US Politics

Chris Christie digs Coldplay. Cornel West is into Coltrane. And Vivek Ramaswamy, the pharmaceutical magnate whose net worth is approaching $1bn, has found a kindred spirit in Woody Guthrie.These are a few of the 2024 presidential candidates revealing the music that “stirs their soul”, assuming they have one. The lists, solicited by Politico, are oozing with the raw passion politicians are known for: who hasn’t shed a tear while listening to Bananarama, as Nikki Haley apparently has?Sure, the 20-song lists were probably focus-grouped beyond recognition, but you can learn a lot about someone from the music they pretend to like. Here’s what the playlists tell us.Chris Christie: Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, EaglesThe tough-talking former New Jersey governor has a well-documented obsession with the Boss, so it’s no surprise that his list starts with Springsteen. His alleged favorite song is Thunder Road, a politically deft option: it’s popular enough without being obvious, avoids any political messaging, yet still screams “regular guy”. The choice of a pathos-tinged tune also feels appropriate given Christie’s shifting position. Once the loudest bully in the room, he’s been so thoroughly out-evilled by red-meat maniacs that he seems to be running as the guy with a heart.To prove his New Jersey credentials – did you know Chris Christie is from New Jersey? He’s from New Jersey – he’s also chosen the obscure Bon Jovi hit Livin’ on a Prayer. And among the other highlights on his list – which features a truly remarkable number of ageing white guys – is the Eagles’ Hotel California, whose tale of self-imprisonment must ring true for any anti-Trump Republican:
And in the master’s chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can’t kill the beast
Nikki Haley: Dolly Parton, the Killers, Post MaloneThe former South Carolina governor’s favorites feature a bit more variety, squeezing in Dolly Parton, Cat Stevens and Abba. Virtually everything on her list is pre-2010, which is perfectly understandable for a 51-year-old – and then suddenly there’s Post Malone’s Take What You Want, featuring Ozzy Osbourne and Travis Scott.It’s unclear how she stumbled on this song the year after she stepped down as Donald Trump’s UN ambassador, and what about it stirred her soul. Does she cut a rug to lines like “I feel you crumble in my arms down to your heart of stone / You bled me dry just like the tears you never show” while mulling over policy ideas?The only other recent hit on her list is Fast Car – the 2023 version by Luke Combs, rather than the 1988 original by Tracy Chapman, a bona fide American classic. Maybe that version has somehow slipped under her radar for the past 35 years. Or perhaps, like Christie, she’s trying to flex her home-state credentials (Combs is from North rather than South Carolina, but they’re close). Then again, Chapman is from Ohio – a swing state.Haley and Christie have something else in common: a love for the Killers’ Mr Brightside. Tough to imagine why a song about cheating, lies and paranoia would appeal to two Republican presidential candidates.Vivek Ramaswamy: Imagine Dragons, Imagine Dragons, MozartThe Harvard-educated businessman apparently doesn’t know 20 songs: he only submitted eight pieces of music, and one isn’t a song – it’s Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca, a staple of fifth-grade piano recitals. (That said, it is an absolute banger.) Beyond an inability to count, he also appears to have trouble following directions: he has two songs by the banal pop outfit Imagine Dragons, despite Politico’s one-song-per-artist rule.Eminem’s Lose Yourself tops Ramaswamy’s list, presumably to the artist’s chagrin: Eminem recently told the politician never to perform his song again after Ramaswamy started rapping at the Iowa State Fair. He’s not the only candidate to have a rocky relationship with one of his musical heroes – Springsteen has rejected performance invitations from Christie and mocked him on TV, though they did hug once after Hurricane Sandy.And like Christie, Ramaswamy has chosen Aerosmith’s Dream On; like Haley, he’s into Dolly Parton’s Jolene. In a country that can feel so divided, it’s nice to know that politicians can agree on which songs are most likely to make them look good.Will Hurd: A Tribe Called Quest, Demi Lovato, MatisyahuCredit where credit is due: this former congressman who will never be president has a very interesting list, including tracks from A Tribe Called Quest, Hootie & the Blowfish, Matisyahu and Demi Lovato. Either he has taste so eclectic it’s verging on bizarre, or he closed his eyes and jabbed at random sentences on the Wikipedia page for “American popular music”.Larry Elder: Sam Cooke, Gladys Knight, the BeatlesElder works in radio, so you’d think he might have heard a few songs written after 1992, but apparently none have stirred his soul. To be fair, his list is probably genuine – no focus group would suggest picking two Boyz II Men songs from the same album.Elder grew up in the 60s, and his favorite songs are mostly from that turbulent era – Sam Cooke, Gladys Knight, the