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      AOC launches effort to impeach Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito

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      Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced articles of impeachment against the conservative US supreme court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito on Wednesday over the justices’ “pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the court”.The articles of impeachment are unlikely to gain traction in the US House, which is controlled by Republicans. The effort follows calls from two US senators, Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden, for the US attorney general to appoint a special counsel to investigate potential criminal violations of federal ethics and tax laws by Thomas.“Justice Thomas and Alito’s repeated failure over decades to disclose that they received millions of dollars in gifts from individuals with business before the court is explicitly against the law. And their refusal to recuse from the specific matters and cases before the court in which their benefactors and spouses are implicated represents nothing less than a constitutional crisis,” Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement.The articles were supported by seven other Democrats in the House.Ocasio-Cortez continued: “The unchecked corruption crisis on the supreme court has now spiraled into a constitutional crisis threatening American democracy writ large.”Reporting by the news outlet ProPublica revealed that Thomas failed to disclose several luxury vacation trips that were paid for by Harlan Crow, a conservative megadonor. Thomas has also been pressed to recuse himself from cases involving the January 6 US Capitol attack and Donald Trump because his wife, Ginni, is involved with groups that were connected to the insurrection.The resolution filed against Thomas contains three articles of impeachment. The first focuses on his failure to disclose gifts from Crow. The second two involve his refusal to recuse himself from cases connected to his wife.Alito also took a vacation with and flew on a private jet chartered by Peter Singer, a Republican billionaire. Additionally, Alito refused to recuse himself from cases involving the attack on the US Capitol after it was reported that his wife, Martha-Ann, flew an upside-down American flag associated with the insurrection at their Virginia home. Further, the Alitos flew a flag associated with Christian nationalism at a beach home in New Jersey.Ocasio-Cortez filed two articles of impeachment against Alito. One focuses on his failure to disclose luxury travel and the other on his refusal to recuse himself from January 6 cases.Alito and Thomas were both part of a majority opinion earlier this month saying that former presidents have immunity from prosecution for official acts, a major win for Trump. They both also were in the majority in a case narrowing the grounds under which January 6 participants can be criminally prosecuted.Supreme court justices have wide discretion over whether to recuse themselves from a given case – something that sets them apart from other justices. Facing pressure after ProPublica’s reporting, the court’s nine justices formalized a code of conduct last November, a move that was seen as a step in the right direction, but still weak. More

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      George Clooney implores Biden to step aside in opinion article

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      The Hollywood actor George Clooney, one of the Democratic party’s biggest fundraisers, has called on Joe Biden to step aside to save democracy from Donald Trump.In an opinion article in the New York Times, Clooney expressed deep affection for the US president but said that personal interaction with him at a recent fundraising event in Los Angeles – the Democratic party’s most successful ever, raising more than $30m – suggested that the stumbling performance in last month’s debate in Atlanta was not an aberration.“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” the actor and longtime Democratic party member and fundraiser wrote.“He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.“Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw,” he said, referring to explanations from the White House and Biden himself for his bad debate performance.More bluntly, he said explicitly that Biden could not prevail in an electoral rematch with Trump: “We are not going to win with this president.”Stressing that his call was made reluctantly, Clooney paid tribute to the political battles that Biden had won throughout his career but said his age represented an insurmountable adversary.“But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can,” he wrote.Clooney’s plea came as Biden continues to insist on staying in the race while senior Democrats agonise about how to apply pressure on him to change his mind, and serious questions continue over Biden’s health and viability for re-election.The actor called on leading party figures to come off the fence and make the case to Biden, while dismissing as “disingenuous” the president’s argument – stated in a letter to Democrats in Congress this week – that the party’s membership had already chosen the nominee in the primaries.‘Most of our members of Congress are opting to wait and see if the dam breaks,” he wrote in remarks clearly critical of continuing inaction. “But the dam has broken. We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe concluded: “Joe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to do it again in 2024.”Clooney’s intervention comes weeks after a disagreement with the White House over Biden’s criticism of the international criminal court’s move to issue an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.The actor’s wife, Amal Alamuddin Clooney, worked on the case. Clooney called Steve Ricchetti, the president’s counsel, to complain about Biden’s labeling the warrant as “outrageous”.Warrants were being sought for the arrest of Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, and three leaders of Hamas, which controls Gaza.Shortly afterwards, however, Clooney appeared at a huge fundraising event in Los Angeles for the campaign, which headlined with Biden and Barack Obama. More

