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      ‘Strategic and moral mistakes’: US politicians step up condemnation of Israel

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      Politicians in the US on Sunday stepped up their denunciation of Israel over its conduct in Gaza, with a leading Democratic senator accusing the key American ally of “strategic and moral mistakes” – and secretary of state, Antony Blinken, saying it was testing the boundaries of international law.In an interview on CNN’s State of the Union, the Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate foreign relations committee, warned that Hamas was likely to become stronger if Israel waged an all-out assault in Rafah.“I want Hamas gone,” Murphy said. “I don’t want them to ever have the ability to hit Israel again. [But] I worry that the number of civilians that are dying are ultimately going to provide permanent recruiting material to Hamas, and it will be a threat for years to come.“We cannot have an invasion of Rafah that ends up in tens of thousands of additional civilians dying. That will be bad for Israel from a moral and strategic standpoint.”He continued: “So I am certainly willing to call out Israel when I think that they have made strategic and moral mistakes in this war. We should [also] be calling out Hamas for the attacks that began this war, the way in which they have violated the rules of engagement, and the fact that the quickest route to end this war is for Hamas to surrender and protect the people of Gaza.”Murphy’s comments amounted to some of the strongest criticism yet by a centrist US politician against Israel, which the Gaza health ministry said on Sunday had now killed more than 35,000 people in strikes since the 7 October attacks by Hamas.Stronger condemnation came from Vermont Democratic senator Bernie Sanders, a member of the party’s progressive wing.“Any objective observer knows Israel has broken international law … has broken American law – and in my view, Israel should not be receiving another nickel in US military aid,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press, adding that Hamas was “a terrible, disgusting terrorist organization that began this war”.Meanwhile, Blinken’s commentary was considerably more measured. In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation, the Joe Biden White House’s top diplomat said it is “reasonable to assess that in certain instances Israel acted in ways that are not consistent” with international humanitarian laws.Blinken’s comments on Sunday came after Biden threatened to stop supplying Israel with weapons if it invaded Rafah. That came as the White House said the US had stopped the transfer of 3,500 high payload “dumb” bombs over concerns of the growing number of civilian casualties in Gaza.Blinken stopped short of explicitly accusing Israel of violating international law as it pursued its offensive against the Palestinian militant group Hamas. He said it was “critical” to note that Israel itself has accountability processes – and there were hundreds of active inquiries as well as criminal investigations into different incidents, showing Israel had “the ability, means and the actions to self-correct.“It had been very difficult to determine, particularly in the midst of war, exactly what happened and to draw final conclusions from any one incident,” he said, adding that the US was avoiding any firm assessment over a potential breach because Hamas “hides behind as well as underneath civilian populations, in schools and hospitals”.Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas later dismissed Blinken’s “reasonable to assess” rhetoric as “some magic talisman” to help Democrats walk a political line within the party. He criticized the Biden administration as having imposed a “de facto arms embargo” on Israel.The administration’s national security policy, Cotton continued, “sounds like a bunch of weaselly, mealy-mouthed politics”.The US last week released a 46-page unclassified report concluding that – despite American concerns – Israel had offered credible assurances that it was not violating US or intentional law.That report’s findings were starkly at odds with assessments by the UN and major international aid groups. The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs last week placed the Gaza strikes’ casualty toll at 34,844, with 7,797 (32%) being children and 4,959 (20%) being women.Israel attacked Gaza in response to the 7 October attack that killed 1,100 mostly civilians while also taking hostages.Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted defiantly, saying his country’s military would press on with its plan to go into Rafah.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Sunday, Blinken reiterated that the US had made clear to the Israeli government that it would not support a major operation in Rafah, where 1.4 million people are sheltering, in the absence of a credible plan to protect civilians.The secretary of state said that the US was not pausing the transfer of US weapons to Israel beyond the 3,500 bombs that had already been withheld.“We’ve been clear that if Israel launches this major military operation into Rafah, there are certain systems we’re not going to be supporting and supplying for that operation,” Blinken said.But Blinken said the Biden administration had not ruled out supplying the high-payload munitions, including 1,800 bombs each weighing 2,000 pounds and 1,700 bombs each weighing 500lbs. “We’re in an active conversation with Israel about that,” he said. “We have real concerns about the way they are used.”Murphy insisted Biden was “being a good leader” by withholding the earlier weapons.“The broad middle of the country wants to support Israel’s ability to destroy Hamas but is very concerned about the fact that there are so many kids dying – that for the last week there’s been no humanitarian assistance getting into the country,” he said.He said Israel would be better served embracing Palestinian Authority leadership to build a “transitional government structure” inside Gaza, given the conclusion of intelligence agencies that it would be all but impossible to totally eradicate Hamas.“There’s going to continue to be a resistance movement to the state of Israel, and the question is, is it going to be weaker or stronger after 13,000 to 15,000 kids are killed inside Gaza?” he said.“My argument is that right now the prospects are that they are just going to be stronger.”Blinken appeared to share those concerns, saying: “There has to be a clear, credible plan to protect civilians, which we haven’t seen. And we have to see a plan for what happens after this conflict in Gaza is over, and we still haven’t seen that.” More

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      The Never Trump Republicans who can’t bring themselves to back Biden

