US Politics

Stunning Rupert Murdoch deposition leaves Fox News in a world of troubleMedia mogul’s admission in Dominion Systems election case that he let cable network broadcast falsehoods stuns observersIn his 71 years as a media executive, Rupert Murdoch has proved himself to be a grand master in the arts of survival. He has weathered bruising battles with British trade unions, the phone hacking scandal, countless ratings wars and a volatile private life, all the while growing his News Corp empire into global colossus.It was against this seven-decade backdrop of seeming invincibility that news of Murdoch’s deposition in the $1.6bn Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News Networks and its parent company Fox Corp dropped like a bomb. Not only did he admit that he knew that Fox News hosts spread lies about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from Donald Trump, but he confessed that he had allowed them to keep on doing so on air to millions of viewers.Rupert Murdoch testified that Fox News hosts ‘endorsed’ stolen election narrativeRead moreTo say that the 91-year-old’s statement astounded close Murdoch watchers would be an understatement. “I was shocked,” said Angelo Carusone, president of the watchdog Media Matters for America. “It is stunning, as it not only exposes a lot about how Fox works, it opens them up to potentially cascading litigation and liability.”Fox News and its parent company now face escalating damage on two fronts: to its reputation as a journalism outlet that ostensibly pays lip service to truth and accuracy – and to the financial health of the operation. Media and legal experts told the Guardian that, partly as a result of his stunning testimony, Murdoch can now expect potentially severe injury to both.A former Republican strategist who co-founded the anti-Donald Trump Lincoln Project, Rick Wilson, said that the reputational damage was self-evident. “This is so profoundly cynical, and deeply corrosive to the role of the largest cable news network in the country,” Wilson remarked. “They admittedly engaged in fraud and lied to their audience.”Wilson predicted that there would be fallout for Fox News in terms of defections from viewers angered by the admission as much as the substance of it. He said: “There’s been worry at Fox for some time now that they’re losing their iron grip on their audience. We are going to see a migration now of Fox News viewers to even further-right outlets like Newsmax and OANN.”Brian Stelter, the former anchor of CNN’s media show Reliable Sources who is now a media and democracy fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, told the Guardian that Fox News would be cushioned by its financial success. “It’s a license to print money,” he said. “It is facing large potential damages which may be a major blow, but not a death blow.”What would hurt most, Stelter suggested, would be the realization among the Fox News base that they had been served a dishonesty. “The most damning headlines to come so far are about the gap between what Fox News hosts say in public and private,” he said. “Even if a little of that seeps into the Fox bloodstream, it still has an impact.”In his deposition, Murdoch – whose newspaper holdings include the Sun in the UK and the Wall Street Journal – made an admission that could have dire consequences, not only reputationally but also to the Dominion lawsuit on which a lot of money is riding.Under heavy pressure from Dominion’s lawyers, he admitted that several Fox News hosts – Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity – had endorsed the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump and handed to Joe Biden.“Some of our commentators were endorsing it,” he said. “Yes. They endorsed.”Murdoch tried to make a distinction between the hosts – “commentators” he called them – who were making false claims of election fraud and Fox itself. But in other parts of his devastating testimony, he admitted that he chose not to keep election deniers such as Rudy Giuliani off the air even though he had the power to do so.He also tried to justify allowing Mike Lindell, an avid conspiracy theorist, to run MyPillow ads on the network as a purely financial decision. “It is not red or blue, it is green,” he said.In a statement, Fox accused Dominion of attempting to “publicly smear Fox for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting president of the United States”.The company called the argument put forward in the lawsuit a “blatant violation of the first amendment” right to free speech and said it represented “an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting”.The word “endorsed” in Murdoch’s deposition could be critical. Under the first amendment’s protection of free speech, Dominion would have to prove “actual malice” in its defamation case against Fox. “It has to show they not only knew these claims were false, but continued to push them with a reckless disregard for the truth,” Carusone said. “‘Endorsement’ neutralizes one of the most important defenses Fox could have used.”The Media Matters president added that, in his view, Murdoch’s extraordinary deposition – so out of kilter with his previous consummate survivor’s record – could be put down largely to hubris. “I think it was hubris,” Carusone said. “He thought he was untouchable.”Carusone pointed to another potential devastating part of the newly released depositions – the testimony of the Republican former US House speaker Paul Ryan. The depositions revealed that Ryan had implored Murdoch to “move on from Donald Trump and stop spouting election lies”.Ryan now sits on the Fox Corp board of directors. “This is catastrophic, frankly,” Carusone said. “It opens the door to litigation from shareholders, given that their own board member tried to stop this.”RonNell Andersen Jones, a media law professor at the University of Utah, said that the deposition could prove highly damaging in the ongoing Dominion case. She said: “It adds some key factual support for the narrative that Fox made a conscious decision to tell a knowing lie and that it did so to win back viewers who were defecting.”She predicted that the revelations would spur “much larger conversations about the stolen election lie and the role Fox and Murdoch played in perpetuating it”.TopicsRupert MurdochUS politicsFox NewsfeaturesReuse this content More

