US Politics

Donald Trump’s trial in New York on criminal charges over hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels will begin on 25 March 2024, amid the Republican presidential primary and less than than eight months before the general election the former president hopes to contest.The trial date was announced in a hearing in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday, Trump attending by video link from his Florida home.The judge, Juan Merchan, advised the former president to cancel all other obligations for the duration of the trial, which could last for several weeks.Trump was muted for most of the hearing, which lasted around 15 minutes. The video feed showed the former president sitting and conferring with his lawyer, Todd Blanche, in front of a backdrop of American flags.No other former president has been criminally indicted. Spokespeople for Trump did not immediately comment on news of his trial date.Trump used his Truth Social platform to lash out, claiming his “first amendment rights, ‘freedom of speech’” had been “violated” by the scheduling of the trial “right in the middle of primary season”.“This is exactly what the Radical Left Democrats wanted,” Trump wrote, also claiming “election interference”, a loaded term given widespread agreement that Russia interfered to boost his candidacy in the election he won in 2016.In April, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 charges of falsification of business records, arising from his $130,000 payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 election, to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter.The Tuesday hearing was also held to explain an order forbidding the disclosing of material presented by prosecutors not already publicly known.Merchan’s order bars Trump and his lawyers from disseminating evidence to third parties or posting it to social media, and requires that some sensitive material be kept only by Trump’s lawyers.Prosecutors sought the order soon after Trump was arrested, citing his history of “harassing, embarrassing, and threatening statements” about people with whom he has entered legal disputes.Trump claims to be the victim of political witch-hunts meant to silence him as he runs for the Republican nomination to face Joe Biden next year.Judge Merchan has stressed he is not seeking to gag Trump, but “bending over backwards and straining to ensure that he is given every opportunity possible to advance his candidacy”.Trump’s court appearance came after news that E Jean Carroll, the writer who accused him of rape and won $5m in a civil suit earlier this month, is seeking additional damages over his comments in a controversial CNN town hall.Just a day after he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, Trump called Carroll a “wack job” who “made-up” her story. He also claimed the trial was “rigged”.In a new filing in New York on Monday, lawyers for Carroll said such conduct “supports a very substantial punitive damages award in Carroll’s favor”.Carroll, a magazine columnist, says Trump raped her at a New York department store in the mid-1990s. Her new damages claim comes in a defamation suit filed in federal court in 2019, over Trump’s initial responses to her allegation and separate from the New York case, which was brought under a state law allowing victims of historic sexual crimes to sue their alleged attackers.The federal case had been on hold over the issue of whether Trump was protected because he made the comments in question while president. He does not enjoy that protection relating to comments during the CNN event.According to the New York Times, the new filing says Trump’s statements “show the depth of his malice toward Carroll, since it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will or spite”.Trump renewed his abuse of Carroll on social media on Monday. As he did so, George Conway, a conservative lawyer and Trump critic, told MSNBC: “The complaint that she’s been amending this time was actually the original complaint from the first lawsuit that she brought in 2019, when … Trump … from the bully pulpit of the Oval Office … basically accused her of being a liar.“And she got $3m for the second libel, in 2022, when he was dumb enough to repeat the first libel. And that time, he wasn’t president, so he didn’t have this legal argument. That’s why the first case went off on a wild goose chase in the appellate court, and now it’s come back.”The 2019 case, Conway said, “already had more damage potential [for Trump] than the case that [Carroll] already won … because he was president at the time.“It was the very, very first libel that he made on E Jean Carroll. And now the fact that he has repeated the libel after being found to have sexually abused her is really, really outrageous. And it is supportive of punitive damages.“This verdict could be greater than the $5m that she got in the first place. Frankly, I hope it is, because I think, at some point he’s got to stop lying about this and stop lying about her. How many times [are we] gonna have to go through this?”Trump’s legal problems extend beyond New York, where he also faces a multimillion-dollar civil suit over his business affairs, lodged by the state attorney general.In Georgia, indictments arising from Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat are expected this summer.In Washington DC, the US justice department continues to investigate Trump’s election subversion, including his incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress.Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by attorney general Merrick Garland, is also investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents.Nonetheless, Trump enjoys huge leads over all other Republican presidential candidates. More

JP Morgan Chase claimed that the government of the US Virgin Islands is “complicit in the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein” in a legal filing on Tuesday, saying the convicted sex trafficker maintained a “quid pro quo relationship” with some of the territory’s highest officials over two decades.The claim comes as part of an ongoing legal tussle that began with the US Virgin Islands alleging in a New York court that JP Morgan “facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of – and were in fact part of – a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls”. JP Morgan denies the claims.USVI has sought legal depositions of the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, and a host of high-profile names from tech, hospitality and finance, including Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Thomas Pritzker and others, as part of an effort to gather more information about Epstein’s relationship with JPMorgan.Epstein maintained a home on a private island in the territory where he sexually abused young women over the years, using money from accounts he maintained at JP Morgan. Last week, Deutsche Bank agreed to settle a similar proposed class action by an Epstein victim for $75m.But in a counterclaim, JP Morgan claims that the government of the US Virgin Islands, not JP Morgan, is the entity “that most directly failed to protect public safety and most actively facilitated and benefited from Epstein’s continued criminal activity”.