#U.S. Senator Ray Luján

[reasonsforhope]

Less than three months after U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin and her colleagues launched an investigation into the four major American manufacturers of inhalers, three of the companies have relented, making commitments to cap costs for their inhalers at $35 for patients who now pay much more.

25 million Americans have asthma and 16 million Americans have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), meaning over 40 million Americans rely on inhalers to breathe.

Inhalers have been available since the 1950s, and most of the drugs they use have been on the market for more than 25 years.

According to a statement from the Wisconsin Senator’s office, inhaler manufacturers sell the exact same products at a much lower costs in other countries. One of AstraZeneca’s inhalers, Breztri Aerosphere, costs $645 in the U.S.—but just $49 in the UK. Inhalers made by Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, and Teva have similar disparities.

Baldwin and her Democratic colleagues—New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders—pressured the companies to lower their prices by writing letters to GSK, Boehringer Ingelheim, Teva, and AstraZeneca requesting a variety of documents that show why such higher prices are charged in America compared to Europe.

As a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Baldwin recently announced that as a result of the letters they had secured commitments from three of the four to lower the out-of-pocket costs of inhalers to a fixed $35.00 rate.

“For the millions of Americans who rely on inhalers to breathe, this news is a major step in the right direction as we work to lower costs and hold big drug companies accountable,” said Senator Baldwin.

A full list of the inhalers and associated drugs can be viewed here.

It’s the second time in the last year that pharmaceutical companies were forced to provide reasonable prices—after the cost of insulin was similarly capped successfully at $35 per month thanks to Congressional actions led by the White House.

-via Good News Network, March 25, 2024

[hussyknee]

(alt included in all images)

Another thread by Senator Ben Ray Luján here.

A book on the subject (haven't read it myself):

One of the sources in another one of Alisa's furiously impassioned twitter threads have been debunked, so I didn't include that. But she claims that her own family was caught in the fallout zone when her mother was a baby, which eventually led to her and large numbers of her community developing cancer. It's human for that kind of grief to be caught up in inaccuracies. People are already being ghastly and racist to Hispanos and Indigenous people criticizing the hype for the movie. They're not attacking Oppenheimer for being Jewish, they're criticising the erasure of the human cost of these bombs and the continued valorisation of the U.S military's actions in World War II as some kind of moral saviourism.

While Oppenheimer himself believed that the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally justified (they had planned to drop them on Germany except they surrendered before they could), he also felt had blood on his hands and regretted his role as the "Father of the Atomic Bomb". He spent the rest of his career vehemently opposing further development of thermonuclear weapons and the hydrogen bomb accurately predicting the concept of mutually assured destruction. This eventually made him a victim of Senator McCarthy's Red Scare and his clearance was revoked. I haven't seen the movie (Christopher Nolan is the kind of casual white racist I avoid on principle) but people who have seen it say that it doesn't glorify nuclear weapons and depicts the man himself with the complex moral nuance that seems to be accurately reflective of his real life.

The backlash to Indigenous and Hispanos people's criticisms and to people pointing out that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were genocides is also frustrating because...both world wars were a clash of genocidal empires. The reason they were world wars is because the countries colonized by Japan, China, the European powers and the US were all dragged into it, whether they wanted to or not. Jews were one of the many colonized peoples that suffered in that time, who were left to die by everyone until they could be used to frame the Allied powers as moral saviours, establishing a revisionist nostalgia for heroism that powers the US military industrial complex to this day.

As early as May 1942, and again in June, the BBC reported the mass murder of Polish Jews by the Nazis. Although both US President, Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, warned the Germans that they would be held to account after the war, privately they agreed to prioritise and to turn their attention and efforts to winning the war. Therefore, all pleas to the Allies to destroy the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau were ignored. The Allies argued that not only would such an operation shift the focus away from winning the war, but it could provoke even worse treatment of the Jews. In June 1944 the Americans had aerial photographs of the Auschwitz complex. The Allies bombed a nearby factory in August, but the gas chambers, crematoria and train tracks used to transport Jewish civilians to their deaths were not targeted.

