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      ‘Uncharted territory’: elections officials weigh Trump’s presidency eligibility

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      After defending the integrity of US elections from an onslaught of threats over the last several years, secretaries of state across the US are now turning to a new high-stakes question: is Donald Trump eligible to run for president?Several secretaries are already working with attorneys general in their states and studying whether Trump is disqualified under a provision of the 14th amendment that bars anyone from holding public office if they have previously taken an oath to the United States and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same”. That language clearly disqualifies Trump from running in 2024, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, two prominent conservative scholars, concluded in a lengthy forthcoming law review article. “If the public record is accurate, the case is not even close. He is no longer eligible to the office of Presidency, or any other state or federal office covered by the Constitution. All who are committed to the Constitution should take note and say so,” they write in the article.A flurry of challenges to Trump’s candidacy are expected – one was filed in Colorado on Wednesday – but the legal issues at play are largely untested. Never before has the provision been used to try to disqualify a presidential candidate from office and the issue is likely to quickly come to a head as soon as officials make their official certifications about who can appear on primary ballots. Secretaries are studying who has the authority to remove Trump from the ballot and what process needs to occur before they do so. They also recognize that the issue is likely to be ultimately settled by the courts, including the US supreme court.Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat in her second term as Michigan’s secretary of state, said she had spoken with another secretary of state about the 14th amendment issue “nearly every day”.“The north star for me is always: ‘What is the law? What does the constitution require?’ To keep politics and partisan considerations out of it. And simply just look at this from a sense of ‘what does the 14th amendment say?’ We’re in unprecedented, uncharted territory,” she said.Among the uncertain questions is the proper timing for the challenges. It’s theoretically possible that a challenge to Trump’s ability to hold office could continue even if he were to win the 2024 election.“There are a lot of ambiguities and unknowns still yet to play out,” Benson added. “Even if the former president does get elected in the fall of ’24, it could re-emerge then after an election. So we’re also preparing for a lack of finality of this and for it to be an issue throughout the cycle.”Several secretaries are studying how state law might intersect with the disqualification language in the 14th amendment. In Arizona, for example, the state supreme court ruled against disqualifying three candidates for their involvement in efforts to overturn the election, saying state law did not allow for the use of the 14th amendment as the basis for a challenge. Unlike Trump, however, none of those three officials were charged with a crime.“The state of the law in Arizona leans in one direction; the plain language of the constitution, including the supremacy clause, leans in a different direction,” said Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who was elected Arizona’s secretary of state last year.“Regardless of whether or not the Arizona supreme court is correct – and I don’t think they are, I think they are dead flat wrong – but if I go against a standing rule in Arizona, is that something I can do? Or that I should do? So really these are the kinds of questions that we’re trying to answer and we’re being very deliberate and we’re being very judicious in our approach.”Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said she had been studying the issue, but said her office wouldn’t address it before a candidate officially filed for the ballot. “While people outside of the business of running elections are free to speculate and inquire, debate, that is not our job. Our job is to follow the law and the constitution and not to make premature conclusions or speculation about what might or might not happen,” she said.One left-leaning group, Free Speech for People, has urged several secretaries of state to unilaterally say Trump is ineligible from being listed on the ballot. But such an idea may be a non-starter for officials who know that they’re likely to face intense backlash over such a decision.“For a secretary of state to remove a candidate would only reinforce the grievances of those who see the system as rigged and corrupt,” Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal under the headline “I Can’t Keep Trump Off the Ballot”. Raffensperger acknowledged there was a legal process to remove candidates from the ballot in Georgia – an effort to disqualify Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene failed last year – but said voters should decide the issue.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn an alarming signal of the minefield that secretaries are stepping into, many offices have started receiving threatening and harassing phone calls and emails about Trump’s eligibility. In New Hampshire, the office of the secretary of state, Dave Scanlan, a Republican, was flooded with phone calls after the conservative personality Charlie Kirk falsely said Scanlan was planning to remove Trump from the ballot. (Scanlan had merely said he was studying the issue.)