It's no secret that we at EPI have been skeptical about President Trump's commitment to a policy agenda that would deliver the goods for low and middle-income Americans. His campaign proposals were nearly across-the-board great for high-income households and corporate business, but bad for most American workers. His nominees for key economic posts have been consistently hostile to policies that boost bargaining power for low and middle-wage workers. And now we have his inaugural speech, in which he specifies the groups he thinks have won and lost over recent decades in the American economy.
This speech is clarifying in that he identifies foreigners and "a small group in our nation's Capital [sic]" as the big winners. Totally absent from his speech is the "small group" that has actually done very well and whose gains genuinely crowded-out potential growth for the vast majority of American households: the top 1 percent.
It's unclear what evidence Trump could be referring to when decrying that "small group in our nation's Capital" as the winners in recent decades. Since the recovery from the Great Recession began, for example, federal spending has grown more slowly than in nearly every other post-war recovery.
Blog: Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio Post: Fwd: Wednesday show topic: HOW TO DE-STRESS Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/01/fwd-wednesday-show-topic-how-to-de.html
The empty stage for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on election night at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images
David Betras realized Hillary Clinton's odds of winning the presidency were in peril — back in March of last year.
Betras, the chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party, lives in an area of Ohio that traditionally votes for Democrats. But during the Ohio primary, Betras saw 18 people on his own precinct committee defect and cross party lines to vote Republican.
"Why did they vote for Donald Trump?" Betras asked rhetorically, and in the next breath answered his own question, "'cause Donald Trump — I don't get it, but, amazingly, a man that s**** in gold-plated toilets — was talking more to working people than the party's standard-bearer."
David Betras, chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party, said his party needs to get back to "its roots" and focus on the working class.
Asma Khalid/NPR
Quick fact check: While some apartments in Trump Tower do have gold-plated bathroom fixtures, there's no evidence of a gold toilet. But you get the point: Betras was frustrated with his own party, that it could not appeal to working-class voters while running against a New York billionaire.
"We were stressing the wrong messages. 'Stronger Together' — that's real nice," Betras said, referring to Clinton's campaign slogan. "Let's sit around and sing, 'Kumbaya,' but that really doesn't get anyone a job, does it?"
The future for Democrats is fuzzy. Following President Obama, the first black president, the party is having something of an identity crisis. Clinton lost, in part, because she wasn't able to appeal to white, working-class voters, who were a crucial pillar of the party for decades. But minority activists warn that people of color have been a growing key to Democratic success for years — yet still don't have the influence they feel they deserve.
While many in the party were encouraged by the massive turnout for the Women's March Saturday, which was bigger than the crowd that showed up for Trump's inauguration the day before, Democrats have no clear leader and no unified policy direction. Democrats suffered a stunning defeat in November, capping off a disastrous string of defeats during the Obama years. Democrats have lost more than 1,000 state legislative seats in that time, dozens of congressional and governors seats — and are at the lowest point of their power than at any time in the last century.
In this post-mortem moment, Democrats can't even agree on why the party lost. Some, like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton's chief rival for the nomination, say Democrats focused too much on identity politics and need to return to their economic roots. Others point out that identity politics is a necessary part of the game. They argue that Trump was playing to his own base of white identity politics and that black voters, for example, were among the most loyal Clinton supporters, so the party should not abandon them and cater to whites.
And yet others insist that economics and race are not mutually exclusive choices, that it is possible to focus on both simultaneously. Figuring out that balance is going to be central to the party's survival, as it currently wanders in the political wilderness.
"Off message": Concerns over economy, white, working-class ignored
Betras, the county chairman, was so deeply frustrated by what he was seeing, he typed up a memo and sent it to the Clinton campaign in Brooklyn.
Clinton did far worse than Obama in Mahoning Valley counties. Obama won Mahoning by 28, Trumbull by 22 and lost Mercer by 4. Clinton won Mahoning by 3 and lost Trumbull by 7, Mercer by 25.