(Source)

Uncritical consumption of World War II media is the reinforcement of imperialist propaganda, more so when one group of colonized people is used to silence other colonized peoples. Pitting white Jewry against BIPOC is to do the work of white supremacy for imperialist colonizers, and victimizes Jews of colour twice over.

Edit: friends, there's been some doubt cast on the veracity of Alisa's claims. The human cost to the Hispanos population caught downwind of the nuclear tests is very real, as was land seizure without adequate compensation. However, there's no record I can yet find about Los Alamos killing livestock and Hispanos being forced to work for Los Alamos without PPE. There is a separate issue about human testing in the development of said PPE that's not covered here. I'm turning off reblogs until I can find out more. Meanwhile, here's another more legitimate article you can boost instead:

[denimbex1986]

'The Senate on Thursday approved a measure that would, for the first time, give health care benefits and compensation to communities impacted by the test of the first atomic nuclear bomb in New Mexico.

The “Trinity” nuclear test is featured in Christopher Nolan’s latest hit movie “Oppenheimer,” which focuses on the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in leading the Manhattan Project, a top-secret U.S. government program that began during World War II.

What the film doesn’t mention, however, is the array of deadly cancers that afflicted people exposed to radiation who lived “downwind” in the area near Alamogordo, New Mexico, for decades afterward ― many of whom were Native Americans and other people of color. The fallout traveled in a northern direction, affecting people as far away as Colorado, Idaho and Montana.

“Millions of people across the country traveled to theaters this weekend to watch a blockbuster centered around this infamous day, but not enough people have focused on the collateral damage caused by our nation’s nuclear testing,” New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján said Thursday in a speech on the Senate floor.

Luján called attention to the consequences for his home state in a series of tweets posted last week ahead of the movie premiere, noting that thousands of victims and their family members continue to face health complications.

In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which compensated many communities affected by U.S. military nuclear explosions. The law excluded survivors of the Trinity test, however, and lawmakers and native tribes in New Mexico have been seeking to right that wrong ever since.

“Those families were not given any warning, any heads up, they saw a bright light, they saw ash fall on their clothing lines, but for some reason they were excluded as a county that should qualify for status. It makes zero sense,” Luján told HuffPost.

Working alongside Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Luján sponsored an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would include previously excluded communities harmed by radiation from above-ground nuclear weapons testing, as well as uranium mining and nuclear waste storage in other states. It was adopted on Thursday in a bipartisan 61-37 vote.

Hawley, who was spotted whipping his GOP colleagues to vote for the measure in the well of the Senate chamber, credited Nolan’s film for raising awareness to an issue that has affected people in his state who lived near a Manhattan Project nuclear processing facility.

“For us, it’s about getting some basic justice for the people in the St. Louis region who have gotten literally poisoned,” Hawley said.

The Senate is expected to pass its version of the National Defense Authorization Act this week. The House already approved the bill earlier this month, though it included several partisan GOP amendments on hot-button social issues. The two sides will have to hash out their differences in a conference committee, including over the Senate amendment extending benefits to victims of nuclear tests.

Luján said he hadn’t yet watched “Oppenheimer,” so he couldn’t weigh in as to its accuracy and its portrayal of how the nuclear testing affected the people of New Mexico.

“I don’t know that anyone can ever give this a fair shake,” he said of the movie. “You have to hear the stories of these families. Many of our brothers and sisters have since passed. I’m hopeful that attention around the movie brings attention to this travesty because this deserves attention.”'

[jcmarchi]

Senators probe OpenAI on safety and employment practices

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/senators-probe-openai-on-safety-and-employment-practices/

Senators probe OpenAI on safety and employment practices

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Five prominent Senate Democrats have sent a letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, seeking clarity on the company’s safety and employment practices.

The letter – signed by Senators Brian Schatz, Ben Ray Luján, Peter Welch, Mark R. Warner, and Angus S. King, Jr. – comes in response to recent reports questioning OpenAI’s commitment to its stated goals of safe and responsible AI development.

The senators emphasise the importance of AI safety for national economic competitiveness and geopolitical standing. They note OpenAI’s partnerships with the US government and national security agencies to develop cybersecurity tools, underscoring the critical nature of secure AI systems.

“National and economic security are among the most important responsibilities of the United States Government, and unsecure or otherwise vulnerable AI systems are not acceptable,” the letter states.

