Category Archives: Trumpism

Under Trump Regime, Sweeping Shift on #VotingRights Undermines Democracy

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From today’s New York Times:

A new voter ID law could shut out many Native Americans from the polls in North Dakota. A strict rule on the collection of absentee ballots in Arizona is being challenged as a form of voter suppression. And officials in Georgia are scrubbing voters from registration rolls if their details do not exactly match other records, a practice that voting rights groups say unfairly targets minority voters.

During the Obama administration, the Justice Department would often go to court to stop states from taking steps like those. But 18 months into President Trump’s term, there are signs of change: The department has launched no new efforts to roll back state restrictions on the ability to vote, and instead often sides with them.

Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the department has filed legal briefs in support of states that are resisting court orders to rein in voter ID requirements, stop aggressive purges of voter rolls and redraw political boundaries that have unfairly diluted minority voting power — all practices that were opposed under President Obama’s attorneys general.

The Sessions department’s most prominent voting-rights lawsuit so far forced Kentucky state officials last month to step up the culling from registration rolls of voters who have moved.

In the national battle over voting rights, the fighting is done in court, state by state, over rules that can seem arcane but have the potential to sway the outcome of elections. The Justice Department’s recent actions point to a decided shift in policy at the federal level: toward an agenda embraced by conservatives who say they want to prevent voter fraud.

Read the complete article here.

‘Eye-popping’ payouts for CEOs follow Trump’s tax cuts, while wages stagnate

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From today’s Politico “Finance and Tax” Series:

Some of the biggest winners from President Donald Trump’s new tax law are corporate executives who have reaped gains as their companies buy back a record amount of stock, a practice that rewards shareholders by boosting the value of existing shares.

A POLITICO review of data disclosed in Securities and Exchange Commission filings shows the executives, who often receive most of their compensation in stock, have been profiting handsomely by selling shares since Trump signed the law on Dec. 22 and slashed corporate tax rates to 21 percent. That trend is likely to increase, as Wall Street analysts expect buyback activity to accelerate in the coming weeks.

“It is going to be a parade of eye-popping numbers,” said Pat McGurn, the head of strategic research and analysis at Institutional Shareholder Services, a shareholder advisory firm.

That could undercut the political messaging value of the tax cuts in the Republican campaign to maintain control of Congress in the midterm elections.

The SEC requires company executives to disclose share purchases or sales within two business days. Companies emphasize that their executives’ share sales are often scheduled at regular intervals well in advance. In Banga’s case, he has routinely sold shares once a year, and always in May, since 2013…

Yet the insider sales feed the narrative that corporate tax cuts enrich executives in the short term while yielding less clear long-term benefits for workers and the broader economy. Critics of insider sales argue that they diminish the value of paying C-suite employees in shares — a practice that’s intended to give them a greater stake in the long-term health of the company — and can even raise questions about the motivation for the buybacks themselves.

Following the tax cuts, roughly 28 percent of companies in the S&P 500 mentioned plans to return some of their tax savings to shareholders, according to Morgan Stanley. Public companies announced more than $600 billion in buybacks in the first half of this year — already toppling the previous annual record.

Year to date, buybacks have doubled from the same period a year ago, Merrill Lynch said in a July 24 report, citing its clients’ trading activity. “Last week we noted that buyback activity [was] poised to accelerate over the next six weeks, and indeed, corporate clients’ buybacks picked up to a two-month high and the 6th-highest level in our data history,” the company said.

Read the complete article here.

 

Dept. of Education Proposes to Curtail Debt Relief for Defrauded Students

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From today’s New York Times:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos proposed on Wednesday to curtail Obama administration loan forgiveness rules for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, requiring that student borrowers show they have fallen into hopeless financial straits or prove that their colleges knowingly deceived them.

The DeVos proposal, set to go in force a year from now, would replace Obama-era policies that sought to ease access to loan forgiveness for students who were left saddled with debt after two for-profit college chains, Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute, imploded in 2015 and 2016. The schools were found to have misled their students with false advertisements and misleading claims for years.

Afterward, the Obama administration forgave hundreds of millions of dollars in student loans and began rewriting regulations to crack down on predatory institutions and bolster borrowers’ ability to seek debt relief from the federal government. But higher education institutions, including historically black colleges and universities and for-profit educators, maintained the new rules were far too broad and subjected them to frivolous claims that carried significant financial risks.

In June 2017, just one month before the Obama rules were to take effect, Ms. DeVos announced that she would block and rewrite them.

Read the complete article here.

What Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s SCOTUS nominee means for consumer rights

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From today’s NPR MarketWatch:

When President Donald Trump announced Brett Kavanaugh as his nominee for the Supreme Court to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy when he retires at the end of July, liberal commentators sounded the alarm about what his service could mean for controversial topics including abortion and health care. Add one more topic to the list: consumer rights.

“There’s a lot to dislike about Brett Kavanaugh’s record — including his hostility to consumers,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts who largely created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of Dodd-Frank reforms in 2010, wrote on Twitter TWTR, -4.27%   on July 10.