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      ‘What we’ve been saying all along’: where do critical voters stand on Biden dropping out?

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      Concerns about Joe Biden’s fitness for re-election on the left may have been muted over the last year. But they were not absent.“There’s a lot of people, especially on the left, that have been talking about this,” said Alex Johnson, an IT worker in Atlanta.Democrats in the center of the party would chastise critics on the left as ageist or radical when bringing up the president’s age before the disastrous debate, he said. “They’re telling everybody that they were crazy. And then one thing happened, and all of a sudden, all of the people who have been calling progressives crazy, they’re like: ‘You know, maybe they were right.’”Biden has repeatedly reiterated that he will not withdraw from the race. Democratic party leaders are locking arms behind the president, instructing their ranks to be circumspect in conversation with news reporters and are strategizing ahead of the Democratic national convention.The conversation about Biden’s fitness ratcheted up after his debate performance last month. But they did not begin then, even among Democrats. Editorials from David Ignatius at the Washington Post and Mark Leibovich at the Atlantic last year called for Biden to refrain from running. Cenk Uygur, progressive co-creator of The Young Turks program, wanted Biden to give up re-election for more than a year and has been more than vocal about it, describing Biden’s supporters on the left as dead-enders.“At this point, eight out of 10 Americans think that Joe Biden’s mental health is not sufficient to be president,” Uygur said. “That’s what we’ve been saying all along. That number was already sky high before the debate.”Uygur has been arguing that it’s more than Biden’s age; no president with poll numbers in the 30s at this point in the election cycle has won re-election. Uygur tried to run as a candidate himself, despite being born in Istanbul – a constitutional disqualification for the office – simply to make the point.Karl Olson in St Louis Park, Minnesota, generally votes for Republican candidates. In 2020, “to save democracy”, Olson made the maximum possible legal contribution to the Biden campaign, he said. He voted for Biden in 2020, but has been calling for Biden not to run for re-election for years.He voted for Nikki Haley in the 2024 primary. Now he is considering a vote for Trump.“I have long held that [Biden] should quit while he’s ahead,” Olson said. “I have concluded that if the Democrats insist on renominating Biden and Harris, they deserve to lose.”“Here’s the thing,” he added. “If Donald Trump is a political antichrist who will destroy democracy, then why are Democrats insisting on renominating Biden-Harris when he’s too old and she’s not enough of a leader to win?”Much of the anger today is being directed at the media, both for ignoring the substance of concerns about Biden’s age before the debate, and now the seeming pile-on after it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe headlines may be overdue, said Blue Tannery, a radio engineer in Atlanta. But they are not helpful.“The age thing in particular; yes, it’s an important problem. I’m really, really, really sick of seeing headlines about it,” Tannery said. The one thing that Biden said that makes any sense: you should all shut up about how old that I am and start talking about what I’ve done over the last four years.”Tannery said he had wanted Biden not to run, but also said the standard the media applies to Biden is unfair. “This is eight years of being in this country, watching Trump just open his mouth onstage and exhale a horde of locusts and the headline is about Biden,” Tannery said. “Because that’s what Trump does every time. That’s not news anymore. It is exhausting.”Samantha Ruddy, a comedy writer in Philadelphia, may be typical of reluctant Biden voters. She’s still voting for Biden. But now she also thinks he’s going to lose.“I have wanted Democratic candidates more politically aligned to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders during the past two election cycles,” Ruddy said. “In 2020, I felt Biden was better than Trump. I still feel he’s better than Trump. However, I don’t think he can win in 2024. I believe the best move is to replace him on the ticket. That being said – much like Donald Trump – I’m an entertainer who looked at the eclipse, so what do I know?” More

