Liz Truss is facing her first cabinet row as she prepares to increase immigration to boost economic growth.
The prime minister is pushing for wide-ranging reform of Britain’s visa system to tackle acute labour shortages and attract the best talent from across the world.
In the coming weeks she intends to raise the cap on seasonal agricultural workers and make changes to the shortage occupations list, which will allow key sectors to recruit more overseas staff.
Truss has told colleagues that she is keen to recruit overseas broadband engineers to support the government’s pledge to make full-fibre broadband available to 85 per cent of UK homes by 2025. It has also been suggested that she could ease the English-language requirement in some sectors to enable more foreign workers to qualify for visas.
…Jacob Rees-Mogg, the business secretary, has told colleagues he would support the changes only if they were shown to increase GDP per capita.
Here is the Times of London (gated) article. Truss has a very definite plan to boost both high-skill immigration and building in Britain, perhaps the two best policies for boosting growth. And yet the silence from many of those who ought to approve has been deafening. To be clear, it remains an open question whether Truss will be able to push through the relevant policies — but at least she is trying!
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The first floods of the end-2022 monsoon season is here, as social media users have reported flash floods happening in Danga Bay Johor this morning.
MetMalaysia predicts that we will face continuous heavy rains from mid-November, but it already starting to flood right now in end-September. Things might get seriously bad in mid-November. The impact is more significant this time around as northeast monsoon is active that time of the year, and the La Nina phenomenon will be present till early next year, which will add to rainfall.
If you have not seen any significant efforts by authorities to improve drainage in areas that have faced heavy flooding the same time last year, you have to be prepared it will happen again.
We must be prepared to face the same floods again.
This is just a reminder that if you live or travel through a flood-prone area and your motor insurance does not have special perils add-on, your insurance policy will not cover damage caused by flood, which is classified as an act of God.
Click to enlarge.
It’s not super costly. We tabulated the extra cost of adding on Special Perils coverage from a few auto insurance companies in Malaysia, including AIA, AIG, Allianz, AXA, Etiqa, Kurnia, MPI Generali, MSIG, RHB, Takaful and Tokio Marine. The rates vary between 0.15% to 0.50%.
For example, if you’re insuring a car for RM50,000, you’re paying as little as RM75 with MPI Generali, while other insurance providers like Allianz, AXA, MSIG and Tokio Marine offer the coverage for RM100. With higher rates like those provided by AIA, AIG, Etiqa, Kurnia, RHB and Takaful, the payable amount is between RM125 to RM250. Click on the table above for a better view.
#Banjir: Pelajar Netherlands Maritime University College yang terkandas terpaksa meredah air di Kampung Mohd Amin #JohorBahru ekoran hujan lebat berterusan sejak pagi tadi.?
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Beberapa kawasan di daerah ini kembali dinaiki air.?
?
???? Nurul Fatiha Kamarudin | BERNAMA pic.twitter.com/WtVB0UPHNM
This is the Xpeng G9, the Alibaba-backed Chinese automaker’s fourth EV in its line-up. It’s also Xpeng’s second SUV, a larger model than the compact G3i that it previously launched.
Like a lot of premium EVs, there are various combinations of motors and batteries – a ‘standard’ range RWD model, long range RWD models, and performance AWD models.
The standard RWD is no slouch, it still hits 100 km/h in 6.4 seconds which is quick, thanks to a 308 hp, 439 Nm motor. Range is 570 km. Upgrade to the long range RWD model and you get up to 702 km range.
The performance AWD model adds on an extra 235 hp, 287 Nm electric motor at the front. A combination of the two motors allows it to hit 100 km/h in just 3.9 seconds.
Xpeng calls the G9 the world’s fastest charging EV. It says it can charge at a rate of up to 480 kW at the peak of its charging curve.
Helping it achieve that 480 kW rate is of course a 800V battery architecture, which we expect most EV manufacturers (especially premium) to eventually migrate to.
How much does all of this cost? Pricing starts from 309,900 RMB (RM200k) in China for the standard model up to 469,900 RMB (RM300k) for the AWD 650X Launch Edition.
Will we ever see Xpeng in Malaysia? Born in left hand drive China, Xpeng seems to want to focus on left hand drive export markets for now. With demand for EVs far outstripping supply in general, we think there’s less reason for Xpeng to bother about right hand drive until it feels LHD markets are saturated.
After dabbling for years in the IT industry, Paul Tan initially began this site as a general blog covering various topics of personal interest. With an increasing number of readers paying rapt attention to the motoring stories, one thing led to another and the rest, as they say, is history.
When Kyncl’s name was first mentioned as a potential successor to outgoing CEO Stephen Cooper, who leaves after 11 years in the role, many wondered whether the job would be sufficiently appealing for the executive who led Netflix from DVDs to streaming and has been YouTube’s business chief for much of his 12 years at the company.
