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      A Democrat’s obsessive quest to change the way America is farmed and fed

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      Each year for the last 26 years – nearly his entire tenure in the US Congress – Earl Blumenauer has advocated for a law that would utterly transform US agriculture.Nearly every time, though, his proposals have been shut down. Even so, he persists.Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, wants to see a version of US agriculture that centers people, animals and the environment, rather than the large-scale, energy-intensive commodity crop farms that currently receive billions of dollars in subsidies. In effect, he has a completely different vision for how 40% of the country’s land looks and works.“Every year is an uphill battle. We’re up against entrenched, wealthy, strong interests,” said Blumenauer, known for his signature bowtie, circular glasses and bicycle enamel pin. He’s the spitting image of a progressive environmentalist and doesn’t shy from discussing some of agriculture’s most divisive issues.But he remains optimistic and steadfast in his vision for the American food system. Now more than ever, he feels momentum and support surrounding the future of farming and food production. People care about where their food comes from and what kind of impact their food is having on the climate, he says.Blumenauer’s newest plan, the Food and Farm Act, was introduced earlier this year, as an alternative to the farm bill – the package of food and agricultural policies passed every five years that is up for renewal this fall. His proposal would redirect billions of dollars away from subsidies for commodity farms towards programs that support small farmers, climate-friendly agriculture and increasing healthy food access.The bill also prioritizes food waste management and animal welfare – areas that have been completely neglected by previous iterations of the farm bill.“We simply pay too much to the wrong people, to grow the wrong foods the wrong way, in the wrong places,” Blumenauer said.While unlikely to pass, Blumenauer’s bill, which has been introduced and referred to the agriculture committee, has won endorsements from prominent food writers such as Marion Nestle and Mark Bittman, as well as dozens of environmental, animal welfare and food justice organizations – representing the growing desire for change in US agriculture.At the heart of Blumenauer’s bill is farm subsidy reform. In the most recent iteration of the farm bill, approximately $63bn was dedicated to subsidies. These mostly benefited the largest farms and agribusinesses, with 70% of subsidy payments going to just 10% of farms, most of which produce commodity crops like soy, corn and wheat, which are often used to make animal feed, processed foods and even fuel for cars.This means that taxpayers are subsidizing processed food, but not the fruits and vegetables you buy in the grocery store – and that commodity farms have little incentive to switch to more sustainable modes of production or more nutritious foods that people will actually eat.“Most of us don’t even know that the public dollars initially designed to protect farmers and keep supply managed to feed a hungry nation in the Great Depression are now reinforcing wealthy agribusiness corporations to grow commodities that are not even meant for human consumption,” said Joshua Sewell, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.Farmers that grow what are called “specialty crops”, which include fruits and vegetables, usually don’t qualify for subsidies. Most of the farms excluded from subsidy payments are those using sustainable growing methods that preserve soil and benefit the climate in the long term.“It’s just maddening to me that the men and women who are working hard producing food, and particularly those that are doing so in a sustainable fashion, or who want to be involved with organics, they’re shortchanged,” Blumenauer said.The Food and Farm Act also proposes limiting the total payment a farmer or agribusiness can receive to $125,000, and narrows eligibility, so that only farmers with annual incomes less than $400,000 would be eligible. (Previously farmers who made less than $900,000 were eligible, and could receive more than $1m in subsidies.)In developing the bill, Blumenauer spent the last five years interviewing and engaging with agricultural producers in Oregon, a state that mostly produces milk, grass seed and wheat. He asked about their needs and wants, what’s working for them and what’s not. He always asks the same question: “What would a farm bill look like if it was just for you?”He found that many farmers and ranchers want to see a redirection of resources from the largest producers to small-scale farmers.“There is a pretty strong consensus that we’re not meeting the needs of farmers and ranchers and we’re not meeting the needs of the American public,” Blumenauer said.Blumenauer’s bill also considers agriculture’s impact on the environment.“Agriculture is one of the most environmentally destructive activities,” Blumenauer said. “There is an increasing awareness of how much carbon is produced and how much carbon we could save and sequester by making relatively modest changes in agricultural practices.”Many of the 2018 farm bill’s conservation programs, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), pay money to the largest agricultural operations, even though their practices are often harmful to the environment, explains Sophie Ackoff, farm bill campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Large producers are paid to make their operations more sustainable; however, much of that funding has been used for things like land clearing and road building, which provide little value to conservation.In 2019, 10% of the program’s funding went to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which have negative impacts on water quality, animal welfare and human health.Factory farming and animal agriculture contribute nearly 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and previous farm bills haven’t acknowledged the impact of factory farms on the climate, says Alexandra Bookis of Farm Sanctuary.“As a system, it has a direct impact on the climate crisis that we haven’t addressed head on,” she said.Blumenauer’s bill would instead end all payments to CAFOs and factory farms, as well as ensure more funding goes toward sustainable farming practices and operations that “demonstrably improve the quality of the environment”. It also mandates that any farm receiving a subsidy payment must comply with certain environmental standards.Nutrition assistance and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) is a point of political contention every farm bill cycle, as the title accounts for nearly 80% of the farm bill’s budget. In May, Republicans proposed expanding work requirements for recipients of Snap, which would make it more difficult for people experiencing food insecurity to qualify for the program.Blumenauer’s bill would not only expand Snap’s funding and eligibility, but it would also provide more funding for local food systems in urban and rural food deserts, as well as increase fresh fruit and vegetable consumption in schools.“It’s a win for people on food assistance, but also farmers selling locally. So many of the farmers I’ve worked with get into it because they want to feed their communities, they don’t want to just sell really expensive food,” Ackoff said.A significant portion of the bill is also dedicated to supporting new and beginning farmers – who often face barriers to entry, like lack of capital. It’s an area of untapped potential, and many young farmers are eager to grow food to feed their communities, they just need the resources to do so, Blumenauer says.“Frankly, these are appeals that really touch American citizens,” Blumenauer said. “The support for family farms, for resiliency, access for younger people – these are themes that are extraordinarily popular, and very important.” More