“Epstein could have lived anywhere in the world. He chose USVI. Discovery obtained in this case reveals why,” JP Morgan claims.“For two decades, Epstein maintained a quid pro quo relationship with USVI’s highest-ranking officials. He gave them money, advice, influence and favors. In exchange, they shielded and even rewarded him, granting him [millions of dollars] in tax incentives … looking the other way when he walked through USVI airports accompanied by girls and young women …”JPMorgan also claims that Epstein backed a USVI government official for office who would later awarded him tax breaks in the territory, and that his “primary conduit for spreading money and influence throughout the USVI government was First Lady [Cecile] de Jongh”.Epstein further “exerted influence over USVI sex offender legislation and received lax monitoring”, according to the filing, and maintained such close connections with government officials that he was able to pass through the “USVI’s airport accompanied by young women as a registered sex offender”.Earlier on Wednesday, it was reported that the governor of the USVI, Albert Bryan, is scheduled to be deposed next month as part of the lawsuit. JPMorgan is believed to have requested Bryan’s deposition.The USVI-JPMorgan lawsuit was filed last year by the then Virgin Islands attorney general Denise George. But days after filing the claim, she was fired by the governor, reportedly because she failed to alert him that she planned to sue the bank.The continuing swirl of allegations comes a day after it was claimed that Epstein had reportedly threatened to blackmail Bill Gates over his extramarital affair with a Russian bridge player. More

The rightwing governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, will launch his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on Wednesday evening in a live appearance with Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter.NBC News first reported the plan, saying the Twitter Spaces talk at 6pm ET would be moderated by David Sacks, a tech entrepreneur, Musk confidante and DeSantis supporter. Multiple outlets later confirmed the scheme and Musk himself retweeted one report.The billionaire also trailed the interview in remarks to a conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal, adding that though he would “not at this time … endorse any particular candidate” he was “interested in Twitter being somewhat of a public town square where more and more organizations … make announcements”.Having convened a widely reported gathering of donors in Miami, DeSantis was also expected to release an announcement video on Wednesday.Fox News said the governor would be interviewed by its host Trey Gowdy, a former Republican congressman, at 8pm ET.Plans for a kick-off rally in DeSantis’s home town, Dunedin, have been reported. NBC said the governor would visit early voting states next week, after the Memorial Day holiday. DeSantis has repeatedly visited such states already, in an extended run-up to his formal campaign launch including the release of a campaign-oriented book.In Republican primary polling, DeSantis has maintained a consistent if increasingly distant second place to Donald Trump.The former president faces unprecedented legal jeopardy, including a criminal trial set to begin in New York in late March next year and potential indictment for his election subversion and incitement of the January 6 insurrection. He has however parlayed such challenges into success with Republican voters responsive to his claim to be a victim of political persecution.Trump used Twitter to great effect in his rise to power but was suspended from the platform after January 6. Musk lifted the ban but Trump has continued to use Truth Social, the platform he set up in his exile.Reporting DeSantis’s announcement plans, the New York Times said Musk would “add a surprising element and give Mr DeSantis access to a large audience online”.But the paper also said Musk would “inject a level of risk into a rollout that is expected to be carefully scripted and ensure that Mr DeSantis’s first impression as a presidential candidate will be aligning himself with … an eccentric businessman who has ranked at times as the world’s richest man”.Musk’s ownership of Twitter has seen continual upheaval at the company and a succession of controversies over his own use of the platform.On Tuesday Maxwell Frost, a Democratic congressman from Florida, greeted news of DeSantis’s plans with derision, tweeting: “On a Twitter space? [Laugh my ass off] this is so lame.”Rick Wilson, a Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, said the conversation between Musk and DeSantis would be, “to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the unspeakable in pursuit of the unelectable”.Nonetheless, DeSantis will enter the race brandishing a successful hard-right record as governor, a position the Yale and Harvard graduate won in 2018 after serving in the US navy, including a spell at Guantánamo Bay, and spending three terms in the US House.He won re-election in a landslide last year. The Florida legislature has not yet finalised a bill allowing him to run for the presidency without resigning as governor but his ambitions have not been affected.With an eye firmly on the White House, DeSantis has accelerated his implementation of culture-war-inspired policies on gender, LGBTQ+ rights, the teaching of history (particularly regarding race), abortion, gun control and voter suppression.Democrats and some political observers say the effects of such policies, including a high-profile legal fight with Disney over a so-called “don’t say gay” public education law, will render DeSantis unappealing to voters in a general election.In figures released this week, the thinktank Data For Progress reported majority disapproval of DeSantis among women likely to vote.Among issues polled, 54% of respondents were against the six-week abortion ban DeSantis signed in April; 57% opposed book bans in public school libraries fueled by parental objections; and 75% were against allowing concealed carry of firearms without a permit or training, which DeSantis also signed into law last month.Musk himself appeared to nod to such concerns on Tuesday, telling the Wall Street Journal conference his “preference and the preference for most Americans is really to have someone fairly normal in office. I think we’d all be quite happy with that actually. Someone who is representative of the moderate views that most of the country holds in reality.“The way that it’s set up is we have … people who push people to the edge … that causes a swing to the left or right during the primaries. And a shift toward the center for the general election. A fairly normal and sensible to be the president, that would be great.”Despite such unease about DeSantis’s policies – and widespread criticism of his lack of interpersonal skills and campaign-trail charisma stoking reports of donor unease – head-to-head polling between DeSantis and President Joe Biden generally puts the two men level.Other candidates for the Republican nomination include Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations; Tim Scott, a sitting US senator from South Carolina; Asa Hutchinson, a former Arkansas governor; and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur. More

