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      South Dakota governor Kristi Noem continues to be plagued by book controversies

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      As she entered a second consecutive weekend trying to manage fallout from revelations in her upcoming memoir that she shot her dog to death, South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, had conceded that she would need to correct multiple factual inaccuracies in other parts of the book.Meanwhile, a Republican fundraiser which Noem was supposed to headline had to be canceled after threats against the event staff, hotel venue and governor, according to organizers.And in one of the clearest signs yet that she has fallen out of contention to be Donald Trump’s vice-presidential running mate in November’s election, as she once was, Rolling Stone published a report quoting multiple sources close to the former president who assured he was “disgusted” by her dog-killing story.Noem has faced increasingly acrimonious backlash after the Guardian in late April reported on an excerpt from her new book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, in which she recounts fatally shooting both a 14-month-old dog, Cricket, along with an unnamed goat.She has defended her self-described actions as being typical of the unpleasant things people who live on farms and answer the call to politics must do.But her polling numbers have plummeted as her justifications for the animal killings have not landed with the public. And since then, Noem’s memoir has only drawn more scrutiny.Experts widely doubted the veracity of an anecdote which Noem included in the book about meeting the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and feeling underestimated by him. Her camp subsequently conceded she never met the North Korean leader.Additionally, a spokesperson for former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley denied the book’s characterization of a conversation between Haley and Noem, who claimed Haley threatened her after she challenged Haley’s status as a leading woman in the Republican party.The book claims the conversation occurred when Noem first took office in 2019, but it was a year later.Whatever the case, Noem’s chief of communications, Ian Fury, told The New York Times that both errors would be corrected.“It was brought to our attention that the upcoming book No Going Back has two small errors,” Fury said to the Times. “This has been communicated to the ghostwriter and editor. Kim Jong-un was included in a list of world leaders and shouldn’t have been.”Separately on Friday, the chairperson of Colorado’s Jefferson county Republican party said the organization canceled its annual fundraiser because Noem’s planned headlining appearance had spurred multiple threats.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNoem was still set to headline Florida’s Brevard county Republican party fundraiser on 25 May. The county party’s chairperson defended Noem’s decision to kill Cricket, and the purchase of a ticket includes a copy of No Going Back.Rounding out the South Dakota governor’s Friday was the Rolling Stone report based on sources of the publication who recounted how Trump has expressed disgust with Noem’s killing of Cricket in closed-door meetings and telephone conversations.“Why would she do that?” Trump – who is grappling with nearly 90 felony criminal charges, among other legal problems – was quoted as saying. “What is wrong with her?”Rolling Stone added: “He has expressed bewilderment that she would have ever admitted to doing this, willingly and in her own writing, and has argued it demonstrates she has a poor grasp of ‘public relations’.”The publication also wrote that Trump’s responses were leaked to definitively eliminate Noem from vice-presidential contention.Noem is scheduled to appear on Sunday morning on CBS’s Face the Nation and is expected to be asked about the ongoing fallout from her new book. More

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      Unsuccessful Biden challenger is first Democrat to call for Henry Cuellar’s resignation

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      The Minnesota congressman who unsuccessfully challenged Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary became the first member of their party to call on fellow US House representative Henry Cuellar to resign after federal bribery charges were unveiled against the Texas politician on Friday.In a post on X, Dean Phillips urged Cuellar to step down, along with other politicians faced with pending criminal cases – including Biden’s presidential predecessor and Republican rival Donald Trump as well as Democratic US senator Bob Menendez.