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Time of India
25-04-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Who is Saikat Chakrabarti? Indian-origin man challenging Nancy Pelosi in California's 11th Congressional District
Saikat Chakrabarti , a former chief of staff to New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , has announced that he will run in the 2026 Democratic primary for California's 11th Congressional District. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now He will be challenging Nancy Pelosi , the longest-serving House member from California. Chakrabarti posted about his decision on X, expressing respect for Pelosi's career but arguing that the Democratic Party needs change to meet today's challenges. Chakrabarti wrote, 'I've decided to run against Nancy Pelosi… I know some of you might be surprised that speaker Emeritus Pelosi is running again, but she is — for her 21st term.' He added that Pelosi once said Democrats did not need to change after Trump's election, a position he strongly disagrees with. Pelosi, who served as speaker of the House from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023, remains a key Democratic figure. She won re-election in 2024 and has held her seat since 1987. Who Is Saikat Chakrabarti Saikat Chakrabarti was born in Fort Worth, Texas, to Bengali immigrant parents from India. He studied at Harvard University, where he earned a degree in computer science. After graduating, he moved to San Francisco and co-founded a tech start-up. He later joined Stripe, a financial services company, as one of its early engineers. Chakrabarti left the tech industry in 2016 to work on senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. While working on the campaign, he helped build digital tools to support grassroots fundraising and outreach. He co-founded Justice Democrats, a political group aimed at electing progressive candidates to Congress. Through this initiative, he helped launch Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's successful 2018 congressional campaign. He served as Ocasio-Cortez's campaign manager and later as her first chief of staff in Congress. After leaving Capitol Hill, he returned to San Francisco and began leading a policy think tank. His think tank focuses on solving economic and environmental problems through clean energy strategies. He has said that he now wants to take these policy ideas to Congress to help both San Francisco and the country. Nancy Pelosi challenger Saikat Chakrabarti says Democrats are out of touch Clashes with Democratic leadership In 2019, Chakrabarti became the centre of controversy due to his outspoken social media posts while serving as chief of staff to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. He criticised moderate Democrats in now-deleted tweets, accusing them of harming communities of colour. One tweet compared them to the old Southern Democrats who supported segregation, which drew sharp backlash from party leadership. Nancy Pelosi reportedly addressed the issue in a closed-door meeting, warning members against using social media to attack fellow Democrats. Chakrabarti also faced criticism from right-wing media after being photographed wearing a T-shirt featuring Indian freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose. Critics pointed out Bose's controversial alliance with Nazi Germany during World War II.
New York Times
26-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
J. Bennett Johnston, Who Shaped U.S. Energy Policy, Dies at 92
J. Bennett Johnston Jr., a Louisiana Democrat and four-term United States senator who helped shape America's energy and science policies in an era of rising concerns over the perils of nuclear power and the nation's dependence on foreign oil, died in Arlington, Va., on Tuesday. He was 92. His death was confirmed by his son J. Bennett Johnston III. One of a new breed of polished Southern Democrats that included Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Mr. Johnston served in the Senate from 1972 to 1997, a tenure that included Middle East conflicts that threatened American oil imports, and nuclear licensing and safety changes in the aftermath of the nation's worst nuclear accident, the partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. A target of environmentalists' wrath, he favored more nuclear power plants, although public safety concerns limited new construction for decades. But he won fights to sharply expand oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the major offshore petroleum-producing area for the United States, and sponsored laws to let coastal states share federal revenue from offshore drilling. As chairman or a ranking member of the energy and natural resources committee from 1973 to 1996, he was involved in virtually all Senate energy legislation, from rewriting the nuclear licensing provisions of federal law to developing synthetic fuels and deregulating oil and natural gas prices to spur production. It was a delicate balancing act for a senator from a state with ferociously competing energy interests. In a state also renowned for flamboyant politicians like Huey and Earl Long and corrupt rogues like former Gov. Edwin