On Thursday, in a 51-48 vote, the Senate rejected a Democratic plan to extend Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits, as well as a Republican alternative that boosted a health savings account model. It is now all but certain that the credits, which began under the Biden administration, will expire at the end of the year. As I previously reported, that expiration will lead, for millions of Americans, to the greatest single rise in health care premiums ever. In a video recorded after the votes, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) expressed her anger towards Republican colleagues. “They voted to increase health care costs across the board, and now millions of Americans are left with the impossible decision of choosing between paying for health insurance or paying their rent,” Warren said. “They’ve all fallen in line behind Donald Trump and left American families in the dirt.” On New Year’s Day, the Urban Institute estimates, at least four million ACA marketplace users will become uninsured. People seeking ACA insurance will have until Monday to select a plan in order to be covered on January 1. Some of those people may now choose plans that are less comprehensive because it’s what they can afford, said University of Pittsburgh assistant professor Miranda Yaver, who focuses on health policy. That would leave an even greater number of Americans underinsured. “The average American cannot accommodate an unexpected $1,000 emergency medical expense,” Yaver said. “It is not exactly hard to run up a thousand-dollar tab in the American health care system, and having a good health insurance plan can insulate us from that cost.” American Public Health Association executive director Georges C. Benjamin said in a press release that Congress had failed its duty to safeguard the health of Americans. “Rather than addressing a serious issue that has been on our radar for years, Congress, earlier this year, rejected the opportunity to extend the enhanced tax credits,” Benjamin said, “and instead passed legislation to gut the Medicaid program and make additional changes to the ACA that will result in 16 million Americans losing their health coverage.” “We’re probably going to see more and more people forgoing coverage and care, which is only going to exacerbate existing health conditions,” said Marilyn Cabrera, the nonprofit Young Invincibles‘ health care policy and advocacy manager. Yaver is also skeptical of the health savings account model being pushed by Republicans as an alternative. They are not practical, she says, for the low and middle-income people that the Affordable Care Act is supposed to help. “You have to have the means to put a lot of money into your health savings account, and if you’re barely scraping by and living paycheck to paycheck, it’s just not going to happen,” Yaver said. Among some people whose health insurance is now in jeopardy, there is anger at Congress on both sides of the aisle. Some Democrats, Yaver said, are willing to “sort of allow a certain amount of harm in the next plan year, not wanting to bail Republicans out from their unwillingness to extend the marketplace subsidies,” ahead of elections. And for Republican politicians, Yaver said, “there is a real lack of connection to everyday Americans’ struggles with accessing health care, which is not a luxury item. It is basic survival for a lot of people.”

In a wide-ranging Sunday night interview on CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” President Donald Trump put his desire for unchecked power on full display. He bragged to correspondent Norah O’Donnell that, thanks to the Insurrection Act of 1792, he can invade your city whenever he wants. He said immigration raids—including acts of police violence such as using tear gas in residential neighborhoods, throwing people to the ground, and breaking car windows—”haven’t gone far enough.” And he said the government shutdown will last until Democrats in Congress bend to his will—or until Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) agrees to eliminate the filibuster, which Thune, so far, has rejected. Here are some of the biggest takeaways from Trump’s comments on domestic policy: Trump blamed the shutdown on the Democrats As the federal government shutdown enters its fifth week—on pace to be the second-longest in history after the one that stretched from December 2018 into January 2019—O’Donnell had a straightforward question for Trump: “What are you doing as president to end the shutdown?” His answer? Blaming the Democrats. “The Republicans are voting almost unanimously to end it, and the Democrats keep voting against ending it,” Trump said. “They’ve lost their way,” he added. “They become crazed lunatics.” Senate Democrats have said they will vote to reopen the government if the legislation includes an extension of Obamacare subsidies; without those, the health policy think tank KFF has estimated, average monthly premiums on people who get their insurance through the ACA marketplace would more than double. Trump also claimed Obamacare is “terrible,” adding, “We can make it much less expensive for people and give them much better health care.” But, yet again, he failed to outline his alternative. (Remember his “concepts of a plan“?) > What is President Trump doing to end the government shutdown? > > “What we're doing is we keep voting. I mean, the Republicans are voting almost > unanimously to end, and the Democrats keep voting against ending it,” says > Trump. pic.twitter.com/f6smwqi8Jn > > — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 3, 2025 He defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s violent tactics Citing videos of ICE officers tackling a mother in court, using tear gas in a residential neighborhood in Chicago, and smashing car windows, O’Donnell asked Trump if some of the raids have “gone too far?” Trump gave what may have been his most direct answer of the interview: “No, I think they haven’t gone far enough,” he said. “We’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in [the federal courts] by Biden and by Obama.” “You’re okay with those tactics?” O’Donnell pressed. “Yeah, because you have to get the people out,” he replied. > "I think they haven't gone far enough," says President Trump, defending ICE > raids. In one case, ICE tackled a young mother and in another tear gas was > used in a residential neighborhood. pic.twitter.com/b7tEYqWyUv > > — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 2, 2025 He bragged that he can send the military into any city, at any time O’Donnell asked Trump what he meant when, at a speech in Japan last week, he said: “If we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard.” Trump has already sent guard troops into Washington, DC; Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; Chicago; and Memphis, Tenn. Trump seemed delighted to remind O’Donnell and viewers of what he sees as his vast power: “Well, if you had to send in the Army, or if you had to send in the Marines, I’d do that in a heartbeat. You know you have a thing called the Insurrection Act. You know that, right? Do you know that I could use that immediately, and no judge can even challenge you on that. But I haven’t chosen to do it because I haven’t felt we need it.” > “If you had to send in the Army or if you had to send in the Marines, I'd do > that in a heartbeat,” says President Trump. He has ordered the National Guard > to five major U.S. cities. https://t.co/GAtK4KJNAf pic.twitter.com/Yx0SoiGDFQ > > — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 3, 2025 This is not the first time Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to override federal law that prohibits the military from acting as law enforcement, in order to “suppress rebellion.” But the law has not been used in more than three decades and is widely seen by legal experts as having a frightening potential for abuse. “So you’re going to send the military into American cities?” O’Donnell pressed. “Well, if I wanted to, I could, if I want to use the Insurrection Act,” Trump responded. “The Insurrection Act has been used routinely by presidents, and if I needed it, that would mean I could bring in the Army, the Marines, I could bring in whoever I want, but I haven’t chosen to use it. I hope you give me credit for that.” He claimed he has been “mild-mannered” when it comes to political retribution In only nine months, Trump has made good on his long-running promise to prosecute his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and New York Attorney General Letitia James. “There’s a pattern to these names. They’re all public figures who have publicly denounced you. Is it political retribution?” O’Donnell asked. Trump promptly played the victim: “You know who got indicted? The man you’re looking at,” he replied. “I got indicted and I was innocent, and here I am, because I was able to beat all of the nonsense that was thrown at me.” (He was, indeed, found guilty in New York last year on 34 felony counts in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case.) > “I think I've been very mild-mannered. You're looking at a man who was > indicted many times, and I