US Politics

As EU countries face multiple challenges in a new era, they must fight to preserve the continent’s social model. That means a new economic approachMore than a year after the election that handed Donald Trump a decisive comeback victory, the Democratic party has still not released its postmortem analysis. But last week, an influential progressive lobby group published its own. Kamala Harris’s campaign, its authors argued, failed to connect with core constituencies because it did not focus enough on addressing basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives neglected the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.As the EU braces for a tumultuous period of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that needs to be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will soon replicate Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, backed by large swaths of blue-collar voters. But among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to troubling times. Continue reading… More

Danny Ceisler’s defeat in sheriff’s race of incumbent who had signed an agreement to work with ICE sends a message on US’s contentious debate around immigration policyOnly 40 miles north of Philadelphia, Bucks county has gained a reputation as the “swingiest” county in the swing state of Pennsylvania and one of the most pivotal political bellwethers in the country.Party registration in the county is almost evenly split among Democrats and Republicans. Joe Biden won it in 2020, Donald Trump triumphed there in 2024. November’s elections there were local – but a hot race for county sheriff drew much wider attention as a microcosm for America’s contentious debate around immigration policy – and the result signaled a shake-up in how the county approaches enforcement. Continue reading… More

Law enforcement and public health experts worry that potential cuts to resources that save lives and stop the flow of drugs into the state could raise overdose deathsThe Trump administration’s proposed cuts in federal funding for law enforcement and public health agencies could have a devastating impact on Alaska, which a Guardian analysis found has struggled to curtail overdose deaths even amid a general decline in national overdose fatalities.Law enforcement and public health experts are sounding the alarm as the Trump administration has prioritized waging its “war on drugs” outside US shores, including with a controversial bombing campaign of fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela. Continue reading… More

Variety of agencies now deliberately provocative on social media, further inflaming discourse on serious issuesWhen Donald Trump posted during his first term on what was then called Twitter, his attacks and rants differed significantly from US federal agency staff’s more cautious and traditional approach on social media.For example, in January 2017, in response to scrutiny of one of the president’s executive orders, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted: “We are & will remain in compliance with judicial orders. We are & will continue to enforce @POTUS’s EO humanely and with professionalism.” Continue reading… More

Federal funds helped Bogalusa address the deep roots of crime – but with the grant pulled, has momentum been lost for ever?Before the street outside her mother’s home filled with gunfire, before panicked partygoers sprinted through the front yard, before she discovered that the body on the ground was a young man she had watched grow up, Khlilia Daniels knew something in Bogalusa had to change.It was December of 2022, and Daniels had spent the year watching her home town on Louisiana’s border with Mississippi become a steadily more frightening place. Murders, once rare, now seemed to be happening almost every month, shootings every other week, and in a city of just over 10,000 people, that violence felt close, the losses personal. The victims and perpetrators were predominantly Black, usually young and too often cousins, neighbors or the children of friends, people whom Daniels would see around, until suddenly they were gone. Continue reading… More

The decision means TikTok now operates under the threat that it could be forced offline with a stroke of Trump’s penJudicial opinions allowing the government to suppress speech in the name of national security rarely stand the test of time. But time has been unusually unkind to the US supreme court decision that upheld the law banning TikTok, the short-form video platform. The court issued its ruling less than a year ago, but it is already obvious that the deference the court gave to the government’s national security arguments was spectacularly misplaced. The principal effect of the court’s ruling has been to give our own government enormous power over the policies of a speech platform used by tens of millions of Americans every day – a result that is an affront to the first amendment and a national security risk in its own right.Congress passed the TikTok ban in 2023 citing concerns that the Chinese government might be able to access information about TikTok’s American users or covertly manipulate content on the platform in ways that threatened US interests. The ban was designed to prevent Americans from using TikTok starting in January 2025 unless TikTok’s China-based corporate owner, ByteDance Inc, sold its US subsidiary before then.Evelyn Douek is an assistant professor at Stanford Law SchoolJameel Jaffer is inaugural director of the Knight first amendment institute at Columbia University Continue reading… More

Congress must work to stop the president from leading us further into a South American quagmireDonald Trump seems determined to have a military confrontation with Venezuela. He has deployed a massive military arsenal in and around the Caribbean Sea and taken a series of provocative actions off the Venezuelan coast, justifying it as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.The Council on Foreign Relations says that deployment includes an “aircraft carrier, destroyers, cruisers, amphibious assault ships, and a special forces support ship. A variety of aircraft have also been active in the region, including bombers, fighters, drones, patrol planes, and support aircraft.” This is the largest display of American military might in the western hemisphere since we invaded Panama in 1989.Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, is the author or editor of more than 100 books, including Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty Continue reading… More

Donald Trump addressed shooting as politicians urged action to improve gun controls – key US politics stories from Sunday at a glanceDonald Trump on Sunday paid his respects to two people killed and nine who were injured in a shooting at Brown University.“Before we begin, I want to just pay my respects to the people, unfortunately two are no longer with us, Brown University, nine injured and two are looking down on us right now from Heaven,” the president told guests at a holiday reception at the White House. Continue reading… More