How Donald Trump Worked to Destroy America’s Labor Unions

by Lawrence Wittner / June 17th, 2024

Although Donald Trump has been eager to garner support from American labor unions for his re- election campaign, there are lots of reasons he’s not going to get it.  Chief among them is his record in sabotaging the nation’s labor movement.

During his decades as a wealthy businessman, Trump clashed with unions repeatedly.  And, upon becoming President, he appointed people much like himself―from corporate backgrounds and hostile toward workers―to head key government agencies and departments.  Naturally, an avalanche of anti-union policies followed.

Under Trump, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)―the federal agency enforcing the nation’s fundamental labor law, the National Labor Relations Act―led the charge.  Instead of following the intent of the 1935 legislation, which was to guarantee the right of workers to union representation, the Trump NLRB widened the basis for denying that right.  According to the NLRB, the nearly two million Uber and Lyft drivers, as well as other workers in the gig economy, were not really workers, but independent contractors and, as such, not entitled to a union.  The NLRB also proposed depriving graduate teaching assistants and other student employees at private universities of the right to organize unions and collectively bargain.

When it came to the reduced number of workers still eligible to form a union, the Trump NLRB adopted new rules making it more difficult for them to win the employee elections necessary for union representation.  The NLRB hindered union activists’ ability to organize workers during non-working hours and, also, allowed employers to gerrymander bargaining units.  In March 2020, the Trump NLRB used the excuse of the Covid-19 pandemic to suspend all union representation elections and, thereafter, allowed mail ballot elections only if the employer agreed to them.

Unlike their Trump-appointed managers, many NLRB employees, as career civil servants, resented the agency’s shift toward anti-union policies and sought to enforce what labor rights remained under the National Labor Relations Act.  But the new management undermined their ability to protect workers’ rights by refusing to fill vacancies, thereby hollowing out the agency.  As a result, the number of NLRB staff members dropped by nearly 20 percent.

Major federal departments moved in the same anti-union direction.  Trump’s Department of Education scrapped collective bargaining with the American Federation of Government Employees and unilaterally imposed a contract curtailing the union rights of the department’s 3,900 workers.  Trump’s Department of Labor removed requirements that employers disclose their use of “union-busting” law firms (a practice in 75 percent of union representation elections at an estimated annual cost of $340 million).  And the Department of Justice, in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Janus case, delivered what was expected to be a devastating blow to public sector unions.

Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 was the culmination of lengthy efforts by big business and reactionary forces to cripple unions representing teachers, firefighters, and other public servants by slashing their source of income: union dues.  In the past, the courts had ruled that, even if a public worker chose not to join the union, the worker, in lieu of union dues, would still have to pay “fair share fees” to cover the costs of collective bargaining and administration of the union contract.  In the Janus case, though, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, prohibited public sector unions from charging fees to nonmembers for representation.  In this fashion, the narrow Court majority (including all three of Donald Trump’s appointees) established a significant financial incentive for millions of workers to stop paying union dues and become “free riders,” securing union benefits without paying for them.  To widespread surprise, though, union-represented workers simply stuck with their unions and went on paying union dues, thereby foiling this Trump administration gambit.

In addition to relying on his appointees, Trump took direct action as president to undermine American unions.  Kicking off Labor Day in 2018, he denounced the nation’s top labor leader, Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, stating that Trumka’s policies explained “why unions are doing so poorly.”  In 2020, after the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act―billed by the AFL-CIO as “the most significant worker empowerment legislation since the Great Depression”―Trump blocked the legislation from moving any further by threatening to veto it.

Trump’s disdain for the American labor movement continued in the years after he left office.  In August 2023, attacking the newly-elected, dynamic leaders of the United Auto Workers (UAW), he told UAW members that “you shouldn’t pay those [union] dues because they’re selling you to hell.  Don’t listen to these union people who get paid a lot of money.”  That October, he insisted:  “The auto workers are being sold down the river by their leadership.”  In fact, though, that November, UAW president Shawn Fain and his team led one of the most impressive nationwide strikes of modern times, securing wage raises for auto workers of at least 25 percent, as well as boosting retirement contributions and other benefits.

Not surprisingly, the UAW doesn’t have much respect for Donald Trump.  In January 2024, the 400,000-member union endorsed Joe Biden for re-election, with Fain remarking that Biden “stood with the American worker,” while “Trump has a history of serving himself and standing for the billionaire class.”  These remarks echoed Fain’s comments of a few days before, when he called Trump “a scab” who “stands against everything we stand for as a union.”

The AFL-CIO, which unites most of America’s unions, delivered a similar appraisal in a press release (“Donald Trump’s Catastrophic and Devastating Anti-Labor Track Record”) the preceding September.  “Trump spent four years in office weakening unions and working people,” it maintained.  “We can’t afford another four years of Trump’s corporate agenda to … destroy our unions.”

If Trump expects significant union support this November, it’s merely another of his many illusions.

Lawrence S. Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press). Read other articles by Lawrence, or visit Lawrence's website.

"Politician with robes": Expert says secret tape exposes Samuel Alito's "apocalyptic vision"

HE VIEWS ABORTION AS WITCHCRAFT!

Tatyana Tandanpolie

SALON
Thu, June 13, 2024 

Samuel Alito Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images

Secret tapes of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito released publicly Monday have plunged the conservative justice and the high court into deeper controversy, exposing a conversation that saw Alito endorsing ultra-conservative hot-takes.

The audio, obtained and first reported by Rolling Stone, came just weeks after reports of far-right-aligned flags being flown outside Alito's home sparked widespread backlash. The reports follow a year of ethics scandal-exposés involving both him and Justice Clarence Thomas. The newly revealed recordings have similarly prompted harsh rebuke of the justice, with legal experts decrying Alito's boosting of Christian nationalist rhetoric on the tapes as unethical.

"Justice Alito’s recorded comments aren’t so much revealing as they are confirming," James Sample, a Hofstra University constitutional law professor, told Salon. "They reinforce what we already know: that Justice Alito sees his raison d’etre as being more of an ideological culture warrior more than a jurist. And he’s indisputably winning the wars he is waging."

The bevy of revelations have also intensified public scrutiny of the Supreme Court in the wake of a series of contentious decisions in recent years, including eliminating federal protections for abortion care and gutting race-based affirmative action, and have led ethics watchdogs and government officials to declare that an externally enforced ethics code be imposed on the justices, a call that Senate Democrats renewed by seeking to pass a binding-ethics code proposal Wednesday in light of the new tapes.

These new tapes mark "yet another self-inflicted wound on the part of the Supreme Court," according to David Schultz, a professor of legal studies and political science at Hamline University.

"We've seen this gradual deterioration of support for the courts, and it's clearly collapsed after the Dobbs opinion. I mean, none of this is going to turn it around," Schultz told Salon, adding: "It's just going to further erode support for the judiciary. And I hate to say this at a time where you've got [former president Donald Trump] attacking the court system and where you really need people to be defending the courts."

Alito's conversation occurred during the Supreme Court Historical Society's annual dinner earlier this month and was recorded by liberal documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who describes herself as an "advocacy journalist" and has a reputation for secretly recording conservatives.

Windsor, who attended the event under her real name and peppered Alito with questions aligned with far-right ideology, got the justice to offer up his perspective on the opinions she touted. At one point in their exchange, she received an endorsement from the justice of her argument that ending the nation's political polarization by negotiating with the political left not possible, and that it's a matter of "winning" rather than compromise.

“I think you’re probably right,” Alito told Windsor. “On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”

In another instance, Alito said he agreed with her position that the country's Christian population has "got to keep fighting" to “return our country to a place of godliness.”


