US Politics

She’s Georgia’s great blue hope. Can Stacey Abrams win her crucial race? Georgia in focus: Despite being hailed as architect of Georgia’s political transformation, Abrams is still an underdog in her rematch with Governor Brian Kemp for reasons that make Democrats nervousStacey Abrams was a high school senior the first time she was invited to the Georgia governor’s mansion. It was for a ceremony honoring the state’s class valedictorians, and Abrams was her school’s top academic achiever. At the time, her family did not own a car, so Abrams and her parents rode the bus from their working-class suburb to the stately mansion in downtown Atlanta.When they arrived, Abrams recalls a guard emerging from the security booth. Eyeing the bus, he told them: “This is a private event. You don’t belong here.” Never mind that her invitation was tucked into her mother’s handbag or that her name was second on the list of invitees.Ginni Thomas still believes Trump’s false claim the 2020 election was stolenRead moreA terse exchange ensued between her father and the guard, who grudgingly checked the guest list and let them in.“The thing of it is,” Abrams said at a recent campaign stop in Atlanta, “I don’t remember meeting the governor of Georgia. I don’t remember meeting my fellow valedictorians from 180 school districts … All I remember is a man standing in front of the most powerful place in Georgia, looking at me, telling me I don’t belong.”But the story doesn’t have to end there, Abrams tells supporters as she campaigns to become the first Black female governor in American history. With their help this November, she promises, they will “open those gates wide” and “win the future for Georgia”.Four years ago, Abrams came within a hair of it. She lost the Georgia governorship to Republican Brian Kemp by fewer than 55,000 votes, in a race dominated by allegations of voter suppression, which Kemp, then the secretary of state overseeing the election, denied.In her near-miss, national Democrats saw a promising leader – and the potential to reclaim the southern state that had long ago slipped away. Successive Democratic wins in the years that followed validated her work expanding the electorate, a decade-long project aimed at mobilizing the disillusioned and the marginalized.Abrams was even considered a potential running mate for Joe Biden in 2020, a prospect she welcomed. But she always kept her sights on the governor’s mansion, declining pleas to run for the Senate. Now, her second chance has arrived.Yet Abrams, hailed by Democrats as the architect of Georgia’s political transformation, enters the final weeks of her rematch with Kemp an underdog.Polls consistently show the 48-year-old Democrat trailing Kemp, now a relatively popular governor with the advantage of incumbency. The latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) poll found that the governor had significantly expanded his lead over Abrams, 50% to 42%. And while Abrams has stronger support among her base than Kemp, according to a Monmouth University survey, it concluded that her path to victory was “much narrower”.But Abrams is refusing to be counted out. A Yale-educated tax attorney, she says she trusts her math better than the polls. In the fast-growing and diversifying battleground state, she notes that as many as 1.6 million new voters have been added to the rolls since 2018, many times Kemp’s margin of victory that year.“Every success I’ve ever had in politics has been about building the electorate I need – building the electorate we should have, which is an electorate that’s much more reflective of the state,” Abrams said during an interview at a coffee shop in Atlanta.Georgia is nearly evenly divided between the parties, and in many ways, Abrams and Kemp embody the dueling factions of the state’s polarized electorate. Abrams, a former state house minority leader and prominent voting rights advocate, is working to mobilize Black, Latino and Asian American voters along with young people in Atlanta and its sprawling suburbs. While Kemp, a staunch conservative who easily defeated a Trump-backed primary challenge earlier this year, draws overwhelming support from white voters in the rural and exurban parts of the state.“This is 100% the battle of the bases,” said Nsé Ufot, leader of the New Georgia Project, a group founded by Abrams to register and engage young people and voters of color. “And it’s 100% going to be determined by who shows up to vote and whose votes get counted.”Canvassers with the New Georgia Project are pounding the pavement to register and turn out voters this cycle. Their goal is to knock on at least 2m doors by election day. Though some Democrats have expressed doubts about Abrams’ expansion strategy, Ufot said it has already proven effective by paving the way for Biden’s victory in 2020 and the election of two Democratic senators in 2021, which delivered the party control of the chamber.“Now is the time to double down, not to second guess ourselves,” she said.Despite a deeply loyal base, surveys suggest Abrams has become a more polarizing figure since her last campaign. Supporters say it is not surprising, after four years of being vilified by conservatives as a far-left extremist who views the governorship only as a stepping stone to the presidency.But it may be making it harder for Abrams to attract the vanishingly thin slice of independent and moderate Republican voters whose discomfort with Trump pushed them toward Democrats in recent elections. A Marist Poll found that 11% of Georgians who voted for Biden in 2020 plan to back Kemp for governor, while just 5% of Trump voters favor Abrams.“If Abrams looks to be more than a contender and she wants to win,” said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, “she really is going to have to shake the tree and find a few more Democratic voters.”Meanwhile, Trump loyalists who were once wary of Kemp have largely aligned behind him, persuaded by his conservative record and their fear of an Abrams victory.