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    Black Alabama mayor reinstated after nearly four-year battle

    Patrick Braxton, the first Black mayor of an Alabama town that has not held elections in several decades, has spent the last four years fighting to be recognized. Finally, after an extensive legal battle, he and the town officials who refused to acknowledge him as mayor have reached a settlement, according to federal court documents.Per the settlement agreement, Braxton will be officially seated as the mayor of Newbern, Alabama, and be able to fully serve in this capacity for the first time in nearly four years, pending approval by Judge Kristi K DuBose of the southern district of Alabama.The town has also committed to holding regular municipal elections, which will happen openly and transparently, beginning in 2025. Until then, all current town council members will resign. An interim town council, composed of new people and members of the town council Braxton originally appointed, will help guide the town until it has elections.Morenike Fajana, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund (LDF), which has been involved with the case since last year, said: “It’s been a really long battle.“It’s been four years that this has been ongoing and there have been different setbacks and challenges. But I feel like [Braxton] is appreciative of the fact that this is happening now and he is proud to have the opportunity to serve the town of Newbern.”Braxton said that he has kept his church and community members informed of daily updates about the court case and is happy to finally give them some good news.“Everybody is pleased and happy,” he said. “They’re glad we can put this behind us and start moving forward and working for the town … The children, some of them don’t quite understand about everything, and then some of them are old enough to know this is a big deal for the community.”All of the community will hear the news by 30 August, by which time the parties will hold a public town meeting informing Newbern residents of the agreement.Braxton is excited to finally do what he set out to do nearly half a decade ago: to unify and improve the town.“I think I got a wonderful team, people that’s going to work with me and help the community,” he said.Newbern, located about an hour and a half away from Montgomery, captured national attention in 2023 when it became widely known that white officials had refused for three years to allow Braxton, the first Black mayor in Newbern’s history, to exercise his mayoral duties.The 133-person town is about 80% Black and 20% white, but the town’s leadership, excluding Braxton and his town council, has been majority white for decades. The defendants in the lawsuit, including the previous mayor and council, refused to hold elections.During discovery for the case and last month’s hearing about a motion for preliminary injunction, those on the former town council admitted to never holding elections.“They claimed that they didn’t know they had to,” Fajana said. “Instead, their process was when a position became vacant, they would just kind of recruit among their community and the people that they knew. They would just appoint that person and it would happen, basically, in a covert manner. That had been the process for as long as anybody could remember. Anybody who was serving in the past town council said that’s how they came to power.”Per the settlement, the defendants “specifically deny having engaged in any wrongful practice, or other unlawful conduct”, saying instead they reached the “compromise” to avoid protracted litigation.Braxton told the Guardian in 2023 that the town’s previous mayor had told him that it wasn’t possible to have elections in the small town. He decided to run anyway, out of a desire to help his community, which has a significant poverty rate.“For decades, officials in my town have excluded me and other voters from participating in elections and having a say in what happens here,” Braxton said in a statement provided by the LDF earlier this year.In 2020, Braxton became mayor by default when he was the only person to file for office. Following his election and swearing in, he appointed a town council.Unbeknownst to him, or anyone else in the town, the previous town council and mayor held a secret, special election during which they voted themselves in as town council. Braxton did not attend their parallel town council meetings, not recognizing them as legitimate. The parallel town council removed him from office and reappointed the former mayor to the position. They were aided, the lawsuit alleges, by the town’s bank and clerk.“It’s really about those facts, it’s about what happened in 2020 with this alleged parallel election process and then also, which is equally important, the failure of the town to have any sort of municipal election, whether for mayor or town council, for decades dating back to as long as anyone who has been involved in this case can remember,” Fajana said.Now that he’s fully recognized as mayor and able to serve in that capacity, Braxton is looking towards the future.Per the agreement, he will submit a list of potential names for town council to the Alabama governor, currently Kay Ivey, who will fill the positions. If she does not, the probate judge of Hale county will declare a special election on 31 December 2024. All elected officials elected or appointed before the 2025 municipal election, including Braxton, will have their terms end that year, in pursuance with Alabama law.“Once we get my town council in place,” he said, “I think the town is going to take off and start moving from here.” More

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    US Congress faces growing calls to withdraw Netanyahu invitation: ‘a terrible mistake’

