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      ‘We must not stop’: potential Trump VP Ben Carson touts national abortion ban

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      In a new book, the retired neurosurgeon, former US housing secretary and potential Trump vice-presidential pick Ben Carson calls for a national abortion ban – a posture at odds with most Americans and even Donald Trump himself.Hailing the 2022 Dobbs v Jackson US supreme court ruling that removed the federal right to abortion, Carson writes: “We must not stop there … the battle over the lives of unborn children is not yet finished. Many states have made abortion illegal because of the Dobbs decision, yet the practice continues in many more states.“What is needed is legislation that guarantees the right to life for all American citizens, including those still in the womb. Therefore, we must be boldly vocal about saving our fellow human beings through the legislative process. They are counting on us!”Carson’s book, The Perilous Fight: Overcoming Our Culture’s War on the American Family, will be published later this month. The Guardian obtained a copy.With the book, Carson follows other potential Trump running mates in seeking to sell himself to the reading and voting public as well as the former president, among them the extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene; the former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard; and the South Dakota governor and self-confessed dog- and goat-killer Kristi Noem.No 2 to Trump may be a dubious prize – his vice-president, Mike Pence, ended up running for his life from Trump supporters who wanted to hang him on January 6 – but contenders continue to jostle.Recent reporting suggests Carson has slipped from the front rank. On Thursday, Bloomberg said Trump was closely considering Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, and three senators: Marco Rubio of Florida, JD Vance of Ohio and Tim Scott of South Carolina.But Carson, 72, remains close to Trump, having challenged him for the Republican nomination in 2016 – briefly leading the race – before becoming one of the only members of Trump’s cabinet to stay throughout his term, even after Trump incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.Carson’s hardline views on abortion are well known: during his 2016 run he ran into controversy when he likened abortion to slavery and said he wanted to see the end of Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which safeguarded the federal right.His new book comes nearly two years after Roe was brought down by a supreme court to which Trump appointed three rightwing justices.Carson writes: “I’m grateful that in my lifetime I was able to hear these incredible words established by the supreme court of the United States: “Held, the constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”Planned Parenthood v Casey was a 1992 case that upheld Roe. Thirty years later, tilted 6-3 to the right by Trump, the court brought both rulings down.Carson continues: “The supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson was a crucial correction to the error of Roe v Wade, and I am certainly grateful for that correction. However, we must not stop there.”Many observers suggest Republicans should have stopped their attacks on abortion rights before achieving their goal with the fall of Roe.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPublic opinion remains in favour of legal abortion: according to Gallup, just 13% of Americans agree with Carson that it should be banned entirely.Since Dobbs, fueled by such voter sentiment, Democrats have enjoyed electoral victories, even in Republican-run states, when campaigning on Republican threats to women’s reproductive rights. The issue has been placed front and centre of the presidential election to come by the Biden campaign.Extreme developments among the states have included the introduction of a six-week abortion ban in Florida and in Arizona the triggering (and repeal) of a brutal ban passed in 1864, before statehood and when the age of consent there was just 10.Trump has struggled to reconcile boasts about bringing down Roe with avoiding talk of a national ban.Last month, the former president said: “States will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both. Whatever they decide must be the law of the land, or in this case the law of the state.“Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks, some will be more conservative than others. At the end of the day this is all about the will of the people. You must follow your heart, or in many cases your religion or faith.“Do what’s right for your family, and do what’s right for yourself.” More

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      Biden was silenced by criticism from families of troops killed in Kabul, book says. ‘Sir, are you still there?’

