US Politics

I was six weeks and two days gone when I found out I was pregnant. I had just gotten back from covering the US midterms in such a sickeningly frantic way that I hadn’t had time to think about the changes going on in my body, but the signs were there: a creeping nausea that felt like seasickness, breasts as sore as swollen pimples, sheer exhaustion that willed me into bed for three days upon my return.I had reasoned this was a normal response to a week spent shuttling across hundreds of miles, working 21-hour days on the abortion beat in the fury of election season.If I had wanted an abortion at that stage of my pregnancy, I would have already lost that right in 15 US states. On 24 June 2022, five months before I discovered my pregnancy, the US supreme court had undone the constitutional right to abortion, curtailing the rights of some 22-million women of reproductive age as easily as untying a shoelace.An influx of bans and restrictions quickly followed suit. Old laws sprang back into action, some of which had been written in the Victorian era – before women had the right to vote or had a legal protection against being raped within marriage. New laws were introduced, too, although their content – including murder charges for people who have abortions, and allowing members of the public to track anyone down like a bounty hunter, clearing the way for them to sue for “aiding and abetting” abortions – felt equally antiquated.I’ve driven across America’s varied terrain as a reporter throughout this tidal wave, bearing witness to a monumental assault on women’s rights. I have faced, head on, the fury that comes from anti-abortion extremists for daring to write about abortions. And I have seen the dogged organization and jubilance of those who have protected abortion rights in their states after months of pounding on doors, rain or shine.None of it has changed the way I’ve reported the news. It’s our job as journalists to see what is happening, not what we want to see. But covering this beat, especially while pregnant, has changed my depth of vision. To see this assault up close and personal is to see it for what it is: not a journey to protect life; but to stifle, suppress and suffocate freedom.I am not one of those people who loves the experience of being pregnant. I’m not excited about birth; I don’t believe it will be magical. I’ve been lucky enough to be healthy throughout my pregnancy but I miss being able to put my own socks on and being able to bend over with ease; I miss playing sports; I miss getting a full night’s sleep.I have, at the best of times, felt complicated emotions when it comes to learning to love the thing inside me, and all the changes in my body that come with it. I’m a fiercely independent person, and I have a tendency towards wanting to control my body and what happens to it. I’ve often fixated on the idea that I can undo bad experiences in my life by bolstering my health. In that vein, I have raced in a mini-triathlon, learned to do clap pushups and lifted heavy weights at the gym.Early in pregnancy, as double the amount of blood began to flood my body like an enemy army, ramping up my blood pressure, I felt I no longer knew myself. I felt trapped in my new body, denied all my usual escape routes. I realized I wouldn’t be able to compete in the New York City half marathon, an event I was looking forward to. I was used to running regularly, now speed-walking to the station felt like a humiliatingly difficult ordeal. My old stress relievers became suddenly out-of-bounds.These are all small things. But small details about a person matter. Small things make a person who she is, and influence how she interacts with a life-changing, all-consuming, body-throttling experience like pregnancy.Here in America, where abortion is now banned or severely restricted in 20 US states every person I report on is as complicated as me.It’s July, and I am hurtling across Kansas City in a rental car covering a monumental vote. In just a few days, Kansas will be the first state to directly ask its people if they want to protect abortion rights under the new status quo.Republicans are wide-eyed and hopeful: recent polls suggest people in Kansas, a ruby-red midwestern state, have far more complicated feelings about abortion restrictions than the rest of the country. While lots of American voters do not want more abortion restrictions, in Kansas, in 2022, polling analysis by the New York Times suggests they might be equally split. Nonetheless, it is currently a safe haven for abortion rights in the midwest, where a slew of bans have come down since Roe was overturned. If voters restrict abortion rights in the coming week, a refuge for millions who want access to abortion may soon be lost.I found Christy McNally – a former science teacher, a grandmother and dog lover – through a friend of hers who was working at the Johnston county Republican party. McNally is soft-spoken and sweet. She is the kind of person you feel would stop to pick up a stranger in the middle of a storm and take them where they needed to go.One night, before we speak on the phone, she sends me a photo of her meeting Bill Clinton in 1996. Back then, she was lobbying for an abortion bill aiming to criminalize doctors for performing a dilation and extraction procedure. These procedures are a rarity in the grand scheme of abortion care, because most abortions happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, when simpler, less invasive options are available. Dilation and extraction in the third trimester, which anti-abortion advocates often reference, accounts for less than 1% of abortions each year and is used primarily in cases where the pregnancy is incompatible with life or puts the pregnant person at risk.The language used by the National Right to Life Committee around that bill in the 1990s was deliberately emotive and included a newly invented term: “partial-birth abortion”.Despite the fact these abortions are most commonly performed at a time when the scientific consensus agrees fetuses feel no pain, and often when life is not viable outside the womb, lobbyists switched to a graphic depiction of the procedure, which requires forceps to pass a fetus through the birth canal, in an attempt to foster anti-abortion sentiment.People outside the US often ask me how a country shifts to having no federal right to abortion. This is how: by evoking emotion that humanizes the fetus at all costs – often on shaky scientific grounding – while diminishing the humanity of the person delivering it. Eventually, these ideas are repeated enough, and become part of the mainstream. Today in America, federal judges refer to “unborn children”, “killing” and “personhood” when talking about abortion care even in the earliest stages of pregnancy.In 1996, the bill McNally lobbied Clinton over had no chance of passing. But in 2022 that rhetoric – of broken limbs, fetal pain and the murderous intent of those who perform and seek out abortions – already sat comfortably in the US vernacular.It is also this language that activates a lot of the anti-abortion advocates I have met during my reporting, who do not see themselves as radical. McNally tells me she believes abortions should be allowed in medical emergencies (she has a friend whose fetus had no skull). She also supports exceptions for rape and incest. When I probe, I can see McNally is conflicted on abortion: there are very particular, intimate circumstances where the case for abortion has won her over, but mostly, outright bans are appealing to her. To me, she most wants to talk about abortions in the third trimester – the most unusual, and incredibly rare type of abortion – as do most anti-abortion advocates I speak to.But the vast majority of bills that have been passed since Roe v Wade was overturned don’t target late-term abortions. Almost every single ban is instead a full ban on abortion with limited exceptions.Those limited exceptions are rarely enacted, because doctors are too scared to intervene. I have talked to women who were denied abortions after they were told their fetuses had no skulls – precisely because of the types of restrictions that would surely come if this referendum in Kansas were to pass.Perhaps most American people, including Republicans, know and care about this. In August 2022, 59% of Kansans voted to protect abortion rights in a state where, just a decade earlier, the abortion doctor George Tiller had been murdered. At the watch party on the night of the vote, the room interrupted in cheers, screams and tears as the result was read out.Nearing the end of the night, I noticed an older man happily perched on the corner of the stage, cradling his drink and looking a little giddy. His name was James Quigley. He was a 72-year-old Republican and a retired doctor, and he looked like he wanted to have his say.