US Politics

Joe Biden told graduating students of Morehouse College that American democracy has failed the Black community, but vowed to continue fighting “the poison of white supremacy”, in a widely watched speech to a historically Black college during an election year.Despite a backlash from some students and alumni in the weeks leading up to Biden’s commencement address, including over the Hamas-Israel war and concerns that Biden would use the speech as a campaign event, the president’s address to the all-male school was warmly received. He used his speech to reaffirm his commitment to democracy in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, and to reiterate his call for a ceasefire in Gaza.Biden’s appearance at Morehouse comes as part of his campaign efforts in Georgia, a key swing state in the 2020 election, and as polls suggest his support from young voters and voters of color – who were integral to the coalition that helped him beat Donald Trump in 2020 – appears to be flagging slightly.Despite criticism over Biden’s visit, the mood at Morehouse seemed upbeat and when a speaker asked attendees to welcome Biden they responded with applause and cheers.“Black men are being killed in the street. What is democracy? A trail of broken promises still leaving Black communities behind,” Biden said. “What is democracy? – You have to be 10 times better than others to get a fair shot.”“What does it mean,” Biden continued, “to be a Black Man who loves his country even if it doesn’t love him back in equal measure?”“My commitment to you [is] to show you democracy, democracy, democracy is still the way,” he said.Biden also warned about the powerful tide of extremism. “Insurrectionists storming the Capitol with Confederate flags are called patriots by some – not in my house,” Biden said to applause. “We all bleed the same color. In America, we’re all created equal.”Biden also reaffirmed his commitment to an end to the Gaza conflict. “I support peaceful nonviolent protests,” he said. “Your voices should be heard and I promise you: I hear you.”Biden said the war in Gaza was “heartbreaking”, discussed the horror of Hamas’s 7 October attack and of the plight of Palestinians. “Innocent Palestinians are caught in the middle of this,” he said. “It’s a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. That’s why I’ve called for an immediate ceasefire.”Despite concerns over disruptions, nobody interrupted Biden’s address, though one lone graduate stood with his back turned to Biden with his right fist raised.The valedictorian, DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher, also addressed the Gaza conflict in his speech.“The Israel-Gaza conflict has plagued the people of its region for generations. It is important to recognize that both sides have suffered heavy casualties in the wake of October 7,” Fletcher said. “From the comfort of our homes, we watched an unprecedented number of civilians mourn the loss of men, women and children.“It is my stance as a Morehouse man, and as a human being, to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.”Fletcher was met with applause, including from Biden.Biden also received an honorary doctorate of laws from Morehouse, which counts Dr Martin Luther King among its many renowned alumni.Morehouse invited Biden to serve as graduation speaker in September, prior to Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israeli civilians that left some 1,200 dead. In April, it announced he would also be the recipient of the honorary degree. The Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine–Georgia condemned his appearance.“More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children,” the group said in a statement. “More than 77,000 have been injured. Every hospital and university in Gaza has been destroyed. None of this would have been possible without the support and sponsorship of the Biden Administration. Any college or university that gives its commencement stage to President Biden in this moment is endorsing genocide.”Steve Benjamin, head of the White House Office of Public Engagement, met with Morehouse students and faculty for several hours ahead of Biden’s appearance, to listen to their concerns that Biden would treat his commencement address as a stump speech.After the Morehouse speech Biden is expected to travel to Detroit, where he will give an address at the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner and highlight how his administration’s policies have helped Black Americans. Earlier this week Biden met with litigants in the watershed Brown v Board of education case, and sat down with the leadership of a group of historically Black fraternities and sororities called the Divine Nine. More

