US Politics

After months of speculation, the US president, Joe Biden, has confirmed his intention to seek reelection in 2024. In his video announcement, Biden promised to stand up against “MAGA extremists” and called on Americans to give him the chance to “finish the job”, saying:

When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are. This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for reelection.

The Republican party countered immediately, showing an AI-generated video on the GOP YouTube channel that depicted a dystopian future if Biden was reelected, using fake reports of increasing crime rates, illegal immigration and financial chaos.

There seems to be little enthusiasm for a second Biden term among Americans. His Gallup job approval rating at the end of his third year in office was just 40% – below Ronald Reagan’s (41%) in 1983 and only a point above Donald Trump’s in 2019 (39%).

According to a recent CBS News poll, almost half (45%) of Democrats think that Biden shouldn’t run. A huge 86% of those who thought he shouldn’t run stated that their main cause of concern was Biden’s age, while 77% felt it was time for someone new.

However, a slew of opinion polls assembled by the influential US politics blog FiveThirtyEight have found that Biden would beat any of the other Democrat politicians touted as possible nominees.

The age-old question

Born on November 20 1942, Biden would be 82 at the start of a second term and 86 by its end – the oldest person to be elected president and serve in the office. One focus group of swing voters deemed Biden too old, with a panellist saying: “Give that man a break!”

But columnist Abhi Rahman has argued that Biden’s age should be seen as a strength, not a weakness, and that he has the potential to make significant ground for Democrats in the next election, much like Reagan did in 1984 – another president whose age was raised as a concern by his opponents.

Just like Biden, even Reagan’s own party was worried about his age before his first election in 1980, at the (relatively) youthful age of 70. Republican leaders’ worries about whether Reagan would be able to “maintain his energy level” throughout his presidency were underlined by a claim by former president Jimmy Carter that he could not have dealt with the challenges of the office at the age 80.

Republicans are less likely to point to Biden’s age as an issue. Trump, currently the likeliest candidate to be the Republican nominee, has said that Biden’s age is not an issue – which is unsurprising given that Trump will be almost 79 at the next election.

Instead, Republicans have focused on the issues that continue to challenge the Biden administration: inflation and immigration concerns at the southern border.

While Democrats are not entirely happy with Biden running again because of his age, it is unlikely anyone will pose a significant threat to his nomination. Carter was the last incumbent to be challenged for the nomination when Senator Edward Kennedy threw his hat into the ring in 1980. Kennedy was unsuccessful then and his nephew, Robert F Kennedy Jr, poses no serious challenge to Biden with his current campaign for the nomination.

Running mate

Biden’s confirmation of his intention to run included his selection of the vice-president, Kamala Harris, as his running mate. Questions had been raised about whether Biden might have chosen someone else for the ticket. Instead, he has identified Harris as his nominated successor, an issue that had concerned many Democrats.

Heartbeat from the presidency: Kamal Harris has been confirmed as Joe Biden’s running mate in 2024.
EPA-EFE/Jim Lo Scalzo

In her statement, Harris called the 2024 election “a pivotal moment in our history” and told Americans that she and the president “look forward to finishing the job, winning this battle for the soul of the nation, and serving the American people for four more years in the White House”.

Harris’s selection is important. As columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times, Biden’s age – and possible failing health while in office – means Americans are voting as much for the vice-president as they are Biden, “more than in any other election in American history”.

But why break a winning formula? Recent polls indicate that a Biden-Harris ticket currently offers the best possible chance for a Democrat victory against either Trump or Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis.

Unlike Trump, Biden has portrayed himself as a president for all Americans, not just those who voted for him. His public courting of Republican collaboration on the passing of his landmark infrastructure bills made small steps to bridging the partisan gap in American politics. This may provide a bridge for the Democratic party of tomorrow to appeal to some Republicans.

Such bipartisan appeal gains even more importance when considering that the 2024 presidential election may be the end of a cycle – the passing of the old guard.

The 2028 election will require a new generation of political leaders to step into the vacuum. If he wins in 2024, Biden will constitutionally be unable to stand, having had two terms in office. If Trump loses for a second time, he will not be trusted with the nomination again. And if Biden loses, it is unlikely he will run at the age of 86.