    A group of prominent Israelis – including a former prime minister and an ex-head of Mossad, the foreign intelligence service – have added their voices to the growing domestic calls in the US for Congress to withdraw its invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address it next month, calling the move “a terrible mistake”.The plea, in an op-ed article in the New York Times, argues that the invitation rewards Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, for “scandalous and destructive conduct”, including intelligence failures that led to last October’s deadly Hamas attack and the ensuing bloody war in Gaza which shows no sign of ending.“Congress has made a terrible mistake. Mr Netanyahu’s appearance in Washington will not represent the State of Israel and its citizens, and it will reward his scandalous and destructive conduct toward our country,” the article’s six authors argue in a blistering critique that also accuses the Israeli prime minister of failing to secure the release of scores of hostages taken in last year’s attack and still held captive.The article’s authors were Ehud Barak, a former prime minister; Tamir Pardo, an ex-director of Mossad; David Harel, the president of Israel’s academy of sciences and humanities; the novelist David Grossman; Talia Sasson, a former director in the state attorney’s office; and Aaron Ciechanover, a Nobel prize-winning chemist.Their august status and biting criticism will reinforce the opposition of many Democrats to Netanyahu’s appearance before a joint session on Capitol Hill on 24 July – a sentiment strengthened by his accusation last week that the Biden administration is hampering Israel’s war effort by deliberately withholding weapons, a charge the White House denies.The invitation was originally extended by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and endorsed by Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, and the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, despite the latter’s earlier denunciation of Netanyahu and call for fresh Israeli elections.Several Democrats have said they will boycott Netanyahu’s congressional appearance, most notably Bernie Sanders, the leftwing senator for Vermont, who has branded the prime minister “a war criminal”.Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat in the House rules committee, has called the invitation to Netanyahu “deeply troubling” and also vowed to stay away. Other critical Democrats have included former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.In comments that will be grist to the Democrats’ mill, the six Israelis write: “Inviting Mr Netanyahu will reward his contempt for US efforts to establish a peace plan, allow more aid to the beleaguered people of Gaza and do a better job of sparing civilians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Time and again, he has rejected President Biden’s plan to remove Hamas from power in Gaza through the establishment of a peacekeeping force.”Setting out the domestic opposition to Netanyahu among Israelis, they add in a scathing conclusion: “Giving Mr Netanyahu the stage in Washington will all but dismiss the rage and pain of his people, as expressed in the demonstrations throughout the country. American lawmakers should not let that happen. They should ask Mr Netanyahu to stay home.” More

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    The US supreme court just basically legalized bribery | Moira Donegan

    Did you know you could give your local government officials tips when they do things you like? Brett Kavanaugh thinks you can. In fact, if you’re rich enough, says the US supreme court, you can now pay off state and local officials for government acts that fit your policy preferences or advance your interests. You can give them lavish gifts, send them on vacations, or simply cut them checks. You can do all of this so long as the cash, gifts or other “gratuities” are provided after the service, and not before it – and so long as a plausible deniability of the meaning and intent of these “gratuities” is maintained.That was the ruling authored by Kavanaugh in Snyder v United States, a 6-3 opinion issued on Wednesday, in which the supreme court dealt the latest blow to federal anti-corruption law. In the case, which was divided along ideological lines, the court held that “gratuities” – that is, post-facto gifts and payments – are not technically “bribes”, and therefore not illegal. Bribes are only issued before the desired official act, you see, and their meaning is explicit; a more vague, less vulgarly transactional culture of “gratitude” for official acts, expressed in gifts and payments of great value, is supposed to be something very different. The court has thereby continued its long effort to legalize official corruption, using the flimsiest of pretexts to rob federal anti-corruption statutes of all meaning.The case concerns James Snyder, who in 2013 was serving as the mayor of small-town Portage, Indiana. Late that year, the city of Portage awarded a contract to Great Lakes Peterbilt, a trucking company, and bought five tow trucks from them; a few weeks later, Snyder asked for and accepted a check for $13,000 from the company. Snyder was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison. He