Biden, Harris celebrate deal to lower drug prices in first joint public appearance

US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made their first joint public appearance since Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race. The pair took the stage at a community college in Maryland to discuss the economy as well as touting the administration's new plan to lower prescription drug prices for Americans on Medicare.


Issued on: 16/08/2024 -

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and US President Joe Biden in Maryland, August 15, 2024. 

Brendan Smialowski, AFP

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made an upbeat show of unity Thursday as they held their first joint public event since Harris replaced the president as the Democratic Party's candidate in November's election.

Chants of "Thank you Joe!" rang out from the audience at a community college in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington.

Biden announced a major deal to reduce medication prices for retirees on social welfare programs.

But the biggest star was Biden's vice president who has surprised many by uniting the Democratic Party and surging in the polls against Republican Donald Trump since her abrupt entry into the White House race.

"She can make one hell of a president," Biden said of Harris.

Shortly after the joint appearance, Trump delivered rambling remarks from his New Jersey golf club, before taking questions from a handful of journalists.

Harris has a "very strong communist lean" and will mean the "death of the American dream," he said.

The real estate billionaire and scandal-engulfed former president has struggled to pivot his campaign since Biden dropped out on July 21 amid Democratic concerns that he lacked the stamina at 81 to do the job.

Until then, Trump was rising steadily in the polls, in large part on his message that Biden was losing his mental acuity – a charge that gained currency when the president badly flubbed a televised presidential debate against his predecessor.

At his golf club event, the 78-year-old Trump began by reading lengthy remarks from a binder notebook.

Ostensibly scheduled to attack Harris on inflation, with household products piled high on a table next to him, he almost immediately veered off into a series of complaints about the media and insults at Harris, who he said is "not smart."
Biden lame duck

For Biden, Thursday's event was half victory lap, half acknowledgment that he is entering his presidency's lame duck period.

Harris, 59, is set to be crowned as Democratic nominee at the party convention in Chicago next week.

But she made a display of vice presidential deference, delivering only short remarks to introduce Biden and stressing that it has been her honor to serve under the "most extraordinary human being."

"There's a lot of love in this room for our president," she said to cheers.

Biden appeared energised, drawing cheers when he said the Democrats' plan was to "beat the hell out of" Republican opponents and he prompted laughter on pretending not to know Trump's name – "Donald Dump or Donald whatever."

The drug prices deal will reduce costs for retirees on 10 key medicines, including treatments for diabetes, heart failure and blood clots.

The scope and timing of the deal – which the White House says will save older Americans $1.5 billion and the Medicare federal health insurance scheme $6 billion in the first year – is a boost for Harris in an election where cost of living is a major issue.

Americans face the highest prescription drug prices in the world, leaving many people to pay at least partly out of their own pocket, despite already exorbitant insurance premiums.

On Friday, Harris will for the first time lay out details of her economic platform.


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The United States' first female, Black and South Asian vice president is expected largely to stick to Biden's economic agenda while trying to differentiate herself, avoiding voter wrath over the post-Covid pandemic surge in inflation.

Axios reported Wednesday that Harris wants to "break with Biden on issues on which he's unpopular," with rising prices being top of the list.

While Trump has long polled more strongly on the economy, a recent poll from the Financial Times and University of Michigan found voters trust Harris more on the issue, by 42 to 41 percent.

Trump, who survived an assassination attempt on July 13, is now the oldest presidential nominee in US history.

(AFP)

Baby Boomers are fleeing Donald Trump and switching allegiance to Harris

Voters over 70 are backing Harris over Trump, 51 to 48 percent, Emerson College poll finds

Gustaf Kilander
Washington, DC

A new poll shows some baby boomers and members of the Silent Generation are switching allegiances from former President Donald Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Emerson College poll released Thursday shows voters over 70 backing Harris over Trump 51 to 48 percent. That’s a small but positive shift for Harris, as last month, 50 percent of the group supported Trump while 48 percent backed President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris last month.


The group includes some baby boomers, who were born between 1946 and 1964, and the Silent Generation, born between 1925 and 1945.

Older voters had so far this cycle remained in Trump’s column, carrying on a long-standing tradition among seniors to support the Republican Party. The party has won voters over the age of 65 in every presidential election since 2000. In 2020, about 52 percent of voters in that age category voted for Trump, Newsweek noted.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris gives remarks alongside U.S. President Joe Biden at Prince George’s Community College on August 15. Older voters are now backing her over Trump (Getty Images)

But that trend could now be changing. In May, a New York Times/Siena College poll found Biden leading among older voters against Trump, 48 to 45 percent.

