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      Moms for Liberty, meet John Birch: the roots of US rightwing book bans

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      Moms for Liberty is a Florida-based pressure group which campaigns for book bans in US public schools, an issue at the heart of the national debate as Republican-run states seek to control or eliminate teaching of sex education, LGBTQ+ rights and racism in American history.But rightwing calls for school book bans are by no means a new phenomenon – and a look at the Moms for Liberty website indicates why.Moms for Liberty seeks to organise “Madison Meetups”, events it describes as “like a book club for the constitution!”, featuring discussion of “liberty, freedom and the foundation of our government”. Under “resources that we have found helpful”, the only resource offered is The Making of America, a book by W Cleon Skousen.In the early 1960s, Skousen was a hero to and a defender of the John Birch Society, a far-right group that campaigned against what it claimed was the communist threat to America.Matthew Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, is the author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. He points out that though the Birchers were not the only ones promoting book bans in the 60s, “they were likely the most visible group promoting book bans or promoting the policing of content in schools, libraries, movie theaters, even on newsstands”.The Birchers, Dallek adds, focused on “the so-called erosion of the moral fiber of the United States, but also the struggle to rid the country of what they regarded as really the socialist left wing”.The society still exists but its influence is greater than its presence, most obviously through a resurgence of Bircher-esque thought and action in the Republican party of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.In the society’s heyday, Dallek says, book bans and school board elections, another current battlefield, “gave Birchers a way to take action in their community.“They looked at where their kids went to school and their local library and the movie theater they would pass by. Part of their agenda was to insert what they considered Americanist publications, as opposed to communist propaganda.“What’s frightening now is that I don’t recall a time where those efforts were so often successful. Moms for Liberty and the other successors to the John Birch Society, they’re having a lot more success at actually implementing their vision.”Last month, the writers’ organisation Pen America reported a 28% rise in public school book bans in just six months. As the 2024 election approaches, attacks on the place of race in history classes and teaching on LGBTQ+ issues seem certain to feature in Republican debates and town halls.Dallek considers the Birchers’ influence on the Republican party over more than 60 years. But he can’t recall the society inspiring “any sweeping legislation like Florida has now passed, through three major bills. And one in particular, it’s very Orwellian. They have these education minders who have to approve all texts in school libraries. That was certainly a dream of the Birch Society.”Tactics are familiar too. Birchers often protested against what they called pornography in books and teaching, as a vehicle for communistic thought. Now, the hard right sees pornography in books on LGBTQ+ rights, in drag queen story hours, or in the casting of children’s plays.Dallek says: “Whatever the language is, whether it’s ‘woke’, or ‘progressive’, or ‘pornographic’, or ‘communistic’, in a way the brilliance of the Birchers and other groups is in the way they use language. They’re able to distill ideas and aspects of the culture they find offensive and brand them as something evil, something un-American, something that will twist and pollute the minds of kids.“I don’t know that they meant that it was literally communistic to teach sex ed in schools but it was a kind of brilliant shorthand, because they were able to mobilise a lot of supporters by saying this was a civilizational battle. A battle for whether your children will grow up being moral or not, whether they’ll have a decent life.“And if we want to bring it back to today, Ron DeSantis is out there claiming, ‘We’re only banning books that are pornographic or that kids should not be exposed to.’ But then when you’re talking about banning Toni Morrison? I mean, come on. It’s ridiculous.”But it’s real. The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s first novel, and her masterpiece Beloved have been removed from some Florida libraries.Dallek notes other echoes. For instance, the role of rightwing women.“Historically, schools have been in terms of teaching jobs often reserved for women. And so, ironically, in the 1960s and 70s, as feminism becomes a major force in the culture and many women expect to work outside the home and be active politically, conservative, really far-right women take an element of that and get active in their communities.“Women have been on the frontlines of many of these fights to ban books, to police what kids are learning. Parental rights, the whole idea … is I think focused at the moms and … imposing their version of Christian morals on public education and many public spaces.“To go back to the W Cleon Skousen thing” on the Moms for Liberty website, “it does suggest a link to the past. Skousen continued to write in the 1980s and 90s. He was a defender of the John Birch Society and was held up as a hero.”Skousen died in 2006. Seventeen years later, to Dallek his recommendation from Moms for Liberty “suggests there really is a tradition in modern American politics, on the far right, that has become much more mainstream.“Groups like Moms for Liberty understand that. That there’s a set of ideas, and a literature, and a whole kind of subculture around this effort to police ideas and morality in schools. And they are tapping into that very effectively.”
      Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right is published in the US by Hachette More