The supreme court’s conservative majority seemed sympathetic today to arguments that Joe Biden’s attempt to cancel some student debt under a two-decade old federal law was an unconstitutional expansion of power, Bloomberg News reports.The court today heard two cases challenging the program Biden announced last year, one filed by a group of Republican-led states, and the other by two people who sued because they were left out of the program. According to Bloomberg, several of the court’s six conservatives judges expressed skepticism to the government’s argument that the Covid-19 pandemic constituted the sort of emergency that would allow debt cancellation under a 2003 law.Here’s more from the report:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As the court heard two cases Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested he is wary of expanding presidential powers during national emergencies. The Biden administration argues that the student loan forgiveness program is a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Some of the biggest mistakes in the court’s history were deferring to assertions of executive or emergency power,” Kavanaugh said. “Some of the finest moments in the court’s history were pushing back against presidential assertions of emergency powers.”
Chief Justice John Roberts suggested Congress didn’t authorize the president to unilaterally take a step with such enormous financial implications for millions of Americans.
“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans. How does that fit under the normal understanding of modifying?” Roberts said, referring to a key word in the 2003 law at the center of the case.
The law, known as the Heroes Act, says the secretary can “waive or modify” provisions to ensure that debtors “are not placed in a worse position financially” because of a national emergency.
Roberts likened the case to the court’s 5-4 decision that blocked the Trump administration from ending a program shielding hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Roberts joined the court’s liberal wing in the majority in that 2020 case.Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student loan debt may soon be struck down by conservative supreme court justices, who sounded skeptical of the government’s argument that the program was permitted under federal law. Elsewhere, Florida governor Ron DeSantis still has not said if he will run for president, but plans to travel to the states that vote first in the Republican nomination process. It seems a formal announcement is just a matter of time.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
The House foreign affairs committee is holding a hearing about China’s global influence, ahead of this evening’s primetime session of a special panel to examine Beijing’s competition with the United States.
GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy will make about 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from January 6 available to the public, after sparking furor by releasing the video to Tucker Carlson.
The House Republican “weaponization” committee plans to scrutinize the Twitter files.
A Florida Republican lawmaker wants to formally terminate the state’s Democratic party.
The Biden White House may soon get its first Asian-American cabinet secretary.
In a House armed services committee hearing today on America’s military aid to Ukraine, Matt Gaetz, a rightwing lawmaker who is opposed to arming Kyiv, thought he had backed a top defense department official into a corner.In questioning Colin Kahl, the defense department’s undersecretary for policy, Gaetz cited a report that indicated the Azov battalion had received American weapons for years. Founded in 2014, the unit is controversial because some of its early members held far-right views, though commanders say it has since moved away from that ideology.The problem? The report Gaetz cited was published in the Global Times, an English-language publication of the Chinese Communist party.In the polite fashion of a congressional witness, Kahl called out Gaetz for falling for what he said was “Beijing’s propaganda”. You can watch the exchange in the clip below, around the three-minute mark:Rep. Matt Gaetz asks about Global Times Investigative report.@DOD_Policy Kahl: “Is this the Global Times from China?”@RepMattGaetz: “No, this is well…yeah, it might be. Yeah…”Kahl: “I don’t take Beijing’s propaganda at face value.”Gaetz: “Fair enough.” pic.twitter.com/9XQewKdZeA— CSPAN (@cspan) February 28, 2023
Tucker Carlson’s staff was allowed to view the 40,000-plus hours of surveillance footage Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy handed over, but needed permission to copy any video, CBS News reports.Carlson’s employees “may request any particular [video] clips they may need, then we’ll make sure there’s nothing sensitive, nothing classified, including escape routes,” according to Barry Loudermilk, the Republican chair of a subcommittee under the House committee on administration. “We don’t want al Qaeda to know certain things.”McCarthy’s decision to provide the footage to Carlson – a popular Fox News commentator who has downplayed the attack by Donald Trump’s supporters on the Capitol – sparked fury among Democrats, who argued the footage could compromise Congress’s security arrangements.McCarthy has said he will soon make the footage public, but today told reporters he wanted to first give Carlson exclusive access:.@GarrettHaake asked @SpeakerMcCarthy why he gave Jan 6 security footage to Tucker Carlson.MCCARTHY: “Have you ever had an exclusive? Because I see it on your networks all the time. So he’ll have an exclusive, then I’ll give it out to the entire country.” pic.twitter.com/2zsnKmUb4V— Kyle Stewart (@KyleAlexStewart) February 28, 2023
The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is calling for the testimony of Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw, after one of the freight rail company’s trains derailed in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this month and spilled toxic chemicals:Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer calls on Alan Shaw, the CEO of Norfolk Southern, to testify following the train derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio:“Mr. Shaw, you have an obligation — obligation — after what happened to testify before the Senate.” pic.twitter.com/h6acw8EDYL— The Recount (@therecount) February 28, 2023
The supreme court’s conservative majority seemed sympathetic today to arguments that Joe Biden’s attempt to cancel some student debt under a two-decade old federal law was an unconstitutional expansion of power, Bloomberg News reports.The court today heard two cases challenging the program Biden announced last year, one filed by a group of Republican-led states, and the other by two people who sued because they were left out of the program. According to Bloomberg, several of the court’s six conservatives judges expressed skepticism to the government’s argument that the Covid-19 pandemic constituted the sort of emergency that would allow debt cancellation under a 2003 law.Here’s more from the report:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As the court heard two cases Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested he is wary of expanding presidential powers during national emergencies. The Biden administration argues that the student loan forgiveness program is a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Some of the biggest mistakes in the court’s history were deferring to assertions of executive or emergency power,” Kavanaugh said. “Some of the finest moments in the court’s history were pushing back against presidential assertions of emergency powers.”
Chief Justice John Roberts suggested Congress didn’t authorize the president to unilaterally take a step with such enormous financial implications for millions of Americans.
“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans. How does that fit under the normal understanding of modifying?” Roberts said, referring to a key word in the 2003 law at the center of the case.
The law, known as the Heroes Act, says the secretary can “waive or modify” provisions to ensure that debtors “are not placed in a worse position financially” because of a national emergency.
Roberts likened the case to the court’s 5-4 decision that blocked the Trump administration from ending a program shielding hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Roberts joined the court’s liberal wing in the majority in that 2020 case.Biden administration officials faced tough questioning from both Republicans and Democrats on the House foreign affairs committee during today’s hearing on US-Chinese relations.Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democrat of California, criticized China for failing to cooperate with investigators seeking to determine the origins of Covid-19, and he pressed Daniel Kritenbrink, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, on why the state department had not done more to condemn China’s “obfuscation”.“They failed to cooperate. They failed to come clean,” Sherman said. “The state department has done almost nothing to tell the world how China is responsible, not maybe for the virus, but certainly for their obfuscation and failure to cooperate afterwards.”Kritenbrink replied, “We have long stated that China needs to do a better job of being transparent.”Shortly after that tense exchange, congresswoman Sara Jacobs, a Democrat of California, asked Kritenbrink how the state department defines competition with China and how US officials can ensure that such competition does not devolve into conflict.“We’re competing for and fighting for the kind of region that we want to live in,” Kritenbrink said. “We talk about a free and open region where countries can freely pursue their interests and where people in those countries can enjoy freedom.”Jacobs replied, “I just think it’s really important that we stay focused on those end goals because China’s not going anywhere. We don’t want to feed into the [Chinese Communist Party’s] talking points around us just being out to weaken China for the sake of weakening them indefinitely.”Julie Su has received Joe Biden’s nomination to become the next labor secretary, the White House announced.If Su wins the Senate’s required approval, she would be the Biden administration’s first cabinet-level secretary of Asian-American descent. She would succeed labor secretary Marty Walsh, who is now leading the National Hockey League players’ union after becoming the first cabinet secretary to depart Biden’s White House.The White House’s announcement Tuesday contained a statement from Biden, which referred to Su, who once served as California’s labor secretary, as a longtime “champion for workers” and “a critical partner” to Walsh.“She helped avert a national rail shutdown, improved access to good jobs free from discrimination through my Good Jobs Initiative, and is ensuring that the jobs we create in critical sectors like semiconductor manufacturing, broadband and healthcare are good-paying, stable and accessible jobs for all,” Biden said.In 2021, the Senate appointed Su as Biden’s deputy labor secretary in a vote along party lines. After last fall’s midterms, Biden’s Democratic party controls the Senate by a 51-49 margin.The Democratic Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman is out of work for a few weeks at least while the staff of Walter Reed medical center in Washington DC treats him for depression. But Biden’s vice-president Kamala Harris can serve as a tie breaker for any votes that require it.Biden’s cabinet was the first in 20 years without a secretary with Asian American or Pacific Island heritage. Asian-American legislators and advocate had pushed for Biden to nominate Su to the labor secretary’s role after he defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election, and again pushed for her to be put up for the position after Walsh’s departure.Testifying before the House foreign affairs committee this morning, Daniel Kritenbrink, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said that China represents “our most consequential geopolitical challenge”.“It is the only competitor with both the intent and increasingly the economic, diplomatic, military and technological capability to reshape the international order,” Kritenbrink said.“The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the [People’s Republic of China] as it becomes more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad will test American diplomacy like few issues we have seen.”Kritenbrink noted that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met with his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference earlier this month. In that discussion, Blinken condemned China’s “unacceptable and irresponsible violation of US sovereignty” with its use of a surveillance balloon shot down by American fighter jets on 4 February off the coast of South Carolina, Kritenbrink said. Blinken also warned China about the potential consequences of providing material support to Russia in its war against Ukraine.“At the same time, the secretary reiterated our commitment to maintaining open lines of communication at all times, so as to reduce the risk of miscalculation that could lead to conflict,” Kritenbrink said.“In coordination with US government departments and agencies, this committee and colleagues across Capitol Hill, we’re confident we can sustain the resources and policies needed to prevail in our competition with the PRC.”It seems the figurative wipeout of the Florida Democratic party in the midterm elections was not enough for the state’s Republicans, who on Tuesday introduced legislation to have it formally terminated.Unashamedly billed “The Ultimate Cancel Act” by its sponsor, vociferous conservative state senator Blaise Ingoglia, the bill requires Florida’s division of elections to decertify any political party that has “previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude.”In a press release accompanying Senate Bill 1248, Ingoglia, who tweets using the handle GovGoneWild and is a devotee of Florida’s far-right governor Ron DeSantis, insists that because the Democratic party adopted “pro-slavery positions” in at least five conventions during the 19th century, it has no place in politics in 2023 or beyond.Additionally, the bill would automatically transfer the registrations of Florida’s 4.9m registered Democratic voters to no-party affiliates.Democrats in Florida lost by huge margins in 2022, now Republicans here want to eliminate the party pic.twitter.com/zQ80TmnrkG— Matt Dixon (@Mdixon55) February 28, 2023
“For years now, leftist activists have been trying to ‘cancel’ people and companies for things they have said and done in the past,” Ingoglia claims in the release, which also cites the removal of controversial Civil War-era statues and memorials.The release, tweeted by Politico’s Florida bureau chief Matt Dixon, goes on to say: “Using this standard, it would be hypocritical not to cancel the Democratic party itself for the same reason.”It remains to be seen if Ingoglia’s bill gains any traction. But with a supermajority in both houses of Florida’s legislature, Republicans certainly have the numbers to pass it.Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student loan debt is having its day at the supreme court, where conservative groups are arguing to do away with the proposal. However, there are signs at least one conservative justice may believe the individuals and states trying to undo the Biden administration’s signature program for debt-burdened Americans don’t have standing to sue. Elsewhere, Florida governor Ron DeSantis still hasn’t said if he will run for president, but plans to travel to the states that vote first in the Republican nomination process. It seems a formal announcement is just a matter of time.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
The House foreign affairs committee is holding a hearing about China’s global influence, ahead of this evening’s primetime session of a special panel to examine Beijing’s competition with the United States.
GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy will make about 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from January 6 available to the public, after sparking furor by releasing the video to Tucker Carlson.
The House Republican “weaponization” committee will scrutinize the Twitter files.
As they heard two cases intended to stop Joe Biden’s student debt cancelation program this morning, some of the supreme court’s nine justices questioned whether conservatives suing over the program had the ability to do so.The court is currently dominated by conservatives, who hold a six-member majority that could upend the Biden administration’s plan to help Americans saddled with student loans. The questions justices pose to attorneys appearing before them in their hearings are no guarantees of how they will ultimately vote, but there are indications at least some conservatives are skeptical of the challengers, particularly Amy Coney Barrett.Here are what a few supreme court watchers saw in this morning’s arguments:I think this Supreme Court will likely do whatever’s necessary to abolish Biden’s student debt relief plan, but arguments aren’t going as well for the challengers as a LOT of people expected. Barrett sounds extremely skeptical on standing. The liberals are roasting Nebraska’s SG.— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) February 28, 2023
Argument in the first student-debt case just wrapped up. There’s a clear majority of conservative justices to strike down Biden’s order on the merits. But it’s less clear if there’s one to overcome standing hurdles to get there. Barrett was pretty pointed in Qs for MO’s SG.— Matt Ford (@fordm) February 28, 2023
Three liberals clearly against state standing and for Biden Admin on the merits.Barrett unsympathetic to state standing, ambiguous on merits.Alito clearly for state standing, against Biden on merits.Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kav against Biden on merits, quiet on standing.— Mike Sacks (@MikeSacksEsq) February 28, 2023 More

