US Politics

The New York progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Monday that the California Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein should retire, amid a long absence from Congress due to ill health which has affected their party’s efforts to stock federal courts with liberal judges.Feinstein, 89, “should retire”, Ocasio-Cortez – 33 and commonly known as AOC – wrote on the social media platform Bluesky.She added: “I think criticisms of that stance as ‘anti-feminist’ are a farce.”Prominent Democrats including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand have labeled calls for Feinstein to quit sexist, because men in similar positions would not face such pressure.Others have pushed back.Feinstein was the first woman to be mayor of San Francisco and is now the longest-serving female US senator. But before her current absence began, over a case of shingles, she faced questions about her mental fitness for the job.She has said she intends to return soon but as a member of the Senate judiciary committee, her absence has affected the pace of confirmation of judges – a key aim of any administration but a priority for Democrats and Joe Biden after Republicans forced the pace of conservative confirmations under Donald Trump.Having removed the Democrats’ majority on the judiciary committee, Feinstein’s absence would also hobble any attempt to force John Roberts, the chief justice of the supreme court, or any other justice to testify regarding ethics rules and scandals concerning Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, members of the conservative majority.Republicans blocked Democratic attempts to appoint a temporary replacement.Ocasio-Cortez previously said Feinstein should consider retirement. She has now added a powerful voice to calls for the senator to quit.“Her refusal to either retire or show up is causing great harm to the judiciary – precisely where repro[ductive] rights are getting stripped,” the New Yorker said.A recent Texas ruling which threatened access to mifepristone, a common abortion pill, came from a hard-right judge installed under Trump. The supreme court removed the right to abortion last year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFeinstein’s failure to retire, Ocasio-Cortez added, “means now in this precious window Dem[ocrat]s can only pass GOP-approved nominees”.However, Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia, recently told the Guardian that Feinstein’s absence had “not stopped the Senate from confirming Biden’s judicial nominees, but it has made confirming them somewhat more difficult.“For nominees who lack [bipartisan] support and receive tie votes, Democrats can discharge them from the committee with majority votes on the floor, which consumes valuable floor time,” he said.Bluesky is a relatively new platform, backed by the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, which operates by invitation. An Ocasio-Cortez spokesperson confirmed her words to CNN, which first reported the post.The spokesperson also confirmed that Ocasio-Cortez does not intend to challenge Gillibrand for her Senate seat in 2024, the subject of recent speculation. More

The US Secret Service denied security clearance for Mohamed Khairullah, the longest-serving Muslim mayor in New Jersey, and prevented him from attending a White House Eid al-Fitr event on Monday afternoon marking the end of Ramadan.Khairullah, who was critical of the Trump administration’s travel ban in 2017 that restricted entry to the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries, received the call from the Secret Service while he was en route to the White House. President Joe Biden revoked that ban in 2021.“It’s disappointing and it’s shocking that this continues to happen under our constitution which provides that everyone is innocent unless proven guilty,” Khairullah, 47, told NewJersey.com. “I honestly don’t know what my charge, if you want to put it that way, is at this point, to be treated in such a manner.”In a statement to the newspaper, United States Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that Khairullah was denied entry to the event on Monday night, regretting “any inconvenience this may have caused” and noting that they were unable to “comment further on the specific protective means and methods used to conduct our security operations at the White House”.Two days earlier, Khairullah, who has been mayor of Prospect Park, New Jersey, a small town of 6,000 people, for more than 17 years, appeared alongside the state’s governor, Phil Murphy, at the gubernatorial mansion for an Eid celebration.Khairullah, who was born in Syria before fleeing persecution as a teenager and moving to the United States with his parents in the 1990s, served as a volunteer firefighter and delivered humanitarian aid to refugees in Syria and Bangladesh for the Syrian American Medical Society and the Watan Foundation. In 2019, Khairullah had been detained for three hours at John F Kennedy international airport after he returned from a trip to Turkey with his family.Khairullah told NewJersey.com that he sought out more information from federal officials on why he was detained but they would not disclose their reasoning. After he informed the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of what happened, the group reviewed a leaked copy of the federal terrorist screening dataset, which contains details on more than 1 million people suspected of being involved in terrorist activities, and informed him that his name and birthdate appeared in it.The Council on American-Islamic Relations has criticized the list for containing “almost entirely lists of Arabic and Muslim names” and called on the Biden administration to stop the FBI from spreading information from that terrorism dataset. Representatives for the group condemned the White House’s denial of entry to Khairullah, with the New Jersey chapter’s executive director, Selaedin Maksut, describing it as “wholly unacceptable and insulting”.“If these such incidents are happening to high-profile and well-respected American-Muslim figures like Mayor Khairullah, this then begs the question: what is happening to Muslims who do not have the access and visibility that the mayor has?” Maksut told the local New Jersey news outlet.Khairullah lamented that he could not enter the “People’s House”, telling NewJersey.com that “there is a secret list I can’t clear my name from and it still haunts me and follows me where I go”.“It’s not a matter of ‘I didn’t get to go to a party.’ It’s why I did not go. And it’s a list that has targeted me because of my identity,” Khairullah added to Al Jazeera. “And I don’t think the highest office in the United States should be down with such profiling.” More

