US Politics

Stacey Abrams files lawsuit after being blocked from fundraising for Georgia governor campaignA dispute over whether Abrams can be declared the nominee has prevented her from legally raising funds Stacey Abrams has filed a lawsuit seeking to immediately begin fundraising for her campaign for governor under a state law that prevents her gubernatorial leadership committee from doing so.Abrams is requesting to take advantage of a new kind of fundraising committee created by Georgia lawmakers last year, which her opponent, the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, has already been able to make use of. Called a leadership committee, it allows certain people and groups to accept unlimited contributions. Giving to direct candidate committees, on the other hand, is limited to $7,600 apiece for the primary and general elections and $4,500 for any runoff election.Under the law, the committees can be formed by the governor and lieutenant governor, opposing major party nominees, and both party caucuses in the state house and senate. The committees can coordinate with candidate campaigns, unlike most other political action committees.Although Georgia has not yet officially approved Abrams as the Democratic party nominee, Abrams argues that because no one filed to run against her in the 24 May Democratic primary and because write-in votes are not allowed, she became the nominee when qualifying closed.“Ms Abrams – the sole qualified and declared Democratic candidate for Governor of Georgia – and her campaign committee will be unable to operate, control, chair, or otherwise use One Georgia, a leadership committee … to support her campaign without credible and justified threat and fear of legal proceedings being instituted against Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit said.“As a direct consequence, Plaintiffs will suffer ongoing and irreparable injury to their ability to use political speech to advocate for Ms Abrams’s campaign, especially compared to her chief opponent, sitting Governor Brian P Kemp.”Georgia has not yet approved Abrams’s leadership due to disputes over whether she qualified as a nominee before the primary, even though the state’s Democratic party chair, representative Nikema Williams, has recognized her candidacy and recognized Abrams as the sole nominee.In an affidavit, Williams wrote, “The only candidate who qualified with DPG [Democratic Party of Georgia] to run for the office of Governor of the State of Georgia prior to the end of the 2022 candidate qualifying period on March 11, 2022 is Stacey Y Abrams.”Abrams said in court pleadings that when a lawyer for her contacted the state ethics commission to confirm that her leadership committee could begin raising and spending money before 24 May, a commission lawyer said Adams’s legal team first needed to seek legal advice from Georgia’s attorney general, Chris Carr, and secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, as to whether state law considers Abrams the nominee. In the absence of any further clarification since, Abrams’s team filed the lawsuit seeking a temporary order to be allowed to raise money right away.Meanwhile, Kemp created the Georgians First leadership committee after signing the law and had raised $2.3m through January.Lauren Groh-Wargo, Abrams’s campaign manager, said that Kemp’s early fundraising advantage causes “severe harm” to the fairness of the election.“Early fundraising supports later fundraising by demonstrating a candidate’s political viability and widespread appeal, particularly in a high-dollar statewide election in a swing state like Governor of Georgia,” she wrote.TopicsStacey AbramsGeorgiaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Jill Biden criticized husband’s choice of Kamala Harris as running mate, book says‘Why do we have to choose someone who attacked Joe?’ first lady reportedly said, according to This Will Not Pass The first lady, Jill Biden, complained about her husband’s choice of Kamala Harris as running mate and now vice-president, according to a new book, asking: “There are millions of people in the United States. Why … do we have to choose the one who attacked Joe?”Kid Rock says Donald Trump sought his advice on North Korea and Islamic StateRead moreThe quote is contained in This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, by the New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, which is due to be published on 3 May.Excerpts have already been reported. Jill Biden’s reported remark was relayed by Politico on Tuesday.Harris made her mark in the Democratic primary – and bruised Biden – at a debate in Miami in June 2019, criticising his opposition to bussing, a way of racially integrating public schools, as a young senator in the 1970s.01:39Biden was reportedly hurt by the insinuation he had been racist but still picked the California senator as his running mate and ultimately the first woman and person of color to be vice-president.A spokesman for Jill Biden, Michael Larosa, told Politico: “Many books will be written on the 2020 campaign, with countless retellings of events – some accurate, some inaccurate. The first lady and her team do not plan to comment on any of them.”Promising “juicy excerpts” of the new politics book, Politico said Martin and Burns offer extensive accounts of Harris’s struggles as vice-president. As allies complained about her “impossible” portfolio, including border security, the news website said, “Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s communications director, not only grew tired of the criticism that the White House was mismanaging Harris – she blamed the VP.”Martin and Burnswrite: “In private, Bedingfield had taken to noting that the vice-presidency was not the first time in Harris’s political career that she had fallen short of sky-high expectations: her Senate office had been messy and her presidential campaign had been a fiasco. Perhaps, she suggested, the problem was not the vice-president’s staff.”Bedingfield told Politico: “The fact that no one working on this book bothered to call to fact-check this unattributed claim tells you what you need to know. Vice-President