Evelyn Reynolds

From 5h agoRobert F Kennedy Jr has officially announced that he will be running for US president as an independent.“I’m here to declare myself an independent candidate for president of the United States,” Kennedy said to applause and chants.Before announcing his run, Kennedy thanked his wife and children, his campaign staff, and other members of his family.The 69-year old had previously been running for the Democratic nomination for president, the only person to challenge Joe Biden for the nomination.But over the weekend, Kennedy teased a “much-anticipated announcement” about his campaign.Kennedy, a member of the Kennedy political family, has received backlash for peddling antisemitic conspiracy theories that Covid-19 was designed to spare Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews.That’s it for our US politics blog.Here’s what happened today:
Robert F Kennedy Jr officially announced that he will be running for US president as an independent. “I’m here to declare myself an independent candidate for president of the United States,” Kennedy said during a campaign event in Philadelphia.
The siblings of Kennedy Jr denounced their brother’s campaign, calling it “perilous” for the US. “Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us,” read the siblings’ statement in part.
More centrist Republicans are already casting doubt on Representative Jim Jordan as a potential House speaker. Lawmakers passed around a mailer from Jordan’s campaign, raising concerns about his potential priorities as House speaker.
At least nine US citizens have died in Israel amid Israel’s war with Hamas. US state department spokesman Matthew Miller confirmed the deaths on Monday, adding that some US citizens have not been accounted for.
McCarthy has not ruled out a return to his former position of House speaker, if House lawmakers were still at a gridlock over the position.
Republican House representatives faced mounting pressure to rally around a House speaker candidate after the ousting of former speaker Kevin McCarthy. Only two candidates have tossed their hat in the ring for the role: House majority leader Steve Scalise, a representative of Louisiana, and Ohio representative Jim Jordan, who is the judiciary chairman.
Thank you for following our politics live blog.Stay tuned for more updates tomorrow.More on Tuberville blocking military promotions from the Guardian’s Oliver Milman:
Tuberville, a former Auburn University football coach turned Alabama senator, has indicated he will maintain the blockade even in the wake of the assault on Israel, in which at least 700 mostly civilians are thought to have died, including several hundred revelers killed at a music festival, while dozens more people are believed to have been taken hostage. Israel has responded with airstrikes on the Gaza Strip that authorities in the penned-in territory say has killed at least 493 Palestinian people, including entire families sheltering in their apartments.
US military appointments currently in limbo include top officers slated to command American forces in the Middle East, and two picks for the joint chiefs of staff. Separately, the US also does not have an ambassador to Israel, its close ally; Democrats have called for a swift confirmation of the nominee, Jack Lew.
Joe Biden has previously called Tuberville’s stance “totally irresponsible”, and the president accused him of undermining the strength and capabilities of the US military. But the Alabama senator said on Sunday that even the attack on Israel would not shift his position.
“The Pentagon clearly thinks forcing taxpayers to facilitate abortion is more important than confirming their top nominees without a vote,” a Tuberville spokesperson told NBC. “They could end this situation today by dropping their illegal and immoral policy and get everyone confirmed rapidly, but they refuse.”
Invoking a name Tuberville calls himself because of his prior job, the spokesperson added: “If the Biden administration wants their nominees confirmed then Senate Democrats can do what Coach just did in September and file a cloture petition to force a vote.”
Military nominees are usually bundled together and confirmed by a voice vote in the Senate to speed along appointments, but under Senate rules a single senator can hold up this process. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, has said that individual votes on each of the nominees would eat up a huge amount of time, and urged Republicans to get Tuberville “in line”.
