Tag Archives: william

Donald Trump’s Newest Delegate Is a Kinder, Gentler White Nationalist

by CecilaMcKenzie Posted on May 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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Meet the chairman of the American Freedom Party:

William D. Johnson, J.D., is an international corporate lawyer practicing in Los Angeles….As Chairman of the American Third Position, he serves the purpose of speaking on behalf of the party, and championing its sensible and just policies before the American people. He is also, more than any other, responsible for safeguarding the course, values, and program of the party.

And now, meet the American Freedom Party:

White Americans should push back! Change your party allegiance to the American Freedom Party. A Nationalist party that shares the customs and heritage of the European American people….Return to Americans their traditional right of freedom of association, including freedom in racial matters, along with the abolishment of all forms of government- and corporate-mandated racial discrimination and racial preferences, such as affirmative action, quotas, and all forms of “sensitivity training.”

Finally, courtesy of MoJo‘s own Josh Harkinson, meet Donald Trump’s newest delegate from the great state of California:

Trump’s slate includes William Johnson, one of the country’s most prominent white nationalists….”I just hope to show how I can be mainstream and have these views,” Johnson tells Mother Jones. “I can be a white nationalist and be a strong supporter of Donald Trump and be a good example to everybody.”

….Armed with cash from affluent donors and staffed by what the movement considers to be its top thinkers, AFP now dedicates most of its resources to supporting Trump. Johnson claims that AFP’s pro-Trump robocalls, which have delivered Johnson’s personal cellphone number to voters in seven states, have helped the party find hundreds of new members. “Trump is allowing us to talk about things we’ve not been able to talk about,” Johnson says. “So even if he is not elected, he has achieved great things.”

….Johnson also now finds it easier to be himself: “For many, many years, when I would say these things, other white people would call me names: ‘Oh, you’re a hatemonger, you’re a Nazi, you’re like Hitler,'” he confessed. “Now they come in and say, ‘Oh, you’re like Donald Trump.'”

See? Donald Trump is already making America great again.

UPDATE: No worries, folks. This was all just a big misunderstanding: “A database error led to the inclusion of a potential delegate that had been rejected and removed from the campaign’s list in February 2016.” OK then.

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Donald Trump’s Newest Delegate Is a Kinder, Gentler White Nationalist

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Ted Cruz Defends His Plan to Patrol "Muslim Neighborhoods"

by ScottSelffum Posted on March 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Ted Cruz stood by his proposal to patrol “Muslim neighborhoods” during CNN’s town hall in Wisconsin on Tuesday night, repeating his assertion that this strategy worked in New York City.

Host Anderson Cooper pressed Cruz repeatedly on his stance, noting that New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton had criticized Cruz’s proposal. “It is clear from his comments that Sen. Cruz knows absolutely nothing about counterterrorism in New York City,” Bratton wrote in an op-ed in the New York Daily News. But Cruz stood firm, describing Bratton as a member of the administration of “left-wing radical” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Watch the exchange, starting around the 8-minute mark.

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Ted Cruz Defends His Plan to Patrol "Muslim Neighborhoods"

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Hollywood’s Lack of Diversity Is Costing It Millions. Here’s Why.

by KayleigDalgarno Posted on February 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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The movie industry’s glaring whiteness may be costing Hollywood millions of dollars. A new report from the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California-Los Angeles, found that films with more diverse casts have higher global box-office sales and a better return on investment than their less-diverse counterparts.

The researchers examined 163 films released in 2014, and found that the films with truly diverse casts (there were only eight) also had the highest median global revenues and returns on investment. The median film among the 55 with mostly lily-white casts grossed less than half as much—and barely broke even:

This isn’t happenstance. The diverse films did better because they attracted diverse audiences. Using data from RenTrak—a company that surveys moviegoers—the Bunche Center estimated that nonwhite audiences accounted for 58 percent of ticket sales for the eight most diverse films, and nearly half of all movie tickets sold in the United States. More than a quarter of the total tickets were bought by people of Hispanic origin.

Diversity is good for domestic TV ratings, too, the study found. The most-watched broadcast TV shows—not just in minority households, but also within one of the most coveted age demographics—had majority nonwhite casts. Even the most-watched shows in white households had casts that were 41 to 50 percent nonwhite. And since people of color make up 38 percent of the population, the study points out, it stands to reason that shows reflective of that fact would perform better.

