The July jobs report released Aug. 5 crushed both expectations and Republican hopes for bad economic news, as the economy added 528,000 jobs, defying predictions of “only” 250,000 new jobs, Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos (8/5). Unemployment fell to 3.46%—which economist Justin Wolfers tweeted would be “THE LOWEST UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IN OVER HALF A CENTURY.” And economist Dean Baker noted the number of jobs in the economy is now above its pre-pandemic level.
One significant area of concern in the overall exceptionally good jobs report is that government employment remains well below pre-pandemic levels, the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) Elise Gould (among others) notes. Black unemployment also ticked up to 6%.
The EPI’s Heidi Shierholz also offered a warning about decelerating wage growth and the Federal Reserve’s anti-inflation policy. “Make no mistake, we generally want positive real wage growth for workers! But decelerating wage growth means the Fed doesn’t need more interest rate increases to contain inflation,” she tweeted. “Though today’s release underscores we’re almost surely not in a recession now, the Fed may have already overshot and secured a recession in coming months. Regardless, they should slow the pace of rate increases substantially and be ready to go into neutral or even cut rates.”
Those are the reactions of economists concerned about workers. On the other hand, here were the smug predictions of two Trump economic advisers (one an economist, the other a television host): “Former Trump economic advisers Larry Kudlow and Kevin Hassett on Fox Business dismissed Wall Street expectations of a 250K jobs report for July, insisting in this recession it would be ‘closer to 100 … way on the downside.’”
Following the release, Fox News continued to struggle.
Aaron Rupar tweeted, “Fox News: Is the jobs report too good?”
Patrick Rodenbush tweeted, “Fox going with the ‘WH misses forecast on lower jobs growth’ chyron is an interesting spin on the economy adding 528k jobs.”
RIGHT-WING THINK TANK CLAIMS TO BE CHURCH. MEMBERS OF CONGRESS WANT TO INVESTIGATE. Forty members of Congress have asked the IRS and the Treasury to investigate what the lawmakers termed an “alarming pattern” of right-wing advocacy groups registering with the tax agency as churches, a move that allows the organizations to shield themselves from some financial reporting requirements and makes it easier to avoid audits, Andrea Suozzo reported at ProPublica (8/2).
Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., raised transparency concerns in a letter to the heads of both agencies following a ProPublica story about the Family Research Council, a right-wing Christian think tank based in Washington, D.C., getting reclassified as a church. Thirty-eight other lawmakers, including Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Jamie Raskin, D-Md., signed onto the letter.
“FRC is one example of an alarming pattern in the last decade — right-wing advocacy groups self-identifying as ‘churches’ and applying for and receiving church status,” the representatives wrote, noting the organization’s policy work supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade and its advocacy for legislation seeking to ban gender-affirming surgery.
“Tax-exempt organizations should not be exploiting tax laws applicable to churches to avoid public accountability and the IRS’s examination of their activities,” they wrote.
The Family Research Council did not respond to requests for comment. The IRS told ProPublica that it does not comment on congressional correspondence.
The FRC’s website describes the organization as “a nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to articulating and advancing a family-centered philosophy of public life,” noting that it provides “policy research and analysis for the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government.”
FRC sought and received reclassification from a standard tax-exempt charity to an “association of churches” in 2020.
In its application for church status, the organization said it met 11 of the 14 characteristics that the IRS uses to determine whether an organization is a church, including an established place of worship — a chapel in the organization’s Washington office building, at which it said it holds services attended by more than 65 people. (Someone who answered the phone at the office said the group doesn’t offer church services.) The organization said its association comprises nearly 40,000 “partner churches” that must affirm a statement of faith to join; it did not offer the names of those partners on its form to the IRS or provide them to ProPublica.
The representatives’ letter asks the IRS to review the FRC’s status change and to examine its review process for organizations similarly seeking to switch their status to become a church or association of churches.
The IRS classifies churches and associations of churches as tax-exempt charitable organizations, meaning that they do not have to pay federal taxes and that donors can deduct contributions from their own taxes. However, churches are exempt from submitting Form 990, the annual financial disclosure that nonprofit organizations use to list board members, key staffer salaries, large payments to independent contractors and grants given by the organization.
And unlike for other tax-exempt organizations, a high-level Treasury official must sign off on any audit of a church.