“We’ve been getting a lot of input, literally hundreds of inquiries, not all of it friendly. I’ll leave it at that,” Arizona’s Fontes said.“We all have been buried in an uptick of visceral vitriol and threats from people on both sides – people who want us to remove him from the ballot, people who don’t,” Benson said. “We’re also seeing this as the beginning of the rancor that we expect to go through the next 19 months.”Regardless of the pressures elections officials face, Fontes said he wouldn’t shy away from making an uncomfortable decision.“We live in a land where the rule of law is the rule of law. And when a determination gets made, a determination gets made,” he said. “If people are dissatisfied with their decisions, if I choose to run for re-election, they’ll be able to speak their voices in a free and fair election to decide whether I should stay in office or not.”Questions about Trump’s eligibility need to be resolved not just for this election, but for future ones as well, Fontes said.“This is a question that I think needs to be answered broadly and certainly. I’m looking at this as far more than just about one person and one office,” he added. “This is a systemic sort of thing and it is as big as the constitution itself.” More

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      Kamala Harris says she’s prepared to serve as president ‘if necessary’

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      Kamala Harris on Sunday declared herself ready to assume the presidency if it ever behooved her to do so – but she also made it a point to dismiss opponents’ political attacks that Joe Biden is too old to seek out a second term in the Oval Office.Asked on CBS’s Face the Nation whether she was prepared to serve as commander-in-chief in case Biden became unable to carry out his duties, Harris said: “Yes, I am, if necessary.”“But Joe Biden is going to be fine,” Harris said. “And let me tell you something: I work with Joe Biden every day.”Harris, who would become the first woman to serve as US president if Biden could not complete an elected term, went on to tell Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan that it would not be a novel experience for her to make history in such a fashion.She alluded to how she was the first woman elected as district attorney of San Francisco and as attorney general of California. As a US senator for California, “I represented one in eight Americans,” before becoming the country’s first ever female vice-president.“Listen, this is not new,” Harris said. “There’s nothing new about that.”Harris’s defense of her qualifications and of Biden’s vitality come as Republicans attack the incumbent 80-year-old Democratic president’s age. If he wins another term during the 2024 election, Biden – already the oldest president ever – would be 86 upon leaving office.Public opinion polling shows that more than two-thirds of the American public think Biden is too old to effectively serve a second term. And, seizing on those findings, Republicans have sought to portray the prospect of Harris being one heartbeat away from the presidency as a scary prospect.“I pray every night for Joe Biden’s good health – not only because he’s our president, but because of who our vice-president is,” Republican presidential hopeful Chris Christie said on a clip played by Brennan on Sunday.Brennan played another clip in which Christie’s fellow Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis insulted Harris as Biden’s “impeachment insurance”.“People know if she were president – Katy, bar the door,” DeSantis said on the clip, invoking an American colloquialism meaning that there’s trouble incoming. “As bad as Biden did, it would get worse.”Both Christie and DeSantis substantially trail the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination: Biden’s White House predecessor, Donald Trump. Trump maintains his polling edge over his Republican competition despite facing 91 pending criminal charges across four separate indictments for his 2020 election subversion, his retention of classified documents after his defeat to Biden forced him out of the Oval Office and hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Harris on Sunday parried the Republican verbal volleys against the Biden administration by referring to lower crime rates, falling inflation and relatively quieter times at the US-Mexico border more than halfway through the Democratic incumbents’ third year in office.“They feel the need to attack because they’re scared that we will win based on the merit of the work that Joe Biden and I, and our administration, has done,” Harris said.In her interview with Brennan, Harris also said that Congress needed to strive to restore the federal abortion rights which had been established by Roe v Wade but then repealed last year by the US supreme court’s conservatives. Most Americans believe abortion should be legal to some degree, particularly in the first trimester of pregnancy, according to polling.Harris dismissed Republican claims that Democrats support abortion up until birth as “ridiculous” and a “mischaracterization”. More

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      Gavin Newsom says Ron DeSantis is ‘fundamentally authoritarian’

