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      Biden says ‘brinkmanship has to end’ after US shutdown avoided but Ukraine aid left out – video

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      US president Joe Biden said that aid to Ukraine must keep flowing after a deal to avert a government shutdown dropped assistance for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion. The president lambasted Republicans for holding up government spending talks and assured Ukraine that US support and aid were unwavering. ‘We cannot under any circumstances allow American for Ukraine to be interrupted,’ Biden said More

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      Republicans attacking Bowman but backing Santos should ‘check values’, AOC says

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      Republicans calling for action against the New York Democrat Jamaal Bowman for triggering a fire alarm in a congressional office building as a vote loomed on a deal to avoid a government shutdown should “check their own values”, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, citing the lack of action against a GOP New Yorker, George Santos, after he was indicted for fraud.“They are protecting someone who has lied to the American people, lied to the United States House of Representatives, lied to congressional investigators,” Ocasio-Cortez, widely known as AOC, told CNN’s State of the Union.“But they’re filing a motion to expel a member who, in a moment of panic, was trying to escape a vestibule? Give me a break.”Santos won his seat last year but saw his resumé taken apart and his background extensively questioned before being indicted on charges of money laundering and fraud. In May, he pled not guilty. Republicans sidestepped an effort to expel him from Congress, saying legal processes should run their course.Like Ocasio-Cortez, Bowman is a prominent New York progressive. In a statement on Saturday, he denied trying to delay the process that stopped a government shutdown.He said: “As I was rushing to make a vote, I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today was not open. I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door. I regret this and sincerely apologise for any confusion this caused.“I want to be very clear, this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite – I was trying to urgently get a vote, which I ultimately did.”Kevin McCarthy, the speaker under pressure from his own party over the deal with Democrats, likened Bowman’s behaviour to that of Donald Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol on 6 January 2021, trying to overturn an election in a riot now linked to nine deaths.Nicole Malliotakis, a New York Republican, said she was drafting a resolution to expel.Authorities were investigating. In Washington, falsely activating a fire alarm is a misdemeanour.Ocasio-Cortez told CNN: “I think there’s something to be said about, the government’s about to shut down, there’s a vote clock that’s going down, the exits that are normally open in that building were suddenly closed … Jamaal Bowman … he’s fully participating in saying there was a misunderstanding.“But what I do think is important to raise is the fact that Republicans like Nicole Malliotakis and others immediately moved to file motions to censure, motions to expel before there has even been conversations … to even see if there was a misunderstanding here.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“… What they did not do was to commit to the same when George Santos was actually found guilty after a thorough investigation of 13 federal charges.”Santos has reportedly negotiated with federal prosecutors, suggesting a plea deal might be on the cards. He has not been found guilty.Ocasio-Cortez continued: “He’s indicted on everything from wire fraud to actual lying to House investigators. And [Republicans] have been buddying up and giggling with him on the House floor.”Bowman, she said, “admits he’s embarrassed … he apologised. And they are protecting someone who has not only committed wire fraud, not only defrauded veterans, not only lied to congressional investigators, but is openly gloating about it.“[It] is absolutely humiliating to the Republican caucus. And I think that they should really check their own values.” More

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      Feinstein death inspired lawmakers to avoid shutdown, Pelosi says

