Saturday, April 29, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.
I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.
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Joe is always busy.
Biden declares Fort Lauderdale disaster area after flooding.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President Joe Biden declared Florida’s Broward County a disaster area Friday, two weeks after record-breaking rain left parts of Fort Lauderdale and its suburbs flooded.
Gov. Ron DeSantis had requested the declaration earlier this week. The declaration makes Broward residents and business owners who incurred damage to their homes and other property eligible for a wide range of federal loans and other assistance. Local governments and nonprofit organizations are also eligible.
More than 2 feet (0.6 meters) of rain fell in some parts of the county on April 12. The 1-in-1,000-year deluge left some neighborhoods with up to 3 feet (0.9 meters) of water. About 1,000 homes were severely damaged, according to the state.
The flooding also closed the airport for almost two days. Gas deliveries to the port were also slowed, causing long lines at the pump.(Associated Press).
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Press Freedom! Celebrities! (Also, the President.)
President Biden, who gets out of town most weekends, will attend the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday evening. (New York Times).
8 PM Tonight.
President Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last year.
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Kamala is always busy.
A stunning picture of @VP from last night! pic.twitter.com/tNy49s87yt
— GeorgiaPeach OG Biden Babe 🥁🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@ChrisFromGA68) April 27, 2023
From the @VP. -“When our hard-won rights are under attack, we don’t throw up our hands. We roll up our sleeves and get to work.
@POTUS and I will keep fighting until we fully protect fundamental rights and secure America’s promise of freedom for all.”
When our hard-won rights are under attack, we don’t throw up our hands. We roll up our sleeves and get to work. @POTUS and I will keep fighting until we fully protect fundamental rights and secure America’s promise of freedom for all. pic.twitter.com/mV0a9bd4Bb
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) April 28, 2023
From @VP - “Today, Senate Republicans blocked the Equal Rights Amendment.
Gender equality is a fundamental promise of democracy, and @POTUS and I will continue to fight for it.”
Today, Senate Republicans blocked the Equal Rights Amendment.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) April 27, 2023
Gender equality is a fundamental promise of democracy, and @POTUS and I will continue to fight for it.
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Happening in the States.
GOP Women say no, finally.
Strict abortion bans fail in deep-red South Carolina and Nebraska.
Opponents of LB626, which would have banned abortions in Nebraska after about six weeks, celebrate Thursday in the rotunda at the Nebraska State Capital in Lincoln, Neb., after the bill fails to get the votes necessary to invoke cloture.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Abortion bans in deeply conservative Nebraska and South Carolina each fell a single vote short of passing in their legislatures amid heated debates among Republicans, yet another sign that abortion is becoming a difficult issue for the GOP.
As the last vote was cast in Nebraska, where abortion is currently banned after 20 weeks of pregnancy, cheers erupted outside the legislative chamber, with opponents of the bill waving signs and chanting, "Whose house? Our house!"
In South Carolina, Republican Sen. Sandy Senn criticized Majority Leader Shane Massey for repeatedly "taking us off a cliff on abortion."
"The only thing that we can do when you all, you men in the chamber, metaphorically keep slapping women by raising abortion again and again and again, is for us to slap you back with our words," she said.
Minnesota to join at least 4 other states in protecting transgender care this year.
Minnesota to join at least 4 other states in protecting transgender care this year
The Nebraska proposal, backed by Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, is unlikely to move forward this year after the bill banning abortion around the sixth week of pregnancy fell one vote short of breaking a filibuster.
And in South Carolina, where abortion remains legal through 22 weeks of pregnancy, the vote marked the third time a near-total abortion ban has failed in the Republican-led Senate chamber since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade last summer.(NPR).
North Carolina’s Republican Court welcomes gerrymandering back to its state.
North Carolina Court, With New Partisan Mix, Reverses Itself on a Key Voting Case.
When it had a Democratic majority last year, the North Carolina Supreme Court voided the state’s legislative and congressional maps as illegal gerrymanders. Now the court has a Republican majority, and says the opposite.
