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      Ex-Trump security adviser backtracks on proposal to send all Marines to Asia

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      Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien – tipped to play a leading role if the ex-president returns to the White House – backtracked on parts of his proposal to sever US-China economic ties, an aspect of which called for sending the entire US Marine Corps to Asia.O’Brien, who recently submitted a 5,000-word article outlining his thinking to Foreign Affairs, explained on Sunday that instead of the “entire US Marine Corps”, it would be only the “fighting force”. And he said some Marines would still be stationed at bases like California’s Camp Pendleton and North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune.“We want to stop a war, and the way to stop the war is through strength,” O’Brien said on Sunday’s edition of CBS Face the Nation. “Moving the Marine Corps to the Pacific and moving the carrier battle group to the Pacific would show the kind of strength needed to deter a war.”In the essay, titled The Return of Peace Through Strength, O’Brien argued for the US to help expand the militaries of Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam; increase military assistance to Taiwan; and boost missile defense as well as fighter jet protection in the region.He also called for renewed plutonium and enriched uranium production – as well as the resumption of live nuclear-weapons testing.O’Brien cites concerns over an aging US nuclear arsenal as his primary argument in favor of abandoning the current nuclear testing moratorium.The military expansion would go beyond the measures Joe Biden has taken to counter Chinese ambitions in the Asia-Pacific region as the president seeks re-election against Trump in November.And on Sunday, Trump’s hawkish foreign policy adviser from 2019 to 2021 appeared to echo an earlier diplomatic strategy when Trump threatened to pull the US out of Asia and Europe unless its strategic partners met defense spending targets.O’Brien said US allies have fielded “some, but not enough” of the cost of housing US troops in their countries, and he called on them to “step up to the plate”.The US currently stations nearly half of all American military deployed abroad in Japan, South Korea and Guam, along with small detachments in Taiwan and the Marshall Islands.“We need our allies to step up,” O’Brien said. “America can’t do this alone.“Sometimes you have to be tough, you have to show tough love to your allies. And just like with family members sometimes you have to be tough with your family members.” More

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      Trump freewheels towards debate as Biden rehearses at Camp David

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      Presidential political surrogates fanned out across the Sunday talkshows to prepare the ground for next week’s televised debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which could help the Democratic incumbent and his Republican predecessor focus the minds of undecided or unengaged voters on November’s election.But the candidates themselves are taking strikingly different approaches. Biden is hunkered down at Camp David in debate preparation, reportedly with his personal attorney Bob Bauer standing in for Trump in mock exchanges.Bauer told Politico last week that his job was “to approximate as closely as you possibly can how it is that that individual, the opponent, is going to debate”.Trump, however, is not known to have a debate surrogate – or been in any debate practice. Instead, he has been out on the campaign trail. In Philadelphia on Saturday, he continued his rhetoric on immigration, at one point saying he would suggest to Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, that the organization pit a league of fighters who are immigrants against the “regular” league fighters with the champion of each then squaring off.That left the talkshows to mull the impending clash with campaign surrogates talking up – or talking down – mounting expectations for a decisive exchange. However, there are also concerns that without a live TV audience to provide voter interaction, it could also fall flat.“I expect President Biden to do an excellent job just like he did the last few debates,” Biden’s campaign co-chairperson Mitch Landrieu told NBC’s Meet the Press.Referring in part to Trump’s conviction in the criminal prosecution involving hush-money paid to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, Landrieu said: “It really doesn’t matter how Donald Trump shows up, if he comes in unhinged, like he has most of the time, or he sits there and is quiet, people are going to know that he’s a twice-impeached convicted felon who has been found to have defamed somebody, sexually abused somebody and going bankrupt six times.”Landrieu said that Biden was “really anxious to tell his story to the American people”, adding: “This race is going to be tight. Everybody knows that.”Trump, Landrieu said, “wakes up every day pretty much thinking about himself, thinking about his rich friends … really thinking about ways to hurt people with the power that he would have if he were the president of the United States again”.Biden, Landrieu added, “wants to be really clear about the difference between those two that everybody will see again on Thursday”.Also for the Democrats was the US senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a member of the national advisory board for Biden’s re-election campaign. With the second anniversary of the elimination of federal abortion rights previously granted by Roe v Wade falling on Monday, Warren sought to bring reproductive rights to the forefront of the looming presidential race, a posture that let Democrats retain control of the Senate and blunted the Republican House majority in 2022.Warren said that if Biden is re-elected and Democrats are given a majority in Congress, her party would be able to defend and restore access to abortion, contraception and in vitro fertilization.“We’re going to make Roe v Wade [the] law of the land again,” Warren said. “Understand this. I want to say this as clearly as I can. If Donald Trump is elected to the presidency, he and the extremist Republicans are coming after abortion, contraception, and IVF in every single state in this country. Not just the [conservative] states.”Trump has said his VP pick will be in the audience in Atlanta on Thursday – a contest that is reported to have narrowed to the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, Florida senator Marco Rubio, and Ohio senator JD Vance.Trump told reporters on Saturday he had made a determination but has not let them know. “In my mind, yeah”, Trump told reporters at a cheesesteak restaurant in Philadelphia.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who was once considered a strong contender to be Trump’s running mate, on Sunday continued trying to bounce back from a disastrous passage in her recently published book in which she recounted shooting a dog to death that she claimed had become dangerous to her family.Noem’s admission came after Biden’s German shepherd, Commander, was merely banished from the White House after biting three dozen Secret Service agents during an 18-month reign of terror.Noem said she thought Thursday’s clash would be “an important debate” and “a great opportunity for President Trump to talk about his policies and how his policies when he served as president of this country were good”.Nonetheless, Noem confirmed that she had not received paperwork from Trump relating to his vice-president pick that others reportedly had. “I’ve had conversations with the president, and I know that he is the only one who will be making the decisions on who will be his vice-president,” she said diplomatically.A strong contender for the role, Burgum told CNN’s State of the Union that Biden’s team had made a real effort to lower expectations. He challenged the network, which is the debate host, to ask tough questions, including over Biden’s assertion when he last debated Trump in 2020 that the furore around Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation”.Though many claims about its contents have not been confirmed, the laptop was admitted as evidence in the recent trial which led to Hunter Biden’s conviction on three federal gun charges.“If he’s that good at lying about that four years ago, the question is what might he do this time,” Burgum added. More

