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    Closing arguments begin in Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial

    Donald Trump’s hush-money trial enters its final stages on Tuesday as closing arguments begin in court.For weeks, testimony has gripped America and the world amid the prospect that the former US president could be found guilty of the criminal charges. Trump, who is almost certain to secure the Republican presidential nomination, is charged with falsifying business records related to paying the adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence about an alleged sexual liaison.Prosecutors argue that the payments amount to election interference as Trump was running in the 2016 race for the White House at the time and seeking to cover up a potentially damaging scandal.But as details of the case and Trump’s liaison with Daniels have been brought before a Manhattan jury, they have had seemingly little impact on the 2024 race – where Trump still often narrowly leads Joe Biden in head-to-head polls and is performing strongly in the swings states that are crucial to victory.Trump denies all the charges.The trial has played out in remarkable scenes where Trump has been in court and largely kept off the campaign trial, except at weekends and some events in and around New York City. Despite admonishments from the court, he has continued to rail against his prosecutors, and Judge Juan Merchan, on social media, labelling the trial as a “witch hunt”.Central to the case is the testimony of Trump’s former lawyer and once-feared fixer Michael Cohen. Cohen gave vital evidence for the role that Trump played in the alleged hush-money scheme, but was also brutally grilled by Trump’s lawyers for his previous history of lying and his evident dislike of his former boss and desire to see him behind bars.What weight the jury places on the reliability of Cohen’s testimony is likely to decide the case one way or the other. If found guilty, Trump could face the prospect of jail, though that is mostly seen as unlikely. Any guilty verdict would also almost certainly trigger a lengthy series of appeals.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump also faces three other criminal trials: one for trying to sway the 2020 election in Georgia, another for his conduct around the January 6 attack on the Capitol and a third one related to his treatment of sensitive documents after he left the White House. However, all three have been seriously delayed and none are seen as likely to conclude – or even start – before November’s presidential election. More

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    Biden honors troops on Memorial Day as Trump lashes out at his ‘human scum’ enemies

    Joe Biden and Donald Trump marked the Memorial Day national holiday honoring America’s war dead with jarringly divergent messages that promised to foretell the forthcoming US presidential election campaign as a contest of sharply contrasting characters.In a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, Biden paid tribute to the fallen as heroes who sacrificed themselves in the service of American democracy and ideals. Meanwhile, Trump, taking to his Truth Social site, took a very different tack – bestowing holiday wishes on those he branded “human scum” and accused them of trying to destroy the country.Biden and Trump are neck and neck in national polling for the 2024 presidential election, with Trump often narrowly ahead. Trump is, however, polling more strongly in the key swing states that will decide the contest.The targets of Trump’s ire on Memorial Day included the judges who presided over his various trials and a writer who won more than $80m in damages after accusing him of rape.While his predecessor and 2024 opponent fulminated on social media, Biden – accompanied by Lloyd Austin, the US defense secretary, General CQ Brown, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and Vice-President Kamala Harris – visited the the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington, final resting place for revered military heroes and US presidents.Identifying his own family with the notion of national sacrifice, Biden highlighted his son Beau, attributing his death from brain cancer nine years ago this week to his exposure to burn pits while serving in the military in Iraq.“The hurt is still real, still raw,” Biden said, after describing the “black hole” that opens up for family members who hear the news of the death of a relative serving in wartime.“I can still hear him saying, ‘it’s my duty dad, it’s my duty. Duty – that was the code my son lived by … the creed the generation of service members have followed into battle on the grounds around us by fallen heroes.”Biden’s words seemed calculated to contrast with previous comments attributed to Trump about fallen members of the military, whom he is said to have derided as “losers” and “suckers” for allowing themselves to be killed in battle.If so, the glaring disparity was further emphasised by Trump’s Memorial Day outburst, which reprised previous holiday volleys of abuse aimed at his enemies and opponents.“Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for ‘DEFAMATION,’” he wrote.That comment was aimed at Lewis Kaplan, the judge in a civil trial brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, who alleged that Trump raped and then defamed her.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“She didn’t know when the so-called event took place – sometime in the 1990s – never filed a police report, didn’t have to produce the dress that she threatened me with (it proved negative)…” Trump continued in reference to Carroll.He then turned his attention to Judge Arthur Engoron, who ruled in a civil lawsuit last year that the former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee had committed fraud by overvaluing his assets – and to Judge Juan Merchan, who is in charge of Trump’s current hush money trial in which he is accused of falsifying documents to cover up an affair with a porn actor.He referred to Engoron as “the [New York] state wacko judge who fined me 500 Million Dollars (UNDER APPEAL) for DOING NOTHING WRONG” before adding: “Now for Merchan!”Prosecutors and lawyers are scheduled to present their closing arguments on Tuesday in the trial, which has been running for four weeks and in which Trump faces 34 counts of paying money to an adult film star before the 2016 presidential election, which he won over Hillary Clinton.The framing of the forthcoming election campaign as a competition about personal character is generally thought to be beneficial to Biden, who is consistently seen to be lagging behind Trump in polls quizzing voters about who has the greatest competence over economic affairs. More