Increasingly politically active millennial voters, who turned out in high numbers in the 2022 midterms, have the potential to change the political landscape of the 2028 election, and are becoming the target audience of the next set of presidential candidates. Who these will be is currently a mystery, but contenders will likely be jockeying for the box-seat between 2024 and the next election.

Until then, it appears almost certain that Democrats will put their faith in the Biden-Harris ticket for one more term. More

It is difficult to begrudge anyone for celebrating the downfall of far-right provocateur Tucker Carlson, ignominiously ejected from Fox News. Slack-jawed, spitting rage, his tirades were calculated at stirring the resentment of angry white America: from declaring that immigrants made the US dirtier and poorer to embracing the “great replacement theory”, which spreads the noxious lie that the authorities were deliberately “undermining democracy” by replacing US-born Americans with immigrants.Fox staff were reportedly jubilant at his departure. Perhaps this quote from a Fox reporter, in which they celebrate seeing the back of the network’s premier conspiracy theorist, will give you pause: “It’s a great day for America, and for the real journalists who work hard every day to deliver the news at Fox.”Oh, really? Were they the journalists who prompted a potential lawsuit from the city of Paris after falsely claiming the French capital had “no-go zones” for non-Muslims? Or aired many negative and sceptical statements about Covid vaccines at a critical point in the pandemic? Or indeed aired the false claims that voting machines had been rigged to steal the 2020 presidential contest, leading to Fox News’ $787m settlement with Dominion Voting Systems? With journalistic standards like these, Carlson will no doubt be replaced by another demagogue committed to stoking the same fear and rage. The focus on specific bogeymen such as him stops us from understanding the real problem.Carlson is merely one figurehead of a misinformation industry that has dramatically reshaped rightwing politics across the world. Defined by conspiratorial thinking, often crude racism and bigotry, and calculated deception, it has succeeded in destroying whatever barrier existed between the traditional centre right and what lies beyond. Carlson – or indeed the modern godfather of this movement, Donald Trump – are easy to single out on account of their vulgarity and open repudiation of respectability. This allows the mainstream right that originally courted and enabled this extremism to evade responsibility.Consider the case study of Liz Cheney, the three-term representative for Wyoming, celebrated as a principled leader of the besieged moderate Republicans for her opposition to Trump. This was the same Cheney who, when offered the opportunity to eschew the conspiracy that Barack Obama was foreign-born, responded: “People are uncomfortable with a president who is reluctant to defend the nation overseas.” Here was a climate denier who almost always voted with the Trump administration. Difficult, then, not to conclude that it was the style, rather than substance, of Trumpism that the likes of Cheney found so objectionable. Cheney was crushed in her Republican primary at the hands of a Trump-backed candidate – consumed by a monster she helped create.It was the “moderate” Republican pinup John McCain who selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. It was the former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney who suggested wiretapping mosques and placing foreign students under surveillance. It was the presidential candidate Ted Cruz who called on law enforcement to “patrol and secure Muslim neighbourhoods”. And a previous generation of rightwing zealot pundits walked so Carlson could run: like the late Rush Limbaugh who identified the “four corners of deceit”: government, academia, science and the media.It was, in sum, a collective effort on the US right to promote bigoted and conspiratorial modes of thinking that radicalised the base of the Republicans and transformed a rightwing capitalist party into a more conventionally far-right movement that increasingly rejects democratic norms. It’s why Trump’s main Republican rival is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a rightwing authoritarian who has suggested the Federal Reserve will seek to prevent Americans buying guns and fuel, and who has shared a platform with people who appear to echo QAnon and other conspiracy theories.This is a tendency long ago identified by the US historian Richard Hofstadter, who unpacked the “paranoid style in American politics” in a 1964 article. This was a mechanism, he believed, for remoulding society: that by identifying a menace to society – be it Muslims, trans people, or anti-fascists – you could marshal support for radical right causes.It is a phenomenon well beyond the United States. It was the Vote Leave faction that took over the Tories who spread the deception about Turkey joining the EU; Michael Gove who denounced “experts”; and Boris Johnson’s ugly rhetoric around surrender, betrayal and traitors that attracted the support of far-right extremists. It was Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro who synthesised bigotry towards Brazilian minorities and disinformation about Covid and stolen elections. And it is Hungary’s far-right regime that spreads antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish businessman George Soros, and implies that outside forces will force children to have gender-affirming surgery.Indeed, Hungary itself is a striking case study about what has happened to the modern right globally. The ruling party, Fidesz, was long considered a conventional centre-right party until it radicalised in power, hollowing out the substance of Hungarian democracy. Misinformation, bigotry and conspiracism acted as battering rams, radically reshaping rightwing politics.Carlson may well have been booted from Fox News, but what victory does it represent? The brand of conspiratorial demagoguery he belongs to has succeeded in drastically reshaping rightwing politics. The “paranoid style” that was once identified as a dangerous trend in conservatism is now its main operating system. The consequence? Democracy as we understand it is imperilled in the US and beyond. The likes of Carlson played their role, but this political catastrophe would never have happened without those who retained ill-deserved reputations for moderation while throwing open the door for the most radical extremism.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist More