argued that the kickback was not illegal because it came after he awarded a contract to the company that ultimately paid him off, not before.Absurdly the US supreme court agreed, classifying such payments as mere tokens of appreciation and claiming they are not illegal when they are not the product of an explicit agreement meant to influence official acts in exchange for money.In so doing, the court has narrowed the scope of anti-corruption law for state and local officials to apply to only those exchanges of money, goods and official favor in which an explicit quid pro quo arrangement can be proved. As in Cargill – the court’s recent decision legalizing bump stocks, wherein the court declared that the gun accessories do not render semiautomatic rifles into machine guns based on a lengthy technical explanation of the meaning of a “trigger function” – the court in Snyder has made an extended, belabored foray into a definitional distinction between “bribes” and “gratuities”.But the glaring reality remains that this is largely a distinction without a difference. As Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her dissent, this is an interpretation which no reasonable reading of the statute can support. In a dissent whose tone seemed exasperated, almost sarcastic, she called the majority opinion “absurd and atextual”, saying it “elevates nonexistent federalism concerns over the plain texts of this statute and is a quintessential case of the tail wagging the dog”. The “bribery” versus “gratuity” distinction, she said, allows officials to accept rewards for official acts in ways that are “functionally indistinguishable from taking a bribe”.The court’s narrow vision of corruption – one in which only explicit, whispered deals in shadowy, smoke-filled back rooms count as “corruption”, and all other forms of influence and exchange are something other than the genuine article – also fundamentally misunderstands how influence-peddling works. In his controlling opinion, Kavanaugh emphasizes that in order to be an illegal bribe, a gift or payment must be accompanied by “a corrupt state of mind” on behalf of the official or benefactor. But corruption, influence-peddling, and unfair and undue methods of persuasion are more subtle and complicated than this in practice.For an example, we need look no further than the conservative justices of the supreme court itself, who have become notorious, in recent years, for accepting lavish gifts and chummy intimacy from rightwing billionaires. According to investigative reporting by ProPublica, Clarence Thomas has accepted vacations, real estate purchases, tuition for his young relatives, and seemingly innumerable private jet trips from the billionaire Harlan Crow, as well as financing for an RV from another wealthy patron, Anthony Welters. Thomas has argued that these gifts and favors are merely the “personal hospitality” of “close personal friends”.ProPublica also reports that Samuel Alito, who flies insurrectionist flags outside his Virginia mansion and New Jersey beach house, has accepted the hospitality of the Republican mega-donor Paul Singer; the billionaire took Alito along on his private jet to a fishing resort in Alaska, where the justice stayed, played and reportedly drank $1,000 wine on the billionaire’s dime. (Alito has disputed aspects of ProPublica’s characterization.)There is no reporting to indicate that the justices received this expansive and expensive generosity in direct compensation for their extremely conservative jurisprudence, even though the judges’ legal writings have furthered the billionaire’s material interests and social preferences. It seems reasonable, to me, to infer that the gifts, as frequent and valuable as they are, are not the product of explicit agreements to exchange things of value for specific official acts.If anything, I think that these relationships do not seem corrupt to the men who take part in them; that they see their relationships with billionaires, and their receipt of these billionaires’ largesse, as innocent and proper expressions of affection between friends and ideological fellow travelers. Clarence Thomas may be able to feel something, in the dark depths of his soul, that we might recognize as akin to love, and he may indeed feel that love for Harlan Crow.But this “love”, or whatever it is, does not mean that what is happening between these men is not corruption, and it does not mean that the law has nothing to say about it. Connections like these are cultivated with both the intention and the effect of rewarding and encouraging conservative outcomes; an explicit quid pro quo comes to seem vulgar and unnecessary in their midst, in which social reinforcement and personal loyalty do the work that a more explicit bribe would otherwise accomplish.Adding money – or, in the court’s parlance, “gratuities” – to these arrangements only makes this more obvious. It is not a coincidence that the court has chosen to legalize for state and local officials exactly the sort of corruption that they partake of so conspicuously themselves.
    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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    US presidential debates: the 10 most memorable moments

