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    Shawn Fain, U.A.W. Leader, Says He Won’t Meet Trump in Michigan

    Shawn Fain, the president of the United Automobile Workers union, said he was opposed to meeting the former president during his visit to Michigan on Wednesday.The leader of the United Automobile Workers union ruled out meeting former President Donald J. Trump, the 2024 Republican front-runner, when he visits Michigan on Wednesday, casting him as an out-of-touch billionaire who has been hostile toward the industry’s workers, who are currently on strike.When Shawn Fain, the U.A.W. president, was asked by CNN in an interview on Tuesday whether he would be open to such an audience with Mr. Trump, he said that there was no upside.“I see no point in meeting with him because I don’t think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for,” Mr. Fain said. “He serves a billionaire class, and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”His remarks came just hours after President Biden, at the invitation of Mr. Fain, joined a picket line outside a General Motors facility in Belleville, Mich., near Detroit.Mr. Trump’s campaign did not address Mr. Fain’s specific criticism on Wednesday, but contended that rank-and-file unions members did not uniformly share his views.“The reality is that there’s a disconnect between the political leadership of some of the labor unions and the working middle-class employees that they purport to represent,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign. “President Trump will be in Michigan talking with union workers and ensuring American jobs are protected.”Mr. Fain stopped short of endorsing Mr. Biden’s re-election, but he had harsh words for Mr. Trump and his planned speech at a nonunion plant in Macomb County, Mich.“I find a pathetic irony that the former president is going to hold a rally for union members at a nonunion business,” Mr. Fain said.Mr. Fain said that Mr. Trump had blamed U.A.W. members and their contracts for the troubles of automakers during the 2008 recession. As a presidential candidate in 2015, he added, Mr. Trump supported moving jobs in the industry out of the Midwest, with fewer protections for union workers. Mr. Fain also asked why the former president did not show solidarity with General Motors workers in 2019, while Mr. Trump was in office, when they were on strike for 60 days.“I didn’t see him hold a rally,” Mr. Fain said. “I didn’t see him stand up at the picket line, and I sure as hell didn’t hear him comment about it. He was missing in action.” More

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    Trump, Weighing In on Auto Strike, Has a Mixed Legacy on Unions

    The former president will be making a campaign stop in Michigan on Wednesday amid the United Automobile Workers’ strike. He has both appeased unions and sought to circumvent them.As a businessman, Donald J. Trump at first tried to circumvent labor unions, then spent decades largely appeasing them to avoid costly strikes.During his first presidential campaign, he boiled down labor issues to a grievance about other countries taking advantage of the United States.As president, he made appointments and adopted policies often more antagonistic to organized labor than those of many other Republicans.When Mr. Trump arrives in the Detroit area on Wednesday to interject himself into the United Auto Workers strike, he will bring with him a record of interactions with organized labor that, whether out of pragmatism or opportunism, has few straight lines.What may resonate the loudest with the current and former factory workers whom Mr. Trump hopes to reach is his decades-long history of reducing a host of economic and labor issues to the complaint that America’s leaders have allowed other countries to “rip off” the United States. He used that line of reasoning in announcing the Michigan trip, arguing that “dumb” government programs to promote electric vehicles would push all automobile production to China. “The all Electric Car is a disaster for both the United Auto Workers and the American Consumer,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.He deployed the same logic in criticizing Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers’ president, though what he thought Mr. Fain should do differently was not clear. “I think he’s not doing a good job in representing his union, because he’s not going to have a union in three years from now,” Mr. Trump said in a recent interview broadcast on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Those jobs are all going to be gone because all of those electric cars are going to be made in China.”In many ways, that argument is a replay of one of the greatest hits from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, when he aligned himself with workers at a Carrier furnace plant in Indianapolis who faced layoffs after the company announced plans to move the operation to Mexico. At rally after rally, he said it would be easy for him to stop such departures, a message that appealed to former factory workers and those who felt at risk. In Detroit, that approach would allow him to strike a note of support to both workers and companies without choosing sides in the most consequential labor dispute in years.Members of the United Auto Workers union at a rally in Detroit last week.Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s visit will serve other political purposes as well. He has scheduled a prime-time speech at an auto parts manufacturer as a distraction from the Republican primary debate he chose not to attend, much as his interview with Tucker Carlson was scheduled to be released during the last primary debate. And in the contest to win over blue-collar voters, the appearance pits him directly against President Biden, who on Tuesday took the unusual step of appearing with Mr. Fain and speaking out in support of the union’s contract demands.Mr. Trump’s early interactions with labor unions were based on less complex concerns. As a young real-estate developer in 1980, Mr. Trump hired a nonunion crew of 200 undocumented Polish workers to demolish the Bonwit Teller department store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, clearing the way for what would become Trump Tower, his signature building and the first new construction he pursued on his own. The men were paid as little as $4 an hour, less than half the union wage, and worked 12-hour shifts without safety gear. Though he saved money in the short term, the long-term costs were significant. The treatment of those workers led to 15 years of litigation. Mr. Trump paid $1.375 million to settle the case, including a $500,000 payment to a union benefits fund. The terms of the settlement remained sealed until Mr. Trump became president and a judge released them over his objections.For the rest of his building career, Mr. Trump generally hired large construction companies, allowing him to complete major projects with a minimum number of full-time employees. Those companies typically handled the hiring and management of union workers. It was an era when organized crime lorded over many of the building trade unions in New York.