However, the SEC filing makes clear that the job is financially appealing: He will receive a base salary of $2 million, a target performance-based bonus of $3 million and an annual grant of performance share units with an aggregate, pre-tax value of $10 million.
He also will be reimbursed some $500,000 for moving from Los Angeles to New York; the role also includes non-competition and non-solicitation covenants applicable during and for one year following his employment.
As noted by Billboard, Kyncl’s target compensation is less than Cooper’s $17 million, although it is dwarfed by that of Lucian Grainge, chairman of the world’s largest music company, Universal Music Group, who earned $48.4 million in 2021 (not including one-time bonuses paid by UMG’s former owner, Vivendi).
Warner is the third-largest major music group, after Universal and Sony. Its labels include Atlantic — which is the most consistently successful major label in the business — Elektra and its flagship Warner Records, along with the third-largest music publisher, Warner Chappell Music. It has a vast catalog and many multiplatinum current acts, including Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Lizzo, Dua Lipa and others.
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Former Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey noted Sunday that a newly-released poll spells “bad news” for Democrats and President Joe Biden ahead of the looming November midterms.
“That’s all bad news for the Democrats in that poll, and I’ll tell you, I was talking to a family farmer this week, just to put what we have to look forward to,” Christie said on ABC News’ “Powerhouse Roundtable.” “He said since Biden entered office, his diesel fuel costs are up 222% on his farm, and his nitrogen costs are up 262%.”
WATCH:
“That’s not only bad for them and their ability to make money, but worse, it’s going to hit us in supermarkets all over this country,” he added. “This is hardly over, and that’s what these numbers are telling. People are feeling that, and they are going to vote that way, and that’s not good for the Democrats.”
The poll also showed that Republicans had double-digit leads over Democrats on being trusted to handle the economy, inflation and crime.
Christie also added that while abortion may be a motivating factor for voters heading to the polls, the economy will most likely be the predominate issue in November.
“Let’s talk about the abortion issue because 84% of the voters say the economy is their top issue,” Christie said. “Only 62% say abortion, and when you go deeper into the poll and look at some of the cross-tabs on this, what our poll is showing is that the pro-life people are more motivated by the abortion issue to vote in these midterms than the pro-choice people are.”
The Supreme Court upheld a Mississippi law restricting abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy in June in a 6-3 ruling, overturning Roe v. Wade.
The ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted between Sept. 18-21 among 1,006 U.S. adults. It had a 3.5 percentage point margin of error.
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The University of California, Berkeley in 2021 sent over $262,500 to the Heising-Simons Foundation, a left-wing charity that opposes “mass incarceration” and has backed prison reform, according to California financial records.
The foundation has granted huge sums to organizations seeking to overhaul the criminal justice system and get inmates back onto the streets, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found.
“Prison abolition is about the least serious policy position you can stake out in this debate,” Rafael A. Mangual, research head for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, told the DCNF.
The University of California, Berkeley gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2021to a left-wing nonprofit funding groups that seek to empty prisons across the U.S., according to California financial records.
Berkeley sent over $262,500 to the Heising-Simons Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity that opposes “mass incarceration” and backs prison reform, according to records obtained by the transparency watchdog OpenTheBooks. The charity has granted huge sums to groups trying to overhaul the criminal justice system and get inmates back onto the streets, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found. (RELATED: UC Berkeley Quietly Funded A Deep-Pocketed Liberal Dark Money Group Tied To ‘Defund Police’ Movement)
“UC Berkeley is effectively funding the further breakdown of civil society in California,” Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, a conservative education group, told the DCNF. “By funding a foundation that seeks to dismantle what it calls ‘carceral systems,’ the university is only arm’s length away from the prosecutors who refuse to prosecute and the officials who have opened the prison doors to serious offenders who have served only fractions of their sentences.”
It is unclear whether Berkeley’s payment was composed of private or public dollars and why the school paid the foundation. Berkeley runs a Heising-Simons Faculty Fellows Program that each year awards two university faculty members “working on topics in a diverse set of fields” with $200,000 over a period of five years to do research.
Married couple and longtime liberal activists Liz Simons and Mark Heising started the Heising-Simons Foundation in 2007. Simons is the daughter of billionaire James Simons, a retired hedge fund manager and top Democratic political donor.
Simons and Heising have given millions to Democratic candidates and PACs, according to Federal Election Commission records. Simons notably joined three liberal donors in spending $22 million on criminal justice ballot measures and has supported George Gascón, the Los Angeles district attorney backed by billionaire George Soros who voters sought to recall for his soft-on-crime policies, Politico reported. The recall effort failed in August.
