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      Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden

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      Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:
      55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
      49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
      49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
      Many Americans put the blame on Biden for the state of the economy, with 58% of those polled saying the economy is worsening due to mismanagement from the presidential administration.The poll underscored people’s complicated emotions around inflation. The vast majority of respondents, 72%, indicated they think inflation is increasing. In reality, the rate of inflation has fallen sharply from its post-Covid peak of 9.1% and has been fluctuating between 3% and 4% a year.In April, the inflation rate went down from 3.5% to 3.4% – far from inflation’s 40-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 – triggering a stock market rally that pushed the Dow Jones index to a record high.A recession is generally defined by a decrease in economic activity, typically measured as gross domestic product (GDP), over two successive quarters, although in the US the National Bureau of Economic Research (NEBR) has the final say. US GDP has been rising over the last few years, barring a brief contraction in 2022, which the NEBR did not deem a recession.The only recent recession was in 2020, early in the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, the US economy has grown considerably. Unemployment has also hit historic lows, wages have been going up and consumer spending has been strong.But the road to recovery has been bumpy, largely because of inflation and the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to tamp down high prices.Despite previously suggesting the Fed could start lowering rates this year, Fed officials have recently indicated interest rates will remain elevated in the near future. While inflation has eased considerably since its peak in 2022, officials continue to say inflation remains high because it remains above the Fed’s target of 2% a year.After a tumultuous ride of inflation and high interest rates, voters are uncertain about what’s next. Consumer confidence fell to a six-month low in May.So even though economic data, like GDP, implies strength in the economy, there’s a stubborn gap between the reality represented in that data – what economists use to gauge the economy’s health – and the emotional reality that underlies how Americans feel about the economy. In the poll, 55% think the economy is only getting worse.Some have called the phenomenon a “vibecession”, a term first coined by the economics writer Kyla Scanlon to describe the widespread pessimism about the economy that defies statistics that show the economy is actually doing OK.While inflation has been down, prices are at a higher level compared with just a few years ago. And prices are still going up, just at a slower pace than at inflation’s peak.Americans are clearly still reeling from price increases. In the poll, 70% of Americans said their biggest economic concern was the cost of living. About the same percentage of people, 68%, said that inflation was top of mind.The poll showed little change in Americans’ economic outlook from a Harris poll conducted for the Guardian on the economy in September 2023.A similar percentage of respondents agreed “it’s difficult to be happy about positive economic news when I feel financially squeezed each month” and that the economy was worse than the media made it out to be.Another thing that hasn’t changed: views on the economy largely depend on which political party people belong to. Republicans were much more likely to report feeling down about the economy than Democrats. The vast majority of Republicans believe that the economy is shrinking, inflation is increasing and the economy is getting worse overall. A significant but smaller percentage of Democrats, less than 40%, believed the same.Unsurprisingly, more Republicans than Democrats believe the economy is worsening due to the mismanagement of the Biden administration.Something both Republicans and Democrats agree on: they don’t know who to trust when it comes to learning about the economy. In both September and May, a majority of respondents – more than 60% – indicated skepticism over economic news.The economy continues to present a major challenge to Joe Biden in his re-election bid. Though he has tried to tout “Bidenomics”, or his domestic economy record, including his $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill from 2022, 70% of Republicans and 39% of Democrats seem to think he’s making the economy worse.But it’s not all bad news for Biden. Republican voters were slightly more optimistic about the lasting impacts of “Bidenomics” than they were in the September Harris poll. Four in 10 Republicans, an 11 percentage-point increase from September, indicated they believe Bidenomics will have a positive lasting impact, while 81% of Democrats said the same. And three-quarters of everyone polled said they support at least one of the key pillars of Bidenomics, which include investments in infrastructure, hi-tech electronics manufacturing, clean-energy facilities and more union jobs.Yet even with these small strands of approval, pessimism about the overall economy is pervasive. It will be an uphill battle for Biden to convince voters to be more hopeful.“What Americans are saying in this data is: ‘Economists may say things are getting better, but we’re not feeling it where I live,’” said John Gerzema, CEO of the Harris Poll. “Unwinding four years of uncertainty takes time. Leaders have to understand this and bring the public along.” More

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      FDIC chair Martin Gruenberg to resign after sexual harassment allegations

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      Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) chairman Martin Gruenberg announced his resignation on Monday, amid a months-long scandal over sexual harassment and other misconduct at the top bank regulator.Gruenberg said he would step down from his responsibilities once a successor is confirmed.Earlier in the day, a top Democrat had called for Gruenberg to be replaced after an external review found sweeping reports of employee mistreatment and sexual harassment.There must be “fundamental changes” at the agency, Senate banking committee chairman Sherrod Brown said, adding that he wanted Joe Biden to immediately nominate a replacement, which the Senate should quickly advance. Brown is the most senior Democrat to call for Gruenberg’s replacement, ramping up pressure on the FDIC chair.Spokespeople for the FDIC and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Last week, Gruenberg testified alongside several other banking regulators before Congress. He vowed to take steps to address longstanding cultural issues at the agency, as well as his own personal conduct, after the review found multiple instances in which he lost his temper with subordinates.But Republicans and Democrats alike expressed skepticism that Gruenberg would be able to overhaul the agency, where he has served for nearly two decades. He was sworn in to his current five-year term as chair of the FDIC in January 2023. He had also served as chairman from November 2012 to mid-2018.“After chairing last week’s hearing, reviewing the independent report, and receiving further outreach from FDIC employees to the Banking and Housing Committee, I am left with one conclusion: there must be fundamental changes at the FDIC. Those changes begin with new leadership,” Brown said in his statement.Notably, Brown did not call for Gruenberg to immediately resign, as many Republicans in Congress have. Should Gruenberg leave the agency without a confirmed replacement, leadership of the FDIC would fall to Travis Hill, the agency’s vice-chair and a Republican. The agency would then be deadlocked 2-2.The FDIC is working with the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on several rule-writing projects that would tighten requirements on larger banks, including a contentious plan to boost big bank capital requirements. More

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      Alleged ‘deal’ offer from Trump to big oil could save industry $110bn, study finds

