Evelyn Reynolds

The Republican majority in the US House of Representatives is set to dwindle further with the early exit of Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, once a rising star of the party.A former US marine who twice deployed to Iraq, Gallagher, 40, is a relatively moderate voice in party at the mercy of the far right.He had already announced his decision to retire but in a statement on Friday he said: “After conversations with my family, I have made the decision to resign my position … effective 19 April. I’ve worked closely with House Republican leadership on this timeline.”The announcement came shortly after Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, an extremist even in a party held hostage by its far right, responded to the passage of a Democrat-backed funding bill by filing a motion to remove Mike Johnson, the speaker from Louisiana.Allies said Gallagher was pushed to the exit by such behaviour, according to Politico, particularly the right’s ejection of Johnson’s predecessor as speaker, Kevin McCarthy, last October.Friday was also the last day in Congress for Ken Buck of Colorado, a rightwinger nonetheless disillusioned by intra-party chaos who also chose to bring forward his intended retirement.After Buck’s departure, Republicans will control the House 218-213. Once Gallagher is gone, Johnson will only be able to afford to lose one vote if Democrats hold together.Under Wisconsin elections law, Gallagher’s seat will not be contested until November.On Friday, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority leader, told reporters: “It’s tough, but it’s tough with a five-seat majority, it’s tough with a two-seat majority, one is going to be the same. We all have to work together. We’re all going to have to unite if we’re going get some things done.”In a caucus dominated from without by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, that seems highly unlikely.Last month, Gallagher was one of three House Republicans who voted against the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, an effort widely seen not to meet the threshold for charges of high crimes and misdemeanours but meant to boost Republican messaging on immigration in an election year.Mayorkas will almost certainly escape conviction and removal by the Democratic-held Senate.Soon after voting against the Mayorkas impeachment, Gallagher announced his plan to retire.“Electoral politics was never supposed to be a career and, trust me, Congress is no place to grow old,” he said. “And so, with a heavy heart, I have decided not to run for re-election.”On Friday, Gallagher cited his work chairing a select committee on China and said “four terms serving north-east Wisconsin in Congress has been the honour of a lifetime and strengthened my conviction that America is the greatest country in the history of the world”. More

The pictures out of Gaza get more harrowing with each passing day. After months of witnessing civilians grieving for loved ones killed by bombs, now we see children desperate to eat – victims of what the aid agencies and experts are united in calling an imminent “man-made” famine. What matters most about these images is their depiction of a continuing horror inflicted on the people of Gaza. But they also reveal something that could have lasting implications for Israelis and Palestinians, for Americans and for the entire world. What they show, indeed what they advertise, is the weakness of the president of the United States.Joe Biden and his most senior lieutenants have been urging Israel to increase the flow of food aid into Gaza for months, in ever more insistent terms. This week the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, cited the finding of a UN-backed agency that the threat of hunger now confronted “100% of the population of Gaza”,adding that this was the first time that body had issued such a warning. Earlier this month, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, told Israel it needed to do whatever it took to get humanitarian aid into Gaza: “No excuses.” The Biden administration is all but banging the table and demanding Israel act.A week ago, it seemed to have had an effect. The Israel Defense Forces announced what was billed as a “dramatic pivot”, promising that it would “flood” Gaza with food supplies. But there’s precious little sign of it. An additional crossing has been opened, the so-called 96th gate, allowing a few more trucks to go in, but nothing on the scale that is required to avert disaster – or mitigate the disaster already unfolding. For all the talk of a pivot, there is still “a series of impediments, blockages, restrictions … on lorries carrying the most basic humanitarian aid”, David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee said this week. He noted the way that Israel’s ban on “dual use” items, those things that could be used as weapons if they fell into the hands of Hamas, means that even the inclusion of a simple pair of scissors for a clinic can result in an entire truckful of aid being turned back.To repeat, the victims of this are the 2.2 million people of Gaza, who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. But it represents a severe problem, or several, for Biden too. The most obvious is that