US Politics

Angry at the size of the government debt, House Republicans have passed a bill that ties spending cuts to any lifting of the US’s debt limit. A tense fight is escalating, with Democrats refusing to budge and hard-line Republicans digging in. Without a solution, economists and others warn, the US could be plunged into an “economic catastrophe”.You can be forgiven a sense of déja vu. This has all happened before. Only this time, it could be worse.The federal government has a legal maximum on how much debt it can accumulate –often called the debt ceiling or the debt limit. Congress has to vote to raise that limit and has done 78 times since 1960 – often without fuss. But in recent years, the debt negotiations have become Washington’s most heated – and potentially dangerous – debate.This year’s fight looks like the most high-risk one since 2011, when Republicans used the debt limit debate as a bargaining chip for spending cuts. It was a fight to the bitter end. One former congressman told the New York Times that the battle drew “parallels and distinctions with other tumultuous times such as the civil war”.With stock markets reeling and 72 hours left before the US would have defaulted on its debts, a disaster that threatened to wreak havoc on the economy, Republicans and Democrats finally agreed on a bill that raised the debt ceiling by $900bn and cut spending by nearly the same amount.For Republicans, particularly the new rightwing Tea Party members who refused to budge even as default loomed, it was a political win.Politics are once again deeply embedded in this year’s debt ceiling debate and many see a mirroring of the debt ceiling crisis of 2011.The House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, is caught between his party’s moderate and far-right factions. Though McCarthy rallied his party behind a House bill, Democrats are so far refusing to negotiate.The US treasury is already running on fumes. In January, the treasury started using “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting on US debts while the debate over raising the limit started. Some estimate that the US government’s default date – the so-called “X date” when the government officially runs out of funds to pay its bills — will arrive in late July, giving the GOP and Democrats less than three months to find a solution.The US has never defaulted on its debt. Failure to find a solution would send stock markets reeling, recipients of federal benefits might not get their monthly checks, parts of government would grind to a halt and “long-term damage” would be inflicted on the US economy, according to the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell.Fights over the US debt ceiling are common and usually resolved after a session of bloviating. Wall Street has so far ignored this scrap, betting on a repeat. But, as in 2011, all that could change as the X date approaches. This time the Tea Party Republicans have been replaced by even more hardline politicians – the Freedom Caucus – who begrudgingly signed on to McCarthy’s plan but have sworn to hold out for cost cuts no matter the price.“What will damage the economy is what we’ve seen the last two years: record spending, record inflation, record debt. We already know that’s damaging the economy,” Representative Jim Jordan, a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, told Reuters.David Kamin, a New York University law professor who served as an economic adviser to the Obama and Biden administrations, including during the 2011 crisis, said: “Congress has negotiated [the debt ceiling] over the many decades that it’s been in its current form. But what is different about this episode, and the episode in 2011, is the very credible threat from the Republican side to not raise the debt limit, to demand a large set of policy in exchange for a vote.” He added: “That then sets up a dangerous negotiation where what’s at stake is severe repercussions for the economy.”A default would be catastrophic for the US and global economy, creating instability in financial markets and interrupting government services. But, as the 2011 crisis showed, even getting close to default comes with a price. Markets plummeted and the ratings agency S&P downgraded the US’s credit rating for the first time in history, making it more expensive for the country to borrow money. The cost to borrow went up $1.3bn the next year and continued to be more expensive years later, essentially offsetting some of the negotiation’s cost-cutting measures.To some economists, that was just the short-term impact. The spending cuts ushered in years of budget tightening whose impacts were felt for years.“We were still in a pretty depressed economy and in recovery from the great recession when those cuts were instituted. They just made the recovery last far longer than it should have,” said Josh Bivens, chief economist for the Economic Policy Institute, a leftwing thinktank. “Over the next six or seven years, really valuable public goods and services were not delivered because they were cut so sharply.”Government spending tends to rise after recessions but per-capita federal spending fell after the debt crisis. Bivens argues that if government spending had continued at its normal levels, the unemployment rate would have returned to its pre-recession level five or six years before 2017, when the job market finally recovered its losses.This time around the Republican bill, called the “Limit, Save and Grow Act”, would increase the debt ceiling by $1.5tn in exchange for $1.47tn in cuts during the next fiscal year and a 1% spending increase cap thereafter. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would cut federal spending by $4.8tn over the next 10 years.The bill would mean cuts to things like defense, education and social services over time, though Republicans have outlined few specific cuts in the bill. House Republicans are proposing scrapping Joe Biden’s student relief program, making more stringent work requirements for government benefits, namely Medicaid, and rolling back several Inflation Reduction Act investments, particularly clean energy tax credits.The IRS would lose $71bn in funding under the new bill, a move that would lead to more lenient tax collection and ultimately cost the federal government $120bn over the next decade. Republicans have been targeting the IRS for budget cuts for over a decade, weakening the agency’s tax enforcement over corporations and the wealthy and allowing $18bn in lost government revenue, ProPublica estimated in 2018.While Republicans are using old tricks from 2011, Democrats appear to have learned some lessons from the Obama-era spat. After 2011, the Obama administration refused to negotiate over the debt ceiling. Biden and other Democratic leaders have continued the practice: the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, called the Republican bill “dead on arrival” when it got to the Senate.