The lawmakers have requested detailed information on several key areas by 13 August 2024. These include:

OpenAI’s commitment to dedicating 20% of its computing resources to AI safety research.

The company’s stance on non-disparagement agreements for current and former employees.

Procedures for employees to raise cybersecurity and safety concerns.

Security protocols to prevent theft of AI models, research, or intellectual property.

OpenAI’s adherence to its own Supplier Code of Conduct regarding non-retaliation policies and whistleblower channels.

Plans for independent expert testing and assessment of OpenAI’s systems pre-release.

Commitment to making future foundation models available to US Government agencies for pre-deployment testing.

Post-release monitoring practices and learnings from deployed models.

Plans for public release of retrospective impact assessments on deployed models.

Documentation on meeting voluntary safety and security commitments to the Biden-Harris administration.

The senators’ inquiry touches on recent controversies surrounding OpenAI, including reports of internal disputes over safety practices and alleged cybersecurity breaches. They specifically ask whether OpenAI will “commit to removing any other provisions from employment agreements that could be used to penalise employees who publicly raise concerns about company practices.”

This congressional scrutiny comes at a time of increasing debate over AI regulation and safety measures. The letter references the voluntary commitments made by leading AI companies to the White House last year, framing them as “an important step towards building this trust” in AI safety and security.

This morning five senate Democrats sent a letter to Sam Altman with twelve questions. This was question nine:

‘Will OpenAI commit to making its next foundation model available to U.S. Government agencies for pre-deployment testing, review, analysis, and assessment?’ pic.twitter.com/Iz1IsvDLuv

— Andrew Curran (@AndrewCurran_) July 23, 2024

Kamala Harris may be the next US president following the election later this year. At the AI Safety Summit in the UK last year, Harris said: “Let us be clear, there are additional threats that also demand our action. Threats that are currently causing harm, and which to many people also feel existential… when people around the world cannot discern fact from fiction because of a flood of AI-enabled myths and disinformation.”

Chelsea Alves, a consultant with UNMiss, commented: “Kamala Harris’ approach to AI and big tech regulation is both timely and critical as she steps into the presidential race. Her policies could set new standards for how we navigate the complexities of modern technology and individual privacy.”

The response from OpenAI to these inquiries could have significant implications for the future of AI governance and the relationship between tech companies and government oversight bodies.

(Photo by Darren Halstead)

See also: OpenResearch reveals potential impacts of universal basic income

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, democrats, ethics, government, legal, Politics, probe, regulation, safety, senate, Society, usa

[newswireml]

The U.S. Senate Has Three Buildings. Why Is One Still Named for a White Supremacist?#Senate #Buildings #Named #White #Supremacist

McCain, a six-term GOP Senator from Arizona and a longtime tenant of the Russell building, which houses the Armed Services Committee that McCain chaired, remains an icon of public service and bipartisanship in the Senate. “McCain would be great,” said Democratic Senators Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Ben Cardin of Maryland, using the exact same language when asked. “I’m all in favor of John…

[swldx]

9915Khz 0400 16 FEB 2023 - BBC (UNITED KINGDOM) in ENGLISH from TALATA VOLONONDRY. SINPO = 55434. English, dead carrier s/on @0400z then transmitter cut out and came back again with weak modulation. Gradually got better by 0401z World News anchored by Neil Nunes. The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday said the U.S. Treasury Department will exhaust its ability to pay all its bills sometime between July and September, unless the current $31.4 trillion cap on borrowing is raised or suspended. Anxious residents are still demanding answers 12 days after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in the small Ohio town of East Palestine. They are drinking bottled water even after being told municipal water has been tested safe well after the derailment. Uruguay security chief convicted and imprisoned for a scheme that made fake passports for Russians. U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto joined Senators Bob Menendez, Tim Kaine, Jeanne Shaheen, Ben Ray Luján, and Tammy Baldwin, in sounding the alarm on Meta’s failure to address malicious actors’ exploitation of its platforms, including Facebook and WhatsApp, to facilitate drug trafficking and human smuggling in the Western Hemisphere. US actress Raquel Welch, often credited with paving the way for modern day action heroines in Hollywood films, has died at the age of 82. The Nicaraguan dictatorship has sent a Catholic bishop to jail for 26 years for treason after he refused to board a plane to take him into exile in the United States. The numbers of women and children "migrating" (quotes are mine, the sound a whole lot like 'refugees' to me) from the Horn of Africa to Gulf countries through Yemen has significantly increased and is a cause of concern, according to the head of the International Organization for Migration. The treacherous journey from Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti through Yemen, called the Eastern Migration Route, has seen a 64% increase in the past year of people seeking better livelihoods, with larger numbers of women with children and children travelling alone (but they are not 'refugees'?!? but merely 'migrants'?). Endangered tigers making a remarkable comeback. @0406z "Newsroom" begins. Backyard fence antenna, Etón e1XM. 250kW, beamAz 315°, bearing 63°. Received at Plymouth, United States, 15359KM from transmitter at Talata Volonondry. Local time: 2200.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

