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      US House passes stopgap funding bill under the wire without funding for Ukraine

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      The House passed a bill Saturday to extend government funding for 45 days, sending the legislation to the Senate with just hours left to avert a federal shutdown. Unless Joe Biden signs a funding bill before midnight, the government will shut down.The bill passed the House in an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 335 to 91, with 209 Democrats joining 126 Republicans in supporting the legislation. Ninety Republicans opposed the bill.The bill – unveiled by the House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, just hours before the final vote – would extend funding through 17 November and allocate $16bn for disaster aid. The House bill does not include additional funding for Ukraine, which has become a source of outrage among hard-right lawmakers.McCarthy introduced the bill under suspension of the rules, meaning he needed the support of two-thirds of House members to advance the proposal. Although Democrats criticized the bill’s lack of Ukraine funding, they ultimately provided McCarthy with the support needed to get the legislation across the finish line.Speaking after the vote, McCarthy expressed disappointment that a large share of his conference opposed the bill, but he said the intransigence displayed by hard-right Republicans left him with no other option.“It is very clear that I tried every possible way, listening to every single person in the conference,” McCarthy told reporters. “If you have members in your conference that won’t let you vote for appropriation bills, [don’t] want an omnibus and won’t vote for a stopgap measure, so the only answer is to shut down and not pay our troops: I don’t want to be a part of that team.”The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, celebrated the bill’s passage, saying: “[‘Make America Great Again’] Republicans have surrendered. All extreme rightwing policies have been removed from the House spending bill. The American people have won.”Prior to the House vote, the Senate had planned to hold a vote at 1pm ET on a separate stopgap spending bill, which would also keep the government open until 17 November and provide some funding for Ukraine’s war efforts as well as disaster relief aid.But the Senate vote was stalled after Republicans said they wanted to wait to see whether the House would be able to pass McCarthy’s proposal before the midnight deadline. In light of the movement in the House, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said he would not support advancing the Senate bill for the time being.“It looks like there may be a bipartisan agreement coming from the House,” McConnell told reporters at the Capitol. “Under these circumstances, I’m recommending a no vote, even though I very much want to avoid a government shutdown.”Now that the House has passed McCarthy’s bill, all attention turns to the Senate. Although Senate Democrats have voiced displeasure about approving a bill that does not include Ukraine funding, the House bill currently represents their only option to prevent a shutdown. Because of procedural hurdles, the Senate cannot hold a final vote on its own bill until Sunday at the earliest, when a shutdown would have already started.The rare weekend session came one day after the House failed to pass McCarthy’s initial stopgap bill, which would have extended government funding for another month while enacting steep spending cuts on most federal agencies.McCarthy’s proposal was rejected by 21 House Republicans, as hard-right members continued to insist they would not support a continuing resolution. Hard-right Republicans threatened to oust the speaker if he teamed up with Democrats to keep the government open, a viable threat when it only takes one member to introduce a motion to vacate the chair. Despite the criticism from his hard-right colleagues, McCarthy downplayed threats to his speakership on Saturday.“If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it,” McCarthy told reporters. “There has to be an adult in the room. I am going to govern with what is best for this country.”As lawmakers made progress in their efforts to extend funding, the federal government was bracing for the possibility of the first shutdown in nearly five years. The White House has warned that a shutdown would force hundreds of thousands of government workers to go without pay, jeopardize access to vital nutritional programs and delay disaster relief projects.“Extreme House Republicans are solely – solely – to blame for marching us toward a shutdown. That is what we’re seeing right now,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, similarly blamed Republicans for a potential shutdown – although he used more colorful language to describe his congressional colleagues.“The damage to our nation’s reputation and critical programming, and chaos for America’s families is because of a small group of [Republican] peckerheads in the House,” Fetterman said on Saturday. “This national upheaval is inflicted by choice over nothing except Fox News face time and tributes to the lunatic fringe from their district.” More

