US Politics

The House of Representatives will on Monday begin considering an unconventional proposal by the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, to extend government funding into the new year and ward off a shutdown that would occur this weekend, but it’s unclear if the measure has the support to pass.Johnson’s bill is the latest attempt to resolve a complex standoff over funding the government that has pitted hardline Republicans against their moderate colleagues and the Democratic minority in Congress’s lower chamber, and also contributed to the chain of events that led to Kevin McCarthy’s overthrow as speaker of the House in October.The US government’s authorization to spend money expires at the end of the day on Friday, and Johnson, a rightwing lawmaker who the GOP elected as House speaker last month to replace McCarthy, unveiled over the weekend a proposal to keep some agencies functioning through 19 January and others through 2 February while long-term spending bills are negotiated.Congress has in recent decades enacted dozens of such short-term funding bills – known as continuing resolutions (CR) – but Johnson’s is unique because it proposes two different deadlines for the funding to run out.“This two-step continuing resolution is a necessary bill to place House Republicans in the best position to fight for conservative victories,” Johnson said in a statement.The White House immediately panned the proposal, which does not include funding for military assistance to Ukraine or Israel that Joe Biden is pushing Congress to approve – issues Johnson says he wants to handle in separate legislation.“This proposal is just a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns – full stop,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said. “With just days left before an extreme Republican shutdown – and after shutting down Congress for three weeks after they ousted their own leader – House Republicans are wasting precious time with an unserious proposal that has been panned by members of both parties.”The White House’s statement could also bode ill for the measure’s reception in the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority their leader Chuck Schumer is moving forward tentatively with a bill to continue government funding through 19 January.But before it even lands there, Johnson’s proposal will have to make it through the House. The rules committee will hold a key procedural hearing on the bill on Monday afternoon, and, if they move it forward, a source familiar with the legislation says the full House is expected to vote on the bill on Tuesday.Already, it has run into opposition from some conservative lawmakers, who say Johnson has proposed a “clean” CR that lacks the deep spending cuts they want to see come with any such bill.“It’s a 100% clean. And I 100% oppose,” tweeted Texas Republican Chip Roy.Scott Perry, the chair of rightwing Freedom Caucus, is also against it, saying he would “not support a status quo that fails to acknowledge fiscal irresponsibility, and changes absolutely nothing while emboldening a do-nothing Senate and a fiscally illiterate president”.At their current numbers, Republicans can afford to lose only three of their own members before they will have to rely on Democratic support to get legislation passed. That is a perilous calculus for Johnson, as McCarthy was ousted days after Democrats helped him pass a measure he proposed to prevent a government shutdown through 17 November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlready, powerful Democrats are signaling opposition to the speaker’s bill. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the appropriations committee, objected to the lack of funding for Israel and Ukraine in the measure, and argued the Departments of Defense and State need long-term funding, not a two-month stopgap.“It is irresponsible to kick the can down the road for several months – keeping government services frozen – and hope that our challenges go away. We are nowhere closer to a full-year funding agreement than we were at the end of September,” DeLauro said. “Congress must avoid a shutdown and pass a CR that facilitates enacting full-year spending bills and emergency assistance as soon as possible.”More ominous for the bill were the comments by the Democratic minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, comments last week, when he called a continuing resolution that extended funding for different periods of time “another extreme rightwing policy joyride”.In an interview on Fox Business Network, the Florida Republican Carlos Giménez acknowledged “the dynamics are the same” for Johnson as they were for McCarthy, but predicted the speaker’s bill would receive support from both parties.“Even though you’ll get some Republicans not to vote for it, just like what happened under Kevin McCarthy where you had a bunch of Republicans not vote for a clean CR, most if not all, Democrats did vote for it, because the last thing we want to see is a government shutdown,” he said. More

