US Politics

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares54 Views

      in US Politics

      A socialist underdog makes history in New York – podcast

      by

      Archive: CBS News, CBS New York, PBS Newshour, Eyewitness News ABC7NY, Fox 5 New York, MSNBC, NBC News, CNN, Newsweek, PIX11 News
      Here’s a link to Carter Sherman’s new book The Second Coming: Sex and the Next Generation’s Fight Over Its Future
      Subscribe to the Guardian’s new narrative series Missing in the Amazon
      Send your questions and feedback to politicsweeklyamerica@theguardian.com
      Help support the Guardian. Go to theguardian.com/politcspodus More

    • 225 Shares31 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: No mention of ‘big beautiful bill’ July 4 deadline in president’s final pitch

      by

      Just two days ago, Donald Trump told Republican members of Congress to cancel their vacation plans until his “big beautiful bill” is sewn up and ready for his signature on 4 July.But in his final pitch to congressional leaders and cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday, he made no mention of deadlines, as his marquee tax-and-spending bill develops a logjam that could threaten its passage through the Senate.Trump stood before an assembly composed of police and fire officers, working parents and the mother and father of a woman he said died at the hands of an undocumented immigrant to argue that Americans like them would benefit from the bill, which includes new tax cuts and the extension of lower rates enacted during his first term, as well as an infusion of funds for immigration enforcement.“There are hundreds of things here. It’s so good,” he said.The bill is highly divisive and deeply unpopular with segments of the country. Democrats have dubbed the bill the “big, ugly betrayal”, and railed against what would be the biggest funding cut to Medicaid since it was created in 1965, and cost an estimated 16 million people their insurance. It would also slash funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps Americans afford food.A win for Democrats opposing Trump’s billRepublicans intended to circumvent the filibuster in the Senate by using the budget reconciliation procedure, under which they can pass legislation with just a majority vote, provided it only affects spending, revenue and the debt limit. But on Thursday, the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, ruled that a change to taxes that states use to pay for Medicaid was not allowed under the rules.Democrats took credit for MacDonough’s ruling, with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer saying the party “successfully fought a noxious provision that would’ve decimated America’s healthcare system and hurt millions of Americans. This win saves hundreds of billions of dollars for Americans to get healthcare, rather than funding tax cuts to billionaires.”Read the full storySupreme court paves way for states to defund Planned ParenthoodThe US supreme court has paved the way for South Carolina to kick Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program over its status as an abortion provider, a decision that could embolden red states across the country to effectively “defund” the reproductive healthcare organization.Read the full storyHegseth defends Iran strike amid doubts The US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, defended the US strikes on Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities and said that Trump had “decimated … obliterated” the country’s nuclear program despite initial intelligence assessments that last week’s strikes had failed to destroy key enrichment facilities and they could resume operations within just months.But he and the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, largely based that assessment on AI modeling, showing test videos of the bunker buster bombs used in the strikes and referred questions on a battle damage assessment of Fordow to the intelligence community.Read the full storyExclusive: State department told to end most overseas pro-democracy programsThe US state department has been advised to terminate grants to nearly all remaining programs awarded under the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which would effectively end the department’s role in funding pro-democracy programming in some of the world’s most hostile totalitarian nations.Read the full storyRFK Jr’s vaccine panel votes against preservative in flu shots in shock moveA critical federal vaccine panel has recommended against seasonal influenza vaccines containing a specific preservative – a change likely to send shock through the global medical and scientific community and possibly impact future vaccine availability.Read the full storyVaccine panel also suggests new RSV treatment for infantsHealth secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s reconstituted vaccine advisory panel recommended a new treatment to prevent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants. The treatment, a new monoclonal antibody called clesrovimab, was recommended by the powerful committee after being approved by the Food and Drug Administration roughly two weeks ago.The tortured vote took place a day late and after rounds of questions from the panel’s seven new members – all ideological allies of Kennedy, who views “overmedicalization” as one of the greatest threats to American children.Read the full storyPurple heart army veteran self-deports after 50 years from ‘country I fought for’A US army veteran who lived in the country for nearly 50 years – and earned a prestigious military citation for being wounded in combat – has left for South Korea after he says past struggles with drug addiction left him targeted by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.“I can’t believe this is happening in America,” Sae Joon Park, who held legal permanent residency, told National Public Radio in an interview before his departure Monday from Hawaii. “That blows me away – like [it is] a country that I fought for.”Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The dollar has fallen to a three-year low following a report that Trump is considering soon announcing his choice to succeed the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell.

