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Starbucks has poured huge amounts of money into its union-busting campaign, deploying extra managers to stores where workers were organizing, keeping an anti-union law firm very busy, and firing union leaders at multiple stores. It hasn’t worked, but the company is still cheerleading its own efforts. And by “it hasn’t worked,” I mean that 41 out of 44 stores to vote have gone union, many by huge margins and several unanimously.

But Starbucks management is committed. In leaked video from an internal anti-union call for store managers, which More Perfect Union obtained and posted clips of, senior corporate management egged on store managers to oppose union efforts more strongly, and some key store managers spoke about how victimized they felt by their workers’ efforts to organize. Poor babies.

RELATED STORY: Starbucks CEO whines that companies are being ‘assaulted … by the threat of unionization’

One tearful manager described a violent, scary picket line outside her store—even though the protest had been covered by the media, with video showing a very different scene than the manager described. The manager who harassed and fired teenage shift supervisor Laila Dalton in Phoenix, Arizona, spoke at length about what she described as sincere efforts to get Dalton’s work up to standard—except Dalton already posted video of some of the interactions, and the National Labor Relations Board has filed charges against Starbucks for the retaliatory firing of Dalton and other workers in Phoenix. The consistent message from Starbucks upper management to Starbucks store managers is that the pro-union workers are enemies and probably not really Starbucks workers at all.

The union representation votes happening in store after store show exactly how false those claims are. This week saw another flurry of votes counted, with an extremely strong majority ending in union wins—including in places like Augusta, Georgia, where one store went union on Thursday in a 26 to 5 vote. Less than 5% of workers in Georgia are union members.

There are now more than 40 unionized Starbucks stores across the country. This week alone, in addition to the Georgia store, Maryland, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Minnesota each got their first corporate-owned unionized Starbucks stores. In Eugene, Oregon, the union won four out of five stores that were counted on Thursday.

Workers are pushing back on management’s attempts to intimidate them or discredit them as real Starbucks workers.

When Sen. Bernie Sanders met with a group of workers, one told him about needing to work full-time through chemotherapy in order to afford the health care coverage to pay for the chemotherapy. Workers told Sanders how one of management’s responses to the union effort has been to flood stores with new workers so that the existing workers don’t get enough hours to pay their bills.

Similarly, California Starbucks worker Dulce Duarte told Teen Vogue, “A lot of us would work close to 30 hours a week, but I was [recently] cut [by] 11 hours per week, which did affect me — not only financially, but it also affected the way I’d support my family, as I live with my grandparents and my mom.” Nonetheless, Duarte said, “My advice to any baristas that are considering [organizing] would just be to go for it. Corporate calls us ‘partners,’ yet we’re not treated as such. The only way we’re going to be able to be heard is if we act and not be afraid. It’s definitely a scary thing going into it, but if everyone has each other’s back and everyone stands their ground and doesn’t let management or corporate convince you otherwise, baristas will come out on top.”

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Anyone paying attention was aware of the ineptitude former President Donald Trump displayed in the first days and months of the COVID-19 pandemic … and his entire presidency. But based on a report released Friday by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, Trump’s pandemic response was worse than the public even knew.

The report found that not only did government scientists observe “incidents of political interference in scientific decision-making,” but they were too afraid of “retaliation” to report it. Additionally, “Trump Administration officials overruled, undermined, and muzzled career public health experts, during the critical first year of the pandemic.”  

Most damning are emails released in the report that shows that in May of 2020, the White House tried to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 transmissions in places of worship, despite knowing full well how deadly it could be for people to gather.

RELATED STORY: Lawyers in Marjorie Taylor Greene reelection suit file motion to add ‘Marshall law’ text as evidence

The day before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released its guidelines for safety in churches, essentially recommending that churches go virtual, “Trump White House officials made edits to the guidance with no scientific basis,” the report reads.

Listen to Markos and Kerry Eleveld talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

Paul Ray, then-administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, found issues with the CDC guideline, writing in an email to senior White House officials that the recommendation “seems to raise religious liberty concerns.” Ray suggested several deletions and that the CDC be allowed to publish guidance “contingent on striking the offensive passages.”

Then-Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway responded to the email, thanking Ray for “holding firm against the newest round of mission creep.”

White House attorney May Davis referred to the CDC’s faith communities guidance as “problematic,” and proposed changes “on top of Kellyanne [Conway]’s edits.”

Davis added, “[T]hough personally I will say that if I was old and vulnerable (I do feel old and vulnerable), drive-through services would sound welcome.”