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      Accusations fly as pro-Israel groups spend big to oust progressive House Democrat

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      It was one of the hottest days of the year in New York City on Saturday – but as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the stage in the Bronx, you wouldn’t know it.At a rally to support Jamaal Bowman, the progressive Democrat facing a primary campaign that has seen pro-Israel lobbying groups pump more than $15m into the race, Ocasio-Cortez was amped up.Bowman’s fellow progressive member of Congress – one of America’s most recognizable politicians – sprinted on to the stage and jumped around to a Cardi B track, drawing cheers and applause from the crowd.“Let’s go, Bronx!” she shouted.“Are you ready to fight? Are you ready to take this borough back? Are you ready to win this country back? Are you ready to fight for peace on earth and ceasefire in Gaza?”The reception from the crowd of more than 1,000 people suggested that the crowd was very ready.Voters go to the polls in New York’s 16th district on Tuesday, in what has become the most expensive House primary in US history. The race between Bowman and his challenger, George Latimer, has been ugly: beset by accusations of antisemitism and racism. Of the almost $23m that has been spent on ads so far, more than $15m has come from pro-Israel groups, in a bid to oust the Democratic incumbent, Jamaal Bowman.Bowman has represented the district in the House of Representatives since 2020, one of a wave of progressive Democrats who have won victories in recent years. Popular among young Democrats and left-leaning voters, the 48-year-old became a high profile member of the Squad – a group of progressive politicians who include Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib – after he arrived in DC.But with greater attention comes greater vulnerability. Bowman has been one of the few Democrats to consistently criticize Israel since it began its war in Gaza, accusing the country of committing genocide and calling for the Joe Biden White House to “stop all funding” to Israel. That has attracted the attention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, a formidable force in US politics not afraid to spend millions to unseat candidates it deems insufficiently supportive of Israel.Bowman, dressed in a bright yellow T-shirt, acknowledged the challenge at the rally, held at St Mary’s Park in the south Bronx.Introduced by Ocasio-Cortez, he rapped along to the Wu-Tang Clan track Triumph to roars of appreciation.“This is the birthplace of hip-hop. I am the hip-hop congressman,” he announced.View image in fullscreenIt was clear that this was a rally designed to rouse the faithful, with Bowman urging supporters to canvas and win votes ahead of Tuesday’s vote, before turning to Aipac.“We are gonna show fucking Aipac the power of the motherfucking south Bronx,” Bowman said.“People ask me why I got a foul mouth. What am I supposed to do? You coming after me, you coming after my family, you coming after my children, I’m not supposed to fight back?“We’re gonna show them who the fuck we are.”Since the start of the primary, the United Democracy Project (UDP), a Super Pac connected with Aipac, has spent almost $15m to defeat Bowman, who is facing a primary challenge from Latimer, a pro-Israel Democrat. DMFI Pac, another pro-Israel group, has spent more than $1m to support Latimer and unseat Bowman, helping to turn the race into an unprecedentedly expensive contest.Bowman, a former school principal in the Bronx, unseated the incumbent Democrat Eliot Engel in 2020, in what was seen as a big win for the progressive wing of the party.But in Latimer, he faces an opponent with more than three decades of experience in New York politics.At 70, and with a list of endorsements from centrist Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Latimer is far from the exciting prospect Bowman was four years ago. He is, however, a vocal advocate for Israel – in the final debate between the pair he declined to criticize Israel, something Biden has previously done – who visited the country before launching his campaign against Bowman in December. He has won the support of Aipac, and was endorsed by the Jewish Democratic Council of America in March.Ironically, given Aipac’s campaign, Bowman angered some on the left during his first year in office by voting in favor of the US giving $1bn to Israel for the country to fund its Iron Dome defense system. But after Hamas militants killed almost 1,200 people on 7 October, to which Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and led to charges of genocide in the international court of justice, Bowman has found himself under fire.View image in fullscreenIn the weeks following the attack Bowman was denounced by some Jewish leaders in his district for condemning the Hamas attack and Israel’s response. He drew further ire in late October, when he was one of only 10 members of the House to vote against a resolution to codify support for Israel while stating that the House “condemns Hamas’s brutal war against Israel”.Other “no” votes included Tlaib, the Palestinian American congresswoman from Michigan, and Ilhan Omar, who was elected in Minnesota in 2018. Tlaib and Omar have been more outspoken in their criticism of Israel than Bowman – last year Tlaib was censured by the House after she defended the use of the phrase “from the river to the sea”, which is seen by some as antisemitic. Aipac has spent some money opposing both women, but it is NY-16 where the pro-Israel organization has really gone all out, breaking all its previous records.Aipac has said it will spend $100m this year on ousting politicians it deems to be anti-Israel. The American electoral system allows Super Pacs to dump as much cash as they want into any election with a few restrictions, and in NY-16, spending has been prodigious.The result has been visible for anyone with a television in the district, which covers part of the Bronx in New York City and half of Westchester county, just to the north.Much of the money has been spent on attacking Bowman. The UDP has invested $14.5m in the race – $9.8m of which has gone towards knocking Bowman, and just $4.8m on promoting Latimer.An ad from late May featured the son of Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor, Nobel winner and staunch Israel supporter, who died in 2016.