Subcontractors hit Obama Presidential Center with nearly $900K in unpaid claims
Source: BizPac Review · Bias: Far Right
Summary
Subcontractors who worked on former President Barack Obama’s presidential library are claiming they haven’t been paid. A Fox News report reveals that three more subcontractors have hit […]
Subcontractors hit Obama Presidential Center with nearly $900K in unpaid claims
Far Right
Subcontractors who worked on former President Barack Obama’s presidential library are claiming they haven’t been paid. A Fox News report reveals that three more subcontractors have hit […]
Maine Democrats on Saturday overwhelmingly nominated Troy Jackson, a former state Senate president and logger by trade, as their party’s nominee to challenge longtime Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November’s high-stakes US Senate election.“Well, thank you, Maine,” Jackson, 58, said after securing the votes of 566 of 571 delegates during Saturday’s special Democratic convention at Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. “Today we turn the page, today this becomes a general election campaign, and today we win the work of defeating Susan Collins in November.”“For nearly 30 years, Collins has told Maine that she is ‘concerned’,” Jackson said, referring to the 73-year-old incumbent’s go-to word when President Donald Trump and Republicans attack rights and justice. “She was concerned while she rubber-stamped Trump’s Medicaid cuts and gutted our healthcare.”“She’s concerned when she cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy,” he continued. “Concerned when she confirmed justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. And really tragically, she was concerned when she gave [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] billions to terrorize our neighbors and murder people in the streets with no accountability.”“But concern does not lower the costs of groceries or gas,” Jackson said. “Concern does not keep our monitoring wards of rural hospitals like down in Lincoln County open. Concern does not restore all the rights that she’s taken away. Maine does not need another six years of concern. We need someone with courage. We need a fighter, and we need a senator who remembers exactly who sent them to Washington.”“So if you’ve ever been ignored, underestimated, pushed around, or told that you have to wait your turn while the rich cut the line, I’m asking you to stand with us in this campaign,” he continued. “If you believe in your heart that healthcare is a right, stand with us. And if you believe that workers deserve power, stand with us. And if you believe our freedoms are worth defending, stand with us.”“And if you believe that Maine deserves a senator who will fight like hell for working-class people, well, stand with us,” Jackson added. “We have a party to unite, we have a movement to build, and we have a senator to defeat.”Jackson’s improbably rapid rise followed former Democratic nominee Graham Platner’s withdrawal from the race earlier this month amid allegations of sexual assault and abusive behavior. Supporters of Platner’s progressive platform warned at the time that they would not back a replacement candidate who did not share the same pro-worker, anti-war agenda.While Collins spokeswoman Blake Kernen called Jackson a “low-energy version” of Platner, Maine Democrats decided the fifth-generation lumberjack fit the bill.“The working class has been left behind and forgotten about,” Shelly Mountain, a former Aroostook County Democratic Committee chairwoman and Jackson delegate at the convention, told NBC News. “He is definitely working class and always—has always—been a champion for the working class.”Progressive politicians, advocacy groups, and labor organizations cheered Jackson’s nomination, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) saying that “he’s ready to fight for working people and flip this seat.”International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) president Brian Bryant said Saturday that “Troy Jackson knows firsthand what it means to work hard for a living and fight for a better future for working families.”“Throughout his career, he has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with union members and working people, never backing down from a challenge when workers’ rights were on the line,” he added. “He represents the strength of a people-powered movement focused on fairness, opportunity, and economic justice. Troy has our full support as he heads to the general election.”
President Trump’s newly announced tariffs could put Republican candidates at risk going into the midterms as Democrats seek to go on the offensive over the economic impact of Trump’s trade agenda. The Trump administration announced Thursday it will impose double-digit tariffs on imports from 60 trading partners over forced labor violations. Those duties went into…
Three subcontractors claim nearly $900,000 in unpaid work on Home Court, the Obama Presidential Center's basketball facility hosting WNBA All-Star events.
