US Politics

‘My gut-felt, heartbreaking decision’ – Tracey Emin on her ‘A-Z of abortion’ blanketThe artist made The Last of the Gold to help women considering a termination. With the issue dominating tomorrow’s US midterms, the work seems more potent than ever “I felt pretty vulnerable. I was so broke, homeless, in debt … I had worked so hard at my education and coming from my background … I knew I wanted to be an artist and I knew that if I had a baby on my own, I felt that I had zero chance of that happening. It seemed ironic that now after all my education and fighting … that I was going to end up being a single mother … And I just thought, I can’t bring a baby into the world with all this …”These are the words of Tracey Emin reflecting on her two abortions from the early 1990s. They highlight the reality endured by so many women around the world. Emin has been making highly political work for decades. Through painting, textiles, films and more, she unveils the rawness and truths of life. Abortion is an issue she has constantly explored, yet its importance in her work has too often been dismissed.TopicsArt and designThe great women’s art bulletinTracey EminAbortionUS politicsWomenfeaturesReuse this content More

Democrat Tim Ryan is running against his own party – it could help him winIn an increasingly red state, Ohio Senate hopeful Ryan blames Democrats as much as Republicans for failing the working class Tim Ryan stood in the middle of the electrical workers union hall, facing the signs declaring he puts “Workers First”, and prepared to call for a revolution of sorts.But this was Dayton, Ohio, where patriotism and religion are largely unquestioned even if political loyalties are fluid. So first came the national anthem and then the prayers.After that, the Democrat congressman and candidate for the US Senate laid into his targets.Ryan made a fleeting reference to his Republican opponent, JD Vance, with a derisive remark about the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy – a controversial account of growing up amid poverty and drug addiction – suddenly growing a beard to look more like the working-class Ohio voters he hopes will elect him.After that, the Democrat had little to say about Vance as he turned his guns on another target.Ryan does not have the enthusiastic support of his party’s leadership in Washington even though the outcome of his race could decide control of the Senate. But then Ryan is not an enthusiast for the Democratic national leadership or his party’s record over recent decades.Ohio saw more than one-quarter of its manufacturing jobs shipped off to Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) signed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, in the 1990s and later to China after it joined the World Trade Organization.At the union hall rally in Dayton, a city that has lost about a third of its population over the past 40 years as jobs disappeared, Ryan was cheered when he said Democrats were as much to blame as Republicans.US midterms 2022: the key racesRead more“You’ve seen a broken economic system where both parties have sold out to the corporate interests that shift our jobs down to the southern part of this country, then to Mexico, then to China. There is no economic freedom if there’s no jobs here in the United States,” he told the crowd.Ryan returned to the theme later in speaking about “people who’ve been on the other side of globalisation and automation and bad trade deals that, quite frankly, both parties passed that devastated communities like ours”.In 2016, Donald Trump tapped into anger about the loss of jobs and its impact on communities with a promise to stop the closure of a major General Motors car plant in Lordstown, Ohio, which employed more than 10,000 workers at its peak. He told a rally in a neighbouring city he would bring back jobs to the region: “Don’t move. Don’t sell your house.”That promise helped deliver north-eastern Ohio to Trump and flip a state that twice voted to put Barack Obama into the White House. In 2019, the Lordstown plant shut anyway, adding to the woes of a city that had already lost its hospital. It was not alone. Few places Trump promised to revive saw him deliver.That has opened the door for Ryan to say the Republicans don’t have any real interest in helping working Americans because they really represent the corporations that employ them. But many of those workers long ago decided that the Democrats aren’t serving their interests either.White voters without college degrees accounted for 42% of voters in the 2020 presidential election across the US. The proportion is even higher in Ohio where more than 80% of the population is white and only about one in five people of voting age graduated from university.In the Clinton years, Democrats took around half of that vote nationally. Now the Republicans have an advantage of nearly two to one while Democrats lead among the college educated.Ryan implicitly acknowledged that many of those who traditionally voted Democrat no longer saw the party as representing their interests, and told the rally that has led to some of its strategists wanting to write off the working-class vote.“When I hear people at the national level say things like we have to invest in races where states have an increasing rate of college graduates, that’s where we need to campaign, whoa,” he said. “We’re going to teach the Democratic party that the working-class folks, whether they’re white or black or brown men or women or gay or straight, we are the backbone of this party.”It’s a theme that appears to be resonating with some Ohio voters. While Republicans are well ahead in most of the other statewide races, Ryan is within shouting distance of Vance.“Tim Ryan has been a really strong candidate,” said Lee Hannah, a professor of political science at Wright State University, named after the Wright brothers who invented the first aeroplane in their Dayton bicycle shop.