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      The Guardian view on Israel’s booby-trap war: illegal and unacceptable | Editorial

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      In the second world war, guerrilla forces scattered large quantities of booby-trapped objects likely to be attractive to civilians. The idea was to cause widescale and indiscriminate death. The Japanese manufactured a tobacco pipe with a charge detonated by a spring-loaded striker. The Italians produced a headset that blew up when it was plugged in. More than half a century later, a global treaty came into force which “prohibited in all circumstances to use booby-traps or other devices in the form of apparently harmless portable objects that are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material”. Has anyone told Israel and its jubilant supporters that, as Brian Finucane of the International Crisis Group points out, it is a signatory to the protocol?On Tuesday, pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least 12 people – including two children and four hospital workers – and wounding thousands more. This situation is directly analogous to the historical practices that current global arms treaties explicitly prohibit. US media say Israel was behind the attack, and the country has the motive and the means to target its Iran-backed enemies. Israel’s leaders have a long history of carrying out sophisticated remote operations, ranging from cyber-attacks, suicide drone attacks and remote-controlled weapons to assassinate Iranian scientists. On Wednesday it was reported that Israel blew up thousands of two-way personal radios used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, killing nine and wounding hundreds.This week’s attacks were not, as Israel’s defenders claimed, “surgical” or a “precisely targeted anti-terrorist operation”. Israel and Hezbollah are sworn enemies. The current round of fighting has seen tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from the Israel-Lebanon border because of the Shia militant group’s rocket and artillery attacks.However, the pager bombs were clearly intended to target individual civilians – diplomats and politicians – who were not directly participating in hostilities. The plan appeared to produce what lawyers might call “excessive incidental civilian harm”. Both these arguments have been levelled at Russia to claim Moscow was committing war crimes in Ukraine. It’s hard to say why the same reasoning is not applied to Israel – apart from that it is a western ally.Such disproportionate attacks, which seem illegal, are not only unprecedented but may also become normalised. If that is the case, the door is opened for other states to lethally test the laws of war. The US should step in and restrain its friend, but Joe Biden shows no sign of intervening to stop the bloodshed. The road to peace runs through Gaza, but Mr Biden’s ceasefire plan – and the release of hostages – has not found favour with either Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or Hamas.The worry is that Israel’s actions lead to a disastrous all-out conflict that would pull the US into a regional fight. The world stands on the edge of chaos because Mr Netanyahu’s continuing hold on power and consequent insulation from corruption charges depend largely on his nation being at war. None of this is possible without US complicity and assistance. Perhaps it is only after its presidential election that the US will be able to say that the price of saving Mr Netanyahu’s skin should not be paid in the streets of Lebanon or by Palestinians in the occupied territories. Until then, the rules-based international order will continue to be undermined by the very countries that created the system. More

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      More than 100 ex-Republican officials call Trump ‘unfit to serve’ and endorse Harris

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      More than 100 Republican former national security and foreign policy officials on Wednesday endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a joint letter, calling Donald Trump “unfit to serve” another term in the White House.Former officials from the presidential administrations of Republicans Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush, George W Bush and Donald Trump, as well as Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama voiced their support for Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in this November’s election. They were joined by some former GOP members of Congress.The letter said: “We believe that the president of the United States must be a principled, serious, and steady leader.”It went on: “We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as president and Donald Trump does not. We therefore support her election to be president.”Among the signees were former defense secretaries William Cohen and Chuck Hagel, who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, respectively. Others include William Webster, a former CIA and FBI director under the Reagan and first Bush administrations, as well as Michael Hayden, a former CIA and NSA director under the younger Bush and the Obama administrations.“We firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump. As president, he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country’s founding document,” the letter added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPointing to Trump’s involvement in the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, his “susceptibility to flattery and manipulation” by authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China, and “chaotic national security decision-making”, the former officials called Trump unfit to serve again as president or in “any office of public trust”.The former officials also pointed to Harris’s support for Nato and Israel, as well as her commitment to signing the bipartisan border security package that Republicans blocked, and her pledge to appoint a Republican to her administration as reasons for their endorsement.Several former Trump officials who signed the letter include Mark Harvey, a former special assistant to the president, and Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security.In recent weeks, a handful of Republicans have crossed party lines to endorse Harris, including the former Virginia representative Barbara Comstock. In an interview with CNN, Comstock explained her decision, saying: “After January 6, after Donald Trump has refused for four years to acknowledge that he lost [the 2020 election], and his threats against democracy, I think it’s important to turn the page.”Other Republicans who have endorsed Harris include Alberto Gonzales, a Republican attorney general who served under the W Bush administration, the former Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger, as well as Trump’s former press secretary Stephanie Grisham and communications director Anthony Scaramucci. More

