Some good news for a change. My cold is better, and I feel a little better. I woke up at 1:30 and first time in at least a week. I could swallow this morning even though my throat is still sore, it is not as bad as it has been. I have to go out and get some things and when I get back I hope to try posting some stuff. My mind is slowly clearing. Again thanks to Ali and Randy for keeping new things on the blog letting me rest and just watch videos. Videos are easier to understand when sick, and they are so much easier to post. I hope in a few days to be back up to full speed. Hugs. Scottie
‘Maniac Murder Cult’ plotted to have person in Santa costume poison kids in New York City
Michail Chkhikvishvili, a neo-Nazi leader from the country of Georgia, was indicted this week on charges including soliciting hate crimes and acts of mass violence in New York City.
Ukrainian authorities say the number of children abducted by Russia since the start of the war, stands at more than 19-thousand. Few have made it back home. DW went to Ukraine to speak to one of those who did.
In Simone de Beauvoir’s 1945 novel The Blood of Others, the narrator, Jean Blomart, reports on his childhood friend Marcel’s reaction to the word “revolution”:It was senseless to try to change anything in the world or in life; things were bad enough even if one did not meddle with them.
The Inflation Reduction Act – which Congress passed in 2022 without any Republican votes – provided an about $80 billion, 10-year investment to the IRS. The agency plans to hire tens of thousands of IRS employees with that money – but only some will be IRS agents who conduct audits and investigations. Many people will be hired for non-agent roles, such as customer service representatives. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.
The 85,000 figure comes from a 2021 Treasury Department report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees – not solely enforcement agents – over the course of a decade with a nearly $80 billion investment.
From CNN’s Katie Lobosco
*Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Transgender Day of Visibility
Greene said while attacking Democrats in her convention speech that “the establishment in Washington” held Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter this year.
“They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday,” the Georgia Republican said.
Facts first:This claim needs context. Transgender Day of Visibility has been held annually on March 31 since it was started in 2009 as a day of awareness to celebrate the successes of transgender and gender-nonconforming people. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the first day of spring and can change year to year. The holiday happened to fall on March 31 in 2024.
Responding to Republicans criticizing President Joe Biden, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in an April 1 briefing said she was “surprised by the misinformation” surrounding Easter and Transgender Day of Visibility falling on the same day.
“Every year, for the past several years, on March 31, Transgender Day of Visibility is marked. And as we know — for folks who understand the calendar and how it works, Easter falls on different Sundays every year. And this year, it happened to coincide with Transgender Visibility Day. And so, that is the simple fact,” she said.
From CNN’s Jack Forrest
*Republican chair falsely claims Middle East was ‘at peace’ four years ago
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said in his speech on Monday: “Four years ago, Europe and the Middle East were at peace.”
Facts First:Whatley’s claim is false. Whatever the merits of the Abraham Accords that Trump’s administration helped to negotiate, in which Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agreed in 2020 to normalize relations with Israel (Morocco and Sudan followed), there was still lots of unresolved armed conflict around the Middle East four years ago in mid-2020 and when Trump left office in early 2021.
“It’s a highly inaccurate statement,” Miller, who worked on Mideast peace negotiations while in government and is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said last fall, when Trump himself made a similar claim about having achieved peace in the Middle East.
Dana El Kurd, senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC think tank, also called that claim “false” when Trump made it. She said in a November email: “The Abraham Accords did not achieve peace in the Middle East. In fact, violence escalated in Israel-Palestine in the aftermath of the Accords (using any metric you can think of – death tolls, settlement violence, etc).”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
*RNC video attacks Biden with two-year-old gas price figure
The Republican National Convention featured a video attacking Biden over the price of gas. But the video misleadingly deployed out-of-date figures as if they were current.
A narrator claimed: “When President Trump left office, gas cost only $2.20. Under Biden and Harris, gas skyrocketed to the highest price in history, over five bucks a gallon.” Later in the video, a young man said, “Within my first year of driving, I’m having to deal with an average of $5.03 across the nation,” and a woman said, “It’s impossible to pay $5.03. We need to care about our people better than that.”
