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Author: Sharon Zhang

  • Manchin Says He’s Skeptical of Congressional Workers’ Union Drive

    Sen. Joe Manchin gets into an elevator on his way to a vote at the U.S. Capitol on January 5, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    As Democratic lawmakers rallied behind congressional staffers’ unionization effort on Tuesday, Conservative Democrat Joe Manchin (West Virginia) expressed skepticism about the workers’ recently announced union drive.

    Manchin claimed that he has “always been a big supporter of unions” — as many union-busting companies also claim – but added that congressional workers are paid by taxpayers. “When you’re working for tax dollars and you’re [at] will and pleasure, I’m here at the will and pleasure of the people. They have a chance to change and things of that sort, so we’ve got to make sure we’re doing it and doing it right,” he told Politico.

    As reporters and pro-labor figures were quick to point out, there are already several congressional unions in place, as agencies like the Government Accountability Office, the Library of Congress and the Capitol Police have already unionized.

    Manchin’s statement came after the Congressional Workers Union formally announced their union drive on Friday. Democratic staffers say they have been quietly organizing for over a year, and at least 78 members of Congress have publicly announced their support for the union effort, according to a count by Demand Progress.

    Manchin’s argument that publicly-funded workers shouldn’t reap the benefits of unionization and collective bargaining is bizarre. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public sector workers are consistently unionized at a higher rate than private sector workers; last year, about 39 percent of public sector workers were in a union, five times the unionization rate in the private sector.

    If Manchin supposedly supports unions, but doesn’t support public sector unions because the workers are funded by the government, then it would appear – based on his own statements – that he doesn’t actually support a large swath of unions in the country.

    Often, workers unionize not only to secure better wages and benefits, but also to combat poor working conditions. Indeed, many congressional staffers report not being paid sufficiently to live in Washington, D.C., which leads to high turnover rates. Further, staff are often viewed as dispensable, they have little say over their working conditions.

    “There is a political culture that treats staff on Capitol Hill as being expendable,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-New Mexico) told Bloomberg Law. “I certainly have heard senior staff and other congressional members in my time on the Hill allude to the fact that staff are a dime a dozen.”

    For the past few months, an anonymous Instagram page called Dear White Staffers has been documenting abuses and microaggressions that staffers have experienced in the workplace, including having to run errands after hours or having things thrown at them by lawmakers.

    “While not all offices and committees face the same working conditions, we strongly believe that to better serve our constituents will require meaningful changes to improve retention, equity, diversity, and inclusion on Capitol Hill,” the union said in a statement announcing their union drive.

    Republicans in the Senate have already come out against the unionization efforts, and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) announced his opposition to the drive on Tuesday. While Republican support for the effort won’t be necessary in the House, Republicans would likely need to be on board for a resolution giving staffers the green light to organize in the Senate.

    House Democrats may soon have a chance to allow their staff to unionize, a process that would have to take place office-by-office, according to Insider. This week, Rep. Andy Levin (D-Michigan) is planning to introduce legislation that would allow staffers to unionize. Although it’s unclear if the legislation has the votes to pass, prominent Democrats like House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) have said that they will support the measure.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Amazon Dodged $5.2 Billion in Taxes Last Year, Report Finds

    Amazon's logo is pictured on the opening day of a new distribution center in Augny, near Metz, eastern France, on September 23, 2021.

    Thanks to a tax code that favors corporations and the wealthy, Amazon was able to dodge billions of dollars of federal income taxes in 2021, a new report has found.

    According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the tech behemoth reported record profits last year, raking in $35 billion – 75 percent more than they made in 2020, which was also a record year for the company.

    Despite these record profits, the company paid a federal income tax rate of 6.1 percent, or $2.1 billion, in 2021. If the company hadn’t benefited from tax breaks and had paid the already low statutory corporate tax rate of 21 percent, it would have paid $7.3 billion in federal tax. This means that the company successfully dodged $5.2 billion in corporate taxes last year.

    Since 2018, the company has only paid an average effective tax rate of 5.1 percent. In 2018 and 2019, Amazon’s tax dodging was especially egregious; in 2019, the company paid 1.2 percent in federal income taxes. The year before, the company paid a negative 1.2 percent tax rate, meaning that it received more money from the government than it paid in taxes.

    “It has been well documented for decades that Amazon’s strategy for retail dominance rests on two tactics: avoiding taxes and using the savings to finance a slow strangulation of its retail competition,” the authors of the ITEP report wrote. “First at the state and local level, then federally and internationally, Amazon has bullied lawmakers into bending tax laws to its advantage and made that the source of its competitive advantage over small businesses in the retail space.”

    In their calculations, the report’s authors took into account tax credits, excess stock option deductions, and other tax breaks. Congress has the power to end these tax breaks as long as lawmakers can summon the political will, they pointed out.

    Corporate tax dodging runs rampant among large corporations. Last week, ITEP reported that Netflix also dodged a huge amount of federal income taxes last year. Though it made record profits in 2021 – nearly doubling its profits over 2020 – the company paid only $58 million in taxes, or a 1.1 percent rate. This means that the company dodged over $1 billion in taxes last year.

    In response to the report, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) reiterated the progressive call to tax the rich. “Corporate greed is Netflix making a record-breaking $5.1 billion profit, giving its CEO $43 million in total compensation, avoiding over $1 billion in taxes and paying a 1.1 percent effective federal income tax rate – a lower tax rate than a nurse, teacher or truck driver,” he said.

    As the authors of the ITEP report noted, Congress can implement simple reforms like the extremely popular corporate minimum tax rate to make it much harder for large corporations to dodge taxes to this degree in the future. The corporate minimum tax would create a minimum tax rate of 15 percent for profits over $1 billion. It would also levy the tax on book profits – the profits that the company reports to shareholders – rather than the deflated profits that the company reports to the government.

    Although Democrats were considering including the corporate minimum tax in the Build Back Better Act, the corporate-backed Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) has declared that the bill is now dead.

    Without tax reforms for corporations, the government will continue to miss out on billions of dollars of revenue each year due to tax dodging. Last year, ITEP found that 20 corporations had paid $0 in federal taxes in 2020, with many companies paying a negative effective tax rate due to tax breaks. Tax dodgers included companies like Nike and FedEx and energy companies like American Electric Power and Duke Energy.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • White House Plans to Implement New Guidelines Making It Easier to Unionize

    Ironworkers Local 5 sit high on a training platform as they listen to President Joe Biden deliver remarks about project labor agreements at the local on February 4, 2022, in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.

    On Monday, a labor task force in the Biden administration released a report outlining dozens of new guidelines aimed at making it easier for workers to unionize.

    In its report, the Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment – led by Vice President Kamala Harris and vice chair Labor Secretary Marty Walsh – presented around 70 recommendations to promote organizing and collective bargaining. The goal of the recommendations, the task force wrote, is to promote more good faith negotiating, to empower the workforce and to promote the use of federal funds to support organizing workers and “pro-worker employers.”

    The White House has said that it plans to implement all of the task force’s suggestions. The task force will submit a second report with updates and additional proposals in six months, the White House added.

    In its report, the task force recommends instructing government agencies to take steps to decrease “persuader” activity, or when a company hires anti-union consultants to quash union drives. The task force also suggests that the Department of Labor wage a pro-union communication campaign in order to increase workers’ awareness of their ability to collectively bargain and organize.

    The report also recommends reforming federal funding programs, and specifically calls for barring companies from using federal contract money to union bust and hire anti-union campaigners.

    Union membership has been steadily declining since the 1960s and is currently at a record low. Last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that union membership was at a dismal 10.3 percent in 2021, the same rate as in 2019 but down from 10.8 percent in 2020.

    “Union density isn’t low because Americans don’t like unions,” the report’s authors wrote. “Today, 68% of Americans approve of labor unions – the highest level on record since 1965, and support for unions among young workers is even higher.”

    “Polls show that more and more workers – a full 52 percent of non-union workers – want to join unions,” the report goes on. “This gap between the percentage of workers who want a union and the percentage of workers who have a union is part of the reason for this Task Force and this report.”

    Joe Biden has repeatedly pledged to be the most pro-labor president in U.S. history.

    “When unions win, workers across the board win. That’s a fact. Families win, community wins, America wins. We grow. And despite this, workers have been getting cut out of the deal for too long a time,” Biden said in September. “In my White House … labor will always be welcome. You know, you’ve heard me say many times: I intend to be the most pro-union President leading the most pro-union administration in American history.”

    Over the past year, there has been an explosion of labor activity across the U.S. Perhaps the most notable example is the union drive spearheaded by Starbucks workers last year, which has resulted in over 50 stores filing for unionization in the past few months alone. Workers are also in the midst of several union campaigns in New York and Alabama Amazon warehouses, where a successful union drive could send shockwaves across the labor movement.

    More labor reforms may be on the way. In a recent interview with More Perfect Union, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said that she wants to crack down on mandatory anti-union meetings and other tactics that companies use to union bust during the critical period between a petition filing and an election.

    “We should not be allowing our processes to be abused in that way,” Abruzzo said. “Employers do have the right to express their opinion, but they don’t have the right to coerce, interfere with, or threaten employees with adverse action.”

    She plans to ask the NLRB to consider implementing the Joy Silk doctrine, which legal researchers say could prove invaluable to the labor movement. The doctrine forces employers to recognize and bargain with a union if it has the support of a majority of workers, or else present legitimate reasons as to why the company can’t voluntarily recognize a union. This would circumvent the union election process and, crucially, the period before an election during which companies typically pull out their most aggressive union-busting tactics.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Medicare for All Bill Introduced by Pramila Jayapal Gets Record 120 Cosponsors

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal speaks as members of Congress share their recollections on the first anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2022, in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C.

    A bill that would establish Medicare for All in the U.S. has reached 120 sponsors, Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) announced on Sunday.

    “We’ve officially got a record 120 co-sponsors on my Medicare for All Act!” said Jayapal, who introduced the legislation. “Thrilled to welcome Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Florida) to our fight to ensure health care as a human right!”

    Signing on to the bill as a cosponsor is one of Cherfilus-McCormick’s first acts since being sworn in as a member of Congress in mid-January. Last week, Representatives Donald Norcross (D-New Jersey) and Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) also became cosponsors of the bill; original cosponsors include progressive “squad” members like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota).

    The Medicare for All Act of 2021, or H.R. 1976, would establish a single-payer healthcare system in the U.S. Under the bill, health care claims would be paid by the government and all U.S. residents would be able to access health care without having to pay out of pocket for most services.

    Jayapal’s bill would establish a more generous plan than in countries like Canada, where the single-payer health care system doesn’t cover vital services like vision, dental or prescriptions. H.R. 1976 includes those benefits as well as long-term nursing and rehabilitative services.

    For years, Medicare for All has been a rallying cry for progressives across the country, popularized by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) during his 2016 presidential run. Some experts have pointed out that the original idea behind the Medicare program was for all residents to have access to health care, not just a few.

    “We mean a complete transformation of our health care system and we mean a system where there are no private insurance companies that provide these core benefits,” Jayapal said when she introduced the bill last March. “We mean universal care, everybody in, nobody out.”