Few chemicals have attracted as intense public and regulatory scrutiny as PFAS, but even as the highly toxic and ubiquitous compounds’ dangers come into sharper focus, industry influence has crippled congressional attempts to pass meaningful consumer protections.Federal bills designed to address some of the most significant sources of exposure – food packaging, cosmetics, personal care products, clothing, textiles, cookware and firefighting foam – have all failed in recent sessions.However, a patchwork of state laws enacted over the last three years is generating fresh hope by prohibiting the use of PFAS in those and other uses. These laws – mostly passed in Democratic-controlled states – are quietly forcing many companies to phase out the chemicals as they become illegal to use in consumer goods in some of the nation’s largest economies.“We’ve seen some corporate leadership on PFAS, but the actual state policies that say ‘No, you have to do this’ – those are great incentivizers,” said Sarah Doll, director of Safer States, which advocates for and tracks restrictions on toxic chemicals at the state level.PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make thousands of consumer products across dozens of industries resist water, stains and heat. The chemicals are ubiquitous, and linked at low levels of exposure to cancer, thyroid disease, kidney dysfunction, birth defects, autoimmune disease and other serious health problems.Though the Biden administration is devoting significant resources to limiting and cleaning up environmental PFAS pollution, it has no coherent strategy to address the chemicals’ use in consumer goods, and states have filled that void. Among those are laws banning their use in:
Clothing/textiles. California, New York and Washington banned PFAS in clothing, while multiple states are prohibiting the chemicals’ use in textiles, such as carpets or furniture upholstery, or in children’s products like car seats and strollers.
Cosmetics/personal care. California, Colorado and Maryland banned PFAS in all cosmetics and personal care products.
Food packaging/cookware. About 10 states have prohibited PFAS in some food packaging, and several also bar it in cookware.
Firefighting foam. At least 15 states have banned or limited the use of firefighting foam with PFAS because it is a major source of water pollution.
Maine has gone several steps further with a ban on all non-essential uses of PFAS, and the momentum continues this session in 33 states where legislation has been introduced. Vermont’s senate unanimously approved a ban on the chemicals in cosmetics, textiles and artificial turf.The state policies may make it financially and logistically impractical for many companies to continue using PFAS, and their effects could reverberate across the economy.“It would not make sense to not use the cancer-causing chemical in California and New York, but go ahead and use it in Texas,” said Liz Hitchcock, federal policy director at Toxic-Free Future, which advocates for stronger restrictions on chemicals.Among a cascade of companies moving away from the compounds in some or all products are Patagonia, Victoria’s Secret, Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Ralph Lauren, Zara, H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Calvin Klein, Burberry, Tommy Hilfiger, McDonald’s, Burger King, Rite Aid, Amazon, Starbucks, Whole Foods, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.Sephora, Revolution Beauty and Target are among those in the cosmetic and personal care sector that have announced phase-outs of PFAS.In December, 3M, perhaps the world’s largest PFAS producer, announced it would discontinue making the chemicals, in part citing “accelerating regulatory trends focused on reducing or eliminating the presence of PFAS”.Companies widely use PFAS despite their myriad risks because they are so effective. The story of outdoor giant REI Co-op is emblematic of industry resistance to phase-outs.In March 2021, a public health campaign began calling out a glaring inconsistency between REI’s virtuous marketing and use of PFAS in waterproof textiles: the company boasted of “responsible production” and advised its customers to “leave no trace” in the wilderness, but sold clothing waterproofed with dangerous PFAS chemicals that the campaign noted left a “toxic trail of pollution”.But that changed in September 2022. California banned PFAS in apparel and textiles, and New York followed soon after. A February REI announcement that it would phase out the chemicals “in part to ensure wide industry alignment with new state laws regarding the use of PFAS” marked a major victory for public health advocates, and a similar story is playing out across the broader marketplace. REI did not respond to a request for comment.Public pressure is also fueling the development. REI faced “immense pressure” from a coalition of more than 100 NGOs and 150,000 co-op members who signed a petition demanding the company eliminate PFAS in the 18 months ahead of the California apparel ban, said Mike Schade, who spearheaded the effort with Toxic-Free Future’s Mind the Store program. Even as REI held out, other companies that Mind the Store approached, like Wendy’s and McDonald’s, committed to eliminating PFAS.The interplay among the campaigns, companies committing to eliminating the chemicals and state laws creates a potent “synergy” and sends pressure in both directions, Schade said.“If we get more companies to act, that builds more political support for action at the state level to regulate and restrict harmful chemicals like PFAS,” Schade added. “At the same time, more states acting will create more pressure on businesses to take action ahead of state policies.