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      Ron DeSantis is “fundamentally authoritarian”, but Donald Trump’s quest for “vengeance” poses an even greater threat to democracy, California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom said on Sunday.Newsom took aim at the leading two candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination during a hard-hitting and wide-ranging interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, the final episode with its long-time host Chuck Todd.“I worry about democracy,” he said. “I worry about the fetishness for autocracy that we’re seeing not just from Trump, but around the world, and notably across this country.“I’ve made the point about DeSantis that I think he’s functionally authoritarian. I’m worried more, in many respects, about Trumpism, which transcends well beyond his term and time in tenure.”Newsom added: “The vengeance in Donald Trump’s heart right now is more of a threat.”The governor, seen as a rising star in the Democratic party and a likely future presidential candidate, was referring to the former president’s often-voiced promises to gain “revenge” – if he wins back the White House – over political rivals he blames for the multiple criminal indictments against him.If Trump does win the 2024 general election, Newsom said, he would work with his administration for the sake of California residents, as he said he did during the Covid-19 pandemic.“At the end of the day, these are the cards that are dealt. And I want to do the best for the people that I represent, 40 million Americans that happen to live in California,” he told Todd, who is standing down as host of Meet the Press after almost a decade.“Many support him. I’m not going to oppose someone just to oppose them – I don’t come into a relationship with closed fists, but an open hand. I call balls and strikes, and few people were more aggressive at calling balls and strikes against Donald Trump. I called California the most un-Trump state in America, and I hold to that.”Newsom saved his harshest criticism, however, for DeSantis, the rightwing Republican governor of Florida, with whom he has frequently clashed. He disagreed with DeSantis’s strategy of lifting lockdowns and banning mask mandates, and attacked the Florida leader’s “partisanship” – most recently on display when he snubbed Joe Biden’s visit to the state in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia.“I don’t like the partisanship. And I thought it was demonstrably displayed by what I thought was a very weak exercise by governor DeSantis,” Newsom said regarding the Floridian’s snub of the president.Newsom and DeSantis have agreed to a televised debate on Fox TV this fall. An impasse over logistics might soon clear, Newsom said.The California governor said he was fine with the rightwing Fox personality Sean Hannity as moderator, making it effectively a “two-on-one” debate in Newsom’s words. But Newsom said he was still not happy with the proposed venue and sizable public audience.“They wanted thousands of people and [to] make it a performance. I wasn’t interested in that. We were pretty clear on that. [But] we’re getting closer,” he said.Other subjects covered during the interview included who might run as the Democratic party’s candidate in the 2024 presidential election if Biden – who will be 81 on polling day – drops out.Newsom said he doesn’t expect that to happen, but if it does, the candidate will not be him.“Won’t happen,” he replied when Todd asked him if he would ever run against the vice-president, Kamala Harris, a former California senator with whom he said he has “a very good relationship”.“It’s the Biden-Harris administration. Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned about presidents and vice-presidents. We need to move past this notion that he’s not going to run. President Biden is going to run, and [I’m] looking forward to getting him re-elected,” Newsom said.Newsom was also questioned on the future of the veteran California senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, whose recent health issues have led to long absences from the chamber and prompted calls for her to stand down.He refused to be drawn on whether he would appoint a replacement, as he did when elevating Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, to the senate when Harris became Biden’s running mate in 2020.“Her staff is still extraordinarily active and we wish her only the best,” he said, insisting that Feinstein could still represent the state until next year.“Her term expires – she’s not running for re-election. So this time next year we’ll be in a very different place. I don’t want to make another appointment, and I don’t think the people of California want me to make another appointment.“That said, [if] we have to do it, we’ll do it.” More

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      Ohio’s working class felt deserted by Democrats. Can Biden win them back?

