Amazon Pauses Construction on “HQ2” After Virginia Promised $750 Million for It

On Friday, Amazon announced that it is pausing construction of its second headquarters (dubbed HQ2) in Arlington, Virginia, a project that the state committed up to $750 million in incentives for.

While the company said it’s pausing the second phase of the massive Virginia campus, it is still scheduled to open its first phase on time this June, hosting more than 8,000 employees. The entire project was slated to host some 25,000 employees.

The announcement comes after Amazon laid off 18,000 employees, but the company claims the massive job cuts are unrelated to the pause on the $2.5 billion project. Meanwhile, the company has incited some internal pushback as it’s rolled out a policy mandating employees return to the office at least three days a week.

In 2019, the state of Virginia approved a plan to give a total of up to $750 million in incentives to Amazon. A grant of $550 million would dole out $22,000 for each job the company planned to create, with another pot of money coming from state’s tax revenue. Arlington County, where HQ2 was set to be based, would offer another $22.7 million in cash incentives, based on projected incremental growth of an existing tax on hotel rooms. Both grants are to be distributed over years. Finally, the state is offering another $200 million if the company hires 37,850 full-time employees by 2035.

Arlington hadn’t doled out any of the incentives as of last year, since the funds are conditional upon Amazon occupying a certain amount of office space in surrounding areas and the increased hotel activity. “Largely because of the pandemic, that expected growth hasn’t happened, and so that means the incentives aren’t happening either,” County Board Chair Katie Cristol told The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, the state is slated to distribute its first round of incentive funds to Amazon on July 1. Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin proposed appropriating $78 million in the state’s Amazon workforce grant fund—an increase from the $42.5 million approved by the legislature.

After publication, an Amazon representative reached out to TNR to clarify the company has not yet received any incentives.

The HQ2 project is an appendage of Amazon’s earlier plans to have two headquarters, the other originally meant to be in Long Island City, New York. Due to strong local opposition, headed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the company pulled out of the New York plans. Much of the opposition was rooted in millions of dollars of public money being given to the massive private corporation instead of being used elsewhere.

“I know I’ll never get an apology for that time, but it was worth it. We protected NYers from a scam deal to drain public dollars from schools & infrastructure in exchange for empty promises of ‘Amazon jobs’ w/ 0 guarantees or guardrails. Sadly, cities who took it are suffering,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Friday.

This post has been updated.

A Florida Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill that would require paid bloggers who write about elected officials to register with the state.

The bill, which was introduced Tuesday, applies to bloggers covering Governor Ron DeSantis, his Cabinet, and the state legislature. The bloggers would have to register with the state government and then self-report every time they write a story about lawmakers, as well as how much they were paid for the posts and who paid them.

If the bloggers fail to report their stories within five days of publication, they will face fines of $25 a day, up to $2,500.

“Paid bloggers are lobbyists who write instead of talk,” state Senator Jason Brodeur, the bill’s sponsor, said. “They are both professional electioneers. If lobbyists have to register and report, why shouldn’t paid bloggers?”

Creating a registry of political writers and independent journalists would only allow for increased surveillance, and smacks of authoritarianism. DeSantis has remained a constant in headlines as of late for cracking down on human rights in his state, particularly for people of color and women and gender minorities. The Republican, seen as a front-runner for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination, has declared war on all things “woke” and is clearly making good on his promise.

Brodeur too is no stranger to controversy. He was elected in 2020 with just 50.3 percent of the vote, and there have been accusations that a “ghost candidate”—someone recruited to help sway the election results—siphoned thousands of votes away from Brodeur’s Democratic opponent.

His new bill is highly unconstitutional and unlikely to survive if challenged in court, according to New York–based First Amendment lawyer Ron Kuby.

“It’s hard to imagine a proposal that would be more violative of the First Amendment,” Kuby told NBC. “We don’t register journalists. People who write cannot be forced to register.”

On April 20, 2021, the Biden administration called the “denial of self-governance” in Washington, D.C., “an affront to the democratic values on which our Nation was founded,” wholeheartedly endorsing efforts to give D.C. statehood. But now President Biden is supporting a congressional effort to actively deny D.C.’s “self-governance.”