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      They have broken with Donald Trump. They have gone public with their concerns about the threat that he poses to democracy and the rule of law. But vote for Joe Biden? That is a bridge too far.A split has emerged in the “Never Trump” movement in the Republican party. There are some who denounce the former US president and contend that, in what is essentially a two-party system, there is a moral imperative to vote for his Democratic opponent in November.Then there are the Republicans who forcefully disparage Trump but stop short of endorsing Biden, suggesting that both choices are unpalatable, forcing them to consider another option such as writing in a different name on the ballot.This category includes Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president, who said in March he would not be backing his former boss but also made clear: “I would never vote for Joe Biden. I’m a Republican.”There is also Chris Christie, an ex-governor of New Jersey who ran against Trump in the Republican primary elections. He told a recent event at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics that he would never support Trump but nor could he bring himself to vote for the current president. “President Biden, in my view, is past the sell-by date,” Christie said.He was joined this week by Paul Ryan, a former speaker of the House of Representatives. He told Yahoo Finance: “Character is too important to me and it’s a job that requires the kind of character that he [Trump] just doesn’t have. Having said that, I really disagree with [Biden] on policy. I wrote in a Republican the last time, I’m gonna write in a Republican this time.”While such dissent from Trump and his authoritarian ambitions is welcome, critics say, refusing to support his opponent because of policy differences draws a false equivalence between them. If a significant number of Republican voters do likewise, not voting or writing in a name such as “Ronald Reagan”, it could prove costly to Biden in a close election.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman and Tea Party activist turned Trump foe, said: “I have zero respect for guys like Chris Christie, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan who come out and say. ‘I’m not gonna vote for Trump but I won’t vote for the only guy who can beat the guy who’s unfit.’ To me, that’s cowardly. What they’re doing is staying relevant as Republicans. They want to run again as Republicans.”Walsh, who challenged Trump in the 2020 Republican primary, added: “Here’s the deal. If, as a Republican, you say I’m voting for Joe Biden because Trump is unfit, you end your career as a Republican. I did that five years ago. [Former congressman] Adam Kinzinger did that this past year. Then you end your relevance as a Republican. Guys like Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence don’t want to give that up. It’s purely a political decision.”Kinzinger broke from his party after the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol and was later one of two Republicans, along with Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who joined the House committee to investigate the attack. He did not seek re-election in the 2022 midterms.Kinzinger said this week: “While I don’t agree with all of Joe Biden’s policies, he’s not out to get democracy so I intend to vote for him. Even if he was like Elizabeth Warren, a little further left, he would not be a threat to democracy, but he’s probably fairly moderate in Democratic terms lately. I certainly don’t think he’s as big of a threat as Trump is.”Despite 88 criminal charges against him, Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination in March. But his support remains soft around the edges. This week, two months after exiting the race, Nikki Haley secured more than 21% of the vote in Indiana’s primary election, held on a day when TV news was dominated by the Trump trial and adult film performer Stormy Daniels.Last month, in another sign of persistent discontent with Trump among the party faithful, Haley received nearly 17% of the primary vote in Pennsylvania. Biden has launched an advertising campaign to target Haley voters in predominantly suburban areas in swing states. A number of anti-Trump Republicans have been willing to aid the effort despite the risk of blowback from their own party.This week Geoff Duncan, a former lieutenant governor of Georgia who has spoken out against Trump’s election lies, endorsed the president and urged fellow Republicans do likewise. He wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper: “I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass.”The former Reagan administration official Bill Kristol has also made peace with casting his vote for Biden, describing him as a “conventional Democrat” and “better than I expected on some things, especially foreign policy”.But Kristol said he respects Pence, Ryan and Christie’s unwillingness to take the extra step by voting Democratic. “It’s not a crazy decision. It’s fair enough. They can’t abide Trump, they’re not going to vote for him, but it’s in a way not their responsibility that the other party hasn’t provided them with an acceptable alternative.”Kristol, director of the Defending Democracy Together advocacy organisation, hopes that line of thinking will appeal to Republicans who backed Trump twice and might resent being told to defect to the Democrats. “As a practical matter, it’s worth it to get some of those voters just to not vote for Trump,” he said.Kinzinger, the ex-congressman, agreed: “For some people I do think there has to be permission to write-in somebody or vote against the two just because, if they’re never going to vote for Joe Biden, I’d much rather them just skip the ballot line. But those that can stomach it should certainly consider voting for Joe Biden.”View image in fullscreenThere are prominent figures still sitting on the fence. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who twice voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trials, has not yet made clear whether he will back Biden. He told NBC’s Meet the Press last December: “If I endorsed them, it would be the kiss of death – I’m not going to do that.”Cheney, who lost her seat in Congress to a Trump-backed rival, told the Washington Post newspaper in March that she was still undecided about whether to formally endorse Biden. She does intend to “educate” Americans about how dangerous Trump is in the lead-up to election day.But another group of Trump sceptics in the Republican party have gone in a different direction, portraying Biden as a “woke” radical outside the political mainstream and Trump as therefore the lesser or two evils.Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, eviscerated Trump after the January 6 insurrection; Trump routinely bashed McConnell as an “Old Crow” and hurled racist insults at his wife, Elaine Chao. Yet once Trump secured the Republican nomination in March, McConnell endorsed him for president.Bill Barr, a former attorney general who said last year that Trump “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office”, has now declared that he wants to see Trump back inside it. He told CNN: “I think Trump would do less damage than Biden, and I think all this stuff about a threat to democracy – I think the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement and the Biden administration.”Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, backed Haley during the Republican primaries but now supports Trump in the general election. He explained in an interview with the Guardian: “Look, I worked hard for Trump not to be the nominee but he is the nominee of the party and, while I don’t care for Trump, I’ll take a Republican administration over this progressive, leftwing socialist administration any day of the week.”The governor said of Biden: “He’s created a culture here that America doesn’t want to see. A culture of not dealing with the border. A culture of lying about inflation – inflation is crushing families. Depending on how families feel their financial pressures in November will determine who wins the election.”To seasoned observers of the Republican party’s surrender to Trump, such sentiments come as little surprise. Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “You cannot make the case credibly that you are concerned for the health of democracy and then lend your support and, more importantly, your vote to the architect of the undoing of democracy. You own that. You’re not just a bystander at this point; you are an accomplice.”Bardella, a former spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee, was also scathing in his verdict on those who announce they will not vote for Trump only to present Biden as equally intolerable.“Talk about a lack of intestinal fortitude. Anyone who wants to try to put Joe Biden on the same plane as Donald Trump should have their mental health checked because that is just an absurd false equivalency. This is a very black and white issue here. You’re either pro-democracy or you’re not. All the other issues that we disagree about – and there are many – don’t matter if we don’t have a functioning democracy.” More