Heising-Simons Foundation seeks to “challenge mass criminalization” and holds that “structural racism pervades” U.S. society. It invests in “communities rather than prisons and surveillance” and groups trying “to shrink and ultimately dismantle carceral systems and reimagine new approaches to safety, justice, and accountability.”
Between 2018 and 2022, the foundation granted over $10 million to groups who “reimagine approaches to safety, justice and accountability,” according to its grant database. Some of these groups openly advocate for lower incarceration rates and claim the U.S. systemically discriminates against minorities.
Women on the Rise GA is one group that Heising-Simons Foundation has funded. The group, which received $200,000 in 2020, helped lead an initiative called #CloseTheJailATL in 2019 that urged Atlanta to divest from a city jail and reallocate $15 million toward social services.
The Georgia group and others sent a 26-page task force report in 2020 to then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms that suggested Atlanta replace the jail with an “equity center,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Bottoms put forth a proposal to close the jail that Atlanta city council members in 2020 rejected, and jail closure has stalled amid newly elected Mayor Andre Dickens weighing proposals, the outlet reported June 28.
Photo by John Moore/Getty Images
“Hi, yes we do!” Women on the Rise GA Executive Director Robyn Hasan told the DCNF in response to a question on whether it supports ending incarceration.
There has been an uptick in violent crime in Atlanta, with the city seeing a 58% homicide surge in 2020, its deadliest year in over two decades, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The city saw just a 1% violent crime decrease in 2021 and in August 2022 recorded its 100th homicide this year, a marker that was hit in 2021 one week prior.
“Prison abolition is about the least serious policy position you can stake out in this debate,” Rafael A. Mangual, research head for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, told the DCNF.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of these policies that I think can be fairly characterized as generally lowering the transaction costs of committing a crime have coincided with a pretty worrying and troubling uptick in serious violence,” said Mangual. “It’s certainly the case we ought to be very, very circumspect in the degree to which we continue to push toward decarceration at a moment in which cities across the country are seeing levels of serious violence rise to levels not seen since the 1980s and 1990s in some cases.”
Another group Heising-Simons Foundation funded is the Mass Liberation Project, a California group that wants to eliminate prisons and “cure the cancer of white supremacy,” which it claims “undergirds the criminal legal system.” The project, which raked in $325,000 in 2019 from the foundation, launched a “Vegas Freedom Fund” in 2020 aimed toward raising money to bail out inmates as COVID-19 spread in jails.
Cities across California were rocked with violence amid riots and protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2020. California in 2020 saw a 31% surge in homicides while Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the state, is on pace for a 15-year high in 2022 for homicides, ABC7 reported in July.
Still, another California-based group Heising-Simons Foundation funded is Young Women’s Freedom, which aims to steer “cis and trans” boys and girls away from incarceration and runs a campaign called “Freedom 2030.” The campaign calls for “the decriminalization and decarceration of all women, girls, and trans people of all genders.”
“We live in a culture of over-policing and perpetual punishment for Black, Brown, Indigenous and Trans* people,” Young Women’s Freedom said in June 2020, the same year it received $300,000 from Heising-Simons Foundation. “We must release people from prisons if we are serious when we say #BlackLivesMatter.”
Berkeley’s payment to Heising-Simons Foundation only became public in August after OpenTheBooks obtained records showing the state of California gave roughly $76 billion to 64,000 recipients in 2021. The watchdog obtained the state’s line-by-line 2021 expenditures after filing public records requests as well as later suing for the documents.
“The funds that UC Berkeley squanders on the Heising-Simons Foundation and other such groups could be far better spent on teaching civics to Berkeley students,” Wood added.
Heising-Simons Foundation did not respond to a request for comment nor did Berkeley, Young Women’s Freedom Center or the Mass Liberation Project.
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Clear Creek County Undersheriff Bruce Snelling died at his home Saturday evening, Sheriff Rick Albers said in a brief statement Sunday.
Snelling was found unresponsive in his home in Golden on Saturday and “life-saving measures were not successful,” said Karlyn Tilley, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
She said there was “nothing suspicious” about Snelling’s death. Albers said Snelling’s death was “natural.”
“I know that Bruce loved his Clear Creek family and was proud of the employees he commanded and the community he served,” Albers said in the statement. “We will continue to provide information as we work through this tragic loss together.”
He declined to comment further and said he expects to put additional information out Monday.
Snelling joined the sheriff’s office in 2015, according to his LinkedIn account. He most recently served as undersheriff and as a spokesman for the sheriff’s office. Snelling’s age was not immediately clear.