‘It’s just gotten crazy’: how the origins of Covid became a toxic US political debateNew report supporting theory the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab has sparked the latest eruption in a long fight over how the virus started, clouding efforts to pursue a neutral, fact-based inquiryWhite House official John Kirby, standing at the podium where Donald Trump once railed against the “China virus” and praised the healing powers of bleach, faced questions on Monday about the origins of Covid-19. He had no choice but humility. “There is not a consensus right now in the US government about exactly how Covid started,” Kirby admitted. “There is just not an intelligence community consensus.”The renewed interest in a genuine scientific mystery followed a report in the Wall Street Journal that the US Department of Energy had determined the coronavirus most likely leaked by accident from a Chinese laboratory.This startling assessment appeared to have a solid foundation: according to the Washington Post, it was based on an analysis by experts from the national laboratory complex, including the “Z-Division”, known for carrying out some of the American government’s most secretive and technically challenging investigations of security threats from adversaries such as China and Russia.But the claim was not officially confirmed by the energy department or Kirby, and it came with a caveat: the department had “low confidence” in its assessment, which was provided to the White House and certain members of Congress, the Journal said.Even so, gleeful Republicans seized on the findings to claim vindication in their pursuit of the lab leak theory, triggering a fresh round of toxic debate in Washington and on social media.Opponents say there is still no hard evidence for a lab leak, as many scientists still believe the virus most probably came from animals, mutated and jumped into people. They note that the loudest champions of the lab leak hypothesis are often also trafficking in rightwing conspiracy theories, for example about the top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci.But the two do not necessarily go hand in hand. Some scientists and other observers argue that the lab leak theory cannot be ruled out and should be kept separate from the racist propaganda that often accompanies it. It demands careful investigation, not peremptory dismissal or acceptance, they contend.It is the latest chapter in a long fight over the origin of a virus that has caused close to 7m deaths worldwide, clouding efforts to pursue a neutral, fact-based inquiry. In its loud opinions, blue v red certainties and lack of nuance, the melee echoes clashes over pandemic lockdowns, masks and vaccines, as well as the investigation into Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia.Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, said: “Isn’t this just like everything else in American politics, where a partisan position on one side invites a partisan response by the other? There’s a lot of what might be called reactive thinking going on because of the high degree of polarisation and the high stakes. Charges without foundation invite responses without foundation.”Calling for public hearings into the matter, Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, warned: “If this isn’t lifted out of the crucible of political debate right now, it’ll just get worse and worse.”Studies by experts around the world have indicated that Covid-19 most likely emerged from a live animal market in Wuhan, China. The hypothesis that it originated from an accidental lab leak was initially dismissed by most public health experts and government officials.In February 2020, the Lancet medical journal published a statement that rejected the lab leak theory, signed by 27 scientists and expressing “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China”. It asserted: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.” (The journal later disclosed that the organiser of the letter had links to the Wuhan lab at the center of the controversy.)That the lab leak theory was being pushed by Trump, who long played down the virus and used xenophobic language such as “China virus”, and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, may have contributed to the instinctive eagerness of some to dismiss the hypothesis – and to ostracise scientists who dared question the mainstream orthodoxy.“From the start, the lab leak theory was never properly framed and parsed,” David Relman, a microbiology and immunology professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, wrote in an email. “The hypothesis of a lab-associated origin became synonymous with deliberate efforts to engineer viruses and malevolent intent, and this has not been helpful. The emotions, assumptions about motives, obstructionism by the Chinese government, and poor scrutiny of the evidence have only made things worse.”Jackson Lears, a history professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, echoed this view: “People who consider themselves Democratic party sympathisers and liberals uncritically arrayed themselves against this. It was a kind of a lockstep reaction against Trump, as in so many matters.”The lab leak hypothesis did begin to receive scrutiny after Joe Biden ordered an intelligence investigation in May 2021. The 90-day review was intended to push US intelligence agencies to collect more information and review what they already had.But the review proved inconclusive. A report summary said four members of the US intelligence community believed with low confidence that the virus was first transmitted from an animal to a human, and a fifth believed with moderate confidence that the first human infection was linked to a lab. Two agencies – including the CIA – remain undecided.Without the equivalent of a special counsel delivering a final report, the White House is left in a fog of uncertainty that satisfies no one. Lears commented: “There should have been a more carefully orchestrated investigation, more centralised, more high profile, with more legitimacy. Splitting it up and into many agencies is a way of defanging the whole situation.”Others agree that the multiple investigations give Biden a political headache, especially at a moment of rising tensions with China over trade, Taiwan, Ukraine and a recent spy balloon shot down after transiting US airspace.Laurie Garrett, a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine who spent time in China during the Sars outbreak, witnessing how animal markets operated, said: “The president said, ‘I want the relevant agencies in the government to take a close look at this.’ Well, every agency has its own prism, its own skill set.“In Britain if you asked the Home Office, MI5, the Metropolitan Police, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the British Medical Association to take a look, you would get seven different answers and that’s the situation that the Biden administration has created for itself. By trying to appease all the screaming and cut the rightwing Republicans off at the knees on this, they’ve essentially opened up a Pandora’s box because every single agency is going to have a different way of looking at the problem.”Many scientists, including Fauci, who until December served as Biden’s chief medical adviser, say they still believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to humans, an established phenomenon known as a spillover event. But the reports of dissent in the intelligence community will give enough oxygen to those with doubts, good faith or otherwise.Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and formerly USAid’s lead official for Covid-19, likens it to a Rorschach test. He said: “The priors that you come in with are going to shape a lot of how you interpret the evidence, because ultimately, the evidence may suggest one way or another, but it’s not definitive one way or another.“If you want to craft a narrative that justifies the lab leak theory, you can do so. If you want to craft a narrative that justifies a natural origin, natural spillover, market amplification theory, you can do so. There’s not enough on either side to definitively rule in or out either.”But that does not make them equally plausible, Konyndyk added. “The preponderance of evidence strongly points to a natural spillover, occurring at and certainly amplified at the market.” Konyndyk noted how online debate about the issue has become toxic, with proponents of the lab leak making death threats to scientists. “There’s been some really irresponsible behaviour and they’re not trying to turn the temperature down.“That has prompted in turn very strong views from some of the more vocal folks who believe in the natural origin theory because they’re getting attacked on Twitter with a larger and larger army of trolls. It’s just gotten crazy.”Earlier this month, Republicans in the House of Representatives issued letters to current and former Biden administration officials for documents and testimony, exploring the hypothesis of a lab leak. Congressman Brad Wenstrup, chair of the House oversight panel’s virus subcommittee, has accused US intelligence of withholding key facts about its investigation.Garrett, author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, added: “My concern about where we are right now with this whole Wuhan origins question is that several very serious, real issues are getting conflated and they’re being manipulated for political purposes by people who don’t understand the issues at all and don’t care.“We’re not hearing in these congressional hearings this is what we should do to strengthen the chemical, biological warfare agreements and make lab research safe in the world. Nobody’s saying that. They couldn’t care less. That’s not their agenda. Their agenda is to tear down a man who was seen on camera in a live press conference putting his hand over his face and shaking his head as President Trump said, ‘Maybe bleach can cure Covid.’”TopicsCoronavirusUS politicsInfectious diseasesMicrobiologyMedical researchBiologyfeaturesReuse this content More

