Evelyn Reynolds

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    Dark Brandon popping off: is Joe Biden’s ‘cringe’ TikTok helping or hurting him?

    In Joe Biden’s TikTok debut, timed to the Super Bowl in February, the president answered rapid-fire questions like “Chiefs or Niners?” (neither, he picked the Eagles because his wife’s a “Philly girl”) and flashed the Dark Brandon meme. He got more than 10m views, so by pure metrics, the video was no flop. But to use one of TikTok’s favorite disses, for many gen Z viewers it felt “cringe” – even pandering. Worse still, the TikTok, captioned “lol hey guys”, made the rounds after Israel struck Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza strip. Biden’s jokes infuriated users who flooded the post with the comment “WHAT ABOUT RAFAH?”“I don’t want my president to be a TikTok influencer,” read the headline of one USA Today editorial. One (actual) influencer told CNN the president’s attempt at meme-ing felt “performative”. A warm welcome to the app, it was not. But Biden’s team kept posting.Biden’s TikTok account, Biden-Harris HQ, has put out more than 150 videos since February, notching over 3.9m likes and 313,000 followers. That’s more than Maxwell Frost (570,000 likes, 96,000 followers), who became the first gen Z member of Congress in 2023, but a fraction of Bernie Sanders’ 11.4m likes or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 987,000 followers on the app. Congressman Jeff Jackson, a Republican from North Carolina with 2.2 million TikTok followers, is one of the most visible politicians on the app. His posts almost always hit more than a million views – only 11 of Biden’s videos have hit more than a million views.View image in fullscreenIf the idea of a president trying to go viral on TikTok seems frivolous, consider what’s at stake for Biden, who’s running a tight election race against Donald Trump. Gen Z was crucial in staving off a predicted “red wave” during the 2022 midterms, and Biden hasn’t exactly locked down the demographic for 2024: a Harvard poll from April found that Biden leads Trump by eight percentage points among 18- to 28-year olds, down from the 23-point lead Biden had at the same point in the 2020 election. The president’s continued support for Israel in the war on Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 people, is eroding youth support – especially as pro-Palestinian protests spread across US college campuses.TikTok is the most downloaded app among 18- to 24-year olds, and many young people count it as their main source of news. Is Biden winning over young voters by meeting them where they are?Dunking on TrumpHardly any Biden-Harris HQ TikToks show Biden awkwardly interacting with pop culture – not after what happened with his Super Bowl post. Instead, the account has hit its stride focusing on policy issues and dunking on conservatives.More than half of Biden’s TikTok content reminds viewers of Trump’s worst gaffes, such as the times Trump suggested that Americans inject bleach to ward off the coronavirus, or when he stared directly at the 2017 eclipse. The fight to protect abortion rights also features prominently. One post pulls a quote from a recent press conference, during which the former president bragged about ending Roe v Wade. Another reminds viewers that a Trump-endorsed candidate for Michigan state senate seat, Jacky Eubanks, called for banning birth control and gay marriage.“It’s very clear to me that Biden’s primary goals on TikTok are in line with his digital goals overall: to highlight and remind folks how dangerous Trump is, and to highlight the accomplishments that Biden has made that no one knows about,” said Josh Klemons, a Democratic digital strategist.View image in fullscreenNoting that many of TikTok’s younger users “didn’t live through Trump’s first presidency as an adult”, Klemons stressed that it was important Biden use his TikTok to zero in on the former president’s catastrophic track record. TikTok is a largely progressive platform, where anti-Trump content does well, and anti-Trump posts are among Biden’s most-watched TikToks. (They’re also an invitation to trolls: top comments on the bleach post, including “Biden sucks” and “Ban Joe Biden”, are all from pro-Trump accounts.)Many Biden TikToks have hundreds of thousands of views, with videos going moderately viral by TikTok standards. That’s not bad reach, but it could be better.A genuinely moving Biden TikTok, seemingly pulled from a campaign ad, shows a man named Bob approaching the president in a restaurant and shaking his hand in thanks for lowering the cost of insulin. It showcases Biden’s well-honed ability to connect one-on-one with voters … but it has only 224k views. Compare that with someone like Jackson, whose most recent TikTok on the war in Ukraine earned more than 1m views.One of Biden-Harris HQ’s highest-performing videos of late pulls a clip from an interview the president did with Howard Stern, in which he described Trump’s response to the January 6 riot. “When they were storming the Capitol … he was sitting in that dining area off the Oval Office for three hours… He said nothing … It was almost criminal.” The clip has 233,000 views – not a flop, but not a rousing success either.In another TikTok, the Biden campaign reposted a video of Steve Bannon talking about Project 2025, an extensive collection of proposals intended to reshape the federal government in support of a Republican agenda if Trump wins the election. Bannon says a second Trump administration would put his opponents in prison “on the evening after we’ve won”. The Biden campaign captioned the clip: “Project 2025 deserves more attention.”It’s a good caption – and Project 2025 does get attention on TikTok, usually in posts that do better than Biden’s. A recent TikTok from the voting advocacy group NowThis Impact, which has 3.3 million followers, also shared information about Project 2025. That video got more than 3.6m views. Biden’s received 43,000, while