On Wednesday, Congress passed one of the most sweeping relief programs for minority farmers in the nation’s history, through a provision of President Biden’s pandemic stimulus bill. Although the landmark legislation, which would cancel $4 billion worth of debt, seemed to emerge out of nowhere, it actually is the result of more than 20 years of organizing by Black farmers.

The Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act will forgive 120 percent of the value of loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or from private lenders and guaranteed by the USDA, to “Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic farmers and other agricultural producers of color,” according to a release from the bill’s sponsors, Senators Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

Advocacy groups say the debt relief will begin to rectify decades of broken promises and discrimination from the USDA that caused Black farmers to lose roughly 90 percent of their land between 1910 and today.

Although the program will be administered as pandemic relief — and apply to all farmers of color — the intellectual forces behind the bill say its main objective is to address failures in two landmark civil rights settlements between the USDA and Black farmers.

In 2016, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said the controversial settlements, known as Pigford I and II, “helped close a painful chapter in our collective history.” But instead, the Pigford settlements, which were designed to address a century of discrimination at the USDA, drew the ire of both conservatives and racial-justice advocates. The new debt-forgiveness legislation is controversial, too, with Republicans accusing Democrats of trying to sneak a reparations policy into an emergency bill instead of going through the proper legislative process.

The bill allocates $4 billion for the program because the Congressional Budget Office estimates that’s how much it will cost to pay off USDA loans to minority farmers, plus 20 percent. According to The Acres of Ancestry Initiative/Black Agrarian Fund, there are currently “over 17,000 Black legacy farmers [who] are delinquent on their loans to USDA ranging from 5 to 30 years.”

[nowthisnews]

DEM WIN: Rep. Ben Ray Luján has been elected to serve New Mexico in the U.S. Senate. As Assistant Speaker of the House, Luján was the highest-ranking Latinx member of Congress. He succeeds two-term retiring Sen. Tom Udall. 

[nativenewsonline]

Legislation to Reauthorize Native American Language Programs Becomes Law

Legislation to Reauthorize Native American Language Programs Becomes Law

Published December 23, 2019

NM Delegation hails passage of bipartisan bill that honors Esther Martinez, an Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo traditional storyteller and Tewa language advocate

WASHINGTON— On Friday, U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.), vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Representatives Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) and Xochitl…

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

In 2018, now-Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley shocked the political world by unseating 20-year incumbents in their Democratic primaries. And this year, the trend continued with progressives Marie Newman, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush winning their own upsets against long-serving congressmen.1

Thanks to an increasingly powerful progressive campaign apparatus, there’s no question that the left is now an established player in the Democratic Party. But is it strong enough to rival the political muscle of the party establishment?

To find out, FiveThirtyEight has once again tracked hundreds of endorsements in every Senate, House and governor primary completed so far this year (through Aug. 18). We looked at the win-loss records of the endorsees of eight key Democratic influencers: progressive groups Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee; progressive figures Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders; and two arms of the national Democratic Party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.2 The result is the most complete picture yet of which wing of the party is doing better at the ballot box.