“We definitely cannot have a Stacey Abrams governorship in Georgia,” said Salleigh Grubbs, chair of the Cobb County Republican party, which censured Kemp in 2021. “That’s a very scary proposition.”Kemp’s refusal to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia during the turbulent weeks after the 2020 election infuriated Trump. In the months that followed, he made Kemp the target of a vengeance campaign, even once musing that Abrams would make a better governor.But since Kemp’s strong primary showing, Trump has mostly stayed away from the governor’s race. And Republican allies say Kemp’s independence will probably help him win back disaffected suburban voters.Abrams is vocal in her view that Kemp deserves no credit for withstanding pressure to subvert a free and fair election.“While I’m glad that he didn’t commit treason, that is not a reason to lionize him,” she said in the interview. “He simply did not do one thing and he has used that to cloak every other bad behavior.”Kemp, Abrams argues, has been relatively silent on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, even as the former president’s stolen-election myth continues to resonate deeply with conservatives in the state. He also backed an overhaul of the state’s voting laws that critics said was rooted in Trump’s groundless claims of widespread fraud.“Kemp is a Maga Republican who has done everything in his power to align himself with not only Trump’s values but Trump’s behavior,” she added. “He has just done it in a more subtle way.”In Georgia, like elsewhere, Democrats face a challenging political environment. Voters have soured on the president amid widespread economic malaise and anxiety about the rising cost of living.With the economy top of mind for voters, Kemp has sought to tie Abrams to Biden and warned that her economic plans would deepen inflation. At the same time, he is campaigning as a steward of Georgia’s bustling economy, which includes record-low unemployment and a record $21.2bn in state-tracked business investments.According to the AJC poll, Georgians were significantly more pessimistic about the direction of the country than the direction of their state. On the campaign trail, Kemp attributes the rosier outlook to his decision to reopen businesses after they closed during the earliest months of the pandemic. He also approved of popular policies that boosted teacher pay, provided tax rebates to families and suspended the state’s gas tax.“The courage that we have seen from Governor Brian Kemp has been extraordinary,” said Nikki Haley, the former Republican governor of South Carolina, during a campaign appearance with Kemp at a burger joint in Atlanta. “First state in the country to open up after Covid – he was vilified for it, and it turns out that he’s the one that saved the economy, saved our businesses … and allowed people to get back to work.”Abrams has sought to paint a starkly different picture of the economy under Kemp, one in which the wealthiest have profited while the poor have been left behind. At the center of her economic agenda is a plan to fully expand Medicaid, which she argues is critical to stopping a wave of hospital closures across the state, including a major trauma center in Atlanta that has become a flashpoint in the campaign.But it is a brewing national backlash to the supreme court decision overturning the federal right to an abortion that Abrams and Democrats believe could change the tide. In ads and on the campaign trail, Abrams has lashed Kemp for signing a 2019 law that bans abortion as early as six weeks in Georgia, before many women know they are pregnant. The law was allowed to take effect in the aftermath of the high court’s ruling.According to recent polling, most voters in Georgia disagree with the supreme court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization and more than half say the state’s abortion laws are too strict.“The No 1 issue that people talk about when I’m on the campaign trail is abortion rights,” said Nabilah Islam, the Democratic nominee for a competitive state senate seat in Gwinnett county.Islam, who has put abortion access at the center of her campaign, pointed to the rise in voter registration among women since the Dobbs decision. “There’s a feeling of helplessness,” she said, “but also hope because people are so angry that they’re organizing at levels unseen before.”Abrams is also working to shore up her base. Black voters are the cornerstone of the Democrats coalition in Georgia. While they still overwhelmingly prefer Democrats, there are some signs the party is struggling to motivate Black voters at the levels needed to win in Georgia.The trend is particularly pronounced among Black men, who have edged toward Republicans in recent years. In several polls, Kemp has notably improved his standing among Black voters from 2018.Ron DeSantis changes with the wind as Hurricane Ian prompts flip-flop on aidRead moreAbrams says she is taking no vote for granted. As part of her campaign’s outreach to Black men, she has hosted a series of conversations called “Stacey and the Fellas” to discuss how her initiatives on issues like healthcare and housing will benefit their communities.At one such event over the summer, she was blunt: “If Black men vote for me, I will win Georgia.”Andrekay Askew is among the roughly one in 10 Black voters who remain undecided in the state. The 27-year-old said he is skeptical of Democrats’ economic policies but was open to learning more about Abrams’s platform.Ultimately, he said, his decision would be guided by: “Who is better with the money?”Listening from the porch, his mother shook her head in disagreement. Laqua Askew, who works in special education, is a lifelong Democrat who voted for Abrams in 2018 and plans to do so again this year. She is worried about a lack of public school funding, as well as gun violence and crime, all of which she said takes a heavy toll on the low-income students she works with.“Kemp had the opportunity to make a change but he hasn’t,” she said. “We’ve got to try something else.”In a state as closely divided as Georgia, much could still change before election day. Kemp and Abrams will face off in a public debate that could help sway the critical few undecided voters. And if neither candidate wins a majority of the vote, the contest proceeds to a runoff election.Speaking at the AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic last month, Abrams asked supporters to spend the final weeks of the campaign focused on the “unfinished business” before them.“I can’t get this job if you all don’t show up,” she said. “I can get this job if you all do what you did in 2018.”
