Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to visit Bakersfield as part of ‘Fighting Oligarchy' tour
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are scheduled to make an appearance in Bakersfield as part of their 'Fighting Oligarchy' tour.
The event is scheduled for April 15 at the Dignity Health Arena in downtown Bakersfield.
Senate Democrat questions what Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez have 'actually done'
The event is being called 'Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here with Bernie Sanders in Bakersfield.' Ocasio-Cortez is listed as a special guest on an RSVP site for the event.
Similar events have brought Sanders and other speakers across the country as Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez rail against President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and their policies. A similar event is scheduled for Los Angeles on April 12.
Sanders and AOC have also held events in Arizona, Colorado and Nevada.
The tour is about 'having real discussions across America on how we move forward to take on the oligarchs and corporate interests who have so much power and influence in this country,' according to Sanders' tour site.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Chicago Tribune
31 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Senators launch a weekend of work to meet Trump's deadline for passing his tax and spending cuts
WASHINGTON — The Senate launched a rare weekend session Saturday as Republicans race to pass President Donald Trump's package of tax breaks, spending cuts and bolstered deportation funds by his July Fourth deadline. Republicans are using their majorities in Congress to push aside Democratic opposition, but they have run into a series of political and policy setbacks. Not all GOP lawmakers are on board with proposals to reduce spending on Medicaid, food stamps and other programs as a way to help cover the cost of extending some $3.8 trillion in Trump tax breaks. The 940-page bill was released shortly before midnight Friday. Senators are expected to grind through the days ahead with procedural vote Saturday to begin considering the legislation, but the timing was uncertain. There would still be a long path ahead, with hours of potentially all-night debate and eventually voting on countless amendments. Senate passage could be days away, and the bill would need to return to the House for a final round of votes before it could reach the White House. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, opened the day's session with an impassioned defense of the package that he said has been misrepresented by its critics. 'Here's what American workers get out of 'One Big Beautiful Bill,' Moreno said as he began outlining the provisions. 'Read it for yourself.' The weekend session could be a make-or-break moment for Trump's party, which has invested much of its political capital on his signature domestic policy plan. Trump is pushing Congress to wrap it up, even as he sometimes gives mixed signals, allowing for more time. At recent events at the White House, including Friday, Trump has admonished the 'grandstanders' among GOP holdouts to fall in line. 'We can get it done,' Trump said in a social media post. 'It will be a wonderful Celebration for our Country.' The legislation is an ambitious but complicated series of GOP priorities. At its core, it would make permanent many of the tax breaks from Trump's first term that would otherwise expire by year's end if Congress fails to act, resulting in a potential tax increase on Americans. The bill would add new breaks, including no taxes on tips, and commit $350 billion to national security, including for Trump's mass deportation agenda. But the spending cuts that Republicans are relying on to offset the lost tax revenues are causing dissent within the GOP ranks. Some lawmakers say the cuts go too far, particularly for people receiving health care through Medicaid. Meanwhile, conservatives, worried about the nation's debt, are pushing for steeper cuts. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he remains concerned about the fundamentals of the package and will not support the procedural motion to begin debate. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., pushing for deeper cuts, said he needed to see the final legislative text. With the narrow Republicans majorities in the House and Senate, leaders need almost every lawmaker on board to ensure passage. The release of that draft had been delayed as the Senate parliamentarian reviewed the bill to ensure it complied with the chamber's strict 'Byrd Rule,' named for the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, It largely bars policy matters from inclusion in budget bills unless a provision can get 60 votes to overcome objections. That would be a tall order in a Senate with a 53-47 GOP edge and Democrats unified against Trump's bill. Republicans suffered a series of setbacks after several proposals were determined to be out of compliance by the chief arbiter of the Senate's rules. One plan would have shifted some food stamp costs from the federal government to the states; a second would have gutted the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But over the past days, Republicans have quickly revised those proposals and reinstated them. The final text includes a proposal for cuts to a Medicaid provider tax that had run into parliamentary objections and opposition from several senators worried about the fate of rural hospitals. The new version extends the start date for those cuts and establishes a $25 billion fund to aid rural hospitals and providers. Most states impose the provider tax as a way to boost federal Medicaid reimbursements. Some Republicans argue that is a scam and should be abolished. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said that under the House-passed version of the bill, some 10.9 million more people would go without health care and at least 3 million fewer would qualify for food aid. The CBO has not yet publicly assessed the Senate draft, which proposes steeper reductions. Top income-earners would see about a $12,000 tax cut under the House bill, while the package would cost the poorest Americans $1,600, the CBO said. The Senate included a compromise over the so-called SALT provision, a deduction for state and local taxes that has been a top priority of lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states, but the issue remains unsettled. The current SALT cap is $10,000 a year, and a handful of Republicans wanted to boost it to $40,000 a year. The final draft includes a $40,000 cap, but for five years instead of 10. Many Republican senators say that is still too generous. At least one House GOP holdout, Rep. Nick LaLota of New York, had said that would be insufficient. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Republicans dropped the bill 'in the dead of night' and are rushing to finish the bill before the public fully knows what's in it. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who sent his colleagues home for the weekend with plans to be on call to return to Washington, had said they are 'very close' to finishing up. 'We would still like to meet that July Fourth, self-imposed deadline,' said Johnson, R-La. Johnson and Thune have stayed close to the White House, relying on Trump to pressure holdout lawmakers.