    Though the bill is unlikely to pass Congress, the record number of cosponsors suggests that pushes for Medicare for All are gaining momentum as progressives in the House are growing in number.

    When Jayapal originally introduced the bill, it had only 112 cosponsors; when she introduced it in the last Congress, it only had 106 original cosponsors. In 2019, Sanders introduced a Medicare for All bill in the Senate with 14 cosponsors. He has not reintroduced the bill in this Congress.

    “In my view, the current debate over Medicare for All really has nothing to do with health care. It’s all about greed and profiteering. It is about whether we maintain a dysfunctional system which allows the top five health insurance companies to make over $20 billion in profits last year,” Sanders said in 2019. These profits have only multiplied since the start of the pandemic.

    Polling has found that a majority of Americans favor proposals for Medicare for All. But while the idea has gained some steam in Congress over the past years, it still faces fierce opposition from lobbyists and the lawmakers they solicit.

    Private health insurers are making record profits while insuring fewer people; reports have found that the U.S.’s health expenditures are the highest among member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), while the U.S.’s health care system ranks last on measures like access, efficiency, equity and health outcomes. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies are hugely reliant on profits generated by U.S. citizens, and a report last year found that prices for top prescription drugs are as much as 10 times higher in the U.S. than they are in other countries.

    Lobbyists, looking to maintain these profits, play a huge role in the legislative equation – according to Politico, the health care industry lobby has created an “army” to fight Medicare for All in Congress, developing cozy relationships with Democrats and Republicans alike. Last year, health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists maxed out their donations to Democrats as they were crafting the Build Back Better Act, which included proposals that took aim at sky-high prescription drug prices.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump Took Letters From Kim Jong Un, Other Official Correspondence to Mar-A-Lago

    President Donald Trump waits for the arrival of Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for talks at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 17, 2018.

    Last month, the National Archives and Records Administration had to retrieve multiple boxes from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property after the former president brought official correspondence and other items that were supposed to be turned over to the agency to his personal residence.

    As first reported by The Washington Post, the boxes contained correspondence between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which Trump once referred to as “love letters.” The letters, sent while Trump was attempting to negotiate over North Korea’s use of nuclear weapons, were the subject of much conjecture during his presidency.

    The boxes also contained mementos, gifts and other letters from world leaders, including a letter from former President Barack Obama.

    Under the Presidential Records Act, correspondence like letters, memos and other official items are supposed to be handed over to the National Archives after the president leaves office. The president is also tasked with ensuring that documents and other records are able to be preserved and maintained.

    Anonymous sources said that discussions about transferring documents to the National Archives began last year. Although Trump’s advisers say that there was no ill intent in not turning over the documents, some officials say that such a late transfer is unprecedented for the agency. Sources have also said that Trump has no concern for complying with the Presidential Records Act.

    Experts say that Trump’s records act violations are a threat to both presidential transparency and national security. “The only way that a president can really be held accountable long term is to preserve a record about who said what, who did what, what policies were encouraged or adopted, and that is such an important part of the long-term scope of accountability,” presidential historian Lindsay Chrevinsky told The Washington Post.

    If the records include information that is critical for national security, Chrevinsky went on, it is important that they are preserved for future administrations to reference.

    The National Archives have had their fair share of issues with Trump’s flippant view of document preservation and transparency in the past.

    During his presidency, Trump regularly ripped up documents; White House aides often had to laboriously tape papers back together before sending them to the National Archives. Recent reporting has found that this practice was even more widespread than reporting during Trump’s presidency had suggested.

    In what experts say is a clear violation of the records act, Trump often left scraps of paper all over – including in the Oval Office, on Air Force One and in his private study in the West Wing. Aides quickly realized that they couldn’t stop Trump from ripping the documents, so they implemented protocols to streamline the process of puzzling the papers back together in attempts to lessen violations of the records act.

    However, recent reporting by The Washington Post has also found that Trump officials would often put documents into “burn bags” to be destroyed. Officials would sift through the papers to decide what should be saved and what should be burned; for instance, documents detailing Trump’s efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, which were recently requested by the January 6 committee, have been destroyed.

    “He didn’t want a record of anything,” a former senior Trump official told The Washington Post. “He never stopped ripping things up. Do you really think Trump is going to care about the records act? Come on.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Congressional Staffers Announce That They Are Unionizing

    A view of the U.S. Capitol during the sunrise on January 6, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    On Friday, congressional staffers declared that they are unionizing, an announcement that was met with an outpouring of support from progressive and Democratic lawmakers.

    The Congressional Workers Union has been in the midst of organizing efforts for over a year, they said in a statement.

    “[W]e are proud to publicly announce our efforts to unionize the personal offices and committees of Congress, in solidarity with our fellow workers across the United States and the world,” the staffers wrote.

    “While not all offices and committees face the same working conditions, we strongly believe that to better serve our constituents will require meaningful changes to improve retention, equity, diversity, and inclusion on Capitol Hill,” they continued. “That starts with having a voice in the workplace. We call on all congressional staff to join in the effort to unionize, and look forward to meeting management at the table.”

    Organizers pointed to a survey last month from the Congressional Progressive Staff Association of 516 staffers, in which 91 percent of survey respondents said that they want more protections at work.

    Congressional staff are often paid insufficiently to live in Washington, D.C. Annual pay for Capitol Hill staffers starts in the $20,000 range, and even workers making a higher salary say that expenses like childcare costs can deplete entire paychecks.

    A recent report found that one out of every eight staffers isn’t paid a living wage, which is about $42,000 for an adult with no children in D.C., according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s living wage calculator. According to the Congressional Research Service, there were about 5,700 Senate staffers in 2020 and about 9,000 staffers in the House in 2021.

    The announcement comes just after a spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said that the Democratic leader would fully back any congressional staffers’ unionizing efforts.

    “Like all Americans, our tireless Congressional staff have the right to organize their workplace and join together in a union,” spokesperson Drew Hammill said on Thursday. “If and when staffers choose to exercise that right, they would have Speaker Pelosi’s full support.”

    Support from Democratic lawmakers soon followed on Twitter. “Congressional staff need unions now!” Rep. Andy Levin (D-Michigan) wrote on Thursday night. “Congress couldn’t run without them and I’m committed to supporting their voice at work.”

    Progressives like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts), Cori Bush (D-Missouri) and Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) also chimed in.

    “On Capitol Hill, interns are often unpaid, many staffers don’t make a living wage, and lack of work protections can pave the way for unhealthy environments,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “[S]ounds like a perfect place for a union.”

    Last year, Ocasio-Cortez led a push from 110 House representatives requesting larger office budgets from the House Appropriations Committee so that lawmakers can afford to pay their staff fair wages.

    “For years, pay and benefits for the staff of Member offices, leadership offices, and committees have fallen farther and farther behind what is offered in the private sector,” the lawmakers said. “At the same time, the cost of living here in our nation’s capital has risen substantially, placing opportunities such as homeownership, rental housing, and childcare out of reach for many.”

    Because Capitol Hill staffers are paid such low wages, only a certain demographic can afford to work in Congress. Staff, especially interns, are often white and from privileged backgrounds; poorer people can’t afford to live in D.C. on such low wages, and often take private sector jobs that will pay more for the amount of experience they have. Recently, non-white staffers have taken to Instagram to post stories from current and former workers that expose poor working conditions within Congress.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Administration Says It’s Keeping Pandemic Policy to Expel Asylum Seekers

    A 7-month-old migrant from Mexico is held by a family member as asylum-seeking migrants wear face coverings at a worship service in the Agape migrant shelter on July 22, 2021 in Tijuana, Mexico.

    After a review, the Biden administration has decided to continue enforcing Title 42, a restrictive Trump-era immigration policy that allows officials to deport asylum seekers at the border, forcing them to forgo their right to seek legal asylum in the country, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials.

    Under the most recent authorization of the policy signed by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, the administration is required to review the policy every 60 days. The administration has reviewed the policy three times so far and has decided to keep it in place every time, this time citing the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

    Under Title 42, officials have expelled over 1.5 million asylum seekers since March 2020. Despite Democrats’ promises on the campaign trail to undo Trump’s inhumane immigration policy and make the U.S. a safe haven for asylum seekers, the Biden administration has deported more people under the policy than the Trump administration did – and it has also enforced the policy for longer.

    Immigrant advocates have been urging the Biden administration to end Title 42, which they say is needlessly cruel and creating a humanitarian crisis at the southern border. Public health experts have also called for Biden to end the policy, saying that there’s no evidence that mass expulsions are helping to curb the spread of the virus, which recently reached record highs despite the restrictive migration policies.

    Still, the administration is using the spread of the virus as a reason to justify their continued enforcement of the policy. “The current reassessment examined the present impact of the pandemic throughout the United States and at the U.S. borders, taking special note of the surge in cases and hospitalizations since December due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant,” a CDC spokesperson told CBS News.

    Of course, it’s more likely that the administration is keeping the policy because it falls in line with their immigration policy goals; Biden’s Justice Department has been actively defending its use of Title 42 while continuing to separate immigrant families in court. Last month, the agency urged federal courts to dismiss two cases brought by families who were separated by the Trump administration, even though Biden has said in public that such families deserve compensation.

    According to counts by immigrant advocates, the Biden administration has deported and expelled over 1.8 million people as of November. This month, the administration began expelling Venezuelan asylum seekers to Colombia and said that it would continue expelling them on a “regular basis.”

    The administration has even been deporting people against its own guidance. The Department of Homeland Security warned last year that deporting people to Haiti could be a violation of U.S. human rights obligations, as the country is undergoing violent political upheaval and is still reeling from a devastating earthquake last summer.

    Despite that warning, Biden began a mass deportation campaign of Haitians under Title 42, a move that prompted some administration officials to resign from their posts, citing the inhumanity of the policy.

    Biden’s immigration policies have been deeply frustrating for immigrant advocates.

    “At a moment when America is honoring and reckoning with Black history, we cannot forget what’s still a present-day reality,” the UndocuBlack Network wrote on Twitter this week. “It’s time for [Biden] to end Title 42 and end a racist immigration system that has demonized Black people for far too long.”

    “I never would have predicted this White House, within Year One, would be expelling Haitians to a failed state,” Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, recently told The Hill.

    Democratic lawmakers have also urged Biden to stop the use of Title 42. “The recent reports of the Biden Administration removing Venezuelans through third countries is extremely disturbing,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) said in a statement this week. “By continuing to use a page from Trump’s immigration enforcement playbook, this administration is turning its back on the immigrants who need our protection the most.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Jamaal Bowman, Jeff Merkley Propose Bill to End College Legacy Admissions

    Rep. Jamaal Bowman gestures prior to a news conference in front of the U.S. Capitol December 14, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    As the Supreme Court prepares to hear a case challenging affirmative action, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) are pushing to end legacy and donor admissions practices at colleges that receive federal funding.

    On Wednesday, the two lawmakers introduced the Fair College Admissions for Students Act, which would bar colleges that receive funding from federal student aid from considering legacies – or a particular applicant’s family ties – in the admissions process. Legacy students, especially at elite universities, can take up a large portion of an admissions class, pushing students who would otherwise qualify out of the equation.

