US Politics

The West Virginia senator Joe Manchin is “thinking seriously” about abandoning the Democratic party to run as an independent for Congress or as a third-party candidate for president.“I’m thinking seriously,” Manchin, 75, told a West Virginia radio host on Thursday. “I have to have peace of mind, basically. The brand has become so bad, the ‘D’ brand and ‘R’ brand. In West Virginia, the ‘D’ brand because it’s [the] national brand. It’s not the Democrats in West Virginia, it’s the Democrats in Washington.“You’ve heard me say a million times I’m not a Washington Democrat.”Over the past two years, Democrats and progressives have perhaps called Manchin a million names – “modern-day villain” among them – mainly because the fossil fuel-aligned senator has wielded tremendous power over domestic legislation including efforts to combat the climate crisis and protect voting rights.Democrats hold the Senate by 51-49. Of those 51 senators, three – Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Angus King of Maine and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – are independents already.Sinema became an independent last year. Her future looks in doubt, with a gathering challenge from the Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego. But Democrats fear what might happen if both Sinema and Gallego contest Sinema’s seat: a split vote handing a win to a Republican extremist, potentially Kari Lake.In West Virginia, Manchin is a long way behind the current Republican governor, Jim Justice – himself a former Democrat – in polling regarding the Senate race next year.Manchin was governor of West Virginia between 2005 and 2010, years in which the formerly Democratic state turned sharply right.On Thursday, he told Hoppy Kercheval, host of Talkline on West Virginia Metro News: “I haven’t made any decisions whatsoever on any of my political direction. I want to make sure that my voice is truly an independent voice. When I do speak, I want to be able to speak honestly about basically the extremes of the Democrat and Republican party that’s harming our nation.”Manchin could also run as an independent candidate for president, backed by the campaign group No Labels, an outcome feared and derided by pundits who think such an effort will split the vote and return Donald Trump to the White House.Manchin has long flirted with No Labels. He told Kercheval: “When I get ready to make a decision, I’ll come see you. You just can’t tell how this is going to break. If come January and February of next year these are still the main contenders, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, that’s a whole other scenario.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe president, 80, and his 77-year-old, 78-times charged rival are historically unpopular.“If they are not” the candidates, Manchin said, “that changes the game completely. The bottom line is, ‘Will the middle speak up? Does the middle have a voice?’”Saying “moderate, centrist Republicans” feel they “don’t have a voice anymore”, Manchin said “the Democratic party that I grew up with was … socially compassionate and fiscally responsible … so if we can create a movement that people understand, we could have a voice.“We could make a big, big splash, and maybe bring the traditional parties … [back to] what they used to be.” More

Federal prosecutors asked the judge overseeing the criminal case against Donald Trump over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election to schedule the trial for the start of January 2024, saying there was a significant public interest in expediting the prosecution.The written filing from prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith set an aggressive timetable that Trump’s lawyers are expected to seek to substantially delay, according to a person close to the former president.“A January 2 trial date would vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial,” prosecutors wrote. “It is difficult to imagine a public interest stronger than the one in this case in which the defendant – the former president of the United States – is charged with three criminal conspiracies.”The eight-page filing submitted to the US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, who will hear arguments from both sides about the scope of the protective order in the case on Friday, argued it gave sufficient time to Trump to prepare a defense.Last week, Trump pleaded not guilty to charges filed in federal district court in Washington that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructed an official proceeding and engaged in a conspiracy against rights.Among other things, the government said Trump’s legal team already appeared to know what arguments they intended to make at trial and what pre-trial motions they intended to file, and therefore were in a position to quickly go to trial.The prosecutors, for instance, sought to use the television appearances from Trump’s lawyer John Lauro – in which he discussed potential legal defenses and the possibility of filing a motion to change the trial venue to West Virginia – against him.