US Politics

Starbucks CEO to testify before Senate over opposition to stores unionizingBernie Sanders had threatened to subpoena Howard Schultz if he refused to appear while workers file unfair labor practice chargesThe Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, has agreed to testify before a Senate committee investigating the company’s intense opposition to national efforts to unionize its stores.Senator Bernie Sanders had threatened to subpoena Schultz if he refused to appear before the US Senate health, education, labor and pensions (Help) committee. Sanders said Schultz had “refused to answer any of the serious questions we have asked” for over a year.Since late 2021, 290 Starbucks stores around the US have won union elections, but dozens of workers and the Starbucks Workers United union have filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over alleged retaliatory firings, discipline, unilateral changes, store closures, refusing to bargain with the union and intimidation against workers’ efforts to form unions.‘Old-school union busting’: how US corporations are quashing the new wave of organizingRead moreNine decisions by NLRB administrative law judges so far have found Starbucks violated the National Labor Relations Act, and 22 Starbucks workers have received judgments ordering their reinstatement. No Starbucks appeals have yet overturned any rulings.“I’m happy to announce that Howard Schultz, the CEO and founder of Starbucks, has finally agreed to testify before the Senate Help committee. The Help committee was scheduled to vote tomorrow to subpoena him and I want to thank the members of the committee who, in a bipartisan way, were prepared to do just that,” Sanders said in a statement. “In America, workers have the constitutional right to organize unions and engage in collective bargaining to improve their wages and working conditions. Unfortunately Starbucks, under Mr Schultz’s leadership, has done everything possible to prevent that from happening.”Starbucks initially pushed back on efforts to compel Schultz to testify before the US Senate Help committee, offering other Starbucks executives in lieu of Schultz. Sanders criticized Starbucks’ response.Starbucks Workers United has called out Schultz on social media, using a #DearHoward hashtag to criticize how Starbucks has responded to unionization efforts and its impact on workers in anticipation of the Senate testimony.TopicsStarbucksUS unionsBernie SandersUS politicsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

Alex Murdaugh’s brother gives first interview since trial: ‘He knows more’In New York Times interview, Randy Murdaugh says he remains unsure if his brother murdered son and wife in South CarolinaAlex Murdaugh, the disgraced South Carolina lawyer found guilty of murdering his wife and son, has long been a thief and liar – but his being a convicted killer is still a shock, his brother has said in the first interview a member of the family has given since the trial.In an interview with the New York Times, Randy Murdaugh said he remained unsure if Alex murdered his son and wife in June 2021. Randy Murdaugh added that while he respects the jury’s verdict, he has known Alex as a protective father and husband.Murder and mystery in the south: how the Murdaugh trial gripped AmericaRead more“He knows more than what he’s saying,” said Randy Murdaugh, referring to Alex’s lying about the murder. “He’s not telling the truth, in my opinion, about everything there.”Randy, Alex’s older brother, said in the interview that the pair were not close, despite going to the same college and law school, and working at the family’s law firm together.“It’s not like there was some problem with our relationship, necessarily,” Randy Murdaugh said. “We just really weren’t alike, so we didn’t do stuff together.”Weeks after the murder, Randy Murdaugh said that much of the family rallied around Alex, who suggested the killing of his 22-year-old son Paul was due to Paul’s involvement in a fatal 2019 boating accident. Maggie Murdaugh, Alex’s wife, was shot dead alongside Paul.Months after the murders, Randy confronted Alex about financial records that showed Alex had embezzled millions from the family business. In an emotional conversation, Randy recalled, Alex admitted to stealing, and to a severe addiction to painkillers.Alex promised never to lie to Randy again, Randy said, but soon broke that pledge. A day later, Alex told police and Randy that he had been shot on the side of the road by an unknown person.Police later said Alex Murdaugh had arranged to have someone else shoot him, in the hopes that his surviving son Buster could collect his life insurance money.Randy soon stopped speaking with Alex, who has been charged with stealing more than $8m from the family firm. The pair have not spoken in almost a year.But in July last year, when Alex was arrested over the murder of his wife and son, Randy re-examined aspects of what he knew about his younger brother.Randy Murdaugh told the newspaper that the family has dealt with similar uncertainty, given the gruesome nature of the crime and the previous understanding they had of Alex.“The not knowing,” Randy Murdaugh said, “is the worst thing there is.”Randy Murdaugh’s interview stands in sharp contrast from statements given by Alex’s defense lawyers, who have said that the Murdaugh family fully believes he did not murder anyone. His lawyers also said the family supports him.On Friday, Alex Murdaugh was given two sentences of life imprisonment after being found guilty of the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh. The sentences capped a six-week, televised trial in which Alex maintained his innocence, though that was undermined by cellphone video captured by his son that placed him at the scene of the murders shortly before they occurred.Randy said the Murdaugh family is focused on supporting Buster, who has lost his immediate family. Randy said his life has attracted international attention given his brother’s crimes.Randy told the New York Times he hoped the trial would give him some closure and an answer about the circumstances around the death of his nephew and sister-in-law, but he said he has not stopped thinking about it.“I hoped that after the trial, because there’s nothing more that can be presented, that I’d stop thinking about this,” Randy Murdaugh said. “But so far, that has not been the case.”TopicsAlex MurdaughUS politicsSouth CarolinaUS crimeLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