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Six days after Traphagen’s visit, U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that work on the border wall that began under Trump is revving back up under Biden. In an online presentation Wednesday, CBP — the largest division of the Department of Homeland Security and home to the Border Patrol — detailed plans to address environmental damage brought on by the former president’s signature campaign promise and confirmed that the wall will remain a permanent fixture of the Southwest for generations to come.
PHILADELPHIA — When the Rev. Mark Tyler, pastor of a predominantly Black church and host of a drive-time radio show, spoke at Senate candidateJohn Fetterman’s campaign rally in northwest Philadelphia on Saturday, he addressed the elephant in the room: that Saturday’s event was Fetterman’s first rally in Pennsylvania’s largest city since he began his run for Senate in February 2021.
Earlier in the day, Tyler had heard someone ask why it had taken Fetterman, a Democrat, so long to hold a rally in the city, the pastor recalled to over 600 attendees assembled in a Mount Airy gymnasium.
“I said, ‘That’s ridiculous! Everybody knows that you save the best for last,’” Tyler quipped, drawing roars of approval from the racially diverse crowd.
Fetterman’s inaugural Philadelphia rally was the capstone of a monthslong effort by the campaign to scale up its operations in the city of more than 1.5 million people.
That’s because while Democrats’ rising fortunes in the Philadelphia suburbs have justifiably elicited national attention, Fetterman’s team understands that high turnout in the city itself is a prerequisite for victory.
“The stakes are always incredibly high. Philly has to turn out at a high margin.”
– Brendan McPhillips, Fetterman campaign manager
“The stakes are always incredibly high,” Fetterman campaign manager Brendan McPhillips told HuffPost in a pre-rally interview. “Philly has to turn out at a high margin.”
Fetterman’s decision in June to hire McPhillips, a South Philadelphia resident who was President Joe Biden’s state director for Pennsylvania, was an early sign of the candidate’s eastward pivot following the Democratic primary.
McPhillips, in turn, prioritized bringing aboard Joe Pierce, a veteran Philadelphia Democratic strategist with close ties to Black elected officials and organized labor, as the campaign’s political director. Both men operate out of a second Philadelphia headquarters that the Pittsburgh-centered campaign opened following the primary.
The campaign’s legwork was apparent in the list of elected officials and union leaders who spoke ahead of Fetterman at Saturday’s rally, including Rep. Dwight Evans (D), who represents the congressional district of the neighborhood where the rally was held.
Tyler’s participation was especially remarkable. He has gone from being a critic of Fetterman’s during the Senate primary to an ally, who also recorded an interview with Fetterman on his radio show this past Thursday.
Speaking to HuffPost before the rally, Tyler waved away his past differences with Fetterman as insignificant.
“The bigger issue is, which of these two persons who are still standing is going to represent the interests of the people that I care about, and in my opinion, only one of them meets any of those boxes,” he said.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, now the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, greets supporters as he enters his first rally in Philadelphia on Saturday.
Ryan Collerd/Associated Press
Republicans Aim For Incremental Improvement
Philadelphia currently has just over 1 million registered voters, about 12% of the state’s entire electorate.
Given Republicans’ growing hold on rural swathes of the Keystone State, running up the margins in Philadelphia is a key part of any statewide Democrat’s strategy for victory. In every recent election cycle, even unsuccessful Democrats running statewide have gotten more than 80% of the vote in the city.
Turnout can be just as decisive as a candidate’s share of the vote, however. Donald Trump actually increased his share of the city’s vote from 15% in 2016 — when he won the state — to nearly 18% in 2020 — when he lost the state.
Higher overall turnout in the city is a key part of the reason Trump fell short the second time. President Joe Biden received nearly 20,000 more votes in Philadelphia than Hillary Clinton had four years earlier, even though Clinton picked up a higher percentage of the total.
Republicans are nonetheless eager to build on Trump’s modest inroads in the city. In March, the Republican National Committee debuted one of its new community engagement centers in a predominantly Black part of Germantown in northwest Philadelphia.
Brandon Brown, who is Black and grew up in the neighboring Mount Airy section of the city, is the center’s dedicated organizer. On Saturday, he led a team of six volunteers — all of them Black — and knocked on more than 240 doors on behalf of the GOP’s slate of candidates. Brown, whose central message is that Democrats have failed to control crime in Black neighborhoods, aims to have his team knock 1,000 doors and place 15,000 phone calls by Election Day.
That isn’t the kind of volume that’s likely to have a significant impact in a statewide race. But Republicans measure progress in Philadelphia very incrementally.
Given the possibility of lower turnout in the city overall in a midterm election year, a Republican candidate that can inch their way past Trump’s 2020 share of 18% might be unbeatable, according to Mark Harris, a Pittsburgh-based Republican strategist.
