Evelyn Reynolds

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

Donald Trump has unleashed a fusillade of baseless accusations against Joe Biden and CNN moderators ahead of Thursday’s first US presidential debate in an apparent “pre-bunking” exercise designed to have his excuses ready-made if he is declared the loser.In a familiar rehash of tactics used in previous campaigns, the presumptive Republican nominee has intensified demands that Biden should take a drug test and accused him of being “higher than a kite” in last January’s State of the Union address, when the president won praise for an energetic performance.“DRUG TEST FOR CROOKED JOE BIDEN??? I WOULD, ALSO, IMMEDIATELY AGREE TO ONE!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform this week.The post came after Trump repeatedly told audiences that Biden would come to the debate “jacked up” after being given “a shot in the ass”.One Trump adviser graphically illustrated the imagery of Biden needing an injection by sharing a picture of a syringe.Even Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician under Trump and Barack Obama who is now a Republican congressman for Texas, got in on the act by writing a letter to Biden calling on him to take a drug test.Trump has also taken aim at Jake Tapper, one of the CNN moderators in Thursday’s debate in Atlanta, repeatedly calling him “fake Tapper” in speeches and interviews.The barbs were reinforced by the Trump campaign’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Monday when she twice attacked Tapper in an interview on the network, prompting the presenter Kasie Hunt to abruptly terminate the exchange.Trump’s son Eric has also joined in the chorus, reinforcing the view that the attacks are part of a coordinated strategy to minimise the debate’s importance.“Understand that he’s not just going to be debating Joe Biden, he’s going to be debating CNN,” Eric Trump told Fox News on Sunday, adding that the network planned to give Biden “a free pass”.Conservative supporters of Trump have also questioned the impartiality of Dana Bash, Tapper’s co-moderator, partly by falsely stating she is married to Jeremy Bash, a former CIA chief of staff, who has been critical of the former president. In fact, the pair have not been married for 17 years.Both lines of attack reprise well-worn Trump tactics.The unfounded allegations of drug use by Biden appears designed to forestall a stronger-than-expected debate from the president following months in which Trump’s campaign have denigrated the president’s supposedly failing mental powers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt echoes similar specious claims Trump made against Biden in 2020 and also against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign, when he accused her of being suspiciously “pumped up” at a presidential debate and demanded that she take a drug test before the next one.The complaints against the moderators are also familiar. In 2020, Trump repeatedly branded Kristen Welker, the moderator of the second debate screened by NBC as a “dyed-in-the-wool, radical-left Democrat”.“It’s called pre-bunking. He’s preparing his audience to dismiss the entire event,” Joan Donovan, a media studies professor at Boston University told the Washington Post. “It’s a communication strategy that is part of his playbook.”Even sources sympathetic to Trump have acknowledged that the accusations may either be false or part of a planned strategy.Maria Bartiromo, a Fox news anchor, responded sceptically to the earlier accusations by Trump supporters that Biden was taking performance-boosting drugs. “These are very serious charges. We don’t know that, we’re not doctors. We have no idea,” she told Byron Donalds, the Republican congressman for Florida, when he accused the president of being ‘jacked up”.Referring to Trump’s criticism of Tapper, one unnamed Republican source close to the former president told the Washington Post that it was “Trump being Trump”, adding: “There’s nothing unusual about any of this stuff in terms of how it’s playing out.” More

The former Republican representative Adam Kinzinger has endorsed Joe Biden for president, as the Biden campaign attempts to win over anti-Trump voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election.In a video released on Wednesday, Kinzinger said he was a “proud conservative” who had put “democracy and our constitution above all else.“And it’s because of my unwavering support for democracy that today, as a proud conservative, I’m endorsing Joe Biden for re-election,” Kinzinger said.Kinzinger warned that former president Donald Trump poses a “direct threat to every fundamental American value.“He doesn’t care about our country. He doesn’t care about you. He only cares about himself,” Kinzinger added.Biden acknowledged Kinzinger’s endorsement in a reply on X.“This is what putting your country before your party looks like. I’m grateful for your endorsement, Adam,” Biden said.Kinzinger’s announcement has received predictable flak from far-right Republicans.In a reply to the endorsement, Representative Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said: “Oh look, Kinzinger finally came out of the closet. As usual, we knew all along, so not a surprise and none of us care.”Kinzinger has remained one of the most staunch Republican critics of Trump.Following the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, Kinzinger publicly denounced Trump for inciting “an angry mob” with false claims of stolen election results. Kinzinger was also among 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.Later, Kinzinger and Republican representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming were the only two Republicans who joined a committee to investigate the Capitol insurrection.Kinzinger later announced he would not seek re-election in 2021 after facing a potential primary challenge from a pro-Trump candidate due to changes in district mapping.In a February interview with the Guardian, the former congressman warned that a second Trump term would be “devastating for the world order”.