Read the full article here.Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville appears to not be lifting holds on military promotions, despite fighting in Israel, the Hill reports.Tuberville has been criticized by other lawmakers who say that his hold on military promotions is affecting US readiness, especially in light of the Israel-Hamas war.Democratic senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island said in a Sunday interview that the recent escalation in fighting “underscores the foolishness” of Tuberville’s actions.Tuberville’s spokesperson Steve Stafford responded, saying in part:“The hold is still not affecting our readiness and it’s certainly not affecting the readiness of other countries.”Tuberville has held military promotions for seven months because of a Pentagon policy that covers travel for service members seeking abortion care.Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released a statement on Monday regarding the violence in Israel. She said: “Today is devastating for all those seeking a lasting peace and respect for human rights in Israel and Palestine. I condemn Hamas’ attack in the strongest possible terms. No child and family should ever endure this kind of violence and fear, and this violence will not solve the ongoing oppression and occupation in the region. An immediate ceasefire and de-escalation is urgently needed to save lives.”Cortez, along with other members of ‘the squad’ have long been vocal against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Others also further to the political left, including house representative Cori Bush also called for a ceasefire and condemned both Hamas militants and the Israeli military on the ongoing violence. Representative Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian said she grieves the “Palestinian and Israeli lives lost yesterday, today, and every day.” She did not outright mention Hamas.“As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.”The US’s secretary of the army Christine Wormuth has called for more congressional funds to support Israel with munitions.In the annual meeting of the association of the US army held on Monday, Wormuth said: “To be able to increase our capacity… to expand production, and then to also pay for the munitions themselves, we need additional support from Congress.”Biden has already said Israel has “rock-solid and unwavering” support from the US and US defense secretary Lloyd Austin said the US will send munitions.Military ships and aircraft have already been ordered to move closer to Israel.The US contributes about $3bn annually to Israel, the largest current recipient of United States military aid.Biden is speaking with several US allies about the Israel-Hamas war, according to White House officials.Biden spent the morning being brief on the situation by his national security team.Remarks from Biden on the developing situation were expected Monday morning, but have been postponed after the White House announced a “lid” for the day.The White House has called a “lid” for the day, meaning Biden will not be delivering any remarks.The lid could be lifted if Biden decides to make remarks later on or attend an event.The decision to call a lid is surprising. The White House previously announced that Biden would speak about the Israel-Hamas war on Monday afternoon.Meanwhile, Republicans have condemned the decision to call a lid.Florida governor and US presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has criticized the White House and called for immediate steps, including shutting down the US southern border.From DeSantis campaign spokesperson Carly Atchison:The siblings of Robert F Kennedy Jr have denounced their brother’s campaign, calling it “perilous” for the US.The Kennedy siblings said that Robert’s announcement to run as a third party candidate was “dangerous to our country”, in a post to X, formerly known as Twitter.“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us,” read the statement in part.Kennedy has largely embraced that his campaign and platform rejects dogmatism, arguing that people can have different opinions and still tolerate them.“People can disagree and still respect each other. You can be pro-choice and not think that pro-lifers are women hating zealots. You can support the second amendment and not think that gun control advocates are totalitarians who hate freedom.”“It’s more than being independent of two existing parties. It’s also independence from tribal thinking,” Kennedy said of his political philosophy.“It’s freedom from the reflex of having to take sides.”Kennedy is not the only candidate running as an independent in the US presidential election.Academic and activist Cornel West is also running in the US election as an independent.West previously ran for US president as a a Green party candidate, but dropped from the party last Thursday.Read a recent interview with West and Robert Tait for the Guardian, available here. More

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s run for the White House as an independent candidate is “perilous” for the US, his siblings said in a statement on Monday, immediately following their brother’s campaign launch in Philadelphia.“The decision of our brother Bobby to run as a third party candidate against Joe Biden is dangerous to our country,” said sisters Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; and brother Joseph P Kennedy II in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.”All are children of Robert F Kennedy, the Democratic former US attorney general and New York senator who was assassinated in 1968, and his widow Ethel, 95, founder of the Robert F Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.It is not the first time Kennedy family members have criticized their relative, a noted conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer. In July, Kerry Kennedy, chair of the Robert F Kennedy human rights center, denounced as “deplorable and untruthful” Robert F Kennedy Jr’s claim that Covid was engineered to target some ethnic groups and spare others.In an email to the Guardian, Rory Kennedy said: “There is a great deal of hate in the world and remarks like Bobby’s only serve to fuel that hate. Such conspiracy mongering not only creates more divisiveness, it actually puts people’s lives in danger.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Democratic former Massachusetts congressman Joe Kennedy III, Robert F Kennedy’s nephew, and US special envoy to Northern Ireland, said in a tweet: “My uncle’s comments were hurtful and wrong. I unequivocally condemn what he said.” More

