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Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, and then- President Donald Trump. (Photo by Erin Schaff / Getty Images)

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With the approach of another Labor Day, it is clear that American workers could use some help. There are jobs to be hadbut without a living wage or the workplace protections that are more necessary than ever in this pandemic age. The federal minimum wage is stuck at $7.25 an hour, no higher that it was in 2009. And working people who want to form unions and bargain for better pay are constrained in the majority of states by so-called right to work laws that empower multinational corporations like Amazon to thwart organizing drives.

To a greater extent than in any country with which the United States would choose to compare itself, our policy-makers have tipped the balance against the working class. Why?

Lets start with the Republican Party. Ever since Ronald Reagan broke a legitimate and necessary strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization 40 years ago this summer, the Republican Party has positioned itself as an explicitly and aggressively anti-labor party. Reagans progenyconniving political careerists like former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and former Ohio Governor John Kasichtook the GOPs war on workers to the states and attacked teachers and their fellow public employees. Now, at the federal level, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy are using their positions to obstruct even the most basic efforts to improve the conditions of working Americans.

In March, when the House voted on the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act of 2021, 220 Democrats supported the proposal to make it easier for workers to secure collective bargaining rights. Two hundred and five Republicans voted against it. Despite the overwhelmingly GOP opposition to the measure, the Democratic support was sufficient to send the bill to the Senate. Unfortunately, McConnell and his colleagues are using their filibuster powers to prevent consideration of a measure that Representative Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat and one of the few union members currently serving in Congress, says is designed to allow workers to fight back against corporations and anti-union special interests that have attacked and eroded the labor movement for decades.

It is interesting that Republicans lately have been trying to falsely rebrand themselves as the party of working people while opposing the strongest bill in Congress to give power to workers, Pocan said during the House debate in March. The same Republicans who fought tooth and nail to reduce stimulus checks and unemployment insurance, championed union busting, and prevented an increase in the minimum wage from being included in COVID relief. They claim they are the party of the working people. Their idea of helping working people is voting for a $2 trillion tax cut for corporate donors and billionaire friends but refusing to vote for a $1.9 trillion investment in the American people.

Pocans right: Just as todays Republicans have abandoned their partys historic commitment to civil rights and voting rights, they have also abandoned their commitment to worker rights.

The great union organizer and Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs used to delight in pointing out: The Republican Party was once red. Lincoln was a revolutionary. Current Issue

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That was not a casual claim. Debs knew a lot more about the first Republican president than does Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy. Lincoln was a fervent reader of Horace Greeleys New York Tribune, which featured regular columns by European correspondent Karl Marx; and he worked closely with the immigrant socialists who were among the founders of the Republican Party.

So passionate was Lincoln about the issue that he raised it in his first annual message to the Congress in 1861. The 16th president took time away from discussing challenges posed by the Civil War to raise what he referred to a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism. This, he explained, was the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government.

Lincoln rejected that view as blasphemy:

It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

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Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

That higher consideration was recognized by Republicans in Lincolns day, and through much of the GOPs first century. The Republican platform of 1960 reflected on the need to enhance and not impede the processes of free collective bargaining and declared: Republican policy firmly supports the right of employers and unions freely to enter into agreements providing for the union shop and other forms of union security.

Todays Republicans have abandoned not just Lincolns prioritization of labor but also his pursuit of a more perfect union. They have rebranded themselves as the very embodiment of the greed and cruelty that the Party of Lincoln once sought to upend.

Link:
There Is No Greater Threat to Worker Rights Than This Republican Party - The Nation

MSNBCs Joy Reid dedicated her Absolute Worst segment on Friday to explaining why the GOP is anything but the pro-life party, despite its claims.

The ReidOut anchor referenced Texas extreme new anti-abortion law, Republican opposition to COVID-19 mask mandates, GOP voter resistance to receiving the coronavirus vaccine, and the partys anti-environment policies to make her point.

You cant call yourself a pro-life party if your policy goals are to allow the maximum number of people to die of COVID, including children, by banning mask mandates in businesses and schools and raising doubts about vaccines, she said.

You cant call yourself the pro-life, pro-family party if your policy goals are to put bounties on pregnant women and to force teenage girls to give birth after getting pregnant as a result of incest and rape, Reid added.

