US Politics

Joe Biden and Xi Jinping have clashed in a telephone call about Taiwan and US trade restrictions on technology, but sought to manage their tensions as two top US officials prepare to visit Beijing.The nearly two-hour telephone conversation on Tuesday was the two leaders’ first direct interaction since a summit in November in California that saw a marked thaw in tone, if not the long-term rivalry, between the world’s two largest economies.The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, will leave Wednesday and visit both Guangzhou, the southern city emblematic of China’s manufacturing power, and Beijing, with secretary of state, Antony Blinken, due in China in the coming weeks, officials said.“We believe that there is no substitute for regular communication at the leader level to effectively manage this complex and often tense bilateral relationship,” national security council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters after the call.US officials said the talks were not aimed at managing but rather than resolving differences, and the two leaders were open about heated disagreements.Xi accused the United States of creating economic risks through Biden’s sweeping ban on high-tech exports to China.“If the United States insists on suppressing China’s high-tech development and depriving China of its legitimate right to development, we will not sit idly by,” Xi warned, according to Chinese state media.Biden rebuffed his appeal, with the White House saying he told him “the United States will continue to take necessary actions to prevent advanced US technologies from being used to undermine our national security, without unduly limiting trade and investment.”Biden also refused to back down on TikTok, the blockbuster Chinese-owned app that Congress is threatening to ban unless it changes hands, with Kirby saying Biden insisted he wanted to protect Americans’ data security.Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades, has solidified power at home and taken a tough approach in Asia, with a crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong and assertive confrontations in recent weeks with the Philippines on the South China Sea.But US observers see Xi as eager to temper the friction with the US as China weathers rough economic headwinds.At the California summit, he agreed to two key asks by the United States – curbs on precursor chemicals for making fentanyl, the synthetic painkiller behind a US overdose epidemic, and restoring dialogue between the two militaries to manage crises.Xi may also believe there is more opportunity to work with Biden, who faces a rematch in November’s presidential election with Donald Trump, who has cast China as an arch-enemy.Biden has preserved or even accelerated some of Trump’s tough measures, but has also identified areas of common interest, such as fighting climate change.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe White House said Biden pressed Xi to ensure “peace and stability” across the Taiwan Strait ahead of the inauguration on 20 May of president-elect Lai Ching-te.China has denounced Lai, a longtime supporter of a separate identity for the self-ruling democracy claimed by Beijing, but US officials have been cautiously optimistic that China’s military moves ahead of the inauguration will not go beyond past practice.In the phone call, Xi told Biden that Taiwan remains an “uncrossable red line” for China, according to state media.The United States has voiced growing alarm over rising Chinese moves against the Philippines in the dispute-rife South China Sea.The Biden administration, while maintaining dialogue with China, has put a strong focus on supporting allies.In the midst of the diplomatic flurry with China, the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, will pay a state visit to Washington next week, with the Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos, joining for three-way talks.Blinken and Yellen will both be paying their second visits to China in less than a year, marking a return to more routine interaction following the Covid-19 pandemic and soaring tensions under Trump. More

