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    Only one group can actually persuade Biden to exit the race: his rich donors | Robert Reich

    At a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, last Friday, Joe Biden said: “Some folks … are trying to push me out of the race.”To whom was the president referring?Certainly not to Donald Trump or the Republicans, who have been uncharacteristically silent about the whole question of whether Biden should drop out. They couldn’t push him out of the Democratic race anyway.Nor was he referring to Democrats in Congress. Almost all have been publicly supportive of Biden. Only eight House Democrats out of 213 have called for him to drop out, and just one Senate Democrat has gone that far.Was Biden referring to the leaders of the Democratic party? Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the Senate majority leader and House Democratic leader, respectively, have been supportive of Biden, at least in public.He couldn’t have been talking about the Democratic National Committee. Not a single DNC member has called for Biden to exit from the race.Was Biden talking about the elite punditry on cable TV and on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post – almost all of who have called for Biden to drop out?Doubtful. The chattering class has little or no influence on the preferences of average voters. How many people at that Wisconsin rally avidly read opinion pieces in the New York Times?Did Biden have in mind some collection of gray-bearded leaders of America – a group of unofficial elder statesmen, perhaps including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, whose counsel carries extraordinary influence behind the scenes?There is no longer any such group. (I recall a time decades ago when a bipartisan cabal of old hands held significant sway behind the scenes of official Washington – people like Lloyd Cutler, George Shultz and Jim Baker. But in the hyper-partisanship of today’s Washington, no such group exists.)The fact is, only one small group of people in the US has the power to push Joe Biden out of the race. Who are they? The major donors to the Democratic party.They’re the ones Biden is angry with.On Monday morning, Biden called into MSNBC’s Morning Joe and railed against the big-ticket donors who have been pushing him to withdraw.“I’m getting so frustrated with the elites … the elites of the party,” he said on the air. “I don’t care what the millionaires think.”Bingo. It was the first time any modern president has admitted that the elites of the party are the millionaires (and billionaires) who fund it, which gives them extraordinary political power – perhaps enough to push Biden out of the race.In truth, the Democratic party is little more than a national fundraising machine, as is the Republican party.I’m not blaming Biden. He’s simply stating the truth. America’s donor class has become extraordinarily powerful in both parties.Biden and his top aides aren’t hiding this reality. To the contrary, they’re actively portraying the effort to remove him as driven by the party’s wealthy elite.This may be an exaggeration. The polling data I’ve seen suggests that concerns about Biden’s age and evident decline worry a wide swathe of the public.But Biden continues to court the party’s major donors. Soon after Biden shared with the hosts of Morning Joe his frustrations with the moneyed elite of the party, he held a video conference call with that very same elite.In that call, according to the New York Times, he told them he was staying in the race. He also told them that they had to shift the focus of the campaign away from him and on to Trump.Telling them to shift their focus seemed to offer further evidence that the party’s biggest donors were responsible for focusing on Biden’s age and his stumbles since the debate. And it was they who must shift their focus to Trump.Over the last week and a half, I’ve been immersed in countless discussions about whether Biden should drop out of the race. I expect you have as well.But those discussions are irrelevant. You and I aren’t going to persuade Biden to stay in or drop out of the race.Only one group is going to persuade him – the Democratic party’s biggest donors. If they decide to stop funding the Biden campaign, Biden has no chance of winning.It’s rapidly becoming a game of chicken. If the biggest donors stop funding Biden and Biden stays in the race notwithstanding, he clearly loses. Yet so do we all.Biden’s efforts over the last few days confirm much of what I’ve increasingly observed over the years. The real political power in the US, regardless of party, lies in the hands of big money.
    Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
    This article was amended on 11 July 2024 to update the number of members of Congress who have called for Biden to drop out More

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    Political rifts have left the US haunted by fear of civil war. Here’s how France can do better | Alexander Hurst