had to beat the rap,” says President Trump after > the recent indictments of high-profile figures who have publicly denounced > him. https://t.co/XHoIr77Eh1 pic.twitter.com/tLH0fxW2wI > > — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 3, 2025 Despite posting a Truth Social message in September demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi speed up the prosecutions, just days before Comey was indicted and a couple weeks before Bolton and James were, Trump insisted he did not instruct the Department of Justice to pursue them. “No, you don’t have to instruct them, because they were so dirty, they were so crooked, they were so corrupt,” he said, proceeding to praise the work of Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. “I think I’ve been very mild-mannered,” Trump continued. “You’re looking at a man who was indicted many times, and I had to beat the rap, otherwise I couldn’t have run for president.” He think he’s “better looking” than Zohran Mamdani Trump insisted that the frontrunner in New York City’s Tuesday mayoral election, 34-year-old self-described Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, is a “Communist.” When O’Donnell asked Trump what he makes of comparisons between himself and Mamdani—”charismatic, breaking the old rules,” as O’Donnell put it—Trump replied: “I think I’m a much better-looking person than him.” He then reiterated his threat to withhold federal funding from his home city if Mamdani wins over ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “It’s going to be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a Communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there,” Trump said. He claimed that he is “not a fan of Cuomo one way or the other,” but added, “If it’s going to be between a bad Democrat and a Communist, I’m going to pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you.” > Some have called Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist front-runner for New > York City mayor, a left-wing version of President Trump. > > "I think I'm a much better looking person than him," says Trump, after calling > Mamdani a "communist." pic.twitter.com/p9FDWNcoGs > > — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 2, 2025

Graham Platner, a 40-year-old oyster farmer from Sullivan, Maine (pop. 1,219), announced a bid for the seat of incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins on Tuesday. A Marine and Army veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Platner says he’s running his Democratic campaign on a message of economic populism. His goal, he says, is to “claw back wealth that was created by the labor and the consumption of working class Americans who have not shared in the riches they helped build.” > “The working class abandoned the Democratic Party, primarily because the > Democratic Party abandoned the working class.” To accomplish his mission, he will first have to win the party’s primary against at least two candidates: Democrats who have already announced their campaigns include Jordan Wood, the former chief of staff to then-Rep. Katie Porter, and David Costello, a former USAID worker who ran against Maine Independent Sen. Angus King in 2024. Maine Governor Janet Mills, who is term-limited in her current role, has also been floated as a strong possible Democratic contender should she decide to run. If he wins the Democratic primary, Platner would likely face an even greater challenge: Collins, the only GOP senator up for reelection from a state won by Kamala Harris in 2024. In a markedly polarized Congress, Collins is one of just a handful of senators on either side who have dared to (on occasion) buck her party. She’s one of just three Republican senators, for example, who rejected Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. But her nay vote didn’t the stop the legislation, which 58 percent of Maine residents opposed; it merely required Vice President JD Vance make a quick trip to the Capitol to break the tie. In a state Trump lost by nearly 7 points in 2024, Democrats see an opportunity in Collins’ declining approval rating to oust a GOP senator making only the faintest show of resistance against Trump’s controversial agenda. By contrast, ousting Collins could tip the Senate majority towards Democrats, which would help the party neutralize Trump moving forward. In announcing his upstart bid, Platner is betting his broad embrace of the working class—and how he defines that group—could be the key to replacing her. “When I talk about the American working class, I talk about the people who work, who labor and struggle, and have and build families, and cannot access the wealth that this country has,” Platner says in an interview. “Someone who’s making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year is far, far, closer to someone who makes below the poverty line than they are to the rich.” In other words, reader, he most likely means you. He also means himself.  Platner has never run for office and seldom wears a suit. His closest connection to Congress before his campaign was serving glasses of Jameson to the late-Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) while working a brief stint at the beloved DC dive bar, Tune Inn. More recently, he spends the vast majority of his days on—or in—the Atlantic Ocean, running Waukeag Neck Oyster Company from the town he grew up in. By his telling, his oyster farm is not making bank: “I don’t make a lot of money,” he says. But he still counts himself lucky. After his military career ended, he said he found it difficult to make ends meet. It wasn’t until several years later that disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs afforded him the financial breathing room to seek out a living he’d actually enjoy. “I didn’t have to go get a job just to get health insurance. I could find something that I might really love, and I could take a risk of starting a business,” he tells me. Many Americans don’t have that luxury. Instead, they are often stuck working multiple jobs, or at least unfulfilling ones, that still don’t earn them enough to buy a house or comfortably afford basics like health care and groceries. Republicans, he says, obliterated Democrats in 2024 because they acknowledged these common adversities. “Everybody down here knows that the system is screwing them,” he says. “The one thing the Republicans and, more importantly, I would say, Donald Trump, did, is they told people that they were right. They told people that they were getting screwed, that the system wasn’t helping them.” Where Trump and other Republicans erred, Platner says, is by not pinning the blame on the billionaires and massive corporations with immense political pull that reap the largest rewards from the government.  Instead, Republicans “blamed minorities, immigrants, groups of people who live lives that are frankly, just as, if not more, full of suffering and pain than the rest of the American working class,” Platner says. “But at least they blamed somebody.” He argues that addressing the woes of average Americans doesn’t mean abandoning the most marginalized groups; it just means listening to the concerns of all the other working-class Americans who are suffering too. “The working class abandoned the Democratic Party, primarily because the Democratic Party abandoned the working class,” says Platner. “And if we are going to move things forward, we need to fix that.”

This story is part of the 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now The Democratic party and the climate movement have been “too cautious and polite” and should instead be denouncing the fossil fuel industry’s “huge denial operation,” the US senator Sheldon Whitehouse said. “The fossil fuel industry has run the biggest and most malevolent propaganda operation the country has ever seen,” the Rhode Island Democrat said in an interview on Monday with the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now. “It is defending a $700-plus billion [annual] subsidy” of not being charged for the health and environmental damages caused by the burning of fossil fuels. “I think the more people understand that, the more they’ll be irate [that] they’ve been lied to.” But, he added, “Democrats have not done a good job of calling that out.” > “Turns out, none of [the science] really matters while the operation is > controlling things in Congress.” Whitehouse is among the most outspoken climate champions on Capitol Hill, and on Wednesday evening he delivered his 300th Time to Wake Up climate speech on the floor of the Senate. He began giving these speeches in 2012, when Barack Obama was in his first term, and has consistently criticized both political parties for their lackluster response to the climate emergency. The Obama White House, he complained, for years would not even “use the word ‘climate’ and ‘change’ in the same paragraph.” While Whitehouse slams his fellow Democrats for timidity, he blasts Republicans for being in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, an entity whose behavior “has been downright evil,” he said. “To deliberately ignore [the laws of physics] for short-term profits that set up people