And while the progressive upsets may have grabbed all the headlines, the numbers say the party establishment is still king of the hill. Of the 217 Democratic incumbents who ran in the primaries we analyzed, 214 won or advanced to the general election.3 Granted, that includes 19 incumbents — such as Reps. Ilhan Omar, Katie Porter, Rashida Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez herself — who were supported by one or more of the six progressive endorsers we’re tracking. But in the 17 primaries where progressives (candidates endorsed by at least one of these six entities) went up against an incumbent, the progressive-backed candidate lost 14 times. (Newman, Bowman and Bush were the only exceptions.)

Most progressive challengers lost to incumbents

How candidates endorsed by Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Sen. Sanders or Rep. Ocasio-Cortez have fared against incumbents in Democratic primaries for Senate, House and governor, through Aug. 18, 2020

Endorsed by … Candidate Race Indiv. J. Dems Our Rev. PCCC Sanders AOC Result Eva Putzova AZ-01 ✓ Lost Robert Emmons Jr. IL-01 ✓ Lost Marie Newman IL-03 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Won Rachel Ventura IL-11 ✓ Lost Jill Carter MD-07 ✓ Lost Cori Bush MO-01 ✓ ✓ ✓ Won Arati Kreibich NJ-05 ✓ ✓ ✓ Lost Melanie D’Arrigo NY-03 ✓ Lost Adem Bunkeddeko NY-09 ✓ Lost Jamaal Bowman NY-16 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Won Morgan Harper OH-03 ✓ ✓ ✓ Lost Albert Lee OR-03 ✓ Lost Mark Gamba OR-05 ✓ Lost Keeda Haynes TN-05 ✓ ✓ ✓ Lost Jessica Cisneros TX-28 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Lost Jason Call WA-02 ✓ Lost Rebecca Parson WA-06 ✓ Lost

Some candidates were endorsed by both progressive and party establishment organizations.

Sources: Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, PCCC, Twitter, Courage to Change PAC, Associated Press

In primaries where there wasn’t an incumbent on the ballot, progressives did better: 22 wins4 (including Mondaire Jones in New York and Kara Eastman in Nebraska) to 10 losses (including Charles Booker in Kentucky). That’s a 69 percent win rate.

Progressives are winning lots of open primaries

How candidates endorsed by Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Sen. Sanders or Rep. Ocasio-Cortez have fared in Democratic primaries for Senate, House and governor where no incumbent was running, through Aug. 18, 2020

Endorsed by … Candidate Race Indiv. J. Dems Our Rev. PCCC Sanders AOC Result Christy Smith CA-25 ✓ Advanced Ammar Campa-Najjar CA-50 ✓ Advanced Georgette Gómez CA-53 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Advanced Andrew Romanoff CO Sen. ✓ Lost Jillian Freeland CO-05 ✓ Won Nabilah Islam GA-07 ✓ ✓ Lost Kai Kahele HI-02 ✓ Won J.D. Scholten IA-04 ✓ Won Paulette Jordan ID Sen. ✓ Won Jim Harper IN-01 ✓ Lost E. Thomasina Marsili IN-08 ✓ Won Charles Booker KY Sen. ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Lost Hank Linderman KY-02 ✓ Won Betsy Sweet ME Sen. ✓ ✓ Lost Jon Hoadley MI-06 ✓ Won Tom Winter MT-AL ✓ Lost Kara Eastman NE-02 ✓ ✓ ✓ Won Ben Ray Luján NM Sen. ✓ Won Teresa Leger Fernandez NM-03 ✓ Won Samelys López NY-15 ✓ ✓ ✓ Lost Mondaire Jones NY-17 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Won Dana Balter NY-24 ✓ ✓ Won Daniel Kilgore OH-15 ✓ Lost Renee Hoyos TN-02 ✓ Won Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez TX Sen. ✓ Lost Mike Siegel TX-10 ✓ ✓ ✓ Won Candace Valenzuela TX-24 ✓ Won David Zuckerman VT gov. ✓ ✓ Won Beth Doglio WA-10 ✓ ✓ Advanced Amanda Stuck WI-08 ✓ Won Stephen Smith WV gov. ✓ ✓ Lost Paula Jean Swearengin WV Sen. ✓ Won

In California and Washington primaries, the top two finishers, regardless of party, advance to the general election. Some candidates were endorsed by both progressive and party establishment organizations.

