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

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

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      Donald Trump and Mike Johnson hold ‘election integrity’ press conference – live

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      Donald Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago that he would “absolutely” testify at his New York criminal trial, which is set to start next week. It is not, however, clear if he will actually do so.Asked if it was “risky” for him to testify, the former president responded, “I tell the truth.” Trump’s testimony has previously hurt him in court, and he was ordered by a jury earlier this year to pay millions to E Jean Carroll for defamation.Trump shared familiar grievances about his various criminal ongoing criminal trials before his “election integrity” press conference with House speaker Mike Johnson came to an end.Vice president Kamala Harris is now speaking in Tucson, Arizona to condemn the 1800s-era ban supported by the state supreme court this week:Donald Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago that he would “absolutely” testify at his New York criminal trial, which is set to start next week. It is not, however, clear if he will actually do so.Asked if it was “risky” for him to testify, the former president responded, “I tell the truth.” Trump’s testimony has previously hurt him in court, and he was ordered by a jury earlier this year to pay millions to E Jean Carroll for defamation.Trump shared familiar grievances about his various criminal ongoing criminal trials before his “election integrity” press conference with House speaker Mike Johnson came to an end.Donald Trump, speaking at Mar-a-Lago, was asked why voters should trust that he won’t sign a federal abortion ban, when he had previously indicated support. He responded:
      We don’t need it any longer, because we broke Roe v Wade … and we gave it back to the states.”
      He claimed he does not support the unpopular Arizona state supreme court ruling this week supporting a near total abortion-ban dating back to 1864. When asked whether he is “pro-life” or “pro-choice”, he did gave a meandering, unclear response.House speaker Mike Johnson says Republicans are introducing legislation to “require proof of citizenship to vote” despite the fact that it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote and there is no evidence of widespread migrant voting (or even many specific examples of this happening).Johnson hasn’t shared a ton of details about the mechanics of the legislation, but claimed that if “hundreds of thousands” of migrants cast votes, it could impact the result of the elections. Research has repeatedly shown that the systems in place have not allowed non-citizens to register or cast ballots.The former president has started his presser with his signature xenophobic rhetoric on immigration, which has become increasingly dehumanizing and viscous on the campaign trail. He has frequently called migrants “animals” and has said they are “poisoning the blood” of the US, echoing Nazi speech and the racist, far-right Great Replacement Theory suggesting the left is promoting migration to replace white people.Trump’s introductory remarks included misinformation tying migrants to crime.As we await the joint press conference of Donald Trump and House speaker Mike Johnson at Mar-a-Lago, here’s a refresher on some of the misleading and false information they have been promoting about non-citizens and voting:
      The two have said they are pushing legislation to ban non-citizens from voting – despite the fact that it is already illegal under federal law for people without US citizenship to cast a ballot.
      Trump has spread racist conspiracy theories on the campaign trail – claiming without evidence that migrants will try to illegally vote and steal the election for him, saying, “They can’t speak a word of English for the most part, but they’re signing them up.”
      As the Guardian’s democracy reporter Rachel Leingang reported: “There is no evidence of widespread non-citizen voting, nor are there even many examples of individual instances of the practice, despite strenuous efforts in some states to find these cases.”
      A study by the Brennan Center of the 2016 election found just 0.0001% of votes across 42 jurisdictions, with 23.5m votes, were suspected to be non-citizens voting, 30 incidents in total.