    In 2016, it was the “Anglo-American” world that seemed in lockstep, the US electing Donald Trump hot on the heels of Britain’s own goal of Brexit. A few weeks ago, it seemed as if France would take the UK’s place as the US’s partner in implosion. But even though fireworks and cheers filled Paris’s Place de la République on Sunday night following the success of a hasty marriage of convenience between leftwing parties and centrist coalitions to keep the far right out of power, they only temporarily drowned out reality. France’s social and political fractures are not going away any more than a four-year respite from Trump means that Trumpism has gone away.France and the US have seen their neuroses about social fracture leading to civil conflict seep into politics, as well as playing out in film and TV dramas. The US’s fractures are so deep that full-blown civil war is already the subject of fiction. Alex Garland’s Civil War film skips over the reasons that the country is divided and jumps straight to the middle of the fighting, suggesting a politically improbable alliance of Texas and California to overthrow a president turned autocrat.During the recent election campaign in France, historians, analysts and politicians evoked the spectre of conflict that could arise in the case of a far-right victory. Emmanuel Macron said that should the extreme right win it would “divide and push” the country towards “civil war”.Of course, there is one big difference between the US and France: guns. “There have to be guns for there to be a civil war; it’s the bare minimum,” says Marie Kinsky (Ana Girardot) in the 2024 French TV series La Fièvre. The co-protagonist and far-right activist sets about to turn France into the US (even seeking assistance from the National Rifle Association) as the basis for provoking an identitarian implosion. Far-fetched? Hopefully – though a shocking 91% of French people share the sentiment that “society is violent”.La Fièvre, directed by Eric Benzekri, opens with an altercation between a football player and his coach, which both far right and far left attempt to inflate into a race and identity crisis to exploit for their own purposes. In the aftermath, Sam Berger (Nina Meurisse), a political communications consultant, and an anxiety-ridden depiction of the centre left, feverishly tries to stop Kinsky from pushing French society to the brink. The two play a nationwide game of chess that takes in disinformation, social media astroturfing, a citizens’ assembly and – in a direct foreshadowing of how Kylian Mbappé and other French footballers took public stances against “the extremes” – the use of a Paris football club as a force for moderation.View image in fullscreenWhile Civil War can seem almost apolitical, La Fièvre never stops theorising, pulling from Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, the Overton window and the research institute Destin Commun’s La france en qûete. The show lays bare the way that modern democracy is being hollowed out by what it terms “conflict entrepreneurs”, those in politics and the private sector who gain from exploiting and aggravating social fracture.One of the truths Benzekri conveys is that the far right isn’t the only threat. Ideological rigidity can come from the far left too, and often blocks progress while contributing to a society where conversation – and thus, democracy – becomes unworkable. But what seems to worry Benzekri most is the phenomenon of politics as spectacle, and the degree to which populism is contagious.In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Benzekri worked with Jean-Luc Mélenchon – the radical-left leader of France Unbowed (LFI), the largest party in the New Popular Front (NFP), the shock winner in the recent French parliamentary elections. But the director has drifted towards the more mainstream centre left, and now seems to see some of his former allies as conflict entrepreneurs who also bear responsibility for the deteriorating state of French politics.I’ve watched as the US has experienced the polarisation of almost all aspects of life along political lines. It’s a phenomenon I desperately would love France to avoid. But how?During the 2021-22, and 2022-23 academic years, I taught a first-year seminar to students at Sciences Po Paris that I titled, “In search of respect: US democracy confronting race and inequality.” I pulled the title from a book written by a French anthropologist, Philippe Bourgeois, who studied crack gangs in Harlem in the 1990s. A desire to be “respected”, it seemed to me, was at the root of so much of the emotion and anger that Trump was able to channel and direct.Populism pits different segments of society against each other, often around competing notions of respect. A far-right populist tells supporters that they are right to feel disrespected, because “someone else” has come and intruded upon something fundamental about who they are. A far-left populist tells supporters that the institutions of the state itself are racist. And now each side’s desire for justice and to be respected validates the other side’s deepest fears about what kind of society they are going to live in.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne solution is to change the game rather than play by the new rules the populists have set out for us. In La Fièvre, football is a socially unifying factor. Offscreen, Destin Commun has for many years promoted ecology as a common project with the potential to create social cohesion: an argument that it has found to be one of the most effective in countering the far right.Outside parliament, perhaps there is another way to change the rules of the game and create something new. According to Mathieu Lefèvre at Destin Commun, when it runs a focus group it often finds that participants request to come back the next day for nothing because they are so relieved to have had the chance to listen to, and be listened to by, other people in their communities. What if focus groups weren’t just run for campaign purposes, but in every one of France’s 36,000 communes? What better way to feel respected than listening and being listened to?Even though the NFP is now the largest group in the national assembly, it lacks anything close to a majority and is divided between different wings. Unless moderates succeed in coalition-building, a legislature split between three rough political families – the far right, Macron’s centrist coalition and the NFP – is a recipe for ungovernability that would serve “conflict entrepreneurs”, but certainly not the country.In the final scene of La Fièvre, the president asks: “Can we make it through?” In real-life France, we are going to find out.
    Alexander Hurst is a Guardian columnist More