“In some ways he agrees with Trump’s criticisms of the the policies that cost jobs but Ryan would say that Trump didn’t make good on that promise and he has better ideas.”Hannah said that Ryan has also been effective at reclaiming ground from Trump that used to belong to the Democrats while Republicans portray the party as in the grip of a “woke” cultural agenda.“The Democrats have been playing defence on being just the party of identity politics, which I think is unfair but it’s been an effective caricature. Tim Ryan has tried to push against that and talk about more of these issues that he thinks will resonate with working-class voters,” he said.The Democratic congressman also has the advantage of running against Vance.‘It’s humiliating’: US voters struggle with hunger ahead of midtermsRead moreHannah said that the Republican is a relative unknown as a politician despite his national profile as a bestselling author about his hard upbringing in Middletown, Ohio.But the bigger problem may be the scepticism engendered by Vance deriding Donald Trump early in his presidency as a “fraud” and a “moral disaster” and then dramatically becoming a fervent supporter in order to win his endorsement in the Senate primaries. That paid off after Trump’s backing moved Vance from down the field to victory. But it has had consequences both with ardent supporters of the former president who dislike the earlier disloyalty and swing voters put off by Trump.“Vance is really trying to thread this needle where he was this Never Trump Republican back in ‘16 and now he is very much a full-throated Trump supporter. That has led to questions about his authenticity which is probably hurting him,” said Hannah.“Vance really is in a tough spot. I still would say he’s the odds on favourite to win but what’s difficult is that he needs to embrace this Trump base to make sure he has enough support but at the same time that can be really off-putting to folks who were really energised in 2020 to come out and vote against Trump.”Some opinion polls suggest that some Ohioans may be splitting their votes to support the popular sitting Republican governor, Mike DeWine, while also voting for Ryan, or at least against Vance.For all that, Trump remains popular in Ohio, with an approval rating of about 55%, while President Biden’s is well below the national average at just 35% which does not help Ryan.The mood in the union hall was sympathetic to the Democratic candidate if not always toward his party.Ryan, whose father is a Republican, is counting on working Ohioans trusting that it is he, and not Vance, who will fight for their jobs. Michael Gross, president of the local electrical union workers branch, thought that could carry him over the line.“We’re seeing somebody from a part of the state that has particularly been abandoned by manufacturing and big corporations that have left the state and left the country. I think he’s able to transfer that message that he’s here to fight for us, for the people of this state, for working-class families,” he said.But Gross, like others in the hall, struggled to explain why so many union members voted for Trump and Republicans and how to bring them back to the broader Democrat party.“I wish I knew the answer. We tell our members we really haven’t made any gains and then the one percenters have. So it’s really, it’s frustrating,” he said.Kim McCarthy, the chair of the Greene County Democratic party which covers part of Dayton and neighbouring towns, was sceptical that her party’s national leadership will change.“They represent those same interests as Republicans. The Democrats get contributions from the same corporations as Republicans. There’s very little someone like Tim Ryan can do. I’m sure his intentions are good but it’s a broken system that does not allow for people who want to represent people and not buy into the interests of money,” said McCarthy, an accountant.“The Democratic party has huge issues. For me to run as county chair and do this is because I feel that the Democratic party’s future lies at the county level. We’re the grassroots, we are where the people are. We are not in DC. It’s ridiculous. People at the grassroots, at the ground level, we have to push it up because they’re not representing us.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsOhioUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Biden and Obama make last-ditch effort as Democrats’ mood darkens The president has remained outwardly optimistic about Democrats’ prospects in Tuesday’s midterm elections, but the party is now struggling as polls tightenThe lights dimmed, the music throbbed and cellphone lights danced across the arena. Then a DJ welcomed to the stage the president of the United States, Joe Biden, flanked by the former president Barack Obama and Pennsylvania’s nominees for Senate and governor. An ecstatic crowd of thousands roared to their feet.With days left until the midterm elections, the presidents were in Philadelphia to mobilize Democrats in a pivotal swing state that could determine Congress’ balance of power. But the event also had the feel of a political homecoming for Biden, joined by his former running mate in the state where he was born at the end of a volatile campaign season.Unregulated, unrestrained: era of the online political ad comes to midtermsRead more“It’s good to be home,” Biden thundered above the cheering. “It’s good to be with family.”The president has remained outwardly optimistic about his party’s prospects in Tuesday’s elections, and the Democrats’ electric reception at Temple University’s Liacouras Center on Saturday no doubt gave him even more reason for hope. But nationally, Democrats’ mood had darkened.After a summertime peak, the party in power is now struggling to overcome historical headwinds and widespread economic discontent. Public polls have tightened in recent weeks. Democrats are now on the defensive in places they thought were safe, like New York and Washington. And Biden’s low approval ratings continue to burden his party’s most vulnerable candidates, many of whom have sought to avoid the president.Not in Pennsylvania.On Saturday, Biden clasped hands with John Fetterman – the Democratic nominee for Senate locked in a narrow race that could decide control of the chamber – and Josh Shapiro, the party’s nominee for governor.Pennsylvania lies at the heart of Democrats’ efforts of staving off major losses in the House, as the president’s party traditionally does in midterm elections, and keeping their narrowest of majorities in the Senate.Biden declared the midterms “one of the most important elections in our lifetime”.Hanging in the balance, Biden charged, was the very American experiment that began in Philadelphia nearly two and a half centuries ago, now at risk of falling victim to the cynical forces seeking to undermine the nation’s system of government with lies and conspiracies. In impassioned bursts, he warned of the dangers of electing candidates who have denied the results of the 2020 election and who he says threaten the security of future ones.