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      Migrants, real and imagined, grip US voters, 1,500 miles north of border

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      Rhinelander is closer to the Arctic Circle than to Mexico, so it is no great surprise that few people in the small Wisconsin city have laid eyes on the foreign migrants Donald Trump claims are “invading” the country from across the US border 1,500 miles to the south.But Jim Schuh, the manager of a local bakery, is nonetheless sure they are a major problem and he’s voting accordingly.“We don’t see immigrants here but I have relatives all over the country and they see them,” he said. “That’s Biden. He’s responsible.”Large numbers of voters in key swing states agree with Schuh, even in places where migrants are hard to find as they eye cities such as Chicago and New York struggling to cope with tens of thousands of refugees and other arrivals transported there by the governors of Texas and Florida.Trump has been pushing fears over record levels of migration hard in Wisconsin where the past two presidential elections have been decided by a margin of less than 1% of the vote. A Marquette law school poll last month found that two-thirds of Wisconsin voters agree that “the Biden administration’s border policies have created a crisis of uncontrolled illegal migration into the country”.Trump has twice held rallies in Wisconsin over the past month at which migrants have been a primary target. In Green Bay he called the issue “bigger than a war” and invoked the situation in Whitewater, a small city of about 15,000 residents in the south of the state.Republican politicians have turned Whitewater into the poster child for anti-migrant rhetoric in Wisconsin after the city’s police chief, Dan Meyer, appealed for federal assistance to cope with the arrival of nearly 1,000 people from Nicaragua and Venezuela over the past two years.Meyer made clear in a letter to President Joe Biden in December that he was not hostile to the foreign arrivals as he expressed concern about the “terrible living conditions” endured by some.“We’ve seen a family living in a 10ft x 10ft shed in minus 10 degree temperatures,” he wrote.But the police chief said that his department was struggling to cope with the number of Spanish-speaking migrants because of the cost of translation software and the time taken dealing with a sharp increase in unlicensed drivers. Meyer also said that his officers had responded to serious incidents linked to the arrivals including the death of an infant, sexual assaults and a kidnapping.However, he told Biden that “none of this information is shared as a means of denigrating or vilifying this group of people … In fact, we see a great value in the increasing diversity that this group brings to our community.”That did not stop Republican politicians from descending on Whitewater to whip up fear.The Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, a close ally of Trump who has spoken at the former president’s political rallies, and a Republican member of Congress from the state, Bryan Steil, held a meeting in the city to denounce what they described as the “devastating” consequences of the migrant arrivals.Johnson blamed “the whole issue of the flood of illegal immigrants that have come to this country under the Biden administration”.Steil declined to back Meyer’s appeal for federal financial assistance and said the answer lay in legislation to secure the border. However, the congressman was among those Republicans who killed off a bipartisan border security law after Trump opposed the legislation in an apparent move to keep the crisis a live political issue going into the presidential election.View image in fullscreenRepublican members of the Wisconsin legislature wrote to Biden in January demanding action over what they claimed was a surge in violent crime in Whitewater even though Meyer has said he sees no threat to residents from the migrants and that “we are a safe community”.Some Whitewater residents are furious at the political intervention. Brienne Brown, a member of the city council for six years, said residents had been welcoming of the migrants, with community organisations providing food, furniture and bedding to many.“The spotlight fell on us because Ron Johnson and Bryan Steil decided to make it a political event for themselves. Most people here were incredibly angry. They feel like they’ve been used as a political football,” she said.“The crime that is occurring is super low level, which is mostly our police department pulling over somebody in a car who doesn’t have a licence.”The police chief has called for migrants to be allowed to obtain driving licences but the Wisconsin legislature will not allow it.Brown said that the serious incidents of assault involved domestic violence as well as the case of a woman who abandoned her newborn baby in a field, and that those kind of crimes remained uncommon.Wisconsin has long relied on migrant workers, many of them undocumented, as farm labour. Studies have suggested that the state’s dairy farms would grind to a halt without foreign workers. Historically, most were from Mexico. Whitewater tended to attract people from Guanajuato as migrants from the Mexican state sent word back about job opportunities.Brown noticed a change during the Covid crisis.“I’d knock on doors a lot just to talk to my constituents right around the pandemic. I started noticing that a lot of them were not from Mexico. They were from Nicaragua and Venezuela,” she said.Brown said the workers moved into accommodation left by students forced to return home by the pandemic lockdown.“We have a lot of farms, a lot of chicken farms, a lot of egg farms. There are factories that make spices, there are factories that can food. They’re always looking for low-paid workers and they never have enough. So there was plenty of work available,” she said.Schuh, like many other Americans critical of what they describe as Biden’s open border policy, makes a point of distinguishing between those who go through the formal process of immigration with a visa and those walking across the border to seek asylum or work illegally.“I have nothing against immigrants but it has to be done the right way,” he said.Trump continued to stoke the issue at a rally in Michigan earlier this month when he blamed Biden for the murder of Ruby Garcia in March. The former president claimed his administration had deported the man who has confessed to the shooting, Brandon Ortiz-Vite, and that “crooked Joe Biden took him back and let him back in and let him stay in and he viciously killed Ruby”. Ortiz-Vite was deported in 2020 following his arrest for drinking and driving. It is not clear when he returned to the US.Trump told the rally that he spoke to Garcia’s family and that they were “grieving for this incredible young woman”. But Garcia’s sister, Mavi, denied that anyone in the family spoke to the former president and accused him of exploiting the murder for political ends.“He did not speak with any of us, so it was kind of shocking seeing that he had said that he had spoke with us, and misinforming people on live TV,” she told WOOD-TV.“It’s always been about illegal immigrants. Nobody really speaks about when Americans do heinous crimes, and it’s kind of shocking why he would just bring up illegals. What about Americans who do heinous crimes like that?” More