“Judge Kavanaugh has been a reckless and partisan jurist who has always seemed more interested in pleasing Wall Street and the conservative political establishment than he has in defending the Constitution,” wrote Karl Frisch, the executive director of the left-leaning consumer advocacy organization Allied Progress, in a statement. “He would be a disaster for consumers and the CFPB if confirmed to the Supreme Court.”

Critics fear Kavanaugh will weaken the country’s most prominent consumer watchdog. In 2017, a three-judge panel for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled against the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, in a case called PHH Corp. v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Kavanaugh was the lead author of that decision, which said the current structure of the CFPB, with just one director, violates the Constitution.

The director could only be removed for specific reasons: Inefficiency, neglect of duty or “malfeasance,” or wrongdoing. In contrast, the president has the power to remove the head of most other agencies at will. Kavanaugh proposed giving that power to the U.S. president, making it possible to remove the CFPB’s director. Consumer advocates feared that would hurt the bureau, especially as the Trump administration had already expressed desire to weaken it.

Read the complete article here.

Tariffs Imperil Workers in South Carolina, Deep in the Heart of Trump Country

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From today’s New York Times:

In the middle of David Britt’s campaign to get BMW to put a car factory here, a man grabbed him by the tie while he was in a restaurant.

“Don’t give that land to the Germans,” the man hissed to Mr. Britt, a county official.

Two decades later, the automaker has become the most important local job creator, earning the affection of a deep-red county where one in 10 people earns a living making vehicles or their parts.

The Spartanburg plant is BMW’s biggest in the world. It has helped draw more than 200 companies from two dozen countries to Spartanburg County. And the German company — not an American icon like Ford or General Motors — is now the largest exporter of cars made in the United States, turning the port of Charleston, S.C., into a hub for global trade.

But by setting off a global trade battle, President Trump is threatening the town’s livelihood. People aren’t happy.

“BMW saved Spartanburg and transformed South Carolina into a manufacturing mecca to the world,” said Mr. Britt, a member of the County Council. “When you mess with the golden goose, they’re family, and you’re messing with me.”

On Thursday, the Commerce Department is holding a hearing in Washington on whether imported cars and car parts harm national security, the premise of an administration plan to impose hefty duties. If imposed, the tariffs would most likely have deeper and wider-reaching repercussions for the economy than levies on fish or steel. Cars don’t come together in one plant, with one work force — they’re the final result of hundreds of companies working together, in a supply chain that can snake through small American towns and cross oceans.

Automakers have lined up to oppose the measure, which they say would make it more expensive to build cars here and would prompt other countries to respond in kind, hurting exports.

Read the complete article here.

Trump’s SCOTUS nominee favors corporations over working Americans

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Today’s Press Release from the AFL-CIO:

Working people expect the Supreme Court to be the most fair and independent branch of government in America, yet recent decisions have protected the privileged and powerful at the expense of working people. Decisions by the Court, often by the narrowest of margins, have a dramatic impact on our lives as we recently saw in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 and reinforce the importance of choosing who sits on the Court.

Share this graphic and reject Judge Brett Kavanaugh because we simply cannot have another Justice on the Court who sides with corporations over America’s working families.

We have thoroughly reviewed the record of Judge Kavanaugh on cases of importance to working families and are compelled to oppose his nomination.

Judge Kavanaugh routinely rules against working families, regularly rejects the right of employees to receive employer-provided health care in the workplace, too often sides with employers in denying employees relief from discrimination in the workplace and promotes overturning well-established U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

Any Supreme Court nominee must be fair, independent and committed to protecting the rights, freedoms and legal safeguards that protect every one of us. Judge Kavanaugh does not meet this standard.The next justice confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the Court will play a pivotal role in new cases addressing health care, worker safety issues and collective bargaining rights for generations to come.

This current Supreme Court has shown that it will side with greedy corporations over working people whenever given the chance, and this nominee will only skew that further. The Senate should reject this nomination and demand a nominee who will protect the rights of working people and uphold our constitutional values of liberty, equality and justice for all.

Across the country, working people are organizing and taking collective action as we haven’t seen in years and won’t stand for any politician who supports justices who put our rights at risk.

Share this graphic and reject Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Our fight for better wages and benefits and a voice on the job will continue on. The rich and powerful won’t dictate the American story. We will pave our own path, populate the halls of power with allies of working people and secure a brighter economic future.

In Solidarity,

Richard Trumka

——

Richard Trumka

President, AFL-CIO

White House proposes merging Labor and Education into one agency

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From today’s Washington Post:

The White House on Thursday will propose merging the Education and Labor departments into one federal agency, the centerpiece of a plan to remake a bureaucracy that President Trump and his supporters consider too big and bloated, according to an administration official familiar with the plan.

The long-awaited proposal to reorganize federal agencies would shrink some and augment the missions of others. It is the result of a directive that Mick Mulvaney, head of the Office of Management and Budget, issued to federal leaders 14 months ago. He urged them to find ways to merge overlapping, duplicative offices and programs and eliminate those the administration views as unnecessary.