Morning After the Revolution by the American journalist Nellie Bowles is a wickedly enjoyable book about the madness that seemingly began to inflame the brains of a certain cohort of the liberal intelligentsia about four years ago (its author dates the fever to the pandemic, but I think – personal information! – it began some time before then). It was a delirium that took her, as it did many people, a little by surprise, not least because she in theory belonged to this subsection herself: at school, where she was for a while the only out gay person, she ran around sticking rainbows all over the place; after college she was known to go to readings at Verso Books (“my God, I bought a tote”); when her girl Hillary was “about to win” she was “drinking with I’m With Her-icanes at a drag bar”. But once she’d noticed it, she couldn’t ignore it. Her instinct was to whip out a thermometer and ask a few pertinent diagnostic questions.Asking questions, though, is (or it certainly was… things may be shifting now) verboten in the time of madness. Either you’re for the ideological buffet – every single dish – or you’re against it, and must eat at the bad restaurant where all the mean people hang out, a place that is otherwise known as “the wrong side of history”. When the insanity started, Bowles was working in Los Angeles for the New York Times, a job she’d dreamed of since childhood, and there her curiosity soon began to piss off some of her colleagues. When she went on to fall in love with a full-blown dissenter, the columnist Bari Weiss, who’s now her wife, she found herself on the outside of something, looking in. Morning After the Revolution is an account of her adventures in this topsy-turvy realm, in both the period before and after she left the NYT in 2021 (she and Weiss now run the Free Press). It comprises a series of reported colour pieces in which she touches on such things as diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programmes, the campaign to defund the police, trans rights and (briefly) the crystal display she noticed when Meghan and Harry did pandemic Zooms from their home in Montecito.View image in fullscreenIn the US, Bowles has already been accused of cherry picking by a furiously indignant critic in the Washington Post, which seems beside the point to me: if your subject is madness, you’re not going to go out of your way to interview the sane, are you? Her reporting doesn’t strike me as unfair; I think she sometimes errs on the side of generosity. Struck by how comical the hyper-‘woke’ sound when they’re in full flight, most of the time she doesn’t need to add anything herself; her mode, which is very effective, is death by quotation. By most people’s standards, moreover, she isn’t even particularly – or at all – rightwing (the Post’s critic, a bit desperately, likens her to Gore Vidal’s arch-enemy, the arch-Conservative, William F Buckley). Mostly, she’s just worried that the rights she takes for granted – she loves her “picket fence” life with her wife and child – are threatened by the extremities of the left, as well as of the right.But of course Morning After the Revolution plays differently here than in the US, in part because we know less than American readers about the stories she relates. I had no idea of the controversy around the handling of funds donated to Black Lives Matter in the early 00s; and I was new to the grim detail of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, a police-free utopia featuring movie nights and Marxism read-alouds that sprang up in the city in 2020. In case you are new to it, too, city leaders including Seattle’s then mayor, Jenny Durkan, loudly embraced its anti-fascist, anti-capitalist spaghetti potlucks (others, though, noticed young men with guns patrolling its borders at night). It may well be the case that the four-day-long workshop Bowles attends in 2021 isn’t a wholly typical example of a DEI programme, but this doesn’t make its existence any the less absurd, its participants furiously competing to denounce their whiteness. Among the speakers is Resmaa Menakem, a “somatic abolitionist” who has appeared on Oprah, one of whose techniques involves getting racists (ie anyone who is white and new to the game) to slap the soles of their feet repeatedly as they confess to their privilege.To poke fun at – to be alarmed by – this kind of stuff is hardly renegade, and voters in the liberal cities Bowles describes (San Francisco is another) have since made it plain they think it loopy and patronising, too. Freedom isn’t only to do with speech: a safe, well-managed city benefits those at the bottom far more than those at the top, who can pay for security and taxis and private schools. But this isn’t to say that free speech isn’t vitally important, and the groupthink that works to limit it is at the bottom of everything that happens in her book – up to and including the fact that one American university has now banned the expression “trigger warning” on the grounds it is violent language.Bowles bookends her dispatches with two accounts of a cancellation – and here she knows whereof she speaks. In the first, she participated on behalf of a close friend, enjoying the mob feeling of righteous indignation. In the second, she refused to join in, an act of resistance that brought the very same friend to cast her out. As she observes, the revolution believed, in the beginning, in a profound empathy; its ideas, many of which she loved as much as the next person, revolved around equity and kindness. But that empathy has long since gone on the run. Bowles does not expect to hear from her old pal ever again.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion More

