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ExxonMobil could see its highest quarterly profits since 2008, the company announced on Monday. According to Reuters, oil and gas operations alone accounted for $9.3 billion for the first quarter of 2022. A combination of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and Exxon’s lack of hedging meant the polluter benefitted greatly from geopolitical conflict and the world’s continuing reliance on fossil fuels. Exxon is so explicitly profiting off of some of the worst issues the world faces that even lawmakers have taken notice. On Wednesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing titled “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.” Naturally, Exxon CEO and Chairman Darren Woods is scheduled to testify, as are his counterparts from Chevron, BP, Shell, and other major fossil fuel players.

The meeting comes a day after many oil execs were scheduled to attend another meeting on high gas prices to be held by the House Natural Resources Committee that they ultimately chose not to even bother with. That hearing has since been canceled, as apparently it’s simply too taxing for oil and gas heads to even show up when asked. Of the three companies requested to testify at the House Natural Resources Committee hearing—Occidental, EOG, and Devon—only Devon Energy’s Richard Muncrief will testify at the House Energy and Commerce Committee meeting. It’s anyone’s guess what Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub and EOG CEO William Thomas will be up to instead, aside from idly profiting off of our languishing climate.

High gas prices have devastated Americans, who are paying on average around $4.18 per gallon. Those who rely on their vehicles to commute— and especially those who use their cars for their very jobs—have little recourse in recouping that substantial loss. Uber and Lyft began adding a fuel surcharge to attempt to address the issue, while DoorDash is offering a pittance for those who drive at least 175 miles or more. And still oil and gas companies continue to profit. There isn’t a whole lot that anyone relying on a car for transportation can do unless policies are changed and these windfall profits are taxed.

Exxon appears to have few worries, save for when it comes to doing the right thing. The fossil fuel giant all but admitted that pulling out of Russia would be bad for business, with the company worrying that it would cost $4 billion to make good on its promise to “discontinue operations at the Sakhalin-1 project and [develop] steps to exit the venture.” Exxon operates Sakhalin-1, an offshore oil and gas consortium which the company has a 30% stake in. The news appears not to have made much of a dent in Exxon’s stock, which rose slightly Tuesday morning. The company will release its full Q1 earnings report on April 29.

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Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, who was one of the 10 Republicans to vote to impeach Donald Trump last year, announced Tuesday that he would not seek a 19th term this fall. Upton emailed his supporters that he believed “it is time to pass the torch,” though the person who will most likely be claiming that beacon in the new 4th Congressional District is his colleague and would-be primary foe, Trump-backed Rep. Bill Huizenga.

While it’s possible that Upton’s departure will entice someone else to run against Huizenga in the August GOP primary, they’d need to collect at least 1,000 valid signatures by the April 19 filing deadline. No notable Democrats have entered the race so far either for the new version of the 4th, a southwestern Michigan seat Trump would have carried 51-47 in 2020.

Huizenga announced back in December right after the state’s new congressional maps were completed that he’d be seeking re-election in the new 4th and he earned an endorsement from Trump last month. Upton, by contrast, spent months keeping the political world guessing whether he’d go up against Huizenga in the primary or retire, though until Tuesday, he’d sounded likely to run again. Upton in February even launched a $400,000 ad campaign where he told viewers, “If you want a rubber stamp as your congressman, I’m the wrong guy. But if you want someone committed to solving problems, putting policy over politics, then I’m asking for your support.”

Upton, though, said he was still undecided about 2022, and his retirement announcement proves he wasn’t just playing coy. On Tuesday, he insisted that redistricting mattered more to him than any backlash from his impeachment vote, saying, “My district was cut like Zorro—three different ways.” However, it was Huizenga who, at least on paper, was more disadvantaged by the new map: While about two-thirds of the residents of the new 4th are currently Upton’s constituents, Huizenga represents only about a quarter of the seat he’s now the frontrunner to claim.

Upton’s decision ends a long career in politics that began in the late 1970s when he started working for local Rep. David Stockman, and he remained on his staff when Stockman became Ronald Reagan’s first director of the Office of Management and Budget. Upton decided to seek elected office himself in 1986 when he launched a primary challenge to Rep. Mark Siljander, who had succeeded Stockman in the House in 1981, in an earlier version of the 4th District.

