US Politics

Did you catch a clip of the tech CEOs in Washington this week? The Senate judiciary committee had summoned five CEOs to a hearing titled Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis. There was Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel, Discord’s Jason Citron and X’s Linda Yaccarino – and a predictable vibe of “Senator, I’m a parent myself …” Listen, these moguls simply want to provide the tools to help families and friends connect with each other. Why must human misery and untold, tax-avoidant billions attend them at every turn?If you did see footage from the hearing, it was probably one of two moments of deliberately clippable news content. Ranking committee member Lindsey Graham addressed Zuckerberg with the words: “I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands.” Well, ditto, Senator. “You have a product that is killing people,” continued Graham, who strangely has yet to make the same point to the makers of whichever brand of AR-15 he proudly owns, or indeed to the makers of the assault rifles responsible for another record high of US school shootings last year. Firearms fatalities are the number one cause of death among US children and teenagers, a fact the tech CEOs at this hearing politely declined to mention, because no one likes a whatabouterist. And after all, the point of these things is to just get through the posturing of politicians infinitely less powerful than you, then scoot back to behaving precisely as you were before. Zuckerberg was out of there in time to report bumper results and announce Meta’s first ever dividend on Thursday. At time of writing, its shares were soaring.Anyhow, if it wasn’t that clip, maybe it was the one of Zuckerberg being goaded by sedition fist-pumper Josh Hawley into apologising to those in the committee room audience who had lost children to suicide following exploitation on his platform. Thanks to some stagey prodding by Senator Hawley, who famously encouraged the mob on 6 January 2020 (before later being filmed running away from them after they stormed the Capitol), Zuckerberg turned round, stood up, and faced his audience of the bereaved. “I’m sorry for everything you’ve all gone through,” he began. Helpfully, a transcribed version of this off-the-cuff moment found its way into a Meta press release minutes after the event.View image in fullscreenSo I guess that was the hearing. “Tense”, “heated”, “stunning” – listen, if adjectival cliches were legislation, this exercise would have been something more than pointless. And yet, they’re not and it wasn’t. There really ought to be a genre name for this kind of performative busywork – the theatre of failure, perhaps.Other outcomes were once available. Back in 1994, the CEOs of seven big tobacco firms took their oaths before a Senate committee, then spouted a communal line that nicotine wasn’t addictive. Within two years, all seven had quit the tobacco industry – a development not unrelated to the fact that all seven were under investigation by the justice department for perjury. Those were different times, and not just because we probably wouldn’t slap them with the “seven dwarfs” moniker now. These days, you can’t escape the sense that old guys were shouting at Zuckerberg at a hearing six years ago, while he offered 2018’s variation on his favourite blandishment: “We know we have more work to do”. And you suspect they’ll be shouting at him again in five years’ time, when he will still know they have more work to do. “If you’re waiting on these guys to solve the problem,” sniffed Graham of the tech CEOs, “we’re gonna die waiting.” Again, the senator speaks of what he knows. There is always talk of legislation, but there is never really much legislation.There’s a line near the start of the movie version of Ready Player One, the cult dystopian book about a VR world that weirdly feels like the lodestar for Zuckerberg’s pivot towards the metaverse: “I was born in 2027,” explains the teenage protagonist, “after the corn syrup droughts, after the bandwidth riots … after people stopped trying to fix problems, and just tried to outlive them.” It was hard to watch any amount of Wednesday’s hearing – it’s hard to watch a lot of news about the intersection of politics and mega-business these days, in fact – and not feel we are in a very similar place. Few of the politicians giving it the hero act could be said to have left the world in a better place than the one in which they found it when they took office. A necrotic form of politics has gripped the Republican party in particular, and this is the vacuum in which they have been downgraded by corporations they don’t even understand, let alone have the will, foresight, or political skill to control.“Companies over countries,” as Mark Zuckerberg said a long time ago. This once-unformed thought becomes more realised all the time, with the Meta boss last year explaining that, “Increasingly, the real world is a combination of the physical world we inhabit and the digital world we are building.” The added irony is that the more the Lindsey Grahams fail the real world, the more people retreat further into the unregulated embrace of the worlds that the Mark Zuckerbergs run. It’s going to take so much more than the theatre of failure to solve it – but bad actors currently dominate the bill.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More

Jonathan Fields and Taj McClary, two college freshmen, were chatting on Monday after class at a South Carolina State University snack shop. Both are young Black men from rough neighborhoods in North Charleston. They’ve made it out. But only so far.Fields is a mechanical engineering major with a 3.2 GPA, which isn’t enough to keep his state scholarship, he said. He’s looking at getting a job, but not just so he can afford a basket of chicken tenders after class.“I have an interview tomorrow at Wendy’s, just so I can send money back home and still get stuff,” Fields said. He’s not sure who he’s voting for in the Democratic primary on Saturday.“You don’t just succeed. You actually work for everything. Nothing is never handed to you. So when you come down here and you look at politics, you actually have to watch it.”On Saturday, South Carolina voters will head to the polls in a Democratic primary contest that is as much a coronation of Joe Biden as the Republican race here two weeks later appears to be of Donald Trump. But the common anxieties of Black voters lie beneath the placid surface of Biden’s re-election campaign, even after he chose to eschew tradition and launch his primary season in the state.There’s a contrast between Biden’s rhetoric and the lived reality of many Black voters in South Carolina who propelled him to the White House four years ago. That leaves some pointing to signs of improvement, but many people keenly aware of how far away equality remains, and how easily these gains can be reversed.Four years ago, Biden recovered from stumbles in Iowa and New Hampshire to win a resounding victory in this state – his first primary victory in his third run for the White House.Two Black senators – Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey – were on the ballot in 2020, hoping to capture the magic of Barack Obama’s victorious run of 2008. It didn’t matter. An early endorsement by James Clyburn, dean of the Black congressional caucus and the state’s only Democratic congressman, galvanized the Black vote for Biden, who went on to win nearly half of South Carolina’s Democratic voters and a first-place finish in every county in the state.Biden has been plain in acknowledging his political debt to South Carolina, and specifically to South Carolina’s Black electorate. According to 2020 exit polling, about 60% of Democratic voters in South Carolina are Black and about 90% of Black voters here cast ballots for Democrats.