The executive director of Emerson College Polling, Spencer Kimball, said in a press release on Thursday that “Likely voters under 30 have shifted toward Harris by nine points, 56 percent of whom supported Biden, 65 percent now support Harris. Voters over 70 also support Harris over Trump, 51 percent to 48 percent — last month they broke 50 percent to 48 percent for Trump.”

“Independents break for Harris, 46 percent to 45 percent, flipping since last month when likely independent voters broke for Trump 45 percent to 44 percent,” he added.

As many as 93 percent of voters said they were extremely or very motivated to vote in the election on November 5.

Kimball noted that the share of Black voters who are very or extremely motivated to vote went from 80 to 91 percent over the course of the last month.

Fifty-one percent of voters said they have a positive view of Harris, while 49 percent said they have an unfavorable view. Those same numbers for Trump were 45 percent favorable and 54 percent unfavorable.

When it comes to Harris’s running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, 39 percent of voters have a favorable view. The same number has a favorable view of Trump’s number two, Ohio Senator JD Vance.


But 49 percent of voters have an unfavorable view of Vance while only 39 percent have an unfavorable view of Walz.

The Emerson College poll was conducted between August 12 and 14 and included 1,000 registered voters.

The right-wing side of Silicon Valley is railing against Harris' economic speech before it even happens

Alice Tecotzky

BUSINESS INSIDER

Aug 15, 2024

Marc Andreessen was among those to bash the proposal on social media. 

Michael Kovac/Getty Images

Marc Andreessen and David Sacks slammed Kamala Harris' upcoming price-gouging proposals.

Harris won't share the plan until Friday, but business-minded dissidents aren't waiting to respond.

Regulatory practices have emerged as a key partisan issue in Silicon Valley this election.


After the Harris campaign shared details of what to expect from the candidate's economic policy speech on Friday, some big-wigs in Silicon Valley lost no time in bashing the yet unspoken proposals. In particular, they slammed her plan to impose the first federal ban on corporate price-gouging and high grocery costs.

According to the campaign, Harris intends to enact the ban within the first 100 days of her presidency, as well as empower the FTC and state attorneys general to investigate and punish corporations that break the rules. She will also instruct her administration to look into proposed mergers between large food companies to ensure that grocery prices don't rise in an anti-competitive environment.

Marc Andreessen, who has become one of the leading faces of Silicon Valley's emergent right-wing coalition, drew unfavorable parallels to price caps in Venezuela. In a thread on X, formerly known as Twitter, he quoted an NPR article about Hugo Chavez' decision to cap the price of food in supermarkets in 2003.

"'The result of Venezuelan economic policies has been a humanitarian disaster. Only in 2017, the average Venezuelan adult lost 24 pounds because there was not enough to eat. Children are dying from a lack of nutrition. And millions of people have fled the country,'" the quotes read.

Andreessen was not alone in his complaints — David Sacks, a venture capitalist and another prominent Trump supporter in Silicon Valley, retweeted a post from a partner at Sequoia Capital.

"I was hoping I'd wake up and this was just a nightmare but it seems it's reality," the post read, with the words sitting above a screenshot of headlines about the soon-to-be proposed policy. "Price controls on food has literally been the beginning of the end for economies in the communist playbook"


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Silicon Valley's political divide is now public — and petty

The discontent deepens an emergent divide in Silicon Valley, where a noisy faction of leaders are throwing their support behind Trump.

Harris, for her part, has significant support among other big business and tech names, though is still struggling to clearly define her regulatory policies. She is at once trying to appeal to her pro-business donors and economic conservatives in her own party, who are likely cheering her upcoming proposals.
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Just yesterday, Mars, which owns brands like M&Ms and Snickers, announced that it is buying salty snack owner Kellanova for nearly $36 billion. The deal is one of this year's biggest and comes as the Biden administration continues to scrutinize mergers.

Hundreds demonstrate in Tel Aviv to demand prisoner exchange with Palestinian factions

Protesters carry banners to ‘The Last Chance’ march, signaling their belief that it is final opportunity for prisoner exchange amid talks in Qatar

 15/08/2024 Thursday

AA


Hundreds protested Thursday in downtown Tel Aviv, “calling for a prisoner swap deal,” according to Israeli Channel 12.

Protesters carried banners at the “The Last Chance” march, signaling that they believed it to be the final opportunity for a prisoner exchange.

Negotiations to secure a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and facilitating a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas resumed Thursday in Qatar.