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the scion of the Kennedy political family who has spent the last six months running for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, announced on Monday he would continue his long-shot pursuit of the White House as an independent.The 69-year-old conspiracy theorist and vaccination opponent gave a fiery speech from Philadelphia, declaring his “independence from the Democratic party and all other parties”, and telling a gathering of several hundred supporters of his “pain” at leaving the party of his uncle and father, John F Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy.“I’m here to declare myself an independent candidate for president for the United States. I’m here to join you in making a new declaration of independence for our entire nation,” he said, in a lengthy and often rambling speech taking aim at Wall Street, big pharma, military contractors, the “mercenary media”, and the “two-party establishment” he said was “leading us all over a cliff”.“A rising tide of discontent is swamping our country. There’s a danger in this discontent but there’s also opportunity and promise,” he added, in what appeared to be a reference to the leading Republican candidate, Donald Trump.“We seem to be cycling from despair to rage and back to despair. This country is ready for a history making change. They are ready to reclaim their freedom, their independence.”The launch, however, was glitchy, with Kennedy leaving the stage briefly as soon as he was introduced, complaining he could not see his speech on the autocue, then struggling to find his stride.And his campaign was immediately assailed as “perilous” for the US in a tweet by prominent Kennedy family members.“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country,” sisters Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; and brother Joseph P Kennedy II said in the message.Kennedy, who announced that he was running against Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in April, has been polling at an average of 15% among Democrats nationwide. Other polls show he is more popular among Republicans than Democratic party supporters.But while his chances of winning the election are close to non-existent, his candidacy could still play a significant role as a spoiler. Analysts are divided on whether Kennedy running as an independent would harm the Republicans or Democrats more.“The Democrats are frightened I’m going to spoil the election for President Biden, and the Republicans are frightened that I’m gonna spoil it for President Trump,” he said. “The truth is, they’re both right. My intention is to spoil it for both of them.”Over the past six months, Kennedy, who has a track record of promoting conspiracy theories and a long history of opposing vaccines, has struggled to make inroads into Biden’s support.The nephew of John F Kennedy, and son of Robert F Kennedy, both Democrats who were assassinated, has drawn ire for false comments about wifi causing “leaky brain” and chemicals in water causing gender dysphoria.In July he was accused of antisemitism after he claimed that Covid had been targeted to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people from the worst impacts of the disease; the same month, the Congressional Integrity Project, a political watchdog, released a report that details Kennedy’s meetings with and promotion of racists, antisemites and extremist conspiracy theorists.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSince launching his campaign Kennedy has repeatedly appeared on Fox News, the rightwing news channel, and has also featured in podcasts of Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, and Alex Jones, a rightwing conspiracy theorist.Kennedy was introduced in Philadelphia by a procession of speakers, including his wife, the actor Cheryl Hines, and his campaign manager Dennis Kucinich, a Democratic congressman for Ohio from 1997 to 2013.Another speaker was Lewis Grassrope, an elder of the South Dakota’s Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, who said he was using indigenous people’s day to call for a healing of political division. “The left wing and right wing are always fighting. If they are always fighting, how are we to become one?” he said, before delivering a prayer in a native American language.Monday’s announcement was also streamed live on YouTube, the broadcast reaching barely 23,000 viewers at its peak.Republicans immediately attempted to distance themselves from Kennedy, insisting in a talking points memo there was “very little daylight between RFK Jr and a typical Democratic politician”.The memo from the Republican National Committee (RNC) listed 23 reasons for Republican voters to reject him, including Kennedy’s previous support for Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and support for Democratic positions over the climate emergency, the economy and abortion.“RFK Jr knows full well he’ll ‘take more votes’ from the Republican nominee; that’s why he’s running,” the RNC memo said. More

The Republican senator Tommy Tuberville has said he will continue to block hundreds of military leadership appointments despite the Hamas attack on Israel, a close American ally, that has triggered a deadly escalation in the Middle East conflict.Tuberville has for several months put a hold on at least 300 military nominees, which are typically confirmed in a routine manner by the US Senate. His blockade is a protest over a Pentagon policy that facilitates abortions for service members and dependents.Tuberville, a former Auburn University football coach turned Alabama senator, has indicated he will maintain the blockade even in the wake of the assault on Israel, in which at least 700 mostly civilians are thought to have died, including several hundred revelers killed at a music festival, while dozens more people are believed to have been taken hostage. Israel has responded with airstrikes on the Gaza Strip that authorities in the penned-in territory say has killed at least 493 Palestinian people, including entire families sheltering in their apartments.US military appointments currently in limbo include top officers slated to command American forces in the Middle East, and two picks for the joint chiefs of staff. Separately, the US also does not have an ambassador to Israel, its close ally; Democrats have called for a swift confirmation of the nominee, Jack Lew.Joe Biden has previously called Tuberville’s stance “totally irresponsible”, and the president accused him of undermining the strength and capabilities of the US military. But the Alabama senator said on Sunday that even the attack on Israel would not shift his position.“The Pentagon clearly thinks forcing taxpayers to facilitate abortion is more important than confirming their top nominees without a vote,” a Tuberville spokesperson told NBC. “They could end this situation today by dropping their illegal and immoral policy and get everyone confirmed rapidly, but they refuse.”Invoking a name Tuberville calls himself because of his prior job, the spokesperson added: “If the Biden administration wants their nominees confirmed then Senate Democrats can do what Coach just did in September and file a cloture petition to force a vote.”Military nominees are usually bundled together and confirmed by a voice vote in the Senate to speed along appointments, but under Senate rules a single senator can hold up this process. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, has said that individual votes on each of the nominees would eat up a huge amount of time, and urged Republicans to get Tuberville “in line”.Tuberville objects to a Pentagon policy that does not itself perform abortions but provides time off and travel assistance to members of the military that require reproductive healthcare.The US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, has said that the policy safeguards the healthcare and combat readiness of service members and is widely popular within the military.Abortion has been effectively banned in several states following the US supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade last year – a move decried by progressives but lauded by conservatives like Tuberville.“The severity of the crisis in Israel underscores the foolishness of Senator Tuberville’s blockade,” said Jack Reed, a Democrat who leads the Senate armed services committee.“The United States needs seamless military leadership in place to handle dangerous situations like this and Senator Tuberville is denying it. This is no time for petty political theater, and I again urge Republican colleagues to help actively end Senator Tuberville’s damaging blockade.” More

The Republican US congressman Matt Gaetz claims it would not matter to him if he lost his seat in Congress for leading the ouster of his fellow party member Kevin McCarthy as US House speaker last week.Asked Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press whether McCarthy’s removal as House speaker would be worth losing his job over, Gaetz responded: “Absolutely. Look, I am here to fight for my constituents.”Gaetz, a Florida representative, on Tuesday followed through on months of threats to boot McCarthy from the speakership after the Republican congressman from California struck a deal with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown at the beginning of October. Gaetz sided with seven other far-right House Republicans and all Democrats in the chamber to strip McCarthy of his role, making him the first speaker in US history to be removed.In response, some House Republicans have openly talked about kicking Gaetz out of their caucus. That manoeuvre would require approval of two-thirds of House Republicans.A more extreme option on the table is to move for Gaetz’s expulsion from Congress altogether, which would also require two-thirds of the House to vote in favor of it.“I don’t see how they can really be part of a conference when they come on the inside, listen to what is going on, and then [go] outside and lob bombs into the middle,” Republican congressman Dave Joyce of Ohio told CNN. Joyce, the Republican Governance Group’s chairperson, added: “It’s a waste of time having conversations with these people.”In his conversation on Sunday with Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, Gaetz said it was nonsense that House Republicans would consider kicking him out of either their caucus or the legislative body.“The voters of Florida’s first congressional district sent me here with about 70% of the vote,” Gaetz said, alluding to his comfortable margin of victory during his re-election run in last year’s midterms. “So I think that anyone trying to kick me out of Congress because they didn’t like me would have a bone to pick with them.“They want to expel me from Congress? That’s crazy.”Welker asked Gaetz whether it was irresponsible for him to successfully plot McCarthy’s ouster as House speaker without a clear replacement. Gaetz argued that Republicans – who hold a thin majority in the House – have “two men who are incredibly respected” ready to succeed McCarthy as speaker.The remark referred to the two Republican congressmen who have announced bids to run for the vacant speakership: Jim Jordan of Ohio and Louisiana’s Steve Scalise, who is the House majority leader.Gaetz declined to endorse one over the other on Monday. He only said he was “heartened” to talk with both “on their specific plans on spending and single-subject appropriations bills” ahead of a House vote to select a new speaker that is tentatively expected to occur in the coming days.“If either of those men get the most support in the conference, I’m eager to vote for them on the floor,” Gaetz said. More

The Biden administration’s plan to erect a new section of border wall is disappointing not only because it contradicts a campaign promise, nor just because physical barriers are a return to the same tired policy responses of the Trump era.Rather, this week’s news around the project – slated for a rural region along the Texas-Mexico border – is upsetting most of all because it stands in stark contrast to the solutions the US immigration system needs right now.Even the highest walls often do not deter desperate migrants and asylum seekers from trying to reach the US. That was true during the previous administration, and it remains true today. Instead, those barriers leave people who cross anyway at higher risk of injury and death, contributing to a growing list of casualties that has turned the US-Mexico border into the world’s most lethal land migration route.Already, blowback to renewed border wall construction has been swift and intense. Representative Henry Cuellar, Biden’s fellow Democrat whose large south Texas district includes the county with the new planned barriers, called it “a 14th-century solution to a 21st-century problem”. To conservation advocates, it means bulldozing “irreplaceable” habitats. Some of the local communities say it feels like “a slap in the face” that will “punish the most innocent”.And, for national immigration advocates, it is yet another letdown that demonstrates a disregard for human dignity within a larger broken immigration system.Given the absence of legislative reforms, and given pressure on the Biden administration to reduce irregular migration, the US-Mexico border is chaotic these days, though not necessarily in the way most Americans think.In the name of deterrence, people fleeing for their lives who might otherwise qualify for asylum are being presumed ineligible because of how they arrived, under a policy that has already been ruled unlawful yet remains in place. Many thousands of non-Mexicans are suddenly being sent back across the border to Mexico, a foreign country where they likely have next to no support or contacts, and where they face grave danger of sexual assault, kidnappings, extortion and other violence.In light of a humanitarian emergency and political repression in Venezuela, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has allowed Venezuelans who made it