EXCLUSIVE UNDERCOVER AUDIO:
Sam Alito x John Roberts x The Undercurrent 🧵

1/ Justice Alito admits lack of impartiality with the Left, says: “One side or the other is going to win.” pic.twitter.com/b5nmxToZ9z

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 10, 2024

Schultz argued that the problems with the exchange are three-fold. First, it presents "almost an apocalyptic vision of American politics" of "dual-contending forces" that Alito appears to hint the resolution to aligns more with a "Christian vision." The second arises from his articulation of this vision, which flies in the face of the "myth" that these "justices are apolitical" and supposed to avoid "abandoning the neutrality."

Third, Alito's statements on the recording also appear to "reinforce both the appearance and the reality that he's voting ideology," that he's not "reading the Constitution neutrally," Schultz continued.

Windsor also secretly taped a conversation Chief Justice John Roberts at the dinner, but his responses to a line of questioning similar to what his colleague received appeared to come in sharp contrast to Alito's, ringing more neutral.

Roberts, according to The New York Times, instead, pushed back against Windsor's assertion that the court had to return the county to a more "moral path."

“Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?” Roberts rebutted. “That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.”

When Windsor expressed views that the U.S. is a "Christian nation" and the Supreme Court "should be guiding us in that path," the chief justice also disagreed, offering a more pluralistic counterpoint.

“I don’t know if that’s true," he said, adding: “I don’t know that we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say maybe not, and it’s not our job to do that.”

2/ Chief Justice Roberts denies that America is a Christian nation. pic.twitter.com/hb3iFa5Jnv

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 10, 2024

While Schultz said Roberts still shouldn't have addressed the questions, the chief justice's responses reflected a "more classic view" in terms of acknowledging the array of perspectives in the nation even with his orientation as a conservative justice.

"Roberts looks like he's a Chief Justice trying to defend the institution of the Supreme Court by at least coming across and looking somewhat more neutral," Schultz said. By comparison, Alito "looks like he's an advocate now," Schultz argued, adding: "He's the politician with robes."

"Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito often reach similar results on the merits," Sample added. "The difference is the extent to which they respect judicial norms."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Charles Geyh, a scholar of judicial ethics and law professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, told Salon that, while he was still "troubled" by Alito's responses — calling Alito's rejection of political compromise disheartening — he finds the justice's comments to reflect a different interpretation of Windsor's questioning from that of Roberts.

Alito appeared to answer the questions, not in an official capacity, but as a conservative with matching views, Geyh said, whereas Roberts seemed to interpret the questioning from the perspective of his role as chief justice and the aims of the court.

"From a judicial ethics standpoint, I would have been deeply troubled if [Alito] had made it clear that he was saying the court needs to be turning us in a more godly direction, that the court needs to assert moral authority and move us to a particular place, that he, as a justice, sees it as his role to interpret the First Amendment — more specifically, the Freedom of Religion clause, the Establishment Clause — in a way that turns us to a godlier nation," Geyh, told Salon. "Then, I'd be flinging flares in the air. But I don't interpret him answering the question that way."

A 2002 Supreme Court decision, Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, held that state Supreme Court justices have a First Amendment right to voice their personal opinions on issues in the context of running for a judgeship, Geyh explained, arguing that the same thing applies here insofar as judges having opinions that they're entitled to.

While allowing his personal views to guide his decision-making on the bench is one of the ethics abuses critics have accused Alito of, especially in the wake of his recent scandals, Geyh argued that Alito's responses on the tape don't offer enough information about how he approaches his role to indicate that his personal beliefs do more than influence his read of the law in close cases as opposed to usurping his approach to his duties and decision making.

"Even if Alito thinks that we need a godlier nation, that doesn't automatically mean that he's going to disregard the First Amendment," said Geyh, who also previously served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee.

While the justice's remarks do offer insight into his belief and how they may inform his legal views, Geyh continued, it "leads us down a path that's illegitimate if he basically is saying, 'Law be damned, I'm going to impose my personal views.' But if what we're saying is, 'The law is ambiguous. It's unclear how this case should be resolved under the establishment clause or the freedom of religion clause, and I am doing my best to interpret it as it should be understood, and my views inevitably influence the way I think about what outcome's best,' that's not illegitimate. That's just the way the world works in close cases."

Still, Geyh said, in a political climate when activists like Windsor are "arguably playing gotcha games" and the court's legitimacy is suffering in the public eye, in part, because of beliefs "bipartisan politics and agendas" drive the justices' decisions, the recent incidents signify the importance of judges being "cautious" and "ever-mindful of how their conduct has been politicized, and they have politicized their conduct themselves," especially in the case of a "political lightning rod" like Alito.

"It's not openly, affirmatively unethical for them to do what he did, but I think the preferred course is to stay under the radar, to do what you can to preserve your open mindedness as best you can and not lock yourself in in public statements that imply that you've got an ax to grind," he explained, referencing canon two of the ethics code the Supreme Court adopted last year.

The Supreme Court Historical Society's executive director, James Duff, condemned Windsor's "surreptitious recording of Justices at the event" as "inconsistent with the entire spirit of the evening" in a statement Monday. “Our policy is to ensure that all attendees, including the Justices, are treated with respect," Duff said.

Windsor, however, has defended her actions, explaining that she felt she had no other means of reporting on the justices' true thoughts.

“We have a court that has refused to submit to any accountability whatsoever — they are shrouded in secrecy,” Windsor said, per The Times. “I don’t know how, other than going undercover, I would have been able to get answers to these questions.”

On Tuesday night, Windsor dropped another undercover audio of Alito, recorded by a colleague at the same June 3 dinner.

In the latest tape, the justice appeared to blame partisan funding for the coverage of the Supreme Court's undisclosed lavish gifts and travel, specifically citing ProPublica, which published a series of bombshell reports in the last year on Alito and Thomas' failure to report the gifts on annual disclosures.

Asked why the Supreme Court is being "so attacked" and "targeted by the media these days," Alito responded plainly.

“They don’t like our decisions, and they don’t like how they anticipate we may decide some cases that are coming up. That’s the beginning of the end of it,” he said, according to Rolling Stone. “There are groups that are very well-funded by ideological groups that have spearheaded these attacks," he added. "That’s what it is.

EXCLUSIVE UNDERCOVER AUDIO feat. the debut of my colleague @Ally_Sammarco:
Alito v @ProPublica

Justice Alito rants on ProPublica and minimizes Justice Thomas’ extraordinary ethics breaches as “any little thing they can find" pic.twitter.com/HXFlaxRpWm

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) June 12, 2024

Alito, Roberts secret recordings spark ethics concerns

FOR WHO?!

Dominick Mastrangelo
Thu, June 13, 2024 

A liberal activist’s secret recordings of two Supreme Court justices has engulfed the nation’s highest court into political controversy, while also raising questions about the ethics in how the conversations were obtained.

The activist, Lauren Windsor, approached conservative Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts while wearing a concealed recording device at the Supreme Court Historical Society gala earlier this month.

Windsor attended as a member under her own name, but posed as a Catholic conservative with the explicit goal of eliciting unfiltered, controversial comments from those in attendance.

Windsor has argued going undercover was the only way to expose what she and many liberals have said is the court’s unacceptable right-wing tilt and the personal bitterness of its conservatives.

But critics contend Windsor crossed a line by misrepresenting herself to obtain the recordings, and warn her move might have further opened a Pandora’s box of political dirty tricks in the midst of an increasingly contentious election year.

“I worry about the cascading effect that something like this can have,” said William Howell, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. “It invites people with whom she disagrees with ideologically to do much the same and point to her actions as justification for doing it.”