The Republican Party is a lot of things; anti-democracy, anti-voting, anti-history, anti-facts, deeply opposed to anti-racism. What they are not is pro-life, she concluded, saying its now loudly and proudly the pro-death party.

Watch Reids monologue here:

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

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MSNBCs Joy Reid Busts A Big Myth Republicans Tell Themselves About Their Party - Yahoo News

Republican Tricia Flanagan is trying to oust Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, and she wants Donald Trumps help.

At an event for another candidate at Trumps Bedminster golf club in June, she said she met briefly with the former president and sought his backing in what could be one of the states most competitive House races in 2022.

Im bold, Flanagan said. I said, Mr. President, I need your help.

Flanagan is one of four prospective 2022 Republican congressional candidates from New Jersey who trekked to Bedminster this year after Trump decamped there from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group that has filed several complaints against the former president.

Closely aligning with Trump could bring support and money from the Republican base. But it runs the risk of turning off independent and other voters who helped turn a 6-6 House delegation to a 10-2 Democratic advantage in just two elections. Trump lost New Jersey to Joe Biden, 57% to 41%, last November.

This is the burning question right now for the Republican Party in the state: Does the blessing of former President Trump help or hurt a candidate in New Jersey? said Ashley Koning, assistant research professor and director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers UniversityNew Brunswick.

Its a delicate dance and balance for any candidate. It helps them rally the party base. It doesnt seem like it would bode well with the broader electorate.

So far, many New Jersey congressional hopefuls arent staying away.

The list of visitors to Bedminster includes:

Rik Mehta, who lost the 2020 U.S. Senate race to Cory Booker and now is competing with state Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. for the nomination to challenge Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-7th Dist.;

Nick DAgostino, trying to take on Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-5th Dist.;

Darius Mayfield, running against Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-12th Dist.;

Billy Prempeh, who has embraced the QAnon conspiracy movement and is seeking a rematch against Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-9th Dist.

Flanagan said she met Trump while attending a June 29 event for Rep. Jody Hice, who has the former presidents backing in a Republican primary challenge against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The incumbent rejected the former presidents false charges of voter fraud in last falls presidential election.

Mayfield was there as well and also met Trump and discussed his congressional campaign with him, according to campaign spokeswoman Krissy Brahney.

Darius shared with him that hes been a vocal supporter from the beginning and thanked him for inspiring his run and interest in politics, Brahney said.

A long time Trump aide, Lynne Patton, was the guest speaker at Mayfields campaign kickoff fundraiser and is seeking support for him from the pro-Trump Save America political action committee, Brahney said.

And Prempeh, who also was at Bedminster then, posted a picture on Instagram of him standing next to Trump.

If you were to meet me in 2019 and told me that not only would I be running for office in 2022 but that Id also meet the President of the United States. I wouldnt believe you. Yet here we are, he wrote next to the photo.

DAgostinos campaign said he attended a Bedminster fundraiser for gubernatorial candidate Phil Rizzo, who closely aligned himself with Trump but lost the Republican primary to former state Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli. He also met in Washington with Trump allies Ben Carson and Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C.

Neither Mehta, who posted on Instagram that he played golf at Bedminister, nor Prempeh responded to requests for comment.

A spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, James Singer, said he welcomed Trumps involvement.

New Jersey Republicans are free to go to the moon to please President Trump if they choose to, Singer said. It wont change the facts on the ground Donald Trump lost the state by more than 15 points last November and then encouraged a mob to attack the Capitol.

Trump hasnt endorsed any of the New Jerseyans yet.

But Flanagan said she hoped he eventually would endorse her in a district that Trump carried by a slim margin in 2020 even while losing the state.

Toward that end, she has touted several issues near and dear to Trumps heart, such as immigration, expanding gun rights, and allowing the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission to regulate social media companies.

Im going to continue to ask for his support and more importantly Im going to work to earn that endorsement, she said. Mr. President, we need you in New Jersey.

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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @JDSalant.

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These N.J. Republicans sought Trumps blessing at his Bedminster golf club this year - NJ.com

J.D. Prose|Pennsylvania State Capital Bureau

Roundtable on Mail-in Ballots in PA

Mail-in ballots have become an increasingly popular voting method among voters across Pennsylvania, but they also often remain a target of accusations of voter fraud.

