Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth WarrenWarren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases OVERNIGHT DEFENSE: Joint Chiefs chairman says he regrets participating in Trump photo-op | GOP senators back Joint Chiefs chairman who voiced regret over Trump photo-op | Senate panel approves 0B defense policy bill Trump on collision course with Congress over bases with Confederate names MORE’s (D-Mass.) presidential campaign has reportedly outpaced her Democratic rivals and even President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE in terms of hiring staffers as she prepares a grass-roots bid for the 2020 nomination.
According to Reuters, Warren has almost twice as many paid campaign staff members as rival Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: Milley apologizes for church photo-op Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness MORE (I-Vt.), and spent more than $1 million on payroll-related expenses in the first quarter of 2019.
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Warren had 161 employees on staff before the Federal Election Commission filing deadline this week, according to documents reviewed by the news service, while Sanders had 86 paid employees, and spent about $417,000 during the quarter.
Sen. Kamala HarrisKamala Devi HarrisRand Paul introduces bill to end no-knock warrants The Hill’s Campaign Report: Biden campaign goes on offensive against Facebook McEnany says Juneteenth is a very ‘meaningful’ day to Trump MORE (D-Calif.), by comparison, had 44 people on staff, but spent $477,000 on salaries last quarter.
Warren’s campaign even outpaced the Trump campaign, which spend just over $400,000 on payroll for the first quarter of 2019, according to Reuters. Trump’s campaign, however, is reportedly being boosted by the Republican National Committee, which has also begun building its reelection team.
Warren’s expenditures on payroll have led to less spending elsewhere, Reuters noted, adding that she trails both Sanders and Harris in terms of dollars spent on online campaign ads.
The Massachusetts senator has trailed Sanders, Harris and other prominent Democrats including former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenHillicon Valley: Biden calls on Facebook to change political speech rules | Dems demand hearings after Georgia election chaos | Microsoft stops selling facial recognition tech to police Trump finalizing executive order calling on police to use ‘force with compassion’ The Hill’s Campaign Report: Biden campaign goes on offensive against Facebook MORE and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete ButtigiegPete ButtigiegScaled-back Pride Month poses challenges for fundraising, outreach Biden hopes to pick VP by Aug. 1 It’s as if a Trump operative infiltrated the Democratic primary process MORE in recent polls of early primary states.
Sen. David Perdue’s (R-Ga.) reelection campaign paid a $30,000 fine to federal regulators for fundraising violations from the 2014 election, documents show.
A disclosure from Monday, the filing deadline for the latest quarter, shows that Perdue’s campaign paid a $30,000 civil penalty last month to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
The payment was the result of a negotiated settlement between the campaign and the FEC based on an audit that found violations in Perdue’s 2014 fundraising reports.
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The audit originally found that the campaign received $271,193 in excessive contributions and failed to disclose $128,972 in debts and obligations.
The campaign presented legal arguments and provided documents that reduced the amount of excessive contributions, according to the settlement, though it does not specify the reduced amount. Auditors also confirmed that disclosure reports were amended to disclose the debts.
“After undergoing an exhaustive four-year-long process, we reached a reasonable agreement regarding some typical bookkeeping errors that occur on a campaign of this size in order to bring the matter to a close,” Perdue’s campaign consultant Derrick Dickey told The Hill in a statement.
Perdue won his seat in 2014 after defeating former charity executive Michelle Nunn (D), the daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.).
The GOP senator is up for reelection in 2020 in a race that the Cook Political Report rates as likely Republican.
Nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters said they would be open to changing their minds about who they support in the party’s 2020 primaries, according to a new poll.
In a CNN survey released Tuesday, 64 percent of Democrats and likely Democrats who had selected a favorite presidential candidate said it is possible they might change their mind. Thirty-six percent said they “definitely support” their top choice.
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When asked which candidates they wanted to learn more about, Sen. Kamala HarrisKamala Devi HarrisRand Paul introduces bill to end no-knock warrants The Hill’s Campaign Report: Biden campaign goes on offensive against Facebook McEnany says Juneteenth is a very ‘meaningful’ day to Trump MORE (D-Calif.) topped the list, with 23 percent of respondents putting her in the top three candidates they were most curious about. She was followed by Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth WarrenWarren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases OVERNIGHT DEFENSE: Joint Chiefs chairman says he regrets participating in Trump photo-op | GOP senators back Joint Chiefs chairman who voiced regret over Trump photo-op | Senate panel approves 0B defense policy bill Trump on collision course with Congress over bases with Confederate names MORE (D-Mass.), with 20 percent, and former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenHillicon Valley: Biden calls on Facebook to change political speech rules | Dems demand hearings after Georgia election chaos | Microsoft stops selling facial recognition tech to police Trump finalizing executive order calling on police to use ‘force with compassion’ The Hill’s Campaign Report: Biden campaign goes on offensive against Facebook MORE (D) at 19 percent.