Siljander was an ardent social conservative well to the right of even Reagan: Among other things, he’d unsuccessfully tried to torpedo Sandra Day O’Connor’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1981 because he didn’t feel she was sufficiently conservative, and he even threatened to vote against the White House’s properties to try and stop O’Connor. Siljander, though, had taken just 58% of the vote in his 1984 primary, which showed that a significant number of primary voters were unhappy with him.

Upton argued that, while both he and Siljander were “conservative Republican[s],” the incumbent had ignored his constituents to focus on international issues. Upton, by contrast, argued that he’d work better with the party’s leadership and seek committee assignments that would allow him to direct his energies to domestic concerns. The race took a truly nasty turn late in the campaign when audio leaked of Siljander telling local clergy members to aid him in order to “break the back of Satan,” arguing that his loss “would send a shock wave across America that Christians can be defeated in Congress by impugning their integrity and smear tactics.”

Upton ended up dispatching the congressman 55-45, a wide result both sides attributed to Siljander’s comments. Upton’s team, while denying that the outcome represented a loss for the religious right, predicted, “Fred’s tactics will be much more moderate and more reasonable.” Upton easily prevailed the general election and had no trouble winning for decades: Siljander, for his part, was last in the news in late 2020 when Trump pardoned what an angry Upton described as “a series of federal crimes including obstruction of justice, money laundering and lobbying for an international terrorist group with ties to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and the Taliban.”

Upton in 2002 easily turned back a primary challenge from state Sen. Dale Shugars 66-32 in what was now numbered the 6th District, but he was more vulnerable to an intra-party challenge in 2010 when the burgeoning tea party turned its wrath on the longtime establishment figure. His opponent was former state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, who had badly failed to unseat Democratic Sen. Carl Levin two years before but argued that Upton was insufficiently conservative. The congressman outspent Hoogendyk by an 18-to-1 margin but prevailed only 57-43, which enticed Hoogendyk to try again in 2012.

However, while the anti-tax Club for Growth ran commercials this time against Upton, who by now was ​​chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the incumbent worked hard to emphasize his opposition to the Obama administration and won by a larger 67-33 margin. That was the last time he faced a serious primary challenge at the ballot box, but in 2014 he went through his first expensive general election campaign when a law professor Larry Lessig directed his Mayday PAC, which he called his “super PAC to end super PACs,” against Upton.

Mayday spent over $2 million to aid a previously-unheralded Democrat named Paul Clements, and while Upton didn’t come close to losing in that red wave year, Democrats hoped his 56-40 showing meant he could be beaten in a better political climate. Clements sought a rematch in 2016, but Upton won by a 59-36 spread.

In 2018, though, he faced a considerably tougher battle against physician Matt Longjohn at a time when the GOP was on the defensive nationwide. Upton got some surprising help during that campaign when Joe Biden delivered a speech in his district that was paid in part by an Upton family foundation; Biden, who was apparently motivated to praise Upton because of the congressman’s work on a bill called the 21st Century Cures Act, declared the congressman was “one of the finest guys I’ve ever worked with” and “the reason we’re going to beat cancer.” Ultimately, the congressman prevailed 50-46 in what was by far the closest race of his career.

Democrats hoped they could finally take him down in 2020, but Upton returned to form and beat state Rep. Jon Hoadley 56-40 as Trump was carrying his seat 51-47. Two months later, Upton responded to the Jan. 6 attack by voting for impeachment, a vote that arguably did more than anything else to close out his lengthy time in Congress.

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Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court has advanced to the full Senate, with an extra procedural step forced by Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who decided to go with Team QAnon. That tactic was blessed by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell when he told his members to go after Jackson as soft on crime, a vile, racist lie that consumed hours of the hearings.

So when three Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and Mitt Romney (UT) announced they would support Jackson’s confirmation and voted with Democrats to bring her nomination to the floor, the inevitable happened. The vilest QAnon House member, Georgia’s Majorie Taylor Greene, smeared them on Twitter, calling them “pro-pedophile.” Thanks, Mitch, for endorsing that.