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      US campus protests give Trump a target for his violent rhetoric of vengeance

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      Donald Trump delights in railing against his enemies, and when protesters set up encampments at college campuses nationwide to decry Israel’s invasion of Gaza, the former US president gained another useful antagonist.For some observers, Trump’s language is both dangerous in the current political environment as he seeks to rile up his base and a dark hint at how he might treat dissent and demonstrations should he defeat Joe Biden and achieve his ambition of returning to the White House in 2025.His language is certainly extreme.“These are radical-left lunatics, and they’ve got to be stopped now,” Trump said earlier this month outside the Manhattan courtroom where he is being tried on business fraud charges.The day prior, police had rounded up demonstrators at Columbia University, home to one of the most contentious protest sites. Trump called the sweep “a beautiful thing to watch”.He then deployed blood-curdling and violent rhetoric to describe the protesters. “Remove the encampments immediately. Vanquish the radicals, and take back our campuses for all of the normal students who want a safe place for which to learn,” he said at a rally in swing state Wisconsin. “The radical extremists and far-left agitators are terrorizing college campuses, as you possibly noticed, and Biden’s nowhere to be found.”Joe Biden has in fact weighed in on the protests, acknowledging that the right to demonstrate is protected in the country while saying “dissent must never lead to disorder”.But the campus unrest has nonetheless vexed the Democratic president as he navigates a backlash to his support for Israel, which may cost him votes essential to winning the November election against Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee whom polls show currently has a narrow lead over Biden.When it comes to the protests, the former president’s course of action is far more clearcut. Though congressional investigators have blamed Trump for instigating the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol, that has not stopped Trump from decrying the pro-Palestinian students as dangerous rabble-rousers who would not be tolerated under his administration.“It’s an old playbook,” said Robert Cohen, a history and social studies professor at New York University. “Nothing original about it except that he’s more unrestrained, in the kind of ludicrous way he talks about it, because he’s openly fascistic about this.”“To feel like it’s a beautiful thing when you’re using, basically, military force to suppress dissenters, that’s really sick, if you think about that in the context of a democratic society,” Cohen said.While the majority of college demonstrations in the United States have been peaceful, police arrested more than 2,500 people at the protests, which have spread to campuses in Europe, the UK, Lebanon and India.A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released earlier this week indicated that Biden supporters are split in their views of the demonstrations. Among those who plan to vote for the president, 39% oppose the protesters’ tactics but agree with their demands, 30% support them overall and 20% are against them.There’s far less diversity among Trump supporters: 78% are against the protests, and the ranks of those who support them to any degree are in the single digits.David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said Trump was reacting to the encampments in concert with conservative news outlets like Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network, whose personalities echo the former president’s condemnation of the students, and incentivize him to keep up his attacks.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You’ve got almost dual filters, reinforcing each other: Trump’s comments, and the outlets that these voters watch and trust the most,” he said in an interview.Trump may also see the protests as a way to win over undecided voters, Paleologos said, since his survey found voters who backed the students were a minority overall.“He’s figured out that if he criticizes the protesters themselves and their behavior, he wedges into the issue that potentially gets to seven-in-10 voters or two-thirds of voters,” Paleologos said.It would not be the first time a presidential candidate has profited from attacking student movements, said Cohen, who has studied the years of demonstrations on college campuses against the Vietnam war.“Doesn’t matter how non-violent they are, how admirable their goals are, dissenting student movements are always unpopular,” said Cohen, blaming the decades-long trend on America’s “overarching culture of conservatism”.“With these politicians on the right, they love this stuff. They know that playing up these student movements works because people don’t like these student movements,” he said.Yet the solutions they embrace often only lead to more intense protests.“Usually when you repress it, it just gets worse in terms of dissent and protest, because people who may not have been concerned about, in this case, Israel and Palestine, they are upset when their friends get arrested for just sitting on a plaza,” Cohen said. More

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      Court upholds Steve Bannon’s conviction for defying Jan 6 committee subpoena – as it happened

