President Biden and former president Barack Obama have spent 14 years as the twin guardians of their party’s coalition, each drawing on the other’s strengths to balance his weaknesses.
Biden brought to Obama’s campaigns and presidency decades of experience that the dynamic political upstart did not have — and a connection to White working-class Democrats that Obama needed in 2008. Twelve years later, Obama brought to Biden the energy of his eloquence, the youthful appeal of ironic detachment and reinforcement among Black voters who were key to Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.
Now, Biden finds himself confronting an onslaught from Republicans similar to the fury Obama faced in the 2010 midterm elections: a potentially unforgiving electorate focused far more on new problems, especially inflation, than on those Biden was elected to solve: unemployment and the pandemic.
Obama got no credit with 2010’s midterm voters for preventing economic collapse, a real possibility at the time, and now Biden is getting little love for mass vaccinations, millions of new jobs, big investments in infrastructure and technology, and an unemployment rate that in most other times would be the envy of incumbents.
Before thousands of raucous supporters on Saturday afternoon on the Temple University campus, Biden delivered an especially fiery defense of his record and Obama made clear he knows what his old ally is going through. “I can tell you from experience that midterms matter, a lot,” he said, drawing appreciative laughter from those in the crowd old enough to remember Democratic shellackings in 2010 and 2014, the latter marked by especially low turnout.
Both men begged, coaxed and pleaded with Democrats, especially young ones, to turn out on Tuesday to defend democracy itself by voting for this state’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, and U.S. Senate candidate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman...
Former President Donald Trump called for the release of those arrested in connection with the Capitol riot.
"Start treating the January 6th protestors [sic] fairly. Let them all go now!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday.
Trump has previously spoken about what he perceives as the "unfair" treatment of those jailed and has repeatedly suggested that he would pardon them if re-elected.
Earlier this year, Trump revealed that he is "financially supporting" some January 6 defendants.
More than 900 people have so far been charged in connection with the insurrection on January 6, 2021, during which a pro-Trump mob stormed inside the Capitol building in a bid to stop the certification of Joe Biden's election victory. [snip]
Along with the January 6 rioters, he also called for the release of Catherine Englebrecht and Gregg Phillips, the leaders of the vote-monitoring organization True the Vote, that were arrested this week.
The pair, who have fuelled debunked conspiracy theories about voter fraud, were jailed after refusing to reveal the identity of a person of interest in a defamation case against them...
Just days after laying off about half of Twitter’s workforce following Elon Musk’s acquisition, the company is now asking dozens of those employees to come back.
On Friday, Musk began mass layoffs at the San Francisco-based company, letting go of roughly 3,700 workers via email. Many Twitter employees expressed learning of their layoff after they were already cut off from accessing company-wide systems.
But according to Platformer and Bloomberg, the company is already trying to reverse course and hire back dozens of employees it just laid off ― continuing the chaos Musk has brought since taking over Twitter.
“sorry to @- everybody on the weekend but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4PM PST Sunday,” still-employed workers read Saturday on Twitter Slack. “I’ll do some research but if any of you who have been in contact with folks who might come back and who we think will help us, please nominate tomorrow before 4.”
Some of those who the company is asking to return were laid off by mistake, sources told Bloomberg, while others were fired before management realized their experience was necessary to build the new features Musk wants for the platform...
The Musk-y Twitter shitshow continues...