On Thursday 13 April, Missouri’s attorney general issued an emergency ruling that restricts access to gender-affirming care for both minors and adults, under the guise that hormone therapy is an “experimental use” rather than an FDA-approved treatment. For the past year, transgender youth have been a football for conservative politicians, with their access to gender-affirming care restricted or outlawed in 14 states. But this move by Missouri’s attorney general is the first attack on gender-affirming care for transgender adults; assuredly, it won’t be the last.The first time I tried to get access to gender-affirming care was in 2003. I was 24 years old and lived in Rhode Island. I’d been out as transgender for eight years by then, eight years spent looking (on a good day) like a 14-year-old boy, until finally the me I saw in the mirror and the me I saw in my head didn’t match any more. Only testosterone would make me feel like myself.I told my doctor, who was kind and sympathetic and said she had no idea about the protocols for administration of testosterone to a transgender person. She did find me a list of all the practitioners in Rhode Island who offered such care. There were three names on the list. True, Rhode Island is not a large state, but still: three names. I called them all. Only one would see me, and only after I had gone to therapy and had a psychologist certify that I was ready to transition.That was the standard back then – and that’s what the Missouri attorney general wants to require of adult transgender individuals now, only more extensive. In 2003 in Rhode Island, I needed to see a therapist for at least three visits. The Missouri AG wants documentation of least three years of “medically documented, long-lasting, persistent and intense pattern of gender dysphoria” before an adult can be approved to get hormones. Three years of therapy is lengthy, time-consuming and expensive; three years is a very long time to suffer before being allowed to get medical attention.Moreover, back in 2003, “gender identity disorder” was in the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual (DSM) as a mental disorder. Doctors required transgender individuals to visit a psychologist so that there was a “legitimate” diagnosis to accompany the prescription of hormones – even though, back then and still today, the use of hormones for gender reassignment is an “off-label” use. But that diagnosis was removed from the DSM in 2013, replaced with “gender dysphoria”.That’s the term Missouri’s AG uses in his emergency ruling and, in doing so, trying to return to the idea that being transgender is synonymous with being mentally ill, a narrative that the right has used at several historical moments to marginalize LGBTQ+ individuals. The narrative here isn’t really about a diagnosis or medical legitimacy – it certainly isn’t about the health of the transgender person. The subtext clearly is that transgender people are mentally ill and delusional, and they need a medical authority to help them figure out who they are.The therapist that I saw in 2003 was a gay man who had a lot of compassion for the situation I was in. He knew it was a hoop I had to jump through, and he also knew he had to do his job. He asked me questions, took notes, and eventually wrote a letter certifying that I fit the diagnosis of “gender identity disorder” and that hormone therapy would help treat this disorder.I felt uncomfortable with the process; it seemed to me then and it seems to me now that there isn’t anything wrong with my gender identity. I know very well who I am; it’s how I feel about my body that needed to be addressed in a medical way. That’s the shift that was made in the DSM – away from “gender identity” and towards “dysphoria”. That’s the shift that the Missouri AG is trying to undo and rewrite.But that diagnosis and that therapist’s letter got me a prescription for testosterone in Rhode Island, a medical intervention that was absolutely transformative and life-saving for me.And then I moved to south-west Florida. I called endocrinologist after endocrinologist, asking if they would see me, look at the paperwork from my Rhode Island doctor, look at the letter from the therapist. A dozen said no – one receptionist told me curtly that the doctor didn’t see “transgendereds”. Another hung up on me. A third said, “Are you kidding me?” Eventually, I found a doctor in the Miami area, a three-hour drive away, who agreed to see me.This was typical for transgender care back then and, sadly, now. Unless you live in or near a major metropolitan area, getting a doctor who is trained, comfortable and willing to provide gender-affirming care is not easy. I was a person with a lot of privilege: health insurance from my employer, a good income, the language and education and time to persist in finding a therapist and a doctor who would treat me. For many transgender individuals, this would be too much, especially to maintain for three years. Missouri is trying to pile more work on to an already significant burden.But more than the details of this particular attack, I hope people will see the mounting pattern here. The first wave of legislation came for transgender youth. This next wave is coming for transgender adults. Put these restrictions next to the rulings against abortion and you can see a larger picture of bodily control. Who gets to make medical decisions about their bodies? Not pregnant women. Not transgender people.Back in 2003, I was so frustrated by my own experience that I vowed to work for improvements. I’ve fought for transgender civil rights and worked in particular for transgender students. There were years when we were making headway, when a conversation between a transgender individual and their doctor was sufficient basis to prescribe hormones. Now, it seems like we are at an inflection point. It’s time to strip away the rhetoric and recognize what’s at stake: our rights to control our bodies, our rights to control our identities. And I’m not just talking about transgender people.
Alex Myers is a novelist and teacher who lives in Vermont More