In a speech to Christian media in Orlando, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, envisaged the creation of a “7-2 conservative majority that would last a quarter-century” on the US supreme court should he be elected president next year.Speaking to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, DeSantis said: “I think if you look over the next two presidential terms, there is a good chance that you could be called upon to seek replacements for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito and the issue with that is, you can’t really do better than those two.”Supreme court justices serve for life or until they choose to retire. Thomas, who has rejected calls to resign over his relationship with a Republican mega-donor, is 74. Alito is 73. Both are hard-right figures on a court tipped firmly right, 6-3.But DeSantis also alluded to a chance to replace Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal appointed by Barack Obama who is now 68, or perhaps Elena Kagan, another Obama appointee who is now 63, should he win the White House and serve two full terms.He said: “So it is possible that in those eight years, we have the opportunity to fortify justices … Alito and Thomas as well as actually make improvements with those others, and if you were able to do that, you would have a 7-2 conservative majority on the supreme court that would last a quarter-century.”According to the Washington Post, DeSantis’s comments were met with “raucous applause”.The governor also took a shot at John Roberts, the conservative chief justice who has sided with liberals on key decisions, including the one last year which eliminated federal abortion rights.“If you replace a Clarence Thomas with somebody like a Roberts or somebody like that,” DeSantis said, “then you’re gonna actually see the court move to the left, and you can’t do that.”Under Roberts, the court has moved to the right.Last year, Alito wrote the opinion in Dobbs v Jackson, which removed abortion rights. Thomas wrote the opinion in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen, striking down a gun control law in place since 1911.DeSantis, 44, is expected to announce his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination this week.Donald Trump, 76, is the clear frontrunner to face President Joe Biden, who is 80 and beat Trump in 2020. On Monday, however, Fox News reported that 100 Trump White House alumni have formed a pro-DeSantis group called the Eight-Year Alliance.DeSantis is preparing to launch a campaign fueled by hard-right state legislation. Notable policies have included a crackdown on the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues and of race in US history, legislation targeting trans people in public life, a loosening of gun control laws and a six-week abortion ban.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMany observers say that record may prove too extreme for voters in a presidential election.On abortion rights, for example, public opinion is consistently against the kind of extreme bans recently passed in Republican states.In Orlando, the Post said, DeSantis “promoted the six-week abortion ban he helped enact this year … a divisive topic he tends to brush past, even with staunchly conservative audiences”.The governor’s comments were “brief”, the Post said. But when he said his ban was meant to “protect an unborn child that has a detectable heartbeat”, he was “drowned out by extended cheers”.Gynecologists say fetuses do not have heartbeats at six weeks, a stage at which many women do not know they are pregnant.In Orlando, DeSantis said his ban was “the right thing to do”. More

Social media use by children and teenagers can pose a “profound risk of harm” to their mental health and wellbeing, the US surgeon general is warning.In a new advisory released on Tuesday, Dr Vivek Murthy calls on tech companies, policymakers and parents to take “immediate action to protect kids now”. He says that in the absence of robust independent research it is impossible to know whether social media is safe for children and adolescents.“The bottom line is we do not have enough evidence to conclude that social media is, in fact, sufficiently safe for our kids. And that’s really important for parents to know,” Murthy told the Associated Press.The 25-page advisory, produced as part of the surgeon general’s ongoing investigation into what he sees as a full-blown youth mental health crisis, points to the ubiquitous use of social media by young people. Up to 95% of 13- to 17-year-old Americans use a social media platform, and more than a third say they do so “almost constantly”.The report shows how current controls on access by children are not working. While most sites apply a minimum age requirement of 13, almost 40% of eight- to 12-year-olds are regular users.The surgeon general’s warning came as the White House put out its own notice on Tuesday about what it called the “unprecedented youth mental health crisis” in the US. The number of children and adolescents dealing with depression and anxiety had risen almost 30% in recent years, with social media a clear factor.The White House is forming a new taskforce on kids and online health and safety. Its job would be to identify the potential harms posed by online platforms and to come up with a tool kit designed to combat the problems for tech companies developing new products.Concern over the effects of popular online apps on children has been building in recent years. In 2021 a whistleblower, Frances Haugen, exposed that Facebook and Instagram knew they were directing young users towards harmful content including material that promoted anorexia – and that they were expressly targeting children under 13.One internal study from Facebook’s parent company, Meta, reported 14% of teenage girls said that when they used Instagram their suicidal thoughts intensified, while 17% of teen girls said it exacerbated eating disorders.In the wake of Haugen’s revelations, Meta sidelined plans to launch a kids’ version of Instagram.Murthy told AP: “I recognize technology companies have taken steps to try to make their platforms healthier and safer, but it’s simply not enough.”His advisory underlines the critical nature of adolescence in the development of the human brain, which leaves kids aged 10 to 19 highly vulnerable to peer pressure. It is within these years that an