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      A federal appellate court ruled unanimously today to uphold Steve Bannon’s conviction of contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House special committee on the January 6 capitol attack. It’s a blow for the far-right media executive who helped usher Donald Trump into office in 2016 and was a key architect of the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Bannon was originally sentenced to four months in prison; this ruling makes his incarceration a real possibility, although he could appeal the decision again.Here’s what else happened today:
      Trump’s 2024 campaign will be “lean,” according to a Washington Post report, which also revealed numerous swing state officials’ worries that they lack critical campaign resources ahead of the 2024 election.
      Paul Manafort offered his consulting services to a Chinese media venture after Trump pardoned him in 2020 – and is likely to join the Trump 2024 campaign soon.
      Unsealed court documents reveal two political consultants pleaded guilty to charges that they conspired to commit money laundering with Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas, who the Department of Justice has charged with receiving bribes from foreign entities.
      Rudy Giuliani can’t stop fanning the flames of election conspiracy theories – a habit that got his show on the conservative talk radio station WABC, in New York, cancelled.
      Rudy Giuliani’s show on the conservative talk radio station WABC in New York was cancelled after Giuliani continued to platform falsehoods about the 2020 election – a violation of the radio station’s policy.According to the New York Times, which first reported the cancellation, Giuliani had been warned repeatedly to stop discussing election lies on air.“We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election,” John Catsimatidis, who owns the station, told the New York Times. “We warned him twice.”In a 9 May letter to Treasury secretary Janet Yellen, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren this week urged the Treasury to step up measures recommended by the Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity (TACRE).“I am concerned that the recommendations made by members of the TACRE remain in limbo at Treasury,” Warren wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Reuters. Warren requested the department provide a timeline by May 23 for implementing the remaining proposals.The Disney heiress and activist Abigail Disney blasted South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and the Republican Party in an email to voters, per an exclusive Guardian report from Martin Pengelly:Evoking the classic Disney tearjerker Old Yeller, in which a family is forced to put down their beloved dog, the US film-maker and campaigner Abigail Disney exhorted voters to oppose the Republican party of Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor whose story of killing Cricket, a 14-month-old dog, shocked the world and seemingly dynamited her hopes of being Donald Trump’s running mate.“My great-uncle Walt Disney knew the magic place animals have in the hearts of families everywhere,” Disney wrote in an email released by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and obtained exclusively by the Guardian.“When he released Old Yeller, the heart wrenching story stayed with people because no one takes the killing of a family pet lightly.“At least that’s what I thought until I read about potential Trump VP Kristi Noem shooting her family’s puppy – a story that has shocked so many of us.”U.S. Department of Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack announced today plans to unleash funding to mitigate the spread of bird flu in cattle – a measure intended to slow the spread of the virus.The spread of the virus to dairy cows poses an immediate risk to the workers in close contact with livestock and has raised concerns about the virus mutating and spreading to humans.Officials have promised nearly $200m for tracking and testing, and to compensate farmers who have taken a loss due to the spread of the virus.Two months after the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Colorado lacked the authority to ban Donald Trump from the ballot there, a separate fight over ballot access is playing out in Ohio, over Joe Biden’s eligibility to appear on the ballot this fall.The partisan fight that has been brewing for months escalated this week when the GOP-controlled state legislature blew past a Thursday deadline to pass legislation ensuring the president will have ballot access in November.Because the Democratic National Convention falls after the state’s certification deadline for presidential candidates, the state legislature was tasked with passing a law to push that deadline ahead.But Republicans in the state say they will grant Biden ballot access only if they garner the votes to also pass legislation banning foreign nationals from donating to state referendum campaigns – a push that stems from their anger over donations from a Swiss billionaire to Democratic-backed ballot measures in the state last year.Unsealed court documents reveal two political consultants pleaded guilty to charges that they conspired to commit money laundering with Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar of Texas.Cuellar’s former campaign manager, Colin Strother, and consultant Florencio “Lencho” Rendon, are now cooperating with the Department of Justice in its case against the Texas Democrat.Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, were indicted last week for allegedly accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from a Mexico City bank and an oil and gas company owned by the government of Azerbaijan.Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaigns are a study in contrasts.While Biden spends his Friday fundraising on the west coast, making campaign stops in California and Washington, Trump sits through another day of his New York trial over Trump’s alleged falsification of business records in connection with hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.And while the Biden campaign has launched a massive fundraising campaign, Trump’s operation appears strained amid his legal battles. According to a report today in the Washington Post, swing state GOP operatives are worried they lack critical campaign infrastructure ahead of the 2024 general election (the Trump campaign insists that’s not the case).Donald Trump’s fixer and former lawyer Michael Cohen is expected to appear in court Monday – his testimony in the hush money case will be key, given Cohen’s role in facilitating the $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. You can follow updates on the case on the Guardian’s live trial blog here:In the unanimous decision by a federal appellate court to uphold Steve Bannon’s conviction of contempt, circuit court judge Brad Garcia wrote that Bannon “deliberately refused to comply with the Select Committee’s subpoena in that he knew what the subpoena required and intentionally did not respond; his nonresponse, in other words, was no accident.”Bannon has maintained that he refused to comply with the congressional subpoena from the special House committee investigating the January 6 attacks on