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      For US democracy to survive, it needs progressives like Sanders and AOC | Judith Levine

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      In France, more than 200 candidates dropped out of their races to consolidate the left-center vote and defeat the extreme right. In Israel, Labor and the leftwing Meretz party are merging to offer “a real alternative to the path of the failed and dangerous government”.And in the US, the Democrats are on a death march behind the zombie Joe Biden, more worried about looking disunited than winning the election.They are disunited – and that may be their last hope. If they’re going to try to save democracy, Biden’s stated campaign goal, they must look to the faction they’ve distanced themselves from: the left. And if the left cares about democracy, it needs to get onboard with the Democrats.The only excitement that the Democrats have generated since Barack Obama’s presidency has come from its further-left members: people such as Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent senator, and erstwhile Democrat; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York City representative; and Jamie Raskin, the left-of-center Maryland representative, who brilliantly orchestrated Donald Trump’s impeachment for attempting to overturn the election.Yet the party establishment is intent on sidelining its progressive wing. Before the 2020 elections, the Democratic congressional campaign committee changed its rules to cut business ties with any consultant who worked with primary challengers – who were coming, not coincidentally, from the left. The party has sat on its hands as the rightwing American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) pours $100m into defeating seven members of Congress’s progressive “Squad” because of their vocal opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza.All this effort represents a suicidal denial of the politics of the Democratic base. More than three-quarters of Democrats oppose the war. As many as 750,000 presidential primary voters chose “uncommitted”, “no preference” or a blank ballot to protest against Biden’s unconditional support for Israel. In early June, the Nation predicted that the uncommitted delegates, a substantial number of them from the battleground states of the upper midwest, would be a critical constituency at the Democratic convention. If Biden finally throws in the towel, that faction will become much more critical.Pundits are calling the trouncing of Jamaal Bowman, the progressive Democratic incumbent from New York’s congressional district 16, a sign of Democratic voters’ swing to the center, even though it was money from the right – Aipac’s $15m to his moderate primary opponent – that defeated him. Yet elsewhere in New York state, progressives, including socialists, running as Democrats handily fought off primary challenges, thanks not to the Democratic party but to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Working Families party (WFP).A 2022 Pew poll found that Democrats under 30 view socialism positively at twice the rate as they favor capitalism. In fact, all Democrats under 65 – Black and brown people more than white, women more than men, poor more than rich – have a better opinion of socialism than of capitalism.While the Republicans cede all power to the radical right, the Democrats, since Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” of the party in the 1990s, have clung to the