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Today, following Vice President Kamala Harris’ selection of Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, the AFL-CIO announced our enthusiastic support for the Harris–Walz ticket.
“By selecting Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Kamala Harris chose a principled fighter and labor champion who will stand up for working people and strengthen this historic ticket,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “We know that Gov. Walz will be a strong partner in the Harris White House, fighting every day to improve the lives of workers in communities across America. Gov. Walz isn’t only an ally to the labor movement, but also our union brother with a deep commitment to a pro-worker agenda.
“The labor movement stands united behind the Harris–Walz ticket, and we are ready to help lead the effort to defeat Donald Trump, JD Vance, and their anti-worker Project 2025 agenda in November.”
Background:
Gov. Tim Walz is a former public school teacher and union member who has proven that a pro-worker agenda is a winning agenda, especially in competitive states. He has delivered on a comprehensive, pro-union legislative package and created the gold standard for state governments aiming to do right by workers.
We know Walz will deliver for working people across the country as vice president, just as he has throughout his career. Gov. Walz has enacted some of the most pro-worker packages of legislation of any state in the country, including laws to:
Gov. Walz also has:
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) works tirelessly to improve the lives of working people. We are the democratic, voluntary federation of 56 national and international labor unions that represent 12.5 million working men and women.
"'Drill, baby drill' doesn't help people with housing needs," said one economic justice advocate. "We need living wages and investment in affordable housing."
Given a chance on Wednesday to speak directly to a voter about how his policies would materially help working families to afford housing and other essentials, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump instead repeated some of his favorite evidence-free attack lines—leaving the voter mainly with promises to "drill, baby, drill" and to get China "to behave properly."
Featured in a "Fox & Friends" segment on Fox News in which the former president called in, the vote explained at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota that he has regularly been helping five of his eight children financially, as they are "struggling" to afford necessities.
"How are you going to make the economy—not just the food and electricity—but bring down the rent prices, the housing prices, so that these kids can survive without their parents' help?" said the voter.
The former president didn't address the voter directly, instead telling a Fox correspondent that he likely had the support of "at least 99, perhaps 100%" of the people at the motorcycle event, before launching into a meandering reply to the question.
"We're going to drill, baby, drill, we're gonna bring down the cost of energy," he said. "Energy's what caused the worst inflation, I think, in the history of our country. Food prices are up 50%, sometimes more. You look at bacon. Bacon has quadrupled. You can't order bacon, you can't order anything. We're living horribly."
In the last year of Trump's presidency, a pound of bacon cost $5.83; the price is now $6.77 and has gone down over the last two years.
Trump's next claim, that "we have the worst inflation we've probably ever had in our country," was also baseless, with inflation down to 3% in June, following a surge in 2022 that resulted from the coronavirus pandemic.
After telling the voter that he would ensure China and other countries were "treating us good"—and saying nothing about introducing programs to bring down rent prices, the subject of the man's question, the former president said the voter had been "in great shape" during his presidency and exaggerated the current price of gasoline, which has also trended downward since 2021.
"Answering with 'drill baby drill' to a concerned supporter asking about rising rent prices is about as asinine as it gets," said Derek Marshall, an organizer and progressive congressional candidate in California's 3rd District. "Americans deserve better!"
Jonathan Wilson-Hatrgrove, assistant director of the Yale Center for Public Theology & Public Policy, said Trump's response illustrated how the former president and his allies "exploit the pain of white poverty, but they have no coherent answer when asked what they will do to fix it."
Wilson-Hartgrove contrasted Trump's rambling reply with a similar question that was asked of then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2020 at the Poor People's Campaign Presidential Forum.
A young white woman from Washington State asked @KamalaHarris the same question when she ran in 2020. Every voter needs to hear the contrast b/w these two visions of the economy. pic.twitter.com/Ws9OIYdn3P
— Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (@wilsonhartgrove) August 8, 2024
"I am proposing what I call the Rent Relief Act, so for renters who are paying more than 30% of their income in rent plus utilities, they will receive a tax credit, so that they can be able to get through the month paying rent," said Harris at the time. "I also connect it to the issue of what we need to do around equal pay, I connect it to the issue of what we need to do to raise the minimum wage."
Voters, said Wilson-Hartgrove, should "hear the contrast between these two visions of the economy."
On Tuesday in Atlanta, Harris, now the Democratic presidential nominee following President Joe Biden's decision to step aside in the 2024 race, told a crowd of supporters that she plans to "take on corporate landlords and cap unfair rent increases."