“My father taught me that antisemitism begins with lies and conspiracy theories, and it ends with violence that consumes any society that tolerates it,” Elisha Wiesel says in the ad. “Will you make your voice heard? Will you confront Jamaal Bowman’s lies and conspiracy theories, or will you sit by silently?”The ad did not reference any specific conspiracy theory, but may have reminded some viewers of Bowman’s comments in November, when he said reports of Hamas committing rapes during the October 7 attack were “propaganda”. Bowman has since apologized.Aipac has been around since the 1950s, and spent decades as a fairly typical lobbying firm, chipping away at politicians behind the scenes, trying to win favorable policies and deals for Israel.But in 2021 Aipac announced that it had formed a political action committee, known as Aipac Pac, and a Super Pac, the UDP. Super Pacs can receive limitless money in donations, and spend it on any political races they like, as long as they do so without coordinating with campaigns. Since a contentious supreme court decision legalized Super Pacs in 2010, they have become extremely powerful – across 2023 and 2024, Super Pacs in the US raised nearly $1.5bn in donations, according to Open Secrets.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt is the UDP that has been doing most of the heavy lifting as Aipac attempts to defeat Bowman, spending nearly $15m in this district of 756,711 people. With Bowman’s district considered a safe Democratic seat, it would be a lucrative prize for Latimer, and for pro-Israel advocates.With a diverse population including large numbers of Black, Hispanic and Jewish voters, allegations of racism and antisemitism have been to the fore.Bowman has suggested Latimer’s campaign has darkened his skin in campaign literature, and has accused Latimer of pushing the “angry black man” stereotype. In the final debate between the pair on Tuesday, Bowman accused Latimer of dragging his feet on desegregation as Westchester county executive. Latimer, who has claimed Bowman has an “ethnic benefit”, said Bowman has “cornered the market on lies”.Latimer was also accused by Bowman of relying on Republican money, pointing to donors who have contributed to Latimer and the Republican candidate who ran to replace the shamed fantasist George Santos in Long Island, New York.Latimer, with $5.8m in fundraising, may have the big money from Aipac, and those Republican donors, but Bowman has raised plenty of cash of his own. Since the start of his campaign, Bowman has raised $4.3m and has support on the ground from progressive groups, including Justice Democrats, a progressive organization which backed his campaign in 2020 and has spent $1.3m to support Bowman this election cycle.Local polling is notoriously unreliable, but one recent survey found Bowman trailing Latimer by 17 points among likely Democratic primary voters – although 21% of respondents were undecided.If Bowman is defeated, there is a potential impact beyond just politics in the Middle East. Some younger, progressive Democrats feel that the primary campaigns against Bowman and other Squad members could drive young voters away from the Democratic party.“We believe that the Squad is just the start of our voice being truly represented in the halls of Congress,” said Ella Webber, an activist with Protect our Power, an organization which seeks to keep progressive Democrats in Congress and has spent time campaigning in Bowman’s district.“The threat of them not winning is gen Z as a whole continues to lose faith in our political process. That’s definitely not what we want, and I don’t think that’s what the Democratic party wants.”At the rally on Saturday, others were also worried about what the loss of a progressive Democrat could mean.“I’m a transgender woman, and I’m really existentially terrified about the rise of the far right in America,” said Genevieve Rand, 27.“And Jamal Bowman’s race is the frontlines of that fight in this country right now. And so it’s really, really important to me that he wins so that the far right can’t buy an election and kick out somebody who stands for peace and for life.”While Latimer would baulk at the suggestion that he is far right, Rand argued that the Republican party “is captured by the far right”.“That’s who controls the Republican party and whoever is taking their donations is complicit with that,” she said.Pro-Israel spending has come to define the race, but there have been unforced errors from Bowman. In September he was criticized after pulling a fire alarm before a crucial House vote; Bowman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour and agreed to pay a $1,000 fine, the maximum applicable under Washington DC law. Early this year the Daily Beast reported that Bowman had touted 9/11 conspiracy theories on a since-deleted blogpost.View image in fullscreenIn a poem posted in 2011, Bowman wrote about world events and the controversial Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election, before riffing on 9/11.“2001/Planes used as missiles/Target: The Twin Towers,” Bowman wrote.“Later in the day/Building 7/Also Collaspsed [sic]/Hmm…/Multiple explosions/Heard before/And during the collapse/Hmm…”The passage makes reference to the debunked conspiracy theory that Building 7 at the site of the World Trade Center was downed in a controlled demolition, rather than collapsing as a result of the plane crashes into the Twin Towers.Bowman apologized, sort of, after the Daily Beast unearthed the post, saying he had merely “processed my thoughts in a personal blog that few people ever read”.“Having since learned how misinformation spreads, I regret posting anything about any of these people,” Bowman said in a statement.There was only support for the congressman on Saturday, however – aside from a small group of pro-Palestine protesters outside the rally. The protesters – somewhat ironically given Aipac’s campaign – accused Bowman, Ocasio-Cortez and the progressive US senator Bernie Sanders, who appeared with Bowman on stage, of being soft on Israel.Some attendees clustered under trees to avoid the heat that was blasting New York City. Others braved the scorching temperatures in the park’s concrete amphitheater. Some waved “Re-elect Bowman” banners, others held placards that said “For the many, not the money”, while one group waved signs that said “Jews for Jamaal” as Bowman launched an attack on Aipac, which suggested he will not soften his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza any time soon.“Aipac is scared to death. That is why they are spending records amounts of money in this race – because they are afraid. They have already lost because the district, the American people and the world are with us,” Bowman said.“They are in this race because we called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and we are going to keep calling for a permanent ceasefire.“We are not going to stand silent while US tax dollars kills babies, and women, and children. My opponent supports genocide. My opponent and Aipac are the ones destroying our democracy, and it is on all of us to save our democracy.”Additional reporting by Will Craft More