    “All students deserve an equitable opportunity to gain admission to institutions of higher education, but students whose parents didn’t attend or donate to a university are often overlooked in the admissions process due to the historically classist and racist legacy and donor admissions practices at many schools across the country,” Bowman said in a statement.

    “The legacy admissions practice which disproportionately benefits rich, white, and connected students, and has antisemitic and anti-immigrant roots, creates another systemic barrier to accessing higher education for low-income students, students of color, and first-generation students,” the New York lawmaker continued.

    Legacy admissions at top universities can take up 10 or 25 percent of an admissions class, according to the lawmakers. At universities that consider family ties in admissions, research has estimated that legacy students are three to eight times more likely to be admitted; the practice gives overwhelming preference to wealthy white students.

    “Getting into college can be really tough for people without lots of money, whose parents have never been through the process before, who can’t pay for test prep or advisers to help them craft the perfect essay,” Merkley said. “Children of donors and alumni may be excellent students and well-qualified, but the last people who need extra help in the complicated and competitive college admissions process are those who start with the advantages of family education and money.”

    The problem is especially egregious at Harvard, where legacy students, students with donor families or recruited athletes can make up 43 percent of all white students that are admitted in a given year. Although the acceptance rate for all applicants at Harvard is about 5 percent, the acceptance rate for legacy students is a whopping 33 percent.

    Such practices discriminate against first-generation college students and poor students – and equity advocates say that these policies essentially amount to affirmative action for rich white students.

    However, conservative opponents of racial affirmative action – which helps to uplift non-white students in college admissions and diversify college campuses – have been mum about legacy admissions, even though they claim to support equity in the admissions process.

    Meanwhile, the Supreme Court may soon overturn racial affirmative action due to conservative opposition. The court, which has a conservative majority, is slated to hear a case that could end the policy aimed at giving more opportunities to students of color.

    Affirmative action helps Black and Latinx students in college admissions in particular; when California ended its practice of affirmative action in 1996, the ban led to lower degree attainment and wages for Black and Latinx students in the state.

    The plaintiff in the Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions, argues that affirmative action works against Asian students. However, Asian writers and students have disputed that this is true.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • At Least 46 Congress Members Have Visited Trump Properties Since He Left Office

    Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower in Manhattan on August 15, 2021, in New York City.

    Even though former President Donald Trump has been out of office for over a year now, he is still profiting off of the presidency as dozens of lawmakers and candidates continue to patronize his businesses, according to a new report.

    A report by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, has found that at least 46 members of Congress and 77 candidates for office have visited one of Trump’s properties since Trump left office last year. These visits can, quite literally, buy influence with the former president, whose approval is still important in many far right political circles.

    “These visits bring more than just profit to the for-profit kingmaker of the Republican Party, they bring an alternate reality,” CREW wrote. “At Mar-a-Lago, Trump won in 2020. These visits and events, where Trump is often present and frequently gives remarks, perpetuate that false belief. Many of Trump’s top customers are the same people most involved in spreading it.”

    Public officials and candidates for public office have visited one of Trump’s hotels, resorts or golf clubs at least 235 times and held 51 events in total over the past year, the report found.

    Visitors include 11 senators and 35 House representatives, who have visited Trump’s properties 119 times. Most visits are to Mar-a-Lago, where Trump currently resides for much of the year – just as he did when he was president.

    Far right lawmakers top the list; Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-North Carolina) has had 10 visits while Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) has had nine. Representatives Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) trail closely behind.

    Visits to Trump’s properties aren’t just a way for lawmakers to gain political clout – they’re also a method of restoring a relationship with the former president, even for other GOP leaders. After House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) said on the House floor that Trump shared responsibility for the January 6 attack on the Capitol, he took a trip to Mar-a-Lago to reconcile with the president, who left office shortly before the visit. Trump’s team then released a picture of the two of them together.

    House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) also visited Mar-a-Lago after the attack on the Capitol. Trump’s guest list also features Republican firebrands and Trump allies like Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Mo Brooks (Alabama), along with Representatives Jim Banks (Indiana) and Jim Jordan (Ohio), who were both rejected from serving on the January 6 House committee due to their closeness to Trump and the attack.

    Though it’s unclear how much money Trump has made off of his presidency since he left office, it’s likely been a huge boon to his profits. Last year, CREW found that Trump reported making over $1.6 billion in revenue from outside sources while he was president.

    Investigations into Trump’s finances, however, have found that his businesses often inflate profits in order to seem more successful than they are; in recent court filings, New York State Attorney General Letitia James found that Trump’s family business has repeatedly engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” practices in order to make Trump’s net worth appear larger.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • US’s Richest Families Set to Dodge $8.4 Trillion in Taxes Over Next Decades

    President Grant and Benjamin Franklin close-ups from dollar bills collage

    The richest families in the U.S. are set to dodge trillions of dollars’ worth of taxes in the coming decades thanks to tax loopholes, according to a new report.

    If lawmakers keep the current maximum estate tax rate of 40 percent, the richest families will dodge roughly $8.4 trillion in taxes over the next 24 years, Americans for Tax Fairness found in its report. Meanwhile, between now and 2045, the top 0.5 percent of wealthy families will pass on an estimated $21 trillion to their heirs.

    As the report notes, capturing $8.4 trillion in dynastic wealth would allow the government to implement the Build Back Better Act for the next four decades, as the House-passed version of the bill was slated to cost $1.75 trillion over a decade.

    Tax loopholes allow families to avoid the estate tax, gift taxes and wealth transfer taxes. Although Donald Trump and congressional Republicans doubled the estate tax exemption during the first year of Trump’s presidency, Democratic lawmakers didn’t address estate and generational tax loopholes in the tax reform section of the Build Back Better Act.

    Under the Trump-implemented rule, which is pegged to inflation, estate values of up to $12 million for individuals and up to $24 million for married couples can be passed on tax-free. This is such a high amount that only 0.1 percent of estates owe the estate tax.

    According to the report, wealth-transfer tax avoidance “has played an outsized role in our return to Gilded Age levels of wealth concentration.” Failing to impose estate taxes, gift taxes and generation-skipping tax exemptions is threatening not only the U.S. economy, but also the “stability of American democracy,” the report says.

    “No justification exists for the failure of policy makers to end this scandal,” it continues. “There is no constituency supporting these enormous tax loopholes except the ultrarich and the wealth-protection industry they employ. They serve no societal purpose.”

    The report’s authors go on to suggest levying a tax on undistributed trust income in order to disincentivize the accumulation of wealth within the trust. They also suggest implementing a 2 percent wealth tax on trust holdings that exceed $50 million and a 3 percent tax on holdings over $1 billion – the same wealth tax proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts).

    Part of the reason why lawmakers have yet to address issues of accumulating dynastic wealth is the outsized power that the wealthy have on politics, the report’s authors point out.

    Despite campaigning on estate and gift tax reforms, President Joe Biden didn’t include any such measures in his Build Back Better proposal, even though he did include other taxes on the rich.

    “His proposal to eliminate stepped-up basis – an income-tax policy that allows the wealthy, including billionaires, to entirely escape income tax on a lifetime of investment gains – was abandoned after wealthy opponents went on the attack, using phony claims that the proposal threatened America’s family farms and small businesses,” the report says.

    In response to the report, lawmakers have reignited calls to tax the rich. “We can afford Build Back Better – four times over, as a matter of fact,” wrote Rep. Bonnie Watson (D-New Jersey). “For the lawmakers who opposed the bill, affordability was never *really* the issue. For them, protecting special interests was worth the cost of hurting working families. The rich must pay their fair share.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • New York Times Managers Are Waging Anti-Union Campaign During Tech Unit Election

    The facade of the New York Times building

    In the midst of a union election for over 600 tech workers at The New York Times, newly leaked documents reveal that managers at the publication are engaging in union-busting practices in hopes of quashing the effort, the Guardian found.

    In leaked Slack messages, leaflets and at least one memo, company leadership discouraged workers within the New York Times Company’s tech guild (known as XFun) from voting for union representation. Ballots for the election, which started on January 24, are due back on February 28.

    Last month, New York Times Company CEO Meredith Kopit Levien sent a memo to employees entitled “Why a Tech Union Isn’t Right for Us,” The Guardian’s Michael Sainato found. “In short, we don’t believe unionizing in XFun is the right move. But that’s not because I’m anti-union,” Kopit Levien wrote, echoing language from other companies that also claim to be pro-union while engaging in anti-union practices.

    Kopit Levien then referenced recent negotiations with Wirecutter, the Times’s product recommendation and review section. “It took Wirecutter two years to reach an agreement with the NewsGuild,” she wrote, adding that the negotiation process caused “uncertainty and discord to negotiate terms that were largely in line with what they and their non-union colleagues already had in place.”

    She went on to say that a union would erode the relationship between the company and its employees – again, a common union buster’s refrain – and said that the union would make it harder for the company to reach diversity, equity and inclusion goals. “This is an unproven experiment with permanent consequences,” she warned.

    The Guardian also found that chief product officer Alexandra Hardiman and chief growth officer Hannah Yang sent messages on Slack encouraging workers to vote “no” in the election. “A union is not a silver bullet,” said Hardiman. “It will introduce another layer into our process that we believe will make it harder to work – and achieve – together.”

    Raising Wirecutter’s case as a warning against unionization is ironic; contract negotiations for Wirecutter workers only took as long as they did, the union said, because the company’s management had offered extremely scant proposals and refused to capitulate to workers’ demands. Before the workers went on strike for Black Friday last year, for instance, the company had offered guaranteed raises of only 0.5 percent – less than annual average inflation rates. In retaliation for the strike, the company withheld wages from striking workers, which the union says is illegal.

    Unionizing workers have also said that the company often offers non-union members better benefits as a union-busting tactic. Just before the election began last month, NewsGuild filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against the Times company for saying that only non-union employees would get Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Veterans Day and Juneteenth as paid holidays. The company disputed that this was true.

    The company has also withheld parental leave for union members. Last year, the company announced that it would be giving non-union members 20 weeks leave for all new parents; at the time, Amanda Hess, vice president of NewsGuild of New York and New York Times writer, said that she had been fighting for this policy at the bargaining table. After pressure from the union, the company eventually changed the policy to include union members as well.

    “Last week, [New York Times] leadership announced additional paid holidays that only apply to non-union employees. We’ve seen this anti-union tactic before when the company rolled out enhanced family leave,” wrote the New York Times Tech Guild on Twitter. “We didn’t fall for it then, and we won’t fall for it now. [Meredith Kopit Levien], stop using our colleagues as bargaining chips.”

    Unionizing workers recently gained the support of a group of investors who represent over $1 trillion in assets under management, who sent a letter to Times management on Tuesday expressing concern over the company’s refusal to voluntarily recognize the union, forcing it to go through an election that the company is tampering with.

    “Rather than accept the union’s request to be voluntarily recognized, it appears the Company is using the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) process to aggressively limit the size and scope of the union and to delay a vote for months in order to conduct an ongoing series of anti-union meetings,” the investors wrote. “These tactics suggest that the Company is not operating in a neutral or good faith manner to have a free and fair election, but is instead seeking to weaken the union as much as possible.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ocasio-Cortez Pans Manchin for Feigning Ignorance on Build Back Better

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) prepares to speak during a rally for immigration provisions to be included in the Build Back Better Act outside the U.S. Capitol December 7, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

    On Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) expressed frustration over conservative Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-West Virginia) declaration that the Build Back Better Act is “dead,” and called out the senator for his luxurious lifestyle.

