Last Call For You Interstated In The Wrong Neighborhood

The Biden Administration is serious about making the Civil Rights Division of the DoJ a working concern again after Republicans keep dismantling it, and that means that, you know, recognizing that federal highway projects through Black neighborhoods might be systemic racism.

President Joe Biden's Department of Transportation is invoking the Civil Rights Act to pause a highway project near Houston, a rare move that offers an early test of the administration's willingness to wield federal power to address a long history of government-driven racial inequities.

DOT's intervention follows complaints from local activists that the state's proposed widening of Interstate 45 would displace an overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic community, including schools, places of worship and more than 1,000 homes and businesses.

It also comes as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has identified racial equity as a major priority for his department — after decades in which federal highway money has paid for projects that leveled minority and low-income communities.

"I think this project is the poster child for [the administration's] policies," said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat representing the Houston area, who has joined local officials in challenging the project. 

In a March 8 letter to the state, the Federal Highway Administration, citing complaints from local activists and Jackson Lee, requested that the Texas Department of Transportation hold off on its expansion of I-45, including initiating more contract solicitations, until the federal DOT has time to review civil rights and environmental justice concerns.

Federal officials could ultimately allow the project to proceed, but the action to freeze it at all, and in particular DOT's use of civil rights laws to underpin that decision, has buoyed activists on the ground and surprised even seasoned regulators in Washington.

“This is a big deal,” said Fred Wagner, an attorney who served as general counsel at FHWA for three years during the Obama administration. "It just doesn’t happen very often."

 

Try "never". 

 

Post-Trumpism Joe Biden is turning out to be the real deal.

I couldn't be happier.

Meathead Matt's Me Too Moment, Con't

Things actually keep getting worse on a daily basis for Republican sex pest Matt Gaetz, now apparently facing accusations of not only sexual assault on underage women, but using campaign money to pay women and openly bragging of his sexual conquests to other lawmakers by showing them nude photos of his partners. 

 

Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican being investigated by the Justice Department over sex trafficking allegations, made a name for himself when he arrived on Capitol Hill as a conservative firebrand on TV and staunch defender of then-President Donald Trump.

Behind the scenes, Gaetz gained a reputation in Congress over his relationships with women and bragging about his sexual escapades to his colleagues, multiple sources told CNN. 

Gaetz allegedly showed off to other lawmakers photos and videos of nude women he said he had slept with, the sources told CNN, including while on the House floor. The sources, including two people directly shown the material, said Gaetz displayed the images of women on his phone and talked about having sex with them. One of the videos showed a naked woman with a hula hoop, according to one source. 

"It was a point of pride," one of the sources said of Gaetz. 

There's no indication these pictures are connected to the DOJ investigation. 

Gaetz, 38, who was elected to Congress in 2016, has been at the center of a number of controversies in his four-plus years in Congress. But he's now embroiled in easily his biggest scandal yet, after the Justice Department began investigating him in the final months of the Trump administration under then-Attorney General William Barr as part of a larger investigation into another Florida politician. Federal investigators are examining whether Gaetz engaged in a relationship with a woman that began when she was 17 years old and whether his involvement with other young women broke federal sex trafficking and prostitution laws, two people briefed on the matter said. 

Gaetz has denied the allegations, saying "no part of the allegations against me are true," and he claimed Tuesday that he was the victim of an extortion plot, which the FBI is separately investigating.

 

And yes, this is starting to look like Gaetz was openly paying women to have sex with them on top of all of this, using campaign and taxpayer money.

A Justice Department investigation into Representative Matt Gaetz and an indicted Florida politician is focusing on their involvement with multiple women who were recruited online for sex and received cash payments, according to people close to the investigation and text messages and payment receipts reviewed by The New York Times.

Investigators believe Joel Greenberg, the former tax collector in Seminole County, Fla., who was indicted last year on a federal sex trafficking charge and other crimes, initially met the women through websites that connect people who go on dates in exchange for gifts, fine dining, travel and allowances, according to three people with knowledge of the encounters. Mr. Greenberg introduced the women to Mr. Gaetz, who also had sex with them, the people said.

One of the women who had sex with both men also agreed to have sex with an unidentified associate of theirs in Florida Republican politics, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. Mr. Greenberg had initially contacted her online and introduced her to Mr. Gaetz, the person said.

Mr. Gaetz denied ever paying a woman for sex.

The Justice Department inquiry is also examining whether Mr. Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl and whether she received anything of material value, according to four people familiar with the investigation. The sex trafficking count against Mr. Greenberg involved the same girl, according to two people briefed on the investigation.

 

The big giveaway that this is a real and devastating problem for Gaetz is that basically nobody is defending him, not even his fellow Republicans.

The Great Biden Jobs Job

The US economy added nearly a million new jobs in March alone as President Biden and the Democrats are getting America back to work after the Trump Depression.

Job growth boomed in March at the fastest pace since last summer as stronger economic growth and an aggressive vaccination effort contributed to a surge in hospitality and construction jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 916,000 for the month while the unemployment rate fell to 6%.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for an increase of 675,000 and an unemployment rate of 6%.

A more encompassing measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons dropped to 10.7% from 11.1% in February.

The labor force continued to grow after losing more than 6 million Americans at one point last year. Another 347,000 workers came back, bringing the labor force participation rate to 61.5%, compared to 63.3% in February 2020.

There are still nearly 5 million fewer Americans employed than a year ago while the labor force is down 2.2 million.

Leisure and hospitality, a sector critical to restoring the jobs market to its former strength, showed the strongest gains for the month with 280,000 new jobs. Bars and restaurants added 176,000 while arts, entertainment and recreation contributed 64,000 to the total.

Even with the continued gains, the sector remains 3.1 million below its pre-pandemic total in February 2020.

With students heading back into schools, education hiring boomed during the month as well. Local, state and private education institutions combined to hire 190,000 more employees for the month.

Construction also saw a healthy gain of 110,000 new jobs, while professional and business services added 66,000 and manufacturing increased by 53,000.

In addition to the powerful gains for March, previous months also were revised considerably higher. The January total increased 67,000 to 233,000, while February’s revisions brought the total up by 89,000 to 468,000.

So yes, with the upward revisions in January and February, we added over a million new jobs this month.

 

One million. And yet we still have millions to go to get us out of the mess Donald Trump, the "CEO of the United States" made. We'll need another five or six months like this just to get back to a year ago, and for a generation of younger workers, a lifetime of economic damage has already been done.

But never tell me again Republicans have any idea what it means to grow an economy.