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      House to form taskforce to investigate Trump assassination attempt

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      The House voted on Wednesday to form a taskforce to investigate the security failures surrounding the assassination attempt against Donald Trump earlier this month.The vote underscores the bipartisan outrage over the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump came within inches of losing his life. One rally-goer was killed and two others severely injured. Lawmakers have responded quickly with hearings and widespread calls for accountability.The legislation passed by a vote of 416-0.The taskforce will be composed of 13 members and is expected to include seven Republicans and six Democrats. It will be tasked with determining what went wrong on the day of the attempted assassination and will make recommendations to prevent future security lapses. It will issue a final report before 13 December and has the authority to issue subpoenas.The bill is sponsored by Republican congressman Mike Kelly, whose home town of Butler was the site of the shooting. Kelly was at the rally with his wife and other family members.“I can tell you that my community is grieving,” Kelly said. “They are shocked by what happened in our backyard. The people of Butler and the people of the United States deserve answers.”He said he was concerned when the site of the rally was picked because he thought it would be “a difficult place to have a rally of that size.” He called the taskforce a chance to build trust with Americans that lawmakers can work together to tackle a crisis.House committees have already held three hearings focusing on the shooting. The Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday, one day after she appeared before a congressional committee and was berated for hours by Democrats and Republicans for the security failures.She called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades, but she angered lawmakers by failing to answer specific questions about the investigation.Democrats also voiced support for the taskforce, saying what happened in Butler was a despicable attack that never should have happened.“We need to know what happened. We need to get to the truth. We need to prevent this from ever, ever happening again,” said Congressman Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat. More

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      Netanyahu says Israel aiming for ‘total victory’ in Gaza as number of protesters arrested in Congress – live