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      Atlanta center of US political universe once again with Biden-Trump debate

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      Joe Biden will debate Donald Trump on Thursday night in an unnerving repeat of the 2020 election cycle, and once again Atlanta is the center of the political universe.The question is whether the two candidates can influence Atlanta, or if Atlanta, which influences everything in American politics, is beyond their influence.Elections in Georgia have been in a state of trench warfare since 2018, the rise of Stacey Abrams and election outcomes predicated more on supercharged turnout than convincing anyone of anything they didn’t already believe. Georgia’s 2020 election was decided by a figurative hair – the infamous 11,780 votes Trump asked the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find in a “perfect phone call” that led to his indictment here.Within the state, Atlanta has extra significance this year. The Biden administration has sent Kamala Harris to the city repeatedly this year, a sign of Democratic anxiety about losing Black voters in a historically Black city. Biden himself came last month to give the commencement speech at Morehouse College, a historically Black college, to a generally positive reception.Trump also has a relationship with Atlanta, of course. It is markedly less positive.Whether Trump is returning to the scene of the crime is a matter to be decided, eventually, by a Fulton county jury. Trump had his notorious – and lucrative – mug shot taken at the Fulton county jail about two miles north-west of the empty studio he and Biden will debate in, across the street from Centennial Olympic Park downtown.“All I can see coming out of this is memes,” said Bem Joiner, an Atlanta cultural critic and creative consultant. Joiner doesn’t want to diminish the importance of a presidential debate, and knows there are issues for which the public craves substantive argument, but people have already picked a side, he said.“I think it is what it is with this race,” Joiner said. “I cannot see questions being answered in a way that changes the mind of anyone at this point, with these two people. You can only, maybe, do something to fuck it up more for you.”View image in fullscreenFor all the symbolism of a debate in the heart of Atlanta, the format is made largely for the national stage. The two men will be standing in an otherwise-empty room, interrogated by two CNN anchors – Jake Tapper and Dana Bash – who neither live nor work in the city.Perhaps the spare environment will limit casualties from collateral fire. In the 2016 debates, Trump lied repeatedly and floridly about his performance on the pandemic, race relations and the economy, while interrupting the moderators and Biden. We remember Trump telling Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” and Biden, exasperated by yet another interruption, asking Trump to just shut up for once.The vitriolic chaos effectively ended the Presidential Commission on Debates as a mechanism for administering the events. This time, Biden is the one defending a presidential record. Trump wants to focus on that record, looking for a wedge to separate Biden from what pliable voters remain in America. Biden is likely to be comfortable explaining the accomplishments of his administration, but will try to use the debate to remind America of the reasons they got rid of Trump in the first place.CNN’s studios in downtown Atlanta are mostly empty today. The network has been forsaking the CNN Center bit by bit for a decade, accelerating their shift to DC and New York after AT&T sold the building to developers in 2021. The halls are filled with echoes of Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer, abandoned set signs in the walkways and ghosts in the studios. The markers of life, such as the Cartoon Network store in the moribund food court, are gone.Workers carted away the CNN sign in March. They just call it “the Center” now.Atlanta itself is thriving, generally, despite the protestations of conservatives like Trump, who has repeatedly attacked its elected leaders and its people over the years. Atlanta also has a flair for expressing its displeasure at such things.Trump even unloaded on the Atlanta civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis in 2017 after the congressman skipped Trump’s lightly-attended inauguration. “Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the US. I can use all the help I can get,” he tweeted.Atlanta responded with a barrage of snark under the hashtag #defendthefifth, posting idyllic pictures of children playing in parks or strolling along the BeltLine. Those hashtags were still being used by people standing in line to vote in Atlanta in 2020.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump also showed up to the college football championship at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2018. But the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America projected the words “Fuck Trump” on to the side of the stadium while he was there, and not one soul did a thing to stop them.Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that Trump had to cart in Black supporters for a publicity stunt presented as authentic community support for his campaign two months ago at a Chick-fil-A up the street from the stadium. Even so, Trump claims he’s winning Black voters in record numbers, which – if it were true – might represent the margin of victory in Georgia.“What is absolutely true is the Republicans cannot win the White House without Georgia,” said Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director for the New Georgia Project, a voter outreach organization. “Either way, Georgia is going to be critical this year for any side to perform well in.”“Georgia is also unique in being such a southern state with a large Black population, but also a growing Latino population and API [Asian/Pacific Islands] population. This perfect storm of reasons makes Georgia such a great place to come to, because you can talk to so many people from so many backgrounds, all in one place.”The New Georgia Project’s political action fund is hosting a watch party, “Vibe and Vote”, at a cigar bar on Peachtree Street on debate night, focusing on Black men and voter turnout. Trump’s reported gains with Black men have prompted a wave of outreach from progressive groups.Harris, meanwhile, may as well put down a deposit on a Buckhead condo considering all the time she spends in town. She has made a point of discussing the administration’s investments in the Black community generally and Atlanta specifically, like a $158m plan to use infrastructure dollars on a project to build a cap over Atlanta’s most traveled highway, the Downtown Connector.She again visited Atlanta on Tuesday – her fifth visit to Georgia this year – for a talk with Migos rapper Quavo to discuss gun violence.Biden and Trump are competing for a vanishingly small portion of the electorate – people who haven’t made up their mind about two people who have been in the public eye for much of the last two decades of American life. Neither is popular. But many people have simply tuned out politics, even here in the center of the political storm.The first debate is a warning bell for them, that election season is upon us more than ever and it is time to pay attention. More

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      Trump’s sledgehammer message to Philadelphia is light on facts, heavy on fear

