US Politics

The recently appointed director of Minnesota’s new marijuana regulatory agency, Erin Dupree, has resigned amid reports that she sold illegal cannabis products in the state.Dupree ran a business that sold products exceeding state limits on THC potency, owed money to former associates and accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in tax liens, Minnesota Public Radio reported.Loonacy Cannabis Co – the business Dupree founded in Apple Valley, Minnesota, last year – posted on its now-deactivated TikTok account about its edible products containing 10 milligrams of THC per serving and 150 milligrams per package, although state law only allows hemp-derived edibles to contain up to 5 milligrams of THC per serving and 50 milligrams per package, the Star Tribune reported.“I have never knowingly sold any noncompliant product, and when I became aware of them I removed the products from inventory,” Dupree said in a statement on Friday.“However, it has become clear that I have become a distraction that would stand in the way of the important work that needs to be done,” she added.Her role as the state’s first director of the office of cannabis management would have begun on 2 October.“One of the responsibilities, and I take it and the buck stops with me, is the appointments of literally thousands of people,” Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, said on Saturday. “In this case, the process did not work and we got this wrong.”Walz said in a Friday statement that the interim director of the cannabis office, Charlene Briner, would remain in an interim role, according to Minnesota Public Radio.Minnesota’s legalization of recreational marijuana went into effect in August, allowing people 21 and older to legally possess and grow their own marijuana for recreational purposes, subject to limits as the state establishes a legal cannabis industry in the coming months and years.The midwestern state is the 23rd in the country to legalize recreational marijuana. Surrounding states – including Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota and North Dakota – have not yet legalized it. More

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined the calls for Bob Menendez to resign, after the Democratic US senator from New Jersey was charged with accepting gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz and other gifts as bribes.Speaking on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez said the charges against Menendez were “extremely serious” and he should step down.A growing number of Democrats are calling for Menendez, who has represented New Jersey in the Senate since 2006, to resign.Menendez is accused of using his position to aid Egypt’s authoritarian government and pressuring federal prosecutors to drop a case against a friend.Over the weekend, John Fetterman became the first US Senate Democrat to suggest Menendez should quit, while a Democratic New Jersey congressman announced he would run against Menendez in next year’s primary election.Asked about Menendez on CBS’s Face the Nation, Ocasio-Cortez said:“The situation is quite unfortunate, but I do believe that it is in the best interest for Senator Menendez to resign in this moment.“Consistency matters. It shouldn’t matter if it’s a Republican or a Democrat. The details in this indictment are extremely serious. They involve the nature of not just his but all of our seats in Congress.”Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks on Menendez come after she has previously called for a federal investigation into Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice, over his acceptance of undeclared gifts from wealthy rightwing donors.In August, ProPublica reported that Thomas had taken “at least 38” undeclared vacations funded by billionaires and accepted gifts including expensive sports tickets.Ocasio-Cortez had also previously called on Republican congressman George Santos to step down after he was indicted earlier this year for fraud, money laundering and other federal charges.Fetterman was another high-profile progressive who had called for Menendez’s resignation.“He’s entitled to the presumption of innocence under our system, but he is not entitled to continue to wield influence over national policy, especially given the serious and specific nature of the allegations,” Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, said in a statement on Saturday.“I hope he chooses an honorable exit and focuses on his trial.”Menendez denies the charges against him. In a statement on Friday he said: “I am not going anywhere.”But that has not stopped a burgeoning movement calling for his departure.Since then, Phil Murphy, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, has joined the calls for Menendez to resign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMurphy would be in charge of appointing a replacement for Menendez if the senator leaves office. The replacement would be in office until a special election is held.Also on Sunday, Josh Gottheimer, a Democratic New Jersey congressman, repeated his previous call for Menendez to quit.“I called on him, given the gravity of the charges, to step aside,” Gottheimer told CNN.