Beatles. It was a time of youthful idealism, of fights for civil rights and gender equality and against war. One can only imagine how proud these musicians would be of Elder’s views – his preferred minimum wage of “$0.00”, his assertion that “women know less than men about political issues”, and his support for ending birthright citizenship and allowing the denial of emergency care to undocumented people.Asa Hutchinson: Johnny Cash, Garth Brooks, PinkThe former Arkansas governor also struggled to come up with 20 songs; like Ramaswamy, he managed a total of eight. They’re mostly country and folk hits from the likes of Johnny Cash, Levon Helm and Garth Brooks – not surprising for an Arkansas man.But don’t be fooled: this 2024 Republican contender knows a beat when he hears one. When things start to get wild in the ex-governor’s household – perhaps when the Hutch reflects on such accomplishments as blocking Syrian refugees from entering Arkansas, or resuming executions – he cranks up Pink’s Get the Party Started.Cornel West: John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Aretha FranklinGiven that the philosopher and activist has worked with Talib Kweli, André 3000, Killer Mike and a host of other musicians, he must know more than four songs. But that was all the Green party candidate was able to provide, falling short of even Ramaswamy and Hutchinson.Then again, maybe there are only four songs that truly stir his soul – and tracks from John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin and the Isleys seem like reasonable candidates. More

A majority of likely Democratic voters say the party should nominate someone other than Joe Biden for president next year, according to a poll released on Thursday.Two-thirds of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters surveyed by CNN and SSRS from 25 to 31 August said they would prefer someone other than Biden. Among those voters, 18% specified another candidate but the overwhelming majority – 82% – said they “just want to see someone besides” the current president.Among declared Democratic candidates, however, Biden is seen as the best-positioned to beat the clear Republican favorite, Donald Trump, CNN said. Other contenders include Robert F Kennedy Jr, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, and the self-help author Marianne Williamson, who also ran in 2020.Most observers say the US economy is strong, and note legislative successes for Biden, including the passage of ambitious infrastructure and domestic spending packages. In last year’s midterms, messaging about Republican extremism, particularly on abortion and voting rights, helped Democrats avoid the kind of heavy losses usually suffered by a president’s party.Polling now shows voters are split on partisan lines when it comes to the merits or otherwise of a likely impeachment effort driven by far-right House Republicans over business deals involving the president’s son, Hunter Biden.But Biden’s own poll numbers remain stubbornly low. In the new poll from CNN and SSRS, the president’s approval rating was just 39%. Nearly 60% of respondents said they thought Biden’s policies had made economic conditions worse, while 76% said they were seriously concerned that, at 80, the president was too old to serve a full term if re-elected.That echoed other recent polls, including a survey conducted during roughly the same period and released on Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal. In that poll, 73% of voters said Biden was “too old to run for president” but just 47% of voters said the same about Trump, who is only three years younger than Biden.Despite widespread opposition to a second term for Biden, the CNN poll found that Nikki Haley was the only possible Republican nominee who voters said would conclusively beat Biden next year.Haley, 51 and a former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, enjoyed a clear lead over Biden in a notional general election, by 49% to 43%. On the campaign trail, Haley has repeatedly targeted Biden’s age, calling for mental competency tests for politicians over 75.Haley is, however, generally fourth in Republican polling averages, behind the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. All of them are way behind Trump, who has long dominated the race regardless of an extreme legal predicament that now features 91 criminal charges and civil suits including a defamation case in which he has been adjudicated a rapist.On Wednesday, in the strongest challenge yet to Trump’s eligibility to participate in the election, a watchdog group sued to remove him from the 2024 ballot in Colorado. The suit argues that Trump’s involvement in the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 – when supporters he told to “fight like hell” sought to block certification of Biden’s election win – disqualifies the former president because the US constitution bars from office any state or federal official who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion”.Trump did not take part in the first Republican debate in Wisconsin last month, a contest Haley was widely held to have won. But she has