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      The death of the California senator Dianne Feinstein may have helped inspire US lawmakers to avoid a federal government shutdown, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said.Speaking on Sunday, to CNN’s State of the Union, the California Democrat mourned the loss of Feinstein and said: “Some of the senators said that maybe her departure and the sadness that went with us focused people more on, ‘Let’s get the job done to keep government open for the people.’”The deal to avoid the shutdown was done late on Saturday, the Senate following the House in backing the deal before Joe Biden signed it.Feinstein, who at 90 was the oldest serving senator, died in Washington on Thursday. Tributes came from both sides of the aisle. On Saturday, a plane from the presidential fleet carried her body to her home city, San Francisco.Pelosi, who accompanied Feinstein’s body with the senator’s daughter, said: “She was my neighbor, my friend. My family loved her personally, politically, in every way.“We used to always say, if Dianne and I ran against each other, my daughter Nancy would probably vote for Dianne. That was the love that existed. But love is a good word for her, because she loved people. She loved California. She loved America.”Pelosi also thanked Joe Biden for arranging the transfer “in the grand way that we did … draped in the flag – she was such a patriot – [to] be welcomed by men and women in uniform as she came off the plane”.Although she and Feinstein “were not always on the same place on the spectrum of politics”, Pelosi said, Feinstein “reached across the aisle all the time”.The former speaker, 83, also recalled a memory from the early 1980s, when Pelosi was chair of the California Democratic party and Feinstein mayor of San Francisco.“When we were moving for the Democratic convention in San Francisco … we went to see her … to say, what about this?” said Pelosi.Feinstein said: “Well, will it cost money?”“And we said: ‘Well, we have to raise money.’”Feinstein said: “Well, my first concern are people at Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco.”“This is where many lower-income people … who need medical care,” Pelosi said, adding: “She was always about people and meeting their needs with her responsibility.”Pelosi also hailed Feinstein’s efforts to pass the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, calling her a “great legislator”.“Then it was reinstated and then it went away but while it was there, it saved lives,” Pelosi said of the ban. “How many people can make that claim?”Pelosi spoke hours after Biden signed a bill to extend government funding for 45 days. On Sunday, in response to the House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s deal with Democrats, the Florida Republican Matt Gaetz announced that he would try to oust McCarthy. Asked what advice she would give to her colleagues about Gaetz’s plan, Pelosi urged Democrats to follow their leader.“Hakeem Jeffries has done a great job,” she said, of the New Yorker who succeeded Pelosi atop the House Democratic caucus and is now minority leader. “Yesterday, we had a victory in the continuing resolution. It was a victory for Democrats, a defeat for the Magas,” a reference to far-right supporters of Donald Trump.Of Gaetz, Pelosi said: “You’re wasting your time on that guy, because he has no sway in the House of Representatives except to get on TV and to raise money on the internet. But, anyway, forgetting that … my advice [is] follow the leader.” More

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      Gold bars and stacks of cash: how Bob Menendez ended up charged with bribery