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      Joe Biden was stunned into silence when he was told families of US service members killed in Kabul in August 2021 said that when the bodies were returned and the president met grieving relatives, he spent too much time talking about the death of his own son, Beau.“I paused for the president to respond,” Jen Psaki, then White House press secretary, writes in a new book.“The silence that followed was a bit too long. I worried for a moment that our connection had been lost.“‘Sir, are you still there?’ I asked.”Psaki left the White House in 2022, joining MSNBC. Her book, Say More: Lessons from Work, the White House and the World, will be published in the US next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Biden ordered the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, after nearly 20 years of war, in April 2021. On 26 August, amid chaos in Kabul, 13 US service members and 170 Afghans were killed when a suicide bomber attacked an airport gate.On 29 August, the bodies of the Americans arrived at Dover air force base in Delaware, Biden’s home state. The president and the first lady, Jill Biden, attended.“Of all the president’s duties,” Psaki writes, “this is high on the list of most heartbreaking. For President Biden in particular, it stirred feelings of his own despair about the death of his son Joseph Biden III, aka Beau.”Beau Biden, a former attorney general of Delaware, went to Iraq with the national guard. He died of brain cancer in 2015, aged just 46.Biden has questioned whether “burn pits” at US bases in Iraq might have caused his son’s cancer, championing legislation to help affected veterans. In her book, Psaki cites World Health Organization research which says burn pit emissions contain substances “known to be carcinogenic to humans”.Psaki also notes how Biden endured the deaths in 1972 of his first wife, Neilia Biden, and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi, in a car crash in which Beau and his brother Hunter were critically injured. The president “often refers to these unique and disparate, but nevertheless unbearable, experiences of grief and loss as a way to connect with others”, Psaki writes.But Biden’s visit with the grieving families at Dover stirred up significant controversy, and political attacks.Psaki describes and dismisses as “misinformation” the claim, boosted by rightwing media, that Biden looked at his watch as the transfer of the bodies went on. Citing media fact checks, the former press secretary says footage shows Biden did so only after the remains had left the airport tarmac.Complaints that Biden spoke too much about his own son were tougher to deal with, Psaki writes, particularly when the New York Times “pounced” on the story.As it was part of her job to warn Biden about “unflattering” and “negative” stories, Psaki called him, though this instance was tougher than usual because “Beau was rarely, if ever, the focus of a negative story”.“It was one thing to tell the president the media was planning to criticise his Covid response,” Psaki writes, “and quite another to say the media was planning to criticise the way he speaks about his son, who passed away tragically young.”Still, she writes, Jill Biden had previously told her: “We’ve been through a lot. And we ask that you always be honest with us. Always tell us what’s coming.”Psaki called Biden and warned him about the Times story, which would say he “referenced Beau’s death repeatedly while meeting with families of the soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan last week” and “quote a number of family members making critical comments”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen the president finally answered her, Psaki says, he did so “in a softer voice than usual.“I thought I was helping them. Hearing about how other people went through loss always helps me,” Biden said.Psaki says Biden paused again, then said: “Thanks for telling me. Anything else?”The Times story duly appeared – as did others like it.One bereaved father, Mark Schmitz, told the Times he showed the president a picture of his son, L/Cpl Jared Schmitz, who was 20, and said: “Don’t forget his name.”“But Mr Schmitz was confused by what happened next,” the Times wrote. “The president turned the conversation to his oldest son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 … for Mr Schmitz, another father consumed by his grief, it was ‘too much’ to bear.”“I respect anybody that lost somebody,” Schmitz said, “but it wasn’t an appropriate time.”Psaki also describes how she herself dealt with the controversy.In the White House briefing room, she told reporters: “While [Biden’s] son did not lose his life directly in combat as [those killed in Kabul did] – or directly at the hands of a terrorist, as these families did … he knows firsthand there’s nothing you can say, nothing you can convey, to ease the pain and to ease what these families are going through.”Psaki also said Biden was “deeply impacted by these family members who he met … talk[ing] about them frequently in meetings and [the] incredible service and sacrifice of their sons and daughters. That is not going to change their suffering, but I wanted to convey that still.” More

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      Kristi Noem calls dog shooting report ‘fake news’ but insists on need to kill animal