“I wouldn’t be here without the Democratic voters of South Carolina, and that’s a fact,” Biden said on Saturday at a celebratory dinner in Columbia. “You’re the reason I am president.”Democrats are celebrating South Carolina’s new status as the first Democratic primary in the nation, both a political gift by Biden and an acknowledgment by the Democratic party that something had to change, said Marlon Kimpson, a former state senator.“There was a large push by the party leadership to hold the first-in-the-nation primary in South Carolina, because the South Carolina Democratic party electorate mirrors the rest of the country,” he said. “The challenge with that is that the president doesn’t have any meaningful opposition. It’s a double-edged sword. While we are very excited about hosting the first primary, we’ve had to start early and work extremely hard to generate enthusiasm.”View image in fullscreenIndeed, neither Congressman Dean Phillips nor author Marianne Williamson have generated much enthusiasm for their primary challenge of a sitting president. A poll conducted by Emerson College on 5 January indicated that 69% of Democratic primary voters in South Carolina intend to vote for the incumbent. About 5% support Phillips and 3% support Williamson in the poll. Twenty-two per cent were undecided.“As I drive down Highway 17, there are no campaign signs,” Kimpson said. “In 2020, not only were there campaign signs, this close to the election there were people holding handheld signs. Radio ads. Bumper stickers. Social media posts 24/7.”This is also the first presidential primary contest in South Carolina which has had early voting. So far, fewer than 30,000 voters have cast Democratic primary ballots.“Turnout is going to be low. We know that,” said Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the Black Voters Matter activist organization based in Atlanta. Albright led a series of town halls and voter education events in South Carolina last week. “If your benchmark is what happened in a previous primary, you’re going to be confused. Certainly, you can’t compare it to four years ago. The primary turnout is not going to tell us a whole lot.”Albright said he sees tension between the local concerns of Black voters and a state government dominated by white Republicans. For example, a recent cross burning in Conway, a gentrifying suburb of Myrtle Beach, has heightened interest in passing a hate crimes law at the state level. Activists have been pressing with increasing vigor for this political goal since the 2015 murders of nine people, including a state senator, at a historic Black church in Charleston.“Without a hate crimes law, who’s the president and who’s the attorney general and who’s running the Department of Justice matters,” Albright said.As the president formally begins his re-election campaign push, his message to Black voters has been to look at the promises he has made and kept to communities of color. Biden has elevated Black women to positions of authority, choosing Harris as his vice-president, appointing Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US supreme court and a record number of Black women to the federal bench.Capping insulin costs for consumers has been one of those signature accomplishments, Kimpson said. According to the American Diabetes Association, about 11.6% of Americans are diabetic, with a disproportionate disease burden affecting Black people. One out of eight South Carolinians is diabetic, according to data from the Medical University of South Carolina. For Black South Carolinians, it’s one in six. For those over 65, it’s one in four.Betty Owens of Orangeburg is 67. She receives insulin free of charge through Medicare, she said. On a Wednesday afternoon, she picked through the crust of some fried gas-station chicken breasts. “I don’t eat the outside,” she said. “It’s not that bad if you control it.”Owens, who had to pay for insulin out of pocket before the law changed, said the new policy was an important reason she’s voting for Biden in the primary and in November. She believes her health depends on it.Owens’ son and daughter got jobs paying more than they had been earning in the Trump years, one at an automotive company, another at a bakery. Biden “put out a lot of jobs out there, and more money with the jobs. When I was working, we weren’t making $19 or $20 an hour,” she said.The problem, she said, was inflation. While the rate of inflation in the United States has been lower than in other industrialized countries, and falling now, prices are still much higher than before the pandemic. “You run through that money like it isn’t even there,” she said. “You go into a store and you buy a few items, and it’s too much money.”The Black unemployment rate in April briefly dipped below 5% for the first time in history and remains lower over the last year than any previous period in American history. With remarkable historical consistency, the Black unemployment has usually moved in lockstep at double the white unemployment rate. Labor data over the past year suggests this is starting to uncouple: Black and white unemployment rates are inching closer together, perhaps a sign that endemic discrimination is receding.In absolute terms, economic outcomes for Black voters are improving. In relative terms, however, they’re falling behind. The wealth gap between Black and white households has increased in Biden’s term. Black households remain about 30% less likely to own a home than white households, driving this gap. The average Black worker earns 76¢ to a dollar earned by the average white worker.In South Carolina, it’s 73¢ to the dollar.View image in fullscreenSolving these problems requires a programmatic response, Kimpson said. “People are looking for immediate results in their mailbox, in their zip code. When you look at the American Rescue Plan, people actually got checks.”Student loan relief – $130bn and counting – has also been a signature chicken-in-the-pot item in Biden’s re-election campaign. Black students have borne a larger burden from those loans. While student loan relief unburdens people who have previously taken out loans, it’s not doing much for people in school today such as Fields, the freshman engineering student.“In order for me to get into the profession that I want to get into, I have to go to college,” Fields said. “But it’s like: I have to struggle just to get to where I want to be. Because nobody wants to help you. They tell everybody without college you won’t be anything, but how can I get there? There’s no help.”The return of Donald Trump to the White House remains a potent, motivating threat for Democrats, regardless of anemic turnout in a primary campaign, and Biden appears to know that.