“The best-case scenario is a completely inept, ineffective government,” Kinzinger said.“The worst-case scenario is look, in his four-year term, he did not understand what he was doing. He was just trying to survive and he actually listened to people around him until the end. Now he’s going to put people around him that share his views, that will only reaffirm his views and, frankly, some of these people are pretty smart and they know how to work around the constitution or around the law to bring these authoritarian measures in.”Kinzinger’s announcement comes weeks after the Biden-Harris campaign announced that Kinzinger’s former chief of staff Austin Weatherford would be running the Biden campaign’s outreach to Republican voters. More

The Democratic primary in the congressional race in New York’s 16th congressional district between the incumbent congressman Jamaal Bowman and the Westchester county executive, George Latimer, was a victory for Latimer, and one of the first successful primaries by the right wing of the Democratic party against the left. The contest was by far the most expensive congressional primary in history, and came to be viewed as a battle for the soul of the Democratic party, and specifically a fight around the Israel-Palestine issue, with Latimer and his advocates in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spending over $20m to elect him, and to rebuke Bowman’s criticism of Israel and support for a ceasefire.Bowman’s defeat represents a victory for Aipac and a defeat for the progressive and pro-Palestine movements. But it is a pyrrhic victory. The first election overtly fought on the Israel-Palestine conflict has resulted in a victory for pro-Israel forces, and the movement for Palestinian rights has been dealt a severe blow at the ballot box. Elected officials will be far less willing to take a stand in the near term. But the result of this election masks a considerable shift in the balance of power within American politics away from unconditional support for Israel as an unquestioned political consensus.Sometimes, a major electoral victory is a sign of a movement in retreat and a crumbling consensus. Take California’s gay marriage ban in 2008, at the time seen as a major defeat for gay rights advocates. But the victory of Prop 8 hid the underlying shift: the very fact that gay rights, unthinkable even a few years prior, was a polarized electoral issue showed that anti-gay rights forces were losing in the long term. The same is true here and now, about Israel and Palestine.The fundamentals of this race were poor for the left. New York’s suburban 16th congressional district would never be a progressive target in a vacuum, containing some of the nation’s wealthiest communities. Redistricting cleaved many of the working-class communities of color that powered Bowman’s 2020 primary win, and even that was in large part due to incumbent Eliot Engel’s chronic absenteeism from the district. Beyond that, Bowman had several compounding low-level mistakes and scandals that could easily be hammered home to voters, like pulling the fire alarm at the Capitol or his controversial hip-hop lyrics. Beyond that, Latimer is a popular politician who has represented most of the district’s voters for years. Add in more money than any group has ever spent on a congressional primary by an enormous margin, and you have the conditions for a win. But the fact that this win, and this amount of spending, was even necessary should give advocates of Israel serious pause. The election represents Aipac’s attempt to rebuild a dam that has already broken. The water is out.The linchpin of their strategy for decades was to make support for Israel a third rail. By successfully building up universal support for Israel beyond the divides of partisan politics, Aipac and Israel’s other supporters in the US were able to successfully create a political culture with hard boundaries on the limits of acceptable speech. In the halls of Congress, discourse around Israel fell within these limits, represented by liberal groups like J Street, where a degree of sympathy for Palestinian people and criticism of rightwing figures of the Israeli state were acceptable for progressive Democrats, but questioning the basic logic undergirding the status quo was outside the bounds of permissible speech, and met with moral opprobrium.This universal consensus undergirded Aipac’s strategy in the US for decades. That is no longer the case. Before 2018, zero members of Congress could plausibly be considered actively pro-Palestine, and that didn’t seem like it would change. But the dam burst, and starting with the elections of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and, in particular, Rashida Tlaib, there were for the first time critics of Israel that brought a perspective outside of the established consensus, and to the left of J Street. While once a fringe position, support for Palestine and criticism of Israel is now mainstream among the American public. It will continue to exist in Congress, no matter how much