Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona dies at 77
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., died Thursday due to "complications of his cancer treatment," his office announced in a statement.
Grijalva, who served in the House for more than 20 years, was first elected to Congress in 2002. During that time he served as chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and, most recently, as the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee.
"He was steadfast in his commitment to produce lasting change through environmental policies — as he would say, 'it's for the babies.' He led the Natural Resources Committee without fear of repercussion, but with an urgency of the consequences of inaction," his staff said in a statement.
Grijalva began his career in public service as a community organizer in Tucson, Ariz. He chaired the Tucson Unified School District Governing Board for six years before serving on the Pima County Board of Supervisors for more than a decade.
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Daily Mirror
2 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
'Los Angeles is just the start: a big, beautiful civil war is coming to America'
It was a hot wet day in June as the tear gas rained upon the land of the free. Peaceful protesters, live streamers, and the ready-to-be-angry were pepper-sprayed. Those two most dangerous foes of tyranny, innocent bystanders and journalists, were fired upon with rubber bullets and stun grenades. And America is such a great nation this was considered a mercy, as these snub-nosed 'non-lethal rounds' 4cm wide and 10cm long, tear flesh apart and usually stop before they reach an organ, rather than pierce with the deadly certainty of a 9mm hollowpoint. This was a rebellion against the rule of law. This was a reminder of obedience to the US Constitution, and to the mandate of a general election in a country that has been a democratic beacon to the world. But Donald Trump was having none of it, and sent the National Guard to begin his second insurrection for him. There were Highway Patrol troops with gas masks and truncheons. There were immigration officials with military fatigues and guns. There were horses to trample with their hooves. And they were sent to calm down people who had committed no crime except to be frightened. It did not, and will not, work. Nor is it supposed to. It had begun perfectly, with immigration raids in a borough that is 80% Hispanic in a Democrat city in a Democrat state. The officers came armed not with laptops or paperwork, but in body armour and clinging to the side of an armoured vehicle of the sort last seen taking an RPG outside the Nakatomi Plaza. They went to Home Depot, a doughnut shop, a clothes factory, and a warehouse. They did not find it necessary to take the police with them, for in America visa officials have the power to arrest, prosecute and shoot whoever they please. They lined up and arrested 44 people, and took them to a detention centre, where statistics show they are likely to be deported within hours, without due process, without a lawyer, and without any good reason beyond having been openly Hispanic. A few dozen people appeared outside the centre with placards. Activists shared details of sightings of the immigration officials, which wasn't difficult because camouflage paint doesn't really hide tanks in an urban setting. Graffiti was sprayed, loudhailers were wielded, and in an act of what must have involved great strength and determination, some of the militarised run-flat tyres got slashed. The President, who was watching closely, decided this was "insurrection". Well, he would know. He sent in National Guard troops to quell the rebellion even though no parliamentary property had been stormed, no police officers killed, and no-one had dressed up as a bison, which is the universally-accepted sign of S*** Going Down. The troops did not ask why their President, 2,6669 miles away, had decided his government was under more threat from a few dozen activists than, say, the government had been when 2,000 people tried to get their hands around Mike Pence's throat while he was counting votes. The portly little sheriff, the desk-jockey from the suburban precinct, and the beat cop were not about to let a chance to play with the hand-me-down military equipment go to waste. The protests grew to several hundred people. Young men grabbed rocks and flags, enlivened by the chance to get one in Goliath's eye. Cop cars were torched, and suddenly there were people sat on the ground with banners and people stood at the back chucking rocks, and the police said hang it let's just shoot 'em all. And the Defence Secretary, who would like people to stop talking about his Signal messages, his wife, and his disastrous handling of just about everything, put the Marines on standby in what must have been certain knowledge that would make it all so much worse. The president's fembot told the world of "mobs" and "attacks" as politicians "abdicated responsibility" and put America at risk of an "invasion", but down was up and wrong was right, and she did not mention that the president was the one breaking the most laws. For this was not the deportation of criminals he had promised in his run for office. This was not scooping