Ex-official in Clinton and Obama White Houses dies in air turbulence incidentDana Hyde, 55, was flying from Maryland to New England and suffered blunt-force injuries from violent turbulenceA former official in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama White Houses died last Friday after the private business jet that the prominent Washington attorney was on experienced stability issues and encountered severe turbulence mid-flight.The National Transportation Safety Board has since started investigating “a reported trim issue that occurred prior to the in-flight upset” that affected the plane’s altitude control and may have caused the instability.Dana Hyde, 55, was returning to Maryland from a trip in New England with her husband, Jonathan Chambers, and one of her sons where they were visiting schools, the Washington Post reported.They flew on a Bombardier aircraft owned by the Kansas City-based rural broadband consulting firm Conexon, where Chambers is a partner, from Keene, New Hampshire, to Leesburg, Virginia, before the plane was diverted to Bradley international airport in Connecticut.In an email to employees and clients, Chambers described that “the plane suddenly convulsed in a manner that violently threw the three of us”, adding that Hyde was “badly injured, the Washington Post reported. Hyde was taken to a hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, where she was pronounced dead. The chief medical examiner’s office declared she had suffered from blunt-force injuries, the Associated Press reported.Hyde grew up in rural eastern Oregon before she became an attorney who worked as a counsel on the 9/11 Commission investigating the deadly World Trade Center terrorist attack. She spent time as a special assistant during Clinton’s administration and then as a senior adviser in the US state department during Obama’s presidency.She went on to become an associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.Most recently, she served as co-chairperson for the Aspen Partnership for an Inclusive Economy in 2020 and 2021.“During her time with us, Dana was a brilliant and generous colleague who worked closely with programs across the organization to build partnerships and enhance our collective work,” an Aspen spokesperson, Jon Purves, said in a statement. “The thoughts of our entire Aspen Institute community are with Dana’s family and loved ones.”Aviation investigators expect to learn more about the circumstances of Hyde’s death after “they analyze information from the flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder and other sources of information like weather data”, the NTSB tweeted. A preliminary report on the incident is expected in two to three weeks.Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration told pilots of 678 aircraft, including the Bombardier BD-100-1A10 flown last week, to take time to check the pitch trim before flights. Officials found multiple times in which the aircraft’s nose turned downward after the plane climbed in the air.According to the Federal Aviation Administration, between 2009 and 2020, just 30 people were injured as a result of turbulence during flights, and no one died, making mid-flight deaths from turbulence an extreme rarity, the Association Press reported.Plans are for Hyde’s funeral to be in Israel, where Chambers said his wife worked and “fell in love with the country, the language, and the people”.“Dana was the best person I ever knew,” Chambers wrote in the email to Conexon associates. “She was a wonderful mother to our boys and she was accomplished professionally.“She loved and was beloved.”TopicsUS newsUS politicsAir transportWashington DCnewsReuse this content More

Anti-trans rhetoric took center stage at CPAC amid hostile Republican effortsRepublicans are pursuing a barrage of new restrictions related to healthcare and human rights for transgender peopleThere was a joke about the suspected Chinese spy balloon’s preferred pronouns; claims that Democrats believe there are “millions” of genders and a menacing call for “transgenderism” to be “eradicated”.From the main stage of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), far-right activists, members of Congress and the former president of the United States waged an aggressive assault on transgender rights last week, raising the issue in speeches and unrelated panel discussions, often under the guise of protecting children.Headlining the conference on Saturday, Donald Trump drew some of the wildest applause of his more than 90-minute address when he pledged to stop the “chemical castration and sexual mutilization [sic]”​ of children if re-elected in 2024 while endorsing a national ban on transgender medical treatment for young people.A day earlier, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, one of Trump’s staunchest allies, rallied attendees with a speech devoted to the issue, unveiling her plan to reintroduce a bill that would criminalize doctors for providing gender-affirming care to a minor.Left unsaid was that leading medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, consider gender-affirming care to be medically necessary and potentially lifesaving for children and adults diagnosed with gender dysphoria.Much of the anti-trans discourse was aimed at liberals, who, according to the Republican senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, believe children “should be able to change their gender at recess” and “hyperventilate on their yoga mats if you use the wrong pronoun”. The remarks elicited peals of laughter from the audience.Advocates say the vitriolic rhetoric on display at CPAC is reflective of the increasingly hostile movement among conservatives that seeks to regulate the lives of transgender Americans and marginalize vulnerable young people.