“President Biden will never force middle class and working families to bear the burden of tax cuts for the wealthiest, as this bill does,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement Wednesday. “Congressional Republicans must act immediately and without conditions to avoid default and ensure that the full faith and credit of the United States is not put at risk.”The question now is: what are the political costs for the Democrats and Republicans? As the crisis deepens, how long will they hold and who will fold?Despite Republicans preaching fiscal discipline, US debt actually rose by $7.8tn under the Trump administration. Spending cuts would also likely target GOP-friendly expenditures. The party has already had to make a tough compromise over ethanol tax credits, which were ultimately left untouched at the behest of “Corn Belt” Republican lawmakers. And McCarthy still lost four Republican votes, the most he can afford to lose with the Republicans’ slim House majority. He has little room to compromise even if he can get Biden to negotiate.Matt Gaetz, a Republican representative from Florida and another Freedom Caucus member, voted against McCarthy’s bill and said in a statement that it would “increase America’s debt by $16tn over the next ten years”.“Gaslighting nearly $50tn in debt to America is something my conscious [sic] cannot abide at this time,” Gaetz said.Kamin pointed out that Republicans only focus on the debt ceiling as a leverage point when there is a Democratic president – the debt ceiling was raised three times during Trump’s presidency – showing that their objective is less about actually reducing the deficit than it is about playing politics.“The Republican party – at least elements of the Republican party – have organized themselves using this as a litmus test for adherence to their beliefs and are really focused on it as a central element of their agenda,” Kamin said. But the fight is “not fundamentally about deficits and debt”, he said. It is a fight about politics.As in 2011, the two sides are locked in a game of chicken and waiting for the opposition to cave. If neither side blinks, the impact on the economy will be felt for years to come. More

Hours after Joe Biden announced his re-election campaign on Tuesday, his vice-president and 2024 running mate, Kamala Harris, delivered a fiery call to action for voters alarmed by the loss of constitutional protections for abortion.“This is a moment for us to stand and fight,” she said to a packed auditorium at Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington and her alma mater. To the “extremist so-called leaders” rolling back access to reproductive rights, Harris warned: “Don’t get in our way because if you do, we’re going to stand up, we’re going to organize and we’re going to speak up.”Across the Potomac, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley appealed for a “national consensus” on abortion in a carefully worded speech delivered earlier that day from the Arlington headquarters of a leading anti-abortion group. Sidestepping the thorny policy debates already animating the Republican primary contest, she said her focus was on “humanizing, not demonizing” the conversation around abortion.“I believe in compassion, not anger,” she said. “I don’t judge someone who is pro-choice any more than I want them to judge me for being pro-life.”Nearly a year after the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the battle over abortion rights is shaping the opening stages of the 2024 presidential contest.In dueling speeches this week, Harris and Haley previewed sharply contrasting approaches to an issue that is energizing Democrats and dividing Republicans. It’s a sign of just how dramatically abortion politics have shifted in the post-Roe era.Republicans, who for decades championed the anti-abortion agenda of the religious right, are now wavering on their positions, no longer sure of how to navigate an abiding principle of American conservatism in their quest to win control of the White House and Congress.Meanwhile, Democrats running for office at every level of government – from the presidential ticket on down – are placing abortion rights at the heart of their campaigns, presenting themselves as bulwarks against Republican extremism on the issue. It was a strategy the party used to surprising success in the 2022 midterm elections last year, when voters in red states, blue states and swing states resisted attempts to advance abortion restrictions.And it worked again earlier this month, when a liberal judge won a pivotal Wisconsin supreme court race after clearly telegraphing her support for abortion rights. Her victory likely guarantees the court’s new liberal majority will strike down the state’s 1849 abortion ban.“This is a defining issue for millions and millions of Americans,” said Cecile Richards, a former CEO of Planned Parenthood who is now a co-chair of Democratic Super Pac American Bridge 21st Century. Abortion rights, she predicted, would be “even more important” in 2024 than they were last year, as Americans grapple with the consequences of abortion bans and restricted access.“I think the harm to American people, to women, to families is going to continue to be on display and that you can lay directly at the feet of the Republican party,” Richards said.Democrats are almost universally aligned in their support for abortion rights, and largely unified in their messaging: Republicans, they warn, will not stop until abortion is outlawed in all 50 states.“Their ultimate goal is clear: a total ban on abortion nationwide,” the Democratic senator ​Dick Durbin​ of Illinois​ said this week, in remarks opening a committee hearing titled “The Assault on Reproductive Rights in a Post-Dobbs America”.The high court’s June decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, he said, “paved the way for activist judges and Republican lawmakers to try to impose their anti-choice agenda on everyone else, even in states that have protected the right to abortion”.During the session, Democratic senators assailed a ruling earlier this month by a conservative judge in Texas to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. Republicans, meanwhile, were largely muted in their response to the decision.If allowed to stand, the Texas order would have far-reaching implications for access to one of the most common methods of terminating a pregnancy in the US, including in places where abortion remains legal. For now, the supreme court ordered the pill to remain widely available while the appeals process plays out.Republicans are divided over how to counter the attacks. Some Republicans have argued that abortion is a matter best left to the states, a position recently endorsed by Donald Trump. Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA), one of the most powerful anti-abortion groups, fired back with a warning to the party’s 2024 hopefuls: any candidate who does not endorse a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy will not receive their support.The rift between Trump and the movement leaders who once anointed him the “most pro-life” president in history for his role delivering the conservative supreme court majority that struck down Roe underscores the challenge for Republican candidates as they seek to appeal to their party’s socially conservative base in the primary without alienating independents and swing voters in a general election.Haley sought to strike that balance In her speech from SBA’s headquarters this week. Emphasizing her “pro-life” record both as the governor of South Carolina and Trump’s ambassador to the UN, she said there was a role for the federal government to play in regulating abortion, but largely avoided specific policy prescriptions.In a statement after the speech, SBA said Haley had made “clear” to the group that she was committed to “acting on the American consensus against late-term abortion by protecting unborn children by at least 15 weeks”. (A spokesman for the Haley campaign said she wanted to build “consensus to ban late-term abortion” but did not say whether she supported such a proposal. SBA did not respond to an email seeking clarity.)Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina waffled on his position in the days after launching a presidential exploratory committee, declining to say if he would support a national 15-week ban. He later backed a 20-week ban before saying in an interview that he would sign “the most conservative pro-life legislation you could bring to my desk”.Anti-abortion advocates applauded Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, seen as Trump’s most formidable challenger for the nomination, after he signed into law legislation banning abortions after six weeks, before many women realize they are pregnant. But the decision to do so has alarmed some Republicans, including a top party donor who cited abortion as one of the reason he was pausing plans to fund DeSantis’s yet-to-be announced presidential bid.Perhaps no potential Republican contender has taken a harder line on abortion than the former vice-president Mike Pence, a staunch social conservative. He has embraced a national ban and recently welcomed the Texas decision on medication abortion, calling it a “victory for life”.Disagreement among the party’s notional field of Republican presidential contenders all but guarantees a robust policy debate on the issue, forcing them to articulate a federal plan that details how early in a pregnancy to restrict abortion and when to allow exceptions.Americans almost universally agree that women should be able to terminate their pregnancy in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, according to a new NBC poll. And a survey by the Pew Research Center recently found that Americans, by a margin of two to one, believe medication abortion should be legal.“As Republicans, we need to read the room on this issue because the vast majority of folks are not in the extremes,” the Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace of South Carolina said in an appearance on ABC News’s This Week. Mace, who like most of her party describes herself as “pro-life”, is part of an increasingly vocal group of Republicans urging her party to avoid politically perilous positions that risk alienating the broader American public that supports legal abortion.“We’re going to lose huge if we continue down this path of extremities,” she said.Leaders of the anti-abortion movement say Republicans’ silence on the issue, not their policy positions, is to blame for the string of recent electoral setbacks. They point to DeSantis, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine as examples of Republicans who sailed to re-election last year, after signing into law new restrictions on abortion. All are from right-leaning but still-contested states.Republican “strategists are advising Republican candidates to talk as little as possible about abortion. Meanwhile, Biden plastered ABORTION all over his new campaign video,” Kristan Hawkins, the president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life of America, wrote on Twitter. “They are talking about it, so we 100% should be too.”Speaking recently at the Reagan Library, Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, urged the party faithful not to impose “rigid, ideological purity tests” while pushing her candidates to lean into the debate over abortion rights.“We can win on abortion but that means putting Democrats on the defense and forcing them to own their own extreme positions,” she said, citing polling that showed support for a 15-week federal ban.But corralling her party behind a unified policy is no easy task. After a half-century of pushing to eliminate federal abortion protections, conservatives feel emboldened to push ever more restrictive laws in places where they hold power.This week, North Dakota became the latest state to dramatically limit abortion, banning the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest. And a new law in Idaho would criminalize those who help a minor obtain an abortion in another state without a parent’s permission.Meanwhile, in South Carolina and Nebraska, the state’s conservative-majority legislatures failed to pass new bills banning abortion, another sign of just how complicated the issue has become for Republicans.Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster who has studied public attitudes on abortion, said voters are highly attuned to the fast-changing legal and political landscape. And repeatedly since Roe’s demise, she noted, they have made clear their opposition to further restrictions.“What voters want is for Republican politicians to stay out of their personal lives,” Murphy said. Until then, she said abortion rights would continue to be a powerful motivator for Democrats.“The energy has not waned,” she said. More