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      What can the White House do to free Evan Gershkovich? – podcast

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      At the end of March, Russian authorities arrested Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, on espionage charges. He is still in a Moscow prison more than a month later, and at the weekend President Biden promised he was ‘working like hell’ to bring Gershkovich, and others detained in Russia, home.
      This week Jonathan Freedland speaks to Polina Ivanova, a reporter for the Financial Times and friend of Gershkovich’s, who breaks down the politics behind his detention

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

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      Proud Boys: four found guilty of seditious conspiracy over Capitol attack

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      Four members of the Proud Boys extremist group, including its former leader Enrique Tarrio, were on Thursday convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in planning and leading the January 6 Capitol attack, in a desperate effort to keep Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election defeat.The verdicts handed down in federal court in Washington marked a major victory for the US justice department in the last of its seditious conspiracy cases related to the January 6 attack. Prosecutors previously secured convictions against members of the Oath Keepers, another far-right group.Seditious conspiracy is rarely used but became the central charge against the Proud Boys defendants after the FBI identified them as playing crucial roles in helping storm the Capitol in an effort to interrupt and stop the congressional certification of electoral results.“Evidence presented at trial detailed the extent of the violence at the Capitol on January 6 and the central role these defendants played setting into motion the unlawful events of that day,” attorney general Merrick Garland later said at a news conference at justice department headquarters.“We have secured the convictions of leaders of both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy, specifically conspiring to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power. Our work will continue,” Garland said.Those convicted now await sentencing. The verdicts were partial, and hours after the initial four were found guilty of seditious conspiracy, the jury found another Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola, who smashed a window to gain entry to the Capitol, not guilty of seditious conspiracy.Tarrio, who was not in Washington for the Capitol attack, as well as Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl were also convicted of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. All five were convicted of obstructing an official proceeding.The trial, which lasted more than three months and tested the scope of the sedition law, was particularly fraught for the defense, the prosecution and the presiding US district court judge, Timothy Kelly. Clashes in court and motions for mistrial were frequent.Trump played an outsized role in the trial, given the reverence the Proud Boys accorded the former president. In closing arguments, the prosecution said they acted as “Donald Trump’s army” to “keep their preferred leader in power” after rejecting Joe Biden’s victory.The former president has long been considered the lynchpin for the involvement of the Proud Boys and others in the Capitol attack when he called for a “wild” protest on 6 January 2021 in an infamous December 2020 tweet and told supporters to “fight like hell” for his cause.More than a thousand arrests have been made in connection to the Capitol attack and hundreds of convictions secured. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting an insurrection but acquitted by Senate Republicans. He still faces state and federal investigations of his attempted election subversion.In court, prosecutors said Tarrio and his top lieutenants used Trump’s December tweet as a call to arms and started putting together a cadre that they called the “Ministry of Self-Defense” to travel to Washington for the protest, according to private group chats and recordings of discussions the FBI obtained.Around 20 December 2020, Tarrio created a chat called “MOSD Leaders Group” – described by Tarrio as a “national rally planning committee” – that included Nordean, Biggs and Rehl. The chat was used to plan a “DC trip” where all would dress in dark tones, to remain incognito.The prosecution argued that Tarrio’s text messages about “Seventeen seventy six”, in reference to the year of American independence from Britain, suggested the leadership of the Proud Boys saw their January 6 operation as a revolutionary force.Lacking evidence in the hundreds of thousands of texts about an explicit plan to storm or occupy the Capitol, the prosecution used two cooperating witnesses from the Proud Boys to make the case that the defendants worked together in a conspiracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power.The first witness, Jeremy Bertino, told the jury the Proud Boys had a penchant for violence and there was a tacit understanding that they needed to engage in an “all-out revolution” to stop Biden taking office, testimony meant to directly support a sedition charge.The second witness, Matthew Greene, told the jury he did not initially understand why the Proud Boys marched from the Washington monument to the Capitol to be among the first people at the barricades surrounding Congress, instead of going to Trump’s speech near the White House.Once the Proud Boys led the charge from the barricades to the west front of the Capitol, Pezzola using a police riot shield to smash a window, Greene said he realized there may have been a deliberate effort to lead the January 6 riot.The prosecution persuaded the judge to allow them to use a novel legal strategy: that though the Proud Boys leaders did not really engage in violence themselves – Tarrio was not even in Washington – they got other rioters to do so, using them as “tools” of their insurrection conspiracy.The defense protested the ruling allowing prosecutors to show the jury videos of other low-level Proud Boys and random rioters committing violence at the Capitol, saying that it amounted to making the five defendants guilty by association.Notwithstanding the other evidence, the defense’s complaint was that if the jury had to assess whether the defendants’ limited use of violence alone met the threshold to “destroy by force the government of the United States”, the outcome might have been affected. 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      Hungary’s far-right PM calls for Trump’s return: ‘Come back, Mr President’

