Friday, March 10, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.
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Joe is always busy.
Biden is using his budget as a cudgel in the debt ceiling fight — and for 2024.
Biden unveils his budget plan in a campaign-style speech. Here's what is in.
President Biden unveiled his budget on Thursday, a $6.9 trillion proposal that would include spending on his long-standing pledges like universal preschool, paid leave and more childcare funding.
Over the longer term, the White House says Biden's plan would reduce the deficit, thanks in large part to tax hikes on corporations and the rich. But in fiscal 2024, it would spend $1.8 trillion more than the government would take in.
Since Congress controls the purse strings — and Republicans control the House of Representatives — the plan is more of a political exercise than a practical roadmap for spending. Rather, it's an opening volley in a high stakes political fight over government funding and the debt ceiling, and is something that Biden can point to during what's expected to be a second run for the White House in 2024.
Biden formally released the plan in a speech in Philadelphia Thursday afternoon, going to a politically critical state to draw attention to something that is often little more than a document dump.
"I value everyone having an even shot," Biden said. "My budget reflects what we can do to lift the burden on hard-working Americans."
"Too many people have been left behind or treated like they're invisible. I promise you, I see you," Biden said. "Families have started to breathe a little easier but we've got further to go."
The event was held in a union hall, and though the speech was centered around his fiscal plans, it had the feel of a campaign stop, with Biden touting his priorities on education, infrastructure and lowering the cost of drugs.
The crowd chanted "four more years" as Biden began his remarks, and there were signs reading "Let's Go Joe" and "Local 252 for Biden."
The White House says Biden's plan would reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years.
Here's what Biden's plan would involve
The budget includes new spending on programs that Biden has campaigned on in the past:
Funding aimed at increasing the amount of affordable housing
Free preschool through funding for a federal-state partnership
Reinstates the expanded child tax credit, which went into effect during the pandemic, but expired at the end of 2021
An increase for Pell grants and more benefits for students going to historically Black colleges or universities and other minority-serving institutions
Allows people on Medicaid to get access to certain HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C treatments that the White House said would ultimately save taxpayer money and provide better care
In order to pay for funding Biden's priorities, the president's plan proposes an increased tax rate on wealthier Americans."I'm not going after any ordinary folks," Biden said in his remarks, noting that his plan won't raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year.
A minimum tax on billionaires of 25%, impacting the wealthiest .01%
An increase to the tax rate corporations pay in taxes on their profits to 28%
A cut in tax breaks for oil and gas companies and for real estate investors
Quadrupling a tax on stock buybacks to 4% from 1%
Ending tax breaks used by cryptocurrency transactions
Reverses former President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts so that people making more than $400,000 per year pay 39.6%
Biden proposes to let Medicare negotiate prices for a broader range of prescription drugs. Some of this was allowed under last year's Inflation Reduction Act.
Biden's budget also includes funding for other government efforts, like funding to increase security at U.S. borders and combat fentanyl tracking. There are also investments in fighting climate change and global warming. aimed at increasing the amount of affordable housing. (NPR).
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Kamala is always busy.
To kick off the second season of She Pivots, I had the privilege of interviewing Vice President Kamala Harris in front of a live audience alongside Minnesota’s Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan. I wanted to uncover what drove her career path—from prosecutor to district attorney to attorney general to senator to vice president.
Despite what many might see as a trajectory based on professional motivations, Harris’ biggest pivots have been driven by personal experiences. In fact, her decision to pursue a career of public service came with a life-altering moment in high school.
“One of my best friends in high school—while we were in high school, I learned that she was being molested,” Harris said during our live She Pivots podcast recording. “And I learned what it was and…the powerlessness that also is a part of it, that one is rendered to feel as though they are powerless. And, in many ways, that was one of the reasons I became a prosecutor.”