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      A “deal” allegedly offered by Donald Trump to big-oil executives as he sought $1bn in campaign donations could save the industry $110bn in tax breaks if he returns to the White House, an analysis suggests.The fundraising dinner held last month at Mar-a-Lago with more than 20 executives, including from Chevron, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum, reportedly involved Trump asking for large campaign contributions and promising, if elected, to remove barriers to drilling, scrap a pause on gas exports, and reverse new rules aimed at cutting car pollution.Congressional Democrats have launched an investigation into the “ethical, campaign finance and legal issues” raised by what one Democratic senator called an “offer of a blatant quid pro quo”, while a prominent watchdog group is exploring whether the meeting warrants legal action.But the analysis shared with the Guardian shows that the biggest motivation for oil and gas companies to back Trump appears to be in the tax system, with about $110bn in tax breaks for the industry at stake should Joe Biden be re-elected in November’s election.Biden wants to eliminate the tax breaks, which include long-standing incentives to help drill for oil and gas, with a recent White House budget proposal targeting $35bn in domestic subsidies and $75bn in overseas fossil fuel income.“Big oil executivess are sweating in their seats at the thought of losing $110bn in special tax loopholes under Biden in 2025,” said Lukas Ross, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Action, which conducted the analysis.Ross said the tax breaks are worth nearly 11,000% more than the amount Trump allegedly asked the executives for in donations. “If Trump promises to protect polluter handouts during tax negotiations, then his $1bn shakedown is a cheap insurance policy for the industry,” he said.View image in fullscreenSome of the tax breaks have been around for decades, and are a global issue, but the US oil and gas industry benefited disproportionately from tax cuts passed by Trump when he was president in 2017.Next year, regardless of who is president, a raft of individual tax cuts included in that bill will expire, prompting a round of Washington deal-making over which industries, if any, will help fund an extension.Lobbying records show that Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, Cheniere and the American Petroleum Institute (API) have all met lawmakers this year to discuss this tax situation, likely encouraging them to ignore Biden’s plan to target the fossil fuel industry’s own carve-outs.Chevron and ConocoPhillips, the analysis shows, lobbied on a deduction for intangible drilling costs, the largest federal subsidy for US oil and gas companies, which is worth $10bn, according to federal figures.View image in fullscreenOther lobbying centered on more generalized tax breaks that the oil and gas industry has taken advantage of. ExxonMobil lobbied for a little-known bill that would restore a bonus depreciation deduction to its full value, which, according to Moody’s, would allow big oil to avoid Biden’s newly established corporate minimum tax.“Unlike previous administrations, I don’t think the federal government should give handouts to big oil,” Biden said following his inauguration in 2021. But Congress and the president will have to agree to any new tax arrangements next year, and the fossil-fuel industry continues to have staunch support from Republicans and some Democrats.The API insisted its industry gets no favorable treatment in the tax system. “America’s energy industry proudly invests in communities, pays local, state and federal taxes and receives no special tax treatment from the federal government,” an API spokesperson said.“This nonsense report is another attempt to distract from the importance of all energy sources – including oil and natural gas – to meet America’s growing energy needs.”Who was at Mar-a-Lago?The high stakes for the fossil-fuel industry, as well as for the climate crisis, have placed scrutiny upon those who attended Trump’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Although representatives of large oil companies were present, the majority of known attendees were executives of smaller firms focused on specific subsections of the fossil-fuel industry, such as fracking or gas exporting.Those companies are not often held to account in international forums such as the UN climate talks or the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which means they are less likely to make buzzy climate pledges. They may also be more threatened by regulations on individual parts of the US fossil fuel economy, such as auto-emissions standards aiming to quell gas-car usage.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The oil majors … see their future in plastic [production]. That doesn’t apply to the smaller companies who don’t work across the industry,” said Kert Davies, director of special investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity. “They’ve got nothing to shift to.”Among other reported attendees were the head of the company Venture Global, which rivals Qatar as one of the world’s leading liquefied natural gas exporters. This year, the company came under fire after it was revealed to have been using millions of gallons of water to construct a Louisiana LNG terminal while a nearby community faced extreme shortages. The firm was also accused late last year of reneging on its contracts by Shell and BP.Another attendee: Nick Dell’Osso, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, which after years of court fights had to pay $5.3m to Pennsylvania landowners who say they were cheated out of gas royalties. The company’s earlier CEO, John McClendon, was indicted in 2016 on charges of conspiring to rig bids on oil and gas leases in Oklahoma.Billionaire oil tycoon Harold Hamm, who founded fossil fuel exploration company Continental Resources, was also present. He helped raise money for Trump’s 2016 presidential run and was under consideration to be Trump’s energy secretary, and was reportedly one of the seven top donors who had special seats at Trump’s inauguration. Though he eschewed the former president after his 2020 loss, he donated to his primary campaign in August.View image in fullscreenAsked about the meeting, API spokesperson Andrea Woods said the organization “meets with policymakers and candidates from across the political spectrum on topics important to our industry”. She said the premise of Democrats’ investigation into the meeting is “patently false and an attempt to distract from a needed debate about America’s future – one that requires more energy, including more oil and natural gas”.Amid the scrutiny of last month’s Mar-a-Lago dinner, Trump is continuing to court oil-tied funders. On Tuesday evening, he held a Manhattan fundraising dinner that cost a minimum of $100,000 to attend.Among the event’s hosts, advocacy group Climate Power noted, was John Catsimatidis, the chief executive of the much-scrutinized gas refiner United Refining Company and owner of two grocery chains, a radio station and holding company Red Apple Group.Between 2017 and 2023, United Refining Company’s small refinery in western Pennsylvania was the most dangerous refinery in the country, with federal data showing it reported 10 times the average number of injuries for a refinery – 63% higher than the next-most dangerous facility.The company also reportedly sought to dodge environmental regulations using a process championed by Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.Catsimatidis has also been criticized for neglecting vacant gas-station properties and for blaming gas prices on “open” borders, corporate taxes and worker benefits. The Pennsylvania town home to United Refining pays some of the highest gas prices in the state, despite the presence of the refinery, raising suspicions among some residents about the company’s practices.Trump this week also held a fundraiser hosted by the US senator JD Vance, who is one of the largest recipients of big-oil funding in Congress, and another with Joe Craft, a major Trump donor who owns massive coal producer Alliance Resource Partners. In 2016, Craft reportedly gifted Pruitt courtside basketball tickets after the agency crafted pro-coal regulations. More

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      One path for Biden to lure blue-collar voters – find the economic villains: ‘You have to pick fights’