WHINING TRUMP CONFIRMS FBI RAIDS MAR-A-LAGO. If you were wondering if the rumblings of a search warrant carried out by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago were true, look no further than the club’s owner—Donald Trump—to confirm this latest development. Florida Politics’ Peter Schorsch first got the scoop from two sources that the former president’s beachfront estate was in the process of being raided Monday evening, Aug. 8, April Siese noted at DailyKos (8/8). It didn’t take long before Trump said what the FBI seemingly didn’t confirm until after Trump’s Truth Social post.
The FBI refused to comment about any specifics on the matter, but Trump found it necessary to issue dozens of words describing the influx of a “large group of FBI agents” at Mar-a-Lago, whose orders Trump readily complied with, though the insurrection ringleader claimed the FBI broke into his safe and that they were carrying out an unnecessary, inappropriate form of prosecutorial misconduct. The horrors that come with allowing the FBI into your house willingly! Are they like vampires?
Here’s Trump’s statement about the FBI raid:
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by the Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections. Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke my safe! What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the National Democratic Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.
“The political persecution of President Donald J. Trump has been going on for years, with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more, it just never ends. It is political targeting at the highest level!
“Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 emails AFTER they were subpoenaed by Congress. Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable.
“She even took antique furniture, and other items from the White House.
“I stood up to America’s bureaucratic corruption, I restored power to the people, and truly delivered for our Country, like we have never seen before. The establishment hated it. Now, as they watch my endorsed candidates win big victories, and see my dominance in all polls, they are trying to stop me, and the Republican party, once more. The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt must be exposed and stopped.
“I will continue to fight for the Great American People!”
The New York Times and other media later reported the search seemed to center on classified documents, including some marked “Top Secret,” Trump had brought to Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House, in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act.
MATERNAL AND INFANT MORTALITY IS HIGHEST IN STATES THAT ARE BANNING ABORTION. This is not what it looks like to value life. Valuing life is the official reason for abortion bans, but on measure after measure, the states banning abortion show just how little they really value life, Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos (7/28).
After Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves claimed that his state’s successful battle to overturn Roe v. Wade was “always about creating a culture of life,” we took a close look at Mississippi: Highest infant mortality rate. Highest homicide rate. Highest firearm mortality rate. Lowest life expectancy at birth.
But it’s not just Mississippi. The New York Times has a look at a range of ways states can support children and mothers, and states that are banning abortion come out worse on just about all of them than states that are not likely to ban abortion.
Outcomes on which the 24 current or likely abortion ban states are worse than the 20 states unlikely to ban abortion:
The infant mortality rate in states banning or expected to soon ban abortion is 6.3 per 1,000 births. In states that aren’t going to ban abortion, it’s 4.7 per 1,000.
The maternal mortality rate in the ban states is 25.2 per 1,000, compared with 15 per 1,000 in states that won’t ban abortion.
• 18.5% of children live in poverty in the ban states, compared with 14.8% in the no-ban states.
• 15.7% of women of reproductive age are uninsured in the ban states, compared with 9% in the no-ban states.
• It’s 7.2% to 3.6% for uninsured children—that’s double.
• 8.8% of babies in the ban states are born with low birthweights, compared with 7.7% in the no-ban states.
• There are 21.2 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19 in abortion ban states, compared with 12.1 per 1,000 in no-ban states.
• Alongside those outcomes are some striking policy differences: Not one of the states banning abortion has paid family leave. Eleven states that won’t be banning abortion have paid family leave. Every single one of the latter has expanded Medicaid, while just 15 of the 24 abortion ban states have done so. All but one of the no-ban states have minimum wages above the federal level of $7.25 an hour, while just eight of the ban states do. Both groups of states include six that have universal pre-K, though that’s a larger percentage of the no-ban states.
None of the state lawmakers who have pushed through and supported abortion bans can seriously claim that their states’ governance reflects a priority on life. The numbers are clear.
Even if every one of these states had 100% insurance rates and the lowest infant mortality and maternal mortality in the world, forcing people to carry pregnancies and give birth against their will would be a moral outrage. But there really should be a rule that anytime a lawmaker is quoted opposing abortion, they should be identified with the infant and maternal mortality rates of their states and with any votes they have made to support or oppose things like expanding health care or establishing paid family leave or reducing child poverty.
