Letters from an American - September 9, 2024

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

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September 9th, 2024. Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign launched a new section of its website detailing her policy positions. Titling her plans, A New Way Forward, Harris vows to build the American middle class through an opportunity economy. Her vision for the future, she says, protects our fundamental freedoms, strengthens our democracy, and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead. Harris's economic plan builds on that of the Biden-Harris administration. This makes sense since their focus on investing in the middle class has created the strongest economy in the world. Harris is emphasizing the need to bring down household costs of food, medicine, housing, health care, and child care, all issues important to Americans. The website provides concrete economic actions she

plans to take with a willing Congress. They include expanding the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit, investing in more housing, and supporting the PRO Act, which protects the rights of workers to unionize, while continuing the crackdown on business consolidation that kills competition and rolling back the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. The biggest economic shift from the current administration is pegging a new capital gains tax for those earning more than a million dollars a year at 28%, significantly lower than the 39.6% President Joe Biden proposed in his 2025 budget. The plans also call for the first ever national ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries. 37 states already have such laws. Aside from strictly economic plans, the policy pages say Harris backs passing

the bipartisan immigration bill that Republicans killed on Trump's orders, protecting reproductive health care and restoring Roe v. Wade, and protecting the right to vote and ending partisan gerrymandering through the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. gerrymandering through the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Republicans have charged that Harris has not offered specifics for her policies, but much of what is now clearly laid out is already in the public record. By the standards of American history, it is a strikingly moderate agenda that reflects the belief that the best way for the government to protect opportunity and nurture the economy is to make sure that the system is fair and that ordinary people have access to opportunity. The new way

forward in Harris's plan seems to be less a new set of policies than a rejection of the politics of the past several decades. She and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, appear to be attempting to reshape the political landscape, to bring Americans of all parties together to stand against Trump's MAGA Republicans. The campaign has actively reached out to Republicans, several of whom spoke at the Democratic National Convention. On Saturday, Harris said she was honored to have the endorsement of former Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican of Wyoming, and former Vice President Dick Cheney, both staunch Republicans. People are exhausted about the division and the attempt to divide us as Americans, she said. We love our country, and we have more in common than what separates us. We love our country, and we have more in common than what separates us.

Trump's website offers slogans rather than policies, so Harris's website compares her policies to the comparable sections of Project 2025, the playbook for a second Trump term laid out by a number of right-wing institutions led by the Heritage Foundation. Trump and his campaign have tried to distance themselves from Project 2025, but at his rallies, he has offered the policies in it, like firing nonpartisan civil servants and replacing them with loyalists and abolishing the Department of Education, as his top priorities. While Harris focused on policy, as critics have demanded, MAGA Republicans today spread slurs about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, claiming they are eating other people's pets and local wildlife. Right-wing media figure Benny Johnson, who was one of the six commenters whose paychecks at now disbanded Tenet media were paid by Russia, was one of those pushing the false stories. So was ex-owner Elon Musk. The story was debunked almost immediately by

the Springfield police, but Republican politicians ran with it. The ex-account for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee shared it. So did Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who shared an image with two kittens saying, please vote for Trump so immigrants don't eat us. And the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, posted, reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country. The Haitians in Springfield are in the U.S. legally. Perhaps most significantly, Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who is challenging Democratic Ohio Senator Sharon Brown, pushed the fake story. That Senate seat is crucial to the Republican attempt to take control of the Senate, and Marino has just launched a $25 million ad campaign against Brown, accusing him of giving undocumented immigrants taxpayer

funded benefits. Today's disinformation was well-timed for that ad campaign. The Justice Department today announced charges against two leaders of the white supremacist Terrorgram Collective, an international terrorist group that operates on the platform Telegram. Dallas Humber of California and Matthew Allison of Idaho have been charged with soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. They solicited murders and hate crimes based on the race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and gender identity of others, U.S. Attorney Philip Talbert said. They had a hit list of federal, state, and local officials, as well as

corporate leaders, and they encouraged attacks on government infrastructure, including energy facilities. Their plan was to create a race war. Hate crimes fueled by bigotry and white supremacy and amplified by the weaponization of digital messaging platforms are on the rise and have no place in our society, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clark of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said. Congress is back in session today and must fund the government before October 1st or face a government shutdown. Although Congress negotiated spending levels for 2024 and 2025 back in June 2023, the House has been unable to pass appropriations bills because MAGA extremists either refuse to accept those levels or insist on inserting culture war poison pills into the bills.

Now, Trump has demanded that a continuing resolution to fund the government must include a measure requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Since it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in elections for president or members of Congress, and there is no evidence it is anything but vanishingly rare, the measure actually seems designed to suppress voting. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, went along and put the measure in the bill. He also designed for the measure to last until next March, making the budget so late a new president could write it, but also blowing through a January 1st deadline set in the June 2023 bill to require automatic

cuts to spending. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat of New York, wrote to his colleagues, House Democrats have made it clear that we will find bipartisan common ground on any issue with our Republican colleagues whenever possible, while pushing back against MAGA extremism. Jeffries called the Republican bill unserious and unacceptable. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told House and Senate leaders that the cuts required by law if Congress pushes the budget into March would drastically affect the military. The repercussions of Congress failing to pass regular appropriations legislation for the first half of fiscal 2025 would be devastating to our readiness and ability to execute the national defense strategy, Austin wrote. Meanwhile, Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican of Alabama, is back to his old trick of blocking

a military promotion, this time of Lieutenant General Ronald Clark, one of Austin's top aides. Tuberville says he placed the hold because he has concerns that Clark did not alert Biden when Austin had surgery. Biden has nominated Clark to become the commanding general of the U.S. Army Pacific, a position currently held by General Charles A. Flynn, younger brother of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security advisor, who resigned after news broke that he had hidden conversations with Russian operatives. Today, 10 retired senior military officials endorsed Harris, saying, She is the best and only presidential candidate in this race who is fit to serve as our commander-in-chief. Frankly stated, Donald Trump is a danger to our national security and our democracy.

His own former national security advisors, defense secretaries, and chiefs of staff have said so. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Denham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.