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      Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel will achieve “total victory” and that it will settle for “nothing less”.Total victory, he says, means that Israel will fight until it destroys Hamas’s military capability, end its rule in Gaza and bring all the hostages home.The Israeli prime minister moves on to talk about a post-war Gaza, and says that “a new Gaza could emerge” the day after Hamas is defeated.He says that his vision for a post-war Gaza is of a “demilitarized and de-radicalized Gaza”, adding:
      Israel does not seek to settle Gaza. But for the foreseeable future, we must retain overriding security control there to prevent the resurgence of terror, to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.
      Netanyahu says that Gaza should have a civilian administration “run by Palestinians who do not seek to destroy Israel” and that a new generation of Palestinians “must no longer be taught to hate Jews”.He notes that the terms “demilitarization” and “deradicalization” were applied to Germany and Japan after the second world war, and that applied to Gaza “can also lead to a future of security, prosperity and peace”. “That’s my vision for Gaza,” Netanyahu says.Connecticut senator Chris Murphy reacted to Netanyahu’s speech before Congress, asserting that it’s out of bounds to suggest that anyone who objects to the war in Gaza is a “Hamas sympathizer.”“That speech was, as I expected, a setback for both the U.S.-Israel relationship and the fight against Hamas” Murphy said on X.During his address, Netanyahu likened that the thousands of protestors demonstrating at capitol hill as Hamas sympathizers. “Many anti-Israel protesters choose to stand with evil,” he said. “Many stand with Hamas.As Netanyahu address Congress today, demonstrators marched in Washington DC, calling on the US to end arms sales to Israel and to implement an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.Our video editors have this report of Netanyahu’s visit to DC:Here are images from around Capitol Hill today, where thousands gathered to protest Israel’s bombardment of Gaza ahead of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the US Congress.The Democratic party has announced the rules for the nomination of its presidential candidate, setting the stage for Kamala Harris to be officially chosen as the party’s standard bearer in early August before the party’s convention in Chicago begins later that month.According to rules adopted today by the convention’s rules committee, candidates will declare their intention to stand by 27 July, and then voting can begin virtually by 1 August at the earliest. Delegates will convene in Chicago beginning 19 August “to approve the Democratic Party platform, have ceremonial and celebratory votes on the nominees, and host historic acceptance speeches from the new Democratic ticket and voices throughout the Party”, the Democrats said in a statement.Harris, who announced her candidacy on Sunday, has said she has enough delegates to win the party’s presidential nomination, and no other major candidate has come forward to challenge her.Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib, the sole Palestinian American in Congress, held up a sign accusing Benjamin Netanyahu of genocide during his speech today.She had this to say about it:Separately, Axios reports that about half of the Democrats elected to the House and Senate opted to skip the Israeli prime minister’s speech:Jean-Pierre also elaborated on Joe Biden’s timeline for revealing his decision to end his bid for a second term.The president, who had been recovering from Covid-19 at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, announced the decision with a post made on X, without warning, on Sunday afternoon. Jean-Pierre shed a little bit more light on the lead-up to that:
      He met with a small group of advisers on Saturday evening and with his family, and was thinking through how to move forward. Sunday afternoon, he made that decision. It was in a very short period of time, as you can imagine. And then at 1.45 [pm], he got on the phone with some of his assistants, assistant to the president, some advisers. He let them know, and then minutes later, a letter went out.
      So, it was in a very short period of time that the president was able to think about this and make a decision.
      Over at the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is holding the first briefing with reporters since Joe Biden announced he would end his bid for a second term.Besides a letter he released on social media, the president has not elaborated on his decision, but plans to do so when he addresses the nation from the Oval Office at 8pm ET, Jean-Pierre said.“The decision that he made on Sunday was about putting country first, was about his party and was about the American people,” Jean-Pierre said.“He’s going to be on camera later today, obviously, to address the American people from the Oval Office, because of this moment and how big this moment is. He wants to do that. He wants to make sure that Americans hear directly from him.”Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that every man, woman and child in Gaza is receiving more than enough food.“The prosecutor of the international criminal court has shamefully accused Israel of deliberately starving the people of Gaza: This is utter, complete nonsense. It’s a complete fabrication. Israel has enabled more than 40,000 aid trucks to enter Gaza. That’s half a million tons of food!” he said, wagging his finger.According to data released by the United Nations, a total of 25,183 trucks entered Gaza before Israeli forces stormed the Rafah crossing in May, which affected both crossing points in the southern part of the enclave. The same UN data says a total of just 2,835 have entered Gaza through Kerem Shalom and Erez in the north in the months since, a fraction of the need.In total, per UN data, 28,018 aid trucks have entered Gaza since the war began. A little more relief entered via the US-built pier, but this has not been seen as a successful effort to boost the supply of aid.The US pier was also intended to overcome what the relief organisation Oxfam called, in a report earlier this year, Israel’s deliberate blocking of aid.Sally Abi Khalil, the organisation’s Middle East and north Africa director, added: “Israeli authorities are not only failing to facilitate the international aid effort but are actively hindering it.”Earlier this year, the world’s leading authority on famine, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, warned that Gaza was on the brink of famine if no action were taken.In a report in June, the organisation’s famine review committee said that as there had been some increase in goods allowed into northern Gaza, that “the available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring”.However, they added that the risk of famine remains. They added: “The situation in Gaza remains catastrophic and there is a high and sustained risk of Famine across the whole Gaza Strip. It is important to note that the probable improvement in nutrition status noted in April and May should not allow room for complacency about the risk of Famine in the coming weeks and months. The prolonged nature of the crisis means that this risk remains at least as high as at any time during the past few months.”The US Capitol Police now say six people were arrested for disrupting Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech in the House chamber:The US Capitol Police said five people who disrupted Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech from a gallery in the House chamber were arrested, while officers deployed pepper spray on protesters outside the Capitol:Photographers on the scene caught images of Capitol police deploying pepper spay:Benjamin Netanyahu also uses his address to praise Donald Trump, and says he wants to thank the former president “for his leadership in brokering the historic Abraham accords”.He thanks Trump for “recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights”, for “confronting Iran’s aggression” and for “recognizing Jerusalem as our capital and moving the American embassy there”.The status of both Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are disputed under international law.Israelis were “relieved” when Trump “emerged safe and sound from the dastardly” assassination attempt on him, Netanyahu says.Benjamin Netanyahu says that he is “confident” that the US and Israel will “vanquish the tyrants and terrorists” that threaten both countries.He says that as Israel’s prime minister, he vows that Israel “will not relent” or bend, no matter “how difficult the road ahead”.He says that Israel will continue to work with the US and its Arab partners on the “noble mission” to “transform a troubled region” full of “repression, poverty and war” into an “oasis of dignity, prosperity and peace”.Israel will always remain the US’s “indispensable” ally, “loyal friend” and “steadfast partner” through thick and thin, Netanyahu says.
      Thank you America. Thank you for your support and solidarity. Thank you for standing with Israel in our hour of need. Together, we shall defend our common civilization together, we shall secure a brilliant future for both our nations. More

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      Netanyahu tells Congress Israel’s ‘fight is your fight’ amid boycotts and protests

