Subterms
Dianne Feinstein, left, California assembly speaker Willie Brown, center, and the Rev Cecil Williams of the Glide Memorial Church of San Francisco, hold hands during Dr Martin Luther King Jr march in downtown San Francisco, January 1986
Photograph: Paul Sakuma/AP More
Joe Biden had to choose a side in the United Auto Workers’ contract fight with the “big three” American automakers, and he did. This week, he became the first US president to walk a picket line while in office when he joined strikers in Belleville, Michigan, offering enthusiastic support for their demands. Biden should be thanking the UAW for handing him a golden opportunity: to prove that the green jobs his administration is creating will be good, union jobs, too, and that climate policy will bear dividends for the working class.Republicans cosplaying solidarity have tried to exploit the strike to score cheap political points. As Republican presidential hopefuls debated this week, Donald Trump told a rally at a non-union plant in Michigan that the strike wouldn’t “make a damn bit of difference” because the car industry was “being assassinated” by “EV mandates”. (Whether there were any union members or even autoworkers in the room isn’t clear.) Ohio senator JD Vance has similarly blamed autoworkers’ plight on “the premature transition to electric vehicles” and “Biden’s war on American cars”.These are cynical, false talking points from politicians who couldn’t care less about autoworkers – but they aren’t going away. (Although similar lines are old hat in the US, they’re finding new purchase in places like 10 Downing Street: Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, has recently taken a “U-turn” on climate goals, citing “unacceptable costs” for “hard-working British people”.) Optimistically, the UAW strike could be a chance to dismantle the rightwing myth that reducing emissions hurts working people – not by pointing to the jobs that will trickle down from the bosses of the energy transition, but by standing with the unions fighting to make those jobs better.Being willing to go on offense against automakers’ bad behavior is a great start and a big shift. The Biden administration has routinely praised car manufacturers as climate heroes poised to decarbonize the country and create millions of middle-class jobs along the way, turning the industry into a sort of mascot for its climate agenda. “You changed the whole story, Mary,” Biden told General Motors’ chief executive, Mary Barra, a frequent White House guest, in 2021. “You electrified the entire automobile industry. I’m serious.”White House climate policy will be good for Barra and her colleagues at the top. The business-side tax credits and government-backed loans furnished by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are already helping the big three retool factories to produce EVs and their component parts. The IRA’s consumer-side subsidies for American-made electric cars – worth up to $7,500 – will boost demand.Yet no one should confuse companies taking advantage of tax breaks with a commitment to the climate fight. The big three lag well behind their competition in the US and abroad; federal incentives are helping them play catch-up. They’ve lobbied to undermine fuel efficiency and clean car standards, including through front groups like the Automotive Alliance. Like oil and gas companies, GM and Ford knew for decades that their products fueled climate change, and proceeded to double down on gas-guzzling models and political attacks on laws and regulations that might hem in their emissions. They still bankroll the campaigns of Republicans dead-set on stopping climate policy.Neither is it a given that EV subsidies benefiting companies will benefit workers there, too. Automakers are already using electrification as an excuse to supercharge attempts to ship jobs to less union-friendly states, and split workers off from their master agreement with the big three.Biden’s decision to join the strike would be remarkable on its own. Beyond the obvious symbolism, his presence there lends tangible material support to workers’ demands, handing the union leverage over companies that might otherwise reasonably assume he’d have their backs.It could also usher in a broader shift in the way he and other Democrats talk about climate policy. Impressive as the IRA is, its most direct benefits accrue largely to companies and consumers with enough cash on hand to afford up-front payments for big-ticket items like solar panels and heat pumps. Like Bidenomics more generally, its goal isn’t to reduce emissions so much as to build out domestic supply chains for clean energy goods, making US companies less reliant on and more competitive against Chinese firms in sectors that will be increasingly important over the coming decades.Targeting climate policy at corporations and affluent consumers doesn’t make a great counterargument to Republicans eager to frame it all as elitist virtue signaling, and win elections accordingly. What the Republican party can be reliably expected to do, though, is side with the bosses. That’s where even self-professed “car guy” Joe Biden might be able to set himself apart – by being willing to offend the automakers so that the rewards of America’s green industrial policy aren’t hoarded at the top.Standing alongside Biden in Belleville this week, the UAW president, Shawn Fain, offered as good a framing for that approach as any. “This industry is of our making,” he said. “When we withhold our labor, we can unmake it. And as we’re going to continue to show: when we win this fight with the big three, we’re going to remake it.”
Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back More
Joe Biden has dramatically raised the ante in the forthcoming US presidential election campaign with an impassioned warning that US democracy is being imperilled by a vengeful Donald Trump, his likely opponent next year. ‘There is something dangerous happening in America,’ he told an audience in Phoenix, Arizona, on Thursday. ‘There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy: the Maga movement.’ He said he did not think all Republicans ascribed to the Maga agenda, but added: ‘There is no question that today’s Republican party is driven and intimidated by Maga Republican extremists’ More
Joe Biden dramatically raised the ante in the forthcoming US presidential election campaign on Thursday with a stark and impassioned warning that American democracy is imperiled by a vengeful Donald Trump, his likely opponent next year.Faced by stagnant approval ratings and worries about his advanced age, the US president attempted to stir his dormant supporters and animate the undecided by spelling out the dangers he insisted a second Trump presidency would pose to the US’s status as the world’s leading beacon of democratic government.Declaring US history at “an inflexion point”, Biden, 80, said the country’s character and future was threatened by the authoritarian values of Trump’s self-styled Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.“There is something dangerous happening in America,” he told an audience in Phoenix, Arizona. “There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy: the MAGA movement … History has brought us to a new time of testing.“All of us are being asked right now: What will we do to maintain our democracy?”His voice at times falling to little more than a whisper to stress his message, Biden invoked the late John McCain, a former Republican senator with whom he had a close relationship, to emphasize what he said were the selfless virtues of democracy.He was forced to pause early in his speech when a heckler interrupted to demand why he had not declared a climate emergency, according to reporters in the auditorium.“If you shush up, I will meet with you immediately after this, OK?” the president responded. He then added pointedly: “Democracy never is easy – as you just demonstrated.”Referring to Trump by name just once in his half-hour speech, Biden nevertheless set out to contrast democratic norms and traditions with conduct that appeared to characterize his predecessor.Democracy, he said, “means rule of the people, not rule of the monarchy, not rule of money, not rule of the mighty.“Regardless of party, that means free and fair elections, respecting the outcome, win or lose. It means you cannot love your country only when you win.“Democracy means rejecting and repudiating political violence. Regardless of party, such violence is never, never, never acceptable in America. It’s undemocratic and it must never be normalized to gain political power.”The last comments were an apparent reference to the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6 when a Trump-inspired mob tried to stop the ratification of Biden’s presidential election victory by the US congress.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite Trump’s failure to overturn the 2020 election result, Biden warned that the danger had not passed. “Today, democracy is still at risk. This is not hyperbole. It’s a simple truth,” he said.The threat of violence continued unabated, he said, most recently aimed at general Mark Milley, the chair of the US armed forces joint chiefs of staff, whom Trump recently said in a social media post was guilty of “treason”.“Frankly, these MAGA extremists have no idea what the hell they’re talking about,” Biden said.The pro-democracy speech was delivered at an event honoring the memory of McCain, one of Biden’s political adversaries and twice a GOP presidential candidate, who frequently criticized Trump before his death in 2018.Biden depicted his relationship with McCain as a fitting paean to American democracy because the two men frequently engaged in across-the-aisle bipartisan cooperation when they were US senators despite being from different parties, a feature the president said the character of today’s Republican party has all but precluded.“There is no doubt that today’s Republican party is driven and intimidated by MAGA extremists,” he said. “Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.”Biden has reportedly been regularly portraying Trump as a threat to democracy to donors at events to raise funds for next year’s election. Thursday’s speech was the first time he had done so publicly since before last year’s congressional mid-term elections and indicated that he intended to make the theme a central presidential campaign issue. More
Questioning witnesses in the first impeachment hearing staged by House Republicans, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez prompted each to say they were not presenting “firsthand witness accounts” of crimes committed by Joe Biden.The New York Democrat also accused Republicans of fabricating supposed evidence of corruption involving the president and his surviving son, Hunter Biden.Republicans on the House oversight committee called three witnesses, Democrats one.Ocasio-Cortez questioned the Republican witnesses first.Turning to Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and well-known conservative commentator, she said: “In your testimony today, are you presenting any firsthand witness account of crimes committed by the president of the United States?”“No, I’m not,” said Turley, who had already made headlines by saying he did “not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment”.Ocasio-Cortez asked the same question of Eileen O’Connor, a former assistant attorney general in the justice department tax division who worked for Donald Trump’s transition team and is a member of the rightwing Federalist Society.“No, I’m not,” said O’Connor, who was also called out during the hearing for omitting the word “Hunter” when referring to the title of a piece she wrote for the Wall Street Journal in July, namely: “You’d go to prison for what Hunter Biden did.”Ocasio-Cortez asked the same question of Bruce Dubinsky, a forensic accountant:“As the third and final Republican witness in this hearing, have you in your testimony presented any firsthand witness account of crimes committed by the president of the United States?”“I have not,” he said.Ocasio-Cortez said she would “assume the same” of the sole witness called by Democrats, Michael J Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor.He said: “I’m not a fact witness. Correct.”Widely known as AOC, the congresswoman has a passionate following among progressives and an equally passionate legion of haters among conservatives. Her questioning duly made a splash on social media.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTurning to an item of actual evidence presented by Republicans, she accused them of making it up.Referring to Byron Donalds, she said: “Earlier today, one of our colleagues, the gentleman from Florida, presented up on the screen something that … appeared to be a screenshot of a text message containing or insinuating an explosive allegation.“That screenshot of what appeared to be a text message was a fabricated image.”Donalds showed text messages he claimed indicated that Hunter Biden engaged in fraud and money laundering, to the benefit of his father.“I don’t know where it came from,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I don’t know if it was the staff of the committee, but it was not the actual direct screenshot from that phone.”She added: “What was brought out from that fabricated image excluded critical context that changed the underlying meaning and allegation that was presented up on that screen, by this committee and by members of this committee.”Ocasio-Cortez also noted that only the witnesses in the hearing were under oath and therefore bound to tell the truth. In contrast, members of Congress could say whatever they wanted. More
Texas Democrat Jasmine Crockett launched a blistering attack on the impeachment hearings against President Joe Biden on Thursday, asking key Democrat witness Michael J Gerhardt how many times GOP members of the inquiry said ‘if’ when probing allegations against the president. Crockett said: ‘Honestly, if they would continue to say “if” or “Hunter” and we were playing a drinking game, I would be drunk by now.’