The US is teetering on the edge of a fiscal cliff. Over three months ago the treasury warned that the US government had hit its borrowing limit, also known as the debt ceiling. Since then the US treasury has been taking “extraordinary measures” to ensure the government can continue to pay its bills. But time is quickly running out. Congress and the White House have until late summer to raise the debt limit, or else the US government will default on its bills, a historic first, with likely catastrophic consequences.Here is more on the debt ceiling and what it means for the US government:What is the debt ceiling?The debt ceiling is the limit on the amount of money the US government can borrow to pay for services, such as social security, Medicare and the military.Each year, the government takes in revenue from taxes and other streams, such as customs duties, but ultimately spends more than it takes in. This leaves the government with a deficit, which has ranged from $400bn to $3tn each year over the last decade. The deficit left at the end of the year ultimately gets tacked on to the country’s total debt.To borrow money, the US treasury issues securities, like US government bonds, that it will eventually pay back with interest. Once the US government hits its debt limit, the treasury cannot issue more securities, essentially stopping a key flow of money into the federal government.Congress is in charge of setting the debt limit, which currently stands at $31.4tn. The debt ceiling has been raised 78 times since 1960, under both Democrat and Republican presidents. At times, the ceiling was briefly suspended and then reinstated at a higher limit, essentially a retroactive raising of the debt ceiling.What happens if the US defaults?The US has never defaulted on its payments before, so exactly what will happen is unclear. It’s not likely to be good.“Failure to meet the government’s obligation would cause irreparable harm to the US economy, the livelihoods of all Americans and global financial stability,” the US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said in a letter to Congress earlier this year.Investors would lose faith in the US dollar, causing the economy to weaken quickly. Job cuts would be imminent, and the US federal government would not have the means to continue all its services.Why is the US debt so high?The US debt grows when the government is spending more money or when its revenue is lower.Throughout its history, the US has had at least some amount of debt. But the debt really started to grow in the 80s, after Ronald Reagan’s huge tax cuts. Without as much tax revenue, the government needed to borrow more money to spend.During the 90s, the end of the cold war allowed the government to cut back on defense spending, and a booming economy led to higher tax revenues. But then, in the early 2000s, the dotcom bubble burst, leading to a recession. George W Bush cut taxes twice, in 2001 and 2003, and then the US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan increased spending by as much as nearly $6tn over the course of the war.When the 2008 Great Recession started, the government had to bulk up spending to bail out banks and increase social services as the unemployment rate hit 10%.When the unemployment rate returned to its pre-recession levels, in 2017, a major tax cut was passed under Donald Trump. The debt rose by $7.8tn while he was in office.And then the Covid-19 pandemic hit. The US government passed a series of stimulus bills to offset the worst of the pandemic’s impacts that ultimately totaled $5tn.What are the main contributors to federal government spending?The biggest chunk of US government spending goes to mandatory programs, such as social security, Medicaid and Medicare, which comprise nearly half of the overall annual budget. Military spending takes up the biggest chunk of discretionary spending, taking up 12% of the budget. Other big-ticket items include spending on education, employment training and services and benefits for US veterans.Why isn’t Congress raising the debt ceiling?On 26 April Republicans passed a bill in the House that would raise the debt ceiling by $1.5tn but mandated $4.8tn in spending cuts over a decade. Given the stakes, Democrats have refused to negotiate spending cuts over the debt ceiling. Lawmakers including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have argued that Republicans should bring forth spending cuts during budget negotiations, not over the debt ceiling.Still, Republicans seem adamant on using the high-stakes timeline toward default to pressure Democrats into agreeing to spending cuts. They did this successfully in 2011, when Democrats agreed to spending cuts 72 hours before the government defaulted. This time around, with neither side budging, a continued stalemate could bring the US economy closer to disaster. More

Age shall not weary him, but it might provide some good punchlines.Joe Biden, the oldest president in American history, faced his biggest political liability with a smile on Saturday as he addressed a gathering of Washington’s political and media elites.The 80-year-old, who this week announced a bid for re-election in 2024, flipped between a pugnacious defence of press freedom and crisp one-liners at the expense of political opponents as he addressed the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner.As opinion polls show that a majority of Americans have little appetite for a second Biden term, with many citing his age as a defining concern, he chose not to hide from his most obvious vulnerability but run towards it.“I believe in the first amendment, not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it,” he said, referring to one of America’s founding fathers, who died in 1836.He went on: “Look, I get that age is a completely reasonable issue. It’s in everybody’s mind and by everyone, I mean the New York Times. Headline: ‘Biden’s advanced age is a big issue. Trump’s, however, is not.’”The president had a dig at Don Lemon, a CNN host who was fired this week after a series of missteps including remarks that Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, 51, “isn’t in her prime” because “a woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s”.Biden earned a big laugh when he said on Saturday: “They say I’m ancient; I say I’m wise. They say I’m over the hill; Don Lemon would say, ‘That’s a man in his prime’.”There was also an indirect pitch that, despite concerns over his readiness for a gruelling election campaign, Biden is spoiling for the fight with Republican opponents.He said of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right congresswoman from Georgia: “I want everybody to have fun tonight but please be safe. If you find yourself disoriented or confused, it’s either you’re drunk or Marjorie Taylor Greene.”Referring to Florida governor and potential presidential candidate Ron DeSantis’s protracted battle with Disney, he quipped: “I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready but Mickey Mouse beat the hell out of me and got there first.”And Biden said of House of Representatives speaker Kevin McCarthy: “Look, you all keep reporting my approval rating as 42%. I think you don’t know this. Kevin McCarthy called me and asked me, ‘Joe, what the hell is your secret?’ I’m not even kidding about that.”Biden also had fun poking fun at the media, especially Fox Corp’s recent settlement of a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5m in a case that centred on Fox News’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election had been manipulated in favour of Biden.“It’s great the cable news networks are here tonight. MSNBC owned by NBC Universal. Fox News owned by Dominion Voting Systems.” That line earned laughter and applause.