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCalifornia state assembly member Phil Ting’s bills to ban the chemicals’ use in food packaging and apparel drew surprisingly little resistance from industry, he said, which he ascribed to market momentum. Though most companies, like REI, were still using the chemicals, some major names like Levi’s, Whole Foods and McDonald’s had already announced phase-outs, the latter two amid pressure from Toxic-Free Future.“It didn’t seem like government was leading, it seemed like government was supporting what had already started happening in the private sector, and that made it much more palatable for my colleagues,” Ting said.Removing the chemicals and identifying, testing and developing safe alternatives for market production is a slow and difficult process that can take years. Before its March announcement, REI had said the “performance that customers expected” could not be matched by alternatives. Still, other companies managed to phase out the chemicals. Levi’s eliminated PFAS by 2018, but a spokesperson said the “challenge is significant considering that there are currently no equally effective alternatives to” PFAS.Moreover, the supply chain is riddled with PFAS entry points as the chemicals are sometimes intentionally or accidentally added to materials upstream. PFAS are also used as lubricants that prevent machines from sticking to materials during the manufacturing process, and previous testing by the Guardian of consumer products highlighted how that can leave low levels of the chemicals on consumer goods.That can mean that even manufacturers with good intentions may not know their products are contaminated with PFAS, said Christina Ross, a senior scientist with Credo Beauty, a “clean beauty” company. Credo has never intentionally added PFAS to its products and works with suppliers throughout the supply chain to try to avoid adding the chemicals unintentionally. It has found that while some suppliers care about the issue, others do not.“We try to honor those suppliers who do by giving them our money,” Ross said.But that is ultimately an inefficient and unreliable way for entire sectors to eliminate the chemicals, and Ross said it underscores the need for legislative bans. “In order to remove PFAS from any consumer products we have to stop the chemicals from being made in the first place,” she said.That’s unlikely anytime soon at the federal level, where only two out of 50 stand-alone PFAS bills were approved last session, and sources say hyper-partisanship makes passing laws unlikely. States and the US House are passing the measures with bipartisan support, though the laws are largely enacted in Democratic-controlled states.Observers offer two theories on why. The PFAS issue knows no socioeconomic or political boundaries – PFAS contamination is a problem for everyone, Doll noted, and it has hit constituents whom Republicans traditionally support, like farmers and firefighters.Others say Republicans in most Democratic-controlled states don’t have a shot at stopping the bills, so they vote for the measure instead of angering constituents for no political gain.Toxic-Free Future’s Hitchcock said she sells legislators on both sides of the aisle on PFAS legislation by pointing out that banning the chemicals makes sense financially. “We’re paying so much to clean up the mess, why not invest in not making the mess in the first place?” she said.That thinking is partly behind the momentum in the states, but she added: “We can’t depend on just that – we need the federal government and Congress to act.”
This article was amended on 3 May 2023 to clarify that Credo has already removed unintentionally added chemicals from its products. More

Deepening tensions within rural and conservative Hillsdale county, Michigan, are coming to a head in a recall election for an election-denying township clerk who has been accused of spreading misinformation and mishandling a vote tabulator.Elected in Adams Township in 2020, Stephanie Scott, who ran unopposed, has spent her years as a clerk – a position that would typically oversee township elections – mostly removed from the electoral process. After she refused to turn over a voting machine for regular maintenance in 2021, allegedly shared confidential voter data with a third-party IT analyst, and spread lies about election rigging, the Michigan Bureau of Elections removed Scott’s power to administer elections.Michigan’s election security issues are not limited to the small township. Similar alleged security breaches surfaced across the politically competitive state following the 2020 elections as some poll workers and clerks, convinced by Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, attempted to access tabulators. A special prosecutor in Michigan has reportedly convened a secret grand jury to investigate.In a 25 October 2021 letter to Scott, Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state, wrote “your past statements, detailed in prior letters, indicate that you are unwilling to fulfill your responsibilities as clerk”, and directed the clerk to “refrain from any election administration activities”. Scott’s attorney, Stefanie Lambert, has joined lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania pushing debunked allegations of election fraud and has been sanctioned for her role in promoting election-related lies. (In an interview with the Guardian, Scott denied all allegations of wrongdoing as “one hundred percent false”.)If the 2 May recall is successful, Scott will be replaced by Suzy Roberts, a retiree who spent most of her career in the auto industry and has worked as a poll worker. Although Roberts has historically voted Republican, she is running as an independent, as required by the rules guiding recall elections.