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Author: Sharon Zhang

  • Democratic Leaders Will Likely Delay Vote on Stock Ban Until After the Election

    A vote on the long-awaited — and some say direly needed — bill to ban members of Congress from being able to trade individual stocks will likely be delayed until at least after the midterm election in November, sources within House Democratic leadership say, drawing frustration from advocates who have been pushing for the bill to come to a vote for months.

    According to Punchbowl News, some sources say that there is “very little chance” that the bill, kept secret by Democratic leadership for months and released this week, will come to a vote before the election.

    House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) has said that it’s likely the bill will not come to a vote this week, missing the estimated time frame for a vote that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) set in a press conference last week. Hoyer is under fire for indicating that he is opposed to the proposal in recent meetings.

    Proponents of the legislation have been urging House leaders to bring the bill to a vote since members began introducing their own versions of the proposal early this year. But Democrats had delayed progress on the legislation, despite rare bipartisan support for the proposal, and had even kept the contents of the proposal hidden from lawmakers advocating for the bill until this week.

    Now that the text of the legislation has been released, Democratic leaders are facing criticism yet again over elements of the bill that ethics experts say make the bill both overly broad and too weak in its enforcement, either dooming the legislation from the start or making it effectively useless.

    In its current form, the bill would ban not only members of Congress but also Supreme Court justices and high-level congressional and executive officials from trading stocks, covering a wider swath of officials than most proposals introduced by lawmakers throughout this year.

    Ethics experts say that the judiciary and executive branches should also be barred from trading individual stocks, as the practice brings up potential conflicts of interest. But Project on Government Oversight Senior Ethics Fellow Walter Shaub pointed out on Twitter that including such officials in the ban would be a “poison pill” for the bill, risking Republican opposition and likely dooming its chances in the Senate.

    Meanwhile, government watchdogs are also taking issue with the meat of the bill: the mechanism by which government officials would hand off control over their stock portfolios.

    The bill would require lawmakers to either divest from their stocks or place them into a blind trust — but the blind trust wouldn’t have to follow existing rules for a blind trust, allowing lawmakers to create a “fake” blind trust like the one used by former President Donald Trump, Shaub said on Twitter.

    “Pelosi’s bill would eliminate all of these requirements by authorizing each ethics office to allow anything they want and call it a blind trust. Literally anything,” Shaub wrote in a Twitter thread railing against the bill on Tuesday. With no rules for what qualifies as a blind trust, experts say that lawmakers could essentially still trade stocks, but do so even more secretively than before.

    “There’s plenty of reason to be concerned about throwing out the current strict uniform standard for blind trusts across the government,” Shaub continued. “For one thing, the House and Senate ethics committees are notoriously loose. They’ve spent the last ten years not enforcing the STOCK Act.”

    Proponents of the stock ban have suggested that Democratic leaders may have purposefully introduced a bill that is far from what other lawmakers have proposed because they oppose it.

    Pelosi, whose husband is a prolific stock trader, has previously expressed her opposition to the proposal. Hoyer indicated in meetings recently that he is intending on voting against the bill when it comes to the floor. And House Administration Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-California), who wrote the bill, had reportedly cooled on the idea after the committee held a hearing on it earlier this year.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Declares Disaster in Florida as Record-Breaking Hurricane Ian Floods State

    President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration in Florida on Thursday morning as Hurricane Ian, now downgraded to a tropical storm, swept through the state in a record storm surge, leaving homes destroyed and millions without power.

    The storm surge was record-breaking in some areas of Southwest Florida, causing flooding and up to 155 mph wind gusts. Just shy of a Category 5 storm, Ian hit Florida as a Category 4 storm, one of the strongest to hit the southwestern part of the state. It raged through the central part of Florida on Wednesday and Thursday, hammering the central and eastern parts of the state with floods even as it was downgraded to a tropical storm early Thursday morning.

    The death toll of the hurricane is unknown, though the county sheriff for Florida’s Lee County, one of the worst-hit areas, predicts that the death toll could be in the hundreds, and said that there are thousands of people waiting to be rescued — many of them stranded and unable to evacuate. According to Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell, there are nine hospitals in Lee County that didn’t have water as of Thursday morning.

    Biden’s emergency declaration unlocks funding and federal resources for provisions like temporary housing and property loss in nine counties. The White House may approve an emergency declaration for more areas of the state as the storm continues on its path north into Georgia and the Carolinas.

    The National Hurricane Center is expecting Ian to restrengthen into a Category 1 hurricane on Thursday and into Friday. The governors of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia have all preemptively declared a state of emergency over the storm.

    Ian was likely worsened by effects of the climate crisis. Warmer water temperatures in the Atlantic “turbocharged” the storm, as The Associated Press wrote, allowing the storm to gain more strength at a faster pace than if the waters hadn’t been warmed by greenhouse gas effects. Such conditions have almost certainly been causing storms like Ian to be stronger, and for strong storms to hit more often, climate experts say.

    Indeed, storm hunters and experts have noted that Ian has been remarkable in many ways. One hurricane hunter, Nick Underwood, noted remarkable amounts of lightning around the eye of the storm, which had cycled and rapidly and severely intensified the storm on Tuesday night as it approached Florida.

    According to PowerOutage.us, about 2.6 million customers in Florida were without power as of Thursday morning, largely concentrated in southwestern parts of the state but spreading to the eastern coast as well. Many people have lost access to water or are under boil advisories.

    Before the storm hit Florida, it made landfall in Cuba, where it knocked out power for the entire island with winds of up to 125 miles an hour. At least two people were killed.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “Billionaires Cannot Have It All” – Sanders Calls for Redistribution of Wealth

    As the wealth gap between middle-income Americans and the 1 percent balloons, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is calling for redistribution of wealth from the wealthiest Americans to the middle and working classes as one of the first steps needed to save the country from the far right and “restore democracy.”

    In an interview with CBS on Tuesday, Sanders said that Democrats need to recognize that billionaires are only getting richer and richer, while workers are falling behind – and, as long as this trend continues, people will keep losing faith in the idea that the government exists to work for them.

    “Right now, a lot of people are losing faith in government,” he said. “If you are a worker out there – and your job went to China, your job went to Mexico, you’re making less than you used to make, your kid can’t afford to go to college, you can’t afford health care – and somebody puts a 30 second ad up on CBS, ‘vote for me,’ [you’d] say ‘go to hell. You’re all the same, you’re not doing anything for me.’”

    “You want to restore democracy? Have a government that works for ordinary people,” he said.

    When asked about the threat to the U.S. from the far right and Donald Trump, Sanders said that a large problem is that voters and regular people don’t see candidates that vow to work for them.

    “You’re not going to hear it much on corporate television. I happen to believe we need redistribution of wealth in this country. We need to protect the middle class and working class, and the billionaires cannot have it all,” he said.

    While there has been a redistribution of wealth over the past half century, he said, it has “gone in the wrong direction.” “We’re talking about trillions of dollars going to the 1 percent while the working class and the middle class become poorer,” he emphasized.

    Indeed, according to a report commissioned by Sanders and released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Tuesday, the share of all wealth held by the top 1 percent shot up from 27 to 34 percent between 1989 and 2019, while wealth held by the bottom half of Americans dropped from 4 percent to 2 percent over the same period.

    Overall, in 2019, while the bottom 50 percent of Americans owned $2.3 trillion in wealth, the top 10 percent owned $82.4 trillion, the report found.

    Student debt has been a major factor in the suppression of the wealth of the bottom 25 percent. In 2019, according to the report, student debt was the largest source of debt among the bottom 25 percent, surpassing the amount of debt from mortgages and credit cards combined.

    The wealth gap has likely grown throughout the pandemic. Though pandemic provisions like the child tax credit and the stimulus checks kept millions of Americans afloat through the first two years of the pandemic, those financial programs are now over – while the economy remains unstable and inflation remains high.

    On the flip side, however, U.S. billionaires have added over $1.7 trillion to their collective wealth since the start of the pandemic, much of this growth accruing to the very richest people in the world. According to a January Oxfam report, the world’s 10 richest people have doubled their wealth during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding $5 trillion to their collective wealth – or more than two times the $2.3 trillion total wealth owned by the bottom 50 percent of Americans in 2019.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Staffers for Andy Levin Unanimously Vote to Form First-Ever Congressional Union

    Staffers for progressive Rep. Andy Levin (D-Michigan) have unanimously voted to form a union, becoming the first congressional office in U.S. history to unionize.

    Last week, workers cast their ballots on the question of joining the Congressional Workers Union (CWU), a group formed in recent years in response to what staffers say are abusive and poor working conditions in the halls of Congress. The result of the vote was announced on Monday by the union, which celebrated their first win.

    “It is with great pride we announce the landslide union election victory in Congressman Andy Levin’s office,” the union said in a statement.

    “While exercising their right to vote, the workers clearly and emphatically expressed their desire to bargain collectively and have a seat at the table to determine workplace conditions and benefits,” the union continued. “CWU is ecstatic to support these workers as we move to the bargaining table and negotiate a contract representative of workers’ needs for the first time in congressional history.”

    The union will only exist for a few months, as Levin was defeated by deep-pocketed special interest groups in his primary in August.

    However, more unions may soon be forming. Next up to vote on unionization are the offices of Representatives Ro Khanna (D-California) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), the union says. They are voting via electronic ballot on Wednesday and Thursday.

    At least five other offices, including those of Representatives Cori Bush (Missouri), Chuy García (Illinois), Ted Lieu (California), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York) and Melanie Stansbury (New Mexico), have also filed to unionize. Their elections have yet to be announced.

    As when workers unionize through votes or voluntary recognition processed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), workers will now begin bargaining with management to negotiate a first contract. Eligible staffers in Levin’s office will now be able to negotiate pay and other compensation, which workers say is often far too low for Washington, D.C., as well as provisions like parental leave.

    According to a report released earlier this year, about 1 in 8 D.C.-based congressional staffers, or about 1,200 workers, didn’t make a living wage in 2020. And, even among staffers who make a living wage, this is still insufficient for many, as workers of their caliber are often wooed away from Congress by private sector jobs that pay far better.

    Further, workers – especially nonwhite workers – frequently report facing harassment regarding their race and sexuality, making them feel unsafe; the January 6 2021 attack on the Capitol highlighted feelings of danger, the union said.

    The staffers were afforded the right to unionize in May, after Levin had filed legislation activating a section of the decades-old Congressional Accountability Act that protects staffers from being penalized for unionizing – protections already afforded to most, but not all, workers across the U.S. Senate staffers are still unable to unionize as the Senate has not passed corresponding legislation.

    When the House staffers petitioned to unionize in July, Levin celebrated the filing.