“I want you to imagine the future nightmare if Trump is back in office,” Biden told South Carolina Democrats last week. “Given the nightmare when he was in office, you know what is likely to come.” His stump speech conjures threats of a national abortion ban, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, cuts to social security and an amplification of divisive politics.Biden’s rhetoric looks beyond the primary, fixated on his expected opponent in November and on repudiating Trump’s election claims. On Saturday, South Carolina voters will signal just how well that message is working.“The second Lost Cause is Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen,” Biden said. We cannot allow that lie to live either, because it threatens our very democracy. Folks, there are truth, and there are lies – lies told for power, lies told for profit. We must call out these lies with a voice that is clear and unyielding.” More

Over the past few weeks, a quiet legal crisis has been unfolding on the US-Mexico border. Texas has seized control of part of the border and claimed the right to prevent federal authorities from exercising jurisdiction there. After the US supreme court ruled that the federal government could tear down razor wire erected by Texas authorities, the state vowed to erect more – and Governor Greg Abbott claimed that because the federal government had failed to protect his state from an “invasion” of refugees, it has “broken the compact between the United States and the States” and lost the right to exercise authority over the border altogether.To understand why this is so alarming, you need to see it in two historical contexts. The first is the notion of a “compact” between the states. This idea holds that the constitution is not the supreme law of the land but rather a mere agreement between independently sovereign states. Those states hence retain the right to decide when certain actions by the federal government break the compact – and to reclaim their independence accordingly.This idea – sometimes known as “compact theory” – was key to the quasi-legal arguments deployed by the Confederate states in the 19th century to justify first secession, and then civil war. As well as being rejected by the framers of the constitution, it was also explicitly ruled incorrect by the supreme court once the civil war was over. Nowadays, there is really no such thing as “compact theory” outside of the imagination of neo-Confederates and other far-right groups – there’s just federal law, and actions that break that law.Secondly, the erroneous idea of the compact and the broader agenda of “states’ rights” of which it is a part have often been deployed in order to advance a white supremacist agenda. Slavery is the most notable example. But the southern states – including Texas – also invoked these ideas to defend the system of Jim Crow, which within living memory denied full rights to generations of African Americans. Only the civil rights movement forced a change.Another part of this tradition is the inversion of the realities of power and violence which lie at its heart. Slavery was justified in part by arguments that the slaves, if freed, would threaten and even exterminate the white race. Jim Crow was reinforced by the related idea that free Black people would, if not physically eradicate white people, destroy the white body politic by contaminating it with unfit citizens. In each case the reality of who was really a threat to whom – the slavedriver to the slave, the Klansman to the free Black citizen – was hidden by an elaborate ideology of fear which in reality was used to justify the continuation of white supremacy.By claiming the right to nullify federal authority in order to wield lethal force against non-white migrants, Abbott is placing himself squarely in the center of these two traditions. His actions have already contributed to the death of two children and a mother who drowned in the Rio Grande as Texas authorities prevented federal agents from coming to their aid. Refugees are among the most powerless people in the world, but to Abbott they are elements of an “invading” force which threatens the security of Texas and the United States. Like his predecessors, he believes that even the constitution shouldn’t stand in the way of his ability to harm them.But just because Abbott is invoking some of the most sordid chapters in American history to justify his actions doesn’t mean we should have confidence that he will fail.One of the most disturbing aspects of this whole affair is that despite Abbott’s arguments having no legal merit, four supreme court justices were willing to endorse Texas blocking federal authorities from removing the razor wire at the border. The fact that this case was so narrowly decided is a five-alarm fire that suggests we are only one new court decision or one new Republican supreme court appointment away from a radical restructuring of America’s constitutional order. Future historians may look back on the 2020s as a turning point as profound as the civil rights movement of the 1960s – and one in which the pendulum swung back the other way.What Texas is doing also dramatically raises the stakes of this year’s presidential election – and not just because the next president may be able to pick another supreme court justice. With so many Republicans endorsing the idea that the situation at the border can be characterized as an invasion, the road seems to be open for a Republican president to make a federal invasion declaration.This would not only pave the way for an even more militarized treatment of refugees, but also allow the federal government to suspend the rights of millions of Americans living in border areas if it deems such a step necessary to repel the supposed attack.Luckily, there are legal and institutional barriers to such a step – many constitutional scholars believe that a federal invasion declaration requires an act of Congress. But in this case as in others, all roads lead to the supreme court, and it has already signaled its openness to many extreme ideas. America is in a time of great constitutional danger, and the border may be both an early warning sign – and the place where the country ultimately comes unstuck.
Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University. He writes a newsletter called America Explained More

A year ago on 3 February a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in a small village on the border of Ohio and Pennsylvania. A few days after the derailment, officials decided to vent and burn the chemicals it was carrying to prevent an explosion.
Those still living in East Palestine and the surrounding communities have been told the air they breathe is safe, but many aren’t confident in what they’re being told.
So what led to the derailment? What’s changed in terms of legislation to make sure this kind of accident doesn’t happen again? And how are residents coming together to advocate for their safety and that of fellow Americans in the future?