“This election is between a giant lie that has taken over our township meetings, versus people who want to make lying wrong again,” said Roberts. An avid documentarian of local politics, Penny Swan started filming political meetings in Hillsdale county, Michigan, nearly a decade ago. A lifelong resident of the rural county, Swan was once a proud member of the Hillsdale County Republican Party, serving as party treasurer and earning recognition for sharing goings-on in Hillsdale county on her Youtube channel, “PS Political News and Views.” Swan got along with her colleagues, even earning a certificate of recognition from the local GOP, which hangs among paintings and family photos in Swan’s living room.But after the 2020 presidential election, politics in rural and deep red Hillsdale county soured. A faction of hard-right party members within the county GOP took control of the party, renouncing more than 60 local GOP delegates who did not share their political vision and rallying around false claims that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. In December, 2022, Swan logged onto Facebook and announced her hiatus from some political activities, including filming city council meetings in Hillsdale.Her frustrations followed a split within the county GOP into factions: one, that calls itself the “America First” Republican Party of Hillsdale, and another, that largely disavows the election lies.At an 11 August 2022 county GOP convention, members of the so-called America First faction disavowed more than 60 members of the party. Armed guards blocked the members from accessing the meeting. Fourteen days later, members who had been disavowed and their allies elected a new slate of leadership and claimed sole legitimacy as the Hillsdale County Republican Executive Committee.For months, the warring factions have met separately, vying for legal recognition and sending separate slates of delegates to the state Republican party convention in February 2023. On 28 April, a circuit court judge ruled that the disavowals were improper and recognized subsequent meetings held by the Hillsdale County Republican Executive Committee as “valid”.Residents say the split in the Republican party has spilled over into the wider Hillsdale county community, breaking up friendships and sowing mistrust among neighbors.“All of the election fraud screaming and hollering I was behind at first, because I felt the same way,” said Tim Martin, a Hillsdale county resident who supported Trump’s 2020 run for office. “But when you can’t produce proof of what you’re saying, you’re looking like a liar.”Across Michigan, which Trump lost by 2.8 points, voters have overwhelmingly rejected election denialism and embraced measures to expand voting access. Proposition 2, a ballot measure that established early voting and expanded absentee voting passed by 60%. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson won her seat in a definitive race against Kristina Karamo, who spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, and voters in the state elected Dana Nessel as attorney general over Matthew DePerno, who led multiple unsuccessful legal challenges to the 2020 presidential election in Michigan.But in Hillsdale county, as many residents are eager to point out, the opposite was true. Karamo earned 66% of the vote and DePerno swept, nearly earning 70% of Hillsdale county voters in his election.“I don’t have any of the friends I had in the Republican party at all anymore,” Martin said.It was in this fractured environment that Scott’s alleged election improprieties came to light.Janice Roberts, a longtime poll worker in Adams Township, said that false claims of fraud in recent years have whipped up unfounded fears of election tampering and fraud among community members in the county.During a local election on 4 November 2021 Roberts alleged that Scott and members of the rightwing faction in the county GOP hovered uncomfortably close to poll workers, creating an intimidating atmosphere.“They were right up there,” said Roberts, who took a photo of the encounter. “The [poll workers] are just trying to make sure everything counts.” Scott confirmed that she watched the vote count, but said no one had asked her to stand further away and dismissed the claim that the presence of the observers constituted intimidation.Abe Dane, the chief deputy clerk of Hillsdale county who was tasked with taking over elections in Adams Township following Scott’s removal from the process in 2021 is more concerned about the misinformation spreading through the community, eroding fragile trust in the electoral process.“It’s guaranteed to have eroded confidence in elections and that upsets me incredibly,” said Dane. “The misinformation and inability to understand the processes, and checks and balances when we explain them really is taken personally by the clerk community – because we put our heart and soul into each election, and in this community.”Ahead of Tuesday’s recall – and next year’s presidential election – Hillsdale county remains divided.Swan, who caucused with the America First Republicans until recently, said after leaving the rightwing group and criticizing them online, she was met with threats and slurs.In a letter sent to a close personal contact of Swan and shared with the Guardian, someone who identified himself only as “Lance” alleged that Swan had “spread hate, lies and misfortune,” and warned that “this is my only and last chance to save her from herself […] I cannot be held responsible for doing what needs to be done in defending my friends who do not deserve what she is doing to them”.After Swan spoke in defense of childrens’ books featuring LGBTQ+ characters at the library, a meme circulated on Facebook calling Swan a pedophile. Swan calls the note “all talk”, but filed a police report anyway. She takes more stock in security these days, too. “Where I live, the building is secured with cameras,” said Swan. “I always have my gun with me – I’m for the most part carrying all the time.”Randy Johnson, who is running to replace township supervisor Mark Nichols – an ally of Scott – said he had gotten a threatening call in the middle of the night. “I got a phone call Friday at midnight, by someone who would not identify themselves,” said Johnson. “He did tell me he knew where I lived and he called me a lot of dirty words.”For Roberts, who is running to replace Scott as township clerk, the election is as much about community relationships as it is election denialism.“This is a story about tearing a community apart,” she said. More

