US Politics

The Republican-led House oversight committee today sent subpoenas to the president’s son Hunter Biden, his brother James Biden and family associate Rob Walker, prompting a furious response for the White House.The subpoenas, which compel the three men to appear for depositions, come as House Republicans press forward with an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden that centers on unproven allegations that he benefited from corrupt business dealings by his family members.“The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes. Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence,” the committee’s chair James Comer said in a statement.In addition to the three subpoenas, Comer requested that five other members of the Biden family and their associates appear for interviews.In a statement, White House spokesman Ian Sams condemned the GOP for dragging the president’s relatives into their long-running investigations:Joe Biden will meet this evening with a groups of Democratic and Republican senators who just returned from a trip to the Middle East, Punchbowl News reports, as his administration navigates the ongoing fallout from Israel’s invasion of Gaza following Hamas’s terrorist attack last month:Biden traveled to Israel shortly after the 7 October terrorist attack, and his secretary of state Antony Blinken in recent days visited the country, including the West Bank, as well as Iraq. However the president’s policy has attracted criticism from some Democrats as well as many Arab American voters, who see Biden as enabling the thousands of civilian deaths reported in Gaza since Israel’s counterattack against Hamas began.It’s a big news day in New York City, where Ivanka Trump just departed the witness stand in the ongoing civil fraud trial against Donald Trump and his family.The former president’s daughter kept her testimony in line with her two brothers, who already testified, while repeatedly saying she did not recall details of correspondences about loans – a plank of the case against the family, which centers on a judge’s finding that the Trump Organization for years inflated the value of its assets to secure better loan terms and other benefits.We have a separate live blog that will tell you all about Ivanka’s time on the witness stand today, and you can read it here:The Republican-led House oversight committee today sent subpoenas to the president’s son Hunter Biden, his brother James Biden and family associate Rob Walker, prompting a furious response for the White House.The subpoenas, which compel the three men to appear for depositions, come as House Republicans press forward with an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden that centers on unproven allegations that he benefited from corrupt business dealings by his family members.“The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes. Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence,” the committee’s chair James Comer said in a statement.In addition to the three subpoenas, Comer requested that five other members of the Biden family and their associates appear for interviews.In a statement, White House spokesman Ian Sams condemned the GOP for dragging the president’s relatives into their long-running investigations:Indeed, what to make of yesterday’s off-year election victories by Democrats and their causes, particularly if you are somebody worried about Joe Biden’s poll numbers?Tuesday’s election came just days after the New York Times and Siena College released a survey that found Biden was trailing the Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump in five of the six swing states expected to decide the winner. Democrats’ strong electoral performance yesterday seems to contradict that grim conclusion, but, in an analysis, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics says the result is actually not as surprising as it appears.“Off-year elections feature smaller electorates and don’t feature presidential candidates at the top of the ballot,” the center writes.All signs point to next year’s race being a close contest between Biden and Trump. Here’s more from the Center for Politics’s piece:
Last night’s results have given Democrats a shot in the arm and have confounded the recent narrative about Democrats being in deep trouble next year. But it’s also true that these races in many respects differ from the election coming up next year. It may be the case that President Biden is in fact uniquely vulnerable, and that even former President Trump – himself dragged down by plenty of vulnerabilities that likely are not getting the kind of attention now that they will if he is renominated – could beat Biden. It may also be the case that polling a year out from an election is not predictive (and it often is not). Maybe the Democrats do just have an advantage now in smaller turnout, off-year elections as their base has absorbed many higher-turnout, college-educated voters while shedding lower-turnout voters who don’t have a four-year degree. Maybe the presidential year turnout will bring out more Trump voters and give the Republicans a clearer shot. About all we feel comfortable saying is that we should continue to expect the presidential race to be close and competitive – a boring statement, we know, but probably true.
Kentucky has not supported a Democratic president in more than 25 years, but last night, voters in the Bluegrass State decided to give Democratic governor Andy Beshear a second term.In an interview with CNN, Beshear was asked if his victory in the strongly Republican state offered any lessons for beleaguered Democrats elsewhere. Here’s what he had to say:Speaking at the White House, Kamala Harris told reporters yesterday was a “good night” after voters in Ohio and Virginia handed victories to advocates of reproductive rights:The bigger question that is undoubtedly on her mind – and, of course, on Joe Biden’s – is whether the momentum Democrats have seen at the state-level since Roe v Wade was overturned will remain in a year, when the presidential elections are held.The Council on American-Islamic Relations has denounced the Republican-led House of Representatives’ decision to censure Rashida Tlaib over her criticisms of Israel.In a statement released on Wednesday, CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad said:
The American Muslim community stands against this hypocritical and racist targeting of representative Rashida Tlaib, whose voice is indispensable in representing the concerns of millions of Americans who are horrified by the war crimes our government supports against the Palestinian people. She should wear this cowardly censure as a badge of honor. We will not be cowed by those attempting to muzzle our voices.
Both Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives who orchestrated the suppression and censure of the only Muslim Palestinian voice in Congress under the cover of darkness while ignoring the openly racist, bigoted and violent remarks that members of Congress have made about Muslims and Palestinians, should be deeply ashamed of their actions. They are on the wrong side of history.