"I told the campaign they were in trouble with blue-collar workers," he said with urgency. He tried to warn the campaign that if it "didn't retool [its] message," it would lose not only Ohio, but also other states with influential white, working-class voting blocs, like Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Betras said no one ever responded to his memo. And Clinton went on to lose exactly as he had predicted. It was the first time a Democrat had lost Ohio and Pennsylvania since 1988 and the first time a Democrat had lost Wisconsin since 1984.
A big reason for that was the bleed with working-class voters in the Mahoning Valley. Three counties make up the valley — Mahoning and Trumbull in Ohio and Mercer in Pennsylvania. Clinton suffered more-than-25-point swings in each county from Obama's performance in 2012.
"We could have saved those states, had they taken my damn memo [and] at least tried to do what I suggested for them to do ... start talking to these people about their jobs," Betras said.
Clinton's loss shocked many Democrats across the country, but it didn't surprise everyone in Ohio, a traditional battleground state where Clinton suffered one of her largest defeats. She lost by more than 8 percentage points, the worst loss for a Democrat there since Michael Dukakis lost it by 11 in 1988.
"I'm not shocked that Hillary Clinton lost," said Precious Samuel, 29, a labor organizer in Cleveland. "I saw the loss a mile away."
In Northeast Ohio, Democrats said they saw the warning signs. And, so now, as Democrats look to rebuild, they also see lessons the national party can learn from Ohio.
"Here's the irony of it — all our local Democrats crushed the Republicans," Betras said, " 'cause we're talking to those voters, we know how to talk to them."
He, like other Ohio voters, pointed to the popularity of Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan (who tried unsuccessfully to challenge Nancy Pelosi, who won yet another term as the Democratic House leader). But Betras said the familiarity and trust many voters felt for local Democrats didn't translate to Clinton on the national level.
"The people here thought — wrongly — the national Democratic Party cared more about where someone went to the bathroom than whether or not these people had a job," Betras said. "And so, we're off-message."
Betras insists for most voters, the economy is the primary concern. And he is worried the Democratic National Committee doesn't understand that — that it has become too coastal, too elite and too disconnected from middle America. His prime example of the elitism he sees in his own party is the criticism he heard from some Democrats when Trump misrepresented the number of jobs in the Carrier deal.
"I don't care if it was a bad deal," Betras argued, "he was fighting for someone's job. That's what we used to do, right?"
Betras said the pushback seemed horribly out of touch with working-class voters. And the Mahoning Valley is home to thousands of working-class folks, many of them white people who voted for Trump in November.
"Those are our voters," Betras said. "Those are the people's issues we should be fighting for."
"Time for progressives to reclaim the party"
Leo Jennings III, a 61-year-old Democratic consultant and former union organizer, grew up in the shadow of the Ohio steel mills.
Leo Jennings III is a Democratic consultant from Youngstown, Ohio, who thinks the progressives need to reclaim the party.
Asma Khalid/NPR
But those days are long gone, he said, in between bites of country toast and bacon at the Golden Dawn restaurant in Youngstown.
"There's no one around this area who believes for two seconds that the steel mills are coming back, because we all watched them flatten. ... They're gone," he said. "But what they see is the rich getting richer and no opportunity for them to go to work."
Jennings, a Sanders supporter during the primaries, said the only way his party can start winning again is by adopting a more progressive economic agenda.
"I think we've left a lot of people behind by this belief in trade," Jennings said. "I think it's time for the progressives to reclaim the party."
He added that in a year when people wanted to shake up the system, Clinton was the poster child for the status quo. Plus, he added, she didn't have credibility among many voters on issues like income inequality and wage stagnation, because of her flip-flop on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Jennings, like Sanders, thinks the party needs to focus on working-class issues above all else.
"If we don't start talking about the things that we can do to make it better for all working-class voters, we're bankrupt as a party," Jennings argued.
Jennings added that working-class whites and blacks are affected by the same financial woes and that the Democratic Party needs to start talking about the economy in a way that rises above race.
"I mean, I don't think you have to abandon identity politics," Jennings said, "but, at the same token, you have to talk to the issues that motivate the traditional Democratic base, because it's been decades where they feel as if they've been ignored."