another Project 2025-themed TikTok from Biden, featuring Lara Trump, received just under half a million viewers.Bringing in backupThough Biden appears in some of his account’s TikToks – usually dragging Trump – the account isn’t all about him. (Perhaps a lesson learned from Hillary Clinton, who used social media during the 2016 race as if she were typing the tweets herself.) Instead, it often taps surrogates to help make Biden’s case. In one TikTok, Sanders speaks about supporting Biden despite not agreeing with him on every issue – a line the campaign no doubt hopes will land with gen Z voters who are against the war in Gaza. AOC touts Biden’s recent record on the climate crisis, and members of the Kennedy family filmed a video saying they support Biden, a swipe against the third-party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr.View image in fullscreenBiden also posted a clip of Frost, the token gen Z politician, reminding his peers in Congress that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had spoken at an event held by white supremacists in 2022. “Someone like Maxwell Frost is going to hit differently [to that audience],” Klemons said. He also pulls in young viewers who might not realize they’re watching what is effectively a Biden campaign ad.Other Biden TikToks smartly mimic influencer content, with what appear to be younger campaign staffers speaking directly to camera about a abortion, immigration or, again, Trump gaffes. “You’ll never believe what Trump is doing in the courtroom,” one such host says in an intro that cuts to a screenshot of a New York Times report on the former president “struggling to stay awake” during his New York trial.“I like how they use younger people from their campaign to be some of the messengers,” said Ashley Aylward, a research manager at the gen Z-focused, DC-based consulting group Hit Strategies. “I think they should lean into that more, and just kind of let [the young people] take it all over. They could make ‘a day in the life working for the Biden campaign’, or a video that humanizes these people and shows that voting for this administration isn’t just voting for Biden, but it’s a group of diverse voices.”Aylward also recommended the account post fewer videos of Biden stumping – recent TikToks that feature Biden himself were filmed during campaign appearances.“If someone isn’t interested in politics, that’s not going to end up on their For You page, and if it does, they’ll scroll by it as soon as they see a podium,” she said. “But if they see a younger person doing a day in the life, or talking through a current event, it’s a smart way to reel people in without them even knowing they’re watching a campaign video.”And though it’s not quite a proxy, Biden’s TikTok has leaned into his so-called Dark Brandon persona, a laser-eyed character that riffs upon a pro-Trump meme. When Biden makes a joke at Trump’s expense during a speech, that’s supposedly Dark Brandon “popping off” or “dragging Trump”, as recent TikToks put it.“I actually do love the humor and using Dark Brandon to show that he can make jokes about himself,” Aylward said. “The account uses young people language in the TikTok caption, like ‘Biden cooks Trump,’ but they aren’t having Biden use the language himself. They’re showing this all from a young person’s point of view, engaging in the language they use.”Whether the effect is cringey or not, it seems, depends on one’s taste.Silence on Gaza and a possible TikTok banBiden’s TikTok account has faced more serious criticisms than cringey-ness. One of young people’s biggest concerns is the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza. In the comment section of his videos, users frequently ask Biden to engage with the topic or to order a ceasefire, but the account has remained silent on the issue.“Biden’s TikTok is clearly a one-way form of communication,” said Yini Zhang, an assistant professor at the University at Buffalo who studies social media and politics. “They’re sticking to some clearly thought-out talking points. They have issues they want to avoid, like Gaza, and the TikTok page is not as interactive as we often think it might be.”Another issue is the irony of Biden’s team putting resources toward TikTok when just last week, Biden signed a measure that could see the app banned in the US. (TikTok remains blocked on most government devices, per a 2022 law.)“It’s a funny position for him to be in,” Klemons said. “I can’t think of a situation that’s similar, where somebody is actively using a platform that they’re actively trying to get rid of. But they need to be where the people are.”It would take at least nine months for the app to disappear if it does at all, so Biden can milk the platform for the entire election cycle. Trump, who does not have a TikTok account, is currently opposed to a TikTok ban. (He’s posting furiously on Truth Social, where, funnily enough, Biden-Harris HQ also runs an account.) In fact, many politicians don’t even touch TikTok due to security concerns.TikTok’s allure has always been its supposed authenticity, with the most popular personas on the app appearing real, raw, unfiltered – even if many of their videos are highly scripted. “They want to project this persona of being authentic in a way that maximizes their appeal, but they also have to be careful in what they say,” Zhang said.Biden is no different. His TikTok follows the trends of the platform. His memes aren’t groundbreaking, but they’re not totally embarrassing either. His stats are middling, and he avoids engaging directly with young people on tough issues. Viewers are constantly reminded of his greatest hits, a persona he’s cultivated through decades in the public eye, but ultimately, the account is just another campaign mouthpiece. A TikTok alone will not clinch an election. More

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    Biden was silenced by criticism from families of troops killed in Kabul, book says. ‘Sir, are you still there?’

