US Politics

Maga Republican and fierce Trump supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene and leftwing Democratic firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have found common ground in freeing Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.The pair are among 16 members of the US Congress who have written directly to president Joe Biden urging the United States to drop its extradition attempts against Assange and halt any prosecutorial proceedings immediately.The group warns continuing the pursuit of Assange risks America’s bilateral relationship with Australia.“It is the duty of journalists to seek out sources, including documentary evidence, in order to report to the public on the activities of the government,” the letter to Biden, first reported by Nine newspapers, states.“The United States must not pursue an unnecessary prosecution that risks criminalising common journalistic practices and thus chilling the work of the free press. We urge you to ensure that this case be brought to a close in as timely a manner as possible.”Assange remains in Belmarsh prison in London as he fights a US attempt to extradite him to face charges – including under the Espionage Act. The charges are in connection with the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011.
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In September, a cross-party delegation of Australian MPs, which included former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, teal independent Monique Ryan, Greens senators David Shoebridge and Peter Whish-Wilson, conservative Alex Antic and Labor’s Tony Zappia, travelled to America to meet with US representatives over Assange’s case.The group hoped to gain support from American lawmakers in their bid to have the pursuit of Assange dropped ahead of Anthony Albanese’s official visit to Washington.Since coming to power, the Albanese government has been more forward than its predecessors in pushing for Assange’s freedom, but so far the Biden government has rebuffed the calls.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlbanese confirmed he raised Assange’s case again during his meeting with Biden at the White House last month, but Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, urged the Australian government to increase the pressure.Shipton told Guardian Australia: “If this government can get back Cheng Lei from China, why is he so impotent when it comes to Julian and the USA?”With Assange’s avenues for legal appeal against the US extradition diminishing, his supporters fear for his life. More