Both Jennings and Betras fundamentally believe race and class are not mutually exclusive — they say the dichotomy between identity politics and the economy is a false choice.
"I hate the [phrase], 'white, working class,' " Betras said, "and I reject that notion that somehow the white, working-class needs are different from the working-class needs."
For both men, it's a matter of prioritizing the discussion. They see a focus on the economy as a way to ensure the party remains a "big tent."
A warning not to "go and pander back to white Americans"
About an hour and a half west of the Mahoning Valley, in Cleveland, Chinemerem Onyeukwu, 23, part of a group called Ohio Young Black Democrats, echoed that message. He, too, wants a more progressive party.
Chinemerem Onyeukwu, 23, an organizer with the Ohio Democratic Party's coordinated campaign to elect Clinton, is worried Democrats are not investing in young voters.
Asma Khalid/NPR
"If the Democratic Party wants to be around in the future, they need to go left," said Onyeukwu, an organizer for the state's coordinated campaign that worked to elect Clinton.
Onyeukwu, like the Democrats in the Mahoning Valley, also thinks the party needs to focus more on the economy. He points out that's how a man named Barack Hussein Obama won Ohio — twice.
But "progressive" politics for Onyeukwu is more than just the economy. He wants a party that is progressive socially — and culturally. He thinks the party could start winning again by investing more in young voters.
"The Democratic Party has not done a good job in developing the next generation of policymakers, of advocates, and activists, and politicians," Onyeukwu said. He feels that Republicans have made more of concerted effort than Democrats to develop a bench.
He is worried that Democrats are going to keep running what he called '90s-style campaigns despite Clinton's loss.
"The people that they're talking about running in 2020 — they need to be in a retirement home, just old heads," he said, quickly adding, "And, I don't say that to like be ageist ... [but] these people have sat at the top for so long, they don't even know what's going on in the rest of America."
A few other members of the Ohio Young Black Democrats nodded in agreement.
"Hillary's not the problem," said Samuel, the labor organizer. "The democratic process is the problem. And, making sure people feel included."
Samuel said the Democratic Party doesn't seem to understand its audience. And for Onyeukwu, that audience includes many people of color. So he wants a party that also continues to push for more progressive policies on race.
"I want to guard against the Democratic Party, because they feel that they lost because white men and white women did not vote for Democrats," Onyeukwu said. "I want to make sure that we do not abandon minority demographics to go and pander back to white Americans."
Onyeukwu is concerned that identity politics has become increasingly taboo in some Democratic circles.
"As a party," he said, "you should be robust enough to have multiple conversations with multiple groups of people at the same time."
"People of color are the base of the Democratic Party"
This debate over identity politics gets people like Jessica Byrd frustrated. She is an Ohio native who now leads a group called Democracy in Color, which calls for Democrats to invest more in minorities.
"We're talking about identity politics as if the only people who have an identity are people of color when we know that white men ... that's an identity too," she said. "That's who came out and voted for Donald Trump."
Byrd believes Democrats need to figure out how to create the most inclusive party possible. And, for her, that means not just expanding the tent, but also looking inside the tent.
She noted that people of color have been key for Democrats to win elections for years — and yet, she believes they have not been given an influential enough voice in the party. She said without doing so inevitably hurts enthusiasm and grass-roots activism.
She added, "People of color are the base of the Democratic Party; it is our home. The difference, though, is — we're not allowed to make any decisions there.""The lack of diversity in the Democratic Party," she said, "means that we aren't meaningfully able to engage in the conversations on the ground that actually get people to care about voting."
She argued that power dynamic needs to change, especially at a moment when the party is rebuilding.
"In a time where we are rebuilding our home, and we're like deciding what's going to go on the walls and what kind of couch we're gonna sit on," she said, "we want everybody to come to our housewarming, [but] we also want to make some decisions about what that vibe is like."
Byrd said the party doesn't need a huge overhaul — it just needs to do a better job connecting with the people already in the Democratic Party, particularly minorities, to make sure they show up on Election Day.
