More stories

  • in

    Biden attacks Trump as grave threat to democracy in rousing 2024 speech

    A day before the third anniversary of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, Joe Biden delivered a pointed speech to warn voters against re-electing Donald Trump, criticizing the likely Republican presidential nominee as a fundamental threat to democracy in an attempt to shape the dynamics of the 2024 election.“Today we’re here to answer the most important of questions: is democracy still America’s sacred cause?” Biden said. “Today, I make this sacred pledge to you: the defense, protection and preservation of American democracy will remain, as it has been, the central cause of my presidency.“America, as we began this election year, we must be clear: democracy is on the ballot.”Sharply contrasting himself with his opponent, Biden accused Trump of attempting to undermine America’s system of government, painting the Republican leader as a would-be autocrat hellbent on revenge. Biden noted that Trump had vowed “retribution” against his political enemies if he is elected, and had indicated he would act as a dictator on the first day of his second term.“Donald Trump’s campaign is about him – not America, not you. Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future,” Biden said. “Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past. It’s what he’s promising for the future.”The speech came a day before the anniversary of the January 6 attack in 2021, when a group of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in a violent effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. A bipartisan Senate report found that seven people died as a result of the insurrection, and Trump now faces four felony counts over his role in the attack and his broader campaign to overturn the election results.But Trump has continued to defend those who carried out the attack as “patriots”, promising to issue pardons to them if he is elected.“In trying to rewrite the facts of January 6, Trump was trying to steal history the same way he tried to steal the election. But we knew the truth because we saw with our own eyes,” Biden said.“Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest. It was a violent assault. They were insurrectionists, not patriots. They weren’t there to uphold the constitution. They were there to destroy the constitution.”Trump, who spoke to hundreds of supporters in Iowa Friday night in his first campaign visit of 2024, shot back at Biden’s speech, painting a dark portrait of the US. He called it a “failing” nation, beset by “terrorists” and immigrants from “mental asylums” pouring over the US-Mexico border.Biden highlighted the setting of his speech, which took place roughly 10 miles from Valley Forge national historical park in Pennsylvania, to underscore the high stakes of the presidential race. During America’s fight for independence in the revolutionary war, George Washington and his Continental army troops camped at Valley Forge during a difficult winter.“After all we’ve been through in our history – from independence to civil war to two world wars to a pandemic to insurrection – I refuse to believe that in 2024 we Americans would choose to walk away from what’s made us the greatest nation in the history of the world: freedom, liberty,” Biden said.The speech came at a particularly vulnerable moment for Biden. Polls show Biden’s approval rating mired in the high 30s with Americans expressing concerns about the state of the economy, despite strong job creation and the easing of inflation. A Gallup poll conducted last month found that only 22% of Americans view economic conditions as “good” or “excellent”, while 78% consider current conditions to be “fair” or “poor”. National polls show Biden and Trump running neck and neck in a hypothetical general election.Biden is holding a series of events to reframe the 2024 election as a fight for democracy and fundamental freedoms. In addition to the Valley Forge speech, Biden will speak on Monday at Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, where nine African Americans were fatally shot by a white supremacist in 2015.Biden’s campaign has said the president will also hold events later this month to commemorate the anniversary of Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a federal right to abortion access. That ruling was overturned by the conservative-leaning supreme court in 2022, resulting in abortion bans in more than a dozen states.“When Joe Biden ran for president four years ago, he said, ‘We are in the battle for the soul of America,’” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden’s campaign manager, told reporters on Tuesday. “As we look towards November 2024, we still are. The threat Donald Trump posed in 2020 to American democracy has only grown more dire in the years since.”Despite that grim outlook, Biden expressed his trademark optimism as he spoke to supporters in Pennsylvania, reiterating his message of American exceptionalism and urging voters to embrace hope.“None of you believe America is failing. We know America is winning. That’s American patriotism,” Biden said. “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is: who are we?”Reuters contributed to this report More