The poll was conducted April 25-28. Among the 1,007 respondents, 411 were Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents who are registered to vote and 367 said they had already chosen a candidate to support in the party’s 2020 primary.
The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
The field of 2020 field has grown to 21 Democratic presidential candidates. Biden has consistently led the field, and a new poll puts him 24 points ahead of his nearest challenger, Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: Milley apologizes for church photo-op Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness MORE (I-Vt.).
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete ButtigiegPete ButtigiegScaled-back Pride Month poses challenges for fundraising, outreach Biden hopes to pick VP by Aug. 1 It’s as if a Trump operative infiltrated the Democratic primary process MORE (D) has seen a rise in popularity in recent weeks, often polling in third place, while Harris, who was once considered a front-runner has been falling recently.
A lengthy Bloomberg article spotlighting President Donald Trump’s long affinity for McDonald’s—which preceded a major decision from a federal agency that involved the fast food giant—revealed Thursday morning that thousands of previously unreported company documents and internal emails expose how “corporate executives monitored developments as managers helped orchestrate a years-long anti-union response across the U.S.”
Bloomberg reviewed McDonald’s internal records and reported that the company’s “tactics, which were discussed by and, at times, coordinated by regional executives of the company, included gathering intelligence from a cashier who attended a union meeting as a mole, circulating names of suspected pro-union workers, and coaching a franchisee on how to avoid hiring union sympathizers.”
McDonald’s and several of its franchises had turned over the documents to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in response to a federal judge’s subpoena, which came as part of a years-long case that involved the question of whether McDonald’s is a “joint employer” and thus liable for labor law violations committed by its franchisees.
Bloomberg‘s report came just hours before the NLRB—which is chaired by a Trump appointee—issued a split ruling instructing a federal judge to approve a settlement in the McDonald’s case that does not include a joint employer finding. The Wall Street Journal called the development “a victory for the world’s largest fast food chain as it faces calls to improve working conditions at its 14,000 domestic restaurants.”
Those calls ramped up in 2012, in the form of the national Fight for $15 campaign, which is supported by labor groups including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). McDonald’s has remained a key target of the campaign—which called the NLRB ruling “illegitimate” and accused Trump administration agencies of “making decisions in the interest of corporations like McDonald’s and not the American people or the law.”
“The settlement is not valid,” the campaign said in a statement, promising a forceful appeal. “McDonald’s is walking away with a get-out of-jail-free card after illegally retaliating against low-paid workers who were fighting to be paid enough to feed their families.”
Ahead of the NLRB ruling Thursday, SEIU president Mary Kay Henry also vowed to appeal any decision that didn’t serve workers.
Henry told Bloomberg in a statement that “it’s going to take a lot more than a politically motivated decision on behalf of a Trump administration doing McDonald’s bidding to stop the workers of the Fight for $15.”
In a series of tweets Thursday that highlighted the report, Henry added that “it’s simply not healthy [for] our country when corporations can use their massive power and influence to block working people from having any power and influence in their communities.”
“Americans who work hard to generate profit for [McDonalds] and other large corporations,” she wrote, “should get a seat at the table through #UnionsForAll to negotiate for a fair return on that hard work.”
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Bloomberg detailed workers’ demands for improvements—which often came in the form of public demonstrations—and how McDonald’s has responded to them:
The Fight for $15 campaign shared the report on Twitter, denouncing McDonald’s behavior as “illegal” and “anti-worker.”
According to Bloomberg:
Without addressing several allegations, McDonald’s told Bloomberg in a statement that the case is “incredibly complex” and that the “evidence is vast and complicated, and requires significant context to accurately and responsibly consider.” The company challenged Bloomberg‘s summary of the evidence and said that “what you have highlighted are selective allegations and asserted them as facts, when there has been no judicial decision or review.”
Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, concluded from the report that “the owner class will buy up every lever of power they can. They will fight with every tired, dirty trick in the book. But in the end we will win because together we are unstoppable.”
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Rule changes proposed by the Trump administration last week could let banks classify investments in professional sports stadiums as aid to the poor, and then give the financial institutions a significant tax break for their efforts.
The changes are part of an Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) plan to overhaul the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which requires banks to invest in low-income communities.
Both bank regulators are run by appointees of President Donald Trump.