“Given how we’ve got elections coming up, there’s a lot of distractions; obviously giving the senator time to defend himself, I think what’s best is that he step aside and we focus on issues.”Menendez has been charged with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, in connection with alleged intervention on behalf of Egypt, and in allegedly pressuring federal prosecutors to drop a case against a friend.The indictment against Menendez alleged that he and his wife were paid a series of bribes by three New Jersey businessmen in exchange for corrupt acts. FBI agents investigating Menendez discovered “a lot of gold”, allegedly provided by businessman Fred Daibes, in the senator’s home, as well as about $500,000 in cash.Some of the money was “stuffed into envelopes and closets”, and some was “stuffed in the senator’s jacket pockets”, the FBI said.On Saturday, the Democratic New Jersey congressman Andy Kim said he would run against Menendez in the 2024 primary election.“After calls to resign, Senator Menendez said: ‘I am not going anywhere,’” Kim said in a statement.“As a result, I feel compelled to run against him. This is not something I expected to do, but I believe New Jersey deserves better. We cannot jeopardize the Senate or compromise our country’s integrity.“I believe it’s time we restore faith in our democracy, and that’s why I am stepping up and running for Senate.” More

Progressive political fundraising in America is facing a crisis, according to a leading Democratic grassroots donor organization, which warned this month that donations to progressive groups are “way down in 2023 across the board”.According to the Movement Voter Project, progressives have “a five-alarm fire going into 2024”. The organization’s director, Bill Wimsatt, said he was “pressing the panic button” because donor inaction is creating a movement-wide crisis.Wimsatt said there had been a peak for progressive causes around the time of Black Lives Matter in 2020 and amid campaigning to get Donald Trump out of office. “The sense of urgency and existential necessity has dissipated in people’s minds,” he said, “though the situation going into 2024 isn’t any less existential.”A report published by Middle Seat Consulting in July found that while the overall trend in small-donation giving is up since 2015, it is “significantly lower” in the first six months of 2023 than in the same quarters in recent years – and slowing. Cycle over cycle, fundraising is down 48%, it said.It noted that 2015–2022 had been an extraordinary time of political upheaval and uncertainty and Donald Trump motivated donors on the Democratic side. But with Trump out of office, grassroots donors on the left feel a sense of stability and there is reduced motivation to give.In 2020 progressive Democrats “busted our ass to win by 43,000 votes across three states”, Wimsatt says, referring to 2020 Democrat margins in Wisconsin (20,608), Arizona (10,357) and Georgia (11,799). “But if we don’t bust our ass again we’ll lose by 43,000.”The report also identified threats to digital fundraising from an increase in spam email across the fundraising industry, Facebook’s decision to deprioritize political content and other social media innovations making it harder to target potential donors. Phone companies, too, have improved filters to limit political texting.Economically, it added, the inflation crisis “likely had a big impact on the fundraising recession”, noting that “political giving is a luxury expense for most”.Wimsatt reasons that political fundraising is also cyclical. In the years where it had been “exhausted” – including 2010, 2014, 2016 – there had been a resulting rightwing surge. An addition $100m-$300m deployed to grassroots organizations for the rest of 2023, he wrote in the memo, would put progressive organization in a “place of strength” going into the election year.Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families party, says that while there are natural ebbs and flows in progressive fundraising, an alert about a paucity of donor interest in such a critical election cycle was appropriate.“The slowdown in small-dollar donations is real,” he said. “We’re coming off a high-water mark in 2020, when a lot of forces got into the action around Donald Trump and where he was taking the country. At the same time, the response to the George Floyd murder sparked the largest social movement in our country’s history.“With Biden as president, a lot of people have shifted their interests. We have to challenge that by communicating , as the rightwing have done from activist to donor, that this is a long-term political project and a reason to make year-round investments.”Raising fears of a second Trump term does not so far appear to be enough. “People heard about a threat to democracy in 2020 and version of it in 2022, so there is a level of fatigue,” Mitchell said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBreathless emails flooding inboxes may be good at squeezing small-dollar donors but not good at educating the base, getting the base into the fight or winning its trust, Mitchells says, “but progressives need to articulate the ‘why’ outside of ensuring a second Biden term”, he added.Ringing the Trump alarm may not be enough. “We think that’s one-third, and people should understand what the stakes are in putting the government in Maga control. Another third, he says, “is telling the story of what was won during this administration – the Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure bill and American Rescue Plan”.The last, and possibly most important, “is the positive piece of what’s left on the agenda to do. We can’t expect that a fear-based narrative [will work] to build the united front we need. So there’s work to be done inspiring the base,” Mitchell says.If progressive organizations are successful at that, “I think we’ll see a surge of interest and a surge of resources, but it’s up to us to make that case.”Wimsatt, too, says effective messaging is key.“I try to tell a positive story,” he said. “We’re 13 years past the Tea Party, seven years since Trump’s first election, and it’ll take another five to 10 years to defeat them. 2024 is the battle royal and then we have a marathon after that. If we can hold on through that, we can have a progressive decade and nice things.” More