    Joe Biden and Donald Trump will debate on Thursday for the first time this election cycle, and it holds the potential for some history-making moments.Debates can inform voters on both the issues and temperaments of the candidates, potentially swaying an undecided voter toward one candidate’s direction. They can also make for good TV, creating soundbites that resonate for decades to come.From the candidates’ physical appearances to gaffes to planned attacks to off-the-cuff retorts, here are some memorable moments from US presidential debate history.View image in fullscreen1960: The first and possibly still the most famous televised American presidential debate pitted the telegenic Democrat John F Kennedy against Republican vice-president Richard Nixon, creating defining moments for both presidential debates and television itself. The clammy Nixon was recovering from illness and had a five o’clock shadow but refused makeup. TV viewers are said to have judged Kennedy the winner, whereas radio listeners gave it to Nixon or called it a draw. Kennedy won a narrow election. He was assassinated three years later.View image in fullscreen1976: Republican president Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon after the Watergate scandal, had been closing the gap on Democrat Jimmy Carter but then remarked: “There is no Soviet domination of eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” It was seen as a critical gaffe in the context of the cold war and Carter went on to win the election.View image in fullscreen1980: Carter accused Republican Ronald Reagan of planning to cut Medicare healthcare funding for the elderly. Reagan, who had complained that Carter was misrepresenting his positions on numerous issues, said with a chuckle: “There you go again.” The audience erupted. The duel attracted 80.6 million viewers, the most ever for a presidential debate at that time, according to Nielsen.View image in fullscreen1984: Reagan, at 73 the oldest president in US history at the time, took the sting out of the issue of his age during the second debate with the Democratic candidate Walter Mondale, 56, with this line: “I want you to know that, also, I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Reagan was re-elected.View image in fullscreen1988: Democrat Michael Dukakis, taking on the Republican vice-president George HW Bush, was asked whether he would support the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife. “No, I don’t, Bernard,” the Massachusetts governor replied. “And I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life.” He was criticised as cold and unemotional and lost the election.View image in fullscreen1988: In the vice-presidential debate, Bush’s running mate Dan Quayle compared himself with John F Kennedy. The Democratic senator Lloyd Bentsen shot back: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” It is probably the most famous line ever uttered in a vice-presidential debate and has been much parodied since.View image in fullscreen1992: In a three-way contest with Democrat Bill Clinton and businessman Ross Perot, President George HW Bush made the fatal mistake of looking at his watch. It gave the impression of a haughty, aloof incumbent who did not want to be there and took too much for granted. Bush later admitted what had been on his mind: “Only 10 more minutes of this crap.” He lost to Clinton.View image in fullscreen2000: Democratic vice-president Al Gore went into the debate leading in the polls but sighed loudly when his rival, Republican George W Bush, spoke. In another incident, he was criticised for invading Bush’s personal space when Bush strolled forward and Gore rose and moved towards his rival, as if looking for a fight. Bush dismissed him with a nod and won a close and bitterly disputed election.View image in fullscreen2012: President Barack Obama was widely felt to have “phoned in” his first lackluster debate performance against Republican Mitt Romney, who performed above expectations. But in the second debate, Romney, responding to a question about gender pay equality, said he had “binders full of women” as candidates for cabinet posts. The phrase became a meme on social media and Romney lost in November.US elections 2024: a guide to the first presidential debate
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    View image in fullscreen2016: With no incumbent in the mix, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton debated like an outsider and a seasoned public servant, respectively. In perhaps the most enduring soundbite, Clinton hit at Trump’s failure to pay income taxes in the few tax returns that were public at the time. “That makes me smart,” Trump retorted. He also called people coming into the US “bad hombres”, botching the pronunciation of the word. And in one eerie moment, Trump stood close behind Clinton as she answered an audience question, which Clinton later wrote made her skin crawl. Trump also refused to say whether he’would accept the results of the election – which he would go on to win in 2016.View image in fullscreen2020: Trump, now the incumbent, debated Joe Biden in his characteristically testy way, replete with interruptions. At one point, an exasperated Biden pleaded, “Will you shut up, man?”. That memorable line came as the debate schedule was affected by a new virus, Covid-19, spreading through the country. Trump tested positive for the virus, leading to the cancellation of the second debate. His former chief of staff claimed Trump tested positive before the first debate but didn’t disclose it, a claim that Trump called “fake news”. Biden went on to win the election.
    An earlier version of this article was published in 2016 More

