Department of Transportation opens investigation into Delta over flight disruptions
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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Department of Transportation has opened an investigation into Delta Airlines over recent flight disruptions, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Tuesday in a post on X.
“All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly, and I will make sure that right is upheld,” Buttigieg said.
The airline is struggling to resume normal service five days after a global IT outage at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. Delta canceled more than 400 flights on Tuesday morning, according to flight tracking site FlightAware. The airline with the second-most cancellations on Tuesday has nixed only 55 flights, FlightAware says.
The outage at CrowdStrike on Friday hindered services at airlines and hospitals in the U.S., banks in Europe and a media company in Canada.
Thousands of flights were cancelled across a host of airlines on Friday, but many companies have limited disruptions over the days since.
Buttigieg requested that Delta passengers share information with the Department of Transportation.
“While you should first try to resolve issues directly with the airline, we want to hear from passengers who believe that Delta has not complied with USDOT-enforced passenger protection requirements during the recent travel disruptions,” Buttigieg said.
(WASHINGTON) — A monthslong stretch of progress in the fight against inflation will face another test on Thursday when a U.S. government agency releases fresh data on price increases.
Inflation has cooled for three consecutive months, reversing a surge in prices that took hold at the outset of 2024.
Price increases have slowed significantly from a peak of more than 9%, but inflation remains more than a percentage point higher than the Fed’s target rate of 2%.
Economists expect consumer prices to have increased 3.1% over the year ending in June. That figure would mark a modest slowdown from the 3.3% rate recorded a month prior.
Despite the cooldown of prices in recent months, the Federal Reserve has opted to keep its benchmark interest rate highly elevated. The Fed Funds rate remains between 5.25% and 5.5%, matching its highest level since 2001.
A further reduction of inflation could heighten pressure on the Fed to move forward with a set of interest rate cuts that the central bank forecasted late last year.
Speaking to House members in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell touted “modest further progress” in the fight to slow price hikes over recent months.
Still, he added, the Fed will not lower interest rates until it has “gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2%.”
While the economy has proven resilient this year, recent performance suggests that high interest rates have begun to slow activity.
A jobs report released on Friday showed that the economy added a robust 206,000 jobs in June. However, downward revisions for hiring over the previous two months brought the three-month average to its lowest level since January 2021. The unemployment rate has ticked up this year from 3.7% to 4.1%.
Economic output has slowed markedly at the outset of 2024, though it has continued to grow at a solid pace.
Interest rate cuts would lower borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, potentially triggering a burst of economic activity through greater household spending and company investment.
But the Fed risks a rebound of inflation if it cuts interest rates too quickly, since stronger consumer demand and higher wages could lead to an acceleration of price increases.
On the other hand, recent data suggesting an economic slowdown heightens the risk of keeping interest rates too high for too long, since the borrowing costs could ultimately tip the economy into a recession.
The Fed is guided by a dual mandate to keep inflation under control and maximize employment. Addressing lawmakers at the Capitol on Wednesday, Powell said recent progress in the fight against inflation has allowed the central bank to bring greater attention to its role in employment.
“Elevated inflation is not the only risk we face,” Powell told lawmakers on Wednesday.
If the Fed opts to lower interest rates “too late or too little,” he added, it could “unduly weaken economic activity and employment.”
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff descend from Air Force Two at Delaware National Air Guard base in New Castle, Delaware, on July 22, 2024. (ERIN SCHAFF/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — When Kamala Harris ran for president in 2020, she released 15 years of her personal tax returns, the most of any 2020 presidential candidate. The disclosure offers a glimpse into how Harris, who has emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination after President Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the race, became a millionaire as a public servant.
After Harris, in 2014, married Doug Emhoff, who was then an entertainment lawyer, her net worth increased significantly due to the couple’s combined assets, a review of her tax records and financial disclosures shows.
Before then, Harris’ income came mostly from her public salaries as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California.
Before she was married, the highest annual income reported by Harris was in 2010, when she reported earning $263,000. The next year, when she became attorney general, her reported income dropped to less than $160,000 a year in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
After marrying Emhoff — whose clients have included retail giant Walmart and health care company Abbott Labs, as well as a Malibu real estate agent who found fame on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills — Harris’ income went up significantly.
As a high-profile attorney for one of the world’s largest companies, Emhoff earned more than $1 million per year and held dozens of investments and stocks, according to financial documents reviewed by ABC News.
In 2014, Emhoff owned shares of at least 30 stocks from companies including Home Depot, St. Jude Medical, Comcast, and American Express, according to his statement of economic interest, a form required for California employees.
After Harris announced she would run for U.S. Senate in 2015, Emhoff sold off many of his stocks, including CVS Health and Oracle. Harris won her Senate seat in 2016.
From 2015 until 2019, Emhoff reported dozens of publicly traded investments known as “excepted investment funds,” according to annual reports filed by Harris when she was a senator.
As Harris’ profile grew, so did her earnings. According to a 2018 annual report filed by Harris, she received an advance of more than $300,000 for her memoir, The Truths We Hold, and she and Emhoff reported a gross joint income of $1,889,156 that year, according to tax returns.
Before Harris assumed the vice presidency in 2021, Emhoff announced in December 2020 that he would leave his law firm. He joined Georgetown University’s law school as a member of faculty, where he has earned nearly $200,000 per year.
As a result of the move, the couple’s income dropped significantly, from more than $3 million in 2019 to about $450,000 in 2023.
Nevertheless, with their real estate assets and pension, Forbes estimates Harris and Emhoff’s net worth to be about $8 million, up from $7 million in 2021. Property records reviewed by ABC News show Harris sold her Washington, D.C., condo in 2021 for $1.85 million, and the couple currently owns a house in Brentwood, California, that Emhoff purchased in 2012 for $2.7 million.
