Waabi CEO aims to launch driverless trucks 'faster and safer than everybody else'

Jordan Fleguel, BNN Bloomberg

The founder and CEO of Toronto-based autonomous driving startup Waabi says her company is on the verge of launching driverless freight trucks that could revolutionize North American supply chains.

Raquel Urtasun told BNN Bloomberg’s Jon Erlichman at the Collision technology conference in Toronto on Wednesday that she started Waabi in 2021 with the goal of introducing cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology to the physical world.

“When I built Waabi it was really about building this next-generation technology that would enable us to go so much faster and safer than everybody else,” Urtasun said.

Urtasun, a University of Toronto professor and the former chief scientist of Uber’s self-driving unit, is widely considered a world leader in AI and machine learning research, and she’s won over some high-profile investors since Waabi’s founding.

The company announced on Tuesday that it raised US$200 million in Series B funding from backers including Nvidia Corp., Uber Technologies Inc. and Volvo AB.

Urtasun said that Nvidia’s Chief Executive Jensen Huang has taken a personal interest in Waabi, and has been a supporter of her AI research for more than a decade.

In a statement released by Waabi on Tuesday, Huang said he’s “excited to support Raquel’s vision through our investment in Waabi, which is powered by Nvidia technology.”

“I have championed Raquel’s pioneering work in AI for more than a decade. Her tenacity to solve the impossible is an inspiration.”

Waabi intends to use the investment to grow its commercial operations and expand its team in Canada and the U.S., the statement said. The company recently opened a trucking terminal in Texas and expects to officially launch a fleet of driverless trucks as soon as next year.

Capital-efficient approach

Urtasun said that while Waabi’s second round of financing was one of the largest in Canadian history, it’s a relatively small amount of invested capital compared to the company’s major U.S. competitors.

She said this is partly due to Waabi’s approach, which is more capital-efficient than other large companies that are developing autonomous driving tech, like Tesla or Alphabet Inc. through its Waymo subsidiary.

Rather than sending a fleet of vehicles on public roads for training purposes, Waabi uses a digital simulator to design and test different scenarios in order to teach its AI system how to react to real-world challenges.

The company said in the statement that this keeps costs down and gives its self-driving system “human-like reasoning, enabling it to generalize to any situation that might happen on the road, including those it has never seen before.”

Despite the recent fundraising success, Urtasun said that it makes sense for Waabi to remain a private company for the time being, but kept the idea of going public on the table.

“What is definite I can say is that there’s a lot of interest for Waabi potentially being public one day,” she said. “We will see when is the right time and if there is a right time.”

Waabi raises US$200 million to deploy driverless trucks by 2025

Tuhin Kar, Bloomberg News   

Jun 18, 2024

Autonomous driving startup Waabi Innovation Inc. has raised US$200 million from investors including Uber Technologies Inc., Nvidia Corp. and Volvo AB’s venture wing to support its deployment of driverless trucks as soon as 2025.

Toronto-based Waabi will use the investment to grow its commercial operations and expand its team in Canada and the U.S., where it recently opened a trucking terminal in Texas, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Founded in 2021, it’s one of a handful of autonomous trucking startups, including Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, whose Via unit specializes in freight, as well as Aurora Innovation, Gatik AI, and TuSimple Holdings Inc.

Unlike Waymo and other self-driving rivals including Tesla Inc., Waabi’s approach does not rely on the capital- and compute-intensive operation of a fleet of vehicles driving for millions of miles on public roads for training purposes. Instead, it uses a digital simulator to design and test different scenarios to teach its AI system how to handle different real-world challenges.

This approach keeps costs down and gives its AI system “human-like reasoning, enabling it to generalize to any situation that might happen on the road, including those it has never seen before,” the company said in the statement. 

Khosla Ventures led the oversubscribed funding round with Uber, with contributions from Porsche Automobil Holding SE and Ingka Investments among others. The round brings Waabi’s total funding to about $280 million.