“The recommendation to attend virtual religious services did not appear in the final guidance,” according to the report. In fact, Trump deemed churches “essential places that provide essential services,” and demanded governors follow his lead or face the consequences.

In excerpts of a transcribed interview with former CDC Director Robert Redfield, the report states that “one of [his] great disappointments” was “[t]hat HHS basically took over total clearance of briefings by CDC” during the most critical points early on in the pandemic.

Redfield said he was left with “PTSD for probably six months” because “none of our [CDC] briefings were approved” by the Trump administration, and CDC staff were prohibited from doing media or interviews.

“The Select Subcommittee continues to unearth disturbing new details on how the Trump Administration’s pandemic response prioritized politics over public health,” Rep. James E. Clyburn, chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, wrote in a statement.

“While a Trump White House official admitted to her colleagues that proposed CDC guidelines for places of worship were reasonable, she worked with them to strong-arm changes to those guidelines that deprived Americans of useful information on how to protect themselves against this deadly virus. As today’s new evidence also makes clear, Trump White House officials worked under the direction of the former president to purposefully undercut public health officials’ recommendations and muzzle their ability to communicate clearly to the American public,” Clyburn added.  

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The House Jan. 6 select committee is planning to hold eight public hearings in June, hearings that Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) says will “blow the roof off the House.”

“We now have the evidence to support a story of the worst presidential political crime against the union in American history,” he told CBS News. Whether that evidence is also going to expose Trump’s partners in crime among congressional Republicans, he’s not saying. But he’s also not giving those members any quarter in his speeches on the House floor.

Take Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA), one of the 10 Republicans (the usual suspects in what Rep, Liz Cheney has dubbed the “Putin Wing of the GOP”) to vote against updating the Lend-Lease Act of 1941 to facilitate the transfer of military equipment to Ukraine. Ahead of that vote, Greene spent her three minutes of debate time not talking about Ukraine and Russia, but instead screeching about immigration and the massive invasion of foreigners into the U.S.

Raskin was having absolutely none of that.

“The United States of America just witnessed the most astonishing spectacle,” Raskin said. “We are here to debate aid to the people of Ukraine defending themselves against a massive invasion by Putin and his army. Then the minority puts up the distinguished gentlelady from Georgia who does not mention Ukraine once. She does not mention the thousands of Ukrainian civilians who have been slaughtered by Putin’s army.”

“Instead, she talks about a massive invasion at the border, a massive invasion which their own speakers have said today, hundreds of thousands of people have been apprehended in,” he continued. “That’s very different from a military invasion. The one in Ukraine, of course, the gentlelady’s not going to talk about that.”

Listen to Markos and Kerry Eleveld talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

Then Raskin reminded the chamber about how Greene heckled him a few weeks ago during the debate to hold former top Trump officials Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in criminal contempt of Congress. “She had a lot to say the other day when she heckled me continuously when I came to the floor, […] chanting about the Russia hoax and Russia this and Russia that,” Raskin said Thursday.

“Now she had the opportunity to tell the world what her views about Russia are.” He then referenced a tweet storm from Greene in which “she said that the aid that the taxpayers of America are sending to the people of Ukraine to defend themselves against Vladimir Putin and the Russian army falls into the hands of Nazis”. She did say that.

“I want to see her proof. where’s her evidence? She talks about NATO Nazis.” (She does, she uses the hashtag #NATONazis.) “Does the minority believe that our allies in NATO who are trying to defend the people of Ukraine are Nazis?” Raskin continued. “Has it come to this? The gentlelady talked about a massive invasion. We had had a massive invasion of our own chamber and she continues to be a cheerleader for the insurrection and deny what happened here.”

At that point, another Republican interrupted, demanding that Raskin’s words be taken down, what the House does to reprimand a member when they’ve been “disorderly.”

It’s not clear who that Republican was, but it was certainly one that didn’t like hearing the truth about the Putin Wing of the GOP on the House floor.

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Thursday’s briefing from the U.S. Defense Department spoke directly to the relationship between Russia’s logistical problems and its slow progress in Ukraine.

“The Russians have not overcome all their logistics and sustainment challenges, and we assess that they’re only able—because they still haven’t solved all their logistics problems—just from a logistics perspective alone, not counting the Ukrainian resistance, which remains active, but just from logistics alone, they’re only able to sustain several kilometers or so progress on any given day, just because they don’t want to run out too far ahead of their logistics and sustainment lines. So they’re limited not only, again, by the fighting and by Ukrainian resistance, but by their still-continued logistics problems.”