The practical effect is to enable the Republican-controlled General Assembly to scrap the court-ordered State House, Senate and congressional district boundaries that were used in elections last November, and draw new maps skewed in Republicans’ favor for elections in 2024. The 5-to-2 ruling fell along party lines, reflecting the takeover of the court by Republican justices in partisan elections last November.
(New York Times).
A note from the great Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom.
“Fox News poll reveals how the @GOP are completely out of touch with America.”
Fox News poll reveals how the @GOP are completely out of touch with America. pic.twitter.com/KRdjFwy9d1
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) April 28, 2023
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Ron Klain on 2024 and Why Kamala Harris Is Underrated.
Kara Swisher chats with Biden’s ex-chief of staff about his time in the political trenches.
Ron Klain is the ultimate Democratic insider. During the Clinton administration, he served as chief of staff to Vice-President Al Gore (and was subsequently portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the HBO movie Recount). During the Obama years, he was then-Vice-President Biden’s chief of staff and later coordinated the U.S. response to Ebola. His career culminated as President Biden’s chief of staff, a role he left in February after two years. Klain, who is generally liked by both the progressive and moderate wings of his party, turned over the reins to Jeff Zients, who has aroused more suspicion on the party’s left flank. In the latest episode of On With Kara Swisher, Klain discusses why he thinks Zients is a logical choice, Vice-President Kamala Harris’s political skills, and more. Below is a section of that conversation.
Kara Swisher: So I saw your going-away speech back in February. It was emotional. You cried. When you think about what you weren’t able to get done, what makes you teary right now?
Ron Klain: I think two things really stand out in my mind immediately. One is voting rights. The Speaker made a big effort to get that done, and did an incredibly great job of getting it through the House, but we could not get the votes in the Senate to override the filibuster. We have a huge crisis of democracy in this country. We have a lot of states where voting-rights laws are being rolled back, and I think the federal government needs to do something.
And we need to do something about guns. We were able to pass a bipartisan gun bill that had some helpful measures after the tragedies in Texas and Buffalo, but obviously we still have way too many assault weapons on the streets. They’re way too easy to get. They’re way too widely dispersed. I worked for then-Senator Biden when we passed the ban on assault weapons through the Senate the first time way back in the 1990s, and it’s time to do that again.
Swisher: Let’s move on to your successor, Jeff Zients. The left has been very wary of him compared to you. He was a business-friendly private-equity guy, a deficit hawk. What was the calculus behind shifting to him from you? You told Chris Whipple that you thought the job would go to a woman.
Klain: I had thought that earlier on, but Jeff was the logical choice. He had experience in the Biden White House running the COVID response. He’s someone the president knew and trusted. He’s a very good manager, good leader. And I think he’s off to a very good start.
Swisher: I’m curious why you thought it was going to go to a woman and it didn’t. Why was he the obvious choice?
Klain: Because I think the president wanted to bring someone back to the White House who had been there previously, who knew him and the team, but would be additive to come back in as opposed to taking someone who was there and promoting that person. And Jeff had done a very good job running the COVID response.
Swisher: Will there ever be a woman White House chief of staff?
Klain: I hope so. There should be.
Swisher: Yeah. It would be nice for once.
Klain: Yeah. I was proud of the fact that we were the first White House in history that had a majority of the senior staff that was female. The majority of the whole White House staff was female; the majority of the senior staff was female. The first Cabinet in history where the Cabinet was equally balanced between men and women. And I think that was very helpful to our administration. And someday there should be a female White House chief of staff, no question about it.
Swisher: Let me then ask you about Vice-President Harris. The New York Times said you were her most important internal ally. According to Chris Whipple, Biden said the vice-president is a “work in progress.” Now that you’re gone, who’s her biggest booster?
Klain: I think the president has always been her biggest booster and remains that. And I know that my successor, Jeff Zients, works with her very closely.