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      Benjamin Netanyahu lauded US support for Israel’s war in Gaza but offered few details on ceasefire negotiations with Hamas as he addressed a raucous joint session of US Congress that was boycotted by dozens of Democratic lawmakers and protested against by thousands on the streets outside the US Capitol.In a fiery speech in the House chamber, Netanyahu called for “total victory” in the nine-month-old war, dashing hopes among some that he would announce progress toward a ceasefire and the return of Israeli hostages before his meetings with Joe Biden at the White House on Thursday.“We’re not only protecting ourselves. We’re protecting you … Our enemies are your enemy, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory,” Netanyahu shouted, as House and Senate Republicans rose to their feet to applaud the Israeli prime minister.Dozens of Democratic members of Congress – including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi – said they would boycott the speech over humanitarian concerns about how Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza, which has left an estimated 39,000 Palestinian civilians dead.Pelosi, in remarks to Politico before the speech, said it was “inappropriate” for Netanyahu to be invited and that she had “no sense of Netanyahu’s interest in peace”.Bernie Sanders, who also boycotted the speech, said that “it will be the first time in American history that a war criminal has been given that honor.” The international criminal court, which the United States does not recognise, is considering its prosecutor’s request for an arrest warrant for Netanyahu (as well as other Israeli officials and senior Hamas leaders) for war crimes and crimes against humanity.Netanyahu brushed asidehumanitarian concerns for the civilian population of Gaza aside, calling for “total victory” and issuing an appeal for the US to fast-track military aid to Israel: “Give us the tools and we’ll get the job done faster.” He thanked Biden for his “heartfelt support for Israel”.Netanyahu did not offer new insight on negotiations about a ceasefire with Hamas, saying only that “we’re actively engaged in intensive efforts” to secure the hostages’ release, adding that “some of those efforts are ongoing right now.”He also denied that Israel would seek to “resettle” Gaza when the conflict ended, but demanded the”demilitarization and deradicalization” of the territory, calling it his “vision for Gaza”.Police officers inside the Capitol arrested several members of the audience wearing shirts that read “Seal the deal NOW!” During the speech, Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, held up a black-and-white sign that read “war criminal” and “guilty of genocide”.Outside the Capitol, police used pepper spray against protestors who chanted “Netanyahu, you can’t hide. You’re committing genocide,”.Netanyahu attacked the protesters directly, saying that they were “Iran’s useful idiots”.“Many anti-Israel protesters choose to stand with evil,” said Netanyahu. “Many stand with Hamas.”The address was Netanyahu’s first to the Congress since the 7 October attack by Hamas that left more than 1,200 Israelis dead and took more than 250 hostages, of which 120 are thought to remain in captivity.In meetings with families of hostages this week, Netanyahu indicated that a ceasefire deal could be taking shape, but also said that he would maintain pressure on Hamas and hold out for the best terms possible.A number of the families of hostages have demanded that he conclude a deal as quickly as possible. “I have to say that the urgency of the matter did not seem to resonate with him,” Daniel Neutra, whose brother Omer is one of eight American citizens in captivity, told a House panel. Inside the House chamber on Wednesday, some members in the audience wore bright yellow T-shirts that read: “Seal the deal NOW!”The US political turmoil has largely overshadowed Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week. Biden on Sunday announced that he would not seek re-election, endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris as the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump at the polls in November.Harris was absent from the House rostrum on Wednesday, saying that she had a prior engagement. She later released a statement denying that she had boycotted the speech.Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right Israeli national security minister, openly endorsed Donald Trump in the elections on Wednesday, saying that “a cabinet minister is supposed to maintain neutrality, but that’s impossible to do after Biden”.In an interview with Bloomberg published hours before Netanyahu was due to speak, Ben Gvir said that Biden had been restraining Israel in fighting against regional enemies, including Iran.“I believe that with Trump, Israel will receive the backing to act against Iran,” Ben Gvir said. “With Trump it will be clearer that enemies must be defeated.“The US has always stood behind Israel in terms of armaments and weapons, yet this time the sense was that we were being reckoned with – that we were trying to be prevented from winning,” Ben Gvir added. “That happened on Biden’s watch and fed Hamas with lots of energy.”Netanyahu is set to meet with Biden at the White House on Thursday. He is also expected to meet with Harris, the presumptive Democratic candidate, on Thursday, and then with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday. Harris would normally have sat directly behind Netanyahu, but said that she had a prior speaking engagement at a sorority in Indianapolis. More

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      A reader’s guide to the US election: an expert recommends the best books, journals, podcasts and commentators

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      Donald Trump apparently prefers to watch television over reading anything at all. As president, some reports claimed, he spent up to seven hours a day watching television news shows, but had little interest in reading the flow of top secret briefings (including tapped phone conversations of various world leaders) that previous presidents had relied on to make decisions.

      Since Trump formally entered American politics, however, reading about him has become a widely recognised hobby, accompanied with significant amounts of fear and loathing for most people living outside of the United States. In many ways, reading about Trump and the upcoming US presidential election is a civic duty in such consequential and worrying times.

      I have put together this guide to help people follow the presidential election – and better understand the social, cultural and political forces that have led to Donald Trump being viewed by millions of Americans as the answer to their political concerns.

      Columnists

      The single best journalist covering the US presidential elections this year has been Thomas Edsall. I have been reading his work since I discovered his book The New Politics of Inequality (1984). Edsall has a regular guest column with the New York Times, in which he summarises relevant research from academics on the presidential election and editorialises about these findings based on email exchanges with those academics.