  • in

    Trans candidate disqualified in Ohio for omitting previous name

    Despite receiving enough signatures to appear on the ballot, a transgender woman has been disqualified from an Ohio state house race because she omitted her previous name, raising concern that other transgender candidates nationwide may face similar barriers.Vanessa Joy of was one of four transgender candidates running for state office in Ohio, largely in response to proposed restrictions of the rights of LGBTQ+ people. She was running as a Democrat in house district 50 – a heavily Republican district in Stark county, Ohio – against Republican candidate Matthew Kishman. Joy legally changed her name and birth certificate in 2022, which she says she provided to the Stark county board of elections for the 19 March primary race.But as Joy found out on Tuesday, a little-known 1990s state law says that a candidate must provide any name changes within the last five years to qualify for the ballot. Since the law is not currently listed on the candidate requirement guidelines on the Ohio secretary of state’s website, Joy did not know it existed.To provide her former name, Joy said, would be to use her deadname – a term used by the transgender community to refer to the name given at birth, not one they chose that aligns with their gender identity.And while Joy said the spirit of the law is to weed out bad actors, it creates a barrier for transgender people who want to run for office and may not want to share their deadname for important reasons, including concern about their personal safety.“If I had known that I had to put my deadname on my petitions, I personally would have because being elected was important to me,” Joy said. “But for many it would be a barrier to entry because they would not want their names on the petitions.”She continued: “It’s a danger, and that name is dead.”The office of the Ohio secretary of state, Frank LaRose, and the Stark county board of elections did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on Thursday. It is not clear if this law has applied to any current or previous state lawmakers.Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA law school and an election expert, said that requiring candidates to disclose any name changes posed problems in Ohio, but generally serves a purpose. “If a candidate has something to hide in their past like criminal activity, disclosing former names used by the candidate would make sense,” Hasen said in an email.Sean Meloy, the vice-president of political programs for the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, which supports LGBTQ+ candidates, said he did not know of tracking efforts to find how many states require name changes in petition paperwork.“The biggest issue is the selective enforcement of it,” Meloy said in an interview on Thursday.Over the past few years, many states have ramped up restrictions on transgender people – including barring minors from accessing gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and hormones. In some states, that has extended to limitations on which school bathrooms trans children and students can use and which sports teams they can join.Last year, Meloy said, a record number of candidates who are transgender sought and won office, and he expects that trend to continue in 2024.Ohio lawmakers passed restrictions late last year that were vetoed by the state’s Republican governor, though many Republican state representatives say they are planning to override that veto as soon as next week.Meloy said that some conservatives are trying to silence transgender voices.He pointed to Zooey Zephyr, a transgender lawmaker who was blocked last year from speaking on Montana’s House floor after she refused to apologize for telling colleagues who supported a ban on gender-affirming care that they would have blood on their hands.“Now that anti-trans legislation is being moved once again,” Meloy said, “this seems like a selectively enforced action to try to keep another trans person from doing that.”Joy appealed against her disqualification on Thursday, and is now seeking legal representation. She plans to try to change Ohio’s law. More

  • in

    Storm Trump is brewing – and the whole world needs to brace itself | Jonathan Freedland