Wearing a shirt festooned with countless images of Donald Trump, Leverne Martin was looking cheerful for a man who had set off from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, at 9pm and driven through the night, arriving in Dubuque, Iowa, at 5.30am. When did he intend to sleep?“As soon as President Trump is back in the White House,” the 55-year-old handyman replied without missing a beat. “If we don’t get him back in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where he belongs, we’re in a mess, man. That’s why I’m voting for President Trump. That’s why I drove nine hours.”On a grey, rainy day, Martin was near the head of a long and winding queue outside a cavernous conference centre overlooking the Mississippi River. Like so many fans in so many towns and cities over nearly a decade, an overwhelmingly white crowd had come to cheer on Trump, elected US president in 2016, beaten by Joe Biden in 2020 and clear frontrunnerfor the Republican nomination in 2024.What is striking about the traveling circus is not what has changed over that time but what has stayed the same. Hawkers still move up and down the line selling Trump calendars, keychains and other regalia with captions such as “Gun rights matter”, “Fight for Trump”, “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president”, “No more bullshit”, “Trumpinator: I’ll be back” and “Fuck Biden and fuck you for voting for him”.Trump, 77, still puts on a show unlike anyone else in politics. Twentieth-century music from Abba, Celine Dion, Elvis Presley and Whitney Houston booms from loudspeakers. Video clips of allies such as the broadcaster Tucker Carlson and Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán receive cheers and those of foes such as Biden and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, elicit boos and jeers.The former reality TV star still enters to thunderous cheers and chants of “USA! USA!” People wave signs bearing his name and snap photos on their phones; one stood on a chair wearing an “I love Trump” T-shirt. Trump still plays the parts of demagogue, divider and standup comic, serving red meat to supporters who revel in shared grievance and the thrill of transgression.The slogan then is the slogan now: “Make America great again” (Maga), emblazoned on a blue backdrop to the stage where Trump spoke for 80 minutes. But for his supporters that phrase has taken on added meaning: Maga is now imbued with nostalgia for the Trump presidency when, as they perceive it, borders were strong and fuel prices were low.Mathew Willis, 41, wearing a “Let’s go Brandon” T-shirt alluding to an anti-Biden meme, said: “He showed what he can do for this country. The economy seemed the best that it had been, in my lifetime at least.“I just feel like he did a good job when he was in office. I want to see him do it again, especially after the last two and a half years of BS we’ve had. The economy’s in the toilet. Gas prices are up. We’re sending billions to other countries. We can’t even fix our own back yard. It’s sad.”The sentiment was echoed by Greg Erickson, 63, a retired insurance agent who blames the media for not giving the ex-president the credit he deserves. “I know to the deepest depths of my heart that Trump loves this country,” the army veteran said. “When he served four years as president, he was competent. Trump had inflation very low.“He had gas prices low and the highest employment rate for all minorities, for Blacks and women, which he doesn’t get credit for. He got rid of the bad guys; he killed two terrorists. He honored our military, which is very near and dear to me. He did a lot of great things for the country and that’s why I’m here.”When he rode down a New York escalator in June 2015, Trump demonised immigrants as criminals, drug dealers and rapists and made the building of a wall on the US-Mexico border his signature issue. Eight years later, the essential point remains the same and the incendiary rhetoric has only intensified.In Dubuque, many Trump supporters interviewed by the Guardian identified the border, which receives hours of coverage on Fox News, as their top priority – one that Democrats ignore at their peril. The candidate duly devoted the first half-hour of his speech to it, repeatedly drawing a contrast between his own presidency and that of Biden’s.