Evelyn Reynolds

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    Say it with cash: Trump’s Valentine love letter to Melania is fundraising email

    In a Valentine’s Day fundraising message, Donald Trump sought to demonstrate the depth of his love for Melania Trump, his third wife, by referring to his lengthy list of criminal charges.“Even after every single indictment, arrest and witch hunt, you never left my side,” the message said.The probable Republican presidential nominee faces four criminal indictments: for election subversion (13 state charges, four federal), retention of classified information (40, federal) and hush-money payments to an adult film star and director who claims a sexual affair (34, state).Stormy Daniels claims to have had sex with Trump in 2006, shortly after Melania gave birth to her son, Barron Trump, a claim Trump denies despite having arranged to pay Daniels $130,000 to be quiet during the 2016 election.Nor is that Trump’s only legal problem – or product of what he claims are witch-hunts mounted by his enemies – to do with matters of sex.Last month, Trump was on the wrong end of an $83.3m judgment in a defamation case arising from an allegation of rape, from the writer E Jean Carroll, that a judge said was “substantially true”.Carroll said Trump assaulted her in a New York department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. In a deposition, Trump memorably confused a picture of Carroll for a picture of Marla Maples, his second wife.And yet, despite it all, when it comes to his current wife – and the matter of raising campaign cash – Trump remains a determined softie.Under the headline “This is a Valentine’s Day letter from Donald J Trump”, the message sent out on Wednesday began: “Dear Melania. I love you!”It then took its unexpected turn.“Even after every single indictment, arrest and witch hunt, you never left my side. You’ve always supported me through everything. I wouldn’t be the man I am today without your guidance, kindness and warmth. You will always mean the world to me, Melania! From your husband with love, Donald J Trump.”Recipients who clicked on one of three big red invitations to “send your love” were directed to a page offering the chance to send a “personalised message” to Melania – and to donate to Trump’s campaign amounts ranging from $20.24 to $3,300 or “other”.Melania Trump has recently reappeared in public with her husband, after an absence believed related to the death of her mother, Amalija Knavs, last month. Donald Trump recently told Fox News his wife “wants to make America great again, too” and would “play a big role” in his campaign to return to power.“I think she’s going to be very active in the sense of being active,” Trump added. More

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    Mayorkas impeachment: petty, doomed … but still potentially damaging

    In 1876, the last US cabinet official to be impeached, William Belknap, resigned before the House could vote on the matter. Ulysses S Grant’s secretary of war was tried in the Senate anyway, on charges of corruption, but escaped conviction.Nearly 150 years later, in the House on Tuesday and at the second time of asking, Republicans corralled just enough votes to ensure Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, suffered Belknap’s fate. But Mayorkas has not resigned – and nor is he likely to be convicted and removed.Democrats control the Senate, which means Mayorkas is all but certain to be acquitted at any trial, regardless of reported doubts among Republican senators about their party’s case.After the 214-213 vote to impeach, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, set out what will happen next. House managers will present the articles of impeachment after Monday’s President’s Day holiday. Senators will be sworn in as jurors. And Patty Murray of Washington state, the Democratic Senate president pro tempore, will preside thereafter.Schumer also issued a stinging statement.“This sham impeachment effort is another embarrassment for House Republicans,” the New Yorker said. “The one and only reason for this impeachment is for Speaker [Mike] Johnson to further appease Donald Trump.”The Mayorkas impeachment is of a kind with Senate Republicans’ decision last week to detonate their own hard-won border and immigration bill because Trump, their likely nominee for president, wants to campaign on the issue.Schumer continued: “House Republicans failed to produce any evidence that Secretary Mayorkas has committed any crime. House Republicans failed to show he has violated the constitution. House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense. This is a new low for House Republicans.”Most observers agree that the charges against Mayorkas – basically, that he performed incompetently and violated immigration law regarding the southern border – do not remotely rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanours”, as constitutionally required for impeachment and removal.Perhaps with a nod to the unfortunate Belknap, the Biden White House weighed in, saying: “History will not look kindly on House Republicans for their blatant act of unconstitutional partisanship that has targeted an honorable public servant in order to play petty political games.”But history also records that all impeachments (and impeachment efforts, such as that mounted by Republicans against Biden himself) are inherently political, so this one could prove as politically potent as did those of Trump. Both Trump impeachments concerned behaviour – blackmailing Ukraine for political dirt and inciting the January 6 attack on Congress – much closer by any standard to the status of high crimes and misdemeanours. Regardless, Republicans ensured Trump was acquitted in both and have since fed Trump’s fierce desire for revenge.The Mayorkas impeachment was driven by Trump-aligned extremists prominently including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.Speaking to reporters on the Capitol steps on Tuesday, the same day the Senate passed a $95bn national security package including funding for Ukraine in its war with Russia, Greene said she was “very thankful to our Republican Congress. We’re finally working together with the American people to send a message to the Biden administration that it’s our border that matters, not other countries’ borders. Our border matters.”Claiming Mayorkas was guilty of “willful betrayal of the American people and breaking federal immigration laws”, Greene also said the impeachment “sends a message to America that Republicans can get our job done when we work together and do what’s important and what the American people want us to do.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf there were any remaining doubt that Mayorkas was impeached in service of pure politics, Greene said senators set to sit as jurors should “look at the polling. They know that our border security is the No 1 issue in every single campaign in every single state, every single city, in every single community … They better pay attention to the American people.”It is not certain, however, that a trial will happen.Joshua Matz, a lawyer who has written extensively on impeachment and worked on both impeachments of Trump, recently told Politico: “Impeachment trials are meant to be deadly serious business for matters of state – not free publicity for the House majority to air policy attacks on the current administration.”The Mayorkas impeachment articles, Matz said, are “so manifestly about policy disagreement rather than anything that could arguably qualify as high crimes and misdemeanours, that it would be unwarranted to waste the Senate’s time with the trial on the matter.“The articles are formally deficient in so many ways that any trial would be flagrantly unfair and create such grave due process issues that it would be outrageous to even proceed.”Senate Democrats could bring up a simple motion to dismiss the Mayorkas charges, a gambit which would be likely to succeed, given indicated support from the West Virginia centrist Joe Manchin, a key swing vote in the narrowly divided chamber. Less starkly, Democrats could seek to tie proceedings up in procedure, options including sending the charges to a committee, there to sit in limbo throughout an election year.All choices carry political peril, however. On Wednesday, the news site Semafor quoted an unnamed Republican aide as saying: “If Democrats give Republicans the opportunity to say that they are sweeping this under the rug, we will gladly take it.“If this is the sham Democrats claim it is, why would they be afraid of holding a trial?” More

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    Trump is ‘unhinged’ and ‘diminished’, says Nikki Haley