Donald Trump flirted with the idea of being president for three terms – a clear violation of the US constitution – during a bombastic speech for the National Rifle Association in which he vowed to reverse gun safety measures green-lighted during the Biden administration.“You know, FDR 16 years – almost 16 years – he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?” The ex-president and GOP presidential frontrunner said to the organization’s annual convention in Dallas, prompting some in the crowd to yell “three!” Politico reported.Trump has floated a third term in past comments, even mentioning a prolonged presidency while campaigning in 2020. He has also tried distancing himself from this idea, telling Time magazine in April: “I wouldn’t be in favor of it at all. I intend to serve four years and do a great job.”The 22nd amendment, which was enacted following Franklin Delano Rosevelt’s fourth term, limits the presidency to two terms.In his speech to the NRA, Trump spoke on abortion, immigration and criticized Robert F Kennedy Jr as being part of the “radical left”. He also complained about the multiple criminal cases against him, including a gag order that bars him from commenting about witnesses in his ongoing New York City criminal trial.Trump has the NRA’s endorsement, but the organization has recently been reeling from legal and financial woe and is not quite the force in US politics it once was.The NRA is holding its convention less than three months after its former long-serving leader Wayne LaPierre – as well as other executives of the group – were held liable in a lawsuit centered on the organization’s lavish spending.Trump, who said he heard that gun owners “don’t vote,” pushed NRA members to hit the polls in November: “Let’s be rebellious and vote this time, OK?”Biden’s administration has worked to curb gun violence, including a host of executive actions and the launch of the first federal office to prevent gun violence, Politico noted.Biden has also pushed to broaden background checks while buying guns, and to end a workaround that permits firearm sales without background checks apart from traditional stores.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If the Biden regime gets four more years, they are coming for your guns,” Trump railed.Only 12% of Americans believe gun laws should be loosened while 56% say they should be toughened and 31% assert they should be maintained as they are for now, according to an October poll conducted by Gallup. More

The push to legalize recreational marijuana in Florida ramped up this week. Campaigners bankrolled by dominant players in the cannabis and CBD marketplace launched a $5m advertising blitz in support of a ballot measure in November’s election that has so far been overshadowed by publicity for the one on abortion rights.Four commercials featuring retired military personnel, business owners, law enforcement officers and regular citizens began appearing on television, radio and the internet, leaning in heavily to themes campaigners believe will appeal to the 60% of voters amendment 3 needs to pass.And while the financial backers of the Smart & Safe Florida political advocacy committee, most prominently Trulieve, a major operator of marijuana dispensaries, stand to harvest far greater profits if the Vote Yes campaign is successful, there is little to no organized resistance.Florida’s Republican party passed a resolution opposing it, and the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, says he is concerned about the smell. But outside of that, nobody has yet set up any group or campaign to counter the tens of millions of dollars and corporate might invested by Trulieve and its allies, a coalition of other invested industry partners.“Nobody is selling ‘no’. They don’t make any money selling no,” said John Michael Pierobon, vice-chair of the Tobacco Free Partnership of Broward county.“The big wealth transfer is from the poor people that are going to be smoking pot, because the temptation is there, to the rich people that own the pot companies. It’s all about corporate greed.”Pierobon said it was difficult to effectively counter the arguments promoted by Smart & Safe Florida with such a “lopsided” platform.View image in fullscreen“I’m just a private citizen. I volunteer with these organizations, who are really just community groups,” he said.“I don’t have the Republican party behind me, I don’t have the Democratic party, I don’t have anybody, so I just have to speak and hopefully influence people to make informed decisions.”Pierobon takes issue with many of the assertions put forward by the yes campaigners. In one of their advertisements, called Freedom, a retired army colonel and Vietnam war veteran heralds the “billions of dollars” that would be raised in revenue and sales taxes, and money and time suddenly available to law enforcement “to focus on serious crime”.A Florida financial impact analysis predicts an almost $200m annual windfall.“In Colorado, they’re regretting they passed it because it actually cost them more money than they thought,” Pierobon said. “They talk about money for law enforcement, well we know there are more car fatalities in states that have legalized marijuana, they’re the hidden costs. It costs money to come out to more fatal car crashes, investigate them and write the reports.”Before producing the advertisements, Smart & Safe Florida had already spent substantial funds on its arguments to get the amendment on the ballot in the first place. Its adoption was opposed at the Florida supreme court by the Republican state attorney general, Ashley Moody, in the same way as amendment 4, the abortion measure. Moody lost both challenges.