Marco Rubio Pretends He Cares About Rail Workers

A month after Halloween, Marco Rubio got to dust off his favorite costume as a faux-populist. On Tuesday, the Florida senator tweeted in his apparent support for rail workers:

Rubio’s tweet comes after President Joe Biden’s Monday announcement, in which he called on Congress to pass legislation and block an impending railroad strike.

While the majority of railroad unions voted for the White House-brokered deal, the majority of railroad workers voted against it. A primary worker complaint about the deal is that it lacks paid sick days.

Instead of heeding those complaints, Biden has urged Congress to impose the deal anyways. Now, Rubio is pretending to care about workers—without any specific engagement towards the actual issues workers face.

This isn’t Rubio’s first rodeo. Last year, Rubio “spoke out” on behalf of unionizing Amazon workers. He avoided expressing actual support of a union itself. Instead, Rubio explained it makes sense workers might want a union in response to “woke” human resources fads.

In other words, Rubio’s “support” for workers had little to do with the material conditions they faced, and more with his ability to use them as a vessel for Republicans’ continual hollow efforts to stoke culture war. Those efforts continue today.

In his brave tweet, Rubio did not actually specify what would comprise an acceptable deal (like including paid sick leave for workers). He could also speak against nine of his Republican colleagues currently cosponsoring a bill that would force workers to accept a deal without sick leave. And yet.

Despite Rubio—or any other Republicans’—posturing, there is no such thing as a conservative workers’ movement. Conservatives (whether Republican or Democrat) are opposed to expanding social welfare or other public programs. They are massive recipients of corporate dollars, from big finance to fossil fuels. And they certainly act in accordance with those dollars.

Biden is dropping the ball for workers here—but let’s not pretend Rubio and Republicans actually care about that.

Georgia has broken its own state record for the most ballots cast in a single day.

Statewide early voting has begun in Georgia’s Senate runoff election between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, and voters are fully embracing the opportunity. On Monday, over 300,000 Georgia voters turned out to cast their ballots. The previous record for early voting in a single day was 233,000 votes in 2018.

As of early Tuesday morning, one week before Election Day, turnout eclipsed 500,000, or 7 percent of all registered Georgia voters. Women outpace men, making up 55.4 percent of early voters. Meanwhile, 9.4 percent of registered Black voters have already voted, a higher percentage than any other ethnic group.

Before Monday’s record, nearly 182,000 people had voted, either with absentee ballots or in select counties that opened voting earlier.

State and national Republican officials fought to prevent the state from allowing early voting before Monday, but the Georgia Supreme Court ruled against them.

As early voting began, the two campaigns pursued different strategies. Warnock spent his time over the weekend around Atlanta rallying supporters and leading a march to the polls. He  benefited from surrogates including Senator Cory Booker, hip-hop artist Waka Flocka Flame, and Yolanda King, civil rights activist and Martin Luther King’s granddaughter.

Meanwhile, Walker spent his time pontificating that anyone peacefully protesting after 5 p.m. should be arrested, that young people don’t know what racism is, and that people born after 1990 “haven’t earned the right” to try changing the country—and he invited them to leave America instead of complaining, saying they should lose their citizenship if they do.

While Walker complains about young people, more voters aged 18-24 have voted than those aged 25-29, 30-34, 35-40, or 40-45 as of early Tuesday morning.

It is too early to make definite predictions as to what the data may portend. But Warnock’s closing message is one of enthusiasm and vision, while Walker is just grumbling about people whose support he ostensibly wants. Voters most eager to turn out early may likely be supporting one message distinctly over the other!

In a confusing twist, the Arizona GOP-controlled county that refused to certify the 2022 midterm elections had voted for Kari Lake as governor.

The two Republican members of Cochise County’s supervisory board voted Monday to delay certification, despite there being no evidence of voter fraud.

What’s more, the vote count published by the Cochise County board showed that Lake won by an overwhelming 58.15 percent, compared to Katie Hobbs’s 40.49 percent.

Arizona Secretary of State Hobbs, the Democratic governor-elect and apparently the world’s worst vote-rigger, sued Cochise County for failing to meet the state’s deadline for certification. The lawsuit will force the county to certify the votes by December 8, which will shrink her margin of victory.

“The Board’s inaction not only violates the plain language of the statute, but also undermines a basic tenet of free and fair elections in this state: ensuring that every Arizonan’s voice is heard,” the lawsuit said.