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      Government shutdown could hurt weather disaster responses, Fema says

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      The budget deal Republicans and Democrats reached in the House on Saturday included a 45-day funding extension for disaster relief funds. Lawmakers had been warning that without that provision, a government shutdown would hamper responses to any new weather disasters, leave hazardous waste sites uninspected, and stop work at federal Superfund clean-up sites.“Federal emergency management agency (Fema) staff will still respond to emergencies, but all long-term projects will be delayed due to a lack of funding in the disaster relief fund,” warned the Illinois Democrat Lauren Underwood on Friday.Underwood warned that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would stop inspecting drinking water and chemical facilities too. Also affected, she said, would be efforts to contain polyfluoroalkyl substances – “forever” chemicals, or PFAS – and cleanup activities at Superfund sites.The warnings came a day after New York was hit by torrential rains that shut down parts of the city’s mass-transit system, flooded parts of Brooklyn and triggered the state governor, Kathy Hochul, to declare a state of emergency.Wide-ranging impacts of a federal freeze come amid warnings that there is little left in the primary government relief fund, after 23 confirmed US weather events related to the climate disaster so far in 2023 have cost at least $1bn each.The events included two flooding events, 18 severe storms, one tropical cyclone, one wildfire and one winter storm, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. For comparison, the 1980–2022 annual average was roughly eight events.According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US has seen more billion-dollar weather disasters in 2023 than in any previously recorded year.Fema spent an average of $4bn annually between 1992 and 1999 on disaster aid. Since 2000, excluding years that saw disasters like 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and the response to Covid-19, the emergency management agency’s spending has jumped to around $10bn annually.With three months of the year to go and disaster costs running at $23bn, the Fema administrator Deanne Criswell testified before the House transportation and infrastructure subcommittee on emergency management last week that the agency would have difficulties responding to any natural disaster in the event of a shutdown.Criswell pointed to decreasing funding levels for the disaster relief fund, climate change and the need for its mitigation, the costs of flood insurance and border security as among the agency’s concerns. She also said in her testimony that the agency’s mission had become “more challenging”.“We can no longer really speak of a disaster season. With atmospheric rivers in January to tornadoes and wildfires in December, we now face intensified natural disasters throughout the year, often in places not used to experiencing them,” she said.Citing the Maui wildfires and the California tropical cyclone, she warned that disasters required outsized funding.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We are in such a moment today,” Criswell added and said she had instituted an “immediate needs funding” mandate of $16bn.The agency had already cut off more than $1bn in funding to 1,000 public assistance projects, Criswell said.The warnings come as the Biden administration directs more funds toward disaster relief and away from reconstruction grants. Fema has already delayed around $2.8bn, including $555m for long-term recovery projects in Florida, $101m in Louisiana and another $74m in California, as its disaster fund dropped to just over $2.4bn, the Washington Post reported last week.While it is likely the fund will be boosted – disasters affect both red and blue states – Criswell warned that any failure to restock agency disaster relief coffers would leave Fema unable to fund a response to new emergencies.“It is vital that Fema – and the American people – be able to tap into an adequately funded Disaster Relief Fund so that we can continue to respond as soon as disaster strikes, rebuild in their aftermath and prepare for future disasters,” she said. More

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      Voter drive: Biden and Trump battle for blue-collar votes in auto heartland