Ron DeSantis takes control of Disney’s governing district after ‘don’t say gay’ rowMove comes after Florida governor lashed out at theme park’s protest of law restricting sexual orientation discussion in schoolsRon DeSantis, the governor of Florida, signed a bill on Monday that gives him control of Walt Disney World’s self-governing district, punishing the company over its opposition to a state law that restricts sexual orientation and gender identity discussions in schools.“The corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” DeSantis said during a press event at Lake Buena Vista near Orlando. “There’s a new sheriff in town, and accountability will be the order of the day.”The Courage to be Free review: Ron DeSantis bows and scrapes to TrumpRead moreThe bill authorizes DeSantis, a Republican, to appoint a five-member board to oversee the government services that the Disney district provides in its sprawling theme park properties in Florida. The quasi-government entity also has the authority to raise revenue to pay outstanding debt and cover the cost of services.“We have a situation here that was basically indefensible from a policy perspective,” DeSantis said. “How do you give one theme park its own government and then treat all the other theme parks differently? We believe that that was not good policy.”Disney did not immediately comment on Monday.State Republicans last year targeted Disney after it publicly clashed with DeSantis, who is widely considered to be running for president in 2024, over a law that restricts classroom instruction of gender and sexual orientation, known by its opponents as the “don’t say gay” measure.In March, Disney’s then chief executive officer, Bob Chapek, publicly voiced disappointment with the bill limiting LGBTQ+ discussion in schools, saying he called DeSantis to express concern about the legislation becoming law.Political observers viewed the bill as retaliation for Disney’s views. DeSantis moved quickly to penalize the company, directing lawmakers in the GOP-dominated legislature to dissolve Disney’s self-governing district during a special legislative session, beginning a closely watched restructuring process. DeSantis and other Republican critics of Disney slammed the company for coming out against the education law, calling it a purveyor of “woke” ideology that injects inappropriate subjects into children’s entertainment.Speakers at the bill-signing ceremony included a parent who criticized Disney for speaking out against the state’s education bill, saying the company “chose the wrong side of the moral argument”. Another person who identified himself as a longtime Disney theme park employee took issue with the company’s policies regarding vaccinations.Disney World is the largest employer in central Florida with close to 75,000 employees, and the theme park drew 36.2 million visitors in 2021, according to the Themed Entertainment Association.The creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, as the 55-year-old Disney government is known, and the control it gave Disney over 27,000 acres (11,000 hectares) in Florida, was a crucial element in the company’s plans to build near Orlando in the 1960s. Company officials said they needed autonomy to plan a futuristic city along with the theme park. The city never materialised, however; instead, it morphed into the Epcot theme park.The Disney government allows the company to provide services such as zoning, fire protection, utilities and infrastructure.In taking on Disney, DeSantis furthered his reputation as a culture warrior willing to battle perceived political enemies and wield the power of state government to accomplish political goals, a strategy that is expected to continue ahead of his potential White House run.The feud also reinforced the governor’s brash leadership style, and the coming months will be critical to DeSantis as he builds his profile out beyond Florida. He is expected to utilize the coming regular legislative session, which begins next week, to bolster his conservative agenda before he announces his candidacy for president.At his news conference, DeSantis said he would appoint Tampa attorney Martin Garcia as the chairman of the district’s new governing board, along with new board members Bridget Ziegler, a conservative school board member and wife of the Florida Republican party chairman, Christian Ziegler; Brian Aungst Jr, an attorney and son of a former two-term Republican mayor of Clearwater; Mike Sasso, an attorney; and Ron Peri, head of the Gathering USA ministry.TopicsRon DeSantisWalt Disney CompanyFloridaUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