“People like Marjorie Taylor Greene will not be satisfied until every LGBTQ person is forced into the shadows,” said Geoff Wetrosky, campaign director for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group. He added: “There’s really no legislative purpose other than discrimination in these bills.”In state legislatures across the country, Republican lawmakers are pursuing a barrage of new restrictions related to transgender youth’s medical care, sports participation and bathroom use.So far this year, anti-trans legislation has been proposed in 39 states, including 112 measures that focus on medical care restriction and 82 that pertain to education-related issues, according to the website Track Trans Legislation.Last week, the Republican governor of Tennessee signed into law a bill prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors as well as one imposing new limits on drag performances, which have become a target for Republicans. Mississippi also enacted a ban on treatment for transgender youth while Republican state lawmakers in Kentucky advanced a similar measure, following a charged debate over a separate proposal allowing teachers to refuse to use students’ preferred pronouns.Until recently, most legislation banning transgender healthcare was aimed at minors, but Republicans are increasingly pushing proposals that would limit treatment for adults.Health experts and LGBTQ advocates say many of these anti-trans bills being pushed in state legislatures are not rooted in science – or reality.Gender-affirming care is defined by the World Health Organization as “social, psychological, behavioral or medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity”.While treatment for transgender youths seeking care is highly individualized, experts say most begin with “social transitioning”, or presenting publicly in their preferred gender. Adolescents may consider puberty-blockers to temporarily pause sexual development, often before hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery, which is not typically offered until age 18 or later. Research suggests regret is rare.Toxic rhetoric and political actions can have profound consequences for LGBTQ Americans, especially transgender youth for whom suicide rates are high.More than 70% of LGBTQ young people, including 86% of trans and/or nonbinary youth, say the political debate around trans issues has negatively affected their mental health, a 2022 survey by The Trevor Project found.Harassment, intimidation and violence against LGBTQ Americans is rising, fueled, experts say, by a rise in online hate speech and an intensifying political debate. Hundreds of transgender people have been killed over the past decade, often in targeted shootings, with Black trans women at especially high risk.“By spreading this propaganda, they’re creating more stigma and discrimination and violence against LGBTQ people,” Wetrosky said. “There are real repercussions and real world violence as a result of this rhetoric.”Angelo Carusone, president and chief executive of Media Matters for America, which monitors rightwing media, said far-right influencers have helped stoke the present hysteria over trans rights. Some of the attacks pull from the online “fever swamps”, he said, merging discussions of gender identity with conspiracy theories about pedophilia and age-old tropes falsely accusing LGBTQ people of “grooming” children.Increasingly, Republican politicians and party leaders see the issue of trans rights as a way to rile their base. It’s a strategy that seeks to capitalize on the conservative “parental rights” movement, which emerged in opposition to pandemic-era school polices requiring remote-learning and mask-wearing but quickly shifted to target classroom instruction related to race, sexual orientation and gender identity as well as transgender students’ bathroom use and sports participation.“When that anti-education wave … started to talk about trans issues, the numbers were already there and their audience responded to it in a really visceral way,” Carusone said.While the backlash may have helped Republicans claw back power in Virginia – a state thought to be increasingly out of reach for the party – their disappointing showing in the 2022 midterms suggests it has limited appeal.But it was a central theme at CPAC, where panelists repeatedly mocked and misgendered transgender people, including Rachel Levine, who serves as the assistant secretary for health and is the highest-ranking transgender official in the US government.On a panel dedicated to the issue, a former college athlete who competed against a transgender swimmer warned that there was an effort under way on the left to “fully eradicate women”.A male panelist joked about “transitioning” into his female co-panelist, Chaya Raichik, who runs “Libs of TikTok”, an anti-LGBTQ social media account. Another lamented that students in China are taught calculus while American students learn that there are “72 genders”.But the speech that LGBTQ advocates found the most chilling came from Michael Knowles, a rightwing political commentator for the Daily Wire, who declared that “for the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely”. A range of voices, including public officials, experts and observers of rightwing rhetoric, condemned the remarks as inflammatory and dangerous, with some calling them “genocidal”. (Knowles insisted on Twitter that he was not referring to trans people, but “transgenderism” which he has described as a “false” ideology.)Yet the intense focus on transgender rights at CPAC this year – nearly every speaker raised it – suggests it is likely to be an animating issue in the coming presidential election.Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, seen as Trump’s strongest potential rival for the Republican nomination, was not at CPAC this year but has aggressively targeted trans rights in his state.He signed into law Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill as well as another measure that bans trans women and girls from competing in some school sports in the state. He has also sought to limit gender-affirming care for transgender youths and recently faced sharp criticism for requesting information about students who sought or received such care at public universities in Florida.Meanwhile Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, as well as possible 2024 contenders including the former vice-president Mike Pence, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, have all emphasized their opposition to trans rights.Wetrosky, of the Human Rights Campaign, said he anticipates the emerging Republican presidential field will continue to embrace the anti-trans rhetoric and policies on offer at CPAC. And though it may boost them in their quest to win the party’s nomination, he predicted it would backfire in a general election.“The vast majority of Americans support LGBTQ equality,” Wetrosky said, “and the people who are speaking at this conference are on the wrong side of history.”TopicsCPACLGBTQ+ rightsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Ron DeSantis has his next target in his sights: freedom of the pressTrevor TimmFlorida’s rightwing governor and legislature want to gut one of the United States’ most important first amendment rulingsRon DeSantis, the Florida governor, and his cronies, not content with destroying free speech in public schools, have set for themselves a new target: destroying press freedom and every Floridian’s right to criticize public officials. Along the way, they aim to overturn the most important first amendment US supreme court decision of the 20th century.The latest bill to raise eyebrows sounds like it’s made up by the opponents of Florida Republicans to make them sound ridiculous. Unfortunately, it’s real. The proposed law, authored by state legislator Jason Brodeur, would – I kid you not – compel “bloggers” who criticize the governor, other officers of the executive branch, or members of the legislature to register with the state of Florida. Under the bill, anyone paid to write on the internet would have to file monthly reports every time they utter a government official’s name in a critical manner. If not, they’d face potentially thousands of dollars in fines.Banning ideas and authors is not a ‘culture war’ – it’s fascism | Jason StanleyRead moreIt’s a policy so chilling that it would make Vladimir Putin proud, and I wish that was hyperbole. In 2014, Russia’s autocratic leader signed a very similar provision, then known as the “blogger’s law”. As the Verge explained at the time, “under it, any blogger with more than 3,000 readers is required to register with the Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media oversight agency”.As despotic as this proposed Florida blogger law may be, it’s also so laughably absurd, and so unconstitutional on its face, that it’s hard to imagine even DeSantis’s rubber-stamp legislature would pass it. As Charles C Cooke recently wrote, “Senator Jason Brodeur is a moron, but he’s a solo moron” with no apparent further support here. One would hope. But the blogger blacklist bill may be useful for another reason: as an attention-grabbing sideshow, to take heat off another free speech-destroying proposal that has DeSantis’s explicit backing – this one aimed at a bedrock principle of press freedom in the United States.For the past few weeks, while his new Orwellian higher education rules have been getting the lion’s share of attention, DeSantis has also been on the warpath against New York Times v Sullivan, the landmark supreme court decision from the early 1960s that set the bar for defamation law in this country – and gave newspapers and citizens alike wide latitude to investigate and criticize government officials.Many legal scholars consider it the most important first amendment decision of the last century. It is one of the primary reasons newspapers in the US can aggressively report on public officials and powerful wealthy individuals without the constant fear that they are going to be sued out of existence. And up until a few years ago, when Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch started criticizing it, everyone assumed it was settled law.Recently, DeSantis staged a dramatic “roundtable” discussion to present to the public that he was now invested in changing Florida defamation law for “the little guys”, “the run-of-the-mill citizens”, the ordinary folk who don’t have “thick skin” like his. He then proceeded to use the majority of the presentation to rail against New York Times v Sullivan, which of course doesn’t apply to “the little guys” at all – only to powerful public figures like him.A few days later, DeSantis’s allies in Florida’s legislature introduced bills that would fulfill his wish and directly violate the Sullivan supreme court ruling. In their original draft, the law’s authors made no attempt to hide their disdain for the bedrock first amendment decision either. They called it out directly in the bill’s preamble, bizarrely stating that the unanimous decision from almost 60 years ago “bears no relation to the text, structure, or history of the first amendment to the United States constitution”. (That sentence was later deleted in the next version.)While the Florida house and senate version vary slightly in specifics, even the “tamer” senate version – introduced by the very same state senator Brodeur – guts almost every aspect of journalists’ rights. Here’s just a partial list of what the bills aim to do:
Kill off a large part of Florida’s journalist “shield bill”, which protects reporters from being forced to testify in court.
Presume any news report written with anonymous sources is defamation.
Roll back Florida’s anti-Slapp law, which ironically protects “little guys” like independent newspapers when they are sued by wealthy individuals for the primary purpose of bankrupting them.
Weaken the “actual malice” standard from Sullivan, to make it easier for public officials to sue newspapers or critics.