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    Trump tells donors he will crush pro-Palestinian protests if re-elected

    Donald Trump has told a group of wealthy donors that he will crush pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses if he is returned to the White House.The former president and presumptive Republican nominee called the demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza part of a “radical revolution” and promised the predominantly Jewish donors that he would set the movement back 25 or 30 years if they helped him beat Joe Biden in November’s presidential election.“If you get me re-elected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” Trump replied, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the event.Trump also said his administration would expel any foreign students found to be taking part in the protests, which have recently taken the form of tented encampments in colleges across the US.Addressing the meeting in New York on 14 May, Trump heard one donor complain that many of the students and faculty academics taking part in the protests could, in future, hold positions of power in the US.He praised New York police for clearing the encampments at Columbia University and said the approach should be emulated by other cities, adding: “It has to be stopped now.”Republicans have increasingly sought to make the campus protests an election issue, depicting them as a manifestation of “chaos” rampaging unchecked on Biden’s watch.Congressional Republicans have staged a series of hearings on Capitol Hill to highlight the trend, focusing on reports of antisemitism among protesters and alleging multiple failures of university presidents to combat it.In the latest hearing last week, GOP members of the education and the workforce committee assailed the presidents of Northwestern and Rutgers universities for negotiating voluntary dismantlements of the encampments, rather than calling in the police, as advocated by Trump.In further remarks to the donors, Trump performed an apparent U-turn on Israel’s offensive in Gaza after months of equivocating by saying that he supports the country’s right to continue its “war on terror”.He has previously said Israel is “losing the PR war” with its actions in Gaza. More than 36,000 Palestinians have so far been killed in an operation originally launched in retaliation for last October’s murderous assault by Hamas, which resulted in around 1,200 Israelis being murdered and another 253 being taken hostage.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking to the mass-circulation Israel Hayom newspaper in March, Trump said: “You have to finish up your war … You gotta get it done.” He has also said Israel should “get back to peace and stop killing people”.In his donor meeting – which he joked was attended by “98% of my Jewish friends” – Trump reportedly failed to mention the name of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, who he resents for recognising Biden’s victory in the 2020 election and has not spoken to since.But he boasted of his policies towards Israel, namely the decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the recognition of the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights, which Israel took from Syria in the 1967 six-day war. More

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    Trump revives false claim that Biden authorized ‘deadly force’ for Mar-a-Lago search