“We had very little, if anything, to do with the unions,” said Barbara Res, who oversaw the construction of Trump Tower for Mr. Trump and worked with him for years. “That’s one of the benefits of having a construction manager. They take care of that crap.”When Mr. Trump ran casinos in Atlantic City, the owners negotiated as an association with the local hotel and casino workers union. John R. O’Donnell, who managed the Trump Plaza casino for several years starting in the late 1980s, said Mr. Trump was so terrified by the threat of lost business during a strike that he would mine his fellow association members and their lawyers for details on the owners’ strategy and then surreptitiously pass that information along to local union leaders. He said Mr. Trump’s typical efforts to reduce costs “did not apply when it came to the union,” because he was adamant that a strike “cannot happen.”“He worked against the association to help the unions, to the detriment of the rest of the city,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “He was going to sign a contract regardless.”In New York City, Mr. Trump developed a professional relationship with Peter Ward, the longtime president of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, which had members working in Trump-owned or -operated hotels. In 2011, Mr. Ward led his union to support Mr. Trump’s brief effort to take over operation of the Tavern on the Green restaurant in Central Park, which had been closed by a bankruptcy.“We have a long and good history with him,” Mr. Ward told The New York Post at the time of the Tavern on the Green agreement.During the transition after Mr. Trump won the 2016 election, Mr. Ward was among those on the president-elect’s official schedule for a face-to-face meeting at Trump Tower.Not all employees at Mr. Trump’s hotels and golf courses are unionized. Workers at the hotel that Mr. Trump co-owns in Las Vegas with the casino mogul Phillip Ruffin began a unionization drive in 2014. The owners pushed back against the effort, but ultimately signed a contract with the union the month after the 2016 election. In 2018, workers at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., told a reporter for The New York Times that many employees there were undocumented immigrants; one worker said a manager had directed her to someone to help her obtain fraudulent records.After decades taking a counterintuitive approach to organized labor as a business owner, Mr. Trump made a sharp turn to the right once elected. Two of his choices for top Labor Department posts had been reliable antagonists of organized labor throughout their careers: Andrew Puzder, who as chief executive of a fast-food company repeatedly argued that labor regulations stifled economic growth; and Patrick Pizzella, a conservative lobbyist and government official who had spent years promoting the interests of businesses against those of unions.Mr. Puzder withdrew his nomination because of a lack of congressional support. Mr. Pizzella served as deputy secretary and acting secretary under Mr. Trump. As a lobbyist in the 1990s, he had been hired by the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the United States where some workers earned less than $1 an hour, to ensure that Congress did not impose federal minimum wage and immigration laws there.As president, Mr. Trump signed executive orders that undid longstanding protections for two million unionized federal workers, including making it easier to fire and discipline government employees. His appointees demoted the senior civil servants who resolved most labor cases. Mr. Trump has said that if re-elected he will fire thousands of federal workers whom he considers part of a “deep state” filled with “villains.”His line of complaint about other countries taking advantage of the United States dates back to his earliest comments on national affairs. In September 1987, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Mr. Trump bought full-page advertisements in three major newspapers, including The Times, arguing that Japan, Saudi Arabia and other countries were “laughing at America’s politicians” because the United States paid their defense costs. “I was tired, and I think a lot of people are tired, of watching other countries ripping off the United States,” he said on CNN that night. “This is a great country. They laugh at us behind our backs. They laugh at us because of our own stupidity, and the leaders.”Nearly 30 years later, during the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump repeated almost those exact words after a video of Carrier managers announcing layoffs to employees in the Indiana plant gained wide attention. He said such moves would stop under his presidency because he would impose a 35 percent tariff on goods shipped from foreign factories that had replaced plants in the United States. “We’re going to make our products here,” he said. “Companies are taking advantage of us. And countries are abusing us. And the way you stop it is so easy.”The message resonated with voters at his rallies, as well as with Carrier employees. “I loved it,” Jennifer Shanklin-Hawkins, a worker at the company, told The Times. “I was so happy Trump noticed us.”Mr. Trump never instituted the sort of targeted tax threat he said would be so easy. He and Mike Pence, the vice president and former governor of Indiana, did help persuade Carrier to keep about 850 of those 1,400 jobs in Indiana, in exchange for $7 million in incentives from the state. The rest of the workers were laid off, and hundreds more workers at a nearby Carrier factory were also let go. Some said they ended up feeling like props for the Trump campaign.“There was still a layoff,” Ms. Shanklin-Hawkins told a reporter with The Indianapolis Star in 2020. “He lied completely.”Noam Scheiber More

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    Why Biden and Trump Are Courting Striking Autoworkers

    The president and his leading Republican rival are heading to Michigan to address members of the U.A.W., whose political clout is growing.The political stakes grow as the U.A.W. strike drags on.