“While the bar for federal indictment is high, trust in our government is low,” Phillips’ post on X said. “That’s why office holders and candidates under indictment should resign or end their campaigns, including [senator] Bob Menendez, Donald Trump & [congressman] Henry Cuellar.”The remarks from Phillips came after federal prosecutors alleged on Friday that Cuellar and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, accepted about $600,000 in bribes in exchange for influencing policy in favor of Azerbaijan as well as a Mexican bank between December 2014 and November 2021.Imelda Cuellar used “sham consulting contracts”, front companies and intermediaries to launder the money, prosecutors contended. And in return for the bribes, Henry Cuellar – who has represented a swath of Texas’s border with Mexico in Congress since 2005 – steered US foreign policy to Azerbaijan’s advantage while pressuring unnamed “high-ranking” federal government executives to implement measures benefiting the bank.In a statement, Henry Cuellar maintained his and his wife’s innocence. “I want to be clear that both my wife and I are innocent of these allegations,” the congressman’s statement said. “Everything I have done in Congress has been to serve the people of south Texas.”Friday’s announcement from prosecutors prompted the House Democratic minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, to say that Cuellar would step down as the ranking member of a homeland security subcommittee while the case against him proceeded. Jeffries cited the party’s rules in the House.However, Jeffries made it a point to describe Cuellar as “a valued member of the House Democratic caucus” who was “entitled to his day in court and the presumption of innocence throughout the legal process”.Phillips did not concur, in his estimation lumping in Cuellar with Menendez and Trump as politicians who did not deserve to hold elected office as they grappled with criminal charges.Menendez has pleaded not guilty to federal corruption charges – he has said he doesn’t plan to run for re-election as a Democrat but hasn’t ruled out an independent candidacy.Trump has pleaded not guilty to nearly 90 felonies for trying to subvert the results of the 2020 election that he lost to Biden, improper retention of classified materials after his presidency and hush-money payments to an adult film actor that prosecutors allege were improperly covered up.The former president’s trial centering on the hush money concluded its third week on Friday. He is the Republican party’s presumptive nominee for November’s presidential race.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne indicted politician who recently did not leave his position on his own terms was George Santos, who was expelled from the US House amid fraud-related charges.Phillips mounted a long-shot bid to deny Biden from winning a second consecutive Democratic nomination seemingly against the advice of most of his party colleagues.Biden dominated the contest, and Phillips dropped out after losing his home state.His cause was not helped when a political operative working for the Phillips campaign – without permission from the candidate or his advisers – admitted being behind a artificial intelligence-created robocall that spoofed Biden’s voice on the eve of the primary’s start and urged Democrats in New Hampshire to avoid voting.Phillips was first elected to Congress to represent a wealthier suburban area outside Minneapolis in 2019 but gave up seeking re-election to his seat in November to pursue his challenge to Biden. More

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      Florida workers brace for summer with no protections: ‘My body would tremble’

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      For Javier Torres and other workers whose jobs are conducted outdoors in south Florida, the heat is unavoidable. A new law recently signed by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, that prohibits any municipalities in the state from passing heat protections for workers ensures that it is likely to stay that way.Torres has seen a co-worker die from heatstroke and another rushed to the emergency room in his years of working in construction in south Florida. He has also fallen and injured himself due to heat exhaustion.“I work outdoors and have no choice but to work in the heat. I work often in painting and, in the majority of cases, we’re exposed to direct sun and we don’t have shade. Sometimes I feel dizzy and get headaches,” said Torres.He said employers rarely provide workers with water, leaving workers to ensure they bring enough water to work or find a hose to drink from.The effects of extreme heat on workers are only expected to worsen due to the climate crisis. Many parts of Florida experienced record heat last year. Orlando hit 100F (37.7C) in August breaking a record set in 1938. The National Weather Service recently issued its outlook for summer 2024, predicting Florida summer temperatures will be warmer than normal.“The heat can be very intense, especially as we get closer to summer,” added Torres. “What we want as workers who labor outdoors is to have water, shade and rest breaks to protect ourselves.”At the behest of agricultural industry lobbyists, DeSantis signed HB433 into law on 11 April, a bill scaling back child labor protections that also included an amendment prohibiting all local municipalities in Florida from enacting heat protections for workers.The exemption came in response to efforts by farm workers in Miami-Dade county to pass heat protections, including proper rest breaks, access to water and shade, as increasingly warming temperatures have expanded the days farm workers are exposed to heat.Ana Mejia, a farm worker, worked for 11 years at Costa Farms in south Florida where she said she experienced two serious heat stress incidents on the job. Costa Farms was included on the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s Dirty Dozen report of unsafe employers in 2024. Costa Farms declined to comment.