    It is not a prediction, but it is a possibility – and a growing one. Barring a major upset, Donald Trump is on course to be the Republican nominee for US president. If he wins that contest, which begins in earnest in Iowa on 15 January, then polling in the handful of must-win, battleground states suggests he has a better than even chance of beating Joe Biden in November. Of course, much can change between now and then: once voters’ minds are concentrated on the looming prospect of a Trump return, many might recoil. All the same, Americans need to prepare themselves now for a second Trump presidency – and so does the rest of the world.A good first step will be shedding any illusions that the sequel would simply be a repeat of the original. Trump 2.0 will be more focused and more capable than the initial iteration. In January 2017, he was a novice, new to Washington, new to political office and clueless as to the machinery of government. He relied on appointees who could, and often did, thwart his crazier, darker impulses – even if that meant swiping key documents from his desk before he had a chance to see or sign them.Trump is different now. Four years in the White House taught him where the levers of power are and who he needs to push aside to reach them. Next time, he won’t allow himself to be babysat or reined in by assorted appropriate adults: there will be no Rex Tillerson at the state department or James Mattis at the Pentagon. Instead, he will populate his administration with loyalists undistracted by any duty to democratic norms and conventions, committed solely to ensuring Trump’s will is done. Once those informal, unwritten constraints are off, there is little that will stand in his way.He has been shockingly upfront about this. As early as last summer, Trump aides were briefing their plans for a massive presidential power grab should their boss be re-elected. They promise to bring independent agencies, including those that oversee the media and the internet, or trade and industry, under the direct control of the Oval Office. They will hand themselves the power to fire tens of thousands of civil servants, replacing them with yet more loyalists – eyeing up especially the intelligence and security agencies, rooting out anyone deemed unreliable. In the words of Russell Vought, who served in the first Trump term and is now involved in drawing up plans for a second: “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.”Team Trump makes no secret of its particular interest in the justice department, ditching the convention that the executive stay out of decisions over who does, and does not, get prosecuted. With judicial independence cast aside, Trump would be able not only to pardon himself and his pals, but to order investigations into his enemies, starting with the Biden family and all those who, he believes, have wronged him – including, no doubt, those state election officials who refused to fiddle the numbers and declare him the winner of the 2020 contest. If that sounds hyperbolic, remember Trump’s stated promise to his supporters: “I am your warrior. I am your justice … I am your retribution.”Not for nothing is there serious concern in the US that January 2025 could open a new chapter of US authoritarianism, even an American dictatorship – with Trump bent on filling the judiciary and the upper reaches of the military with those whose first loyalty will be not to the US constitution but to him. Perhaps the most telling moment of the primary season so far came last month when Trump was interviewed by major league sycophant Sean Hannity of Fox News. Clearly trying to help, Hannity invited Trump to quash the rumours that he planned to rule as a dictator, abusing power and seeking revenge against his political rivals. “Except for day one,” came the reply. “After that, I’m not a dictator.So Americans have much to brace for: a Trump presidency with all the darkness, bigotry and corruption of the first, only this time more determined, efficient and ruthless. But it is not only those inside the country who need to gird themselves. The rest of the world must prepare too.Among the more startling pieces in a collection compiled by the Atlantic magazine under the heading “If Trump wins”, was one by the analyst Anne Applebaum. Her stark prediction: “Trump will abandon Nato.” She makes the persuasive case that even if he does not formally withdraw from the alliance, Trump can render it defunct simply by shaking confidence in its central commitment: that each member come to the defence of any other if attacked. Once the likes of Vladimir Putin conclude that Trump no longer believes in that creed of collective defence, the game will be up.The immediate casualty of such a shift will be Ukraine. Kyiv has relied on US arms and aid since Russia’s invasion nearly two years ago, an act of aggression whose initial stages were praised by Trump as “genius”. A re-elected Joe Biden would keep that support for Ukraine coming. Under Trump, it would dry up.Orysia Lutsevych of Chatham House told me that, in that scenario, Kyiv would have to pursue a “totally different war strategy, lowering its ambition from retaking territory seized by Russia to denying Russia the opportunity to take more”. One former high-ranking figure in the US military reckons that “the best we can hope for is that Europe pressures [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy into accepting some form of armistice with Russia that concedes Donbas and Crimea”, along with international security guarantees. He offers that verdict with no enthusiasm: “This is exactly the outcome Putin desires.”It’s worth spelling out what that means: a Moscow no longer deterred by the threat of Nato, rewarded for its aggression and free to pursue more elsewhere, eyeing up its neighbours and licking its lips. If the US is led by a man who, we already know, grovels to dictators and disdains the US’s allies, other nations will start to recalculate: watch smaller, more vulnerable countries in Asia cosy up to Beijing, as a matter of self-preservation. Some might welcome a Trump-led retreat as the end of US imperialism; in reality, it would merely advance the day when Chinese and Russian imperialism take its place.None of this can wait. The US’s allies need to prepare now for a change that could well be just a year away. To defend Ukraine without US help will take money and hardware on a scale dwarfing anything Europe has come up with so far. But no less important, the return of Trump will also require deep cooperation, whether on security or the climate emergency, especially among the nations of Europe – and that includes Britain.The go-it-alone fantasies of the Brexit era were always delusional. In a second Trump era, they would be downright dangerous. An orange storm could be coming – and we need to be ready.
    Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
    Join Jonathan Freedland at 8pm GMT on Tuesday 16 January for a Guardian Live online event. He will be talking to Julian Borger, whose new memoir, I Seek a Kind Person, reveals the story of his father’s escape from the Nazis via an ad placed in the Guardian. Tickets available here More