    Joe Biden was stunned into silence when he was told families of US service members killed in Kabul in August 2021 said that when the bodies were returned and the president met grieving relatives, he spent too much time talking about the death of his own son, Beau.“I paused for the president to respond,” Jen Psaki, then White House press secretary, writes in a new book.“The silence that followed was a bit too long. I worried for a moment that our connection had been lost.“‘Sir, are you still there?’ I asked.”Psaki left the White House in 2022, joining MSNBC. Her book, Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House and the World, will be published in the US next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Biden ordered the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, after nearly 20 years of war, in April 2021. On 26 August, amid chaos in Kabul, 13 US service members and 170 Afghans were killed when a suicide bomber attacked an airport gate.On 29 August, the bodies of the Americans arrived at Dover air force base in Delaware, Biden’s home state. The president and the first lady, Jill Biden, attended.“Of all the president’s duties,” Psaki writes, “this is high on the list of most heartbreaking. For President Biden in particular, it stirred feelings of his own despair about the death of his son Joseph Biden III, aka Beau.”Beau Biden, a former attorney general of Delaware, went to Iraq with the national guard. He died of brain cancer in 2015, aged just 46.Biden has questioned whether “burn pits” at US bases in Iraq might have caused his son’s cancer, championing legislation to help affected veterans. In her book, Psaki cites World Health Organization research which says burn pit emissions contain substances “known to be carcinogenic to humans”.Psaki also notes how Biden endured the deaths in 1972 of his first wife, Neilia Biden, and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi, in a car crash in which Beau and his brother Hunter were critically injured. The president “often refers to these unique and disparate, but nevertheless unbearable, experiences of grief and loss as a way to connect with others”, Psaki writes.But Biden’s visit with the grieving families at Dover stirred up significant controversy, and political attacks.Psaki describes and dismisses as “misinformation” the claim, boosted by rightwing media, that Biden looked at his watch as the transfer of the bodies went on. Citing media fact checks, the former press secretary says footage shows Biden did so only after the remains had left the airport tarmac.Complaints that Biden spoke too much about his own son were tougher to deal with, Psaki writes, particularly when the New York Times “pounced” on the story.As it was part of her job to warn Biden about “unflattering” and “negative” stories, Psaki called him, though this instance was tougher than usual because “Beau was rarely, if ever, the focus of a negative story”.“It was one thing to tell the president the media was planning to criticise his Covid response,” Psaki writes, “and quite another to say the media was planning to criticise the way he speaks about his son, who passed away tragically young.”Still, she writes, Jill Biden had previously told her: “We’ve been through a lot. And we ask that you always be honest with us. Always tell us what’s coming.”Psaki called Biden and warned him about the Times story, which would say he “referenced Beau’s death repeatedly while meeting with families of the soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan last week” and “quote a number of family members making critical comments”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen the president finally answered her, Psaki says, he did so “in a softer voice than usual.“I thought I was helping them. Hearing about how other people went through loss always helps me,” Biden said.Psaki says Biden paused again, then said: “Thanks for telling me. Anything else?”The Times story duly appeared – as did others like it.One bereaved father, Mark Schmitz, told the Times he showed the president a picture of his son, L/Cpl Jared Schmitz, who was 20, and said: “Don’t forget his name.”“But Mr Schmitz was confused by what happened next,” the Times wrote. “The president turned the conversation to his oldest son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 … for Mr Schmitz, another father consumed by his grief, it was ‘too much’ to bear.”“I respect anybody that lost somebody,” Schmitz said, “but it wasn’t an appropriate time.”Psaki also describes how she herself dealt with the controversy.In the White House briefing room, she told reporters: “While [Biden’s] son did not lose his life directly in combat as [those killed in Kabul did] – or directly at the hands of a terrorist, as these families did … he knows firsthand there’s nothing you can say, nothing you can convey, to ease the pain and to ease what these families are going through.”Psaki also said Biden was “deeply impacted by these family members who he met … talk[ing] about them frequently in meetings and [the] incredible service and sacrifice of their sons and daughters. That is not going to change their suffering, but I wanted to convey that still.” More

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    Trump trial update, terrifying Time interview and a Republican dog killer – podcast

