US Politics

We’re closing the US politics blog now, thanks for joining us today. Here’s what we covered:
The Wisconsin supreme court appeared poised to strike down gerrymandered Republican-drawn state legislative maps that have maintained the party’s domination for decades. In a hearing Tuesday, the panel’s new liberal majority appeared sympathetic to arguments from lawyers for Democratic governor Tony Evers and others that the majority of districts breached strict rules.
Two senior aides to Ron DeSantis’s cratering campaign for the Republican presidential nomination almost got into a fist fight during a heated argument, it was reported. The altercation came last week as the Florida governor’s Never Back Down political action committee discussed how to counter a rise in popularity of rival Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor.
Donald Trump appealed a ruling in which a Colorado judge said he could not be disqualified from the presidential ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, even though he engaged in insurrection by inciting the deadly January 6 attack.
Joe Biden called on Congress to pass his $106bn supplementary budget request that he said includes funding to “step up” the fight against a flow of deadly fentanyl entering the US. The president, speaking at the White House before leaving for a Thanksgiving break in Massachusetts, said the fentanyl crisis was hurting families in every state and curbing it was “something every American needs to get behind”.
A trio of prominent conservative lawyers said in a scathing New York Times oped that a second term in office for former president Donald Trump would imperil democracy. George Conway, J Michael Luttig and Barbara Comstock, who have formed a new group to “speak out against Trump’s falsehoods”, say Trump has surrounded himself with “grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution” and that “our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis”.
A reminder that you can follow the latest developments in the Israel-Hamas war, including the reported imminent deal for the release of some of the hostages held in Gaza, in the Guardian’s liveblog here.Two senior team members of Ron DeSantis’s flailing presidential campaign almost came to blows during a meeting last week to discuss how to counter Nikki Haley’s rise in the polls, NBC News is reporting.According to the network, Jeff Roe, chief consultant for DeSantis’s Never Back Down political action committee, got into “a heated argument” with longtime DeSantis associate and PAC board member Scott Wagner, the two being stopped just short of a physical altercation.“You have a stick up your ass, Scott,” Roe allegedly fumed at Wagner during the meeting in Tallahassee last Tuesday.“Why don’t you come over here and get it?” Wagner responded, rising from his chair, according to NBC. Wagner was “quickly restrained by two fellow board members”, the network’s report said, adding its information came from sources in the room.Florida governor DeSantis, once seen as a viable rival to runaway leader Donald Trump in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has been tanking in numerous opinion polls, even in his own state.He appears to be an an opposite trajectory to former South Carolina governor Haley, whose “surging poll numbers and newfound affection from megadonors pose an existential threat to the Florida governor’s campaign,” NBC said.DeSantis campaign insiders have indicated that the candidate and his wife Casey DeSantis, a former television news presenter who has assumed an increasingly prominent role in his political career, are growing unhappy at the performance of the Never Back Down PAC leadership.Both DeSantis and Haley, however, still trail Trump by a substantial margin.The unseemly scenes in DeSantis’s campaign meeting mirror those of last week’s Senate labor committee meeting when Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin rose from his seat and challenged a Teamsters union official to a fight.We’ve been bringing you updates for much of the day from Wisconsin’s supreme court, where arguments have tilted back and forth over the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps.According to the Guardian’s Sam Levine, and Alice Herman in the courtroom in Madison, the panel’s liberal majority appears poised to strike down the existing Republican-drawn maps and end the party’s stranglehold on both legislative chambers of government.But it’s unclear what that would mean for a redraw of the maps, or if special elections would be needed to fill legislative seats next year.Here’s our latest report on today’s developments, and a look at what might come next:A newly-elected Florida Republican state congressman has filed legislation that would effectively ban any LGBTQ group in the state from receiving taxpayer funding.A House bill by Ryan Chamberlin would bar any non-profit from using “sexual orientation or gender identity” as a factor in any application for state contracts or grants, Florida Politics reports.The proposal was immediately criticized by Democrats, who see the bill as an extension of the Republican-dominated legislature’s well-documented assault on LGBTQ+ rights, including the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill and other restrictions championed by hard right governor Ron DeSantis.The bill is “bigoted, unnecessary and highly unconstitutional”, Democratic state representative Anna Eskamani said on X, adding that groups such as Equality Florida would essentially be banned from existing.Chamberlin captured his central Florida seat in May with 79% of a special election vote, promising at the time: “There’s work to be done. I’m excited to help with that.”Missouri’s supreme court won’t hear an appeal by Republican secretary of state Jay Ashcroft over the wording of ballot question on access to abortion, a win for advocates attempting to enshrine protections for the procedure.A state appeals court ruled last month that wording asking voters if they were in favor of “dangerous and unregulated abortions until live birth” was politically partisan.On Tuesday, the state supreme court declined to hear Ashcroft’s appeal of that ruling. Missouri’s Republican controlled legislature banned abortion except in cases of medical emergency after the US supreme court last year overturned the Roe v Wade ruling and ended 50 years of federal protections.In all seven states where abortion has been on the ballot since, voters have either supported protecting abortion rights or rejected attempts to erode them.Here’s our state-by-state guide to where abortion laws stand:A judge in Atlanta is hearing arguments on a request to revoke the bond of Harrison Floyd, one of former president Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia case related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis filed a motion last week telling superior court judge Scott McAfee that Floyd attempted to intimidate and contact likely witnesses and his co-defendants in violation of the terms of his release, the Associated Press reports.Floyd’s attorneys wrote in a court filing that Willis’ allegations are without merit and that the motion is a “retaliatory measure” against their client. Floyd “neither threatened or intimidated anyone and certainly did not communicate with a witness or co-defendant directly or indirectly,” they wrote.Willis was in court Tuesday to present the prosecution’s case. She planned to call three witnesses, including Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia who strenuously defended the legitimacy of the state’s 2020 vote count against Trump’s false claims that the election was fraudulent.The charges against Floyd relate to allegations of harassment toward Ruby Freeman, a Fulton county election worker who had been falsely accused of election fraud by Trump and his supporters. Floyd took part in a 4 January 2021 conversation in which Freeman was told she “needed protection” and was pressured to lie and say she had participated in election fraud, the indictment says.Four of the original 19 defendants agreed plea deals that include a promise to testify in any trials in the case. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.No trial date has been set, but Willis last week asked McAfee to set it for August next year, and warned the case could stretch into 2025.Donald Trump appealed a ruling in which a Colorado judge said he could not be disqualified from the presidential ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, even though he engaged in insurrection by inciting the deadly January 6 attack.The former president took issue with the finding that he participated in insurrection in connection with the attack on the Capitol staged by his supporters.“The district court ruled that section three [of the 14th amendment] did not apply to the presidency, because that position is not an ‘officer of the United States’,” lawyers for Trump said in a court filing, responding to the ruling last week.“The district court nonetheless applied section three to President Trump, finding that he ‘engaged’ in an ‘insurrection’. Should these findings be vacated because the district court self-admittedly lacked jurisdiction to apply section three to President Trump?”The group that filed the suit on behalf of six state petitioners, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), also lodged an appeal.It argued: “Section three of the 14th amendment, passed after the civil war, excludes from federal or state office those who engaged in insurrection against the constitution after previously taking an oath to support it.“Because the district court found that Trump engaged in insurrection after taking the presidential oath of office, it should have concluded that he is disqualified from office and ordered the secretary of state to exclude him from the Colorado presidential primary ballot.”Read Martin Pengelly’s full story here:John Dean, former White House counsel to Richard Nixon, is scathing about Donald Trump’s efforts to persuade an appeals court that he should not have a gag order in his federal election interference case because he is running for president.Dean has weighed in on what appears to be a court leaning towards, narrowing the gag order that bans Trump from making inflammatory statements and social media posts attacking prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff.Dean posted on X/Twitter, saying: “Donald Trump has turned the rule of law in the United States upside down, and it is stunning that federal circuit court judges are buying into his remarkable con!” He said the hearing yesterday in Washington, DC, “bordered on pure farce.”Dean, who ultimately helped bring down Nixon despite being involved in the-then president’s cover-up of corrupt and illegal presidential conduct known as Watergate, must be experiencing deja vu right now. He told the Guardian’s David Smith in June 2022, of now-GOP frontrunner Trump: “I was never worried about the country and the government during Watergate but from the day Trump was nominated, I had a knot in my stomach…he just discovered late in his presidency the enormous powers he does have as president…he knows he can hurt his enemies and help his friends.”On X last night his new post on Trump concluded: “For heaven sakes, hold this man responsible for his aberrant and bullying behavior before he further destroys our country. Enough is enough is enough!”Joe Biden says negotiators are “very close” to securing the release of potentially dozens of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.The US president was speaking at the White House and said: “We’re now very close, very close – we can bring some of these hostages home very soon, but don’t want to get into the details of things.”He added: “Nothing is done until it’s done and when we have more to say we will, but things are looking good at the moment.”We are closely covering all the news in the Israel-Gaza crisis via our global live blog and you can find the details here.It’s lunchtime on a quiet day so far in US politics, and time for a recap of what we’ve looked at so far:
Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass his $106bn supplementary budget request that he said includes funding to “step up” the fight against a flow of deadly fentanyl entering the US. The president, speaking at the White House before leaving for a Thanksgiving break in Massachusetts, said the fentanyl crisis was hurting families in every state and curbing it was “something every American needs to get behind”.
Wisconsin’s supreme court justices have been grilling attorneys for both the respondents and plaintiffs in a much-watched gerrymandering case that could end in a complete redraw of the state’s legislative districts. Lawyers for Democratic governor Tony Evers say the current maps favoring Republicans breach a law that says they must be “contiguous”; a conservative justice says the plaintiffs want to upend 50 years of precedent.