Now, can states just pass laws that blatantly ignore supreme court precedent? Of course not. Any responsible judge would strike this down as unconstitutional right away. But DeSantis may be hoping for a friendly appeals court ruling from a Trump-appointed judge or supreme court showdown to revisit the Sullivan ruling – following the same decades-long Republican strategy that finally overturned Roe v Wade. And in the meantime, DeSantis can burnish his anti-media bona fides for his presidential run, and Republican legislatures around the country can use the opportunity to copy the bill or one-up him.Whether the bill survives in the long term doesn’t change the fact that it would destroy all media in Florida – the traditional and mainstream, but also the independent and alternative, including all the conservative publications that have sprouted up all over the state in recent years.DeSantis has turned Florida into a national laboratory for speech suppression. And every American – Republican or Democrat – should be horrified.TopicsUS politicsOpinionRon DeSantisFreedom of speechJournalism booksFloridaUS supreme courtcommentReuse this content More

The Democrats botched the Ohio disaster response – and handed Trump a victoryMichael MassingThe failure of Pete Buttigieg, the US secretary of transportion, to appear for nearly three weeks recalls the incompetence of Fema during Hurricane Katrina“Where’s Pete Buttigieg?” someone shouted at a February 15 town hall meeting in East Palestine, Ohio. “I don’t know,” Mayor Trent Conaway replied.Twelve days earlier, a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals had derailed near the town. Three days later, the company announced it was going to carry out a controlled burn of vinyl chloride that would send dangerous gasses into the air, forcing many of East Palestine’s 4,700 residents to evacuate. They returned after receiving assurances that the air and water were safe, but a strong chemical odor clung to the town, and many continued to complain of headaches, nausea, and burning throats. And so several hundred residents had crowded into a local school to demand answers. Conaway said that two weeks had passed before anyone at the White House had contacted him, and the US secretary of transportation still hadn’t materialized.In Washington, Republicans made hay. “Secretary Buttigieg laughing about Chinese spy balloons, while ignoring the Ohio train derailment, shows you how out of touch Democrats are,” Ohio congressman Jim Jordan tweeted. Senator Marco Rubio called Buttigieg “an incompetent who is focused solely on his fantasies about his political future & needs to be fired”.On Fox, Tucker Carlson mocked Buttigieg for commemorating “Transit Equity Day” while remaining silent about the majority-white, struggling East Palestine. If the disaster had happened in a rich Washington DC neighborhood like Georgetown, he said, the National Guard would have been called in, and the story would have led every news channel. “But it happened to the poor benighted town of East Palestine, Ohio, whose people are forgotten and in the view of people who lead this country, forgettable.”But it wasn’t just the right who complained. Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota tweeted that “East Palestine railroad derailment will have a significant negative impact on the health and wellbeing of the residents for decades … We need Congressional inquiry and direct action from @PeteButtigieg to address this tragedy.” In a rare show of partisanship, Senator Ted Cruz said he “fully agreed” with her.On 22 February, Donald Trump visited East Palestine. He distributed thousands of bottles of Trump-branded water, walked through the town with his son Donald Trump Jr and Ohio senator JD Vance, and visited a local McDonald’s to buy food for first responders. “You are not forgotten,” Trump said in a speech not far from the accident site. “In too many cases, your goodness and perseverance were met with indifference and betrayal.”The next day, Buttigieg finally showed. Surveying the site of the derailment in a hard hat and safety vest, he acknowledged that he could have spoken out “sooner” about the accident. “I was taking pains to respect the role that I have, the role that I don’t have – but that should not have stopped me from weighing in about how I felt about what was happening.” He tweeted a photo of himself at the site along with the message that he was “amazed by the resilience and decency of the people of East Palestine”.The Department of Transportation did not have the lead role in the accident response – that fell to the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board – but the failure of the nation’s top transportation official to appear at the disaster site for nearly three weeks inevitably recalled the incompetence and disengagement of Fema director Michael Brown during Hurricane Katrina. (President George W Bush famously claimed Brown was doing “a heck of a job”.) It also allowed Trump to present himself as the champion of blue-collar America.How could so poised and polished a figure as Buttigieg so badly miscalculate? A glowing Washington Post profile in August 2021 described him as a skilled communicator and “nimble public speaker” who “rarely makes verbal miscues”.President Joe Biden had made Buttigieg the lead spokesman for his massive infrastructure program, offering him an opportunity to meet with local officials around the country as he promoted roads, ports, bridges and tunnels. During the presidential campaign, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor had assumed the mantle of outsider, but, the Post observed, he had “quickly morphed into a quintessential Washington insider” – omnipresent on television, a fixture at dinners, a tireless networker seeking to advance both the president’s agenda and his own political prospects.Buttigieg’s East Palestine no-show can help answer the question, What’s the matter with Ohio? Formerly considered a “battleground state”, it has in recent years become unshakably red. Columbiana county, where East Palestine is located, is a microcosm. In 2008, John McCain barely took the county with 52% of the vote. Donald Trump won 68% in 2016 and 71.5% in 2020 – a reflection of the perception that the Democrats had abandoned small-town America.In January, Biden went to Covington, Kentucky, to publicize the awarding of $1.6bn in federal funds to reconstruct a bridge over the Ohio River to Cincinnati, a key regional artery. He was joined by Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, and Ohio governor Mike DeWine. The Democrats hope that such investments and ceremonies over the long term can help repair the damage done to the Democrats’ standing in the midwest by their longstanding embrace of free trade, globalization and the outsourcing of jobs to China and Mexico.In the short term, however, Buttigieg’s no-show in East Palestine reinforces the perception that the Democrats really don’t care. It didn’t help that on February 20, as East Palestine was still dealing with the fallout from the derailment, Biden made his surprise visit to Kyiv. “The biggest slap in the face,” Mayor Conaway called it on Fox News, adding, “that tells you right now he doesn’t care about us. He can send every agency he wants to, but I found out this morning that he was in Ukraine giving millions of dollars away to people over there and not to us, and I’m furious.”All the investment in bridges, roads, and factories will not translate into political gains if the party continues to be missing in action.Heck of a job.