    This week, Donald Trump gave an interview to Time magazine confirming the fears many have about what he would do were he to win back the White House in November. He found time to lay out his vision of a Trump presidency 2.0 despite having to appear in a New York court for a case that this week cost the former president even more money.
    On top of that, a potential Trump vice-president admitted she killed her puppy, Republicans attempted to remove the party’s House speaker – again – and a wave of Gaza protests took place on US university campuses.
    Jonathan Freedland and Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone magazine discuss what it all means for the 2024 election

    How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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    Biden calls Japan and India ‘xenophobic’: ‘They don’t want immigrants’

    Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the US on immigration.The remarks, at a campaign fundraising event Wednesday evening, came just three weeks after the White House hosted Fumio Kishida, the Japanese prime minister, for a lavish official visit, during which the two leaders celebrated what Biden called an “unbreakable alliance,” particularly on global security matters.The White House welcomed Indian PM Narenda Modi for a state visit last summer.Japan is a critical US ally. And India, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, is a vital partner in the Indo-Pacific.At a hotel fundraiser where the donor audience was largely Asian American, Biden said the upcoming US election was about “freedom, America and democracy” and that the nation’s economy was thriving “because of you and many others”.“Why? Because we welcome immigrants,” Biden said. “Look, think about it. Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants.”The president added: “Immigrants are what makes us strong. Not a joke. That’s not hyperbole, because we have an influx of workers who want to be here and want to contribute.”There was no immediate reaction from either the Japanese or Indian governments. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Biden was making a broader point about the US posture on immigration.“Our allies and partners know well in tangible ways how President Biden values them, their friendship, their cooperation and the capabilities that they bring across the spectrum on a range of issues, not just security related,” Kirby said Thursday morning when asked about Biden’s “xenophobic” remarks. “They understand how much he completely and utterly values the idea of alliances and partnerships.”Biden’s comments came at the start of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and he was introduced at the fundraiser by Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, one of two senators of Asian American descent. She is a national co-chair for his reelection campaign.Japan has acknowledged issues with its shrinking population, and the number of babies born in the country in 2023 fell for the eighth straight year, according to data released in February. Kishida has called the low birth rate in Japan “the biggest crisis Japan faces” and the country has long been known for a more closed-door stance on immigration, although Kishida’s government has, in recent years, shifted its policies to make it easier for foreign workers to come to Japan.Meanwhile, India’s population has swelled to become the world’s largest, with the United Nations saying it was on track to reach 1.425 billion. Its population also skews younger.Earlier this year, India enacted a new citizenship law that fast-tracks naturalization for Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians who have come to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.But it excludes Muslims, who are a majority in all three nations.It’s the first time that India has set religious criteria for citizenship. More

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    Biden campaign condemns Trump’s refusal to commit to honoring November election results – as it happened

    Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has come out swinging against Donald Trump’s refusal in an interview yesterday to commit to accepting the results of the presidential election in November.From spokesman James Singer:
    President Biden has said, ‘You can’t love your country only when you win.’ But for Donald Trump, his campaign for revenge and retribution reigns supreme.
    In his own words, he is promising to rule as a dictator on ‘day one’, use the military against the American people, punish those who stand against him, condone violence done on his behalf and put his own quest for power ahead of what is best for America.
    Bottom line: Trump is a danger to the constitution and a threat to our democracy. The American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence and his thirst for revenge.
    In a surprise address from the White House, Joe Biden condemned violence on university campuses where pro-Palestine demonstrations are taking place, while saying the unrest would not spur him to change his policies in the Middle East. Meanwhile, his campaign hit out at Donald Trump, who yesterday held a rally in swing state Wisconsin and refused to commit to accepting the results of the November presidential election. Trump also repeated his debunked claim that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.Here’s what else happened today:
    Biden met with the families of four law enforcement officers killed while serving a warrant in North Carolina last week, as well as those wounded in the shooting.
    Trump stayed away from the issue of abortion in his Wisconsin appearance, which Democrats have used to direct voter anger against Republicans in recent elections there and in other states.
    In addition to Wisconsin, Trump also visited fellow Great Lakes swing state Michigan, where his fans offered a reprieve from the dreary New York courthouse in which he has lately been spending a lot of time.
    The campus protests are the latest complication to Biden’s re-election chances, after he sparked the ire of key Democratic voting groups by backing Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
    Napping in court? Not me, Trump said, despite reports to the contrary.
    Perhaps you have heard that South Dakota’s Republican governor Kristi Noem killed a dog (the Guardian broke the story, after all!). Noem now says she had no choice, but blamed “fake news” (must be referring to us) for pushing the story that may have sunk her chances of becoming Donald Trump’s running mate, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota whose chance of being Donald Trump’s presidential running mate was widely deemed over after she published a description of shooting dead a dog and a goat, claimed reports of the story were “fake news” but also that the dog in question, Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, was “extremely dangerous” and deserved her fate.“You know how the fake news works,” Noem told Fox News. “They leave out some or most of the facts of a story, they put the worst spin on it. And that’s what’s happened in this case.“I hope people really do buy this book and they find out the truth of the story because the truth of the story is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous.”The Guardian first reported Noem’s story of killing Cricket the dog and an unnamed, un-castrated male goat. The story is contained in Noem’s book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.In the book, Noem says her description of killing a dog and a goat illustrates her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” in politics as well as on her South Dakota farm – a defence she repeated before her Fox News interview.Noem says Cricket ruined a pheasant hunt and then killed a neighbour’s chickens, all the while presenting “the picture of pure joy”.Legal proceedings can be dull, sometimes so dull they put you to sleep – even if you happen to be a former president.On the first day of his trial in New York, Donald Trump appeared to shut his eyes for an extended period of time. That was a couple of weeks ago now, but he just got around to denying doing so, in a post on Truth Social:
    Contrary to the FAKE NEWS MEDIA, I don’t fall asleep during the Crooked D.A.’s Witch Hunt, especially not today. I simply close my beautiful blue eyes, sometimes, listen intensely, and take it ALL in!!!
    Here’s more on the alleged nap:Yesterday, Donald Trump was appearing before crowds in Michigan and Wisconsin – two swing states that will put him well on his way to the White House, if he wins them in November.Today, he’s back at the defense table in a Manhattan courtroom, where his lawyers are cross-examining Keith Davidson, a former attorney for Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor at the center of the case against him for allegedly falsifying business records.Follow our live blog for the latest from the trial:Fun fact about Joe Biden: the 2020 election was the first one in which he faced a sustained campaign of negative television advertising, the New York Times reports.And it goes without saying that 2024 will be his second. In a look back at his lengthy political career, the Times recounts what it was like for the Republicans who attempted to oust Biden from his Senate seat in Delaware, over the 36 years he represented the state.Biden was something of juggernaut, his ex-opponents recount, both personally, and in the campaign infrastructure he wielded:
    In Delaware, Mr. Biden was so well known and, in his early years in office, had such a wellspring of sympathy from voters after the tragic crash that killed his first wife and daughter, that no rival ever mounted a sustained case that he should not be re-elected. For years, bumper stickers promoting his re-election just said ‘Joe,’ while opponents lost with an array of long-forgotten slogans.
    ‘I don’t think he ever broke a sweat once he was an incumbent,’ said Jane Brady, a Republican who lost to Mr. Biden by 27 points in 1990.
    The only negative ad run against Mr. Biden between 1978 and 2008, according to the University of Oklahoma’s archive, is one that his campaign would most likely embrace today. That 30-second spot reminded viewers that President Ronald Reagan endorsed John Burris, Mr. Biden’s Republican challenger in 1984, while Mr. Biden backed the unpopular Democratic presidential nominee, Walter Mondale.
    The Biden of today often makes gaffes, to the chagrin of his supporters, and the delight of his enemies. Here’s an example of a recent one, which was seized on by the conservative media:
    Just last week, Mr. Biden prompted the crowd at an endorsement event to chant, ‘Four more years!’ and then added ‘pause’ as it appeared to have been written into his teleprompter, an episode that drew much mocking in conservative news media and quiet forehead-slapping among Democrats.
    Back in the day, the Times reports such things did not happen:
    Mr. Biden’s opponent in 1996 and 2002 was Ray Clatworthy, an entrepreneur who owned restaurants and local Christian radio stations. During a 1996 televised debate, Mr. Clatworthy accused Mr. Biden of raising taxes while voting to increase his own salary and accused him of ‘attempting to portray himself as a conservative’ in an election year.
    Mr. Biden spoke quickly and precisely, without entering the verbal cul-de-sacs endemic to many of his presidential speeches 28 years later.
    Mr. Biden sought to pin down Mr. Clatworthy on his anti-abortion stance and then delivered a clear statement of his own views on the issue after Mr. Clatworthy accused him of flip-flopping to endorse abortion rights in his 1988 presidential campaign.
    ‘My position has been consistent from the very beginning,’ Mr. Biden said of his abortion stance. ‘I believe government should stay out – no constitutional amendment, no public funding.’