Harris is a force in this administration and I have the utmost respect for the work she does every day to move the country forward.”Harris, the book says, does not want only to work on issues connected to women and Black Americans. In her attempts to lead the way on voting rights, however, she reportedly felt stymied by Biden’s reluctance to commit to serious Senate reform.Burns and Martin also report that Biden and Harris are “friendly but not close”, but say the president grew frustrated with leaks about Harris, warning aides that if “he found that any of them was stirring up negative stories about the vice-president … they would quickly be former staff”.The authors say Harris’s frustration was “up in the stratosphere”, according to an unnamed senator who “lamented that Harris’s political decline was a ‘slow-rolling Greek tragedy’. Her approval numbers were even lower than Biden’s, and other Democrats were already eyeing the 2024 race if Biden declined to run.”Biden, the oldest president ever inaugurated for the first time, will turn 82 shortly after the 2024 election. He has said he intends to run again.Whatever the accuracy of the reporting by Martin and Burns, it seems Harris may have cause to agree with a famous judgment by John Nance Garner, vice-president to Franklin D Roosevelt from 1933 to 1941. The vice-presidency, Garner said, “wasn’t worth a bucket of warm piss”.TopicsJoe BidenKamala HarrisJill BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

‘We have failed’: how California’s homelessness catastrophe is worsening A new Guardian US series reports on a seemingly intractable crisis, and hears from those living on the edge in one of America’s richest statesWhen California shut down in March 2020, advocates for unhoused people thought the state might finally be forced to solve its homelessness crisis. To slow the spread of Covid, they hoped, officials would have to provide people living outside with stable and private shelter and housing.But in the two years since, California’s humanitarian catastrophe has worsened: deaths of people on the streets are rising; college students are living in their cars; more elderly residents are becoming unhoused; encampment communities are growing at beaches, parks, highway underpasses, lots and sidewalks. California has the fifth largest economy in the world, a budget surplus, the most billionaires in the US and some of the nation’s wealthiest neighborhoods. Yet the riches of the Golden State have not yielded solutions that match the scale of the crisis that’s been raging for decades. Pandemic-era programs have had some success for a slice of the unhoused population, but many measures have fallen short.Meanwhile, homelessness has become the top issue in political races. Polls in Los Angeles, which is home to 40% of the state’s unhoused population, suggest that a majority of voters want their governments to act faster, and that residents are angered by the immense human suffering caused by a seemingly intractable crisis. ​​Unhoused and unequal: a California crisis. The pandemic brought money, political will and public support to tackle California’s longstanding homelessness crisis. Instead, things got worse. In a new series, the Guardian’s west coast team reports from across the state, exploring what it would take to address a seemingly intractable problemIn response, governments across the state are increasingly cracking down on people sleeping outside. Out of the 20 largest cities in California, the majority have either passed or proposed new laws banning camping in certain places or have ramped up encampment sweeps. LA and Oakland passed laws meant to prohibit camping in certain zones; San Francisco’s mayor has pushed for a police crackdown on unhoused people using drugs in the Tenderloin neighborhood; Fresno adopted a law to fine people up to $250 for entering certain restricted areas; and Modesto, Bakersfield and Riverside are pushing to expand the number of park rangers in an effort to enforce anti-camping rules and related restrictions.Some unhoused people and civil rights activists warn that those escalating efforts to force people off the streets are only further hurting the most vulnerable.“We have failed in so many respects,” said Theo Henderson, a Los Angeles advocate for the unhoused, who was himself living outside until recently. “There are families with children living in automobiles. There are elderly and the infirm on the streets … It’s a dark time right now, and unhoused residents are very afraid.”‘Unacceptable’ numbersIn a new series that will be published over the next several months, Guardian US is examining California’s homelessness crisis across the state.While homelessness remains concentrated in major metro areas like Los Angeles, San Jose, the San Francisco Bay area and San Diego, communities from the north to the Mexico border are facing their own emergencies.Bar chart showing the 31% increase in California’s total unhoused population, largely driven by a 57% increase in those that are unsheltered, or living on the streets, since 2010.California counted 161,548 unhoused people in the state in January 2020, the most recent count data available. The count is a “point in time” estimate that tallies people living on the street or in shelters. Since it’s a rough snapshot of a single day, and doesn’t account for people who are hidden from public view or are unhoused but couch-surfing that night, it is considered a significant undercount.At least 113,660 of those counted were classified as “unsheltered”, making California home to more than half of all people without shelter in America and the only state where more than 70% of the homeless population is unsheltered (by comparison, just 5% of New York’s homeless population was unsheltered.A treemap area chart that shows California has up over 50% of the US’s unsheltered population.The consequences of so many people living outside are severe and fatal. In 2015, the LA county coroner’s office recorded 613 deaths of unhoused people. That number has steadily climbed each year, rising to 1,609 fatalities in 2021, a spokesperson said. Those figures are an undercount, because the coroner only tracks fatalities considered sudden, unusual or violent. A report by the University of California, Los Angeles last year estimated that overdoses were a leading cause of death of unhoused people during the pandemic.Deaths of unhoused people in LA county up 160% since 2015. Bar chart showing the increase in LA county unhoused deaths from 2015 to 2021.Data analyses have revealed other disturbing trends: one UCLA study estimated that at least 269,000 students from kindergarten to grade 12 in the state were experiencing homelessness before the pandemic; in LA county, Black residents were four times as likely to be unhoused; and also in LA, there was a 20% jump in the number of unhoused seniors, with nearly 5,000 elderly people living outside before Covid arrived.