      The US justice department sued the Maryland federal judiciary over an order that bars deporting undocumented immigrants for at least one day after filing a challenge.

      Clothing prices are starting to rise in the US as Trump’s tariffs on imported goods start to have an effect, according to the CEO of H&M.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 25 June 2025. More

    • 150 Shares48 Views

      in US Politics

      Briefing on Iran strikes leaves senators divided as Trump threatens new row

      by

      Republican and Democratic senators have offered starkly contrasting interpretations of Donald Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities after a delayed behind-closed-doors intelligence briefing that the White House had earlier postponed amid accusations of leaks.Thursday’s session with senior national security officials came after the White House moved back its briefing, originally scheduled for Tuesday, fueling Democratic complaints that Trump was stonewalling Congress over military action the president authorized without congressional approval.“Senators deserve full transparency, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening,” the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said following the initial postponement, which he termed “outrageous”.Even as senators were being briefed, Trump reignited the row with a Truth Social post accusing Democrats of leaking a draft Pentagon report that suggested last weekend’s strikes had only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months – contradicting the president’s insistence that it was “obliterated”.“The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran. They should be prosecuted!” he wrote.The partisan divisions were on display after the briefing, which was staged in the absence of Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, who previously told Congress that Iran was not building nuclear weapons, before changing her tune last week after Trump said she was “wrong”.Instead, the briefing was led by CIA director John Ratcliffe, secretary of state Marco Rubio and defense secretary Pete Hegseth, who had publicly assailed journalists over their reporting on the strikes at a Pentagon press conference.With intelligence agencies apparently in open dispute over the strikes’ effectiveness, Thursday’s briefing did little to clear up the clashing interpretations on Capitol Hill.Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina senator and close Trump ally, said “obliteration” was a “good word” to describe the strikes’ impact.“They blew these places up in a major-league way. They set them back years, not months,” he said. “Nobody is going to work in these three sites any time soon. Their operational capability was obliterated.”But he warned that Iran would be likely to try to reconstitute them, adding: “Have we obliterated their desire to have a nuclear weapon? As long as they desire one, as long as they want to kill all the Jews, you still have a problem on your hands. I don’t want the American people to think this is over.”But Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said Trump was “misleading the public” in claiming the program was obliterated and questioned why Gabbard had not attended the briefing.His skepticism was echoed by Schumer, who said the briefing gave “no adequate answer” to questions about Trump’s claims.“What was clear is that there was no coherent strategy, no endgame, no plan, no specific[s], no detailed plan on how Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon,” he said, adding that Congress needed to assert its authority by enforcing the War Powers Act.Gabbard and Ratcliffe had scrambled on Wednesday to back Trump, with Gabbard posting on X: “New intelligence confirms what POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed.”The ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Jim Himes, dismissed the destruction claims as meaningless. “The only question that matters is whether the Iranian regime has the stuff necessary to build a bomb, and if so, how fast,” he posted.The destruction response has also rankled Republican senators in the anti-interventionist wing of the party such as Rand Paul, who rejected claims of absolute presidential war powers.“I think the speaker needs to review the constitution,” said Paul. “And I think there’s a lot of evidence that our founding fathers did not want presidents to unilaterally go to war.”The Senate is expected to vote this week on a resolution requiring congressional approval for future military action against Iran, though the measure appears unlikely to pass given Republican control of the chamber.The White House also admitted on Thursday to restricting intelligence sharing after news of the draft assessment leaking.Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the administration wants to ensure “classified intelligence is not ending up in irresponsible hands”. Leavitt later said the US assessed that there “was no indication” enriched uranium was moved from the nuclear sites in Iran ahead of the strikes.Trump formally notified Congress of the strikes in a brief letter sent on Monday, two days after the bombing, saying the action was taken “to advance vital United States national interests, and in collective self-defense of our ally, Israel, by eliminating Iran’s nuclear program”.The administration says it remains “on a diplomatic path with Iran” through special envoy Steve Witkoff’s communications with Iranian officials. More

