US Politics

Donald Trump, the former US president, continued to invoke retribution and violence on Saturday when he used the first rally of his 2024 election campaign to rail against prosecutors weighing a criminal charge against him.Efforts by Trump’s team to steer a more conventional, disciplined candidacy have wilted in recent days as the 76-year-old unleashed words and images that – even by his provocative standards – are unusually dehumanising, menacing and dangerous.He opened the rally by playing a song, “Justice for All”, that features a choir of men imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection singing the national anthem intercut with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.Trump stood solemnly on a podium with hand on heart and footage from the Capitol riot was shown on big screens and US flags billowed in the wind. “That song tells you a lot because it’s number one in every single category,” he told a crowd of thousands. “Number two was Taylor Swift, number three was Miley Cyrus.”The choice of location for the rally was also striking: Waco, a city in Texas, exactly 30 years after a 51-day standoff and deadly siege between law enforcement and the Branch Davidians that resulted in the deaths of more than 80 members of the religious cult and four federal agents.It came with Trump facing the prospect of becoming the first president in US history to be indicted. A grand jury in New York investigating a hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, who alleged a sexual encounter with Trump, a claim he denies.Trump falsely predicted his own arrest on Tuesday last week and called for protests without adding that they should be peaceful. On his Truth Social platform he warned of “potential death & destruction” if he is eventually charged.He also used increasingly racist rhetoric as he launched ever more personal attacks against Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, raising fears that supporters could try to lash out on his behalf. Trump even shared an image of himself holding a baseball bat next to a picture of Bragg.Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, said: “The twice-impeached former president’s rhetoric is reckless, reprehensible and irresponsible. It’s dangerous, and if he keeps it up he’s going to get someone killed.”On Friday a powdery substance was found with a threatening letter in a mailroom at Bragg’s offices; officials later determined the substance was harmless.Yet at Saturday’s rally at Waco airport, there was little sign of Trump heeding the warnings and cooling off. Behind him supporters held signs that said, “Witch hunt”, “I stand with Trump” and “Trump 2024”.The 45th president repeated his false claim that the the 2020 presidential election was “rigged”, praised the rioters of January 6 and raged against the “weaponization of law enforcement”, branding the prosecutors overseeing multiple investigations into his conduct as “absolute human scum”.Wearing a dark jacket, white shirt and no tie, he said: “I got bad publicity and my poll numbers have gone through the roof – would you explain this to me … It gets so much publicity that the case actually gets adjudicated in the press and people see it’s bullshit.”Trump claim that his personal life “has been turned upside down” because of “prosecutorial misconduct by radical left maniacs” and framed the various investigations as political attacks coordinated by Democrats in Washington.He said: “You will be vindicated and proud. The thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system will be defeated, discredited and totally disgraced.”He declared that his “enemies are desperate to stop us”, and “our opponents have done everything they can to crush our spirit and to break our will. But they failed. They’ve only made us stronger. And 2024 is the final battle, it’s going to be the big one. You put me back in the White House, their reign will be over and America will be a free nation once again.”Trump also launched his most sweeping attack yet on Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, seen as his strongest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination.“He’s dropping like a rock and I wonder why,” Trump said of DeSantis’s recent slippage in opinion polls. He went to repeat his claim that DeSantis had begged for Trump’s endorsement with “tears in his eyes” when he was running for governor. “I did rallies for Ron that were massive rallies.”Trump claimed that Florida had been successful for “decades” before DeSantis took office and accused him of disloyalty. “But when a man, you know, you get him elected and there’s no quid pro quo … He gets the nomination because of you, he wins the election because of you. Two years later, the fake news is up there saying, ‘Will you run against the president? Will you run?’ And he says, ‘I have no comment.’ I say, that’s not supposed to happen. ‘I have no comment.’ No. So I’m not a big fan.”Trump’s critics described the rally as anti-democratic and un-American. The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said in a statement: “Trump doubled down on his usual violent rhetoric and threats against his political enemies. After spending this week threatening the New York City district attorney Alvin Bragg and calling for ‘protests’, he talked about the ‘final battle’, ‘weaponization’ of the office, and how he would be the ‘justice’ for his supporters.“His choice of Waco on the anniversary of the Branch Davidian standoff was to embrace the rightwing extremists who gave him the violent protests he craves. His followers got the message, loud and clear.”The grand jury investigating Trump’s alleged hush money payment is expected to meet again Monday in New York. More