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      When federal prosecutors raided Bob Menendez’s home in the summer of 2022, they found a staggering haul.The US senator for New Jersey, one of the most influential and powerful Democrats in the country, had almost $500,000 in cash stuffed into jacket pockets, closets and a safe, along with 13 gold bars, two of them marked as 1kg in weight.In the garage was a gleaming Mercedes-Benz, allegedly bought for Menendez and his wife, who has been charged along with her husband with accepting bribes in return for political favors.“Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes,” Nadine Mendendez texted her husband on taking possession of the black convertible in April 2019. A day earlier, prosecutors say, a New Jersey businessman, who has a previous conviction for fraud, gave her $15,000 in cash towards the car, and would eventually pay for its entire cost.Menendez was last week accused, with his wife and three Jersey-based businessmen, of a staggering range of offenses. The story has struck a blow to the heart of Democratic politics, especially when the party is busy trying to convince an increasingly cynical electorate it is a safe pair of hands for honest American governance.According to the charging document, Menendez used his position as chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee to benefit Egypt in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes.Menendez also used his “power and influence”, according to the indictment, to secure and maintain a lucrative contract with Egypt for a business associate. Closer to home, Menendez allegedly attempted to disrupt a New Jersey criminal prosecution on behalf of another businessman friend.Menendez, 69, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, and conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right.Wednesday’s appearance at a federal courtroom in Manhattan marked an ignominious moment for Menendez, who said he will not step down and is still planning to run for re-election next year. But it was far from the first.In 2015, he was charged in connection with a bribery scheme, after allegedly accepting gifts from a businessman friend, in exchange for intervening in a dispute with the government of the Dominican Republic. The case went to court in 2017, but ended in a mistrial after the jury was deadlocked.Menendez grew up in a tenement building in Union City, New Jersey, the bilingual son of Cuban immigrants. His was the “quintessential American story”, according to his website: elected to the Union City board of education when he was 19, he then graduated from St Peter’s University in New Jersey with a law degree.He became mayor of Jersey City in 1986, aged 32, and was a congressman by the time he was 39. In 2006, Menendez was elected to the Senate, where he became a key figure on the foreign relations committee.The latest charges are likely to bring an end to that illustrious career. At least 18 Senate Democrats have called for Menendez to resign, along with New Jersey’s governor and most of the state’s congressmen and women.But Menendez is fighting and says he has been “falsely accused” because he is Latino. He insists he will not step down.Menendez told reporters he had saved the nearly $500,000 found at his home over the course of 30 years, and kept it in cash “because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba”. But he has not addressed questions about why some of the money bore the fingerprints and DNA of Fred Daibes, a New Jersey real estate developer accused of paying Menendez bribes.The story of Menendez’s alleged corruption cannot be separated from the story of his marriage.Menendez met Nadine Arslanian in late 2017, at an iHop – a popular chain of pancake restaurants – in Jersey City.Menendez, a diminutive gray-haired man, was in his mid-60s at the time. That February, he and Arslanian were dating, and Menendez proposed in October 2019 at the Taj Mahal.A video of the proposal, posted to a YouTube account called Robert&Nadine, showed Menendez singing a snippet from the song Never Enough, from the movie The Greatest Showman, before asking Arslanian to marry him. She said yes, and they married in October 2020.At the time they met, Nadine Menendez had been friends with Wael Hana, an Egyptian American businessman, for many years – exchanging “thousands of text messages” – according to the indictment. Born in Egypt, Hana “maintained close connections with Egyptian officials”, prosecutors said.In early 2018, Nadine told Hana she was dating Menendez, and by March 2018, Hana was organizing meetings between Menendez and Egyptian military officials.Those meetings, at Menendez’s Senate office and at upscale restaurants, came as Egypt was anxious to secure American cash.For several years prior to 2018, Egypt “had often faced resistance in obtaining foreign military financing and foreign military sales” from the US, according to the indictment, and in August 2017 the US state department said it was withholding $195m from Egypt until it could “demonstrate improvements on human rights and democracy”.For Egypt, Menendez’s position as chair of the foreign relations committee made him a lucrative contact. A longstanding convention in the US government held that the state department would not proceed with a transfer of money to Egypt, or with the sale of military equipment, without sign-off from the chairman or ranking member of the committee.As such, according to the indictment, “Robert Mendendez […] possessed substantial influence over the foreign military sales and foreign military financing to Egypt.”At the meetings, organized by Hana, Egyptian officials repeatedly raised the issue of foreign military sales and foreign financing, prosecutors say. Menendez promised to “use his power and authority to facilitate such sales and financing to Egypt”, according to the indictment, in exchange for Hana putting Nadine Menendez on his company’s payroll.Reading the indictment, one of most striking themes is how the Menendezes failed to cover their tracks. Prosecutors found a flood of text messages and emails between the pair, some of which seem to directly reference actions and payments.On 6 May 2018, according to the indictment, Bob and Nadine Menendez met with Hana. That afternoon, Menendez asked the state department for staffing information regarding the US embassy in Cairo. The information was not formally classified, but was “deemed highly sensitive”, the indictment says, because it could pose “significant operational security concerns if disclosed to a foreign government”.Having obtained the information, Menendez texted Nadine a full breakdown of the people who worked in the embassy, including the number of US diplomats, and the number of locally employed Egyptian staff. Nadine Menendez forwarded the message to Hana, who forwarded it to an Egyptian government official, according to the indictment.Later that month, Menendez was again asked for his services, prosecutors say. An Egyptian official requested help in editing and drafting an email lobbying US senators to release a hold on $300m of US aid to Egypt.Menendez “edited and ghost-wrote” the requested letter, according to the indictment, and sent the letter to Nadine Menendez from his personal email account. She sent the letter to Hana, who gave the draft to Egyptian officials.The money did not immediately flow.The plan, according to prosecutors, was that Hana pay money to Nadine Menendez through his company, IS EG Halal. But several months after Bob Menendez had met, and allegedly worked on behalf of, the Egyptian officials, no money had emerged.“I have been so upset all morning,” Nadine Menendez texted her husband one day, complaining that Hana was yet to pay her any money.In the spring of 2019, things began to look up for the Menendezes. Egypt granted Hana’s company, IS EG Halal, an “exclusive monopoly” on the certification of US food exports to Egypt over halal standards.IS EG Halal had no experience in halal certification, but the deal provided a revenue stream from which, prosecutors allege, bribes were paid to the Menendezes – through a “consultant” company set up by Nadine Menendez in June 2019.“Seems like halal went through. It might be a fantastic 2019 all the way around,” Nadine Menendez texted her husband on 8 April 2019, the day after IS EG Halal was awarded the Egypt deal.With IS EG Halal now in business, money started flowing to the Menendezes.In July of that year, IS EG Halal paid about $23,000 to Nadine Menendez’s mortgage, according to the indictment. Menendez received further checks for $10,000 in August, September and November of the same year – which Daibes allegedly helped to facilitate.The relationship continued, according to the indictment, and the Menendezes continued to benefit, to the tune of “hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks, cash and gold”, prosecutors say.Along the way, the Mercedes-Benz was purchased for the delighted Nadine Menendez with money allegedly provided by Hana and Jose Uribe, one of the co-defendants and a businessman who has a previous conviction for fraud.The Mercedes was acquired after Menendez allegedly promised to intervene to disrupt the New Jersey prosecution of a friend of Uribe, in an example of how Menendez’s services were available both home and abroad.Sometimes the alleged bribes were more prosaic – expensive furniture, two exercise machines and an air purifier were bought for the couple by IS EG Halal – but still amounted to thousands of dollars.In the indictment, prosecutors have asked that the couple be required to forfeit to the government their home, the Mercedes, and the $480,000 in cash, plus $79,760 found in a safe deposit box, and all their gold bars.As for Menendez’s political career, it may now be forever associated with the photos released by investigators from his home: the almost parody-of-corruption images showing money stuffed into pockets, and gold bars laid out on paper towels.One of the jackets Menendez used to store his cash had his political title emblazoned on the chest: Senator Menendez. If prosecutors – and many of his colleagues – have their way, the New Jerseyite will be called that no more. More