    • 163 Shares48 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump makes case for ‘big, beautiful bill’ and cranks up pressure on Republicans

      by

      Donald Trump convened congressional leaders and cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday to make the case for passage of his marquee tax-and-spending bill, but it remains to be seen whether his pep talk will resolve a developing logjam that could threaten its passage through the Senate.The president’s intervention comes as the Senate majority leader, John Thune, mulls an initial vote on Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” on Friday, before a 4 July deadline Trump has imposed to have the legislation ready for his signature.But it is unclear whether Republicans have the votes to pass it through Congress’s upper chamber, and whether any changes the Senate makes will pass muster in the House of Representatives, where the Republican majority passed the bill last month by a single vote and which may have to vote again on a revised version of the bill.Trump stood before an assembly composed of police and fire officers, working parents and the mother and father of a woman he said died at the hands of an undocumented immigrant to argue that Americans like them would benefit from the bill, which includes new tax cuts and the extension of lower rates enacted during his first term, as well as an infusion of funds for immigration enforcement.“There are hundreds of things here. It’s so good,” he said. But he made no mention of his desire to sign the legislation by next Friday – the US Independence Day holiday – instead encouraging his audience to contact their lawmakers to get the bill over the finish line.“If you can, call your senators, call your congressmen. We have to get the vote,” he said.Democrats have dubbed the bill the “big, ugly betrayal”, and railed against its potential cut to Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for low-income and disabled people. The legislation would impose the biggest funding cut to Medicaid since it was created in 1965, and cost an estimated 16 million people their insurance.It would also slash funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps Americans afford food.Republicans intend to circumvent the filibuster in the Senate by using the budget reconciliation procedure, under which they can pass legislation with just a majority vote, provided it only affects spending, revenue and the debt limit. But on Thursday, Democrats on the Senate budget committee announced that the parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, had ruled that a change to taxes that states use to pay for Medicaid was not allowed under the rules of reconciliation.That could further raise the cost of the bill, which the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation recently estimated would add a massive $4.2tn to the US budget deficit over 10 years. Such a high cost may be unpalatable to rightwing lawmakers in the House, who are demanding aggressive spending cuts, but the more immediate concern for the GOP lies in the Senate, where several moderate lawmakers still have not said they are a yes vote on the bill.“I don’t think anybody believes the current text is final, so I don’t believe anybody would vote for it in it’s current form. We [have] got a lot of things that we’re working on,” the senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a top target of Democrats in next year’s midterm elections, told CNN on Wednesday.In an interview with the Guardian last week, the Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski declined to say how she would vote on the bill, instead describing it as “a work in progress” and arguing that the Senate should “not necessarily tie ourselves to an arbitrary date to just get there as quickly as we can”.Democrats took credit for MacDonough’s ruling on the Medicaid tax, with the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, saying the party “successfully fought a noxious provision that would’ve decimated America’s healthcare system and hurt millions of Americans. This win saves hundreds of billions of dollars for Americans to get healthcare, rather than funding tax cuts to billionaires.” More