The business jet flight that killed a former White House official earlier this month violently pitched up and down after pilots addressed cockpit warnings by switching off a system meant to keep the aircraft stable, but it did not encounter turbulence as was initially reported, federal investigators have said.Dana Hyde’s death on 3 March was the subject of a preliminary National Transportation Safety report Friday which described a series of mishaps before and after the Bombardier plane she was on swooped out of control.The report stopped short of reaching any conclusions about what caused the accident that fatally injured Hyde, but it described how the Bombardier Challenger 300’s pilots followed a checklist and turned off a switch that “trims” – or adjusts the stabilizer on the plane’s tail – after several alerts confronted them in the cockpit. The crew and passengers were then exposed to forces that were about four times the force of gravity when the plane’s nose swept, pointed down and then turned up again before pilots could retake control, the safety board’s report said.Though board officials had said the day after the accident that there was severe turbulence when the plane pitched, the pilots told investigators they had actually not encountered any turbulence, according to the report published Friday.Friday’s report said that the pilots had to abort their initial takeoff because no one removed a plastic cover from an exterior tube that determines airspeed, and they took off with a rudder limiter fault alert on. Another alert warned those aboard about the autopilot stabilizer trim failure. The plane began its violent pitching as the pilots turned the stabilizer trim switch from primary to off while working through a checklist of procedures, the report added.Hyde, 55, was flying from Keene, New Hampshire, to Leesburg, Virginia, with her husband, Jonathan Chambers, and one of her sons, who was visiting schools. The three passengers were reportedly thrown around as the plane convulsed.It was unclear if Hyde had her seatbelt on or was moving around when that happened. But the two pilots diverted the plane – owned by the Kansas City-based rural broadband consulting firm Conexon, where Chambers is a partner – to Connecticut’s Bradley international airport, and Hyde was brought to a hospital where she was pronounced dead from blunt-force injuries.No one else was injured.A Federal Aviation Administration mandate last year had ordered pilots flying the twin-engine jet to conduct extra safety checks because of the plane’s trim system. The FAA handed down that mandate after multiple instances in which the horizontal stabilizer on Bombardier Challenger 300 jets caused the plane’s nose to turn down after pilots attempted making them climb.In a statement to the Associated Press, Bombardier said it was “carefully studying” Friday’s report but otherwise didn’t respond directly to its contents. The Canadian jet manufacturer had maintained in a previous statement that its Challenger 300 jets were airworthy.The two pilots in charge of the Challenger 300 where Hyde was mortally injured had a combined 13,000 hours of flying time and were rated to fly for airlines.A former airline pilot who is now a safety consultant, John Cox, told the AP that there were “definitely issues” with the pilots’ pre-flight actions, but they reacted correctly by following the checklist after the trim failure.Hyde lived in Cabin John, Maryland, which is a little more than 30 miles from Leesburg. Having grown up in rural eastern Oregon, she worked as a special assistant in the Bill Clinton White House and was then a senior adviser in the US state department during Barack Obama’s presidency.She was also an associate director of the White House office of management and budget, an attorney who worked on the commission that investigated the deadly September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, and a co-chairperson for the Aspen Partnership for an Inclusive Economy. Her family planned to bury her in Israel, where she and Chambers worked before they developed an affinity for the country and its people, Hyde’s husband wrote in an email to Conexon associates after her death.“Dana was the best person I ever knew,” Chambers wrote in the email. “She was a wonderful mother to our boys and she was accomplished professionally. She loved and was beloved.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

Stacey Abrams has been hailed as a masterly community organizer, after she helped turn out the voters that secured two Senate seats for Democrats in once solidly red Georgia. She has also run twice – unsuccessfully – for state governor. For her next move, she’s not focusing on electoral power so much as power itself.Recently she left the world of campaign politics and took a job as senior counsel for the non-profit Rewiring America. Her role will focus on helping thousands of people across America wean their homes and businesses off fossil fuels and on to electricity, at a moment when scientists have given a “final warning” about the need to curb greenhouse gas emissions and prevent global catastrophe.“We are at an inflection point where we can choose to electrify,” she said in an interview. “We don’t have to do it everywhere, all at once. If you want to see what the future looks like, we start building it here and now.”The impetus for her role comes from significant moves taken by the Biden administration. When he signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) last year, President Joe Biden hailed it as “the biggest step forward on climate ever”. It includes a sprawling array of tax credits, rebates and other incentives to help people electrify their lives.