US Politics

Judith Heumann, activist who led US disability rights movement, dies aged 75‘Trailblazer’ fought for civil rights protections at a time when people with disabilities were treated like second-class citizensThe savvy, wheelchair-using civil rights activist Judith Heumann, who led a movement to reimagine what it means to be disabled in the US, died on Saturday at a hospital in Washington DC.Heumann had been hospitalized for a week dealing with heart issues that may have stemmed from her lifelong challenge with polio, the Associated Press reported. She was 75.People across the country, from past and present politicians and presidential figures to civil rights activists, mourned Heumann’s sudden death over the weekend. Joe Biden described her as a “trailblazer” and a “rolling warrior” whose “fierce advocacy” led to landmark civil rights legislation – the president singled out the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects people with disabilities from discrimination.Heumann, who founded the Independent Living Movement, was perhaps most recognized in recent years from her appearance in the documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, which chronicled the forgotten history of a freewheeling summer camp called Camp Jened in upstate New York for teenagers with disabilities in the 1970s.Heumann, who was born in Philadelphia in 1947 and raised in New York, contracted polio in 1949. When her mother tried to enroll her in kindergarten at a local public school, Heumann was denied entry because she was unable to walk. The principal at the time told Heumann’s mother, Ilse Heumann, that letting her attend school in a wheelchair would create a “fire hazard”. She was instead given home instruction twice a week.After Ilse challenged those restrictions, Judy was eventually allowed to enter the building.She attended Camp Jened at the age of eight and eventually became a counselor there. She continued to face the stigma and exclusionary practices surrounding her disability. As an adult, she had been denied a teaching license in New York, despite passing her exams. After she sued the city’s board of education, she became the state’s first wheelchair-using teacher.Her experience at Camp Jened inspired a groundswell of US political activism and sparked a movement of young activists with disabilities who fought for civil rights protections at a time when they were treated like second-class citizens.In a 2020 film review from when Crip Camp was released, the Guardian described her as a “captivating central figure, persuasively, passionately petitioning for equity” who refused to settle in the pursuit of broader rights even as Congress passed legislation.As an adult, Heumann – who co-founded Disabled in Action, an activist group born out of that experience at Camp Jened – notably led a sit-in that went for 28 days at a federal building to protest the US Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare’s refusal to implement regulations from a section of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. It was the longest sit-in at a federal building in US history.Her youngest brother Rick Heumann told the Associated Press that her lifelong activism had not been about seeking glory but was “always about how could she make things better for other people”.On Twitter, former president Barack Obama, who was co-executive producer of Crip Camp along with former first lady Michelle Obama, said Heumann “dedicated her life to the fight for civil rights”.The health justice activist Ady Barkan, who serves as co-executive director of Be a Hero and moves with the help of a wheelchair while fighting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, described Heumann on Twitter as “warm and witty and full of life, as always”. Barkan added: “What a privilege it was to meet her and what a gift it is to roll in the tracks she carved. Thank you Judy. Rest in power.”Shantha Rau Barriga, disability rights director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Heumann was a “true force of nature”.“She was a giant in the human rights movement and led with such integrity,” she added. “This loss will be felt far and wide but what a legacy she leaves behind.”“Beyond all of the policymaking and legal battles that she helped win and fight, she really helped make it possible for disability to not be a bad thing, to make it OK to be disabled in the world and not be regarded as a person who needs to be in a separate, special place,” the president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities, Maria Town, told the Hollywood Reporter.In Crip Camp, Heumann said that she wanted to see “feisty disabled people change the world”. Back in 2021, she told PBS News Hour that decades after the height of her activism, she had seen the country shift toward recognizing the need to address “race and gender, equality, and disability as issues”.“Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives – job opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example,” she once said. “It is not a tragedy to me that I’m living in a wheelchair.”TopicsUS newsUS politicsUS healthcarenewsReuse this content More

President Joe Biden will convene world leaders beginning on March 29, 2023, to discuss the state of democracies around the world.

The Summit for Democracy, a virtual event being co-hosted by the White House, is being touted as an opportunity to “reflect, listen and learn” with the aim of encouraging “democratic renewal.”

As political scientists, we have been doing something very similar. In the fall of 2022 we listened to thousands of U.S. residents about their views on the state of American democracy. What we found was that, despite widespread fears over the future of democracy, many people are also hopeful, and that hope translated into “voting for democracy” by shunning election result deniers at the polls.

