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      Starbucks CEO to testify before Senate over opposition to stores unionizing

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      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

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      Starbucks condemned for ‘intimidation’ of US union organizers

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      Starbucks condemned for ‘intimidation’ of US union organizersBernie Sanders moves to summon chief executive Howard Schultz to Senate committee to explain repeated anti-union violationsStarbucks is under fire over the company’s response to unionization efforts as senator Bernie Sanders threatens to call its chief executive before his committee on alleged labor violations and staff petition for it to end “intimidation” of organizers.Sanders, chairman of the Senate health, education, labor and pensions (Help) committee, announced on Wednesday that the committee will be voting on whether to issue a subpoena to compel the Starbucks chief, Howard Schultz, to testify about Starbuck’s federal labor law violations, and to authorize a committee investigation into labor-law violations committed by major corporations.‘Old-school union busting’: how US corporations are quashing the new wave of organizingRead more“For nearly a year, I and many of my colleagues in the Senate have repeatedly asked Mr Schultz to respect the constitutional right of workers at Starbucks to form a union and to stop violating federal labor laws,” Sanders said in a press release confirming the 8 March vote.“Mr Schultz has failed to respond to those requests. He has denied meeting and document requests, skirted congressional oversight attempts, and refused to answer any of the serious questions we have asked. Unfortunately, Mr Schultz has given us no choice but to subpoena him.”The move came after 44 employees at Starbucks headquarters in Seattle and 22 additional anonymous employees signed on to a petition calling on the company to reverse a return-to-office mandate and “to commit to a policy of neutrality and respect federal labor laws by agreeing to follow fair election principles, and allow store partners, whether pro- or anti-union, to decide for themselves, free from fear, coercion, and intimidation”.According to Starbucks Workers United, more than 200 Starbucks workers have been fired in retaliation for organizing. The National Labor Relations Board has alleged that Starbucks has fired over 60 union leaders across the country. Starbucks has aggressively opposed unionization efforts from the first stores to unionize in late 2021 in Buffalo, New York, to over 350 stores around the US that have held union elections. More than 280 stores have won union elections, though a first union contract has not been reached at any store so far.On Tuesday, administrative law judge Michael A Rosas issued a sweeping decision in Buffalo, ordering the reinstatement of seven fired Starbucks workers with back pay, and issuing a bargaining order for three Starbucks stores. The order requires 27 workers to be reimbursed for lost wages, for Schultz and the senior vice-president of operations, Denise Nelson, to read a notice or make a video for employees in Buffalo informing them of their rights, and for the company to post a national physical and electronic notice.“It’s what we, the workers, have been saying for more than a year now: that Starbucks, at every chance they get, bust the union and get us to be intimidated by it,” said Austin Locke, an employee for nearly six years in New York who was fired and recently won reinstatement after the city sued Starbucks under “just-cause” protections. “They’ve just been stonewalling us the whole time.”“The news of this win is single-handedly the most exciting thing that’s happened in this campaign thus far,” said Michael Sanabria, a barista from the Transit Commons location in Buffalo, New York, in a press release on the decision.“Having to reinstate all of these workers, reopen the first Starbucks location closed in the name of union-busting, and most importantly, post notices in every single store across the country for the duration of the Starbucks organizing campaign is such a massive win for us, and for the labor movement as a whole.“After waiting through months of Starbucks’ stalling tactics, this will reinvigorate and re-energize the momentum of this movement.”The Guardian has contacted Starbucks for comment.TopicsStarbucksBernie SandersUS politicsUS unionsnewsReuse this content More

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      Has Bernie Sanders really helped Joe Biden move further left?

