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Watch: Oprah Winfrey’s full speech at the 2024 DNC
Oprah Winfrey surprised the crowd Wednesday night at the 2024 Democratic National Convention and delivered an energetic 15-minute speech showcasing her support for Vice President Kamala Harris as the next president and encouraging Americans to vote in November. She said she was honored to have been asked to speak about the night’s theme: freedom.
In the beginning of her remarks, Winfrey referenced the words of the late Congressman John Lewis, “No matter what ship our ancestors arrived on, we are all in the same boat now.”
She shared the story of civil rights pioneers Ruby Bridges, Leona Tate, Gail Etienne and Tessie Prevost Williams, known as the “New Orleans Four,” who helped desegregate schools and break barriers in New Orleans.
Winfrey also took jabs at former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, in her speech, calling out Vance’s 2021 “childless cat ladies” remark.
“But we are beyond ridiculous tweets and lies and foolery. These are complicated times, people. And they require adult conversation. And I welcome those conversations because civilized debate is vital to democracy and it is the best of America,” Winfrey said.
Read a full transcript of Winfrey’s 2024 DNC remarks below.
Good evening, everybody! Who says you can’t go home again?
After watching the Obamas last night, that was some epic fire, wasn’t it? Some epic fire. We’re now so fired up, we can’t wait to leave here and do something! And what we’re going to do is elect Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States.
I am so honored to have been asked to speak on tonight’s theme about what matters most to me, to you, and all of us Americans: freedom.
There are people who want you to see our country as a nation of us against them. People who want to scare you, who want to rule you, people who’d have you believe that books are dangerous and assault rifles are safe. That there’s a right way to worship and a wrong way to love. People who seek first to divide and then to conquer. But here’s the thing. When we stand together, it is impossible to conquer us.
In the words of an extraordinary American, the late Congressman John Lewis. He said no matter what ship our ancestors arrived on, we are all in the same boat now. Congressman Lewis knew very well how far this country has come because he was one of the brilliant Americans who helped to get us where we are. But he also knew that the work is not done. The work will never be done because freedom isn’t free. America is an ongoing project. It requires commitment. It requires being open to the hard work and the heart work of democracy. And every now and then, it requires standing up to life’s bullies. I know this. I’ve lived in Mississippi, in Tennessee, in Wisconsin, Maryland, Indiana, Florida, Hawaii, Colorado, California, and– and sweet home Chicago, Illinois!
I have actually traveled this country from the redwood forests, love those redwoods, to the gulf stream waters. I’ve seen racism and sexism and income inequality and division. I’ve not only seen it. At times, I have been on the receiving end of it. But more often than not, what I have witnessed and experienced are human beings, both conservative and liberal, who may not agree with each other but who still would help you in a heartbeat if you were in trouble. These are the people who make me proud to say that I am an American. They are the best of America. And despite what some would have you think, we are not so different from our neighbors. When a house is on fire, we don’t ask about the homeowner’s race or religion. We don’t wonder who their partner is or how they voted. No! We just try to do the best we can to save them. And if the place happens to belong to a childless cat lady…Well, we try to get that cat out, too.
‘Cause we are a country of people who work hard for the money. We wish our brothers and sisters well, and we pray for peace. We know all of the old tricks and tropes that are designed to distract us from what actually matters. But we are beyond ridiculous tweets and lies and foolery. These are complicated times, people. And they require adult conversation. And I welcome those conversations because civilized debate is vital to democracy and it is the best of America.
Now, over the last couple of nights, we have all seen brave people walk onto this stage and share their most private pain. Amanda and Josh, Caitlin, Hadley. They told us their stories of rape and incest and near-death experiences from having the state deny them the abortion that their doctor explained was medically necessary, and they’ve told us these things for one reason and that is to keep what happened to them from happening to anybody else. Because if you do not have autonomy over this, over this, if you cannot control when and how you choose to bring your children into this world and how they are raised and supported, there is no American dream. The women and men who are battling to keep us from going back to a time of desperation and shame and stone-cold fear, they are the new freedom fighters. And make no mistake, they are the best of America.