In the middle of all that is Judge Jackson, objectively the most qualified nominee to the court in nearly a century. She has had more years on the bench as a trial court judge than any nominee since 1923. When she’s elevated to the Supreme Court, she will become just the second justice to sit on all three levels of the federal judiciary: District, Circuit, and the Supreme Court.

Judge Jackson also has more time on the bench—more than eight years—than Justices Thomas, Roberts, Kagan, and Barrett had combined when they were confirmed. She will be the first justice who has also worked as a public defenders and is the first since Thurgood Marshall retired in 1991 to have substantial criminal defense experience.

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She rose to where she is as a Black woman in this society. She sat calmly and stoically through 20 hours of abuse from foaming-at-the-mouth Republicans. Contrast that with Brett Kavanaugh, who yelled, insulted, and temper-tantrumed his way through his hearings. Judge Jackson clearly has the temperament to sit on the court. And she will, beginning in the October term of the court when Justice Stephen Breyer steps down.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer filed for cloture Tuesday, and the Senate voted 53-47 to proceed to the nomination. The next step is the cloture vote Thursday morning, after the requisite time under Senate procedure has passed. Following the cloture vote Thursday, there are up to 30 hours of “debate” on the nomination.

We’ll see then whether Republicans are really intent upon doing all they can to obstruct the inevitable—her confirmation—or if they’ll decide they’re rather start their two-week spring recess early, and allow the vote on Thursday instead of Friday.

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As a contempt vote in the House looms for Trump White House officials who sidestepped subpoenas from the Jan. 6 Committee, NBC News has reported first that investigators of the attempted overthrow will meet today with Ivanka Trump, the ex-president’s daughter and onetime adviser.

Ivanka reportedly appears Wednesday on the heels of a private deposition given by her husband and fellow senior adviser to the former president, Jared Kushner. Kushner appeared voluntarily. Ivanka was first asked to appear in January and talks have reportedly been ongoing since then. 

The probe is particularly interested in hearing details from Ivanka about her father’s conduct before, during, and after the siege. Former Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser, Keith Kellogg, told the committee he and Ivanka were present when Trump called Pence to pressure him to stop the certification. 

As that call had ended, Ivanka turned to Kellogg and said of the vice president: “Mike Pence is a good man.”

RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 committee requests critical meeting with Ivanka Trump

RELATED STORY: Trump officials pumping election bunk inch closer to full contempt referral after tense hearing

It is unclear whether Ivanka Trump will appear remotely or in person. A representative for the committee declined to comment to Daily Kos on Wednesday.

If she indeed appears, she will be the second member of the Trump family circle to testify since Kushner went first last week.

Investigators have targeted phone records belonging to Eric Trump, as well as records belonging to Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s financée. Guilfoyle received a separate subpoena direct from the committee on March 3 following a voluntary appearance that fell apart fast.

The committee has appeared generous with Trump family members thus far, extending opportunities for “friendly” or voluntary meetings and granting time to negotiate appearances.

Guilfoyle was afforded that friendliness, too, but balked on the day of her deposition, when she realized she would have to testify in front of members of the committee as well as House counsel. Her attorney chalked up the opposition to a fear of media leaks.

Guilfoyle’s fundraising efforts around the rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 are front and center for the probe. Last year, text messages obtained by ProPublica showed Guilfoyle boasting about raising no less than $3 million for the event. She was also backstage at the rally, seen celebrating with those closest to the president just before his speech to a crowd that would soon descend violently on the U.S. Capitol.

RELATED STORY: A subpoena for Guilfoyle after deposition blowout

It is unclear if Guilfoyle has agreed to cooperate since her last botched appearance. 

Kushner’s appearance went smoothly according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who serves on the probe. Lofgren was mum on details during an appearance on CNN following the meeting but described Kushner as “precise.”

Though she did say Kushner “did not volunteer” anything. 

The meeting lasted six hours but Lofgren emphasized that the deposition was not “volatile.”

Fellow Jan. 6 investigator Rep. Elaine Luria told NPR Kushner’s testimony was “helpful.”