“Under my leadership we had the most secure border in US history, acknowledged by everybody; now we have the worst border probably in the history of the world,” he said. “Just think of what we achieved under the Trump administration: I ended the human, economic and national security calamity known as catch-and-release.”Trump made the wildly exaggerated claim that mobs of unscreened, unvetted illegal alien migrants were “stampeding” across the southern border “by the millions and millions”. He continued: “This is an invasion and I’m the one candidate who from day one knows exactly how to stop it.”As in 2016, he recited The Snake, based on a song in which a “tenderhearted woman” finds a half-frozen snake on a path and rescues it, only to be bitten – supposedly a parable about the dangers of being soft on immigration. As in 2016, he mocked the “fake news” media and hurled nicknames at his political rivals, even repurposing “Crooked” Hillary Clinton as “Crooked” Joe Biden.But if there is a difference, a second Trump term is set to be even harsher and more extreme than the first. He vowed to move thousands of troops currently stationed overseas to the border and deploy the navy to impose a “fentanyl blockade”, arguing: “Before we defend the borders of foreign countries, we must secure the border of our country.”The former president went on: “We’ll carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. I’ll also invoke immediately the Alien Enemies Act to remove all known or suspected gang members.” He also promised to expand on a travel ban that barred people from several countries with majority-Muslim populations during his presidency.Trump is also known to be planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power at the expense of the administrative state if he wins re-election next year. Referring to it as “our second term”, he said: “It is the greatest movement in the history of our country and probably any country and, if we do this, it will be written about for hundreds of years. We have to do it much bigger.”The rally came amid fresh criticism from conservatives of Trump over his refusal to commit to a national restriction on abortion and description of DeSantis’s signing of a six-week ban as a “terrible mistake”. Trump told the crowd in Dubuque that they needed to “follow their heart” but warned that Republicans needed to “learn how to talk” about legislation in a way that does not turn off voters.Carving out exceptions in any ban for instances of rape, incest and risk to the mother’s life was vital, he said. “Without the exceptions, it is very difficult to win elections. We would probably lose the majorities in 2024 without the exceptions and perhaps the presidency itself.”Iowa’s popular governor, Kim Reynolds, has condemned Trump’s position but his followers here seemed at peace with it. Only one told the Guardian that he was “slightly” troubled by the comments. Many have been on the eight-year journey and are sticking with him through thick and thin.Indeed, whereas for millions of Democratic and independent voters Trump’s first term and its fiery denouement are his biggest liability, an essay in American carnage, for the true believers of the Maga movement they are his biggest asset.Dawn Ruff, 55, who went to a Trump rally in Dubuque when he first ran for president, said: “I want the economy back to the way it was. I thought he did a good job when he was in there.”The White House quotes figures showing that inflation is in decline and unemployment at a 50-year low. But Ruff responded: “Yeah, that’s their opinion. They’re not the ones that have to worry about going to the gas pump and pumping gas that’s almost five bucks a gallon. When Trump was in there it was a dollar something.”Laci Doyle, 19, a student nurse who will vote for the first time next year, agreed that things were better under Trump. “Our country was at its highest point when he was president. We need to get back to what it used to be, because I think our country was a lot happier and less divided when he was president.”Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his four-year presidency, according to a Washington Post count. But Doyle added: “Yeah, he says some stupid stuff – the tweets and everything – but that doesn’t bother me because ultimately he’s an honest, truthful person. I like his personality. I like that he’s a businessman.”Trump is facing 91 criminal counts in four jurisdictions, but Susan Tayloe, 59, who works for a bank, said: “He obviously has a great respect for the rule of law and also just he’s shown when he was in office before that he got a lot of things accomplished for a lot of people and did a lot of good things. He got persecuted and I like him even better now because of that.”Asked what she would like to see Trump do in a second term, Tayloe replied: “I would like to see the border closed. I would like to see drilling: drill, baby, drill. We have tons of oil here. Why are we shutting down Alaska reserves? We bought Alaska for the oil. Let’s use it. More energy independence. I’d like to see less of this Green New Deal bullshit.” More

