Both Sides: Why we don't fuck with the GOP: Update: Trump says Obama is guilty of treason.


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Republican donors trying to unseat Pittsburgh’s progressive Black mayor​

Democratic primary battle promising to be biggest test for progressive movement since Trump’s presidential victory

Joan E Greve
Mon 3 Mar 2025 06.00 EST
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Several major Republican donors are throwing their financial support behind the primary opponent of Ed Gainey, who became Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor in 2022 and now faces a difficult re-election fight this year, in a seemingly concerted effort to oust the progressive leader.
The Democratic primary battle between Gainey and Corey O’Connor, the Allegheny county controller, is shaping up to be one of the biggest tests of the progressive movement since Donald Trump’s victory last November. The victor of the 20 May primary is widely expected to win the general election, and with few major races on the ballot this year, Gainey’s re-election could provide a morale boost for progressives still reeling from Democrats’ losses in the 2024 races.

The mayoral race may also offer insight into the broader political environment in Pennsylvania, a pivotal battleground state that Trump won by roughly 2 points last year. While Trump made marginal gains in Philadelphia and its surrounding counties, his performance in Allegheny county, which covers Pittsburgh, remained virtually unchanged from four years earlier. Trump won just 22% of the Pittsburgh vote, while 77% went to Kamala Harris.

With so much attention on the mayoral race, prominent Republicans are now getting involved in the contest. According to campaign finance reports, several prominent Republican donors have already contributed the maximum allowable amount of $3,300 to O’Connor’s war chest before the primary.
Those Republican donors include J Clifford Forrest, the founder of Rosebud Mining Company, who gave $1m to the Trump 2017 inaugural committee, and Kent McElhattan, who contributed more than $200,000 to Senate Republicans’ campaign arm during the 2024 election cycle. Herb Shear, who donated more than $675,000 to the Pac and Super Pac affiliated with the Republican Jewish Coalition during the 2024 cycle, also contributed the maximum allowable amount to O’Connor’s campaign.
Those donations appear to be part of a larger effort by certain Republican operatives to boost O’Connor’s prospects in the primary. According to an email seen by the Guardian, Jeff Kendall, a trustee of the conservative non-profit Commonwealth Partners, invited interested parties to a meeting with O’Connor at a private social club in Pittsburgh last month. Jeffrey Yass, the billionaire financier and Republican mega-donor from a mainline suburb of Philadelphia, has previously been linked to Commonwealth Partners.

In his email, Kendall noted O’Connor would “open the meeting with his pitch and answer questions”. Kendall added: “Kent Gates of Brabender will discuss recent polling and the plan to win this race.” According to his LinkedIn profile, Gates serves as senior director of strategic planning for data and insights at BrabenderCox, a Republican consulting firm that received more than $1.4m from Trump’s leadership Pac, Never Surrender Inc, during the 2024 cycle.
Reached for comment, the O’Connor campaign highlighted financial contributions to Gainey in past years that came from donors with ties to the Republican party. Those contributions included $5,000 in donations from Forrest and his wife, Tracy, during Gainey’s 2021 mayoral campaign. A spokesperson for Gainey said he returned the Forrests’ full donations once he became aware of them, in a transaction that will be reflected in his February fundraising report.
Asked about O’Connor’s February meeting, the candidate’s spokesperson said the campaign “had no involvement in the planning of this event”.
“Corey spoke about his record of progressive reform and his plans to make housing more affordable, expanding before and after school programming, and reopening [recreation] centers,” the O’Connor campaign said.
“This is the same stump speech that he has shared with hundreds of residents and dozens of community organizations across Pittsburgh. The campaign did not know who would be in attendance in advance.”
If O’Connor and his allies are successful, it would mark a significant defeat for the progressive organizers who helped carry Gainey to a primary victory four years ago. In 2021, Gainey, then a state representative, defeated the incumbent mayor, Bill Peduto, by 7 points in the Democratic primary before going on to easily win the general election.
Since taking office, Gainey has faced questions about his handling of public safety concerns, although he often notes that the city’s homicide rate has dropped significantly since 2022. More recently, Gainey attracted criticism from Republicans and rightwing media outlets in January, when he announced his administration would not work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents amid Trump’s calls for a mass-deportation program.
When O’Connor launched his campaign in December, he decried a lack of vision from the Gainey administration, saying: “When I look around, I see a mayor and an administration managing decline instead of trying to grow Pittsburgh.”
O’Connor’s primary bid is not the first recent effort to unseat one of Pittsburgh’s progressive leaders. The representative Summer Lee, a progressive who represents Pittsburgh in the House of Representatives, faced a well-funded primary challenge from local council member Bhavini Patel last year. The organization Moderate Pac, which was largely funded by Yass, spent more than $600,000 in support of Patel’s campaign.
Lee turned Yass’s financial involvement in the primary into a campaign issue, attacking the mega-donor as an out-of-touch billionaire seeking to remove a promising, young progressive from office.
“Everybody in the country is waiting to see whether or not we can have a reflective democracy,” Lee said days before her primary. “We’re going to send a message to every dark-money billionaire, whoever they are: that your influence is no longer welcome in our democracy.”
That message ultimately won out, as Lee went on to defeat Patel in the primary by 21 poi
 

