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      Biden housing plan seeks to curb rent increases by penalizing landlords

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      President Joe Biden wants to curb rent increases by penalizing landlords who hike rents beyond 5% each year, but he needs the help of Congress to put the plan into action.The Biden administration will announce the idea in Nevada on Tuesday along with a host of other housing-related policies, including an influx of funds to add more housing in Nevada and elsewhere and a plan to use public federal lands for affordable housing near Las Vegas.The rent control plan for larger landlords with over 50 units would restrict increases to 5% or less, or those landlords who increased at higher rates would lose access to tax breaks. The administration estimated it would apply to 20m units nationwide. It would be in place for two years if Congress approves Biden’s plan, cast as a way to help renters while developers build more housing stock to meet demand and increase affordability.The announcement comes as Republicans gather in Milwaukee for their convention to officially appoint Donald Trump as their nominee. Affordability has become a main issue for voters this election, as the price of housing and goods has increased over the past four years.The likelihood is low that Congress would work in a bipartisan way to pass Biden’s rent control plan and deliver him a legislative victory to use on the campaign trail.In a statement, Biden said he is determined to make housing more affordable after “decades of failure to build enough homes”.“Today, I’m sending a clear message to corporate landlords: If you raise rents more than 5%, you should lose valuable tax breaks,” he said. “My Administration is also taking action to cut red tape and repurpose public land to build more affordable homes – including thousands of new homes in Nevada – and announcing new grants to build thousands of homes from Las Vegas to Syracuse. And I’m reiterating my call for Congress to pass my plan to build 2 million new homes – to lower housing costs for good, we need to build, build, build.”The Biden administration announced other plansto try to lower housing costs in the absence of congressional action.The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $325m in grants for affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization that will bring more than 6,500 units of new housing and add childcare centers and parks in communities around the country. One grant of $50m will go to the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority and the city of Las Vegas to restore existing units and build new ones, and will go toward small business support and an early childhood center, the agency said.For renters in multifamily properties that are financed by federal Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac loans, the administration announced renter protections like a 30-day notice before rent increases and a five-day grace period for late payments.Also in Nevada, the Bureau of Land Management plans to sell 20 acres of public land to Clark county, Nevada, below market value in what the administration says will allow for about 150 affordable homes to be built. Another land sale will go to the city of Henderson to build about 300 affordable housing units.Several other agencies, including the US Forest Service and US Postal Service, were directed to explore using their land or properties for affordable housing.“This is a crucial component of our agenda,” Neera Tanden, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, said in a press call. “The federal government is the biggest landowner in the country, and some of its land is currently underutilized or entirely unused. President Biden is asking federal agencies, from the Department of Interior to the Department of Defense, to identify opportunities to repurpose surplus property to build more affordable housing.” More

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      RNC day two to focus on crime and immigration after energetic first day

