Evelyn Reynolds

Outside, traders were braving the bitter cold to sell Trump hats, T-shirts and other merchandise. Inside, hundreds of Trump supporters were proudly sporting “Make America great again” (Maga) regalia. They were surrounded by big screens, loudspeakers, TV cameras, patriotic flags and “Team Trump” logos.It had all the trappings of a Donald Trump campaign rally but one thing was missing: Donald Trump.The former US president was content to let South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, speak on his behalf at the convention centre in Sioux City, Iowa, on Wednesday night. “We would never have the situation going on like we see in the Middle East right now,” Noem said. “If he had been in the White House, we would never see what was going on with Russia and Ukraine.”It was not the first time that Trump has delegated his campaign to a proxy ahead of the Iowa caucuses on 15 January, the first of the state-by-state contests in which Republicans choose a presidential nominee to take on Democrat Joe Biden in November’s election.While rivals Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have crisscrossed Iowa in search of votes, the frontrunner has been content to stay at home and let allies do much of the legwork for him. For these campaign surrogates, it is a very public opportunity to stake their claim to a job in a future Trump cabinet – or even as his vice-president.This week’s lineup included Ben Carson, a former housing secretary seeking to rally Iowa’s Christian evangelical voters; Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right firebrand and prominent ally of Trump in Congress; and Eric Trump, a son of the former president who followed him into business.On Monday two “Team Trump Iowa Faith Events” will feature ex-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now governor of Arkansas, and her father, Mike Huckabee, a former governor of the same state.Other prominent proxies include Florida congressmen Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz; Kari Lake, a former candidate for Arizona governor who has roots in Iowa; Iowa’s attorney general, Brenna Bird, whose endorsement of Trump put her at odds with the state’s governor, Kim Reynolds, a backer of DeSantis; and actor Roseanne Barr, who five years ago was fired from her sitcom, Roseanne, after posting a racist tweet.For the Trump campaign, these events are useful to scoop up personal information that allows for follow-up calls and texts to remind supporters to show up at the caucuses. For the surrogates, they represent a chance to enhance political careers or boost their profile in the “Maga universe”, which might lead to work as a host or pundit in rightwing media.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “It’s a live audition, using the campaign trail as a substitute for the boardroom set that he had on The Apprentice. All of these people are jockeying and trying to curry favour with Trump so that they are considered to be on the shortlist for some of the high-visibility positions that might become available if he were to win.”Since 2016, Trump campaigns have also been a family affair. His eldest son, Don Jr, attended the first Republican primary debate in Milwaukee along his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, but they were denied access to the official “spin room” so talked to reporters on the sidelines. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, a former senior adviser at the White House, is sitting this one out.Eric Trump, who turns 40 on Saturday , has long been mocked by comedians and satirists as the poor relation but seems to be working doubly hard to impress his dad. He told an audience in Ankeny, Iowa, on Thursday: “The greatest fighter in the world is my father. In fact, it’s kind of sometimes what he’s actually criticised for.”Bardella, a former senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee, added: “It’s ‘I’m trying to win your approval’, whether it’s politically in terms of someone like Kristi Noem particularly or the lifelong pursuit of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr to live up to the last name, to the outsized shadow that their father cast over their lives.”Such ostentatious displays of fealty could prove valuable to Trump in a year in which he faces the distraction of four criminal cases that threaten to strand him in a courtroom instead of the campaign trail. He is expected to appear at a federal appeals court hearing next week regarding the scope of his presidential immunity while in office.He must also choose a running mate. It is safe to assume that it will not be Mike Pence, his former vice-president, who alienated Trump by certifying the 2020 election results and ran an abortive campaign against him last year. Potential contenders include Haley, Lake and Noem as well as Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, entrepreneur and 2024 candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNoem’s event on Wednesday was far bigger than two DeSantis events in western Iowa on Wednesday, one of which was right down the road. Asked by CBS News what she would do if offered the vice-presidential slot, the South Dakota governor said: “I think anybody in this country, if they were offered it, needs to consider it.”Rick Wilson, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, commented: “Noem is auditioning for vice-president, absolutely, which is why I think you’ll also see Elise Stefanik out there in the next couple of weeks also, because she is definitely trying to be vice-president. She’s not being shy about it at all; she’s telling people: ‘I want this gig.’”Wilson added: “Trump responds to people who are not just loyal. It’s subservience and a willingness to do whatever Trump wants you to do and so they’re checking a box. This is probably the minimum they can do to stay in his good graces. We’ll see more ‘respectable’ Republicans in the coming months also out there checking