Marianne Williamson to run for president again to ‘help repair America’Self-help author who brought quirky spiritualism to the 2020 presidential race becomes first Democrat to challenge BidenBestselling self-help author Marianne Williamson, who brought quirky spiritualism to the 2020 presidential race, has announced she’s running for the White House again, becoming the first major Democrat to challenge Joe Biden for his party’s nomination in 2024.Williamson, 70, pulled out of the 2020 presidential election in early January of that year, after failing to gain much traction with primary voters. She then endorsed Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination and he ended up coming in second to Biden, who had been trailing him badly but surged ahead after a crucial win in South Carolina.But she has now signaled she will soon head to key early primary voting states New Hampshire and South Carolina and will visit the site of the recent toxic chemical train spill that has caused an environmental crisis in East Palestine, Ohio.Williamson is formally kicking off her campaign with an event in Washington DC, on Saturday. Without mentioning former US president Donald Trump, she noted in a weekend Facebook post that his unconventional White House win in 2016 makes it “odd for anyone to think they can know who can win the presidency”.“I’m not putting myself through this again just to add to the conversation,” Williamson wrote. “I’m running for president to help bring an aberrational chapter of our history to a close, and to help bring forth a new beginning.”Williamson running against a sitting president from her own party would be the longest of long shots in any circumstances.But that’s especially true this cycle, as the Democratic establishment – and even potential presidential hopefuls who could have competed with Biden from the left or middle – has closed ranks with remarkable uniformity behind the president.Williamson declared: “I feel my 40 years being up close and personal with the trauma of so many thousands of individuals gives me a unique perspective on what is needed to help repair America. We need a politics that treats not just symptoms, but cause. That does not base itself on the crass imperatives of endless corporate profit, but on the eternal imperatives of our principles and values.”She is a spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey.One of her signature proposals was a plan to create a US Department of Peace. She also advocated that the federal government pay massive financial reparations to Black Americans as atonement for centuries of slavery and discrimination.TopicsUS elections 2024Marianne WilliamsonUS politicsJoe BidenDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

The derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals that may have done long-lasting, potentially life-changing damage to a small Ohio community is certainly the type of calamity Congress is equipped to look into.And on the surface, the hearings announced by a House and a Senate committee thus far seem intent on doing just that.“Thousands of trains carrying hazardous materials, like the one that derailed in Ohio, travel through communities throughout the nation each day. Every railroad must reexamine its hazardous materials safety practices to better protect its employees, the environment, and American families and reaffirm safety as a top priority,” Maria Cantwell, the Democratic chair of the Senate commerce committee, wrote in a letter sent to the heads of the US’s top freight rail companies.Republican House commerce committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Bill Johnson, who leads the environment, manufacturing and critical materials subcommittee and also represents the district encompassing East Palestine, addressed their letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Michael Regan.They asked for “information to our Committee regarding the EPA’s overall response, the controlled burn of some of the rail cars, and its testing plan to ensure people are kept safe”.Both sound like serious efforts to get to the bottom of the derailment, and they may well be. But they’re also opportunities for each party to make the case that the other is responsible for laying the groundwork for the disaster. For Republicans, they’ll argue the buck stops with Joe Biden and the leaders he’s chosen for the EPA and transportation department. For Democrats, don’t be surprised if they bring up Donald Trump, arguing his deregulation policies were friendly to the rail industry at the expense of the communities around their tracks.The Ohio train derailment found its way on to Congress’s agenda, where House and Senate lawmakers said they are determined to get answers, but will also probably use the accident as a cudgel against their political opponents. Across the street from the Capitol at the supreme court, justices have agreed to hear the Biden administration’s appeal of a lower court ruling that would have defanged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Here’s what else happened today:
TikTok could be banned across the United States, if a bill House Republicans are pursuing becomes law.
Primetime TV viewers can tune in tomorrow to a congressional hearing on the Chinese Communist party and how its policies affect the United States.
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has made a surprise visit to Kyiv on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Marianne Williamson is back, becoming the first Democrat to challenge Joe Biden for the presidential nomination.
Democrat Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who recently won re-election in one of America’s toughest House districts, is jumping into the Michigan Senate race.
Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic House lawmaker from Michigan who won re-election last year in one of the most hotly contested races of the cycle, announced she will stand for the state’s open Senate seat in 2024.“I’m running for Senate because I believe that we need a new generation of leaders that thinks differently, works harder, and never forgets that we are public servants,” Slotkin wrote in an email to supporters. She would replace Debbie Stabenow, Michigan’s Democratic senator who has opted not to seek another term.A former CIA analyst who worked in the defense department under Barack Obama, Slotkin banked heavily on her support of abortion rights in her successful run for election last November.John Fetterman’s office has released an update on the senator’s health after the Pennsylvania Democrat earlier this month checked himself into a hospital to be treated for clinical depression.“There’s no real news to report except that John is doing well, working with the wonderful doctors, and remains on a path to recovery,” his communications director, Joe Calvello, said in a statement.“He is visiting with staff and family daily, and his staff are keeping him updated on Senate business and news,” Calvello said.“We understand the intense interest in John’s status and especially appreciate the flood of well-wishes. However, as we have said this will be a weeks-long process and while we will be sure to keep folks updated as it progresses, this is all there is to give by way of an update.”At today’s White House press briefing, national security council spokesperson John Kirby downplayed the energy department’s report into Covid-19’s origins, noting it represents the opinion of just one part of the US government:National Security Council’s John Kirby urges caution regarding the WSJ report that the Department of Energy believes, with “low confidence,” that COVID-19 leaked from a lab:“There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how COVID started.” pic.twitter.com/Gceirrwy6k— The Recount (@therecount) February 27, 2023
There was more intelligence-related news this weekend, when the department of energy weighed in on the origins of Covid-19 and found it probably emerged from a laboratory, but could not say for sure. The conclusion will no doubt fuel the ongoing dispute over the pandemic’s origins and the extent to which China deserves blame. The Guardian’s Nicola Davis and Amy Hawkins took a closer look at what exactly the report says:What has the US energy department said about the origin of the Covid outbreak?According to the Wall Street Journal, an updated and classified 2021 US energy department report has concluded that the coronavirus behind the recent pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons programme.Does this report mean it is more likely Covid came from a lab?Not necessarily. The report’s conclusion runs counter to that from several scientific studies as well as reports by a number of other US intelligence agencies. What’s more, experts are unable to scrutinise the evidence the US energy department report is based on.How seriously should we take the US DoE’s Covid lab leak theory?Read moreThe top Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees will receive a briefing tomorrow on the classified documents found in Donald Trump’s, Joe Biden’s and Mike Pence’s possessions.That’s the word from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:New: Gang of Eight will be briefed on Trump Mar-a-Lago, Biden and Pence docs and risk assessment tomorrow afternoon by ODNI, per sources.— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) February 27, 2023
The Gang of Eight is an informal term for top lawmakers who are occasionally given classified briefings by the intelligence community. The group today encompasses speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and the chamber’s top Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell, as well as the leaders of the chambers’ intelligence committees: Republican chair Michael Turner and Democratic ranking member Jim Himes in the House, and Democratic chair Mark Warner and Republican ranking member Marco Rubio in the Senate.Lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, have demanded a briefing from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines ever since the Mar-a-Lago classified documents scandal became public last year. Their calls only grew louder as more documents turned up in Biden’s and Pence’s possession in the months that followed.The FBI recently arrested a Virginia man on allegations that he participated in the deadly US Capitol attack more than two years ago after matching a photo of the shoes he wore at the Capitol that day with a photo of him wearing the same shoes while doing a Crossfit workout, NBC News reporter Ryan J Reilly tweeted Monday.Also recently arrested by the FBI: Jan. 6 defendant Jeffrey Etter of Portsmouth, Virginia. They matched up the shoes he wore to the Capitol to a Crossfit photo. https://t.co/1qwNnNWhmg pic.twitter.com/1PxPaosQM3— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) February 27, 2023
Jeffrey Etter, of Portsmouth, faces charges of illegally entering a restricted federal building as well as engaging in disorderly conduct at the Capitol, according to court documents filed on 22 February. There was no telling on Monday how long it might take for the case against him to be resolved.As of Monday, at least 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack, which a bipartisan congressional report linked to nine deaths, including the suicides of officers who were traumatized after securing control of the building, according to officials. More than 475 of those have pleaded guilty, and a smaller number have been convicted at trial.Supporters of Donald Trump who were trying to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race staged the attack. Trump, who told his supporters to “fight like hell” on the day they targeted the Capitol, has not been among those charged in connection with the attack.The bestselling self-help author Marianne Williamson has announced that she is again running for president in 2024, becoming the first Democrat to sign up to challenge incumbent Joe Biden for the party’s nomination next year.Williamson, 70, ran in the 2020 race which saw Biden oust Donald Trump as president, bringing what the Associated Press described as “quirky spiritualism” to the campaign. In a Facebook post over the weekend that alluded to Trump’s White House victory in 2016 without mentioning him or how it was the Republican’s first time holding elected office, she argued that it was foolish “for anyone to think they can know who can win the presidency”.“I’m not putting myself through this again just to add to the conversation,” Williamson added in the post. “I’m running for president to help … bring forth a new beginning.”Williamson is sure to face the steepest of odds trying to win her party’s nomination over the sitting president. She is scheduled to kick off her campaign in Washington DC on Saturday.Biden hasn’t formally declared himself a candidate for re-election. But first lady Jill Biden gave one of the clearest indications yet on Friday that the president would seek office again, telling the AP in an interview that there is “pretty much” nothing left to do but set the time and place for the announcement.In a separate interview with CNN published on Monday, Jill Biden was asked if there was any chance her husband wouldn’t run. “Not in my book,” Jill Biden said.Jill Biden added that she was “all for it, of course”, when asked if she supported her 80-year-old husband’s search for a second term in the White House.The Ohio train derailment has found its way on to Congress’s agenda, where House and Senate lawmakers say they are determined to get answers, but will also probably use the accident as a cudgel against their political opponents. Across the street at the supreme court, justices have agreed to hear the Biden administration’s appeal to a ruling that would have defanged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
TikTok could be banned across the United States, if a bill House Republicans are pursuing becomes law.
Primetime TV viewers can tune in tomorrow to a congressional hearing on the Chinese Communist party and how its policies affect the United States.
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has made a surprise visit to Kyiv on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After the East Palestine train derailment, Democrats have accused Donald Trump of laying the groundwork for the accident by deregulating the freight rail and chemicals industries during his presidency.But a Washington Post fact check of some of those arguments shows they don’t hold water, at least based on the information currently available. “From our analysis, none of the regulatory changes made during the Trump administration at this point can be cited as contributing to the accident,” the piece concludes.However, there does seem to be some difference of opinion on whether electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes could have made a difference in the crash. Barack Obama’s administration promulgated a rule that would have required this more sophisticated braking system on all “high hazard” trains. Trump put that rule on hold when he took office in 2017, and Joe Biden hasn’t reinstated it. Indeed, his chair of the National Transportation Safety Board Jennifer Homendy has said it would not have made a difference even if it had been in place.However, there’s this, from the Post’s fact check: “Cynthia Quarterman, who helped write the rule as administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration during the Obama administration, told The Fact Checker that if the rule had not been delayed and then shelved, she believes ECP brakes might have been widely adopted by industry and could have ended up on this train.”Last week, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin announced he was pulling out of New Start, its last major nuclear arms control treaty with the United States.Perhaps he spoke too soon. CNN reports that the state department says Russia was still complying with the treaty as recently as today:Kinda wild: Russia’s New START suspension hasn’t been officially affected yet, after Putin’s announcement last wk. “We’re still receiving notifications, as recently as today, under the treaty,” top State arms control official Mallory Stewart says, h/t @jmhansler.— Kylie Atwood (@kylieatwood) February 27, 2023
Want to help Ukraine? Adopt an orphan. That’s the message from the leader of one non-profit, as the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:Since Russian troops invaded Ukraine a little more than a year ago, some in the US have shown their support for the encroached country by volunteering to fight for it while others have called on politicians to equip the defenders with munitions and weapons.Randi Thompson is calling on Americans to ponder another way: aiding efforts to place Ukrainian children orphaned by the Russian invasion in new families within their country.Thompson is the president, chief executive officer and co-founder of the Los Angeles-based non-profit Kidsave, which is dedicated to connecting older children in institutionalized care around the world with families to adopt them. The group had worked in Ukraine for six years before the invasion by Russian forces on 24 February 2022 made a bad situation worse.Officials estimate there were more than 105,000 children across 700 orphanages, boarding schools and other institutions in Ukraine when the war there started – that’s more than 1% of the nation’s underage population and Europe’s highest rate of youth institutionalization.Numbers since then are harder to track as children have been evacuated and moved out of Ukraine’s institutionalized care for safety reasons. But there’s reason to think things have gotten only harder for Ukraine’s orphans.Ukrainian children orphaned by war ‘need a tremendous amount of help’Read more More