up the wrong'uns for which people had voted. It was random, broad sweeps that had already seen innocents deported, children separated from parents, US citizens and those with a right to remain, those protected by court orders and due process, crushed by the apparatus of the state. They were directed at those districts which had the temerity not to vote for him, and now had the temerity to protest. The president has no right to send in the National Guard unless there is an invasion, a rebellion, he is unable to execute the law, and he has read a tiny clause in a rarely-used bit of legislation. The president has no right to deport US citizens. The president has no right to throw stun grenades at people exercising their constitutional right to protest. But the president needs an enemy, and the browner the better. For there is no point to Donald Trump - to the anger, the ignorance, the bullying, the dick-waving - if there is no problem with the Hispanic family in your street. He has no use for joy or happiness or community, only fear and rage and hate. Which is why, when he has stoked the small protest into a grander, flaring thing, when it is matched with riots fuelled by summer heat and immigration raids in Democrat strongholds across the country, he will inflame it as much as he can. So that when his time should be up in the White House he has reason to say: you need me. Look at the violence. Fear your neighbour. What you need, he will say, is a big, beautiful civil war to put all of this right. For him there is no other way. And it is probably about time America had this argument with itself. Only then can it decide to take power away from those who wield it so vindictively. It managed it once before, and the whole world hopes it can do it again.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘History will judge us as cowards or heroes': Ras Baraka, the mayor arrested by Ice, won't be intimidated
It took about two minutes for Ras Baraka to be propelled from being a relatively obscure New Jersey politician into a nationwide avatar. The transformation happened on 9 May when he was trying to inspect Delaney Hall, a privately run federal immigration detention center that he accuses of violating safety protocols, when he was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). Video footage of those fateful minutes show burly Ice agents dressed in militarised fatigues dragging the mayor into the compound. Baraka, who was accompanying three congressmembers, has his hands yanked behind his back and is handcuffed. He vainly urges his captors to go easy on him with a plea that, in hindsight, now sounds deeply ironic. 'I'm not resisting,' he says, over and over. Since the arrest Baraka, 55, has rapidly emerged on the national stage as someone who resists, a lot. The son of a revolutionary poet, and a poet in his own right, he was a high school principal before becoming councilmember then mayor of one of America's less glamorous cities: Newark. He has articulated an opposition to Donald Trump's march towards 'authoritarianism' with a potency that, apart from sporadic actions, has been lacking from Democratic party leaders. 'History will judge us in this moral moment,' he says. 'These people are wrong. And it's moments like this that will judge us all – as cowards or, you know, as heroes.' Following his arrest, Baraka was charged with trespassing, had his mugshot taken and was fingerprinted, twice. That second time really irked him. 'That was a little much. Marshals came into the courtroom to carry me out to the basement, for charges that were a class C misdemeanor.' A few days later, Trump officials abruptly dropped the charges, earning themselves a sharp rebuke from the court. Judge André Espinosa slammed the Trump administration for having made a 'worrisome misstep' in rushing to prosecute an elected representative. All of that took place in three weeks, at the same time as Baraka has been running in the Democratic primary to become New Jersey's next governor. 'It's been a little crazy,' Baraka concedes, with understatement. The volatility has not ended with his court case, it has just moved onto the streets. Baraka says he is now frequently stopped by people on the Newark sidewalk, praising him for his stand. When he travels outside Newark, the obverse is true. 'I've had every crazy person calling me all kinds of things. People jumping out of their car, yelling and screaming because you're protecting immigrants.' For Baraka, the praise and anger has underlined the perilousness of these times. 'The country is really, really divided. And in my mind, really uninformed. And we're seeing how dangerous these people have become.' Now that he's had time to reflect on this surreal episode, what does he think it was all about? Why did Trump's America – 'these people', as he calls them – pick on him? 