US Politics

From More

There must always be a place for necessary whistleblowing from inside governments. This newspaper will always stand, responsibly, for that principle. Yet leaks are also serious matters, which challenge a state. In a particularly serious case, or at a particularly serious time, such as during a war, a leak can help an enemy, dismay allies, weaken morale and, at least potentially, change the military balance and put lives at risk.The leak of highly classified US intelligence documents covering plans to aid Ukraine’s war against Russia is unquestionably grave, both in its content and context. In Ukraine, Nato is in the midst of by far its most serious conflict for a generation. The inherent seriousness of the leaks is enhanced by other factors, including the details and numbers they contained, the breadth of the secrets’ online distribution, including to potential enemies, the length of time they were accessible, and the likelihood that the material becomes part of a disinformation campaign.This case has particular features that distinguish it from celebrated leaks in earlier times. There is no suggestion – yet – that the leaks are the work of foreign spies. Nor do they appear to be the work of a whistleblower seeking to expose a scandal, as happened in the Pentagon Papers case during the Vietnam war, or in Edward Snowden’s exposures of US surveillance programmes. There is no hard evidence that the leaker believed, as happened during WikiLeaks, that the material should be put into the public domain on freedom of information or other grounds.Instead, the evidence points in a recognisably more contemporary and disturbing direction. The leaks were made on the social network Discord by a young male official in the Massachusetts air national guard. In the histories of espionage, and also of recent mass shootings, there have been examples of relatively anonymous young men triggering major incidents in part to boost their self-esteem. Jack Teixeira, who was arrested and charged in Boston this week, is 21, and is interested in guns, games and racist memes. He released his Pentagon documents, it has been suggested, to display his self-importance and to impress others in the online gaming chat group of which he was the leading figure.Two large public policy questions immediately arise. One is how someone low down the intelligence food chain like Teixeira could get his hands on such material. Part of the answer is the unmanageable volume of material held by the US government. For decades, there have been allegations that intelligence agencies were too bloated, slow and complex to be clear, including to themselves, about what must be secret and who should be able to access it. The digital revolution made this process even more mountainous. But, as events from WikiLeaks to these Pentagon leaks suggest, the government systems have not been fit for purpose.The other issue is the extent of the damage. The most important aspect from a European perspective are the doubts documented over Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russian air power. That information should never have been seen in public in this way. It could suggest that Ukraine’s low stocks of arms mean its expected spring offensive will be difficult to carry through, leaving Kyiv highly vulnerable to Russian counterattacks. This may mean a less decisive offensive and, instead, a protracted lower intensity conflict. If that is the result, then these leaks have altered the course of history too.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

The Biden administration on Thursday approved exports of liquefied natural gas from the Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, a document showed, prompting criticism from environmental groups over the approval of another “carbon bomb”.The US energy department approved Alaska Gasline Development Corp’s (AGDC) project to export LNG to countries with which the United States does not have a free trade agreement, mainly in Asia. Backers of the roughly $39bn project expect it to be operational by 2030 if it receives the required permits.The project, for which exports were first approved by the administration of Donald Trump, has been strongly opposed by environmental groups.“Joe Biden’s climate presidency is flying off the rails,” said Lukas Ross of Friends of the Earth. Ross pointed out this was the second US approval of a “fossil-fuel mega-project” in as many months.The Biden administration last month approved the ConocoPhillips $7bn Willow oil and gas drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, prompting criticism of Biden’s record on the climate crisis.Alaska LNG includes a liquefaction facility on the Kenai peninsula in southern Alaska and a proposed 807-mile (1,300-km) pipeline to move gas stranded in northern Alaska across the state.Frank Richards, the president of Alaska-owned AGDC, said the company will review the 51-page decision as it develops the project, which he said will “provide Alaskans and US allies with a significant source of low-emissions, responsibly produced energy consistent with international environmental priorities”.The Biden administration undertook an environmental review of Alaska LNG, concluding it has economic and international security benefits and that opponents had failed to show the exports were not in the “public interest”.The Biden administration modified the previous approval to prohibit venting of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide associated with the project into the atmosphere.Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, said the approval of the project cleared the way for additional lawsuits seeking to stop the project.The Biden administration is trying to approve more US LNG exports as it competes with Russia, traditionally one of the world’s largest energy exporters. Critics say the Ukraine conflict is a “false justification” for a rush to natural gas.An expansion of LNG terminals on the Gulf coast would double or even triple current capacity to deliver natural gas, which a report by Climate Action Tracker researchers said would keep carbon emissions above levels needed for net zero.Russia is under pressure from western sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine, and the US has boosted LNG exports to Europe after Moscow cut gas pipeline shipments to the continent.Reuters contributed to this report More