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      Joe Biden became the first sitting US president to join a picket line when he stopped at a General Motors facility just outside Detroit to show support for striking United Auto Workers last week. “Stick with it. You deserve a significant raise,” Biden told the crowd.A day later, Donald Trump told raucous blue-collar supporters at a speech north of Detroit: “Just get your union guys, your leaders, to endorse me and I will take care of the rest.”The tug-of-war remarks represented the unofficial opening salvoes of the 2024 election season as the parties’ likely candidates set out to woo blue-collar voters in Michigan, a critical bloc in a state that’s a must-win in any White House bid.“Politically, Michigan is ground zero right now because of the auto strike,” said Bill Ballenger, a conservative state political analyst. Biden, he said, was seeking to shore up his slipping support among unions, while Trump had spotted a “weakness in Bidenomics” that the former president was set on exploiting as the strike pushes into its third week.Trump won Michigan, an upper midwest swing state, by about 12,000 votes in 2016. Biden took the state by nearly 150,000 votes in the next election. Michigan is a heavily unionized state, and Biden won with 64% support among union members. But August polling found support among Michigan union members hangs at 49%, and Biden and Trump are in effect tied.“Clearly there’s division among the rank and file,” said pollster Bernie Porn, president of Epic MRA, a Michigan-based survey research firm. Political observers say Michigan is very much in play in the 2024 election.The dueling visits showcased two very different visions for America’s future. Trump criticized the Biden administration’s support for the auto industry’s shift to electric vehicles, which unions fear because they require fewer workers to make. “You can be loyal to American labor or you can be loyal to the environmental lunatics,” Trump told the crowd in a meandering, hour-long speech. (Later he insisted he would make “sex changes for children” illegal.)Biden’s minutes’ long pitch zeroed in on the unions: “The fact of the matter is that you guys, the UAW – you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 … You made a lot of sacrifices. But now they’re doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too.”The visits also put on display two competing styles. Despite the historic nature of Biden’s visit, the daytime visit was a low-key, invite-only event among a small crowd of UAW members. The tone was supportive, good-natured. At the nearby Ford Michigan Assembly plant, Biden’s supporters viewed it as a morale boost.Trump, by contrast, set up at night in a non-union shop in Macomb county, an Obama-to-Trump blue-collar swing county. Hundreds of boisterous supporters lined the streets, banging on drums and shouting “Freedom!” and breaking into chants of “USA! USA!” and “Back the blue!” The Trump campaign dismissed Biden’s visit as a “cheap photo op”, and said the rank and file support him, not Biden. Some of his supporters echoed that.“We’ve always known that the blue-collar workers are behind Trump, but the party heads and elites have such a command of the microphone that the floor worker is really underrepresented,” said Trump supporter James Anthony Minnick Jr after attending the former president’s Wednesday speech.Biden’s visit seems to convey an understanding of that, political observers say, but despite that the UAW leadership has been very clear in who it supports.“I see no point in meeting with [Trump] because I don’t think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for,” the UAW president, Shawn Fain, said before Trump’s visit. “He serves a billionaire class, and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”Biden had attended the UAW picket at Fain’s invitation, but the union has yet to officially endorse anyone, which could signal an understanding of rank-and-file divisions, or could be read as leverage to gain continuing White House support.Scott Malenfant, 47, an Obama-to-Ted Cruz-to-Trump supporter and union rep, was among those on the picket line outside Ford’s Michigan Assembly plant on Tuesday who split from UAW leadership. After Biden’s speech, the 23-year line veteran said Democrats lost him and other union members over the EV transition and their support of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Democrats are “on the record saying those jobs are never coming back”, Malenfant noted.“Trump is the first one who said ‘We’re going to bring these jobs back,’” he added while acknowledging that Republicans are typically anti-union. But Trump was different, he said: “All he cares about is whether the country does well … and at least he’s the one pushing for workers.”Biden’s Tuesday message that auto companies need to reward workers did resonate with some who are undecided, or describe themselves as “not political”, like Lisa Carter, 53, who works in the plant’s stamping department. She has two jobs despite 17 years on the line, and she cannot afford to buy a new Ford.“If you’re for the people, then I’m for you,” Carter said. “And Trump can stay where he’s at because when he was president he said we make too much money.”Biden needs to address the EV concerns, Porn said, and talk to union members about how batteries and chips could be produced by autoworkers in the state. The visit also comes in the wake of another Trump indictment, and Porn said the former president’s mounting legal numbers appear to be a drag on his favorability numbers, which are down to 37%.Some of that may be down to Trump’s ever mounting legal troubles. But those cases are unlikely to shake his diehard supporters “because they see him as he likes to see himself – a victim, a martyr being crucified by the deep state”, said Ballenger.For now, with more than a year to go before the election, Porn and Ballenger each say Biden has the edge in the state despite his concerning poll numbers. But Ballenger warned the race was far from decided. Just like in 2016: “It could be deja vu all over again,” Ballenger said. More

