The White House on Tuesday doubled down on its stance that it won’t force striking dockworkers back on the job, and insisted that impacts to America’s vital goods will be minimal for now.

The key phrase is for now.

Just after midnight on Tuesday, thousands of dockworkers from New England to Texas represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association, who load and unload cargo at ports on the East and Gulf coasts, took to the picket lines. So far the Biden administration is sticking to its script: try to bring the union and the shipping industry to the table, monitor the situation and hope the dispute doesn’t drag out.

All of this means President Joe Biden is not planning to use powers from the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to end the strike. Business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are already calling for Biden to invoke the act, but that would infuriate union members just weeks before the election.

On Tuesday the Republican chair of the House Transportation Committee also called on the administration to use the Taft-Hartley law and blamed the administration for not preventing the strike in the first place. The letter, signed by Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and and Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee Chair Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) pointed to President George Bush’s decision to invoke the act against striking dock workers in 2002 as an example of effective action.

“Continued inaction only compounds our Nation’s economic harm, further burdening American families’ pocketbooks,” the Republicans wrote.

The White House said the president and vice president were briefed on assessments by federal agencies that “show impacts on consumers are expected to be limited at this time,” including fuel, food, medicine and infant formula.

The White House also outlined all the products that it says will not be affected by the strike, including bulk shipments of grain, crude oil, gasoline, natural gas, and other liquid fuel exports and imports.

But many other products — from fresh fruit to new cars and materials for manufacturing — will be affected, and that list could grow depending on how long the strike lasts.

For now, Biden is counting on his lieutenants to try to cajole both sides into a deal. He’s tasked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and economic adviser Lael Brainard to try to keep negotiations going.

The administration is also trying to assure Americans it has learned lessons about the supply chain from the pandemic, severe weather events and the collapse this year of a Baltimore bridge that idled part of that city’s port.

One Biden ally, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, suggested on Monday that the closeness to the election had its upsides because consumers shouldn’t feel major impacts from a strike during the few weeks before voters finish heading to the polls.

But the head of the dockworkers union has threatened to “cripple” the economy to get the shipping industry he’s negotiating with to meet his demands for higher wages. There were some last-minute hopes Monday for a deal before the strike began, with the shipping industry saying it had offered dockworkers “nearly” 50 percent wage increases over the next six years.

Appearing on Fox News Tuesday morning, Harold J. Daggett, international president of the dockworkers union, said it’s “time for Washington to put so much pressure on them to take care of us because we took care of them.”

“Now you start to realize who the longshoremen are, right? People never gave a shit about us until now when they finally realized that the chain is being broken now. Cars won’t come in, food won’t come in, clothing won’t come in. You know how many people depend on our jobs? Half the world,” he said.

SACRAMENTO, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed legislation that will require public universities in California to update their codes of conduct and train students on how to protest with civility, a response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations that erupted across the state last spring.

Universities will also have to add mandatory antidiscrimination training for students under the laws, which were introduced by Jewish lawmakers with the aim of counteracting antisemitic harassment that has reportedly spiked on college campuses since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year.

Both parties in the state Legislature broadly supported the proposals, despite opposition from pro-Palestinian activists and the ACLU. And Newsom endorsed updating university codes of conduct even before the bill was on his desk. The Democratic governor traveled to Israel soon after the attacks and released a plan targeting antisemitism in April as university protests were peaking.

“We know that tensions are high following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas,” state Sen. Steve Glazer, author of the codes of conduct bill, told reporters earlier this year. “Even in these difficult circumstances, all students should be able to freely express themselves without threat or intimidation, especially on college campuses.”

Protests have not yet exploded on California campuses the way they did last spring. And public university leaders have promised not to tolerate pro-Palestinian encampments that were raised up on several California campuses last year.

Much of the last academic year was marked by turmoil over the war. Jewish students at Berkeley had to be evacuated from an event as counter protesters forced open a door at the venue. Cal Poly Humboldt demonstrators occupied an administrative building for days. And counter protesters, some of them still unidentified, viciously beat occupants of a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California Los Angeles.

The Legislature’s Jewish Caucus members, all Democrats, were frustrated by the responses of university leaders — and responded with legislation. At first, they sought more sweeping changes, including a ban on calls for genocide, but that provision and others that tested free speech rights were removed.

The state’s public universities haven’t fought the changes, and some campuses have already begun steps such as code of conduct updates.

Yet the ACLU contested some of the proposals, arguing in one letter to lawmakers that the codes of conduct change would be duplicative and “only serves to chill the speech of students.” Also opposed were the United Auto Workers 4811, a campus workers union at the UC that went on strike last spring in protest of the system’s response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations. That work stoppage caused some Jewish lawmakers to reject legislation that would have provided unemployment benefits to striking workers.

In addition to this round of legislation, Newsom also signed a bill meant to prevent “hate littering” — the distribution of flyers and other materials on private property that threaten or harass people based on their identity.

It makes me think of this episode specifically:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street

I remember watching/reading/dissecting this episode in junior high. In Ohio. It's fucking nuts to see this playing out in real life.

The ending narration:

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices ... to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill ... and suspicion can destroy ... and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own—for the children and the children yet unborn.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/17348714

> Hey all, you might see some flyers from a socialist group who were originally working with Cincinnati Socialists about a planned event on 9/28. Cincy socialists canceled their event per the wishes of the Haitian community. The Haitian community has asked for no demonstrations for the month of September and they do not support this event stating that any planned action against the wishes of the Haitian community is to be viewed as actions of colonizers. > > The Black Panthers have been told not to demonstrate as well as other groups (we had a very large demonstration planned and we canceled per the Haitian community’s wishes), but this group is choosing selfish needs over solidarity and inflicting their addenda on people who do not want it.

Hey all, you might see some flyers from a socialist group who were originally working with Cincinnati Socialists about a planned event on 9/28. Cincy socialists canceled their event per the wishes of the Haitian community. The Haitian community has asked for no demonstrations for the month of September and they do not support this event stating that any planned action against the wishes of the Haitian community is to be viewed as actions of colonizers.

The Black Panthers have been told not to demonstrate as well as other groups (we had a very large demonstration planned and we canceled per the Haitian community’s wishes), but this group is choosing selfish needs over solidarity and inflicting their addenda on people who do not want it.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/17285544

> I didn't censor this, it was posted by them after Vance called them white supremacists.

I didn't censor this, it was posted by them after Vance called them white supremacists.