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In our system of government, congressional oversight of the intelligence community is critically important -- and not optional. Intelligence agencies and professionals have a responsibility to cooperate with lawmakers on the intelligence committees and make available materials they request.
At least, that's the way it's supposed to work. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told ABC News over the weekend that the National Security Agency has begun "withholding" information, including materials that may be directly relevant to Donald Trump's Ukraine scandal.
"That is deeply concerning," the Democratic leader said. "And there are signs that the CIA may be on the same tragic course. We are counting on the intelligence community not only to speak truth to power, but to resist pressure from the administration to withhold information from Congress because the administration fears that they incriminate them."
Yesterday, in a CBS News interview, he went a little further.
"We have requested intelligence, relevant intelligence, concerning Ukraine as a part of our oversight responsibility," Schiff said when asked what evidence his committee is requesting. "The intelligence agencies -- some of them have stopped cooperating. And it's our understanding they're doing this on the instructions of others, or with the advice of others."
Schiff said information about Ukraine's reaction to the pressure campaign by Trump allies in 2019 "would be very pertinent" and should be handed over to investigators.
The Intelligence Committee chairman added, "If there was more evidence that bears on that question and it's being withheld by the intelligence community at the urging of the president, that is a corruption of the intelligence community."
On the eve of Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial, the president's legal defense team began peddling a new and provocative claim: presidential abuses of power are not impeachable offenses. They made this argument in writing, and even took the pitch to the public in television interviews.
Alan Dershowitz, a member of the president's legal defense team, told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that the House vote "was to impeach on abuse of power, which is not within the constitutional criteria for impeachment."
It was new legal ground. As far as Trump's lawyers are concerned, presidents who are caught abusing their powers cannot face congressional accountability, unless they commit statutory crimes. In the case of the Ukraine scandal, the Republican's legal team believes Trump's guilt, for all intents and purposes, is irrelevant -- because even if every allegation is true, Congress lacks the authority to punish abuses of power.
After Team Trump made the pitch, the New York Times reported on the legal consensus among scholars who believe the president's lawyers have it backwards. The article quoted University of Missouri law professor Frank O. Bowman, the author of a recent book on the topic, who told the Times the argument is "constitutional nonsense."
But it's not just scholars who've reached this conclusion. As recently as two years ago, Attorney General Bill Barr, before joining the administration, said the same thing in a memo for the Justice Department and the president's attorneys.
Mr. Trump should not talk to investigators about his actions as president, even under a subpoena, Mr. Barr wrote in his 19-page memo, which became public during his confirmation. Mr. Barr based his advice on a sweeping theory of executive power under which obstruction of justice laws do not apply to presidents, even if they misuse their authority over the Justice Department to block investigations into themselves or their associates for corrupt reasons.
But Mr. Barr tempered his theory with a reassurance. Even without the possibility of criminal penalties, he wrote, a check is in place on presidents who abuse their discretionary power to control the executive branch of government -- impeachment.
Complicating matters, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley -- the Republicans' witness during the House impeachment proceedings -- wrote a Washington Post op-ed also rejecting Team Trump's radical assertion.
The first day of Donald Trump's impeachment trial was a unique opportunity for the president and his legal defense team. After having several weeks to prepare, and with the eyes of the nation upon them, Americans could finally see Team Trump bring its A game, making the best possible case for the president's innocence.
It didn't take long, however, before an awkward truth became obvious: Team Trump had no A game to bring. As Jonathan Allen explained in an analysis piece for NBC News, the president's attorneys "failed him at the opening of his Senate impeachment trial on Tuesday."
Trump's squad ... chose not to defend his actions with a cogent explanation for them. Rather than rebutting hours of evidence presented by House Democratic impeachment managers, White House lawyers opted to repeat Trump's attacks on the process and the disjointed set of rejoinders he's delivered to Democrats in public.
"If you can't even rise to the challenge of trying to defend your client," NBC News legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said on NBC News Now, "it becomes painfully obvious that the emperor has no defense."
The most glaring problem with yesterday's proceedings was Trump's lawyers' willingness to brazenly lie, repeatedly, about matters large and small. They lied about the House process; they lied about Robert Mueller's findings; they lied about House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.); they lied about the genesis of the impeachment inquiry itself.
It reached a point at which Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), the Senate's longest serving member, tweeted during a break, "I would hope later today and in the days ahead, the President's lawyers remember they are addressing the United States Senate, and personal insults and falsehoods will not serve them well."
And while it made for an exasperating day -- if Trump were innocent, his lawyers should probably have been able to tell the truth -- the deceptions weren't the only problematic part of the defense's first day at trial.
Senator Amy Klobuchar talks with Rachel Maddow and an MSNBC panel during a break in the Donald Trump impeachment trial, and remarks on how her Republican colleagues, who she's known to make a priority of national security and support for Ukraine, appear ashamed as House managers outline the factual details of Donald Trump's Ukraine... watch
Andrew Weissmann, MSNBC legal analyst points out that Mitch McConnell, in his effort to expedite Democratic amendments to his impeachment trial rules, also reveals that the arguments being made by the House managers don't matter to him because it's already made up his mind. watch
Former Senator Claire McCaskill points out that while Mitch McConnell is eager to end the exhausting day of impeachment debate by consolidating Democratic amendments, he is not willing to simply adjourn and finish tomorrow because his mail priority is end the impeachment trial as quickly as possible. watch
Maya Wiley, MSNBC legal analyst, remarks on the rigor of the case being presented by the House managers in Donald Trump's impeachment trial and how they're using the arguments for amendments to the trial rules to present evidence of their case. watch
Andrew Weissmann, MSNBC legal analyst, remarks on whether Donald Trump's defense counsel could face any consequences for making factually false assertions in the course of the Senate impeachment trial. watch
Tuesday's Mini-Report, 1.21.20
Today's edition of quick hits:
* The votes on Democratic amendments in the impeachment trial are underway: "The Senate voted on party lines to kill the first Schumer amendment, which would have subpoenaed the White House for documents related to Ukraine."
* Given how Trump responded to Ebola in 2014, I shudder to think what he'll do with this: "Federal health officials confirmed Tuesday that a case of the new coronavirus has been diagnosed in Washington state, just north of Seattle."
* He seems to enjoy threatening traditional U.S. allies: "President Trump said Tuesday that he is serious about imposing tariffs on European automobiles if he can't strike a trade agreement with the European Union. 'They know that I'm going to put tariffs on them if they don't make a deal that's a fair deal,' Mr. Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum."