not seen a meaningful bump in support among Republican voters.Jim Messina, a former campaign chair for Barack Obama, to whom Biden was vice-president, this week called Democrats worried about Biden’s prospects “fucking bedwetters” and said electoral signs remained positive.But according to the CNN poll, match-ups between Biden and all other major Republican candidates returned ties or scores within the margin of error.Trump is set to face a series of criminal and civil trials in election year. Nonetheless, he led Biden by 47% to 46%. DeSantis and Biden were tied on 47%. Biden was one point ahead of Ramaswamy, 47% to 46%. The former vice-president Mike Pence, the South Carolina senator Tim Scott and the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a rare Trump critic, edged Biden out by two points each.Nearly half of respondents said any Republican would be a better choice than Biden. More

Concern for US democracy amid deep national polarization has prompted the entities supporting 13 presidential libraries dating back to Herbert Hoover to call for a recommitment to principles including the rule of law and respecting diverse beliefs.In a statement, the first such public declaration, the libraries said Americans have a strong interest in supporting democratic movements and human rights around the world because “free societies elsewhere contribute to our own security and prosperity here at home”.“But that interest is undermined when others see our own house in disarray.”The message emphasized the need for compassion, tolerance and pluralism while urging Americans to respect democratic institutions and uphold secure and accessible elections. Noting that “debate and disagreement” are central to democracy, the libraries also alluded to the coarsening of dialogue in an era when officials and their families are receiving death threats.“Civility and respect in political discourse, whether in an election year or otherwise, are essential,” the statement said.Polls show many Republicans still believe the lie perpetuated by Donald Trump that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump has also lashed out at the justice system as he faces indictments in four criminal cases, including two related to his efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden.The libraries’ statement did not name individuals.“I think there’s great concern about the state of our democracy at this time,” said Mark Updegrove, president and chief executive of the LBJ Foundation, which supports the Lyndon B Johnson library in Austin, Texas.“We don’t have to go much farther than January 6” – when Trump supporters attacked Congress – “to realize that we are in a perilous state.”Efforts to suppress or weaken voter turnout were of special interest, Updegrove said, given Johnson considered the Voting Rights Act his “proudest legislative accomplishment”.The bipartisan statement was signed by the Hoover Presidential Foundation, the Roosevelt Institute, the Truman Library Institute, the John F Kennedy Library Foundation, the LBJ Foundation, the Richard Nixon Foundation, the Gerald R Ford Presidential Foundation, the Carter Center, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, the George & Barbara Bush Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, the George W Bush Presidential Center and the Obama Presidential Center.Those organizations all support libraries created under the Presidential Library Act of 1955, along with the Eisenhower Foundation. That group said it “respectfully declined to sign this statement … we have had no collective discussion about it, only an invitation to sign”. The foundation also said each presidential entity had its own programs related to democracy.The push for the statement was spearheaded by David Kramer, executive director of the George W Bush Institute. Kramer said the former president “did see and signed off on this statement”.He said the aim was to send “a positive message reminding us of who we are and also reminding us that when we are in disarray, when we’re at loggerheads, people overseas are also looking at us and wondering what’s going on”. He also said it was necessary to remind Americans that democracy cannot be taken for granted.Kramer said he hoped the statement would generate wide support, but added: “It’s hard to say whether it will or not in these polarized times.”Melissa Giller, chief marketing officer at the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Institute, said the statement represented “everything our center will stand for”.“We need to help put an end to the serious discord and division in our society,” Giller said. “America is experiencing a decline in trust, social cohesion and personal interaction.”Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Barack Obama now the chief executive of the Obama Foundation, said the former president supported the statement.Saying Obama has led a democracy forum and is planning another this year in Chicago, Jarrett added: “I think part of it is recognizing that we are very fragile … the wheels on our democracy bus feel a little wobbly right now.” More