No statements have been released by Qatar, the US or Egypt regarding the start of the talks. Details about the framework and timeframe for the negotiations have not been disclosed.

The talks, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US, bring together high-level representatives, including the heads of US and Egyptian intelligence, and Israeli officials led by Mossad Chief David Barnea.

Hamas said Wednesday, however, that it will join the cease-fire and hostage swap talks if it gets a clear commitment from Israel on the implementation of US President Joe Biden-backed proposal.

Biden said in May that Israel presented a three-phase deal that would end hostilities in Gaza and secure the release of hostages held in the coastal enclave. The plan includes a cease-fire, a hostage-prisoner exchange and the reconstruction of Gaza.

Typically, communication with Hamas occurs through Egyptian and Qatari mediators, who relay messages between the group and Israel during indirect negotiations.


Hamas is insisting on ending the war in Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the return of displaced Palestinians to their homes as part of any prisoner exchange deal.

Based on recent statements from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, however, four main issues need to be resolved to finalize an agreement.

Netanyahu's office emphasized the need Tuesday for a mechanism to prevent armed Palestinians from crossing the Nitsarim Crossing from central Gaza to the north.

Israeli negotiators have told reporters in recent weeks that the condition to establish a mechanism for inspecting Palestinians complicates reaching a deal.


Netanyahu's second condition is for Israel to maintain control over the Philadelphi Corridor (Salah al-Din axis) and the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which has been under Israeli control since May.

The third concerns knowing the number of Israeli prisoners still alive in Gaza, who would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Israel holds at least 9,500 Palestinians in its prisons, while Hamas claims there are around 115 Israeli prisoners in Gaza, with more than 70 reportedly killed in Israeli airstrikes.

The proposed agreement would involve the release of a limited number of “alive or dead” Israelis, but Netanyahu insists on the release of mostly living captives and wants Israel to receive a list of names in advance.

The fourth condition is for Israel to retain the right to reject the release of specific Palestinian prisoners that Hamas wants freed and to deport released prisoners outside of Palestine -- a condition Hamas rejects.

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

The Israeli onslaught has since killed more than 40,000 victims, mostly women and children, and injured over 92,400, according to local health authorities.

More than 10 months into the Israeli onslaught, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

UAW files labor charges against Trump and Musk #shorts

Physicist Urges Putin to Use Nukes to Cut Ukraine's NATO Aid

By Jim Thomas  | NEWSMAX  |   Thursday, 15 August 2024 

A Russian physicist has sparked controversy by urging President Vladimir Putin to deploy nuclear weapons against Ukraine to disrupt Western aid and accelerate the war's conclusion.

The proposal highlights Russia's growing frustration as the conflict, now in its third year, drags on without a decisive victory, Newsweek reported.

In a letter to Putin, obtained by the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Russian physicist Anatoly Volyntsev argued that a nuclear strike could break the current military deadlock and achieve Russia's goals more rapidly.

Volyntsev, a professor at Perm State University, voiced his concerns in an interview with Novaya Gazeta, emphasizing that the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has reached a stalemate. He criticized the slow progress of Russian forces despite their apparent advantages on the battlefield.

"The situation at the front has become so bogged down and drawn out," he said, adding that Moscow has yet to execute any significant breakthrough.

Tensions have become heightened between Russia and the West, with relations between Moscow and Washington deteriorating further due to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russian officials have consistently accused NATO of complicity in the war, citing the alliance's ongoing supply of aid and weapons to Kyiv.

Volyntsev's letter proposed targeting Ukraine's Beskydy Tunnel in the Lviv region, a key rail route reportedly used to transport Western weapons to Ukrainian forces. The physicist argued that conventional weapons would be insufficient to destroy the tunnel, describing it as one of the most secure bomb shelters.

Instead, he suggested a "gentle nuclear strike" using small hydrogen bombs, which he claimed would minimize radioactive contamination and collateral damage.

"Yes, some radioactivity will be induced. But this is an option that does not leave a large radioactive contamination of the atmosphere and load on the soil," Volyntsev said.

He acknowledged the potential for casualties but insisted that the operation could be conducted with "minimal destruction."

Volyntsev described the conflict as a "war of attrition" and suggested that Western support is the primary reason Ukraine has not yet fallen. "Without Western assistance, everything would have ended long ago," he said.

He further argued that blocking the flow of weapons and other critical supplies from the West is essential to achieving Russia's objectives in Ukraine.

On Aug. 6, Kyiv executed a surprise offensive in Russia's Kursk region, capturing nearly as much territory as Russian forces have secured in Ukraine throughout the year. According to Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukrainian troops now control approximately 386 square miles of the Kursk region, The Washington Post reported.