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      Suspicious packages sent to election offices in 16 US states as threats mount

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      An investigation has been launched after suspicious packages, some containing white powder, were sent to election officials in 16 states, intensifying fears of disruption to the forthcoming US presidential election.Election offices in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Georgia, Missouri, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Indiana, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado and Connecticut all confirmed receiving suspect mail, triggering a joint investigation by the FBI and the US Postal Service (USPS).In one case, a package from a sender purporting to be “the United States Elimination Army” and marked with a return address in Maryland was sent to officials in the Nebraska elections division, according to the Washington Post.In a joint statement issued with the USPS, the FBI said it was collecting packages from what the agencies called “a series of suspicious mailings sent to election officials in several states.“We are also working with our partners to determine how many letters were sent, the individual or individuals responsible for the letters, and the motive behind the letters,” the statement said.The substance in some cases turned out, on inspection by local authorities, to be flour.Dispatch of the packages was disclosed two days after a suspected second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, in two months. It comes amid a febrile and increasingly toxic political atmosphere, punctuated by violence and threats and reports from several fronts of the specter of Russian interference, as well as rising fears among election officials and others that the outcome of the 5 November election could be subject to multiple challenges from committed partisans unwilling to accept the result and ready to intimidate election workers.The National Association of Secretaries of State, a nonpartisan body of public officials responsible for administering elections and voting procedures, said the packages were part of “a disturbing trend”.“With less than 50 days until the … [election] we are seeing a disturbing trend continue – the second assassination attempt of a presidential candidate, and threatening and intimidating actions towards election officials,” the association said. “This must stop, period. Our democracy has no place for political violence, threats or intimidation of any kind.”It is the second time in the past year that suspicious mail has been sent to election officials in multiple states. The latest episode came to light after postal voting – which has been labelled as corrupt by Trump and his supporters, who disparaged the practice to bolster their false accusations that the 2020 election was stolen – has already begun in several states.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe development comes after Microsoft published a report citing evidence of increased evidence of attempted Russian interference in November’s poll. It identified attempts to denigrate the character of Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, with fake videos.In one instance, researchers found that a Russian covert disinformation operation created a video featuring a paid actor who falsely claimed that Harris had inflicted injuries on her in a 2011 hit-and-run incident.The fictitious claim was disseminated by a fake website for a nonexistent San Francisco news outlet named KBSF-TV. The Russian group responsible, which Microsoft called Storm-1516, is described as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm. More

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      Abortion rights are on 10 state ballots in November − Democrats can’t count on this to win elections for them

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      Ten states will vote on ballot initiatives on abortion this November: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Nevada and South Dakota.

      Many political analysts and pundits view abortion as a partisan issue, fueling speculation that direct votes on abortion rights will boost Democrats’ chances up and down the ballot in November. Some Democratic strategists are hoping that turnout from the ballot initiatives will swing elections away from Republican candidates in key states such as Arizona, Nevada and Florida.

      But the effects that ballot measures have on which candidates win or lose is rarely so straightforward.

      For the past three years, my work as a political sociologist has been cataloging and studying ballot initiatives. Based on state-level data and recent trends, I believe it is highly likely that many of November’s ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights will pass. But that will not necessarily translate into broader Democratic candidate victories.

      An attendee wears a ‘vote for life’ shirt during a rally in Kentucky ahead of the abortion ballot vote in October 2022.
      Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

      The wave of abortion rights votes

      The U.S. Supreme Court overturned half a century of federal abortion protections in June 2022, sending the question of whether and when people can get an abortion back to individual states to decide. Republican legislators in Kansas quickly seized the opportunity and rushed a referendum enabling them to ban abortion onto the August 2022 primary ballot.