    Donald Trump’s campaign has issued another extraordinary fundraising request to supporters by doubling down on a false claim that rival Joe Biden was prepared to hurt or kill him by authorizing the use of deadly force during an FBI search for classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago compound in August 2022.The claim has become a currency among some Trump supporters and is widely described by them as an “attempted assassination” – but rests on a misquoted section of FBI policy in a legal motion. Moreover, Trump was not even in Florida during the search.The revival of the claim came late Sunday in the form of an email to supporters headlined:“This is an Alert from Donald Trump.” “DEADLY FORCE? Biden authorized it. They brought guns to the raid on Mar-a-Lago!” it read.“I’m sick and tired of the Radical Left destroying this country and trying to destroy me,” it continued, before detailing raids, indictments and arrests Trump claims he has been subjected to for political purposes.“Here’s the bottom line: I WILL NEVER SURRENDER. AND NEITHER WILL YOU!’ It concluded with a request for donations of up to $500 and a demand to “drop all charges” against him.As laid out in the justice department’s justice manual. agents are permitted to use deadly force “when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person”. It is standard procedure in many cases and the execution of a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago was communicated ahead of time with Trump’s Secret Service detail.In a statement, the FBI described the language as “a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force. No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.”Since leaving office in 2021, Trump is estimated to have spent more than $100m on lawyers and other costs related to various investigations, indictments and legal defense costs – or roughly $90,000 a day.Most of those expenses are met by donations in to political action committee and campaign funds set up to contest the results of the 2020 election. But those accounts are running low, and the former president could be facing a cash crunch.But Trump’s claims ignore the realities that fears of rising political violence during this election cycle are mostly focused on the threat from the far right.“You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable,” read the previous Trump campaign fundraising email, signed with the former president’s name. “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”The government’s charges that Trump hid classified documents taken from the White House at the end of his term and then refused requests to turn them over is currently stalled by legal challenges.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the sense that the government itself is working against justice in the case of Trump is a powerful fundraising tool for his campaign.Trump’s latest assassination-warning email comes as his trial on campaign finance charges is coming to a conclusion in New York. Final prosecution and defense arguments are expected on Tuesday. Opinion polls suggest that the month-long proceedings have not so far moved the needle either way on Trump but merely served to reinforce existing opinions.But a verdict could change that – or not. Either way both presidential candidates are likely to make political hay from whichever way it goes. Trump has made the dingy corridor outside the courtroom a campaign stage, with Republican allies turning up daily to show their support.According to Politico last week, Biden plans to address the matter once a verdict is reached. But he may do so from the White House, not from the campaign trail, to show his statement isn’t political. But with political heat rising, the reactions of both men will likely be seen primarily through the political lens. More

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    Libertarians nominate Chase Oliver for president, rejecting Trump and RFK Jr

    The US Libertarian party has nominated Chase Oliver as its presidential candidate after members rejected overtures from Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr.Oliver, 38, who describes himself as “armed and gay”, was chosen at the party’s convention in Washington DC on Sunday at the end of seven rounds of voting that lasted seven hours.Accepting the nomination, he vowed to be “the only national candidate” – contrasting himself to Trump, Kennedy and President Joe Biden – in the presidential poll and called for a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, saying “end the genocide”.Oliver’s victory followed separate pitches to the Libertarian convention – staged against the backdrop slogan of “Become Ungovernable” – by Trump and Kennedy for the backing of a party that could win a significant enough proportion of the popular vote to swing what is expected to be a close election.Trump has been running narrowly ahead of Biden in most nationwide polls, while Kennedy – with the advantage of name recognition through being a member of America’s most storied political family dynasty – has been consistently running at around or above 10%, making him a potential spoiler candidate.With the party platform dedicated to individual freedom and small government, members booed and jeered Trump on Saturday when he addressed them in a bid to win their support.“We should not be fighting each other,” Trump – the former president and presumed Republican nominee – told the gathering, only to be greeted with a chorus of profane catcalls. “Combine with us in a partnership – we’re asking that of the libertarians. We must work together. Combine with us. You have to combine with us.”Kennedy, the son of the former attorney general Robert F Kennedy and running as an independent after initially trying to win the Democratic nomination, earned a warmer reception after pledging to pardon Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower now exiled in Russia, and drop espionage charges against Julian Assange.But he was eliminated in the first round of Sunday’s voting after winning just 19 votes, 2% of the total. Trump, who was not an official potential nominee, won six write-in votes.In his acceptance speech, Oliver took aim at both candidates, as well as Biden.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Rule No 1: If you want to elect a real political outsider, don’t elect somebody with the last name Kennedy,” he said.Referring to the advanced years of Trump and Biden, aged 77 and 81 respectively, he said younger voters “don’t want octogenarians running their lives”.The party, which expects to be on the ballot in at least 37 states, won 1.2% of the popular vote in the 2020 election. More

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    ‘Heads, we win; tails, you lose’: how rightwing hush-money trial coverage boosts Trump