The US government should confiscate 100% of any money that Americans make above $999m, the leftwing independent senator Bernie Sanders said late last week.Sanders expressed that belief in an exchange on Friday evening with the host of Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? on HBO Max.Wallace had asked Sanders about the general assertion in his book It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism that billionaires should not exist.“Are you basically saying that once you get to $999m that the government should confiscate all the rest?” Matthews asked the US senator from Vermont, who is an independent but caucuses with Democrats and has helped them attain their current slim majority in the upper congressional chamber.“Yeah,” Sanders replied. “You may disagree with me but, fine, I think people can make it on $999m. I think that they can survive just fine.”Wallace had earlier mentioned how the late Sam Walton could make the giant retail chain Walmart the largest single private employer in the US thanks to his family’s net worth of about $225bn. Sanders countered that Walmart in many cases pays starvation wages to its 1.2 million employees despite how rich the Waltons are.“Many of their workers are on Medicaid or food stamps,” Sanders said, referring to forms of government assistance for which low-income Americans can qualify. “In other words, taxpayers are subsidizing the wealthiest family in the country. Do I think that’s right? No, I don’t.”Nonetheless, Sanders said his comments on the matter weren’t a personal attack against the Waltons or other billionaires.“It is an attack upon a system,” Sanders said. “You can have a vibrant economy without [a few] people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society” combined.He added that if he were in charge: “If you make a whole lot of money, you’re going to pay a whole lot of money.”Sanders’s remarks are unlikely to ingratiate him with proponents of the US political right who already dismiss him as a communist. But they have never been a part of his base of supporters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe 81-year-old has held one of Vermont’s US Senate seats since 2007. He had spent the previous 16 years representing the state in the US House of Representatives, helping him become the longest-serving independent in American congressional history.Sanders, who has previously run unsuccessfully to become a Democratic presidential candidate, published It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism in February. In it, he notes that one-tenth of 1% of the US population owns 90% of the nation’s wealth, among other things.He also argues that “unfettered capitalism … destroys anything that gets in its way in the pursuit of profits”, including the environment, democracy and human rights.On Friday, Sanders told Wallace that he believes “people who work hard and create businesses should be rich”, but the concept of some being billionaires offended him deeply when a half-million Americans are homeless and 85 million of them cannot afford to buy health insurance. More

The announcement that CNN will host a New Hampshire town hall event for Donald Trump was met with widespread criticism on Monday.Angelo Carusone, chief executive of Media Matters for America, a progressive watchdog, said: “The transparent attempt to goose their ratings does feel at least a little odious. But all the more reason that they need to get this right.”Judd Legum, author of the Popular Information newsletter, said: “First, CNN systematically purged anyone on the network who was deemed too anti-Trump. Now this.”Keith Olbermann, a Trump critic and former MSNBC host, said: “I think we can say Chris Licht’s conversion of CNN into a political and journalistic whorehouse is complete.”Licht took over from Jeff Zucker as CNN’s chief executive last year, with a mission to remodel.Announcing the event to be held at St Anselm College on Wednesday 10 May, CNN said: “The former president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate will take questions from [anchor Kaitlan] Collins and a live audience of New Hampshire Republican and undeclared voters who say they intend to vote in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.”Trump and CNN were at odds throughout Trump’s run for the White House and his presidency, over what he deemed its hostile coverage and liberal slant. Collins, a morning show anchor, formerly worked for the Daily Caller, a website cofounded by Tucker Carlson, the far-right anchor fired by Fox News last week.In polling regarding the Republican nomination next year, Trump enjoys commanding leads.He continues to peddle the lie that Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was the result of electoral fraud. On 6 January 2021, he used that lie to incite an attack on Congress now linked to nine deaths and carried out by supporters seeking to block Biden’s win.More than 1,000 arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured, some for seditious conspiracy. Trump was impeached a second time but acquitted when Republican senators stayed loyal to him.He now faces a federal investigation of his election subversion and incitement of the Capitol attack, as well as a state election subversion investigation, in Georgia, in which indictments are expected this summer.In New York, Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges over a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels. In the same state, a civil rape case brought by the writer E Jean Carroll is at trial while a civil lawsuit brought by the state continues, over Trump’s tax and business practices.Jack Smith, a federal special counsel, is also investigating Trump’s retention of classified materials.CNN said it had “a longstanding tradition of hosting leading presidential candidates for town halls and political events as a critical component of the network’s robust campaign coverage”.It also said the Trump event would be “the first of many in the coming months as CNN correspondents travel across the country to hear directly from voters”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCarusone said: “Donald Trump is the frontrunner for Republican nomination; it benefits no one to pretend otherwise.“But this is risky business and CNN should go into this clear-eyed: Trump will lie and he will attack. Trump has been repeating the same torrent of lies in his speeches and interviews with rightwing media figures for months. Nothing he will say will be new.“So if CNN lets him get away with it unchallenged, they have no excuse. CNN isn’t being graded on a curve here.”Carusone also pointed to cable networks’ struggles since Trump left office.“I can’t help but notice that this comes just as Fox’s ratings are in freefall and CNN’s shift hasn’t born any fruit,” he said.David Rothkopf, a Daily Beast columnist and author of Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump, called CNN’s decision “irresponsible”.The town hall, he said, would be “a sham if it does not lead with the question, ‘You lead an insurrection against the government of the US, why should any American voter support a candidate who sought to undermine the constitution, institutions and values he was sworn to uphold?’”A CNN spokesperson said: “There is certainly a lot of news to cover with him and we’ll do that next Wednesday.” More