      The press conference is scheduled for 4.30pm local time. For more background, check out Leingang’s coverage from earlier this week:Donald Trump is set to meet House Republican speaker Mike Johnson in Mar-a-Lago on Friday where the two will hold a press conference on “election integrity”.Earlier on Friday, Johnson told reporters, “I don’t ever comment on my private conversations with President Trump, but I’m looking forward to going to Florida and spend some time with him.”Meanwhile, a senior Trump adviser told CNN that the two will “draw attention to” state proposals and lawsuits that would allow non-citizens to vote.Johnson’s meeting with Trump comes after the Republican speaker secured a crucial win in the House earlier on Friday after the Republican-led chamber voted to pass Fisa reauthorization. The legislation, which allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans by intelligence officials, is supported by Johnson but heavily opposed by hard-right Republicans and Democrats alike.The Wyoming Republican representative Harriet Hageman has also released a video address following the House’s passage of Fisa’s reauthorization.In her address, Hageman, who voted no, said:
      I was a no vote for the reason that the amendment that would have required the intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant to search the records of American citizens was not adopted.
      I truly believe that as members of Congress, it is our responsibility to ensure that all of these agencies are following the constitution and the protecting the civil liberties of American citizens yet that’s not what happened today.
      The Colorado Republican representative Lauren Boebert has released a video address following the House’s passage of Fisa’s reauthorization.In her address, Boebert said:
      … 86 Republicans betrayed you, the American people, today, saying the federal government does not need a warrant to start a query or illegally spy on you or tap your phones or whatever they want to do.
      Boebert went on to point to the Florida Republican representative Anna Paulina Luna, who objected to the legislation’s passage and requested a vote to reconsider the legislation. As a result, the bill will not be able to head to the Senate until the House votes on the motion.
      That bill cannot be sent to the Senate until we take another vote on the warrant amendment for Fisa on Monday. That means we need you, the American people, putting pressure on these 86 Republicans who sold you out today,” said Boebert.
      Here is the list of the 86 House Republicans who voted against Arizona’s Republican representative Andy Biggs’ amendment to Fisa’s section 702 which called for the prohibition of warrantless surveillance:The Minnesota Democratic representative Ilhan Omar has criticized the House’s passage of the reauthorization of Fisa.In a series of tweets on Friday, Omar, who voted against the legislation, wrote:
      Section 702 still allows the government to collect communications of non-Americans abroad without a warrant. This has enabled warrantless surveillance that disproportionately targets Muslim Americans, African Americans, and other minority communities.
      She went on to add:
      True reform of surveillance powers needs warrants for searches of Americans, strict rules against racial and religious profiling [and] oversight to protect civil liberties.
      Anything less continues a system used to unfairly target Americans under the guise of counterterrorism.
      The 273-147 bipartisan vote reauthorizing Fisa is a win for the embattled House speaker, Mike Johnson, and comes at a time when he faces direct challenges to his leadership.Johnson was seen on the House floor speaking to the far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who last month filed a motion to remove Johnson from the speakership.Greene later told reporters she and Johnson spoke about “all sorts of things”, CNN reported.Johnson said he and Greene “agree on our conservative philosophy”, adding:
      We just have different ideas sometimes on strategy. The important part of governing in a time of divided government like we have is communication with members and understanding the thought process behind it, that they have a say in it.
      Johnson is also scheduled to meet with Donald Trump in Florida later on Friday.The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa, which gives the government expansive powers to view emails, calls and texts, has long been divisive and resulted in allegations from civil liberties groups that it violates privacy rights.Section 702 has faced opposition before, but it became especially fraught in the past year after court documents revealed that the FBI had improperly used it almost 300,000 times – targeting racial justice protesters, January 6 suspects and others. That overreach emboldened resistance to the law, especially among far-right Republicans who view intelligence services like the FBI as their opponent.Debate over Section 702 pitted Republicans who alleged that the law was a tool for spying on American citizens against others in the GOP who sided with intelligence officials and deemed it a necessary measure to stop