“I worked outdoors during my entire time at Costa Farms in temperatures that quite often exceeded 100 degrees,” said Mejia. “I had headaches, sweat excessively, my body would start to shake and tremble. I started to feel dizzy and a lack of coordination, and this feeling of shock and desperation. It was a very bad experience.”She recounted having to be brought to onsite medical care, but only being given an electrolyte drink and finding no medical professional on site or called to help her.“The high standards of meeting productivity quotas per day combined with working in high temperatures is putting us in danger,” added Mejia. “The rest breaks are at the discretion of supervisors and often they don’t want to give rest breaks because it will reduce the productivity of the business.”There are currently no protections in the US for workers from heat. Only a handful of states such as California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Minnesota have passed any heat protections for workers.The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) is currently reviewing federal heat standard protections and issues fines against employers citing the general duty clause in cases where workers die due to heat stress, but worker groups have advocated that heat protections which include water, rest, shade, breaks and acclimatization are needed to save workers from heat illnesses and their lives.Up to 2,000 workers in the US die every year due to heat stress, according to a 2023 report by Public Citizen.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSeveral business groups are lobbying against heat protections for workers at the federal level, and lobbyists aggressively pushed lawmakers to pass the Florida heat exemption bill.Orlando Weekly reported on texts from corporate lobbyists to lawmakers urging them to pass the heat exemption bill before the end of the legislative session.“I haven’t texted you in weeks–HEAT cannot die,” wrote Carol Bowen, a lobbyist for the Associated Builders and Contractors in a text message on 7 March to the House speaker Paul Renner’s chief of staff Allison Carter, the day before the last day of the legislative session when the bill was ultimately passed. “The entire business community is in lock step on this. Thank you for your attention to this concern.”Ahead of a vote on the bill, the Florida chamber of commerce lobbyist Carolyn Johnson told Republican lawmakers their vote on the bill would be double-weighted on the How They Voted report the chamber sends to its members.Jeannie Economos, an organizer with the Farmworker Association of Florida, said worker advocacy groups opposing HB433 were hoping the clock would run out for the bill to get passed by the state legislature. Several labor and environmental groups sent letters imploring DeSantis to veto the bill.“It’s incomprehensible that people who live in Florida, and are supposed to represent the people of Florida, can vote against the health and safety of the workers that make this economy run, who were considered essential workers just a couple years ago and given PPE, are now treated like this, and not giving protection from extreme heat,” said Economos. “That makes no sense and it’s unconscionable.”She said worker advocacy groups in Florida were regrouping and planned on developing strategies on how to override the Florida law, while continuing to advocate for heat protections at the federal level and conducting heat stress trainings for outdoor workers to protect themselves.“For us right now, while HB433 is a setback to our campaign, we know the issue of extreme heat isn’t going away anytime soon,” said Oscar Londoño, executive director of the worker advocacy non-profit WeCount!, which has been pushing for heat protections for workers through its ¡Qué Calor! campaign. “We know that the issue is going to get even more and more relevant, and that workers will need to continue to do what is necessary to protect their lives on a job, whether that is through direct action, through workplace organizing, or through ongoing corporate campaign, workers will find a way to win the protection they deserve in Florida.” More

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      Student encampments have the potential to strengthen US democracy | Jan-Werner Müller