“It appears that defense counsel is already planning which motions the defendant will file,” prosecutors said in one footnote. “On CBS’s Face the Nation on August 6, 2023, Mr Lauro stated, ‘We’re going to be identifying and litigating a number of motions that we’re going to file.’”The government also noted that Trump’s legal team had known about the facts of the case for at least a year after prosecutors first contacted them in June 2022, and one of the lawyers involved in that initial outreach, presumably Evan Corcoran, was at Trump’s arraignment.It also argued that Trump’s lawyers were wrong to characterize the Speedy Trial Act, which broadly mandates criminal cases to go to trial promptly, as existing for the benefit of the defendant and therefore allowing Trump to seek delays if he chooses.The speedy trial rules in fact exist to protect the rights of the public as well as the defendant, prosecutors wrote, citing an opinion from United States v Gambino that found: “The public is the loser when a criminal trial is not prosecuted expeditiously, as suggested by the aphorism, ‘justice delayed is justice denied’.”But the draft schedule proposed by the government, that would see evidence turned over to Trump through discovery completed by the end of August and jury selection at the start of December, is almost certain to be delayed because of complicating factors.The prosecution unexpectedly disclosed in a footnote that they intended to use classified information at trial, which means his case will be tried according to the time-consuming steps laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.Cipa essentially requires the defense to disclose what classified information they want to use at trial in advance, so the courts can decide whether to add restrictions. If the government feels the restrictions aren’t enough, they can decide whether they still want to continue with the case.While Cipa established a mechanism through which the government can safely charge cases involving classified documents, the series of steps that have to be followed means it takes longer to get to trial compared with regular criminal cases without national security implications. More

The US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas appears to have violated US law by failing to disclose “flights, yacht cruises and expensive sports tickets” bestowed by wealthy friends behind at least 38 destination vacations, ethics experts told ProPublica in its latest blockbuster report on the conservative judge and his friends.“It’s so obvious,” Richard Painter, a White House ethics chief under George W Bush, told the nonprofit website. “It all has to be reported.”The report was just the latest in a string of exposés of links between Thomas, 75, and rich benefactors, many donors to conservative causes, prominently including the real-estate magnate Harlan Crow.ProPublica has revealed undeclared links to Crow including luxury holidays and travel; a real estate sale to the benefit of Thomas’s mother; and school fees paid for his grand nephew. It has also reported on links between another arch-conservative justice, Samuel Alito, and another billionaire, Paul Singer.In response to a previous ProPublica report about Crow, Thomas denied wrongdoing, saying he never discussed politics or business before the court with his friend.The justice did not comment on the new report about his 38 vacations at the gift of businessmen including Wayne Huizenga (a former owner of the Miami Dolphins NFL team who died in 2018), David Sokol and Paul “Tony” Novelly, trips that included luxury golf resort visits and expensive college football tickets.Novelly and Huizenga’s son did not comment.Sokol told ProPublica he and Thomas “have never once discussed any pending court matter. Our conversations have always revolved around helping young people, sports and family matters. As to the use of private aviation, I believe that given security concerns all of the supreme court justices should either fly privately or on governmental aircraft.”On social media, Mark Paoletta, a lawyer, conservative activist and Thomas friend, attacked ProPublica before its report was published. Bemoaning “another smear job”, Paoletta called ProPublica a “leftwing billionaire-funded attack dog”, apparently a reference to Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency mogul who faces criminal charges. Earlier this year, ProPublica said it would return a $1.6m donation from Bankman-Fried and terminate the relationship.Paoletta, who appears on a painting made famous by ProPublica, of Thomas with Crow, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and other prominent conservatives, said the site “reached out to me for this story as I was on one of these wonderful trips with my good friends”.ProPublica described how at a luxury lodge in Wyoming, Thomas and his wife, the far-right activist Ginni Thomas, “fished, rafted on the Snake River and sat by a campfire overlooking the Teton Range with the other couples”.ProPublica also published a picture of a card sent to friends by Ginni Thomas. It showed Mark and Tricia Paoletta singing while holding phones. The caption said they were performing “a special tribute to Clarence”.Thomas’s love of luxury travel has been described elsewhere. The New York Times recently reported how Anthony Welters, a healthcare magnate, financed Thomas’s purchase of a luxury motor home, or RV.In its new report, ProPublica also reviewed records showing how the Horatio Alger Association, to which Thomas belongs, a link first reported by the Times, raised money by offering donors seats at an event at the supreme court.Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer, said: “To use the supreme court to fundraise for somebody’s charity is, to me, an abuse of office. It’s pay to play, isn’t it?”The association, named for a 19th-century writer who popularised rags-to-riches tales, denied wrongdoing and praised Thomas’s work with scholarship recipients. In a literary historical aside, ProPublica said: “In real life, Alger was a minister on Cape Cod who resigned from his parish after he was credibly accused of molesting boys.”Published early on Thursday, the ProPublica story made a huge splash.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn response, Kyle Herrig, senior adviser to Accountable.US, a progressive nonprofit, said: “Justice Thomas clearly sees his position on our nation’s highest court as a way to upgrade his own lifestyle via his billionaire benefactor social circle.”