individual’s sense of self-worth is formed, and it is when mental health challenges such as depression often emerge.The report says that social media use is predictive of a decline in satisfaction with life, especially for girls aged 11 to 13 and boys aged 14 and 15.Accessing apps does have positive benefits, Murthy says, including providing community and connection with others who share similar interests or identity. That can be particularly valuable for LGBTQ+ youth who can easily find each other.Seven out of 10 adolescent girls of colour said they found positive and affirming content this way. Across all user groups, most American adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted and supported through tough times.But such positive indicators are currently overshadowed by risk factors, the surgeon general warns. A long-term study of 12- to 15-year-olds found that adolescents who spend more than three hours each day on social media have twice the risk of mental health challenges including depression and anxiety.Figures from 2021 suggest that the current average in that age group is 3.5 hours a day.Excessive social media use, which can result in compulsive or uncontrollable behaviour, can lead to sleep problems which in turn can alter the neurological development of the adolescent brain. Depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts can ensue, the advisory says.Murthy is calling on tech companies to be more open with the public and to put the health and safety of their young users first when creating new products. He also has words for parents.“For every family, it may not be feasible to stop your child from using social media or there may be benefit,” he told the AP. “But drawing boundaries around the use of social media in your child’s life so there are times and spaces that are protected, that are tech-free, that can be really helpful.” More

The favored metaphor on the left is to compare the trumped-up debt-ceiling crisis to hostage-taking by the House Republicans.But in a true hostage situation, both sides have something major to lose. The perpetrators risk not getting a payoff or, worse, spending decades in prison. For the families of the victims and the police, the danger is that the hostages will be killed during the negotiations or in the midst of a botched rescue mission.For Kevin McCarthy and the defaulters (which, incidentally, is a promising name for a band), there is no downside. If Joe Biden ultimately hands over his sword in surrender, the Republican incendiaries will be lionized as conquering heroes from the Fox News green room to the dining room at Mar-a-Lago.Sure, the reviled liberal media will grumble if Republican intransigence forces America into default, guaranteeing higher interest for years to come, and jeopardizing the world economy. But that crazed toughness would prove that the House speaker is not a “Republican In Name Only” (Rino) squish like his deal-making predecessor John Boehner, who at the last minute helped avert default in 2011.Marching off the fiscal cliff like lemmings will also inoculate House Republicans against a rightwing primary challenge – which, in Republican circles, is a fate worse than death. And since members of Congress can trade stocks, every smart Republican can personally prosper during the coming cataclysmic economic downturn by adroitly shorting the Dow Jones Average.In contrast, the consequences of debt-ceiling brinkmanship are dire for Joe Biden. In the best conceivable case – one that will prompt dismay among liberals – the president would reluctantly agree to tight spending caps that will limit his domestic agenda and penalize the poor. But, at least, that option would avert default.At the end of his Sunday press conference in Hiroshima, Biden publicly acknowledged the devastating political consequences for him if America were unable to pay its bills. Channeling the thought process of House Republican zealots as they head towards the abyss, Biden said: “Because I am president, and presidents are responsible for everything, Biden would take the blame. And that’s one way to make sure Biden is not re-elected.”Sad, but true.A default might well mean that Biden would be running for reelection with the economy in a Republican-created tailspin. And it wouldn’t matter politically that, as Biden said, “On the merits, based on what I’ve offered, I would be blameless.”But if Democrats believe that they can win the messaging wars about a default, they’re deluding themselves.An Associated Press/NORC poll, released last week, found that only 20% of Americans say that they understand the debate over the debt ceiling “extremely” or “very well.” That number is significant because it is often hard for political insiders to remember that most Americans do not watch cable TV news or obsessively follow political machinations in Washington. The danger for Democrats is that many of these low-information voters will be persuaded by the implicit one-sentence Republican message: America defaulted because Biden wouldn’t agree to cut government spending to deal with the national debt.In order to appreciate the folly of that glib Republican argument, a voter both has to understand the draconian nature of the Republican budget proposals and to grasp that raising the debt ceiling merely authorizes borrowing rather than new spending. Good luck making that complex case to anyone who doesn’t devotedly read the New York Times or listen to National Public Radio.In an era of streaming and thousands of channels, Biden does not have the option of commanding national attention with an old-fashioned Oval Office address. Moreover, there is no guarantee that Biden, with his rambling asides and workmanlike delivery, would convince anyone with a televised speech. To illustrate that point, here is the awkward way Biden highlighted the dangers of the Republican budget plan in his Sunday press conference: “I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects, for example, a $30bn tax break for the oil industry, which made $200bn last year – they don’t need an incentive of another $30bn – while putting healthcare of 21 million Americans at risk by going after Medicaid.”The harsh reality is that Biden has little choice but to grub for the best deal he can. While there is a strong legal argument that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional under the 14th amendment, no one at the treasury department or anywhere else knows how the global markets would react if Biden thumbed his nose at Kevin McCarthy and his wingnut caucus.With the continuing danger that Donald Trump’s comeback tour will end in the Oval Office, there are more important matters on the table than punishing Kevin McCarthy for his hostage-taking. In fact, the best revenge would be a sweeping Biden reelection that brings with it a Democratic House majority. Then, in 2025, without a presidential election on the horizon, Biden would be free to blow up the dangerously irrational debt-ceiling law.