for huge, really bad impacts—if that’s not a good definition of evil, I don’t know what is.” The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s trade association, says on its website that “API and its members commit to delivering solutions that reduce the risks of climate change while meeting society’s growing energy needs.” Long before Donald Trump reportedly told oil company CEOs he would repeal Joe Biden’s climate policies if they contributed $1 billion to his 2024 presidential campaign, Republicans went silent on climate change in return for oil industry money, Whitehouse asserted. The key shift came after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which struck down limits on campaign spending. Before that, some GOP senators had sponsored climate bills, and John McCain urged climate action during his 2008 presidential campaign. But Citizens United, Whitehouse said, “told the fossil fuel industry: ‘The door’s wide open—spend any money you want in our elections.’” The industry, he said, promised the Republican party “unlimited amounts of money” in return for stepping away from bipartisan climate action: “And since 2010, there has not been a single serious bipartisan measure in the Senate.” > Democrats get stuck in a “stupid doom loop in which our pollsters say: ‘Well, > climate’s not one of the top issues that voters care about,’ so then we don’t > talk about it.” Whitehouse said that after delivering 300 climate speeches on the Senate floor, he has learned to shift from talking about the “facts of climate science and the effects on human beings to calling out the fossil fuels’ massive climate-denial operation”. He said: “Turns out, none of [the science] really matters while the operation is controlling things in Congress. I could take facts from colleagues’ home states right to them, and it would make no difference because of this enormous, multibillion-dollar political club that can [punish] anyone who crosses them.” Most Republicans even stay silent despite climate change’s threat to property values and other traditional GOP priorities, Whitehouse said. He noted that even the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell—who is not known for his climate bona fides, he said—testified before the Senate in February that in 10-15 years there will be whole regions of the country where nobody can get a mortgage because extreme weather will make it impossible to afford or even obtain insurance. Democrats can turn all this to their advantage if they get “more vocal and aggressive,” Whitehouse argued. “The good news is that the American people hate dark money with a passion, and they hate it just as much, if not more, in districts that went for Trump as in districts that went for Biden.” Democrats also need to recognize “how much [public] support there is for climate action,” he said. “How do you have an issue that you win 74 [percent] to 12 [percent] and you don’t ride that horse as hard as you can?” Whitehouse said he was only estimating that 74 percent figure, but that’s exactly the percentage of Americans who want their government to take stronger climate action, according to the studies informing the 89 Percent Project, the Guardian and other Covering Climate Now partner news outlets began reporting in April. Globally, the percentage ranges from 80 percent to 89 percent. Yet this overwhelming climate majority does not realize it is the majority, partly because that fact has been absent from most news coverage, social media and politicians’ statements. Democrats keep “getting caught in this stupid doom loop in which our pollsters say: ‘Well, climate’s not one of the top issues that voters care about,’ so then we don’t talk about it,” said Whitehouse. “So it never becomes one of the top issues that voters care about. [But] if you actually go ask [voters] and engage on the issue, it explodes in enthusiasm. It has huge numbers when you bother to engage, and we just haven’t.” Nevertheless, Whitehouse is optimistic that climate denial won’t prevail forever. “Once this comes home to roost in people’s homes, in their family finances, in really harmful ways, that [will be] motivating in a way that we haven’t seen before around this issue,” he said. “And if we’re effective at communicating what a massive fraud has been pulled on the American public by the fossil fuel industry denial groups, then I think that’s a powerful combination.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Democratic lawmakers led by the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren are pressing two energy companies about their efforts to “win a $1.1 billion tax loophole” in Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. The proposed exemption, which Senate Republicans inserted into their version of the reconciliation megabill this month, would exempt fossil fuel companies from paying a tax codified by Biden in 2022. “It’s an insult to working people to give oil companies a massive tax handout while slashing healthcare and raising energy prices for millions of families,” Warren, who was a major advocate for the tax, told the Guardian. > “Americans deserve to know if Big Oil paid for these Republicans in Congress > to carve out tax breaks just for them.” Enshrined within the Inflation Reduction Act, the corporate alternative minimum tax (CAMT) requires corporations with adjusted earnings over $1 billion to pay at least 15 percent of the profits they report to their shareholders, which are known as “book profits,” in taxes. The Senate Finance Committee’s proposal would shield domestic drillers from that tax by allowing companies to deduct certain drilling costs when calculating their income—a change that would allow some companies to pay zero dollars in federal taxes. Winning the tax tweak has been a major priority for fossil-fuel interests this year. The oil major ConocoPhillips and Denver-based petroleum company Ovintiv directly lobbied for the change, federal disclosures show. On Thursday morning, Warren, along with Senate Democratic colleagues Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island), Ron Wyden (Oregon), and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, sent letters to ConocoPhillips and Ovintiv pressing for answers on their role in shaping the CAMT change. “Your company’s lobbying disclosures explicitly prioritize this handout,” read the letters, which were shared exclusively with the Guardian. Both companies could “benefit tremendously from this provision,” read the letters, which are addressed to the ConocoPhillips CEO, Ryan Lance, and the Ovintiv CEO, Brendan McCracken, respectively. The Guardian has contacted ConocoPhillips and Ovintiv for comment. In their missives, the senators asked how much each company has spent on lobbying for the provision and will spend this year, how much each has donated to elected officials advocating for fossil fuel tax cuts, and how much of a reduction in taxes each company would see if the provision is finalized, requesting answers by July 9. “The rationale for CAMT was simple: for far too long, massive corporations had taken advantage of loopholes in the tax code to avoid paying their fair share, sometimes paying zero federal taxes despite earning billions in profits,” the signatories wrote. The proposed change, the letters note, closely resembles a bill introduced by the Oklahoma senator James Lankford this year, which would allow companies to subtract “intangible drilling and development costs” from their CAMT income calculations. Lankford accepted nearly $500,000 in donations from the fossil fuel sector between 2019 and 2024, making it his top source of industry funding. The Guardian has contacted the senator for comment. Deductions for intangible drilling costs—referring to costs incurred before drilling, such as for labor and equipment—have been on the books since 1913, making them the oldest, largest US fossil fuel subsidy, according to one report on the Lankford proposal. “Big Oil now wants this deduction to apply not only for purposes of their taxable income, but for book income purposes as well,” the letters say. “Put another way, if enacted, this provision would reduce or even eliminate tax liabilities for oil and gas companies under CAMT, allowing some to pay no federal income taxes whatsoever.” Other energy-related provisions in the draft reconciliation bill would phase out incentives for clean energy manufacturing and energy efficiency, causing utility bills to rise and jobs to be lost. This makes the tax break proposal “especially insulting,” says the letter, which was sent as temperatures spiked across much of the US. “Americans deserve to know if Big Oil paid for these Republicans in Congress to carve out tax breaks just for them,” said Warren. As drafted, the reconciliation bill would also jeopardize energy security by curbing the growth of renewable energy, Schumer told the Guardian. “The Republicans’ plan is a complete capitulation to Big Oil at the expense of clean energy and American families’ wallets,” Schumer said. “Republicans would rather kill over 800,000 good-paying jobs and send energy costs skyrocketing than stand up to their Big Oil billionaire buddies.”