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      Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota whose chance of being Donald Trump’s presidential running mate was widely deemed over after she published a description of shooting dead a dog and a goat, claimed reports of the story were “fake news” but also that the dog in question, Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, was “extremely dangerous” and deserved her fate.“You know how the fake news works,” Noem told Fox News. “They leave out some or most of the facts of a story, they put the worst spin on it. And that’s what’s happened in this case.“I hope people really do buy this book and they find out the truth of the story because the truth of the story is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous.”The Guardian first reported Noem’s story of killing Cricket the dog and an unnamed, un-castrated male goat. The story is contained in Noem’s book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.In the book, Noem says her description of killing a dog and a goat illustrates her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” in politics as well as on her South Dakota farm – a defence she repeated before her Fox News interview.Noem says Cricket ruined a pheasant hunt then killed a neighbour’s chickens, all the while presenting “the picture of pure joy”.“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket tried to bite her and proved herself “untrainable … dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”Noem describes killing Cricket in a gravel pit, then deciding to do the same to the goat because it was “nasty and mean”, smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid”, and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and spoiling their clothes.It took two shots – separated by a walk back to her truck to fetch more shotgun shells – to kill the goat, Noem writes.Speaking to Fox News, Noem did not mention the goat.Of Cricket the dog, she said: “It had come to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive. We were her second chance and the day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock that were part of our neighbours. She attacked me and it was a hard decision.”Repeating her claim that the story illustrated her willingness to make tough decisions, Noem claimed to have done the same through the Covid pandemic by “keeping my state open”, a stance she said invited media attacks.Figures from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do show South Dakota with a relatively low Covid death rate, with 71.2 deaths per 100,000 people, for a total of 776.Noem’s Fox News host, Sean Hannity, tried to compare the governor’s decision to shoot Cricket with the case of Commander, a german shepherd owned by Joe Biden who was sent away from the White House – not shot – after being found to have been involved in more than 20 incidents of biting.Hannity then asked: “You say here you said you follow the law in your book. What is the law?”Noem said: “Virtually every state has a law in place that says the animals that attack and kill livestock can be put down in situations like this.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA Guardian review of South Dakota state law found that Noem could have committed a misdemeanour, both by failing to control Cricket when she attacked and killed a neighbour’s chickens and by killing the dog later, on her own property.A spokesperson for Noem did not respond to a request for comment on that point.Noem continued: “Farmers and ranchers, they expect it. They know that once an animal like this starts killing and starts killing just because they enjoy it, that is a very dangerous animal. And that was the situation that we were dealing with.“And I’m a dog lover. I’ve trained dogs for years, I’ve been around hundreds of them, of course. And so this was a tough situation and very difficult. But that’s what happens in rural America many times.”Noem has also discussed a recent decision on her farm to put down three elderly horses – Lucy, Dunny and Tibbs – sharing pictures of the process including a horse standing in a freshly dug pit.“These weren’t just horses,” Noem told Newsmax in March. “These were family members … they raised my girls.”On Fox News on Wednesday, she said: “I hope people do read the facts of the story [about Cricket and the goat] and truly understand that I’m a mom, and at the time I had small children and a lot of small kiddos that worked around our business and people and I wanted to make sure that they were safe and that dogs that have this kind of a problem that have been to training for months and still kill for fun, they are extremely dangerous and a responsible owner does what they need to do and what the law will allow.”On the page, Noem’s story of the day she shot Cricket the dog and the unnamed goat – titled “Bad Day to be a Goat” – features the arrival of a school bus and the emergence of her daughter, Kennedy, who by the governor’s own accounting would then have been about seven years old.“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes, “and asked, ‘Hey, where’s Cricket?’” More

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      Kristi Noem ‘had a shot’ at Trump VP slot before dog-killing boast, sources say