“This isn’t a referendum this year,” he said. “It’s a choice – a choice between two vastly different visions of America.”Making an equally dire case for the Republican party was Biden’s predecessor and political rival, Donald Trump, who addressed a crowd of thousands at an event in the Pittsburgh exurb of Latrobe.There he reprised familiar warnings of worsening crime, open borders and war on “your coal” – a jab at Biden’s comments from a day earlier pledging to shut down coal plants “all across America” that set off an unwelcome political firestorm within his own party. He also teased a long-anticipated third presidential run: “I promise you, in the very next – very, very, very short period of time, you’re going to be so happy.”Biden has said publicly he intends to run again in 2024 but has not made a formal announcement. His team have begun preparations for a possible re-election bid though his age and low approval ratings remain a concern for many Democrats.The convergence of three presidents in Pennsylvania on Saturday underscored the state’s importance as a battleground. In a potential 2024 rematch between Trump and Biden, Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes are once again likely to play a decisive role in determining the victor.Biden on Saturday reminded Pennsylvanians of that power. In 2008, the state helped elect the nation’s first Black president in 2008. In 2020, he said, Pennsylvania elected “a son from Scranton president” and helped make Trump not only a former president but a “defeated president”.Despite some fretting that Biden’s appearance in Philadelphia might do more harm than good for Democrats in tight races, Biden arrived as the native son.Though he built his political career in Delaware, Biden’s political identity is rooted in Pennsylvania. And on Saturday he proudly recalled that as a senator from Delaware he was often referred to as “Pennsylvania’s third senator”.He anchored his 2020 campaign in Philadelphia. As president, he has returned to Pennsylvania on as many as 20 occasions, including a trip to Scranton to tout his infrastructure plan at an electric trolly museum and, more recently, to deliver a primetime address in Philadelphia warning that Trump and his Republican followers “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic”.Biden touted his home state ties to make the case for electing Fetterman to the Senate, saying: “I know Pennsylvania well and John Fetterman is Pennsylvania.”Then he turned on Fetterman’s Republican opponent, the Trump-backed celebrity doctor, Mehmet Oz, casting him as a carpetbagger from neighboring New Jersey. “Look,” he said, “I lived in Pennsylvania longer than Oz has lived in Pennsylvania – and I moved away when I was 10 years old.”Tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots, though polls officially close on Tuesday and it could take days – or weeks in some cases – to know the final result of an election Biden said will “shape our country for decades to come”.In the final months of the midterm cycle, Biden has largely avoided states with the most competitive contests, like Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, even though all of them helped elevate him to the White House. Instead, it has been Obama rallying Democrats in those battlegrounds – a role reversal from 2010 when Obama was the unpopular president and Biden, then his vice-president, was the party’s in-demand surrogate.Yet Biden has kept a frenetic pace on the campaign trail in the final days. On Tuesday, he traveled to Florida, a battleground where Democrats have seen their hopes fade in recent elections cycle, before heading to New Mexico, California and Illinois, Democratic strongholds with competitive midterm contests.On Sunday, Biden returned to New York, where the race for governor has narrowed in a worrying sign for Democrats’ fortunes elsewhere, and he will headline a rally the night before the election in Maryland.In his appearances, Biden has tried to rally supporters around his administration’s policy achievements, highlighting initiatives to lower the cost of prescription drugs, boost domestic manufacturing, combat climate change and forgive student loan debt while warning that Republican control of Congress would threaten social security and Medicare.The economy and inflation consistently rank as voters’ top concern this election, along with crime, abortion and threats to democracy. Democrats have sought to blunt Republicans’ advantage on the economy and crime by arguing that their opponents would pursue an extreme agenda on issues like abortion, guns and voting rights. They have pointed to the threats posed by election deniers loyal to Trump.