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    Biden and Trump look to debate to open up race currently in a dead heat

    It could be the moment when a rematch that few seem to want finally comes to life: like two ageing prizefighters, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will enter the arena of political bloodsport on Thursday evening to resume a verbal sparring bout that will revive memories of the ugly exchanges when the two debated face to face four years ago.A CNN studio in Atlanta will host the first presidential debate of the campaign between the same two candidates who contested the last election, which Biden won.With more than four months to go until polling day in November, it is the earliest in any US presidential campaign that a debate between the two main candidates has ever been staged.While some see the timing as premature, it could provide a chance to open up a contest that has become overshadowed by, among other things, Trump’s recent felony conviction, as well as assorted other legal travails that see him facing 54 criminal charges for trying to overturn the last election and for retaining classified documents.Knife-edge polls indicate a race essentially tied, with a national polling average for May and June showing the candidates at 46% each. Polls in seven key battleground states – Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina – give Trump a narrow advantage, though usually within the margin of error.For non-Trump supporters, it is a troubling scenario given he incited a violent insurrection against the US Capitol to stop Congress certifying the results of the 2020 election that he refused to accept that he lost, despite Biden winning by more than 7m votes.Both candidates are deeply unpopular: Trump because his opponents see him as an aspiring dictator who threatens democracy, Biden because, at 81 (although just three years older than his Republican opponent), he is viewed – even among many Democrats – as too old for another term as president.Both will attempt to change their respective narratives in the debate. Trump, openly hostile towards immigrants, will probably attack Biden over an uptick of migrants at the border, despite Biden’s recent moves to tighten it. But Trump advisers know he needs at least some moderate voters to win, and will be hoping he can tone down his most virulent rhetoric, such as saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.Biden, for his part, will be aiming to dilute criticism of his age with an energetic performance along the lines of his State of the Union address earlier this year. He could be prepared to go on the offensive regarding Trump’s criminal record, and for how Trump takes credit for stacking the supreme court with conservatives in order to overturn the right to abortion.The stakes for both could not be higher. “We have a majority of voters who are unhappy with the incumbent, but they don’t have great recollection of what the prior officeholder did either,” said Patrick Murray, head of the Polling Institute at Monmouth University. “That sets us up for a very tight race where people just don’t know when they want to go.“Very rarely do you have anything like 18, 19, 20% of an electorate who say [as they do now] ‘I don’t like the fact that I could vote for either one of these.’ We’ve only seen this phenomenon one other time in living memory, which was eight years ago, with the Clinton-Trump race.”The two men will meet in transformed circumstances from 2020, when the world was still grappling with the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdown rules limited political campaigning.Since then, Russia has invaded Ukraine and Israel has become embroiled in a long and devastating war in Gaza, developments requiring US military aid and diplomatic commitment.The lingering effects of inflation, fuelled by Covid-era public spending, is partly dousing the otherwise rosy economic situation, pulling down Biden’s approval ratings even as the US outgrows other developed economies and unemployment sees historic lows. Meanwhile, Biden – contrary to his pre-election promises – has embraced some of Trump’s fiercely anti-immigrant policies by temporarily shutting the southern US border to a tide of asylum seekers should a number of daily crossings be exceeded.Many of these changes have rebounded to Trump’s advantage, with polls showing a majority favouring him on the economy over Biden, a trend Murray attributed to “rosy retrospection”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You think you’re not happy with the way things are right now and you automatically remember the past as having been better. We’re seeing that now with Donald Trump,” he said. “When we ask [voters] looking back to Donald Trump’s presidency, to approve or disapprove of the job he did, he gets 48% approval. He never got a 48% approval rating when he was president.”Trump’s achilles heel – and the possible key to Biden’s salvation – may lie in arguably the most startling domestic change to have happened since the last election, the US supreme court ruling in 2022 overturning the landmark Roe v Wade decision that guaranteed women’s right to abortion.“It’s a good issue for Democrats in an election where they’re hunting for issues that are good for them,” said Kyle Kondik, of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “Pretty clearly the public opinion is closer to them on abortion rights than it is to the Republican position.”That advantage was illustrated in a campaign video Biden released on Monday that blamed Trump personally for the court’s abortion ruling, pointing out that the decision had depended on the votes of three conservative justices appointed by him when he was president.The video followed an equally personalised attack in another television advert released and widely circulated in swing states the week before. Titled Character Matters, it targeted Trump’s criminal status arising from his felony conviction in a New York court last month of falsifying documents to cover up hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actor who testified that the pair had sex.According to Murray, the president’s only route to victory is to intensify and broaden such attacks to woo a bloc of an estimated 6-7 million anti-Trump voters who backed Biden last time but have cooled on him and are inclined to sit out the forthcoming election.“Those are the voters I’d be going after, if I was Biden,” he said. “There’s a host of issues – Roe v Wade, January 6, book banning – but the real issue is that Donald Trump represents a change in how the government deals with your personal freedoms.“That’s the kind of thing that can move this, this group of voters sitting on the fence. This group was for Biden; if he can win them back, he moves the needle four points in his direction and we’re talking about an entirely different ballgame.” More