    For months, progressives have been advocating for the passage of the Build Back Better Act, which includes key proposals to expand the U.S. social safety net. But on Tuesday, Manchin told CNN: “What Build Back Better bill? There is no, I mean, I don’t know what you all are talking about.”

    “No, no, no, it’s dead,” Manchin went on, when asked if he had been participating in negotiations surrounding the bill.

    In response, Ocasio-Cortez pointed out that the bill contains vital social safety net proposals that would help public housing residents. “Seniors, kids, and people with disabilities in my community have been sleeping with bubble jackets on in 18 degree nights, despite paying rent, because the [New York City Housing Authority] funding to fix their heating and capital needs is in BBB,” she wrote on Twitter.

    “Where should I direct them to wait out the cold? Manchin’s yacht?” she continued.

    The version of the bill passed by the House in November contained about $65 billion for public housing, funding that housing advocates say is desperately needed to repair public housing in the U.S. The bill’s price tag, which was fully paid for with offsets, was $1.75 trillion – nearly the exact price tag that Manchin fought for.

    Manchin dealt a deadly blow to the bill in December when he said that there wouldn’t be a path forward for the legislation. But progressives have still been advocating for the bill’s passage, which they say is necessary and urgent.

    “Public housing residents have endured devastating fires, the cost of insulin and other prescription drugs continue to crush working people, and parents are desperate for child care support. This desperately needed relief cannot be delayed any longer,” said Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) last week. She urged the Senate to pass the bill before March 1.

    But as advocates for expanding the social safety net have pointed out, it’s not in Manchin’s personal interest to pass the bill, regardless of its potential to decrease poverty and elevate lower- and middle-income Americans.

    According to Federal Election Commission filings, Manchin’s campaign raised nearly $300,000 from corporate and wealthy donors in the days after he killed the bill. This is about a fifth of the $1.5 million his campaign raised between October and December, and the most his campaign has ever raised in one quarter, according to campaign finance expert Derek Willis.

    Many of these donations came from companies that would have been directly impacted by proposals in the Build Back Better Act, like natural gas company Cheniere Energy. He also got thousands of dollars from Republican mega-donors like billionaire Ken Langone, who supported Donald Trump in 2016.

    As Manchin has slashed funding for the public, his personal finances have also come under scrutiny. Manchin’s yacht is insured for $700,000 – nearly double the average price for a home in the U.S.

    Manchin’s yacht – and the Maserati Levante he drives – were thrust into the public view when West Virginia climate activists confronted the senator, on separate occasions, as he was negotiating the Build Back Better Act. It’s unclear exactly where Manchin got the funds to afford such a luxurious lifestyle, but much of his wealth comes from his stock in the coal company that he founded in the 1980s.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Labor Board Says Amazon Illegally Threatened Workers in Union-Busting Campaign

    Supporters of organizing a union at Amazon Staten Island warehouse rally in front of the field office of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) located at 2 MetroTech in New York City on October 25, 2021.

    In a complaint filed on Thursday, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accused Amazon of illegally surveilling, interrogating and threatening unionizing employees at its warehouse in Staten Island, New York.

    The NLRB found that a company representative had made a racist remark to union organizers, calling them “thugs” who were destined to fail. According to the complaint, security guards repeatedly prohibited organizers from distributing union pamphlets and the company “solicited grievances from employees with an express promise to remedy them if they rejected the Union as their bargaining representative.”

    To remediate these problems, the NLRB said, the company will have to train managers and consultants on workers’ rights to form a union. Management will also have to instruct workers about their rights with an NLRB representative present.

    “We just hope that Amazon is held accountable,” Amazon Labor Union leader Christian Smalls said. “We hope that other union-busters as well learn their lesson and that workers are encouraged to speak up.”

    The Staten Island warehouse has been in the midst of a union campaign for nearly a year, facing roadblocks along the way. The company has also displayed anti-union messages and sent emails to their employees warning them of negative consequences if they sign a union card.

    Last week, the NLRB said that the workers have enough signatures for a union election after the Amazon Labor Union filed the petition in December.

    The company has disputed the NLRB’s accusations and claims that they are “false.” However, the company has faced numerous labor complaints over the years from workers like Jonathan Bailey, who said in 2021 that the company has harassed him for a year, retaliating against him for organizing fellow workers.

    The NLRB ultimately found that the company illegally threatened and interrogated Bailey, and the case was settled before going to trial.

    It’s common for union-busting companies to break the law, as punishments for illegal union-busting tactics are often mild; as of 2019, U.S. employers were breaking the law in about 42 percent of all union election campaigns. For a trillion-dollar company like Amazon, punishments for breaking labor laws are a slap on the wrist at best.

    Last year, Amazon also faced discipline from federal officials when the labor board found that the company illegally interfered with the union election in Bessemer, Alabama – a union drive that gained national attention and inspired over 1,000 Amazon workers across the country to contact the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) about unionization.

    The company had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, hiring union-busting consultants and police to quash the union drive. The company employed numerous anti-union tactics, but the NLRB took particular issue with a mailbox that Amazon installed on warehouse grounds with the likely intention of surveilling employees casting their ballots. The mailbox was plastered with anti-union slogans, and there were multiple cameras installed around it.

    Ultimately, the NLRB ordered a second election for Bessemer employees beginning this week.

    Even as Amazon is facing a second union vote, however, the company has yet to remove the mailbox on warehouse grounds. Although the mailbox has been moved further away, workers say that it is still surveilled by cameras and patrolled.

    “The mailbox’s continued existence on Amazon’s property stands as a stark physical memorial of a tainted election,” said Jennifer Bates, a Bessemer worker, at a RWDSU press conference.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 46 Senators Wage Campaign to End “Global Gag Rule” Restricting Abortion Access

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren is seen after the Senate Democrats luncheon in the U.S. Capitol on October 5, 2021.

    On Monday, 46 senators led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) sent a letter to Democratic leaders calling for a permanent repeal of the global gag rule, also known as the Mexico City Policy.

    “The Mexico City Policy undercuts access to voluntary and comprehensive family planning and reproductive health services,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California). They then requested that the repeal be included in this year’s appropriations bill.

    The Ronald Reagan-era gag rule bars non-governmental organizations that receive U.S. funding from using any funds – including from non-U.S. sources – to advocate for or perform abortions. The implementation of the rule is subject to the whims of any given presidential administration; President Joe Biden rescinded the policy when he took office last year.

    Though every Republican president since Reagan has implemented the rule, Donald Trump expanded it to include all American global health funding, not just family planning funding. His administration also expanded the rule to apply to sub-recipients of organizations affected by the rule, meaning that organizations whose work is not financially supported by the U.S. government were also subject to the gag.

    This placed restrictions on about $9.5 billion of funding, about 15 times more funding than the rule previously restricted.

    Abortion advocates have called Trump’s expansion of the gag rule “devastating.” The rule led to higher death rates of pregnant people, made it harder to fight HIV and AIDS and, paradoxically, resulted in higher abortion rates; many organizations that provided abortion information and referrals also provide other health care services like cancer screenings, contraceptive care and HIV testing. Some organizations have lost millions in funding and have had to stop programs altogether.

    Experts have said that as long as the implementation of the rule is up to the whims of presidential administrations, it will have a chilling effect even when it’s rescinded. That’s why it’s critical to permanently end the rule, the senators said.

    “Since it first went into effect in 1985, this partisan policy has been instated and rescinded, to the detriment of the most vulnerable people in the world,” they wrote. “It is time to put an end to this deadly cycle.”

    Progress made when the rule is rescinded can be undone by the reimplementation of the rule, the lawmakers said. Clinics are often forced to choose whether or not they want to provide comprehensive family planning care that includes information about abortion or access to the procedure – and choosing to provide better care can hamper progress and result in a loss of funding when a Republican comes around.

    “The Global Gag Rule is a dangerous, discriminatory, and partisan policy that puts the health and wellbeing of millions of vulnerable people around the world at risk,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), a letter signatory, in a statement.

    “We shouldn’t force organizations to provide less comprehensive reproductive health services in order to receive health aid from the United States,” Warren continued. “I was glad that President Biden rescinded the policy one year ago, but we have to permanently end this policy in order to protect reproductive health care for good.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 15 Starbucks Locations Filed for Unionization Today

    Representatives from local unions hold signs in support of workers of two Seattle Starbucks locations that announced plans to unionize, during an evening rally at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle, Washington, on January 25, 2022.

    Fifteen Starbucks locations are filing to unionize on Monday as workers at stores across the country wage a historic union drive.

    Workers at stores in Ithaca, Buffalo and Rochester in New York will be filing, according to Starbucks Workers United, as well as workers at stores in California, Kansas, Missouri, Oregon, Washington and Arizona.

    According to Starbucks Workers United, Monday is also the first day of collective bargaining for the two locations that have already unionized, the Genesee and Elmwood locations in Buffalo, New York. Meanwhile, ballots for the next three union elections in Buffalo are beginning to be mailed.

    This milestone follows six stores – two locations in Philadelphia and four stores in Michigan – announcing union drives on Friday. Overall, a whopping 26 stores have filed for unionization just over the past week, bringing the total to about 54 stores that are unionizing, according to Starbucks Workers United. Many of those union filings took place in January alone.

    Starbucks stores have been filing for unionization at a staggering pace. Many of the workers filing for unionization have cited similar working conditions: Corporate has little to no regard for COVID safety, there is no way to report grievances, workers are underpaid and stores are often understaffed, leading to a stressful work environment.

    Despite the company’s supposed progressive values, corporate has been holding mandatory anti-union meetings, posting anti-union propaganda and even temporarily closing stores that are attempting to unionize. Last week, the company requested that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) stop or pause an ongoing union vote in Mesa, Arizona, in order to review rules that the NLRB has already set for the election.

    Meanwhile, workers in Boston-area stores have reported being forced to attend meetings in which management gives them pamphlets with anti-union messaging. The company claims, as many union-busting companies have done before, that the union would have “control” over the employees and that the union would “drive a wedge” between the company and its workers.

    On Wednesday, workers from Allston, Massachusetts, sent a letter asking corporate to stop holding its so-called listening sessions.

    “Although you have approached us with the goal of creating, in your own words, a ‘pro-partner and pro-fact’ environment, we have reached a team consensus that these meetings are antithetical to the spirit of the Starbucks mission and actively harm our store community for both our partners and customers,” the 17 workers wrote.

    They said that the company has been “dismissive” toward concerns and that the meetings have had a “combative nature.” Though the company claims that forming a union would drive division, the workers wrote that the company’s meetings are actually making it harder for employees to foster a harmonious work environment.

    The workers also said that the company has been peddling false information about the union – in one case, claiming that Buffalo workers only unionized because Workers United placed a plant in the region. At a later meeting, the company admitted that some of its anti-union messaging may have been factually inaccurate.