Chris Ullery, Bucks County Courier Times

In the latest attack on Pennsylvanias mail-in voting option, 14Republican state House members filed a lawsuitasking a court to invalidate mail-inballoting by claiming it is unconstitutional.

Lawmakers argued in the suit filed late Tuesday in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Courtthat Act 77, under which no-excuse mail-in voting was allowed, violates the state and U.S. constitutions and should have been pursued through a state constitutional amendment, even though11 ofthemvoted for the legislation in 2019.

TheGOPlegislators on the lawsuit are:

"Last year, over 2.5 million Pennsylvanians embraced mail-in voting and other safe secure and modern forms of voting which Act 77 allowed for the first time in the commonwealth," said Lyndsay Kensinger, a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

"The fact that members of the General Assembly who voted for Act 77 and were chosen for office in elections in which it was in effect are now suing to overturn it is hypocritical and a betrayal of voters," Kensinger said. "We should continue to modernize our election system and make it more convenient for voters to make their voices heard. Instead these members are seeking to silence voters as they perpetuate false claims of a stolen election."

However, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a likely Democratic candidate for governor in 2022, said Thursday on Twitter: This lawsuit is not only the height of hypocrisy, but it also has real consequences and damages public trust in our elections.

After initially supporting mail-in voting, Republicans havefollowed former President Donald Trumps calls against the practice andlaunched several legal attacks on the process, althoughnone of them have been successful.

Trump began baselessly warning about mail-in voting fraud last year before the November election when it became clear that Democrats were flocking to mailed ballots amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 2.6 million Pennsylvania voters used mail-in voting in November with Democrats accounting for 1.7 million, nearly three times the number of Republicans.

More: Wolf, Democrats say Pa. already had election audits and Biden won

More: A bill overhauling Pa.'s election law could soon pass the House. What's the fight over?

As Trumps evidence-free claims continue, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly called into question the results of the presidential election, but not the races that theywon.

On Thursday, the state Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee announced that it has created a webpage for Pennsylvania voters to submit sworn testimony about theirvotingexperiencesand any irregularities they have witnessed.

The effort is part of what committee Chairman Sen. Cris Dush, R-Jefferson County, called an election integrity investigation.Testimony can be submitted athttps://intergovernmental.pasenategop.com/electioninvestigation/.

Dush recently replaced state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin County, as committee chairman after Mastriano was removed amid bickering with Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman over the committees efforts to subpoena records from York, Tioga and Philadelphia counties.

Mastriano has been at the forefront of the movement questioning the 2020 election results and was part of a Republican group that visited Arizona to review the GOP-led election audit there.

Dush also said that the committee will hold public hearings and request documents from counties and the Pennsylvania Department of State to conduct a comprehensive election investigationincluding potentially using the committees subpoena powers, according to a statement.

More: Here's why state Sen. Doug Mastriano says Pa. election audit 'stopped for the time being'

More: Mastriano: Democrats using 'scare tactics' in telling Pa. counties to ignore election audit

J.D. Prose is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network's Pennsylvania State Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jprose@gannett.com.

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GOP state lawmakers file lawsuit to have mail-in voting tossed out. Who is suing - GoErie.com

The American right has been drunk on its freedom from two kinds of inhibition since Donald Trump appeared to guide them into the promised land of their unleashed ids. One is the inhibition from lies, the other from violence. Both are ways members of civil society normally limit their own actions out of respect for the rights of others and the collective good. Those already strained limits have snapped for leading Republican figures, from Tucker Carlson on Fox News to Ted Cruz in the Senate and for their followers.

Weve watched those followers gulp down delusions from Pizzagate to Qanon to Covid denialism to Trumps election lies. And rough up journalists, crash vehicles into and wave weapons at Black Lives Matter and other anti-racist protesters at least since Charlottesville, menace statehouses, issue threats to doctors and school boards testifying about public health, and plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, for imposing Covid-prevention protocols.

The Texas abortion law that the rightwing supreme court just smiled upon, despite its violation of precedent, seethes with both violence and lies. The very language of the law is a lie, a familiar one in which six-week embryos are called fetuses and a heartbeat is attributed to the cluster of cells that is not yet a heart not yet powering a circulatory system.