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      House Republicans to meet after stopgap measure to avert shutdown fails by 232 to 198 votes – US politics live

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      From 4h agoThe House rejected a short-term spending bill aimed at averting a government shutdown, dealing a blow to Speaker Kevin McCarthy and likely cementing the chances of a shutdown less than 48 hours away.The bill, known as a continuing resolution, failed by a vote of 198 in favor to 232 opposed.Twenty one Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the bill. Hard-right members of McCarthy’s conference refused to support the bill despite its steep spending cuts of nearly 30% to many agencies and severe border security provisions, calling it insufficient.McCarthy is planning to meet with the GOP conference on Friday afternoon to discuss next steps. Ahead of the vote, he all but dared his hard-right colleagues to oppose the package. “Every member will have to go on record where they stand,” he said.Despite McCarthy’s concessions, members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus remained adamant on Friday that they would not support a continuing resolution.The Senate is scheduled to take another procedural vote at 1pm on Saturday to advance its stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown.Donald Trump plans to attend at least the first week of his $250m civil fraud trial brought by the New York attorney general Letitia James, according to court documents.James sued Trump and his adult sons last year, alleging widespread fraud connected to the Trump Organization and seeking $250m and professional sanctions. The trial is scheduled to start on 2 October.Trump’s plan to attend the trial was revealed in court filings in a separate lawsuit Trump filed against his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, according to a Politico report. The former president had been scheduled to undergo a deposition in the case on Tuesday in Florida, but the documents show that Trump’s attorneys “requested to reschedule his deposition so that he could attend his previously-scheduled New York trial in person.”The filings state:
      Through counsel, Plaintiff represented that he would be attending his New York trial in person—at least for each day of the first week of trial. He also stated that, because of the trial, he would be unavailable on any business day between October 2, 2023 and the end of his trial.
      US district judge Tanya Chutkan has scheduled a 16 October hearing on federal prosecutors’ request for a limited gag order in the case charging Donald Trump with scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.Special counsel Jack Smith had requested a gag order barring Trump from making inflammatory and intimidating public statements about potential witnesses, lawyers and other people involved in the case.Smith’s proposed order would bar “statements regarding the identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses” and “statements about any party, witness, attorney, court personnel, or potential jurors that are disparaging and inflammatory, or intimidating.”Trump’s lawyers earlier this week denounced the gag order request as a “desperate attempt at censorship”.National parks across the US will close to visitors as soon as Sunday if Congress is unable to avert a government shutdown, the Department of Interior has announced.“Gates will be locked, visitor centers will be closed, and thousands of park rangers will be furloughed,” the interior department wrote in a news release on Friday.
      Accordingly, the public will be encouraged not to visit sites during the period of lapse in appropriations out of consideration for protection of natural and cultural resources, as well as visitor safety.
      The plan, outlined in an updated National Parks Service (NPS) contingency plan, emphasizes the need to protect park resources and ensure visitor health and safety.The decision marks a notable departure from how the national park system was handled under the Trump administration during the last government shutdown. During a funding stalemate that stretched for 35 days through the end of 2018 into 2019, officials ordered parks to remain accessible to the public while they were without key staff, resources and services.That decision culminated in destruction and chaos at some of the country’s most cherished landmarks such as Joshua Tree national park, with high levels of vandalism, accumulation of human waste and trash and significant risks to ecosystems and unsupervised visitors.The US stands just days from a full government shutdown amid political deadlock over demands from rightwing congressional Republicans for deep public spending cuts.Fuelled by bitter ideological divisions among the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, funding for federal agencies will run out at midnight on 30 September unless – against widespread expectation – Congress votes to pass a stopgap measure to extend government funding.It is an event with the potential to inflict disruption to a range of public services, cause delays in salaries, and wreak significant damage on the national economy if it becomes prolonged.At the heart of the looming upheaval is the uncertain status of the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who is under fire from members of his own party for agreeing spending limits with Joe Biden, that members of the GOP’s far-right “Freedom Caucus” say are too generous and want to urgently prune.Here are seven things you should know about the looming shutdown.As part of his plea deal, Atlanta-area bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty to five counts of “conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties”, a misdemeanor.He will serve five years of probation as part of the sentencing agreement, Judge Scott McAfee said during a hearing in Fulton county superior court.He also agreed to a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service and a ban on polling and election administration-related activities, the judge said.Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area bail bondsman, pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges in the Georgia election interference case, becoming the first defendant in the Fulton county case to take a plea deal.Hall was charged in relation to the alleged breach of voting machine equipment in the wake of the 2020 election in Coffee county.Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts as part of a negotiated deal. He appeared before Judge Scott McAfee on Friday afternoon after reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors.Addressing Hall, the judge asked:
      You understand that you’re pleading guilty today because you believe there exists a factual basis that supports the plea, and you are pleading guilty because you are, in fact, guilty?
      Hall replied:
      Yes sir.
      Back at the government shutdown, as it were, the National Organization for Women, or Now, has called for leaders in Washington to get their act together.In a statement, Christian F Nunes, Now’s national president, gets slightly ahead of events, presuming no solution will be found before midnight tomorrow, the final funding deadline.It’s a powerful statement, all the same:
      Congress has failed in its most basic function. The extremists who control the House of Representatives have shut down the government – out of incompetence, ignorance, and cruelty.
      “This is not just about politics – far from it. When you’re living day to day, paycheck to paycheck, wondering how you’ll cope with a shutdown is chilling to the core.
      “Real people will be harmed because of this inexcusable partisan gamesmanship. For weeks, they’ve been dreading this day – not knowing if they’ll be able to pay the rent, afford childcare, or feed their families.
      “Those who are responsible for today’s shutdown are causing fear and uncertainty to be felt not only by government workers and their families, but by millions more who are impacted by this crisis – starting with the 7 million women and children who rely on vital nutrition assistance, but will be turned away when the funds dry up just days from now.”
      The shutdown is being driven by hard-right House Republicans, opposing Kevin McCarthy, a speaker from their own party, and refusing to compromise on policy priorities including reducing funding for Ukraine in its war with Russia and advancing various “culture war” proposals also unacceptable to Democrats who control the Senate and the White House.Nunes continued:
      It couldn’t be clearer – these extremists are willing to cause such disruption, pain, and uncertainty because they’d rather tear down the government than make it work.
      “And now they’re holding every function of government hostage until their extremist demands are met—including more restrictions on abortion, cutting access to Social Security and Medicare, allowing discrimination against LGBTQ+ people, and slashing funding for cancer research, safe and clean drinking water and making our elections less safe, and making it harder to vote.
      “Now members are calling on their representatives to shut off the shutdown. Not in months or weeks, but days or hours. They may not feel the pain they cause, but we know people who do.”
      Robert F Kennedy Jr is reportedly set to end his challenge to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination and run as an independent instead.According to Mediaite, Kennedy, 69 and a scion of a famous political dynasty – a son of the former US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, a nephew of President John F Kennedy – will announce his run in Pennsylvania on 9 October.“Bobby feels that the Democratic National Committee is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” the website quoted a “Kennedy campaign insider” as saying.Kennedy is an attorney who made his name as an environmental campaigner before achieving notoriety as a prominent vaccine skeptic, particularly over Covid-19.He has often flirted with controversy, not least in a podcast interview released this week in which he repeated a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 attacks on New York.Polling has shown Kennedy performing relatively well against Biden, the incumbent president, in the Democratic primary, but not close to posing a serious threat.However, Biden aides are reportedly nervous about the possible impact of third-party candidates in a likely presidential election match-up with Donald Trump.Polling shows widespread belief that at 80, Biden is