Evelyn Reynolds

At a campaign rally in New Hampshire last Saturday, the former president Donald Trump repeated a claim he made back in September: immigrants coming to the United States, he said, are “poisoning the blood of our country”. The phrase is particularly disturbing as it evokes Nazi language about blood and nation.The last time Trump uttered this “poisoning the blood of our country” phrase, criticism from historians and civil libertarians was swift. This time, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign saw an opportunity and pounced. “Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler,” a Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding that “Trump is not shying away from his promise to lock up millions of people in detention camps.”Yes, that’s true, but while Trump’s rhetoric and promises are odious and must be rejected, the Biden campaign is also talking out of both sides of its mouth.First, to Trump. By now, only a visitor from another planet (who would certainly be locked up by Trump for illegal entry) would be surprised by the ex-president’s rhetoric. Trump’s jingoistic ability to sow fear of foreigners and hatred of others is a large part of his rightwing populist appeal. Over the weekend, Trump also claimed that “drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are pouring into our country”. He said the United States was facing something “like a military invasion” from would-be immigrants and asylum seekers and promised to implement “the largest deportation operation in American history”.Even the cadence of his speech is reminiscent of a reel highlighting the Greatest Worst Things Trump Ever Said. Remember what he said about Mexico in 2015? “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”Today, even the “good people” are gone. Now, Trump describes those crossing the border this way: “They come from prisons. They come from mental institutions and insane asylums. Many are terrorists.” (It’s a 2024 remix!) He also makes a point to say: “They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Africa, from Asia,” as if we should be afraid of Latinos, Africans and Asians, leaving me to wonder whom we shouldn’t be afraid of. I’m not really wondering. The answer is as plain as vanilla.But far more troubling than Trump’s putrid but predictable xenophobia is hearing the Biden campaign trumpet how morally opposed it is to Trump’s border policies at precisely the same time that the White House is negotiating with Republicans to adopt immigration policies that look suspiciously and horribly Trump-like. There is a word for such a stance: hypocrisy.The reason for the negotiations is no secret. The Biden administration has been seeking to send US military assistance to both Ukraine and Israel, but the funding bills have stalled in Congress. To vote for the money, Republicans are demanding the administration overhaul its immigration policy to align more closely with theirs, and – disturbingly – the Democrats seem poised to do so.Put another way, the Democrats are ready sell out immigration for foreign policy, even though the impact on immigration could be substantial and long-lasting, while Democratic foreign policy goals are both unclear and increasingly unpopular.Joe Biden entered office with an immigration reform agenda, one that sought to reverse many of the inhuman positions of his predecessor, such as the family separation policy that the Trump administration cruelly deployed. Biden didn’t always succeed, but the aspiration was clear. Early on in his term, he proposed the US Citizenship Act of 2021, which would have offered a path to citizenship for undocumented people, brought Dreamers – undocumented people brought to the United States as children – immigration relief, set up refugee processing centers in Central America and funded more immigration judges, among other things.It never passed.Instead of convincing the other side of the aisle of the need for immigration reform, the Biden administration has slowly given up on reform over the years. It’s been happening piecemeal for a while now (such as Biden funding the construction of 20 miles of Trump’s border wall), but reports of the latest negotiations read like a major capitulation to the Republican worldview.The Biden administration is reportedly discussing rolling back its historical commitments to asylum seekers in exchange for aid to Ukraine and Israel and inducting a new system to apprehend undocumented immigrants already in the country. Being discussed is expanding “expedited removal” of migrants at the border without a hearing, significantly raising the criteria for asylum, making permanent pandemic-era border restrictions (like the public health provision known as Title 42) and mandating immigration detention for some immigrants who are awaiting a court date.“A return to Trump-era policies is not the fix,” is how Alex Padilla, a Democratic senator from California, has responded. Padilla is the first Latino chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety. “In fact, it will make the problem worse,” he said. “Mass detention, gutting our asylum system, Title 42 on steroids. It is unconscionable.”Trump’s racist comments about “poisoning the blood of the nation” are typical of Trump’s bigotry, but Biden’s immigration approach reads more like a betrayal. Biden’s willingness to trade away American traditions of asylum protection and meaningful immigration reform for an Israeli military campaign on Gaza that is widely acknowledged – even by Biden himself – as unacceptably dangerous to civilian life, having killed upwards of 20,000 people, makes Biden’s calculation here seem not only cynical but disastrous, both for Gaza’s civilians and for Biden’s prospects for re-election. (Meanwhile, why wouldn’t Israel’s leaders continue to ignore Biden’s pleas to limit their military assault? Ignoring Biden makes him look weak, as they too would almost certainly prefer a Trump presidency.)The Biden administration wants to have it both ways. Biden officials want to believe they can criticize Trump’s positions but adopt positions close to Trump’s when it’s expedient. To answer this fundamental contradiction, they seem to be throwing their weight behind the appeal of a “lesser of two evils” argument for Democratic voters.What they don’t seem to realize, or want to acknowledge, is that every time someone asks you to choose between a lesser of two evils, they’re still asking you to choose evil. And that’s a choice some voters simply aren’t willing to make.
Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday announced a new proposal aimed at banning logging in old-growth forests, a move meant to protect millions of trees that play a key role in fighting the climate crisis.The proposal comes from an executive order signed by the president on Earth Day in 2022 that directed the US Forest Service and the land management bureau to conduct an inventory of old-growth and mature forest groves as well as to develop policies that protect them.“We think this will allow us to respond effectively and strategically to the biggest threats that face old growth,” the US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, told the Washington Post. “At the end of the day, it will protect not just the forests but also the culture and heritage connected to the forests.”The US Forest Service oversees 193m acres of forests and grasslands, 144m of which are forests. In its inventory conducted after Biden’s executive order, the agency found that the vast majority of forests it oversees, about 80%, are either old-growth or mature forests. It found more than 32m acres of old-growth forests and 80m acres of mature forests on federal land.The land management bureau defines old-growth forests as those with trees that are in later stages of stand development, which typically means at least 120 years of growth, depending on species. The giant sequoias in California, for example, are old-growth trees. Mature forests, meanwhile, have trees that are in the development stage immediately before old growth.Advocates for years have been pushing the Biden administration to explicitly ban logging in old-growth and mature forests. Trees that are in their old-growth stage are able to store more carbon than younger trees, making them a natural solution to fighting the climate crisis.In 2022, shortly before Biden announced his executive order, a group of more than 130 scientists wrote a letter to Biden advocating a ban on logging in old-growth forests.“Older forests provide the most above-ground carbon storage potential on Earth, with mature forests and larger trees driving most accumulation of forest carbon in the critical next few decades,” the letter read. “Left vulnerable to logging, though, they cannot fulfill these vital functions.”The ban will come into effect in early 2025, allowing time for the forest service to finalize rules that will protect old-growth forests from logging. Because it comes under an executive order, its existence depends on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, making advocates worried about the protections’ vulnerability to the country’s political climate.But federal agencies have also been under pressure from the timber industry, which argues that logging creates economic activity and helps to fight wildfires. The proposal focuses on most old-growth forests, leaving mature forests still vulnerable to logging, which is a middle ground between environmentalists and the timber industry.Chris Wood, the president of Trout Unlimited and a former official with the US Forest Service, told the Associated Press the policy “is a step in the right direction”.“This is the first time the Forest Service has said its national policy will be to protect old growth,” Wood said.Other advocates are emphasizing that this is just Biden’s first step toward fulfilling his executive order.“Protecting our old-growth trees from logging is an important first step to ensure these giants continue to store vast amounts of carbon, but other older forests also need protection,” Randi Spivak, public lands policy director with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a press release. “To fulfill President Biden’s executive order and address the magnitude of the climate crisis, the Forest Service also needs to protect our mature forests, which if allowed to grow will become the old growth of tomorrow.” More

The US senator John Fetterman has vowed to block the multibillion-dollar sale of US Steel to the Japanese company Nippon Steel, calling the potential deal “outrageous”.The former mayor of the south-west Pennsylvania town of Braddock, which is home to a major US Steel plant, Fetterman has long advocated for the rights of American steel workers and positioned himself as a pro-union Democrat.In the video posted to X and taken from the roof of his house in Braddock, which overlooks the plant, Fetterman criticized the proposed $14.9bn sale, decrying US Steel for selling itself “to a foreign nation and company”.“Steel is always about security,” Fetterman said. “And I am committed to anything I can do, from using my platform or my position, in order to block this.“I’m going to fight for the steelworkers and their union way of life here as well, too.”The acquisition was announced on Monday and saw US Steel’s stock price jump 25%. The company confirmed the deal in a statement on Tuesday, saying its board unanimously approved the acquisition and calling Nippon Steel “a global leader in steelmaking, innovation and decarbonization”.The United Steelworkers (USW) union, meanwhile, denounced Nippon Steel for agreeing to an acquisition deal without prior approval from the union, Axios reported.David McCall, the president, called the deal “greedy” and a “violation” of a union agreement that requires any buyer of US Steel to agree to a new labor agreement prior to any sale.