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      Ron DeSantis to cut a third of staff amid flagging primary campaign – as it happened

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      From 3h agoFlorida Governor Ron DeSantis is sharply reducing the size of his presidential campaign staff, cutting a third of his campaign staff, according to campaign aides.The cuts will amount to a total of 38 jobs across an array of departments, Politico reported, citing sources. They will include the roughly 10 event planning positions that were announced several weeks ago, as well as the recent departures of two senior DeSantis campaign advisers, Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain.Today began with Democrats reacting with fury to comments from Kevin McCarthy that seemed to support impeaching Joe Biden, though he later clarified any such effort won’t happen this week. The remarks underscore the seriousness with which Republicans are taking their investigations against the president and his family, as well as the degree of influence the party’s right wing wields in the House. At the White House, Biden and Kamala Harris held a public ceremony to designate new national monuments in honor of Emmett Till, but made a point of condemning book bans and changes to Florida’s school curriculum that make light of slavery, respectively.Here’s what else happened today:
      Ron DeSantis slashed his campaign staff by a third, the latest sign that his presidential campaign is not going as well as he hoped.
      Strike averted: the Teamster and UPS have tentatively agreed to a new contract ahead of what would have been one of the biggest single-employer work stoppages in US history.
      Biden’s immigration policies lost in court.
      House Republicans will consider on Thursday whether to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress, arguing he has not complied with a subpoena.
      A Democratic congressman from Texas is on a thirst and hunger strike after the state’s Republican governor signed legislation blocking regulations that gave construction workers water breaks amid intensifying heat.
      A federal judge has ruled against a recently enacted Biden administration policy intended to discourage people from claiming asylum at the US southern border.The policy is among a slew of new rules Joe Biden announced earlier this year to crack down on irregular migration, after pandemic-era regulations turning away many asylum seekers expired. Immigrants right groups have criticized the restrictions, saying they’re similar to the hardline policies championed by Donald Trump.Here’s more on the judge’s ruling, from the Associated Press:
      A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a rule that allows immigration authorities to deny asylum to migrants who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border without first applying online or seeking protection in a country they passed through. But the judge delayed his ruling from taking effect immediately to give President Joe Biden’s administration time to appeal.
      The order from U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of the Northern District of California takes away a key enforcement tool set in place by the Biden administration as coronavirus-based restrictions on asylum expired in May. The new rule imposes severe limitations on migrants seeking asylum but includes room for exceptions and does not apply to children traveling alone.
      “The Rule — which has been in effect for two months — cannot remain in place,” Tigar wrote in an order that will not take effect for two weeks.
      The Justice Department said it would seek to prevent the judge’s ruling from taking effect and that it’s confident the rule is lawful.
      House Republican lawmaker Darrell Issa predicts an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden could be opened as soon as September.He also predicts that some Democrats would support the effort, casting it as a “bipartisan inquiry to get to the truth”. Here’s a clip of his interview, on Fox News:The Republican-controlled House judiciary committee will on Thursday consider whether to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress:Led by Jim Jordan, a staunch Donald Trump ally, Republicans on the committee allege that Zuckerberg, whose company owns Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms, has not fully responded to a February subpoena demanding information about its communications with the Biden administration. The GOP has alleged that the White House is working with social media firms to censor conservatives, and earlier this month a federal judge ordered some Biden administration officials to stop communicating with the companies, though that order has since been put on pause by an appeals panel.“Meta and its Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg have willfully refused to comply in full with a congressional subpoena directed to Mr. Zuckerberg stemming from an investigation conducted by the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government into the Executive Branch’s coordination with social media companies and other third parties to censor free speech on digital platforms,” according to a report from Jordan.“This censorship by proxy is a serious threat to fundamental American civil liberties.”Joe Biden has released a statement congratulating UPS and the Teamsters union for reaching a tentative agreement to prevent a strike from starting next month, which would have been one of the biggest organized labor walkouts from a single employer in US history.Biden has long sought to keep unions on his side, and in his statement, he called the deal “a testament to the power of employers and employees coming together to work out their differences at the bargaining table in a manner that helps businesses succeed while helping workers secure pay and benefits they can raise a family on and retire with dignity and respect.”You can read the full statement here.Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, House speaker Kevin McCarthy said an impeachment inquiry could be used to force the Biden administration to hand over information it has resisted providing to the Republicans:Since taking control of the House earlier this year, Republicans have stepped up investigations of Joe Biden and his family, particularly his son Hunter Biden, accusing them of corruption, while alleging the White House is stonewalling their investigation. The Biden administration has responded by saying the GOP is demanding information about ongoing investigations and confidential sources, two matters it does not discuss publicly.If McCarthy moves forward with impeachment, it won’t happen this week, Punchbowl News reports, nor will the House consider GOP-backed resolutions to expunge Donald Trump’s twin impeachments:In a statement, DeSantis campaign manager Generra Peck said:
      Following a top-to-bottom review of our organization, we have taken additional, aggressive steps to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden.
      Gov. DeSantis is going to lead the Great American Comeback and we’re ready to hit the ground running as we head into an important month of the campaign.
      Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is sharply reducing the size of his presidential campaign staff, cutting a third of his campaign staff, according to campaign aides.The cuts will amount to a total of 38 jobs across an array of departments, Politico reported, citing sources. They will include the roughly 10 event planning positions that were announced several weeks ago, as well as the recent departures of two senior DeSantis campaign advisers, Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain.Donald Trump’s appeal has sunk among Republicans, a new poll has found.Pew research found that 63% of Americans of all political affiliations have an unfavorable opinion of Trump – an increase from 60% last year.At 66%, the majority of those who identify as Republicans or Republican-leaning still view the former president in a favorable light, but that is nine percentage points lower than last July’s 75%.Last July, about a quarter of those on the right viewed him as very or mostly unfavorably, but that figure has risen to 32%.Unsurprisingly, Democrats’ opinion of Trump is also low, though consistent with recent years. Ninety-one percent of Democrats polled viewed Trump unfavorably. Of that, 78% viewed him as very unfavorable.A mere 8% of Democrats view him favorably.By contrast, Biden’s popularity among the general popularity slipped about 4% since last year. Positive opinions of Vice-President Kamala Harris were worse, dropping from 43% to 36% since last year.Trump still remains the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, ahead of the far-right Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, according to FiveThirtyEight.Read the full story here.Joe Biden’s German shepherd dog, Commander, bit or attacked Secret Service officers at least 10 times between October 2022 and January, according to records from the department of homeland security obtained by a conservative watchdog group.The emails released today by Judicial Watch, which it said were obtained following a Freedom of Information Act request lawsuit, show nearly 200 pages of Secret Service records. The group said it filed the request after receiving a tip about Commander’s behavior.On 3 November 2022, a Secret Service official emailed colleagues to say that Commander had bitten a uniformed officer twice – on the upper right arm and thigh – and that the officer had to use a steel cart to protect himself from another attack. Staff from the White House medical unit treated the officer and decided to have him taken to a hospital, the emails say.Commander has been “exhibiting extremely aggressive behavior”, a uniform division officer wrote in an email. It continues:
      Today, while posted, he came charging at me. The First Lady couldn’t regain control of [Commander] and he continued to circle me.
      The note adds:
      I believe it’s only a matter of time before an agent/officer is attacked or bit.
      Commander is the second dog of Biden’s to behave aggressively, including biting Secret Service officers and White House staff, AP reported. The first, a German shepherd named Major, was sent to live with friends in Delaware after those incidents.Former Texas congressman and long-shot Republican presidential candidate, Will Hurd, once again criticized his rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, for showing a “lack of leadership” over the state’s new curriculum that contends some Black people benefited from being enslaved.“It’s a bit shocking to me,” Hurd said in an interview with CNN.
      There is no there was no upside to slavery. Slavery was not a jobs programme.
      Hurd was referring to the DeSantis’s response to vice-president Kamala Harris, who has called Florida’s new Black history education standards “propaganda”. The Florida governor said he wasn’t involved in drafting the document but defended the standards.DeSantis “showed a lack of leadership by acting like it was somebody else’s fault and not something that was done on his watch,” Hurd said on Tuesday.To imply there was an upside to slavery “is unacceptable”, he added.Today began with Democrats reacting with fury to comments from Kevin McCarthy that seemed to support impeaching Joe Biden. While it’s unclear if the House speaker will follow through on his threats, the remarks underscore the seriousness with which Republicans are taking their investigations against the president and his family, as well as the degree of influence the party’s right wing wields in the House. At the White House, Biden and Kamala Harris held a public ceremony to designate new national monuments in honor of Emmett Till, but made a point of condemning book bans and changes to Florida’s school curriculum that make light of slavery, respectively.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Ron DeSantis was involved in a car accident while on the campaign trail in Tennessee, but was not injured.
      Strike averted: the Teamster and UPS have tentatively agreed to a new contract ahead of what would have been one of the biggest single-employer work stoppages in US history.
      A Democratic congressman from Texas is on a thirst and hunger strike after the state’s Republican governor signed legislation blocking regulations that gave construction workers water breaks amid intensifying heat.
      As he signed a proclamation at the White House that creates new national monuments to honor Emmett Till, a Black teenager whose 1955 murder in Mississippi was a turning point in the civil rights movement, Joe Biden spoke out against conservative activists’ campaigns to ban books.“At a time when there are those who seek to ban books, bury history, we’re making it clear, crystal, crystal clear,” Biden said. “We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know. We have to learn what we should know. We should know about our country. We should know everything, the good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation.”Writers’ organization Pen America reports that book bans in public schools rose 28% in the first half of the 2022-2023 academic year, and are most common in Republican-led states. Its April report added that “of the 1,477 books banned this school year, 30% are about race, racism or include characters of color”.In a ceremony to designate new national monuments related to the murder of Emmett Till, Kamala Harris made a veiled attack on a new curriculum in Florida backed by Republican governor Ron DeSantis that contends some Black people benefited from enslavement.“Today, there are those in our nation who would prefer to erase or even rewrite the ugly parts of our past, those who attempt to teach that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” said Harris, the first woman and first African America in the position of vice-president.“Those who insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, who try to divide our nation with unnecessary debates. Let us not be seduced into believing that, somehow. we will be better if we forget.”Last week, Harris visited Florida and forcefully condemned the state board of education’s new standards for Black history, which will see students learn that some slaves received “personal benefit” from skills they learned in their forced servitude.What would have been the largest single-employer labor strike in US history appears to have been averted, after UPS and the Teamsters union reached a tentative deal on a new contract.Here’s the Guardian’s Michael Sainato with the latest on the agreement:
      The Teamsters union announced today that leadership has reached a tentative agreement with UPS, averting a strike that was set to begin on 1 August involving 340,000 workers.
      The national bargaining committee unanimously endorsed the five-year tentative agreement.
      Highlights of the agreement include wage increases of $2.75 per hour for full-time and part-time workers this year and $7.50 more per hour over the length of the contract, and part-timers will see wage increases immediately of at least $21 an hour. The wage gains are double the gains from the previous five-year contract that was in effect from 2018, and a 48% increase for part-timers over the life of the contract. Full-timers will see their average top rate increase to $49 per hour.
      The agreement also ends a two-tiered classification for drivers, provides part-timers with longevity raises, adds Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday off, and ends forced overtime on off days.
      “Rank-and-file UPS Teamsters sacrificed everything to get this country through a pandemic and enabled UPS to reap record-setting profits. Teamster labor moves America. The union went into this fight committed to winning for our members. We demanded the best contract in the history of UPS, and we got it,” said the Teamsters general president, Sean M O’Brien in a press release announcing the agreement.
      Meanwhile, the jail sentences keep coming in for people convicted of involvement in the violence on January 6. Here’s the Associated Press with the latest:An Arkansas truck driver who beat a police officer with a flagpole attached to an American flag during the US Capitol riot was sentenced Monday to more than four years in prison.Peter Francis Stager struck the Metropolitan police department officer with his flagpole at least three times as other rioters pulled the officer, head first, into the crowd outside the Capitol on 6 January 2021. The bruised officer was among more than 100 police officers injured during the riot.Stager also stood over and screamed profanities at another officer, who was seriously injured when several other rioters dragged him into the mob and beat him, according to federal prosecutors.After the beatings, Stager was captured on video saying, “Every single one of those Capitol law enforcement officers, death is the remedy. That is the only remedy they get.”US Judge Rudolph Contreras sentenced Stager to four years and four months in prison, according to a spokesperson for the prosecutors’ office. More