Will the Revolution Be Funded?

Organizers and researchers Zac Chapman and Nairuti Shastry examine how movements can build power by working within, without, and against philanthropy.'

By Zac Chapman, Nairuti Shastry 

June 15, 2024

Source: The Forge


Image credit: Big Door Brigade



In April 2022, grassroots organization Mijente unveiled a political framework in which it advocated for a threefold strategy of working within, without, and against the state to achieve its political goals. This framing was inspired by a movement group in Chile, the Movimiento de Pobladores en Lucha.

We propose a similar path: building strategic alignment across groups working within, without, and against philanthropy. We aim to share the historical and present-day value of diverse approaches to fundraising that include but are in no way limited to philanthropic investment. Moreover, we seek to show how aligning work within, without, and against philanthropy can catalyze power building on the Left.
New Gilded Age

This April marked twenty years since INCITE!’s landmark conference, “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,” shifted the conversation about how the Left organizes and funds our movements. The conference and eponymous anthology published in 2007 put forth incisive critiques of how the “nonprofit industrial complex”—largely due to its pernicious relationship with philanthropy—professionalizes, derails, and cools off dissent that would otherwise go toward mass movement building.

INCITE!’s own experience was informed by a 2004 incident in which the Ford Foundation retracted a $100,000 grant after catching wind of a letter the group had written in support of Palestinian liberation. Two decades later, censorship continues, and funders remain largely silent about the escalating genocide and collective punishment wrought on the Palestinian people.

The past two decades have marked the rise of a “new gilded age” of capitalist accumulation. Foundations currently hoard upward of $1.5 trillion. Moreover, movement organizations on both the Left and Right increasingly rely on this capital to advance their work, no matter how frustrating the funding process may be. In March 2024, the New Economy Coalition (an organization with whom we both work) hosted “Will the Revolution Be Funded?,” an event marking the launch of a new Solidarity Economy Funding Library. When asked to share a word or a phrase participants might use to describe what resourcing has looked like for their communities at large, the chat flooded with hundreds of comments: keywords included “gaslighting,” “exploitative,” “scarce,” and “soul theft and spirit murder.”

Foundations gave away an estimated $105.21 billion in 2022—a 2.5 percent increase from the previous year—so why does it still feel like there is not enough?
Thrice-Stolen Wealth

As Justice Funders note in their Just Transition Investment Framework, foundations “[contribute] over 13 times [more] to extractive global stock markets” than to grants through their portfolio assets. Ruth Wilson Gilmore refers to philanthropic wealth as “twice stolen,” but it could really be viewed as thrice stolen: the $1.5 trillion in current US philanthropic assets are not just (1) stolen from wage laborers and (2) warehoused outside of the realm of taxation but are also (3) actively invested every day into ensuring this same extractive cycle continues.

Where do we go from here? While INCITE!’s conference, anthology, and very phrase “nonprofit industrial complex” conjure images of burning one’s problematic nonprofit to the ground, the introduction to the book’s 2009 edition makes it clear that “the more important question [is] not whether one should ever get nonprofit status, but what is the most strategic way to use nonprofits so they support movements rather than being thought of as [the] movement.”

When we live in a world where nonprofits have largely become the movement, we need to explore better ways—beyond philanthropy—of building power.
Organizing Without

Tiny (lisa) gray-garcia is a lot of things—“that houseless momma, that houseless daughter,” “a poverty scholar…[who rocks her] jailhouse attire”—and unabashedly so. As cofounder of POOR Magazine and PeopleSkool, she is invested in work that uplifts the voices of the poor and unhoused. The Homefulness Project in East Oakland is a manifestation of that work, a co-housing project funded by what tiny calls “the bank of community reparations,” an interracial and interclass community fund.