On one recording, Windsor, who has a history of using surreptitious methods to catch conservatives saying embarrassing things, captured Alito saying of the left and right, “One side or the other is going to win.”

Windsor also talked to the justice’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, who is heard on the recording promising revenge on the people who have raised controversy surrounding her and her husband.

The audio’s publication sparked instant outrage from court watchers and the historical society itself.

“We condemn the surreptitious recording of Justices at the event, which is inconsistent with the entire spirit of the evening,” the organization said in a statement to The Hill. “Attendees are advised that discussion of current cases, cases decided by this Court, or a Justice’s jurisprudence is strictly prohibited and may result in forfeiture of membership in the Society.”

Windsor did not respond to a request for comment from The Hill this week but in various media interviews has expressed no regret for her reporting methods.

The activist insists that recording the justices secretly was the only way she would have been able to shine a light on their personal beliefs.

“To people who want to pearl-clutch about this, please tell me how we’re going to get answers when the Supreme Court has been shrouded in secrecy and really refusing any degree of accountability whatsoever,” she said Tuesday on CNN.

During a subsequent appearance on cable news channel NewsNation, Windsor pushed back on suggestions she baited Alito into making controversial comments.

“I don’t think that I was baiting him,” she insisted. “I think that it coaxed him into a position that either was already held or that he came to that over the past year.”

Windsor’s expose comes amid a whirlwind time for the conservative-majority court, which has seen its objectivity and political independence questioned, particularly by those on the political left.

ProPublica has reported extensively in recent months on alleged ethics violations by members of the court while just last month, the Alitos were embroiled in a controversy over various flags flying over their properties.

Outside observers to the latest scandal say the increased scrutiny of conservatives on the court in recent months undermines Windsor’s argument that her recordings were revelatory enough to justify the means she used.

“We didn’t learn very much we didn’t already know from this,” said Susan Keith, a professor of media studies at Rutgers University. “There was nothing in what Alito said to her that you wouldn’t already expect to hear from him publicly.”

Covert operations and secret recordings with political agendas in mind are nothing new in modern election cycles and semiregular partisan publicity fights.

The right-wing group Project Veritas was well known during the years of the Trump administration for using hidden cameras and secret recording devices to obtain audio and video of public health officials, journalists and other perceived enemies of the right making unflattering remarks or espousing personal opinions on matters of public debate.

“This sort of technique [on both sides] of sneaking up on people and secretly recording them is just not fair,” Keith said. “I just don’t think it’s necessary in most situations.”

Windsor has, at the same time, shown deft media strategy in rolling out the audio clips she captured at the June 3 gala.

On Wednesday, as Windsor was making the rounds on cable news, Rolling Stone published new audio of Alito, provided to the outlet by the activist, on which he is heard bashing ProPublica’s reporting on the court, saying “they don’t like our decisions.”

And while Windsor is receiving outsized attention for her clandestine recordings, some observers note her work should be viewed differently from mainstream journalists covering the court regularly.

“Every time a major mainstream news outlet or news organization promotes one of her stories, they’re essentially paying her money and sending millions of people to her website,” said John Watson,

 a professor of journalism at American University.

“In journalism using deception to get information is inherently unethical. However, if the information is absolutely important for the public to have and there’s no other way to get it … I have yet to see anything she has done that reaches that threshold.”

 The Hill.

Justice Clarence Thomas took more trips on GOP megadonor’s private plane than previously known

Tierney Sneed and John Fritze, CNN
Thu, June 13, 2024 

Justice Clarence Thomas took several more trips on the private plane of GOP megadonor Harlan Crow than were previously known, a top Senate Democrat revealed Thursday.

According to information obtained by Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, Thomas traveled on Crow’s private jet during trips in 2017, 2019 and 2021 between various US states, as well as on a previously known 2019 trip to Indonesia, during which Thomas also stayed on Crow’s mega-yacht.

The newly revealed private plane trips add to the picture of luxury travel enjoyed by Thomas and bankrolled by friends of the justice who have ties to conservative politics.

Thomas has come under fire for his failure to include such trips on financial disclosure forms the justices release each year, though he and his defenders argue that he followed the court’s disclosure rules as they were understood at the time.

The revelation was likely to add to the tension between the high court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority, and Democrats on Capitol Hill, who have been pushing for more than a year for tighter ethics rules. A series of ethics scandals involving Thomas and, more recently, Justice Samuel Alito, have left public approval of the court at historic lows.

Last year, amid stories by ProPublica on the justice’s jet-setting lifestyle, the federal judiciary’s policy-making body said that travel on private planes should be reported by the justices closing a loophole that Thomas said had exempted him from reporting the “personal hospitality” he had received form his uber-wealthy friends. The court’s critics argue that the current understanding of the disclosure rules should apply retroactively.

Thomas, through a court spokeswoman, did not respond to a CNN inquiry about the new revelations and why the trips were not disclosed.

He previously said that he was advised at the time that he was not required to disclose the hospitality he received from the Crows, but that he intended to follow the recent changes to the guidance going forward. His defenders have pointed to a 2012 letter from the Judicial Conference, which administers the regulations for judges’ financial disclosures, that cleared him of claims at the time that he should have been reporting his trips with Crow.

Last week, with the release of his financial disclosures for 2023, Thomas said he had “inadvertently omitted” from previous financial filings a hotel stay paid by the Crows during the 2019 trip to Indonesia and his accommodations that same year at a private club they are members of in Monte Rio, California.

Yet he did not disclose his travel on Crow’s private plane for either of those trips that was revealed by Durbin.

In addition to that trip, according to the documents released by Durbin, Thomas traveled on Crow’s plane from St. Louis to Montana and then on to Dallas in 2017; on a 2019 round trip from Washington, DC, to Savannah, Georgia; and on a 2021 round trip from Washington, DC, to San Jose, California.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis is producing new information - like what we’ve revealed today - and makes it crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct, because its members continue to choose not to meet the moment,” Durbin said in a statement that pointed to Supreme Court ethics legislation put forward by Senate Democrats. A procedural maneuver by Durbin on Wednesday to pass the bill on the Senate floor was blocked by Republicans.

Elliot Berke, an attorney for Thomas, said the trips Senate Democrats called attention to on Thursday fell under the “hospitality exemption.” Thomas and others have previously said they understood the disclosure rules to exclude situations involving “personal hospitality.”

“Consequently, and as Justice Thomas has already explained, he and many other federal judges were advised that they were not required to report gifts of personal hospitality from friends who did not have business before the Court,” Berke told CNN.

Mark Paoletta, a former top Trump administration official and prominent Thomas ally, similarly said on X that Thomas disclosed the hotel and private club stays from the previous trips because they were not covered under the personal hospitality exemption – even before the 2023 changes to the disclosure guidance. He argued that a justice’s stays on a friend’s “home, planes” and “boats” were exempted under the rules until the 2023 revision.

Durbin and other Democrats launched probes into gifts and lavish travel Thomas received after a bombshell ProPublica report that detailed the Indonesia trip with Crow – during which Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas stayed on Crow’s 162-foot yacht – and other extravagant trips that the Thomases took with Crow and Crow’s wife.

Crow – whom Thomas has described as among his family’s “dearest friends” – has said that he has never talked to Thomas about matters in front of the judiciary.

“Mr. Crow reached an agreement with the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide information responsive to its requests going back seven years,” Crow spokesperson Michael Zona said of the information revealed Thursday.

