Evelyn Reynolds

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    Robert F Kennedy Jr claims he qualifies for ballot in swing state North Carolina

    Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent candidate for the US presidency, said on Monday he has qualified for the ballot in North Carolina – which will be a key state in the November election battle between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.“We have the field teams, volunteers, legal teams, paid circulators, supporters and strategists ready to get the job done,” said Kennedy’s campaign press secretary, Stefanie Spear.Kennedy, 70, is an environmental lawyer turned vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist who has campaigned with reference to his famous family – his father was the US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy and his uncle was John F Kennedy, the 35th president.Kennedy Jr now says he has enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in five states, the others being Utah, New Hampshire, Hawaii and Nevada.Only Utah has confirmed his place on its ballot. Nevada is also a battleground state, but Kennedy’s ballot access may be in question there, as he secured it before naming his running mate.That announcement last week saw Nicole Shanahan, a 38-year-old tech lawyer, join the Kennedy ticket.Polling generally shows Biden and Trump closely matched and Kennedy clear of other candidates outside the major parties, enjoying double-digit support, with the potential to act as a spoiler.Debate continues about whether Biden or Trump stands to lose most votes to Kennedy. Democrats have historical reason to be fearful, given recent election results.In 2000, Ralph Nader took votes from Al Gore as the former vice-president was beaten by George W Bush in a contentious, knife-edge election that came down to a legally contested result in Florida. In 2016, Jill Stein showed strongly as Hillary Clinton lost narrowly to Trump in a number of battleground states.The Biden campaign has created a team dedicated to countering Kennedy. In that vein, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee recently claimed Republicans were “working to prop up third-party candidates like Robert Kennedy Jr to make them stalking horses for Donald Trump”, adding: “We’re going to make sure voters are educated and we’re going to make sure all candidates are playing by the rules.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden’s campaign has also trumpeted endorsements from Kennedy family members.On Monday, Kennedy’s sister, Rory Kennedy, told MSNBC: “I love my brother, and it pains me to come out against him, but I am very concerned with the stakes in this election, and I’m very concerned from the polls I’m seeing that he takes many more votes from Biden than he does from Trump.“And I think this election is going to come down to a handful of votes in a handful of states, and I’m concerned that his campaign and running for office as an independent is going to lead to Trump’s election.“And I feel that that will be catastrophic, honestly, for not just our country, but for the world. So, I feel that the stakes couldn’t be higher, frankly. So, you know, I would love more than anything to sit out on the sidelines on this one and not be in this position, but I don’t feel like I can do that.” More

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    Extremist ex-adviser drives ‘anti-white racism’ plan for Trump win – report

    The anti-immigration extremist, white nationalist and former Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller is helping drive a plan to tackle supposed “anti-white racism” if Donald Trump returns to power next year, Axios reported.“Longtime aides and allies … have been laying legal groundwork with a flurry of lawsuits and legal complaints – some of which have been successful,” Axios said on Monday.Should Trump return to power, Axios said, Miller and other aides plan to “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of civil rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of colour”.Such an effort would involve “eliminating or upending” programmes meant to counter racism against non-white groups.The US supreme court, dominated 6-3 by rightwing justices after Trump installed three, recently boosted such efforts by ruling against race-based affirmative action in college admissions.America First Legal, a group founded by Miller and described by him as the right’s “long-awaited answer” to the American Civil Liberties Union, is helping drive plans for a second Trump term, Axios said.In 2021, an AFL suit blocked implementation of a $29bn Covid-era Small Business Administration programme that prioritised helping restaurants owned by women, veterans and people from socially and economically disadvantaged groups.Miller called that ruling “the first, but crucial, step towards ending government-sponsored racial discrimination”.Recent AFL lawsuits include one against CBS and Paramount alleging discrimination against a white, straight man who wrote for the show Seal Team, and a civil rights complaint against the NFL over the “Rooney Rule”, which says at least two minority candidates must be interviewed for vacant top positions.Reports of extremist groups planning for a second Trump presidency are common, not least around Project 2025, a blueprint for transition and legislative priorities prepared by the Heritage Foundation, a hard-right Washington thinktank.Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, told Axios: “As President Trump has said, all staff, offices, and initiatives connected to [Joe] Biden’s un-American policy will be immediately terminated.”Throughout Trump’s term in office, Miller was a close adviser and speechwriter – though one of the 45th president’s less successful TV surrogates, ridiculed for using “spray-on hair”.Controversies were numerous. Among them were reported advocacy for blowing up migrants with drones (which Miller denied); for sending 250,000 US troops to the southern border; and for beheading an Isis leader, dipping the head in pig’s blood and “parad[ing] it around to warn other terrorists” (Miller denied it and called the source of the story, the former defense secretary Mark Esper, a “moron”).In 2019, after Miller was discovered to have touted white nationalist articles and books, 55 civil rights groups wrote to Trump, protesting: “Stephen Miller has stoked bigotry, hate and division with his extreme political rhetoric and policies throughout his career. The recent exposure of his deep-seated racism provides further proof that he is unfit to serve and should immediately leave his post.”On Monday, Cedric Richmond, co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign, said: “It’s not like Donald Trump has been hiding his racism … [but] he’s making it clear that if he wins in November, he’ll turn his racist record into official government policy … It’s up to us to stop him.”Despite his legal advocacy in the cause of eradicating “anti-white racism”, Miller is not himself a lawyer.Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer, recently told the Guardian those close to the former president were now “looking for lawyers who worship Trump and will do his bidding. Trump is looking to Miller to pick people who will be more loyal to Trump than the rule of law.” More