Walter Shapiro is a staff writer for the New Republic and a lecturer in political science at Yale More

Senator John Neely Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, offended Mexicans across the world in a hearing on the FBI and DEA’s budget this month, calling for American military members and law enforcement agents to invade their country in order to “stop the cartels” while adding that Mexico would be “eating cat food and living in tent behind an Outback [Steakhouse]” if not for “the people of America”.Mexico’s top diplomat condemned the comments as “profoundly ignorant”, and the country’s ambassador to the US called for a formal apology for the “vulgar and racist” language. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, urging the more than 37 million Americans of Mexican and other Latin American descent to “not to vote for people with this very arrogant, very offensive and very foolish mentality” in the future.The entire episode illustrated how Kennedy has emerged as a loud conservative voice in recent years in the US and in a state which has repeatedly relied on laborers of Mexican origin to rebuild homes as well as businesses following hurricanes and other natural disasters.But as the fallout from his remarks about Mexico unfolded, critics also seized on the opportunity to point out that the Republican senator was once a moderate – and some would even say liberal – Democrat before switching parties in 2007, just as the far-right Tea Party movement was taking hold in Louisiana politics.And those critics say the politician who holds degrees from Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia and Oxford University in the UK is “playing the role of a clever hick” by doing things like making fun of Mexico in order to exploit the “bigotry and fear of his base”.Kennedy has made a name for himself by delivering “folksy”, sometimes racist statements in an exaggerated southern American accent that has been likened to being somewhere between that of Mr Haney, the con artist from the former CBS sitcom Green Acres, and Foghorn Leghorn, the cartoon rooster who appears in Looney Tunes. The latter comparison is so striking that New Orleans’s Times-Picayune newspaper once posted a quiz featuring a series of eccentric statements that was headlined: “Who said it: Sen John Kennedy or Foghorn Leghorn?”In a Senate confirmation hearing, Kennedy once told a Cornell law professor born in Soviet-era Russia: “I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade” – insinuating that she was a communist or a foreign agent. The remark came about three years after Kennedy drew ridicule from some quarters for spending a Fourth of July holiday – which recognizes the US’s independence from the UK – in Russia with leaders of his country’s rival power.Separately, in a tough-on-crime, pro-police campaign ad, Kennedy ended the video by saying: “Look, if you hate cops just because they’re cops, the next time you’re in trouble, call a crackhead.”But back when he was a figure in Louisiana’s state politics, Kennedy’s elocution hewed more closely to a background that is typical of his estimated net worth of more than $12m in 2016. In interviews and videos of proceedings before his switch to the Republican party, Kennedy – one of the wealthiest members of Congress – appears to speak with only a slight southern accent.“Before he got to the Senate, Kennedy never pretended to be a hick,” said Robert Mann, mass communication professor at Louisiana State University and author of Backrooms and Bayous: My Life in Louisiana Politics. “Instead, he usually acted like the well-educated, affluent person that he is.”Mann said that while Kennedy was a member of the Democratic party during a prior role as the Louisiana state government’s treasurer, he was one of the most outspoken critics of the governor at the time: Bobby Jindal, a Republican. But once he switched parties and entered the national political scene, Kennedy literally changed his tune.“After he got to the Senate and realized that Fox News and its viewers enjoyed his shtick, he went all in on this new persona,” Mann said. “The Kennedy of 2005 or 2008 is a completely different person in style and tone from the one you see today on the TV.”For Mann, Kennedy’s one-liners aren’t genuine, off-the-cuff folksy remarks. They’re calculated attempts to appease his conservative base. “The relationship is simple, I think: he periodically validates and reinforces their distorted views [on] Mexicans, Blacks and other marginalized people,” Mann said. “That tells them that he’s not an urbane, rich, well-educated person, but just one of them.“It’s how politicians have pandered to the lowest common denominator for centuries. Kennedy has mastered the technique.”Mann said that Kennedy was “playing a role on TV” by delivering sometimes “nonsensical” statements and using an exaggerated accent, which appears to fall in the long tradition of ambitious people using voice alteration to further themselves. Recent examples include Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder who is bound for prison after fraudulently claiming her technology could diagnose diseases with a single drop of blood and admitted that the baritone voice she used before her criminal conviction wasn’t her real voice. Another is Paris Hilton, who recently dropped the iconic, high-pitched “shy” voice she once used while appearing on the reality television show The Simple Life.