    Donald Trump is “unhinged” and “diminished”, said Nikki Haley, the former president’s last rival for the Republican presidential nomination, on Wednesday.“To mock my husband, Michael and I can handle that,” the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador told NBC News’s Today, referring to comments by Trump about Michael Haley, a national guard officer deployed in Djibouti.“But you mock one member of the military, you mock all members of the military … Before, when he did it, it was during the 2016 election, and everybody thought, ‘Oh, did he have a slip? What did that mean?’ The problem now is he is not the same person he was in 2016. He is unhinged. He is more diminished than he was.”In the 2016 campaign, Trump mocked John McCain, an Arizona senator and former nominee for president who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Having avoided the draft for that war, Trump was expected to pay a heavy political price but did not, going on to attract controversy in office for allegedly deriding those who serve.Eight years later, Trump has won Republican votes in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada and leads Haley in her own state, the next to vote, by vast margins.Haley’s use of the word “diminished” spoke to concerns about Trump’s age – 77 – but also that of the president, Joe Biden, who at 81 is facing a barrage of Republican attacks about his fitness for office. Haley, 52, has said older politicians should face cognitive tests.Initially shy of attacking Trump, Haley has turned fire his way as primary rivals have dropped out, leaving her the last impediment to a third Trump nomination. But Haley continues to say she will support Trump if he is nominated to take on Biden.“I have said any of those 14 [Republican candidates] would be better than Joe Biden,” she told NBC, “because everybody sees how diminished Joe Biden is.“[But] I will also tell you there is no way that the American people are going to vote for a convicted criminal. They’re not.”Trump faces 91 criminal charges under four indictments: 40 for retaining classified information, 34 for hush-money payments to an adult film actor, 13 for attempted election subversion in Georgia and four for attempted federal election subversion.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe former president also faces civil suits over his business affairs and was on the receiving end of an $83.3m judgment in a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge said was “substantially true”.After supreme court arguments last week, Trump looks set to survive state attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection, the attack on Congress of 6 January 2021.Despite such dramas, Trump is poised to extend control over his party by installing a loyalist and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as Republican National Committee co-chairs and a campaign official, Chris LaCivita, as chief operating officer.Asked about Trump’s claim she was hurting the party by staying in the primary, Haley told NBC: “From a man who spent $50m of his own campaign contributions on his personal court cases, where the RNC is broke, I’m the one hurting in resources? I don’t think so.“I’m the one that saves the Republican party. Look at every general election poll. Look at any of them. Trump loses [to Biden] by five, by seven. On a good day, he’s even. Margin of error. I defeat Biden by up to 17 points.” More

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    Anti-abortion centers raked in $1.4bn in year Roe fell, including federal money

    Anti-abortion facilities raked in at least $1.4bn in revenue in the 2022 fiscal year, the year Roe v Wade fell – a staggering haul that includes at least $344m in government money, according to a memo analyzing the centers’ tax documents that was compiled by a pro-abortion rights group and shared exclusively with the Guardian.These facilities, frequently known as anti-abortion pregnancy centers or crisis pregnancy centers, aim to convince people to keep their pregnancies. But in the aftermath of Roe’s demise, the anti-abortion movement has framed anti-abortion pregnancy centers as a key source of aid for desperate women who have lost the legal right to end their pregnancies and been left with little choice but to give birth.Accordingly, abortion opponents say, the centers need an influx of government cash.“Those are the centers that states rely on to assist expecting moms and dads,” Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, told anti-abortion protesters at the March for Life in January. The Louisiana Republican praised the centers for providing “the important material support that expecting and first-time mothers get from these centers”.Earlier this year, under Johnson’s leadership, the House passed a bill that would block the Department of Health and Human Services from restricting funding for anti-abortion pregnancy centers. State governments are also in the midst of sending vast sums of taxpayer dollars to programs that support anti-abortion pregnancy centers. Since the demolition of Roe, at least 16 states have agreed to send more than $250m towards “alternative to abortion” programs in 2023 through 2025. Those programs funnel money towards anti-abortion pregnancy centers, maternity homes and assorted other initiatives meant to dissuade people from abortions.Still, abortion rights supporters say, much of the anti-abortion pregnancy center industry remains shrouded in mystery – including their finances.“Stewards of both taxpayer and charitable funds should insist on a real impact analysis of the industry, whether investments that are being made are achieving their desired outcomes and are cost-effective,” said Jenifer McKenna, the crisis pregnancy center program director at Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch, the group behind the analysis of tax documents. “Taxpayers deserve performance standards and hard metrics for use of their dollars on these centers.”The analysis by Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch examined 990 tax documents, which most US tax-exempt organizations must file annually, from 1,719 anti-abortion pregnancy centers in fiscal year 2019 and from 1,469 in fiscal year 2022. The analysis confirms that the anti-abortion pregnancy center industry is growing: while the centers’ revenue in 2022 exceeds $1.4bn, it was closer to $1.03bn in 2019, even though more centers were included in the earlier analysis.Centers reported receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from private funders between 2018 and 2022. While only a relatively small fraction of the centers reported receiving grants from state and federal governments in both 2022 and 2019, that number is on the rise, according to the Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch analysis memo. In 2022, the centers said they received $344m in such grants, but they received less than $97m in 2019.Just 21 centers identified the federal grants that they received in 2022, the analysis found. Those grants included the Fema-funded Emergency Food and Shelter Program, which is primarily meant for organizations that alleviate hunger and homelessness, and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a program for low-income families.This accounting does not represent the full financial picture of the anti-abortion pregnancy center industry. More than 2,500 anti-abortion pregnancy centers are believed to dot the United States – a number that far outstrips the number of abortion clinics in the country.‘What did they do with all that money?’Much of the modern, publicly available information on anti-abortion pregnancy centers comes from one of their biggest cheerleaders: the Charlotte Lozier Institute, which assembles reports on the industry and operates as an arm of Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the top anti-abortion organizations in the United States.In 2019, the Charlotte Lozier Institute said that 2,700 anti-abortion pregnancy centers provided consulting services to 967,251 new clients on-site. In 2022, the Institute said 2,750 centers provided consulting services for 974,965 new clients – an increase of 0.08%.Even though the US supreme court overturned Roe at the halfway point of 2022, it did not appear to result in a crush of new clients – despite anti-abortion advocates’ argument that the pregnancy centers need an infusion of funding to handle post-Roe clients.“The new client numbers alone don’t fully tell the story,” a bevy of Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars – Moira Gaul, Jeanneane Maxon and Michael J New – said in an email to the Guardian, adding that anti-abortion centers and groups have seen an increase in violence following the fall of Roe. (The abortion clinics that remain post-Roe have also faced rising violence. That has not stoppered the demand for their services, as rates of abortions have risen since Roe’s demise.)Anti-abortion pregnancy centers are seeing a dramatic rise in calls for certain kinds of help. Data from the Charlotte Lozier Institute reports show that centers handed out 64% more diapers, 52% more baby clothing and 43% more wipes in 2022, compared to 2019. Demand for new car seats and strollers also increased by about a third.All of these items would presumably go to new parents. The fall of Roe led to an estimated 32,000 more births, particularly among young women and women of color, a 2023 analysis found.The total dollar value of these goods and services was about $358m, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute report. Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch found that the roughly 1,500 centers included in the group’s 2022 analysis reported expenses of more than $1.2bn on their 990 tax documents.“They took in – according to the 990s – $1.4bn, and they spent $1.2bn on expenditures,” McKenna said. “What did they do with all that money? There’s so many questions begged by their own reporting.”The Charlotte Lozier scholars said there were other expenses not listed in the report, such as maternity clothing, property-related payments, fundraising, marketing and staff salaries. Data from their report indicates that, between 2019 and 2022, the number of volunteers who work at the centers fell while the number of paid staffers rose. (Volunteers still make up the overwhelming bulk of the workforce.)“Most non-profits prefer to use staff when possible. Centers are attracting more professionals that desire to help women,” the scholars said. “Many centers are now in a place where they can pay them so they are less reliant on volunteers.”The institute’s report on anti-abortion pregnancy centers in 2022 is a very different document to the reports that it released to cover the centers in 2019 and 2017. The earlier reports span dozens of pages; the 2022 report is only four. A longer report is now in the works, the Charlotte Lozier scholars said, which will include information about government funding of centers.A lack of regulationAlthough anti-abortion pregnancy centers may appear to be local mom-and-pop organizations, in reality many are affiliated with national organizations like NIFLA, Care Net and Heartbeat International. These centers thrive in a kind of regulatory dead zone, providing medical services like ultrasounds. But many are not licensed as medical facilities, leaving them unencumbered by the rules or oversight imposed on typical medical providers.“They are changing their names a lot and changing their names in ways like including ‘clinic’ or ‘medical’ or ‘healthcare’ into their names and dropping things like ‘Care Net’ and other types of wording that might instantly identify them as a CPC,” said Andrea Swartzendruber, an associate professor at the University of Georgia College of Public Health who tracks anti-abortion pregnancy centers.These centers, she said, are “changing their names in ways that make them seem more like medical clinics”.The Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars said “calls for governmental regulation are nothing new” post-Roe and that “such efforts have been ongoing for decades”.“They have been found to be politically motivated and have been largely unsuccessful,” the scholars said. “Abortion facilities are in need of far greater government regulation.”Anti-abortion pregnancy centers’ taxes can also be deeply intricate. The analysis by Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch found that the centers used a variety of tax codes to describe themselves, frequently describing themselves as organizations that provide “family services” or “reproductive healthcare”. They were sometimes listed as organizations that work to outlaw abortions, or as explicitly Christian, religious organizations.The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a charity watchdog group, has previously found that many centers share tax identification numbers with much larger organizations that do multiple kinds of charity work, such as non-profits run by Catholic dioceses. By sharing numbers, these organizations are effectively collapsed into one legal and tax entity, the committee said.The Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars told the Guardian that “this is not our understanding at all”. NIFLA, Care Net and Heartbeat International do not share tax identification numbers with affiliated centers, they said.Just because these particular groups do not share tax identification numbers does not preclude centers from sharing them with other organizations. For example, Care Net is affiliated with a string of Florida pregnancy centers – which, rather than sharing Care Net’s tax ID, are instead listed on tax documents for a wide-ranging charity run by a local Catholic diocese.Anti-abortion pregnancy centers tend to be faith-based. Given the industry’s religious bent, courts have proven reluctant to restrict centers in order to avoid treading on their free speech rights.In 2018, the US supreme court ruled to toss a California law that would have forced centers to disclose whether they were a licensed medical provider. Then, last year, a federal judge in Colorado paused a law that would have banned “abortion reversal”, an unproven drug protocol that aims to halt abortions and is often offered by anti-abortion pregnancy centers. (The first randomized, controlled clinical study to try to study the “reversal” protocol’s effectiveness suddenly stopped in 2019, after three of its participants went to the hospital hemorrhaging blood.)“More regulation could lead to better reporting, which would also then help with reducing all of these risks,” said Teneille Brown, a University of Utah College of Law professor who studies anti-abortion pregnancy centers. “Then the consumers could get some sense of like, ‘Oh, this clinic has had a bunch of violations,’ and if there were regulation, they could actually even shut them down.” More