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    Trump’s stake in Truth Social falls by $1bn after company reveals $58m loss

    The value of Donald Trump’s stake in Truth Social fell by more than $1bn on Monday after the social media company revealed it lost $58.2m last year and an auditor disclosed “substantial doubt” over its ability to continue operating.Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of Truth Social, dropped 21.5% as investors scrutinized the fundamentals of its business.The former president’s vast stake in the firm was worth about $4.88bn on paper after its extraordinary stock market debut last week . After Monday’s sell-off, it was valued at about $3.83bn.Trump Media generated sales of just $4.13m in 2023, according to regulatory filings.While over $4m in sales marks significant growth from $1.47m in 2022, the previous year, it underlines the small scale of Trump Media’s operation – and the depth of its losses.BF Borgers of Colorado, an auditor for the company, said the losses “raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern”, according to Monday’s filings.Trump Media separately acknowledged that it could be “subject to greater risks” than other social media platforms “because of the focus of our offerings and the involvement of President Trump”.Shares in the group – and Digital World Acquisition, the shell company with which it merged last week to go public – have been surging since the turn of the year.The company has a similar valuation to Reddit, a social network that also went public last month. Reddit generated sales of $804m in 2023, according to regulatory filings, and losses of $90.8m.Net losses at Trump Media came to $58.2m in 2023. Stripping out interest expenses on its debt, the firm posted operating losses of $16m, down slightly from $23.2m in 2022.A volatile market surge over recent months has nevertheless transformed Trump Media into a so-called meme stock, boosted by internet memes – posted, in its case, on platforms including Truth Social – urging retail investors to buy into it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt has joined a small bevy of stocks, most famously the video games retailer GameStop, which rattled Wall Street by staging unexpected, turbulent rallies in recent years. Maintaining momentum after the initial surge has often proved challenging.Trump has a vast stake in Trump Media, and its arrival on the market has netted him a multibillion-dollar paper fortune. When it finally combined with Digital World last Monday, Bloomberg said the former president had joined the ranks of the world’s 500 wealthiest people for the first time.He is currently unable to offload his stake, however, and will need the stock to continue to trade at the levels to which it has surged in recent months if he is to raise billions of dollars from a sale.Trump, who is vying to regain the presidency from Joe Biden in November’s election, is grappling with hefty legal costs. He is on the hook for $454m after a civil fraud case, although the former president was recently thrown a lifeline when a panel of appellate court judges provided him with 10 days to secure a far smaller $175m bond.John Rekenthaler, vice-president for research at Morningstar, recently argued Trump Media was akin to a cryptocurrency. “As with bitcoin, people buy Trump Media not for future cash flows but because: 1) they expect its price to rise, and 2) they feel an affiliation for the asset,” he wrote. For Trump Media investors, “DJT shares represent a currency by which they can express their beliefs and commitment.” More

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    Biden campaign accuses Trump of plans for ‘formalizing white supremacy’ – as it happened