“The government has basically filled a bank account for you with thousands of dollars that will help you go electric,” Abrams said.Her mission is to help people access that so-called bank account.“You can improve your indoor air quality, make cooking quick and easy, make being cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and be more affordable,” Abrams said. “But we have to talk about it.”Abrams is perhaps best known for registering 800,000 voters in Georgia through her voting rights advocacy organization Fair Fight Action. She wants to use a similar playbook with electrification, and doing so could benefit many of the same people whose voices risked going unheard in elections.Low-income communities and communities of color have long had to contend with polluting, inefficient appliances. This has an impact on public health by increasing the risk of asthma and leads to higher utility bills that take a bigger bite out of households’ income. The IRA takes aim at some of those wrongs, with tax credits and rebates that can help those households swap in heat pumps, induction stoves and electric vehicles for their gas-powered counterparts.But figuring out what incentives you qualify for and how to access them can be involved, to say the least. While Rewiring America has a calculator that lets individuals suss out what IRA benefits they can snag, Abrams will be taking that and other tools to the community level. She highlighted how houses of worship could be prime places to talk about the IRA and a potential target for outreach.And she hopes to work with local leaders such as teachers, mayors and city council members to make the IRA a kitchen table issue. Enlisting them will, she hopes, eventually lead to neighbors talking to neighbors about how much money they saved on a new induction stove or how much more comfortable their home was during a heatwave thanks to a newly installed heat pump.“You meet people where they are, not where you want them to be,” she said. “That means understanding the lives they’re living and the questions they have and who they go to to talk about their questions.”While the IRA has the potential to be transformative, it’s also not enough to electrify every household in the country. The law has billions set aside for home upgrades, but more resources will be needed to achieve the Biden administration’s goal of reducing US emissions up to 52% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAn analysis by the Rhodium Group found the law has the potential to cut emissions by up to 42%. And that it could reduce home energy bills by $717 to $1,146 by 2030.Abrams said that, based on her experience in the arena of voting rights, the prospect of such benefits could help foster an electrification movement. “As people get more, they expect more,” she said. “The most sustainable movement is when people expect more and are willing to work for more.”This isn’t Abrams’ first foray into climate. She was quick to point out her college senior thesis was on environmental justice and that she interned with the Environmental Protection Agency. During her tenure in the Georgia house of representatives, she also worked as minority leader to help pass a bill that included the state’s biggest influx of cash for public transportation.Ultimately, the Biden administration wants the US to reach net zero by mid-century. It might be hard to imagine that occurring – a distant future, when perhaps technologies that are only nascent today like carbon dioxide removal will be more widespread, almost every car and home will be electric, and the inequalities targeted by the IRA and Biden’s executive orders will have dwindled.That scenario can read a bit like science fiction – a genre of which Abrams is a well-known fan.“In almost every sci-fi story, it begins with what decisions people are making long before the story takes place,” she said. More

When Donald Trump took his final walk from the White House, boarded a helicopter and vanished into a cold sky, millions of Americans breathed a sigh of relief. With the former US president retired to his Mar-a-Lago estate, they reasoned, they would no longer live in constant dread of new scandals or impulsive tweets.Two years and two months later, it turns out that Trump addiction is hard to beat. His legal perils have dominated headlines all week. Republicans continue to define themselves in relation to him. He remains the favourite for the party nomination in next year’s presidential election. Trump is still living rent-free in the nation’s head.“The hope that Donald Trump would melt away into Mar-a-Lago seems sweetly nostalgic,” said Jane Dailey, a history professor at the University of Chicago. “There is something about Donald Trump that fascinates and grabs the gaze and holds on to it. Nothing seems to hurt him ever. It’s just bizarre. Every single time we’ve thought he’s gone too far, he’s been rewarded.”Now 76, Trump has continued to make news and make himself impossible to ignore. His conduct before and during the January 6 insurrection was the subject of primetime congressional hearings. He inserted himself into the midterm elections for Congress and declared his own presidential run. And now he is on the brink of becoming the first American president charged with a crime.A grand jury in New York is examining his involvement in a $130,000 payment made in 2016 to adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep her from