Motivated by her family and her deep desire to fight injustice on a larger scale, Harris decided she could have more impact as district attorney in California. But she faced her fair share of doubters, both before and after she was elected in 2003. “I was the first Black woman to ever have been elected as DA anywhere in the State of California,” Harris said. “And so, you can imagine when I decided to run, and I took on an incumbent, the number of people that said to me, ‘Oh, they're not ready for you.’ ‘It's not your time.’ ‘It's going to be hard work.’ And I didn't listen."
Harris’ passion for protecting those who are suffering injustices—stemming back to both her high school best friend’s experiences and her family’s own life experiences—has played an enormous role in every step of her career. Fighting for child sexual assault survivors pushed her to bring greater attention to domestic violence and sex trafficking crimes. And watching friends and loved ones battle complications during pregnancy motivated her fight to lower the Black maternal mortality rate when she was elected to the Senate in 2016.
“Speaking of personal experiences, someone very close to me just lost a member of their family, she died in connection with childbirth, just within the last month,” Harris said. To read on, click here.
The interviewer is Emily Tisch Sussman.
I welcomed former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to the White House today to discuss her work to support African women leaders.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) March 10, 2023
Her legacy and efforts to support the rights of women are an inspiration to the world. pic.twitter.com/6383XizMeD
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Senatorial succession in Kentucky won’t add a Democrat to the Senate.
In March 2021, Kentucky completed overhauled its laws regarding the replacement of a Senator who dies, resigns, or is removed from office.
Previously, the state governor would appoint the person of his choosing to fill out the term.
Under this new law, the governor must pick someone who is of the same political party, and list of three nominees is submitted by that state party, with the governor forced to pick from among the three. It also provides for the holding of special elections, depending on when the given senator leaves office.
It’s worth noting that this state law was strongly supported by McConnell, and that Kentucky currently has a Democratic governor. The reasons behind the law are very clear. (Quora).
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“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is being treated for a concussion after falling Wednesday evening and is expected to remain hospitalized “for a few days,” a spokesperson announced Thursday afternoon.” (Washington Post”)
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The Crimes of Donald J. Trump.
Prosecutors Signal Criminal Charges for Trump Are Likely.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in the payment of hush money to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.
The prosecutors offered Mr. Trump the chance to testify next week before the grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the potential case, the people said. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close; it would be unusual for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him.
Any case would mark the first indictment of a former American president, and could upend the 2024 presidential race.
It would also elevate Mr. Bragg to the national stage, though not without risk, and a conviction in the complex case is far from assured. (New York Times).
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If all the criminal investigations into former President Donald Trump end in conviction, then Trump will be a true renaissance man of crime. (Vox).
Here are the top 4.
#1 - Alvin Bragg’s case above 👆may be the first case in which Trump is indicted but it likely won’t be the last.
#2 - The DOJ’s Mar-a-Lago classified documents investigation.
The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida residence because, as federal prosecutors said in a fiery court filing in August, they believed not only did the former president possess “dozens” of boxes “likely to contain classified information” but also that “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.” In that search, the FBI said it did remove over 100 classified documents, some of which reportedly contained information about nuclear weapons.
That’s all part of just investigation into possible violations of the Espionage Act, the improper handling of federal records, and obstruction of a federal investigation.
#3 - a second federal investigation is looking into the January 6 attack on the Capitol and broader efforts to overturn the 2020 election, an issue that obviously could implicate the man who spent most of the 2020 lame-duck period trying to erase his loss to President Joe Biden.
In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor who previously oversaw war crimes prosecutions from an office in The Hague, as a special counsel in charge of these two Justice Department investigations into Trump.
#4 case is in Georgia where a number of Trump allies were subpoenaed as part of a state criminal investigation into interference with the 2020 election in their state specifically.
Trump could also be implicated, and even criminally charged, before this Georgia investigation concludes. In a post-election call with Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump told the state’s top election official that he wants “to find 11,780 votes.” Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by 11,779 votes. Fani Willis, the District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, leads the Georgia investigation.