As Bloomberg reported Monday, “the agencies drafted a long list hypothetical ways banks could seek to meet their obligations [under the Community Reinvestment Act], including this sentence on page 100 of their proposal: ‘Investment in a qualified opportunity fund, established to finance improvements to an athletic stadium in an opportunity zone that is also [a low- or moderate-income] census tract.'”
“There are well over a dozen NFL venues nestled in so-called opportunity zones,” Bloomberg noted. “They include M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, home of the National Football League’s Ravens, which this year completed $120 million in upgrades such as a new sound system… There also are facilities for professional baseball, basketball, soccer, and hockey teams in the zones.”
Under the 2017 tax law signed by President Donald Trump, real estate developers and financial institutions that invest in “opportunity zones” receive a capital gains tax cut.
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The tax incentive sparked criticism from lawmakers including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who warned in a statement last month that “there are no safeguards to ensure taxpayers are not simply subsidizing handouts for billionaires with no benefit to the low-income communities this program was supposed to help.”
“Republicans who support the program should work with Democrats to ensure it does not become a boondoggle,” Wyden said.
Critics reacted with incredulity to the Trump administration’s proposed rule changes.
“The proposed credit for financing ‘improvements’ to stadiums soon raised eyebrows among policy wonks,” Bloomberg reported. “That may put pressure on regulators to clarify whether banks really can satisfy CRA obligations by, say, funding a 200-foot video screen.”
Daily Beast reporter Lachlan Markey said the proposal is “simply astonishing.”
Pat Garofalo, managing editor of Talk Poverty and author of the “Boondoggle” newsletter, tweeted that the proposed rule changes are “truly wild.”
“A potential change to the Community Reinvestment Act—the federal anti-redlining law—would allow banks to meet their obligations by investing in sports stadiums in Opportunity Zones,” said Garofalo. “Opportunity Zones are a bad giveaway to investors gentrifying neighborhoods. Stadium subsidies are a huge waste of money.”
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China said Monday that the United States posed a “direct threat” to peace by “pursuing the weaponization of outer space” following President Donald Trump’s newly-created Space Force.
“The relevant U.S. actions are a serious violation of the international consensus on the peaceful use of outer space, undermine global strategic balance and stability, and pose a direct threat to outer space peace and security,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a press briefing.
The international community, he added, should “adopt a cautious and responsible attitude to prevent outer space from becoming a new battlefield and work together to maintain lasting peace and tranquility in outer space.”
Geng’s comments came days after Trump’s signature on the National Defense Authorization Act, which included a provision for the creation of the sixth branch of the military—an idea the president began floating early last year.
As Vox previously reported:
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Speaking at a signing ceremony Friday, Trump said the inauguration of Space Force marked “a big moment.”
“That’s a big moment, and we’re all here for it,” said Trump. “Space. Going to be a lot of things happening in space. Because space is the world’s newest warfighting domain.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark A. Milley used similar language on Friday when he suggested the new military branch was to counter perceived threats from Russia and China.
“In military operations, space is not just a place from which we support combat operations in other domains, but a warfighting domain in and of itself,” Milley said in a statement. “Our adversaries are building and deploying capabilities to threaten us, so we can no longer take space for granted. The U.S. Space Force is the necessary and essential step our nation will take to defend our national interests in space today and into the future.”
Among those reacting to the new Space Force by decrying the use of federal funds for more militarism rather than lifesaving programs like Medicare for All was justice advocate Bernice King:
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As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has traveled the country to support Sen. Bernie Sanders’ second campaign to secure the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, the New York congresswoman—who is currently too young to legally hold the nation’s highest office—has sparked fresh speculation that she will eventually make her own run for the White House, Politico reported Friday.
“The undeniable fact is that Ocasio-Cortez has been the rock star of the political left since she pulled off her shock defeat of 10-term incumbent Joseph Crowley.” —Mehdi Hasan, journalist
Ocasio-Cortez garnered national media attention in mid-2018 for her landslide victory in a primary race for New York’s solidly blue 14th Congressional District, which ousted longtime Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley. She has since used her national platform to promote progressive policies on key issues such as the climate crisis and healthcare—and support fellow political candidates who share her priorities.
In October, Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Sanders for president. The past couple months, Politico explained, “Ocasio-Cortez has become a supercharged surrogate for Sanders in early-voting and delegate-rich states. As she’s drawn massive crowds alongside the Vermont senator in Iowa, Nevada, California, and New York, progressive insiders and activists are increasingly whispering about Ocasio-Cortez inheriting the movement one day—and running for the White House with it behind her.”
Longtime Sanders adviser Jeff Weaver didn’t answer Politico‘s question about whether Sanders is positioning Ocasio-Cortez as a protégé, but he did say that “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a leader in the progressive movement.”