“It was his own decades-long improper financial relationship with Harlan Crow that sparked the supreme court corruption crisis in the first place – and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Harlan Crow, Justice Thomas, Leonard Leo and other key players in this court corruption crisis may believe they exist above the law, but they don’t. We need accountability and reform now.”Many would agree the supreme court is in crisis but accountability is unlikely. Supreme court justices are nominally subject to the same ethics rules as all federal judges but in practice govern themselves.Claiming his court holds itself to the “highest standards” of ethical conduct, the conservative chief justice, John Roberts, has rejected requests to testify in Congress. Meanwhile, the Senate judiciary committee chair, Dick Durbin of Illinois, has exchanged barbs with Alito. On Thursday, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, another committee Democrat, said of the new ProPublica report: “I said it would get worse; it will keep getting worse. Omertà must stop; it becomes complicity.”The committee has introduced legislation for ethics reform. It is almost certain to fail, given Republican opposition.Democrats and progressives have called for Thomas to resign or be removed. Neither is remotely likely. Republican control of the House ensures impeachment is a non-starter. Even if it were, Thomas is a senior conservative among six on the nine-member court, delivering wins including the removal of the right to abortion. It is inconceivable that impeachment could receive necessary bipartisan support.Still, ProPublica found no shortage of ethics experts to profess dismay at Thomas’s friendships and failure to disclose their benefits.Jeremy Fogel, a former judge, said: “I don’t remember ever seeing this degree of largesse given to anybody. I think it’s unprecedented.”Don Fox, a former government ethics counsel, said: “It’s just the height of hypocrisy to wear the robes [of a justice] and live the lifestyle of a billionaire.” More

Donald Trump and his valet pleaded not guilty on Thursday to an expanded set of charges stemming from the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, after special counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment in the case last month.Trump’s two codefendants in the case appeared in court in Ft Pierce, Florida, although the former US president himself was not in attendance as his legal team submitted a plea of not guilty.Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet, did appear in person at the Thursday hearing to plead not guilty to the expanded set of charges he now faces. Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, was expected to enter a plea as well but was unable to do so because he has still not retained a local attorney.His arraignment was rescheduled for next week.The hearing came two weeks after Smith filed his superseding indictment adding De Oliveira as a codefendant in the case and outlining further charges against Trump and Nauta.De Oliveira faces four federal criminal charges, including making false statements and conspiring to obstruct justice. Smith’s superseding indictment alleges that Trump engaged in a scheme with Nauta and De Oliveira to wipe a server containing Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage that was subpoenaed by prosecutors and showed boxes of classified documents being removed from the storage room.Trump had already indicated he would plead not guilty to the expanded set of charges after the former president’s legal team submitted a court filing waiving his right to appear at the arraignment in person.“I have received a copy of the Indictment and the plea is NOT GUILTY to the charged offense(s),” the filing read.At his initial arraignment in June, Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 federal counts, including 31 violations of the Espionage Act, over his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021.According to Smith’s indictment, Trump intentionally withheld dozens of classified documents from federal officials even after a subpoena was issued to recover the materials from Mar-a-Lago. Some of those documents included information on the US’s nuclear programs, the military’s vulnerabilities and the White House’s plans for retaliation in the event of an attack.The former president appears to have been aware of the illegality of retaining the documents, as recordings obtained by the special counsel show Trump acknowledging he could no longer declassify information after leaving office.The judge overseeing the case, US district court judge Aileen Cannon, has set a trial date of May 2024.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Wednesday, Trump’s lawyers filed a motion asking Cannon to approve the re-establishment of an ultra-secure facility at Mar-a-Lago to allow the former president to review classified documents produced to him in discovery. To justify the extraordinary request, Trump’s lawyers claimed his schedule and security requirements made it impossible for him to make regular trips to a sensitive compartmented information facility, often called a “Scif”, at a courthouse.As Cannon weighs that request, Trump’s other legal woes are mounting. Last week, Trump pleaded not guilty to four federal charges over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.Trump may soon face more charges related to his election subversion efforts in Georgia, where Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis is expected to present her evidence to a grand jury next week. Trump has already pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in an unrelated case concerning a hush-money scheme during the 2016 presidential election.With a fourth indictment on the horizon, Trump has continued to criticize the prosecutors leading the cases against him, which he has dismissed as “witch-hunts”. In an interview with Newsmax on Wednesday, Trump attacked Smith as a “deranged human being” and mocked Willis as “not a capable woman”.