In early April, Tracy Baton helped organize a “Hands Off!” rally protesting President Donald Trump in downtown Pittsburgh that was attended by more than 6,000 people. But she wasn’t just angry at the president—she was also incensed by her state’s Democratic senator, John Fetterman. So was the crowd. “Fetterman?” one speaker yelled from a stage near the steps of City Hall. “Jagoff!” protesters shouted back in unison. “Fetterman?” “Jagoff!” The term is Pittsburghese for “jerk.” “It means you’ve broken the social contract,” says Baton, a 62-year-old social worker. “It’s a neighbor who you know won’t give you a cup of sugar.” Or, in Fetterman’s case, it describes a politician who campaigned as a Bernie Sanders–loving populist and vowed to help Democrats advance their priorities past the party’s two obstructionists, Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin—only to reprise their roles once in Congress and cozy up with Republicans. “He ran in the 2022 primaries against Joe Manchin, and now he’s become Joe Manchin,” says Mike Mikus, a longtime Democratic operative in Pennsylvania. “An unprincipled Manchin.” He’s sided with Republicans on denying immigrants due process, voted to confirm a 2020 election denier to lead the Department of Justice, and approved a GOP budget that freed Trump to slash spending without oversight. His recent actions have enraged progressives, mystified colleagues, and alarmed former and current aides. Even Conor Lamb, who ran to Fetterman’s right in Pennsylvania’s 2022 Democratic Senate primary, doesn’t know what to make of the metamorphosis. “John has changed who he was, and he’s never really adequately explained that,” the former member of Congress says. “He presented himself as fighting for people and caring about the minimum wage and the people who were just barely getting by. I think all those people are wondering now, where is he?” In May, a bombshell profile by New York magazine’s Ben Terris provided a feasible rationale. The story was a gutting dive into the psyche of the senator, who had a stroke during his campaign and required six weeks of hospitalization to treat clinical depression shortly after taking office. Terris laid out concerning behind-the-scenes behavior in striking detail: outbursts that drove away staff, paranoid and grandiose delusions, reckless driving, and a near-fatal crash that injured his wife. As anybody with mental health struggles can attest, Fetterman is a victim of whatever demons he’s fighting. But he’s not the only one: He also has 13.1 million constituents to think about—not to mention a party in free fall. Related THE UNORTHODOX POLITICAL RISE OF JOHN FETTERMAN Fetterman’s unique backstory is as familiar as his trademark gym shorts and hoodie: A hulking Harvard Kennedy School grad settles in the Rust Belt town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, runs for mayor, and uses the perch as a springboard to loftier ambitions. As mayor, a position that came with little power, he used family money to launch a nonprofit to cut through red tape. The organization, Braddock Redux, did nothing to revive the steel industry, but it did bring a new community center and green space. A James Beard Award–nominated chef opened a (short-lived) fine-dining restaurant downtown. Yet this modest revitalization brought a flood of national attention, including an appearance on the Colbert Report and a New York Times Magazine profile. In 2016, he launched a long-shot Senate primary bid against establishment Democrats who, Fetterman said, weren’t progressive enough on fracking or the minimum wage. The New Republic dubbed Fetterman a member of “Bernie’s Army” who got “emotional talking about opportunity for all,” including “immigrants seeking a better life.” Fetterman aggressively sought Sanders’ endorsement, telling Slate, “I’m sitting here with my corsage, waiting.” Two years later, he successfully ran for lieutenant governor and, in 2022, made another Senate run, taking on celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz. In addition to criminal justice reform, Fetterman focused on reducing economic disparities and supporting LGBTQ rights. He also warned of climate change, though he eased his opposition to fracking. “He was absolutely comfortable speaking in terms of progressive issues, progressive concerns, and being quite aligned with the left of his party,” says Christopher Borick, political science professor and polling director at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College. His campaign was catnip to out-of-state Democrats desperate to halt an exodus of working-class voters. It helped that Fetterman did not fit the image of a stereotypical progressive. “He’s 6’ 8”, weird-looking. Doesn’t dress up in a suit and tie and doesn’t look like someone you’d think would be a Bernie-­endorsed candidate,” says a former Fetterman campaign staffer. “People would see him and they wouldn’t think, ‘Oh, this guy’s a crazy lefty.’ They would think this is a normal guy who lives next door to their grandma.” Just five months before the election, an ischemic stroke took Fetterman off the campaign trail for three months and forced him to rely on closed captioning to process speech. Still recovering and facing $84 million in outside spending, he nonetheless beat Oz by nearly 5 points, with hefty backstopping from staff and his wife, Gisele, who became his most visible surrogate. To those contemplating the party’s future, it looked like Fetterman and his everyman persona had blazed a path for battleground-state Democrats. Rebecca Katz, his former chief campaign strategist, even launched a political consulting firm that cites Fetterman’s win as the model to “elect more and better Democrats.” But what Katz didn’t say was that she quit working for Fetterman after nine years as his mental state declined. He seemed, as she reportedly texted colleagues in March, “meaner.” Terris reported that just weeks after taking office in January 2023, Fetterman began displaying alarming symptoms, including, at his lowest, experiencing delusions that family members were wearing wires. He was hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and treated for depression in February. By late March, Fetterman’s doctor reported marked improvements. “His treatment gradually produced remission of his depression,” the neuropsychiatry chief wrote in a discharge note. “He expressed a firm commitment to treatment over the long term.” But a little over a year later, Fetterman seemed to be unraveling again. His driving was so dangerous that staffers reportedly wouldn’t ride with him, and in June, he rear-ended an elderly woman while speeding “well over” the 70 mph limit, according to a police report. Senior employees, including back-to-back-to-back communications directors, quietly departed. But some began to speak out. One of the first was Annie Wu Henry, a former campaign social media strategist. “In the past, I’ve described the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race as one where we voted for a candidate with empathy and character,” she posted on X in May 2024. “Today, I’m apologizing to everyone who also believed that was the case.” That month, according to New York, Fetterman’s chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, sent a long email to the senator’s doctor with the subject line “concerns.” > Fetterman’s positions, an ex-aide says, are “clouded through a > fuck-the-opposition-left” mindset. “We often see the kind of warning signs we discussed,” Jentleson wrote. “Conspiratorial thinking; megalomania…high highs and low lows; long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues; lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious.” Fetterman did not respond to questions from Mother Jones, but told New York that the magazine’s revelations came from “disgruntled employees,” that his staff was not informed about his personal health, and that he’s felt like the “best version” of himself in recent months. (A week after the story published, the Associated Press reported on a new “outburst” from Fetterman. While meeting with a teachers union, he questioned why “everybody is mad at me” and “why does everyone hate me?,” according to the AP, which also reported a member of his staff broke down crying.) Much of Fetterman’s worrisome behavior took place at the same time he was staking out defiant (and sometimes befuddling) policy positions, especially his bellicose support for Israel. Despite consuming what an ex-aide describes as a lot of far-right news and rarely reading staff memos, he self-identified as the smartest thinker on the subject. That staffer, who worked for Fetterman both on the campaign trail and in Congress, believes it was the Israel-­Hamas war that really broke him, leaving his positions “clouded through a fuck-the-opposition-left” mindset. “Had the war never happened, he would maybe have voted to confirm Marco Rubio­. He wouldn’t be voting for Pam Bondi.” His bombastic rhetoric on Israel caused a rift not only between ­Fetterman and his aides, but between Fetterman and his wife. Eventually, according to New York, Gisele confronted him in his office about Israel’s bombing of refugee camps in Gaza. Fetterman reportedly shot back: “That’s all propaganda.” Fetterman and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema applaud during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint meeting of Congress in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty There are plenty of pro-Israel politicians in Washington. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bestowed only Trump and Fetterman with mementos celebrating the exploding-pager strike targeting Hezbollah militants that resulted in 32 deaths and thousands more injured. Fetterman had famously tattooed the dates of Braddock homicides on his arms to remember the victims, yet he accepted a silver beeper from Netanyahu: an unmistakable symbol of Israel’s brutal aggression that has left tens of thousands of civilians dead. “That kind of an evil…whether it was Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan or the Confederacy here in the South, that kind of movement has to be destroyed,” Fetterman told the New Yorker, referring to Hamas. “That’s why Atlanta had to burn.” His new position on immigration was similarly stark, especially considering his wife’s own background. When she was 7, Gisele’s family illegally crossed the border, fleeing violence in Rio de Janeiro. “Every time there was a knock at the door when we were not expecting guests, it was like my heart would drop,” she told a podcast in 2021. During his Senate campaigns, Fetterman was sympathetic to people with stories like hers, stating on his 2022 website, “I would not have my family if it weren’t for immigration.” But as Trump was poised to return to the White House, he was one of just two Senate Democrats to co-sponsor the Laken Riley Act, which requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain migrants accused of theft and other minor offenses and hold them without bail. He then was the only Democratic lawmaker on Capitol Hill to make the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump, whose eldest son had repeatedly accused Fetterman of not having “a working brain.” Fetterman has also voted to confirm more Trump Cabinet nominees than almost anyone else in his party. He was the only member of his caucus to vote yes on Attorney General Pam Bondi, who falsely claimed that voter fraud had robbed Trump of victory in 2020 in Fetterman’s home state. There was a time Fetterman had made a national name for himself calling out Trump’s Pennsylvania election lies on major networks, but today, a third ex-staffer says, he is “Trump’s favorite Democrat.” In March, Fetterman backed the GOP budget bill, scoffing at the idea Senate Democrats should have followed the lead of their House colleagues and held out for a better deal. When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called for a “Democratic Party that fights harder,” Fetterman replied curtly: “We kept our government open. Deal with it.” That prompted Lamb to come to AOC’s defense. On X, he accused Fetterman of “collaborating with—rather than fighting” Republicans. “It seems like the only time you hear from him,” he told me, “is about Israel or about attacking his fellow Democrats.” It isn’t just antagonistic behavior; people who see him up close say that it also isn’t obvious he’s doing the work. He’s sponsored fewer bills than 75 percent of his fellow senators; on vote attendance, he ranks last. “He’s not interested in any real legislating,” says a Democratic Hill source. “He misses a ton of votes. He’s not someone who you’re ever going to find in a back room leading the negotiation of a bill. It’s just not what he does.” Even before May’s revelations, Fetterman was losing ground with his base as fundraising cratered, according to Federal Election Commission filings. As a fourth ex-staffer, who worked on his campaign, warns, “I don’t think that he’s going to have the same people putting time and energy and grassroots dollars into his race that he did last time.” That is, of course, if there is a next time. When I checked back in with Tracy Baton after New York’s investigation, she had just returned from another anti-­Trump rally, where protesters had again vented at the senator, chanting: “Fetterman, Fetterman, stand up and fight. We don’t need no MAGA-lite.” As a licensed mental health provider, she understands the nuance between struggling with a psychiatric condition and losing yourself in one. “If you have a mental illness,” she told me, “you still have to be accountable for your actions and their consequences.”