the advice of his former lawyer, Robert Costello – a justification the appellate court has rejected.Bannon could continue to appeal the case, including by turning to the U.S. Supreme Court.Far-right Trump ally Steve Bannon has, since Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, maintained the lie that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. Even as other figures in the conservative movement shy away from the claim, Bannon has made the falsehood a rallying cry. In March, the Guardian’s David Smith wrote about Bannon’s incendiary role in right-wing politics: Wearing an olive green jacket over a black shirt, Steve Bannon blew the doors off a subject that most other speakers had tiptoed around. “Media, I want you to suck on this, I want the White House to suck on this: you lost in 2020!” he roared. “Donald Trump is the legitimate president of the United States!”A thrill of transgression swept through the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland. “Trump won!” Bannon barked, pointing a finger. “Trump won!” he repeated, shaking a fist. “Trump won!” he proclaimed again. His audience, as if hypnotised, chanted the brazen lie in unison.It was a blunt reminder that Bannon, an architect of Trumpism variously compared to Thomas Cromwell, Rasputin and Joseph Goebbels, remains a potent force in American politics as the 2024 US presidential election looms into view and the re-election of Trump looks a clear possibility.After Steve Bannon’s criminal conviction for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the special House committee investigating the January 6 capitol attack was upheld by a federal appeals court, the far-right political operative could soon be forced to begin a 4-month prison sentence initially ordered in 2022.Leaked audio showed that ahead of the 2020 general presidential election, Bannon was familiar with Trump’s plans to declare an early victory. Since 2020, he has continued to push falsehoods about the 2020 election and host prominent conspiracy theorists on his influential War Room podcast.When the House committee investigating the January 6 attacks issued a subpoena for Bannon, he refused to comply. The court’s decision to uphold his conviction delivers a blow to the Trump ally.A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has reportedly upheld Steve Bannon’s conviction on contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena issued by the United States House select committee on the January 6 capitol attack.Paul Manafort returned to international consulting after Donald Trump pardoned him in 2020, The Washington Post reports.Manafort, in the years since obtaining clemency, worked on a Chinese streaming media venture. Now, the Post reports, Manafort is poised to join Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Manafort denied that his work on the Chinese media project would form a conflict of interest in the U.S.-China relationship.Before chairing Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Manafort’s former firm, called Black, Manafort, and Stone notoriously lobbied U.S. congress on behalf of foreign governments – including on behalf of human rights-abusing dictatorships, among them the regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.Former president Donald Trump has adopted the legal strategy of stalling and stalling to ensure his most sensitive trials will take place after the election. That strategy is working, reports Sam Levine:As had been expected for months, Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday scrapped a 20 May trial date that had been set in south Florida over the former president’s handling of classified documents. The delay was almost entirely the doing of Cannon, a Trump appointee, who allowed far-fetched legal arguments into the case and let preliminary legal matters pile up on her docket to the point where a May trial was not a possibility.On Thursday, the Georgia court of appeals announced it would hear a request from Trump to consider whether Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, should be removed from the election interference case against him because of a relationship with another prosecutor. The decision means both that Trump will continue to undermine Willis’s credibility and draw out the case. “There will be no trial until 2025,” tweeted Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University who has been closely following the case.The third pending case against Trump, a federal election interference case in Washington, also appears unlikely to go to trial before the election. The US supreme court heard oral arguments on whether Trump has immunity from prosecution last month and seemed unlikely to resolve it quickly enough to allow the case to move forward ahead of the election.Swing state GOP officials say they have not received key campaign resources ahead of the 2024 general presidential election, The Washington Post reports. This comes amid a funding crunch for Donald Trump’s campaign, which is looking lean as the former president faces mounting legal costs.Top campaign officials rejected the idea that their operation was suffering.But Republican Party officials in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan said they worried that their funding and operations would be insufficient – and that the campaign had not built out enough of an infrastructure in those key states.“There is no sign of life,” Kim Owens, an Arizona Republican Party operative, told the Post.Good morning! After easily surviving an attempt to oust him by the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, House speaker Mike Johnson appears to be basking in it. In an interview with Politico, Johnson – the conservative Republican who developed his career in the legal world of the Christian right and joined his colleagues in contesting the results of the 2020 election – waxed poetic about bipartisanship and consensus.He had high praise for House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, and proclaimed – of bipartisanship – that the American political system “doesn’t work unless you understand the principles that undergird it.”His praise came after the House easily quashed far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resolution to oust Johnson on Wednesday, as members of both parties came together in a rare moment of bipartisanship to keep the chamber open for business.The vote on the motion to table Greene’s resolution was 359 to 43, as 196 Republicans and 163 Democrats supported killing the proposal.Having said this, Johnson was just as quick to defend his role in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Johnson, who led the effort to garner congressional Republican support for a Texas lawsuit attempting to overturn the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, said he had no regrets over the legal maneuver.Here’s what’s going on today:
      Amid the former president’s mounting legal costs, Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is taking a “lean” approach, Washington Post reports.
      Trump returns to court today, rounding out a week marked by detailed testimony from adult film star Stormy Daniels about her alleged affair with Trump.
      Joe Biden will participate in campaign events on the west coast this afternoon. More