Speaking to reporters, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called last night’s Democratic victories across the country an “important night for the American people.”
“They rejected these extreme, extreme policies that we’re seeing from the Republican party and they also lifted up the president’s agenda, the president’s values.”
In response to a follow-up question on Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, Jean-Pierre said:
“You have to take these polls with a grain of salt… I talked about 2020…what we saw is a president that was able to bring an incredibly strong, diverse coalition to win in 2020. We saw the same thing in 2022…we kept on hearing about a ‘Red Wave’ that didn’t materialize…
We don’t put much stock in polls. The president’s going to focus on delivering for the American people. He has an agenda that is incredibly popular and that matters.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “we strongly disagree” with Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib’s support for the controversial pro-Palestinian phrase “from the river to the sea”, for which the sole Palestinian congresswoman was censured by the Republican-controlled House on Tuesday night.“We strongly disagree with using that phrase – it’s been said by many people at the White House. I do not have any conversations to read out to you with the congresswomen,” Jean-Pierre said after being asked if Joe Biden has spoken to Tlaib about the matter.But Jean-Pierre added: “We have been very, very clear how it is important to be mindful about the language that we use at this time, and we will continue to speak out on that.”Tlaib, who is the only Palestinian American in the US Congress, on Tuesday defended her criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and urged US lawmakers to join in calling for a ceasefire.Tlaib has long criticized Joe Biden’s support of Israel, but received intense backlash after her defense of the slogan “from the river to the sea”.In a social media post on Friday, Tlaib defended the phrase as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate”.The full slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, references the land that sits between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. While many recognize the slogan as a call for Palestinian liberation, others argue that the term has been used to call for the destruction of Israel and the persecution of Jewish people.White House national security spokesman John Kirby was just asked at the daily press briefing how long is a humanitarian pause – in the sense of something being characterized as such.Is, for example, a 72 hour humanitarian pause different from a ceasefire, Kirby was asked by one of the gathered journalists.Kirby said a humanitarian pause was “as long as it needed to be”, eg to get aid in to Gaza or people out of the Palestinian territory, and was something different from “a general ceasefire” that stands as a “cessation of hostilities” between both sides as they seek to negotiate towards an end game in a war, he said.“We do not support that at this time,” Kirby said. He said the White House regarded at ceasefire as currently being to the benefit of Hamas, as opposed to Israel, in military and propaganda terms.A humanitarian pause, in contrast, is something “temporary, localized and for specific purposes,” Kirby said.White House national security spokesman John Kirby adds, at the press briefing now ongoing in the west wing, that it could take “more than one pause” in the fighting in Gaza to get all hostages out of the territory.That is not to say there is any sign today that an opportunity has yet been created for them to be released.Israel’s military is currently reiterating that there will be no ceasefire in Gaza – but the military will allow for “humanitarian pauses,” Reuters notes.The White House reckons such pauses could “last hours or days.”Kirby says the US continues to urge Israel to minimize civilian deaths in Gaza, especially putting people who are currently trying to flee to the south of the territory or out of it altogether “in harm’s way”.He acknowledged that “most Palestinians don’t want to leave” and there are around a million people internally displaced within Gaza right now.The White House is holding its press briefing and national security spokesman John Kirby is reiterating a point he made yesterday, that the notion of Israel occupying Gaza is “not a long term solution to post-conflict governance.”This follows Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration earlier this week that Israel would take control of security in Gaza for an indefinite period, adding to the sense of uncertainty over the future of the Palestinian territory even as it is currently gripped by war and humanitarian crisis.Kirby said, meanwhile, that there are still between 500 and 600 Americans that the US is trying to get out of Gaza. And, asked by journalists about what the militant group Hamas, that controls Gaza, is demanding to release the more than 200 hostages that its fighters snatched when they attacked southern Israel on October 7 and killed at least 1,400 people, Kirby would not give details. The hostages include Americans.“We have a way to communicate with Hamas, we are using that way. We are doing everything we can to get those folks back with their families,” he said.Bernie Sanders has also hit back at the Republican-led House’s decision to censure Rashida Tlaib over her criticisms of Israel amid its deadly bombing campaign that has killed over 10,000 Palestinians, saying:
“The House should pass desperately needed aid for Gaza, work to stop the conflict in the Middle East, and address the pressing needs of the American people.
Instead they voted to censure my friend Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress. Pathetic and shameful!” the Independent Vermont senator said.
MPower Change, a Muslim-led grassroots organization, has thrown its support behind Rashida Tlaib following her censure by the Republican-led House of Representatives.In a post on Instagram, the group said:
“Shame on those who voted to silence the only Palestinian voice in Congress. Rep. Rashida Tlaib has been censured for defending the rights of Palestinians to live free of Israeli occupation and siege and for demanding an end to the bloodshed in Gaza.
Rashida has always been on the side of humanity and she will continue to do that regardless of those who try to stop her.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has spoken out against the House’s censure of Rashida Tlaib over her criticisms of Israel amid its deadly bombing campaign across Gaza that has killed over 10,000 Palestinians in reponse to the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.