foreign terrorist groups.One proposed amendment called for requiring authorities to secure a warrant before using section 702 to view US citizens’ communications, an idea that intelligence officials oppose as limiting their ability to act quickly.Another sticking point in the debate was whether law enforcement should be prohibited from buying information on American citizens from data broker firms, which amass and sell personal data on tens of millions of people, including phone numbers and email addresses.House conservatives who had blocked the Fisa bill earlier this week amid a push from Donald Trump allowed it to move forward on Friday after striking a deal with the speaker, Mike Johnson.Under the agreement, the new version of the bill would be a two-year reauthorization of section 702 of Fisa, cut down from the original proposed five years.This would mean that if Trump won the presidential election this year, the legislation would be up in time for Trump to overhaul Fisa laws next time around.The far-right Florida Republican Matt Gaetz, speaking to CNN earlier today, said:
      We just bought President Trump an at bat. The previous version of this bill would have kicked reauthorization beyond the Trump presidency. Now President Trump gets an at bat to fix the system that victimized him more than any other American.
      The House passed a two-year reauthorization of the nation’s warrantless surveillance program that had stalled earlier this week amid Republican resistance and after Donald Trump had urged GOP members to “kill” the law.In a 273 to 147 vote, lawmakers renewed section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), which is set to expire on 19 April, through 2026. The bill now heads to the Senate, which is expected to give it bipartisan approval.Section 702 allows the US government to collect the communications of targeted foreigners abroad by compelling service providers to produce copies of messages and internet data, or networks to intercept and turn over phone call and message data.But the law is controversial because it allows the government to incidentally collect messages and phone data of Americans without a court order if they interacted with the foreign target, even though the law prohibits section 702 from being used by the NSA to specifically target US citizens.The White House, intelligence chiefs and top lawmakers on the House intelligence committee have warned of potentially catastrophic effects of not reauthorizing the program.Friday’s vote marks the fourth attempt to pass the bill, which was blocked three times in the past five months by House Republicans bucking their party. Earlier this week, House conservatives refused to support the bill that the speaker, Mike Johnson, put forward.The Republican Ohio congressman Warren Davidson, has responded to the House vote to reauthorize Fisa, calling it a “sad day’.From Punchbowl news’ Mica Soellner:The House’s vote to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Service Act has passed.Following days of Republican infighting that has put House Republican speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership in a precarious position, Fisa passed with a vote of 273 yays and 147 nays in the Republican-led chamber.The vote marks a win for Johnson who has come under fire from hard-right Republicans including Georgia’s representative Marjorie Taylor Greene over his support for Fisa. Greene, who is opposed to Fisa, has repeatedly threatened to oust Johnson as he has “not lived up to a single one of his self-imposed tenets”.With the vote’s passage, the reauthorization of Fisa, specifically its amendments to section 702, allows for intelligence officials to extend their warrantless surveillance on electronic communications between Americans and foreigners abroad.Despite intelligence officials including the FBI director, Christopher Wray, arguing that a warrant requirement would “blind ourselves to intelligence in our holdings”, civil rights organizations such as the ACLU have criticized the legislation.“Given our nation’s history of abusing its surveillance authorities, and the secrecy surrounding the program, we should be concerned that section 702 is and will be used to disproportionately target disfavored groups, whether minority communities, political activists, or even journalists,” it said.A vote to amend Fisa’s section 702 to update the definition of foreign intelligence to help target international narcotics trafficking has passed.The amendment, introduced by Texas Republican representative Daniel Crenshaw, passed after 268 yays and 152 nays.A vote to amend Fisa’s section 702 to require the FBI to report to Congress on the number of queries conducted on Americans has passed.The amendment, introduced by Texas Republican representative Chip Roy, passed after 269 yays and 153 nays. More