middle. By simultaneously marginalizing the left and depending on its votes, the party has courted only mistrust and cynicism from the social justice movements whose ideas, in milder form, they eventually co-opt.The problem is not just that the Democrats snub progressives. The progressives are carrying on as if no more were at stake in this election than in the last one, when a lot was at stake. Jill Stein and Cornel West, presidential candidates of the Green party and the People’s party, respectively, keep campaigning – and sparring with one another – knowing that they might scrape off enough votes to give the election to Trump.Since the debate, both are sounding delusional. “Biden’s dropping out, Trump is on his way to jail. I could be the last one standing constant and consistent,” West told the talkshow host Tavis Smiley. On the media circuit, Stein is describing the exchange as “zombie versus psychopath”, proof of the two-party system’s dysfunction – and claiming a surge of support for her campaign. Surge or not, Stein is on the ballot in five swing states; according to Politico, she could determine who wins.In spite of the animosity, progressives and progressive organizations – MoveOn, Lean Left, the DSA, the WFP – continue to pitch in. Most of the people I’ve met making get-out-the-vote phone calls for whatever mediocre candidate the Democrats put on the ballot come from the old, New, Labor, feminist, anti-war or antiracist left. The Democratic party needs the left.And as much as the Democrats need the left, the left needs democracy. In June 2020, under Trump’s orders, national guard troops in riot gear fired teargas and rubber bullets at citizens peacefully protesting George Floyd’s murder in Washington’s Lafayette Park so that the president could have his picture taken holding up a Bible in front of a church. When Trump lectured governors to “dominate” – arrest, prosecute, jail and “do retribution” to – demonstrators in their cities, only the Illinois Democrat JB Pritzker, whose name has been floated to replace Biden on the ticket, objected.In an extraordinary move, Trump’s defense secretary, along with other active and retired military officers, condemned the deployment of the military against non-violent domestic protest. The next time, surrounded by vetted loyalists, Trump will not be constrained.For the people who braved Covid and the cops, it’s more than distasteful to canvass for the party that named its reform bill after Floyd, then spent hundreds of millions to put more cops on the streets. West and Stein are right: unlike parliamentary systems, where parties large and small represent proportionate popular support within government, the US electoral duopoly fails democracy. But the duopoly is what we’ve got. And this time, the greater of two evils is far eviler than the lesser.Overlapping crises – a US supreme court that has (most recently) coronated all past and future presidents, and the flameout of the already sputtering Democratic nominee – have muddled the rescue of democracy with the election of Democrats. If they win, they’re unlikely to do better than resuscitate the white supremacist minority-ruled oligarchy we have now.Still, the prospect of Trumpian fascism ought to stir our fealty to the good old American oligarchy we call democracy. If the left values democracy, it must help the Democrats. And if the Democrats prevail, they must look to the left to make democracy worthy of its name.
      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books More