going public about an alleged sexual encounter years earlier. Trump has denied the claim, insisted he did nothing wrong and assailed the investigation, led by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, as politically motivated.With an indictment seemingly imminent, Trump last weekend used his Truth Social platform to predict that he would be arrested on Tuesday and call for his supporters to protest. With that single post, he triggered a week of breathless will-he-won’t-he media coverage and speculation that demonstrated, far from moving on from Trump, America remains as in thrall to him as ever.New York police erected security barricades outside the Manhattan criminal court and Bragg’s office. News outlets deployed teams of reporters and braced for the spectacle of the former president in handcuffs. Fake AI-generated images of Trump being arrested received millions of views online. Pundits debated whether Bragg’s case hinges on an untested legal theory and whether it will benefit Trump politically by galvanising his base.Tuesday came and went without an arrest, though the prospect of it reportedly helped Trump raise $1.5m in three days. The breaking news from the grand jury was no news: it gradually became clear that it would not reach a decision this week. Trump fired off a barrage of messages on Truth Social, describing Bragg as an “animal” who is “doing the work of Anarchists and the Devil”.He also contrived to turn his imminent disgrace into a loyalty test for Republicans who for nearly eight years have rallied around him over and over again.Dozens of congressional Republicans gathered at a conference in Orlando, Florida, to discuss the party’s legislative achievements instead found themselves talking about Trump and his potential indictment. Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House of Representatives, told reporters: “I think you know in your heart of hearts that this is just political. And I think that’s what the rest of the country thinks. And we’re kind of tired of that.”House Republicans drew comparisons with the Russian collusion saga and set about investigating the investigator. In a letter to Bragg on Monday, they demanded communications, documents and testimony relating to the “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority and the potential indictment” of Trump. Bragg dismissed the effort as “an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty”.Potential rivals in the 2024 Republican primary were also forced to respond, rushing to defence rather than risking alienating his base. Former vice-president Mike Pence said Americans do not want to see Trump indicted. The New Hampshire governor, Chris Sununu, and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a frequent Trump critic, suggested that he was being unfairly prosecuted.Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who has been losing ground to Trump in recent opinion polls, offered a mixed assessment when asked to address the potential indictment. He condemned Bragg as a “George Soros-backed” prosecutor “pursuing a political agenda and weaponising the office” but also said pointedly: “I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.”Just as in the 2016 election, when Trump received free media coverage worth billions of dollars, these contenders were forced to talk about him rather than establishing their own identity or setting their own agenda. Political analysts suggested that it will be hard for any of his Republican rivals to cut through the noise.Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York, said: “DeSantis keeps aligning himself more and more with Trump’s own views. He talks about the witch-hunt of the New York DA and is clearly trying to capture Trump voters and keep himself on their good side in case something happens to Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“But that’s not necessarily a winning strategy, because if Trump doesn’t have anything damaging that’s going to take him down, then DeSantis isn’t going to go anywhere. He can’t win Trump voters if Trump is still a viable option. For others, just getting room in the public sphere is going to be hard because Trump is the 500lb gorilla.”The hush money case is only the beginning: Trump is under scrutiny from special counsel Jack Smith for his efforts to overthrow the 2020 election and mishandling of classified documents after leaving office. In Georgia a prosecutor has been investigating whether Trump and his allies illegally meddled in the election in that state.Although Trump’s call for protests this week fell flat, the higher-stakes investigations are only likely to drive up the temperature and increase the potential for social unrest heading into the 2024 election. On Thursday he wrote on Truth Social: “Our country is being destroyed, as they tell us to be peaceful!” – implying that peaceful demonstrations might not be enough.Yet there is little prospect of the media ending its obsession with Trump given the way his perpetual dramas translate into ratings. Some commentators argue that his continued presence also suits Democrats just fine because he unites their coalition and has proven beatable in elections.