Joe Biden’s campaign team said Donald Trump is “directly to blame” for the ruling upholding an abortion ban in Florida, given that the former president nominated three of the supreme court justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade in 2022.“Because of Donald Trump, Maga [’Make America Great Again’] Republicans across this country are ripping away access to reproductive health care and inserting themselves into the most personal decisions women can make, from contraception to IVF,” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager, told reporters on a press call.“And make no mistake: Donald Trump will do everything in his power to try and enact a national abortion ban if he’s reelected.”Earlier today, the Biden campaign released a new ad, titled “Trust”, that highlights Trump’s past comments bragging about the reversal of Roe and also warns of the possibility of a federal ban. The ad will air across battleground states as part of the Biden campaign’s broader media blitz this spring.“These are the stakes in November, and we’re going to continue to make sure that every single voter knows them,” Rodríguez said. “Here’s the bottom line: Trump and Maga Republicans are working to ban abortion nationwide, while President Biden and Vice-President Harris will never stop fighting to protect reproductive freedom.”Democrats have condemned a Florida supreme court ruling that will allow a six-week abortion ban to go into effect, while seizing on a separate decision green lighting an initiative protecting access to the procedure to go before voters in November. The party has seen success in recent elections by campaigning against efforts to cut off access to abortion, and will try to replicate that in Florida, a state where Democratic candidates have struggled in recent years. To hammer the point home, top House lawmakers convened a hearing in the state, which Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries called “ground zero” in the fight for abortion access.Here’s what else happened:
The Biden campaign said Donald Trump was “directly to blame” for the Florida court ruling upholding the state’s abortion restrictions.
Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse signaled he was open to at least some of what Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is considering to approve military aid to Israel and Ukraine.
Tina Smith, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, wants to repeal a moribund 19th-century law that some fear could be used to stop abortions nationwide.
Opponents of Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza are encouraging voters to choose “uninstructed” in Wisconsin’s primary today.
Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, said he wants to fight “the isolationist movement” in his party.
Joe Biden plans to today hold a small meeting with Muslims at the White House, rather than the larger gathering it traditionally hosts during Ramadan, in the latest sign of his administration’s tensions with the community over Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza, National Public Radio reports.The Biden administration has repeatedly approved weapons transfers to Israel as it presses on with its invasion of Gaza, sparking protests from Muslims who have organized efforts to withhold their votes for Biden during the primaries. Here’s more on the White House meeting tonight, from NPR:
The gathering is in lieu of the traditional Ramadan iftar dinner or Eid celebrations the White House usually hosts with Muslim leaders, and it comes amid ongoing political tensions given the war in Gaza.
The goal, according to people familiar with the plans, is to allow guests to have a “substantive” conversation with the president about the situation in Gaza. Vice President Harris and national security adviser Jake Sullivan will also attend, the sources said. Biden last met with Muslim and Arab-American leaders at the White House in late October.The sources said the White House had initially planned to host a small, solemn Ramadan dinner Tuesday evening, but plans changed after a number of Muslim invitees said they did not feel comfortable dining at the White House while scores of Palestinians are on the brink of starvation.
The White House still intends to host a small iftar dinner later Tuesday evening for a dozen or so Muslim staffers — a scaled-down version of the traditional celebration.
Some Democrats fear the rift between Biden and Arab and Muslim communities could cost him support crucial to winning the November election, particularly in swing state Michigan. Here’s more on that:Another tentative and potential sign of movement has emerged on the long-stalled military aid package for Ukraine and Israel.Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse weighed in on Republican House speaker Mike Johnson’s comments yesterday, where he floated some potential demands he may make to move the package through his chamber. Whitehouse seems alright with two of the three changes Johnson requested, but takes issue with the third:Republicans and Democrats have been tussling over the aid proposal for months, and it’s unclear if Johnson’s mulled concessions will be palatable to Democrats, or enough for his fellow Republicans, many of whom are demanding new, strict border security policies to support the bill. Here’s more on where the House speaker says he now stands on the bill:Donald Trump is making a swing through Michigan and Wisconsin today, two states he will almost certainly need to win if he is to return to the White House.His stop in Michigan took him to Grand Rapids, an area where Democrats have lately made inroads in what was traditionally Republican territory. It’s also the site of a murder allegedly committed by an undocumented immigrant, and during his appearance in the city, Trump reiterated his vows to crack down on people in the country illegally:Attacks on migrants have been a mainstay for Trump since his first run for the White House, and thus far, this campaign has been no different:The first criminal trial Donald Trump faces begins 15 April in New York City, on charges related to making hush money payments ahead of the 2016 election. The former president has taken to insulting various people involved in the case, and as the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, now faces a gag order:The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s forthcoming criminal trial in New York expanded an existing gag order on Monday, preventing the former president from making inflammatory comments about the judge’s family members, after they became the target of Trump’s personal attacks.The new protective order continues to allow Trump to rail against the judge and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who charged Trump last year with falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal before the 2016 election.But Trump is now expressly prohibited from assailing the family members of any lawyers or court staff involved in the case, as well as family members of the judge and the district attorney, the New York supreme court justice Juan Merchan wrote in the revised order.The order cited the recent attacks Trump had leveled at the judge’s daughter and rejected Trump’s contention that he should be free to criticize what he perceived to be conflicts of interest and other complaints because they amounted to “core political speech”.