“Last year your favourite Fox News reporters were able to attend because they were fully vaccinated and boosted. This year, with that $787m settlement, they’re here because they couldn’t say no to a free meal.”In a jab at former president Donald Trump, Biden quipped that comedian Roy Wood Jr, who also was a featured speaker at the dinner, had offered him $10 to keep his speech short. “That’s a switch – a president being offered hush money.”Earlier this month Trump was charged with 34 felony counts in a case involving an alleged $130,000 hush payment to an adult film star during his 2016 presidential campaign.Biden assured Wood: “I’m going to be fine with your jokes but” – he put on his trademark sunglasses – “I’m not sure about Dark Brandon.” This was a nod to an internet meme that began as a rightwing attack but has been co-opted by Biden’s supporters.Wood, a regular on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, naturally could not resist making Biden’s age a target. He said: “We should be inspired by the events in France. They rioted when the retirement age went up two years to 64. Meanwhile in America, we have an 80-year-old man, begging us for four more years.”For all the comedy, Biden also used his speech to issue forceful denunciations of attacks on press freedom and on misinformation that threatens to undermine democracy.The president and first lady Jill Biden met privately with the parents of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich upon arriving at the dinner. Gershkovich has been imprisoned in Russia since March after being charged with spying, despite strong denials from his employer and the US government.Also among the 2,600 guests in a cavernous hotel ballroom was Debra Tice, the mother of Austin Tice, who has not been heard from since disappearing at a checkpoint in Syria in 2012.Biden said: “Journalism is not a crime. Evan and Austin should be released immediately along with every other American detained abroad. I promise you, I am working like hell to get them home.”The president acknowledged Brittney Griner, a basketball player who was detained in Russia for nearly 10 months last year before her release in a prisoner swap. Griner attended with her wife, Cherelle, as guests of CBS News. “This time last year we were praying for you, Brittney,” Biden said.In another preview of a 2024 campaign theme, Biden condemned news outlets that use “lies told for profit and power” to stir up hatred. “Lies told for profit and power. Lies of conspiracy and malice repeated over and over again designed to generate a cycle of anger and hate and even violence.”The Washington black-tie dinner returned last year after being sidelined by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Biden was the first president in six years to accept the invitation after Trump shunned the event while in office.This year the gala drew politicians including Vice-President Kamala Harris and celebrities such as actor Liev Schreiber and singer John Legend and his wife, Chrissy Teigen, a model and television personality. More

Being vice-president of the United States is not much fun, or so it often seems from the outside. All the trappings of power are present: high-profile events, free foreign travel, big limos, secret service protection and a turreted mansion in the grounds of Washington’s Naval Observatory.But the job itself is a cemetery from which few escape with their political lives. Indeed, attending funerals is in the job description. The incumbent is forever overshadowed by the president of the day, blamed for his blunders, given thankless tasks to perform.To think of the post as a stepping stone is misleading. George HW Bush, Ronald Reagan’s deputy, moved directly into the top job in 1989. Few others have pulled it off. Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s loyal No 2 for eight long years, was passed over in favour of Hillary Clinton.Of course, there’s always a chance the ‘phone will ring – and everything changes in a proverbial heartbeat. That happened to Lyndon Johnson, after JFK’s assassination, and, in less tragic circumstances, to Gerald Ford. Yet mostly, ex-vice-presidents slip unlamented into obscurity, diminished and finished. Gaffe-prone Dan Quayle, 1989-93, the “deer caught in headlights”, was terminally mauled. Snarling Dick Cheney, 2001-9, departed widely loathed. Donald Trump thundered that his reluctant fall guy Mike Pence, 2017-21, deserved lynching.Veep hunting: it’s a favourite Washington bloodsport. Foreshadowing Prince Harry’s “Spare”, Benjamin Franklin suggested re-titling the incumbent “Your Superfluous Excellency”. One Veep spluttered the job was “not worth a bucket of warm piss”.It’s like having your head in the stocks. Expectations are set impossibly high, then the victim is pilloried and pelted with mud pies for failing to match them.Veep hunting recommenced in earnest last week after Biden confirmed he will seek a second term with Kamala Harris again at his side. As vice-president, Harris has been patronised by friends, ridiculed by pundits and traduced by enemies.Evidently, some of this pain goes with the job. And perhaps her sometimes less-than-stellar performance partly warrants it. Yet even by past standards, Harris has had an unusually rough ride. Why? The fact she is the first woman vice-president, has Black and Asian American roots, and is a liberal from California provides a clue. As divided America’s crucial 2024 election looms, her reselection effectively pins a target on her back for Trump – the most likely GOP candidate – plus Maga extremists, rabid Republicans, preachifying evangelicals, lying TV hosts and assorted wackos, racists and bigots to aim at. This is a figure of speech – hopefully.Yet security is certainly a worry given the Capitol Hill insurrection and out-of-control gun crime. Last week, Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis, another female Black Democrat – who is expected to charge Trump with election tampering – requested extra FBI protection.Harris will face intense scrutiny for one reason entirely beyond her control: Biden’s age. The president is already the oldest ever; he will be 86 by January, 2029. Pretending this is not an issue is foolish. Recent polls suggest most voters, including most Democrats, believe he should step down.Biden’s refusal means, actuarially speaking, that Harris, 58, stands an inexorably increasing chance of becoming president as his notional second term proceeds. Given that her disapproval rating is 53%, Democrats worry this possibility could alienate uncommitted independents, representing around half of all voters.