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      Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, “had a shot” at being named Donald Trump’s presidential running mate – but blew it by boasting about shooting her dog to death, a Trump insider reportedly said.“She was already unlikely to be picked as VP but had a shot,” the New York Post quoted an unnamed Trump ally as saying.“After this, it’s just impossible.”Noem’s story of deciding to kill Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer she deemed useless for hunting and a danger to chickens, is contained in her forthcoming book.No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, will be published next month. Last week, the Guardian obtained a copy and reported the startling tale of Noem and Cricket the dog, who Noem says she “hated”.More startlingly still, Noem also describes killing – with two shotgun blasts – an unnamed, un-castrated male goat, which she deemed too smelly and unruly.On the page, Noem defends her actions as indicative of the kinds of unpleasant things people have to do on farms and in politics, too. Since the story became public, she has doubled down, saying her family recently put down three horses and claiming she was legally obliged to kill Cricket because she killed a neighbour’s chickens.According to a Guardian review, South Dakota law suggests Noem may have committed a class two misdemeanour by allowing Cricket to kill the chickens – and also may have contravened the law by killing the dog on her own property, after the attack on the chickens.A spokesperson for Noem did not comment on that contention.Having entered Congress in the hard-right Tea Party wave of 2010 and becoming governor of South Dakota in 2019, Noem has been widely seen to be a possible vice-presidential pick for Trump.In the wake of revelations about how she killed Cricket and the unnamed goat, the latter animal with two shots separated by a walk back to Noem’s truck for more shells, most pundits have pronounced such hopes to be dead.The Trump ally who spoke to the New York Post – while the former president sat on trial in the city, in his hush-money case over payments to an adult film star – said: “Trump isn’t a dog person necessarily but I think he understands that you can’t choose a puppy killer as your pick, for blatantly obvious reasons.”The Post said another source from within the former president’s camp said that though Trump “likes Kristi a lot” he was “disappointed when hearing the ‘dog’ story”.“It certainly has not enhanced her chances, but no decision has been made concerning any of the VP candidates,” the source reportedly said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther outlets reported similar disquiet.“The median reaction when we checked around Trump world was ‘WTF’,” said Semafor, “although some noted her chances were considered slim already.”Dog-killing aside, Noem’s other potential liabilities include links to a Texas cosmetic dentist and views on abortion bans – opposing exceptions for rape or incest – to the right even of Trump.“Governor Noem just keeps proving over and over that she’s a lightweight,” Semafor quoted a source “close to the Trump campaign” as saying.The Hill quoted an unnamed Trump ally as saying the story of Cricket and the goat guaranteed Noem would not be the VP pick.“Anytime you have to respond more than once to a story, it’s not good,” the source reportedly said.With Cricket and the unnamed goat in mind, the same source said that when it came to assessing Noem’s chances of a place on Trump’s ticket, “She’s DOA.” More

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      Kristi Noem’s story of killing her dog points to class two misdemeanor