“This pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurists and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose,” Merchan wrote. “It merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings, that not only they, but their family members as well, are ‘fair game’.”Elsewhere in Florida, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that the federal judge handling Donald Trump’s trial on charges related to hiding classified documents has yet to schedule a start date, despite the best efforts of prosecutors:The prospects of Donald Trump going to trial in July on charges of retaining national security documents, as suggested by special counsel prosecutors, are rapidly diminishing, with the judge overseeing the case yet to issue a schedule weeks after she was presented with the potential options.The US district judge Aileen Cannon received proposed trial start dates from Trump and the special counsel Jack Smith more than a month ago in advance of a hearing ostensibly to settle the matter in Fort Pierce, Florida, but she has still not decided when the proceeding will begin.As a result, Trump has been able to avoid filing certain pre-trial motions that have to be completed before the case can proceed to trial, playing into his strategy of trying to delay the case as much as possible before the 2024 election in November.Trump’s legal strategy for all of his criminal cases has been to delay, under the calculus that winning re-election would enable him to appoint a loyalist as attorney general who could direct prosecutors to drop the case, or pardon himself if he was convicted.There are more than 13.4 million people registered to vote in Florida, according to its division of elections, and one of them very well may be Donald Trump.Long associated with New York’s real estate scene, he changed his residence from the Empire State to the Sunshine State during his time in the White House. That means he can vote on Florida’s ballot initiative that will decide whether abortion rights are enshrined in the state constitution – and you can expect that reporters will try their darnedest over the coming months to get him to reveal which way he leans on the issue.Floridians will have an opportunity to weigh in on the question of abortion access this November, when they vote on an initiative that would enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution.Speaking on the Biden campaign press call, Fentrice Driskell, the Democratic leader of the Florida house, argued that the state supreme court’s decision to uphold an abortion ban underscored the urgency of the November elections.“We are seeing what Trump’s agenda looks like here in Florida: extremist politicians inserting themselves into women’s healthcare, threatening doctors with prison time and endangering women’s health and lives,” Driskell said.“The only thing that can stop governmental interference into our lives and exam rooms is to stay in the fight and by exercising our right to vote. This November, Florida will draw a line in the sand and say enough.”Democrats hope that the presence of the abortion initiative on the ballot might tip the scales in their party’s favor in Florida, but they acknowledge that the task will be difficult, given Republicans’ recent dominance in the purple state. Trump carried the state by 3 points in 2020, increasing his advantage from 2016 even as he lost the national election to Biden.“We’re clear-eyed about how hard it will be to win Florida, but we also know that Trump does not have it in the bag,” said Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager. “We definitely see Florida in play.”Joe Biden’s campaign team said Donald Trump is “directly to blame” for the ruling upholding an abortion ban in Florida, given that the former president nominated three of the supreme court justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade in 2022.“Because of Donald Trump, Maga [’Make America Great Again’] Republicans across this country are ripping away access to reproductive health care and inserting themselves into the most personal decisions women can make, from contraception to IVF,” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager, told reporters on a press call.“And make no mistake: Donald Trump will do everything in his power to try and enact a national abortion ban if he’s reelected.”Earlier today, the Biden campaign released a new ad, titled “Trust”, that highlights Trump’s past comments bragging about the reversal of Roe and also warns of the possibility of a federal ban. The ad will air across battleground states as part of the Biden campaign’s broader media blitz this spring.“These are the stakes in November, and we’re going to continue to make sure that every single voter knows them,” Rodríguez said. “Here’s the bottom line: Trump and Maga Republicans are working to ban abortion nationwide, while President Biden and Vice-President Harris will never stop fighting to protect reproductive freedom.”Democrats have condemned a Florida supreme court ruling that will allow a six-week abortion ban to go into effect, while seizing on a separate decision to allow an initiative protecting access to the procedure to go before voters in November. The party has seen success in recent elections by campaigning against efforts to cut off access to abortion, and will try to replicate that in Florida, a state where Democratic candidates have struggled in recent years. To hammer the point home, top House lawmakers convened a hearing in the state, which Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries called “ground zero” in the fight for abortion access.Here’s what else has happened:
Tina Smith, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, wants to repeal a moribund 19th-century law that some fear could be used to stop abortions nationwide.
Opponents of Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza are encouraging voters to choose “uninstructed” in Wisconsin’s primary today.
Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, said he wants to fight “the isolationist movement” in his party.
Congress has some unfinished business to deal with when it returns to Washington DC next week, in the form of a military aid package for Israel, Ukraine and other US allies. It’s been held up by Republicans in the House, some of whom are opposed to further aid to Kyiv, and the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports that the Senate’s top Republican has signaled he will make overcoming these holdouts a priority:Mitch McConnell will spend the rest of his time in the US Senate “fighting” isolationists in his own Republican party, the longtime GOP leader said on Monday.“I’m particularly involved in actually fighting back against the isolationist movement in my own party,” McConnell told WHAS, a radio station in his state, Kentucky.“And some in the other as well. And the symbol of that lately is: are we going to help Ukraine or not? I’ve got this sort of on my mind for the next couple years as something I’m going to focus on.”McConnell, 82, has led Republicans in the Senate for 17 years. In March, he said he would step down at the end of this year, after an election in which Republicans have a good chance of retaking the chamber.McConnell assured his decision to step down was not related to recent health scares and said he would stay to the end of his term in 2027.Isolationism has surged in the Republican party under Donald Trump, president between 2017 and 2021 and the presumptive nominee again for November’s election.Israel’s allies, including the United States and Britain, are demanding it investigate the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza that were with the World Central Kitchen charity.Follow our live blog for more on this developing story: More