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      Republicans could not have asked for a more eventful day to kick off their nominating convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and they will be looking to keep party members’ energy high on Tuesday.Donald Trump opened the convention on Monday with the announcement that Ohio senator JD Vance would serve as his running mate, ending months of heated speculation over who would join the former president at the top of the ticket. After formally winning the nomination in the afternoon, Trump brought convention-goers to their feet when he made a surprise appearance at Fiserv Forum on Monday evening.In his first public appearance since the assassination attempt against him on Saturday, Trump appeared at the convention with a bandage over his ear, which was injured in the attack. Multiple speakers who addressed the convention on Monday expressed deep gratitude that Trump survived the shooting, which left one rally attendee and the suspected gunman dead.“Two days ago, evil came for the man we admire and love so much,” hard-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told convention attendees. “I thank God that his hand was on President Trump.”On Tuesday, Republicans are expected to focus their attention on crime and immigration, as the theme of the day will be “Make America Safe Once Again”. Immigration has become a rallying cry for Republicans, as Trump and his allies have repeatedly and falsely accused Joe Biden of supporting “open borders”.Trump has previously called for the deportation of 15 to 20 million undocumented immigrants if he wins re-election, and Vance voiced his own support for mass deportation in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday.“We have to deport people,” Vance told Hannity. “We have to deport people who broke our laws who came in here. And I think we need to start with the violent criminals.”The speaker schedule for Tuesday remains unclear, as Republicans have not yet specified who will next be addressing the convention. But a number of Republican lawmakers and members of Trump’s family, including his sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, have been named as speakers and have not yet addressed the convention crowd.While Republicans rally in Milwaukee, Biden and his Democratic allies are resuming some campaign communications after suspending their planned anti-Trump ads in response to the assassination attempt. In an NBC News interview with Lester Holt that aired Monday evening, the president made a case for his re-election while acknowledging it was a “mistake” to say during a recent donor call that Trump should be Democrats’ “bullseye” right now.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I meant focus on him. Focus on what he’s doing. Focus on – on his – on his policies. Focus on the number of lies he told in the debate,” Biden said. “I’m not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one. I’m not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election. I’m not the guy who said that I wouldn’t accept the outcome of this election automatically. You can’t only love your country when you win.”As of now, it seems like Biden still needs to sell more voters on that message. National polls show a neck-and-neck race between Biden and Trump, and Biden appears to be in trouble in several states he won in 2020. A pair of New York Times/Siena College polls conducted last week found the two candidates virtually tied in both Pennsylvania, a must-win state for Biden, and Virginia, which he won by 10 points in 2020.If Virginia is indeed competitive, Biden’s chances of re-election appear bleak. And Republicans will be looking to further damage those chances on Tuesday. More

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      Trump is an authoritarian who must not win. Saying that is not inciting violence | Jan-Werner Mueller

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      The horrific attempt to assassinate Donald Trump – and reactions to it – created a kind of X-ray of our body politic. It demonstrates how, contrary to the conventional wisdom about “polarization” – which suggests some kind of symmetry between the parties moving towards extreme poles – US politics is fundamentally asymmetrical. Democrats, from Biden to AOC, have been statesmanlike and stateswomanlike, condemning political violence in unison. Republicans, by contrast, have immediately blamed the attack on Biden. Worse, they have used the attack for a novel form of blackmail: stop warning about Trump’s authoritarianism or be accused of inciting violence. Of course, Trump must be protected on the campaign trail and beyond; at the same time, US democracy must be protected from Trump.Democrats