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      Has Bernie Sanders really helped Joe Biden move further left?The senator’s relationship with Biden has proven constructive, with an ambitious agenda – but some Sanders aides and supporters offer a mixed verdictThe band played On The Road Again. The New York studio audience chanted: “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” Senator Bernie Sanders was making his 16th appearance on CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – tying the record set by comedian John Oliver.Colbert confronted his guest with a card bearing a provocative headline, “Joe Biden Is Bernie Sanders”, from a Wall Street Journal column that argued the president will effectively be running for a re-election as a democratic socialist. The host asked Sanders: “Was this news to you?”What to expect from this year’s CPAC: Biden bashing, 2024 Republican primary chatter and lawsuit gossipRead moreWith a hearty laugh, Sanders, 81, recalled that, after the 2020 Democratic primary, his team and Biden’s had joined forces to produce an “agenda for working families”. They did not agree on everything but “put together probably the most progressive outline that any president has introduced since FDR” – a reference to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s.Nearly eight years have passed since Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, launched his first run for US president. The economic populist outsider rocked the establishment as he mounted a fierce challenge to frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Sanders lost but put issues such as class inequality, universal healthcare and the negative effects of globalisation in mainstream political discourse.Four years later, Sanders ran and lost again. But whereas the battle with Clinton had turned bitter, their mutual antipathy palpable, the relationship with Biden proved constructive. The president included progressive voices in his administration and, along with his chief of staff, Ron Klain, committed to keeping the door open to Sanders and his allies.The upshot has been an agenda more ambitious in scope and scale than many imagined and a Democratic president working more closely with progressives than Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama did.But Sanders aides, alumni and supporters interviewed by the Guardian offered a mixed verdict, welcoming Biden’s faith in government to deliver – a repudiation of Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics – while expressing frustration over setbacks on healthcare, progressive taxation and other issues.Few disputed that Biden and Sanders share an authenticity and do not come over as polished, scripted or elitist. Faiz Shakir, chief political adviser to Sanders, recalls that during the 2020 campaign, many Sanders voters said Biden was their second choice and vice versa.“Biden has a kind of plainspeak about him,” he said. “That is also the style of Bernie Sanders, to relate with a working-class person, not to suggest that ‘I know more and I’m smarter than you’, which occasionally does happen from the people who have more advanced degrees, become schooled in technocratic talk and start using various abbreviations for government agencies.”After Biden won the nomination, the president and Sanders appointed six joint taskforces that came up with a 110-page policy document. Shakir described Biden’s team as “a pleasure to work with” and said he had “moved in a progressive direction both during the campaign and as president”.Now 80, Biden was long perceived as a centrist and moderate who would not challenge the status quo. He represented Delaware for 36 years in the US Senate and served as Barack Obama’s vice-president. He has made much of his belief in bipartisanship and still speaks warmly of Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, who has thwarted many liberal dreams.Yet with a gossamer-thin majority in Congress, Biden has also pulled off four big wins worth trillions of dollars: coronavirus relief, a sweeping infrastructure law, a massive boost to domestic production of computer chips and the biggest climate crisis law in history. He won further goodwill on the left by withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan to end America’s longest war. What happened?Shakir identifies two major influences. First, Sanders’ insurgent campaigns in 2016 and 2020 built a mass movement that attracted millions of people. “Biden was not clueless as to the need to make sure that if he was going to win, he needed all those people in his tent, and he’s been a good coalition builder in that regard.”Then there was an accident of history, an opportunity in crisis. “When Covid came along, it just affirmed that to the extent that we needed government solutions to address crises in America, they needed to be progressive. The politics changed in a big way such that people were needing and desiring and wanting government action. As a result he’s been able to pass a bunch of legislation that shows government is going to be a very strong actor on the scene in a way that it hasn’t been in decades.”Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren, agrees. “The Covid crisis gave Joe Biden a permission structure to think bigger and a bit differently than he did his entire political career and made him more open to fully baked progressive solutions that had been worked on for years and were very fitting in the moment,” he said.“The idea of helping workers and helping businesses keep workers. The idea of helping parents take care of their kids. The various solutions that were passed in reaction to the crisis were not made up on the fly. They had been percolating for years among progressives and ended up setting the tone for Joe Biden’s entire presidency.”As the party has shifted left, Biden, an old-school pragmatist, was willing to shift with it. Last year he announced a plan for student loan forgiveness. He has pledged to take on corporate greed and malfeasance, stand with workers at Amazon and elsewhere and revive American manufacturing in left-behind communities.But it may be less a Damascene conversion than simply slipping into the comfort zone of a self-described “union man” who has been dubbed “blue-collar Joe” because of his humble roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “What was most interesting about Biden’s first two years were how many areas he departed from Obama. If you put yourself back into the Vice-President Biden years, you could almost hear Biden’s criticisms of Obama.