Byrd argued part of what's getting lost in this moment of Democratic introspection is the technical failures of the Clinton ground game. Clinton lost Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by fewer than 78,000 votes combined. Winning all three of those states would have put Clinton over the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
Clinton didn't make a single campaign stop in Wisconsin and did not pour in the kind of resources necessary to win Michigan. In each of those states, Clinton underperformed President Obama with young voters. Byrd, who worked on the Obama campaign in Ohio, said it takes extensive organizing and one-on-one conversations for Democrats to engage their base voters.
"We have to get back to believing that those resources being spent on human beings," she said, "having conversations with other human beings, is meaningful."
'It's a dark time right now,' a former Obama administration spokeswoman says as multiple agencies tell employees to restrict news releases and social media.
Federal agencies are clamping down on public information and social media in the early days of Donald Trump's presidency, limiting employees' ability to issue news releases, tweet or otherwise communicate with the outside world, according to memos and sources from multiple agencies.
The steps to mute federal employees — seen to varying degrees in the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of the Interior, Transportation, Agriculture and Health and Human Services — are sparking early fears of a broader crackdown across the government, as Trump vows to pursue an agenda sharply at odds with his predecessor.
New administrations have long sought to control the message coming out of federal agencies. But watchdog groups worry about what restrictions the Trump administration may yet impose on federal workers, who are already reeling from the president's decision Monday to freeze most hiring, as well as a move in Congress to allow lawmakers to impose draconian salary cuts for individual employees.
"From what we can tell, the cloud of Mordor is descending across the federal service," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
"It's a dark time right now," said Liz Purchia, who headed EPA's public affairs office during the Obama administration. "People are nervous and they are scared about what they can and can't do. They don't want to get in trouble and they want to do the right thing.
"It's ironic that Trump based his entire campaign on Twitter and social media and now he's preventing the staff that work from him from communicating with the public," Purchia added.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on this story. But Trump aides have rejected criticism that they're planning to embark on a "witch hunt" targeting federal employees.
Asked about that matter Tuesday, Spicer said: "My understanding is that because they had inappropriately violated their own social media policies, there was guidance that was put out to the department to act in compliance with the rules that were set forth."
Other agencies have since followed suit to restrain their employees' external communications.
On Monday, the Transportation Department advised its employees not to publish news releases or engage on DOT's social media accounts until they get more guidance from the new administration. The move was not a "ban," a department spokesperson told POLITICO, and DOT's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration continued to tweet about distracted driving and vehicle recalls.
Meanwhile, employees at HHS and the National Institutes of Health received a memotelling them to halt external correspondence.
"For your additional awareness, please note that we have been directed not to send any correspondence to public officials (to include Members of Congress and state and local officials) between now and February 3, unless specifically authorized by the Department," said one section of the memo, which was obtained by POLITICO.
But an HHS official disputed the idea that the agency had been muzzled, and said people were misinterpreting a memo from acting Secretary Norris Cochran that "pertains only to proposed or pending regulations." Trump had ordered a "regulatory freeze" Friday night, telling agencies to hold off on all pending rules until his administration can review them.
"Contrary to erroneous media reports, HHS and its agencies continue to communicate fully about its work through all of its regular communication channels with the public, the media and other relevant audiences," the official said. "There is no directive to do otherwise."
NIH spokeswoman Renate Myles said her agency was told "to hold on publishing new rules or guidance in the Federal Register or other public forums and discussing them with public officials until the administration has had an opportunity to review them."
At EPA, the lockdown extends well beyond formal coordinated messaging. Aside from a block on any press releases and social media posts, a Monday memo circulated internally and obtained by POLITICO warned that EPA employees scheduled to speak at public events like conferences in the next month must alert Trump's team of temporary political appointees.
Trump's team will also review EPA's previously planned public webinars "and decide which ones will go forward." And EPA employees were cautioned to send only "essential" messages to email lists, since those messages "can be shared broadly and end up in the press."
Separately, employees of the USDA's Agriculture Research Service received a memo Monday from branch chief of staff Sharon Drumm telling them that the release of documents, including "but not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds and social media content," would be held until further notice.