Our study – and indeed Biden’s stated push for democracy – comes at a unique point in American political history.

As a group, we have decades of experience studying politics and believe that not since the American Civil War has there been so much concern that American democracy, while always a work in progress, is under threat. Survey trends point to eroding trust in democratic institutions. And in addition to serving as a direct reminder of our political system’s fragility, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol provoked concern of the potential of democratic backsliding in the U.S.

Fears of a failing democracy

The 2022 midterms were the first nationwide ballot to take place after the Jan. 6 attack. The vote provided a good opportunity to check in with potential U.S. voters over how they viewed the risks to democracy.

As such, in the fall of 2022, the African American Research Collaborative – of which one of us is a member – worked with a team of partners to create the Midterm Election Voter Poll. In an online and phone survey, we asked more than 12,000 U.S. voters from a variety of backgrounds a series of questions about voting intention and trust in national politics. Respondents were also quizzed over their concern about the state of American democracy.

On a five-point scale ranging from “very” to “not at all,” the survey asked how worried respondents were that: “The political system in the United States is failing and there is a decent chance that we will no longer have a functioning democracy within the next 10 years.”

Roughly 6 in 10 Americans expressed fear that democracy is in peril, with 35% saying they were “very worried.”

Broken down by race and ethnicity, white Americans were the most concerned, with 64% expressing some worry that democracy is in peril. Black and Latino Americans were slightly less concerned. Asian Americans appeared the least worried, with 55% expressing concern.

Of the 63% of respondents who registered concern, more than half said they were “very worried” that democracy is in trouble and that it may soon come to an end.

Such fragility-of-democracy concerns can have a self-perpetuating effect; voters’ increasing lack of faith in their system can hasten the collapse in government they fear.

For example, negative attitudes about democracy can also destabilize voting habits – prompting some to skip elections altogether while motivating others to swing back and forth between candidates and political parties from one election to another. This pattern of voting can, in turn, lead to gridlock in government or worse: the election of cynical politicians who are less able – or even willing – to govern. It is a process that former Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts described in 2015 as the “self-fulfilling prophesy of ‘government doesn’t work.’”

Turning hope into action

But the story that emerged from our survey isn’t all doom and gloom.

In addition to confirming how endangered Americans believe their democracy is, citizens appear hopeful that their political system can recover. When given the prompt: “Overall, as you vote in November 2022, are you mostly feeling …,” more than 40% of the respondents – regardless of race or ethnicity – said they felt “hopeful.”

Indeed, “hope” was by far the most common feeling out of the four emotions that respondents were able to choose from. “Worry” was the second most typical emotion, with 31% of the total sample selecting it, followed by “pride” and “anger.”

Rather than resigning themselves to a lost democracy, the results indicate that voters from a broad array of demographic and political backgrounds feel hopeful that American democracy can overcome the challenges facing the nation.

Black Americans were among the most hopeful (49%), second only to Asian Americans (55%), while white Americans were the most worried (33%). These racial and ethnic differences are consistent with recent research on how emotions can shape politics.

The results also make sense in the context of the trajectory of race relations in the U.S. Black people have borne the brunt of what happens when authoritarian forces in this country have prevailed. They have suffered firsthand from anti-democratic actions being used against them, depriving them of the right to vote, for example. Throughout U.S. history, stories of racial progress often reveal a struggle to reconcile feelings of hope and worry – particularly when thinking about what America is versus what the nation ought to be.

Such hope in democracy has turned into action. Efforts to counter GOP-led attempts to suppress votes are encouraging signs of citizens combating anti-democratic measures, while punishing parties deemed to be pushing them.

Take the example of Georgia, which has “flipped from Republican to Democrat” in large part because of voting rights activist and Democratic politician Stacey Abrams’ tireless mobilization efforts. In the midterm election, GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker underperformed among Black voters, winning less of the Black vote than GOP candidates in other states.

The breaking of the Republican stronghold in Georgia fits with a broader theme of Black voters casting ballots to “save democracy,” as scholars writing for the Brookings Institution think tank put it. In rejecting anti-democratic measures – and representatives of the party held responsible – in Georgia, “Black people were the solution for an authentic democracy.”

Black women deserve the most credit here, consistently voting for pro-democracy candidates. Not surprisingly, when broken down by race and gender, our survey shows that Black women are most hopeful (56%), some way ahead of white men (43%), with Black men and white women both at 42%.

A democracy, to keep for good.

