Evelyn Reynolds

A rightwing Christian lobby group that wants abortion to be banned has forged ties with an adviser to the prime minister and is drawing up ­policy briefings for politicians.The UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has more than doubled its spending since 2020 and been appointed a stakeholder in a parliamentary group on religious freedoms in a role that grants it direct access to MPs.The ADF’s efforts to boost its UK influence are revealed as part of an Observer analysis that shows a surge in activity within the wider anti-­abortion movement.Ahead of a historic vote on abortion later this spring, in which MPs will vote on a law that would abolish the criminal offence associated with a woman ending her own pregnancy in England and Wales, several anti-abortion campaign groups have expanded their teams, ramped up advertising and coordinated mass letter-writing campaigns targeting MPs.The findings have led to calls for greater transparency and accountability over the groups’ funding and lobbying activities. The ADF in particular is an influential player on the US Christian right and part of a global network of hardline evangelical groups that were a driving force behind the repeal of Roe v Wade – the supreme court ruling that gave women the constitutional right to abortion and was overturned in 2022.The group – which also supports outlawing sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ+ adults and funds US fringe groups attacking gay, trans and abortion rights – has faced claims its funding is not transparent due to its use of donor advised funds: a loophole in US charity law that allows people to give millions anonymously.The latest financial accounts for its UK entity ADF International UK, published last week, show it spent almost £1m in the year to June 2023, up from £392,556 in 2020, and that its income almost doubled between 2022 and 2023, from £553,823 to £1,068,552.ADF International UK, which has argued publicly against decriminalising abortion, has sought to develop closer relationships with MPs. Its latest accounts show a focus of its UK activity has been attempting to engage with “significant decision-makers” and that staff provided “briefing material and legal analysis” to several MPs ahead of a vote on introducing buffer zones to prevent anti-abortion activity outside abortion clinics.In September 2023 it spent £1,737.92 flying the prime minister’s special envoy on freedom of religion and beliefs, Fiona Bruce MP, paying for her hotel and travel to attend an unspecified conference. Last month Bruce – who reports directly to Rishi Sunak – appeared at an event sponsored by ADF International on religious freedom, speaking remotely alongside two members of the charity.Number 10 did not respond to questions about the links between the ADF and Bruce, who declared the donations in the MPs register of interests and previously voted against legalising abortion and same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. Calls and emails to her office went unanswered late last week.View image in fullscreenHeidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said the ADF had “ramped up its spending” in the UK and Europe “aggressively” in recent years and that there was “no transparency” around “where the money’s actually coming from”. She said its relationship with MPs raised “huge concerns”. “Why are politicians openly working with an organisation that has such a hateful agenda?”Rose Whiffen, senior research officer at Transparency International UK, said the donations to Bruce raised questions about conflicts of interest and that her association with the group could give it credibility in the UK.Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, said it was “very concerning” that the UK’s envoy on religious freedoms was “accepting donations from organisations that use religious liberty as a way of denying others their human rights”. “The Christian nationalist movement is increasingly investing in the UK on a number of fronts, and all supporters of freedom and choice should take seriously the threat to human rights that this represents,” he said.ADF International UK said it was committed to protecting “liberties dear to the British people” including free speech and freedom of religion, and that its stance on abortion aimed to “protect the lives of both mother and baby in every pregnancy”. “Like much of the British public, we are concerned about political initiatives to further liberalise abortion law,” a spokesperson added.The charity, which has an office in Westminster, said it received funds from many countries, like “many UK charities on both sides of the abortion debate”; that claims it was not transparent about its funders were “baseless” and that it complied with all charity regulations. It did not comment on its link to the PM’s special envoy.View image in fullscreenJonathan Lord, co-chair of the British Society of Abortion Care Providers and a consultant gynaecologist, said: “We’ve known for some time that these extreme groups from America are infiltrating the UK, having been emboldened following the US supreme court’s actions removing women’s right to abortion there. However the scale of their spending and influence in the UK is disturbing, especially as we know they are actively lobbying MPs and want to restrict women’s reproductive rights, whether