      It backfired. Despite being majority Republican, almost 60% of Kansas voters rejected the abortion ban.

      In 2022 and 2023, voters in six more states protected abortion rights with ballot initiatives. Kentucky and Montana voters rejected abortion bans, while California, Michigan, Ohio and Vermont voted to codify abortion rights in their state constitutions, all through ballot measures.

      Ballot initiatives are nonpartisan

      Ballot initiatives – also called propositions, measures, referendums and more – refer to votes on a policy instead of a politician. In some states, voters can put initiatives on the ballot by gathering signatures. In all states except one – Delaware – state legislators can put issues directly before voters in the form of a referendum. In other instances, such as amending most state constitutions, decisions must go to a popular vote.

      The media often portrays U.S. politics through a polarized, two-party lens. Ballot initiatives do not necessarily fit the mold. Ballot initiative votes on topics such as the minimum wage and Medicaid expansion show that some policies are popular across Democratic and Republican party affiliations. For example, raising the minimum wage is undefeated in 24 ballot initiatives at the state level since 1996, including in traditionally conservative, liberal and swing states.

      The state ballots that wound up serving wins on abortion rights since 2022 reflect a similar dynamic. The issue is polarizing, but not down the middle and not strictly along party lines. Nationwide polls show long-standing majority support for abortion rights, including among many Republicans.

      Inconclusive at best

      There is research indicating that ballot initiatives can increase voter turnout. However, most studies show mixed results and limited effects.

      Looking at turnout numbers in the 2022 and 2023 state elections that had votes on abortion rights, and comparing them with those same states’ previous election numbers, we don’t see compelling evidence for the ballot measures bringing out more voters.

      Michigan and Vermont had increased turnout in 2022, while voter numbers decreased in California, Kentucky and Montana.

      Kansas in 2022 and Ohio in 2023 both saw voter gains, but those votes are poor comparisons, because they took place in a primary and an odd-year election, respectively, when turnout tends to be low.

      Ballot initiatives on abortion rights, whether to codify or ban them, also appear to have little impact on partisan elections. After defeating the abortion ban in August 2022, Kansas voters went on to reelect both the Democratic incumbent governor and a Republican incumbent senator that November. Kansas House seats remained unchanged, with Republicans holding a supermajority.

      In Kentucky and Montana, a majority of voters rejected abortion bans in 2022 and continued to elect Republicans to state office. In Michigan, Democrats took control of the state Legislature in 2022 alongside the state’s vote for abortion rights.

      It is possible that Michigan’s “blue wave” in 2022 got a boost from the state’s ballot initiative to protect abortion rights that year. However, it likely had more to do with direct legislation from the previous election. In 2018, Michigan voters passed a ballot initiative to create an independent redistricting commission that undid years of gerrymandering that had benefited Republicans. These redrawn maps were first used in 2022.

      Most importantly, just because a voter cares deeply about abortion rights does not necessarily mean they will vote for Democrats. Republican women voters overwhelmingly support the right to abortion in all states.

      Meanwhile, about 6% of voters chose “uncommitted” in Nevada’s 2024 Democratic primary, in line with the national uncommitted movement in solidarity with Palestinians. This political movement advocates withholding support for Democrats over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Those voters are highly likely to support the state’s abortion initiative in November but may not be persuaded to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris or other Democrats.

      Signs supporting the upcoming abortion ballot initiative in Montana are displayed during a rally in Bozeman on Sept. 5, 2024.
      William Campbell/Getty Images

      Democrats can’t rely on abortion ballot initiatives

      Ballot initiatives are about specific issues, not political candidates. In this case, the issue of abortion rights has more nationwide support than the Democratic Party does.