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      The Republicans’ new party platform is scary – because it can win | Dustin Guastella and Bhaskar Sunkara

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      The new Republican platform was released yesterday. Some liberal journalists – the opinion-makers of what has been called the Democrats’ “shadow party” – dismissed the new platform as a “joke”. They’re wrong. The Republican party platform is scary. Not because it rolls out the usual litany of conservative policy preferences, but precisely because of where it breaks from that orthodoxy.The new party platform is scary, because it can win.Remember, the Republican party did not release a platform in 2020. Presumably, many in the party had not yet accepted that Trumpism was not an aberrant virus but instead the new normal for conservative politics. But in 2024 party leaders, billionaire donors, and rightwing media have embraced Donald Trump without reservation. The new platform reflects his political formula: moderate, at least rhetorically, on abortion; double down on immigration; and reject the small-government Republican tradition.In addition to the ex-president’s signature anti-immigrant positions, consider the following changes: the drafters have dropped the party’s longstanding commitment to cut “entitlements” and now say that Republicans “will not cut one penny” from social security or Medicare. The platform also does not mention reducing the national debt, opting instead for vague language about slashing “wasteful spending”. The platform endorses an industrial policy to make the US the “Manufacturing Superpower”. The platform rails against the “unfair trade deals” and politicians who “sold our jobs and livelihoods to the highest bidders overseas”. And there is a new commitment to “rebuild our cities and restore law and order”.Most strikingly, the platform does not mention any national abortion ban, only opposition to “late-term abortion”. The platform describes itself as “a return to common sense” and Trump has distanced himself from the radical framing of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.In US politics, platforms typically don’t mean much, and both Democrats and Republicans tend to throw together broad programs designed to triangulate between appeasing ideologues and appealing to swing voters. But platforms can be consequential if they signal a genuine break from past orthodoxy, and if legislators take them seriously. Given the sudden advocacy of platform positions from several leading Republican figures such as JD Vance and Marco Rubio, the new Republican platform does not seem like window dressing.This is the new core of the Republican party’s appeals: moderate on certain cultural issues and economic issues. That can win against a feeble Democratic party that is too busy wrestling over who their nominee should be to promote a second-term agenda. (“Let’s Finish the Job” says Joe Biden, in a recent ad, with no indication what that job is.)Democrats seem to have tricked themselves into thinking that the voting public’s general rejection of the US supreme court’s Dobbs decision means that polarization around abortion will catapult them to victory. They seem to think that because Ron DeSantis lost by making his campaign all about “wokeness”, voters really don’t mind corporate DEI language. They seem to think that because the Republican party is unwilling to follow through on the populist economics presented in their 2016 and 2024 platforms, voters will laugh off those promises. And, of course, they underestimate the degree to which inflation has soured voters on the president and the Democrats.Much was made in the lead-up to 2016 about the civil war within the Republican party between “Never Trump” conservatives and the Steve Bannon populist wing of the party. Moderate figures like Joe Scarborough and Colin Powell left the party in opposition to their presumptive candidate, while Marco Rubio said that Trump’s nomination would “fracture the party and be damaging to the conservative movement”. Far from crippling the Republican party, however, Trump brought it back to power. And in office, he reassured establishment figures by coupling largely symbolic protectionist measures with the deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy that one would have expected from a Mitt Romney administration.And now, instead of moving the Republican party to the radical right, Trump, on key issues like abortion, is at least theoretically moving his party closer to the center. Indeed, the Republican platform appears to be a winning one. Yet while the Republican party is offering a relatively coherent program, Democrats are all over the place, with a nominee unable to effectively communicate with the American people and no unifying theme other than opposition to Trump. Rather than running on the Biden administration’s oversight of job growth in distressed areas and its new industrial policy, liberals seem content to do battle on the cultural front.This discursive failing has allowed common sense policies that are more reflective of the governing practice of today’s Democratic party – from defending the social safety net to growing manufacturing jobs – to become rebranded as the bread-and-butter of the Republican party.In power, it’s likely that Trump will once again betray his working-class supporters and govern like a typical business conservative, because he is utterly committed to more tax cuts and weakening trade unions. He’s promised his richest political donors whatever they want if they help him get back in power. As a result, we’ve seen billionaires lining up to shower him with cash.Yet Trump has displayed surprising political discipline lately. While the Democrats bicker among themselves about Biden’s fitness, Trump is only now beginning to spend big money in swing states like Wisconsin – where he is already leading in the polls.This is a side of Trump we haven’t previously seen; he is campaigning to win in a dangerously coherent way. If progressives don’t wake up and offer an appealing alternative, Trump might do more than rule through the courts and through executive orders – he might forge a long-lasting, majoritarian movement.
      Dustin “Dino” Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and director of operations for Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia
      Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, founding editor of Jacobin, and author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalities More

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      ‘Blitz primary’: the scenario that could turn replacing Biden into a ‘riveting spectacle’