“I don’t think this is a partisan issue, and I don’t think the decision will be made by politicians at party meetings,” Morgan Hill, spokesperson for Smart & Safe Florida, said, referring to the Florida Republican party’s declaration of opposition.“It’ll be made by the voters at the ballot box in November, and I think a really good example of how bipartisan marijuana is, as an issue in the state of Florida, is 2016, when medical marijuana was on the ballot that passed with 71.3% support.”Hill also said that the “way medical marijuana was both implemented and regulated” in Florida “is a really good roadmap”.“Other states that haven’t had medical [marijuana] had a little bit of a harder time when it comes to the implementation process [of recreational marijuana]. We kind of already have a state program set up for that,” Hill added.The proposed Florida amendment would make it the 26th state to approve marijuana for recreational use, and seeks to place production and distribution solely in the hands of professional, regulated operators such as Trulieve, and their networks. Growing marijuana independently would still be illegal, and individuals could possess no more than three ounces for personal use.As in almost all other states where voters said yes, campaigners are resting heavily on “safety” arguments, including how legalization will lead to a reduction or elimination of street drugs, often produced by cartels and laced potentially with fentanyl or other toxins.View image in fullscreen“The state’s own economic analysis shows 1.8 million people in Florida are accessing marijuana on the illicit market, more than double those who are getting it from medical marijuana cards,” Hill said.“When that many people are accessing a product in a market that’s not regulated, that’s really dangerous, especially when we know that market is often tainted.”Polling so far, all conducted before this week’s advert drop, indicates that voters’ minds are far from made up. Florida Atlantic University found last month that only 47% of voters said they would vote yes, with another 18% undecided.Also unknown is what effect this week’s proposal by the justice department to reclassify marijuana from a schedule I drug, the same level as heroin, to a schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act will have on the process in Florida. Joe Biden said he was committed to “reversing longstanding inequities”, but the move would not legalize marijuana nationally or wrest control from states’ jurisdiction.The political analyst Jeff Brandes, a Republican former state senator and founder of the Florida Policy Project, said he expected the amendment would pass.“You’re going to see the Republicans coming out, saying, ‘don’t turn Florida into Colorado or other states’, but it’s largely tempered because so many states have now implemented adult use of marijuana, and I can’t see that argument winning today,” he said.“Most Republicans, quietly and once they’re able to vote their own mind in the privacy of the voting booth, will vote to support it.”Brandes also said the measure had, understandably, taken a back seat to the other big policy amendment in November’s ballot.“The Republican party cares much more about the abortion issue than it does about the marijuana issue,” he said.“Ultimately, it’s not a question of if Florida’s going to have adult use, it’s a question of when. In the meantime, we can either perpetuate the illegal drug cartels and the black market, or we can bring people into the light of day and create a legal pathway for people to make adult decisions.” More

Would you fly the Jolly Roger for Uncle Sam? AJ Jacobs tried to. For 12 months, the author and journalist became what he calls “the original originalist”, seeking to live the way the founders envisioned life under the US constitution.That life included the right to piracy on behalf of the US government. It sprang from a tradition predating the constitution, when the Continental Congress granted letters of marque and reprisal, allowing seamen to capture British ships. Noting this precedent, Jacobs brought an unconventional offer to Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California, when the two met in a hotel lobby.“I said, ‘I’m following the constitution and would like to be granted a letter of marque and reprisal,’” Jacobs recalls. “He said, ‘Great, let’s make it happen.’ I explained to him what it was: basically legalized piracy. I would fight our enemies on my friend’s water-ski boat.”After that, Khanna “was a little more like, ‘Maybe this is not going to happen.’”Jacobs didn’t get his Captain Jack Sparrow moment. But he did get a book out of the experience, The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning, which has received multiple votes of approval – including from Khanna.“He did like the idea of the book: trying to explain the origins of the constitution, what it really means, what it says.”In 2007, Jacobs published the results of a similar project, The Year of Living Biblically.