    Joe Biden is now in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he is meeting with the families of four law enforcement officers killed and four others who were wounded while serving a warrant last week.The shooting was the deadliest attack against police in the United States since 2016. Here’s more about what happened:As Donald Trump rallied elsewhere in Wisconsin, demonstrators convened outside the venue that will host the Republican National Convention this summer to decry his vow to bring back hardline immigration policies if elected, the Guardian’s Alice Herman reports:Led by a mariachi band, hundreds of demonstrators on Wednesday morning marched across Milwaukee to the Fiserv Forum – the home of the Milwaukee Bucks and, in July, the venue of the Republican National Convention.The rally, organized by the immigrant and workers’ rights group Voces de la Frontera, is an annual event, but in 2024 it holds particular weight. The focus of the rally extended beyond immigration, to fear of authoritarianism under Republican candidate Donald Trump and critique of Joe Biden’s handling of the US role in Israel and Gaza.This year, May Day also fell on the same day as a Trump campaign event in Waukesha, which organizers seized on to denounce Trump’s immigration policy and call on Biden to use his executive authority to adopt protections for undocumented workers.“We reject [Trump’s] political platform, which promises dictatorship, deportations and separation of families,” Voces de la Frontera executive director Christine Neumann-Ortiz told the crowd on Wednesday, to applause.While Donald Trump kept mum about abortion in a visit to to the swing state of Wisconsin, he was far more open in a pair of interviews with Time in which he described in depth what he would like to do if returned to the White House. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington has more:Donald Trump has warned that Joe Biden and his family could face multiple criminal prosecutions once he leaves office unless the US supreme court awards Trump immunity in his own legal battles with the criminal justice system.In a sweeping interview with Time magazine, Trump painted a startling picture of his second term, from how he would wield the justice department to hinting he may let states monitor pregnant women to enforce abortion laws.Trump made the threat against the Biden family in an interview with Eric Cortellessa of Time, in which he shared the outlines of what the magazine called “an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world”.Trump made a direct connection between his threat to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bidens should he win re-election in November with the case currently before the supreme court over his own presidential immunity.Asked whether he intends to “go after” the Bidens should he gain a second term in the White House, Trump replied: “It depends what happens with the supreme court.”A potentially landmark lawsuit by youth activists against the federal government over its role in fueling the climate crisis was struck down by an appeals court, on the request of the Biden administration, the Guardian’s Dharna Noor reports:A federal appeals court on Wednesday evening granted the Biden administration’s request to strike down a landmark federal youth climate case, outraging climate advocates.“This is a tragic and unjust ruling,” said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit.The lawsuit, Juliana v United States, was filed by 21 young people from Oregon who alleged the federal government’s role in fueling the climate crisis violates their constitutional rights.The Wednesday order from a panel of three Trump-appointed judges on the ninth circuit court of appeals will require a US district court judge to dismiss the case for lack of standing, with no opening to amend the complaint.The decision affirmed an emergency petition filed by the justice department in February arguing that “the government will be irreparably harmed” if it is forced to spend time and resources litigating the Juliana case. It’s a measure the justice department should never have taken, said Olson.“The Biden administration was wrong to use an emergency measure to stop youth plaintiffs from having their day in court,” she said in a statement. “The real emergency is the climate emergency.”In a surprise address from the White House, Joe Biden condemned violence on university campuses where pro-Palestine demonstrations are taking place, while saying the unrest would not spur him to change his policies in the Middle East. Meanwhile, his campaign hit out at Donald Trump, who yesterday held a rally in swing state Wisconsin and refused to commit to accepting the results of the November presidential election. He also repeated his debunked claim that the 2020 election was marred by fraud.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
    Trump stayed away from the issue of abortion in his Wisconsin appearance, which Democrats have used to direct voter anger against Republicans in recent elections there and in other states.
    In addition to Wisconsin, Trump also visited fellow Great Lakes swing state Michigan, where his fans offered a reprieve from the dreary New York courthouse in which he has lately been spending a lot of time.
    The campus protests are the latest complication to Biden’s re-election chances, after he sparked the ire of key Democratic voting groups by backing Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
    Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has come out swinging against Donald Trump’s refusal in an interview yesterday to commit to accepting the results of the presidential election in November.From spokesman James Singer:
    President Biden has said, ‘You can’t love your country only when you win.’ But for Donald Trump, his campaign for revenge and retribution reigns supreme.
    In his own words, he is promising to rule as a dictator on ‘day one’, use the military against the American people, punish those who stand against him, condone violence done on his behalf and put his own quest for power ahead of what is best for America.
    Bottom line: Trump is a danger to the constitution and a threat to our democracy. The American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence and his thirst for revenge.
    Joe Biden is already facing heat from some Democratic voters for his support of Israel as it invades Gaza following the 7 October attack. As the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reported earlier this week, the unrest on college campuses targeted at America’s closest Middle East ally could present the latest complication to his campaign for another four years in the White House:The policies of Joe Biden and Democrats towards Israel, which have prompted thousands of students across the country to protest, could affect the youth vote for Biden and hurt his re-election chances, experts have warned, in what is already expected to be a tight election.Thousands of students at universities across the US have joined with pro-Palestine rallies and, most recently, encampments, as Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 people.Some of the protests began as a call to encourage universities to ditch investments in companies that provide weapons and equipment to the Israeli military. But as the Biden administration has continued to largely support Israel, the president has increasingly become a focus of criticism from young people. Polling shows that young Americans’ support for Biden has been chipped away since 2020.With Biden narrowly trailing Trump in several key swing states, it’s a voting bloc the president can ill afford to lose.“The real threat to Biden is that younger voters, especially college-educated voters, won’t turn out for him in the election,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history of education at the University of Pennsylvania.“I wouldn’t expect that the protesters on campuses today are going to vote for Trump, almost none of them will. That’s not the danger here. The danger is much simpler: that they simply won’t vote.”Joe Biden spoke about the nationwide protests against Israel at college campuses after police arrested more than 100 people at the University of California, Los Angeles.Follow our live blog for more on the ongoing demonstration wave:In his brief speech on the pro-Palestine protests on college campuses, Joe Biden cast himself as a defender of free speech rights, but said the demonstrations should not disrupt students’ learning.“Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others, so students can finish the semester and their college education. Look, it’s basically a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education, right to get a degree, right to walk across campus safely without fear of being attacked,” the president said.He later added:
    There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism, or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech, or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s not American.
    Biden concluded with:
    As president, I will always defend free speech. And I will always be just as strong in standing up for the rule of law. That’s my responsibility to you, the American people, my obligation to the constitution. More