“Because … the chance of [Biden’s] health failing is not small, people will be asked to vote as much for his vice-president as for him, maybe more than in any other election in American history,” veteran commentator Tom Friedman predicted last week. Whether or not her problems stemmed from inflated expectations, from being out of her depth, or from “a mix of sexism and racism”, Harris continued to struggle with public perceptions, he wrote. If the past is any guide, Republicans will try to capitalise on Harris’s uncertain appeal, and weaponise her progressive views, against the constant, unspoken, unwritten and infinitely divisive subtext of colour and ethnicity.It’s already begun, with an AI-generated TV attack ad last week depicting street riots during a second term. Harris was sneered at for another so-called “word salad” public speaking snafu.Watching America, a similarly divided world is “loading for bear”, as Americans say. A victory for Trump, 76, would spell disaster for democracy, Europe – and Ukraine. Yet reactionaries of all stripes prefer that to the prospect of Harris sitting in the Oval. Typically, an opinion piece last week in Britain’s Daily Telegraph warned: “President Kamala Harris should terrify us all”. Oblivious to the irony, the article’s female author suggested Harris was the product of “tokenism” favouring women and minorities.Such mud-slinging is unavoidable. And there’s a lot more to come. Yet looked at another way, Harris has a golden opportunity to turn the tables and de-fang her detractors. Biden’s increasing reliance presages a raised profile and more top-line campaign appearances.It also means Harris, less fearful of White House second-guessing and backstabbing, will be freer to speak her mind. Two powerful Democrat women, Jill Biden and Hillary Clinton, who have not always been entirely supportive, should rally round. Harris has earned this chance to make her case.She is already the administration’s lead advocate for abortion rights following the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade last year. The issue is splitting and hurting Republicans from Nebraska and Wisconsin to South Carolina. Her strong stand on police reform, civil rights, GOP voter suppression, climate and education may energise vital centre-ground support.In this age of disillusionment, of distrust and cynicism about old-boy politics, Harris is honest, passionate – and relatively young. Far from being the liability conventional wisdom suggests, this latest incarnation of the much-abused Veep may prove the Democrats’ saving grace. More

Joe Biden has praised the “absolute courage” of Evan Gershkovich, the US journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges, and reiterated calls on Moscow for his immediate release.The US president said the Wall Street Journal reporter, who is the first correspondent since the cold war to be detained in Russia on spying charges, sought to “shed light on the darkness” of the country and said American efforts to get him home would not cease.Biden, speaking at an annual dinner for White House correspondents on Saturday night, directly addressed the parents of Gershkovich, who were in the room and were given standing ovations by the more than 2,000 attendees.“We all stand with you. Evan went to Russia to shed light on the darkness that you all escaped from, years ago. Absolute courage … to the entire family, everyone in this hall stands with you. We’re working every day to secure his release,” said Biden, noting the journalist’s letter to his parents that said he was “not losing hope”.Some guests at the Washington Hilton function wore buttons with “Free Evan” printed on them. The US has previously declared Gershkovich to be wrongfully detained, signalling that it views the espionage charges against him as bogus and that he is being held as a hostage.This week Russia’s foreign ministry denied a request from the US for a consular visit to Gershkovich, saying it was rejected in retaliation for the US refusing to grant visas to Russian journalists planning to accompany the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on a trip to the UN. Gershkovich has been in custody since 29 March.Attendees to Saturday’s gala also included Debra Tice, the mother of Austin Tice, who has not been heard from since disappearing at a checkpoint in Syria in 2012. US officials say they operate under the assumption that he is alive and are working to try to bring him home.“Journalism is not a crime,” said Biden. “Evan and Austin should be released immediately, along with every other American held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad.“I promise, I am working like hell to bring them home.”The president also had warm words for Brittney Griner, who attended with her wife Cherelle. “I love this woman … this time last year we were praying for you, hoping you knew how hard all of us were fighting for your release. It’s great to have you home .. I can hardly wait to see you back on the court, kid.”The WNBA star endured a nearly 10-month detainment in Russia on drug-related charges. Griner was arrested in February 2022 at a Moscow airport after Russian authorities said a search of her luggage revealed vape cartridges containing cannabis oil. She later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison. More

Waldes Thomas and Diamond Darville were driving for the grocery delivery service Instacart near Miami in mid-April when they drove the order up to the wrong address.Thomas, 19, and Darville, 18, reportedly told authorities they were backing away from the home when the owner emerged with his son, grabbed on to the driver’s window and fired a gun three times at their car. Antonio Caccavale, who didn’t hit anyone, later reportedly claimed to police who investigated the encounter that he shot because he feared for his and his son’s lives as Thomas and Darville’s car ran over his foot and struck a boulder.Eventually, police concluded everyone – including Caccavale – acted “justifiably based on the circumstances they perceived”, leading to no arrests.It remains to be seen whether the police’s interpretation of the case is the final word on the matter. A local prosecutor told ABC News in a statement that he would evaluate whether Caccavale should be charged, adding that “the safety of the entire Instacart community is incredibly important” to his office.Nonetheless, that case, along with a spate of recent shootings across the country which victimized Americans who approached property owners by mistake or for an otherwise innocent reason, did not only vividly illustrate how the US is flooded with guns. It all also showed how people who are made paranoid by the nation’s bitter political climate believe they can use guns with impunity thanks to firearms laws and self-defense statutes that in many states are remarkably permissive, according to experts who spoke with the Guardian this week.