here by the end of July to access deportation protections and work authorization. Yet Venezuelans arriving today can be directly deported to the same authoritarian regime where US officials explicitly acknowledged a few weeks ago that people could not safely return.Similarly, the Biden administration continues to repatriate Haitians, even as it tells Americans and non-emergency government personnel to depart Haiti for security reasons.Meanwhile, DHS has removed or returned over 36,000 migrant family members in the last few months – more than in any previous full fiscal year. The unluckiest of asylum seekers, families included, are being put through particularly fast-tracked deportations, where they often confront a higher bar to qualify for protection and have almost no time to prepare their case.This tangle of convoluted policies demonstrates why more walls are not the answer that the US’s immigration policy strategy needs: it’s already a labyrinth. Barrier after barrier – some more visible than others, but all formidable – work together to confuse, limit and disqualify people trying to reach the US.Even so, the restrictions have not stopped newcomers.Border patrol documented over 181,000 migrant encounters between official ports of entry at the US-Mexico border in August. That number is expected to rise in September, with early estimates showing roughly 210,000 apprehensions last month, according to CBS News.To try to get here, little girls cry as they crawl beneath razor wire, and in some of the most tragic cases, kids are dying. Amid this humanitarian emergency, a sprawling border wall – to use Biden’s own words – “is not a serious policy solution”. Neither is the House GOP’s sweeping but specious legislative proposal, the Secure the Border Act, which continues to take an enforcement-only approach to immigration by gutting asylum, curtailing other existing lawful pathways, establishing new criminal penalties, and more.There’s so much work Democrats and Republicans – the White House and Congress – should take up. For one, the Biden administration could expand processing capacity at official ports of entry and let more migrants in there, even if they don’t have a pre-scheduled appointment through a government phone app, and without rendering them ineligible for asylum. That way, children and families could walk across an international pedestrian bridge with far less struggle than they can wade through a river or stumble through the desert.Ultimately, however, the buck stops with Congress. The best, most proactive way to keep many people from showing up at the US-Mexico border is to offer them a safer, more orderly pathway here, but such immigration avenues are in woefully short supply right now.It will take both parties working together in good faith to address border security and improve the legal immigration system, a compromise supported by the vast majority of American voters. Lawmakers can expand labor pathways, update the US’s humanitarian protections to meet 21st-century challenges, and offer permanent solutions for people who are already here contributing while stuck in a protracted legal limbo.In other words, they can fight arbitrary cruelty and chaos at the border by making our immigration system work again.
Alexandra Villarreal is a policy and advocacy associate at the National Immigration Forum. More

“DEATH!” tweeted Donald Trump about Gen Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (AKA “My Generals”). “TRAITOR!” he said about former speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (AKA “My Kevin”).“Monster” and “Deranged Lunatic” he labeled the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, who is prosecuting the case against him for his false valuations of Trump properties. “Deranged”, “Psycho” and “Crackhead” he called special prosecutor Jack Smith, who has charged him for his role in the January 6 coup attempt and his theft of classified documents.“We’ll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi, who ruined San Francisco – how’s her husband doing, anybody know?” he shouted at a rally, referring to Paul Pelosi, who was nearly murdered by a hammer-wielding assassin. “Crooked Joe Biden, let’s indict the motherfucker! Let’s indict him,” Trump said to a cheering crowd.“A racist … having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member,” he claimed about Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in Georgia, prosecuting him for the fake electors scheme. “Animal” and “Degenerate Psychopath” he called Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, who has charged him with campaign bribery. “[Senator Charles] Schumer’s girlfriend … is running this case against me,” he lied about a clerk in the New York courtroom, identifying her by name. For that transgression, Manhattan supreme court justice Arthur Engoron, who Trump previously said should be “disbarred”, issued a limited gag rule forbidding him from targeting officers of the court.Needless to say, Trump’s vilification of Bragg, Willis and James, all Black, is an extension of his lifelong campaign for white supremacy, going back to his discrimination against Black housing buyers and his full-page ads in the New York newspapers in 1989 calling for the death penalty for five Black and Hispanic youths, the “Central Park Five”, who were innocent of the charges against them. But he now has a larger agenda than a race war here and there.Trump’s torrent of attacks on judges, prosecutors and witnesses is of a piece with his larger project to delegitimize and demolish the institutions of government, including now the House of Representatives through the historic first overthrow of a sitting speaker. His goal in every arena is the same: to clear the path to one-man rule. His threats, incitements and smears are more than outbursts. They are statements of intention for his next presidency.The constitution must be suspended to overturn the results of the 2020 election: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he has proposed. He has announced he will prosecute and imprison his political opponents: “I will appoint a real special ‘prosecutor’ to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the USA, Joe Biden, the entire Biden crime family, & all others involved with the destruction of our elections, borders, & country itself!” He has pledged to purge the federal civil service and replace its employees with Trump loyalists: “You’re fired, get out, you’re fired,” he said, repeating his signature phrase from his television show The Apprentice. “[You] have to do it. Deep state. Washington will be an entirely different place.”Facing 91 felony counts in four separate trials, not to mention his second defamation judgment in the E Jean Carroll adjudicated rape case and the court-ordered unraveling of the Trump Organization in New York for decades of financial fraud, Trump has not stopped committing