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      Leading Republican strategist rebukes Trump for bringing ‘chaos’ back

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      As Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s first nominee for attorney general, withdrew after eight days amid allegations of sexual misconduct and more, and as Trump’s new pick, Pam Bondi, faced scrutiny of her own, a leading Republican strategist rebuked the president-elect for bringing “chaos” back to Washington.“Inadequate vetting, impatience, disregard for qualifications and a thirst for revenge have created chaos and controversy for Mr Trump before he’s even in office,” said Karl Rove, once known as George W Bush’s “Brain”, in the Wall Street Journal.“The price for all this will be missed opportunities to shore up popular support for the incoming president. But at least it’ll make great TV.”Gaetz, 42 and a far-right Florida congressman, denied wrongdoing but lost Senate support amid sensation over an unpublished House ethics committee report concerning allegations of “sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shar[ing] inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misus[ing] state identification records, convert[ing] campaign funds to personal use, and/or accept[ing] a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift.”Gaetz was torpedoed by the Republican US senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and senator-elect John Curtis of Utah, who had indicated a lack of support for the former representative’s congressional confirmation. Bondi, 59 and a former attorney general of Florida, seemed more likely to earn support.Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist turned critic of the president-elect, Trump, told CNN Bondi was “a mainstream Republican who turned Maga”, adding: “I will tell you, she is not an ogre. She is not a jerk.”Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told reporters that Bondi was a “grand slam, touchdown, hole in one, ace, hat-trick, slam dunk, Olympic gold medal pick”, adding: “She will be confirmed quickly because she deserves to be confirmed quickly.”Bondi has strong, longtime links to Trump. Part of his defense team in his first impeachment, for trying to extort political dirt from Ukraine, she holds a position at the hard-right America First Policy Institute, set up by Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller.Democrats look less favorably on Bondi’s lobbying work for Qatar, her support for Trump’s lie that his defeat in 2020 was the result of electoral fraud, and a Trump-linked scandal from 2013.As Florida attorney general, Bondi had said she was considering joining a lawsuit brought by students cheated by Trump University, a short-lived, fraudulent for-profit past venture of the president-elect’s that was shut down. Four days later, Bondi received a $25,000 donation from a Trump non-profit. Bondi never joined the lawsuit. She and Trump denied wrongdoing but Trump paid a $2,500 fine for violating federal tax laws.Other Trump picks face continued uncertainty, not least Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host nominated for secretary of defense. Widely seen as unqualified, war veteran Hegseth is the subject of a released police report about an alleged sexual assault in California in 2017.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Thursday, Hegseth said: “As far as the media is concerned, the matter was fully investigated and I was fully cleared.”The Washington Post reported that Republican senators broadly saw Hegseth as a good choice alongside more mainstream selections for other cabinet positions,including Marco Rubio, the Florida senator nominated for secretary of state, and Mike Waltz, the Florida congressman picked for national security adviser.Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma senator, told the Post: “We live in an age that everybody’s past is exposed, regardless of what their circumstances are, and people draw an opinion before they have time to actually know the whole truth. The good thing is, there’s actually a full report, and you guys can read it for yourself. I don’t think there’s any way in the world you can say that this is a sexual assault.”But Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, of the armed services committee, told NBC the police report was “a pretty big problem, given that we have … a sexual assault problem in our military. You know, this is why you have background checks. This is why you have hearings. This is why you have to go through the scrutiny. I’m not going to prejudge him, but, yeah, it’s a pretty concerning accusation.”Questions also swirl about the vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr, picked for secretary of health. An allegation of sexual misconduct towards a babysitter has resurfaced. Kennedy has said he does not remember but also apologized. CNN, meanwhile, unearthed 2016 comments in which Kennedy previously compared Trump to Hitler and praised descriptions of his supporters as Nazis.Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman nominated for director of national intelligence, is reviled on the left for her positions on Russia, Ukraine and Syria, and distrusted on the right for support for the Iran nuclear deal and opposition to trade wars with China.And Linda McMahon, the World Wrestling Entertainment impresario picked to be education secretary – a department Trump wants to scrap – is accused in a lawsuit of failing to stop an employee sexually abusing children. McMahon has not commented.Away from Trump’s nascent cabinet, the Georgia congresswoman and far-right conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene was picked to lead a House subcommittee linked to a newly conceived body, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. This is not an official government department and details are vague.It has been proposed by Trump as a mission for the unelected tech mogul Elon Musk, meant to slash trillions off the federal budget, for which project he has been paired with Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Greene promised to fire “bureaucrats” deemed underperforming or surplus to requirements. More