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      David Cox is trying to persuade his members that Joe Biden has done more for working-class Americans than any US president in his decades as a construction worker and union organiser in eastern Ohio.But Cox is not sure they really want to hear it in a state where the Democratic brand was in decline long before Donald Trump snatched victory in Ohio in 2016 and then increased his support four years later.“Biden’s been great. He’s done so much for labour like we haven’t never seen in my lifetime,” he said, ticking off legislation to revitalise manufacturing and invest in technology that created many new construction jobs, as well as labour department decisions in favour of workers.“But whether it brings back those we lost to Trump remains to be seen. I think even if they aren’t inclined to go out and vote for Biden, maybe they’ll just stay home and not vote at all. That’s half a win.”Cox, an ironworker and director of the Dayton Building and Construction Trades Council, a union umbrella group representing thousands of construction workers in eastern Ohio, has good reason for scepticism.Ohio was once a swing state so crucial that presidential candidates repeatedly piled in to win over voters. But by 2020, the Democratic national funders decided it wasn’t even worth throwing serious money into the fight and left Ohio off their list of targets, essentially conceding the state to Trump and the Republicans.The only Democrat to win statewide office in more than a decade is the US senator Sherrod Brown who is expected to face a tough fight for re-election next year.Cox’s union is based in Dayton, a part of Montgomery county where the Democratic vote was once strong enough to help offset losses elsewhere in the state. Trump won the county in 2016, albeit by a whisker. Biden took it back four years later by just 2%.Party officials, nationally and locally, appear to have recognised the mistake in letting Ohio slip away. But there is disagreement on the causes and how to respond even if they see reasons for optimism.Ohio Democrats have been energised by the size of the victory and turnout in last month’s referendum on a Republican attempt to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution. The move was aimed at making it harder for voters to enshrine access to abortion in the constitution in another ballot in November. But it was defeated by 57% to 43% on an exceptionally high turnout for a ballot vote in August, reflecting what Democrats see as a major electoral issue in their favor after the US supreme court struck down constitutional protections last year.For all that, veteran Democrats say there is a long road to travel in Ohio for a party that is the architect of some of its own misfortunes.On paper, Biden should be in a relatively strong position. The economy and job numbers are growing even if inflation has hit hard. But a CNN national survey released on Thursday found Biden neck and neck with Trump and every other Republican candidate with the exception of the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who was six points ahead of the president.There are good reasons to be cautious about those numbers more than a year before the election, but they are another reminder to the Democrats of the difficulties of persuading voters in regions like eastern Ohio that Biden has been good for them. The economy may look stronger on paper but even if voters are not struggling financially many do not feel good about their deeply fractured country or the Democrats.Kim McCarthy, the Democratic chair in Greene county which includes part of eastern Dayton, said her party struggles to shake the perception that, at a national level, it is not interested in working people.“It’s not a secret that our country is run by corporate USA Inc. I feel that limitation stops Democrats from fighting for things that would bring people over to their side, like universal healthcare,” she said.McCarthy said that remained a good part of the reason for Trump’s continuing support in her county.“The appeal of Trump ultimately is that people recognise that our federal government is failing us as a society, as a nation. I’m from Australia and I think one of the most profound things that I’ve realised over my 25-odd years of living here is that the US government doesn’t care about me and my life,” she said.“When I moved here, I gave up a government that was prepared to support me to ensure that I had the tools to live my best life. I think Americans, even without having lived in another country, ultimately understand that difference. Trump, of course, is not the answer to that problem.”Cox said the Democratic party nationally and locally bears a good deal of the responsibility for losing Ohio. “Labour feels it has been left out of the picture,” he said.He added that the Democrats had been damaged goods in Dayton since Bill Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and thousands of factory jobs were shipped to Mexico after 1994.“This was a General Motors town and every family had somebody that worked there. When Nafta happened, General Motors virtually pulled out of this town and moved to Mexico. In the Dayton area, it’s a sore issue even today. People were selling homes, selling their boats, selling their motorcycles,” he said.The legacy is visible in abandoned industrial buildings and open spaces where factories once stood. Dayton has lost one-quarter of its population since Nafta.Cox said Nafta changed the perception of the Democrats as representing American workers. Then Trump came along and renegotiated Nafta to improve some of the terms for the US which made it look as if he was at least listening to workers in cities like Dayton.“That was one of his better moves. People here liked that,” said Cox. “That and really punching China in the nose.”There’s no shortage of Democrats to admit they got it wrong in Ohio. But the chair of Montgomery county Democrats, Mohamed Al-Hamdani, sees the mistakes differently.Al-Hamdani, the first Muslim to chair a Democratic party branch in Ohio, said that the problem went beyond overlooking industrial workers.