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    The US supreme court may turn this election into a constitutional crisis | Sidney Blumenthal

    Imagine it is 6 January 2025. The bell tolls for the day of electoral college certification again. All the events of 2024 converge:The US supreme court’s likely ruling in Trump v Anderson denying Colorado’s disqualification of Trump under the constitution’s 14th amendment, section 3; the exoneration of Joe Biden by special counsel Robert Hur for handling documents while sideswiping him as near senile; the ruling on Trump’s immunity; the trial for his coup attempt; and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s defiance of federal court rulings in deploying his national guard to the border, supported by other Republican governors who have mobilized their guard units in similar acts of nullification – all these happenings could hurtle to a convulsive confrontation.The supreme court was precisely cautioned against fostering “potentially disastrous turmoil” if it were to rule against Colorado, in an amicus brief submitted by Benjamin Ginsberg, who for decades was the leading Republican party attorney on elections, along with two prominent legal scholars, Richard Hasen, professor at the UCLA law school, and Edward Foley, professor at the Ohio State University law school.The brief by Ginsberg et al was unvarnished: “A decision from this court leaving unresolved the question of Donald Trump’s qualification to hold the office of president of the United States under section 3 of the 14th amendment until after the 2024 election would risk catastrophic political instability, chance disenfranchising millions of voters, and raise the possibility of public violence before, on, and after November 5 2024.”The brief added that “the grounds for avoiding the merits are not credible: Colorado manifestly had the authority to determine Mr Trump’s legal qualification for the office he seeks, and this court has jurisdiction to review that federal-law decision on its merits. To punt on the merits would invite chaos while risking great damage to the court’s reputation and to the Nation as a whole.”But apparently the justices failed to read this brief, just as they apparently failed to read the various amicus briefs filed by distinguished historians.Picture how the scenario might unfold as though reading it as a history from the vantage point of one year from now. The Ginsberg brief predicts the dire consequences that would flow from the supreme court ruling against Colorado. If we layer on to that prophesy the seemingly disparate events of this winter of our discontent we can see, through a mixture of fact and speculation, a disastrous unraveling.Start with the supreme court ruling that a state is not the proper body to determine a disqualification under the 14th amendment, section 3. That would, as the Ginsberg brief states, leave enforcement inevitably, by a process of elimination, to the Congress. The justices’ frantic effort to escape responsibility for upholding the plain language of the 14th amendment in the name of saving the country from a hypothetical political crisis would potentially create a very real constitutional one.In that light, the election result might prove irrelevant. The reason is that now, according to this scenario, the 119th Congress, sworn in on 3 January 2025, could reject the electors from states for Trump by deciding that he is an insurrectionist. The supreme court would have set the stage. If the Democrats were to win the House, they could remove Trump. If the Republicans win control of the Senate, the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, refusing to whip the vote for Trump, could allow a number of Republican senators to vote for Trump’s disqualification, which would void his electoral votes by both chambers.If there is a deadlock, the Ginsberg brief argues, the House still would have an option to remove Trump. Under the Electoral Vote Reform Act, the House would establish rules under the constitution’s 12th amendment in which each state delegation gets one vote in the House. But before that would have taken place, the House could vote that Trump is excluded from a 12th amendment ballot because he was disqualified under the 14th amendment, section 3. No one not on the ballot for president could be substituted. Which means that Joe Biden would be re-elected in any case.All along, throughout the entire campaign year, that would mean that Trump has never been qualified. And it would also mean that only the supreme court decision against Colorado made it seem that he was.In the hearing of the Colorado case earlier this month, Chief Justice John Roberts cast aside the pretense of the conservative doctrines of originalism and textualism on which the supreme court has eviscerated voting rights, gun control and abortion rights. He retreated into a political hypothetical that if the court ruled in Colorado’s favor Biden might be subject to attempts to remove him from the ballot as an insurrectionist.Roberts prattled, “… maybe they’ve got a stack of papers saying here’s why I think this person is guilty of insurrection, it’s not a big insurrection, something that, you know, happened down – down the street, but they say this is still an insurrection … I don’t know what the standard is for when it arises to that.”Led by Roberts, the justices refused to define an insurrection, which was the heart of the Colorado supreme court’s ruling. Roberts’ hypothetical, besides tossing overboard originalism, was more than supercilious punditry. Perhaps his scenario was based on his familiarity with the tactics of the right wing.But Roberts also inadvertently revealed an implicit contempt for the federal system of justice. If a ludicrous suit were ever to be filed against Biden claiming he was an insurrectionist, it would enter into the process of that state’s courts. Roberts apparently had scant confidence in the state courts, up to their supreme courts, to render a sensible decision to throw out transparently mischievous cases. And if a silly case somehow made it to the supreme court, Roberts himself could lead it to deny certiorari. But in his eagerness to find some cause to rule against Colorado, Roberts may have suffered a memory lapse about the fundamental workings of the judicial system.With a supreme court ruling against Colorado, Trump would hail it as a major political victory, brandishing it as proof that all of the charges against him were motivated by partisanship.Now, imagine that in the 2024 election Biden wins the popular vote for the presidency by millions. That is not such a difficulty. Only one Democrat since 1992 has lost the popular vote in a presidential election.But consider that Biden’s overall vote and vote in swing states might be hurt by a lingering ill wind from the special counsel’s report, blowing in suspicion that, despite his command of foreign policy, military affairs and congressional negotiations, he is too damn old, unlike his unsympathetic, malicious, despised and also elderly opponent.If that report imprinted the notion that Biden’s age reflected disability, then wavering voters could fail to grant Biden the credit for his accomplishments, instead giving more weight to the image of him as incapacitated, leaving the record of his presidency unexplained. Trump’s malignant rants, meanwhile, would be, as they are often now, either accepted or dismissed.Cognitive dissonance, rather than cognitive function, in the election could prove to be the critical factor. The president who lifted the country out of Trump’s massive economic and social fiasco in the Covid crisis, and steered it through the resulting inflation to a fabled soft landing, would be perceived as having little to do with his own purpose and therefore weak. On the economy, it’s the stupidity, stupid.The cognitive disconnect in failing to attribute results to Biden’s actions would have enormous political consequences. The more Biden would try to explain the benefits of his policies, the more the