the box.”The former president’s absence from the campaign trail also reflects his dominance. Last month a Fox News poll put him at 52% among likely Republican caucus goers in Iowa, far ahead of DeSantis, at 18%, and Haley, at 16%. DeSantis has visited all 99 counties in the state but has made little headway.Trump is scheduled to host eight events in person before the caucuses, a small number compared with other candidates. He will skip a Republican primary debate hosted by CNN in Des Moines on Wednesday in favour of a town hall hosted by Fox News in the same city at the same time. He will hold his final rally in Cherokee on the eve of the caucuses and remain in the state on caucus night.His opponents have struggled to attract surrogates with star power. Haley’s backers include Will Hurd, a former congressman who dropped out of the race, and Chris Sununu, an ex-governor of New Hampshire, which holds the second nominating contest later this month. DeSantis has the support of Reynolds and Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Republican operative in Iowa and the chief executive of the Family Leader, a social conservative organisation.None is able to fire up the Republican base like Trump allies such as Greene, who was greeted by cheers in Keokuk, Iowa, on Thursday and proudly declared: “I’m a Maga extremist.”Sam Nunberg, a DeSantis supporter who was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, acknowledged her influence: “Marjorie Taylor Greene, whatever the majority of Americans think of her, is very strong within the Republican primary so she’s a good surrogate to have, specifically for the people that [Trump] needs.“The strongest, most enthusiastic voters … would like the message of a Marjorie Taylor Greene and are on the same page as him, particularly about the 2020 election and issues with Biden. But in general a surrogate operation can only do so much. I’m not saying that he’s going to lose the caucus; I hope he does.” More

It’s 20 January 2025, the day of the presidential inauguration. After taking the oath of office the new president, a 44-year-old woman, born in the Bronx to Dominican parents, takes her seat in the office and gets to work.In one of the first acts of Claudia de la Cruz’s presidency, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk watch on as the government seizes control of Amazon and Tesla, along with all of the top 100 corporations in the US.And that’s just the start. De la Cruz, America’s first socialist president, goes on to abolish the Senate and the supreme court – there isn’t a specific plan as to how – as well as disbanding the FBI and the CIA and reining in the military.Barring a major miracle, none of this will happen. The Party for Socialism and Liberation, which sees a socialist US as part of a step towards “the creation of a communist world”, won about 85,000 votes in the 2020 presidential election, slightly more than Kanye West. But De la Cruz, the party’s presidential candidate, is optimistic about this moment in American politics – even if she is realistic about what she and her running mate, Karina Garcia, can achieve at the ballot box next year.“The only way that historically we’ve been able to transform anything in society is through struggle, through movement,” De la Cruz says.“Nothing that we have earned as working-class people in society has been something that has been granted to us by the benevolence of the ruling class: not voting rights, not access to the most basic human rights.”De la Cruz is speaking to the Guardian in a coffee shop in midtown Manhattan. It’s cold outside, and she and Garcia, 38, are each wearing a keffiyeh, the scarf which has long been a symbol of support for Palestine, and has taken on even greater meaning amid the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza following the 7 October Hamas attacks.Both women have been heavily involved in protests against Israel’s actions, and against the continuation of US support for Israel, over the past two months. De la Cruz says growing anger among the left with the Democratic party over a range of issues has seen interest in the PSL grow.“We have an understanding that we are on the side of justice, that we are on the side of people who are oppressed, who are colonized, who are exploited,” De la Cruz says.“But I think it also has to do with the fact that people are tired of the same thing. Of broken promises. [There is a] sentiment of dissolution, of outrage and hopelessness.”De la Cruz adds: “So we’ve definitely seen an upsurge that has to do with the inability of the Democratic party to keep up with their promises.”In recent years the closest the US has come to a countrywide leftwing wave came in in 2016, when Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator and a self-described democratic socialist, ran for president. Sanders was credited with galvanizing progressives and arguably laid the pathway for the election of “the Squad” – the name given to a group of left-leaning Congress members including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He also did well in the 2020 primary but was then overtaken by Joe Biden who became the Democratic nominee on a more moderate ticket and then beat Trump for the White House – with Sanders’ public support.The presence of newly prominent progressives in the House of Representatives represents hope for some, but De la Cruz says they won’t effect change.“There’s always been progressive politicians,” she said.“That’s not enough because we should not shortchange ourselves, as working=class people thinking that that’s like, the be all and end all, because it’s not.”Ocasio-Cortez et al have shown no sign that they will sign on to De la Cruz’s signature plan to to seize 100 corporations – which would amount to the government gaining trillions of dollars in revenue and “serve as the foundation for a total reorganization of the economy”, the PSL says. The US remains the only western country that does not provide free healthcare for its citizens, and that would be an immediate focus. The money would also be used to provide housing, improve education and offer free childcare.