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “It’s extremely depressing that elements of the left want to keep scratching at the national scab. It takes two to tango and we definitely have a willing partner in this. Alvin Bragg does not have to bring this prosecution and yet he chooses to do so. Let’s apportion blame to all contributing actors.”Trump’s enduring grip on the national psyche marks yet another break from his presidential predecessors, who have largely devoted their time to preserving their legacies through philanthropic work and presidential libraries. Although Barack Obama continues to campaign on behalf of Democrats during election campaigns, he no longer drives news cycles.Trump’s refusal to leave the stage did not surprise Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and biographer of Abraham Lincoln. “Our long national nightmare continues,” he said. “It was a delusion to believe, even after the coup attempt and the insurrection of January 6, that Trump would just fade away and cease to be a factor and that politics as usual could be resumed between two normal political parties.”He added: “I don’t know if it requires the brandishing of a cross and the wearing of garlic to deal with the vampire. It’s entirely possible and even likely that Trump could be the Republican nominee and has a possibility of re-entering the White House to, as he has promised, abrogate the constitution and the republic, destroy the western alliance and, in effect, rule as a dictator.” More

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Ron DeSantis, the rightwing Florida governor and rising Republican star, has said he would not accept an offer to be Donald Trump’s running mate because he is “probably more of an executive guy”.“I think that you want to be able to do things,” the Florida governor told the hard-right Newsmax channel.DeSantis has not yet entered the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination but he is Trump’s only serious rival in polling and is widely expected to announce his run in the coming months. DeSantis’s growing influence in Republican politics has seen Trump turn his guns on his ambitions.This week, relations between the two men turned especially sour.Though DeSantis has dutifully attacked Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney expected to indict Trump, he has also floated criticism of Trump for making the hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels that is at issue in New York.DeSantis has also questioned Trump’s governing style and handling of the Covid pandemic. Performing a U-turn on the Ukraine war after widespread criticism of earlier remarks, DeSantis moved away from the isolationist position favoured by Trump and much of the right of the party.Trump has fired off nicknames, abuse and insinuations about DeSantis’s behaviour around young women as a teacher and even that he might be gay.Perhaps correspondingly, the former president has increased his polling lead.Despite all that, on Thursday the Newsmax host Eric Bolling asked DeSantis if he would consider becoming Trump’s vice-president.“I think I’m probably more of an executive guy,” DeSantis said. “I think that you want to be able to do things. That’s part of the reason I got into this job is because we have action. We’re able to make things happen, and I think that’s probably what I am best suited for.“The whole [Republican] party, regardless of any personalities or individuals, you have got to be looking at 2024 and saying, if the Biden regime continues, and they’re able to pick up 10 to 15 seats in the House and a Senate seat or two, this country is going to be in really, really bad shape.”The governor then plugged his book, The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.Rather than a primary campaign, DeSantis has mounted a book tour: in part because under Florida law he is supposed to resign his state office to pursue a federal post.On Friday, the Daily Beast detailed what it said were “a few road bumps” hit by the tour, including the withdrawal of the top event coordinator.Amid reports of missing podiums and snubbed power brokers, a source described as a “seasoned GOP presidential campaign strategist” told the Beast: “This is amateur hour.” Another “Republican observer” said the operation was “out over its skis”.A “Florida Republican consultant who has advised DeSantis” said: “I think it’s gone poorly. I hear nothing but they are unhappy.”Such reports have provoked glee in the Trump camp. In a message viewed by the Guardian, one veteran operative said: “Heard this was coming. No one is running the place.”Many primaries feature an early frontrunner who soon flames out. Examples include Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor who went nowhere quickly in 2016, and Howard Dean of Vermont, who crashed out after a strong start in the Democratic race in 2004.Discussing DeSantis’s decision to take shots at Trump, the anonymous Republican strategist told the Beast: “If you’re running for president … you’re selling to the largest stakeholder audience anyone could have. Why would he go out there … and offend voters that you need?“I think that they blew it. People need to remember, when you peak too soon, that’s a problem. And DeSantis peaked too soon.” More