Maga base and suggestible voters would disbelieve him because they have already decided he was too old to do anything, a perception reinforced not only by Fox News but also by the drumbeat of mainstream and social media.The election would then disclose the tenacity of the primitive mind. Trump’s bluster would be equated with strength and his threats with energy. The more bellicose he behaves, the more he would be seen as strong; the more incoherently he babbles, the more his supporters believe he knows what he was talking about. While Biden’s irrelevant gaffes have so far been held against him, Trump’s stream of semiconsciousness has been credited as a sign of vigor. The primitive mind that instinctively associates ape-like bellowing with power will not be swayed.Special counsel Robert Hur’s report on the storage of documents at the Penn Biden Center and Biden’s home, published earlier this month, underscored the negative campaign attack. The report’s first line was that “no criminal charges are warranted”. This was followed by contradictory assertions that Biden “willfully retained” documents and that “reasonable jurors” would conclude “that he did not retain them willfully”, and that “he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully – that is, with intent to break the law – as the statute requires”.Having exonerated Biden, the special counsel added this snark: “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”The press attention to the latter part of the sentence has almost always left out the first part – the conjecture of a trial. Yet, as Hur made clear in the opening of his report, he had already decided that he would not bring charges because he lacked evidence, much less a single witness he could bring before a grand jury. When Hur wrote the line he knew there could be no trial.In Biden, Hur had a president “willfully” dedicated to cooperation. He appeared for a deposition at the White House for more than five crucial hours on 8 and 9 October, immediately after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, in which he was immersed in urgent national security meetings and conversations with world leaders. There was no appearance of obstruction of justice or perjury, as there was in the documents case against Trump. Instead, Biden was willing to elevate the legal process over affairs of state.Biden’s quoted statements that appeared muddled are completely familiar to anyone who has ever had a discussion with him. I have personally had long conversations with Biden since I met him nearly 40 years ago. He has a habit of ruminating, wandering and voicing fragments of thought aloud, but always returns to his subject with considerable knowledge, experience and clear views. (I know of many people who have had conversations with Biden very recently, who report that he is focused, sharp and has a cogent grasp of the many crises he is handling at once.)Hur’s elaborately cute description of a doddering Biden was not gratuitous; it was carefully crafted. Hur knowingly lent the imprimatur of a Department of Justice report to character assassination. Then, Attorney General Merrick Garland naively released it unredacted to the public – red meat for the jackal pack.What was Robert Hur’s state of mind? The most generous interpretation of the special counsel’s innuendo may have been that he was innocent of any experience with a charming Irish American politician. The irony was surely lost on the hardwired conservative that his description of Biden fit Ronald Reagan to a T. But Hur instrumentally deployed his summary of his encounter with Biden as an excuse for his lack of evidence.Hur is a cold-blooded Javert as rightwing careerist. He is a representative man of the first generation bred entirely within the hothouse of the Federalist Society from his start to his smear. Beginning as a summer intern in 2000 at Kirkland & Ellis, where he had the model of partner Brett Kavanaugh, he clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist in the period when he was issuing opinions blocking abortion clinics from using Rico to sue anti-abortion protesters for damages, in Scheidler v National Organization for Women, and striking down affirmative action to increase racial diversity in college admissions, in Grutter v Bollinger and Gratz v Bollinger.Hur was an associate to then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who defended then attorney general William Barr’s misrepresentation of a redacted version of the Mueller report on Russian interference in the presidential election of 2016 to assist Trump. Trump appointed Hur the US attorney for Maryland, which certainly met with the approval of the Federalist Society chair, Leonard Leo. Hur has been a featured speaker at Federalist Society events since 2007.Hur’s report was not obsessional or fanatical, but professional. It was in effect his job application for the next Republican administration.Now, imagine, if the scenario of the Ginsberg brief is a catastrophe foretold, that all these events tumble unpredictably to 6 January 2025 and beyond. One of the analytic tools of historical understanding is to speculate on what might have happened if events took unexpected twists and turns. The proverb “for want of a nail” suggests that the absence of a minor factor produced a major outcome. In chaos theory, the butterfly effect describes the impact of seemingly random occurrences that set in motion a chain reaction leading to enormous change – the flapping of a butterfly’s wings that results in a distant tornado. A supreme court ruling and a special counsel’s report are more than a nail and a butterfly’s wings.So, consider the possible effects in a not-so-distant future:Disqualified by the Congress, an enraged Trump files a suit before the supreme court. But that is just a gesture. After the 2020 election, he incited a mob to attack the Capitol. Suppose that now he calls on the Texas governor – and other Republican governors – to send national guard units to enforce his “election”. Biden federalizes them, but the Republican governors proclaim that he has usurped power to keep himself in office illegitimately and that Trump is the truly elected president.Self-installed as the president of the de facto Second Confederacy, Trump’s first act is to pardon himself of all federal crimes. He has called Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán and Benjamin Netanyahu to request that they recognize him as the true president. Putin offers him asylum.As armies prepare to clash on a darkling plain, Trump’s last-ditch appeal in the Manhattan election fraud case for paying hush money to a porn star goes against him. The New York appellate court announces it has upheld his prison sentence and fine. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida responds that while Trump might be the president he will honor the extradition clause of the constitution to deliver him from Mar-a-Lago as a fugitive from justice. Trump flees to Texas, where Governor Abbott refuses the extradition order. Trump proclaims he is president wherever he is.The case for remanding Trump to jail in New York then goes to the supreme court. Having decided that the 14th amendment, section 3, is not self-executing, that a state cannot enforce it, the justices must now decide whether to uphold a district attorney under a state law to seize a convicted criminal under the extradition clause, which has always been pro forma. The court puts the case on its calendar several months in the future in the spring of 2025. Its conservative members are at the moment on an extended Federalist Society retreat at a private luxury lodge in Wyoming paid for by Harlan Crow.Or we click the heels of the ruby slippers. “There’s no place like home.” We awake from a phantasmagorical dream in a bed surrounded by Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.
    Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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    Biden inches away from Netanyahu as Israeli PM fails to heed US on Gaza