Even before he took over Twitter, Elon Musk touted himself as a “free speech absolutist”.This was always a troubling notion for an insanely rich guy with a cult following whose sense of history is as limited as his ego is boundless.As it turns out, what Musk had in mind was something more along the lines of “free speech for me, but not for thee”, as the title of the revered columnist Nat Hentoff’s 1992 book put it.A few days ago, he threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League – for defamation, no less – blaming the non-profit for driving billions of dollars in advertising from his company. The ADL has criticized Twitter for failing to take action against hate speech, charging that fewer than a third of posts flagged for antisemitic content were removed or sanctioned; and it joined other civil rights groups last year in calling for advertiser boycotts.But clearly, if anything has destroyed the value of the company for which he paid an ill-considered $44bn, it’s been Musk himself.He’s made a series of stunningly bad decisions that seemed designed to drive away users and advertisers. Rebranding Twitter, nonsensically, as X was one; another was removing unpaid verification symbols, making it much more difficult to figure out who is real and who is an impostor.Yet another was the restoration of thousands of banned accounts.“Musk has declared open season for hate on his platforms,” Suzanne Nossel, author of Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All, and the CEO of PEN America, the free-expression organization, told me.Twitter was far from great under its co-founder Jack Dorsey, but at least an army of content moderators tried to restrain the worst offenders.Under Musk’s control, many of those employees have been fired or have departed in disgust.But a few days ago, things got much worse. Over the weekend, Musk engaged with posts from far-right figures by “liking” or responding to them. When the ADL called him out, he threatened to sue and got his ardent followers to go on the attack.The hashtag #BantheADL went viral, fanning the flames of antisemitism, already ablaze in the US and around the world.“It is profoundly disturbing that Elon Musk spent the weekend engaging with a highly toxic, antisemitic campaign on his platform,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the non-profit’s chief executive, noting the effort has been promoted by “individuals such as white supremacist Nick Fuentes, Christian nationalist Andrew Torba, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and others”.Then things got worse.“We saw the campaign manifest in the real world,” Greenblatt said, referring to masked men marching outside Orlando, Florida, waving flags adorned with swastikas and chanting: “Ban the ADL.”Musk claims he opposes antisemitism in all forms, but it sure doesn’t look that way.“Those who go up against the ADL tend to find themselves on the wrong side of history,” Nossel said, noting the organization’s fights for more than a century against the Ku Klux Klan, fascists and white supremacists.Free-speech issues aren’t easy to parse these days. The digital world, with its lightning-fast speed and worldwide reach, has changed everything. There are legitimate disagreements about what’s allowable on social media platforms.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Musk’s approach never made sense. “By ‘free speech’, I mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law,” he declared before he bought Twitter. “If people want free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”Musk’s rhetoric seemed to conflate the first amendment with practices imposed by a corporation.“It’s not just about turning up the free-speech dial, because there are always trade-offs,” Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told me then.If there were no limits on harassment and abusive speech, people – particularly women and members of historically oppressed groups, who often are the targets – would leave the platform altogether.And that, Jaffer said, is not a free-speech victory: “Nobody wants a platform on which anything goes.”Musk seems immune to that kind of reasoned discussion. He wants revenge.Just weeks ago, X Corp filed a $10m suit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, claiming revenue loss due to “false and misleading claims”; the center had published research finding that hate speech on the platform had soared.The suit Musk has threatened against the ADL would likely be for much more, since he claims its criticism has cost his company billions.Like many a mogul, Musk doesn’t like to be challenged.And his company’s precipitous decline has him searching for a scapegoat when he ought to look in the mirror.In targeting the ADL, he’s proven himself not a free-speech absolutist but an absolute bully.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

