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On Saturday, workers in the middle of a union drive at the Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., stopped to hear from a special guest: Sen. Bernie Sanders. The onetime presidential candidate, now the Democratic caucuss point man on political outreach, cameto the March on Mississippi event both to help the United Automobile Workers campaign and to send a message about what opponents of President Trump should be doing.

What Im going to be saying is that the facts are very clear, that workers in America who are members of unions earn substantially more, 27 percent more, than workers not in unions, Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an interview before the speech. They get pensions and better working conditions. I find it very remarkable that Nissan is allowing unions to form at itsplants all over the world. Well, if they can be organized everywhere else, they can be organized in Mississippi.

In a statement, new Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez, the former U.S. labor secretary, lent his support to the rally and the union drive.

[Nissan accused of wrongly blocking union activity at plant]

The Nissan workers in Canton deserve to go to work every day without risking their lives, said Perez. They deserve to earn a fair days wage for a fair days work. And they deserve the opportunity to stand up for their rights without fear of retribution. But since thats too much to ask from Donald Trump and the Republicans who currently control Mississippi, Democrats will stand with the workers and continue to organize in order to fight back wherever workers rights are threatened.

The Mississippi march, organized by the United Automobile Workers andjoined by the NAACP and the Sierra Club, comes as Democrats are reintroducing themselves to voters who drifted toward Trumps populism last year. Reinvigorated by Trumps near daily political problems and by anagenda thathas drifted closer to traditional Republican economic policies, theyre identifying themselves more closely with liberalpolicies and labor organizers.

Some of the poorest states in this country, where large numbers of people have no health insurance and have experienced stagnating wages, have not had the support from progressives that they need, Sanders said. Its time we change that. It means standing up for working men and women.

[Heres 3 reasons Rust Belt Democratic senators arent compromising with Trump]

On Friday morning, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) delivered a speech atOhio State University about the how dignity comes from work, arguing for an agenda that would boost wages and offer more family leave.

Populism is for the people not these people or those people but all people, Brown said. True populism is not about who it excludes but who it embraces. The value of work isnt a black issue or a white issue. Its not a blue-collar issue or a white-collar issue. Its not a liberal or conservative issue.

Browns ideas, packaged in a 77-page report titled Working Too Hard for Too Little, mirror much of what Sanders ran on in the 2016 presidential primary and much of what Hillary Clinton adopted for the general election. Some ideas go further.

Like Sanders, Brown argues for a $15 minimum wage, in sync with the campaign waged by the Service Employees International Union. Like Clinton, he pitches 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. Brown, who was also one of the first senators to suggest expanding Social Security payments by raising Federal Insurance Contributions Act, or FICA, taxes, also suggests standardized overtime pay for workers making less than $47,476 and a crackdown on the process of paying workers as contractors to avoid giving them benefits packages.

[Democrats rally with federal employees facing tough times under Trump]

I can already hear the complaints coming from the corporate boardroom, Brown said. These ideas cost too much. Well have to raise prices. Funny, you never hear those concerns raised over the cost of shareholder payouts or corporate bonuses. Corporations always want to talk about the cost of raising wages and benefits, but what about the cost of not raising them?

Like Sanders, Brown is up for reelection in 2018. Unlike Sanders, he represents a state that broke solidly for Trump in 2016 after twice voting for Barack Obama, and he has already drawn an opponent in Josh Mandel, the Republican state treasurer seeking a rematch of their 2012 race.

The first step, as seen by Brown and other Democrats, is holding and winning back the blue-collar voters who rejected Clinton in 2016 after years of voting Democratic. They see appetite for the Trump-centric and personality-focused campaign that failed Clinton in the Midwest.

At this weeks speech by Trump before a joint session of Congress, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) brought a guest who highlighted her campaign for Buy American steel policies, highlighting a Trump pledge that has proved hard to fulfill. And in a video message released while senators were heading homefor the weekend, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), another member of the 2018 election class, pitched his plan for a five-year ban on former senators or members of the executive branch becoming lobbyists after they leave office another one-up on a Trump pitch, in this case to drain the swamp of Washington influence-peddling.

[How the economy of West Virginia has changed over the past 25 years]

After Im done serving Montana, I know what Im going to do Im still going to be a farmer, Tester says in the video. But unfortunately, many of my former colleagues become lobbyists.

Little of that has cut through in a week dominated by Trumps speech, and then by questions about whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions misled the Senate about 2016 conversations with Russias ambassador.

The Canton rally and march, Sanders said, provided an opportunity to focus on something concrete something that Republicans, who now dominate Mississippi and have stopped unionization campaigns in other Southern states, were already dug in on.