“It is not lost on anyone how many offensive, violent, and racist things people regularly hear members of Congress say, yet virtually the only one that gets censured for her political speech also happens to be the only Palestinian American.
It does not reflect well. At all,” the New York Democratic representative said.
The Republican-led House of Representatives has voted to censure Rashida Tlaib, Michigan’s Democratic representative and Congress’s only Palestinian-American.The Guardian’s Chris Stein reports:The 234-188 tally came after enough Democrats joined with Republicans to censure Tlaib, a punishment one step below expulsion from the House. The three-term congresswoman has long been a target of criticism for her views on the decades-long conflict in the Middle East.The debate on the censure resolution on Tuesday afternoon was emotional and intense. The Republican representative Rich McCormick of Georgia pushed the censure measure in response to what he called Tlaib’s promotion of antisemitic rhetoric. He said she had “levied unbelievable falsehoods about our greatest ally, Israel, and the attack on October 7”.Tlaib provoked criticism last week by defending the controversial slogan “from the river to the sea”.In remarks on the House floor, Tlaib defended her criticism of the country and urged lawmakers to join in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.“I will not be silenced and I will not let you distort my words,” Tlaib said. “No government is beyond criticism. The idea that criticizing the government of Israel is antisemitic sets a very dangerous precedent, and it’s been used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our nation.”She also said she had condemned the Hamas attacks on Israeli citizens several times.For further details, click here:Following a series of Democratic wins across the country, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said that “it’s time to recognize Maga extremism is the wrong answer.”In an address on Wednesday, the New York senator said:
“There is no possible takeaway from last night other than this: Americans fiercely opposed Maga extremism, fiercely opposed total abortion bans and want bipartisan leaders who can put America’s needs first.
After last night’s results, I have a message to my Republican colleagues:
When the Maga agenda can’t win in deep-red Kentucky or in Ohio or help you in Virginia, it’s time to recognize Maga extremism is the wrong answer, not just for the country but even for the GOP.”
Here is more from the Guardian’s staff and agencies on Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated ‘“Central Park Five” members who won a New York City council seat following yesterday’s election:Salaam, a Democrat, will represent a central Harlem district on the city council, having run unopposed for the seat in one of many local elections playing out across New York state on Tuesday. He won his primary election in a landslide.The victory comes more than two decades after DNA evidence was used to overturn the convictions of Salaam and four other Black and Latino men in the 1989 rape and beating of a white jogger in Central Park. Salaam was imprisoned for almost seven years.“For me, this means that we can really become our ancestors’ wildest dreams,” Salaam said in an interview before the election.Elsewhere in New York City, voters were deciding whether to re-elect the Queens district attorney and cast ballots in other city council races. The council, which passes legislation and has some oversight powers over city agencies, has long been dominated by Democrats and the party is certain to retain firm control after the election.Local elections on Long Island could offer clues about how the city’s suburbs could vote in next year’s congressional elections.For the full story, click here: More

“I don’t recall,” Ivanka Trump repeatedly told a New York court on Wednesday as she took the witness stand at her father’s $250m fraud trial and was quizzed about deals prosecutors claim prove the Trump Organization knowingly misled lenders.Trump’s eldest daughter gave an orderly, calm performance after the often chaotic testimony of her father and brothers. She pointed out that she had not worked for the family firm since 2017 and said she did not recall many specific conversations but added: “I have no reason to doubt it.”But like her father and brothers, she consistently said she did not recall details about specific transactions or conversations. “There were many emails, many conversations,” she said.The trial is just one of a series that the Republican presidential frontrunner faces. Trump has been charged with 91 felony counts across criminal cases in New York, Florida, Washington and Georgia.New York’s attorney general is trying to prove that the Trump family and other executives knowingly inflated Trump’s wealth in order to secure favorable loans.In one exchange Ivanka Trump was shown a series of emails and other documents relating to a loan from Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management division. The loan was contingent on Trump maintaining a value in excess of $3bn. Ivanka Trump negotiated to get the net worth covenant reduced to $2.5bn after a Trump lawyer expressed some concerns.“It doesn’t get better than this,” Ivanka Trump said of the terms in 2011. “Let’s discuss asap.” That year Donald Trump would go on to claim he was worth $4.2bn. The prosecution alleges that Trump was not worth $2bn at the time.“I don’t recall,” she said, when asked about multiple documents and emails that showed she played a key role in deals to obtain financing for the Trump Organization.Asked about whether she understood that the financial statements at the center of the case were used to guarantee a loan to purchase the Old Post Office building in Washington DC, which became the now defunct Trump International hotel, Trump said: “I generally understand that there was a personal guarantee condition of the loan and a series of requirements that were fulfilled by the team in accordance to the terms.”Trump’s lawyers made the case that Deutsche Bank was delighted to do business with the family and favorable loans were part of their attempts to woo them. Ivanka Trump said one of its top bankers had “expressed tremendous excitement to have our account”. Deutsche Bank severed ties with Trump in 2021 after the deadly January 6 US Capitol attack.Last month, Ivanka Trump asked the court to remove her from the prosecution’s witness list, but the request was denied. Ivanka Trump tried to argue that appearing in court would cause her “undue hardship” if she was to testify during the school week. The attorney general’s office had wanted Trump’s eldest daughter to testify in court before the former president himself took the stand, but ultimately rescheduled her appearance because of her appeal.Ivanka Trump was once listed as a co-defendant on the case, along with her father and two adult brothers, but an appeals court tossed out the claims against her last summer, saying that her involvement with the Trump Organization had passed the statute of limitations.Before the trial started, Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump guilty of inflating the value of his assets on state financial statements that were used to broker deals and obtain loans. Though Trump’s team is appealing the decision, he stands to lose his state business licenses if the appellate court sides with Engoron. The actual trial is over the fine Trump will have to pay. Prosecutors are asking for at least $250m.