Hollywood, alas, have yet to embrace this reality. For another recent study, researchers at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism analyzed 109 films from 2014 along with 305 broadcast, cable, and digital (Amazon, Netflix, etc.) TV series across 31 networks from the 2014-15 season. Only 28 percent of all the speaking roles, they found, went to people of color. And then there’s this:

The studios, in short, are leaving a ton of money on the table. “The conventional wisdom has been, you can’t have a film with a minority lead because it’s not going to travel well overseas—and films make most of their money overseas,” says Darnell Hunt, director of the Bunche Center. “What our study is suggesting is that that logic is false.” The same goes for TV, he says: “People want to see themselves reflected in media. You relate better to characters who kind of look like you, who have experiences that resonate with your own.”

The Bunche Center calculated that just 17 percent of broadcast TV shows in the 2013-14 season roughly mirrored America’s population (31 to 40 percent nonwhite). Hunt points to shows like Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder—both created by Shonda Rhimes, who is black—as examples of shows that perform well in part because their casts are diverse. “You have a little bit of something for everybody,” Hunt explains. “And over the long haul, you’re going to make a lot more money if you do that, as opposed to where there may be one token person of color and you’re hoping that’s going to be enough to get the rest of the audience interested.”

So why does Hollywood keep using the same old formula? The biggest reason, Hunt says, is that the creative pipeline is dominated by white guys: “They’re making projects they know how to make, projects that they think are good, with people whom they’re familiar with and whom they think will sell, and so we tend to get more of the same year in, year out—the same types of leads, the same types of stories.”

There’s another behind-the scenes-culprit, too, Hunt notes:

The talent agencies (the “gatekeepers,” Hunt calls them) pitch most of the projects to the networks and film studios—complete with writers, directors, and leads. The top three—Creative Artists Agency, William Morris Endeavor, and United Talent Agency—represented a majority of the credited writers, directors, and actors on 2014 film projects. They also repped the majority of broadcast TV show creators and lead actors for the 2013-2014 season. But minorities make up only around 2 percent of the credited show creators on their rosters, and 6 percent of the credited lead actors. Which means the deal makers have few minority clients to pitch.

Why are the talent rosters so white? Maybe because the agents are. According to the Bunche Center, the agents of the Big Three were 90 percent Caucasian and 68 percent male—hello Ari Gold! The agency partners—who develop business strategy and share in the profits—are amost entirely white and 71 percent male. This lack of diversity, unwittingly or not, dictates the kinds of stories that end up in production, and who we see on the screen. “The question is, how many people of color are involved in the earliest stages?” Hunt says.

The makers of at least one would-be blockbuster hope to break the old mold. We recently talked with the scriptwriter of Marvel’s Black Panther, the forthcoming film about an African superhero, about that studio’s efforts to get more diversity in the pipeline.

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Hollywood’s Lack of Diversity Is Costing It Millions. Here’s Why.

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National Review Is Against Trump, But it Probably Doesn’t Matter

by AundreaWedel Posted on January 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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National Review has finally released its big anti-Trump issue. A bevy of conservative stars contributed to the issue, and they complained about Trump’s boorishness, his ignorance, his bullying, his libertine personal life, his racism, his narcissism, his love of dictators, his vitriol, and the fact that he’d probably lose to Hillary Clinton. But the most common complaint was simple: Trump is no conservative. Here are a few snippets:

The Editors: Trump’s political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun control, single-payer health care à la Canada, and punitive taxes on the wealthy….Some conservatives have made it their business to make excuses for Trump and duly get pats on the head from him. Count us out. Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself.

Glenn Beck: While conservatives fought against the stimulus, Donald Trump said it was “what we need”….While conservatives fought against the auto bailouts, Donald Trump claimed “the government should stand behind the auto companies 100 percent”….While conservatives fought against the bank bailouts, Donald Trump called them “something that has to get done.”

Mona Charen: One thing about which there can be no debate is that Trump is no conservative—he’s simply playing one in the primaries. Call it unreality TV. Put aside for a moment Trump’s countless past departures from conservative principle on defense, racial quotas, abortion, taxes, single-payer health care, and immigration….Is Trump a liberal? Who knows? He played one for decades — donating to liberal causes and politicians (including Al Sharpton) and inviting Hillary Clinton to his (third) wedding. Maybe it was all a game, but voters who care about conservative ideas and principles must ask whether his recent impersonation of a conservative is just another role he’s playing.

David Boaz: Without even getting into his past support for a massive wealth tax and single-payer health care, his know-nothing protectionism, or his passionate defense of eminent domain, I think we can say that this is a Republican campaign that would have appalled Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan.