“Amongst Republicans, there is a belief on our side — and it may turn out to be wrong — that we can do better in Philadelphia in a meaningful way this election cycle,” said Harris, who does not represent Fetterman’s opponent Mehmet Oz or other statewide GOP candidates. “That’s super important.”
“Part of Republicans’ longer-term strategy to compensate for suburban losses has to be to do better in urban areas.”
– Mark Harris, Republican strategist
That might be what Oz was hoping to achieve when he held a series of events in Philadelphia last week, including a roundtable discussion on gun violence at a predominantly Black church in Germantown on Monday.
“Showing up matters,” Harris said. “Part of Republicans’ longer-term strategy to compensate for suburban losses has to be to do better in urban areas.”
In an unforced error that provided Oz with an unexpected public relations win, state Rep. Chris Rabb, a Democrat and Fetterman supporter, appeared onstage at the event. Under fire, Rabb claimed to have attended in solidarity with members of the community and said he stormed out in protest after being denied the right to speak. (The moderator of the panel disputed the latter point.)
Republicans have also had some success convincing previously registered Democrats to switch to the GOP in Philadelphia. So far this year, 4,499 Philadelphia Democrats registered as Republicans — a figure that is 3.6 times greater than the 1,245 Philadelphia Republicans who registered as Democrats over the same period, according to state data. That’s a bigger gap in party-switchers than the state’s overall shift toward Republican registration this year, where Democrat-to-Republican switches were about 2.9 times greater in number than Republican-to-Democrat switches were.
McPhillips characterized hopes of exceeding Trump’s 2020 showing in Philadelphia as a pipe dream, however.
“I don’t think Mehmet Oz is the same unifying electric figure for the right that Trump was,” McPhillips said. “People know that he’s not from here.”
During his remarks on Saturday, Fetterman also accused Oz of speaking out of two sides of his mouth in his effort to appeal to Black voters.
Oz unveiled his “Plan to Fight for Black Communities” at the event on Monday, which includes an endorsement of the bipartisan First Step Act legislation. The law, signed by Trump in December 2018, aimed to reduce the federal prison population by reducing prison sentences for some federal convicts.
The next day, Fetterman noted, Oz’s campaign again deployed “Inmates for Fetterman” — a group of people Oz pays to wear orange prison jumpsuits at Fetterman events — to a Fetterman rally in a rural county to depict him as soft on crime.
“He has no core,” Fetterman declared at the Philadelphia rally.
Mehmet Oz (second from right), the Republican Senate nominee, speaks at a roundtable on gun violence in northwest Philadelphia on Monday. State Rep. Chris Rabb, a Democrat and Fetterman supporter, is seated at left.
Ryan Collerd/Associated Press
Fetterman’s Big Philly Makeover
There are a number of reasons Fetterman has been slow to plant his flag in Philadelphia.
For one thing, Fetterman has been deeply rooted in southwest Pennsylvania for his entire career in public life. He got his start in politics as mayor of Braddock, an economically distressed steel town outside Pittsburgh.
Fetterman has also used his perch as lieutenant governor since 2018 to form relationships with people in largely rural communities who have historically received less attention from the party. During the primary this year, Fetterman sought to leverage that experience, emphasizing his ability to compete in all 67 of the state’s counties.
Sure enough, in a three-candidate primary, Fetterman won every county. In Philadelphia, he even defeated state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Black and openly gay lawmaker from the city’s northern precincts. Kenyatta, who was a fierce critic of Fetterman during the primary, is now an active surrogate for Fetterman.
“John is laying out real solutions” for Philadelphia’s most vulnerable residents, Kenyatta told HuffPost on Friday. “Dr. Oz doesn’t even know where to find the solution.”
“I admire him. He’s got strong values, a decent person.”
– William Dorsey, resident of Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood
Kenyatta, Tyler and other Philadelphia-based boosters for Fetterman tend to emphasize the policy contrast between Fetterman and Oz, a Trump ally who refuses to fully acknowledge the validity of the 2020 election results. They note that Fetterman supports their priorities — strengthening federal voting rights protections, protecting abortion rights, raising the minimum wage, and supporting labor unions.
But their answers also reflect a reality that in a city where personal relationships are often the lifeblood of Democratic politics, Fetterman’s aversion to glad-handing has been a disadvantage.
For example, as lieutenant governor, Fetterman presided over the state Senate. State Sen. Vincent Hughes, a Fetterman campaign surrogate who represents part of North Philadelphia, would nonetheless only describe his relationship with Fetterman as “fine.”
“There is nothing that has occurred that would stop me from aggressively supporting John Fetterman for U.S. Senate,” Hughes said on Friday. “He’s a good man and the choices are stark and real.”