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      The Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán has called for Donald Trump’s return to office, claiming their shared brand of hard-right populism is on the rise around the world, in a speech to US Republicans and their European allies in Budapest.Orbán was addressing the second annual meeting of the US Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) in the Hungarian capital, aimed at cementing radical rightwing ties across the Atlantic. He said that conservatives have “occupied big European sanctuaries”, which he listed as Budapest, Warsaw, Rome and Jerusalem. He added that Vienna “is also not hopeless” .He noted that Washington and Brussels were still in the grip of liberalism, which he described as a “virus that will atomize and disintegrate our nations”.The Orbán government has made tentative approaches to open contacts with Ron DeSantis, with the Hungarian president, Katalin Novák, flying to meet the Florida governor in Tallahassee in March, but at Thursday’s CPAC conference it was overwhelmingly Trumpist, and Orbán threw his full-throated support behind the former US president.He said: “I’m sure if President Trump would be the president, there would be no war in Ukraine and Europe. Come back, Mr President. Make America great again and bring us peace.”The prime minister, who last year won his fourth consecutive term in office, portrayed Hungary’s self-described “illiberal Christian democracy” – widely criticised for its constraints on media and academic freedom, and for its anti-LGBTQ+ legislation – as a model for the world.“Hungary is an incubator where the conservative policies of the future are being tested,” Orbán said.The conference site, a modernist building called the Bálna, or whale, was festooned with messages echoing that theme. A gateway on the main path to the entrance declared it a “no-woke zone”. Inside, a huge map of Hungary was emblazoned with the words: “No country for woke men.”Some guests arrived in T-shirts that displayed Orbán and Trump together as “peacemakers” and “saviors of the world”. The event’s 2023 motto was “United we stand”.On its first day, the CPAC conference watched a 25-second video greeting from Tucker Carlson, a keen admirer of Orbán, which was clearly recorded before he was fired by Fox News last week.“I wish I was there in Budapest. If I ever get fired, have some time, and can leave, I’ll be there with you,” Carlson promised.Most independent journalists were refused accreditation for the event, in a country where the International Press Institute has said media freedom “remains suffocated”. During the Covid outbreak, Orbán’s government passed a law imposing prison sentences of up to five years for spreading disinformation. Hungarian journalists say the law was being used to deny them access to information, and on occasion to threaten them.The CPAC chair, Matt Schlapp, said Hungary was a model for dealing with journalists. He said that he told the event’s Hungarian organisers his team “would determine who a journalist is”, adding that was “quite revolutionary for the Americans, because in America a journalist tells them who is a journalist and we treat them like a journalist”.Schlapp said that in Hungary journalists had to follow certain rules about writing the truth and presenting “both sides” of a story.Orbán could point to a widening of the radical right coalition this year, with the presence of the Georgian prime minister, Irakli Garibashvili, who praised his Hungarian counterpart as “far-sighted” and stressed his party Georgian Dream’s commitment to prioritising “family values” over “LGBTQ propaganda”. More

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      Bernie Sanders unveils plan for $17-an-hour US minimum wage