“They have a similar status in our society,” he says, of the Bible and the constitution. “Some people see them as sacred and try to follow them in the original meaning as it was written.”Others look to adapt the texts for a modern era. For the constitution, this has evolved into a debate between originalists and living constitutionalists. Jacobs interviewed scholars across the spectrum.View image in fullscreen“This was my favorite part. They were super-generous with me.” Some were “people who were the most liberal and progressive and saw the constitution as having no intrinsic meaning, it could be molded like Play-Doh”. Others felt that “whatever the constitution meant then is what it means now. One guy refused to capitalize the S in ‘supreme court’. In the constitution” – as in the Guardian style guide – “the S is not capitalized … It was a wide range.”The originalists have been getting the better of things lately, including on the supreme court. And it was originalism – and the Guardian – that helped nudge Jacobs toward his book idea.After the 2022 supreme court decision Dobbs v Jackson, which overturned Roe v Wade, removing the federal right to abortion, a Guardian editor asked Jacobs to cover an unexpected trend. It related not to abortion, which was suddenly up to the states, but to vasectomies, which a surprising number of American men were choosing to have.“I am the type of journalist who tries things out myself and writes about the effort,” Jacobs says. “I did not feel like getting a vasectomy. I did not know if I was the right person for that interesting storyline.”What he did feel like was exploring the originalist mindset. He came across a startling statistic: at least 60% of Americans, including himself at the time, had not read the constitution from beginning to end, despite it running just four to six pages. It was time to delve into “what it really says, what it really means, instead of getting it filtered from whatever media you happen to be partial to. Let’s read what it actually says.”When it came to the right to piracy, although Jacobs couldn’t sail the high seas he did receive an email from a Khanna staffer addressing him as “Captain Jacobs”. Then there was petitioning the government. Instead of the online approach, Jacobs brought a scroll somewhere near 200ft long into the office of Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon. Hundreds had signed the scroll. When Jacobs took some notes using his quill pen, it left ink on Wyden’s carpet. Jacobs added $50 to his taxes to foot the bill. (The subject of his petition was “Let’s have co-presidents”, a cause advocated by some founders, with Benjamin Franklin recommending 12 chief executives at once.)State laws came into the picture too. Free-speech advocates might be surprised by how much states policed what Americans said in the early republic. New York fined those who blasphemed or cursed 37 and a half cents. Jacobs did the same with his three sons, though they declined to come up with a half-cent.“It was not an easy year,” he says. “It was about as hard as The Year of Living Biblically.” That said, there were some differences. With the Bible, Jacobs “grew a huge beard. This did not involve as much facial hair.” But his appearance and lifestyle changed in other ways. He wore a tricorn hat, carried a musket, consumed an unusual amount of cloves, wrote with a quill, and woke up at the hour recommended by Franklin: 5am.View image in fullscreen“I tried to express second amendment rights the old-fashioned way,” he says. “I got a musket off ye olde internet and carried it around the Upper West Side where I live. A lot of people were crossing the street. People gave me a scowl.” When he brought it into a coffeeshop, a customer invited Jacobs to go ahead of him in line.“It’s sort of a good example of how this year went. At times, it was very strange, bizarre and awkward. But it was also, at the same time, incredibly enlightening and fascinating. I do think it gave real insight into how we should interpret the constitution.”He was particularly pleased with one custom: election cakes, meant to spur civic participation. Jacobs got volunteers representing all 50 states to bake election cakes last year. He plans to do it again.Although Jacobs appreciated the chance to adopt an 18th-century detachment from the near-constant news of today, he appreciates the progress America has made, saying: “It was terribly sexist and racist towards women, Black people and Indigenous people. I don’t want to go back to that.“Women’s rights were very constrained, especially married women, who were treated like children. They could not sign contracts. My wife owns a business. She signs several contracts a day.”Jacobs’s wife, Julie, let him take over contract-signing – then fired him after an hour.Jacobs also examined how 19th-century abolitionists saw the constitution. William Lloyd Garrison was so outraged by its stance on slavery that he advocated burning it – and did so. Frederick Douglass, who was formerly enslaved, had the same view but changed his mind and recommended Americans view the constitution as a promissory note.“Douglass says, ‘Let’s work to make America live up to the principles in the constitution.’ It becomes a very powerful way of looking at the constitution. Martin Luther King Jr talks about the constitution as a promissory note. Barack Obama gave a great speech that said the seeds of freedom were planted in the constitution … The solutions to the problems of the constitution are in the constitution itself.”