Jim Thomas ✉

Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 year

 

Iraq's Yazidis hope a new village will prompt survivors of a 2014 Islamic State massacre to return

Iraq's Yazidi community leaders have announced plans for an internationally funded project to build an entire new village to house displaced survivors of one of the bloodiest massacres committed by Islamic State militants against their religious minority

BySTELLA MARTANY Associated Press

August 15, 2024,

KOCHO, Iraq -- Ten years ago, their village in Iraq's Sinjar region was decimated by Islamic State militants. Yazidi men and boys were separated and massacred, Yazidi women and children were abducted, many raped or taken as slaves.

Now the survivors are coming back to Kocho, where Yazidi community leaders on Thursday announced plans for an internationally funded new village nearby to house those displaced in what was one of the bloodiest massacres by the Islamic State group against their tiny and insular religious minority.

On Aug. 15, 2014, the extremists killed hundreds in Kocho alone. During their rampage across the wider region of Sinjar — the Yazidi heartland — IS killed and enslaved thousands of Yazidis, whom the Sunni militants consider heretics. To this day, the Kocho massacre remains as a glaring example of IS atrocities against the Yazidi community.

Out of 1,470 people in Kocho at the time, 1,027 were abducted by the IS, 368 were killed and only 75 managed to escape, according to a report by the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics.

All the permits have now been finalized and construction for the new village will break ground on Sept. 5, said Naif Jaso, a prominent Yazidi leader.

The New Kocho is planned to be built near the village of Tel Qassab, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) north from the original Kocho, now mostly in ruins.

The International Organization for Migration, the U.N. Development Program and Nadia’s Initiative, an nonprofit founded by Yazidi survivor Nadia Murad, are hoping it will provide much-needed housing and infrastructure to encourage displaced Yazidis to return to their historic homeland.

Their return is a thorny issue and few Yazidis have trickled back to their former homes. In Sinjar, the situation is particularly grim, with destroyed infrastructure, little funding for rebuilding and multiple armed groups vying to carve up the area.

Though IS was defeated in Iraq in 2017, as of April this year only 43% of the more than 300,000 people displaced from Sinjar have come back, IOM says.

Jaso said 133 displaced families have said they are willing to return and settle in New Kocho Village, which envisages parks, marketplaces, a health facility, a psychiatric support center and recreational spaces along with homes for people.

Each house will be built according to the size and needs of each family, Nadia’s Initiative’s spokesperson Salah Qasim said.

Alyas Salih Qasim, one of the few male survivors from Kocho says he plans to go back once the new village is ready. He has been living for years in a displacement camp in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region and plans to settle in the new village.

“I would love to return to my original house,” he said but was not optimistic about others — many Yazidis have since migrated and started new lives elsewhere.

But it's “difficult ... to return to an empty village, and it’s better if we settle in the New Kocho once they finish constructing it," he said.

Earlier this year, Iraq's government ordered displacement camps in the Kurdish region housing thousands of Yazidis to be closed by July 30 and even offered payments of 4 million dinars (about $3,000) to those who leave, but later postponed the order.

Fatima Ismael, another survivor of the Kocho massacre who has been living in the same camp as Qasim for nine years and also hopes to settled in the new village, said the old village of Kocho contains too many painful memories.

The remains of her husband and two of her sons were found in a mass graves while three other sons are still missing, with empty graves waiting for them at the local cemetery.

“I can never return home because I can’t look at the empty rooms,” she said, though she misses the old village community. “How can I live with that?”

Survivors still live in fear of IS and part of the reason for placing the new Kocho at a distance from the old village is to be closer to mountains where many Yazidis took refuge during the militants' rampage. Since their defeat, IS militants have gone underground but are still able to stage surprise attacks.

Commemorations and ceremonies like Thursday's bring back traumatic memories.

“It feels like the first day every time there’s a ceremony or event to remember these days,” Qasim said. “Whatever they do for us, or how hard they try, what we saw is unbearably terrible and impossible to forget.”

Canadian railway bridge across border from International Falls collapses

An environmental team had contained a biodegradable hydraulic oil that had been released during the incident.

By Christa Lawler
Star Tribune
August 15, 2024

The Rainy River Rail Lift Bridge, known as the 5-Mile Bridge, collapsed Wednesday near Fort Frances. (Rainy Lake Boat Taxi)


A railway lift bridge northeast of Fort Frances, Ontario, and near the border to the United States collapsed late Wednesday afternoon — an incident without injuries, that left behind mangled debris and uncertainty about when this pass will open to marine traffic.