“Despite his serious and continued concerns about the legality and necessity of the inquiry, Mr. Crow engaged in good faith negotiations with the Committee from the beginning to resolve the matter. As a condition of this agreement, the Committee agreed to end its probe with respect to Mr. Crow,” Zona added.

Clarence Thomas Was A More Frequent Flyer On Harlan Crow Air Than We Knew

David Kurtz
Thu, June 13, 2024



Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas went up and away into the wild blue yonder aboard billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow’s private jet three other times that he hasn’t reported on his financial disclosure filings, according to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL).

Durbin’s revelation of the new information about Thomas’ travels came this afternoon, not even 24 hours after Senate Republicans killed a Durbin measure that would have imposed new ethics standards on the Supreme Court.

The demand for greater Supreme Court accountability has ramped up in the months since ProPublica published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on freebies, gifts, and other financial benefits — including travel — that Crow had bestowed on Thomas but which Thomas had not included in his public financial disclosures.

Just last week, Thomas filed an amended 2019 report that for the first time included the travel that ProPublica had previously reported, a tacit though begrudging acknowledgement by Thomas that he should have included them in the original filing.

The three newly revealed trips announced today by Durbin were not included in Thomas’ amended filing last week.

The three previously unreported trips on Crow’s private jet include:

A May 2017 flight from St. Louis to Kalispell, Montana, with a return flight to Dallas;


A March 2019 round-trip flight between Washington, D.C. and Savannah, Georgia;


A June 2021 round-trip flight between Washington, D.C., and San Jose, California.

Durbin obtained the information about the three flights via a Judiciary Committee subpoena of Crow last November. You can see a portion of the relevant response from Crow’s lawyer here. It’s not clear when the committee obtained Crow’s responses or why Durbin released them today.

In a statement to CBS News, Crow’s office said he had reached an agreement with the committee to provide certain information going back seven years to resolve the matter.

Despite his serious and continued concerns about the legality and necessity of the inquiry, Mr. Crow engaged in good faith negotiations with the Committee from the beginning to resolve the matter. As a condition of this agreement, the Committee agreed to end its probe with respect to Mr. Crow.

Durbin has been a very reluctant warrior on Supreme Court ethics oversight, dismissing as useless the prospect of holding public committee hearings on the court’s ethical lapses and lack of institutional accountability. But Durbin did launch an investigation last fall and has slowly budged in recent days, a result of a combination of outside pressure and a new round of news reports about insurrectionist flags flying outside two of Justice Samuel Alito’s homes.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation into the Supreme Court’s ethical crisis is producing new information — like what we’ve revealed today — and makes it crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct, because its members continue to choose not to meet the moment,” Durbin said in a press release.

Crow owns a Bombardier Global 5000, ProPublica previously reported. It’s a long-range, twin-engine business jet with a reported range of more than 5,000 nautical miles and cruising speed upwards of 560 m.p.h.

Opinion
Clarence Thomas Fails to Disclose More Gifts From Right-Wing Buddy

Hafiz Rashid
Thu, June 13, 2024 at 3:33 PM MDT·2 min read
17

It turns out Clarence Thomas has failed to disclose even more free trips from conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation uncovered.

At least three times, Crow provided trips on his private jet to the Supreme Court justice to destinations including a March 2019 trip to Thomas’s Georgia hometown, a May 2017 trip to Montana near Glacier National Park with a return flight to Dallas two days later, and a June 2021 roundtrip flight between San Jose, California, and Washington, D.C. The revelations were provided to the committee from Crow’s lawyer.

The purpose of the trips was not mentioned in the report, and Thomas has not reported them in his financial disclosures, even though some legal experts say it violates the law.

It may be the first of more revelations to come, according to Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, who said that a full investigative report from Democrats on the committee would be released later in the summer.

“As a result of our investigation and subpoena authorization, we are providing the American public greater clarity on the extent of ethical lapses by Supreme Court justices,” Durbin said in a statement. The revelations make it “crystal clear that the highest court needs an enforceable code of conduct,” he added.

Last year, a ProPublica investigation found that Thomas received free luxury vacations from Crow nearly every year, which the Supreme Court justice failed to report until just last week. The publication also reported that Crow funded the renovation of the home where Thomas’s mother lives, as well as the private school tuition of Mark Martin, the grandson of Thomas’s sister Emma Mae Martin. Thomas and his wife, Ginni Thomas, were Martin’s legal guardians from age 6 to 19 but have since cut ties with Martin, whom Thomas once said he was raising as a “son,” Martin revealed in a recent interview.

Trans People Are Sharing The Differences They Noticed After Transitioning, And It Proves How Much We Discriminate Based On Gender
BuzzFeed

Thu, June 13, 2024 




Recently, we asked the trans members of the BuzzFeed Community about the differences they noticed before and after transitioning. After all, trans people sometimes have a unique perspective on how society treats men, women, nonbinary, genderfluid, and non-gender-conforming people differently, having potentially had two or more gender experiences.

Vladimir Vladimirov / Getty Images

We received a ton of responses, so below are some of the most interesting and insightful ones.

Trans men who were AFAB noticed some differences in how they are perceived socially now, along with physical changes:


1.

"Four and a half years on [testosterone] here. I’ve always been boyish, so my friend group and fashion sense stayed the same. The main change I noticed was how others treated me. I get asked to help move stuff more and don’t get told to 'smile more' or get leered at by strangers, which is such a blessing I didn’t even consider.

Physically, I’m stronger, my proportions changed, and my feet grew and height increased. T didn’t make me aggressive, just very *excitable*. Overall, I am so damn happy I made the decision to transition, no matter if people have negative opinions on my identity. I am loved and cherished still, and my mental health has skyrocketed over the last four years."

—witchystar55

2.

"FTM, transitioned at 19. To be honest, I haven’t noticed that much difference in how people treat me. The biggest difference is that HRT has made my emotions a lot steadier, and I’m way more confident. It’s also weirdly difficult to cry —apparently, it has something to do with hormones changing your tear ducts."

—wes7887

3.

"I transitioned from female to male, and the biggest physical differences I've noticed are in how my body processes being cold and needing to pee. Before, when I was in either of those situations, they felt IMMEDIATE and UNBEARABLE. Being on testosterone makes them both things where I'm like, 'I should deal with that at some point,' but it doesn't need to be NOW.

Also, people like to talk about how much more rational men's clothing sizes are, but I haven't found that to be true at all. A 31-inch waist fits me very differently in different brands and even different styles in the same brand."

—anonymous

Doble-d / Getty Images

4.

"A lot of my friends have completely forgotten that I’m not a cis male and will talk/joke about certain things. And when I bring up something from my past about being raised a girl or not having a dick, they are dumbfounded, trying to rack their brain around how that’s possible, LOL."

—anonymous

5.

"Trans man here. I am honestly so shocked by how much easier life is for me now that I’m fully passing. I’m treated with so much more respect, and I no longer feel unsafe in most public areas. I don’t know if this is the same for every trans man, but I really do feel that now I am a man, the world feels structured to benefit me entirely. I’m not inherently happy about this, obviously. I’m just constantly reminded of how truly awful life can be for women."

—anonymous

6.

"I am treated completely differently [than] before my transition. To everyone, I was just one of those girls that always hung out with the boys. A major tomboy. Once I started hormones, I felt more like myself, and finally, everyone was able to start seeing who I saw all along. It was much harder before I passed. For those who don't know, 'passing' is when a trans person is seen as a cis person. Once I started passing, I was more welcome into male spaces.

