April 20, 2024

Saturday, April 20, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Joe is always busy.

Biden administration bans drilling in nearly half of Alaska petroleum reserve in sweeping win for climate advocates.

A part of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System runs through boreal forest past Alaska Range mountains in May 2023 near Delta Junction, Alaska. The 800-mile-long pipeline carries oil from the North Slope in Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez

In a sweeping win for climate and environmental advocates, the Biden administration on Friday finalized a rule to ban fossil fuel drilling on nearly half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, alongside other major conservation actions.

The Interior Department will block oil drilling on over 13 million acres in the Western Arctic, including about 40% of the land of the NPR-A – a remote area that is home to protected animal species including polar bears and caribou.

The reserve is more than 23 million acres of public land and an underground emergency oil supply for the US Navy that was designated in the early 1920s. More recently, it’s become the site of the ConocoPhillips-owned Willow project, a controversial oil drilling venture in the Arctic.

When the Biden administration approved Willow in March 2023, it sparked intense backlash among young people on social media, as well as environmental and climate groups. Friday’s action could improve President Joe Biden’s approval among young voters.

“These natural wonders demand our protection,” Biden said in a statement. Biden said he was “proud” of his administration’s move to conserve more than 13 million acres in the Western Arctic, but added, “as the climate crisis imperils communities across the country, more must be done.”

Some Alaska Natives are critical of the drilling ban across such a significant swath of the NPR-A. It has proved controversial with Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation, as well as Alaska Native groups who say they depend on the tax revenue from oil drilling to fund schools and basic services.

The final rule “does not reflect our communities’ wishes,” said Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat President Nagruk Harcharek, adding the move “will hurt the very residents the federal government purports to help by rolling back years of progress, impoverishing our communities, and imperiling our Iñupiaq culture.”

The ban will also open the president to attacks from Republicans that he is failing to prioritize American energy independence and is driving up the price of gasoline. But under Biden’s tenure, the US is producing more oil than any country in history, CNN Business reported, and gas prices are down $1.35 from their all-time high in June 2022. (CNN).

Thursday.

Friday.

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Trump Election Interference Trial in Manhattan.

Day #4.

The final jurors for Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial were selected on Friday, with lawyers preparing to offer opening statements on Monday in a landmark proceeding that was suddenly overshadowed at midday by the spectacle of a man setting himself aflame outside the courthouse.

Five Manhattan residents were chosen Friday, filling out a group of 12 seated jurors and six alternates who will hear accusations from the Manhattan district attorney’s office that Mr. Trump sought to cover up a sex scandal that could have imperiled his 2016 run for president.

The day was marked by an intensity of emotion from the start. Several prospective jurors asked to be excused, and some became upset, with one saying she had become too nervous to continue the process.

Then word quietly began to spread about the man who had set himself on fire in a park across the street from the courthouse. The courtroom proceedings continued, but the stir was noticeable, and reporters ran from the room. The man’s motivations were not immediately clear, but he was carrying leaflets espousing antigovernment conspiracy theories.

From ABC News - “The man, Maxwell Azzarello, [from St. Augustine, FL] was badly burned and taken to a hospital in critical condition, officials said.”

From Associated Press - “Judge Juan Merchan said lawyers will present opening statements Monday morning before prosecutors begin laying out their case alleging a scheme to cover up negative stories Trump feared would hurt his 2016 campaign. He has pleaded not guilty and says the stories were false.”

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Trump to face a challenge to his $175 million bond for New York Fraud Case.

Here 👇 is New York Attorney General General’s 26 page challenge to the bond filed.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24558931-452564_2022_people_of_the_state_of_v_people_of_the_state_of_memorandum_of_law_i_1738

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Late Last night the tallies were read in Tennessee.

The Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga are now members of the UAW.

Who do you think they will vote for in 2024?

Volkswagen workers vote to join UAW in historic win.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — Employees at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelmingly voted to join the United Auto Workers union Friday in a historic first test of the UAW’s renewed effort to organize nonunion factories.

The union wound up getting 2,628 votes, or 73% of the ballots cast, compared with only 985 who voted no in an election run by the National Labor Relations Board.

Both sides have five business days to file objections to the election, the NLRB said. If there are none, the election will be certified and VW and the union must “begin bargaining in good faith.”

President Joe Biden, who backed the UAW and won its endorsement, said the union’s win follows major union gains across the country including actors, port workers, Teamsters members, writers and health care workers.

“Together, these union wins have helped raise wages and demonstrate once again that the middle-class built America and that unions are still building and expanding the middle class for all workers,” he said in a statement late Friday.

Twice in recent years, workers at the Chattanooga plant have rejected union membership in plantwide votes. Most recently, they handed the UAW a narrow defeat in 2019 as federal prosecutors were breaking up a bribery-and-embezzlement scandal at the union.

But this time, they voted convincingly for the UAW, which is operating under new leadership directly elected by members for the first time and basking in a successful confrontation with Detroit’s major automakers.

The union’s pugnacious new president, Shawn Fain, was elected on a platform of cleaning up after the scandal and turning more confrontational with automakers. An emboldened Fain, backed by Biden, led the union in a series of strikes last fall against Detroit’s automakers that resulted in lucrative new contracts.

The new contracts raised union wages by a substantial one-third, arming Fain and his organizers with enticing new offers to present to workers at Volkswagen and other companies.

Next up for a union vote are workers at Mercedes factories near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who will vote on UAW representation in May.

Worker Vicky Holloway of Chattanooga was among dozens of cheering workers celebrating at an electrical workers union hall near the VW plant. She said the overwhelming vote for the union came this time because her colleagues realized they could have better benefits and a voice in the workplace.

“Right now we have no say,” said Holloway, who has worked at the plant for 13 years and was there for the union’s previous losses. “It’s like our opinions don’t matter.”

Michael Ream, who has worked assembling vehicles at the Chattanooga plant since 2019, said he voted for the union because he was inspired by the contracts it won with Detroit automakers after going on strike last year.

In a statement, Volkswagen thanked workers for voting and said 83.5% of the 4,300 production workers cast ballots in the election.

Six Southern governors, including Tennessee’s Bill Lee, warned the workers in a joint statement this week that joining the UAW could cost them their jobs and threaten the region’s economic progress.

But the overwhelming win is a warning to nonunion manufacturers, said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who studies the union.

“This is going to send a powerful message to all of those companies that the UAW is knocking at the door, and if they want to remain nonunion, they’ve got to step up their game,” Masters said.

He expects other nonunion automakers to become more aggressive at the plants, and that anti-union politicians will step up their efforts to fight the union.

Shortly after the Detroit contracts were ratified, Volkswagen and other nonunion companies handed their workers big pay raises.

Last fall, Volkswagen raised production worker pay by 11%, lifting top base wages to $32.40 per hour, or just over $67,000 per year. VW said its pay exceeds the median household income for the Chattanooga area, which was $54,480 last May, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

But under the UAW contracts, top production workers at GM, for instance, now earn $36 an hour, or about $75,000 a year excluding benefits and profit sharing. By the end of the contract in 2028, top-scale GM workers would make over $89,000.

The VW plant will be the first the UAW has represented at a foreign-owned automaking plant in the South. It will not, however, be the first union auto assembly plant in the South. The UAW represents workers at two Ford assembly plants in Kentucky and two GM factories in Tennessee and Texas, as well as some heavy-truck manufacturing plants.

Also, more than three decades ago, the UAW was at a Volkswagen factory in New Stanton, Pennsylvania, east of Pittsburgh. VW closed the plant that made small cars in the late 1980s. (Axios).

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Today, the House will vote on the foreign aid package.

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