I want to talk now about somebody who is not with us tonight, Tessie Prevost Williams, born in New Orleans not long after the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools were unconstitutional. That was in 1954, the same year I was born. But I didn’t have to head to first grade at the all-white McDonogh 19 school with a U.S. Marshal by my side like Tessie did. When I got to school, the building wasn’t empty, like it was for Tessie. Parents pulled their kids out of the school, leaving only Tessie and two other Black girls to sit in the classroom with the windows papered over to block snipers from attacking their 6-year-old bodies.
Tessie passed away six weeks ago. I tell this story to honor her tonight. She, like Ruby Bridges, and her friends Leona and Gail, the “New Orleans Four,” they were called. They broke barriers and they paid dearly for it. But it was the grace and guts and courage of women like Tessie Prevost Williams, who paved the way for another girl who nine years later became the second class to integrate the public schools in Berkeley, California.
And it seems to me, that at school and at home, somebody did a beautiful job of showing this young girl how to challenge the people at the top and empower the people at the bottom. They showed her how to look at the world and see not just what is but what can be. They instilled in her a passion for justice and freedom and the glorious fighting spirit necessary to pursue that passion.
And soon, and very soon. Soon, and very soon, we are going to be teaching our daughters and sons about how this child of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, two idealistic energetic immigrants, immigrants, how this child grew up to become the 47th president of the United States! That is the best of America!
You know, you know. Let me tell you this. This election isn’t about us and them. It’s about you and me. And what we want our futures to look like. There are choices to be made when we cast our ballot. Now, there’s a certain candidate that says if we just go to the polls this one time that we’ll never have to do it again. Well, you know what? You are looking at a registered independent who is proud to vote again and again and again because I’m an American and that’s what Americans do.
Voting is the best of America. And I have always, since I was eligible to vote, I’ve always voted my values. And that is what is needed in this election now more than ever.
So I’m calling on all you independents and all you undecideds. You know this is true. You know I’m telling you the truth, that values and character matter most of all. In leadership and in life. And more than anything, you know this is true, that decency and respect are on the ballot in 2024. And just plain common sense. Common sense tells you that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz can give us decency and respect. They are the ones to give it to us.
So we are Americans. We are Americans. Let us choose loyalty to the Constitution over loyalty to any individual. Because that’s the best of America. And let us choose optimism over cynicism because that’s the best of America. And let us choose inclusion over retribution. Let us choose common sense over nonsense. Because that’s the best of America. And let us choose the sweet promise of tomorrow over the bitter return to yesterday. We won’t go back. We won’t be set back, pushed back, bullied back, kicked back. We’re not going back. Not going back. We’re not going back.
So, let us choose, let us choose truth. Let us choose honor. And let us choose joy! Because that’s the best of America. But more than anything else, let us choose freedom. Why? Because that’s the best of America. We’re all Americans. And together, let’s all choose Kamala Harris!
Thank you, Chicago!
Bangkok — A 64-year-old woman was preparing to do her evening dishes at her home outside Bangkok when she felt a sharp pain in her thigh and looked down to see a huge python taking hold of her.
“I was about to scoop some water and when I sat down it bit me immediately,” Arom Arunroj told Thailand’s Thairath newspaper. “When I looked I saw the snake wrapping around me.”
The 13-to-16-foot-long python coiled itself around her torso, squeezing her down to the floor of her kitchen.
“I grabbed it by the head, but it wouldn’t release me,” she said. “It only tightened.”
Kunyakit Thanawtchaikun/AP
Pythons are non-venomous constrictors, which kill their prey by gradually squeezing the breath out of it.
Propped up against her kitchen door, she cried for help but it wasn’t until a neighbor happened to be walking by about an hour and a half later and heard her screams that authorities were called.
Responding police officer Anusorn Wongmalee told The Associated Press on Thursday that when he arrived the woman was still leaning against her door, looking exhausted and pale, with the snake coiled around her.
Police and animal control officers used a crowbar to hit the snake on the head until it released its grip and slithered away before it could be captured.
In all, Arom spent about two hours on Tuesday night in the clutches of the python before being freed.
She was treated for several bites but appeared to be otherwise unharmed in videos of her talking to Thai media shortly after the incident.
Encounters with snakes are not uncommon in Thailand, and last year 26 people were killed by venomous snake bites, according to government statistics. A total of 12,000 people were treated for venomous bites by snakes and other animals 2023.