    A long time ago, Joe Biden signed a photo for Benjamin Netanyahu. “Bibi, I love you,” he recalls writing. “I don’t agree with a damn thing you say.”This twisty, best-of-frenemies relationship has been at the heart of the crisis in Gaza for the past five months. Unfortunately for the US president, the message from Jerusalem has been: he’s just not that into you.After the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October that killed 1,200 people, Biden invoked his long commitment to the country by giving full-throated support to its government’s right to defend itself. Biden’s embrace of the Israeli prime minister was supposed to come with an understanding – spoken or unspoken – that Netanyahu would heed US advice, show restraint and alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.But as the months have gone by and the death toll has mounted, it is a case of all give and no take. Biden is fond of saying “This is not your father’s Republican party” when considering the influence of Donald Trump. Slowly but surely, he has been forced to confront that this is not your father’s Israeli government, either.“We’re not dealing with the old Benjamin Netanyahu,” said Aaron David Miller, a former state department analyst, negotiator and adviser on Middle East issues who has worked for several administrations. “The risk-averse Israeli prime minister would take one step backward, one step forward and one step to the side.“We’re dealing with a different incarnation. He’s almost desperate to keep his coalition and prioritises it above all else even at the risk of incurring suspicion, mistrust, the anger of an American president. We’re five months into this and you’ve yet to see the administration impose any cost or consequence.”Biden, 81, and Netanyahu, 74, have known each other for nearly four decades, since the days when the former served in the Senate and the latter worked at the Israeli embassy in Washington. Biden became chair of the Senate foreign relations committee and ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988.Netanyahu served as Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and became prime minister in 1996, holding the position intermittently ever since. Relations with the US have not always been smooth. Miller, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace thinktank, said: “I remember when Bill Clinton emerged from his first meeting with Netanyahu in June 1996. He exploded. He said: ‘Who’s the fucking superpower here?’ Frustration with Benjamin Netanyahu is not new.”Tensions flared during Obama’s presidency when Biden was vice-president. A 2014 report in the Atlantic magazine characterised US-Israel relations as on the edge of a “full-blown crisis”, but Biden publicly declared that he and Netanyahu were “still buddies”, adding: “He’s been a friend for over 30 years.”However, the Israeli prime minister undercut the Obama administration by speaking before a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill and denouncing a nuclear deal that the US and its allies were negotiating with Iran. Relations with Obama never recovered.When the 7 October attack happened, Biden was unequivocal as ever in declaring himself a Zionist and duly travelled to Israel to meet Netanyahu and his war cabinet in person. It was a classic diplomatic play: bear-hug Netanyahu in public while urging restraint in private. The administration claims that Israel has duly heeded its advice and taken steps to minimise civilian casualties.But the overall Palestinian death toll from the war has surpassed 28,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry, while Netanyahu has been reluctant to pursue a long-term peace agreement (and rejected calls for Palestinian sovereignty). Anti-war protests have erupted across the US and demonstrators have interrupted Biden’s speeches to brand him “Genocide Joe” – a potential disaster in an election year.Brett Bruen, a former global engagement director for the Barack Obama White House, said: “Biden went out on a limb for him and part of that effort is that Netanyahu, even if it was not explicitly said, needed to do the minimum to keep things from getting untenable for Biden. And yet it seems as though Netanyahu’s back to his old way of operating, and that’s going to prove costly because Biden now has a pretty strong justification for taking a harder line.”Bruen, the president of the public affairs agency Global Situation Room, added: “It’s fair to say that the relationship is on the brink of breaking. With the president, you have an unstated expectation that we’ve known each other for a while and therefore can call on some of those favours from time to time and it clearly isn’t working. So you’ve not only alienated key members of the cabinet but also folks who are critical for Biden’s re-election effort.”NBC News reported this week that Biden has been “venting his frustration” over his failure to persuade Israel to alter its military tactics, complaining that Netanyahu is “giving him hell” and impossible to deal with. The president makes contemptuous references to Netanyahu such as “this guy” and “asshole”, according to unnamed sources who spoke to NBC News, and has said Netanyahu wants the war to drag on so he can remain in power.Larry Haas, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, said: “There’s no question that political matters are weighing on Biden, and the fact that these reports have come out, that Biden is saying this and that about Netanyahu in private, is not accidental. In a political sense, Biden and his people are trying to walk a fine line between supporting Israel and responding to the complaints of the Arab community and progressive Democrats.”Biden did flex some muscles by issuing an executive order targeting Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have been attacking Palestinians. He has also been increasingly critical in public. Last week he described Israel’s military assault in Gaza as “over the top” and said he is seeking a “sustained pause in the fighting” to help ailing Palestinian civilians and negotiate the release of Israeli hostages – though this is still far short of the ceasefire calls that progressives are demanding.The president told Netanyahu in a 45-minute phone call on Sunday that Israel should not go ahead with a military operation in the densely populated Gaza border town of Rafah without a “credible” plan to protect civilians. More than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have fled to Rafah to escape fighting in other areas.If Netanyahu ignores him again and presses ahead, Biden could signal his displeasure by slowing or restricting weapons sales to Israel, changing course at the UN by throwing America’s weight behind a ceasefire resolution or coming out aggressively for Palestinian statehood.Any of these would make a point, but would they make a difference? Miller doubts they will happen since the US believes the key to de-escalation in Gaza is achieving an Israel-Hamas deal – which requires Netanyahu’s approval. “I do believe that without the Israel-Hamas deal, you can hang a ‘closed for the season’ sign on this administration’s handling of this crisis,” he said. “They need it.” More