A trio of prominent conservative lawyers said in a scathing New York Times oped that a second term in office for former president Donald Trump would imperil democracy. George Conway, J Michael Luttig and Barbara Comstock say Trump has surrounded himself with “grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution” and that “our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis”.
Back in Wisconsin’s supreme court, lawyers for Republicans defending gerrymandered state legislative maps are getting a grilling from the judges, as the Guardian’s Alice Herman reports from the courtroom:An attorney representing the Republican-controlled state legislature, the respondent in the redistricting case, argued that petitioners asking for legislative districts to be redrawn before the 2024 elections have not allotted sufficient time to redraw the maps, and disputed their definition of “contiguous districts”.Taylor Meehan argued that the existence of districts with literal water-bound islands invalidate the plaintiffs’ argument that the legislative maps should avoid non-contiguous districts and said that the court should adopt a looser definition of “contiguous”.“You’re telling us to use one definition because it will help your argument and I’m pretty sure the rule is we’re supposed to look at the definition to figure out what the law is,” said justice Jill Karofsky, who, along with bench colleague Ann Bradley, repeatedly questioned Dallet’s definition of “contiguity.”Meehan questioned the right of plaintiffs in non-contiguous districts across the state to bring forward the case, comparing their complaint to an Illinois voter challenging Wisconsin maps.“I don’t see how a petitioner who lives in Beloit” can ask for a statewide redraw, Meehan said.Joe Biden has called on Congress to join him to “step up the fight” against the flow of fentanyl coming into the US.The president was speaking at the White House in his final official engagement before he and first lady Jill Biden head to Nantucket later for their Thanksgiving break.Before a cabinet meeting that’s now gone into private session, Biden said he was heartbroken for families who will have an empty seat at their Thanksgiving table because they had lost a loved one to the drug:
Fentanyl is likely the number one killer of Americans at this point. It’s an issue that’s hurting families in every state across the nation. Curbing this crisis is something that every American needs to get behind, Democrat and Republican.
How can we accelerate our efforts and make sure that we’re delivering real results? Congress also has to step up in this fight. It can start by passing my supplemental budget request for national security, including significant resources to help stop the flow of fentanyl in our country, as well as funds to strengthen and support services for people struggling with fentanyl impacts.
I also urge Congress to permanently make fentanyl and related substances Schedule One drugs. Too many people are dying.
Biden prefaced his remarks with an update on progress towards a deal to free hostages held in Gaza by Hamas since the 7 October attacks on Israel. He said an agreement was “very close”.You can follow that and other developments in the Israel-Hamas war in our dedicated blog here:Here’s more from Alice Herman covering the gerrymandering case in Wisconsin’s supreme court:Anthony Russomanno, an attorney representing Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers, argued that the state’s legislative maps, and the process for drawing them, violates the separation of powers – privileging the legislature, which is responsible for drafting the maps, over the executive branch.Tamara Packard, representing five Democratic lawmakers, also argued the mapmaking process violated the separation of powers.Conservative justices hammered Russomanno and Packard with questions of propriety regarding the timing of the litigation, and justice Rebecca Bradley accused attorneys of attempting to illegally overhaul the makeup of the state legislature.“You are ultimately asking that this court unseat every assemblyman that was elected last year,” said Bradley, comparing the plaintiffs’ request to implement a new map before the 2024 elections, and hold early special elections for representatives not up for election in 2024, to Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Packard said her clients, Democratic lawmakers who would face special elections if the court were to side with the plaintiffs, were “ready, willing, and able” to face re-election and that other legislators should be willing as wellA conservative judge on Wisconsin’s supreme court questioned the timing of a lawsuit challenging the state’s legislative districts as oral arguments got under way Tuesday in a much-watched case over gerrymandering.The Guardian’s Alice Herman, who is in the courtroom, reports that Mark Gaber, an attorney representing Campaign Legal Center, laid out one of the plaintiff’s central arguments: that non-contiguous districts in the state are unconstitutional.Almost immediately, conservative judge Rebecca Bradley interrupted Gaber to question the plaintiffs’ timing in bringing the case forward.“Where were your clients two years ago?” she asked, pointing to the fact that the ideological sway of the court flipped when Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal judge, was elected this year. “You’re seeking to overturn 50 years of precedent.”Gaber disputedthe case was brought in a partisan manner, arguing that the state constitution requires contiguous districts – a non-partisan requirement. The argument that 75 of the state’s 132 districts are non-contiguous is at the heart of the plaintiffs’ case against the gerrymandered maps.House speaker Mike Johnson took a trip to visit Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday night, CNN is reporting, a pilgrimage similar to the one that exposed predecessor Kevin McCarthy to criticism.“Maga Mike”, as some have branded the Louisiana Republican for his unswerving loyalty to the former president, has endorsed Trump’s campaign for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, so a “kiss the ring” visit to Mar-a-Lago was not entirely unexpected.It is not known what the pair discussed, CNN says. But the trip has echoes of former speaker and then minority leader McCarthy’s “groveling” visit to see Trump in January 2021, days after condemning him for sparking the deadly 6 January Capitol riot.With his endorsement of Trump, Johnson, who voted against certifying the 2020 election results, has gone even further than McCarthy did in backing the twice-impeached ex-president, who is currently facing dozens of charges in multiple cases against him around the country.“I’m all in for President Trump,” Johnson told CNBC, adding he was “one of the closest allies that President Trump had in Congress”.The Guardian’s Sam Levine and Alice Herman are following oral arguments this morning at the Wisconsin supreme court, where the seven justices will adjudicate one of the most closely-watched gerrymandering cases this year.The case is a challenge to the maps for Wisconsin’s state legislature, which are so heavily distorted in favor of Republicans that it is all but impossible for Democrats to win a majority.Republicans took over the legislature in 2010, and drew maps that have cemented their majority ever since. Democrats won statewide elections in the state in 2018, 2020, and 2022, but Republicans have never had fewer than 60 seats in the state assembly. State senate districts must be comprised of three assembly districts in Wisconsin, so any gerrymandering in the assembly carries over to the senate.The challengers want the court to strike down the maps and order new elections in all 132 of the state’s legislative districts in 2024.They note that 75 of Wisconsin’s 132 legislative districts are non-contiguous, a clear violation of a state constitutional requirement that says all districts need to be contiguous. The districts, Republicans argue, are contiguous because even with “islands” they still keep municipalities whole.The challengers also argue that the process by which the supreme court picked the current maps violated the separation of powers because the panel chose one the Democratic governor had vetoed.Oral arguments have just begun. We’ll bring you updates as we get them.Read more here:“Grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency.”That’s how a group of prominent conservative lawyers sees the legal team Donald Trump has surrounded himself with as the former president plots a return to the White House next year.Warning of an unprecedented threat to democracy from a Trump second term, and the worsening of a “legal emergency” set in motion by his unprecedented efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, they have founded a group called the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, which they say is needed “to bring sanity back to conservative lawyering and jurisprudence”.A trio of lawyers form the new group’s board. They are George Conway, ex-husband to Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway; J Michael Luttig, formerly a US appeals court judge; and Republican former Virginia congresswoman Barbara Comstock.They set out their case Tuesday in a hard-hitting editorial in the New York Times:
American democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law are the righteous causes of our times, and the nation’s legal profession is obligated to support them. But with the acquiescence of the larger conservative legal movement, these pillars of our system of governance are increasingly in peril. The dangers will only grow should Donald Trump be returned to the White House next November.
Recent reporting about plans for a second Trump presidency are frightening. He would stock his administration with partisan loyalists committed to fast-tracking his agenda and sidestepping – if not circumventing altogether – existing laws and long-established legal norms.
They cite Trump’s already publicized plans to appoint public officials investigate and exact retribution against his political opponents; remove federal public servants at will; and invoke special powers to seize control of First Amendment-protected activities, criminal justice, elections, immigration and more.The “guest essay” continues with praise for the few lawyers in the first Trump administration who stood up to his excesses, and a warning that legal checks and balances would be largely absent from his second:
Alarming is the growing crowd of grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency.
The actions of these conservative Republican lawyers are increasingly becoming the new normal. Any legal movement that could foment such a constitutional abdication and attract a sufficient number of lawyers willing to advocate its unlawful causes is ripe for a major reckoning.
Our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis.
Good morning US politics blog readers! A group of prominent conservative lawyers is warning that democracy would be placed in unprecedented peril if Donald Trump returns to the White House next year, and that legal checks and balances on his conduct would be largely absent if he wins a second term.The dire predictions come in a hard-hitting opinion piece Tuesday in the New York Times.Trump, the former president and runaway leader for the Republican 2024 nomination, has surrounded himself with “growing crowd of grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency,” they say, creating an unprecedented “legal emergency” worsened by their support of his unsuccessful efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.The authors, who include George Conway, ex-husband to Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, have formed an attorneys’ group called the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, which they say is needed “to bring sanity back to conservative lawyering and jurisprudence”.We’ll have a closer look at that coming up.Here’s what else we’re watching today on a quiet pre-Thanksgiving Tuesday in Washington DC:
Joe Biden will host a White House meeting over efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl into the US this morning, before he and first lady Jill Biden head for their Thanksgiving break in Nantucket.
There’s no action in Congress, but an election in Utah’s 2nd congressional district Tuesday will restore the House to its full complement of 435 members since Democrat David Cicilline of Rhode Island resigned in May. Republican Celeste Maloy is expected to handily beat Democratic state senator Kathleen Riebe.
Wisconsin’s supreme court will hear oral argument in a high-stakes lawsuit seeking to strike down the maps for the state’s legislature. The result could bring an end to what may be the most gerrymandered districts in the US. Read more about that here. More