By contrast, Hughes gushed over Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, describing him as a “personal friend” and a “very decent man — a very decent man.”
In recent weeks, Fetterman has quietly tried to make up for lost time, engaging key Philadelphia political players in ways that have not always come naturally to him. He has met privately with a number of Black clergy members, and, on Monday, he attended a walking tour of Black businesses in West Philadelphia with three members of the Philadelphia City Council.
Fetterman has also been investing heavily in radio advertisements on Philadelphia stations with large Black audiences since August.
Lee Horton (center) and Dennis “Freedom” Horton (right) speak at a campaign event for Fetterman (left) in Plymouth Meeting in April. They introduced themselves to Philadelphia rally-goers on Saturday as well.
Tom Williams/Getty Images
Jokes, Sympathy And Powerful Validators
Whatever his challenges with the inside politics game, Fetterman found a warm reception from the audience that came to see him Saturday.
“I admire him. He’s got strong values, a decent person,” William Dorsey, a consultant from Germantown, said after the rally. “His kind of honesty needs to be in higher office.”
Linda Miller, a retail worker from West Philadelphia, described Fetterman as “refreshing.”
“It makes folks excited,” she said after the rally. “Everybody’s tired of the same old speeches.”
Fetterman’s speech has noticeably improved since he returned to the campaign trail after a life-threatening stroke. At a rally in Erie in mid-August that was his first public event since the stroke, his speech sounded more halting and disjointed, and his remarks had less of a natural structure to them.
At just under 13 minutes, Fetterman still keeps his remarks briefer than a typical Senate candidate might. And interviews with the press have been rare.
But on Saturday, Fetterman, who does not speak from prepared remarks, provided precious few noticeable miscues for any Oz-affiliated video trackers — whose presence he joked about — to pounce on.
Fetterman opened with a barrage of regional humor that is already part of his standard schtick on social media. He boasted of having the state agriculture department create a butter sculpture of Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty and introduced himself as “Jawn Fetterman,” a reference to a unique Philadelphia-ism (that does not really make sense as a replacement for “John”).
Incidentally, some of his wisecracks doubled as jabs at Oz, who does not live in Pennsylvania.
“I’m not going to stand here right now and pander to you the way Dr. Oz [does]. I’ll never do that. But … let me just say: WaWa is so much better than Sheetz,” said Fetterman, praising the Eastern Pennsylvania convenience-store chain that he has often jokingly disparaged on Twitter.
“He said, ‘I’m going to fight to get you and your brother out, even if it means I lose every single election after this.’”
– Lee Horton
Fetterman also reflected openly about his struggles with “auditory processing” following his stroke, using it again as an opportunity to blast Oz, a celebrity physician, for lacking empathy. He asked everyone in the room who either had experienced a serious illness or medical event themselves, or had a close family member who had endured that, to raise their hand. Almost everyone in the room raised their hand.
“I hope you didn’t have a doctor in your life making fun of it, laughing at you, telling you that you’re not able to do your job, you’re not fit to serve,” Fetterman said. “But unfortunately, I have a doctor in my life making fun of me and saying all of those things. But if we don’t do what we have to do and step up, you’re going to have that doctor in your life for the next six years.”
Fetterman was likely referencing a late August comment from an Oz spokesperson that if Fetterman had “ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.” In the course of negotiations over a televised debate, the Oz campaign also joked about keeping medical personnel on hand during the debate and allowing for extra bathroom breaks.
Perhaps the remarks with the most impact at Saturday’s rally, however, were not from Fetterman at all. The brothers Lee and Dennis “Freedom” Horton spoke powerfully about how Fetterman lobbied for their life sentences in prison to be commuted. The Hortons had unknowingly given a ride to a friend who had just committed a murder and were convicted of second-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence in Pennsylvania.
Lee recalled Fetterman’s vow to help them at a time when their family had struggled to get the attention of other elected officials. “He said, ‘I’m going to fight to get you and your brother out, even if it means I lose every single election after this,’” he told the crowd.
Following a recommendation from Fetterman, who heads the board of pardons, Gov. Tom Wolf (D-Pa.) agreed to the commutation in February 2021, after both men had served 27 years in prison.
The Hortons have spoken in support of Fetterman before.
But in Philadelphia, many rally-goers were hearing the story for the first time. Raymond Drayton, a retiree from Germantown, pointed to the tale as evidence of Fetterman’s integrity.
Fetterman “was fantastic,” Drayton said. “Getting those individuals out of jail — it takes a man with a lot of backbone, who cares about people, to do that.”
Raymond’s wife, Vivian, who is also retired, agreed.
“He is going to have to really continue to utilize those individuals who were sentenced inappropriately so he can refute what they’re stating about him being soft on crime,” she said.