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      Crooked Joe or Sleepy Joe? Donald Trump wanted to know which nickname his supporters prefer. “That’s the first time Sleepy Joe has ever beaten Crooked Joe!” he said with surprise, after asking the crowd to make noise for each contender.That, however, is not the branding exercise the former US president cares about most right now. On Saturday night he wanted his followers to go home with three words: Biden. Migrant. Crime.A month after his audacious campaign stop in the Bronx, New York, Trump held his first ever campaign rally in Philadelphia, the birthplace of American democracy and another Democratic stronghold where Joe Biden won 81.4% of the vote in 2020.He had come with a sledgehammer message: Biden’s open borders have allowed thousands of illegal immigrants to pour into America, leading to a surge of violent crime in its major cities, hurting Black and Hispanic populations the most. And in the grand tradition of “law and order” Republicans, only Trump could fix it.“Few communities have suffered more under the Biden regime than Philadelphia,” he told thousands of supporters, many wearing “Make America great again” caps, at the event in a sports arena. “Under Crooked Joe, the City of Brotherly Love is being ravaged by bloodshed and crime.”The rally was staged at Temple University, in a historically Black area. Trump won just 5% of the vote in precincts within a half-mile radius of Temple’s main campus in the last election, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper.But encouraged by opinion polls, his campaign has made wooing Black and Hispanic voters, who make up more than half of Philadelphia’s population, a priority this cycle. Even small gains could make all the difference in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.Several African American supporters were positioned behind Trump’s lectern in the Liacouras Center, against the backdrop of a gigantic Stars and Stripes. Attendees brandished signs with Trump’s police mug shot and the words “Never surrender”. An electronic sign flashed optimistically: “Philadelphia is Trump country.”View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenTrump painted a dystopian, often dishonest picture of “bedlam and death and terror”, a likely preview of his strategy for Thursday’s debate against Biden in Atlanta and the rest of his scorched earth campaign until November.“Murders in Philadelphia reached their highest level in six decades,” he said “Retail theft in Philly is up 135% since I left office. The convenience stores are closing down left and right. The pharmacies have to lock up the soap … You can’t buy toothpaste, you can’t buy a toothbrush, it takes you 45 minutes.” The crowd roared with laugher.In April the Pew Charitable Trusts’ annual “State of the City” report found that violent crime in Philadelphia is at its lowest level in a decade. The city’s homicide rate dropped six percentage points in 2023, in line with other cities of similar scale. But the number of property crimes did rise sharply over the same period.Crucial to Trump’s fear and fury election strategy is joining dots between crime and illegal immigration. It is a hot button issue after Republican governors in Texas and Florida chartered buses and planes to send thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities. Mayors have felt a strain on their resources and growing backlash from voters.Trump said: “Unbelievably Crooked Joe Biden is going around trying to claim that crime is down. Crime is so much up. First of all, we have a new form of crime. It’s called the Biden Migrant Crime, right? And all these millions of people that have come in, they’re just getting warmed up.”In fact last year violent crime fell to one of its lowest levels in more than half a century. FBI statistics show steep drops in every category of violent crime in every region in the first three months of 2024 compared to a year earlier.But at Saturday’s rally Trump, himself a convicted criminal, sought to turn reality on its head.View image in fullscreen“The FBI crime statistics Biden is pushing are fake,” he said without evidence. “They’re fake just like everything else in this administration.”The former president went on to use lurid, apocalyptic language to describe the alleged threat posed by undocumented immigrants. Many studies have found that immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than US-born citizens.“Day after day, week after week, Joe Biden is releasing illegal criminals into our communities to rape, pillage, plunder and to kill,” he said. “Just this week, a 12-year-old girl in Houston, Jocelyn Nungaray, was tied up, stripped, and strangled to death after walking to a 7-Eleven.”“… Charged with Jocelyn’s heinous murder are two illegal alien savages that Joe Biden recently set loose into our country. They came across our border claiming they feared for their lives in Venezuela.”At that a man in the crowd shouted: “Fuck Joe Biden!” – an ominous sign of how Trump’s rhetoric fires up his crowds. During his 85-minute speech, they shouted and shrieked and chanted “Build the wall!” and “USA! USA!”The Republican National Committee recently launched a website called “Biden Bloodbath” that highlights anecdotal incidents involving migrants in eight US states, including electoral battlegrounds such as Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.Trump went on to cite the case of Rachel Morin, a 37-year-old mother from Maryland allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant, and thanked members of her family for attending the rally. Telling another grim crime story in unsparing detail, he commented: “Like a scene from a horror movie.”Trump deployed a similar tactic in 2016 and believes it could resonate again. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in March found that only about three in 10 Americans approve of Biden’s handling of immigration. A similar share approved of his handling of border security.View image in fullscreenSix people interviewed by the Guardian inside the arena in Philadelphia – all of whom were attending a Trump rally for the first time – expressed support for his proposed crackdown on border security and illegal immigration.Jim Leedom, wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “We the people are pissed off”, said: “He’s definitely going to clean that up good. The atrocities that are going on down there, the little girls being raped, the women being raped, the drug cartel has control of the whole area – Biden doesn’t seem to give a shit.”“None of that shit went on when Trump was in..”Leedom, 55, who owns a small manufacturing shop, voiced support for Trump’s plan to carry out the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in history.In recent weeks Biden has imposed significant restrictions on immigrants seeking asylum in the US while also offering potential citizenship to hundreds of thousands of people without legal status already living in the country. But the measures cut little ice here.Leedom, accompanied by his son Joseph, a 21-year-old engineering student voting in his first presidential election (he too will vote for Trump), commented: “He’s playing games. That doesn’t surprise me. He’s evil. There’s not enough water for a shower to wash the filth of Biden off.”Michael Krug, 53, was sporting a red T-shirt that said “Keep America great” and “Trump” but had attached a piece of blue sticky tape to hide the word “Pence”. He also wore a badge that said, “God, guns and Trump”.Krug, who works for a paint company, endorsed the “great replacement” theory that describes a supposed elite conspiracy to change the demographics of America, replacing and disempowering white people in favour of people of color, immigrants and Muslims.“Why is it that we don’t have a border any more and people can come just right in and they can get benefits and they can take money and they can take social services away from our poor people or our people that maybe need it?” he asked. “They’re doing it for the Great Replacement. They’re doing it for voters. They’re also doing it to change our culture.”Krug cited the false notion that undocumented immigrants are given voter registration cards, adding: “They’re prosecuting people for walking into the Capitol on January 6th, but they won’t prosecute people coming across the border, which is illegal. There’s a two tiered system of justice, which is not the American way it’s supposed to be. It’s got to change.”Jair Moly, 27, an African American man wearing a Maga cap, said: “You ain’t from here, don’t come here. You ain’t allowed here, don’t come here. Make America great again ‘24. Let’s go!”Asked why he intends to vote for Trump, Moly replied: “He’s real, he keeps it real. He’s not fake. There’s nothing fake about him. He keep it real and he pull no no punches and that’s what we need, America, punch you right in the face.”But Erwin Bieber, 71, a retired car salesman, suggested that a Trump defeat could lead to at least one case of reverse migration. “Initially I didn’t like the way he spoke years ago but I voted for him in 2016. I feel that the country is completely gone if we don’t put him into office. I think I’m going to leave America. If we get stuck with Biden, I’ll go to Mexico.”Democrats set up posters, billboards and kiosks in Philadelphia and on the Temple campus to promote Biden’s policies, including his efforts to forgive student debt, as well as to criticise Trump’s record with the Black community.State representative Malcolm Kenyatta said: “I represent the community in Philly where Trump is currently ranting and raving. I can authoritatively say, my neighbors aren’t in that arena listening to his lies. But a bunch did show up to protest him, so I guess there’s that.” More