Brent Bozell: Until he decided to run for the GOP nomination a few months ago, Trump had done none of these things, perhaps because he was too distracted publicly raising money for liberals such as the Clintons; championing Planned Parenthood, tax increases, and single-payer health coverage; and demonstrating his allegiance to the Democratic party.

Erick Erickson: In October 2011, when many of the other Republican candidates were fighting Barack Obama, Donald Trump told Sean Hannity, “I was Obama’s biggest cheerleader.” Trump donated to both the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign, as well to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and other Democrats. In 2011, according to the website OpenSecrets.org, “the largest recipient of Donald Trump’s political spending has been the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee with $116,000.”

Dana Loesch: I love conversion stories. I have my own, from when I became a conservative 15 years ago. But I’m not running for president. Donald Trump is. And his “conversion” raises serious questions. Trump wrote in his book The America We Deserve that he supported a ban on “assault weapons.” Not until last year did he apparently reverse his position. As recently as a couple of years ago, Trump favored the liberal use of eminent-domain laws.

David McIntosh: For decades, Trump has argued for big government. About health care he has said: “Everybody’s got to be covered” and “The government’s gonna pay for it.” He has called for boycotts of American companies he doesn’t like, told bureaucrats to use eminent domain to get him better deals on property he wanted to develop, and proudly proposed the largest tax increase in American history. Trump has also promised to use tariffs to punish companies that incur his disfavor. He offers grand plans for massive new spending but no serious proposals for spending cuts or entitlement reforms.

Whew! But will it do any good? Probably not. The kind of people who read National Review are already convinced that Trump is a menace. Trump’s fans, by contrast, are far more likely to have heard of Rush Limbaugh than William F. Buckley or Edmund Burke. And Rush thinks that Trump is great.

At the moment, everyone is eagerly awaiting “Trump’s reaction” to NR’s destruction derby. I sure hope they’ve never asked him for money in the past. In any case, I’m sure he’ll just write them off as establishment losers who are jealous of his success and afraid they won’t get invited to his inauguration. Still, at least the editors of National Review will always be able to say that their magazine has lasted a lot longer than the Trump magazine.

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National Review Is Against Trump, But it Probably Doesn’t Matter

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Obama Is Setting Free 95 Nonviolent Drug Offenders—Including 2 Pot Lifers

by Kali73Ukpvrtfio Posted on December 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Marine veteran William “Billy” Ervin Dekle, 66, used to fly planeloads of weed into South Florida in the 1970s and ’80s in his single-prop airplane. Charlie Cundiff, now approaching 70, had two minor priors for growing and possessing marijuana before he got caught up in a pot sting in Tallahassee in 1991. Both men have been behind bars since the early 1990s after getting life sentences for conspiracy to distribute a substance that’s now legal in some form in 23 states and Washington, DC.

On Friday, Dekle and Cundiff were among the 95 nonviolent drug offenders granted clemency by the Obama administration as part of its efforts to reduce the federal inmate population and give relief to those sentenced under the war on drugs. Today’s commutations are more than twice as many as he announced last March, which were the most granted at a single time since Lyndon B. Johnson.

As Mother Jones has reported, at least 69 people have been sentenced to life without parole for marijuana crimes, sometimes with charges as insignificant as serving as go-betweens in the sale of minor quantities of marijuana to undercover police officers—as in the case of Fate Vincent Winslow, a homeless man who provided two $10 bags of weed in exchange for a $5 commission he intended to use to get something to eat.

While today’s announcements are a step in the right direction for the administration’s intention to reduce harsh sentences for drug offenders, it’s a far cry from the 10,000 prisoners who former Attorney General Eric Holder said “were potentially going to be released” under the new clemency initiative announced in 2011. For Winslow, the dozens of other pot lifers, the 95,000 federal drug offenders, and the more than 35,000 inmates who have applied for clemency relief, today’s news will be met with disappointment.

“For an activist like me who works with marijuana lifers and who has been working directly with these two men, the news does not get much better than this,” says Cheri Sicard, former vice president of the CAN-DO Foundation, an advocacy group for nonviolent drug offenders. “At the same time, I am deeply disappointed for the many marijuana lifers left behind. I am in regular contact with them and their families, and I know the anticipation that comes with waiting for the clemency announcements, as well as the subsequent devastating blow it is to not see their names on the list.”

Today’s announcement brings Obama’s clemency total to 91 pardons and 159 commutations. To put those numbers in perspective, federal prisons hold approximately 200,000 people. “We take President Obama at his word that there is no ceiling on the number of commutations he will grant before leaving office,” said Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, in a statement Friday. “And so while we are grateful for every single commutation, there are many hundreds more who deserve relief. We urge the President to confound the skeptics by making 2016 an historic year for clemency grants.”