The Guardian’s fossil fuels and climate reporter, Dharna Noor, travelled to East Palestine to see for herself what’s changed in the 12 months since the disaster

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

Joe Biden won a strong pledge of support on Thursday from union autoworkers crucial to his re-election bid in Michigan, while yet more protests over his backing of Israel’s actions in Gaza put pressure on the trip.The president’s travel to the battleground state was intended as a celebration after the United Auto Workers (UAW) union recently endorsed his re-election bid. But his visit was also met with protests amid the state’s sizable Arab American community, demanding Biden seek a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war, and refusing to meet his campaign.Biden visited a UAW union hall in Warren, Michigan, where UAW members plan to work a phone bank on his behalf ahead of the state’s 27 February nominating contest.He was greeted by UAW president Shawn Fain, who last week gave a full-throated endorsement of the Democratic incumbent and a sharp rebuke of Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.As the crowd chanted, “Joe, Joe”, Fain promised Biden: “We’re going to fight like hell” for him to win the November presidential election.“Wall Street didn’t build the middle class. Labor built the middle class, and the middle class built the country,” Biden said. “When labor does well, everybody does well.”He later joked: “Besides, you built my ’67 Corvette.”The campaign kept specific details of Biden’s visit private in the face of expected opposition until just before his arrival.Ahead of his motorcade, about 100 protesters marched down a street toward the UAW location, chanting “Genocide Joe has got to go” and waving Palestinian flags.Before heading to Michigan, Biden attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. He said he was working to resolve the Gaza conflict, including a two-state solution for Palestinians and bringing home the hostages still held following Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel.“We are actively working for peace,” he said at the breakfast.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump on Wednesday met with the Teamsters, one of the US’s biggest unions representing truck drivers, airline pilots and others, as he competes for their backing.Ahead of Biden’s visit to the Detroit area, protesters amassed in cars and vans with blue and white “Abandon Biden” signs and Palestinian flags, planning to rush to wherever he appeared.Arab Americans account for 5% of the vote in Michigan and Biden’s margin of victory over Trump was less than 3 percentage points in 2020.Reuters contributed reporting More

The US state department has released the names of four Israeli nationals subjected to sanctions under Biden’s new executive order.
David Chai Chasdai
Einan Tanjil
Shalom Zicherman
Yinon Levi
According to the state department, Chasdai “initiated and led a riot, which involved setting vehicles and buildings on fire, assaulting Palestinian civilians, and causing damage to property in Huwara, which resulted in the death of a Palestinian civilian”.It accuses Tanjil of involvement in the assault of “Palestinian farmers and Israeli activists by attacking them with stones and clubs, resulting in injuries that required medical treatment”.Zicherman was seen on video assaulting “Israeli activists and their vehicles in the West Bank, blocking them on the street, and attempted to break the windows of passing vehicles with activists inside,” it said. He “cornered at least two of the activists and injured both”.Levi “led a group of settlers who engaged in actions creating an atmosphere of fear in the West Bank. He regularly led groups of settlers from the Meitarim Farm outpost that assaulted Palestinian and Bedouin civilians, threatened them with additional violence if they did not leave their homes, burned their fields, and destroyed their property. Levi and other settlers at Meitarim Farm have repeatedly attacked multiple communities within the West Bank.”Good afternoon. It’s been another lively day in Washington. Thanks for reading.Here’s what we covered today:
Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, announced that the long-awaited text of a border deal to unlock aid to Ukraine and Israel could be released as early as tomorrow and said to expect a vote next week. Despite months of painstaking, bipartisan negotiations between senators and the White House, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has already declared it “dead on arrival” amid opposition from Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner who hopes to use immigration as a cudgel against Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, Biden announced that the US will place sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, via presidential executive order, citing “intolerable levels” of violence. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the action as “unnecessary.” The state department on Thursday released the names of four Israeli citizens targeted in a first round of sanctions under the new authority. For latest updates on the Middle East, you can follow our live coverage here.
Defense secretary Lloyd Austin, was contrite in a Pentagon press briefing this morning, his first since being rushed to the hospital with complications from prostate cancer surgery that he kept secret from the president and the public for several days. “I want to be crystal clear: we did not handle this right and I did not handle this right,” Austin told reporters.
Biden praised the Ukrainians people’s “incredible resolve and resilience against Putin’s aggression” and demanded afresh of Congress: “We must continue to help them.” The White House’s request to send nearly $110bn in additional security assistance and aid to Ukraine is on hold on Capitol Hill amid House Republican resistance.
The US House of Representatives last night passed a nearly $79bn tax package that would expand the child tax credit for millions and revive a trio of tax breaks for businesses.