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    The surprising psychology behind extremism, and how politics is driving it – podcast

    Psychologists usually expect ambivalence to be a driver of political apathy. But a new study appears to show a link between ambivalence in our views and the likelihood that we’ll support extremist actions. Madeleine Finlay speaks to the study’s co-author Richard Petty, professor of psychology at Ohio State University, to find out what pushes people to take extreme actions, how politics could be driving this behaviour and how it could be combated

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

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    Jamaal Bowman’s primary defeat leaves progressives angry at role of Aipac

    Progressive groups reacted with disappointment and anger over Jamaal Bowman’s decisive primary loss to a moderate Democrat in New York’s 16th district, calling for the party to cut ties with pro-Israel lobbying groups they blame for the result.In a letter to the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, more than a dozen progressive organizations said they had “dire concerns” over the party’s continued association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), “the future of the Democratic Party, the future of our multiracial democracy, and the future of our planet”.Aipac and its affiliates plan to spend $100m across the election cycle, and Bowman’s defeat marks their most significant victory to date. Looking ahead, they have already set their sights set on the Missouri congresswoman Cori Bush, who will face Wesley Bell in her August primary. United Democracy Project, a Super Pac affiliated with Aipac, has already spent nearly $1.9m promoting Bell’s candidacy.The signatories of the letter included the Center for Popular Democracy Action, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, New York Communities for Change and New York City Democratic Socialists of America.In the letter, they said that in the run-up to the vote, UDP had flooded the Westchester county–northern Bronx district with nearly $20m in mailers and ads “funded largely by Republican billionaires, to drown out Jamaal Bowman’s message of humanity, dignity, and a thriving future for all”.The result, they said, had been to unseat a a candidate that Jeffries had personally endorsed, who retains “a deep well of support among the Black and brown communities in the district”, and to replace him with “a conservative politician with a history of racist remarks and governance”.Bowman, a Black former middle school principal who has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, lost to challenger George Latimer by a wide margin of 58% to 42% of the vote. The race was called within an hour of polls closing.Bowman had been supported on the campaign trail by heavyweight party progressives, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who called the race “one of the most important in the modern history of America”.Sanders said in a statement after Bowman’s loss that it was “an outrage and an insult to democracy that we maintain a corrupt campaign finance system which allows billionaire-funded Super Pacs to buy elections.”“Aipac and other Super Pacs spent over $23 million to defeat Bowman. He spent $3 million. That is a spending gap which is virtually impossible to overcome,” he said, adding: “It is not a coincidence that with our corrupt campaign finance system we also have a rigged economy that allows the very rich to get much richer while many working people are falling further behind. Big Money buys politicians who will do their bidding, and the results are clear.”Progressives, like Sanders, attempted to characterize the race as an example of big-money influence in politics after pro-Israel groups and a number of wealthy residents of the New York suburban parts of the district weighed in with their checkbooks.Bush underscored that Latimer’s victory represented a clear threat to the progressive movement, saying in a statement: “These same extremists are coming to St Louis. They are bankrolling a faux-progressive, former Republican campaign operative to buy our deep blue Democratic seat. But let me be clear: St Louis will not be silenced or sold out.”The progressive groups said that Aipac had “turned the NY16 race into the most expensive Democratic primary in history, waging an unacceptable assault on our democracy, our communities, and our shared future” and called on Jeffries to take action against “destructive actions in your own backyard”.Jeffries, along with most of the House Democratic leadership team, has received Aipac’s endorsement, and the progressive groups demanded that he reject the pro-Israel lobby group’s financial support to protest against Bowman’s defeat.Protect Our Power said in a statement that Bowman’s defeat was a “loss for young people and anyone who cares about our continued movement toward justice, peace, and building a multiracial democracy”.The progressive group blamed “Aipac and the Maga billionaires who recruited and paid for George Latimer’s campaign from start to finish” for the defeat, and vowed “to tell Aipac they have no business creating division in our democracy”.In a separate letter of protest, Jewish Voice for Peace Action said it was “saddened” by the results that had unseated a congressman who “has been one of the few members of Congress committed to defending Palestinian human rights”.“Today is a sad day for American democracy,” said JVP’s political director, Beth Miller. “To protect progressive candidates moving forward it is essential that Democrats reject Aipac,” she added.Bob Herbst, a member of the group and a constituent of NY-16, called Aipac’s multimillion-dollar spend in the district “a dangerous interference in our democracy”.The race had been viewed as a crucial test of Democratic party unity over an issue that threatens to separate traditionally Democratic-voting Jewish Americans from the party in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people, and a nine-month Israeli counter-offensive that has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and driven hundreds of thousands more to the point of starvation.Bowman claimed that the results would show “fucking Aipac the power of the motherfucking South Bronx”, though the Aipac campaign focused primarily on Bowman’s weaknesses overall and not specifically or solely his stance on Israel. One UDP attack ad against Bowman specifically called out his votes against the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the debt ceiling agreement, accusing the representative of failing his constituents.“Jamaal Bowman has his own agenda and refuses to compromise, even with President Biden,” the ad’s narrator says. “Jamaal Bowman has his own agenda, and it’s hurting New York.”Nonetheless, Aipac is using Latimer’s victory to claim that Bowman’s stance on Israel is why he lost.“This race presented a clear choice – between George Latimer, who reflects the views of the Democratic mainstream in his congressional district and across the country, and his opponent, who aligns with the extremist, anti-Israel fringe,” an Aipac spokesperson, Marshall Wittmann, told Axios.Bowman was no stranger to scandals while in office. In December 2023, he became the 27th House member in history to be censured after pulling a fire alarm on his way to vote on a stopgap spending bill. He was also linked to problematic blogposts that pushed unfounded conspiracy theories about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The posts, which Bowman said were from more than a decade ago, were unearthed by the Daily Beast earlier this year and the former representative has since said he regrets them.Bowman’s opponent, Latimer, offered a more measured approach in a district with a large number of Jewish voters.After Latimer accepted his win on Tuesday night, he told supporters: “We have to fight to make sure that we do not vilify each other, that we remember that we’re all Americans, and that our common future is bound together.”Joanie Greve contributed reporting More

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    Supreme court says Idaho abortion ruling ‘inadvertently’ published online – as it happened