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      We can still have progress under Trump. We just need to focus on our mission | Aaron Glantz

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      Welcome to Fighting Back, the Guardian’s new pop-up newsletter from our opinion desk. From now until the inauguration, you will hear from big thinkers on what we can all do to protect civil liberties and fundamental freedoms in a Trump presidency. If you aren’t already a subscriber, you can sign up here.***Take a deep breath. Go on a walk. Meditate if it’s your practice. Talk with your family, friends and longtime collaborators. And then, when you are ready, sit down and write a personal mission statement rooted in an issue that’s important to you.Think about all the levers of power – local, state, federal, corporate and in the broader civil society. Sketch how each of them relate to the problem you hope to tackle. Most likely, Donald Trump and his administration will have a lot of say on this issue, but they won’t be the only players. Move forward with the intention to confront that issue, rather than attack the US president-elect, and you may find unexpected allies. By doing so, you will give yourself a chance to make a meaningful difference.
      It struck me, in 2016, that many in the media were overlooking the fact that the US had elected a real estate developer president
      As an investigative reporter, I spent the first Trump term focused on housing and economic equity. It struck me, after Trump’s surprise win over Hillary Clinton in 2016, that many in the media were overlooking the fact that the US had elected a real estate developer president – one who had been forced to settle a federal discrimination suit, at that.Housing is central to the American dream. It is nearly every family’s largest expense and the single most important source of wealth for homeowners. But on Barack Obama’s watch, homeownership slipped to a 50-year low. Black and brown families bore the brunt of the decline. I and my colleagues at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting set out out not to confront Trump per se, but to attack the following problem:Fifty years after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act, which banned discrimination in mortgage lending, the homeownership gap between Black and white families is larger than during the Jim Crow era. What can we do to ensure equal access to credit and a fair shake at the American dream?Confronting Trump directly seemed like a fool’s errand. His treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, was a Wall Street executive who personally profited off the foreclosure crisis. The man Trump appointed as the country’s top bank regulator, the comptroller of the currency Joseph Otting, was former chief executive of Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank. From 2010 to 2015, the years Otting was in charge, OneWest made just 1% of its home loans to Black families and 3% to Latinos, despite being headquartered in southern California. But Trump, Mnuchin and Otting were not the only people with power over mortgages. State, local and corporate officials could also be held accountable.In February 2018, my colleague Emmanuel Martinez and I published an investigation, Kept Out, which used an analysis of 31m mortgage records to expose modern-day redlining in 61 US cities. In Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Washington DC and dozens of others, we found people of color were far more likely to be denied a home loan even when they made the same amount of money, sought the same size loan and wanted to buy in the same neighborhood.This was a year into Trump’s first term. Republicans also controlled both houses of Congress. But our approach, simultaneously sweeping and local in scope, gave communities the tools they needed to hold public officials and corporations accountable.Six state attorneys general launched investigations. In Philadelphia, where we conducted our field reporting, the city created a $100m revolving loan fund to help first-time homebuyers. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, the country’s largest bank, visited the city and promised a major expansion in community lending. After Trump left office, three states and the justice department reached a $20m settlement with one of Warren Buffett’s mortgage companies, which had been the largest home purchase lender in Philadelphia.That inquiry, launched by then Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro, found loan officers and mortgage brokers at Buffett’s companies shared pictures of Black people holding wheelbarrows filled with watermelons. One sent a message that read “PROUD TO BE WHITE!” Another complained: “When I call you N****r, K*ke, Towel head, Sandn***r, Camel Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink … You call me a racist.” A top company official posted a picture with the Confederate flag. In addition to settling the case, the company shut down.
      We, the public, would be well-served to step back from this partisan tit-for-tat and focus on whether political leaders get stuff done
      This history is worth revisiting as Trump returns to power and once again stacks his administration with cronies. Some blue-state governors, including California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, have positioned themselves to lead the resistance, with Newsom convening a special legislative session to “Trump-proof” the state.But we, the public, would be well-served to step back from this partisan tit-for-tat and focus on whether political leaders “get stuff done”, as Shapiro said in his post-election statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHousing is a major concern for Americans of all political perspectives. A recent Pew Research survey found 69% percent of respondents were “very concerned” about housing costs – with overwhelming majorities of both Republicans and Democrats worried. On this metric, the blue states are failing.California and New York have the lowest homeownership rates and the highest rents, according to the US Census Bureau. In California, a family must make $221,000 a year to qualify for a loan on a “mid-tier” home, according to an October report from the state legislative analyst office. If you’re a working-class person of any race, it’s no wonder Trump’s outrage is attractive. Democratic politicians aren’t solving the problems most important to you.Homelessness is also on the rise – especially in blue states and especially in California. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, California accounted for 49% of all unsheltered people in the United States last year (123,423 people) – nearly eight times the number of unsheltered people in second-place Florida.None of this is Trump’s fault. California is the fourth-largest economy in the world with a state budget approaching $300bn. The Golden state has poured $24bn into solving its homelessness crisis over the last five years, but a state audit found it didn’t adequately track whether all that money was spent effectively. In San Francisco, where residents voted to oust their mayor in favor of the heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, the city spends nearly a billion dollars a year fighting homelessness – and likewise has little to show for it.
      Center an issue you care about, ask who is responsible for solving it, find allies and move forward with intention
      So where does this leave us? Back where we started. It sounds basic, but it’s true. People want a government that works for them. Center an issue you care about, ask who is responsible for solving it, find allies and move forward with intention. Not only will this approach bring results for you and those you care about, it will also provide an opportunity to dull the political polarization that feeds Trump’s power. You may not be able to lessen Trump’s rage or his desire for retribution, but you will be able to get something done – and that’s the most important step to creating the world you want to live in.What gives me hopeI derive hope and strength from the community around me. I know that all of us, pushing together, can weave a tapestry of strength that propels impact. In this time, consider supporting organizations that provide space to mission-driven journalists to find common cause together, including the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and the Carter Center, home of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.***Aaron Glantz, a two-time Peabody award winner and Pulitzer prize finalist, is a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for the Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences. His books include Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream (HarperCollins). More