'I'm the mayor of the city. That's it. They're coming after the governor, the US attorney, the judges. It's all trying to prove that they're in charge, like regular bullies do.' We meet 3 miles and a world away from Delaney Hall. The metal fences and khaki Ice uniforms that confronted Baraka on 9 May make way for a rather grander setting: the golden domed beaux-arts wonder that is Newark city hall. Baraka's office is up a sweeping marble staircase. There are officers guarding his door, also uniformed, but instead of batons they greet visitors with smiles. The mayor sounds a bit flat when we start talking, as though his mind is elsewhere. But then, he has got a lot on his plate. A day after our interview he lodges a lawsuit against New Jersey's top federal prosecutor for false arrest and malicious prosecution. The suit also accuses Alina Habba, Trump's appointee as the state's acting US attorney, of defaming him. On top of that, there are next Tuesday's primary elections in the race to replace the time-limited Democratic incumbent Phil Murphy as New Jersey governor. Baraka is competing in a field of six Democratic candidates in what is turning out to be a tight contest: many polls suggest he is running in second place to the former Navy helicopter pilot Mikie Sherrill, though the outcome remains unpredictable. Then there's the fact that Trump has come at him with the entire might of the US government. It's not just Baraka in the line of fire, it's Newark. Trump has long shown disdain for Democratic-controlled cities, especially those that happen to be majority Black and brown. During his first term Trump called Baltimore, Maryland, which is 60% Black, a 'disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess'. Newark, New Jersey's largest city, is 47% Black and 37% Hispanic, so it's fair to surmise where much of Trump's animus towards it comes from. The president's racist antagonism is targeted at Newark because of its status as a 'sanctuary city' – meaning that it offers protections for undocumented immigrants, and limits the cooperation of its police with federal enforcement operations unless crime is involved. There's no better manifestation of this collision of values than Delaney Hall. It's 1,000 beds are only currently accommodating 120 detainees, but its presence on the edge of downtown makes its own looming statement. 'It's menacing, a threat,' Baraka says of the detention facility. 'They said they were arresting criminals, but people know that's not true. You can't find 1,000 immigrant gang members and rapists and murderers, not in Newark. So who else are they going to put in there?' Baraka says that the fear is palpable across the city. Since Ice carried out a high-profile raid at Newark fish market just three days after the inauguration, there has been a steep decline in people leaving their homes for health or social service appointments, or trips to shops and restaurants. 'People are afraid. It's regular everyday anxiety. These people are running around, grabbing people off the street,' Baraka says. In the latest salvo, the Trump administration is suing Newark and three other New Jersey cities for 'standing in the way' of federal immigration officers. That's quite something, to have one of the world's most powerful governments bearing down on you like a gigantic bird of prey. Is he scared? Baraka is surprisingly honest in admitting his own fears. 'You got the apparatus of government, of law, of the police and military – all this stuff to make your life miserable.' He's warming to his subject now, that early flatness giving way to an intensity of rhetoric clearly honed at campaign rallies. He comforts himself, he says, with the thought that people who came before him must also have been afraid, yet they were unbowed. 'When we were fighting to dismantle Jim Crow in America, people were afraid. When the women's suffrage movement was going, in the fight for labor rights, there was fear, but people still did what they thought was right.' He hopes he will make the same decision, though he candidly admits it's not easy. 'Of course, this is scary,' he says. 'I just pray that it doesn't turn me into a coward.' There are plenty of, if not cowards, then collaborators in this 'moral moment'. Universities like Columbia or multibillion-dollar law firms like Paul Weiss, that have capitulated in the face of Trump's assault without so much as a squeak of protest. Then there's that other mayor ensconced just 15 miles away across the Hudson River. Eric Adams's deal with Trump, in which the New York mayor had his federal corruption charges dropped in return for cooperation over immigration deportations, is perhaps the most shocking of all apparent quid pro quos in this second Trump era. Baraka is open about his ties to Adams, and though he stressed he didn't agree with what had happened his take on events is slightly ambiguous. It sits somewhere between condemning the man and empathising with his plight. Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion 'Mayor Adams, I know him, he's my friend,' he says. For Baraka, the Adams story is another sign of present dangers – not just in the Trump attack, but also in the Democratic response. 'This is what this moment does to people, does to us – it puts us in these precarious situations where we have to choose ourselves over our people, over the things we believe or care about the most. That's why these are very, very dangerous times.' He has a message for those who think they can save themselves by making a pact with the devil, such as Adams or Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic Michigan governor, whom he also namechecked. Whitmer has cozied up to Trump since his return to the White House, only to find the president now considering a pardon for the men who plotted to kidnap her. 