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      In the morass in which the Democratic party now finds itself over Joe Biden’s troubled presidential candidacy, a prominent narrative is that the party is confronted by two dire options: an aged and weakened Biden stumbles on to November, or he stands down, igniting an acrimonious and chaotic scramble for his replacement.Either way, Donald Trump wins.Over the past few days, however, energy has been building around a third, more optimistic solution. Advocates of this alternative model believe it could reinvigorate Democrats by putting the spotlight on young fresh talent, inspire the country with a powerful articulation of the party’s values and, critically, prevent Trump from returning to the White House bent on unleashing a full-blown attack on American democracy.The idea is being floated by a loose affiliation of Democratic party stalwarts, including former senior government officials and elected representatives, major donors, and current party officeholders. They are calling their plan the “blitz primary”– a quickfire, tightly controlled selection process that would culminate with a younger successor to Biden being nominated at next month’s Democratic national convention.“The question is: how can we flip this disaster into something remarkable?” said Ted Dintersmith, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur who is a leading proponent of the blitz primary idea. “What would totally shift the national narrative, turning bad options into an opportunity?”Dintersmith, who in 2012 was appointed by Barack Obama to represent the US at the UN general assembly, estimates that about 70 prominent individuals have participated in the search for an alternative. Discussions have focused on how to move beyond the crisis in which the Democratic party has been propelled by Biden’s lamentable performance in last month’s presidential debate which has sown doubt both about the president’s mental acuity and his electability.The blitz primary is posited on Biden voluntarily stepping down as the party’s nominee and playing an active role in the process. With his involvement, a shortlist of five to eight younger candidates would be identified, drawn from the Biden administration, Democratic state governors and other rising stars of the party.Names mentioned include Vice-President Kamala Harris; Governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Gavin Newsom of California, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky; the US senator from Georgia, Raphael Warnock; and Biden cabinet members such as the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, and the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg.View image in fullscreenA controversial aspect of the blitz primary model is that Harris would be required to compete on equal terms – there would be no anointing her as Biden’s heir. Allan Katz, the former US ambassador to Portugal under Obama who has helped frame the blueprint, said that if she emerged as the nominee she would do so “as a much stronger, much better candidate than if the nomination was just handed to her”.The younger generation of leaders would be introduced to the nation through a series of televised town halls running up to the convention in Chicago on 19 August. Moderators would be selected for their dynamic ability to attract large primetime audiences especially of younger voters, snatching back the media limelight from Trump.Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, and even Taylor Swift have been floated as fantasy interlocutors.“It would increase the number of Americans actually paying attention,” said Rosa Brooks, a key advocate of the blitz primary who held senior positions in both the Obama and Bill Clinton administrations and was a volunteer policy adviser for Biden’s 2020 campaign. She added: “For delegates it would be a chance for them to see how the candidates performed in front of the American people – because in the end this is about finding a candidate who is most likely to defeat Trump.”Brooks pointed out that under party rules, if and when Biden agreed to withdraw he would release his 3,904 delegates who would then be free to pick a new nominee of their choice. Under the blitz primary formula, a vote would be staged before the Chicago convention to avoid the risk of an ugly and bruising spectacle at the event itself.Selection would be by ranked choice voting. Delegates would vote only once, but list all candidates in order of preference.View image in fullscreenContenders would then be eliminated one by one, and their votes redistributed to those remaining, in a process that could be staggered over several days for maximum TV suspense and exposure. That would have the dual benefit of increasing public engagement, as well as ensuring that the final winner would have very broad appeal.“It would be a riveting spectacle,” Brooks said. “It would be a way of getting people focused on the issue and the fact that the Democrats are not, in fact, a one-person party.”Blitz primary advocates report that the model has proven to be popular among those they have tested it against. Brooks said that she has had private conversations with senior Biden administration officials who expressed support.“People in very senior positions within the administration have said to us privately, ‘Thank you, we’re glad you’re doing this. We need Biden to withdraw and we need some better process,’” Brooks said.The architects of the blitz primary have no illusions about how difficult it would be to achieve – not least because the entire plan rests upon Biden agreeing to quit the race. So far he has shown no sign of doing that, stating in interviews and an open letter that he intends to stick it out.“It’s a very long shot, I know, as there are a whole bunch of things that have to line up,” Dintersmith said. “But our party is bursting with creative talent, and we have the ability to transform the election, energize the country, and come out of this in a better place as a nation than we are today.”Brooks said: “We are up against a failure of imagination and courage – a failure to see that there are other possibilities if we are willing to move quickly and be creative. There are risks associated with that, of course, but there is a huge risk with the current approach – the risk of an autocrat determined to destroy democracy getting back into the White House.” More

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      European leaders use Nato summit to sell military alliance to US voters

