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EXTRA! for March 6, 2017

Stories of interest to working people for Monday, March 6, 2017.
By AFSCME Staff ·

Labor Nominee

Trump labor nominee talked tough on sex crimes but gave billionaire a ‘sweetheart’ deal
By Jay Weaver and Patricia Mazzei, Miami Herald, March 3, 2017

Kent Frank, 50, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Miami’s U.S. attorney at the time, Alex Acosta, declared in a news release that society “cannot permit such individuals to seek sanctuary in our community.” … But Acosta, now President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of labor, made a very different call in another, far more sordid case just months later. The agreement Acosta approved for Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein — a “sweetheart plea deal,” according to attorneys for Epstein’s victims — could come back to haunt his Senate confirmation hearing.

Working People’s Agenda

Sen. Sherrod Brown’s Proposal Aims to Boost Workers’ Wages, Stability (Subscription required)
By Bob Davis and Siobhan Hughes, Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2017

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has long pushed populist liberal themes, is putting together a worker aid package that will help his party make the case it is on the side of working families.  The 77-page proposal … would boost the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, expand collective bargaining rights and give workers a tax credit to match retirement contributions, among other measures. 

Supreme Court

Supreme Court showdown about to get real
By Seung Min Kim, Politico, March 6, 2017

For Gorsuch to get confirmed to the nation’s highest court without a nasty filibuster fight, Donald Trump’s nominee needs to win over the likes of (Angus) King, the first-term Maine senator who's one of about a dozen Democratic votes who will determine Gorsuch’s fate.  After nearly four hours fielding questions and comments at a Gorsuch-themed town hall here Sunday night, King still wasn't tipping his hand. 

Health Care

‘Really Sick and Really Scared’ Voters Temper Action on Health Law
By Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times, March 5, 2017

Republicans have chosen a partisan route to remaking the law, in which 218 votes in the House and a mere 50 in the Senate are needed to repeal and replace it. While much of the focus has been on the potential for hardline conservatives to act as spoilers with their opposition to anything but a bare-bones replacement, there is increased wariness among Republican senators who have the opposite concerns. “Once low-income people are receiving good health care for the first time, it becomes very difficult for a member of Congress to take that assistance away from them,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. “To deprive them of that health care is something that now makes a lot of people in my party uncomfortable.”

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