West Virginia’s Democratic senator Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek re-election in the Senate.In a statement released on Thursday, Manchin, who has held his Senate seat since 2010, said:
“After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.
To the West Virginians who have put their trust in me and fought side by side to make our state better – it has been an honor of my life to serve you. Thank you.
Every incentive in Washington is designed to make our politics extreme. The growing divide between Democrats and Republicans is paralyzing Congress and worsening our nation’s problems. The majority of Americans are just plain worn out…
Public service has and continues to drive me every day. That is the vow that I made to my father 40 years ago, and I intend to keep that vow until my dying day.”
In the statement announcing he would end his Senate career, Joe Manchin said “I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”That line stoked speculation he could launch a third-party presidential run next year, perhaps with the help of centrist group No Labels. Democrats have been fretting over that possibility for months, as a Manchin candidacy could swing voters away from Joe Biden, whose re-election campaign has been dogged by worrying poll numbers.At the Capitol, Politico says some of Manchin’s counterparts don’t believe he has presidential ambitions:There are two main Republicans vying for West Virginia’s Senate seat, which Democrat Joe Manchin just said he would not stand for again.The first is governor Jim Justice, who in 2017 left the Democratic party and joined the GOP at a rally for Donald Trump. “Senator Joe Manchin and I have not always agreed on policy and politics, but we’re both lifelong West Virginians who love this state beyond belief, and I respect and thank him for his many years of public service,” Justice said in a statement after Manchin’s announcement.The second is Alex Mooney, a fifth term House lawmaker representing the northern half of the state. He is what he had to say about Manchin’s departure:The state’s primary elections are scheduled for 14 May of next year.Minutes after Joe Manchin announced he would not run for re-election, Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown made a veiled reference to the West Virginia senator’s decision:Brown represents Ohio, which has supported Republican candidates in the past two presidential elections, albeit by a much smaller percentage than West Virginia. With Manchin gone and almost certain to be replaced by a Republican, Brown’s victory next year is essential if the party has any chance of staying in the majority in the Senate.Following Joe Manchin’s decision not to seek re-election, the Cook Political Report has changed its rating of the race to “solid Republican”.That’s the same rating given to Senate races in other deep-red states like Nebraska, Tennessee and Wyoming:In the 2020 election, West Virginia voted more than 68% for Donald Trump, his second biggest-margin of victory after Wyoming.Joe Manchin first arrived in the Senate in 2010 after a stint as West Virginia’s governor, but the peak of his political power came in the first two years of the Biden administration.Democrats held a 50-seat majority in the Senate those two years, meaning the party had to vote unanimously on legislation that Republicans would not support. While Manchin backed most of Joe Biden’s agenda, he flexed his muscles in the negotiations over Build Back Better, an expansive plan to fight climate change and invest in a host of social programs that the president wanted approved.Manchin opposed several of its measure, including continuing the expanded child tax credit that was credited with cutting child poverty in half in 2021. Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, then a member of the Democratic party, also rejected tax changes to offset some of the bill’s costs. Negotiations over the legislation dragged all through 2021 and into 2022, and appeared to have stalled completely by that summer.Then, suddenly, Manchin and the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer announced they had reached an agreement on a different bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, which included some measures to fight climate change and lower prescription drug costs, but lacked some of Build Back Better’s most expansive proposals.For climate activists who blamed the West Virginia senator and coal businessman for defanging attempts to lower America’s carbon emissions, it was a surprising change in course. Here’s more from the Guardian’s Oliver Milman’s piece from last year analyzing Manchin’s role in the agreement:
Climate advocates reacted with surprise and delight to Joe Manchin’s decision to back a sweeping bill to combat the climate crisis, with analysts predicting the legislation will bring the US close to its target of slashing planet-heating emissions.
The West Virginia senator, who has made millions from his ownership of a coal-trading company, had seemingly thwarted Joe Biden’s hopes of passing meaningful climate legislation – only to reveal on Wednesday his support for a $369bn package to support renewable energy and electric vehicle rollout.
The move by the centrist Democrat shocked many of Manchin’s colleagues, who despaired after more than 18 months of seemingly fruitless negotiations with the lawmaker, a crucial vote in an evenly divided Senate.
“Holy shit,” tweeted Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota. “Stunned, but in a good way.”
Should the bill pass both chambers of Congress and be signed by Biden, it will be the biggest and arguably first piece of climate legislation ever enacted by the US. The world’s largest historical carbon polluter has repeatedly failed to act on the climate crisis due to missed opportunities, staunch Republican opposition and the machinations of the fossil fuel lobby.
The climate spending, part of a broader bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, “has the potential to be a historic turning point” said Al Gore, the former vice-president.
Joe Manchin’s decision not to seek re-election makes Democrats’ quest to preserve their majority in the Senate even more difficult.Manchin was one of three Democratic senators representing red states who are facing voters next year, and the party is not viewed as having a strong replacement candidate in West Virginia, a deeply Republican state.The focus now shifts to Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, both of whom have said they will stand again, but face difficult paths to victory. There is also the question of whether Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, will stand again in purple state Arizona, or if she will be replaced by a Democrat. The GOP may also launch offensives against incumbent Democratic senators in swing states Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and try to win the open Senate seat in Michigan.Even if Democrats fail in West Virginia but win all the other races, they could still lose their Senate majority. That best-case scenario would give the party only 50 seats, one short of a majority, and control of the chamber would come down to whether Joe Biden wins re-election, or is replaced by a Republican.Israel’s decision to allow hours-long pauses to its bombing campaign in Gaza is “heartless” and falls far short of what is necessary to protect civilian life in the territory, said Congresswoman Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat who is the lead sponsor of a ceasefire resolution.The White House said on Thursday that Israel has agreed to four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in its bombardment of northern Gaza, part of a negotiated deal to allow aid and assistance to flow to the enclave’s increasingly desperate population of 2.3 million.“How dare we treat humans in that way,” Bush said, her voice rising with anger. “How dare we be so careless and so inhumane and heartless to decide that four hours is enough time to get you some stuff so that you can live a little bit longer until the bombs hit. How dare we? How dare we treat humans as if we don’t understand what it’s like to be human.”“That’s not the way,” Bush added. “We don’t want four hours. We don’t want 16 hours. We don’t want 22 hours. We want a ceasefire now.”The Israeli military has said it has not agreed to a ceasefire but that it will continue to allow “tactical, local pauses” to let in humanitarian aid. It comes as Biden administration officials push Israel to agree for a longer stoppage in the fighting as part of an effort to free the hostages held by the militant group.Asked about the prospect of a formal ceasefire on Thursday, Biden said that there was “no possibility” at the moment.His response angered a group of veterans gathered with Bush on Capitol Hill to call for an end to the hostilities. Drawing on their own recollections of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, they said peace and security could only be won through diplomacy.Shaking with anger, Brittany Ramos DeBarros, a combat veteran and former army captain, addressed Biden directly.“Mr President, you are the commander in chief of one of the most powerful militaries on the face of this planet in the history of the world,” she said. “How can you be so powerful and so weak as to say that you are incapable of negotiating peace?”Bush was also joined by congresswomen Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Delia Ramirez of Illinois, who are among the 18 Democratic sponsors of the ceasefire legislation.Bush vowed to keep up the pressure on the White House to advocate for a ceasefire.“If that is his position today, there is also a this afternoon and a tonight. There is a tomorrow. There is a Saturday and a Sunday,” she said. “I expect that there will be change. There will be change because … the people that elected this president are screaming out saying we want a ceasefire now.”In response to the announcement from West Virginia’s Joe Manchin that he will not seek Senate re-election in 2024, the National Republican Senatorial Committee said:
“We like our odds in West Virginia.”
West Virginia’s Democratic senator Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek re-election in the Senate.In a statement released on Thursday, Manchin, who has held his Senate seat since 2010, said:
“After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.
To the West Virginians who have put their trust in me and fought side by side to make our state better – it has been an honor of my life to serve you. Thank you.
Every incentive in Washington is designed to make our politics extreme. The growing divide between Democrats and Republicans is paralyzing Congress and worsening our nation’s problems. The majority of Americans are just plain worn out…
Public service has and continues to drive me every day. That is the vow that I made to my father 40 years ago, and I intend to keep that vow until my dying day.”
Iowa’s Republican governor Kim Reynolds said that “it feels good to get in the game” after endorsing Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis for president. The Associated Press reports:After seven months of hosting Republican presidential candidates in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds said it “feels good to get in the game” with her endorsement of of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But the popular Iowa governor declined to say whether other candidates should concede and throw their support behind him as well, even as she acknowledged that a wider field could advantage former President Donald Trump. “At some point, if we don’t narrow the field, it’s going to be hard to … maybe, you know, that helps Trump,” Reynolds said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But I think that is for them to decide.”In making the endorsement earlier this week, Reynolds broke with a longstanding tradition of Iowa governors staying neutral in their party’s presidential contests, the first in the GOP nomination calendar…Still, Reynolds said DeSantis is best poised for victory in the general election, a race she doesn’t think Trump can win without attracting voters beyond his base. DeSantis “won in demographics that Republicans have never really won in Florida,” she said. More