Democracy has long been a cherished ideal in the U.S. – but one that from the country’s founding was perceived to be fragile.

When asked what sort of political system the Founding Fathers had agreed upon during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin famously replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

While acknowledging that the success of our government isn’t promised, Franklin’s words serve as a reminder that citizens must work relentlessly to maintain and protect what the Constitution provides. What we’ve discovered, both from our survey and from how people voted, is that Americans are sending a clear message that they support democracy, and will fight anti-democratic measures – something that politicians of all parties might benefit from listening to if we want to keep our republic. More

DeSantis lambasts California’s ‘woke ideology’ in Reagan library speechFlorida governor, expected to announce presidential run, says Democrats have been infected with a ‘woke mind virus’Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, took his fight against liberalism deep into the Democratic territory of California on Sunday, part of a national roadshow as he lays the ground for an expected White House bid.DeSantis has been meeting with wealthy donors in recent days and burnishing his national credentials in a series of speeches boasting about his achievements in Florida while lambasting the “woke ideology” of leaders in Democratic strongholds including California and New York.DeSantis, who is expected to announce a presidential run in the next few months, has made a war on liberalism a central theme of his governorship and a way to appeal to the Republican base.While he has not yet announced a White House bid, one candidate who has – former Republican president Donald Trump – clearly views DeSantis as a major potential threat as the GOP nominating contest kicks into gear. Trump has already launched personal and political attacks on DeSantis as the race for the Republican party’s 2024 presidential nomination begins to heat up.DeSantis, speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library about 50 miles north of Los Angeles, made a veiled reference to the chaos of Trump’s presidency and his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020.“You don’t see drama and palace intrigue,” DeSantis said of his governorship in Florida. “You see surgical precision and execution.”DeSantis, who narrowly won election to the governor’s mansion in 2018, touted his landslide re-election in November.He attacked Democratic governors and leaders as being infected with a “woke mind virus”. The term “woke” has become shorthand among opponents as leftwing ideology run amok.He decried their policies on tax, vaccine mandates and classroom “indoctrination”.DeSantis also took aim at Disney, which opposes a Florida law that restricts classroom instruction of gender and sexual orientation.Last month he signed a bill that takes control of a special tax district surrounding Walt Disney World that for half a century allowed it to operate with a high degree of autonomy.“There’s a new sheriff in town,” DeSantis declared, referring to what he has called the end of Disney’s “corporate kingdom”.Other candidates expected to jump into the Republican primary race include former vice-president Mike Pence and ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo. Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, declared her candidacy last month.TopicsRon DeSantisRepublicansUS politicsUS elections 2024CaliforniaFloridanewsReuse this content More