After the D.C. City Council voted unanimously in support of a criminal code reform bill—and voted 12–1 to override Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto of it—Republicans pounced on the bill last month, vying to subvert local democratic processes and obstruct the reforms (Republicans interfering in democracy; who would’ve imagined?). But more astonishing was that many moderate Democrats joined the charade and voted to overturn the D.C. law too. And on Thursday, Biden announced he’d join them.

Democrats in and outside of D.C. are furious, noting that the administration either supports D.C. statehood, or it doesn’t. “The White House f***** this up royally,” one House Democrat texted The Hill. “F****** AMATEUR HOUR. HEADS SHOULD ROLL OVER AT THE WHITE HOUSE OVER THIS.” They added that numerous other members were “EXTREMELY PISSED.”

The House voted last month to block both D.C.’s proposed criminal code reform, which would eliminate most mandatory sentencing and reduce penalties for certain crimes, and another bill that would extend voting rights to noncitizens. An estimated 7 percent of D.C. residents are noncitizens of some form. It is likely to clear the Senate as well, and now with Biden’s announcement, a local government overseeing 700,000 residents will find its rule wholly subverted by the federal government.

An array of D.C. officials denounced the move. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Norton called the moment “a sad day for D.C. home rule and D.C. residents’ right to self-governance.”

Mayor Bowser—who, again, vetoed the criminal code reform—has not publicly commented since Biden’s decision, but last week, she wrote a letter to Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell beseeching Congress not to block the measures. “The insult of limited Home Rule is that the 700,000 DC residents and taxpaying Americans, and their duly elected officials, must endure the review and oversight of our laws by officials not elected to represent our interests or values,” Bowser wrote. “I call on all senators who share a commitment to the basic democratic principles of self-determination and local control to vote ‘NO’ on any disapproval resolutions involving duly elected laws of the District of Columbia.”

Democratic members of Congress echoed the concerns. “Plenty of places pass laws the President may disagree with. He should respect the people’s gov of DC just as he does elsewhere,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.

Number three House Democrat Pete Aguilar called the move “disappointing,” saying “I’m a former mayor of a city of 70,000 and I wouldn’t want the federal government coming in and telling me what city ordinances to pass.”

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called Biden’s move “smart politics,” adding that, “you don’t want to get left of the D.C. mayor.” As if any consequential number of the more than 250 million potential voters in this country will make their decision based on Biden’s stance on D.C. criminal justice policies.

And even aside from the political miscalculation, the rhetorical misstep is almost just as confounding. Opponents of D.C. statehood are now using this as yet another feather in their tattered caps against stopping taxation without representation.

For an administration that purports to care about D.C. statehood, it’s silly for it now to support overruling D.C.’s own local processes. But it’s also a move that has no substantial political benefits—which may make one question whether the administration actually ever wanted D.C. statehood at all.

A Texas Republican lawmaker has introduced a bill that would ban credit card companies from processing transactions for abortion pills, the state’s latest attempt to dramatically curb safe access to the medical procedure.

The bill, which Representative Drew Springer proposed Thursday night, would classify processing credit card transactions for “the provision of an abortion-inducing drug by courier, delivery, or mail service” as a felony. The legislation would also allow individuals to sue credit card companies that allow such transactions to go through.

Springer’s bill did not say how the state would monitor credit card purchases for abortion pills, nor how civilians would know which card companies continue to process the transactions.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Texas has banned abortion after six weeks, before many people even know they are pregnant. There are no exceptions for rape or incest, and only a few to save the life of the pregnant person. Individuals are also allowed to sue anyone who provides abortion care or helps someone get an abortion, in what’s known as the state’s chilling vigilante law.

Apparently not satisfied with those restrictions, Texas has continued to try to limit access to other forms of reproductive health. Last week, another Republican lawmaker introduced a bill that would compel internet providers in the state to block websites that sell or provide information on how to obtain abortion pills.

Under the Women and Child Safety Act, abortion funds and their staffers could face criminal penalties for helping someone get an abortion even if they travel out of state, as could individuals who manufacture and distribute abortion pills in Texas or who provide information on how to get the drugs. The bill would also allow individuals to bring civil lawsuits against the people who maintain such sites, another extension of the state’s vigilante law. All of these restrictions, however, run counter to what Texans actually want: A study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 57 percent of state residents think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Medication abortions, which consist of taking the two drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, make up more than half of all abortions in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The pills are considered a crucial resource in maintaining widespread access to safe abortions. Restricting the means to medication abortions will hit people of color and lower-income people the hardest.