The Biden administration has also proposed limiting rent increases to 5% nationwide for landlords who own more than 50 units, covering over 20 million units across the country, and exempting yet-to-be-built units in order to encourage the construction of new housing.
Trump's response to the frustrated voter's question about housing costs, said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, was to lie "about the economy he inherited from the Obama/Biden administration, then ran into the ground before his response to Covid made things even worse."
"'Drill, baby drill' doesn't help people with housing needs," said Barber. "We need living wages and investment in affordable housing."
"It's a clear threat to our democracy, as our government could be weaponized against us as part of a concerted effort to control how we live our live," said the vice president of Media Matters for America.
A watchdog organization that monitors the Republican Party and the far-right movement at its core released a document Thursday characterized as "the definitive guide to Project 2025," a sweeping policy agenda crafted by more than 100 conservative groups and alumni of former President Donald Trump's administration.
The 67-page report published by Media Matters for America lays out in detail Trump's close ties to Project 2025 and examines specific policy proposals included in the agenda, which—if implemented—would affect every area of American life, from the workplace to the environment to reproductive rights and other fundamental freedoms.
"Project 2025 lays out an extreme far-right agenda that would impose draconian restrictions to the lives of everyday Americans," Media Matters vice president Julie Millicansaid in a statement. "If enacted, not only would it gut the checks and balances that our country relies on, but it's a clear threat to our democracy, as our government could be weaponized against us as part of a concerted effort to control how we live our lives."
"Project 2025's extremist goals make clear what's truly at stake," Millican added.
"Project 2025 looks like an albatross that Trump will find hard to get rid of."
Contrary to the Republican presidential nominee's claim that he "knows nothing about" Project 2025 or who's behind it, Media Matters noted that "Trump and his allies are deeply connected" to the initiative spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation.
The new report points to Trump's remarks at a 2022 Heritage event, where the former president declared that the group would "lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do." The Washington Postrevealed Wednesday that Trump traveled to the event via private jet with Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation.
"CNN reported that there are 'nearly 240 people with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump,'" Media Matters observed in its new analysis. "The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee nominated Project 2025 author Russ Vought as the policy director of the RNC's 2024 Committee on the Platform... John McEntee, a Project 2025 senior adviser, said in April he would 'integrate a lot of our work' with the Trump campaign later this year."
The report spotlights plans outlined by Project 2025 and the Trump campaign to purge the federal workforce and replace career civil servants with Trump loyalists dedicated to implementing the far-right movement's assault on abortion rights, climate regulations, labor protections, and more. Trump allies have already begun screening "thousands of potential foot soldiers" to replace federal employees across the U.S. government.
"This posture toward witch hunts against federal bureaucrats recalls the days of disgraced Sen. Joe McCarthy's anti-communist crusade, which resulted in massive purges of left-wing federal employees as well as those perceived to be gay or gender-nonconforming," Media Matters noted, adding that "MAGA media, including Project 2025 allies, have openly celebrated McCarthy's destructive legacy."
The report also points with alarm to "a blog published to The American Conservative, a Project 2025 partner, [that] advocated for repealing the 22nd Amendment to allow Trump to serve a third term."
The Media Matters report came as the University of Massachusetts Amherst released new national survey data showing that Project 2025's policy proposals are "deeply unpopular" with U.S. voters.
Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the poll, said Thursday that "Project 2025 looks like an electoral liability" for Trump and the GOP, which has been accused of injecting Project 2025 policies into government funding proposals currently before Congress.
Nteta said that given the results of the new survey—conducted between July 29 and August 1—"it is no surprise that the Democratic Party has sought to link" Project 2025 with Trump or that the GOP nominee has attempted to "move away from any and all association with the unpopular 900-page playbook."
"Large majorities of Americans oppose the key pillars of Project 2025, such as the replacement of career government officials with political appointees (68% opposed), restricting a woman's right to contraception (72% opposed), and eliminating the Department of Education (64% opposed)," said Nteta. "While our politics are usually divided by class, generational, racial, gender, and partisan identities, among these groups we find strong opposition to many of the policies associated with Project 2025."
"Even former Trump voters exhibit opposition to many of these policies," Nteta added, "a bad omen for the Republican Party and Trump campaign."
Just 8% of Trump 2020 voters support Project 2025's proposal to strip emergency contraception access from tens of millions of women across the U.S., according to the new poll. Only 18% of Trump voters said they support "firing federal employees and replacing them with political appointees loyal to the president."
More than half of Americans say they have heard about Project 2025, the new survey shows—a finding that UMass Amherst professor Jesse Rhodes described as remarkable given that Heritage Foundation reports are "usually incredibly obscure."