W. Edwards, Mr. Johnston was a notable exception — a quiet intellectual with finely honed political judgments who grasped the technical intricacies of energy exploration and production and could also lucidly discuss astrophysics, subatomic particles and tennis serves. A trim, athletic man with receding hair, Mr. Johnston — an inveterate apple muncher who was said to be the Senate's most avid tennis player in his 50s — was an approachable, friendly man, responsive to questions and easy to talk to or negotiate with. . His voting was not based on loyalties. Colleagues said he switched sides according to his views on the merits of proposed legislation. He advocated higher gas-mileage standards for auto manufacturers, but opposed President Ronald Reagan's strategic defense initiative — a plan to use weapons in space to protect America from nuclear attack — calling it ill-conceived and too costly. On international policy, he often sided with liberals in support of the United Nations and foreign aid. But he joined conservatives in opposing abortion and most gun-control measures, and championed a 1981 bill to limit busing for racial integration in public schools to five miles or 15 minutes. The measure died in the House of Representatives. In Senate fights over candidates for the Supreme Court, Mr. Johnston helped lead a 1987 rejection of Robert H. Bork as President Reagan's nominee, but broke with his party in 1991 to support confirmation of President George H.W. Bush's nominee, Clarence Thomas. In 1988, with Democrats in control of the Senate and Robert F. Byrd of West Virginia stepping down as their leader after a decade, Mr. Johnston and Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii ran for majority leader, the Senate's most powerful post. Both lost to Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine. Mr. Johnston's support for higher education landed $110 million for five national research centers at universities in Louisiana. He crusaded for years for billions for the Superconducting Super Collider, a pure research particle accelerator, in Texas, to search for fleeting subatomic structures. 'It was lynched by the know-nothings,' he said when the project was canceled in 1993. 'I'm interested in understanding where the universe came from and where it's going,' Mr. Johnston told Physics Today magazine in 1996. 'I'm interested in the Higgs boson, which high-energy physicists hope to find if it exists at all, and, like them, I also hope the search produces surprises.' (In 2012, scientists announced that they had discovered a new subatomic particle that appeared to be the Higgs boson.) John Bennett Johnston Jr., who rarely used his first name, was born in Shreveport, La., on June 10, 1932, to John Bennett Johnston Sr., a lawyer, and the former Wilma Lyon. He graduated from Shreveport schools and attended the United States Military Academy at West Point and Washington and Lee University before graduating from law school at Louisiana State University in 1956. He married Mary Gunn the same year. They had four children: J. Bennett Johnston III, Hunter Johnston, Mary Johnston Norriss and Sally Roemer. In the Army from 1956 to 1959, he became a first lieutenant with the Judge Advocate General's Corps in Germany. After practicing law in Shreveport for several years, he began his political career in 1964 with election to the Louisiana House of Representatives. In 1968 he won a four-year term in the State Senate. In a state dominated by Democrats, with nominations tantamount to election, Mr. Johnston in 1971 ran for governor, but narrowly lost the nomination to Representative Edwin Edwards, who then won the first of his four terms as governor. Mr. Edwards later went to jail for eight years for bribery and extortion. In 1972, Mr. Johnston contested the renomination of United States Senator Allen J. Ellender, who had held his seat since 1936 as a protégé of the assassinated Senator Huey P. Long. But Mr. Ellender died during the campaign. Mr. Edwards named his own wife to the seat pending a special election, and Mr. Johnston won the nomination and the general election. He was re-elected in 1978 and again in 1984 against token opposition, despite a landslide for President Reagan that hurt other Democrats. Mr. Johnston's last campaign, in 1990, was his toughest — against David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who had become a popular state legislator. Even by Louisiana's baroque political standards, the race was strange: a powerful three-term Democratic incumbent overshadowed by a political neophyte who had not sponsored a single bill in the Louisiana Legislature. Mr. Duke dominated the campaign with appeals to white resentment over affirmative action and welfare programs, and allusions to his racially charged agenda. But his candidacy and his past associations with white supremacy groups were widely condemned, and Mr. Johnston won a fourth term. When that term ended in January 1997, Mr. Johnston, who lived in McLean, Va., retired from politics and founded Johnston & Associates, a Washington a lobbying firm that later went out of business. Mr. Johnston's son said that he is survived by his wife, his four children and 10 grandchildren.