* An important church-state case: "The Supreme Court takes up the sensitive issue of religion in public life Wednesday, considering whether states violate the Constitution if they prevent religious groups from receiving some state benefits."
* Hmm: "Documents apparently generated by Cambridge Analytica suggest that the political consulting firm had a contractual relationship with Kenneth Braithwaite in the year before he was nominated to be U.S. Ambassador to Norway in 2017. Braithwaite, who President Trump has said will be his nominee for Secretary of the Navy, made no mention of an agreement in his required government disclosure form, and says he never entered one."
* A good look at presidential corruption: "In three years in the White House, Donald Trump has accomplished something no president before him has done: fusing his private business interests with America's highest public office."
* Guantanamo: "James Mitchell will be the first witness to describe the torture of detainees in the secret prisons -- some at his own hands -- in the trial of the men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks."
McConnell changes direction (at least a bit) on impeachment trial
When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) unveiled his blueprint for Donald Trump's impeachment trial last night, it landed with a thud.
Under the GOP leader's vision, for example, both sides would present their cases over just two days -- opening the door to late-night proceedings that few Americans would see. McConnell's plan also did not automatically admit evidence collected as part of the House's impeachment inquiry as part of the Senate proceedings.
Senate Democrats howled, pointing to the Republican leadership's approach as evidence of a rigged trial, and a sharp departure from the rules during the Clinton impeachment trial in 1999. This afternoon, to the surprise of many, McConnell shifted his posture.
The last-minute changes -- which were written by hand on the resolution, with other lines crossed out -- were revealed on Tuesday as the organizing resolution for President Donald Trump's Senate trial was being read into the record on the Senate floor. The new version gives both side 24 hours to make their case over three days, instead of the two initially proposed by McConnell on Monday.... The change means the trial days, which start at 1 p.m. ET, will likely now conclude around 9 pm. [...]
McConnell also tweaked another controversial provision that could have barred all the evidence against Trump gathered by the House Democrats' inquiry from being entered into the Senate record.
To be sure, these changes in direction do not entirely resolve the partisan conflict. The revised resolution still offers no guarantees on witness testimony and no assurances that senators will be able to consider new evidence.
But it was an unexpected step all the same -- which naturally raises questions about why McConnell, after weeks of planning, changed his mind.
With election-year implications, Supreme Court punts on ACA case
There was a real possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court would put the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act on a fast track, setting the stage for a major ruling ahead of this year's presidential election. As NBC News reported this morning, however, the justices punted the case, which is a move with considerable political implications.
Tuesday's brief Supreme Court order does not indicate whether the court intends to hear the case, after the normal time for the opposing sides to submit their legal briefs, or allow it to continue working its way through the lower court appeals.
But even if the justices do decide to take it up, the case would not be heard until the court's next term, which begins in October and any decision would not come until after Election Day on Nov. 3.
For those who may need a refresher, at issue is a lawsuit from state Republican officials -- with the enthusiastic support of the Trump administration -- who are arguing that "Obamacare" must be torn down in its entirety because Congress gutted the ACA's individual mandate in late 2017. By Republicans' reasoning, this provision was so integral to the reform law that the nation's health care system can't function without it.
Their argument, of course, is belied by the fact that the Affordable Care Act appears to be working just fine, even after federal GOP lawmakers effectively scrapped it more than two years ago.
Nevertheless, a Texas judge ruled in Republicans' favor in 2018, insisting that the entire law, its benefits, and its protections must cease to be. The 5th Circuit, in a move that appeared awfully political, recently left the future of the nation's health care system in limbo, sending the case back to the district court, urging the conservative jurist to see if any elements of the law could be salvaged.
The ACA's proponents asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case, and earlier this month, the justices directed the Trump administration and Republican state officials behind the lawsuit to respond.
Tuesday's Campaign Round-Up, 1.21.20
Today's installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In New Hampshire, which will hold its presidential primary three weeks from today, a new Suffolk/Boston Globe poll shows Bernie Sanders with the narrowest of leads over Joe Biden, 16% to 15%, followed closely by Pete Buttigieg at 12%, and Elizabeth Warren at 10%.
* Hillary Clinton has caused a considerable stir with new criticisms of Bernie Sanders as part of an upcoming Hulu documentary. Referring to the Vermont senator and his relationships on Capitol Hill, the former secretary of State said, "Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it."
* Amid questions about Rep. Devin Nunes' (R-Calif.) role in the Ukraine scandal, the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee made the case yesterday that voters in his district "deserve better."
* With the expectation that Donald Trump and his allies will spread "false accusations" about Joe Biden, the former vice president's campaign yesterday released a memo to journalists, explaining to media professionals why they shouldn't believe or help disseminate untrue information to the public.
* Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) is the only Senate Republican running this year in a state Trump lost, and the endangered incumbent reportedly hasn't held a town hall-meeting with his constituents in two years.
Trump's impeachment defense rests on a foundation of falsehoods
Perhaps more so than any other figure in American public life, Donald Trump has earned a reputation for saying things that aren't true. It's a problem that, in a quantifiable sense, is getting worse as his presidency continues.
The Washington Post reported yesterday, for example, on the third anniversary of the Republican's inauguration, that Trump has made "more than 16,200 false or misleading claims" since taking office. The report added, "In 2017, Trump made 1,999 false or misleading claims. In 2018, he added 5,689 more, for a total of 7,688. And in 2019, he made 8,155 suspect claims."
But as the Senate's impeachment trial gets underway, CNN's Daniel Dale narrowed the focus a bit and examined Trump's "compulsive" dishonesty about the scandal that threatens the Republican's presidency.
President Donald Trump is dishonest about a whole lot of things. But he is rarely as comprehensively dishonest as he has been about his dealings with Ukraine and the impeachment process.
From the eruption of the Ukraine controversy in September to the Senate trial that officially began on Thursday, relentless deceit has seemed to be Trump's primary defense strategy in the court of public opinion. He has made false claims about almost every separate component of the story, from his July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to the whistleblower who complained about the call, to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's own relations with Ukraine.
Dale's report documented 65 specific claims Trump has made about the controversy, each of which were false. That seems like an awful lot of lying -- which continues on a nearly daily basis.
Indeed, it's surprisingly difficult to think of any aspect of Trump's Ukraine scandal in which the American president has managed to make an accurate claim and stick to it as the story continued to unfold.
But there's a larger significance to this, beyond simply marveling at one person's capacity for brazen dishonesty. More important is the degree to which Trump is relying on public deception as part of his response to the political crisis, and the implications of such a strategy.