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      Joe Biden will cancel $7.4bn in student debt for 277,000 borrowers

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      The Biden administration will cancel $7.4bn in student debt for 277,000 borrowers, the White House said on Friday, the latest in a series of debt cancellations.Joe Biden announced plans on Monday to ease student debt that would benefit at least 23 million Americans, addressing a key issue for young voters whose support he needs as he seeks re-election in November.Those plans include canceling up to $20,000 of accrued and capitalized interest for borrowers, regardless of income, which Biden’s administration estimates would eliminate the entirety of that interest for 23 million borrowers.The latest round of debt relief affects 277,000 Americans enrolled in the Save Plan, other borrowers enrolled in Income-Driven Repayment plans, and borrowers receiving Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the White House said in a statement.It follows an announcement in March that $6bn in student loans would be canceled for 78,000 borrowers.The administration said on Friday it had approved $153bn in student debt relief for 4.3 million Americans.Biden, a Democrat, last year pledged to find other avenues for tackling debt relief after the US supreme court in June blocked his broader plan to cancel $430bn in student loan debt.The campaign of the former president Donald Trump, Biden’s Republican challenger in the White House race, in March criticized the student loan cancellation as a bailout that was done “without a single act of Congress”.The issue remains high on the agenda of younger voters, many of whom have concerns about Biden’s foreign policy on the war in Gaza and fault him for not achieving greater debt forgiveness.Republicans have called Biden’s student loan forgiveness approach an overreach of his authority and an unfair benefit to college-educated borrowers while other borrowers received no such relief.Roughly half of federal student loan debt is held by people with a graduate degree, according to the Brookings Institution thinktank. An August 2023 report by the Department of Education said graduate students received the highest share – 47% – of federal student loan disbursements from 2021-22, even though they accounted for only 21% of all borrowers. More

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      Campaign funds used to pay Biden legal bills in classified documents inquiry

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      Campaign donations to Joe Biden were used to help pay legal bills during the special counsel investigation of his retention of classified information when out of office, Axios reported on Friday.Citing a review of campaign finance records and two unnamed sources “familiar with the matter”, the site said filings by the Democratic National Committee showed it paid more than $1.5m to lawyers or firms representing Biden during Robert Hur’s investigation.The news opens the Biden campaign to charges of hypocrisy, given its own attacks on Donald Trump and his campaign for using donations to pay legal bills.But the two candidates’ legal situations – and legal costs – are vastly different.Trump faces 88 criminal charges (for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments) and multimillion-dollar penalties in civil suits over tax fraud and defamation, the latter arising from a rape claim a judge said was “substantially true”.Denying wrongdoing but seeking to delay trials until he can retake power next year and dismiss them, Trump has fought prosecutors at every step, appealing all the way to the US supreme court. Nonetheless, Trump’s first criminal trial – in the hush-money case and the first criminal trial ever to involve a former president – is scheduled to begin in New York on Monday.The New York Times has reported that Trump’s legal bills since leaving office have topped $100m.Biden was investigated for retaining classified information after his 36-year stint as a US senator from Delaware and eight years as vice-president to Barack Obama. Unlike Trump, he cooperated with the special counsel throughout. Unlike in Trump’s case, the special counsel declined to bring charges – though he did deliver a controversial report.Hur’s investigation began in January last year. Axios said DNC filings showed payments of $1.05m to a company run by Bob Bauer, Biden’s lead attorney, between July 2023 and February 2024 and “largely” relating to the special counsel’s investigation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked about those payments and others, the DNC declined to tell Axios exactly how much was spent on matters concerning the special counsel. Bauer did not comment.Axios pointed to recent statements by Biden campaign officials aimed at Trump’s methods of meeting legal costs, including “We are not spending money on legal bills or hawking gold sneakers” and a hit at the Republican for relying on “a handful of billionaires figuring out how to pay his legal bills”.Alex Floyd, a DNC spokesperson, said: “There is no comparison – the DNC does not spend a single penny of grassroots donors’ money on legal bills – unlike Donald Trump, who actively solicits legal fees from his supporters and has drawn down every bank account he can get his hands on, like a personal piggy bank.” More

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      How badly has US diplomacy been damaged by the war in Gaza? – podcast

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      Criticism of Israel’s war strategy has been growing in recent months, but last week there was a marked shift in tone from western leaders after seven aid workers were killed by an Israeli strike. The most notable change has come from the US president, Joe Biden, who this week turned on Benjamin Netanyahu, declaring Israel’s approach to the war a ‘mistake’.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to a former negotiator in the Middle East, Aaron David Miller, about whether pressure from within his own party will force Biden to stop supplying arms to the US’s biggest ally in the Middle East, and what the future holds for the relationship between the US and Israel when the war ends