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      in US Politics

      Democrat Jamaal Bowman pulled fire alarm on Capitol Hill before House vote

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      Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm on Saturday in a Capitol office building before a House vote on a stopgap measure to avoid a government shutdown.The alarm prompted the Cannon House office building to be evacuated and triggered outcry from Republicans including the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who compared the New York congressman’s actions with those of the January 6 rioters.“I was really appalled watching Democrats’ actions today, to delay it, to get a shutdown,” said McCarthy amid Democrats’ complaints that they did not have sufficient time to review the bill Republicans released last-minute in an attempt to avoid a government shutdown.“That’s a new low,” he said, adding, “We watched how people have been treated if they’ve done something wrong in this Capitol. It would be interesting to see how he is treated and what he was trying to obstruct when it came to the American public.”Brian Steil, a Republican Wisconsin representative and chair of the House administration committee, announced that an investigation into the incident is underway.Georgia’s Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she is calling on the justice department to prosecute Bowman “using the same law they used to prosecute J6 defendants for interfering with an official proceeding”.Meanwhile, the Republican representative Nicole Malliotakis of New York said that she is drafting a resolution to expel Bowman, tweeting, “This is the United States Congress, not a New York City high school. This action warrants expulsion & I’m introducing a resolution to do just that.”Malliotakis’s fellow Republican representative Elise Stefanik echoed similar sentiments, tweeting, “A Democrat member of Congress just committed a felony by pulling the fire alarm to try to delay and stop a Congressional vote to fund the government.”In DC, falsely pulling a fire alarm is considered a misdemeanor.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a statement to The Hill, a spokesperson for Bowman said, “Congressman Bowman did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote,” adding, “The congressman regrets any confusion.”Speaking to reporters, Bowman said, “I thought the alarm would open the door.”It remains unclear whether Bowman will be prosecuted.The 45-day funding resolution, which Bowman and a majority of Democrats ultimately voted in favor of, passed with a 335-91 vote in the House. The bill is now with the Democrat-majority Senate, and lawmakers have until midnight on Sunday to pass it and send it to president Joe Biden to sign into law before a government shutdown. More

