By Sophie Tatum
CNN Newsource

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday criticized “judicial activism” and condemned attempts to depose or question senior executive branch officials, including President Donald Trump.

“Simply put, discovery against the President of the United States should not be treated lightly. The man is busy, in case you’d like to know,” Sessions said while speaking to the Heritage Foundation.

Sessions added that preparing for a deposition is “a monumental disruption.”

“Subjecting the executive branch to this kind of discovery is unacceptable,” he said.

His comments also addressed a number of upcoming cases and decisions, including a challenge to the administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Last week, the Trump administration asked the US Supreme Court to block Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross from having to be deposed on the matter.
However, days after the administration filed its request with the court, new questions arose about previous comments Ross had made to Congress about the controversial census question.

A Justice Department filing revealed that Steve Bannon contacted Ross in the spring of 2017 — when Bannon was a senior Trump adviser — asking him to speak with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach about including a citizenship question.

Ross previously denied to Congress that anyone from the White House had discussed adding that type of question to the census with him, later adding that it was an initiative from the Justice Department.

CNN previously reported that a Commerce Department spokesman, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Ross’ comments before Congress were not misleading.

The spokesman said that the Justice Department “response supplements the record but does not change the secretary’s story, it only adds to it.”

Directly addressing the census case during his remarks on Monday, Sessions criticized “an increasing number of judges,” who he said, “view themselves as something akin to roving inspectors general for the entire Executive Branch.”

“For example, right now we are litigating one case where the district court has authorized a deposition of the Secretary of Commerce about the decision to reinstate a question on the Census. The court believes this is proper because it wants to probe the Secretary’s motives,” he said.

Sessions went on to defend the census question, noting that it “has appeared in one form or another on the census for over a hundred years.”

“The words on the page don’t have a motive; they are either permitted or they are not. But the judge has decided to hold a trial over the inner-workings of a Cabinet Secretary’s mind.”

CNN’s Ariane de Vogue, Gregory Wallace and Paul LeBlanc contributed to this report.

By Chris Cillizza,
CNN Newsource

On Monday morning, we learned that Elizabeth Warren is probably-almost-definitely-I-mean-nothing-is-100-percent partially Native American.

“The facts suggest that you absolutely have a Native American ancestor in your pedigree,” Carlos Bustamante, a professor of genetics at Stanford University, tells Warren in a video released by her campaign.

The release of the video — and its contents — mean that Warren was probably right when she claimed — to much criticism — during her 2012 Senate campaign that she is part Native American. But it definitely means that she is running for president in 2020. And running hard.

Let’s dig in.

The presence of President Donald Trump — and other Republicans — making fun of Warren’s supposed heritage is everywhere in this video.

It features video of Trump repeatedly referring to Warren as “Pocahontas” and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders suggesting that Warren used her questionable Native American heritage to get a series of teaching jobs at prominent universities.

This all began back in Warren’s 2012 Senate campaign, when the Boston Herald ran a piece noting that Harvard Law School listed Warren as a minority professor — and used her status as such to boost their diversity numbers amid criticism.

Within a week, Warren acknowledged that she had listed herself as a minority in a listing of law professors.

When asked for documentation of that heritage, her campaign was unable to produce any.

“I am very proud of my heritage,” Warren said in 2012. “These are my family stories. is what my brothers and I were told by my mom and my dad, my mammaw and my pappaw. This is our lives. And I’m very proud of it.”

Warren also changed her story on whether or not she had informed Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania of her Native American heritage; she initially said she had no idea how either school had received the information before later acknowledging that she had told the schools sometime after she was hired.

What Warren knew — and what she said — about her Cherokee heritage was a major issue during her 2012 campaign against then Sen. Scott Brown (R). He ran ads attacking her story and confronted her in a debate over the issue as well. She won easily.