On Friday, the 10th Rugby World Cup will kick-off in Paris with a monumental match-up, France against New Zealand, les Bleus against the All Blacks. Like most rugby fans in Washington, and across the US, I will be watching on TV.With my sister-in-law, who played at Dartmouth, I’ll be at the French embassy in Georgetown. We are promised a taste of “the extraordinary atmosphere found at rugby matches at French stadiums”. Lucky us. Less fortunately, the US men’s team will also watch from these shores. The Eagles failed to qualify for France, losing out to Uruguay, Chile and Portugal. Nonetheless, American sports fans who do not know rugby should consider tuning in too.Most will see something familiar. Rugby springs from the same root as football. A rugby ball is similar in shape to a football, if slightly fatter. A rugby tackle is similar in form to a football tackle, if slightly lower. A rugby player is similar in craziness to a football player, if slightly madder.A century ago, American rugby might have seized its moment. As American football struggled to contain the violent passions it provoked, its wilder cousin flowered. Teams full of Stanford students won Olympic gold in 1920 and 1924. But then football got its house in order, becoming the dominant pastime.Rugby survived, in colleges and clubs, a sport for outsiders but also for future Washington giants. Bill Clinton (Oxford), George W Bush (Yale) and Joe Biden (Syracuse) played. So did James Baker (Princeton) and Ted Kennedy (Harvard). The women’s game also took hold. Ask Gina Raimondo, Biden’s commerce secretary. She has said rugby at Radcliffe was good preparation for politics.I’m not American but I am a rugby lifer. And, more than 20 years ago, on my first visit to Washington, I had a game for the Maryland Exiles.We played in Bethesda, at Burning Tree elementary, against the Potomac Athletic Club. The facilities were spare, the game was fast, I made friends that last to this day. I’ve recently moved to DC. Just last week, I met an old Exile (Jason Maloni, memorably called “rugby pretty boy” by Jake Tapper of CNN) at Millie’s on Massachusetts. Paul Sheehy, once an Eagles wing, and Chris Dunlavey, co-owners of the DC pro team, were there too.A couple years after that game in Bethesda, American rugby found me again. Playing for Rosslyn Park, a London club, I faced the cadets of West Point. The game was one to remember. As time passed, I found myself wondering what happened when those cadets went into an army at war. Eight years ago, on the eve of a previous World Cup, I set out to find out.That piece for the Guardian has now become a book. The research took me across America: to the borderlands of Ohio and Pennsylvania, to California, to towns and bases in between. Two of the team I faced died, at Ranger School in Georgia and on a lake in Texas, before any had seen action. Most of the rest saw it, in Iraq or Afghanistan. One was killed in Baghdad, by an IED. Another died recently, of cancer. All have been touched by loss.The survivors are in their 40s, consumed by life and work. Some are in the defense industry, some are investors, others work in oil. All have families to support. But in twos or threes or full reunions they remain a band of brothers, their bond forged in rugby. Their team contained a Rhodes scholar, two special forces operators, two helicopter pilots, a bunch of infantry officers. It contained a few classic rugby berserkers, the kind that populate most college teams. Most dreamt of playing army football but saw such dreams dashed. But that only sent them to rugby, where they found their tribe.In Texas and Oklahoma, in Massachusetts and Virginia, they will watch the World Cup too. Like me, and like millions of others in America, they may try to watch the biggest games in friendly bars, with fans of all national and political stripes.One American fan I know prefers to count his stars. HR McMaster is a retired three-star general and former national security adviser. He is also a rugby nut, having played on the wing for West Point. We have talked on record as well as off it at the bar. I have asked him what rugby means. I think his words bear repeating.He said: “We’re more connected to each other electronically than ever before but more distant from each other psychologically and emotionally than ever before. So I recommend that we come together on basketball courts and rugby pitches, to renew our fellowship with one another and to transcend the vitriol that we see on social media.”Clearly, rugby is not the only sport which can bring Americans together. But McMaster feels that rugby fuels an “abundance of what seems scarce in society today: exemplars of comradeship and the willingness to sacrifice for one another and one’s fellow citizens”.I think, or hope, he’s right. Rugby has its magic to work.American rugby is gaining a foothold. A men’s professional competition, Major League Rugby, has played six seasons. World Rugby has placed a big bet. In 2031, the men’s World Cup, the third-biggest global sporting event, will come to the US. Two years later, the women will follow.So though the US men will be missing from France over the next month, any curious American who finds a game on NBC or passes a bar full of fans – in DC, perhaps the Tight Five in Adams Morgan, where “every day is a rugby day” – might pause to take in the show. Rugby is not unique, but it is special. When the rugby bug bites, it holds.