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      California school board president who led conservative culture war loses recall vote

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      Voters in Temecula, California, have ousted the local school board president who thrust the political body to the forefront of rightwing culture wars seeking to eliminate discussions of race and gender identity from the classroom.Joseph Komrosky on Thursday lost a recall vote with 51% of voters favoring his removal.Temecula – a predominantly white city of 100,000 residents – was a hotbed of the culture wars that conservative Americans have mounted in an attempt to censure how schools teach racism, gender and American history.In June of 2023, Komrosky presided over the Temecula school board’s banning of critical race theory – which examines how racism was embedded into American law – as well as attempts to purge elementary school textbooks of any reference to Harvey Milk, the openly gay politician from San Francisco who supported LGBTQ+ rights before his 1978 assassination.Komrosky first joined the board in November 2022. Since then, the school board has forced out the district superintendent and passed a parent notification policy requiring schools to tell parents if students go by a different gender than what they were assigned at birth.Komrosky has called critical race theory a “racist ideology” that uses “division and hate as an instructional framework in our schools”. Komrosky and fellow school board members then voted to reject California’s social studies curriculum over its inclusion of references to Milk, whom Komrosky described as a “pedophile”.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, threatened to impose a $1.5m fine on the district for not adopting the curriculum, though Komrosky and the school board vowed to find a way to circumvent doing so while adhering to state mandates. The board also initiated another controversial vote to limit what flags can be displayed on school grounds.The unflattering public attention drawn by the controversies Komrosky’s actions ignited incited the recall election against him.The recall vote was conducted on 4 June with final results released on Thursday. Among 9,722 ballots tallied, 4,963 supported the recall. The recall election turned out 45.1% of registered voters in Temecula.Komrosky told the LA Times he is inclined to run for the school board again given his slim margin of defeat in the recall.“Given the narrow margin, I will likely run again in the November 2024 general election,” Komrosky said. “If not, it has been an honor to serve the Temecula community, and I am proud to have fulfilled all of my campaign promises as an elected official.“My commitment to protecting the innocence of our children remains unwavering.” More

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      In Trump we trust: religious right on crusade to make their man president