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      To the dismay of Democrats, blue-collar voters have lined up increasingly behind Donald Trump, but political experts say Joe Biden can still turn things around with that large and pivotal group by campaigning hard on “kitchen table” economic issues.With just six months to go until the election, recent polls show that Trump has stronger support among blue-collar Americans than he did in 2020. But several political analysts told the Guardian that Biden can bring back enough of those voters to win if he hammers home the message that he is helping Americans on pocketbook issues – for instance, by canceling student debt and cutting insulin prices.According to Celinda Lake, a pollster for the Democratic National Committee, Biden needs to talk more often and more effectively about how his policies mean “real benefits” for working families and how he’s battling on their behalf against “villains” like greedy pharmaceutical companies.“We need to have a dramatic framing that we’re going to take on villains to make the economy work for you and your family,” said Lake, who did polling for Biden’s 2020 campaign. “The villains can be a lot of things – corporations that don’t pay any taxes or drug companies that make record profits while they gouge you on prices.”View image in fullscreenRepublicans have won over many voters by attacking Democrats on cultural issues, but Lake said Democrats can overcome that. “We need to recognize that the economic message beats the cultural war message,” she said, adding that the economic message should focus on specific examples of how Biden’s policies have helped workers and their families.“We have to make sure the economic message isn’t focused on GDP and low unemployment rates and lower inflation, but on real benefits, things that people feel at the kitchen table,” Lake said. She talked of reduced prescription drug prices, limits on banks’ junk fees and increasing taxes on the wealthy so the nation can invest in things like making childcare more affordable.Patrick Gaspard, president of the Center for American Progress, also stressed the importance of economic messaging. “Biden needs to speak more on the economy, but you shouldn’t do it in terms of spiking the ball, which we’ve done too much of. You need to pick some fights,” said Gaspard, who was executive director of the Democratic National Committee under Barack Obama. “You have to pick fights with greedy corporations. It’s good to say, ‘I lowered insulin to $35 a month, and I’m bringing down the cost of a dozen drugs.’ But also say, ‘Big pharma is suing to stop us, and Maga Republicans and Donald Trump are standing with them on that. The fight is on, and I’m fighting for you on this.’”Several Democrats voiced concern about the party’s current messaging, arguing that the White House and the Biden campaign are too insular and in ways locked into an outdated vision – that if a president delivers good things to voters, like good-paying construction jobs created by the $1.2tn infrastructure package, and runs campaign ads about those things, that will win over many voters. One political consultant warned that many voters are uninformed, telling of a focus group where one woman was delighted that she would soon begin paying $35 a month for insulin, down from $350, but she had no idea that the Biden administration was largely responsible for that lower price.Even if the Biden campaign runs ads to make that point, several political experts said, Americans are so cynical about candidates and their campaigns that those ads might do little persuading. “The level of cynicism is so high that for many people, anything that comes from politicians or elected officials doesn’t pass the smell test,” said Steve Rosenthal, a longtime political consultant.Rosenthal said groups that blue-collar voters trust – labor unions, community groups and Facebook pages – need to step up to communicate important, election-related information, such as the fact that Biden played a major role in capping insulin costs.Speaking about crucial battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation, said, “It rests on the people in those states, the unions in those states, the civic institutions in those states to make clear what the stakes of a Trump presidency will be – for instance, he’ll push to repeal the Affordable Care Act.”View image in fullscreenPodhorzer acknowledged that Biden is having problems with blue-collar voters even though, he said, “Biden has done more by a large margin than either President Clinton or Obama to appeal directly to working people – and not just symbolically by joining the UAW’s picket line.” In the 2020 election, 48% of voters without a college degree voted for Biden, while 50% supported Trump, according to exit polls, White voters without a college degree backed Trump over Biden 67% to 32%, while voters of color without a college degree supported Biden, 72% to 26%. All told, 59% of 2020 voters didn’t have a college degree. Biden won the overall election because his comfortable 55% to 43% margin among college graduates more than offset his narrow loss among non-college graduates.Several Democratic consultants said that if the election were held today, Trump would win. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that Trump was leading Biden by between one and six percentage points in six of the main battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada. A Fox News poll in April found Trump leading by three points in Michigan and six in Georgia but tied with Biden in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.“There’s an enormous amount of work that has to be done, and there’s a lot of room for movement,” Rosenthal said. “When the labor unions kick into gear and really start to communicate with their members, the numbers can change pretty dramatically.”Lake added, “I don’t think it’s too late at all.”Mike Lux, a political consultant who has worked on six presidential campaigns, helped write an influential report called Factory Towns that found that the Democratic presidential vote in the midwest declined most sharply in communities that suffered the steepest drops in factory and union jobs. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt was president, Lux said, blue-collar voters saw the Democrats as the party that would protect them, but many have drifted away, convinced that Democrats weren’t doing enough to protect them.Many blue-collar voters remain angry at Bill Clinton for getting Congress to ratify the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and normalize trade relations with China – trade moves that caused many US factories to close. “Working folks expected Democrats to fight for them,” Lux said. “But folks feel like Democrats have forgotten about them. They don’t feel like Democrats are talking to them or caring about them. It’s true that Republicans don’t do anything to help them, but they show up and wave the flag and pound their chest and say, ‘Nobody cares about you, but we do.’”Lux said many blue-collar voters were unhappy that presidents Clinton and Obama pushed the idea that everybody should go to college. “A feeling started to develop that working-class people weren’t as welcome in the Democratic party,” Lux said.In his eyes, the 2007-2009 recession, largely caused by Wall Street, has also been a big problem for Democrats. “There was a feeling that Barack Obama bailed out Wall Street and did not do much to bail out regular workers,” Lux