were right to repeat the civics textbook wisdom that democracy is about processing conflicts – including deep moral disagreements – in a peaceful manner. Meanwhile, commentators, out of naivety or noble idealism, did not always choose to remain faithful to the historical record: political violence might, in theory, be “un-American;” in practice it is, alas, as American as apple pie. If anything, the recent period – both in the US and European democracies – has been somewhat exceptional in not featuring many high-profile attempts on politician’s lives (which is not to deny the continuity of racist domestic terrorism in the US).Democrats also resisted the temptation to point out that Trump’s rhetoric since 2015 has encouraged violence – not a subjective impression, but a question of social scientific findings. There are specific incidents when perpetrators invoked his name; what’s more, large numbers of citizens who identify as Republicans profess their willingness to countenance violence in defense of “their way of life.” Like other right-wing populists around the globe, Trump has been instilling fear that somehow the country is being taken away from what he regularly calls “the real people.” As in so many instances of terror, it is those willing to commit violence who see themselves as victims, convinced that others, not they, engaged in evil first.Plenty of Republicans have shown no restraint in their reactions to the events in Pennsylvania. It’s the reverse of what happens after mass shootings: Democrats ask why civilians should have the right to carry assault weapons; conservatives, offering thoughts and prayers, warns against “politicizing” mass killings. Now, in the absence of real information on the shooter, leading Republicans have not hesitated a second to “politicize” the assassination attempt, which is to say: turn it to partisan advantage. Trump’s running mate JD Vance blamed those who dare to call Trump authoritarian (after having, before his Maga conversion, warned of Trump as “America’s Hitler”); Greg Abbott pointed to a “they” who first tried to put Trump in jail and how attempted to kill him; Mike Lee demanded that all federal charges against the former president be dropped (by that logic, the possible guilt of any defendant dissolves if they are attacked by some random person).Whether such bad-faith claims succeed depends on professional observers: pundits and journalists. Will they adopt a framing according to which “all sides” have to “lower the political temperature”, and somehow “come together”, as the kitschy communitarian rhetoric of many commentators has it? Or can they accept two things as true at the same time: that political violence is wrong, and that the Republican party, transformed into a Trumpist personality cult (with new narrative elements and iconography after Saturday) poses an existential danger to American democracy.Under relentless assault from the right for supposedly being “biased,” plenty of media professionals seek refuge rather than truth, as journalism professor Jay Rosen has memorably put it. Refuge-seeking can take different forms: one is to deploy euphemisms; instead of calling a second Trump term potentially authoritarian, call it “disruptive”. Another is use of passive voice (a blogger opined on Sunday that norms of peaceful transfer of power have been “strained” – as if some impersonal force, or force majeure, was to blame); and, most of all, there is the seemingly unassailable descriptive claim that the two parties live in “two realities”.Most damaging, perhaps, is false equivalence. This past weekend, observers could point to deeply irresponsible, if not outright crazy, claims on the left and the right. But the crucial difference remains that such claims were made by highly influential office holders only on the right. It’s one thing to have conspiracy theories advanced by some leftie internet personality; it’s another to have an ominous “they” invoked by the governor of Texas.If all else fails, horse race analysis of elections can provide refuge, since it requires only speculation, not political judgment: is the assassination attempt good or bad for Trump’s campaign? Of course, there’s nothing wrong with asking the question – especially in light of the fact that the attempt to kill far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 appears to have helped the Brazilian aspiring autocrat at the time. But it’s hardly the most important one.No one should give in to blackmail based on the notion that criticizing politicians’ authoritarian aspirations is equal to incitement to violence. Aspiring authoritarians do want to control speech; before they have reached power, they cannot do so – unless the fearful or the ignorant become their accomplices.

      Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump’s arrival and ‘our God saves’: key takeaways from day one of the RNC

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      Just two days after a gunman targeted a Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania, leaving the candidate grazed by a bullet and one of his supporters dead, the Republican national convention kicked off in Milwaukee in a strikingly normal fashion.Donald Trump, who made his first public appearance but did not yet address the convention, has now been officially nominated as the Republican presidential candidate. Here are key takeaways from the day:1. As VP, Trump picks JD Vance, Hillbilly Elegy author who once called him ‘America’s Hitler’ For his vice-president, Trump chose 39-year-old JD Vance, a bestselling author who swiftly transformed himself from a self-described “never Trumper” to a Trump loyalist.Now an Ohio senator, Vance first took public office 18 months ago, when he won a race for Senate after being backed by more than $10m in support from tech mogul Peter Thiel. Vance had previously worked as a venture capitalist, and lived for several years in the Bay Area before moving back to Ohio.Vance, who gained a national profile for a much-praised 2016 memoir about white family dysfunction in Appalachia and how he made it to Yale Law School, once publicly called Trump “reprehensible” and an “idiot”, and said he was a dangerous figure who was “leading the white working class to a very dark place”. But Vance worked hard to walk back these criticisms and gain Trump’s endorsement in his 2022 Senate race.Vance has endorsed a ban on abortion, continued to falsely claim that Trump won the 2020 election, said that the US should conduct “large-scale deportations”, and claimed the Democratic party is trying to “transform the electorate” amid an immigrant “invasion”, which Democrats have said is an endorsement of the white nationalist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Vance was praised today by Donald Trump Jr for being a powerful surrogate for Trump on television.2. Trump makes his first public appearance since surviving a shooting attack in Pennsylvania Donald Trump looked unusually somber as he emerged from backstage and joined his sons, and his new vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, in a VIP section of the convention hall audience.There was a stiff white bandage covering his ear, which had been grazed by a bullet on Saturday when the former president narrowly avoided an assasination attempt at a Pennsylvania campaign rally that left one of his supporters dead.Trump waved to his supporters and occasionally held his fist in the air as he walked through the crowd. But he looked more moved than defiant in his first public appearance, mouthing “thank you”, to his supporters, and once gesturing to his ear and to the camera filming him backstage as if to suggest that he could still hear them despite the bandage.After Trump shook hands with other supporters, he joined Tucker Carlson, his sons, and Vance, to listen to the speakers, he appeared to relax somewhat, and began to smile more in response to the crowd.3. Post-shooting speeches focus on Trump’s relationship with God, not blaming Biden Amid multiple media reports that Trump wanted to strike a note of unity after what he saw as his own miraculous escape from death, Axios reported that “Trump ordered aides not to allow the convention’s prime-time speakers to update their remarks to dial up outrage over the shooting.”Many of the speeches on Monday appeared to reflect a more restrained approach to talking about the shooting, with Republicans focusing on Trump’s personal strength and framing the event in Christian terms.“Our God still saves, he still delivers, and he still sets free, because on Saturday, the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle, but an American lion got back up on his feet, and he roared!” South Carolina senator Tim Scott said.4. Teamsters president Sean O’Brien praises Trump’s toughness in defiant pro-labor speech One of the most prominent labor union leaders in the US brought a fiercely anti-corporate message into the heart of the GOP convention, where he wove together a denunciation of corporate power with praise of Trump’s willingness to hear from alternate voices.Teamsters president Sean O’Brien faced sharp criticism for within his own union for what some called his “unconscionable” decision to speak at the RNC.In his speech, O’Brien pushed back at that response, saying: “The left called me a traitor,” but that “today, the teamsters are here to say, we are not beholden to anyone or to any party.”“The teamsters are doing something correct if the extremes of both parties think I shouldn’t be on this stage,” he added.O’Brien used the platform to argue for changes in labor laws to protect US workers and for “corporate welfare reform”.He received some cheers from the Republican audience when he said: “Elites have no party. Elites have no nation. Their loyalty is to the balance sheet and the stock prices at the expense of the American worker.”But his praise of Trump prompted an even more enthusiastic responses from the crowd, particularly his comment that, whatever else people might think of Trump, after the shooting on Saturday: “He has proven to be one tough SOB.”5. Elon Musk is reportedly discussing major donations to a pro-Trump Super PacTrump’s choice of former venture capitalist and Peter Thiel protege JD Vance as his vice-presidential nominee already strengthened the link between the 2024 Trump campaign and Silicon Valley.But a report from the Wall Street Journal today suggested that one of the biggest and most volatile tech titans is now considering pouring a record-breaking amount of cash into a Super Pac designed to boost Republican turnout.The Wall Street Journal reported that Elon Musk is discussing donating $45m a month, starting in July, to a pro-Trump Pac reportedly created by members of his tech executive inner circle. How much Musk has actually given so far is unclear, and may not be made public until the next round of campaign filings are made public on 15 July, but Bloomberg reported he had already given “a sizable amount”. More

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      Teamsters union president calls Trump ‘tough SOB’ in unprecedented speech at RNC