Joan E Greve contributed to this report from Atlanta.
TopicsUS midterm elections 2022AtlantaGeorgiaStacey AbramsUS politicsDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

Former warden and brother accused of killing migrants near US-Mexico borderMichael Sheppard has since been fired from his job at Texas jail and faces, along with his brother, a charge of manslaughter After stopping for water near the US-Mexico border, one migrant was shot dead and another was wounded when they were fired on by the warden of an allegedly abusive Texas jail and his brother last week.Michael Sheppard – the warden of West Texas Detention Facility, a privately-owned jail which once housed migrants detained by the federal government – and Mark Sheppard each face a charge of manslaughter after the 27 September shooting in rural Hudspeth county, roughy 90 miles (145km) from El Paso.Prosecutors charged the Sheppard brothers, both 60, two days after the shooting. Michael Sheppard has since been fired from his job.According to Texas’s public safety department, the victims in the case were among several migrants standing alongside a road drinking water from a reservoir when the Sheppards drove up in a truck. The migrants hid when the pickup first passed, but then the driver backed the truck up, got out, leaned over the hood and fired two gunshots at the group.One of the group’s members, a man, was struck in the head and killed. Another – a woman – was struck in the stomach and injured before eventually being brought to the hospital, officials said. Neither of the victims’ names was immediately released to the public.Investigators wrote in court records that witnesses reported hearing one of the men in the pickup hurl derogatory words at them and make the engine roar, the Associated Press reported.Using a description of the pickup as well as surveillance cameras, authorities later found the truck and the Sheppard brothers.The Sheppards – before they were arrested – claimed to investigators they were hunting at the time of the shooting.A spokesperson for the West Texas Detention Facility’s proprietor, Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections, later told media outlets that the company had dismissed Michael Sheppard “due to an off-duty incident unrelated to his employment”. The spokesperson wouldn’t elaborate, citing an “ongoing criminal investigation”.The University of Texas and Texas A&M immigration law clinics and the immigration advocacy group Raices wrote a 2018 report that detailed multiple allegations of abuse – physical and verbal – against African migrants held at the West Texas Detention Facility.The report alleges that the warden “was involved in three of the detainees’ reports of verbal threats [and] in incidents of physical assault”.Authorities had trouble following up on the report’s allegations because many of those interviewed were soon deported, co-author Fatma Marouf told the Associated Press.Though the report stops short of naming that official, Democratic congressmember Lloyd Doggett of Texas over the weekend confirmed that Michael Sheppard was the warden to which the 2018 report referred.Doggett on Saturday joined other Texas Democrats in Congress in calling for a federal investigation in the shooting with which the Sheppard brothers have been charged.“The dehumanizing, the demeaning of people who seek refuge in this country, many of whom are people of color, is what contributed to the violence we see here,” Doggett said.Overall, in August, US authorities said they stopped migrants 203,598 times, an increase of 1.8% from 199,976 times in July but a decrease of 4.7% from the same month in 2021.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
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Capitol attack officer Fanone hits out at ‘weasel’ McCarthy in startling interviewMichael Fanone makes candid and profane remarks about Republicans in Rolling Stone interview as he promotes memoir In an extraordinarily candid and profane interview with Rolling Stone, Michael Fanone – the former Washington police officer who was seriously hurt at the US Capitol during the January 6 attack – called the Republican House leader, potentially the next speaker, a “fucking weasel bitch”.Oath Keepers to stand trial on charges of seditious conspiracyRead moreFanone said past Republican giants would be unimpressed with Kevin McCarthy.“I think at night, when the lights are turned off, Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan have some pretty choice words to say about the fact that they have to hang on Kevin McCarthy’s wall,” Fanone said.“They did some fucking above-average things. And they’ve got to adorn the wall of this fucking weasel bitch named Kevin McCarthy, with his fake fucking spray-on tan, whose fucking claim to fame, at least in my eyes, is the fact that he amassed a collection of Donald Trump’s favorite-flavored Starburst, put them in a Mason jar, and presented them to fucking Donald Trump.“What the fuck, dude?”Fanone’s remarks came as he promoted his memoir, Hold the Line, which will be published next week.The title refers to Fanone’s actions on 6 January 2021, when he, a DC Metropolitan officer, answered calls from Capitol police and rushed to confront Trump supporters storming Congress in an attempt to stop certification of the outgoing president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.Fanone suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury. He has since left the police and emerged, with other officers, as a key witness in hearings held by the House January 6 committee. The riot has been linked to nine deaths, including suicides among law enforcement officers. More than 900 rioters have been charged, some with seditious conspiracy.In his Rolling Stone interview, Fanone also had harsh words for far-right Republicans including Marjorie Taylor Greene (“Put her in the tinfoil-hat brigade”) and Josh Hawley.Of Hawley, the Missouri senator, Fanone said: “He comes down there, flashes the sign of solidarity, [and] riles up this fucking crowd.”Hawley was famously pictured raising a fist to protesters – a picture he has used for fundraising purposes.Fanone continued: “I would’ve had more respect for him if he said, ‘Charge,’ and fucking rushed the first fucking group of police officers that he could possibly fucking find. But he didn’t. He ran like a bitch as fast as he fucking could to the closest safe room in the fucking Capitol building.”Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paperRead moreAmong other startling footage from the Capitol on January 6, the House committee has shown security video in which Hawley is seen running through the Capitol as the mob breaks in.Fanone, now an analyst for CNN, said his new mission in life was to “wag[e] a one-man war against Donald Trump and the fucking people that refuse to accept reality”.Of Republicans under McCarthy and as high in the party as Trump who have sought to downplay the Capitol attack, he said: “You call [January 6] a ‘tourist day’, You say it was ‘hugs and kisses’. I’m going to be that fucking inconvenient motherfucker that pops his head up every time you say some stupid shit like that.”He also said he does not want to be thought of as an American hero, in part because “Motherfuckers think [former vice-president] Mike Pence is a goddamn hero” for resisting Trump’s scheme to stay in power, and “don’t lump me in with that fucking pathetic coward”.Discussing his work for CNN, Fanone described how he has had to moderate his language on air – and how he “did get in a lot of trouble for saying I thought history was going to shit on Mike Pence’s head”.“They thought that it was inciteful language,” Fanone also remarked. “I said, ‘Listen’ – this is an actual conversation I had – ‘if a person named History takes a shit on Mike Pence’s head, I will apologise for having incited that behavior. But until a person named History literally takes a shit on Mike Pence’s head, I’m not saying shit, nor do I regret what I said, because history is going to shit on Mike Pence’s head.’”He added: “History is going to be busy.”Fanone said he thought most of those who physically attacked the Capitol might eventually be brought to account but doubted that those who incited the riot, from Trump down, would face the consequences of their actions.Congressman Jamie Raskin: ‘I’ll never forget the terrible sound of them trying to barrel into the chamber’Read more“To me,” he said, “every last one of them should have been charged with sedition. These guys love 1776” – the year of the American revolution – “so much. They should be damned glad we’re not in 1776 because I’m pretty sure they would all end up on the fucking business end of a musket or the gallows.”Fanone did have kind words for one congressman: Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a Democrat on the January 6 committee. But Fanone said the professor of constitutional law, being a “super-intellectual type”, was “not designed for what lies ahead” in a divided America.Fanone also said he was publishing his memoir because he was going “broke” after resigning his job.“I’m pretty sure that’s why people do things like this,” he said. “I said the things that I said for free and fucking destroyed my career, made my job untenable, and then tried to make hard lemonade out of lemons.”TopicsBooksUS Capitol attackUS policingUS politicsPolitics booksRepublicansUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

Petraeus: US would destroy Russia’s troops if Putin uses nuclear weapons in UkraineFormer CIA director and retired army general says Moscow’s leader is ‘desperate’ and ‘battlefield reality he faces is irreversible’ The US and its allies would destroy Russia’s troops and equipment in Ukraine – as well as sink its Black sea fleet – if Russian president Vladimir Putin uses nuclear weapons in the country, former CIA director and retired four-star army general David Petraeus warned on Sunday. Petreaus said that he had not spoken to national security adviser Jake Sullivan on the likely US response to nuclear escalation from Russia, which administration officials have said has been repeatedly communicated to Moscow.He told ABC News: “Just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a Nato – a collective – effort that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black sea.”The warning comes days after Putin expressed views that many have interpreted as a threat of a larger war between Russia and the west.Asked if the use of nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine would bring America and Nato into the war, Petreaus said that it would not be a situation triggering the alliance’s Article 5, which calls for a collective defense. That is because Ukraine is not part of Nato – nonetheless, a “US and Nato response” would be in order, Petreaus said.Petreaus acknowledged that the likelihood that radiation would extend to Nato countries under the Article 5 umbrella could perhaps be construed as an attack on a Nato member.“Perhaps you can make that case,” he said. “The other case is that this is so horrific that there has to be a response – it cannot go unanswered.”Yet, Petreaus added, “You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear escalation here. But you have to show that this cannot be accepted in any way.”Nonetheless, with pressure mounting on Putin after Ukrainian gains in the east of the country under last week’s annexation declaration and resistance to mobilization efforts within Russia mounting, Petreaus said Moscow’s leader was “desperate”.“The battlefield reality he faces is, I think, irreversible,” he said. “No amount of shambolic mobilization, which is the only way to describe it; no amount of annexation; no amount of even veiled nuclear threats can actually get him out of this particular situation.“At some point there’s going to have to be recognition of that. At some point there’s going to have to be some kind of beginning of negotiations, as [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy has said, will be the ultimate end.”But, Petreaus warned, “It can still get worse for Putin and for Russia. And even the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield won’t change this at all.” Still, he added, “You have to take the threat seriously.”Senator Marco Rubio, the ranking Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee told CNN that Putin was down to two choices: established defensive lines or withdraw and lose territory.Rubio said he believed it “quite possible” that Putin could strike distribution points where US and allied supplies are entering Ukraine, including inside Poland. The senator acknowledged the nuclear threat, but he said most worries about “a Russian attack inside Nato territory, for example, aiming at the airport in Poland or some other distribution point”.“Nato will have to respond to it,” he said. “How it will respond, I think a lot of it will depend on the nature of the attack and the scale and scope of it.”But as a senator privy to Pentagon briefings, Rubio resisted being drawn on whether he’d seen evidence that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.“Certainly, the risk is probably higher today than it was a month ago,” Rubio said, predicting that Russia would probably take an intermediate step.“He may strike one of these logistical points. And that logistical point may not be inside … Ukraine. To me, that is the area that I focus on the most, because it has a tactical aspect to it. And I think he probably views it as less escalatory. Nato may not.”TopicsUkraineUS politicsRussiaEuropeVladimir PutinnewsReuse this content More