The division between right and left around the world has rarely felt more polarised. Of course there have always been differences between people on the different ends of the political spectrum, but now it seems they are living in different worlds entirely. This is perhaps related to the tendency for those on the right to focus on the past and to strive for a world that once was and the tendency for those on the left to do the opposite.

Take two of the most famous political slogans of recent times: Barack Obama’s “Yes we can” and Donald Trump’s “Make America great again”. While Obama’s message evokes glimpses of a prosperous future, Trump’s expresses a nostalgic outlook towards the past.

In the UK, the successful Brexit campaign, which was largely led by conservatives, famously called on people to “take back control”, while the Labour party has just launched its local election campaign under the slogan “Britain’s future”.

The pattern is similar around the world. In South Africa, the rightwing Freedom Front Plus has recently carried the slogan “Stop the decay”. For the upcoming presidential elections in Mexico, the leftwing National Regeneration Movement is mobilising voters with “United for the transformation”.

In a recent study, I explored whether, within the general public, people on the right evaluate the past, present, and future differently compared to people on the left. I asked a sample of 1,200 people to judge different periods of history.

They were asked about the period from 1950 to 2000, the present day and the near future (by giving their view on what society would look like in 25 years). I drew participants from the US, UK, Italy, South Africa, Mexico and Poland – countries with different economies, cultures and political regimes.

Labour looks to the future.
Alamy

In every country, rightwingers evaluated the recent past more positively than leftwingers. In the US, Poland and the UK, by contrast, leftwingers were more optimistic about what humanity could achieve in the near future.

Interestingly, the effect on the left did not emerge in Italy, Mexico, and South Africa. Therefore, while the right’s more positive view of the past seems to be shared across countries, the left’s higher optimism does not.

The glorious past

In one experiment for the study, a group of participants was prompted to look more favourably to the past. These participants did not appear to be more open to rightwing opinions after having done so. This suggests that the connection does not run in this direction. Being more nostalgic about the past does not predispose people to endorse rightwing beliefs.

On the other hand, another experiment encouraged a group of participants to freely reflect on their political opinions. Rightwing participants from this group became more nostalgic about the past when given this prompt.