Self-funding for unmet community and movement needs, although difficult and time-consuming, is at the heart of organizing without philanthropy. The historical record is replete with other examples of how self-funding our movements can itself serve as prefigurative power building. One of the Black Panther Party’s most profitable funding streams funding stream came from its book publications, a point that compelled researcher Andrew Fearnley to write that “the Panthers’ books were not just accounts of their activism, but examples of it.”

Another example comes from the radically simple technology of member dues, which union members have put toward worker power building for decades. Recently, the United Auto Workers (UAW) announced a $40 million investment of dues toward organizing workers in the nonunion auto sector. This mark of renewed labor militancy came just weeks after UAW’s president, Shawn Fain, plans for a 2028 general strike.

Mutual aid groups like the Sylvia Rivera Law Project also organize without philanthropy: In 2013, it released a report describing how sliding-scale dues structures build “members’ investment in the work,” limit potential philanthropic co-optation, and nurture leadership. And new outfits like the Resource Organizing Project are building off of this wisdom by training cohorts of movement organizations to build out grassroots donor bases while reconstructing fundraising to be a “form of organizing, power building, and healing.”

All of this draws on the long legacy of community savings pools and other forms of solidarity funding to meet immediate needs across historically colonized and oppressed communities, precluding the need for external monetary support.

Beyond self-funding, organizing without philanthropy includes fortifying alternative financing efforts—like community lending, community development financial institutions (CDFIs), social movement investing, regulation crowdfunding, and more—so there is no longer a hyper-reliance on philanthropic capital.

The work of both PODER Emma and the Drivers Cooperative is a testament to this effort, serving as powerful prefigurations of what solidarity economies can look like if we truly leverage a plurality of non-extractive financing options. In the words of Seed Commons (a cooperatively governed network of loan funds that moves millions of dollars into worker-owned businesses each year): “Non-extraction is defined simply as the returns to the lender not ever exceeding the wealth created by the borrower.” Non-extractive financing—as opposed to traditional financing—places emphasis on the social impact and community success of the investment alongside (and, at times, over) financial return.

Alan Ramirez is a community organizer who hails from western North Carolina and works as a cooperative developer with PODER Emma. For years, PODER Emma has worked to preserve the homes and livelihoods of Asheville’s increasingly gentrifying immigrant neighborhoods—and it’s done so by relying on non-extractive lending capital for sustainable land and housing projects in the city’s Emma neighborhood. Alan’s care for workers in the South is palpable, even over Zoom. When asked, at the conclusion of our event, what they would want wealth holders (read: hoarders) to know, they looked unflinchingly into the camera and said, “We got us.”

Erik Forman is one of those people who is so gracious and humble that you wouldn’t believe that his Drivers Cooperative, a worker-owned alternative to Uber, made headlines in the New York Times. As Erik explains it, the Drivers Cooperative started in 2019 as 25 drivers in a classroom and grew to 2,500 drivers and 40,000 users by August 2021. Largely funded through non-extractive investments, a membership drive with 2,500 members, and regulation crowdfunding, the cooperative is a hallmark example of building without philanthropy.

As Alan and Erik secure resourcing outside the current paradigm of reliance on philanthropic dollars, they not only demonstrate what fundraising looks like in a post-philanthropic world but also showcase a new form of community-controlled enterprise that is not hoarding the wealth that creates philanthropic surplus in the first place.
Organizing Within

There have been some improvements in the realm of philanthropy in recent years, most notably in the rise of more movement–anchored funders and radical philanthropy-serving organizations (PSOs). It’s also important to note recent strides in democratic practices such as participatory grantmaking, giving circles, and worker self-directed governance. Much of these advancements have largely been the result of the burgeoning field of funder organizing, which looks at certain groups of funders as a base that can and should be organized to support redistributive and reparative work.

But it would be a misunderstanding to view funder organizing as merely “moving the money.” “Money is a governance tool. We’re trying to figure out how to govern, and we need to build out our infrastructure,” said Michael Brennan, project coordinator of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, on a recent call. Brennan sees the notion that money is something finite “to be moved” as limiting our organizing horizons. Transactionally viewing funders as ATMs to rage against also absolves them of their wider political responsibility for shifting power.