Sources: Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, PCCC, Twitter, Courage to Change PAC, Associated Press

However, the party establishment had even more success: 30 of the 31 candidates (97 percent) whom the DSCC and DCCC supported in incumbent-less primaries advanced to the general election. The only exception was Senate candidate James Mackler in Tennessee. Notably, Mackler was the first DSCC-endorsed candidate to lose a primary since 2010.5

The party decides

How candidates supported by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee or Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have fared in Democratic primaries for Senate, House and governor where no incumbent was running, through Aug. 18, 2020

Candidate Race Result Al Gross AK Sen. Won Alyse Galvin AK-AL Won Mark Kelly AZ Sen. Won Hiral Tipirneni AZ-06 Won Christy Smith CA-25 Advanced John Hickenlooper CO Sen. Won Margaret Good FL-16 Won Theresa Greenfield IA Sen. Won Rita Hart IA-02 Won Betsy Dirksen Londrigan IL-13 Won Christina Hale IN-05 Won Barbara Bollier KS Sen. Won Michelle De La Isla KS-02 Won Amy McGrath KY Sen. Won Sara Gideon ME Sen. Won Hillary Scholten MI-03 Won Jon Hoadley MI-06 Won Dan Feehan MN-01 Won Jill Schupp MO-02 Won Mike Espy MS Sen. Won Kathleen Williams MT-AL Won Cal Cunningham NC Sen. Won Ben Ray Luján NM Sen. Won Jackie Gordon NY-02 Won Eugene DePasquale PA-10 Won Jaime Harrison SC Sen. Won James Mackler TN Sen. Lost MJ Hegar TX Sen. Won Wendy Davis TX-21 Won Gina Ortiz Jones TX-23 Won Carolyn Long WA-03 Advanced

In California and Washington primaries, the top two finishers, regardless of party, advance to the general election. Some candidates were endorsed by both progressive and party establishment organizations.

Sources: DSCC, DCCC, Associated Press

These findings — that Democratic voters are generally voting for establishment candidates over insurgents — match what we saw in 2018. But that doesn’t mean progressive groups haven’t made progress in the last two years. They’ve just changed their strategy. Instead of endorsing dozens of candidates like they did in 2018, progressive groups are picking their battles more carefully. For instance, Justice Democrats has endorsed just three candidates in incumbent-less primaries this year, but two of them won.

Endorsing fewer candidates is part of a longer-term approach as the group’s political apparatus has grown more sophisticated. As Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, told HuffPost, “We’ve been intentional about building infrastructure and an ecosystem that can take on decades worth of the establishment’s.” This means withholding support from candidates whose values may match the organization’s but who are running in districts where challengers face long odds or where unseating the incumbent in a primary could hand the seat to the GOP in the general.

Certain progressive endorsers are also having more success this cycle. Sanders has a 75 percent win rate in incumbent-less primaries so far this cycle (6 for 8), up from 56 percent (5 for 9) around this point in 2018. And the PCCC has an 83 percent win rate (10 for 12), whereas two years ago it was 67 percent (10 for 15). This could reflect that these endorsers (and their ideas) enjoy more clout in 2020 than they did in 2018 — or it could just mean they’ve become savvier in whom they endorse.

All told, the progressive group with the best win rate so far in primaries without an incumbent is Indivisible; they’ve endorsed 10 candidates in those races, and nine of them have advanced. Our Revolution has the worst win rate of the progressive endorsers we looked at, but they’ve also backed more candidates than the other groups; of the 14 candidates they endorsed, five have advanced to the general. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Courage for Change PAC has a win rate of 50 percent (4 for 8).

Which progressive endorser has the best record?

How candidates endorsed by six progressive figures and groups have fared in Democratic primaries for Senate, House and governor where no incumbent was running, through Aug. 18, 2020

num. endorsed endorsees who won percent Indivisible 10 9 90% PCCC 12 10 83 Sen. Sanders 8 6 75 Justice Dems 3 2 67 Rep. Ocasio-Cortez 8 4 50 Our Revolution 14 5 36

Some candidates were endorsed by both progressive and party establishment organizations.