The Year of Living Constitutionally is published in the US by Crown More

Under a large tent at the Crook county fairgrounds in Prineville, Oregon, six people stand in a neat line, each clutching the gun in their holster. “Shooters, set,” a man to the side yells. They wait. A light turns on in the centre of the target. They fire. A clock above records how long it took them to draw, shoot and, if they managed to, hit the target. They’re playing in pairs. Best two out of three wins.Welcome to Oregon’s Cowboy Fast Draw State Championship, a sport organisers say is “dedicated to the romance and legend of the Old West”.The residents of Prineville are voting on 21 May on a fundamental question: “Should Crook county represent that its citizens support efforts to move the Idaho state border to include Crook county?” If a majority votes yes, the county will become the 13th to vote in favor of leaving the state of Oregon and joining next-door Idaho instead. Polarisation breeds frustration which creates secession. America’s past and present.Calvin Foster, who competed under the name of Scrub Brush, is the man in charge of affairs at the Fast Draw, and he sums up his political frustration.The cities “don’t understand the life that we have out on this side of the state”, he says.View image in fullscreenThe majority of Oregon’s just over 4 million residents live on the western side of the Cascade Mountains, which run down the centre of the state. To the west lie high-density cities like Portland, Salem and Eugene, which in past years have voted largely Democratic. To the east are sparsely populated counties that have reliably voted Republican. Democrats have held the governorship since 1987.The presidency of Donald Trump and the Covid pandemic have heightened divisions – with different groups starkly diverging on how they think the state should move forward. Crook county voted for Donald Trump, a Republican governor, against decriminalising drugs and against restrictions on gun ownership. The state went the other way every time.Foster explains what he sees as the difference between west and east: that the culture out here is about family and guns. “I’ve grown up with guns, been shooting guns since I was probably five,” he said as we sat on the bleachers and watched the competition. “It’s a right that we’ve had and hopefully we keep forever.”That life is one of farmers and ranchers, said Jim Bunch (competing as Jabberin’ Jim, a nickname his wife chose), a livelihood that he says city folk don’t appreciate. “People that think that livestock is bad, that cutting timber is bad, that farming is bad. They want to get rid of agriculture. They want to get rid of us being able to control our own lives.”People here believe the other side is forcing their ideals on them. One thing that comes up again and again is not just “family” values, a nod to Oregon’s progressive stance on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, but the green economy. Foster said electric cars were what really irk him. Larry Lansdowne, a shooter from Idaho, said he understood his neighbours’ frustration.“We really don’t want you to come here and start telling us about why you can’t carry that gun or you need to drive an electric car,” he said. “We’ve been living this lifestyle for hundreds of years and we really just don’t want to change.”View image in fullscreenThe most extreme stance I heard was from Bunch. “We don’t have a democracy, we are a constitutional republic,” he said. I asked him what he meant by that distinction.“We have a constitution that lays down the laws for us. As a republic, the individual is protected. So the minority can be protected. It’s not just majority rules.”“So you feel at the moment that democracy, especially within Oregon, isn’t working for you?”“Oh, democracy doesn’t work,” he said, emphatically.If democracy does not work for supporters of annexation, they are pursuing democratic means to change it.The Greater Idaho movement was set up in 2019 and has campaigned to put its measures on the ballot. Its current proposal would see 14 counties move states, along with sections of three others. Originally, the plan included five more counties in south-western Oregon, but after two voted against the proposal, the movement scaled back its ambitions.Moving the state lines is a tall order, given that both Oregon and Idaho legislatures would have to agree, along with the respective governors, and then for Congress to approve the matter. But the movement argues history shows this can happen. West Virginia was formed after separating from Virginia in 1863, and Maine was created by cutting itself off from Massachusetts in 1820.View image in fullscreenI spoke with Matt McCaw, the group’s executive director. He and his wife lived in Portland, Oregon’s largest city, for 20 years before moving east because on “almost every issue”, abortion, LGBTQ+, guns, drugs, McCaw was opposed to the progressive measures enacted by state legislators. He said that while there had always been this urban-rural divide, it had become worse recently.