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Trump campaign calls for more presidential debates ‘much earlier’ in election race – as it happened

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      Joe Biden’s campaign launched a seven-figure ad buy in Arizona on Thursday focusing on reproductive rights, just two days after the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total abortion ban dating to 1864.The ad buy focuses on Donald Trump’s latest abortion stance, in which he said laws should be left to individual states, many of which have enacted new restrictions since he appointed supreme court justices who were instrumental in the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade.“Because of Donald Trump, millions of women lost the fundamental freedom to control their own bodies,” Biden narrates in the 30-second ad.
      And now, women’s lives are in danger because of that. The question is, if Donald Trump gets back in power, what freedom will you lose next?
      The ad, dubbed “Power Back”, will run this month on targeted television programs and target key young, female and Latino voters both on television and online, according to the campaign.In a statement, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said:
      This week, women across the state of Arizona are watching in horror as an abortion ban from 1864 with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of a woman will soon become the law of the land for Arizonans. This nightmare is only possible because of Donald Trump.

      Donald Trump’s campaign wrote to the commission on presidential debates asking for this year’s general election debates between him and Joe Biden to take place “much earlier” and calling for more to be added to the schedule.
      The Trump campaign letter comes after five of the major TV news networks banded together to prepare a letter urging Biden and Trump to participate in televised debates ahead the November general election.
      Joe Biden’s re-election campaign launched a seven-figure ad buy in Arizona on Thursday focusing on reproductive rights, just two days after the state’s supreme court upheld a near-total abortion ban dating to 1864.
      Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister, called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress.
      Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right congresswoman of Georgia who has filed a motion to remove Mike Johnson, said the House speaker offered her a spot on a proposed “kitchen cabinet” of advisers after a meeting at the Capitol.
      Senator Tim Kaine, a former vice-presidential nominee and leading foreign policy voice in the Democratic party, has said Joe Biden now understands that Benjamin Netanyahu “played” him during the early months of the war in Gaza but “that ain’t going to happen any more”.
      The joint press conference between Mike Johnson and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago tomorrow will come just two days after the former president called on Republicans to kill legislation the speaker put forward to extend a controversial surveillance law. Trump had urged House GOP members to reject a reauthorization of the law, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), ahead of the key procedural vote on Wednesday.
      Johnson is dashing to Florida to meet with Trump, where the pair are expected to appear tomorrow at an event at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate for a “major announcement on election integrity”. Friday’s appearance will mark their first public event together since Johnson was elected to the speakership last fall.
      FBI director Christopher Wray is currently speaking before the House appropriations committee, where he is expected to warn lawmakers of his concerns over potential bad actors carrying out attacks on US soil.“Our most immediate concern has been that individuals or small groups will draw twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home,” a transcript of Wray’s opening statement obtained by ABC News reads.
      But now increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, akin to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia Concert Hall a couple weeks ago.
      Wray said he was “hard pressed to think of a time where so many threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once,” according to the transcript.While he was careful not to touch on US domestic politics, the address by Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, today comes amid a deadlock in Congress on approving billions of dollars in additional military aid to Ukraine, due to pressure from hard-right Republicans aligned with Donald Trump.Kishida warned that the biggest challenge the world faces comes from China:
      China’s current external stance and military actions present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge, not only to the peace and security of Japan but to the peace and stability of the international community at large.
      “Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow,” he added.Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Thursday called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress.Warning of risks from the rise of China, Kishida said that Japan – stripped of its right to a military after the second world war – was determined to do more to share responsibility with its ally the United States.“As we meet here today, I detect an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should be,” Kishida told a joint session of the House of Representatives and Senate during a state visit to Washington.
      The international order that the US worked for generations to build is facing new challenges, challenges from those with values and principles very different from ours.
      Kishida said he understood “the exhaustion of being the country that has upheld the international order almost single-handedly” but added:
      The leadership of the United States is indispensable. Without US support, how long before the hopes of Ukraine would collapse under the onslaught from Moscow? Without the presence of the United States, how long before the Indo-Pacific would face even harsher realities?