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      Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, may have committed a class two misdemeanor offence when her fated dog Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer Noem deemed “untrainable” for hunting pheasant, killed a neighbor’s chickens.Under South Dakota law, “any person owning, keeping, or harboring a dog that chases, worries, injures, or kills any poultry or domestic animal is guilty of a class two misdemeanor and is liable for damages to the owner thereof for any injury caused by the dog to any such poultry or animal.”Though Cricket’s chicken attack has made headlines in recent days, however, it was not the main subject of such reports.Instead, Noem’s startling description of her decision to kill Cricket – and also an unnamed, un-castrated and unruly goat – has pitched her into an unprecedented political storm.The story is included in Noem’s new book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward.The book will be released next month. Last week, the Guardian obtained a copy and reported the passage in which Noem describes killing Cricket and the goat after Cricket first ruined a pheasant hunt, then killed the chickens.“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, before describing how she shot Cricket and the goat in the same gravel pit, the goat having to be shot twice, the second shotgun blast after Noem left the goat to fetch more shells from her truck.Noem says what she thought she had to do was not “pleasant”, and describes how her actions startled a construction crew and confused her young daughter.She also seems to acknowledge the possible effects of including the story in her book, writing: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”News of Noem’s tale did indeed set off a political firestorm, with observers suggesting she had irrevocably damaged her chances of being named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president who faces 88 felony charges of his own and was adjudicated a rapist but nonetheless maintains his grip on his party.Noem twice defended her account of killing Cricket and the goat, saying as she does in the book that such actions are sometimes necessary in farming, and show her willingness to do difficult things in life as well as in politics.But each defense added to her problems.In the first statement, Noem both referred to recently putting down three horses and advertised her book, promising “more real, honest and politically incorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping”. That drew accusations of insensitivity.In her second statement, Noem said she could “understand why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story of Cricket” but added: “The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down.“Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them” – Noem says the dog “whipped around to bite me” after killing the chickens – “I decided what I did.”In a separate section of South Dakota’s codified laws, the definition of livestock makes no mention of poultry, which would have meant the law did not apply to Noem.But asked about a South Dakota legislature definition that says livestock “means cattle, sheep, horses, mules, swine, goats, and buffalo”, omitting chickens or poultry in general, Ian Fury, Noem’s communications chief, advised the Guardian to “take a look at SDCL 40-34-1 and 40-34-2.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen the Guardian did, questions arose.Section 40-34-1 of the South Dakota codified laws – Killing of dog lawful when disturbing domestic animals – says: “It shall be lawful for any person to kill any dog found chasing, worrying, injuring, or killing poultry or domestic animals except on the premises of the owners of said dog or dogs.”Noem writes that she killed Cricket on her own property.The following section – 40-34-2, Liability of owner for damages by dog disturbing domestic animals – seems to contain greater potential legal jeopardy.It says: “Any person owning, keeping, or harboring a dog that chases, worries, injures, or kills any poultry or domestic animal is guilty of a class two misdemeanor and is liable for damages to the owner thereof.”In her book, Noem writes that she apologised to the family that owned the chickens Cricket killed, “wrote them a check for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.Asked if SDCL 40-34-2 indicated that Noem might have committed a class two misdemeanor, Fury did not immediately comment.The South Dakota laws apparently applicable to the case of Noem and Cricket were passed before the dog’s death.In her weekend statement, Noem said her story was 20 years old. That would place it in 2004, when she was in her early 30s, three years before she entered South Dakota state politics and six years before she won a seat in Congress as part of the hard-right Tea Party wave. Noem was elected governor of South Dakota in 2018.South Dakota was the last of the 50 states to make animal cruelty a felony, passing legislation in 2014. More

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      Kristi Noem defends killing dog: ‘Cricket had shown aggressive behavior’

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      Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, on Sunday again defended killing a family dog and goat on her farm, two days after the Guardian revealed how she describes those actions in a forthcoming book.“I can understand why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book – No Going Back,” Noem wrote on Twitter/X.“The book is filled with many honest stories of my life, good and bad days, challenges, painful decisions, and lessons learned.”Noem’s book comes out in May. The Guardian obtained a copy and reported how Noem recounts the story of Cricket – a 14-month-old, wire-haired pointer – ruining a pheasant hunt and killing a neighbour’s chickens.“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket tried to bite her, proving herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.“At that moment,” says Noem, “I realised I had to put her down.”The governor describes taking Cricket to a gravel pit and killing her – then deciding to mete out the same fate to the unruly, uncastrated goat. The second killing took two shots, says Noem, adding that when it was all over her daughter Kennedy came home from school and asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”Kennedy Noem is now 27 years old, making her, by the governor’s statement, just seven at the time of her mother’s decision to shoot Cricket and the unnamed goat.Amid widespread disbelief that a contender to be selected as Donald Trump’s running mate would commit such a tale to paper, many observers deemed Noem’s hopes of national office as dead as Cricket and the unnamed goat.Noem defended her story on Friday, saying it demonstrated the harsh realities of rural life that only recently saw her family put down three horses too.But animal rights groups condemned Noem.“There’s no rational and plausible excuse for Noem shooting a juvenile dog for normal puppy-like behavior,” said a statement from Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. “If she is unable to handle an animal, ask a family member or a neighbor to help. If training and socializing the dog doesn’t work, then give the dog to a more caring family or to a shelter for adoption.“Raising and caring for a dog takes patience and kindness. Tens of millions of Americans who know and love dogs have to wonder about a person who expresses hatred for a young female dog and kills her.”Meanwhile, one South Dakotan wrote to police Friday asking them “to ascertain whether all the legal and ethical guidelines were followed, given the high-profile nature of the incident”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Governor Kristi Noem … has publicly stated that she shot and killed her own dog,” said the missive that Chaz Stevens, the chief executive officer of ESADoggy, sent to police. “This incident raises significant concerns about animal welfare and the circumstances that led to such a drastic action.In her Sunday post, Noem said: “What I learned from my years of public service, especially leading South Dakota through Covid, is people are looking for leaders who are authentic, willing to learn from the past, and don’t shy away from tough challenges.“My hope is anyone reading this book will have an understanding that I always work to make the best decisions I can for the people in my life.“The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did.”According to the South Dakota legislature, livestock “means cattle, sheep, horses, mules, swine, goats, and buffalo”.A spokesperson for Noem did not immediately respond to a request for comment about how chickens are not mentioned in the state’s definition of livestock.The governor’s post Sunday did not mention her decision to kill the goat.Ramon Antonio Vargas contributed reporting More