Very few people at my current workplace know my trans status. I am seen as a cis male consistently for the first time in my life. It opened me up to a world of guy talk, which is wild. I honestly thought guy talk was a made-up thing in movies. But it's real, and I'm here to tell you that there are certain things men will not say in 'mixed company.' After being at my workplace for almost two years, it doesn't faze me anymore."

—anonymous

7.

"I'm over 30 and out as FtM for three years. I absolutely love that strangers are no longer asking and judging me about kids ('Do you have any/why not/when/who's gonna take care of you later?'). I also feel much more self-assured, nobody is second-guessing my technical competence (I work in IT), and as an extension, I am not second-guessing myself, either. I genuinely feel much more at ease and comfortable, and I'm happier. I also don't hesitate to speak up for either myself or others, and interestingly, I've become much less tolerant of misogyny and sexism in general."

—anonymous

8.

"This may be silly — or just plain obvious — but the men’s restroom is almost always in worse condition than the women’s restroom. I’ve seen unspeakable things stuffed in toilets, smeared on walls, and pooled at the bottom of stalls. It reminds me of that saying, 'You never know what you have until it’s gone.' I miss relatively clean public restrooms, but I am also way too dysphoric-ly stubborn to use the women's outside of absolute emergencies."

—anonymous

Alan George / Getty Images

9.

"Cis men really don't seem to wash their hands in bathrooms, at ALL."

—anonymous

10.

"I was assigned female at birth and began transitioning in my early 20s. I began 'passing' as a straight, cisgender male and noticed how I felt safe walking alone. People didn't bother me as much. I noticed that when I did group assignments, people would listen to me more and talk over me less. This all sparked a lot of feelings inside me, and it helped me work through a lot of internalized misogyny. If it hasn't already been done, someone needs to write a paper on the difference in culture between the men's and women's restrooms. The men's room is generally a mess, and eye contact or quick greetings seem forbidden. I miss the camaraderie of the women's room all the time — the sharing of tampons, a quick heads-up if the toilet paper is low, and a shoulder to cry on during a drunken meltdown. Now it's one stall that's being used by someone watching YouTube loudly on their phone and Zyn pouches lining the urinals. Love it."

—anonymous

11.

"I transitioned from female to male. There are a lot of differences, but one I did not expect is that — before I passed as a man — I would offer car rides home to strange women my age I saw walking on the road in my town, especially in the cold winter. Now that I pass as a man, I feel as though they would immediately assume I intended something bad (understandable from their position), so I just keep driving and hope they get home safe. The instant solidarity and connection I formerly experienced with women is not as readily experienced with men. I had to come out as gay to my managers at work just to get them to stop teasing me for 'flirting' with the female receptionist my age, whom I'm friends with outside of work. Literally cannot be friends with women or go out to dinner with them without everyone assuming we're a couple."

—anonymous

12.

"I'm transitioning FtM and passing most of the time. Women, when talking about reproductive issues or periods, pat my knee and say, 'You don't have to worry about that.' Doctors take me more seriously. I get fewer smiles back on the street. Uber and Lyft drivers don't try to make small talk, which I love. I still get clocked on the phone, and it's wild how condescending people are."

—anonymous

13.

"I've never experienced the men vs. women part; it's more that before I transitioned, I was catcalled a lot. [Now that I've] transitioned, I get left alone, which is lovely. The downside was I got a lot of harassment: things thrown at me by strangers in the street, threats, being filmed and harassed. I've also faced discrimination when applying for jobs."

—anonymous

14.

"I've noticed quite a few differences. As a woman, men paid unwanted attention to me. When I corrected them, they'd laugh it off claiming it was harmless. If I needed help, men would come do it for me as opposed to showing me how best to do a job, or just assisting the extra muscle I may need."

—anonymous

15.

"I am a transgender man who transitioned about 10 years ago. The first thing I noticed right away, especially being more of an opinionated 'nerd' type, is that I no longer had to bring backup to a discussion. I didn't have to google things to prove I was right about something. People just listened to me and believed me when I said things. It was a whiplash! Not that everything I say is always right, but people would actually engage with it instead of just being like, 'Oh, sweetie, you don't know what you're talking about.' Just in general, people treated me like I was another person on the same level and not in an infantilizing way.

I did mourn the loss somewhat of not being seen as a threat to women, though. I felt like I lost the ability to communicate with women my age without them being guarded or suspicious, but I don't blame them at all. I was taught to do the exact same thing."

—anonymous

16.

"FtM: Far less emotion (haven't cried in 15 years), far more body hair. :P

One thing that stands out was that when I was dining out with my ex-husband (not ex yet then, obviously), pre-transition, they would automatically give him the bill, and as soon as they clocked me as male, they asked if we wanted to split. Women are more weary of me now, I feel less comfortable complimenting both men and women for how that might come across, people don't interrupt me nearly as often now, and I feel like I'm taken more seriously, even if I'm spewing the same bullshit."

—anonymous

Thaninee / Getty Images/iStockphoto

17.

"I transitioned FtM nine years ago. One thing I will notice about the 'men vs. women' environments is that it is so much less scary in the world passing as a man. Men leave me alone or say, 'What’s up man?' whereas when I was a girl, I was terrified to walk down the street. I feel very lucky to be who I am, but I think the world has a lot to learn. Trans people are just people. That’s it."

—anonymous

18.

"I’ve applied to jobs under my dead name and birth gender and never got a call back or any kind of acknowledgment that they received it. Applied to the same jobs as my new name and current gender and moved on to the interviewing process so fast."

—anonymous

Trans women noticed a lot of the same differences, but on the other side:

19.

"I transitioned MtF. One of the biggest differences was how small I started to feel. Taking hormones, shrinking muscles, and always being scared of what people are thinking about you and how you look. I'm 6 ft., but I would feel tiny when out with people."

—anonymous

20.

"Men started opening doors for me, which I'm happy for now that I’ve lost my boy strength; I had to relearn basic tasks like opening heavy doors. Men are much more likely to help me with physically difficult things, warn me something is heavy, and unfortunately, mansplain and give unnecessary help with non-physical tasks. I’ve had a few gas station clerks ask for my number, or say I’m pretty and ask if I have a boyfriend. Ewwphoria at first. It quickly got old.

Women are much more friendly and willing to help me, like offering to stand guard while I use a public restroom that won’t lock if I do the same for her or help me push my car out of a parking space when it wouldn’t start. Now they usually make eye contact and smile as we pass each other; I didn’t realize before just how separated these two genders are in public, but now I’m finally joining the half of the population that I should have been with from the start.

Physically, the changes estrogen made to my body and mind feel absolutely wonderful. There are things I didn’t expect, like my feet shrinking and having to buy smaller shoes, and my thighs and butt getting too big even to pull my men’s pants up all the way, never mind buttoning them. I’m so glad my body odor smell changed for the better and is rarely even present; I can easily skip a shower or even two. Sunscreen is more important than ever, though, as is eating healthy if I want to feel well and stay in shape. And the loss of strength, wow…it was true what I heard about thinking you know what to expect, but being surprised when it happens; nothing could have prepared me. I struggled to enter a building a few times because opening doors isn’t even the same."

—slaughterdog

21.

"I definitely can tell I am treated like less of a person after transitioning. I am MtF, and my ideas [are ignored], but then when a male says the same thing, they listen."

—anonymous

Maskot / Getty Images/Maskot

22.

"I was a professional in the finance industry for eight years and was a senior member of my department and seen as a subject matter expert before I came out and began transitioning (MtF). My workplace was quite progressive and supportive, but when I changed my name and started using she/her pronouns, I noticed an immediate change in the way customers treated me. My expertise in my field was suddenly second-guessed or questioned where I was the authority before."

—anonymous

23.

