US Politics

Dozens of activists who oppose a controversial police and fire training facility in Georgia known as Cop City have been charged with racketeering, appearing to confirm fears from civil rights groups that prosecutors are stepping up an aggressive pursuit of environmental protesters.A total of 61 people – most not from Georgia – were indicted for violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act last week, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Some of the defendants face additional charges of money laundering and domestic terrorism, the newspaper reported.In July, a coalition of groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote to the Department of Homeland Security decrying tactics used in authorities’ surveillance of the environmental protesters, and their use of the label “domestic violence extremism” for opponents of the $90m facility under construction on 85 acres of the South River Forest near Atlanta.The letter warned of the “dangers of … vague, overbroad, and stigmatizing terms like ‘domestic violent extremist’ and ‘militant’ to describe individuals who may be engaged in protected first amendment activity”.The US constitution’s first amendment protects Americans’ rights to free political speech and assembly.The most recent indictment was filed by the Georgia attorney general’s office in Fulton county last Tuesday, the AJC reported, and follows months of often violent protests at the site and in downtown Atlanta.In June, Sherry Boston, district attorney for DeKalb county, in which Cop City is located, announced she was withdrawing from criminal cases tied to protests, citing differences with Georgia’s Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, over how they were being handled.At that stage, more than 40 people had been charged with domestic terrorism following incidents in which fireworks and rocks were thrown at police. Police vehicles and construction equipment were also vandalized.“It is clear to both myself and to the attorney general that we have fundamentally different prosecution philosophies,” Boston said. The move handed Carr’s office sole responsibility for charging and prosecuting cases.Protesters have complained of intimidation and heavy-handed action by police, and the shooting death of an environmental activist, Manuel Paez Terán, in a January raid by officers on a camp at the constriction site. Investigators claimed Paez Terán, who was shot 57 times, fired first, but an autopsy found no gunpowder residue on the activist’s body.Paez Terán’s death was believed to be the first of an environmental campaigner by law enforcement in the US, reflecting what campaigners say is an escalation in the criminalization and repression of those who seek to protect natural resources.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNo detailed explanation of the charges against the 61 activists has yet been released, the AJC said. Ché Alexander, the Fulton county clerk of court, told the newspaper the indictment would be released later on Tuesday.In July, three members of a support group that helped earlier Cop City defendants with legal costs were arrested and charged with financial crimes, including money laundering and “charity fraud”. Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, called the three “criminals who facilitated and encouraged domestic terrorism”.In a message posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday morning, the ACLU said it was alarmed by the latest indictments. “This is unprecedented and extremely concerning, and we’re tracking the situation closely,” it said.The activist group Vote to Stop Cop City said the racketeering charges were “a clear assault on the broader movement for racial justice and equity”.In a statement to the Guardian, the group said: “These charges, like the previous repressive prosecutions by the state of Georgia, seek to intimidate protesters, legal observers, and bail funds alike, and send the chilling message that any dissent to Cop City will be punished with the full power and violence of the government.“[District attorney] Carr’s actions are a part of a retaliatory pattern of prosecutions against organizers nationwide that attack the right to protest and freedom of speech. His threats will not silence our commitment to standing up for our future, our community, and our city.” More

A panel of federal judges has struck down Alabama’s redrawn congressional map, saying the state clearly continued to violate the Voting Rights Act and had ignored a clear mandate from the federal judiciary to increase the political power of Black voters in the state.The panel said a court-appointed special master and cartographer would draw a new map before the 2024 election. Alabama is expected to appeal the decision to the US supreme court, which upheld an earlier ruling ordering the state to redraw its map.The decision is a win for Black voters in Alabama, who have long had their political influence cracked among several congressional districts.“We do not take lightly federal intrusion into a process ordinarily reserved for the state legislature,” the panel wrote. “But we have now said twice that this Voting Rights Act case is not close.“The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.”Analyses have shown voting in Alabama is highly racially polarized – Black voters prefer Democrats while white voters prefer Republicans. So an additional majority-Black district is likely to favor a Democratic congressional candidate in a general election. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House, was in touch with Alabama Republicans while they redrew their map as he prepares to try to hold on to the narrow advantage Republicans have in the US House next year.The order on Tuesday strikes down a remedial map Alabama Republicans passed earlier this summer after the three-judge panel ruled the congressional plan that the state passed in 2021 violated the Voting Rights Act.Black people comprise about a quarter of the eligible voting population in Alabama, but they were a majority in only one of the state’s seven congressional districts. Plaintiffs showed it was easy to draw a reasonably configured second majority-Black district that stretched across the Black belt, a rural swath of Black voters in Alabama that is one of the poorest regions in the US. The three-judge panel told the state last year it needed to draw a map that had a second-majority Black district “or something quite close to it”. The US supreme court agreed in June.But Alabama lawmakers did not appear to make much of an effort to comply with the ruling. The new map they enacted still had one majority-Black district and a second one that was only about 41% Black.“We are disturbed by the evidence that the state delayed remedial proceedings but ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy,” the three-judge panel wrote on Tuesday. “And we are struck by the extraordinary circumstance we face.“We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature – faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district – responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district.”The decision was unanimous from Stanley Marcus, an appellate judge on the 11th circuit, as well as US district judges Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer. Marcus was appointed by President Bill Clinton while Manasco and Moorer were appointed by Donald Trump.“Once again, Alabama has openly defied our laws in order to disenfranchise Black voters. Thankfully, the district court has rejected Alabama’s defiance. The court has once again confirmed that Black voters deserve two opportunity districts. We look forward to ensuring that the special master draws a map that provides Black voters with the full representation in Congress that they deserve,” said Deuel Ross, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, that represents some of the challengers in the case, which include Alabama voters and civic action groups.The court-appointed special master, Richard Allen, a former deputy chief attorney general and commissioner of the Alabama department of corrections. The cartographer is David Ely, a California-based redistricting expert who has advised numerous states and localities on redistricting issues.The court gave the two men until 25 September to come up with three proposals that “include either an additional majority-Black congressional district, or an additional district in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice”. Their proposals must also comply with the Voting Rights Act and other constitutional requirements.“Sixty years ago, former governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door to stop Black people from desegregating the University of Alabama. He moved only when the federal government forced him to do so. History is repeating itself and the district court’s decision confirms that Alabama is again on the losing side. We demand that Alabama again move out of the way and obey our laws – we demand our voting rights,” groups representing the plaintiffs said in a joint statement. More

Jill Biden tested positive for Covid on Monday night, the White House said, the second time the first lady has tested positive for the virus.“She is currently experiencing only mild symptoms. She will remain at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware,” the first lady’s communications director, Elizabeth Alexander, said in a statement.Joe Biden, scheduled to leave on Thursday for a G20 meeting in India, tested negative for Covid on Monday evening. But the president “will test at a regular cadence this week and monitor for symptoms”, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement. The first lady’s positive result came after the Bidens spent Labor Day weekend together.Jill Biden previously tested positive for Covid in August last year. Joe Biden tested positive the previous month.There has been a late-summer uptick in Covid cases across the United States. Experts are closely watching two new variants, EG.5, now the dominant strain, and BA.2.86, which has attracted attention from scientists because of its high number of mutations. Experts have said that the United States is not facing a threat like it did in 2020 and 2021. “We’re in a different place,” Mandy Cohen, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told NBC News last month. “I think we’re the most prepared that we’ve ever been.”New Covid vaccines and booster shots are expected to be available this fall. More

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, announced it will allow political advertising back on the platform – reversing a global ban on political ads since 2019. The move is the latest to stoke concerns about the ability of big tech to police online misinformation ahead of the 2024 elections – and X is not the only platform being scrutinised.Social media firms’ handlings of misinformation and divisive speech reached a breaking point in the 2020 US presidential elections when Donald Trump used online platforms to rile up his base, culminating in the storming of the Capitol building on 6 January 2021. But in the time since, companies have not strengthened their policies to prevent such crises, instead slowly stripping protections away. This erosion of safeguards, coupled with the rise of artificial intelligence, could create a perfect storm for 2024, experts warn.As the election cycle heats up, Twitter’s move this week is not the first to raise major concerns about the online landscape for 2024 – and it won’t be the last.Musk’s free speech fantasyTwitter’s change to election advertising policies is hardly surprising to those following the platform’s evolution under the leadership of Elon Musk, who purchased the company in 2022. In the months since his takeover, the erratic billionaire has made a number of unilateral changes to the site – not least of all the rebrand of Twitter to X.Many of these changes have centered on Musk’s goal to make Twitter profitable at all costs. The platform, he complained, was losing $4m per day at the time of his takeover, and he stated in July that its cash flow