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    Booker makes a stand against Trump – and doesn’t stop for 25 hours

    “Would the senator yield for a question?” asked Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.Senator Cory Booker, who on a long day’s journey into night had turned himself into the fighter that many Democrats were yearning for, replied with a wry smile: “Chuck Schumer, it’s the only time in my life I can tell you no.”But Schumer wasn’t taking no for an answer. “I just wanted to tell you, a question, do you know you have just broken the record? Do you know how proud this caucus is of you? Do you know how proud America is of you?”New Jersey’s first Black senator had just shattered the record for the longest speech in Senate history, delivered by South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond, an arch segregationist who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.In the normally sombre Senate chamber, around 40 Democrats rose to their feet in effusive applause. A few hundred people in the public gallery, where the busts of 20 former vice-presidents gazed down from marble plinths, erupted in clapping and cheering and whooping. The senator took a tissue and mopped perspiration from his forehead.Since Booker’s obstruction did not occur during voting on any bill it was not technically a filibuster. But it marked the first time during Donald Trump’s second term that Democrats have deliberately clogged up Senate business.Indeed, after 72 days in which Democrats have appeared lame and leaderless, Booker stood up and did something. He said his constituents had challenged him to think differently and take risks and so he did. In an attention economy so often dominated by the forces of Maga, his all-nighter offered a ray of hope in the darkness.Some Democrats have desperately tried to be authentic with cringeworthy TikTok videos such as a “Choose Your Fighter” parody. Booker, by contrast, went old school: one man standing and talking for hour after hour on the Senate floor in a display of endurance reminiscent of a famous scene in the 1939 film Mr Smith Goes to Washington starring Jimmy Stewart.It had all begun at 7pm on Monday when, wearing a US flag pin on a dark suit, white shirt and black tie as if dressed for the funeral of the republic, Booker vowed: “I rise tonight with the intention of getting in some good trouble. I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able.“I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis … These are not normal times in America and they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate. The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.”What followed was a tour de force of physical stamina. The 55-year-old, who played tight end for Stanford University’s American football team, asked a Senate page to take away his chair so he was not tempted to sit down, which is barred by the Senate rules. The chair could be seen pushed back against a wall.Above Booker the words “Novus Ordo Seclorum” – a Latin phrase meaning “a new order of the ages” or “a new order of the centuries” – were inscribed in the Senate chamber above a relief depicting a bare chested hero wrestling a snake.Booker leaned on his desk and sipped from a glass of water. He shifted from foot to foot or paced to keep the blood circulating in his legs. He wiped away sweat with a white handkerchief. He plucked a tissue from a blue-grey tissue box, blew his nose and dropped it into a bin. He persisted.Alexandra De Luca, vice president of communications at the liberal group American Bridge, tweeted: “I worked for Cory Booker on the campaign trail and (and I say this with love) that man drinks enough caffeine on a normal day to stay up 72 hours. This could go a while.”Booker may also be a great advert for veganism. He could be jocular, bantering with old friends in the Senate about sport and state rivalries. He could be emotional, his voice cracking and his eyes on the verge of tears, especially when a letter from the family of a person with Parkinson’s disease reminded him of his late father.He could also be angry, channeling the fury of those who feel their beloved country slipping away. Yet to the end his mind was clear and his voice was strong. This was also a masterclass in political rhetoric, which Schumer rightly praised for its “crystalline brilliance”.There were recurring themes: Trump’s economic chaos and rising prices; billionaires exerting ever greater influence; Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, slashing entire government programmes without consent from Congress and inflicting pain on children, military veterans and other vulnerable groups.Booker read dozens and dozens of letters from what he called “terrified people” with “heartbreaking” stories. As the day wore on, he quoted from a fired USAid employee who told a devastating story of broken dreams and warned: “The beacon of our democracy grows dim across the globe.”The senator also warned of tyranny: Trump disappearing people from the streets without due process; bullying the media and trying to create press corps like Vladimir Putin or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; seizing more executive power and putting democracy itself in grave peril.A few times he inverted former president John F Kennedy’s famous phrase to warn that today it’s no longer “ask not what your country can do for you. It’s what you can do for Donald Trump.”He acknowledged that the public want Democrats to do more. But he insisted that can only go so far and, as during the civil rights movement, the American people must rise up. He frequently referred to a “moral moment” and invoked the late congressman John Lewis, famed for causing “good trouble”.“This is not who we are or how we do things in America,” Booker said. “How much more can we endure before we, as a collective voice, say enough is enough? Enough is enough. You’re not going to get away with this.”The Senate chamber contains 100 wooden desks and brown leather chairs on a tiered semicircular platform. For most of the marathon nearly all the seats were empty and only a handful of reporters were in the press gallery.But Democrat Chris Murphy accompanied Booker throughout his speech. “We’ve passed the 15-hour mark,” Booker observed. “I want to thank Senator Murphy because he’s been here at my side the entire time.”Other Democrats took turns to show up in solidarity, asking if Booker would accept a question. He agreed, reading from a note to ensure he got the wording right: “I yield for a question while retaining the floor.”Occasionally he would quip: “I have the floor. So much power, it’s going to my head!”Just after 10.30am Schumer, the minority leader, told Booker: “Your strength, your fortitude, your clarity has just been nothing short of amazing and all of America is paying attention to what you’re saying. All of America needs to know there’s so many problems, the disastrous actions of this administration.”They discussed Medicaid cuts before Booker responded: “You heaped so many kind things on me. But never before in the history of America has a man from Brooklyn said so many complimentary things about a man in Newark.”Angela Alsobrooks, the first Black senator from Maryland, entered the chamber, caught Booker’s eye and raised a clenched fist in a shared act of resistance.As Booker approached the 24-hour mark, most Senate Democrats took their seats and Democrats from the House of Representatives, including minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, sat or stood in the chamber. The public and press galleries swelled.Booker once again channelled Lewis, the civil rights hero. “I don’t know what John Lewis would say, but John Lewis would do something. He would say something. What we will have to repent for is not the words and violent actions for bad people, but the appalling silence and inaction of good people. This is our moral moment.”As Booker closed in on Thurmond’s record, Murphy noted that this speech was very different. “Today you are standing not in the way of progress but of retreat,” he told his friend.Booker commented: “I could break this record of the man who tried to stop the rights upon which I stand. I’m not here, though, because of his speech; I’m here despite his speech. I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people were more powerful.”Even when the record was beaten he carried on. “I want to go a little bit past this and then I’m going to deal with some of the biological urgencies I’m feeling,” he said.Finally, after 25 hours and four minutes, Booker declared: “This is a moral moment. It’s not left or right. It’s right or wrong. Madam President, I yield the floor.”Again the chamber erupted in cheers and Democrats mobbed their new unofficial leader. No one who was there will ever forget it. Booker had delivered a vivid portrait of a great nation breaking promises to its people, betraying overseas allies and sliding off a cliff towards authoritarianism. He had also made a persuasive case that an inability to do everything should not undermine an attempt to do something.His was a primal scream of resistance. More