“Neither US Steel nor Nippon reached out to our union regarding the deal, which is in itself a violation of our partnership agreement that requires US Steel to notify us of a change in control or business conditions,” McCall told Axios, calling the sale “shortsighted”.A previous buyout offer in August, worth $7.3bn, by rival company Cleveland Cliffs, was rejected by US Steel. That offer did have the support of the USW union, which praised the Ohio-based Cleveland Cliffs as being “in the best position to ensure that US-based manufacturing remains strong in this country”, and noted it didn’t cut jobs during previous acquisitions in 2019 and 2020. More

The US senator Ben Cardin said he is “angry” and “disappointed” in a now-former staffer who allegedly recorded himself having sex in a Capitol Hill hearing room.Speaking to reporters on Monday, the Maryland Democrat declined to elaborate on either the ex-staffer or the episode, video of which was leaked. But Cardin said he considered the entire sequence “a breach of trust”.“It’s a tragic situation, and it’s presented a lot of anger and frustration,” he added. “I’m concerned about our staff, and the way that they feel about this, and the Senate staff.”Cardin also said US Capitol police were investigating the tryst and the footage.The senator would not confirm the ex-staffer’s identity or whether he had been fired. Cardin would only comment that he is “no longer a Senate employee”.After the initial report in the Daily Caller, a rightwing news site, Cardin’s office released a statement saying that one of its staffers – Aidan Maese-Czeropski – was “no longer employed by the US Senate”. Maese-Czeropski later posted a statement on his LinkedIn account which read: “This has been a difficult time for me, as I have been attacked for who I love to pursue a political agenda.“While some of my actions in the past have shown poor [judgment], I love my job and would never disrespect my workplace,” Maese-Czeropski’s statement added, according to CBS. “Any attempts to characterize my actions otherwise are fabricated and I will be exploring what legal options are available to me in these matters.”Maese-Czeropski’s LinkedIn statement has since been deleted.The video addressed by Cardin showed two men having sex, apparently after hours, in Hart 216, a room that was empty at the time but has hosted Senate judiciary committee hearings, US supreme court nomination hearings and the 9/11 commission.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar – in whose seat the men in the video were having sex – told Hill journalists that Cardin’s office “is dealing with it” and that she believed the staffer involved had actually been fired.Her fellow Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia jokingly told reporters searching for Cardin on Monday to “leave that beautiful man alone”. Republican US senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, another judiciary committee member, sarcastically asked if the chamber was “locking the doors now”, adding after a positive reply: “We do? Thanks.”Cardin announced in May that he would retire at the end of his third Senate term in early 2025. Before joining the Senate, he had spent 20 years in the US House. More

Entering the 2024 campaign season, Joe Biden faces a slew of challenges, including economic uncertainties, foreign policy tensions and healthcare reform. Most notable, however, comes from the critical engine that delivered 2020 key victories in swing states: the African American voting bloc.Recent polls show a historic low of 37% in Biden’s overall approval ratings, while others highlight underlying factors, such as the alarming decline in Black voter support, from 86% in January 2021 to 60% now, the lowest of his presidency.Many Black Americans feel the Democratic party has ignored their concerns and reneged on promises. There’s a perception that the party is taking African Americans for granted as well as growing cynicism with the lack of progress on issues such as affordable housing, healthcare costs and student loan debt. More specific policies, like the recent decision to halt the ban on menthol cigarettes, which disproportionately affect Black smokers, have further raised concerns.But members of Biden’s campaign say definitive conclusions from early polls are premature, adding they have a comprehensive strategy to address growing apprehensions.“The DNC hasn’t let up on engaging and mobilizing Black voters,” said the Democratic National Committee chair, Jaime Harrison. “This isn’t something I take lightly. I know what it feels like to have our community taken for granted and only have folks show up for us when they need our vote on election day.”He traced the party’s commitment to investing more heavily in organizing, persuading and activating Black voters ahead of the 2022 midterm election cycle to their plan to double down on those efforts in 2024. Harrison said he’s met with Black voters across the country in the past year, “listened to what matters to them most and shared with them the successes of the administration for Black Americans”, including an investment of more than $7.3bn in HBCUs, lowering prescription drug prices for seniors, the drop in child poverty and executive action on criminal justice reform.The DNC’s deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, acknowledged that messaging is one of their primary challenges going into 2024, which could be contributing to the disconnect currently reflected in polls.