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      Democrats call on GOP to end senator’s ‘reckless’ military promotions block

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      The Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville’s block on senior US military promotions in protest of Pentagon policy on abortion is “reckless and dangerous”, eight Democratic senators told Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, in a letter published on Monday.“It falls to you to act now, for the safety and security of our nation,” the Democrats wrote to McConnell, of Kentucky. “We urge you to exercise your leadership and prevail on senator Tuberville to end his reckless hold.”The protest by the former football coach and Donald Trump ally has stretched for months, leaving the US Marine Corps without a permanent leader for the first time since before the civil war and even threatening leadership of the joint chiefs of staff.Tuberville is seeking to bring down a Department of Defense policy that allows service members based in states which restrict abortion rights to travel to ones where such healthcare remains available.The secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, has defended the policy. He has also said nearly 650 senior posts requiring Senate confirmation could be unfilled by the end of the year.Tuberville wants a Senate vote on the policy. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said last week Democrats “would not object to” a vote but added: “The bottom line is it’s up to the Republican leadership. They are risking our security, and it’s up to them to fix it.”In their Monday letter, the eight Democratic senators – led by Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and including Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Tammy Duckworth (Illinois) and Jacky Rosen (Nevada) – expressed “deep concern for the stability of our armed services and national security and call on [McConnell] to exercise your leadership to protect the readiness of our military”.Tuberville’s block was “threatening our national security”, the senators said, adding: “We know you share our concerns … and as the leader of your conference, we urge you to take stronger action to resolve this situation”.McConnell has said he does not support Tuberville’s protest but has not moved to end it.The senators added: “Although there are numerous ways to legislatively change this policy, senator Tuberville has failed to convince a majority of the Senate to agree with his position.“He continues to try to force his personal beliefs on the women and men who volunteer to serve our country, creating unnecessary havoc and punishing service members for a policy they had no part in writing.”Describing the effects on service members denied promotions, the senators said: “Families who were ordered to move are now living in temporary family housing, children aren’t able to ready themselves for new schools, and spouses are missing vital employment opportunities.”Also on Monday, Tuberville took delivery of a petition from the Secure Families Initiative, an advocacy group for military families.It said: “No matter your political beliefs, we must agree that service members and military families will not be used as political leverage. It’s time to end this political showmanship and recommit to respect the service and sacrifice of those who pledge to defend this nation.”The petition was also sent to Schumer and McConnell. In his own petition last week, Tuberville claimed support from more than 5,000 military veterans.The eight Democrats who wrote to McConnell also said the Kentuckian, as Republican leader, should hold “colleagues accountable when they recklessly cross boundaries and upend senatorial order.“Senator Tuberville’s continuation of this stalemate is reckless, dangerous, and must end.” More