“That role is of a clever hick who, while unsophisticated, is always quick with a put-down for smug city slickers,” Mann said. “If you view him through the lens of someone who is affecting an attitude, the words don’t have to make complete sense. It’s the image and the attitude that count.”But while Kennedy may be playing a character, the senator’s statements have real-world impacts, including on foreign relations. The remarks have strained the relationship between the US and Mexico.The two countries are economic partners, with more than 33 million US tourists visiting Mexico every year and over $800bn in bilateral trade. That includes the more than $40bn Louisiana exports to Mexico and $15bn the state bought, creating a surplus balance in favor of Louisiana of $25bn.Additionally, more than 2 million US citizens permanently live in Mexico, and the jobs created by trade between the countries supports more than 70,000 families in Louisiana.A senior Mexican diplomat at the Mexican embassy in Washington said the rhetoric in Kennedy’s recent remarks about his country and his people runs “counter to the needs of the US-Mexico relationship,” which he said requires “stronger dialogue and mutual understanding”.“Uninformed and ill-intentioned statements have the potential to veer us on to a trajectory that can further foster misunderstanding and miscommunication between both countries,” the official said. “The true challenge lies in comprehending and addressing the numerous shared challenges but also opportunities faced by Mexico and the US, on the grounds of respect.” More

From 5h agoTim Scott has said the magic words.“Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every single rung of the ladder that helped me climb and that’s why I’m announcing today I’m running for president of the United States of America,” the senator said to applause and cheers in his kick-off speech in North Charleston, South Carolina.He began the speech by recounting his upbringing from poverty and downplaying the impacts of racial disparities in the economy, saying “I’m living proof that America is the land of opportunity and not a land of oppression.”When it comes to policy, the senator is outlining familiar conservative priorities.“On my first day as commander in chief, the strongest nation on earth will stop retreating from our southern border,” he said.He embraced the conservative demand to deploy the military against drug traffickers, and vowed to restart construction of the border wall pioneered by Donald Trump.“When I am president, the drug cartels using Chinese labs and Mexican factories to kill Americans will cease to exist. I will freeze their assets, I will build the wall and I will allow the world’s greatest military to fight these terrorists. Because that’s exactly what they are.”Republican senator Tim Scott threw his hat into the ring with a speech in South Carolina where he promised to pursue a more compassionate form of conservatism, while advocating for hardline border security policies and downplaying the effects of racial inequality on American society. The GOP’s presidential field is crowded and set to become more packed on Wednesday when Ron DeSantis makes his campaign official, but can anyone defeat the final boss of Republican politicians, Donald Trump? We’ll see.Here’s what else has happened today:
Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy will meet at 5.30pm to (hopefully) resolve the debt ceiling standoff.
The NAACP issued a travel advisory for Florida over policies DeSantis has pursued as governor, and which he will likely try to sell voters on in his presidential campaign.
Mandatory water cuts were avoided in the west after the Biden administration and several states agreed to a deal regarding management of the Colorado river.
Trump and fellow South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham both wished Scott well on his presidential bid.
Speaking of Trump, federal prosecutors have evidence that he was warned he could not hold onto classified documents, the Guardian has confirmed.
We’re 10 days away from 1 June, the estimated date when the US government, fresh out of cash and prohibited by the legal debt ceiling from borrowing more money, will default on its obligations for the first time in history.Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy are in the midst of negotiations over a deal to raise the limit, likely in exchange for spending cuts or the enactment of conservative priorities that the GOP has demanded. But it’s coming awfully close to the deadline, particularly since it takes several days for Congress to consider and vote on legislation, and there’s no telling who might object to whatever deal the Democratic president reaches with the Republican speaker of House.The Associated Press took a look at what might happen if Washington does the unthinkable and actually defaults, and reached a grim verdict:
The repercussions of a first-ever default on the federal debt would quickly reverberate around the world. Orders for Chinese factories that sell electronics to the United States could dry up. Swiss investors who own U.S. Treasurys would suffer losses. Sri Lankan companies could no longer deploy dollars as an alternative to their own dodgy currency.
“No corner of the global economy will be spared” if the U.S. government defaulted and the crisis weren’t resolved quickly, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
Zandi and two colleagues at Moody’s have concluded that even if the debt limit were breached for no more than week, the U.S. economy would weaken so much, so fast, as to wipe out roughly1.5 million jobs.
And if a government default were to last much longer — well into the summer — the consequences would be far more dire, Zandi and his colleagues found in their analysis: U.S. economic growth would sink, 7.8 million American jobs would vanish, borrowing rates would jump, the unemployment rate would soar from the current 3.4% to 8% and a stock-market plunge would erase $10 trillion in household wealth.