“For those voters that we know a lot of these policies impact, we have to communicate ways in which they can get these benefits,” he said. “Like all this funding for capital, all the student loan forgiveness – not everybody knows how to tap into that.“African American voters know that a lot is at stake, and I think, similar to other audiences of color and young voters, it’s our job to communicate to them what’s at stake. And if we do that successfully, and also from a place of respect in our messaging and how we do it, I think that these voters will turn out and vote for Joe Biden.”The DNC has infused $4.8m on off-year advertising costs, with a total ad buy, to date, of $45.6m, including funding from groups such as the Biden Victory Fund ($4.8m).Fulks said they will also focus heavily on college campuses, including HBCUs, and traditional media outreach such as online engagement, television appearances, drivetime radio features, tapping influential figures such as Roland Martin, Steve Harvey and DL Hughley.Sean Foreman, a political scientist at Florida’s Barry University, emphasized the critical role messaging plays and said Democrats need to be forcefully working to retain, or in some cases, restore, traditional support from Black voters, making sure everyday families are aware of the bread-and-butter issues the administration has tackled.“In 2020, Biden may have been Democrats’ best bet to beat Trump, but 2024 is not a repeat of 2020,” he said. “His administration needs to make a better case to the public about their successes. They should make the Infrastructure Act and the Chips Act, and their role in supporting the unions help tell the story about how they are helping people close to home.”The civil rights historian Katherine Mellen Charron, who lectures on southern history and democracy at North Carolina State University, sees it as more of an age-related challenge.“The change between 2020 and now also falls along generational lines,” she said. “Elders from the movement years of the late 20th century went along with [the South Carolina’s congressman Jim] Clyburn’s endorsement [of Biden] and its logic: ‘He knows us.’ Younger people and activists don’t have that same historical relationship with the Democratic party.”In response to such scrutiny, DNC’s political director, Brencia Berry, said the Biden administration will use a second term to continue their agenda. Berry said the first step to countering the polls is “talking to Black voters well before we ask for their vote and building relationships with folks on the ground”.This involves setting the stakes for this election by contrasting the Biden-Harris agenda with how far backward Republicans want to take Black Americans if they win – such as how Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump for example plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.“President Biden and Vice-President Harris made it clear that Black voters are a priority when they made South Carolina the first state on the presidential primary calendar,” Berry added about their critical decision given the state’s significant Black population. “We have an opportunity to spend the earliest part of the election year engaging Black voters in states like South Carolina, Nevada and Michigan.”Jamil Scott, a political behavior researcher and Georgetown University government professor, called Biden’s re-election bid “complicated … It’s always tough when the president makes legislative promises because these only come to fruition if the legislative branch is on board with his agenda.”But the political scientist Lakeyta Bonnette-Bailey of Georgia State University plainly said the promises from Biden’s 2020 campaign were not kept for the electorate. She pointed to the administration’s failure to decriminalize marijuana, take significant action on voters’ rights, and not “substantively address police reform. [Biden] continues to speak out on police misconduct but has not done anything to reform the police, including an inability to eliminate cash bail, which disproportionately impacts lower-income people.”The DNC conceded that such issues need to be clearly addressed on the campaign trail and said they will tackle any misinterpretations in their efforts.