    “It is the workers who ensure that this institution – the bedrock of our fragile and precious democracy – operates efficiently and serves the American people here in the Capitol and in every corner of our nation,” he said at the time, expressing solidarity with the labor organizers. “It is the workers who applied pressure, pushing their bosses to walk the walk and respect the will of staff. It is the workers who bravely stepped up despite potential backlash and interference and made clear that they want more of a voice in our workplace.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Manchin’s Big Oil Deal Scrapped From Budget Bill in Victory for Climate Movement

    The Senate voted to advance a must-pass government funding bill on Tuesday night after a so-called side deal to greatly expand fossil fuel infrastructure sponsored by conservative Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) was taken out, in a massive victory for thousands of climate and community activists who mobilized against the proposal.

    Manchin announced before the vote on Tuesday that the proposal had been taken out after it became clear that it wouldn’t have the votes to pass. If it had been attached to the budget bill, the vote would likely have failed, potentially triggering a government shutdown at the end of this month.

    The proposal would have severely limited the regulatory power of key environmental laws and given the green light to numerous oil and gas projects, garnering fierce opposition from activists and progressive lawmakers for its moves to enrich and entrench the fossil fuel industry. Indeed, the proposal appeared to have been at least partially written by the major fossil fuel trade group, American Petroleum Institute, an ally of Manchin, himself a coal baron.

    Research has found that the bill would have been a major contributor to the climate crisis. An analysis by Oil Change International found the projects that would have been fast tracked by the fossil fuel expansion bill would have added 665 million metric tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere yearly, more than negating any of the supposed emissions reductions impacts that proponents of the bill had said it would create.

    Indigenous and community activists who live along the proposed path of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which Manchin sought to fast track with the bill, said that the bill would have exposed Appalachian communities to countless spills and other safety hazards during the pipeline’s construction and while it was in operation.

    Climate and community groups had waged protests and sent numerous letters to Democrats and the Democratic leadership, urging them to kill the deal.

    Climate and community activists celebrated the death – however temporary – of Manchin’s proposal.

    “Senator Manchin’s dirty deal went down in flames today because Indigenous and frontline communities raised their voices and fought back,” said Oil Change International in a statement, while warning that the deal could still rear its head in upcoming bills. “This legislation would have had deadly consequences for communities and the climate, and we applaud all Members of Congress who stood with frontline communities and boldly opposed it. That’s real climate leadership.”

    Food and Water Watch noted that the campaign to kill the proposal was successful despite the odds.

    “Tonight’s turnaround represents a remarkable, against-all-odds victory by a determined grassroots climate movement against the overwhelming financial and political might of the fossil fuel industry and its Senate enablers,” said Food and Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter in a statement. “While the campaign against polluting oil and gas is far from over, this repudiation of Senator Manchin’s so-called permitting reform bill marks a huge victory against dirty energy – and also against dirty backroom Washington dealmaking.”

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) also celebrated the victory for climate activists.

    “I want to congratulate the more than 650 environmental groups and community organizations who made clear that, in the midst of the horrific climate crisis that we face, the last thing we need is a side deal which would build more pipelines and fossil fuel projects,” said Sanders in a statement. “This is a victory for the survival of the planet and a major loss for the fossil fuel industry.”

    Sanders was a key opponent of the deal. Last week, he sent a letter urging his colleagues to oppose the deal and had signed onto another letter from eight senators last week sharing their concerns about potential deleterious impacts to environmental justice that the deal would have created.

    Over 70 Democrats in the House had also voiced their opposition to the deal, provisions of which they said were tantamount to “attempts to short-circuit or undermine the law in the name of ‘reform.’”

    However, it was the opposition of not only Democrats but also Republicans that appeared to have helped to kill the proposal in the Senate.

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) had been whipping Republicans to vote against the proposal for reasons that appear to be chalked up to revenge for the party; the GOP had come up with its own fossil fuel permitting bill that shares similarities with Manchin’s deal. And their opposition to Manchin’s side deal appears to have been triggered by the West Virginia senator’s support of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which they viewed as a betrayal.

    Nonetheless, the Republican version of the fossil fuel expansion bill will likely not garner the support of enough Democrats to pass.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sinema Says Filibuster Should Be Expanded to Make It Harder to Confirm Judges

    At an event with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) on Monday, embattled conservative Democrat Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona) said that she wants to expand the use of the filibuster, an arcane Senate rule that she’s used as an excuse to block her own party’s legislative efforts over the past two years.

    In a speech, Sinema emphasized her commitment to keeping the anti-democratic filibuster in an event on the supposed importance of bipartisanship at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville. She said, falsely, that the filibuster increases bipartisanship and that it should be expanded for that reason, although opponents of the filibuster have pointed out that it actually promotes minority rule.

    “Not only am I committed to the 60 vote threshold — I have an incredibly unpopular view — I actually think we should restore the 60-vote threshold for the areas in which it has been eliminated already,” she said, to scattered applause.

    “Because it would make it harder. It would make it harder for us to confirm judges, it would make it harder for us to confirm executive appointments in each administration,” she continued. “But I believe that if we did restore it, we would actually see more of that middle ground in all parts of our governance.”

    McConnell introduced Sinema before her speech, calling her “the most effective first-term senator I’ve seen in my time in the Senate.”

    The Arizona senator also railed against Democrats and opponents of the filibuster for wanting to “give into” their “short-term desires” like passing voting rights legislation, protecting democracy, salvaging a liveable climate, protecting workers from increasingly exploitative employers, taking steps to end child poverty, codifying life-saving abortion protections, and more — all proposals that have been blocked in the past two years by Sinema or another lawmaker via the filibuster.

    Expanding the filibuster for Senate confirmations could open up avenues for Republicans to even further manipulate the Supreme Court. When Barack Obama was president, Democrats got rid of the filibuster for non-Supreme Court judicial nominations after Republicans, led by McConnell, blocked dozens of the Democratic president’s appointments for what Democrats said were purely political reasons.

    Indeed, when Republicans retook power of the Senate in 2015, they continued blocking Obama’s nominations and at the end of his presidency waged a historic blockade of judicial nominees — including the nomination of Obama’s Democratic Supreme court pick Merrick Garland. Then, when Donald Trump took office, the party rushed through Trump’s nominations, ended the filibuster for the Supreme Court, and confirmed a record number of judges.

    If the filibuster had still been in place during the Trump years, Democrats could have used it to block some of Trump’s picks, none of whom received enough votes to surpass the 60-vote filibuster. But it’s also possible that they wouldn’t have; political experts say that the filibuster benefits Republicans, who want to disrupt regulatory facets of the government, more than it does Democrats, who often capitulate to Republicans, even if there is no political upside.

    Indeed, the increasing weaponization of the filibuster from the right in the past decade and Democrats’ continual and futile obsession with bipartisanship likely means that restoring the filibuster for confirmations would make it hard or impossible for Biden and future Democratic presidents to succeed in any of their nominations.

    Thanks at least in part to Sinema’s defense of the filibuster and blocking of important Democratic priorities, Sinema’s approval rating is low among her constituents, recent polling has found. A poll of Arizona commissioned by the AARP finds that her approval is below 50 percent for every demographic the poll measured. Voters old and young, Black and Latinx, Democratic, Republican and Independent have an unfavorable view of Sinema, the poll found, with over 50 percent of voters disapproving of her in each category.

  • January 6 Committee Members: Group May Unanimously Refer Trump for Prosecution

    In interviews over the weekend, members of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol said that the ultimate decision on whether or not to prosecute former President Donald Trump for his role in the far right attack will be unanimous — and that there is enough evidence to do so.

    In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, committee member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California) said that the two Republicans and seven Democrats on the committee work with “a high degree of consensus and unanimity” and that he is personally leaning toward a referral.

    “It will be certainly, I think, my recommendation, my feeling, that we should make referrals, but we will get to a decision as a committee, and we will all abide by that decision, and I will join our committee members if they feel differently,” Schiff said.

    “I do agree there have been several laws broken and it is, I think, apparent that there is evidence that Donald Trump was involved in breaking several of those laws,” he continued. “When Congress does find evidence that people have broken the law, it is not always the case that it makes a referral, but in circumstances like these, I think that’s the better part of the argument.”

    Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) also said that the decision would be unanimous in an interview with the Texas Tribune over the weekend.

    Cheney emphasized that Trump was actively involved in the attack. “One of the things that has surprised me the most about my work on this committee is how sophisticated the plan was that Donald Trump was involved in and oversaw every step of the way,” she said. “It was a multipart plan that he oversaw, he was involved in personally and directly.”

    “In whatever action we take, we will be unanimous,” she said.

    The lawmakers don’t have the power to charge Trump, but can make a criminal referral to the Department of Justice (DOJ), which would decide whether or not to act. The DOJ can also decide to prosecute Trump any time it wants, without a referral. It’s unclear if the DOJ is currently investigating Trump in relation to the attack, but it has subpoenaed documents provided to the January 6 committee, signaling that it may at least be considering an investigation.

    Cheney and Schiff’s statements differ slightly from what members were saying about the referral decision this summer. Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) said in June that making such a referral is “not our job,” and that the group’s role is simply to gather and present evidence, which the DOJ can decide whether or not to use.

    Committee members immediately rejected Thompson’s statement, however, saying that the group hasn’t yet made a decision on the referral and that if they did find criminal conduct — which the group has suggested they have — it would be their duty to make such a referral.

    The interviews come before a public hearing scheduled by the committee for Wednesday this week, which is slated to include not-yet-revealed witness testimony and footage of the attack. This could potentially include testimony from Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, whose texts show coordination with high level officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

    The committee may also discuss a phone call made from the White House switchboard to a Capitol attacker during the assault, the existence of which was made public by a former GOP lawmaker and committee staffer on Sunday. The contents of the 9-second phone call with Trump supporter Anton Lunyk are yet unknown.

  • Sanders, Warren Say Manchin Big Oil Deal Would “Steamroll” Frontline Communities

    As environmental groups and experts express fury and frustration over coal millionaire Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-West Virginia) fossil fuel permitting overhaul deal released on Wednesday, Senate Democrats are highlighting concerns that the deal could set environmental justice advances back by years.

    In a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) on Thursday, eight senators, led by Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), wrote that they share concerns expressed by environmental justice groups in recent weeks. They emphasized that the deal, which would blow open the permitting process for federal fossil fuel projects and fast track dangerous projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline and potentially dozens of others, is especially dangerous for communities on the frontline of the climate crisis.

    “For many years, siting decisions for big infrastructure projects have essentially prioritized the perceived societal benefits of fossil energy over the very real costs disproportionately borne by communities of color, low-income communities, and others who have traditionally been marginalized,” the lawmakers wrote. “The result has been the destruction of homes and neighborhoods, lost wealth in those communities, long-lasting health consequences, and premature deaths.”

    The letter was signed by prominent lawmakers like Senators Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts).

    Lawmakers said that Manchin’s (and the American Petroleum Institute’s) proposed changes to landmark environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Clean Water Act threaten to “steamroll over” protections for and public comments from frontline communities.