    The co-chair of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign Cedric Richmond said that “formalizing white supremacy” will be a priority of Donald Trump, if he is returned to the White House.His statement came after Axios reported that Trump’s allies are planning to fight “anti-white racism”, and dismantle efforts to promote diversity and combat discrimination against people of color and other minorities.Richmond pointed to Trump’s promotion of the baseless conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and his equivocation over condemning the violent 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia:
    Trump couldn’t care less about Black and brown communities – he never has. Now he’s making it clear that if he wins in November, he’ll turn his racist record into official government policy, gutting programs that give communities of color economic opportunities and making the lives of Black and brown folks harder. Already, his Project 2025 allies have blocked billions of dollars in support for women and minority-owned businesses, and if he wins a second term they’ll take their divisive agenda even further. It’s up to us to stop him.
    Could the frozen negotiations on passing aid to Ukraine, Israel and other American allies finally be unthawing? Yesterday, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, laid out some potential concessions he may demand of Democrats in exchange for putting the measure up for a vote when Congress returns to work next week. We don’t know what Joe Biden, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, or other top Democrats think of this proposal, though California senator Laphonza Butler signaled that Johnson’s call to restart the permitting of new natural gas export projects may prove controversial. Meanwhile, Biden and Johnson are feuding over the White House’s declaration of 31 March as Transgender Day of Visibility – which also happened to be Easter Sunday.Here’s what else happened today:
    The president will on Friday visit the site of the collapsed Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore, as efforts to reopen the city’s vital port continue.
    Johnson downplayed rightwing congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s attempt to remove him from office, but acknowledged it was a “distraction”.
    Biden gave a brief interview where he sounded upbeat about his prospects of winning re-election.
    Donald Trump’s campaign also attacked Biden for recognizing transgender people, while reportedly stretching the truth about the rules for the annual Easter Egg Roll.
    John Avlon, a former CNN anchor and Daily Beast editor, released impressive fundraising numbers as he runs for Congress in New York.
    A victory by Donald Trump could also imperil efforts to fight the climate crisis worldwide, a former top UN official warns. The Guardian’s Fiona Harvey has the story:Victory for Donald Trump in the US presidential election this year could put the world’s climate goals at risk, a former UN climate chief has said.The chances of limiting global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels are already slim, and Trump’s antipathy to climate action would have a major impact on the US, which is the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and biggest oil and gas exporter, said Patricia Espinosa, who served as the UN’s top official on the climate from 2016 to 2022.“I worry [about the potential election of Trump] because it would have very strong consequences, if we see a regression regarding climate policies in the US,” Espinosa said.Although Trump’s policy plans are not clear, conversations with his circle have created a worrying picture that could include the cancellation of Joe Biden’s groundbreaking climate legislation, withdrawal from the Paris agreement and a push for more drilling for oil and gas.The co-chair of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign Cedric Richmond said that “formalizing white supremacy” will be a priority of Donald Trump, if he is returned to the White House.His statement came after Axios reported that Trump’s allies are planning to fight “anti-white racism”, and dismantle efforts to promote diversity and combat discrimination against people of color and other minorities.Richmond pointed to Trump’s promotion of the baseless conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and his equivocation over condemning the violent 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia:
    Trump couldn’t care less about Black and brown communities – he never has. Now he’s making it clear that if he wins in November, he’ll turn his racist record into official government policy, gutting programs that give communities of color economic opportunities and making the lives of Black and brown folks harder. Already, his Project 2025 allies have blocked billions of dollars in support for women and minority-owned businesses, and if he wins a second term they’ll take their divisive agenda even further. It’s up to us to stop him.
    Speaking of the November elections, Donald Trump’s allies are putting together plans to fight racism against white people, should be elected again. Here’s more on that, from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly:The former Trump White House adviser, anti-immigration extremist and white nationalist Stephen Miller is helping drive a plan to tackle supposed “anti-white racism” if Donald Trump returns to power next year, Axios reported.“Longtime aides and allies … have been laying legal groundwork with a flurry of lawsuits and legal complaints – some of which have been successful,” Axios said on Monday.Should Trump return to power, Axios said, Miller and other aides plan to “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of civil rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of colour”.Such an effort would involve “eliminating or upending” programmes meant to counter racism against non-white groups.The US supreme court, dominated 6-3 by rightwing justices after Trump installed three, recently boosted such efforts by ruling against race-based affirmative action in college admissions.America First Legal, a group founded by Miller and described by him as the right’s “long-awaited answer” to the American Civil Liberties Union, is helping drive plans for a second Trump term, Axios said.In John Avlon’s Vanity Fair interview, the former CNN anchor and Daily Beast editor turned Democratic candidate for a US House seat in New York says his party has a problem when it comes to “obsessing about culture-war issues”.“I think Democrats often get spun around the axle when they start obsessing about culture-war issues,” Avlon says, offering as an example, “Defund the police, one of the worst, most self-defeating political slogans imaginable.“But in reality, in the last Congress – I counted this up – there were seven members of the Democratic House who supported the policy known as ‘Defund the police’. There were 139 members of the Republican House [and eight senators] who voted to overturn the election after the attack on the Capitol. That’s asymmetric, that’s not the same moral universe.“As I wrote in my book Wing Nuts over a decade ago, the far right and the far left can be equally insane, but there’s no question who’s far more powerful and more dangerous in our time.“I mean, the Democratic party nominates and elevates centrists, right? The party is evenly divided between liberals and moderates. The Republican party is nominating Donald Trump for a third time after he tried to destroy our democracy on the back of a lie, with totally fact-free rants that are contrary to everything that party allegedly once believed. So there’s just no equivalence at all. The problem is, it distracts from a lot of the issues that we really need to deal with that are right in the Democrats’ sweet spot.”Vanity Fair’s interviewer, Joe Pompeo, asked Avlon “for his centrist view on Israel and Gaza”.Avlon said: “As someone who was formed by 9/11, fundamentally, in the wake of the absolute horror of the October 7 attacks, our impulse should be to stand with the victims of terrorism and not blame the victims of terrorism … It’s absolutely legitimate to not only defend yourself, but to ensure that Hamas leadership is taken out. You’re dealing with terrorism, but you’ve got to maximise humanitarian aid and minimise civilian casualties, because that ends up playing into the terrorist narrative. I think the Biden administration is walking a difficult line well.”Here, again, is the Guardian’s John Avlon interview, from the launch of his campaign in February:John Avlon, the former CNN anchor and Daily Beast editor running for the Democratic nomination in New York’s first US House district, is heralding an impressive fundraising effort in his first month-and-a-bit in the race.