Trump finds semi-official impeachment role for far-right GOP reps
As recently as a couple of weeks ago, when it was far from clear who'd serve on Donald Trump's legal defense team during his impeachment trial, the president reportedly "loved the idea" of adding a group of far-right House congressmen to the operation. The plan was to add Republican lawmakers such as Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), John Ratcliffe (Tex.), and Doug Collins (Ga.) to the legal team, at least in part because of their "bare-knuckles tactics and top-rated TV performances."
As we discussed, Senate GOP leaders went out of their way to discourage Trump from pursuing such a course, and it appears those lobbying efforts were effective: when the president's legal defense team expanded to include the likes of Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz, no House Republicans were included.
Last night, however, it appears the White House nevertheless found jobs for the lawmakers. Politico reported:
After excluding House Republicans from his defense team, President Donald Trump announced Monday night that eight of them would serve as his personal warriors.
Republican Reps. Doug Collins (Ga.), Mike Johnson (La.), Jim Jordan (Ohio), Debbie Lesko (Ariz.), Mark Meadows (N.C.), John Ratcliffe (Texas), Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and Lee Zeldin (N.Y.) will "serve as part of his team working to combat this hyper-partisan and baseless impeachment," according to a White House news release Monday.
The official White House announcement, introducing the eight GOP members, was a little odd. For one thing, it insisted that during the House impeachment process, the White House "was prohibited from participating in the proceedings." That's plainly false: Trump and his attorneys were invited to play a role, but they refused. That's not a prohibition on participation; it's the opposite.
For another, while many of the president's most sycophantic congressional allies were part of the new roster, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) was not included -- and his absence was notable given the intensifying questions about his possible role in the broader Ukraine scandal.
But even putting these relevant angles aside, there was a lingering question for which there was no obvious answer: what exactly are these eight House Republicans going to do? They're now part of Trump's "impeachment team," but what does that mean?
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Tag: layoffs
Why temporary layoffs may become permanent
Posted on June 1, 2020 June 1, 2020 by Eleanor Mueller
Forty-two percent, or 11.6 million, of all jobs lost through April 25 due to Covid-19 will become permanent, according to the University of Chicago.
The White House is downplaying the bulk of coronavirus-related layoffs as temporary. But as the worsening recession forces companies to downsize or shut their doors, economists warn that many of these departures will turn permanent.
The unemployment rate for May is expected to hit about 20 percent, coming on top of April's 14.7 percent. Those statistics — likely underestimates because workers must be "actively looking" for jobs to be counted — would be the highest since the Great Depression.
But President Donald Trump's advisers have found a different number to seize on: a Federal Reserve estimate, released earlier this month, that 91 percent of people who lost their jobs or were furloughed reported that they expect to return to the same employer eventually. This statistic, the administration officials say, is part of the reason the U.S. should reopen its economy.
"Besides the stock market, there are little glimmers," Trump's economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said last week. "I don't want to downplay the heartbreak because the numbers are not good for this quarter — bad, bad pandemic contraction — but there are little glimmers. A lot of the unemployed are temporary."
But economists say shifting demands and the sheer breadth of the business closures mean that many of the lost jobs will never return — and to lean on the statistic as a sign of economic well-being is politically risky.
"That's a high number, and that's good," said the Economic Policy Institute's Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, of the workers' optimism about returning to their jobs. "But I think we absolutely have to think of that as an upper-bound on how many will be called back."
"And what we don't know is how much lower than that … will it ultimately be. The concern is that it's going to be a lot lower."
Forty-two percent, or 11.6 million, of all jobs lost through April 25 due to Covid-19 will become permanent, according to research from the University of Chicago's Becker Friedman Institute. The study places these in three buckets: jobs lost to coronavirus-induced demand shifts, jobs at firms that don't survive the pandemic and jobs lost due to post-pandemic concerns, such as social distancing.
"I understand that the administration and other folks are optimistic," the conservative Heritage Foundation's Paul Winfree, a former Trump aide, said of the temporary layoff numbers. But "I don't think I can get behind those estimates."
"We're going to be dealing with this unemployment problem for quite some time," Winfree said. "And ultimately, it's going to plague the economy for months, if not years."
Businesses in some of the hardest-hit industries have already announced thousands of closures. As of April, about 3 percent of restaurants in the country, once temporarily shuttered, have permanently closed, according to the National Restaurant Association. And manufacturing giants like Caterpillar, Polaris and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. are shutting down their once-furloughed factories for good, The Wall Street Journal reports.
"You probably had a lot of businesses in absolute good faith say 'we're going to call you back' totally thinking they were going to, but will never do it," Shierholz said. "Many may go out of business. And two, it's very probable that in many cases [when they do reopen] they won't need everyone."
Even if businesses make it through the pandemic, continued social distancing and other altered consumer behavior mean that many of them are unlikely to be able to rehire their temporarily laid-off or furloughed workers, economists say.
"If it's the case that for the next two, three years, far fewer people are going to go out and eat at restaurants, if cinemas and movie theaters are going to have to have semi-permanent social distancing reducing their capacity, then a lot of these businesses will become nonviable and these jobs will be permanently lost," said Ryan Bourne, an economist with the libertarian Cato Institute.
By touting the majority of layoffs as impermanent, Bourne said, the White House is creating a dangerous precedent given the large degree of uncertainty.
"There's a political danger to implying that things will just go back to normal, which is that you create the expectation that you're willing to do what it takes to ensure that happens," Bourne said. "If I was somebody in the Trump administration, I would not be wanting to create the expectation that 90 percent of existing work relationships … were highly likely to return because I think there's still a huge degree of uncertainty as to whether that will happen."
This blog originally appeared at Politico on May 28, 2020. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Eleanor Mueller is a legislative reporter for POLITICO Pro, covering policy passing through Congress. She also authors Day Ahead, POLITICO Pro's daily newsletter rounding up Capitol Hill goings-on.
Posted in layoffsTagged COVID-19, layoffs, unemploymentLeave a Comment on Why temporary layoffs may become permanent
Labor Department reports 36.5 million unemployment claims over 2 months
Posted on May 14, 2020 May 14, 2020 by Rebecca Rainey
Thursday's report brought the eight-week total of coronavirus-induced layoffs to 36.5 million.
Workers filed nearly 3 million new unemployment claims last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, signaling that a wave of coronavirus-induced layoffs is continuing as the country struggles to reopen for business.
The latest number, which covers the week ending May 9, pushed the two-month tally of unemployment claims to 36.5 million, reflecting a jobless rate that the Bureau of Labor Statistics acknowledged last week is the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The figure is "another sickening punch to the gut," Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst for Bankrate, said in a statement. "And, we need to be braced for more incoming body blows with respect to economic data," he said.