    Donald Trump has retained much of his political support amid his ongoing hush-money trial in part due to a combination of the courtroom’s ban on cameras and conservative media echoing his claims that both the prosecutor and judge are corrupt, media analysts say.The experts suggest that the former president could retain political support on the right even if the jury determines he is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to his reimbursements to Michael Cohen for a payment to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.Conservative media like Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network are “running a sort of ‘heads, we win; tails, you lose’ play”, said Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a leftwing advocacy group. They are portraying the trial as a “witch-hunt ginned up by Joe Biden, and obviously because of that”, they say “he will be found not guilty, but at the same time, they are arguing that if he is found guilty, it will be because the jury and the judge are partisan and corrupt”.The trial in New York concerns one of four criminal indictments Trump faces, but will probably be the only one that concludes before the November election.As of this month, Trump leads Biden in several recent polls.A camera ban in the Manhattan courtroom is hardly unique to the Trump hush-money case. In the US, only the District of Columbia is more restrictive than New York in terms of allowing audio-visual coverage of court proceedings, among 48 jurisdictions reviewed in a report by the Fund for Modern Courts. And a shortage of in-house visuals means the public has to rely on courtroom sketches and secondhand accounts of what occurred during trial proceedings.“You know the saying, ‘The camera never blinks,’ I think if you just had a fixed camera in the courtroom, it wouldn’t interpret; it would just be what is in front of the camera,” said Howard Polskin, president of The Righting, a newsletter and website that monitors conservative media.Both Polksin and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania communications professor and director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which publishes Factcheck.org, contrasted coverage of the Trump trial with that of the OJ Simpson murder trial in 1995. The judge allowed live camera coverage of the courtroom, and the case captivated the nation.“When we are actually observing something, we are making judgments in the moment that are potentially very powerful in shaping perceptions,” said Jamieson. “When someone recounts something to us, the effect is less vivid, less immediate.”Since a retelling makes for less dramatic content than photos and videos of, for example, recent protests on college campuses concerning the war in Gaza, analysts said that cable news networks – particularly Fox News – have devoted less time to it.From 15 April to 17 May, Fox News mentioned the trial about half as much as CNN and MSNBC, according to calculations provided by Roger Macdonald of the Internet Archive TV News in a Politico report.During the first week of the trial, 55% of Americans said that they were not closely following or not watching it at all, according to a poll from the PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist.“It’s Christmas in May for Trump,” Polskin said. “It was a gift for Trump that there were no cameras in the courtroom. I think there would have been a lot more coverage on both left, right and mainstream if that were the case.”That void then provided more space for Trump to shape the narrative, Jamieson said.Trump has repeatedly ignored a gag order imposed by Judge Juan Merchan in March after the former president attacked people including the judge, the judge’s daughter, Cohen, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and members of the jury.On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump has shared posts in which he quoted the Fox News host Jesse Watters describing potential jurors as “undercover liberal activists” and a New York Post story that labeled Cohen a “serial perjurer”.While Trump refrained from violating the order in recent weeks of the trial, high-profile supporters have instead leveled similar charges outside the courtroom. Sean Hannity and other cable news hosts followed suit.“Tonight, as your mentally vacant president shuffles through the halls of the White House in his maximum-stability sneakers, lawyers and bureaucrats in the Democratic Party – they are hard at work,” Hannity said at the start of his Fox News show on 21 May. “You see, they are determined to get Donald Trump by any means necessary and are using America’s system of justice as a political weapon.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHannity also hosted legal analysts such as Gregg Jarrett and Alan Dershowitz, who have described it as a “corrupt case” and called Stormy Daniels a “shakedown artist”.Trump later repeated such assertions when he spoke outside the courtroom.“There is a kind of feedback loop that happens between Fox News and Trump’s public-facing legal commentary in which he is quoting figures like [Jarrett and Dershowitz] and then saying, ‘This is what all the experts are saying,’ just the experts [are] from Fox News,” Gertz said.Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network have also frequently described the criminal charges against Trump as “lawfare” committed by Democrats. (And it’s not just the cable news personalities – Hannity quoted the film-maker Oliver Stone, who described the lawfare as a “new form of warfare”.)The goal, Polskin said, was to convey that the trial is “completely politically motivated”.Still, is it possible that rather than Fox News devoting too little time to the trial, CNN and MSNBC are devoting too much time to it?The Daily Show host Jon Stewart critiqued the media for its coverage of events at the start of trial, such as the former president driving from Trump Tower to the courtroom. During the 2016 presidential election, networks drew big ratings by airing his rallies live and uninterrupted and later faced criticism for giving the candidate free airtime.“Perhaps if we limit the coverage to the issues at hand and try not to create an all-encompassing spectacle of the most banal of details. Perhaps that would help,” Stewart said of the early trial coverage.On whether CNN and MSNBC were again spending too much time on Trump, Jamieson said: “The question always is, what else is in the news agenda? And as a result, what aren’t you covering? We are in a relatively quiet period legislatively in the United States, so it’s hard to make the argument that there is some big major story that’s being downplayed.”Gertz, of Media Matters for America, points out that Trump has spent the last nine years engaged in a cycle of saying and doing shocking things, followed by rightwing media hosts and pundits condemning backlash against Trump as unfair, so their handling of the trial is not particularly novel.“They know that every alleged infraction or crime committed by Trump is an opportunity for them to prove that they are onboard with the Maga movement and with Trump specifically,” he explained, “by loudly saying that he did nothing wrong and that his pursuers are in fact the real criminals.” More