    While recent years have seen some modest investments and improvements in environmental justice initiatives from Congress and the White House, Manchin’s proposed deal could set those advancements back.

    “[T]ransparency and the ability for potentially impacted communities to have prior, informed and meaningful participation and consideration are foundational to providing environmental justice,” the lawmakers said. “A number of the proposed permitting reforms would do the exact opposite.”

    Congress should focus on strengthening protections and public participation for frontline communities — not rolling back those rights, the lawmakers said.

    Environmental, Appalachian, and other frontline groups have expressed strong discontent with the deal, and have spent the last weeks waging protests and sending letters in attempts to block the legislation from being passed. They say that allowing a deal like Manchin’s to go through is tantamount to creating “sacrifice zones” out of communities that would experience the pollution and environmental degradation that inevitably comes with projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

    Climate advocates and experts have said that the proposal shouldn’t be characterized as a small deal made to appease Manchin, but rather as a massive fossil fuel expansion bill — one made to fulfill the industry’s long-held wishes to weaken laws that force agencies to consider environmental impacts when reviewing federal projects. Indeed, Big Oil and Republicans have been trying for years to slash NEPA and other environmental laws, just as Manchin has proposed.

    Democratic leaders had planned to attach the deal to a must-pass government funding bill that’s due by the end of the month. But after Manchin released the text of the proposal on Wednesday, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle came out against the proposal, with those on the left saying that it would be disastrous for the climate.

    The lawmakers haven’t directly called for the deal to be rejected, but asked for it to come to consideration as a stand-alone bill so that they can vote against it without risking a government shutdown. Sanders has pledged to vote against the funding bill if Manchin’s proposal is attached. Meanwhile, even some centrist Democrats are vowing to do everything in their power to kill the deal, saying that it goes far past what they were expecting in terms of giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Zero Republicans Vote for Bill That Would Expose Billionaire Dark Money Donors

    A bill aimed at exposing deep-pocketed dark money political donors and increasing campaign transparency failed in the Senate on Thursday after zero Republicans voted for the bill, allowing billionaires and special interest groups to continue to exercise huge influence over elections with little accountability.

    The DISCLOSE Act, introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), failed 49 to 49, falling short of the 60-vote threshold to advance the bill. Nearly every Republican in the Senate, except for one who didn’t cast a vote, voted against the legislation that campaign transparency advocates and government watchdogs say is crucial to combating the flood of cash from wealthy dark money donors that was unleashed by Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) 12 years ago.

    Endorsed by President Joe Biden, the DISCLOSE Act requires dark money groups — trade associations, shell corporations that give to Super PACs, tax exempt so-called “social welfare” groups, and more — to disclose donors who give $10,000 or more during an election cycle. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Koch Industries are some of the largest dark money groups in politics today.

    Democrats lamented the failure of the bill, saying that it exposes Republicans’ motivation to keep the flow of dark money running.

    “Today, Senate Republicans stood in lockstep with their megadonors and secretive special interests to protect the most corrupting force in American politics — dark money,” Whitehouse said in a statement after the vote. “The American people are fed up with dark money influence campaigns that rig their government against them and stymie their priorities.”

    Various versions of the DISCLOSE Act have been introduced since Citizens United was handed down in 2010. It has been blocked by Republicans many times, even as they conveniently complain about dark money when liberals benefit from it.

    Government watchdogs say that passing the bill would be an important step toward combating billionaires’ and corporations’ influence in politics.

    Thanks to Citizens United, corporations and billionaires can give unlimited amounts of money to influence elections, while giving to dark money groups allows them to stay anonymous. The decision unleashed a barrage of dark money into politics; an analysis earlier this year found that billionaires are spending nearly $1 billion more per election cycle than they were before the decision. Their influence is so large that, as of this summer, nearly half of the funding — $89.4 million — raised by Republicans’ two largest super PACs at that point in the 2022 election cycle came from just 27 billionaires.

    The DISCLOSE Act wouldn’t put restrictions on large donations — which advocates say is also needed — but would rather increase transparency around them. This could discourage donors from giving in large amounts and would give the public a better idea of who is pulling the levers in U.S. politics. Proposals to tighten campaign transparency laws are also widely popular among the public.

    A recent example of a major dark money political donation was that of Barre Seid, who gave over $1.6 billion to a little-known dark money group headed by Leonard Leo, who was instrumental in nominating every right-wing Supreme Court justice who sits on the bench today.

    This is likely one of the largest single political donations ever made — and it was entirely legal thanks to Citizens United. It’s likely the donation was only made public because of a tip to journalists about the donation.

    Biden cited that donation in a speech calling for the passage of the DISCLOSE Act on Tuesday. “Dark money has become so common in our politics, I believe sunlight is the best disinfectant. And I acknowledge it’s an issue for both parties,” he said. “But here’s the key difference: Democrats in the Congress support more openness and accountability. Republicans in Congress so far don’t.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Congressional Staffers Are Holding Their First-Ever Union Vote

    The Congressional Workers Union celebrated on Thursday as House staffers began voting on whether or not to form the first-ever union within Congress, a right that was granted to congressional staffers earlier this year by House lawmakers.

    Staffers in Rep. Andy Levin’s (D-Michigan) office will be voting electronically on whether or not to unionize on Thursday and Friday. Levin was an original sponsor of the resolution that allowed staffers to unionize and granted them related labor protections; the resolution activated decades-old legislation outlining congressional workers’ right to form unions.

    “This is a historic and momentous day for both the labor movement and democracy, as we watch a union election play out for the first time in a congressional office in the history of the U.S. Congress,” the union wrote in a press release.

    If a majority of staffers vote “yes” on the union, they will be the first office in congressional history to unionize. The union will be short-lived, however, as Levin was defeated in his primary in August after moneyed interests like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and corporate groups spent millions of dollars on his ousting.

    However, there may be several other congressional unions that will survive Levin’s, if the vote succeeds. At least seven other offices have filed to unionize so far, including the offices of Representatives Cori Bush (Missouri), Chuy García (Illinois), Ro Khanna (California), Ted Lieu (California), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) and Melanie Stansbury (New Mexico).

    Though it’s unclear whether or not these offices will, indeed, vote to unionize, nearly all of the lawmakers whose offices will soon be voting have spoken out in support of the union.

    “I am so proud of the staffers who made a historic move today,” said Levin in a statement in July, when his office filed a union petition. “It is the workers who ensure that this institution — the bedrock of our fragile and precious democracy — operates efficiently and serves the American people here in the Capitol and in every corner of our nation.”

    Once they form a union, workers will be able to negotiate pay and benefits like student loan repayment aid or parental leave, according to Demand Progress.

    Though there are Senate workers involved in the union, the chamber has not voted on the corresponding Senate resolution to activate their staffers’ right to unionize, and would likely reject the resolution if it came to a vote thanks to opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin (West Virginia).

    Congressional staffers have long reported poor working conditions in both their offices and the halls of Congress at large. Workers face low pay and often struggle to pay for necessities like child care, while other workers of their caliber are often offered private sector jobs that pay far better, like those in the lobbying sector, for instance.

    Non-white workers have it the worst. Research has found that non-white staffers working for lawmakers in both major parties are paid an average of $5,600 less a year in the House and $9,100 less in the Senate. This — and the racist abuse that non-white staffers often face — could be part of the reason why there are so few non-white staffers on Capitol Hill.

    When it comes to the union effort, on the other hand, non-white workers have been at the forefront of the movement.

    Organizers with the Congressional Workers Union have also been involved in other activist efforts in Congress in recent months. This summer, several organizers within the union participated in a protest in Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-New York) office, urging him and President Joe Biden to take action on the climate crisis after Manchin threw cold water on climate-related negotiations in July.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Unionized Boston Starbucks Workers Celebrate Win After 64-Day Strike

    Boston Starbucks workers have ended their two-month strike after management yielded to their main demand, bringing an end to the longest Starbucks strike in history.

    The workers at a unionized Starbucks near Boston University have been on strike since mid-July, largely protesting what they say was an unlawful unilateral change to employee policy from the company to force part-time workers to have the equivalent of full-time availability, even if they are only scheduled for 20 hours a week or less. Workers said that, if the part-timers didn’t have such availability, they could risk termination.

    On Sunday, management agreed to end the enforcement of the policy after the workers held a consistent strike for 64 days, the union says.

    “We are excited that our partners whose availability only permits a part-time schedule will no longer be at risk of losing their jobs because of this arbitrary rule,” the workers wrote in a statement. “We are also proud of our partners in Watertown, MA who joined us in taking action against this rule during their most recent strike action — this victory was won by all of us.”

    Along with the end of the minimum availability requirement, workers say they also won a number of other victories, largely related to problems with their store manager, Tomi Chorlian. Chorlian “aggressively” cut employees’ hours, they say, leaving the store “dramatically” understaffed. She had also used “harmful and offensive rhetoric” regarding race, gender and sexual orientation against workers and customers, according to the workers’ statement.

    The district manager overseeing the store is now looking to replace Chorlian and will be investigating her behavior with the participation of the workers.

    The staunchly anti-union company claims that, despite the end of the strike, nothing has changed policy-wise for the workers.

    Workers thanked the community for helping them keep the picket line staffed for 24 hours a day during the strike.

    “Keeping our picket line alive 24-hours a day for 64 days took a village of community supporters, union siblings, friends, and Starbucks workers,” they wrote. “We are incredibly inspired by this display of solidarity, and we look forward to supporting y’all in the larger fight for worker power.”

    The strike had garnered support from a wide swath of prominent politicians, including people like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who visited the picket line last month in a trip to rally with labor leaders in Boston.

    Sanders congratulated the workers on Twitter on Wednesday. “Let me congratulate the Starbucks workers in Boston who won their 64-day strike for fair schedules and decent working conditions,” he wrote. “When workers stand together and fight for justice, there is nothing they cannot accomplish. I was proud to have stood on the picket line with them.”

    Police had shown up to the picket line multiple times, with the seeming purpose of breaking up the strike. Picketers were threatened with arrest last week and police came once in August to remove furniture from the patio that workers were picketing on, watching them to ensure they didn’t return to the area.

    “If this isn’t blatant union busting, what is?” the union wrote of the August incident.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Manchin’s Big Oil Giveaway Deal Garners Opposition From Both Sides of the Aisle

    Conservative coal baron Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) released the text of a 91-page permitting proposal containing huge giveaways to the fossil fuel industry on Wednesday night — and senators from both sides of the aisle have expressed their disapproval.

    The proposal is the result of a deal made between Manchin and Democratic leaders to convince the conservative Democrat to support the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). It would expedite fossil fuel projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, weaken the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and require President Joe Biden to choose 25 energy projects to prioritize, including a “minimum” number of Big Oil priorities like fossil fuel and carbon capture projects, according to the summary of the bill.

    In short, the proposal would majorly ramp up the permitting and construction process for a wide swath of fossil fuel projects and would further entrench the fossil fuel industry for years to come — posing a major threat to a livable planet.

