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UAW chief Shawn Fain explains why the union endorsed Biden over Trump
Washington — United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, who announced the group’s endorsement of President Biden for reelection last week, explained why the union endorsed Mr. Biden, noting a “very clear difference” between him and former President Donald Trump.
“One of them, President Biden, has always been on the American worker and stood with the American worker and he proved that during this presidency,” Fain told “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “For the first time in U.S. history, we had a sitting president join striking workers on the picket line.”
With the UAW endorsement on Wednesday, Mr. Biden earned the backing of the 400,000-member union, which marked a critical step in his reelection bid as he seeks to gain support from working class Americans. He cited Mr. Biden’s support during the UAW’s strike last fall as evidence of his priorities.
“I believe the overwhelming majority of UAW members and working class people, when the facts and the truth are put in front of them, will support Joe Biden for president,” Fain said. “That’s why we made this decision.”
The UAW president contrasted the president and former president, saying that while “Joe Biden has a history of serving others” and the working class, “Donald Trump has a history of serving himself and standing for the billionaire class.”
“That’s contrary to everything that working class people stand for,” Fain added.
For his union members, issues like retirement security, better wages and health care are key, Fain explained.
“That’s what matters,” he said. “And I believe that’s why a huge majority of our members and working class people will side with President Joe Biden in the upcoming election.”
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“The Handmaid’s Tale” is selling again.
Since President-elect Donald Trump clinched his return to the White House, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic about a country in which women are brutally repressed has been high on the Amazon.com best seller list. “The Handmaid’s Tale” was popular throughout Trump’s first term, along with such dark futuristic narratives as George Orwell’s “1984” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” both of which were in the Amazon top 40 as of Thursday afternoon. Another best-seller from Trump’s previous time in office, Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” was in the top 10.
Pro-Trump books also were selling well. Former first lady Melania Trump’s memoir, “Melania,” was No. 1 on the Amazon list, and Vice President-elect JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” was in the top 10. Donald Trump’s photo book “Save America” was in the top 30.
At Barnes & Noble, “Fiction and non-fiction books that feature fascism, feminism, dystopian worlds and both right-and-left leaning politics rocketed up our sales charts with the election results,” according to Shannon DeVito, the chain’s director of books. She cited “Melania,” “On Tyranny” and Bob Woodward’s latest, “War,” which covers the responses of Trump and President Joe Biden to the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
DeVito also cited “a massive bump in dystopian fiction,” notably for “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “1984.”
A Russian court sentenced two soldiers to life in prison for the massacre of a family of nine people in their home in occupied Ukraine, state media reported on Friday.
Russian prosecutors said in October 2023, the two Russian soldiers, Anton Sopov and Stanislav Rau, entered the home of the Kapkanets family in the city of Volnovakha with guns equipped with silencers.
They then shot all nine family members who lived there, including two children aged 5 and 9.
The southern district military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced the two men to life in prison for mass murder “motivated by political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred,” the state-run TASS news agency reported, citing an unnamed law enforcement source.
The incident triggered uproar in Ukraine.
Kyiv alleged at the time that the Russian soldiers had murdered the family in their sleep after they refused to move out of their home to allow Russian soldiers to live there.
“The occupiers killed the Kapkanets family, who were celebrating a birthday and refused to give up their home,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said a day after the murder.
Russian forces seized the city of Volnovakha in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region at the start of their full-scale military offensive. Russian artillery strikes virtually destroyed it.
Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Russian soldiers have been accused of multiple instances of killing civilians in Ukrainian towns and cities they have occupied since February 2022.
Moscow has always denied targeting civilians and tried to claim reports of atrocities at places like Bucha were fake, despite widespread evidence from multiple independent sources. In 2022, independent journalists who went into Bucha found the streets littered with bodies. The dead were wearing civilian clothing, and some had their hands tied behind their backs, apparently executed. Others were buried in a mass grave.
The arrest and sentencing in this case is a rare example of Russia admitting to a crime committed by its troops in Ukraine.
State media did not say what prosecutors determined the reason for the attack was.
TASS suggested it could have been a “domestic dispute” while both the independent Radio Free Europe and Kommersant business outlets said it could have been linked to a dispute over obtaining vodka.
The trial was held in secret.
The independent Radio Free Europe outlet reported that Rau, 28, and Sopov, 21 were mercenaries for the Wagner paramilitary before joining Russia’s official army.
They had both received state awards a few months before the mass murder, it said.
Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and 9 crew members were killed last year when Prigozhin’s plane crashed between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, two months after he led a brief mutiny against Russia’s top military brass.