said. “That was a huge moment. It led to folks giving the finger to the establishment, and that helped elect Donald Trump in 2016.”View image in fullscreenRuy Teixeira, a political scientist and co-author of the book Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, agreed with Lux. “Working-class people were counting on them [the Democrats]. They were the party that was on the side of the working class, and they felt betrayed.”Teixeira said the free trade initiatives “showed that the Democrats were not worrying about deindustrialization, not worrying about what’s happened to the median voter in the middle of the country. The Democrats were increasingly responsive to Wall Street. So some folks decided to give the Republicans a try.”Taking a position that has angered many progressives, Teixeira said the Democrats’ stance on “crime, race, gender and climate is a whole can of worms” that has turned off many blue-collar voters. He said the Democrats are obsessed with climate change in a way that alienates many blue-collar voters, who, he said, fear that the push for renewable energy will mean higher energy prices. Teixeira also said that Democratic concerns about transgender rights – a culture war focus of the Republicans – has turned off many blue-collar voters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Democrats have to orient themselves away from the median liberal, college- educated voter who they get a Soviet-style majority from and orient themselves toward the median working-class voter, not just white, but non-white voters,” Teixeira said. “It’s not easy to do. They have to turn the battleship around.”Another reason blue-collar voters have turned away from Democrats is the decline in union membership – from 35% of all workers in the 1950s to 10% today. Rosenthal remembers going to a steelworkers’ union hall in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, several decades ago – it had 15 bowling lanes and a bar. “Around 30% of workers were in unions,” Rosenthal said. “Another 10% or 15% were in union households, and a lot of other workers drank at the bar or bowled there.” The steelworkers’ hall served as a community center where people received information from the union and there was robust support for Democrats. The new book Rust Belt Union Blues describes a transformed landscape where many union halls have closed and gun clubs have often replaced them as gathering places for the working class – and there, the ambience is pro-Trump.Another factor contributing to the Democrats’ woes is that over half the nation’s local news stations are in the hands of Sinclair and other rightwing owners, said Lux. That often makes it harder for Biden and other Democrats to get their message across.As a result, Lux said, Democrats have to work extra hard to get their message out – for instance, through community Facebook pages that explain that the new bridge in town is being built thanks to Biden or that the Biden administration has helped blue-collar Americans by extending overtime coverage to 4 million more workers and banning non-competes that cover 30 million workers.“The Democrats have to lean into issues that mean a lot to working people,” Lux said. “We have to keep showing up in Ottumwa [a working-class town in Iowa] and keep showing up in Youngstown [a blue-collar Ohio town].”The Biden administration often seems to communicate its economic agenda in dribs and drabs. One day it blocks two giant grocery chains from merging, saying the merger could push grocery prices higher. Another day it caps banks’ junk fees, and yet another day it boasts about the low unemployment rate.Lake says the administration is going about this the wrong way. “They tend to start the message with their accomplishments,” she said. “They need to start the message with the overall narrative and then go to their accomplishments.”Lake said Biden’s economic message wasn’t getting across effectively. “They need more repetition,” she said. “They need more volume. It’s really difficult to break through.”Several political analysts said love it or hate it, Donald Trump – unlike Biden – has an unmistakable narrative: Make America great again. Too many immigrants are crossing the border. The elite and deep state are out to get you.“In a war between good policies and good stories that speak to people’s identities and emotions, good stories are going to win,” said Deepak Bhargava, president of the JPB Foundation and former head of the Center for Community Change.Gaspard said Biden had a good economic story to tell and agreed that he wasn’t telling it very effectively. “He needs to talk more and more about growing the economy by building out the middle class,” Gaspard said. “Talking about the amount of dollars going to a big social program does nothing to sway voters. You need to talk about how Donna is going to be able to afford insulin and Josh is going to be able to afford to send kids to daycare. Things that are relatable to people.”He said it was important to point to villains and draw contrasts with the other side: “You need to say Trump will cut taxes on the wealthy and that will hurt the working class. You need to ramp up efforts to say Trump will raise prices and hurt working families with his 10% across-the-board tariffs. That will mean a $1,500 tax that’s passed on to all working families. That’s massive, and it makes it painstakingly clear that Trump isn’t concerned about workers.”View image in fullscreenGaspard said that in his economic messaging, Biden needed to “recognize the insecurities that working folks – white, Black and brown – are feeling” whether about the cost of living or other matters. “Biden needs to call out General Mills and Kimberly-Clark for raising the price of cereal and diapers,” Gaspard said. “People like it when you’re fighting for them.”Amid all the talk about wooing blue-collar voters, Lake said young voters were too often forgotten. She urged Biden to address their concerns. “They’re very hard-pressed economically,” she said. “We haven’t been talking enough about issues facing young voters. It’s not just student loans. They’re worried about how much jobs pay and for many of them, it’s impossible to buy a house.”With his blue-collar support soft, Biden is looking to labor unions to help put him over the top in crucial swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately for Biden, his lead over Trump in union households has slipped: from 56% to 40% in 2020 exit polls to 50% to 41% early this year, according to an NBC News Poll.Rosenthal, who like Podhorzer used to be the AFL-CIO’s political director, said it was vital for unions to step up – and soon – emphasizing that they can make the crucial difference in battleground states where the victory margin can be just a few thousand votes. Rosenthal said the labor movement had a huge amount at stake, considering that Biden has been the most pro-union in memory – he has invited union organizers to the White House and appointed many pro-union officials to the National Labor Relations Board.“If Biden loses, and if he loses because he didn’t win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and if he doesn’t win those states because the union household vote isn’t where it should be, there will never be another Democratic candidate who will give a shit about the union movement,” Rosenthal said. “Why should they, if he can’t win in those critical states? There is way more at stake for the labor movement in this election than for the rest of the country.” More