On a typical day during the 2022 elections in Arizona, threatening emails and social media posts flowed into Maricopa county’s inboxes.Emailers, social media posters and callers were mad about everything from printer problems on election day to vote counting to court rulings, documents obtained by the Guardian show.“Election stealing piece of shit – get cancer,” one person wrote to a county elections official.“You cheating sons of bitches every last one of you should swing for treason,” a Twitter account wrote to the county.“You deserve to be executed in front of America by Firing Squad,” another wrote to the county supervisors.Nearly all of the perpetrators of these threats believed that the election was stolen from the candidate they wanted to win. In 2022, the threats regularly mentioned the election being stolen from the Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who, despite her loss, has not conceded the race and is still fighting it in court.These kinds of harassing and threatening messages have become the new normal for elections officials, especially those in swing states such as Arizona. Since Maricopa county became a frequent target in 2020 after Trump lost both it and the state, the county has worked to catalogue and respond to threats to protect its employees and try to hold the people making these threats accountable, creating one of the most robust threat monitoring and response systems in the nation. County officials hope the system will help them in 2024, when they anticipate a rise in threats.After 2020, it seemed, more people felt empowered to threaten elections officials, egged on by politicians who continued to spread election lies, said Paul Penzone, the sheriff of Maricopa county.The number of threats against Maricopa county elections officials increased in 2022 compared with 2020, though the county improved and perfected the way it catalogued threats, making a direct comparison difficult. In 2022, the county processed 386 threats – more than one a day. Penzone said that 2024 could be even worse.“My concern is, with that empowerment now as we come into another presidential election, the populace who feel like that behavior is acceptable and appropriate, now they’re enabled, now they’re empowered and they feel like it is not only appropriate to do, but that it’s their responsibility to act that way,” Penzone said.The detailed process and level of monitoring and response from Maricopa county is far more than in most other election jurisdictions. The county is one of the country’s largest, and it’s situated in the middle of near-constant election denialism in a state where the fervor over purported voting irregularities has not died down.“You’re talking about 9,000 jurisdictions across the country, 3,000 counties, and the vast majority just do not have the resources and the tools and the skill level to do the kinds of things that you see in Maricopa,” said Neal Kelley, the chairman of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections and a former elections official in Orange county, California.How the county respondsThe threatening messages fall along common themes: they mention treason, saying the penalty for it is death, sometimes adding in the word or imagery of hanging. They say that “we the people” are watching officials’ moves. They bring up jail or prison, bloodshed, violence, war or the second amendment. Some are blatantly homophobic, antisemitic, sexist.Some willingly sign their names to their screeds, sometimes leaving their phone number or address, a sign that they don’t believe there could be repercussions. Depending on the content of a message and directness of a threat, though, the county contacts law enforcement for further investigation and potential prosecution.Over the past few years, in response to rising threats, Maricopa county has beefed up the way it monitors and responds to these kinds of messages.When a direct or indirect threat comes in, anyone in the county can send an email to an internal email address to document the threat, which then creates a ticket that can be responded to, similar to how an employee would file a ticket if they needed computer help. From there, analysts look over the threat and decide whether it should be forwarded to law enforcement agencies in Arizona and at the federal level.Whether law enforcement decides to investigate or, eventually, prosecute is out of county election officials’ hands.Some threats come directly to the county, via social media messages, emails or phone calls. But the county also proactively monitors certain corners of the internet where people toss around threats and plan responses, funneling those into the monitoring system as well.The threats most frequently target the public officials who run elections, like the county supervisors and recorder, and top elected officials in the state, like the governor, attorney general and secretary of state.But they also occasionally target lower-level employees whose roles rarely become fodder for the public’s ire. Those employees sometimes end up in videos that ping around the internet or land in certain publications that are known to kick up more threats, such as the far-right Gateway Pundit. When that happens, those employees face ongoing harassment and threats, too.If an employee becomes a target, the county works with them to improve their security