that is fertility treatment, contraception or access to abortion.”Other anti-abortion groups have also ramped up activity here in recent months. Right to Life, a leading UK anti-abortion charity, has been coordinating a lobbying campaign encouraging people to write to their MPs to tighten abortion laws, and spent £117,000 on Facebook ads in 2023, 10 times the amount in 2020.The charity – whose overall spending overall has risen from £200k in 2019 to £705k last year – also provides the secretariat to the Pro-Life all-party parliamentary group and aims to “deepen and expand relationships with parliamentarians”, according to its latest accounts. It is currently advertising vacancies for eight full-time staff and says in one ad that the role will include “producing briefings” for MPs and peers.The Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform UK – another anti-abortion group, which notoriously launched a billboard campaign featuring graphic images in pro-choice MP Stella Creasy’s constituency – has increased its staff numbers from four to 12 since 2017. Due to its status as a small company, it does not have to publish details of its income but said it was happy to engage in public debate about its “funding, growth and activities” and that its targeting of Creasy “does not equate to animosity towards her as a fellow human being”.MPs are due to vote in the coming weeks on proposed changes to abortion law that would see abortion decriminalised in England and Wales, as it is in Northern Ireland, Australia, France and New Zealand. Under a Victorian-era law that remains in place today, it is an offence to procure your own abortion. There are exemptions under the 1967 Abortion Act, which permits abortion in cases where two doctors agree that continuing the pregnancy would be risky for the physical or mental health of the woman. But the old law was never repealed and is still used today to prosecute and jail women for terminating pregnancies without sign-off from medics or after the 24-week limit.The proposal on decriminalisation from backbench Labour MP Diana Johnson has cross-party support and is expected to pass. However some in the Labour party fear it could be counterproductive and further embolden anti-abortion campaigning on related issues, such as the remote access to abortion that was introduced during the pandemic.A government spokesperson said abortion was an “extremely sensitive issue” with “strongly held views on all sides of the discussion”, and that MPs would have a free vote on the proposed law change. “By longstanding convention, any change to the law in this area would be a matter of conscience for individual MPs rather than the government,” a spokesperson said. More

Celebrating the demise of No Labels as a third-party presidential election threat, two advocacy groups who mobilised against it have said they would now turn their sights on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s independent run for the White House.Though it is hard to make solid predictions, a high-profile third-party run in 2024 unnerves both Republicans and Democrats who fear it might siphon off their votes. But the nervousness is especially pronounced among supporters of Joe Biden, who worry such a campaign could split the center and left and allow Donald Trump and his highly motivated rightwing base to win a return to the Oval Office.“Just as we organised against No Labels we’re going to organise against Robert Kennedy Jr,” Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, told reporters a day after No Labels said it would not field a candidate against Biden and Trump in November.Kennedy – an environmental attorney, conspiracy theorist and member of a famous political family – is running as an independent, gaining ballot access and polling in double figures.“We’re going to let folks know he can’t win,” Epting said, “but he can help Trump win” by taking votes from Biden.“We’re going to let folks know that he said he supported abortion bans. We’re going to let folks know that his vice-presidential pick [Nicole Shanahan, an attorney] calls IVF ‘one of the biggest lies’ and we’re going to let folks know that his dark money Super Pac is being funded by Trump donors.“There’s a lot we’re gonna let folks know. This victory against No Labels is just the start. There is a lot of work that we have to do.”No Labels said on Thursday it had not been able to find a candidate to run against Biden and Trump.On Friday Matthew Bennett, of Third Way, said No Labels was helped on its way out by a coalition put together by his centre-left group and MoveOn, an effort “from the left all the way to the centre-right and the Never Trump movement”.But, Bennett said, “The challenges ahead of us are in some ways even tougher.