US Politics

Thousands of Palestinians killed in Israel’s attacks on Gaza over the past three weeks “did not deserve to die”, according to the US national security adviser, in a marked softening of the Biden administration’s hardline support of Israel.In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, Jake Sullivan, the White House’s chief security adviser, said Hamas is “hiding” behind civilians but that doesn’t lessen Israel’s “responsibility under international humanitarian law and the laws in war to do all in their power to protect the civilian population”.“There have been deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians in this conflict and that is an absolute tragedy … Those people did not deserve to die. Those people deserve to live lives of peace and safety and dignity,” Sullivan told ABC’s This Week.At least 8,000 Palestinians including more than 3,300 children and more than 2,000 women have been killed by Israeli’s military bombardment of Gaza, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The toll is expected to rise as Israel continues with its ground offensive – in addition to ongoing aerial attacks.Israel’s current offensives were launched in retaliation for the surprise cross-border attack on 7 October in which Hamas, which has run Gaza since 2007, killed about 1,400 people in Israel and took more than 200 hostages.“Israel has a right – indeed a duty – to defend itself against terrorists. Israel also has a responsibility to distinguish between terrorists and ordinary civilians,” said Sullivan.Sullivan’s remarks come after another weekend of mass protests across the country demanding an immediate ceasefire and an end to America’s financial and political support for Israel. In New York, thousands of people occupied Grand Central station during the Friday night rush hour in an act of civil disobedience organized by progressive groups Jewish Voices for Peace and IfNotNow.Hundreds of protesters were arrested inside Grand Central amid shouts of ‘Let Gaza live’ and ‘never again for anyone, never again is now’ – a slogan associated with the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides.Sullivan’s remarks on civilian deaths come after Biden cast doubt on the veracity of the Palestinian death toll reported daily by the Gaza health ministry.“I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” the US president said last week. “But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”UN agencies and Human Rights Watch have over many years checked – and verified – the health authority’s figures, finding no major discrepancies.Biden’s remarks triggered widespread anger, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations calling on the president to apologize for his “shocking and dehumanising” remarks. There is growing anger among progressives including Arab Americans, whose vote was crucial to Biden’s election win in 2020.Last week, two American hostages were released by Hamas but Israel says that more than 200 people from dozens of countries remain captive. Securing the safe passage of Americans remains the Biden government’s priority, Sullivan told news programs on Sunday.Asked about ​​the status of Americans and other foreigners trapped at the Rafah crossing in Gaza by CNN’s Jake Tapper, Sullivan said: “Hamas has been preventing their departure and is making their demands … this is an equal priority for us as is to get the hostages out.Around 2.3 million Palestinians are trapped without food, water and medicines in Gaza, which even before this bloody conflict has been described by international human rights groups as an “apartheid state” and “open air prison”.Sullivan has come under criticism for an essay published in the Foreign Affairs magazine just five days before Hamas’s surprise and shocking attack on Israel, in which he wrote in the face of “serious” frictions, “we have de-escalated crises in Gaza”.The weekend bombardment – described by Gaza residents as the most intense of the war – was carried out in a blackout after Israel shut down communications in the territory late Friday. Some communications was restored to much of Gaza early Sunday.Protesters from across the US are expected to descend on the capital next Saturday, in what’s expected to be the largest pro-Palestinian protest so far. More

On a hot Saturday in late September, a couple of hundred Mississippians drove to a clearing off Martin Luther King Jr Road. They stayed in their cars, enjoying a few moments of cool air-conditioning before filing towards the field’s few shaded areas.Chrystal O’Neal, of nearby Fayette, grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, while volunteers filled tables with chips and beverages. What distinguished the gathering as a campaign event were the copious signs, all reminding those assembled that they were there to hear from Brandon Presley, the Democratic candidate in Mississippi’s upcoming gubernatorial election.The visit to Natchez was one of Presley’s campaign stops on his journey through all 82 of Mississippi’s counties. He made a point to speak to every single person present, personally introducing himself and shaking attendees’ hands, in hopes that on 7 November they would elect him Mississippi’s 66th governor, beating out Republican incumbent Tate Reeves to become the first Democrat to hold the position in nearly two decades.After four years marked with a chaotic and deadly response to the Covid-19 pandemic, an ongoing healthcare crisis and a welfare scandal, many Mississippians are looking for a change. Presley, who is anti-abortion and a lifelong Democrat, aims to end corruption in the state, expand Medicaid, increase funding for education and bring jobs to people across the state.With less than three weeks ahead, Presley is still trailing Reeves in the polls. Having endured a life of struggle and tragedy, he is not backing down.“I’m doing something Tate Reeves doesn’t have the courage to do, and that is to go to every county in the state,” Presley said. “The likelihood of some counties voting for me might be low, but the fact is, a governor should want to be in every county, listening to every constituent in the state of Mississippi: those that agree with you, those that don’t agree with you.”