“Even with just the top 100, imagine what we could do,” Garcia says.“[We should] put them under public management, so that we can have democratically elected people to manage those things, who are accountable to their constituencies. And we can decide: ‘Do we want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars for Raytheon [a defense manufacturer] to be stinking rich? Or do you want to improve the infrastructure in this crumbling country?’”They would also work to end the problem of mass incarceration – the US imprisons people, particularly people of color, at rates far higher than the rest of the western world. (A slight inconsistency emerges here, as the PSL’s electoral program also insists that “war criminals and Wall Street con men would be locked up”.)De la Cruz and Garcia are engaging company. They speak passionately and animatedly, but both seem more comfortable talking about the ills of capitalism than presenting tangible plans for change.A question about how seizing 100 corporations would actually work leads to a lengthy dissection of American society, taking in the fact that some Walmart workers have to rely on the government’s ​​supplemental nutrition assistance program (Snap), formerly known as food stamps, to survive; the ills of the electoral college system; and the issue of why the constitution has not been significantly updated since 1789.A conversation about Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications network swiftly turns to the deregulation of industry, then to the Federal Reserve bank, finishing with a dissection of alleged corruption at the supreme court.One thing that is clear is the uphill battle De la Cruz and Garcia face. The PSL has increased its share of the vote in each of the last four presidential elections, rising from fewer than 7,000 votes in 2008 to 85,685 votes in 2020. (That was enough for sixth place in the popular vote, with 0.05% of votes cast.) The number remains minuscule, however, and ballot access is just as significant a problem.Candidates typically have to present a list of thousands of signatures of support to a state to get their name printed on a ballot. That takes time and money – a group connected to Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is running an independent campaign for president, recently committed to spending $15m to get his name on the ballot in 10 states – and there is little sign that the PSL has much funding. Financial summary reports show that De la Cruz’s campaign had $11,900 cash on hand at the end of September.Despite the obstacles, De la Cruz predicted that her name would be on the ballot in “30-40” states in November, way above the 15 states Gloria La Riva, the 2020 PSL candidate, managed.But share of the vote is almost irrelevant in the movement the PSL envisages. De la Cruz and Garcia are realistic that the kind of changes they want to see – abolishing the Senate, seizing billions of dollars from the richest Americans, hobbling the likes of Bezos and Musk – aren’t possible through presidential decrees alone.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Will it happen only through electoral politics? It has never happened through electoral politics,” De la Cruz says.“It’s always necessitated mass movements. It’s always necessitated political organizations outside of the two-party system. And that goes for any reform that we have won, whether it is abortion rights, whether it is the right for the LGBTQI community to be able to have access to the most basic rights as people to live in a union; whether it is desegregation, whether it is the end of slavery, it necessitated mass movement to force the hand of reform.“Because these people will never give us anything willingly. It will necessitate millions and millions and millions of people in motion to transform society, electoral politics won’t do it alone.”The PSL believes that “fully developed socialism” is necessary in the US before the aim of a communist society can be achieved. De la Cruz says that “communism, ultimately, is the creation of a communist world” – where nations no longer compete against each other for money and resources.Something that has given the PSL hope is that the recent resurgence in industrial organizing in the US, which has seen labor unions win impressive contract settlements across the health industry, school districts and car manufacturing, has demonstrated an energy and enthusiasm for systemic change.“It takes different levels of participation and struggle. It takes different instruments, being creative. And by that I mean, organizations, unions, different forms of organized struggle,” De la Cruz says.But for all the talk of attracting the disaffected working class, evidence suggests that people unhappy with the status quo are going elsewhere. Countries in Europe and South America have elected rightwing populists, and in the US the specter of a Donald Trump second term looms.Polls show that white Americans who did not graduate from college – the imperfect shorthand pollsters use to identify blue-collar voters – far prefer Trump to Biden. Researchers have attributed this long-running trend of working-class people moving towards the Republican party to attitudes about race as well as economics, but it seems clear where the politics of the dissatisfied worker lie. (In September a New York Times/Siena poll found that Biden’s lead among non-white voters who hadn’t graduated from college had also declined.)The current success of the far right, including Trump, is “a result of the failure of bourgeois democracy, a failure of capitalism”, De la Cruz says.