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    US House Democrat blasts Trump for using ‘antisemitism’ to attack universities

    The representative Jerry Nadler of New York has slammed Donald Trump’s crackdown on American universities in the name of fighting antisemitism, saying that withholding federal funding from schools will “not make Jewish students safer”.In a statement issued on Tuesday, the Democratic representative said he condemned Trump’s “latest attacks on higher education cloaked under the guise of fighting antisemitism”.“Once again, the president is weaponizing the real pain American Jews face to advance his desire to wield control over the truth-seeking academic institutions that stand as a bulwark against authoritarianism,” Nadler said.Last month, the Trump administration pulled $400m in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University over what it alleged to be the college’s failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment on campus tied to the pro-Palestinian campus protests of the last 18 months.Several weeks later, the university agreed to a series of changes put forth by the Trump administration as a pre-condition for restoring the funding.In recent weeks, the Trump administration has warned at least 60 other universities of possible action over alleged failure to comply with federal civil rights laws regarding antisemitism. On Monday, it announced a review of $9bn in federal contracts and grants awarded to Harvard University, over similar allegations that it failed to address issues of antisemitism on campus.In his statement on Tuesday, Nadler said that “withholding funding from Columbia and, potentially, Harvard will not make Jewish students safer”.“Cutting funding to programs that work to cure cancer and make other groundbreaking discoveries will not make Jewish students safer,” he said. “Impounding congressionally appropriated funding will not make Jewish students safer.”“Trump’s ‘review’ is part of a larger effort to silence universities and intimidate those who challenge the Maga agenda,” the representative added, describing it as “a dangerous and politically motivated move that risks stifling free thought and academic inquiry”.Nadler continued: “Make no mistake. Trump’s actions are not rooted in genuine concern for combatting hate. If Trump were truly committed to fighting antisemitism, he would not have crippled the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the only agency specifically tasked with enforcing anti-discrimination laws at our nation’s educational institutions.”The administration’s campaign to weaken universities perceived as bastions of leftism, along with Columbia’s apparent willingness to accept Trump’s terms for restoring funding, has prompted anxiety that academic freedom in the US is facing an unprecedented crisis.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We cannot allow Trump’s authoritarian tactics to prevail – this is not the America we want to live in, nor is it the America we need,” Nadler’s statement said.He urged US universities to reject demands from the Trump administration and to “fight back against these hostile acts”. Experts have pointed out that Columbia had strong grounds to sue in order to stop the cuts, and have expressed surprise that the university opted not to pursue them.“If necessary, these issues must be litigated in federal court to put an end to the illegal and unconstitutional actions taken by the Trump administration,” Nadler said. More