Bridget Brehen, director of resource mobilization for Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, recently told us that we must organize alongside the organizers and allies that have strategically deployed into philanthropy, as well as organizing funders to see themselves “as political actors with the potential to become conscious organizers.” In the same breath, she shared that the ecosystem model of transformative organizing presents unique challenges in its application to philanthropy. As Brehen put it, “Poor and working-class people are the base and primary drivers of transformation. Who is the ‘base’ we are organizing in philanthropy, given the class character is vastly different?”

Additionally, there are so many different sectors within philanthropy itself (e.g., foundations, PSOs, and donor advisors). A continuous question remains: How do we further organize the multifarious bases of philanthropy in alignment both with grassroots groups and with each other?

Writing in Dissent last year, Working Families Party organizer Nina Luo made a compelling case for bringing funders “into live campaigns where they can experience what it’s like to struggle together.” Luo calls for a militant comradeship with funders who “practice organizing skills, build deep relationships of trust, see directly how money sustains or kills work, and develop the political discipline that comes from making complex decisions with real consequences.” Such a process outlines one way in which we can organize funders into alignment with grassroots movements.

One limitation of Luo’s piece is what amounts to a dismissal of projects that go beyond seizing and wielding state power. Limiting the funding ecosystem to policy and electoral wins harms the very forms of prefigurative power building that make those wins meaningful. Building housing justice won’t just come from passing TOPA (tenant opportunity to purchase) laws and electing more members of the Squad. It’s also going to derive from resourcing the tenants’ rights groups and community land trusts that make laws like TOPA worth fighting for. It’s going to derive from resourcing communities willing to take risky direct actions that shape a narrative exposing how violent rentier capitalists truly are. And it’s going to derive from resourcing movement-anchored lawyers like those at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, who are developing new legal structures of what housing under community control can look like.

While funder organizing entails philanthropy grappling with the paradoxical role of working to provide capital to those from whom wealth has been intergenerationally stolen, it also entails opening the risky terrain of engaging with (some) funders as solidaristic political actors who can become organizers.
Organizing Against

While organizing with funders is a crucial component of leftist power building, it’s severely limited by one blatant fact: on a structural level, we’re not going to convince the owning class to work against their class interests. And yet there has been a glaring asymmetry between the number of groups organizing within philanthropy (as evidenced by the proliferation of the industry of philanthropic-serving organizations) and the number of those attempting to wield both state and people power to fight back against big philanthropy as a permissible phenomenon in the first place.

This has not always been the case. In 1915, institutional philanthropy, still in its nascent stage, was put on trial in the form of a congressional investigation. The proceedings included testimonies by people across the political spectrum speaking out against institutional philanthropy as a deeply anti-democratic phenomenon. The commission concluded that foundations “are so grave a menace [that] it would be desirable to recommend their abolition.”

Today Congress remains largely silent on philanthropy’s unchecked power. The 1969 Tax Reform Act was the last meaningful federal policy reigning in the power of foundations. Even a milquetoast piece of legislation calling for a mandatory 15-year payout of donor-advised fund assets has stalled in Congress. However, several advocates are still working toward leveraging policy-level interventions to make the landscape untenable for big philanthropy. The Institute for Policy Studies’ 2022 Gilded Giving report, for example, calls for a constellation of non-reformist reforms that would completely overhaul philanthropy as we know it.
Aligning Our Strategies

The current political moment is awash with resourcing strategies, from resurgent dues-based labor organizing, increased mutual aid activity, and funder organizing to frontline groups using financial tools to put community assets under community control. Many initiatives are already oscillating among within, without, and against strategies. It Takes Roots, for example, organizes funders to advocate for policies that curtail the power of philanthropy itself. The organization with whom we work, New Economy Coalition, is funded by institutional philanthropy, grassroots donors, and mandatory member dues.