‘I’ve been there’By now, most Mississippians know Presley’s story.Now 45, he was born in Nettleton, in the north part of Mississippi. His grandfather and Elvis Presley’s grandfather were brothers – Brandon Presley was born shortly before his famous cousin’s death.His mother worked in a garment factory, raising him and his two siblings after their father was shot and killed on Presley’s first day of third grade.“We had our lights cut off, we had the water cut off, we had times in which the lights and the water were cut off – I’ve been there,” Presley told the crowd in Natchez. “I understand. There was probably a time in my life when I was a teenager and I was ashamed of that. I ain’t ashamed anymore. It made me who I am. It means you can get through anything.”He attended Itawamba Community College before going on to attend Mississippi State University.The young Presley looked up to his uncle, the Lee county sheriff Harold Ray Presley, as a father figure and mentor. Presley’s mother and the sheriff both died in 2001 – his mother died just days after Brandon filed his qualifying papers for mayor of Nettleton; the sheriff was shot and killed in the line of duty five days after Presley was sworn in.Presley, then 23, was one of the youngest mayors in the state’s history. During his time in office, he “cut property taxes twice and secured millions of dollars in grants for public projects like a new city hall, roads and parks”, according to a 2007 newspaper article.After his second term, Presley ran for and was elected to the northern district seat on the Mississippi public service commission, a three-member group that regulates utilities. He is completing his fourth term this year.An opportunity for changePresley, if elected, would be unlike other Democratic governors who came before him in the largely conservative state. He’s pro-life, has a conservative view on gun control and describes himself as a “populist, FDR-Billy McCoy Democrat”.During his campaign, Presley has pushed to extend Medicaid, the public health insurance program, in a state where nearly 20% of the population lives under the poverty line. His platform also includes ending corruption in the state, improving education, bringing in jobs and removing the sales tax for groceries.As he spoke with the crowd in Natchez about each of these promises, he received an impassioned response.O’Neal, a former casino worker whose son played while she worked the grill, said she had been looking forward to hearing Presley speak, and was “most definitely” voting for him come November. She, like many voters at the event, was drawn to Presley because of his commitment to expanding Medicaid and improving education.The statehouse representative Jeffery Harness, a Democrat who represents Claiborne, Franklin, Jefferson and Warren counties, mingled with other attendees. He, too, is eager to support Presley. “We need a Democratic governor,” he said. “It’s very important that we change the tide of the political atmosphere of the state.”Mississippi is in the midst of a healthcare crisis: many hospitals across the state are either at risk of closing or have already closed. According to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, Mississippi has 24 hospitals at risk of immediate closure.“There’s a lot of fear right now about the healthcare crisis we have in the state where hospitals are shutting down and it’s only getting worse,” Presley said. “I hear from people that are worried about whether or not they’ll be able to afford to get healthcare, to be at a hospital, and get the care that they need.”Despite 72% of voters supporting Medicaid expansion and 92% being concerned about hospital access, Mississippi is one of 10 states that continue to reject federal funding to expand health insurance; Reeves has balked at expanding Medicaid.“You got people today in Natchez that are sacking groceries, they’re wiping a table at the Waffle House. They’re doing the best they can do, yet they have no chance at healthcare and you’ve got a governor that not only doesn’t understand, he doesn’t care,” Presley told supporters at the Natchez event. “Y’all’ve all heard that old quote: ‘When somebody shows you who they are, believe them.’ Tate Reeves has shown us who he is.”Fresh on the minds of many Mississippians is also the ongoing fallout from the state’s welfare scandal, in which at least $77m in federal funds earmarked for the poorest state’s poorest residents were spent in the interests of the wealthy and politically connected.The scandal took place while Reeves was lieutenant governor. Reeves, who has not been charged with any crime, denies any wrongdoing. Last week, a defendant in the state’s lawsuit sued Reeves, claiming that he is illegally protecting himself and his allies.During the Natchez event, before Presley was able to mention the scandal, supporters called out, reminding him of it. “What about his thieving?” one man said.Of note, Reeves’ friend and personal trainer, Paul Lacoste, who endorsed Reeves in 2019, is now one of the people being sued by the state in an attempt to recoup misspent funds. According to court documents from the state’s welfare department, Lacoste improperly received $1.3m in welfare funds.“These were dollars that were aimed at working, poor people to put food on the table, pay the light bill,” Presley said.Despite the excitement around his campaign, Presley is trying to make up the gap in the race with only days to go.He has tried to court voters in key demographics. He repeatedly acknowledged that Black voters are essential to secure the race. On day one, he was endorsed by the Democratic US representative Bennie Thompson, arguably the most influential Black politician in the state. He has also attended events led by black Greek letter organizations and historically Black colleges and universities across the state, including recently attending both Jackson State University’s and Alcorn State University’s homecomings.