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      We last raised the US federal minimum wage 14 years ago. This is unacceptable | Rev William J Barber and Rev A Kazimir Brown

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      Researchers at the University of California-Riverside recently released a study showing poverty is the fourth leading cause of death nationwide. Poverty kills more people than homicide, respiratory disease, gun violence and opioid overdoses, the study showed.It’s stress, it’s starvation, it’s disease. And it’s all unnecessary.Policymakers have many tools to counter the death by poverty that is ravaging America. But they have neglected the simplest one in their toolkit for far too long: raising the federal minimum wage. Monday marks 14 years since the last federal minimum wage increase, the longest period America’s lowest-paid workers have gone without a raise since the minimum wage was first put into effect in 1938.The minimum wage has been stuck at an unlivable $7.25 an hour under three presidents. Adjusting for inflation, today’s minimum wage is now worth less than at any point since 1956. Nearly a third of the workforce, or 52 million people, earn less than $15 an hour, including 47% of Black workers, 46% of Hispanic workers, 20% of Asian American and Indigenous workers, 40% of working women and 50% of working women of color. Raising the minimum wage to even $15 an hour would lift 7.6 million people – many of whom are women, immigrants, Black, Latinx or parents – out of poverty and give more than 50 million people a raise.According to the Economic Policy Institute, a worker paid the $7.25 federal minimum wage earns 27.4% less in inflation-adjusted terms than what their counterpart was paid in July 2009 when the minimum wage was last increased, and 40.2% less than a minimum wage worker in February 1968, the historical high point of the minimum wage’s value.Courageous workers in the Fight for $15 and the union movement have pushed 14 states and the District of Columbia to adopt $15 minimum wage laws. We’re proud to have marched with, prayed with, and even gotten arrested with these workers as they’ve demanded living wages and a union. But the sad fact is that 20 states remain stuck at the federal minimum of $7.25 – and working people in those states, the majority of which are in the south, need help now. That’s why, earlier this year, we hit the road with Bernie Sanders and stood alongside workers across the south to demand living wages.These workers are 46% more likely to be paid less than $15 than workers in the 30-plus states with minimums higher than $7.25, according to the Economic Policy Institute. And, according to EPI, there isn’t a place in the country where even a single adult without children can get by on less than $15 an hour. There’s no city, county or state where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a two-bedroom rental, a report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition showed.Yet instead of raising pay for fast-food cooks, home care aides, warehouse workers, retail clerks and others, politicians push a false moral narrative of religious nationalism, trying to trick us into believing that poverty is a moral failing on the individual and that the real moral issues of our time are standing against LGBTQ+ people and a woman’s right to choose while defending tax cuts and gun rights.We will not be duped: the real moral question for our country is where we stand in relation to the poor. Instead of pushing culture wars and partisanship, lawmakers should focus on the 800 people dying each day from poverty in the wealthiest nation on earth. Our politicians have failed to act, and leaders who stand silent in the face of these injustices are guilty of policy murder.Indeed, our demand for a living wage is the moral issue politicians should be focused on. Isaiah 10 says, “Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights, and make women and children their prey.” And President Franklin D Roosevelt adopted the moral argument of the Social Gospel when he declared that “no business which depends for its existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” It is a moral travesty that as a nation we continue to expand the military budget in surplus, but refuse to guarantee basic human rights like healthcare and living wages.We are putting our nation’s leaders on notice, across party lines, that we need living wages now. If they don’t act, we’ll vote them out. Poor and low-wealth people make up nearly 40% of the electorate and have the ability to decide elections. We are calling for a Third Reconstruction to lift our nation’s 140 million poor and low-wealth people from the bottom up. This includes raising the outdated minimum wage to a living wage as well as updating the also-obsolete official poverty measure to reflect what it takes to secure a decent standard of living today.America has gone 14 years without a raise. It’s literally killing us. And it’s time for it to change.
      The Rev D William J Barber II is founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School
      The Rev A Kazimir Brown is executive director of Repairers of the Breach More

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      Filthy Rich Politicians: journalist Matt K Lewis on Trump, ethics and money in Washington

