US Politics

The Republican leader in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, experienced another public health scare on Wednesday when he appeared to freeze for more than 30 seconds while speaking to reporters in his home state, Kentucky.McConnell, 81, was eventually escorted away by staff, footage from an NBC News affiliate showed.Asked for his thoughts about running for re-election in 2026, McConnell laughed and said: “Oh, that’s a …” He then appeared to freeze.Coming to his side, an aide said: “Did you hear the question, senator? Running for re-election in 2026?”McConnell did not answer. The aide said, “All right, I’m sorry you all, we’re gonna need a minute.” Another aide exchanged quiet words with the senator, who said: “OK.” The first aide asked for another question, saying: “Please speak up.”The aide repeated questions loudly into McConnell’s ear. He gave quiet, halting answers.Told, “It’s a question about Trump,” McConnell said he would not comment on the presidential race “on the Democratic side or the Republican side”.The two aides then escorted McConnell away.The incident came a little more than a month after McConnell appeared to freeze while talking to reporters at the US Capitol in Washington.McConnell returned to answer questions then, saying he had been “sandbagged” – a reference to remarks by the 80-year-old president, Joe Biden, after he tripped and fell at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado in June.The Washington incident was followed by reports of McConnell suffering multiple falls, including one in March that left him with concussion and a rib fracture, keeping him away from Washington.Elected to the Senate in 1984, McConnell became Republican leader in 2006. Now the longest-serving Senate party leader in history, he has earned a reputation for ruthlessly partisan operations, memorably describing himself as “stronger than mule piss” when it came to stocking the supreme court with conservative justices.Aides have said McConnell will stay in his role as Republican leader until the end of his term, in 2026. Were he to vacate the role before that, his temporary replacement would be appointed by the governor of Kentucky. Andy Beshear is a Democrat but state law says he must pick from a shortlist named by the same party as the retiree. Democrats hold the Senate 51-49, with vulnerable senators up for re-election in Republican-run states next year.Public incidents involving McConnell and other ageing politicians, particularly the 90-year-old California Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, have stoked growing public opinion that too many party leaders and grandees have put off retirement too long.Biden was 78 when he was inaugurated president, the oldest ever, and would be 86 at the end of his second term if he wins re-election next year. On Tuesday, the Guardian reported that a new book about Biden’s presidency, based on access to his trusted advisers, says Biden has often told aides he is tired.After the incident in Kentucky on Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said Biden, a senator from Delaware from 1973 to 2009, would wish McConnell well.Biden later told reporters he would try to get in touch with his “good friend” and would “wish him well”.A spokesperson for McConnell told reporters the senator had “felt momentarily lightheaded” and would consult a doctor before his next event.Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, said: “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.” More

Republican senator Mitch McConnell appeared to have another freezing moment on Wednesday at a Kentucky event, prompting further concerns about the minority leader’s health. He fell silent for more than 30 seconds after he was asked if he would run for re-election. McConnell, 81, froze at a news conference in Washington in July, going silent for 19 seconds before being taken away from cameras More

A Texas judge has ruled that a controversial bill dubbed “the Death Star law” is unconstitutional, just days before the law was set to take effect when it would have hurt many local labor laws, including paid sick leave and mandated water breaks for some employees toiling outside in a brutal heatwave.The state district judge Maya Guerra Gamble issued her decision in response to a lawsuit against Texas filed by the cities of Houston, San Antonio and El Paso. Gamble agreed with arguments made by the cities that the bill is vague and unclear on which ordinances the municipalities must cancel before it was set to take effect.The law was an attempt by Texas Republicans to nullify and prevent local municipalities and counties from passing local ordinances that go further than state law. It was slated to prevent legislation requiring paid sick leave for workers, eviction protections for tenants, and would nullify local ordinances that mandated water breaks for construction workers in Austin and Dallas and prompted San Antonio to scale back efforts to enact a similar ordinance.Texas is expected to appeal, but worker advocate groups praised the decision.“This ruling allows critical, life-saving local policies to remain in place – including worker protections like rest breaks for construction workers – reflecting the importance of local leaders being able to respond to their communities’ urgent needs. We celebrate this win today, but we also acknowledge that this fight is far from over,” wrote Local Progress Texas, Texas AFL-CIO, Every Texan, & Workers Defense Project in a joint statement in response to the ruling.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe statement added: “The Death Star law is part of a trend of Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country using preemption as a tactic to undermine local policies that protect vulnerable Americans and concentrate power in the hands of extreme lawmakers and their corporate interests. We hope that the Texas supreme court will uphold this decision to protect local democracy.” More