As Weaver put it: “She is broadly popular, frankly, among Democratic voters. She is particularly strong with young voters, voters of color. She’s an important national voice and adding her weight to the political revolution is a real coup for us.”
Will Rodriguez-Kennedy, president of the California Young Democrats—the official youth arm of the state party—compared the 30-year-old congresswoman with the 37-year-old South Bend, Indiana mayor who is one of Sanders’ opponents in the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential primary race.
“The future of the Democratic Party is not Pete Buttigieg. It’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Rodriguez-Kennedy told Politico. “She has gripped the attention of fellow millennials across the country. The Green New Deal has changed the conversation on environmental action in the Democratic Party.”
The goal of the Green New Deal, introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in February, is to craft a plan to transition the U.S. energy system to 100% renewable sources—in line with what global scientists say is necessary to avert climate catastrophe—while creating millions of jobs. Sanders was a “proud” original co-sponsor of the resolution.
Rodriguez-Kennedy, whose group endorsed Sanders for the 2020 nomination, described a couple potential political futures: “One, Sen. Sanders wins, and then his coalition could be up for grabs. It could be AOC’s. Or two, if we don’t make it, who builds that coalition moving forward?”
But, he said, “I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about the latter.”
The Politico report noted that some attendees of a Sanders rally that Ocasio-Cortez led in Los Angeles this past weekend openly wondered whether the New Yorker will eventually launch a presidential campaign.
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A spokesperson for the congresswoman did not comment. However, speculation about Ocasio-Cortez’s political future has circulated since her 2018 primary win.
In May, VICE interviewed historians and political analysts about the potential for Ocasio-Cortez to rise to the Oval Office someday. Most of them, according to VICE, “noted that there are plenty of examples of politicians who started out as young, energetic, sometimes polarizing newcomers and ended up becoming president.”
In the wake of the November 2018 elections, Mehdi Hasan wrote for The Intercept that President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly targeted Ocasio-Cortez, “should be relieved” that the congresswoman “is constitutionally barred from running for the office of president until 2024.”
Hasan, who dismissed the Constitution’s presidential age requirement of 35 as “ridiculous and arbitrary,” continued:
Noting his nearly two decades of working as a journalist, Hasan added that “I can safely say that, with the exception perhaps of Barack Obama, I have never before seen a politician come out of nowhere to energize, enthuse, and inspire millions of people in such a phenomenally short space of time in the way that Ocasio-Cortez has over the past few months. And unlike Obama, Ocasio-Cortez has done so while challenging conventional wisdoms and going on the offensive against a lazy neoliberal consensus.”
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In a move underscoring that the U.S. Congress has the sole constitutional power to declare war, Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee and Ilhan Omar announced a War Powers Resolution in the House on Sunday as a companion version to that introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine in the Senate on Friday.
“Let’s not mince words: the assassination of Qasem Soleimani was an act of war undertaken without Congressional authorization, in violation of the Constitution of the United States of America,” said Congresswoman Omar of Minnesota in a statement. “Following the assassination, thousands of additional troops were sent to the Middle East in one of the largest rapid deployments seen in decades. This follows years of saber-rattling and threats of war against Iran by President Trump and his accomplices. We in Congress must exercise our Constitutional duty—and do everything in our power to stop another disastrous war.”
Last week’s assassination of Soleimani, ordered by Trump, sparked domestic and international outrage with concerns of further escalations only growing as Trump continued to threaten war crimes against the people of Iran over the weekend.
In a tweet announcing the resolution, Omar said, “The stakes could not be higher.”
In her statement, California’s Congresswomen Lee—one of the most outspoken anti-war voices in the U.S. House—said that it is beyond time that lawmakers in Washington, D.C. do their duty to rein in a president openly and recklessly agitating for war.
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“For far too long, Congress has been missing in action on matters of war and peace,” Lee said. “Make no mistake: the assassination of Qasem Soleimani places us on the brink of war with Iran. Trump’s reckless military actions, without Congressional approval or authorization, have caused this crisis. We have been down this dangerous path before in Iraq, and we cannot afford another ill-advised, destructive, and costly war in the Middle East. It’s past time for Congress to reassert our Constitutional authority and return to diplomacy with Iran and our allies.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna also introduced a separate bill on Friday that would bar any Pentagon funding for “military force in or against Iran” without congressional approval.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that a vote on a War Powers Resolution would come as early as this week, though it was not clear if leadership has decided on the complete language for its version. In a letter to colleagues, Pelosi said the effort on the resolution in the House would be a spearheaded by Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), a former CIA and Department of Defense analyst specializing in Shia militias.