Georgia Republicans race to pass laws to restrict and challenge votesIn the final days of the legislative session, there’s also a push to create a mechanism to unseat county election board membersIn the final few days of this year’s Georgia assembly legislative session, Republican lawmakers raced to propose laws seeking to restrict voting access, and make it easier for citizens to challenge and subvert normal election processes.‘We will prosecute death threats’: Arizona’s new attorney general fights to protect election workersRead moreSenate bill 221, house bill 422 and house bill 426 are just a few of the newly proposed election laws, which come after state Republicans, including the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, praised election officials for smooth elections in the past two years. They include measures to eradicate absentee ballot drop boxes, allow citizens to more easily challenge voter registrations – which Republican conspiracy theorists had already done with little backing evidence during the midterms – and even unseal ballots for review.While some of the elements of these proposed laws offer expanded flexibility and resources for elections, including the popular bipartisan effort to eradicate runoff elections in the state, other aspects are grounded in unfounded claims and conspiracy theories surrounding mass election fraud stemming from the 2020 election.Cynthia Battles, policy and engagement director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a civil rights advocacy organization, recently raised her concerns at a hearing for house bill 426. “We continue relitigating the 2020 election, and the Georgia assembly is making legislation to try and appease some conspiracy theories,” she said.SB221: ‘weaponizing voter challenges’SB221, the most controversial law, allows voter eligibility challenges to proceed without adequate due diligence. Last year, the number of challenges statewide was nearly 100,000, yielding many unfounded claims from apparent election deniers, and clogging up the process for overwhelmed election officials during a critical time. Under SB221, voters could be purged from rolls simply based on allegations that include “a sworn statement by any person with relevant information”.“We have seen a lot of organized and weaponized groups that have been weaponizing voter challenges for partisan gain,” said Isabel Otero, Georgia policy director at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “That causes a lot of concern for us.”In addition, the bill proposes using the National Change of Address (NCOA) database to determine a voter’s eligibility to vote in elections. However, according to Otero, this could directly violate federal law.“That program is not very reliable as a tool for establishing the eligibility of a voter,” said Otero. “And there are federal laws that provide for safe harbor provisions when removing voters from the rolls using the NCOA data because the NCOA data is known to be inaccurate.”The proposed changes under SB221 don’t end at voter eligibility. In a last-minute change during a senate committee on ethics meeting, Republican senators amended the proposed legislation to include language that completely eliminates the use of drop boxes throughout the state. This comes after previous legislation slashed the number of drop boxes available by more than half after the 2020 election when record numbers of voters returned their absentee ballots via drop boxes. There is no evidence that drop boxes increase voter fraud.HB422: an assault on members of the election boardMeanwhile, house bill 422, which is specific to Ware county, would allow the political party that receives the most votes in the preceding election – in this case, the Republican party – to unseat current election board members and appoint replacements of their choosing. If this law is passed, it will unseat the county’s three Black board of elections members. This is in direct contrast to other counties in the state that hold spaces for members of both parties.Shawn Taylor, the current co-chair of the Ware county board of elections, is concerned that without safeguards in place, those nominated to the board will not properly represent the population of the county.“The board currently has three Black members,” said Taylor. “We believe that this legislation is an assault on not only the members of the board but on the Black and brown members of the community.”Fallon McClure, deputy director of the ACLU of Georgia, said HB422 is part of an alarming and growing pattern of legislation that allows biased political motivations to rule in local election boards.“We must take partisanship out of elections administration and make it a fair process where everyone can have their voice heard,” said McClure.Some south Georgia residents are concerned that even though this law currently only affects Ware county and does say that Democrats can submit nominations for the election boards, stark partisan divides make this just a formality that will give way to Democrats losing their voice.“We are very concerned that the fair process will fail,” said former state house candidate Lethia Kittrell. “Our major concern is that this is already feeding down into other areas.”HB426: removing a ‘check against partisanship’Though the proposed law’s connection to election conspiracy theories is not as direct, another proposed bill has a much clearer connection. HB426 aims to remove the court seal on paper ballot verifications. As it stands, a lawsuit must be filed to access physical copies of election documentation. However, under HB426, only a request would need to be made for public access of ballots.While the bill’s sponsor, Representative Shaw Blackmon, says it will improve transparency and help guarantee a truly “citizen-run election”, those opposed to the bill maintain that this is another tool that can disenfranchise voters and burden election officials.“The court seal provides a check against partisanship,” said Phil Olaleye, a Democratic state representative. “I would not want to lower the barrier for potentially inundating our local officials and staff with an endless stream of requests coming from folks who are upset at the politics of the day.”Anne Gray Herring of Common Cause Georgia echoed Olaleye’s sentiments. “Consider the real risks of an unmanageable quantity of review requests, including those that are made in bad faith and the limits of time and resources for county officials,” she said.Controversial election legislation is nothing new for Georgia. Like the contentious SB202 in 2021 – which overhauled the state’s voting system – these newly proposed laws will significantly affect election officials and voters.“Right now in our election system, we see an enormous amount of burnout and an enormous amount of turnover,” said Vasu Abhiraman of the ACLU of Georgia. “This should be an emergency to try to make the lives of local election officials easier.”Voting advocates like Abhiraman agree that this type of sweeping legislation each session is a direct result of election lies and conspiracy theories.“[This is] nothing more than continued political appeasement of the folks who have ripped so many lives apart and who have suppressed the vote in Georgia,” said Abhiraman.“Underlying it is the perpetuation of a false narrative and an attempt to disenfranchise a subset of voters.”TopicsUS newsThe fight for democracyGeorgiaUS voting rightsRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