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    Biden under renewed pressure to step aside as top Democrats make agonized appeals

    Joe Biden came under renewed moral pressure on Wednesday to abandon his presidential candidacy amid agonised appeals by a succession of senior Democrats for him to consider the broader picture.Those calls came as the US president dug in his heels to make it hard to supplant him as the nominee.With the backlash over his 27 June TV debate fiasco refusing to abate, Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, became the most senior party member yet to subtly float the possibility of Biden stepping down while stopping short of explicitly telling him to do so.Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, gleefully sought to further tighten the screw by summoning three White House aides to testify about Biden’s mental fitness.The summons came in the form of a subpoena from James Comer, the GOP chair of the House oversight committee, who demanded testimony from Anthony Bernal, the top aide to the first lady Jill Biden; the deputy White House chief of staff Annie Tomasini, and the president’s senior adviser Ashley Williams, Axios reported.Pelosi, 84, who was speaker until Republicans regained control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that “it’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run”, adding: “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision. Because time is running short.”That remark came as the president seemed intent on running down the clock until next month’s Democratic national convention in Chicago, to make it practically impossible to replace him. Pelosi later qualified her comments, claiming they had been subject to “misrepresentations”, while adding: “The president is great.”But they prefaced further critical interventions from Senate Democrats, who followed the lead of Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado in voicing doubts over whether Biden could beat Donald Trump in November.Bennet told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday evening that Trump was likely to win November’s poll in a landslide because of the widespread concerns over Biden’s age and mental acuity.“This race is on a trajectory that is very worrisome if you care about the future of this country,” he said in an impassioned interview. “Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election and maybe win it by a landslide, and take with him the Senate and the House. It’s not a question about politics, it’s a moral question about the future of our country.”He added: “I have not seen anything remotely approaching the kind of plan we need to see out of the White House that can demonstrate that he can actually beat Donald Trump, which is not going to be about the accomplishments that we all had, you know, three and four years ago. This is something for the president to consider.”Bennet’s comments stopped short of a full-blown appeal for Biden’s withdrawal, in contrast to Democrats in the House – where seven members have explicitly made such calls in the wake of the debate, where the president repeatedly appeared confused, mangled his words and allowed Trump to lie without effective contradiction.Soon after, Pete Welch of Vermont became the first senator to call on Biden to withdraw from the election. Welch said he was worried about the race because “the stakes could not be higher”.“I understand why President Biden wants to run,” Welch wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “He saved us from Donald Trump once and wants to do it again. But he needs to reassess whether he is the best candidate to do so. In my view, he is not.“For the good of the country, I’m calling on President Biden to withdraw from the race.”Richard Blumenthal, a senator from Connecticut, also voiced concerns.“I am deeply concerned about Joe Biden winning this November,” Blumenthal told reporters, adding that the party “had to reach a conclusion as soon as possible” and that Biden still retained his support.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA similarly circumspect call to reconsider came from Katie Hobbs, the Democratic governor of Arizona, a battleground state that was one of six moved by the Cook Political Report – a non-partisan election forecaster – in Trump’s direction following the president’s post-debate poll slide.“I want the president to look at the evidence and make a hard decision,” Hobbs told reporters, adding that Biden had “a lot to do to assure Americans and Arizonans”.And on Wednesday evening, Representative Earl Blumenauer, the longest-serving Democrat in Oregon’s House delegation, put it bluntly: “President Biden should not be the Democratic presidential nominee.”
    “The question before the country is whether the president should continue his candidacy for re-election. This is not just about extending his presidency but protecting democracy,” he said in an emailed statement.“It is a painful and difficult conclusion but there is no question in my mind that we will all be better served if the president steps aside as the Democratic nominee and manages a transition under his terms.”There were even signs of slippage within the staunchly loyal Congressional Black Caucus, which had pledged its support on Monday night. On Wednesday one of its members, Marc Veasey of Texas, became the first to break ranks by telling CNN that Democrats running in tight races should “distance themselves” from Biden in an effort to “do whatever it is they need to do” to win.The public agonising illustrated how Biden’s debate failure has plunged the Democrats into paralysis as the campaign approaches a key phase.Yet there seemed little imminent sign of Biden – who has already written to the party’s congressional group en masse telling doubters to challenge him at the convention – yielding to pressure to bow out.Far from Biden retreating, plans were announced for a second primetime television interview – this time with NBC’s Lester Holt next Monday in the symbolic setting of the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas – to follow last Friday’s with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.The latest interview, coming on the heels of Biden’s hosting of Nato’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington this week – where he has been meeting a succession of world leaders – appeared designed to reinforce the message that he intends to stay the course.On Wednesday, the president visited the Washington headquarters of the main US trade union body, the AFL-CIO, an important Democrat constituency.The trade union visit followed a virtual meeting from the White House on Tuesday evening with about 200 Democratic mayors, in which he restated his determination to remain and reportedly won their support. More