“Our whole country got more polarised with Donald Trump,” he said as we chatted at Smith Rock State Park. “And then Covid just drove a wedge through all of it. Oregon was very heavy on lockdowns. They closed schools. They forced masks on people. People in western Oregon wanted that. The people in eastern Oregon were opposed to those policies.”McCaw and his wife are evangelical Christians, and faith is “first and foremost in every decision we make”, he said. “They were telling us, ‘You can’t go to church.’ Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that my government would say, ‘You can’t go to church.’” He said Covid showed him you need a government that aligns with your values. Idaho, McCaw said, fits that bill.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe problem, I put to McCaw, is that this would lead to a nation where democracy is redundant. Everyone would split into their Democratic and Republican states and just stick with it. The divided states of America.“You’re saying we shouldn’t divide up, because that will cause things to be more polarised. But if you leave these people together, it’s not going to change. The two cultures are drifting further apart and want different things. If you continue to force people that want polar opposite things together, that is not a productive or healthy way to run a society.”In a flip of the state-wide picture, it is progressives who are in the minority in Crook county. Outside the courthouse one Sunday, I chatted with Priscilla Smith, chair of the county’s Democrats, who was leading a small rally against the Greater Idaho movement. About 20 people were holding banners that said “We Love Oregon … all of it” or “Oregon, Yes, IdaNo”. One person was wearing a pro-Ukraine T-shirt.For Smith, this is also about family values. “My concern is for my granddaughters,” she said, wearing a bright blue hoodie bearing Oregon’s state seal. “What happens to their health if we become part of Idaho?” Idaho has a near-total ban on abortions.One sign at the protest read “Oregon values are my values.” I asked Priscilla what those were. “My values are that we treat everyone equally. Especially because I have a trans grandson. That we care about everyone. The proponents [of Greater Idaho] think our values in this part of the state align more closely with Idaho. Well, mine don’t. So they don’t speak for everyone.”View image in fullscreenTom Andersen a Democratic, represents a district on the western side in the state legislature. I asked him whether his party was at fault for allowing a movement like Greater Idaho to emerge.“I think fault is a pretty strong word, but I say part of the responsibility is that the Democrats have not listened to the other side,” he said.“We could do better. We need to listen to them. They feel that their needs have not been addressed by the whole state of Oregon.”Andersen warned that while it was worth engaging with the Greater Idaho movement, the idea of splitting the state was a concern, given it may send a message to other states to do the same. “That would open a Pandora’s box, a slippery slope,” Andersen said, and one that could lead to a situation where “democracy does fall apart”.“Dear Father, we thank you for the opportunity and the freedom in this country to come together and to discuss issues like this.”Mike McCarter, the president of the Greater Idaho movement, was leading a prayer at the start of a question-and-answer session hosted by McCaw at the Crook county library in Prineville. About two dozen people turned up. On one side, a few men sat silently with “Trump” hats on. Across the aisle sat Priscilla Smith alongside some people from the rally.She took the microphone. “My first concern is the fact that Idaho has one of the strictest abortion rights laws in the nation,” Smith asked, adding, “The other thing I have a real angst about with Idaho is their position on LGBTQ. I have a grandchild who’s trans. How is their life going to be affected?”McCaw and Smith then bickered over the details of Oregon’s abortion laws, before McCaw summarised: “The bigger point of all that is that people have very different, very strong opinions on abortion. And the same thing is true with trans kids.” He said these were the two hottest topics that spoke to the great divide.After that, the debate was cordial. One older man in a cowboy hat did call the politicians in Salem “heathens”. Yet there were no heated back-and-forths, just a few mutters and murmurs in agreement or disagreement.As people began to get up and leave amid a smattering of applause, McCaw ended the proceedings: “There’s no easy way out of it. I wish there was,” he said.Oregon’s Border Battles from Kiran Moodley of Channel 4 News is available via Channel 4 News here. More