Facts First: These claims about Biden-era gas prices are two years out of date. The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline was about $3.52 on Monday, according to the AAA. The national average did, under Biden, hit a record high of more than $5 per gallon – about $5.02, according to AAA data – but that happened in June 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a global spike in oil prices. The RNC videos offered no indication that the national average has since fallen substantially.
Also, the national average on the day Trump left office in January 2021 was about $2.39 per gallon, not $2.20, though it was lower than $2.20 in some states.
This news makes me feel bad about tiger-momming our kid into college, though by the time he went, it was all his decision to go (he did earn a full ride scholarship,) to stop, and finally, to go back and finish his degree last year. Which he did, again with a great scholarship and a promise to work in our state for at least 2 years now. Anyway, while over time we’ve heard not-good things about US colleges and the governments that keep them running, there is more news here that startles me, as to companies removing degree requirements for employment. I see some good in that, but I have worries, not the least of which are employee pay and airplane doors. Ah, well, here’s Nan’s piece.
Happy Wednesday all. Only more 2 days of the Republican Convention! Got a few things for you today…..
Hopium community member Roger Poulard dropped this note on our paid subscriber chat last night responding to a link I shared from Biden-Harris about needing volunteers:
Did my first [DNC] phonebanking shift tonight. 65 calls made – talked to 10 people, 7 of which are voting for Joe, and two who are undecided or won’t say. Feeling a little bit better about everything. It’s a close race and I really hope things go our way, but I’m going to do my part to try to make it happen.
Here’s a little hopium of my own to share. This morning I got an email from “postcards to swing states” . They are pausing sign-up for the moment because of the overwhelming number of volunteers who have reached out and they need to catch up. In the last two weeks alone over 19,000 volunteers have requested 5.5 million postcards. In early August, they will resume taking orders with a goal of 29 million postcards to be sent out. Maybe this kind of news isn’t reported in the media or reflected in the polls but it’s a wonderful thing to see such an amazing amount of enthusiasm in a grassroots organization.
Community member ArcticStones added this:
On a related note, last night I was on a Zoom call where Red Wine & Blue hosted Heather Cox Richardson. An intense discussion ensued about Trump’s Project 2025 – and what we can do to stop it! Everyone received information and tool-kits to make other voters aware of the danger America faces.
There were 35,000 people on that call. Afterwards it broke into separate Zoom action groups, organized geographically, to prepare concrete action.
Throughout our nation, patriotic defenders of American democracy are rising!
VP Harris released this short video ahead of JD Vance’s speech tonight:
We now have a few days of polling after the events of the weekend and the race remains remarkably stable, close and competitive (all polls can be found on 538). Biden remains 2 points down on 538’s average. The Congressional Generic is back in positive territory and has been encouraging for us these past few weeks. Senate polling continues to hold. We’ve had polls this week with Biden up in MI and WI and down just 2 in NC. As we discussed yesterday, JD Vance may be good for Trump’s fundraising, but he is not good for him electorally. The 538 forecast this morning has Biden at 277. Here’s the current battleground in the 538 forecast:
Here’s the RNC Chair yesterday saying “there is no red wave.” For there isn’t, and Rs got heavily burned by their bullshit polls and wishful thinking in 2022. The election is remarkably stable, close and competitive, with Trump, perhaps, having a slight advantage. Commentators on television suggesting otherwise are operating outside the data available to us today.