    Democratic leaders planned for the proposal to be included in an upcoming government spending bill that must be passed by the end of this month in order to avert a government shutdown. But now that the text of the deal has been released, lawmakers from both major parties are voicing their opposition, potentially dooming the proposal in an ironic twist of fate for Manchin.

    The latest Democrat to speak out against the bill was Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), who told reporters that the provisions for the Mountain Valley Pipeline are “completely unacceptable. I was not consulted about it. I will do everything I can to oppose it.”

    “Allowing a corporation that is unhappy about losing a case to strip jurisdiction away from the entire court that has handled the case? Unprecedented,” added Kaine, referring to a proposal to require litigation on the pipeline to be moved from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has ruled against the pipeline multiple times, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “It would open the door for massive abuse and corruption.”

    Kaine joins a small chorus of Democratic senators who oppose the deal. A group of Democratic senators led by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) made their opposition known with a letter on Wednesday asking for the bill to come to a vote separately from the budget bill so that opponents can vote against it without risking a government shutdown.

    The letter was signed by Democratic Senators Cory Booker (New Jersey), Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), among others.

    “We have heard extensive concerns from the environmental justice community regarding the proposed permitting reforms and are writing to convey the importance of those concerns, and to let you know that we share them,” the lawmakers wrote, per Politico. Only Sanders has publicly made the pledge to vote against the budget bill if Manchin’s proposal is included.

    Meanwhile, it appears that Republicans oppose the deal out of a desire for revenge for the passage of the IRA. Nearly all Senate Republicans have signed onto their own fossil fuel permitting proposal, led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia). Their proposal is similar to Manchin’s bill, with provisions like fast tracking the Mountain Valley Pipeline, but would go further in opening up avenues for air and water pollution with provisions like removing the Clean Air Act requirement for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review federal construction projects. The GOP proposal likely has no chance of passing or being attached to the budget bill.

    Manchin’s proposal also faces opposition from Democrats in the House. Last week, a group of 77 House Democrats sent a letter to the chamber’s leadership, urging them to oppose the inclusion of Manchin’s deal in the government spending bill, saying that the provisions amount to “attempts to short-circuit or undermine the law in the name of ‘reform.’”

    Climate and Appalachian activists have spoken out against the deal, with hundreds of groups sending multiple letters and leading protests against what they say is a massive and unacceptable giveaway to fossil fuels.

    “We’ll never get off fossil fuels if Congress keeps greasing the skids to make it ever easier to approve dirty gas pipelines, refineries and other polluting infrastructure,” government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity Brett Hartl said in a press release that characterizes Manchin’s deal as the “most significant environmental rollback in decades.”

    “Any member of Congress who claims this disastrous legislation is vital for ramping up renewables either doesn’t understand or is ignoring the enormous fossil fuel giveaways at stake,” Hartl continued.

    Appalachian organizers are angered by the deal, saying that it undoes years of progress and struggle from local Indigenous and community activists.

    ​​”For eight years we have tirelessly fought the Mountain Valley Pipeline and other fossil fuel projects in West Virginia and Virginia,” Russell Chisholm, Mountain Valley Watch coordinator, said in a statement. “Nearly a decade of our lives and our health has been shaped by fighting these unnecessary projects as the climate crisis escalates and pummels our homes with intensified storms and floods. Manchin’s dirty pipeline deal is an insult to his constituents and furthers a fossil-fueled death sentence to many people and the planet.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 61 Percent of Republicans Think US Should Be Declared a Christian Nation

    An alarming new poll finds that a comfortable majority of Republicans think that the U.S. should be declared a Christian nation in a show that GOP leaders’ propaganda campaign to normalize and advance fascism has caught hold among the party electorate.

    The poll, conducted by the University of Maryland in May and published by Politico on Wednesday, finds that 61 percent of Republicans favor declaring the U.S. a Christian nation, while 39 percent oppose. Among Democrats, only 17 percent favor the idea, while only 38 percent of respondents expressed support for the idea overall.

    This is despite the fact that declaring Christianity the national religion is blatantly unconstitutional; the First Amendment states that U.S. lawmakers “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

    Most of the poll’s nearly 2,100 respondents acknowledged this, though Republicans did so at a much lower rate than others, at 57 percent compared to 70 percent of all respondents. Still, it is striking that so many Republicans say that they favor such a move despite its unconstitutionality, especially for a party that, before Donald Trump, largely viewed itself as the primary supporter of the Constitution (even if that has never really been true, either).

    That there is such a large amount of support on the right for Christian nationalism is disquieting. Christian nationalism is a dangerous ideology closely associated with — or even identical to — white supremacy, corporate oligarchy and fascism; a modern example of religious nationalism is Zionism and Israel’s quest to violently suppress Palestinians and strip them of their humanity.

    The ideology has been pushed by Trump and his allies in recent years and has even been openly embraced by the party’s most extremist members, including white nationalist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia). Modern Christian nationalists position people of color and LGBTQ people as enemies of civil society, variously asserting that social justice movements are attempts to end Christian “heritage” and the white race.

    Indeed, the poll found that those who support Christian nationalism are highly likely to harbor “white grievance” over their status in the U.S. About 59 percent of those who say that white people are facing increased levels of discrimination — not true by nearly any metric — say that the U.S. should be a Christian nation.

    Research has found that identifying with Christian nationalism is highly correlated with support for political violence — and, indeed, horrific recent events demonstrate the rise of the Christian nationalist movement on the right.

    The racist mass shooter who opened fire in a grocery store in a majority-Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, in May, killing ten people and injuring three others, had links to Christian nationalism, experts say. Christian nationalists also showed up in droves to the anti-democratic attack on the Capitol on January 6, citing God and Christianity as reasons for their attempt to violently overturn the 2020 election.

    The ideology is also at least partially responsible for recent attacks on peoples’ rights. Anti-LGBTQ laws and sentiments have frequently been pushed in the name of Christianity, like in a recent lawsuit by Christian plaintiffs to allow employers to deny coverage of medication for HIV, which disproportionately affects gay and bisexual men, in their health insurance plans.

    And, of course, the overturn of abortion protections under Roe v. Wade was a major triumph of Christian nationalism this summer, stripping hundreds of millions of people of the guarantee that they can choose whether or not to be pregnant and putting millions of lives in danger.

    For those alarmed by the rise of Christian nationalism, there is a small bit of solace, however. The poll finds that it is much more common for older Republicans to want the U.S. to be declared a Christian nation, at 71 and 72 percent among the silent generation and baby boomers, respectively. Among Generation X, millennials and Generation Z, about 50 percent of respondents say they favor Christian nationalism.

  • Sanders to Democrats: If You Support Progressive Policies, “You Win Elections”

    On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) explained to Democrats that, if they want to win elections this fall and beyond, they must support and implement popular progressive policies like student debt cancellation and resist pressure from deep-pocketed donors to give sweeping tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy.

    In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Sanders said that Democratic candidates and lawmakers must position themselves firmly behind the working class and fight against corporate greed, rather than work to feed it.

    “If Democrats are going to do well in 2022, in my view, they’ve got to stand up very firmly for working families,” the Vermont progressive said. “Now is the time, if you want to win an election, to say … ‘I’m prepared to take on greedy, powerful corporate interests who are enjoying record breaking profits while you Americans can’t afford health care, can’t afford to send your kids to college and are working for starvation wages.’ That, to my mind, is how you go forward and win.”

    Backing policies like student debt relief is one such way that Democrats can be on the side of working families, he said.

    “I have the radical idea that good policy is good politics. And it is good policy to cancel student debt in this country,” he said, noting that he would have gone further than President Joe Biden did in his debt cancellation plan. “If you do what the people want, and not what the corporate world wants, billionaire campaign contributors want, you win elections.”

    On the flip side, Republican efforts to stop student debt relief from ever reaching borrowers will “hurt them politically,” Sanders said, noting that polls have found that canceling student debt is widely popular.

    Progressives have long maintained that supporting popular movements like Medicare for All or more recently the growing labor movement is a strong way to gain political power and support from voters. This theory stands in sharp contrast to the way that modern mainstream political candidates from both major parties run their campaigns, soliciting donations from corporations and rich donors — and perhaps promising benefits to them in return — in order to outspend their opponents and win.

    While money remains a powerful force in politics, recent wins from progressives running against corporate-backed opponents suggest that progressives may be right in their assessment of the electoral landscape. Though big donors still successfully defeat progressive candidates who vow not to take corporate funds, primary wins from progressive candidates like Pennsylvania’s Rep. Summer Lee or Oregon’s Jamie McLeod-Skinner this year are bucking the trend.

    Democrats are in need of a boost if they want to maintain control of Congress this fall. Recent polls have found that, while Democrats may be experiencing a surge in support due to moves like the student debt cancellation plan, they will need further support in order to keep their majorities in the Senate and the House.

    Sanders also emphasized in his interview that recent successes from the labor movement could be a major vehicle for political change — and an opportunity for Democrats to demonstrate which side they’re on.

    Recent news with the potential railroad strike, for instance, has exposed “the most ugly type of corporate greed imaginable” from railroad owners, he said. Because of strict attendance policies, workers are often not even able to take time off if they or their spouses are ill — and workers and rail unions say railroad owners are so adamant in their refusal to acquiesce to workers’ time off demands that they’re willing to risk tanking the U.S. economy and push their workers to strike.

    Workers’ willingness to stand up to rail owners and other labor activists’ struggles are a powerful rebuke of growing corporate greed, Sanders said.

    “People are standing up, fighting back,” he said. “What you are seeing right now are workers saying ‘enough is enough. You guys on top — you can’t have it all.’ We need an economy that works for all of us. Unions are one vehicle that help people get decent wages and working conditions.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Philadelphia Home Depot Workers File to Form Company’s First Ever Retail Union

    Retail workers at a Home Depot in Philadelphia filed a petition to unionize this week, seeking to become likely the first-ever store within the company to form a union.

    The filing covers 274 employees, according to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and the union is listed as “Home Depot Workers United.”

    This will likely be the first-ever store-wide union within the company. The NLRB website shows only four petitions for union representation filed within Home Depot, none of which appeared to cover a large swath of employees at a single store like the Philadelphia workers’ petition. According to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 60 Home Depot drivers won a petition to unionize in San Diego in 2019 and were the first to ever join the Teamsters union.

    The workers join a wave of retail workers at nationwide companies like Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, Apple, REI and Chipotle that have recently filed to unionize — a wave that labor activists and progressives say is a sign that the labor movement is stronger than it’s been in decades.

    As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, the Philadelphia workers are apparently unsatisfied with their pay, staffing and overall working conditions; while the company has seen soaring profits throughout the pandemic, the employees say their working conditions have deteriorated.

    “Long story short, we got screwed over during the pandemic,” employee-organizer Vincent Quiles told the Inquirer. “This company made money hand over fist, and we just feel exploited. A lot of times we feel like we’re just a means to an end to make other people a lot of money.”