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    Democrat calls for congressional leaders to denounce Trump loyalist’s ‘target list’

    A senior Democrat called for congressional leaders to denounce a Trump loyalist’s claim to have compiled a “deep state target list”, of public figures to be detained if the former president returns to power next year.“This is a deadly serious report,” Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, told Raw Story, regarding its extensive discoveries about Ivan Raiklin, a former US army reserve lieutenant colonel and US Defense Intelligence Agency employee the site said was seeking to enlist rightwing sheriffs while calling himself Donald Trump’s “future secretary of retribution”.Raskin has spoken extensively of his own harrowing experiences on 6 January 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to block certification of Joe Biden’s election win.Nine deaths, about 1,300 arrests and hundreds of convictions are now linked to the attack.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but escaped conviction when Senate Republicans stayed loyal. Now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump leads Biden in polling and has made pardons for January 6 prisoners a key campaign promise.In its report about Raiklin, Raw Story noted Trump’s words at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland last year, when he told supporters: “I am your warrior. I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”By his own description, in a video posted to X in May, Raiklin wants to implement that retribution with “‘live-streamed swatting raids’ against individuals on his ‘deep state target list’.”The deep state conspiracy theory holds that a permanent government of bureaucrats and operatives exists to thwart Trump. The theory was popularised by Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign chair and White House strategist now in prison for contempt of Congress over the January 6 investigation.Bannon has said the deep state theory is “for nutcases”.Nonetheless, Raw Story’s report about Raiklin’s plans contained chilling details.According to the site, the target list Raiklin has circulated since January includes “Democratic and Republican elected officials; FBI and intelligence officials; members of the House January 6 committee; US Capitol police officers and civilian employees; witnesses in Trump’s two impeachment trials and the January 6 hearings; and journalists from publications ranging from CNN and the Washington Post to Reuters and Raw Story”.Raiklin has described his plans in “in podcast interviews, multiple posts on X, a press conference and conversations with prominent far-right extremists”, Raw Story said, adding that he acknowledged but did not answer its questions.Claiming to be being hounded, he told the site: “Look at my entire Deep State target list. That is the beginning. This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalised for their treason, OK?”Citing public records requests, the site said Raiklin had pitched his plans to far-right sheriffs who met in Las Vegas in April, without take-up.He has also “attempted to build relationships with conservative members of Congress”, the site said, efforts leading to Raiklin being seen sitting behind witnesses at “at least five House committee hearings over the past year”.In a May podcast, Raw Story said, Raiklin said he had sent his “Deep State target list” to James Comer of Kentucky, chair of the oversight committee; Jim Jordan of Ohio, chair of the judiciary committee; and to the administration oversight committee, led by Barry Loudermilk of Georgia.None of the congressmen responded to requests for comment, Raw Story said, adding that aides to Loudermilk and Comer said they were familiar with Raiklin.Meanwhile, Raskin sought to sound alarm bells.“A retired US military officer has drawn up a ‘deep state target list’ of public officials he considers traitors, along with our family members and staff,” Raskin said.“His hit list is a vigilante death warrant for hundreds of Americans and a clear and present danger to the survival of American democracy and freedom.”The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, should “denounce this dangerous plot and repudiate threats of, and planning for, political violence from any quarter”, Raskin said.