Hurricane Ian: Americans urged to weigh risks of rebuilding in vulnerable areasFema administrator says people should ‘make informed decisions’ about rebuilding in areas hit by natural disasters US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) administrator Deanne Criswell asked Americans on Sunday “to make informed decisions” about rebuilding in vulnerable areas hit by natural disasters intensified by climate change.“People need to understand what their potential risk my be whether it’s along the coast, inland along a riverbed or in tornado alley,” Criswell told CNN’s Face the Nation. “People need to make informed decisions about what their risk is and if they choose to rebuild there they do so in a way that’s going to reduce their threat.”Criswell’s comments came four days after Hurricane Ian devastated barrier islands and coastal communities around Fort Myers Beach, Florida, with estimates for rebuilding running into the tens of billions.The state’s Medical Examiners Commission has confirmed that the storm resulted in at least 44 deaths, most of them due to drowning. Other estimates say the toll is already at 72 – and that is expected to rise.Of those dead, 30 were found in Lee county, which includes Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel and Cape Coral. About 70% of the county is without power. Across the state, about 837,000 businesses and homes remained without power on Sunday.The Associated Press reported that water was still rising in central Florida, with officials warning that flooding could continue for days, particularly in areas around the St Johns River and its tributaries, which were left swollen by the powerful storm.The latest natural disaster to hit the US comes after a series of floods, tornadoes, fires and hurricanes, has laid bare the rising costs of devastation associated with a warming climate.It has been widely reported that only about 18% of Fort Myers residents had purchased flood insurance. “If you live near water or where it rains it can certainly flood, and we have seen that in multiple storms this year,” Criswell said. “If you live near water – anywhere near water – you should certainly purchase flood insurance.”Insurers say they are anticipating between $28bn and $47bn in claims from what could amount to the costliest Florida storm since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.Criswell’s comments came as officials and political figures have deflected accusations that evacuation orders for residents of Fort Myers came too late for many to leave.The Fema administrator defended that decision on ABC’s This Week: “The storm itself was fairly unpredictable in the days leading up to landfall,” Criswell said. “Just 72 hours before landfall, the Fort Myers and Lee county area were not even in the cone of the hurricane.”Criswell continued: “As [the cone of uncertainty] continued to move south, the local officials immediately – as soon as they knew that they were in that threat zone, made the decisions to evacuate and get people to safety.”State senator and a former governor Charlie Crist told CNN that the timing of the warnings out were “something we’ll have to look at”.“When you do issue an evacuation notice, assuming everybody is going to do it, you have to think how fast can you get them out?” he added.Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are set to visit the devastation in Florida on Wednesday, two days after the president is supposed to take a trip to Puerto Rico, where thousands of people are still without power two weeks on from Hurricane Fiona’s hitting the island.“This is not just a crisis in Florida. Or in South Carolina. Or in Puerto Rico,” Biden tweeted Sunday. “It’s a United States crisis.“We’ll do everything we can to get these communities back on their feet.”This is not just a crisis in Florida. Or in South Carolina. Or in Puerto Rico.It’s a United States crisis.We’ll do everything we can to get these communities back on their feet.— President Biden (@POTUS) October 2, 2022
In Florida, satellite images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show how storm surge demolished structures on the shores of Sanibel Island. In addition the roadway linking the island to the mainland has been severed in several places and could be structurally unsound in others.Marco Rubio, the Florida Senator, told ABC that it was likely that Fort Myers will recover but would not be the same. “They’re going to be rebuilt, but they won’t look the same, because you can’t rebuild old Florida,” Rubio said. “Some of those places that had been there for so long are just gone.”The Republican senator predicted that it would take at least a couple of years for the causeway to Sanibel island to be rebuilt.“I think our priority now is to identify the people that remain on Sanibel who wanted to stay there, but eventually have to come off because there’s no way to continue their life there,” Rubio said. “There’s no way to restore the power. There’s no economy there. At some point, they’ll have to be moved.”As authorities continue to assess the damage, Fema’s Criswell warned that “this is going to be a long road to recovery”. The administrator signaled that any lessons to be learned from the disaster would come after federal and state agencies had discharged their initial responsibilities.“We’re still actively in the search and rescue phase trying to make sure that we are accounting for everybody that was in the storm’s path and that we go through every home to make sure that we don’t leave anybody behind,” Criswell said.TopicsHurricane IanUS politicsFloridanewsReuse this content More