"Interestingly, my son told me I'm a far better mom than I ever was a dad!"

—anonymous

24.

"As a trans woman, I have noticed that clothes shopping has become a lot more fun, and I am starting to notice that I am starting to be attracted to both men and women."

—anonymous

Nonbinary people had their own set of observations, as well:

25.

"I'm genderfluid and recently had top surgery. I do dress pretty femme most of the time, but the fact that everyone seems to think that I still have to cover my chest even though there are no breasts there anymore has me baffled! I literally have the same chest as a FtM person, but because I present femme, it's inappropriate. So weird!"

—chaoswitch

Jonathandowney / Getty Images

26.

"I feel infinitely better in terms of my overall wellbeing. While dysphoria often can be related to your personal feelings about your body, people often underestimate the impact of social dysphoria: the distress caused not by your body image but by being constantly misidentified in public. It was so depressing always being called 'ma’am' in public no matter how I dressed or acted. I just was never read as male until I started testosterone, and it’s really nice not having people’s incorrect assumptions thrown in my face all the time.

One BIG thing I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen discussed much is the difference in how people treat you when they view you as a gender-nonconforming man vs. a gender-nonconforming woman. Before being on testosterone, I was always read as a butch lesbian, and now I’m read as a femme man. When people thought I was a butch lesbian, I was frequently treated with hostility, but that hostility was generally less overtly threatening. While I now am the beneficiary of male privilege, I’m also physically threatened and publicly harassed a lot more for being gender-nonconforming. I would get stares and under-the-breath comments before, whereas now I get open threats, yelled slurs, and loud comments intimating a desire to commit violence far more often. While I don’t want to downplay the negative experiences people read as butch women receive, I have observed that straight men are a lot more threatened by — and feel that they have more justification for being violent toward — effeminate men (and trans women) than people they read as butch cis women."

—anonymous

27.

"I will say that one of my experiences as a mixed-race nonbinary trans man is that my treatment has gotten a lot worse than when people thought I was a woman. I am Choctaw and Iraqi, and now that I am perceived as a man, I often face an increase in racism.

Which is depressing stuff, for sure! So let me tell you about the positives.

My father accepted me immediately. After I came out as trans, he came out as bisexual. We've gone to Pride together multiple times and are able to be ourselves without fear when we're with each other.

My boyfriend and I can share a closet. I have saved so much money on my wardrobe, it's incredible. And in regards to my boyfriend, he has been sweet, compassionate, and understanding beyond belief.

When I got on testosterone, my body stopped hurting. For most of my life, I was a survivor of chronic pain and fatigue. When I got on T, both of them went away. I talked to my doctor, and we did some tests. It turns out that for most of my life, I suffered from a hormone imbalance caused by aromatase deficiency. Getting on T literally made my life easier. It also led to me getting tested and finding out that I am intersex, which is something I hold with a lot of pride. So, literally, because I am transgender and moved forward with transitioning, my physical health improved DRASTICALLY, and I learned something about myself that explained what my puberty was all about because it definitely wasn't typical.

I promise it gets better, especially if you move to a more accepting area, like I did recently. All in all, it's been a beautiful journey, and I cannot wait to see what the future has in store."

—anonymous

A big thank you to our trans readers for their insightful comments! Hopefully, reading these can help other trans people to navigate their transition and find the joy they deserve on the other side. ❤️🏳️‍⚧️

Looking for more LGBTQ+ or Pride content? Then check out all of BuzzFeed's posts celebrating Pride 2024.

Zachary Ares/BuzzFeed

Gavin Newsom Wants to Curb a Labor Law That Cost Businesses $10 Billion





Eliyahu Kamisher, Josh Eidelson and Andrew Oxford
Wed, Jun 12, 2024, 

(Bloomberg) -- For two decades, a California law has helped workers sue the world’s biggest companies. Drivers for Uber Technologies Inc. won a $20 million settlement, Google employees secured $27 million over complaints of free-speech violations, and Walmart Inc. agreed to pay $65 million for allegedly not providing seating to their cashiers.

Now, Governor Gavin Newsom is quietly overseeing talks about changing that law after prodding from some of California’s largest business interests, who say a cascade of progressive policy wins in the state – like raising the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour and increasing paid sick days — are eating away at their bottom lines.

Newsom’s office has brought together the state’s powerful California Chamber of Commerce with the California Labor Federation to hash out a compromise over the Private Attorneys General Act, or PAGA, people familiar with the negotiations said. The law has cost big and small businesses $10 billion over the past ten years, according to one study, and is viewed by labor advocates as a model of worker protection.

The negotiators are in a race against time: June 27 is the deadline to strike a measure from Californians’ November ballot that would give voters the opportunity to repeal the law. The Chamber of Commerce is negotiating on behalf of a broad alliance, which includes the billionaire owner of the Wonderful Company, Stewart Resnick, car dealership owners, Walmart and McDonald’s Corp., along with small businesses across the state. The business coalition committed more than $31 million to entities backing the ballot measure, including the signature-gathering effort and an advertising blitz.

Seeking Compromise

Yet both sides would rather strike a compromise, according to people familiar with the negotiations, in order to forgo the massive expense of a ballot fight. The governor is also eager to get PAGA off the ballot, according to a person familiar with his thinking, to keep focus on a separate ballot measure that he opposes which would require voter approval for new taxes.

Newsom, who started his career running a hospitality group, has often sought to appease the business leaders who are perennially frustrated by policies enacted by the state’s liberal lawmakers.

PAGA “is a California-only issue that businesses in California are subjected to, and it adds a huge layer of costs for them,” said Jennifer Barrera, president of the California Chamber of Commerce.

Outlines of a possible deal remain vague, with the business coalition saying it wants to bolster state enforcement and reduce avenues for civil litigation. Labor leaders are willing to reform aspects of PAGA in ways that would lead to fewer lawsuits based on minor violations of state labor code. But they insist that workers retain the ability to use PAGA claims to get around forced arbitration, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

“We’re willing to work on reforms that do two things,” said Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation, a coalition of unions. “One: change the working conditions that are illegal. Two: make the worker whole.”

The push to overhaul PAGA is an effort by business interests in California to fight back against a series of major wins the state’s progressive leaders have notched. Last year, after hundreds of thousands of workers went on strike around the state, lawmakers approved a hike in the minimum wage for health-care workers to $25 an hour. In October, Newsom approved sweeping climate change legislation forcing companies to disclose carbon emissions across their entire supply chain.

The governor’s office took notice of the PAGA reform effort last year during talks that led to a $20 minimum wage deal for California fast-food workers. Franchisees requested that Newsom pair the wage hike with a PAGA deal to offset new costs, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. While PAGA wasn’t addressed, the governor’s staff said they would try to tackle PAGA in a future compromise.

The business groups’ playbook is a familiar one in California politics. Companies often look to sidestep the legislature by funding a ballot measure that would take their issue directly to voters. They then use the prospect of a costly ballot fight to force negotiations overseen by the governor’s office. If an agreement is reached, the legislature approves the compromise with the governor’s blessing, and all sides avoid spending tens of millions of dollars trying to drum up support or opposition.

“There’s an opportunity of course, just like with any other ballot measure that qualifies, for the legislature to step in and fix PAGA,” said Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association. “We’ve got $20 million in our bank account and we’re prepared to push the measure forward.”

PAGA passed the California legislature in 2003. The law is unique in that it allows employees to act as “private attorneys general,” bringing lawsuits on behalf of the government for workplace violations.