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      Bernie Sanders on Thursday announced a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour, saying the potent inflation Americans have faced over the past two years makes it necessary for the government to institute higher wages for workers.Sanders intends to next month formally introduce legislation raising the minimum wage over a five-year period to a level $2 higher than the $15 an hour Joe Biden and many Democrats have pushed for in recent years. But there is no sign of Republicans wavering in their opposition to the proposal.“As a result of inflation, $15 an hour back in 2021 would be over $17 an hour today,” said Sanders, an independent senator who caucuses with the Democrats. “In the year 2023, in the richest country in the history of the world, nobody should be forced to work for starvation wages. That’s not a radical idea. If you work 40-50 hours a week, you should not be living in poverty. It is time to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.”Congress has not approved a minimum wage increase since raising the level to $7.25 an hour in 2009, where it remains for workers in 20 states. Voters in several states and cities across the country have approved raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour, but progress on a national increase has remained elusive.In 2021, Democrats attempted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour as part of a large spending bill intended to help the US economy recover from the Covid pandemic, but the effort failed, in part due to the defections of eight Democratic lawmakers.Biden later that year signed an executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors, which affected as many as 390,000 workers, but the president has not said if he supports the increase to $17 an hour. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.In the two years since, Americans have faced the highest inflation since the 1980s, with consumer price increases hitting an annualized peak of more than 9% in June 2022, though they have moderated in recent months. While workers’ wages also increased over that period in part because of a tight labor market, the pace has not kept up with inflation.“As a home healthcare worker, I make just $12 an hour. I worked in fast food for over 30 years and I never, never made $15 an hour. And now $15 isn’t even enough for what we’re going through today,” said Cookie Bradley, a founding member of the Union of Southern Service Workers, who joined Sanders in the announcement.Although Sanders was supported by the heads of major labor groups the AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union (SEIU), he said little about how he planned to overcome objections both from Republicans and reluctant Democrats.He said: “This is a popular issue. I don’t think there’s a state in the country where people do not believe we should raise the minimum wage. I would hope that every member of Congress understands that and there will be political consequences if they don’t.”Republicans, who took control of the House of Representatives this year, have shown at best lukewarm enthusiasm for a minimum wage rise, and have instead focused on trying to convince Americans that Biden is to blame for the rapid inflation. In 2021, Republican senators introduce two proposals, one that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour, and another that would give a tax credit for workers who make less than $16.50 an hour. Neither went far in the Senate, which Democrats currently control.The SEIU president, Mary Kay Henry, said her millions of members would be keeping an eye on which lawmakers support Sanders’s proposal.“We are going to be watching any congressperson, senator or in the House, that dares to say that they are not going to vote yes for Senator Sanders’ bill, because they need to be held accountable at the ballot box,” Henry said. More

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      US workers deserve a break. It’s time for a 32-hour working week | Bernie Sanders