If Putin or his top generals really want to improve Russia’s odds on the ground in Ukraine, they’d be better off staying in Moscow, or sitting someone outside Belgorod, dealing with the logistical issues and keeping supplies flowing.

In the Friday briefing, it was learned that the U.S. has commenced training Ukrainian soldiers on additional “key systems” in Germany. That includes training on radar systems and armored vehicles (presumably that means the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier). Some of the training will be carried out by Florida National Guard members who had been serving in Ukraine before the invasion. U.S. National Guard forces have participated in training and joint exercises in Ukraine over the last 8 years.

In response to questions, the DOD stated that the U.S. is not planning to do any training inside Ukraine, as that would create some level of “boots on the ground.” However, they are looking at doing some virtual or remote training for systems. Making this possible, as well as reducing the time necessary for those training in Germany, is a focus on bringing people who are already familiar with similar systems. For example, the fifty Ukrainian soldiers trained on M777 howitzers were already artillerymen, not just random people pulled out of the infantry. 

Priority has also been given to systems that Ukraine can learn quickly and which can be integrated into their effort “without burdening them” with extensive training or the need for a lot of additional support. The Pentagon seems highly aware that they do not want to saddle Ukraine with difficult and complex additions to their supply chain, or keep critical forces out of the fight for an extended period. Overall, the U.S. is very aware that it not only has to get the weapons on the ground in Ukraine—which they are doing in around 72 hours following announcements—they have to make sure that when those systems reach the front lines, they are also functional and effective as quickly as possible.

One other thing that came up in the Friday briefing that was interesting: The U.S. is aware of military donations being made to Ukraine by other nations which have not been made public. The reasons for this could be varied, including nations that are dependent on Russia for fossil fuels and don’t want to endanger that access, as well as nations who feel like this may make them targets for potential attacks (not necessarily from Russia). In any case, it means that some of the equipment that turns up on the battlefield might represent something of a detective game.

Popasna

The news out of Popasna is mostly that Popasna has still not been taken. The town remains under Ukrainian control even as additional attempts to advance Russian tanks into the town’s streets have been reported. On Friday Russia also risked a Ka-52 helicopter in an effort to get at the Ukrainian positions in the town that had blocked Russian advances for over a week. None of this seems to have dislodged the Ukrainian forces.

There’s also this report that former U.S. military member “Joseph Kensel was fighting for the Ukrainian side, was killed by the Russian army in Popasna.” However, even though this has been reported in a few locations, the original source appears to be a Russian Twitter account identified as belonging to a “hero of the Soviet Union” and whose other tweets include a heavy dose of racism. So definitely consider this to be unconfirmed at this time. 

Listen to Markos and Kerry Eleveld talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

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Amid questions about whether Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter will ever be finalized, details are trickling out about how Musk has claimed he’ll make the finances work, and … they’re about as confidence-inspiring as the average Musk tweet. 

Musk tweeted that he might eliminate salaries for Twitter’s board, which would save around $3 million, or a couple days’ worth of the interest he’ll owe for the loans he’s taking out to buy the company. He has also deleted tweets floating ideas like reducing the company’s dependence on advertising. And he reportedly told the banks he would find new ways to monetize tweets, such as charging third-party organizations to embed certain tweets, a plan likely to get third-party organizations to rely less on Twitter.

RELATED STORY: Elon Musk starts encouraging abuse of Twitter executives the day after purchase deal announced

That’s not the only questionable thought Musk has floated. “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally,” he tweeted, showing that he has not followed the history of moderation at Twitter and other social media platforms, where cracking down on actual hate speech and disinformation has been a major challenge—but not one that upset the far right and far left equally.

Musk also showed that, in addition to seeing himself at the absolute center of existence, he knows nothing about U.S. politics in recent years, with this:

People on Twitter had some thoughts about that one.

Who knows, maybe this kind of thing is what Musk had in mind when he tweeted, “Let’s make Twitter maximum fun!”

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Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt has been absolutely relentless when it comes to attacking trans and nonbinary youth in the state of Oklahoma. On Tuesday, Stitt signed a hateful bill into law that bans nonbinary sex markers on birth certificates, as reported by CNN. The legislation insists that the sex designated on a birth certificate must be either “male” or “female.” It may not include nonbinary or any symbol related to nonbinary identity, including but not limited to “X.”

Mind you, a growing number of states (soon to be 16, in fact, plus Washington, D.C.) in the nation recognize X as a sex marker on official documents and forms of identification. It’s also permitted on U.S. passports. It’s also allowed on official government documents in a number of countries across the globe. But Republicans don’t want trans and nonbinary people to have even a shred of dignity or government recognition. After all, it becomes much easier to stop trans and nonbinary people from accessing gender-affirming health care, for example, if their gender is affirmed by the government. And that’s exactly what conservatives don’t want.