Criticizing the policies included in the bipartisan border deal as “Republican light,” Democratic congressman Greg Casar lamented Joe Biden‘s recent statement indicating that he would move to “shut down the border” if the deal becomes law.“I’m a supporter of the president, but I think that he made a big mistake with that statement. The president’s statement reflects not just bad policy but bad politics,” Casar said.“‘Shutting down the border’ means that we’re further empowering cartels and criminal organizations to move people across the border. We need to be creating legal pathways for migration.”Republican lawmakers have demanded that Biden sign off on severe border measures in exchange for approving additional aid for Ukraine, and Casar advised the president against accepting those terms.“I do not think we should be playing into that kind of a hostage-taking situation. It’s bad policy,” Casar said. “And I don’t think that it will be good politics for the president either because these Republican policies are not going to create a more orderly situation at the border.”Conservative opposition to the border bill has received much of the attention. But progressives are also alarmed by the emerging proposal, as the Guardian’s Joan Greve reports.Congressman Greg Casar, a progressive Democrat of Texas, expressed grave concerns today about the border deal recently brokered by the Biden administration and a bipartisan group of senators.“It really worries me to hear these negotiations with the US Senate, where it feels that Republican, anti-immigrant policies could make their way into law even under a Democratic president,” Casar said on a press call.“I just don’t think that that is the way to go. We have to respond to this anti-immigrant propaganda with a proactive vision that recognizes that immigration is a good thing.”The Senate negotiators have not yet released bill text of the border deal, and it remains highly unclear whether the proposal can pass through Congress. Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has already attacked the proposal as insufficient and has indicated that the legislation would be “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber.The group of senators working on the border deal have defended it against what they claim are rumors and misinformation about the bill’s contents. Conservatives are under pressure from Donald Trump to reject the deal, despite arguing that border enforcement is their top priority.Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Independent of Arizona who has helped lead the talks, outlined some of the provisions for reporters on Capitol Hill yesterday.According to Axios, she said the plan would include strict new measures to tighten and speed up asylum claims as well as changes the way enforcement agents use detention, deportation and parole.Switching back for a moment to matters of domestic policy – albeit it an issue with major global implications for US immigration policy, aid to Ukraine and support for Israel and Taiwan: Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, just announced that the text of a long-awaited border security bill could be released as early as tomorrow (Friday), with a vote expected next week.For months, Senate negotiators have worked behind the scenes to broker a border deal that would unlock military aid to Ukraine and Israel. But it faces long odds in the Republican-controlled House, where the speaker, Mike Johnson, has already rejected the measure outright, despite not knowing what exactly is in the bill.My colleague Peter Beaumont notes in his full report on the sanctions that they follow a US visa ban for any Israeli settlers implicated in attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank announced last month.The new order will give the treasury department the authority to impose financial sanctions on settlers engaged in violence, but is not meant to target US citizens. A substantial number of the settlers in the West Bank hold US citizenship and they would be prohibited under US law from transacting with the sanctioned individuals.The Guardian’s Chris McGreal has a deeper dive into how American citizens have been leading the rise in settler-related violence in the West Bank, which you can read here:Biden has landed in the Detroit area, ahead of an event with auto workers. But expect senior administration officials to return to the state this month to meet with community leaders amid deep anger at the president’s handling of the war in Gaza, Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.Past outreach attempts by the administration have … not gone well. Participants have been open about their frustration with Biden and what they view as his failure to rein in Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza.Arab American voters are a relatively small but growing constituency that has historically favored Democrats. In battleground states such as Michigan and Georgia, home to large Arab and Muslim American communities, even the tiniest erosion of support could hurt Biden’s prospects for re-election. Representative Rashida Tlaib, the lone Palestinian American in Congress, who represents a Detroit-area district, has said so explicitly. In a video calling on the Biden administration to back a ceasefire, she appears before text that reads: “We will remember in 2024.”In a statement, the office of Benjamin Netanyahu said the vast majority of West Bank settlers as “law-abiding citizens” and described Biden’s executive order sanctioning settler extremists as “exceptional”.“Israel acts against all Israelis who break the law, everywhere; therefore, exceptional measures are unnecessary,” the statement continued.The US state department has released the names of four Israeli nationals subjected to sanctions under Biden’s new executive order.
David Chai Chasdai
Einan Tanjil
Shalom Zicherman
Yinon Levi
According to the state department, Chasdai “initiated and led a riot, which involved setting vehicles and buildings on fire, assaulting Palestinian civilians, and causing damage to property in Huwara, which resulted in the death of a Palestinian civilian”.It accuses Tanjil of involvement in the assault of “Palestinian farmers and Israeli activists by attacking them with stones and clubs, resulting in injuries that required medical treatment”.Zicherman was seen on video assaulting “Israeli activists and their vehicles in the West Bank, blocking them on the street, and attempted to break the windows of passing vehicles with activists inside,” it said. He “cornered at least two of the activists and injured both”.Levi “led a group of settlers who engaged in actions creating an atmosphere of fear in the West Bank. He regularly led groups of settlers from the Meitarim Farm outpost that assaulted Palestinian and Bedouin civilians, threatened them with additional violence if they did not leave their homes, burned their fields, and destroyed their property. Levi and other settlers at Meitarim Farm have repeatedly attacked multiple communities within the West Bank.”White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre just wrapped up the media briefing on Air Force One, as the flight was about to descend towards the Detroit area, where Joe Biden is heading to a campaign event to meet auto workers.Jean-Pierre was asked whether the executive order setting up sanctions against certain Israeli settlers in the West Bank was announced today to, essentially, appease Muslim Americans incensed by America’s tenacious support and funding for Israel even as its military decimates Gaza in response to the attack by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7.The Detroit area has a huge Arab American population and protests are expected during Biden’s visit today.Jean-Pierre denied that the timing was intentional, adding that “these types of sanctions take a long time” to plan and impose.The US government informed the Israeli government before it publicly announced earlier today that Joe Biden was issuing an executive order in relation to the occupied West Bank, the White House just confirmed.The US will place sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, with the US president citing “intolerable levels” of violence against Palestinians there.John Kirby, the national security spokesman, based in the White House, was asked in the press briefing now underway whether Biden had informed Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu before he issued the executive order.“We informed the Israeli government before it was announced,” Kirby said.Asked again if that communication had been at the level of president to prime minister, Kirby repeated his answer.The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, has called on the Biden administration to “immediately sanction” what Cair termed far-right Israeli officials who enable violence by illegal Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.Biden issued an executive order today imposing sanctions on Israeli settlers who have been attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
The Biden administration should use this executive order to immediately sanction Israeli government officials who are enabling settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Just as importantly, President Biden must end American support for the Israeli government’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza. It makes no sense for the Biden administration to oppose killing Palestinian civilians in the West Bank while enabling the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” Cair national deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said.