As high as the official unemployment rate is — BLS said it reached 14.7 percent in April — that likely understates the damage, because large numbers of people misclassified themselves as employed but absent from work, artificially suppressing the jobless rate by about five percentage points.
Unemployment claims by week
"We're going to see high levels of unemployment for a long time, meaning nine to 18 months," predicted Tom Gimbel, founder & CEO of LaSalle Network, a national staffing and recruiting firm. "The whole labor model is going to change."
As most states begin allowing non-essential businesses to reopen their doors, Gimbel said he expects many companies to favor temporary over permanent hiring.
"We'll see an increase in temporary staffing, because companies are going to be concerned about a resurgence," Gimbel said. "People don't want to commit to full-time staff."
Workers who are called back face a choice between potentially risking their health or losing unemployment benefits. On Monday, DOL "strongly encouraged" state unemployment agencies to find out from employers whether benefit recipients refuse to return to work, as federal guidelines dictate that those workers will no longer be eligible.
The data released by DOL Thursday also indicated that self-employed workers who were made eligible for jobless benefits under a new temporary program, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, have finally begun to tap into the relief.
In the week ending April 25, 3.4 million Americans were receiving benefits from the program, up from fewer than 1 million the week prior.
In Washington, lawmakers have been unable to agree on next steps to address the economic pain caused by the virus.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a vote Friday on a new $3 trillion relief package that would include an extension through January of the $600 sweetener to weekly unemployment checks, which is set to expire at the end of July, and another round of direct payments. President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans oppose the plan, and say they prefer to assess the effects of the $2 trillion CARES Act.
But Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that further congressional stimulus would be worth the price.
"The record shows that deeper and longer recessions can leave behind lasting damage to the productive capacity of the economy," Powell said at a virtual event hosted by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "Additional fiscal support could be costly but worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery."
The Fed chief said the central bank will release a survey on Thursday showing that nearly 40 percent of people in households making less than $40,000 a year had lost a job in March.
Over the short term, financial losses are already devastating. About half of Americans say they've lost income and savings due to the effects of the coronavirus, a National Bureau of Economic Research survey found. On average, those Americans said they've lost $5,293 in income and $33,482 in wealth.
Posted in unemploymentTagged Labor Department, layoffs, unemployment rateLeave a Comment on Labor Department reports 36.5 million unemployment claims over 2 months
Labor Is Pioneering a New Kind of Relief Effort in the Twin Cities
Posted on May 14, 2020 May 14, 2020 by Aaron Gallant
Scores of workers across America have been laid off through no fault of their own, and still many of them are not eligible for federal benefits during these unprecedented times. In Minnesota's Twin Cities, the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation (MRLF) is organizing to provide support to those workers who can't get the support they need from our federal government.
Led by President Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou (UFCW), the MRLF is pioneering a new kind of initiative focused on filling that gap. The Twin Cities Hospitality Relief Effort is specifically designed to help laid-off hospitality workers who are being left behind. The labor federation is giving direct one-on-one assistance to dozens of these workers who need immediate help with health care, housing and money to survive.
"A lot of hospitality workers are not eligible for government assistance for a number of reasons: they receive much of their income from tips, they have families with mixed immigration status, they received a combination of wages and 1099 forms, or they worked for many different employers over the course of the year," Glaubitz Gabiou explained. "These workers come from an industry that was the first to shut down, and they have a very long recovery ahead."
The MRLF has 16 people trained to provide navigation services, and they are in place to keep the relief effort going. The navigators are doing direct outreach to those who need help the most, and they interact with community partners and government agencies to provide tailored support for each individual. They are a mix of union organizers, laid-off workers and labor federation staff, and many of them are bilingual. Their conversations with the people receiving help also has an organizing component, as the labor federation is promoting union values to these laid-off workers.
"The way that this team of front-line workers is coming together to take care of other workers in this industry is inspiring," Glaubitz Gabiou said. "They're helping people negotiate payment plans with their landlords, get access to active food resources and pharmaceuticals, and much more." She pointed out that they have helped more than 150 laid-off workers and their families—90% of whom do not have access to unemployment insurance benefits.
The MRLF's Twin Cities Hospitality Relief Effort is operating in close collaboration with its affiliates, including UNITE HERE Local 17, Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 13 and the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. The initiative is receiving financial support from the LIFT Fund, the city of Minneapolis, Ramsey County, Minnesota, the Greater Twin Cities United Way, the Minnesota Nurses Association-NNU and UNITE HERE. The coalition recently held an online bingo tournament that raised nearly $5,000. And this funding is being used to support the relief effort and provide $200 cash grants to those laid-off workers who meet minimum standards.
"We have to keep fighting and scraping for people to take seriously the state that all workers are in," Glaubitz Gabiou said. "It's not just about surviving right now; we're working to make sure we recover more resilient in the future."
This blog originally appeared at AFL-CIO on May 13, 2020. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Aaron Gallant is a contributor for AFL-CIO.
Posted in Community ServiceTagged layoffs, Minnesota, unemploymentLeave a Comment on Labor Is Pioneering a New Kind of Relief Effort in the Twin Cities
Layoffs have high stakes for foreign nationals and their employers
Posted on May 13, 2020 May 13, 2020 by Leslie Ditrani
As society reacts to the spread of COVID-19, businesses are making difficult decisions. Despite the government's interventions to encourage continuity in the workforce, unemployment is at historic rates and still rising.
This creates high stakes for employers of foreign nationals. The inflexible regulatory scheme governing such employment did not anticipate COVID-19. It's important to approach layoffs, hours reductions, and furloughs with a concrete plan: the impact on foreign workers must be taken into account before your company takes action.
Temporary Furloughs and Reductions in Hours Worked
The H-1 and E-3 visa categories require the filing of a Labor Condition Application (LCA) with the Department of Labor and are governed by DOL wage regulations. An employer must pay these employees the greater of (1) the actual wage rate paid by the employer to all other individuals with similar experience and qualifications for the specific job, or (2) the prevailing wage for the occupational classification in the geographic area of intended employment. This required wage must be paid, even if the employee is not performing work and is in a nonproductive status. The temporary furlough of such an employee would therefore lead immediately to a violation of the LCA and a potential claim by the employee against the company. Reductions in hours worked could also lead to LCA violations where the LCA was based on full-time employment.