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesBiden and Trump bid for blue collar votes In an extraordinary show of support, President Biden plans to join striking autoworkers on the picket line in Michigan on Tuesday. It comes a day before Donald Trump is expected to speak to union members in Detroit instead of participating in the second Republican primary debate.The competing visits come as the two home in on battleground states ahead of next year’s election. But their appearances also reveal a political battle to become the voice of blue collar workers at a time when both candidates are struggling to win over mainstream voters and even some within their own parties.Bidenomics is a conundrum for the president. Biden says he is “the most pro-union president in American history” and has overseen one of the biggest industrial policy shifts in decades through the Inflation Reduction Act, offering billions of dollars in subsidies to create new manufacturing jobs in a push to greenify the economy.But the president is getting little credit from voters. Approval ratings for his economic management are at career lows. And the I.R.A. is somewhat troublesome for him: It includes incentives for automakers to make more electric vehicles, which labor leaders say will depend on non-union jobs and require fewer workers.The United Automobile Workers union has held back from endorsing Biden. The group was an early supporter of his economic road map but broke with other big unions. “The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom,” Shawn Fain, the U.A.W. president, wrote to members in May.Trump sees an opportunity to hammer Biden and the U.A.W. Trump, whose track record as a businessman and president often backed business over labor, will speak directly to workers, aiming to project himself as a protector of jobs. He has called the federal push for electric vehicles a “catastrophe for Michigan” that would cost American jobs, benefit China and raise prices for consumers.Fain has said Trump would be a “disaster” if re-elected. But the former president’s rhetoric and policies like rewriting trade agreements have appealed to some union members.Union votes could prove decisive in 2024. Trump won Michigan in 2016, but Biden took the state by more than 150,000 votes in 2020. In crucial swing states, even wooing a relatively small portion could be crucial. “In a strike situation, they’re all going out because they’re supporting their own economic interests,” said Alexander Colvin, the dean of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “That doesn’t mean they all think the same thing politically.”HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The F.C.C. is reportedly set to reinstate net neutrality rules. The regulator will revive Obama-era limits on broadband providers’ ability to unfairly interfere with internet traffic, after Democrats finally gained a majority among its commissioners, according to Bloomberg. Companies including AT&T and Comcast are likely to push back, arguing that such rules would be a big burden.All eyes are on striking actors as screenwriters prepare for a vote on their labor deal. Leaders of the Writers Guild of America are to vote on their tentative pact with studios on Tuesday, with members set to weigh in soon. But there are few signs that an agreement with the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union is close, meaning that Hollywood will remain largely shut for now. Meanwhile, SAG-AFTRA members voted to authorize a strike against video game companies.Fossil fuel use needs to fall more quickly to contain global warming, the International Energy Agency says. Adoption of cleaner energy technologies like electric vehicles and solar is growing, but the use of fossil fuels must shrink faster to avoid a climate catastrophe, the agency said in its latest report. Some industry watchers said that the I.E.A. is still too optimistic about the decline in demand for oil and coal.Senator Bob Menendez says he won’t resign. The New Jersey Democrat, accused of taking bribes, said he’d fight the corruption charges leveled by federal prosecutors. He didn’t address questions about bars of gold found on his property, but asserted that the $550,000 in cash found stuffed around his home was merely part of an emergency fund.Growth concerns hit the bond market Alarm bells are ringing for markets on both sides of the Atlantic. Investors have again sold off their sovereign bond holdings, especially Treasury notes and German bunds, pushing yields to highs last seen in 2007 just before the housing crisis and in 2011 during the European debt crisis.Growth concerns appear to be the culprit. Global trade fell in July at its fastest pace since the summer of 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic snarled global markets. According to the newest World Trade Monitor report, the decline is the latest signal that global demand for goods is deteriorating, as inflation and high interest rates remain at multi-decade highs.Jamie Dimon added fuel to the pessimistic outlook. The C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase warned of a kind of worst-case scenario in which the Fed is forced to keep raising its benchmark lending rate to combat inflation, further blunting growth. “I am not sure if the world is prepared for 7 percent,” he said in an interview with The Times of India, referring to the federal funds rate.Fed policymakers themselves don’t see such a scenario playing out. They released a forecast last week suggesting that one more interest rate increase was in the cards this year, and possibly two cuts next year, which would keep interest rates at around 5 percent by the end of 2024. But since the Fed meeting, the futures market has been pricing in higher policy rates for longer, and that’s adding volatility to the bond market.A potential U.S. government shutdown is also unnerving investors. The prospect that lawmakers will fail to reach a deal by Saturday’s deadline to fund the government is weighing on stocks, with U.S. futures in the red this morning. On Monday, Moody’s, the ratings agency, said a shutdown could lead it to downgrade the country’s credit rating — a warning that the White House seized upon in hopes of compelling the warring Republican factions to break their impasse on spending cuts.The good news: The uncertainty has put a lid on the oil rally, with Brent crude falling below $91 a barrel this morning, a two-week low.1.5 trillion — Gallons of water used in fracking by oil and gas companies in the U.S. since 2011. That’s equivalent to the amount of tap water used by the state of Texas each year, according to a Times investigation. The boom in fracking to meet growing energy demand poses a threat to the country’s aquifers, researchers say.ChatGPT, can you take on Alexa? Hours after Amazon announced a big bet on an artificial intelligence start-up — and days after it revealed plans to make its Alexa digital assistant smarter — one of the most prominent names in the A.I. race unveiled its plan to surpass those advancements.OpenAI said its ChatGPT chatbot can now listen to users’ spoken requests and respond vocally, among other new capabilities. It’s a reminder of how fast the race to advance A.I. is moving — and how high the stakes are.Voice is a more natural way of interacting with ChatGPT, according to OpenAI executives, who also said that their chatbot will feature voices that sound more natural than those of existing digital assistants. (The Times says that the voices sound better, but still come across as a little robotic.)OpenAI is adding other features to ChatGPT, including image recognition. One example that OpenAI demonstrated: Share an image of a bicycle with the chatbot and it will instruct the user how to lower the seat.Amazon seems aware of the risks of being outpaced by rivals. Unlike Alexa or Siri, which require users to ask specific commands, the latest version of ChatGPT is capable of more conversational interactions, including follow-up questions and clarifications. Wider adoption of that chatbot could risk Amazon losing its longtime dominance in the market for personal assistants.The Alexa announcement last week, in which Amazon said that it was incorporating the large language model technology into its assistant, is meant to address that eventuality — though ChatGPT’s new capability will be available sooner.With new capabilities come worries about new dangers. OpenAI executives said that they won’t let ChatGPT identify faces, though the software will be able to talk at length about other pictures it’s asked to analyze. There’s also the risk that greater use of ChatGPT will lead to potential mishaps involving the well-known A.I. weakness of inventing facts, known as hallucinating.And Amazon, perhaps leery of the well-publicized hitches that Microsoft and Google suffered in rolling out advanced A.I. features to the wider public, is making the new Alexa features available initially only to some users in the U.S.In other A.I. news: Meet the human workers training A.I. systems. Spotify says it won’t ban A.I.