      Recent columns on partisanship and the gender gap in voting preferences among the young and the old have been particularly insightful. Reflecting on surveys that consistently show the majority of American men supporting Donald Trump over any likely Democratic candidate, I was reminded of Naomi Alderman’s novel The Power (2016), in which women exact revenge on men for centuries of oppression and stupidity.

      The New York Times opinion poll analyst Nate Cohen is also consistently worth reading, as are the columns of Aaron Blake on opinion polling for the Washington Post. For breaking news as well as insider takes, the news service Axios is worth signing up to.

      Robert Reich’s regular substack posts are well written and informative. Some get picked up by newspapers, like this piece on Elon Musk’s financial support of Trump’s campaign. Reich was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Department of Labor and a fellow Rhodes scholar at Oxford with Clinton back in the 1960s. At 78 years old, he is still as sharp as a tack and writes with a real passion for a fairer America.

      Other worthwhile substacks include the Old Goats and Forever Wars, which provide a wealth of information in a short and chatty format delivered right to your inbox. On Middle Eastern politics and its impact on the election, I subscribe to the paid version of Peter Beinart’s substack, which is excellent value for money.

      For those wanting prison humour and a spiky take on events, I recommend Guy Rundle’s Crikey columns on US politics. He described the first presidential “debate” between Trump and Joe Biden, which set in train events that led to Biden stepping down as a candidate, as at first an “audition. Then it became a physical fitness examination. By the conclusion, it verged on being a coronial inquiry.”

      Current vice president and presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaking at the White House, March 18, 2024.
      Evan Vucci/AAP

      Magazines and journals

      The excellent journal The American Prospect consistently focuses on the most important policy issues and rewards regular reading, as does The Atlantic, which Trump called a “third-rate magazine that’s failing” in the first presidential debate. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic, has come in for special criticism from Trump at recent rallies for publishing statements from military advisers who claimed that President Trump called Americans who died during World War I in France “losers” and “suckers”.

      My favourite piece from the Atlantic in recent years is an article by Kurt Andersen on disinformation and conspiracy theories called How America Lost Its Mind, which was subsequently developed into his book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire (2017).

      Andersen makes the fascinating argument that America is particularly open to lies and conspiracies in politics and public life because of its history of evangelical religion. The development of the counterculture in the 1960s, with its emphasis on uncovering conspiracies in the American government and interest in alternative medicine and spirituality, has also played a role. Andersen sees the current crisis of legitimate authority and the power of disinformation in America as the result of a heady mix of these two seemingly contradictory forces.

      Andrew Marantz in the New Yorker has done an excellent job of exploring the role of the internet in spreading disinformation and political hatred. His book Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation (2019) is also a must read on this topic, as it offers particular insight into alt-right internet communities, with their culture of trolling and ability to spread disinformation very widely.

      There is almost a “punk” spirit to this destructive element of Trump’s success, as James Parker has argued. Marantz shows how a small and motley collection of internet trolls, who are racist, sexist and dishonest, have had an outsized influence on American politics – all the while claiming their acts are either one big joke or motivated by revenge.

      The best books

      Many non-Americans are inclined to ask what is wrong with the Republican party. Why has it become so delusional and destructive? Is it Trump’s fault, or was this happening before Trump?

      Nicole Hemmer’s Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s (2022), Geoffrey Kabaservice’s Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party (2011), and John Ganz’s When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up In The Early 1990s (2024) all persuasively show that the roots of the Republican turn to the hard right date from well before Trump.

      On the madness of the Republican party during the Trump years, Tim Alberta has written two of the best deeply sourced books: American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump (2020) and The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

      Alberta offers particular insight into why Republican politicians continued to support Trump after everything they know about him and everything he has done. The short answer is that they are fearful of Trump and his supporters. They are fearful that he will make them irrelevant and thus starve them of attention. They are fearful he and his supporters can end their careers by directing support away from them in Republican Party primaries, or just threatening to (this ended the career of Republican senator Jeff Flake, a Trump critic). They are even fearful for their lives and those of their families if Trump sets the mob on them.

      Another book that is very good on the Republican Party today is Robert Draper’s Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost its Mind (2022), which gives a fascinating account of the lunacy of the Arizona Republican party following the death of long-serving senator John McCain in 2018.

      Three books are essential reading for those who have the stomach for revisiting Trump’s presidency, the 2020 election and the events of January 6, 2021. These are Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021 (2023), Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America (2022), and Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s Peril: Trump, Biden and a Nation on the Brink (2021).