There is no easy way out of this problem. Foreign national employees may not be treated better than U.S. workers, so exempting them from such measures is not an option. An employer's only choice may be to amend an H-1B petition to reflect the change in working conditions, which is expensive and cumbersome, or to terminate the foreign national's employment outright.
This situation is much more flexible for foreign workers not in H-1B, H-1B1 or E-3 status. Such employees may generally be treated the same as U.S. workers without the need to amend an underlying visa petition.
Permanent Layoffs
Immigration regulations require employers of individuals in the H-1, L-1 and O-1 visa categories to immediately notify USCIS of material changes in the terms and conditions of employment. What constitutes a material change is not always clear, but termination of employment is plainly material. Written notice to USCIS would be sufficient for all except H-1B employees.
Employers of terminated H-1B employees – whether through layoff or otherwise — must notify USCIS immediately by withdrawing the H-1B petition. The employer must also offer to repatriate the employee — pay the cost of the employee's trip home if the employee chooses to depart the U.S.
F-1/STEM OPT Issues
There are also certain obligations for employers of F-1 nonimmigrant students who are employed pursuant to STEM OPT work authorization. The STEM OPT period is governed by the Form I-983 training plan, which contains an employer certification. Among other things, the Form I-983 includes the student's salary and the agreed-upon number of hours worked per week. The employer is responsible for notifying the student's Designated School Official (DSO) regarding any material change to the training plan, including any reduction in compensation or any significant decrease in hours worked per week. The employer also must notify the DSO within five business days of the termination of the student during the authorized STEM OPT period.
Permanent Residency Issues
If the company has filed an immigrant petition, or I-140, or an employee who is laid off, the employer should withdraw the I-140 petition. However, the employee may be able to join a new employer and maintain the benefit of the prior approved I-140 petition and the established priority date, so long as the I-140 petition has been approved for at least 180 days.
Layoffs may affect not only the individual employee(s) laid off, but they can also have a significant effect on the green card process for other employees as well. If the company has had a layoff within the last six months in the area of intended employment of the PERM job or a related job, the employer may not be able to file the PERM application. This may delay the filing of PERM applications for employees, and may prevent the employer from sponsoring an employee for a green card altogether if the employee does not have sufficient time remaining in their nonimmigrant status.
In this tumultuous time, if your business is being forced to consider layoffs or if you are a foreign national employee who has been recently laid off, be sure to speak with an immigration attorney that is well versed in the nuances of both the regulations and these unusual circumstances.
Printed with permission.
About the Author: Leslie Ditrani is Co-Managing Partner of Chin & Curtis, LLP and has been practicing immigration law for more than 25 years. Working closely with employers to hire and retain talent, she and the firm represent a wide range of enterprises from start-ups and entrepreneurs to large, multi-national businesses. Leslie is known for her broad expertise in business and family immigration matters, and her dedication to finding creative and effective solutions.
Posted in layoffsTagged Foreign Workers, furloughs, layoffsLeave a Comment on Layoffs have high stakes for foreign nationals and their employers
Trump administration wants states to zip their lips about soaring unemployment numbers
Posted on March 25, 2020 by Laura Clawson
Unemployment is skyrocketing as entire industries shut down or scale back dramatically in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Unemployment claims rose 30% last week, with 281,000 newly jobless people filing for unemployment insurance. But the numbers that are still to come are going to be much worse. How much worse? Well, the Labor Department is asking states not to give any numbers until the official report comes out, because the financial markets will see and it will be bad.
On Wednesday, the Labor Department's administrator of the Office of Employment Insurance (a career official, not a political appointee) sent state officials an email telling them to "provide information using generalities to describe claims levels (very high, large increase)." Perhaps state officials should pay a visit to Thesaurus.com for some help, and tell the public, "We can't give you exact numbers here, but there has been an enormous/giant/gigantic/hefty/huge increase in unemployment claims this week. For exact numbers, wait until the federal government releases them next week." That will surely ease anxieties!
Washington state's new unemployment claims rose by 150% last week—and while officials there aren't giving numbers, they did say there's an "even more dramatic increase this week." In Pennsylvania, a state labor official told lawmakers and union leaders that there had been 180,000 new unemployment claims in recent days. That's more than the state typically sees in a month.
It sounds like we might need to go back to the thesaurus to convey the magnitude of the job losses going on. How about gargantuan? Immense? Massive?
Or maybe—here's a thought—numbers. Waiting until Thursday to know the scope of the economic crisis is not going to calm anyone down. We saw that when Donald Trump attempted to downplay the coronavirus crisis because he was worried about how the markets would respond, and the markets tanked anyway. Everyone knows things are really, really, really bad out there. Knowing that the government is being transparent would at least be one piece of good news.
This article was originally published at Daily Kos on March 20, 2020. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Laura Clawson is a Daily Kos contributor at Daily Kos editor since December 2006. Full-time staff since 2011, currently assistant managing editor.
Posted in unemploymentTagged coronavirus, economy, layoffs, unemploymentLeave a Comment on Trump administration wants states to zip their lips about soaring unemployment numbers
Coronavirus layoffs surge across America, overwhelming unemployment offices
Posted on March 20, 2020 by Rebecca Rainey
Employers are slashing jobs at a furious pace across the nation due to mass shutdowns over the coronavirus, slamming state unemployment offices with a crush of filers facing sudden crises.
Long before official government data is expected to reveal the depths of the economic shock inflicted by the coronavirus, reports from state officials and businesses around the country indicate the gathering of a massive wave of unemployment on a scale unseen since the Great Recession.
In New Jersey, 15,000 people applied for unemployment benefits on Monday, a twelvefold increase over normal levels. In Connecticut, nearly 8,000 applications arrived over the weekend, an eightfold increase over the norm. Rhode Island officials reported Tuesday a five-day rise in claims due to the coronavirus from 10 on March 11 to 6,282 on March 16.
More than 45,000 Ohio workers have applied for unemployment over the past week, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services told Sen. Rob Portman, a nearly sevenfold increase over the previous week.
The dramatic rise in claims could spur further action by Congress beyond the legislation now under discussion. "This demonstrates the urgency for Congress to act, and act quickly," Portman said Tuesday in a written statement.
According to an NPR/Marist poll conducted Thursday and Friday, 18 percent of households already reported someone being laid off or having hours reduced because of the coronavirus outbreak, with women hit harder (21 percent) than men (16 percent), and people who earn less than $50,000 hit harder (25 percent) than those earning $50,000 or more (14 percent).
"A coronavirus recession is inevitable," said Josh Bivens, director of research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, in a blog post. He estimated that at least 3 million jobs will be lost by summer. Meanwhile, the U.S. Travel Association was projecting 4.6 million jobs lost this year in the travel industry alone, pushing the unemployment rate up to 6.3 percent.