A lawyer representing a key witness in the investigation into Donald Trump over hush money payments has drawn comparisons between the case and the sex scandal that embroiled Bill Clinton, as it became clear there would be no indictment in the Trump investigation until next week at the earliest.Lanny Davis, who represents Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, hypothesized about what might have happened if Clinton had handled his affair with Monica Lewinsky differently.Clinton was impeached in his second term after lying about his relationship with Lewinsky while he was president. Davis, who served as a special adviser to Clinton, speculated about how the Democrat might have been perceived if a representative had paid money to Lewinsky.Cohen, who was Trump’s lawyer and fixer for more than a decade before he turned on his former boss, paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels to prevent her from going public with allegations that she and Trump slept together a decade before he won the White House.“I won’t mention the name of the former president I worked for,” Davis told Politico in an interview.“But can you imagine if … he had written personal checks as part of that controversy?“Can you imagine if I had personal checks out of a checking account of a sitting president that reimburses a hush money scheme, and then I used a legal argument to say why he should get off: because New York state law doesn’t apply to federal law? Good luck!”Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison for ​​tax evasion and campaign-finance violations related to the Daniels payment, has been a key witness in the investigation into Trump.The now-disbarred lawyer paid Daniels through a shell company, and was then reimbursed through Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses. The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is leading the investigation into potential wrongdoing by Trump.Davis, a lawyer and longtime political operative, claimed in the Politico interview that he himself had triggered that investigation by speaking to Cyrus Vance, Bragg’s predecessor.“Cyrus Vance Sr was the secretary of state under Jimmy Carter – I’m showing my age now […] I was in my 20s when President Carter was elected,” Davis told Politico.“And I got to know Mr Vance. So his son, being the DA of [Manhattan], I called after Michael was sent to prison.”Davis said he believed “the evidence of financial fraud was on the record in the [congressional] hearings and that Vance’s office should interview Michael”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“They came to Otisville [the prison where Cohen served some of his sentence] … They did manage to get a visit, and then two and then three separate visits at the beginning,” Davis said.“And that’s how it began.”Davis’s interview came as the investigation into Trump rolled on in New York. Reports had suggested Trump would be indicted this week – Trump himself claimed, wrongly, last weekend that he would be arrested on Tuesday – but the grand jury hearing the case is not due to meet again until Monday.In the meantime Trump, who is the subject of multiple other legal inquiries, warned on Friday of “potential death and destruction” should he be charged in the case.In a rambling, idiosyncratically punctuated message posted on Truth Social, a niche rightwing social media network that he owns, at 1am, Trump wrote:“What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country? Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely [sic] hates the USA!” More

Speaking recently at a theater in Davenport, Iowa, Donald Trump marveled at the crowd’s reaction when he vowed to “bring back parental rights into our schools”. The line elicited thunderous applause – one of the loudest ovations of his nearly two-hour address.“Can you imagine what I’m doing? I’m saying, ‘Parents, you have rights’ … and the place goes crazy,” remarked the former president, who is again seeking the Republican nomination.With the 2024 election cycle looming, Republicans are leaning into the education culture wars, championing policies that they say will give parents more of a say in their children’s education, from the subjects they are taught to the books they read, with hopes of appealing to suburban voters who recoiled from the party during the Trump years. In their telling, Republicans are the defenders of America’s schoolchildren whose education is threatened by a leftwing ideology that promotes activism, racial history and gender fluidity over academic outcomes.But critics and many educators say conservatives are using the term “parents’ rights” as a guise to advance a rightwing education agenda that undermines public schools, whitewashes American history and marginalizes LGBTQ+ students.The debate took center stage in the House this week, where Republicans broke into cheers after narrowly advancing their “Parents Bill of Rights”. Friday’s vote followed a contentious 16-hour committee hearing and a bitter floor debate over the legislation, whose sponsor argued would “bring more transparency and accountability to education” and whose opponents derisively rebranded the “politics over parents act”.Democrats argued that the bill would only serve to embolden a far-right movement that has pushed book bans, restrictions on the instruction of American history and turned classrooms into “ground zero” for conservative culture wars.“This legislation has nothing to do with parental involvement,” said Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader. “It has everything to do with jamming the extreme Maga Republican ideology down the throats of the children and the parents of the United States of America.”Though the legislation has little chance of advancing in the Democratic-controlled Senate, it will serve as a rallying cry for Republicans on the campaign trail.‘A line in the sand’The origins of the “parents’ rights” movement, experts say, can be traced back to the 1925 “trial of the century” in which a Tennessee biology teacher was fined for teaching evolution in violation of state law. The term has been invoked repeatedly in the decades since, notably in clashes related to desegregation, the red scare, sex education and homeschooling.