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      Three things are certain: antisemitism is on the rise; hatred of Muslims is increasing; and everyone – but especially those at universities with time to reflect – should be very, very troubled by this. Without taking account of the hate waves, it is impossible to understand why the seemingly mundane act of pitching a tent on campus has become so high stakes: is it announcing a desire to annihilate Israel, or is it a perfectly legitimate way to protest against particular US (and university) policies?University administrations are not supposed to take a stance on the content of student activism, but many have declared encampments as such to be unsafe. If anything, though, student (and professor) safety seems to have been endangered by police brutally coming after peaceful protesters.To be sure, today’s encampments are not hippie festivals; people might show up with guitars, but next to the guitar is a Hezbollah flag. To understand that camps do not pose a peril as such – and in fact can enable democratic action – we need to recall the 2010s: squares from Cairo’s Tahrir to Madrid’s Puerta del Sol saw encampments that were peaceful, self-policing and pluralistic; inside them, very different citizens could develop solidarity, but also engage each other across divisions.Protesters coming together need to show what the sociologist Charles Tilly memorably called “WUNC”: worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment. These might be achieved with demonstrating, once described by Eric Hobsbawm as “next to sex, the activity combining bodily experience and intense emotion to the highest degree”. Encampments create further possibilities: they might foster community, and they mark a site where those with particular beliefs can be found and engaged. They also serve as laboratories of how people want to live together; as progressive philosophers put it, they “prefigure” a different future.The anthropologist David Graeber, one of the organizers of Occupy, always insisted that the point of what happened in Zuccotti Park had been to show the world how supposedly naive anarchist ideals of free cooperation among equals could be realized.One might find free libraries, improvised kitchens, drums, chants and all the other communitarian kitsch. But the encampments of the 2010s proved not only remarkably resilient; they also served, for protesters on Kyiv’s Maidan, as sites where a new social contract could be negotiated. The gatherings in Tahrir Square – where devout and secular citizens camped together peacefully – also held out this promise. Open and diverse camps markedly contrasted with the fortress-style constructions anti-globalization activists created at the time of World Trade Organization and G8 meetings: they were not located in city centers, remained closed even to journalists, and essentially provided staging grounds for confrontations with the police.The campus camps have largely followed the example of the “movements of the squares”. Anyone who has bothered to look will have seen that Columbia’s camp is not a site of “mob rule”; there are strict guidelines, including ones about alcohol and littering. Of course, no rules can entirely prevent bad actors appearing (by that logic, no demonstration should ever happen, since what Mike Johnson called “lawless agitators” might join). The question is whether organizers will insist on something like the Hezbollah flag disappearing right away (apparently they did) and use the moment to school young progressives that Iran, Hezbollah’s backer, might not be the greatest ally for anyone who cares about women, life and liberty. All the self-policing in the world, however, will not change the fact that a campus is different from a public square; universities have the right to keep outsiders out and to prohibit conduct that specifically endangers their educational mission.Ideally, an encampment – or multiple encampments – would allow for unexpected, productive encounters and have an educative effect (or even produce empathy). To be sure, such encounters may well feel unsafe at first; but being serious about addressing conflicts together means being willing to take such risks. By contrast, the more encamping appears like claiming exclusive territory, the more it will be experienced as coercion. The “community guideline” at Columbia that tells people not to engage with “Zionist counter-protesters” is problematic: if you simply want to show how many you are, march; but if you’re sitting in a place, the advantage is precisely that people can find you and try to engage you.Many university administrations’ responses have been heavy-handed; they have also not lived up to a basic feature of the rule of law: clear and consistent messages about what is allowed and what is not. Yet, no matter how harshly universities act, Republicans bent on instrumentalizing the antisemitism charge will never be satisfied even by presidents sending in cops in ostentatious riot gear (except that it produces TV images of “chaos” that work for the opposition in an election year). Centrists, instead of defending rights to protest, are performing seemingly reasonable even-handedness in condemning Trumpists while also delegitimizing students. One does not have to agree with the encampments’ agendas (I differ on crucial points), to see that the former are a threat to democracy, while the latter have the potential to strengthen it.
      Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist More

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      Wilmington: how a once-red district is a window on North Carolina politics

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      The area around Wilmington, North Carolina, was once rock-ribbed Republican red. No longer. It’s contested territory in what may be the most contested state in the country this year.Donald Trump had planned a rally in Wilmington earlier this month but was rained out at the last moment. Trump promised to return with a bigger and better rally later. Joe Biden visited Wilmington on Thursday, after a detour to Charlotte to meet with the families of four law enforcement officers killed on Monday while serving an arrest warrant. It was his second visit to North Carolina this year and is unlikely to be his last.“I want to get Joe Biden to Wilmington,” the state senator Natalie Murdock of Durham said last week, before Biden announced the trip. Murdock is helping coordinate the Biden-Harris campaign in North Carolina. She noted that Biden won New Hanover county in 2020 after Hillary Clinton lost it four years earlier. “We’re going to have a field office out there,” she added, explaining plans for “boots on the ground” to get out the vote.The outsized political attention on Wilmington reflects a granular effort to win voters in the persuadable places, the swing districts in swing states. Trump won North Carolina in 2020 by a margin of 1.3%, his narrowest state victory. The most recent Emerson College poll shows Biden running behind Trump by five points, with 10% undecided.But North Carolina’s political map is a pointillist portrait of post-pandemic population change, with cities such as Charlotte, Durham and Wilmington booming from domestic migration while other communities bleed residents to places with economic vibrancy. Two-thirds of North Carolina’s population growth between 2010 and 2020 was non-white. About 400,000 people have moved to North Carolina since 2020. Trump’s margin in 2020 was less than 75,000 votes.Growth is the story of Wilmington. The beach town vacation spot has expanded beyond Saturday farmers’ markets and upscale restaurants on the river for tourists, attracting pharmaceutical research, banking and logistics today.“I moved to Wilmington 22 years ago. And when I moved here, I didn’t even realize you were allowed to live here all year,” said David Hill, a pediatrician and the Democratic nominee for the North Carolina state senate. “I can say that if you drive down the street, you will see acres and acres of what was forest when we moved here just five years ago, that is now in part sand and in part foundations and newly built homes.”Many census tracts around Wilmington in Pender, Brunswick and New Hanover counties doubled in population between 2010 and 2020. During the pandemic, growth accelerated, with both Pender and Brunswick county’s population increasing by 15% since 2020.The seventh district is held by Michael Lee, a real estate attorney and a relative moderate in the Republican-led senate. The district, covering most of New Hanover county, has been targeted by national campaigners as one of North Carolina’s few legislative seats that can be flipped, despite a ruthless redistricting that moved much of downtown Wilmington into a neighboring district last year.“One of those precincts was the highest-turnout precinct for Black voters, and it has now been put into deep-red Brunswick county,” Murdock said. “It is one of those races that was still going to be competitive, but they did not do us any favors with that map. I mean, it is one of the most gerrymandered of this cycle.”Republicans have a 30 to 20 advantage over Democrats in the state senate and a 72 to 48 advantage in the state house; precisely the 60% margin needed in each chamber to override a veto by North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. Cooper has blocked legislation restricting abortion access and expanding gun rights, but Republican lawmakers have overridden dozens of vetoes, from bills banning transgender hormone therapy for minors to changes in election laws.Cooper is term-limited and will be out of office in January. Republicans cannot afford to lose one seat in either chamber if they also lose the governor’s race, and the fate of the gubernatorial race is an open question given North Carolina’s history of ticket splitting and the nomination of the lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, who has a record of extreme, racist and homophobic comments and faces unpleasant revelations about his financial and business history.National Democratic campaigners are hoping that a backlash against restrictive abortion laws will fuel turnout statewide. But local contenders in closely divided districts have largely avoided the culture war rancor and are focusing on community concerns.Lee, for example, published a column this week taking issue with the New Hanover school system’s $20m shortfall, describing it as evidence of poor financial decisions made with short-term pandemic funding. Though the