-produced music, but it will work with OpenAI to clone podcasters’ voices to produce versions of their shows in other languages. And New York Magazine asks whether Sam Altman, OpenAI’s C.E.O., is the Robert Oppenheimer of the digital age.THE SPEED READ DealsAmerican Airlines appealed a federal court ruling that blocked its planned alliance with JetBlue. (Reuters)Vista Equity Partners now oversees more than $100 billion in assets, reflecting investor interest in the big tech deals that are the firm’s stock in trade. (Axios)What’s at stake as Disney and Comcast prepare to negotiate over the value of the streaming service Hulu, which they jointly own. (FT)PolicyTesla is reportedly a focus of European regulators’ inquiry into state subsidies for electric vehicles made in China. (Bloomberg)The Commerce Department has hired veterans of Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs and KKR to help run its semiconductor funding program. (Bloomberg)Best of the restSan Francisco residents say that their city is being unfairly pilloried as a decaying, crime-ridden metropolis. (NYT)Microsoft is looking to power its A.I. and cloud data centers with small nuclear reactors. (CNBC)How companies are pulling off four-day workweeks. (WSJ)“The End of Privacy is a Taylor Swift Fan TikTok Account Armed with Facial Recognition Tech” (404 Media)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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    What Republicans Say (and Don’t Say) About the Auto Workers’ Strike

    It has been interesting to watch the response of Republicans to the United Auto Workers strike against the Big Three American car manufacturers: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler).The most openly anti-worker view comes from Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who condemned the striking workers as insolent and ungrateful in a stunning display of conservative anti-labor sentiment. “I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike,” Scott said at a campaign event in Iowa. “He said, ‘You strike, you’re fired.’ Simple concept to me, to the extent that we can use that once again.” Scott also criticized the union’s demands. “The other things that are really important in that deal is that they want more money working fewer hours. They want more benefits working fewer days.” In America, he continued, “that doesn’t make sense.”Most other Republicans have sidestepped any discussion of the workers themselves in favor of an attack on electric vehicles and the Biden administration’s clean energy policies. “I guarantee you that one of the things that’s driving that strike is that Bidenomics, and their green energy, electric vehicle agenda is good for Beijing and bad for Detroit, and American autoworkers know it,” former Vice President Mike Pence said during a recent interview on CNBC.Donald Trump took a similar swing at the same target. “The all Electric Car is a disaster for both the United Auto Workers and the American Consumer,” Trump wrote last week. “They will all be built in China and, they are too expensive, don’t go far enough, take too long to charge, and pose various dangers under certain atmospheric conditions. If this happens, the United Auto Workers will be wiped out, along with all other auto workers in the United States. The all Electric Car policy is about as dumb as Open Borders and No Voter I.D. IT IS A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER!”That much was expected. But beyond the presidential contenders, there were also the ostensibly populist Republicans who have placed workers at the center of their case.“Autoworkers deserve a raise — and they deserve to have their jobs protected from Joe Biden’s stupid climate mandates that are destroying the U.S. auto industry and making China rich,” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio wrote that he was “rooting for the autoworkers across our country demanding higher wages and an end to political leadership’s green war on their industry.” Likewise, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida pinned the strike on “a radical climate agenda that seeks the end of gas-powered cars even if it means destroying American jobs,” adding: “Instead of supporting either union bosses or C.E.O.s we need to support American workers who want policies that protect their jobs.”You’ll notice that for all the talk about workers, not one of these more populist Republicans has actually said their demands should be met. They haven’t affirmed the right of labor to strike. They haven’t even blamed management for the strike, despite the fact that the U.A.W. is taking aim at rising corporate profits, which it believes could support higher wages, cost-of-living protections and stronger benefits — and the two-tier system that pays new workers less than veteran workers for the same work.And they haven’t voiced support for the largest, most ambitious organizing goal of the U.A.W. — the unionization of new electric vehicle and battery factories, either as part of a new contract or pursued through new organizing. If anything, Republican attacks on electric vehicles work to obscure the nature of the conflict, which is less about a new product category than about the balance of power between labor and management in the American auto industry.As (my former editor and colleague) Harold Meyerson notes in a piece for The American Prospect:The long-term future of the U.A.W. truly hinges on its ability to unionize the Big Three’s non-union competitors and their own non-union E.V. factories springing up in the right-to-work South. As today’s Wall Street Journal points out, the S.E.C. reports that total compensation (wages and benefits) for the median-paid worker at Tesla’s factories is a bare $34,084, while for the median worker at GM, it’s $80,034; at Ford, $74,691; and at Stellantis, $68,683. Total compensation at the Big Three and non-Big Three new E.V. and battery factories, as well as at the non-E.V. foreign-owned auto factories that are spread across the South, also falls well short of the levels that U.A.W. members make at the Big Three.