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      How millions of US children would be hurt by Trump’s mass deportation plan: ‘Deep harm is intentional’

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      Donald Trump confirmed on Monday his intentions to make mass deportations a hallmark of his second term.That such measures would drastically upend the lives of the US’s immigrant communities is widely understood. But sweeping anti-immigrant policies would also be detrimental to American citizens – most notably the nearly 20 million US-born children of immigrant parents.“Mass deportations will be profoundly harmful to US citizen children,” said Andrew Craycroft, staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco.In 2022, one in four US children had at least one immigrant parent, and more than 4 million US citizens under age 18 lived with an undocumented parent.“These are millions of US citizen children who were born here, who have grown up going to your elementary schools and playing on your little league baseball teams, who are facing a very real danger of losing their parents,” said Kelly Albinak Kribs, co-director of the Technical Assistance Program at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.And while the mechanics by which the president-elect would actually execute his sweeping anti-immigrant agenda remain murky, there is little doubt that creating a climate of fear for immigrant communities is one of his administration’s top priorities – and one that will cause irreparable psychological damage to millions of US citizens.Deporting the parents of US-citizen children didn’t begin with Trump. However, past administrations took precautions to limit the trauma it caused, advocates and legal experts say.The Obama administration barred Ice raids from taking place in schools, childcare centers, hospitals and places of worship. Before that, the Bush administration required Ice to notify schools and child protective services in advance of a large-scale raid.Trump’s policies, on the other hand, appear to traumatize children by design to curb unwanted immigration. “Under Trump, previously and in the future, deep harm to children is absolutely intentional and in many ways is the entire point,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy.Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy at the southern border separated at least 5,000 foreign-born children and hundreds of US citizen children from their parents. He also ramped-up interior enforcement measures, such as targeted worksite raids. In 2019, Cervantes visited towns in central Mississippi where Ice agents had arrested nearly 700 undocumented poultry plant workers, many of whom had US-born children attending nearby public schools.View image in fullscreen“The kids could see their parents being marched into white vans, handcuffed, as they were leaving school,” Cervantes said. “It was like a nightmare. And those kids, to this day, are still requiring a lot of mental health support.”Come January, Americans should anticipate a return to “draconian measures” such as family separation, said Kribs. Trump has also indicated desires to go after immigrants with legal status, expand the circumstances that allow for denaturalization and pursue unlawful measures that explicitly target the US-born children of immigrants like ending birthright citizenship.But how Trump would execute his more radical ambitions, including militarized mass deportations, is unclear.Such an operation would take a high degree of coordination, both between US agencies and with foreign governments, to pull off. A country like Mexico may accommodate receiving a few hundred people, “but it’s a completely different issue to talk about hundreds of thousands of people being sent back”, said Nando Sigona, professor of international migration and forced displacement at the University of Birmingham.It would also be expensive. According to Debu Gandhi, senior director for immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, deporting workers would accelerate inflation, shrink the food supply, slow efforts to build affordable housing and squander taxpayer dollars in efforts to “deport mothers of US citizen children who [pose] no security threat”, Gandhi said.And then there’s the question of public opinion.Backlash again Trump’s 2018 family separation policies was widespread across the political spectrum, explained Lee Gelernt, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who led the lawsuit against “zero tolerance”. “If a second Trump administration does extreme things, we hope and expect the public will push back,” he said. “In his first term, I think they believed they had dehumanized the immigrant population to such an extent that the public would not push back even when little babies were torn away, but there was enormous pushback across the political and ideological spectrum.”Whether or not mass deportations occur, citizen children of immigrants will be adversely impacted by living in a constant state of fear.Research shows that the threat of parental separation alone can cause PTSD and toxic stress in young children. Under the coming administration, that stress will be especially pronounced in mixed-status families, where one or more parent lacks legal status. “It’s easiest to start with people who are wholly unprotected,” said Kribs.Anti-immigrant policies can also have a chilling effect by which immigrant parents, fearing arrest and separation, keep their citizen children home from school, refrain from signing up for benefits such as food stamps or health insurance, and avoid taking their citizen children to the doctor, said Sigona.View image in fullscreenMisinformation exacerbates immigrant parents’ fears that engaging with public services could jeopardize their status or their chances of acquiring permanent residency. The repercussions can be dangerous. “There were parents telling us about how they were making decisions about whether or not to take their kids to the emergency room in the middle of the night,” Cervantes said.Other citizen children may lose contact with the US entirely. If a parent facing deportation chooses to keep their family together, a citizen child will have to leave the US and resettle elsewhere – often in an unfamiliar country that their parent fled for reasons of safety or security.Existing guidance urges Ice agents to detain the parents of citizen children near their children’s residence, arrange for visitation rights, and give them time to make childcare arrangements – but this isn’t binding. “Broadly speaking, these citizen children don’t have the right to have their parent remain with them,” Craycroft said.“Children simply don’t have the same rights as adults,” echoed Cervantes, describing the discrepancy as one of the immigrant system’s biggest flaws.Knowing this, immigrant and child welfare advocates are prepared to have all hands on deck to combat what they see as an imminent crisis for millions of citizen children.“We are facing these next four years clear-eyed and ready to meet the challenge,” said the Young Center’s Kribs. “But there’s going to be a lot of heartbreak along the way.” More