“Kennedy cannot be talked out of this race. He is going to have a lot of money and he’s not subject to reason. So we’re going to have to make clear that voters understand who this guy is, and that is not his father.”Kennedy is the son of the former US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy and the nephew of the 35th president, John F Kennedy.But, Bennett said, the current Kennedy “is not a safe place to park your vote if you’re dissatisfied with something that [Biden] is doing. This guy’s dangerous and voting for him is tantamount to voting for Trump. It’s also true of the other third-party candidates, Jill Stein [the Green nominee] and anybody else who runs.”Bennett said No Labels had posed a danger by planning to attack Biden from the political centre, even though Biden, as a Washington dealmaker of 50 years standing, was “kind of the platonic ideal of a No Labels candidate”.Kennedy, Bennett said, “is coming from some kind of weirdo fringe … and so it is harder to understand who his coalition is. However, our view is that anyone who divides the anti-Trump coalition is dangerous.”The Biden campaign has set up a team to combat Kennedy. But, Epting said, “It is incredibly important that we get to work in campaigning against Robert Kennedy … and ensure that the choices in November are clear to voters. It is that whether we like it or not … we live in a two-party system and there’s only two candidates that can win this presidential election. Donald Trump or Joe Biden.“Our job is to make that very clear to voters and in terms of resources … to ensure that we re-elect President Biden and an usher in a Democratic House and Senate. We have a $32m program to do that and we will be driving … We’ve got a great team that we assigned to this No Labels work. We’re going to reassign them to our Robert Kennedy work.”Epting and Bennett were asked what they would do to woo “the Kennedy curious”, voters who might be won back, perhaps by less brusque tactics than those employed by Hillary Clinton, who said this week anyone dissatisfied with a Biden-Trump rematch should “get over yourself”.“We’re not going to shame people into voting for Joe Biden,” Epting said. “That is not the pathway to get us out of this quagmire.“Really, it’s making a strategic case to voters, [saying], ‘We understand your grievances, we hear them and yet we live in a two-party presidential system.’ So the impact of your vote … will result in one of two possible worlds. A world in which Donald Trump is president, and he is dismantling our democracy even further. He is instituting a national abortion ban. He is setting up migrant camps, etc.“Or a world in which Joe Biden continues to be in the Oval Office and we’re able to continue to campaign, to push him to enact all the policies that we have dreamed up to strengthen our democracy: to go further around gun violence prevention reform, to protect abortion rights, to continue to create green new jobs and invest in our economy, to continue to tax the rich.”Epting promised to ask “tough questions” of Kennedy on subjects such as abortion, on which he supported a 15-week ban before quickly reversing.“We need to get [his responses] on camera and we need to share what we get … with all the voters that we can, especially in battleground states and districts,” Epting said.Asked about previous Democratic defeats involving third-party candidates, Bennett said that as “a veteran of the [Al] Gore campaign” of 2000, “losing two elections in my professional life to third-party candidates is incredibly galling, and I have made it my mission that we won’t lose three.”That was also a reference to 2016, when Jill Stein took votes from Clinton as Trump won.Bennett said: “I think everybody in Democratic politics … ignored Jill Stein in 2016 because we did not think that she posed a threat, just as the Gore campaign didn’t think Ralph Nader posed a threat in 2000.“We’re simply not going to make that mistake again.” More

Donald Trump’s speeches on the 2024 campaign trail so far have been focused on a laundry list of complaints, largely personal, and an increasingly menacing tone.He’s on the campaign trail less these days than he was in previous cycles – and less than you’d expect from a guy with dedicated superfans who brags about the size of his crowds every chance he gets. But when he has held rallies, he speaks in dark, dehumanizing terms about migrants, promising to vanquish people crossing the border. He rails about the legal battles he faces and how they’re a sign he’s winning, actually. He tells lies and invents fictions. He calls his opponent a threat to democracy and claims this election could be the last one.Trump’s tone, as many have noted, is decidedly more vengeful this time around, as he seeks to reclaim the White House after a bruising loss that he insists was a steal. This alone is a cause for concern, foreshadowing what the Trump presidency redux could look like. But he’s also, quite frequently, rambling and incoherent, running off on tangents that would grab headlines for their oddness should any other candidate say them.Journalists rightly chose not to broadcast Trump’s entire speeches after 2016, believing that the free coverage helped boost the former president and spread lies unchecked. But now there’s the possibility that stories about his speeches often make his ideas appear more cogent than they are – making the case that, this time around, people should hear the full speeches to understand how Trump would govern again.Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head: a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories.Curiously, Trump tucks the most tangible policy implications in at the end. His speeches often finish with a rundown of what his second term in office could bring, in a meditation-like recitation the New York Times recently compared to a sermon. Since these policies could become reality, here’s a few of those ideas:
Instituting the death penalty for drug dealers.