McCONNELL SAYS PEOPLE FORCED TO HAVE CHILDREN DON’T DESERVE ANY MORE FINANCIAL HELP. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), to his very minimal credit, wants to ensure that some of the people being forced to have children get some financial support from the government, albeit minimal. He has a few Republican takers, a very few. And absolutely no support from leadership, Joan McCarter noted at DailyKos (8/8). According to Sen. Mitch McConnell, people are being coddled enough already.
“There are actually a lot of resources for expecting and new Moms, including Medicaid and S-CHIP for health care, maternal nutrition and child care programs,” McConnell spokesman Scott Sloofman told the Washington Post. “What we shouldn’t do is expand massive government stimulus programs which would exacerbate the runaway inflation that is crushing Kentucky’s working families.”
Get that? Kentucky’s working families don’t need any more help for those children Republicans are forcing them to have. Because all those programs exist, despite repeated efforts by Republicans to end them.
One of the main reasons people have been having abortions since, well, forever, is economic. Having a child upends work, education, ability to care for other family members, and just costs a lot of money.
That’s one reason why a group of 154 distinguished economists and researchers filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in advance of the Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, where the court overturned Roe and ended federal protection of abortion rights.
That’s what passes for family-friendly among the death cult Republicans, the ones including Romney and Rubio who just voted against making insulin affordable for people with private insurance.
You would think last week’s lesson on abortion rights from Kansas might make McConnell rethink his stance on abortion rights and all of the politics around it. You’d think wrong.
“Republicans have a major, major problem right now with women, exacerbated by abortion but made a lot worse by their refusal to balance that liability with support for any kind of family benefits,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told the Post. “That could really make them pay a price in the fall, particularly with women, but there’s no evidence they’re going to change.”
BIDEN ADMIN HAS REUNITED NEARLY 400 CHILDREN TAKEN FROM PARENTS BY TRUMP ADMIN. The Biden administration’s Family Reunification Task Force says that nearly 400 children ripped from their parents by the previous administration have now been reunited, marking a significant milestone in attempting to right the wrongs of one of the darkest moments in modern US history, Gabe Ortiz noted at DailyKos (8/4).
Michelle Brané, a leading immigrant rights advocate who was appointed by the administration to head the task force, said that most of the parents who’ve been reunited with their children had been deported, NBC News’ Julia Ainsley and Jacob Soboroff reported. Soboroff tweeted that more than 2,000 families members affected by the policy have been allowed to temporarily live in the US.
“More than 5,000 families were separated under Trump’s 2018 ‘zero tolerance’ policy and a 2017 pilot program and advocates estimate over 1,000 remain separated,” the report said. “Because the Trump administration did not keep records of which children were separated and where they were sent, the task force and lawyers working on behalf of separated families have had a difficult time identifying families to offer them the chance of reunification.”
Soboroff tweeted that the parents of 168 known children ripped away by the previous administration have still not been located. The parents of most of these kids have likely been deported. Soboroff said that officials have no contact information for three of these children. Remember that officials with the previous administration had claimed they had “a central database” that could quickly link children and parents, but that turned out to be a giant lie.
“We are thrilled for the hundreds of children who will finally be with their parents after all these years, but we are not even halfway through reuniting all the families that remain separated by the Trump administration,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt told NBC News. “And indeed, we still haven’t located nearly 200 families. I think the Biden administration would agree that there’s a lot of work yet to be done.”
Deported parents have been returned to the US by the administration under a process known as humanitarian parole, which allows them to live here for period of three years. The president has said he supports permanent legal status for separated families, but that’ll only be possible through the backlogged asylum system, or congressional action. Lawmakers including Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro have previously introduced legislation that would accomplish that, but it has failed to advance.
“While we applaud the Biden admin’s efforts to reunite families separated by the cruel Zero Tolerance policy, Congress must provide the resources necessary to facilitate future reunions and help families heal from the trauma of their separation,” tweeted Kids in Need of Defense (KIND). Brané told NBC News that “many of the families have suffered from profound mental health issues after their separation and counseling is often needed before they reunify.”
Both “M.S.E.” and “J.M.,” the mother and son from the recent lawsuit, were traumatized by the policy. M.S.E., as she’s identified in court documents, said her son appeared “withdrawn” and “very sad for a long time. He even began cutting himself,” documents said.
“J.M. still hurts from the separation. He still remembers it vividly and viscerally: he feels great pain in his chest and throat when he thinks about it. Now 19 years old, J.M. continues to struggle with the damage the separation caused, stating, ‘I’m big now, so I try to be strong. But I still feel broken inside.’”