and privacy online while providing any assistance they may need to cope with a barrage of hateful comments. In some cases, the county will add physical security for them as well, Penzone said.Since the 2020 election saw the central count facility become a target of protesters, the county has added a permanent fence and limited access to the area. During the 2022 election, the Maricopa county sheriff’s office had an increased presence at the site, adding a temporary fence around a broader part of the facility and putting more officers there to deter any mayhem. At one point, deputies rode by the area on horseback, probably as a show of force.For people who answer the phones, the county trains them on how to handle difficult callers by attempting to defuse and de-escalate the situation. The training follows a “Triple A” strategy of apologizing, acknowledging and assuring callers. If a caller continues to harass, the employee should provide a warning about their inappropriate behavior and let them know they will hang up if it continues.“You are not expected to be subjected to continued verbal abuse from callers,” says a training document obtained by the Guardian.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf a person calls and makes threats, the county advises the employee to remain calm and try to gather as much information as possible, like the caller’s name and target of their threat. Immediately after the call, the employee is directed to report the incident to a supervisor so it can be documented and responded to.When harassment becomes a threatThose who assess the harassing and threatening messages and phone calls walk a fine line when considering what could be an actionable threat. They weigh people’s free speech rights against safety.“Oftentimes, people say some really offensive things that cause you to feel uneasy or feel that your life may be threatened, but by letter of the law, maybe their words aren’t a direct threat,” Penzone, the county sheriff, said. “And that’s the frustrating part.”A few threats in Arizona have led to federal charges since 2020, like an Ohio man who was charged for sending threats to the secretary of state’s office, an Iowa man who threatened to kill a county supervisor and a Missouri man who threatened the county recorder.The Iowa man recently pleaded guilty. Clint Hickman, the chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors who was threatened, told the Washington Post he was glad a prosecution was “finally happening” when the charges were announced.“The wheels of justice turn awfully slow, including when there’s quite possibly actionable threats to not just me, but to my family, to our co-workers, my colleagues, the recorder, and election staff, people that are just trying to do a job,” he said. “This has been going on a long time, and I know that there’s hundreds, if not thousands, of election officials that have received calls like this.”Elections officials around the country have expressed frustration with a lack of prosecutions for these kinds of threats. In Maricopa county, Reuters reported, the county’s information security officer wrote to the FBI asking for more help last year.“Our staff is being intimidated and threatened,” the IT officer wrote. “We’re going to continue to find it more and more difficult to get the job done when no one wants to work for elections.”Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, said he is working with a Republican lawmaker to advance a bill that would make the addresses of both elections officials and elected officials private as a way to prevent harassment and threats.When Kelley was in charge of elections in Orange county, California, he received veiled threats on occasion, which left him unnerved and searching for ways to make sure the threats didn’t escalate.“A lot of election officials who’ve experienced something have been frustrated because they report it, but then there’s no action taken,” he said.Federal prosecutions have increased for election-related threats, and the justice department launched a taskforce aimed at the issue in 2021, but there’s no data at the state level to show how local law enforcement has responded, Kelley said. And despite the increased prosecutions federally, “We’re not seeing the kinds of numbers that would probably equate to what actually is happening out there with threats,” he said.Aside from prosecutions, elections officials can work to dispel disinformation and transparently explain to voters the various checks and balances that make election fraud rare, Kelley said. They should use their official channels to spread these messages and work toward creating systems to monitor threats, though that requires better funding.And when politicians lose an election, they should concede and move on quickly, signaling to their followers to do the same, Kelley said. Several Arizona hopefuls still have not conceded their races, five months after the November 2022 election.For Penzone’s part, he’s balancing making elections workers safe with not overpolicing polling sites, which could deter voters as well.Since 2020, election protection has grown to be a bigger and more constant part of his office’s duties.“In a perfect world, I would tell you that if I had enough staff, I would create a division specifically for election-related crime and security,” Penzone said. More