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      In 1938, as a result of a massive grassroots effort by the trade union movement, the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted by Congress to reduce the work week to 40 hours. Back then, the American people were sick and tired of working 80, 90, 100 hours a week with very little time for rest, relaxation or quality time with their families. They demanded change and they won a huge victory. That’s the good news.The bad news is that despite an explosion in technology, major increases in worker productivity, and transformational changes in the workplace and American society, the Fair Labor Standards Act has not been reformed in 80 years. The result: millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, with the average worker making nearly $50 a week less than he or she did 50 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. Further, family life is suffering, as parents don’t have adequate time for their kids, life expectancy for working people is in decline, and increased stress is a major factor in the mental health crisis we are now experiencing.Compared with other countries, our workplace record is not good. In 2021, American employees worked 184 more hours than Japanese workers, 294 more hours than British workers, and 442 more hours than German workers. Unbelievably, in 2023 there are millions of Americans who work at jobs with no vacation time.It’s time to reduce the work week to 32 hours with no loss in pay. It’s time to reduce the stress level in our country and allow Americans to enjoy a better quality of life. It’s time to make sure that working people benefit from rapidly increasing technology, not just large corporations that are already doing phenomenally well.Think about all of the extraordinary changes that have taken place in the workplace over the past several decades. When I was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in 1981, there were no computers in city hall. There were no chatboxes, no printers, no emails, no calculators, no cellphones, no conference calling or Zoom.In factories and warehouses, robots and sophisticated machinery did not exist or were only used in primitive forms.In grocery stores and shops of all kinds, there were no checkout counters that utilized bar codes.As a result of the extraordinary technological transformation that we have seen in recent years, American workers are now 480% more productive than they were in the 1940s.In addition, there are far more workers today. In the 1940s, less than 65% of Americans between 25 and 54 were in the workforce. Today, with most families requiring two breadwinners to pay the bills, that number is over 83%.Yet despite all of these incredible gains in productivity, over 40% of US employees now work more than 45 hours per week; 12% work more than 60 hours a week; and the average worker now works 43 hours per week. Many are on their computers or answering emails seven days a week.Moving to a 32-hour work week with no loss of pay is not a radical idea. In fact, movement in that direction is already taking place in other developed countries. France, the seventh-largest economy in the world, has a 35-hour work week and is considering reducing it to 32. The work week in Norway and Denmark is about 37 hours.Recently, the United Kingdom conducted a four-day pilot program of 3,000 workers at over 60 companies. Not surprisingly, it showed that happy workers were more productive. The pilot was so successful that 92% of the companies that participated decided to maintain a four-day week, because of the benefits to both employers and employees.Another pilot of nearly 1,000 workers at 33 companies in seven countries found that revenue increased by more than 37% in the companies that participated and 97% of workers were happy with the four-day workweek.Studies have shown that despite working fewer hours, workers are either more, or just as, productive during a four-day work week. One study found that worker productivity increased 55% after companies implemented a four-day week. A trial of four-day work weeks for public-sector workers in Iceland found that productivity remained the same or improved across the majority of workplaces. In 2019, Microsoft tested a four-day work week in Japan and reported a 40% increase in productivity.In addition, 57% of workers in companies that have moved to a four-day work week have indicated that they are less likely to quit their jobs.Moreover, at a time when so many of our people are struggling with their mental health, 71% of workers in companies that have moved to a four-day work week report feeling less burnout, 39% reported feeling less stress and 46% reported feeling less fatigued.As much as technology and worker productivity has exploded in recent years, there is no debate that new breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and robotics will only accelerate the transformation of our economy. That transformation should benefit all, not just the few. It should create more time for friends and family, more time for rest and relaxation, more time for all of us to develop our human potential.Eighty-three years after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a 40-hour work week into law, it’s time for us to move to a 32-hour work week at no loss of pay. More

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      Federal Reserve increases interest rates by a quarter point to 16-year high – as it happened