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    The US attempt to ban TikTok is an attack on ideas and hope | Dominic Andre

    I’m a TikTok creator. I’ve used TikTok to build a multimillion dollar business, focused on sharing interesting things I’ve learned in life and throughout my years in college. TikTok allowed me to create a community and help further my goal of educating the public. I always feared that one day, it would be threatened. And now, it’s happening.Why does the US government want to ban TikTok? The reasons given include TikTok’s foreign ownership and its “addictive” nature, but I suspect that part of the reason is that the app primarily appeals to younger generations who often hold political and moral views that differ significantly from those of older generations, including many of today’s politicians.The platform has become a powerful tool for grassroots movements challenging established elites and has amplified voices advocating against capitalism and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and women’s rights. Moreover, for the first time in modern history, Americans’ support for Israel has sharply fallen, a shift I would argue can be attributed in part to TikTok’s video-sharing capabilities. In particular, the app’s stitching feature, which allows creators to link videos, correcting inaccuracies and presenting opposing views within a single video, has revolutionized how audiences access information and form more informed opinions.US Congress has cited concerns over Chinese data collection as justification for proposing a ban. This rationale might be appropriate for banning the app on government-issued devices, both for official and personal use. Other Americans, however, have the right to decide which technologies we use and how we share our data. Personally, I am indifferent to China possessing my data. What harm can the Chinese government do to me if I live in the United States? Also, I’d point out that viewpoints critical of Chinese policies have proliferated on TikTok, which would seem to indicate that the platform is not predominantly used for spreading Chinese propaganda.If politicians’ concern were genuinely about foreign influence, we would discuss in greater detail how Russia allegedly used Facebook to bolster Trump’s campaign and disseminate misinformation. Following this logic, we might as well consider banning Facebook.I spent a decade in college studying international affairs and psychology for my masters. So while I’m somewhat prepared for tough times in the event of TikTok ending, many others aren’t. TikTok hosts tens of thousands of small businesses who, thanks to the platform, reach millions worldwide. This platform has truly leveled the playing field, giving everyone from bedroom musicians to aspiring actors a real shot at being heard. A ban on TikTok would threaten those livelihoods.A ban on TikTok would also threaten a diverse community of creators and the global audience connected through it. As a Palestinian, TikTok gave my cause a voice, a loud one. It became a beacon for bringing the stories of Gaza’s suffering to the forefront, mobilizing awareness and action in ways no other platform has.Using TikTok’s live-streaming feature, I’ve been able to talk to hundreds of thousands of people each day about the issues Palestinians face. I personally watched the minds change of hundreds of people who asked me questions out of honest curiosity.TikTok has made a real difference in educating people about what is happening in Palestine. The stitch feature is one of the most powerful tools for debunking propaganda spread against Palestinians. This feature does not exist on other platforms and was first created by TikTok; with it, creators can correct information and respond to the spread of misinformation in real time.Removing TikTok would do more than disrupt entertainment; it would sever a lifeline for marginalized voices across the world – people like Bisan Owda, an influential young journalist in Gaza whose TikToks each reach hundreds of thousands of views – or creators like myself, whose family was driven out of Palestine in 1948, and killed during the Nakba. I’ve used TikTok to show all the paperwork of my great-grandfather’s land ownership in Palestine – and his passport – to show how his existence was taken away from him.On TikTok, you’ll find thousands of creators from different ethnic groups teaching the world about their cultures. You’ll also find disabled creators sharing their journeys and experiences in a world designed for able-bodied people. UncleTics, for example, is a creator who lives with Tourette syndrome and creates content about his life while also bringing joy to his audience.Banning TikTok wouldn’t just mean an enormous financial hit for the creators who use the platform – it would stifle the rich exchange of ideas, culture and awareness that TikTok uniquely fosters. We stand to lose a tool that has brought global issues out of the shadows and into the public eye. A ban on TikTok is a ban on ideas and hope.Almost every creator and consumer of TikTok I have spoken to does not care about potential data collection by China. Creators, in particular, don’t expect privacy when we’re posting about our lives on a public platform. If Congress wants to enact laws that make it harder for social-media companies to potentially harvest our data, Congress should do it across the board for all social media platforms – not just ones which happened to be based in non-Western countries.A TikTok ban threatens to destroy millions of jobs and silence diverse voices. It would change the world for the worse.
    Dominic Andre is a content creator and the CEO of The Lab More