Rudy Giuliani, an attorney and close ally of Donald Trump, is liable for defaming two Georgia poll workers following the 2020 election, a federal judge has ruled in a default judgment.Giuliani failed to produce records during the discovery process while making “excuses” to shroud his noncompliance, according to the opinion by Judge Beryl Howell, of the federal US district court for the District of Columbia.“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straightforward defamation case,” Howell wrote.Ruby Freeman, a election worker in Fulton county, Georgia during the 2020 election, sued Giuliani for defaming her and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, by repeatedly spreading baseless claims they committed election fraud, including rolling around suitcases of fake ballots.As a result of those baseless claims, Freeman and Moss, who are Black, became targets of harassment in the weeks after the election. Moss testified that she received threats and racist messages from strangers as a result had to go into hiding and change her appearance. The ruling, along with the Fox-Dominion settlement, marks the second time Giuliani, one of the most prolific spreaders of misinformation in the 2020 election, has been held liable.Giuliani admitted to making false statements but argued they were protected by the first amendment, in an earlier court filing.A Georgia state election board formally cleared Freeman and Moss, of wrongdoing in a 10-page report released in March.That report confirmed that the election tampering allegations against Freeman and Moss were “unsubstantiated and found to have no merit”.According to the Wednesday ruling, Giuliani is also liable for “intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy and punitive damage claims”.Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, is facing 13 felony charges in the Georgia election interference case. He was booked in a Fulton county jail last week and was released after posting $150,000 bail.Yet Giuliani, 79, has struggled to pay his mounting legal fees, according to the New York Times, which reports that his bills add up to $3m. He put his Manhattan apartment up for sale for $6.5m in July, and has asked Trump to help cover some of the cost.Trump is set to host a fundraiser for Giuliani at his New Jersey golf club this September, and it will cost each guest $100,000 to attend.The defamation case will now go to trial to determine the amount of damages. While it is unclear how much Giuliani will be required to pay, Howell ruled that he owes $89,172.50, with interest, in attorney fees for Freeman and Moss on their successful motion to compel discovery. More

Joe Biden is a little tired.That shouldn’t be surprising. Biden is, after all, the president of the United States. He has a demanding job, an intense travel schedule and a re-election campaign looming, Most presidents, one would assume, are tired a lot of the time.But Biden’s tiredness is one “bombshell” from a forthcoming biography of the 46th president by the journalist Franklin Foer.“His advanced years were a hindrance, depriving him of the energy to cast a robust public presence or the ability to easily conjure a name,” Foer writes in The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future. Biden reportedly takes few meetings and schedules few events before 10am. “In private,” Foer writes, “he would occasionally admit that he felt tired.”Being president is no doubt exhausting. George W Bush notoriously went to bed by 10pm, needed eight hours of sleep to be functional, tried to squeeze the enormous demands of the presidency into an eight-hour day, and took ample relaxation time. Bill Clinton, who slept four hours a night or less, also reportedly told a friend: “Every important mistake I’ve made in my life, I’ve made because I was too tired.”For Biden, though, a normal human reaction – being tired while working one of the most demanding jobs on Earth – takes on outsized importance because the president is elderly.To be clear, Foer isn’t wrong that Biden’s age is a concern: at 80, he is the oldest president in American history, and if he wins in 2024, he’ll be 86 when he leaves office. And the president’s advanced age no doubt does leave Biden, as Foer put it, experiencing “physical decline and time’s dulling of mental faculties that no pill or exercise regime can resist”.Just how much is Biden’s advanced age affecting his ability to do his job? That’s a valid question.What’s infuriating, though, is how that question is used as a cudgel by the right, despite the fact that their preferred guy – Donald Trump, who continues to lead in Republican primary polls – is also an elderly man, just three years Biden’s junior, and demonstrates even more worrying signs of both cognitive and physical decline, as well as narcissism, grandiosity and dishonesty.Still, nearly 90% of Republicans say Biden is too old to be president, but only 29% say the same about Trump, who is roughly the same age and will also leave office in his 80s if he wins in 2024.Nor is it the case that Trump is demonstrably fitter than Biden. By many accounts, Trump’s physical and cognitive health is poor. He’s both elderly and obese, which puts him at greater risk of a host of mental and physical problems, including dementia, cancer and cardiovascular failure. He has evinced significant cognitive decline, saying he can’t remember notable conversations and events, and that he doesn’t know people he has clearly met.During Trump’s presidency, some of those around him worried that he had lost his mind. Over the years he has grown less and less coherent, more paranoid, more conspiratorial. His speech is erratic, his thoughts disorganized, and he makes simple factual errors – for example, seeming to forget where his father was born. As Trump’s years in the Oval Office ticked by, the question of whether there was something neurologically wrong with him became all the more urgent.The man says he can’t even remember saying he has one of the world’s best memories.The default assumption now seems to be that Trump is simply lying, and indeed that might be the case (if it is, it should also be disqualifying). But either he’s lying or he’s not firing on all cylinders – or, perhaps, both.Trump has also exhibited signs of having a serious personality disorder, and while mental health professionals are careful about weighing in on a person’s psychological state without having examined them, some have at least outlined the telltale signs and allowed the reader to draw their own conclusions. Researchers have even drawn a connection between Trump’s seeming pathological narcissism and narcissistic traits among his supporters. This seems at least as concerning as Biden feeling tired.The fact that the 2024 election seems likely to be between two men in their golden years is itself a disturbing sign of American degeneration. Both political parties feel stagnant. But only one party is careening toward authoritarianism and lining up behind a candidate who has undermined American democracy and been indicted in several jurisdictions for serious crimes.Biden’s age, and any exhaustion that goes with it, is a valid concern, and a legitimate area of inquiry for a biographer or journalist. The voting public, though, may soon be faced with a binary choice: on the one hand is an ageing but extremely experienced man who has begun to right the economy, forgiven student loan debt, invested in nationwide infrastructure projects, appointed a slew of new judges and is currently taking historic action on prescription drug prices – and yes, he is old and tired.And on the other hand is an ageing narcissist who took a strong economy and sent it into a tailspin, cut taxes for the super-rich, left office with fewer American jobs than when he started, oversaw a chaotic and disastrous pandemic response, appointed supreme court justices who went on to strip abortion rights from American women, made it more difficult for Americans to access healthcare, made abusing power and profiting from the office something of a personal hobby, rolled back protections for the environment and endangered species, attacked immigrants and tried to ban refugees from coming in, and then refused to accept the results of a free and fair US election, fomenting an attempted coup that left several Americans dead.I could certainly go on. But in a contest between these two old men of almost the same old age, where one is tired and imperfect and the other unhinged and malignant, Biden’s slight seniority is only an issue because there’s so little else to raise.
Jill Filipovic is the author of the The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness More