      In my view, these three books are necessary to understand the extent of Trump’s lack of respect for democratic norms and the lengths he will go to in order to maintain power. Also well worth reading for its satirising of Trump’s trolling political persona, and for reminding us of Trump’s unapologetic misogyny, is Laurie Penny’s brilliant Bitch Doctrine (2017).

      On the question of the loyalty of Trump’s staffers and the wider Republican Party, two books are interesting: Mark Leibovich’s breezy Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission (2022) and Jonathan Karl’s Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show (2021). The latter makes the bold claim that a number of Trump’s staffers saved America from an attempted coup against democracy after his 2020 election defeat.

      The witty and snarky Leibovich is always a lot of fun to read, particularly his earlier book about the Obama era, This Town (2014). Thank You for Your Servitude skewers Republican politicians in the Congress for being sycophantic in their support of Trump. The greatest single error of judgement Republican politicians made from 2017-2021, in my opinion, was not finding Trump guilty during the second impeachment trial and barring him from ever running for office again. Instead, enough of them were cowed by threats and sufficiently concerned about the possible end of their political careers to vote to save him.

      For anyone wanting the analysis of academics rather than journalists, I would highly recommend Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s two excellent books How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future (2018) and Tyranny of the Minority: How to Reverse an Authoritarian Turn and Forge a Democracy for All (2023). These books wisely take a comparative approach to the decline of American democracy during recent times.

      The Tyranny of the Minority lays out the argument that anti-majoritarian institutions in the US have far too much power, contending that the MAGA movement, which they estimate to make up 30% of American voters, has disproportionate power given its size.

      For those fretting about the 2024 election, books by John Sides and Lynn Vavreck with Michael Tesler and Chris Tausanovich – Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America (2018) and The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy (2023) – are comprehensive accounts of which demographic groups voted for Trump and why.

      Identity Crisis focuses on what the authors call the “diploma divide”. Their hunch was that whites without college degrees had abandoned the Democratic party in support of Trump. Subsequent data showed this to be the case. Trump had a 39% advantage among whites without a college degree in 2016. A key reason Biden was chosen as the Democrats’ candidate in 2020 was to combat this Democratic party weakness. The support of male voters of all races without a college degree may take Trump to victory in November this year.

      The go-to book on Trump’s likely opponent Kamala Harris is currently her autobiography The Truths We Hold: An American Journey (2019).

      The subtitles “American Journey” or “American Story” or “American Life” are a common way to suggest a life story is the personification of the nation’s story. They have been used in biographies written by or about Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin, Jerry Garcia, Andrew Mellon, George Kennan, Condoleezza Rice, Burt Lancaster, Martha Washington, Ben Hogan, George Washington, Jesse Owens, Oral Roberts, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell and Benjamin Franklin.

      No one person can stand in for a nation’s story or journey, but Harris undoubtedly represents a multicultural America – and an America where immigrants come to seek greater opportunities. Both of her parents gained PhDs in the US and went on to work at leading North American universities.

      One of the most interesting chapters of Harris’ book describes the teenage years she spent living with her mother in Quebec. Personal experiences in that period set her on the path to becoming a prosecutor committed to protecting women and children from violence. Harris is well placed to emphasise to Americans just how vile, and criminal, Trump’s record of comments and behaviour towards women has been.

      Podcasts

      Strictly speaking, listening to podcasts is not reading, but given their rise and rise, a few are worth mentioning.

      The Ezra Klein Show and Chris Hayes’ Why is this happening? have great guests. Two recent shows have been particularly insightful about the history and structures of American politics and how these have made the rise of Trump possible – and so frightening. One was Klein interviewing John Ganz about his book When the Clock Broke; the other was Hayes interviewing Ari Berman about his book Minority Rule.

      The New Yorker’s Political Scene, which features the excellent Jane Mayer, also helps keep me up to date. To delve deeper, certain episodes of the New Books in Political Science podcast are worth looking out for, such as Stephanie Ternullo talking about her fascinating book How the Heartland Went Red (2024).

      For many American politics junkies, the New York Times podcast The Daily is a deserved favourite. A few recent episodes have been the most insightful podcasts I have listened to on the election this year. A recent Daily podcast, for example, explained why Biden was generally behind the widely disliked Trump in most opinion polls. The short answer is that Biden was the status quo candidate in a year where 70% of voters say they want significant change.

      Lots of voters do not want the change that Trump is promising, but plenty do, including a group that might decide the election: men of all races who are low information voters. Members of this demographic generally identify as being “conservative”, but do not have particular policy changes in mind when they say they support “change”.

      The next administration?

      Another worrying Daily podcast examined what the next Trump administration might look like. According to this podcast, and many other accounts of the first Trump administration, the biggest regret Trump had was the lack of loyalty of his staff. Books by Bob Woodward and others have emphasised this. As a result, a second Trump administration is likely to be staffed with younger, more loyal people.