    The company has indeed been highly profitable throughout the pandemic. Throughout 2020 and 2021, the company made tens of billions of dollars in profits, with 2021 being a “record year,” according to CEO Craig Menear. Last month, the company approved a $15 billion stock buyback plan, while Menear’s compensation for 2022 is over $13 million — or over 450 times its workers’ median pay, according to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

    By contrast, per the Economic Policy Institute, 42 percent of Home Depot workers make less than $15 an hour, or $31,000 a year for a full-time worker. Most of its workers — 68 percent — make between $12 and $18 an hour, close to or below the city’s $17.87 living wage for a single worker with no kids, as calculated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s living wage calculator.

    In response to the union filing, the company says that it opposes unionization and has “a track record of working successfully with our associates to resolve concerns,” according to Bloomberg.

    Quiles said that he had begun quietly organizing the store over the summer, hoping to avoid being noticed because the company “has a history of union busting.”

    According to workers who joined the Teamsters in 2019, Home Depot “brought in union busters” to crush the union campaign, likely meaning that the company hired union-busting lawyers in response to the union effort as many anti-union companies do. Additionally, a TikTok posted last year supposedly shows a training video for the company with anti-union messages in it.

    It’s unclear if this is an independent union, the same way Amazon Labor Union (ALU) has no affiliation with major labor unions, or if it is backed by an established union; however, Quiles says that the organizers are inspired by ALU’s effort and are “hoping to maybe do the same thing.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • AOC: Fossil Fuel Reliance Aided “Tragically Predictable” Puerto Rico Blackout

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said that the power outages in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Fiona was “tragically predictable” and could have been mitigated with sustainability measures that she and climate advocates have promoted.

    High winds knocked out the entire electrical grid for over 1.4 million customers in the U.S. territory on Sunday before the hurricane made landfall, five years after Hurricane Maria similarly caused an island-wide blackout that took nearly a year to fix. However, the system was plagued with constant blackouts. Luma Energy, the private company that took over transmission and distribution of power in Puerto Rico last year, says that it may take several days for power to be fully restored.

    The island’s energy grid has gone through many changes over the past years, with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which oversaw the energy grid before Luma took over, running into $9 billion of debt.

    The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has injected funds into programs to restore the energy projects, but lawmakers — including Ocasio-Cortez — criticized that funding in a letter last year, saying that PREPA’s restoration plans would only entrench fossil fuels and the problems that the island’s energy grid have already faced for years.

    Ocasio-Cortez highlighted the letter on Tuesday, saying that lawmakers’ prediction has now come true.

    “More than 4 years after Maria and Irma wiped out power for 70 percent of the Island, the grid was still extremely vulnerable to natural disasters. This weekend’s infrastructure failure was tragically predictable,” she wrote on Twitter.

    “We now have the chance to do something different,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “We can help Puerto Rico’s economy and vulnerability to climate change by building a reliable, sustainable grid that will create thousands of jobs. We must break the vicious cycle of rebuilding vulnerable fossil fuel infrastructure.”

    The island’s power grid is almost entirely powered by fossil fuels, and FEMA’s $9.4 billion funding plan for the island is earmarked nearly entirely for more fossil fuel infrastructure. Despite the fossil fuel industry’s long-running campaign to paint fossil fuels as reliable, power on the island is intermittent and even small storms can knock out power to thousands.

    In their letter, lawmakers said that using these funds to transition the island to a higher renewable energy mix would “break the vicious cycle” of extreme weather damage and the further entrenchment of fossil fuels.

    Ocasio-Cortez added in an interview on Monday with Latino Rebels that, as Congress considers plans to respond to the current crisis, it is an opportunity to fund a “just transition” to renewable energies and resilience efforts like building power cables underground.

    She also echoed calls from labor unions and community activists who have long called for the Puerto Rico government to cancel its contract with Luma.

    Though the power grid’s reliability has not seen significant improvements under Luma — and while thousands of unionized PREPA workers lost their jobs in the transition to the company — customers are now paying double the rate for electricity than they were before Luma took over. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Puerto Ricans now pay 8 percent of their incomes for electricity, compared to 2.4 percent on average across the U.S.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Stock Ban May Not Come to Vote This Month as Pelosi Claimed, Lawmakers Say

    Proponents of legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading stocks are say that Democratic party leaders are stalling on the bill.

    Though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) claimed last week that lawmakers are finally ready to bring a bill to ban Congress from trading stocks to a vote by the end of this month, proponents of the ban are skeptical that that is the case, according to interviews with the lawmakers.

    As Insider reports, key advocates of the proposal in the House like Representatives Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois) and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) say that, even though lawmakers have been negotiating the bill for months, the details of a potential ban are still not being discussed.

    Democratic leadership, meanwhile, has not been clueing lead advocates in on their plans for the legislation — and some lawmakers think that Democratic leaders could be delaying because they’re personally against the plan, with people like Pelosi and her husband personally profiting greatly from stock trading.

    As a New York Times report revealed last week, members of Congress regularly make stock trades in companies that their committees oversee, potentially representing conflicts of interest. According to the report, nearly a fifth of Congress has reported making such a trade between 2019 and 2021.

    Last Wednesday, Pelosi said that lawmakers “believe we have a product that we can bring to the floor this month. But in a briefing with the Committee on House Administration on Thursday on the bill, advocates were presented with no legislative text, according to two Democratic sources, but just a framework on the bill. Lawmakers on the committee have been claiming that bill text is ready for months, but no such thing has emerged.

    “We have not heard exactly what’s happening,” Jayapal told Insider. “I can’t say I’m confident.”

    Spanberger has speculated that Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) are simply trying to put the bill off long enough until efforts to pass it fizzle out. “I think that they’re trying to run out the clock,” she said in May.

    The delay isn’t due to a lack of energy or ideas for the proposal; there have been multiple stock ban bills introduced by members from both sides of the aisle over the past year, with rare bipartisan support for the ban. Those bills all have some form of ban on members’ ability to trade individual stocks. Some include variations on whether their families should also be banned, while others allow lawmakers to keep the stocks in a blind trust or require officials to divest from them entirely.

    One roadblock to progress on the proposal in the House may be the House Administration Committee, which is drafting the bill. After the committee held a hearing on the idea earlier this year, committee chair Zoe Lofgren (D-California) was cool to the proposal. Republicans on the committee also said that they are opposed to the idea.

    According to Insider, Spanberger sought a meeting with Lofgren after the April hearing, and found a wide disconnect between lawmakers in terms of their understanding of the bill. “It was very clear that some of the members just were on different planets talking about this issue,” said Spanberger. “Like, ‘Oh, am I going to have to sell my house?’”

    Even if lawmakers are successful in urging Pelosi and Democratic leaders to make progress on the proposal, Senate Democrats are saying that they won’t propose a stock ban until after the midterm election, according to Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), frustrating Senate advocates.

    “There is no reason that we should not have a stock trading bill on the floor and vote on it,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) told Insider last week. “Every day that we delay on passing meaningful restrictions on stock trading among members of Congress is a day that further erodes the credibility of this body.”

    Indeed, as the proposal has been delayed, advocates and watchdog groups have grown increasingly frustrated, saying that a stock ban is crucial to restoring public confidence in lawmakers. As long as lawmakers are allowed to trade stocks, they say, the public will question whether or not they’re using insider information to get out ahead; after all, Congress beat the market last year.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • GOP: Student Loan Forgiveness Hurts Ability to Lure Poor People Into Military

    Republicans are facing criticism for complaining that President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellation program will hurt the Pentagon’s ability to recruit poor people into the military.

    Last week, a group of 19 Republican representatives sent a letter saying that Biden’s recent plan to cancel up to $10,000 for borrowers or $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients making under $75,000 a year is “removing any leverage the Department of Defense” to recruit people wishing to access higher education but who can’t afford it.

    Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) tweeted a link to a news report on the letter, saying that he is “very concerned that the deeply flawed and unfair policy of blanket student loan forgiveness will also weaken our most powerful recruiting tool at the precise moment we are experiencing a crisis in military recruiting.”

    Bacon faced ridicule for his tweet by progressives like former Ohio state senator Nina Turner, who are saying that GOP lawmakers are openly admitting that they have an interest in keeping higher education expensive as a tool for military recruitment.

    “Read between the lines: these folks want poor people to be put in a corner so they will go fight endless wars that benefit the rich just to receive an education,” Turner wrote.

    Republicans have faced criticism for similar statements. Last month, Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana) similarly complained that student debt forgiveness “undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools.”

    Critics of the Pentagon have long condemned what is known as the “poverty draft.” The military’s offers of financial incentives like student loan repayment, free college, and other cash incentives are a draw for young people experiencing debt or poverty.

    And, knowing this, the military often actively travels to schools in poor and nonwhite neighborhoods in order to recruit; then, once they join, Black, Latinx, Indigenous and low-income people are disproportionately placed in the most dangerous situations compared to other enlistees.

    This predatory practice is unethical for many reasons, critics of the practice argue. People in active military service are at high risk of mental health issues like suicide, and critics say that poor people shouldn’t have to put their bodies and lives on the line just in order to afford higher education.

    With that in mind, critics said on social media that it is alarming that Republicans would not only acknowledge this fact but also openly advocate for it, saying that Republicans were saying “the quiet part out loud.”

    Activist group the Debt Collective wrote that if canceling student debt actually does decrease military recruitment, that would, in fact, be a good thing.

    “One of the best parts about canceling student debt is thinking of all the people who no longer feel compelled to enlist in the military to pay off their loans,” the group wrote on Twitter. “It is not a stretch to say that canceling student debt — and making college free — would hamper U.S. imperial/colonial efforts.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Poll Finds Trump’s Approval Is Declining — While Biden’s Is on the Rise

    New polling finds that former President Donald Trump’s approval rating among the public has dropped to its lowest point in nearly a year and a half, following a legal scandal for the former president and along with the rising approval of President Joe Biden.

    According to an NBC poll released on Sunday, only about one in three Americans say they approve of Trump as of mid-September. About 34 percent of the survey’s 1,000 registered voter respondents said they approve of the former president, while 54 percent said they disapprove.

    This is the lowest approval for Trump that NBC has recorded since April of 2021, when only about 32 percent of voters said they approved of him. While Trump’s approval shot up to 38 percent last August, his approval rate has been steadily declining ever since, NBC finds.

    As Trump’s approval has declined, Biden’s approval has increased. After hitting lows of about 41 and 42 percent this summer, Biden’s approval rating is bouncing back, hitting 45 percent in the publication’s most recent survey.

    While Biden’s overall approval rating is still in the negatives, with 52 percent of voters saying they view him negatively, it’s been on an upward trend as gas prices have gone down and Biden has announced major initiatives like canceling up to $20,000 of student debt for certain debtors.