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      Kristi Noem dogged by poor polling amid fallout from tale of killing puppy

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      Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful, saw polling numbers plummet after the Guardian revealed that she writes in a new book about the day she shot dead a hunting dog and an un-castrated goat, a revelation that ignited a political storm.Announcing what it called its “Noem Puppy Murder Poll Findings”, New River Strategies, a Democratic firm, said 81% of Americans disapproved of Noem’s decision to shoot Cricket, a 14-month-old wire-haired pointer who Noem says ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbour’s chickens, thereby earning a trip to a gravel pit to die.According to Noem’s account, the goat, which Noem did not name, followed Cricket to the pit because Noem deemed his odour and behaviour unacceptable on her farm. By Noem’s own detailed admission, it took two blasts from a shotgun, separated by a walk back to her truck for more shells, to finish the goat off.Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in May. The Guardian obtained a copy.The governor’s extraordinary admission made news because she has long been seen to be auditioning to be picked for vice-president by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.On Friday, amid widespread disbelief that Noem chose to tell such a horrific story in such detail in a campaign book, most observers thought her chances of winning the Trump veepstakes were over.Wrote Meghan McCain, a conservative pundit whose father, John McCain, in 2008 made one of the most disastrous vice-presidential picks of all time, in the form of extremist Sarah Palin: “You can recover from a lot of things in politics, change the narrative etc – but not from killing a dog.“All I will distinctly think about Kristi Noem now is that she murdered a puppy who was ‘acting up’ – which is obviously cruel and insane. Good luck with that VP pick[,] lady.”According to New River Strategies: “While 37% of Republicans are still not sure if [Noem] would be a good choice, 84% of them report liking or loving dogs – not a promising sign.”Fourteen percent of respondents to the poll still thought Noem would be a good choice for vice-president to Trump. Among Republicans, 21% thought Noem would be a good pick, to 42% who did not.Among self-identified “very conservative voters”, 28% said Noem would be a good choice, against 32% who said she would not.New River noted: “A plurality of Americans who do not like dogs still disapprove of the governor’s action. While 87% of Americans who love dogs disapprove of what the governor did, so too do 48% of Americans who do not care for the animals.”Politico, which reported the New River poll, also noted Noem had fallen in a ranking of potential Trump running mates offered by PredictIt, an online betting firm.By Saturday, Noem had fallen from second, behind Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, to fourth, also behind Elise Stefanik, the New York representative, and Tulsi Gabbard, a former representative and Democratic presidential hopeful whose own campaign book, out on Tuesday, does not contain any scenes of shooting puppies.Noem responded to reports about her book by saying: “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm.” She added that her family recently put down three horses.Her communications director, Ian Fury, cited polling showing Noem as the only potential Trump vice-presidential pick with a positive favourability rating in four battleground states: Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.“This is why the liberal media is so eager to attack Kristi Noem,” Fury said. “She’s the potential running mate they fear most.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe poll from Kaplan Strategies, which describes itself as bipartisan, was conducted the previous weekend but released on Friday, the day the Guardian broke the story of Noem, Cricket the dog and the unnamed goat.On Saturday, the Guardian attempted to contact public figures whose glowing recommendations of Noem’s book are printed on its jacket and introductory pages.In his blurb, Trump calls Noem “a tremendous leader, one of the best”, adding: “This book, it’s a winner … you’ve got to read it!”Asked whether Trump had read the whole book before recommending it, and whether he had comment about the controversy over Noem’s tale of killing domestic animals, the former president’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, did not immediately respond.Fox News spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rachel Campos-Duffy, a host whose quote on Noem’s book salutes her “common sense and fearless fight for freedom”, adding: “Get ready to be inspired!”No Going Back is also blurbed by Chaya Raichik, creator of the trolling Libs of TikTok social media account; James Golden, also known as Bo Snerdley, formerly sidekick to the late rightwing shock jock Rush Limbaugh; and Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who campaigns against transgender participation in women’s sports.By Saturday, Raichik had not commented about Noem’s dog-killing confession. Snerdley had reposted a Daily Mail version of the Guardian report.Gaines, who calls Noem’s book “the perfect blueprint for young Americans on how to move our nation forward”, did not comment on the controversy over Noem’s decision to kill a 14-month-old dog. She did, however, post a video of eight puppies sleeping in a pile on a pink rug.“The pups have arrived!” she wrote. “Be still my heart.” More