“Abortion is a much more nuanced issue than anti-choice individuals would have you think,” Quigley told me.“It is deeply personal, sometimes tragic, but also sometimes a liberating decision – and we should trust women, their physicians, and their God on that.”At some point during my pregnancy, I realized that I was no longer considered a full, complete, messy human – one with autonomy, quirks and desires. At best, what I wanted was important only in proportion to my ability to protect my pregnancy. At worst, people saw me as a container for a child.I was frequently advised that from now on, I should not “take any risks”, which, of course, is ridiculously unhelpful advice. “I just don’t see why you would [take any],” one friend told me – seemingly unaware that to leave your house in the morning is a risk. To drive at 28mph on a stressful day when you’re late for an appointment, instead of at 25mph, is a risk. Going for a run is a risk – but so is choosing to forgo exercise.I have found being treated like a child in this way difficult. I don’t have to listen to any of these people, but the experience of constantly being told what to do is tiring; usually becoming an adult means we get to make our own calculations over what’s best for us, pregnant or not.For many pregnant people in America, this is no longer the case. By accident of birth, circumstance, or both, they live in a state that now limits their opportunity to end a pregnancy. If they’re rich, and unafraid, they might travel for care. But often, they don’t have the money, or can’t get the time off work, or can’t spend the numerous days and thousands of dollars to travel to another state for care. Their personhood has been reduced beyond all measure, in defense of the potential person living inside them.In March, I reported on the case of a South Carolina woman who was arrested a year after allegedly taking pills to end her pregnancy. On the police report, her offense was listed simply as: “abortion”.Pregnancy now converts legal behavior for everyone else, into a potential charge of child abuse, or child neglect, or attempted murder just for women – as the CEO of a charity explained it to me at the time.It is hard for me not to feel that viscerally, in a context where I have sometimes had to decide whether it’s worth it for me to go to report in a state with a total abortion ban, where I know miscarriage could make me a crime suspect, or result in me being denied healthcare. Other people don’t get to make that choice, they just live there.In a country where drinking alcohol, overexerting yourself in a yoga class, or hanging out the top of a truck while someone drives fast is not a crime, it could become illegal just for pregnant people. Teenagers whose grade point averages don’t satisfy judges are told they are too immature to have abortions; but not to raise a child. This is not rhetoric: politicians have spoken brazenly about manipulating laws not meant for abortion to police proper conduct in pregnancy since Roe was overturned.Reporting on this while pregnant means I’ve sometimes found it hard not to feel anger when I should have been feeling happy. At our first ultrasound appointment, at six weeks and five days, I struggled to feel joy when the nurse played the “fetal heartbeat” to me and my husband.Watching the zigzags bounce up and down on the screen in a dimly lit room, and seeing my husband’s face light up, I suddenly felt indignant. At that point, our “baby” was barely a yolk sac and some villi. Still, in many places it had more rights than me.“That’s not actually a heartbeat, you know?” I told my husband as soon as the nurse left the room. I felt like a killjoy. This was supposed to be an intimate moment. But all I could think about was the many US states that had brought “fetal heartbeat bills” in recent years. Those were now a legal reality, banning abortions at a point when I did not yet know I was pregnant.At six weeks, a fetus has not yet developed a heart. It has developed a small cluster of cells that may eventually turn into a heart – if the pregnancy is healthy – and the noise is the electrical activity coming from those cells. This is amazing, sure, but it’s not a heartbeat. There is no heart, no chambers, no blood pumping.In these early stages of pregnancy – between four and 12 weeks – pregnancy tissue removed in an abortion looks, first, like something that comes out of your nose; then tiny little egg whites; then more like a sprawling jellyfish. I know this because I worked with doctors to publish photos of what pregnancy tissue looks like after it’s extracted in an abortion before 12 weeks of pregnancy. I have seen early abortions performed at a clinic, and looked at the tissue directly after.Still, to point out what early abortion tissue looks like is often met with rage, sometimes with confusion and disbelief. In a way, I understand this. I wanted to report this story precisely because it goes against the grain of the pregnancy images we are shown. So many pregnancy images show the fetus through a microscope, or make it seem more humanized: when you look at images of early fetal development online, or even scientific imagery provided in textbooks, the depictions are very human-like. Even the perspective on an ultrasound can be misleading, highlighting the fetus in black and white so features are more visible, and showing the growing form in contrast to the tiny surrounding container of the amniotic sac.After I published this story, angry readers sent me ultrasound images; graphic descriptions of what fetuses look like in miscarriage; and videos of early fetal development under microscope. Some sent me the Guardian’s own coverage of Lennart Nilson’s photos of the earliest stages of life, taken in 1965. That imagery shows a nascent embryo, which first forms around 11-12 weeks, at a time when, if you view the fetus through a macro lens, you will see the early beginnings of a trunk and head developing.These are all different perspectives of life – neither I nor any single person can determine which is right. Different perspectives don’t have to discount one another. Sometimes, they just add to the knowledge we draw upon to make decisions about the world. I see it as my job as a journalist to give people more of this information, so they can make more informed decisions.I understand that images are incredibly powerful; I often come back from my scans feeling bursts of excitement; rare moments when I feel ready. I also understand the way in which personifying my pregnancy helps me to connect with it. Early on, my husband and I debated for a long time whether or not to find out the sex. Still feeling detached and confused about the changes going on inside me, I reasoned that knowing more might help me to feel more connected. It has.Later in my pregnancy, I have paid attention to when the little kicks come – sometimes after I eat raspberries, or drink orange juice, or when I have a chocolate bar. “He loves sugar!” I tell my husband – although I actually have no idea what the correlation is.I have also reported on the stories of people who do not feel this way about kicks or scans. One woman, Samantha Casiano, told me every new kick was a reminder of the inevitable moment when her baby would die, after she was refused an abortion in the state of Texas, despite her pregnancy not being viable.I can imagine how the descriptions of whether her fetus is now the size of a mango, or a cantaloupe, might bring on horror and fear. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be bombarded with this imagery after being told you no longer have agency over your own body.Carrying many perspectives can be helpful. It’s not my job to tell you what to believe, or even what to feel – just to let you know that these images are factual, and the lens you choose to put on them is yours, not mine.When I think about the decisions a person who wants an abortion has to make in places where it is banned, I think about the hormones that have cascaded through my body like a tornado during pregnancy.One day was so bad I had to call my friend to come over and console me while I cried for hours in my living room. That was a day when every decision I made felt certain to result in the sky falling in on me: the offending decision was over whether to buy a more expensive bar of soap, that smelled nicer. One day, I cried after a friend gave me a batch of her maternity clothes. I was in my 16th week of pregnancy, and increasingly feeling like nothing was my own. I wanted to go home to London. I worried about losing my career. I was watching my body balloon up in real time, and worried about looking at myself after pregnancy and not knowing who I was any more.Recently, when I couldn’t sleep at 4am, I read a book about the first month postpartum. The author used the word “capacious” to describe the vagina after birth. Even though I knew the word, I felt a need to Google it. “She rummaged in her capacious handbag,” was the sentence example returned to me in the search. I cried again.The changes the body goes through during pregnancy are not small. But in an abortion context obsessed with a very particular kind of religious morality, the changes a body goes through in a pregnancy sometimes feel like an afterthought.When 22-year-old Chloe tells me about being forced to deliver a baby at 37 weeks that did not go on to live, I feel a crushing sense of empathy for her. It is her struggles with her body image that she finds difficult, precisely because it is seen as so unimportant.“I’ve gained a ton of weight. And you know, I don’t know what to do about it,” she told me in a recent phone call. “If I ask anybody for help, people will probably just tell me, you should go work out. It sucks, a lot,” she says.On a reporting assignment last winter, I sat in a doctor’s office nextdoor all day while they saw clients. One woman came in, her face flooded with tears, already knowing the doctor couldn’t help – the state had a total ban. The woman was too poor to afford another child, and too poor to travel out of state to get an abortion.This is not unusual, the doctor told me: people still need abortions all the time. The conflict for the doctor has become what to do. Help, and you risk losing your license, or going to jail. Don’t help, and the patient might be failed at a time when one doctor’s decision could change their lives forever.One doctor told me about a single weekend during which she saw two infected pregnant women on her emergency shift when she checked in. One had gone into sepsis; the second patient eventually hemorrhaged, although she did not die. The doctors, one on the prior shift, and one at another hospital, had ignored them both – too scared to intervene, because administering an abortion was legally risky.They are not wrong to be scared. I’ve documented the consequences for doctors who stick their heads above the parapet: one was fined thousands for speaking out about a 10-year-old rape victim forced to travel to her state for care, another was publicly chased from her job.Working on those stories, I’m often told by people denied abortions that they feel America should be described as pro-birth, rather than pro-life. States have no intention of cleaning up the mess after an abortion has been denied, just to stop it happening in the first place.This exact scenario unfolded for Samantha Casiano, the Texas woman who was forced to deliver her baby with ancephaly. Her baby was breech – for which people are often offered a C-section, to reduce pain and severe complications. Casiano was not offered this, and found the entire birthing experience traumatic. “Your baby is going to pass away so we don’t need to do all that,” the doctors told her.“I felt degraded,” Casiano told me. “There was a lot of things I felt like wouldn’t have happened in a normal pregnancy, but with me, it’s like they were like, ‘OK, let’s just get this over with,” she said.She was made to carry the pregnancy for 13 weeks, knowing her daughter wouldn’t survive – just so, in her eyes, the doctors could “get it over with”.Mostly, the impacts of abortion bans don’t fall on people who are sick; or who have wanted pregnancies; or medically complicated pregnancies. They fall on people who want abortions because giving birth doesn’t fit with school work, with work-work, with raising the children they already have. They fall on people with few economic options, further entrenching inequality along race and class lines. Sometimes, they fall on people in domestically violent relationships. Other times, on people who know they won’t make good parents.These are all complicated reasons why someone might not be ready to have a child. In America, they aren’t good enough reasons to justify an abortion, but what happens after the abortion is denied?I recently moved back to England to give birth and be closer to family for a while. Here, I have often felt that people like to exaggerate America’s differences with the UK, because it helps deflect from our own very sordid political realities. “At least we’re not America,” people often say with a wink and a nod, often bypassing shattering political moments like Brexit, the story of a young Black boy being murdered, or our own legacy of slavery.These are the assurances I am sure people may feel reading this article: that the rest of the world is nothing like America when it comes to abortion.That may be true, but our prime minister has abstained every time he has been asked to vote on abortion since he became an MP; this includes voting to stop protesting outside of abortion clinics and to legalize abortion in Northern Ireland. In the UK, our chancellor of the exchequer has called to cut the time that abortions are legal in half, from 24 weeks to 12. Our health minister said that protesters outside clinics could just be trying to “comfort” women.This is the UK, too: where a woman was this month sentenced to two years in prison for taking abortion pills after the legal limit.As I write this, two weeks before my due date, I don’t know whether to feel hope or despair. Nor do I know what to make of America’s complicated abortion landscape, where people have repeatedly shown at the ballot box that they do not want abortion restrictions; that they are willing to oust politicians who want to bring them; and that they will continue to find innovative ways to continue to protect abortion.It’s a strange dynamic to see play out in a country where people are so obsessed with freedom. Because this is, at its core, an issue of freedom, as well as an issue of equality and fairness. When you curtail abortion – whether it is an abortion you agree with or not – you fundamentally alter someone’s right to make choices about their own chequebooks, their bodies and their families.I’m glad I had a choice, but I still burn with rage at how normal it has become in America for people not to. More