Speculation over US President Joe Biden’s intention to run for office again is reaching fever pitch. Biden is, reportedly, on the verge of announcing he will indeed seek reelection. Opinion pieces are being churned out at a rapid clip. Polls are being commissioned with a feverish intensity.

Much of the focus is on one apparently simple question: is the 80-year-old Biden too old to run for reelection in 2024? He would be 82 at the start of a second term, and 86 by the time he left office.

Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor, sought to fire up the Republican Party’s base after announcing her presidential campaign earlier this month, making the not-so-subtle proposal that politicians aged over 75 submit to mandatory cognitive testing.

The president’s age is, clearly, a matter of concern. But the intensity of the questioning over this issue is striking. It would be easy to believe this is the most pressing question for American politics right now.

Meanwhile, only last week, the dangerously influential Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene tweeted the United States needed a “national divorce” between red and blue states.

Just over two years ago, Donald Trump, the former president, incited an insurrection that very nearly succeeded. Today, his followers are openly invoking the spectre of secession.

Is Biden’s age really the dominant question?

The relentless focus on Biden’s age is indicative of an uncomfortable reality. The vast bulk of the American media establishment is incapable of grasping the true significance and dangers of the current political moment.

As Biden contemplates a re-election campaign, he is grappling with a potentially catastrophic breakdown in democracy facilitated by a group of fanatical and influential Republicans that explicitly believe in minority authoritarian government based on racist disenfranchisement.

At the same time, the United States is experiencing an uneven social, economic and environmental fracturing caused by decades of destructive deregulation. The country now appears grounded in policy inertia from an increasingly gridlocked Congress.

And internationally, Biden inherited the legacy of a failed imperial project in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, which the policy establishment in the US remains unable and unwilling to think beyond.

Some observers have described this as a state of “polycrisis”, a series of disparate but interacting systemic shocks that are upending assumptions and challenging old certainties.

The most pertinent question is not Biden’s age. It is whether Biden is capable of negotiating the extraordinary ruptures in American politics. And if he is not, who is?

Biden’s place in history

In his first term, Biden has demonstrated his grasp of the pressing needs of the moment. And he has quietly established himself to be the most consequential president of our times.

The office of the US presidency personalises power to such an extent that it is often presumed it is presidents and their individual traits (such as age) that determine the course of events. But the truth is, whatever power a president has at their disposal, they remain constrained by the circumstances inherited from their predecessor and current economic and political realities. Presidencies will forever be bound by events beyond their control.

Fundamentally, what defines a presidential tenure is not the particular personality or priorities of a president, but whether they rise to the needs of the moment.

In another era, Abraham Lincoln may have been too colloquial or cerebral for national office (he was a paradoxical man). Outside the specific circumstances of the Great Depression and the second world war, Franklin Roosevelt’s patrician air may have grated too harshly on the electorate to claim a place in history. Jimmy Carter could have been lauded for his moral presidency across two terms.

The current state of the American republic means that what this president does, and what he is able to achieve, is quite simply more consequential than any other post-war president.

Viewed against the broad sweep of American history, Biden’s self-appointed task is not to win reelection. It is not to win partisan points against his opponents. In a strict sense, it is not even to accumulate a record of legislative accomplishment.

The task he has been set by this moment is the rescue and repair of American democracy.

Read more:
Biden’s first 100 days show a president in a hurry and willing to be bold

Biden demonstrates an awareness of this position that is rare among presidents. He has already expended considerable effort in consulting with leading historians to place his administration in the context of American history – particularly his efforts to enact large-scale reform amid crisis.

The effect of this is evident in his administration’s legislative record. Through the climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act (the largest piece of climate spending in US history), to protecting marriage equality and providing student debt relief, the Biden administration has sought to make meaningful reform without risking further instability.

Whether he succeeds in this approach – and that remains an open question – Biden is already presiding over tectonic shifts in American history. And he is all too aware of the consequences of failure.

It is within this context that Biden must determine if he will run.

President Joe Biden delivers an update on the student debt relief portal beta test.
Bonnie Cash/Pool/EPA

A reminder of better times

There is a simple and uncomfortable reality for Democrats: no one else has as effectively demonstrated their awareness of the needs of the moment as Biden – and they are unlikely to get the chance to do so in the immediate term.

Biden has a singular capacity to communicate the seriousness of the threat to US democracy to swathes of the American public that might otherwise be disengaged or feel disenfranchised. And he does it from behind the presidential seal.

Biden may be returning lacklustre opinion poll results, but the one time the resonance of his message was put to the test was at the midterm elections. Then, Biden demonstrated a grasp of the national mood that most pundits and political professionals missed. It turns out many Americans continue to care deeply about the state of their democracy and the maintenance of institutional protections for basic rights.

Read more:
Midterm election results reflect the hodgepodge of US voters, not the endorsement or repudiation of a candidate’s or party’s agenda

Biden can seem like a relic from a different age. He ambles, and he is visibly frailer than he used to be. He reminisces a lot about the good old days. He is easy to dismiss.

But he also represents something more. He represents tradition, a form of politics that is not trapped in constant, partisan trench warfare on every issue. He reminds people of a time when things got done. From a distance, we can dismiss this as misguided nostalgia. But there is nothing nostalgic in millions of Americans wishing for a government that actually governs.