    The supreme court has acknowledged to Bloomberg Law that the ruling in a case over whether hospitals in Idaho can be required to carry out abortions in emergencies was published by accident.The court’s public information officer Patricia McCabe told the outlet: “The Court’s Publications Unit inadvertently and briefly uploaded a document to the Court’s website. The Court’s opinion in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States will be issued in due course.”Bloomberg Law goes on to report that the ruling is 6-3 in favor of the Biden administration, with conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissenting. However, the ruling is structured to allow litigation over the issue to continue, and not resolve the broader question of whether the federal government can require emergency abortions be performed in states where the procedure is banned:
    The high court decision “will prevent Idaho from enforcing its abortion ban when the termination of a pregnancy is needed to prevent serious harms to a woman’s health,” Justice Elena Kagan said in a concurring opinion.
    Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote separately to say that she wouldn’t have dismissed the case, according to the copy that was briefly online.
    “Today’s decision is not a victory for pregnant patients in Idaho. It is delay,” she wrote. “While this court dawdles and the country waits, pregnant people experiencing emergency medical conditions remain in a precarious position, as their doctors are kept in the dark about what the law requires.”
    The posted decision indicates the court won’t resolve broader questions about the intersection of state abortion bans and a federal law designed to ensure hospitals treat patients who arrive in need of emergency care.
    The case is the supreme court’s first look at a state abortion ban since the conservative majority overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. The court on 13 June preserved full access to the widely used abortion pill mifepristone, saying anti-abortion doctors and organizations lacked legal standing to press a lawsuit.
    The supreme court turned down an attempt by Republican-led states to block the Biden administration’s coordination with social media companies on fighting disinformation, one of only two decisions the conservative-dominated panel released today. They still have yet to rule on cases concerning Donald Trump’s prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election and the scope of federal government regulations, but will issue more opinions on Thursday and Friday. But perhaps an even bigger story than what the court actually decided is what it inadvertently decided. Bloomberg Law noticed that the court had accidentally posted its opinion in a closely watched case pitting Idaho against the Biden administration, and a 6-3 majority was going to require the Republican-led state to allow emergency abortions – at least for now.Here’s what else happened today:
    House Republicans convened a little-known congressional body to intervene on behalf of top Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s attempts to stay out of jail.
    The supreme court once again overturned the ultra-conservative fifth circuit court of appeals, in its ruling over social media disinformation. Here’s why that’s significant.
    Trump claims he can get detained US journalist Evan Gershkovich out of jail in Russia, if he wins the November election. The Wall Street Journal reporter’s trial began behind closed doors today.
    Encounters at the southern border dropped by 40% after Joe Biden imposed restrictions that will temporarily restrict access to asylum seekers, the homeland security department said.
    Progressives are not pleased after congressman Jamaal Bowman lost his Democratic primary yesterday, and are training their ire on the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac).
    A group of Black campaign surrogates for Donald Trump met at a barbershop in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood Wednesday, ahead of the head-to-head between Trump and Joe Biden here tomorrow.Trump made a phone appearance to tout his accomplishments for the Black community while in office and his proposal to end taxation on tips.“Let the people earn what they earn,” Trump said, adding that he was aware he was talking to people in a barbershop who do tipped service work. “And it has been so popular beyond anything.”Both Trump and Biden are blitzing metro Atlanta with events leading up to the debate. Rocky’s Barber Shop, a Black-owned business in Atlanta’s more affluent neighborhood, hosted conservative Black leaders from metro Atlanta. Shelley Winter, a conservative talk show host here, asked Trump if he thought that CNN debate moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash would treat him fairly.“Well, I think it would be good for them if they did,” Trump replied. “I think probably not,” he added, expressing lingering ire about Tapper cutting off his televised victory speech after winning the primaries.
    So they cover the whole primary, but they don’t cover my victory speech. So am I going to get it fair? Probably not, but it would be very good for CNN. They’re having a lot of ratings problems.
    Two potential choices for vice president who did not need a haircut found themselves at the shop anyway Wednesday: congressman Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) and former housing and urban development secretary Dr. Ben Carson.“I just want to encourage you to continue to speak out because the attacks on you have been absolutely ridiculous,” Carson said. “We’re praying that God will give you the strength to bear it because you’re standing in there for all of us.”Donalds said we would see if he was Trump’s vice presidential pick. Does he want to be vice president? “Of course!” he replied.Trump said on Saturday that he had already made up his mind about who he would choose to be vice president, and that his choice would be present in Atlanta for the debate.The number of encounters at the south-west border was down 40% in the three weeks since Joe Biden announced new rules restricting asylum, the Department of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday.According to a DHS fact sheet, the average daily arrests over a seven-day period has fallen to under 2,400 encounters per day, the lowest level of encounters since January 2021. It is still not low enough to lift the order. Asylum processing resumes when encounters fall to an average of 1,500 encounters across a seven-day period.“It’s a remarkable feat that our personnel have accomplished in just such a short period of time,” DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Wednesday. “Congress failed to act. The president has acted.”But he said congressional action was needed to send more resources to border patrol and that without legislation the order could be lifted or reversed by the courts or a future administration.Last week, CBP said encounters fell by 25%, meaning illegal border crossings dropped significantly since then.Encounters were already on a downward trend before Biden’s asylum order, due in part to a crackdown on northward migration by Mexican officials. Seasonal patterns also affect crossings.Opponents have sued the administration to block the order.Cori Bush, the Democratic congresswoman of Missouri and another prominent member of the progressive “Squad”, has issued a statement calling Jamaal Bowman her “brother-in-service” and attacking Aipac’s role in his primary defeat last night.Bowman is the “true representation of transformational leadership and brings … the power of everyday people from our communities to Congress each and every day,” Bush wrote.