“What you’re going to see from us [is] boots on the ground coming out in the new year,” Fulks said, “being in front of these voters and relaying [our message]. I think that a part of it is that voters of color want to feel like they are deeply involved in a campaign. They don’t want to feel like they’re being told that they’re given handouts. These are hardworking Americans who sent Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House.”Foreman believes that while 2024 isn’t “a make or break moment for African American support for the Democratic party,” a weak showing with critical blocs, including younger voters, could sway the party’s direction.He also recognized the calls for Biden not to seek re-election from within the party. Last month, David Axelrod, a former Obama advisor, questioned Biden’s candidacy in light of another poll showing Trump leading in five key states. “If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic party,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?”Biden dropping out, Foreman said, could do the party some good because “a different, younger candidate could help mobilize new voters”.“But when it comes down to it, if Biden is the nominee, then the job will be for all Democrats – African American and otherwise – to get out in the various local communities and work hard to motivate people to vote.” More

Few states will have more influence over the country’s political future than Arizona. Once a ruby-red Republican stronghold, it is now a south-western battleground and the stakes couldn’t be higher for Arizonans – or Americans.In 2020, Joe Biden carried Arizona by just over 10,000 votes, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the state in nearly a quarter-century. Two years later, Democrats won statewide races for governor, secretary of state and attorney general and re-elected the Democratic senator Mark Kelly to a full six-year term.Now, Arizona is at the center of the battle for the White House and for control of Congress, with a marquee Senate race and a pair of closely contested House races. At the state level, Democrats are attempting to wrest control of the Arizona legislature for the first time in decades. Republicans presently hold one-seat majorities in both the state senate and the state house.To win in Arizona, Democrats say they must reassemble the coalition of moderate Republicans, suburban women, Latinos and young people who powered nail-biting victories for the party in recent election cycles. They also must confront widespread economic discontent in a state that saw some of the worst levels of inflation in the country last year. Frustration over high prices and housing affordability has hurt Biden’s standing in Arizona, where he trails Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, in a number of swing state polls.As Democrats attempt a repeat of their successes in Arizona next year, Yolanda Bejarano, the state party chair, will play a crucial role in turning out the vote in what is expected to be another closely fought election.In an interview, Bejarano, a longtime union organizer and Arizona native, previewed Democrats’ strategy for winning her state. The Guardian’s interview with Bejarano has been edited for clarity and length:Tell us how you got involved in politics.I was a union organizer for 18 years and I got involved in politics after Arizona passed SB 1070, which was the racial profiling bill. I started volunteering for candidates that I believed in and I thought would make a difference in making sure that racial profiling was not something that we were OK with. I became vice-chair of the state party a couple years ago and then our chair [Raquel Terán] finished her term and then I decided to run.Recent polling shows Joe Biden struggling in Arizona, with voters unhappy over his handling of the economy and immigration. What can Biden do to improve his standing in the state?The best predictor of how voters are feeling is how voters are voting. And we saw in the 2022 and 2023 elections when the Democratic party puts in the time, money and resources behind the president’s agenda, it really is a winning message. President Biden is creating more jobs more quickly than the rest of the world. He’s providing relief in Arizonans’ pockets and it’s our job to continue to do what we do best and to communicate that widely across the state – to communicate President Biden’s accomplishments from bringing back good union jobs like manufacturing jobs, decreasing inflation, expanding broadband, lowering the cost of internet and lowering the cost of prescription drug prices. Folks care about these issues, these kitchen table issues and we’re going to continue to communicate that across the state.Democrats may find themselves in a three-way race for Kyrsten Sinema’s Senate seat. Sinema was elected to the seat in 2018 as a Democrat but left the party to become an independent after the 2022 midterms. She has not decided whether to seek re-election. The Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego launched his campaign for the seat last year and Kari Lake, the former local TV anchor who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022, is likely to be the Republican nominee.In 2022, Democrats portrayed Lake as a threat to American democracy. In a three-way race, could Arizona end up electing a Senator Lake?When we talk about Kari Lake and just everything she stands for – she calls abortion the “ultimate sin” – she’s dangerous for our state, dangerous for Arizonans. Now she’s trying to rebrand herself, trying to appeal to moderate Republicans and it’s just not working. She’s just a failed candidate. She kept saying she was the governor even though she’s running