The plan also is expected to include major changes to the way the government provides benefits for low-income Americans, an area that conservatives have long targeted as excessive, by consolidating safety-net programs that are administered through multiple agencies.

The reorganization plan also is likely to revamp the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to shrink its role as the department responsible for employee background checks, retirement claims, benefits and federal workforce policy, two sources with knowledge of the proposal said.

The plan to consolidate the Labor and Education departments, which first surfaced in Education Week and was later confirmed by other news outlets, would allow the Trump administration to focus its efforts to train students in vocational skills in one place.

Republicans have long expressed an interest in eliminating the Education Department since it was created by President Jimmy Carter in 1980. Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have shown similar leanings.

In 1995, the House introduced legislation to merge the agencies to put K-12 schools and job training together, but the measure failed.

The Education Department is the smallest Cabinet agency in number of employees, with just under 4,000, and a $68 billion budget. It oversees federal student loans, distributes K-12 education funding, and enforces federal civil rights laws at public schools and colleges.

The Labor Department, with about 15,000 employees and a $13 billion budget, has a broad portfolio that includes programs to train workers, enforcement of minimum-wage laws, the Bureau of Labor Statistics — which produces economic data — and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Under Republican presidents, the department has tended to have a lower profile than under Democratic administrations.

Read the complete article here.

Trump pardons Dinesh D’Souza on felony campaign contribution violation

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From today’s CNBC “Politics” site:

Conservative commentator and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza revealed on Friday what he said President Donald Trump told him about why he was getting a pardon.

On Fox News, D’Souza said he didn’t know he was going to get it. “I was just in my office working away. And an operator came on the line and said, ‘Is this Dinesh D’Souza?’ Yes. ‘Hold the line for the president of the United States.’ And there was Trump.”

He said Trump said: “”You’ve been a great voice for freedom. I’ve got to tell you man to man, you’ve been screwed.’ He goes, ‘I’ve been looking at the case. I knew from the beginning that it was fishy.'”

D’Souza, who was convicted in 2014 of making an illegal campaign contribution, said, “[Trump] said upon reviewing it, he felt a great injustice had been done. And using his power, he was going to rectify it, sort of clear the slate. And he said he just wanted me to be out there and be a bigger voice than ever defending the principles that I believe in.”

A day earlier, Trump announced on Twitter his decision to pardon D’Souza, an outspoken critic of Democratic former President Barack Obama. D’Souza was prosecuted by then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, an Obama appointee who was later fired by Trump.

Read the complete article here.

Trump Changes Executive Regulations to Ease the Firing of Federal Workers

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From today’s New York Times:

Seizing on a longtime ambition of many Republicans, President Trump on Friday overhauled rules affecting at least two million federal workers, making it easier to fire them and rolling back the workplace role of their unions.

Mr. Trump, furthering a goal cited in his State of the Union address this year, signed a series of executive orders affecting disciplinary procedures and contract negotiations and limiting the conduct of union business on government time.

Andrew Bremberg, the head of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said the president was “fulfilling his promise to promote more efficient government by reforming our Civil Service rules.”

Past administrations of both parties have argued that Civil Service rules are in need of modernization, but Mr. Trump zeroed in on aspects that create sharp partisan divisions. And the action follows growing acrimony between his supporters and the federal bureaucracy that they portray as the deep state.

Unions representing government workers were quick to denounce the actions. “This is more than union busting — it’s democracy busting,” J. David Cox Sr., national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said in a statement. “These executive orders are a direct assault on the legal rights and protections that Congress has specifically guaranteed.”

The executive orders come after a series of prominent Republican victories against public employee unions in recent years at the state level and a rollback of Obama-era policies favorable to labor at the federal level.

In the coming weeks, the Supreme Court will rule on a case, propelled by years of conservative philanthropy, that could end mandatory fees for public-sector unions in more than 20 states, dealing a body blow to union coffers.

The Trump administration portrayed its new rules as a needed remedy to make a sclerotic work force more efficient and responsive, but Newt Gingrich, who has been an informal adviser to the White House on Civil Service issues, has given a different explanation in the past.

In an interview last year, when the administration was considering action, Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker, said that a major impetus was the federal bureaucracy’s ideological opposition to the Trump agenda.

Read the complete article here.

The face of political corruption in DC? Emails show collaboration among EPA and climate change deniers

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From today’s Los Angeles Times:

Newly released emails show senior Environmental Protection Agency officials collaborating with a conservative group that dismisses climate change to rally like-minded people for public hearings on science and global warming, counter negative news coverage and tout Administrator Scott Pruitt’s stewardship of the agency.

Emails show collaboration among EPA and climate change deniers

The emails were obtained by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Southern Environmental Law Center through the Freedom of Information Act.

The emails show John Kokus, EPA’s deputy associate administrator for public affairs, repeatedly reached out to the conservative Heartland Institute.

EPA spokesman Lincoln Ferguson says the Heartland Institute is one of a broad range of groups the agency engages with.

Heartland’s Tim Huelskamp says it will continue to work with Pruitt and the EPA against a “radical climate alarmism agenda.”

Read the complete article here.