offenses. He has been a fount of ceaseless threats to specific officers of the court that he well knows may incite violence against them, interspersed with other calls for extralegal violence, such as shooting shoplifters. “Shot!” he shouted to a cheering crowd. If people can’t be bought off, told off or pushed off, they must be offed.Jack Smith’s filings to the Washington DC court requesting a gag order are a running commentary on Trump’s continuing crime wave. “Like his previous public disinformation campaign regarding the 2020 presidential election,” Smith wrote, “the defendant’s recent extrajudicial statements are intended to undermine public confidence in an institution – the judicial system – and to undermine confidence in and intimidate individuals – the court, the jury pool, witnesses and prosecutors.”In his collection of Trump’s latest “prejudicial statements,” Smith highlighted that Gen Milley, who Trump stated “had committed treason and suggested that he should be executed”, is “a witness cited in the indictment”.Smith addressed the issue of witness intimidation and tampering directly: “Even assuming that certain witnesses are not intimidated by the defendant’s statements, other witnesses see and may be affected by what the defendant does to those who are called to testify in this case. And regardless of whether certain witnesses are intimidated by the defendant’s extrajudicial statements, the defendant should not be permitted to attack or bolster the credibility of any witness in a manner that could influence prospective jurors.”Adding new felony charges against Trump for his egregious efforts at witness tampering would slow down the case against him. But the special prosecutor retains the option of filing those charges later. Trump’s inflammatory language could yet lead to further indictments.Trump’s threats are not simply rhetorical explosions but illegal attempts to intimidate witnesses and prejudice the jury. But they are more than that too. For Trump, the further the dismantlement of the rule of law, the smoother the path to one-man rule. Attempting to intimidate officers of the court and to tamper with witnesses is more than his legal strategy; it’s central to his overarching political strategy. He has systemic purpose. He is seeking to sideline every institution of government other than a presidency he occupies in which he is not bound by constitutional confines. By eliminating checks and balances now, he’s preparing for dictatorial rule.In 2020, under his aegis, the Republican party passed no platform whatsoever. Now, his incitements are the planks of the Republican platform on which all Republicans must run. His threats are his promises of what is to come. He is moving beyond the politics of grievance to the menace of revenge. Making him their candidate, Republicans are pledged to his violence and illegality. If he can escape accountability for his crimes, the rule of law collapses and the path is cleared for him. That is his vision. The criminal is the political.Trump seized upon the chance to advance the collapse of the speakership as an opportunity to reduce another governmental body that might be a check on him. The fewer barriers to one-man rule, the easier his road back to power. The party’s impotence is his strength. Kevin McCarthy’s demise appeared to him as a fortunate opening to grind toward control.The House Republicans rehearse an endless revenge tragedy strewing bodies on the stage. They flail at the Democrats, who for the crucial motion to vacate removed themselves to the reserved seats in the colosseum to watch the Republicans devour their speaker. The Republicans blamed the Democrats for failing to save McCarthy from the Republicans. McCarthy contrived to cooperate in his own destruction upon accepting the speakership by agreeing that one member alone could file a motion to vacate. Brutus, undisguised, was already lurking. McCarthy had put a knife in his hand in the first scene.With McCarthy’s corpse still warm, the speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry’s first act was to evict former speaker Nancy Pelosi from her hideaway office, a little piece of real estate within the Capitol. It turns out it was a last sniveling request to McHenry from McCarthy, a spasm preceding rigor mortis. When she was speaker, she accorded the favor of the office to Dennis Hastert as a former speaker for as long as he remained in the House (before his pedophilia conviction). At the moment McHenry made his graceless gesture, Pelosi was in California, having accompanied the body of her dear friend Senator Dianne Feinstein to prepare for her funeral. He struck out at Pelosi as though her eviction punished her alongside the Republican eviction of Kevin McCarthy. It was presumably an equivalent slam of the Democratic speaker for the slamming of the Republican one.But Pelosi had left the speakership in dignity, handed off her baton and stays as an eminence, while McCarthy was despised, trampled and cut to pieces by his own. She served as the speaker for four years; he completed eight months, not quite to term. The displacement of Republican hostility to Pelosi only highlights their auto-da-fe of McCarthy. He is their former lord of the flies, felled by the swarm of flies. McHenry’s first act, ingratiating himself to the recently departed, established the tone of his even briefer transitional tenure. McCarthy all along tried to play to the bullies, joined in with the bullies, was roughed up by the bullies, and, finally, rousted by the bullies; after he was bullied out, his figurehead successor messed the clean slate with a small act of bullying. The hunger games continue.Trump was silent on McCarthy’s defenestration, the gratitude McCarthy received for his self-abasement, down to the nicety of regularly giving Trump gifts of jars of pink and red Starbursts, the former president’s favorite candy. The sweetener did not sweeten things for the candy man. Trump was the not-so-hidden hand reaching from behind the curtain, waving on the assassins. Stroking Trump almost to the last with praise, as “stronger today than in 2016”, McCarthy walked to his destiny with a knife about to be planted in his back. Immediately after the vote to remove him, Matt Gaetz stated, “I would say that my conversations with the former president leave me with great confidence that I’m doing the right thing.”McCarthy’s reward for loyalty to Trump led him into the usual cul-de-sac of Republicans trying to contain Trump. Predictably, Trump demanded what McCarthy could not deliver. “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN!” Everyone who decides to be involved with Trump inevitably faces an unacceptable request. In McCarthy’s case, it was shutting down the government, which would be disastrous for the razor-thin Republican majority going into an election. “If somebody wants to remove [me] because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try,” McCarthy challenged his enemies. He could not bring himself in the end obviously to damage his party’s power through a shutdown. So McCarthy faced a choice of self-destruction, either losing the speakership eventually or immediately. He took his chances.Trump has mused to a rapt Iowa crowd of followers about his own possible fate: “If I’m sitting down and that boat is going down and I’m on top of a battery and the water starts flooding in, I’m getting concerned, but then I look 10 yards to my left and there’s a shark over there, so I have a choice of electrocution and a shark, you know what I’m going to take? Electrocution.” McCarthy thought he could survive by accommodating Trump. Then he somehow believed he could navigate between the rock and the hard place. But he was still eaten by the sharks. He met the fate of all the other adults in the room.At once, like a jack-in-the-box, Sean Hannity, Fox News host, popped up to float the idea of Trump as speaker. Rupert Murdoch, Hannity’s erstwhile boss, has referred to Hannity as “a moron”, and, at least according to Murdoch chronicler Michael Wolff, Hannity was playing the jester, for a jab of ratings heroin. But he is a slavish Trump stalwart, following him like a daddy figure, perhaps explained by his recent anecdote: “By the way, when my father would hit me with a belt, I didn’t actually raise my voice. We used to be the land of the free, home of the brave. What happened? When did we become the land of the snowflake?” Hannity’s cri de coeur was more revelatory of the underlying psychology of authoritarianism than anything he has ever said.Trump doesn’t need the quotidian grief of being speaker when he can direct the inmates of the asylum by remote control, and, anyway, he’s busy in and out of court. But the fake speaker ploy presented itself as a terrific, if brief, opportunity for playacting and grifting, like the fake electors scheme without the real life truth and consequences.After Trump retreated from glowering at the defendant’s table in the Manhattan courtroom for several days, using the occasion to gin up a round of contributions, Letitia James pronounced, “The Donald Trump show is over.” But once that episode of the show ended, the special episode of Speaker Trump appeared on the schedule. When he was in the courtroom, he retweeted a drawing of himself seated next to Jesus, with the caption: “This is the most accurate court sketch of all time.” Then he tweeted a photo-shopped picture of himself in the speaker’s chair, wearing a red Maga cap and in his right hand lifting up the gavel. He had passed from crucifixion to resurrection in less time than Jesus. Hail, Trump!Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted ecstatically, “If Trump becomes Speaker of the House, the chamber will be like a Trump rally everyday!! It would be the House of MAGA!!!” But this Trump candidacy was a speaker-for-a-day con. Trump announced his endorsement of Representative Jim Jordan, founder of the rightwing Freedom Caucus, who had harassed two previous Republican speakers out of their chairs, run against McCarthy and, most importantly, was a co-conspirator in the January 6 coup attempt. For the speakership, Jordan faces Representative Steve Scalise, McCarthy’s majority leader, a get-along-go-along kind of guy, a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil industry, the candidate of K Street corporate lobbyists.Jordan had stonewalled a subpoena from the House January 6 committee to testify to his involvement. He had mobilized the “Stop the Steal” movement months before the election, was the key member of the House in White House meetings plotting how to stymie the certification of the electoral college count, texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on 5 January to put pressure on then vice-president Mike Pence to “call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all”, and on the phone strategizing with Trump throughout the fateful day. That evening, after the devastation, he led 139 representatives to object to certification.If section 3 of the 14th amendment, enacted after the civil war, barring former Confederates who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding federal office, applies to Trump, as two prominent conservative legal scholars have argued, then even more clearly and forcefully it applied to members of Congress, including Jim Jordan. After initially agreeing that Trump should be disqualified, Federalist Society co-founder Steven Calabresi, professor of law at Northwestern University, flipped, citing an article by Michael Mukasey, former attorney general under President George W Bush, that argued the provision did not cover the former president but only members of the Congress and other “officers of the United States”. However tendentious the argument, Mukasey – and Calabresi – had inadvertently made the case for disqualifying Jordan and the others who voted against certification on 6 January 2021 from serving in office at all.McCarthy’s fall has been another stepping stone for Trump’s return to power. Trump has announced he will go to the Capitol to intervene in the speaker contest and address the House Republican Conference. The last time he wanted to visit, to march with the January 6 mob, he was restrained by a secret service agent whom he allegedly grabbed by the throat. Trump would be the only member of the J6 prison choir to come to the Capitol since then. He had joined the jailed insurrectionists who had formed a singing group by overlaying his recital of the Pledge of Allegiance on their version of The Star Spangled Banner. Trump has promised “full pardons with an apology to many” of those convicted of rampaging through the Capitol’s corridors chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” Now, Trump says he would return there as “a unifier”.But, first, he took time to trash his former chief of staff Gen John Kelly, who confirmed on 3 October to CNN that Trump had disparaged wounded, captured and tortured soldiers as “suckers” and “losers”. Kelly offered a description of Trump: “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about … A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our constitution and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.”After endorsing Jim Jordan, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Kelly was “by far the dumbest of my Military people … He was incapable of doing a good job, it was too much for him, and I couldn’t stand the guy, so I fired him like a ‘dog.’”The “wannabe dictator”, as Gen Milley calls him, is without theory or fig leaf. As the trials bear down, as Trump contemplates the shark or electrocution, he projects his The Pit and the Pendulum terror into violent threats. The greater the fear he feels, the more violent the threats. He is stalked by Thanatos. “DEATH!”