      Most commentators are concerned about how Trump will attempt to pervert the Justice Department by mass sackings and unprecedented political interference. But the most disturbing plan associated with a possible second Trump administration is the idea of setting up detention camps for supposedly illegal immigrants. Trump has stated that, if re-elected, many thousands, and possibly millions, of people would be rounded up and put in detention camps before being deported.

      Many commentators are also concerned that Trump might put into action the truly frightening and fascistic ideas advocated by the Heritage Foundation’s road map, known as Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. Emma Shortis has done an excellent job of summarising the 900 page plus blueprint in the Conversation.

      But with so many insightful analyses to inform us and help us navigate this worrying time (to misquote a line from REM), it’s the end of the world as we know it – and I’m reading online! More

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      Elon Musk attends Netanyahu’s congressional address as his guest

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      Elon Musk attended Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress on Wednesday as a guest of the embattled Israeli prime minister.A day earlier, the tech billionaire announced that his Starlink internet service was now active in a Gaza hospital, with the support of Israel’s government.Netanyahu’s congressional visit was met with thousands of protesters gathering near Capitol Hill to demonstrate against Israeli abuses during its war in Gaza. Lawmakers were divided over whether he should have been invited to speak.Musk has a history of courting rightwing leaders in countries that have overlapping business interests with his various enterprises. He previously hosted Javier Millei, Argentina’s president, at his Tesla factory and has been a cheerleader for his policies, while also cozying up to Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, and Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president.Musk previously met with Netanyahu during a visit to Israel last year, as the tech leader sought to quell accusations of antisemitism after personally endorsing a post on his social network X, formerly Twitter, that claimed Jews hate white people. Far-right content on the platform has also increased.Musk’s visit also appears to have helped pave the way for SpaceX to provide its Starlink satellite internet to Gaza, which he announced on Tuesday was now in service at a hospital. The single location, which was supported by Israel and the United Arab Emirates, also reflects the tight controls that Israel has put on communications technology in the area.In recent weeks, Musk has also thrown his support behind Donald Trump’s election campaign and played a direct role in advising the former president to select JD Vance, Ohio senator, as his running mate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlthough Musk has continued to post conservative content and attacks against the presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, he appears to have tempered some of his support for Trump following Joe Biden dropping out of the race. Musk pushed back against a report he was set to donate $45m per month to a pro-Trump political action committee.Musk’s appearance as a guest of Netanyahu further aligns him with the Republican party line, which has thrown its support behind the Israeli leader as many Democrats condemn his actions. A number of progressive Democratic lawmakers declined to attend Netanyahu’s speech, with New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denouncing him as a “war criminal”. More

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      JD Vance writes foreword for Project 2025 leader’s upcoming book

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      The Republican senator and vice-presidential nominee JD Vance has written the foreword to a forthcoming book by the head of Project 2025, the vast rightwing plan for a second Trump administration Democrats say shows the authoritarian threat posed by the GOP – and which Donald Trump has tried to disavow.In publicity material for the book, Vance says of Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation: “Never before has a figure with [his] depth and stature within the American Right tried to articulate a genuinely new future for conservatism.”The same publicity material describes Roberts as “head” of Project 2025.Roberts’ book, Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America, will be published in September.Orchestrated by the Heritage Foundation but featuring contributors from across the US right, Project 2025 is more than 900 pages long and includes proposals for radical reform to all corners of government and public life.Democrats have highlighted its threats to key freedoms including reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights. On Wednesday, Kamala Harris, the vice-president and presumptive presidential nominee, discussed Project 2025 in Indianapolis.“We must … recognise there are those who are trying to take us backward,” Harris said.“Can you believe they put that in writing? This represents an outright attack on our children, our families and our future. These extremists want to take us back, but we are not going back.”Such attacks have proved effective. Concurrently, Trump and top aides have sought to distance themselves from Project 2025.Vance recently told NBC: “What the media and the Democrats are trying to do is attach its most unpopular elements to the Trump administration. It’s a 900-page document. I guarantee there are things that Trump likes and dislikes … but he is the person who will determine the agenda of the next administration.”Such protestations have been greeted with skepticism, particularly given extensive links between Trumpworld and Project 2025 authors.According to publicity material, Roberts’ book will cover similar ground to Project 2025, “outlin[ing] a peaceful ‘Second American Revolution’ for voters looking to shift the power back into the hands of the people”.But that only echoed controversial comments in which Roberts recently told the former Trump aide Steve Bannon: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”Furthermore, as reported by the New Republic, Roberts’ book was previously advertised under a more dramatic subtitle: “Burning Down Washington to Save America”.Such rhetoric is spreading. At a recent Trump-Vance rally in Ohio, a speaker warned of civil war if the Republican ticket is beaten. In promoting Roberts’ book, Vance uses violent imagery of his own.“We are now all realising that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets,” the senator says. “In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”Reed Galen, a Republican operative turned director of JoinTheUnion.us, a “coalition of pro-democracy organisations”, told the Guardian: “Project 2025 is Maga’s endorsed blueprint for turning America into an authoritarian state.“That Trump’s running mate is introducing [Roberts’] book personally only proves that his protestations [of no links to Project 2025] are an indication of how unpopular they know the plan is.” More