The Rainy River Rail Lift Bridge, at more than 100 years old, led to the Port of Thunder Bay. The cause isn’t yet known.

“It’s a disaster,” said Al Boivin, owner of Rainy Lake Boat Taxi, who until the incident was able to see the raised bridge from his home’s front window. “My barge can’t gain access to the north part of the lake. I have no idea when it will be working again.”

Canadian National Railway owns the bridge and said in a statement that it had begun working on repairs on Thursday. Environmental crews had contained and were “recovering a release of biodegradable, non-toxic hydraulic oil related to the incident,” according to a news release.

Boivin lives about 1/4-mile from the site and said his wife heard the crash. The Town of Fort Frances issued a news release asking those using the lake to avoid the area. Known as the 5-Mile Bridge, it was built in 1908 and its main span was 134 feet, according to historicbridges.com.

“It failed yesterday for the first time ever,” Boivin said.

J.D. Vance shilled for a company that left workers hospitalized & hundreds jobless

The so-called "indoor vertical farming hub" was an intolerably hot greenhouse. Laborers worked long hours without breaks or promised health benefits.

Commentary by Greg Owen 

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Mar 7, 2023; Washington, DC; Senator JD Vance (R-OH) listens as Jerome Powell, Chair, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, testifies in front of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee during a hearing on the Federal Reserve's Semiannual Monetary Policy Report.

Photo: Jack Gruber-USA TODAY via IMAGN


Just like Donald Trump, Trump’s vice-presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance has a pattern of overpromising and underdelivering. This pattern surfaced yet again recently in the story of a high-tech farming company that he invested in — it later imploded.

In 2017, in the wake of Vance’s blockbuster Hillbilly Elegy book debut, the then-venture capitalist met with the founder of AppHarvest, an indoor farming venture based in Eastern Kentucky. The company was seeking funding to build greenhouses, with the promise of high-paying jobs and benefits for workers in a chronically underemployed area, one Vance purported to know well.

Related:

JD Vance’s foreword to Project 2025 founder’s book says Democrats are “wolves” who must be killed

He also suggests that “liberals” have poisoned America’s soil.

Vance became a major backer of the so-called indoor vertical farming hub, joining the board of directors and attracting tens of millions of dollars in capital to the venture, according to an investigation by CNN.

“It’s not just a good investment opportunity, it’s a great business that’s making a big difference in the world,” Vance told Fox Business on the day the company went public in 2021.

The start-up attracted locals with high-tech hype over jobs that were essentially indoor farmworker positions.

“AppHarvest was the talk of the town,” said Anthony Morgan, who left his job at an automobile parts plant for a job as a “crop care specialist” pruning tomatoes at the company’s 60-acre mega greenhouse. “A major emphasis with them was ‘We want to bring work to Eastern Kentucky. This is why we are here.’”

Things went downhill fast.

When production fell behind, the company cut costs — including promised health care benefits — and quotas went up. This resulted in longer hours and fewer breaks.

Then there was the heat.

“I think about the hottest that I experienced was around 128 degrees,” Morgan said. “A couple days a week, you’d have an ambulance show up, and you seen people leaving on gurneys to go to the hospital.”

Locals began quitting in droves, so AppHarvest turned to the same people that farms across the country rely on to harvest crops: migrant workers.

“They brought Mitch McConnell into the greenhouse, and they sent every single Hispanic worker home before he got there,” one former employee recalled. “He then proceeded to have a speech about how we were taking the jobs from the Mexicans.”

By this time, investors in AppHarvest were revolting, suing management for misrepresenting company finances.

In 2021, the company’s valuation soared to over a $1 billion; two years later it went under with $341 million in debt.

By that time, JD Vance had moved on. While he remained an investor, Vance left the board in 2021 to pursue his race for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat.

But even after employees filed complaints over intolerable working conditions and other investors began questioning management — and the company continued relying on Mexican and Guatemalan workers to make their quotas — Vance kept hawking the promise of AppHarvest creating jobs for the people of Appalachia as part of his Hillbilly Elegy narrative.

Said “crop care specialist” Anthony Morgan, “making the decision to go to work at AppHarvest, like many of us made, the livelihood just went right down the drain.”

“I blame all of the original investors,” he added.

Kentucky is a “right-to-work” state where unions are scarce. In an appearance before the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Vance’s VP opponent Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota reminded his audience of the Trump ticket’s hostility to workers’ rights.