A member of staff cleans The Beast, Biden’s official car, at Áras an Uachtaráin, the residence of the president of Ireland, in Phoenix Park, Dublin, on Thursday

Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA More

John F Kennedy set the template for US presidential forays to Ireland with a rapturous visit in 1963 that he called the best four days of his life.Joe Biden’s visit this week did not quite match that fervour but at times it came close, alchemising politics, diplomacy and the personal into a feelgood glow for visitor and hosts.Standing in Ireland’s legislature Biden raised his arms to heaven, saying: “Well, mom, you said it would happen. I’m at home. I’m home. I wish I could stay longer.”It was corny but also true. This is the most Irish of presidents since Kennedy, a man steeped in Irish ancestry who cannot make a speech without citing Irish poets, proverbs, myths. He had visited Ireland before but to come as president was to consecrate the relationship between the US and Ireland.He was late for engagements and he rambled. There were gaffes. He confused the All Blacks with the Black and Tans. He recast the foreign minister, Micheál Martin, a Corkman, as a proud son of Louth.But the trip was a success. Biden navigated the Northern Ireland leg – a meeting with Rishi Sunak, a speech at Ulster University in Belfast to mark the Good Friday agreement’s 25th anniversary – deftly. Instead of hectoring the Democratic Unionist party over the collapse of power sharing, he said he was there to “listen” and dangled a $6bn (£5bn) carrot of US investment if Stormont was restored.The party’s former leader, Arlene Foster, still accused him of hating Britain, a line echoed by some colleagues and UK commentators, but the DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, and other unionist leaders were respectful, even warm.Once Biden crossed the border on Wednesday his smile broadened and his schedule loosened as he dallied with well-wishers in Dublin and lingered in the Cooley peninsula in County Louth, where his great-grandfather James Finnegan was born. A reporter asked amid driving wind and rain what he thought of the weather. “It’s fine. It’s Ireland,” Biden beamed.The entourage included his son Hunter, his sister Valerie, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and other senior officials that reflected US diplomatic and corporate interests in Ireland.There is evidence the trip has already boosted US tourist numbers. “Biden’s trip is like a golden worldwide tourism windfall,” said Paul Allen, a public relations consultant who launched an Irish for Biden campaign in 2020.The love-in continued in Dublin, where a day of ostensible politics – meetings with President Michael D Higgins and the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, the address to a joint sitting of parliament – felt more like a family reunion. “President Biden, today you are among friends because you are one of us,” said Seán Ó Fearghaíl, the speaker of the Dáil.There was an element of paddywhackery and performative Irishness for a returned son of Erin. Donald Trump mocked Biden for making such a tip while the world was “exploding”.Few doubt the sincerity of Biden’s Irish affinities. But the pilgrimage had some electoral logic. Other US presidents – Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama – visited Ireland the year before re-election contests. Biden is expected to seek another term.The trip is unlikely to sway Irish Americans, as many of the 30 million-plus Americans who profess Irish roots vote Republican. And those who vote Democrat will back Biden, if at all, for reasons unrelated to his visit to a pub in Dundalk or a Catholic shrine in County Mayo.The trip, rather, reinforces an Ellis Island narrative about the US being built by immigrants from all over the world, not just Ireland, about a land of opportunity where working-class families can forge communities, send their children to college and achieve the American dream.Biden’s last stop on Friday was Ballina, a County Mayo town where he has relatives from another side of the family. It is twinned with his native Scranton in Pennsylvania. The hosts prepared a dramatic light show for his farewell speech outside St Muredach’s cathedral. It promised to be part homecoming, part campaign rally. More

Joe Biden was in his element this week on his genial tour of Ireland, meeting the politicians, meeting the people, being Joe. But in keeping with the strange – often absurd – state of US national politics, the really big event, his amble into the 2024 race for president, took shape a few days earlier at the White House Easter egg roll.Speaking informally to Al Roker, best known as the weather presenter for NBC News, Biden made his plans all but official. “I’m planning on running, Al,” Biden said in answer to Roker’s query about whether the president planned to take part in this springtime frivolity after next year. “But we’re not prepared to announce it yet.”The setting, however, is far from the only absurdity about the presidential contest, still more than 18 months away. Consider the latest polls which depict essentially a dead heat between Biden – whom many (and certainly not just liberals) evaluate as a highly effective president – and Donald Trump, whose April activities include his indictment on 34 felony charges involving hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Interpreting polls, of course, is tricky, which we should have learned in 2016 when relatively few Americans believed that Trump, the reality-show star and con artist, could actually be elected president of the United States.But it’s still startling to see how little awareness many Americans have of how hazardous the next election will be. Media coverage of election-as-horserace makes the problem worse.