These workers are incredibly courageous, Sanders said. One thing we already know is that workers who have stood up for their rights are being harassed, arebeing discriminated against and are being lectured about the so-called perils of trade unionism. Theres a massive anti-union effort going on, and these guys are standing out their own. They deserve our support.

At the rally itself, facing throngs of workers and activists whod come to hear him speak, Sanders hit on familiar themes. America, he said, was in a race to the bottom for low wages labor standards.

What justice is about is the freedom for workers at Nissan to vote their conscience, said Sanders. If we can win here at Nissan, you will give a tremendous vote of confidence to workers across this country.

Read more here:
Bernie Sanders backs unionization campaign in Mississippi as Democrats draft populist agenda - Washington Post

BERLIN German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives took a one point lead over the Social Democrats (SPD) in the latest poll conducted by Emnid for the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, with nearly seven months to go before federal elections.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its CSU Bavarian sister party gained one percentage point to reach 33 percent support, compared with an unchanged 32 percent for the SPD in a poll of 1,403 people taken from Feb. 23 to March 1.

The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party gained one percentage point in the poll to reach 10 percent, while the ratings for the Left party and pro-environment Green party were unchanged at 8 percent and 7 percent, respectively.

The Free Democratic Party lost one percentage point compared to the last poll to reach 6 percent, just above the 5 percent threshold needed to take seats in parliament.

The increase for Merkel's conservatives came after a surge in support for the SPD that followed its nomination of former European Parliament President Martin Schulz as its candidate to challenge Merkel in the Sept. 24 national election.

Merkel, who is seeking a fourth term in the election, leads a coalition government made up of the CDU/CSU and the center-left SPD, but Schulz is hoping to win enough votes to form a new government with smaller allies.

The unexpectedly strong gains shown by the SPD - and the CDU/CSU's slide - have prompted some German media to write about "Merkel fatigue" and what they see as the chancellor's lack of enthusiasm for this year's campaign.

"Angela Merkel suddenly seems like one of those dinosaurs that was incapable of adapting in time, and could only hang around limply waiting for its own extinction," wrote Jakob Augstein, a columnist for Der Spiegel magazine, in Sunday's edition.

But the new Emnid poll and others taken over the past week showed Merkel's conservatives have now stabilized and are now polling neck-and-neck or just ahead of the Social Democrats.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Hugh Lawson, Bernard Orr)

ISTANBUL A Syrian air force pilot who bailed out as his warplane crashed on Turkish territory has been found by a Turkish rescue team and is being treated at a hospital in the Hatay region, a hospital spokeswoman said on Sunday.

WASHINGTON The White House budget director confirmed Saturday that the Trump administration will propose "fairly dramatic reductions" in the U.S. foreign aid budget later this month.

LONDON Finance minister Philip Hammond said he would not take advantage of an expected lowering in Britain's future borrowing requirements and spend heavily because the country needs "reserves in the tank" ahead of its impending divorce from the European Union.

The rest is here:
German conservatives edge ahead of Social Democrats in Emnid poll - Reuters

Congressional Republicans are muting their criticism of Attorney General Jeff Sessions one day after a handful of key GOP officials broke ranks with him and President Donald Trump over Sessions' contacts with a Russian official.

Since Sessions' decision Thursday to recuse himself from investigations involving Trump campaign contacts with Russia, critical Republicans have either supported his decision or refrained from commenting. Democrats, meanwhile, are intensifying calls for accountability, demanding more answers about his and the administration's ties to Russia.

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman was one of a handful of Republicans who called for Sessions to recuse himself on Thursday and now says he is satisfied with the decision.

"He thinks Jeff Sessions did the right thing and that his recusal will enhance the credibility of DOJ's investigation," said Portman's spokesperson Kevin Smith.

Related: Democrats Say Recusal Not Enough For Sessions

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's office pointed NBC News to his comments Thursday morning, before Sessions announced his recusal, where he said, "I don't want to pre-judge, but I just think for any investigation going forward, you want to make sure everybody trusts the investigation."

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, head of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who also called on Sessions to step aside from an investigation, has remained silent after Session's Thursday announcement. So has Rep. Darrell Issa who had called for a special prosecutor into the matter. Requests into their office for comment went unanswered Friday.

But Democrats continue to call for a whole range of actions, from resignation to the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the entire matter.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, is among those who say Sessions should step down.

"I found his explanations simply not credible. You don't, I think, treat a visit in your office by the Russian Ambassador as something casual, something not memorable, and when you're asked about your contacts with the Russians in the Senate, that should have been disclosed," Schiff on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," said. "It's a conclusion I reach reluctantly."