“There’s no doubt that for Biden, where he comes from matters a lot. You can see the imprint of ‘I’m from Scranton’ on a lot of his policies. These may be some of the most progressive policies to encourage unions to protect workers that we’ve seen in decades and decades. It’s the kind of stuff that Obama just didn’t make a top priority.”Even so, Joe Biden is not Bernie Sanders. The president is an avowed capitalist; the senator is currently on tour promoting a book entitled It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who knows both of them, said: “They’re not the same. Just because someone has similar visions of a just and equitable society, we shouldn’t confuse two very different politicians. They’re different people. The society that Bernie wants is a society where everyone gets a living wage and has healthcare. The society that Joe Biden is fighting for is one where it’s equitable and no one is left behind.”There have undoubtedly been areas where a President Sanders would have gone further. He has long advocated Medicare for all – a single-payer, government-run healthcare programme that would cover all Americans but that Biden never embraced. Sanders’ wishlist also includes taxing Wall Street transactions more aggressively and using those funds to expand free public colleges and universities.But some of the failures have come at the hands of Congress rather than the White House. Sanders’ fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage fell in the Senate. His $6tn Build Back Better plan to tackle the childcare crisis, make community colleges tuition-fee, tax billionaires, address homelessness and expand vision, hearing and dental care for the elderly was backed by Biden but blocked by Republicans and the Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.Congress did pass legislation to invest nearly $400bn in climate and energy measures and make the biggestreforms to national healthcare policy since Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act. But Sanders told the Guardian it was “extremely modest” since it was a long way short of the Medicare for All and $16.3tn “Green New Deal” he campaigned on in 2020.Some on the left are disappointed by such compromises and want alternatives to Biden in 2024. Norman Solomon, national director or RootsAction.org and organiser of a “Don’t Run Joe” campaign, said: “Given the extreme crises that we face, from climate to income inequality to the fraying of the social fabric to the diminishment of actual healthcare in the post-Covid era, there are signs that Biden to a significant degree is throwing in the towel around Covid, around anything approximating moving towards healthcare inequality. Bernie’s trying to mitigate the slide.”The next two years could be an uphill battle for the Sanders agenda. Republicans control of the House of Representatives and are intent on paralysing the White House with multiple investigations. Klain, lauded for giving a sympathetic ear to the left, departed as chief of staff earlier this month and was succeeded by Jeff Zients, whose background as a wealthy corporate executive alarms progressives.Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families party, said: “Joe Biden’s choice of a chief of staff suggests that perhaps he might be listening even less to people like me.“That simplistic way the Wall Street Journal framed it doesn’t really tell the story of the real debate and contention that’s happening every single day inside the Democratic party and likely inside of that White House around what direction to take the country and to take to the Biden administration. The fact that it’s live means this is a White House that’s organisable but it could be organised in the direction of a Bernie Sanders or in the direction of a Joe Manchin.”TopicsBernie SandersJoe BidenDemocratsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      It’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders review – straight talking from the socialist senator

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      ReviewIt’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders review – straight talking from the socialist senatorSanders tackles the grim facts about the economic order that the political establishment wilfully ignores“When we talk about uber-capitalism in its rawest form – about greed that knows no limit, about corporations that viciously oppose the right of workers to organize, about the abuses of wealth and power that tear apart our society – we’re talking about Amazon,” writes Bernie Sanders in his new book. “And when we’re talking about Amazon, we’re talking about Jeff Bezos.”These are typical lines in what comprises an attack on the status quo from every conceivable direction. Sanders addresses his own two ultimately thwarted campaigns to lead the Democratic party; the crisis in American healthcare and the chasms of health inequality shown up by Covid; the declining union movement and stagnation of wages; the burgeoning billionaire class and its impact on democracy; and the looming environmental crisis. Nothing he says will come as any surprise to his supporters, who are legion. Everything he says is quite unfashionable, from the macro – greed is bad, actually – to the micro, still using “uber” to mean “ultra”, as if Uber itself didn’t exist. He has no compunction about his reference points, which go from the obvious (F Scott Fitzgerald observing that thing about the rich) to the niche (a union organiser and folk singer named Florence Reece, who wrote a song in the 1930s called Which Side Are You On?). If his ideas were a band, they’d be the Ink Spots, with songs written a long, long time ago, and all the intros the same.These aren’t