“I’m honored and humbled to have received so much support in so short a time,” Avlon said in a statement accompanying news of more than $1.1m raised so far.“To raise over a million dollars in the first 40 days of the campaign is a measure of the excitement we’ve unleashed. Democrats understand that we can’t afford to lose this fight … Together, we’ll fight the good fight by defending our democracy, defeating Donald Trump and winning back the House from his Maga minions, who aren’t trying to solve problems in the national interest anymore.”Avlon, 51, has also spoken to Vanity Fair, describing the “moral urgency” he feels running for office with Trump at the head of the Republican ticket, as a determined centrist, calling for an end to partisan extremities.“This is a swing district,” he told Vanity Fair, “but when you look at the battleground maps in New York, it wasn’t being treated as one. We just got the new district registration numbers, and in New York one, we have the highest number of independent voters in the state. That’s prime for swing.”That could be vital in a close House election.Here’s our own interview with Avlon, from February, when he announced his run:When Joe Biden visits Baltimore on Friday, he is expected to meet with Maryland governor Wes Moore and Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott as he tours the area where the Key Bridge collapsed last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said a little earlier in the media briefing in the west wing.She noted that the administration has already worked with local leaders to secure barges and a crane for the scene, along with an early influx of money, Reuters reports.Meanwhile Jean-Pierre condemned racist attacks on Moore and Scott from the right-wing in the wake of the bridge catastrophe. Both men are Black. Such attacks are “wrong”, she said.An Israeli air strike has hit Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria.Israeli warplanes destroyed the consulate, killing several people including a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).Among those killed was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Iranian state media reported. Iranian state television said several Iranian diplomats had been killed.The Guardian is live blogging this in a separate blog and you can follow all that news as it happens, here.The White House spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, said moments ago that if reports are true that Israel is trying to shut down the Qatari news network Al Jazeera in Israel, it would be “concerning”, Reuters reports.Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, revived moves on Monday to shut down Qatari satellite television station Al Jazeera in Israel, saying through his party spokesperson that parliament would be convened in the evening to ratify the necessary law.Israel has previously accused the station of agitating against it among Arab viewers.Netanyahu indicated that the Israeli parliament would be convened this evening to ratify the necessary law. Neither the station’s main office in Israel nor the Qatari government in Doha immediately responded to a request for comment.Al Jazeera has previously accused Israel of systematically targeting its offices and personnel. Israeli officials have long complained about Al Jazeera‘s coverage but stopped short of taking action, mindful of Qatar’s bankrolling of Palestinian construction projects in the Gaza Strip – seen by all sides as a means of staving off conflict.Since the Gaza war that erupted on 7 October with a cross-border killing and kidnapping rampage by the enclave’s dominant Hamas Islamists, Doha has mediated ceasefire negotiations under which Israel recovered some of those taken hostage. However, talks on a second proposed truce appear to be going nowhere.An Israeli government spokesperson, Avi Hyman, was asked if the threat against Al Jazeera might be part of pressure by Netanyahu publicly called for the Qataris to be pressed into applying more pressure on Hamas. Qatar hosts the group’s political office and several top Hamas officials.Hyman, did not answer directly, though he did describe the station as “spouting propaganda for many, many years”.Joe Biden plans to visit Baltimore on Friday in the wake of the catastrophic collapse last week of the landmark Francis Scott Key Bridge after a massive container ship collided with one of the main supports of the bridge.The White House secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is briefing now at the White House and gave the new detail, that the US president will be heading to the Maryland city, with its huge port, where the shipping channel has been blocked since the incident, which also killed six people who were working on road repair when it happened.The wreckage of the huge bridge, which served as a road artery, fell into the Patapsco River in the early hours of last Tuesday morning, and the steel debris and the stricken container ship are still jamming the main entry and exit for the port.Jean-Pierre had few details of the visit so far and said she couldn’t add any information about whether Biden will be reviewing the site of the bridge collapse by air, land or sea, or whether he will meet the relatives of victims.The huge salvage operation on the bridge is under way.Could the frozen negotiations on passing aid to Ukraine, Israel and other American allies finally be unthawing? Yesterday, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, laid out some potential concessions he may demand of Democrats in order to bring the measure up for a vote when Congress returns to work next week. We don’t know what Joe Biden, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, or other top Democrats think of this proposal, though California senator Laphonza Butler signaled that Johnson’s call to restart permitting new natural gas export projects may prove to be the most controversial aspect. Meanwhile, Biden and Johnson are feuding over the White House’s declaration of 31 March as Transgender Day of Visibility – which also happened to be Easter Sunday.Here’s what else is going on today:
    Johnson downplayed rightwing congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s attempt to remove him from office, but acknowledged it was a “distraction”.
    Biden gave a brief interview where he sounded upbeat about his prospects of winning re-election.
    Donald Trump’s campaign also attacked Biden for recognizing transgender people, while reportedly stretching the truth about the rules for the annual Easter Egg Roll.
    Here’s more on the kerfuffle over Easter and Transgender Day of Visibility that has managed to suck in Donald Trump, Mike Johnson and Joe Biden:A Joe Biden White House spokesperson said Republicans who have spent the Easter weekend criticizing the president for declaring Sunday’s annual Transgender Day of Visibility “are seeking to divide and weaken our country with cruel, hateful and dishonest rhetoric”.“As a Christian who celebrates Easter with family, President Biden stands for bringing people together and upholding the dignity and freedoms of every American,” the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said. “President Biden will never abuse his faith for political purposes or for profit.”Bates’ statement came as the president faced criticism from the campaign of his Republican presidential challenger Donald Trump – along with religious conservatives who support him – for going through with issuing the annual proclamation recognizing 31 March as Transgender Day of Visibility even though that coincided with Easter Sunday.The Democrat issued the proclamation Friday, calling on “all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity”.But Republicans objected to the fact that the Transgender Day of Visibility’s designated 31 March date in 2024 overlapped with Easter, among the holiest celebrations for Christians. Trump’s campaign accused Biden, a Roman Catholic, of being insensitive to religion. And the former president’s Republican allies piled on. More