Mijente’s threefold political framework is powerful precisely because it allows for cross-coalitional experiments in power building that wouldn’t otherwise take place. These experiments are happening at this very moment in the form of solidarity between organized labor and worker cooperatives. As Brennan reflected to us, “One of the reasons unions and cooperatives should work together is that cooperatives can help shape the ceiling of what is possible in an industry, and unions can help raise the floor toward that.”

Despite this proliferation of diverse funding strategies, there continues to be a lack of alignment. To us, after having worked in this field for nearly a decade, one thing is certain: The current economic system operates on one thousand coordinated fronts. In order to supplant it, we must work on ten thousand.

This kind of alignment necessitates going beyond reductionist arguments for moral purity (even Vladimir Lenin avidly courted wealthy donors and was an unlikely champion of professionalized paid organizers, as Chicago-based organizer and researcher Jasson Perez recently unearthed). It requires us to hold philanthropy and funders to account culturally, materially, and legislatively. It compels us to imagine and build out a rigorous federation of anti-capitalist financial tools and tactics. And it demands that we organize together to make this work, in the words of Toni Cade Bambara, irresistible.

ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers. DONATE



Zac Chapman is an organizer and researcher based in western Massachusetts. He is the Resource Mobilization Director at the New Economy Coalition, a steering committee member of Massachusetts Solidarity Economy Network, and board member of LittleSis. tiktok: @applzeed

Amazon Workers Affiliate With The Teamsters, Next Up Electing Top Officers

The affiliation agreement charters a new local known as Amazon Labor Union No. 1, International Brotherhood of Teamsters (ALU-IBT Local 1), for the five boroughs of New York City.

By Luis Feliz León

June 22, 2024

Source: The Real News Network


Photo: Jim West / jimwestphoto.com



Amazon Labor Union members voted June 17 to affiliate with the Teamsters.

Workers cast 878 ballots at JFK8 Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island, N.Y. The tally broke down to 829 votes in favor of the affiliation and 14 against it; 10 ballots were spoiled.

Total turnout was 11 percent out of 8,000 workers. However, workers estimate the workforce has dipped to between 5,000 and 6,000 workers during the off-peak season.

A Teamsters statement said the union will now “represent the roughly 5,500 Amazon warehouse workers.” Turnout works out to 16 percent based on that number.

“On behalf of the Amazon Labor Union, I’m proud of our members choosing a path to victory. We’re now stronger than ever before,” said ALU President Chris Smalls in a statement.

“Having the support of 1.3 million Teamsters to take on Amazon gives us tremendous worker power and the opportunities to demand better conditions for our members and, most importantly, to secure a contract at JFK8.”

The affiliation agreement charters a new local known as Amazon Labor Union No. 1, International Brotherhood of Teamsters (ALU-IBT Local 1), for the five boroughs of New York City. That may signal that Amazon workers will not be integrated into existing locals with other Teamster crafts.

“Together, with hard work, courage, and conviction, the Teamsters and ALU will fight fearlessly to ensure Amazon workers secure the good jobs and safe working conditions they deserve in a union contract,” Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.

The ALU is the fledgling independent union that sent shock waves through the labor movement two years ago when it won a landmark election to organize 8,000 workers at Amazon fulfillment center JFK8 on Staten Island.

The union’s current leadership and the reform caucus both backed the affiliation and had met together with O’Brien and other Teamster officials in Washington, D.C., on May 20, after weeks of conversations about what an affiliation would involve.

“The ratification vote by our members is a historic moment—and it sends a powerful reminder to Amazon that we’re not giving up in our years-long campaign for respect, better wages, and safe jobs,” said Connor Spence of the ALU Democratic Reform Caucus. Spence is running for president of the local and was one of the key organizers of union drive at JFK8.