A former president of Univision condemned the Spanish-language US television network’s recent interview with Donald Trump as “propaganda” and an “insult to the Hispanic community”.“To call the Trump [interview] an interview is mistaken,” Joaquin Blaya told MSNBC. “It was not an interview as we understand [it] in the United States. It was basically a one-hour propaganda open space for former president Trump to say whatever he wanted to say.”The friendly interview was filmed at the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago home. Lingering controversy ensued, including a call from John Leguizamo, the actor and sometime Daily Show host, for a Univision boycott.Amid revelations that Univision canceled both ads bought by President Joe Biden (after announcing a surprise policy change) as well as an interview in which a White House official was scheduled to respond, a top network anchor resigned.Speaking to the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Monday, Blaya lamented “a drastic change for what have been the standards of Univision”.“When I created the Univision network news [in the 1980s], [it was] built on the principles of American broadcasting journalism, the ABC, CBS, NBC … we were trying to basically create a Spanish but American network,” Blaya said.“And I say that because there’s a big difference from our association in those days with the news that we’re seeing coming from Mexico.”Univision recently came under the control of Grupo Televisa, a Mexican company. In his interview, Trump, who famously clashed with the Univision anchor Jorge Ramos during the 2016 election, said of the new owners: “They like me.”Last week, Blaya told the Washington Post that the Univision interview failed to preserve a standard “separation of business and news”.“What I saw there was batting practice, someone dropping balls for him to hit out of the park,” Blaya said. “I think it was an embarrassment.”Trump faces 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats but dominates Republican primary polling, amid mounting warnings of the fascistic tone of his rhetoric.Speaking to MSNBC, Blaya said favourable Univision coverage of Trump’s anti-immigration views was “a real insult to the Hispanic community of this country”.He added: “And for those who understand the business, there is no doubt that in doing what they did, [it] had to be a corporate decision. That is not a decision that the local news director or the local general manager would have taken on [their] own.”According to the Post, the interview was “arranged with the help of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner”, who was also a senior White House adviser for the ex-president.The Post said the interview was also “attended by a trio of senior executives at Univision’s parent company”.Latino voters have long leaned Democratic. This week, however, the polling firm Morning Consult noted that “Trump is gaining ground among key voter segments including Black, Hispanic and young Americans.” More