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    Mike Johnson hints vote on Ukraine aid is up next despite threat to speakership

    The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, has raised expectations that a vote on funding for Ukraine could be imminent in the chamber, even at the risk of the Republican losing his leadership position.Johnson touted “important innovations” to a possible Ukraine package during an interview on Fox News’s Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy, and he suggested a vote on a standalone bill could come soon after Congress returns from Easter recess on 9 April.But the Louisiana Republican acknowledged forces in his party were trying to unseat him over his efforts to find a bipartisan solution to stalled US funding for Ukraine’s efforts to repel Russia’s military invasion, which began in February 2022. The far-right extremist Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to remove Johnson in March, but she stopped short of calling it for a floor vote.The White House, meanwhile, has warned that delays are costing Ukraine lives and territory because Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, “gains every day” Congress does not pass a funding measure.“What we have to do in an era of divided government, historically, as we are, you got to build consensus. If we want to move a partisan measure, I got to have every single member, literally. And some things need to be bipartisan,” Johnson said, acknowledging the shrinking Republican majority in the House.“We’ve been talking to all the members especially now over the district work period. When we return after this work period, we’ll be moving a product, but it’s going to, I think, have some important innovations.”Those innovations include efforts to placate Republican hardliners, who have cooled on continuing to support Ukraine financially with the war there now in its third year. They include a loan instead of a grant, or harnessing Russian assets confiscated in the US under the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (Repo) for Ukrainians Act.“If we can use the seized assets of Russian oligarchs to allow the Ukrainians to fight them, that’s just pure poetry,” Johnson said. “Even [former president Donald] Trump has talked about the loan concept, where we’re not just giving foreign aid, we’re setting it up in a relationship where they can provide it back to us when the time is right.”The specter of Trump, the prospective Republican nominee for November’s presidential election, has loomed large over the wrangling for a Ukraine deal. He was instrumental in Johnson’s refusal to call a House vote on a $95bn wartime funding bill that passed the Democratic-led Senate in February, which also included aid for Israel in its war in Gaza.Trump has also demanded Republicans reject any Ukraine funding measure that ties in money for US border security in order to deny the Joe Biden White House a “win” on immigration ahead of November’s election, hence Johnson’s pursuit of a standalone solution.The friction has led to rightwingers, such as Greene, threatening Johnson’s position. Other Republican colleagues, however, have leapt to the speaker’s defense. The New York congressman Mike Lawler blasted Greene’s motion to vacate as “idiotic” on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “It’s not actually going to help advance the cause she believes in, and in fact it undermines our House Republican majority,” he said.Some Democrats have indicated they would support Johnson if a vote to remove him were called, though other Republicans have acknowledged his precarious position.“I’m not going to deny it. It’s a very narrow majority, and one or two people can make us a minority,” the Nebraska congressman Don Bacon told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.Without identifying Greene by name, he added: “We have one or two people that are not team players. They’d rather enjoy the limelight, the social media.”Bacon is one of several Republicans who have worked across the aisle to craft a Ukraine aid proposal. “We put a bill together that focuses on military aid, a $66bn bill that provides military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. There’s enough support in the House to get this done,” he said.Of Johnson’s plans to bring a House vote next week, Bacon added: “He’s doing the right thing.” More