    • 150 Shares56 Views

      in US Politics

      Bill Moyers, Lyndon Johnson press chief and celebrated broadcaster, dies at 91

      by

      Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary who became one of television’s most honored journalists, masterfully using a visual medium to illuminate a world of ideas, died on Thursday at age 91.Moyers died in a New York City hospital, according to longtime friend Tom Johnson, the former chief executive of CNN and an assistant to Moyers during Lyndon B Johnson’s administration.Moyers’ son William said his father died at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York after a “long illness”.Moyers’ career ranged from youthful Baptist minister to deputy director of the Peace Corps, from Johnson’s press secretary to newspaper publisher, senior news analyst for CBS Evening News and chief correspondent for CBS Reports.But it was for public television that Moyers produced some of TV’s most cerebral and provocative series. In hundreds of hours of PBS programs, he proved at home with subjects ranging from government corruption to modern dance, from drug addiction to media consolidation, from religion to environmental abuse.In 1988, Moyers produced The Secret Government about the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, and simultaneously published a book under the same name. Around that time, he galvanized viewers with Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, a series of six one-hour interviews with the prominent religious scholar. The accompanying book became a bestseller.His televised chats with poet Robert Bly almost single-handedly launched the 1990s Men’s Movement, and his 1993 series Healing and the Mind had a profound impact on the medical community and on medical education.In a medium that supposedly abhors “talking heads” – shots of subject and interviewer talking – Moyers came to specialize in just that. He once explained why: “The question is, are the talking heads thinking minds and thinking people? Are they interesting to watch? I think the most fascinating production value is the human face.”Demonstrating what someone called “a soft, probing style” in the native Texas accent he never lost, Moyers was a humanist who investigated the world with a calm, reasoned perspective, whatever the subject.From some quarters, he was blasted as a liberal thanks to his links with Johnson and public television, as well as his no-holds-barred approach to investigative journalism. It was a label he didn’t necessarily deny.“I’m an old-fashion liberal when it comes to being open and being interested in other people’s ideas,” he said during a 2004 radio interview. But Moyers preferred to term himself a “citizen journalist” operating independently, outside the establishment.Public television (and his self-financed production company) gave him free rein to throw “the conversation of democracy open to all comers”, he said in a 2007 interview with the Associated Press.“I think my peers in commercial television are talented and devoted journalists,” he said another time, “but they’ve chosen to work in a corporate mainstream that trims their talent to fit the corporate nature of American life. And you do not get rewarded for telling the hard truths about America in a profit-seeking environment.”Over the years, Moyers was showered with honors, including more than 30 Emmys, 11 George Foster Peabody awards, three George Polks and, twice, the Alfred I duPont-Columbia University Gold Baton award for career excellence in broadcast journalism. In 1995, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.Born in Hugo, Oklahoma, on 5 June 1934, Billy Don Moyers was the son of a dirt farmer-truck driver who soon moved his family to Marshall, Texas. High school led him into journalism.“I wanted to play football, but I was too small. But I found that by writing sports in the school newspaper, the players were always waiting around at the newsstand to see what I wrote,” he recalled.He worked for the Marshall News Messenger at age 16. Deciding that Bill Moyers was a more appropriate byline for a sportswriter, he dropped the Y from his name.He graduated from the University of Texas and earned a master’s in divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was ordained and preached part time at two churches but later decided his call to the ministry “was a wrong number”.His relationship with Johnson began when he was in college; he wrote to the then senator offering to work in his 1954 re-election campaign. Johnson was impressed and hired him for a summer job. He was back in Johnson’s employ as a personal assistant in the early 1960s and for two years, he worked at the Peace Corps, eventually becoming deputy director.On the day John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Moyers was in Austin helping with the presidential trip. He flew back to Washington on Air Force One with newly sworn-in President Johnson, for whom he held various jobs over the ensuing years, including press secretary.Moyers’ stint as presidential press secretary was marked by efforts to mend the deteriorating relationship between Johnson and the media. But the Vietnam war took its toll and Moyers resigned in December 1966.Of his departure from the White House, he wrote later: “We had become a war government, not a reform government, and there was no creative role left for me under those circumstances.” More

    • 150 Shares45 Views

      in US Politics

      US citizen arrested during Ice raid in what family describes as ‘kidnapping’