Sources: Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, PCCC, Twitter, Courage to Change PAC, Associated Press

Of course, part of the difficulty here is that these groups are also endorsing candidates who are challenging incumbents, and incumbency, while not necessarily as potent as it once was, is still a pretty powerful force in American politics.6 However, some groups we analyzed were willing to take the risk. In fact, Justice Democrats endorsed more candidates running against incumbents (five) than they did candidates in primaries without incumbents (three), reflecting their status as one of the groups most urgently insisting upon drastic change in the halls of Congress. And, notably, their challengers won three of those races against incumbents — an extremely impressive win rate considering how rarely incumbents lose overall.

Given Justice Democrats’ success this cycle, Democratic incumbents should probably be expecting more progressive challengers in 2022: After the 2018 midterms and the success of candidates like Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley, liberal groups made clear their intention to continue to target incumbent Democrats whose records hadn’t kept pace with their districts’ politics, especially in places where demographic changes favored progressives. Notably, this was Newman’s second challenge against incumbent Rep. Dan Lipinski in Illinois’s 3rd District — in 2018, Lipinski won by about 2,000 votes. So, long term, the strategy of challenging incumbents could pay dividends for the left.

[don-lichterman]

U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein, John Barrasso, Colleagues Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Boost Production, Use of Renewable Diesel, Sustainable Aviation Fuel

U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein, John Barrasso, Colleagues Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Boost Production, Use of Renewable Diesel, Sustainable Aviation Fuel

April 9, 2022 – Washington – Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) led their colleagues in introducing the Renewable Diesel and Sustainable Aviation Fuel Parity Act of 2022. The legislation is cosponsored by Senators Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), and Steve Daines (R-Mont.).  The bill would require the Department of Energy to track foreign imports and…

[iowamedia]

New Mexico’s Luján back and voting in the U.S. Senate after recovery from stroke

New Mexico’s Luján back and voting in the U.S. Senate after recovery from stroke

U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján returned to work in Washington, D.C., Thursday after more than a month in his home state recovering from a stroke. A C-SPAN video showed the New Mexico Democrat’s fellow senators gave Luján a standing ovation when he walked into a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Thursday morning. Democrats Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and John Hickenlooper of Colorado…

[javierpenadea]

"Senator Ben Ray Luján Recovering After Suffering Stroke" by BY CHRIS CAMERON AND EMILY COCHRANE via NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/bv1AVXG9F

[innocentamit]

U.S. lawmakers want working terms to be summarized in simple terms

U.S. lawmakers want working terms to be summarized in simple terms

Unless you are a lawyer, there is a good chance that you have not read all of your paperwork. There is a simple reason for that. Often, they are very long and difficult to explain. Some tasks provide brief sentences, but they are different, not the usual ones. A panel of two lawmakers made up of Representative Lori Trahan and Senators Bill Cassidy and Ben Ray Luján of Louisiana and New Mexico…

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this Santa Fe New Mexican story:

There are old lessons New Mexicans should have learned about a powerful industry extracting valuable minerals from below the soil, members of the U.S. House of Representatives said Monday at a federal committee hearing in Santa Fe.

Decades ago, it was uranium. Now Democratic lawmakers say they fear oil and gas could leave a similar legacy in the state.

During the first of several congressional hearings, lawmakers, tribal leaders and environmentalists spoke about the need for stronger federal oil and gas regulations, particularly the importance of protecting Chaco Culture National Historical Park and the greater Chaco region from lasting degradation.

Last week, New Mexico Democratic Reps. Ben Ray Luján and Deb Haaland helped co-sponsor the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act, a bill that would block more than 316,000 acres around Chaco Canyon from oil, gas and other mineral extraction. While numerous people at the hearing said they would support the proposed legislation, Republicans maintain control of the Senate, and President Donald Trump has consistently taken executive action to boost the fossil fuel industry, making the Democratic initiative less likely to succeed in Washington.

[sfwr]

Ex-Senate candidate Mark Ronchetti quits job to ‘consider’ run for NM governor

Ex-Senate candidate Mark Ronchetti quits job to ‘consider’ run for NM governor

On Thursday, KRQE 13 announced that “meteorologist” Mark Ronchetti, a failed candidate for U.S. Senate against Ben Ray Luján, was — Read on pinonpost.com/ex-senate-candidate-mark-ronchetti-quits-job-to-consider-run-for-nm-governor/