“I think that the committee really appreciates hearing information directly from people who have relevant facts about Jan. 6, and the fact that Jared Kushner came as a witness is helpful to building the story of our investigation,” the Virginia Democrat said.

Unlike Ivanka, Kushner was not in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6.

RELATED STORY: Texts show Kimberly Guilfoyle may have raised $3M for Jan. 6 rally

He was heading back to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia while she, according to testimony already provided to the committee, was busy trying to convince her father to say something publicly to soothe the mob attacking the Capitol and threatening to kill Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Pence. 

Where Ivanka’s insights into how she soothed her father during the riot are sought after by the committee, it’s likely that investigators asked Kushner about the widely reported role he played: telling Trump that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. 

Luria said that Kushner’s testimony allowed the committee to “substantiate information” while providing “his own take on different reports on the Jan. 6 attack.”

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The House last week passed a bill to cap the price of insulin for people with insurance at $35 a month. That was part of President Biden’s larger social investment plan that has hit the hopes and dreams shredder of Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate. Because this single issue is so critical the White House and Democratic leadership blessed efforts to pass this bill as a stand alone piece of legislation, rather than as part of that large reconciliation bill.

Despite the fact that this price cap bill did nothing to hurt one of the Republicans’ favorite industries, Big Pharma, 193 Republicans in the House opposed the bill. Republican spokesmember Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), as Republican an everyman as you’re going to find these days, explained his vote. It’s the fat people, you see. If they’re going to be fat and have diabetes, they should have to pay through the nose to be alive. They should be rewarded for being fat. That’s really his argument. “[L]ifestyle changes en masse would expeditiously lower demand and the subsequent prices of insulin,” he wrote.

We can thank him for putting the Republican position out there so clearly when Senate Republicans also refuse to support the bill, even though one of their own is working on an alternative. To be honest, the bill that Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) are crafting together has the potential to be a much better bill. If Republicans would allow it.

RELATED STORY:  House Democrats vote to make insulin affordable for people with insurance, 193 Republicans oppose it

What the House bill does is cap how much people with health insurance have to pay a month for insulin at $35—nothing else changes. One House Democrat, who voted for it nonetheless, had a problem with that. “This bill does not lower the price of insulin by one penny,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX). “It just shifts the burden of paying for the insulin off of the shoulders of insured insulin users, and shifts it on to the rest of all of us who are paying insurance premiums.”

The approach Collins and Shaheen are taking is more effective, fairer, and importantly, helps uninsured people who have diabetes as well. Their bill would instead bring the prices pharmaceutical companies charge. “It tackles the broader issue of the high list price for insulin, and the conflicts of interests that occur in the chain from manufacturer to the consumer buying it at the pharmacy counter,” Collins said.

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It would be based on a bill the two worked on in 2019, and would roll insulin costs back to what they were in 2006, before the great surge in the cost of the drug. They would achieve that by barring pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) from getting rebate payments on the drug.

Those are the intermediaries who act as sort of brokers for insurance companies, negotiating prices with pharmaceuticals and other medical device manufacturers. The PBMs generally determine which drugs the insurance companies will cover. The PBMs are in a position to jack up prices, because they are in a position to pick higher-priced drugs—that gives them a larger rebate, really a kick-back, and that in turn gives drugmakers an incentive to raise the prices of their drugs.

“There’s a very complex system which essentially encourages high list prices because the pharmacy benefit managers frequently receive a percentage of the list price,” Collins said. “So their incentive is to choose one that is higher cost. And so we are trying to address that broader issue, as well as looking at the out-of-pocket costs.” She’s not wrong, which is not something one can say about her that often.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has blessed this effort, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the House bill, which Sen. Raphael Warnock has sponsored in the Senate, isn’t also a possibility. Because at this point Collins only has a discussion draft and she’s not going to be in any hurry to make her Republican colleagues have to take a vote on something that will both help people and also help President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats.

Either would take 60 votes in the Senate. That would mean 10 Republicans who gave a damn about people’s lives. Which is why Schumer should put one of them on the floor, even if it’s not the better bill—the one from Collins that might or might not ever be introduced.

“If 10 Republicans stand between Americans being able to get access to insulin or not, that’s a good question for 10 Republican [senators] to have to answer when they go back home,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) said ahead of the House vote. “So we’re gonna pass this bill, and this will put the pressure on the Senate to act.”