  • in

    Biden to start election year with speech on third anniversary of Capitol attack

    Joe Biden will on Friday mark the third anniversary of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, delivering his first presidential election campaign speech of 2024 at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania – a site replete with historical meaning.A day before the anniversary, due to forecast bad weather, Biden will speak where George Washington’s army endured another dark moment: the bitter winter of 1777-78, an ordeal key to winning American independence from Britain.Biden will also speak about January 6 on Monday at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, where in June 2015 a gunman shot dead nine Black people in an attempt to start a race war.Donald Trump’s nearest challenger for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, was governor of South Carolina at the time and subsequently oversaw the removal of the Confederate battle flag from statehouse grounds.Haley has since struggled to define her position on the flag and the interests it represented, last week in New Hampshire failing to say slavery caused the civil war.But the Biden campaign is focusing on Trump, who refused to accept his conclusive defeat in 2020, spreading the lie that he was denied by electoral fraud and ultimately encouraging supporters to attempt to stop certification of Biden’s win by Congress.The attack on the Capitol delayed certification but the process was completed in the early hours of 7 January. Biden was inaugurated two weeks later.On Thursday, the Biden campaign previewed his Valley Forge speech and released Cause, an ad one adviser said would “set the stakes” for this year’s election.“I’ve made the preservation of American democracy the central issue of my presidency,” Biden says in the ad, over footage of Americans voting.But, he adds, over shots of white supremacists marching in Virginia in 2017 and the attack on Congress, “There’s something dangerous happening in America. There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy.”Wes Moore, the first Black governor of Maryland, widely seen as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2028 but now a Biden campaign adviser, told MSNBC: “The president is really setting the stakes and really hoping to set the platform for what people are going to hear.“From him, it is a vision for their future. From Donald Trump, they’re going to hear a vision about his future. That’s the difference.”Less than two weeks from the Iowa caucuses, Trump dominates Republican polling, regardless of 91 criminal charges – 17 concerning election subversion – in four cases, civil trials over his business affairs and a rape allegation and attempts to bar him from the ballot in Colorado and Maine under the 14th amendment, introduced after the civil war to stop insurrectionists running for office.Trump has called January 6 “a beautiful day” and supporters imprisoned because of it “great, great patriots” and “hostages”. At rallies he has played Justice for All, The Star-Spangled Banner sung by jailed rioters, interspersed with his own recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. On Saturday, he will stage a rally in Iowa, less than five days before caucuses in the midwestern state kick off the 2024 election.Republicans in Congress continue to range themselves behind Trump, the majority whip Tom Emmer’s endorsement this week completing the set of GOP House leaders. Among the rank and file, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right representative from Georgia who has touted herself as Trump’s running mate, was due to host a January 6 commemoration in Florida, until the venue canceled it.Many observers see winning the White House as Trump’s best hope of staying out of prison. Some polling suggests a criminal conviction (also possible over retention of classified information and hush-money payments) would reduce support but for now he is competitive with Biden or leads him in surveys regarding a notional general election.Furthermore, polling shows more Americans accepting Trump’s stolen election lie.This week, the Washington Post and the University of Maryland found that only 62% of respondents said Biden’s 2020 win was legitimate, down from 69% two years ago. On the question of blame for January 6, meanwhile, the same pollsters found that 25% of Americans (and 34% of Republicans) thought it was probably or definitely true that the FBI, not Trump, was responsible for inciting the riot.Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, referred to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan when she said: “Led by Donald Trump, Maga Republicans are running on an extreme platform of undermining the will of the American people who vote in free and fair elections, weaponising the government against their political opponents, and parroting the rhetoric of dictators.”Biden’s new ad and January 6 speeches, Chavez Rodriguez said, would “serve as a very real reminder that this election could very well determine the very fate of American democracy”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