So why is Warren re-addressing this now? And doing so in a slickly produced, campaign-style video in which,

• a) she travels back to her hometown of Norman, Oklahoma to talk to her brothers — and others — about her mother, who she has long contended was part Native American,
• b) she interviews a series of professors involved in her hiring processes at various universities who insist her claimed Native American background had nothing to do with why she was hired, and
• c) she submits to a DNA test that seems to suggest that her past heritage claims are likely to be true, and
• d) she releases a series of documents aimed at bolstering her heritage claims?

The answer, of course, is because she is running for president in 2020. And she wants to do two things with this video:

1) Stamp out a whisper campaign (or more) from her likely Democratic opponents — and Trump — about whether she lied about her background

2) Send a message to Democratic activists and donors that she is 100% going to fight back — and fight back hard.

Make no mistake: The timing of the release of this video is not accidental. (Almost nothing in politics is.) Trump has been going after Warren — he dubbed her “Pocahontas” during the 2016 campaign — of late, as reports suggest she is gearing up to run against him in 2020.

“I want to apologize,” Trump said during a campaign speech in Montana over the summer. “Pocahontas, I apologize to you. I apologize to you. To you I apologize. To the fake Pocahontas, I won’t apologize.”

Asked to respond to news of the DNA test, Trump said Monday morning, “Who cares?”

Whether Warren wants to admit it or not — and my strong guess is “not” — Trump’s attacks were clearly doing some damage. You don’t respond — with a 5+-minute video, a DNA test and loads of documentation — if you think that this whole Native American thing is just so much GOP conspiracy theorizing.

Warren knows she has a weakness — whether perceived or real is harder to tell — on her origin story. And she and her team know that presidential campaign often hinges on just those origin stories.

The American public tends to buy into the person as opposed to the specific policy when considering their vote for president; if Warren has a major problem in that origin story, it could well hamstring attempts to get people to connect with her.

And so, we get this video. And the DNA test. And all the documents. To show, yes, that Warren’s claim that she had some Native American blood is almost certainly true, but also to show that she has a full campaign team who understands how modern campaigns work and is at the ready to deal — and deal effectively — with any sorts of problems that arise during the course of the campaign.

Warren said recently that after the 2018 midterms she planned to “take a hard look at running for president.”

Which left some wiggle room and uncertainty. But this video is all the proof anyone paying attention should need to know that Warren’s hedge on whether she will run is simply political talk.

She’s in. You don’t produce a video like this if you aren’t.

WPLN Nashville Public Radio 

Middle Tennessee State University’s plans to open a law school have been rejected by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, who voted 8-5 today against a proposal to transfer Indiana-based Valparaiso Law School to MTSU’s campus.

“THEC’s decision denies a legal education to Nashville-area students financially unable to attend an expensive, nearby accredited private institution or unable to relocate to a public institution hundreds of miles away in Knoxville or Memphis,” MTSU President Sidney McPhee said in a statement. 

WPLN Nashville Public Radio reports:

The commission looked at these criteria, among others, in making the decision: Alignment with state master plan and institutional mission, sustainable demand, program costs and revenue and no unnecessary duplication. The commission also solicited comments from expert legal reviewers.

Based on comments and these criteria, the commission denied MTSU’s proposal. The biggest critics of the transfer came from lawyers and law schools in Memphis and Knoxville, where the state’s only other public law schools are located.
Comments generally regarded concerns of a watered down law school market for the state, since Nashville is already home to three law schools — Belmont University, Vanderbilt University and Nashville School of Law. Another school in the city, many said, would take away from other schools’ ability to compete, even if it’s a public option.

Metro Nashville Public Schools, along with the Nashville’s Agenda Steering Committee and the Nashville Public Education Foundation (NPEF), announced today the winners of this year’s Blue Ribbon Teacher Awards.

This year, the focus of the awards was on recognizing teachers doing outstanding work in one of three areas – literacy instruction, support of English Language Learners and teacher leadership.

Winners will be honored at a special reception in March and celebrated through a month-long city advertising campaign. Along with Blue Ribbon status, each teacher receives a $1,000 cash prize – supported exclusively by private donations.