The Biden White House condemned Donald Trump for promising, if re-elected president, to “root out” opponents within US society he called “communists, Marxists, fascists and radical left thugs that live like vermin”.“Employing words like ‘vermin’ to describe anyone who makes use of their basic right to criticise the government ‘echoes dictators’ like Hitler and Mussolini,” the White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said, quoting Washington Post coverage of Trump’s remarks.“Using terms like that about dissent would be unrecognisable to our founders, but horrifyingly recognisable to American veterans who put on their country’s uniform in the 1940s. President Biden believes in his oath to our constitution, and in American democracy. He works to protect both every day.”Trump is the clear frontrunner to face Joe Biden in an election rematch next year, enjoying vast leads for the Republican nomination in battleground and national polls despite facing 91 criminal charges, including election subversion, and assorted civil trials including a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge said was “substantially true”.Trump leads or is close to Biden in numerous swing state polls.The former president spoke in Claremont, New Hampshire, on Saturday, in the middle of the Veterans Day weekend.“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within,” said Trump, who was impeached, for a second time, for inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress in an attempt to stay in power.On Monday, Bates said: “We do not comment in the 2024 presidential election.”But he added: “The nation just observed Veterans Day, recognising the sacred memory of every American who risked their lives to defend our freedom.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionReferring to previously reported remarks by Trump about US servicemen and women, Bates said: “Veterans who are absolutely not ‘suckers’ or ‘losers’ … as President Biden has said, deserve our greatest respect.”Trump has also said he would if re-elected consider suspending the US constitution in order to achieve his aims.Bates said: “Suspending the constitution would gut the protection of freedom that defines our country, and for which so many brave service members sacrificed everything. That abuse of power would put the rights of all Americans in unprecedented danger.” More

Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired US federal judge and older sister of the former president Donald Trump, has died. She was 86.Multiple news outlets said Barry died at her home on the Upper East Side in New York City. A person familiar with the matter told the New York Times that Barry was found early on Monday morning. Her cause of death was unknown.The eldest daughter of prominent New York property developer Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, Barry became an assistant US attorney in 1974 before being appointed to the US district court for New Jersey by Ronald Reagan in 1983. Her appointment to the federal bench, the Times said, was aided by Donald Trump’s then “fixer, the lawyer Roy M Cohn”. In 1999, Barry was appointed to the US court of appeals for the third circuit by Bill Clinton.In 2018, while Donald Trump was in the White House, a New York Times investigation of his tax affairs, aided by Mary L Trump, the president’s niece who had become alienated from the family, prompted a formal complaint over whether Barry engaged in tax schemes in the 1990s.The Times report claimed that Barry, who allegedly benefited financially, was able to use her position of power to benefit her family.Barry retired from the federal bench in 2019.She was long said to be close to her younger brother, but his rise to power and chaotic White House term seemed to change the relationship.In 2020, Mary Trump released recordings in which her aunt could be heard criticising the then president.At one point, Barry was heard to say “the phoniness of it all … the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.”She also said: “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God … I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”Barry was married to the late John Barry, a trial and appellate lawyer.Fred Trump Jr, the oldest of Donald Trump’s siblings and father to Mary L Trump, died in 1981, aged 42.Robert Trump, a younger brother of the former president, died in 2020 aged 71. His funeral was held at the White House.Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, died aged 73 at her home in New York City last year. She is buried at Bedminster, the former president’s golf club in New Jersey.Donald Trump, 77, is the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination next year, despite facing 91 criminal charges and assorted civil threats.Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

The man who donned face paint and a horned headdress to storm the US Capitol at the 6 January insurrection has filed paperwork for a potential congressional run in Arizona as a libertarian.Jacob Chansley, known as the “QAnon Shaman”, became one of the most recognizable symbols of the insurrection, as media showed him walking the halls of the Capitol and standing at the dais in the US Senate.He pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding and was sentenced to 41 months in prison. He was released early in March.After his release, he resumed posting bizarre messages online. His profile on X, @AmericaShaman, says his nickname is “a straw man they created in an attempt to control the narrative & destroy my public image”. In response to someone asking for a campaign donation link, he said he wasn’t taking donations now and wasn’t sure if he would later because “BIG $$$ is a part of the problem in politics … I intend to run an ENTIRELY different kind of campaign …”As Chansley has a felony, he would not be able to vote for himself until he gets his voting rights restored in Arizona.Chansley filed a statement of interest in running for congressional district 8 with the Arizona secretary of state last week. Writing his name as Jacob Angeli-Chansley, his forms say he would run as a libertarian.The right-leaning eighth district seat will be open in 2024 as Debbie Lesko, the Republican representative, announced she would not seek re-election. Since her announcement, a flood of Republican contenders have entered the race.Republican primary candidates for the seat include the losing 2022 Senate candidate Blake Masters, the Arizona House speaker, Ben Toma, losing 2022 attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh, and a state senator, Anthony Kern, who attended the 6 January event at the Capitol. A handful of others are also running. More