The newly confirmed Federal Aviation Administration administrator, Mike Whitaker, has asked the US public to be on its best behavior ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday travel rush on Wednesday, when planning and execution are likely to be frustrated by bad weather.“If you’re flying, please be nice to your flight crew,” Whitaker said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “They are there for your safety. The FAA has zero tolerance for unruly behavior.”Whitaker – who was confirmed to his post by the Senate on 24 October – also said he anticipates that US skies will be “extremely busy” over the Thanksgiving period, “eclipsing last year”.“We are expecting 49,600 flights on Wednesday,” he added in a separate post. “The FAA will be working around the clock to make sure passengers get to their destinations safely.”Separately, the Transportation Security Administration anticipates that a record-breaking 30 million airline passengers will be screened from 17 through 28 November, with 2.6 million on Tuesday and 2.7 million on Wednesday. Sunday is expected to be the peak, with 2.9 million passengers squeezing through TSA checkpoints.The National Weather Service forecasts that two storm systems will affect the nation with rain, thunderstorms and other winter weather. About 1,784 flights within, into and out of the US had been delayed as of 1pm EST on Tuesday, as 2.6 million passengers rushed to get out ahead of a weather system moving up from the Gulf of Mexico toward the east coast.Severe storms have battered the US plains and midwest already this week. The American Automobile Association (AAA) predicts weather could cause travel disruptions for more than 50 million Americans who plan to go at least 50 miles from their homes at some point between Wednesday and Sunday.Alongside Whitaker’s appeal for improved passenger behavior, the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, released a public service announcement reminding airline passengers of their rights.“[I]f your flight does get delayed or canceled, know that the department of transportation has your back,” Buttigieg said in the PSA video posted to X.“For example, we have secured enforceable commitments from the 10 largest airlines to cover expenses for things like rebooking, meals and more, when you face delays or cancellations that are the airline’s responsibility.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe transportation secretary also noted that passengers are “entitled to a full cash refund” if a flight is canceled for “any reason”.At a press conference on Monday, Buttigieg said hiring more air traffic controllers, opening new air routes along the east coast and providing grants to airports for snowplows would help ease disruptions. He warned holiday travelers to check road and flight conditions before setting off.“Mother Nature, of course, is the X factor in all of this,” he said. More