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    House revolt over Republican bid to stop new parents from voting by proxy

    An attempt by Republican leaders to stop new parents from voting by proxy sparked a bipartisan mutiny in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, during which a small group of GOP lawmakers joined with all Democrats to obstruct a key procedural motion and paralyze the chamber.The revolt was the first legislative setback Republicans have faced since Donald Trump returned to the White House with the GOP holding a slim majority in Congress’s lower chamber. It also delayed consideration of House speaker Mike Johnson’s legislative agenda for the week, which included a bill to stop federal judges from issuing nationwide injunctions – as several have done for Trump’s executive orders – and to require proof of citizenship to vote.Fueling the split was an attempt by the Republican Anna Paulina Luna and the Democrat Brittany Pettersen to force consideration of a measure allowing new parents to temporarily designate someone else to vote in their place. House leaders attempted an unusual parliamentary tactic to prevent the proposal from going forward, but were blocked by the votes of all 213 Democrats and nine Republicans.“I think that today is a pretty historical day for the entire conference. It’s showing that the body has decided that parents deserve a voice in Washington,” Luna said after the vote, though it remains unclear when the chamber will consider allowing proxy voting.Cradling her infant son, Pettersen referred to a fellow lawmaker who just announced she was pregnant: “I’m really excited to think that she will not go through what we went through on trying to make sure that we’re representing our constituents and taking care of our baby.”“It’s all worth it – changing Congress for the better,” the Colorado lawmaker added.The House’s then Democratic leadership allowed lawmakers to vote remotely after Covid broke out, but Republicans ended that policy after they took control of the chamber two years ago. In an interview with National Public Radio last week, Johnson described himself and the GOP as “pro-family” but said he opposed a return of proxy voting.“We want to make it as easy as possible for young parents to be able to participate in the process,” the speaker said. “But proxy voting, in my view, is unconstitutional.”Pettersen and Luna had managed to attract 218 signatures, including 12 Republicans, to a discharge petition, which forces a vote on a bill even if leadership objects. In response, GOP lawmakers on Friday inserted language blocking the petition in a rule that would have to pass the House in order to begin consideration of the bills targeting nationwide injunctions and requiring proof of citizenship to vote.“Congress is defined as ‘act of coming together and meeting’. I’ve never voted by proxy, because I believe it undermines the fabric of that sacred act of convening,” said the Republican Virginia Foxx, the chair of the rules committee, who added she feared the measure would pave the way for a return of universal proxy voting if Democrats retake control.“I know there’s a new laptop class in America that seems to operate increasingly in a virtual space, but that’s simply not a fact of life for most American workers, and I believe Congress should live by that standard.”Elected in 2022 to a Florida gulf coast district, Luna was a member of the far-right House Freedom caucus, but reportedly left on Monday after several of her counterparts backed leadership’s efforts to block her petition. In a speech on the House floor, Luna called herself “one of the most conservative members of this body” but said she viewed the issue as important enough to risk upending the House’s business for the week.“For almost two years now in this cause, I’ve met with leadership, and I’ve exhausted all tools in my legislative toolkit to to be able to bring this to the floor,” she said. “For a while we’ve had the majority, and we’ve had the ability to bring legislation to the floor on election integrity and also to call out rogue judges, and yet they chose at this point in time to tie this discharge petition killer to this rule that would also permanently paint me and the members supporting it.”The episode was reminiscent of the infighting that gripped the House GOP during Joe Biden’s presidency, which climaxed when a small group of Republicans collaborated with the Democrats to oust Kevin McCarthy as House speaker.Democratic lawmakers, who are still reeling from their party’s underwhelming performance in last November’s elections, broke into applause in the House chamber after the rule was voted down. The House then announced that no further votes were expected for the remainder of the week, though Pettersen said that her petition must be voted on by Thursday, raising the possibility that lawmakers will reassemble. More

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    Cory Booker holds marathon Senate speech to warn of Trump’s ‘harmful’ policies