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      When Covid-19 materialized as a serious threat, Richard Burr took action. As chair of the Senate intelligence committee, the North Carolina Republican had access to information on the pandemic that was unavailable to the American public. He unloaded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stocks, including investments in the hospitality industry that was likely to be hard-hit. Burr also contacted his brother-in-law, who made his own stock dump. After the trades were publicized, Burr resigned as chair of the intelligence panel. But he was not charged with a crime.For the reporter Matt K Lewis, the story is part of an ever-increasing problem: the outsized role of wealth in Washington. The Daily Beast journalist has written a book, Filthy Rich Politicians, that was published in the US this week. The extent of the problem is reflected by Lewis’s subtitle: The Swamp Creatures, Latte Liberals, and Ruling Class Elites Cashing In on America.“Rich people get elected, and people, when elected, tend to get richer,” Lewis says. “Over time, it has gotten worse.”The narrative is bipartisan and includes progressives and populists from members of the Squad to election deniers.“I think it’s just an irony that I wrote the book Filthy Rich Politicians in a moment when all the politicians in America … one thing almost all have in common is trying to position themselves as being populist outsiders attacking elites,” Lewis says.He is concerned by politicians bolstering their finances during moments of crisis, as Burr did during Covid.“That, I think, is one of the most interesting and disturbing parts of the book. Everybody kind of knows politicians are rich and some of what they do is sketchy. This, I think, most Americans don’t fully appreciate.”Whether regarding Covid or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lewis says, “These are the moments when it really pays off to have inside information.” He points out that the list of members of Congress who made advantageous stock purchases ahead of the Ukraine war included Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a Democrat, and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a notorious hard-right Republican.The House of Representatives has become a flashpoint. In the lower chamber, where members are ostensibly closer to average Americans, incomes have climbed quite high. The average member of Congress is now 12 times wealthier than the typical US household.“In the last four decades, the gap has demonstrably widened between politicians and ‘We, the people,’” Lewis says.Causes range from insider trading to book deals to lobbying, family members and friends getting in on the action through paid positions as campaign or office staffers. Lewis cites numerous examples.The former Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, have netted millions from his stock deals, outperforming top investors including Warren Buffett while Nancy Pelosi fended off attempts at reform.In the annals of lobbying, there is Billy Tauzin, a former Republican congressman from Louisiana. On Capitol Hill, Tauzin helped then-president George W Bush pass a Medicare bill. His term done, Tauzin became a lobbyist for Big Pharma.Running for office is a perfect fit for high net-worth individuals. After all, it requires significant time off from work and enough campaign funds to draw in outside donations. It helps if you’re born into wealth, marry into it – or both.Lewis comes from a different background – though he notes that his wife, Erin DeLullo, is a political consultant who has worked with some of the Republicans he criticizes as self-proclaimed populists, despite their Ivy League degrees.Lewis’s father was a prison guard for three decades. The family never lacked for food on the table, but Lewis got a rude introduction to the wider world when he made his own foray into campaign politics. A $1,000 check was late to his bank account, giving him an impromptu lesson in how much it costs to be poor in Washington.Then, after becoming an opinion journalist at the Daily Caller, a conservative site, Lewis learned how rich people populate the DC landscape. One day, he was researching a tip that a prominent liberal family was polluting the environment with its penchant for boating. A family member contended otherwise, asking if Lewis knew anything about sailing or yachting. Lewis confessed he did not, asked his colleagues if they did, and saw a sea of hands.“For me, it really hit home that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, so to speak,” he recalls.Lewis planned his book as a survey of America’s 100 richest politicians. It evolved into a more substantive project, although the original idea is reflected by two lists in the appendix: the 25 wealthiest members of Congress and the 10 richest presidents.The Florida Republican senator Rick Scott – who before entering politics ran a company fined $1.7bn for Medicare fraud – leads the congressional list with more than $200m. Top of the presidential list is Donald Trump, whose net worth topped out at $3.1bn.“Putting money aside, [Trump] changed the game in many ways,” Lewis says. “It’s never going to be the same, and not primarily because of his wealth – he’s such a different type of human being and president than we’ve ever seen.”Ironically, Trump’s populist denunciations of corruption and the DC “swamp” resonated strongly with voters.Citing a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, Lewis says: “Three-quarters of Americans believed politicians were primarily selfish and interested in feathering their own nest. I don’t think it’s any surprise that one year later, Donald Trump was elected. He talked about how the game was rigged, he talked about elites and the establishment and the need to drain the swamp.”The Biden family has also been doing quite well for itself financially – not just the president’s scandal-embroiled son, Hunter, but Hunter’s uncles Frank and James.“There are a lot of ways politicians and their families can become enriched, sort of trading off the family relationship, name and access,” Lewis says.He mentions a story in the Atlantic about Joe Biden’s 1988 run for president: the campaign took in over $11m, with around 20% of that amount going either to the candidate’s family or to companies they worked for.“You have an example of other people’s money – in this case, campaign donors – being transferred to the family of Joe Biden,” Lewis says. “Given my druthers, I would make this illegal.”He offers more suggestions for limiting the influence of wealth in politics, including a counterintuitive proposal: raise congressional salaries.“I firmly believe in it,” Lewis says. “This will happen after we ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks, after we impose a 10-year moratorium on the revolving door of lobbying, after we ban the ability to make millions from a book deal while you’re serving the country, after we ban the hiring of family for congressional offices and campaigns.“It’s not cheap to live in Washington DC. Once we have curtailed the ability to get rich from nefarious or certainly questionable means, I would compensate them even more so they could focus on the actual job.”
      Filthy Rich Politicians is published in the US by Center Street More

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      Oppenheimer biographer supports US bill to bar use of AI in nuclear launches