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      From 6h agoThe Federal Reserve is set to raise interest rates this afternoon, with an announcement coming at 2pm ET from the central bank after its most recent board meeting. Analysts expect the Fed will raise rates by a quarter point, which will bring rates up to 5% to 5.25%. This would be the central bank’s 10th interest rate increase since March 2022, when rates were at zero.The interest rate increase will come at what in hindsight may seem like an inflection point for the economy. Inflation is down, consumer spending has flattened and growth in the job market is starting to slow down, but Fed officials, especially Fed chair Jerome Powell, have been stringent on getting inflation down to their target of 2%. Inflation in March was 5%, the lowest it’s been since 2021, but still quite far from 2%.Analysts and economists will be closely watching Powell’s press conference at 2.30pm, where he will discuss the direction Fed staff see the economy going, giving hints as to whether even more interest rate hikes are to come or whether the Fed will end its rate-hike campaign.Here’s a quick summary of everything that’s happened today:
      The Federal Reserve increased interest rates by a quarter point, bringing rates up to 5% to 5.25%. Fed chair Jerome Powell said that Fed officials no longer anticipate more hikes, but will monitor economic data to see if they are necessary in coming months. The stock market dipped slightly after the Fed’s announcement.
      The debate over the debt ceiling continued today, with news that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell will keep himself out of the specific of negotiating talks and hints that senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are breaking from Dems and looking to take Senate negotiations seriously.
      2024 is already gearing up: Joe Biden released his second TV ad since launching his campaign last week, while US rep. Colin Allred of Texas announced his bid to unseat Texas senator Ted Cruz. In Nevada, Jim Marchant, an election denier and staunch supporter of Donald Trump, also announced a Senate big.
      We’ll be closing this blog for today. Thanks for reading.Democratic senator Raphael Warnock from Georgia said that his two young kids were on lockdown at school because of the shooting in midtown Atlanta.“They’re there. I’m here, hoping and praying they’re safe,” he said on the Senate floor. “Thoughts and prayers are not enough.”One person has been confirmed dead and at least four injured after a gunman opened fire in a building in midtown around 12.30pm ET. Police said they are still searching for a suspect.The Washington Post just published a cheery report that the White House and lawmakers on Capitol Hill technically have just six working days together before the US government potentially defaults on its debt on 1 June.With the House and Senate in session on different days, and Biden making international trips for the G7 summit in Japan and another “Quad” meeting with Australia, Japan and India in Australia, the legislative and executive branches are scheduled to have just six more days together to figure out the debt ceiling.Of course, negotiations can take place even when a chamber is not in session, but the precariousness of negotiations and the closeness of default makes the timing a tad inconvenient.Talking about the fallout of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said that it seems the worst of the crisis is over.“The severe period of stress, those have now all been resolved and all the depositors have been protected,” he said, adding that JPMorgan’s acquisition of First Republic bank marked the end of the worst of it all.Asked about lessons that he learned from the crisis, he noted that there needs to be stronger regulation and supervision, but declined to offer any specifics as he has tasked Fed vice chair Michael Barr with drafting specific policy proposals.“I am not aware of anybody thinking [the collapse] could happen so quickly,” Powell said. “Now that we know that was possible… it will be up to vice chair Barr to design ways to address that.”Today’s Federal Reserve interest rate hike is its second quarter-point hike in a row, after a series of half- and three-quarter point hikes over the last year. Fed chair Jerome Powell said at his press conference this afternoon that “slowing down was the right move”.“I think it’s enabled us to see more data and it will continue to do so. We have to always balance the risk of not doing enough and not getting inflation under control against the risk of maybe slowing down economic activity too much,” he said. “We thought that this rate hike, along with the meaningful change in our policy statement, was the right way to balance that.Asked about the possibility of a recession, Powell seemed optimistic that the Fed could achieve a “soft landing” – keeping interest rates high without seeing huge impacts on unemployment. He noted that even as rates have hit 5% over the last 14 months, the unemployment rate stands at 3.5%.“It’s possible that we can continue to have a cooling in the labor market without having the big increases in unemployment that have gone with many prior episodes,” he said.Of course, Powell noted earlier in the press conference that the full impacts of the interest rate increases have yet to be seen, acknowledging uncertainty about the full economic impact of rate hikes.Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell emphasized the importance of raising the debt ceiling, though noted that the debt limit is “fiscal policy matters”.“It’s essential that the debt ceiling be raised in a timely way so that the US government can pay all of its bills when they’re due. Failure to do that would be unprecedented,” he said. “We’d be in uncharted territory.Powell noted that the Fed doesn’t “give advice to either side” and also noted that “no one should assume that the Fed can protect the economy from the potential short- and long-term effects” upon default.He also noted that debt limit standoff did not play a role in the Fed’s decision today to increase interest rates.Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is holding a press conference after the central bank announced a quarter-point interest rate increase. Powell’s tone in the press conference has changed since he last addressed the press in March. The Fed is no longer anticipating needing more rate increases, but will monitor the economy in determining future interest rate changes.While Powell is still reiterating the Fed’s inflation target of 2%, he acknowledged that the economy is “seeing the effects of our policy tightening on demand and the most interest-rate-sensitive sectors of the economy, particularly housing and investment”. In other words, the Fed sees its interest rate hikes taking effect in the slowing of the economy.“There are some signs that supply and demand in the labor market are coming back into balance,” Powell said. He added that the “economy is likely to face further headwinds from tighter credit conditions”, meaning the full effects of the interest-rate hikes have yet to be seen.Taking a question from a reporter on whether the Fed’s statement today should be taken as a hint that officials will pause rate hikes, Powell said the officials did not make a decision on a pause, but noted that they intentionally updated their stance in today’s press statement that removed a line suggesting more increases would be appropriate.“Instead, we’re saying that in determining the extent to which [more hikes are needed], the Committee will take into account certain factors,” he said. “That’s a meaningful change that we are no longer saying we anticipate [changes] and we will be driven by incoming data meeting by meeting.”The press statement that came with the Federal Reserve’s announcement of another interest rate hike is nearly identical to the one that was released at its last meeting on 22 March, with one key exception.In its 22 March release, Fed officials in the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) hinted that more interest rates are to come, saying: “The Committee anticipates that some additional policy firming may be appropriate” in order to bring inflation down to the target of 2%.In today’s statement, that line was cut.The rest of the statement was in line with FOMC’s March meeting statement. They reiterated their stance that “inflation remains elevated” and the jobs market has been strong, with the unemployment rate low. They emphasized that “the US banking system is sound and resilient” and that they are “highly attentive to inflation risks”.Analysts have been wondering whether this interest rate increase will be the Fed’s last, with pauses to come after as the interest rate is held steady at future meetings.Any more hints about what is next for interest rates after this most recent hike will likely be made at Fed chair Jerome Powell’s press conference at 2.30pm ET.The Federal Reserve just announced a quarter-point interest rate increase. This brings the interest rate to a 16-year high at 5% to 5.25%. The central bank has been on a year-long campaign to temper inflation, though it has had to delicately balance the potential of shaking the economy too much with stringent rate increases.Fed chair Jerome Powell will lead a closely watched press conference, where he will discuss the Fed’s view on the state of the economy.The United Auto Workers (UAW) union said in an internal memo that it is holding off on a Joe Biden endorsement due to the president’s electric vehicle policies.UAW president Shawn Fain said in the memo that union leaders met with Biden last week and discussed “our concerns with the electric vehicle transition”, according to the New York Times. The union is concerned that auto workers will suffer during the transition to EV as less workers are needed to assemble EVs.“The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom,” the memo reads, referring to electric vehicles. “We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments.”The union has 400,000 members across the country, though members are primarily in auto-industry heavyweight Michigan, a key election battleground state.The FBI arrested a man in Florida on Tuesday for his involvement in the January 6th Capitol riots, specifically for setting off an “explosive device” in the US Capitol tunnel that leads into the building. Daniel Ball, 38, was first arrested last week by the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office for assaulting seven people, including law enforcement officers, in Florida. Ball’s probation officer, upon being shown photos and videos of the Capitol riot, identified Ball as the person throwing an explosive device in the tunnel, where law enforcement was blocking rioters.Ball faces multiple charges related to the riot, including assaulting police officers and entering a restricted area with a deadly weapon.The justice department said in March that at least 1,000 people have been arrested on charges related to the riots, with 518 pleading guilty to federal crimes so far.Election denier Jim Marchant announced that he will be running for US Senate, challenging Democrat incumbent senator Jacky Rosen for the seat she won last year.During his announcement speech on Tuesday, Marchant said that he is running to “protect Nevadans from the overbearing government, from Silicon Valley, from big media, from labor unions, from the radical gender-change advocates,” the Washington Post reported.His election campaign was acknowledged by Rosen on Twitter, who replied to Marchant’s announcement:
      Nevadans deserve a Senator who will fight for them, not a MAGA election denier who opposes abortion rights even in cases of rape and incest…
      While far-right politicians like Jim Marchant spread baseless conspiracy theories, I’ve always focused on solving problems for Nevadans.
      Marchant has described himself as a “MAGA conservative”, the Post reports, and is an avid supporter of Donald Trump. More