Hello, it’s been a lively few hours in Washington, on Capitol Hill and at the White House. We await a briefing from press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security spokesman John Kirby, so stand by for that. Looks like that will go ahead at 1.30pm ET as the two spox and reporters accompany Joe Biden to Michigan, aboard Air Force One.Here’s how the day is going:
Joe Biden announced that the US will place sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, via presidential executive order, citing “intolerable levels” of violence.
Americans’ views of the economy are improving, but their views of Biden are not. That’s according to a new AP-Norc poll that found a notable increase in the percentage of US adults who called the US economy “good”, but that’s not translating into support for the president.
Defense secretary Lloyd Austin, was contrite in a Pentagon press briefing this morning, his first since being rushed to the hospital with complications from prostate cancer surgery that he kept secret from the president and the public for several days. “I want to be crystal clear: we did not handle this right and I did not handle this right,” Austin told reporters.
Joe Biden praised the Ukrainians people’s “incredible resolve and resilience against Putin’s aggression” and demanded afresh of Congress: “We must continue to help them.” The White House’s request to send nearly $110bn in additional security assistance and aid to Ukraine is on hold on Capitol Hill amid House Republican resistance.
The US House of Representatives last night passed a nearly $79bn tax package that would expand the child tax credit for millions and revive a trio of tax breaks for businesses. Yes, that House – the Republican-controlled one that booted its Speaker and has repeatedly brought the US government to the brink of a shutdown!
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz suggested the move to sanction Israeli settlers was without precedent, calling it “arguably the most punitive measure ever taken from the US government against Israeli citizens”.Four Israelis are expected to be sanctioned under the new authority, according to several news reports, with more expected to be punished in the future. Doing so blocks these individuals from engaging with the American financial system and from accessing their assets and property in the US as well as bars them from traveling to the US.In a statement following the announcement of sanctions against Israeli settlers, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said the “record” spike in violence by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank “poses a grave threat to peace, security, and stability in the West Bank, Israel, and the Middle East region, and threatens the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States”.He said the executive order allows the US to impose financial sanctions against those it deems to have directed or particpated in acts of violence against civilians as well as those who have sought to displace them from their homes, destroyed property or engaged in “terrorist activity” in the West Bank.“Today’s actions seek to promote peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” Sullivan said.In December, the state department imposed a travel ban on some settlers.In an executive order released moments ago, Biden announced that the US will place sanctions on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, citing “intolerable levels” of violence.Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by security forces and settlers across the occupied West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the United Nations. The violence is separate from Israel’s military assault on Gaza, where the death toll is approaching 27,000 Palestinians.In the notice to Congress, Biden said actions by Israeli settler extremists “constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and declared a national emergency to address it.
I, Joseph R Biden Jr, President of the United States of America, find that the situation in the West Bank – in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction – has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region,” reads the order.
“These actions undermine the foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a two-state solution and ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal measures of security, prosperity, and freedom. They also undermine the security of Israel and have the potential to lead to broader regional destabilization across the Middle East, threatening United States personnel and interests.”
Americans’ views of the economy are improving, but their views of Biden are not. That’s according to a new AP-Norc poll that found a notable increase in the percentage of US adults who called the US economy “good”.Last year, just 24% of Americans rated the national economy as good, compared with 35% who do so now. It’s also an improvement from late last year when just 30% said so. The rosier outlook tracks with positive economic indicators: inflation has begun to recede and growth is strong.While nearly two-thirds of Americans still call the economy poor, it’s an improvement from a year ago, when 76% described it that way, the survey found.Still, that is not translating into support for the president, whose approval ratings are languishing at 38%, where it has stood mostly unchanged for the past two years. Just 35% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy. The evidence of a stronger economy has yet to spill over into greater support for Biden: the new poll puts his approval rating at 38%, which is roughly where that number has stood for most of the past two years. Biden’s approval rating on handling the economy is similar, at 35%.Voters’ perceptions of the economy often shape elections, which is why Biden and his team are working to emphasize any sign of economic strength. But if Americans aren’t feeling it personally, the message is unlikely to resonant.New reporting from the Associated Press reveals that Biden is expected to issue an executive order targeting Israeli settlers in the West Bank, where violence against Palestinians has surged in the occupied territory.The report, based on four officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the White House was expected to announce the order later today. It comes as Biden departs for Michigan, a battleground state and home to a sizable Arab American population that is furious with the president over his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza.Biden has faced growing criticism from Democrats amid rising Palestinian death toll and the destruction in Gaza. The move reflects the administration’s growing frustration with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, as the US ramps up pressure on its ally to show more restraint in its military operations in Gaza.
The AP reports: Israel Defense Forces stepped up raids across the West Bank after the war began. Hamas militants are present in the West Bank, but largely operate underground because of Israel’s tight grip on the territory. Palestinians complain that the Israeli crackdown in the West Bank have further blurred the line between security forces and radical, violent settlers.
The executive order is expected to set the ground for imposing sanctions on individuals who have engaged in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met on Wednesday at the White House with Ron Dermer, the Israeli minister of strategic affair. It was not clear whether the executive order was discussed.