too old to serve an effective second term in the White House. Trump is only three years younger – and faces 91 criminal charges, including for election subversion, and assorted civil threats – but polls show less concern among the public that he could be unfit to return to office.Whether Kennedy, the Green Party pick, Cornel West, or a notional nominee backed by No Labels, a supposedly centrist group, a third-party candidate is widely seen to be likely to peel more support from Biden than Trump, thereby potentially handing the presidency to the Republican.Rightwing figures (prominent among them Steve Bannon, formerly Trump’s White House strategist) have encouraged Kennedy to run against Biden or as an independent.As cited by Mediate, in July the Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said: “I think he should run as a third-party candidate because I do think he should, he would win … because his party’s radical elements, what we call the woke, have embraced this fascist clampdown on language.”On Friday, as observers digested news of Kennedy’s imminent change of course, the author Michael Weiss referred to infamous electoral sabotage carried out by Roger Stone and other Republican operatives when he said: “The ratfuckery was self-evident from day one.”But not everyone thought Kennedy’s move would be bad for Biden.Joe Conason, editor of the National Memo, said: “Go Bobby! Running ‘independent’ means you’ll draw more voters from the candidate you resemble most in political ideology, personal conduct, and narcissistic mentality. (That’s Trump, not Biden.)”More:Retiring as chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the army general Mark Milley directed a parting shot at Donald Trump, the president he served but who he seemed to call a “wannabe dictator”.Speaking at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, this morning, Milley said of the US armed forces: “We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion.“We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen, or tyrant or a dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.“We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”Trump, who nominated Milley in 2019, did not immediately comment. But Milley’s struggles to contain Trump, particularly in 2020, the tumultuous final year of his presidency, have been long and widely reported.Such struggles concerned foreign policy, as Milley and other officials sought to stop the erratic president provoking confrontations with foes including China and Iran.But Milley and others also had to keep the US military out of domestic affairs, as Trump chafed against nationwide protests for racial justice, openly yearning to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and thereby call in the army.Last week saw publication of an in-depth profile by the Atlantic, in which Milley again expressed his regret over an infamous appearance with Trump in June 2020, when the president marched from the White House to a historic church, slightly damaged amid the protests, in an attempt to project a strongman image.The Atlantic profile prompted Trump to rail at Milley again, calling a widely reported conversation in which the general sought to reassure his Chinese counterpart that Trump would not order an attack “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”Milley has said he has taken “adequate safety precautions” against potential threats from Trump supporters perhaps also encouraged by the words of Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican congressman who told supporters Milley should be hanged.Full story:The House GOP leadership have made the following changes to the House floor schedule:Members are advised that votes are now expected in the House tomorrow, Saturday 30 September 2023.This is a change from the House GOP leadership’s previously announced schedule.House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called on Republicans to work with Democrats to avert a shutdown by putting a bipartisan stopgap funding bill on the House floor for a vote when the measure arrives from the Senate, according to a Washington Post report.“Republicans face a clear choice: put the bipartisan continuing resolution on the floor of the House for an up-or-down vote and we can avoid the extreme Maga Republican shutdown and end this nightmare,” Jeffries said.
      Or fail to put the bipartisan continuing resolution sent over from the Senate on the floor of the House for an up-or-down vote because your objective, apparently, as extreme Maga Republicans is to shut the government down.
      The top three House Democrats held a last-minute press conference after the vote on a stopgap funding measure failed.House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters that House Democrats met this morning and are “unified in the position that we support” the Senate’s bipartisan continuing resolution.From the Hill’s Mychael Schnell:The House GOP conference will meet at 4pm ET after a measure on a stopgap funding bill that would have averted a federal shutdown failed.Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department lawyer who schemed with Donald Trump and others to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states, has been denied in his attempt to move his case from state court to federal court. More