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      DeSantis accused of favoring insurance-industry donors at residents’ expense

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      Ron DeSantis, the rightwing Republican governor of Florida and a likely 2024 presidential candidate, has handed favors to his big-money donors in the insurance industry at the expense of cash-strapped residents of his state, a new report claims.The report, “How Ron DeSantis sold out Florida homeowners”, draws on contributions from the American Federation of Teachers union, the non-profit Center for Popular Democracy, the voting rights group Florida Rising and the dark money watchdog Hedge Clippers.The report pinpoints the insurance industry as a crucial underwriter of DeSantis’s meteoric rise to the governor’s mansion and as a potential White House contender – and alleges that this may have influenced his decision making.DeSantis, who ran a successful re-election campaign last year, and Friends of Ron DeSantis, a political action committee that supported him, have taken a combined $3.9m in contributions from insurance industry players. If donations to the Republican party of Florida since 1 January 2019 – days before DeSantis assumed office – are added, this total swells to more than $9.9m.The authors’ analysis of campaign finance data also found that two property casualty insurance firms donated a combined total of $125,000 to DeSantis’s 2023 inaugural celebration, which marked the beginning of his final term as governor in the term-limited state.It is no coincidence, the report’s authors suggest, that DeSantis’s administration has put the insurance companies’ interests ahead of Florida’s own citizens, who are battling homeowner insurance rates nearly triple the national average.They write: “Instead of fixing problems with Florida’s property insurance industry, DeSantis has lavished the industry with favors and benefits while everyday Floridians suffer.”These benefits have included the creation of $2bn taxpayer-funded reinsurance fund. Such funds exist to insure the insurers and prevent them being wiped out during a catastrophic event. Usually, insurance companies buy such coverage on the open market but, in Florida, DeSantis chose to use tax dollars to provide access to a state-subsidised insurance fund.Second, the Florida legislature passed a bill that stripped policyholders of the ability to recover legal fees when suing insurance companies that refuse to honour legitimate claims. DeSantis trumpeted the signing of this bill on his official webpage.Home insurance is a hot-button issue in Florida, where communities vulnerable to the climate crisis face increasingly frequent and severe hurricanes and other weather events. Last year Hurricane Ian caused record levels of property damage and recent storms flooded some Fort Lauderdale neighbourhoods for more than a week.The report notes: “Communities of color and low-income neighborhoods with significant climate risks face crumbling infrastructure, soaring insurance premiums, and a lack of public investment. Florida cities like Jacksonville (where one in three residents is Black) and Orlando (where one in three is Latino) are at the highest risk nationally, based on the number of properties at substantial climate risk.”For many, it is getting worse. This year insurance price hikes are expected to average 40%, according to the Insurance Information Institute. This follows a reported 50% climb during the DeSantis administration, industry analyst John Rollins found. The increases are forcing Florida homeowners to forgo coverage at nearly twice the national rate or quit the state altogether.Tracy-Ann Brown, 53, said by phone from Miami: “The prices are horrendous. Our insurance went up to $1,800 per month and I could not afford it with my husband’s salary and my salary put together. We had a home that we had to take the insurance off and, unfortunately, our house caught fire on Easter Sunday and we didn’t have insurance on it.”Brown, a community liaison specialist for public schools, added: “The insurance everywhere here is crazy from Broward all the way to Dade. I’ve asked so many people and they’ve said the same thing. Their insurance has gone sky high.”The report argues that the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation is dominated by industry insiders who approved insurance price hikes at greater rates than were seen under previous governors.“Evidence is mounting that big insurance has blocked proposals that would have lowered costs for consumers,” it continues. “A 2022 proposal by state senator Jeff Brandes claimed to reduce insurance and save Floridians ‘$750 million to $1 billion a year’ by allowing smaller insurance companies to access the catastrophic reinsurance fund. The insurance-heavy business lobby reportedly blocked the plan.”The authors draw a contrast with Louisiana, which they say has a more robust property casualty insurance market despite similar hurricane risks. Unlike DeSantis’s insurance industry handouts, they contend, Louisiana conditions its subsidies to the insurance industry on increased participation in the state property insurance market.Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said: “Floridians are suffering from the threat of floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters, and homeowners are increasingly at risk of losing it all because they simply cannot afford spiraling insurance premiums.”She added: “Where is the governor? Well, he has picked sides: when given the choice of helping Florida’s working families or doing the bidding of the insurance lobby, Ron DeSantis puts his donors first. This report joins the dots. We can’t allow DeSantis to dismantle the livelihoods of millions of Floridians in the service of corporate interests.”DeSantis has not yet formally announced a 2024 campaign but is expected to do so after Florida’s legislative session ends later this month. In the meantime he has travelled to early-voting states to promote his new book, has met with donors and just returned from an overseas trade mission.The governor has also become embroiled in a legal battle with Disney. Days after the company sued him in federal court for what it described as retaliation for opposing the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill, members of Disney World’s governing board – made up DeSantis appointees – filed a lawsuit to countersue the entertainment giant.A CBS News-YouGov poll released on Monday showed former president Donald Trump leading a hypothetical Republican primary field with 58% of the vote, followed by DeSantis with 22%.The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment. More