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      US House passes stopgap funding bill under the wire without funding for Ukraine

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      The House passed a bill Saturday to extend government funding for 45 days, sending the legislation to the Senate with just hours left to avert a federal shutdown. Unless Joe Biden signs a funding bill before midnight, the government will shut down.The bill passed the House in an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 335 to 91, with 209 Democrats joining 126 Republicans in supporting the legislation. Ninety Republicans opposed the bill.The bill – unveiled by the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, just hours before the final vote – would extend funding through 17 November and allocate $16bn for disaster aid. The House bill does not include additional funding for Ukraine, which has become a source of outrage among hard-right lawmakers.McCarthy introduced the bill under suspension of the rules, meaning he needed the support of two-thirds of House members to advance the proposal. Although Democrats criticized the bill’s lack of Ukraine funding, they ultimately provided McCarthy with the support needed to get the legislation across the finish line.Speaking after the vote, McCarthy expressed disappointment that a large share of his conference opposed the bill, but he said the intransigence displayed by hard-right Republicans left him with no other option.“It is very clear that I tried every possible way, listening to every single person in the conference,” McCarthy told reporters. “If you have members in your conference that won’t let you vote for appropriation bills, [don’t] want an omnibus and won’t vote for a stopgap measure, so the only answer is to shut down and not pay our troops: I don’t want to be a part of that team.”The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, celebrated the bill’s passage, saying: “[‘Make America Great Again’] Republicans have surrendered. All extreme rightwing policies have been removed from the House spending bill. The American people have won.”Prior to the House vote, the Senate had planned to hold a vote at 1pm ET on a separate stopgap spending bill, which would also keep the government open until 17 November and provide some funding for Ukraine’s war efforts as well as disaster relief aid.But the Senate vote was stalled after Republicans said they wanted to wait to see whether the House would be able to pass McCarthy’s proposal before the midnight deadline. In light of the movement in the House, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said he would not support advancing the Senate bill for the time being.“It looks like there may be a bipartisan agreement coming from the House,” McConnell told reporters at the Capitol. “Under these circumstances, I’m recommending a no vote, even though I very much want to avoid a government shutdown.”Now that the House has passed McCarthy’s bill, all attention turns to the Senate. Although Senate Democrats have voiced displeasure about approving a bill that does not include Ukraine funding, the House bill currently represents their only option to prevent a shutdown. Because of procedural hurdles, the Senate cannot hold a final vote on its own bill until Sunday at the earliest, when a shutdown would have already started.The rare weekend session came one day after the House failed to pass McCarthy’s initial stopgap bill, which would have extended government funding for another month while enacting steep spending cuts on most federal agencies.McCarthy’s proposal was rejected by 21 House Republicans, as hard-right members continued to insist they would not support a continuing resolution. Hard-right Republicans threatened to oust the speaker if he teamed up with Democrats to keep the government open, a viable threat when it only takes one member to introduce a motion to vacate the chair. Despite the criticism from his hard-right colleagues, McCarthy downplayed threats to his speakership on Saturday.“If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it,” McCarthy told reporters. “There has to be an adult in the room. I am going to govern with what is best for this country.”As lawmakers made progress in their efforts to extend funding, the federal government was bracing for the possibility of the first shutdown in nearly five years. The White House has warned that a shutdown would force hundreds of thousands of government workers to go without pay, jeopardize access to vital nutritional programs and delay disaster relief projects.“Extreme House Republicans are solely – solely – to blame for marching us toward a shutdown. That is what we’re seeing right now,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, similarly blamed Republicans for a potential shutdown – although he used more colorful language to describe his congressional colleagues.“The damage to our nation’s reputation and critical programming, and chaos for America’s families is because of a small group of [Republican] peckerheads in the House,” Fetterman said on Saturday. “This national upheaval is inflicted by choice over nothing except Fox News face time and tributes to the lunatic fringe from their district.” More

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      Government shutdown could hurt weather disaster responses, Fema says