Creating the “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act”: “If China or any other country makes us pay 100% or 200% tariff, which they do, we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff of 100% or 200%. In other words, you screw us and we’ll screw you.”
Indemnifying all police officers and law enforcement officials.
Rebuilding cities and taking over Washington DC, where, he said in a recent speech, there are “beautiful columns” put together “through force of will” because there were no “Caterpillar tractors” and now those columns have graffiti on them.
Issuing an executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, transgender and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content.
Moving to one-day voting with paper ballots and voter ID.
This conclusion is the most straightforward part of a Trump speech and is typically the extent of what a candidate for office would say on the campaign trail, perhaps with some personal storytelling or mild joking added in.But it’s also often the shortest part.Trump’s tangents aren’t new, nor is Trump’s penchant for elevating baseless ideas that most other presidential candidates wouldn’t, like his promotion of injecting bleach during the pandemic.But in a presidential race among two old men that’s often focused on the age of the one who’s slightly older, these campaign trail antics shed light on Trump’s mental acuity, even if people tend to characterize them differently than Joe Biden’s. While Biden’s gaffes elicit serious scrutiny, as writers in the New Yorker and the New York Times recently noted, we’ve seemingly become inured to Trump’s brand of speaking, either skimming over it or giving him leeway because this has always been his shtick.Trump, like Biden, has confused names of world leaders (but then claims it’s on purpose). He has also stumbled and slurred his words. But beyond that, Trump’s can take a different turn. Trump has described using an “iron dome” missile defense system as “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. OK. Missile launch. Whoosh. Boom.”These tangents can be part of a tirade, or they can be what one can only describe as complete nonsense.During this week’s Wisconsin speech, which was more coherent than usual, Trump pulled out a few frequent refrains: comparing himself, incorrectly, to Al Capone, saying he was indicted more than the notorious gangster; making fun of the Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’s first name (“It’s spelled fanny like your ass, right? Fanny. But when she became DA, she decided to add a little French, a little fancy”).View image in fullscreenHe made fun of Biden’s golfing game, miming how Biden golfs, perhaps a ding back at Biden for poking Trump about his golf game. Later, he called Biden a “lost soul” and lamented that he gets to sit at the president’s desk. “Can you imagine him sitting at the Resolute Desk? What a great desk,” Trump said.One muddled addition in Wisconsin involved squatters’ rights, a hot topic related to immigration now: “If you have illegal aliens invading your home, we will deport you,” presumably meaning the migrant would be deported instead of the homeowner. He wanted to create a federal taskforce to end squatting, he said.“Sounds like a little bit of a weird topic but it’s not, it’s a very bad thing,” he said.These half-cocked remarks aren’t new; they are a feature of who Trump is and how he communicates that to the public, and that’s key to understanding how he is as a leader.The New York Times opinion writer Jamelle Bouie described it as “something akin to the soft bigotry of low expectations”, whereby no one expected him to behave in an orderly fashion or communicate well.Some of these bizarre asides are best seen in full, like this one about Biden at the beach in Trump’s Georgia response to the State of the Union:“Somebody said he looks great in a bathing suit, right? And you know, when he was in the sand and he was having a hard time lifting his feet through the sand, because you know sand is heavy, they figured three solid ounces per foot, but sand is a little heavy, and he’s sitting in a bathing suit. Look, at 81, do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don’t think Cary Grant, he was good. I don’t know what happened to movie stars today. We used to have Cary Grant and Clark Gable and all these people. Today we have, I won’t say names, because I don’t need enemies. I don’t need enemies. I got enough enemies. But Cary Grant was, like – Michael Jackson once told me, ‘The most handsome man, Trump, in the world.’ ‘Who?’ ‘Cary Grant.’ Well, we don’t have that any more, but Cary Grant at 81 or 82, going on 100. This guy, he’s 81, going on 100. Cary Grant wouldn’t look too good in a bathing suit, either. And he was pretty good-looking, right?”Or another Hollywood-related bop, inspired by a rant about Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s romantic relationship:“It’s a magnificent love story, like Gone With the Wind. You know Gone With the Wind, you’re not allowed to watch it any more. You know that, right? It’s politically incorrect to watch Gone With the Wind. They have a list. What were the greatest movies ever made? Well, Gone With the Wind is usually number one or two or three. And then they have another list you’re not allowed to watch any more, Gone With the Wind. You tell me, is our country screwed up?”He still claims to have “done more for Black people than