Sidney Blumenthal is the author of The Permanent Campaign, published in 1980, and All the Power of the Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1856-1860, the third of a projected five volumes. He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton More

US party leaders in Washington have wasted no time in turning the Middle East conflict into a domestic political dispute, with senior Republicans accusing both the Biden administration and each other of having triggered the violence.The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, charged top Republicans with exploiting the crisis for their own political ends after several Republican presidential hopefuls accused the Biden administration of effectively causing the conflagration. “It’s deeply unfortunate that some are playing politics when so many lives have been lost and Israel remains under attack,” Blinken told CNN’s State of the Union.The reported presence of US citizens among the dead and captured from the Hamas attack on Israel is likely to inflame the partisan mud-slinging between Republican leaders and the White House. Several presidential candidates accused Joe Biden of being partly responsible for the crisis, blaming him for appeasing Iran through the recent deal involving the return of five detained Americans in exchange for the release of $6bn in frozen Iranian funds for humanitarian use.Blinken insisted on Sunday that none of the $6bn had yet been liquidated. “Not a single dollar has been spent from that account. The account is closely regulated by the US treasury department, so it can only be used for things like food, medicine, medical equipment – that’s what this is about,” he told CNN.Tim Scott, the Republican senator from South Carolina who is vying for his party’s presidential nomination, went so far as to accuse Biden personally of being “complicit” in the Hamas attack. “Biden’s weakness invited the attack, Biden’s negotiation funded the attack,” he said on social media.Nikki Haley, Donald Trump’s former UN ambassador and another 2024 White House hopeful, also turned on the US president, saying that Blinken’s assurance that the $6bn had not yet been released was duplicitous. “Hamas knows, and Iran knows, they’re moving money around as we speak, because they know $6bn is going to be released. That’s the reality,” she said.The sniping was not limited to cross-party wrangling. Top Republicans also attacked each other over the Israeli crisis.The former vice-president and presidential hopeful Mike Pence seized the opportunity to take a pot shot at his former running mate Trump as well as two other rivals in the Republican presidential contest.Pence told CNN’s State of the Union that the Middle East violence was partly catalysed by their calls for America to withdraw from the world stage. He pointed his finger specifically at the former US president, the entrepreneur, and the Florida governor respectively who have raised doubts about US funding to support Ukraine.“This is what happens when we have leading voices like Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis signaling retreat from America’s role as leader of the free world. What happened in Ukraine was an unprovoked invasion by Russia, what happened this weekend was an unprovoked invasion by Hamas into Israel,” he said.Top Republicans also lambasted their party peers for the vacuum in leadership in the House of Representatives at such a critical moment. Last week Kevin McCarthy was ousted as speaker of the House by the hard-right flank of the party, and a replacement has yet to be found.Another presidential hopeful, the former governor of New Jersey Chris Christie, said that the outbreak of fighting in the Middle East had made a bad business on Capitol Hill worse. “The actions taken by some members of my party were wholly irresponsible without this going on, they’re now putting an even brighter light on the irresponsibility of not having someone in place,” he told ABC’s This Week.Michael McCaul, the Republican chair of the House foreign affairs committee, also lamented the absence of leadership. “It wasn’t my idea to oust the speaker,” he told CNN.“I thought it was dangerous. What kind of message are we sending to our adversaries when we can’t govern, when we are dysfunctional, when we don’t even have a speaker of the House. That’s a terrible message.” More