money is spent. There are now millions of Americans who have heard this perspective and agree with it. The era of complete Aipac consensus is over for good.While Aipac and their allies, or any political group with $20m to spend on a single congressional primary, can eliminate nearly any adversary, this is not a sustainable strategy. While this level of financial power may deter many politicians from challenging them in the near future, Israel is now a polarizing, partisan issue. The collapse of previous bipartisan consensus and discursive limits is a catastrophe for Israel’s position in the US in the long term. Aipac did not spend directly on elections until 2021. They didn’t need to. Transitioning from an untouchable position to a fiercely polarized one that necessitates massive, unprecedented spending should be a cause for concern for Aipac. Israel and Palestine are now, for the first time, a live issue in American politics.Make no mistake, Latimer’s win is big for Aipac and the conservative wing of the Democratic party and harmful for efforts at a ceasefire in Gaza. But the very fact that Aipac has to spend $100m on Democratic primaries in a vain attempt to silence their critics is a sea change from the last few decades of American politics. Most of their hitlist is still around. This win was, ultimately, a successful rearguard action for the Israel lobby. Having prominent advocates for Palestine and pro-Palestine speech move toward public acceptability in the US is a crisis for Israel, which is why their partisans are spending so much money to stop it. There will be many more battles to come.
Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC More

According to Donald Trump, Joe Biden is either a very accomplished or utterly incompetent debater.When details of the presidential debate, which takes place in Atlanta on Thursday, were announced last month, Trump mocked Biden as “the WORST debater I have ever faced”, adding: “He can’t put two sentences together.” And yet, while speaking to the All-In podcast last week, Trump commended Biden’s showing in the 2012 vice-presidential debate.“He destroyed Paul Ryan,” Trump said. “So I’m not underestimating him.”The flip-flop could be Trump’s belated effort to temper expectations of how he will perform against an incumbent president with extensive debating experience. With four presidential campaigns and two terms as vice-president on his résumé, Biden is no stranger to the debate stage, and he has shown a sharp ability to deliver pointed attacks on his opponents.But as a sitting president who has reckoned with historically high inflation and multiple wars abroad since he took office, Biden goes into his next debate with a unique set of challenges that he must overcome to sell voters on re-electing him. Although Biden, 81, is only a few years older than Trump, 78, voters have expressed more concern about the president’s age than his opponent’s, and he will be looking to address those fears at the debate.These five memorable moments from Biden’s past debate performances offer some insight into the president’s strengths – and vulnerabilities:A lasting dig at GiulianiIn 2024, Biden is the president of the United States while Rudy Giuliani is Trump’s disgraced former lawyer. But in 2007, both men were presidential candidates. As the former mayor of New York who led the city through the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Giuliani was widely viewed as a frontrunner in the 2008 Republican primary race.During a Democratic primary debate, Biden mocked Giuliani as “the most under-qualified man since George Bush to seek the presidency”, arguing he was incapable of making a coherent pitch for his candidacy.“There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11. There’s nothing else,” Biden said.The debate audience greeted the quip with laughter and applause, and the remark became one of the most enduring criticisms of Giuliani, whose presidential campaign eventually failed in spectacular fashion, giving way to an even more disgraceful downfall. Biden will be looking to deliver similarly memorable attack lines against Trump on Thursday.A sorrowful moment during the Sarah Palin debateBefore the 2008 vice-presidential debate, Sarah Palin had already made headlines for her disastrous interview with Katie Couric and Tina Fey’s devastating impersonation of the self-proclaimed “hockey mom” from Alaska.Biden’s debate strategy rested on amplifying his credentials without descending into condescension against Palin, who invoked the importance of “Joe Six-pack” Americans in an apparent effort to paint her opponent as out of touch. Biden confronted the criticism head-on by referencing his family background and the death of his first wife and daughter in a 1972 car crash, demonstrating how he had known hardship in his life.