“It’s just not acceptable,” said Wendy Carrillo, a state assemblymember who represents parts of LA and chairs a budget committee on homelessness. As a kid, she would pass by Skid Row and struggle to understand why so many people were forced to live outside, she said. The crisis has grown since: “We’ve become so disconnected as a society, so cold to the issue that people are OK with stepping over someone who is passed out on the floor.”A $14bn investment – and a crackdown on campingCalifornia’s catastrophe stems in part from a longstanding, statewide housing affordability crisis. Californians spend significantly more of their income on housing compared with the rest of the nation. More than 1.5 million renters spend half of their earnings on rent, leaving them potentially one medical emergency or crisis away from homelessness. In recent years, income inequality has only worsened.UCLA research on the residents of one LA encampment found that people cited a range of factors that led them to become unhoused, including eviction, job loss, domestic violence, former incarceration, family conflict and low wages in gig economy jobs.Responding to the crisis, California is pouring billions of dollars into housing and related services, but the success of new programs meant to expand affordable housing and emergency shelter has been mixed.“One of the challenges of housing policy is that it’s like turning around a giant ship. It’s a slow process,” said Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project. The state has made significant progress in recent years in investing in housing, he noted, but the benefits can sometimes take more than a decade to materialize.There are also systemic and historical problems that housing programs can’t solve, including the loss of social safety nets, the dissolution of redevelopment programs, and a controversial state tax measure passed in 1978 that has created significant obstacles for new home ownership, Roller said.And some regions have invested more in temporary shelter programs than in permanent housing, making it hard for people to transition out of shelters, especially as the housing market worsens and as more people newly become unhoused, advocates said.Emblematic of the challenges is California’s signature homelessness response during the pandemic: Project Roomkey. The program temporarily provided motel rooms to an estimated 50,000 people living on the streets. But the program was administered at the local level and some counties fell short of their goals or failed to meet the demand in their regions; participants reported struggling to find housing after hotel stays ended and some returned to the streets because of the strict rules in the program, advocates said.This year, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, is pushing a $14bn investment in homelessness solutions, meant to create 55,000 new housing units and treatment slots. His Homekey initiative, the successor to Project Roomkey, allows local governments to buy motels to use as temporary or permanent housing for unhoused people. As of last week, the state has awarded $695m for more than 2,400 units.While the programs could be transformative for some participants, advocates worry their impact for many could come too late, especially with statewide eviction protections expiring at the end of the month and pandemic-era rent relief efforts winding down. Even with a partial eviction moratorium in place, sheriffs enforced lockouts of thousands of households in the first year of the pandemic, according to a CalMatters analysis.“We are getting a lot of calls from tenants who are being evicted,” said Jovana Morales-Tilgren, housing policy coordinator with Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, a Central Valley-based organization. “A lot of undocumented folks don’t have the resources to battle an eviction notice … and then there are not enough shelters for the unhoused people.”Meanwhile, advocates warn, conditions for those living on the streets are only getting harder amid increasing restrictions on camping. A proposed state law would also allow courts to force some people with severe mental illness into treatment.The crackdown on tent living and fear of possible forced treatment can lead people to scatter into more hidden locations where it can be harder for them to access services and get into programs, advocates say.“Using law enforcement to respond to houselessness is both counterproductive and ineffective,” said Eve Garrow, policy analyst and advocate at the ACLU of Southern California. The expansion of criminalization was overwhelming, Garrow said. “And people are experiencing compassion fatigue, and they want something done. Local public officials are responding with what they see as ‘quick fixes’ that aren’t fixes at all and are completely misguided.”‘I don’t want to die on the streets’People living on the streets or in temporary shelters waiting for housing said they were worried and exhausted by the increasingly hostile rhetoric of politicians and communities.“Unhoused people are blamed for every social ill,” said Henderson, who regularly talks to unhoused residents on his podcast. “There’s an uptick in burglaries, and then the response is, ‘Can we get the unhoused removed?’ Every unhoused person has those stories – as soon as something happens, here comes the police looking at them as the prime suspect.”Kenneth Stallworth, who has been living in a group shelter since his Venice Beach encampment was shut down in a high-profile dispute last year, said he didn’t mind the shelter and appreciated the electricity, but also noted that he had seen several people die or have health emergencies in the facility.“The people are getting what they want,” he said of his fellow Angelenos. “The homeless are getting moved away from areas where there were the most complaints.”Dawn Toftee, 57, was living at an encampment near the stadium where the Super Bowl was held in LA last month, until she was forced to leave in advance of the big game. Officials said the residents were offered housing, but a month later, Toftee is camping down the street – and is still waiting for a housing voucher that could subsidize a rental.“I’m getting old and I don’t want to die on the streets,” she said, adding that she didn’t think officials cared whether people like her got housing: “They just want us out of eyesight.”TopicsCaliforniaUnhoused and unequal: a California crisisLos AngelesHomelessnessPovertyHousingUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: ex-Tory MP urges inquiry into why Iran debt went unpaid Alistair Burt, previously a Foreign Office minister, queries delay to payment of cash that freed Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe02:07The UK government has known for many years that if it paid a £400m debt to Iran it was likely to lead to the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the former Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt has said in a letter to the foreign affairs select committee.Burt, a Tory MP until 2019, is calling for the committee to launch an inquiry into why the debt was not paid and into who – either in the governments of the UK or the US – resisted making the payment.Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, was released last week immediately after the UK paid the debt, and at a press conference on Monday she asked why it had taken five foreign secretaries and six years to secure her release.Burt also said he repeatedly urged the government to pay the £400m, which he said was “not a ransom, but a debt owed”.Burt was Middle East minister between 2017 and 2019, and says even now he is not sure what forces were preventing the debt’s payment.Iran debt should have been settled years ago, Zaghari-Ratcliffe saysRead moreIt is the first time a former minister has revealed so much about the clashes within government over the failure to secure Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release earlier. It is understood Burt has told the committee he is prepared to give evidence in public or private.The £400m debt relates to a 1970s arms deal in which the UK took money from the Shah of Iran but then did not deliver the promised Chieftain tanks after he was deposed by Islamic revolutionaries.In his letter to the committee, Burt is careful to say he could not have known for sure if the payment would have led to the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, another dual national.But, he said, he did know from his discussions with senior Iranian ministers that payment represented a chance to open up a new relationship with Iran and “remove an impediment to the relationship and possibly their release”.He said he had reported to the then foreign secretary Boris Johnson (in office from 2016 to 2018) that from his dealings with the then Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, he understood that “payment of the debt was fundamental to their release”.Burt also said he knew there were practical difficulties in paying the debt because of US sanctions, but routes were explored including payment in humanitarian aid or through undertakings by the Iranian foreign ministry that the money would not go to the Iranian army.It is understood that Burt at one point formed a view that the defence secretary Gavin Williamson at the time was opposed to the payment. Burt challenged him, leading to a row, but never received a direct response.Other possible blockages were the US government led by Donald Trump.Burt has also let it be known that he would be happy for his ministerial papers showing his advocacy of paying the debt to be placed on the public record in front of any foreign affairs select committee inquiry.The foreign affairs committee has also been asked to launch an inquiry by Tulip Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead, and the MP representing Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Zaghari-Ratcliffe.Burt, an experienced and respected figure across the Middle East, is curious to know if the resistance was internal inside the government or came from the Trump administration.In his letter, he writes: “I believe now we need to find out who or what stopped the payments.”Ratcliffe has said he believes a parliamentary inquiry is the best route to finding the truth, as opposed to seeking judicial review.Ministers may be reluctant for an inquiry to take place if it starts to unearth the degree to which UK policy on Iran, and the fate of the dual nationals, was being dictated by pressure from the Trump administration.In a clue to the attitude of the Trump administration to payment of the debt, Mike Pompeo, secretary of state under Trump, last week accused Britain of paying blood money by clearing its debt.TopicsNazanin Zaghari-RatcliffeBoris JohnsonIranForeign, Commonwealth and Development OfficeForeign policyUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