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      The budget deal Republicans and Democrats reached in the House on Saturday included a 45-day funding extension for disaster relief funds. Lawmakers had been warning that without that provision, a government shutdown would hamper responses to any new weather disasters, leave hazardous waste sites uninspected, and stop work at federal Superfund clean-up sites.“Federal emergency management agency (Fema) staff will still respond to emergencies, but all long-term projects will be delayed due to a lack of funding in the disaster relief fund,” warned the Illinois Democrat Lauren Underwood on Friday.Underwood warned that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would stop inspecting drinking water and chemical facilities too. Also affected, she said, would be efforts to contain polyfluoroalkyl substances – “forever” chemicals, or PFAS – and cleanup activities at Superfund sites.The warnings came a day after New York was hit by torrential rains that shut down parts of the city’s mass-transit system, flooded parts of Brooklyn and triggered the state governor, Kathy Hochul, to declare a state of emergency.Wide-ranging impacts of a federal freeze come amid warnings that there is little left in the primary government relief fund, after 23 confirmed US weather events related to the climate disaster so far in 2023 have cost at least $1bn each.The events included two flooding events, 18 severe storms, one tropical cyclone, one wildfire and one winter storm, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. For comparison, the 1980–2022 annual average was roughly eight events.According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US has seen more billion-dollar weather disasters in 2023 than in any previously recorded year.Fema spent an average of $4bn annually between 1992 and 1999 on disaster aid. Since 2000, excluding years that saw disasters like 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and the response to Covid-19, the emergency management agency’s spending has jumped to around $10bn annually.With three months of the year to go and disaster costs running at $23bn, the Fema administrator Deanne Criswell testified before the House transportation and infrastructure subcommittee on emergency management last week that the agency would have difficulties responding to any natural disaster in the event of a shutdown.Criswell pointed to decreasing funding levels for the disaster relief fund, climate change and the need for its mitigation, the costs of flood insurance and border security as among the agency’s concerns. She also said in her testimony that the agency’s mission had become “more challenging”.“We can no longer really speak of a disaster season. With atmospheric rivers in January to tornadoes and wildfires in December, we now face intensified natural disasters throughout the year, often in places not used to experiencing them,” she said.Citing the Maui wildfires and the California tropical cyclone, she warned that disasters required outsized funding.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We are in such a moment today,” Criswell added and said she had instituted an “immediate needs funding” mandate of $16bn.The agency had already cut off more than $1bn in funding to 1,000 public assistance projects, Criswell said.The warnings come as the Biden administration directs more funds toward disaster relief and away from reconstruction grants. Fema has already delayed around $2.8bn, including $555m for long-term recovery projects in Florida, $101m in Louisiana and another $74m in California, as its disaster fund dropped to just over $2.4bn, the Washington Post reported last week.While it is likely the fund will be boosted – disasters affect both red and blue states – Criswell warned that any failure to restock agency disaster relief coffers would leave Fema unable to fund a response to new emergencies.“It is vital that Fema – and the American people – be able to tap into an adequately funded Disaster Relief Fund so that we can continue to respond as soon as disaster strikes, rebuild in their aftermath and prepare for future disasters,” she said. More

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      Voter drive: Biden and Trump battle for blue-collar votes in auto heartland