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      European leaders at the Nato summit in Washington are focused on explaining to ordinary American taxpayers that the military alliance is worth the money, as the issue of burden-sharing has become a political football for both parties in the US – and threatens to become a serious stumbling block for the alliance should a second Trump administration come to power.“There is a debate in the United States that the US are doing a lot to support Ukraine and Europe is not doing enough. If you look at figures, it’s actually a different picture. Europe is doing more than the United States: the financial support, military support we all have provided so far has been enormous … We are taking the security and defense seriously,” said Edgars Rinkēvičs, the president of Latvia, during a speech on Tuesday alongside former CIA director Leon Panetta and the Estonian defense minister, Hanno Pevkur. “It’s also very important to explain to the American public.”In background briefings, European officials have said they have been concerned with political turmoil in the US and Europe. The US was among countries that pushed back against a multi-year financial pledge for military aid to Ukraine – in part because of the bitter fight in Congress over the Ukraine supplemental bill.“We think that this is essential to signal that Europeans are taking a greater burden of their own security,” said another European official ahead of the summit. “And it’s an important message to Ukraine, to Russia – but also for domestic audience. Here in DC, we are aware of the sensitivity of that topic, and I think you can expect a lot of strategic communication on that next week.”European officials are balancing concerns over the growing Russian threat in Ukraine and the political sensitivities that could further divide the alliance.“We also understand that the ordinary people, in Latvia or the United States or somewhere else, sometimes do care more about economy, social issues, internal security, and we should take those concerns seriously and address them in the same manner that we are addressing the high geopolitical issues,” said Rinkēvičs.Polling has shown that views on Nato are subject to a partisan divide in the US, and that the alliance has become steadily less popular among Republicans in the past year. According to the Pew Research Centre, just 43% of Republicans have a positive view of the alliance, down from 49% who said the same in 2023.European leaders have taken different tacks, with some talking points seemingly tailored toward the Republican candidate as well. “Nato is a club, and when you have a club rules, then you respect the rules, and you expect that everybody will also respect the rules,” Pefkur, the Estonian defense minister said on Tuesday. “So Trump is a golfer, so when you pay your fee, in the golf club, you can play. Doesn’t matter how big is your wallet. So when you pay that fee, you can go to the golf course and play.”In a speech at the Hudson Institute on Tuesday, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said that he supported Nato but that he would press European leaders on fulfilling a pledge to spend 2% of GDP on defense. He also tied national security to US border security, once again reinforcing how Nato policies have become subsumed to domestic US politics.“Nato needs to be doing more,” he said. “Not all Nato members have reached their current commitment. It may even need to be closer at a level during the cold war. But if we’re all going to enjoy a future of peace and prosperity, we all need to have skin in the game.”Critics have said that the US is going through a period of isolationism. “On a tectonic level, our allies should understand that there is a usually isolationist instinct in this country,” said Representative Jim Himes, a senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee. “And it emerges from time to time, when economic conditions here are not good,” or after moments of disenchantment like the Iraq war. “We are in that isolationist moment and it’s not just Donald Trump.”Others describe it as restraint. Trump is not the only one calling for the US to withdraw forces and resources from Europe, leaving Europeans to take on the burden of defending themselves. Several liberal foreign policy analysts have been calling for years for a switch to American restraint when it comes to US military projection, especially in Europe.“It is in the interest of a transatlantic alliance to shift the burden toward Europe and transition over, a decent period, maybe about a decade, toward European leadership of European defense with the United States moving to a supporting role,” Stephen Wertheim a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a leading advocate for restraint.Wertheim was one of dozens of foreign policy experts who wrote an open letter published in the Guardian urging Nato leaders not to invite Ukraine to become a member.“It could also be counterproductive insofar as Russia believes that Ukraine is advancing down this bridge to Nato membership, Russia gains an incentive to prolong the war so that that moment never arrives, so that Ukraine never crosses that bridge on the other side.” More

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      Trump airs list of false grievances at Florida rally: ‘We don’t eat bacon any more’