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      Thousands rally around Congress to denounce Netanyahu speech

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      Thousands of protesters demonstrated around Capitol Hill voicing opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who addressed a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday.With tensions over Israel’s nine-and-half-month war on Gaza running high, police mounted a huge security operation to seal off the US Capitol from protesters.Streets in Washington’s downtown area were closed to traffic, while officers experienced in dealing with mass protests were drafted in from the New York police department. The Capitol building itself was ring-fenced off.“Shut it down,” a large group of protesters chanted as they marched toward the Capitol after blocking a nearby intersection, adding “Bibi, Bibi, we’re not done!” Capitol police deployed pepper spray at protesters they claimed had crossed the police line.Netanyahu’s speech – arranged weeks ago and instigated by the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson – comes at a singularly dramatic moment in US politics, days after the withdrawal of Joe Biden from the presidential race and less than two weeks after a failed assassination attempt on the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.But the fevered domestic backdrop has done little to reduce the furore surrounding Netanyahu, seen as a renegade figure even among some pro-Israel Democrats for prosecuting a war that has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians.The military offensive was launched in response to an assault by the Palestinian group Hamas last October that left about 1,200 Israelis dead and saw another 250 taken hostage.Netanyahu’s presence was protested by demonstrators coming from a broad range of mostly leftwing groups, some of them Jewish, and many of them having travelled from as far as Indiana, Georgia and Illinois, according to protest organisers.View image in fullscreenIn a sign of the many fractures created by the war, anti-Netanyahu protesters from different factions clashed angrily with one another, after pro-Palestinian demonstrators apparently mistook another group displaying Israeli flags as supporters of Israel’s prime minister.Police intervened after scuffles broke out, as a march passed a group of protesters denouncing Netanyahu for his failure to end the war in Gaza and strike a deal that would free the remaining hostages being held by Hamas.Marchers chanted “free, free Palestine” as they passed the Israeli groups gathered in a park near the US Capitol. Things turned heated when two men close to the Israeli gathering shouted “from Hamas” in response.As tempers frayed, a young pro-Palestinian marcher appeared to grab several Israeli flags, leading to scuffles and shouts of “do not attack” and “leave her alone” from a man holding a Palestinian flag.As a shouting match ensued, the same man was clearly heard shouting “go back to Poland” at members of the Israeli group, some of whom wore T-shirts bearing slogans like “Saving Israeli Democracy”.View image in fullscreenOfficers nearby appeared to be slow to react but arrived on the scene after being summoned by the members of the Israeli gathering.“Both sides have a trigger when they see the other flag,” said Offer Gutelson, an organiser with UnXeptable, an Israeli group protesting against Netanyahu. “They get the feeling when they see the [Israeli] flag that we are not on their side, but we are,” he said. “We are on the side of the people who want peace, but not the ones who want to free Palestine from the river to the sea.”Among those organising the main rally were Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, Jewish Voice for Peace, Code Pink, the US Palestinian Community Network, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), the People’s Forum and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.Speakers lined up to address the crowd included Jill Stein, the Green party presidential candidate, and the actor Susan Sarandon.Protesters demanded Netanyahu’s arrest, as requested by the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor in May. The request was later denounced by Biden.“If Biden were fit to lead, he would stop funding genocide and turn Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over to the ICC,” Ahmad Abuznaid, an executive director at the USCPR, said in a statement.The demonstrations started on Tuesday, a day after Netanyahu’s arrival in the US on Monday night, when members of the Jewish Voice for Peace group occupied the rotunda at the Cannon building, where many members of Congress have office space. Police carried out arrests and the group said about 400 of its members were detained.At the main demonstration – a safe distance from the fenced-off Capitol on a square off Pennsylvania Avenue – protesters chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan some supporters of Israel have alleged is antisemitic and potentially genocidal.A giant effigy of Netanyahu with horns on his head and blood dripping from his mouth was on display, while one woman holding a Palestinian flag had a baby doll held in a makeshift child’s sling fashioned out of a keffiyeh, apparently as a symbol of the large number of children killed in Israel’s Gaza offensive.One of several speakers to address the crowd, Abuznaid of USCPR said Palestinians were fighting “for our stolen past [and] our liberated future”.He added: “We reject Netanyahu not because he is more brutal or racist than those before him … [but] because he’s exactly the manifestation of the colonial project known as Zionism. We reject genocide Joe [Biden] and the US government’s support of this monstrosity historically and today.”Emily De Ferrari, 72, a retired midwife and volunteer for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), which campaigns for economic and cultural embargoes to pressure Israel to change its policy, called Netanyahu’s visit to Washington “criminal”.“I don’t know what to say about the people who invited him,” said De Ferrari, who had driven five hours from Pittsburgh with a group of fellow activists to be present. “It’s a cynical, manipulative, criminal move to invite him here today.”Asked if she believed Israel should continue to exist as a Jewish state, she replied: “A place where Jews are free and safe, I think that’s a justifiable aim. But it doesn’t make any sense for the Jews to say: ‘We’ve got to be free and safe and you don’t.’“Shouldn’t the Palestinians be allowed to live where they have lived for thousands of years? That’s not to deny the Holocaust or thousands of years of antisemitism.”View image in fullscreenSeveral Democratic members of Congress, including the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, have said they will boycott Netanyahu’s speech.Some made statements of condemnation on the eve of its delivery. “It will be the first time in American history that a war criminal has been given that honor” of addressing a joint session of Congress, Sanders said on Tuesday in remarks on the Senate floor.Jerry Nadler, a senior Democratic House member from New York, also issued a withering denunciation, calling the Israeli prime minister “the worst leader in Jewish history since the Maccabean king who invited the Romans into Jerusalem over 2100 years ago”. However, he said he would be present during the speech out of respect to the state of Israel.He called the speech “the next step in a long line of manipulative bad-faith efforts by Republicans to further politicise the US-Israel relationship for partisan gain and is a cynical stunt by Netanyahu aimed at aiding his own desperate political standing at home. There is no question in my mind it should not be happening.” More