Mississippi lawmakers have introduced a bill that would give citizens back the right to vote on ballot initiatives—except on laws about abortion access.

State residents were stripped of their right to introduce citizen-led ballot initiatives in 2021. This new bill, introduced Tuesday, would allow them to propose changes to laws but not constitutional amendments. They would also not be allowed to “propose any new law or amend or repeal any existing law relating to abortion.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last summer to roll back the nationwide right to an abortion. The case concerned the constitutionality of Mississippi’s law banning abortion after 15 weeks. After the ruling, Mississippi’s trigger law went into effect, and abortion is now illegal in the state except in cases of rape or incest or to save the pregnant person’s life.

Opinion regarding abortion in Mississippi is almost evenly split. A recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 49 percent of state residents believe the procedure should be legal in all or most cases. In July 2022, a month after the Dobbs ruling, a poll conducted by Blueprint Polling for the ACLU of Mississippi found that 51 percent of state residents disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision.

Mississippi residents also rejected a previous ballot initiative aimed at curbing abortion access. In 2011, anti-abortion groups put the Personhood Amendment on the ballot. The amendment would have defined the word “person” in the state constitution to include fertilized human eggs. An overwhelming majority of voters, 58 percent, rejected the initiative.

Lawmakers in Mississippi have a history of using the right to ballot initiatives as a punitive tool. It has been taken away twice, once in 1922 and again in 2021, because officials disagreed with the results of citizen-led ballot initiatives.

If the measure passes the state legislature, it would be just another instance of lawmakers creating loopholes to continue restricting abortion, instead of letting the people decide what they want for themselves. This has also happened in Kentucky, where a Republican lawmaker introduced a bill to prosecute people who get illegal abortions for criminal homicide, despite state residents voting in the 2022 midterms against an amendment that would have said abortion is not a protected right in the state.

The most egregious example is Kansas, where residents voted overwhelmingly in August to keep abortion protections in the state constitution. Lawmakers responded by introducing a bill that would let individual cities and counties restrict abortion, directly circumventing the will of the people.

Conservatives are always seeking ways to (a) defund the government and its services and (b) push their own cultural values onto others. One Texas state representative found a way to try doing both.

Representative Bryan Slaton has filed a bill to roll back 100 percent of property taxes for heterosexual married couples with 10 children.

The legislation calls for property tax relief by increments of 10 percent for each child, starting with married couples with four “qualifying children” receiving a 40 percent credit, those with five receiving a 50 percent credit, and so on. (Couples with three children or fewer do not qualify for the credit.)

If a “qualifying married couple” has 10 or more “qualifying children,” they would receive a 100 percent credit off their property taxes.

Language in the bill defines a “qualifying child” to be a “natural child of both spouses of a qualifying married couple born after the date on which the qualifying married couple married,” or an adopted child of one or both spouses, adopted after the couple was married.

And what constitutes a “qualifying married couple,” you may ask? Well, it “means a man and a woman who are legally married to each other, neither of whom have ever been divorced.”

“With this bill, Texas will start saying to couples: ‘Get married, stay married, and be fruitful and multiply,’” Slaton said in a statement.

The bill may not be surprising coming from Slaton. The Houston Press reports that the Texas representative, a former minister, has proposed banning minors from all drag events and has also dedicated much of his time in government to trying to attach various anti-LGBTQ amendments to completely unrelated legislative packages.

Slaton’s former intern Jake Neidert is a self-described Christian nationalist who has menacingly called for trans people to be “publicly executed.” The vicious figure went on to work as legislative director for Representative Tony Tinderholt, Slaton’s ally in many of his anti-LGBTQ crusades.

So, whether or not this specific bill gets awfully far, rest assured its author is heavily active in working to advance a radical fundamentalist agenda on Texans.

President Donald Trump is not entitled to immunity from civil lawsuits over his role in the January 6 insurrection, the Department of Justice said Thursday.

Two Capitol Police officers, backed by 11 Democratic House members, have sued Trump for physical and psychological injuries they suffered during the riot. The suit was brought under a statute that allows for damages to be paid when force, threats, or intimidation are used to prevent government officials from doing their job. Trump has argued that he is protected against the suit by presidential immunity.