That.

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Former trade adviser to ex-President Donald Trump Peter Navarro and Trump’s onetime communications director, Dan Scavino, are about to find themselves held in contempt of Congress for their months-long refusal to comply with the Jan. 6 committee’s demands for records and deposition tied to Trump’s attempted overthrow of the 2020 election. 

This was an expected outcome on Monday given that the House Rules Committee—the body tasked with reviewing the resolution before it goes to the full House for a vote—is majority Democrat. Though Monday’s conclusion was almost entirely forgone, what transpired was far from mere rudimentary procedure.

Instead, Jan. 6 committee investigators came out swinging, using the typically perfunctory venue as an opportunity to cut to ribbons many of the Republican talking points used to prop up dubious claims often invoked by Trump’s lackeys in court and before Congress. 

Contempt Report Navarro Sca… by Daily Kos

At just over 450-odd days removed from the attack that left five dead and hundreds injured, committee chair Bennie Thompson and vicechair Liz Cheney have amassed huge amounts of information to anchor the probe.

From reams of text messages and emails to video footage and witness interviews and sworn statements scored from a sea of 800 people, compliance has been a regular feature from most of those subpoenaed, the committee leaders said Tuesday.

It has only been those closest to Trump who have worked overtime to avoid accountability. But a refusal to comply with a Jan. 6 committee subpoenas sits on shaky legal ground.

Subjects must appear, Thompson said. Once they appear, then they can invoke their Fifth Amendment right and refuse to speak. So is their right. 

“But here’s the thing, if you want the protection of these privileges, you have to show up,” Thompson said. 

Neither Navarro nor Scavino has invoked this right. Instead, Navarro bragged about crafting the scheme to overturn the election in his memoirs and dubs the committee a band of “domestic terrorists” to the press. He also continues to promote the falsehood that fraud took place in the 2020 election.

Scavino has been somewhat quieter than Navarro but no more cooperative. He actively sued the committee to stop a review of his phone records and tried to do so anonymously before a judge unmasked the attempt. That case is still pending.

Navarro argues testifying would violate Trump’s claim of executive privilege but Trump hasn’t invoked executive privilege over discussions with his ex-trade adviser. And more importantly, neither has sitting President Joe Biden.

Navarro has said he would testify if Trump waived the privilege. But Trump’s powers as a former president do not outweigh the powers of the incumbent, so the only thing barring Navarro from speaking up, or invoking his Fifth Amendment right, is Navarro. He could stop the contempt resolution tomorrow. 

As for Scavino, Biden recently refused an attempt by the ex-Trump official to invoke executive privilege, siding with the committee’s position that Scavino’s efforts spreading Trump’s bogus claims of election fraud were not a part of his official duties and therefore not protected. 

In sum, it was not Scavino’s job to convince the American public that Trump won an election he actually lost.  

RELATED STORY: Navarro won’t talk to Jan. 6 probe but another Trump White House official will

During the proceedings Tuesday, Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Colorado Democrat with 25 years of experience as a civil lawyer who serves on the House Rules Committee, was exasperated. 

Both Navarro and Scavino had an opportunity to discuss the subpoenas with their lawyers and Congress. They have had an opportunity to assert their rights, just as others have before them, Perlmutter said.  

If there’s any question from Republicans or anyone else about whether committee targets have had due process, there shouldn’t be, Perlmutter said. 

“They’ve had it. They have refused their right to appear. They have refused their right to be heard. Now they will have a criminal referral and have an opportunity in court, just like [Steve Bannon] did. He was indicted and now he will have his day in court,” Perlmutter said. “In my entire life, I never thought we would be talking about these kinds of things. This is so basic. The legal premises are so basic… the fact that we had a mob try to overthrow this place, in a million years, I never thought that would happen.” 

RELATED STORY: Steve Bannon, crony extraordinaire to twice-impeached Trump, found in contempt of Congress

Indeed, Bannon is the only one so far to be indicted by the DOJ after a referral for criminal contempt of Congress, Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows cooperated for a time but abruptly backpedaled. He was held in contempt of Congress but the Justice Department has not indicted Meadows yet nor has it indicated its close to doing so. 