Joe Manchin’s decision not to seek re-election makes Democrats’ quest to preserve their majority in the Senate even more difficult.Manchin was one of three Democratic senators representing red states who are facing voters next year, and the party is not viewed as having a strong replacement candidate in West Virginia, a deeply Republican state.In the 2020 election, West Virginia voted more than 68% for Donald Trump, his second-biggest margin of victory after Wyoming. After Manchin’s announcement on Thursday, the Cook Political Report has changed its rating of the 2024 race to “solid Republican” – the same it has given to Senate races in other deep-red states like Nebraska, Tennessee and Wyoming.The focus now shifts to Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, both of whom have said they will stand again, but face difficult paths to victory. Brown, whose victory next year is essential if his party wants any chance of staying in the majority in the Senate, reacted almost immediately to Manchin’s announcement, tweeting: “It’s never been more clear that we need to win in Ohio.”There is also the question of whether Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, will stand again in purple state Arizona, or if she will be replaced by a Democrat. The GOP may also launch offensives against incumbent Democratic senators in swing states Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and try to win the open Senate seat in Michigan.Even if Democrats fail in West Virginia but win all the other races, they could still lose their Senate majority. That best-case scenario would give the party only 50 seats, one short of a majority, and control of the chamber would come down to whether Joe Biden wins re-election, or is replaced by a Republican. More