How Trump’s big lie played out on the CPAC stageMost speakers focused on issues other than election integrity, but prominent election deniers were still given top billingIn the exhibit hall, vendors displayed various styles of hats declaring “Trump won” and attendees referred to former president Donald Trump as the rightful winner of the 2020 election.But on the event stage, most prominent Republican lawmakers at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) didn’t bring up Trump’s big lie. Instead they largely chose not to repeat his common talking point that rampant voter fraud cost him his re-election.A diminished but loyal Trump Maga at CPAC: ‘There’s one choice’Read moreCPAC this year was seen as a crucial barometer of the likely contours of the 2024 fight. In that regard the majority of conservatives here aligned themselves closely with the former president. But they also chose not to relitigate the 2020 election and looked ahead to the 2024 contest, repeatedly calling Trump the former and future president.Attendees said they noticed the absence of a talking point that has in the past, including at last year’s CPAC, been pervasive.“There’s a lot of gaps in the topic list,” said Suzzanne Monk, a DC resident who donned a Maga hat and a T-shirt reading: “Don’t blame me, I voted for Trump.” “The election integrity issues are kind of soft. We could be hitting a lot harder.”While most speakers focused on issues other than election integrity, prominent election deniers were still given top billing. Kari Lake, a former TV news anchor who unsuccessfully ran for Arizona governor in 2022 and who continues to challenge both the results of her own election and the 2020 presidential election, was the keynote speaker at Friday night’s Ronald Reagan dinner.Though Lake didn’t bring up claims that Trump’s election was stolen, she dedicated many minutes to describing how her own election last November was rigged.“They stole that election,” she said, referring to Democrats. “The crime was committed in broad daylight on November 8. They sabotaged election day.”She claimed that Democrats “had to pump in hundreds of thousands of phony ballots” and specifically jammed tabulators in Republican precincts to cause long lines at the polls.“I will not stand by and let these bastards get away with it,” she said.The big lie also snuck its way into other mainstage speeches in small mentions and asides.Kimberly Guilfoyle, former Trump adviser and fiancee to Donald Trump Jr, declared that conservatives must “never let another election be stolen in this country”. Steve Bannon called out Fox News for “illegitimately calling” the race in November 2020 against Trump.In the event hallways, Bannon interviewed conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, who was promoting an “election crime bureau”. Bannon said that some conservatives view election denialism as a losing issue, to which Lindell replied: “If you give it up, you lose your country.”On Saturday, Hogan Gidley, former press secretary under Trump and now vice-chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for Election Integrity, moderated a panel called They Stole it From Us Legally, which he said would focus on how to “make it easy to vote but hard to cheat”.Abe Hamadeh, an election denier who lost the race for Arizona attorney general in November, claimed that incompetence cost him the election.“What happened on election day is a disgrace to democracy,” he said, calling out what he said were major issues in Maricopa county. “But it ain’t over yet.”Hamadeh, like Lake, has challenged his loss in court and continues to claim that voters were disfranchised. “We need to make sure that there’s competency and people are held accountable,” he said.On the same panel, former Republican representative Lee Zeldin said that if Democrats are going to “ballot harvest”, conservatives need to lean in and do the same.“We’ve got to get out there and ballot harvest the heck out of the next election and they’re going to want to change that policy,” Gidley said, agreeing with Zeldin.Ahead of the panel on Saturday, Monk lamented that too many CPAC discussions focused on topics not as relevant to the conservative audience. “Look, I’m opposed to big tech censorship too, but I don’t think that’s the most pressing issue facing conservatives right now and I think the topics we’re listening to right now demonstrate kind of a soft pedaling rather than where I think these attendees are,” she said.Monk said she thinks Matt Schlapp, the chairman of CPAC who was recently accused of sexual misconduct by a Republican campaign staffer, “might be a little off the pulse”.“Long before Donald Trump and the 2020 election, we’ve had election integrity issues,” she added. “It’s very hard to prosecute election fraud, so we need to start. We need to fix that before we have elections.”But others were less concerned about the readiness to move on from 2020. “I’m not the type of person who thinks it was, per se, stolen,” said Orlando resident Luis Marrero.TopicsCPACUS politicsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS elections 2020US elections 2024featuresReuse this content More