Michael Massing is the author most recently of Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind
TopicsUS politicsOpinionDonald TrumpPete ButtigiegOhioPollutionHealthcommentReuse this content More

Republican congressman ‘unaware’ he was posing for photo with neo-NazisMatt Rosendale of Montana says he unwittingly posed for picture: ‘I absolutely condemn and have zero tolerance for hate groups’A Republican congressman from Montana said a photo of him in front of the US Capitol with two neo-Nazis was a mistake, claiming he unwittingly posed with the men, one of whom appeared to be wearing a trench coat of a style worn by German soldiers in the second world war.Matt Rosendale told the Billings Gazette: “I absolutely condemn and have zero tolerance for hate groups, hate speech and violence. I did not take a meeting with these individuals.“I was asked for a photo while walking between hearings, accommodating as I do for all photo requests, and was not aware of the individuals’ identity or affiliation with these hate groups that stand in stark contrast to my personal beliefs.”Rosendale, 62, was elected to the US House in 2020. A member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, in the aftermath of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol he was one of 147 Republicans in Congress who voted to overturn election results in Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.Republican under fire for using ‘Voltaire’ quote actually coined by neo-NaziRead moreThe picture of Rosendale with the neo-Nazis spread on social media last week.The Gazette identified two of three men posing with Rosendale as “Ryan Sanchez, formerly of the white supremacist street-fighting gang Rise Above Movement, and Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathiser and podcaster present at the January 6 insurrection”.Sanchez, a former US marine, was wearing the German army-style coat. Arnold is a far-right blogger and commentator who the Gazette said has called Adolf Hitler a “complicated historical figure”.Rosendale is not the first Republican to have been linked to Arnold.In November 2021, Kari Lake, the Trump-endorsed candidate for governor in Arizona, posed with Arnold and another far-right activist at a campaign event.In October 2022, meanwhile, Arnold was revealed to have been paid a little more than $800 by the Washington state Republican party.The picture with Rosendale appeared to have been taken on Wednesday 1 March. Other pictures tweeted by anti-fascist activists that day appeared to show the same men inside the Capitol.Examination of the congressional schedule for 1 March appeared to cast doubt on Rosendale’s claim to have been walking between hearings when he posed for the picture.Rosendale sits on the House veterans affairs and natural resources committees. The schedule for 1 March lists one joint House-Senate hearing on veterans affairs and one hearing of the House natural resources subcommittee on Indigenous peoples.Rosendale sits on the natural resources subcommittees for energy and mineral resources and oversight and investigations.The House subcommittee hearing was in the Longworth House Office Building at 9am and the joint veterans’ affairs session was in the Dirksen Senate Office Building an hour later.The Longworth Building is south of the Capitol, Dirksen to the north-east. Lawmakers moving between buildings mostly make use of tunnels and subways connected to the Capitol itself.Rosendale’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

That’s it from our live blog today. Here’s how the day unfolded in US politics:
Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis appears to be moving toward announcing his presidential campaign after delivering a speech yesterday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. In the speech, DeSantis’ condemned other states’ responses to the coronavirus pandemic and celebrated Florida as a “citadel of freedom”. DeSantis is expected to formally enter the GOP primary in the next couple of months.
The DC city council will withdraw its bill revising the local criminal code from congressional consideration, the panel’s chairperson announced. The news comes after Joe Biden said he would not veto a Republican measure to overturn the DC bill. Despite the council’s move to withdraw the bill, the Senate still plans to vote on the matter this week, according to CNN.
Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake won the vice-presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference this weekend. Lake defeated other contenders with 20% of the vote, while DeSantis came in second place at 14% and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley trailed with 10%. Lake is best known for losing the Arizona gubernatorial race last year and peddling the lie that her election was tainted by widespread fraud.
Biden reportedly plans to travel to the west coast next week to fundraise, as the president is widely expected to formally launch his reelection campaign in the next several weeks. Biden is expected to make stops in California and Nevada as he meets with donors.
Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, is “well on his way to recovery” after being hospitalized to receive treatment for depression, his top adviser said. Fetterman’s chair of staff, Adam Jentleson, shared photos of a morning meeting with the senator and said he continues to weigh in on legislation as he recovers.
The live blog will be back tomorrow morning with more updates and analysis of US politics. See you then.Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat of Pennsylvania, is “well on his way to recovery” after being hospitalized to receive treatment for depression, his top adviser said.Fetterman’s chair of staff, Adam Jentleson, shared photos of a meeting this morning with the senator and said he continues to weigh in on legislation as he recovers.“Productive morning with Senator Fetterman at Walter Reed discussing the rail safety legislation, Farm Bill and other Senate business,” Jentleson said on Twitter. “John is well on his way to recovery and wanted me to say how grateful he is for all the well wishes. He’s laser focused on PA & will be back soon.”Productive morning with Senator Fetterman at Walter Reed discussing the rail safety legislation, Farm Bill and other Senate business. John is well on his way to recovery and wanted me to say how grateful he is for all the well wishes. He’s laser focused on PA & will be back soon. pic.twitter.com/143uAhoQRx— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) March 6, 2023
Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed last month, following an evaluation by Dr Brian P Monahan, the attending physician of the US Congress. Fetterman’s office said he has “experienced depression off and on throughout his life,” and his symptoms had becaome severe in the weeks leading up to his hospitalization.Fetterman has received praise for publicly acknowledging his mental health struggles, as advocates have expressed hope that it will encourage others to seek help.“Asking for help is important, but it’s not always easy,” said Dr Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general. “I hope Senator Fetterman’s courage will serve as an example for others.”Joe Biden reportedly plans to travel to the west coast next week to fundraise, as the president is widely expected to formally launch his reelection campaign in the next several weeks.Politico reports:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Biden’s trip west will take him to Rancho Santa Fe, a wealthy enclave of sprawling estates north of San Diego, two of the people told POLITICO. He also will have likely stops in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Nev. The trip is planned for Monday and Tuesday, though the two people stressed Biden’s itinerary is still being finalized and specifics remain fluid.