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIvanka Trump had served as a top executive at the Trump Organization, alongside brothers Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, until 2017, when she stepped down to assist her father at the White House. Like her siblings, she helped her father broker deals with lenders to develop properties for the company.Brothers Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump testified last week, distancing themselves from the financial statements at the center of the case despite multiple documents showing they affirmed the statements’ financial representations and were, at times, consulted for the statements.Trump has not been present in the court for any of his children’s testimony. Ahead of his daughter’s appearance he once again lambasted the judge and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who brought the case against him, calling James, who is Black, “Corrupt and Racist,” on Truth Social, his social media site.Ivanka Trump has moved to distance herself from the family business since Trump’s election defeat. In April, she engaged her own lawyers in the New York case.Trump’s eldest daughter has also broken from the family’s line in previous testimony. In 2022 she told investigators looking into the January 6 Capitol insurrection that she did not believe the election was stolen, contrary to her father’s furious insistence. More

House Republicans issued subpoenas on Wednesday to members of Joe Biden’s family, taking their most aggressive step yet in an impeachment inquiry bitterly opposed by Democrats that is testing the reach of congressional oversight powers.The long-awaited move by Representative James Comer, the chairman of the House oversight committee, to subpoena the president’s son Hunter and his brother James comes as Republicans hope to gain ground in their nearly year-long investigation. So far, they have failed to uncover evidence directly implicating the president in any wrongdoing.But Republicans say the evidence trail they have uncovered paints a troubling picture of “influence peddling” by Biden’s family in their business dealings, particularly with clients overseas.“Now, the House oversight committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence,” Comer, of Kentucky, said in a statement.The stakes are exceedingly high, as the inquiry could result in Republicans bringing impeachment charges against Biden, the ultimate penalty for what the US constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors”.The subpoenas demand that Hunter Biden and James Biden, as well as former business associate Rob Walker, appear before the oversight committee for a deposition. Lawmakers also requested that James Biden’s wife, Sara Biden, and Hallie Biden, the wife of the president’s deceased son Beau, appear voluntarily for transcribed interviews.Requests for comment from Hunter Biden, who lives in California, and James Biden, who is from Royal Oak, Maryland, were not immediately returned.Both the White House and the Biden family’s personal lawyers have dismissed the investigation as a political ploy aimed at hurting the Democratic president. They say the inquiry is a blatant attempt to help former president Donald Trump, the early frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, as he runs again for the White House.Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said the investigation has been full of “worn-out, false, baseless or debunked claims”. In a letter to the House speaker, Mike Johnson, on Wednesday morning, Lowell urged the new speaker to rein in the “partisan political games”.Johnson, now settling into the speakership after replacing Kevin McCarthy as the top Republican in the House, has given his blessing to the inquiry and has hinted that a decision could come soon on whether to pursue articles of impeachment against Biden.“I think we have a constitutional responsibility to follow this truth where it leads,” Johnson told Fox News Channel recently. He also said in a separate Fox interview that he would support Comer’s decision to subpoena the president’s son, saying “desperate times call for desperate measures, and that perhaps is overdue”.Since January, Republicans have been investigating the Biden family for what they claim is a pattern of “influence peddling” spanning back to when Biden was Barack Obama’s vice-president. Comer claimed the committee had “uncovered a mountain of evidence” that he said would show how Biden abused his power and repeatedly lied about a “wall” between his political position and his son’s private business dealings.While questions have arisen about the ethics surrounding the Biden family’s international business, no evidence has emerged to prove that Joe Biden, in his current or previous office, abused his role or accepted bribes. More

Supporters of Rashida Tlaib are donating to and speaking out in defense of the progressive Democratic congresswoman following her censure from Congress, while the White House “strongly disagrees” with her use of the slogan “from the river to the sea”.Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in the US Congress, was censured on Tuesday over her criticism of Israel’s attacks in Gaza.In a 234 to 188 vote, 22 Democrats joined Republicans to pass a resolution punishing Tlaib for allegedly “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel” and “promoting false narratives” about the 7 October attack on Israel.Tlaib has long criticized Joe Biden’s support of Israel, but received intense backlash after her defense of the slogan.In a social media post on Friday, Tlaib defended the phrase as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate”.The full slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, references the land that sits between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. While many recognize the slogan as a call for Palestinian liberation, others argue that the term has been used to call for the destruction of Israel and the persecution of Jewish people.The White House denounced Tlaib’s use of the slogan on Wednesday.