SENATE REPUBS WANT TO WATER DOWN RESPECT FOR MARRIAGE ACT. Senate Republicans are trying to get Democrats to water down the Respect for Marriage Act, the bill codifying marriage equality to keep the Supreme Court’s extremist hands off that right. This was an inevitable step in the process of Republicans trying to avoid a hard vote, and yet Democrats appear to be falling into the trap, Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos (8/4).
Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Republican Sen. Susan Collins are supposedly working to “build more support with Republicans,” including by adding language with “more clarity that the legislation would not take away any religious liberty or conscience protections.” This on a bill that got the support of 47 Republicans when it passed the House, and with limited time to get it passed before the annual fall crunch of funding the government. Changing the bill would involve getting it through the House again, adding even more time on top of what negotiating new language would require. And once Democrats start changing the legislation, Republicans are virtually guaranteed to move the goalposts repeatedly.
Democrats must not let Republicans run down the clock on a vote to protect a fundamental right.
The first Republican avoidance strategy was to refuse to say how they would vote while Democrats chased their votes. Democrats didn’t want to bring the bill to the Senate floor until they had 10 Republicans lined up, and many Republicans didn’t want to publicly admit that they would oppose it, so they said things like “I’ll see if it comes up, and then I’ll make a decision,” and Democrats didn’t call that bluff.
Then Collins said that the Democratic deal on a completely separate issue, the Inflation Reduction Act, was “a very unfortunate move that destroys the many bipartisan efforts that are under way.”
And now Republicans want changes to the bill, lest they might have to acknowledge someone else’s marriage as real and valid violate religious freedom.
At Talking Points Memo, Sarah Posner explains why Republicans are so reluctant to get to a vote on marriage equality: On the one hand, Gallup finds 71% support for same-sex marriage. But on the other hand, the single major religious group that opposes marriage equality is evangelical Christians, also known as the Republican base, and right-wing organizations have been lobbying hard and issuing threats. These organizations have a long-term goal of getting the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, and they’re not going to sit back while Congress ruins that.
Republicans are between a rock and a hard place, and it’s time for Democrats to start pressing that rock closer to the hard place. Consider this: According to Gallup, support for same-sex marriage is substantially higher than opposition to overturning Roe was. It’s higher than self-identification as pro-choice. This is a winning issue for Democrats in addition to being the right policy move. If Republicans are going to oppose it, make them show themselves in a vote. Don’t let them weasel and squirm their way out of having a vote at all.
STUDENT LOAN PAYMENTS WILL RESUME AUG. 31, IF BIDEN DOESN’T EXTEND PAUSE. The Biden administration’s pause on federal student loan payments expires on Aug. 31. Joe Biden campaigned on forgiving “a minimum of $10,000/person of federal student loans,” and he’s been pressured to do much more, but with the midterm elections approaching, he hasn’t taken action. Instead, he’s repeatedly kicked the can down the road by extending the pause on payments, Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos (8/2).
Biden’s inability to decide what to do about forgiving debt may explain his delay in announcing whether the payment pause will be extended again or will end: The White House previously said that his decision on forgiveness would be announced before the end of the pause. But with Aug. 31 fast approaching, people with federal student debt are dealing with serious uncertainty about their financial futures. And Biden is not exactly projecting an aura of decisiveness and leadership.
Student loan servicers say the Education Department has told them not to communicate with borrowers about when and how payments are set to resume—which creates uncertainty for them, as well, about how they will be able to fulfill their obligations to notify people fully before payments are set to resume. At a minimum, borrowers should get a billing statement 21 days before their next payment is due.
The Biden administration has forgiven more than $26 billion in debt for 1.3 million student borrowers, through targeted programs like public service loan forgiveness and cancellation of debt for students defrauded by their for-profit colleges. But this is just a tiny drop in the overall $1.7 trillion of student debt in the U.S.
Forgiving $10,000 per student borrower would wipe out the debt for one in three who owe. But it would have disparate effects. Currently, 66% of Black borrowers owe more than they originally borrowed 12 years after starting college, compared with 37% of Latino and 30% of white borrowers. Canceling $10,000 of debt zeroes out debt for just 14% of people who owe more after 12 years than when they started. Given this and other ways student debt has fallen particularly heavily on Black people, forgiving more than $10,000 would be a racial justice measure.
From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2022
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