Biden pays tribute to heroes of Selma’s ‘Bloody Sunday’ and highlights voting rightsThe president spoke of the civil rights movement march that led to passage of landmark voting rights legislation nearly 60 years agoJoe Biden paid tribute to the heroes of the “Bloody Sunday” civil rights march nearly 60 years ago and used its annual commemoration to warn of an ongoing threat to US democracy from election deniers and the erosion of voting rights.The US president joined thousands of people in Selma, Alabama to mark the movement that led to passage of landmark voting rights legislation shortly after peaceful marchers were brutally attacked by law enforcement on a bridge though town.Speaking on a Selma stage with the bridge as a backdrop, Biden warned that the right to vote in the US – which the civil rights marchers had sought to gain for Black Americans – was far from safe amid a concerted push to weaken voting rights legislation across the US and prominent Republican efforts to call into question election results.“The right to vote – to have your vote counted – is the threshold of democracy … This fundamental rights remains under assault,” Biden said.He added: We have to remain vigilant … In America hate and extremism will not prevail though they are raising their ugly heads again.”The speech presented Biden with a chance to speak directly to the current generation of civil rights activists. Many feel dejected because the president has been unable to make good on a campaign pledge to bolster voting rights and are eager to see his administration keep the issue in the spotlight.‘We’re hitting the soil’: Georgia activists mobilize voters in an off yearRead moreBiden underscored the importance of commemorating Bloody Sunday so that history can’t be erased, while making the case that the fight for voting rights remains integral to delivering economic justice and civil rights for Black Americans, according to White House officials.This year’s commemoration came as the historic city of roughly 18,000 is still digging out from the aftermath of a January EF-2 tornado that destroyed or damaged thousands of properties in and around Selma.Ahead of Biden’s visit, the Rev William Barber II, a co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, along with six other activists wrote to the president and members of Congress to express their frustration with the lack of progress on voting rights legislation.In his speech, Biden vowed to push ahead with those laws and also to keep up the pressure to get new laws passed on police reform, though that will not be easy now that Republicans control the House of Representatives after securing a narrow win in the 2022 midterm elections.Other parts of Biden’s address sounded like a stump speech as the US awaits a widely expected announcement from the president that he will run for a second term. He touted his economic achievements and strove to strike a tone of optimism for the US as it seeks to overcome hard times.Former president Donald Trump has already declared his own intention to run for the White House again. Trump’s own election pitch is full of false claims about the 2020 election though he remains a strong favorite to secure the Republican nomination.Few moments have had as lasting importance to the civil rights movement as what happened on 7 March 1965 in Selma and in the weeks that followed.Some 600 peaceful demonstrators led by Lewis and Williams had gathered that day, just weeks after the fatal shooting of a young Black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by an Alabama trooper.Lewis, who would later serve in the US House representing Georgia, and the others were brutally beaten by Alabama troopers and sheriff’s deputies as they tried to cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus bridge at the start of what was supposed to be a 54-mile walk to the state capital in Montgomery, part of a larger effort to register Black voters in the south.The images of the police violence sparked outrage across the country. Days later, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr led what became known as the “Turnaround Tuesday” march, in which marchers approached a wall of police at the bridge and prayed before turning back.President Lyndon B Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eight days after Bloody Sunday, calling Selma one of those rare moments in American history when “history and fate meet at a single time”.The Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsCivil rights movementUS voting rightsJoe BidenUS politicsAlabamaMartin Luther KingnewsReuse this content More

Larry Hogan won’t run against Trump but warns party of ‘cult of personality’Former Maryland governor says in op-ed he won’t be entering 2024 race and warns Republicans of putting Trump back in White HouseA top Republican figure has warned that the party under Donald Trump has become a “cult of personality” and it could not afford to try and put the former US president back in the White House in 2024.Larry Hogan, a former Maryland governor, had been widely tipped to enter the party’s nomination race but instead used an op-ed in the New York Times on Sunday to announce he would not be running and to warn against Trump’s own 2024 campaign.A diminished but loyal Trump Maga at CPAC: ‘There’s one choice’Read more“I would never run for president to sell books or position myself for a cabinet role. I have long said that I care more about ensuring a future for the Republican party than securing my own future in the Republican party,” Hogan wrote.He went on to warn that the Republican party cannot be successful if it puts “personality before principle, if our elected officials are afraid to say publicly what they freely admit behind closed doors, and if we can’t learn from our mistakes because of the political cost of admitting facts to be true”.“For too long, Republican voters have been denied a real debate about what our party stands for beyond loyalty to Mr Trump. A cult of personality is no substitute for a party of principle,” Hogan continued.He added: “I am deeply concerned about this next election. We cannot afford to have Mr Trump as our nominee and suffer defeat for the fourth consecutive election cycle. To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Mr Trump.”Hogan explained that his decision not to run for president is due to stakes that are “too high for [him] to be part of another multicar pileup” which could potentially help Trump secure the Republican nomination once more.Hogan echoed similar sentiments last month, telling NBC in an interview that if he believed his candidacy was going to contribute to inadvertently helping Trump, then “that would be a pretty good reason to consider not running”.Seven years ago, when asked by reporters whether he was going to vote for Trump in the 2016 presidential election, Hogan replied: “No, I don’t plan to.”In 2020, then president Trump lashed out at Hogan after Maryland purchased a batch of flawed Covid-19 tests from a South Korean company.“This RINO will never make the grade,” Trump wrote on Twitter, using a disparaging acronym for “Republican in Name Only” coined by far-right Republicans. “Hogan is just as bad as the flawed tests he paid big money for!”In response, Hogan wrote: “If you had done your job, America’s governors wouldn’t have been forced to fend for themselves to find tests in the middle of a pandemic, as we successfully did in Maryland.”“Stop golfing and concede,” Hogan added, calling on Trump to accept the 2020 presidential election results.Meanwhile, another top Republican who chimed in on the presidential race discussion on Sunday was Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire.During an interview with NBC host Chuck Todd, Todd asked Sununu if he would be comfortable signing a “loyalty pledge” as a presidential candidate that would ensure his support for whoever ends up securing the Republican nomination, even if it were Trump.“I’m a lifelong Republican. I’m going to support the Republican nominee. When you look at what’s coming out of the White House, it isn’t Democrat policies. It’s real leftwing extreme agenda type stuff that is not in the best interest of this country and I have no doubt that any solid Republican … would be better than … what comes out,” Sununu said.Nevertheless, Sununu said that he does not think that Trump will secure the nomination.“As far as former president Trump, I think he’s going to run – obviously he’s in the race. He’s not going to be the nominee. That’s just not going to happen,” he said.Sununu has not officially announced his run for presidency but hinted last month that a run would be “an opportunity to change things”.TopicsUS elections 2024MarylandDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