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      Project 2025: the Trump picks with ties to ultra-rightwing policy manifesto

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      On the campaign trail, Donald Trump repeatedly disavowed Project 2025, saying he had “nothing to do” with the blueprint for a conservative presidency and didn’t know the people behind it. But as he starts to assemble his cabinet and White House staff, it seems likely he’ll get to know the people involved very well soon.Trump’s attempts to disavow the project before winning re-election seemed improbable, given that it was written by various members of his first administration and aligned on policy goals with his own proposed second term agenda.His transition team claimed it would not hire any people associated with Project 2025 because it was “radioactive”.But, in his selections for key roles, he has already tapped people with direct ties to the rightwing manifesto.Brendan CarrView image in fullscreenTrump’s nominee to chair the Federal Communications Commission wrote the chapter on the FCC in Project 2025. In the chapter, Carr advocates for “reining in big tech”, in part by limiting the immunity tech platforms have from content posted by third parties. He specifically mentions abuses by Google, Meta and YouTube as examples of platforms requiring such reining in.Tom HomanView image in fullscreenHoman, chosen as Trump’s “border czar”, is listed as a contributor to Project 2025, though his name is not listed on any specific chapter or policy ideas.He also worked as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He penned op-eds, promoted by Heritage, that attacked the Biden administration over immigration and panned the bipartisan immigration deal. He wrote in one op-ed that “race-baiting Democrats” had called him names when he led Ice.Mike HuckabeeView image in fullscreenMike Huckabee, named by Trump to be his ambassador to Israel, interviewed the Heritage president and Project 2025 architect, Kevin Roberts, on his show in October 2024 as part of an effort to counter the negative press about the project.Karoline Leavitt View image in fullscreenThe incoming White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, appeared in training videos for Project 2025. In addition to the policy manifesto, the project’s four pillars involved amassing a database of potential employees and creating a training program for conservatives who wanted positions in a rightwing presidency. In a video called “The Art of Professionalism”, obtained by ProPublica and Documented, Leavitt talks about her advice for people who would serve as staff. While she was the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign, she claimed the project had nothing to do with Trump. She also appears in a promotional video for the project.Stephen MillerView image in fullscreenStephen Miller will be back in the White House, this time as deputy chief of staff for policy. He is the president of the America First Legal Foundation, a legal attack dog non-profit for rightwing causes.America First Legal was listed as a supporter of Project 2025 and appeared as a member of the project’s advisory board, though the group then asked to be removed from it. Miller also appeared in a promotional video for the project, which is still posted on the project’s website.John RatcliffeView image in fullscreenRatcliffe, offered the role of CIA director by Trump, was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where he was tasked with chairing a project to hold China accountable for Covid-19 and “helping Project 2025 build out policy recommendations for intelligence reform in the next presidential administration”, according to the Heritage website.Ratcliffe is listed as a contributor to Project 2025. He also is interviewed for the project, and excerpts of the interview went into a chapter on the intelligence community. In the chapter, Ratcliffe is quoted multiple times, on issues such as making sure the intelligence community is accountable to the director of national intelligence and on countering China.“I had an $85bn combined annual budget for both the national intelligence program and military intelligence program,” he is quoted in Project 2025. “My perspective was, ‘Whatever we’re spending on countering China, it isn’t enough.’”JD VanceView image in fullscreenTrump’s vice-president has close ties with Roberts, the Heritage president. Vance wrote the foreword for Roberts’ book, which was released after the election.Roberts “is somebody I rely on a lot who has very good advice, very good political instincts”, Vance told news outlet Notus in January 2024. In the foreword, Vance praises Roberts’ ideas and boldness, saying the book advances a “fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics” and a “surprising – even jarring” path forward for conservatives. More