Julie Su, President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Department of Labor, was just 26 and two years out of Harvard Law School when she took on the defining case of her career that led to profound immigration and labor reforms.In 1995, as a staff attorney at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Su led a team of lawyers to secure legal immigration status and $4m in stolen wages for 72 enslaved Thai nationals in a garment sweatshop in El Monte, California. The case eventually led to federal protections for victims of human trafficking. Su, a Wisconsin-born daughter of Chinese immigrants, later earned a MacArthur genius award for her representation of the garment workers.“She’s a creative, rigorous, incredibly committed public servant,“ said Ai-Jen Poo, a labor activist and the president of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. “Growing up in an immigrant household and working as a civil rights lawyer gives her a unique perspective on both the incredible opportunities and the inequities that exist in this country.”Su, now the deputy labor secretary, was nominated to lead the labor department in February, to replace outgoing Marty Walsh. She’s facing an uphill battle to confirmation, though, with business lobbying groups and prominent Republicans campaigning against her. That was on display in the first confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee, where Republicans criticized her record as California’s labor secretary and a handful of moderate Democrats remained noncommittal about voting her through. (The Senate narrowly confirmed Su as deputy secretary in 2021 by three-vote margin, along party lines.)Labor advocates say Su’s political career has been shaped by the enduring legacy of the El Monte sweatshop case – a grassroots campaign that “turned my life upside down and changed me forever”, Su has written.If confirmed, the veteran civil rights attorney and California’s former top labor official – who’s endorsed by the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and more than a dozen Asian American advocacy groups – would be the first Asian American cabinet secretary to serve under Biden.After federal and state authorities freed the Thai garment workers in a pre-dawn raid, they were immediately sent to an immigration detention center and forced into orange prison uniforms. Su and her team secured their release after a week.The workers, most of whom were women and undocumented, had been locked up in a factory surrounded by barbed wire, forced to toil from dawn to midnight for less than $1 an hour – some for as long as seven years.The case pushed Congress to pass a landmark anti-trafficking law in 2000, which established a federal taskforce on human trafficking and created a new visa category for victims of crimes who assist law enforcement.“The combination of having been a non-profit attorney representing workers of color in civil rights litigation, then moving into government, is unique among people in higher ranks of government,” said Julia Figueira-McDonough, an attorney who has worked for Su for more than a decade at both Advancing Justice and the California labor commissioner’s office. “She has a level of empathy and compassion that comes from her personal experience.”Over the past three decades, as California’s labor commissioner and labor secretary, Su has spearheaded programs to educate and protect garment workers who still toil in sweatshop conditions.Poo, of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, worked closely with Su while she was the California labor commissioner from 2011 to 2018. She said Su was particularly skilled at bringing together diverse stakeholders, including community organizers, business owners and elected officials, to address issues affecting domestic workers. In 2014, Su launched a sweeping “Wage Theft Is a Crime” campaign to inform low-wage workers of their rights and how to report labor law abuses.The El Monte case played a pivotal role in Su’s career, but it also won her detractors. Some community organizers said Su, and the media, greatly exaggerated her involvement in the seminal 1995 anti-sweatshop movement that catapulted her to fame.“Julie and the Legal Center completely hijacked the case from the Thai community and turned the spotlight on themselves,” said Chanchanit Martorell, founder and executive director of the Thai Community Development Center, one of the social services groups that helped liberate, resettle and obtain redress for the garment workers.In a 2020 letter to Biden opposing Su’s nomination for deputy secretary, Martorell noted that, in contrast with Su’s stated position as “lead attorney”, she played only a “minor role” winning the multimillion-dollar settlement against the clothing manufacturers, nor was she responsible for securing the garment workers’ release from immigration detention. More experienced lawyers bore the brunt of the legal work, including filing briefs, Martorell said, and social services groups attended to the survivors’ housing and basic daily needs.“For the Thai community that stands for social justice,” she said, “we really consider her exploiting the case for her own self-aggrandization as a betrayal.”Stewart Kwoh, then the executive director at the Legal Center (now known as Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California), said that Su and her team put in thousands of hours preparing garment workers for their depositions. He said that Su learned to speak some Thai and kept in touch with the workers long after the case settled. At the same time, he said, the settlement was the result of a multiyear, grassroots effort involving many LA-based lawyers and organizers whose roles were diminished in the news coverage.“In my view, it was a collective victory, but we don’t control the media,” said Kwoh, who worked with Su at Advancing Justice for 17 years. “There were a lot of people who contributed to it, and they should all take credit for the work done.”As the California labor secretary, a post she held from 2019 to 2021, Su expanded apprenticeship programs that trained workers without college degrees and initiatives to curtail wage theft. But she also faced fierce criticism from Republicans for the $30bn in unemployment fraud the state lost during the pandemic, and from business groups for helping craft AB5, a law that required companies to classify some independent contractors as employees.Kent Wong, the director of the UCLA Labor Center who has known Su since the mid-1990s, said the heat she had received for the unemployment fraud scandal is unfair, since it was a result of an overwhelmed, outdated system ill-equipped to handle an avalanche of demands for cash assistance.“It was a problem in the making for decades,” he said. “To hold the last person in charge responsible is wrong.”Meanwhile, Wong said, her stance on policies like AB5 is precisely what makes her such a qualified candidate for labor secretary.“We’ve seen unbridled corporate greed during the pandemic, epitomized by the Silicon Valley Bank scandal,” he said. “To have someone who’s dedicated her life to supporting a living wage and the end of exploitation is a huge breakthrough.”The committee is expected to vote this week on whether to advance Su’s confirmation to a full vote in the Senate. More