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      A biographer whose Pulitzer prize-winning book inspired the new movie Oppenheimer has expressed support for a US senator’s attempt to bar the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear weapons launches.“Humans must always maintain sole control over nuclear weapons,” Kai Bird, author of American Prometheus, said in a statement reported by Politico.“This technology is too dangerous to gamble with. This bill will send a powerful signal to the world that the United States will never take the reckless step of automating our nuclear command and control.”In Washington on Thursday, Bird met Ed Markey, the Democratic Massachusetts senator who is attempting to add the AI-nuclear provision to a major defense spending bill.Markey, Politico said, was a friend of Bird’s co-author, the late Tufts University professor Martin J Sherwin.A spokesperson for the senator told Politico Markey and Bird “shared their mutual concerns over the proliferation of artificial intelligence in national security and defense without guardrails, and the risks of using nuclear weapons in south Asia and elsewhere.“They also discussed ways to increase awareness of nuclear issues among the younger set.”J Robert Oppenheimer was the driving force behind US development of the atomic bomb, at the end of the second world war.Bird and Sherwin’s book is now the inspiration for Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster starring Cillian Murphy in the title role.The movie opens in the US on Friday – in competition with Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s film about the popular children’s doll.On Friday, Nolan told the Guardian: “International surveillance of nuclear weapons is possible because nuclear weapons are very difficult to build. Oppenheimer spent $2bn and used thousands of people across America to build those first bombs.“It’s reassuringly difficult to make nuclear weapons and so it’s relatively easy to spot when a country is doing that. I don’t believe any of that applies to AI.”Nolan also noted “very strong parallels” between Oppenheimer and AI experts now calling for such technology to be controlled.Nolan said he had “been interested to talk to some of the leading researchers in the AI field, and hear from them that they view this as their ‘Oppenheimer moment’. And they’re clearly looking to his story for some kind of guidance … as a cautionary tale in terms of what it says about the responsibility of somebody who’s putting this technology to the world, and what their responsibilities would be in terms of unintended consequences.”Bird and Sherwin’s biography, subtitled The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer, was published in 2008.Reviewing for the Guardian, James Buchan saluted the authors’ presentation of “the cocktails and wire-taps and love affairs of Oppenheimer’s existence, his looks and conversation, the way he smoked the cigarettes and pipe that killed him, his famous pork-pie hat and splayed walk, and all the tics and affectations that his students imitated and the patriots and military men despised.“It is as if these authors had gone back to James Boswell, who said of Dr Johnson: ‘Everything relative to so great a man is worth observing.’” More

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      ‘We’re done with the cover-up’: UFO claims to get their day in Congress

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      For decades, US politicians have been reluctant to get involved in the topic of UFOs and aliens.After a series of disclosures in recent months, however, Republicans and Democrats now appear to be lining up to inquire into the question of extraterrestrial life, as the world seems closer than ever to finding out whether we are alone in the universe.Next week, the House oversight committee will hold its first public hearing as part of its investigation into UFOs, weeks after a whistleblower former intelligence official went public with claims that the government has possession of “intact and partially intact” alien vehicles.David Grusch’s allegations about the government harboring alien craft – he has since suggested that the US has also encountered “malevolent” alien pilots – sparked the 26 July hearing, and beyond that, appear to have lit a fire under the Washington establishment.The Republican party has led the initial charge, with a series of claims about extraterrestrial life that, until recently, would have been seen as career-ending.Tim Burchett, the Republican congressman from Tennessee who is co-leading the UFO investigation, declared in early July that alien craft possess technology that could “turn us into a charcoal briquette”, while a Republican colleague suggested that extraterrestrial interlopers could actually be representatives of an ancient civilization.In a briefing on Thursday, Burchett said he and his co-investigator Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican member from Florida, had been “stonewalled” by federal officials when asking about UFOs, and prevented from accessing some “information to prove that they do exist”.“We’ve had a heck of a lot of pushback about this hearing. There are a lot of people who don’t want this to come to light,” he said.Burchett said the US had evidence of technology that “defies all of our laws of physics”, and angrily railed against a “cover-up” by military officials.He added: “We’re gonna get to the bottom of it, dadgummit. Whatever the truth may be. We’re done with the cover-up.”In recent days the government itself has joined the UFO discourse. A White House official claimed that aerial phenomena “have already had an impact on our training ranges”, while a bipartisan group of senators have proposed new legislation to collect and distribute documents on “unidentified anomalous phenomena”.The legitimization of UFO discussion has been propelled in part by claims from US military pilots of UFO encounters, along with leaked military videos showing inexplicable happenings in the sky.Following those revelations, in 2021 the Pentagon released a report on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), the term some experts prefer, which found more than 140 instances of UAP encounters that could not be explained. Since then, politicians appear to have moved past some of the stigma around extraterrestrial life.“There’s a sort of critical mass building now,” said Nick Pope, who spent the early 1990s investigating UFOs for the British Ministry of Defence (MoD).“And I think even though it’s easy to portray some of the politicians as mavericks, the fact that Republicans and Democrats are lining up, are united in their stance on this … I think we have crossed a line.”Grusch will appear at the hearing on Wednesday, along with David Fravor, a former navy commander who reported seeing a strange object in the sky while on a training mission in 2004, and Ryan Graves, a retired navy pilot who in 2021 told the 60 Minutes news show he had seen unidentified aerial phenomena off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years”.As Burchett has investigated the accuracy of Grusch’s claims, he has begun to make some bold declarations of his own. On the Event Horizon podcast, Burchett was asked if had seen “compelling evidence” that the US was seeing things in the sky “that might not be of this earth”.“Oh, 100%. 100%. No question,” he said.Burchett went on to claim that the US has been hiding evidence of UFOs since 1947, and speculated that the extraterrestrial craft could be dangerous.“If they’re out there, they’re out there, and if they have this kind of technology, then they could turn us into a charcoal briquette,” Burchett said.“And if they can travel light years or at the speeds that we’ve seen, and physics as we know it, fly underwater, don’t show a heat trail, things like that, then we are vastly out of our league.”He is not alone.Days earlier, Mike Gallagher, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, hypothesized that UFO encounters “could actually be an ancient civilization that’s just been hiding here and is suddenly showing itself”.Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who, along with Democrats including Kirsten Gillibrand, has maintained a longtime interest in UAPs, has weighed in, as has the Donald Trump disciple Josh Hawley, who claims the US has “downplayed” the number of UFO sightings “for a long, long time”.On Thursday, Luna, the co-lead of the oversight committee investigation, echoed Hawley’s statements, alleging that “the Pentagon and the Department of the Air Force” had been particularly uncooperative.“When I take at face value the numerous roadblocks that we’ve been presented with, it leads me to believe that they are indeed hiding information,” she said.“I look forward to bringing this topic to light, and finding out the truth of what is really out there.”It is doubtful that the hearing on Wednesday will prove conclusively whether or not aliens exist. It is also unlikely the public will find out whether aliens, with their charcoal-briquette capable weaponry, have visited Earth.But still, the desire of politicians, of both sides, to wade into UFO discourse suggests that a corner has been turned, and Pope suggested Republicans’ and Democrats’ willingness to investigate could mean they are beginning to believe.“I think these politicians are doing it because they either know, or more likely strongly suspect that some of this is true,” Pope said.“I don’t think you would go all in – and they are going all in on this – if they weren’t pretty darn sure of themselves. Because the egg on the face if this all turns out to be drones – it would be staggering.” More