Biden and McCarthy are set for a 5.30pm meeting at the White House for further talks on a debt limit agreement.In major news for western US states grappling with drought, the Guardian’s Oliver Milman reports that the Biden administration has agreed to a deal that will see them use less water from the Colorado river and ward off the prospect of mandatory water cuts:A deal has been struck by Joe Biden’s administration for California, Arizona and Nevada to take less water from the drought-stricken Colorado River, in a bid to prevent the river dwindling further and imperiling the water supplies for millions of people and vast swaths of agricultural land in the US west.The agreement, announced on Monday, will involve the three states, water districts, Native American tribes and farm operators cutting about 13% of the total water use in the lower Colorado basin, a historic reduction that will probably trigger significant water restrictions on the region’s residents and farmland.In all, 3m acre-feet of water is expected to be conserved over the next three years – an acre-foot is 326,000 gallons, or enough water to cover an acre of land, about the size of a football field, one foot deep. A single acre-foot is enough to sustain two average California households for a year.Of these savings, 2.3m acre-feet will be compensated by the federal government, with $1.2bn going to cities, tribes and water districts. The rest of the savings will be voluntary, uncompensated ones to be worked out between the states.The agreement averts, for now, the prospect of the Biden administration imposing unilateral water cuts upon the seven states – California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming – that rely upon the river, a prospect that has loomed since last summer when the waterway’s two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, hit perilously low levels.In the run-up to the presidential campaign announcement he’s expected to make on Wednesday, Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis has overseen an effort by the state government to restrict what students can learn about race and diversity. That has prompted one of the country’s best-known civil rights groups to issue an unusual warning against visiting the state, the Guardian’s Gloria Oladipo reports:The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has issued a travel advisory for the state of Florida, calling the state “actively hostile” to minorities as Florida’s conservative government limits diversity efforts in schools.In a Saturday press release, the civil rights organization better known as the NAACP said the travel warning comes as Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, “attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools”.“Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color,” the advisory said.While much of Monday’s political focus has been on the expanded field of 2024 Republican presidential candidates, Texas’s US senator Ted Cruz has drawn unflattering headlines from some quarters for announcing an investigation into the maker of Bud Light as his state is gripped by major crises.Cruz, along with fellow Republican US senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, on Wednesday sent a letter to the beer industry’s regulatory body questioning whether Anheuser-Busch violated guidelines “prohibiting marketing to underage individuals” when transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in April posted a video of herself on Instagram holding a custom Bud Light can with her face on it.Rightwing media outlets and consumers reacted to Mulvaney’s video by calling for a boycott of Bud Light, which reported a 23% drop in sales for the final week of April as compared to the same period during the previous year, according to CBS News.Meanwhile, as Business Insider noted, Cruz’s home state has experienced five of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in recent US history but has offered little in the way of solutions to that. He’s also hardly weighed in as Covid asylum limits known as Title 42 recently expired, giving way to new, arguably tougher immigration policies.The rush to the US-Mexico border in Texas and other parts which preceded the expiration of Title 42 has brought extraordinary pressure to immigration officials, and politicos on both sides of the aisle have so far mostly just bused migrants to different cities rather than devise substantial solutions.“Beer marketing, however – thanks to Cruz – has all the attention of the state’s top leaders” on Capitol Hill, as Insider put it.Of Cruz’s latest culture war entry, Vanity Fair added: “No, he doesn’t have anything better to do.”Tim Scott was announcing his presidential campaign on Monday, when a technical glitch left the 57-year-old senator in silence.“Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every rung of the ladder that helped me climb. And that is why I am announcing today that I am running for president of the United States of America,” Scott told a cheering crowd at Charleston Southern University in his home state of South Carolina. “Our nation, our values, and our people are strong, but our president is weak,” he added.At that point, the sound cut out. Here’s that moment, if you missed it earlier today:Now that Tim Scott has announced his run for the presidency, my colleague Nick Robins-Early has pulled together 10 things you need to know about the newest Republican hopeful.He writes:Scott is a 57-year-old senator from South CarolinaScott grew up in South Carolina, attending a Baptist university and owning an insurance company before becoming involved in politics. He entered politics in the mid-1990s as a Charleston, South Carolina, city council member before running for Congress.Scott was first elected to Congress in 2010Scott staked his political claim amid a wave of conservative opposition to Barack Obama’s presidency. As a member of the hardline conservative Tea Party movement, he was endorsed at the time by the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and became a rising star of the party. After two years as a congressman, he was chosen in 2012 to replace the Republican senator Jim DeMint and appointed to the Senate.Scott is the sole Black Republican senatorScott is the only Black Republican senator, and was the first Black Republican elected to the US House of Representatives from South Carolina in over a hundred years. He has previously talked about his unique role as a Black Republican and the discrimination he has faced from authorities, but has claimed that liberals use race as a way to divide voters. He faced heated criticism from Black activists in 2021 after declaring “America is not a racist country” in response to a speech from President Joe Biden that condemned racism following a white supremacist mass shooting.Here’s the full explainer:Politicos and voters of South Carolina who support both US senator Tim Scott and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley have been handed a dilemma now that they have both declared their candidacies for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.As the Associated Press pointed out Monday, Scott and Haley have a lengthy history and were even allies earlier in their careers. Both were members of South Carolina’s state House. And in 2012, while she was serving as governor of South Carolina, Haley appointed Scott to a state Senate seat in 2012.Scott, who is the US Senate’s only Black Republican and formally launched his presidential campaign Monday, told the AP that he doesn’t consider the situation a dilemma and expressed his belief that he and Haley would remain friends despite their competing interests.Meanwhile, the AP said Haley declined to comment when asked about Scott.Others in the Republican field who have already declared include Donald Trump – who appointed Haley to her UN role during his presidency – as well as former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and Woke, Inc author Vivek Ramaswamy. Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis is widely expected to formally announce his presidential campaign in the coming days.As for the Democrats, Joe Biden has announced that he will campaign for a second term in the Oval Office after defeating Trump in the 2020 presidential race. Biden’s declared Democratic challengers so far include self-help author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr.Republican senator Tim Scott threw his hat into the ring with a speech in South Carolina where he promised to pursue a more compassionate form of conservatism, while advocating for hardline border security policies and downplaying the effects of racial inequality on American society. The GOP’s presidential field is crowded and set to become more packed on Wednesday when Ron DeSantis makes his campaign official, but can anyone defeat the final boss of Republican politicians, Donald Trump? We’ll see.Here’s what else has happened today:
Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy will meet at 5.30pm to (hopefully) resolve the debt ceiling standoff, which, by all indications, remains ongoing.