    The poll also finds that Democrats in general are experiencing a boost over Republicans — thanks in part to the far right’s attacks on abortion and education. Still, voters are evenly split over who they want to control Congress after this year’s midterm elections, with 46 percent saying they prefer Republican control and 46 percent saying they prefer Democratic control.

    The dip in favorability for Trump may be due to a search carried out by the FBI last month at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Officials were reportedly searching for documents related to nuclear weapons that the former president improperly took from the White House and seemingly stored haphazardly at his estate, potentially risking a leak of classified, sensitive information.

    Indeed, the poll found that a majority of voters — 56 percent — said that the investigation into the documents should continue, while 41 percent, largely Republicans, said they should stop. These results echo those of other polls that similarly find that Americans support the investigation, while Trump’s favorability ratings have dropped in the weeks following the search.

    Polls on related issues also suggest that Trump’s popularity is low; earlier this month, Reuters/Ipsos found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans agree that Trump’s Make America Great Again movement is a threat to democracy, in line with experts who say that Trump is playing a major part in leading the Republican Party in its embrace of fascism.

    As the 2016 presidential election made clear, however, polls can often have a bias toward Democrats, and political experts say that pollsters have not made enough tweaks to their models to correct that bias in the ensuing years. Still, polling can still be a useful indicator of trends, even if they may not always reflect precise percentages.

  • Entirety of Puerto Rico’s Private Power Grid Knocked Out Before Hurricane Hit

    The entirety of Puerto Rico lost power on Sunday, leaving the island’s over 3 million people in the dark before the Category 1 Hurricane Fiona that was forecasted to dump at least over a foot and up to 30 inches of rain on the island.

    Over 1.4 million customers tracked by Luma Energy, which owns the transmission and distribution of power in Puerto Rico, lost power. This includes places like health centers, where many people rely on electricity to survive. According to PowerOutage.us, the vast majority of buildings and residences are still without power as of Monday morning, with over 1.3 million customers currently in a blackout.

    The hurricane, which experts say was likely made worse by the climate crisis, has now largely passed Puerto Rico, leaving landslides and flooding in its wake, destruction that Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi called “catastrophic.” The storm also ripped the roofs off of homes and took down a bridge in the town of Utuado in central Puerto Rico.

    Large portions of the island have also been left without safe drinking water in the wake of the storm. Officials have confirmed at least one death caused by the storm so far.

    President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency for the island on Sunday, freeing up Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding and resources to coordinate a response to the storm.

    Luma says that high speed winds and otherwise poor conditions disrupted power lines, leading to the blackout. The company says that it could take several days for power to be fully restored.

    The storm hit five years after Hurricane Maria, the worst-ever hurricane to hit the U.S. territory, also knocked out all power on the island. The island’s now-privately owned power grid never recovered from that storm — the grid is now constantly plagued by power outages and brownouts, and residents and energy analysts note that electricity can be knocked out for hundreds of thousands of customers if there’s even a mild storm.

    Maria’s devastation highlighted deep-rooted issues with the island’s electrical grid. It took nearly an entire year for power to be fully restored to the island’s customers — if it can be categorized as such with constant blackouts and brownouts. The government agency that managed the electricity system at the time was dealing with a shrinking workforce, billions in debt and corruption within its ranks.

    The hurricane paved the way for Luma to take over the transmission and distribution of power on the island from the agency, known as Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), with the goal of revitalizing the grid and making it more reliable. But experts noted when officials drew up plans for the transfer in 2018 that privatization would not help heal the island’s grid — and, as previous privatization schemes for water utilities on the island showed, it could make the situation worse.

    Indeed, some Puerto Ricans say that the blackouts and brownouts have remained unchanged or even worsened since Luma took over grid management last year, while customers are now paying double the rate for electricity that they were paying before the takeover. These reliability issues also come as the island’s grid is almost entirely powered by fossil fuel sources, not only contributing to the climate crisis but also majorly driving prices up, according to one analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

    On top of that, thousands of unionized workers who worked for PREPA lost their jobs or were transferred to other departments when Luma took over; while many were offered jobs with Luma, they declined because they would have lost benefits like pensions, according to the union.

    Because of these issues, Puerto Ricans have waged protests against Luma, asking for the government to end its contract with the company.

  • Ocasio-Cortez Calls Out Cruz for Lying About Martha’s Vineyard Stunt

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) called Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) an embarrassment on Saturday after the senator spread disinformation about the way asylum seekers who were sent to Martha’s Vineyard in a cruel GOP stunt were treated by the residents of the island.

    After Republican Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott sent dozens of mostly Venezuelan asylum seekers and refugees to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and other liberal areas last week, Ocasio-Cortez thanked Martha’s Vineyard residents for immediately mobilizing to shelter the migrants, despite being given zero notice that they were arriving.

    In a tweet responding to Ocasio-Cortez on Friday, Cruz lied about how the migrants were treated, saying that “The rich, liberal ‘people of Martha’s Vineyard’ DEPORTED THE ILLEGAL ALIENS WITHIN 24 HOURS.” This is untrue — the residents of the island had arranged to shelter and feed the group upon their arrival, and the state has now arranged to have them sheltered and fed at an emergency shelter in Cape Cod.

    Ocasio-Cortez called out Cruz’s lie. “They were not deported. They were brought to shelter in the U.S. With no help from you. Why lie to and traffic Venezuelan refugees? For votes? This is nuestra familia Latina,” meaning “our Latin family.” She continued in her tweet, saying, “You should be standing up for them. If it’s one thing we can count on you for, it’s being una vergüenza,” or an embarrassment.

    The right has repeatedly spread disinformation about the Martha’s Vineyard stunt, which Republicans likely pulled in hopes of exposing so-called “liberal hypocrisy” on immigration. Cruz recently deleted a tweet from last week in which he falsely claimed that Democrats had activated the National Guard in order to “interdict” the group, when in fact the National Guard was activated to help with relief.

    In reality, however, it is Republicans who are likely to come out of the incident looking cruel and callous, reportedly having lied to the migrants about where they were being taken and resources that would be provided to them in an inhumane and potentially illegal attempt to score political points.

    Ocasio-Cortez castigated the GOP lawmakers for the move on social media. “It’s appalling that far-right politicians seem to have decided that fall before an election is their regularly scheduled time to commit crimes against humanity on refugees,” she said Friday. “Don’t normalize this. Lying to & trafficking people for TV and clicks isn’t politics as usual. It’s abuse.”

    She pointed out that immigration has only become the arduous process that it is for many asylum seekers at the southern border because it has been politicized.

    “Not people calling others ‘illegal’ as they fondly recall their last name is spelled the way it is because their great-grandpa came to the US with the equivalent of a misspelled post-it note,” she wrote. “By today’s standards, most US families would have be deemed undocumented or trafficked at some point in their family history. For the most part, people didn’t need lawyers and years of processing to come to the US until immigration became a racialized issue. Remember that.”

    Representatives for the migrants and other immigration experts have called for a criminal probe into DeSantis, likening his action to human trafficking or kidnapping. On Saturday, Lawyers for Civil Rights, which represents about 30 of the people who were flown to Martha’s Vineyard, sent a letter asking the Massachusetts attorney general to open a criminal investigation into the “shameful political stunt.” New York City Mayor Eric Adams also said that he is looking into legal action after Abbott similarly bused asylum seekers from Texas into New York.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Tells Warren Buffett to Treat Rail Workers Better and Avert Strike

    As a strike by tens of thousands of railroad workers looms, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is calling on multibillionaire and owner of a parent company involved, Warren Buffett, to listen to workers’ demands and intervene to avert the strike.

    Rail workers have been pleading with major freight companies to agree to give workers basic benefits; one of the biggest sticking points, workers say, is that many of them can’t take sick or emergency days, whether paid or unpaid, without racking up points that could lead to their termination. Workers say they’re also expected to be on call 24/7, which exacerbates burnout and exhaustion.

    One of the major freight companies that unions say won’t budge on this is BNSF, which is owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. As union representatives told The Washington Post, BNSF is also one of the two major rail companies, along with Union Pacific, that are blocking process on negotiations. The group representing the rail companies says that workers aren’t denied sick time.

    “In the midst of a potential rail strike, Warren Buffett, the owner of BNSF Railway’s parent company, worth $100 billion, must intervene,” Sanders wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “During the pandemic, Mr. Buffett became $36 billion richer. He must ensure that rail workers receive decent wages and safe working conditions.”

    Two of the 12 unions involved in negotiations have ratified agreements as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the National Carriers’ Conference Committee (NCCC), which represents railroads in negotiations, but there are still a number of negotiations pending involving the largest unions.

    Though it is unlikely that Buffett would heed Sanders’s call, it underscores the players of the looming strike, which the unions say can be blamed on corporate greed and “extortion,” as two of the largest unions involved, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), Teamsters Rail Conference and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) Transportation Division, said in a joint statement on Sunday.

    Indeed, U.S. rail companies are making record profits, as the stock prices for all of the largest railroads – known as Class I railroads – rose in 2021. They have paid out nearly $200 billion in stock buybacks and dividends to shareholders in the past 12 years – and yet, in recent years, have eliminated tens of thousands of jobs and are pushing workers to the breaking point.

    BLET President Dennis Pierce says that the unions and the companies aren’t far apart in negotiations – and yet, the companies won’t budge to grant workers their request for a time off benefit.

    “All we’re asking is folks to be able to go to routine doctor’s visits without pay, but they have refused to accept our proposals,” Pierce said to The Washington Post. “The average American would not know that we get fired for going to the doctor. This one thing has our members most enraged. We have guys who were punished for taking time off for a heart attack and COVID. It’s inhumane.”

    If workers are pushed to strike, it will have major consequences for a large range of industries covering basic needs like energy, water and food. The White House has stepped in on the negotiations, hoping to work out an agreement between the unions.

    Republicans in Congress are planning to force a vote on a bill on Wednesday that would force both parties to accept an arbitration agreement, an option that’s favored by conservative lobbyists and railways. It’s expected to be blocked by Democrats.

    Sanders spoke out against the move on the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon.

    While industry CEOs and companies are raking in large compensation packages and record profits, Sanders pointed out that workers are being treated inhumanely. “The key issue that is being contested is about the working conditions in the industry which are absolutely unacceptable and are almost beyond belief,” he said.

    “What the freight rail industry is saying to its workers is this: it does not matter if you have covid, it doesn’t matter if you’re lying in a hospital bed, it doesn’t matter if your wife just gave birth to your child, it doesn’t matter. If you do not come in to work for whatever reason, we in the industry, we the bosses, have the right to fire you,” he continued.

  • Hundreds Protest as Starbucks Holds Investor Day Without Any Retail Workers

    Hundreds of workers took to the streets in front of Starbucks’s Seattle headquarters on Tuesday as the company hosted investors for its biennial investor day, in which executives and investors discuss the company’s outlook — an event that has never once included representation from a Starbucks retail worker, the workers’ union says.