Another contempt referral for former DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark has also stagnated at the DOJ for the moment. Unlike Bannon, Clark invoked his Fifth Amendment right, a decision that may ultimately save him from an indictment though that decision will be exclusively left up to the DOJ. 

Chairman Thompson spelled it out simply for his colleagues opposing the resolution. 

“If Navarro and Scavino won’t comply with Congress, they will be beholden to a federal judge instead,” he said. 

Arguing against the resolution Tuesday was onetime public defender Rep. Kelly Armstrong, a North Dakota Republican and ally to the former president.

Armstrong does not sit on the Jan. 6 committee but serves the Jan. 6 shadow committee, a team comprised exclusively of pro-Trump GOP legislators who were passed over for a seat on the formal probe.

RELATED STORY: A Jan. 6 shadow committee sets its sights on U.S. Capitol Police

Armstrong told Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, and Jan. 6 investigator that the contempt resolution was premature.

It was also unfair, he argued because the subpoenas to Navarro and Scavino demanded too much information in too short a time. Navarro was hit with the demand in mid-February. Scavino received his subpoena in September.

Republican Rules Committee members were still utterly unmoved when Cheney invoked a decision from a federal judge who recently found that if Trump’s plan to stop the certification of the election had worked, it would have “permanently ended the peaceful transfer of power, undermining American democracy and the Constitution.” 

Undeterred, Raskin laid out for the record an evisceration of popular argument from Armstrong and other GOPers who are opposed to the very existence of the probe.

Where the ubiquitous defense from Republicans has hinged on the belief that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi never gave the GOP a fair shot to join the committee, Raskin spelled it out Tuesday in an exchange with Thompson. 

Before the House created the select committee, House Leader Kevin McCarthy called for an outside commission modeled after the 9/11 Commission. As such, it would feature zero members of congress and would be made up of former secretaries of state or defense. 

Thompson agreed with McCarthy’s proposal, but when progressives in Congress balked that Democrats had the majority and therefore the committee should be Democratically controlled, Thompson said he pushed back. 

He agreed to an original proposal from McCarthy that the committee be split between five Democrats and five Republicans with equal subpoena power.

“I wanted a balanced commission,” Thompson said. “Plus it was clear that when the insurrection of Jan. 6 occurred, they wanted to hurt anybody they got their hands on. Democrat. Republican. Whatever. I felt a calling beyond the partisanship.”

But when news of a deal emerged, Trump came out publicly against it and McCarthy did, too. 

“It was a U-turn,” Rep Raskin said. “McCarthy opposed the commission he advocated for.

Raskin in that moment recalled how insurrectionists called for the murder of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi while others called to hang then Vice President Mike Pence. 

“Those words are still ringing in my ears from that day,” Raskin said. “That was a bipartisan hit squad.”

The vote to advance the contempt report to the full House will be slated in the days ahead before it is kicked over to the Department of Justice. 

For a full recap of today’s hearing, check out this thread here.

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Pandemic-related layoffs are not fully a thing of the past, a fact that is coming home to the very institution currently considering another round of COVID-19 funding: the Senate. Senate cafeteria workers visited senators on Monday asking them to prevent layoffs scheduled for April 14.

Senate cafeterias and food service work have always gone up and down with the institution’s schedule—busy during long days of voting and deserted during recess. But the pandemic has been like recess on steroids, and even now the Capitol Visitor Center cafeteria is closed. The workers who staff the cafeterias and catering services were never well-paid. They unionized last year and were voluntarily recognized by the private contractor that directly employs them, but haven’t yet gotten to the point of negotiating a first contract. Some are paid just $15.30 an hour, 10 cents above the minimum wage in Washington, D.C.

In a letter supporting the workers, Sen. Sherrod Brown and 17 co-signers—all Democrats—called on Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to include emergency funding for the dining workers in the COVID-19 funding bill currently under consideration. 

“After facing down a violent insurrection on Capitol grounds and continuing to serve through more than two years of a pandemic, layoffs should not be on the table. In fact, the United States Senate expressly called for the opposite: workers should be rewarded for their service to this institution, the Capitol complex, and to the people who visit us,” the senators wrote, going on to note that just 18% of the workers have employer-sponsored health insurance and none have employer-sponsored pensions.