“The truth is, people that look like me have been pitted against Black Mississippians for decades,” Presley told people at the Natchez event. “For two reasons: political power and money.”Presley has also worked to secure the support of younger voters – he himself, along with his supporters, have become mainstays at tailgates and other events at colleges across the state – and Indigenous voters.Despite that traction, he is up against an incumbent. Reeves, 49, has largely run an “us-versus-them” campaign, painting Presley as an outsider who is divorced from the lives of average Mississippians and functioning as a puppet for national Democratic interests.Reeves, a former investment banker, grew up in Flowood, a suburb of Jackson, and his father owns a multimillion-dollar heating and air conditioning business.Reeves attended Millsaps College, a private liberal arts college, where he joined Kappa Alpha Order, a fraternity known for its old south ball, in which members and their dates dress as Confederate soldiers and antebellum ladies (the national organization banned the wearing of Confederate uniforms to old south parades in 2010, but the practice stands).On bid day, when they were both students at Millsaps, the acclaimed writer and MacArthur grant winner Kiese Laymon got into an altercation with two fraternities on campus, including Kappa Alpha. Fraternity members wore Confederate capes and afro wigs, and some blackened their faces, Laymon, who played basketball against Reeves throughout high school, remembered years later.In 2020, Laymon wrote about “the heartbreak of seeing the future governor of Mississippi in that group of white boys, proudly representing the Kappa Alpha fraternity and its confederate commitment to Black suffering”.Though Presley has outraised Reeves, Reeves has more campaign cash on hand going into the final stretch of the election, the AP reported. Presley started the year with just under $730,000 in his campaign fund. Since then, he has raised about $7.9m, of which he has about $1.8m on hand as of last month. Comparatively, Reeves started the year with almost $7.9m across two campaign accounts. Since then, he has raised about $5.1m. At the end of last month, he reported about $4.2m cash on hand.Presley has long tried to debate Reeves.Finally, after months of Presley calling for a debate, including proposing five and accepting invitations from television stations and the Mississippi NAACP, Reeves agreed to one debate – to take place a week before the election.In a tweet posted last week, Reeves wrote: “Pleased to announce that the first Gubernatorial debate will be on November 1st at 7:00 PM on WAPT! I’m looking forward to talking about our record on jobs and schools, and dispelling the lies funded by out-of-state liberals.”Presley’s team is not scared to turn that rhetoric against his rival. Using a slogan made popular by Maga supporters, weeks ago the Presley campaign launched a commercial featuring Republicans, including former elected officials, all rallying behind Presley.“I’ve got three words for you,” the commercial says. “Let’s go, Brandon.” More

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.On Wednesday night, Joe Biden basked in the pageantry of a state dinner – white-jacketed violinists, golden chandeliers dotted with pink roses, a vivid wall display of 3D paper flowers. But soon after toasting the Australian prime minister in a pavilion on the White House south lawn, the US president had to step away to be briefed on a deadly mass shooting in Maine.The presence of Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, was a reminder of another, even darker shadow. Even as Biden and guests savoured butternut squash soup, sarsaparilla braised short ribs and hazelnut and chocolate mousse cake, Israeli bombs were raining down on the people of Gaza, posing one of the biggest tests yet for the 80-year-old commander-in-chief.Biden took office in January 2021 articulating four crises – the coronavirus pandemic, economic strife, racial injustice and the climate – but as many of his predecessors discovered, the one guarantee of the job is the unexpected. Since Hamas’s horrific attack on Israel on 7 October, the president has found himself in the crucible of a Middle East war that is killing innocents and threatening a broader conflagration.Biden has given Israel full-throated support and urged Congress to send the US ally $14bn in military aid. He has stressed that Hamas does not represent the vast majority of the Palestinian people and pushed for humanitarian assistance. But he is resisting calls for a ceasefire. He is trying to thread a diplomatic needle, knowing that each decision reverberates around the world and one mistake could cost him re-election next year.“Biden’s been at the top of his game – pitch perfect, morally clear, decisive – but there are real risks to having no daylight between the US and Israel,” said Chris Whipple, author of The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House. “We’re starting to see that now with all the civilian casualties that are mounting.”“It reminds me of Colin Powell’s old Pottery Barn rule: if you break it, you own it. Along with Israel, the US is going to own the spectacle of Palestinian civilians being killed no matter how ‘surgical’ the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] claims to be and we’re already seeing that.”Biden’s allegiance to Israel is written in his political DNA. He was born during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt when, in Europe, the Nazis were systematically murdering 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. Biden has said how his father helped instill in him the justness of establishing Israel as a Jewish homeland in 1948.His long political career has long included deep engagement with the Israeli-Arab conflict in the Middle East. He has often told the story of his 1973 encounter with Israel’s then prime minister Golda Meir who, on the cusp of the Yom Kippur war, told the young senator that Israel’s secret weapon was “we have no place else to go”.During 36 years in the Senate, Biden was the chamber’s biggest ever recipient of donations from pro-Israeli groups, taking in $4.2m, according to the Open Secrets database. As vice-president, he mediated the rocky relationship between Barack Obama and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Brett Bruen, a former global engagement director for the administration, recalled: “I remember in the Obama White House how pissed off we were at Netanyahu for coming to town and addressing a joint session of Congress without so much as a heads-up. The animosity towards Netanyahu among the current national security staff at the White House is palpable and yet obviously it isn’t about personalities, it isn’t about politics – it’s about the principles that are at stake here.”Biden’s own relationship with Netanyahu is hardly uncomplicated. He recently recalled how, as a young senator, he had written on a photo of himself and Netanyahu: “Bibi, I love you. I don’t agree with a damn thing you say.”That point was illustrated in recent months with the White House echoing Israeli opponents of Netanyahu’s plan to curb the powers of the country’s supreme court. All that was put aside, however, after 7 October when Hamas gunmen killed 1,400 people and took more than 200 hostages.Standing beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, Biden gave one of the most visceral, heartfelt speeches of his presidency, denouncing “an act of sheer evil” by Hamas and insisting “the United States has Israel’s back”. It was received rapturously in Israel and helped to quell any scepticism about where the president stood.Biden then travelled to Israel, marking his second visit as president to an active war zone not under US military control after a trip to Ukraine earlier this year. In Tel Aviv, he met Netanyahu and his war cabinet and displayed his celebrated empathy as he comforted victims’ families.He compared the 7 October assault to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US that killed nearly 3,000 people. But he added: “I caution this: while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”Biden’s gambit was widely reported to be a public embrace of Netanyahu while trying to restrain him behind the scenes – including with US military advisers – so as to mitigate the civilian death toll, avoid complicating the release of American hostages and prevent the war from spreading into a regional conflict.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “He has chosen the classic diplomatic course of amity and unity in public and candour in private. I think Israelis understand and appreciate that. ”The president was said by officials to have asked Netanyahu “tough questions” about what would come in the days, weeks and months after a ground invasion of Gaza. Egypt and Israel agreed to allow a limited number of trucks carrying food, water, medicine and other essentials into Gaza via the Rafah border crossing.Back in Washington, the president then tried to sell his mission to the American people, using the ultimate bully pulpit, an Oval Office address, to make a direct connection between Israel’s fight against Hamas and Ukraine’s war against Russia. The commander-in-chief said: “American leadership is what holds the world together … To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the president is under pressure for a balanced approach from Arab leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and beyond who have seen major protests erupt in their capitals over the crisis in Gaza.In theory, the crisis could turn Biden’s political weakness – his age – into an asset that points to his unrivalled foreign policy experience. Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and CIA director, said: “He gets it. He understands it. He understands what I think he sees as the end game here … There’s a lot of balls in the air but if anybody understands how to basically work his way through that, it’s Joe Biden.”Keeping all the balls in the air at once can be tricky. At a Rose Garden press conference on Wednesday, he said “there has to be a vision of what comes next” – a two-state solution – and expressed alarm about extremist settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, “pouring gasoline on fire”.But under questioning, he also angered some on the left by questioning the death toll in Gaza: “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”The Gaza-based health ministry – an agency in the Hamas-controlled government – says 7,028 Palestinians, including 2,913 minors, have been killed by the bombing. Shortages of water, electricity, fuel, food and medicine are making the humanitarian situation more catastrophic by the day and prompting a global outcry against Israel’s tactics – and the US’s unwavering support for it.Many Palestinians and others in the Arab world regard Biden as too biased in favor of Israel to act as an evenhanded peace broker. His blanket refusal to join calls for a ceasefire also risks alienating elements of his own Democratic party coalition, exposing a generational divide between Biden, who grew up knowing Israel as a vulnerable country and safe haven for Jews, and younger progressives who associate it primarily with the oppression of Palestinians.A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that only 48% of Gen Z and millennials believe the US should publicly voice support for Israel. Protests demanding a ceasefire have erupted on university campuses across the country. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, told supporters: “President Biden, not all America is with you on this one, and you need to wake up and understand. We are literally watching people commit genocide.”Rae Abileah, a strategy consultant based in Half Moon Bay, California, argues that Biden’s words do not match his actions, which are pouring fuel on the flames. She said: “My message to President Biden, as a Jewish clergy person with family who are in Israel, is to say my grief is not your weapon. Do not use my faith or my grief to justify $14bn of military aid going to kill innocent lives.”“The big thing we have to talk about around Biden’s policies right now, and the policies of 10 US senators who flew to Tel Aviv as well, is that this is putting the blood of children in Gaza on our hands as American taxpayers. This is our responsibility. This is not about a war of Israel attacking Gaza; this is enabled with our money.”In addition, Biden is facing a backlash from Arab Americans and American Muslims. Haroon Moghul, an American Muslim academic and preacher based in Cincinnati, Ohio, said: “I voted for Biden in 2020. I thought he would be the adult in the room and right now all I see him doing is taking American resources, American political capital, American goodwill and throwing all in with the most radical Israeli government in history.”Biden’s job approval rating among Democrats has fallen 11 percentage points in the past month to 75%, according to pollster Gallup, the party’s worst assessment of the president since he took office. Gallup cited Biden’s immediate and decisive show of support for Israel as turning off some members of his own party. He is likely to face former president Donald Trump in an election a year from now.Matthew Hoh, associate director of the Eisenhower Media Network, who served as a US Marine Corps captain in Iraq, said: “Could 2, 3, 4 million progressive voters not turn out, not vote for Biden because of this? That’s absolutely possible.”Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino More