The trial of a man accused of breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and bludgeoning her husband with a hammer has begun, with a defense attorney arguing that her client, David DePape, was caught up in conspiracy theories.Paul Pelosi, who was 82 at the time, was attacked by DePape in the early hours of 28 October last year and hospitalized with a skull fracture and injuries to his right arm and hands. The encounter, which was captured by police body-cam footage, sent shockwaves through the political world just days before last year’s midterm elections.“There’s too much violence … political violence. Too much hatred, too much vitriol,” Joe Biden said shortly after the attack. “Enough is enough is enough.”The defense attorney Jodi Linker said on Thursday in opening statements in court in San Francisco that she would not dispute that DePape attacked the former House speaker’s husband. Instead, she will argue that DePape believed “with every ounce of his body” he was taking action to stop corruption and the abuse of children by politicians and actors.“This is not a whodunit. But what the government fails to acknowledge is the ‘whydunit’ – and the ‘why’ matters in this case,” Linker said.DePape pleaded not guilty to attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official with intent to retaliate against the official for performance of their duties. Paul Pelosi is expected to testify next week.The federal prosecutor Laura Vartain Horn told the jurors that DePape started planning the attack in August, and that the evidence and FBI testimony will show he researched his targets online, collecting phone numbers and addresses, even paying for a public records service to find information about Nancy Pelosi and others.During her opening statement, Vartain Horn showed a photo of Paul Pelosi lying in a pool of blood. She also played a call DePape made to a television station repeating conspiracy theories.“The evidence in this case is going show that when the defendant used this hammer to break into the Pelosi’s home he intended to kidnap Nancy Pelosi,” Vartain Horn said, holding a hammer inside a plastic evidence bag.DePape is known to have a history of spreading far-right conspiracy theories, posting rants on a blog and an online forum about aliens, communists, religious minorities and global elites. He questioned the results of the 2020 election and echoed the baseless rightwing QAnon conspiracy theory that claims the US government is run by a cabal of devil-worshipping pedophiles. The websites were taken down shortly after his arrest.If convicted, DePape faces life in prison. He was also charged in state court with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, residential burglary and other felonies. He pleaded not guilty to those charges. A state trial has not been scheduled.In the courtroom on Thursday were Christine Pelosi, one of the Pelosis’ daughters, as well as Gypsy Taub, DePape’s ex-girlfriend, and Taub and DePape’s two teenage sons. Taub called DePape’s name softly and blew a kiss, and he smiled and waved in return.A Canadian citizen, DePape moved to the United States more than 20 years ago after falling in love with Taub, a Berkeley pro-nudity activist well-known in the Bay Area, his stepfather, Gene DePape said. In recent years, David DePape had been homeless and struggling with drug abuse and mental illness, Taub told local media.Federal prosecutors say DePape smashed his shoulder through a glass panel on a door in the back of the Pelosis’ Pacific Heights mansion and confronted a sleeping Paul Pelosi, who was wearing boxer shorts and a pajama top.“Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” DePape asked, standing over Paul Pelosi at about 2am holding a hammer and zip ties, according to court records. Nancy Pelosi was in Washington and under the protection of her security detail, which does not extend to family members.Paul Pelosi called 911 and two police officers showed up and witnessed DePape strike Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer, knocking him unconscious, court records showed.After his arrest, DePape, 43, allegedly told a San Francisco detective he wanted to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage. He said that if she told him the truth, he would let her go, and if she lied, he was going to “break her kneecaps” to show other members of Congress there were “consequences to actions”, according to prosecutors.DePape, who lived in a garage in the Bay Area city of Richmond and had been doing odd carpentry jobs to support himself, allegedly told authorities he had other targets, including a women’s and queer studies professor, the California governor Gavin Newsom, the actor Tom Hanks and Joe Biden’s son Hunter. More