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    Only 1% of Americans serving in military is ‘problematic’, Democrat Pat Ryan says

    The New York Democratic representative Pat Ryan said that having only 1% of Americans serving in the US military is “deeply problematic as a democracy”.In an interview with CBS’s Face The Nation ahead of Memorial Day, Ryan, who is a veteran of the US army, said: “When you lose touch between those that are fighting our wars and their families and everyone else, that’s something so essential that we have to figure out how to bring folks together, and get more folks serving.”Ryan, who did two tours in Iraq, said that he is working on recruiting more Americans to serve in the military.Speaking alongside Florida’s Republican representative and army veteran Mike Waltz, Ryan said: “A lot of the work we did … on the defense bill is recruiting. Every service has been challenged on recruiting numbers and we’ve been pushing a bunch of directions to say that is not acceptable to the department of defense. And we’re starting to see the numbers come up.”To Waltz, “service doesn’t just have to be in the military,” as he said that both he and Ryan are advocates of “getting us back to national service as a country”.“That’s not a draft, that doesn’t necessarily have to be in uniform,” he said, adding: “It could be with the national park, inner-city tutoring, elderly care. But how do we get young people out in an environment where they’re learning leadership, discipline, followership, serving a cause bigger than themselves and with fellow Americans who may not look or come from the same backgrounds as them.”The two representatives also spoke of the need for bipartisanship when it comes to supporting veterans. For Ryan, the “most powerful thing” he has done in his time in Congress since he assumed office in 2023 was cleaning the Vietnam Veterans Memorial alongside other veterans.“I mean, there’s so many divisive forces, and so to get together with fellow veterans, all services, all generations, and just actually do something with your hands that improves the world, that honors our veterans,” Ryan said.Waltz echoed Ryan’s sentiments, saying: “I saw the acrimony and the in-fighting and I said, ‘You know, let’s get a group of veterans together’… I think that’s important for the American people to see. To see us honoring our forefathers, to see us where Democrat, Republican, Black, white, brown, none of that matters. It just matters that we’re all Americans, we’re all veterans.”There are currently over 18 million veterans who represent 6% of the country’s adult population. According to the Pew Research Center, veterans who served in the last 30 years comprise the largest number of living veterans in the US.In 1980, approximately 18% of US adults were veterans. In 2022, that number dropped to 6%. The center cites the falling trend to a decrease in active-duty personnel following the end of the military draft in 1973.The center also reports that as the amount of veterans declines over the next 25 years, women, Hispanic and Black adults, and adults below the age of 50 will make up larger shares of the total US veteran population. More