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      God’s army is on the march. And many of its foot soldiers are wearing “Make America great again” regalia, sensing that their unlikely standard-bearer, former US president Donald Trump, is once again close to the promised land.“I do not believe that America can survive another four years of Joe Biden,” Ralph Reed, founder and chair of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, told a gathering of the religious right in Washington on Friday. “I haven’t felt this way since Jimmy Carter was president.” The audience burst into knowing laughter.Reed promised they would knock on 10m doors of Christian and conservative voters in every battleground state, make 10m phone calls, send 25m text messages and put 30m voter guides in 113,000 churches, producing “the biggest turnout of Christian voters in American history”.The election result will be clear, he added. “This time there aren’t gonna need to be any lawsuits. We’re not going to have to go to court and we’re not going to have to wait until 2.30 in the morning for Donald Trump to declare victory. He’s going to do it at 9 o’clock at night!”With Trump running ahead of Biden in many swing state polls, religious right voters scent a historic opportunity to impose a radical agenda that could ban abortion nationwide, curb LGBTQ+ rights and blur the separation of church and state. At Friday’s conference, speaker after speaker framed it as righteous crusade and the only way to resist a tide of liberal secularism sweeping America.Ben Carson, a former housing secretary in Trump’s first term, praised Republican-dominated Louisiana for becoming the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every government school classroom.“Aren’t you glad that yesterday the governor of Louisiana signed into law – put the Ten Commandments back in the schools?” he said to cheers and applause before warning of a 60-year communist project to change America by taking over schools, churches and Hollywood and removing God from the public square.Josh Hawley, a Republican senator for Missouri, warned of a “radical anti-faith agenda” gripping the country. He said: “Who’s dividing America is the radical left and that’s why I say to you we don’t need less Christian influence in our society, we don’t need less Christian witness in our society; we need more in every part of government, in every part of society.”To approving roars from the audience, Hawley added: “We ought to take the Pride flag out of schools and put the Bible back in. You know what? We ought to take the trans flag down from all of our federal buildings and over every federal building in America write the words: ‘In God we trust.’ In God we trust. Amen.”The couching of an Armageddon election, in which religious truth itself is at stake, with victory representing divine providence and defeat spelling total catastrophe, was crystallised by Monica Crowley, a rightwing political commentator and former assistant secretary of the treasury.She described the election as a “hinge moment” comparable to the American revolution, American civil war, second world war and September 11 terrorist attacks. She spoke of a “war” against “the enemy within” that has spent nearly half a century “infiltrating, undermining and destroying” America with “godless philosophies”.Crowley lamented that Hollywood no longer produces “patriotic films” like those of John Wayne and, extraordinarily, defended the communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. “Senator Joe McCarthy was right, and he was trying to ring the bell in the 1950s about communist infiltration in our government and the same deep state that is now going after Donald Trump,” he said.“The same deep state that removed Richard Nixon, the same deep state that went after Ronald Reagan and anybody else who stood up to them. That deep state became very insidious and in the 1950s smeared and attacked Joe McCarthy for speaking the truth about godless communism in very halls of our government.”Notably, little was said by the dozen main stage speakers about abortion, a live political grenade for which Republicans have struggled find a coherent message since the supreme court overturned the landmark Roe v Wade precedent two years ago.Religious conservatives’ pact with Trump appears to be holding. Some were sceptical about the thrice-married reality TV star when he first ran for president in 2016 but the concerns were assuaged by his running mate, born-again evangelical Christian Mike Pence, and by a first term that saw him shift the judiciary to the right.Not even Trump’s conviction in New York last month on 34 felony counts in a trial involving hush-money payments to an adult film star has shaken his grip on this constituency. Many who complain that their faith is under siege regard him as a blunt instrument with which to fight back against the radical left.They often rationalise their vote by saying they are choosing a president, not a pastor. Some evangelicals have likened him to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who, according to the Bible, enabled Jews to return to Israel from their exile in Babylon.View image in fullscreenRobert P Jones, the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute thinktank in Washington, wrote on Substack recently: “The transformation of Trump from a person to a symbol is the key to understanding the power of the Maga movement and the internal logic of the upside-down world where a unanimous guilty verdict in a fair trial results in solidified support, record fundraising, and desperate Christian defenses of a convicted felon.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe presumptive Republican nominee has exploited this totemic status. Earlier this year, he launched his own brand of Bible, selling for $59.99 each. During the trial, he shared social media posts comparing himself to Jesus Christ.At Friday’s Road to Majority policy conference, it was not uncommon to hear of the Almighty and Trump spoken in the same breath. Crowley said: “We do have a fearless leader in Donald Trump, where they have thrown the kitchen sink at this man over nine years and they cannot believe that he is still standing. Hand of God!”Kari Lake, a senate candidate in Arizona, said: “We gotta bring Him back into our culture, into our lives, into our hearts and souls – and then also let’s work to bring Donald J Trump back on November 5.”Inside the upmarket Washington hotel hosting the conference, there were vendors selling Maga merchandise, lifesize cardboard cutouts of Trump and an area where attendees could pose with head shots of their choice for his running mate.Stephen Sandrelli, 60, posed with a picture of the US representative Elise Stefanik against an Oval Office backdrop. “First of all, we’ve got to deport millions – at least 15 million people,” he said of a second Trump term. “The Democrats are terrorists. They hate our nation. They hate humankind.“They’re trying to replace us – replacement theory, whatever you want to call it – and Trump cares about us. I believe he’s a man that God has touched and he’s doing the right thing. He’s only blessed our country. He’s only helped people.”Sandrelli, a former Democrat and federal government officer from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, added: “Anybody who supports abortion is supporting murder.”But sensing political danger, Trump has refused to endorse a national abortion ban. Some here felt let down. Wearing a red Maga cap, Thomas Dinkel, 16, who goes to a school in Morgantown, West Virginia, said: “I’m going to be honest with you: as a pro-life Christian, it hurts. I see why he and a lot of other national Republicans are doing it. They’re slowly backing away from the issue. It’s ruffled some feathers.“I do back an abortion ban. For right now, it’s at the state level, and I respect that, but if it ever went as a federal ban, I would back that. I understand why Trump is having a stance on that, just like some other stances he’s been taking lately. I pray that when he gets in, the least he can do for the pro-life communities is continue to back and appoint pro-life justices.”But Dinkel is supporting Trump and is willing to overlook his moral shortcomings, saying: “Listen, I’m a Christian. I mess up, you mess up. Everyone in this room messes up. We sin, we fall short, we turn away from God, and Trump has admitted to that. He’s not the best person. He’s not a perfect person. None of us are. He says that he’s repented of his sins, and I’m called to forgive Trump.”Dorothy Harpe, an African American woman who is retired from a church in Atlanta, Georgia, was wearing a Maga cap and badge that said: “Trump was right!” The 74-year-old said: “He tells the truth. People don’t want to believe him, they think he always doing something wrong, but he’s not. He’s innocent of all the bogus charges they brought against him. God knows every man’s heart, and I believe he is a Christian.” More

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      Both sides of gun issue seek to stir up US voters as NRA influence wanes