West Virginia’s controversial Democratic US senator Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek re-election in 2024 and will instead “fight to unite the middle”.The 76-year-old senator, who for years has held an outsized degree of power within the Democratic party and often defied its leadership, appeared in July at an event held by a political group exploring a third-party presidential bid.Manchin’s appearance with the centrist No Labels group fueled speculation that he was considering a run for the presidency, a scenario that alarmed Democrats as it could weaken Joe Biden’s candidacy for another term in the White House.On Thursday afternoon, Manchin put out a statement saying: “After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate.”He added: “But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”No Labels sees Manchin as a potential candidate for its centrist platform. Although No Labels, which has been around since 2010, mostly behind the scenes, has stated it will not field a candidate if their platform does not gain traction or if it appears it would swing the vote in favor of one party, the group has been actively fundraising and is seeking to get on ballots across the country.Maryanne Martini, a spokesperson for No Labels, released a statement praising Manchin as “a longtime ally” but declining to comment on his potential to run for president.“Regarding our No Labels unity presidential ticket, we are gathering input from our members across the country to understand the kind of leaders they would like to see in the White House,” she said. “As we have said from the beginning, we will make a decision by early 2024 about whether we will nominate a unity presidential ticket and who will be on it.”Opinion polls show dissatisfaction with the current leading White House candidates, both the incumbent Biden and the Republican frontrunner Trump.Manchin’s decision to step down will also jeopardise Democrats’ narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate. Republicans hold the governor’s office and the rest of the congressional delegation in a state that Trump won by a wide margin over Biden in 2020. Manchin won his last election with just 49.6% of the vote, 0.3 percentage points ahead of his Republican rival, in 2018.The US senator Steve Daines, the head of Republican senators’ campaign arm, said in a brief statement: “We like our odds in West Virginia.”The state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, has already launched a campaign for his party’s nomination for Senate. Justice was a Democrat when he was first elected governor in 2016, but a year into office he switched parties and went on to cruise to re-election, winning 65% of the vote in 2020. Trump has endorsed Justice.Justice said on Thursday: “Senator Joe Manchin and I have not always agreed on policy and politics, but we’re both lifelong West Virginians who love this state beyond belief, and I respect and thank him for his many years of public service.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionManchin’s departure will raise the stakes for Democrats in several other Senate races including in Republican-leaning Montana and Ohio and highly competitive Pennsylvania and Arizona.Manchin, who took office in 2010, has been a key vote on every major piece of legislation of Biden’s tenure as a moderate representing an increasingly conservative state. His support was critical to the passage of Biden’s sweeping $1tn infrastructure law, one of the president’s key domestic accomplishments.Together with the Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, who switched her registration to independent from Democrat in December, Manchin has secured major concessions and the scaling back of his party’s legislative goals, winning him applause from conservatives and condemnations from many fellow Democrats.The pair stood together in protecting the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires that 60 of the chamber’s 100 members agree on most legislation, in the face of intense opposition from their own party.Manchin’s defence of the filibuster helped block Democrats’ hopes of passing bills to protect abortion rights after the supreme court last year overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had established the right nationwide.Republican senators praised Manchin’s commitment to bipartisanship.The Utah senator Mitt Romney, who is also not seeking re-election, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “I will miss this American patriot in the Senate. But our friendship and our commitment to American values will not end.” More

