Black residents in San Francisco could receive a life-changing amount of money in the form of reparations if a plan backed by the city's Board of Supervisors gets enacted.
The board voiced support for the city's reparations committee's recommendation to pay eligible Black adult residents $5 million and also recommended eliminating personal debt, tax bills, and instituting guaranteed yearly incomes starting at $97,000 for the next 250 years, according to the Associated Press.
There are estimated less than 50,000 Black residents living in San Francisco, only 6 percent of the current population.
Like other such plans explored around the country to improve Black generational wealth, it received some pushback from the local community.
"Those of my constituents who lost their minds about this proposal, it's not something we're doing or we would do for other people. It's something we would do for our future, for everybody's collective future," said Rafael Mandelman, San Francisco supervisor.
While the board said it was open to the reparations proposal in an effort to atone for slavery and institutionalized racism, some supervisors have said the city cannot afford major reparations payments. Lee E. Ohanian, a professor with Stanford University's Hoover Institution, estimated that the plan could cost non-Black families at least $600,000 per household.
"This conversation we're having in San Francisco is completely unserious. They just threw a number up, there's no analysis," said John Dennis, chair of the San Francisco Republican Party.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says he wasn’t required to disclose the many trips he and his wife took that were paid for by a Republican megadonor.
The two expelled members are Black and the member not expelled is white.
On A Positive Note: U.S. Taps First Woman to Ever Lead Largest U.S. National Guard
The capacity to burn coal for power went up in 2022 despite global promises to phase down the fuel that’s the biggest source of planet-warming gases in the atmosphere, a report Wednesday found.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has for more than two decades accepted luxury trips nearly every year from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow without reporting them on financial disclosure forms, ProPublica reports.
Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families, is running for president.
A Democratic state lawmaker in North Carolina announced Wednesday that she is jumping to the Republican Party, giving the GOP veto-proof majorities in both the state's legislative chambers that should make it easier to enact conservative policies over the opposition of Gov. Roy Cooper.
The Environmental Protection Agency is tightening rules that limit emissions of mercury and other harmful pollutants from coal-fired power plants.
King Charles III’s wife has been officially identified as Queen Camilla for the first time, with Buckingham Palace using the title on invitations for the monarch’s May 6 coronation.
Tax payers are getting less bang for their buck in 2023. The IRS said the government has so far issued $172 billion in refunds. That's down 9 percent from a year ago, and the average refund is down from roughly $3,2000 to $2,900. However, the overall number of people to get refunds is up 3 percent.