population around Wilmington has been exploding, public school enrollment has not: the local system has fewer students now than before the pandemic.Lee chairs the senate’s education committee, and has been leading the state senate’s efforts to expand North Carolina’s private school voucher program. The committee approved a bill on Wednesday to add $248m to the program next school year, on top of the $191m the program received this year. Applications for the vouchers, worth up to $7,468, outstripped funding after a surge of interest. (Lee did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.)Newcomers chasing Wilmington’s burgeoning film industry or simply looking for a better climate while working from home are wrestling with crowded roads, rising housing costs, access to healthcare and the other downsides of rapid growth, Hill said. Their interests do not easily map on to a highly partisan political framework.“Characterizing North Carolina in the same sentence as some of the more extremist states in the south fails to give the population of the state credit for really being quite centrist,” Hill said. “I think when you look at what our rightwing extremist supermajority has done, it would be easy to lump our state and with some states that are more extremist, but I don’t feel – and I think we have good evidence to tell us – that they don’t really represent the state as a whole.” More

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      The Wolves of K Street review: how lobbying swallowed Washington

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      Donald Trump decries the proverbial Washington swamp. Congress does next to nothing. The band plays on: lobbying remains big business. In 2023, the industry hit a $4.3bn payday. This year shows no end in sight to the trend. As the US gallops toward another election, The Wolves of K Street befits the season.Brody Mullins, a Wall Street Journal investigative reporter and Pulitzer prize winner, and his brother, Luke Mullins, a contributor at Politico, deliver a graduate seminar on how lobbying emerged and became a behemoth, an adjunct of government itself, taking its collective name from the street north of the White House where many of its biggest earners sit.Smoothly written, meticulously researched, The Wolves of K Street informs and mesmerizes.“This is a book about men – for they were almost exclusively men – who built K Street,” Brody and Luke Mullins write.They have produced a tightly stitched, 600-plus-page tome that begins as a true-crime story. The suicide of Evan Morris, a lobbyist for big pharma, takes center stage. In the opening scene of the book, at a posh Virginia golf club on a balmy evening in July 2015, Morris, 38, turns a gun on himself.The seemingly almost idyllic backdrop to his death is actually a tableau of excess, complete with $150,000 initiation fees, an abandoned Porsche, an emptied bottle of $1,500 bordeaux and a scenic sunset.Millions of corporate dollars were missing and untaxed. An anonymous letter and an FBI investigation helped ignite Morris’s untimely and violent end.“The allegations would touch off a years-long case,” the brothers Mullins write.Morris’s wife and estate settled with Genentech, his employer, the Internal Revenue Service and the commonwealth of Virginia. The government never charged anyone with a crime. Death had taken its toll.The Wolves of K Street is about way more than just one man. It is an engrossing lesson in how lunch-bucket sensibilities and the accommodation between big business and the New Deal gave way to neoliberalism, corporate activism and the decline of industrial unions.The Democratic party, to name just one major part of American life, would never be the same again. The Mullins brothers are keenly aware of the social forces that buffet and drive US politics. They recall how Jimmy Carter’s defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980 left the party of FDR, Truman and JFK to wonder how it was no longer the political home of working-class America. Democrats wonder to this day.The Wolves of K Street traces how the US reached this point, and lobbying attained its present stature, by following “three lobbying dynasties – one Republican, two Democratic – over the critical period from the 1970s to today, when the modern lobbying industry was created, corporate interests came to power in Washington, and the nature of our economy was fundamentally changed”.The late Tommy Boggs, son of Hale Boggs, once a Democratic House majority leader, stands out as the patriarch and pioneer of Democratic lobbying. His name came to grace Patton, Boggs and Blow, a storied DC law firm now subsumed in Squire Patton Boggs, a sprawling global entity nominally based in Ohio. Evan Morris stood out as Boggs’s “prized pupil” – or apostle.Next came the Republicans: Charlie Black, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and the late Lee Atwater, who would manage the 1988 presidential campaign of George HW Bush.