“In short,” he concludes, “the union won’t long be able to realize the kind of gains its members need unless it can level up the standards at Tesla et al., lest it be compelled to face a long-term leveling down to Elon Musk’s idea of what a proper division of revenue should be.”Or as the U.A.W.’s first-ever directly member-elected president, Shawn Fain, wrote last week in a Guardian opinion essay co-authored with Representative Ro Khanna of California:The electric vehicle transition must be as much about workers’ rights as it is about fighting the climate crisis. We will not let the E.V. industry be built on the backs of workers making poverty wages while C.E.O.s line their pockets with government subsidies. There is no good reason E.V. manufacturing can’t be the gateway to the middle class. But the early signs of this industry are worrying. We will not let corporate greed manipulate the transition to a green economy into a roll back of economic justice.The extent to which Republicans are indifferent to these questions of power is key, because it puts the lie to the idea that the party has become pro-worker in any sense other than a few words and the occasional nod to blue-collar cultural identity. Josh Hawley, for example, opposed a 2018 effort to repeal Missouri’s anti-union “right to work” law. Marco Rubio, according to the AFL-CIO’s scorecard of members of Congress, is among the most anti-labor Republicans in the Senate. J.D. Vance railed against “union bosses” in his 2022 campaign, and Donald Trump (along with Mike Pence) ran one of the most anti-union presidential administrations in recent memory.In other words, Republican support for workers remains little more than rhetoric, signifying nothing. They have no apparent problem with management granting workers a modest increase in wages, but remain hostile to workers who seek to organize themselves as a countervailing force to corporate and financial power.What I WroteMy Tuesday column was on the basic analytical problem with the constant calls for Joe Biden to step away from the 2024 Democratic nomination.Absent an extraordinary turn of events, Biden will be on the ballot next year. He wants it, much of the institutional Democratic Party wants it, and there’s no appetite among the men and women who might want to be the next Democratic president to try to take it away from him. Democrats are committed to Biden and there’s no other option, for them, but to see that choice to its conclusion.My Friday column, building somewhat on the Tuesday one, was on Donald Trump, abortion and the political burdens of presidential leadership.Trump is no longer the singular figure of 2016. He is enmeshed within the Republican Party. He has real commitments to allies and coalition partners within the conservative movement. He is the undisputed leader of the Republican Party, yes, but he can’t simply jettison the abortion issue, which remains a central concern for much of the Republican base.And in the most recent episode of my podcast with John Ganz, we discussed the film “The American President” with Linda Holmes of NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour.”Now ReadingSamuel Clowes Huneke on “wokeness” for The Los Angeles Review of Books.Michael Szalay on the politics of prestige television for Public Books.Dinah Birch on anonymous letters for The London Review of Books.Lola Seaton on “political capitalism” for The New Left Review.Amy C. Offner on neoliberalism for Dissent.Photo of the WeekA photo from the archive! This is the Art Deco Model Tobacco building in Richmond, Va., built around 1940. I took this photo in 2018 with a camera I have long since sold. The building itself has been converted into apartments.Now Eating: Greek-Style White BeansThis is a very simple recipe for Greek-style white beans from The Rancho Gordo Vegetarian Kitchen series, Volume 1. The book calls for lima beans, but any large white bean will do. You’ll want to use dried beans. Other than that, however, the recipe is yours to play with. I cook anchovies along with the vegetables and tomatoes for some additional umami, and I tend to let the beans cook in the oven for longer than 30 minutes — I like them a little on the drier side. I also go a little easy on the olive oil.Be sure to garnish with additional feta and a lot of herbs — dill, parsley and mint all work well here. You would also do well to buy, or make, some pita bread to have on the side.Ingredients½ cup olive oil (divided use)1 large carrot, peeled and finely chopped1 celery stalk, finely chopped½ onion, finely chopped2 tablespoons tomato paste½ pound large white beans, cooked and drained1 large, ripe tomato, chopped3 tablespoons minced fresh dillsalt and freshly ground pepperfeta cheeseDirectionsPreheat the oven to 350 degrees.In a large skillet, warm 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium heat. Add the carrot, celery, and onion; sauté until the vegetables are soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste.In a large baking dish, combine the sautéed vegetables, beans, tomato and remaining olive oil. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and dill. Add feta, if desired.Bake until the beans are soft and creamy, about 30 minutes. More

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    UAW Strike: Biden to Visit Michigan to Support Autoworkers on Picket Line

    In an extraordinary show of support for organized labor, President Biden said he would join workers in Michigan on the front lines of their strike against leading automakers.President Biden announced that he would travel to Michigan on Tuesday to “join the picket line” with members of the United Automobile Workers who are on strike against the nation’s leading automakers, in one of the most significant displays of presidential support for striking workers in decades.“Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of U.A.W. as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create,” Mr. Biden wrote on Friday on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.The trip is set to come a day before Mr. Biden’s leading rival in the 2024 campaign, Donald J. Trump, has planned his own speech in Michigan, and was announced hours after Shawn Fain, the union’s president, escalated pressure on the White House with a public invitation to Mr. Biden.“We invite and encourage everyone who supports our cause to join us on the picket lines, from our friends and family all the way to the president of the United States,” Mr. Fain said in a Friday morning speech streamed online.It was not immediately clear where Mr. Biden would go in Michigan. The White House had already announced plans for Mr. Biden to fly to California on Tuesday as part of a three-day trip to the West Coast. Mr. Biden made the decision on Friday, after Mr. Fain’s public invitation, according to two people familiar with the White House deliberations.Mr. Fain on Friday announced the expansion of the U.A.W.’s work stoppage from three facilities to 38 assembly plants and distribution centers in 20 states, including six — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia — that are expected to be presidential battlegrounds in next year’s election.Michigan, the home of the American automotive industry, is home to the bulk of the facilities and striking workers.There is little to no precedent for a sitting president joining striking workers on a picket line.Seth Harris, a former top labor policy adviser for Mr. Biden, said he was not aware of any president walking a picket line before.