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell contributed reporting More

Scrolling through Twitter a couple of weeks ago, I came across a clip of rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson interviewing a face I never thought I’d see on his platform: Ice Cube.As in Fuck Tha Police Ice Cube.“What planet am I on right now?” I found myself thinking.In a two-part segment, Ice Cube and Carlson commiserated about cancel culture and cast doubt on the safety of the Covid vaccine. “It was six months, kind of a rush job and I didn’t feel safe,” Ice Cube said about his widely-publicized resistance to the Covid shot. He also claimed that he’s been banned from appearing on the talkshows The View and Oprah because he is too much of an “independent thinker”.It seems Ice Cube has become quite the conservative media darling lately, sitting down with not just Carlson, but Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan as well. He’s joining a long list of rappers – Kanye West, Da Baby, Kodak Black, Lil Pump – who have all put themselves in dangerous proximity to conservative politicians even as rightwing populism threatens to destroy their communities.Kanye campaigned for Trump, and both Lil Wayne and Kodak Black publicly supported the former president after being pardoned by him on his last day in office. In 2020, Trump even brought a supportive Lil Pump out to a Michigan rally (where Trump introduced him as “Lil Pimp”), while Da Baby was also very vocal about supporting Trump’s second bid last year.We can try to excuse this behavior or dress it up as “opening a dialogue” or “crossing the aisle” as much as we like, but that is not what this is about. So what do these rappers have in common with rightwingers who wouldn’t otherwise touch them with a 10ft pole?Shared values.In discussions about money, gender identity, public health and a variety of social issues, rappers and rightwingers have a lot more in common than you’d immediately think. Many people from both groups share hypermasculinity, conservative Christian values, and a distrust of social institutions (justified or not); and on this common ground sits a messy and dangerous alliance full of people who ordinarily would hate each other, but have come together to make vulnerable people their enemy.Ice Cube, for example, is a well-documented anti-vaxxer, and has expressed bigoted views on gender identity, as have many of his colleagues like Da Baby, Boosie and others.And when it comes down to the raw cents and dollars, modern-day wealth solidarity between mainly Black rappers and powerful conservatives isn’t entirely surprising. Ownership in hip-hop is whiter than ever and the nature of the music itself has become increasingly capitalistic. Rap is no longer the embodiment of African American resistance it once was. Now, it’s a hyper-commercialized cultural assembly line that’s somehow been re-designed to glorify the very issues it once pushed so hard against.That’s why society’s current obsession with Black billionaires and one-percenters as “success stories” constantly falls so flat. The notion of building individual wealth as a means of collective liberation is as sinister as it is stupid. We know that Black wealth hoarding can’t save us and that recreating the violent architecture of capitalism – but with Black people in the positions of power, of course – does nothing for the plight of everyday African Americans. Still, hip-hop legends like Jay-Z continue to peddle this demented lie because that is the very function of capitalism: keep the poorest in society busy providing cheap labor while they chase an impossible dream.Then there’s the pseudo-intellectual bunch, who mask their self-serving motivations as elevated political awareness. Say what you want about Democrats and what they have or haven’t done for Black people in America, but Kanye West campaigning for Trump wasn’t some stroke of genius – it was one of the most self-hating and objectively stupid moves that a person in his position could have made back in 2016. But Kanye’s thirst for relevance, combined with a pathological desire to be contrarian and his new hyper-religious bent, made him the perfect kind of Trump-loving troll.As many rappers gain inordinate wealth and power, they’re increasingly exposed to the ways that all of that can also be a gateway to political influence and social dominance. These men don’t want a better America for Black people, they want one where their worldviews are advanced, regardless of which enemies they have to sleep with in order to make that happen.And while Black voters obviously don’t owe loyalty to any one political party, some rappers do function as community leaders in many ways, and they always have: that’s why their allegiance to the right needs to be called out now. The custodians of rap as an art form have a duty to be responsible with their platforms. And when I say responsible, I’m not talking about respectability politics and pearl-clutching about raunchy lyrics. I’m talking about the stuff that materially affects Black people’s lived experience, like what kind of politics to adopt, and why.What’s perhaps most fascinating about all this is the fact that many rappers are willing to align themselves with white supremacists not in spite of their marginalization, but because of it. I don’t blame Black people – burned by decades of generational disenfranchisement and then walloped over the head with the illusion of meritocracy – for trying to keep their place at the top no matter who they have to play nice with.But romancing fearmongering xenophobes isn’t keeping us at the top, it’s digging a pitiful hole to the bottom, a new low from which Black people as a community will not recover if we don’t put a stop to it now.
Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist More

In July, the Florida department of education announced that it had approved the use of content by PragerU Kids for the coming school year. PragerU Kids was recently described by Time magazine as “a resource for schools”. But it is only a “resource” because the state of Florida has deemed it so. PragerU is not an actual university. It has no accreditation. It is a conservative media company whose goal since its founding in 2009 has been to spread rightwing ideology to adults and children.And it has been incredibly successful at doing that. PragerU’s latest annual report says that the company’s self-described “edutainment” videos racked up more than 1.2bn views in 2022, with more than 7bn since its founding. Its content has been mostly available online, particularly on Facebook and YouTube, but now it is making its way into US classrooms with the promise of fighting the so-called “woke agenda”.PragerU makes no secret of its agenda. Its co-founder, Dennis Prager – a conservative radio talkshow host and writer who has been attacking progressive causes since the 1980s – was recently glib in responding to claims that PragerU “indoctrinates kids”. “Which is true,” Prager said in a speech to the conservative “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty. “We bring doctrines to children. That is a very fair statement. I said, ‘But what is the bad of our indoctrination?’”PragerU Kids’ cartoon videos for children as young as kindergarten age not only soft-pedal the history of slavery, racism, colonialism and police brutality – they show sympathy for them. In one video, Leo and Layla Meet Christopher Columbus, Columbus tells young Leo and Layla: “Slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every corner of the world … Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no?”Another PragerU Kids video describes George Floyd, who was murdered by the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020, as a “Black man who resisted arrest”. Another features a cartoon version of the Black American educator and author Booker T Washington comforting white children by saying, “Future generations are never responsible for the sins of the past.” To which his young listener responds: “OK, I’ll keep doing my best to treat everyone well and won’t feel guilty about historical stuff.”Another video says that British colonialism transformed India “in many positive ways”.PragerU Kids’ videos for teens often focus on sexuality and gender, promoting traditional gender roles in ways that could be considered anti-feminist. In one, How to Embrace Your Femininity, a young blond woman with perfect hair and makeup tells viewers: “Most gender stereotypes exist because they reflect the way that men and women are naturally different. And those differences aren’t bad … So don’t let anyone tell you it’s bad to fit stereotypes. Those people are just trying too hard to be cool.”And climate change denial? A PragerU video for kids compares pushing back against the science of the climate crisis to Jews in the Warsaw ghetto uprising who fought the Nazis. As they say, you can’t make this stuff up. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the initial funding for PragerU came from the Wilks brothers, petroleum industry billionaires.It wouldn’t be a stretch to call this content rightwing propaganda, which the state of Florida has now all but legitimized as suitable learning materials for kids. This isn’t surprising in a state with a governor, Ron DeSantis, who has staked his political career on fighting “wokeness”. Alarmingly, however, Florida may be just the first of other states to follow in adopting PragerU’s anti-progressive materials. The company is now reportedly going through the process of being approved as an education “resource” in other states. Which is next? Texas? Oklahoma? And how many more after that?American education has never been perfect. I can remember, as a teenage girl growing up in Florida in the 1970s, being frustrated by the fact that my public high school curriculum included almost nothing on the history of women in the US – which hasn’t changed so very much since then. It was also appalling how little time we spent on the history of slavery, the history of Native people or the contributions of people of color to our society, which schools still fail to teach.But the adoption of PragerU Kids content by a state’s department of education is something on another level. This is admittedly indoctrination, propaganda full of lies and half-truths specifically designed to manipulate and mold young minds to serve a rightwing political agenda. You could argue that this has always been the problem – a problem that critical race theory and its proponents have been trying to combat and change.The reaction against this has been swift and severe, and the embrace of PragerU Kids could be just be one of the many unseemly moves we’ll be seeing in the continued fight to finally teach the truth in American schools.