In April this year, Robert F Kennedy Jr, nephew of former President Kennedy, announced his own bid for the presidency running as a Democrat. Recently, supporters of Joe Biden couldn’t ignore RFK Jr’s headline-grabbing appearances on two controversial podcasts – and the news that among Democrats he has an approval rating of 20%.
This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks with author and presenter Mehdi Hasan about RFK Jr’s popularity among Republicans and whether Joe Biden should engage with his main rival in the presidential race.

How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

From 3h agoBiden also mentioned press freedom in his opening statement, saying that both countries “cherish freedom and celebrate the democratic values of universal human rights which face challenges around the world and in each of our countries.” “Press freedom, religious freedom, tolerance, diversity…India now is the most populous country in the world… The backbone of our people…and talents and traditions make us strong as nations,” said Biden.“The friendship between our nations is only going to grow as we face a future together,” he added.It is 4pm in Washington DC. Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
India’s prime minister Narendra Modi was at the White House for his bilateral meeting today with Joe Biden. Modi was met with a series of performances and ceremonies on the White House lawn and the two leaders proceeded to discuss press freedom, trade, technological advancements, as well as the Russia-Ukraine war.
Former US president Barack Obama has addressed Modi’s visit to the United States in a new interview with CNN, saying, “The protection of Muslim minorities in a majority Hindu India, that’s something worth mentioning.” “I do think it is appropriate for the president of the United States…to challenge, whether behind closed doors or in public, trends that are troubling…” he said.
New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced in a statement late Wednesday that she will “boycott” a joint address to Congress from Modi. “I will be boycotting Prime Minister Modi’s address to Congress tomorrow, and encourage my colleagues who stand for pluralism, tolerance, and freedom of the press to join me in doing the same,” said Ocasio-Cortez’s statement, shared to Twitter.
Bernie Sanders has also joined several Democratic lawmakers in their condemnation of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi over his human rights abuse allegations. “Prime Minister Modi’s government has cracked down on the press and civil society, jailed political opponents, and pushed an aggressive Hindu nationalism that leaves little space for India’s religious minorities,” Sanders wrote in a tweet.
During a press conference with Modi, a reporter asked Biden about comments he made calling China president Xi Jinping a “dictator” and if such remarks complicate progress that the Biden administration has made on maintaining a relationship with China. “The answer to your first question is no,” said Biden.
Human rights group Amnesty International has publicly criticized Modi’s visit to the White House, calling on the Biden administration to address “grave human rights issues” in the US and India. Amnesty International called out increasing violence against religion minorities in India during Modi’s tenure, as well as “criminalization of dissent”.
The two individuals who guaranteed bail for New York’s Republican congressman George Santos has ben identified as his father and aunt. The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports: “The revelation that Gercino dos Santos Jr and Elma Preven were the people behind Santos’ bail solves a running mystery that had fascinated Washington-watchers and also a wider American public obsessed with the travails of a politician famous for playing fast and loose with the truth.”
Georgia’s far-right representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has explained why she called Colorado’s equally far-right representative Lauren Boebert “a little b****” yesterday in Congress. “It’s purely for fundraising… It’s throwing out red meat so that people will donate to her campaign because she’s coming up on the end of the month, and she’s trying to produce good fundraising numbers,” Greene told Semafor.
That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.You can read our latest full report here:For a quick refresher on all the 16 candidates currently vying for the presidential office, here is our latest guide to all contenders, ranging from Ron DeSantis to Cornel West:Currently, 12 candidates are running for the GOP nomination while 2 Democrats – Robert F Kennedy Jr and Marianne Williamson, are looking to unseat Joe Biden.Meanwhile, progressive activist Cornel West has announced that he is running for office as a member of the People’s party, a third party.Georgia’s far-right representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has explained why she called Colorado’s equally far-right representative Lauren Boebert “a little b****” yesterday in Congress.Speaking to Semafor, Greene explained the verbal altercation between the two lawmakers yesterday which erupted over both their efforts to impeach the president.“I was sitting down, and so I stood up and I said, ‘I’m happy to clarify my public statements to your face… I told her exactly what I think about her,” Greene said, referring to public comments she made yesterday about Boebert whom she said “basically copied my articles” in her own separate privileged resolution (which would bypass House Republican leadership and instead head straight to the floor for voting).
“It’s purely for fundraising… It’s throwing out red meat so that people will donate to her campaign because she’s coming up on the end of the month, and she’s trying to produce good fundraising numbers,” Greene added.
Donald Trump’s efforts at obtaining a new trial in the civil case involving writer E. Jean Carroll is “magical thinking,” Carroll’s lawyers said on Thursday.Reuters reports:Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presential nomination, on June 8 asked for a new trial after the jury awarded Carroll $5 million, saying the damages were excessive because the jury did not find she was raped and because the alleged conduct did not cause her a diagnosed mental injury.In court papers filed Thursday in opposition to Trump’s request, Carroll’s lawyers maintained that the attack has harmed her ability to have romantic and sexual relationships, and she has suffered intrusive memories.They pointed to a psychologist’s testimony at trial that Carroll had some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.“Trump’s motion is nothing more than his latest effort to obfuscate the import of the jury’s verdict by engaging in his own particular Trump-branded form of magical thinking,” her lawyers wrote.Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.For the full story, click here:Several progressive lawmakers have released a joint statement to announce they will boycott Modi’s joint address to Congress.Missouri representative Cori Bush; Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib; Minnesota represetatiev Ilhan Omar; and New York representative Jamaal Bowman shared the statement on Thursday.They will be joining other legislators, including New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are not attending Modi’s address in light of human right abuses in India.Read the joint statement below:
When it comes to standing up for human rights, actions speak louder than words. By bestowing Prime Minister Modi with the rare honor of a joint address, Congress undermines its ability to be a credible advocate for the rights of religious minorities and journalists around the world.
Modi has a notorious and extensive record of human rights abuses. He was complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots that killed over 1,000 people, leading to the revocation of his U.S. visa. His government has openly targeted Muslims and other religious minorities, enabled Hindu nationalist violence, undermined democracy, targeted journalists and dissidents, and suppressed criticism using authoritarian tactics like Internet shutdowns and censorship.
It is shameful to honor these abuses by allowing Modi to address a joint session of Congress. We refuse to participate in it and will be boycotting the joint address. We stand in solidarity with the communities that have been harmed by Modi and his policies. We must never sacrifice human rights at the altar of political expediency and we urge all Members of Congress who profess to stand for freedom and democracy to join us in boycotting this embarrassing spectacle.
The two individuals who guaranteed bail for New York’s Republican congressman George Santos has ben identified as his father and aunt.The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:The revelation that Gercino dos Santos Jr and Elma Preven were the people behind Santos’ bail solves a running mystery that had fascinated Washington-watchers and also a wider American public obsessed with the travails of a politician famous for playing fast and loose with the truth.Santos had tried to stop the legal process of them being named, arguing disclosure could threaten the guarantors’ safety amid a “media frenzy” and “hateful attacks”.Santos’s lawyer had also said that his client would rather go to jail himself than have his guarantors unmasked. But Santos seemed to have backed off that wish by not asking to change the conditions of his bail after a federal judge in New York dismissed his appeal to keep the names sealed.Media organisations and the House ethics committee had asked that the names be revealed.Santos, 34, won election in New York last year, in a district covering parts of Long Island and Queens. He has been dogged by controversy and calls to resign. His résumé has been shown to be largely made-up and past behavior – sometimes allegedly criminal, other times bizarrely picaresque – widely reported.Santos has admitted to embellishing his résumé but denies wrongdoing. In court in May, he pleaded not guilty to all charges.For the full story, click here:Biden and Modi have wrapped up their joint press conference, where they discussed a range of issues including climate change and democracy.Here is an update from Mary Yang for the Guardian with updates on what the two world leaders discussed.Another reporter asked Biden about criticisms that the US is not implementing solutions to climate change or transferring technologies to developing nations that would address warming.Both countries have agreed to work on tackling climate change as apart of the G20 forum.Here is an explainer on progress made during the last summit in November 2022.A reporter asked Biden about comments he made calling China president Xi Jinping a “dictator” and if such remarks complicate progress that the Biden administration has made on maintaining a relationship with China.“The answer to your first question is no,” said Biden, adding that he expects to be meeting with Jinping soon and that State Secretary Antony Blinken had a productive trip to the country recently.Biden was also asked about criticisms he faces about overlooking human rights violations in India, including the targeting of religious minorities and dissent.Biden added: “The prime minister and I had a good discussion about democratic values. That’s the nature of our relationship, we’re straight forward with each other and we respect each other.”Biden noted that both India and US are democracies, compared to China.Biden also mentioned press freedom in his opening statement, saying that both countries “cherish freedom and celebrate the democratic values of universal human rights which face challenges around the world and in each of our countries.” “Press freedom, religious freedom, tolerance, diversity…India now is the most populous country in the world… The backbone of our people…and talents and traditions make us strong as nations,” said Biden.“The friendship between our nations is only going to grow as we face a future together,” he added.In Joe Biden’s opening statement, the president talked about a series of topics discussed with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, including technological advancements such as semi-conductor supply chains, telecommunication networks, and growing major defense partnerships with further joint exercises.Biden also talked about the expansion of educational opportunities for Indian students and to build “on the record of 125,000 student visas for Indians to study in the United States.”The Ukraine-Russia was was also discussed, with Biden saying, “We talked about our shared efforts to mitigate humanitarian tragedies unleashed by Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine and to defend core principles of the UN charter.”Joe Biden and Narendra Modi have started their press conference.Former US president Barack Obama has addressed Modi’s visit to the United States in a new interview with CNN, saying, “The protection of Muslim minorities in a majority Hindu India, that’s something worth mentioning.”Speaking to CNN host Christiane Amanpour, Obama said:“I do think it is appropriate for the president of the United States…to challenge, whether behind closed doors or in public, trends that are troubling…If the president meets with prime minister Modi, then the protection of Muslim minorities in a majority Hindu India, that’s something worth mentioning… If I had a conversation with prime minister Modi…part of my argument would be if you don’t protect the rights of ethnic minorities in India, there’s a strong possibility India starts pulling apart.”As we wait for the press conference with Biden and Modi, here is the Committee to Protect Journalists’ statement urging India to stop its media crackdowns and to release detained journalists.
“Press freedom is under attack in India,” said CPJ, adding, “India is the world’s largest democracy, yet it is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media…
Leaders around the world who value democracy must urger those in power in India to stop the threats against journalists there. Democracy depends on a free press.”
CPJ’s president Jodie Ginsberg also issued a statement, saying, “Since Modi assumed power in 2014, there has been an increasing crackdown on India’s media…
India is the world’s largest democracy and it needs to live up to that by ensuring a free and independent media – and we expect the United States to make this a core element of discussions.”
US president Joe Biden and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi are scheduled to host a press conference soon.We will be bringing you the latest updates. More