The former Donald Trump White House aide who became a pivotal January 6 witness remembers wanting to make a last-minute run for it before delivering her crucial testimony about the US Capitol attack that the defeated president’s supporters staged.But Cassidy Hutchinson kept her nerve, and the cost of breaking ranks with Trump and his fanatical supporters was steep.“Security protocols and … concerns” forced her out of her Washington DC apartment and into hiding after testifying, she said in an interview airing Sunday at 9am ET.“My life changed – the way that I was living my life – for a while,” Hutchinson told CBS News Sunday Morning. “I could not go back to my apartment. I ended up moving down to Atlanta for several months.”Hutchinson, who was working forMark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, when January 6 occurred, also told CBS that she continues to consider herself a Republican. But she said she is not supporting Trump’s efforts to win the Republican nomination and return to the Oval Office in 2024 as he grapples with more than 90 criminal charges, many stemming from his attempts to overturn his electoral loss to Joe Biden weeks before the Capitol attack.“I would … like to make clear – I would not back the former president of the United States,” Hutchinson remarked to CBS News Sunday Morning’s Tracy Smith during the interview. “He is dangerous for the country. He is willing – and has showed time and time again willingness – to proliferate lies, and to vulnerable American people, so he could stay in power.“To me, that is the most un-American thing that you can do.”Hutchinson gave some of the most dramatic testimony about the Capitol attack during live congressional hearings in the summer of 2022. One key moment she described was how Trump accosted a secret service agent and lunged for the steering wheel of the car the then-president was in when he was told he would not be driven to the Capitol.The Capitol attack carried out by supporters whom Trump had told to “fight like hell” was a desperate but failed maneuver meant to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s victory over him. The riot has been linked to nine deaths – more than 1,100 people have been charged in connection with the attack, and the majority of them have either pleaded guilty or been convicted by judges or juries.Hutchinson explained Sunday how it was a grueling decision to testify at the January 6 hearings conducted by a special House committee.“I almost ran out of – there’s a little hold room outside the Committee room – that we were about to walk in, and I almost darted,” Hutchinson told the program. “I heard the door click open, and I turned around and I looked at my attorney and said, ‘I can’t do this.’ And I started to walk, and he gently pushed my shoulders. And he said, ‘You can do this.’ And then we walked out.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHutchinson’s interview was meant to promote her memoir Enough, which was published by CBS’s sister company Simon & Schuster and is scheduled for release Tuesday.Enough has already attracted worldwide headlines after the Guardian reported that in it Hutchinson wrote about how she was groped by Rudy Giuliani – the Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor – on the day of the Capitol attack. The book mainly tracks the 27-year-old’s journey from Trump believer to disenchantment with him, echoing some of the comments Hutchinson made to CBS in Sunday’s interview.Giuliani and Trump have pleaded not guilty to charges that they illegally sought to overturn Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory in the state of Georgia. The pair are among 19 people charged in the case brought against state prosecutors based out of Atlanta.Those charges are contained in one of four criminal indictments filed against Trump this year. The others charge him for his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels and other efforts to nullify his 2020 defeat that culminated in the January 6 attack.Trump has denied all wrongdoing and enjoys commanding polling leads over other candidates pursuing the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. More

Consider the following social science experiment: go into a unionized steel mill parking lot in western Pennsylvania, look at the bumper stickers and track the political messages. Given the longstanding bond between unions and the Democratic party, you might predict widespread support for Democratic candidates. Yet when the then Harvard undergraduate Lainey Newman conducted such unconventional field research during the Covid pandemic, encouraged by her faculty mentor Theda Skocpol, results indicated otherwise. There was a QAnon sticker here, a Back the Blue flag there. But one name proliferated: Donald Trump.It all supported a surprising claim: industrial union members in the shrunken manufacturing hubs of the US are abandoning their historic loyalty to the Democrats for the Republican party.“The most interesting point, how telling it is, is that those stickers were out in the open,” Newman says. “Everyone in the community knew. It was not something people hide.“It would not have been something old-timers would have been OK with, frankly. They stood up against … voting for Republicans, that type of thing.”Newman documented this political shift and the complex reasons for it in her senior thesis, with Skocpol as her advisor. Now the recent graduate and the veteran professor have teamed up to turn the project into a book: Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party.The book comes out as organized labor is returning to the headlines, whether through the United Auto Workers strike at the big three US carmakers or through the battle to buy a former industrial powerhouse, US Steel. In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump is again wooing union voters. On the 3 September edition of ABC’s This Week, the Manhattan Institute president, Reihan Salam, noted that Trump “was trying to appeal to UAW members to talk about, for example, this effort to transition away from combustion engine vehicles”.Newman reflects: “It is relatively well-known [that] union members aren’t voting for Democrats like they used to. What we say is that for a very long time, Democrats did take unions for granted. They didn’t reinvest in the relationship with labor that would have been necessary to maintain some of the alliances and trust between rank-and-file labor and the Democrats.”Once, the bond was as strong as the steel worked by union hands across western Pennsylvania, especially in Pittsburgh, known to some as “The City That Built America”. Retirees repeatedly mentioned this in interviews with Newman and Skocpol. An 81-year-old explained longtime hostility to the Republican party in unionized steel mills and coal mines: “They figure that there was not a Republican in the world who took care of a working guy.” A union newsletter, one of many the authors examined, urged readers to “Vote Straight ‘D’ This November”. Even in the 1980 presidential election, which Ronald Reagan won decisively, union-heavy counties in Pennsylvania were a good predictor of votes for the incumbent Democrat, Jimmy Carter.The subsequent sea change is summed up in one of Newman and Skocpol’s chapter titles, From Union Blue to Trump Red. In 2016, the connection between Pennsylvania union voters and Democratic support all but evaporated as Trump flipped the normally Democratic state en route to victory. His showing that year set a new bar for support for a GOP presidential candidate among rank-and-file union members, bettering Reagan’s standard, with such members often defying leadership to back Trump.“It’s a myth that it all happened suddenly with Reagan,” says Skocpol. “Not really – it took longer.”‘In Union There Is Strength’To understand these changes, Newman and Skocpol examined larger transformations at work across the Rust Belt, especially in western Pennsylvania. It helped that they have Rust Belt backgrounds: Newman grew up in Pittsburgh, where she returned to research the book, while Skocpol was raised in the former industrial city of Wyandotte, Michigan, located south of Detroit.Once, as they now relate, unions wove themselves into community life. Union halls hosted events from weddings to retirement parties. Members showcased their pride through union memorabilia, some of which is displayed in the book, including samples from Skocpol’s 3,000-item collection. Among her favorites: a glass worker’s badge featuring images of drinking vessels and the motto “In Union There Is Strength”.That strength eventually dissipated, including with the implosion of the steel industry in western Pennsylvania in the 1970s and 80s. (According to one interviewee, the resulting population shift explains why there are so many Pittsburgh Steelers fans across the US.) In formerly thriving communities, cinemas and shoe stores closed down, as did union halls. The cover of Skocpol and Newman’s book depicts a line of shuttered storefronts in Braddock, Pennsylvania, the steel town whose former mayor, the Democrat John Fetterman, is now a US senator.Not all union members left western Pennsylvania. As the book explains, those continuing in employment did so in changed conditions. Steelworkers battled each other for dwindling jobs, capital held ever more power and Pittsburgh itself changed. The Steel City sought to reinvent itself through healthcare and higher education, steelworkers wondering where they stood.Blue-collar workers found a more receptive climate among conservative social organizations that filled the vacuum left by retreating unions: gun clubs that benefited from a strong hunting tradition and megachurches that replaced closed local churches. The region even became a center of activity for the Tea Party movement, in opposition to Barack Obama, a phenomenon Skocpol has researched on the national level.In 2016, although Trump and Hillary Clinton made a nearly equal number of visits to western Pennsylvania, they differed in where they went and what they said. Clinton headed to Pittsburgh. Trump toured struggling factory towns, to the south and west. In one, Monessen, he pledged to make American steel great again – a campaign position, the authors note, unuttered for decades and in stark contrast with Clinton’s anti-coal stance. As president, Trump arguably followed through, with a 2018 tariff on aluminum and steel imports. The book cites experts who opposed the move for various reasons, from harm to the economy to worsened relations with China.The authors say their book is not meant to criticize unions or the Democratic party. Democrats, they say, are taking positive steps in response to union members’ rightward shift.“We didn’t have time to research at length all the new kinds of initiatives that have been taken in a state like Wisconsin, like Georgia,” says Skocpol. “They have learned some of the lessons, are trying to create year-round, socially-embedded presences.”In 2020, Joe Biden made multiple visits to western Pennsylvania and ended up narrowly winning Erie county, which had been trending red. As president, he has sought to have the federal government purchase more US-made products, while launching renewable energy initiatives through union labor. Skocpol says Trump’s more ambitious promises, including an across-the-board 10% tariff, propose an unrealistic bridge to a bygone era.“Will Trump promise to do all these things?” asks Skocpol. “Of course he will. Will he actually do them more effectively if he becomes president again? God help us all.”