RELATED: Bisexual Brigham Young University student protests school’s anti-queer policies on graduation stage

As a refresher, you might remember that the state’s Department of Health actually did allow nonbinary markers on birth certificates back in 2021 as part of a lawsuit settlement. However, that victory was short-lived as Stitt reversed the decision via executive order.

Listen to Markos and Kerry Eleveld talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

Stitt’s new ban on nonbinary birth certificates is the first of its kind here in the United States, but follows in the footsteps of many other anti-trans measures pushed by Republicans, including efforts to keep trans people out of sports and to deny them access to safe, age-appropriate, gender-affirming health care. Stitt himself, for instance, already signed an anti-trans sports bill into law earlier this year. 

“People are free to believe whatever they want about their identity,” Republican Rep. Sheila Dills, who sponsored the House version of this anti-queer bill, said as reported by NPR. Dills went on to add that “science” determines sex at birth and that people want “clarity and truth” on official state documents. 

As we know, first of all, her take is patently incorrect as it leaves out intersex people. It’s also clearly offensive and demeaning because people’s identities are valid. Identities, including pronouns and sex designations, are not optional or preferences. Having incorrect sex designators is in fact inaccurate, just in the opposite direction of which Dills is arguing. If we want accuracy in our records, we must expand the system to allow for nonbinary and trans folks to safely show up as their authentic selves.

Adding to the harm done here in Oklahoma is the reality that the first openly nonbinary state lawmaker actually lives and serves in Oklahoma. Democratic Rep. Mauree Turner took to Twitter the day the bill was debated and said it was a “very extreme” and “grotesque” use of power to both write the law and try to pass it when none of the people involved have to face the hardships and oppression of trans and nonbinary people.

“I find it a very extreme and grotesque use of power in this body to write this law and try to pass it—when literally none of them live like us,” Turner tweeted on April 21, the day the bill was debated.

“Have you ever had your colleagues vote on your personal documentation which will ultimately affect how you show up,” they continued. “Right in front of your eyes and say nothing to you about it?”

They went on to tweet that while they’re willing to work across the aisle, as they’re often asked if they’re prepared to do, we must also keep in mind that if conservatives are this hateful publicly, what might they be like when the “cameras are off,” as they put it?

And that’s a question we all need to keep in mind—brave folks are fighting the good fight, but we have to get involved as allies and advocates and make sure we aren’t waiting for the already marginalized and vulnerable to take on the brunt of the labor.

One thing we can all do? Educate people in our lives about trans issues and why the fight for equality isn’t an option.

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President Joe Biden laid out his urgent request for $33 billion in aid to Ukraine and $10 billion for COVID-19 measures on Thursday. Republicans responded as predicted: No. Not unless they get their way.

It’s slightly more nuanced than that, but not a lot. Their position amply illustrates that the only things motivating them are racism and partisanship. Take the pandemic. They’re arguing it’s serious enough to force President Joe Biden to continue the Trump-era anti-immigrant using the public health emergency order known as Title 42 to migrants and asylum-seekers from entering the country. But the pandemic isn’t enough of a crisis to keep funding the government’s efforts to curtail it. Not that Republicans are seriously arguing that the pandemic is behind their efforts. They have no problem simply being racist about it. If that means taking urgent aid to Ukraine hostage, so be it.

In order to get both of these things done in a timely manner—i.e. by Memorial Day—Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is likely to link the two must-pass bills. The Senate is scheduled to be in most of the month (the Fridays they routinely take off excepted) but the House has planned just eight days of legislative work, with three days of committee work, in May. So timing is a problem.

Some Democrats are a problem, too, with five of them—Maggie Hassan, Mark Kelly, Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Jon Tester—joining Republicans in a bill to usurp Biden’s administrative authority in immigration policy. They are helping Republicans. Period. And they are complicating getting this critical work done, because whatever passes the Senate also has to pass the House, and Democrats there are not willing to endorse Republican racism.

Rep. Veronica Escobar a Democrat who actually represents a border district in Texas, explains. “We’ve tried the Republican strategy,” she told the Washington Post. “The Republican strategy has been to build walls and harden the border. That hasn’t worked. And if you look at Title 42 over the last two-and-a-half years that it’s been in place, it has not slowed migration, deterred it, or eliminated it. So we have to do something different.” She and other members, including Sen. Bob Menendez, argue that the policy does more harm than good. Menendez told the Post that Title 42 is “part of the problem, not the solution.”