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Former AOC chief of staff announces run against Pelosi, calls Dems 'paralyzed and unprepared' under Trump
The former chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., announced Wednesday his intention to run against Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., calling the Democratic Party "paralyzed and unprepared" for President Donald Trump's second term in office. In a lengthy message on X, Saikat Chakrabarti said he decided to run against the former House speaker, who is seeking a 21st term, after "watching Trump and Elon (Musk) freely unleash chaos in their illegal seizure of government." "It's become clear to me that the Democratic Party needs new leadership," he wrote. "I don't understand how DC's Democratic leaders are so paralyzed and unprepared for this moment after living through President Trump's first term — and after Trump and Elon warned us exactly what they planned to do." Pelosi Demurs On If 'Everything Is Ok' Between Her And Biden: 'You'd Have To Ask Him' While Chakrabarti said he respects the Democratic leader, the country has dramatically changed since her early days in Washington. He noted that Pelosi intervened to block Ocasio-Cortez from becoming chair of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform. "When Nancy Pelosi was first elected to Congress, you could buy a home on a single income. A summer job could pay for college," he wrote. "Republicans believed in climate change and respected election results. Now, the things that defined the American Dream — being able to afford health care, education, a home, and raise a family — are impossible for most people." Read On The Fox News App He added that the Republican Party is "overtly conspiratorial and anti-democracy." Aoc's 'Red Light District' Plagued By Crime As Democrat Who Helped Her Rise To Power Says She 'Disappeared' "The Democratic Party needs to stop acting like it's competing against a normal political party that plays by the rules, and it needs a bold vision for how to raise living standards, quality of life and security for all Americans," he said. "America is stuck, and Americans want real solutions that are as big as the problems we face." In his campaign, Chakrabarti said he plans to talk about problems that need solving for San Francisco, the U.S. and the Democratic Party. Click To Get The Fox News App Chakrabarti, who helped manage Ocasio-Cortez's upstart 2018 campaign, left his chief of staff position in 2019 after drawing the ire of Democrats when he publicly criticized party moderates during policy spats between progressive members and party leadership. That year, he tweeted that Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, one of the first two Native American women to serve in Congress, enabled a racist system after she voted in favor of a Senate border bill not backed by progressives. A month later, Chakrabarti described centrist Democrats who blocked a liberal-backed emergency border bill as the "new Southern Democrats." They "certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s," he wrote in a now-deleted post. Fox News Digital has reached out to article source: Former AOC chief of staff announces run against Pelosi, calls Dems 'paralyzed and unprepared' under Trump
Fox News
06-02-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Former AOC chief of staff announces run against Pelosi, calls Dems 'paralyzed and unprepared' under Trump
The former chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., announced Wednesday his intention to run against Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., calling the Democratic Party "paralyzed and unprepared" for President Donald Trump's second term in office. In a lengthy message on X, Saikat Chakrabarti said he decided to run against the former House speaker, who is seeking a 21st term, after "watching Trump and Elon (Musk) freely unleash chaos in their illegal seizure of government." "It's become clear to me that the Democratic Party needs new leadership," he wrote. "I don't understand how DC's Democratic leaders are so paralyzed and unprepared for this moment after living through President Trump's first term — and after Trump and Elon warned us exactly what they planned to do." While Chakrabarti said he respects the Democratic leader, the country has dramatically changed since her early days in Washington. He noted that Pelosi intervened to block Ocasio-Cortez from becoming chair of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform. "When Nancy Pelosi was first elected to Congress, you could buy a home on a single income. A summer job could pay for college," he wrote. "Republicans believed in climate change and respected election results. Now, the things that defined the American Dream — being able to afford health care, education, a home, and raise a family — are impossible for most people." He added that the Republican Party is "overtly conspiratorial and anti-democracy." "The Democratic Party needs to stop acting like it's competing against a normal political party that plays by the rules, and it needs a bold vision for how to raise living standards, quality of life and security for all Americans," he said. "America is stuck, and Americans want real solutions that are as big as the problems we face." In his campaign, Chakrabarti said he plans to talk about problems that need solving for San Francisco, the U.S. and the Democratic Party. Chakrabarti, who helped manage Ocasio-Cortez's upstart 2018 campaign, left his chief of staff position in 2019 after drawing the ire of Democrats when he publicly criticized party moderates during policy spats between progressive members and party leadership. That year, he tweeted that Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kansas, one of the first two Native American women to serve in Congress, enabled a racist system after she voted in favor of a Senate border bill not backed by progressives. A month later, Chakrabarti described centrist Democrats who blocked a liberal-backed emergency border bill as the "new Southern Democrats." They "certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s," he wrote in a now-deleted post. Fox News Digital has reached out to Pelosi.