But the Justice Department disagreed. “Speaking to the public on matters of public concern is a traditional function of the Presidency, and the outer perimeter of the President’s Office includes a vast realm of such speech,” attorneys for the department’s Civil Division said. “But that traditional function is one of public communication. It does not include incitement of imminent private violence.”

A U.S. district judge had found in February 2022 that Trump could be sued, and the former president’s lawyers appealed the decision. The appeals court debated the case in December and ultimately asked the Justice Department to weigh in.

A dozen former White House and Justice Department officials from Democratic and Republican administrations had already called for the court to reject Trump’s immunity argument, saying it was “the rare but clear circumstance in which a President broke the law while acting well beyond any official capacity.”

Another group of Capitol Police officers have sued Trump in a separate case for inciting the insurrection, as have D.C. police officers. The partner of Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who died after being brutally attacked by rioters, has also sued Trump, as well as two members of the mob.

Capitol Police officers have made it clear they hold Trump and other Republican leaders accountable for the deadly riot, as well as for law enforcement’s lack of preparedness on the day.

The Conservative Political Action Conference kicked off this week, minus a few noteworthy faces.

The annual gathering was once considered a premier event for Republicans and a must-do for anyone considering a presidential run. But this year, the event has been overshadowed by sexual assault allegations against Matt Schlapp, head of the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC. A staffer on Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign has accused Schlapp of groping him without consent. Schlapp has denied the allegations but has yet to address them at CPAC, during which he is speaking multiple times, along with his wife and one of his children.

Another reason many notable Republicans are staying away from CPAC could be that it has turned into more of a Donald Trump fan party, which seems to have turned off many of the people seeking to challenge him in 2024.

Chief among them is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is predicted to be Trump’s main contender for the Republican presidential nomination. DeSantis, who seems to be busy curtailing human rights in his state, will instead be at a retreat hosted by the Club for Growth, a conservative economics organization.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is also reportedly considering a presidential run, will similarly be at the Club for Growth event. Pence has tried to walk a fine line recently of distancing himself from Trump enough to appeal to potential moderate supporters, but not so much that he alienates his former boss’s most loyal fanbase.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will not be at CPAC, which comes as a surprise given all his efforts to stay in Trump’s good graces. Neither will Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has become a Trump critic despite using the former president to push through conservative judges and legislation.

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel won’t be there, either. Trump backed her run for reelection as RNC head, but McDaniel announced Sunday that all Republican presidential candidates would be required to sign a pledge to support the eventual nominee, no matter who, in order to be allowed onto the debate stage. In response to McDaniel, Trump’s campaign spokeswoman told CNN that Trump “will support the Republican nominee because it will be him.”

These absences could be a sign that some of the Republican Party is turning on Trump, who will be the closing speaker at CPAC on Saturday. The event seems to be turning into a glorified Trump rally. In 2021, CPAC unveiled a golden statue of the former president for attendees to take selfies with, and the 2023 speaker lineup has been packed with Trump loyalists, including Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Donald Trump Jr., and even Jair Bolsonaro.

However, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom are running against Trump in 2024, and Mike Pompeo and Tim Scott, who are reportedly considering running, will speak at CPAC. All four of these candidates are considered extreme long shots, so they could be trying to peel support away from Trump over the course of the event.

Norfolk Southern workers are saying that, in the aftermath of the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment, the rail giant assured them it was safe for them to clean up the mess, and that the company offered them little more than N95 masks to wear while doing it.

In a letter addressed to Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, union leader Jonathon Long wrote that in the immediate days following the derailment, Norfolk Southern directed approximately 40 rail maintenance workers to clean the crash site. Workers reported that the company failed to provide personal protective equipment.

Long, a 28-year veteran of Norfolk Southern and general chairman of the American Rail System Federation for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, or BMWED, told TNR that workers had asked for better respirators, but “none of the good ones were left.” There was allegedly no additional equipment, even rubber gloves or boots—let alone hazmat suits or eye protection—for the workers; meanwhile, the workers were assured it was safe for them to continue working.

A spokesperson for the company said that the company coordinated their response “with hazardous material professionals who were on site continuously to ensure the work area was safe to enter and the required PPE was utilized, all in addition to air monitoring that was established within an hour.”