he is in a re-election year, seeking to reassemble the coalition that brought him victory in 2020. Back then, a crucial constituency was the young, with voters under 30 favouring Biden over Donald Trump by 25 points. Now it’s a dead heat. To be sure, there are several factors to explain that shift, but one of them is younger Americans’ outrage at the plight of Gaza.The threat to re-election is illustrated most sharply in the battleground state of Michigan, home to 200,000 Arab-Americans who are similarly appalled, with many unequivocal that they will not vote for Biden, even if that risks the return of Trump – with all that implies for the US and the world. That number is more than enough to tip the state from Democrat to Republican in November. “If the election were held tomorrow, I think Biden would lose Michigan,” veteran Republican strategist Mike Murphy told me on the Unholy podcast this week. For Biden, “this is a pain point”.US support for Israel in this context would be a headache for any Democratic president, but Israel’s willingness to defy its most important ally presses especially on Biden. For one thing, the upside of his great age is supposed to be his experience in foreign affairs and especially his personal relationships with fellow world leaders. He likes to say he has known every Israeli prime minister since Golda Meir and that he’s dealt with Netanyahu for decades. Critics reply: a fat lot of good it’s done you.And that is the heart of the matter. For most of Israel’s history, it’s been taken as read that a clear objection from a US president is enough to make an Israeli prime minister change course. A shake of the head from Dwight Eisenhower brought an end to the Suez war of 1956. A phone call from Ronald Reagan ended the Israeli bombardment of west Beirut in 1982. In 1991, George HW Bush pushed a reluctant Likud prime minister to attend the Madrid peace conference, by withholding $10bn in loan guarantees.Biden has repeatedly made his displeasure known, and yet Netanyahu does not budge. It’s making the US look weak and for Biden especially, that’s deadly. “The subtext of the whole Republican campaign is that the world’s out of control and Biden’s not in command,” David Axelrod, former senior adviser to Barack Obama, told me on Unholy . “That’s basically their argument, and they use age as a surrogate for weakness.” Every time Netanyahu seems to be “punking” Biden, says Axelrod, it makes things worse.Plenty of Israeli analysts suggest that appearances are deceptive. In their view, Netanyahu is making a great show of thumbing his nose at Biden, because he is in an undeclared election campaign and defiance of Washington plays well with his base, but in reality he is much more compliant. In this reading, Team Netanyahu’s talk of a ground operation in Rafah – where nearly 1.5 million Palestinians are crammed together, most having fled Israeli bombardment – is just talk. Yes, the Israeli PM likes to threaten a Rafah invasion, to put pressure on Hamas and to have a bargaining chip with the Americans, but he is hardly acting like a man committed to doing it. Amos Harel, much-respected defence analyst for the Haaretz newspaper, notes that there are only three and a half IDF brigades currently in Gaza, compared with 28 at the height of hostilities. “Netanyahu is in a campaign, and for the time being at least, ‘Rafah’ is just a slogan,” he told me.Let’s hope that’s right, and a Rafah operation is more rhetorical than real. That does not address Israel’s foot-dragging on aid, which Netanyahu is clearly in no hurry to end, in part because his ultranationalist coalition partners believe sending food to Gaza is tantamount to aiding the Hamas enemy.That leaves Biden with two options. His preferred outcome is a breakthrough in the talks in Qatar, which would see both a release of some of the hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October and a pause in fighting, allowing aid to flow in. But Netanyahu fears such a pause, which would hasten the day of reckoning for his role in leaving Israel’s southern communities so badly exposed six months ago to Hamas – whether that reckoning is at the hands of the electorate or a commission of inquiry. He prefers to play for time, ideally until November, when Netanyahu hopes to say goodbye to Biden and welcome back Trump.The alternative for Biden is tougher. Last month, he issued a new protocol, demanding those countries that receive US arms affirm in writing that they abide by international law, including on humanitarian aid. If the US doesn’t certify that declaration, all arms sales stop immediately. In Israel’s case, the deadline for certification is Sunday.Joe Biden does not want to be the man who stopped arming Israel, not least because that would leave the country vulnerable to the mighty arsenal of Hezbollah just across the northern border with Lebanon. His administration is split on the move and he may well deem it too much. But he does need to see food flood into Gaza, right away. He has tried asking Netanyahu nicely. Now he needs to get tough.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