    “Although we appreciate the honest acknowledgements that much of this information has been wrong, this does not redeem the trust we have lost in Starbucks,” the workers said.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Georgia Mail Ballot Restrictions Disenfranchised 45 Times More Voters Last Year

    An election worker validates ballots at the Gwinnete County Elections Office on November 6, 2020, in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

    Due to a voter suppression law that was passed by Republicans in Georgia last year, the rate of voters in the state who didn’t vote after having mail-in ballot applications rejected increased 45-fold, according to a new analysis by Mother Jones.

    During Georgia’s municipal elections in 2021, mail-in ballot applications were rejected at a rate that was four times higher than during the 2020 election. Officials rejected a record rate of 4 percent of absentee ballot.

    Mother Jones analyzed how many voters didn’t go on to cast a ballot in person due to their mail-in applications being denied, a rate that also increased dramatically last year. Of the 1,038 people who had their applications rejected in 2021, only about a quarter ultimately cast a ballot in person. That’s about 2.19 percent of total mail-in voters – a huge increase over the 0.05 percent of voters who didn’t end up voting after an application rejection in 2020.

    As Mother Jones’s Ryan Little and Ari Berman wrote, the figure is “an example of how a seemingly minor change to voter access can lead to a big increase in disenfranchisement.”

    The voter suppression law that Republicans rushed to pass through the legislature last spring contains a number of restrictions on absentee voting. The new law implemented stricter ID requirements for mail-in ballots, cut the period in which voters can submit their mail-in ballot requests by more than half and reduced the number of drop boxes. The law also made it illegal for election officials to mail unsolicited mail-in ballot requests.

    Voter disenfranchisement has directly resulted from these changes, reporting has found. About 1 in 6 mail-in ballots were thrown out because voters had filled out their identification information incorrectly after the new ID requirements.

    If the rate of rejections from last year was applied to the 2020 election, over 38,000 people would not have voted in the presidential election. This is over three times the margin of President Joe Biden’s win in Georgia; Biden won the state by only 11,000 votes.

    The mail-in ballot restrictions are more likely to affect Democrats. Last year, of the people who voted in the 2020 primaries, 404 Democrats had their applications rejected, while only 145 Republicans received a rejection. Further, 351 Democrats had their mail-in ballots rejected, while only 102 Republicans experienced the same.

    It’s unclear why there is a disparity between how Democrats and Republicans are affected by the new changes.

    However, election experts warned last year that the Republicans’ voter suppression laws were racist. One reason for the disproportionate effects of the law, then, could be that the restrictions disproportionately affect Black voters; 58 percent of registered voters who don’t have an ID on file with the state are Black, Little and Berman pointed out. According to exit polls, Black voters in the state overwhelmingly chose Biden in the 2020 election. Black voters also participated in mail-in voting at a higher rate than other demographics in the state.

    Another reason could be that Democrats generally voted by mail at a higher proportion than Republicans in the 2020 election. In some states, mail-in ballots went overwhelmingly for Biden, even in states that ultimately went for Donald Trump, like North Carolina. However, Republicans ended up having a slim margin over Democrats when it came to mail ballots in Georgia.

    Republicans in other states are also cracking down on mail-in votes, leading to similar consequences. In Texas, Republicans’ voter suppression law led to a 700 percent increase of rejected mail-in ballot applications in Houston’s Harris County, which went for Biden in 2020.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Warren Calls for Increased Funding for the IRS, Which Has Been Gutted by GOP

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren talks with reporters after the Senate Democratic policy luncheon in the Capitol on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) is leading a call for increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which is anticipating a “frustrating season” for taxpayers due to underfunding issues brought on by Republicans and corporate interests.

    Warren, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) and 13 other senators sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this week, urging the secretary to do everything in her power to prevent challenges that taxpayers – particularly those who are low-income – may face during this year’s tax season. The lawmakers call for a minimum increase of 14 percent in annual funding for the IRS, as well as an $80 billion investment over the next decade, a measure that President Joe Biden proposed last year to crack down on wealthy tax dodgers.

    “We urge you to do everything you can to alleviate challenges for tax filers this year, especially lower-income Americans, while also continuing to work with Congress to make long-overdue investments in the IRS,” they wrote. “We are deeply concerned about the challenges that our constituents will face during this tax filing season, including service issues that have become all too familiar.”

    The IRS recently said that it is anticipating “enormous challenges” during this year’s tax season, including delays and service issues. The agency is currently in crisis due to an incredibly chaotic tax season in 2021, which it called “the most challenging year ever for taxpayers” in its annual report. The agency ended the year with about 6 million unprocessed individual tax returns, and closed the filing season last year with over 35 million unprocessed returns, which was four times more than they had before the pandemic.

    In their letter, Warren and fellow lawmakers pointed out that the agency only answered one out of every nine calls for assistance, according to its annual report. As 2021’s problems spill into 2022, the IRS is warning that taxpayers may face the same issues this year, or worse.

    The lawmakers say that increased funding could help alleviate some of these problems and prevent them from happening in the future.

    “It is clear that long-term underfunding, combined with the extra burdens posed by the ongoing pandemic, is the primary reason for the IRS’ challenges,” they wrote.

    In a letter to Warren last year, IRS Commissioner Chris Rettig said that the agency has gotten a 22 percent budget cut since 2010. This has led to a corresponding 22 percent reduction in staff, including a 32 percent reduction in enforcement staff. Meanwhile, the number of tax filers has increased, compounding the agency’s problems.

    According to Rettig, the funding issues started years ago; for decades, IRS staffing increased at a rate relative to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). But that trend has now reversed, and while the GDP has increased by 76 percent since 1995, IRS staffing has decreased by 32 percent overall.

    These underfunding issues have been brought on by “corporate lobbyists and anti-tax extremists” who have pushed to cut IRS funding over the years, the lawmakers wrote. “Last year, Republican Senators were initially open to including IRS funding in an early framework for the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, but quickly reversed course under pressure from corporate and conservative lobbyists.”

    Reporting has found that as Republicans have cut IRS funding over the years, corporations and the wealthy benefit. With less funding, the agency isn’t able to perform as many audits and often doesn’t have the resources to investigate the complex ways that the rich can hide their incomes from auditors. Instead, at the behest of Republicans, the agency has been going after low-income taxpayers in order to catch supposed fraud from the earned income tax credit.

    Thanks to tax dodgers, the government has missed out on $7 trillion in revenue over the course of a decade, Yellen estimated last year. Rettig estimated that the IRS misses out on as much as $1 trillion a year.

    “This right-wing crusade against the IRS is achieving its primary goal – decreasing U.S. government revenue and denying the IRS the resources it needs to identify and stop the complex tax evasion by the top 1 percent,” the lawmakers wrote.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Biden Administration Cancels Two Trump-Approved Minnesota Mining Leases

    An outdoor enthusiast takes a picture by one of the hundreds of fresh water lakes that make up the Boundary Waters in September of 2019 in the northern woods of Minnesota.

    On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced that it has cancelled two mining leases near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, a move that will likely kill the project opposed by environmental activists and Indigenous groups.

    The project, proposed by Chilean mining giant Antofagasta, was revived by President Donald Trump when he took office and reinstated the leases, slashing environmental regulations that would have prevented the mine from being built. However, the Department of the Interior recently found that those leases were issued improperly.

    “The Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans. We must be consistent in how we apply lease terms to ensure that no lessee receives special treatment,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in a statement. “After a careful legal review, we found the leases were improperly renewed in violation of applicable statutes and regulations, and we are taking action to cancel them.”

    The agency said that the Trump administration hadn’t followed simple procedural steps and that the revival of the project had violated Interior Department regulations. Now that the leases have been cancelled, the project is likely dead.

    The lease cancellation follows the Biden administration’s announcement last year that it would be pausing all mining activity in northern Minnesota in order to review environmental impacts.

    Environmental advocates celebrated Wednesday’s news. “Today is a major win for Boundary Waters protection,” Becky Rom, chair of the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters, said in a statement. “This action by the Biden administration re-establishes the long-standing legal consensus of five presidential administrations and marks a return of the rule of law. It also allows for science-based decision-making on where risky mining is inappropriate.”

    Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Antofagasta which would have operated the project, had spent nearly $1 million lobbying for the copper and nickel mines when Trump took office. Billionaire Andrónico Luksic, whose family controls the conglomerate, had also rented a house to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump in hopes of buying favor with the presidential family.

    Advocates said that the leasing flew in the face of evidence that the mining would have resulted in polluting heavy metal runoff that would have flowed directly into the Boundary Waters, causing irreparable damage.

    The Boundary Waters are incredibly significant to Indigenous communities in northern Minnesota. In their opposition to the mining project, Ojibwe tribes have noted that the Boundary Waters have been used by Chippewa people for centuries and are still used by Indigenous people today to harvest fish and Manoomin, or wild rice.

    The over one million acre wilderness area is also home to 230 species of wildlife that would have been threatened by the mine.

    Twin Metals has spent years lobbying politicians to support the plan, claiming that it would benefit the state economically. But environmental advocates contend that any jobs created by the mines would be completely offset by the harm that the mines would do to the area.

    The Boundary Waters is the most heavily visited wilderness area in the U.S., supporting over 17,000 jobs in the area and driving nearly $1 billion in economic activity. A 2020 study on the area by Harvard University economists found that any potential positive impacts of the mine would be negated by long-term detriments to the recreation and tourism industry in the area.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Over 80 Democrats Say It’s Time for Biden to Cancel $50,000 of Student Debt

    Rep. Ayanna Pressley speaks as Sen. Elizabeth Warren looks on during a press conference about student debt outside the U.S. Capitol on February 4, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Over 80 Democrats have demanded that President Joe Biden cancel a portion of student debt and release an Education Department memo on his legal authority to do so, in an effort led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) and Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and Chuck Schumer (D-New York) this week.

    In a letter to the president, the lawmakers wrote that Biden should immediately cancel up to $50,000 of student debt per borrower – a move that would boost the economy and provide a lifeline to the millions of Americans with student loans. The lawmakers emphasized that the president should act with urgency, as student loan payments are due to restart in three months.

    “Canceling $50,000 of student debt would give 36 million Americans permanent relief and aid the millions more who will eventually resume payments their best chance at thriving in our recovering economy,” the lawmakers said. “In light of high COVID-19 case counts and corresponding economic disruptions, restarting student loan payments without this broad cancellation would be disastrous for millions of borrowers and their families.”

    Data released on Thursday shows that the U.S. economy was on an upswing last year despite the pandemic; restarting student loan payments could impede that process. The data also demonstrates that the payment pause, which was in place for all of 2021, didn’t stop the economy from beginning to recover from the impact of the pandemic.

    Meanwhile, resuming payments will have an enormous impact on many borrowers’ lives. Thousands of borrowers have reported that student loan payments take a large portion of their income, making it difficult to afford bills and essentials. A recent report for Warren and Schumer found that borrowers will lose out on $85 billion annually once loan payments resume.

    The burden of student debt is holding back nearly an entire generation from being able to make financial decisions freely, even impeding upon borrowers’ ability to buy a house. Canceling this debt could raise homeownership rates and credit scores; such a move would also likely result in a higher gross domestic product (GDP).