From my read over the last few weeks the Trump campaign understands they have a lot of work to do to win. After publicly dissing her they clumsily gave Nikki Haley a Convention speaking slot at the last minute because they don’t have her voters locked up. They’ve kept Trump off the campaign trail because every time he speaks his idiocy, extremism and craziness hurts the campaign. They know that selling a rapist, fraudster, traitor and felon to the American people is no easy thing. They have to lie about Biden’s Presidency because they know how successful it has been – that the economy is booming, the stock market setting records, inflation dropping, crime is way way down and flows to the border are now the lowest they’ve been during the Biden Presidency. They sold the VP pick to Silicon Valley because they needed the money. They’ve tried to bury their extremism and run from Project 2025. They know the pro-Russian views of their two candidates is a stone cold political loser. They know we’ve won more votes in 7 of the past 8 Presidential elections. They know that we’ve averaged 51% in the last 4 Presidential elections, our best showing since FDR’s 4 elections, and that this is a center-left country today. They know they are not at 270 Electoral College votes in current polling. They know that when voters have voted in these last 2 years since Dobbs they keep underperforming and struggling, and we keep winning and overperforming. They know the power of American women and the Democratic grassroots. They know the abortion ballot initiatives could cost them a few critical points in critical battleground states. They know the far right flamed out in the European, French and UK elections. They know NeverTrumpers remain a big threat to their ability to win the election.
And they know that the guy who tried to kill Trump is almost certainly one of theirs and a very public confirmation of the threat their radical politics is to the country. From Newsweek this morning (and this has been confirmed by other news outlets):
A neighbor in Bethel Park, the Pittsburgh suburb where Crooks lived, said they saw pro-Trump signs in the family’s yard as recently as a few months ago.
“There absolutely was MAGA-supporting signs for a while,” Kelly Little told WTAE-TV.
Not only I am optimistic we can win this thing based on current data and my assessment of the landscape but because of the “margin of effort” all of you are putting in. As a fellow citizen I remain deeply inspired by your commitment, love of country, grit and willingness to just put your head down and do the work required for us to win.
But our party today is not united as we need it to be. There remains deep concern about the President’s ability to go out and win the election given his struggles of late. This concern is not just being expressed by some party leaders (who by the way know how to win elections in tough places) but based on current polling is shared by tens of millions of Democrats themselves. As I said in my video to you a few days ago (above), I am optimistic we can win this November; but if the President is going to win he is going to need to do far more to assuage the legitimate doubts many Democrats have about his candidacy, and all of us will have to come together soon – for a divided, fractious Democratic Party will lose the 2024 election.
My ongoing advice to this community is to approach these coming days with respect – respect of the President, our nominee; respect of party leaders who are working to ensure that we can win the election; and respect of one another who today are not all on the same page. For those of you backing the President telling your fellow Democrats who continue to have doubts to stop it and get in line is counter-productive, insulting and corrosive. For those of you wanting the President to step aside recognize that the most likely scenario is that our ticket remains Biden-Harris and attacking him wounds him at a time we need to be building him and the Vice-President up. This current moment is not easy for us given the stakes but as I asked in my video think of yourself here as a leader, not just a citizen. Lead the party forward, show respect of views different than yours and work to bring us together not push us apart. Do the hard thing here not the easy thing. And the hard thing is to resist fighting with fellow Dems, publicly, right now, and keep putting our heads down and working; and commit to bring us all together as we head into our Convention in a few weeks. The only way we win is if we stay together.
I want to be very clear at what I am saying here. The doubts about the President’s capacity to lead us now is a serious matter. In the Washington Post poll released last week which had the race at 46-46, 56% of Democrats wanted the President to step aside for another candidate. This data is consistent with data from other polls in the last few weeks.
If the President cannot get this number down, way down, I think it will be very difficult for us to win the election this November. He is the President, and the leader of our Party. It is his responsibility to bring us together, to demonstrate that he can lead us successfully against this fascist threat. Perhaps his media appearances over the past few weeks, the ongoing encouraging economic news, his successful leadership of the NATO Summit, the shock of the ugliness of the GOP Convention and his confident and strong leadership in the aftermath of an assassination attempt of a former President has already started assuaging these concerns. But we are not where we want to be right now, have a lot of hard work ahead of us and we are not the “my way or the highway” party. That’s them. We are the bring everyone together, listen to each other respectfully, expand our coalition and go out kick MAGA’s ass party. We are the Democratic Party.