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      Anti-gun-control groups and gun-safety advocates are launching hefty voter-mobilization drives this year with the stakes high in the fall elections given the stark differences on gun violence policy between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.But the long-powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), which has been beset with financial and legal headaches for several years, is not expected to be nearly as active as in 2016, when it spent more than $31m to back Trump’s victorious campaign by boosting his political fortunes in key states, say gun experts and ex-NRA insiders.Now, though, other anti-gun-control groups are trying to take up the slack.For instance, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), an influential firearms industry lobbying group, has begun an eight-figure voter-mobilization drive to help pro-gun interests defeat President Biden, whose strong support for gun-control measures it finds anathema.The NSSF’s general counsel, Larry Keane, said that the organization’s “GunVote” campaign will focus on seven to nine battleground states, where it will mount voter-registration, education and get-out-the-vote efforts to help Trump win the presidency again.On the other side of this year’s election brawl over gun control, Everytown for Gun Safety is planning a large effort to get its millions of supporters to help re-elect Biden and defeat Trump, who has a record of siding firmly with pro-gun priorities.“We’re going to knock on doors, make calls, rally and campaign for President Biden,” said Nick Suplina, the senior vice-president for law and policy at Everytown, which claims nearly 10 million supporters including mayors, students, gun owners, teachers and others.The stakes seem higher than usual given Biden’s successes as president backing new gun-control measures such as the first new law in three decades boosting gun safety, and Biden’s talk of doing more if he’s re-elected, including fighting for an assault weapons ban, which would probably need Democratic control of Congress to enact.By contrast, Trump has often reiterated his fealty to the pro-gun lobby, which characterized his presidency. At last month’s NRA annual meeting, Trump earned a ringing endorsement and pledged that if he wins, “no one will lay a finger on your firearms”.But the once deep-pocketed and five-million-member NRA remains mired in internal and financial headaches: its annual revenues have dropped for several years while its legal expenses have risen.The NRA’s problems were underscored when its longtime top executive, Wayne LaPierre, resigned in January as he was about to go on trial in New York, where he was convicted of looting the organization to enjoy lavish personal perks including fancy vacations and expensive clothes.“The NRA is going to again be a peripheral player for lack of funding this election cycle, and that could hurt Trump in several battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota,” a former NRA board member said.“It’s a vacuum compared to 2016 when the NRA was robustly engaged,” the ex-board member added.Longtime observers of gun-control fights agree.Robert Spitzer, the author of several books on gun issues and an emeritus political science professor at Suny Cortland in New York, said the NRA was “as strongly behind [Trump] as they have been before”.“However, the organization simply does not possess the money or personnel to be as influential as they were in 2016, when they spent over $31m on his campaign, and over $70m on Republican efforts around the country. Still, the gun issue will continue to be salient to an important segment of the Trump base.”Spitzer added: “Other gun groups, such as the NSSF and state gun groups, will be working to supplant the NRA’s traditional dominance in national politics. They do not possess the degree of organization, experience and reach as the NRA of old, but they will ratchet up their efforts.”That’s what the NSSF, whose members include such gun giants as Sturm, Ruger & Co and Smith & Wesson, plus other anti-gun-control groups say they intend to do. “There’s a stark difference between Trump and Biden,” Keane said in explaining the NSSF’s hefty effort this year. “It’s clear there are ongoing challenges at the NRA.”Some ex-NRA leaders credit NSSF with trying to fill the NRA’s vacuum. “NSSF has attempted, and continues, to fill the gap left by a weakened NRA,” Jim Baker, the NRA’s former top lobbyist, said.The NRA did not respond to a call seeking comments.Further, the Trump campaign in tandem with the Republican National Committee has launched Gun Owners for Trump including firearms makers and gun-rights advocates such as Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation; Women for Gun Rights; and some NRA officials.To spur more pro-gun votes at the polls, Trump has spoken twice this year at NRA events. At their May meeting, Trump employed some incendiary conspiracy-mongering, telling the crowd that Biden “has a 40-year record of trying to rip firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGun-control advocates and the Biden campaign are using Trump’s own pro-gun pledges and cavalier attitude towards gun violence to rev up their backers, including younger voters and women.After an Iowa school shooting in January, for instance, Trump callously opined that “we have to get over it”, a clip of which is being circulated by Democrats and pro-gun-control advocates.Likewise, another clip in circulation shows Trump boasting to NRA members in May that he “did nothing” as president on guns. Actually, Trump signed a “bump stock” ban after the country’s largest gun massacre ever in Las Vegas, but the supreme court overturned it this month.Biden cemented his gun-control credentials in 2022 when, after the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre, he pushed hard for a gun-safety bill that passed on a bipartisan basis, becoming the first new gun-control law in almost three decades.To energize his supporters, Biden spoke to an Everytown training event for about 1,000 gun-safety volunteers including students on 12 June, where he cited several major achievements, including setting up a White House office focused on curbing gun violence and beefing up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Explosives and Firearms.Biden urged a ban on assault-style weapons and universal background checks for purchases of firearms, both goals he has stressed before.“We need you to overcome the unrelenting opposition of the gun lobby,” Biden said.Suplina said Everytown’s plans for targeting states to help Biden and how much they intend to spend overall this election cycle were not ready to be announced, but he did reveal that Everytown intends to support 465 of its volunteers who are running for office this year. The majority of these races are state and local.Further, Everytown will be backing Senate and House candidates who support gun-safety measures, Suplina said.Overall, Everytown spent about $55m on 2020 election efforts.Other gun-control advocates have broad election plans“This cycle, GIiffords will use its unique identity as a gun owner and survivor-led organization to reach a broad gun safety coalition in battlegrounds – including Democrats, Republicans, young voters, gun owners, and people of color,” Emma Brown, executive director of Giffords, said in a statementThe group plans on “supporting gun safety champions in key House and Senate races, [and] communicating the Biden-Harris administration’s historic gun safety accomplishments in states across the map,” she added.Looking ahead, Spitzer stressed that Biden “has continued to speak out on gun safety, and gun-safety groups will surely redouble their efforts on his behalf, not only to help him get re-elected, but to advance the cause of down-ballot Democrats running for Congress and state offices, where the fate of many gun laws lie”. 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