      If Democratic politicians want to win in November – from Harris and Tim Walz to state and local candidates – they will need to persuade voters based on their merits compared with their Republican counterparts. They can’t count on abortion initiatives to win the 2024 election for them. More

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      ‘Racism is embedded in our society’: how attacks on immigrants in Ohio highlight US disinformation crisis

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      In recent weeks, racist conspiracy theories about immigrants have dominated the election cycle. High-ranking Republicans have doubled down on unsubstantiated rumors about Black and brown migrants, tapping into anxieties that immigrants are responsible for increased crime in US cities.During last week’s presidential debate, Donald Trump echoed a baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” the Republican nominee said.And in response to a question about high costs of living, Trump alluded to viral rumors that members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were taking over a Colorado apartment complex. “You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently.”Both claims are completely untrue.Experts argue that the spread of such disinformation amplifies existing xenophobic beliefs within the American psyche as a means of political gain. “It’s so dangerous when people with a platform are repeating these very fabricated rumors,” said Gladis Ibarra, co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. “These are very much part of a large coordinated strategy to continue to demonize our immigrant neighbors. It’s undermining the values of our nation and historically what people have said this nation stands for.”Misinformation (inaccurate information that is spread unknowingly) and disinformation (false information that is meant to mislead) are widely shared via social media platforms, despite a push for fact checking and accuracy since the 2016 presidential election. The phenomenon of inaccurate news still occurs at alarming rates as people’s online algorithms are largely driven by their political biases, according to Jeffrey Layne Blevins, a journalism professor at the University of Cincinnati.“[The algorithm] is merely designed to keep users engaged,” Blevins said, referring to metrics such as how long a person looks at content or shares it in their feed. “And what tends to engage most people? Things that outrage them or piss them off.”Blevins added that rightwing figures share disinformation in hopes of “outraging people on the political right”, especially during an election cycle. Such content is accepted as truth by those online who already share rightwing beliefs themselves. “It creates an echo chamber of sorts,” he said. “When public figures who share your political beliefs post content like this – people are more likely to accept it at face value.”Republicans at all levels of government have linked immigrants to instances of violent crime, including drug smuggling and assault. During his campaign for the 2016 presidential election, Trump claimed Mexicans crossing the US southern border were “rapists”, “bringing drugs, bringing crime”. He began the construction of a wall along the border – among other anti-immigrant policies – to deter “large sacks of drugs [from being thrown] over”. During this election cycle, Trump has said that undocumented people are “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”, despite immigrants being significantly less likely to commit crimes than US-born citizens.The demonization of immigrants is a repeated move by lawmakers to secure votes, said Germán Cadenas, an associate professor at Rutgers University who specializes in the psychology of immigration. “Immigration is really not as divisive as some politicians are trying to make it out to be,” he said, as 64% of Americans believe immigration is beneficial for the country. “It’s a tactic that has been used historically to mobilize voters who feel threatened.”For centuries, Cadenas said, politicians built policy around the stereotype that immigrants are a “threat” to US identity and safety. Anti-immigration laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the 1924 Immigration Act were among the first to curtail US immigration based on nationality. The Chinese Exclusion Act came largely after high-ranking union members warned of a “Chinese invasion” that would steal white, American jobs. Similarly, US senators advised their fellow legislators to “shut the door” on immigrants as a migrating population would “encroach upon the reserve and virgin resources” of the US, before the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act.Fast forward to the early 2000s, as states such as Arizona passed laws allowing local law enforcement to target anyone they believed was in the country without documentation. Arizona Republicans called arriving undocumented people an “invasion that must be stopped” and a “national security threat”, a political tactic to encourage support of the controversial bill.Politicians also attempt to etch out a voting bloc by passing anti-immigrant policies. “Historically, these stereotypes, these falsehoods, have [then] been used to mobilize voters to elect policymakers who are going to make anti-immigrant laws and policies.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven as most Americans have a positive view of immigration, Cadenas said: “Racism and xenophobia are deeply embedded in our society and our psychology.” A study by Cadenas and Elizabeth Kiehne found that white US adults are most susceptible to the core stereotype of Latino immigrants being a threat.“The anti-immigrant rhetoric is less about convincing than about amplifying and strengthening beliefs that are already held,” Cadenas said. “It takes large efforts to unlearn these problematic beliefs and biases.”Disinformation about immigrants has consequences, Cadenas and Ibarra said. “Across the nation, a number of states have an ‘anti-immigrant policy climate’,” Cadenas said, meaning those states pass laws that make the lives of immigrants harder.“A small minority of folks who are threatened by immigration are electing policymakers who are crafting policies that are negative towards immigrants,” he added “These policies trickle down to housing. They trickle down to the way that authorities deal with immigration at the local level. These policies trickle down to healthcare and the kinds of access to health and mental health that immigrants have.”In Aurora, Venezuelan residents of the aforementioned apartment complex have said they feel unsafe after the rumors of a gang takeover and they fear being stereotyped as criminals.Springfield has received more than 33 bomb threats since Trump’s statements at the debate. Its city hall was evacuated, along with some local schools. Springfield hospitals are also on alert, and Haitian immigrants say they have received several threats. “People that are hardworking, contributing to our communities, are not the danger, Ibarra said. “The danger is all of these violent ideologies that are being fueled by the people that repeat these lies, by the people that go on social media and on TV and continue to repeat them.” More