The Wisconsin supreme court appeared poised to strike down the current maps for the state legislature after three hours of oral argument on Tuesday, a decision that could end more than a decade of Republican dominance and eliminate some of the most gerrymandered districts in the United States.The four liberal justices on the court all seemed ready to embrace an argument from challengers in the case, Clarke v Wisconsin elections commission, that the maps violate the state constitution because they include more than 70 districts. It was unclear, however, how the justices would handle the redrawing of a map and whether it would immediately order elections for the entire legislature next year in new districts. Wisconsin voters elect 99 assembly members every two years, but only about half of the 33-member state senate would normally be up for election next year.Much of Tuesday’s oral argument focused on how to interpret the definition of contiguity in Wisconsin’s constitution. The document mandates that assembly districts “be bounded by county, precinct, town or ward lines, to consist of contiguous territory and be in as compact form as practicable” It says state senate districts shall be comprised of “convenient contiguous territory”. Despite that requirement, 75 of the state’s 132 legislative districts – 54 in the state assembly and 21 in the senate – contain at least one detached piece.Taylor Meehan, an attorney for legislative Republicans, argued that districts had long been considered to be contiguous as long as they kept towns, counties and wards whole. In Wisconsin, localities have annexed disconnected parts of land that have resulted in strange shapes. “You can define contiguity as strictly or as loosely as you want,” she said.“That’s the tail leading the dog. I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to look at the definition to determine what the law is,” said Jill Karofsky, a liberal elected in 2020, who asked some of the most pointed questions.Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, another liberal on the court, said history from the time Wisconsin’s constitution led her to believe that it was “unconvincing” that contiguous could “mean something other than physical contact”.Mark Gaber, a lawyer from the non-profit Campaign Legal Center who represented some of the challengers, also said that it was possible to draw physically contiguous districts that included the detached portions.“There’s not a single place in Wisconsin where it’s not possible to bound the districts with county, town and ward lines and to be 100% contiguous,” Gaber said.In 2011, Republicans drew districts for the state legislature that were so distorted in their favor that it made it impossible for them to lose their majorities. Last year, the state supreme court implemented new maps that made as little change as possible from the old ones when lawmakers and the state’s Democratic governor reached a redistricting impasse.The court’s liberal wing seemed unsettled on how they would proceed with a potential remedy to fixing the maps (state election officials have said they would need a new map in place no later than 15 March 2024 for use in next year’s elections). The justices asked all of the lawyers in the case on Tuesday to submit the names of non-partisan mapmakers who could serve as a special master to advise them in coming up with new maps. The request signaled the court was aware of the need to move quickly if they are going to strike down the map.Meehan, the attorney for legislative Republicans, and Richard Esenberg, an attorney with the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, both argued that any non-contiguous defects in the map could be addressed with tweaks to the defective areas and without redrawing the entire map. Redrawing the entire map, they suggested, would simply allow the challengers a back door to try to get districts that were more friendly to Democrats. Meehan said the arguments were a “wolf in sheep’s clothing designed to backdoor a political statewide remedy”.Karofsky seemed unpersuaded.“Over half of the assembly districts in this state have a constitutional violation,” she said. “Why don’t we start clean?”Sam Hirsch, a lawyer representing mathematicians and statisticians challenging the maps, urged the justices not to draw the map themselves, but instead give the legislature a chance to fix them. Getting involved in the actual districting, he said, was a “slippery slope that you don’t want to go down”.Brian Hagedorn, a conservative justice, pressed the challengers to explain how they should think about partisan fairness if the maps get redrawn. He suggested that there was no way for a court to determine whether there was an acceptable number of Republican or Democratic districts.Gaber responded with a much simpler principle that he said should guide decision.Many of the questions from the conservative justices sharply pressed the challengers in the case why they had not raised their claims two years ago, when the supreme court initially decided the redistricting case. Justice Rebecca Bradley, one of the three conservatives on the seven-member court, repeatedly noted that two years ago, no party had raised a contiguity challenge and had stipulated that all the districts complied with the court’s definition of contiguity.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe clear subtext was that the challengers were bringing the new claims now because liberals flipped control of the supreme court. The case was filed the day after Janet Protasiewicz formally took her seat on the supreme court in August, flipping control of the bench and giving liberals a 4-3 majority. Protasiewicz, who called the maps “rigged” during her campaign last year, a comment that has prompted Republicans in the legislature to threaten impeaching her.Bradley interrupted Mark Gaber, a lawyer for challengers, less than 10 seconds after he began his argument on Tuesday. “Where were your clients two years ago?” she asked. At one point Bradley bluntly said that the challengers were only bringing the case because the composition of the court had changed.The question set the tone for many of the questions from Bradley and the court’s conservative minority. They pressed Gaber and other attorneys seeking to get rid of the maps on why they did not raise their arguments two years ago when the court picked the current maps.“You are ultimately asking that this court unseat every assemblyman that was elected last year,” said Bradley, comparing the plaintiffs’ request to implement a new map before the 2024 elections – and additionally, to hold early special elections for representatives not up for election in 2024 – to Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. She later asked Esenberg, one of the attorneys defending the map, whether he really expected to get a fair hearing before the court.Other challengers warned that a court decision wading into redistricting would invite future challenges and would signal there was no finality to rulings in redistricting cases. “Is there any end to this litigation?,” Annette Ziegler, a court’s chief justice and a conservative, asked at one point.“It is remarkable to see a matter, a particular case or controversy, fully litigated before this court, and then an attempt made to effectively reopen this a year later, after a change in the composition of the court,” said Esenberg. He described a situation where the state repeatedly and rapidly adjusts its legislative maps, hindering representatives’ ability to serve their constituents in office.“The constitution takes a back seat to what you just described?” countered Justice Rebecca Dallet.Several of Bradley’s questions were pointed. At one point, she yelled at Karofsky, a liberal on the court, for cutting her off during a question and asked: “Are you arguing the case?”The map for Wisconsin’s state assembly may be the most gerrymandered body in the US. It packs Democrats into as few districts as possible while splitting their influence elsewhere. Even though Wisconsin is one of the US’s most politically competitive states, Republicans have never held fewer than 60 seats in the state assembly since 2012. The gerrymandering in the assembly carries over to the state senate, where Wisconsin law requires districts to be comprised of three assembly districts.The court’s liberal justices seemed less interested in a second part of the challenge to the map, an argument the way the maps came to be implemented ran afoul of the state constitution. In 2021, the state supreme court took over the redistricting process after the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, vetoed a GOP-drawn plan. The court, which then had a conservative majority, invited a range of submissions for a new map, but announced it would pick a proposal that made as little change as possible to the existing maps. It initially chose a plan drawn by Evers, but that map was rejected by the US supreme court. The state supreme court then chose a different plan submitted by legislative Republicans. It was the same map Evers had vetoed in 2021.That decision, the challengers argue, allowed the legislature to essentially override Evers’s veto, the challengers say, violating the separation of powers between governmental branches. The state supreme court also exercised a constitutionally permissible role in choosing a map, they say, because the governor and lawmakers had reached an impasse. More