“We’ve become a polarised country and I think some of that is because demographics are changing in the United States. In 1992, when my family came here, I don’t think there was a Muslim in Congress. People of color had a few seats in Congress, women had smaller number of seats in Congress and the Senate. And you couldn’t even say LGBTQ+,” he said.“Fast-forward 35 years and the country has rapidly changed and some of that change comes at a cost for a party like us. When you’re that party that supports all that, sometimes there is a backlash. We’re on the right side of history, for sure. But doing the right thing doesn’t always get you elected.”That divide can be seen in differing views of why the former Ohio congressman Tim Ryan lost the US Senate race last year to the Republican JD Vance, the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy – a controversial account of growing up amid poverty and drug addiction.At times Ryan appeared to be running against his own party.“You’ve seen a broken economic system where both parties have sold out to the corporate interests that shift our jobs down to the southern part of this country, then to Mexico, then to China. There is no economic freedom if there’s no jobs here in the United States,” he told a 2022 election rally.Cox, who calls Ryan “the worker’s Democrat”, thinks he lost because the national Democratic party failed to fund his campaign properly. Ryan has accused the party of writing off states like Ohio that do not have a majority of voters with a university degree.Al-Hamdani thinks Ryan was so concentrated on winning back support from those who decamped to Trump, such as some of Cox’s members, that he neglected the voters who stuck with the Democrats.“Our base is still a diverse base. In Montgomery county a majority of votes that come to Democrats still come from very diverse areas, black neighborhoods,” he said.“Ryan’s team made the calculation that they thought those folks were already in the bag and that just wasn’t true. You have to work to shore up your base, and our base just didn’t show up. They didn’t vote in the numbers we wanted them to. I think a lot of it’s because they felt, and rightfully so, that they were forgotten and taken for granted, and we can’t do that as a party.”Then there are the rural voters. While Ohio’s three largest cities – Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati – remain solidly Democrat, it’s not enough to offset the huge shift away from the party outside urban areas.Fred Strahorn, a Black member of the Ohio legislature for a Dayton district for nearly 20 years who also led the Democratic caucus for four years, said the party had not been helped by east coast liberals dismissing Trump voters as motivated by nothing more than prejudice.“I think some of those voters took that as an insult, and it made them even more entrenched in their decision. I don’t think that’s how you court voters. I don’t think that you can just say, hey, because you didn’t agree with me, there’s something wrong with you,” he said.Strahorn said that if Biden was to have any chance of winning the state he needed to return to Obama’s strategy of spending a lot of time on the ground telling people what he is going to do for them. But he said the Democrats also need to engage voters on their “litmus issues” such as guns and support for the military to explain that the party is not hostile to either.“We need to say that we do support the military. The truth is the opposition supports military contracting, not necessarily military personnel, because they often try to take stuff from the military personnel and their families. They support things that go boom. There’s ways to talk about this but you have to engage them,” he said.Strahorn said there would be no quick comeback for the party in Ohio and that ultimately winning voters’ confidence was a long game. He wants the Democrats to have the courage to embrace what he regards as one of the party’s greatest strengths, defence of government as a means to improve people’s lives.He said the party had become afraid of doing it in the face of relentless Republican attacks blaming people’s problems on “big government”, a strategy reinforced by Democrats in Congress who serve the interests of corporations.“One of the failures, multi decades long, is not telling people what government does for them and remind them on a regular basis, so they’re not so easily turned against it. We’ve not defended government, not really explained all the things that government does that you actually like, want and use,” he said.“Therefore when somebody comes along and takes a swack at it, it’s easy for people to believe because they never hear anything but that. If you don’t counter that it really makes it hard for that electorate to see you as somebody who’s trying to help them because you haven’t explained how that works. That’s your battleground.” More

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      The Last Politician review: the case for Joe Biden, polling be damned