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    For the sake of all of us, Sonia Sotomayor needs to retire from the US supreme court | Mehdi Hasan

    Forget Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It is Sonia Sotomayor who is the greatest liberal to sit on the supreme court in my adult lifetime. The first Latina to hold the position of justice, she has blazed a relentlessly progressive trail on the highest bench in the land.Whether it was her lone dissent in a North Carolina voting rights case in 2016 (“the court’s conclusion … is a fiction”); her ingenious referencing of Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin and WEB DuBois in another 2016 dissent over unreasonable searches and seizures; or her withering observation at the Dobbs oral argument in 2021 (“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts?”), Sotomayor has stood head and shoulders above both her liberal and conservative colleagues on the bench for the past 15 years.And so it is with good reason that she has been called the “conscience of the supreme court” (the Nation), “the truth teller of the supreme court” (New York Times) and “the real liberal queen of the court” (Above the Law).I happen to agree 100% with all of those descriptions. But – and it pains me to write these words – I also believe it is time for Sotomayor to retire.Why?Okay, now it is time to remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg. To recall how RBG, who had survived two bouts of cancer, refused to quit the court despite calls to do so from leading liberals during Barack Obama’s second term office. To hark back to her insistence, in multiple interviews, that it was “misguided” to insist she retire and that she would only stand down “when it’s time”. To recollect how, on her deathbed in 2020, she told her granddaughter that her “most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed” – and how it made no difference whatsoever! Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett as RBG’s replacement just eight days after her death, and Senate Republicans confirmed Barrett to RBG’s vacant seat just eight days before election day.With Joe Biden trailing Trump in several swing states and Democrats also in danger of losing their razor-thin majority in the Senate, are we really prepared for history to repeat itself? Sotomayor will turn 70 in June. Of course, only Sotomayor knows the full status of her health, still it is public knowledge that she has had type 1 diabetes since she was seven; had paramedics called to her home; and is the only sitting justice to have, reportedly, traveled with a medic. To be clear: she could easily – and God willing – survive a potential Trump second term and still be dishing out dissents from the bench come 2029.But why take that risk? Why not retire now? Why not quit the bench at the same age that justices in Belgium, Australia and Japan are forced to do so?Let’s deal with the three most obvious objections.First, wouldn’t a replacement for Sotomayor that Senator Joe Manchin has to approve be less progressive, and more centrist, than our sole Latina, super-progressive justice? Perhaps. But, again, consider the alternative. Would we rather Biden replace Sotomayor with a centrist in 2024 … or Trump replace her with a far-right Federalist Society goon in 2025? Or, what if Trump doesn’t win but the Republican party takes control of the Senate and blocks a second-term Biden from replacing her between 2025 and 2028?Second, is there really any difference between a 6-3 conservative majority on the court and a 7-2 majority? Isn’t all lost already? Not quite. The damage to our democracy from a 7-2 hard-right court would be on a whole other and existential level. Yes, 6-3 has been a disaster for our progressive priorities (Dobbs! Bruen! Kennedy!) but there have also been a handful of key 5-4 victories (Redistricting! Razor wire at the border! Ghost guns!) in cases where Roberts plus one other conservative have come over from the dark side. None of that happens in a 7-2 court. The hard-right conservatives win not just most of the time but every single time.Third, how can anyone on the left dare ask the first, and only, Latina justice to quit the supreme court?It’s simple. Women in general, and Latinas especially, will suffer most from a 7-2 supreme court. It is because I am so worried about the future of minority rights in this country that I – reluctantly – want Sotomayor to step aside.This has nothing to do with her race or her gender. Forget RBG (again). Consider Stephen Breyer. You remember Breyer, right? The bookish and bespectacled liberal justice who quit the supreme court in 2022, at the age of 83, in part because of an intense pressure campaign from the left.The fact that he was a white man didn’t shield him from criticism – or from calls for him to stand down. In 2021, the progressive group Demand Justice sent a billboard truck to circle the supreme court building with the message: “Breyer, retire.” I joined in, too. “Retire, retire, retire,” I said in a monologue for my Peacock show in 2021. “Or history may end up judging you, Justice Breyer.”So why is it okay to pressure Breyer to retire but not Sotomayor? This time round, Demand Justice isn’t taking a position on whether an older liberal justice should quit while a Democratic president and Senate can still replace them and, as HuffPost reports, “on the left, there is little open debate about whether she should retire.”Democrats, it seems, still don’t seem keen on wielding power or influence over the highest court in the nation. In 2013, Barack Obama met with RBG for lunch and tried to nudge her into retiring, but as the New York Times later reported, Obama “did not directly bring up the subject of retirement to Justice Ginsburg”.Compare and contrast with Donald Trump. The finance journalist David Enrich, in his book Dark Towers, reveals how the Trump family carried out a “coordinated White House charm offensive” to persuade Justice Anthony Kennedy to retire in 2018. Trump himself, according to Vanity Fair, “worked for months to assure Kennedy his legacy would be in good hands”.The offensive was a success. Out went self-styled moderate Kennedy, in came the hard-right political operative Brett Kavanaugh.If there is to be a change to the supreme court in 2024, Biden and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, have only a few months left to make it happen. And yet they don’t seem too bothered about Sotomayor’s age or health. Last week, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, called it “a personal decision for her to make”.A personal decision? The prospect of a 7-2 conservative supreme court, with a far-right Federalist Soceity apparatchik having taken “liberal queen” Sotomayor’s seat on the bench, should fill us all with dread.Biden, elected Democrats, and liberals and progressives across the board should be both publicly and privately encouraging Sotomayor to consider what she wants her legacy to be, to remember what happened with RBG, and to not take any kind of gamble with the future of our democracy.If insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results, then I’m sorry but a liberal supreme court justice about to enter her 70s and refusing to retire on a Democratic president and Democratic Senate’s watch is nothing short of insane.
    Mehdi Hasan is the CEO and editor-in-chief of Zeteo More