was still in the negative. More than half of the platform’s top advertisers have fled since the takeover – roughly 70% of the platforms leading advertisers were not spending there as of last December. For his part, this week Musk threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, saying, “based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss”. Whatever the reason, his decision to re-allow political advertisers could help boost revenue at a time when X sorely needs it.But it’s not just about money. Musk has identified himself as a “free speech absolutist” and seems hell bent on turning the platform into a social media free-for-all. Shortly after taking the helm of Twitter, he lifted bans on the accounts of Trump and other rightwing super-spreaders of misinformation. Ahead of the elections, he has expressed a goal of turning Twitter into “digital town square” where voters and candidates can discuss politics and policies – solidified recently by its (disastrous) hosting of Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign announcement.Misinformation experts and civil rights advocates have said this could spell disaster for future elections. “Elon Musk is using his absolute control over Twitter to exert dangerous influence over the 2024 election,” said Imran Ahmed, head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a disinformation and hate speech watchdog that Musk himself has targeted in recent weeks.In addition to the policy changes, experts warn that the massive workforce reduction Twitter has carried out under Musk could impact the ability to deal with misinformation, as trust and safety teams are now reported to be woefully understaffed.Let the misinformation wars beginWhile Musk’s decisions have been the most high profile in recent weeks, it is not the only platform whose policies have raised alarm. In June, YouTube reversed its election integrity policy, now allowing content contesting the validity of the 2020 elections to remain on the platform. Meanwhile, Meta has also reinstated accounts of high-profile spreaders of misinformation, including Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr.Experts say these reversals could create an environment similar to that which fundamentally threatened democracy in 2020. But now there is an added risk: the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence tools. Generative AI, which has increased its capabilities in the last year, could streamline the ability to manipulate the public on a massive scale.Meta has a longstanding policy that exempts political ads from its misinformation policies and has declined to state whether that immunity will extend to manipulated and AI-generated images in the upcoming elections. Civil rights watchdogs have envisioned a worst-case scenario in which voters’ feeds are flooded with deceptively altered and fabricated images of political figures, eroding their ability to trust what they read online and chipping away at the foundations of democracy.While Twitter is not the only company rolling back its protections against misinformation, its extreme stances are moving the goalposts for the entire industry. The Washington Post reported this week that Meta was considering banning all political advertising on Facebook, but reversed course to better compete with its rival Twitter, which Musk had promised to transform into a haven for free speech. Meta also dissolved its Facebook Journalism Project, tasked with promoting accurate information online, and its “responsible innovation team,” which monitored the company’s products for potential risks, according to the Washington Post.Twitter may be the most scrutinised in recent weeks, but it’s clear that almost all platforms are moving towards an environment in which they throw up their hands and say they cannot or will not police dangerous misinformation online – and that should concern us all.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe wider TechScape David Shariatmadari goes deep with the co-founder of DeepMind about the mind-blowing potential of artificial intelligence in biotech in this long read. New tech news site 404 Media has published a distressing investigation into AI-generated mushroom-foraging books on Amazon. In a space where misinformation could mean the difference between eating something delicious and something deadly, the stakes are high. If you can’t beat them, join them: celebrities have been quietly working to sign deals licensing their artificially generated likenesses as the AI arms race continues. Elsewhere in AI – scammers are on the rise, and their tactics are terrifying. And the Guardian has blocked OpenAI from trawling its content. Can you be “shadowbanned” on a dating app? Some users are convinced their profiles are not being prioritised in the feed. A look into this very modern anxiety, and how the algorithms of online dating actually work. More

As we celebrate Labor Day, 2023 let’s take a quick look at the economy over the last few years.Never before in American history have so few owned so much and has there been so much income and wealth inequality.Never before in American history has there been such concentration of ownership in our economy with a handful of giant corporations controlling sector after sector, enjoying record-breaking profits.Never before in American history have we seen a ruling class, utilizing a corrupt political system, exercise so much political power through their Super Pacs and ownership of media.And never before in American history have we seen the level of greed, arrogance and irresponsibility that we see today on the part of the 1%. Corporate greed is rampant.Meanwhile, as the billionaire class becomes richer and more powerful, over 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and many work for starvation wages and under terrible working conditions. Incredibly, despite huge increases in worker productivity and an explosion in technology, the average American worker is making over $45 a week less today than he or she did 50 years ago after adjusting for