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      Trump promised to scrap climate laws if US oil bosses donated $1bn – report

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      Donald Trump dangled a brazen “deal” in front of some of the top US oil bosses last month, proposing that they give him $1bn for his White House re-election campaign and vowing that once back in office he would instantly tear up Joe Biden’s environmental regulations and prevent any new ones, according to a bombshell new report.According to the Washington Post, the former US president made his jaw-dropping pitch, which the paper described as “remarkably blunt and transactional”, at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago home and club.In front of more than 20 executives, including from Chevron, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum, he promised to increase oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, remove hurdles to drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, and reverse new rules designed to cut car pollution. He would also overturn the Biden administration’s decision in January to pause new natural gas export permits which have been denounced as “climate bombs”.“You’ll get it on the first day,” Trump said, according to the Post, citing an unnamed dinner attendee.Trump’s exhortation to the oil executives that they were wealthy enough to pour $1bn into his campaign war-chest, at the same time pledging a U-turn on Biden’s efforts to combat the climate crisis, was immediately denounced on Wednesday by environmental groups.“$1bn for Trump, a devastating climate future for the rest of us,” said Pete Maysmith of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV).Christina Polizzi of Climate Power told the Guardian that Trump was “putting the future of the planet up for sale”.“He is in the pocket of big oil – he gave them $25bn in tax breaks in his first term – and now it’s clear he is willing to do whatever big oil wants in a potential second term.”The former president’s exchange with fossil fuel giants also engaged the concern of groups monitoring the influence of money in politics. Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (Crew), a non-partisan government watchdog, said the conversation, as reported by the Post, “certainly looks a lot like quid pro quo”.Libowitz said the encounter was “about as blatant as I’ve ever seen. Politicians often give a nudge and a wink, they don’t say raise a billion dollars for me and I’ll get rid of the regulations that you want.”He added that Crew’s legal team were looking into whether this rises to the high legal standard of bribery.Trump’s close relations to the oil industry, and his hostility to federal regulations designed to reduce emissions that exacerbate the climate crisis, are well-known and longstanding. With six months to go until the presidential election, however, he is stepping up his efforts to attract campaign donations from the sector.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump is also performing strongly in the polls. Having all but certainly secured the Republican nomination, Trump is often narrowly ahead of Joe Biden in surveys of the presidential race, including performing strongly in the key swing states that are vital to any candidate’s chances of victory. Trump’s solid performance comes despite a swath of legal woes, including currently being on trial in New York over an alleged hush-money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.For their part, executives in big oil companies have been preparing for a possible Trump second term by drafting executive orders designed to be ready to sign as soon as he returns to office. Politico reported this week that the executives have clubbed together to produce off-the-shelf policies on increasing natural gas exports, supercharging drilling and extending offshore oil leases.The interplay between Trump and the oil giants as the election approaches underlines the vast gulf between the former president and the current occupant of the White House. According to an analysis by a group of environmental groups including the Sierra Club and LCV, the Biden administration has taken more than 300 actions towards greater public health and clean energy, more than any other administration in US history.Those measures included the first major climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, which has propelled record investment in clean energy including solar and wind and increased sales of electric vehicles. US energy emissions are slowly declining, by some 3% this year.Even so, the US is extracting more oil and gas than ever, reaching almost 13m barrels of crude oil a day – more than double the production levels a decade ago. More

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      Florida workers brace for summer with no protections: ‘My body would tremble’

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      For Javier Torres and other workers whose jobs are conducted outdoors in south Florida, the heat is unavoidable. A new law recently signed by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, that prohibits any municipalities in the state from passing heat protections for workers ensures that it is likely to stay that way.Torres has seen a co-worker die from heatstroke and another rushed to the emergency room in his years of working in construction in south Florida. He has also fallen and injured himself due to heat exhaustion.“I work outdoors and have no choice but to work in the heat. I work often in painting and, in the majority of cases, we’re exposed to direct sun and we don’t have shade. Sometimes I feel dizzy and get headaches,” said Torres.He said employers rarely provide workers with water, leaving workers to ensure they bring enough water to work or find a hose to drink from.The effects of extreme heat on workers are only expected to worsen due to the climate crisis. Many parts of Florida experienced record heat last year. Orlando hit 100F (37.7C) in August breaking a record set in 1938. The National Weather Service recently issued its outlook for summer 2024, predicting Florida summer temperatures will be warmer than normal.“The heat can be very intense, especially as we get closer to summer,” added Torres. “What we want as workers who labor outdoors is to have water, shade and rest breaks to protect ourselves.”At the behest of agricultural industry lobbyists, DeSantis signed HB433 into law on 11 April, a bill scaling back child labor protections that also included an amendment prohibiting all local municipalities in Florida from enacting heat protections for workers.The exemption came in response to efforts by farm workers in Miami-Dade county to pass heat protections, including proper rest breaks, access to water and shade, as increasingly warming temperatures have expanded the days farm workers are exposed to heat.Ana Mejia, a farm worker, worked for 11 years at Costa Farms in south Florida where she said she experienced two serious heat stress incidents on the job. Costa Farms was included on the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s Dirty Dozen report of unsafe employers in 2024. Costa Farms declined to comment.“I worked outdoors during my entire time at Costa Farms in temperatures that quite often exceeded 100 degrees,” said Mejia. “I had headaches, sweat excessively, my body would start to shake and tremble. I started to feel dizzy and a lack of coordination, and this feeling of shock and desperation. It was a very bad experience.”She recounted having to be brought to onsite medical care, but only being given an electrolyte drink and finding no medical professional on site or called to help her.“The high standards of meeting productivity quotas per day combined with working in high temperatures is putting us in danger,” added Mejia. “The rest breaks are at the discretion of supervisors and often they don’t want to give rest breaks because it will reduce the productivity of the business.”There are currently no protections in the US for workers from heat. Only a handful of states such as California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Minnesota have passed any heat protections for workers.The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) is currently reviewing federal heat standard protections and issues fines against employers citing the general duty clause in cases where workers die due to heat stress, but worker groups have advocated that heat protections which include water, rest, shade, breaks and acclimatization are needed to save workers from heat illnesses and their lives.Up to 2,000 workers in the US die every year due to heat stress, according to a 2023 report by Public Citizen.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSeveral business groups are lobbying against heat protections for workers at the federal level, and lobbyists aggressively pushed lawmakers to pass the Florida heat exemption bill.Orlando Weekly reported on texts from corporate lobbyists to lawmakers urging them to pass the heat exemption bill before the end of the legislative session.“I haven’t texted you in weeks–HEAT cannot die,” wrote Carol Bowen, a lobbyist for the Associated Builders and Contractors in a text message on 7 March to the House speaker Paul Renner’s chief of staff Allison Carter, the day before the last day of the legislative session when the bill was ultimately passed. “The entire business community is in lock step on this. Thank you for your attention to this concern.”Ahead of a vote on the bill, the Florida chamber of commerce lobbyist Carolyn Johnson told Republican lawmakers their vote on the bill would be double-weighted on the How They Voted report the chamber sends to its members.Jeannie Economos, an organizer with the Farmworker Association of Florida, said worker advocacy groups opposing HB433 were hoping the clock would run out for the bill to get passed by the state legislature. Several labor and environmental groups sent letters imploring DeSantis to veto the bill.“It’s incomprehensible that people who live in Florida, and are supposed to represent the people of Florida, can vote against the health and safety of the workers that make this economy run, who were considered essential workers just a couple years ago and given PPE, are now treated like this, and not giving protection from extreme heat,” said Economos. “That makes no sense and it’s unconscionable.”She said worker advocacy groups in Florida were regrouping and planned on developing strategies on how to override the Florida law, while continuing to advocate for heat protections at the federal level and conducting heat stress trainings for outdoor workers to protect themselves.“For us right now, while HB433 is a setback to our campaign, we know the issue of extreme heat isn’t going away anytime soon,” said Oscar Londoño, executive director of the worker advocacy non-profit WeCount!, which has been pushing for heat protections for workers through its ¡Qué Calor! campaign. “We know that the issue is going to get even more and more relevant, and that workers will need to continue to do what is necessary to protect their lives on a job, whether that is through direct action, through workplace organizing, or through ongoing corporate campaign, workers will find a way to win the protection they deserve in Florida.” More