any president other than Abraham Lincoln” and also now says he’s being persecuted more than Lincoln and Andrew Jackson:“All my life you’ve heard of Andrew Jackson, he was actually a great general and a very good president. They say that he was persecuted as president more than anybody else, second was Abraham Lincoln. This is just what they said. This is in the history books. They were brutal, Andrew Jackson’s wife actually died over it.”You not only see the truly bizarre nature of his speeches when viewing them in full, but you see the sheer breadth of his menace and animus toward those who disagree with him.His comments especially toward migrants have grown more dehumanizing. He has said they are “poisoning the blood” of the US – a nod at Great Replacement Theory, the far-right conspiracy that the left is orchestrating migration to replace white people. Trump claimed the people coming in were “prisoners, murderers, drug dealers, mental patients and terrorists, the worst they have”. He has repeatedly called migrants “animals”.View image in fullscreen“Democrats said please don’t call them ‘animals’. I said, no, they’re not humans, they’re animals,” he said during a speech in Michigan this week.“In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion,” he said during his March appearance in Ohio. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. “These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it,” he said.And he has turned more authoritarian in his language, saying he would be a “dictator on day one” but then later said it would only be for a day. He’s called his political enemies “vermin”: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” he said in New Hampshire in late 2023.At a speech in March in Ohio about the US auto industry he claimed there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost, which some interpreted as him claiming there would be violence if he loses the election.Trump’s campaign said later that he meant the comment to be specific to the auto industry, but now the former president has started saying Biden created a “border bloodbath” and the Republican National Committee created a website to that effect as well.It’s tempting to find a coherent line of attack in Trump speeches to try to distill the meaning of a rambling story. And it’s sometimes hard to even figure out the full context of what he’s saying, either in text or subtext and perhaps by design, like the “bloodbath” comment or him saying there wouldn’t be another election if he doesn’t win this one.But it’s only in seeing the full breadth of the 2024 Trump speech that one can truly understand what kind of president he could become if he won the election.“It’s easiest to understand the threat that Trump poses to American democracy most clearly when you see it for yourself,” Susan B Glasser wrote in the New Yorker. “Small clips of his craziness can be too easily dismissed as the background noise of our times.”But if you ask Trump himself, these are just examples that Trump is smart, he says.“The fake news will say, ‘Oh, he goes from subject to subject.’ No, you have to be very smart to do that. You got to be very smart. You know what it is? It’s called spot-checking. You’re thinking about something when you’re talking about something else, and then you get back to the original. And they go, ‘Holy shit. Did you see what he did?’ It’s called intelligence.” More

The wrestler turned action star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson dealt a blow to Joe Biden, saying he would not repeat his endorsement of the president in his looming rematch with Donald Trump.Johnson endorsed Biden in his first contest with Trump four years ago, saluting the former vice-president and senator for his “compassion, heart, drive and soul”.But in an interview with Fox News on Friday, Johnson said: “Am I going to do that again this year? That answer’s no. I realise now going into this election, I will not do that.”Long the subject of rumours about his own political ambitions, Johnson reportedly fielded an approach from No Labels, the centrist group that now says it will not run a candidate against Biden and Trump.Johnson has not disavowed talk of running for office. In 2021, after a poll showed public support, he said: “I don’t think our Founding Fathers EVER envisioned a six-four, bald, tattooed, half-Black, half-Samoan, tequila drinking, pick-up truck driving, fanny pack-wearing guy joining their club – but if it ever happens it’d be my honour to serve you, the people.”Last year, he said the same poll led “the parties” to his door.“That was an interesting poll that happened and I was really moved by that,” Johnson told a podcast. “I was really blown away and I was really honoured. I’ll share this little bit with you: at the end of the year in 2022, I got a visit from the parties asking me if I was going to run, and if I could run.“It was a big deal, and it came out of the blue. It was one after the other, and they brought up that poll, and they also brought up their own deep-dive research that would prove that should I ever go down that road [I’d be a real contender]. It was all very surreal because that’s never been my goal. My goal has never been to be in politics. As a matter of fact, there’s a lot about politics that I hate.”Johnson overcame that hatred in September 2020, when he endorsed Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris.“You guys are both experienced to lead, you’ve done great things,” Johnson said.“Joe, you’ve had such an incredible career, and you’ve led with such great compassion, heart, drive, and soul … Kamala, you have been a district attorney, a state attorney, a US senator. You are smart and tough. I have seen you in those hearings.”Biden beat Trump convincingly but four years on, Johnson told Fox News: “Am I happy with the state of America right now? Well, that answer’s no. Do I believe we’re gonna get better? I believe in that – I’m an optimistic guy. And I believe we can do better.“The endorsement that I made years ago with Biden was what I thought was the best decision for me at that time. I thought back then, when we talked about, ‘Hey, you know, I’m in this position where I have some influence,’ and it was my job then … to exercise my influence and share … who I’m going to endorse.”Johnson also said his “goal is to bring this country together” but said he would “keep my politics to myself”.“It is between me and the ballot box,” he said. “Like a lot of us out there, not trusting of all politicians, I do trust the American people and whoever they vote for that is my president and who I will support 100%.” More

The national director of No Labels, the third-party group which on Thursday said it would not run a candidate in the US presidential election, will now vote for Joe Biden, not Donald Trump.“Me, as a person?” Joe Cunningham told Fox News. “I would vote for Biden over Trump.”Cunningham did not elaborate. He was also offered the chance to choose Robert F Kennedy Jr, the vaccine sceptic and conspiracy theorist running as an independent.Asked why No Labels gave up on its quest, for which it said it raised $60m and secured ballot access in key states, Cunningham said: “No Labels was looking for a hero and a hero never emerged.“We’ve been very straightforward and upfront and honest with the American public that we were gonna field this ticket if two conditions were met. Number one, if Americans wanted another option, which is definitely, box is checked.”Biden and Trump are indeed historically unpopular. Kennedy has polled in double figures. But amid a barrage of warnings that a No Labels candidate stood to damage Biden most, amid warnings of Trump’s threat to US democracy, the group ultimately gave up on its search.“Number two,” Cunningham said, “if we’re able to find candidates that we believe have a pathway to victory. And that’s where we ran into the trouble. At the end of the day, we weren’t able to find candidates we felt had a straightforward path of victory.”Candidates courted reportedly included Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who opposed Trump longest in the Republican primary; Larry Hogan, the former Maryland governor now running for US Senate; Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who ran an explicitly anti-Trump Republican primary campaign; and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a former wrestler and Hollywood action star.No Labels also suffered a major blow last week with the death at 82 of its founding chair, Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic and independent senator and vice-presidential nominee.“The establishment does not reward dissent,” Cunningham said. “So we found it difficult to find the leaders to step up with the courage to be able to say, ‘OK, we are putting our country first, and, you know, damn the consequences within our respective parties.’”Groups opposed to the No Labels’ third-party effort celebrated its climbdown.Matt Bennett, of the centre-left group Third Way, said: “A year and a half ago, we were the first to warn that No Labels’ presidential bid was doomed, dangerous, and would divide the anti-Trump coalition. Joined by a wide array of allies, we waged a campaign to dissuade any serious candidate from joining their ticket.“We are deeply relieved that everyone rejected their offer, forcing them to stand down. While the threat of third-party spoilers remains, this uniquely damaging attack on President Biden and Democrats from the centre has at last ended.”On Friday, in a call with reporters and supporters, No Labels leaders said the group would stay engaged in election-year politics.Jay Nixon, a Democratic governor of Missouri turned director of No Labels ballot access efforts, said: “Twenty-one states, successful in any litigation we had, were were on a path to get that completed.”He also said: “This year we will pursue two goals at once. We will do all in our power … in the next seven months to ensure that the major [presidential] candidates compete for commonsense voters rather than speaking solely to their respective party bases. I think that is a significant responsibility.“This means defining the issues in this moment. [It] stands for border security, spending, the cost of living, supporting our allies abroad, all of that commonsense agenda …“That means also supporting commonsense congressional candidates that can serve as a check on the executive branch. On that front [we have a] very significant standard bearer in former [Maryland] governor Larry Hogan [who is] running for the Senate [as a Republican]. There are folks like that. He is not alone.”Nixon and other leaders who spoke on Friday did not say another presidential effort was on the horizon in 2028.But another senior No Labels official, Andy Bursky, told the Wall Street Journal: “I wouldn’t rule anything out. The organisation has not been beaten by this effort, it has been strengthened by this effort.” More