Will Gavin Newsom run for president – and could he win over the Democratic base? The California governor insists he’s not running – but his recent moves suggest national aspirationsGavin Newsom has paid for billboard banners in Mississippi, Texas and several other Republican-run states in the lead up to the November midterms. The California governor’s campaign has aired TV advertisements in Florida, and he’s challenged the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, to a nationally televised debate.No, he’s not running for president. At least, not officially.Newsom easily trounced a recall effort last year and is expected to coast into re-election in November. With a healthy lead in statewide polls and a hefty $24m in his campaign fund, Newsom is using the opportunity to raise his national profile – and maybe bask a bit in the presidential buzz surrounding him.He has insisted that he has “subzero interest” in being president, and he reiterated the point during a talk last week in Austin, where he was billed to speak “on what the nation’s most populous state” could teach the other 49.“I cannot say it enough,” Newsom said. “I never trust politicians, so I get why you keep asking.”But denial is the tradition of pretty much every politician who has flirted with chief executive ambitions. Why else is he touting his visits to the White House (to “meet with national leaders” and pick up an education award) and speaking engagements in New York (to amplify his climate policies)?“Yeah, he’s definitely running for president,” said Dan Schnur, a politics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has advised Republican candidates. “The only question is whether he’s running in 2024 or 2028.”With Joe Biden suggesting that he will probably run for re-election, Newsom might have to wait his turn. In any case, “Newsom is setting a course for higher office, after his tenure as governor,” said Sonja Diaz, director of UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute. Nearly every California governor since the second world war has harbored presidential hopes, but Newsom could just as well be auditioning for the Senate seat that the 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein might retire from soon, or perhaps some other national position in Washington DC.It’s not just Newsom’s campaign that has raised chatter about his national aspirations. Opinion columnists, political consultants and activists have also closely watched his gubernatorial priorities and vetoes – and wondered about his motivations.California governor’s ad campaign offers help to women in anti-abortion statesRead moreDiverging at times from his own professed policy ideals, Newsom has attempted to walk the line between California progressivism and nationally appealing moderation. He pushed to keep open the state’s last nuclear plant, going against an agreement devised with environmental groups years ago. He successfully championed a controversial program to force unhoused people into mental health and substance abuse treatment, over the objections of civil rights leaders, disability activists and healthcare professionals. And last month, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed for supervised injection site pilot programs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland – backtracking on his own support for such measures to prevent overdose deaths. “I have long supported the cutting edge of harm reduction strategies,” he said in a veto message, but he said the bill “could induce a world of unintended consequences”. Ultimately, he kicked the can down the road, directing the health department to research “best practices” for such programs.“A centrist Democrat who needs to win swing voters in the general election can’t sign legislation creating government-run drug sites,” Schnur said. Based on his personality, his business-minded background and his policy track record, Newsom isn’t likely to inspire the party base the way progressives like Bernie Sanders could. “So his opportunity lies in really presenting himself as a center-left alternative,” Schnur said.Newsom’s office declined to comment on this story but directed the Guardian to news releases and public comments explaining his reasoning for vetoing legislation. His re-election campaign also did not respond to the Guardian’s queries.Having risen to political prominence from the Bay Area, backed by some of San Francisco’s wealthiest families, Newsom will have to expand his circle of advisers, consultants and surrogates – to better understand and reach across the state and country, Diaz said.As a career politician who rose from San Francisco parking and traffic commissioner to mayor to lieutenant governor to governor, and as a multimillionaire businessman, with a chain of wineries, restaurants, nightclubs, hotels and shops stretching across northern California, Newsom has benefitted throughout his career from his close ties with the Gettys, politically well-connected heirs to an oil fortune.And so far, Newsom has had to face few – if any – truly competitive political challenges. Currently, he has the backing of 52% of registered voters, compared with 25% who favor his challenger, Brian Dahle, a conservative state senator. Even during his recall election last year, when California voters showed signs of losing faith in Newsom amid a devastating surge in the Covid-19 pandemic and escalating economic woes, the governor was able to easily retain his seat – and defeat conservative and rightwing challengers who inspired even less faith in voters.In many ways, Newsom has made much more of an effort than many of his predecessors to elevate Latino, Black and Asian American leaders, and to engage with the state’s vast geography of cultures and experiences, Diaz noted. But in a national race, Newsom may have to do more to convince voters, especially voters of color and working-class voters, that he really sees and understands their challenges and the legacy of inequality that they have to contend with, she said. So far, even the governor’s well-intentioned policies amid the pandemic exacerbated racial and economic disparities.Although Newsom ultimately signed a farmworker labor bill to ease union voting, his initial hesitancy threatened to alienate California’s large unions, agricultural workers and their families, and other essential workers. In a rare moment of intervention, Biden has urged Newsom to sign the measure, which would ease farmworker union voting, as did the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Newsom’s longtime Bay Area ally.The pressure came after Newsom’s office issued a statement last month suggesting that he would veto the measure, and the governor declined to personally meet with United Farm Workers representatives who organized a march from the San Joaquin Valley all the way to the capitol.“In the state with the largest population of farmworkers, the least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union,” Biden said, just before Labor Day.The statement is in line with Biden’s broader support for unions. “But it’s not hard to imagine that the president wanted to remind the governor to wait his turn,” Shnur said.TopicsGavin NewsomUS politicsCaliforniafeaturesReuse this content More