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      Ruby Bridges: civil rights pioneer rejects claim book makes white children uncomfortable

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      Increasingly, the US civil rights icon Ruby Bridges – the first Black child to integrate a school in Louisiana – has seen some adults seek to prevent grade-school students from accessing the books and films that chronicle her story, saying the tale makes white children feel bad about themselves.But that justification is “ridiculous” because “my biggest fans are kids all around the world”, Bridges told NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker in an interview airing on Sunday morning’s episode of the show.“All of the letters, all of the mail, I have little girls from all walks of life, different nationalities that dress up like Ruby Bridges,” the now 69-year-old activist said in an excerpt of the interview that NBC shared in advance with the Guardian.“I found through … traveling that they resonate with the loneliness, probably the pain that I felt. There’s all sorts of reasons that they are drawn to my story. So I would have to disagree [that it makes certain children feel guilty].”Delivered in a recurring segment known as Meet the Moment, which aims to spotlight people who influence political issues outside Washington, Bridges’ remarks to Welker come a little more than a year after one parent’s complaint prompted a school in Florida to stop showing its students a 1988 made-for-TV movie about her.The parent in question complained that the movie – which some schools usually show to students during Black History Month in February – might teach children that “white people hate Black people”.Separately, Bridges’ autobiographical picture book I Am Ruby Bridges was included in a collection of 64 “diverse” titles from Scholastic Books – the US’s largest children’s book publisher – that librarians are allowed to opt out of for popular book fairs that Scholastic helps stage at campuses nationwide.Scholastic defended itself by saying it had been forced into that position to shield teachers and librarians in largely conservative regions which may have enacted prohibitions against children’s books addressing race, gender and sexuality.Other works by Bridges have also been targeted by book bans schemed up by groups such as Moms for Liberty.In her conversation with Welker, Bridges dismissed the idea that her experience could unduly make white children uncomfortable.“That’s just an excuse not to share the truth, to cover up history,” Bridges said. “But I believe that history is sacred – that none of us should have the right to change or alter history in any way.”Bridges was six years old in November 1960 when US deputy marshals escorted her past jeering crowds into New Orleans’ William Frantz elementary school.With her white sweater, matching hair bow, black patent leather shoes and a small satchel in her right hand that day, she became the first Black child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in New Orleans – a scene immortalized in the 1963 Norman Rockwell painting named The Problem We All Live With.Bridges grew up to start an eponymous foundation dedicated to promoting tolerance and change through academic education. Meanwhile, the Akili Academy now occupying the school which Bridges integrated has a majority Black student population and is a stop on Louisiana’s Civil Rights Trail. More