Leftwing participants became less so. This suggests that endorsing rightwing opinions at the start leads people to be more nostalgic, while endorsing leftwing opinions does the opposite.

One last experiment explored nostalgia in more detail. Here I considered two potential forms of nostalgia. Some people may be nostalgic about traditional communities, about the old hierarchical order, about stronger family ties and about traditional culture. Other people may be nostalgic about the state of the economy, hearkening back to a time when governments tended to intervene more.

Is the right nostalgic about tradition, the economy, or both? In my experiment, it was people on the left, not the right, who were more nostalgic about the economy. Those on the right had greater nostalgia for tradition.

The data does also show that the economic nostalgia on the left is not as strong as the nostalgia for tradition on the right, explaining why the right can, overall, be considered more nostalgic than the left.

These findings help explain why it’s so common for rightwing politicians to appeal to voters with promises to take them back to the good old days, and for leftwing slogans to mobilise voters towards building a better future – and perhaps offers lessons to those politicians who’d like to reach across the divide. More

Dulles airport should be renamed for Donald Trump, a Republican co-sponsor of a bill to do so said, because there would be “no better symbol of freedom, prosperity and strength”.Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania told Fox News Digital: “In my lifetime, our nation has never been greater than under the leadership of President Donald J Trump.“As millions of domestic and international travelers fly through the airport, there is no better symbol of freedom, prosperity and strength than hearing ‘Welcome to Trump international airport’ as they land on American soil.”The bill stands no chance of becoming law, given Democratic control of the Senate and White House, but it could cause embarrassment if Republican House leaders give it a vote. Reschenthaler is chief deputy whip.Dulles is a major international airport in Virginia, not far from central Washington DC. It is named for John Foster Dulles, who was US secretary of state under a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, between 1953 and 1959.Trump was president between 2017 and 2021, leaving office amid the Covid pandemic and with the US Capitol strewn with smashed glass and human feces after his supporters attacked it, a riot meant to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory and now linked to nine deaths and more than 1,200 arrests.Notwithstanding a second impeachment for inciting an insurrection, 88 criminal charges (for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments) and multimillion-dollar civil penalties (for tax fraud and defamation arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”), Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee to face Biden again.Reschenthaler is one of seven House Republicans listed as sponsors of the bill to rename Dulles for Trump. The others are Chuck Fleischmann and Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Barry Moore of Alabama, Troy Nehls of Texas and Michael Waltz of Florida.Moore said: “In 1998, Congress renamed the National airport in Washington after one of our great presidents, Ronald Reagan.”Reagan is actually in Virginia.Moore continued: “It is only fitting that we would do the same for another one of our greatest presidents, Donald J Trump, especially as he stands against the onslaught of weaponised government to fight for Americans like us.”Rejoinders were swift.Don Beyer, a House Democrat from Virginia, said: “One of Trump’s first acts as president was a racist Muslim ban that blocked permanent American residents from their own country. I went to Dulles to try to help innocent people caught up in the chaos. I remember grandparents detained for hours as their terrified families waited.“I remember Republicans like those who wrote this bill hiding and giving mealy mouthed responses when asked about the suffering Trump’s Muslim ban caused. They know Dulles will never be renamed after Trump. Again, that’s not the point, the point is to suck up to their Dear Leader.”Gerry Connolly, a Democrat who represents part of Dulles, said: “Donald Trump is facing [88] felony charges. If Republicans want to name something after him, I’d suggest they find a federal prison.” More