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      JD Vance’s obsession with cats is bizarre. He needs to stop spreading fake mews | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Want to know the secret to winning elections and influencing people? Cat memes. This is according to JD Vance, who, you might have noticed, has a bizarre fixation with felines. Donald Trump’s running mate – a man who might soon become one of the most powerful people in the world – has been widely ridiculed and condemned for his comments about “childless cat ladies”. But instead of trying to move the news cycle on from cat-related matters, he seems to have doubled down on them. Vance is now in the headlines for spreading outrageous, and wildly racist, false rumours about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Trump amplified those rumours during his debate with Kamala Harris last week.These accusations, which partly stemmed from a Facebook post some random woman wrote (and has now apologised for) about a friend of a neighbour losing a cat, have wreaked havoc in Springfield. There have been bomb threats against local hospitals and Haitian community members are reportedly terrified. We all know Trump doesn’t have a conscience – but is Vance even the slightest bit contrite?Of course not. Vance isn’t just standing by the debunked claims – he is defending them while also seemingly admitting to lying. During an interview on CNN on Sunday, he claimed he has evidence to back up the accusations and insisted he is doing people a public service. “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Vance said. He added: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”I’m all for Vance creating stories – just not while running for high office. Please, JD, quit politics and go back to writing! You clearly have a knack for fiction. Or, since you are so obsessed with children, why not spend more time with your own kids and tell them a bedtime story or two? Just, you know, try to stick to unicorns and mermaids rather than people eating cats. And please, for the love of dogs, stop spreading fake mews. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      AOC calls the US Green party ‘not serious’ – can it be more than a ‘spoiler’ in the election?

