Supercreator Daily: “They’re coming for the right to vote”
Supercreator Daily: “They’re coming for the right to vote”
President Biden repeats his warning that the Supreme Court won’t stop at Roe v. Wade. Plus: A preview of his inflation speech and a concession on his request to Congress for more COVID money.
President Joe Biden predicted the Supreme Court could soon further overturn voting rights after it reverses Roe v. Wade, as the leaked draft opinion shows a conservative majority is poised to do as early as next month.
“And folks, you know, they’re also coming for, you know, the right to vote,” Biden said during remarks on Monday evening at a fundraising reception for the Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Maryland. “I got involved in politics because my state of Delaware, which is not unlike Maryland has the eight largest Black population in America … and the fact is that I’ve seen such an onslaught.”
The president spoke of his work as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to extend the Voting Rights Act and said he got Strom Thurmond, a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s who gave the longest speaking filibuster ever by a lone senator in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, to eventually vote for the VRA.
A few other Biden highlights:
On Russian President Vladimir Putin: “I’m confident that Putin believed that he could break up NATO, that he believed he could break the European Union.” Biden said his worry is that Putin, whom he called Putin “very calculating,” can’t find a way out of the Ukraine war.
On the Senate: “You got 51 presidents” that could block any Biden legislative proposals, he said of the slim Democratic majority.
On the midterms: “I think there are at least four seats that are up for grabs that we could take in the Senate.” … “If we win, we have an opportunity to do such great things for this country, on the environment, on matters relating to health care, on matters relating to mental health, on matters relating to criminal justice.”
On Republicans: “Tell me anything they are for as a party, there’s good Republicans… but today if you look at the leaders of the Republican Party, what is their agenda? It’s not a conservative agenda.”
Expect Biden to continue this line of attack this morning in a speech on inflation where he’s expected to contrast his record and economic agenda against the “ultra-MAGA proposal” introduced by Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.
The president will focus on prescription drug and health care prices, the cost of groceries, child and senior care, housing and American supply chains. He’ll also renew his call for higher taxes on big corporations and the wealthiest Americans to reduce the federal deficit.
I’ll have a full recap of the speech so check the website later this afternoon.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Monday sent a letter to congressional leaders requesting additional funding by May 19 to “allow us to provide uninterrupted critical military support to our Ukrainian partners.”
The delay is due to the White House’s preference that Congress pass a bill that includes President Biden’s requests for COVID-19 preparedness funding and Ukraine assistance.
But Republicans — and some Democrats — are holding up the COVID funding because they oppose the administration’s decision to lift Title 42, a public health authority that allows border officials to quickly expel undocumented migrants — even those seeking asylum — to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus at border facilities and in border communities.
But President Biden on Monday agreed to decouple his COVID funding request from Ukraine to get things moving again.
“So I call on Congress to pass the Ukrainian Supplemental funding bill immediately, and get it to my desk in the next few days,” he said in a statement. “And then, I urge Congress to move promptly on the COVID funding bill. This virus knows no borders; we must continue to save lives here at home and around the world.”
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Good Tuesday morning and welcome to Supercreator Daily, your guide to the politicians, power brokers and policies shaping how digital creators work and live in the new economy.
Here’s what’s happening today in politics:
— President Biden this morning will receive his daily intelligence briefing and then give a speech on inflation. This afternoon, he will meet with Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy.
— Vice President Harris will be in DC and has no public events scheduled.
— The House is in and will vote on several bills including legislation to support research on privacy-enhancing technologies and promote responsible data use.
— The Senate is in and will resume consideration of a nominee to lead the agency that oversees the use of waterborne transportation.
In the Know
— The Alabama corrections officer who went on the run with an inmate she helped escape from prison died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after she was apprehended at the end of a 10-day manhunt. At the time of his escape, which took place on the officer’s last day before retirement, the suspect was facing two counts of capital murder for allegedly stabbing a woman to death in 2015. (Emily Shapiro and William Mansell / ABC News)
— The Senate passed a bill that would extend Supreme Court justices the same security protections that some executive and congressional officials receive. The vote was in response to protests at the homes of conservative justices following the leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.
— The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $20 million in new grants for its Eviction Protection Grant Program. The investment is double the amount originally allocated for the launch of the program last November and will help non-profits and governmental entities provide legal assistance to low-income tenants at risk of or subject to eviction.
— New York Attorney General Letitia James announced new legislation to establish the Reproductive Freedom and Equity Program that would provide funding for abortion providers and non-profit organizations that serve low-income residents and individuals traveling to New York from other states that ban abortion. The bill was introduced by State Senator Cleare and Assemblymember González-Rojas and originally called for by James last year.
— Deshawn Carter, a 25-year-old inmate at Rikers Island, died just two days after entering the custody of the New York City Department of Correction. Carter, who was facing charges of third-degree burglary and first-degree robbery and whose cause of death is under investigation, is the fourth death at the New York City jail complex this year, as officials call for its closure due to reported poor conditions. (Chantal Da Silva / NBC News)
— The Pulitzer Prizes, one of journalism’s most prestigious honors, were awarded to several local news organizations this year in addition to the usual national newsrooms. The New York Times won the most Pulitzers of any outlet and The Washington Post received the coveted Public Service Prize, but the staff of the Miami Herald, Tampa Bay Times, Chicago Tribune, Kansas City Star and Houston Chronicle were also recognized.