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Children are endangered in Red States.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, [Now Governor of Arkansas],Thinks Child Labor Laws Have Been Working a Little Too Well.
The Republican Party is currently obsessed with the idea that it needs to protect children from things like being read to in libraries, men wearing dresses within 1,000 feet of them, historically accurate versions of US history, and the knowledge that gay people exist. Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders is one of these Republicans, and on Wednesday, she signed a sweeping education bill that, among other things, bans talk of “gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual reproduction” prior to fifth grade and curriculums that include critical race theory. How else is Sanders going to bat for kids? By loosening child labor laws, of course.
On Wednesday, the former White House press secretary signed the Youth Hiring Act of 2023, which says that children under 16 do not need to get permission from the Division of Labor to work or obtain an employment certificate verifying their age, work schedule, and written consent from a parent or guardian. In explaining Sanders’s thinking, her communications director claimed that previous permit requirements put an “arbitrary burden on parents.“ (It’s not actually clear how any of this was “arbitrary.”) Speaking to NBC News, Andrew Collins, an Arkansas state House Democrat, said by removing the parental-consent condition, the bill will “increases the risk that there will be abuses and violations of other child labor laws.” Reid Maki, director of child labor advocacy at the National Consumers League, told the outlet that the new law “increases the likelihood that kids will end up in dangerous jobs,” adding that a current increase in reported instances of child labor law infractions makes it a “very odd time” for Arkansas to erode protections.
In February, the Department of Labor said it had uncovered more than 3,800 instances in the last fiscal year of children working in US companies in violation of the law, with more than 100 kids, as young as 13, employed in hazardous jobs cleaning slaughterhouses overnight for Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (Ten of them were in Arkansas.)
Also this week, Republicans in the Ohio Senate passed a bill weakening child labor protections, which is expected to make it out of the House and be signed by Republican governor Mike DeWine. Similar measures are working their way through Minnesota and Iowa.
Last month a New York Times investigation explored the “brutal jobs” US companies are employing unaccompanied migrant children in in violation of labor laws. The Biden administration has since announcedit will introduce an array of new initiatives to investigate child labor violations and crackdown on companies that both illegally employ kids and use child labor in their supply chains. (Vanity Fair).
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Bill To Ban Child Marriage In West Virginia Defeated By Republicans.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A bill that would have prohibited minors from getting married in West Virginia was defeated Wednesday night in a legislative committee.
The Republican-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the bill on a 9-8 vote, a week after it passed the House of Delegates.
The vote came shortly after the bill’s main sponsor, Democratic Del. Kayla Young of Kanawha County, testified briefly before the committee. She said that since 2000 there have been more than 3,600 marriages in the state involving one or more children.
Currently, children can marry as young as 16 in West Virginia with parental consent. Anyone younger than that also must get a judge’s waiver.
“For now, there will be no floor for the age of marriage in WV, endangering our kids,” Young wrote on Twitter after the vote.
Some of the bill’s opponents have argued that teenage marriages are a part of life in West Virginia.
The bill would have established that 18 is the age of consent and removed the ability of a minor to obtain consent through their parents, legal guardians, or by court petition. Existing legal marriages, including those done in other states, would have been unaffected.
According to the nonprofit group Unchained At Last, which seeks to end forced and child marriage, seven states have set the minimum age for marriage at 18, all since 2018. Supporters of such legislation say it reduces domestic violence, unwanted pregnancies and improves the lives of teens.
Although recent figures are unavailable, according to the Pew Research Center, West Virginia had the highest rate of child marriages among the states in 2014, when the state’s five-year average was 7.1 marriages for every 1,000 children ages 15 to 17. (HuffPost).
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This raises a big question. About health care but also should there be a national referendum? On health insurance? Or on other matters?
American Health Care Is Dying. This Hospital Could Cure It.
A few months ago, I had to give a patient the worst news.