  • in

    Trump businesses received millions in foreign payments while he was in office

    Donald Trump “repeatedly and willfully” violated the US constitution by “allowing his businesses to accept millions of dollars from some of the most corrupt nations on Earth”, prominently including China, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee charged on Thursday, unveiling a 156-page report on the matter.Four businesses owned by Trump’s family conglomerate received at least $7.8m in payments in total from 20 countries during his four years in the White House, the report said. It added that the payments probably represented just a fraction of foreign payments to the Republican president and his family during his administration, which ran from 2017 to 2021.The foreign emoluments clause of the US constitution bars the acceptance of gifts from foreign states without congressional consent.Trump broke with precedent – and his own campaign-trail promises – and did not divest from his businesses or put them into a blind trust when he took office, instead leaving his adult sons to manage them.The issue of foreign spending at Trump-owned businesses proceeded to dog Trump throughout his time in power.On Thursday, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the oversight committee, said: “After promising ‘the greatest infomercial in political history’ [regarding his business interests] … Trump repeatedly and willfully violated the constitution by failing to divest from his business empire and allowing his businesses to accept millions of dollars in payments from some of the most corrupt nations on earth.”Such countries spent – “often lavishly”, the report said – on apartments and hotel stays at properties owned by Trump’s business empire, thereby “personally enriching President Trump while he made foreign policy decisions connected to their policy agendas with far-reaching ramifications for the United States”.Raskin said: “The limited records the committee obtained show that while Donald Trump was in office, he received more than $5.5m from the Chinese government and Chinese state-owned enterprises, as well as millions more from 19 other foreign governments including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, through just four of the more than 500 entities he owned.”Those four properties – Trump International Hotel in Washington, Trump Tower and Trump World Tower in New York, and Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas – represented less than 1% of the 558 corporate entities Trump owned either directly or indirectly while president, the report said.Raskin said: “The governments making these payments sought specific foreign policy outcomes from President Trump and his administration. Each dollar … accepted violated the constitution’s strict prohibition on payments from foreign governments, which the founders enacted to prevent presidents from selling out US foreign policy to foreign leaders.”Shortly after Trump was elected, Congress began investigating potential conflicts of interest and violations of the emoluments clause. The investigation led to a lengthy court dispute which ended in a settlement in 2022, at which point Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars, began producing documents requested.After Republicans took over the House last year, the oversight committee stopped requiring those documents. A US district court ended litigation on the matter. Mazars did not provide documents regarding at least 80% of Trump’s business entities, Democrats said on Thursday.Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination this year, despite facing 91 criminal indictments, assorted civil threats and moves to bar him from the ballot in Colorado and Maine, under the 14th amendment meant to stop insurrectionists running for office.His campaign did not immediately comment on the Democratic report.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRaskin pointed a finger at a leading Trump ally, James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican oversight chair.“While the figures and constitutional violations in this report are shocking, we still don’t know the extent of the foreign payments that Donald Trump received – or even the total number of countries that paid him and his businesses while he was president – because committee chairman James Comer and House Republicans buried any further evidence of the Trump family’s staggering corruption.”Comer – who is leading Republican attempts to impeach Joe Biden over alleged corruption involving foreign money – issued a statement of his own.“It’s beyond parody that Democrats continue their obsession with former President Trump,” Comer said. “Former President Trump has legitimate businesses but the Bidens do not. The Bidens and their associates made over $24m by cashing in on the Biden name in China, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Romania. No goods or services were provided other than access to Joe Biden and the Biden network.”Most observers say Republicans have not produced compelling evidence of corruption involving Biden, members of his family and foreign interests. The New York Times, for example, judged recently that “many messages cited by Republicans as evidence of corruption by President Biden and his family are being presented out of context”.On social media on Thursday, the California Democrat Eric Swalwell said: “No president ever personally enriched himself more while in office than Donald Trump. And mostly, in his case, from foreign cash. I don’t want to hear another peep about bogus Biden allegations. Game, set, match. Move on.”Raskin said: “By concealing the evidence of Trump’s grift, House Republicans shamefully condone former President Trump’s past conduct and keep the door open for future presidents to exploit higher office.”The family business empire, the Trump Organization, including Donald Trump and his two oldest sons, Don Jr and Eric, is in the closing stages of a civil trial brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.Reuters contributed reporting More

  • in

    ‘Floored’ union leader called AOC new Springsteen after shock primary win, book says