Ed Martin, the far-right-activist-turned-acting US attorney for DC, apologized this week for praising an alleged Nazi sympathizer at an event last year. But Martin’s ties to Timothy Hale-Cusanelli—who is known for wearing a Hitler-style mustache, and who allegedly once told a coworker that the Nazis “should have finished the job”—are far more extensive than just that one meeting. Martin told the Forward this week that he was “sorry” for bestowing an award on Hale-Cusanelli during an August 2024 event at Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “I denounce everything about what that guy said, everything about the way he talked, and all as I’ve now seen it,” Martin said. “At the time, I didn’t know it.” Martin was not specific in the portions of interview quoted by the Forward, but he seemed to suggest he had previously known only of a photo in which Hale-Cusanelli wore the Hitler-syle mustache, not “the full scope of his repulsive behavior.” Martin reportedly said that he now understands Hale-Cusanelli’s behavior was “clearly far more serious than a singular act that, by itself, might look like a mistake.” Martin’s office did not respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones. Martin’s tenure as acting US attorney is set to expire May 20. His apology appears aimed at softening opposition from lawmakers in both parties as he seeks Senate confirmation to hold the post permanently. It is a notable exception to his general refusal to respond to the overwhelmingly negative press generated by his efforts to help President Trump use the Justice Department as a partisan weapon. It appears that Martin believes his past praise for an alleged antisemite could be particularly damaging to his nomination. But Martin’s suggestion that he was not familiar with the broader scope of Hale-Cusanelli’s alleged bigotry when he gave him an award is implausible. The prior month—in July 2024—Martin asked Hale-Cusanelli about his alleged extremism during an interview on a podcast hosted by Martin. Martin asserted on the program that the allegations, which emerged in court filings following Hale-Cusanelli’s indictment for entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were “leaked” by federal prosecutors in an effort to push the narrative that “MAGA people are antisemitic.” “I’ve gotten to know him really well,” Martin said of Hale-Cusanelli during the show. “I’d say we’re friends.” The two men know each other because Martin, a former “Stop the Steal” activist and lawyer for January 6 defendants, served until January 2025 on the board of the Patriot Freedom Project, a nonprofit that was launched in 2021 by Cynthia Hughes, a New Jersey activist who refers to herself as Hale-Cusanelli’s “adoptive aunt.” Martin reported on a Senate financial disclosure form that he was paid $30,000 last year to serve on the board. Hughes, who did not respond to a request for comment, has previously said she launched the group as a result of Hale-Cusanelli’s arrest and “incredibly unfair” treatment. That treatment included court filings in which Justice Department prosecutors called Hale-Cusanelli an “avowed white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer” and cited a litany of antisemitic and racist statements his former colleagues said they had heard him make. In a sentencing memo filed in September 2022, prosecutors also quoted a conversation secretly recorded by an unidentified person, in which Hale-Cusanelli said, “I really fucking wish there’d be a civil war.” In the same conversation, according to prosecutors, Hale-Cusanelli stated that he would like to give Jews and Democrats “24 hours to leave the country” and to have many of them arrested. Prosecutors also noted a picture of Hale-Cusanelli sporting a Hitler-like mustache and hair style, an image that drew substantial media coverage. > Cusanelli was convicted on all counts at a jury trial this year. The judge — a > Trump appointee, who has been skeptical of some J6 cases — panned Cusanelli's > testimony on the witness stand, where he claimed he didn't know Congress met > at the Capitol. /4 https://t.co/S4nkmnyBoA > > — Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) September 3, 2022 Hale-Cusanelli—who has said he has Jewish and Puerto Rican ancestry—testified during his trial that he is not antisemitic or racist. He said the statements prosecutors cited were meant to be “ironic” and “self-deprecating humor” intended to gain attention. Hale-Cusanelli did not respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones. While imposing a 48-month prison sentence, Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, said Hale-Cusanelli’s “statements and actions” make Jews “less safe and less confident they can participate as equal members of our society.” Martin sounded conversant on the details of the government’s accusations during a more-than-hour-long interview on July 2, 2024, on Martin’s podcast, video of which remains available on Rumble. “They used your phone and…leaked the photo to say, ‘Look, these people, these MAGA people are antisemitic,'” Martin said. “And the photo was of you…you had like a mustache shaped in such a way that you looked vaguely like Hitler.” Throughout the conversation, Martin indicated familiarity with the accusations about Hale-Cusanelli that emerged in his court case. Their discussion also referenced the same secretly recorded conversation in which Hale-Cusanelli and a confidential informant talked about Jews and civil war. Hale-Cusanelli told Martin he was drunk when he made the statements later cited by prosecutors. Martin repeatedly defended Hale-Cusanelli, arguing prosecutors had improperly “leaked” the photo and other material from Hale-Cusanelli’s phone. (Hale-Cusanelli acknowledged that material in fact appeared in publicly filed court documents related to his detention.) “I really think that your story is now sort of the quintessential example,” Martin said later. That interview came amid multiple appearances that Hale-Cusanelli made at events with Martin last year. Those include a June 2024 event at Bedminster and the August 14 event at the club where Martin gave Hale-Cusanelli an award for promoting “God, family and country.” Hale-Cusanelli’s presence at the Bedminster events gained attention when NPR reported on them in September. And Martin’s role attracted notice after he began serving as US attorney in January. Martin’s ties to an alleged Nazi sympathizer were noted in a February bar complaint against him and in a March speech by Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering Martin’s nomination. Still, weeks later, Martin appeared alongside Hale-Cusanelli—this time at a March 24, 2025, fundraiser in Naples, Florida, for an organization that Martin previously ran. As I reported with Amanda Moore, Martin was the keynote speaker at the March 24 event. The event was also attended various January 6 defendants, including two who were convicted of seditious conspiracy and whose appeals Martin’s office is still opposing—an apparent conflict of interest. (Moore reports additional details on Martin’s ties to Hale-Cusanelli here.) Martin did not address this event in his comments printed by the Forward. But at that fundraiser, there was no evidence of distance between Martin and Hale-Cusanelli. In a speech at the event, Hale-Cusanelli called January 6 “a psy-op led by three-letter agencies.” And he said he had an ally in Martin, who has fired, demoted, and investigated former January 6 prosecutors, even as he has promoted, while US attorney, a conspiracy theory that the FBI had a hand in January 6. “Led by the current US attorney,” Hale-Cusanelli said in Naples, “we’re starting to see a vast restoration of the truth, which is that January 6 defendants were not criminals, they were in fact the victims…And we will expose these nefarious actors who set us up in the first place.” In his own remarks, Martin did not denounce those claims.