“It’s the failure of neoliberalism and capitalist systems to provide for the majority of people. And not only that, [they] have constructed a narrative of ‘the enemy’, ‘the other’ – that element of society that is dehumanized constantly,” De la Cruz said.It is widely accepted that Trump and his acolytes have tapped into the fear of “the other” – people including immigrants, women and the LGBTQ+ community. Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly blamed immigration for crime and for America’s economic woes, while stoking a so-called culture war that has seen the introduction of laws limiting the rights of gay and transgender people in states around the country.That fear, De la Cruz said, “has been instilled in the way that we’re educated in schools, in the history we learn, in the churches we go to, the temples we go to. It is a social conditioning of attacking the other.“And then you have someone like Trump, that ultimately taps into that, and says: ‘OK, all of the things that you’ve learned, I’m gonna regurgitate that, I’m gonna blame them, and I’m gonna fix this.’“Obviously, he’s a threat. And we will continue to say he’s a threat, and we’ve known he’s a threat. But he is the result of a system that created him, which is the same system that people think he’s going to fix.”De la Cruz and Garcia’s vision of the future would require the kind of mass uprising rarely seen in the modern-day west. But in the shorter term one challenge De la Cruz and Garcia, whose father emigrated to the US from Mexico, face is their race and gender.All 46 US presidents except one have been white men. In 2020 Kamala Harris became the first female, the first Black American, and the first south Asian American to be elected vice-president, but the Democratic and Republican parties are currently on track to nominate white men for president yet again next year“Our biggest obstacle is precisely what makes us who we are, which is the fact that we are working-class people, that we are women of color. And it is a shame to say that in a society that claims to be a democracy, that claims to have freedom, that claims to have equity, that is an obstacle,” De la Cruz says.Garcia believes that their experiences, not just as women of color, but as people from working-class backgrounds, “is actually something people can actually relate to”.She adds: “Are there going to be haters and people who disrespect us because we’re women? We’ve dealt with that all our lives. The anti-immigrant, anti-black, all that stuff, we’ve dealt with it our whole lives. We’re not afraid of that, we’re not intimidated by that.“If anything, those experiences just connect us more to the millions of people across the globe who have experiences where capitalism is killing them and killing their families. And we have a responsibility to fight against it, to do everything that we can in our lifetime to change that.” More

A group of Michigan Republicans voted on Saturday to remove Kristina Karamo as state party chair after months of infighting and slow fundraising raised concerns her leadership would hurt the party’s chances in the key swing state in 2024.Karamo, a former community college instructor and election-denying activist who was elevated to her post in February, has indicated she would not respect Saturday’s vote, setting the stage for a potentially messy court battle over party leadership.At a special meeting called by critics of Karamo, nearly all of the state committee members present voted to remove her from her post, according to Bree Moeggenberg, a state committee member who helped organize the meeting in Commerce Charter Township.“We have voted to remove Kristina Karamo as the Chair of the Michigan Republican Party. It is now time to collaborate and grow forward,” Moeggenberg said in a statement.After running unsuccessfully for Michigan secretary of state in 2022, Karamo ran for the party’s top position with a promise to break free from the big donors she vilified as part of the “establishment” while expanding the base of small donors.She has failed to deliver on that promise while angering many of her supporters with what they have called a lack of transparency from her administration. Contributions from the party’s largest donors have dried up, leading to a cash crunch.A report released last month by Warren Carpenter, a former congressional district chair and one-time Karamo supporter, said the state party was mired in debt, on the “brink of bankruptcy” and “essentially non-functional” under her leadership.Calls for Karamo to step down came three years after she made claims of election fraud on her Christian podcast that would propel her to a leading voice in Donald Trump’s campaign discrediting the 2020 election.Karamo continued to espouse her outlandish views last year after winning the party seat, echoing the QAnon conspiracy theory that a shadowy cabal of elites are harvesting children’s organs.“There’s a ton of money involved in those freshly harvested organs,” Karamo said on a 2020 podcast hosted by RedPill78, a conspiracy theory website. She has also called Beyoncé and Jay-Z “satanists”, said yoga is a satanic ritual and described Cardi B as a “tool of Lucifer”.Karamo did not respond to requests for comment. In an email statement on Friday, the party said the Saturday meeting “by a faction of the State Committee” was unauthorized and in violation of party bylaws. Karamo would attend a separately called special meeting on 13 January, according to the statement.Jason Roe, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican party, said an effective new leader could help the party “right the ship” before the November 2024 elections, but that a drawn-out fight in court could hinder that progress.To date, the chaos engulfing the party has prevented it from fulfilling its traditional role of organizing and fundraising for Republican candidates, former party officials have said.