“Affiliating with the Teamsters and chartering a strong, autonomous local union signals a new chapter for so many working people and for this industry.”
NEW ELECTION

Amazon workers will soon vote on their union leadership. The mail-in ballots go out June 27 with a return deadline of July 18. The American Arbitration Association is running the vote.

The affiliation agreement says the Teamsters “will provide resources to effectuate an internal election for ALU-IBT Local 1 in a manner so that potential officers may reach, with equal access, as many eligible members in JKF8 as possible.”

The internal election became possible only after the reform caucus sued the union last year for violating the ALU’s constitution because it “refused to hold officer elections which should have been scheduled no later than March 2023.”

The ALU was supposed to hold elections within 60 days after the National Labor Relations Board certified the union. But before the NLRB certification, the union’s leadership presented a new constitution to the membership, changing the timeframe for officer elections to after the union ratified a contract with Amazon.

The reform caucus asked a Brooklyn court to compel union leaders to hold an election. The court did so.

THE MAIN SLATES

Current and former members of the ALU executive board are running on the slate ALU-Ma-at, on a platform of truth, justice, and harmony—the qualities of the ancient Egyptian goddess Ma’at.

Leaders said the slate’s main focus is to get a contract. Claudia Ashterman is running for president, Tyrone Mitchell for vice president, Rina Cummings for recording secretary, and Arlene Kingston for secretary-treasurer.

The ALU-Ma-at slate is backed by Smalls, Derrick Palmer, Gerald Bryson, and Jordan Flowers—the founders of the Congress of Essential Workers that later formed the ALU.

The Amazon Labor Union Democratic Reform Caucus slate includes Spence for president, Brima Sylla for vice president, Kathleen Cole for secretary-treasurer, and Sultana Hossain for recording secretary.

This slate is proposing major reforms to the union: creating a system of stewards, allowing members to vote on and approve budgets, hiring an external firm to conduct financial audits quarterly, and expanding the executive board from the current four officers to 20 to 30 JFK8 workers.

A third slate known as Workers First! is led by Michelle Valentin Nieves, a former ALU executive board member and a key leader in the union. It is made up of current JFK8 workers. Some of the people running on the other slates have been terminated, pending the results of unfair labor practice charges.

Ashterman and Kingston were key leaders in the successful union drive at JFK8. They mobilized Black Caribbean workers and helped build a culture of support by cooking West Indian staples like jerk chicken and curry goat. “To bring people together, people in the Caribbean cook,” said Ashterman, who has four years at Amazon.

The union was certified in January 2023. But Amazon has been pulling all the stops to challenge the election through the courts. Two and a half years later, it’s still refusing to bargain—and donations have dried up.

Amazon spent more than $3 million on anti-union consultants last year. The Teamsters told the ALU, according to the New York Times, that it has committed $8 million to support organizing at Amazon, including tapping the union’s strike fund of $300 million to aid in efforts to organize workers at the logistics behemoth.

“We didn’t know it would take so long to get a contract,” Ashterman said. “We depended on funds from whoever donated. That’s exhausted.”

Ashterman is known as a fighter inside the warehouse. “I had to fight Amazon tooth and nail for this walker,” she said. In 2020 she demanded that Amazon allow her to sit while she stuffed boxes. After multiple abdominal surgeries, she argued that with the high pace of work she could risk a fall without proper accommodations. Eventually the company agreed.
STEWARDS NETWORK

Hossain, running on the reform slate, said June 12 that she was voting yes on the affiliation—the Teamsters resources could help.

“But I do believe that organizing needs to happen bottom-up,” Hossain said. “It’s about the rank and file coming together and demanding more for themselves. And that is how we plan on organizing a national coalition.”

Reform caucus leaders say they’ve built a stronger organizational structure inside the warehouse than the official union has—including an informal steward structure and job actions like marching on the boss. The current ALU leaders have adopted a grievance handling process overseen by Rina Cummings who was paid to fulfill the role until the union ran out of funding. But the approach was more service-oriented, including helping workers apply for unemployment benefits.

