POLITICS

Why this predominantly White county in Southern California is declaring racism a public health crisis

Andrew Do was afraid to play sports his last two years of high school.

“I didn’t want to walk home alone after practices and be harassed, and beat up, and strangled,” he said in an interview with.

His constant fear: violent racism, “extreme hostility,” and physical assault.

Decades later, the refugee who arrived in the United States from Vietnam in the mid-1970s, is now a Republican member of the powerful Orange County, California, Board of Supervisors, yet continues to face vitriolic racism – even while seated on the dais at public government meetings.

At a Tuesday meeting of the Board of Supervisors in the once-solid Republican stronghold of Orange County, Do put forth a resolution taking a stance similar to many.

The resolution was unanimously adopted by the board, but was met with contempt by some audience members in attendance, with at least one heard on video yelling an ethnic slur.

During the public comments segment of the meeting, one speaker equated Do’s resolution with critical race theory .

The Republican supervisor fired back at his critics, telling them, “For those of you who care enough to follow, I am far from the Left…so don’t get on your soap box and preach to me.”

Democrat Doug Chaffee, Chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, co-sponsored Do’s resolution and outlined during the meeting why racism poses such an acute public health crisis.

Experiencing racism has been associated with increased risk for numerous mental and physical chronic health conditions, like heart disease, cancer, asthma, stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetics (sic), and suicide,” Chaffee said. “These health disparities underscore the urgent need to address systemic racism as a root cause of racial and ethnic health inequities and a core element of public health efforts.”

Speaking from his own experience, Do described to the audience how he believed racism impacted one’s psychological development.

Do told CNN the resolution declaring racism a public health crisis is more than symbolic, and will include a review of county government policies and operations by an ad hoc committee tasked with identifying potential practices of concern.

While he said he does not believe county governance operates under any policies that are inherently racist by design, the board of supervisors will be reviewing whether a “lack of understanding” or “inadvertence on our part may have adverse effect on ethnic communities.”

For example, Do said the review will include looking at the locations of county social services facilities, homeless shelters, and hospitals, to “lower barriers” and ensure underrepresented communities are not being inadvertently denied access.

“[W]e need to expand the way we look at how we deliver services, because there are segments of the population perhaps that we haven’t reached,” he said.

than Republicans, Do is quick to ridicule what he perceives as overreach by some progressives in expanding government in the name of fighting racism.

“My concern is when we talk about racism, that the topic can be hijacked by people on either end of the spectrum – either to deny that racism exists, or to use as an excuse for big government programs that are not necessarily related .

POLITICS

Former Trump AG Bill Barr joins new business lobbying group that aims to target Biden regulations

Former Attorney General Bill Barr will help to lead a new group formed by a business lobbying organization that aims to be an alternative to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the massive advocacy group that has fallen out of favor with some Republicans.

Barr will be chair of an advisory board for a project called the Center for Legal Action, he told CNBC in an interview. The group is part of the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce, the business lobbying group that launched last year as a possible rival to the chamber.

The American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce boasts of being a business lobbying group that fights “against outdated regulations, future-killing tax policies, and the corporate cronyism and backroom DC deal making that close down our economic future,” according to a memo pitch to potential members.

Barr’s decision to join with the new group comes as some Republicans on Capitol Hill have turned their backs on the Chamber of Commerce after it started to favor endorsing Democrats running for House seats. The business lobbying behemoth moved away from predominantly supporting Republicans in recent years after former president Donald Trump embraced trade protectionism, bashed certain companies for their social stances and tried to overturn the 2020 election.

Barr, for his part, drew the ire of the former president and many of his GOP allies when he said evidence did not back Trump’s claims that fraud cost him the presidential election.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., are among the powerful GOP members who have distanced themselves from the original chamber.

In a statement to CNBC provided by the new group, McCarthy said it “is an important tool to ensure regulators operate fairly, efficiently, and without burdening America’s entrepreneurs and small businesses.”

Scalise in a separate statement to CNBC provided by the business lobbying organization said, “The American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce creating the Center for Legal Action is welcome news to House Republicans.”

The new group aims aims to challenge — at times in court — regulations put in place by the Biden administration. Barr will chair the project’s advisory board, in support of the chairman Terry Branstad and CEO Gentry Collins.

Branstad was a longtime Iowa governor and Trump’s U.S. ambassador to China. Collins was once a political director for the Republican National Committee.

In his role, Barr will advise the Center for Legal Action on the best litigators to hire, he explained to CNBC. He will also help to develop the organization’s overall legal strategy.

The “CLA will provide congressional testimony, initiate litigation, file amicus briefs, and support lawsuits brought by other parties in important regulatory and constitutional cases,” the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce said in a statement.

Barr would not say who he aims to recruit from the legal community.

He noted that the newly formed project would engage on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed climate-risk disclosure rule. If the rule is enacted, public companies would have to disclose the carbon emissions that are part of their operations, as well as the climate risks their businesses face.

Collins would not say how much the organization is investing into the new project. But he told CNBC that the group has been recruiting business members “at a rate of more than 1,000 a month for almost a year now.”

“As we’ve done that, one of the principal challenges that we hear from businesses of all sizes around the country is regulatory overreach threatening our business, threatening our industries and threatening our overall economy,” Collins said.

POLITICS

Trump faces deposition in New York AG Letitia James’ fraud lawsuit

Donald Trump said he is being deposed Thursday in New York City as part of the state attorney general’s $250 million civil lawsuit alleging widespread fraud by the former president and his company.

Trump announced on social media overnight that he had “just arrived in Manhattan for a deposition in front of” New York Attorney General Letitia James as part of the sweeping lawsuit.

In another post Thursday morning, Trump said he was “heading downtown” to be deposed. He accused James of leaking that the appointment was scheduled at 9:30 a.m. ET.

His trip marks the second time in less than two weeks that he has traveled to the Empire State to respond to court actions against him. The ex-president faces multiple criminal and civil proceedings as he makes a third bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump previously flew from his home state of Florida to New York to surrender to authorities following his indictment in a separate criminal case centered on hush money payments made before the 2016 presidential election. The former president pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in that case, which is being prosecuted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Trump is “not only willing but also eager to testify before the Attorney General today,” his attorney, Alina Habba, told CNBC in a statement. “He remains resolute in his stance that he has nothing to conceal, and he looks forward to educating the Attorney General about the immense success of his multi-billion dollar company.”

James’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

James filed the civil fraud lawsuit last September against Trump, three of his adult children, the Trump Organization and others. The suit accuses Trump of repeatedly overstating the values of his assets in statements to banks, insurance companies and the IRS in order to obtain better loan and tax terms.

POLITICS

No shield for Trump in rape accuser’s case as court declines to rule

A Washington, D.C., appeals court on Thursday declined to shield Donald Trump from the first of two civil defamation lawsuits by E. Jean Carroll, a writer who said the former U.S. president raped her nearly three decades ago.

The district’s highest local court, the Court of Appeals, said it did not have enough facts to decide whether Trump deserved immunity, after he accused the former Elle magazine columnist in June 2019 of lying about the alleged encounter.

A ruling that Trump was acting as president, and not in his personal capacity, would have immunized him and doomed Carroll’s first lawsuit because the government could substitute itself as the defendant, and the government cannot be sued for defamation.

The court sent the case back to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, which had last September asked the Washington court for guidance on local law.