“Not the odds, but the stakes” is the excellent recent advice to journalists about how to focus their politics coverage from Jay Rosen, the prominent media critic and New York University professor. That counsel, though, is widely ignored, as sensation and speculation eclipse substance nearly every time.That’s a shame, because the stakes could hardly be higher. Trump, after all, both during and after his term in office, has chipped away at the foundations of American democracy, including doing his best to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and has steadfastly, if baselessly, denied its legitimacy.Another Trump term – complete with appointments of Trump loyalists instead of competent experts in the courts and throughout government – would be nothing short of disastrous. It would be, quite possibly, the end of the US as we know it.Biden, by contrast, has done a far better job than most who voted for him could have hoped or even imagined. Politico’s John Harris compared him to the less-than-stellar student who pulls an all-nighter and slips a major paper under the professor’s door at 6am. “It turns out the paper is actually pretty good,” Harris writes. “A solid B is within reach.”And Russell Berman, senior fellow at the (mostly conservative) Hoover Institution, offered this evaluation in the Atlantic: “The signing of just three enormous bills – the $1.9tn Covid-19 relief package, the roughly $1tn bipartisan infrastructure law, and (last year’s) climate-and-health spending bill – made Biden’s first two years among the most productive of any president in the past half century.”Biden also put the first Black woman on the supreme court, has successfully led the west’s support for Ukraine and, however chaotically, got the US out of the quagmire of Afghanistan. He also is difficult for his opponents to label as a raving radical leftist since his background simply doesn’t bear that out, and because his entire persona is that of your “aw shucks” uncle.So why isn’t he a slam-dunk for reelection? Even for those who appreciate him most, Biden’s age is a major worry. Already 80, Biden would be 86 by the end of a second term. (Trump is just a few years younger, but somehow that rarely surfaces as a concern.)Writing in the New York Times, the progressive columnist Michelle Goldberg summed up the disconnect in a column carrying this headline: “Biden’s a great president. He should not run again.” Like others, she argues that now is the time for Democrats to make way for the next generation of leadership.And, to be sure, there are some impressive and capable Democrats out there. Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, has shown her mettle and acumen. Sherrod Brown, the Ohio senator, is downright admirable. Julián Castro, the youngest member of the former president Barack Obama’s cabinet, has significant appeal, as does his brother Joaquin, the Texas congressman. The vice-president, Kamala Harris, certainly has experience and readiness. Elizabeth Warren, always articulate, is on the right side of the messiest questions, from banking improprieties to gun control. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland congressman, is inspiring. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has brains and charisma.To varying degrees, they all are younger, quicker on their feet, less likely to make one cringe in anticipated fear when giving off-the-cuff remarks. But what Biden has, in addition to his other accomplishments, is something that can’t be improved upon: a proven record of beating Donald Trump.The twice-impeached Trump, of course, has declared his candidacy, used his legal troubles to raise millions, and has the enduring adoration of the Maga crowd. Because of his iron grip on those stalwarts, and thus his control – even if waning somewhat – of the benighted Republican party, it’s hard to imagine a Ron DeSantis or a Glenn Youngkin, the governors of Florida and Virginia respectively, actually wresting the Republican nomination from him. Or anyone else doing so.Trump’s re-emergence on the rightwing propaganda network Fox News tells the story. The network’s brief, though intense, flirtation with DeSantis seems to have given way to reality – if you can call it that.Americans’ resistance to Biden makes me think of Winston Churchill’s famous line in support of popular rule (I am condensing slightly here): democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.Biden is flawed, no doubt. But could any of the aforementioned Democrats – “all the others” – have done as well? Could any of them, in 2020, have beaten Trump, the worst threat to American democracy in modern history? And do any of them stand as good a chance in 2024 against Trump?So the answer to who should be the Democratic nominee is easy: the Trump-slayer, Joseph R Biden Jr. Yes, the very guy who’s too old and not especially popular, the one who doesn’t speak all that eloquently, and who has been kicking around American politics since his election to the Senate in 1972 when he was 29.Thus, with a few words to a weather man at a White House Easter egg roll, the most significant presidential election of our time is shaping up a lot like the last one.If we – and the rest of the world – are lucky, the outcome will be the same, too.
Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Micheál Martin, has criticised remarks by the former Democratic Unionist party leader, Arlene Foster, who said Joe Biden “hates” the UK.Martin said Foster was “wrong”, saying her remarks about the US president were “misplaced” as Biden did not hate anyone. “I’m very surprised by that comment,” Martin told RTÉ’s This Morning on Friday.“The one word that you do not associate with Joe Biden is the word ‘hate’. He’s the antithesis of that. He’s the opposite of that. He always speaks about the dignity of every human person. He’s more love than hate by a country mile.”Biden has spoken about the importance of treating everyone with dignity in each of the three speeches he has given on his four-day trip to the island of Ireland.Martin said: “I think it’s a wrong comment by Arlene. In fact, he often references his British heritage as well in terms of his uncle had been involved in the British navy and I think he gave a personal anecdote about that. So I think that was misplaced. He’s not that type of person.”Foster doubled down on her remarks earlier this week, saying on Thursday that the president had “disdain” for the UK.Martin, asked if Foster should withdraw her remarks, said: “Look, people make comments. I just have to say that I would refute it. I don’t have any sense, having met with Joe Biden on quite a number of occasions now, that he hates anybody.”Foster claimed she was reflecting on Biden’s past affinity with the nationalist position in Northern Ireland but others, including the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said the US president was proud of his Irish heritage but also of the special relationship with the UK.On Thursday, Biden risked irritating Foster and other critics further when he urged the UK to “work closer with Ireland” on strengthening efforts to sustain peace in Northern Ireland.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe row over Foster’s remarks has marred the three-day love-in Biden is enjoying in the Republic of Ireland.He completes his visit on Friday with another heavy schedule in the west of Ireland, before leaving on Air Force One at about midnight.Before that, he will visit Knock at about lunchtime and pray at the nearby basilica and Marian shrine, an important Catholic pilgrimage site said to mark the apparition by Mary, the mother of Jesus, in 1879.He will then honour his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, during a private visit to the Mayo Roscommon hospice. The hospice has previously paid tribute to Beau Biden, a former Delaware attorney general. In 2017, Joe Biden travelled to the Mayo town to turn the first sod on the site for the new hospice complex, and he again paid tribute to the €6.3m palliative care centre when it opened two years ago.The US president will then visit a genealogy and heritage centre established to help descendants of Irish people who emigrated to the US, including his ancestors on his father’s side, before a final keynote speech outside a cathedral in Ballina. More

A popular political souvenir in Florida currently is a range of merchandise touting the services of a nonexistent travel company named DeSantis Airlines.T-shirts, drinks glasses and car decals alike bear the motto “Bringing the border to you”, a mocking commemoration of the time last year when Ron DeSantis, the state’s Republican governor, baited a load of mostly Venezuelan asylum seekers on to two chartered planes in Texas with false promises of jobs and housing in Boston, then promptly dumped them in Martha’s Vineyard.The stunt, paid for by Florida taxpayers, was branded cruel and heartless by analysts, political opponents and immigration advocates, and lauded by DeSantis’s supporters as another successful “owning” of liberals.But beyond the politically charged rhetoric, the episode was further proof that immigration, and the demonizing of immigrants, are top priorities for DeSantis while he prepares his likely run at the Republican 2024 presidential nomination.That might seem a curiosity, given that his state is so reliant on immigrant labor, and that almost 3 million workers, comprising more than a quarter of Florida’s entire workforce, were born overseas, according to the American Immigration Council. They fill jobs vital to Florida’s key dollar-generating industries including agriculture, construction, tourism and transportation.Yet to observers of DeSantis’s “anti-woke” world, where liberalism is the enemy, and hard-right ideology eclipses all else, it comes as little surprise.“It’s a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook, a play to elevate his national profile by using this issue to mobilize the base and get his soundbites on Fox News,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigrant advocacy organization America’s Voice.