The House voted on Friday to pass a $1.2tn spending package that would fund much of the federal government through September, with just hours left to avert a partial shutdown. The bill now advances to the Senate, which will have to act quickly to keep the government open.The House vote was 286 to 134, with 101 Republicans and 185 Democrats supporting the funding bill. Twenty-two Democrats and 112 Republicans opposed the proposal.The House speaker, the Republican Mike Johnson, introduced the bill under suspension of the rules, meaning that he needed the support of two-thirds of members to pass the proposal. The bill barely crossed that threshold, and Johnson did not win the the support of the majority of his conference as he had hoped, but the speaker voiced optimism after the successful vote.“House Republicans achieved conservative policy wins, rejected extreme Democrat proposals, and imposed substantial cuts while significantly strengthening national defense,” Johnson said in a statement. “The process was also an important step in breaking the omnibus muscle memory and represents the best achievable outcome in a divided government.”On the government funding front, the spending package now advances to the Senate, where members will have to unanimously agree on fast-tracking the bill’s passage to prevent a shutdown. If the Senate can pass the bill, Joe Biden has already said he will “immediately” sign it once it reaches his desk.The bill would fund about 70% of the federal government – including the defense, state, education and homeland security departments – for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends on 30 September. Earlier this month, Biden signed a separate spending bill that funded the rest of the federal government through September, so the bill’s passage would eliminate the threat of a shutdown until October.Although the bill passed the House, Johnson had to mostly rely on Democratic votes to get it across the finish line. The widespread opposition among House Republicans raised questions about the future of Johnson’s speakership, which began only five months ago.Just before the funding bill passed, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Republican of Georgia, was seen giving a resolution to the House parliamentarian. Greene later confirmed the resolution was a motion to vacate Johnson from the speakership, but it remains unclear whether she would have the votes to remove him.Speaking to reporters after the vote, Greene described the resolution as “more of a warning than a pink slip” to Johnson, indicating she would not move immediately to oust the speaker.“I do not wish to inflict pain on our conference and throw the House in chaos,” Greene said. “But this is basically a warning, and it’s time for us to go through the process, take our time and find a new speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority instead of standing with Democrats.”A number of hard-right Republicans had indicated before the final vote that they would oppose the bill, arguing the legislation does not go far enough in restricting immigration. Members of the hard-right House Freedom caucus expressed alarm over the bill’s price tag and the timing of its release on early Thursday morning, complaining that lawmakers were unable to sufficiently review the 1,000-page proposal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHouse Republican leaders typically give members 72 hours to review bills before a vote, but they ignored that guideline in this case because of the shutdown deadline. At a press conference held on Friday morning, House Freedom caucus members accused leadership of rushing through a massive spending package that is “chock full of crap”, in the words of Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona.At least one freedom caucus member appeared to raise the idea of removing Johnson over the bill’s passage. The Louisiana congressman assumed the top job after the former speaker, the Republican Kevin McCarthy, was ousted over his decision to work with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown – just as Johnson did on Friday.“There’s some who will say that the Republicans are in the majority in the House, but it’s clear that the Democrats own the speaker’s gavel,” said Congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee. “This bill, if it passes, will likely determine who controls the House of Representatives, and this bill will most certainly determine who the next speaker is.”If a vote is held on removing Johnson, he will only be able to afford a handful of defections within his conference and still keep the speaker’s gavel, assuming Democrats do not come to his aid. In the event that Johnson is removed, the House will be unable to conduct business until a new speaker is elected, plunging the lower chamber into chaos yet again. More