This story was originally published by Public Domain, a Substack publication to which you can subscribe here. When rancher Ammon Bundy and his armed posse stormed into Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January 2016 in a failed attempt to seize public land for themselves, Kathleen Sgamma, then the vice president of the Western Energy Alliance, issued a brief condemnation. She described the militants as “serious lawbreakers.” Sgamma reserved the bulk of her ire, though, not for the armed men in Oregon, many of whom were inspired in part by a fringe Mormon theology, but for the US government itself. In a 2016 blog post that appears to have been deleted, she went on a lengthy diatribe against the land management policies of the United States that, in her view, led to the Bundy takeover. Among her chief complaints: “The situation arises from too much federal ownership of land in the West,” she wrote. “Whereas in the East and Mid-West lands were transferred as private property to individuals for farms, by the time the West was settled the government retained a vast amount of land.” Sgamma, who thinks there is too much federal public land, is now President Trump’s choice to lead the federal government’s largest land management agency. Trump nominated her in mid-February to be the next director of the Bureau of Land Management, an agency that oversees more than 246 million acres on behalf of all Americans. In addition to enforcing bedrock environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act, the BLM director oversees oil and gas drilling on federal land. The agency is also responsible for the conservation of iconic western species, including the greater sage grouse. In all of these realms, and others too, Sgamma will have to contend with a thicket of conflicts of interest. Sgamma is best known as a passionate activist on behalf of oil and gas corporations. She is a long-time leader and current president of the Western Energy Alliance (WEA), a litigious trade group that represents drillers and other fossil fuel companies that operate on federal land. In that role, she has served as industry muscle, so to speak, attacking in court, in the media, and in the halls of power any policy, rule or regulation that hinders the oil industry’s ability to profit on public lands. Her organization’s methods have sometimes sparked controversy. > In Project 2025’s manifesto, Sgamma and others accuse Joe Biden of waging a > “war on fossil fuels” and bemoan the amount of land and minerals under federal > ownership. In 2014, for instance, a secret recording of the WEA’s annual meeting revealed that the trade group had invited the Washington, DC, public relations operative Richard Berman to speak to its members. Berman was there to solicit money to fund a PR campaign called Big Green Radicals that would target environmentalists opposed to the oil industry. During his speech, Berman told the audience they should think of their fight against environmental organizations as “an endless war.” He told them that they could either “win ugly or lose pretty.” He assured the assembled oil industry operatives that if they funded his campaign he could protect their anonymity while going on the offensive against environmentalists, using emotions like “fear” and “anger” to try to turn public opinion against green groups. In the end, Berman’s Big Green Radicals campaign did just that. Among other things, it put out a report titled “From Russia with Love” that portrayed American environmental groups as the puppets of shadowy Russian interests. Republicans in Congress quickly latched onto the report despite its thin sourcing, recycling many of its claims to argue that groups like the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club are the “useful idiots” of Russia. The Western Energy Alliance used similar tactics to undermine greater sage grouse conservation in the American West. When the Obama administration was considering listing the greater sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act due to the species’s precipitous population decline, WEA launched a PR campaign, running ads that disparaged grouse advocates and scientists. The Obama administration ultimately declined to list the species under the ESA, instead opting to have the BLM and Forest Service issue land-use regulations that could help prop up the species. Though those regulations have not stopped the continued loss of grouse habitat across the West, they are likely to be further weakened under the new Trump administration. WEA frequently turns to the courts to prevent new rules, regulations or fees that could inconvenience public land oil drillers. In May of last year, for instance, the group and its industry allies sued the Bureau of Land Management after the Biden administration raised royalty rates on public land drillers, from 12.5 percent to 16.7 percent. If she is confirmed, Sgamma’s appointment will likely raise thorny questions about conflicts of interest. She will have substantial influence over sage grouse policy, royalty rate policy, public lands oil leasing, and many other issues that have been at the center of her work for the fossil fuel industry. Will she sign an ethics pledge that recuses her from these and similar policy matters? Will she be too conflicted to function? Sgamma’s appointment to the helm of BLM also complicates Trump’s attempts to distance himself from Project 2025, the sweeping policy blueprint that MAGA operatives compiled to guide Trump in a second term. Sgamma co-authored a section of the manifesto’s chapter on the Interior Department, in which she and others accuse Biden of waging a “war on fossil fuels” and bemoan the amount of land and minerals under federal ownership. The Project 2025 chapter that Sgamma contributed to was authored by William Perry Pendley, who served as acting director of BLM during Trump’s first term and has a long record of advocating for federal lands to be transferred to states or sold to private interests. It stops short of calling for the outright pawning off of federal lands. Instead, Pendley casts the federal government as a bad landlord and argues that a Republican president should “draw on the enormous expertise of state agency personnel” and “look for opportunities to broaden state-federal and tribal-federal cooperative agreements.” When it comes to how federal lands are managed, Project 2025 contains a comprehensive fossil fuel industry wish list written by Sgamma and two other industry allies. The manifesto calls for opening vast swaths of the federal estate to increased drilling, rolling back already-protected landscapes, expediting permitting, slashing the royalties that oil and gas companies pay to drill on federal lands, and weakening regulations that might complicate increased development. If confirmed as BLM director, Sgamma would play a pivotal role in carrying out Trump’s pro-fossil fuel energy vision to the direct benefit of her trade group’s members. As she prepares to lead the BLM, does Sgamma still believe there is too much federal land? Is she a partisan of the so-called land transfer movement, a movement led by Utah politicians who would like to divest the American public of their ownership stake in millions of acres of federal land? Will she seek to sell off BLM land? Given her record, how will she avoid conflicts of interest as she oversees the government’s vast onshore oil and gas leasing program? Will she manage public lands for multiple use, including conservation and recreation, or will extractive industries be her sole priority? Sgamma did not respond to these and other questions, nor did the WEA make her available for an interview. Berman’s organization did not respond to a request for comment. Sgamma’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for Thursday, April 10 before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

In President Donald Trump’s meritocracy, you apparently don’t need much educational experience to run the Department of Education.  The Republican-controlled Senate on Monday confirmed former wrestling exec and billionaire Linda McMahon as the next Secretary of Education. With a demonstrated lack of knowledge about even the most basic education laws and policies, McMahon is now the head of a department that Trump has called a “big con job” that he hopes to dismantle. The Senate voted 51-45 to confirm McMahon after Democrats spent hours opposing the confirmation and a pending bill to ban trans girls and women from women’s sports from kindergarten through college. After confirming McMahon, Senate Republicans immediately, and ultimately unsuccessfully, moved to end debate on the bill, which would codify Trump’s change to Title IX that classifies trans-inclusive athletic policies as sex discrimination. Created by Congress in 1979, the Department of Education is one of the largest agencies in the federal government, responsible for the disbursement of tens of billions of dollars each year for everything from preschool readiness programs to grants for low-income college students and school funding for students with disabilities. It holds more than $1.5 trillion in federal student loans from 43 million borrowers. It’s also responsible for ensuring that schools comply with a variety of federal laws, including Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination, and Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race or national origin.  “We need a Secretary of Education who will put students first, not billionaires, who will stand up for our students—every single one of them—even if it means standing up to Donald Trump and Elon Musk,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said on the Senate floor. “Linda McMahon fails to make the grade.” Best known as the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment and a major Trump donor alongside her since-separated husband Vince, McMahon’s experience in education is limited. She worked for a semester as a student teacher while studying at Eastern Carolina University, served for a year in 2009 on the Connecticut State Board of Education (which ended after the Hartford Courant discovered she falsely claimed to have an education degree), and spent more than a decade on the board of a private Catholic university. She unsuccessfully ran for US Senate in Connecticut in 2010 and 2012. During the first Trump administration, she served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration, resigning in 2019 to join the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action.  > “We need a Secretary of Education who will put students first, not > billionaires, who will stand up for our students—every single one of them—even > if it means standing up to Donald Trump and Elon Musk.” According to Senate Republicans, McMahon’s business track record matters much more than her skimpy experience in education. “I know that some people feel the Secretary of Education should have extensive experience in a school system. However, it is important to remember that education is still mostly a state and local responsibility,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said. “The job is to manage a bureaucracy who [stet] runs a number of funding programs.” During her confirmation hearing in February, McMahon largely defended Trump’s vision for education in America, affirming her dedication to the expansion of school choice programs and following the administration’s interpretation of federal anti-discrimination laws—such as using Title IX to investigate schools that allow trans women and girls to play girls’ sports. As I reported: > Between outbursts from protesters at the Senate hearing—most of whom > identified themselves as teachers—McMahon did not say whether she supports > Trump’s plan to get rid of the department. She vowed that important programs > protected by statute, such as the Title I program for high-poverty > schools, Pell Grants, and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, would > continue. > > But she also expressed support for downsizing the department and suggested > that other federal departments and agencies might be able to oversee key > education-related programs. For example, she said the department’s Office of > Civil Rights, which enforces federal anti-discrimination laws including Title > VI and Title IX, might be better managed by the Department of Justice. > Disabled students might have their funding and protections overseen by the > Department of Health and Human Services, she suggested. > > When asked about choosing between upholding the law—for example, administering > education funds already appropriated by Congress—and carrying out Trump’s > directives, McMahon said that “the president will not ask me to do anything > that is against the law.” She repeatedly asserted that defunding federal > educational programs is not the Trump administration’s goal—ignoring Musk’s > directive to slash funding, cancel grants, and end contracts. > > > “I believe the American people spoke loudly in the election last November to > say they do want to look at waste, fraud and abuse in our government,” McMahon > told the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, suggesting > Musk’s budget cuts amount to an “audit.” As for questions about multiple education laws, including the Every Student Succeeds Act, one of the major laws governing K-12 public schools, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, McMahon was unable to reply. When Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) asked McMahon about Title IX, the nominee mischaracterized the policy and incorrectly stated that under the 2020 Trump rules, colleges are obligated to investigate off-campus sexual assaults. (In fact, those rules expressly forbid universities from investigating off-campus assaults.) Her difficulty in demonstrating some understanding of the foundational laws and policies affecting education prompted groups including the National Education Association and the National Center for Learning Disabilities to condemn her nomination. After the hearing, nearly 100 civil rights organizations penned a letter urging senators to reject McMahon.  “McMahon’s defense that she hopes to learn on the job what is required of a Secretary of Education would be a disqualifying answer in any environment,” the letter from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights read. “In this moment, when the threats to education are so overwhelming, and when so much damage has already been done in the first few weeks of this new administration, McMahon’s response is even more alarming.”       Along with nearly every federal agency, the Education Department has been upended since Trump took office. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team has canceled nearly $1 billion in contracts, mostly affecting the department’s nonpartisan research arm that provides schools and states with valuable information about school performance. DOGE asserts that its calculations result in only about $450 million in savings. Dozens of department employees, including civil rights investigators, have been fired. In a prelude to a “very significant” workforce reduction, on Friday afternoon, the department’s top human resources official offered remaining employees a $25,000 buyout if they resigned by midnight on Monday, according to Politico. > “McMahon’s defense that she hopes to learn on the job what is required of a > Secretary of Education would be a disqualifying answer in any environment.” Meanwhile, the department has shut down income-driven repayment plans for student loan borrowers for at least three months. These plans tailor monthly loan payments to a person’s discretionary income and offer the lowest monthly payments compared to other plans. It has stopped investigations into race- and gender-based discrimination. In furthering Trump’s targeting of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the department gave schools until the end of February to halt initiatives that, in its view, unlawfully discriminate to achieve “nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity.” The memo, which the department admits holds no legal weight, faces a legal challenge. Still, colleges across the United States have shuttered diversity offices and scrubbed all DEI references from their websites rather than risk federal funding.  But it’s not as if McMahon has not invested in education. According to her December 2024 financial disclosure report, she holds millions of dollars worth of bonds issued to colleges and school districts across the country. Within 90 days, she’ll divest from more than 75 such bonds, most of which explicitly relate to education, she has said. Her ethics report also notes that she’ll resign from several boards, including those of America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank; the right-wing dark money group America First Works; Sacred Heart University, and the Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social.  “[Trump] pledged to make American education the best in the world, return education to the states where it belongs, and free American students from the education bureaucracy through school choice,” McMahon said at her confirmation hearing. “November proved that Americans overwhelmingly support the president’s vision, and I am ready to enact it.”

Trump appointee Lori Chavez-DeRemer found herself facing a tight committee vote Thursday morning to head the Department of Labor. The question: was she too pro-worker for the job? Apparently not. On Thursday, the same Senate committee where the bill repeatedly died—Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP)—voted to move forward her nomination to lead the federal Labor Department. Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) joined Republicans in support, offsetting Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) “no” vote. The Democratic support in committee means Chavez-DeRemer will almost undoubtedly pass the full Senate floor vote. Chavez-DeRemer seemed to allay many of the Republican committee members’ fears during her Senate confirmation hearing last Wednesday—taking pains to demonstrate that she regretted her cosponsorship of the labor-friendly PRO Act, rhetorically turning her back on workers and suggesting that she’d fall in line with Trump’s anti-worker agenda. To Paul, she called state “right-to-work” laws a “fundamental tenet of labor laws, where states have the right to choose,” and disowned the bill’s limitations on such laws.  In fact, Chavez-DeRemer said, she only backed the PRO Act to better represent her congressional district—and to be part of the conversation in Congress about labor. “I recognize that that bill was imperfect,” she told Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the chair of the HELP Committee. “If confirmed, my job will be to implement President Trump’s policy decisions and my guiding principle will be President Trump’s guiding principle, ensuring a level playing field for businesses, unions, and, most importantly, the American worker.” When Democrats introduced its first iteration, in 2019, the PRO Act—Protecting the Right to Organize—was the culmination of many labor advocates’ attempts to empower workers through increased union membership. Since unionization rates peaked at around one-third of the workforce in the 1950s—mostly due to legislation passed during the New Deal—those figures have steadily decreased, as waves of legislation have added obstacles to union participation. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a body within the US Department of Labor that collects data on workers and the economy, union membership was down to 9.9 percent in 2024. That first version of the PRO Act would have strengthened workers’ rights to organize by, in part, banning retaliation for labor-related whistleblowing and strikes, including sympathy strikes (now illegal), preventing many employers from countering organizing drives through strategies like mandatory meetings meant to intimidate employees into voting against unions, and establishing penalties for employers who flout the National Labor Relations Board. Many Republicans, unsurprisingly, hated it. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) called it “radical, backward-looking legislation” that would “diminish the rights of workers and employers while harming the economy.” The National Restaurant Association said the bill was “essentially setting fire to billions in taxpayer dollars.” The PRO Act even split Democrats, including opposition by both of Arizona’s senators at the time—Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema—among others. “The way I make decisions on behalf of Arizona and for our constituents is by listening to the business leaders,” Sinema said to members of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce.  After passing the House in February 2020, the bill died in committee. So did a second version the next year. But Lori Chavez-DeRemer, then a first-term GOP representative from Oregon, was one of just three Republicans to support its third version, in 2023-24, making her an altogether surprising—and, to some Democrats, promising—pick for Donald Trump’s Secretary of Labor. The vote results were largely down to Chavez-DeRemer’s backers pitching her as a rare pro-labor Republican who could reach across the aisle and speak with both workers and employers. Her story was promising for some worker advocates—she is both the daughter of a Mexican-American Teamster, and the owner of a medical business that earns between $1 million and $5 million a year, according to congressional financial disclosures. Although Chavez-DeRemer lost her 2024 House reelection campaign in Oregon’s fifth district, which includes parts of Portland and Eugene, she received support from at least 17 labor unions—more than the eventual Democratic winner, Janelle Bynum. Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination frightened some Republicans—especially because the PRO Act would have overridden states’ so-called right-to-work laws, designed to limit union membership and defund labor, in part by easing the nonpayment of union dues. Her most prominent conservative naysayer was Paul, who said last month that he would vote against her in committee, and predicted that Chavez-DeRemer would “lose 15 Republicans” in a full Senate vote for being “very pro-labor.”  But Teamsters Union General President Sean O’Brien, who has tied himself to Trump, was a fan—it was reportedly O’Brien who put Chavez-DeRemer forward as Labor Secretary to the Trump transition team. And when her nomination was announced in late November, O’Brien posted on X, calling it a significant demonstration that Trump was “putting American workers first.” The Teamsters—along with many other unions—backed Chavez-DeRemer, specifically citing her 2024 endorsement of the PRO Act. As my colleague Serena Lin noted last July, O’Brien, who had previously called himself a “lifelong Democrat,” drew controversy in labor circles for his move toward Trump: > O’Brien’s critics from within the union argue that his appearance at the RNC > will set a dangerous precedent at a potential turning point for American > labor. Teamsters vice president at-large John Palmer has repeatedly publicly > rebuked O’Brien’s involvement with Trump. In a recent op-ed in New Politics, > he wrote that O’Brien’s speech at the RNC “only normalizes and makes the most > anti-union party and President I’ve seen in my lifetime seem palatable.” Palmer’s concerns came to pass, as a small but vocal faction of the GOP, including the likes of J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley, leveraged the nomination to burnish their images as supporters of certain workers’ rights. As Mother Jones’ Noah Lanard observed, this “small subset of Republicans who want to be seen as class warriors” pits American labor against imaginary enemies. Immigration is one of them. During Chavez-DeRemer’s confirmation hearing last week, Sen. Hawley (R-Mo.) lobbed the nominee a friendly softball on whether Trump’s border crackdown was “pro-worker.” She agreed—in fact, Chavez-DeRemer had already said earlier in the hearing that “mass immigration…has hurt the American worker, and we want to make sure that we’re supporting President Trump in his endeavor to support the American worker at all costs.”  Pinning labor issues on immigration is nothing new. As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote, many Republicans pushed that message during the 2024 election campaign. Samantha Sanders, the Director of Government Affairs and Advocacy at the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, says such rhetoric “is based on racism, xenophobia, and misinformation.” What does more to depress working conditions and wages, Sanders told me, is the large number of workers who—whether due to deportation concerns or other fears—are not able to push against exploitative labor conditions. “If you want to make sure that immigrant workers are not pushing wages down and contributing to a race to the bottom,” Sanders says, “give them legal status to work, to be able to work above board, and, ultimately, have a pathway to citizenship.” She pointed to a report from the Immigration Research Initiative, another nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, and some of her colleagues at EPI, which found that immigration enables the US to experience continued economic growth despite an aging American-born population and a decreasing number of working adults.  A separate EPI report detailed the damage wrought by a “two-tiered” system of workplace rights, especially among immigrants who only have temporary status through a work visa. Hawley and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), who stated during the hearing that he, along with the Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien, presented Chavez-DeRemer to Trump as a potential nominee, framed her as the candidate to make both sides happy: a nominee “uniquely positioned in the center.” He also referred to his newfound friendship with O’Brien as an example of “bipartisanship.” (Mullin—a former MMA fighter—bizarrely challenged O’Brien to a fight during a HELP Senate committee hearing in November 2023 when the Teamsters president questioned his “self-made” business background.)  But that’s simply not what the Labor Department is, Sanders explains. Just as the Department of Commerce, and employer-focused federal agencies like the Small Business Administration, engage the demands of employers, the Department of Labor “protects and promotes the interests of the American worker.” Sanders told me she was “disappointed but not surprised” at Chavez-DeRemer walking back many of her supposed pro-worker positions to align with the Republicans on the committee. The nominee avoided giving a clear answer when Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) asked whether her vision of “putting American workers first” was compatible with the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and many employees having jobs without paid leave.  She also sidestepped Sens. Murray (D-Wash.) and Murphy’s (D-Conn.) questions about Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reportedly getting access to the Labor Department’s data systems to search for supposed waste and fraud. According to NBC News, the information likely includes investigations into Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla, both of which face labor violation accusations, as well as confidential data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on topics like economic health and employment.  The Democrats’ questioning seemed like an attempt to determine whether Chavez-DeRemer would be the pro-labor Republican that she was touted as or just another cabinet member who would fall in line with Trump.  “Two months ago, before we saw how this administration was operating, it might have been more of a question of whether this is a place where an agency has some more leeway to make a case for positive changes,” Samantha Sanders said. “Now I think it’s pretty clear that they’re all supposed to do whatever they’re ordered to do.”  One telling exchange for Sanders occurred during Murray’s questioning, where the Democratic senator asked Chavez-DeRemer what she would do if facing illegal instructions from Trump, noting that offenses have been “seen across the board since he was put into office.” Throughout the hearing, Democratic senators referred to attacks on workers like mass firings at the Labor Board and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that damaged and slowed both federal agencies.  “I will commit to following the law, and I do not believe the president is going to ask me to break the law,” the nominee replied.  “Well, okay,” Murray responded, visibly annoyed. For Samantha Sanders, this was a significant departure from the promise of a supposed pro-worker Republican—and meant many Republican committee members’ calls for collaboration and bipartisanship from Democrats came off as bad faith.  So what does Chavez-DeRemer’s ascent mean for labor under Trump’s second term? For unions, there may be immediate uncertainty. O’Brien acknowledged that the Teamsters disagreed with Chavez-DeRemer’s support of right-to-work in a Fox News interview hours after last Wednesday’s hearing.  “But there is an opportunity to work bipartisan,” O’Brien told co-anchor John Roberts. “I’m working with senators like Josh Hawley to come up with a form of the PRO Act that may not include that.” He then echoed those Republicans’ new favorite words: “That’s the beauty of having conversations with people on the other side where you can collaborate.” And regarding Trump’s dismantling of the federal government: “Let’s take a look at the hundred-and-first day and where we’re at at that point in time.”  Trump has moreover nominated Keith Sonderling, who reportedly backs a pro-employer, deregulatory agenda, to serve as Deputy Secretary of Labor. His confirmation hearing took place immediately after the HELP Committee voted on Chavez-DeRemer.  Sanders says that expectations have changed amid Trump’s all-out attacks on the state: The essential questions are now larger than Chavez-DeRemer’s voting record or even policies within the Department of Labor. The senators appear to also be interested in what nominees will do about the integrity of the federal government, she says.  “It’s not just, ‘are you going to be allowed to carry a pro-worker agenda forward,’” Sanders said. “It’s also, ‘are you going to be compliant with an anti-worker agenda or even an anti-federal government agenda.’”