Mitch McConnell will spend the rest of his time in the US Senate “fighting” isolationists in his own Republican party, the longtime GOP leader said on Monday.“I’m particularly involved in actually fighting back against the isolationist movement in my own party,” McConnell told WHAS, a radio station in his state, Kentucky.“And some in the other as well. And the symbol of that lately is: are we going to help Ukraine or not? I’ve got this sort of on my mind for the next couple years as something I’m going to focus on.”McConnell, 82, has led Republicans in the Senate for 17 years. In March, he said he would step down at the end of this year, after an election in which Republicans have a good chance of retaking the chamber.McConnell assured his decision to step down was not related to recent health scares and said he would stay to the end of his term in 2027.Isolationism has surged in the Republican party under Donald Trump, president between 2017 and 2021 and the presumptive nominee again for November’s election.The Senate did pass a foreign aid package containing new support for Ukraine in its war with Russia but it remains stalled in the House, where a Trump supporter, Mike Johnson, is speaker.McConnell entered the Senate when Ronald Reagan was president and is an old-fashioned Republican foreign policy hawk. Under his leadership, however, 26 of 49 Republicans voted against the Senate foreign aid bill, which also contained support for Israel and Taiwan.McConnell said his fellow Kentucky Republican, Rand Paul, “would be the first one to say that he’s an isolationist”. Other loud voices for Trump’s “America first” approach include JD Vance, the first-term senator from Ohio reportedly under consideration to be named Trump’s running mate.Identifying “the most dangerous time for the free world since right [before] the Berlin Wall fell down”, McConnell told WHAS: “What’s made [Republican isolationism] more troublesome is, it seems to me, others are heading in that direction, making arguments that are easily refuted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We’re not losing any of our troops – the Ukrainians are the ones doing the fighting. If the Russians take Ukraine, some Nato country would be next and then we will be right in the middle of it.”Asked if he had spoken to Trump – who he endorsed in March – McConnell said: “I’ve got my hands full dealing with the Senate.”Of the presidential election, McConnell said the Democratic incumbent, Joe Biden, had “got problems, too”.“Both these candidates don’t score very well with the public,” McConnell said. “One of them’s going to win. What am I going to do? I’m going to concentrate on trying to turn my job over to the next majority leader.” More

After Donald Trump said that he loved how Robert F Kennedy Jr was running for president, the independent candidate called Joe Biden “a much worse threat to democracy” than Trump, citing the Biden White House’s involvement in a US supreme court case focused on social media.A noted anti-vaxxer who has peddled conspiracy theories, Kennedy currently faces an uphill task to get on enough state ballots, though on Monday his campaign said his name would appear on the ballot in the crucial state of North Carolina.Both the Republican and Democratic parties have increasingly seen Kennedy as a threat in the November election over fears that he could siphon off enough votes to swing the election. It remains unclear whose support base Kennedy might tap into. Historically a Democrat with a strong environmental record, Kennedy has drifted rightwards on various issues and his anti-vaccine views could attract Trump supporters.Kennedy’s remarks in an interview on CNN on Monday centered on the pending supreme court case Murthy v Missouri, which tests the limits of how much the government can pressure social media companies to remove content.The case comes out of efforts by the Biden administration to push social media platforms to take down false posts about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election that Biden won and which Trump has consistently lied was stolen from him.In oral arguments before the court last month, justices appeared skeptical of arguments in favor of limiting contacts between government officials and social media companies, a practice known as “jawboning” that some argue is tantamount to censorship.Kennedy told CNN that Biden “has used the federal agencies to censor political speech”.“I can make the argument that President Biden is the much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history, the first president in history, that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech … to censor his opponent,” Kennedy told the outlet.He did not address the more than 80 criminal charges pending against Trump for trying to forcibly overturn the outcome of his defeat to Biden, improperly retaining classified government materials after the Republican left the White House and hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has claimed to have engaged in extramarital sex with him.Kennedy also did not address the multimillion-dollar civil penalties Trump is facing for business practices deemed fraudulent or a rape claim that a judge has determined to be substantially true.Kennedy is averaging close to 10% in polling from the Hill/Decision Desk HQ. That makes him the highest polling third-party candidate in a presidential race since the businessman Ross Perot in 1992, according to the Hill, citing a RealClearPolitics national average analysis.The Democratic national committee on Monday excoriated Kennedy for his remarks about the Democratic incumbent.“With a straight face Robert F Kennedy Jr said that Joe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump because he was barred from pushing conspiracy theories online,” Mary Beth Cahill, a Democratic national committee senior adviser, said in a statement.Cahill accused Kennedy of merely seeking to be a “spoiler candidate” and – referring to Trump’s Make America great again slogan – said he pushed “his Maga talking points in prime time”.Cahill said there was “no comparison” between Biden and Trump, whose supporters mounted the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol in early 2021. She also alluded to how Trump has promised to be dictator on “day one” if returned to the presidency.Notably, as NBC pointed out, Cahill previously served as chief of staff for Kennedy’s uncle, the late US senator Ted Kennedy.Her remarks criticizing Kennedy came after other members of his family had visited the White House to celebrate St Patrick’s Day without him.His interview on CNN came a few days after Trump – in a rare show of political equilibrium – joined Democrats in attacking Kennedy’s nascent candidacy, casting him as a liberal in disguise who was more “radical left” than Biden.But Trump also made it a point to say he supported Kennedy’s campaign because he was likely to divert more votes from Biden than from him.“It’s great for Maga,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “I love that he is running!” More