Biden and Democrats are gearing up an expected reelection campaign, including by dispatching Vice President Kamala Harris to fundraisers of her own in her home state. On Friday, she headlined a midday event in the San Francisco suburb of Hillsborough at the home of longtime fundraiser Stefanie Roumeliotes and her husband, John Costouros.
Despite feeling no pressure to formally announce his re-election campaign, Biden has already held a handful of fundraisers out east to benefit the Democratic National Committee. Earlier this year, he gave a speech to DNC members in Philadelphia that aides described as a soft launch of sorts.The news comes as the Republican presidential primary is already in full swing, with Donald Trump and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley having both launched their campaigns. Other Republican candidates, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, are expected to announce in the next few months.As of now, Democratic leaders appear to be rather unified around Biden’s candidacy. No Democratic lawmaker has yet stepped forward to challenge Biden, indicating that the president will likely have a smooth path to the nomination.When asked about self-help author Marianne Williamson announcing she will challenge Joe Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, Karine Jean-Pierre said the White House is “not tracking that”.Jean-Pierre joked that she would perhaps have more to say on Williamson “if I could feel her aura,” eliciting laughter from reporters in the briefing room.The comment appeared to be a dig at Williamson, a self-described spiritual leader who ran for president in 2020 and said that she struggled to push back against the perception that she was a “crystal woo-woo lady”.The White House will be represented at King Charles III’s coronation in May, but Karine Jean-Pierre would not commit to Joe Biden himself attending the event.Reports indicate that Biden does not plan to attend the coronation, but other senior members of the administration may travel to the UK for the event.Jean-Pierre rejected any suggestion that Biden’s lack of attendance should be interpreted as a snub of the British monarchy if the president does decide to skip the coronation.Karine Jean-Pierre would not comment on Donald Trump’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, in which the former president vowed “retribution” against his political enemies.Jean-Pierre said she could not speak to Trump’s remarks because of the Hatch Act, which prohibits employees of the federal government from engaging in some political activities.A reporter asked Karine Jean-Pierre why Joe Biden believes DC should be a state if he disagrees with the city council’s judgment on altering the local criminal code.Despite his refusal to veto the proposal overturning DC’s crime bill, Biden still believes that Congress should pass a bill granting DC statehood, and he would sign that legislation, Jean-Pierre said.“He believes that cities and states should be able to govern for themselves,” Jean-Pierre said.Karine Jean-Pierre sidestepped questions about the news that the DC city council is withdrawing its crime bill after Joe Biden said he would not veto a Republican motion to overturn the policy.“The president expressed concerns on certain provisions of the DC crime bill,” Jean-Pierre said. “As we can see, the DC council’s process is still ongoing, so we won’t comment on that any further.”A reporter noted that the White House has cited DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s opposition to the crime bill to justify Biden’s stance, but Bowser herself has said that Congress should not be “meddling” in local policy matters.Jean-Pierre deflected that question, instead saying the White House has been in “constant communication” with Bowser’s team.“This is not something that we put forward,” Jean-Pierre said. “This is a decision that was brought to [Biden], and he wants to be very clear and communicate with the people of DC and with all of you.”According to reports, the Senate plans to move forward with its vote to overturn the crime bill, even after the council announced it was withdrawing the proposal from congressional consideration.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is now holding her daily briefing with reporters, and she kicked off her comments by discussing “junk fees”.The Biden administration has pushed airlines to limit fees for customers, and Jean-Pierre said several airlines are now working toward fee-free family seating to “guarantee that parents can sit with their young children without getting nickeled and dimed”.The Department of Transportation is also launching a new family seating dashboard to help customers compare fees across airlines, Jean-Pierre noted.In his State of the Union address last month, Joe Biden pledged to crack down on junk fees, saying, “Junk fees may not matter to the very wealthy, but they matter to most folks in homes like the one I grew up in. … I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and gets away with it. Not anymore.”The Guardian’s Chris McGreal reports on Evangelical Christians flocking to the Republican party over support for Israel:When Israel’s former ambassador to the US said his country should worry less about what American Jews think and concentrate on Christian evangelicals as the “backbone” of support for the Jewish state, he had in mind the Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee.Hagee founded Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a group that claims 11 million members, who have had a significant influence on Republican party politics and in hardening Washington’s already strong support for Israel.Donald Trump, while president, made no secret of his desire to keep Hagee and Christian Zionist voters happy as a key part of his base by abandoning even the pretense that the US was a neutral player in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Former South Carolina governor and current White House hopeful Nikki Haley recognised Hagee’s power within the most important religious bloc of Republican voters and their influence over political priorities, from anti-abortion laws to Israel policy, when she invited him to give the invocation at her presidential campaign launch last month.“Pastor Hagee, I still say I want to be you when I grow up,” she enthused.Left largely unmentioned by Haley and Hagee’s Israeli allies were his antisemitic views, including calling Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler a “half-breed Jew” who was sent by God to drive the Jewish people to Israel. He has also suggested that Jews brought centuries of persecution on themselves by disobeying God.Read Chris’ full report:Evangelical Christians flock to Republicans over support for Israel Read moreHere’s where the day stands so far:
Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis appears to be moving toward announcing his presidential campaign after delivering a speech yesterday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. In the speech, DeSantis’ condemned other states’ responses to the coronavirus pandemic and celebrated Florida as a “citadel of freedom”. DeSantis is expected to formally enter the GOP primary in the next couple of months.