“It looks like your cancer has returned,” I said.
The man had religiously attended his chemotherapy and radiotherapy sessions in the city’s public health care system up until nine months before. Looking for a little more scheduling flexibility with his appointments, he took a step that seemed logical.
“I got health insurance,” he said, the eyeglasses on his forehead still for a moment. “Everything changed from there.”
Health insurance was supposed to improve his medical experience, but my patient couldn’t find an oncologist or hospital — even in the public system — that accepted his particular type. After months of searching, he grew discouraged; eventually he gave up. “A lot of this is on me,” he told me, ruefully.
This is the level of confusion and complexity we’ve come to accept as normal in our health care system.
I work as an internal medicine doctor at Houston’s Ben Taub Hospital, which is part of a public health system that treats Harris County’s most vulnerable patients, many of whom don’t have insurance. I often see the back end of our insurance fiasco: I’ve cared for dozens of patients who were sent to our E.R. hours after receiving inadequate treatment elsewhere. I’ve felt the injustice of a patient dying after he was dropped by his insurance. I’ve also seen patients hit with unexpected medical bills showing arbitrary prices after visiting the emergency room of a private hospital.
Visiting a hospital or clinic today feels like facing a firing squad, with rounds and rounds of bills coming from every direction. Fewer than half of Americans rate the quality of U.S. health care as excellent or good. We all have our stories. Whether through Twitter rants or opinion pieces or surveys quantifying how many of us grade the system as a failure — 56 percent at last count— we are fed up.
After listening to partisan rants on both sides that aim only to tweak rather than remake our system, I suggest we hold a national referendum on health care. Americans should vote yea or nay on a system that provides basic health care for all.
A federal ballot measure like this has never been held in our country. A referendum would ask Americans to focus on the proposal rather than on a candidate or political party. There’s reason to believe that a direct vote could help us solve our health care quagmire. In a recent survey, about two out of three Americans said it was the government’s responsibility to provide universal health coverage. Another study conducted in my home state showed the same, with seven out of 10 Texans declaring universal health coverage important (Guest essay, By Ricardo Nuila, New York Times).
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My college has a fierce new feminist President.
Barnard College Names Florida Law Dean as New President.
Barnard College of Columbia University, one of the most prominent women’s colleges in the United States, announced on Thursday that it had chosen Laura A. Rosenbury, the dean of the University of Florida Levin College of Law, to serve as its next president.
Ms. Rosenbury became the first woman to serve as dean of Levin College of Law, in Gainesville, Fla., in 2015. She also taught classes in feminist legal theory, employment discrimination and family law.
“As a scholar who has long studied the law’s role in the construction of gender, I am excited to be part of an institution that has a deep history of studying gender in all of its complexity,” said Ms. Rosenbury in an interview.
Barnard was the first college in New York City to offer degrees to women, and it has always had a woman president.
Ms. Rosenbury oversaw a period of growth at the University of Florida, raising more than $100 million in donations, hiring 39 new faculty members and increasing the number of applicants by roughly 200 percent, Barnard said.
Before serving as dean of the Levin College of Law, Ms. Rosenbury was a professor of law and vice dean at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. She also served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Stanford Law School and the University of Chicago Law School.
Before she entered academia, Ms. Rosenbury worked as an associate at Davis, Polk & Wardwell in New York City and clerked for Judge Carol Bagley Amon of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and Judge Dennis Jacobs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in women’s studies at Harvard-Radcliffe and her Juris Doctor at Harvard Law School. (New York Times).
One more thing. Rosenbury was born in Indiana and raised in New York. At Harvard Law School, she was primary editor of the Harvard Law Review. Her first job out of college was at Planned Parenthood. She has been a Board member at Guttmacher Institute for more than 6 years.
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And one other thing. Sorry that the Roundup was late yesterday. The problem, dear readers, was a breakdown on the Buttondown Platform on which I create the Roundup. We all hope there are not more problems.
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