The reticulated python is the largest snake found in Thailand and usually ranges in size from 5 to 21 feet, weighing up to about 165 pounds. They have been found as big as 33 feet long and 287 pounds.
Smaller pythons feed on small mammals such as rats, but larger snakes switch to prey such as pigs, deer and even domestic dogs and cats. Attacks on humans are not common, though do happen occasionally.
There have also been fatal attacks in Indonesia, where a woman was found inside the belly of a reticulated python that swallowed her whole in June — the fifth person to be devoured by one of the snakes in the country since 2017.
CBS News
After Tyre Nichols’ fatal beating, Memphis officer texted photo of bloodied man to ex-girlfriend, she testifies
A former Memphis police officer charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols sent his ex-girlfriend a photo of the badly injured man on the night he was punched, kicked and hit with a police baton following a traffic stop, according to trial testimony Wednesday.
Brittany Leake, a Memphis officer and Demetrius Haley’s former girlfriend, testified during the criminal trial that she was on the phone with Haley when officers pulled Nichols over for a traffic stop. She said she heard a “commotion,” including verbal orders for someone to give officers his hands.
The call ended, but Haley later texted the photo in a group chat comprising Haley, Leake and her godsister, she testified. Prosecutors displayed the photo for the jury. It showed Nichols with his eyes closed, on the ground with what appeared to be blood near his mouth and his hands behind his back.
Leake said that when she saw the photo, her reaction was: “Oh my God, he definitely needs to go to the Med.”
The Med is shorthand for Memphis’ trauma hospital.
The fatal beating, caught on police bodycams and street surveillance cameras, has sparked protests and calls for police reform. Officers said they pulled over Nichols for reckless driving, but Memphis’ police chief said there was no evidence to substantiate that claim.
Haley, Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith are on trial after pleading not guilty to charges that they deprived Nichols of his civil rights through excessive force and failure to intervene, and obstructed justice through witness tampering. Their trial began Sept. 9 and is expected to run three to four weeks.
George Walker IV / AP
The Memphis Police Department fired the three men, along with Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr., after Nichols’ death. The beating was caught on police video, which was released publicly. The officers were later indicted on the federal charges. Martin and Mills have taken plea deals.
During her testimony Wednesday, Leake said she deleted the photo after she saw it and that sending such a photo is against police policy.
“I wasn’t offended, but it was difficult to look at,” she said.
Leake said Haley had sent her photos before of drugs, and of a person who had been injured in a car accident.
Earlier Wednesday, Martin was on the witness stand for a third day. Defense attorneys tried to show inconsistencies between Martin’s statements to investigators and his court testimony. Martin acknowledged lying about what happened to Memphis Police Department internal investigators, to try to cover up and “justify what I did.”
But Martin said he told the truth to FBI investigators after he pleaded guilty in August, including statements about feeling pressure on his duty belt where his gun was located during the traffic stop, but not being able to see if Nichols was trying to get his gun. Martin has testified that he said “let go of my gun” during the traffic stop.
Martin Zummach, the attorney for Justin Smith, asked Martin if he knew of any reasons why Nichols did not simply say, “I give up.”
“He’s out of it,” Martin said. “Disoriented.”
Martin testified that the situation escalated quickly when Haley pulled his gun and violently yanked Nichols from his car, using expletives and failing to tell Nichols why he had been pulled over and removed from the vehicle.
“He never got a chance to comply,” Martin said.
Nichols, who was Black, was pepper sprayed and hit with a stun gun during the traffic stop, but ran away, police video shows. The five officers, who also are Black, then beat him about a block from his home, as he called out for his mother.
Video shows the officers milling about and talking as Nichols struggled with his injuries. Nichols died Jan. 10, 2023, three days after the beating.
An autopsy report shows Nichols – the father of a boy who is now 7 – died from blows to the head. The report describes brain injuries, and cuts and bruises on his head and elsewhere on his body.
Jesse Guy testified that he was working as a paramedic for the Memphis Fire Department the night of the beating. He arrived at the location after two emergency medical technicians, Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge.
Guy said he was not told about the medical problems Nichols had experienced before he arrived, and that Nichols was injured, seated on the ground and unresponsive.
Nichols had no pulse and was not breathing, and it “felt like he was lifeless,” Guy said.