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      Elon Musk is spending millions to elect Trump. Let’s boycott his companies | Robert Reich

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      For many years I’ve argued that the consolidation of great wealth in the hands of a few undermines our democracy.Elon Musk is the poster child for that concern.Wealth is most dangerous when transformed into political power.One way Musk is transforming his gargantuan wealth into political power is by committing $45m a month, according to recent reporting, to a new pro-Trump super PAC founded and funded in May by other tech oligarchs. On Tuesday, Musk distanced himself from that claim, saying that the actual amount is lower.Either way, we may never know how much Musk is plunking down for Trump because of Musk’s avowed distaste for groups whose donors must be legally disclosed. Musk prefers to wield his political power through dark money.A second way Musk is transforming his wealth into political power is by posting pro-Trump, anti-Kamala Harris messages to his 189 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter.The reason Musk has 189 million followers is that he owns X. He can adjust its algorithm to give his tweets maximum exposure and effectively buy and capture huge numbers of X users.Immediately after Biden withdrew from the race, Musk interacted with and reposted a number of X posts mocking and criticizing Harris while expressing support for Trump.Musk retweeted former Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who said: “We’re not running against a candidate. We’re running against a system.”Musk also tweeted out a video of Harris in which she said the pronouns she uses and described her appearance for the accessibility of blind people. Musk captioned the post: “Imagine 4 years of this … ”Musk also retweeted and expressed approval of comments made by a QAnon-linked influencer, who had tweeted Biden’s resignation letter with the remark “Democrats destroy democracy in pursuit of power.” The Anti-Defamation League has highlighted this influencer as one of the “extremists and conspiracy theorists” that X has allowed back on to the platform.A number of X users have complained on the platform that they have been unable to follow the @KamalaHQ account, the official rapid response page of the vice-president’s presidential campaign. Instead, the users found a message that said they had reached their “limit” and could not follow any more accounts at this time.Trump is obviously delighted with Musk. The former president is reportedly thinking about offering the billionaire an advisory role in his administration, if there’s a second Trump presidency.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn all these ways, Musk and Trump seem on the way to merging into a single vortex of wealth and power. The result undermines American democracy and the rule of law.Maybe we should call it the Mump – the joining together of two rich and famous narcissists who crave attention, lie through their teeth, enjoy provoking critics, hate labor unions, refuse to be held accountable for anything and have utter contempt for democracy.Toward the end of America’s first Gilded Age, Louis Brandeis, the eminent American jurist, said: “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”Musk demonstrates the truth of Brandeis’s insight now, in America’s second Gilded Age.High on the list of legislative objectives for Harris and the Democrats, if they regain power, should be a wealth tax that makes it impossible for future Mumps to use their great wealth to undermine democracy.If a wealth tax is not politically feasible, an alternative would be to end the “stepped-up basis” inherent tax rule that allows heirs to great fortunes to avoid paying a dime of capital gains taxes.What can you do about Musk in the meantime? Use your economic power. Boycott Tesla and tell advertisers to boycott X.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

      This article was amended on 24 July 2024 to reflect Musk’s suggestion that the $45m figure is inaccurate More