    AIPAC and their allies—backed by far-right Donald Trump megadonors—poured a tidal wave of cash into this primary race showing us just how desperate these billionaire extremists are in their attempts to buy our democracy, promote their own gain, and silence the voices of progress and justice. There should be no question about the need to get Big Money out of politics.
    A recent poll shows Bush at risk of losing in her own primary contest for Missouri’s 1st congressional district, one point behind challenger Wesley Bell. The pollster, The Mellman Group, said:
    Bush is still seen favorably, but assessments of her and her performance are moving in a negative direction, while Bell’s image is improving, leaving him with an underlying image advantage. With some six weeks to go and 11% [of voters surveyed] still undecided, this race can go either way, but Bell has achieved a slight advantage.
    Jamaal Bowman’s primary defeat on Tuesday was a “loss for young people and anyone who cares about our continued movement toward justice, peace, and building a multiracial democracy,” Protect Our Power said in a statement.The progressive group blamed “Aipac and the Maga billionaires who recruited and paid for George Latimer’s campaign from start to finish” for the defeat, and vowed “to tell Aipac they have no business creating division in our democracy”.In a separate letter of protest, Jewish Voice for Peace Action (JVP) said it was “saddened” by the results that had unseated a congressman who “has been one of the few members of Congress committed to defending Palestinian human rights”.“Today is a sad day for American democracy,” said JVP’s political director, Beth Miller. She added:
    To protect progressive candidates moving forward it is essential that Democrats reject Aipac.
    Progressive groups are calling on House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries to reject the endorsement and donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) in the wake of congressman Jamaal Bowman‘s primary loss in New York.The United Democracy Project, a super Pac affiliated with Aipac, dumped nearly $15m into Bowman’s district as part of its successful effort to elevate George Latimer to the Democratic nomination.A coalition of progressive groups, outraged over Aipac’s involvement in the race, sent a letter to Jeffries today demanding that he reconsider his association with the group and denounce its tactics.“AIPAC turned the NY16 race into the most expensive Democratic primary in history, waging anunacceptable assault on our democracy, our communities, and our shared future. We call on you to take action to address this threat,” the letter reads.
    AIPAC’s interference in Democratic politics poses a grave danger to the vision our organizations fight for every day: a future in which everyone can access a high quality education, comprehensive healthcare, a liveable climate, affordable housing, good jobs for good pay, humane immigration policies, human rights centered foreign policy — and more.
    Latimer defeated Bowman by 17 points yesterday, and he is now heavily favored to win the seat in November, as the Cook Political Report rates the district as solid Democrat.The abortion rights group Reproductive Freedom for All has said it agrees with Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson’s reported reservations in the copy of the opinion briefly posted on the supreme court’s website.“This is not a victory but a delay,” the group said in a statement responding to the court’s reported decision to permit abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho.
    The abortion bans that are putting people’s lives on the line in the first place will continue to remain on the books. We’re grateful that the Biden administration is fighting to preserve the shreds of access possible in states where anti-abortion extremists are doing everything in their power to block people from the care they need, even under the most dire of circumstances.
    The group said it will not forget that Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans are responsible for those bans, adding:
    Our rights are on the line, and we must send President Biden back to the White House to restore the federal right to abortion and end these bans once and for all.
    The copy of the opinion suggesting that the supreme court may rule to permit abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho may not be final and could be changed.According to the copy obtained by Bloomberg, a majority of justices will reportedly dismiss the case as “improvidently granted”, meaning the supreme court should not have accepted the case.The ruling would reinstate a lower court’s order that had allowed Idaho hospitals to perform abortions in cases where a woman’s health may be endangered, according to the outlet.Currently, the state’s law only allows abortions when a woman’s “life” is in danger. Idaho has sought to have abortion exempted from the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala), a precedent critics said would endanger pregnant people in any state that has abortion restrictions.Although many states allow doctors to perform an emergency abortion when a woman’s life or health is at risk, effectively mirroring Emtala, Idaho only allowed doctors to intervene when a woman was on the brink of death, a much higher bar for intervention. The Biden administration sued Idaho to enforce the law.The Emtala law, signed by abortion opponent Ronald Reagan, sought to protect pregnant women in active labor in particular. Until its passage, hospitals often transferred or “dumped” women who could not pay when they suffered an emergency on public hospitals, even when in advanced stages of labor.Emtala had endured a series of attacks, including by some hospital administrators who viewed it as an “unfunded mandate”. Although the federal government required hospitals to treat sick patients, it never provided money to care for indigent patients.Bernie Sanders has joined those blaming the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) for congressman Jamaal Bowman’s primary loss in New York last night.Bowman, whose criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza made him a target for pro-Israel lobbying groups, was defeated by George Latimer, a pro-Israel centrist, after Aipac and an affiliated group spent almost $15m to defeat him.Sanders, in a statement today, said it was an “outrage and an insult to democracy that we maintain a corrupt campaign finance system which allows billionaire-funded super PACs to buy elections.” He added:
    AIPAC and other super PACs spent over $23 million to defeat Bowman. He spent $3 million. That is a spending gap which is virtually impossible to overcome.
    It is not a coincidence that with our corrupt campaign finance system we also have a rigged economy that allows the very rich to get much richer while many working people are falling further behind. Big Money buys politicians who will do their bidding, and the results are clear.
    The Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus has responded to the news that the supreme court may be poised to allow abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho.“We are all watching,” the caucus posted to X, adding:
    With lives hanging in the balance, we hope this indicates a step forward for patients’ access to emergency abortion care.
    Now, it is up to #SCOTUS to confirm that this is true and they will indeed protect that right and uphold federal law.
    Alexis McGill Johnson, the head of Planned Parenthood, the country’s largest abortion provider, writes that any decision that falls short of guaranteeing patients’ access to abortion care in emergencies would be “catastrophic”. More