The DC city council will withdraw its bill revising the local criminal code from congressional consideration, the panel’s chairperson announced. The news comes after Joe Biden said he would not veto a Republican measure to overturn the DC bill. Despite the council’s move to withdraw the bill, the Senate still plans to vote on the matter this week, according to CNN.
Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake won the vice-presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference this weekend. Lake defeated other contenders with 20% of the vote, while DeSantis came in second place at 14% and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley trailed with 10%. Lake is best known for losing the Arizona gubernatorial race last year and peddling the lie that her election was tainted by widespread fraud.
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.The Senate still plans to vote on overturning the DC bill revising the local criminal code, even after the council announced it would withdraw the proposal from congressional consideration.Two Senate aides told CNN’s Manu Raju that they still expect the vote to occur:Senate will STILL vote this week to halt DC criminal code rewrite despite the last-ditch attempt by the DC Council’s chairman to withdraw the legislation from Hill review, two aides said— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 6, 2023
Now that Joe Biden has said he would not veto the proposal to overturn the DC bill, more Senate Democrats are expected to join Republicans in supporting the motion.The chair of the DC Council, Phil Mendelson, said this morning, “If the Republicans want to proceed with a vote … it will be a hollow vote because the bill isn’t there before them.”Carlisa N Johnson reports on how Republican legislators are attempting to restrict voting access:In the final few days of this year’s Georgia assembly legislative session, Republican lawmakers raced to propose laws seeking to restrict voting access, and make it easier for citizens to challenge and subvert normal election processes.Senate bill 221, house bill 422 and house bill 426 are just a few of the newly proposed election laws, which come after state Republicans, including the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, praised election officials for smooth elections in the past two years.They include measures to eradicate absentee ballot drop boxes, allow citizens to more easily challenge voter registrations – which Republican conspiracy theorists had already done with little backing evidence during the midterms – and even unseal ballots for review.While some of the elements of these proposed laws offer expanded flexibility and resources for elections, including the popular bipartisan effort to eradicate runoff elections in the state, other aspects are grounded in unfounded claims and conspiracy theories surrounding mass election fraud stemming from the 2020 election.Read Carlisa’s full report:Georgia Republicans race to pass laws to restrict and challenge votesRead moreBefore the DC Council announced it would withdraw the crime bill, Joe Biden faced criticism from a number of Democrats for saying that he would sign a Republican measure to reverse the policy.“It’s disappointing to all of us who believe in home rule,” Congressman Pete Aguilar, chair of the House Democratic caucus, said Thursday.“I’m deeply disappointed to see the President announce he will allow Congress to overturn a DC law for the first time in decades,” Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said. “This is simple: The District of Columbia must be allowed to govern itself.”Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi added Friday, “If he was going to do it, I wish he would’ve told us first because this was a hard vote for the House members.”The Guardian’s Chris Stein has more details on the DC Council’s decision to withdraw a bill revising the local criminal code:The chair of the DC council, Democrat Phil Mendelson, criticized the Republican opponents of the crime bill, saying Congress was more focused on winning political points rather than carefully considering the policy.“It’s quite clear to me that the headwinds that have prevailed in Congress are about the politics of next year’s election and not about what’s the substance in this criminal code,” Mendelson said at a press conference this morning.“The fact is is that the criminal code has hit these headwinds, which is why I pulled it back.”Mendelson acknowledged that Senate Republicans may still push for a vote to overturn the bill, but he said such a maneuver would be “hollow” because the council has withdrawn the proposal from congressional consideration.Mendelson blamed the criticism of the crime bill on misinformation about the content of the proposal, saying, “What people were hearing was we were decriminalizing or that we were reducing sentences and the messaging just got out of our control.”Asked why he believed Joe Biden indicated he would sign the Republican reversal measure, Mendelson said he thought the president was trying to protect Democratic lawmakers.“The reality is that if we’re to get statehood, it’s going to be the Democrats who help us with it,” Mendelson said. “So if we have any hope for statehood, we have to want to protect our Democratic friends in Congress. And that’s where I think the president is.” More