This year’s winners join an elite group of the city’s top public school educators. With their addition, only 192 teachers have received this distinction to date.

“In classrooms across this district we have many life-changing moments taking place every single day due to the expertise, commitment, and caring of our great teachers,” said Dr. Shawn Joseph, director of schools. “The Blue Ribbon Teacher Award helps us shine the spotlight on some of our best teachers and more importantly, better demonstrate the value this community places on teaching excellence.”

In its fourth year, the program aims to recognize top teaching talent in our public schools. Winners are determined following a rigorous selection process that included a review of evidence of outstanding teaching practices by a team of experts.

Applications of semi-finalists are then reviewed by a specially-convened community selection panel.

“So often, teachers tell us they feel invisible or their work unnoticed in the larger community,” said Tom Sherrard, chairman of the Nashville’s Agenda Steering Committee and a member of the Board of the Nashville Public Education Foundation. “What we are hoping to do with this award is to say that great teaching matters – not just to students and parents but the entire community.

“We all benefit immensely from the work of extraordinary educators like these. They deserve the entire city’s thanks and recognition.”

The Blue Ribbon Teacher awards program began in 2014 and is a joint project of the Nashville’s Agenda Steering Committee, the NPEF and MNPS.

Members of this year’s community selection panel were: Susannah Berry, Gail Carr-Williams, Hank Clay, Ron Corbin, Stephen Francescon, Rebecca King, Vanessa Lazon, Rob McNeilly, Paul Oakley, David Plazas, Stephanie Silverman, Brenda Wynn and Nahed Zehr.

By REBECCA BERG and ERIC BRADNER
CNN Newsource

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has released the results of a DNA analysis showing she has distant Native American ancestry, in an apparent attempt to pre-empt further questions and attacks should she run for president in 2020.

Warren first faced scrutiny for her purported Native American heritage during her 2012 Senate race. But President Donald Trump has revived and amplified the controversy as he eyes Warren as a possible rival, frequently mocking her with the nickname “Pocahontas.”

But Warren now has documentation to back up her family lore — an analysis of her genetic data performed by Carlos Bustamante, a professor of genetics at Stanford and adviser to Ancestry and 23 and Me.

In a rollout video about Warren’s heritage, the Massachusetts Democrat is seen sitting behind a laptop as she calls Bustamante.

“Now, the President likes to call my mom a liar,” Warren asks him. “What do the facts say?”

Bustamante responds, “The facts suggest that you absolutely have a Native American ancestor in your pedigree.” Warren is shown nodding.
Trump waved off Warren’s DNA test results on Monday, telling reporters, “who cares?” when asked about them.

Trump said later Monday that Warren owes the nation an apology.
“She owes the country an apology,” the President said when asked whether he himself owed the senator an apology for calling her “Pocahontas.”

Bustamante’s full report is now posted on Warren’s website, along with other supporting documents and interviews detailing her background.

According to the report, “the great majority of (Warren’s) identifiable ancestry is European.” However, the report adds, “The analysis also identified 5 genetic segments as Native American in origin at high confidence.”

Bustamante’s analysis places Warren’s Native American ancestor between six and 10 generations ago, with the report estimating eight generations.

“The identity of the sample donor, Elizabeth Warren, was not known to the analyst during the time the work was performed,” the report says.

Warren’s video makes clear that it is in part a response to Trump’s attacks, opening with a clip of the President mocking Warren as “Pocahontas.” Members of Warren’s family express their disappointment with the President’s taunts in a series of interviews.

“He’s talking about stuff he doesn’t have any idea about,” Mark Herring, Warren’s nephew, says in the video.

On Monday, Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to Trump, told CNN that the video was “odd” and wrote off the DNA results.

“I haven’t looked at the test,” Conway said. “I know that everybody likes to pick their junk science and sound science depending on the conclusion it seems some days. But I haven’t looked at the DNA test and it really doesn’t interest me, to be frank with you.”

The video also tackles the question of whether Warren’s Native American heritage played any role in her professional advancement.