      A majority of voters in Florida say they believe a six-week abortion ban is too strict, but only 42% said they will vote in favor of a ballot measure to enshrine abortion protections into the state constitution, according to a new poll.The study by Emerson College Polling found that 57% of respondents said the six-week abortion ban that will become state law next month is “too strict”, compared with 15% who said it is not strict enough.Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said:
      Fifty-six percent of Democrats and 44% of independents plan to vote in favor of a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability. Republicans are more split: 36% plan to vote no, 30% yes, and 34% are unsure.
      Wisconsin Republicans have hit the state election commission with complaints alleging that officials in the state’s two largest cities illegally rejected Republican applicants for poll worker positions for the primary election.The complaints, filed by the Milwaukee county Republican party and Dane county Republican party, claim officials in Milwaukee and Madison violated state law by not contacting eligible Republicans nominated by their party to work the polls. The move furthers the GOP strategy of questioning election processes in key battleground states.“This is the kind of misconduct that drives down faith in elections,” the Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman, Michael Whatley, said in a statement on Wednesday.
      The Republican Party is filing these complaints to compel election officials to follow the law and guarantee bipartisan access to important election administration positions in the Badger state.
      Burt Jones, Georgia’s state senator turned lieutenant governor, will be investigated for his role as a fake elector for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.Pete Skandalakis, director of the prosecuting attorneys’ council of Georgia, said he will look into whether Jones should face criminal charges over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state.Jones was one of 16 state Republicans who signed a certificate stating that Trump had won Georgia and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors even though Joe Biden had been declared the winner in the state.The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, was barred from prosecuting Jones in 2022 as part of her election interference case against Trump and others, after she hosted a campaign fundraiser for his Democratic opponent in the lieutenant governor’s race.Skandalakis announced on Thursday that he would appoint himself to spearhead a potential case against Jones, after facing criticism for not moving more quickly to find a prosecutor to replace Willis.The Trump campaign letter comes after five of the major TV news networks banded together to prepare a letter urging Joe Biden and Donald Trump to participate in televised debates ahead the November general election.The letter, endorsed by ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News, urged the presumptive presidential nominees “to publicly commit to participating in general election debates before November’s election”, according to CNN.In a statement responding to the Trump campaign’s letter asking for more presidential debates, Republican national committee Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump said:
      Election calendars have become longer than ever before – and scheduling debates after millions of Americans have already cast their ballots does a grave disservice to voters who want to hear solutions to the economic, border, and crime crises created by Joe Biden.
      Donald Trump’s campaign wrote to the commission on presidential debates asking for this year’s general election debates between him and Joe Biden to take place “much earlier” and calling for more to be added to the schedule.In a letter to the commission, Trump co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita wrote:
      The Commission must move up the timetable of its proposed 2024 debates to ensure more Americans have a full chance to see the candidates before they start voting, and we would argue for adding more debates in addition to those on the currently proposed schedule.
      The first presidential debate is scheduled to take place on 16 September in San Marcos, Texas. There are three presidential debates and one vice presidential debate scheduled.Wiles and LaCivita noted that by the date of the first proposed debate, more than a million Americans are likely to have already voted, and three million may have cast their ballot by 1 October, when the second proposed debate is scheduled. They added:
      We have already indicated President Trump is willing to debate anytime, anyplace, and anywhere – and the time to start these debates is now.
      Trump, who did not participate in any of the Republican primary debates, made similar requests during the 2020 election.The Republican National Committee sent out a scripted robocall on behalf of its new co-chair Lara Trump, falsely claiming Democrats were guilty of “massive fraud” in the 2020 election.“We all know the problems,” the RNC call said, according to CNN, which also said the call was sent 145,000 times in the first week of April.
      No photo IDs, unsecured ballot drop boxes, mass mailing of ballots and voter rolls chock full of deceased people and non-citizens are just a few examples of the massive fraud that took place. If Democrats have their way, your vote could be canceled out by someone who isn’t even an American citizen.
      Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who repeatedly defeated Trump in court after the 2020 election, said the RNC robocall showed the Republican party to be “more committed to the big lie than ever”.Donald Trump, who installed his daughter-in-law at the RNC last month, lost the 2020 election conclusively to Joe Biden and was told by close aides including William Barr, his attorney general, and Chris Krebs, his head of cybersecurity, that there was no widespread fraud.Regardless, Trump pursued his fraud lie through the courts – losing every case – and ultimately by inciting the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021. More