“I understand what it’s like to be a single parent,” Biden said. “I understand what it’s like to sit around the kitchen table with a father who says: ‘I’ve got to leave, champ, because there’s no jobs here … ’“The notion that, somehow, because I’m a man, I don’t know what it’s like to raise two kids alone, I don’t know what it’s like to have a child you’re not sure is going to make it – I understand. I understand as well, with all due respect to the governor or anybody else, what it’s like for those people sitting around that kitchen table. And guess what? They’re looking for help.”The exchange marked one of the most humanizing moments of the debate for Biden, who has now developed a reputation as the consoler-in-chief. Biden’s ability to connect his personal story with voters’ lives could give him an advantage over Trump, who has struggled to do the same.A challenge to Paul Ryan’s expertiseWhile Biden may have pursued a more careful debate strategy in 2008, he came out swinging in 2012 against Paul Ryan, who was then Mitt Romney’s running mate.As Ryan explained his plan to cut taxes by 20% while still preserving benefits for middle-class workers, Biden slammed the proposal as “not mathematically possible”. Any time Ryan attempted to justify the policy, Biden was quick to cut in with criticism.Ryan then said: “Jack Kennedy lowered tax rates and increased growth.”Biden replied: “Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe comment alluded to Democrat Lloyd Bentsen’s infamous mockery of Republican Dan Quayle at the 1988 vice-presidential debate, and it appeared to successfully deflate some of Ryan’s grandiose vision for a new tax system.If Biden pursues a similar approach on Thursday, it may serve two aims of undercutting Trump and mitigating concerns about the president’s mental sharpness.A rebuke to Trump’s constant interruptionsThe first debate between Biden and Trump in 2020 was defined by chaos. Trump repeatedly talked over Biden, while even moderator Chris Wallace struggled to get a word in edgewise. At one point, Biden attempted to answer a question about the supreme court, but he kept getting derailed by Trump’s comments about the “radical left” and efforts to “pack the court”.Then, Biden reached his breaking point. “Will you shut up, man?” he said to Trump. “This is so unpresidential.”The comment could have come off as petulant, but instead, it seemed to resonate with viewers as an attempt to inject order into a debate badly in need of it. Looking ahead to Thursday, CNN’s decision to mute the candidates’ mics when it is not their turn to speak may prevent similar interruptions, but Biden’s willingness to stand up to Trump could still play to his advantage.An unforgettable instruction to the Proud BoysPerhaps the most memorable moment from Biden and Trump’s first debate came when Wallace asked Trump to specifically condemn white supremacist and militia groups. Despite the simplicity of the request, Trump tried and failed to brush off the question.“Almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing,” Trump said. Pressed by Wallace, he added: “I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.”Biden replied: “Say it. Do it. Say it.”Trump then asked: “What do you want to call them? Give me a name.”Biden supplied the name of the Proud Boys, a far-right and neo-fascist group, and Trump then issued this infamous instruction: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”The comment bolstered Democrats’ warnings about Trump empowering the far-right faction of his party, which appeared prescient after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. (The former national chair of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, was later sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in orchestrating the attack.)As he prepares for his next debate, Biden will be looking to again put Trump on the record about his relationship with far-right groups and the violence they have caused. More

I just turned 78, and frankly I’m scared about what might come down on Thursday evening when the oldest candidates ever to compete in a presidential race debate each other.I’m less worried that Joe Biden will suffer a mental lapse or physically stumble than I am that Biden will look weak and Donald Trump appear strong.One of Trump’s most successful ploys has been to frame the upcoming election as a contest between strength and weakness, and to convince many Americans that stridency and pugnacity are signs of strength while truth and humility signal weakness.In 1960, when I watched John F Kennedy square off against Richard Nixon, character and temperament were the most important variables.According to the legend, most people who listened to the first debate on the radio called it a draw or thought Nixon had won, but Kennedy won handily among television viewers.Television hurt Nixon, and not just because of his paler complexion. Kennedy stared directly into the camera when he answered each question. But Nixon looked off to the side to address the various reporters who asked questions, which came across as shifting his gaze to avoid eye contact with the public – a move that seemed to show evasiveness, the character flaw that had earned Nixon the moniker “Tricky Dick”.I last watched a tape of the Kennedy-Nixon television debate in 1992, when sitting beside Bill Clinton, who used it to prepare for his debate with George HW Bush and Ross Perot. Clinton wanted to emulate Kennedy’s character – his confidence, humor and optimism.Perot’s whiny indignation turned viewers off. George HW seemed over the hill. Clinton was effusive and charming, and connected with viewers.Which brings me back to character. Over 78 years, I’ve met or observed a small number of people in American public life whom I’d characterize as vile. Senator Joseph McCarthy, Governor George Wallace and Speaker Newt Gingrich come immediately to mind, along with Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes.What made them vile to me was their cynical opportunism – the eagerness with which they exploited people’s fears to gain power or notoriety, or both. All had the character of barnyard bullies.Donald Trump is the vilest by far.Trump’s loathsomeness extends to every aspect of his being – his continuous stream of lies, the eagerness with which he seeks to