Voters in Wisconsin cast their ballots today in an election that will test voter enthusiasm for Joe Biden and Donald Trump – and potentially enshrine two amendments in the state constitution affecting election administration across the state.The president and former president are already the presumptive nominees and will almost certainly face off in the general election in November, and it seems that the threat of prosecution, general unpopularity and advanced age can’t stop them.But while the primary will not offer alternative candidates, a group of activists in Wisconsin see it as an opportunity to push Biden on his policy toward Israel’s war on Gaza. The organizers, inspired by Michigan’s “uncommitted” campaign, which garnered more than 100,000 votes there, are calling on voters to choose “uninstructed” instead of Biden.“The margins of our elections are so incredibly close – less than 1% in the last two presidential election cycles – so I think it would behoove the administration to pay attention,” said Reema Ahmad, the lead organizer of the Listen to Wisconsin campaign.Organizers with the campaign aim to turn out as many voters for “uninstructed” as Biden’s margin of victory in 2020 to demonstrate their critical role in November, Ahmad said. The campaign has relied on the support of a broad network of progressive organizations, including the state’s largest network of Latino voters, Voces de la Frontera Action and Black Leaders Organizing Communities (Bloc), groups that helped propel Biden to his narrow 2020 victory.Connecticut, Rhode Island and New York also hold presidential primaries today, and voters in Arkansas and Mississippi will participate in primary runoffs. Voters in Rhode Island and Connecticut will also have an “uncommitted” option on the ballot, and in New York, pro-Palestine activists are encouraging voters to leave their presidential primary options blank in protest.The Trump campaign faces no similar challenge within the party, making Republican discontent with him harder to gauge. On 6 March, the former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, whose campaign gave anti-Trump Republicans a means to show their frustration with him, dropped out, and Trump snapped up enough delegates to secure the GOP nomination less than a week later. Haley and four other Republicans will still appear on the Wisconsin ballot alongside Trump.Brandon Scholz, a retired Wisconsin GOP strategist, said primary turnout could lend some insight into how both candidates will fare in November. In 2020, Biden clawed back parts of the country that Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016 – especially in the suburbs, and especially suburban women. Biden also benefited from strong support from Black and Latino voters – groups that recent polls show could be slipping away from him.“You want to do what you can to turn your base – your hardcore Dems and your hardcore Republicans, you want to be able to get them to the polls, because the last thing you want to do is come out looking like you didn’t do anything,” Scholz said.Whether or not the Trump campaign will mobilize voters outside the Maga movement is another question.“Observers will look to see what sort of participation traditional Republicans will have in this primary,” said Scholz. “And then finally, for both campaigns what are the ‘double haters’ going to do?”Also on the ballot in Wisconsin are two constitutional amendments that voting rights and government watchdog groups warn could have a negative impact on elections administration in the state.The first proposed amendment, which would ban elections offices from accepting private grant money to fund their operations, comes amid GOP anxieties – and election-denying conspiracy theories – about the role of funding from Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s Center for Tech and Civic Life. During the 2020 election, the Facebook co-founder and his wife used funding from their organization to help mitigate the spread of Covid-19 in polling places and send voters information during the 2020 election.The donations from Center for Tech and Civic Life became a key focus of Republicans, many of them activists who questioned the results of the 2020 election. “Zuckerbucks”, they argue, unfairly benefited Democratic strongholds – although there is no evidence that the grants, which reached small and large municipalities across the state, played a role in Biden’s victory.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe second proposed amendment would enshrine in the state constitution a provision that already exists in Wisconsin statute, mandating that “only election officials designated by law may perform tasks in the conduct of primaries, elections, and referendums”.Both proposals were passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature, which sent them to voters after the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, vetoed them. And both, worries Debra Cronmiller, the executive director of Wisconsin’s League of Women Voters, could hurt voters.“There’s no guarantee that the election will be funded fully in the absence of outside money,” said Cronmiller, of the proposal to ban elections offices from accessing private grants. Without sufficient funding – and the state legislature has not proposed additional resources to elections offices – she argued towns and counties are forced to hire fewer poll workers and host fewer polling locations, causing longer lines and a slower tally of the votes and disproportionately impacting poorer and smaller towns.“They might not have the opportunities that a bigger municipality, that has deeper pockets, might have in order to serve their citizens,” she said.The second proposed amendment, Cronmiller and other elections experts and voter advocates say, could prevent non-profits and other third-party groups from assisting voters in critical ways during elections. Groups that assist in driving voters to the polls, provide residents with information about voter registration, or help in the recruitment of poll workers, for example, could find themselves facing legal challenges for their work.“We’re all scratching our heads and wondering: is this allowed? If this passes, and if we don’t do those things, how do voters get to the polls?” said Cronmiller.“Is this a way to suppress the vote?” More