The layoffs swept businesses large and small. On Tuesday Marriott said it expects to lay off tens of thousands of workers worldwide. MGM Resorts International on Monday closed 150 restaurants and bars, with more closings to come; Caesars Entertainment Corp. said it also has begun layoffs. In D.C., Compass Coffee, a local Starbucks competitor, laid off most of its 189 employees, and the Dubliner, a popular Irish bar on Capitol Hill, laid off all of them, leaving the place empty on St. Patrick's Day.
During the past 48 hours, unemployment insurance offices around the country were flooded with phone calls, and state unemployment websites crashed in Kentucky, Oregon, and New York.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill late Tuesday were racing toward a deal with the White House on an economic stimulus package to aid industries disrupted by the pandemic, and ironing out the details on a separate coronavirus aid package.
But many state unemployment insurance programs are ill-prepared for the downturn. Twenty-two states and jurisdictions, including California, New York, Illinois and Texas, have dangerously low reserves, and 10 have reduced the number of weeks they offer benefits since the 2007-09 Great Recession. The duration of eligibility for unemployment insurance in any given state won't be affected by the legislation moving through Congress.
With the Trump administration and other nations considering travel restrictions, and more Americans pulling back on nonessential trips, the travel and hospitality industries have been among the first to see job cuts.
"We are adjusting global operations accordingly," a Marriott spokesperson said in an emailed statement, "which has meant either reduction in hours or a temporary leave for many of our associates at our properties." The spokesperson said that employees "will keep their health benefits during this difficult period and continue to be eligible for company- paid free short-term disability that provides income protection should they get sick."
Several airlines have cut back service, and Delta recently announced a hiring freeze in the wake of the outbreak.
Ian Kullgren contributed to this report.
This article was originally published at Politico on March 17, 2020. Reprinted with permission.
Prior to joining POLITICO in August 2018, Rainey covered the Occupational Safety and Health administration and regulatory reform on Capitol Hill. Her work has been published by The Washington Post and the Associated Press, among other outlets.
Rainey holds a bachelor's degree from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.
She was born and raised on the eastern shore of Maryland and grew up 30 minutes from the beach. She loves to camp, hike and be by the water whenever she can.
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12 Things We've Learned About the GOP Tax Bill
Posted on April 16, 2018 April 18, 2018 by AFL-CIO Now
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans rushed to pass the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017, leaving very little time for public scrutiny or debate. Here are a few things we have learned since the GOP tax bill passed.
1. It Will Encourage Outsourcing: An April 2018 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirms that two "provisions [of the GOP tax bill] may increase corporations' incentive to locate tangible assets abroad."
2. It Has Not Boosted Corporate Investment: The rate of investment growth has stayed pretty much the same as before the GOP tax bill passed.
3. Few Workers Are Benefiting: Only 4.3% of workers are getting a one-time bonus or wage increase this year, according to Americans for Tax Fairness.
4. Corporations Are Keeping the Windfall: Americans for Tax Fairness calculates that corporations are receiving nine times as much in tax cuts as they are giving to workers in one-time bonuses and wage increases.
5. Corporations Are Using the Windfall to Buy Back Stocks: Corporations are spending 37 times as much on stock buybacks, which overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, as on one-time bonuses and wage increases for workers, according to Americans for Tax Fairness.
6. Corporations Are Laying Off Workers: Americans for Tax Fairness calculates that 183 private-sector businesses have announced 94,296 layoffs since Congress passed the tax bill.
7. It Costs More Than We Thought: The GOP tax bill will eventually cost $1.9 trillion by 2028, according to an April 2018 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. And we know some Republicanswill call for cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to pay for it.
8. We've Fallen Behind When It Comes to Corporate Tax Revenue: Thanks to the GOP tax bill, corporate tax revenue (as a share of the economy) will be lower in the United States than in any other developed country, according to an April 2018 report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
9. Extending the Individual Tax Cuts Would Benefit the Wealthy: The GOP tax bill's temporary tax cuts for individuals expires by 2025, and some Republicans are now proposing to extend them. An April 2018 report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that 61% of the benefit from these extending individual tax cuts would go to the richest one-fifth of taxpayers.
10. It Is Shoddy Work: In March 2018, a leading tax expert concluded that the GOP tax bill's new rules for pass-through businesses "achieved a rare and unenviable trifecta, by making the tax system less efficient, less fair and more complicated. It lacked any coherent (or even clearly articulated) underlying principle, was shoddily executed and ought to be promptly repealed."
11. It Is Still Unpopular: The GOP tax bill polls poorly, with a clear majority disapproving.
12. The Outsourcing Incentives Can Be Fixed: In February 2018, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) introduced the No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Act, which would eliminate the GOP tax bill's incentives for outsourcing by equalizing tax rates on domestic profits and foreign profits.
This blog was published at AFL-CIO on April 16, 2018. Reprinted with permission.
Posted in TaxCutsTagged GOP tax bill, layoffs, Outsourcing, Salary, tax bill, wage increaseLeave a Comment on 12 Things We've Learned About the GOP Tax Bill
Recognizing Signs of Age Discrimination in the Workplace
Posted on June 30, 2017 by The Attorneys of Passman and Kaplan
In the ideal workplace, employees would be evaluated based on their knowledge, skills, and work ethic.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Employment discrimination and other forms of discrimination can plague a workplace.
For an employer, it's not only a bad idea to discriminate against someone because of his or her age – it's also against the law.
The Employment Act protects employees who are 40 years of age or older. Employers that discriminate against an employee on the basis of age (or inclusion in another protected class) can be held responsible for their conduct.
Examples of age discrimination
Can you recognize signs of age-related discrimination? Any of these employer actions may indicate that age discrimination is occurring in your workplace:
Treating older employees differently than younger employees
Failing to promote older workers
Targeting older employees in layoffs
Targeting younger applicants in job recruitment efforts (such as "seeking young and energetic employees")
Asking an applicant's age or date of birth in an interview
Repeatedly inquiring about an employee's retirement plans
Encouraging an employee to retire
Age-based name calling (calling an employee "old man" or "grandma", for example)
If age discrimination has occurred, a federal employee may be eligible for compensation to cover back pay, front pay, job reinstatement, attorney fees, court costs, and more. It is advisable for an employee to promptly discuss his or her legal options with an employment law attorney.
This blog was originally published at Passman & Kaplan, P.C., Attorneys at Law on June 28, 2017. Reprinted with permission.