“A lot of people who shouldn’t have guns, who don’t need them, who don’t know how to use them safely … are fearful and trigger happy,” said the president of Global Action on Gun Violence, Jonathan Lowy. “And it’s inevitable that that will lead to tragedies like we’re seeing.”In a speech on the legislative floor, the Democratic Connecticut US senator Chris Murphy added: “Gun murders are now just the way in which we work out our frustrations. This is a dystopia … that we’ve chosen for ourselves.”A Harvard University study from 2016 found “there is no good evidence” that using a firearm in purported self-defense reduces the likelihood of injury.The study’s author, David Hemenway, found some evidence that having a gun for such a purpose may reduce the likelihood of property loss. “But the evidence is equally compelling that having another weapon, such as [pepper spray] or a baseball bat, will also reduce the likelihood of property loss,” Hemenway has said.Nonetheless, US gun manufacturers have been able to sell their products briskly – some experts estimate there are more than 400m firearms circulating across the country, whose population is about 332 million. Experts say gun manufacturers have done that by collectively convincing buyers that having a firearm is both a constitutional right as well as an effective tool to help them ward off potential danger, playing up the worst-case scenarios that few people are statistically likely to experience but which receive disproportionate attention from media outlets and political partisans.“The narrative that has been pushed by the gun industry and many politicians [is] that a person needs to be armed at all times everywhere or else they are going to get murdered by the boogeyman,” said Allison Anderman, the Giffords Law Center’s senior counsel and director of local policy.Most US states now allow residents to carry around a concealed gun without a permit that would typically require some level of training to get, even as a pro-gun, self-defense expert like the author Paxton Quigley says such instruction is essential to be a responsible firearm owner.“There are very good courses out there that will explain … when you can shoot a gun and if you should shoot it under certain circumstances,” said Quigley, adding that she began carrying a gun on her after her friend was raped. “But a lot of people will just go to a gun store, say ‘that’s a cute gun’, pick it up, see they can handle it and off they go.”Meanwhile, at least 28 American states, along with the territory of Puerto Rico, permit people to resort to meet an aggressor with deadly force without being required to try to retreat as long as they are lawfully in that place, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.Information from the conference adds that at least 10 states mention the right for a person to “stand his or her ground” – including Florida, where the Instacart delivery pair were shot at.To many experts, the inevitable outcome of those realties is a quick-trigger culture exposed internationally by a hellacious, two-week stretch that more or less began with the 13 April shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl. Yarl was shot and injured in Kansas City, Missouri, by a man whose doorbell he rang after going to the wrong address to pick up his siblings.Kaylin Gillis, 20, was shot dead two days later in upstate New York when the car she was riding in pulled into the driveway of a wrong address. Three days after that, high school cheerleaders Payton Washington and Heather Roth were shot in Elgin, Texas, after practice when Roth inadvertently almost got into a car that strongly resembled her vehicle but was actually the shooter’s.The same day as the cheerleaders’ shooting in Texas, six-year-old Kinsley White and her parents were allegedly shot by a neighbor in Gastonia, North Carolina, after a basketball that the child was playing with rolled into the attacker’s yard. And in Illinois, on Tuesday, police accused a man of shooting his neighbor, 59-year-old William Martys, to death 13 days earlier while Martys used a leaf blower in his own yard.The shootings of Yarl, Gillis, Washington, Roth, White, her parents and Martys have all led to arrests, but it remains to be seen whether their accused attackers are convicted. For instance, in 2013 and 2021 in Nevada and Wisconsin, respectively, juries acquitted George Zimmerman of murdering Trayvon Martin and Kyle Rittenhouse of murdering Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber after claiming that they shot in self-defense.Rodney Peairs was acquitted in Louisiana in 1993 of committing manslaughter when he shot Yoshihiro Hattori to death after claiming that he feared for his, his wife’s and their child’s lives when the 16-year-old Japanese exchange student mistakenly knocked on his door during the previous Halloween while looking for a party.State legislatures and the US federal government could at least limit the chances of cases like these unfolding if they enacted measures that “separated people who are not responsible gun owners from their guns”, Mike Lawlor, a criminal justice professor at Connecticut’s University of New Haven, said.While a member of Connecticut’s legislature in 1999, Lawlor authored the first of the nation’s “red-flag” laws, which enable courts to be petitioned to allow police to confiscate weapons from a person who is judged to be dangerous to themselves or others. The state five years earlier had banned assault-style weapons.And after an intruder at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook elementary school shot 20 children and six adults dead in 2012, Lawlor said the state enacted even more restrictive gun laws, including prohibiting high-capacity ammunition magazines, requiring permits to purchase firearms and bullets, and outlawing the public carrying of loaded rifles.The fact that people can go to many other states to circumvent those restrictions stop a place like Connecticut from getting the full benefit of that legislative work, said Anderman, adding that it’d be more effective if Congress passed more substantial federal gun control.Nonetheless, Lawlor said he firmly believes that legislation is why Connecticut and states that have sought to build similar systems – including New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts – consistently have firearm death rates ranking among the lowest in the US, though they are higher than many other places around the globe where guns aren’t so culturally or legally entrenched.“As long as there are more guns in circulation in this country than there are responsible gun owners, public policy … has got to narrow that gap,” Lawlor said.On Friday, a day after Lawlor made that remark to the Guardian, Colorado’s governor signed four gun control bills as the state continued its attempt to reckon with its long history of mass gun violence, including the killings of people at an LGBTQ+ nightclub last fall. 