“I think the chaos is far from over,” Roe said. “If this turns out to be a binding vote, I don’t think she [Karamo] or her supporters will go quietly and there will probably continue to be skirmishes throughout the election cycle.”As the special meeting got underway on Saturday, Karamo’s administration announced it would consider a plan under which candidates for elected office would no longer be chosen by voters in a primary but by precinct delegates in a caucus.The plan, due to be discussed at the 13 January meeting called by Karamo, was met with criticism by a number of prominent Republicans in Michigan, some of whom warned the move would empower party insiders more likely to elevate extremist candidates while stripping power from voters.“Instead of trusting voters, the Michigan Republican Party is now attempting to consolidate power into the hands of 2,000 people,” Tudor Dixon, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022, said in a statement on social media, referring to the party’s roughly 2,000 precinct delegates across the state.“The MIGOP [Michigan GOP] leadership has become what it claims it despises.”Alice Herman contributed reporting More

The US defense secretary Lloyd Austin has been hospitalized since Monday due to complications after a minor elective medical procedure, his press secretary said, in the first official acknowledgement that Austin had been admitted five days earlier to Walter Reed national military medical center.Air Force Maj Gen Pat Ryder said Friday that Austin was “recovering well”, but it was not clear when the secretary would be released from the hospital.The Pentagon’s failure to disclose Austin’s hospitalization is counter to normal practice with the president and other senior US officials and cabinet members. The Pentagon Press Association, which represents media members who cover the defense department, sent a letter of protest to Ryder and Chris Meagher, the assistant defense secretary for public affairs.“The fact that he has been at Walter Reed … for four days and the Pentagon is only now alerting the public late on a Friday evening is an outrage,” the PPA said in its letter. “At a time when there are growing threats to US military service members in the Middle East and the US is playing key national security roles in the wars in Israel and Ukraine, it is particularly critical for the American public to be informed about the health status and decision-making ability of its top defense leader.”The White House has refused to say when or how it had been notified of Austin’s hospitalization, and it referred questions to the Pentagon.When the attorney general Merrick Garland went in for a routine medical procedure in 2022, his office informed the public a week in advance and outlined how long he was expected to be out and when he would return to work.Ryder, the Pentagon spokesperson, cited an “evolving situation”. He also said that the Pentagon did not make Austin’s absence public due to privacy and medical issues. He declined to provide any other details about Austin’s medical procedure or health.Austin, 70, spent 41 years in the military, retiring as a four-star army general in 2016.In a statement, Ryder said that at all times, the deputy defense secretary Kathleen Hicks “was prepared to act for and exercise the powers of the secretary, if required”.Austin’s hospitalization comes as Iranian-backed militias have repeatedly launched drones, missiles and rockets at bases where US troops are stationed in Iraq and Syria, leading the Biden administration to strike back on a number of occasions. Those strikes have often involved sensitive, top-level discussions and decisions by Austin and other key military leaders.The US is also the chief organizer behind a new international maritime coalition using ships and other assets to patrol the southern Red Sea to deter persistent attacks on commercial vessels by Houthi militants in Yemen.In addition, the Biden administration, particularly Austin, has been at the forefront of the effort to supply weapons and training to Ukraine, and he’s also been communicating frequently with the Israelis on their war against Hamas. More

The wife of Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire who accused Claudine Gay of being a plagiarist and led calls for her resignation as Harvard president, is now facing allegations of plagiarism herself.Neri Oxman, a prominent former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has apologized after Business Insider identified multiple instances in which she lifted passages from other scholars’ work without proper attribution in her 2010 dissertation. She also pledged to review the primary sources and request the necessary corrections.Business Insider on Thursday initially labeled four passages of Oxman’s dissertation as plagiarized – without any attribution – from Wikipedia entries. But by Friday, the outlet had found at least 15 such passages, a turn of events that was similar to that which led to Gay’s ouster from the Harvard presidency.Business Insider also identified research papers written by Oxman that contained plagiarism, including a 2007 paper – titled Get Real: Towards Performance Driven Computational Geometry – and a 2011 paper named Variable Property Rapid Prototyping.The 2011 paper contained more than 100 words lifted from a book without any attribution or citation, included two sentences from another book verbatim without any attribution, and pulled material from a 2004 paper without citing it, according to Business Insider.In response to Gay’s resignation, Ackman published a 4,000-word post on X – formerly Twitter – in which he criticized diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as well as complained about “racism against white people”. He also complained that Gay, a Black woman, was allowed to remain on Harvard’s faculty. Gay had faced plagiarism allegations over her 1997 dissertation, but she requested corrections and was cleared of academic misconduct by a three-member independent review board.Ackman struck a different tone on X when addressing the plagiarism allegations against his wife. He wrote on X: “It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family. This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews.”He