EthnicMajority

(McClatchy) Hispanic lawmakers and community leaders warned Republicans on Tuesday about the consequences of blocking President Barack Obama’s nomination of Thomas Perez to be labor secretary.

The show of force at a Capitol Hill news conference came a day before Wednesday’s scheduled confirmation vote on Perez by a Senate committee, following a two-week delay caused by partisan infighting.

“Tom Perez is eminently qualified for this job,” freshman Rep. Joe Garcia, a Florida Democrat, said in an interview. “If Republicans wanted to show an understanding of the Hispanic electorate or sympathy for the Hispanic electorate, they picked the wrong guy to make a scapegoat.”

Some Republican senators have criticized Perez’s performance as the head of the civil rights division in the Justice Department, accusing him of unfairly blocking several states’ voter ID laws and of enforcing anti-discrimination laws too aggressively.

Full story…

(Washington Post) Important segments of President Obama’s base have been hammering him for not appointing enough Latinos and African Americans — and no gays — to his second-term Cabinet.

Thirty-two years ago, when Ronald Reagan’s first-term team was coming together, the Cabinet included one woman, U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, and one African American, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Samuel Pierce.

But the number of women and minorities increased later in Reagan’s term, and he named the first Hispanic Cabinet member.

Quick Loop Quiz! Who was that person?

Ah, you guessed it: Education SecretaryLauro Cavazos.

Cabinet diversity increased substantially in the Bill Clinton administration as the 42nd president worked to fulfill his pledge to have a Cabinet that “looks like America.” Clinton was first to name women secretary of state and attorney general. In his initial Cabinet, he had five African Americans, five women and two Hispanics.

Obama appointed more women (seven) and more Asian Americans (three), putting together the most diverse Cabinet ever in his first term.

Full story…

(Christian Science Monitor) By nominating Charlotte, N.C.President Obama> adds some additional racial diversity to his administration, comes a step closer to completing his second term Cabinet, and moves a youthful African American politician into the national spotlight.

In a ceremony in the White House East Room Monday afternoon, Mr. Obama called Mayor Fox "one of the most effective mayors Charlotte has ever seen,” and detailed Foxx's transportation experience.

"Since Anthony took office, they have broken ground on a new street car project that is going to bring modern electric tram service to the downtown area, they have expanded the international airport, and they are extending the city’s light rail system," the president said. "All of that has not only helped to create new jobs, it has helped Charlotte become more attractive to business.

"So I know Anthony’s experience will make him an outstanding transportation secretary."

Full story…

(Mediaite) Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has beenunder fire in the press this week after she criticized President Barack Obama for taking advantage of the White House’s taxpayer funded dog walker. Beyond the factual inaccuracies, however, MSNBC host Chris Matthewsidentified a racial element in Bachmann’s criticisms of Obama. He said Friday that, in his opinion, the president’s “ethnicity’s a factor” in Bachmann’s criticisms. 

RELATED: Rep. Michele Bachmann ‘Goes Rogue,’ Literally Races Away From CNN Reporter

After playing a clip of several quotes Bachmann made recently which earned her the rebuke of the nation’s fact checkers, Matthews returned to his guests and asked if they heard something deeper in her comments.

“You know, I’m going to be careful here, but I think ethnicity’s a factor here,” Matthews said. “You go after a president on things like dog walking and this ridiculous notion of five chefs on Air Force – like you can’t have that because, from your background.”

“Let me not call her a racist, but I don’t know what’s in this,” Matthews added.

Full story…

(Washington Post) In Florida, President Obama has nominated the first openly gay black man to sit on a federal district court. In New York, he has nominated the first Asian American lesbian. And his pick for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit? The first South Asian.

Reelected with strong support from women, ethnic minorities and gays, Obama is moving quickly to change the face of the federal judiciary by the end of his second term, setting the stage for another series of drawn-out confrontations with Republicans in Congress.

The president has named three dozen judicial candidates since January and is expected to nominate scores more over the next few months, aides said. The push marks a significant departure from the sluggish pace of appointments throughout much of his first term, when both Republicans and some Democrats complained that Obama had not tried hard enough to fill vacancies on federal courts.

Full story…

(Washington Post) For an administration under fire for lacking gender and ethnic diversity in its top posts, thenominations President Obama unveiled Monday have quieted some amount of the criticism — but not much.

Obama’s choice of Sylvia Mathews Burwell to head the Office of Management and Budget and Gina McCarthy to direct the Environmental Protection Agency adds two women to the Cabinet, in addition to Interior Secretary nominee Sally Jewell.

Obama also tapped Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Ernest Moniz to oversee the Energy Department. Still, members of the Hispanic community are waiting for a high-profile appointment and becoming increasingly uneasy as the number of available slots are dwindling. The grandparents of Moniz hailed from the Azores in Portugal, but that does not fit the traditional definition of Hispanic or Latino.

Full story…

(Guardian) Mitt Romney has admitted that a failure to connect with minority voters and his underestimation of support for Barack Obama's healthcare reforms helped cost him the presidential election – an assessment that could have important implications for a Republican party divided over how to take back the White House.

Romney said the alienation of Latino and black voters did "real damage to my campaign".

"We weren't effective taking our message to primarily to minority voters, to Hispanic Americans, African Americans, other minorities.

"That was a failing. That was a real mistake," he told Fox News Sunday in his first major interview since his defeat in November.

Full story…

One day before President Barack Obama kicks off his push for comprehensive immigration reform, a bipartisan group of Senators has announced agreement on a blueprint for reform:

A bipartisan group of senators has agreed on a set of principles for a sweeping overhaul of the immigration system, including a pathway to American citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants that would hinge on progress in securing the borders and ensuring that foreigners leave the country when their visas expire.

The senators were able to reach a deal by incorporating the Democrats’ insistence on a single comprehensive bill that would not deny eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants, with Republican demands that strong border and interior enforcement had to be clearly in place before Congress could consider legal status for illegal immigrants.

Full story…

(Examiner.com) Politics made for strange bedfellows in those taking swipes at President Obama’s white guy appointees. Staunch GOP conservative Mike Huckabee took the first hard whack. He screamed that Obama was a hypocrite on diversity in that he used the issue of the war on women during the presidential campaign to pound the GOP and then turned around and stacked his cabinet with white males. The swing then went over the political spectrum to Harlem Democratic congressman Charles Rangel who called the president’s diversity record, “embarrassing.”,

Here are the problems with the criticism. One is Obama’s actual record on diversity. It’s easy to cherry pick a picture of his four prominent white male nominees, Secretary of State John Kerry, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, CIA Director John Brennan and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel as a score of prominent national newspapers did and finger this as the supposed proof that Obama has a chronic penchant for plopping white men in high and any other places in his administration. The raw numbers and the ground breaking spots that he has appointed minorities and women to tell a far different tale. More than forty percent of his appointees to sub cabinet positions have been women and a significant percent of them have been minority women.

Full story…

(CBS News) Sonia Sotomayor was appointed four years ago by President Barack Obama, but she gave her first broadcast interview to "60 Minutes."

She grew up in a public housing project in the Bronx, the child of Puerto Rican immigrants.

One of the biggest cases before the court right now concerns racial preferences in college admissions, known as affirmative action.

We were curious about how she sees that, because it was a factor in how Sotomayor got into Princeton in 1972.

Full story…