complex propositions. Of course it’s wrong to profit from other people’s illness; of course when access to healthcare is tied to work, that puts citizens in a state of semi-bonded servitude. Of course corporations are actively anti-social, of course they have driven down wages over 50 years and immiserated the workforce. Of course when three firms – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – control assets equivalent to the GDP of the entire United States, we’re into the rotting phase of late-stage capitalism.Sanders’ popularity and his immense value to the political ecosystem stems from his willingness to say all this out loud, defying the credo which has defined mainstream discourse since at least the Clinton era: that the class war is over, that capitalism is as inevitable as the weather, and that markets don’t need morals, because they have their own separate schematics, drawn by an invisible hand.In other words, his book is easily as frustrating and depressing as it is galvanising and uplifting; reading one story or statistic after another, about growing inequality, child poverty, financial insecurity – 77% of Americans are now anxious about their financial situation – one’s very lack of surprise reinforces a sense of hopelessness.Yet, particularly in the early chapters, which cover the intricacies of both Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 campaigns, and his (also often thwarted) work as the chairman of Congress’s Budget Committee since the election of Joe Biden, you cannot ignore the fact that the wind has changed. Precisely because Sanders is such a straightforward thinker and writer, he insists on some facts that the political establishment – on both sides – wilfully ignores. It is objectively better, more democratic, more plural, when a campaign is funded by grassroots donations than when a candidate has to go cap in hand to Peter Thiel. The Democrats do better in the polls when they allow in their left flank, rather than try to erase it in the name of electability. And at the level of the principle, to let the man himself take over, “wars and excessive military budgets are not good”; “carbon emissions are not good”; “racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia are not good”; “exploiting workers is not good”. This isn’t the book to come to for new ideas, in other words. But it’s a capitalist fallacy that everything has to be new, in any case.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTopicsBooksUS politicsBernie SandersDemocratsreviewsReuse this content More

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      Bernie Sanders: Nikki Haley’s demand for mental tests is ageist and ‘absurd’

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      Bernie Sanders: Nikki Haley’s demand for mental tests is ageist and ‘absurd’Senator makes remark to CBS’s Face the Nation after Republican presidential candidate calls for tests for politicians over 75 The Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s demand for mental competency tests for politicians older than 75 is “absurd” and ageist, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders said.Bernie Sanders: ‘Oligarchs run Russia. But guess what? They run the US as well’Read more“We are fighting racism, we’re fighting sexism, we’re fighting homophobia, I think we should also be fighting ageism,” Sanders, 81, told CBS’s Face the Nation.Sanders has mounted two strong challenges for the Democratic presidential nomination, the first in 2016 when he was 74.Haley, 51, launched her 2024 campaign this week, calling for a “new generation” of leaders but offering few policy specifics except a call for political term limits and mental competency tests.She has aimed that talking point at Joe Biden, the 80-year-old president, but not at Donald Trump, the 76-year-old former president who remains her only declared rival for the Republican nomination.Asked on Fox News Sunday why she was a better choice for the nomination than Trump or anyone yet to declare, the former South Carolina governor said: “Why not me?”“You know, I am a wife of a combat veteran. I’m a mother of two children.”Haley said those children were struggling with the cost of buying a home and with the challenge of “woke education”, while her Indian immigrant parents were “upset by what’s happening at the border”.Claiming she had “never worked in DC”, the former ambassador to the United Nations who was part of Trump’s White House cabinet and met with the president in the Oval Office, said it was “time that we start putting a fire on what’s happening in Congress”.Repeating her call for term limits and “mental competency tests for people over the age of 75”, she said: “And what I do strongly believe is the American people need options. I don’t think you have to be 80 years old to be in Washington DC.”Sanders told CBS: “I think that’s absurd. We are fighting racism, we’re fighting sexism, we’re fighting homophobia, I think we should also be fighting ageism.Bernie Sanders on going viral: ‘There I was with my mittens on the moon, at the Last Supper, on the Titanic’Read more“Trust people, look at people and say, ‘You know, this person is competent, this person is not competent.’ There are a lot of 40-year-olds out there who ain’t particularly competent. Older people, you know, you look at the individual, I don’t think you make a blanket statement.”Sanders also discussed age, and its relevance for serving politicians, in an interview with the Guardian published on Sunday.Speaking to promote his new book, It’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism, he said he expected Biden to run for re-election in 2024, when the president will be 82, and vowed to support that effort.“Age is always a factor,” Sanders said. “But there are a thousand factors. Some people who are 80 or more have more energy than people who are 30.“… There are a lot of elderly people with a whole lot of experience who are very capable of doing great work.”TopicsBernie SandersNikki HaleyUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Gerontocracy: the exceptionally old political class that governs the US