    Cory Booker, the Democratic US senator from New Jersey, has embarked on a marathon speech on the Senate floor to warn of what he called the “grave and urgent” danger that Donald Trump’s presidential administration poses to democracy and the American people.Booker began his speech at 7pm on Monday night and passed the 20-hour mark with barely a break in speaking at 3 pm on Tuesday afternoon.“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able,” Booker said near the start of his speech. “I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our nation is in crisis.”Booker said that he has heard endless stories of “pain and fear” from constituents who are both Democrats and Republicans due to the Trump administration’s policies.“Institutions that are special in America, that are unique in our country are being recklessly – and I would say unconstitutionally – affected, attacked and even shattered,” Booker said.“In just 71 days the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety, financial stability, the core foundations of our democracy and even our aspirations as a people for, from our highest offices, a sense of common decency.“These are not normal times in America and they should not be treated as such. I can’t allow this body to continue without doing something. The threats to America’s democracy are grave and urgent.”Booker’s speech is not technically a filibuster as he is not trying to run down the Senate’s time to prevent a piece of legislation from passing.Instead, he has used his speaking slot to decry the Trump administration’s spending cuts, its attempt to abolish the Department of Education, the president’s attempts to bypass the judicial system and the removal of people from the US who speak out against the administration.Booker’s speech has been supported with reams of quotes from speeches by the late American politicians John McCain and John Lewis, as well as excerpts from newspaper articles.Some of the senator’s fellow Democrats have helped support him during his monologues, with several asking questions that have allowed Booker to have a break without yielding the floor.The Democratic Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, was the first to pose a question to his New Jersey colleague, and he praised Booker for his “strength and conviction”.“You’re taking the floor tonight to bring up all these inequities that will hurt people, that will so hurt the middle class, that will so hurt poor people, that will hurt America, hurt our fiscal conditions, as you document,” Schumer said in his own question to Booker.“Just give us a little inkling of the strength – give us a little feeling for the strength and conviction that drive you to do this unusual taking of the floor for a long time to let the people know how bad these things are going to be.”At one point, Booker spoke about the need for bipartisanship and mentioned a recent dinner he had with Ted Cruz, the arch-conservative Republican senator from Texas. Cruz is no stranger to marathon speeches, having spoken for more than 21 hours in 2013 in an attempt to filibuster an expansion of Medicaid eligibility. At one point, Cruz read from Green Eggs and Ham, the Dr Seuss children’s book.Around his 20th hour of speaking, Booker offered an apology to his fellow Democrats for the current political climate, saying: “I confess that I’ve been inadequate. That the Democrats have been responsible for allowing the rise of this demagogue.”Booker is getting close to the all-time Senate record. In 1957, Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of the same year. More

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    Senate Republicans consider joining Democrats to oppose Trump over tariffs

    On the eve of Donald Trump’s so-called “liberation day” for tariffs, a handful of Senate Republicans are debating whether to defy the president and join Democrats to stop the US from imposing levies on Canadian imports.The resolution, offered by the Democratic senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, would terminate the emergency order that Trump is using to justify tariffs against Canada, citing the flow of fentanyl across the US’s northern border. The vote is largely symbolic – the House is not expected to take up the measure – but several defections would amount to a rare and notable rebuke of the president by his own party.Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, which shares a border with Canada, told reporters on Monday night that imposing tariffs on Canada was a “huge mistake” that would cause major “disruption in the economies of both countries”. The senator, one of the few Republicans with a history of breaking ranks, indicated her support for the “intent” of the resolution and suggested that she would likely lend her vote as well.Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, has co-sponsored the legislation. Meanwhile, several other Republican senators, including Thom Tillis of North Carolina, have expressed concern over the impact of tariffs on Canadian goods, set to go into effect on 2 April.Republican leaders on Tuesday were racing to keep their senators in line, as Trump moves quickly to upend the global trading system. In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump lashed out at Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, and delivered an all-caps demand that Senate Republicans vote to keep the national emergency in effect so we can “finish the job”.“Don’t let the Democrats have a Victory,” Trump wrote. “It would be devastating for the Republican Party and, far more importantly, for the United States.”In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday, Kaine said Trump’s tariffs on Canada amounted to the “largest sales tax ever in the history of the United States” and were based on claims of a “fake” emergency at the northern border. The senator pointed to recent congressional testimony by Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who cited fentanyl as a top threat to US national security but acknowledged that Canada was not a significant source of trafficking into the country.“It is an invented rationale to allow the president to do what he wants to do, which is use tariffs to collect revenues so that he can use that revenue to pay for a big tax cut for the rich,” Kaine said. He was hopeful a strong bipartisan show of support “could have an effect on curbing the president’s behavior”.A vote on the resolution could come as early as Tuesday afternoon, but may happen on Wednesday as Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, delivers a marathon speech on the floor to protest – and draw attention to – the Trump administration’s tumultuous opening months.In the CBC interview, Kaine said he was still working to get the support of all 47 Democrats, while indicating that he expected to win a handful of Republican votes.Trump – a self-described “tariff man” who believes levies are the answer to many economic woes – is also challenging Republican orthodoxy on free trade, leaving a handful of GOP senators torn between swallowing a policy they disagree with or opposing the president.He has moved aggressively to slap tariffs on allies, neighbors and top trading partners, provoking retaliation and shaking global markets. Trump has said he would roll out the new tariffs on Wednesday, claiming the taxes on imports from other countries will “liberate” Americans from their reliance on foreign goods.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFears of a global trade war have hurt consumer confidence and caused wild swings in the stock markets. They have also hurt Americans’ assessment of Trump’s job performance as it relates to the economy, once one of his biggest strengths. Just four in 10 Americans have a positive view of Trump’s handling of the economy and trade, according to a poll from the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research.Meanwhile, Americans are increasingly concerned about the implementation of sweeping tariffs on foreign goods, according to a survey conducted recently for the Guardian.House Republican leaders have pre-empted any effort to reverse Trump’s controversial tariffs on Canada, as well as Mexico and China, by slipping language into their stopgap funding bill, which passed earlier this month. The provision effectively removed the House’s ability to undo the tariffs by terminating Trump’s declaration of a national emergency.The Senate majority leader, John Thune, has argued that tariffs are an important negotiating tool Trump can use to combat fentanyl traffic into the US. He said this week that the case for tariffs remains “the same”. He was expected to publicly urge Senate Republicans to oppose Kaine’s resolution in a floor speech on Tuesday, according to the Daily Caller. More