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the lawyer, conspiracy theorist and independent candidate for US president, vowed to investigate “whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends” in convictions of January 6 rioters – just one day after his campaign said a fundraising reference to such prisoners as “activists” was an unfortunate error.In a statement on Friday, Kennedy said that as president, he would “appoint a special counsel – an individual respected by all sides – to investigate whether prosecutorial discretion was abused for political ends in this case, and I will right any wrongs that we discover”.On 6 January 2021, Donald Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol after the former president told them to “fight like hell” to block certification of his defeat by Joe Biden. Nine deaths are linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,300 arrests have been made and nearly 1,000 convictions secured, some for seditious conspiracy. Some rioters have been held before trial.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal. Now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump has called January 6 prisoners “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots”; promoted a rendition of the national anthem performed in a Washington jail; and said that if re-elected, he will “free the January 6 hostages being wrongfully imprisoned”.Earlier this week, the Kennedy campaign ran into a media firestorm when a fundraising email referred to “J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their constitutional liberties” and compared them to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower who lives in exile in Russia, and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder held in the UK while the US seeks extradition.Amid uproar, a Kennedy spokesperson said: “That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr Kennedy’s views. It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process.”But on Friday, Kennedy indicated that he does think some January 6 prisoners might be activists wrongly imprisoned.“January 6 is one of the most polarising topics on the political landscape,” he said. “I am listening to people of diverse viewpoints on it in order to make sense of the event and what followed. I want to hear every side.“It is quite clear that many of the January 6 protesters broke the law in what may have started as a protest but turned into a riot. Because it happened with the encouragement of President Trump, and in the context of his delusion that the election was stolen from him, many people see it not as a riot but as an insurrection.“I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection. They observe that the protesters carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully’.”That statement was in accordance with others, collected by NBC News, in which Kennedy has questioned or dismissed the severity of events on January 6.View image in fullscreenFurthermore, the House committee that investigated January 6 detailed how protesters did carry weapons, some armed with guns; how Trump whipped up the crowd before belatedly appealing for calm; and how the riot followed lengthy attempts to find a legalistic way to keep Trump in power.“Like many reasonable Americans,” Kennedy continued, “I am concerned about the possibility that political objectives motivated the vigour of the prosecution of the J6 defendants, their long sentences, and their harsh treatment.”Echoing claims by Trump and Republicans in Congress, he said: “That would fit a disturbing pattern of the weaponisation of government agencies … against political opponents. One can, as I do, oppose Donald Trump and all he stands for, and still be disturbed by the weaponisation of government against him.”Kennedy polls in double figures, has attracted millions of dollars in donations, has named a running mate (Nicole Shanahan, an attorney) and is seeking ballot access in key states. But he remains most likely to act as a spoiler in November, siphoning votes from both candidates but, many observers think, doing more damage to Biden.In his Friday statement, Kennedy claimed to be following the example of the second US president, John Adams, “a staunch patriot” who in 1770 took on an unpopular task, “defend[ing] the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre”.Kennedy also said Democrats as well as Republicans were “using J6 to pour fuel on the fire of America’s divisions”, and charged both parties with “demonising … opponents as apocalyptic threats to democracy”.Many observers, however, view Kennedy himself as a threat to US democracy.On Friday, before Kennedy issued his statement about January 6, Rahna Epting of Move On, a progressive advocacy group, and Matthew Bennett of Third Way, a centre-left group, described to reporters plans to switch from campaigning against No Labels, the centrist group that dropped out of the presidential race this week, to targeting Kennedy and his campaign.“I want to be clear,” Epting said. “Robert Kennedy Jr’s ill-fated run for the presidency is helping put Donald Trump back in the White House and we’re going to work to stop that. Just as we organised against No Labels we’re going to organise against Robert Kennedy Jr. We’re going to let folks know we can’t win, but he can help Trump win.” More

Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, announced major changes to its policies on digitally created and altered media on Friday, before elections poised to test its ability to police deceptive content generated by artificial intelligence technologies.The social media giant will start applying “Made with AI” labels in May to AI-generated videos, images and audio posted on Facebook and Instagram, expanding a policy that previously addressed only a narrow slice of doctored videos, the vice-president of content policy, Monika Bickert, said in a blogpost.Bickert said Meta would also apply separate and more prominent labels to digitally altered media that poses a “particularly high risk of materially deceiving the public on a matter of importance”, regardless of whether the content was created using AI or other tools. Meta will begin applying the more prominent “high-risk” labels immediately, a spokesperson said.The approach will shift the company’s treatment of manipulated content, moving from a focus on removing a limited set of posts toward keeping the content up while providing viewers with information about how it was made.Meta previously announced a scheme to detect images made using other companies’ generative AI tools by using invisible markers built into the files, but did not give a start date at the time.A company spokesperson said the labeling approach would apply to content posted on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Its other services, including WhatsApp and Quest virtual-reality headsets, are covered by different rules.The changes come months before a US presidential election in November that tech researchers warn may be transformed by generative AI technologies. Political campaigns have already begun deploying AI tools in places like Indonesia, pushing the boundaries of guidelines issued by providers like Meta and generative AI market leader OpenAI.In February, Meta’s oversight board called the company’s existing rules on manipulated media “incoherent” after reviewing a video of Joe Biden posted on Facebook last year that altered real footage to wrongfully suggest the US president had behaved inappropriately.The footage was permitted to stay up, as Meta’s existing “manipulated media” policy bars misleadingly altered videos only if they were produced by artificial intelligence or if they make people appear to say words they never actually said.The board said the policy should also apply to non-AI content, which is “not necessarily any less misleading” than content generated by AI, as well as to audio-only content and videos depicting people doing things they never actually said or did. More

The port of Baltimore could be partially open again by the end of the month as the US military and partners push to clear the collapsed bridge that blocked the main shipping channel after being rammed by a cargo vessel, and Joe Biden toured the disaster site on Friday.After getting a firsthand look at efforts to clear away the hulking remains of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, the US president reiterated his calls for Congress to authorize the federal government to cover the cost of rebuilding the bridge “through union labor and American steel”.Yet he also said his administration was “absolutely committed to ensuring that parties responsible for this tragedy pay to repair the damage and be held accountable to the full extent the law will allow”. And he made it a point to pay tribute to the six construction workers who were killed when the bridge collapsed as they fixed potholes on it.“Most were immigrants but … were Marylanders, hardworking, strong and selfless,” Biden said of the workers, who were from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. “To all the families and loved ones who are grieving, we have come here to grieve with you.”Cranes, ships and diving crews worked to reopen one of the nation’s crucial shipping lanes as Biden prepared to deliver his remarks.Biden received updates from the US Coast Guard and army corps of engineers and got an aerial view of the wreckage.Eight workers were filling potholes on the bridge when it collapsed in the middle of the night on 26 March. Two were rescued, but the bodies of only two of the six who died have been recovered.Biden planned to meet privately with the families of the victims Friday afternoon.Officials have established a temporary, alternate channel for vessels involved in clearing debris.The army corps of engineers reported that it hopes to open a limited-access channel for barge container ships and some vessels moving cars and farm equipment by the end of this month and to restore normal capacity to Baltimore’s port by 31 May, the White House said.As much as $200m in cargo normally moves through Baltimore’s port per day, and it is the leading hub for importing and exporting vehicles.Of more immediate concern might be covering the costs of cleanup and building a new bridge.The Federal Highway Administration has provided $60m in “quick release” emergency relief funds to get started. Exactly how much the collapse will cost is unclear, though some experts estimate recovery will take at least $400m and 18 months.The White House announced on Friday it is asking Congress to authorize the federal government to cover 100% of the collapsed bridge cleanup and reconstruction costs, rather than seeking funding through a separate, supplemental funding request.The Associated Press contributed reporting More