    Joined by other union members, workers with Starbucks Workers United are demanding that the company give them a say in its strategy and financial decisions and a place at the bargaining table for contract negotiations, which the company has been delaying. They are also asking the company to stop union-busting practices like firing pro-union employees, which it has done almost 100 times over the course of the union drive, Starbucks Workers United says.

    “Starbucks workers are referred to as partners, which is ironic given that the company abjectly refuses to partner with us,” said Billie Adeosun, who has worked as a barista for seven years, in a statement. “They’ve delayed bargaining. They’ve lied to employees. They have proven that they value their performatively liberal brand and their profits more than the workers who bring in that revenue.”

    Just a few miles from the company’s headquarters, workers also went on strike on Tuesday at the company’s flagship roastery, asking the company to stop union busting and recognize their union. The store, one of only three of its kind in the U.S., voted to unionize in April.

    Though that win was months ago, the union says that the company is still delaying bargaining with the employees; it has apparently delayed so long, in fact, that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charged the company with a complaint of illegal labor practices, saying that the company has refused to recognize the union and refuses to bargain.

    The workers’ protest comes just after the company announced on Monday that it is rolling out new student loan and savings account programs that union members will not be allowed to access. The move has been widely criticized by labor advocates, who say that it was done to discourage workers from unionizing.

    “Starbucks is blatantly disregarding the law to continue their scorched-earth union-busting campaign,” Workers United said in a statement, per Bloomberg. “Starbucks is not only damaging their brand and their business, but irrevocably damaging their credibility as a company.”

    American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) communications adviser Steve Smith said that the move is a show of how far the company is willing to go to antagonize its employees.

    “Let’s be crystal clear about one thing: Corporations that have even a modicum of concern about the well-being of their workers would never do anything like this,” Smith wrote. “Union-busting Starbucks executives are squarely in comic-book villain territory now.”

    The company has gotten in hot water with the NLRB for a similar practice before. Earlier this year, the company announced that it was raising wages and benefit increases only for non-union workers. According to the NLRB, which filed a complaint over the move last month, this is illegal, and labor officials are seeking compensation for unionized employees who didn’t receive the benefit and wage increases.

    Despite the company’s efforts, the union has been remarkably successful, becoming a major symbol of the burgeoning labor movement in the U.S. According to the NLRB, the union has won 80 percent of its elections so far, with almost 240 unionized stores and 18 elections in the pipeline.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 2021 Had Lowest-Ever Supplemental Poverty Rate, Thanks to Stimulus Provisions

    Poverty rates hit a record low by some measures in 2021, the Census Bureau found in a new report released Tuesday, thanks in large part to the direct aid provided in stimulus bills passed by Congress over the first year of the pandemic.

    The Census Bureau found that the poverty rate hit an all-time low of 7.8 percent last year, while the child poverty rate fell to an all-time low of 4.5 percent, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure.

    The Supplemental Poverty Measure takes a more holistic view of poverty, taking into account aid provided by public programs like Social Security and costs like food, shelter and utilities, rather than just looking at income and food costs like the Census’s traditional poverty measure. Because of the increase in costs taken into account, the supplemental poverty rate is typically higher than the official poverty rate, but dropped below the official poverty rate for the second time in history last year.

    The programs that drove the largest reductions in poverty were Social Security, refundable tax credits like the expanded child tax credit and the stimulus checks, the agency found; these measures moved about 26 million, 10 million and 9 million people out of poverty last year, respectively. The expanded child tax credit, which expired at the end of 2021, lifted 5.3 million people out of poverty alone.

    These findings are an astounding show of the efficacy of the measures put forth in the stimulus packages.

    Not only did the aid help to keep millions from experiencing poverty, the Census measurements show, they also appear to have staved off losses that were expected from economic instability and unemployment rates last year. Indeed, the massive reductions in poverty rates came despite the fact that median household income remained statistically unchanged from 2020, adjusted for inflation.

    “This has been a large-scale experiment that shows that child poverty is a solvable problem in the United States, and that poverty more broadly is,” Alix Gould-Werth, director of family economic security policy for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told The New York Times. “So in order to see these changes last, we really need sustained public investment.”

    The Agriculture Department similarly found earlier this month that child food insecurity declined to an over two-decade low last year, thanks in large part to expansions in the U.S.’s social safety net.

    Although the stimulus measures had a massive hand in reducing poverty and child poverty, conservatives in Congress fought to lessen or eliminate the direct aid in negotiations for the bills. Progressive lawmakers fought to keep the expanded child tax credit alive and continued to advocate for the program after it expired, but the program is effectively dead due to Republicans’ and Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-West Virginia) opposition.

    Republicans argue that continuing programs like the expanded child tax credit would provide aid to those who don’t truly need it, or that it would cost the government too much money.

    But these arguments are fallacious; the Census analysis shows that the program helps millions of children who would otherwise experience poverty, while an investment into a version of the program would pay off 10-fold for the government, massively increasing health and education outcomes for both children and parents.

    On the other hand, progressives have long argued that poverty is a policy choice, and that reducing poverty is not only the moral thing to do but also an economically sound choice to raise up low-income people and help rebuild the middle class.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Labor Activists: Senate Candidates Should Support PRO Act or Get Out of Congress

    A coalition of labor groups is launching an effort to pressure U.S. Senate candidates in battleground states to support the pro-union Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.

    This week, the Worker Power Coalition will begin calling, protesting and visiting the offices of senators up for reelection this fall, pressuring them into supporting the PRO Act or publicly shaming them if they don’t, according to Politico. Organizers will target lawmakers in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, New Hampshire, Nevada, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida.

    The coalition, made up of over 40 labor, progressive and climate groups and led by several major labor unions, including Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and United Auto Workers (UAW), says it aims to make it clear to voters whether or not candidates are pro-worker.

    One way to do this, they say, is to force the PRO Act to come to a vote so that every senator’s vote is on the record, which International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) President Jimmy Williams Jr. told Politico would show voters “who the real pro-worker members of the U.S. Senate are.”

    The PRO Act is a sweeping labor bill that would massively expand workers’ rights to collectively bargain and form unions, setting much harsher legal penalties on employers for violating labor laws, outlawing common union-busting tactics and ending “right-to-work” laws, among many other provisions. Labor advocates say that, if the bill passes Congress, it will be the most consequential and vital labor legislation of this generation.

    The Worker Power Coalition has been working for over a year to bring attention to the PRO Act in Congress. In March, the bill passed the House with only one Democratic dissenter, Rep. Henry Cuellar (Texas), but it has yet to come to a vote in the Senate. It’s unclear how much support it currently has in that chamber, though reporting from last year suggests that all Republicans are against the bill, as well as three Democrats — Senators Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona), Mark Kelly (Arizona) and Mark Warner (Virginia).

    “We have an opportunity in November to elect somebody different who we know supports the PRO Act,” Florida coalition campaign leader Curtis Hierro told Politico. Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, for instance, could be unseated by Democratic challenger Rep. Val Demings, who voted for the PRO Act in the House last year. Rubio, on the other hand, introduced a bill earlier this year that would provide an “alternative to unions,” per Politico.

    “We’re going to make sure that every single voter in Florida understands clearly where Marco Rubio stands on that issue when they go to cast their vote this November,” Hierro said. “One of the great labor songs that still has relevancy is, ‘What side are you on?’ And we definitely want to make it plain for the working people of Florida — who is a great majority — what side Marco Rubio is on.”

    The coalition’s push comes amid surging union popularity and activity in the U.S. Over just the past year, labor organizers have launched and won a number of major campaigns at corporations like Starbucks and Amazon, as well as at lesser known organizations.

    It’s likely that these victories are also fueling an uptick in the public’s opinion of unions; according to a Gallup poll released late last month, union approval is at 71 percent, its highest point since 1965. This represents a 23 percent increase since 2009. The same poll also found that 42 percent of working respondents are interested in joining a union, with 11 percent saying that they’re “extremely interested” in union membership.

  • 15,000 Minnesota Nurses Wage Largest Private Sector Nurses’ Strike in US History

    Fifteen thousand Minnesota nurses began a three-day strike on Monday in what the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) says is the largest private sector nurses’ strike in U.S. history.

    The strike spanned 16 Minnesota hospitals and was authorized by union members last month after over five months of negotiations with hospital administrators led to what the union says are inadequate or essentially nonexistent offers for workers’ safety, staffing and salary demands.

    “Hospital executives have already driven nurses away from the bedside by their refusal to solve the crises of staffing and retention in our hospitals, and we hope they will not be so brash as to fire nurses for standing up to demand better,” MNA said in a statement earlier this month.

    “If hospital executives want to avoid a strike on September 12, they should spend less time and money on lawyers and more time working with nurses to settle fair contracts to improve patient care and working conditions in our hospitals,” the union continued.

    Nurses say that, while they didn’t want to strike, issues like understaffing at their hospitals mean they aren’t able to adequately provide for patients, even when a patient is facing an urgent or emergency situation.

    “I can’t give my patients the care they deserve,” Chris Rubesch, vice president of the Minnesota Nurses Association and a Duluth nurse, told The Washington Post. “Call lights go unanswered. Patients should only be waiting for a few seconds or minutes if they’ve soiled themselves or their oxygen came unplugged or they need to go to the bathroom, but that can take 10 minutes or more. Those are things that can’t wait.”

    The union has asked for a 27 to 30 percent raise over the next three years. These raises would more closely match both inflationary and staffing pressures that its members face, they say — especially as nurses as a whole have faced increased risks throughout the pandemic.

    Hospital administrators have countered with a 10 to 12 percent raise over the next three years, or a bit over 3 percent a year on average — far lower than recent rates of inflation. The hospitals blame the strike on workers, saying that they have refused to negotiate, though the MNA claims it is administrators who haven’t budged on key issues.

    “Nurses have steadfastly refused to go to mediation,” a spokesperson for Twin Cities Hospital Group said to The Washington Post. “Their choice is to strike.”

    Many of the hospital groups are hiring nurses to replace workers as they strike; Twin Cities Hospital Group said that it’s hiring 2,000 traveling nurses during the strike, while other affected hospitals are also bringing in temporary workers, according to reports.

    The workers have garnered the support of local and national lawmakers, including Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party member, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

    “I stand in solidarity with the 15,000 [Minnesota nurses] on strike this week fighting for safer care, fair scheduling, and higher wages,” Sanders said on Twitter Monday. “Nurses are the backbone of our health care system. They understand what’s best for their patients.”

    The health care sector is facing major issues with nurse staffing, which has taken a huge hit amid the pandemic and never quite recovered. While administrators complain that nurses are “exploiting” the shortage, nurses across the country have said that the shortage can be chalked up to hospitals’ failures to adequately invest in their own workers. Such failures also endanger patients, nurses say.