turn Americans against each other, his scapegoating of immigrants, his demeaning of women and the disabled.And Trump’s utter disrespect for the office of the presidency – for the laws of the land, for the United States constitution, for the senators and members of Congress and staff and police whose lives he intentionally endangered on 6 January 2021, and for hundreds of thousands of election workers whose lives he directly or indirectly threatened with his baseless claims of election fraud.Character will not be debated on Thursday night, but I hope Americans who have not yet made up their minds or who are wavering in their support of Joe Biden will pay attention to it. Character is – must be – on the 2024 ballot.I remember debating Arizona’s former Republican governor Jan Brewer before the 2016 election. I asked her whether she thought Trump had the character and temperament to be president. When Brewer temporized, I asked again. Finally she said yes. Her answer may have been the most dishonest thing anyone said during that election season – other than Trump’s own rapacious lies.A few days ago, I was talking with a young conservative who admitted that Trump was an “odious thug”, in his words, but argued that the US and the world had become such a mess that we need an odious thug as president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Think of Putin, Xi, Kim, Ali Khamenei, Netanyahu – they’re all odious thugs,” he said. “We need our own odious thug to stand up to them.”I demurred, saying that direct confrontation could lead to more bloodshed, even nuclear war.He continued: “We need an odious thug to shake up Washington, stir up all the ossified bureaucracies now destroying America, do all the things no one has had the balls to do.”When I looked skeptical, he charged: “We need someone to take control!”As soon as he uttered those last words, he and I both knew the conversation was over. He had spilled the beans. He was impatient with the messiness and slowness of democracy. He wanted a dictator.I’m not sure how many Americans attracted to Trump feel this way. It’s consistent with the strength-versus-weakness framework Trump is deploying.Trump may be loathsome, they tell themselves, but at least he’s strong, and we need strength over weakness.I was born 78 years ago. At that time, the world had just experienced what can occur when a loathsome person who exudes “strength” takes over a major nation and threatens the world. A number of my distant relatives died fighting Nazis or perished in Nazi concentration camps.I can’t help but wonder if the young conservative I spoke with would feel differently were he 78.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

Hardly a week passes without another billionaire endorsing Donald Trump. With Joe Biden proposing a 25% tax on those with assets over $100m (£80m), this is no shock. The real twist? The pro-Trump multimillionaire club now includes a growing number of venture capitalists. Unlike hedge funders or private equity barons, venture capitalists have traditionally held progressive credentials. They’ve styled themselves as the heroes of innovation, and the Democrats have done more to polish their progressive image than anyone else. So why are they now cosying up to Trump?Venture capitalists and Democrats long shared a mutual belief in techno-solutionism – the idea that markets, enhanced by digital technology, could achieve social goods where government policy had failed. Over the past two decades, we’ve been living in the ruins of this utopia. We were promised that social media could topple dictators, that crypto could tackle poverty, and that AI could cure cancer. But the progressive credentials of venture capitalists were only ever skin deep, and now that Biden has adopted a tougher stance on Silicon Valley, VCs are more than happy to support Trump’s Republicans.The Democrats’ romance with techno-solutionism began in the early 1980s. Democrats saw Silicon Valley as the key to boosting environmentalism, worker autonomy and global justice. Venture capitalists, as the financial backers of this new and apparently benign form of capitalism, were crucial to this vision. Whenever Republicans pushed for measures favourable to the VC industry – such as changes in capital gains tax, or the liberalisation of pension fund legislation – Democrats eventually acquiesced. On issues such as intellectual property, Democrats have actively advanced the industry’s agenda.This alliance has shaped how the US now finances innovation. Public institutions such as the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health fund basic science, while venture capitalists finance the startups that commercialise it. These startups, in turn, build on intellectual property licensed from recipients of public grants to design apps, gadgets and drugs. A good chunk of these profits, naturally, flows back to the venture capitalists who own a stake in these startups. Thanks to this model, Americans now pay some of the highest drug prices in the world – yet when politicians have tried to curb these egregious outcomes, they have been met with accusations from the VC industry that they’re undermining progress.Venture capitalists have been keen to emphasise the role they play in delivering progress. Through podcasts, conferences and publications, they have successfully recast their interests as those of humanity at large. For a clear distillation of this worldview, look no further than The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, a 5,200-word treatise by Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. Its jarring universalism suggests that all of us – San Francisco’s venture capitalists and homeless alike – are in this together. Andreessen urges readers to join venture capitalists as “allies in the pursuit of technology, abundance, and life”. Yet his text quickly reveals its true colours. “Free markets,” he writes, “are the most effective way to organise a technological economy.” (Andreessen has criticised Biden without endorsing Trump.)Andreessen isn’t celebrating technology in the abstract, but promoting what he calls the “techno-capital machine”. This system allows investors like him to reap most of the rewards of innovation, while steering its direction so that alternative models to Silicon Valley hegemony never achieve the kind of take-up that would allow them to drive out for-profit solutions. Andresseen, like all VCs, never stops to consider that a more effective technological economy might not revolve around free markets at all. How can VCs be so sure that we wouldn’t get a better kind of generative AI, or less destructive social media platforms, by treating data as a collective good?View image in fullscreenThe tragedy is that we won’t be trying anything like this any time soon. We’re shackled by a worldview that has fooled us into thinking there is no alternative to a system that relies on poorly paid workers in the global south to assemble our devices and moderate our content, and that consumes unsustainable volumes of energy to train AI models and mine bitcoin. Even the idea that social media might promote democracy has now been abandoned; instead, tech leaders seem more concerned with evading responsibility for the role their platforms have played in subverting democracy and fanning the flames of genocide.Where do we find the much-needed alternative? While researching my latest podcast, A Sense of Rebellion, I stumbled on a series of debates that took place in the 1970s and pointed in the right direction. Back then, a small group of hippy radicals were advocating for “ecological technology” and “counter-technology”. They weren’t satisfied with merely making existing tools more accessible and transparent: they saw technology as the product of power relations, and wanted to fundamentally alter the system itself. I came across a particularly compelling example of this thinking in a quirky 1971 manifesto published in Radical Software, a small but influential magazine. Its author was anonymous, and signed themselves as “Aquarius Project”, listing only a Berkeley-based postal box. I eventually tracked them down, partly because the points they made in that manifesto are so often lost in today’s debates about Silicon Valley. “‘Technology’ does nothing, creates no problems, has no ‘imperatives’,” they wrote. “Our problem is not ‘Technology’ in the abstract, but specifically capitalist technology.”Being hippies, the group struggled to translate these insights into policy demands. In fact, somebody else had done this three decades earlier. In the late 1940s, the Democratic senator Harley Kilgore saw the dangers of postwar science becoming “the handmaiden for corporate or industrial research”. He envisioned a National Science Foundation (NSF) governed by representatives from unions, consumers, agriculture and industry to ensure technology served social needs and remained in democratic control. Corporations would be forced to share their intellectual property (IP) if they built on public research, and would be prevented from becoming the sole providers of “solutions” to social problems. Yet with its insistence on democratic oversight and sharing IP riches, his model was eventually defeated.Instead, our prevailing approach to innovation has allowed scientists to set their priorities, and does not require companies that benefit from public research to share their IP. As Biden’s Chips Act directs $81bn to the NSF, we must now question if this approach still makes sense. Shouldn’t democratic decision-making guide how this money is spent? And what about the IP created? How much will end up enriching venture capitalists? Similar questions arise with data and AI. Should big tech firms be allowed to use data from public institutions to train privately owned, lucrative AI models? Why not make the data accessible to nonprofits and universities? Why should companies such as OpenAI, backed by venture capital, dominate this space?Today’s AI gold rush is inefficient and irrational. A single, authoritative, publicly owned curator of the data and models behind generative AI could do a better job, saving money and resources. It could charge corporations for access, while providing cheaper access to public media organisations and libraries. Yet the merchants of Silicon Valley are taking us in the opposite direction. They are obsessed with accelerating Andreessen’s “techno-capital machine”, which relies on detaching markets and technologies from democratic control. And, with Trump in the White House, they’ll waste no time repurposing their tools to serve authoritarianism as easily as they served the neoliberal agendas of his Democratic predecessors.Biden and his allies should recognise venture capitalists as a problem, not a solution. The sooner progressive forces get over their fascination with Silicon Valley, the better. This won’t be enough, though: to build a truly progressive techno-public machine, we need to rethink the relationship between science and technology on the one hand and democracy and equality on the other. If that means reopening old, seemingly settled debates, so be it.
