Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) speaks at a rally for National Nurses United on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, November 17, 2016. (Photo by J. Lawler Duggan/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
We produce this news digest every weekday. You can to receive these updates as an email newsletter each morning.
Carrier to keep some jobs in the US –> Carrier, the air conditioning company that was planning to lay off 1,400 employees at an Indiana factory and move the jobs to Mexico — a talking point in the presidential campaign — will not move all the jobs after all. Donald Trump’s team is hailing this as a victory for the president-elect. What convinced Carrier to keep the plant open is not yet clear — and complete terms of the deal and how it will affect worker wages, etc., are unknown — but it seems Trump’s VP-elect, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, will give the plant a tax break.
This sort of whack-a-mole method of fighting outsourcing is not sustainable — especially in states where the governor is not also VP-elect. But Politico reports that Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, was worried the Trump administration would not continue awarding them defense contracts. Challenging outsourcing by companies with defense contracts is sustainable, and Sen. Bernie Sanders is introducing a bill to do just that — and to force outsourcers to pay a tax.
Sanders has an op-ed in this morning’s Washington Post announcing his legislation: “Just a short few months ago, Trump was pledging to force United Technologies to ‘pay a damn tax.’ He was insisting on very steep tariffs for companies like Carrier that left the United States and wanted to sell their foreign-made products back in the United States. Instead of a damn tax, the company will be rewarded with a damn tax cut. Wow! How’s that for standing up to corporate greed? How’s that for punishing corporations that shut down in the United States and move abroad? In essence, United Technologies took Trump hostage and won. And that should send a shock wave of fear through all workers across the country.”
Veterans to defend DAPL opponents –> “More than 2,000 US military veterans plan to form a human shield to protect protesters of a pipeline project near a Native American reservation in North Dakota, organizers said, just ahead of a federal deadline for activists to leave the camp they have been occupying,” Terray Sylvester reports for Reuters. “It comes as North Dakota law enforcement backed away from a previous plan to cut off supplies to the camp — an idea quickly abandoned after an outcry and with law enforcement’s treatment of Dakota Access Pipeline protesters increasingly under the microscope.”
Kansas Secretary of State and Trump adviser repeats false claim –> “The top election official in Kansas asserted without evidence that millions of noncitizens voted in the presidential election moments after he certified the state’s election results on Wednesday,” Bryan Lowry writes for The Wichita Eagle. “Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who made his first public appearance since meeting with President-elect Trump last week, backed Trump’s claims that he would have won the popular vote if illegal votes were discounted.” Kobach was the architect of SB 1070, an Arizona law requiring state police to attempt to determine a person’s immigration status during any stop — essentially telling law enforcement to demand papers from any Latino-looking person. He also has been a major force behind GOP voter suppression efforts.
Nancy Pelosi re-elected Democratic House leader –> Tim Ryan, an Ohio congressman who challenged Pelosi, saying he could better steer the party back toward winning working-class voters, failed to unseat the House minority leader. “But Pelosi’s margin of victory, 134 votes to 63 for Ryan, signaled a large degree of discontent with her leadership after 14 years atop the caucus and, more broadly, with the Democratic policy agenda that many lawmakers say has grown stale,” Paul Kane and Ed O’Keefe report for The Washington Post. “While she cleared her self-declared margin of victory, a two-thirds majority, many Democrats were stunned that almost a third of the caucus was willing to vote for a backbench lawmaker with no major policy or political experience.”
Obama EPA toned down fracking report –> Scott Tong and Tom Scheck report for public radio’s Marketplace: “Top officials of the US Environmental Protection Agency last year made critical changes at the 11th hour to a highly anticipated, five-year scientific study of hydraulic fracturing’s effect on the nation’s drinking water… Documents obtained by APM Reports and Marketplace show that in the six weeks before the study’s public release, officials inserted a key phrase into the executive summary that said researchers did not find evidence of ‘widespread systemic impacts’ of fracking by the oil and gas industry on the nation’s drinking water.”
Military warns of climate-induced refugee crisis –> Damian Carrington for The Guardian: “Climate change is set to cause a refugee crisis of ‘unimaginable scale,’ according to senior military figures, who warn that global warming is the greatest security threat of the 21st century and that mass migration will become the ‘new normal.’ The generals said the impacts of climate change were already factors in the conflicts driving a current crisis of migration into Europe, having been linked to the Arab Spring, the war in Syria and the Boko Haram terrorist insurgency.”
Meanwhile: Ivanka Trump, apparently, has decided to speak out on climate change. It’s an interesting development, given her relationship to the man who plans to derail global climate action and send the planet past key tipping points that could make climate change impossible to reverse. A source told Politico, “Ivanka is in the early stages of exploring how to use her spotlight to speak out on the issue.”
Trump speaks to Pakistan’s PM –> The government of Pakistan released a summary of a call between Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and Donald Trump. According to Pakistan’s press information department, here is some of what was said: “President Trump said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif you have a very good reputation. You are a terrific guy. You are doing amazing work which is visible in every way… On being invited to visit Pakistan by the Prime Minister, Mr. Trump said that he would love to come to a fantastic country, fantastic place of fantastic people. Please convey to the Pakistani people that they are amazing and all Pakistanis I have known are exceptional people, said Mr. Donald Trump.”
Morning Reads was compiled by John Light and edited by Michael Winship. See a story that you think should be included in Morning Reads? Tell us in the comments!
We produce this news digest every weekday. You can to receive these updates as an email newsletter each morning.