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      Donald Trump returned to the campaign trail in Florida on Tuesday night, hurling insults at Joe Biden and airing a litany of familiar grievances, but declining to name a running mate for November’s general election.The former president and presumptive Republican nominee was speaking to a crowd of several hundred supporters at his golf club in Doral, a western suburb of Miami, keeping them waiting in 90F heat for a freewheeling monologue that began more than an hour later than scheduled.There was speculation that he might use his first public appearance since last month’s debate with the president to announce Florida senator Marco Rubio, who was present, as his vice-presidential pick, six days ahead of the Republican national convention (RNC) in Milwaukee.Instead, Trump delivered a rambling 75-minute speech that included a succession of attacks on Biden and his faltering debate performance, which has raised questions among Democrats on whether the 81-year-old president was robust enough for a second term of office.He seized on the post-debate turbulence that has prompted calls from some senior Democrats for Biden to step down and nominate Kamala Harris.“The radical left Democratic party is divided in chaos, and having a full scale breakdown all because they can’t decide which of their candidates is more unfit to be president, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden or laughing Kamala,” he said, repeating previous derogatory terms for the pair.“Despite all the Democrat panic this week, the truth is it doesn’t matter who they nominate because we are going to beat any one of them in a thundering landslide.”Trump has kept a lower than usual profile in the days since the debate, a strategy an aide described as designed to allow Democrats to tear into each other following Biden’s dismal debate performance.His remarks on Tuesday were notable for adding the vice-president’s name to numerous attacks on Biden policies, and sprinkling in mentions of both Rubio and Byron Donalds, a Republican Florida congressman also believed to be on Trump’s shortlist for vice-president.Otherwise, it was a standard Trump stump speech, full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US “most of their prisoners”; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000.It also touched on the surreal. Biden, he insisted, had raised the price of bacon four-fold.“We don’t eat bacon any more,” Trump said.Electric cars, he said, “cheated” the US public because drivers had to stop for three hours to recharge their vehicles after every 45 minutes of driving. And, in an echo of one of the more bizarre debate exchanges with Biden over who was the better golfer, he challenged his White House successor to 18 holes over the Doral course while granting a 10-stroke concession.“It will be among the most watched sporting events in history, maybe bigger than the Ryder Cup or even the Masters,” Trump said, pledging $1m to a charity of Biden’s choosing if he lost.Returning to politics, Trump assailed Democrats for tax rises he said they wanted to impose; criticized Biden for the US military’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan; and promised to build an “iron dome” missile defense system for the US, if he was elected in November.Perhaps worn down by the energy-sapping humidity, the crowd appeared mostly subdued, including yawns in the bleachers behind him as Trump drew to a close with slow music playing, and others tapping disinterestedly on their phones.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis campaign had touted the possibility of Trump announcing a vice-presidential pick on Tuesday, but in the end his only reference to the post was suggesting that Rubio might or might not still be in the Senate to vote to allow Nevada waitresses to keep their tips untaxed.There was no mention of Ohio senator JD Vance, or North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, other Republicans said to be on the shortlist. Trump will rally again on Saturday in Pennsylvania, close to the Ohio border, with Vance expected to be a speaker.Earlier on Tuesday, Democrats, on a Biden campaign call featuring first lady Jill Biden, and previewing Trump’s Doral rally, mocked him for his low-key approach since the debate.“I hope he hasn’t exhausted himself with all the golf that he’s been playing,” Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar said.“Speaking of staying off the campaign trail, Trump has been hiding a lot recently, not just from voters and from the press, but from Project 2025.“Donald Trump tried to pretend that he had nothing to do with Project 2025 despite the fact that it was written for him by the people who know him best. And yesterday, his campaign preview of the RNC platform, was just as unhinged and extreme as Trump himself. They left out some of the most unpopular specifics that we know they support.“As usual, they’re trying to hide the ball from the American public.”Trump, in his speech Tuesday, avoided mention of Project 2025 or his policy on abortion. More