How long can we go between news cycles featuring assault rifles? According to the Gun Violence Archive, in 2023 the answer is barely more than 12 hours. This year there have been 565 mass shootings in the US, including the latest horror in Maine – an average of nearly two a day. Those statistics make American Gun, a brilliant new biography of the AR-15, a particularly powerful and important book.Written by two fine Wall Street Journal reporters, Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, the book is packed with characters and plot turns, from Eugene Stoner, the publicity-shy inventor who designed the first AR-15 in the 1950s, to the embrace of the gun by Robert McNamara and John F Kennedy, which led to its disastrous adoption as the chief weapon for army infantrymen in Vietnam.The design was shaped by a simple military adage: “Whoever shoots the most lead wins.” Every detail of how the weapon went from a “counter-insurgency” tool in south-east Asia in the 1960s to the most popular way to kill American schoolchildren in the 21st century is included in this harrowing narrative.Stoner worked with aluminum in one of the booming aerospace factories in California and became obsessed with how he could use new materials like plastic to make a lighter, more effective rifle. He also achieved the “holy grail that gun designers had pursued for generations: how to use the energy released from the exploding gunpowder … to reload the weapon”. Soon he had a patent for a “gas operated bolt and carrier system” with fewer parts than a conventional rifle, that would make his “smoother to operate and last longer”.The first third of American Gun is devoted to how Stoner teamed up with an entrepreneur, George Sullivan, who brought his invention to the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation, which set up a new division, ArmaLite, to produce the weapon. The main challenge they faced in selling the gun to the government was a centuries-old tradition of the army designing its own weapons. In 1957, the army announced it had chosen its own M-14 to replace the M-1, the workhorse of the second world war.But the inventors used the ancient rivalry between the services to get their foot in the door. They socialized with an air force general, Curtis LeMay, and got him to fire an AR-15 at a July 4 celebration in 1960. (Famously, LeMay was a model for the psychotic character played by George C Scott in Dr Strangelove.) LeMay was so impressed by the impact the gun had on watermelons 50 and 150 yards away, he decided the air force should buy 8,500 of them for its security teams.The new rifle took off inside the government with the arrival of John Kennedy in the White House and former Ford president Robert McNamara at the defense department, with a legion of whiz kids who wanted to invent new forms of warfare. McNamara was eager to prove he was smarter than the generals he inherited, so he overrode them and convinced Kennedy the army should adopt Stoner’s rifle instead of the M-14.One thing which especially impressed the earliest AR-15 users, including South Vietnamese troops, was the way its bullets became unstable inside a human body, tearing through “like a tornado, spiraling and tipping … obliterat[ing] organs, blood vessels and bones”. This of course was the same quality that would make the weapon the ultimate scourge of American schoolchildren five decades later.To mollify the generals, McNamara allowed the Pentagon’s technical coordinating committee to modify the gun before it went into mass production. Among other things, the committee changed the kind of ammunition used – with disastrous consequences. In Vietnam, the gun jammed repeatedly in combat. Vivid descriptions of how that jeopardized the lives of American soldiers are some of the most terrifying sections of American Gun.Dick Backus, a grunt who saw half of his 10-member squad mowed down, summarized the problem: “Our government sent young men to war with a rifle that didn’t shoot.” A Washington Post editorial reached a similar conclusion: “If the New Left were to set out to compose an insider’s indictment of the ‘military-industrial complex’, it could hardly match the report which a congressional committee has submitted” about the new rifle. Eventually, the army redesigned the weapon, and by 1975 it was working well again.The second half of American Gun highlights the role of Wall Street hedge fund owners in consolidating the gun industry and making the AR-15 the weapon of choice for insecure American males. Some of the most disgusting details are about an ad campaign proposed for readers of Maxim. The first ad was a picture of a gun pointed at the reader, with the caption “MINE IS SO DEFINITELY BIGGER THAN YOURS”. A website for the Bushmaster rifle read: “The Bushmaster Man Card declares and confirms that you are a Man’s Man, the last of a dying breed, with all the rights and privileges duly afforded.”Even more disgusting was the strategy of private equity owners who bought up large portions of the gun industry in the early 2000s. They made sure video games included their brand of rifle because it would “help create brand preference among the next generation who experiences these games, allowing [us] to win our fair share of these young customers”.There is so much more in this book, including the collapse of political will to reform gun laws. The authors also detail how fake the 10-year ban on assault rifles really was, because the bill authored by then California senator Dianne Feinstein contained so many loopholes, gun manufacturers just made tiny tweaks and kept producing weapons.And because Congress had made the AR-15 forbidden fruit, sales actually exploded. In 1995, Americans owned about 400,000 of them. “By the end of 2021,” McWhirter and Elinson write, “that number jumped to more than 20 million.”