The scene is Des Moines, Iowa, earlier this month. Up on stage is a man running to be the Republican party’s next pick for US president. A song starts over the tannoy. It is one of the hopeful’s declared favourites. Pumping the air, he lifts the mic and begins rapping along: “You better lose yourself in the music / The moment, you own it, you better never let it go.”So goes one of the best-known songs of the 21st century – and one of the most bizarre moments so far in the Republican primaries. Why is Vivek Ramaswamy – with an estimated net worth somewhere north of $950m – karaoke-ing about life in a mobile home? What does a product of Yale and Harvard know about having to wear a sweater coated with vomit (“mom’s spaghetti”)?Such questions clearly troubled Lose Yourself’s author, Eminem, who last week fired off a lawyer’s letter demanding that the politician stop using any of his work. Just as the song foretold, Mr Ramaswamy only got one shot – sadly for him.Politicians have tangled with pop for decades – just think of Harold Wilson’s canny award of MBEs to the Fab Four – yet in recent years, real political contenders have had to pretend that they actually listen to the stuff. Picking her Desert Island Discs in 1978, Margaret Thatcher thought she would subsist on a diet of Beethoven and Dvořák. Three decades later, Gordon Brown was asked whether he liked Arctic Monkeys and tried a cheery bluff about how they’d “certainly wake you up in the morning”.As the then chancellor later admitted, he’d never heard the band, let alone sluiced cider down his jumper to I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor. But he was right to observe that, from Strictly to the Lionesses, “Unless you can offer a view on each and every issue of the day, you are immediately accused of indecisiveness.” As mass-membership parties have withered away, so modern politicians must show that they are one of us through a feigned enthusiasm for popular culture – even though it has nothing to do with their job.In a few weeks, Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem, turns 51. He ranks among the most talented performers in hip-hop, an art form that has marked its own 50th birthday this month. Both are a good sight older than 38-year-old Mr Ramaswamy, and are soaked into our daily lives to an extent that politicians can only dream of. Lose Yourself has soundtracked countless gym sessions, an advert for Chrysler and a campaign by Joe Biden. Its author may hate the politics of Donald Trump and his Republican acolytes, but artists can’t choose their fans.Yet it is odd to see a venture capitalist such as Mr Ramaswamy act the underdog; or to hear Old Etonian David Cameron proclaim his love for The Eton Rifles by the Jam. Part of how this era of supersized inequality persists is by the people at the top pretending they’re just like those at the bottom. Why, they even listen to the same music! The boss of Goldman Sachs is a DJ, and our very own prime minister enjoys rap. Although, being Rishi Sunak, he knows all the words to that 90s embarrassment Ice Ice Baby. Give us Eminem any day. More

