https://www.axios.com/2024/04/14/teamsters-donation-josh-hawley-senate-republicans Scoop: Teamsters make another move toward GOP headshot Hans Nichols The Teamsters union's political action committee is jumping into the Missouri Senate race, contributing $5,000 to Sen. Josh Hawley's re-election campaign, Axios has learned. Why it matters: It's the latest indication that one of the country's biggest and most powerful labor unions — which has yet to endorse in the presidential election — is willing to back Republicans who share its priorities. In the past, the PAC has given overwhelmingly to Democrats, but Hawley has made a point to align himself with the labor movement, joining picket lines with the Teamsters and the United Auto Workers. In total, Hawley's first-quarter fundraising report will show that he raked in $2.56 million through April 1 and has $5.48 million cash on hand, according to a Hawley adviser. The other side: Hawley's likely Democratic opponent, Lucas Kunce, raised over $2.25 million in the first quarter, with Democrats eyeing a potential statewide vote on abortion rights as a way to make the race competitive. Zoom out: Historically, the Democratic Party and unions have been close to synonymous, with union leaders sending big checks to their candidates and using their members to run ground games on Election Day. But Republicans, led by former President Trump, have made inroads with working-class voters, if not all of their leaders. The United Auto Workers, led by Shawn Fain, has endorsed Biden, but Trump is working the Teamsters hard. He paid a personal visit to the union's president, Sean O'Brien, in January. Afterward, Trump claimed he had a "good shot" at receiving the endorsement from the Teamsters, which has approximately 1.3 million members. In January, the Teamsters' political arm contributed $45,000 to the Republican National Committee's convention fund, its first big donation to the RNC since 2004, according to the Washington Post. The Teamsters also contributed $135,000 to the Democratic National Committee last year. Zoom in: Hawley, first elected to the Senate in 2018, has worked to burnish his pro-union credentials inside the chamber and on picket lines. Last month, Hawley joined Teamsters workers on strike at Graybar Electric outside St. Louis. In late 2022, he voted for an amendment from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to add seven paid sick days to the rail workers' contract. By the numbers: In the 2022 election cycle, the Teamsters PAC gave $1.28 million to Democratic candidates and $30,000 to Republicans, according to OpenSecrets. In 2020, its Democratic tilt was even more pronounced, with the PAC giving $1.59 million to Democrats and $37,000 to the GOP. The bottom line: There's still some deep — and personal — animosity between the Teamster president and some Republican senators. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) challenged O'Brien to a fight during a Senate hearing in November.
I spoke about it well over 5 years ago, when Trump was still president. I worked in the management side of a heavily unionized industry and already then, listening to them talk, I could tell Trump attracted many of the white workers. Read your history. MAGA is not the Republican party, it is its cancer. Trump needs the support of unions and discharged military, he needs their numbers and their primitive Jan 6 like behavior. He just demonstrated that MAGA is powerful enough to dominate the Republican discourse, to the alarm of the most hawkish Republicans. Can the United States of America overcome this? I think so, but it's pretty damn scary to watch how fast MAGA infiltrated all branches of the government, its enforcement apparatus and the military.
Republicans are shopping for dollars, MAGA is plain folks rejecting the oligarch's kool-aid. We're not infiltrating, we're suffering from commie leprosy.
The Military’s Phantom ‘Extremists’ An independent study puts to rest another false media narrative. Good news: The U.S. military isn’t packed with violent extremists. That’s the gist of a new report commissioned by the Pentagon in 2021 and released quietly with little notice in December. The result won’t surprise Americans who have spent time in uniform, but it should calm the media frenzy about right-wing radicals in the armed forces. https://www.wsj.com/articles/milita...fense-analyses-pentagon-lloyd-austin-97619f4d
You believing it's "commie" this that or anything else is proof you have drank the oligarchs' kool-aid. They've been using this angle for a long time to divide and rule the working class. "They have you fighting a culture war to keep you from fighting a class war."
That's until they come out of their ratholes: https://abcnews.go.com/US/number-ca...-law-enforcement-government/story?id=77246717 https://www.forbes.com/sites/zachar...-sheriff-prepares-to-testify/?sh=74c54b9613c8 Most of the militias and enforcement forces are filled with white supremacists, many of whom are also ex military. We can argue about percentages all you want.
As a veteran military officer and close friends with Majors, Lt. Colonels, and Colonels on active duty... extremists have infitrated our military ranks along with gang members. They do not know the percentages but it is a concerning problem for them as they try very hard to identify them and then weed them out of the military especially the ones in our special military units. Also, there's been an increase in attacks on our infrastructure with few arrests. Simply, they're still out there. https://www.militarytimes.com/flash...hy-some-veterans-join-the-extremism-movement/ https://www.cfr.org/blog/violent-far-right-terrorist-threat-us-military https://www.theatlantic.com/newslet...xtremism-in-the-military-is-a-problem/677026/ wrbtrader