“The idea of parents’ rights is really nothing new in American politics,” said Melissa Deckman, the CEO of the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute who has written extensively about culture war battles in education.The present-day movement emerged in response to the upheaval sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, when extended school lockdowns led to a burst of political activism by parents who felt overwhelmed and abandoned, and by the racial justice protests that erupted in the summer of 2020, with the murder of George Floyd. Conservative politicians were quick to seize on any backlash, channeling voter frustration into a sophisticated national campaign aimed at restricting instruction on race and gender.As the presidential primary begins to take shape, the notional field of Republican hopefuls are using the education battles to distinguish themselves on an issue they believe has the potential to motivate their base.By far the most aggressive education culture warrior has been Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is widely seen as Trump’s strongest rival for the Republican nomination, though he has not formally entered the contest.“I think we have really done a great job of drawing a line in the sand to say the purpose of our schools is to educate kids not to indoctrinate kids,” DeSantis said at a recent event in Des Moines, Iowa.He has pointed to his successes in Florida, where he notably signed into law the Parental Rights in Education Act, branded by critics as “don’t say gay”, which forbids the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in early elementary grades. He also approved the “Stop Woke Act” that restricts conversations around race in schools, colleges and even private workplaces; banned transgender athletes from competing on women’s sports teams at public schools and colleges; and blocked high schools in the state from offering an Advanced Placement course on African American studies.Emboldened by his re-election victory, DeSantis is now pushing a raft of education-related proposals that would go even further ahead of an anticipated White House run.Not to be outflanked, Trump and the budding field of GOP candidates and potential contenders have also sharpened their attacks on the education system.In Iowa this month, Trump vowed to prohibit the teaching of “critical race theory”, “transgender insanity” and “any other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” in public classrooms while calling for universal school choice, the direct election of school principals by parents and breaking up the Department of Education.Former vice-president Mike Pence, who built a reputation as a staunch social conservative and is weighing a run for president, has also staked out territory in the education wars, pushing what he calls a “parents’ rights” agenda. In Iowa last month, he stood with conservative parents as a federal appeals court considered a case involving a local school district’s policy to support transgender students.Nikki Haley, Trump’s former UN ambassador who is now challenging him for the nomination, has denounced critical race theory as “un-American” and blamed leftwing ideology for fueling a culture of “woke self-loathing” she has called a “virus more dangerous than any pandemic”. And in a likely preview of the education fights to come, Haley suggested Florida’s so-called “don’t say gay” law “didn’t go far enough”.‘A front-row seat’In 2021, Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the race for Virginia’s governor under the banner of “Parents matter” in a state that had been steadily trending blue offered a model for Republicans candidates across the country.“During Covid, parents for the first time weren’t just going to PTA conferences; they were literally turning their living rooms into classrooms and so they got a front-row seat to curriculum, standards, grading, teaching practices,” said Kristin Davison, a top strategist for Youngkin’s gubernatorial campaign. “That awoke a number of parents across the political spectrum to demand more out of their schools.”As governor, Youngkin issued a day one executive order prohibiting the teaching of “inherently divisive concepts, including critical race theory” from Virginia classrooms and overhauled policies related to transgender students in public schools. He also set up a tip line for parents to report teachers who raise “divisive” topics in the classroom, thought it has since been shut down.With parents and teachers continuing to grapple with the repercussions of the pandemic on students – the learning loss and mental health challenges – Davison believes the education agenda championed by Republican politicians like Youngkin, who has also been raised as a potential presidential candidate in 2024, will only become more resonant with voters.Since Youngkin’s election, the conservative campaign to expand parental control over public education has moved from contentious school board meetings to state capitols and now Congress. Over the last two years, Republican-controlled legislatures have enacted or are considering a dizzying array of new proposals limiting the instruction of what proponents deem “divisive concepts” in public schools.And this week House Republicans pressed ahead with their “Parents Bill of Rights”, a centerpiece of their midterm election campaign and a top priority for the speaker, Kevin McCarthy.The measure outlines five pillars that Republicans say will guarantee a parent’s right to scrutinize library books and classroom curricula and review school budgets, among other aspects. It would also require parents’ consent before a student is allowed to change their gender designation, pronouns or name, a provision that Democrats warned would force schools to out LGBTQ+ students to their families that may not be accepting of their identity.