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      Gerontocracy: the exceptionally old political class that governs the USJoe Biden and members of Congress are increasingly long in the tooth – and more and more out of step with a much younger US public It is the year of the octogenarian. American TV viewers can find Patrick Stewart, 82, boldly going in a new series of Star Trek: Picard and 80-year-old Harrison Ford starring in two shows plus a trailer for the fifth installment of Indiana Jones.And a switch to the news is likely to serve up Joe Biden, at 80 the oldest president in US history, or Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, who turns 81 on Monday. But while action heroes are evergreen, the political class is facing demands for generational change.California senator Dianne Feinstein, 89, announces she will not seek re-electionRead more“America is not past our prime – it’s just that our politicians are past theirs,” Nikki Haley, 51, told a crowd of several hundred people in Charleston, South Carolina, as she launched her candidacy for president in 2024.It was a shot across the bow of not only Biden but former US president Donald Trump, who leads most opinion polls for the Republican nomination but is 76 years old. Haley, notably, mentioned Trump’s name only once and avoided criticisms of him or his administration, in which she served as UN ambassador.Instead, the former South Carolina governor called for a “new generation” of leaders and said she would support a “mandatory mental competency test for politicians over 75 years old”. It was a clue that in a party long shaped in Trump’s image, where ideological differences are likely to be slight, his senior status could offer primary election rivals a line of attack.Lanhee Chen, a fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, said: “She said what a lot of people are thinking, or are maybe afraid to say, and for that she deserves a lot of credit. The basic foundation of her argument, which is that we need to turn the page and find a new generation of leadership, is 100% right.”Gerontocracy crept up on Washington slowly but inexorably. Biden, elected to the Senate in 1972, has been a public figure for half a century and, if re-elected as president, would be 86 at the end of his second term. At a recent commemorative event at the White House he hosted Bill Clinton, who was president three decades ago – but is four years his junior.The octogenarian McConnell is the longest-serving leader in the history of the Senate and has offered no hint of retirement. Chuck Schumer, Democratic majority leader in the same chamber, is 72. Senator Bernie Sanders, standard bearer of the left in the past two Democratic primaries, is 81.But there are finally signs of erosion in the grey wall. Last month Patrick Leahy, 82, a Democrat from Vermont, stepped down after 48 years in the Senate. Last week Senator Dianne Feinstein of California announced her retirement at 89 after months of difficult debate about her mental fitness.Most profoundly, last month saw Democrats’ top three leaders in the House – Nancy Pelosi, 82, Steny Hoyer, 83, and 82-year-old Jim Clyburn – make way for a new generation in Hakeem Jeffries, 52, Katherine Clark, 59, and 43-year-old Peter Aguilar, as well as the arrival of Maxwell Frost, now 26, hailed as the first Gen Z congressman.Presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle may now seek to harness this hunger for change in the contest for the world’s most stressful job in 2024. A CNBC All-America Economic Survey in December found that 70% of Americans do not want Biden to run for re-election, giving his age as the principal reason.Chen, who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for California state controller last year, commented: “He has exhibited some of the manifestations of somebody who probably has seen better days and that’s hard to hide on the campaign trail. There’s a big difference between running for president at 70 or 75 – and what was possible in the 2020 election when Covid was still raging and a lot of the interactions were different – than running in 2024. I do think his age is going to be an issue.”Biden typically brushes off such talk with the simple refrain: “Watch me.” The president underwent a routine medical checkup this week and Dr Kevin O’Connor, his personal physician since 2009, concluded that Biden “remains a healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency”.Karine Jean-Pierre, 48, the White House press secretary, said: “If you watch him, you’ll see that he has a grueling schedule that he keeps up with, that sometimes some of us are not able to keep up with.”Noting Biden’s string of legislative achievements, she added: “It is surprising that we get this question when you look at this record of this president and what he has been able to do and deliver for the American people.”After a strong performance in the midterm elections, a serious challenge to Biden from within the Democratic party still looks unlikely. Defenders say the obsession with his age merely illustrates his lack of other vulnerabilities after two years in which he has done much to win over moderates and progressives.Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, asked: “Did anybody watch the State of the Union? Joe Biden is fully capable of executing his job as president of the United States. He’s in better shape in some people half of his age. So they need to start focusing on the positives because repetition creates reality: perception is reality in politics.