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Molok Luyuk, a 11-mile (18km) rocky ridge just north of San Francisco, is a rare, idiosyncratic landscape. Purple and yellow wildflowers bloom against green and brown hillsides. Dark rock formations extend against lush cypress groves.Located along California’s inner coast ridge, “it’s a beautiful area, secluded from development,” said James Kinter, tribal secretary of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation. “And for us, it’s more than just a natural environment.”Now, the Yocha Dehe and local environmentalists are asking Joe Biden to add 13,700-acres (5,500 hectares) of the ridge to the Berryessa Snow Mountain national monument. Legislation introduced in Congress is also proposing tribal co-management of an expanded monument.“It’s a great opportunity to work with the federal government, the state government and local governments to protect this habitat and history,” Kinter said.Molok Luyuk means “condor ridge” in Patwin, and tribes in this region have always referred to the area that way. Though development, hunting, lead poisoning and DDT contamination have decimated the California condor population over the decades, the ridge is still a home to bald eagles, golden eagles and peregrine falcons, as well as more than 30 species of rare plants.Kinter has driven his family across the ridge many times. “It’s kind of a long drive,” he said laughing. “But, you know, it’s important to explain to them what is out there.”For thousands of years, the ridge served as a key trade route for northern California Indigenous nations, and was a meeting place for the Yocha Dehe, as well as the Cachil Dehe and Kletsel Dehe, said Kinter. A number of village sites and gravesites, and petroglyphs remain on the landscapeFrom the summit, there’s a clear view of the state’s most iconic peaks and mountain ranges – there’s Mount Diablo to the south, the Sutter Buttes and Sierra Nevadas to the east, Mount Shasta to the north. “You can see so much of California from just one place, from this one point,” said Sandra Schubert, executive director of local conservation group TuleyomeIt’s a botanical wonderland, said Nick Jensen, conservation program director at the California Native Plant Society. “One of the things that makes this place special is the diversity of environmental conditions, the diversity of habitats,” he said. “You have oak woodland, right next to a patch of grassland underlaid with clay soils, right next to serpentine chaparral.”The patches of clay soil are fertile grounds for delicate pink adobe lilies. And the harsh, serpentine soils – low in calcium and other minerals most plants need, and high in heavy metals like chromium – spark deep burgundy blooms of Hoover’s lomatium.This spring, after an especially wet, rainy winter, Molok Luyuk’s foothills were alive with fields of sweet butter-coloured creamcups and California goldfields, bird’s-eye gilia, and blue dicks.The ridge is also the largest habitat for MacNab cypress in California. Its small, tightly closed cones only open when they’re exposed to the high heat of a wildfire. “When a fire sweeps through a grove, the mother plant is almost always killed,” said Jensen. “And then what happens afterwards is this grand process of rebirth where you have thousands upon thousands of seedlings sprouting from the burn.”In 2015, Barack Obama designated Berryessa Snow Mountain, but only included a small portion of Molok Luyuk within its borders. Adding the rest of the ridge, the tribe and local environmentalists say, will ensure a protected wildlife corridor between Berryessa and the Mendocino national forest to the north.The Yocha Dehe would like to work with the local and federal agencies to reintroduce indigenous land stewardship practices to the area, including the use of prescribed burns in a landscape that has evolved with fire. “Here, this is an awesome opportunity to show some of the Indigenous knowledge of how to take care of the land,” Kinter said.And eventually, Kinter said, the tribe would like to help reintroduce California condors, so they can once again soar over this stretch.Last year, senators Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein, along with California representative John Garamendi, introduced legislation to add about 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of the ridge to the Berryessa monument, and officially change its name from “Walker Ridge” to Molok Luyuk.Lawmakers reintroduced the legislation this year, as well. But nearly 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) of the ridge, however, were excluded from that legislation, after Colusa county supervisors asked those areas be left out of the monument.A monument designation would increase the bureaucracy and consultation required for fire management, logging and other activity in the area, said Gary Evans, vice chair of the Colusa county board of supervisors. “I’m one with the whole nature thing but it’s gone off the deep end,” he said. “We’re going overboard with the touchy feely thing.”In a letter to Padilla sent in June, county officials also opposed the renaming of Walker Ridge, and said doing so would require changing maps, and would confuse law enforcement and fire response teams that work in the area. The name Walker Ridge is “just fine”, said Evans. “I just hate rewriting history.”The Bureau of Land Management supported the expansion in testimony to congress, though the office said it could not comment further on pending legislation. The expansion “aligns with the administration’s conservation goals,” Mark Lambrecht, assistant director of the National Conservation Lands and Community Partnership, testified.Regardless of whether the legislation passes, local environmental groups are also petitioning the Biden administration to designate the entirety of Molok Luyuk under the Antiquities Act. The administration has so far named three new national monuments, and restored three monuments that the Trump administration reduced.“We just want to make sure we’re protecting our cultural sites and also protecting the natural habitat,” Kinter said. “It’s not just for tribal folk. It’s American history, California history right there.”Periodic proposals to develop wind energy projects in the area have been denied, but a monument designation would ensure that key habitats and archaeological sites across the ridge are protected in perpetuity.A national monument designation would come with additional resources and funding to improve trails and access routes, and the ability to better preserve some areas, while also opening up others for recreation and tourism, said Schubert, whose group organises hikes and wildflower tours on the ridge. In consultation with tribes, the federal government could help create more opportunities for hiking, mountain biking, off-roading and camping, she said. “You could have art classes and science classes up here,” she said.“It’s a very auspicious area,” said Eddie “EJ” Crandell, a supervisor in Lake county, and former chairman of the Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California. “And if it’s marked as such, I think people will really take a liking to it.” More