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      Pro-Israel Pac pours millions into surprise candidate in Maryland primary

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      A pro-Israel lobby group has dropped millions into a Maryland congressional race as tensions remain high over the war in Gaza.The primary race in the third congressional district, which will be held on Tuesday, has attracted national interest thanks to the candidacy of one Democrat in particular: Harry Dunn. A former US Capitol police officer, Dunn and his colleagues won praise for their actions defending lawmakers against a violent mob of Donald Trump’s supporters on January 6. In his New York Times bestselling memoir, Standing My Ground, Dunn recounted how the insurrectionists repeatedly used the N-word as they attacked him and other Black officers.Dunn announced his bid to replace retiring Democratic congressman John Sarbanes on the third anniversary of January 6, marking his first formal foray into electoral politics. Despite Dunn’s high name recognition, the group United Democracy Project, a Super Pac affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), has thrown its support behind another primary candidate.According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, UDP has spent over $4.2m supporting state senator Sarah Elfreth.UDP’s investment comes after the group spent $4.6m on its failed effort to block the Democratic congressional candidate Dave Min from advancing to the general election in California’s 47th district. But the group notched one of its biggest wins of the election cycle so far on Tuesday, when the former Republican representative John Hostettler lost his primary race in Indiana’s eighth district. UDP had devoted $1.6m to defeating Hostettler because of his voting record on Israel and some of his past comments that were criticized as antisemitic.View image in fullscreenUDP’s decision to wade into the crowded Maryland primary came as somewhat of a surprise, given that neither Dunn nor Elfreth has made a point to highlight their position on Israel in their campaign messaging. A UDP ad for Elfreth does not mention Israel at all and instead focuses on her legislative record, applauding her work in the state senate.“Sarah Elfreth gets things done,” the ad’s narrator says. “With so much at stake – abortion rights, the environment, our democracy – we need a congresswoman who will deliver.”UDP did not respond to a request for comment, but in a statement to HuffPost last month, the group’s spokesperson acknowledged Dunn’s “support for a strong US-Israel relationship” but suggested concern about other candidates in the primary.“There are some serious anti-Israel candidates in this race, who are not Harry Dunn, and we need to make sure that they don’t make it to Congress,” spokesperson Patrick Dorton said.That comment appeared to reference progressive candidate John Morse, a labor lawyer who has received the endorsement of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and has centered his campaign on his vocal support for a ceasefire in Gaza. In a recent interview with Fox45 Baltimore, Morse said: “I am the most outspoken on a permanent humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza because I think that’s the critical issue that’s going on right now.”Meanwhile, UDP’s investment has helped Elfreth compete against Dunn’s massive fundraising haul, as the first-time candidate has brought in nearly $4.6m since he entered the race. In comparison, Elfreth’s campaign has raised roughly a third as much money, $1.5m, and all 20 other candidates lag even further behind.UDP’s support for Elfreth is not part of this total; federal regulations prohibit Super Pacs from contributing directly to political candidates, but the groups can spend unlimited amounts of money to promote or criticize specific campaigns.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe financial contest could help decide what is widely expected to be a close race. A poll commissioned by Dunn’s campaign showed him leading Elfreth by four points, 22% to 18%, with state senator Clarence Lam trailing in third at 8%. The winner of the primary will almost certainly go on to win a seat in the House of Representatives, given the district’s liberal leanings. In 2022, Sarbanes won re-election by 20 points in the third district, which includes Annapolis and suburbs of Washington and Baltimore.Elfreth has said that she, like her opponents, was surprised by UDP’s support, although she has not rejected the group’s help.“I’m uncomfortable with dark money as well,” Elfreth told Maryland Matters last month. “I don’t like it. But I’m not in a position to say no to people who want to amplify my message.”Despite remaining mostly silent about the war in Gaza, Dunn has now found himself indirectly affected by UDP’s electoral strategy, and he has turned the group’s involvement in the race into a campaign issue. When news of UDP’s investment broke last month, Dunn responded by calling on all candidates to “condemn this dark-money spending bankrolled by Maga [Make America Great Again] Republicans”. In a statement to the Guardian, Dunn framed the Super Pac’s involvement as an insult to the legacy of Sarbanes, who made campaign finance reform one of his top priorities over his nine terms in Congress.“Our grassroots movement won’t be scared off by this dark money spending. I’ve made protecting and strengthening our democracy the center of our campaign,” Dunn said. “We’re going to win this race, and when I get to Congress, I know who I will work for and I will be accountable to – and it won’t be the dark money donors or the special interest groups.”That message seems to be resonating with voters, as Dunn’s team boasts that more than 100,000 people have donated to his campaign. FEC filings show that, of the $4.6m raised by Dunn, nearly $3.7m came in the form of unitemized contributions, meaning they derived from donors who gave less than $200 to the candidate across the election cycle. According to Dunn’s team, the average contribution to the campaign has been $21.64.In comparison, of Elfreth’s $1.5m raised, only $85,000 came from unitemized contributions, indicating that most of her donations came from supporters who gave more than $200. Her FEC filings show that some of her larger contributions came from some well-known Republican donors – including Robert Sarver, former owner of the Phoenix Suns, and Larry Mizel, one of Trump’s campaign finance chairs in 2016. Mizel has also served as a member of the board of directors of Aipac. More

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      House quashes Marjorie Taylor Greene motion to oust speaker Mike Johnson

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      The House easily quashed Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resolution to oust the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, on Wednesday, as members of both parties came together in a rare moment of bipartisanship to keep the chamber open for business.The vote on the motion to table Greene’s resolution was 359 to 43, as 196 Republicans and 163 Democrats supported killing the proposal.Greene took to the House floor on Wednesday evening to announce her plans, prompting boos from fellow Republicans present in the chamber. Her request triggered a countdown clock, as House rules stipulated that members had to vote on the matter within two legislative days. House Republicans chose to take up the matter immediately, as the resolution was widely expected to fail.House Democratic leaders previously indicated that they would vote to kill Greene’s resolution, and the vast majority of their caucus took the same position on Wednesday. However, 32 Democrats and 11 Republicans opposed the motion to table the resolution, and seven members voted “present”.Speaking to reporters after the vote, Johnson thanked his colleagues for helping him to hold on to a post he has held for six and a half months.“I want to say that I appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided effort. That is certainly what it was,” Johnson said. “As I’ve said from the beginning and I’ve made clear here every day, I intend to do my job. I intend to do what I believe to be the right thing, which is what I was elected to do, and I’ll let the chips fall where they may. In my view, that is leadership.”Greene’s maneuver appeared to catch many Republicans off guard, after the hard-right congresswoman spent much of the past few days meeting with Johnson to address her concerns about his leadership. She has repeatedly criticized Johnson for passing significant bills, including a government funding proposal and a foreign aid package, by relying on Democratic support.Greene had said she would force a vote on the motion to vacate this week, but she appeared to back away from that commitment on Tuesday.“We’ll see. It’s up to Mike Johnson,” Greene told reporters when asked if she still planned to demand the vote. “Obviously, you can’t make things happen instantly, and we all are aware and understanding of that. So now the ball is in his court, and he’s supposed to be reaching out to us – hopefully soon.”Donald Trump, who has voiced support for Johnson in recent weeks, reportedly called Greene over the weekend, but she would not disclose details about the call to reporters.“I have to tell you, I love President Trump. My conversations with him are fantastic,” Greene said. “And again, I’m not going to go into details. You want to know why? I’m not insecure about that.”Even though her motion to vacate overwhelmingly failed, Greene and her allies already appear poised to turn the issue into a litmus test for fellow Republican members. Congressman Thomas Massie, a co-sponsor of Greene’s resolution, shared a picture on X of the 11 Republicans who voted against the motion to table.“It’s a new paradigm in Congress,” Massie said. “[Former Democratic speaker] Nancy Pelosi, and most [Republicans] voted to keep Uniparty Speaker Mike Johnson. These are the eleven, including myself, who voted NOT to save him.”View image in fullscreenThe Republicans who rallied around Johnson returned the fire by accusing Greene and her allies of promoting chaos in the House. The episode came less than a year after the ouster of former Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy, which brought the chamber to a standstill for weeks until Johnson’s election.Congressman Mike Lawler, who faces a tough reelection campaign in New York this November, told reporters on Wednesday: “This type of tantrum is absolutely unacceptable, and it does nothing to further the cause of the conservative movement. The only people who have stymied our ability to govern are the very people that have pulled these types of stunts throughout the course of this Congress to undermine the House Republican majority.”Congressman Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat, offered a more concise and cutting assessment. Writing on X, he said of Greene: “She is so, so dumb. And yet she keeps talking.” More