The service did send out a news release Monday, touting a National Academy of Sciences award given to one of its scientists, and retweeted an Academy statement on the win. Both ARS and USDA's communications office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The move was unusual for USDA's research arm, which looks at the broad scope of food and agriculture issues including nutrition, crop yields and even detecting fire ants. It was unclear whether the restrictions also apply to researchers publishing work in outside scientific journals, attending conferences and other public-facing activities that ARS scientists regularly engage in.
The worries about freedom of information in the government extend well beyond tweets and press releases. On Monday, two of Trump's political aides visited Voice of America, where a little-noticed move by Congress will give the president unprecedented control over a broadcasting agency that has been governed by a bipartisan board of directors. And the CDC gave no explanation as it canceled a conference planned for next month on climate change — a move that one of the event's scheduled speakers described to The Washington Post as a "strategic retreat."
Some agencies appear undeterred. The Twitter account of Badlands National Park in South Dakota, for example, posted a series of messages Tuesday seemingly at odds with new president's skepticism on climate change science, including: "Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate"
Federal workers have been on alert since Trump's transition, when a series of leaks from the new president's team raised the possibility that the new administration could target specific employees seen as contradicting its agenda. One memo to the Energy Department asked for the names of any employees who worked on Obama's climate initiatives — a request then-Secretary Ernest Moniz refused. Another memo to the State Department asked for details of existing programs aimed at promoting gender equality.
Not all employees appear all that worried about the latest moves, which come as most of Trump's Cabinet nominees are waiting for Senate confirmation. One current EPA official said the early moves, which include halting work on the agency's grants, raised eyebrows. But the official added, "If this freeze on hiring and on contracts, grants and interagency agreement continues for several months, then I will be concerned."
Still, the restrictions on public communications could be just the first volley against career employees. The Trump administration's budget is expected to advocate for deep cuts targeting disfavored domestic agencies in which Trump has little interest, compared with national security. A past budget blueprint from the Heritage Foundation, which has played a leading role in developing policy for Trump, calls for slashing programs inside the EPA, the Energy Department, the State Department and the National Endowment for the Arts.
"The hiring freeze is kind of like an opening jab, and then the right cross will be a budget that in some of the target agencies like EPA we assume are going to see deep, double-digit budget cuts," said Ruch, from PEER. "So we're dusting off legal research about reduction in force, return rights, things like that."
Ruch also warned that his group is fielding concerns that the hiring freeze could prevent even seasonal government hires, including firefighters at the Forest Service or national parks rangers during the busy summer season. "Those agencies run on seasonals," he said.
Within the first few days of the Trump administration, the hand-off of power varied from agency to agency.
Places with a confirmed Cabinet secretary, such as DHS and the Department of Defense, hummed along, according to agency sources, while employees at the other places, like USDA or the Department of Education, felt directionless and rudderless.
One senior official at the FDA said people there felt "mass confusion" and that "no one knows who is on first." The FDA's acting commissioner was set to have his first meeting with Trump's "beachhead" team Tuesday, the official added. For comparison, eight years ago, the Obama-Biden transition team showed up a week after the election.
Similarly, the White House OMB's website has been down since shortly after Trump was sworn in Friday afternoon. OMB is a key agency that helps manage the sprawling federal government and will be central to carrying out Trump's goal of shrinking the size of the federal government through potential budget cuts.
Over at the State Department, employees also waited. "Not much has happened. I've not personally met with anybody [from the Trump team,]" said a department spokesperson. "Most assistant secretaries have had one or two meetings, but it's far less developed than it was from Bush to Obama or Clinton to Bush. All transitions are different, but this one seems less developed."
Sources familiar with the issue said Trump's team did little to coordinate with State ahead of the president's move on Tuesday to advance the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. The State Department is the lead agency in charge of reviewing the project.
Joanne Kenen, Sarah Karlin-Smith, Ben Weyl, Jeremy Herb, Ted Hesson, Arthur Allen, Michael Stratford, Caitlin Emma, Helena Bottemiller Evich, Jenny Hopkinson and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.