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      By the polling, Joe Biden is stuck in a footrace with Donald Trump, his 91-times criminally charged predecessor as president. More than three-quarters of voters say Biden is too old to govern effectively. Two-thirds of Democrats wish he would throw in the towel.The intersection of Biden’s work as vice-president to Barack Obama and what Franklin Foer calls the “dodgy business dealings of son Hunter” haunts the father still. More than three fifths of Americans now believe Joe Biden was involved in Hunter’s business. The impeachment specter hovers.Kamala Harris poses a further problem. The polls, again: 53% of independents disapprove of the vice-president, two in five strongly. Were Biden to leave the stage, few would be reassured.Under the subtitle “Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future”, Foer dives into our political morass. He emerges with a well-sourced look at Biden and his time in power. A staff writer at the Atlantic and former editor of the New Republic, Foer acknowledges his own doubts about Biden but also voices his admiration for the back-slapping politician from Scranton. Foer’s title, The Last Politician, points to his thesis: that Biden’s old-fashioned approach to politics drives and shapes all he does.Foer captures Biden’s successes and his cock-ups, his abilities and insecurities. At times, Biden is portrayed as overly confident. He is also caught wondering why John F Kennedy was not so tightly handled by his aides – or “babied”, as Foer reports it. Youth, vigor and acuity are all parts of the answer.The Last Politician is definitely news-laden, a must-read for political junkies. Biden’s staff finally spoke. Foer lays out how Biden’s age shapes his first term and his re-election odds; Harris’s shortcomings as vice-president; and Biden’s relationships with Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Complications dominate.Biden’s “advanced years were a hindrance, depriving him of the energy to cast a robust public presence or the ability to easily conjure a name”, Foer writes. “His public persona reflected physical decline and time’s dulling of mental faculties that no pill or exercise regime can resist.”Biden was gaffe-prone as a younger politician. Now, his verbal and physical stumbles lead news cycles.Decades ago, Ronald Reagan’s typical day began with his arrival in the West Wing at 9am. Biden starts about an hour later. That’s an hour earlier than Trump, sure. But Foer writes: “It was striking that [Biden] took so few morning meetings or presided over so few public events before 10am.” Plenty has been written about Reagan’s capacity by the end of his term. When Reagan left the White House, after eight years, he was nearly 78. Today, Biden is nearly 81.“In private,” Foer writes, Biden “would occasionally admit that he felt tired.” Unstated is this: the cumulative effect of such realities of age leaves Biden on the cusp of being ignored, unable to woo swaths of the American public or drive his message and numbers. In the 2022 midterms, his popularity deficit kept him sidelined. For a politician, a shrug or a yawn can be more damning than disdain.Expect Republicans to quote Foer as they bash Harris. “Rabbit Ears” is the chapter title of Foer’s examination of the former California senator, a moniker bestowed by Biden’s inner circle. As they saw it, Foer writes, Harris was sensitive to “any hint of criticism … instantly aware” of the slightest dissatisfaction.She projected clinginess and uncertainty. “Instead of carving out an independent role, she stuck to the president’s side – an omnipresence at every Oval Office meeting.” Harris’s “piercing questions” impressed Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, but lunches with Biden gradually fell “off the schedule”.Then again, Biden owed Harris little. She brutalized him in a debate, intimating he was a bigot. Then she dropped out of the Democratic primary before a vote was cast, the political equivalent of a face-plant.The relationship between Biden and Zelenskiy also had its ups-and-downs, Foer says. He lauds Biden for “quietly arming the Ukrainians”, helping them “fend off invasion” by Russia. He also describes tensions between the two leaders.Biden and Zelenskiy failed to establish swift rapport. Zelenskiy demanded Nato membership and offered “absurd analysis” of alliance dynamics, leaving Biden “pissed off”. In Foer’s telling, “even Zelenskiy’s most ardent sympathizers in the [Biden] administration agreed that he had bombed”, while Zelenskiy “at least subconsciously … seemed to blame” Biden “for the humiliation he suffered, for the political awkwardness he endured” at the hands of Trump.“Where Biden tended to expect Zelenskiy to open with expressions of gratitude for American support, Zelenskiy crammed his conversations with a long list of demands.” Sucking up to Ted Cruz didn’t help either.In the end, Foer is a Biden fan. He gives the Inflation Reduction Act, in his view the crowning achievement of the first term, an unqualified endorsement. Homing in on provisions that aim to “stall climate change”, Foer says the law stands as “an investment in moral authority”, enabling the US to “prod” other countries on environmental issues.Watching the latest spate of environmental cataclysms, it is hard to dispute that the climate crisis is real – all while Republican presidential aspirants continue their denials. But there is something amiss in Foer’s enthusiasm and the administration’s posture. For now, inflation holds more public attention. Nearly three-quarters of Americans see inflation as a “very important” issue. Climate crisis and the environment? Forty-four per cent.A hunch: voters are less worried about moral authority and more about grocery bills and prices at the pump. According to the polls, the Democrats have lost their grip on voters without a four-year college degree, regardless of race. A priorities gap is on display again.Issues that speak loudest to white progressives lack broad resonance. The faculty lounge makes a lousy focus group. Foer’s enthusiasm is premature.