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    Democrats still misunderstand working-class voters – to their peril | Dustin Guastella

    Progressives have plenty of bad ideas that should be axed, but populism without an economic promise is a bloodless bleat.It wasn’t long ago that Democratic party moderates expressed ambivalence toward the working class. In 2016, Chuck Schumer summed up the party’s attitude by predicting that “for every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia”.What a difference a decade makes. In a recent report titled Renewing the Democratic Party the thinktank Third Way warns: “For the first time since the mid-20th century, the central fault line of American politics is neither race and ethnicity nor gender but rather class.” The policy shop even organized a meeting of heavy-weight Democratic party leaders to develop a new strategy for how they might win back the working class.Can moderate Democrats, plotting their path back to power in Loudoun county, Virginia (the richest county in the US), convincingly make a populist pivot?While Third Way’s advice, collected in a widely circulated memo, has some useful insights, more than anything it demonstrates establishment Democrats’ failure to understand the nature of working-class woes. In fact, the revival of populism, left and right, can be understood as a revolt against the world Third Way helped midwife. After all, they embraced an economic model – defined by free trade, deindustrialization, mass global migration and stagnant wages – that was responsible for the left’s breakup with the working class in the first place.Working-class culture clashThird Way’s first takeaway from the election is that Democrats are culturally disconnected from the working class. And they’re right. They advocate moving away from identity politics, insist that candidates use “plain language”, “avoid jargon”, reject “fringe positions” and eschew “overly moralistic or condescending messaging”. This makes sense. Yet newfound fears of identity politics, or the excessive influence of the foundation-funded non-profit left, reflect a certain amnesia. Moreover, turning the ship around is easier said than done.It’s no secret that sanctimonious political correctness, and preachy “social-justice” rhetoric have served as a major means to sideline progressive critics of the prevailing economic order. In fact, long before Hillary Clinton infamously wondered whether breaking up the big banks would “end racism”, her husband’s campaign architects – paradigmatic Third Way Democrats – pursued the same line of attack against critics of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). Those who didn’t want jobs shipped to the lowest-wage corners of the globe were labeled “racists”. It’s not a coincidence, then, that the rise of identity politics, and even “wokeness”, happened in tandem with the ascent of globalization as championed by Third Way adherents.As factories closed and millions of jobs were drained out of the US, the economic and social power of the working class fell into a steep decline. By the mid-1990s non-profits and thinktanks replaced labor unions as the major source of political influence on the left. With unions taking a backseat, politicking within the Democratic party took on a more elite character. Fights over slices of the economic pie shifted from the vertical axis – between labor and big business, between the rich and the poor – to the horizontal, between cross-class “groups”, unfailingly represented by well-staffed professional advocacy organizations.This all had the convenient effect of rendering blue-collar concerns practically invisible to elite Democrats. While trade, immigration and dissension over cultural issues have long appeared at the top of lists of concerns for non-college educated workers, Democrats wouldn’t listen. Instead they embraced liberal professionals as the vanguard of the New Democrat movement. Welcoming the influence of the Brahmin caste. Meanwhile, liberal cultural institutions (the media, the academy, the arts) increasingly applied downward pressure on blue-collar workers to embrace new values. That is, the values of the elite.Consider that, for the first half of this decade, there were wall-to-wall injunctions from the largest corporations in retail, tech and even finance – not to mention virtually all major media conglomerates – to embrace liberal identity politics, “diversity, equity and inclusion”, and cosmopolitan sexual ethics. Looked at in this light, today’s culture war can best be understood as a working-class revolt against the values of “knowledge economy” elites. It won’t be easy to make peace with the same elite still in charge.Resentment is richNor is it a coincidence why educational cleavages, in particular, play such a major role in cultural and political conflict today. While they were busy