In the ambulance, Guy performed CPR and provided mechanical ventilation, and Nichols had a pulse by the time he arrived at the hospital, the paramedic said.
Guy said Long and Sandridge did not say if they had checked Nichols’ pulse and heart rate, and they did not report if they had given him oxygen. When asked by one of Bean’s lawyers whether that information would have been helpful in treating Nichols, Guy said yes.
Long and Sandridge were fired for violating fire department policies after Nichols died. They have not been criminally charged.
The five officers also have been charged with second-degree murder in state court, where they pleaded not guilty. Mills and Martin are expected to change their pleas.
Federal prosecutors have previously recommended a 40-year sentence for Martin. A date has not been set in state court yet.
Nichols worked for FedEx, and he enjoyed skateboarding and photography. The city of Sacramento, where Nichols grew up, named a skatepark in his honor. “Tyre fell in love with skateboarding at a young age and it wasn’t long before it became a part of his lifestyle,” states the resolution approved by the city council. He had a tattoo of his mother’s name.
“Tyre Nichols’ family have been praying for justice and accountability from the very beginning of this tragedy,” Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, the civil rights attorneys representing Nichols’ family, said in a statement when the trial began.
Boeing’s CEO said Wednesday that the company will begin furloughing “a large number” of employees to conserve cash during the strike by union machinists that began last week.
Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg said the people who would be required to take time off without pay starting in coming days include executives, managers and other employees based in the U.S.
“While this is a tough decision that impacts everybody, it is in an effort to preserve our long-term future and help us navigate through this very difficult time,” Ortberg said in a company-wide message to staff.
Boeing didn’t say how many people will face rolling furloughs, but the number is expected to run into the tens of thousands. The aerospace giant had 171,000 employees at the start of the year.
About 33,000 Boeing factory workers in the Pacific Northwest began a strike Friday after rejecting a proposal to raise pay by 25% over four years. They want raises of at least 40%, the return of a traditional pension plan and other improvements in the contract offer they voted down.
Scott Brauer / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The strike is halting production of several airplane models including Boeing’s best-selling plane, the 737 Max. The company gets more than half of the purchase price when new planes are delivered to buyers, so the strike will quickly hurt Boeing’s cash flow.
Ortberg said selected employees will be furloughed for one week every four weeks while retaining their benefits. The CEO and other senior executives will take pay cuts during the duration of the strike, he said, without stating how deep the cuts will be.
All work related to safety, quality, customer support and certification of new planes will continue during the furloughs, he said, including production of 787 Dreamliner jets, which are built by nonunion workers in South Carolina.
Ortberg said in a memo to employees that the company is talking to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers about a new contract agreement that could be ratified.
“However, with production paused across many key programs in the Pacific Northwest, our business faces substantial challenges and it is important that we take difficult steps to preserve cash and ensure that Boeing is able to successfully recover,” he said.
Boeing’s chief financial officer warned employees earlier this week that temporary layoffs were possible.
The company, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, but has most of its commercial-airplanes business located in the Pacific Northwest, is also cutting spending on suppliers, freezing hiring and eliminating most travel.
Despite two full days of talks assisted by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the union said Wednesday that no resolution had been reached and no additional negotiations were scheduled, according to CBS Seattle affiliate KIRO-TV.
Striking workers are picketing at several locations in the Seattle area, Oregon and California. The union, which recommended the offer that members later rejected by a 96% vote, is surveying the workers to learn what they want in a new contract. The union’s last strike at Boeing, in 2008, lasted about two months.
If the walkout doesn’t end soon, Boeing’s credit rating could be downgraded to non-investment or junk status, which would make borrowing more expensive. Shortly after the walkout began Friday, Moody’s put Boeing on review for a possible downgrade, and Fitch said a strike longer than two weeks would make a downgrade more likely.
Python squeezes Thai woman in her kitchen for 2 hours before she’s rescued by police
After Tyre Nichols’ fatal beating, Memphis officer texted photo of bloodied man to ex-girlfriend, she testifies
Boeing set to start large-scale furloughs due to machinists strike
Python squeezes Thai woman in her kitchen for 2 hours before she’s rescued by police
After Tyre Nichols’ fatal beating, Memphis officer texted photo of bloodied man to ex-girlfriend, she testifies