Dekle and Cundiff will first be sent to lower-security prisons and then to halfway houses to begin their transitions before being released from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody. The process is expected to take four months. Meanwhile, as the Washington Post reported this morning, lawmakers in Congress are debating several bills aimed at changing sentencing laws.

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Obama Is Setting Free 95 Nonviolent Drug Offenders—Including 2 Pot Lifers

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Why Did Democrats Lose the White South?

by EmilioBrodzky Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Modern conservatives are oddly fond of pointing out that it was Democrats who were the party of racism and racists until half a century ago. There’s always an implied “Aha!” whenever a conservative mentions this, as though they think it’s some little-known quirk of history that Democrats try to keep hidden because it’s so embarrassing.

It’s not, of course. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, and Republicans were the face of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Because of this, the South became solidly Democratic and stayed that way until World War II. But in the 1940s, southerners gradually began defecting to the Republican Party, and then began defecting en masse during the fight over the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

But wait: the 1940s? If Southern whites began defecting to the GOP that early, racism couldn’t have been their motivation. Aha!

But it was. The Civil Rights movement didn’t spring out of nothing in 1964, after all. Eleanor Roosevelt was a tireless champion of civil rights, and famously resigned from the DAR when they refused to allow singer Marian Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall in 1939. FDR was far more constrained by his need for Southern votes in Congress—and it showed in most New Deal programs—but the WPA gave blacks a fair shake and Harold Ickes poured a lot of money into black schools and hospitals in the South. In 1941 FDR signed a nondiscrimination order for the national defense industry—the first of its kind—and he generally provided African-Americans with more visibility in his administration than they had ever enjoyed before. After decades of getting little back from Republicans despite their loyal support, this was enough to make blacks a key part of the New Deal Coalition and turn them into an increasingly solid voting bloc for the Democratic Party.

From a Southern white perspective, this made the Democratic Party a less welcoming home, and it continued to get less welcoming in the two decades that followed. Harry Truman integrated the military in 1948, and Hubert Humphrey famously delivered a stemwinding civil rights speech at the Democratic convention that year. LBJ was instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1957, while Republican Dwight Eisenhower was widely viewed—rightly or wrongly—as unsympathetic to civil rights during the 1950s.

In other words, Southern whites who wanted to keep Jim Crow intact had plenty of reasons to steadily desert the Democratic Party and join the GOP starting around World War II. By the early 60s they were primed and ready to begin a massive exodus from the increasingly black-friendly Democratic Party, and exit they did. Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP nominee, refused to support the Civil Rights Act that year, and influential conservative thinkers like William F. Buckley were decidedly unfriendly toward black equality. This made the Republican Party more and more appealing to Southern white racists, and by 1968 Richard Nixon decided to explicitly reach out to them with a campaign based on states’ rights and “law and order.” Over the next two decades, the Democratic Party became ever less tolerant of racist sentiment and the exodus continued. By 1994, when Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich won a landslide victory in the midterm elections, the transition of the white South from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican was basically complete.

This history is what makes the conservative habit of pointing out that Democrats were the original racists so peculiar. It’s true, but it makes the transformation of the party even more admirable. Losing the South was a huge electoral risk, but Democrats took that risk anyway. That made it far more meaningful and courageous than if there had been no price to pay.

Despite all this, conservatives still like to argue that the surge in Southern white support for the Republican Party was driven not by racism, but by other factors: economic growth; migration from other regions; and by the evolution of Democratic views on redistribution, free speech, abortion, and other issues. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find quantitative data that can settle this dispute.

But a couple of researchers recently found some: Gallup poll data starting in the late 50s that asks if you’d be willing to vote for a qualified presidential candidate who happened to be black. Respondents who answered no were coded (quite reasonably) as racially conservative. They then looked at differences between the Democratic Party ID of Southern whites who were and weren’t racially conservative. Here’s their conclusion:

We find that except for issues involving racial integration and discrimination, whites in the South and elsewhere have indistinguishable preferences on both domestic and foreign policy in the 1950s….We find no evidence that white Southerners who have negative views of women, Catholics or Jews differentially leave the Democratic party in 1963; the exodus is specific to those who are racially conservative. Finally, we find no role for Southern economic development in explaining dealignment.

