Senate Votes to Impose Contract On Rail Workers, But Not Give Them Paid Sick Leave

The Senate voted Thursday to advance a labor agreement to avert a rail strike—but not give workers needed paid sick leave.

The Senate voted 80-15 to advance a labor agreement brokered by President Joe Biden. The agreement is to be imposed on about 115,000 rail workers across the country. The Senate also voted 52-43 rejecting a measure to add seven paid sick leave days to the agreement. One Democrat, Joe Manchin, and 42 Republicans voted against. Rail workers currently have no paid sick days.

On Wednesday, the House overwhelmingly passed the labor agreement, but narrowly passed the measure to add the sick leave days to the deal. In between the House and Senate vote, Biden refused to whip momentum up for the measure, choosing instead to focus on the success of the labor deal he arranged.

Now, the agreement—without the sick leave provision—goes to the White House, where Biden is expected to sign it.

The paid sick leave measure, given to Biden on a platter by progressives, offered the president a second chance at getting it right for rail workers. But Biden did not express his support for the bill or engage with the notion that perhaps the best way to avert a strike is to address demands that prompted the threat in the first place.

The government’s failure to finally give rail workers paid sick days is disgraceful. More disgraceful is how Biden allowed, and even encouraged, such a failure to occur. He could have used the bully pulpit, and the momentum generated by workers and committed members of his caucus, to harden his supposed legacy as among the most pro-worker presidents.

Unfortunately, today’s outcome reveals that “Union Joe” may just be another hollow moniker. Given that a majority of rail workers have rejected Biden’s now-passed tentative agreement, it’s not necessarily guaranteed his lackluster deal will stop a strike anyways.

The House Judiciary Committee Republicans finally deleted a controversial tweet Thursday expressing support for Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Kanye West—after the rapper praised Hitler and the Nazis.

The House Judiciary GOP account tweeted “Kanye. Elon. Trump” in early October. The tweet stayed up through multiple controversies, including all three men seeming to embrace some form of white supremacy.

The New Republic reached out to the office of ranking committee member Jim Jordan about the deleted tweet but did not hear back by press time.

West, now known as “Ye,” gave an unhinged, multihour interview on InfoWars Thursday, during which he formally said he was a Nazi sympathizer. He said people should stop being mean to Nazis, as they had done some good things, and at one point said, “I like Hitler.” He also denied the Holocaust, saying it was “factually incorrect” that Hitler killed six million Jews.

West appeared on the show alongside Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Both of them met with Trump last week—a meeting that very few Republicans have condemned.

Although the InfoWars interview seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, Ye has been increasingly outspoken about his antisemitism in the past few months. He wore a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his Yeezy fashion show in October, just days before the Judiciary GOP posted the tweet, and he tweeted later in the month that he would go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”

That tweet got him banned from Twitter and cost him many major brand deals, including with Adidas.

Musk, however, said he’d spoken with Ye and insisted the musician had learned his lesson. Then, a month later, Musk shared a Nazi photo on Twitter the day before the midterm elections. A few days later, he welcomed Ye back onto the platform.

Since Musk took over, hate speech has skyrocketed on Twitter. The social media research group National Contagion Research Institute said that in the 12 hours since Musk bought Twitter, use of the n-word increased almost 500 percent.

As for Trump, in addition to meeting with Fuentes, he has made veiled threats to the American Jewish community and embraced white supremacists. He chillingly told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during a 2020 presidential debate.

On Thursday, Kanye West, known now as “Ye,” appeared on InfoWars alongside antisemite and white supremacist Nick Fuentes. There, Ye formally came out as a Nazi sympathizer.

“You’re not Hitler, you’re not a Nazi, you don’t deserve to be called that and demonized,” Alex Jones insisted to Ye.

“Well, I see good things about Hitler, also” Ye said.

He went on to complain that he has to love Jews, and what they’re doing with “contracts” and “pornography,” but that he can’t also appreciate “this guy that invented highways, invented the very microphone that I use as a musician,” seemingly misconstruing the false notion that the Nazis invented the microwave oven and the autobahn highway in Germany.

“Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.”

At another point in the interview, West simply says, “I like Hitler.”

