Seven major labor unions sent a letter to Joe Biden Tuesday calling on the president to “immediately halt all military aid to Israel.” This comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address a joint session of Congress and speak privately with Biden, Kamala Harris, and other politicians.

The unions that signed on to the letter, which represent six million people, include the Association of Flight Attendants, or AFA, American Postal Workers Union, or APWU, International Union of Painters, National Education Association, or NEA, Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, United Auto Workers, or UAW, and United Electrical Workers.

The labor movement is concerned that a cease-fire plan is not being put into action as Palestine faces one of the bloodiest weeks since October 7.

“The time to act decisively to end this war is now. Stopping US military aid to Israel is the quickest and most sure way to do so, it is what U.S. law demands, and it will show your commitment to securing a lasting peace in the region,” wrote the signatories.

“Recent reports only underscore the urgency of our demands. Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, continue to be killed, reportedly often with US-manufactured bombs,” reads the letter. “We have spoken directly to leaders of Palestinian trade unions who told us heart-wrenching stories of the conditions faced by working people in Gaza.”

The unions and allied groups plan to protest Netantyahu’s visit to Washington, D.C., and have a plan to symbolically issue a warrant of arrest for the prime minister.

“Our unions are hearing the cries of humanity as this vicious war continues,” said Mark Dimondstein of the APWU in a statement released alongside the letter. “Working people and our unions are horrified that our tax dollars are financing this ongoing tragedy. We need a cease-fire now, and the best way to secure that is to shut off U.S. military aid to Israel.”

The letter comes as many other unions, including the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the SEIU, and more quickly endorsed Kamala Harris for president this week, who plans to meet privately with Netanyahu during his visit.

Some labor unions have held off, however, perhaps looking to leverage their endorsements. Those include the NEA, UAW, and AFA, who are part of the coalition, as well as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, led by Sean O’Brien.

Labor unions have been calling for a cease-fire for months. Earlier this year, U.S. labor unions launched the National Labor Network for Ceasefire, which included several of the signatories of Tuesday’s letter, as well as National Nurses United and smaller local unions. The new organization demanded an immediate and permanent cease-fire, release of the hostages, and unimpeded full access for humanitarian aid.

UAW President Shawn Fain appeared on MSNBC Monday night to say his union was “not going to rush” their Harris endorsement without the approval of the union members. In December, the UAW was one of the first major unions to call for a cease-fire after the APWU.

Donald Trump’s team is mounting a new angle of attack on Vice President Kamala Harris, and while their plan is very much connected to the campaign’s already racist rhetoric, its bigoted legacy goes back even further to the presidential election of 1988.

In the days since President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris, Trump’s team has scrambled to adapt their attacks to the new presumptive nominee. Even before Biden’s decision was officially announced, Trump had started to try out a couple lame nicknames, such as “Laughing Kamala,” and most recently “‘Dumb As a Rock’ Kamala.” But, not surprisingly, none of these have really stuck.

As such, it’s time to get serious with their mode of attack, and so Republicans are planning to take aim at Harris’s record as a district attorney in San Francisco, which she has already started to weaponize against convicted felon Trump.

One Trump adviser said the Harris cases included “several Willie Hortons,” The Bulwark reported Tuesday, referring to the racist attack ad launched against Senator Michael Dukakis during the 1988 election. The ad featured a Massachusetts inmate named Willie Horton who had stabbed a man and raped a woman while on a weekend furlough—a policy and crime for which then-Republican candidate George H.W. Bush inexplicably blamed Dukakis.

As the late, great Walter Shapiro wrote for The New Republic in 2022, “It has become a Republican cliché: When the polls look ominous, the party often conjures the image of a menacing Black man.”

The infamous Horton ads encouraged race-based politics by playing into racial stereotypes linking Black men with crime, to fearmonger about a lawless Democratic presidency. Trump has been able to exploit and exacerbate this trend within the Republican Party with his own lies about immigrant crime rates. Now, it seems the Republicans are plotting to launch a similar attack against Harris.

For some Republicans, it seems the racist Willie Hortonesque smack talk has already begun. During an interview on CNN Tuesday, Senator Tom Cotton called Harris a “failed San Francisco liberal that’s wrong for America,” and said there were many cases in which she had been “weak on crime” and let “thousands” of criminals walk free.

Cotton also referred to one specific Harris case, which is likely to start appearing in Republican talking points. In 2004, Harris declined to seek the death penalty for the killer of police officer Isaac Espinoza, despite a pressure campaign from several California Democrats.

Renata Espinoza, the police officer’s widow, said Harris hadn’t called her before announcing the decision. Harris had “just taken justice from us. From Isaac,” Espinoza told CNN in 2019. “She was only thinking of herself.”

The prosecution worked to paint David Hill, who was convicted of fatally shooting Espinoza and sentenced to life without parole, as a hardened gangster, and even cited his own rap lyrics in their case against him.

CNN’s John Berman had reminded Cotton that when Trump ran for president in........

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