LABORING FOR VOTES — When Joe Biden touts himself as “the most pro-union president in American history,” it isn’t much of a stretch.

He is the first sitting president to walk a picket line, has appointed union-backed advocates to the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board and has pledged to create millions of union jobs through bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. In the last week alone, he’s banned noncompete agreements, increased the number of people eligible for overtime pay and cracked down on bad retirement savings advice.

Last year, AFSCME President Lee Saunders referred to him as “the most pro-union, pro-worker president of our lifetimes — hands down, no contest.”

So why isn’t Biden running better among union members?

Biden has seen his support among union households drop from 56 percent, according to 2020 exit polls, to 50 percent in an NBC news poll conducted earlier this year — despite capturing endorsements from top unions such as the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers Union and the North America’s Building Trades Unions.

In the key industrial swing state of Michigan, where Biden outpaced Donald Trump by 25 percentage points among union households in 2020, the president’s lead has been cut to just 12 points, according to recent polling.

Part of the problem is that Democrats appear to be losing their traditional edge with working-class voters – especially those of color. In 2020, Biden won non-white working-class voters by a 48-point margin. That lead has dropped to just 16 points in recent polls.

But union members’ lukewarm response to Biden’s pro-labor policies can also be boiled down to their perceptions about the economy and inflation — a majority of Americans still view the economy as poor, according to a recent NYT/Siena poll.

Sal Rosselli, president emeritus of the California-based National Union of Healthcare Workers, says the issue is particularly pressing for his members.

“Workers in general these days are struggling economically in terms of food, housing,” Rosselli said. “So people aren’t paying attention to national politics and enthusiastic about it because we’re not better off today. Things are getting worse.”

Biden’s record on immigration is also working against him. Trump’s focus on undocumented immigrants and calls for more restrictive policies have become an especially potent tool as GOP lawmakers sound the alarm around the border crisis. At a Michigan rally earlier this year, Trump sought to leverage fears by claiming, “The biggest threat to your unions is millions of people coming across the border, because you’re not gonna have your jobs anymore.”

While the Biden administration may be rolling out policies to improve workers’ day-to-day concerns — lowering prescription drug costs, rolling out local infrastructure projects, and creating more union jobs — Rosselli emphasizes that the president needs to go even further and directly engage with union members on the ground.

“One incredibly positive reaction that people had was when he joined the auto workers on the picket line and was very critical of these multi-billionaires that run these corporations. So that would be the positive thing, that I believe [Biden] needs to do a lot more of … as opposed to being in the White House or in the Rose Garden.”

Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster who has sounded the alarms about the political consequences of inflation back in 2021, notes that it’s still early in the campaign — and many union leaders haven’t actively sold Biden to their members yet.

Once they do, she says, “for labor union members, there’s more of an ability to break through because you have established trusted communication channels.”

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at [email protected]. Or contact tonight’s author at [email protected] or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ck_525.

TRUMP ON TRIAL

TENSE TIMES — Defense attorney Susan Necheles questioned Stormy Daniels today about whether or not she sought publicity in an effort to profit from her story, after a 2018 Wall Street Journal report detailed the hush money payment ahead of the 2016 election.

Necheles asked her if she wanted to go public with her story of having sex with Trump.

“No one would ever want to publicly say that,” Daniels responded. “I wanted to defend myself.”

Necheles also raised an $800,000 book contract Daniels signed and a strip club tour that was in some instances billed as “Make America Horny Again.” When asked if the tour drew a “resistance” crowd to strip clubs, Daniels admitted that the “climate in the clubs absolutely changed.”

She added, however, that she got on stage and “did the same shows I have done since I was 21 years old.”

END AROUND ATTACK — Justice Juan Merchan’s gag order forbids Trump from verbally attacking the prosecutors working for District Attorney Alvin Bragg. It also bars Trump from commenting on the judge’s family. But that hasn’t stopped some close allies from unleashing rhetoric that Trump himself cannot.

Today, that role was filled by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who attended a portion of the trial proceedings and accompanied Trump into the courtroom. Scott went to a Fox News TV camera to mount the very criticisms that Trump is legally barred from making. He suggested the case against Trump is unfair because one of the prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, used to work in the Justice Department. And he called Merchan’s adult daughter a “political operative,” noting that she has raised money for Democrats. He also swiped at the “lead prosecutor’s wife,” whom he described as a Democratic donor.

Those criticisms were then amplified by a Trump-aligned super PAC.

STILL GAGGED — A new bid by Trump to be partially released from the gag order in the hush money case fell flat today, as Justice Juan Merchan said there were ample reasons to keep the order in place even though one of the case’s most prominent witnesses — porn star Stormy Daniels — finished testifying this morning.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche argued that Daniels’ in-court account of her alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006 was so different from her prior accounts that he should be able to respond publicly to her, especially to what Blanche said were suggestions from Daniels that the sex may not have been consensual or that she did not feel free to leave.