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      The US needs more working-class political candidates | Dustin Guastella and Bhaskar Sunkara

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      Dan Osborn’s performance this month was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak election cycle for progressives. Although he ultimately lost, the independent US Senate candidate outperformed Kamala Harris in Nebraska by 14 percentage points while running an assertively anti-establishment, pro-union platform. His formula was simple: connect with people about their economic problems, tell them who to blame for them, and tell them what he would do about it.Now he’s starting a new political action committee, Working Class Heroes Fund, to support working-class candidates, something our national politics direly needs.Throughout 2024, Osborn’s ideas shaped what should have been an uneventful race in a deep red state. He ran on a pro-union agenda that would have passed the Pro Act to aid organizing efforts, raised the minimum wage, and provided mandatory bereavement leave for all workers. His statement to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl – “I want to challenge the system because the system has to be challenged” – captured a common campaign theme.Osborn’s egalitarianism was profoundly connected to his personal experiences. “Thirty-thirty 16-hour shifts on Sundays,” he recalled in one of his closing campaign ads. “That’s what I had to do to provide for my family.” His story wasn’t unusual, but it wasn’t one reflected in Washington (a city he hadn’t even visited until April of this year).Osborn led a strike in 2021 at a Kellogg’s plant in Omaha and has spent most of his working life as an industrial mechanic – in fact, he’s already back working as a steamfitter. He made $48,000 last year, within a few thousand of the Nebraska median income. This background was highlighted by the Osborn campaign through the race, contrasting the candidate with a Congress where most members are wealthy: “My opponent, Deb Fischer, is … taking so much corporate cash she should wear [sponsor] patches like Nascar.”Osborn’s working-class identity isn’t just an affect; it’s something that connects him to the needs and aspirations of millions of other American workers. And the profound lack of people like him in Congress is one of the major reasons why working-class people have been treated as a political afterthought. Right now, fewer than 2% of congressmembers come from working-class backgrounds. There is virtually no one in government who speaks for, or speaks like, regular workers.But wait, isn’t advocating for more working-class candidates just another form of identity politics? That is, isn’t this just more of the same thing that hurt Democrats in the first place?It’s true that the emphasis on a person’s race, gender and sexuality as a demonstration of their moral and political rectitude has been an albatross for progressives in recent years. This has been especially true when it’s been presented as tales of personal trailblazing (think #ImWithHer and Hillary Clinton’s crusade to become the first female president) or to trumpet individuals simply because of qualities they were born with rather than the ideas they espouse. However, class is different. And, in the case of Osborn, his class background was key to his being able to deliver a credible populist appeal that challenged the rule of the wealthy.In other words, as a working-class populist, Osborn’s appeal could cut across the various divisions of race, gender, region and religion to unite working people, because to be working class, and to proudly identify as such, is not just to show voters that you “feel their pain”, as Bill Clinton once dramatized, but that you actually understand the world from their position. And that’s one reason Osborn thinks that getting more workers represented in office is such a good idea.We agree. After all, the fight for working-class political representation was part of the origin story of self-conscious workers’ movements everywhere in the world. In the United Kingdom and Australia, the battle to extend the franchise helped give rise to labor parties. In Germany, the Social Democratic party swelled under the leadership of August Bebel, a carpenter and woodturner. In Brazil, the Workers’ party, led by a metalworker with little formal education, rose to become a governing force.Even in the United States, at the height of the New Deal, the Congress of Industrial Organizations organized the first-ever political action committee with the explicit aim of getting workers into Congress.In each case, and there are many others, the simple argument that workers – their organizations, and their interests – deserved representation in government generated immense excitement. And in each case, the parties that pursued such a goal became, at least for a time, the undisputed representatives of working-class interests in government.There are similar political opportunities in the United States today. While Nebraska might have had a particularly effective worker populist, there is evidence that people want to vote for workers across the country. A study by the Center for Working-Class Politics found that among working-class voters, hypothetical candidates with elite or upper-class backgrounds performed significantly worse than candidates from humbler backgrounds.Yet, in reality, there were few working-class candidates to vote for. Only 2.3% of Democratic candidates worked exclusively in blue-collar jobs before entering politics. Even if we broaden out the category to professionals like teachers and nurses, the number is still under 6%. Why? Mainly because it’s extremely expensive to run for office. Most workers simply do not have the fundraising networks or the ability to take time away from their jobs to run for office.What’s more, as Duke University political scientist Nicholas Carnes has shown, the burdens of running for office are much higher for blue-collar workers than they are for those in white-collar professions because they also include the considerable challenges that working-class candidates have in persuading political gatekeepers to endorse their candidacies over much more familiar options in salaried professions who speak the same language and run in the same social circles. Osborn’s new effort to help ease some of these burdens is laudable for this reason.The lack of working-class representation in government is also one major factor in explaining the dysfunction in our politics and the persistence of economic policies that seem to only benefit the rich. Working-class voters have been cut adrift. Their views and voices are invisible in Washington, and they see no real champions for their interests. One reason these voters are likely to prefer working-class candidates is that these candidates are much more likely to advance an economic agenda that benefits them.Osborn’s appeal might not be so unique if we can encourage more working-class candidates to run. Here the labor movement has a role to play in recruiting talented candidates, protecting their day jobs during the campaign, providing training and working with organizations like Osborn’s to get these candidates the funds they need to win elections. It’s not a silver bullet to fixing our broken politics, but it’s a great start.During his campaign, Osborn reminded a crowd that “the Senate is a country club of millionaires that work for billionaires”. It’s high time that the people who created their wealth got a foot in the door.