    Health care workers have led strikes throughout the pandemic. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were five strikes of over 1,000 workers from unions representing health care workers in 2020 and four such strikes in 2021.

    Labor activity in the sector appears to be reaching a new high this year, according to Healthcare Dive, with at least seven strikes of 1,000 workers or more in health care so far, including the Minnesota workers’ strike. Recently, a strike set to consist of hundreds of nurses at UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin, was narrowly averted.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Manchin’s Pipeline Deal Must Be Blocked, 77 Democrats Say in Letter

    A group of 77 House Democrats are urging the chamber’s leadership to oppose the inclusion of a host of pro-fossil fuel provisions in the upcoming must-pass government funding bill, including a side deal made with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) to fast track a major fracked gas pipeline.

    The Democrats, led by House Committee on Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva (D-Arizona), say that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) must ensure that efforts to weaken fossil fuel project permitting regulations — which are slated to be included in the upcoming continuing resolution to fund the government — are taken out.

    This is not only crucial for the climate, the Democrats say, but also for protecting low-income, Indigenous and other non-white communities. The letter was signed by prominent progressive lawmakers, including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington).

    Permitting provisions that are slated to be included in the resolution are tantamount to “attempts to short-circuit or undermine the law in the name of ‘reform,’” which “must be opposed,” the Democrats wrote, noting that these reforms appear to have been proposed by the American Petroleum Institute (API).

    These “reforms” include setting maximum timelines for the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which environmentalists say would severely undermine the keystone environmental law’s efficacy in guarding frontline communities from pollution and other impacts and could worsen the climate crisis. The proposals could kneecap the public’s ability to comment on projects that are slated to be placed in their communities, which is crucial to the NEPA process.

    There are also proposals to weaken permitting regulations set by the Clean Water Act and set strict deadlines for court challenges to energy projects — the latter of which are a crucial tool of climate advocates fighting against projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which is set to be fast tracked by the resolution.

    “These destructive provisions will allow polluting manufacturing and energy development projects to be rushed through before the families who are forced to live near them are even aware of the plans,” the lawmakers wrote.

    “The inclusion of these provisions in a continuing resolution, or any other must-pass legislation, would silence the voices of frontline and environmental justice communities by insulating them from scrutiny,” they continued. “Such a move would force Members to choose between protecting EJ communities from further pollution or funding the government.”

    The letter comes as Indigenous and Appalchian climate activists protested in Washington, D.C. last week to speak out against the Manchin and Big Oil deal, saying that Democrats’ approval of projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline sacrifices their communities for the profits of fossil fuel corporations.

    “The Manchin dirty deal is more than a dirty deal and a give-away to the fossil fuel industry,” Maury Johnson, co-chair of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights Coalition, which helped to lead the protest, said in a statement. “If it is passed it will decimate the environmental and social justice laws put into place over the several decades.”

    Other lawmakers have also spoken out against the pipeline, which is projected to emit the equivalent amount of greenhouse gas emissions of 26 coal plants a year and transport fracked gas between over 300 miles of West Virginia and Virginia, according to Oil Change International. Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) announced that he would not vote for the continuing resolution if it included the Mountain Valley Pipeline deal.

    “Combating climate change is more important than fossil fuel profits. I will not vote for any bill that makes it easier for Big Oil to destroy the planet and that includes approving the Mountain Valley Pipeline,” Sanders said on Twitter. “The Continuing Resolution must not be held hostage by Big Oil.”

    Correction: This story has been edited to reflect a new number of letter signers after lawmakers sent an updated version of the document late Monday afternoon.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Majority of Americans Say MAGA Movement Is a Threat to Democracy, Poll Finds

    New polling finds that a majority of Americans view Donald Trump’s far right political movement as a threat to American democracy.

    According to a survey done by Reuters/Ipsos last week, 58 percent of respondents believe that Trump’s so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement threatens to undermine democracy.

    The poll found that one in four Republicans also agree that MAGA is threatening democracy. Though this number does not represent the majority of Republicans, it shows that a significant portion of the party’s base rejects the extremist bent that many mainstream Republicans have embraced in recent years. The survey also found that 60 percent of Republicans don’t think MAGA represents the majority of the party.

    The findings add to evidence from other recent polls that Trump’s popularity — if it existed in the first place — is waning. Only a third of voters in a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll said they believe Trump should run for president again, while 61 percent said he shouldn’t.

    The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted in the days following President Joe Biden’s speeches warning of the threat of “semi-fascism” within the Republican Party, in which Biden issued his strongest rebukes of the right since he took office.

    “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people,” Biden said last week in a speech in Pennsylvania. “They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state, to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.”

    Political experts and anti-fascists have been warning for years of the threat that Trump and his movement pose to a democratic society — even before he took office. His actions to gag government scientists, repeal regulations whole cloth, normalize the perpetuation of blatant lies from far right politicians and resurrect open white supremacy in the mainstream Republican Party have continually empowered the party to suppress facts and uplift its most extreme figures.

    It is fitting that Trump ended his first term by rejecting the results of the 2020 presidential election and stoking an attempted coup to violently force lawmakers to overturn the will of American voters, as historians say that Trump and his movement have brought the U.S. to the brink of fascism and, potentially, the end of American democracy.

    Republican lawmakers and political figures across the country have seized upon Trump’s election-denial to implement dozens of voter suppression laws and even establish blatantly fascist institutions like a so-called election police force put in place by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year.

    Despite the unpopularity of the MAGA movement among the public, however, extremist Republicans have been finding success in state and federal elections. According to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight earlier this week, over half of Americans will have an election denier on their midterm ballot this fall, with 256 candidates running for state or federal office that outright or somewhat deny the results of the 2020 election.

  • Elizabeth Warren Introduces Bill to Ban Anti-Union “Right-to-Work” Laws

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) has introduced a bill that would ban states from implementing so-called “right-to-work” laws, which suppress union activity and make it more difficult for workers to form unions.

    The bill, which was previously introduced in 2017 and 2020, is known as the Protecting Workers and Improving Labor Standards Act. It would rescind “right-to-work” laws — which are currently in place in 27 states and Guam — that prohibit unions from collecting dues from non-union members who are still covered under a union contract.

    Labor organizers have long advocated against such laws, saying they lower wages and worsen working conditions not only for pro-union workers, but for all workers in states where “right-to-work” legislation is implemented, as data has shown.

    “Republicans and their corporate interest backers have imposed state laws with only one goal: destroy unions and discourage workers from organizing for higher wages, fair benefits, and safer working conditions,” Warren said.

    “At a time when labor unions are growing in both size, popularity, and delivering real wins for workers, Democrats are making clear that we stand in solidarity with workers everywhere, from Starbucks baristas to Google cafeteria workers and everyone in between,” she went on. She also advocated for the passage of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would massively expand the ability of workers to form unions in the U.S.

    The bill is cosponsored by 18 senators and 12 House representatives, including prominent progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington). It has little chance of passing the Senate filibuster, which forces bills to clear a 60-vote threshold to pass.

    The bill also has the support of many major labor organizations, including the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Unions (AFL-CIO), the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW).

    As a press release on the bill points out, “right-to-work” laws result in 5 percent lower union rates and a decrease in overall wages for full-time workers of about $11,000 a year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Further, according to the AFL-CIO, workers in these states have worse health benefits and workplace fatality rates. These states also have a nearly 15 percent higher poverty rate.

    Such laws have likely played a large role in declining union rates in the U.S. In the 1940s, roughly a third of workers were in a labor union. But union rates have been declining ever since then — with the majority of “right-to-work” laws being passed in the 40s and 50s, and a handful in the 2010s — and now sit at a mere 10.3 percent.

    Pro-union advocates and labor experts say that “right-to-work” laws severely kneecap unions financially, as they require unions to represent workers that may not even be paying dues. Supporters of “right-to-work” claim that it gives workers more choice and boosts employment, but research shows that this isn’t true: states with such laws don’t have higher employment, and, as a result of unions being weakened, workers have less bargaining power and less choice than workers in stronger unions.

    A ban on “right-to-work” has been proposed before, in the PRO Act. But although the PRO Act passed the House last year, it’s never been taken up in the Senate, as several conservative Democrats are opposed to its passage.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Report: 17 of 18 Pro-Democracy Bills Were Killed By Filibuster This Congress

    Recent years have marked a period of deep uncertainty and danger for the health of American democracy, and a new report reveals one major reason why attempts to protect democracy could be failing: the Senate filibuster.

    According to a new report from Common Cause, the Senate filibuster has been at least partially responsible for blocking the passage of 17 out of 18 pro-democracy legislative texts that have come to a vote in Congress before the House or the Senate in 2021 and 2022, according to the group’s analysis of votes for each piece of legislation. The analysis was first reported by Insider.

    The 117th Congress has considered a number of pro-democracy bills and resolutions, ranging from the For the People Act, which tackles dark money in campaigns and expands voting access, to the impeachment of Donald Trump, for his attempt to stoke a violent overturn of the 2020 election.

    Other bills include the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would have strengthened rules preventing racial discrimination in voting, a bill that would have granted statehood for Washington, D.C. and the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which have would placed limits on presidential power in reaction to Trump.

    None of these bills have passed Congress, likely because they were either blocked by the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold or never came to a vote because of their likelihood of being blocked by the filibuster.

    Many of these bills, like the For the People Act, have been hailed by voting rights advocates as crucial to bat off Republican attempts to suppress voters. Since 2021, and as of May, lawmakers in 18 states have passed 34 laws aimed at suppressing voters — many of which disproportionately affect voters of color.

    Only one of the measures that Common Cause analyzed passed Congress: the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act, which passed unanimously in the Senate and strengthens requirements for Supreme Court and other federal judges to disclose their financial holdings and stock trades.

    “In the end, with high levels of support in Congress and an overwhelming outpouring of public support, Congress ran into one of the reasons our democracy needs to be modernized: the filibuster,” Common Cause wrote of Democrats’ attempt to pass the For the People Act last year.

    Even if conservative Democrats Senators Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona) and Joe Manchin (West Virginia) had been on board with the bill and given it a majority of 51 votes, “the arcane Senate procedure known as the filibuster requiring super majorities just to debate an issue, prevented the Democrats from passing major democracy reform and voting rights legislation or the Republicans from considering negotiating in good faith to get to 60 votes,” the group wrote.

    The report lends evidence to the argument that progressives and some Democrats have been making for years now: the Senate filibuster is an arcane and dangerous procedure that prevents lawmakers from effectively legislating against attacks on democracy, which currently largely come from the right. Opponents of the filibuster also say that it is used to block climate action that is crucial to keeping a livable planet, action to stave off white supremacy, moves to workers’ rights, advance protections for abortion rights, and more.

    In their analysis, Common Cause also tracked votes for various pro-democracy measures for each individual member of Congress. Of the 535 voting members of Congress, only 101 members earned a perfect score, voting for each measure. All 101 of those members were Democrats or progressives.