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      John Bolton says he will write in Dick Cheney instead of voting for Biden

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      John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Donald Trump who wrote a tell-all book and now campaigns against him, will cast a write-in vote for the former vice-president Dick Cheney instead of Joe Biden this year – despite saying Trump must not be re-elected.Bemoaning Trump’s focus on the 2020 election, which he lost conclusively but falsely insists was won with electoral fraud, Bolton told CNN that four years ago: “I voted for Dick Cheney.“And I’ll vote for Dick Cheney again this November. He was a principled Reaganite conservative and he still is. Age is no longer a factor in American presidential politics, so his age doesn’t disqualify him.”Cheney, 83, has suffered five heart attacks, the first aged just 37. In 2001, at the beginning of his vice-presidency to George W Bush, he prepared a resignation letter lest he become too ill to do the job. He went on to be by most judgments the most powerful vice-president of all but also an architect of the disastrous invasion of Iraq which cost hundreds of thousands of lives and sparked chaos across the Middle East.Three years after leaving office, in 2012 and aged 71, Cheney was given a new heart.Bolton said: “I think he’d do an immensely better job than either Trump or Biden.”Biden is 81. Trump is 77. Both are subject to doubts about their mental and physical capacity to be president.Trump faces unprecedented legal jeopardy, from 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar civil penalties. Biden does not.Trump was impeached twice, for blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt and for inciting an insurrection in the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021. Attempts to impeach Biden, over alleged corruption involving his son, have failed to produce evidence or momentum.On CNN, Bolton was asked if he had considered writing in Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney’s daughter who lost her seat in Congress over her opposition to Trump and who has flirted with a presidential run.Bolton said: “Well, I like Liz a lot. And, you know, maybe someday she’ll get my write-in vote too. But right now I’ll stick with her father.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I hope it sways the electorate and prevents both Trump and Biden from being the successful candidate and if I could start a nationwide write-in campaign for Dick Cheney, maybe I should do that.”Trump v Biden round two promises to be settled by razor-thin margins in a small number of battleground states. Both candidates fear the impact of third-party candidates or voters deserting the major party picks in any way.Among other anti-Trump conservatives, Bolton’s choice did not land well.“I think this is so wrong,” said Joe Walsh, a former Tea Party congressman who ran for the presidential nomination against Trump in 2020.“Bolton believes Trump is unfit, yet he won’t vote for Joe Biden, the only person on the ballot this year who can keep Trump out of the White House. Instead he does this. This is wrong.” More

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      Companies are using inflation to price-gouge Americans – and making it worse | Robert Reich