Donald Trump appealed a ruling in which a Colorado judge said he could not be disqualified from the presidential ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, even though he engaged in insurrection by inciting the deadly January 6 attack.The former president took issue with the finding that he participated in insurrection in connection with the attack on the Capitol staged by his supporters.“The district court ruled that section three [of the 14th amendment] did not apply to the presidency, because that position is not an ‘officer of the United States’,” lawyers for Trump said in a court filing, responding to the ruling last week.“The district court nonetheless applied section three to President Trump, finding that he ‘engaged’ in an ‘insurrection’. Should these findings be vacated because the district court self-admittedly lacked jurisdiction to apply section three to President Trump?”The group that filed the suit on behalf of six state petitioners, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), also lodged an appeal.It argued: “Section three of the 14th amendment, passed after the civil war, excludes from federal or state office those who engaged in insurrection against the constitution after previously taking an oath to support it.“Because the district court found that Trump engaged in insurrection after taking the presidential oath of office, it should have concluded that he is disqualified from office and ordered the secretary of state to exclude him from the Colorado presidential primary ballot.”The 14th amendment is otherwise generally known for extending equal protection under the law to all people in the US.Trump faces 91 criminal charges – 17 arising from attempts to overturn the 2020 election – and civil threats including a defamation trial arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Nonetheless, he dominates polling regarding the Republican presidential nomination and challenges the Democratic incumbent, Joe Biden, in general election polling.The Colorado suit is one of a number seeking to use the 14th amendment to keep Trump off the ballot. Judges have also ruled against plaintiffs in Michigan and Minnesota. Experts are split over whether the amendment should prevent Trump from seeking office again.Speaking to the Guardian this month, Eric Foner, the pre-eminent historian of the post-civil war era, discussed “the most important amendment added to the constitution since the Bill of Rights in 1791”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe question of whether the president is “an officer of the United States”, key to the Colorado ruling, “hasn’t been decided”, Foner said.“It certainly seems the normal understanding of the term ‘officer’ is someone holding office,” he said. “The president certainly holds office. When the constitution was ratified, there was no president … so it’s unclear … But I don’t see how you can … exclude the president from this language.“If you take the whole of section three, I think it’s pretty clear that they are trying to keep out of office anybody who committed the acts that section three describes.”But though Foner said January 6, when Trump sent rioters to the Capitol to stop certification of his defeat to Biden in 2020, was “certainly [an attempt] to halt a constitutional procedure”, whether it was an act of insurrection or rebellion remained open to question.Most experts expect challenges to Trump under the 14th amendment to reach the US supreme court. As there is no case law on the question, Foner said, legal challenges to Trump will inevitably “take a long time”.“It would be weird if Trump is elected next fall,” he said, “then a year into his term of office he’s evicted because he doesn’t meet the qualifications. We saw how Trump reacted to actually losing an election. But now, if he won and then was kicked out of office, that would certainly be a red flag in front of a bull.” More