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      in US Politics

      Shawn Fain, president of the UAW: ‘Workers realized they’ve been getting screwed for decades’

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      From Amazon and UPS to Starbucks and Hollywood studios, organized labor is making a comeback in the US after decades of decline. Shawn Fain thinks he knows why: “Workers have realized they’ve been getting screwed for decades, and they’re fed up.”The United Auto Workers (UAW) president has emerged at the front of the pack of a new generation of labor leaders as a galvanizing voice in a critical year for the labor movement and American politics.A soft-spoken but unrelentingly blunt midwesterner, Fain has met the moment in his role as the union’s newly elected president. Having beaten the US’s big three automakers into a landmark new union contract, Fain’s members have been courted by both Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Fain has gone all in for the Democrats despite some reservations and the misgivings of some of his members.Now he faces bigger tests. The UAW is taking its fight to states that have long, successful records of seeing off union drives – and he must hold his new coalition together as the US enters a fractious election cycle that will pit worker against worker.The union boss’s political ascendancy was crowned by his recent appearance as a guest at Joe Biden’s State of Union address, where both he and the union were called out in a nationally-televised salute from the commander-in-chief.Sporting a new, closely cropped beard and wearing a dark business suit and tie for the Capitol occasion, Fain responded with a raised power fist, telegraphing in one succinct image how much organized labor’s message and tone have changed of late, along with their popularity.View image in fullscreenThe winning trajectory of the union and its new, class-conscious president have caught carmakers off guard, no more so than when Fain, 55, contrasts his workers’ declining wages with corporate share buybacks and the lavish compensation bestowed upon automotive CEOs.Not without irony, Fain’s ascent almost certainly wouldn’t have been possible but for the 2022 federal felony convictions of more than a dozen union officials, as well as three Stellantis executives, for fraud and corruption, including embezzlement of union training funds. A UAW dissident with near 30 years’ previous service as a Stellantis (formerly FCA and Chrysler) electrician in Kokomo, Indiana, Fain unseated the union’s long-entrenched leadership cabal in 2023, vowing to root out corruption and change what he viewed as the union’s overly accommodating posture toward their employers.Speaking recently with the Guardian in his office at the UAW’s Detroit headquarters – Solidarity House, a brutalist four-story structure built in the 1950s along a grim stretch of East Jefferson Avenue, overlooking the Detroit River – Fain without naming names derided previous leadership. “The corruption was one thing. But even prior to that. What they call ‘working together’, I call ‘company unionism’. All we witnessed out of that philosophy is losing plants, losing jobs. We watched over 20 years as 65 factories [owned by] the big three, disappeared. ‘Working together’ in the spirit of what I view it as would be when it’s a win-win for everybody. It’s not one-sided.”View image in fullscreenFain was a national bargaining negotiator during the Great Recession and the 2009 Chrysler bankruptcy. “I saw how the company really went after everything, took advantage of a bad situation while our workers bore the brunt of all that sacrifice. Moving forward, we’ve sat here for over a decade, watching the big three make massive profits. I ran for this reason, to change this union, to get us back to what it is supposed to be and hasn’t been in my lifetime. Right from the beginning, we had to set the tone and do things differently. We ran the contract campaign to define the narrative and define the issues. In the last decade, the [big three] companies made a quarter trillion dollars in profits. CEO pay went up 40% in the last four years. And our pay went backwards. So that was really setting the table.”Cleaning house at the union’s headquarters, Fain brought in new staff experienced in the use of social media, something that helped galvanize his campaign to lead the UAW. “I didn’t have the advantages that [predecessors] had because they were in power. They could fly all over the country on the union’s dime and visit plants under the guise of union business. People like me who were running had to take vacation [time] and go stand out at plant gates and hope to catch workers coming and going.”Fain turned to social media to interact with members all over the country. “We were doing this as a way to communicate with our members. But it turned into a lot more because social media brought in anyone that wanted to come in. The general public was paying attention, the news media paid attention. And I think it was really effective because when it got time to go on strike, 75% of Americans supported us.”The big hree were caught flat-footed by the fresh approach. “I think they just thought that it was talk,” Fain said. “They’re used to hearing talk. Companies were used to having their way, saying what they wanted and getting it. I don’t think they really knew how to handle leadership that wasn’t operating in that mode. I mean, our leaders in the past, they’d stand up and beat the podium and say, ‘We’re gonna fight, we’re gonna fight, fight, fight!’ and then when they got into negotiations, they’d roll over. Obviously, I don’t think they expected this and, let’s be honest, they didn’t expect me to be president.”View image in fullscreenBreaking with precedent, where just one of the trio of American legacy makers would be “targeted” for a strike, the UAW launched simultaneous strikes against all three, then shrewdly conserved strike funds by closing individual plants rather than all at once. The 46-day “Stand Up Strike,” begun after contract negotiations with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis collapsed, ended in a resounding victory for the UAW. Since then, with the wind at its back, the union has taken the fight to the many non-union auto manufacturing plants dotting the country, including many in southern, so-called “right to work” states.News last month that 96% of unionized workers at Daimler Trucks North America plants in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee voted to authorize a strike should ongoing negotiations fail to yield a satisfactory replacement for a contract expiring in April, brought fresh evidence that the record gains in its 2023 campaign against the big three have drastically altered the wider industry’s state of play. So did the UAW’s successful drives to have elections held at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tennessee, and at Mercedes-Benz’ Vance, Alabama plants.Fain is bullish on the possibility of extending the union’s gains to non-union automobile factories. Notable among the Detroit settlements’ broader impact has been how, in efforts to avert unionization, several non-union carmakers, including Toyota, Honda, Tesla, Nissan, Subaru, Volkswagen, and Hyundai hurried to give workers unsolicited raises and, in some cases, improved benefits and eliminated the two-tier wage structures, where new hires, often classified as temporary, are paid substantially less than veteran workers.Fain said he believes these companies all have more to give, as does Tesla, which, despite recent share losses, has been one of the world’s most profitable makers of electric vehicles. Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, is a vociferous foe of unionization. Recently, following a complaint filed against his SpaceX company, the rocket and satellite maker joined Amazon, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s in suing the NLRB, challenging the constitutionality of the almost 90-year-old agency.View image in fullscreenFain’s overarching optimism is grounded, he insists. “Workers have realized they’ve been getting screwed for decades, and they’re fed up … If Volkswagen workers had Ford’s [new] agreement, they would have got $23,000 profit-sharing checks this year. Instead, they got zero … We made a big deal in the big three contract fight that these companies made a quarter trillion dollars in profits in the last decade. But the Japanese and Korean six [with US factories] made $480bn. The German three made $460bn in profits worldwide. Toyota alone made $256bn profit in the last decade. Their profit margins are obscenely more gross than they were at the big three, and yet their workers get less. I truly believe we’re going to see a huge shift this year. I think we’re gonna win in the south.” And Musk? A somewhat tougher nut to crack, Fain concedes, adding: “He’s the epitome of everything that’s wrong with this world.”Not one to mince words, Fain’s bold rhetoric harkens to a long-gone era, his regular use of stark terms like “billionaire class” recalling, for this reporter, childhood remembrances of elderly trade unionist relations recounting 1930s Labor Day marches down New York’s Fifth Avenue. Fain credits his old-school class consciousness to the experience of his grandparents – poor people who emigrated from the south during the Depression to the north to work in the newly unionized automobile industry, affording them a middle-class life. He also notes the importance of his faith. An unthinking churchgoer as a youth, he said adulthood brought a renewed interest in religion. “I started reading the Bible. I pray every day when I wake up. I do a daily reading. And everything I read about it, no matter what religion someone is, whether you’re Muslim or Christian, whatever your belief is, all religion speaks to one thing, it’s love of your fellow human being. With the greatest excess in the history of the world, why don’t we work with a mindset of what works for human beings?”What he doesn’t have faith in is the likelihood that corporations will use technology to make life better for his members. “[Legendary UAW leader] Walter Reuther [who died in a 1970 plane crash] had this famous saying, ‘We have to master technology, not let it master us,’” said Fain.“As we have advancements in technology, it should be making life easier for people and workers’ lives. But what happens? When technology advances, the companies find ways to eliminate jobs, close plants, exploit workers in other places. And then the people that are left with a job, they want them to work longer and harder … The companies have to realize they’ll still make their profits; government should be subsidizing some of this. And everyone wins in this equation. Workers have better lives, working class people have better lives. The companies are profitable. The money’s there. This can all happen but let’s go back to the central issue of this. It’s corporate greed and a miniscule amount of people, the billionaire class, who want to concentrate all the wealth in their hands and screw everybody else to do it.”View image in fullscreenFain objects strongly to those who would place the blame for rising car prices on union contracts. “Another myth. Five to 7% of the cost of a car is labor. [Carmakers] could give us everything they gave us in that contract and not raise the price of cars a penny and still make massive profits. Why are they not saying what $20 billion in [additional] corporate dividends and stock buybacks cost them? That affects the bottom line more. That money somehow just disappears and doesn’t count, right? All they want to talk about is our wages and our benefits. People forget, over the last four years, the price of vehicles went up 35% on average. But our wages didn’t go up. Our benefits didn’t get better. Nothing changed for us. [Price hikes are] because of two things: corporate greed and consumer price gouging. They just pile all those costs on and then try to blame the workers for it.”A latter day rise in the union’s long-sagging fortunes – its membership dwindled from 1.5m in the 1970s to its current 380,000 – has been seen by some hopeful observers as early evidence of a burgeoning reversal of the downward trend that began with the punishing defeat of the air traffic controllers’ union early in the Reagan administration. In hindsight, Fain, who was a teenager at the time, suggests “all labor, not just union labor, should have come together then. I wish they would have. Because what’s happened over the last 40 years? Reagan and the ‘greed is good’ idea and the new philosophy of the rich getting richer. Forty years of going backwards for the working class … people understand that they’ve been left behind. Workers are now scraping to get by, while working multiple jobs, seven days a week, 12 hours a day and living paycheck to paycheck. That’s not a life. When I was a kid it didn’t matter if you worked at a grocery store, or if you worked at an assembly plant, a one-person income could sustain a family. That’s not the case anymore … workers, union and non-union, have to harness the power that we have and take back our lives.”Asked about the parallels between Reagan and Trump, charismatic presidents who quietly championed the interests of wealth and organized capital while retaining a strong following among the working class, Fain acknowledged the undeniable presence of a voluble Maga contingent among autoworkers including members of his own union. But he played down the political division within the ranks.Trump, a lifelong anti-union voice, has singled out the labor organization and Fain, in particular, for derision. Calling the union corrupt and Fain “a weapon of mass destruction” for jobs, Trump traveled to Detroit during the high-profile strike to a staged rally purportedly in support of auto workers but opposed to the union. Held at a non-union plant that charged his campaign $20,000 for its use, the event featured a crowd containing no actual auto workers, anti-union or otherwise.In January, Fain, who has said Trump represents the billionaire class and “doesn’t give a damn about working-class people” endorsed Biden’s re-election bid on the union’s behalf. “As I tell our members, ‘Look, this isn’t a Democrat-Republican issue. This isn’t a party issue. This wasn’t my opinion. Let’s look at their own words and their own actions.’” Fain credits Biden and Democrats with the federal government’s rescue of the domestic industry during the 2008-2009 recession, as the newly-installed Obama administration pro-actively addressed the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler. “They worked on a path forward for [the US car business] to come out of this and to live, they battled for the American worker. Trump, at the same time, was blaming the workers for everything that was wrong with these companies.”Last Fall “[f]or the first time in American history, a sitting US president [Biden] joined workers on the picket line. Trump had that opportunity in 2019, when GM was on strike for 40 days. He never said a word about the strike. He never did a damn thing to support it.”Auto worker support could well be critical in determining the allegiance of Michigan’s electoral college delegates, as well as those in other swing states. There’s no doubting where Fain thinks their best interest lie. “Joe Biden has a lifelong history of serving others and in standing with working-class people. President Trump has a lifetime history of serving himself and the billionaire class. And so there’s a stark contrast there. When you look at those things, the decision for us is very easy about who has our interests at heart. And who doesn’t. Sure, some of our members are still going to vote for Trump. But at the end the day we have to put the facts out there, we have to talk to our members about that and hope like hell we don’t have another disaster for four years.” More