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

      Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, founding editor of Jacobin and author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalities More

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      I’d much rather share a ladies’ room with Sarah McBride than with Nancy Mace | Margaret Sullivan

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      Since the conversation, if you can call it that, about trans people always seems to come down to bathrooms, I am sure of one thing.I would much rather share a ladies’ room or a locker room with Sarah McBride than with Nancy Mace.McBride, of course, was just elected to Congress and, in January, will be the highest-ranking elected official in America who is transgender. The 34-year-old comes to the US House of Representatives after serving in the Delaware legislature; before that, she was the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign.Mace, a member of Congress from South Carolina since 2021, has been on an ugly campaign in recent weeks clearly intended to belittle and marginalize McBride – and to get on TV as much as possible doing so. She has filed a resolution, and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has given it his nod of approval, that would somehow force trans people to keep out of the congressional bathrooms that reflect their gender identity.“If you think this bill is about protecting women and not simply a ploy to get on Fox News, you’ve been fooled,” wrote Natalie Johnson, Mace’s former communications director. She added, pointedly, that a real effort to protect women would involve “a bill to bar Matt Gaetz, a sexual predator with an affinity for underage girls, from ever walking those halls again”. (Trump, as you know, tapped the far-right former Florida representative as his attorney general as part of this month’s parade of appalling cabinet choices. Gaetz later withdrew from consideration.)On Wednesday, McBride reacted with dignity to all the performative insults and abuse. She simply responded that she would follow the rules and that she’s in Congress to represent her Delaware district; I’m sure she’ll eventually find ways to continue her admirable advocacy.Mace, on the other hand, can’t be described as dignified. She’s running around pasting the word “biological” on restroom doors for photo ops, and snidely tweeting in McBride’s direction about International Men’s Day.And she’s getting plenty of the media attention she craves.On one level, this is all part of the unending circus of the Trump era.On a human level, it’s scary, wrong and damaging.“As a trans person myself, I’m really worried about where this is headed,” wrote Parker Molloy, who writes incisively about politics and media in her newsletter the Present Age. “I spend each day worrying about whether or not the healthcare that keeps me alive will remain legal, whether I’m going to face new restrictions on where I’m allowed to exist in public, what would happen to me if (god forbid) I wound up in prison for some reason, and whether or not my identity documents like my passport will be retroactively made invalid.”She added poignantly: “Now, more than ever, I feel alone.”Trans students may have it even worse. Again, it often comes down to bathrooms.A lot of children, especially transgender and gender-nonconforming children, avoid bathrooms all day, since that’s where the bullying can be most intense. Thus, advocates say, trans kids often are prone to urinary tract infections or eating disorders because they’ve avoided eating and drinking.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs for the right’s obsession with trans students on sports team, the vast majority have no unfair advantage on the playing fields (or courts, or pools). They are just trying to reap the same benefits of sports as do other kids – leadership, teamwork and friendship.The meanspirited and misinformed narrative about transgender people makes it difficult for them to feel cared about and to live full lives.But don’t try to tell that to Mace, whose preoccupation is not with kindness or decency, but with getting attention and winning the culture wars.As the Daily Beast reported last year, Mace’s staffers were given a handbook that outlined just how intensely this mattered to their boss; they were told to book her on TV multiple times a day, amounting to nine times a week for national outlets and six times a week for local outlets.In 2021, Mace depicted herself as supportive of LGBTQ+ rights. That was before the tide turned so forcefully and, as Philip Bump of the Washington Post put it, before “the Republican base had been fed a steady diet of anti-trans rhetoric, making trans issues fertile ground for anyone willing to engage in the fight”.Mace, clearly, is more than willing.If that means being cruel, then so be it. As writer Adam Serwer observed about Trumpian politics: “The cruelty is the point.”Meanwhile, vulnerable and marginalized people are made to suffer for trying to be true to themselves. And despite the progress shown by McBride’s election, the world around this milestone seems to be getting increasingly harsh.