went on to promise to lead plagiarism reviews against all current MIT faculty, board and committee members, and its president, Sally Kornbluth.Ackman additionally criticized Business Insider and the reporters at the publication who authored the story investigating Oxman, saying he would spearhead plagiarism reviews against the outlet’s staff.Previously, Ackman was a donor to the Democratic party. But the New York Times reported that the billionaire’s campaign against Harvard came because he resented the fact that years’ worth of donations to the university did not yield him more influence there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConservatives have seized upon and supported Ackman’s complaints about Harvard.Meanwhile, Oxman has also been criticized for accepting a $125,000 gift from the late Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious sex trafficker and disgraced financier. Oxman responded to the donation by sending an art gift to Epstein.Oxman was a tenured faculty member at MIT before leaving the school and moving to New York City in 2020. Some consider her a celebrity in the field of architecture and design, and her new company – named Oxman – was in the middle of a soft launch when she issued her apology in response to Business Insider’s reporting. More

Donald Trump told an audience at a campaign event on Friday in Iowa to “get over” a deadly shooting at a high school in the state a day earlier.After offering sympathy and emotional support for the victims of the shooting in Perry, Iowa, and their families, Trump said at the event in Sioux Center: “It’s just horrible – so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.”Trump’s comments on the shooting that occurred about 36 hours earlier were the first he had made addressing the violence.Friday’s remarks were not the first time in the last year that Trump has apparently tried to deflect from having a substantial conversation about gun violence in the US. During a speech in April 2023 to the National Rifle Association, Trump argued that the long history of deadly school shootings in the US is “not a gun problem”. He instead blamed the issue on Democrats, mental health issues, marijuana and the transgender community.Trump’s recent comment on the Perry shooting was criticized by the Democratic Super Pac American Bridge.“We knew Trump lacked empathy for others, but no one thought he could go this low and tell Iowans to simply ‘get over it’ as they grieve from a situation communities across the country know all too well,” American Bridge presidential campaigns communication director Brandon Weathersby said in a statement on Trump’s comments. “This is beyond the pale, even for Trump.”Trump has made several campaign stops in Iowa ahead of the Republican presidential primary caucuses on 15 January. He is seeking a second presidency despite facing 91 criminal charges for trying to subvert his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, illegally retaining government secrets after he left the Oval Office and illicit hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who has reported having a sexual encounter with Trump during an earlier time in his marriage to Melania Trump.The former president has also grappled with civil litigation over his business practices and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.Nonetheless, Trump dominates polling for the Republican presidential nomination this year.The shooting in Perry killed one sixth grader and wounded seven others. Police identified the shooter as a 17-year-old student who attended high school at the targeted campus. The teen attacker died from a self-inflicted bullet wound, police said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPolice said they found an improvised explosive device during a search of the school while responding to the shooting.Four of the wounded were students, two were faculty and one was the principal, who was reported to be in critical condition but – like the remaining victims – did not appear to be facing life-threatening injuries.The shooting occurred shortly before classes started on the first day of school after the students’ holiday break. More

Shortly after taking office in January, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched a powerful salvo in the so-called war on woke being waged by Republicans.Sanders, 41, signed an executive order targeting critical race theory, an academic field that probes how racism affects US society and laws. The move aligned with countrywide Republican opposition to the discipline.“Our job is to protect the students, and we’re going to take steps every single day to make sure we do exactly that,” Sanders said in a statement. “And that’s the reason I signed the executive order. I’m proud of the fact that we’re taking those steps and we’re going to continue to do it every single day that I’m in office.”Sanders also barred the use in state of documents of “Latinx”, which an expert described as a “gender-neutral term to describe US residents of Latin American descent”.Days after this slew of executive orders, Sanders also delivered the Republican address responding to Joe Biden’s State of the Union, during which she evoked immigrants, liberals and others held up as boogeymen by her former boss Donald Trump during his presidency.