Narendra Modi’s state visit to the US has prompted condemnation and protest from Muslim leaders, lawmakers and other allies.US house representatives Rashida Tlaib, Representative Ilhan Omar, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush and Kweisi Mfume are among those who have said they will boycott the Indian prime minister’s address to Congress on Thursday in light of the violence and repression of the media and religious minorities like Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Dalits carried out under his rightwing nationalist government.“Modi has a notorious and extensive record of human rights abuses,” Tlaib, Bush, Omar and Jamaal Bowman said in a statement. “He was complicit in the 2002 Gujarat riots that killed over 1,000 people, leading to the revocation of his US visa. His government has openly targeted Muslims and other religious minorities, enabled Hindu nationalist violence, undermined democracy, targeted journalists and dissidents, and suppressed criticism using authoritarian tactics like internet shutdowns and censorship.“It is shameful to honor these abuses by allowing Modi to address a joint session of Congress. We refuse to participate in it and will be boycotting the joint address. We stand in solidarity with the communities that have been harmed by Modi and his policies. We must never sacrifice human rights at the altar of political expediency and we urge all members of Congress who profess to stand for freedom and democracy to join us in boycotting this embarrassing spectacle.”In a statement, the Center on Islamic Relations (Cair), the US’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization, also said it “welcomes pledges by members of Congress to boycott Thursday’s joint meeting of Congress honoring India’s far-right, anti-Muslim Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.Cair’s research and advocacy director, Corey Saylor, said: “Leaders do the right thing in the face of pressure to comply with bad ethics. Boycotting any event honoring Prime Minister Modi centers our value of religious freedom over cynical politics. We applaud these elected officials and urge others to join their leadership.”Saylor added: “The honor of a state dinner and joint meeting of Congress signals to Modi that no one will interfere in his repression of Indian religious minorities and journalists.”Modi was once denied a visa to visit the US by the state department in 2005 because of his violent persecution of minority faiths in Gujarat, where he served as chief minister.More recently, anti-Muslim policy and violence in India and in Indian communities abroad have ramped up under Modi.In 2019, citing militancy in the region, Modi stripped Kashmir – India’s only Muslim-majority state – of its constitutional autonomy in what was seen as an effort to make India a Hindu-first nation, eroding the pluralistic and secular reputation for which the country was once known.That same year, the Citizenship Amendment Act was passed, amending the country’s citizenship law so that naturalization could be expedited for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, but not Muslims. As a result, violent clashes broke out in 2020 in the capital city of New Delhi. About 50 people were killed, most of whom were Muslim.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionModi’s government has also been accused by rights groups of turning a blind eye to the violence committed against Muslim cow farmers by rightwing Hindutva vigilantes with the aim of protecting cows, a holy animal in Hinduism.Tlaib, who is one of only three Muslim members serving in the House, said: “It’s shameful that Modi has been given a platform at our nation’s capital – his long history of human rights abuses, anti-democratic actions, targeting Muslims & religious minorities, and censoring journalists is unacceptable. I will be boycotting Modi’s joint address to Congress.”A letter was also signed by 75 Democrats, detailing the human rights violations under Modi and urging Biden to “discuss the full range of issues important to a successful, strong, and long-term relationship between our two great countries”.Modi’s visit to the US is seen as an attempt by both countries to forge closer ties so the south Asian country can stop relying on Russia for military arms as it continues to wage war against Ukraine.It is also speculated that Modi is using this US visit to repair his image after receiving several global “flawed democracy” ratings. More

The two people who guaranteed George Santos’s $500,000 bail after the Republican congressman was charged with 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds have been revealed to be his father and an aunt.The revelation that Gercino dos Santos Jr and Elma Preven were behind Santos’s bail solves a running mystery that fascinated Washington-watchers and also an American public obsessed with the travails of a politician famous for playing fast and loose with the truth.Santos tried to stop his guarantors being named, arguing disclosure could threaten their safety amid a “media frenzy” and “hateful attacks”.Santos’s lawyer said that his client would rather go to jail himself than have his guarantors unmasked. But Santos seemed to have backed off that wish, by not asking to change the conditions of his bail after a federal judge in New York dismissed his appeal to keep the names sealed.Media organisations and the House ethics committee asked that the names be revealed.Santos, 34, won election in New York last year, in a district covering parts of Long Island and Queens. His résumé has been shown to be largely made-up and past behavior – sometimes allegedly criminal, other times bizarrely picaresque – widely reported.Santos has admitted to embellishing his résumé but denies wrongdoing. In court in May, he pleaded not guilty to all charges. If found guilty, he could face up to 20 years in prison.He has been dogged by controversy and calls to resign. House Republicans, however, deflected a motion to censure Santos while party leaders have chosen not to move against him.In January, Santos backed Kevin McCarthy of California through 15 votes for speaker, in the face of a rightwing rebellion. McCarthy must govern with an extremely narrow majority. Santos has said he intends to run for re-election next year. He is next due in court on 30 June.Neither Santos nor his lawyers immediately commented on the identification of his guarantors.In Washington on Wednesday, Santos was among Republicans who voted to censure Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who led impeachment efforts against Donald Trump.The motion passed. On the House floor, Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat, told Republicans: “One of my colleagues says, ‘We will hold members accountable.’ You are the party of George Santos. Who are you holding accountable?“The guy is an alleged and acknowledged liar and indicted, and you protect him every day. Don’t lecture us with your projection and your defense of Donald Trump. It’s pathetic, and it’s beneath you and it’s beneath this body.” More

Hunter Biden, the younger son of U.S. President Joe Biden, is expected to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges as part of a recently announced deal with the Justice Department that will help him avoid the federal charges for possessing a gun while using illegal drugs.

Joe Biden has long defended his son amid his drug addiction and other personal issues, including a paternity scandal and ongoing court battle over child support.

The president responded to the news of Hunter’s charges, saying on June 20, 2023, that he is “very proud of my son”.

I am a scholar of the American presidency and have looked at how the children and other family members of presidents have been thrust into the nation’s spotlight, often unwittingly. Their shortcomings, vices and sometimes even physical appearance have been fodder for gossip columns, political opponents and comedians.