The advice columnist E Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump for rape after she was encouraged to take legal action by George Conway, the husband of a top aide to the then president.On her third day on the witness stand, Carroll told the jury hearing her lawsuit for battery and defamation over the alleged sexual assault in a New York department store changing room in 1996 that she did not intend to sue Trump until he called her a liar when she went public with her accusations more than two decades later.Shortly afterwards she met Conway, a lawyer who was at the time married to Kellyanne Conway, one of the Trump White House’s most visible officials. George Conway was a vocal critic of the then president, to the embarrassment of his wife.Carroll said that they spoke at a party where Conway laid out the difference between criminal case and civil cases.“George said: you should seriously think about this,” she told the jury of six men and three women.Two days later, Carroll filed her first lawsuit against Trump, for defamation, after he called her a liar in denying the alleged rape at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman store.Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, sought to characterise the lawsuit as politically motivated, in part through the association with Conway who went on to recommend a lawyer to Carroll.Tacopina contrasted that move – and a second more recent civil lawsuit for rape after a change in the law allowed for it – with Carroll’s decision not to take legal action against the former head of CBS, Les Moonves, who she also accused of sexual assault in an elevator.Carroll said that Moonves had not called her a liar.“He simply denied it,” she said. “He didn’t call me names. He didn’t grind my face into the mud like Donald Trump did.”Carroll said Moonves was accused of sexual abuse by a dozen women and that his denial of her allegation was one among many.Under cross-examination, Carroll defended her decision not to call the police after the alleged rape, as the typical response of women of her generation who are “ashamed” to have been sexually assaulted.She acknowledged that she frequently advised people to go to the police in her Elle column, Ask E Jean.“I was born in 1943. I’m a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught to keep our chins up and to not complain,” she said. “I would never call the police about something I am ashamed of.”Carroll acknowledged she did call the police on one occasion, when she saw “loutish behaviour by some kids”.Tacopina responded: “So your testimony is you’ll call the police if a mailbox is attacked but not if you are attacked?”Carroll said it was.“I will never, ever go to the police,” she said.Asked why, then, more than two decades after the alleged rape she decided to go public, Carroll said that times had changed.“I reached a point in my life at 76 where I was no longer going to stay silent,” she testified.Tacopina pressed Carroll about her continued shopping trips to Bergdorf Goodman where she spent thousands of dollars in the following years.“Bergdorf’s is not a place I’m afraid to enter,” she responded.Tacopina also highlighted Carroll’s complimentary comments about Trump’s television show The Apprentice. Carroll said she was praising the construct of the programme as “witty”.On Monday afternoon, in re-cross-examination, Tacopina asked Carroll if she was happy now and she responded that she was “with undertones of unhappiness”.Then after three days of intense testimony, Carroll’s stint on the witness stand ended.Later this week, Carroll’s legal team is expected to call her friend, Lisa Birnbach and another woman, Carol Martin, to testify that Carroll told them about the alleged assault shortly after it occurred. Both have since corroborated the account.Carroll testified that Birnbach told her the alleged attack was rape and to call the police. But Martin advised her to keep quiet because Trump was a powerful businessman who would “bury” her.Carroll kept her silence for more than two decades but changed her mind as other women came forward to recount their experiences of sexual assault and harassment as the #MeToo movement swept the US. She wrote a book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, detailing abuse of one kind or other by a number of men, including Trump. Excerpts were published in New York magazine in 2019.Trump called Carroll’s allegations “a complete con job” and said her book “should be sold in the fiction section”.“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City department store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a hoax and a lie,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Carroll’s legal team is also expected to call two other women. Natasha Stoynoff, a writer for People magazine, is expected to testify that in 2005 Trump led her into an empty room and forcibly kissed her until he was interrupted. Jessica Leeds accuses Trump of assaulting her on a plane in 1979 by grabbing her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt. More

From 5h agoJoe Biden has been speaking at the White House about the collapse of First Republic Bank, insisting that the “safety and security” of the US banking system was paramount.JP Morgan stepped in quickly to snap up the “deposits and substantially all assets” of the California bank, the third US lender to fail this year.Biden praised the swiftness of the takeover by the nation’s largest bank:
I’m pleased to say that regulators have taken action to facilitate the sale of First Republic bank, making sure that all depositors are protected, and the taxpayers are not on the hook.
These actions are going to make sure that the banking system is safe and sound. And that includes protecting small businesses across the country who need to make payroll for workers and their small businesses.