Jezebel, a feminist US news site, was shut down by its owners on Thursday, with 23 people laid off and no plans for the outlet to resume publication.G/O Media, which owns Jezebel and other sites including Gizmodo and the Onion, announced the closure in a memo to staff, which was obtained by the Guardian.“Unfortunately, our business model and the audiences we serve across our network did not align with Jezebel’s,” Jim Spanfeller, the chief executive of G/O Media, wrote in the memo, which was sent to staff on Thursday morning.“And when that became clear, we undertook an expansive search for a new, perhaps better home that might ensure Jezebel a path forward. It became a personal mission of Lea Goldman, who worked tirelessly on the project, talking with over two dozen potential buyers.“It is a testament to Jezebel’s heritage and bona fides that so many players engaged us. Still, despite every effort, we could not find Jez a new home.”In response to the shuttering, the Writers Guild of America-East, which represents G/O Media staffers, issued a statement condemning Spanfeller.“Jezebel has been a pillar of fearless journalism and important cultural commentary since 2007 and made an indelible mark on the media landscape,” the statement read, before adding: “A well-run company would have moved away from an advertising model, but instead they are shuttering the brand entirely because of their strategic and commercial ineptitude. Jezebel was a good website.”Susan Rinkunas, a senior reporter at Jezebel, told the Guardian that it was “unconscionable that the company is shutting down its only politics site, which did hard-hitting reporting on abortion, ahead of the 2024 elections.“Readers everywhere will be worse off without Jezebel,” she added.Audra Heinrichs, a staff writer at Jezebel, told the Guardian she was “certainly not surprised” at the site’s closure, but was “heartbroken” that both G/O Media and Spanfeller “unceremoniously gutted Jezebel, a pillar of fearless feminist journalism in digital media and the website I’ve been fortunate to call home for nearly two years”.“Its demise in the wake of Dobbs and in the run-up to the 2024 election in which abortion will no doubt be a significant part of the conversation is not only undue, but despicable,” she said. “As Jim Spanfeller wrote, the Jezebel staff – both past and present – ‘changed the game’. I feel at once honored to be one small part of its singular legacy and devastated for all those who were comforted by its presence.”The closure and layoffs come at a difficult time for US journalism.On Thursday, Vice Media Group said it would lay off a number of employees, six months after more than 100 people were laid off in April. Deadline reported that a number of Vice News shows would not be renewed, meaning some employees would lose their jobs.Vice, once a titan of the media industry, filed for bankruptcy in May, and was acquired by a consortium of organizations following an auction.In October, the Washington Post announced plans to cut 240 jobs through a voluntary redundancy scheme, while earlier this year the Los Angeles Times said it would lay off 10% of its newsroom staff.The Jezebel closure brings an end to 16 years of publishing for the organization. It was launched in 2007 by Anna Holmes and Gawker Media – the online media company and blog whose flagship Gawker.com website shut down in 2016 after being financially crippled by a lawsuit filed by Terry Bollea, better known as Hulk Hogan.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the memo to Jezebel staff, the Daily Beast reported, Spanfeller praised journalists’ coverage of reproductive rights in the wake of the supreme court decision to overturn Roe v Wade.Spanfeller added that he had not “given up” on Jezebel, the Daily Beast said, despite G/O Media’s decision to shut it down.“Media is nothing if not resilient. So are its practitioners,” Spanfeller wrote to staff. “I will keep you apprised if circumstances change.”News of the site’s closure sent shockwaves through social media, with many former staffers and readers offering eulogies and notes about the site’s legacy.“I am not exaggerating when I say [Jezebel] is the reason why I became a journalist. Reading it completely changed my perspective on so many things: on abortion, on sex, on how I navigated the world as a woman in general. I owe it a huge debt. Lots of us do,” wrote the Rolling Stone reporter EJ Dickson on X.Gita Jackson, a former staffer at the G/O Media site Kotaku, wrote: “All my love to the staff laid off today at G/O Media, especially the staff of Jezebel. That site helped me understand how to be not just a feminist, but craft a coherent ideology, and being able to work alongside all the many wonderful people who worked there was a dream.”Laura Bassett, Jezebel’s most recent editor-in-chief, who departed the site earlier this fall, implored people on X to hire the Jezebel staffers who were let go on Thursday: “My heart is with the entire Jez staff who just got laid off, including incredible abortion reporters at a time when the beat couldn’t be more relevant to national politics. Please hire them.”Bassett told the Guardian that it was “ironic that the forces that necessitated the founding of Jezebel in the first place are the same ones that put the nail in its coffin – especially at a time when the site’s urgent coverage of abortion rights is more relevant than ever.“I mourn the loss of the outlet that inspired me to become a journalist in the first place and that I proudly led for two years,” she continued. “The work Jezebel writers have always done and continue to do, and the unflinching voice they bring to feminist media, are vital and irreplaceable.”
Jenna Amatulli contributed reporting; she is a former deputy editor at Jezebel More

In September 2023, Joe Biden became the first sitting US president to join strikers on a picket line. He told car workers that they “deserve a significant raise and other benefits”.

Even more surprisingly perhaps, those same workers – in a dispute with three of America’s biggest car manufacturers – were later praised by Donald Trump. Meanwhile in the UK, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to repeal anti-strike laws, and “unequivocally” support the right to strike.

It seems that ongoing – and largely successful – strike action in both the UK and the US has forced political leaders to take trade unions more seriously than they have for decades.

There is a shifting balance of power towards the unions, with employers increasingly agreeing settlements in the strikers’ favour. In the UK, key workers in sectors such as education, healthcare and transport continue to strike in pursuit of better pay and conditions – no doubt encouraged by the successes they have seen elsewhere.

For example, in October last year, striking barristers received a 15% pay rise, while London bus drivers ended their industrial action after accepting a pay deal worth 18% in February 2023. Then in July, Royal Mail workers concluded a three-year dispute after receiving a 10% rise .

In the US, a well-publicised strike which stopped production of popular TV shows and films ended in success for the Writers Guild of America, bolstering action by striking actors who have now agreed a “tentative” deal with Hollywood studios.

Low numbers and high barriers

That successful strike action is taking place at such a size and scale is remarkable considering the various hurdles still being faced by unions in both countries.

UK unions, once powerful enough to bring down a government (as when Edward Heath succumbed to the National Union of Mineworkers in 1974), have faced an increasingly restrictive environment. This culminated in 2016 legislation which established high legal barriers for strike action, such as requiring a 50% turnout, or placing tight restrictions on where and how pickets can be conducted.