      The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future is published in the US by Penguin More

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      Virginia’s off-off-year election is next big test for reproductive rights

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      As she addressed about 120 Democratic voters at a rally in rural Orange, Virginia, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger made a point to impress upon her constituents just how much is on the line this fall.“This is personal. And politics is personal,” Spanberger told the crowd. “This year more than any other year, this election matters.”Stepping up to the podium, one of the Democrats endorsed by Spanberger, the state senate candidate Jason Ford, warned that Republican victories in November could have devastating consequences across the state.“In Virginia, reproductive rights are on the ballot this fall,” Ford said. “Properly funding our schools [is] on the ballot this fall.”The messages encapsulated Virginia Democrats’ broader pitch to voters as they look to regain control of the house of delegates and maintain their narrow majority in the state senate. They fear that, if Republicans can take full control of the general assembly, they will rubber-stamp Governor Glenn Youngkin’s conservative agenda to lower taxes and bolster “parents’ rights”. But most importantly, Democrats expect Republican victories in November would jeopardize abortion access in Virginia, which has become a rare refuge for those seeking the procedure in thesouth.The results also may provide the clearest indication yet of voters’ sentiments ahead of the 2024 elections and determine whether Virginia can still be considered a battleground, considering Republicans have lost the state in every presidential race since 2008.“Too many people think Virginia is solid blue in the electoral college,” said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “With Glenn Youngkin’s victory, and if the Republicans achieve what they are setting out to do this year, I think all bets are off for 2024.”An off-off-yearVirginia is one of just five US states that conduct off-year elections, meaning those that are held when no federal elections take place. History shows turnout in Virginia’s state legislative races tends to be particularly low in so-called “off-off-years” when there are no major statewide offices such as governor on the ballot.But candidates and activists from both sides of the aisle insist it would be a mistake to downplay the importance of Virginia’s elections this year. If Republicans can flip just two seats in the state senate, Youngkin will face few impediments in enacting his legislative agenda.Since taking office last year, Youngkin has already advanced policies calling for transgender children to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their sex assigned at birth. On his first day in office, Youngkin signed executive orders aimed at barring schools from teaching critical race theory and loosening public health mandates related to the coronavirus pandemic.“To get in and have the opportunity to take back the state senate and be able to support those initiatives is something that’s really important,” said Steve Knotts, chair of the Fairfax county Republican party in northern Virginia. “I think that they’ll be voting for Governor Youngkin’s initiatives and Republican control of the state legislature this year, but we have to do the work to get that message out because a lot of people forget there’s an election.”All 100 seats in the house of delegates, where Republicans held a 52-48 majority during the most recent legislative session, will be up for grabs. Democrats will be defending a 22-18 advantage in the state senate, where every seat will also be in play this November. The implementation of a new legislative map, which fueled a wave of retirements among veteran Virginia legislators, has injected more uncertainty into the elections.As of now, control of the legislature appears to be a true toss-up. According to a survey conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University in July, 47% of Virginians want Republicans in control of the house of delegates, compared with 41% who would prefer a Democratic majority. When asked about control of the state senate, Virginians were evenly divided, with 44% of respondents preferring a Democratic majority and another 44% supporting a Republican takeover.A fully red general assembly would be a gamechanger for Youngkin, who has faced a legislative blockade from Senate Democrats. A Republican takeover would erase the last major barrier in Youngkin’s quest to enact his full agenda – including a 15-week abortion ban.“This race is first and foremost about abortion,” said Susan Swecker, chair of the Democratic party of Virginia. “If it hadn’t been for the Democratic blue brick wall in the state senate the last two years, abortion would be banned in Virginia.”The last holdout in the southIn the wake of the supreme court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v Wade, southern states controlled by Republicans passed a wave of laws severely restricting access to abortion or, in some cases, banning it altogether. Virginia – where abortion is currently legal until about 26 weeks – has become the last remaining southern state without extensive abortion restrictions, but that status could soon evaporate if Republicans have their way.Youngkin has indicated he supports a 15-week abortion ban with exceptions for rape, incest and the safety of the mother. The governor has framed the proposal, which senate Democrats already defeated once earlier this year, as a point of consensus among a wide swath of Virginia voters.“I believe that there’s a moment for Virginians to come together over a very, very difficult topic, and Virginians elected a pro-life governor,” Youngkin said last month.But polls challenge the perception of a 15-week ban as an area of common ground across the state. According to a Washington Post-Schar School survey conducted in March, 49% of Virginia voters support a 15-week ban with exceptions, while 46% oppose it. Voters also expressed criticism of Youngkin’s stance on abortion, with 33% approving of his handling of the issue and 45% disapproving.Threats to abortion access appear to be weighing heavily on Virginians’ minds as they head for the polls. Sara Ratcliffe, a Democratic candidate for the house of delegates who spoke at the Orange rally, said abortion was often the first issue voters mention when she knocks on doors.