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      In an unprecedented address, Sean O’Brien, the president of the powerful Teamsters union, delivered remarks at the Republican national convention (RNC) Monday night.In addressing the RNC, O’Brien broke with most major unions in the US, which have overwhelmingly thrown their support behind Joe Biden.During his speech, O’Brien thanked Donald Trump “for opening the RNC’s doors” to the union – whose leaders have never spoken at the Republican national convention – and shot back at criticism over his willingness to appear at the former president’s invitation.“I travel all across this country and meet with my members every week,” said O’Brien. “I see American workers being taken for granted, workers being sold out to big banks, big tech cooperation, the elite.”Backlash from “the left”, O’Brien said, “is why it’s so important for me to be here today”. That comment, followed by his resounding exclamation that Trump proved himself to be “one tough SOB” after the assassination attempt Saturday drew a standing ovation from the crowd.For the rest of his speech, O’Brien railed on corporate greed, demanded “long-term investment in the American worker” and implored lawmakers to seek bipartisanship in congress.“Most legislation is never meant to go anywhere,” said O’Brien. “It’s all talk – and in America, talk isn’t cheap. It’s very expensive. It comes at the cost of our own country.”During his remarks, the crowd often seemed puzzled and sat in a silence punctuated occasionally by applause when O’Brien spoke in more general terms about America’s “elites”.O’Brien’s decision to appear before the RNC came just hours after Trump announced that he had chosen JD Vance to run alongside him on the Republican ticket. Vance, who has invoked his family’s midwestern and Appalachian roots in a nod to working class voters, has embraced populist rhetoric while touting a less-than-friendly labor record. Vance opposed the Pro Act, which organized labor rallied around, and introduced legislation that would legalize company unions, corporate labor formations outlawed by the National Labor Relations Act in 1935.O’Brien’s remarks bookended an evening of speeches focused largely on the economy – a core issue for the Trump campaign and one that O’Brien could address with special authority given his role as a union leader. His was the second speech from a union official that evening – in brief remarks, Bobby Bartels, the business manager of a Steamfitters local in New York, endorsed Trump to cheers from the crowd of Republican delegates and conservative activists.Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers union (UAW), slammed Trump in a speech shortly after he announced his third run for the presidency, calling him a “scab” and saying: “If Donald Trump ever worked in auto plant, he wouldn’t be a UAW member – he’d be a company man trying to squeeze the American worker.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfter Trump announced the rightwing populist Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate, Sara Nelson, the president of the union representing flight attendants, wrote on Twitter/X that “behind all his slick rhetoric, JD Vance is just another shill for the corporate class who will sell out workers to corporate America. This ticket isn’t pro-worker or pro-union. It’s the billionaire ticket through and through.”Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO, the largest labor federation in the US, called the Trump-Vance ticket “a corporate CEO’s dream and a worker’s nightmare” and vowed that the federation would “continue educating union voters every single day” on topics like Project 2025, the rightwing Heritage Foundation’s playbook for a Republican presidency.When O’Brien met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and when the union later donated $45,000 to the RNC, it sparked outrage from progressive members.Richard Hooker Jr, the secretary treasurer of Teamsters local 623 and vice-president of the Philadelphia AFL-CIO board, has on multiple occasions spoken out against the union’s increasingly friendly relations with the Republican party.“Republicans have been, for the most part anti-union, anti-labor and anti-working class,” said Hooker. “Labor has to be together. We have to take a position like the AFL-CIO – Shawn Fain said ‘Donald Trump is a scab’ and that’s the same language that all of us should use.” More

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      Biden touts record in NBC interview – but the doubts won’t go away