During a hearing of the House Oversight Committee, Crockett also accused GOP members of ignoring evidence against Donald Trump while continuing ‘disturbing’ efforts to impeach Biden. More
A government shutdown appeared all but inevitable as the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, dug in on Thursday, vowing he will not take up Senate legislation designed to keep the federal government fully running despite House Republicans’ struggle to unite around an alternative.Congress is at an impasse just days before a disruptive federal shutdown that would halt paychecks for many of the federal government’s roughly 2 million employees, as well as 2 million active-duty military troops and reservists, furlough many of those workers and curtail government services.But the House and Senate are pursuing different paths to avert those consequences, even though time is running out before government funding expires after midnight on Saturday.The Senate is working toward passage of a bipartisan measure that would fund the government until 17 November as longer-term negotiations continue, while also providing $6bn for Ukraine and $6bn for US disaster relief.The House, meanwhile, has teed up votes on four of the dozen annual spending bills that fund various agencies in hopes that would cajole enough Republicans to support a House-crafted continuing resolution that temporarily funds the government and boosts security at the US border with Mexico. It’s a long shot, but McCarthy predicted a deal.“Put your money on me; we’re going to get this done,” he said in a CNBC interview. “I think we can work through the weekend. I think we can figure this out.”Lawmakers were already weary from days of late-night negotiating. The strain was evident at McCarthy’s closed-door meeting with Republicans on Thursday morning, which was marked by a tense exchange between the speaker and Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, according to those in the room.Gaetz, who has taunted McCarthy for weeks with threats to oust him from his post, confronted the speaker about conservative online influencers being paid to post negative things about him. McCarthy shot back that he wouldn’t waste his time on something like that, Gaetz told reporters as he exited the meeting.McCarthy’s allies left the meeting fuming about Gaetz’s tactics.With his majority splintering, McCarthy is scrambling to come up with a plan for preventing a shutdown and win Republican support. The speaker told Republicans he would reveal a Republican stopgap plan, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, on Friday, according to those in the room, while also trying to force Senate Democrats into giving some concessions.But with time running out, many GOP lawmakers were withholding support for a temporary measure until they had a chance to see it. Others are considering joining Democrats, without McCarthy’s support, to bring forward a bill that would prevent a shutdown.With his ability to align his conference in doubt, McCarthy has little standing to negotiate with Senate Democrats. He has also attempted to draw Joe Biden into negotiations, but the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said Congress and the White House had already worked out top-line spending levels for next year with an agreement this summer that allowed the government to continue borrowing to pay its bills.McCarthy was deviating from that deal and courting a shutdown by catering to Republicans who said it didn’t do enough to cut spending, he said.“By focusing on the views of the radical few instead of the many, speaker McCarthy has made a shutdown far more likely,” Schumer said.Biden also sought to apply more pressure on McCarthy, urging him to compromise with Democrats even though that could threaten his job.“I think that the speaker is making a choice between his speakership and American interests,” Biden said.The White House, as well as the Department of Homeland Security, notified staff on Thursday to prepare for a shutdown, according to emails obtained by the Associated Press. Employees who are furloughed would have four hours on Monday to prepare their offices for the shutdown. More
Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Republicans of fabricating evidence in the first hearing of Biden’s impeachment inquiry on Thursday. Ocasio-Cortez said: ‘Earlier today, one of our colleagues, the gentleman from Florida, presented up on the screen something that looked, appeared, to be a screenshot of a text message containing or insinuating an explosive allegation. That screenshot of what appeared to be a text message was a fabricated image’
In a blistering attack on the GOP-led inquiry Ocasio-Cortez continued: ‘This is an embarrassment. An embarrassment to the time and people of this country’ More