    Donald Trump memorably compared the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Eva Perón, the Argentinian first lady known as Evita. But a new book reveals that when the young Latino leftwinger burst on to the US political scene in 2018, one US labour leader made perhaps a more telling comparison – to Bruce Springsteen.“I was floored,” Michael Podhorzer, then political director of the AFL-CIO, told the author Joshua Green. “The best comparison I can make is to the famous Jon Landau line: ‘I’ve seen rock’n’roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.’”Landau is a journalist who became Springsteen’s manager and producer. He passed his famous judgment in May 1974, after seeing Springsteen play at the Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then 25, Springsteen went on to sell records by the million and win Grammys by the sackful, becoming widely known as the Boss but maintaining his image as a blue-collar hero, true to his New Jersey roots.In Democratic politics, Ocasio-Cortez – widely known as AOC – has built her own star power while maintaining working-class credentials.In 2018, she was a 28-year-old bartender when she scored a historic upset primary win over Joe Crowley, then 56 and a member of Democratic US House leadership, in a New York City district covering parts of Queens and the Bronx.In a campaign ad, Ocasio-Cortez depicted herself as an ordinary New Yorker, hustling to work on the subway.She described Crowley, in contrast, as “a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off foreclosure, doesn’t live here, doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water or breathe our air”.Green, previously the author of Devil’s Bargain, on Trump’s rise to power, reports Podhorzer’s response in his new book, The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics.A look at three stars of the modern Democratic left, the book will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Podhorzer, Green says, is a union official “who spends his waking hours trying to get voters to care about working people”. Among working people who might appreciate his comparison of Ocasio-Cortez to Springsteen is none other than Crowley, now senior policy director for Dentons, the world’s largest law firm.At a party event on election night in 2018, as he digested the sudden end of his 20-year congressional career, Crowley picked up a guitar and took the stage with a band.“This is for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” he said, launching a cover of Springsteen’s Born to Run.In his epilogue, Green considers a common question: was Ocasio-Cortez born to run for president?Noting how AOC, Warren and Sanders have pushed Democrats left, as evidenced by Joe Biden’s record in office, he writes that Ocasio-Cortez “still gets covered mainly through the lens of ‘the Squad’” – a group of mostly female representatives of color who have achieved prominence on Capitol Hill.“But among the rising generation of Democratic staffers and strategists who will soon run the party, she’s come to be seen as a significant figure in her own right.”Speaking anonymously, a Warren adviser adds: “You can see [AOC] pointing a path toward the future in a way that none of the other Squad members are doing. She’s the one really marking the future of the left in the post-Biden era.” More

  • in

    ‘They had absolute power’: the US congressman driven out by Republican gerrymandering