US Capitol attack trial begins for Cowboys for Trump founderTrial of Couy Griffin is the second among hundreds of people charged with federal crimes related to the January 6 riot An elected official from New Mexico went on trial on Monday with a judge, not a jury, set to decide if he is guilty of charges that he illegally entered the US Capitol grounds on the day a pro-Trump mob disrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.That’s not the only unusual feature of the case against Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, an Otero county commissioner, whose trial in Washington DC, is the second among the hundreds of people charged with federal crimes related to the January 6 riot.Griffin is one of the few defendants not accused of entering the Capitol or engaging in violent or destructive behavior. He claims he has been prosecuted for his political views.One of three members of the county commission in southern New Mexico, he is among a handful of defendants who either held public office or ran for a government post in the years before the attack.He is among only three defendants who have asked for a bench trial, which means a judge will decide his case without a jury. A US district court judge, Trevor McFadden, was scheduled to hear one day of testimony.Griffin, a 48-year-old former rodeo rider and pastor, helped found a political committee called Cowboys for Trump. He vowed to arrive at the courthouse on horseback. Instead, he showed up on Monday as a passenger in a pickup truck that had a horse trailer on the back.Griffin is charged with two misdemeanors: entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds and disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds. His attorney, Nicholas Smith, said prosecutors apparently believe Griffin engaged in disorderly conduct by peacefully leading a prayer on the Capitol steps.“That is offensive and wrong,” Smith told the judge in brief opening statements.Prosecutors didn’t give any opening statements. Their first witness was Matthew Struck, who joined Griffin at the Capitol as his videographer. Struck has an immunity deal with prosecutors.In a court filing, prosecutors called Griffin “an inflammatory provocateur and fabulist who engages in racist invective and propounds baseless conspiracy theories, including that communist China stole the 2020 presidential election”.Griffin’s attorneys say hundreds if not thousands of other people did exactly what Griffin did on January 6 and have not been charged.“The evidence will show that the government selected Griffin for prosecution based on the fact that he gave a speech and led a prayer at the Capitol, that is, selected him based on protected expression,” they wrote.More than 770 people have been charged with federal crimes. More than 230 have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors, and at least 127 have been sentenced. About 100 others have trial dates.Earlier this month, a jury convicted a Texas man, Guy Wesley Reffitt, of storming the Capitol with a holstered handgun in the first trial for a riot defendant. Jurors also convicted him of obstructing Congress, of interfering with police officers guarding the Capitol and of threatening his two children if they reported him to law enforcement.Reffitt’s conviction could give prosecutors more leverage in negotiating plea deals or discourage other defendants from going to trial. The outcome of Griffin’s trial also could have a ripple effect, helping others decide whether to let a judge or a jury decide their case.In a video taken in a parking lot outside the Capitol on 5 January, Griffin said he came to Washington for “possibly the most historic day for our country in my lifetime” and trusted that the vice-president, Mike Pence, would “do the right thing” and stop certification of Biden’s win.After attending Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally, Griffin and Struck walked over barriers and up a staircase to enter a stage under construction on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace for Biden’s inauguration, according to prosecutors.Struck is listed as one of three government witnesses. Prosecutors also intend to call a Capitol police inspector and a US Secret Service inspector. Prosecutors want to use Griffin’s own words against him. They plan to play video recordings of his statements and actions in Washington.After climbing over a stone wall and entering a restricted area, Griffin said: “This is our house. We should all be armed.” He called it “a great day for America” and added: “The people are showing that they have had enough,” prosecutors said.A key question is whether he entered a restricted area while Pence was on Capitol grounds, a prerequisite for the US Secret Service to invoke access restrictions. Griffin’s attorneys say Pence had departed before Griffin could have entered a restricted area.“The government responds that the vice-president’s precise location ultimately doesn’t matter,” the judge wrote on Friday. “Perhaps, although the lack of clarity about the metes and bounds of the restricted area and the vice-president’s movements on January 6 undermine this argument.”TopicsUS Capitol attackNew MexicoMike PenceUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Disney faces backlash over LGBTQ controversy: ‘It’s just pure nonsense’The company’s tone deaf mishandling of Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ bill has revealed a long-gestating conflict Brandon Wolf has fond memories of his five years working as a dancer at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom near Orlando, Florida.“It was one of the best times of my life because I moved to Orlando to find a place to belong, to find a community, to discover a world where I could be an out queer person of colour and be proud of that,” the 33-year-old says. “I certainly found that in the central Florida community that I have grown to love. I found that in my fellow cast members and I’m very grateful for my time being able to work with them at Disney.”Same-sex kiss restored to Toy Story prequel after backlash – reportRead moreThe Walt Disney Company, one of the world’s biggest media and entertainment empires, prides itself on a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) friendly culture. But today its reputation for inclusivity and tolerance is under scrutiny – as are its deep ties to the political establishment and the lack of LGBTQ representation in its films.Disney’s workers have been staging walkouts in protest at chief executive Bob Chapek’s lacklustre response to Florida legislation dubbed “don’t say gay”. The controversial bill bars instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in schools from kindergarten through grade 3.Republicans promoting it claim that parents rather than teachers should