fashioning the “New Economy”, Third Way elites insisted that non-college educated workers refashion themselves to suit it. They implored everyone to go to college and learn to code to compete in the emerging high-tech hyper-global world. They were confident that the short-term pain of job losses would be rewarded with future gains. It hasn’t panned out. In terms of income, wealth and even life expectancy, blue-collar workers have found themselves lagging further and further behind their educated white-collar counterparts. Since 2000 wages for non-college educated workers have remained flat or actually fallen. For those with a college degree they have modestly increased. The earnings gap has grown wide.Meanwhile, none have benefitted from the contemporary economic and political arrangement as much as the wealthy. In inverse proportions have the rich profited alongside working-class decline. In 1990 – before Clinton signed Nafta, before Democrats presided over further deregulation of the financial sector, and before the dot-com boom – there were 66 billionaires in the United States. Just 10 years later – after gobs of factory jobs were off-shored – there were 298. A 350% increase. Today, there are more than 748.As a result, even Larry Summers (once a pre-eminent Third Way economist) has identified an “investment dearth” combined with a “savings glut” that has led to economic “secular stagnation”. In layman’s terms: the rich have all the money and they refuse to share. The billionaire hoarding of wealth means investment in the real economy is anemic. They sit like elephants on top of global growth rates. And because workers can’t spend wages they don’t have, effective demand stays flat.The Third Way left promised that the fire sale of public assets, the unshackling of big banks and the introduction of unfettered free trade would unleash unprecedented growth and a rising standard of living for American workers. It didn’t. Instead, it drove down wages and helped them transform their own party into a haven of the affluent and the educated.The paradoxes of pragmatic populismConfronting all this, Third Way now advocates that Democrats embrace a brand of pragmatic populism. They recognize the need to critique “corporate excess and corruption”, they counsel Democrats to avoid “dismissing economic anxieties” and instead acknowledge “real struggles like high prices and stagnant wages”. They even suggest that Democrats fight “for systemic reforms rather than just defending the status quo”.At the same time, they stress that Democrats are hurt by “reflexively attacking wealthy business leaders”. They warn against “vilifying the rich” and “demonizing” corporations. And insist that Democrats be pragmatic “pro-capitalist” reformers.They argue that candidates ought to own “the failures of Democratic governance” they don’t count among these, the broad failure of liberal economic policy to improve the lives of most voters. And while the authors of the memo are right to notice that “Democrats lack a cohesive, inspiring economic agenda”, they don’t offer any ideas for economic renewal. There is nothing about trade, manufacturing, the crisis of mass layoffs or the crumbling of American infrastructure. There is no discussion of jobs programs, labor market policies, overtime pay, or cost-of-living raises. The only mention of wages is to suggest that they ought to be “better”. Worse, Third Way’s insistence that candidates avoid blaming the corporations and the rich – the very group responsible for the broad economic and political crisis – presents a conundrum for would-be Democratic populists: how are they meant to make “the economy” a central talking point, if they don’t have anything to talk about?Blue-collar preferences do seem politically heterodox – progressive on wages and jobs, protectionist on trade, restrictive on immigration, moderate on culture and conservative on the deficit – and it can seem difficult to build a program to suit what seem like conflicting demands. But looked at another way these views add up to a fundamental break with the prevailing economic order. A call to shift society in favor of workers.Yet Third Way’s economic proposals – summed up by the demand for “middle-class tax cuts”– are a last gasp effort at preserving that order. Until, and unless, progressives can campaign in ways that address the root causes of workers’ cultural, social and economic concerns – that is, until the left can provide a compelling case for how to exit the global race to the bottom – the result will be a string of narrow majorities and narrow defeats.Each party taking their turn in office, neither providing a permanent home for the working class.

    Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623. More

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    Democrats sue Trump over ‘unlawful’ plan to overhaul US elections

    Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to overhaul the nation’s elections faced its first legal challenges Monday as the Democratic National Committee and a pair of nonprofits filed two separate lawsuits calling it unconstitutional.The Campaign Legal Center and the State Democracy Defenders Fund brought the first lawsuit Monday afternoon. The DNC, the Democratic Governors Association, and Senate and House Democratic leaders followed soon after with a complaint of their own.Both lawsuits filed in the US district court for the District of Columbia ask the court to block Trump’s order and declare it illegal.“The president’s executive order is an unlawful action that threatens to uproot our tried-and-tested election systems and silence potentially millions of Americans,” said Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the DC-based Campaign Legal Center.“It is simply not within the president’s authority to set election rules by executive decree, especially when they would restrict access to voting in this way.”The White House did not respond to a request for comment.The legal challenges had been expected after election lawyers warned some of Trump’s demands in the order, including a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration and new ballot deadline rules, may violate the US constitution.The order also asserts power that legal experts say the president doesn’t have over an independent agency. That agency, the US Election Assistance Commission, sets voluntary voting system guidelines and maintains the federal voter registration form.The suits come as Congress is considering codifying a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration into law, and as Trump has promised more actions related to elections in the coming weeks.Both the legal challenges draw attention to the constitution’s “elections clause”, which says states – not the president – get to decide the “times, places and manner” of how elections are run. That section of the constitution also gives Congress the power to “make or alter” election regulations, at least for federal office, but it does not mention any presidential authority over election administration.“The constitution is clear: states set their own rules of the road when it comes to elections, and only Congress has the power to override these laws with respect to federal elections,” said Lang, calling the executive order an “unconstitutional executive overreach”.The lawsuits also argue the president’s order could disenfranchise voters. The nonprofits’ lawsuit names three voter advocacy organizations as plaintiffs that they allege are harmed by Trump’s executive order: the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Secure Families Initiative and the Arizona Students’ Association.The DNC’s lawsuit highlights the role of the government’s controversial cost-cutting arm, the so called “department of government efficiency”.It alleges the order’s data-sharing requirements, including instructing Doge to cross-reference federal data with state voter lists, violate Democrats’ privacy rights and increase the risk that they will be harassed “based on false suspicions that they are not qualified to vote”.“This executive order is an unconstitutional power grab from Donald Trump that attacks vote by mail, gives Doge sensitive personal information and makes it harder for states to run their own free and fair elections,” reads a statement from the plaintiffs.Trump, one of the top spreaders of election falsehoods, has argued this executive order will secure the vote against illegal voting by noncitizens. Multiple studies and investigations in individual states have shown that noncitizens casting ballots in federal elections, already a felony, is exceedingly rare.Monday’s lawsuits against Trump’s elections order could be followed by more challenges. Other voting rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have said they’re considering legal action. Several Democratic state attorneys general have said they are looking closely at the order and suspect it is illegal.Meanwhile, Trump’s order has received praise from the top election officials in some Republican states who say it could inhibit instances of voter fraud and give them access to federal data to better maintain their voter rolls.If courts determine the order can stand, the changes Trump wants are likely to cause some headaches for both election administrators and voters. State election officials, who already have lost some federal cybersecurity assistance, would have to spend time and money to comply with the order, including potentially buying new voting systems and educating voters of the rules.The proof-of-citizenship requirement also could cause confusion or voter disenfranchisement because millions of eligible voting-age Americans do not have the proper documents readily available. In Kansas, which had a proof-of-citizenship requirement for three years before it was overturned, the state’s own expert estimated that almost all the roughly 30,000 people who were prevented from registering to vote during the time it was in effect were US citizens who had been eligible.Monday’s lawsuits are the latest of numerous efforts to fight the flurry of executive actions Trump has taken during the first months of his second term. Federal judges have partially or fully blocked many of them, including efforts to restrict birthright citizenship, ban transgender people from military service and curb diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives among federal contractors and grant recipients. More

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    Clean energy spending boosts GOP districts. But lawmakers are keeping quiet as Trump targets incentives