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      American politics often has wild deviations from the norms of other major democracies and one of the most striking differences is set to be on display in this year’s election – the performance of its domestic Green party.There are elected Greens at the national level in the UK, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany and Australia, sometimes helping form governments, and yet the US Green party has only ever had a handful of state-level representatives (it currently has none) and has never had a federal election winner.Of about 500,000 elected positions in the US, from school boards and township supervisors to the presidency, the Green party holds just 149. There’s little indication there will be an influx of left-leaning Greens in November’s elections, which will include local and state polls, as well as the headline presidential race in which Jill Stein is the party’s nominee for a third time.“It’s been a story of complete failure,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia who argued the most consequential Green party impact has been as “spoilers” helping Republicans in close elections, such as Ralph Nader’s campaign in 2000 and Stein’s in 2016. There’s a small chance such a scenario could play out again in this year’s tight contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. One poll this month had Stein leading Harris among Muslim-American voters in three key swing states of Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin, Middle East Eye reported.“Normally the Greens aren’t important but they were in 2016, they cost Hillary Clinton a couple of blue wall states, and they were in 2000,” Sabato said. “Why vote for them when Democrats are also concerned about climate change? All you’re doing is helping Republicans. Without them we might not have had the Iraq invasion, we might not have had Donald Trump.”Others are more sympathetic, pointing to the winner-takes-all nature of US politics and the well-funded machinery of the two-party system that makes it hard for third parties, including the Green party and the Libertarian party, to break through. Notably, however, the UK’s Green party did win four seats in first-past-the-post Westminster elections in July.“It is difficult for small parties to make way in the United States because of the undemocratic electoral system,” said Christine Milne, former leader of the Australian Greens, which was in coalition with the ruling center-left Labor party between 2010 and 2013.“Proportional representation systems provide opportunities for small parties to be elected which has been key to the growth of the Greens around the world.”Under Stein, the US Green party has complained of a duopoly but aimed most of its attacks at Democrats, accusing the party of supporting a genocide in Gaza and holding rallies with signs reading “Abandon Harris”.“The simple fact is there is very little policy daylight between these two candidates,” Stein said following last week’s debate between Trump and Harris. Stein added that Harris “chooses the softer approach to fascism of capitulating to endless war and corporate rule in exchange for half a billion in campaign contributions.“What we saw on Tuesday [last week] were two candidates striving to outbid the other’s promises to push us towards a new world war and accelerate the climate emergency.”Such a stance has dismayed some who sought to build the Green party as an alternative to the two major parties. “To me this election is the choice between fascism and keeping democracy alive so it’s almost unfathomable to me that people can think the parties are the same,” said Ted Glick, a progressive activist who was a long-standing Green party member and ran as a Senate candidate for the party in New Jersey.“It’s scary to see so many people support Donald Trump and it’s hard to understand how someone as smart as Jill Stein can think this guy is the same as Kamala Harris.”Glick said he left the Green party in 2017 after becoming convinced the party needed to grow its base between presidential elections by focusing on states that are ‘safe’ for either of the two major parties, rather than battleground states. He said he was “shocked” when Stein said those who sought alliances with other progressives and independents, such as Bernie Sanders, were “sheepdogs for the duopoly”.“Bernie Sanders’s campaign more than anything else points the way to how we get strong, progressive alternatives in the US,” Glick said.“But the Green party became very narrow and rigid, a tiny party of true believers focused on ideological purity above all else. Back in 2004 there were 225 Green party members in elected office, now it’s 143 (the Green party has said it is 149). It’s a pretty dismal record for 20 years of existence.”Rather than ally with the Democratic left wing, Stein has instead been involved in a recent battle with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive Democratic congresswoman from New York. “All you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you’re just showing up once every four years to do that, you’re not serious,” Ocasio-Cortez posted on Instagram last month. “To me, it does not read as authentic. It reads as predatory.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStein has responded by accusing Ocasio-Cortez of supporting genocide in Gaza and for “taking” a Green party policy in the Green New Deal, a resolution supported by some Democrats, formerly including Harris, for a massive investment in clean energy, jobs and healthcare. “Maybe it’s time to watch these parties die,” Stein, a doctor who has run for president in 2012, 2016 and now 2024, posted on X.This approach, as well as a comparative lack of focus on environmental issues – the US Green party has attacked the Inflation Reduction Act, a huge climate bill with elements of the Green New Deal that was passed by Democrats in 2022, as “relatively small” and a “tradeoff” with fossil fuel interests – and opposition to Nato is unusual among overseas counterparts.“The US Green party is attempting to go after the subset of voters on the left who don’t like the Democrats,” said Carl Roberts, a spokesperson at the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, affiliated with a German Green party that has been in the German federal parliament consistently since 1983 and currently supplies the country’s vice-chancellor and foreign minister.“I think this is quite out of step with other Green parties, who always center environmental concerns in their messaging and campaigns as one of their highest priorities,” Roberts said, adding, however, that “systemic” issues with the US political landscape are largely the cause of this difference.A US Green party spokesperson said the party had been “dismayed” by European Green parties’ “silence and complicity” over Israel and Gaza and that these parties have “relied too much on US corporate news media and seem to have swallowed falsehoods like the belief that Republicans are right and Democrats are left”.Democrats and Republicans do differ on climate, he said, but the Biden administration has taken “modest and inadequate measures” to deal with the crisis and it is “reckless and irresponsible to allow an expansion of drilling in the midst of a worsening global climate emergency”.“When Greens get elected to Congress some day, they’ll work with progressives like AOC and others on shared legislative agenda,” the spokesperson said. “The Green party didn’t pick an election-year fight with AOC, the reverse is what happened.”He added the solution to “spoiler” allegations would be ranked-choice voting, which has been mostly opposed by the main two parties.So, will Stein prove a factor in this November’s election? The Green party candidate, running with Butch Ware, is not on the ballot in around a dozen states and is polling at around 1% of the vote, a small but potentially significant total should certain swing states have razor-thin margins.“I doubt they will have an impact but nobody expected Jill Stein to do what she did in 2016, or for Trump to win,” said Sabato. “It was a perfect storm, and the storm is still raging.”Glick hopes his former party isn’t decisive in November. “Hopefully there will be a major drop off in their support when it comes to pulling the lever and preventing Trump getting back into office,” he said. “I hope they see the error of their ways. We need progressive alternative to the Democrats and Republicans, but this isn’t the way you do it.” More