Nancy Jo Sales is the author, most recently, of Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno More

The climate crisis is not in transit, it’s arrived at the gate. It’s in our skies, our water, and our land – with record-shattering heat waves, increasingly severe wildfires and flooding from superstorms and rising seas.We have no time for delays. Tackling this crisis and protecting frontline environmental justice communities will take all of us. And the tax-dodging ultra-wealthy need to stop fueling the problem and start supporting first-class solutions.That’s why, this July, I introduced the Fueling Alternative Transportation with a Carbon Aviation Tax (Fatcat) Act with Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez.Private air travel is the most energy-intensive form of transportation. For each passenger, private jets pollute as much as 14 times more than commercial flights and 50 times more than trains. Despite their sky-high emissions, private air travel is taxed considerably less than commercial air travel.My legislation changes that. Because the 1% should not get a free ride while destroying our environment.At the moment, billionaires and the ultra-wealthy are getting a bargain, paying less in taxes each year to fly private and contribute more pollution than millions of drivers combined on the roads below. Just one hour of flying private negates the climate benefits of driving an electric car for an entire year. That is unfair and it is unacceptable.For the sake of our environment, it is time to ground these fat cats and make them pay their fair share, so that we can invest in building the energy-efficient and clean public transportation that our economy and communities across the country desperately need. We cannot continue to ask frontline communities – disproportionately low-income, rural, immigrant, Black and brown Americans who are bearing the weight of the climate crisis – to subsidize billionaires jet-setting the globe.Our legislation would increase fuel taxes for private jet travel from the current $0.22 to nearly $2 a gallon – the equivalent of an estimated $200 a metric ton of a private jet’s CO2 emissions – and remove existing fuel tax exemptions for private flight activities that worsen the climate crisis, like oil or gas exploration.The revenue generated by the Fatcat Act would be transferred to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund and a newly created federal Clean Communities Trust Fund to support air monitoring for environmental justice communities and long-term investments in clean, affordable public transportation across the country – including passenger rail and bus routes near commercial airports.To fully tackle the climate crisis at the scale that is required, we need to ensure that those who are fueling this problem are held accountable for contributing to the solution. It is, of course, the same logic that should, but sadly does not, apply to our tax code.If Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and countless Wall Street hedge fund managers want to fly private jets, the least they can do is pay their fair share in taxes to compensate for the damage to our environment and the wear on our infrastructure. It’s unconscionable that they be allowed to continue to pay pennies on the dollar to pollute our environment as Americans suffer through the hottest days in an estimated 125,000 years. Everyday Americans should not have to pay for their excess.And let’s be clear: this is an issue of economic and environmental justice. The wealthiest 1% globally are responsible for more than twice as much carbon dioxide pollution as the bottom 50%. But the burden of that pollution gets passed along to people already struggling.A billionaire who takes to the skies in a private jet isn’t going to feel the hardship of paying a sky-high air conditioning or electric bill. The ultra-wealthy who own their own airplanes aren’t going to feel the hardship of breathing dirty air.We are approaching a dangerous tipping point in our battle against the climate crisis. This summer’s brutal weather is just a preview of what is to come. We all need to step up to do our part to address this crisis. Especially jet-setting billionaires.