The ‘all-out’ effort to overcome Georgia’s new restrictive voting billSB202 is forcing officials and voting rights groups to use every resource to ensure elections run smoothly In 2021, the Election Integrity Act sent shockwaves across Georgia as citizens learned of new restrictions, such as curbing the way churches could provide pizza and water to voters. However, there are much broader effects of the bill being felt across the state as communities across Georgia prepare for midterm elections, the first major election since the signing of the controversial bill.The 98-page bill, also called SB202, impacts a litany of election elements ranging from voter ID laws to the distance at which food and water can be distributed to voters waiting in line. Election officials say they are being forced to use every resource at their disposal to navigate the bill and ensure this election season runs smoothly. But there is widespread concern that the new law will create fresh barriers to voters of color and the changing Georgia electorate.Kamala Harris says ‘everything on the line’ in midterm elections Read more“Internally, we are taking a multifaceted approach, strengthening leadership and expertise throughout departments, and working to beef up skillsets,” said Dele Lowman Smith, chair of the Dekalb county voter registration and election board. “Externally, we are expanding poll worker training and modernizing it to help better address voter concerns when they come up.”Lowman Smith, who was appointed to the position in July 2021, said it will take an all-out approach to ensure elections run smoothly in her county of more than 500,000 active voters.Although there were once 31 ballot drop boxes across the county in the 2020 election season, they are now allowed only six for the entire county as the bill prescribes one drop box per 100,000 voters. The time to request and return absentee ballots has dropped from 176 days to 59 days – more than 50% – forcing election officials to contend with a much quicker turnaround. Additionally, rather than completing absentee ballot applications solely online, voters must now include an original signature on their application, requiring access to a printer.Liza Conrad, deputy executive director of Fair Fight, a voting rights organization based in Georgia, said SB202 significantly burdens voters. “For voters who wish to vote by mail, many are now overcoming these barriers while attempting to make their voices heard,” she said. “If we look back to Georgia’s primary election in May, the rate of rejected vote by mail applications was much higher than that of 2020.”And while voter education once focused on civic engagement and political education, voting rights organizers such as Helen Butler, executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, says engaging voters now has to include education around technology and intricacies of the law out of necessity.“What we have to do now is canvassing to really educate people about the process. We are trying to make sure people are still able to exercise their right to vote,” said Butler. “Every little thing seems to have had some kind of change. Even the secretary of state ‘my voter’ page [website] has changed, and now voters have to navigate through tabs instead of just having it all on one page, so we’re having to train voters on that now too.”Conrad, Butler, and Lowman Smith all think it is critical to note that the full breadth of the law goes well beyond absentee ballots, voter IDs and drop boxes. SB202 also limits poll workers’ ability to work at polls outside their county, limiting the capacity of many counties in Georgia as they struggle to find an adequate number of already dwindling poll workers.Shanice Amira Bennerson worked as a precinct manager for multiple elections between 2020 and 2022. However, after witnessing the impact SB202 changes had on voters during the May primaries, Bennerson decided not to continue her work as a poll worker.“Trying to help voters who were just so confused and dejected is heartbreaking. When you have limited precincts and voters who are confused by these changes, some voters just left. Tensions are high, and voters were understandably frustrated,” said Brennerson. “When you couple this with all of the new rules from [SB202] and the limited training we get, it almost feels like a disaster waiting to happen.”Voting organizations such as the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and Fair Fight have sought ways to engage and encourage poll workers and election boards across the state to address capacity and education on a larger scale. Fair Fight is hosting a “Vote Gold Georgia” tour calling for intentional and expanded voting sites and voting times.Still, some voting rights organizations hope to call attention to the many changes prompted by SB202 by highlighting the voters most impacted by the law.“Anti-voter bills like SB202 are a response to Black, brown and young voters turning out and claiming their power in 2020,” says Conrad. “And so, we are working to continue to make sure that these communities continue to participate and make their voices heard and that the poll workers who keep our democracy functioning are empowered and protected.”Meredyth Yoon, litigation director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta, also thinks the bill unjustly targets voters of color, and hopes to bridge the gap in access it could create.Her group is reallocating resources and shifting its voter education approach to fully educate its communities around changes in timelines, requirements and other recent election changes.“Overall, the impact of the bill is on voters of color, and it was not an accident or unknown to legislators that these communities would ultimately be affected,” says Yoon. “These sorts of tactics are traditionally the types of restrictions that are intended to impact voters of color on the assumption of how voters of color will vote.”TopicsGeorgiaUS voting rightsUS midterm elections 2022RaceUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