“From out-of-control inflation and violent crime to the dangerous border crisis and threat from China, Biden and the Democrats have failed you,” Sanders proclaimed, later warning: “The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy.”Sanders’s fight, however, didn’t end during her first weeks in office. Far from it, in an October executive order meant “to eliminate woke, anti-women words from state government and respect women”, Sanders prohibited phrases such as “pregnant people” and “chestfeeding” from being used in “official state government business”.That Sanders was even in a position to mount such a comprehensive assault on certain progressive initiative might have come as a shock to some political observers. Sanders had worked as Trump’s press secretary, and other acolytes of the former president fared poorly after he left the White House.But to those familiar with Arkansas politics, and to Sanders herself, her ascent did not come as a surprise. Nor did she simply luck out on account of her father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Rather, they say that Sanders is an immensely skilled communicator and politician with a deep understanding of speaking to voters’ wants and needs.“Mike Huckabee had been governor for much of the 1990s and early 2000s, and had been very successful,” said Andrew Dowdle, a professor of political science at the University of Arkansas. “She had spent some time working with his campaign and so, to some degree, that kind of ends up giving her roots here that other candidates might not have had.”While other states didn’t immediately jump to elect Trump associates, Sanders’s bona fides with the former president seemed to play well with the Arkansas electorate. “Statewide, Donald Trump was very popular as well, so that ended up giving her a little bit of a political boost,” Dowdle said.And though Arkansas didn’t have much in the way of far-right leanings, Sanders has been able to appeal to a wide range of Republicans. Sanders “bridges those two camps – but at the same time, she does end up really being viewed by the more populist wing as one of theirs”.Hal Bass, a professor emeritus of political science who taught Sanders’ at her alma mater, Ouachita Baptist University, said: “She was a natural – I think kind of born and bred in the sense.”Bass added that Sanders “very much grew up in the political area”. He also said she showed great promise as a student and campus leader. A double-major in political science and communications, Sanders took several classes with Bass and worked in his office.He also sponsored the student government organization in which she was active.“Ouachita is a small college, small campus, so you would see her out and about over the course of her time here,” Bass said. “She was intelligent, she was articulate, she was fun – she was very much a popular student.”When Sanders worked in his office, peers would just drop by to visit and speak with her. Her organizational skills were clear in how she ran student meetings.When it came time for class, she was a key player in class discussions and wrote excellent exams. “I wasn’t at all surprised to see her pursue a career in politics out of college,” Bass said.As for Sanders’s success despite other Trump-linked candidates’ struggles, Bass said: “I certainly think she has an identity in Arkansas that is more than simply an extension of Donald Trump.” He pointed to her father’s popularity as governor as fomenting that identity.“It gave her name identification, [and] it also gave her goodwill,” Bass said. “I think it is certainly more difficult now to … distinguish her from the Trump era than it was at the beginning of her political rise.“But in terms of developing a political identity, a political persona, I think those foundations were laid before” the 2016 presidential election won by Trump.Margaret Scranton, a political science professor at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, also pointed to how Sanders’s father taught her lots about governance.“She grew up in a governor’s mansion, and so she saw firsthand how a lot of things work – whether it’s having state troopers and security, or managing the press,” Scranton said. “Having a family who understands state and national politics gives you a set of sounding boards that the average person who did not grow up in a governor’s mansion wouldn’t have.”Scranton, whose academic interest in executive leadership focuses on communications, said: “She really is a phenomenal communicator.” Scranton pointed to Sanders’s response to Biden’s State of the Union.“If I just read the transcript, I would see a very Trumpian set of themes that look like ‘American carnage’ – whether it’s the border or immigration or fentanyl, unemployment, a landscape of disaster after disaster,” Scranton said.“Watching her deliver, her tone is more gentle. Her rhetoric is not as stark. She’s saying similar things but in a much more approachable kind of language.”The professor said: “She draws you in, her body language, her face. Occasionally she’ll kind of smile, and there will be a twinkle in her eyes.”Asked if Sanders might have higher political ambitions, Scranton said “absolutely”.Yet whether Sanders can one day be a credible candidate for the Oval Office once occupied by her ex-boss will depend on her performance in office.She endured several first-year foibles, among them outcry over her efforts to restrict public records access and a lectern that cost $19,000. It remains to be seen whether those can hurt her governorship overall.Still, Sanders’s youth and success make her a viable option for those conservatives who say they are ready for new Republican party standard bearers.“One of her themes is, ‘It’s time for a new generation of leaders in the Republican party,’” Scranton said. “There’s a huge opportunity there.” More

