Teamsters president will speak at the Republican National Convention

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Teamsters president will speak at the Republican National Convention

2024-06-22 07:39 Last Updated At：07:40

CHAPIN, S.C. (AP) — The president of the Teamsters Union is set to speak at next month's Republican National Convention, as Donald Trump angles to chip away at President Joe Biden's support among the blue-collar workers who are expected to play a major role in the general election, particularly in crucial Midwestern swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said that Sean O'Brien had “accepted my invitation to speak at the RNC Convention in Milwaukee."

Teamsters spokesperson Kara Deniz said Friday that O'Brien had requested a speaking slot at both major party conventions and accepted Trump's invitation for the RNC, marking the first time a Teamsters president would speak at the GOP event.

Planners for the Democratic National Convention said Friday that no final decisions about programming had yet been made for the August event.

“We are building a convention in Chicago that will tell our story to the American people, including the stories of labor and union leaders and workers that President Biden has been delivering for as the most pro-union president in modern history," party spokesperson Matt Hill told The Associated Press.

Trump has been trying to make inroads among Biden's support among organized labor heading into the general election, as he works to win over the blue-collar workers who helped fuel his 2016 victory. Union members tend to vote Democratic, with 56% of members and households backing Biden in 2020, according to AP VoteCast.

In September, while his GOP rivals met for a debate, Trump traveled to Michigan and tried to win over autoworkers by lambasting Biden’s electric vehicles push in the midst of a strike. During his speech, Trump urged the United Auto Workers to endorse him, directly appealing to union president Shawn Fain — though he spoke from the floor of a nonunionized auto-parts plant.

Fain instead called Trump a “scab,” a derogatory term for workers who cross union picket lines and work during a strike, as he endorsed Biden. In January, Trump called on UAW members to oust Fain after the group endorsed Biden.

O’Brien meanwhile has met privately with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club, where the two discussed issues including right-to-work laws that allow those in unionized workplaces to opt out of paying dues and fees. After a roundtable with Teamster leaders in January, Trump called the event “a very productive meeting,” acknowledging that the union typically backs Democrats, but, referencing the possibility of an endorsement, “Stranger things have happened.”

O’Brien later described the roundtable conversation with Trump as “pleasant” and “direct” but said the union was a long way from making a decision. After meeting with Biden in March, O'Brien said the president has been “great” for workers but stressed that “there’s still a lot of work to be done” to bolster unions.

Biden — who has long billed himself as the most labor-friendly president in history, going so far as to turn up on a picket line in the Detroit area during the autoworkers strike last fall — has already received significant organized labor backing with early endorsements from the AFL-CIO and others. But Trump is hoping to cut into that support as he casts himself as pro-worker and tries to exacerbate divisions between union leaders and some rank-and-file members.

The Teamsters union represents 1.3 million workers, including UPS drivers, film and television workers, freight operators, members of law enforcement and other government workers.

It backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, although O’Brien has stressed that the union is keeping an open mind on endorsements this cycle. The group generally waits until after both parties’ summer nominating conventions to make a formal endorsement, and it will “most likely” do so again this year, once it polls its members, solicits rank-and-file input and reconvenes its leadership team, O’Brien has said.

Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

European Union leaders agree on top officials who will be the face of world's largest trading bloc

2024-06-28 05:58 Last Updated At：06:01

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders signed off on a trio of top appointments for their shared political institutions on Thursday, reinstalling German conservative Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission for another five years.

At the side of von der Leyen, who heads up the EU’s executive branch, would be two new faces: Antonio Costa of Portugal as European Council president and Estonia’s Kaja Kallas as the top diplomat of the world’s largest trading bloc.

“Satisfaction,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a former European Council President. “For Poland and for Europe.”

Both von der Leyen and Kallas should now be approved by European lawmakers. Costa’s nomination only needed the leaders’ approval, and he will start in his new role in fall.

After the three centrist political families in the European Parliament struck a deal earlier this week, the top jobs package was widely expected to be approved at the two-day summit starting Thursday in Brussels.

But far-right politicians, emboldened by their strong showing in EU parliament elections earlier this month, slammed it as a stitch-up in the run-up to the meeting.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made clear her displeasure at being excluded from preparatory talks with a small group of leaders who divvied up the top jobs. Her nationalist European Conservatives and Reformists group emerged as the third force in the European Parliament elections this month.

Meloni voted against Portugal’s Costa and Estonia’s Kallas, two sources close to the discussions told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Meloni abstained on von der Leyen for European Commission president, the same sources confirmed. The two officials requested anonymity in line with EU practice.

In the end only one leader, nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, voted against the tripartite deal.

“European voters were cheated,” he said on Facebook Thursday evening. “We do not support this shameful agreement!” His objections were moot: the package only needed a two-thirds majority to pass.

The June 6-9 poll saw the EU’s legislature shift to the right and dealt major blows to mainstream governing parties in France and Germany, but the three mainstream groups managed to hold a narrow majority of seats.

Costa, a former Portuguese prime minister, hails from the center-left Socialists and Democrats group, which came second. Kallas is prime minister of her tiny Baltic home country. She comes from the pro-business liberal group, which is also home to embattled French President Emmanuel Macron and lost seats in the June poll, trailing into fourth place.

EU top appointments are supposed to ensure geographic and ideological balance, but ultimately it is the 27 leaders who call the shots - and generally the most powerful among them.

While Costa’s appointment is decided by EU leaders alone, both von der Leyen and Kallas will also need to be approved by a majority of lawmakers. With 720 members, the threshold is 361. That vote could happen when the newly constituted European Parliament meets for the first time in July.

The European Council is the body composed of the leaders of the 27 member states. If confirmed, Costa’s role as president would be to broker deals within an often hopelessly divided political club. In Portugal, he is known as a savvy negotiator.

As foreign affairs chief Kallas, whose country neighbors Russia and has taken a strong line on Moscow in its war with Ukraine, would see her represent the bloc on the world stage.

But von der Leyen’s role is the most powerful. As commission president, her job is to devise and implement the bloc’s shared policy on everything from migration to the economy and environmental rules.

With the far right pushing back against the flagship EU policies ushered through in the last five years, von der Leyen’s critics charge she is poised to roll back ambition.

Teamsters president will speak at the Republican National Convention

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Teamsters president will speak at the Republican National Convention

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