“You see these guys standing there with rifles, outside polling places?” Biden said on Saturday. “Come on. Where the hell do you think you are?”For Democrats to remain competitive Tuesday, their task will be to rebuild the coalition responsible for Democratic victories during the Trump era. They must recapture support from a mix of college-educated suburban voters and Republican-leaning moderates while motivating Black voters and young people to turn out in strong numbers.Should they fall short, Biden has been blunt about the challenges of governing with Republican majorities. “If we lose the House and Senate,” he said in Chicago, “it’s going to be a horrible two years.”Taking the stage last on Saturday, in a slot typically reserved for the current president, Obama said he knew all too well what Democrats stood to lose if Biden no longer had majorities in Congress.Bernie Sanders hits the campaign trail with days left before US midtermsRead more“When I was president, I got my butt whooped in midterm elections,” Obama recalled of the 2010 elections. “Midterms are no joke.”He asked the audience to imagine what it might have been like if Democrats had kept control of Congress. They might have acted on immigration reform, gun safety and the climate crisis. Had they kept the Senate in 2014, he continued, the makeup of the supreme court might look very different. The audience groaned at the thought.History didn’t have to repeat itself, Obama said. Democrats didn’t have to imagine what Biden could accomplish with another majority in Congress.“The good news is, you have an outstanding president right now in the White House,” Obama said, ticking through Biden’s legislative accomplishments.“You’ve seen what he’s accomplished with the barest of margins,” he said. “If you vote, he can do even more. But it depends on you.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsJoe BidenBarack ObamaPennsylvaniaUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Kari Lake closes campaign office over envelope with white powder – reportsArizona Republican gubernatorial candidate’s staffer opened the envelope and is under medical supervision, spokesperson says Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake closed a campaign office after an envelope containing “suspicious white powder” was delivered to the premises on Saturday, according to reports.A member of the candidate’s staff unwittingly opened the envelope and is now under “medical supervision”, campaign spokesperson Colton Duncan told CNN.‘A really dangerous candidate’: Kari Lake, the new face of Maga RepublicanismRead moreThe FBI will analyze the item at its laboratory in Virginia, and agents stopped short of saying whether they had confirmed the powder was harmful.“It was one of two envelopes that were confiscated by law enforcement and sent to professionals at Quantico for examination, and we are awaiting details,” Duncan reportedly said.While Lake was taking the threat seriously, Duncan said, she would not be deterred. “In the meantime, know that our resolve has never been higher, and we cannot be intimidated,” Duncan added. “We continue to push full speed ahead to win this election.”Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state and Lake’s opponent in Tuesday’s election, decried the incident. “The reported incident at Kari Lake’s campaign office is incredibly concerning and I am thankful that she and her staff were not harmed,” Hobbs’ campaign reportedly commented. “Political violence, threats, or intimidation have no place in our democracy. I strongly condemn this threatening behavior directed at Lake and her staff.”This case ensnaring Lake’s office comes amid heightened concerns about political violence surrounding the 2022 midterm elections Tuesday and unrest generally. Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, was bludgeoned by a hammer-wielding home intruder on 28 October in an attack that authorities described as politically motivated.In June, California resident Nicholas John Roske was arrested near US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home for allegedly trying to kill the jurist. Roske, who has pleaded not guilty, allegedly told a police officer that he was angry over the then draft supreme court opinion overturning the federal abortion rights established by the landmark Roe v Wade case.Threats against politicians have surged in recent years, with the US Capitol police saying that they investigated 9,625 threats against legislators in 2021, which began with supporters of Donald Trump launching an attack on the congressional session that certified the former president’s defeat to Joe Biden. That toll was about a threefold increase from 2017, Capitol police said.While US House members will now receive a $10,000 security allowance, the stipend has been criticized as insufficient.The New York police department (NYPD) warned on 27 October that extremists might target political events and polling sites in advance of Tuesday’s race.A New York City voting site was shuttered for several hours Sunday after a bomb threat, authorities said. The threat was reportedly directed toward the school which housed the site.The NYPD said this threat was neither against the polling station nor politically motivated.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022ArizonaRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Republicans and Democrats make last arguments as midterms loomDemocrats frame election as referendum on US democracy while Republicans say they will better address economic woes Political leaders from both sides of the aisle on Sunday made their closing arguments to voters two days before the hotly contested US midterm elections, with several top Democrats framing the election as a referendum on American democracy.Republicans, meanwhile, swung back by saying that they would better address Americans’ economic woes and repeatedly insisted their rivals were ill-equipped to help voters despite Democratic rhetoric that the GOP was to blame for the nation’s political divisiveness.Trump expected to announce 2024 campaign before end of NovemberRead more“The stakes are about economics,” Minnesota Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar said on CNN’s State of the Union. “Every country in the world has been through a hard time coming out of this pandemic.”“The question [that] voters have to ask is: who do you trust to have people on staff who see them, who’s going to stand up for them, social security and Medicare?”Klobuchar also warned that a shift right could spell danger for this country. She noted that numerous Republican candidates have sowed doubt over the 2020 elections – and said that Donald Trump’s shadow is “looming over” key states.