Markets have responded to President Donald Trump’s evaporating ceasefire by wiping out whatever gains it made after Trump’s premature announcement.And now CNN Table for Five host Abby Phillip reports the president is announcing new tariffs between 10 and 12 percentage points to dozens of U.S. trading partners, even as rising oil prices and inflation fears rattle the world's largest bond market and send the 10-year U.S. treasury yield “to its highest level since Trump reclaimed office.”But Saturday morning Table for Five panelist Marc LoPresti, CEO and Senior Market Strategist of Market Rebellion, did not agree with the news.“I kind of respectfully disagree with some of the fundamental premises there. I mean, the economy is actually doing quite well,’ claimed LoPresti. “We just were in the middle of another earnings season where earnings are beating on average expectations. That makes the earnings quarter over quarter in a row of earnings that have beat expectations of high average individuals.”“You're talking about corporations,” said CNN Global Affairs pundit Sabrina Singh. “Yeah, corporations are doing great,” “Well, that's an indication of how the economy is doing,” LoPresti argued.“I would say the family that's going to fill up a gallon of gas that's over $4 from where it was in May, would say it does not,” Singh countered.Phillip pointed out that while the economy has indeed been resilient, that is in spite of Trump's war and tariff policies, which have heaped new unnecessary costs upon Americans. But LoPresti said it was all for a good cause: “What the president's been trying to do, as it relates to tariffs and other policies, are to level the playing field, it's long-term gain for some short-term inflationary pressure.”“For who,” Phillip said.“For everyone,” said LoPresti.“What do you mean ‘leveling the playing field’? Who is paying the tariffs?” demanded Phillip.At that point, Singh busted in: “The tariffs get shifted to the consumer, which are Americans who buy goods from countries that are being taxed like Canada or Mexico.” “The last three quarters of corporate earnings nave not demonstrated that,” LoPresti said“You’re talking about corporate earnings, which is very different from a family living in Michigan, who is going to the gas pump to fill up with either diesel or gas, and they're seeing higher gas prices, higher diesel prices, and then they go to the grocery store,” said Singh. “So, on top of the higher gas prices, then they get to get the gift of driving to the grocery store to see grocery prices higher. Because guess what diesel does? It takes the goods coming off of those trucks and [makes them more costly.] So yes, those supermarkets or the corporations might be getting a higher earning paycheck here, but the average family is not.” “That's not the message that I'm trying to transmit here,” LoPresti insisted. “In breaking down corporate earnings reports since Liberation Day, corporations have reported by and large that they are not raising prices and passing the costs.”“That's not true,” Singh countered flatly. “They absolutely are. Grocery prices are higher.”Kmele Foster, editor at large at Tangle news, warned that LoPresti’s argument, which reflects corporations’ take, is doing nothing to encourage voters.“Actually, it seems like any single any moment you have politicians and pundits who are saying things are actually pretty good when in fact people feel otherwise is probably [not a good look.]” said Foster.LoPresti eventually lamented: “there’s no economic patriotism.” - YouTube youtu.be
CNN pushed back furiously after President Donald Trump turned Friday's White House Correspondents' Dinner into a mocking fest for reporter Kaitlan Collins — including a jab likening her to a transgender influencer.Trump set his sights on Collins roughly 10 minutes into his remarks at the rescheduled gathering, held at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, according to The Daily Beast. Collins had just accepted the WHCA's Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure for her reporting on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's February 2025 Oval Office blowup with Trump — a prize the president promptly dismissed as "fake.""She's a young, attractive woman," Trump told the crowd. "She never smiles. I said, 'Kaitlan do you ever smile? Smile!' You have a nice position; you're at CNN fake news. You should be a happy person. So smile, Kaitlan! Just smile."He then teased that Collins had landed a major sponsorship, before delivering the punchline that it was actually transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney on the Bud Light can, a reference to the 2023 conservative boycott of the beer brand. The riff was met with near silence."That was an appalling hit at our colleague Kaitlan Collins," responded CNN's Betsy Klein.Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter flagged that a rebuttal from Collins' team was already circulating before Trump had wrapped up his remarks. "And the fact that CNN had a statement supporting Kaitlan ready to go... in advance... tells you everything about this media moment," he wrote.Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny zeroed in on the contradiction of a commander-in-chief who routinely denounces the press nevertheless spending an entire evening at a dinner devoted to them. "For a president who complains so bitterly about the press, there's never been anyone in the history of the modern presidency who spends as much time talking to reporters," Zeleny wrote.CNN's Kristen Holmes delivered the sharpest jab of the night. "In addition to how much he speaks to the press, he is also one of the most unreliable sources at the White House," she said.The smile jab was not new. Trump has publicly hectored Collins about her facial expressions for months, telling her in June she had "hatred in her eyes" and calling her a "corrupt reporter."Friday's dinner was Trump's first as president. Originally scheduled for April, it was postponed after a gunman breached security outside the ballroom. The scaled-back redo drew about 700 guests, roughly a quarter of the original crowd. The 80-year-old president was also seen repeatedly closing his eyes for extended stretches as awards were handed out earlier in the evening.