I think Vice-President Harris has done an excellent job. I think she takes a lot of grief unjustifiably, and that being a vice-president is a very, very tough job. Because this is a country that always thinks dubiously about someone who’s the No. 2. We’re a No. 1 kind of country. I lived with that when Al Gore and Joe Biden were vice-president. She makes a major contribution to the administration, and I think hopefully she’ll get more and more recognized for that.
Swisher: Why hasn’t she been able to shake the perception that she’s bad at her job? And give me a little more of a nuanced answer. I know sexism and racism are huge problems, but that doesn’t explain all the bad press.
Klain: Well, I do think sexism and racism are part of the problem, no question about it. I think she was not as well known in national politics before she became vice-president. And I think that she hasn’t gotten the credit for all that she’s done. She’s done a lot of very hard work and been very successful as vice-president. And I think hopefully during the campaign season, the American people will get more of a chance to see her on the stump and get to know her a little better. (New York Mag).
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What Joe has done. What he must do. To win the women’s vote in 2024.
President Joe Biden’s reelection could hinge on women voters, the economy.
President Biden at the SBA Women’s Summit, March 2023.
President Joe Biden ran for office during the “first female recession,” when the pandemic walloped women’s economic prospects much more than men’s. Women in and out of the workforce were burdened by extra caregiving responsibilities. Biden promised to get things back on track — especially for women of color, who were hardest hit by the pandemic — and to restore a sense of normalcy in their lives.
Since he took office, women’s employment has rebounded amid a historic low overall unemployment rate. Labor force participation among women aged 25 to 54 has fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels, and a significant number of women with children under 18 have reentered the workforce.
Biden and his team tout these improvements, some of which were in motion before he took office, saying they have fulfilled the campaign promise. They also point to the passage of several landmark economic investment packages and workplace protections for women and parents. The past two years have also seen a broader, but still unfulfilled, push for wage equality, paid leave and child care — moves highly popular with the public that face significant roadblocks in Congress.
As Biden launches a campaign for a second term, he’ll have to educate voters about what he’s done — and convince them that he’s the one who can finish the job when it comes to long-neglected policy goals important to women and families.
The challenge, as described by people who back the president, is multifaceted: Many temporary programs benefiting women and families, like the expanded child tax credit, have expired or are set to expire later this year. Efforts to pass more permanent investments in paid leave and child care stalled out in the Senate. And despite Democrats’ better-than-expected performance in the 2022 midterms, many voters don’t know what the Biden administration has passed.
Energizing women voters, who tend to be more Democratic than men, is core to Biden’s chances of winning. Groups that back him, like the nonprofit Building Back Together, have been working to pitch women voters on these accomplishments even before his reelection bid is announced.
Fundamentally, all of the legislation has an economic narrative that we have an incredible opportunity to tell,” said Mayra Macías, interim executive director of Building Back Together. “… It is so important to show these concrete examples of people who are already feeling the impacts and are able to tell their story.”
The economy isn’t the only way gender will impact the 2024 election. Abortion access, which boosted Democrats to victory in many 2022 races, is poised to play a major role again in 2024. But the White House and Biden’s allies are also laser-focused on promoting Biden’s economic achievements, especially as they relate to women, and are preparing to spend considerable resources communicating them to voters.
What Biden has done
Biden’s investments in the economy started soon after he took office in January 2021, following two major economic stimulus packages passed in 2020 under then-President Donald Trump.
The American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion relief package Congress passed in March 2021, sent direct payments to millions of Americans and “stemmed the freefall of the child care sector” with a lifeline of subsidies, said Melissa Boteach, vice president for economic security and child care/early learning at the National Women’s Law Center. It also expanded the child tax credit, which cut child poverty in half while it was in effect, broadened other tax credits for families, bolstered nutrition assistance and lowered health care premiums.
The bill “made a huge difference” for women and families in need, Boteach said, but the relief measures, many of which are temporary and since expired, were “never designed to address the underlying problems that COVID laid bare.”