The gag order forbids Trump from publicly commenting about various people involved in the case, including witnesses. Trump has been twice held in contempt for violating the gag 10 times, including some comments criticizing Daniels. The judge has warned him that further violations may result in jail time.

What'd I Miss?

— McConnell and GOP give Netanyahu backup as aid tension spikes: As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will “stand alone” if it has to, leading congressional Republicans are pressuring President Joe Biden to rule out withholding weapons to the allied country — regardless of any invasion into the Gaza city of Rafah. “We should not be telling them how to protect themselves,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in an interview. “We should not be conditioning the arrival of military equipment that they need because of some domestic view that Netanyahu is unpopular. Completely irrelevant to the war.”

— With House-passed short-term patch in hand, Senate slogs toward FAA bill agreement: A Senate agreement on a path forward for Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization remains on standby, as Washington stares down a Friday deadline. Another procedural vote is slated for 1 p.m. as lawmakers continue work on the broader reauthorization. However, the House passed a one-week extension before leaving town Wednesday, offering the Senate a possible escape hatch. Even that won’t be easy, though. Virginia’s Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner said they would not consent to speedy passage of the one-week extension unless they’re guaranteed a vote on their amendment to strip a provision adding more flight slots to Reagan National Airport.

— Judge denies Hunter Biden’s bid to dismiss gun charges: A federal judge in Delaware denied Hunter Biden’s bid to throw out his felony gun charges today, rejecting arguments from the president’s son that the federal prohibition on owning guns while using illegal drugs is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. Separately, a federal appeals court panel ruled against Biden earlier today in another bid to have the charges against him tossed. The two decisions appear to clear the way for his case to head to trial on June 3, though his defense team can still pursue further appeals.

Nightly Road to 2024

BALLOT BRAWL — The question of whether Democratic President Joe Biden will appear on Ohio’s fall ballot has become entangled in a partisan legislative fight to keep foreign money out of state ballot campaigns, writes the Associated Press.

On Wednesday, against the backdrop of a festering Republican leadership fight that’s roiled lawmaking since last year, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s proposal to ban foreign money from initiative campaigns became the poison pill that prevented a final solution for adjusting an Aug. 7 ballot deadline that precedes the Democratic National Convention.

Today marked the last day legislators could pass the fix with a simple majority, and no sessions were held. All four Republican and Democratic leaders at the Statehouse still say they’re confident the president will appear on Ohio’s ballot. It’s the how and when that remains a mystery.

LET’S MAKE A DEAL — As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, writes the Washington Post, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation. Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.

Trump’s remarkably blunt and transactional pitch reveals how the former president is targeting the oil industry to finance his reelection bid. At the same time, he has turned to the industry to help shape his environmental agenda for a second term, including the rollbacks of some of Biden’s signature achievements on clean energy and electric vehicles.

AROUND THE WORLD

TALKS PAUSED — Talks for a hostage deal and cease-fire between Israel and Hamas have paused — in part because of the ongoing fighting in Rafah, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.

Hamas is still willing to negotiate a deal but has largely stepped back from the table because of Israel’s operation in the city, the people said. Both were granted anonymity to speak freely about the talks.

The people stressed that this does not mean talks have broken down completely. Hamas has told Doha that it is willing to keep negotiating. The U.S. has people in the region to participate in future talks, but all those who were involved in the negotiations in recent days have left, they said.

CIA Director Bill Burns was heading back to Washington today after days of trying to negotiate with officials from Egypt, Israel and Qatar to seal a deal that would institute a temporary cease-fire and allow for the release of dozens of hostages from Gaza, along with potentially hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israel.

Burns was always scheduled to come back to Washington at the end of this week, one of the people familiar with the negotiations said. But his departure without a deal in hand raises questions about how the ongoing fighting in Rafah will impact the talks in the coming days.

“His departure does not connote the end of the current round of negotiations,” National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby told reporters today. “We’re going to stay engaged in the hopes that we might be able to land something.”

Nightly Number

RADAR SWEEP

THE FULL SCHRADER — How does a guy who’s been everywhere from the white hot center of Hollywood to close to forgotten to everywhere in between think about the movie business? Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver in 1975, is in the midst of something like a late career renaissance. He has a new film, “Oh, Canada,” coming out this year. But looking back on his career, it hasn’t been without its bumps, which continue to this day due to his propensity for loud political incorrectness. He states his off the wall opinions enough that production companies have asked him to stop posting on Facebook in the weeks before his films premier. And in the midst of this profile, he tells journalist Stephen Rodrick about recent conversations with Kevin Spacey after the actor was legally cleared of sexually assaulting four men last July but remains persona non grata in Hollywood. Read the Variety profile of Schrader here.

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