About the Authors: Founded in 1990 by Edward H. Passman and Joseph V. Kaplan, Passman & Kaplan, P.C., Attorneys at Law, is focused on protecting the rights of federal employees and promoting workplace fairness. The attorneys of Passman & Kaplan (Edward H. Passman, Joseph V. Kaplan, Adria S. Zeldin, Andrew J. Perlmutter, Johnathan P. Lloyd and Erik D. Snyder) represent federal employees before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and other federal administrative agencies, and also represent employees in U.S. District and Appeals Courts.
Posted in age discrimination, UncategorizedTagged age discrimination, ageism, date of birth, Employment Act, employment discrimination, energetic employees, layoffs, retire, retirement plansLeave a Comment on Recognizing Signs of Age Discrimination in the Workplace
Labor and Community Allies Fight for Jobs and Public Safety in Atlantic City
Posted on March 28, 2017 March 29, 2017 by Lee Sandberg
Atlantic City, New Jersey, may be the gambling capital of the East Coast, but there are certain things that shouldn't be left up to chance, namely public safety. However, bureaucrats in charge of the state takeover of Atlantic City are now ready to impose drastic budget cuts that will result in 50% fewer firefighters and the smallest police force since 1971.
The New Jersey State AFL-CIO has joined with various labor and community allies to oppose these cuts that threaten safety and also undermine the economic recovery of Atlantic City. This community-based coalition has launched a campaign called "Don't Gamble on Safety AC" that seeks to raise awareness of the impact of budget cuts.
During the campaign launch last week, one of the most salient voices was that of Officer Joshlee Vadell, who was shot in the head while heroically intervening in an armed robbery last year. Under the plan proposed by the state of New Jersey, disability payments for officers like Vadell could be cut, and the officers who rushed to save his life would face layoffs.
Watch Officer Vadell's press conference speech, and be sure to check out highlights from the event.
Without ensuring safety, residents, businesses, visitors and workers are all put at risk. The New Jersey State AFL-CIO will stand with our brothers and sisters and the Atlantic City community to ensure that this fundamental community need is met.
The campaign will include billboards, direct mail, online advertising and multiple grassroots activities, including leafleting on the boardwalk and door-to-door canvassing to inform residents. For more information on the campaign, visit DontGambleOnSafetyAC.com.
This blog originally appeared in aflcio.org on March 28, 2017. Reprinted with permission.
Lee Sandberg is the Communications Coordinator at New Jersey State AFL-CIO.
Posted in layoffsTagged Budget cuts, Firefighters, layoffs, New Jersey, Police OfficersLeave a Comment on Labor and Community Allies Fight for Jobs and Public Safety in Atlantic City
This week in the war on workers: SoftBank investment is not necessarily something to look forward to
Posted on December 19, 2016 December 21, 2016 by Laura Clawson
Donald Trump's claim that, because of him, SoftBank would be investing $50 billion in the U.S. and creating 50,000 jobs was greeted somewhat less credulously than his Carrier claims. But it's still worth an extra look at the details. It's not just that SoftBank had already planned a major investment fund before the election:
Worse yet, this deal is lose, lose, lose for the domestic economy. First, this inflow of foreign capital will bid up the U.S. dollar, which will reduce the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing by making imports cheaper and exports more expensive. This will increase the U.S. trade deficit and reduce employment in U.S. manufacturing. The U.S. dollar has gained about 25 percent in the past two-and-a-half years, and one-fifth of that increase has occurred since the election. As a result, the trade deficit in manufactured goods increased sharply in 2015 and is poised for another increase after the recent run-up in the dollar. Meanwhile, the United States has lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs since the first of the year due, in part, to the rising trade deficit.
Second, foreign investment in the U.S. economy is dominated by foreign purchases of existing U.S. companies. Between 1990 and 2005, foreign multinational companies (MNCs) acquired or established domestic subsidiaries that employed 5.25 million U.S. employees. The vast majority (94 percent) of jobs associated with those investments were in existing firms acquired by foreign MNCs. However, 4 million of those jobs disappeared through layoffs or divestiture of part or all of those companies […]
SoftBank provides a clear example of plans to acquire and merge existing U.S. businesses.
This article originally appeared at DailyKOS.com on December 17, 2016. Reprinted with permission.
Laura Clawson is a Daily Kos contributing editor since December 2006. Labor editor since 2011.
Posted in JobsTagged job creation, layoffs, manufacturing jobs, President Trump, Trade DefecitLeave a Comment on This week in the war on workers: SoftBank investment is not necessarily something to look forward to

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text:
How We Ended up Creating Our Own Tron Challenge
By Pablo Garcia Roca on July 14, 2021
Many of you know, we're a company that likes to do team events. Such as Workations, MJ University, or the Summer Camp. We always loved to spend time together, in person, getting to know each other, and having good times together. It's part of our company culture and a strong one.
Since COVID-19, we didn't want to take any risks, and in favor of everyone's safety at Mobile Jazz, we decided to cancel any on-site events until it's safe enough to do them again (hopefully soon!).
It's been more than a year, with new people joining the team where we weren't able to gather, and we missed those times and had the feeling we didn't have any event for team bonding (which would usually happen naturally on our regular team gatherings) in a long time. So, how could we fill that gap?
Keeping up the Team-Bonding
When doing our regular events, we often travel to different places, so no one is at their home, and hence, nobody has errands to run or responsibilities after work. This leads to people joining naturally and seeking activities such as exploring the city or area where we're at or simply going for some beers.
Being a remote-based team, spread around the world, makes it harder to create or find these spaces, obviously because of the physical location of each but also because of everyone's duties. We were missing these moments, and we wanted to somehow bring those back in while we can't plan for our regular events.
We were missing these moments and we wanted to somehow bring those back in while we can't plan for our regular events.
We envisioned the Fun Fest to be a free-form event where anyone could propose ideas and people could join in groups based on their interests/mood every day. There were many proposals and activities being hold during the event such as:
Playing online chess tournaments (we have some Kasparov's in the team!)
Discovering and playing with new technologies
Doing round-tables of various topics we're interested in
Unleashing our creativity playing some rounds of Gartic Phone
Becoming hackers in a capture-the-flag game finding flaws on a web app
Asides from these activities we held and had fun with, we also played something special, a custom Tron game a couple of our engineers created from scratch to bring a bit of innovation to the event.
Mobile Jazz's Tron – A Code Challenge
We were thinking about the event activities when one of our engineers recalled an activity they used to do back in university, a coding challenge. This is essentially an exercise where developers create their best algorithms to solve a problem, sparkling up the challenge with some competitiveness.