Assuming Donald Trump clinches the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, it would be unfair for any court dates associated with the former president’s pending criminal charges to “compromise [his] ability to have a robust campaign schedule”, the Democratic US congressman Ro Khanna has said.Khanna’s remarks on Tuesday – in an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt – might be surprising to some, given his credentials as a leading progressive voice in the House. Khanna was the former co-chairperson of the liberal US senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination that Joe Biden ultimately secured.Nonetheless, while Khanna made clear that he believed Trump should have to answer the various charges against him, the Californian said the timing of exactly when that happens is of the utmost importance.“My instinct on all of this is they’re not going to have trials in the middle of something that’s going to compromise a candidate’s ability to have a fair fight,” Khanna said. “I just don’t see that happening in our country.”He continued: “You can’t just say OK, because someone was president or someone is a candidate, that you’re above the law. Everyone is under the law, and that allegations, the evidence needs to be pursued. But what we’re discussing is the timing.“And I do think we need to make sure that in the timing, if Trump does emerge as the Republican nominee, that it does not compromise the ability to have a robust campaign schedule. And I imagine that the courts will take that into consider if he is the nominee.”Khanna’s comments come as Trump grapples with 91 criminal charges contained in four separate indictments related to subversion of the 2020 election which he lost to Biden, retention of classified information once he left the Oval Office and hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.Trump has denied wrongdoing and claims that he is being politically persecuted. Trials have been scheduled for next year, but it is not uncommon for such proceedings to be delayed – sometimes significantly.In his conversation with Hewitt, Khanna alluded to the possibility of trial delays, which often result from logistical complications that are commonplace even when the defendant is much less well-known than an ex-president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m not sure that that’s going to be the actual date at the end of the day,” Khanna said when Hewitt mentioned that one of the cases against Trump was set for trial on 4 March 2024, when many states have scheduled presidential primary voting. “There’s an ability to move it. I mean, let’s see what happens.”Khanna also brought up the possibility that one of the other candidates vying for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination ends up swiping it from Trump, even though polling shows that he holds a commanding lead in the contest.“You know, he may not be the nominee,” said Khanna, who has been in Congress since 2017. “I mean, that’s still – that has to be determined.” More

Donald Trump extended his lead over his Republican nomination rivals in a series of polls conducted since the release of his mugshot in Fulton county after he surrendered on charges that he conspired to subvert the 2020 election in Georgia and his absence from the first GOP primary debate.The former US president held commanding advantages across the board in recent surveys done for the Trump campaign and for Morning Consult, leading his nearest challenger, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, in the overall race, in a head-to-head matchup, and in favorability ratings.That outcome has been a trend for Trump who has seen polling and fundraising boosts with each indictment this year – in the hush-money case in New York, in the classified documents case in Florida, and in the federal 2020 election subversion case in Washington.It also suggests that some of DeSantis’s principal campaign arguments – that he is more electable than Trump – have failed to cut through with likely Republican voters even after he had the opportunity to establish himself last week in Trump’s absence on the debate stage.The polling commissioned and touted by the Trump campaign in the days after Trump surrendered at the Fulton county jail suggests the release of his mugshot that underscored his legal jeopardy and skipping the first GOP debate has not weakened him among likely Republican primary voters.Overall, Trump polled at 58% compared with DeSantis at 13% among roughly 2,700 likely Republican primary voters surveyed by Coefficient, improving his lead by three points since the start of the month. No other candidate topped 10%.The Trump campaign polling was consistent with a Morning Consult poll which found Trump’s lead unshaken in the immediate aftermath of the release of his mugshot and the first Republican primary debate, with Trump at 58%, DeSantis at 14% and no other candidate again above 10%.The survey found that even if all the other candidates withdrew for a unified opposition against Trump, the former president would win the hypothetical head-to-head race against DeSantis by almost a two-to-one margin, 62% to 23%.Notably, in the days after Trump’s surrender in Fulton county, the share of voters who believed Trump is guilty of the charges dropped by 11%, while the share of voters who believed Trump was being indicted as part of an effort to stop him running for president held at 74%.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe survey comes less than six months before the first 2024 primary contest and the political landscape for Trump could still change as he spends more time in courtrooms across the country and off the campaign trail.On Monday, the federal judge presiding over the special counsel prosecution of Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, scheduled the trial to commence on 4 March 2024, one day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states are scheduled to hold Republican primaries or caucuses.Both Trump and DeSantis are viewed favorably among likely Republican primary voters, 75% to 62%. But the intensity of the approval split for Trump, as 54% held a “very favorable” opinion for the former president compared with 19% for DeSantis. More