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent candidate for the US presidency, said on Monday he has qualified for the ballot in North Carolina – which will be a key state in the November election battle between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.“We have the field teams, volunteers, legal teams, paid circulators, supporters and strategists ready to get the job done,” said Kennedy’s campaign press secretary, Stefanie Spear.Kennedy, 70, is an environmental lawyer turned vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist who has campaigned with reference to his famous family – his father was the US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy and his uncle was John F Kennedy, the 35th president.Kennedy Jr now says he has enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in five states, the others being Utah, New Hampshire, Hawaii and Nevada.Only Utah has confirmed his place on its ballot. Nevada is also a battleground state, but Kennedy’s ballot access may be in question there, as he secured it before naming his running mate.That announcement last week saw Nicole Shanahan, a 38-year-old tech lawyer, join the Kennedy ticket.Polling generally shows Biden and Trump closely matched and Kennedy clear of other candidates outside the major parties, enjoying double-digit support, with the potential to act as a spoiler.Debate continues about whether Biden or Trump stands to lose most votes to Kennedy. Democrats have historical reason to be fearful, given recent election results.In 2000, Ralph Nader took votes from Al Gore as the former vice-president was beaten by George W Bush in a contentious, knife-edge election that came down to a legally contested result in Florida. In 2016, Jill Stein showed strongly as Hillary Clinton lost narrowly to Trump in a number of battleground states.The Biden campaign has created a team dedicated to countering Kennedy. In that vein, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee recently claimed Republicans were “working to prop up third-party candidates like Robert Kennedy Jr to make them stalking horses for Donald Trump”, adding: “We’re going to make sure voters are educated and we’re going to make sure all candidates are playing by the rules.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden’s campaign has also trumpeted endorsements from Kennedy family members.On Monday, Kennedy’s sister, Rory Kennedy, told MSNBC: “I love my brother, and it pains me to come out against him, but I am very concerned with the stakes in this election, and I’m very concerned from the polls I’m seeing that he takes many more votes from Biden than he does from Trump.“And I think this election is going to come down to a handful of votes in a handful of states, and I’m concerned that his campaign and running for office as an independent is going to lead to Trump’s election.“And I feel that that will be catastrophic, honestly, for not just our country, but for the world. So, I feel that the stakes couldn’t be higher, frankly. So, you know, I would love more than anything to sit out on the sidelines on this one and not be in this position, but I don’t feel like I can do that.” More