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      We learned this week that the Consumer Price Index climbed 3.5% in March from a year earlier, up from 3.2% in February, and faster than most economists anticipated.This poses a conundrum for central bankers who have made it clear they want to see further evidence that inflation is cooling before they cut interest rates.The Fed’s high interest rates haven’t pushed America to the brink of a recession, fortunately, but they haven’t slowed inflation as much as policymakers had hoped.The question is whether Fed officials can cut interest rates at all this year.Joe Biden acknowledged that “prices are still too high for housing and groceries”, and said he was “calling on corporations, including grocery retailers, to use record profits to reduce prices”.What’s the president getting at?Corporate profits reached a record high in the fourth quarter of last year.The easiest explanation for record corporate profits at the same time prices remain elevated is that corporations have enough monopoly power to keep prices high.(Note that many corporations are also shrinking the size of the products you’re buying without lowering their prices – a variant of the same thing.)This is one of the biggest reasons the American public is not yet crediting Biden with a great economy. Most people still aren’t feeling it.In 2023, PepsiCo’s chief financial officer said that even though inflation was dropping, its prices would not be. Pepsi hiked its prices by double digits and announced plans to keep them high in 2024.If Pepsi were challenged by tougher competition, consumers would just buy something cheaper. But PepsiCo’s only major soda competitor is Coca-Cola, which – surprise, surprise – announced similar price hikes at about the same time as Pepsi and has also kept its prices high.The CEO of Coca-Cola claimed that the company had “earned the right” to push price hikes because its sodas are popular. Popular? The only thing that’s popular these days seems to be corporate price gouging.We’re seeing this pattern across much of the economy – especially with groceries. At the end of 2023, Americans were paying at least 30% more for beef, pork and poultry products than they were in 2020.Why? Near-monopoly power. Just four companies now control processing of 80% of beef, nearly 70% of pork, and almost 60% of poultry. So of course it’s easy for them to coordinate price increases.The problem goes well beyond the grocery store. In 75% of US industries, fewer companies now control more of their markets than they did 20 years ago.What should be done?First, antitrust laws must be enforced.Kudos to the Biden administration for enforcing antitrust more aggressively than any administration in the last 40 years. This administration has taken action against alleged price fixing in the meat industry – which has been a problem for decades.The Biden administration has sued to block the merger of Kroger and Albertsons – two giant grocery chains.Kroger operates 2,750 stores in 35 states and the District of Columbia. The company’s 19 brands include Ralphs, Smith’s, King Soopers, Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, Mariano’s, Pick ’n Save, and Harris Teeter. Albertsons operates 2,273 stores in 34 states. Its 15 brands include Safeway, Jewel-Osco, Vons, Acme and Shaw’s. Together, Kroger and Albertsons employ around 700,000 people.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Biden administration is suing Amazon for using its dominance to artificially jack up prices, in one of the biggest anti-monopoly lawsuits in a generation.The Biden administration is suing Apple for using its market power to control its apps and prevent other businesses from offering them.The administration successfully sued to block the merger of JetBlue and Spirit Airlines, which would have made consolidation in the airline industry even worse.But given how concentrated American industry has become, there’s still a long way to go. Biden should make his antitrust enforcement against corporate power a centerpiece of his campaign.Second, big corporations must not be allowed to use their power to gouge consumers.Senator Elizabeth Warren and others recently unveiled the latest version of their Price Gouging Prevention Act.“Giant corporations are using supply chain shocks as a cover to excessively raise prices and sometimes charging the same price but shrinking how much consumers actually get,” Warren charges.The bill would empower the Federal Trade Commission (which would also get $1bn in additional funding) and state attorneys general to stop companies from charging “grossly excessive” prices, regardless of where alleged price gouging took place in a supply chain.The legislation would also protect small businesses – those earning less than $100m – from litigation if they had to raise prices in good faith during crises, and require public companies to disclose more about their costs and pricing strategies.I don’t have any illusions that this bill will find its way into law soon. Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate, and not all Democrats support it. Meanwhile, Republicans and their business backers are dead set against it – and are eager to blame continued high prices on Biden, not on corporations.But this bill is just as necessary as aggressive antitrust enforcement – and an example of what could and will be done if Democrats sweep the 2024 elections.The record profits of large corporations are coming out of the paychecks of average Americans, who are still struggling to get by.Biden and the Democrats must say this loudly and clearly and tell the public what they are doing – and will do – to stop corporate monopolies and price gouging.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More