“This president takes seriously his role as the most pro-union president in history,” Mr. Harris said. “Sometimes that means breaking precedent.”Earlier Friday, Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign posted on social media a video of Republican presidential candidates and Fox News anchors bemoaning his support for unions. The caption from Mr. Biden read: “Yes.”Mr. Fain’s invitation came a week into an expanding work stoppage by autoworkers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis plants. The union president announced on Friday that the strike, which began last week at three plants in the Midwest, would expand to 38 more locations in 20 states across the country. He said that talks with General Motors and Stellantis had not progressed significantly, but that Ford had done more to meet the union’s demands.Mr. Biden has defended the striking autoworkers since the stoppage began last week, and the White House has dispatched Julie Su, the acting secretary of labor, and Gene Sperling, a top White House economic adviser, to seek an end to the strike.Mr. Biden has referred to himself as “the most pro-union president in American history” and has long made his alliances with and support for organized labor a central part of his political identity. But his administration’s push for a transition to electric vehicles has put him at odds with the U.A.W., because electric vehicles require fewer workers to produce.The U.A.W. has broken with other major unions in so far declining to endorse Mr. Biden’s re-election bid.Mr. Trump is skipping next week’s Republican presidential primary debate and instead delivering a speech in Michigan before current and former union workers. Mr. Trump pulled away significant portions of union workers from Democrats in his 2016 victory by denouncing international free trade agreements. In his current campaign, he has staked out a position against the federal push for more electric vehicles.Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said Mr. Biden would not be going to Michigan if Mr. Trump had not announced a trip there first. On social media, he called Mr. Biden’s visit “nothing more than a cheap photo op as he finds himself between a rock and a political hard place.”Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina — who, like the rest of the Republican presidential candidates, trails far behind Mr. Trump — sought to inject himself into the news cycle about the strike this week by suggesting that the autoworkers should be fired, a move the companies are legally prohibited from carrying out.On Thursday, the U.A.W. postured back by filing a complaint against Mr. Scott with the National Labor Relations Board (such complaints are often dismissed). On Friday, Mr. Scott called the U.A.W. “one of the most corrupt and scandal-plagued unions in America” and said the union’s contract proposal would lead to government bailouts.Mr. Fain, who appeared at a rally with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont when the strike began, has been critical of Mr. Trump and Republicans. More

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    Asked About Auto Walkout, Tim Scott Praises Reagan’s Firing of Workers

    Mr. Scott, when asked if he would involve himself in the United Auto Workers dispute as president, took a harsher stance than many other Republican candidates.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina took a harsher stance toward striking autoworkers on Monday than many of his fellow Republican presidential candidates, saying it did not make sense for workers to want higher pay for shorter workweeks and noting approvingly that President Ronald Reagan had fired federal employees for striking.“I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike,” Mr. Scott said at a campaign event in Iowa, in response to a voter who had asked whether he would “insert” himself into the United Auto Workers talks as president. “He said, ‘You strike, you’re fired.’ Simple concept to me, to the extent that we can use that once again.”He went on to criticize federal funding for private-sector unions’ pension plans and said with regard to the U.A.W. dispute: “The other things that are really important in that deal is that they want more money working fewer hours. They want more benefits working fewer days.”In “America, that doesn’t make sense,” he said. “That’s not common sense.”Members of the United Auto Workers union went on a targeted strike on Friday against three automakers: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. The workers are seeking raises of up to 40 percent — which would correspond with pay increases for their companies’ executives over the past decade — and four-day workweeks, along with cost-of-living adjustments and a restoration of previously forfeited pensions.Despite Mr. Scott’s approving reference to Reagan, who fired thousands of striking air traffic controllers in 1981, United Auto Workers members are not federal employees and cannot be fired by the president. Federal labor law also protects them from being fired by their employers for striking.Mr. Scott’s campaign emphasized the rest of his answer — his rejection of taxpayer funding for any deal — and said the Reagan portion had referred to federal workers, not the U.A.W. But it declined to respond on the record when asked why he had brought up Reagan’s firing of federal workers if that had no relevance to the U.A.W. dispute.“Senator Scott has repeatedly made clear, both at that event and others, that Joe Biden shouldn’t leave taxpayers on the hook for any labor deal,” a campaign spokesman, Matt Gorman, said.Mr. Scott’s criticism of the workers’ demands set him apart from many other Republican candidates who have commented on the U.A.W. strike, though not all of them have weighed in. While most of the other candidates have been critical of unions in general, with particular vitriol for teachers’ unions, they have generally expressed sympathy with the autoworkers’ economic concerns.Former President Donald J. Trump is actively trying to court the striking workers while denouncing their leaders; he has cast the workers as victims of Biden administration rules intended to ensure that two-thirds of new passenger cars sold in the United States are electric by 2032.Three other candidates, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, former Vice President Mike Pence and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, have also brought up the push for electric vehicles in offering sympathy, directly or obliquely, for the workers. Mr. Pence has emphasized inflation, too, while denying that the growing gap between workers’ and executives’ salaries is a factor — though the workers themselves have cited it.One exception to the trend was Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who has proudly described herself as a “union buster.” She told Fox News after the U.A.W. strike began that it would increase auto prices and hurt consumers, and that President Biden was to blame because his support had encouraged unions to make unreasonable demands.“When you have ‘the most pro-union president’ and he touts that he is emboldening the unions, this is what you get,” she said. “And I’ll tell you who pays for it is the taxpayers.” More