If Harris becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, she will face former President Donald Trump, who has long fought to keep his tax records private.
Forbes, in its most recent accounting, estimates Trump’s net worth to be $5.9 billion, which an earlier breakdown said consists of $2.5 billion mainly from his real estate properties, clubs and resorts, plus the value of his share of Truth Social’s parent company, minus the $540 million in legal liabilities from his civil trials over the last year.
President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Sean O’Brien speaks on the first day of the Republican National Convention, July 15, 2024, in Milwaukee. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Vice President Kamala Harris has received endorsements from most of the nation’s top labor unions, with a key exception: The International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who leads the union of 1.3 million members, drew attention last month when he spoke at the Republican National Convention, praising former President Donald Trump as “one tough SOB.”
The speech followed a visit by Trump to Teamsters headquarters in January, but little has been known about what Trump told some union members, the executive board and O’Brien at the meeting months before the RNC.
Details about Trump’s visit, first reported by ABC News, reveal an effort to woo meeting attendees with labor-friendly views and a promise of political access if the Teamsters went on to endorse him, according to an account published last month by the Teamsters in the union’s quarterly magazine.
“Before departing the union’s headquarters, the former President directly told those in attendance that the Teamsters would have a seat at the table if a potential endorsement was made for a second administration,” the Teamsters magazine said.
Speaking with Teamsters members at its national office in Washington, D.C., Trump described union contracts as an effective means of winning wage gains amid high inflation, the union said. Trump also said he agreed with attendees who voiced support for antitrust policy and who described the strong potential for growth in the U.S. labor movement, according to the union’s account.
Trump appeared to voice views friendlier to unions than he has shared in some other appearances on the campaign trail. Some positions he offered up with the Teamsters stood in contrast with stances his administration took while he was in office.
“The former President often pointed to persistent inflation as a detriment to any marginal gains achieved by workers to increase their wages but acknowledged that union workers like Teamsters were much more likely to get ahead thanks to strong collective bargaining agreements,” the magazine said.
The Teamsters did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Trump campaign.
In response to a previous request for comment, Teamsters Assistant Director of Communications Kara Deniz told ABC News the Teamsters has traditionally endorsed a candidate for president after the party conventions.
“We are on our timeline and continuing to engage our members in this process,” Deniz added.
To be sure, the magazine sent by the Teamsters to its members included accounts of roundtables held with President Joe Biden, as well as third-party candidates Robert Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. Last month, the Teamsters invited Vice President Kamala Harris for a discussion at the union’s headquarters, the union said in a post on X. The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the invitation.
The Teamsters is currently carrying out a vote among its members on who the union should endorse, the union said in a post on X last week.
During the roundtable discussion in January, which the union said lasted more than an hour, Trump declined to offer a firm view on potential legislation enshrining “right to work” nationwide, the union said. Rather, Trump said, such legislation should be left up to the states to decide for themselves, according to the union.
Currently, 26 states have enacted right-to-work laws, which allow workers to opt out of membership in a union at their workplace. The laws are widely opposed by unions in part because studies have shown that states with right-to-work laws have lower unionization rates.
In declining to support a nationwide right-to-work law, Trump bucked the position of more than half of the Republican members of Congress, who’ve signed onto such a measure introduced last year.
As president, however, Trump voiced support for right-to-work laws.
“The president believes in right to work,” then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer said at a White House press conference in February 2017.
More generally, the favorable attitude toward union contracts that Trump expressed in the meeting contrasts with efforts taken by the Trump administration that made it more difficult for workers to form a union.
Trump appointees at the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency that sets labor rules, for instance, expanded the length of time between when a union files for representation and when an election takes place. That additional time affords greater opportunity for anti-union employers to dissuade workers.
At the meeting, Trump also told Teamsters members that he felt public sector workers should have the same rights as union members at private companies, according to the account published by the Teamsters last month.
However, the Trump administration filed a brief in support of plaintiffs in a 2018 Supreme Court case that struck a major blow to public sector unions.
In Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Trump-appointee Neil Gorsuch cast a decisive fifth vote that made it illegal for public sector unions to charge so-called “fair share fees” to workers who opt out of belonging to a union at their workplace.
Labor unions widely condemned the decision, saying it would deny unions crucial funds that allow them to advocate for all workers at a given employer.
The remarks made by Trump at the meeting with the Teamsters sounded a more positive tone toward unions than he has expressed in some other settings during the campaign.
In an interview on Monday with billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, Trump praised Musk for what he described as a willingness to fire employees who go out on strike. Federal labor law prohibits the termination of workers for engaging in a collective labor action, such as a strike.
“They go on strike. I won’t mention the name of the company but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. Every one of you is gone.’ You are the greatest,” Trump told Musk in an interview broadcast on X.
O’Brien sharply criticized the comments on Tuesday.
“Firing workers for organizing, striking, and exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism,” O’Brien said.
The United Auto Workers filed federal charges against Trump and Musk on Tuesday over the remarks, alleging that the comments amounted to threats that workers would be fired for going on strike. Musk did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
At multiple fundraisers this year, Trump urged CEOs to make large donations because unions are giving significant funds to Democrats, the The Washington Post reported last month.
Art Wheaton, the director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations in Buffalo, New York, said the comments made at the Teamsters meeting appear to be in keeping with efforts Trump has made to woo other constituencies.
“He likes to speak to whoever the audience is and say good things about them,” Wheaton told ABC News. “With this audience, he did not want to appear anti-union.”
“He seems to pander to his audience, which is not unusual for a politician,” Wheaton added.