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      Joe Biden became the first sitting US president to join a picket line when he stopped at a General Motors facility just outside Detroit to show support for striking United Auto Workers last week. “Stick with it. You deserve a significant raise,” Biden told the crowd.A day later, Donald Trump told raucous blue-collar supporters at a speech north of Detroit: “Just get your union guys, your leaders, to endorse me and I will take care of the rest.”The tug-of-war remarks represented the unofficial opening salvoes of the 2024 election season as the parties’ likely candidates set out to woo blue-collar voters in Michigan, a critical bloc in a state that’s a must-win in any White House bid.“Politically, Michigan is ground zero right now because of the auto strike,” said Bill Ballenger, a conservative state political analyst. Biden, he said, was seeking to shore up his slipping support among unions, while Trump had spotted a “weakness in Bidenomics” that the former president was set on exploiting as the strike pushes into its third week.Trump won Michigan, an upper midwest swing state, by about 12,000 votes in 2016. Biden took the state by nearly 150,000 votes in the next election. Michigan is a heavily unionized state, and Biden won with 64% support among union members. But August polling found support among Michigan union members hangs at 49%, and Biden and Trump are in effect tied.“Clearly there’s division among the rank and file,” said pollster Bernie Porn, president of Epic MRA, a Michigan-based survey research firm. Political observers say Michigan is very much in play in the 2024 election.The dueling visits showcased two very different visions for America’s future. Trump criticized the Biden administration’s support for the auto industry’s shift to electric vehicles, which unions fear because they require fewer workers to make. “You can be loyal to American labor or you can be loyal to the environmental lunatics,” Trump told the crowd in a meandering, hour-long speech. (Later he insisted he would make “sex changes for children” illegal.)Biden’s minutes’ long pitch zeroed in on the unions: “The fact of the matter is that you guys, the UAW – you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 … You made a lot of sacrifices. But now they’re doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too.”The visits also put on display two competing styles. Despite the historic nature of Biden’s visit, the daytime visit was a low-key, invite-only event among a small crowd of UAW members. The tone was supportive, good-natured. At the nearby Ford Michigan Assembly plant, Biden’s supporters viewed it as a morale boost.Trump, by contrast, set up at night in a non-union shop in Macomb county, an Obama-to-Trump blue-collar swing county. Hundreds of boisterous supporters lined the streets, banging on drums and shouting “Freedom!” and breaking into chants of “USA! USA!” and “Back the blue!” The Trump campaign dismissed Biden’s visit as a “cheap photo op”, and said the rank and file support him, not Biden. Some of his supporters echoed that.“We’ve always known that the blue-collar workers are behind Trump, but the party heads and elites have such a command of the microphone that the floor worker is really underrepresented,” said Trump supporter James Anthony Minnick Jr after attending the former president’s Wednesday speech.Biden’s visit seems to convey an understanding of that, political observers say, but despite that the UAW leadership has been very clear in who it supports.“I see no point in meeting with [Trump] because I don’t think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for,” the UAW president, Shawn Fain, said before Trump’s visit. “He serves a billionaire class, and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”Biden had attended the UAW picket at Fain’s invitation, but the union has yet to officially endorse anyone, which could signal an understanding of rank-and-file divisions, or could be read as leverage to gain continuing White House support.Scott Malenfant, 47, an Obama-to-Ted Cruz-to-Trump supporter and union rep, was among those on the picket line outside Ford’s Michigan Assembly plant on Tuesday who split from UAW leadership. After Biden’s speech, the 23-year line veteran said Democrats lost him and other union members over the EV transition and their support of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Democrats are “on the record saying those jobs are never coming back”, Malenfant noted.“Trump is the first one who said ‘We’re going to bring these jobs back,’” he added while acknowledging that Republicans are typically anti-union. But Trump was different, he said: “All he cares about is whether the country does well … and at least he’s the one pushing for workers.”Biden’s Tuesday message that auto companies need to reward workers did resonate with some who are undecided, or describe themselves as “not political”, like Lisa Carter, 53, who works in the plant’s stamping department. She has two jobs despite 17 years on the line, and she cannot afford to buy a new Ford.“If you’re for the people, then I’m for you,” Carter said. “And Trump can stay where he’s at because when he was president he said we make too much money.”Biden needs to address the EV concerns, Porn said, and talk to union members about how batteries and chips could be produced by autoworkers in the state. The visit also comes in the wake of another Trump indictment, and Porn said the former president’s mounting legal numbers appear to be a drag on his favorability numbers, which are down to 37%.Some of that may be down to Trump’s ever mounting legal troubles. But those cases are unlikely to shake his diehard supporters “because they see him as he likes to see himself – a victim, a martyr being crucified by the deep state”, said Ballenger.For now, with more than a year to go before the election, Porn and Ballenger each say Biden has the edge in the state despite his concerning poll numbers. But Ballenger warned the race was far from decided. Just like in 2016: “It could be deja vu all over again,” Ballenger said. More