Lady Bird, as Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson was better known, is a nickname that conjures the frivolous and fanciful, but the fiftysomething woman from east Texas who emerges in Dawn Porter’s elegant documentary The Lady Bird Diaries was a paragon of substance. She was also a documentarian in her own right, chronicling her time in the White House over 123 hours of audio recordings that were released after her death in 2007.Apart from the footage of wildflowers that Porter shot on the Johnson family ranch in Texas, the film entirely relies on archival audio and video recordings from the time of Lyndon B Johnson’s presidency, from the 1963 assassination of John F Kennedy to 1969. Building on an ABC News podcast, Porter’s work is a visually mesmerizing collage of mid-century America and one of its most fascinating characters.“[Being a first lady] is traditionally a feminine thing. It’s usually about children and reading and food gardens,” Porter said. “And those things are worthy.” Johnson, though, occupied herself with more than rose gardens. She was a shadow politician, serving as the president’s adviser as well as his tutor, even giving her husband grades on his speeches as we hear in one recording. “I don’t think there were a lot of A-pluses,” Porter said. “I think there was always room for improvement.”The Johnsons’ high expectations for each other mirrored the intensity of their devotion. “In a lot of ways, it’s a love story,” Porter said. “I think some of the best marriages are where each person thinks the other person is the smartest and most capable person. Her daughters confirmed that when I met them. They said, ‘Daddy thought Mother was the smartest person he’d ever met.’”Finding archival footage featuring her film’s subject was a bit of a treasure hunt, as scant material was catalogued with her name. “When we started and put in the words ‘Lady Bird Johnson’, very little came back,” the director said. Porter had better luck when she searched by the date and the names of other people who had been on the scenes of Johnson’s recounting. “She’s not noted in the description of the footage, and yet she’s right there in the middle of all of these events,” Porter said. “And I think that’s the story for a lot of women.”Johnson’s recordings brim with intimacy, and include material on her anxieties about her husband’s mental and physical wellbeing as well as her own apprehensions about living in the public eye. She also chronicled her work life, from campaigning for her husband’s second term to her environmental and anti-poverty efforts. She was the first president’s wife to hire her own staff, which was presided over by Liz Carpenter, a fellow Texan. (Carpenter’s teenage son, who liked to record himself singing, owned the tape recorder that Johnson used.)Porter’s film paints Johnson’s work on the “beautification” of Washington DC as more than an act of aesthetic improvement. “She was going into some of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the District of Columbia, which are primarily Black neighborhoods, and she was making the connection that kids need outdoor space, they need playgrounds, they need calm, beautiful places. She wasn’t just planting flowers.” The film touches on a few controversies, including the time when the singer Eartha Kitt publicly chastised Johnson at a luncheon, sounding off on the Johnson administration’s handling of the Vietnam war. But the point of view is unwaveringly Johnson’s. “This is not a tell-all movie,” Porter said. “What I wanted to do is add her perspective to what was happening.“She really was documenting this history in her tapes, and she was so accurate,” Porter said. “I’ve done a lot of films where people will tell me a story, and then we’ll go back and look at the archive and it’s similar, but memory is imperfect.” Lady Bird’s version of events, however, shared an uncanny precision backed up by the trove of film.Porter’s next two projects are about a reporter who embedded with the New York police department and ended up proving the innocence of a handful of wrongfully convicted inmates, as well as a film on the musician Luther Vandross, who died in 2005. While some documentarians like the immediacy of shadowing living subjects, Porter said that working with pre-existing footage guarantees an added layer of authenticity. “They’re not being interviewed for your movie so they’re not performing for you in any way,” she said. “The footage is very honest.”The choice not to interview anybody for Lady Bird came naturally, and it’s unlikely viewers will mind the absence of talking heads. “I wanted it to be her story. And also make the point that she’s there, she’s everywhere,” Porter said. “You just have to look for her, and then you’ll find her.”
The Lady Bird Diaries is now available on Hulu in the US More

