Musk meets with Johnson as DOGE tension heats up
Progressives are naming California Rep. Lateefah Simon, a rising Democratic star, to deliver their response to President Donald Trump's joint address to Congress next week, according to a statement provided first to POLITICO.
'I'm honored to speak on behalf of the Working Families Party,' Simon said in a statement. 'We need a government that is run by and for working people, not billionaires — and that's what the WFP is fighting for.'
Simon, who is serving her first term and represents a district centered around Oakland, California, is expected to focus on the impact of Trump and Elon Musk's dramatic overhaul of the federal government, according to a spokesperson. She is also likely to talk about her recent visit to labs at the University of California, Berkeley and the effects of cuts at the National Institutes of Health on disease research.
The Working Families Party response to the State of the Union or the president's joint address has generally given the party's left flank an opportunity to provide counter-programming apart from Democrats' main rebuttal speech. The progressive organization also gave rebuttal speeches to former President Joe Biden's joint addresses, causing some controversy among Democrats who chafed at the left-flank pressure.
Philadelphia City Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke gave the rebuttal speech to Biden last year, and progressive 'Squad' member Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) gave the last progressive response to Trump in 2020.
'Working people are looking for leaders who will fight for them, and Rep. Lateefah Simon was born to lead in this moment,' said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
'When He Least Expects It': Michael Cohen Warns Elon Musk Of Trump's Revenge
Michael Cohen, former longtime personal attorney to Donald Trump, on Sunday warned Elon Musk that the president isn't done with him yet. 'They're going to really go after Elon Musk like nobody has seen, ever, in this country because they can,' he said on MSNBC on Saturday. 'And one thing Elon doesn't understand is this political guerrilla warfare that they're going to conduct against him.' Cohen warned that Trump can use the power of government to target Musk's companies and even his citizenship. Musk and Trump last week had a spectacularly public falling out, and over the weekend the president slammed his one-time pal as 'very disrespectful' and warned him of 'serious consequences' if he supported Democrats. Cohen said that while Trump has also downplayed the feud, the president is likely already plotting against the billionaire behind the scenes. 'I just wish him well,' Trump said on Friday. 'No he doesn't,' Cohen said. 'Because while Elon Musk is taking a step back thinking Trump is taking a step back, what Trump is actually doing is weaponizing the Department of Justice through his attorney general and other people, and they are gonna drop the hammer on him out of nowhere when he least expects it. That's the playbook.' See more of his conversation with MSNBC's Ali Velshi below:
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
On This Day, June 9: Laverne Cox is first transgender person on cover of Time
On this date in history: In 1534, French navigator Jacques Cartier became the first European explorer to discover the St. Lawrence River in present-day Quebec. In 1898, Britain leased Hong Kong from China for 99 years. The territory returned to Chinese rule in 1997. In 1934, Donald Duck made his first screen appearance in "The Wise Little Hen." In 1973, Secretariat, having won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, captured racing's Triple Crown with a spectacular victory in the Belmont Stakes. The big chestnut colt, ridden by Ron Turcotte, was the first horse to do so since Citation in 1948. In 1982, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt declared himself president of Guatemala. He overthrew the government in a coup d'etat in March 1982, and was himself overthrown in August 1983 by Defense Minister Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores. In 1993, Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito married former diplomat Masako Owada in Tokyo in a Shinto ceremony. In 1997, recognizing the findings of The National Bioethics Advisory Commission, which unanimously recommended a new federal law banning the creation of human babies through cloning, President Bill Clinton urged Congress to ban human cloning, saying it reflects ''our humanity and it is the right thing to do." In 1998, Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar was sworn in as Nigeria's military ruler, one day after the death of Gen. Sani Abacha of a heart attack. In 2005, after weeks of protests, Bolivian President Carlos Mesa resigned. In 2008, Internet providers Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner agreed to block access to websites that distribute child pornography. In 2014, actor Laverne Cox became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Time. "People need to be willing to let go of what they think they know about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. Because that doesn't necessarily mean anything inherently," she told the magazine. In 2018, Justify won the Belmont Stakes, becoming the 13th horse to win the Triple Crown and only the second to do so while still undefeated. In 2019, Ali Stroker became the first actor who uses a wheelchair to win an acting Tony Award. She won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Oklahoma! In 2020, the Senate voted unanimously to make Gen. Charles Q. Brown the Air Force's 22nd chief of staff, the first Black official to lead a U.S. military branch. In 2023, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned as a member of Parliament after receiving a pre-publication copy of a Privileges Committee report evaluating if he misled Parliament about gatherings he held at Downing Street during the COVID-19 pandemic.