Read the full report here. More

The US Senate will vote next week on a bipartisan bill that would strengthen security at the US-Mexico border and also provide more aid to Ukraine and Israel, the chamber’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, said on Thursday.“We cannot simply shirk from our responsibilities just because the task is difficult,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, adding that the text of the package will be released by Sunday, with the initial vote taking place no later than Wednesday.Senate negotiators have been in talks over the package for months. Donald Trump, who is seeking re-election to the White House and is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, has urged lawmakers to reject the deal.The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, has also voiced skepticism about the talks, saying that if it emerged from the Senate the bipartisan legislation would be “dead on arrival” in the GOP-controlled House.A bipartisan group of senators have for weeks been looking for an agreement to implement stricter immigration policies and stop undocumented migrants at the southern border with Mexico. Numbers have fluctuated during Joe Biden’s presidency but are currently at record levels.Republicans have named passing the legislation as their price for approving aid to Ukraine, whose cause rightwing lawmakers have soured on as the war has dragged on and as Donald Trump, who has been ambivalent about sending arms to Kyiv, draws closer to winning the Republican presidential nomination.Congresses and presidents since the days of George W Bush have tried and failed to reform the US’s system for admitting workers and immigrants, including screening undocumented migrants and asylum seekers.The long odds of the latest negotiations succeeding were underscored last week when the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, told his lawmakers that because Trump wanted to campaign on immigration reform, he doubted that the party would support any agreement that emerges from the talks. Biden is suffering at the polls on economic factors but also on conservative voters calling for greater security at the border.Senators from both parties expressed outrage over Trump’s apparent and sudden influence after almost daily talks. Chris Murphy, the main Democratic negotiator in the talks, said: “I hope we don’t live in a world today in which one person inside the Republican party holds so much power that they could stop a bipartisan bill to try to give the president additional power at the border to make more sense of our immigration policy.”The following day, Politico reported that McConnell had changed his tone, telling Republicans in a meeting that he still supported the talks.Now Schumer has signaled that the bill may be ready in the Senate. Details of what is in the legislation have not been disclosed.Meanwhile, the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, who has been involved in the talks, is facing a rare impeachment of a cabinet member by the House, over his handling of the southern border.Reuters contributed reporting More

Time after time, with predictable regularity, never missing a beat, Donald Trump proclaims his innocence. He always denies that he has done anything wrong. The charge does not matter. He is blameless. But this is only the beginning of the pattern. Then, he attacks his accusers, or anyone involved in bringing him to account, usually of committing the identical offense of which he stands accused.But it is not enough for him to lash out. Then, he declares himself to be the victim. Whatever it is, he is falsely accused. But his self-dramatization as the wounded sufferer is only half his story: he insists that whoever has accused him is in fact the offender. He emerges triumphant, the martyr, the truth-teller, courageously unmasking the real villain. J’accuse!Trump’s pattern is textbook manipulation – literally. It has a precise name given to it after decades of academic research. Jennifer Freyd, now professor emerita of psychology at the University of Oregon, developed the theory over her career studying sexual assault, trauma and institutional betrayal. She named the process by which the perpetrator seeks to avoid accountability Darvo – a strategy with the elements of denial, attack, and reversal of victim and offender.“I named the idea in the 1990s,” Freyd told me. “People can deny an accusation without resorting to Darvo. Why not just say, ‘I’m disturbed by what you’re saying, it doesn’t comport with what I remember, these are important issues, I want to understand.’ You can stick to a firm denial without being a victim. But the viciousness of the attack is intended to be silencing.”Freyd observes: “The people who use Darvo are different from the people who don’t … It’s a red flag.”Trump’s behavior in the E Jean Carroll case has been a classic exhibit. The defamation case was brought after Trump said she was “totally lying”, explaining that “she’s not my type”, about her description of his sexual assault of her in a book and a New York magazine article. He issued a formal statement from the White House on 19 July 2019: “If anyone has information that the Democratic Party is working with Ms Carroll or New York magazine, please notify us as soon as possible. The world should know what’s really going on. It is a disgrace, and people should pay dearly for such false accusations.”All the elements of Darvo, his familiar pattern, were present in his deflection. He denied the incident occurred: “I’ve never met this person in my life.” He attacked her: “Shame on those who make up false stories of assault to try to get publicity for themselves or sell a book or carry out a political agenda.” And he turned the tables to make himself the victim and her the aggressor deserving of punishment: “People should pay dearly for such false accusations.”In the first defamation trial in 2023, Judge Lewis Kaplan declared that based on the jury’s deliberations Trump had defamed her and committed rape. “… Mr Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’,” he stated. “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr Trump in fact did exactly that.”The jury awarded Carroll $5m. Trump appeared on CNN the day after the judgment to call the decision “fake news” and her a “whack job”. She amended her defamation lawsuit.During the second trial, Trump inevitably repeated this pattern. First, he denied the accusation. “She said that I did something to her that never took place,” he testified in a deposition. “There was no anything.” Then, he attacked her: “I know nothing about this nutjob.” Then, he made himself her victim: “She’s accusing me of rape, a woman that I have no idea who she is.” Then, he called her “sick, mentally sick” and labeled her attorney Roberta Kaplan “a political operative”. They had connived for ulterior motives to hurt him.Then, he lied about an interview she had given, to claim that – even if he never knew her and the event never took place – she said she enjoyed being sexually assaulted by him. “She actually indicated that she loved it. Okay? She loved it until commercial break,” Trump said. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say that?”In the second defamation trial, the jury delivered a judgment of $83.3m in damages against Trump.There’s a method to Trump’s madness. The madness is the method – and the method is the madness. It’s more than his malignant narcissism. It’s more than his relentless lying. Conscious or unconscious, it is his invariable reflexive response to the danger of being held responsible for his misdeeds and crimes. Its roots lie in the model of his brutish father. Upon that foundation he added the vicious counsel of Roy Cohn to attack anyone suing him in order to raise the personal cost for his victims, drain them of resources and delay the courts.But Trump’s instinctive reliance on Darvo goes beyond the mean-spirited tactics he learned from Cohn. Those lessons settled long ago into his pathology, becoming something more pervasive, systematic and fundamental, defining Trump’s behavior in every area of his life. The pattern is written all over Trump’s rap sheet of adjudicated and alleged sexual violence. Dozens of women have come forward by name to accuse him of assault and rape. His malicious insults of women are legion.He responds to all of his accusers using the Darvo playbook. “Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign,” he said in 2016. “Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.” Again, he was the victim, they were the aggressors. He threatened them in order to silence them.Though Trump ranks among the greatest living specimens of misogyny, his Darvo blame-casting extends to foes of any gender in every one of his conflicts. Trump’s syndrome has become the core of his politics. Just as he is the Maga icon, even exalted as a god, his derangement is the golden calf for his followers. They worship by imitation. His gaslighting about his sexual violence has morphed into the essence of his pseudo-ideology of a debauched party.The Trump Republicans, apologizing for him, twist their arguments into the Darvo template. In the Republican-dominated House of Representatives, the weaponization committee has institutionalized a warped Darvo construct in its projections on the cave wall of conspiracies and enemies. One day, the FBI is the culprit victimizing Trump; the next, Taylor Swift.In case after case, Trump applies the blueprint. His closing statement at his New York fraud trial on 12 January was definitive in his application of the complete features of Darvo. He raced back and forth from denial, to attack, to reversal of victim and offender. “This is a political witch-hunt that was set aside by – should be set aside. We should receive damages for what we’ve gone through, for what they’ve taken this company through.” He was the victim.The one bringing the case, Letitia James, the New York attorney general, was the assailant. “We have a situation where I’m an innocent man,” Trump said. “I’ve been persecuted by somebody running for office … they want to make sure that I don’t win again, that this is partially election interference. But, in particular, the person in the room right now hates Trump and uses Trump to get elected.”Trump, on trial for financial fraud, flipped the narrative. “This is no fraud. This is a fraud on me.” Then, he baited Judge Arthur Engoron. “I know this is boring you.”“One minute, Mr Trump,” said the judge.“You can’t listen for more than one minute,” Trump shot back. “This has been a persecution of somebody that’s done a good job in New York.”“Please control your client,” the judge told Trump’s lawyer.“Your Honor, look, I did nothing wrong,” said Trump. “They should pay me for what we had to go through.”Trump’s harangue in the Manhattan courtroom was just the latest variation on his themes. After the FBI seized boxes of classified documents, including national security secrets, that Trump took to Mar-a-Lago, for which he has been charged with 41 felonies, Trump let loose on 8 August 2022 with a vehement Darvo defense. His “beautiful home” was “under siege” from “FBI agents”, in “an attack from Radical Left Democrats”.Never describing the reason for the seizure of documents, he literally spelled out his technique of sleight-of-hand reversal. “What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.”This outrage, according to Trump, was the culmination of his mistreatment – at least until the next one. “The political persecution of President Donald J Trump has been going on for years,” he said, speaking of himself in the third person, “with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax No 1, Impeachment Hoax No 2, and so much more, it just never ends. It is political targeting at the highest level!” Then, he attacked Hillary Clinton. “Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable.”Trump’s language in his Darvo screed about the documents he had secreted at Mar-a-Lago was a replica of his most historic speech. In his rant on 6 January 2021 to the assembled mob ready to march on the Capitol, he presented himself as the victim in almost exactly the same words.“All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media … You don’t concede when there’s theft involved … We will stop the steal.”He turned Mike Pence, his vice-president, into an enemy, mentioning his name seven times. The gallows were already being constructed in front of the Capitol, yet Trump and his mob were the ones being intimidated and silenced. “We will not let them silence your voices.” The media was “the enemy of the people”.In the midst of his recital of the “pure theft” of the election, he managed to find a way to insert a graceless note of misogyny, exactly as he would after the Mar-a-Lago seizure, a non sequitur explicable by the perverse logic of Darvo. “And the only unhappy person in the United States, single most unhappy, is Hillary Clinton.” Then, he told the mob to go “fight” at the Capitol.“Darvo works,” Freyd told me. “There are two ways it works. One is on the victim, who is attacked. Darvo leads to self-blame, which leads to self-silencing. It’s effective in that it increases power over the victim. The other way is that it damages the credibility of the victim. When we introduce Darvo into the experiment, for the participant who doesn’t know about it, blame is reduced on the perpetrator. Darvo hurts the victim more. It tarnishes more the person who is the target of Darvo.”But Freyd also says that her research shows that when people are made aware of the nature of Darvo beforehand, it has a diminished effect. “The one hope is that when they know about it, they are less susceptible to it as a defense.” She concludes: “It would make a difference to identify the strategy and call it out. Normalizing Darvo is colluding and harmful.”Trump’s campaign themes largely consist of his defenses, which are adaptations of Darvo. He denies all the accusations. A majority of Republicans believe he is falsely charged. He attacks a host of enemies from E Jean Carroll to Jack Smith, from the judges to their clerks. He is the victim. They are the offenders. Darvo is his shield of innocence.“Are you thinking of trying to use campaign funds to pay some of the penalties?” a reporter asked Trump after it was disclosed that he had spent $50m in donor money on lawyers’ fees in 2023.“What penalties?” Trump answered.“In the New York fraud case and the defamation case.”“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump said. “I mean, that’s been proven as far as I’m concerned.”
Sidney Blumenthal is a Guardian US columnist. He is a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More