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    US House votes to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in historic vote – video

    The US House of Representatives has voted to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, on explicitly political charges related to conditions at the southern border as Republicans attempt to capitalise on the issue in an election year. Mayorkas becomes the first cabinet secretary facing charges in nearly 150 years, and the first in modern history to be impeached. More

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    Biden condemns Trump’s Nato comments as ‘dumb, shameful, dangerous and un-American’ – as it happened

    Here’s a fuller account of what Joe Biden just said about Donald Trump’s role in Republicans opposing the national security package approved today by the US Senate but set for an uncertain future in the US House, where the far right enjoys a modicum of control through the speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana.“The stakes were already high for American security before this bill was passed in the Senate last night,” Biden said. “But in recent days, those stakes have risen.“That’s because the former president has set a dangerous and shockingly, frankly, un-American signal to the world. Just a few days ago, Trump gave an invitation to Putin to invade some of our allies, Nato allies. He said if an ally didn’t spend enough money on defence, he would encourage Russia to quote, ‘Do whatever the hell they want’.“Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that? The whole world heard it.“The worst thing is, he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will. “For god’s sake it’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous. It’s un-American. When America gives its word it means something, so when we make a commitment, we keep it. And Nato is a sacred commitment.“Donald Trump looks at this as if it’s a burden. When he looks at Nato, he doesn’t see the alliance that protects America and the world. He sees a protection racket. He doesn’t understand that Nato is built on a fundamental principles of freedom, security and national sovereignty. Because for Trump, principles never matter. Everything is transactional.“He doesn’t understand that the sacred commitment we’ve given works for us as well. In fact, I would remind Trump and all those who would walk away from Nato that Article Five” – which assures mutual defence if one alliance member is attacked – “has only been invoked once. Just once in Nato history. And it was done to stand with America after we were attacked on 9/11. We should never forget it.”That’s a wrap for us on the politics liveblog today. Here’s a recap of what happened:
    Joe Biden ripped into Trump for saying over the weekend that he would let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” and attack Nato countries. “No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator,” Biden said during remarks at the White House. “It’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous, it’s un-American.” Biden also said: “No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will.”
    The US Senate passed a $95bn national security bill early this morning. The bill includes $60bn in aid for Ukraine, $14bn for Israel, and around $5bn for Indo-Pacific allies.
    Biden urged the US House to “move with urgency” to pass the national security bill, but Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, has downplayed the bill’s chances in Congress’s lower chamber.
    Voting is under way in a special election on Long Island to replace George Santos, the disgraced former congressman and prolific fabulist. Democrat Tom Suozzi is trying to beat Republican Mazi Pilip. A Democratic win would be significant because it would narrow the already slim margin Republicans hold in the US House. Polls close at 9pm EST.
    Donald Trump will attend a preliminary court in New York in the criminal case related to hush-money payments he made to Stormy Daniels. Trump is choosing to attend that hearing over a different high-stakes hearing in Atlanta on Thursday over whether Fani Willis should be disqualified from handling the wide-ranging election interference against him there because of her relationship with another prosecutor on the case.
    Nikki Haley said Donald Trump’s efforts to install his daughter-in-law and other allies in leadership at the Republican National Committee was part of Trump’s effort to cement the nomination. “Think about what’s happening right now. Is that how you’re going to try and take an election?,” she said in remarks in Bamberg, South Carolina, her home town.
    That’s all for today. I’ll be back on the liveblog tomorrow morning with a new day of updates. See you then!Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, is back at the capitol after receiving treatment for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.Scalise’s return to the capitol is significant because House Republicans are planning another impeachment vote of Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, according to the Hill. An impeachment vote last week failed by just one vote. Three Republicans voted against the measure.If Scalise supports impeachment, and no other votes change, it would narrowly pass the US House.Before I hand the controls to the great Sam Levine, a short summary of Joe Biden’s remarks from the White House just now about the $95bn national security package passed by the Senate, its uncertain future in the House and what that says about the hold Donald Trump continues to place on the American right.
    Johnson has said he doesn’t like the bill because it does not include anything to tackle the crisis at the southern border. Biden didn’t mention it, but Republicans will be hoping voters don’t remember what happened last week, when the Senate GOP tanked the border part of the package their own negotiators had worked hard to agree, because Trump (essentially) told them to do it.
    Biden did say that if Johnson allowed the border-free deal a free vote in the House, it would pass. Would it? Maybe. There are plenty of House Republicans who would back the national security package, sure – but there are plenty of House Democrats who, like three senators on their side, for sure do not like the parts of the bill which funds continuing Israeli strikes in the Palestinian territories. Biden emphasised provisions in the spending package for more aid to the besieged Palestinian people.
    Unsurprisingly, Biden therefore focused his remarks on what the Senate package would do for Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion. “We’ve all seen the terrible stories of recent weeks,” Biden said, citing “Ukrainian soldiers out of artillery shells, Ukrainian units rationing rounds of ammunition to defend themselves, Ukrainian families worried that the next Russian strike will permanently plunge them into darkness, or worse.”
    Providing such aid to Ukraine – and to Israel and allies in the Pacific including Taiwan, threatened by China – would Biden said mean work for Americans, in generating new materials to replenish Pentagon stockpiles.
    Biden also focused on what support for Ukraine would say to the world as Trump homes in on the Republican presidential nomination: “This bipartisan bill sends a clear message to the Ukrainians and to our partners, and to our allies around the world: America can be trusted, America can be relied upon, and America stands up for freedom. We stand strong for our allies. We never bow down to anyone and certainly not to Vladimir Putin.”
    Biden aimed squarely at Trump on that front, accusing him of “bowing down to a Russian dictator” and excoriating him for threatening to encourage Russia to attack Nato allies he considers financially delinquent.