Touting the economic successes of his administration during an address for small business week, Biden used the crisis to pivot to an attack on so-called make America great again (Maga) Republicans he said were threatening the economy by presenting proposals over raising the national debt limit that were unacceptable:
The most immediate thing we can do is ensure the continued reliance of our economy and the financial system. The most important thing we have to do in that regard is to make sure the threat by the speaker of the House to default on the national debt is off the table.
For over 200 years, America has never, ever ever failed with a debt. America is not a deadbeat nation. We have never, ever failed to meet the debt.
As a result, one of the most respected nations of the world, we pay our bills and we should do so without reckless hostage taking from some of the Maga Republicans in Congress.
Read more:We’re closing the US politics blog now, thanks for joining us.It’s been an eventful day, with Joe Biden attempting to reassure the public the US banking system was “safe and sound” following the collapse of First Republic bank.The president praised regulators and JP Morgan bank, the nation’s largest, that stepped in to pick up First Republic’s deposits and assets, safeguarding money invested in the failed California institution.Here’s what else we followed:
Kevin McCarthy launched a robust defense of his stance on Ukraine in a testy exchange with a Russian reporter in Jerusalem. The speaker, with a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers to celebrate Israel’s 75th anniversary, challenged the reporter’s assertion that Republican rightwingers weakened his position by calling for an end to US aid.
The Democratic governor of Washington state, Jay Inslee, announced he would not seek a fourth term in elections next year.
It followed an announcement by Democratic Maryland senator Ben Cardin that he was standing down after three terms in office, creating a primary battle for a seat crucial to his party’s hopes of retaining control of the chamber in the 2024 election.
Ron DeSantis’s war on Disney escalated with a decision by his hand-picked board overseeing the theme park giant to sue the company. Disney sued the board last week saying the Republican Florida governor’s seizure of power over the company was a retaliatory move for opposing his “don’t say gay” law.
Dominion Voting Systems executives insisted its $787.5m settlement with Fox News over the media company’s lies about the 2020 election did not include a requirement that rightwing TV celebrity Tucker Carlson be dismissed. Fox fired Carlson last week.
Attorneys for Montana state representative Zooey Zephyr filed a lawsuit seeking her return to the House floor, a week after Republicans banished the transgender Democrat for her opposition to a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for trans children.
Donald Trump will appear next week in a town hall debate hosted by CNN. The surprise announcement said the former president will participate in the 10 May event for Republican and undecided voters at St Anselm college, a liberal arts campus in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Please join us again tomorrow for more live US politics.The US military is tracking a mysterious balloon that flew over American soil, NBC News is reporting. It is not clear what it is or who it belongs to, according to three US officials cited by the network.The object flew across portions of Hawaii but did not go over any sensitive areas, the officials said.NBC reported the military had been tracking the object since late last week and has not determined if posed a threat to aerial traffic or national security. It was not communicating signals, one official said.It is also not clear if it is a weather balloon or something else, the official said, adding that the US military could shoot it down if it nears land.It was revealed last month that a Chinese spy balloon that flew over parts of the US earlier this year, and was shot down in February, had sent sensitive intelligence from US military sites back to Beijing.Donald Trump will appear next week in a town hall debate hosted by CNN, the cable news channel he has frequently and loudly derided as “fake news”.The network made the surprise announcement on Monday afternoon, saying the former president will participate in the 10 May event for Republican and undecided voters at St Anselm college, a liberal arts campus in Manchester, New Hampshire.The event will be hosted by Kaitlan Collins, host of CNN This Morning.Trump attacked the network frequently during his single term in office, at one stage revoking the press credentials of White House correspondent Jim Acosta, a particular bête noire. Acosta was reinstated after a legal challenge.It is not yet known who else might be appearing at the event.Attorneys for Montana state representative Zooey Zephyr are asking a court to allow for her return to the House floor, a week after Republicans banished the transgender Democrat for her opposition to a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for trans children.A lawsuit was filed Monday in state district court in Helena on behalf of Zephyr and several constituents who say they are being denied their right to adequate representation, the Associated Press reported.Zephyr was removed from the chamber last week after telling Republicans they would have “blood on your hands” if they voted for the measure.The controlling party said her actions “violated decorum” and that she had incited protests at the statehouse.The legal challenge against House speaker Matt Regier and statehouse sergeant-at-arms Bradley Murfitt comes with just days left in the legislature’s biennial session. Neither has commented on the lawsuit.Another prominent Democrat, the governor of Washington state Jay Inslee, has announced he won’t be seeking re-election. It follows the declaration earlier Monday by Maryland senator Ben Cardin that he was standing down.Inslee won election to a third term in 2020, but said in a statement: “I’m ready to pass the torch”.He didn’t say what he intended to do after his retirement next year, but said: “Now is the time to intensely focus on all we can accomplish in the next year and a half”.Inslee, who ran for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 2020, added: “Serving the people as governor of Washington state has been my greatest honor”.Senior Democrat Jamie Raskin – the Maryland congressman – has paid tribute to his friend Ben Cardin, his state’s US senator who has announced he’s standing down after three terms in office:
After 58 years of integrity-filled public service, where he showed his prodigious work ethic from Annapolis to Washington, senator Ben Cardin has assembled a remarkable record of advancing the needs and priorities of Maryland.