On Monday, workers visited senators’ offices asking them for help saving the jobs of the 81 Senate workers slated for layoffs, Latino Rebels’ Pablo Manríquez reported, and were able to speak to some Democrats who had not signed Sherrod Brown’s letter. “That’s bullshit,” Sen. Jon Tester said when he heard about the layoffs, while Sen. Chris Van Hollen told them, “We will look into it.”

The problem is that they need Republicans on board with providing the funding to save their jobs. It will be a critical test of whether Republicans see low-paid Black and brown people as worth helping when it’s low-paid Black and brown people who Republican senators see every day (that the Senate is in session) doing the hard work of keeping the Senate fed. 

Workers and allies will picket the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon at 3:30 PM ET. 

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Democrats in Washington have spent months debating whether to make Donald Trump a campaign issue in November. The good news is, Trump may have singlehandedly settled that debate by dominating recent headlines.

Whether it’s a federal judge directly implicating him in the January 6 insurrection or he himself is publicly and explicitly calling on Russian president Vladimir Putin to help him smear a sitting U.S. president, Trump is undoubtedly making himself an issue in November. The question now is, whether Democrats will work to capitalize on Trump’s misdeeds and how well will they do it?

At the moment, Democrats face a yawning enthusiasm gap that has foretold big gains for the opposition party in midterms past. A recent NBC News poll showed Republicans with a 17-point advantage in voter enthusiasm.

But if there’s one thing the could help Democrats with both base voters and swing voters, it’s reminding them why they turned out to vote in historic numbers in both the 2018 and 2020 elections—to defeat Trump and the party that had underwritten his tumultuous tenure in the White House.

“We still have a villain. We’ll have to remind people of what that was like. And that sure scares the hell out of me,” Rep. Scott Peters of California told Politico. “For God’s sake, how did we get to the point where … the base voters are so mad about two of our own senators, rather than Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump and Jan. 6?”

Exactly. This villain vs. hero narrative seems to spring directly from a messaging memo penned last month by Way to Win

“Every story has a hero and a villain,” Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, co-founder of Way to Win, explained to the Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent. “You have to paint Republicans as the villain.”

The memo identified the hero of this year’s story as the cross-racial coalition of white, Black, Latino, and Asian American voters who came together to defeat Trump in 2020 and can coalesce this year to “fight division sown by corrupt GOP politicians.”

It’s a message that empowers voters and average Americans to make a difference in the direction of the country—to choose their own destiny.

But highlighting Trump and his abhorrent politics isn’t just a motivator for the Democratic base, it’s also a message that can remind swing voters why they defected to Joe Biden. In fact, some Trump-Biden voters in a recent focus group indicated that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had reminded them exactly why they had opted to vote against Trump in 2020—his sycophancy of Putin was both disgusting and menacing.

“He makes me feel good that I voted for Biden,” one Trump-Biden voter said in The Focus Group podcast.

So there’s value in reminding both base and swing voters that Trump is still a threat and that Republicans still haven’t abandoned their deal with the devil.

In fact, rather than focusing on Trump himself, some Democratic members are weighing an effort to highlight Trump’s acolytes, such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who recently cast Washington Republicans as a group of cocaine-bumping orgy-loving hypocrites.

“I mean, do you want to hand the keys to the government to these folks?” said Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan, who is facing a difficult reelection due to redistricting in the state. “They’re scary. They’re nuts.”

As Rep. Ted Lieu of California noted, “One of the things that motivates voters is fear, and a lot of this is causing a lot of fear among not just Democrats but also rational individuals everywhere.” Lieu tweeted last week that he wanted to help Cawthorn, who has complained that Republicans are silencing him, “be the face and voice of @HouseGOP.”

The good news is, so does Donald Trump, who invited Cawthorn to speak at his rally this coming weekend in North Carolina.

So Democrats are getting a lot of help from Individual No. 1 in putting his own personal stamp on the midterms. All Democrats have to do is amplify the special touch Trump is putting on these midterm contests.