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      In the shadow of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, where Donald Trump officially became the party’s nominee, days after surviving an attempt on his life, Joe Biden was still confronting a question he thought he’d answered: will he be the Democratic nominee in November?“1,000%” the president said in an interview with Complex’s Chris “Speedy” Morman, which aired on Monday. So the president would remain the party’s standard-bearer, Morman asked? “Unless I get hit by a train, yeah,” Biden replied.The interview was recorded before a would-be assassin shot at Trump during a rally in western Pennsylvania on Saturday, bloodying his ear and killing one spectator. In the roughly 36 hours that followed, the presidential contest was suspended, as Biden returned to the White House to lead a nation rattled by the shocking act – the latest ugly episode in a rising tide of political violence.Biden condemned the attack as “sick”. He called Trump to check in on him and let him know he and the first lady were praying for him. Then, on Sunday, Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office, pleading with Americans in a heartfelt speech to “lower the temperature”.The moment played to Biden’s strengths – the healer-in-chief, offering himself once again, as he did four years ago, as a compassionate leader determined to overcome political tribalism. But on Monday, as Biden returned to a campaign trail transformed by the attack, he faced many of the same doubts and weaknesses that have dogged his re-election campaign since the start.“I’m old,” Biden conceded in an interview with NBC News’s Lester Holt, that took place and aired on Monday. “But I’m only three years older than Trump, number one. And number two, my mental acuity has been pretty damn good. I’ve gotten more done than any president has in a long, long time in three and a half years. I’m willing to be judged on that.”Though the dramatic turn of events appeared to have momentarily quieted calls for Biden to step aside, Democrats still harbored deep reservations about their nominee’s viability. Since his disastrous debate performance against Trump last month, Biden, asked by Holt if he was ready to “get back on the horse, insisted he was already “on the horse,” having held nearly two dozen campaign events as well as an hour-long press conference at the conclusion of the Nato summit, where he held forth on foreign policy.But many of the verbal miscues and stumbles remain, only now they are scrutinized and amplified as observers search for evidence of decline. Yet the president has remained steadfast. Asked what he would do if he had another poor performance, the president insisted it wouldn’t happen again. And when pressed on who was helping him make the decision about whether to stay in the race, Biden replied: “Me.”The interview aired as prominent Republicans took the stage in Milwaukee, exuding a sense of confidence and resolve to win in November. The attempt on Trump’s life, and his preternatural instinct to raise a fist and shout “Fight!” to his supporters as Secret Service agents rushed him offstage, appeared to have unified and energized the Republican rank and file in attendance. Further exciting Republicans, Trump revealed his choice of running mate – the Ohio senator JD Vance – on Monday, hours after a judge he appointed during his presidency dismissed the classified documents case against him.In the evening, Trump made his first public appearance since Saturday’s attack, drawing thunderous applause when he arrived at the convention hall with a bandage on his ear. The former reality TV star-turned-president pumped his fist, as country singer Lee Greenwood sang God Bless the USA from the main stage.Polls show a close race – “essentially a toss-up” Biden said in his interview. But voters say they trust Trump more on the economy and immigration, two top issues. Biden holds the advantage on reproductives rights, and his campaign on Monday said it plans to make Vance’s support for abortion bans a central theme.Asked how the attempted assassination changed the race, the president told Holt: “I don’t know. And you don’t know either.”The president on Monday departed for Nevada, a battleground state he won in 2020, that appears to be slipping out of reach. There he will hold events in Las Vegas aimed at mobilize Black and Latino voters who are critical to his electoral coalition. On Tuesday he will deliver remarks at the 115th NAACP national convention, followed on Wednesday by remarks at the UnidosUS Annual Conference. He will also sit for two more national interviews with Black Entertainment Television (BET) and Univision radio.Biden has also faced heavy criticisms from Palestinian and Arab Americans who say his unyielding support for Israel enabled its 10-month war in Gaza, which has killed more than 37,000 people. His interview with Morman, recorded last week in Detroit, home to a large, diverse Arab American community, likely did little to address their concerns. In it, Biden claimed that he was “the guy that did more for the Palestinian community than anybody,” pointing to his administration’s efforts to secure more humanitarian aid into Gaza.Reassembling the diverse coalition that helped elect him in 2020 rests in part on reminding Americans why they voted Trump out of office in the first place.“I’m not the guy that said, ‘I want to be a dictator on day one.’ I’m not the guy who refused to accept the outcome of the election,” Biden told Holt, who pressed the president on whether he regretted casting Trump as “an existential threat” to American democracy in light of Saturday’s attack. Biden was again defiant, vowing not to shy away from delivering sharp critiques of his rival.“How do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when he says things like he says?” he said, referring to Trump. “Do you just not say something because it may incite somebody?”Biden has said the contest was a choice between two starkly different visions of America and its future. But many Democrats remain still torn over whether he is the best messenger to lay out that contrast.In his interview with Morman, the president attempted to do just that. After touting his own record of bipartisan accomplishments, he was asked to name one thing he thought Trump would succeed at should his opponent win a second term.“I’m not being facetious,” Biden said. “I can’t think of a single thing.” More