“As it relates to that term, we’ve been very clear we strongly disagree,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre during Wednesday’s press briefing, Reuters reported.But many supporters of Tlaib posted their thoughts to social media.Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, founder of the blog MuslimGirl.com, thanked Tlaib for her service and called out Congress for failing to pass a ceasefire.“Thank you for becoming the lesson for future generations – for solidifying the hypocrisy of this moment, when our Congress refused to vote for a ceasefire but instead to censure the ONLY Palestinian rep we have,” wrote Al-Khatahtbeh on X, formerly known as Twitter.Peter Beinart, a professor at the Newmark School of Journalism and editor-at-large for Jewish Currents, posted a message of support for Tlaib, adding that the congresswoman “exposes as a sham [other Democrats’] claim to defend human rights”.“She reminds them that their lack of courage is a choice,” Beinart said in a post to X.Others called for donations to Tlaib’s re-election campaign.Progressive legislators and groups have also rallied to demonstrate their support of Tlaib. The Missouri representative Cori Bush, who has also faced backlash for criticizing Israel, posted a message of support to X before Tuesday’s censure vote.“I stand with Rashida,” Bush said.The Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar called out the lack of discipline for Republican lawmakers who have publicly called for Gaza to be turned into a “parking lot”.“Where is the condemnation for that?? Where is the condemnation of the 10,000+ Palestinians dying?” wrote Omar on X.“We will continue to stand for the dignity and humanity of ALL in the face of inhumanity,” she said.Representative Alexandrio Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X that it was “not lost on anyone how many offensive, violent, and racist things people regularly hear members of Congress say, yet virtually the only one that gets censured for her political speech also happens to be the only Palestinian American. It does not reflect well. At all.”Usamah Andrabi, spokesperson for the progressive Pac Justice Democrats called Tlaib’s censure “shameful” and “unmistakably racist” in a statement to the Guardian.“It is utterly shameful and disgusting that we saw 22 Democrats who have seen 10,000 Palestinians getting murdered with bombs they voted to fund – and they couldn’t even stand with the single Palestinian woman in Congress when Republicans attacked her,” he said.“It is clear that the only thing they’re full of is a bloodlust for genocide and ethnic cleansing,” he added. “Every single one of these Democrats’ names should be remembered for their cowardice.”Such support has been tempered by hostility from Republicans and Democrats who voted to censure Tlaib, who has served in the US House since 2019.The Tennessee representative Marsha Blackburn replied to a statement from Tlaib via X.“As the only Palestinian American in Congress, you should want freedom for Palestinians, which starts with eradicating Hamas,” Blackburn said, in part.The Democratic representative Brad Schneider accused Tlaib of “inflammatory language that dangerously amplifies Hamas propaganda”, in a statement about his support of the censure.“I recognize this censure resolution is not a perfect resolution in its language or form, but unfortunately it is the only vehicle available to formally rebuke the dangerous disinformation and aspersions that Rep Tlaib continues to use and defend,” he said in a statement via X.Tlaib’s censure comes as more than 10,000 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, the territory’s health ministry said on Monday, the Associated Press reported.Israel has launched a series of airstrikes on the territory, including on Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp. The UN human rights office has warned the attack “could amount to war crimes”.Israel attacked Gaza after Hamas fighters crossed into Israel from the territory and killed 1,400 people and took more than 200 hostages. Casualties on both sides have been mostly civilians. More

More than a year after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, handing states the power to decide if and how to ban abortion, voters have again overwhelmingly rejected attempts to curtail access to the procedure. A string of successes for abortion rights groups on Tuesday are raising hopes among Democrats that, despite recent dismal polls, the issue will lift their odds in 2024.In Ohio, the only state to hold an abortion-related ballot referendum in 2023, more than 56% of voters agreed to enshrine the right to the procedure into the state constitution. In Virginia, Democrats won back full control of the state legislature after Republicans campaigned on the promise of a “sensible limit” that would ban most abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy. In Kentucky, the incumbent Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, bested his anti-abortion Republican opponent. And in Pennsylvania, in a race dominated by talk of abortion, Democrats won a seat on the state supreme court.On Tuesday evening in downtown Columbus, Ohio, abortion rights advocates crowded into a hotel ballroom to watch as results streamed in. Once the vote was called in their favor, the conversation in the room immediately turned to the topic on everyone’s minds: what does the victory mean for next year? In 2024, abortion-related referendums may be on the ballot in roughly a dozen states, including in critical swing states like Nevada, Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Iowa. Democrats will almost certainly lean on the issue to buoy their party in races for Congress and the White House. And Tuesday’s results in Ohio raise hopes that they might be able to pluck voters from the other side. While Joe Biden lost Ohio in 2020, garnering only about 45% of the vote, Issue 1, the proposal to add abortion rights into the state constitution, won with an estimated 56% of the vote on Tuesday. That sweep indicates that Republican voters are abandoning their party on this issue.