“These candidates are throwing truth out the window – they’re shattering the rule of law and they’re laughing at political violence,” Klobuchar said. “If you’re a Democrat, independent, or moderate Republican, democracy is on the ballot and it is time to vote for democracy.”New Jersey Democratic senator Cory Booker voiced similar sentiments. “There’s a lot on the line and we have to remember after what we saw at January 6, Republican or Democrat, we should be electing people that believe in our democracy, that believe in our traditions, and that ultimately want to unite people and not divide them,” Booker said on ABC’s This Week.Referring in part to the attack on US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, he added: “There’s a culture of contempt in this country. You’re seeing election workers getting increased threats. You’re seeing judges getting increased threats. Heck, you’re even seeing members of Congress – as we saw with what happened to Paul Pelosi.“Something has gone wrong in our country where rising political violence, rising threats are really threatening who we are as a people.”South Carolina Democratic congressman Jim Clyburn on Fox News Sunday defended prior comments that the climate in the US had similarities to Germany in the early 1930s. The House majority whip pointed to denying election results and establishing ways that state executives can overturn election results, as well as calling the press “the enemy of the people”.Clyburn insisted that he didn’t think people were in the wrong if they didn’t vote Democrat. Rather, wrongness involved voting for persons trying to sow skepticism about elections’ validity.“If they don’t vote against election deniers. If they don’t vote against liars, people who lie, know full well they’re lying, we all know they’re lying,” Clyburn said. “So if they’re lying, they’re denying, they’re trying to delete, they’re trying to nullify votes – vote against that foolishness.”During a pre-recorded interview that aired on ABC, Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, told voters that his party better represented their economic interests. Youngkin also hit cultural talking points, invoking the bogeyman of rising crime.“Americans are hurting right now and Republican gubernatorial candidates, because that’s who I’ve been spending a lot of time with, are offering commonsense solutions to these most critical issues,” Youngkin said. “Americans are sitting around their tables in the evening and they’re worried about inflation and they’re worried about crime and they’re worried about their schools and they’re worried about the border.“Republicans have clearcut commonsense solutions to all of these,” Youngkin also said, without detailing any of those purported solutions.Both sides’ intensely ideological politicking ahead of Tuesday speaks to a potentially watershed outcome for the nation’s future. The party in control of Congress often loses its majority during midterm elections. So a Republican majority at this point of Joe Biden’s presidency would not be shocking historically speaking.Any dramatic political shift in the current climate, however, could fan the flames of unrest and pessimism pervading a country that is increasingly divided over issues such as voting, gun control, race, reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights.And, as political violence and conspiracy theories abound, Trump’s divisive politics might reign supreme once more, especially as he might soon declare his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.Regardless of the midterm election’s outcome, it remains unclear whether politicians will be able to shepherd meaningful legislative solutions to these problems. Major legislation will probably require bipartisan cooperation, which seems unlikely in a bitterly partisan political climate.On NBC’s Meet The Press, host Chuck Todd asked Florida Republican senator Rick Scott: “What’s the first bill a Republican Congress sends to the president’s desk that you actually think he would sign?”Scott did little more than toe the party line, saying: “I think the issue we’ve got to deal with is inflation. We’ve got to figure out how to spend our money wisely, so we don’t continue this inflation. I think we’ve got to do whatever we can to get this crime rate down, so I think we have to look at that. We’ve got to secure the border.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

The Guardian view on the US midterms: a tale of two contestsEditorialThese elections are key not just to what the president can achieve in the next two years but to the future of democracy When American voters go to the polls on Tuesday, they will be voting not only in a multitude of specific races, but in what feel like two separate elections. The first is a largely traditional version of the midterms: a referendum on the incumbent (helping to explain why Joe Biden has been keeping a relatively low profile, given his approval ratings) and on the economy. In a cost of living crisis, it may not be surprising that 92% of Republicans see the economy as very important, with predictable issues of crime and immigration following behind.But among Democrats, only 65% see the economy as very important – while 80% cite the future of democracy, 79% cite healthcare and 75% abortion. This is the second and very different contest. It is a “struggle for the very soul of America”, as Mr Biden warned on Wednesday, and a battle over people’s fundamental rights – to control their own bodies, and to have free and fair elections. The context is the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021; the vicious attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband by a man who told police he had planned to kidnap the House speaker and break her kneecaps if she “lied” to him; and the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade. The latter led to a surge in registrations, and more than half of registered voters still say abortion will be very important in determining their choice. But Republican candidates who have realised the unpopularity of their extreme views are now muddying their message, as even some voters who define themselves