      by

      A US citizen was arrested during an immigration raid in downtown Los Angeles this week in what her family described as a “kidnapping” by federal immigration agents.Andrea Velez, 32, had just been dropped off at work by her mother and sister, the pair said, when they saw agents grab her.“My mom looked at the rear mirror and she saw how my sister was attacked from the back,” Estrella Rosas told ABC7. “She was like: ‘They’re kidnapping your sister.’”Velez, a graduate of Cal Poly Pomona, was taken into custody during an immigration raid on Tuesday. In video captured from the scene, agents can be seen surrounding her as a crowd gathers in the street and police officers stand by. Meanwhile, Rosas and her mother, who has residency but is not a citizen, screamed from a nearby vehicle for help.“She’s a US citizen,” Rosas said through tears. “They’re taking her. Help her, someone.”In other video, an agent can be seen lifting Velez off the ground and carrying her away. Witnesses told media, including CBS Los Angeles, that the agents never asked Velez for identification, and that she did nothing wrong.“The only thing wrong with her … was the color of her skin,” Velez’s mother, Margarita Flores, told CBS Los Angeles.The incident comes as numerous US citizens have been swept up in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. People have reported they are being targeted for their skin color and for attempting to aid immigrants being detained by immigration agents.While it’s not yet clear how many citizens have been affected by the administration’s attack on immigrant communities, a government report found that between 2015 and 2020, Ice erroneously deported at least 70 US citizens, arrested 674 and detained 121.Velez’s family was unaware of her whereabouts for more than a day until attorneys for the family tracked her down. “It took us four hours to find her and we’re attorneys. That’s crazy,” attorney Dominique Boubion told ABC7.“Just to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and you have the full weight of the federal government against you and your family can’t find you – it is very scary.”Authorities have not told lawyers what charges Velez faces, but an official with the Department of Homeland Security told media that she was arrested for assaulting an Ice officer. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

    • 113 Shares33 Views

      in US Politics

      Plan to open California’s largest immigration jail sparks outrage

      by

      Plans to open an enormous federal immigration processing center in a California desert community have sparked outrage among advocacy groups who argue it will come at a “long-term cost” and “fuel harm”.US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has partnered with CoreCivic, a private prison contractor that operates several facilities in California, to transform a shuttered 2,500-bed prison in California City into the state’s largest immigrant detention center.The site, built by CoreCivic in 1999 as a federal prison, operated as a state prison from 2013 to March 2024. This year, as Donald Trump’s administration has sought to dramatically increase detention capacity as part of its crackdown on immigration, the company has received $10m in initial funding as part of a six-month contract, the Los Angeles Times reported.A new sign has been placed outside the facility and CoreCivic has listed two dozen jobs for the site on its website, including psychologists, nurses and maintenance workers.The development has fueled concern among some southern California residents and advocacy groups. This week, people packed a city council meeting to voice their feelings in California City, a remote desert community of 14,000 people with historically high unemployment and poverty rates and limited economic opportunities. The issue was not on the agenda, but people traveled from as far as Los Angeles to express opposition.The Dolores Huerta Foundation shared a letter with the council urging the community to “make its voice heard and refuse to be complicit in a system built on incarceration, dehumanization, and profit from suffering”.“We urge you not to mistake short-term job offers for long-term economic health. California City deserves real investment – in housing, healthcare, education, and job training – not a facility that profits only when people are detained, dehumanized, and separated from their families,” said Camila Chávez, the executive director of the foundation.“ICE detention centers don’t exist in isolation. Every bed built becomes justification for more raids, more deportations, and more broken families. Expanding detention in California City directly fuels that harm.”Most people in attendance spoke in opposition to the project, KERO 23ABC reported, although John Fischer, a California City resident and retired police officer, argued that the site had been previously used as an Ice facility and significantly boosted the local economy.“What most people don’t know is the facility here started off as an Ice prison and it was very good for this town. It brought jobs to the economy. It brought other businesses into the economy,” he told the outlet. “Why do people support these criminal illegal aliens and allow them to remain here, costing us precious tax dollars?”The city’s mayor, Marquette Hawkins, has told media that he recently toured the facility and emphasized the city’s desire to have oversight.“From an economic standpoint, I’m told that it does have some benefits there,” he told the Bakersfield Californian. “However, we understand that 40% of our residents are Latino. We want to make sure there is fairness, there. We talked about oversight and my office having the ability to do that.”Hawkins has encouraged people to continue sharing their perspectives on the facility at city council meetings. More