Dissent inside the Biden administration over the president’s Gaza policy is growing, with a public resignation this week of a Department of Education official, and a letter signed by more than a dozen Biden campaign staffers calling for a ceasefire and the conditioning of aid to Israel.“It’s pretty extraordinary levels of dissent,” said Josh Paul, a career official working on arms sales at the state department who resigned in protest in October, of the mounting signs of discontent. “I am hearing in recent weeks from people who are thinking more seriously about resigning.”Tariq Habash, the Department of Education official, also says that he has heard from many more officials than he had anticipated who are contemplating their own exits. “It speaks to the continued shift and concerns about our current policies,” he said. “I hope it resonates with the president and the people who are making policy decisions on this issue that is affecting millions of lives.”Habash, who is Palestinian American, is the first political appointee from the Biden administration to bring his resignation to the media and publish an open letter. “I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives,” he wrote in announcing his resignation from his position as adviser to its policy planning office. In the letter, he objected to the president not pressuring Israel “to halt the abusive and ongoing collective punishment tactics” that have led to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He also took issue with administration leaders’ repetition of “unverified claims that systemically dehumanize Palestinians”.A day before Habash quit, 17 current campaign staffers anonymously called for a ceasefire and conditioning military aid to Israel. Their letter urged Biden to take “concrete steps to end the conditions of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that are the root causes of this conflict”. An organizer of the letter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “We know we’re not alone in this, and there is a very big coalition asking for the same thing.”These are just the latest internal criticisms of Biden. Last month, a group of administration officials hid their faces with masks and scarves and staged a vigil in front of the White House in support of a ceasefire. More than 500 alumni of Biden’s presidential campaign signed an open letter calling for a ceasefire in November, and congressional aides and USAid employees sent their own petitions this fall. Current state department officials who do not want to risk their jobs by speaking out have increasingly taken advantage of sanctioned routes to criticizing the president, by filing dissent memos to the secretary of state.The Guardian spoke to several current political appointees and career staffers from the state department who are critical of the administration’s approach but declined to speak on the record. Some say they are trying to create change from within. Others say that the president’s entire Middle East approach is being guided by the White House and in many sense the president himself, defying the recommendations of policy experts.Of Habash’s resignation, the White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that “people have the right to voice their opinion”. She and the state department directed questions to the Department of Education, whose spokesperson wished Habash the “best in his future endeavors”.Biden’s advisers sought to diffuse internal dissatisfaction with a series of listening sessions at the White House and the state department in October and November. “It’s a sign of strength that an administration not only hears but welcomes dissent from within,” said Emily Horne, a former spokesperson for the Biden White House.Since the first days after Hamas’s 7 October attacks, the administration has shifted some of its rhetoric. Biden is now talking more about the humanitarian catastrophe than he was during the initial days of Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza and has repeatedly urged Israel to take steps to protect civilians. But the acute situation in Gaza caused by Israel’s ongoing operations, which have killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, along with risks of famine and severely restricted medical care, have overshadowed any purported shifts in US policy.This week, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will travel to the Middle East “to underscore the importance of protecting civilian lives in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza”. The state department criticized statements from Israeli ministers who have called for the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza. But even that condemnation came just days after the secretary of state bypassed Congress to rush arms to Israel.“There is a feeling among Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in government that the administration does’t take their opinions or dissent seriously,” said Jasmine El-Gamal, a former civil servant who worked on Middle East policy at the Department of Defense during the Obama years.Paul, the senior state department career official who resigned in protest in October, said he’s in contact with several people currently in government who are thinking about leaving over Biden’s handling of Israel. “If there was universal healthcare, there would be more people willing to resign,” he said, in reference to many government employees’ reliance on their jobs for medical care.Habash’s resignation, coupled with the 3 January letter from current campaign staff, comes amid fears that Biden could be losing important members of his base as the 2024 presidential election begins in earnest. Even former Obama administration officials now hosting popular podcasts like Pod Save America have become vocally critical of Biden. The campaigners’ letter said that re-election campaign “volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever, because of this conflict”.For now, the dissent does not seem to be affecting Biden’s approach or that of the close-knit circle of advisers around him. A former official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, downplayed the resignations and open letters. “Some of these criticisms resonate, but I don’t see them actually making a significant difference,” they said. “The times when it matters to this administration is when it starts to play into domestic politics and becomes a concern for the next election.”Habash says he remains aligned with much of Biden’s domestic policies, and hopes his departure pushes the president to change course on Gaza. “Our elected officials are not in touch with their base and their voters,” he warned. More