USA Today
25 minutes ago
- USA Today
Former Biden press secretary is ready to tell Americans the truth? Give me a break.
Former Biden press secretary is ready to tell Americans the truth? Give me a break. | Opinion The knives are now out inside the Democratic Party. And the party is bleeding, not only Americans' support and trust but also its last remaining drops of honesty and truth. Show Caption Hide Caption Karine Jean-Pierre talks exit from Democratic party in new book Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre talks about leaving the Democratic party in her upcoming book slated for release in October. The Democratic Party continues to self-destruct, and I am here for it. Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has teased a tell-all memoir about former President Joe Biden and the administration she served for nearly three years. 'Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines' is stoking claims that Jean-Pierre is a grifter, profiting off her time in the administration by trashing the former president and the political party that gave her prominence. Knives are out among Democrats for one of their own who has now betrayed them. Like other books that have recently exposed details about Biden's poor health, Jean-Pierre's book raises questions about the White House cover-up that attempted to hide the president's mental and physical decline from voters. It also calls into question Jean-Pierre's honesty: Why did she wait until now, when she can profit from it, to tell the truth about the former commander in chief? Former White House colleagues turn on former Biden press secretary Democrats are now a minority party in America. The GOP controls the White House, the Senate and the U.S. House along with a majority of governor's offices and state legislatures. The Democratic Party has lost Americans' trust because of its leaders' penchant for gaslighting, not just about Biden's health but also on issues like immigration, border security and the economy. Jean-Pierre, who now claims to be an independent, certainly isn't helping her former colleagues rebuild that lost trust. Details from the book are still sketchy, but Jean-Pierre should provide readers with an inside look at what happened after Biden's disastrous debate with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump a year ago this month. Jean-Pierre's coworkers have already reacted to the book with contempt. "Former colleagues expressed confusion at how Jean-Pierre seemingly intends to paint Biden as a victim while pinning her own decision to leave the party on his 'broken' White House," Politico reported, citing multiple former Biden administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Opinion: Biden's cancer diagnosis raises the question: Was he ever in good enough health? Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Commerce Department's communications team during Biden's presidency, took umbrage with Jean-Pierre's assertion that the Democratic Party betrayed Biden. 'Kamala Harris and the entire Biden/Harris campaign did hero's work to avoid losing 400 electoral votes and giving Republicans a supermajority in Congress, which is what would have happened if he stayed on the ticket,' Legacki told Politico. 'It's more productive to focus on that, and thank Biden for doing the responsible thing by stepping aside, than it is to pretend this was an unwarranted act of betrayal.' But party insiders continuing to squabble over whether a now former president was or was not betrayed by fellow Democrats entirely misses the larger point. Opinion: Guess who Americans want to run the economy? Hint − it's not Democrats. Far too many Democrats, Jean-Pierre included, worked hard to deceive Americans. Their willful lack of self-awareness about their gaslighting and dishonesty is why the party has shown no signs of recovering from the last disastrous election cycle. Karine Jean-Pierre's book about Biden isn't the first Jean-Pierre's book will be far from the first to address the deception at the heart of the Biden White House. On May 20, journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson released "Original Sin," which describes in detail Biden's cognitive decline and the mind-boggling efforts with which his inner circle and the Democratic Party tried to hide the truth from Americans. Opinion: Texas woman's death would have been prevented if Biden had secured the border Conservatives had long been suspicious about Biden's health, but journalists with White House access failed to ask tough questions then. Now that it's too late to make a real difference, those who were silent when it mattered most are more than ready to profit from belated exposés about the former president's failing health. The knives are now out inside the Democratic Party. And the party is bleeding, not only Americans' support and trust but also its last remaining drops of honesty and truth. Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist with USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four kids. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, and get it delivered to your inbox.