“He is using immigration as a tool to create anger, a very motivating emotion, and elevate his national profile. It’s about amplifying the narratives of chaos, of fear and, really, hate, which is damaging not just to the politics of our country, but also to the policy advancement of the issue.”Advocates in Florida are angered by the governor’s progressively hardline stance in a catalog of legislative measures that might not have drawn the same headline publicity as the Massachusetts flights, yet signal the priorities and policies he would probably pursue from the White House.DeSantis has a long history of picking fights with the Biden administration over the southern border and pursuing legal challenges to federal immigration policies.Closer to home, he and his willing Republican-dominated legislature passed a law in 2019 banning perceived sanctuary cities he believed were shielding migrants from national immigration laws. That case is still tied up in the appeals court after a federal judge ruled parts of it unconstitutional.Last year, DeSantis signed a bill mandating law enforcement to fully implement federal policies and blocking local authorities from contracting with companies that have transported undocumented aliens.But in the weeks since his landslide re-election in November, Florida’s governor has really cut loose on immigration, expanding his migrant removal program, then unveiling measures billed as his response to “Biden’s border crisis” that many consider his most extreme package yet.One part, removing in-state university tuition rates for undocumented students, put him at odds with his own party’s lieutenant governor, Jeanette Nuñez, who sponsored the 2014 bill introducing the tuition discounts, and his Republican predecessor Rick Scott who signed it. While Scott has said he would do so again, the ever-loyal Nuñez has reversed her position.Florida’s business leaders are also concerned by a new requirement to use the internet-based E-Verify employment checking system to deny jobs to those who are undocumented, while those without papers would be denied ID cards and driver’s licenses.Another alarming strand, flagged this week by the New York Times, would require hospitals to establish and report to the state a patient’s immigration status.Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, is worried by the proposed felony criminalization and lengthy prison sentences for anyone who “harbors or transports” an undocumented alien knowingly. She said it could affect parents whose child invites an undocumented classmate to their birthday party, or a carer who took an undocumented senior to a medical appointment.“It’s government overreach. He’s using a facade of protection for government overreach and fascism, controlling every part of everybody’s life,” she said.The effect of DeSantis’s immigration crackdown has been chilling. Rubén Ortiz, a pastor in DeLand whose congregation is almost exclusively from South and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean, says they are “terrified”.“I’m getting calls saying: ‘Pastor, can you find someone to take care of our kids if we are deported?’ Others are looking to return to their own country,” he said.“They can call us if they have any incident with the police, a traffic stop or whatever, and now they say: ‘Will the future be worse?’ It’s not only going to school with the kids, it’s if we get sick, and it’s mandatory for hospitals to verify legal status.“People are basically living in the shadows. These people are just looking for a better life, a better place to live. They already had a horrible journey to the US, they’re established and flourishing right now. This is repeating their nightmare and affecting their ability to dream.”The economic impact of DeSantis’s policies is also a concern for Cárdenas, of America’s Voice.“Immigrants contribute like $600m in taxes at the state and local level, 36% of businesses are immigrant owned, so once the business community starts thinking about the implications of what DeSantis is proposing, it’s going to be eye-opening,” she said.“It’s really out of step with our economic needs, which is a top issue for every voter.”She pointed to the rejection of Trump-style immigration extremism in the midterms as a warning for DeSantis. “The majority of the electorate supports immigration and a progressive vision when it comes to policy. They’re Americans who recognize the important place immigrants play in our economy, they want us to have a compassionate system, and they really value our heritage as a nation of immigrants.“It’s such a disservice to the issues Americans care about when we have these kinds of leaders who are amplifying again not just hateful rhetoric that hurts immigrants, but also is not in the best interest of our nation.”Petit, meanwhile, is certain DeSantis will try to project his agenda on to the national stage, noting that he won re-election as governor by 19 points last year and that his Republican legislative supermajority in Florida has left him in effect untouchable.“He’s gotten to the point where there’s a part of his form of governance that is showing up because he has become too empowered. He feels unstoppable,” she said.“It’s what his governance could look like in 2024 for the United States, should he get elected, so people need to pay attention to what he’s doing.”DeSantis, who has previously sent Florida law enforcement officials to help patrol the US southern border with Mexico, continues to paint the immigration debate as a national crisis. He says the nearly 11,000 migrants repatriated from his state since last August are a consequence of the Biden administration “losing control” of the country’s borders.“As Biden’s border crisis continues unabated, my administration is working hard to protect our communities and businesses from the many threats posed by illegal immigration,” he said in a statement announcing his latest crackdown in February.Petit isn’t buying it, and sees DeSantis’s actions as a performance designed to capture Trump’s hardline base for his own presidential ambitions.“I think he realized that when Trump was president people wanted to see a strong presidency, and the fact Trump was a bully got everybody excited,” she said.“He wants to be a bully, except the danger is he’s much more subtle. He’s doing the same things in a much more subtle way and using immigrants as pawns to advance his popularity.” More