    “[T]he enduring weight of student loan debt has negated opportunities for many borrowers to truly transform their lives and our country,” the lawmakers wrote. “More than 80 percent of borrowers with student loan debt report that it holds them back from being able to afford a home. Without this debt, many would be in a better position to begin saving for homeownership as well as retirement and starting a business.”

    The lawmakers also urged Biden to release a memo assessing the legality of canceling student debt via executive order. Although the Education Department prepared the memo in April, the administration refused to publicly acknowledge it for months. Ultimately, the existence of the memo was uncovered by the Debt Collective through a Freedom of Information Act request, but the contents of the document were completely redacted.

    “Publicly releasing the memo outlining your existing authority on cancelling student debt and broadly doing so is crucial to making a meaningful difference in the lives of current students, borrowers, and their families,” the lawmakers wrote. Debt activists have also been organizing efforts to pressure Biden on the issue.

    The Biden administration’s refusal to release the memo has led debt activists to speculate that the document confirms that the president has the legal authority to cancel student debt with a stroke of his pen – but that he doesn’t actually want to do so.

    On the campaign trail, Biden promised to cancel up to $10,000 in student debt per borrower, a promise he has repeatedly come under fire for breaking. Last week, Biden dodged a question from a journalist who asked him about his plan to cancel student loans during a press conference; the president answered a second question from the reporter, said nothing about the student loan question and promptly left the conference.

    Many progressives and activists say that even cancelling up to $10,000 of debt per borrower wouldn’t be enough. Student debt cancellation advocates like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who signed on to the Democrats’ letter this week, have encouraged Biden to cancel student debt completely.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ocasio-Cortez Says Backing Progressive Over Sinema Would Be “Easiest Decision”

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks during an event at the U.S. Climate Action Centre during COP26 on November 9, 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland.

    On Wednesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said that backing a progressive primary challenger to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) would be the “easiest decision” she would ever have to make.

    In an interview with MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan, Ocasio-Cortez said that four years into her six-year term, the conservative Democrat hasn’t “given a compelling case as to why she should be renominated as the Democratic nominee” in Arizona.

    “She has proven herself an obstacle to the right to vote in the United States, she is not an ally on civil rights,” Ocasio-Cortez said, adding that Sinema has become a “threat” to securing a stable democracy in the U.S. “She is not standing up to corporate interests – in fact, she is a profound ally to them … she is not doing what voters in Arizona sent her to do.”

    The New York progressive said that she would gladly support a progressive challenger to Sinema should one arise when the senator is up for reelection in 2024.

    “If it came down to someone like Ruben Gallego and Kyrsten Sinema, I think that would be the easiest decision I would ever have to make,” she said. “There is no comparison…. We need someone that has more allegiance to the actual people of this country than special interests.”

    Representative Gallego, a Democratic Congress member from Phoenix, is an early progressive favorite to challenge Sinema. He recently said that he has been encouraged by political figures of all stripes – lawmakers, unions, Democratic advocacy groups and donors – to run against Sinema in two years.

    A recent poll by Data for Progress found that Sinema would lose against Gallego if the primary were held now. Among likely Arizona Democratic primary voters, a whopping 74 percent of respondents said that they would vote for Gallego, while only 16 percent said they would vote for Sinema. Against a less well-known potential candidate, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, Sinema would still lose by a large margin, securing only 17 percent of the vote, the poll found.

    If the polling data is reflective of the state’s Democratic populace, it means that Sinema has only gotten less popular since last October, when a similar poll conducted by Data for Progress found that Gallego would win 62 to 23 percent among Democratic primary voters. Against other hypothetical challengers, including Romero, Sinema received no more than 26 percent support, the poll found.

    Meanwhile, support for Sinema among Democrats has dropped drastically over the past year. The poll from last October found that Sinema’s job approval is dismal, with only 25 percent approval and 70 percent disapproval. Earlier this month, she lost the support of major Democratic organizations like Emily’s List, a prominent abortion rights PAC that helps to elect female Democratic candidates to office.

    Last week, Sinema even lost the support of her party in her home state, as the Arizona Democratic Party voted to censure the lawmaker on Friday. While they have had frustrations with Sinema over her opposition to filibuster abolition or reform, the party said, Sinema’s obstruction of voting rights legislation last week was a step too far.

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) praised the party’s decision earlier this week, calling the move “exactly right.” Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-West Virginia) vote against changing filibuster rules to pass voting rights legislation was “a terrible, terrible vote” and “pathetic,” Sanders said. Last week, the progressive lawmaker also indicated that he was open to supporting primary challengers to Sinema and Manchin.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Since “Citizens United,” Billionaires Are Spending Nearly $1B More on Elections

    A sign reads Democracy Is Not For Sale, held up outside Supreme Court building during Citizens United protest

    Billionaires are spending nearly 40 times more on elections than they were 12 years ago thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, a new report has found.

    Analyzing campaign contribution data, Americans for Tax Fairness found that billionaires have increased their donations from $31 million total during the 2010 election cycle to a whopping $1.2 billion in the 2020 election cycle, or about 39 times more. 2020’s total doesn’t even include the $1.4 billion total that Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer contributed to their own campaigns, the report noted.

    Overall, nearly 40 percent of all billionaire election spending since 1990 took place in 2020, totalling about 9.3 percent of federal campaign contributions. About 55 percent of donations went to Republicans.

    Billionaire donations appear to be on an upward trend. In 2016, billionaires spent a staggering $682 million on campaign contributions, or about half of their spending in 2020. In 2012, billionaires spent about $233 million.

    This is vastly more than billionaires spent prior to Citizens United. In the 2008 presidential election cycle, billionaires donated about $17 million, according to a report by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies last year. This means that billionaires spent over 70 times more on elections in 2020 than in 2008, before the controversial Supreme Court decision.

    In January of 2010, conservative Supreme Court justices ruled in their Citizens United decision that restricting corporate donations was a violation of corporations’ First Amendment rights – a decision that granted individual rights to corporations and enabled them to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaign contributions. As a result of this decision, vast amounts of money from corporate and deep-pocketed interests have been funneled into elections.

    Citizens United paved the way for the rise of super PACs, which can spend unlimited amounts on campaigns as long as they’re not officially coordinating events with candidates. This has been a vehicle for billionaires to majorly influence elections, Americans for Tax Fairness notes.

    “On this anniversary of the disastrous Citizens United decision, the escalating campaign donations of billionaires offer the clearest argument possible for why we have to get big money out of politics,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness. “Weak taxation of the wealthy combined with anemic regulation of campaign fundraising have handed America’s billionaires outsized political influence to go along with their huge economic clout.”

    Campaign donations serve as an investment for the ultrarich. Indeed, one of the reasons why billionaires are donating more money than before is because they have been allowed to accrue unlimited wealth virtually tax-free; right now, that wealth is accumulating faster than ever. While $1.2 billion is an unfathomable amount of money for a very small group of individuals to have contributed, it is less than 0.1 percent of billionaire wealth, the report found.

    The ultrarich are allowed to hoard this wealth largely because their campaign contributions to politicians incentivize lawmakers to implement tax breaks for the rich, creating a vicious cycle where the two groups feed off each other while the public is left to suffer.

    One way to break the cycle, progressive advocates have said, is for lawmakers or officials to overrule Citizens United. “Corporations are not people, and billionaires shouldn’t get to use their enormous wealth to pick and choose who they want in office,” Americans for Tax Fairness wrote. “It’s well beyond time for Citizens United to go, and to put real action towards getting big money out of politics. Our democracy depends on it.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Nina Turner Announces Run for Congress in Likely Rematch Against Shontel Brown

    Congressional candidate Nina Turner speaks to a crowd of volunteers before a Get Out the Vote canvassing event on July 30, 2021, in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

    Nina Turner has announced that she will be running to represent Cleveland in the House of Representatives after her campaign against Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) fell flat in the primaries last year.

    Turner, who formerly served as an Ohio state senator and as campaign co-chair for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), will likely go up against Brown again. Brown beat Turner in a Democratic primary and easily won the general election to fill the seat vacated by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge last year.

    “Families are struggling…. While corporations make record profits,” Turner said in a video announcing her campaign. “Greater Cleveland needs a change maker, not someone who will just go along to get along. We can put an agenda through Congress that puts working families first.”

    During last year’s run, Turner ran on a progressive platform that included supporting Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. She alluded to these priorities in her campaign announcement on Wednesday, saying that she would focus on climate, economic, racial and reproductive justice while in office.

    “The people of Greater Cleveland overwhelmingly support Medicare for All. So do I,” she wrote on Twitter. “Healthcare has been denied to millions of Americans for too long. I will fight for Medicare for All, and I won’t take a dime from the health insurance industry.”

    When she ran last year, Turner garnered endorsements from people like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Sanders, along with the support of progressive groups like the Working Families Party.

    In August, Brown won over Turner by about six points. Corporate media outlets framed the defeat as a public rejection of progressive ideology and as proof that President Joe Biden didn’t need to capitulate to the left. But progressives say that the takeaways from the election weren’t that simple.

    As Turner noted at the time of her loss, Brown had the support of the massively powerful Democratic establishment, and received a flood of money from PACs, corporate funders and even GOP donors during the campaign; Turner called these donations “evil money” in her concession speech.

    One of Brown’s major financial backers was a pro-Israel PAC called the Democratic Majority for Israel that spent over $2 million supporting Brown and running attack ads against Turner; other centrist and right-leaning organizations attempted to smear Turner by claiming that she isn’t a “real Democrat,” a common refrain of establishment Democrats targeting the left.

    After the primary, some political commentators noted that the election didn’t indicate a widespread rejection of progressivism. What many news outlets overlooked at the time, wrote The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey, was that special elections are often not indicative of voters’ preferences more generally.

    While a Turner win would have been a victory for the left, “Brown’s win indicates that the establishment was successful here, and that their late-in-the-game devotion of resources and manpower worked,” Godfrey wrote. “[T]hose are about the only reasonable extrapolations.”

    “There was an anybody-but-Nina campaign ran in 2021,” Turner told NBC recently. “Some of those forces may still decide to get into this race, but what they will not be able to do is totally concentrate [on the Ohio 11th District] because this will not be the only race.”

    Brown’s campaign last year touted her closeness with establishment Democrats. Her first TV ad bragged that she would “work with Joe Biden.”

    As Cleveland.com’s Brent Larkin noted in May of last year, “Brown will be a well-financed candidate with deep-pocketed supporters who aren’t afraid to play rough. That’s because Turner can’t be beaten unless opponents plant seeds of doubt about her fitness, convincing voters her harsh criticisms of President Joe Biden would make it impossible for her to get things done for her community.” Larkin then pointed out that Biden chose Kamala Harris as his vice president despite her harsh criticisms of Biden during the primary.

    Turner has said that it is important for progressive lawmakers to support Biden’s agenda while still demanding more from the party. “There is a need for people to both lift the president’s agenda when they agree with that agenda but also in that same motion push for more,” she told NBC. “I don’t see those things as mutually exclusive – even though people want to make it mutually exclusive.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Is Retiring, Opening Seat for Biden Nominee

    Associate Justice Stephen Breyer sits during a group photo of the Justices at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on April 23, 2021.

    Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring, giving President Joe Biden and Democrats a chance to fill a crucial spot in the nation’s top court. Biden is expected to announce the justice’s retirement as soon as Thursday.

    The 83-year-old liberal was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1994 and is the oldest member of the Supreme Court. Democrats have been urging Breyer to retire since President Joe Biden took office last year in order to give the president ample time to fill his seat.

    On the campaign trail, Biden pledged to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court. If he follows through on this promise and his pick is confirmed by the Senate, the justice would be the first Black woman to serve on the High Court. Lawmakers like Representatives Cori Bush (D-Missouri), Barbara Lee (D-California) and Mondaire Jones (D-New York) have begun urging Biden to pick a Black woman to fill the seat.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) has said that the Senate will vote swiftly on a nominee once one is chosen. “President Biden’s nominee will receive a prompt hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be considered and confirmed by the full United States Senate with all deliberate speed,” he said in a statement.

    Currently, there is a conservative majority in the court, with five right-leaning justices and four liberals. Replacing Breyer won’t change the partisan makeup of the court, given that Biden chooses a liberal, but it will secure a liberal spot on the court for the remainder of the justice’s lifetime appointment.

    Breyer’s retirement comes just as Democrats could potentially lose the ability to nominate a liberal justice for years to come. Last year, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) vowed not to allow a Biden nominee to be confirmed by the Senate if the GOP retakes the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections.

    Securing this seat is critical for Democrats, as Republicans have fought tooth and nail to pack the court with conservative justices. In 2016, the GOP, led by then-Senate Majority Leader McConnell, delayed President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, for 11 months. They justified this obstruction by making the dubious claim that it was too close to the general election to fill the seat.

    When Donald Trump’s pick, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was up for confirmation, the GOP changed filibuster rules to push him through, ignoring numerous sexual assault allegations that had been leveled against the justice. Notably, Republicans have steadfastly opposed changing filibuster rules when it comes to protecting voting rights and addressing the climate crisis.

    Last year, Republicans broke their own rule about filling Supreme Court seats in relative proximity to an election. When liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September, just weeks before the general election, GOP members rushed to replace her; McConnell released a statement vowing to rush through an appointment the night of Ginsburg’s death. Trump nominated the far right Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed by Republicans just eight days before the election took place.

    Though the nation is years away from another presidential election, Democrats are bracing for yet another fight with Republicans.

    “The right-wing donors who stocked the Court with its 6-3 supermajority will deploy massive dark-money firepower in an attempt to defeat any Biden replacement,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) in a statement. “I hope the White House and our allies prepare for the fight ahead. We cannot allow right-wing donor interests to tighten their grip on the Court any further.”

    Over the last year, Whitehouse has been raising awareness about dark money interests that are influencing the Supreme Court, which he says have pushed the Court further to the right.

    The Court has made several far right moves over the past months and has shot down Biden’s pandemic-related mandates and is poised to potentially overturn Roe v. Wade. Justices also recently agreed to take on a case that could end affirmative action, which has helped uplift non-white students in the college admissions process for decades.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Starbucks Asks Labor Board to Stop Ongoing Union Election in Mesa, Arizona

    A Starbucks drive-through sign is pictured on January 18, 2022, in Cardiff, Wales.

    Starbucks is seeking to stop or pause an ongoing unionization vote at a store in Mesa, Arizona, in order to overturn a regional labor officials’ ruling that the election would be conducted on a store-by-store basis, rather than region-wide.

    On Monday, the company filed an appeal with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to overturn an earlier ruling, hoping to incorporate workers in other parts of the region that haven’t necessarily been involved in unionization activities in the union vote, Bloomberg reported. Starbucks has requested that the election be stopped or that the ballots be impounded while the NLRB considers the appeal.

    Earlier this month, the company requested that the union vote be region-wide in order to dilute the votes, but an NLRB regional official ruled that only the Power and Baseline store in Mesa be included. Ballots have already been sent out and are due next week.

    “Trying to prevent our votes from being counted is so undemocratic,” Michelle Hejduk, an Arizona employee, told Bloomberg in a statement from Workers United. “But the partners will win.”

    This is the second time that Starbucks has filed a request to interrupt a unionization vote. In November, the company filed a last-minute request to delay the mailing of ballots to Buffalo workers. The company’s request was the same: Starbucks wanted the NLRB to include all 20 Starbucks locations in western New York in the election instead of the three organizing stores.

    The NLRB ultimately rejected the request, and the vote went on at the three stores as planned. That election resulted in two unionized stores in Buffalo, the Elmwood and Genesee Street locations. The union, Starbucks Workers United, has disputed the results of the election from the third location at Camp Road.

    It’s unclear why Starbucks is filing such similar requests over and over. But it is an indication that the company may be intimidated by the organizing workers in Mesa; Monday’s filing may be a last-ditch effort to stop the unionization.

    As More Perfect Union reported, Arizona workers say that the company is flooding the stores with managers who are surveilling workers and trying to find reasons to fire organizing employees. According to Starbucks Workers United, the company has already fired one employee, Brittany Harrison, after she spoke out about union-busting practices like holding mandatory anti-union meetings for unionizing workers.

    The company has disputed that Harrison was fired. Retaliating against workers for participating in union activities is illegal, and companies like Amazon have faced discipline from the NLRB for taking such actions.

    Even if the company is successful in interrupting the Arizona vote, Starbucks workers are now filing for union elections at a rate that may be difficult for the company to combat individually. As of Tuesday, over 30 stores have filed to unionize, with new election petitions being filed nearly every day this month.

    The latest to file are two stores in Seattle, where the company is headquartered. Seattle workers have noted that they face poor working conditions even with preferential treatment from corporate.

    Sarah Pappin, a shift supervisor at one of the unionizing Seattle stores, told Vice that Seattle workers have the same complaints as other Starbucks employees across the country: stores are often understaffed, workers don’t make a fair wage and the company has ignored COVID concerns.

    “We see the best side of the company because we have such visibility to corporate. [Former CEO] Howard Schultz is a regular at some of our stores,” Pappin said. “We get the best experience of anyone in the country. But we’re still saying this is not enough for us to be successful.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ocasio-Cortez Urges Biden to Expand At-Home Test Program for Multifamily Homes

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on December 8, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) is leading an effort to urge President Joe Biden to address oversights in his administration’s program to allow people to order free at-home COVID tests.

    “[W]e write requesting your attention on a salient issue that has arisen in the distribution of the testing kits to multifamily households,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in her letter to Biden. The letter was signed by 36 members of Congress, including members of the progressive “squad” like Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) and Jamaal Bowman (D-New York).

    The lawmakers requested that the Biden administration address issues that have been preventing families from being able to order tests from the free at-home test program.

    Last week, the Biden administration put up a website and a hotline allowing people to order four at-home tests per household. Biden announced the program just after detailing his administration’s plan to purchase 500 million at-home tests to distribute to Americans, in addition to a plan to buy 500 million tests that he outlined last month.

    Shortly after the website and hotline launched, however, many people living in apartments or other multifamily residences noted that they were unable to place an order to their homes because someone in their complex or building had already ordered tests for themselves. People who live above retail establishments or in basement apartments have also reported not being able to order tests.

    In their letter, the lawmakers noted that their constituents have been contacting them about the issue.

    “Approaching a rollout process with the aim of equity and accessibility requires the acknowledgement of households residing outside of single-family units,” the lawmakers wrote. They went on to point out that people living in multifamily buildings and people living in multigenerational family homes are at the highest risk of contracting COVID, making it especially paradoxical that these families wouldn’t be able to access the free tests.

    Even when people are able to successfully order tests for their household, four test kits often aren’t enough to cover everyone living under one roof. Many families, especially non-white families, have more than four individuals living in their homes. Making it harder for these communities to receive free at-home tests may exacerbate inequalities that already exist, as people of color are at a higher risk of dying from the virus due to lack of health care access.

    To rectify these inequities, the lawmakers urged Biden to direct program officials to account for different types of residences. They also recommended allowing families to specify the number of people in their household so that they can order an appropriate number of tests.

    The Biden administration has faced widespread criticism for its handling of the pandemic during the president’s first year in office. Earlier this month, the administration faced scrutiny for announcing a program that would only allow people with private health insurance to get reimbursed for at-home COVID tests. That program, critics noted, would not only bar uninsured people from participating in the program, but would also place an unnecessary hurdle on people who are insured by requiring them to contact insurance companies for reimbursement.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Court Rejects Alabama GOP’s Congressional Map That Marginalized Black Voters

    State capitol building in Alabama during sunny day with old historic architecture of government and many row of flags by dome

    On Monday, federal judges rejected a redistricted congressional map in Alabama, saying that the Republican-drawn map likely violated the Voting Rights Act, which protects voting rights for non-white groups.

    The judges ruled that the Republican-led legislature in the state must redraw new maps that give Black voters two districts with a majority-Black population or “in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice,” the panel of three judges wrote.

    “Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the ruling reads. “We find that the plaintiffs will suffer an irreparable harm if they must vote in the 2022 congressional elections based on a redistricting plan that violates federal law.”

    The ruling was the result of a lawsuit filed by Greater Birmingham Ministries, Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, and plaintiffs represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and others.

    The legislature must now draw a new map, which is due in two weeks. If lawmakers fail to pass a new map in that time, the court will appoint a third party expert to draw a new map for them.

    The court found that the plaintiffs would be “substantially likely” to successfully demonstrate that the map violates the Voting Rights Act.

    “The congressional map our Legislature enacted fails Alabama’s voters of color,” plaintiff Evan Milligan said in a statement. “We deserve to be heard in our electoral process, rather than have our votes diluted using a map that purposefully cracks and packs Black communities.”

    The rejected map, which the legislature approved last year, has only one majority-Black district, which represents only about 14 percent of the state’s districts. But Black people make up about 27 percent of the state’s total population, meaning that the state’s remaining majority white districts would get disproportionate representation. Two majority-Black districts of the state’s seven total regions would give the state’s Black population more equal representation.

    The state’s Republican attorney general, Steve Marshall, has already said that his office plans to appeal the ruling “in the coming days,” according to a spokesperson.

    Chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee Eric H. Holder Jr. told The New York Times that the court’s decision is “a win for Alabama’s Black voters, who have been denied equal representation for far too long.”

    “The map’s dilution of the voting power of Alabama’s Black community — through the creation of just one majority-Black district while splitting other Black voters apart — was as evident as it was reprehensible,” Holder said.

    This is the second time that Republicans have had their congressional maps thrown out by the courts. Earlier this month, the Ohio Supreme Court struck down the state’s Republican-drawn district map for being unconstitutionally gerrymandered. Voting rights advocates said that the map would have given disproportionate favor to the GOP and violated the Voting Rights Act by marginalizing Black voters.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 25 House Democrats Urge Pelosi to Bring Congressional Stock Trading Ban to Vote

    Representatives Rashida Tlaib, left, and Pramila Jayapal speak at a campaign event in Clive, Iowa, on January 31, 2020.

    On Monday, a group of 27 House representatives sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) urging them to pass legislation that would bar Congress from trading stocks.

    The letter calls such a ban a “common-sense” move that has the support of both Democrats and Republicans in the chamber. “Both of you have recently addressed this issue in public comments, but this glaring problem will not go away until it is fixed and Congress should not delay when we have the power to fix it,” the letter read.