If Donald Trump wins a second presidency, the US would resemble the authoritarian regimes of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, a prominent Democratic congressman predicted Sunday.During an appearance on MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki, Jamie Raskin invoked the names of some of the globe’s most powerful strongmen political leaders to characterize the threat posed by Trump’s status as the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination despite the mound of legal problems with which he is grappling.“The role of the government in his view is to advance his political fortunes and destroy his … enemies,” Raskin said of the former president and reality television show host. “So what would a second term look like?“It would look a lot like Vladimir Putin Russia. It would look a lot like Viktor Orbán in Hungary – illiberal democracy, meaning democracy without rights or liberties or respect for the due process system, the rule of law.”Raskin added: “Their position is that they don’t accept elections that don’t go their way. They refuse to disavow political violence – they embrace political violence as an instrument for obtaining power. And then everything flows from the will of a charismatic politician, and that is Donald Trump in their book.”Raskin said another turn in the Oval Office for Trump would thrust the US “into a completely different form of government than any of us would recognize as continuous with the past”, one that instead would feel more familiar in Xi Jingping’s China or in Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil before the latter man was ousted from office last year and then barred by his country’s courts from running for re-election due to abuses of power.The Maryland congressman’s dramatic admonition to Psaki came days after Trump went on Univision and suggested he would use federal investigators and prosecutors to pursue his enemies if he scores a victory in next year’s presidential election.On Saturday, Trump promised in a speech to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and radical left thugs that live like vermin” in the US. Many commentators noted how the term “vermin” echoed antisemitic rhetoric that the Nazis frequently employed to dehumanize Jews as they murdered 6 million of them during the Holocaust.Meanwhile, the New York Times reported Saturday that Trump – who routinely speaks fawningly of Putin and other autocratic world leaders – is “planning an extreme expansion” of the immigration crackdown that the Republican oversaw during the presidential term he won in 2016.The plan reportedly envisions sweeping raids that round up undocumented people in the US before detaining them en masse in sprawling camps while they await deportation. Among other measures, it also calls for a revival of his first-term ban against travelers from predominantly Muslim countries.Raskin served on the US House committee which investigated the deadly Capitol attack staged by Trump’s supporters on 6 January 2021, weeks after he lost the presidency to his Democratic rival Joe Biden.After a series of televised hearings last year, the committee recommended that the justice department file criminal charges against Trump. And since March, a combination of federal and state prosecutors have obtained more than 90 criminal charges in four separate, pending indictments against Trump accusing him of election subversion, retention of government secrets and illicit hush-money payments to a porn actor.He has also faced civil lawsuits over his business affairs and a rape allegation which a judge deemed “substantially true”.Trump has denied all wrongdoing and sought to portray himself as a victim of political persecution. Nonetheless, he has held commanding polling leads in the contest for the 2024 Republican White House nomination. And there is a consensus among experts that a rematch between him and Biden would be very close.The Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, on Sunday said her organization is ready to support and embrace Trump as its candidate if he clinches the party’s nomination.“The voters are looking at this, and they think there is a two-tiered system of justice,” she said on CNN’s State of the Union. “They don’t believe a lot of the things that are coming out in this. And they’re making these decisions. And you’re seeing that reflected in the polls.” More

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has suspended his presidential campaign, conceding that he does not see any path to the Republican nomination as Donald Trump maintains a significant lead in primary polling.Scott told Fox News in an interview on Sunday evening that he had suspended his campaign. His exit may provide a modest boost for other candidates trying to dislodge frontrunner Donald Trump from the top spot.“I think the voters, who are the most remarkable people on the planet, have been really clear that they’re telling me: ‘Not now Tim,’” he said.The news comes less than six months after Scott launched his White House bid with the promise of offering a more optimistic vision about America’s future, projecting the persona of a “happy warrior” ready to lead the Republican party into a new era. Scott, who is the only Black Republican serving in the Senate, used his own personal story as the child of a single mother to make an argument for America’s greatness, accusing Joe Biden and other Democrats of “attacking every rung of the ladder that helped me climb”.“We live in the land where it is absolutely possible for a kid raised in poverty in a single-parent household in a small apartment to one day serve in the people’s house and maybe even the White House,” Scott said as he announced his candidacy in May. “This is the greatest country on God’s green Earth.”But that positive messaging failed to sway Republican primary voters, and Scott struggled to gain traction with a party base that remains largely loyal to Trump, despite the 91 felony counts against the former president.In more recent months, Scott explored darker rhetoric on the campaign trial in an apparent attempt to bolster his dwindling hopes of capturing the nomination. During the second Republican primary debate in late September, Scott implied that slavery had been more bearable for Black Americans than the Great Society, President Lyndon Johnson’s anti-poverty program that led to the creation of social welfare programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The comment won praise from Fox News commentators and sparked outrage among Scott’s critics, who accused Scott of downplaying the atrocities of slavery.Weeks after that incident, Scott lambasted Biden over his response to the attacks carried out by Hamas on 7 October, which killed more than 1,400 Israelis. Blasting Biden’s foreign policy agenda, Scott accused the president of inadvertently causing the violence.“While Hamas carried out these attacks, Joe Biden has blood on his hands,” Scott said. “His weakness invited the attack.”Scott later applauded the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for his “restraint” in his response to the Hamas attacks. At the time Scott made the comment, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza had already reportedly killed a large number of Palestinians.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite Scott’s pivot to more severe rhetoric, his level of support in national primary polls remained in the low single digits, leaving him with no path to the nomination. Scott announced in October that he would shift his campaign resources to Iowa, zeroing in on the first voting state in a last-ditch effort to revive his campaign.But that strategy failed to lift Scott’s polling numbers, and he has now formally suspended his campaign, as Trump cements his status as the clear frontrunner in the race. More

A federal Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted November 1–5 from a sample of 1,602, gave Labor 35% of the primary vote (down two since October), the Coalition 30% (down one), the Greens 13% (up one), One Nation 7% (steady), the UAP 2% (steady), independents 9% (steady) and others 4% (up two).