for Senate. Arizonans don’t like her and we’re going to make sure she doesn’t win.What’s your best guess: does Sinema run for re-election?I don’t know if she runs again. I haven’t spoken to her in years. Who knows what she’s going to do. We are laser-focused on making sure that our Democratic nominee wins in November 2024.The state is roughly evenly divided between Democratic, Republican and independent voters. What is Democrats’ message to moderate Republicans, independent and swing voters who they will need to persuade in order to win in 2024?The number one thing is making the persuasive argument that Democrats want to protect our democracy; Republicans want to destroy our democracy. Democrats are helping working families bringing back jobs, Democrats are supporting small businesses, Democrats are bringing back manufacturing jobs, fixing our infrastructure, lowering the price of prescription drug prices that affects everybody, regardless of party affiliation. So I think it’s that we Democrats believe in our democracy, Democrats believe in protecting our institutions and Republicans are trying to tear down everything and privatize things and it’s just not good for our state.Arizona is a border state and immigration is top of mind for voters. How are Arizona Democrats navigating concerns over border security with the concerns of immigrant communities?I grew up near a border town in a place called Roll, Arizona. It’s in Yuma county. My dad was a farm worker. We were pretty poor. We didn’t have healthcare so we would drive across the border to San Luis Río Colorado and go to the doctor, see the dentist. Americans would go there for the pharmacies or to go eat. Mexicans would come across the border to work. It was like an exchange of commerce and people.That being said, I 100% agree that the border needs to be a safe, secure and welcoming place. Our Arizona Democrats from Governor [Katie] Hobbs to our congressional delegation, they’re multi-focused on this issue. It’s a complicated issue. And Democrats are working towards a solution that prioritizes the economics, the safety, the humanity, treating people humanely, people who are suffering and trying to find a better life.Democrats are trying to find a solution while Republicans are weaponizing the border and they’ll continue to weaponize the border. I truly do not believe that they want a solution because they will use the border to dehumanize people, to scare people.It appears likely that a measure enshrining abortion rights into the state’s constitution will appear on the ballot next year. At the same time, the state’s supreme court is considering the legality of a territory-era ban that could effectively outlaw the procedure in the state. How are Democrats working to leverage the issue in next year’s election?This is a mobilizing issue for us. When abortion is on the ballot, like we saw in Kansas, we saw it in Ohio, what happened in Virginia, people do not want the government interfering with their decisions to grow or start a family. People in Arizona and across the country believe that everyone should be free to decide how and when to start and grow a family free from political interference. This is a big issue. It’s going to get on the ballot and we’re going make sure that a woman’s right to an abortion is enshrined in our constitution.How central is abortion to Democrats’ campaign message?In 2022, we elected pro-choice Democrats up and down the ticket: our attorney general, our secretary of state, our governor. They were talking about abortion and it is what got them across the finish line. So it’s huge.The economy and inflation are top of mind for voters in Arizona and across the country. How are your candidates confronting frustration over the economy and Biden’s handling of it?We are starting to see the economic progress made with Bidenomics. In our wallets we’re seeing decreased energy prices, and there’s a consistent drop in inflation. And it wasn’t just the United States that had an inflation problem. It was something across the entire world.So what we’re doing is letting folks know that the reason why they’re seeing their energy bills decreasing is because of our Democratic policies. The cap on insulin at $35 a month for Medicare recipients, that’s because of Democratic policies. Our infrastructure, our improved roads are thanks to a Democratic policies. So we’re messaging that to Arizonans across the state.In 2020 Arizona became “ground zero” for Donald Trump’s stolen election lies. Though Arizona voters largely rejected election-denying candidates in 2022, two Republican officials were recently indicted on charges of conspiring to delay the election. How is the party confronting pervasive and ongoing election denialism in the state? Arizona is a testing ground for Republican election conspiracy theories. We saw in 2022 militia men hanging outside of ballot drop boxes with their rifles to try to intimidate people. We saw Maga mobs showing up to our county recorders’ offices when they were counting ballots in a very transparent manner. People can see how they were counting the ballots but we have mobs outside.Our state where Democrats have been working diligently to protect