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Elon Musk has cozied into Trump’s White House. How long will this bromance last? | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      It’s deja vu all over again, again. In the wake of Donald Trump’s decisive re-election, his transition team has moved to pack his cabinet and adviser positions with figures straight out of the Star Wars cantina – some of the most dangerous and bizarre sideshows from every corner of his chaotic galaxy.In the Trump Cinematic Universe, loyalty usurps qualification. That’s why Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host who wants to eliminate “woke” officials from the military, got tapped to oversee our national defense. And it’s why Matt Gaetz was asked to helm the very Department of Justice that was investigating him for alleged sex trafficking, before his abrupt withdrawal from consideration.But perhaps no figure better captures the cartoonish nature of Trump’s staffing philosophy than Elon Musk, the literal richest man on Earth, who has somehow grabbed the wheel of a presidential transition that’s navigating the road ahead about as well as one of his Teslas.From offering his two cents on presidential appointments, to joining calls with the Ukrainian president, to adjudicating the race for Senate majority leader via an X poll, the man who broke Twitter now has his sights set on breaking the federal government. He’s poised to hack the budget, ramrod in his half-baked policy musings and push through deregulation that will inevitably benefit his fleet of companies.Like any great romcom, Musk and Trump got off to a rocky start. Two years ago, before he donned a “dark gothic Maga” cap himself, Musk was urging Trump to “hang up his hat”, and Trump was calling Musk too chicken to buy Twitter. But then Musk did buy Twitter, and began diligently turning it into a bastion of rightwing misinformation called X.The arc of this entanglement reached its inevitable conclusion when Musk rewired the platform’s algorithm to promote his own conspiracies about immigrants and election interference, while also giving free advertisement to Trump to the tune of 2bn views. Though Trump was already the first major party nominee to own a social media platform in Truth Social, he now essentially leases a second one for free.While Trump received support from Musk gratis, his voters received million-dollar checks. For all Musk’s handwringing about “ballot harvesting”, he engaged in a brazen election interference scheme when he more or less paid citizens to vote for Trump.Musks’s so-called sweepstakes, which a Pennsylvania court waved through, culminates big money’s political playbook. Billionaires no longer need to launder their bribes through Super Pacs with vaguely patriotic names. They can avoid that rigmarole, cut out the middleman and offer direct financial incentives for supporting whichever candidate they deem most favorable to their business interests.And now that Musk’s doubtfully legal efforts have paid off in the election of the country’s first president with a felony conviction, the true singularity can begin – not the merging of humans with AI supposedly portended by Neuralink, but of Musk’s agenda with Trump’s. There’s no shortage of “catastrophic conflicts of interest”, to quote former chief of government ethics Walter Shaub. Sure enough, Musk’s corporate empire has received $15bn in public contracts, while facing 20 federal investigations. But it would be no more than coincidence should that first number skyrocket and the second number plummet over the next four years.More troubling than his informal heft as Trump’s self-proclaimed “first buddy”, though, is Musk’s appointment to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency – which, as many have pointed out, somehow takes two people to lead. This glorified taskforce has a mandate to slash government costs, regulations and employment. With his typical spunk, Musk has pledged to eliminate a third of the $6.75tn federal budget, not unlike how he cut half of Twitter’s workforce.Fortunately for Musk, that austerity doesn’t extend to his own bank account, which has received a generous Trump bump. Post-election Tesla stock surges have already earned him $70bn, and Musk’s appointment may also qualify him to receive a massive tax break. That seems only appropriate given that this faux department’s name abbreviates to Doge, a cryptocurrency that Musk owns “a bunch of”.Nevertheless, the patent absurdity of the Musk-Trump pact just might offer a silver lining for Democrats. First, analysts and casual observers alike remain skeptical of how long the honeymoon can last between two narcissists whose power is exceeded only by their pettiness. Their relationship, like Trump’s coalition at large, is perilous and fragile.Second, Doge’s recommendations are just that: nonbinding. Trump himself has described Musk and Ramaswamy as offering “advice and guidance from outside of government”. That means the Department of Government Efficiency is not actually a department, nor is it government – so its proposals can be dispensed with efficiently.This cuts both ways. The few worthy, populist ideas that could expand the Trump administration’s appeal – like reining in the Pentagon – will never get past a Republican House of Representatives. And if they dared touch entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, there won’t be a Republican House for much longer.Musk is clearly attempting to emulate Trump’s governing style. But Trump has consistently proven a more effective huckster than head of state. On the campaign trail, he was a Rorschach test: voters projected their grievances and aspirations on to his concepts of a plan. But a record is concrete. Soon enough, reality will sharpen into undeniable focus, one bad bromance at a time.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editorial director and publisher of the Nation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has contributed to the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times More