I salute him and have congratulated him on a truly amazing and inspiring career devoted to service of our people and the old-fashioned public values of honesty and decency. I want to thank him, his beloved wife Myrna and their whole family for their outstanding and continuing contributions to our state.
In his own statement saying he had given his “heart and soul” to the state, Cardin said he would remain in office until the 2024 election:
There is still much work to be done. During the next two years, I will continue to travel around the state, listening to Marylanders and responding to their needs.
My top priorities include continuing our progress for the Chesapeake Bay, helping the people of Baltimore city deal with the challenges they face, and permanently expanding opportunities for telehealth, mental and behavioral health.
Kevin McCarthy had a testy exchange with a Russian reporter over the war in Ukraine after his speech to the Israeli Knesset this afternoon.Asked if Ukraine was losing the support of Republicans, following comments by rightwingers such as McCarthy ally Marjorie Taylor-Greene that the US “had done enough” to help the country against the Russian invasion, the speaker of the American House of Representatives was firm:
I vote for aid for Ukraine. I support aid for Ukraine. I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine. I do not support your killing of the children either.
And I think for one standpoint, you [Russia] should pull out and I don’t think it’s right, and we will continue to support because the rest of the world sees it just as it is.
Joe Biden has been speaking at the White House about the collapse of California’s First Republic bank, the third US lender to fail this year. He said the swift action of regulators, and JP Morgan bank, the nation’s largest, to take on First Republic’s deposits and most assets, helped ensure the US banking system was “safe and secure”.Here’s what else we’ve been following:
Kevin McCarthy, the first speaker to address the Knesset for 25 years, talked up US-Israel relations in Jerusalem, and pledged full financial support for the country’s security. He promised US support for ensuring Iran never obtains nuclear weapons.
Ron DeSantis’s war on Disney stepped up a notch with a decision by his hand-picked board overseeing the theme park giant to file its own lawsuit against the company. Disney sued the board last week saying the Florida governor’s seizure of power over the company was a retaliatory move for its opposition to his “don’t say gay” law.
Democratic Maryland senator Ben Cardin announced he was standing down after three terms in office, opening the prospect of a furious primary battle for a seat crucial to his party’s hopes of retaining control of the chamber in the 2024 election.
Dominion Voting Systems executives have been insisting that its $787.5m settlement with Fox News over the media company’s lies about the 2020 election did not include a requirement that rightwing TV celebrity Tucker Carlson be dismissed. Fox fired Carlson last week.
We’ve plenty more coming up this afternoon. Please stick with us.Joe Biden has been speaking at the White House about the collapse of First Republic Bank, insisting that the “safety and security” of the US banking system was paramount.JP Morgan stepped in quickly to snap up the “deposits and substantially all assets” of the California bank, the third US lender to fail this year.Biden praised the swiftness of the takeover by the nation’s largest bank:
I’m pleased to say that regulators have taken action to facilitate the sale of First Republic bank, making sure that all depositors are protected, and the taxpayers are not on the hook.
These actions are going to make sure that the banking system is safe and sound. And that includes protecting small businesses across the country who need to make payroll for workers and their small businesses.
Touting the economic successes of his administration during an address for small business week, Biden used the crisis to pivot to an attack on so-called make America great again (Maga) Republicans he said were threatening the economy by presenting proposals over raising the national debt limit that were unacceptable:
The most immediate thing we can do is ensure the continued reliance of our economy and the financial system. The most important thing we have to do in that regard is to make sure the threat by the speaker of the House to default on the national debt is off the table.
For over 200 years, America has never, ever ever failed with a debt. America is not a deadbeat nation. We have never, ever failed to meet the debt.
As a result, one of the most respected nations of the world, we pay our bills and we should do so without reckless hostage taking from some of the Maga Republicans in Congress.
Read more:Long-serving Democratic senator Ben Cardin of Maryland is expected to announce his retirement Monday after serving three terms, opening a rare vacancy in the chamber ahead of the 2024 election, according to the Associated Press, citing his spokesperson.The 79-year-old plans to release a statement saying he will not seek reelection. His retirement is likely to create a highly competitive Democratic primary to replace him as the party faces a tough electoral map to maintain its slim majority next year.Cardin has served in the Senate since 2006, when he won a seat to replace retiring Democrat Paul Sarbanes. Before that, he was a congressman who represented a large part of Baltimore and several nearby suburbs, winning his first House race in 1986.During his tenure in the Senate, Cardin has been a leader on health care, retirement security, the environment and fiscal issues. The senator has been a leading advocate for clean water and the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary, which flows in his home state.No reason for his decision was given. More