Trump and Vance have “waged war on working people,” the former union member said, adding, “When unions are strong, America is strong.”

VP nominee JD Vance to dissolve last vestige of mothballed charity, give its $11K to Appalachia

Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. JD Vance is preparing to dissolve the vestiges of a charitable effort he launched in Ohio after publication of his best-selling memoir ''Hillbilly Elegy,'' the Trump-Vance campaign said.


By JULIE CARR SMYTH and MICHELLE R. SMITH
Associated Press
August 15, 2024

JD Vance speaks at a rally July 27, 2024, in St. Cloud. (Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune)

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. JD Vance is preparing to dissolve the vestiges of a charitable effort he launched in Ohio after publication of his best-selling memoir ''Hillbilly Elegy,'' the Trump-Vance campaign said.

Vance formed two like-named nonprofits starting in 2016 to address problems in Ohio and other ''Rust Belt'' states. They were primarily supposed to focus on boosting job opportunities, improving mental health treatment and combating the opioid crisis. The original organization folded within five years and Vance put the other on hold when he ran successfully for the Senate in 2022.

He faced criticism during the race over how little the groups accomplished. Despite Vance's stated intentions to identify and produce national solutions to those problems, the nonprofits' only notable achievement was paying to send an addiction specialist to southern Ohio for a year who had questioned the well-documented role of prescription painkillers in the national opioid crisis. Vance has acknowledged that the groups' efforts fell far short of his aspirations.

One of the groups — a foundation — filed paperwork in April reinstating the corporate status it had allowed to expire in 2022.

Trump-Vance campaign spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk told The Associated Press that that filing was required because the foundation still had money left in its bank account and did not signal that Vance intended to resume the foundation's efforts. She said he plans to close out its accounts and distribute the remaining balance to causes benefiting Appalachia.

Records the group filed with the state and obtained by the AP through a public records request show it reported about $11,000 remaining in the foundation's account.

Vance's first nonprofit, Our Ohio Renewal, was formed not long after ''Hillbilly Elegy'' was published in 2016. It was registered as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. Such groups are able to endorse candidates, though this one never did. Its contributions were not tax-deductible. Vance said his goal was to raise $500,000 a year to fund its work.

A year later, he created the Our Ohio Renewal Foundation. As a 501(c)(3) charitable group, it operates with more restrictions but also allows donors to receive tax deductions for donations.

The groups failed to catch on, in part because a key organizer was diagnosed with cancer. Our Ohio Renewal reported raising $221,000 in 2018 — $80,000 of which was Vance's own money. It raised less than $50,000 a year thereafter, before being shut down in 2021, records show.

Meanwhile, the foundation appears to have raised and spent only about $69,000 from 2017 to 2023 — although figures in its annual reports don't all add up. Neither Jai Chabria, a Vance political adviser who formerly worked as a consultant to the foundation, nor the campaign was able to explain the discrepancies, citing the passage of time and changes in personnel.

The AP reported in 2022 that the residency funded by Vance's charitable efforts for Dr. Sally Satel in Ironton, Ohio, was clouded by ties between her, the American Enterprise Institute, where she was a resident scholar, and OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma. Satel cited Purdue-funded studies in some of her writings while being paid by the institute, which at the time was receiving funding from the drugmaker, according to reports in ProPublica.

Vance's Senate campaign said the candidate — whose family's experience with addiction figured heavily in his book and helped inspire his charity work — was unfamiliar with Satel's reliance on Purdue research in her work when she was selected for the 2018 residency. But he said he remained proud of her work treating patients in one of Ohio's hardest hit areas.

Satel said at the time that she came to her conclusions independently, and AEI said it maintains a firewall between its scholars and its donors.

Bernie Sanders Makes The Progressive Case For Kamala Harris

Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., arrives for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee hearing in Dirksen building on Thursday, June 20, 2024. 

(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

By Hunter Walker
August 15, 2024 
TPM

Shortly before he was tapped to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

“I’m not going to tell you that he’s a close friend — he’s not — but we’ve been in touch and touch recently,” Sanders said of Walz in a conversation with TPM on Wednesday. “What I like about him is he is a very down-to-earth guy.”

And so, like others in the left wing of the Democratic Party, Sanders was pleased to see Walz join the ticket in light of his record as governor, which includes enacting multiple progressive policy priorities — legislation of the sort Sanders has supported for years, including paid sick leave, strong protections for unions, universal school meals, free college tuition programs, and a child tax credit.