Evgeny Morozov is the author of several books on technology and politics. His latest podcast, A Sense of Rebellion, is available now
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Jamaal Bowman, the progressive Democratic congressman whose criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza made him a target for pro-Israel lobbying groups, lost his primary race on Tuesday night.The Democratic primary in New York’s 16th district became the most expensive House primary in history after Bowman was challenged by George Latimer, a pro-Israel centrist.The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and an affiliated group spent almost $15m to defeat Bowman, a former middle school principal, who has been one of the few Democrats to consistently criticize Israel since it began a military campaign on Gaza that has killed a reported 37,000 Palestinians.Latimer, a vocal advocate of Israel who has been involved in local politics for more than three decades, is likely to win the congressional election in November, given the heavily Democratic make-up of the district.Our Revolution said the primary outcome “puts the glaring hypocrisy of Democratic party elites on full display”. Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of the organization founded by Bernie Sanders, said: “Hillary Clinton and other establishment Democrats who supported Bowman’s challenger like to parade around as champions of democracy … [but] lack the backbone to call out the broken system that allows Democratic primaries to be sold to the highest bidder.”Bowman had appeared with Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a rally on Sunday, as progressive Democrats launched a last-ditch attempt to drive people to the polls.“Are you ready to fight? Are you ready to take this borough back? Are you ready to win this country back? Are you ready to fight for peace on earth and ceasefire in Gaza?” Ocasio-Cortez said as she introduced Bowman, hinting at what has become the key issue in the race between him and Latimer.Bowman has accused Israel of committing genocide and has called for the Biden White House to “stop all funding” to Israel.That prompted Aipac to wade into the race: since the start of the primary, the United Democracy Project, a Super Pac connected with Aipac, has spent almost $15m to defeat Bowman, who is facing a primary challenge from Latimer, a pro-Israel Democrat. DMFI Pac, another pro-Israel group, has spent more than $1m to support Latimer and unseat Bowman, helping to turn the race into an unprecedentedly expensive contest.While the Israel issue has been a driver for Aipac, Bowman was also seen as vulnerable due to issues within his control. In September, he was criticized after pulling a fire alarm before a crucial House vote; Bowman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour and agreed to pay a $1,000 fine, the maximum applicable under Washington DC law. Early this year, the Daily Beast reported that Bowman had touted 9/11 conspiracy theories on a since-deleted blogpost.In New York City, TV ads attacking Bowman have been ever-present in recent weeks, although Bowman raised plenty of cash of his own. Since the start of his campaign, Bowman raised $4.3m and had support on the ground from progressive groups, including Justice Democrats, a progressive organization that backed his campaign in 2020 and spent $1.3m to support Bowman this election cycle.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe race became contentious in recent weeks. Bowman suggested Latimer’s campaign darkened his skin in campaign literature and accused Latimer of pushing the “angry Black man” stereotype.In the final debate between the pair on Tuesday, Bowman accused Latimer of dragging his feet on desegregation as Westchester county executive. Latimer, who has claimed Bowman has an “ethnic benefit”, said Bowman has “cornered the market on lies”.With Bowman being a high-profile progressive who is popular with young people and the left, the race took on wider implications.“We believe that the squad [a group of progressive politicians who include Ocasio-Cortez] is just the start of our voice being truly represented in the halls of Congress,” said Ella Weber, an activist with Protect Our Power, an organization that seeks to keep progressive Democrats in Congress and that spent time campaigning in Bowman’s district.“The threat of them not winning is gen Z as a whole continues to lose faith in our political process. That’s definitely not what we want, and I don’t think that’s what the Democratic party wants.” More