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      US public school officials push back in congressional hearing on antisemitism

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      Some of America’s top school districts rebuffed charges of failing to counteract a surge of antisemitism on Wednesday in combative exchanges with a congressional committee that has been at the centre of high-profile interrogations of elite university chiefs.Having previously grilled the presidents of some of the country’s most prestigious seats of higher learning in politically charged settings, the House of Representatives’ education and workforce subcommittee switched the spotlight to the heads of three predominantly liberal school districts with sizable Jewish populations.The hearing was presented as an investigation into how the authorities were safeguarding Jewish staff and students in an atmosphere of rising bigotry against the backdrop of Israel’s war in Gaza.Calling the need for the hearing “a travesty”, Republican member Aaron Bean from Florida said 246 “very vile” antisemitic acts had been reported in the three districts – in New York City, Montgomery county in Maryland and Berkeley in California – since last October’s attack by Hamas on Israel.“Antisemitism is repugnant in all its forms but the topic of today’s hearing is pretty troubling,” he said. “It’s hard to grasp how antisemitism has become such a force in our kindergarten-through-12 [high] schools.”He cited instances of students marching through corridors chanting “kill the Jews”, a pupil caught on a security camera imitating Hitler and performing the Nazi salute, and Jewish children being told to pick up pennies.The three districts insisted in response that they did not tolerate antisemitism in their schools. They said they had taken educational and disciplinary steps to combat antisemitism following the 7 October attack, which led to an Israeli military offensive in Gaza that has triggered a wave of demonstrations on university campuses and beyond.However, the districts gave divergent answers on whether teachers had been fired for actions deemed antisemitic. Each district has received complaints over their handling of post-7 October allegations of antisemitism.David Banks, the chancellor of the New York City school system, engaged in a testy exchange with Republicans over an episode at Hillcrest high school, whose principal had been removed following a protest against a pro-Israel teacher but had been reassigned to an administrative role rather than fired.The Republican representative, Elise Stefanik – noted for her pointed questioning of three university presidents over free speech at a previous hearing last December – sparred with Banks and accused the school leaders of paying “lip service”.Banks stood his ground and appeared to challenge the committee, saying: “This convening feels like the ultimate ‘gotcha’ moment. It doesn’t sound like people trying to solve for something we actually solve for.”He added: “We cannot simply discipline our way out of this problem. The true antidote to ignorance and bias is to teach.”Banks said his district had “terminated people” over antisemitism.Karla Silvestre, president of Montgomery county public schools in Maryland – which includes schools in suburbs near Washington – said no teacher had been fired, prompting Bean to retort: “So you allow them to continue to teach hate?”Enikia Ford Morthel, superintendent of the Berkeley unified school district in California, said her authority’s adherence to state and federal privacy laws precluded her from giving details on disciplinary measures taken against staff and students.“As a result, some believe we do nothing. This is not true,” she said.“Since October 7, our district has had formal complaints alleging antisemitism arising from nine incidents without our jurisdiction. However, antisemitism is not pervasive in Berkeley unified school district.”Echoing previous hearings that featured the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia, Bean asked all three district heads whether they considered the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” antisemitic.Each said yes, although Silvestre and Morthel qualified this by saying their affirmation was dependent on whether it meant the elimination of the Jewish population in Israel – an interpretation disputed by many pro-Palestinian campaigners. Bean said tersely: “It does.”Responding to the three opening statements, Bean said: “Congratulations. You all have done a remarkable job testifying. But just like some college presidents before you that sat in the very same seat, they also in many instances said the right thing. They said they were protecting students when they were really not.”The subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, accused Republicans of being selective in their stance against antisemitism, singling out the notorious white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, whose participants chanted “Jews will not replace us”. The then president Donald Trump later said the rally included some “very fine people” .She described one of those who took part, Nick Fuentes, as a “vile antisemite … who denied the scope of the Holocaust”, but noted that Trump hosted him at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida in November 2022.“I will offer my colleagues on the other side of the aisle the opportunity to condemn these previous comments,” Bonamici said. “ Does anyone have the courage to stand up against this?”When committee members remained silent, she said: “Let the record show that no one spoke at this time.” More