Trump and fellow South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham both wished Scott well on his presidential bid.
Speaking of Trump, federal prosecutors have evidence that he was warned he could not hold onto classified documents, the Guardian has confirmed.
And here’s what Donald Trump has to say about Tim Scott throwing his hat into the presidential ring:
Good luck to Senator Tim Scott in entering the Republican Presidential Primary Race. It is rapidly loading up with lots of people, and Tim is a big step up from Ron DeSanctimonious, who is totally unelectable. I got Opportunity Zones done with Tim, a big deal that has been highly successful. Good luck Tim!
For those unfamiliar with Trump’s latest batch of zingers: Ron DeSanctimonious is the ex-president’s erstwhile ally Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is expected to announce his presidential campaign on Wednesday.Senator Tim Scott is now the second South Carolinian vying for the Republican presidential nomination, after former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley.The state’s other senator, Republican Lindsey Graham, has already made public his endorsement of Donald Trump. He nonetheless reserved kind words for Scott in a statement released after his campaign’s official kick off:
Congratulations to my good friend Senator Tim Scott on his announcement that he is running for President of the United States.
Tim makes South Carolina proud, and he is one of the most talented and hard-working public servants I’ve ever known.
He will have an optimistic vision for the future of conservatism and America, and I know he will acquit himself well.
The anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America welcomed Senator Tim Scott’s formal entry into the 2024 Republican presidential primary today.“We are encouraged by his commitment to sign the strongest achievable protections for life should he be elected president,” said the group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser. “We welcome Scott and all presidential contenders further outlining their pro-life vision and policy platform.”Scott has vowed to sign “the most conservative, pro-life legislation” that could pass Congress if he becomes president, but he has refused to specify his preferred time frame for a potential federal abortion ban.When asked about his preferred cut-off point for banning the procedure, Scott told NBC News last month: “I’m not going to talk about six or five or seven or 10 [weeks].”Dannenfelser said today, “The pro-life movement is seeking a national defender of life who will boldly advocate a minimum national standard to protect unborn children at least by 15 weeks when they can feel pain, and who will work tirelessly to build consensus and gather the votes necessary in Congress.”In his presidential campaign announcement speech, Tim Scott recounted his upbringing from poverty, discounted the impact of racial inequality on Americans’ lives and restated conservative policy goals, from cutting taxes to building a wall along the US border with Mexico.As he wrapped up his address, he vowed to promote on the campaign trail a friendlier form of conservatism.“This can’t be another presidential campaign. We don’t have time for that. We need a president who persuades not just our friends and our base,” he said. “We have to have a compassion for people who don’t agree with us.”He closed with these words: “I am living proof that God and a good family and the United States of America can do all things, if we believe. Will you believe it with me?”In the months to come, we’ll find out if Republican voters share his faith.Tim Scott has said the magic words.“Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every single rung of the ladder that helped me climb and that’s why I’m announcing today I’m running for president of the United States of America,” the senator said to applause and cheers in his kick-off speech in North Charleston, South Carolina.He began the speech by recounting his upbringing from poverty and downplaying the impacts of racial disparities in the economy, saying “I’m living proof that America is the land of opportunity and not a land of oppression.”When it comes to policy, the senator is outlining familiar conservative priorities.“On my first day as commander in chief, the strongest nation on earth will stop retreating from our southern border,” he said.He embraced the conservative demand to deploy the military against drug traffickers, and vowed to restart construction of the border wall pioneered by Donald Trump.“When I am president, the drug cartels using Chinese labs and Mexican factories to kill Americans will cease to exist. I will freeze their assets, I will build the wall and I will allow the world’s greatest military to fight these terrorists. Because that’s exactly what they are.”Tim Scott may be the lone Black Republican in the Senate, but his message to Republican voters downplays the impact of racial inequality in America.“For those of you who wonder if America is a racist country, take a look at how people come together,” Scott said. “We are not defined by the color of our skin. We are defined by the content of our character.” More