Harry Belafonte, a trailblazing Caribbean-American artist, has passed away at the age of 96 due to congestive heart failure, according to his spokesperson who gave the news to the New York Times. Belafonte was a multifaceted talent who made an indelible impact on music and film. He was not only a chart-topping singer but also a renowned actor and television personality, known for his captivating performances in films such as Buck and the Preacher and Island in the Sun.

However, Belafonte’s legacy extends far beyond his artistic achievements. Throughout his career, he used his platform to advocate for racial and social justice in America and around the world. Belafonte was a prominent civil rights activist who worked closely with Dr Martin Luther King Jr and was a key figure in the movement for racial equality. More

A defense attorney argued on Tuesday at the close of a landmark trial over the January 6 insurrection that the US justice department is making the Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio a scapegoat for Donald Trump, whose supporters stormed the US Capitol.Tarrio and four lieutenants are charged with seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors say was a plot to stop the transfer of presidential power from Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 election.In his closing argument, the defense lawyer Nayib Hassan noted Tarrio was not in Washington on 6 January 2021, having been banned from the capital after being arrested for defacing a Black Lives Matter banner. Trump, Hassan argued, was the one to blame for extorting supporters to “fight like hell” in his cause.“It was Donald Trump’s words,” Hassan told jurors in Washington federal court. “It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6 in your beautiful and amazing city. It was not Enrique Tarrio. They want to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald J Trump and those in power.”Seditious conspiracy, a rarely used charge, carries a prison term of up to 20 years.Tarrio is one of the top targets of the federal investigation of the riot, which temporarily halted certification of Biden’s win.Tarrio’s lawyers have accused prosecutors of using him as a scapegoat because charging Trump or powerful allies would be too difficult. But his attorney’s closing arguments were the most full-throated expression of that strategy since the trial started more than three months ago.Trump has denied inciting violence on January 6 and has argued that he was permitted by the first amendment to challenge his loss to Biden. The former president faces several civil lawsuits over the riot and a special counsel is overseeing investigations into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the election.A prosecutor told jurors on Monday the Proud Boys were ready for “all-out war” and viewed themselves as foot soldiers for Trump.“These defendants saw themselves as Donald Trump’s army, fighting to keep their preferred leader in power no matter what the law or the courts had to say about it,” said Conor Mulroe.Tarrio, a Miami resident, is on trial with Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola. Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter president. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described organizer. Rehl was president of a chapter in Philadelphia. Pezzola was a member from Rochester, New York.Attorneys for Nordean and Rehl gave closing arguments on Monday.Tarrio is accused of orchestrating the attack from afar. Police arrested him two days before the riot on charges that he burned a church banner during an earlier march. A judge ordered him to leave Washington after his arrest.Defense attorneys have argued that there is no evidence of a conspiracy or a plan for the Proud Boys to attack the Capitol. Tarrio “had no plan, no objective and no understanding of an objective”, his attorney said.Pezzola testified he never spoke to any of his co-defendants before they sat in the same courtroom. The defense attorney Steven Metcalf said Pezzola never knew of any plan for January 6 or joined any conspiracy.