Donald Trump claimed on Friday to have at his disposal “almost $500m in cash”, despite having complained about a $454m bond his lawyers say he cannot pay as he appeals a New York civil fraud judgment.In an all-capitals, early morning post to his Truth Social platform, the former president said: “Through hard work, talent, and luck, I currently have almost $500m in cash, a substantial amount of which I intended to use in my campaign for president.”The judge in his New York fraud case knew this, Trump claimed, and therefore came up with a penalty which, with interest, amounts to around $454m.Trump’s lawyers have said it is a “practical impossibility” for Trump to meet that bond by its 25 March deadline. In turn, the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, reportedly took steps towards seizing Trump-owned properties.One legal analyst called Trump’s Friday morning rant “the dumbest thing he could possibly have done”.“That is a direct admission by him that he has the money,” Nick Akerman, a former assistant US attorney in the southern district of New York who was a prosecutor during the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, told CNN.“Keep in mind, even with this operating money or cash that he supposedly has, if he doesn’t pony up and put up a bond, Letitia James is going to be able to go in and basically put restraining orders on all of his bank accounts. Everything that relates to him and all of that money is going to be tied up and frozen.“So if he’s really got that money, he’s got to put it up.”As Trump runs to return to the White House, he faces unprecedented legal jeopardy: 88 criminal charges (14 over election subversion, 40 over retention of classified information, 34 over hush-money payments), and various civil penalties – both in the fraud case and in a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Trump’s legal costs are therefore enormous. He received a potential boost on Friday as shareholders approved the public listing of Trump Media & Technology, the parent company of Truth Social, a move that could net more than $3bn. That money, however, will not be accessible for some time and is subject to the whims of the markets.Also on Friday, multiple outlets reported that Trump’s new fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee directs donations to his campaign and a political action committee that pays his legal bills before the RNC gets a cut.The unorthodox diversion of funds to the Save America political action committee – disclosed in an invitation to an event in Florida on 6 April obtained by the Associated Press – makes donors more likely to see their money go to Trump’s lawyers, who have received at least $76m over two years.Fine print says donations will first be used to give the maximum amount allowed under federal law to Trump’s campaign, which would total $6,600 for individuals giving in a primary and then a general election. Anything left next goes toward a maximum contribution of $5,000 to Save America. Anything more goes to the RNC and state parties.On the invitation, top donors are asked to contribute $250,000 as “host committee” contributors or $814,600 for a seat at Trump’s table. A separate contribution form allows donors to give contributions of any size but still spells out in fine print that the donation is first to be allocated to the Trump campaign and Save America.According to the fine print, any donor can direct their contribution to be distributed differently. Donors can also give directly to the RNC or any other entity.The Trump campaign said donors who contribute the suggested $814,600 or $250,000 per person will see hundreds of thousands of dollars go to the RNC, adding that Save America “also covers a very active and robust post-presidency office and other various expenses”. But the New York Times reported that for smaller events or donations, a much larger share will go to Save America.It in effect means that when checks are written to the new combined Republican campaign, Trump’s campaign and Save America get paid first.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWith Trump reportedly against declaring bankruptcy, a step that would delay payments in his civil cases but which would likely damage his campaign image, Save America spent more than $50m on legal fees in 2023 and, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), entered 2024 with just $5m in cash on hand.The Trump campaign said Save America spends on expenses other than legal fees. But legal spending made up 85% of operating expenses in the first two months of this year, a total of $8.5m.Trump’s political operation is struggling to catch Joe Biden on fundraising. Trump’s campaign and Save America reported raising $15.9m in February with more than $37m on hand, FEC filings showed. Biden’s campaign raised $53m, with $155m on hand.On Thursday, a Biden campaign email taunted Trump as “Broke Don”.Having taken control of the RNC, however, Trump can take advantage of far higher contribution limits. His handpicked leadership team includes his daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Chris LaCivita, one of two campaign managers and now RNC chief of staff.LaCivita previously suggested the RNC would not pay Trump’s legal bills.In February, Henry Barbour, an RNC member, attempted to formally preclude such spending, saying: “The RNC has one job. That’s winning elections. I believe RNC funds should be spent solely on winning elections, on political expenses, not legal bills.”LaCivita said: “The primary is over and it is the RNC’s sole responsibility to defeat Joe Biden and win back the White House. Efforts to delay that assist Joe Biden in the destruction of our nation.”But with Trump’s RNC takeover complete, Republicans are reportedly concerned it could leave the cash-strapped party shortchanged.
Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

A Maryland Democratic congressman running for US Senate has apologised for using a racist slur during a hearing on Capitol Hill.Speaking during a House budget committee hearing, David Trone said: “So this Republican jigaboo that it’s the tax rate that’s stopping business investment, it’s just completely faulty by people who have never run a business. They’ve never been there. They don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.”“Jigaboo” is a derogatory and offensive term for a Black person. The Oxford English Dictionary says the word is of unknown origin, its first documented use found in a song from 1909.Trone apologized in a statement to the Washington Post. “While attempting to use the word ‘bugaboo’ in a hearing, I misspoke and mistakenly used a phrase that is offensive,” he said.“Upon learning the meaning of the word I was deeply disappointed to have accidentally used it, and I apologise.”Merriam-Webster defines “bugaboo” as “an imaginary object of fear”.In 2009, the rapper Jay-Z discussed with the Guardian his use of the N-word in his music, saying: “If you eliminate [it, racists will] say ‘monkey’ or ‘jigaboo’.”The word “jigaboo” has recently been an occasional source of controversy.Shalanda Young, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to whom Trone was speaking on Thursday, is Black. She declined to comment to the Post.In Maryland, Trone leads Democratic polling regarding the party race to contest the US Senate seat now filled by the retiring Ben Cardin.Trone’s closest competitor, Angela Alsobrooks, a state politician, is Black. She also declined to comment.In early polling, Trone and Alsobrooks trail Larry Hogan, the probable Republican nominee for Senate, a moderate who was a popular governor until 2023, when he was succeeded by Wes Moore, a Democrat and the first Black governor of the mid-Atlantic state.Trone said the word he used “has a long dark terrible history” and “should never be used any time, anywhere, in any conversation.“I recognise that as a white man, I have privilege. And as an elected official, I have a responsibility for the words I use – especially in the heat of the moment. Regardless of what I meant to say, I shouldn’t have used that language.” More

“We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have [its] forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hatred for me – and I welcome their hatred.”President Franklin D Roosevelt – the cousin of a beloved former president and scion of two prominent New York families – was an unlikely tribune of economic populism. But amid the devastation wrought by the Great Depression, he understood that the only way to show millions of working Americans that he really had their back was to put a target on the back of his own class, economic elites.Today, in another turbulent period and facing a strong threat from Donald Trump’s anti-democratic rightwing populism, Democrats have forgotten their history. A recently released study by the Center for Working-Class Politics reveals that Democrats aren’t taking advantage of a powerful weapon in the fight against Trump: economic populism.Political candidates who are drawing more on Roosevelt’s anti-elite playbook are, however, finding success. Our study found that 2022 Democratic congressional candidates who called out economic elites while celebrating working people out-performed other candidates in places where Democrats struggle the most: districts with majority-white, non-college graduate populations and those with disproportionately higher percentages of people holding working-class occupations.Economic populists’ average vote shares were, respectively, 12.3 and 6.4 percentage points higher than other candidates’ in those places. Economic populists also performed better than other candidates in rural and small-town districts, where their average vote share was 4.7 percentage points higher. These findings are in line with previous research from the Center for Working-Class Politics that tested the impact of economic populism and similarly found that working-class voters prefer economic populists.Yet even though we know that economic populism can help Democrats win back the working-class voters – of all races – who recent polls indicate are bolting from the Democrats at a rapid pace, the report also finds that Democrats are generally allergic to running against Roosevelt’s economic royalists.Indeed, less than 10% of Democratic candidates called out Wall Street, billionaires, millionaires or CEOs on their candidate websites, and a related analysis by the Center found that only about 20% of TV ads by Democrats in competitive 2022 house races did so. Less than 5% of ads invoked billionaires, the rich, Wall Street, big corporations or price gouging.Nor, despite the Biden administration’s focus on industrial policy and jobs creation, are Democrats centering bread-and-butter economic issues that resonate with the working-class voters they need to stop Trump in November. Indeed, just 30% of TV ads released by 2022 Democratic candidates in competitive districts focused primarily on bread-and-butter economic issues, from high-quality jobs to reining in drug and consumer costs.The other 70% prioritized abortion, resistance to Trump and Republican extremism or individual candidate qualities. A mere 18% of these ads said anything at all about jobs, less than 2% talked about the need for high-quality, good-paying or unionized jobs, and virtually none talked about specific policy proposals to create better employment – like generating new manufacturing positions or expanding job training programs.As a result, despite Democrats’ progressive economic policy goals, many voters simply don’t associate them with the ideas that will improve their lives. They feel that Trump – with his constant barrage of rhetorical attacks on the rich and powerful – understands their pain better than the elites who write Democrats’ campaign checks.Simply, the Democratic party faces an image crisis among working-class voters as severe as any we’ve seen since the 1960s.This is not to say that there are no Rooseveltian anti-elite populists in the Democratic camp. Indeed, candidates such as Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Tim Ryan embraced this kind of rhetoric and overperformed relative to President Biden’s 2020 margins in difficult races with large working-class electorates. But there are vanishingly few candidates who combined full-throated economic populism with the ambitious economic policies Democrats need to send working-class voters a credible message that they really understand and care about the issues they care about.Why are Democrats so loth to attack economic elites? There are many reasons – both ideological and political – but the party’s anti-populist bias is probably related to the changing class dynamics of its electoral and donor base. Research by Sam Zacher shows that the Democratic party has increasingly relied on affluent, highly educated voters to make up for their declining support among the working class. Zacher emphasizes that the Democrats’ increasingly affluent base has been reflected in the party’s policy priorities – which carefully avoid proposals that might directly challenge the interests of economic elites.Without a major course correction, Democrats’ elite bias means they will continue to resist rhetorical class war against the plutocrats and the bold economic reforms needed to overcome decades of perceived neglect among working-class voters.In the short-term, if Democrats don’t change course, the Republican party will look more and more appealing to working-class voters, and the electoral math for Democrats in working-class-heavy swing states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania will become increasingly dire.In the long term, unless Democrats can make credible appeals to working-class voters through policy and rhetoric, we face the prospect of a long-term class realignment with the affluent and poor on the Democratic side and the working class on the Republican. This would negate any possibility of forging a majoritarian coalition to deliver the economic reforms working people so desperately need, and would guarantee that culture war rather than class war defines American politics for the foreseeable future.To fix this problem and defeat Trumpism, progressives must take a page from President Roosevelt’s playbook and call out economic elites as the main obstacle to rebuilding working-class communities.