    A little over nine months after he was sworn in to his first term in Congress, Jeff Jackson, a freshman US representative for North Carolina, announced he would leave the body at the end of his term.To an outsider, that might seem like a surprising decision. In just his first few months in Congress, Jackson had become well-known for smart, short videos explaining what was going on at the Capitol. By April, he had more followers on TikTok than any other member of Congress, the Washington Post reported (as of mid-December he had 2.5 million). By all accounts, he was a rising star.But the reason for his planned departure was simple – it was impossible for him to win re-election. In October, Republicans enacted a new congressional map that reconfigured the boundaries of his district. They cracked the district near Charlotte, which Jackson won by more than 15 points in 2022, and divided voters into two districts that heavily favor GOP voters. It was an effort made possible by the new Republican majority on the North Carolina supreme court, which reversed a key ruling limiting extreme partisan gerrymandering it issued just months ago. Jackson announced he would run for attorney general in the state instead.The Guardian spoke to Jackson about gerrymandering, what he’s learned in Congress, and his decision to leave. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.You get that phone call – and you have no chance of winning re-election. What’s that like?To be honest, we knew it was very likely to end up that way. I was not shocked. They had absolute power to draw almost any map they wanted. And we all know what absolute power does to politicians. Frankly, it would have been a shock if we hadn’t seen this level of corruption from them.So you sort of knew that this was coming.I didn’t know it to a certainty. And I didn’t have any advance information. I just knew the legal freedom that our court was going to grant them and I knew what their incentives were. So if you have that information you can predict the outcome.Can I ask you what happened with the supreme court in North Carolina. Obviously, they switched their rulings on the districts within a matter of months after control of the court flipped. And some people might look at that and say that’s not surprising, the partisan makeup changes, the rulings change. Is there something there that you think people should pay more attention to?On its face it’s deeply concerning. I don’t think you have to know much about the court or politics to see exactly what happened here. This is one of those instances where one of the most obvious explanations is simply the right one. The court was elected with a different partisan composition and they acted in a partisan way to accommodate their party. I think the simple read here is the right one.And do you think people pay close enough attention to what’s happening in supreme court races? I mean, there was one in North Carolina that was decided by 400 votes.I am absolutely positive that they do not. Just with my conversations with voters over the years, the judicial races are the ones furthest from people’s radar.Why do you think that is and how do you get people to pay more attention to them?We haven’t had partisan judicial races for a really long time in North Carolina. That’s a recent development. We’re the first state in a long time, many decades, to go from non-partisan judicial races to partisan judicial races.So I think most people in North Carolina just grew up with an understanding that these judicial races were not partisan and were probably between judges and lawyers who wanted to be a judge. But now that’s not the case. Now these offices come with prepackaged partisan agendas as we saw with redistricting in North Carolina.Is there any hope of fixing this problem in North Carolina?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe gerrymandering fix in North Carolina is a long-term fix. There are no immediate prospects for this because of the hurdles that you cited. The only way to mitigate it is by doubling down on our effort to get people to the polls. The only way you overcome the seawall of gerrymandering is through an energetic approach to turning out the vote, and that’s what we’re gonna do.Going back to your district, what do you think the consequences are going to be for voters?That’s a good question, particularly when it’s a brutal gerrymander. The state legislature basically used redistricting to take as much power away from voters as they possibly could. They found the true ceiling of how much electoral power they should shift from the voters to themselves. I don’t care which party you’re in, you really shouldn’t appreciate elections being decided for you for the rest of the decade by the state legislature drawing the map, which is exactly what happened.Walk me through your decision to not run for this new district and to run for attorney general?I’ve appreciated the opportunity to serve in Congress. I’ve found it highly educational and [there have been] moments where I felt really productive but I also appreciate the opportunity to serve as attorney general. The job is to protect people. It’s our state’s top prosecutor. I started my career at the district attorney’s office and it’s about guarding against consumer fraud and keeping kids safe online and combatting the fentanyl epidemic and protecting clean air and water.One thing about the job that’s really great is that it’s really not about the type of jobs you see in Congress. It’s not so much about left versus right. It’s just about doing what’s right. Having been in a highly charged partisan environment like Congress, serving as attorney general would be completely different in a really refreshing way.You were in Congress for a relatively short time – what are your takeaways from what you learned there? Your videos about what it’s like to be a congressman I think really struck a chord with a lot of people.There are a lot of serious people here who want to do good work and they tend to be the people whose names you might not know. And getting to know a lot of those people and find ways to work with them has been a rewarding part of the experience.Another rewarding part, to your point, has been learning that there’s enormous appetite by the American public for being spoken to in a calm, reasonable, sensible way about politics. That wasn’t necessarily what I expected. They’re so used to being screamed at that I sort of thought what I was offering wasn’t going to gain much traction beyond my district, beyond people who personally knew me. But as it turns out there’s huge demand for being spoken to in a normal tone of voice about what’s happening in Congress. I think that’s really encouraging.Can I also ask you one more question about this new law that messes with the composition of local boards of elections? There’s concerns that could be used to interfere with certifying election results in other matters. Is that something that you’re concerned about and that you would be focused on as attorney general?Any time the same group of people who just gerrymandered the heck out of the whole state say that they have some ideas about tinkering with the state board of elections, it should make the hair on the back of everyone’s neck stand up. These people are flatly not to be trusted when it comes to taking power away from the voters. More