“It’s not possible. It’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist,” Metcalf said.Mulroe, the prosecutor, told jurors a conspiracy can be an unspoken and implicit “mutual understanding, reached with a wink and a nod”.The foundation of the government’s case is a cache of messages Proud Boys leaders and members privately exchanged in encrypted chats and publicly posted on social media before, during and after the deadly January 6 attack.Norm Pattis, one of Biggs’s attorneys, described the Capitol riot as an “aberration” and told jurors their verdict “means so much more than January 6 itself” because it will “speak to the future”.“Show the world with this verdict that the rule of law is alive and well in the United States,” he said.The justice department has secured seditious conspiracy convictions against the founder and members of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers. But this is the first major trial involving leaders of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group that remains a force in mainstream Republican circles. More

A Texas state agency told its employees this month that they must dress in a manner that is “consistent with their biological gender”, a directive that seemed to be a thinly veiled attack on transgender employees.The state’s department of agriculture laid out the dress policy in a 13 April memo, which was first reported by the Texas Observer.The memo says that “Western business attire” is appropriate and lays out acceptable business casual items.“For men, business attire includes a long-sleeved dress shirt, tie, and sport coat worn with trousers and dress shoes or boots,” it says. “For women, business attire includes tailored pantsuits, business-like dresses, coordinated dressy separates worn with or without a blazer, and conservative, closed-toe shoes or boots.”It prohibits women from wearing clothing that allows for “excessive cleavage” as well as skirts that are shorter than four inches from the knees. It also bans certain footwear – Crocs, slippers and slides are all not allowed. Also not allowed are neon and fluorescent hair colors as well as lip and other facial piercings. Clothing that is “too tight or too revealing” is also not allowed. “You are a professional, look like one,” the memo says.The policy comes as Texas and a number of other US states have moved to attack transgender Americans. There was more anti-transgender legislation filed in Texas this year than in any other state, according to a tally by Axios.Proposed measures would restrict drag performances, impose new obstacles to gender-affirming care and limit teaching about gender and sexuality, the Texas Tribune reported.Texas’s department of agriculture is run by Sid Miller, a Republican who was first elected to his role in 2014. An outspoken supporter of former president Donald Trump, Miller has faced headwinds because of some scandals in recent years.The memo says agency supervisors can exercise “reasonable discretion” in assessing employees’ clothing. Employees’ refusal to comply with a request to change their clothing could result in their dismissal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If a staff member’s inappropriate attire, poor hygiene or use of offensive perfume/cologne is an issue, the supervisor should first discuss the problem with the staff member in private and should point out the specific areas to be corrected,” the memo says.The CEO of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Texas, Ricardo Martinez, told the Texas Tribune that the ambiguities in the policy could lead to confusion. “Are women no longer allowed to wear suits? Can men wear necklaces?” he said.An attorney with the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Brian Klosterboer, told the Texas Tribune that the policy violated federal law. Federal civil rights law also protects LGBTQ+ individuals from discrimination by their employers, the supreme court ruled in 2020. More