Rust Belt Union Blues is published in the US by Columbia University Press More

The abrupt uncoupling of the Republican kingmaker Rupert Murdoch from his Fox News empire may have represented a ground shift in the media landscape in the US, but politically at least, very little is likely to change, analysts say.That could be good news for those on the right of the Republican party, who can expect the network to head into the 2024 presidential election – even without its long-time figurehead – continuing to amplify the worst of the political bias and disinformation upon which it made its name.“They’re going to continue the same business formula, which is whipping up hysteria around manufactured crises. They’ll continue to foster outrage and division, and gin up support for conservative causes. I don’t see any of that changing dramatically anytime soon,” said Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg school for communication.“Looking at the big picture, with Rupert Murdoch stepping down, don’t expect change. I agree that he was a politico, a very influential political figure in his own right, and certainly he had personal relationships that might not continue with Lachlan [Murdoch’s son, the Fox Corp chief executive].“But the actions of Fox News are going to be primarily dictated by economic concerns and maximizing shareholder value, and they’re doing quite well at the moment. They’re still the most watched cable news network, they’re incredibly profitable. So I don’t think they’re going to mess with their formula.”Pickard’s view is shared by other analysts, who see a “business as usual” approach as the network continues to deal with the fallout from the $787.5m settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for peddling Donald Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen.That episode cost Fox its most-watched rightwing host, Tucker Carlson, who left in April after pushing the worst of the falsehoods, and complaining he was fired as part of the settlement. Fox and Dominion both say he wasn’t.Fox still faces another, potentially more costly defamation lawsuit from a second voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7bn in damages for multiple fabrications broadcast about the company. The legal turbulence has profound implications for Fox’s future, experts say.“The huge Dominion settlement, and the underlying misconduct that the defamation litigation revealed, is inextricably intertwined with the network’s fortunes going forward,” said Carl Tobias, Williams chair in law at the University of Richmond school of law.“Because the Smartmatic litigation, which involves strikingly similar allegations of misconduct revealed in Dominion’s lawsuit, could impose similarly damaging reputational and economic harm on Fox, with concomitant loss of viewers, Lachlan Murdoch must seriously consider settling with Smartmatic.“The departure of Tucker Carlson may suggest that Fox has learned from the Dominion debacle and perhaps attempted to restrict peddling of misinformation that the Dominion litigation uncovered, but that remains unclear.”Others believe Rupert Murdoch will continue to wield significant power at News Corp, the parent company of his global media operations, and Fox itself, despite the Australian-born billionaire announcing in a six-paragraph farewell statement on Thursday that he was transitioning to “chairman emeritus” of the companies.Preston Padden, a veteran media industry executive who served Murdoch in several roles, including as the president for telecommunications at News Corp and as a senior vice-president at Fox Broadcasting Company, made such a claim on X, formerly Twitter, in a post referring to efforts by US ethics groups to have Fox’s US broadcast licenses revoked by the federal communications commission (FCC).“Given [Murdoch’s] statement that ‘I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change,’ the fact that the trust he controls has a controlling stock interest in Fox, the fact that his son remains chair and CEO, and the fact that the same cadre of executives who knowingly and repeatedly presented false news remains, this announcement has zero impact on the FCC filings,” he wrote.Padden, who gave testimony in the Dominion case, is one of three former senior Fox executives who have become vocal critics of Murdoch and the network, writing in a blog post earlier this year that they regretted their defense of the channel. “We never envisioned, and would not knowingly have enabled, the disinformation machine that, in our opinion, Fox has become,” they wrote.Pickard, meanwhile, said the tried and tested political playbook that Fox has followed for so long will continue to encourage Republican politicians, and help the network fend off the rise of fledgling channels seeking a greater slice of conservative and rightwing viewership.“Fox News will continue to fear they’re being outmaneuvered by these upstarts, One American News Network, or Newsmax, but there’s just no comparison, no real competition,” he said.“They’ll continue to play this central role in rightwing political discourse whether we’re talking about Fox News and its audience, Fox News and the Republican party, Fox News and Trump. These relationships are all mutually beneficial, mutually reinforcing.“They’re going to make crass business decisions in terms of how they’re serving their audience. You’re still going to see this endless parade of Republican politicians on Fox News, and Fox News will continue to amplify their talking points, along with plenty of white grievance and disinformation and conspiracies, but very little journalism.”Ultimately, Pickard believes, it makes little difference which Murdoch name is on the chairperson’s office door.“We need to ask questions about the effect this has on democracy, and the corrosive, toxic effects that Fox is having on political discourse in civil society writ large,” he said.“It’s a very dramatic, personality-driven narrative of Rupert Murdoch stepping down. But at the end of the day, Rupert Murdoch is a symptom of these larger political-economic relationships, and I feel that’s what we really need to draw attention to.” More