Trump purge hits Chips Act office, two-fifths of staff to be terminated: Report​


The gov't staff behind $52 billion chip program join the list of DOGE casualties

According to Bloomberg, 20 employees previously accepted resignations last week, with the other 40 being "probationary" employees who had begun their positions within the last two years; those probationary workers were to be terminated by the end of Monday.


It is no secret that President Trump is not a fan of the Chips Act. The law signed by the previous President Biden devotes $52 billion to investing in American semiconductor production and R&D. In response, companies including Intel and TSMC have pledged $400 billion in private investment in moving more of the supply chain to the U.S.

“The CHIPS Program Office has told us that certain conditions that do not align with President Trump’s executive orders and policies are now under review for all CHIPS Direct Funding Agreements,” shared GlobalWafers spokesperson Leah Peng. Some funding promised by the Biden-era Chips Office includes stipulations requiring allowing the unionization of chip fab workers and paid parental leave, policies outside of the Trump administration's wishes.

 


@13:06

:idea:

Interesting point on Trump and how he communicates and the democrats issue with communicating their agenda​
 
@Camille @easy_b


Ex-White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Says Biden Forced Out of Race by Democratic ‘Firing Squad’​

Karine Jeane-Pierre speaks at the Institute of Politics about media's role in democracy on Wednesday. Jeane-Pierre was former President Joe Biden's press secretary.

Karine Jeane-Pierre speaks at the Institute of Politics about media's role in democracy on Wednesday. Jeane-Pierre was former President Joe Biden's press secretary. By Elise A. Spenner
By Elise A. Spenner, Crimson Staff Writer
February 27, 2025
Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lambasted Democratic leadership for attacking Joe Biden like a “firing squad” at a Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics forum Wednesday, saying the party should have united behind the former president.
“I have never seen anything like that,” she said. “It was truly, truly unfortunate. And I think it hurt us more than folks realized to have done that.”
Jean-Pierre attended a discussion with spring IOP fellow Brittany Shepherd and Anoushka Chander ’25 — her first public event since leaving the White House in January.
Jean-Pierre stood by Biden’s achievements, his cognitive fitness, and his decision to run for re-election during the talk. She echoed statements from Michael C. Donilon — a senior advisor to Biden and a current IOP fellow — who defended the former president on the same stage just two weeks ago.
“I believe in what we were trying to get done,” Jean-Pierre said. “I would not have come back into the administration, I don’t think, for anybody else.”
Jean-Pierre served as the White House press secretary from May 2022 to January 2025, and is the first Black person and openly LGBTQ person to hold the position. She credited the Biden administration with restoring a traditional and productive relationship between the press and the White House.
“We tried to bring that norm back, because we understood how important it was to have the freedom of the press,” Jean-Pierre said. “Even when we didn’t agree with them, it didn’t matter, even when it was contentious in that room.”
But President Donald Trump has already taken steps to reverse the Biden administration’s efforts. One day before Jean-Pierre spoke, Trump announced his plan to take control of the White House press pool, hand-picking the small group of reporters given access to the President’s movements.
“What I am seeing now is scary,” Jean-Pierre said. “When you take that away, when you do not do that, then where’s the democracy? Where’s that healthy back-and-forth? Where’s the accountability?”
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Jean-Pierre said that over the last month she has “deprogrammed” herself after the stress of her White House responsibilities, which required her to wake up at 4:30 a.m. for four years. Jean-Pierre wrote in a recent Vanity Fair op-ed that she was simultaneously caring for her mother, who was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2023.
“I have not missed it at all,” she said. “It was an honor and a privilege to have the job, to be the White House press secretary, and I would do it again easily, but I don’t miss it.”
Jean-Pierre said the traditional demands of the role were compounded by the pressure to “represent many communities.”
“You have to outperform,” she said. “You have to be better than everybody before you, because you don’t want to be the last. You want people to see you doing the job and say, ‘Oh yeah, okay, we can see someone else who looks like you be in that job.’”
“There were moments where I was like, ‘Okay, can I get up and do this over again? Can I continue to do the job?’” Jean-Pierre added. “And I would always say yes.”
 
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