In the US, striking rights are weaker still, with the balance of power overwhelmingly favouring employers. Every single state (except for Montana) is an “at will” state, meaning that an employer can effectively dismiss an employee at any time, for any reason (if the decision is not illegal, such as being discriminatory).

Membership levels also paint a depressing picture for trade unions. In the UK, just 22.3% of workers were part of a union in 2022. In the US, the proportion is 10.1%, and 84% of households do not include a single union member.

For younger workers, with no memory or experience of what unions have achieved in the past, the numbers are even lower. Only 4.4% of US workers aged 16 to 24 are members of a union, and in the UK it’s just 3.7%.

Lower levels of union membership results in less bargaining power, and therefore a weakening of employment rights and job security – which again makes the recent levels of industrial action a surprise.

Striking a blow

Falling membership also has a direct impact on the number of working days lost to industrial action, with substantial declines in recent decades. The US saw a peak of 52.8 million lost working days in 1970, and a low of 200,000 in 2014.

In the UK, 29.5 million working days lost in 1979 went down to as little as 170,000 in 2015.

But this vital metric of successful unionisation is also changing, with the number of days lost rising to 2.2 million in the US, and 2.5 million in the UK in 2022.

This suggests unions are becoming much more effective at galvanising the members they do have. An increase in the number of lost working days implies that workers’ feel like they can take industrial action, and that such action will actually make a difference.

This snowball effect will only embolden unions further, and aggrieved workers will feel more confident about standing up to their employers.

The fact that workers seem to be feeling empowered despite low numbers and an increase in the barriers to strike action, begs an important question about what is behind the current resurgence.

It may be down to the cost-of-living crisis spurring strained workers to demand above-inflation pay rises. Or it may be thanks to unemployment levels being at their lowest in nearly 50 years, providing substantial bargaining power and leverage.

Many employers would struggle to find replacement workers at the moment, especially highly skilled ones, like those in the car industry. Unions know this, and therefore feel more comfortable agitating for better terms and conditions.

Responding to the unions’ apparent new levels of confidence, the UK government recently introduced legislation designed to force some strikers back to work. Meanwhile Labour, which receives substantial funding from unions, is seeking to walk a tightrope of pleasing both workers and employers as it seeks a broad electoral coalition.

Both parties need to accept that trade unionism is experiencing a revival few thought possible – and one that shows no signs of stopping. More