"For the most part, Americans don't like what they are hearing," said Rhodes, a co-director of the new poll. "It's no wonder Trump is trying to distance himself from Project 2025, but unfortunately for him, because dozens of his former administration officials worked on the report, this is going to be hard to do. Project 2025 looks like an albatross that Trump will find hard to get rid of."
"We need to tackle the root cause and get serious about reducing record levels of greenhouse gas emissions," said the head of the World Meteorological Organization.
As scientists around the world on Thursday released new data about recent record-smashing heat, one United Nations adviser placed blame for the lack of ambitious climate action on the fossil fuel industry's decadeslong disinformation efforts.
"There is this prevailing narrative—and a lot of it is being pushed by the fossil fuel industry and their enablers—that climate action is too difficult, it's too expensive," Selwin Hart, a special adviser to the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and assistant secretary-general of the Climate Action Team, toldThe Guardian's Fiona Harvey.
"It is absolutely critical that leaders, and all of us, push back and explain to people the value of climate action, but also the consequences of climate inaction," said Hart, former executive director of the Caribbean at the Inter-American Development Bank and Barbados' ambassador to the United States and the Organization of American States.
Investigations by academics, journalists, and lawmakers as well as ongoing legal battles have exposed how Big Oil not only has heated and polluted the planet but also knew about the devastating impacts of fossil fuels decades ago and opted to spread lies so shareholders could make massive profits—which they continue to rake in today.
"Climate appears to be dropping down the list of priorities of leaders," Hart said, pointing to polling that shows people around the world want a rapid transition to clean energy. "But we really need leaders now to deliver maximum ambition. And we need maximum cooperation. Unfortunately, we are not seeing that at the moment."
According to The Guardian:
[Hart] warned that the consequences of inaction were being felt in rich countries as well as poor. In the U.S., many thousands of people are finding it increasingly impossible to insure their homes, as extreme weather worsens. "This is directly due to the climate crisis, and directly due to the use of fossil fuels," he said. "Ordinary people are having to pay the price of a climate crisis while the fossil fuel industry continues to reap excess profits and still receives massive government subsidies."
Yet the world has never been better equipped to tackle climate breakdown, Hart added. "Renewables are the cheapest they've ever been, the pace of the energy transition is accelerating," he said.
Hart's comments came as the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) announced that last month "was the second-warmest July globally in our data record, with an average ERA5 surface air temperature of 16.91ºC," or 62.44ºF.
From June 2023 to June 2024, each month was the hottest on record, according to C3S. Samantha Burgess, the agency's deputy director, noted that now, "the streak of record-breaking months has come to an end, but only by a whisker."
"Globally, July 2024 was almost as warm as July 2023, the hottest month on record," Burgess stressed. "July 2024 saw the two hottest days on record. The overall context hasn't changed, our climate continues to warm. The devastating effects of climate change started well before 2023 and will continue until global greenhouse gas emissions reach net-zero."
The U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said Thursday that the new C3S data "underlines the urgency of the Call to Action on Extreme Heat" issued by Guterres last month, shortly after July 22 became the hottest day ever recorded.
"Widespread, intense, and extended heatwaves have hit every continent in the past year," said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo in a statement. "At least 10 countries have recorded daily temperatures of more than 50ºC in more than one location. This is becoming too hot to handle."
Saulo highlighted that "Death Valley in California registered a record average monthly temperature of 42.5ºC (108.5ºF)—possibly a new record observed for anywhere in the world. Even the remote frozen ice sheets of Antarctica have been feeling the heat."
"The WMO community is committed to responding to the U.N. secretary-general's Call to Action with better heat-health early warnings and action plans," she pledged. "Recent estimates produced by WMO and the World Health Organization indicate that the global scale-up of heat-health warning systems for 57 countries alone has the potential to save an estimated 98,000 lives per year. This is one of the priorities of the Early Warnings for All initiative."
"Climate adaptation alone is not enough," she added. "We need to tackle the root cause and get serious about reducing record levels of greenhouse gas emissions."
C3S wasn't alone in releasing new data on Thursday; the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also shared some key points for the country's climate in July, with the full report set to be released on Tuesday.
NOAA's top takeaways were:
Other major events in July included California's Thompson Fire, which forced over 13,000 people to evacuate, and Washington, D.C. enduring 101ºF on July 17, tying a record for the longest streak of temperatures above 100ºF. NOAA also found that "for the January-July period, the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 54.5ºF, 3.2ºF above average, ranking second-warmest on record."