The Secret History of the Five Eyes by Richard Kerbaj review – secrets and spies A murky alliance between intelligence agencies, among them the UK and US, is revealed in a scandalous tale of mistrust and misjudgment, including British teenager Shamima Begum being smuggled into Syria by a Canadian spy On the same spring day in 1946 that Winston Churchill made a speech coining the phrases “special relationship” and “iron curtain”, another historic event that would help to shape the next 75 years took place. A secret pact was signed between the UK and the US, a formal agreement to share intelligence in order to combat the Soviet threat.In time, as Canada, Australia and New Zealand signed on, too, that agreement would become known as Five Eyes – although it was not until 2010 that the alliance was made public. Five Eyes, much like the UK’s permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council and its leadership role in Nato, has allowed Britain to feel, post-Brexit, like it still has a seat at the top table. But, perhaps understandably for a secret alliance of intelligence agencies, little about its inner workings have ever been known.Richard Kerbaj, a former security correspondent for the Sunday Times and documentary-maker, has made a decent stab at lifting the curtain. He has persuaded many of those involved in Five Eyes to speak to him, and delved into national archives of all five nations to piece together an understandably partial history.It is a tale that reveals an alliance marred by mistrust, mistakes and misjudgments, one that likes to see itself as responsible for keeping its nations safe but has, at times, not only failed in that endeavour but has also contributed to global insecurity.Until the end of the cold war, the five nations were united in their attempts to defeat the Soviet Union. Part of that involved rooting out Soviet spies or turning Russian diplomats. This is the work that the Five Eyes has been happy to reveal. It has been less keen on shining a light on the darker role it has played.Intelligence agencies may like to see themselves as defensive outfits – preventing attacks, not carrying them out themselves. But over the past 70 years, British and American intelligence agencies have been responsible for a series of aggressive moves that have destabilised the Middle East, contributing to many of the geopolitical problems that still exist today.In the late 1950s, CIA chief Allen Dulles orchestrated the overthrow of a series of democratically elected governments from Iran to Guatemala. In Syria he oversaw “a series of conspiracies” to overthrow the government for committing the crime of refusing to join a western-led military alliance. As Kerbaj points out, “the CIA’s botched operation magnified the already growing anti-western sentiment in the Middle East”.In the early 1980s, the CIA and MI6 worked together to fund, support and arm the mujahideen in Afghanistan in order to help them defeat the Soviet Union. One of the CIA’s “greatest recipients of funding and arms”, Kerbaj notes, was the leader of the Haqqani network, a group the director of national intelligence now deems to be a terrorist network whose leaders are on the US’s most wanted list.And then there is Iraq. This was a war supposedly based on intelligence, namely that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that he was prepared to use them, and that he was willing to share them with terrorist groups such as al-Qaida. None of these theories were true. George W Bush and Tony Blair may have sold the war, but the material they used was created by members of Five Eyes.Not only that, those intelligence agencies were also responsible for some of the most egregious human rights abuses carried out by western powers. Torture was technically illegal, so they instead kidnapped suspected terrorists, flew them to countries with less stringent rules, allowed them to carry out the torture and even provided lists of questions to be asked once the suspects were deemed malleable. It was an American-led operation – Canadian, British and Australian citizens were sometimes the victims – but all members of Five Eyes knew it was happening. Indeed, there were numerous cases where British officials were accused of involvement.The programme, named “extraordinary rendition” rather than the more accurate “kidnap and torture”, would, as Kerbaj notes, “ultimately haunt the legacy of the Five Eyes”.The mistrust that has dogged the alliance from the start still exists today. Seventeen British nationals and citizens were held at Guantánamo but it was two years before the US agreed to release just five of them. Kerbaj reveals that Peter Clarke, former head of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command, was urged by the US to imprison them on their return, something Clarke immediately dismissed. “None of the material they provided us with would have been admissible in court,” Clarke told Kerbaj.Arguably worse is the case of Shamima Begum, who left London in 2015, aged 15, to join Islamic State, and who has now been stripped of her British citizenship. Kerbaj reveals that Begum was smuggled into Syria by a Canadian spy, a fact the Canadians initially withheld from their supposed ally. Both the Canadian and British governments decided to keep this a secret. Begum’s lawyers hope this revelation will help her win the appeal against the decision to remove her citizenship, which takes place next month.Intelligence agencies tell us they keep us safe. And perhaps they do. But the stories Kerbaj tells reveal a different truth. From 2001 onwards, this is a story of failure – of missing warnings that could have prevented atrocities, of misusing intelligence to start a war, and of using its almost untrammelled power to terrorise its own citizens.Spot a problem in the Middle East and Five Eyes either didn’t see it coming, or inadvertently gave it a helping hand.And yet Kerbaj, oddly, comes to a different conclusion. After 15 chapters outlining the disasters and revealing the outrages, he ends with a parade of 14 former spy chiefs and prime ministers explaining why Five Eyes matters. No critics are quoted, nor does Kerbaj himself offer any alternative view. What he has gained in access he has lost in analysis.After 300 plus pages of scandal, Kerbaj blandly concludes: “The alliance remains vital in attempting to foresee and combat future threats.” It is a bizarre end to an, at times, brilliant book.TopicsPolitics booksThe ObserverHistory booksEspionageUS politicsreviewsReuse this content More