  • in

    It’s the democracy, stupid … and other issues set to shape the 2024 US election

    Whether or not the 2024 US presidential election presents the expected Joe Biden v Donald Trump rematch, much will be at stake.From the future of reproductive rights to the chances of meaningful action on climate change, from the strength of US support for Ukraine in its war with Russia to the fate of democracy in America itself, existential issues are set to come to the fore.Economy“It’s the economy, stupid.” So said the Democratic strategist James Carville, in 1992, as an adviser to Bill Clinton. Most Americans thought stewardship of the economy should change: Clinton beat an incumbent president, George HW Bush.More than 30 years later, under Joe Biden, the post-Covid recovery seems on track. Unemployment is low, the Dow at all-time highs. That should bode well for Biden but the key question is whether enough Americans think the economy is strong, or think it is working for them in particular. It seems many do not. Cost-of-living concerns dominate public polling, inflation remains high. Republican threats to social security and Medicare might offset such worries – hence Biden (and indeed Donald Trump) seizing on any hint that a Republican candidate (see, Nikki Haley) might pose a threat to such programmes.EqualityRon DeSantis made attacks on LGBTQ+ rights a hallmark of his attempt to “Make America Florida”. The hardline governor’s tanking campaign suggests how well that has gone down but Republican efforts to demonise all forms of so-called “woke” ideology should not be discounted. There have been tangible results: anti-trans legislation, book bans and restrictions on LGBTQ+ issues in education, the end of race-based affirmative action in university admissions thanks to the conservative-packed supreme court.Continuing struggles on Capitol Hill over immigration, and Republicans’ usual focus on crime in major cities, show traditional race-inflected battles will play their customary role on the campaign trail, particularly as Trump uses extremist “blood and soil” rhetoric in front of eager crowds. On the Democratic side, meanwhile, a distinctly worrying sign: Black and Hispanic support for Biden is no longer such a sure thing.AbortionHigh-ranking Democrats are clear: the party will focus on Republican attacks on abortion rights, from the Dobbs v Jackson supreme court ruling that struck down Roe v Wade last year to the forthcoming mifepristone case, draconian bans in Republican states and candidates’ support for such bans.For Democrats, it makes tactical sense: the threat to women’s reproductive rights is a rare issue on which the party polls very strongly and has clearly fuelled a series of electoral wins, even in conservative states, since Dobbs was handed down.Trump, however, clearly also recognises the potency of the issue – while trying to dodge responsibility for appointing three justices who voted to strike down Roe. Haley and DeSantis have tried to duck questions about their records and plans on abortion. Whoever the Republican candidate is, they can expect relentless attacks.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionForeign policyThe Israel-Gaza war presents a fiendish proposition for Biden: how to satisfy or merely mollify both the Israel lobby and large sections of his own party, particularly the left and the young more sympathetic to the Palestinians.Proliferating protests against Israel’s pounding of Gaza and the West Bank show the danger of coming unglued from the base. A recent Capitol Hill hearing, meanwhile, saw Republicans claim a political victory with the resignation of the president of the University of Pennsylvania over alleged antisemitism amid student protests for Palestinian rights.Elsewhere, Biden continues to lead a global coalition in support of Ukraine in its fight against Russia but further US funding is held up by Republicans seeking draconian immigration reform, some keen to abandon Kyiv altogether. Throw in the lasting effects of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan (teed up by Trump but fumbled by Biden), questions about what the US should do should China attack Taiwan, and the threat Trump poses to US membership of Nato, and heavy fire on foreign policy is guaranteed throughout election year.DemocracyIf Biden is happy to be seen as a protector of democracy abroad, he is increasingly keen to stress the threat to democracy at home. After all, his most likely opponent refused to accept the result of the 2020 election, incited the deadly attack on Congress of 6 January 2021, has been linked to plans to slash the federal government in a second term, and has even said he wants to be a “dictator” on day one.Trump will no doubt maintain the lie that his 2020 defeat was the result of electoral fraud as various criminal cases proceed towards trial, 17 of 91 state and federal charges concerning election subversion. For Biden, the issue has been profitable at the polls. DeSantis and Haley, though, must dance around the subject, seeking not to alienate Trump supporters. The New York Times sums up their responses, dispiritingly, thus: DeSantis “has signed restrictions on voting rights in Florida, and long avoided questions about 2020”; Haley “said Biden’s victory was legitimate, but has played up the risk of voter fraud more broadly”.ClimateIf Trump threatens US democracy, the climate crisis threatens the US itself. From forest fires to hurricanes and catastrophic floods, it is clear climate change is real. Public polling reflects this: 70% of Americans – strikingly, including 50% of Republicans – want meaningful action. But that isn’t reflected in Republican campaigning. Trump says he doesn’t believe human activity contributes to climate change, nor that climate change is making extreme weather worse, and is opposed to efforts to boost clean energy. Haley does believe humans are causing climate change and making weather worse, but worked for Trump as UN ambassador when the US pulled out of the Paris climate deal and opposes clean energy incentives. DeSantis is closer to Trump – and wants to end regulation of emissions.Biden’s record on climate may be criticised by campaigners but his record in office places him firmly against such Republican views. More