Martin Pengelly’s book Brotherhood: When West Point Rugby Went To War will be published by Godine on 17 October More

A Russian strike has hit a crowded market in the Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka, killing at least 17 people, as the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was in Kyiv for an unannounced visit, his first for a year to the Ukrainian capital.Ukrainian officials said a further 32 people were wounded in the attack, one of Russia’s deadliest attacks in months, 12 miles (20km) from the frontlines in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.Video of the aftermath showed fires raging in destroyed buildings and soldiers carrying body bags away from the scene. The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said a child was among those killed.“A regular market. Shops. A pharmacy. People who did nothing wrong. Many wounded,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, wrote in a post on Telegram.He called the strike “a terrorist attack” and said in a later press conference that it reflected the situation on the battlefield. “Whenever there are any positive advances by Ukrainian defence forces in that direction, Russians always target civilian people and civilian objects.”Russia also targeted Kyiv with ballistic missiles in the hours prior to Blinken’s arrival, with loud booms audible in the Ukrainian capital shortly before 6am, as his train was approaching.“It was clearly meant as a greeting to Blinken,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to Zelenskiy, told the Guardian. “Russia is constantly showing that it will not abide by any rules,” Podolyak added.He said Russia had used Iskander missiles in the Kyiv attack, which was thwarted by Ukrainian air defences. Falling debris damaged building but there were no casualties, officials said.Blinken met his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, in Kyiv and held discussions with Zelenskiy. The two-day visit will include an overnight stay in the Ukrainian capital.While Blinken was in Kyiv, the US announced a new package of military assistance, including $100m (£80m) in financing for Ukraine’s long-term requirements and $175m in arms and ammunition drawn from US stockpiles, which included depleted uranium shells for the US M1 Abrams tanks that are due to be delivered by the end of this year.Depleted uranium shells are effective in piercing armour, but concerns have been raised over the incidence of cancer and birth defects in areas where they have been used. Because they have not definitively been identified as the cause, they are not banned under international law.The arms package also included components for air defence systems, guided multiple launch rocket systems, 155mm artillery and 105mm artillery ammunition.“I’m here in large part at the behest of President Biden to reaffirm our commitment to stand with you – to stand with you to help ensure that you succeed militarily in dealing with the aggression, but also to stand with you to make sure that your efforts to build a strong economy and a strong democracy succeed,” Blinken said, in remarks before a meeting with Shmyhal.The visit comes shortly after Zelenskiy fired his defence minister, and as Ukraine’s military counteroffensive grinds on in the south-east of the country. On Wednesday Ukraine’s parliament approved the appointment of Rustem Umerov as the new defence minister. He replaces Oleksii Reznikov, who was sacked after a number of corruption scandals linked to the defence ministry. Reznikov is tipped to become ambassador to Britain.Umerov was tasked with negotiations with Russia in the early stages of the war, before heading the state property fund, Ukraine’s main privatisation agency. “He has an impeccable reputation, and all political circles respect him,” said Podolyak. “He’s a consensus candidate, which is important.”In a statement posted to Facebook, Umerov promised to do “everything possible and impossible” to bring about Ukraine’s victory, saying: “42 million Ukrainians stand behind every solider. Behind every soldier is a ministry that will do everything to protect and provide for all our people.”Unnamed western officials have criticised the speed and tactics of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which has irritated Ukrainian officials. The offensive has proceeded more slowly than expected, partly due to the extensive fortifications and minefields that Russian forces have built to defend their lines.