It is why I hope this weekend the President and his team to do one more final assessment of the political landscape given the tumult of the past few weeks, review the latest data, talk one more time to party leaders, and perhaps most importantly, do one more final assessment of whether an 81 year old man who has been struggling a bit can, in the next four months, be both the President of the United States in a very challenging time and a successful candidate for President in a race we are not winning right now. If the answer is yes I will be all in and work as I have, with all of you, to go win this thing for our democracy, our freedoms and our future. And if the President chooses to pass the baton I will be all in and work as I have, with all of you, to go win this thing for our democracy, our freedoms and our future.
I am proud of my President, proud of my party, and oh so proud to be in this fight with all of you. Let’s keep working hard everyone and commit to bring our party back together and go out defeat the fascists one more time. Voters in Europe, France and the UK just did their job. It’s our turn now.
Making July Count/We Cannot Let Up/Do More and Worry Less – Friends, we just did a remarkable job together here making June count. In five weeks from late May to June 30th we raised over $1m for our candidates and party committees. Many of you have been out there hustling for candidates, writing postcards, canvassing, calling and texting. We launched our Winning the House campaign which brought in more $500,000 for our 12 Hopium-endorsed candidates with the best opportunity to flip seats and help us take back the House. We added the blue dot in Nebraska to our “checkmate” state strategy, one designed to get us to 270 electoral college votes and win the election. We raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Biden-Harris, including more than $100,000 in the days after the debate. When called once again the Hopium community answered. That’s why we’ve launched a new campaign to “Make July Count” with new July 31st fundraising goals.
We cannot let up now, not for a moment. We are deep into the 2024 election and while it is summer, and we are not all on same page today, we cannot stop working to make the election everything we want it to be. So please do something this week to support this new campaign, and be on the look out for many more interviews of our endorsed House candidates in the coming days. Trying to get the remaining eight done by our Convention.
Winning The House – $529,000 today, $600,000 goal – Donate | Volunteer | Learn More. We’ve also raised more then $42,000 into the individual House campaigns (you can either give to all 12 or each one individually)
Volunteer for the Biden-Harris campaign – their volunteer program is really ratcheting up – check it out and sign up for a shift of calls into the battlegrounds today!
Join me and Anderson Clayton in Raleigh on Friday, July 19th by donating to the NCDP Unity Dinner and signing up here
Commit to Vote on Day 1 and get everyone you know to join you
Finally help me spread Hopium and grow this plucky community. Sign others up to be a Hopium subscriber at this link. Note that options for group and gift subscriptions are available to those who want to bring friends and colleagues into the Hopium community. Click on the group and gift tabs here to learn more. To update your payment information or check your renewal status follow these instructions from Substack. Let’s keep the Hopium flowing and our community growing!
New regulations likely won’t be implemented until 2026, but the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act already covers some employees.
Originally published by The 19th , republished per their instructions for republishing.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced a new rule that, if finalized, would become the first federal regulation specifically designed to protect workers from extreme heat both indoors and outdoors. It would trigger requirements for access to drinking water and rest breaks when the heat index reaches 80 degrees Fahrenheit. At 90 degrees, it would mandate 15-minute breaks every two hours and require employers to monitor for signs of heat illness.
The rule has taken years to draft and likely wouldn’t be implemented until 2026 — though it could be stymied if President Joe Biden fails to win re-election. But pregnant workers don’t have to wait for some of these protections, thanks to last year’s passage of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA).
While the law has been enforceable since 2023, it wasn’t until June that its final regulations went into effect. The act requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” to pregnant workers who need to modify some aspects of their duties or workspace to protect their health and pregnancy — as long as it doesn’t cause “undue hardship” for the employer. These include having a water bottle at their workstations, being able to sit instead of stand and taking more frequent breaks to eat, drink or use the restroom.
“We think that these accommodations will almost always never cause an undue hardship” to an employer, said Sharyn Tejani, associate legal counsel for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency responsible for enforcement. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act also makes it clear that these types of basic accommodations don’t require a doctor’s note, something advocates say used to cause unnecessary delays.