For one thing, the official report showing that 1.8 million migrants have been expelled under Title 42 is misleading and inflates the numbers. Escobar explained that it reflects multiple attempts by some migrants, who have been turned back numerous times. Menendez agrees. “There is no immigration law on the books that allows people to cross the border multiple times without consequence,” he said in a statement to the Post. “Why would any lawmaker who supports border security want to preserve such a policy?”

Schumer, who has been advocating that Biden drop the policy, is now trying to find a compromise. “We’re going to be working through this to see if we can come to a position that our caucus can agree on,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “There’s divisions there now.” House Speaker Pelosi also supports an end to the policy. “President Biden did the right thing” in setting an end date for it, she told reporters Friday. She added, “we haven’t made any decision about how we go forward” in dealing with it. She also said, “I’m all for” combining the COVID-19 request with the Ukraine supplemental. “We will have to come to terms with how to do that.”

While leadership has to figure out how to deal with those Democrats, the Republicans are happy to keep obstructing. Even the “good” ones, the “bipartisan” ones. “I think what we need to do is, we need to get Ukraine taken care of and that has to be a priority,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowsk (R-AK). “We need to have a priority on getting the Ukraine assistance out. So things that slow things down—let’s not slow things down.” So some more people needlessly die from COVID-19 because we’ve run out of money to fight it. Whatever.

“I think the prospects of each being passed would be greater if they were kept separate, and if each had the potential for amendments,” said another “good” Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT). He worked on the $10 billion COVID-19 relief deal with Schumer in early April. The one that hasn’t passed. The one his fellow Republicans have been fighting, but sure, it has a great chance of passing on its own with at least 10 Republican votes.

So there’s the congressional agenda for the next month, pretty much the same as the congressional agenda for all the months.

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If you really want to know the how and the why—besides a general moral imperative to help improve generations of people languishing under the weight of stagnating wages, skyrocketing education and health costs—look no further than the recent GOP response to rumors that Joe Biden may finally do something to address his campaign promise to “immediately cancel a minimum of $10,000 of student debt per person.” Most recently, the Stop Reckless Student Loan Actions Act was introduced by Sens. John Thune, Bill Cassidy, Roger Marshall, Mike Braun, Richard Burr, and Sen. Mitt Romney. That bill, among other things, is set up to stop any president from using emergency powers to forgive federal loan debt.

Why so afraid of President Biden using executive powers to forgive tens of millions of Americans’ federal debt? On the one hand, conservatives believe that federal money should only go to the richest businesses that support GOP officials’ election campaigns and offer up cushy private sector jobs if and when those elected officials need to retire. On the other hand, conservatives admit that stagnating wages, skyrocketing education costs, predatory loan practices, and the like are unfair and dragging down an entire generation or two of Americans’ earnings and spending.

And on the third, most obvious hand, they are terrified that President Biden might do something that politically moves the needle by motivating young voters and Black voters who are essential to Democratic success this coming November.

On Thursday, right-wing wraith Laura Ingraham went to Twitter to give her two cents about student loan forgiveness. Spoiler alert: She is not for it. Trigger warning: Laura Ingraham gave the most ludicrous story of all time supporting her millionaire’s position, writing: “My mom worked as a waitress until she was 73 to help pay for our college, even helped with loan repayment. Loan forgiveness just another insult to those who play by the rules.”

Listen to Markos and Kerry Eleveld talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

Obviously, this statement brings to mind all kinds of questions. For example, what was Laura doing after college that her “waitress” mom, in her senior years, was paying for Laura’s bootstraps? Ingraham graduated with a B.A. from Dartmouth college in 1985 when she was 22 years old. Ingraham’s mother died in 1999 at the age of 79. Using my fancy calculator (remember all of those hands in the opening of this story?) this would mean that, as Laura tells it, from 1985 until around 1993, while Ingraham worked at New York law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and also worked as a speechwriter for the Reagan administration, her waitress mother paid for Dartmouth college.

Okay. Maybe. Whether or not Laura Ingraham tells the truth about anything that ever comes out of her mouth or is written onto a page in the public sphere is hard to say. Most of the time, she seems to lie in service of the current GOP talking point.

The responses to this were predictably awesome.

Wait. I said that! Let’s go to the “good book.”

And from another “Good Book.”

Maybe we are coming at this all wrong?

Maybe we should come at another way.

And boy, that was fast.

RELATED STORY: Senate Republicans want to ban Biden from canceling student debt