Cummings shared the example of a worker who Amazon alleged had stolen a co-worker’s Uber Eats order. Because stealing was against company policy, Amazon denied the worker unemployment benefits.

That stands in stark contrast to the class struggle orientation of the ALU reform caucus.

While leafleting outside the warehouse entrance in June ahead of the Teamster affiliation vote, a handful of workers marched on Amazon management to deliver a petition demanding Juneteenth as a paid holiday, part of a petition coordinated across Amazon facilities in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Jessica Marrero is one of the workers who has been supported by this stewards network. She credits Cole, another candidate on the reform slate, with walking her into HR and getting her reinstated. She had been fired for job abandonment after an injury.

“My hand got caught in the conveyor belt,” she said. “I ended up tripping over a bunch of boxes causing a sprain in my hands and in my wrist, and it caused a contusion between my fingers. They yell at you about safety, but they don’t do anything about safety in there.”

Since its blockbuster win in 2022, ALU’s efforts to make inroads at other Amazon facilities have gone down in defeat. The union has also faltered in efforts to bring Amazon to the bargaining table.

These organizing failures gave rise to the caucus, which won the right to hold democratic elections for the union’s top spots.

As the ALU struggled to advance further at Amazon, workers at the air cargo hub KCVG in Northern Kentucky, who had begun a card drive with ALU, voted in April to affiliate with the Teamsters. The tug and ramp workers at a nearby DHL facility had joined the Teamsters and won a lucrative first contract in January.

The Teamsters launched an Amazon Division last year to bring together various organizing efforts under one big tent. Teamster activists and staff have been involved over the past three years in supporting Amazon workers in building organizing committees in key metro regions across the country.

Amazon Teamsters have extended picket lines to other Amazon facilities, after delivery drivers organized in Palmdale, California, last April. These 84 workers were nominally employed by a contractor, Battle-Tested Strategies—one of 2,500 “delivery service partners” that carry out package deliveries while Amazon retains full control. Amazon illegally terminated their contract.

Since then, more independent groups organizing at Amazon have worked with the Teamsters, hoping the union can help them.

PERMATEMPS

Eligible voters in the ALU-IBT leadership election will include all current employees who are not seasonal workers.

That’s a sore point as Amazon has leaned into hiring more permatemps. Amazon organizers estimate a third of the warehouse is made of permatemps known as white badge holders. Permanent employees wear blue badges. Organizers say permatemps can’t hold those positions for more than eleven months, but Amazon promotes people into permanent positions arbitrarily.

Ray Bowie started working at JFK8 seven months ago and he said people in his same recruitment class have moved to blue badges while he hasn’t, in spite of asking HR about moving to a permanent role.

Amazon warehouses across the tri-state area, including the sortation center LDJ5 across the street from the JFK8 warehouse, are running a petition demanding conversion to permanent status after 30 days of employment.

Even though Bowie can’t vote in the officer election, he supports the union, citing a case involving his god-brother’s wrongful termination for job abandonment when security cameras showed him being wheeled out of the warehouse and put into an ambulance.

“Even one of his supervisors went to the hospital to visit him the next day, and he wound up getting fired because he couldn’t come to work because he hurt his leg,” said Bowie.

The worker found out he was terminated via an email. While hospitalized, he didn’t check his phone. “When he returned to work, he just tried to scan his badge to come in and it didn’t work.”

Like dozens of workers at the facility, the slog to get a contract hasn’t diminished their support for a union because their lives are replete with stories of how Amazon forces them to work long days to the point of injury and limits their time off, including to go to the restroom.

“Now I understand the amount of work that they expect us to do and the pay it just doesn’t add up,” said Bowie. “I mean, they really want you to be robots in there.”

As he said those words, I pointed to the hoodie he was wearing spelling out in bold white letters against navy blue: “JFK8 World Class-Talent Machine!”

 

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.

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