Biden visits his Pennsylvania hometown to call for more taxes on the rich and cast Trump as elitist - The Boston Globe (2024)

It’s all aimed at reframing the conversation around the economy, which has left many Americans feeling sour about their financial situations at a time of stubborn inflation and elevated interest rates despite low unemployment.

“When I look at the economy, I don’t look at it through the eyes of Mar-a-Lago. I look at it through the eyes of Scranton," the president said, contrasting his modest upbringing with the Florida estate where the former president now lives.

Biden has proposed a 25 percent percent minimum tax rate for billionaires, which he said would swell federal coffers by hundreds of billions of dollars. He added that such levies are “how we invest in the country.”

“Scranton values or Mar-a-Lago values," Biden said. "These are the competing visions for our economy that raise questions of fundamental fairness at the heart of this campaign.” He spoke at a community center from a stage flanked by a banner reading “Tax Fairness for All Americans.”

Biden was taking part in a training session for grassroots organizers at a union hall before swinging by his old house, which has served as a touchstone for him through the years, according to a person familiar with the plans who declined to be identified ahead of Biden’s arrival.

By the time the week is over, Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris will have visited the state eight times this year, reflecting its importance to Biden’s hopes for a second term.

Associated Press

Mayorkas impeachment articles delivered to Senate

WASHINGTON — After two months of delay, House Republicans on Tuesday delivered articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to the Senate, as they demanded a full trial.

Constitutional scholars have called the case against Mayorkas groundless, and the Democrats who control the Senate have made it clear that they want to curtail a lengthy trial in favor of a quick vote to dismiss the charges against him. But Republicans have pushed ahead with the articles, which accuse the secretary of willfully refusing to enforce border laws and breaching the public trust.

“For the last nearly four years, we’ve seen Secretary Mayorkas willfully cede operational control of our border to drug cartels,” Speaker Mike Johnson said on Tuesday, describing the chaos at the country’s southern border as he urged the Senate to take up the case.

He accused Mayorkas and President Biden of intentionally failing in their responsibilities to secure the border.

“He and Joe Biden engineered this catastrophe,” Johnson said. “They allowed it. They apparently desired it.”

On Tuesday afternoon, the 11 House Republicans named to prosecute the case against Mayorkas made the ceremonial walk across the Capitol to present the charges, which they read aloud on the floor.

The Republican case against Mayorkas does not accuse him of any specific criminal conduct, but rather amounts to an attempt to fire an administration official who is enforcing policies they oppose, and who they argue is failing at his job. That is a far cry from the “high crimes and misdemeanors” laid out in the Constitution as the basis for an impeachment.

A two-thirds majority would be needed to convict him in the Senate, an unachievable threshold given that Democrats are solidly opposed.

For his part, Mayorkas has spent months essentially ignoring the case and continuing to work. He negotiated a border security deal with both Senate Republicans and Democrats that fell apart after former president Trump opposed it.

“Our immigration system, however, is fundamentally broken,” he said. “Only Congress can fix it. Congress has not updated our immigration enforcement laws since 1996 — 28 years ago.”

New York Times

Lindell loses bid to challenge FBI seizure

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The US Supreme Court has denied a petition by MyPillow founder and election denier Mike Lindell to consider his challenge to the legality of the FBI’s seizure of his cellphone at a restaurant drive-through.

The high court, without comment Monday, declined to reconsider three lower court rulings that went against Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the 2020 presidential election from President Donald Trump.

FBI agents seized the cellphone from him at a Hardee’s fast-food restaurant in the southern Minnesota city of Mankato in 2022 as part of an investigation into an alleged scheme to breach voting system technology in Mesa County, Colorado. Lindell alleged the confiscation violated his constitutional rights against unlawful search and seizure and was an attempt by the government to chill his freedom of speech.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.

Associated Press

Cotton urges physical force against protesters

WASHINGTON — Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, on Monday urged people whose routes were blocked by pro-Palestinian protesters to “take matters into your own hands” and confront the offenders, endorsing the use of physical force against peaceful demonstrators.

In a series of social media posts after protesters shut down traffic in cities across the country including major roads in Oakland, Calif., the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and near O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Cotton called those responsible “pro-Hamas” and “criminals.”

He also shared a clip of himself during a recent interview in which he said that if protesters had disrupted public roads in his home state of Arkansas, they would have been met with force from citizens.

“Let’s just say I think there would be a lot of very wet criminals that would have been tossed overboard — not by law enforcement, but by the people whose road they are blocking,” he told Fox News in the interview. “If they glued their hands to their car or pavement, it’d probably be pretty painful to have their skin ripped off.”

On Tuesday morning, Cotton posted a video showing a group of men forcibly removing protesters in orange vests from a roadway that appeared to be outside the United States. In the clip, one man is shown roughly dragging a protester off the road by his feet.

“How it should be done,” Cotton wrote.

His comments came as protesters angry over US support for Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip have stepped up their civil disobedience in recent days.

New York Times

Michigan Republican charged with misusing funds

LANSING, Mich. — Prosecutors charged the former leader of the Michigan House and his wife with financial crimes Tuesday, alleging they milked political accounts for personal travel, housing, and other benefits while the Republican lawmaker was raising millions of dollars from his powerful post.

Lee Chatfield misused various political funds, including his multimillion-dollar Peninsula Fund, which was not required to report the names of donors and served as an “unregulated slush fund,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said.

The operation was a family affair, as his wife, Stephanie Chatfield, monitored her husband’s credit card balance and paid it off with cash from the Peninsula Fund, including $132,000 over a 14-month period, Nessel said.

In another example, Nessel said Lee Chatfield’s brother cashed a $5,000 check from a political fund in 2020 and returned $3,500 to the lawmaker ahead of a vacation, Nessel said.

Lee Chatfield’s various political funds took in more than $5 million over six years, including more than $2 million in 2020, which was his last year as speaker, the attorney general said.

“To call him, as many have, a prodigious fund-raiser would not be an exaggeration,” Nessel said.

Lee Chatfield faces 13 charges, including conducting a criminal enterprise, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, and embezzlement.

Chatfield’s attorney, Mary Chartier, said she’ll fight the charges “each and every step of the way.”

Associated Press