“It’s a distraction and it undercuts the successes that Joe Biden actually has as president of the United States. There is much more concern over Donald Trump’s mental acuity and physical presence than Joe Biden. Joe Biden can run circles around Donald Trump.”A White House doctor once memorably proclaimed that Trump has “incredible genes” and could have lived to 200 years old if only he had been on a better diet. But on the Republican side he could face challenges not only from Haley but Florida governor Ron DeSantis, 44, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, 59, former vice-president Mike Pence, 63, and 57-year-old Senator Tim Scott.Each has previously endorsed Trump’s “Make America great again” mantra and may now struggle to disavow it. No-holds-barred attacks on Trump himself risk alienating his fervent base. But as Haley showed this week, the promise of generational change might serve as a coded rebuke in party that is no stranger to dog whistles.Drexel Heard, 36, who was the youngest executive director of the biggest Democratic party in the country (Los Angeles county), said: “Hypocrisy is a weird thing in American politics. It’s going to be interesting to see if Nikki Haley only talks about Joe Biden’s age and doesn’t talk about Donald Trump’s age and how the media calls her out on that. She’s going to say things like: ‘Well, you know, I’m just saying that we need generational change.’ She’s never going to call Donald Trump out.”Trump will not be the first Republican candidate to face questions over his age. At a debate in 1984, the moderator reminded Ronald Reagan that he was already the oldest president in history at that time. Reagan, 73, replied: “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Even his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale, laughed at the line. Reagan won re-election in a landslide.Trump, for his part, will have an opportunity to silence Republican doubters at his raucous campaign rallies. Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to Clinton, said: “If he can’t do that, if he seems older and less energetic, then I can imagine the generational appeal sticking. But if his juices start flowing and he is able to do what he did seven years ago, then the generational appeal will be likely to fall somewhat flat.”Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, and a 77-year-old grandfather, added that it is not the “consensus view” among Republicans than Trump is too old to move back into the White House. “There’s a lot more support inside the Democratic party for the proposition that Biden is too old than there is inside the Republican party for the parallel proposition that Trump is too old,” he said.Of all the Congresses since 1789, the current one has the second oldest Senate (average age 63.9) and third oldest House of Representatives (average age 57.5). Critics say the backup of talent puts it out of step with the American public, whose average age is 38. One example is around the tech sector and social media as members of Congress have often struggled to keep pace with rapid change and its implications for society.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “I’m 70, so I have great sympathy for these people: 80 is looking a lot younger than it used to, as far as I’m concerned. But no, it’s ridiculous. We’ve got to get back to electing people in their 50s and early 60s.”“That’s the right time for president. You have a good chance of remaining reasonably healthy for eight years if you get a second term. Everybody knows that makes more sense but here we are. What can you say? This was the option we were given in 2020 and we’re going to get essentially the same one in 2024.”TopicsUS newsUS politicsAgeingUS CongressUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesJoe BidenfeaturesReuse this content More

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      White House says Republicans have ‘zero credibility’ over Biden documents case – as it happened

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      Republicans are continuing to pressure Joe Biden over the classified documents found at his residence and former office, while Democrats are telling anyone who will listen that there are significant differences between the president’s case and that of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the White House is demanding Kevin McCarthy release the details of agreements he made with conservative Republicans to win their support for his House speaker bid, arguing he has empowered extremists.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      The White House attempted to explain why it didn’t announce the discovery of classified documents in Biden’s possession when it was first made in November.
      Trump may be the big winner of the kerfuffle over Biden’s classified documents, especially if it undermines the investigation into the government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago.
      Daniel Goldman, who served as the Democrats’ lead prosecutor of Trump during his 2019 impeachment, will play a major role in defending Biden from the GOP’s investigation campaign.
      State Democratic parties are revolting against Biden’s plan to shake up the primary calendar for presidential nominations.
      George Santos lied his way into office, but he will nonetheless serve on committees in the House, McCarthy said.
      It’s going to be a tough couple of months for Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who has become the subject of near-daily criticism from Republicans for his handling of the surge of migrants at the country’s southern border.The GOP has already vowed to call him repeatedly before the House, and will probably use the hearings as another cudgel against the Biden administration. Today, CNN reports that several top Republicans are ready to impeach the secretary – something that hasn’t happened to a cabinet secretary since 1876:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The House Judiciary Committee, which would have jurisdiction over an impeachment resolution, is prepared to move ahead with formal proceedings if there appears to be a consensus within the GOP conference, according to a GOP source directly familiar with the matter. The first impeachment resolution introduced by House Republicans already has picked up support, including from a member of the GOP leadership team.
      A GOP source said the first Judiciary Committee hearing on the border could come later this month or early February.
      One top chairman is already sounding supportive of the move, a sign of how the idea of impeaching President Joe Biden’s Cabinet secretary has moved from the fringes to the mainstream of the conference.