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HARRISBURG, Pa. — Michael Daino smiled as he unloaded folding chairs from a car and lugged them up the Pennsylvania capitol building steps. “One of the sharks!” he said when I told him I was a journalist. “Circling the waters looking for bait.”
The activist from Delaware County was excited. He’d met Doug Mastriano at a 2020 COVID denial rally ― a “reopen” rally, he called it — in the early days of the pandemic, when Mastriano was just a state senator. Now, two years later, Daino was organizing this get-out-the-vote event on Saturday for Mastriano,the Republican nominee for Pennsylvania governor.How far they’d come together. Up to 2,000 people were expected here. Mastriano had posted a video urging folks to come to the “big rally.” He was going to give a speech.
But only 50 or so people turned up to hear Mastriano speak. An embarrassing showing. (“This was in my neighborhood and I didn’t notice,” one nearby resident tweeted. “Tremendously low energy.”) Daino told me the event must’ve been suppressed by tech companies, blaming Facebook for “shadowbanning” the event page ― acommon gripeamong the MAGA faithful.
It wasn’t immediately clear why the rally was such a bust. Maybe Mastriano didn’t advertise it enough? Or his hostility to the media meant little publicity? Or maybe his supporters were more interested inthe Jan. 6 Truth Rallydown in D.C.? Or just wanted to watch the Penn State game?
Or maybe Mastriano’s campaign, six weeks before the election, is losing steam.
What is clear is that the event once again demonstrated what anextreme figure Mastriano is; and how he and his supporters are animated by a cruel set of grievances ― against democracy, immigrants, trans people and the media ― that make his candidacy one of the biggest emergencies in American politics.
Among the first to arrive Saturday morning were three middle-aged white men who appeared to be working security. One wore a hat saying “Molon Labe,” an ancient Greek phrase meaning “Come and take them,” a common refrain for Second Amendment fundamentalists. The two others belonged to the South Central Pennsylvania Patriots, wearing patches on their sleeves showing two AR-15s crossed over a map of the state and the Roman number III — a symbol for theThree Percenters militia movement, whose followers have been implicated in the insurrection, armed standoffs with the feds and terror plots.
These two Patriots wouldn’t give me their names.
As more people arrived, a Black man on the road below drove by in a truck and yelled “Get out of the twilight zone!” at the gathering crowd. “Turn the channel!” Harrisburg is a majority-Black city, but the crowd for Mastriano was almost completely white.
As was one man from York County who was there to sell MAGA merchandise, unfurling Blue Lives Matter flags across a folding table. There was also a stack of stickers, each with drawings of a diverse set of guns — pistols, AR-15s, rifles — and the words “CELEBRATE DIVERSITY.”
“That one’s just… a joke,” he explained. He wouldn’t give me his name either. He did tell me he expects Democrats to try to steal this upcoming election from Mastriano, just like they stole the 2020 election from former President Donald Trump. There’s widespread voter fraud everywhere, he said, citing “2,000 Mules,” thewidely debunked election denial film. He watches Fox News too.
Stickers for sale on the steps of the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building during a rally for Mastriano.
Christopher Mathias for HuffPost
Jordan Klepper, the comedian and Daily Show host, stopped by the merch table with a camera crew, flipping through the posters on sale. “AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A SOCIALIST COUNTRY,” declared one poster. “DEFUND THE MEDIA,” read another, replete with the logos of major media outlets, including HuffPost.
As Klepper and his camera crew tried to start an interview with someone at the merch table, a man in a white “Project Veritas” hat suddenly arrived, making it clear that this interview was over.
This man was Jeremy Oliver, a former producer for far-right, pro-Trump One America News Network.WHYYreported that the Mastriano campaign has paid over $80,000 to Oliver’s Onslaught Media Group, and that Oliver has since been a regular at Mastriano campaign events, working as a videographer. Oliver has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory.
All day Saturday, Oliver menacingly followed Klepper’s film crew, sometimes holding up a handheld camera.
Mastriano still hadn’t arrived at the statehouse. The bees were vicious, buzzing around the trashcans on the statehouse steps before sometimes darting after the assembled demonstrators. A woman carrying a large poster of a fetus and the words “IT’S A BABY” swatted a bee from her face.
So did Joe D’Orsie, a Republican nominee for the Pennsylvania state House, shortly before lashing out at progressives who “demean women’s sports by allowing biological males on their teams.”
D’Orsie was among a handful of GOP hopefuls and other elected officials offering up speeches while everyone waited for Mastriano to arrive.
State Rep. Mike Jones lavished praise upon Mastriano, comparing the GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor to Moses in the Bible — “and where he stood, the dying stopped,” Jones said, quoting the book of Numbers — in a speech dripping with Christian nationalism.