be talking to their children about gender issues during their early formative years. But their prejudices were laid bare by a tweet from Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, that said: “The bill that liberals inaccurately call ‘don’t say gay’ would be more accurately described as an anti-grooming bill.”Just in case anyone did not get the message, she added: “If you’re against the anti-grooming bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of four- to eight-year-old children. Silence is complicity.”The legislation has been sent to DeSantis, a rightwing populist in the mould of Donald Trump, for signature but could then face legal challenges. It has been condemned as “hateful” by Joe Biden and other Democrats who argue that it demonises LGBTQ people.Wolf, press secretary of the LGBTQ rights organisation Equality Florida and a survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, says: “The ‘don’t say gay bill’ was dubbed that by the community because it is a bigoted, very specifically anti-LGBTQ piece of legislation designed to censor classroom speech about our community.“It is a hateful bill that is rooted in the same anti-LGBTQ animus that has been used to justify discrimination and violence against us forever. It needs to be vetoed and, if it isn’t vetoed, it needs to be repealed.”Few activists or non-government organisations could have opposed the bill with the clout of Disney, as synonymous with Florida as beaches and oranges. The opening of the Walt Disney World Resort in October 1971 helped transform the state into an economic powerhouse and tourism magnet. Disney is now the biggest private sector employer in Florida; Walt Disney World had more than 75,000 workers before the coronavirus pandemic.Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, says: “You could argue that Disney has had a bigger impact on Florida and central Florida than any other company or group. It just really changed the face of Florida.“The state had always been a tourist destination, going back to the 1920s, in the sense that it had warmer weather and coastline. But typically it was mom and pop attractions that popped up to service tourists. When Disney came into town, it really put Florida on the map not only as a national destination for many Americans but an international tourist destination well known all around the world.”Disney has also contributed millions of dollars to Republican and Democratic politicians, ensuring a cosy relationship between Mickey Mouse and state government, Jewett adds: “Disney typically has not gotten involved in lots of controversial social issues. They donate to a lot of charities in central Florida and try to be a good corporate citizen.“But they also do try to steer public policy their way like any big corporation and because they are so big and have such influence, usually they’re very successful. Typically almost anything they want they get in terms of public policy.”Yet the “don’t say gay” bill wrong-footed Chapek, who succeeded Bob Iger as chief executive in February 2020. Initially he sent a message to Disney workers affirming the company’s support for LGBTQ rights but also contending that corporate statements often do little to change minds and can be “weaponised” by either side.Chapek then told Disney shareholders that, instead of making an early public statement against the legislation, company officials had been working behind the scenes with politicians “to achieve a better outcome” but without success, despite “our longstanding relationships with those lawmakers”.It was tone deaf response, misjudging the mood of an era in which companies face heightened ethical expectations to take a stand on issues such as Black Lives Matter. Disney workers mobilised with an online campaign including a website, whereischapek.com, that says their leadership “utterly failed to match the magnitude of the threat to LGBTQIA+ safety represented by this legislation”.The site includes anonymous employee statements criticising Disney, a schedule of walkouts in protest and a detailed breakdown of the company’s donations to Florida politicians, including $106,809.38 to the “Friends of Ron DeSantis” political action committee.Jewett comments: “If you look at their donation record, they do give to candidates and elected officials of both parties but over the last 20 years they gave a lot more to Republicans because Republicans have been in charge of our state government for the last 20 years.“Like any big interest group, they want access and influence, and the best way to get that is to make sure you give to the party and people that are in charge. They give to a lot of Democrats, because they want those Democrats to be on their side too, but they have given a disproportionate amount to Republican legislators, many of whom supported and voted for the ‘don’t say gay’ bill. That’s what’s upset a lot of the employees.”The employee protests will culminate on Tuesday with a general walkout by LGBTQ workers and their supporters at Disney worksites in Florida, California and elsewhere. The Human Rights Campaign has said it will stop accepting money from Disney “until we see them build on their public commitment and work with LGBTQ+ advocates to ensure that dangerous proposals, like Florida’s ‘don’t say gay or trans’ bill, don’t become dangerous laws”.How did Chapek get it so wrong? Eric Marcus, creator and host of the Making Gay History podcast, says: “Disney has cultivated an LGBTQ-friendly image, both through their inclusion of LGBTQ characters in recent years and with their employees, so it’s shocking but not shocking that the CEO would have been so flat-footed. I don’t think he realised, although he should have, how much the world has changed.”Chapek is 61 years old. Marcus, who is 63, adds: “That means that he had zero education about LGBTQ history and so what he knows is what he’s picked up along the way and maybe from his diversity and inclusion team. So I’m guessing a lot of the flat-footedness is out of ignorance and also fear of doing the wrong thing.”Stung by the outcry, Chapek apologised and announced that the company was pausing all political donations in Florida. He told employees: “I truly believe we are an infinitely better and stronger company because of our LGBTQ+ community. I missed the mark in this case but am an ally you can count on – and I will be an outspoken champion for the protections, visibility and opportunity you deserve.”DeSantis, in typically combative style, responded by sending a campaign fundraising email that said: “Disney is in far too deep with the Communist Party of China and has lost any moral authority to tell you what to do.”Some activists welcome Chapek’s shift as better late than never. Wolf, the Equality Florida spokesperson who finished working at Disney World in 2013, says: “I don’t know much about Mr Chapek at all personally but it speaks volumes that he’s been willing to to meet with cast members and to acknowledge where his statements have fallen short.