“I think he is able to communicate with working class people very, very effectively. And I think he has a record in Minnesota that — given the fact that he doesn’t have much of a majority in the legislature there — he’s been able to get through a lot of very positive and progressive pieces of legislation,” Sanders said of Walz.

“I like the idea that he is a former football coach, a teacher, a down-to-earth guy,” the senator added, “and I think he’s a real asset for her ticket.”

The progressive enthusiasm for Walz is notable because Sanders and others on the left were staunch backers of President Joe Biden before he abandoned his re-election bid and endorsed Harris. Progressive champions in Congress, including Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), were some of the most prominent leaders to stand behind Biden as other Democrats pressed him to leave the race. That support was a direct result of Biden’s legislative agenda, which the White House crafted with input from unity task forces that included Sanders and his allies. Biden’s first chief of staff, Ron Klain, also made a point of reaching out to the left and developed a reputation as a progressive ally in the West Wing.

It remains to be seen whether Harris will adopt a similarly progressive agenda and whether Walz or another figure might emerge as a key liaison to the left, in the way that Klain did post-2020. For his part, Sanders is willing to be patient. Harris, after all, had to start her campaign against former President Donald Trump in an unprecedented sprint following Biden’s exit from the presidential race last month.

“I just don’t want to get into that right now because it’s still — you know, in fairness to the vice president, she’s had to move very, very quickly in a few weeks,” Sanders said when asked if progressives had the level of contact with Harris and her team that they enjoyed with Biden. “She’s been going around the country. She’s enjoying very large crowds. You know, I think she’s doing a good job. The polling is looking very good. We hope it continues.”

Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont speaks at a “Get Out The Vote” rally on the weekend before the Democratic Primary in New York, June 22, 2024. 

 (Photo by YUKI IWAMURA/AFP via Getty Images)

Biden’s push for unity early in his term came after Sanders spent years energizing the Democratic Party’s left flank, including young voters. The Vermont senator is an independent, but he caucuses with the Democrats and he ran for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. In both cases, Sanders won significant support from key Democratic constituencies. His campaign also helped spark the careers of Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives who would go on to serve in Congress and local legislatures. After the 2016 race exposed divisions between Sanders and more mainstream Democratic figures, Biden actively worked to bring the party together.

While Harris may not yet have made any formal unity efforts with the left flank, Sanders and other progressives can take heart in the early details about her policy platform. Harris is set to deliver a speech in North Carolina Frida focused on her economic plan Friday. She will reportedly focus on confronting price gouging along with other measures to lower the cost of living. Harris also plans to discuss bolstering the child tax credit, another progressive policy priority. Sanders was enthusiastic when asked about Harris’ focus on price gouging.

“One of the realities of why we have had inflation is that large corporations who monopolize sector after sector who are making record breaking profits are making those record breaking profits because they are gouging consumers,” Sanders said. “We’re seeing that in the food industry. We’re seeing that in the fossil fuel industry. We’re seeing that in many industries across the country. So, I think the fact that she is talking about that is absolutely right. We’ve got to stop price gouging.”

Not all of Harris’ initial policy signals line up with Sanders’ own priorities. As she rolled out her economic agenda, Harris’ campaign quietly signaled that she would not support Medicare For All, the senators’ signature health care policy. And, while progressives have expressed confidence that Harris will do more to oppose Israel’s war in Gaza than Biden, she has yet to outline a detailed position on the conflict, which has been a major source of friction between the White House and the left. Nevertheless, Sanders expressed optimism about Harris emerging agenda and flatly stated he sees her as a fellow “progressive.”

“She’s balancing a dozen different factors,” he said, during what is “literally a unique political moment in American history. Nobody’s had to do what she has to do, put together a campaign, and a team, and an agenda, and a schedule, all that in a short period of time.”

“I’ve known Kamala for a number of years. We served together in the Senate, we ran against each other in the presidential primary. I think she is a progressive,” Sanders continued, adding, “She’s going to have to formulate what her views are, and I think she will do that. And I think she stands on a record. She’s been part of the Biden administration and that’s been a progressive agenda. And I hope very much that in the coming weeks and months she will be bringing forth an agenda that speaks to the needs of working families.”

Sanders is also working to have input on Harris’ agenda. Earlier this month, Sanders unveiled polling from the progressive firm Data For Progress. The survey, which Sanders used to make the case that Democrats should adopt a progressive policy agenda, showed strong public support for a suite of policies including raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the minimum wage, expanding Social Security and Medicare, the child tax credit, and lowering the cost of prescription drugs.