Because I did something terrible in a past life and have to be punished for it in this one, on Wednesday night I watched the Republican presidential debate. It was the third in a series of televised temper tantrums by a dwindling field of eligible candidates, all pretending that there is a meaningful contest for the Republican presidential nomination and that any of them have the slightest chance of winning it.In the past, these events have ranged from the chaotic to the deranged, as characters like Tim Scott put a smiling, chipper, aw-shucks sheen on a lurid vision of enforced male supremacy, Ron DeSantis publicly indulges wild fantasies about sending American soldiers to conduct summary executions of Mexican drug cartel leaders on the soil of a sovereign foreign nation, and Chris Christie puts on a poor imitation of someone who believes in his own relevance.And like the past debates, there was plenty of rancor and personal barbs on Wednesday night, plenty of morbid daydreaming about future regimes of social control, and plenty of fact-free declarations about the supposed causes of America’s plights. There was yelling, and there were insults. Somehow, the whole thing still managed to be incredibly tedious.Donald Trump, the man who will be the Republican nominee unless he dies before next November, was not on stage. The candidates did their usual dance of trying not to attack Trump or alienate his base – which meant, in effect, that none of them could make much of a case for themselves. Nikki Haley, once a member of Trump’s cabinet, somewhat weakly suggested that Trump was not the right candidate “for now”. Even Chris Christie, whose candidacy is largely seen as a kamikaze mission meant to hurt Trump rather than a serious bid for office, could barely manage to point out that the frontrunner’s legal problems – he faces 91 felony charges – would probably distract him from the duties of office.For all of the five contenders on stage – Haley, Christie, DeSantis, Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy – their very candidacy suggests a discomfort with Trump: if they really thought he was the best guy for the job, they wouldn’t be running. But a taboo on criticizing Trump remains the one constant that unites the fractious, dysfunctional and internally chaotic Republican party, the one thing that all of them know it would end their political careers to do. They couldn’t go after Trump. So they went after each other.It would be wrong to say that the candidates’ attacks on one another were exactly ideologically driven. As they gave rambling, euphemism-laden, largely dishonest answers to a series of policy questions, it was hard to discern anything like a coherent policy orientation from any of them – save for Haley, who as in every debate emphasized her foreign policy credentials and seemed interested in reviving some early-century neoconservative positions about the efficacy and usefulness of American foreign intervention.Others wandered and waffled in their policy prescriptions: when they were asked a question that confused or frustrated them, as happened frequently, both the Florida governor DeSantis and South Carolina senator Tim Scott would pivot to bizarre non-sequiturs about closing the southern border. Ramaswamy pushed an isolationist, “America-first” approach, but nevertheless echoed calls by DeSantis to use the military to discipline southern border immigration. (Ramaswamy, it should be noted, did distinguish himself by also cautioning about crime and immigration at the Canadian border. “Build both walls,” he said.)Tim Scott, a Christian conservative pitching his candidacy as a return to traditional social hierarchies, “faith-based morals” and compassion, called for a military strike on Iran. They decried protests in support of Palestinian human rights as “pro-Hamas” and vowed to deport foreign students who participated, and to cut off the funding for any college or university that did not sufficiently suppress pro-Palestinian speech. They seemed united in encouraging Israel to take a genocidal, eliminationist approach to Palestinians in Gaza, with DeSantis telling Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job”, Haley instructing him to “finish them”, and Ramaswamy offering a disturbing fantasy about severed Palestinian heads being displayed on spikes. The candidates also largely agreed, as it happened, that they would cut Medicare and social security benefits. They set about arguing with each other about how much.The biggest rivalry of the night was between a pair who are emerging as recurring antagonists in these debates: Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. The pair have opposing visions of foreign policy, with Haley calling for greater engagement and intervention abroad and Ramaswamy serving as a conduit for the Republican party’s post-2016 return to nativist isolationism. But they also represent two distinct career paths for Republican politicians. Haley’s rabid, sadistic conservatism is the result of an old-fashioned kind of political vetting – a long career of political ascent, coupled with an affect of credentialed competence. Ramaswamy, by contrast, is a public buffoon, someone with no political experience who has gained his spot on the debate stage with provocative, hateful, algorithmically boosted social media content of outlandish public quackery.Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that the two had their most pointed clash over TikTok. The pair had been fighting all night: Ramaswamy made a misogynist remark calling Haley “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels”. Haley shot back that her shoes were five-inch heels, and quipped, somewhat nonsensically, that she wore them “for ammunition”. But they fought most bitterly when moderators asked the candidates if they would ban TikTok, the social media app that has become a bete noire on the right. Ramaswamy jumped in to point out that Haley had criticized him for campaigning on TikTok, even though her adult daughter also used the app – he suggested that Haley was not exercising adequate control over her family. Haley told him to leave her daughter out of it, and called him scum.It was a mistake, and it was also, perhaps, one of the more relatable moments for Nikki Haley, a politician so stuffy and rehearsed that one wonders if she has ever had a thought that does not occur to her in a pollster’s voice. Ramaswamy is scum: he’s self-interested and cynical, indifferent to truth, with a black hole of ambition in the place where other people might have a soul. She was right to be angry. But public expressions of anger rarely serve women.But what might have been most conspicuous about the debate was what was largely absent from it: for more than an hour and a half, the moderators did not ask about abortion, even though the issue has dominated American electoral politics up and down the ballot for nearly a year and a half. Anger over the overturning of Roe v Wade has become an abiding motivator for voters, with the issue persisting in relevance long after most pundits thought it would fade from national attention, and it is driving unlikely wins for Democratic candidates and their priorities. Abortion had delivered electoral wins for Democrats just on Tuesday, when the issue drove voters to the polls nationwide. Abortion proved to be a decisive issue not only in Ohio, where an abortion rights amendment to the state constitution was ratified by a wide margin, but also played a pivotal role in races in Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.When the moderators finally asked about “the way forward” on abortion, in their last question of the night, the candidates mostly hemmed and hawed. Some backtracked or hedged their anti-choice stances; others doubled down. They could not deliver a real answer for the same reasons they could not attack Donald Trump: neither stating their real positions against abortion or admitting that the issue has become a political albatross for the Republican party would be viable paths for their continued careers. They’re not ready to make a real argument on the issue to the American people. Luckily for them, I suppose, none of them will have to.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More