“I certainly think in a very divisive political climate, that’s a challenging thing to do. It also speaks to the need for continued growth around representation in leadership positions in corporate America generally.”The row has erupted when the multibillion-dollar Disney behemoth has never been more powerful. Its global franchise spans Marvel superheroes, the Star Wars saga, The Simpsons, National Geographic and Lin-Manuel Miranda, who with films such as Encanto projects an admirably inclusive, progressive, 21st-century vision.But Chapek’s memo to staff on 7 March, which cited “diverse stories” such as Black Panther, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and the TV series Modern Family as “more powerful than any tweet or lobbying effort”, implying that Disney’s content speaks for itself, has been questioned.For decades the studio’s output was steadfastly heterosexual even though its creative talents included gay people such as Howard Ashman, an Oscar winner who wrote the lyrics for The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast before his death from Aids in 1991.There has been some progress since then with a growing LGBTQ portrayals in films and TV shows and the selling of LGBTQ pride-themed merchandise at Disney stores. Last year’s film Jungle Cruise featured a prominent gay character: McGregor Houghton, played by Jack Whitehall. But the struggle against erasure is far from over.In response to the current controversy, LGBTQ staff at Pixar, the animation studio owned by Disney, wrote in an open letter: “We at Pixar have personally witnessed beautiful stories, full of diverse characters, come back from Disney corporate reviews shaved down to crumbs of what they once were.“Nearly every moment of overtly gay affection is cut at Disney’s behest, regardless of when there is protest from both the creative teams and executive leadership at Pixar. Even if creating LGBTQIA+ content was the answer to fixing the discriminatory legislation in the world, we are being barred from creating it. Beyond the ‘inspiring content’ that we aren’t even allowed to create, we require action.”None of these recent events come as a surprise to Henry Giroux, a distinguished scholar in critical pedagogy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and author of The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence.He says: “What people really tend to underestimate and confuse is that many of the organisations that define themselves as simply avenues for entertainment are enormously powerful political and what I call pedagogical organisations. They shape identities, they shaped values, they get engaged in defining who is excluded and who isn’t, what people want and what people don’t.“The thing about Disney that’s interesting, more so in some ways than other organisations, is it hides behind this veil of innocence while at the same time it utterly commodifies children. It’s one of the top five major corporations that define the entertainment field and beyond all that it exercises enormous influence politically in Florida.”Giroux adds: “Now think about an organisation that basically supports DeSantis. They give money to these people and then they come out and they say, ‘Oh, we’re so sorry, we really are supporting LGBTQ people’. It’s just pure nonsense and is a kind of cover for politics that hides in the shadows.”TopicsWalt Disney CompanyFloridaLGBT rightsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

The real – and far scarier – reason Republicans think Biden is illegitimateThomas ZimmerMany conservatives don’t think the 2020 election was stolen. But they believe democracy itself has betrayed America, by allowing the ‘wrong’ people to take charge Earlier this month, Team Trump claimed in court that their efforts to nullify Joe Biden’s victory could not possibly have been fraudulent or be described as a criminal conspiracy, because those in and around the White House had merely been acting on the basis of sincerely held suspicions.This sparked the latest round in the never-ending debate over whether or not Republicans actually believe that the election was stolen from them. Politically, it is important to push back against the opportunistic ways in which Republicans up and down the country have been using the “big lie”. But if we are trying to understand what is animating the right’s rapidly accelerating radicalization against democracy, binary assumptions of Republicans as either true believers or power-hungry cynics are not very helpful and actually obscure more than they illuminate. In some fundamental way, Republicans are both. What we really need to grapple with is why so many Republicans are convinced the outcome of the election was illegitimate regardless of whether or not there were specific procedural irregularities.Surveys have consistently indicated that a clear majority, probably about two-thirds, of Republicans consider Biden an illegitimate president. It’s highly likely that many of them are well aware that some of the specific conspiratorial claims emanating from the right – fake ballots? Lost ballots? “Illegals” voting? – are bogus. But they don’t seem to care about the specifics. They just believe Biden shouldn’t be president.What is most alarming is the underlying ideology that leads so many on the right to consider Democratic