as “pro-life” balk at total bans.The question is how much ground Democrats lose. Polls suggest Republicans will almost certainly take the House and are favoured to take the Senate. Whether they prove more accurate than in recent years is critical to an outcome which will help to determine everything from US support for Ukraine to the 2024 presidential race. A triumph for the Republicans will mean a hobbled administration, facing legislative stagnation, hostile committees and investigations on matters such as Hunter Biden’s business dealings.But this is also a defining moment in the defence of democracy. Thanks to Donald Trump’s lies, amplified by hard-right media outlets like Fox News, grassroots Republicans believe, entirely wrongly, that the 2020 election was unfair or outright stolen – a belief not dented even when his own officials testified to his defeat. The consequences have included political violence; the danger of more is clear. But this “big lie” is also playing out in midterm races.The electoral system is already warped by years of gerrymandering, as the growing gap between the Democrats’ share of the popular vote and actual political power demonstrates (though the House race appears fairer than in recent contests). Now it is under fresh threat from outright election deniers who question or reject Mr Trump’s defeat and won’t commit to accepting defeat themselves. If the former president runs in 2024 – as he says he “very, very, very probably” will do – key election officials may not resist his attempts to overturn his defeat as they did in 2020. In Arizona, all but one of the Republican candidates for Congress, governor, attorney general and secretary of state have questioned the 2020 result.The very act of casting a vote in the midterms may help to preserve or imperil democracy. But because very protracted counts will probably be followed by legal challenges and threats, winning means not just persuading voters, but ensuring that their choices are upheld. An increasingly polarised electorate may move even further apart. It is unsurprising that there are two contests when there are, increasingly, two different Americas, who cannot even agree on the facts, still less what they mean for the nation.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsJoe BidenDonald TrumpDemocratsRepublicanseditorialsReuse this content More

US far-right group sparks legal firestorm over drive to monitor drop-box votingMelody Jennings of Clean Elections USA teamed up with True the Vote for project that echos Trump’s false claims about 2020 A far-right group run by a Christian pastor has sparked a legal firestorm by spearheading a drive to aggressively monitor drop-box voting for fraud in Arizona and other states, in an echo of Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election results were rigged.Melody Jennings, who runs Clean Elections USA, has teamed up with the conservative group True the Vote, which has a track record for making debunked charges of voting fraud. Together they are promoting a project to hunt for alleged drop-box fraud, which Jennings boasted in multiple interviews on Steve Bannon’s podcast War Room and the MG Show, a conspiratorial QAnon program.Michigan’s top election official: ‘Every tactic tried in 2020 will be tried again’Read moreJennings’ frequent messages advocating using cameras and videos in drop-box surveillance fueled lawsuits last month by Arizona voting rights groups charging that voters have faced intimidation tactics from her followers, some of whom have been armed, as they have put their ballots in boxes.Nationwide, more than 4,500 people have reportedly signed up to help monitor drop boxes as part of the Clean Elections drive, which has discussed plans to share photos, information and videos with True the Vote, an organization recently enmeshed in legal battles.Oklahoma-based Jennings has said her campaign to investigate Arizona drop boxes, where people can legally drop off their ballots, was inspired by a teaser on Trump’s Truth Social website for the widely discredited film 2000 Mules, which True the Vote helped make. Jennings has roughly 30,000 followers on the platform.“We’ve got people ready to go in 18 states to go out in shifts and guard these boxes,” said Jennings, whose moniker is Trumper Mel, to Bannon on a 15 October podcast. “We’ve got people out there, on the ground and doing the work.”On Monday, the justice department (DoJ) supported a lawsuit brought by the League of Women Voters against Clean Elections and two other rightwing drop box surveillance operations. The DoJ brief outlines organized campaigns to intimidate voters with video recording and photography.The brief also noted that a legitimate role exists for poll watchers, but said private “ballot security forces” probably violated the federal Voting Rights Act.On Tuesday, a federal judge in Arizona issued a temporary restraining order against Clean Elections and its allies: the order barred them from taking videos and photos of voters and promoting baseless charges of voter fraud, and banned them from openly carrying guns and wearing tactical gear.Judge Michael Liburdi, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, also required that Clean Election drop box watchers stand at least 75 ft (23 metres) away from the boxes they’re monitoring, and publicly correct past false charges they have made about the state’s election laws.Shortly before the restraining order, Clean Elections announced its volunteers would halt certain tactics, such as openly carrying guns and wearing tactical gear. A lawyer for Jennings and the group has said it’s likely that an appeal would be filed on first amendment grounds, contesting some parts of the order.The judge’s restraining order and the Arizona lawsuits came after several drives by Clean Elections volunteers to target alleged drop-box fraud in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa, including one where two armed individuals wearing tactical gear identified themselves as being with Clean Elections, an action that Jennings sought to distance her group from.Similarly, last month the Arizona secretary of state received a report from one individual stating that a Clean Elections representative accused one voter of being a “mule” and had the voter’s license plate photographed, after being followed into a parking lot.Some Arizona GOP officials voiced alarm about the drop box monitoring tactics by Clean Elections and some allied groups, and deplored how their efforts were fueled by the 2000 Mules movie, created by conservative firebrand Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote. The movie’s sweeping claims of nefarious, but unsubstantiated, ballot-box stuffing has drawn widespread criticism.