American Gun is published in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux More

Why do seemingly serious people repeat crazy political lies? This was the question the American anthropologist and political scientist Lisa Wedeen explored when she studied the Syrian dictatorship in the 1990s.She was struck by how people who were usually rational in private would repeat the utterly absurd slogans of the regime, such as claiming that the dictator Hafez al-Assad was the greatest chemist in the world.“From the moment you leave your house, you ask: what does the regime want?,” a Syrian explained to her. “The struggle becomes who can praise the government more.” The bigger the lie you uttered, the more loyal you were.“The regime’s power resides in its ability to impose national fictions and to make people say and do what they otherwise would not,” Wedeen concluded. “This obedience makes people complicit; it entangles them in self-enforcing relations of domination, thereby making it hard for participants to see themselves simply as victims of the state’s caprices.”I was reminded of Wedeen’s research when the US Congress finally selected a speaker after weeks of chaos. Their choice, Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana, is best known for ardently supporting ex-president Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Jo Biden, was rigged. Johnson was the head of the committee to question the integrity of the election. He constructed spurious legal arguments that tried to discredit the vote, though his proposals were thrown out by the US supreme court. He raised the unfounded theory that the voting machines used in the election were tampered with.This claim is so groundless that Fox, the network that supported the allegation, had to pay nearly a billion dollars in a settlement with Dominion, the company that makes the machines.Many of the Republican representatives who supported Johnson’s candidacy have admitted both publicly and privately that the elections were, in fact, not falsified. Yet when journalists faced a gaggle of Republican congressmen and questioned Johnson’s record on this blatant lie, his colleagues jeered and he mockingly said: “Next question” – as if the facts were irrelevant here.And in a sense, they are. Agreeing to Trump’s claims about the rigged election is the absurdity you have to pledge allegiance to in order to show you belong to the tribe. It ensures your fealty by making you complicit. For anyone who has lived in authoritarian regimes, it’s a familiar sight.Along with Wedeen’s Syrian example, I’m reminded of the Czech dissident and playwright Václav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless, where he tells the story of a greengrocer in communist-era Prague who puts up pro-regime posters in his shop window. The greengrocer doesn’t believe the communist slogans; the people who make the slogans don’t believe in them; and the people who read them don’t believe in them.But as long as everyone plays along, the system continues. It’s the act of not believing and yet pretending, rather than of fervently believing, which is the power of such systems. Your will is corroded: you are made into moral mincemeat that can be shaped any which way by the leader.Havel nobly suggested that in order to fight such a system, what was needed was to “live in truth”, start being honest. Republican politicians face none of the danger communist-era Czechoslovaks or Syrians under the Assads have, but living in truth seems beyond them.Contradicting Trump’s absurdities risks falling out of favour with the leader and his supporters.Altogether, about 40% of Americans think the 2020 vote was illegitimate, and about 60% of Republicans (the figures fluctuate). A democracy will struggle to survive, let alone flourish, when such huge swathes of its population see it as their badge of loyalty not to trust its most fundamental processes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut if the “rigged” election claim is more about identity than evidence, it also means it will be hard to fact check our way out of this situation. The issue can’t simply be resolved by “trusted” sources, even those on the far right, who can communicate the truth about the election to Trump supporters. Instead, sources only become trusted if they agree to the lie.Pledging loyalty to the “big lie” is more about identity than knowledge – and to fight it entails understanding the need for belonging and meaning it fulfils. Authoritarian propaganda can give the illusion of status and at its extremes a sense of supremacy to compensate for the lack of real agency.Self-styled “populists” can flourish in what sociologists call “civic deserts”: frequently rural areas where the old institutions that bonded communities, the local clubs and town halls have disappeared and where civic engagement is particularly low.But such communities can start to be regenerated for a digital age with, for example, online as well as offline town halls; reinvigorated local news that responds to people’s priorities; and online municipal budget making and other innovations that help people feel part of a community and have ownership over local politics.Historical lessons from understanding and fighting propaganda can be useful here too. When he investigated the psychology of German soldiers in the second world war, the British psychiatrist Henry Dicks thought that counterpropaganda needed to stress the bonds people had that went beyond belonging to the Nazi Volk: the emotional bonds they felt with loved ones and relatives, for example.The competition with the big lie is not just, or even primarily, about fact checking. It’s a competition between different models of belonging: can we build alternative communities that are more benign and yet fulfilling than the ones offered by the conspiracy theorists? More

Every legal drama needs a surprise witness. Until June last year, the congressional hearings to investigate the attempted coup at the US Capitol in January 2021 were unsurprising: Democrats presented evidence that Trump had riled up the incendiary mob, to which Republicans responded with regurgitated abuse. Then into the room walked Cassidy Hutchinson, a Republican true believer who had worked as an aide to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff. No one gasped, because the then 25-year-old woman was unknown, but her testimony, provoked by an uneasy conscience, quietly confirmed that Trump and his henchmen had knowingly lied about the outcome of the presidential election, then summoned loony militias from the backwoods and dispatched them, armed with bear spray and flagpoles sharpened into spears, to disrupt the certification of Biden’s victory.Hutchinson’s memoir adds many greasy, sleazy details to the more sanitised account she gave in Congress. Trump, she recalls, smashed plates in his dining room beside the Oval Office, squirting ketchup on the walls to express his exasperation. She observes Meadows illicitly incinerating bags of telltale documents that should have been passed to the government archives; his wife complains about the cost of dry-cleaning his suits to remove the stench from so many bonfires. And as Trump exhorts his horde to invade the Capitol, Rudy Giuliani, for whom the mayhem was like a double dose of Valium, leers at Hutchinson with jaundiced eyes and slides his hand up her thigh. Disillusioned and disgusted, she decides, as the title of her book tersely puts it, that she has had enough of the president and his thuggish praetorian guards.Her earlier glimpses of Trump are killingly candid, exposing the tough guy as a weakling, even a sissy. He disdained face masks during the pandemic because the stained straps drew attention to his second skin of bronzer. During the winter he required a valet to