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      Robert Kennedy Jr to run for president as independent in 2024 – report

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr is reportedly set to end his challenge to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination and run instead as an independent candidate, in a move that could upset the 2024 race for the White House.Kennedy, 69 and a scion of a famous political dynasty – a son of the former US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, a nephew of President John F Kennedy – will announce his run in Pennsylvania on 9 October, according to Mediaite.“Bobby feels that the Democratic National Committee is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” the website quoted a “Kennedy campaign insider” as saying.Whether Kennedy, the Green party pick, Cornel West, or a notional nominee backed by No Labels, a supposedly centrist group, a third-party candidate is widely seen to be likely to peel more support from Biden than the likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump, thereby potentially handing the presidency to the Republican.Kennedy is an attorney who made his name as an environmental campaigner before achieving notoriety as a prominent vaccine sceptic, particularly over Covid-19. His campaign has been rife with controversy, not least in a podcast interview released this week in which he repeated a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 attacks on New York.His campaign has also been roiled by an antisemitism scandal after Kennedy told reporters at a press dinner that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” at Caucasians and Black people, while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people had greater immunity. The false claim was embraced by neo-Nazi groups and condemned by scientists and Jewish organizations.Kennedy’s remarks echoed antisemitic tropes that circulated widely during the pandemic which portrayed the coronavirus as a global Jewish plot and caused members of his own family to denounce him for “deplorable and untruthful” comments.Polling has shown Kennedy performing relatively well against Biden, the incumbent president, in the Democratic primary, but not close to posing a serious threat.However, Biden aides are reportedly nervous about the possible impact of third-party candidates in a likely presidential election match-up with Trump.Polling shows widespread concerns, including among Democrats, that at 80, Biden is too old to serve an effective second term in the White House. Trump is only three years younger – and faces 91 criminal charges, including for election subversion, and assorted civil threats – but polls show less concern among his fervent Republican base that he could be unfit to return to office.Rightwing figures – prominent among them Steve Bannon, formerly Trump’s White House strategist – have encouraged Kennedy to run against Biden or as an independent.As cited by Mediate, in July the Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said: “I think he should run as a third-party candidate because I do think he should, he would win.”But not every observer thought Kennedy’s move would be bad for Biden.Joe Conason, editor of the National Memo, said: “Go Bobby! Running ‘independent’ means you’ll draw more voters from the candidate you resemble most in political ideology, personal conduct, and narcissistic mentality. (That’s Trump, not Biden.)” More

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      A look back at the political career of the Dianne Feinstein – video obituary

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      Dianne Feinstein, the oldest serving member of the US Senate and longest-serving female senator, has died aged 90. Feinstein’s trailblazing career was full of firsts. She was the first female head of the San Francisco board of supervisors, first female mayor of San Francisco and the first female senator to represent California when she was elected in 1992. From there her career spanned the administrations of five US presidents over three decades. During her time in office, Feinstein distinguished herself as a vocal advocate for gun control. Joe Biden led tributes, calling Feinstein a ‘pioneering American’ More

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      Dianne Feinstein: a life in pictures

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      Dianne Feinstein, left, California assembly speaker Willie Brown, center, and the Rev Cecil Williams of the Glide Memorial Church of San Francisco, hold hands during Dr Martin Luther King Jr march in downtown San Francisco, January 1986

      Photograph: Paul Sakuma/AP More

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      Biden is right to praise the auto strike. His climate agenda depends on it | Kate Aronoff