victories invalid – even if they concede there was nothing technically wrong with how the election was conducted. It has become a core tenet of the Republican worldview to consider the Democratic party as not simply a political opponent, but an enemy pursuing an “un-American” project of turning what is supposed to be a white Christian patriarchal nation into a land of godless multiracial pluralism. Conversely, Republicans see themselves as the sole proponents of “real” America, defending the country from the forces of radical leftism, liberalism and wokeism.Even if they don’t subscribe to the more outlandish conspiracies propagated by Trumpists, many Republicans agree that the Democratic party is a fundamentally illegitimate political faction – and that any election outcome that would lead to Democratic governance must be rejected as illegitimate as well. Republicans didn’t start from an assessment of how the 2020 election went down and come away from that exercise with sincerely held doubts. The rationalization worked backwards: They looked at the outcome and decided it must not stand. In other words, accusations of fraud gain plausibility among conservatives not because of empirical evidence, but because they adhere to the “higher truth” of who is and who is not legitimately representing – and therefore entitled to rule – “real” America.It is worth paying attention to how reactionary intellectuals have been dealing with the 2020 election. We certainly wouldn’t expect Trump, most Republican officials, or the conservative base to devour rightwing treatises. As much as they would like to believe it, these reactionary thinkers are not leading the movement. But they tend to articulate the radicalizing authoritarian spirit that is threatening American democracy in strikingly stark terms. In this way, the rightwing intellectual sphere provides a crucial window into the energies and anxieties that are animating the right more broadly.In March 2021, the magazine American Mind published a particularly instructive essay by Glenn Ellmers, entitled “‘Conservatism’ is No Longer Enough”. American Mind is a publication of the Claremont Institute, a rightwing thinktank in California that has become home to some of the most outrightly pro-Trumpian intellectuals. It is notable that Ellmers makes no claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” – he doesn’t allege manipulation, voter fraud, or conspiracy, and in fact explicitly acknowledges that more people voted for Biden than for Trump. He does not peddle conspiracy theories. Yet Ellmers maintains that the outcome of the 2020 election is illegitimate and must not be accepted.According to Ellmers, Biden’s presidency represents an “un-American” idea of multiracial pluralism – something that is fundamentally in conflict with what he refers to as “authentic America”. In his view, everyone who voted for Joe Biden and his “progressive project of narcotizing the American people and turning us into a nation of slaves” is also “un-American” and therefore not worthy of inclusion in the body politic. Ellmers declares that “most people living in the United States – certainly more than half – are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term”. Only “authentic Americans” are allowed in Glenn Ellmers’ United States – a racialized idea of “the people,” most clearly represented by “the vast numbers of heartland voters”.On the other side are “un-American” enemies, not coincidentally characterized by their blind admiration for a young Black artist: “If you are a zombie or a human rodent who wants a shadow-life of timid conformity, then put away this essay and go memorize the poetry of Amanda Gorman.” Ellmers’ racist, anti-pluralistic vision is remarkably radical: he wants to redraw the boundaries of citizenship and exclude over half the population.The uphill battle to resurrect the US child tax credit that lifted millions from poverty Read moreEllmers is outraged precisely because he accepts the fact that a majority voted for Biden, that “authentic Americans” have become the minority in a country which they are supposedly entitled to dominate. Here we have a striking glimpse of the depth of despair underlying the pervasive siege mentality on the right. What’s scandalous about the 2020 election, in this interpretation, is not that it was “stolen”, but that “un-American” forces straightforwardly won.Reactionaries like Ellmers have internalized the idea that they represent a persecuted minority, fighting with their backs against the wall in a desperate effort to defend “authentic America”. They dispute the legitimacy of the 2020 election not necessarily on the basis of fraud and conspiracy but because democracy itself subverted the will of “real America” by allowing the “wrong” people too much of an influence on the fate of the country.Trump’s incessant lies represent a vulgar, clumsy, narcissistic strand of conspiratorial thinking; those lies are shared by some, opportunistically used by many, and widely accepted on the right because they adhere to a “higher truth”: “we” are entitled to rule in America. That’s what is behind the widespread support for, or willingness to accept, any kind of suspicion, regardless of whether or not there is any shred of empirical evidence. If an election doesn’t result in “us” being in power, it must be illegitimate, as we are “real America”; if it puts “them” in charge, it cannot be accepted, as they are out to destroy the nation.Whether or not Republicans actually believe conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, most are absolutely convinced the result was illegitimate – and they are all too willing to use allegations of fraud or ally with conspiracy theorists if it helps prevent future “illegitimate” outcomes. It is precisely the mixture of deeply held ideological convictions of white Christian patriarchal dominance, of what “real America” is supposed to be and who gets to rule there, and the cynical opportunism with which these beliefs are enforced that makes the assault on democracy so dangerous.
Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer
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