    • 163 Shares48 Views

      in US Politics

      Democratic senator sounds alarm on party’s failures: ‘We don’t act as a team’

      by

      A Democratic senator has sounded the alarm about her own party’s failings, urging colleagues to “slaughter some sacred cows” if they want to combat Donald Trump and win back power.Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan castigated fellow Democrats for losing their “alpha energy” and “bravado”, being “scared” to enforce immigration rules, taking an “elitist” approach to the climate crisis and having “a bias towards navel gazing”. She painted a bleak picture of a leaderless party pulling in different directions.“Democrats are very disparate,” Slotkin told an audience at the Center for American Progress thinktank in Washington DC. “We’re like a solar system with no sun. We got a lot of planets, some with their own gravitational pull, we’ve got a lot of stars but there’s not enough cohering us.”The senator added: “You can’t retake the town of Mosul without a plan but then also a coordination effort by all parties to specialise and do things. Everyone has a different role to play … My concern is that we don’t act as a team and, when we don’t work as a team, we turn our guns on each other and it’s so, so, so fruitless.”Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who served three tours in Iraq, is a first-term senator widely regarded as a rising star in the party. In March, she delivered the Democrats’ rebuttal to Trump’s joint congressional address.The 48-year-old used her speech on Thursday to unveil an “economic war plan”, proposing that the government addresses problems such as rising costs and declining trust in institutions rather than exacerbating them.The plan focuses on five areas: creating well-paying jobs, modernising education to prepare for future economies, making housing affordable through increased construction, pursuing an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy to lower costs, and reforming a broken healthcare system by introducing a public option and tackling drug pricing.“As a CIA officer and Pentagon official by training, I believe that the single, greatest security threat to the United States is not coming from abroad,” she said. “It’s the shrinking middle class here at home.”When people cannot provide for their children as they themselves were provided for, she argued, it breeds “anger and suspicion among Americans”. This frustration can be unifying for Democrats including “moderates, progressives and everything in between”.Slotkin argued that government failed to uphold its “Great American Deal” by not ruthlessly expanding the middle class, instead being swayed by special interests and political expediency. She proposed rebuilding systems around jobs, education, housing, energy and healthcare rather than simply “nibbling at the margins”.She also advocated for political reforms, such as banning corporate political action committee donations and congressional stock trading, to regain public trust and refocus politicians on the needs of the middle class.The senator urged Democrats to take a pragmatic approach willing to “slaughter some sacred cows” to achieve results. She called on her colleagues to distinguish between small businesses and multinational corporations and avoid “vilifying success”.Slotkin, who hails from a border state, said there must be acknowledgment that the immigration system is broken. “Both parties have been a mess on this issue. Republicans say border security should substitute for an immigration policy and are rounding up people in a way that goes against American values.“Democrats are scared to impose real rules. So let me slaughter another sacred cow. We need to move past the talking point on comprehensive immigration reform … We need big, bold change to fix a broken system but at this point that can be one bill or spread across five bills. I will work with any adults I can find who are actually interested in making some kind of progress on immigration.”On education, Slotkin called for mobile phones to be banned from every K-12 classroom in the US and advocated for investment in certification programmes, community colleges, trade schools and apprenticeships as well as a radical overhaul of federal workforce training programmes.“Killing another sacred cow: in America you don’t have to go to college to be successful … Making a living using your hands is a worthy path. Some Democrats give that lip service but it’s time to put our money where our mouth is.”She called for an “all-of-the-above energy plan”, including natural gas, nuclear, batteries, renewables and new technologies, rejecting the “elitist” climate change approaches of some fellow Democrats that create “purity tests”.Slotkin represents swing state Michigan, which Democrat Kamala Harris narrowly lost to Trump in last year’s presidential election. She was speaking two days after the progressive candidate Zohran Mamdani stunned the Democratic establishment by beating the moderate Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral primary.Asked for her reaction, Slotkin replied: “The message that came across loud and clear to me was number one, people just like in November are still really focused on costs and the economy and their own kitchen table math. And they’re looking for a new generation of leadership. Those were to me the two big takeaways.“That’s why, again, it reinforces for me we may disagree on some key issues but understanding that people are concerned about their family budget – that is a unifying thing for our coalition. The message, at least for me, was clear.”She rejected the common observation that Trump supporters were voting against their own interests. “Their interest was in believing that someone was going to do something different and, while I don’t believe Donald Trump for one second on what he’s been selling, he at least was offering something different, and we need to hear that.” More