“[They] used their links to the Reagan revolution to erect Washington’s signature GOP house of lobbying,” the Mullins write. “Each member of the partnership had his own distinct role.”Together, they bridged the gap between corner offices and the universe of conservative activists. Furthermore, Donald Trump was a client of Black, Manafort and Stone. Stone helped boost Maryanne Trump Barry, the property magnate’s late sister, on to the federal bench.That history is why Manafort and Stone emerged as part of Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016; why the pair were caught in the special counsel’s net when it came time to investigate Russia’s attempts to help Trump; why they received presidential pardons before Trump left office; and why they stand to be back for one more rodeo as Trump runs for the White House again.Tony Podesta, brother of the Democratic White House veteran John Podesta, is the keystone of the third lobbying dynasty examined by Brody and Luke Mullins, an “avant-garde political fixer [who] used his experience as a brass-knuckled liberal activist to advance the interests of Wall Street and Silicon Valley”.The paths taken by Manafort and Podesta would eventually entwine. Out of the limelight, Manafort came to represent the interests of Ukraine’s anti-Nato Party of Regions and its head, Viktor Yanukovych. In 2012, seeking to stave off sanctions, Manafort enlisted Podesta to his cause.“I used to call them the dynamic duo,” Rick Gates, Manafort’s convicted acolyte, tells the Mullins brothers.The Wolves of K Street is also newsy, disclosing for the first time Manafort’s attempt to have Yanukovych congratulate Joe Biden in summer 2012.“I am thinking of recommending a call from VY to Biden to congratulate Biden on his [re-]nomination” as vice-president to Barack Obama, Manafort emailed Gates, who forwarded the note to Podesta. The brother of Bill Clinton’s chief of staff cum Obama counselor approved.“‘Only downside is [if] biden [sic] presses him personally on politics of criminal prosecutions of his political’ opponents, Podesta responded. ‘I would say worth the risk.’”The Wolves of K Street ends on a weary note: “No matter what new obstacles have emerged, K Street has always managed to invent new ways to exercise its power over Washington,” the Mullins brothers conclude. “New fortunes to be made, new rules to be broken. New stories to be told.”One might well reach for Ecclesiastes, son of David: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
      The Wolves of K Street is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      Star Wars’ Mark Hamill hails ‘Joe-B-Wan Kenobi’ after White House meeting

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      “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” But enough about Washington. The Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who once saw off gangsters at a fictional spaceport, came to the US capital on Friday for a meeting with Joe Biden.Quite why he was in the Oval Office, and what was talked about, remained something of a mystery. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Biden was riding high in the opinion polls but now, perhaps, he is in need of added star power.The surprise appearance by the man who played Luke Skywalker thrilled Star Wars geeks among the White House press corps while leaving non-fans somewhat bemused or baffled.“How many of you had ‘Mark Hamill will lead the press briefing’ on your bingo card – hands?” the actor, wearing dark suit, blue tie and sunglasses, asked reporters at the start of a media briefing. “Yeah, me neither. I just got to meet the president and he gave me these aviator glasses.”Hamill, 72, then put the glasses in his pocket, quipping: “I love the merch.”Hamill, who has more than 5 million followers on X, where he is a trenchant critic of Biden’s election rival Donald Trump, said he was “honoured” to be invited to meet “the most legislatively successful president in my lifetime”, and reeled off a list of Biden’s accomplishments.The actor told reporters that “it just shows you that just one person can be so influential and so positive in our lives” and said he would take questions, “although no Star Wars questions, please”.Asked about the Oval Office meeting, Hamill said: “I only expected to be there for five minutes. He showed us all his photographs.“It was really amazing to me because I was invited to the Carter White House and I came. And then I came to the Obama White House but I never was invited into the Oval Office, and it was a large gathering. So this one was really extra special.”In the original blockbuster Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), Hamill played farm boy Luke learning Jedi mind tricks from Obi-Wan Kenobi, an elderly Jedi master who has seen better days. On Friday, it seems, he again took the role of young apprentice to the 81-year-old Biden.“I called him ‘Mr President’. He said, ‘You can call me Joe.’ I said, ‘Can I call you Joe-B-Wan Kenobi?’ He liked that.”Hamill left the podium to whoops and applause from a few starstruck reporters. The first question to the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, began: “May the Force be with you.” She replied: “May the Force be with you or, tomorrow, the 4th be with you, however you want to look at it.”A journalist said: “Let’s hope we’ve killed off the Star Wars jokes for the rest of the briefing.