Three prominent US legal thinkers have announced a new organisation to champion conservative legal theory within the rule of law, to fight the threat of a second Donald Trump term.“Our country comes first,” the three wrote in the New York Times, “and our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis. We all must act accordingly, especially us lawyers.”The authors were George Conway, an attorney formerly married to Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s White House counselor; J Michael Luttig, a retired judge and adviser to Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, who became a prominent January 6 witness; and Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia.The authors also rebuked prominent rightwing groups including the Federalist Society for not resisting the former president and his authoritarian ambitions.Their new group, the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, would “work to inspire young legal talent … focus on building a large body of scholarship to counteract the new orthodoxy of anti-constitutional and anti-democratic law … [and] marshal principled voices to speak out against the endless stream of falsehoods and authoritarian legal theories … propagated almost daily,” they said.The Federalist Society and its chair, Leonard Leo, played a key role in Trump’s judicial appointments, installing three hardliners on the supreme court who helped hand down rightwing wins including removing abortion rights and loosening laws on gun control, affirmative action, voting rights and other progressive priorities.Conway, Luttig and Comstock emerged among prominent conservative opponents of Trump, warning of his authoritarian threat before and after January 6, when rioters attacked Congress in an attempt to block Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.Ninety-one criminal charges and assorted civil threats notwithstanding, Trump is now the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination while polling strongly against Biden in battleground states.“American democracy, the constitution and the rule of law are the righteous causes of our times, and the nation’s legal profession is obligated to support them,” Conway, Luttig and Comstock wrote.“But with the acquiescence of the larger conservative legal movement, these pillars of our system of governance are increasingly in peril. The dangers will only grow should Donald Trump be returned to the White House next November.”Trump, they said, would stock a second administration “with partisan loyalists committed to fast-tracking his agenda and sidestepping – if not circumventing altogether – existing laws and long-established legal norms.“This would include appointing … political appointees to rubber-stamp his plans to investigate and exact retribution against his political opponents; make federal public servants removable at will by the president himself; and invoke special powers to take unilateral action on first amendment-protected activities, criminal justice, elections, immigration and more.”Saying Trump tried such attacks when in power but was blocked by lawyers and judges, the authors said the former president would if re-elected “arrive with a coterie of lawyers and advisers who, like him, are determined not to be thwarted again”.Though they said the Federalist Society had long been “the standard-bearer for the conservative legal movement”, they said it had “failed to respond in this period of crisis.“That is why we need an organisation of conservative lawyers committed to the foundational constitutional principles we once all agreed upon: the primacy of American democracy, the sanctity of the constitution and the rule of law, the independence of the courts, the inviolability of elections and mutual support among those tasked with the solemn responsibility of enforcing the laws of the United States.“This new organisation must step up, speak out and defend these ideals.” More

Hillary Clinton famously did not win the 2016 election and become the first female U.S. president. Yet Clinton’s presidential campaign still resonated with many women who have said it made them more likely to get involved in politics.

When women run for office, it can inspire other women and girls to become more politically active. Clinton, Vice President Kamala Harris, presidential candidate Nikki Haley and other high-profile female politicians have motivated women to follow in their footsteps and consider running for office.

It turns out that same sort of inspiration can happen when a female politician is not actually real, but instead is a character on a fictional TV show.

I am a scholar of political communication and media psychology. My research shows that when women watch a female lead character on a fictional political TV show, it can increase their interest in participating in politics and their belief that they can make a difference in the electoral process and results.

American women’s political engagement

Women run for office in the U.S. and serve in political positions less often than men. Only 28% of Congress and 24% of state governors are women. The U.S. ranks 86th among 152 countries when it comes to the number of women who serve in political office – and how long they hold those positions, according to the World Economic Forum.

With the exception of voting, women are less likely than men to participate in political activities. Compared with men, women often have less confidence in their abilities to understand politics.

The role model effect documents that women and girls become more encouraged to participate in politics when they see other women run for political office.

And my research team found that this role model effect can translate into fictional TV content as well.

When women see strong female lead characters in political TV shows, it can inspire them to vote or find other ways to get involved in politics.
Scott Olson/Getty Images

Connecting with TV characters

The fictional characters Alicia Florrick, Olivia Pope and Elizabeth McCord are examples of women whose political power exists only on TV.

Alicia Florrick, played by Julianna Margulies, worked as a Chicago-based lawyer before she eventually ran for Illinois state attorney general in CBS’s drama “The Good Wife,” which aired from 2009 until 2016.

Olivia Pope, played by Kerry Washington, worked as a high-profile political fixer and consultant on ABC’s political thriller series “Scandal,” which started in 2012 and ended in 2018.

Elizabeth McCord, played by Téa Leoni, regularly overcame political obstacles as U.S. secretary of state – and later as the first female U.S. president – on the CBS drama “Madam Secretary,” which ran from 2014 to 2019.

Each of these shows includes a woman lead character in a nonstereotypical role – a leader successfully tackling political problems.

When people watch these TV shows, they can feel a strong bond with their characters, a connection researchers call parasocial relationships. Viewers even use their attachments to TV characters to satisfy their need to feel connected with other people.

Sometimes, connecting with fictional characters – and seeing strong, female characters – can even spark viewers to become more involved in politics.

Inspiring political engagement

Two studies that I co-authored show how viewers’ connections with TV show characters influence their political engagement.

Political engagement can mean a range of things, including how closely someone follows news about the government and elections. Political engagement can also be someone feeling that they can make a difference in an election and that they have a say in what the government does. Political engagement can also include circulating a petition, attending a political rally or speech and, of course, voting.

We found that viewers formed strong bonds with these fictional women, and these connections persisted even after the credits rolled at the end of each episode.

In our first study on this topic in 2019, we surveyed people who watched one or more of three shows: “Madam Secretary,” “The Good Wife” and “Scandal.” When compared with individuals who watched less often, viewers who regularly watched one of these shows, who were mostly women, had particularly strong connections with that show’s lead female character. These bonds with the fictional character translated into viewers saying they had a growing interest in politics, feelings of making a difference in the election process and greater intentions to participate in politics.