our democracy, making it clear that if you hold up a certification of our elections, you will be indicted. That just happened to two Cochise county board of supervisors. Our statewide Democrats are laser-focused on making sure that our everybody’s fundamental right to vote is protected. We are prepared to communicate clearly about what’s at stake in this upcoming election.I think this is something that crosses party lines. People need that assurance, that stability, that when you vote that your elections are fair and they are transparent and that is what is happening. And we have people on the Republican side that are still perpetuating this “big lie” and the election conspiracy theories that hurt our democracy and hurt our democracy.Several recent polls show Donald Trump ahead in Arizona. With the caveat that much can change in a year, why do you think Trump is winning over some of the Arizonans who turned against him in 2020?People know that Trump’s judgment is totally compromised. He is not someone who Arizonans will support. Ah. What can I say about Donald Trump? He is dangerous. Arizonans will want progress over chaos, they want stability, and they don’t get that with Donald Trump. They get more chaos.So you don’t think the polls capture where Arizona voters will be come election day 2024?I do not think the polling captures where people will be in a year, correct. More

A Confederate memorial was blocked on Monday from being removed from Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia, with a court order setting back the push to remove symbols that commemorate the Confederacy from military-related facilities.A federal judge on Monday issued a temporary restraining order barring removal of a memorial to Confederate soldiers at the nation’s foremost military cemetery. A group called Defend Arlington, affiliated with a group called Save Southern Heritage Florida, filed a lawsuit Sunday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, seeking the restraining order. A hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday.The decision also follows a recent demand from more than 40 Republican congressmen that the Pentagon suspend efforts to dismantle and remove the monument from Arlington cemetery.Work to remove the memorial had begun Monday before the restraining order was issued, and the memorial remains in place on cemetery grounds.A cemetery spokesperson said Monday that Arlington is complying with the restraining order, but referred all other questions to the US justice department.Safety fencing has been installed around the memorial, and officials had expected to complete the removal by this upcoming Friday 22 December, the Arlington National Cemetery had previously said in an email.Virginia’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, had previously disagreed with the removal decision.In 2022, an independent commission recommended that the memorial be taken down as part of its final report to Congress on renaming of military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32ft pedestal, and was designed to represent the American south. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”The installation includes a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer as well as an enslaved man following his owner to war.In a recent letter to the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, more than 40 House Republicans had said the commission overstepped its authority when it recommended that the monument be removed. The congressmen contended that the monument “does not honor nor commemorate the Confederacy; the memorial commemorates reconciliation and national unity.“The Department of Defense must respect Congress’s clear legislative intentions regarding the naming commission’s legislative authority,” the letter said.Earlier this year, Fort Bragg shed its Confederate name to become Fort Liberty, part of the broad Department of Defense initiative, motivated by the 2020 George Floyd protests, to rename military installations that had been named after Confederate soldiers.The Black Lives Matter demonstrations that erupted nationwide after Floyd’s killing by a white police officer, coupled with ongoing efforts to remove Confederate monuments, turned the spotlight on the army installations. The naming commission created by Congress visited the bases and met with members of the surrounding communities for input.
The Associated Press contributed reporting More

A US appeals court has ruled that the election interference case against the former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows must stay in state court in Georgia and not move to federal court as he requested.Meadows had attempted to transfer his 2020 election interference case in the state to federal court, but the court had expressed doubt in his argument that he was acting as a federal official in trying to reverse Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.Meadows has been charged with violating the Georgia racketeering statute, alongside Trump and other co-defendants by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, over their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.More details soon … More