inflation.Today, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, tens of millions struggle to put food on the table, find affordable housing, affordable healthcare, affordable prescription drugs, affordable childcare and affordable educational opportunities. In our country today we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major nation, and half of older workers have no savings as they face retirement.And, in the midst of this massive inequality, the United States and the world face enormous economic transformation as a result of artificial intelligence, robotics and other new technologies. There is no question but that many of the jobs being done today will not be here in 10 or 20 years.Let’s be clear. These technologies, which will greatly increase worker productivity, have the potential to be extraordinarily beneficial for humanity, or could cause devastating pain and dislocation for tens of millions of workers. The question is: who makes the decisions as to what happens in this radically changing economy, and who benefits from those decisions? Do we allow the “market” to throw working people out in the streets because they are “redundant”, or do we take advantage of the increased productivity this technology creates to improve the lives of all?Throughout the history of humanity, the vast majority of people have had to struggle to feed themselves, find adequate shelter and eke out a living. The good news is that the revolutionary new technology, if used to benefit all of humanity and not just the rich and the powerful, could usher in a new era in human development. It is not utopian thinking to imagine that, for the first time in world history, we could enter a time in which every man, woman and child has a decent standard of living and improved quality of life.In the United States, for example, the 40-hour work week, under the Fair Labor Standards Act, has been the legal definition of full-time work since 1940. Well, the world and technology have undergone enormous changes since 1940 and American workers are now 480% more productive than they were back then. It’s time for those standards to reflect contemporary reality. It’s time for a 32-hour work week with no loss in pay. It’s time that working families were able to take advantage of the increased productivity that new technologies provide so that they can enjoy more leisure time, family time, educational and cultural opportunities – and less stress.Moving to a 32-hour work week with no loss of pay is not a radical idea. In fact, movement in that direction is already taking place in other developed countries. France, the seventh-largest economy in the world, has a 35-hour work week and is considering reducing it to 32 hours. The work week in Norway and Denmark is about 37 hours a week.Recently, the United Kingdom conducted a four-day work week pilot program of 3,000 workers at over 60 companies. Not surprisingly, it showed that happy workers were more productive. The pilot was so successful that 92% of the companies that participated decided to maintain a four-day work week because of the benefits to both employers and employees.Another pilot of nearly 1,000 workers at 33 companies in seven countries, found that revenue increased by more than 37% in the companies that participated and 97% percent of workers were happy with the four-day work week.Needless to say, changes that benefit the working class of our country are not going to be easily handed over by the corporate elite. They have to be fought for – and won. And in that regard there has been some very good news over the last several years. We are now seeing workers stand up and fight for justice in a way we have not seen in decades. In America, more workers want to join unions; more workers are joining unions – 273,000 last year alone; and more workers are going out on strike for decent wages and benefits and winning. We’re seeing that increased militancy all across our economy – with truck drivers, auto workers, writers, actors, warehouse workers, healthcare professionals, graduate student teachers and baristas.Let’s continue that struggle. Let’s think big, not small. Let’s create an economy and government that work for all, not just the few.Happy Labor Day. More

The author of a new biography of Joe Biden has said it “wouldn’t be a total shock” if the president cancels his re-election bid by the end of the year.Franklin Foer, whose book The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future is published this week, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that “it doesn’t take Bob Woodward to understand that Joe Biden is old”, referring the Watergate reporter who, like Biden, is 80.“I’m not a gerontologist, and I can’t predict how the next couple years will age Joe Biden,” Foer added. Asked if Biden could drop out of his re-election bid, Foer said: “It would be a surprise to me, but it wouldn’t be a total surprise to me.”The comments came a day ahead of the president’s Labor Day visit to Philadelphia, where Biden spoke about the importance of trade unions and addressed the potential auto workers’ strike. “I’m not worried about a strike … I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Biden said. The president also addressed the age issue, remarking: “The only thing that comes with age is a little bit of wisdom.”Questions about Biden’s age and competency, along with others in legislative positions, have become a recurring theme ahead of a presidential election year. On Sunday, the former South Carolina governor and Republican nomination hopeful Nikki Haley repeated calls for “competency tests” for presidential and congressional candidates.Last week, the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell appeared to freeze up in public for the second time in two months.