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      House Republicans pass defense bill, setting up clash on abortion policy

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      The Republican-led House of Representatives on Friday approved a huge defense bill that includes amendments overturning the Pentagon’s policies on covering abortion services for the military, healthcare costs for transgender service members and diversity initiatives – setting up a historic clash with Democrats and the Biden administration that could imperil spending on the armed forces.The amendments, pushed by the GOP’s right flank with the support of the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, represent the latest instance of conservative lawmakers using their influence in Congress’s lower chamber to attempt to change Joe Biden’s policies on a range of issues that chiefly animate the Republican base.They also seems certain to spark a major battle with Democrats who hold control of the Senate, and whose assent will be needed for the defense spending bill, a version of which Congress approves every year, to become law.“House Republicans have made a commitment to America that we fight for a nation that is safe,” McCarthy said shortly after the amended National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) covering the 2024 fiscal year passed on a mostly party-line vote.“Radical programs that are forced [on] our troops at the expense of readiness are now eliminated. Cutting-edge technology that is essential for the future of this country and to keep freedom around the world in the rise of China and Russia, will receive more investment than we’ve watched in the past,” McCarthy said, adding that the legislation costing $886.3bn would also give service members their largest pay increase in two decades.The NDAA is one of the bills Congress must pass every year, and often attracts bipartisan support, with politicians of both parties eager to show they support the United States military. But while it is not unusual for the defense spending measure to include provisions addressing other issues on Congress’s mind, rightwing Republicans this year proposed several amendments dealing with some of the most divisive issues in American society.On Thursday evening, Republicans pushed through an amendment to the bill that reverses a defense department policy covering expenses and leave for troops who must travel out of state to seek an abortion. The policy was implemented after the supreme court last year struck down Roe v Wade and allowed states to ban the procedure.The party also supported amendments banning the Pentagon’s healthcare plans from covering gender-affirming care for transgender individuals, as well as a provisions targeting diversity, equity and inclusions programs and banning any teaching in the defense department’s school system that America is “a fundamentally racist country”.Amendments halting military assistance to Ukraine and ending a policy of renaming military bases bearing monikers inspired by the Confederacy were voted down.While they did not formally tell their members to vote against the NDAA, the House’s top Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, whip Katherine Clark and caucus chair Pete Aguilar released a joint statement accusing Republicans of corrupting legislation that should be used to support American troops.“Extreme Maga Republicans have chosen to hijack the historically bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act to continue attacking reproductive freedom and jamming their rightwing ideology down the throats of the American people. House Republicans have turned what should be a meaningful investment in our men and women in uniform into an extreme and reckless legislative joyride,” the trio wrote, adding that they would vote against the bill.In the end, only four Democrats supported the NDAA, all of whom represent swing districts. The four Republicans who voted against it were conservatives of varying stripes, with Colorado’s Ken Buck releasing a statement saying the legislation is too expensive.“Our country is careening toward fiscal ruin, and Congress continues to turn a blind eye by passing these massive spending packages with no attention to their cost or efficacy,” Buck wrote, noting that he agrees “with several amendments to this bill”. More