The House Judiciary GOP’s infamous tweet that read “Kanye. Elon. Trump,” has now been deleted as of Thursday afternoon. Unfortunately, the tweet’s expressive function as some form of a Nazi summoning hex has been dealt.

Elon Musk continues to reinstate racist, antisemitic, and inflammatory Twitter accounts—including Ye. The disgraced hip hop artist and ex-billionaire has now quadrupled down on straightforward Nazi propaganda. Trump himself shared an evening meal with Fuentes and Ye last week, thereafter attempting to distance himself, claiming he “didn’t know” who Fuentes was. On InfoWars Thursday, Ye claimed Trump “loved” Fuentes.

Several prominent—and predominantly liberal—Twitter accounts have had major issues this week, but no one really seems to know why.

Dean Baker, the senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research, had his account suspended Thursday. He said Twitter claimed in an email that he had violated the platform’s spam rules.

“I have no idea,” Baker said, when asked why he was suspended. He appealed the suspension, and his account was reinstated, but his follower count had dropped precipitously, from about 67,000 to 400, although the number has grown.

Baker’s work is not political—economic research is numbers-driven and neutral—but he noted he makes the occasional joke about Twitter owner Elon Musk and has written about repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from liability over what people post.

Andrew Lawrence, founder of the left-wing blog Media Matters, also had his account temporarily suspended Thursday for “spam.” Although his account was reinstated within an hour, he told reporter Ben Collins he had “no idea why I was suspended.”

Other major users have also been having issues on Twitter. HuffPost reporter Nathalie Baptiste posted a screenshot of her notifications tab, which said she had none.

On Wednesday, The Nation tweeted at Musk directly, saying the outlet’s reporter Joan Walsh’s account had been hacked. “She’s contacted @TwitterSupport at least a dozen times—no answer,” The Nation said.

Since Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter, the company has been rife with controversy and problems. Musk immediately fired most of the top executives and the entire board of directors, followed soon after by nearly half the workforce. The remaining employees are leaving in droves.

Many accounts that had been suspended for spreading disinformation or inciting violence—such as former President Donald Trump’s and the personal account for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—have been allowed back online. Twitter also dropped its Covid-19 misinformation regulations on November 23, without fanfare.

Sam Bankman-Fried “didn’t try to commit fraud” and is “shocked” at how his gargantuan crypto empire collapsed and left customers down $8 billion.

On Wednesday, the FTX founder and former CEO spoke in a virtual interview at The New York Times’ Dealbook Summit, an event featuring speakers including Blackrock chairman and CEO Larry Fink, former Vice President Mike Pence, Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mark Zuckerberg.

From the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried attempted to paint himself as both responsible for the billions of missing customer dollars and remorseful and unimpeachable regarding those losses. “I was CEO of FTX … I had a responsibility,” he said. When asked whether FTX inappropriately loaned customer funds to Alameda Research, a crypto trading firm he co-founded, he said he “didn’t knowingly commingle funds.”

Bankman-Fried claimed to have distanced himself from Alameda, which was why he apparently didn’t understand the circumstances of the company. But Bankman-Fried lived with Alameda employees, including its CEO, his ex-girlfriend.

Bankman-Fried secretly used $10 billion in customer funds from FTX to prop up Alameda. At least $1.5 billion of that money is missing. Now, after FTX’s collapse and bankruptcy filing, more than a million customers are owed roughly $8 billion—an amount that FTX and its affiliates don’t have.

“I’ve had a bad month …” Bankman-Fried said at the summit, prompting laughter from the audience of people who paid $2,499 to attend. “But that’s not what matters here. What matters here is the millions of customers, what matters here is the stakeholders in FTX. And what matters is trying to help them out.” Even in times of crisis, Bankman-Fried is ever the effective altruist.

Bankman-Fried’s appearance on Wednesday comes during a broader media tour. Thursday morning, he appeared in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopouols. He was also able to negotiate an embargoed interview with New York magazine, in which he echoed similar sentiments of remorse and “concern” for customers, while refusing to answer basic questions on his culpability or knowledge of customer funds being used to prop up Alameda.

Bankman-Fried has tried and will continue to try to present as someone who got caught up in the tribulations of being in charge of so much but apparently, at the same time, nothing at all. He ought not get away with it.