Biden has supported measures in line with some of Sanders’ priorities, but they have proved difficult to pass through Congress due to opposition from more moderate Democrats and Republicans, an impasse that caused Sanders to express some frustration. “I think it has a lot to do with money and politics, but I think at the end of the day, you have a whole lot of people who are working class people who are hurting,” he said. “In fact, we have 60 percent of people living paycheck to paycheck. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth. We’ve got half of our senior citizens trying to get by on $30,000 or less. That is the reality. People can’t afford housing, they can’t afford health care, and it is a reality.”

As a result of those challenges, Sanders wants to see more Democrats vocally get behind measures like expanding Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision costs, and removing the cap on Social Security taxation so the wealthy pay a full share of their income into the program.

“All of these are sensible ideas, been talked about for years, so my own thought is that if we want to win over working class people who’ve become disillusioned with the status quo politics, I think reaching out and talking about these issues is the right thing to do,” said Sanders.

As he outlined the challenges facing many Americans and areas where he’d like to see Democrats shift their priorities, Sanders stressed that he believes both Biden and Harris have made real progressive achievements.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris have a right to be proud of what they have accomplished over the last three and a half years. When Biden ran for office … he said he wanted to be the most progressive president since FDR and I think, in many ways, he has. He kept his word,” Sanders said. “They should be proud of their accomplishments in a number of areas, but at the same time, you cannot close your eyes to the reality of what tens and tens of millions of people, working class people are experiencing.”

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (L), Democrat of New York; US Independent Senator Bernie Sanders (C) from Vermont and US Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York, attend a “Get Out The Vote” rally on the weekend before the Democratic Primary in New York, June 22, 2024. 

 (Photo by YUKI IWAMURA/AFP via Getty Images)

Indeed, a striking feature of the political landscape since Sanders’ initial foray into presidential politics is the fact progressivism has taken root in the White House while, in Congress, some of Sanders’ allies have not been able to hold onto their seats. This election cycle has seen Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) — two members of the Sanders-aligned “Squad” in the House — defeated in primary challenges. Those races were defined by massive spending against them from AIPAC and other groups who oppose critics of the way in which Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has handled the war in Gaza, which has left tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians dead.

To Sanders, the extent to which special interest groups and megadonors influence elections is “one of the outrages of the current political scene.” He has unsuccessfully pushed the Democratic National Committee to prohibit the use of Super PAC funding in the party’s primaries.

“Getting back to AIPAC, it’s not just that they defeated two good members of Congress, the message went out, if you want to speak out against Netanyahu, you’re going to have to pay a price,” Sanders said. “That kind of is going to inhibit people from speaking out on important issues if they’re afraid that millions of dollars are going to come in against them. It’s a horrific situation and it’s got to be dealt with.”

Even as he is calling for changes to the Democratic Party’s primary processes and attempting to push the party’s agenda to the left, Sanders is already campaigning for Harris. While he has yet to give Harris a formal endorsement, Sanders was one of several lawmakers who took part in a “Progressives for Harris” fundraising and organizing call earlier this month. Sanders is also stepping up criticism of Harris’ opponent, Trump.

In the past week, Sanders repeatedly called out Trump’s efforts to spread conspiracy theories about the size of crowds at Harris’ rallies.

“I think we have to look at these incredible lies, preposterous lies, and understand that he is laying the groundwork for saying that, if he loses — and I don’t know that he will — but if he loses the election, he will say, see, I told you it’s all fraud, it’s fake, I really won,” Sanders said. “I think people have got to accept that sad and tragic and painful reality and figure out how we address it. But that is what this is about to be.”

Sanders characterized Trump’s behavior as Orwellian and undemocratic.

“Don’t believe your lying eyes. I, Donald Trump, I’m the only one who knows the truth, and I’m telling you that what you saw on television … it’s a lie, it’s all fake, and I alone have the truth,” Sanders said. “That’s a pretty dangerous situation for a country to be in and I think we have got to take what he’s doing a bit more seriously than we have until now.”

With the Democratic National Convention coming up next week, Sanders is set to take his message to Chicago where he will headline a program dubbed “Progressive Central 2024” that is set to take place on the sidelines of the main event. Sanders offered a coy response and referred the question to the Harris campaign when TPM asked if he would be among the speakers at the DNC. (The Harris campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

“That’s a top secret,” Sanders said of the convention plans. “I can’t tell you.”



Hunter Walker (@hunterw) is an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo. He is an author and former White House correspondent whose work has appeared in a variety of publications including the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and New York Magazine. He can be reached at hunter@talkingpointsmemo.com