Hunter Biden is not the first child of a president to be charged with a crime. Jenna and Barbara Bush pleaded “no contest” in 2001 to misdemeanor charges of underage drinking and using a false ID. Amy Carter was arrested for protesting in 1985, and before his father was president, Donald Trump Jr. was arrested for public drunkenness in 2001.

But nearly all presidents have had incidents involving their kids and other family members that attracted public scrutiny. Some of the events fall into questionable prank category, like when Tad Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln, sprayed dignitaries with fire hoses.

Other incidents are less innocuous and amusing.

A colorized portrait of former President Theodore Roosevelt’s family features his oldest daughter, Alice, in the center.
Stock Montage/Getty Images

Youthful indiscretions

James Madison raised his troubled stepson, John Payne Todd, as his own. Todd regularly engaged in gambling, drinking and womanizing. Madison went deeply into debt trying to pay off Todd’s vices, including once bailing him out of debtor’s prison. In the mid-1800s, Todd’s debts eventually forced his widowed mother to sell the family estate, Montpelier.

Todd even had a lawyer visit his mother on her deathbed to rewrite her will, making himself her sole heir.

Alice Roosevelt, the oldest child of Theodore Roosevelt, also presented some complications for her father during his presidency in the early 1900s.

Alice had a strained relationship with her father and his second wife, Edith. When her parents suggested sending her to a boarding school, Alice responded: “If you send me, I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will.”

In a time when women were expected to be demur, Alice smoked, drank, partied and even sometimes wore a pet snake as an accessory.

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “I can do one of two things: I can be president of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. I cannot possibly do both.”

Alice was later banned from the Taft White House after burying a voodoo doll in the likeness of the new first lady, Helen Herron Taft, on the property.

Neil Bush, son of George H.W. Bush and brother to George W. Bush, also has a colorful history.

Neil was the director of a large savings and loans company that collapsed in 1988, after it made improper and illegal loans. This cost taxpayers more than US$1 billion at the time and resulted in an embarrassing payout to federal banking regulators.

People also criticized Neil because of his ties to Chinese investors and his limited knowledge about industries that employed him, leading to accusations of influence peddling.

Neil Bush, like Hunter Biden, was also the subject of paternity accusations during his divorce.

That’s my brother

Presidential brothers have been another particular sore point for some presidents.

Lyndon Johnson’s brother, Sam Houston Johnson, was often quite talkative after he had a few drinks. The president eventually had to use the Secret Service to follow his brother to ensure he didn’t disclose any embarrassing information to the press .

Billy Carter, former President Jimmy Carter’s brother, reveled in his notoriety. As the president’s brother, he toured the country to make money and hawk his own Billy Beer.

He urinated on a runway before the press corps while waiting for people.

When Carter was running for reelection in 1980, Billy took money from the Libyan government and became a foreign agent for the country – while also making inflammatory and antisemitic statements to justify his behavior.

Billy’s association with Libya ultimately led to a Senate investigation and complicated his brother’s failed reelection campaign.

Former President Bill Clinton comforts his half-brother Roger in 1994, shortly after their mother’s death.
POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Roger Clinton, the younger half-brother of former President Bill Clinton, also engaged in questionable activities. In the 1980s, before the Clinton presidency, Roger sold cocaine to an undercover officer.

Later, during the Clinton administration, Roger’s Secret Service codename was “Headache.”

Bill Clinton pardoned Roger for his drug offenses right before leaving office in January 2001.

Hunter Biden stands next to his father, President Joe Biden, at an event in 2016.
Kris Connor/WireImage

Keeping it in the family

Presidents are like everyone else. They, too, have family members who do or say things that eventually become stories for the dinner table – or tales people want to push under the rug.

A federal judge still needs to approve Hunter Biden’s deal with the Justice Department that would allow him to avoid prison time for paying $1 million in taxes late and possessing a gun.

And he is still not free of other controversies. The Republican-controlled House continues to investigate his bank records, as well as lingering questions about money he received from foreign organizations.

Hunter himself has said that he is accountable for his actions, and I do not think it is fair to conflate the administration with the activities of an adult son.

He is not the first presidential relative who has caused turmoil, and he won’t be the last. More

The American right wing’s widening fight against what it calls “woke capitalism” is partly driven by fossil fuel interests or industry allies, according to a new report published on Thursday.Conservatives often use the term “woke capitalism” to refer to environmental, social and corporate governance – or ESG – criteria used to screen investments based on their environmental and social implications.Just this year, Republican lawmakers in 37 states introduced a stunning 165 pieces of anti-ESG legislation, according to the new report from the strategic research and advisory firm Pleiades Strategy.“The trend has been rampant,” said Connor Gibson, who co-authored the report.The 165 proposals sought to employ a variety of tactics, ranging from imposing limits on public contracts and restricting pension managers to forcing disclosures and combatting federal investment rules.The researchers examined news articles, fiscal notes and statehouse testimony related to each bill. They found that the majority of them bear strong resemblances to model bills crafted or circulated by four influential rightwing thinktanks: the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute and the Foundation for Government Accountability.Each of the four organizations is affiliated with the far-right thinktank coalition State Policy Network, whose members have also fought to pass punitive anti-pipeline protest laws and which has received funding from groups linked to fossil fuel billionaires Charles and the late David Koch.Advocacy for many of the bills was also led by fossil fuel-tied groups, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which has accepted at least $8.8m from organizations linked to the Kochs since 2012, and has also received funding from ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron. The TPPF began attacking ESG as far back as 2020 and says it was behind a pioneering anti-ESG bill passed in Texas in 2021.The American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil and gas lobbying organization, has also worked to shape anti-ESG policies. And representatives from several other fossil fuel interest groups have supported the efforts as well, the researchers say.Despite their well-connected champions, just 22 of the 165 proposed anti-ESG bills progressed through statehouses, the report says.“The dark-money-funded attacks on the freedom to invest responsibly hit deep opposition from business, labor and environmental advocates in statehouses across the country this year,” said Frances Sawyer, founder of Pleiades Strategy and co-author of the report. “Our report shows that the effort to weaponize government funds, contracts and pensions to prevent companies and investors from considering real financial risks is not a winning platform.”Many of the bills that did pass were watered down before they became law, the report says. But that doesn’t mean they won’t have real negative consequences.Opponents of the successful pieces of legislation fear they could cost taxpayers millions, collectively. And the implications for climate policy could be even larger, because the legislation could have a chilling effect on future climate policy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe laws could create an environment that discourages support for shareholder resolutions that aim to lower emissions, said Sawyer. It could also make it harder for states to take advantage of the clean energy investments offered by the Inflation Reduction Act, she said, due to fears that those funds would drive competition with the industries the bills favor.“The full extent of those costs, we don’t know,” she said.Anti-ESG legislation has increasingly popped up in statehouses over the past two years. In 2021, North Dakota lawmakers passed a law calling for a study of the implications of state funds making investments “for the purpose of obtaining an effect other than a maximized return to the state”.The same year, Texas lawmakers passed a law prohibiting state funds from contracting with or investing in companies that “boycott” fossil fuel stocks, based on a policy passed four years earlier that aimed to prevent Texas from doing business with entities that support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS, movement, for Palestine.Similar legislation began to appear in statehouses across the country. Last year, Idaho, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Kentucky all passed various forms of anti-ESG legislation.The legislation is unpopular, the authors say, but they still expect to see more of it in the coming years as more policymakers take the energy transition more seriously.“We think this is the latest iteration of climate denial and obstruction and delay,” said Gibson. More