    A response from Trump, one suspects, will be along sooner rather than later.In his brief remarks at the White House just now, Joe Biden continued to target Donald Trump over the former president’s marshaling of House Republicans to oppose the $95bn national security package passed by the Senate today, a bill including money for Israel and Taiwan as well as Ukraine, in its fight against the Russian invasion.“Our adversaries have long sought to create cracks” in Nato, Biden said. “The greatest hope of all those who wish Americans harm is for Nato to fall apart. You can be sure that they all cheered when they heard Donald Trump and heard what he said” last week, about encouraging Russia to attack Nato allies who he thinks do not pay enough into the pot.“I will not walk away,” Biden said. “I can’t imagine any other president walking away. As long as I’m president, if [Vladimir] Putin attacks a Nato ally, the United States will defend every inch of Nato territory.”In remarks notably heavy on Russia-Ukraine and light on Israel-Gaza – a divisive issue among Democrats – Biden then pivoted towards his re-election message, regarding the almost certain rematch with Trump this November.“Let me close with this. You heard me say this before. Our nation stands at an inflection point, an inflection point in history, where the decisions we make now are gonna determine the course of our future for decades to come. This is one of those moments.“And I say to House Republicans: you got to decide. Are you going to stand up for freedom? Or are you going to side with tyranny? Are you going to stand with Ukraine? Are you gonna stand with Putin? Are you going to stand with America or Trump?“Republicans and Democrats in the Senate came together to send a message of unity to the world [by passing the national security package]. It’s time for the House Republicans do the same thing. Pass this bill immediately. Stand for decency, stand for democracy, stand up to a so-called leader hell-bent on weakening American security.“And I mean this sincerely: history is watching. History is watching. In moments like this, we have to remember who we are. The United States of America. The world is looking to us. Nothing is beyond our capacity when we act together. In this case, acting together includes acting with our Nato allies.“God bless you all … and I promise I’ll come back and answer questions later.”While reporters shouted questions, Biden left the room.Here’s a fuller account of what Joe Biden just said about Donald Trump’s role in Republicans opposing the national security package approved today by the US Senate but set for an uncertain future in the US House, where the far right enjoys a modicum of control through the speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana.“The stakes were already high for American security before this bill was passed in the Senate last night,” Biden said. “But in recent days, those stakes have risen.“That’s because the former president has set a dangerous and shockingly, frankly, un-American signal to the world. Just a few days ago, Trump gave an invitation to Putin to invade some of our allies, Nato allies. He said if an ally didn’t spend enough money on defence, he would encourage Russia to quote, ‘Do whatever the hell they want’.“Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that? The whole world heard it.“The worst thing is, he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will. “For god’s sake it’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous. It’s un-American. When America gives its word it means something, so when we make a commitment, we keep it. And Nato is a sacred commitment.“Donald Trump looks at this as if it’s a burden. When he looks at Nato, he doesn’t see the alliance that protects America and the world. He sees a protection racket. He doesn’t understand that Nato is built on a fundamental principles of freedom, security and national sovereignty. Because for Trump, principles never matter. Everything is transactional.“He doesn’t understand that the sacred commitment we’ve given works for us as well. In fact, I would remind Trump and all those who would walk away from Nato that Article Five” – which assures mutual defence if one alliance member is attacked – “has only been invoked once. Just once in Nato history. And it was done to stand with America after we were attacked on 9/11. We should never forget it.”“Supporting this bill is standing up to Putin,” Biden says. “Opposing it is playing into Putin’s hands.”He’s casting, of course, the House Republicans who oppose the national security package, as allies of the Russian president in his invasion of Ukraine.Biden also stresses, as aides did earlier, that this bill worth $95bn of foreign aid means work for American workers, who will produce the materials to replenish American stockpiles.The argument: in an election year, this is good for the American worker.Biden also hits a note hit by aides earlier, stressing the part of the package passed by the Senate that “provides Israel with what it needs to protect his people against the terrorist group like Hamas and Hezbollah and others, and it will provide life-saving humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people desperately need food, water and shelter. They need help.”That’s a message to his own party: three senators voted no, citing support for Israel’s military strikes in the Palestinian territories.Moving onto Trump, Biden excoriates the former president for his recent remarks about encouraging Russia to attack Nato allies who did not pay what Trump would call their fair share.“No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator,” Biden says, his voice rising.“It’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous, it’s un-American.”Biden accuses Trump of seeing Nato as “a protection racket” rather than an alliance and accuses his rival of “bowing down” to the Russian president.No questions taken.Here’s Joe.“I urge Speaker Johnson to bring it to the floor immediately,” Biden says, adding that the package will pass the House if it is put on the floor.“I call on the speaker to let the full House speak its mind and not allow a minority of the most extreme voices in the House to block this bill even from being voted on. Even from being voted on. This is a critical act, for the House to move this bill.”And the wait for Joe Biden to speak goes on.Wondering what’s in the national security package the Senate passed around dawn and everyone has been talking about since, particularly regarding the vanishingly small chances of it getting past the Trump-aligned Republicans who control the House?If yes, read this:While we wait and wait for Joe Biden to speak at the White House, here’s what Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the US House, has to say about the national security bill’s prospects therein, in a “Dear Colleague” letter to his caucus.Jeffries, from New York, has strong words directed at those in his party who are unhappy about military aid for Israel in its war with Hamas – three Democratic or Democratic-aligned senators voted no to the bill earlier – as well as for “pro-Putin extremist” Republicans in the House who he says “apparently want Russia to win” its war in Ukraine.“The Senate bill addresses America’s national security interests in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific region and its advancement represents a critically important step forward,” Jeffries writes.“The House must now work on a bipartisan basis to advance legislation that supports our democratic ally Israel as it fights an existential war against Hamas and seeks to free the remaining hostages. A just and lasting peace for Israel and the Palestinian people is only possible if Hamas is decisively defeated.“At the same time, we must surge humanitarian assistance like food, water and shelter to Palestinian civilians in Gaza and in other theaters of war throughout the world who are in harm’s way through no fault of their own. This imperative is met in the bipartisan national security bill passed in the Senate.“It is critical that we continue our support for the Ukrainian people who have courageously fought for democracy, the free world and America’s national security interests. If Vladimir Putin is allowed to win in Ukraine and proceeds to attack any of our Nato allies in Eastern Europe, the logical consequence is a brutal war between the US and Russia. Inaction by House Republicans who remain beholden to Maga extremists threatens the lives of American service women and men. The stakes are high and failure in Ukraine is not an option.“Traditional Republicans must now put America first, and stand up to Pro-Putin extremists in the House who apparently want Russia to win. The American people deserve an up or down vote, and we will use every available legislative tool to get comprehensive national security legislation over the finish line. The US Senate has done its job. It is time for the House of Representatives to do the same.”We’re still waiting on Joe Biden, who is due to speak at the White House on the national security package that passed the Senate today but which seems sure not to pass the Republican-held House.While we wait, here’s Lauren Gambino’s report:We’re still waiting for Joe Biden to speak at the White House, so while we do, here’s Adam Gabbatt on today’s special election in New York, where the successor to George Santos will be selected …The replacement for George Santos, the disgraced, indicted Republican and fabulist who was expelled from Congress last year, is set to be decided today, as New Yorkers head to the polls in a closely watched election.Voters in Long Island, east of New York City, face a choice between Tom Suozzi, a Democrat who previously spent six years in Congress, and Mazi Pilip, a relatively unknown local politician, in an election that will affect Republicans’ narrow majority in the House of Representatives.But more than that, the Suozzi-Pilip race has become a test for what the US can expect in the run-up to November’s elections.Immigration, the