Resolve does not give a two party estimate until close to elections, but an estimate based on applying 2022 election preference flows gives Labor a 57–43 lead, unchanged since October. While this poll was published today, it was taken over a week ago, before the November 7 interest rate rise.

Resolve’s polls since the 2022 election have been far better for Labor than other polls. Other recent federal polls have been last week’s Newspoll and Redbridge poll that gave Labor respectively a 52–48 and a 53.5–46.5 lead, a 52–48 Labor lead in Morgan and a 48–46 Labor lead in a late October Essential poll including undecided voters.

While Resolve’s voting intentions are much better for Labor than other recent polls, their leaders’ ratings are not. On Anthony Albanese, 46% thought he was doing a poor job and 39% a good job, for a net approval of -6, down seven points since October. Albanese’s net approval was +27 after the May budget.

Dutton’s net approval improved 11 points since October to -4, his best net approval since the election and the first time in any poll Dutton has had a better net approval than Albanese. Albanese led Dutton as preferred PM by 40–27, a narrowing from 47–25 previously.

The Liberals extended their lead over Labor on economic management from 35–33 to 34–27. On keeping the cost of living low, the Liberals reversed a 31–27 Labor lead in October to take a 29–24 lead. These are the Liberals’ best results on these issues since the election. With 52% naming cost of living as the highest priority for their vote, this issue matters.

Voters are pessimistic about the economic outlook. In the next three months, 50% expect the economy to get worse and just 8% improve. In the next year, it’s 41% get worse and 23% improve.

By 60–19, voters said their income had not kept up with inflation over the past year. By 64–8, they expected inflation to get worse in the near future. By 65–9, they did not think interest rate rises are coming to an end.

Morgan poll and additional questions from other polls

In last week’s Morgan federal poll, conducted October 30 to November 5 from a sample of 1,371, Labor led by 52–48, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the previous week. Primary votes were 35% Coalition, 31.5% Labor, 13.5% Greens and 20% for all Others.

Voters in last week’s Newspoll were also asked whether they approved or disapproved of five measures to help with cost of living.

Subsidising energy bills was most supported at 84% approve, followed by subsidising fuel prices (81%), cutting government spending (77%), giving tax cuts to individuals (73%) and giving cash payments to low-income families (56%).

In additional questions from Redbridge, by 50–36 voters thought the Albanese government was not focused on the right priorities. By 50–30, they thought the Coalition was not ready for government.

Essential had questions on the Melbourne Cup that were released on Cup Day November 7 in The Guardian from the previous national Essential poll in late October.

On interest in the Cup, 11% said they had high interest (down four since 2022), 24% moderate interest (down seven), 27% low interest (up three) and 35% no interest (up seven). On betting, 13% regularly bet on horses and the Cup (down five) and 26% rarely bet on horses but make an exception for the Cup (down three).

On attitudes to the Melbourne Cup, 65% said it is a unique part of Australia’s national identity (down seven), 48% said it promotes unhealthy gambling behaviour (up three) and 36% said it normalises animal cruelty (up two).

US off-year elections

While the United States presidential election is in November 2024, there were some state elections on November 7. I covered the results for The Poll Bludger. Democrats performed well in the headline races, holding the Kentucky governorship and gaining control of the Virginia legislature, while Ohio passed two referendums supported by Democrats.

However, the legislative elections were mediocre for Democrats, as they did worse than Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. US polls show Biden struggling against Donald Trump, and these elections should not change our opinion of 2024.

NSW Resolve poll: drop for both major parties’ primary votes

A New South Wales state Resolve poll for The Sydney Morning Herald, conducted with the federal October and November Resolve polls from a sample of 1,100, gave Labor 36% of the primary vote (down two since September), the Coalition 32% (down four), the Greens 13% (up four), independents 12% (down one) and others 7% (up three).

No two-party estimate was provided, but The Poll Bludger estimated a 56.5–43.5 Labor lead, a 2.5-point gain for Labor since September. Labor Premier Chris Minns held a 35–13 lead over the Liberals’ Mark Speakman as preferred premier (41–14 in September). More