“Bipartisan opposition to vigilante violence and assassination plots is essential for American government to continue.”In its reporting, Raw Story also said Raiklin was linked to Michael Flynn, the retired general who was briefly national security adviser to Trump before emerging as a prominent figure on the Christian nationalist far right.The site also described Raiklin’s involvement in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, through a memo claiming Mike Pence, then vice-president, could block electoral results, and via links to Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia extremist then a congresswoman-elect.Raiklin was at the US Capitol on January 6. He has not been charged in relation to the attack. The Army reserve cleared him of wrongdoing.The Trump campaign did not comment.A spokesperson for the New York Times, employer of five journalists reportedly on Raiklin’s list, said: “The conspiracy theories underpinning this list are baseless, and the calls for targeted harassment are dangerous … In the event of any instances directed at our employees, the Times will work with law enforcement to prosecute those responsible.”Max Stier, president and chief executive of the Partnership for Public Service, told Raw Story: “The idea that you would target anyone … on the basis of allegiance to the rule of law and the constitution is really scary.” More

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    Giuliani may face defamation and sexual harassment lawsuits if bankruptcy is dismissed

    A US judge on Wednesday said he is likely to discontinue Rudy Giuliani’s bankruptcy process, which would enable lawsuits for defamation, sexual harassment and other claims to proceed in other courts against Donald Trump’s former lawyer.Sean Lane, a US bankruptcy judge, said at a court hearing in White Plains, New York, that he would rule on Friday on competing requests from Giuliani and his creditors about the future of his bankruptcy case.Giuliani, 80, filed for bankruptcy protection last December after a Washington DC court ordered the former New York City mayor to pay $148m to two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, whom he had falsely accused of rigging votes in the 2020 presidential election, following Joe Biden’s victory over Trump.The women had described how such public lies and hounding by the powerful Republican operative wrecked their lives.The bankruptcy process had prevented the election workers from collecting on that judgment, while freezing other lawsuits stemming from Giuliani’s work for Trump, the former Republican president, as he sought to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.Last week, Giuliani asked to convert his personal bankruptcy case into a straightforward liquidation, which would force him to sell nearly all of his assets. One group of creditors asked Lane to appoint a trustee to take over Giuliani’s finances and businesses, which could lead to a lengthy and contested bankruptcy liquidation, while another group said Giuliani should be kicked out of bankruptcy altogether.All three options pose significant risks for Giuliani.Lane said dismissal was likely the best option, given the difficulties the court has had in getting straight answers from Giuliani about his finances. A dismissal of his bankruptcy would allow Giuliani’s creditors to resume lawsuits against him, but it would also give him more freedom to appeal the $148m defamation judgment that prompted him to seek the legal protection afforded by a bankruptcy filing.“We believe that the debtor’s best chance of getting an appellate determination would be dismissal,” Giuliani attorney Gary Fischoff said during Wednesday’s court hearing.Rachel Strickland, representing Moss and her mother, Freeman, said Giuliani should be kicked out of bankruptcy so her clients can try to collect against him.Giuliani “regards this court as a pause button on his woes while he continues to live his life unbothered by creditors”, Strickland told Lane.A committee representing Giuliani’s other creditors asked Lane to instead appoint a trustee to take over Giuliani’s finances and businesses. Committee attorney Phil Dublin said ending the bankruptcy now would create a “race to the courthouse” among the many people who have sued Giuliani.Giuliani’s other creditors include former employee Noelle Dunphy, who has accused Giuliani of sexual assault and wage theft, and the voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic, who have also sued Giuliani for defamation. Giuliani has denied the allegations.In addition to the civil lawsuits, Giuliani denies criminal charges in Georgia and Arizona relating to election interference.Reuters contributed reporting. More