    The effort has rare bipartisan support, with 25 Democrats and two Republicans signing on to the letter. This includes progressives like Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), Katie Porter (D-California) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) as well as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) from the far right.

    Lawmakers said that any legislation, whether written by Democrats or Republicans, can be brought to the floor, as long as it is done swiftly. They cite Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D-Georgia) Ban Conflicted Stock Trading Act or Representatives Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia) and Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-Texas) TRUST in Congress Act that were both introduced recently as bills that could be brought to a vote soon.

    Both bills would bar members of Congress and their spouses and dependent children from trading stocks while in office. Aside from certain investments like those in diversified mutual funds or U.S. treasury bonds, portfolios would have to be put in a blind trust.

    The letter comes just after Pelosi made a slight heel turn on the issue last week. While she doesn’t “buy into” the issue, she said, the speaker said that she would be open to supporting her caucus if members are in favor of the ban. The Speaker had previously sparked ire when she defended members’ ability to trade stocks, saying that they should be able to participate in the “free market economy.”

    McCarthy, who would likely become speaker of the House if Republicans take control of the chamber in the midterm elections, also voiced his support for the issue this month.

    As the letter points out, Congress members’ ability to trade stocks is eroding public trust and leads to corruption. Though it is technically illegal for lawmakers to act on nonpublic information to trade stocks, it can be difficult to determine the true cause of certain stock trades.

    “The law prohibits only those stock trades that members of Congress make or direct because of their nonpublic knowledge,” the lawmakers wrote, referring to a 2020 stock trading scandal involving several senators making trades after receiving confidential information on the pandemic’s economic effects. “But it can be nearly impossible to determine what counts as ‘nonpublic knowledge’ or how personally involved members are in their stock trades.”

    Lawmakers also frequently break the law outright in regards to stock trading disclosures. The 2012 STOCK Act instituted disclosure requirements to increase transparency of Congress members’ stock trades.

    But since the penalty for failing to disclose trades on time is small – often just a $200 fine – lawmakers and their staffers have little incentive to report their trades, even when they represent clear conflicts of interest. An investigation last year by Insider found that at least 54 members of Congress have violated the STOCK Act, with many late disclosures being worth upwards of a million dollars.

    Regardless of the legality of these actions, the letter writers said that being able to trade stocks distracts lawmakers from doing their job to protect and serve their constituents. “Perhaps this means some of our colleagues will miss out on lucrative investment opportunities. We don’t care,” they wrote. “We came to Congress to serve our country, not turn a quick buck.”

    Polling has found that the public also agrees that Congress shouldn’t be allowed to trade stocks. A recent Data for Progress poll found that 74 percent of likely voters support such a ban when presented with arguments for and against the proposal. This includes 75 percent of Democrats, 76 percent of independents and 70 percent of Republicans.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Says Arizona Democrats’ Decision to Censure Sinema Was “Exactly Right”

    Senators Bernie Sanders and Kyrsten Sinema

    Over the weekend, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) praised the Arizona Democratic Party for censuring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) over her obstruction of federal voting rights.

    In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sanders called Sinema’s vote in the Senate last week against filibuster changes to allow the passage of voting rights legislation “terrible.”

    Certain Republican states “are moving in a very, very anti-democratic way,” he said. “It was absolutely imperative that we change the rules so we could pass strong voting rights legislation. All Republicans voted against us, two Democrats voted against us – that was a terrible, terrible vote.”

    “I think what the Arizona Democratic Party did was exactly right,” Sanders concluded.

    Last week, Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) voted against a proposal to enact a talking filibuster for Democrats’ voting rights bill, which would allow the Senate to pass the measure with a simple majority vote. It was a last-ditch effort to protect voting rights as Republicans shred them to pieces.

    The Arizona Democratic Party announced that it had voted to censure Sinema on Saturday after months of frustration with the senator’s obstinate defense of the filibuster.

    “[T]he Arizona Democratic Party is a diverse coalition with plenty of room for policy disagreements,” party chair Raquel Terán said in a statement. “[H]owever on the matter of the filibuster and the urgency to protect voting rights, we have been crystal clear.” Terán said that, while the party supports Democratic candidates, the consequences of Sinema’s “failure” to protect voting rights are too dire to ignore.

    The state party has expressed frustration over the senator’s obstruction before. Last year, it threatened to hold a vote of “no confidence” for Sinema’s filibuster defense, which has caused a near-absolute deadlock in the Senate over Democratic priorities.

    A censure is largely a symbolic ruling that does not carry formal consequences in this instance. However, it is a strong rebuke to Sinema, as her own party essentially rules to stand against her, and will likely fuel a primary campaign to unseat her when she’s up for reelection in 2024.

    In October, a poll found that, if the election were held soon, Sinema would easily be defeated by Democratic challengers. In a head-to-head race against Ruben Gallego, an early favorite to primary the senator, Sinema loses 62 to 23 percent, according to the poll.

    Sanders told reporters last week that he would be open to supporting a candidate who ran against her. In a video posted to his Twitter, he said that it was “pathetic” that Sinema and Manchin would vote to obstruct voting rights during such a crucial time for the country.

    However, with Sinema and Manchin not up for reelection for another four years, Sanders is saying that it’s crucial for their stances to be made clear now. In interviews and an op-ed in CNN last week, Sanders has made it clear that he thinks more Democratic agenda items should be put to a vote so that voters can clearly see what the conservative Democrats oppose.

    “Funny things happen when a bill gets to the floor,” Sanders said on “Meet the Press.” “Let’s put a strong bill on the floor. And if Mr. Manchin and Ms. Sinema want to vote against it whatever, Republicans want to vote against it – we can go from there. But what we cannot continue to do, in my view, is these endless backroom negotiations. The American people have got to see where we are.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • REI Retail Workers in Manhattan File to Form Company’s First Union

    REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc., aka REI Co-op) store is pictured in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City on October 23, 2018.

    Workers at an REI store in New York City filed to form a union among the location’s 116 employees on Friday. If the effort is successful, the store would be the first of the outdoor recreation equipment company’s 168 locations and 15,000 employees to unionize.

    The workers have filed for representation by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). They have also requested voluntary recognition of the union by their employer, which would bypass the need for a vote.

    It’s unlikely that the company will simply allow the workers to unionize without an election, however. In response to the filing, the company said it stands against unionization for their employees.

    “We respect the rights of our employees to speak and act for what they believe – and that includes the rights of employees to choose or refuse union representation,” the company said in a statement. “However, we do not believe placing a union between the co-op and its employees is needed or beneficial.”

    The statement echoes language from an email sent to organizing workers over the weekend, according to Daily Union Elections on Twitter. According to a screenshot of the email, CEO Eric Artz sent the message.

    Framing a union as divisive is a common union busting technique. Starbucks has used similar language in attempts to discourage its employees to unionize, claiming that a union divides workers and creates tension. (Starbucks has also taken steps to schedule workers erratically seemingly in order to make it harder to unionize, workers have said.)

    Workers say the union is necessary due to unsafe working conditions for employees amid the pandemic. Additionally, there has been “a tangible shift in the culture at work that doesn’t seem to align with the values that brought most of us here,” according to a statement by organizer Graham Gale.

    Indeed, like Starbucks, the company claims to have progressive values. In 2016, the company rebranded to include “co-op” in their logo to emphasize its membership program and garner a sense of community between the company and its customers. Its website says that REI is “A different kind of company,” and says that a large portion of its profits are invested back into its members and employees.

    The 2016 rebrand came after a tussle between the company and its workers, when Seattle retail employees waged a campaign for higher pay and better scheduling policies. The workers also were in the beginning stages of organizing a union campaign.

    Before workers could file a petition for unionization, however, the company shut it down. It posted a memo to employees at the store warning that signing a union card could have “consequences.”

    “REI management is not anti-union,” read the memo, according to The Stranger. “We just don’t need one at REI…. We sincerely urge you not to sign a union authorization card.”

    As a result of the push, employees eventually won a wage raise to $15 an hour for its Seattle workers. However, then-CEO Jerry Stritzke said that it would be too expensive to do the same for employees across the country; according to Indeed, average salaries at the company are still below $15 an hour for lower level retail employees.

    The company had also earned widespread praise when it decided in 2015 it would no longer open on Black Friday, garnering an image as a company that treated its employees well.

    New York workers’ push comes during a time of heightened unionization activity at major corporations. Starbucks workers have filed an extraordinary number of union filings over the past month, and have so far succeeded in unionizing two locations despite a fierce union-busting campaign from the company.

    Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, have also filed to unionize with RWDSU and will begin their second election in February after the National Labor Relations Board found that the company broke labor laws during the first vote in 2021.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Pelosi Changes Course, Says She’s Open to Stock Trading Ban for Congress Members

    Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi talks to reporters during her weekly news conference on Capitol Hill on January 20, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

    As Democrats discuss implementing a ban on stock trading for members of Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) signaled on Thursday that she may be open to passing such a ban, despite her opposition to the proposal.

    Pelosi reiterated her opposition at a press conference on Thursday, but said that she would support the Democratic caucus if they wanted to pass such legislation. “I just don’t buy into it, but if members want to do that I’m OK with that,” she said.

    Pelosi added that she has asked the House Administration Committee to review the STOCK Act. Although the bill aims to increase transparency around lawmakers’ stock trades, it has such lax penalties that members regularly violate the law and face little consequences.

    Pelosi has come under scrutiny over the past weeks for her defense of Congress members’ ability to trade stocks despite a huge scandal in 2020, when members were accused of insider trading. The accusations came after members made major stock trades directly after receiving confidential information about the pandemic’s imminent effect on the stock market.

    “We’re a free market economy. [Members of Congress] should be able to participate in that,” Pelosi said in December. The speaker is among the richest of Congress’s over 500 members, and her husband, Paul Pelosi, is a very active stock trader. In fact, Paul Pelosi is such a prominent trader that people have begun following his trades as a stock trading strategy.

    Pelosi faced pushback for her comment. “There is no reason members of Congress should hold and trade individual stock when we write major policy and have access to sensitive information,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) tweeted at the time. “There are many ways members can invest w/o creating actual or appeared conflict of interest, like thrift savings plans or index funds.”

    Last week, Senators Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) and Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) introduced a bill that would bar members of Congress and their families from participating in stock trading while in office. The bill would compel members to move their portfolios into a blind trust shortly after being sworn in. The proposal appears to have bipartisan support, as Republicans in Congress have signaled their support for the idea.

    The public is also in favor of the ban. Just over the past few weeks, several polls by different polling groups have confirmed that a majority of Americans support banning stock trading for members of Congress. Data for Progress, for instance, found that 74 percent of voters support the proposal when they are presented with arguments for and against a ban, including a majority of respondents from across the political spectrum.

    Last year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) proposed a similar bill that would not only disallow members of Congress from trading stocks, but also prominent federal officials like judges and presidents.

    Lawmakers, including Ocasio-Cortez, introduced a bill last year that would prohibit Congress members and senior staff from trading individual stocks. The bill, which had bipartisan support, also sought to root out corruption by barring members from serving on boards of corporations.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.