Marianne Williamson says 2024 bid is not a challenge to Biden but to a system‘I know how to disrupt’: the two-time aspirant to the Democratic presidential nomination fleshes out her vision for the countryAuthor Marianne Williamson has said she doesn’t view her very outsider bid for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination as a direct challenge to Joe Biden but as “challenging a system”.The self-help writer and speaker, who also ran a nomination challenge in 2020, said voters “have to rise up” to secure an equitable economic future for the US.“I want to be president because this country needs to make an economic U-turn,” Williamson told ABC News on Sunday. Among her priorities, she said, were free healthcare, free college and free childcare.‘I am your retribution’: Trump rules supreme at CPAC as he relaunches bid for White HouseRead more“The system that effectuates and perpetuates that kind of income and opportunity inequality is not changing itself … It’s not going to change if we continue to elect the same-old, same-old,” she added.Williamson is currently the only Democrat to challenge Biden – although the president has yet to announce his bid for re-election – after announcing her campaign in Washington DC on Saturday afternoon.Before dropping out of the 2020 race, Williamson made a splash when, addressing then president Donald Trump in the first Democratic presidential debate with her closing argument, she said: “I’m going to harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field. And, sir, love will win.”Williamson, author of 14 books, describes herself as “a leader in spiritual and religiously progressive circles” for more than three decades. She established a national profile on Oprah Winfrey’s daytime talkshow, and has taken independent-minded and often controversial positions on depression and vaccine mandates.ABC host Jonathan Karl, attributing a quote about Williamson as “the longest of long shots” to the Associated Press, asked Williamson, 70, why she thought she could win the White House.“I would bet that the Associated Press also said that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in [in 2016],” Williamson fired back.“The system that is now saying that I’m unserious, I’m not credible or I’m a long shot is the very system that protects and maintains this idea that only those whose careers have been entrenched within the system that drove us into a ditch should possibly be considered qualified to lead us out of that ditch,” Williamson said.Her qualification for the job, she continued, “is not that I know how to perpetuate that system. My qualification is that I know how to disrupt it,”While Williamson appeared to support the White House policy on Ukraine, she stopped short of endorsing a US military response if China were to attack Taiwan.“We must make a stand for such things as human rights. At this point, we must be committed that this not spill over into a military confrontation,” she said.And she declined to criticize Biden over his age. “I’m not going there,” she said. “I don’t think ageism has any place in our thinking” and would “do whatever I feel I can do as an American to make sure that the neo-fascist threat that is represented by some aspects of the Republican party does not win in 2024”.The Democratic National Committee has indicated that the party doesn’t plan to hold primary debates. But Williamson maintained that Biden should debate her. “It’s called democracy,” she said. “And I’m running as well.”TopicsMarianne WilliamsonUS elections 2024DemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More