“Abortion is a winning issue, including in states that are considered red,” said Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of Urge: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity. “Young people, black voters, rural voters – voters all across the state came out and we saw support in every single corner of the state. The lesson for other states is: don’t take anyone for granted. Don’t assume they’re gonna support you, but also don’t assume that they’re gonna oppose.”The issue turns voters out in high numbers, which could also prove a boon for Biden at a time of low enthusiasm: nearly 4 million people voted this year on Issue 1, according to early data from Ohio’s secretary of state office. That’s only slightly less than the 4.2 million people who turned out to vote in Ohio’s gubernatorial race last year – even though 2023 was considered an “off-off” election year.The failures in Ohio and Virginia also leave Republicans without a clear roadmap for messaging on abortion – an issue that led them to underperform in the 2022 midterms. In Ohio, opponents of the ballot initiative, Issue 1, focused much of their message not on the morality of abortion, but on the idea that Issue 1 threatened parents’ rights to know if their children underwent an abortion or gender-affirming care. (That claim is dubious, legal experts told the Guardian.) In Virginia, Republicans tried to take advantage of Americans’ lack of support for abortion in the second and third trimester by proposing to ban abortion past 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and medical emergencies.Both efforts were viewed as tests for next year – had either message won over voters, Republicans across the country may have adopted them in their own races in 2024. Now, their strategy is in question, and any course they choose risks alienating key constituencies. “If the GOP moves to the center on abortion, they’re afraid that they’ll lose conservative donors and base voters – who are the ones who tend to be the most passionate Republican voters, the ones who turn out the most reliably and also people who donate a lot of money,” said Mary Ziegler, a University of California, Davis School of Law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. “Republicans have been trying to finesse that, with pretty much no success to date.”Despite being directly responsible for overturning Roe v Wade through his appointments to the supreme court, Donald Trump has attempted to stem the damage by distancing himself from much of his party, coming out against a national abortion ban. But polling shows that voters don’t necessarily trust Republicans who say they will not totally ban abortion. That may be in part due to their decades-long partnership with an anti-abortion movement that would like to eliminate the procedure entirely.Hours before polls closed on Tuesday, Jamie Curry, Ohio regional coordinator for the anti-abortion group Students for Life, tried to convince passing Ohio State University students that Issue 1 was too extreme. “You seem to be in favor of a commonsense, middle of the road, but there’s plenty of people who align more pro-choice and are voting no on this issue,” Curry told one student.But Curry’s message of moderation and compromise were contrasted by her group’s nearby poster board, which read: “All human beings are valuable persons, no matter their stage in life.”“Republicans can spend their money saying that, ‘We are the moderates on this,’” said Joey Teitelbaum, vice-president of research for Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm. “But in voting for Democrats in Virginia and voting for Andy Beshear, where abortion was a major part of that race and the communications, voters are clearly saying, ‘We do not trust Republicans on this.’” More

Loudoun county, Virginia, attracted national headlines in 2021, when parents outraged over the alleged instruction of critical race theory and policies regarding transgender students shouted down officials at school board meetings.Republican Glenn Youngkin made the issue a central focus of his gubernatorial campaign in the months after, accusing Democrats of politicizing education to the detriment of students’ learning and blaming them for pandemic-related school closures. And he had hoped it would continue to work in Tuesday’s general election.“No more are we going to make parents stand outside of the room,” Youngkin told a crowd in Leesburg, part of Loudon county, on Monday. “We are going to put them at the head of the table in charge of our children’s lives.”But that message failed on Tuesday, as Democratic-endorsed candidates won a majority on the Loudoun county school board.The elections, in which every school board seat was up for grabs on Tuesday, had been framed as a test of the resiliency of parents’ rights as a campaign issue. Republicans had hoped to replicate Youngkin’s success in Loudoun county, which serves more than 80,000 students in a wealthy area located about an hour outside Washington. Instead, Loudoun county voters delivered a six-seat majority for Democratic-backed candidates on the nine-seat school board.The Democrats’ wins reflected their broader success on Tuesday, as they maintained their majority in the state senate and flipped control of the house of delegates. Despite Youngkin’s hopes that Republicans would take full control of the legislature, he will instead finish his gubernatorial term with a statehouse led by Democrats.Over the first two years of his governorship, Youngkin had pushed a series of controversial policies in schools to amplify his support of parents’ rights. On the day that he took office in 2022, Youngkin signed an executive order to “restore excellence in education by ending the use of divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, in public education”. Another order signed on the same day eliminated mask mandates for students in Virginia’s schools.“No day will be more vividly held in my mind than when I sat on those steps in our capitol, and I signed that bill that said that parents will decide if your child wears a mask in school,” Youngkin said on Monday. “Folks, children belong to parents, not to the state.”Republican-backed candidates championed a similar message in Loudoun county ahead of this year’s elections, pointing to the school board’s mismanagement of sexual assault allegations as evidence of the need for a change in leadership.The new Loudoun county school board will be composed solely of new members, as the two incumbents who ran on Tuesday both lost, and Republicans fell short in their efforts to take the majority.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Democrats took a victory lap on Tuesday, some of them pointed to the results in Loudoun county as evidence that Youngkin’s message of parents’ rights no longer resonates with Virginia voters.“It’s always been obvious to those who paid attention that Republicans oversold their political advantage by weaponizing school board meetings with culture war issues,” the Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Glenn Youngkin’s politics have never been popular in Loudoun.”The disappointing results could spell trouble for Republicans as they look ahead to the 2024 elections, when control of the White House and Congress will be on the ballot. As one of the only states holding off-year elections, Virginia generally serves as a test of each party’s messaging before a presidential race.The results in Loudoun county and across the state of Virginia indicate that Republicans may need a new message. More