Arizona has been plagued with election falsehoods since surprisingly going for Joe Biden in 2020, and the midterms were no exception: early voting was rife with voter intimidation.

On Election Day, when some of the polling stations in Maricopa County began experiencing issues with their tabulator machines, right-wing figures accused the state government of trying to rig the race—even though people could still vote.

Lake sued Maricopa County officials over the weekend, supposedly over the tabulator issues but really to try to delay certification. The two Cochise County Republican supervisors also cited tabulator issues, saying the county’s machines had not been properly certified.

Both of those supervisors are Covid-19 skeptics, and one is an election denier like Lake. They had voted to turn down almost $2 million in government Covid-19 relief funds because Peggy Judd said it should be treated “like the common cold,” and Tom Crosby compared the coronavirus vaccine to Agent Orange.

Judd also participated in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

All of Arizona’s other counties have certified the votes.

Officials in a Republican-controlled county in Arizona voted to delay certifying the 2022 midterm election results, meaning they will miss the state’s legal deadline of 5:00 p.m. Monday and face legal action.

Cochise County’s decision came despite there being absolutely no discovery of fraud during the voting process.

“There is no reason for us to delay,” the board of supervisors chair Ann English, a Democrat, said. Her vote to certify was outweighed by the votes against from the two Republican board members.

The Arizona secretary of state’s office confirmed it will sue the county for failing to meet the deadline. The secretary, Katie Hobbs, was elected as governor during the race earlier in November.

Lawyer and Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias also hinted he will file suit against Cochise County.

Arizona has become a crucial swing state after surprisingly going for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Then-Governor Doug Ducey certified the vote results, but Arizona has been plagued with election falsehoods since.

The midterms were no exception: during early voting, the state reported 18 cases of voter intimidation, including self-appointed poll watchers showing up at ballot boxes with guns.

On Election Day, about 20 percent of the polling stations in Maricopa County began experiencing issues with their tabulator machines. Even though people could still vote, right-wing figures accused the state government of trying to rig the race for Democrats.

Also on Monday, the Maricopa County certification meeting dragged on for hours. County officials ultimately certified the votes, but only after dozens of election deniers accused them of fixing or even destroying ballots.

Kari Lake, who despite her baseless claims otherwise lost the gubernatorial race to Hobbs, retweeted multiple videos of people sharing election conspiracies during the Maricopa meeting. She sued Maricopa County election officials over the weekend, ostensibly to make them respond to her campaign’s public records request about the tabulator issues, but really because she’s a sore loser.

Tyler Adams knows when to apologize—and when not to.

At a press conference on Monday, the U.S. men’s soccer captain was confronted by an Iranian state media reporter who accused Adams of hypocrisy.

“You say you support the Iranian people, but you’re pronouncing our country’s name wrong,” Press TV reporter Milad Javanmardy said.

Javanmardy proceeded to press Adams, asking, “Are you okay to be representing a country that has so much discrimination against Black people?”

Adams, 23, apologized about his mispronunciation of “Iran,” before thoughtfully answering Javanmardy’s pointed question.

“I grew up in a white family with obviously an African-American heritage and background, as well. So I had a little bit of different cultures and I was very, very easily able to assimilate in different cultures,” he said.

“Not everyone has that ease and the ability to do that…through education, I think it’s super important. Like you just educated me now on the pronunciation of your country…I think, as long as you see progress, that’s the most important thing.”

Monday’s conference was unusual, as both Adams and U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter fielded charged question after question, ranging from why the American government hasn’t removed a Naval ship from near Iran to why people with an Iranian passport can’t travel to America.

Iranian state affiliates have attacked the U.S. Soccer Federation for its social media accounts displaying Iran’s flag without the emblem of the Islamic Republic. U.S. Soccer said it wanted to change the flag for 24 hours to express “support for the women in Iran fighting for basic human rights.”.

In response, Iranian state media suggested on Sunday that the U.S. should be kicked out of the World Cup and suspended for 10 games.

Javanmardy, who questioned Adams, works for Press TV—an organization owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. The corporation’s head is appointed by the Iranian state leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Of course, Javanmardy is not wrong in a general sense about America’s pervasive racism. But his targeted questioning is part of a larger pattern of whataboutism by Iranian state affiliates to detract attention from the state’s continual civil rights violations. And Adams, the youngest captain at this year’s World Cup, seamlessly displayed the brazen ridiculousness of it all.