'That's an insane proposition,' Baraka says. 'You think you're protecting yourself, but you're just releasing your rights, your abilities, your values, and making yourself more vulnerable.' Baraka describes himself as an unabashed but pragmatic Democrat, a progressive who gets things done. 'I'm a pragmatist at heart,' he says. 'As mayor, I don't have the luxury of debating ideology in the egg line at the supermarket. I've got to get people jobs and opportunity.' His record since he became mayor in 2014, succeeding Cory Booker who left city hall for the US senate, has earned him the plaudits of such Democratic luminaries as Barack Obama. The former president praised Baraka in the New Yorker as being 'both idealistic and practical'. Under Baraka, Newark homicides have fallen to lows not seen since the 1940s. He is proud of his record on attracting new businesses to the city, improving water quality and increasing childhood vaccinations. Yet in the gubernatorial race, he still faces the old put-down leveled at progressives: unelectability. He complains that during the campaign he has been labeled 'too progressive, too Newark, and too Black'. 'It's hogwash,' he says animatedly. 'The moderates, they want to keep the status quo and are maintaining these lies to make people do what's safe, as opposed to what's right.' Trump lost New Jersey last November by six percentage points. That was a 10-point improvement for him on 2020 – the second largest swing in his favour of any state. Baraka blames that startling result not on Trump's appeal, but on the Democrats' failings, especially in their pitch to working Americans. 'The Democrats lost touch with people, that's the real issue: the Democratic party's ability to connect to its voter base and to attract new voters. Ultimately, they did not inspire.' He criticizes the party for being afraid of powerful interests. 'People can't pay their healthcare costs, but we're afraid to challenge the healthcare industry; childcare costs are too high, but we're afraid to lean into child tax credits that would end child poverty; rents and mortgages are unaffordable, but we're afraid of developers and big banks.' His critique does not end there. Democratic leaders are also proving incapable of rising to the challenge of this perilous moment. 'We've seen a bunch of disparate, spur-of-the-moment acts by individuals and smaller groups, but there's no collective offensive strategy. And we've underestimated Donald Trump.' So why does he stick with it? Why stay in a Democratic party that he believes is abjectly failing? 'It's all we have right now. This is what we got. We got to fight with the weapons we have until there's others. I mean, pragmatically.' Poetry is not the most conventional tactic in a bid for statewide office. One of Baraka's closing political ads in the primaries has him reciting American Poem, his best-known work which is featured by Beyoncé in her current Cowboy Carter tour. Baraka argues that poetry can be a powerful tool in reaching out to voters. 'There's a lot of folks who respond to art, poetry, music. And I'm a poet. My dad said: 'Never lose your poetry license'. So I'm not.' His dad was the prominent Black poet, playwright and jazz aficionado, Amiri Baraka (AKA Everett Leroy Jones AKA LeRoi Jones). Newark born and raised, Baraka Sr was a founding member of the 1960s Black Arts movement; he helped both to chronicle and shape the Black liberation struggle. Though a radical and at times a revolutionary, Amiri Baraka also worked within the system to promote Black politicians. He was seminal in having Kenneth Gibson elected in 1970 as the first Black mayor of Newark. It must have been a profound sadness for Baraka, then, that his father died in January 2014, four months before he himself won the mayoral election. 'It was worse than that, I guess,' Baraka reflected. 'My father didn't want me to run for mayor at first – he knew how ugly this thing is. But in the last week or so of his life, he was passing out flyers in his hospital room, encouraging doctors, patients to vote for me. 'My son's running for mayor! My son's running for mayor!' Yeah, that was amazing.' American Poem is a call for an inclusive definition of America and what it is to be an American. 'It's me saying, I want to hear an American poem that talks about all the things – good or bad – that people refuse to talk about: our communities, our struggles, our lives, our culture, our history – all of which is as American as the KKK.' The poem was written in the 1990s, when Baraka was straight out of college. That's uncanny, because it reads today with a burning contemporary urgency, as though it was composed as a direct riposte to Trump's ideology of 'America first': I want to hear an American poem You know, something made in the USA Something American and Afro-Cuban Nuyorican Latin tinge, beaten bone by plena, Sprawling out of wide open tenement windows In the middle of winter Which just goes to show, Baraka says, that the current fight is nothing new. It's as old as the country itself. 'People keep trying to define what this country is. Now Trump is telling us what it is to be an American. But he can't. It belongs to all of us. Yeah, it belongs to all of us.'