Jared Abbott is the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics
Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, founding editor of Jacobin, and author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalities More

In the run-up to this year’s election, President Joe Biden has warned that American democracy is at stake. But when it comes to the democratic process of an entire nation, might the solution be local?
In an age of declining print media, losses of local newspapers and journalists are creating ‘news deserts’: areas bereft of a local paper. But does this matter, or is local news just a collection of obituaries and classifieds? Especially when rolling news coverage can be found online?
This week, Joan Greve speaks to the journalist and local news campaigner Steven Waldman, who argues that in an election year of increasing polarisation, we need local news more than ever. They will discuss why local journalism is a fundamental part of building communication, scrutiny and trust – and what can be done to save it

How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland and campaign surrogate for Joe Biden, has warned of the limitations of an election message centred on the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump.In January the US president gave a rousing speech about the need to protect democratic institutions from Trump, now his rival in the 2024 election, and the Biden campaign has promised to put the issue front and centre.But Moore, who is Maryland’s first Black chief executive and only the third Black governor ever elected in the nation, said that voters are focused on cost-of-living, housing and healthcare issues.“When you’re talking to a lot of folks – and I can tell you specifically when you’re talking to folks in communities I grew up in and my old neighbours – the threat to democracy is not something that’s on people’s everyday thought list or the things that they’re prioritising,” the governor told reporters in Washington on Thursday.“They’re prioritising things like how expensive prescription drugs are. They’re prioritising things like we have a housing crisis that we have to address. They’re prioritising things like you graduated from college – or maybe you did not graduate from college, you just took college courses 23 years ago – and you’re still paying off debt.“That’s the thing that they’re talking about and so I think that’s the message that we need to continue to resonate, because on those issues and so many more the president actually has a story to tell.”Biden can point to an increase in housing inventory and measures that make it easier to build affordable housing, Moore argues, as well as a cap on insulin prices and steps to reinforce and expand the Affordable Care Act, which Trump has threatened to undermine.The danger to democracy from Trump is “very real”, the governor acknowledged. “We are literally talking about a person where some of the first decisions are going to have to be about his own personal freedom. But I think things that people are going to vote on are the things that they are waking up to every single morning and which person, which candidate, has those interests at heart.”Moore, 45, a Rhodes scholar and former paratrooper who saw combat in Afghanistan, is widely tipped as a potential future presidential candidate. He insists that he is not thinking about such speculation but does intend to be a highly active surrogate for the Biden-Harris re-election campaign in the coming months.The governor urged the grassroots “uncommitted” movement, which racked up tens of thousands of Democratic primary votes in Michigan and Minnesota in protest at Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza, to consider the potential perils of withholding their support in November.“I would argue to the people who voted uncommitted that elections do have consequences and, if you think that you are going to get something better from the other binary choice on this, a person who has during no point showed any sense of compassion towards what’s happening overseas, a person who when they think about what becomes the future of Gaza, the real estate prospects is probably a more interesting conversation – if you think that’s a better option then I would just ask you to look deeply into your heart and into your soul.” More