“There is no king here in America but Jesus Christ,” state Rep. Stephanie Borowicz told the crowd. (Last week Borowiczintroduceda bill in the state legislature that would ban teachers from mentioning gender identity or sexual orientation, a more extreme version of Florida’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law.)
State Rep. Dave Zimmerman listed out “10 ways you’re being controlled.”
“They used the pandemic, that might’ve been a test drive….” he began, before listing off other apparent avenues of control, including climate change, schools and the FBI.
“Now they even use the FBI to scare us, and guys, I’m one of those. The FBI looked for me all day long but what they don’t know, is I turned my tracker off,” Zimmerman said, a seeming acknowledgement that he was among several Pennsylvania state legislators — whose names weren’t known — whorecently received federal subpoenas.
HuffPost can report first that Zimmerman received a federal subpoena. It happened a “couple weeks ago,” he told me at the rally. The subpoena was part of a “witch hunt,” he said, launched by people who want to “shut us up.” He wouldn’t say what is in the subpoena, although it’s widely believed to be related to a federal probe into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Mastriano — one of the country’s foremost election deniers, who received his own subpoena earlier this year — finally arrived on the statehouse steps Saturday around 1:45 p.m., after his supporters had already been there for two hours. When he won the Republican primary this past May, it raised the alarming prospect that aninsurrectionist could be the next governorof Pennsylvania, a key battleground state in the 2024 presidential election.
He arrived with his running mate, Lt. Gov nominee Carrie DelRosso. She spoke first, saying “the Republican Party is the party of family and that’s exactly why we need to win. We need to restore our family systems in Pennsylvania and make sure that we are doing what’s right for our kids.”
“Separate bathrooms!” Del Rosso continued, a reference to banning trans people from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. “Separate bathrooms! That is a safety measure.”
Del Rosso kept the anti-trans panic going. “Biological males should not be allowed to participate in biological female sports and take away our rights!” she said.
Finally, Mastriano took to the podium. It had been a long week. The media, rightly, had gone after him forcampaigning with a self-described “prophet”and prayer coin salesman who calls President Joe Biden the “antichrist.”
Moreover, Mastriano hadadmittedin a video before the rally that needed cash because he’s losing support from national GOP groups. “We have not seen much assistance from them and we’re 49 days out,” he said.
And then there are the polls, which show Democrat Josh Shapiro in the lead.
Now here Mastriano was at this pitiful rally. (“It’s clear that Doug Mastriano’s desperate campaign is flailing as Pennsylvanians come together to reject his radical extremism,” Manuel Bonder, a spokesman for the Shapiro campaign, told HuffPost in response to the rally’s poor attendance.)
“So about my campaign,” Mastriano told the crowd, “it’s a vision for Pennsylvania in one word: freedom. On day one ‘woke’ is broke. On day one critical race theory will no longer be taught in Pennsylvania schools. On day one no more boys on the girls’ team. We stand with female athletes. On day one, no more boys in the girls’ bathroom. We stand with the young ladies and their safety. On day one — we’re blessed Pennsylvania, we’re blessed — on day one we’re gonna withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. We’re going to open up our state lands and rollback regulations, and we’re going to drill and dig like never before.”
Later, Mastriano talked about other freedoms he wanted — like the freedom to use undocumented immigrants as pawns. After mentioning how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently flew migrants to Martha’s Vineyard as part of acruel stuntto make immigration an election issue, Mastriano laughed and said when he’s governor he’ll use “my Pennsylvania state police″ to send immigrants to President Joe Biden’s house in Delaware.
The few dozen Mastriano supporters waving a big flag on the statehouse steps as Courtesy of the Red White and Blue plays for the second time pic.twitter.com/tqjoolSDvD
Mastriano wrapped things up with a “Thank you and God bless you all” before quickly shuffling off to his car, leaving the statehouse grounds before reporters could ask questions. Not that he would answer them anyway. Mastriano has siloed himself away on the campaign trail to an astonishing degree, refusing to engage with major media outlets, or even local newspapers, preferring instead to answer only softball questions from friendly far-right influencers, like Steve Bannon, and often holding campaign events on private properties where his security team can chase away reporters.
His supporters in Harrisburg Saturday were left to unfurl a giant American flag on the statehouse steps by themselves, as Daino, the event organizer, blared Toby Keith’s jingoistic, post-9/11 country anthem“Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”out of the speakers.
Daino played the song again, one more time, as Mastriano’s smattering of supporters stood mostly in silence, once breaking into half-hearted chants of “Doug for Gov!” as they waved the flag up and down, up and down, like somber preschoolers playing the parachute game.
“And you’ll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A.,” Keith sang. “Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass / it’s the American way.”
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