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Defying debt warnings, Republicans push forward on Trump tax agenda
WASHINGTON, June 9 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress are determined to enact his tax-cut agenda in a political push that has largely abandoned longtime party claims of fiscal discipline, by simply denying warnings that the measure will balloon the federal debt. The drive has drawn the ire of Elon Musk, a once-close Trump ally and the biggest donor to Republicans in the 2024 election, who gave a boost to a handful of party deficit hawks opposed to the bill by publicly denigrating it as a "disgusting abomination," opening a public feud with Trump. But top congressional Republicans remain determined to squeeze Trump's campaign promises through their narrow majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives by July 4, while shrugging off warnings from the official Congressional Budget Office and a host of outside economists and budget experts. "All the talk about how this bill is going to generate an increase in our deficit is absolutely wrong," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo told reporters after a meeting with Trump last week. Outside Washington, financial markets have raised red flags about the nation's rising debt, most notably when Moody's cut its pristine "Aaa" U.S. credit rating. The bill also aims to raise the government's self-imposed debt ceiling by up to $5 trillion, a step Congress must take by summer or risk a devastating default on $36.2 trillion in debt. "Debt and deficits don't seem to matter for the current Republican leadership, including the president of the United States," said Bill Hoagland, a former Senate Republican aide who worked on fiscal bills including the 1997 Balanced Budget Act. The few remaining Senate Republican fiscal hawks could be enough to block the bill's passage in a chamber the party controls 53-47. But some have appeared to be warming to the legislation, saying the spending cuts they seek may need to wait for future bills. "We need a couple bites of the apple here," said Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a prominent fiscal hardliner. Republicans who pledged fiscal responsibility in the 1990s secured a few years of budget surpluses under Democratic former President Bill Clinton. Deficits returned after Republican President George W. Bush's tax cuts and the debt has pushed higher since under Democratic and Republican administrations. "Thirty years have shown that it's a lot easier to talk about these things when you're out of power than to actually do something about them when you're in," said Jonathan Burks, who was a top aide to former House Speaker Paul Ryan when Trump's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was enacted into law in 2017. "Both parties have really pushed us in the wrong direction on the debt problem," he said. Burks and Hoagland are now on the staff of the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank. Crapo's denial of the cost of the Trump bill came hours after CBO reported that the legislation the House passed by a single vote last month would add $2.4 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. Interest costs would bring the full price tag to $3 trillion, it said. The cost will rise even higher - reaching $5 trillion over a decade - if Senate Republicans can persuade Trump to make the bill's temporary business tax breaks permanent, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The CRFB projects that if Senate Republicans get their way, Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act could drive the federal debt to $46.9 trillion in 2029, the end of Trump's term. That is more than double the $20.2 trillion debt level of Trump's first year at the White House in 2017. Majorities of Americans of both parties -- 72% of Republicans and 86% of Democrats -- said they were concerned about the growing government debt in a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month. Analysts say voters worry less about debt than about retaining benefits such as Medicaid healthcare coverage for working Americans, who helped elect Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress. "Their concern is inflation," Hoagland said. "Their concern is affordability of healthcare." The two problems are linked: As investors worry about the nation's growing debt burden, they demand higher returns on government bonds, which likely means households will pay more for their home mortgages, auto loans and credit card balances. Republican denial of the deficit forecasts rests largely on two arguments about the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that independent analysts say are misleading. One insists that CBO projections are not to be trusted because researchers predicted in 2018 that the TCJA would lose $1.8 trillion in revenue by 2024, while actual revenue for that year came in $1.5 trillion higher. "CBO scores, when we're dealing with taxes, have lost credibility," Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin told reporters last week. But independent analysts say the unexpected revenue gains resulted from a post-COVID inflation surge that pushed households into higher tax brackets and other factors unrelated to the tax legislation. Top Republicans also claim that extending the 2017 tax cuts and adding new breaks included in the House bill will stimulate economic growth, raising tax revenues and paying for the bill. Despite similar arguments in 2017, CBO estimates the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act increased the federal deficit by just under $1.9 trillion over a decade, even when including positive economic effects. Economists say the impact of the current bill will be more muted, because most of the tax provisions extend current tax rates rather lowering rates. "We find the package as it currently exists does boost the economy, but relatively modestly ... it does not pay for itself," said William McBride, chief economist at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. The legislation has also raised concerns among budget experts about a potential debt spiral. Maurice Obstfeld, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the danger of fiscal crisis has been heightened by a potential rise in global interest rates. "This greatly increases the cost of having a high debt and of running high deficits and would accelerate the point at which we really got into trouble," said Obstfeld, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund.