The parts that especially exasperate businesses are the ability for workers to file suits on behalf of their colleagues and duck forced arbitration clauses. As forced arbitration clauses become increasingly common, workers are turning to PAGA more than ever. In 2022, the number of PAGA settlements topped 3,165, an 1,100% increase from 2016, according to a study funded by the California Chamber of Commerce.

“We had signed our rights away” by agreeing to forced arbitration, said Melissa Viviana Covarrubias, a janitorial worker in San Diego who’s accusing her company of illegally misclassifying employees as independent contractors and depriving them of minimum wage, overtime and rest breaks. PAGA “allowed us to sue on behalf of the state. It’s pretty awesome to be able to do that.”

Cottage Industry

PAGA settlements are divided between the state, workers and their lawyers. The law’s success – built on a cottage industry of attorneys that specialize in PAGA claims – nabbed the state more than $200 million in civil penalties in the 2022-2023 fiscal year. In New York, a PAGA-like bill has been introduced every session since 2017.

Unions worry wage theft will go unpunished if PAGA is repealed. Workers can file claims seeking unpaid wages with the state labor commissioner, but a recent investigation found that office took a median of 854 days to issue decisions. The delay contributed to a backlog of 47,000 unprocessed claims by the middle of last year, according to the state auditor.

Weakening PAGA would force even more workers to rely on that chronically underfunded agency, opponents of its repeal argue.

“PAGA is the only way most workers can escape arbitration agreements specifically designed to silence them,” said Lea-Ann Tratten, political director for Consumer Attorneys of California. “Without PAGA, workers have nowhere else to turn.”

Opponents of PAGA’s current structure say the law largely benefits lawyers who file lawsuits for technical violations of the state’s sprawling labor code like spelling errors. They point to cases where attorneys reap payouts that are larger than what the workers get. The business coalition says instead of lawsuits, the state should bolster enforcement of the labor code and raise penalties for certain violations to deter bad actors.

“It’s insulting that attorneys get the majority of the fees,” said Heath Flora, the top Republican on the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee.

--With assistance from Daniela Sirtori.

 Bloomberg Businessweek

Uber to cooperate with taxi companies across Germany for first time

DPA
Tue, June 11, 2024

The Uber logo can be seen at the headquarters of the ride service provider. Andrej Sokolow/dpa

The transport service provider Uber is opening its app to all taxi companies throughout Germany, whereas until now, it was only possible to book journeys with Uber in 16 German cities.

Taxi drivers and car-hire companies will now be able to use Uber nationwide. This would allow companies to tap into additional sources of revenue without monthly membership fees or long-term contracts and significantly increase their capacity utilization and turnover, the company explained.

Uber already changed its global strategy months ago. Originally, Uber primarily brokered the services of competitors to taxis. The company is now also trying to attract taxi drivers to its platform. In cities such as Berlin and Munich, taxis can already be booked via the US-founded company's app.

According to Uber, around 20% of all taxis in the capital are already working with the platform. Across Germany, there are more than 4,000 taxi drivers.

Christoph Weigler, head of Uber Germany, said that by opening the app to all taxi drivers across Germany, Uber was emphasizing its interest in being a partner to the taxi industry in Germany.

"Taxis can also benefit from digitalization, active advertising for customers and the high demand on our platform," the company said. The digital booking of services has become the standard. "With the Uber app, we offer the technological solution and provide taxi drivers with additional orders simply and transparently."

The German Taxi and Rental Car Association is sceptical about working with Uber. Cooperation can only be considered between serious business partners and "there are considerable doubts about Uber," Michael Oppermann, managing director of the association, said in an interview with broadcaster RTL/ntv.

"It appears to be a payoff": Expert says Kushner's Saudi cash an "egregious" national security worry

Charles R. Davis

SALON
Wed, June 12, 2024 

Jared Kushner John Lamparski/Getty Images

Based on his prior experience and demonstrated abilities, Jared Kushner never should have landed a job in the White House. Before joining the Trump administration, Kushner was best known as his father’s son — a real estate mogul and disbarred attorney who gifted his child control over the family’s portfolio after being convicted of multiple felonies — whose greatest accomplishment was purchasing a New York City skyscraper for $1.8 billion just months before the housing market crashed, slashing the property's value in half.

To be fair, Kushner made the best of his time in public service and appears to have turned it all around. Although he did not achieve peace in Israel and Palestine, Kushner was able to establish strategically important friendships with future benefactors in the Persian Gulf, a region he visited no fewer than 10 times on the taxpayer’s dime. A day before the January 6 insurrection, he was in Saudi Arabia for an event marking the restoration of relations between the kingdom and its rival, Qatar.

Out of office two weeks later, Kushner started up an investment firm, Affinity Partners, that quickly attracted big-time investors from the Middle East, despite the 43-year-old owner’s lack of experience running such an operation and a Google-able record of botching his only major investment decision.


As The New York Times reported in April, Kushner’s investment fund, valued at $3 billion, “is financed almost entirely from overseas investors with whom he worked when he served as a senior adviser in the Trump White House.”

Some two-thirds of that money has come from Saudi Arabia’s state-run Public Investment Fund, whose own advisers deemed Kushner’s fund “unsatisfactory in all aspects” only to be overruled by a board that includes Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the man who ordered the killing of U.S.-Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi when Trump was in office and who Kushner today describes as a “visionary leader.” The other third? Much of it reportedly comes from other sovereign wealth funds run by the likes of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

That arrangement — Kusner receiving billions of dollars from friends he made as a government employee — has attracted scrutiny from Democrats and watchdog groups, who suspect that Charles Kushner’s son (turned Ivanka Trump’s husband) might be doing so well for reasons that are not entirely above board.

In a letter sent Wednesday, Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., demanded that Kushner and company answer questions about their relations with foreign powers and suggested that what he knows so far points to their investments being part of an influence operation.

“Mr. Kushner’s limited track record as an investor, including his nonexistent experience in private equity or hedge funds, raise questions regarding the investment strategy behind the seeding investments and lucrative compensation that Affinity received from the Saudi PIF and other sovereign wealth funds,” Wyden wrote in the letter, addressed to Affinity Partners’ chief financial officer, Lauren Key. In addition to the investments themselves, Kushner’s firm charges a 2% fee to manage the states’ assets, generating at least $80 million from the Saudis alone.

It all adds up to “an appearance that Affinity’s investors are motivated not by commercial interests of seeking a return on investment,” Wyden wrote, “but rather by strategic considerations of foreign nationals seeking to funnel money to U.S. individuals with personal connections to former President Trump.”

Since being awarded billions by governments he worked with — Kushner arranged it so Trump’s first state visit was to Saudi Arabia — the former president’s son-in-law has used at least some of the money to pursue projects that Trump himself was interested in. Earlier this year, Kushner scored a major real estate deal in Belgrade, Serbia, under which Affinity Partners will have the exclusive rights to build a luxury compound on the site of a former army headquarters that was bombed by NATO in 1999. Trump had wanted to build a hotel on the same site, where Kushner has agreed to finance a memorial on behalf of the pro-Russia Serbian government that will mark the NATO campaign, which came as Belgrade’s forces were committing war crimes in neighboring Kosovo.

Virginia Canter, former chief ethics counsel for the Treasury Department and now an attorney with the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said an investigation of Kushner is not just “long overdue” but “vital for our national security.”

“It’s pretty apparent that he made and was involved in decisions that were unusually favorable to the Saudis and then he turned around, within weeks of leaving the White House, and was engaging in negotiations with them to obtain a $2 billion investment,” Canter told Salon. “It just raises all kinds of national security concerns for a former government official at that level – a former White House official — who never qualified, legitimately, for a security clearance.”