Biden may be from a different time. But against the odds, the president may have found his moment. More

Has Bernie Sanders really helped Joe Biden move further left?The senator’s relationship with Biden has proven constructive, with an ambitious agenda – but some Sanders aides and supporters offer a mixed verdictThe band played On The Road Again. The New York studio audience chanted: “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” Senator Bernie Sanders was making his 16th appearance on CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – tying the record set by comedian John Oliver.Colbert confronted his guest with a card bearing a provocative headline, “Joe Biden Is Bernie Sanders”, from a Wall Street Journal column that argued the president will effectively be running for a re-election as a democratic socialist. The host asked Sanders: “Was this news to you?”What to expect from this year’s CPAC: Biden bashing, 2024 Republican primary chatter and lawsuit gossipRead moreWith a hearty laugh, Sanders, 81, recalled that, after the 2020 Democratic primary, his team and Biden’s had joined forces to produce an “agenda for working families”. They did not agree on everything but “put together probably the most progressive outline that any president has introduced since FDR” – a reference to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s.Nearly eight years have passed since Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, launched his first run for US president. The economic populist outsider rocked the establishment as he mounted a fierce challenge to frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary. Sanders lost but put issues such as class inequality, universal healthcare and the negative effects of globalisation in mainstream political discourse.Four years later, Sanders ran and lost again. But whereas the battle with Clinton had turned bitter, their mutual antipathy palpable, the relationship with Biden proved constructive. The president included progressive voices in his administration and, along with his chief of staff, Ron Klain, committed to keeping the door open to Sanders and his allies.The upshot has been an agenda more ambitious in scope and scale than many imagined and a Democratic president working more closely with progressives than Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama did.But Sanders aides, alumni and supporters interviewed by the Guardian offered a mixed verdict, welcoming Biden’s faith in government to deliver – a repudiation of Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics – while expressing frustration over setbacks on healthcare, progressive taxation and other issues.Few disputed that Biden and Sanders share an authenticity and do not come over as polished, scripted or elitist. Faiz Shakir, chief political adviser to Sanders, recalls that during the 2020 campaign, many Sanders voters said Biden was their second choice and vice versa.“Biden has a kind of plainspeak about him,” he said. “That is also the style of Bernie Sanders, to relate with a working-class person, not to suggest that ‘I know more and I’m smarter than you’, which occasionally does happen from the people who have more advanced degrees, become schooled in technocratic talk and start using various abbreviations for government agencies.”After Biden won the nomination, the president and Sanders appointed six joint taskforces that came up with a 110-page policy document. Shakir described Biden’s team as “a pleasure to work with” and said he had “moved in a progressive direction both during the campaign and as president”.Now 80, Biden was long perceived as a centrist and moderate who would not challenge the status quo. He represented Delaware for 36 years in the US Senate and served as Barack Obama’s vice-president. He has made much of his belief in bipartisanship and still speaks warmly of Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, who has thwarted many liberal dreams.Yet with a gossamer-thin majority in Congress, Biden has also pulled off four big wins worth trillions of dollars: coronavirus relief, a sweeping infrastructure law, a massive boost to domestic production of computer chips and the biggest climate crisis law in history. He won further goodwill on the left by withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan to end America’s longest war. What happened?Shakir identifies two major influences. First, Sanders’ insurgent campaigns in 2016 and 2020 built a mass movement that attracted millions of people. “Biden was not clueless as to the need to make sure that if he was going to win, he needed all those people in his tent, and he’s been a good coalition builder in that regard.”Then there was an accident of history, an opportunity in crisis. “When Covid came along, it just affirmed that to the extent that we needed government solutions to address crises in America, they needed to be progressive. The politics changed in a big way such that people were needing and desiring and wanting government action. As a result he’s been able to pass a bunch of legislation that shows government is going to be a very strong actor on the scene in a way that it hasn’t been in decades.”Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren, agrees. “The Covid crisis gave Joe Biden a permission structure to think bigger and a bit differently than he did his entire political career and made him more open to fully baked progressive solutions that had been worked on for years and were very fitting in the moment,” he said.“The idea of helping workers and helping businesses keep workers. The idea of helping parents take care of their kids. The various solutions that were passed in reaction to the crisis were not made up on the fly. They had been percolating for years among progressives and ended up setting the tone for Joe Biden’s entire presidency.”As the party has shifted left, Biden, an old-school pragmatist, was willing to shift with it. Last year he announced a plan for student loan forgiveness. He has pledged to take on corporate greed and malfeasance, stand with workers at Amazon and elsewhere and revive American manufacturing in left-behind communities.But it may be less a Damascene conversion than simply slipping into the comfort zone of a self-described “union man” who has been dubbed “blue-collar Joe” because of his humble roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “What was most interesting about Biden’s first two years were how many areas he departed from Obama. If you put yourself back into the Vice-President Biden years, you could almost hear Biden’s criticisms of Obama.“There’s no doubt that for Biden, where he comes from matters a lot. You can see the imprint of ‘I’m from Scranton’ on a lot of his policies. These may be some of the most progressive policies to encourage unions to protect workers that we’ve seen in decades and decades. It’s the kind of stuff that Obama just didn’t make a top priority.”Even so, Joe Biden is not Bernie Sanders. The president is an avowed capitalist; the senator is currently on tour promoting a book entitled It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who knows both of them, said: “They’re not the same. Just because someone has similar visions of a just and equitable society, we shouldn’t confuse two very different politicians. They’re different people. The society that Bernie wants is a society where everyone gets a living wage and has healthcare. The society that Joe Biden is fighting for is one where it’s equitable and no one is left behind.”There have undoubtedly been areas where a President Sanders would have gone further. He has long advocated Medicare for all – a single-payer, government-run healthcare programme that would cover all Americans but that Biden never embraced. Sanders’ wishlist also includes taxing Wall Street transactions more aggressively and using those funds to expand free public colleges and universities.But some of the failures have come at the hands of Congress rather than the White House. Sanders’ fight for a $15 an hour minimum wage fell in the Senate. His $6tn Build Back Better plan to tackle the childcare crisis, make community colleges tuition-fee, tax billionaires, address homelessness and expand vision, hearing and dental care for the elderly was backed by Biden but blocked by Republicans and the Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.Congress did pass legislation to invest nearly $400bn in climate and energy measures and make the biggestreforms to national healthcare policy since Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act. But Sanders told the Guardian it was “extremely modest” since it was a long way short of the Medicare for All and $16.3tn “Green New Deal” he campaigned on in 2020.Some on the left are disappointed by such compromises and want alternatives to Biden in 2024. Norman Solomon, national director or RootsAction.org and organiser of a “Don’t Run Joe” campaign, said: “Given the extreme crises that we face, from climate to income inequality to the fraying of the social fabric to the diminishment of actual healthcare in the post-Covid era, there are signs that Biden to a significant degree is throwing in the towel around Covid, around anything approximating moving towards healthcare inequality. Bernie’s trying to mitigate the slide.”The next two years could be an uphill battle for the Sanders agenda. Republicans control of the House of Representatives and are intent on paralysing the White House with multiple investigations. Klain, lauded for giving a sympathetic ear to the left, departed as chief of staff earlier this month and was succeeded by Jeff Zients, whose background as a wealthy corporate executive alarms progressives.Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families party, said: “Joe Biden’s choice of a chief of staff suggests that perhaps he might be listening even less to people like me.“That simplistic way the Wall Street Journal framed it doesn’t really tell the story of the real debate and contention that’s happening every single day inside the Democratic party and likely inside of that White House around what direction to take the country and to take to the Biden administration. The fact that it’s live means this is a White House that’s organisable but it could be organised in the direction of a Bernie Sanders or in the direction of a Joe Manchin.”TopicsBernie SandersJoe BidenDemocratsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More