That issue has been raised by the White House as well, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying during one briefing, “What most people find offensive is Sen. Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career.”

Warren’s purported Native American heritage was touted by Harvard Law School when she was a professor there.

But Warren’s video includes testimonials from faculty at Harvard Law, the University of Houston, University of Pennsylvania Law School and UT Austin School of Law insisting Warren’s professional advancement was not tied to it.

“Her heritage had no bearing on her hiring,” Jay Westbrook of the UT Austin School of Law says in the video. “Period.”

Her campaign has also published a lengthy archive of university documents to support these claims.

The information is unlikely to dissuade the President from continuing to zero in on the controversy surrounding Warren’s background.

At one rally, depicted in Warren’s video, Trump offered to donate $1 million to charity if Warren were to take a DNA test “and it shows you’re an Indian.”

Warren tweeted Monday morning that Trump could “send the check to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center.”

But Trump said Monday that he “didn’t say” he would pay Warren $1 million for showing her test results.

“I didn’t say that. You better read it again,” he told reporters outside the White House.

At the July rally where Trump made the original offer, he said, “And we will say, ‘I will give you a million dollars, paid for by Trump, to your favorite charity if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian … we’ll see what she does. I have a feeling she will say no but we will hold it for the debates.”
Later Monday, Trump said he did not owe Warren the money, saying that

was contingent on her winning the nomination.
“If she gets the nomination in the debate where I was going to have her tested,” Trump said.cx”I’ll only do it if I can test her personally,” he said. “This is not something I would enjoy doing either.”

The President also said Monday he hopes Warren will run for president because she will be “easy” to beat.

“I hope she’s running for president because I think she’d be very easy… I do not think she’d be very difficult at all,” Trump said, adding, “I don’t want to say bad things about her because I hope she’s one of the people that get through the process.

A Warren aide told CNN the decision to release the video and DNA test about her Native American ties is part of a larger effort to put out as much information about her background as possible as she weighs a 2020 presidential run.

Warren also recently released 10 years of tax returns and her personnel files from Harvard and other schools. The aide said the DNA test came back Friday.

Warren wonders in the video about the motives of those, like Trump, who “have questioned my heritage and my family history.”

“Maybe they do it to insult me,” she muses. “Maybe they do it to distract from the kinds of changes I’m fighting for.”

She concedes in the video that she is not enrolled in any tribe, “but my family history is my family history.”

What counts as Native American heritage is a question with different answers among the 573 legally recognized tribes in the United States.

Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. released a statement Monday in response to Warren’s test and claims.

“Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong,” the statement said in part. “It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is proven. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”

Most tribes use their membership rolls dating back decades, requiring a direct descendant or blood quantum. Warren claims Cherokee and Delaware heritage — both of which use membership rolls to determine who qualifies for tribal citizenship, which Warren has never claimed.

Cherokee Nation principal chief Bill John Baker is 1/32 Cherokee by blood.
Melanie Benjamin, the tribal chairwoman of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Indians in Minnesota, said Warren asked her for advice on how to discuss her heritage before a speech in February.

“My advice to her — and I used an example — is that in Indian country, we are very community-oriented,” she said. “We are those types of people where we will embrace you as part of our community, and then we will recognize you as our community from there on.”

“If you are told from Day One that you are that tribal person and that tribal home, that’s who you are. And that’s the simplest way to explain that,” Benjamin said.

Warren concludes in the video that the issue “isn’t just about casual racism,” but part of a pattern of “discrimination, neglect and violence” that Native communities have faced “for generations.”

“And Trump can say whatever he wants about me,” she adds. “But mocking Native Americans or any group in order to try to get at me that’s not what America stands for.”

CNN’s Abby Phillip, Kevin Liptak, Manu Raju, Devan Cole, Paul LeBlanc and Leslie Bentz contributed to this report.

Nashville Voice

People from Vanderbilt present and past who have made Vanderbilt a more inclusive space for black students, faculty and staff are the subjects of 10 new portraits unveiled by the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center Oct. 10.