In our second study from 2020, we collected data from people who were much less familiar with these shows. Participants in an experiment viewed a leading female character in “Madam Secretary,” or a leading male character in another show, with either a political- or family-focused plotline.

When compared with the other experimental conditions, participants who self-identified as more feminine, primarily women, experienced greater connections with the female lead character when she was shown in a plotline that addressed a political problem. That then increased their interest in politics, feelings of political self-efficacy and plans for political participation.

Importantly, our study concluded that merely seeing women as lead characters on TV is not enough to prompt women and girls to become more involved in politics. Instead, these women characters must be shown as a political leader.

A woman walks past a billboard promoting CBS’s ‘The Good Wife’ in 2009, shortly after the show’s release.
George Rose/Getty Images

More than just entertainment

Fictional television can influence viewers’ political attitudes and policy preferences. Political TV shows, in particular, can be both fun and thought-provoking for viewers.

Given the limited amount of nonstereotypical TV content featuring women, political TV shows with female lead characters may be particularly influential. Shows like “Madam Secretary,” “Scandal,” “The Good Wife” and, more recently, Netflix’s political drama “The Diplomat” all feature strong female characters with high-profile careers in politics, entertaining millions of viewers.

But these shows do more than just entertain their audiences. The power of a woman character leading a political TV show extends beyond viewership to real-world political engagement. More

Off-year elections, like the ones that took place earlier this month, can fall under the radar – or at least, that’s what far-right reactionary groups like Moms for Liberty and the 1776 Project might have been hoping. Organizations like these spent the better part of this year pushing to elect school board members who would enact a rightwing agenda in the name of “abolishing critical race theory”.But, for the most part, they failed. Per the American Federation of Teachers, groups like these lost close to 70% of the races where they made endorsements this November. And while conservatives made some inroads in places like the Houston suburbs, they fell short in some of the most high-profile races in swing states, like Pennsylvania – where Democrats swept several school boards while rejecting the culture war – as well as Iowa, Ohio and Virginia.The failure of rightwing ideologues to take over local school boards shows that voters simply don’t want to buy what they’re selling. As Keenan Crow of LGBTQ+ organization One Iowa Action said: “There is a basic decency left in the electorate that recognizes that every kid deserves a safe, inclusive space to learn.” And as the countdown to 2024 begins in earnest, progressives could benefit from embracing that decency in school board battles and beyond.Moms for Liberty was formed in 2021 to oppose Covid-19 restrictions in schools, like mask requirements and vaccine mandates. Supercharged by funding from national conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation, it has since expanded its mission to include fighting school “wokeness”– otherwise known as “acknowledgment that racism exists” – and touting “parental rights” as their justification for trying to privatize the public school system.As I wrote in September, they are one of the organizations behind the latest wave of book bans across the United States. The pastor who leads their Philadelphia faith-based outreach was recently outed as a registered sex offender; he has resigned as a city ward leader, but remains a Moms for Liberty member. The Southern Poverty Law Center categorized Moms for Liberty as an extremist group earlier this year – and that was before an Indiana chapter opened a newsletter by literally quoting Hitler.The group has generous funding and chapters in almost every state. It has mainstream Republican support; former president Donald Trump, plus four other 2024 GOP also-rans, spoke at a Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia this summer.So why did they perform so poorly? For one thing, the Moms for Liberty agenda was simply too extreme for most voters outside of the deepest-red districts. National polling from earlier this year found that the majority of Americans oppose book bans, trust teachers to make curricular decisions, and think schools should teach the history of slavery, racism and segregation.This dynamic was reflected in the repudiation of figures like Teri Patrick – a school board candidate in West Des Moines, Iowa, who once fought to criminally charge a school district because its library had two books about LGBTQ+ issues. Patrick was endorsed by Moms for Liberty but crushed in the election, receiving a measly 9% of the vote.As well-organized as Moms for Liberty may be, teachers unions are organized better. In Iowa, more than 85% of candidates endorsed by the local teachers union, the Iowa State Education Association, won a seat in the 7 November school board elections. On the same night, only one of the 13 candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty was elected. Moms for Liberty founder Tina Descovich herself partially blamed the strength of teachers unions for their recent losses.If anything, the intense attention and resources that the right gave to school board races only motivated the labor movement to match those efforts. Last summer, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said that Moms for Liberty has “created more action and more energy” within unions.When a group of concerned parents in the small suburb of Madeira, Ohio, saw the campaign materials being shared by Moms for Liberty, they formed their own Pac, Madeira United, and communicated a simple message: “No culture wars. No extremism”. On 7 November, their nonpartisan candidates prevailed.For all the fear-mongering about the woke mind virus infiltrating our schools, millions of parents across the country trust, respect and admire their children’s teachers. This month’s election results ought to be a wake-up call: progressives can still win the education debate, but it will take full-throated support and organizing of teachers and their unions.Conservatives aren’t giving up this fight any time soon. Shortly after the election, the Leadership Institute hosted a training in Colorado to plot next steps for the rightwing board members who were successfully elected. And just last week, Moms for Liberty’s Oklahoma chapter called for the deplatforming of an institution that they say is “largely focused on indoctrinating youth with radical viewpoints and sexual ideologies”. You guessed it: they’re talking about the Scholastic Book Fair.But between teachers unions, enterprising parents, progressive leaders across the country, and an enduring majority of voters, there remains a robust national coalition that favors a pluralistic education system. As Weingarten said shortly after the election: “These results underline what families have been telling us for the last two years: They don’t want culture wars; they want safe and welcoming public schools … They reject division and want to seize the future together.”
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation and serves on the Council on Foreign Relations More