Politico
38 minutes ago
- Politico
Trump pollster warns Senate GOP against deeper Medicaid cuts
Senate Republicans released updated megabill text late Friday that would make sharp cuts to the Inflation Reduction Act's solar and wind tax credits after a late-stage push by President Donald Trump to crack down further on the incentives. The text would require solar and wind generation projects seeking to qualify for the law's clean electricity production and investment tax credits to be placed in service by the end of 2027 — significantly more restrictive than an earlier proposal by the Senate Finance Committee that tied eligibility to when a project begins construction. The changes came after Trump urged Senate Majority Leader John Thune to crack down on the wind and solar credits and align the measure more closely with reconciliation text, H.R.1, that passed the House, as POLITICO reported earlier on Friday. The changes are likely to put some moderate GOP senators, who have backed a slower schedule for sunsetting those incentives, in a tough position. They'll be forced to choose between rejecting Trump's agenda or allowing the gutting of tax credits that could lead to canceled projects and job losses in their states — something renewable energy advocates are also warning about. 'We are literally going to have not enough electricity because Trump is killing solar. It's that serious,' Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) responded on X early Saturday. 'We need a bunch of new power on the grid, and nothing is as available as solar. Everything else takes a while. Meantime, expect shortages and high prices. Stupid.' The revised text would retain the investment and production tax credits for baseload sources, such as nuclear, geothermal, hydropower or energy storage, as proposed in the Finance Committee's earlier proposal. But it would make other significant changes, including extending a tax credit for clean hydrogen production until 2028. The panel's earlier proposal would have eliminated the credit after this year. And despite vocal lobbying by the solar industry, the proposal would maintain an abrupt cut to the tax incentive supporting residential solar power. The committee's earlier proposal would have eliminated that credit six months after the enactment of the bill; now the updated draft proposes repealing it at the end of this year. It would also deny certain wind and solar leasing arrangements from accessing the climate law's clean electricity investment and production tax credits, but, in a notable change, removed earlier language specifically disallowing rooftop solar. And it would move up the timeline for certain rules barring foreign entities of concern from accessing those credits. The bill would move up the termination date for electric vehicle tax credits to Sept. 30, compared to six months after enactment in the earlier Finance text. The credit for EV chargers would extend through June 2026. The new text also provides a bonus incentive for advanced nuclear facilities built in communities with high levels of employment in the nuclear industry. And the bill makes metallurgical coal eligible for the advanced manufacturing production tax credit through 2029. Sam Ricketts, co-founder of S2 Strategies, a clean energy policy consulting group, said the new draft is going to 'screw' ratepayers, kill jobs and undermine U.S. economic competitiveness. 'All just to give fossil fuel executives more profits,' he said. 'Or to own the libs. Insanity.' Josh Siegel contributed to this report.


New York Times
38 minutes ago
- New York Times
Pat Williams, Last Montana Democrat to Serve in the House, Dies at 87
Pat Williams, a retired Montana congressman whose left-leaning politics were forged in the hard-rock mining town of Butte, and who, to date, was the last Democrat to serve in the House of Representatives from Montana, died on Wednesday in Missoula, Mont. He was 87. His death, in a hospital, was announced by his family. Mr. Williams championed wilderness protection, federal arts funding and family-friendly social policies. He retired from the House in 1997 after 18 years, the longest consecutive tenure by a Montana congressman. His most notable election came in 1992, when Montana had been chiseled down to a single congressional seat, from two, after the 1990 census. Mr. Williams, who represented the state's more liberal forested western half, faced Representative Ron Marlenee, a Republican who served the conservative ranchland of eastern Montana. The left-versus-right showdown was fought over the use of the state's vast natural resources and whether the New Deal-era safety net for the vulnerable still mattered. Mr. Williams won narrowly, with 51 percent of the vote. In Washington, he was a co-sponsor of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which gave workers 12 weeks of unpaid time off to care for a newborn or a sick family member. Multiple attempts to enact the law under the Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush had failed. Mr. Williams called those administrations 'frozen in the ice of their own indifference' to working people. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.