Thirty years ago, I had my first job in PR, at a small Midtown Manhattan firm. This was before HR complaints were really a thing, which was lucky for the managing director, because his behavior would have gotten him fired a dozen times over.He was also one of the most offensive human beings I have ever met, and the fact that I'm still thinking about him three decades later tells you he left a nasty mark in my memories..He thought he was hilarious. In meetings, he'd riff on the size of his own anatomy, brag about his sex life with his wife in raunchy details, and disparage women in the room, all while chuckling at his own material. It was grotesque. But everyone reporting to him laughed, because that's what you did back then. And that laughter did exactly what you'd expect: it convinced him he was the funniest man alive.I thought about that atrocious boss when I watched Donald Trump's hour-plus “bomb after bomb” performance at Friday night's White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria. There he was again.If Trump had been a contestant on Chuck Barris's old game show "The Gong Show," he would have been gonged in the first 30 seconds. That show existed to publicly end bad performances. Trump went on for more than an hour, only because there was no gong to stop him..The reason Trump thinks he's funny is the same reason my old boss did. He surrounds himself with people who laugh because they feel they have to, not because anything is funny. At his rallies, 90 minutes of obscenities and insulting tangents get cheered by a crowd that showed up already believing he's a comic genius. On Truth Social, his posts get flooded with laughing emojis from followers who treat everything he types as the epitome of comedy. Trump has built an entire ecosystem that reflects his own ego and inflated narcissism back at him, and he's never had to sit with the silence that follows a joke that simply isn't funny.Friday night, he got that silence. The Correspondents' Dinner crowd wasn't a rally audience or a Truth Social feed. And it wasn’t a room full of yes men like Howard Lutnick and Stephen Miller. It was a room of journalists, people who, for the most part, cover Trump rather than worship him, and who don't laugh on command. And don’t find him funny in the least.And it showed. As CNN put it, Trump's jokes mostly fell flat, and by the network's own account, "even he could tell, in real time, that many of his jokes were bombing."The clearest example was when he tried to tell a joke about aging lawmakers. Trump told the room about a senator who got a text from his wife asking him to "come up the stairs and make love to me,” to which the senator supposedly replied, "I can't do both." No laughs. No laughing emojis. No praise. Just total silence. Trump tried to explain the joke — that’s when you know you’ve told a dud — then explained it again, then gave up and told the crowd, "That was actually the only thing I thought was good in this whole, frickin' stupid speech they wrote." An 80-year-old man, mocking other aging men for being past their prime, using a joke ultimately about his own stamina and assumed lack of libido, and nobody in the room found it funny but him.Then there was Kaitlan Collins. About 10 minutes into the speech, Trump used her CNN award to needle her, again, for supposedly never smiling. "You're at CNN fake news. You should be a happy person. So smile, Kaitlan! Just smile,’ before bizarrely and incomprehensibly comparing her to trans activist Dylan Mulvaney. Watching that elicited a loud, “what the ...?” from me.It’s always been his way of telling a woman her job is to perform pleasantness for him, as misogynistically as possible. What's almost too ironic to invent is that he delivered that riff to a room of reporters who sat there largely stone-faced themselves. Trump complained about a woman not smiling enough, to a crowd that wasn't smiling at him — at all.So, Friday night was revelatory in so many ways — well, let’s say redundantly revelatory because we all know Trump stinks at being funny, except when he’s not trying to be funny.Take Trump out of the sycophantic loop that he's built for himself, the rally crowds, the Truth Social replies, the aides who write his material and the aides who laugh at his vulgarity, and what's left is a joke of a man whose jokes flat out stink, just like him.Trump is someone who's spent his entire life, even before the presidency, basically being laughed at on command. That’s why he seems incapable of recognizing the difference between real laughter and fake laughter. My old boss had the same blind spot. He never learned it, because nobody with power over him — at least as long as I had to suffer through him — ever let him feel the silence. Trump felt it Friday night, and the only thing that would have interrupted that silence would have been the bang of a gong.