Other options available to pregnant workers include access to a personal cooling device, a change in work hours to avoid the hottest parts of the day, a temporary reassignment to a job with less heat exposure or the ability to work remotely.
“The last possible option an employer can provide is [unpaid] leave, but that should really be a last resort,” said Kameron Dawson, senior staff attorney with A Better Balance, a nonprofit that advocates for improving workplace conditions for caregivers. This would only be an option if the accommodation presented an undue hardship on the employer, which Dawson says is a high bar to clear. First, the employee and employer are supposed to discuss all possible options and show they made a genuine effort to find a solution. “We want to make sure workers have job protection,” she said.
Before the act passed, Dawson said, providing unpaid leave would have been a quick out for employers, but a huge financial burden for a worker who couldn’t afford to lose any paychecks. The effects were disproportionately felt by women of color, who are significantly more likely to be the main breadwinners for their families.
Pregnant people need accommodations at work because they are more vulnerable to illnesses like heat stroke or heat exhaustion, said Dr. Marya Zlatnik, an OB-GYN at the University of California, San Francisco. That’s because a pregnant person’s heart is working overtime to supply blood to the placenta, which carries nutrients and oxygen to the growing fetus. This makes it harder for their body to cool down.
“So a pregnant woman in the third trimester who’s just sitting there, it is almost like she’s working out,” Zlatnik said. “Maybe her pulse is at 90 when she’s perfectly at rest. On a not particularly hot day, if she walks a block, her pulse may be 120. And if it’s a really hot day, her pulse could jump up to a dangerously high level.”
A pregnant person is also more susceptible to becoming dehydrated, which increases their risk of going into preterm labor, she said. Studies have also found a link between extreme heat and an elevated risk of developing preeclampsia, a serious pregnancy complicationwhich causes persistently high blood pressure, as well as risk of delivering low birth weight babies.
Heat exposure is a concern for pregnant women who work in industries like manufacturing, construction and agriculture, said Dawson. And this summer, as heat has enveloped large swaths of the country, A Better Balance has also received calls on its hotline from employees at big retailers and bakeries, where heat also has the potential to affect their pregnancy, she said. But, she added, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act “does offer that safeguard now, while OSHA and other agencies are working on the final rule for the heat standard.”
The Occupation and Safety Health Administration, or OSHA, a federal agency whose mission is to protect workers, first announced it was working on the new rule in 2021. It was one of several initiatives the Biden administration spearheaded to combat the dangers of extreme heat. Others include the formation of a heat working group and a plan to increase workplace inspections for heat-related hazards. An OSHA spokesperson said the agency “is working swiftly and responsibly to ensure that the rulemaking process continues effectively,” though would not speculate on when the final rule will be published. The rule can only be finalized after a public comment period and hearings.
In the meantime, the act offers a good buffer, but there are still limitations to its effectiveness for those most vulnerable to the heat, Zlatnik said. One is that it only covers pregnant workers, who are a small share of the total workforce. Also, some pregnant workers may be afraid to request accommodations under the law. “Most people who are maybe undocumented — or maybe they’re citizens, but they are still sort of on the margins — are not excited about entering into some kind of legal battle, right?” she said. “Even if now legally, they have more rights, they don’t really have a way to satisfy them.”
Because the act is still fairly new, one of the main barriers to its use is that employers, employees and even healthcare providers don’t know much about what it means, though that’s beginning to change. “A lot of it is about education,” Tejani said. “When you talk to people about this law, it is a pretty common sense situation.”
To fill that knowledge gap, a Better Balance has been reaching out to doulas, midwives and doctors to help them advocate for their patients. OSHA has also released its own guidance on preventing heat illness for pregnant workers. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also has been hosting webinars about the new regulations and disseminating its own materials to employers and advocacy groups.
Ultimately, Tejani hopes the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act will level the playing field. “People like me who work in an office, I can go to the bathroom when I want, and I work in air conditioning,” she said. “It’s just such a great thing that there’s now a law for the entire country that applies to all types of workers, including those who work in situations where those things that office workers totally take for granted are not the common thing.”
Scottie's Playtime 