Can you name the top 10 causes of death in America? Without too much trouble, most Americans could likely come up with some of them: cancer, heart disease, stroke, accidents. But it would come as a surprise to many to know that poverty is right up there with these other dreaded scourges – much higher, in fact, than many ills that have inspired investigative committees, major policy investments and sustained attention from the public and private sectors in American life.A recent study by one of our colleagues shows that cumulative poverty over many years is the fourth leading cause of death in this country. Current poverty – just being poor right now – is seventh on that list, and it alone causes 10 times as many deaths as homicide, close to five times as many deaths as gun violence, and 2.5 times as many deaths as drug overdoses. Cumulative poverty that lingers year after year is associated with approximately 60% more deaths than current poverty, putting only heart disease, cancer and smoking-related deaths ahead in the number of Americans it kills.But if this is true, why do we hear so much about crime rates, opioids and gun violence in America, but so little from our elected leaders about the crisis of poverty? Why is there no “Surgeon General’s Warning” on low-wage jobs? The relationship of poverty to disease and death is a well-established fact detailed in reports by the World Health Organization, the World Bank and our own government. But we as a people have become numb to the unnecessary deaths that are normalized by the ways we often think and talk about the economy in public life.Sadly, the United States is the leader in poverty among the rich countries of the world. As of 2019, the US had the worst poverty rate overall (17.8%) and in children specifically (20.9%) among the other 25 wealthy countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).In addition, poverty affects us all. Seventy-five per cent of all Americans between 20 and 75 years of age will be among the “current” poor or near poverty for at least one year of their lives. Contrary to popular belief, poverty is hardly just the province of the inner city: only 10% of poor Americans live in high-poverty census tracts – most are spread out across the country. They are our neighbors. And although the rates of poverty are highest among communities of color, by sheer volume most people living in poverty are white.Finally, poverty is a drag on our economy. Child poverty alone in the US presents an $800bn to $1.1tn price tag, based on reductions in adult productivity, criminal justice costs and the costs of healthcare for children from poor families.But what if we could end poverty in America, the misery and suffering it generates – the 500 deaths a day it causes in this country? Our colleague Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at Princeton University, estimates that we could lift everyone within our borders above the poverty line for less than 1% of our national GDP – $177bn. Ending poverty is within our grasp. It is something we can accomplish together. So what’s stopping us?As the economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson said in their 2012 book Why Nations Fail, “those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose.” Matthew Desmond elaborates a similar theme in his recent book Poverty, By America: “Tens of millions of Americans do not end up poor by a mistake of history or personal conduct. Poverty persists because some wish and will it to.”It is difficult to believe that some people are pro-poverty. The incentives for maintaining the status quo, for keeping many Americans poor, rest on the fact that some people find considerable financial benefit from presiding over the misery of others. This is what a young Friedrich Engels – observing the deaths of factory workers, the conditions of the slums and the exploitation of children in Manchester, England in the mid-19th century – called “social murder”. Many were dying, while a few made a killing from their suffering. It was true then, and it is true now.But this is not our destiny. We can be the generation that abolishes poverty, the country that goes from the bottom of the heap among its peers – whether it’s about poverty, or life expectancy – to the top of it. We can rise to lead and “we the people” of the US can stand up to form a more perfect union, lifting this generation and the generations after it out of poverty, wiping away the deaths being poor causes in this nation.But this means holding up a mirror to who we are as a country. Those who gain from keeping people in the chains of poverty, condemning them to early death, must be confronted with a movement that names poverty in the richest nation on Earth as a public health crisis, an economic dead weight, a moral abomination and a stain on the republic. When the poor and low-wealth people of this nation link arms to make the moral case for an economy that works for everyone, we have the power to change the conversation about what is possible in Washington and in our statehouses.The US claims to be a beacon of democracy abroad and a nation committed to justice and general welfare at home. This cannot be true as long as poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the richest nation in the history of the world. Poor and low-wealth people are fighting for their lives and for the life of our democracy through the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, which worked with members of the US House of Representatives last year to introduce a Third Reconstruction Resolution that outlines policy priorities that can guide legislation to end poverty.In an echo of the Bible, this movement is saying, “Woe unto those who make unjust laws and rob the poor of their right.” But this prophetic challenge isn’t a condemnation. It is an invitation to life. Together, we can become the land of “liberty and justice for all” that has never yet been. Indeed, people who know that they do not have to accept the death sentence of poverty are leading the way.
The Rev Dr William J Barber II is founding director of the Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
Gregg Gonsalves is associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health More