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJean-Pierre: “I doubt it. I feel like there’s more coming.”And later she was challenged as to why Hamill, who has never held elected office, was in the Oval Office at all. Weijia Jiang of CBS News asked pointedly: “What was Mark Hamill doing here today?”Laughing, Jean-Pierre replied: “Did you not like having him here? … Mark Hamill was in town. They met. I think it was important as someone – you all know Mark Hamill. He is someone who is very much invested in our country, very much invested in the direction of this country.”As Jiang confessed a lack of familiarity with the films, Jean-Pierre wondered: “Do you not like Star Wars? You’ve not seen Star Wars?”Jiang promised “I will now!” as some in the room groaned.Hamill is one of numerous Hollywood stars that the Biden campaign may seek to deploy ahead of a presidential election now six months away. On Thursday, the actor and director Robert De Niro spoke out against Trump, urging Biden to “keep up the fight” against him and “go at him hard”.Interviewed by Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, De Niro warned: “The guy’s a monster. He is beyond wrong. It’s almost like he wants to do the most horrible things that he can think of in order to get a rise out of us. I don’t know what it is but he’s been doing it and doing it, and it’s fucking scary.” More

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      Congressman Henry Cuellar in court accused of receiving $600,000 in bribes

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      The US justice department on Friday accused the Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, of accepting about $600,000 in bribes in exchange for influencing policy in favor of Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank.The Cuellars had made their first appearance before a federal magistrate judge in Houston by the afternoon, but it was not clear how they pleaded. Earlier, the congressman, who has represented a swath of Texas’s border with Mexico in the US House since 2005, issued a statement denying unspecified “allegations” against him.“I want to be clear that both my wife and I are innocent of these allegations. Everything I have done in Congress has been to serve the people of South Texas,” Cuellar said.He added that “I’m running for re-election and will win this November,” when Democrats are hoping to regain the majority in the House of Representatives.The justice department said that between December 2014 and November 2021, the Cuellars received bribes from an unspecified bank headquartered in Mexico City as well as an oil and gas company controlled by the government of Azerbaijan.Imelda Cuellar then allegedly used “sham consulting contracts”, front companies and intermediaries to launder the money.In return, the congressman influenced US foreign policy to Azerbaijan’s advantage and pressured unnamed “high-ranking” officials in the executive branch to take actions in favor of the bank.A statement from the House Democratic minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said that under the party’s rules in the chamber, Cuellar would step down as the ranking member of a homeland security subcommittee while he faces these charges.Jeffries added that Cuellar “admirably devoted his career to public service … is a valued member of the House Democratic caucus” and was “entitled to his day in court and the presumption of innocence throughout the legal process”.Two years ago, the FBI raided Cuellar’s Laredo, Texas, home and campaign office as part of an investigation into US businessmen and their links with Azerbaijan. Cuellar said he was cooperating with their inquiry, and months later, an attorney for the lawmaker told Fox News that he was not a target of the investigation that led to the raid.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn his statement on Friday, the congressman said that “before I took any action, I proactively sought legal advice from the House Ethics Committee, who gave me more than one written opinion, along with an additional opinion from a national law firm. The actions I took in Congress were consistent with the actions of many of my colleagues and in the interest of the American people.”Cuellar added that he had requested to meet with “the Washington DC prosecutors to explain the facts and they refused to discuss the case with us or to hear our side”.Federal charges could complicate the re-election of 68-year-old Cuellar, who is seeking an 11th term in office. A moderate Democrat, he supported a bipartisan Senate bill that would have tightened immigration policy, and is the party’s sole House lawmaker opposed to passing federal legislation to guarantee abortion access.After the 2022 raid on his home and office, Cuellar narrowly won the Democratic primary against his progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, then easily beat the Republican Cassy Garcia in the general election. More