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    Trump Planning Detroit Visit During Second GOP Debate

    Looking past the Republican primary, Donald Trump and his campaign are already gearing up for a possible rematch with President Biden.Former President Donald J. Trump is planning to travel to Detroit on the day of the next Republican primary debate, according to two Trump advisers with knowledge of the plans, injecting himself into the labor dispute between striking autoworkers and the nation’s leading auto manufacturers.The trip, which will include a prime-time speech before current and former union members, is the second consecutive primary debate that Mr. Trump is skipping to instead hold his own counterprogramming. He sat for an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that posted online during the first G.O.P. presidential debate in August.The decision to go to Michigan just days after the United Auto Workers went on strike shows the extent to which Mr. Trump wants to be seen as looking past his primary rivals — and the reality that both he and his political apparatus are already focused on the possibility of a rematch with President Biden.So instead of attending the next G.O.P. debate — on Sept. 27 in California at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum — Mr. Trump intends to speak to over 500 workers, with his campaign planning to fill the room with plumbers, pipe-fitters, electricians, as well as autoworkers, according to one of the Trump advisers familiar with the planning. Mr. Trump has not directly addressed the wage demands of striking workers and has attacked the union leadership, but he has tried to more broadly cast himself on the side of autoworkers.The campaign is also considering the possibility of having Mr. Trump make an appearance at the picket line, although the adviser said such a visit, which could involve difficult logistics given the former president’s security protections, is unlikely.The former president has long prided himself on his appeal to rank-and-file union workers — even as most union leaders have remained hostile to him, and as Mr. Biden has called himself the most pro-union president in history. In the 2016 campaign, an adviser to Mr. Trump, Paul Manafort, sought to establish a back channel with organized labor in Michigan and Wisconsin in the hopes the A.F.L.-C.I.O. would scale back its efforts to help the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. It did not appear to go anywhere, but underscored the areas that Mr. Trump considered vital in the general election.Mr. Trump won Michigan in the 2016 election, one of the states in the so-called blue wall that crumbled for Democrats that year. But Mr. Biden carried Michigan by more than 150,000 votes in 2020, and it is seen as a critical state for Democrats in 2024.The Trump campaign has produced a radio ad that will begin running on Tuesday in Detroit and Toledo, Ohio, trying to cast Mr. Trump as aligned with autoworkers. The same Trump adviser said the ad targeted union workers and men, and will air on sports and rock-themed stations.“All they’ve ever wanted is to compete fairly worldwide and get their fair share of the American dream,” the narrator says in the ad. “Donald Trump calls them great Americans and has always had their backs.”Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized the transition to electric vehicles, and in a post on his social media site Truth Social over the weekend, he called it an “Electric Car SCAM.” The radio ad also uses the Biden administration’s support for the transition to electric vehicles to attack Mr. Biden.The ad does not specifically mention the strike, which began last week against all big three Detroit automakers, and in which the union is seeking a 40 percent wage increase over four years.Ammar Moussa, a press officer for Mr. Biden’s campaign, said in a statement, “Donald Trump is going to Michigan next week to lie to Michigan workers and pretend he didn’t spend his entire failed presidency selling them out at every turn.”Mr. Biden has sided with the striking workers, sending two top aides to Detroit and saying at the White House hours after the strike began that “workers deserve a fair share of the benefits they helped create.”The United Auto Workers pointedly decided not to endorse Mr. Biden this spring ahead of the current labor clash, with the union’s new president, Shawn Fain, expressing concern about the labor elements of the transition to electric vehicles. At the same time, in a memo, Mr. Fain said Mr. Trump would be a “disaster” if he returned to the White House.In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” broadcast over the weekend, Mr. Trump was critical of Mr. Fain, saying workers had been “sold down the river by their leadership.”“I don’t know the gentleman, but I know his name very well, and I think he’s not doing a good job in representing his union,” Mr. Trump said. “Because he’s not going to have a union in three years from now. Those jobs are all going to be gone, because all of those electric cars are going to be made in China.”In a statement after The New York Times reported on Mr. Trump’s Detroit plans, Mr. Fain said that “every fiber of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers.”“We can’t keep electing billionaires and millionaires that don’t have any understanding what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to get by and expecting them to solve the problems of the working class,” he said. More

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    Biden Defends Striking Autoworkers: They Deserve a ‘Fair Share’

    President Biden forcefully sided with the striking United Auto Workers on Friday, dispatching two of his top aides to Detroit and calling for the three biggest American car companies to share their profits with employees whose wages and benefits he said have been unfairly eroded for years.In brief remarks from the White House hours after the union began what they called a targeted strike, Mr. Biden acknowledged that the automakers had made “significant offers” during contract negotiations, but he left no doubt his intention to make good on a 2020 promise to always have the backs of unions.“Over generations, autoworkers sacrificed so much to keep the industry alive and strong, especially the economic crisis and the pandemic,” Mr. Biden said. “Workers deserve a fair share of the benefits they helped create.”Mr. Biden said that Julie Su, the acting secretary of labor, and Gene Sperling, a top White House economic adviser, would go to Michigan immediately to support both sides in the negotiations. But he said the automakers “should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the U.A.W.”For decades, Mr. Biden has been an unapologetic backer of unions who rejects even the approach of some Democrats when it comes to balancing the interests of corporate America and the labor movement.During the past several years, he has helped nurture what polls suggest is a resurgence of support for unions, as younger Americans in new-economy jobs push for the right to organize at the workplace. Mr. Biden declares that “unions built the middle class” in virtually every speech he delivers.