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    Senator Raphael Warnock: ‘The Bible doesn’t need Trump’s endorsement’

    Donald Trump’s decision to sell Bibles branded under his name is “risky business”, the Democratic US senator Raphael Warnock said on Sunday, as the former president stands accused of having few moral scruples in four separate criminal indictments pending against him.“The Bible does not need Donald Trump’s endorsement,” Warnock, the pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist church, said to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. Speaking on Easter, one of Christianity’s holiest celebrations, Warnock added: “It’s a risky bet because the folks who buy those Bibles might actually open them up, where it says things like thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not bear false witness, where it warns about wolves dressed up in sheep’s clothing.“I think you ought to be careful. This is risky business for somebody like Donald Trump.”Warnock’s comments to CNN came days after the Republican who is running against Joe Biden for a second presidency in November presented an offer for the public to buy Trump-endorsed Bibles for $59.99. “Let’s Make America Pray Again”, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, a clear reference to the “Make America Great Again” slogan that he rode to the White House in 2016.But indeed more than 80 criminal charges filed against Trump over the previous 12 months – including in Warnock’s home state of Georgia – charge the former president with behaving in ways that many true Bible devotees would frown upon.Trump has pleaded not guilty to allegations that he tried to unduly overturn the outcome of the 2020 election that he lost to his Democratic rival Biden, improperly retained classified government materials after his presidency, and illicitly covered up hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has claimed to have engaged in extramarital sex with him.He is also facing multimillion-dollar civil penalties for business practices deemed fraudulent and an allegation that he raped a woman – a claim that a judge has determined to be substantially true.Warnock on Sunday said he wasn’t surprised Trump had turned to selling Bibles to help raise funds for his soaring legal bills as well as his presidential campaign. The senator alluded to Trump’s history of hawking – among other things – Trump-branded steaks, non-accredited business school degrees and, more recently, $399 gold sneakers.“Now he’s trying to sell the scriptures,” said Warnock, who was first elected to the US Senate in 2020. “At the end of the day, I think he’s trying to sell the American people a bill of goods.”Warnock went out of his way to mention that Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016, but recognized that his tact allowed him to triumph in the electoral college. But Warnock remarked: “It did not work in 2020,” when Trump lost both the popular and electoral college votes.“And,” the senator said,” I don’t think it’s going to work in 2024.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuring his interview on CNN, Warnock also addressed criticism from Trump and his Republican allies that Biden recognized Transgender Day of Visibility – which falls annually on 31 March – as scheduled on Sunday, even though this year it coincided with Easter.The Republican US House speaker, Mike Johnson, notably asserted that Biden had “betrayed the central tenet of Easter”, something that he called “outrageous and abhorrent”.Warnock, who is part of a succession of Ebenezer Baptist church pastors that includes the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, said the fabricated controversy was another instance of people “who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us”.“Apparently, the speaker finds trans people abhorrent, and I think he ought to think about that,” Warnock said. “The fact of the matter is … March 31 has been a day to lift up transgender people who endure violence and bigotry.“But this is just one more instance of folks … who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us. And this is the opposite of the Christian faith. Jesus centered the marginalized. He centered the poor. And in a moment like this, we need voices, particularly voices of faith, who would use our faith not as a weapon to beat other people down, but as a bridge to bring all of us together.” More