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money campaign finance trial in New York has been cautioned by a state ethics panel over two small donations made to Democrat-aligned groups in 2020.The caution is likely to be seized on by Trump and his lawyers as evidence of his claims that the New York trial, now entering its fourth week, has been unfairly adjudicated by Judge Juan Merchan along partisan political lines.But the New York state commission on judicial conduct has not revealed who lodged the complaint against Merchan that stems from a $35 donation to the Democratic group ActBlue that included $15 earmarked for Biden for President and $10 each to Progressive Turnout Project and Stop Republicans.“Justice Merchan said the complaint, from more than a year ago, was dismissed in July with a caution,” spokesperson Al Baker of the state office of court administration said in response to an inquiry from Reuters.The commission considers that contributions violate the rules on prohibited political activity. In its 2024 annual report, the body said several dozen judges had apparently made prohibited contributions in the last few years, mostly to candidates for federal office.Judges are prohibited from contributing to any campaigns, including for federal office.“Like so much of the misconduct the commission encounters, making a prohibited political contribution is a self-inflicted mistake,” the commission wrote in the report.The commission has also received a complaint against the Manhattan judge Arthur Engoron, who oversaw the former president’s civil business fraud trial that resulted in a $454m fine earlier this year. That complaint, brought by Trump lawyers, has yet to be adjudicated.Under commission guidelines, proceedings are confidential unless there is a public censure or the judge makes them public.Trump has been highly critical of the justices in both cases. In the earlier trial he was censured for describing Judge Engoron’s law clerk of being Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s girlfriend. In the current case, he has drawn attention to Judge Merchan’s daughter, who works as a Democratic political consultant.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn response to a motion for Merchan to step aside, which the judge denied, a separate advisory committee on judicial ethics said the contributions did not create an impression of bias or favoritism.Reports of the contributions come a day after the New York Times revealed that the wife of conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito had flown an inverted American flag outside the couple’s home in the aftermath of the 2020 election.Alito has said that his wife took that action because a Democratic neighbor had used a highly pejorative insult to describe her to her face. More

A long-shot Missouri gubernatorial candidate with ties to the Ku Klux Klan will stay on the Republican ticket, a judge ruled on Friday.Cole county circuit court judge Cotton Walker denied a request by the Missouri GOP to kick Darrell McClanahan out of the August Republican primary.McClanahan is running against the Missouri secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft; the lieutenant governor, Mike Kehoe; state senator Bill Eigel; and others for the GOP nomination to replace Governor Mike Parson, who is barred by term limits from seeking re-election.McClanahan’s lawyer, Dave Roland, said the ruling ensures that party leaders do not have “almost unlimited discretion to choose who’s going to be allowed on a primary ballot”.“Their theory of the case arguably would have required courts to remove people from the ballot, maybe even the day before elections,” Roland said.McClanahan, who has described himself as “pro-white” but denies being racist or antisemitic, was among nearly 280 Republican candidates who officially filed to run for office in February, on what is known as filing day. Hundreds of candidates line up at the secretary of state’s Jefferson City office on filing day in Missouri, the first opportunity to officially declare candidacy.The Missouri GOP accepted his party dues but denounced him after a former state lawmaker posted photos on social media that appear to show McClanahan making the Nazi salute. McClanahan confirmed the accuracy of the photos to the St Louis Post-Dispatch.In his decision, Walker wrote that the Republican party “has made clear that it does not endorse his candidacy, and it remains free to publicly disavow McClanahan and any opinions the plaintiff believes to be antithetical to its values”.“I’m not sure they ever actually intended to win this case,” said McClanahan’s lawyer, Roland. “I think the case got filed because the Republican party wanted to make a very big public show that they don’t want to be associated with racism or antisemitism. And the best way that they could do that was filing a case that they knew was almost certain to lose.”The Associated Press’s emailed requests for comment to the Missouri GOP’s executive director were not immediately returned on Friday. But Missouri GOP lawyers have said party leaders did not realize who McClanahan was when he signed up as a candidate back in February.McClanahan has argued that the Missouri GOP was aware of the beliefs. He previously ran as a Republican for US Senate in 2022.In a separate lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) last year, McClanahan claimed the organization defamed him by calling him a white supremacist in an online post.In his lawsuit against the ADL, McClanahan described himself as a “pro-white man”. McClanahan wrote that he is not a member of the Ku Klux Klan; he said he merely received an honorary one-year membership in the white supremacist terrorism organization. And he said he attended a “private religious Christian identity cross lighting ceremony falsely described as a cross burning”. More