“Parents across this country have overwhelmingly spoken out that they have had enough,” said Julia Letlow, the Republican congresswoman of Louisiana who sponsored the bill. “They want a seat at the table because at the end of the day, these are our children, not the government’s.”‘It’s just terrible what they’re doing’Democrats say the focus on divisive cultural issues distracts from the real challenges facing American students and public education – and suspect voters will punish Republicans for it.They point to the midterms results and polling as evidence that voters are more concerned about school funding, teacher shortages, student mental health and campus safety than they are about the instruction of critical race theory, an academic framework for examining systemic racism in American institutions.A pre-election memo by the Republican National Committee last year seemed to recognize that risk and last year advised candidates to center their general election pitch on “parental rights and quality education”, as opposed to cultural attacks.And though DeSantis soared to re-election last year in Florida, several other GOP candidates for governor who pushed a socially conservative agenda lost, including in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. House Republicans failed to secure the dominating majority they predicted, while many of the “parents’ rights” activists who ran for seats on their local school board came up short, even though conservative groups poured millions of dollars into winning the once-sleepy contests.“Unless we say stupid things,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said, a reference to the debate-stage blunder by the party’s nominee for Virginia governor that many believe contributed to Youngkin’s victory, “our proactive agenda of quality education, well-paid teachers, mental health and job skills beats their agenda of transgender, CRT every single time.”Democrats believe they can offer a strong contrast. They are promoting an education agenda focused on boosting federal funding for public schools and raising teachers’ pay while expanding pre-K programs and increasing college affordability, plans that face strong Republican resistance.In the president’s State of the Union address, Joe Biden, who is expected to run for re-election, proposed two years of tuition-free community college as a way to expand access to “the best career training in America”. He also used his executive authority to forgive more than $400bn in student-loan debt, an action that enraged Republicans and some Democrats and which the supreme court appears poised to invalidate.In a recent interview, Biden criticized the flurry of legislation targeting transgender students and athletes and singled out new laws in Florida as particularly problematic.“What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful,” he said. “It’s just terrible what they’re doing.”‘Peddling hysteria’For many of the teachers, parents and students caught up in the political battle of so-called parents’ rights, the impact has been disorienting and demoralizing.Public school teachers, already grappling with the impacts of the pandemic on their students’ mental health and academic achievement, are now trying to navigate a thicket of new restrictions that critics say are having a chilling effect on what they can discuss in the classroom.Educators and librarians have come under attack, inundated with conspiracy-fueled accusations that they are “grooming” students by offering books that address LGBTQ+ issues. Some have quit or retired early, exacerbating, some say, the nation’s teacher shortage.A survey by the Pew Research Center found that parents divided sharply along partisan lines when asked how their school-age children should be taught about gender identity, the legacy of slavery and whether they had enough influence over school curriculum. But some polls have found broader support for laws restricting certain instruction on gender and sexuality in elementary grades.There are areas of consensus. In general, Americans strongly oppose book bans and believe students should be taught both “the good and bad” aspects of American history. And though public attitudes on transgender rights are complex and still being shaped, especially on issues involving trans youth, Americans remain widely supportive of laws that protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination.But as the debate over parental rights in education rages, LGBTQ+ students, and especially trans youth, say the efforts to place aggressive controls on their identities is harming their mental health, while LGBTQ+ parents in states like Florida reporting that they have considered moving away to protect their families.“The politicians and rightwing zealots behind this anti-LGBTQ+ movement are peddling hysteria,” said Brandon Wolf of the LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Florida, adding: “While it’s a marketing ploy for those folks, it has had real impacts on people across the state.”Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, denounced Republicans’ attacks on public education as a “divisive” political strategy. While it may serve Republicans on the campaign trail, she said, it was doing a “disservice” in the classroom, where teachers must prepare students for a world that is socially, culturally and technologically different than the one into which their parents graduated.“I don’t think it has anything to do with parental rights or education,” she said. “I think it’s a fear of the future.” More