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      Trump names Pam Bondi as attorney general pick after Gaetz steps aside

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      Donald Trump announced that he would nominate for attorney general Pam Bondi, the former Florida state attorney general, hours after the former representative Matt Gaetz withdrew in the face of opposition from Senate Republicans who had balked over a series of sexual misconduct allegations.The move to name Bondi reflected Trump’s determination to install a loyalist as the nation’s top law enforcement official and marked another instance of Trump putting his personal lawyers in the justice department.Trump almost immediately settled on Bondi as a replacement pick for Gaetz, according to people familiar with the matter. Bondi had not auditioned for the role and her loyalist credentials coupled with her willingness to defend Trump on television made her an attractive pick.View image in fullscreenThe fact that Bondi could count on broad support inside Trump’s world and the Senate Republican conference, in contrast with Gaetz who always faced an uphill struggle, also earned her the endorsement from most of Trump’s senior advisers on Thursday, the people said.“I am proud to announce former Attorney General of the Great State of Florida, Pam Bondi, as our next Attorney General of the United States. Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.“Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, and Making America Safe Again. I have known Pam for many years — She is smart and tough, and is an AMERICA FIRST Fighter, who will do a terrific job as Attorney General!”Should Bondi be confirmed by the Senate in the coming months, it would be a reward for years of her loyalty to Trump which started during the 2016 campaign, when she became an outspoken but fierce defender of his candidacy.She also helped with Trump’s legal defense during his first impeachment trial, parroted claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and continued working as a surrogate through the 2024 campaign when she attended Trump’s criminal trial in New York.Bondi’s elevation to lead the justice department would also come as a result of extraordinary serendipity, after Trump picked Gaetz almost on a whim after he decided against more conventional lawyersThe selection process for major positions has involved Trump pulling up each candidate on a bank of screens at his Mar-a-Lago club and looking for various qualities, including on their perceived loyalty and how they might play on television.Trump did not like the initial list of names that included Mark Paoletta, the former counsel at the White House office of management and budget; Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey; and Robert Guiffra, co-chair of the New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, and decided he preferred a pugilist like Gaetz.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the Gaetz nomination sank after a series of meetings on Wednesday with Republican senators. Later that evening, they broadly expressed to the Trump team their continued opposition to the Gaetz nomination, the people said.On Thursday morning, Trump called Gaetz and told him that it was clear he did not have the votes in a rare moment of realpolitik for Trump. Gaetz agreed and took himself out of the running, one of the people said.Gaetz told associates after he announced he was withdrawing his nomination that he faced the reality that at least three senators – Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski – and senator-elect John Curtis, would vote against him and block his confirmation, the people said.From his Mar-a-Lago club, Trump said in a statement: “I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be attorney general. He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the administration, for which he has much respect.” More