The charts on the right show one specific data point: JFK’s televised civil rights speech of June 11, 1963. Among Southern whites, approval of JFK plummets right at that moment (top chart). And in the Gallup polls, racially conservative Southern whites leave the party in droves (bottom chart). This is not a steady decline. It’s a sharp, sudden exodus at a specific moment in time.

So: why did Democrats lose the white South? For the reason common sense and all the evidence suggests: because the party became too liberal on civil rights, and racist white Southerners didn’t like it. Southern white flight from the party began in the 1940s, took a sharp dive in the early 60s, and continued to decline for several decades after as Democrats became ever more committed to black equality. This might not be the only reason for Southern realignment, but it’s surely the most important by a long stretch.

For more on both this study and the Southern Strategy of the Nixon era, Wonkblog’s Max Ehrenfreund has you covered.

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Why Did Democrats Lose the White South?

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Legendary NASA Scientist Wonders if Aliens Are as Shortsighted and Stupid as Humans

by CelindaArmbruste Posted on September 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Exploring new stretches of the galaxy brought NASA scientist William Borucki back to Earth.

Borucki, 76, retired in July as the principal investigator of NASA’s Kepler Mission, an unmanned spacecraft that has been surveying a portion of the Milky Way for habitable planets since March 2009. The mission has discovered more than 1,000 confirmed planets and inspired many to think about what, if any, life is out there.

But Borucki said it also made him reconsider life on Earth—and its fate in light of climate change.

“The Earth is a very special place,” Borucki said in an interview with the Huffington Post earlier this month. “Unless we have the wisdom and technology to protect our biosphere, it could become like many other dead worlds.”

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Legendary NASA Scientist Wonders if Aliens Are as Shortsighted and Stupid as Humans

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As Federal Aid Goes Up, College Costs Rise Enough to Gobble It All Up

by DebbraCranwell Posted on August 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Josh Mitchell of the Wall Street Journal writes today about the spiraling cost of college:

The federal government has boosted aid to families in recent decades to make college more affordable. A new study from the New York Federal Reserve faults these policies for enabling college institutions to aggressively raise tuitions.

….Conservatives have long held that generous federal-aid policies inflate higher-education costs, a viewpoint famously articulated by then-Education Secretary William Bennett in a 1987 column that came to be dubbed the Bennett Hypothesis.

Regular readers know that I have at least a bit of sympathy for this view. But Mitchell doesn’t really explain how the data supports this hypothesis. So I’ll give it a try. As you can see on the right, federal aid increased very modestly from 2000 to 2009. Then it went up sharply starting around 2010. If this aid were truly helping make college more affordable, out-of-pocket expenses for students (i.e., actual cash outlays net of loans and grants) would start to flatten out or even go down.

But that hasn’t happened. You can lay a straightedge on the red line in the bottom chart. Basically, families received no net benefit from increased federal aid. Actual cash outlays rose at exactly the same rate as they had been rising before.

My guess is that this will continue until universities get to the point at which students and families simply don’t value higher education enough to pay any more. That’s the gating item, not aid programs. When out-of-pocket expenses finally equal the value that students put on a college degree, prices will stabilize.1 That’s my guess, anyway.

The Journal article has more on this, and the Fed study is here if you want to read more about the methodology—much more sophisticated than mine—that the authors used to come to a similar conclusion.

1Actually, it’s when the perceived value of a college degree equals current cash outlays plus whatever burden students associate with future loan paybacks. However, the latter is pretty tricky to quantify since it varies widely depending on the university, the student’s major, and their subjective discount rate.

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As Federal Aid Goes Up, College Costs Rise Enough to Gobble It All Up

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And Now For Something Completely Different

by Lyle03Xmgl Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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A new1 study from Swift, Stone, and Parker has identified the top four components of a successful online fundraising appeal. Here they are:

The end of a quarterly fundraising cycle.
Clear comparisons to the opposition’s fundraising results.
Over the top doomsaying.
Cats.

Lucky for me, I’ve got all those things, so I figured I’d take a crack at it.

Check out National Review’s current fundraising drive. One reader just gave $250! This guy coughed up $100! They’ve even got a wine club to suck in new contributors. And a cruise!

These guys are killing us. Without your help, the heirs of William F. Buckley will dominate the political magazine market for years to come. And you know what that means: More articles about how the only real racism is anti-white racism. More pseudo-science about how the globe is probably cooling, not warming. More hagiographies of Marco Rubio. More whining about how white people can’t use the N-word. More blog posts about Jonah Goldberg’s dog.