blow-dry the insides of his leather gloves, to ensure that his tiny fingers stayed warm; volunteering tips like a chatty beautician, he even advised Hutchinson to add some blond streaks to her dark hair. In a casual aside, she notes that Trump dislikes animals – a symptom of his quaking cowardice, and of his reluctance to confront creatures unimpressed by his inflated wealth and his equally puffed-up celebrity. Titanically petulant, he sought to overturn the US constitution because he felt “embarrassed” by his lost bid for re-election.About herself, Hutchinson is less clear-eyed. Born to a working-class family in New Jersey, she was exposed during childhood to the alienation and festering resentment that eventually produced the Unabomber, QAnon and Trump’s Maga fanatics. Her father taught her to distrust anyone sporting a government-issued badge, and also anyone in a white coat: he once offered to perform an appendectomy on her with a pocketknife. On hunting trips he schooled her in what he called “the warrior spirit”, and toughened her by using turtles for target practice and feasting on the deer he shot.Despite her college education, Hutchinson surrendered to Trump’s rants and was pleased to serve as his “loyal foot soldier”. Too late, she realised she had enrolled in a movement – or perhaps in a nihilistic death cult – whose aim was to foment chaos. First, she crashed a golf cart at Camp David when drunk, while one of her colleagues almost burned down a cabin at the presidential retreat. Then Meadows solemnly asked if she would take a bullet for Trump. “Yeah,” Hutchinson replied, adding after a pause that she’d prefer to take it in the leg. The cheeky proviso revealed that she was not the kind of diehard that Trump demanded.At the end of the book, Hutchinson’s Trump-worshipping father sells his house and vanishes without trace. She is relieved to be rid of him; it doesn’t occur to her that he might be somewhere in the wilderness with the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers, limbering up for the next battle. After months in hiding, she re-emerges into society and buys herself a new friend – a cockapoo puppy, which she names George in homage to Washington, founding father of the currently foundering republic. I hope that George’s lapping tongue has comforted Hutchinson, but it will take more than a puppy’s licks to clean up Washington. More

McKay Coppins joined BuzzFeed in 2012, as its Mitt Romney reporter. The former Massachusetts governor won the Republican presidential nomination but lost the election to Barack Obama. Coppins wrote a postmortem, A Mormon Reporter on the Romney Bus. Its subtitle: How America Got Used to His Religion, and Mine.“I quickly found that my expertise in Romney’s religion posed a distinct advantage – not in access or sourcing, necessarily, but in understanding the elusive candidate as an actual person,” Coppins wrote.These days, Romney represents Utah in the US Senate. He has less than 14 months until he retires. His disdain for Donald Trump is legend. In February 2020, he sought to hold Trump accountable for abusing his power and strong-arming Ukraine, becoming the first senator ever to vote to convict a president of his own party in an impeachment trial. He voted to convict Trump again at his second trial, for inciting the January 6 insurrection.Coppins is now at the Atlantic. His new book is a must-read for anyone interested in how the Republican party morphed from the party of Lincoln into a Trumpian mess, picking up where Coppins left off in The Wilderness, his earlier look at the GOP.The 1960s set off a realignment in US politics. Over the past 60 years, resentment and tribalism have come to dominate, social issues come to the fore. In a Republican party once synonymous with the Union army and high-end suburbs, the south and evangelical protestantism now wield major influence.In the 1968 presidential race, the religion of George Romney – the Republican governor of Michigan and Mitt’s father – was a non-issue. His aspirations finally came undone after he said he had been “brainwashed” over the war in Vietnam.Mitt Romney first ran for the Republican nomination 40 years later, in 2008. Times and the party had changed. Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister as well as governor of Arkansas, went gunning for his rival’s religion.“Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?” Huckabee asked.Coppins offers an engaging read, the product of 30 interviews with Romney, interviews with aides and friends, and the senator’s emails and diaries. Chock-full of direct quotes, Romney: A Reckoning offers a window into the world of a private man who has darted in and out of the public eye.The book is also a scorching critique, singeing many. Coppins captures Romney strafing a heap of A-list Republicans. Trump and Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, Mike Pence and Chris Christie. All take direct hits. Coppins portrays their peevishness, pettiness and gutlessness – or worse – in Technicolor. Gingrich is a “smug know-it-all, smarmy, and too pleased with himself”. Cruz is “frightening”, “scary” and a “demagogue”.As for Ron DeSantis, in Romney’s estimation, the Florida governor is “much smarter than Trump”. But Romney also asks: “Do you want an authoritarian who’s smart or one who’s not smart?” Months before the primary, the party faithful have rendered their verdict. In poll after poll, Trump clobbers DeSantis.Onwards, to Pence: “No one had been more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God’s will to things that were ungodly.”Romney also recalls how Jared Kushner tried to convince him Trump’s erratic behavior was actually a manifestation of strategic savvy. Romney wasn’t buying. “I think he’s not smart,” he said. “I mean, really not smart.”Nonetheless, in 2012, Romney sought Trump’s endorsement. Beaten by Obama, Romney conceded on election night. Trump, though, unfurled his lie that the election was rigged. We had seen the future.To George Romney and his son, race relations mattered. The younger Romney parted with Trump after he was slow to disavow backing from David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Here, Coppins quotes Romney’s journal: “It is nearly certain that he will be the nominee. I am not tempted in the slightest to retreat. I will fight him on the beaches. I will fight him in the air.” Fine words – that didn’t alter the outcome.Romney then entertained the prospect of serving Trump as secretary of state, only to be publicly humiliated. He ascribes the failed gambit to “a mix of noble motivations and self-centered ones”. Said differently, he wanted the prize but refused to pay the price. “You need to say that you’ve come to the conclusion that I’m terrific,” Trump reportedly demanded. “That I’ll be a great president … We need to clear this up.”Romney would not bend the knee. But he admits: “I like being involved and being in the middle of things, and having something important to do. It’s like, you know, I wanted to be president. If you can’t be president, being secretary of state’s not a bad spot to come thereafter.”George W Bush tells Coppins Romney dodged a bullet. Now, he has little to lose. His time in the Senate ticks down. He has a fortune to enjoy. Published estimates peg him as the third-richest member of Congress, net worth hitting $300m. Yet he is not content. Washington crumbles from within. Violence and menace are coins of the realm. January 6 cemented a new political era.Jim Jordan’s run for House speaker, from the extreme right, triggered a barrage of threats for Republicans who refused to go along. Being primaried by the right is no longer the worst that could happen. On January 6, as the Capitol lay besieged, Ann Romney, Mitt’s wife, cried: “This is our country … This is our country.”
