The Total Report

This article was produced by Sludge, an independent, ad-free investigative news site covering money in politics. Click here to support Sludge. In the late 1980s, Joe Manchin was a West Virginia state senator with a part-time salary from the legislature and a failing carpet business. According to a 2014 lawsuit filed by Joe’s brother, Dr. John Manchin II, the Manchin Carpet Center, which Joe had started years before with their brother Roch, required funding and a loan guarantor to avoid bankruptcy.

Late last year, with the pandemic in full, brutal swing, Boris Johnson’s Conservative government in the U.K. announced a nearly 17 billion pound (what was then $21.9 billion) increase in military spending. The increase, spread over four years, represented the largest hike in “defense” investments since the end of the Cold War, and, while it was a tiny fraction of what the U.S. spends annually on defense, made clear Britain’s ambition to be seen as a global military superpower once more. In an era of escalating tensions between a U.S.-led NATO and Russia, and during a period in which economic competition between China and the West is increasingly morphing into a high-stakes arms race, Britain’s move to ramp up military spending made clear that the U.K. won’t be sitting out these new global struggles.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement got a powerful boost when Ben & Jerry’s announced its boycott in the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territory. On July 19, the iconic ice cream company said in a statement, “We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT),” which includes the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. The statement quoted an op-ed penned by co-founders Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in The New York Times, calling the boycott “a rejection of Israeli policy, which perpetuates an illegal occupation that is a barrier to peace and violates the basic human rights of the Palestinian people who live under the occupation.” Israel lashed back, threatening “severe consequences” for the boycott and urging U.S. states to employ anti-boycott laws. In every case but one, however, courts have struck down such legislation as unconstitutional. Boycotts are protected by the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech, association and assembly.

A memo uncovered by The Intercept shows that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) opposed supporting a push for President Joe Biden to cancel student loan debt after billionaire donors, with whom she has close ties, urged her to do so.

As amendments to the bipartisan infrastructure bill were being debated in the Senate, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Thursday that only about half of the $550 billion in new spending proposed by the bill will be paid for and the rest will add to the deficit. The CBO announced that the bill would add about $256 billion to the deficit over the next ten years despite the fact that the bipartisan group working on the bill had promised the entire bill would be paid for.

A journalist was forcibly removed from a press conference being held by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) on Thursday when the reporter asked the lawmaker why he still opposed a commission to investigate the violence that took place at the U.S. Capitol building earlier this year.

The July employment report again showed very strong gains in both the establishment and household survey. In addition to showing 943,000 new jobs in July, the numbers for April and May were also revised up substantially so that the average over the last three months is now 832,000. At that pace, we would make up the jobs lost in the recession in seven months. Unemployment Record Far Ahead of Recovery From Great Recession

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is 56 years old today, but instead of simply celebrating the historic law that helped combat Jim Crow-era suppression of Black voters, civil rights leaders are busy organizing mass actions to bring a fresh slate of voting rights legislation to President Biden’s desk.

As the United Nations Security Council holds an emergency session to discuss the crisis in Afghanistan, we speak with Polk Award-winning journalist Matthieu Aikins, who is based in Kabul. The Taliban have been seizing territory for months as U.S. troops withdraw from the country, and the group is now on the verge of taking several provincial capitals. “In the 13 years I’ve been working here, I’ve never seen a situation as grim,” says Aikins.