Schiff is one of about 100 House members who have called on Sessions to step down, including House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

"The recusal is an admission that something is wrong," Pelosi said Friday morning at a breakfast event hosted by Politico Playbook.

Related: Sessions Recuses Himself From Probe of Russian Election Interference

While resignation is not likely, some Democrats are also pushing for a special prosecutor, insisting that Sessions' recusal doesn't do enough to separate the Justice Department from an investigation.

Sessions said he will stay out of any investigation relating to the Trump campaign, but Democrats say that Sessions recusal should be much broader. And they argue that even the acting deputy attorney general, Dana Boente, should not oversee any investigations either. They say that the Obama appointee's direct reporting chain to the White House shrouds any possibility of independence.

"It's clear that this administration cannot be independent when it comes to looking at what Russia did in our past presidential election so I'm calling for an independent commission - bipartisan appointed - to take this outside of Congress and with respect to any criminal activity that may have occurred, a special council should be appointed to make sure that Attorney General sessions has nothing to do with this investigation," said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said on MSNBC.

All nine Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Sessions to return to return to the committee to clarify his answers to Sens. Al Franken and Patrick Leahy when he said he had no communications with the Russians.

But the idea was shot down by Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who said there are no plans to ask Sessions to come before the committee.

"Attorney General Sessions did the right thing by recusing himself, and he did exactly what he said he'd do regarding potential recusals when he was before our committee," Grassley said in a statement. "It's unfortunate that the Democrats didn't even have the decency to give him an opportunity to clear up confusion to the statement in writing."

Democrats said that Sessions could have committed perjury if he lied under oath, but to be prosecuted for perjury it has to be done consciously.

Both Sens. Angus King, I-Maine and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said earlier Friday that Sessions should "clarify" his questions under oath.

"For him to correct that record and avoid a perjury prosecution if one is required under the record right now. The question of the FBI investigation will concern whether or not perjury was committed in the Judiciary Committee," Blumenthal said on MSNBC.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is also calling on the Justice Department Inspector General to investigate Sessions' first three weeks as attorney general. They want to know if Sessions did anything to influence, direct or hinder any investigation in those three weeks.

And the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding hearings next week on the nominations of Sessions' deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. Democrats are likely to use the hearings as another means to call attention to Sessions and any role that the Department of Justice plays in an investigation.

Read the original:
Republicans Tamp Down Sessions Criticism While Democrats Ramp it Up - NBCNews.com

Sen. Rand Paul walks to a room on Capitol Hill on March 2, 2017, where he charges House Republicans are keeping their Obamacare repeal and replace legislation under lock and key and not available for public view.(Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

Democrats and at least one Republican were searching the Capitol on Thursday following a Bloomberg report that the Republican plan to repeal Obamacare was locked in a dedicated reading room.

Sen. Rand Paul who has said hed vote against a draft of the bill that was leaked last week was not happy about the report and asked to make a copy so he can publicly release it.

The Kentucky Republican then decided to take things into his own hands.

It didnt go so well.

In a statement, Paul said that he had been denied from making a copy.

"It is already bad enough that it appears House leadership wants us to settle for Obamacare Lite, but now we cant even expect full transparency during the process," he said. "I will not settle and I will not stand idly by while the American people are kept in the dark. I will continue to speak out for full repeal."

Democrats also seized on the opportunity:

The stunts highlight the ongoing repeal-and-replace drama surrounding the Affordable Care Act.

Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2mxN889

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Democrats, Sen. Paul go on hunt for secret ACA repeal bill

U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, as chairman of Philadelphias Democratic City Committee, is often spoken of as a big-city political boss.

But Bradys job is more akin to a full-time mediator, trying to keep competing factions from shaking apart the local Democratic Party.

Nowhere is the fractious nature of the party more frequently on public display than the heavily Latino North Philadelphia neighborhoods, east of Broad Street and south of Roosevelt Boulevard.

The constant squabbling among Democrats there now has a new embarrassing cost: yet another in a series of high-profile party messes.

The state will hold a special election on March 21 in the state Houses 197th District, which includes parts of Feltonville, Hunting Park, Glenwood, Fairhill, North Square, and Francisville.

As of now, there will be no Democrat on that ballot, even though the party controls 85 percent of the voter registration in the district.

Only Republican nominee Lucinda Little is on the ballot. Her party holds just 5 percent of the registered voters there. Independents and smaller political parties make up the other 10 percent.

Bradys frustration is clear when he discusses the area and its Democratic leaders.

Theyve got to get their act together, Brady said of the ward leaders and elected officials in the neighborhoods that include the 197th District. They just dont get along together. Theres too much animosity. The Latinos, its a shame they just cant get their act together.