— Consumers’ reported spending on alcohol was down 15 percent month over month in March due in part to higher expenses for essentials like groceries and gas. The pullback spending also hints at the changing role of alcohol in consumers’ lives. (Emily Moquin / Morning Consult)
— Uber will cut back on spending and focus on becoming a leaner business, according to an internal email from CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. The ride-hailing firm will slash spending on marketing and incentives and treat hiring as a “privilege.” (Deirdre Bosa and Ryan Browne / CNBC)
— Meta will start testing digital collectibles and NFTs on Instagram this week. A similar feature to let creators place digital art into physical rooms and spaces will be coming to Facebook soon as well. (Anushree Dave / The Block)
— Andy Warhol’s 1964 iconic silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe’s face sold for about $195 million to an unknown buyer in New York, making it the highest price achieved for any American work of art at auction. The painting sold in under four minutes of bidding. (Robin Pogrebin / NYT)
Read All About It
Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa on how George Floyd spent his last two hours:
love you.” Floyd would express the same sentiment to men, women and children; to relatives, old friends and strangers; to romantic partners, platonic acquaintances and the women who fell somewhere in between; to hardened hustlers and homeless junkies; to big-time celebrities and neighborhood nobodies. He said the phrase so often that many friends and family members have no doubt about the final words he spoke to them. He would end phone calls with the expression and sign off text messages by tapping it out in all caps. On that fateful Memorial Day, as he suffocated under Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee, Floyd spent his dying breaths calling out the same phrase.
“Mama, I love you!” he screamed from the pavement, where his cries of “I can’t breathe” were met with an indifference as deadly as hate.
“Reese, I love you!” he yelled, a reference to his friend Hall. But he and Hill were being blocked by an officer around the corner — unable to see what was happening or hear Floyd’s final cries.
“Tell my kids I love them!”
Hannah Levintova on private equity billionaires are looting the country:
It bears noting that not all private equity acquisitions kill jobs, product quality, or companies. In the best cases, private equity takes a faltering business and improves it—a win-win for all involved. But study after study confirms that the bad results eclipse the good ones. A 2019 report found that private equity purchases of companies resulted in the loss, on average, of 4.4 percent of the companies’ jobs—and as high as 16 percent for certain types of acquisitions. In the latest example of this, Elon Musk announced plans to cut jobs at Twitter as he pitched banks on lending more than $20 billion toward his leveraged buyout of the social media company. Multiple studies have also found that private equity buyouts drive down wages at acquired companies, even when productivity increases. Private equity firms wreak this havoc while charging their investors steep fees—about $230 billion between 2006 and 2015, according to one estimate. That money has created a new class of multibillionaires but not delivered particularly impressive returns: Private equity firms haven’t beat the US stock market since at least 2006.
Ellen McCarthy on the parents who refuse to give their kids smartphones:
It’s a hard dilemma for anyone to manage gracefully. Smartphones can expose kids to all kinds of toxic stuff online — cyberbullying, porn, bad information, the mind-warping artifice of social media — and yet the devices are so interwoven with modern life that depriving their kids of one doesn’t even seem like an option.
Ross Barkan on how The New York Times ignores its 20th-century homophobia:
While some might criticize the Times for writing about a dead man’s sexuality, the newspaper made the correct decision to publish such an investigation into the life of someone who made a great impact on New York City. This is news. What was missing, though, was any kind of reflection on the Times’ own role in the homophobia that was once ran rampant through New York. Koch was closeted, in part, because the most influential newspaper in America held a fiercely anti-gay editorial line that emanated directly from A.M. Rosenthal, the powerful executive editor. Rosenthal lorded over the Times for much of the second half of the twentieth century, serving as a city editor, managing editor, executive editor, and columnist. A Pulitzer Prize-winner, he died in 2006.
Rosenthal is mentioned nowhere in the Times’ Koch investigation, though no discussion of homophobia in politics is complete without him. What made life so precarious for gay men and women wasn’t merely the prejudices of ordinary people. It was elite opinion, the sort that aligned fully with the everyday, vile fury of the common man.
Corky Siemaszko on why “sexstoritionists” are increasingly targeting young men for money:
In previous years, the typical victim of this type of crime was young girls, but there's been a shift toward boys recently, John Shehan of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said, adding that he's seen an "explosion" of these cases in the past six months.
“It’s rare to talk about or hear about the sexual exploitation of boys,” he said. “In reality, boys are equally vulnerable to these crimes and more and more often are being enticed and coerced to create sexually explicit content.”
Boys are easier targets “because they are easier to coerce into exchanging intimate photographs” and are less likely to tell anybody what happened to them out of shame, Peirce said.
Elizabeth Bruenig on why nothing beautiful survives the culture war:
Politics is downstream of culture, and this is perhaps the greatest defeat of all: Having and raising children itself now seems poised to become a culture-war issue, daily losing its discursive resemblance to an ordinary life event and gaining all the markers of a personal consumption choice that makes a statement about who you are and which side you’re on. The GOP seems all too happy to nudge the process along with caricatures of childless libs and the specter of armies of “groomers,” broadly labeling scores of left-wing educators, activists, and parents as pedophiles. The fact that Republicans are up two-to-one versus Democrats among households with kids in Marist’s latest pre-midterm survey suggests that they’re enjoying some success in this push to become the Party of Parents, and on it goes.
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