“I understand that the further away you are from the war, sitting in your office, the better you understand the war, and if you’re 10,000km away then it’s the best place to understand what is happening,” said Podolyak, in a sarcastic aside.He criticised western officials who saw the war as “arrows on a map” rather than in terms of human lives, but said in recent months there had been an increased understanding of the task Ukraine faced in pushing through Russian lines.One senior western official said in a briefing to journalists on Wednesday that Ukraine was making “incremental but methodical progress” on parts of the southern and eastern fronts but accepted it was “slower than expected a couple of months ago”.This was due to the heavier than expected minefield belt laid by the Russians on the frontline, at times forcing Ukrainian soldiers to dismount and “crawl on their bellies to get through”, meaning that the pace of advance has been at best a few hundred metres a day.An unnamed US official told Reuters that Blinken wanted to get a first-hand assessment of the counteroffensive during the trip.“What’s most important is that we get a real assessment from the Ukrainians themselves,” the official said. “We want to see, hear how they intend to push forward in the coming weeks.” More

Mitch McConnell rejected speculation about his future as Republican leader in the US Senate, telling reporters: “I’m going to finish my term as leader and I’m going to finish my Senate term.”The remarks on Wednesday came amid intense speculation about the 81-year-old Kentucky senator’s health, after two recent freezes in front of reporters, one on Capitol Hill in July and another in McConnell’s home state last week.“I think Dr [Brian P] Monahan covered [the question of my health] fully,” McConnell said, regarding two public letters in which the congressional physician has discussed possible causes of the freezes and cleared his patient to continue working.The first letter said McConnell might be suffering the after-effects of a concussion, sustained in a fall in March, or from dehydration. The second letter said McConnell was not suffering from a “seizure disorder”, a stroke or a “movement disorder such as Parkinson’s disease”. That letter also called McConnell’s freeze in Kentucky last week a “brief episode”.“I have no announcement to make on that subject,” McConnell said.McConnell is the longest-serving party leader in Senate history, in place since 2007. His power over his caucus has rarely been questioned but health scares including the freezes and a series of falls have stoked speculation about whether he will finish his seventh six-year term, which ends in January 2027.Earlier, in a sign of growing uncertainty in Senate Republican ranks, McConnell’s fellow Kentuckian, Rand Paul, cast doubt on the assurances from congressional physician.Paul, once a practising opthalmologist, told reporters: “When you get dehydrated you don’t have moments when your eyes look in the distance with a vacant look and you’re sort of basically unconscious with your eyes open. That’s not a symptom of dehydration.”Monahan has also said “several medical evaluations” of McConnell included “brain MRI imaging, EEG [electroencephalogram] study and consultations with several neurologists for a comprehensive neurology assessment”.Paul said: “It is a medical mistake to say someone doesn’t have a seizure disorder because they have a normal EEG.“My point is that I’m just trying to counter the misinformation from the Senate doctor. It is basically not believable to come up and say that what’s going on is dehydration. It makes it worse.”Paul also said his remarks had “nothing to do with [McConnell’s] fitness to serve and whether he’s doing a good job or a bad job”.According to Fox News, McConnell used a closed-door party luncheon to reassure senators he was up to the job. Rick Scott of Florida, who challenged McConnell last year, told Fox McConnell did well.But press attention to McConnell’s health has been constant since he fell in Washington in March, sustaining injuries that kept him away from Capitol Hill, and since he froze in front of congressional reporters in July. Other falls were reported then, including a “face plant” at an airport.Polling shows most Americans think many politicians stay in their roles too long. More than 75% think that at 80, Joe Biden is too old for a second term as president.McConnell is a member of the oldest Senate on record. He is however nine years younger than the oldest senator, 90-year-old Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and eight years younger than the oldest Republican, Chuck Grassley of Iowa. More

Federal prosecutors are seeking to bring a new indictment against Joe Biden’s son Hunter by the end of September, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.The exact charges the president’s son would face were not immediately clear, but he has been under investigation in Delaware on gun and tax charges.US attorney for Delaware David Weiss, newly named a special counsel in the case, referred to the new indictment in a status report required by Judge Maryellen Noreika.Defense attorneys have argued that an agreement sparing Hunter Biden from prosecution on a felony gun charge remains in place. It was part of a plea deal on misdemeanor tax offenses that fell apart during a court appearance in July. More