Edward J Markey is a US senator from Massachusetts More

Joe Biden has moved to restrict US investment in Chinese technology, signing an executive order which focuses on a few, sensitive hi-tech sectors including semiconductors, quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI).It is the latest in a series of measures taken by the US to restrict China’s access to the most advanced technology and comes as the president has embarked on a multi-state tour of the south-west to tout his plans to revive American manufacturing after decades of decline.The restrictions are expected to take effect next year – and come at a sensitive time in the US-China relationship. The Biden administration has launched diplomatic overtures to Beijing in recent months, seeking to mend ties after a series of incidents, while still attempting to bolster its position against China on military, economic and technological fronts.What are the latest restrictions?As a result of previous Biden administration measures, the US already bans or restricts the export to China of many of the technologies covered in these new measures. The aim of Wednesday’s executive order is to prevent US funds from helping China build its own domestic capabilities, which could undermine the existing export controls.Under the executive order, the US Treasury has been directed to regulate certain US investments in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.China, Hong Kong and Macau are listed as the “countries of concern”, but a senior Biden official has told Reuters other countries could be added in the future.The rules are not retroactive and apply to to future investments, with officials saying the goal is to regulate investments in areas that could give China military and intelligence advantages.Britain and the European Union have signalled their intention to move along similar lines, and the Group of Seven advanced economies agreed in June that restrictions on outbound investments should be part of an overall toolkit.Biden’s plan has been criticised by Republicans, many of whom say it does not go far enough.Republican Senator Marco Rubio has called it “almost laughable”, adding that the plan is “riddled with loopholes … and fails to include industries China’s government deems critical”, he said.How has China reacted?A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said the White House had ignored “China’s repeated expression of deep concerns” about the plan.The embassy warned that it would affect more than 70,000 US companies that do business in China, hurting both Chinese and American businesses.The country’s commerce ministry said it reserved the right to take countermeasures and encouraged the US to respect the laws of market economy and the principle of fair competition.What part do these measures play in Biden’s re-election bid?As the executive order was made public, Biden was speaking in New Mexico, touting his government’s success in boosting manufacturing jobs in the renewable energy sector.“Where’s it written that America can’t lead the world again in manufacturing? Because we’re going to do just that,” Biden said at the groundbreaking of a new factory manufacturing wind turbine towers in the city of Belon.“Instead of exporting American jobs, we’re creating American jobs and we’re exporting American products,” he added.However, polling shows that for many, the perception of the president’s economic policies – “Bidenomics” as his communications team likes to call them – are at odds with a range of positive indicators. US inflation has dropped to the lowest levels since 2021 and the administration has repeatedly touted months of consistent jobs growth; despite this though multiple polls show that only a minority of Americans support Biden’s handling of the economy.The cornerstone of Biden’s refreshed bid to voters are two major bills he shepherded through Congress and signed into law a year ago: the Chips and Science Act – which pumps huge funding into semiconductor manufacturing, research and development – and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a law for megaprojects boosting green investment.The chips act aims to further freeze China’s semiconductor industry in place, while pouring billions of dollars in subsidies into the US chip industry.Both laws, along with the growing restrictions on Chinese industry, are positioned to win back portions of the working-class vote who felt left behind by globalisation and turned to Donald Trump at previous elections.What’s next?The ban is a step in a broad and ongoing push to undermine China’s efforts to achieve independence in a number of technological areas, in particular the development of advanced semiconductors.In recent months, the US government has signalled it still wants to close some loopholes Chinese businesses are using to get their hands on the most advanced semiconductors.In response to previous chip bans, Nvidia one of the world’s leading chip companies, has started offering a less advanced chip, the A800, to Chinese buyers. But new curbs being considered by Washington would restrict even those products.In possible anticipation of such a move China’s tech giants – including Baidu, TikTok-owner ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba – have made orders worth $1bn to acquire about 100,000 A800 processors from the Nvidia to be delivered this year, the Financial Times has reported.The Chinese groups had also bought a further $4bn worth of graphics processing units to be delivered in 2024, according to the report.Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report More