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    Engineers begin removing Baltimore Key Bridge’s mangled wreckage

    Crews of engineers have begun the dangerous and intricate job of removing the mangled wreckage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge from the Patapsco River outside Baltimore, as top federal government and Maryland state officials stressed Sunday that the health of the US national economy depended on it.Officials took to the political talkshows Sunday to praise the emergency teams that have now amassed in the Patapsco and have started the delicate process of cutting and lifting steel debris from the north side of the destroyed bridge. Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, said the operation was extremely complex.“We have a ship that has nearly the size of the Eiffel Tower that is now stuck within the channel that has the Key Bridge sitting on top of it,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. He added that the bridge collapse, which occurred six days ago when the 985ft cargo ship the Dali lost power and crashed into the structure, was not a local but a national economic catastrophe.“This port is one of the busiest most active ports inside of the country. This is going to impact the farmer in Kentucky, the auto dealer in Ohio, the restaurant owner in Tennessee,” he said.Some 15,000 people are estimated to rely on the Port of Baltimore directly for their livelihoods, with a further 140,000 jobs indirectly affected. The port handles the shipping of more cars and light trucks than any other in the US, and it is also a major hub for agricultural equipment.Last year, more than 1m cargo containers passed through it. That amounted to more than 50m tonnes of foreign cargo, worth about $80bn.Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, was unable to give CBS News’s Face the Nation a timeline for the removal of the stricken bridge or for its rebuilding. He noted that the original bridge took about five years to construct, though that was not an indication of how long it will take to replace.Buttigieg said that it was possible the Biden administration may have to turn to Congress for approval of federal funds, which are expected to meet up to 90% of the costs of recovery. So far only $60m has been provided from an emergency pot held by the Federal Highway Administration.Asked by CBS News why any skeptical lawmakers should vote for what promises to be a multimillion-dollar project, Buttigieg said: “The pitch is: your district could be next. And this has historically been bipartisan.”James Clyburn, the influential Democratic congress member from South Carolina, underlined that point on NBC’s Meet the Press. “The fact of the matter is, all of us, every state in the nation, all 50 of us, will take our turns needing this kind of assistance,” he said.Clyburn added: “It may be gust storms in some places, it may be a flood, or here in this part of the country, hurricanes. We all are subjected at one time or another to some kind of calamity.”Brandon Scott, the mayor of Baltimore, who is Black, addressed the ugly wave of conservative social media attacks against him since the bridge disaster erupted. He was trolled by a user on X as “Baltimore’s DEI mayor”.Asked about the abuse on CBS News’s Face the Nation, Scott said that the backlash was coming from those who were “too afraid to use the N-word”. He added: “I am a young Black man, a young Black mayor. I know how racism goes in this country.”Moore, the state’s Black governor, has also been caught up in the rightwing backlash that has sought to connect the bridge collapse to progressive politics and initiatives promoting the concept of DEI (short for diversity, equity and inclusion), especially after the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPhil Lyman, who is running for governor of Utah, posted on social media after the disaster occurred that “this is what happens when you have governors who prioritize diversity over the well-being and security of citizens.”Unlike Scott, Moore refused to respond to the trolling Sunday. Asked by CNN whether he thought the attacks were racist, he replied: “I have no time for foolishness. I’m making sure we can get closure and comfort to these families … I have no time for foolishness, and so I’m not going to delve into it.”The rescue operation has been taken up a notch by the arrival on location of a massive crane that can lift 1,000 tonnes, along with six other floating cranes also now at the site of the disaster. According to Associated Press, the clean-up teams also now include 10 tugboats, nine barges and eight salvage vessels.A top priority of emergency workers is to address the human tragedy of the bridge collapse. Eight construction workers were working on the bridge in the early hours of Tuesday when the disaster happened. Only two of them survived.The bodies of two workers, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, who were trapped underwater in their vehicle, have been recovered. Four other workers, who are presumed to have died, have yet to be found.Scott said that a fund set up to help the families of those who died has reached over $300,000. “We will support them throughout this, and that could mean ongoing trauma care in the future,” he said.Beyond the lives lost, the main structural priority at the site of the collapsed bridge is first to open a channel for smaller boats to be able to enter and exit the port. The main goal of allowing big ships in and out is expected to take much longer.Recovery operations are being hampered by the murkiness of the water in which the wreckage is partially submerged. Sunken metal beams also increase the perilousness of the work. More