Romney: A Reckoning is published in the US by Scribner More

Mike Pence, the former vice-president under Donald Trump, has suspended his campaign to become the Republican nominee for president in the 2024 election.Pence announced at an event held by the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas on Saturday that he was dropping out of the race, in which he has been lagging, along with others, far behind frontrunner Trump.“I came here to say it’s become clear to me this is not my time, so after much prayer and deliberation I have decided to suspend my campaign for president, effective today,” Pence said.Pence, 64 and the former governor of his home state of Indiana, after representing it as one of its congressman, had been leading a struggling campaign for a while. He had not yet qualified for the third GOP debate on 8 November, falling short on required donations.But his announcement on Saturday during an event attended by other prominent candidates for the party’s nomination next year, including Trump and Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, came as a surprise to most.Appearing on the stage at the event in Nevada, Pence, a Christian hard-right conservative, said: “The Bible tells us there is a time for every purpose under heaven” and he went on to add: “This is not my time.”As he made the announcement, with a trademark absence of visible emotion, there was a collective gasp among the audience gathered at the event, which was expecting to hear rallying remarks as he continued his campaign.Instead, Pence made his announcement drily then put more power in his voice as he said: “Now, I’m leaving this campaign, but let me promise you, I will never leave the fight for conservative values and I will never stop fighting to elect principled Republican leaders to every office in the land, so help me God.”The crowd then broke into cheers, whistles and sustained applause, with Pence saying a quiet “thank you” after some minutes.His campaign for the presidency never caught fire. He was a loyal lieutenant to Trump throughout the New York Republican’s controversial single term despite Trump being twice impeached, for extorting Ukraine and for inciting the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.That ended, though, when Pence made the definitive move that caused an irreparable breach between him and Trump. The then vice-president refused to go along with exhortations from Trump that he decline, in his role as president of the US Senate, to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump.When Trump then condemned Pence for that via social media, as crowds of extremists were surging to the Capitol then broke in to try, in vain, to force a halt to Biden’s certification, many began chanting “Hang Mike Pence”.The vice-president, in the congressional chamber to certify the result on 6 January, had to flee for his safety along with other members of Congress as the mob invaded the building. Biden’s victory over Trump was certified by Congress in a battered Capitol in the early hours of 7 January, although many Republicans refused to endorse it.When Pence launched his campaign for the 2024 GOP nomination, however, in June, he chastised Trump for his “reckless” actions on 6 January.Pence touted his record in Congress and as Indiana governor, during which he supported legislation against abortion and expanded government spending, and repeated ideas from his campaign video released hours earlier including addressing inflation, the national debt and issues at the US-Mexico border.He also pointed to his time as vice-president, touting some of the policies that he and Trump pushed forth in their term.He first noted: “I was proud to stand by President Donald Trump every day”, then said: “The American people deserve to know that on that day [6 January 2021], President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the constitution … And anyone who asked someone else to put them over the constitution should never be president of the United States again.”Pence is strongly anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ equality, a fiscal conservative and a foreign policy hawk.“I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” Pence said at his launch, repeating a frequently used phrase.Trump’s base of core supporters never forgave Pence for overseeing the certification of Biden’s election to the White House, viewing it as a supreme act of disloyalty to their icon.Pence stopped short of endorsing anyone in his speech on Saturday, but in an apparent swipe at Trump, called on Americans to select someone who appeals to “the better angels of our nature” and can lead with “civility”.Pence failed to attract enough anti-Trump Republican primary voters, and donors, to sustain a candidacy that has languished in the low single digits in opinion polls and struggled to raise money since he announced his White House bid in June.As a result Pence, a stolid campaigner short on charisma, was low on cash by October and despite spending time and resources in the first Republican nominating state of Iowa, had failed to catch fire there.When his campaign released Pence’s third-quarter fundraising totals on 15 October, his candidacy was $620,000 in debt and only had $1.2m cash on hand, far less than several better-performing Republican rivals and insufficient to sustain the financial demands of a White House race.In several past elections, former vice-presidents who have competed to become the White House nominee have succeeded, including Republican George HW Bush in 1988 and Democrat Al Gore in 2000.Reuters contributed reporting More