“That was most pro-union statement from a White House in decades, if not longer,” Eddie Vale, a veteran Democratic strategist who worked for years at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said after the president’s remarks.The president’s decision to weigh in on the side of the union without much reservation will most likely to draw fierce criticism from different quarters. Earlier in the day — even before the president’s White House comments — Suzanne P. Clark, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, issued a searing statement blaming the strike on Mr. Biden for “promoting unionization at all costs.”After Mr. Biden’s remarks, Neil Bradley, the group’s top lobbyist in Washington, said the president’s message and the pro-union policies his administration has pursued have “emboldened these demands that just aren’t grounded in reality.”And in a possible preview of a rematch with former President Donald J. Trump, NBC on Friday aired part of an interview in which Mr. Trump sided just as forcefully with the car companies against the unions.“The autoworkers will not have any jobs, Kristen, because all of these cars are going to be made in China,” Mr. Trump said in an interview set to air Sunday on the network’s “Meet the Press” program. “The autoworkers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump.”Friday’s walkout by the U.A.W. is in some ways a broader test of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda beyond just his pro-union stand. It also touches on his call for higher wages for the middle class; his climate-driven push to reimagine an electric vehicle future for car companies; and his call for higher taxes for the wealthy. The strike is centered in Michigan, a state that the president practically must win in 2024 to remain in the Oval Office.“You’ve got rebuilding the middle class and building things again here,” Mr. Vale said. “You’ve got green energy, technology and jobs. You’ve got important states for the election. So all of these are sort of together here in a swirl.”At the White House, Mr. Biden’s aides believe the battle between the car companies and its workers will underscore many of the president’s arguments about the need to reduce income inequality, the benefits of empowered employees, and the surge in profits for companies like the automakers that makes them able to afford paying higher wages.That approach is at the heart of the economic argument that Mr. Biden and his campaign team are preparing to make in the year ahead. But it sometimes comes into conflict with the president’s other priorities, including a shift toward electric vehicles.Mr. Biden’s push for automobiles powered by batteries instead of combustion engines is seen by many unions as a threat to the workers who have toiled for decades to build cars that run on gas. The unions want factories that make electric cars — most of which are not unionized — to see higher wages and benefits too.So far, Mr. Biden has sidestepped the question of whether his push for a green auto industry will hasten the demise of the unions. But Friday’s remarks are an indication that he remains as committed as ever to the political organizations that have been at the center of his governing coalition for years.In his remarks on Friday, he hinted at the tension inherent in the technological transition from one mode of propulsion to another.“I believe that transition should be fair, and a win-win for autoworkers and auto companies,” he said. But he added: “I also believe the contract agreement must lead to a vibrant ‘Made in America’ future that promotes good, strong middle class jobs that workers can raise a family on, where the U.A.W. remains at the heart of our economy, and where the Big Three companies continue to lead in innovation, excellence, quality and leadership.”The targeted strike is designed to disrupt one of America’s oldest industries at a time that Mr. Biden is sharpening the contrast between what rivals and allies call “Bidenomics” and a Republican plan that the president warns is a darker version of trickle-down economics that mostly benefits the rich.“Their plan — MAGAnomics — is more extreme than anything America has ever seen before,” Mr. Biden said on Thursday, hours before the union voted to strike.Mr. Biden was joined on Friday by several of the more liberal members of his party, who assailed the automakers and stood by the striking workers.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, sent out a fund-raising appeal accusing the companies of refusing “to meet the demands of workers negotiating for better pay” despite having “netted nearly a quarter trillion dollars in profit over the last decade.”Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, visited striking Jeep workers at a Toledo plant that makes the popular Wrangler sport-utility vehicle and declared that “Ohioans stand in solidarity with autoworkers around our state as they demand the Big Three automakers respect the work they do to make these companies successful.”How Mr. Biden navigates the strike and its consequences could have a significant impact on his hopes for re-election. In a CNN poll earlier this month, just 39 percent of people approved of the job he is doing as president and 58 percent said his policies have made economic conditions in the United States worse, not better.The fact that the strike is centered in Michigan is also critical. Mr. Biden won the state over Mr. Trump in 2020 with just over 50 percent of the vote. Without the state’s 16 electoral votes, Mr. Biden would not have defeated his rival.Unlike previous strikes involving rail workers or air traffic controllers, Mr. Biden has no special legal authority to intervene. Still, he is not exactly just an observer either.Just before the strike vote, Mr. Biden called Shawn Fain, the president of the U.A.W., as well as top executives of the car companies. Aides said that the president told the parties to ensure that workers get a fair contract and he urged both sides to stay at the negotiating table.Economists say a lengthy strike, if it goes on for weeks or even months, could be a blow to the American economy, especially in the middle of the country.Still, the president is unwavering on policies toward both unions and the environment. In a Labor Day speech in Philadelphia, Mr. Biden renewed both his vision about what he called a “transition to an electric vehicle future made in America” — which he said would protect jobs — and his rock-solid belief in unions.“You know, there are a lot of politicians in this country who don’t know how to say the word ‘union,’” he said. “They talk about labor, but they don’t say ‘union.’ It’s ‘union.’ I’m one of the — I’m proud to say ‘union.’ I’m proud to be the most pro-union president.” More