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    Biden defends right to protest but says ‘order must prevail’ amid college unrest

    Joe Biden on Thursday defended the right to protest but insisted that “order must prevail” as college campuses across the US continued to face unrest amid pro-Palestine demonstrations against the war in Gaza and universities’ investments in companies that support Israel’s government.The US president has stayed mostly quiet about the current phase of intensified protests at dozens of colleges coast to coast, from the Ivy League to small public institutions in the last two weeks, which has prompted the use of outside police on some campuses in controversial crackdowns.“Dissent is essential for democracy,” Biden said at the White House. “But dissent must never lead to disorder.”Biden said he did not support calls to send in national guard troops, which prominent Republican lawmakers have demanded he do.He also said that the protests had not prompted him to reconsider his approach to the Israeli military offensive in Gaza aimed that followed the attack led by Hamas on southern Israel last 7 October but, since, has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians. The Democratic president has occasionally criticized Israel’s conduct but continued to supply it with weapons.Biden admonished protesters using what he termed “violent” methods, which included a broad sweep.“Violent protests are not protected. Peaceful protest is,” he said, adding: “There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.”And he said: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campus, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation … none of this is a peaceful protest.”He added, however, that the right to free speech must be protected in the US.“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people and squash dissent … but neither are we a lawless country,” he said.Biden’s previous public comment on the protests came more than a week ago, when he condemned “antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians”. Some dismayed at America’s vigorous support for Israel have warned they may not vote for Biden and experts also warned that many younger voters could sour on the Democrats, a little more than six months out from the presidential election.On 19 May Biden is scheduled to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse University in Atlanta, a historically Black college where the president’s imminent visit is causing controversy.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    Kristi Noem calls dog shooting report ‘fake news’ but insists on need to kill animal

    Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota whose chance of being Donald Trump’s presidential running mate was widely deemed over after she published a description of shooting dead a dog and a goat, claimed reports of the story were “fake news” but also that the dog in question, Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, was “extremely dangerous” and deserved her fate.“You know how the fake news works,” Noem told Fox News. “They leave out some or most of the facts of a story, they put the worst spin on it. And that’s what’s happened in this case.“I hope people really do buy this book and they find out the truth of the story because the truth of the story is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous.”The Guardian first reported Noem’s story of killing Cricket the dog and an unnamed, un-castrated male goat. The story is contained in Noem’s book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.In the book, Noem says her description of killing a dog and a goat illustrates her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” in politics as well as on her South Dakota farm – a defence she repeated before her Fox News interview.Noem says Cricket ruined a pheasant hunt then killed a neighbour’s chickens, all the while presenting “the picture of pure joy”.“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket tried to bite her and proved herself “untrainable … dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”Noem describes killing Cricket in a gravel pit, then deciding to do the same to the goat because it was “nasty and mean”, smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid”, and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and spoiling their clothes.It took two shots – separated by a walk back to her truck to fetch more shotgun shells – to kill the goat, Noem writes.Speaking to Fox News, Noem did not mention the goat.Of Cricket the dog, she said: “It had come to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive. We were her second chance and the day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock that were part of our neighbours. She attacked me and it was a hard decision.”Repeating her claim that the story illustrated her willingness to make tough decisions, Noem claimed to have done the same through the Covid pandemic by “keeping my state open”, a stance she said invited media attacks.Figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do show South Dakota with a relatively low Covid death rate, with 71.2 deaths per 100,000 people, for a total of 776.Noem’s Fox News host, Sean Hannity, tried to compare the governor’s decision to shoot Cricket with the case of Commander, a german shepherd owned by Joe Biden who was sent away from the White House – not shot – after being found to have been involved in more than 20 incidents of biting.Hannity then asked: “You say here you said you follow the law in your book. What is the law?”Noem said: “Virtually every state has a law in place that says the animals that attack and kill livestock can be put down in situations like this.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA Guardian review of South Dakota state law found that Noem could have committed a misdemeanour, both by failing to control Cricket when she attacked and killed a neighbour’s chickens and by killing the dog later, on her own property.A spokesperson for Noem did not respond to a request for comment on that point.Noem continued: “Farmers and ranchers, they expect it. They know that once an animal like this starts killing and starts killing just because they enjoy it, that is a very dangerous animal. And that was the situation that we were dealing with.“And I’m a dog lover. I’ve trained dogs for years, I’ve been around hundreds of them, of course. And so this was a tough situation and very difficult. But that’s what happens in rural America many times.”Noem has also discussed a recent decision on her farm to put down three elderly horses – Lucy, Dunny and Tibbs – sharing pictures of the process including a horse standing in a freshly dug pit.“These weren’t just horses,” Noem told Newsmax in March. “These were family members … they raised my girls.”On Fox News on Wednesday, she said: “I hope people do read the facts of the story [about Cricket and the goat] and truly understand that I’m a mom, and at the time I had small children and a lot of small kiddos that worked around our business and people and I wanted to make sure that they were safe and that dogs that have this kind of a problem that have been to training for months and still kill for fun, they are extremely dangerous and a responsible owner does what they need to do and what the law will allow.”On the page, Noem’s story of the day she shot Cricket the dog and the unnamed goat – titled “Bad Day to be a Goat” – features the arrival of a school bus and the emergence of her daughter, Kennedy, who by the governor’s own accounting would then have been about seven years old.“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes, “and asked, ‘Hey, where’s Cricket?’” More

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    Sweat review – chilling vision of a divided, alienated America

    Although principally set in 2000, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning 2015 play anticipated Donald Trump’s presidency with its portrayal of a divided, frustrated and disfranchised community in the deindustrialising city of Reading, Pennsylvania. With Trump campaigning for a second term, the Royal Exchange’s revival is timely. Jade Lewis’s production ultimately presents a chilling vision of how job insecurity can destroy one’s sense of self and lead to the poisonous othering stoked by Trump.The stage design by Good Teeth studio has huge slabs suspended from the rafters, powerfully suggesting an industrial landscape hoisted away overnight. This in effect is what happens to the play’s steelworkers who, amid a dispute with management over pay cuts, are locked out of their plant, with their machines and jobs destined for Mexico as a result of the contentious North American Free Trade Agreement whose renegotiation was a Trump campaign pledge.This conflict is heightened by a familial dimension akin to Human Resources, the 1999 film by the late Laurent Cantet in which a management trainee is embroiled in job cuts that affect his father on the shop floor. Nottage’s play centres on African American Cynthia (Carla Henry) who works at the factory with her son Chris (Abdul Sessay) and has finally crossed the floor to become a supervisor only to encounter resentment, some of it racially fuelled, from her friends. Suspicious of her new colleagues (“I wonder if they gave me this job on purpose. Pin a target on me”), Cynthia is also alienated by her former neighbours at the machines.View image in fullscreenSimilarly targeted is Colombian American Oscar (Marcello Cruz) who works at the local bar and crosses the picket line to pick up factory shifts. He is labelled a traitor by workers whose union has long been a closed shop to him and the story, framed by the aftermath of a violent climax, has a lucid sense that blustering calls for solidarity usually conceal exceptions. Nottage gave the play an epigraph from Langston Hughes’ Let America Be America Again, in which the poet declares the country “never was America to me”.With its sparse, barely stocked bar-room design, Lewis’s production perfectly conveys the play’s desolation – embodied by Cynthia’s ex, the drug-addicted Brucie (Chris Jack), one of the bar’s regulars – but missing is the atmospheric, authentic sense of place that marked Lynette Linton’s blistering 2018 staging at the Donmar Warehouse. It’s not just in the occasionally wavering accents or oddly pristine costumes but in the bonds between the characters, which need to be more fully established for the play’s second half to detonate. While the cast convey the bodily toll of work, a visceral sense of physicality is missing in their confrontations. Further use of the revolve stage, which heightens some scenes, might have prevented the energy seeping from other exchanges.If it never finds the right rhythm, there are powerful performances, especially from Henry as the weary yet steadfast Cynthia, Pooky Quesnel as her rancorous friend Tracey and Cruz as the observant Oscar who captures the lived-in tone of Hughes’ poem, which evades Maga fantasy nostalgia in its call to simply “make America again”.
    At the Royal Exchange, Manchester, until 25 May More