“If it were not for 2000 Mules, organizations and activists in our state would not be engaging in aggressive monitoring of drop boxes which has bordered on unlawful voter intimidation,” said Bill Gates, the GOP chairman of the Maricopa board of supervisors.Gates added that GOP candidates running for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in Arizona have “pointed to 2000 Mules as evidence that the 2020 election was marred by fraud”.Arizona Republican state senator Paul Boyer also voiced strong criticism of the aggressive actions some groups have taken in their pursuit of drop box fraud.“For those who monitor ballot drop boxes, there are the malicious actors who wear military fatigues thereby insinuating voting is akin to war. It is not. No Arizona citizen should ever feel intimidated when dropping off their ballot,” Boyer said.But there’s no doubt that Jennings has been zealous in spreading debunked allegations about 2020 election fraud as revealed by internet archives of now deleted Clean Election USA blog writings and other group materials.“We often hear people say things like, ‘there is always some election fraud’ as if it is OK at a certain level. However, with the help of our heroes mentioned above, we now know that the level of fraud in 2020 was unprecedented and determinative, meaning Joe Biden is now NOT our duly elected representative and neither is Kamala Harris.”“The rabbit hole goes much deeper, but this is all we need to know for now. It means that we do not have free and fair elections in the US and this should be concerning for all,” Jennings said in a previously unreported Clean Elections document found using internet archives.The alliance between Clean Elections and True the Vote to target drop boxes seems to have been fostered in part to obtain evidence to support the unsubstantiated claims in 2000 Mules. The film slings allegations of “ballot trafficking” by 2,000 people – dubbed mules – who were hired by nonp-rofits to stuff drop boxes with potentially bogus absentee ballots in five key states that Joe Biden won.Last month, before the start of early voting in Arizona, Votebeat first revealed that True the Vote’s Gregg Phillips raved about the fledgling partnership with Clean Elections in a video on the conservative website Rumble: “This is the greatest opportunity for us to catch the cheaters in real time, maybe that’s ever existed. So we’re excited about it.”True the Vote is expected to offer new information to conservative sheriffs including a group, launched by the Pinal county sheriff, Mark Lamb, who has been working with True the Vote for several months on other fraud finding missions involving drop boxes.Jennings has denied charges that her group has broken any laws. “All activities supported by Clean Elections USA are lawful and designed to support lawful elections,” she wrote to Votebeat.But Jennings sees her battle to uncover alleged election fraud in apocalyptic terms.“Luckily, people are standing up and the truth is being uncovered. We have some real American heroes out there,” she wrote in a previously unreported blog earlier this year. Jennings cited True the Vote’s leader Catherine Engelbrecht, Phillips and D’Souza among other heroes “who literally put their lives on the line to uncover what is clearly a planned effort to undermine our democratic republic”.Meanwhile, True the Vote has faced mounting legal scrutiny in Arizona and Texas – where two of its leaders were arrested on Monday and cited with contempt of court – related to conspiratorial allegations about voting fraud in the 2020 election.Last month, Arizona’s Republican attorney general, Mark Brnovich, requested an investigation of True the Vote by the IRS and the FBI into potential tax violations by the non profit tax exempt group after the group failed to provide his office evidence of voting fraud they had promised for months.A Brnovich investigator in a letter last month said True the Vote has “raised considerable sums of money alleging they had evidence of widespread voter fraud”.The letter concluded that given True the Vote’s non-profit IRS status, “it would appear that further review of its financials may be warranted”.The letter also revealed that the attorney general’s office had three meetings over the course of about a year with Engelbrecht and her key associate, Phillips. True the Vote leaders have called the attorney general’s charges inaccurate, but didn’t offer proof to rebut them. Engelbrecht and Phillips did not respond to calls seeking comment.In a separate legal firestorm facing True the Vote in Texas, both Engelbrecht and Phillips were arrested on Monday, after being cited with contempt of court by a judge in a defamation lawsuit brought against the group by a Michigan election software firm, Konnech, for alleging that the company’s leader was a “Chinese operative” and that Konnech had engaged in the “subversion of our elections”.True the Vote in podcasts and other places had stated it authorized “analysts” to hack Konnech’s computers that it claimed gave China access to the names of 2 million election workers, to support its allegations against the firm. Last month, a Texas judge ordered True the Vote to hand over the Konnech data and reveal the name of the person who helped them obtain the information.Georgia ballot rules mean voters are falling between cracks, advocates sayRead moreOn Monday, US district judge Kenneth Hoyt ordered the True the Vote leaders detained for “one day and further until they fully comply” with his demand last week that they disclose the name of a person of interest in the case who True the Vote had cited in its defense in court but referred to mysteriously as a confidential FBI informant.A True the Vote spokesperson has said the group’s lawyer would appeal against the judge’s action and demanded the pair’s “immediate release”.As for Jennings, just days before the justice department brief and the judge’s restraining order against her group she dropped some hints about her looming legal problems during another interview with Bannon.Jennings told Bannon that her group was rebranding some by changing its name to the Drop Box Initiative in Arizona, but keeping her original name in other states.