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      in US Politics

      He voted Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020. He’s the kind of voter candidates are desperate to swing

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      For the past 35 years, Scott Richardson and his wife, Theresa, have run a small, cheerful restaurant and catering business outside Philadelphia. Occasionally Yours has long been a community meeting spot in the town of Swarthmore. More recently, it has taken on another, unexpected, role – on the stage of national politics.Richardson is an independent-minded small business owner in a key swing state – exactly the kind of person US presidential candidates are desperate to woo. In 2016, when Pennsylvania went Republican for the first time since 1988, he voted for Donald Trump. Then, in 2020, dismayed by Trump’s Covid response, he switched to Joe Biden, in no uncertain terms. Richardson’s vote tracked how the state went in both elections.This year, polls show Biden and Trump evenly matched in Pennsylvania, with approval ratings for both men at historic lows. And Richardson himself isn’t ecstatic about the options.“I just don’t understand how in a country of 300 and whatever we are, 50, 60 million people, that these are the two gentlemen that we have to choose from,” he says. “I just don’t understand how we can be in this position, but we are.”But he is clear on one thing: he’s sticking with Biden.“In 2016, I voted for Trump because I was ready to have it mixed up – you know, just turn things upside down,” he says. But “my definition of turning things upside down and what actually happened are two completely different scenarios.” Trump, he says, was “inept” when it came to handling the pandemic, doing far too little to confront it even when it was clear it was coming. In Richardson’s view, Biden got handed a “crappy, crappy economy” and has slowly been getting the US back on its feet.In July 2020, Richardson told the Washington Post it was now his “life’s mission” to swing voters from Trump to Biden. A month later, he was on stage, virtually, at the Democratic national convention, describing what his business had endured during Covid. “We’ve literally had to reinvent our business several times since the beginning of the year,” he told Eva Longoria, the host on that August evening. “To be honest with you, I’m just frustrated.” He wished Americans could just unite “on this one issue” and forge ahead. Once again, plenty of Richardson’s fellow Pennsylvanians seemed to share his view: the state went blue.As their 2024 rematch approaches, Biden and Trump are dueling for Pennsylvania for a second time. The result, as ever, could hinge on perceptions of the economy. And while some key figures look good for Biden – unemployment below 4%, the stock market breaking records, the rate of inflation way down from its 2022 peak – for many Americans, those numbers haven’t translated into a sense of financial wellbeing.Richardson has never been wedded to a particular party: he grew up in a deeply Republican area of upstate New York, spent years as an independent, registered Republican to support Bob Dole in the 90s, then switched to Democratic to back Barack Obama. Now both parties are vying for people like him.When it comes to the economy, “I don’t believe in fast change,” he says. The economy “couldn’t get much worse than when [Biden] took over”. But now he’s seeing “slow growth, consistent employment numbers”.He has seen inflation gradually decline at the smaller suppliers he uses. “Lettuce was $3 for a nice beautiful head, and then during the inflation it maybe went for $4.50. And now it’s like $3.25.” That doesn’t mean things are easy, especially for people with low incomes: “I mean, you’re going into the grocery store, it used to cost you $100. Now it costs you $150.”Still, Occasionally Yours is thriving. As the world reopened, customers returned to the restaurant, and demand for catering grew. “People got really, really anxious to have parties,” he says. Sales last year were “through the roof better” – up more than 20%, he says.Richardson acknowledges that his own experience isn’t necessarily representative; different industries experience different headwinds. “But it seems to me that people are still spending money.”He credits much of his own business’s recent success not to the economy but to its capacity for change. Over the years, Occasionally Yours has seen a succession of redesigns and menu updates. “People say ‘if you build it, they will come’,” he says. “My experience is if you put an avocado on it, they will come.”He thinks some of his pro-Trump friends with small businesses are misdirecting their anger at Biden, when their real enemy might be big-box stores. “Maybe you’re blaming factors on politics that maybe aren’t as big a factor in your life,” he says, “but the news tells you that they are.”There are some areas, he says, where politics can have a big impact. Richardson has been most impressed by the bipartisan infrastructure bill that Biden pushed.“I’ve been to Florida, up into New England and over into Ohio and across the north – there is not one state, one county, anywhere I traveled that doesn’t have a damn bridge torn apart, or something being fixed,” he says. “It’s something that, in my opinion, our country needed for many, many years and now it’s actually getting done – and those are great-paying friggin’ jobs.” He has questions about how the country will pay for it, but “a country, you know – you need to invest in it in order for it to get better”.View image in fullscreenRichardson has also benefited from a rare experience: he’s met the president in person. In June 2020, he got a call from the then candidate’s team asking if he’d like to join a roundtable for small business owners. He agreed – not because he was a particular fan, but because “who the hell wouldn’t? What an opportunity.”His first words to Biden were “I voted for Trump in 2016”. “And I believe what [Biden] said to me was, ‘We all have our crosses to bear.’”At the meeting, Richardson was touched by Biden’s reaction to a woman’s story of grief at losing someone to Covid. Biden told the woman: “I can tell you from personal experience: there will be a time in your life when the thought of your loved one will bring a smile to your face instead of a tear to your eye.” He’d heard Biden say it before, “but when you’re right there listening to him and how sincere he was … from that point on I was voting on the character of the man,” Richardson says. “I’ve met other politicians and, to me, they were phoney as hell.”That roundtable led to his appearance at the DNC, filmed from the restaurant. “I mean, I was nervous nervous, heart racing, I’m gonna have a panic attack type of thing.” Afterward, there was some political backlash: the restaurant got a few one-star reviews from strangers, and Richardson received a few profanity-laced phone calls. Still, “it was something that I’ll never forget, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”Now, after 35 years of working every weekend, Richardson is ready to pass the baton: three and a half decades to the day after the Richardsons signed the lease to open their restaurant, a new business is taking over the location. The Richardsons are retiring.In the meantime, he’s hoping not to see the dawn of a new Trump era – in addition to the former president’s handling of the economy and Covid, Richardson is disgusted by his business practices. “He played all these games for so many years. And because of his ego, he gets drawn into being president, which is the maximum ego trip. It exposed all his private matters … I think it’s gonna come back to haunt him.” More