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Even before he left office, there were concerns about Kushner’s ties to sketchy interests. He was indeed denied a security clearance, The New York Times reported, after officials “raised questions about this and his family’s real estate business’s ties to foreign governments and investors”; he only obtained one after his father-in-law intervened. While in government, and following the murder of Khashoggi inside of Saudi Arabia’s Turkish embassy, Kushner, by then on a first-name basis with the Saudi leader who ordered the killing, “became the prince’s most important defender in side the White House,” per the Times.

“Every action he took seemed driven by what was going to come after he left office,” Canter said, noting that Kushner’s Trump-ordered security clearance granted him access to valuable, top-secret information. While he’s not the first former government official who has sought to cash in, Kushner is one of the few to completely disregard the traditional cooling off period (the other: former Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, whose investment firm is also backed by Riyadh).

“It’s one of the most egregious situations I’ve ever seen in decades of working in the federal government as an ethics official,” Canter said. “It appears to be a payoff as much as a potential investment,” she said, and also something of a purchase: buying Trump’s continued support for the Saudi government, which has also paid the former president millions of dollars to host its Liv Golf events. By enriching Kushner, and consequently Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, the Saudis have increased the potential cost, personally, for ever breaking with them politically.

“That,” Canter said, “may be a way of keeping Trump, in or out of office, on the Saudi side.”

Opinion
Democrats Are Finally Coming for Jared Kushner and His Shady Firm

Talia Jane

THE NEW REPUBLIC
Wed, June 12, 2024 


Jared Kushner’s Saudi Arabia–funded investment firm is finally being seriously examined. Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, seeking information about the company’s investments—after it received $2 billion of its $2.5 billion in investments from Saudi Arabia.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden is leading the investigation, noting the peculiarities of nepobaby Kushner’s involvement in business dealings he has next to no experience doing. In a letter Wednesday asking Kushner’s firm to respond to queries about its investors, Wyden wrote:

Mr. Kushner’s limited track record as an investor, including his nonexistent experience in private equity or hedge funds, raise questions regarding the investment strategy behind the seeding investments and lucrative compensation that Affinity received from the Saudi PIF and other sovereign wealth funds.

Virginia Canter, former Treasury Department chief ethics counsel, told Salon that Kushner’s shady business dealings with Saudi Arabia, so soon after he and his father-in-law left the White House, raise serious national security concerns. “It’s one of the most egregious situations I’ve ever seen in decades of working in the federal government as an ethics official,” she said. “It appears to be a payoff as much as a potential investment.”

Kushner’s firm launched in 2021 and immediately received a majority of its funds from Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, with a whopping 99 percent coming from foreign sources. Kushner defended the flood of cash by pointing out that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s fund also invests in Nintendo, Uber, and Microsoft—which is more of an insult to those companies than it is a vouch for Kushner.

“The Saudi PIF’s decision to invest $2 billion in Affinity so soon after Kushner’s departure from the Trump White House raises concerns that the investment was a reward for official actions Kushner took to benefit the Saudi government, including preventing accountability for the Saudi government ordering the brutal murder of journalist and American citizen Jamal Khashoggi,” Wyden wrote.

In 2018, MBS oversaw the brutal assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump’s White House paid no mind to the murder, instead releasing a shocking statement expressing support for Saudi Arabia and sowing doubt that MBS ordered Khashoggi’s murder, despite a CIA analysis finding that was certainly the case. Trump himself has curious ties to MBS, which during his presidency raised concerns of foreign influence.

This isn’t the first time Congress has sought answers about Kushner’s firm. In 2023, the stench of corruption was so putrid, Congress subpoenaed the company over its ties to Saudi Arabia, with even Republican James Comer saying Kushner’s Saudi blood money “crossed the line of ethics.”


Senate Democrats Launch Probe Of Foreign Payments To Jared Kushner’s Firm

Arthur Delaney

HUFFPOST
Wed, June 12, 2024 


Democrats are increasing their scrutiny of Jared Kushner’s business activities.

Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, for details about its investors on Wednesday, including the $2 billion it received from the Saudi Arabian government’s Public Investment Fund in 2021.

“Mr. Kushner’s limited track record as an investor, including his nonexistent experience in private equity or hedge funds, raise questions regarding the investment strategy behind the seeding investments and lucrative compensation that Affinity received from the Saudi PIF and other sovereign wealth funds,” Wyden wrote.

A panel that screens investments for the Saudi sovereign wealth fund warned against investing with Kushner, given his inexperience in finance, but the full board, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, overruled the panel, The New York Times reported in 2022.

Kushner advised Trump on foreign affairs, guided his administration to embrace Saudi Arabia as an ally, and remained in close contact with the crown prince even after he was implicated in the dismembering of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“The Saudi PIF’s decision to invest $2 billion in Affinity so soon after Kushner’s departure from the Trump White House raises concerns that the investment was a reward for official actions Kushner took to benefit the Saudi government, including preventing accountability for the Saudi government ordering the brutal murder of journalist and American citizen Jamal Khashoggi,” Wyden wrote.

Wyden’s letter asked Affinity Partners for details about its seeding investments, the investments made by the firm, as well as the fees it has received, and the amount Kushner has been paid. The company did not immediately respond to requests for comment made through its website.

Wyden’s letter represents an escalation of Democratic scrutiny of Kushner’s business activities, which have been controversial from the start. Even House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.), an aggressive defender of Donald Trump, said last year that he thought Kushner “crossed the line of ethics” with his Saudi deal.

Comer has overseen Republicans’ impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, which has largely focused on business deals by the president’s son. Republicans have said he improperly traded on his father’s former position as vice president during the Obama administration.

Democrats on Comer’s committee have highlighted the millions Trump’s business received from foreign governments while he was president and also questioned Kushner’s Saudi payday. Unlike Wyden, however, House Democrats don’t have subpoena power because Democrats don’t have a majority in the chamber.
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Wyden probes Kushner firm for investment details

Lauren Irwin

THE HILL
Wed, June 12, 2024

Wyden probes Kushner firm for investment details


Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) launched an investigation Wednesday into former President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his investment firm, Affinity Partners, over details regarding its investments in Saudi Arabia.

In a letter to Affinity Partners Chief Financial Officer Lauren Key, Wyden said its concerning that several Middle Eastern governments, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, are using funds managed by the company and creating “significant conflicts of interest and potential counterintelligence risks.”

“These arrangements also raise concerns that Affinity’s exclusively foreign funded private investment funds are being exploited as a loophole by Mr. Kushner and other former U.S. government officials as a means to avoid complying with the Foreign Agents Registration Act and other U.S. laws requiring U.S. persons to disclose payments form foreign governments,” Wyden wrote in the letter.

The chair is asking for the company to provide a list of all investors in funds managed by Affinity since its inception in 2021. For each investor, Wyden asked for Affinity to disclose the amount invested in funds it manages, total amount of fees the investment firm has been paid, and the annual rates of return, as well.

Building off a report by The New York Times that found Affinity disclosed that 99 percent of its assets were attributable to non-U.S. people or entities, Wyden is asking why that is the case.

One of Wyden’s asks specifically names Kushner, requesting the company detail how much Affinity paid him from 2021 to 2023, in not only salary but bonuses, other compensation, dividends and other distributions associated with the company.

The senator also asked for a list of all the shareholders and the number of shares each person owns, among several other requests he made.

During his time in the Trump administration, Kushner oversaw Middle East policy. He secured a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia six months after leaving the White House and has come under criticism for the potential political influence.

Kushner has defended himself and his firm’s action about the allegations of conflict of interest.

The Hill has reached out to Affinity and the attorneys representing Kushner for comment.