The ten Legacy Pioneer Portraits, which were painted by critically acclaimed visual artist James Threalkill, a 1979 Vanderbilt alum, will hang in the Study Lounge inside the Black Cultural Center.

“This project is about helping the Vanderbilt community to see, understand and appreciate the black history of the university and those who helped shape that experience for the better,” said Rosevelt Noble, assistant dean of students and director of the Black Cultural Center. “It’s important for students who frequent the Black Cultural Center to realize that a lot of people made significant sacrifices to make their experience what it is today.”

Noble noted that this is just the first class of Legacy Pioneers and that there is much more to come. The portraits unveiled in the Black Cultural Center include:

• Rev. Walter R. Murray,
• Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos,
• Eileen Carpenter,
• Sheryll Cashin,
• Peter Pratt,
• Ray Winbush,
• Tonya Mitchell,
• Monica Peek,
• Akaninyene Ruffin; and,
• former Chancellor Gordon Gee.
  

The Legacy Pioneers initiative was inspired by the Lost in the Ivy project, which Noble established back in 2007.

Lost in the Ivy comprises hundreds of interviews and personal narratives on the African American experience at Vanderbilt, which includes faculty, staff, students, and alumni from across the university.

More than 500 interviews have been conducted to date and the project has brought to light many stories that for years remained untold.

The Legacy Pioneer initiative came to life when Noble repeatedly heard the stories told during the interviews about the lasting impact of particular individuals or events in improving the Vanderbilt culture.

Subsequent research through old newspapers, magazines and other artifacts confirmed the oral narratives and identified some individuals as pioneers for their enhancements to the black experience.

By Nia-Malika Henderson
CNN Newsource

Imagine this: A president, concerned about the opioid crisis that is ravaging many communities, particularly white, Midwestern communities, invites a retired football player and a famous musician to talk about the crisis.

And imagine that this is one of the few high-level meetings he has about the crisis, which has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
Well, that is kind of what just happened.

Not with the opioids, but with the critical, potentially lethal, issues facing many African-Americans across the country. On Thursday, President Donald Trump had a working lunch with Kanye West and retired football player Jim Brown.

This was the meeting’s preview sent by the White House ahead of time: “The discussion will be centered on President Trump’s historic work to benefit all Americans such as urban revitalization, the creation of Opportunity Zones, new workforce training programs, record highs in African American employment, the creation of manufacturing jobs, ideas from his meeting with African American pastors, potential future clemencies, and addressing the massive violent crime surge in Chicago.”

Shorter readout: This was Trump’s black people meeting.

What a meeting it was. No cameras were allowed in the lunch, but West’s about 10-minute soliloquy in the Oval Office provided a window into the ground covered.

Here are some ideas West raised:

• Bring Trump factories and Yeezy ideation centers to Chicago.
• His MAGA hat makes him feel like a superhero.
• Make the dopest … no the “flyest” cars.
• School is boring. Kids should play basketball while they are doing math.
• Time doesn’t exist.
• Stop worrying about the future. We only have today.
• Trump and Colin Kaepernick wearing “Make America Great” hats at the Super Bowl.
• Stop-and-frisk is bad.
• The solution to police brutality is love.
• Something about an Iplane.
• Opening up industries and tax breaks.
• Something about liberals distracting black people by focusing on racism.

So, what were the goals here?

For Trump, it was a chance for him to say, Trump does care about black people, but don’t take my word for it, listen to Kanye West

.But what the meeting highlighted was how few African-Americans Trump has in his circle.

Omarosa Manigault-Newman, who wrote a scathing tell-all on Trump, hasn’t been replaced.

The meeting also highlights how seriously Trump takes issues that his base doesn’t really care about.

Rather than invite real policy experts, say on education or criminal justice, Trump brought before the cameras two famous black men who like him.

The result was about what one would expect — a hard-to-parse, bizarre Oval Office moment with very little substance fueled by West’s desperate need for attention and Trump’s need for open adoration by famous people.