Tron is a 1982 sci-fi movie where riders had to compete against each other in a delimited area. Each of their bikes would leave a trace behind resulting in a solid wall where other bikers could crash into. Riders had to move along the area while avoiding hitting the playground walls or other rider's traces and only one person could win each game.
As good nerds we are, most of us knew and watched Tron and destroyed our fingers beating the snake game of the good old indestructible Nokia 3110 phones. So we went ahead and created our own version of the game, where 4 teams had to compete against each other and try to be the last-standing team.
Initially, our bikes were just dumb pieces of code that we had to improve and turn into smart algorithms capable of executing strategies to keep them alive. In other words, we had to create a code deciding what each bike should do in each movement (essentially moving up, down, left, or right). The concept sounds simple, but each team has to account for the other 12 bikes moving around making their own decisions based on their own code and strategies.
The fuel behind our Tron bikes
Here's where each engineer had to prove their skills, using cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence or genetic engineering. Yes, genetic engineering, you've read well. Beyond deciding in which direction each bike should go the code had to be smart enough to predict what others would do, or find the best possible path avoiding any obstacle in between.
To make it even more interesting, one of our highly creative front-end engineers built a retro-looking UI interface where we were able to test our codes, and ultimately join together to watch the championship finale.
It was a ton of fun and every one of us took different approaches, from crazy algorithms taking more than 2000 lines of written code to very efficient ones using only 41 lines and still, ending up in the top 5 teams.
The Outcome of the Event
Some people might put their hands on their heads when we explain we stopped working all afternoons during a week and, instead, paid our team to enjoy, have fun and do anything they like non-work-related.
Truth is, we discovered early events have a great outcome in terms of team bonding and preserving a strong team culture. Having a motivated team requires a healthy workspace and by focusing only on work you leave aside an important fact, each one's personality and interests.
While the Fun Fest won't be our best-remembered event (we all agree we prefer to spend time together in person), it helped us forget about the pandemic horizon for a while, which held us locked down in our homes without a window to do some social interactions. We keep good memories about it, and we'll for sure remember those fun moments that happened during the MJ Fun Fest.
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Now on View: First Comprehensive Monographic Exhibition of Henry Fuseli
Percival Delivering Belisane from the Enchantment of Urma, 1783
With almost seventy paintings, the first comprehensive monographic exhibition of the work of the Swiss-born artist Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) at the Kunstmuseum Basel turns the spotlight on two of his most important sources of inspiration: literature and the stage.
Fuseli's entire oeuvre is steeped in his engagement with the canon of great literature he began to explore during his student years in Zurich. He borrows motifs from ancient mythology, John Milton's Paradise Lost, or Shakespeare's dramas and stages them in "theatrical" tableaus: highly effective compositions in which hard lighting throws the strained and contorted bodies of his heroes and virgins into sharp relief, while visions of specters, fallen angels, fairies, and other supernatural apparitions make for spectacular and often lugubrious fantastic scenes. Spanning the shift from classicism to Romanticism, Fuseli's art jettisons convention to unfurl a panorama of his idiosyncratic imagination.
Kunsthaus Zürich
The Three Confederates During the Rutli Oath, 1780
©Freies Deutsches Hochstift / Frankfurter Goethe-Museum, Photo: Ursula Edelmann
Mad Kate, 1806-07
Titania Caresses Bottom with the Donkey's Head, 1793-94
© RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Hervé Lewandowski
Lady MacBeth Sleepwalking, 1783
© Hamburger Kunsthalle / bpk Foto: Elke Walford
The Creation of Eve, 1791-1793
Cupid and Psyche, 1818
The "Shakespeare of canvas"
Having spent several years in Rome, Fuseli returned to London in 1779 and soon caused a sensation with illustrations of the dramas of Shakespeare. The exhibition Fuseli. Drama and Theatre showcases large-format paintings based on A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, and Hamlet that the self-taught artist created for two literature galleries dedicated to Shakespeare; these and other works earned him the nickname "Shakespeare of canvas." From 1790 until 1800, Fuseli himself pursued the project of a Milton Gallery, several key works from which are also on display.
Fuseli's public image as an eccentric "Wild Swiss," as he was known in London, is largely due to the scandalous success of The Nightmare; we present the version now in a private collection in Basel. Wider audiences primarily know the artist as a pioneer of Dark Romanticism and "Gothic horror." The exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel limns a more comprehensive portrait of the man of letters with a brilliant gift of visual invention, surrounding the viewer with his painterly translations of epic plots and surveying his literary universe as well as his dramatic imagination.
Visitors are introduced to the sources from which Fuseli drew inspiration in sections dedicated to ancient and medieval legends, his study of recent and contemporary works such as Christoph Martin Wieland's Oberon, Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies, and Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. A separate section is reserved for his portraits of writers and his inventions—paintings that, rather than adapting an existing literary model, depict "sentiments personified," which the artist sometimes embedded in narrative contexts of his own devising.
International and multimedia
Like Fuseli's art, Drama and Theatre does not aim for subtlety, and so the focus is on painting as the medium best suited to the artist's quest for stirring effects. Almost seventy paintings exemplify the spectacular as well as intellectually ambitious art he created during his London decades. The seven works in the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, the municipal art collection of Basel, are complemented by generous loans from the Kunsthaus Zürich; the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.; the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; the Louvre; the Tate, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and other Swiss and international museums and private collections.
To bring the marriage of literature, theatre, and visual art in Fuseli's work to life in the museum, Thom Luz, resident director at the Theater Basel, has created video projections that reflect on the evocative and sometimes mysterious quality of Fuseli's pictures in the perspective of contemporary theatre. Antenna International has produced an audio guide that gives visitors a unique opportunity to let Fuseli himself lead them through the presentation.
The catalogue prepared in conjunction with the exhibition and published by Prestel pursues an interdisciplinary approach, with contributions by scholars of literary and theatre history. Alexander Honold traces the formative influence of the poetological ideas of Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger, Fuseli's teachers in Zurich, on his understanding of art. Beate Hochholdinger-Reiterer reconstructs the beginnings of the artist's interest in Shakespeare's works and pinpoints the developments in the London theatre scene from the 1760s onward that allowed the dramatic arts to become a source of inspiration for Fuseli's art. Additional essays by Eva Reifert, Bodo Brinkmann, Claudia Blank, Gabriel Dette, Thom Luz, and Caroline Rae.
Fuseli: Drama and Theatre is on view through February 10, 2019, at the Kunstmuseum Basel.
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