DOV 17 12 / 01 / 1 7 illiullintHlIliiill •s--x-CH ILL DEPARTMENT UNC-CH SERIALS CB ii LIBRARY DAVI 8890 p □ BOX 599-0001 Nt CHAPEL HILL abuses IP&Sb^^ VOLUME 96 - NUMBER 12 DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 2017 TELEPHONE (919) 682-2913 PRICE: 50 CENTS Trump’s budget boosts military but cuts GOP, Dem favorites The young ladies of Girl Scout Troop 711 of St. Joseph A.M.E. Church hosted local troops for World Thinking Day. See story an dphotos on pages 8 and 9. Arkansas lawmakers vote to remove Lee from King holiday By Tafi Mukunyadzi LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Arkansas lawmakers gave final approval March 17 to legisla tion removing Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the holiday honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The state House ap proved the proposal with a 66-11 vote and sent it to Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who had urged lawmakers to end the dual holiday. Five representa tives voted present, effec tively voting no on the bill. The U.S. Conference Of Mayors Opposes Proposed Elimination Of Community Development Block Grants, Other Key Priorities Washington, D.C. - The U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) today pushed back on Administration’s initial “skinny” budget pro posal for Fiscal Year 2018. The document entitled, “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” proposes deep cuts in funding for many local programs, and eliminates the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, which impacts every community in the country. The Community Development Block Grant program is the most flexible stream of federal dollars allocated to cities. Since the start of the program in 1974, it has been used for broad purposes ranging from affordable housing development and lead-paint abatement, to services for seniors and people with disabilities, as well as dental care for low-income children. For every $1.00 of CDBG investment, another $3.65 in private and public dollars is leveraged. Regarding the proposed elimination of the CDBG program, U.S. Conference of Mayors President Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cor nett said, “Community Development Block Grants are the only fed eral funding source that gives city leaders some discretion in how the money is spent, and mayors have used them to leverage private investment, create affordable housing, spur economic development, rebuild infrastructure and provide services that strengthen metro ar eas. America’s mayors will continue to work with our many cham pions in both the House and Senate to ensure that critically-needed tools like CDBG funds and the HOME Investment Partnership are fully funded.” As previously reported, the Administration has also called for a $54 billion increase in defense spending in FY 2018, and thus mas sive corresponding cuts to domestic programs, many of which sup port the country’s most-vulnerable residents. “The nation’s mayors will be the front line of concern and action as we go forward working with Congress to dispose of the Admin istration’s Budget to reflect the truthful needs of our men, women, and children” said Conference CEO and Executive Director Tom Cochran. “Unfortunately, many persons living in our cities, small, medium and large, in our suburbs, and in our rural areas, will be severely hurt if Congress allows these proposals to stand. Mayors stand for all. This is the first day of this battle to truly put our people first. Togeth er, with our allies representing the public interest and the needs of the people, we will demand Congressional action against the ill-advised proposals contained in the Administration’s budget.” Mayors will use the hashtag #budget across their social media platforms to amplify their statements on the Administration’s budget. Once the bill is signed into law, Mississippi and Alabama will be the only states that honor Lee and King on the same day. The bill sets aside the second Saturday in Oc tober to honor Lee with a memorial day, not a state holiday, marked by a gu bernatorial proclamation. It also expands what is taught in schools about the Civil War and civil rights. Hutchinson, who prom ised last year to push for ending the dual holiday, made the unusual move of testifying in front of two separate legislative com mittees this month to speak in support of the proposal. Hutchinson told the panel that King deserved his own day of recognition, and that ending the dual holiday would be a healing moment for the state. Hutchinson’s office said he would sign the measure into law on Monday with a ceremony that the governor said would emphasize the “historic dynamic of this new day.” “The support for a separate holiday to recognize Martin Luther King far exceeded my expectations and speaks well of the General Assembly and our state,” Hutchinson said in a statement released by his office. Republican Rep. Grant Hodg es presented the bill in the House and acknowledged that it wasn’t perfect. The representative said he has several Confederate me morials in his district and that the measure is not meant to disre spect Confederate history in any way. He said the proposal was an effort to give both King and Lee their due, individually. “This is not a perfect solu tion, but it is a good solution,” Hodges said. A similar effort to remove Lee from the King holiday repeated ly failed before a House commit tee two years ago. Opponents of the measure said the legislation belittled the state’s Confederate heritage by not giving Lee his own holiday. The vote on March 17 fol lowed an emotional debate about King, Lee and Arkansas’ Con federate and civil rights histo ries. “We are not separating Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King,” Republican Rep. Jana Della Rosa told lawmakers before the vote. “We are taking Robert E. Lee and we are putting him in the basement and we’re acting like we’re embarrassed that he ever existed.” Della Rosa told the other leg islators that this marked the first time she had been angry about a bill that she was voting against. She had filed a competing bill to move Lee to the state and federal holiday in February honoring George Washington, but said she withdrew the bill. By Andrew Taylor WASHINGTON (AP) - Presi dent Donald Trump’s new $1.15 trillion budget would reshape America’s government with the broad, conservative strokes he promised as a candidate, order ing generous increases for the Durham Branch NAACP to Mark 100th Anniversary The Durham branch of the NAACP will have it’s 100th anniversary program at Markham Chapel Mis sionary Baptist Church, 3630 Old Chapel Hill Road on Sunday March 26th at 4pm. Bishop Tony Butler will be