Several Democrats including his own state governor are calling on their fellow party member Robert Menendez to resign after federal authorities charged the New Jersey US senator and his wife with accepting bribes. However, the defiant senator has rejected those claims and is refusing to step down.Authorities on Friday revealed charges alleging that Robert and Nadine Menendez illegally accepted gold bars, cash, a luxurious Mercedes-Benz car and other gifts in exchange for favors benefiting three businessmen as well as influencing the Egyptian government.In response, the Democratic congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota told CNN he was deeply disappointed in Menendez and that the senator needed to resign. Phillips said that was his position despite his belief that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.“Yes, I am a Democrat and so is Senator Menendez, but based on what I have seen, I am disappointed and yes, I think he should resign,” Phillips said.He continued: “I’m appalled. Anybody who pays attention – I don’t care [about] your politics, Democrat or Republican, you should be appalled.“A member of Congress who appears to have broken the law is someone who I should believe should resign.”Phillips went on to invoke the case of George Santos, the Republican congressman who has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.“I think George Santos should have resigned already,” he said. “Sadly, our House ethics process, and I would argue the Senate as well, is not as proficient as it needs to be so we have to rely on the judicial system, but I’m really disappointed.”Menendez rejected calls to resign and plans to refute the claims of bribery and corruption, according to NBC News. “Those who believe in justice believe in innocence until proven guilty. I intend to continue to fight for the people of New Jersey with the same success I’ve had for the past five decades,” Menendez said in the statement.“This is the same record of success these very same leaders have lauded all along. It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. I am not going anywhere,” he added.In response to a question on whether Democratic leaders in Congress should lean on Menendez to resign and push him out, Phillips replied: “Look, I am trying to restore faith in government.“That’s one of my missions. It’s a lot of my colleagues’ missions, and sometimes we have to walk that talk, even if it’s uncomfortable. And I would argue that this time, yes, the answer is absolutely.”The New Jersey representative Andy Kim, a Democrat, also called on Menendez to resign. The New Jersey Globe quoted Kim as saying: “These allegations are serious and alarming. It doesn’t matter what your job title is or your politics – no one in America is above the law.“The people of New Jersey absolutely need to know the truth of what happened, and I hope the judicial system works thoroughly and quickly to bring this truth to light.”He added: “In the meantime, I don’t have confidence that the senator has the ability to properly focus on our state and its people while addressing such a significant legal matter. He should step down.”Unsurprisingly, New Jersey’s Republican state committee joined Phillips and Kim in calling for Menendez to step down. The statement said Menendez’s “legal woes [were] an embarrassing distraction”.“For the good of the people of this state, who deserve full and devoted representation, we call on … Robert Menendez to resign,” the statement added.In New Jersey, if there is a vacancy in the US Senate, that seat gets filled by a gubernatorial appointment before a special election is held to replace the appointee. Should Menendez leave office, his vacancy would be filled by the state’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, a reality that perhaps makes it less uncomfortable for Phillips and Kim to insist on their fellow party member’s resignation.Murphy himself also called for Menendez to resign in a statement issued on Friday.“The allegations in the indictment … are deeply disturbing,” the statement said. “These are serious charges that implicate national security and the integrity of our criminal justice system.”In recent months, Democrats have not only called on Santos to be removed from Congress – they have also demanded that Donald Trump not run for a second term as president as he grapples with more than 90 criminal charges across four separate indictments.House Democrats introduced a resolution to expel the indicted Santos from Congress in May, but Republicans successfully sidestepped the maneuver.Meanwhile, Virginia’s Democratic US senator Tim Kaine said earlier this month that he believed there was a “powerful argument” to be made that Trump could be disqualified from running in the 2024 presidential election under the 14th amendment of the constitution. That amendment bars anyone who has taken an oath to support the constitution and has “engaged in insurrection” against the US from holding any civil, military or elected office without approval from two-thirds of both the House and Senate.Trump’s charges include ones in connection with the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress staged by his supporters after he lost the previous year’s presidential election to Joe Biden.Other liberals as well as prominent legal scholars across the country have echoed that argument. More