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      The American right is inciting a pogrom against Haitian immigrants in Ohio | Moira Donegan

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      Does it even matter that the Haitian immigrants who have flocked to Springfield, Ohio, are in the country legally? Does it matter that Springfield, once a depressed post-industrial Rust belt town like so many others, has been economically revitalized by their arrival? Does it matter that the immigrants from Haiti fled violence and economic deprivation in their own country that are the outcome of American policy? Does it matter that none of the bizarre lies that have been peddled about them by Donald Trump, JD Vance and others on the right, telling lurid tales of the migrants capturing and killing local pets, are true?But even though the stories are made up, the threats now facing Springfield’s population of roughly 80,000 souls are very real. After last week’s presidential debate, when Trump railed about how Haitians in Springfield were “eating the dogs, eating the cats … they’re eating the pets of the people that live there”, life has been transformed in Springfield. Ordinary life has yielded to a barrage of media attention, nationally broadcast lies and threats.Two elementary schools in Springfield had to be evacuated because of threats of violence. Think about that: someone contacted Springfield authorities and made threats against grade-school children that were credible enough that the buildings had to be evacuated for the sake of safety. Classes at Wittenberg University in Springfield had to be held online because multiple threats of violence targeting Haitian students and staff there – including a bomb threat and a mass shooting threat – were deemed credible. Two hospitals in the town, Kettering Health Springfield and Mercy Health, had to go into lockdown after receiving threats. Government buildings in the city also had to be closed.Haitian immigrants in Springfield told news outlets that they were afraid to leave their homes. There were reports of broken windows and acid thrown on cars. There is a word for this kind of large-scale, organized violence against a local ethnic enclave. That word is pogrom.There was a time, earlier in Trump’s political career, when pundits liked to issue chin-scratching missives about the mutability of truth: about how Trump could spin outright fabrications into vehicles for white or male grievance, and about how shockingly little it mattered when his stories were revealed to be lies. Now, the thoroughly Trumpified Republican party has all but dispensed with the pretext of honesty, instead embracing an avowed sense that the factual truth is actually irrelevant.In an interview with CNN, Vance, who was instrumental in amplifying the lies about Springfield’s Haitian population, seemed to concede that he knew the stories of immigrants eating pets were false. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” the vice-presidential candidate said. The suffering of the people of Springfield, apparently, is not his concern.The episode is typical of Trump’s cynical cycle, one which the rightwing media and his many Republican imitators have almost perfected over the course of the past decade: an outrageous lie is told that provides cover for a racist resentment among Trump’s supporters – and, more importantly, gins up attention for Trump himself. Because the lie is fabricated and because it has no basis in reality, it can exist entirely at the level of fantasy and projection: lurid tales of pet-eating are not true, but because they can’t be proven or disproven, they can propel days’ worth of imaginings, condemnations, hoaxes and frantic factchecking by the media class. That this particular lie evokes longstanding racist imaginations of Black people as brutal and bestial – something more akin to coyotes than to hardworking small-town families – it reaffirms Trump’s particular appeal to the white Republican id. Trump, meanwhile, uses this vulgarity to monopolize the news cycle. Real people pay the price somewhere off camera, while he repeats his libels into a microphone.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThose microphones may be part of the point. One of the great lessons of the past month, as Kamala Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket and took on a more mocking and dismissive approach to Trump and his brand of politics, is that Trump’s entertainment value is a bit like Samson’s hair. When Trump is not getting attention – be it negative, outraged, adulatory or prurient – he is desperate, useless, like a fish out of water. The debate last week was a disaster for Trump: he was belittled, humiliated, made to seem peevish, petty, pathetic and incompetent by the woman who now leads him in most polls.But this blood libel against a small migrant community in the midwest has turned the attention back to him. That may be all he really wants. Trump’s theory of politics, after all, has always been wildly consistent: he only feels like he’s winning when everyone is looking his way.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More