majority and is under constant threat from far-right provocateurs that the GOP Speaker cannot fully control.

“He serves as shadow speaker on all important votes,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

While Johnson still wields the powerful tools of the Speaker’s office, a constitutionally mandated job that’s second in line of succession to the presidency, the Republican-led House has endured a tumultuous session of infighting and upheaval that has left its goals and priorities stalled.

In a fit of discontent just months after winning the majority, far-right Republicans ousted the previous speaker, now-retired Rep. Kevin McCarthy, D-Calif., last fall in a never-before-seen act of partisan defiance. He refused to specifically ask Democrats for help.

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Johnson faces the same threat of removal, but Jeffries sees Johnson as a more honest broker and potential partner he’s willing to support not less than temporarily — although Johnson also hasn’t openly asked for any help from the other side of the aisle. A vote on Greene’s motion to fireplace the speaker is anticipated next week.

While Johnson approaches Donald Trump and receives the nod of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Jeffries has what Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a retired speaker, called the “currency of the realm” – that’s, votes – which might be required in the House to bring about any order. session until the end.

Pelosi said in an interview that Jeffries has “always had influence” as minority leader due to his slim majority in the House.

“But it’s a matter of whether he shows that he wants to take advantage of it,” she said.

Jeffries said she “masterfully” secured Democratic priorities, especially humanitarian aid in a foreign aid package that was initially opposed by Republicans.

However, Pelosi disagreed with the concept that Democrats would support Johnson at this point, creating some recent era of coalitions in American politics.

“Our House functions because we want things to function in a bipartisan way,” she said. “He doesn’t necessarily save Speaker Johnson – he upholds the dignity of the institution.”

Jeffries is a quiet, confident operator who’s positioning himself and his party as purveyors of democratic norms amid the Republican thunderstorm of Trump-era disruption.

Jeffries, the first Black American to guide a political party in Congress, is already a historic figure whose stature will only increase if he’s elected first to wield the gavel as Speaker of the House.

Born in Brooklyn, Jeffries, 53, has steadily risen through the New York state political ranks after which onto the national stage as a charismatic next-generation leader, elected to Congress in 2012 from districts once represented by one other historic legislator, Shirley Chisolm, the first black woman elected to Congress.

Jeffries, a former corporate lawyer, can be known for his sharp oratory, drawing on his upbringing at the historic Black Cornerstone Baptist Church, a spiritual home for a lot of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of enslaved African Americans who fled to Brooklyn from the American South. But he also gives his speeches and remarks a contemporary sensitivity and rhythm, connecting generations.

Last yr, when Republicans did not muster votes on the procedural stage of a budget and debt agreement, it was Jeffries who stood intently at his desk in the House chamber and held up his ballot to signal to Democrats that it was time to step up motion and deliver.

Jeffries has repeatedly asserted that Democratic votes would prevent a federal government shutdown. And last month, when Johnson faced an all-out right-wing Republican revolt over Ukraine aid, Jeffries stepped in again, asserting that Democrats had more votes than Republicans to get the bill through.

Heading into the November elections, each parties are battling for political survival and control in the narrowly divided House, and Jeffries would definitely face his own challenges leading Democrats in the event that they were to win a divided majority on many key issues.

But each Jeffries and Johnson have gone across the country raising money and enthusiasm for his or her party’s candidates ahead of November, with the GOP speaker attempting to keep his job and the Democratic leader waiting to take it.