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    Bearded JD Vance remains a contender for Trump VP – by a whisker

    JD Vance is still in contention to be named Donald Trump’s running mate, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee indicated on Wednesday, despite the Ohio senator committing what Trump is reported to consider a heinous faux pas.According to multiple reports, Vance’s offence does not lie in past decisions to call Trump “America’s Hitler” and Trumpism the “Opioid of the Masses”.Vance’s mistake, according to a bristling mass of pundits, is to have a beard.“JD has a beard,” an unnamed “Trump confidant” and Vance supporter told the Bulwark this week. “But Trump is a clean-shaven guy. He just doesn’t like facial hair.”That judgment seemed to check out, given proliferating reports about Trump’s dislike for beards, as sported by his sons Donald Jr and Eric and senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, and indeed for the moustache sported by John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser.But on Wednesday, in an interview with the Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade, Trump brushed off the subject.“Real quick,” Kilmeade said, “on your vice-president candidate, word is that you won’t pick JD Vance because of his facial hair. Is that true?”Trump said: “No.”“He looks good,” Trump added. “Looks like a young Abraham Lincoln.”Trump did not discuss Vance further. But he also said he would announce his running mate – with the Florida senator Marco Rubio and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum both empirically clean-shaven and reportedly in contention – “close to” the Republican convention in Milwaukee next week.“It used to be picked during the convention,” Trump said, “and it made the convention frankly, more interesting. The pick used to be during the convention – that’s what I’d like to do.”Unsurprisingly, Trump’s comparison of Vance to “a young Abraham Lincoln” was not strictly accurate.At 39, Vance is a former “public affairs marine” turned venture capitalist and bestselling author who first resisted Trumpism but then adopted it as he won a Senate seat in 2022, emerging as a fiery rightwing populist voice.When Lincoln was 39, in 1848, he was a clean-shaven lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, a former Whig congressman ejected from Washington after one term.Lincoln grew his beard – but not a moustache – when he was well into middle age, at 51, after winning the presidency as a Republican and apparently at the suggestion of a correspondent 40 years his junior.“I have got four brothers,” Grace Bedell, 11 and of Westfield, New York, told Lincoln in a letter in October 1860, “and a part of them will vote for you anyway, and if you will let your whiskers grow, I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you.“You would look a great deal better, for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers, and they would tease their husbands to vote for you, and then you would be president.”Vance may have a similar motive for keeping his beard, as he seeks to project the necessary experience and toughness to appeal to Trump and voters.“Without the beard, Vance looks like he’s 12,” an unnamed Trump adviser told the Bulwark this week. More

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    AOC launches effort to impeach Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito

    Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced articles of impeachment against the conservative US supreme court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito on Wednesday over the justices’ “pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the court”.The articles of impeachment are unlikely to gain traction in the US House, which is controlled by Republicans. The effort follows calls from two US senators, Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden, for the US attorney general to appoint a special counsel to investigate potential criminal violations of federal ethics and tax laws by Thomas.“Justice Thomas and Alito’s repeated failure over decades to disclose that they received millions of dollars in gifts from individuals with business before the court is explicitly against the law. And their refusal to recuse from the specific matters and cases before the court in which their benefactors and spouses are implicated represents nothing less than a constitutional crisis,” Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement.The articles were supported by seven other Democrats in the House.Ocasio-Cortez continued: “The unchecked corruption crisis on the supreme court has now spiraled into a constitutional crisis threatening American democracy writ large.”Reporting by the news outlet ProPublica revealed that Thomas failed to disclose several luxury vacation trips that were paid for by Harlan Crow, a conservative megadonor. Thomas has also been pressed to recuse himself from cases involving the January 6 US Capitol attack and Donald Trump because his wife, Ginni, is involved with groups that were connected to the insurrection.The resolution filed against Thomas contains three articles of impeachment. The first focuses on his failure to disclose gifts from Crow. The second two involve his refusal to recuse himself from cases connected to his wife.Alito also took a vacation with and flew on a private jet chartered by Peter Singer, a Republican billionaire. Additionally, Alito refused to recuse himself from cases involving the attack on the US Capitol after it was reported that his wife, Martha-Ann, flew an upside-down American flag associated with the insurrection at their Virginia home. Further, the Alitos flew a flag associated with Christian nationalism at a beach home in New Jersey.Ocasio-Cortez filed two articles of impeachment against Alito. One focuses on his failure to disclose luxury travel and the other on his refusal to recuse himself from January 6 cases.Alito and Thomas were both part of a majority opinion earlier this month saying that former presidents have immunity from prosecution for official acts, a major win for Trump. They both also were in the majority in a case narrowing the grounds under which January 6 participants can be criminally prosecuted.Supreme court justices have wide discretion over whether to recuse themselves from a given case – something that sets them apart from other justices. Facing pressure after ProPublica’s reporting, the court’s nine justices formalized a code of conduct last November, a move that was seen as a step in the right direction, but still weak. More

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    George Clooney implores Biden to step aside in opinion article

    The Hollywood actor George Clooney, one of the Democratic party’s biggest fundraisers, has called on Joe Biden to step aside to save democracy from Donald Trump.In an opinion article in the New York Times, Clooney expressed deep affection for the US president but said that personal interaction with him at a recent fundraising event in Los Angeles – the Democratic party’s most successful ever, raising more than $30m – suggested that the stumbling performance in last month’s debate in Atlanta was not an aberration.“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” the actor and longtime Democratic party member and fundraiser wrote.“He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.“Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw,” he said, referring to explanations from the White House and Biden himself for his bad debate performance.More bluntly, he said explicitly that Biden could not prevail in an electoral rematch with Trump: “We are not going to win with this president.”Stressing that his call was made reluctantly, Clooney paid tribute to the political battles that Biden had won throughout his career but said his age represented an insurmountable adversary.“But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can,” he wrote.Clooney’s plea came as Biden continues to insist on staying in the race while senior Democrats agonise about how to apply pressure on him to change his mind, and serious questions continue over Biden’s health and viability for re-election.The actor called on leading party figures to come off the fence and make the case to Biden, while dismissing as “disingenuous” the president’s argument – stated in a letter to Democrats in Congress this week – that the party’s membership had already chosen the nominee in the primaries.‘Most of our members of Congress are opting to wait and see if the dam breaks,” he wrote in remarks clearly critical of continuing inaction. “But the dam has broken. We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe concluded: “Joe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to do it again in 2024.”Clooney’s intervention comes weeks after a disagreement with the White House over Biden’s criticism of the international criminal court’s move to issue an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.The actor’s wife, Amal Alamuddin Clooney, worked on the case. Clooney called Steve Ricchetti, the president’s counsel, to complain about Biden’s labeling the warrant as “outrageous”.Warrants were being sought for the arrest of Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, and three leaders of Hamas, which controls Gaza.Shortly afterwards, however, Clooney appeared at a huge fundraising event in Los Angeles for the campaign, which headlined with Biden and Barack Obama. More