economy, abortion and aid to Israel have proved key issues, and politicians around the country will be looking to see whether Suozzi, a moderate Democrat, is able to navigate his attachment to an unpopular president dealing with a much-politicized situation at the US-Mexico border.Pilip, who was relatively unknown before the local Republican party selected her to run, has repeatedly attacked Suozzi over immigration – a tactic likely to be repeated in nationwide elections later this year. Suozzi has sought to tie Pilip to Donald Trump – who remains unpopular – and the anti-abortion movement.The seat is seen as a key indicator of voter sentiment before the expected Biden-Trump election in the fall. The demographic of New York’s third congressional district is seen as a political bellwether: largely suburban, it was one of 18 districts Biden won in 2020 but which voted for a Republican House representative in 2022.Biden won the district in 2020, but the area swung Republican in the 2022 midterm elections, when Santos was elected.Read the full story here:Joe Biden is due to deliver “remarks on the Senate passage of the bipartisan supplemental agreement”, AKA the $95bn national security spending bill that the upper chamber passed earlier today, but which the Trump-aligned Republicans who control the House … do not like.The White House stream for Biden’s remarks, which were announced for 1.15pm ET (but which could well start later than that, given precedent) is here.It’s been a lively day in US politics so far and we’ll continue to bring you the news as it happens. Here’s where things stand:
    The national security bill that passed the US Senate early this morning, by 70 votes to 29, is valued at $95bn. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, has already rejected it. Nonetheless, here’s some of what’s in it: $60bn in aid for Ukraine, in its fight against the Russian invasion; $14bn for Israel, as it prosecutes its war against Hamas; $5bn (or close to) for allies in the Indo-Pacific prominently including Taiwan, which is widely held to be in danger of attack from China.
    Joe Biden urged the House to “move with urgency” on the $95bn foreign aid bill that passed the Senate first thing this morning, with more funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and other overseas assistance, after an overnight marathon session in the upper chamber.
    Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, saluted the passage of the national security bill with a “robust majority”, and in remarks to reporters on Capitol Hill said: “Now, it’s up to the House to meet this moment, to do the right thing and save democracy as we know it.”
    Out on the campaign trail, Nikki Haley said Donald Trump’s move to have his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, named co-chair of the Republican National Committee was simply another attempt to have himself confirmed asap as the winner of the presidential primary – in which Haley is still running.
    A new feature: Non-Apology of the Day.Here’s Lauren Hitt, a Biden campaign spokesperson, saying sorry-not-sorry to Margaret Hoover, via Politico, after she said Joe Biden comparing Donald Trump to her great-grandad, Herbert Hoover, was a “cheap shot” at the much-maligned, very reasonably arguably misunderstood 31st president:
    We apologize for any undue pain we caused Herbert Hoover by lumping him in with Donald Trump. While they do share the worst jobs record in American history, Hoover never said he wanted the economy to crash to improve his own political fortune – an important distinction.”
    Hoover was the president who had to deal with the Great Depression. Trump’s presidency had an adverse effect on many Americans’ mental health. And so forth.Here’s more on the subject of Biden, Trump and Herbert Hoover:In South Carolina earlier, Nikki Haley said Donald Trump’s move to have his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, named co-chair of the Republican National Committee was simply another attempt to have himself confirmed as the winner of the presidential primary in which Haley is still running.Speaking in her hometown, Bamberg, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador (under Trump) said: “He tried to get the RNC to name him the presumptive nominee. We don’t do coronations. South Carolinians deserves the right to vote on this. So does Michigan, so do all the states on Super Tuesday [5 March]. And so that backfired and he pulled back from it.“What we saw yesterday was, he took a different approach. Now he has decided he has fired the RNC chair [Ronna McDaniel], he’s named who’s going to be the new RNC chair [Michael Whatley, the North Carolina Republican chair and a Trump loyalist], his daughter-in-law [married to Eric Trump, his second son] will be the co-chair, and he is making his campaign manager [Chris LaCivita] the [chief operations] officer that runs the party.“Think about what’s happening right now. Is that how you’re going to try and take an election?”Unfortunately for Haley, the Republican election of a nominee to face Joe Biden in November has so far proceeded entirely in the direction of Trump.The former president won in Iowa, then won in New Hampshire, then won in Nevada. South Carolina is next up. Haley’s home state it may be, but Trump leads polling there by vast margins.Haley also bemoaned Trump’s many legal problems, saying he “talked about being a victim” and had spent “$50m of campaign contributions on his personal court cases”.Accusing Trump of not caring about issues facing everyday Americans, Haley said they included “wasteful spending, the $34tn in debt”, poor reading among eighth graders, “lawlessness on the border … law and order in our cities [and] the wars around the world that make us less safe” .“All he did was talk about himself,” she said, “and that’s the problem.”White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates continues his memo on the national security bill by breaking down areas of US interest boosted by passage through the Senate but, he says, at risk in a House controlled by Republicans loyal to Donald Trump.Such areas include “Ukraine and Nato”, the latter a subject of special concern in Washington (and in European capitals) this week, after Trump told supporters he would encourage Russia to attack Nato members he did not think paid enough for the privilege of US support.Bates says: “Unhinged, irresponsible voices on the right are even encouraging Russia to attack our closest allies and agitating to unravel Nato – an alliance which is bigger and stronger than ever, thanks in no small part to President Biden’s leadership. Those irresponsible voices are erratic and dangerous.”He also points to a consideration common across the national security package – what it means for Americans who make things like planes and weapons.“Our support for Ukraine is revitalising the American defense industrial base across the country,” Bates says.He also seeks to highlight Iranian support for Vladimir Putin’s Russia in its war in Ukraine and, on the Israel part of the bill, says “a House vote against American national security is a vote against crucial military support for Israel as they defend themselves from the Hamas murderers who committed the worst terrorist massacre in that country’s history and whose leaders have pledged to repeat the attacks of October 7 over and over again until Israel is annihilated”.Bates highlights humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, too.Turning to Taiwan, the Bates memo says Biden is “committed” to the island’s “self-defense capabilities” in the face of “a more assertive Peoples Republic of China”.Bates concludes: “A House vote against American national security would undermine these goals.”Andrew Bates, the deputy White House press secretary, sends the press a memo …“Months ago, President Biden submitted a request for critical national security funding to Congress – every aspect of which has strong bipartisan support. President Biden has called for action ever since, working in good faith with Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate, in order to keep the American people safe.“But a subset of congressional Republicans delayed that urgently-needed action, choosing politics over national security.“Today, the Senate just voted to move forward on many of the most pressing needs of the American people. The onus is now on the House to do the same. This is a high stakes moment for American families. It’s also a high stakes moment for House Republicans, because the choice is stark.“Will House Republicans side with President Biden and senators on both sides of the aisle in supporting American national security? Or will House Republicans, in the name of politics, side with Vladimir Putin and the regime in Tehran?“The House GOP cannot lose sight of this binary choice. It would be devastating to undercut American national security by voting against our interests and values.” More