our guest speaker and his topic will be “One Language, One Speech”. There will be no food served during or after the meeting as previously men tioned. Fred Foster, Jr. will be recognized as our presi dent from 2006 tO 2016. Please come to our meet ing, your support is needed. Former NC police chief detained at JFK for 90 minutes By Martha Waggoner RALEIGH (AP) - A former North Carolina police chief who now works as a law enforcement consultant said March 19 that he’s disappointed with his country of 42 years after he was detained at John F. Kennedy Interna tional Airport. Former Greenville Police Chief Hassan Aden of Alex andria, Virginia, said he was detained March 13 on his return trip from Paris. He supports the officers ofthe U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, but he believes his 90-min- ute detention was unreasonable, he said in a telephone interview. Aden, who is biracial, said a customs officer told him that his name was used as an alias by someone on a watch list. He said one officer told him that he wasn’t being de tained even though he couldn’t use his phone and he had to remain seated. “When it goes to 90 minutes with no phone ... and you can’t move around, it seems more than an investigation to check your passport,” he said. “It begins to feel like you are in custody.” Aden described the scene in a Facebook post March 18, adding that the officer who told him that he wasn’t be ing detained has an “ignorance of the law and the Fourth Amendment” of the U.S. Constitution that should dis qualify him as a customs officer. “I certainly was not free to leave,” Aden said. Aden, 52, said he became a naturalized U.S. citizen at the age of 10 when he was an Italian citizen. He worked for the police department in Alexandria for about 25 years, then as Greenville police chief for about two years. Clients of the consulting firm he now owns include the U.S. Justice Department, he said. With family in Italy, France and England, Aden travels often travels overseas. He says that won’t change. But he is rethinking plans to send his 12- and 15-year-old children overseas as unaccompanied minors to spend the summer with relatives because he wouldn’t want them to go through the same situation on their own. “This is my country and with things I see happening, I see certain rights eroding in the name of national security. It’s worrisome,” he said. A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson said the agency doesn’t comment on individual cases. military, slashing domestic pro grams and riling both fellow Re publicans and Democrats by go ing after favored programs. The president’s initial budget proposal, submitted to Congress on March 16, would boost de fense spending by $54 billion, the largest increase since Ron ald Reagan’s military buildup of the 1980s. That means deep cuts elsewhere - the environment, agriculture, the arts - but Trump said that’s imperative to take on the Islamic State group and oth ers in a dangerous world. “To keep Americans safe, we have made the tough choices that have been put off for too long,” he declared in a statement titled “America First” that accompa nied the budget. Or, as Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said, “This is a hard power budget, not a soft power budget.” It’s not entirely in line with Trump’s campaign pledges. It would make a big down payment on the U.S.-Mexico border wall, which Trump re peatedly promised the Mexicans would pay for. American taxpay ers will, at least for now. The March 16 proposal calls for an immediate $1.4 billion infusion with an additional $2.6 billion planned for the 2018 budget year starting Oct. 1. Parts of Trump’s spending plan for the next fiscal year angered both congressional Democrats and Republicans who will have the final say on it. While it targets Democratic priorities like housing, commu nity development and the en vironment, it also would slash GOP sacred cows like aid to rural schools and subsidized airline service to Trump strong holds, and it would raise fees on participants in the federal flood insurance program. The budget pursues frequent targets of the GOP’s staunch est conservatives, eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, legal aid for the poor, low- income heating assistance and the AmeriCorps national service program established by Presi dent Bill Clinton. But Midwestern Republicans including Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio were upset by cuts to the Great Lakes Restoration Initia tive. Southern Republicans like Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky lashed out at cuts he called “dra conian, careless and counterpro ductive.” One target of the budget is the Appalachian Regional Commis sion, which helps communities in the region. Trump’s proposal covers only roughly one-fourth of the approximately $4 trillion total federal budget. This is the dis cretionary portion that Congress passes each year, not addressing taxes, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Nor does it make predictions about deficits and the econo my. Those big-picture details are due in May, and are sure to show large - probably perma nent - budget deficits. Trump has vowed not to cut Social Security and Medicare and is dead set against raising taxes. As for Thursday’s (March 16) proposal, Republicans praised the president for beefing up the Pentagon, but they were far less enthusiastic about accept ing Trump’s recipe for doing so without adding to the nation’s $20 trillion debt. “While we support more funding for our military and de fense, we must maintain support for our farmers and ranchers,” said North Dakota Republican John Hoeven, blasting a 21 per cent cut to the Agriculture De partment’s budget. The proposed budget would close numerous county offices that help farmers and rural resi dents navigate farm subsidy and rural development programs. Rural development and water projects would also bear cuts. “I just want to make sure that rural America, who was very supportive to Trump, doesn’t have to take a disproportion ately high cut,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala. Budget Director Mulvaney acknowledged that passing the cuts could be an uphill strug gle and said the administration would negotiate. “This is not a take-it-or-leave- it budget,” he acknowledged. Many of Trump’s GOP al lies on Capitol Hill gave it only grudging praise, if any. “Congress has the power of the purse,” reminded House Ap propriations Committee Chair man Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. “I look forward to reviewing this,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. MCC NcU

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