    Billions of dollars in clean energy spending and jobs have overwhelmingly flowed to parts of the US represented by Republican lawmakers. But these members of Congress are still largely reticent to break with Donald Trump’s demands to kill off key incentives for renewables, even as their districts bask in the rewards.The president has called for the dismantling of the Inflation Reduction Act – a sweeping bill passed by Democrats that has helped turbocharge investments in wind, solar, nuclear, batteries and electric vehicle manufacturing in the US – calling it a “giant scam”. Trump froze funding allocated under the act and has vowed to claw back grants aimed at reducing planet-heating pollution.Republicans who now control Congress have to decide if they will eliminate the IRA’s grants and, more crucially, the tax credits that have spurred a boom in clean energy activity in their own districts. A total of 78% of this spending has gone to Republican-held suburban and rural districts across the US, according to data from Atlas Public Policy.Of the 20 congressional districts that have attracted the most clean energy manufacturing investment since the IRA passed in 2022, 18 are represented by Republicans, according to Atlas. The top three districts, in North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada, represented by Richard Hudson, Earl Carter and Mark Amodei, respectively, have collectively seen nearly $30bn in new investments since the legislation.Despite this, none of the 18 Republican representatives contacted by the Guardian would comment on whether they agree with Trump that clean energy incentives should be scrapped.“Members aren’t necessarily looking for opportunities to disagree with the White House at the moment,” said Heather Reams, the president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a center-right group that advocates in favor of clean energy.The Atlas data set is the newest in a series of reports showing the IRA benefitted Republican-led districts the most. And the largest individual pools of money from the bill also went to projects in red communities, according to a separate data set shared with the Guardian by an anonymous source at the Department of Energy (DoE).The top grant from the IRA, worth $500m, went to a General Motors plant in Lansing, Michigan – represented by Republican Tom Barrett – the DoE data shows. And though the biggest loan of $15bn went to California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Company utility to expand clean power and modernize infrastructure, the second and third largest went to battery plants in Glendale, Kentucky, and Kokomo, Indiana, represented by conservatives Brett Guthrie and Victoria Spartz, respectively. Hageman, Guthrie and Spartz did not respond to requests for comment.Some Republicans have publicly lauded the tax credits’ impacts on their districts even as they have attacked the IRA. The ultraconservative Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, for instance, praised the IRA-funded expansion of solar manufacturing in her district but called the bill itself “dangerous”, winning her scrutiny from Joe Biden in 2023. Her district saw more investment than all but 14 others, the Atlas data shows.In a sign of private nervousness among conservatives about a repeal of the tax credits, though, a group of 21 Republican lawmakers, including Carter and Amodei, signed a letter to colleagues warning that axing the IRA risks planned projects and would escalate energy bills. Some conservatives made similar calls during a January hearing in the House ways and means committee.But these voices have gotten quieter in recent weeks, with some Republicans who privately supported the letter refusing to sign it for strategic reasons, and some letter signatories saying the IRA tax credits should not necessarily be a major priority.Ongoing budget concerns have made it especially difficult for conservatives to defend the credits. Republicans’ fiscal year 2025 proposal authorized $4.5tn in tax cuts through 2034 and called on committees to partially offset the cost with $2tn in spending reductions. A full repeal of the IRA’s green energy tax credits would slash about $850bn in spending the Tax Foundation thinktank recently found.“They’re trying to kind of balance finding the money so that they’re not adding to the federal debt, while also trying to protect these beneficial and popular tax credits and provisions,” said Dana Nuccitelli, the research coordinator at the non-partisan advocacy group Citizens’ Climate Lobby. “It’s not easy.”Reams, of the Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions thinktank, said that as the realities of lost jobs and increasing energy costs become clear, Trump may change his mind about the need to repeal the credits. “There’s what Donald Trump says – remember, he hated EVs, but he just bought a Tesla – and what he does,” she said. “You’ve got to not take it all so literally and bide some time to get a sense of what really is going on.”Still, there are already signs that Trump’s hostile stance towards renewables – he has halted approvals of wind and solar projects on federal land and waters – – is starting to dampen clean energy activity in the US.Approximately $8bn in clean energy manufacturing activity has been canceled so far this year, Atlas has calculated, with a separate analysis by Climate Power finding that 50,000 jobs have been lost or are threatened.A full repeal of the IRA would hike energy bills for households and imperil a further 1.5m jobs in the US, according to yet another recent report, by Energy Innovation. “Many of those jobs will be at risk if the IRA is repealed,” Jim Farley, the chief executive of Ford, warned recently about the company’s plans to expand its electric vehicle factories.“The Trump administration aims to restore US manufacturing jobs, but cutting existing federal energy incentives could really undermine that goal,” said Tom Taylor, a senior policy analyst at Atlas.It’s a message some climate advocates have been bringing to Republican lawmakers in recent weeks in an attempt to save the tax credits. Citizens’ Climate Lobby, for instance, this month lobbied 47 Republicans on Capitol Hill calling on them to protect the tax credits, and is now asking its members to call their Republican representatives, focusing not on their climate benefits but on their potential to spur economic growth.“Everybody loves manufacturing jobs,” Nuccitelli said.In their lobbying, Citizens Climate Lobby is also highlighting the low price of building clean power, the need for abundant energy amid forecasted spikes in energy from the artificial intelligence boom, and the fact that repealing the incentives could cause household electricity bills to increase by about 10% over the next decade.Despite the lack of public support for the tax credits from GOP lawmakers, the organization said they enjoy significant support on Capitol Hill, with some GOP lawmakers calling to protect them in private meetings and personal phone calls with other congressional colleagues.Only two Democratic-led districts were on the list provided by the Atlas Public Policy. One was Arizona’s Raúl Grijalva, who was a strong advocate for the IRA’s green incentives before he died this month.“The Inflation Reduction Act is a vital investment in the future stability of the planet,” his office wrote in a statement to the Guardian before his passing. “As a self-proclaimed business genius, Trump should easily be able to understand the high financial and humanitarian costs of increasing climate catastrophes.” More