Behind it are other lies, in which women have abortions because they are reckless, wanton and callous, rather than, in the great number of cases, because of the failure of birth control, or coercive sex, or medical problems, including threats to the health of the mother or a non-viable pregnancy, and financial problems, including responsibility for existing children.

But what was new about the Texas bill is its invitation to its residents to become vigilantes, bounty hunters and snitches. This will likely throw a woman who suspects she is pregnant into a hideous state of fearful secrecy, because absolutely anyone can profit off her condition and anyone who aids her, from the driver to the doctor, is liable. It makes pregnancy a crime, since it is likely to lead to the further criminalization even of the significant percentage of pregnancies that end in miscarriage. It will lead women particularly the undocumented, poor, the young, those under the thumbs of abusive spouses or families to die of life-threatening pregnancies or illicit abortions or suicide out of despair. A vigilante who goes after a woman is willing to see her die.

The rightwing stance on abortion is often treated as a contradiction coming from a political sector that sings in praise of unfettered liberty to do as you like, including carry semiautomatic weapons in public and spread a sometimes fatal virus. But like the attack on voting rights in Texas happening simultaneously with the attack on reproductive rights, it is of course about expanding liberty for some while withering it away for others. The attacks on reproductive rights seek to make women unfree and unequal; the attacks on voting rights seek to make people of color unfree and unequal; women of color get a double dose.

This is the logical outcome of a party that, some decades back, looked at an increasingly non-white country and decided to try to suppress the votes of people of color rather than win them. Not just the Democratic party but democracy is their enemy. In this system in which some animals are more equal than others, some have the right to determine the truth more than others, and facts, science, history are likewise fetters to be shaken loose in pursuit of exactly your very own favorite version of reality, which you enforce through dominance, including outright violence.

What was the 6 January coup attempt but this practice writ large? A mountain of lies about the outcome of an election was used to whip up a vigilante mob into an attack not just on Congress but on the ratification of the election results and death threats against the vice-president and against Speaker Pelosi. The sheer berserker-style violence of it was extraordinary, the mostly middle-aged mostly white mostly men trying to gouge out eyeballs and trampling their own underfoot while screaming and spraying bear spray in the faces of those guarding the building and the elected officials within and the election.

Their leaders produced lies that instigated the violence, lies to justify that violence, lies to deny the existence of that violence, and then lies to stir up further violence. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who by his own account furiously begged Trump to call off the attackers, has since been trying to sabotage the investigation into what happened.

As the New York Times reported this week: Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, has threatened to retaliate against any company that complies with the congressional committee investigating the January 6 riot, after the panel asked dozens of firms to preserve the phone and social media records of 11 far-right members of Congress who pushed to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He is trying to prevent Congress and the public from knowing what has gone on. Which you could also call covering up a crime, in public, and his threats may themselves constitute crimes.

Madison Cawthorn, the North Carolina freshman congressman who appeared onstage on 6 January to whip up the crowd, calls the rioters political prisoners and continues to lie about the outcome of the 2020 election, declaring: If our election systems continue to be rigged, continue to be stolen, its going to lead to one place and thats bloodshed. Cawthorne, like the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, like Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, whose votes set the Texas abortion law into action on Wednesday, has been accused of sexual misconduct.

While men across the political spectrum are accused of similar wrongdoing Andrew Cuomos conduct led to New York getting its first female governor last month in the Republican case it is not an ideological inconsistency. The ideological premise is that ones own rights matter so much that others rights do not matter at all, and that goes from rape to mask and vaccine policies to the proliferation of guns and gun deaths in recent years.

There is no clear way to tell if the right is emboldened because theyve gotten away with so much in the past five years, or whether theyre increasingly desperate because they are in a wild gamble, but it seems like both at once. If the US defends its democracy, such as it is, and protects the voting rights of all eligible adults, the right will continue to be a shrinking minority. Their one chance of overturning that requires overturning democracy itself. Thats one goal theyre willing to use violence to achieve and no longer bothering to lie about.

Originally posted here:
Republicans seethe with violence and lies. Texas is part of a bigger war theyre waging - The Guardian