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      Joe Biden had to choose a side in the United Auto Workers’ contract fight with the “big three” American automakers, and he did. This week, he became the first US president to walk a picket line while in office when he joined strikers in Belleville, Michigan, offering enthusiastic support for their demands. Biden should be thanking the UAW for handing him a golden opportunity: to prove that the green jobs his administration is creating will be good, union jobs, too, and that climate policy will bear dividends for the working class.Republicans cosplaying solidarity have tried to exploit the strike to score cheap political points. As Republican presidential hopefuls debated this week, Donald Trump told a rally at a non-union plant in Michigan that the strike wouldn’t “make a damn bit of difference” because the car industry was “being assassinated” by “EV mandates”. (Whether there were any union members or even autoworkers in the room isn’t clear.) Ohio senator JD Vance has similarly blamed autoworkers’ plight on “the premature transition to electric vehicles” and “Biden’s war on American cars”.These are cynical, false talking points from politicians who couldn’t care less about autoworkers – but they aren’t going away. (Although similar lines are old hat in the US, they’re finding new purchase in places like 10 Downing Street: Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, has recently taken a “U-turn” on climate goals, citing “unacceptable costs” for “hard-working British people”.) Optimistically, the UAW strike could be a chance to dismantle the rightwing myth that reducing emissions hurts working people – not by pointing to the jobs that will trickle down from the bosses of the energy transition, but by standing with the unions fighting to make those jobs better.Being willing to go on offense against automakers’ bad behavior is a great start and a big shift. The Biden administration has routinely praised car manufacturers as climate heroes poised to decarbonize the country and create millions of middle-class jobs along the way, turning the industry into a sort of mascot for its climate agenda. “You changed the whole story, Mary,” Biden told General Motors’ chief executive, Mary Barra, a frequent White House guest, in 2021. “You electrified the entire automobile industry. I’m serious.”White House climate policy will be good for Barra and her colleagues at the top. The business-side tax credits and government-backed loans furnished by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are already helping the big three retool factories to produce EVs and their component parts. The IRA’s consumer-side subsidies for American-made electric cars – worth up to $7,500 – will boost demand.Yet no one should confuse companies taking advantage of tax breaks with a commitment to the climate fight. The big three lag well behind their competition in the US and abroad; federal incentives are helping them play catch-up. They’ve lobbied to undermine fuel efficiency and clean car standards, including through front groups like the Automotive Alliance. Like oil and gas companies, GM and Ford knew for decades that their products fueled climate change, and proceeded to double down on gas-guzzling models and political attacks on laws and regulations that might hem in their emissions. They still bankroll the campaigns of Republicans dead-set on stopping climate policy.Neither is it a given that EV subsidies benefiting companies will benefit workers there, too. Automakers are already using electrification as an excuse to supercharge attempts to ship jobs to less union-friendly states, and split workers off from their master agreement with the big three.Biden’s decision to join the strike would be remarkable on its own. Beyond the obvious symbolism, his presence there lends tangible material support to workers’ demands, handing the union leverage over companies that might otherwise reasonably assume he’d have their backs.It could also usher in a broader shift in the way he and other Democrats talk about climate policy. Impressive as the IRA is, its most direct benefits accrue largely to companies and consumers with enough cash on hand to afford up-front payments for big-ticket items like solar panels and heat pumps. Like Bidenomics more generally, its goal isn’t to reduce emissions so much as to build out domestic supply chains for clean energy goods, making US companies less reliant on and more competitive against Chinese firms in sectors that will be increasingly important over the coming decades.Targeting climate policy at corporations and affluent consumers doesn’t make a great counterargument to Republicans eager to frame it all as elitist virtue signaling, and win elections accordingly. What the Republican party can be reliably expected to do, though, is side with the bosses. That’s where even self-professed “car guy” Joe Biden might be able to set himself apart – by being willing to offend the automakers so that the rewards of America’s green industrial policy aren’t hoarded at the top.Standing alongside Biden in Belleville this week, the UAW president, Shawn Fain, offered as good a framing for that approach as any. “This industry is of our making,” he said. “When we withhold our labor, we can unmake it. And as we’re going to continue to show: when we win this fight with the big three, we’re going to remake it.”
      Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back More