Maybe you think this doesn’t matter to you? Think again. This week features “Reagan’s Supply-Side Genius,” and it doesn’t matter if you try to ignore it. Your crazy uncle is going to be regaling you about it for hours this Thanksgiving unless you figure out how to fight back.

This blog is your ticket. We need contributions to help us fight back against the avalanche of right wing babble. Right. Now.

This is our final push. My cats are down to their last bowl of kibble. The fell hordes of NR are already cackling at their imminent victory. Soon we won’t be able to afford the very pixels that make up this blog. I know you don’t want that. So please, make a generous contribution today. The first $10 will go to cat food.2 The rest will go to fighting the dark hordes. And Jonah’s dog.

OK, I’m joking around here. But we really are closing out our fiscal year next week and Mother Jones can use all the help we can get. If you can afford to pitch in, please do—so I never have to write a fundraising appeal like this and actually mean it.

Make a tax-deductible gift by credit card here.

Or via PayPal here.

1: See the Annals of Improbably Convenient Results, v. 83, p. 101.
2: Just kidding. The cats already have a bottomless supply. Your full donation will go towards MoJo’s hard-hitting journalism that gets people talking. Like our groundbreaking package, “The True Costs of Gun Violence in America,” that President Obama alluded to in the wake of Charleston.

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And Now For Something Completely Different

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Beau Biden, the Vice President’s Son, Has Died

by Natalia681 Posted on May 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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RIP:

Joseph Robinette “Beau” Biden III, the son of Vice President Biden and former state attorney general of Delaware, died Saturday after battling brain cancer for several years.

Biden, 46, the oldest son of the vice president and the rising star of a family dynasty, had been admitted recently to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington as he fought the cancer, a battle that his father largely kept private in the last weeks as his son clung to his life.

So sad.

Here’s the Vice President’s statement:

It is with broken hearts that Hallie, Hunter, Ashley, Jill and I announce the passing of our husband, brother and son, Beau, after he battled brain cancer with the same integrity, courage and strength he demonstrated every day of his life.

The entire Biden family is saddened beyond words. We know that Beau’s spirit will live on in all of us—especially through his brave wife, Hallie, and two remarkable children, Natalie and Hunter.

Beau’s life was defined by service to others. As a young lawyer, he worked to establish the rule of law in war-torn Kosovo. A major in the Delaware National Guard, he was an Iraq War veteran and was awarded the Bronze Star. As Delaware’s Attorney General, he fought for the powerless and made it his mission to protect children from abuse.

More than his professional accomplishments, Beau measured himself as a husband, father, son and brother. His absolute honor made him a role model for our family. Beau embodied my father’s saying that a parent knows success when his child turns out better than he did.

In the words of the Biden family: Beau Biden was, quite simply, the finest man any of us have ever known.

And the statement from the President:

Michelle and I are grieving tonight. Beau Biden was a friend of ours. His beloved family – Hallie, Natalie, and Hunter – are friends of ours. And Joe and Jill Biden are as good as friends get.

Beau took after Joe. He studied the law, like his dad, even choosing the same law school. He chased a life of public service, like his dad, serving in Iraq and as Delaware’s Attorney General. Like his dad, Beau was a good, big-hearted, devoutly Catholic and deeply faithful man, who made a difference in the lives of all he touched – and he lives on in their hearts.

But for all that Beau Biden achieved in his life, nothing made him prouder; nothing made him happier; nothing claimed a fuller focus of his love and devotion than his family.

Just like his dad.

Joe is one of the strongest men we’ve ever known. He’s as strong as they come, and nothing matters to him more than family. It’s one of the things we love about him. And it is a testament to Joe and Jill – to who they are – that Beau lived a life that was full; a life that mattered; a life that reflected their reverence for family.

The Bidens have more family than they know. In the Delaware they love. In the Senate Joe reveres. Across this country that he has served for more than forty years. And they have a family right here in the White House, where hundreds of hearts ache tonight – for Hallie, Natalie, and Hunter; for Joe and for Jill; for Beau’s brother, Hunter; his sister, Ashley, and for the entire Biden clan.

“I have believed the best of every man,” wrote the poet William Butler Yeats, “And find that to believe it is enough to make a bad man show him at his best or even a good man swing his lantern higher.”

Beau Biden believed the best of us all. For him, and for his family, we swing our lanterns higher.

Michelle and I humbly pray for the good Lord to watch over Beau Biden, and to protect and comfort his family here on Earth.

And this old tweet from Beau is heartbreaking:

Originally from:

Beau Biden, the Vice President’s Son, Has Died

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