The 197th seat is open because former State Rep. Leslie Acosta pleaded guilty last year to a felony embezzlement charge but then, to the consternation of her party, won reelection and waited until Jan. 3 to resign, just before her colleagues in Harrisburg planned to eject her.

Acosta, who replaced another convicted felon, former State Rep. Jose J.P. Miranda, had pushed for the local Democratic ward leaders in the district to select as their candidate for the special election Frederick Ramirez, president of Pan American Mental Health Clinics.

But state Commonwealth Court Judge Anne E. Covey on Feb. 23 removed Ramirez from the ballot, ruling that he does not really reside in the home he owns in the district.

Another Commonwealth Court judge previously prevented Green Party candidate Cheri Honkala from being listed on the ballot because her nomination papers were filed one day late. Sheappealed that decision to the state Supreme Court, which on Friday in a 4-3 decision rejected her bid to get on the ballot. Honkala has vowed to run a write-in campaign for the seat.

Covey, who was elected to the court as a Republican, on Friday rejected a request from the Democratic Party to allow Emilio Vazquez, a Philadelphia Parking Authority revenue auditor on a 30-day leave from that job, onto the ballot as a replacement candidate for Ramirez.

Vazquez, the Democratic leader of the 43rd Ward, has been involved in the efforts to replace Acosta since the special election was called in January.

The party doesnt run it from the top down, Brady said of selecting special-election candidates. I let people be independent. The ward leaders in the district have the say.

As if on cue, the ward leaders and elected officials in the area promptly blamed their problems on each other.

State Rep. Angel Cruz represents the 180th District, next door to the 197th District. He previously represented parts of the 197th until the decennial redistricting plan was approved in 2012, shifting his district eastward. That plan made the 197th a majority Hispanic district, at 53.5 percent.

Cruz, who is also the Seventh Ward leader, concedes that a power struggle roils the area. He spent part of last week arguing on Facebook with people who back other potential candidates.

I try not to make those kinds of comments, Cruz said. But you can only take so much.

Cruz is an on-again, off-again political ally with Carlos Matos, Democratic leader of the 19th Ward.

Complicating the conflict, Matos is married to Renee Tartaglione, daughter of former City Commissioner Marge Tartaglione and sister to State Sen. Tina Tartaglione.

Renee Tartaglione is awaiting federal trial, accused of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Juniata Community Health Clinic, where Acosta previously worked before taking office.

Acosta is now a cooperating witness for the prosecution who is expected to testify at Tartagliones trial in May.

Matos, who had supported Acostas bid for office, feuds frequently with City Councilwoman Maria Quiones Snchez, except when he is allied with her against other foes. Snchezs Seventh District shares some of the same territory as the 197th District.

I think people have to put the community first, said Matos, after suggesting Snchez does not. They cant be worried about how much power they can gain or whatever.

Snchez, who supported her husbands unsuccessful run against Tina Tartaglione in the 2014 Democratic primary, said she is not a party leader but tries to work within the framework.

She blames the partys inability to secure a candidate in the 197th on the shifting alliances in the district.

I think its part of what has to happen for people to see how bad it is, Snchez said.

Former City Councilman Angel Ortiz laughingly calls the local Democratic leaders a dysfunctional family."

He wants the party to give more opportunities to young, active Democrats. But a lack of leadership prevents that from happening, he said, and puts the 197th seat at risk.

I think were going to make national news on March 21, either way it goes, Ortiz said. It would be a heavily embarrassing situation for the Democratic City Committee.

The Republicans already hold a sturdy majority in the 203-seat state House with 121 members. So picking up a formerly Democratic seat won't signal any major shift in power. Still, justtwo members of the Philadelphia delegation to the House are Republicans, and both hail from Northeast Philly.

And the Pennsylvania Republican Party pounced on the ruling. New chairman Val DiGiorgio quickly issued a plea for campaign donations and volunteers to help Little.

"We now have an opportunity to shock Philadelphia's Democratic machine because of their sheer incompetence and corruption," DiGiorgio wrote in that plea.

For now, the Democrats have appealed Coveys ruling to the state Supreme Court.

Brady says the Democrats will run a write-in campaign for the seat if Vazquez is kept off the ballot. But he acknowledged that the Republicans could win the seat, at least until the next regular election for a two-year term next year.

Until then, Brady will keep mediating.

The Hispanics have been fighting for years, Brady said. And the common denominator is they all talk to me. I try to keep them together.

Published: March 3, 2017 3:26 PM EST | Updated: March 3, 2017 6:24 PM EST

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North Philly feud costs Democrats a shot at a state House seat - Philly.com