What the company considers “required PPE” may be up for dispute.

One worker claimed to have called his supervisor, requesting to be transported off the site due to concerns for his safety; he was reportedly feeling nauseous and suffering from migraines. Allegedly, the supervisor said he would get back to the employee. The worker never heard back, and was left to keep working.

Other workers reported similar symptoms of migraines and nausea, even days after the derailment. Such reports are unsurprising, given that residents even miles out of city limits reported such symptoms and worse—even while not undergoing direct, prolonged exposure to the hazardous materials.

Long also wrote of troubling negotiations with the company as workers attempted to attain paid sick leave. An attached memo from the company showed that Norfolk Southern was bargaining the offer for paid sick leave, so long as BMWED relented on its opposition to the expansion of the company’s automated inspection program.

“The gall to ask BMWED to rescind our comments and concerns about maintaining track structure integrity with a sensible precautionary measure in the form of qualified human track inspections following their test equipment while the world watches NS’s mistake cause disruption and chaos in an American Hometown is unfathomably obtuse and shameless,” Long wrote.

Long reiterated to TNR that workers are not opposed to the automated system. Rather, they’re uncomfortable with the idea of substituting automation with the current practices that include checks conducted by train inspectors; they’re perfectly satisfied with a system that includes both automated and manual procedures.

Though the BMWED workers were able to reach an agreement with the company, the behind-the-scenes look reveals troubling ways the company still dug in its heels before providing some of its workers paid sick leave.

“NS and other railroads alike must be stopped from continuing their cost-cutting business model and start focusing on how they can improve their performance to be as safe as possible,” Long wrote to DeWine. “NS and other railroads alike must be held accountable in their operations, through rule-making and regulatory reform that establishes minimum safety standards in their operations.”

To become speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy had to give the most radical parts of his party pretty much everything they asked for. The negotiations elided the fact that McCarthy is actually not all that different from his detractors. By introducing the repressive so-called “Parents Bill of Rights,” McCarthy reminds us that indeed, he’s in good company.

The Republican-led bill aims to police teachers and school staff even more, at a time when school boards across the country have expressed concern for academic freedom (and even for their lives) in the face of a loud minority protesting everything from Covid safety precautions to classroom material.

The bill, introduced on Wednesday by Representative Julia Letlow, says that parents’ “God-given right to make decisions for their children’’ is being disrupted as “special interest groups try to criminalize free speech.” Letlow’s bill—applauded by far-right special interest groups like Moms for Liberty (funded by billionaire heiresses and endorsed by figures like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis)—polices schools down to the materials teachers use in class and what books kids are allowed to read.

Couched in what may appear like reasonable respect for parents’ concern for their children, the bill in reality opens up more avenues to attack already overworked and under-appreciated teachers.

The bill—echoing practices already being rolled out in places like Florida—calls for school districts to post curriculum information and provide parents with lists of reading materials available in school libraries. Again, what may seem like reasonable enough requests have been, in practice, draconian. Teachers in Florida subject to similar standards have been forced to either empty classroom libraries, cover them up, or catalog each book into a central system to check for compliance with their districts’ restrictive standards.

Other parts of the Bill of Rights seem to fearmonger and imply that parents are never listened to in schools. The bill calls for school districts to consider community feedback when making decisions, allow parents to address school boards, and notify parents of violent activity happening on school grounds. These are already more-or-less standard practices for schools across the country, but in combining these demands with others that are more radical, the bill’s proponents push an agenda that escalates an already ongoing assault on teachers and students.

In 2021, the National School Boards Association sent a letter to the government asking for a comprehensive investigation into violent threats against school board members, writing that the threats “could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the Justice Department to carry out such an inquiry shortly after. In February, House Republicans subpoenaed officials including Garland, questioning such efforts to support school board members, in attempts to cast doubt on the school board letter and their concerns in the first place.

And now, Republicans are lining up behind a bill that broadly mandates educators and policymakers to “respect the First Amendment rights of parents as well as their right to assemble.” In hiding behind amorphous constitutional language, Republicans are signing off on, and encouraging, threats against school staff and escalating an attack on the freedom of teachers to teach and students to learn without being policed by outside interests.