In 2021 and 2022, the White House, working with a narrowly divided Senate, got through a trifecta of bills that aimed to cut costs for Americans and create more job openings for more women in industries long dominated by men: the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the party-line Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
“I think that we’re at a transformational moment for women, especially women in the workplace,” said Noreen Farrell, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates. “And I think a lot of that has to do with how the Biden administration has prioritized that in the past few years.”
Several other pieces of legislation were designed to help women stay in the workforce and be treated fairly. In 2022, Biden signed into law several bipartisan bills aimed at combatting gender-based violence and workplace harassment, including a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). In addition, the December government funding bill included more federal funds for child care block grants, VAWA programs, maternal health research and workplace protections for pregnant and breastfeeding workers.
And after the IRA capped out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 per month for Medicare recipients, three major drug companies announced they would lower insulin costs for all patients. Reducing drug costs is particularly significant for women, who make an estimated 80 percent of the health care decisions for their families and spend more on health care than men on average.
“There’s really no more important issue than your family’s health and your health care — this has been one of the most important issues that we’ve seen over the past decade-plus,” said Danielle Deiseroth, interim executive director of left-leaning pollster Data For Progress. “They should take a victory lap, because government delivering on tangible wins that impact folks’ everyday lives is almost unheard of in the modern political era.”
Macías also pointed to Small Business Administration leader Isabel Guzman’s focus on empowering women small-business owners, and guidelines from the Department of Commerce, led by Secretary Gina Raimondo, requiring companies seeking over $150 million in CHIPS funds to provide employee child care.(the 19th).
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What would we expect!
In N.H. stop, Trump embraces woman convicted in Jan. 6 case.
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Former president Donald Trump on Thursday praised and embraced a woman convicted of defying police orders on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Listen, you just hang in there,” Trump told the woman, Micki Larson-Olson, who was found guilty on a misdemeanor charge of resisting police efforts to clear the grounds after the insurrection by a pro-Trump mob. “You guys are gonna be okay.”
Trump, who was campaigning here in New Hampshire, then agreed to sign the backpack she said she carried to the Capitol complex on the day of the interruption of the congressional proceedings to formally certify Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
“I can’t tell you how much that meant to me,” Larson-Olson said when Trump returned the backpack. Trump, the polling leader in the GOP presidential race, finished by taking a picture with her, hugging her, and giving her the personalized marker he used for his autograph.
“You just take care of yourself,” Trump told her. “You’ve been through too much. You’re going to wind up being happy.” (Washington Post).
The journalist Vaugh Hillyard interviewed the woman Trump hugged.
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As one who has lived this, I thought I’d post it.
Things People Think My Girlfriend and I Are Before Realizing We’re Lesbians | The New Yorker.
Best friends.
Sisters who look nothing alike.
A mother who’s miraculously the same age as her daughter.
Europeans air-kissing but on the mouth.
Two people having a very slow arm-wrestling competition.
Out-of-uniform police partners.
Girl Bert and Ernie.
Jehovah’s Witnesses who are lost.
Female C.E.O.s who leaned in just a little too far.
Cousins who haven’t seen each other since their grandmother’s funeral.
Brangelina.
Someone speaking to herself in a mirror.
Nurses on their lunch break at 8 p.m.
Exceptionally close managers of a Pret a Manger.
Two-sixteenths of an a-cappella group.
Actors in a play about a couple dating for real.
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph.
Drunk women in a bathroom who aren’t drunk or in a bathroom.
Running mates.
Escaped nuns.
Austria-Hungary?
Alsace-Lorraine?
The Wicked Witches of the East and the West.
Reunited triplets, but one of them died.
Strangers who touch.
Synchronized swimmers.
Two sentient Chia Pets.
Zombie friends.
Two people in the front and back of a horse costume who lost the horse costume years ago.
The Easter Island heads, if they were grabbing some tapas together.
Seagulls fighting over a French fry.
And one more time, even though they already asked: Sisters?
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