The New York Times released a poll on Monday showing Donald Trump beating Joe Biden in several key states, and progressives across the country started to panic. The next day, actual voters in actual states cast actual ballots, and suddenly Democratic prospects don’t look nearly as bleak. In state after state, Democrats and progressives swept to victory, affirming the findings from decades of demographic and electoral data showing that the majority of Americans prefer the more multiracial and inclusive vision of Democrats to the angry and punitive policies of the Republicans.At the heart of the Times poll was the suggestion that African Americans and Latinos were gravitating in large and significant numbers to support Trump. According to the poll, 71% of Black voters and just 50% of Latinos backed Biden. If accurate, those numbers would represent a historic collapse of Democratic support among people of color. Since exit polling by racial groups began in 1976, African Americans have supported the Democratic nominee for president with 88% of their votes, on average. In 2020, Biden got 87% of the Black vote, and in the 2022 midterms, Democratic candidates received 86% of the Black vote. As for Latinos, Biden secured 65% support in 2020.Rather than question the findings of a poll that contradicted decades of prior electoral evidence, much of the media ran with the findings and prophesied doom for Democrats. But then a funny thing happened on the way to a second Trump administration. Voters went to the polls this week and elected Democratic candidates and passed progressive policies.In Kentucky, a state Trump won by 26 points, the Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, handily defeated the Trump acolyte Daniel Cameron. The fact that Cameron is African American and yet still performed poorly undermines the narrative that Black voters are donning Maga hats in large numbers. As the professor Jason Johnson tweeted on Tuesday: “Cameron is a Black Republican candidate w/ Trump’s endorsement in a deeply Red State and he’s going to lose. Can we stop w/ the ‘Trump is gaining ground with black voters’ narrative? Because this should’ve been the test case.”There is literally no state more historically intertwined with the Black experience in America than Virginia. It is where Africans were first brought in 1619, and it was the capital of the Confederacy during the civil war. In 2021, the Republican Glenn Youngkin won the gubernatorial election, and his party flipped control of the house of delegates, occasioning a spate of articles about the shifting political tides in the commonwealth. But activists and organizers led by groups such as New Virginia Majority steadily registered and mobilized voters of color in large numbers, resulting in Democrats maintaining control of the state senate and recapturing a majority in the house of delegates. Come January, in the same building where the Confederates attempted to organize their white nationalist rebellion, an African American, Don Scott, will become the speaker of the house.In Ohio, a state carried twice by Trump, Democrats backed a pro-choice ballot measure that would amend the state constitution to give individuals the “right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions”. The measure swept to a resounding victory, 57% to 43%. Buckeye state Black voters supported the amendment with 83% of their ballots, sharply refuting the premise that Black support for progressive causes is dissipating.Other states and cities also rode the progressive wave this week, with Democrats winning a contest for a seat on the Pennsylvania state supreme court and also prevailing in a key race in Allegheny county.This week’s election results affirm a few fundamental truths about American politics. Truths proven by this week’s results and nearly 50 years of electoral results, annual census reports and biennial exit polls.There is no more immutable law of politics than the fact that African Americans overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. This is less the result of a particular partisan affinity than the logical reaction to the reality that the fuel of the Republican political machine is white racial rage and resentment. No Democratic nominee has received less than 83% of the Black vote. In terms of African Americans, the question is not who they will vote for, but whether they will vote. That is the real challenge facing progressives in 2024. And that relates to the second fundamental truth, the changing composition of the country’s electorate and the implications for political contests.In the 1960s, people of color comprised just 12% of the US population. Today, the nation is far more racially diverse, with 41% of the population identifying as people of color as the demographic revolution continues apace. In a country defined by the ongoing existential battle over whether this will be a white nationalist society or a multiracial democracy, the majority of people reject the idea of making America white again. Most people in America prefer the Democrats’ vision of a multiracial America (however halfheartedly it may be expressed at times) to the raw, unapologetic white nationalism espoused in coded and not-so-coded ways by Republicans. With the sole exception of the 2004 presidential election, the Democratic nominee has won the popular vote in every single presidential election over the past 30 years.Republicans understand this reality better than Democrats which is why they ferociously focus on suppressing the vote far more than Democrats emphasize expanding voting. From Florida to Texas to Georgia, Republican legislatures and governors have passed draconian laws designed to make it harder to vote.The most important lesson coming out of this week’s election (beyond ignoring aberrant polling data from august institutions) is that maximizing voter turnout is the key to victory. Biden and the entire progressive movement must both inspire the multiracial New American Majority by fighting for unapologetically social justice policies and also invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the kind of voter turnout machine required to surmount suppression and manifest the power of the true majority.
Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and author of Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good More

Late last month, when House Republicans ended their chaotic, weeks-long search for a new speaker by elevating Louisiana’s Mike Johnson, a curious trend of stories began appearing in national media. Democratic operatives (and perhaps a few of Johnson’s Republican adversaries, too) had begun leaking what’s known in Washington as “oppo”, or opposition research – unflattering truths about political rivals – about the new speaker.For many politicians, the embarrassing secrets revealed in an oppo dump are somewhat oblique; usually, they’re about money. Maybe the candidate, as a young lawyer, represented a bank in a case where he aimed to repossess the home of a poor widow; maybe the candidate’s husband or daughter was appointed to a job they did not seem quite qualified for, raising questions about nepotism or access trading. The aim of such stories is to make a politician appear corrupt, or unscrupulous – like someone beholden to greed and not to principle.But the picture that has emerged instead of the once-obscure Louisiana congressmen has not been that of the typically cynical climber, maneuvering corporate heights in pursuit of their own ambition without regard to ethics. Instead, the revelations that have emerged about Mike Johnson since his ascent to the speakership paint a picture of a fevered zealot: in thrall of baroque and morbid religious fantasies; beholden to a regressive, bigoted and morbid worldview; and above all, obsessed – with a lurid and creepy enthusiasm – with sex, and how he thinks it should be done.The enforcement of a Christian sexual morality and a strict gender hierarchy of men over women have not been incidental or minor themes of Johnson’s career: they have been its primary goal, one he pursued doggedly through his pre-congressional life. As a lawyer, he worked against gay marriage, and to uphold Louisiana’s criminal ban on gay sex, writing briefs that described homosexuality as “inherently unnatural” and “a dangerous lifestyle” which he compared to pedophilia and bestiality. He still opposes marriage equality, and led efforts to squash the speakership candidacy of Tom Emmer last month in part because of Emmer’s support for gay marriage rights. Along the way, Johnson has authored a national version of Florida’s so-called “don’t say gay” bill, which would outlaw mentions of homosexuality at schools, hospitals and other federally funded facilities. He opposes access to transition-related healthcare for adolescents and adults alike, and both he and his wife have worked to advance so-called “conversion therapy”, an abusive, homophobic practice that has been outlawed in several states.It probably goes without saying that Johnson, like many Republicans and nearly all of the party’s luminaries, favors a national ban on abortion, which he calls a “holocaust.” While more savvy Republicans like Glenn Youngkin have attempted to frame themselves as “moderates” by placing their preferred abortion bans at supposedly more amenable points in pregnancy, like 15 weeks, Johnson has made no such effort: he has sponsored legislation that would ban abortion nationwide at all stages of pregnancy, establishing a “right to life” for fertilized eggs that supersedes women’s rights to dignity and self-determination.His sweeping antagonism to abortion rights has extended to several kinds of birth control, such as IUDs, implants and many birth control pills. In his career as a lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom – a rightwing legal shop spearheading efforts to advance Christian gender conservatism through litigation – he argued that the most popular kinds of hormonal birth control, and those that are controlled by women, are equivalent to abortion and should therefore be banned. When the House advanced a bill to codify the right to contraception after the US supreme court’s Dobbs ruling in 2022, Johnson voted against it. He has since played dumb on the issue, claiming he does not remember his opposition to birth control in an interview with Shannon Bream of Fox News.In light of his aggressively misogynist and anti-gay views on public policy, it is likely not surprising that Johnson also advances a disturbing and sexist view of the private sphere. He has condemned no-fault divorce, the liberalized regime of divorce law that was won by feminists in the 20th century, and which allowed women to initiate divorce and to exit marriages without having to prove either infidelity or abuse to a court. Johnson says that women’s freedom to leave marriages, along with their freedom to elect out of motherhood when they choose, is responsible for mass shootings.He and his own wife have a so-called “covenant marriage”, a religious arrangement that formalizes men’s superiority and constricts women’s freedom to leave, designed for conservative straight couples who feel that no-fault divorce and gay marriage rights somehow degrade their own unions. He has also spoken of being in a bizarre arrangement of mutual masturbation monitoring with his son, with whom Johnson installed family surveillance technology that reports users’ pornography consumption habits to one another.It would be easy to see Johnson’s wildly regressive gender politics as a personal quirk – his beliefs that gay people are sinful and inferior; that women should not be able to live freely from men or use their bodies in ways that are counter to wishes of the men close to them; that marriage should act, for men, as an entitlement to absolute control, and for women, as a prison. But these ideas are not quirks; they are part of a powerful constituency in the Republican party, one that has now found its way into the speakership, second in line for the presidency.Gender conservatism does not tend to attract as much notice as the other pillars of the far-right ideology: it is less distinct than the far right’s avowed white supremacy, less flashy than its hostility to democracy. But the convictions shared by Johnson – about women’s inferiority and men’s right to control them, about gay people’s moral transgression, and about the ways that the sexed body at birth can, and must, be used to determine the outcomes of a person’s life – have become the foundation upon which the Republican party’s warring factions are set to unite.The notion that the Christian right tradition that Johnson represents would be uncomfortable with Trumpism was always overstated; in America, Christian conservatives have always had more moral vanity than moral conviction. But now, Johnson’s ascent to the head of the thoroughly Trumpist House Republican caucus marks the groundbreaking for a new party order. The Republican party is rebuilding itself: it’s building on misogyny.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More