      ‘If anybody is a prime candidate for impeachment in this town, it’s Mayorkas,’ Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told CNN.But not all Republicans are on board, with several lawmakers worrying the public won’t see the need for the effort, which is sure to die in the Democratic-controlled Senate anyway. Here’s Republican Dusty Johnson’s thoughts on the matter, to CNN:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Clearly, the management of the Southern border has been incompetent … That is not the threshold in the Constitution for impeachment – it’s high crimes and misdemeanors. … I would want to think about the legal standard the Constitution has set out – and whether or not that’s been met.Mario Diaz-Balart was of a similar mind:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Has he been totally dishonest to people? Yes. Has he failed in his job miserably? Yes … Are those grounds for impeachment? I don’t know.For all the bombast of Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans in the House, keep this fact in mind: their margin of control is only four seats. If the party wants to maintain its grip on the chamber for the next two years, the GOP simply cannot afford to have any of their lawmakers leave office.That said, not all Republicans were happy with the deals that McCarthy cut to win the House speakership, and Puck reports that one lawmaker is particularly aggrieved over the Californian’s bargaining. That would be Vern Buchanan, who was passed over as chair of the tax-writing ways and means committee in favor of Jason Smith, an ally of the speaker.With no committee to helm, Puck reports that the 71-year-old Buchanan could decide that now’s the time to retire. According to their story, he already told McCarthy what he thought of his decision to promote Smith rather than himself on the House floor:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Just how angry was he? Well, a source on the House floor during the vote told me that while McCarthy was gaveling down the votes, Buchanan walked up to McCarthy and said, ‘You fucked me, I know it was you, you whipped against me.’ He then proceeded to chew out McCarthy’s deputy chief of staff for floor operations, John Leganski. It was shocking to see such fury from Buchanan, who’s known for being mild mannered. Indeed, I heard that the tirade was so heated that the Speaker’s security detail stepped in with a light touch. (McCarthy’s spokesperson Matt Sparks disputed this detail saying, ‘at no point did anyone have to step in.’ A spokesperson for Buchanan declined to comment.)The House hasn’t convened its committees yet, and thus Democrats and Republicans have taken their squabble over the investigations into Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s possession of classified material to the next logical venue: Twitter.Jim Jordan, chair of the House judiciary committee, fired the latest salvo by reiterating his latest talking points about the investigation into Biden’s documents:Why was President Trump’s home raided but not President Biden’s? Why did the FBI take pictures of President Trump’s so-called classified documents but not President Biden’s?Americans are tired of the double standard.— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) January 17, 2023
      To which Daniel Goldman, a Democrat who has lined up to be one of Biden’s chief defenders in the House and served as the lead counsel when Democrats impeached Trump in 2019, fired back:1) because Trump obstructed justice by failing to comply with a subpoena. Biden volunteered all docs. 2) It’s standard procedure for the FBI to photograph everything they find during a search warrant. In the future, feel free to reach out to me directly with your questions. https://t.co/05JVjbNCgI— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) January 17, 2023
      And before you “investigate the FBI” to obstruct their investigations into you and others, you might want to brush up on the FBI Manual of Investigative Operations and Guidelines (MIOG) so you don’t ask any more dumb questions.— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) January 17, 2023
      Arizona’s US senator Kyrsten Sinema, who recently left the Democratic party and declared herself an independent, drew political fire from critics Tuesday after defending her congressional chamber’s filibuster rule at Switzerland’s Davos World Economic Forum.Among other remarks Tuesday, Sinema reportedly said the Senate filibuster was the “basis of the productivity for some incredible achievements” in Congress during Joe Biden’s first two years in the White House.Both Democrats and Republicans have used the rule, which allows a relatively small group of senator to block action by the majority. Sinema outraged Democratic supporters before she left the party in December when she opposed filibuster reform to pave the way for the passage of voting rights legislation.A group named “Replace Sinema Because Arizona Deserves Better” on Tuesday issued a statement arguing that the first-term senator preferred to be at Davos rubbing elbows with “billionaires and Wall Street execs” as well as others belonging to the global elite rather than “doing her job” in her state or on Capitol Hill.Meanwhile, one journalist snapped and tweeted out a photograph of her appearing to speak warmly with former Donald Trump White House spokesperson Anthony Scaramucci and ex-US House speaker Paul Ryan, both figures in the Republican party. The tweet referred to both Ryan and Scaramucci – Republican figures and Democratic opponents – as “old pals”.Sinema, like centrist Democrat Joe Manchin (who was alongside her on stage at Davos), has often taken stands that undermined key Biden administration agenda items along with other left-leaning interests in the nation’s capital. Her defection from the party came shortly after Raphael Warnock’s victory over Republican challenger Herschel Walker in Georgia left the Democrats thinking they had a clear one-seat majority in the Senate.There has been no indication that Sinema will caucus with Republicans, and she has said she doesn’t intend to. Either way, when the Senate was split 50-50 for two years beginning in 2021, Vice-President Kamala Harris broke ties in the Democrats’ favor.The White House on Tuesday defended its public handling of revelations that classified documents were discovered at Joe Biden’s home and the president’s private office. In a call with reporters, White House spokesperson Ian Sams said the decision not to immediately inform the public of the discovery of sensitive records in November was “consistent with safeguarding the integrity of the investigation”.