According to the Speaker, the resolution the House will vote will be similar to the resolution introduced by Kaine in the Senate. “It reasserts Congress’s long-established oversight responsibilities,” she said, “by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administration’s military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days.”
The text of Kaine’s resolution, which Omar and Lee linked to in their joint statement, can be read in full below:
In a new Frontline documentary, a Border Patrol agent describes taking part in a pilot program to separate families nearly a year before the Trump administration officially unveiled the policy—saying that while he was unhappy about separating children from their parents, he and other agents were following orders.
Journalist Martin Smith interviews agent Wesley Farris in “Targeting El Paso” about the program Farris worked on in the summer of 2017 in El Paso, Texas. Agents were instructed to separate families as the administration tested the theory that doing so would deter people from trying to enter the U.S. at the border city.
“That was the most horrible thing I’ve ever done,” Farris tells Smith in an excerpt released ahead of the documentary. “You can’t help but see your own kids.”
Farris describes one experience in particular which caused him to ask his supervisor to take him out of the pilot program.
“It was a young boy. I think he was about two. The world was upside down to that kid,” Farris says. “So when the contractor tried to take him away, he reached for me and he climbed up on me again, and he was holding on to me. So that that one got me a little bit.”
“I said at that one, ‘I’m not doing this anymore. I won’t do it,'” he tells Smith. “I went back to the supervisor and I told him, ‘Don’t assign me to do that anymore.'”
Farris “wanted to” take his complaint up the chain of command, he says, but the Border Patrol agents who were separating families were required to do as they were told.
“I mean, none of us were happy about it,” Farris says. “We were all told to do this.”
Journalist Brooke Binkowski suggested in a tweet that Farris’s defense mirrored that of numerous war criminals who have invoked the “Nuremberg defense,” infamously used by Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in the Nuremberg trials after World War II.
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“So he was just doing his job? Where have we heard that defense before?” tweeted Binkowski.
The Trump administration announced six months after the pilot program ended that it would begin separating families on a much larger scale, eventually separating more than 5,000 children from their parents or guardians at the border.
As the program rapidly drew international outrage in the summer of 2018, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen scoffed at the suggestion that the administration was separating families as a deterrent to asylum-seekers and migrants—but “Targeting El Paso” presents new evidence that it was doing just that.
“It aligned with my experience, in the times where we applied a consequence to people who cross the border illegally, we got less of them crossing the border illegally,” Ronald Vitiello, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), tells Frontline. “And so when zero tolerance is discussed as a way forward, we knew that it was going to be a benefit to us.”
“Targeting El Paso” will premiere on PBS stations on Tuesday evening.
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Members of the advocacy group “Moms 4 Housing” were forceably evicted from a home they were occupying in Oakland early Tuesday morning by armored police, hours after community members turned out in force to show support for the coalition of homeless and marginally housed mothers pushing to end the housing crisis in the Bay Area.
“We’ve built a movement of thousands of Oaklanders who showed up at a moments notice to reject police violence and advocate for homes for families,” the group’s Twitter account said shortly after the arrests Tuesday. “This isn’t over, and it won’t be over until everyone in the Oakland community has a safe and dignified place to live.”
The home on Magnolia Street—which was bought in foreclosure by real estate speculation firm Wedgewood, Inc.—was occupied by Moms 4 Housing in November as a protest of the housing market in the Bay Area. The group claimed squatting rights, but Wedgewood, one of the investment firms flipping houses in the region, took them to court and ultimately won.
Demonstrations against the group’s eviction filled the streets outside of the house on Monday night.
Wedgewood has said it wants to help the group; Moms 4 Housing countered Monday by requesting the company resell the home for the $501,000 paid for it during the foreclosure auction.
News that Alameda Sheriffs were coming to evict Moms 4 Housing inspired a huge community turnout on Monday night which delayed the expulsion. But just before 6:00 am local time Tuesday the sheriffs raided the home and marched members of the group out of the house in handcuffs.
Video from the group shows the raid:
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Journalist Zoé Samudzi noted the tactical gear worn by police, calling the outfits and weaponry “a show of force and a willingness to arrest and escalate when CHILDREN are in that home.”
Moms 4 Housing leaders Carroll Fife and Dominique Walker had to cut short an interview with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman Tuesday as the raid began.
“I just think it’s important to say that we need to take speculation out of real estate, and we need to decommodify housing,” Fife said in the minutes before the interview ended.
Walker and Fife held a press conference outside of the home after the raid.
“I’m concerned for my sisters,” said Walker.
“It’s rare you get moments that expose the system but this is one of them,” said Fife.
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