“We are going to rebrand a little bit,” Jennings told Bannon, noting that “I don’t need any more people in Arizona, honestly”. But she added that her drive was still trying to recruit more volunteers in many states.Appearing on War Room again two days later, Jennings appealed to the podcast’s audience to help her legal defense by donating funds to True the Vote.TopicsArizonaUS midterm elections 2022US voting rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Trump expected to announce 2024 campaign before end of NovemberEnvoys quietly start to prepare groundwork for aggressive field operation, putting Trump at center of attention ahead of midterms Donald Trump is expected to announce a third White House campaign before the end of November as envoys have quietly started to prepare the groundwork for an aggressive field operation, according to people familiar with the matter, thrusting him into the center of attention ahead of Tuesday’s midterms.Inside the unhinged midterm election conspiracy theories on Truth Social Read moreThe plans for a potential 2024 campaign have started to accelerate in recent weeks, with the former president and his advisers signalling that an announcement is imminent and aiming to capitalize on his position as the clear frontrunner to seize the GOP nomination.Expecting broad Republican gains in an array of midterm races, Trump has indicated that he wants to launch his latest presidential campaign around the week of 14 November on the back of that momentum, taking credit for Republican wins that were bolstered by his endorsements and those that were not.The date, earlier reported by Axios, is not final and partly dependent on GOP performance in the midterms. But Trump has been eager to start a 2024 campaign in part because he believes it could shield him from intensifying criminal investigations by the US justice department.The anticipated presidential campaign is expected at first to be a tight-knit operation, with the core team mainly drawn from his recently created Maga Inc political action committee, which plays off his Make America Great Again slogan and where staffers were told when they joined that they could become part of the 2024 campaign personnel.The early team is widely expected to include a leadership role for Susie Wiles, the chief executive at the Save America Pac. He has credited her with winning him Florida when he captured the Oval Office in 2016, and she had a complicated tenure working with another Republican political darling: Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis.Wiles was recently a top adviser to DeSantis until she was ousted after being accused of leaking emails showing the governor appearing to sell access to lobbyists on golf trips, leading some allies to believe she would be an asset if Trump finds himself in a 2024 race against DeSantis.The Maga Inc staffers expected to play leading roles on a 2024 campaign include senior strategist Chris LaCivita, veteran pollster Tony Fabrizio and the committee’s executive director, Taylor Budowich, considered a capable political operator who is additionally Trump’s main spokesperson.Trump has also raised the possibility of bringing back 2020 deputy campaign manager Brian Jack – as well as his close partner Justin Clark, who worked on litigation related to the January 6 Capitol attack – and Scott Gast, the chief counsel for Compass Legal Group and a Trump representative with the National Archives.But in recent weeks, Trump envoys have started sending out feelers for people who might be interested in working as Trump 2024 field directors, one of the sources said, offering up to double the usual salary of what a presidential campaign field director might otherwise make.The plans for the anticipated presidential campaign have intensified as the justice department moves forward with several criminal investigations surrounding Trump, including over potential mishandling of national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and over the January 6 attack.Some advisers have told Trump that the timing could be positive since the combined effects of announcing a presidential run and daring the justice department to indict him as a candidate could drown out political messaging by congressional Democrats and the Joe Biden White House.Trump remains the fixation of the political and media world, and the reach of Trump coverage invariably exceeds that of Biden. Page views on stories about Trump and the justice department can reach millions, a figure multiple times greater than stories about Biden’s presidency.On Thursday night in Iowa, Trump opened a swing of four rallies in the final five days of the midterm campaign season, where he was joined by Republican senator Chuck Grassley, who is seeking re-election for an eighth time.The rally underscored both Trump’s significant baggage and his popularity with his base – tens of thousands of supporters turned out on a frigid night where temperatures dipped below 40F to hear the same grievances about his 2020 election defeat to Biden that he has delivered countless times.The loudest cheers came when he talked, almost giddy with excitement, about his own campaign. “In order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again,” he said of another White House bid. “Get ready – that’s all I’m telling you. Very soon.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsnewsReuse this content More