“We understand that there’s a tension between the need to be cooperative with an ongoing DOJ investigation, and rightful demands for additional public information,” Sams said. “And so we’re trying to strike that balance.” He pointed reporters to a line in a statement released by the president’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, after the discovery of additional documents, which stated that “regular ongoing public disclosures also pose the risk that, as further information develops, answers provided on this periodic basis may be incomplete.”The explanation did little to satisfy Republicans – or reporters – who have repeatedly pressed the White House on why it was not transparent with the public when the documents were first found at the president’s private Washington office on 2 November. On 2o December, Biden’s personal lawyers found “a small number of potential records bearing classified markings” in the garage of the president’s Delaware home. Five more pages of materials were found at his home on Thursday. ‘Rampant hypocrisy’After the first discovery two months ago, the White House said it “immediately”notified the National Archives and Records Administration, which then informed the US justice department.Sams repeated that the White House was cooperating with the investigation and would continue to do so, drawing a sharp distinction with the way Biden’s presidential predecessor Donald Trump handled sensitive documents. Trump refused to turn over troves of government documents that he took with him to his Mar-a-lago estate, even after being subpoenaed. Agents dispatched to his home to retrieve the materials, which Trump said he had the right to keep, and even argued without evidence that he had declassified. Sams accused Republicans of fomenting “faking outrage about disclosure and transparency” and “rampant hypocrisy.” ‘Fake outrage’He seized on comments by the newly installed Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, who has promised to aggressively investigate Biden’s handling of the documents. In a CNN interview this weekend, the Republican said: “At the end of the day, my biggest concern isn’t the classified documents, to be honest with you. My concern is there’s such a discrepancy between how President Trump was treated … versus Joe Biden.” Asked last year about Trump’s handling of the documents, Comer, Sams noted, said it “didn’t amount to a hill of beans.” “House Republicans lose credibility when they engage in fake outrage about an issue that they’re clearly pursuing only for partisan gain,” Sams said. Sams said the White House was reviewing “a few letters” from the House Oversight committee related to Biden’s retention of classified documents and will make a “determination about our response in due course.”Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has vowed to investigate both the classified documents found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and at Joe Biden’s properties.But his sympathies were clearly with Trump. The Republican leader argued that the former president had been treated more harshly than Biden, which “just does not seem fair.”“This is why the American people get so upset and distrust their government when they see that the law is not applied equally,” he continued, accusing Biden of “hypocrisy” for not making the document discovery public before the November midterms.Here’s C-SPAN with his full comments:.@SpeakerMcCarthy (R-CA) on Biden and Trump documents probes: “It’s not a fair process when you equalize this out, and that is what is wrong with the system.” https://t.co/wY8OFxGe89 pic.twitter.com/FZ8vlO1aDZ— CSPAN (@cspan) January 17, 2023
      George Santos will be seated on committees in the House, even though the New York Republican admitted to lying about his qualifications for office, House speaker Kevin McCarthy said.While he did not say on which committees the freshman lawmaker will serve, the comment underscores that Republican leadership is disinclined to take any major steps to exclude Santos, who is facing an array of investigations into his admitted dishonesty on the campaign trail.Here are McCarthy’s comments, courtesy of C-Span:.@SpeakerMcCarthy (R-CA) on Rep. George Santos (R-NY): “He’ll get seated on committees.” https://t.co/77obCJittk pic.twitter.com/Oo2JIBf9Cc— CSPAN (@cspan) January 17, 2023
      Republicans are continuing to pressure Joe Biden over the classified documents found at his residence and former office, while Democrats are working to point out the significant differences between the president’s case and that of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the White House is demanding Kevin McCarthy release the details of the agreements he made with conservative Republican to win their support for his House speaker bid.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Trump may be the big winner of the kerfuffle over Biden’s classified documents, as it undermines the investigation into the government secrets found at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
      The House Democrats’ lead prosecutor of Trump during his first impeachment will play a major role in defending Biden from the GOP’s investigation campaign.
      State Democratic parties are revolting against Biden’s plan to shake up the primary calendar for presidential nominations.
      In Florida, the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports that US authorities are turning back more and more migrants amid a surge in arrivals:Authorities in Florida have been turning back growing numbers of undocumented Cubans and Haitians arriving by sea in recent weeks as more attempt to seek haven in the US.Local US residents on jet skis have been helping some of the migrants who attempted to swim ashore after making arduous, life-threateningand days-long journeys in makeshift vessels.Joe Biden’s turn to the center over immigration comes as Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, attempts to plot his own strategy for handling a sensitive situation in the south of his state, calling out national guard troops in a hardline approach.US turns back growing number of undocumented people after arduous sea journeysRead moreTo the GOP, the White House’s demand for answers from Kevin McCarthy is little more than a distraction from the unfolding investigation into Joe Biden’s classified documents.Here’s Republican operative Matt Whitlock:The communications wizards at the Biden White House right now: https://t.co/dT9swCaPVc pic.twitter.com/hTKj4qIntv— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) January 17, 2023 More