“At what point do they get it’s time to leave? They need to let a younger generation take over,” Haley said. “This is not just a Republican or Democrat problem. This is acongressional problem.”But Foer, who is reported to have conducted 300 interviews for the 407-page account of Biden’s career, also said that Biden’s religious beliefs could be a factor in his decision-making. “When he talks about his life, he uses this word ‘fate’ constantly. Joe Biden is a very religious guy, and fate is a word loaded with religious meaning,” Foer said. “When I hear that, to me it’s the ellipses in the sentence when he’s talking about his own future that I account for in thinking about his calculus.”In the book, Foer writes that Biden’s “advanced years were a hindrance, depriving him of the energy to cast a robust public presence or the ability to easily conjure a name.“It was striking that he took so few morning meetings or presided over so few public events before 10am. His public persona reflected physical decline and time’s dulling of mental faculties that no pill or exercise regime can resist.“In private, he would occasionally admit that he felt tired.”A Wall Street Journal poll published on Monday found that voters overwhelmingly think Biden is too old to run for re-election. The outlet said negative views of Biden’s age and performance in office “help explain” why only 39% of voters had a favorable view of the White House incumbent.According to the survey, 73% of voters said they felt Biden is too old to seek a second term. That compares to 47% of voters who held the same view of Donald Trump, who is three years younger at 77. The poll also found that 46% of voters said Trump is mentally competent for president, compared to 36% for Biden.But voters also expressed concerns about Donald Trump, saying he is less honest and likable than Biden. A majority also viewed Trump’s actions after his 2020 election loss as an illegal effort to deny Biden a legitimate win.“Voters are looking for change, and neither of the leading candidates is the change that they’re looking for,” the Democratic pollster Michael Bocian, who conducted the study, told the outlet.Biden took the opportunity on Friday to talk up his administration’s economic record, saying: “We ought to take a step back and take note of the fact that America is now in one of the strongest job-creating periods in our history.”But job creation figures released on Friday show that America’s employers added 187,000 jobs in August that have been interpreted as a sign that the US labor market is slowing. More

The question was simple: what are your thoughts about running for re-election in 2026? “Oh,” said Mitch McConnell with a half-chuckle, a mumble and then: silence. The most powerful Republican in the US Senate stared into space and said nothing for more than 30 seconds.It was the second time in little more than a month that 81-year-old McConnell had frozen while speaking to reporters. But there were few voices in the Democratic party calling on him to step down.The question of age is one that both party establishments in America have cause to avoid.Democrat Joe Biden, 80, is the oldest president in American history. Republican Donald Trump, 77, is the second oldest and current frontrunner for the party nomination in 2024. The Senate, average age 64, has one of the oldest memberships of any parliamentary body in the world. It is small wonder that dealing with America’s drift into gerontocracy is not top of its agenda.“Both political parties are pulling their punches,” said Frank Luntz, a political consultant who has worked on many Republican campaigns. “Democrats have been quiet about McConnell because they know their own party is run by someone who has the same challenges McConnell has.”If he wins re-election, Biden would be 86 by the end of his second term; a recent opinion poll found that more than three in four Americans think he would be too old to be effective. This week the Guardian reported a claim in a new book that the president has privately admitted he is occasionally tired.Critics faulted Biden’s response to recent wildfires in Maui, Hawaii, and described a speech he gave there as rambling. He mangled the names of Senator Brian Schatz and Mayor Rick Bissen and, in one odd digression, told the latter: “Rick, when we talked on the phone, I never – you look like you played in defensive tackle for – I don’t know who, but somebody good.”John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “In all honesty I’ve been a fan of Joe Biden and have tried to overlook some of the missteps but I did see him in Maui and that was troubling. He got to the microphone and started making jokes and then repeated himself three times between his unprepared remarks and prepared remarks. He just did not look good.”When McConnell suffered his second freezing episode while talking to reporters in Kentucky, Biden was quick to defend the “friend” he served with in the Senate. He said: “I’m confident he’s going to be back to his old self.” Asked if he had any concerns about McConnell’s ability to do his job, the president replied: “No.” Asked again, he insisted: “I don’t.”The congressional doctor has cleared McConnell – who tripped in March and was hospitalised for a concussion and minor rib fracture – to continue his duties. But observers increasingly question Washington’s octogenarian rule.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “It’s lIke both parties are being led by decrepit leaders. Frankly, if there were people in the wings who could step forward, there would have been an effort.“But in the Democratic party, if Biden’s not the candidate, it’s a free-for-all and in the Senate, if McConnell’s not the leader, the wings of the party are going to bash each other: there’s the Trump supporters and there’s the let’s-move-past-Trump. That’s what’s keeping Biden and McConnell in place: the venomous battles that would ensue as soon as they step down.”This standoff creates a headache for party strategists on both sides going into next year’s elections. Jacobs added: “What’s going on here is handcuffing the Democratic communications masters. The talking points for going after McConnell just get turned around on Biden. The Republicans want to move past McConnell because going after Biden’s age is one of their very few talking points at this stage.”There have been no such inhibitions for rightwing media, including Fox News hosts such as Sean Hannity. Some dissident voices have also emerged in both parties. Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, has called on the president to retire because of his weak poll numbers and advanced age. Phillips told the Washington Post newspaper: “God forbid the president has a health episode or something happens in the middle of a primary.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn response to the McConnell incident, Phillips wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “For goodness sake, the family, friends, and staff of Senators Feinstein and McConnell are doing them and our country a tremendous disservice. It’s time for term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court, and some basic human decency.”Meanwhile Republican candidates for president such as Nikki Haley, 51, former governor of South Carolina, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur, have called for generational change. Haley, who has called for mental competency tests for candidates over 75, told the Fox News network: “What I will say is, right now, the Senate is the most privileged nursing home in the country. I mean, Mitch McConnell has done some great things, and he deserves credit. But you have to know when to leave.”Such talking points could strike a chord with the public. Six in 10 Americans told a Reuters/Ipsos poll last November that they were very or somewhat concerned that members of Congress are too old to represent the American people.The oldest current senator, Dianne Feinstein of California, is 90 and was absent for months earlier this year after she suffered complications from shingles; she has said she will retire at the end of her term next year. Senator Bernie Sanders, the voice of progressives in the past two Democratic primaries, turns 82 next week. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa turns 90 later this month. A rematch between Biden and Trump appears the most likely scenario next year.Sally Quinn, a journalist and author, noted the strategic quandaries for both parties. “Donald Trump is going to be 78 next year so the Republicans don’t exactly have a spring chicken on their lineup and are reluctant to go after Biden for his age when Trump is getting up there.“It doesn’t help any of them to and it makes them look ungracious and unkind and unsympathetic, even though they’re all rolling their eyes privately and saying, ‘Oh, my God, they’ve got to go, they’ve got got to go.’ There isn’t anybody who’s not rolling their eyes over Dianne Feinstein. And the Democrats worry about Joe Biden: they think he’s done a great job and they like him but they also see that he’s 80, 81, and that’s old.”Quinn was married to the late Ben Bradlee, who retired as editor of the Washington Post in 1991 at the age of 70. “He was asked to stay and he said, I want to go out at the top, I don’t want to be hanging around here and hear them saying, ‘Oh my God, poor old Bradlee’s really losing it,’ and so he went out on top. With my blessing, by the way – a lot of the spouses don’t want to lose the power and the influence.” More

A judge in Florida has ruled in favor of voting rights groups that filed a lawsuit against a congressional redistricting map approved by Ron DeSantis in 2022. Voting rights groups had criticized the map for diluting political power in Black communities.In the ruling, Leon county circuit judge J Lee Marsh sent the map back to the Florida legislature to be redrawn in a way that complies with the state’s constitution.“Under the stipulated facts (in the lawsuit), plaintiffs have shown that the enacted plan results in the diminishment of Black voters’ ability to elect their candidate of choice in violation of the Florida constitution,” Marsh wrote in the ruling.The ruling is expected to be appealed by the state, likely putting the case before the Florida supreme court.The lawsuit focused on a north Florida congressional district previously represented by the Democrat Al Lawson, who is Black. Lawson’s district was carved up into districts represented by white Republicans.DeSantis vetoed a map that initially preserved Lawson’s district in 2022, submitting his own map and calling a special legislative session demanding state legislators accept it. Judge Marsh rejected claims from Florida Republicans that the state’s provision against weakening or eliminating minority-dominant districts violated the US constitution.“This is a significant victory in the fight for fair representation for Black Floridians,” said Olivia Mendoza, director of litigation and policy for the National Redistricting Foundation, an affiliate of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, in a statement.“As a result, the current discriminatory map should be replaced with a map that restores the fifth congressional district in a manner that gives Black voters the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.”In 2022, the Florida Legislative Black Caucus labeled the DeSantis-approved congressional map as voter suppression.The map resulted in Florida Republicans picking up four congressional seats in the state, increasing Republican representatives from 16 to 20 out of 28 seats and helping Republicans seal a slim majority in the House in 2022.Prior to the court decision, the state of Florida and voting rights groups that had filed the lawsuit reached an agreement that narrowed the scope of the lawsuit to focus on Lawson’s congressional seat, though there is still a separate lawsuit in federal court over the state’s congressional maps.The court decision is the latest ruling in the south against Republican-drawn congressional maps over concerns the redistricting reduced Black voting power.In June, the US supreme court overturned a Republican drawn map in Alabama and shortly after lifted a hold on a case involving redistricting in Louisiana, returning the case to a lower court, increasing the likelihood Louisiana will be required to create a second congressional district that empowers Black voters. More