“As the dominoes have fallen, especially in the redder states and in the states surrounding us here in the south, people have realized what’s at stake,” Ratcliffe said. “People are scared, and people are worried, which is why they’re turning out and they’re voting on this issue.”That fear and anger was palpable among the Democratic attendees of the Orange rally, several of whom cited protecting abortion access as their top priority for November.“People younger than me now don’t have the same freedoms I had when I was a woman of childbearing age, and I feel that’s not fair,” said Lynn Meyers, a 78-year-old from Locust Grove.Bill Maiden, a 58-year-old voter from Culpepper, added, “Even my friends that are Republican, they are concerned about [abortion access] too. They don’t agree with Youngkin’s stance on this.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConcerns over abortion restrictions contributed to Republicans’ disappointing performance in the 2022 midterms, and the issue could now threaten the party’s hopes in Virginia.Despite the potential political liability of a 15-week ban, Democrats fear that Youngkin will not hesitate to approve an even more severe policy if Republicans flip the senate. They often remind voters that, shortly after Roe was overturned last year, Youngkin said, “Any bill that comes to my desk I will sign happily and gleefully in order to protect life.”Youngkin bets big on 2023Three years ago, most Virginians had never heard the name Glenn Youngkin. A former co-CEO of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group, Youngkin’s 2021 gubernatorial bid marked his first foray into electoral politics.He defeated six primary opponents by carefully toeing the line between endorsing many of Donald Trump’s policy positions on culture war issues without completely alienating the independent voters who eventually fueled his victory in the general election. Youngkin’s win over the former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe was all the more surprising given that it came just one year after Joe Biden beat Trump in Virginia by 10 points.“The guy never ran for office before, but he just had really good instincts [on] how to strike that balance and get the support of the [‘Make America Great Again’] Republicans while not seeming threatening at all to swing voters at the same time,” Rozell said. “Not many Republicans these days can do that.”Those instincts appear to have served Youngkin well in office so far. The VCU survey conducted in July showed Youngkin’s approval rating stood at +18, as 49% of Virginians approved of the governor’s job performance and 31% disapproved. Biden trailed far behind Youngkin at -15, with 39% of Virginians approving of his job performance and 54% disapproving.Those approval numbers have made Knotts more optimistic about Republicans’ prospects in November. “We have a very popular governor who is really getting in and doing some programs that are good for Democrats, Republicans [and] independents,” Knotts said. “So I think this could be a really good year for us.”Youngkin’s popularity has also spurred talk of a potential presidential bid, and the Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, has reportedly told allies that he would like to see the Virginia governor jump into the 2024 Republican primary.Youngkin’s success or failure in November could decide his fate on the national stage, and he has dedicated substantial political capital to bringing home a win for Republicans. Youngkin’s state Pac, Spirit of Virginia, raised an impressive $5.9m during the second quarter of the year to promote Republican campaigns.“This is a unifying agenda that is resonating across the Commonwealth,” said Dave Rexrode, chair of the Spirit of Virginia. “Virginians want leaders in the general assembly who will work with Governor Youngkin to move our commonwealth forward.”Beyond Youngkin’s own political future, the outcome in Virginia this November could provide a roadmap for both parties in 2024, as they battle it out for the White House.…When Barack Obama won Virginia in the 2008 presidential race, he became the first Democrat to carry the state since 1964, and the victory marked a sea change for his party. Democrats have won Virginia in every presidential election since Obama’s landmark victory, and the party now holds both of Virginia’s US Senate seats.Their wins have led some Democrats to downplay Virginia’s status as a battleground state, but Swecker warns that would be a dangerous oversight.“People got very excited about the successes we had and took for granted that we were a blue state,” Swecker said. “Those of us who are in the trenches know better.”Youngkin’s victory in 2021 demonstrated how Republicans can still play statewide in Virginia, and the governor hopes that the legislative races this year will prove his win was no fluke.“I am curious whether the Republicans are able to carry that momentum into this election cycle and what it might suggest about the Republican base and how deeply engaged it is and activated going into the 2024 elections,” Rozell said.Regardless of the outcome in Virginia, the November results will be closely scrutinized by both parties to spot potential strengths and vulnerabilities heading into 2024, when the White House and Congress will be up for grabs.As someone who has closely studied Virginia politics since the 1980s, Rozell has endured much talk about the state being a guarantee for one party or the other over the years, but he insists that Virginia remains, as ever, a battleground.“Don’t assume that Virginia is a Democratic lock any more,” Rozell said. “And those 13 electoral votes can be really important next year.” More

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      Nancy Pelosi announces 2024 House re-election bid

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      Former House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will be seeking re-election in 2024. The 83-year-old Democrat representing California’s 11th district announced the news on Wednesday among volunteers and labor allies in San Francisco.Pelosi went on to tweet about her plans, saying: “Now more than ever our city needs us to advance San Francisco values and further our recovery. Our country needs America to show the world that our flag is still there, with liberty and justice for ALL. That is why I am running for reelection – and respectfully ask for your vote.”Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco since 1987, served as House speaker twice. Her first tenure as House speaker was from 2007 to 2011, during which she made history by becoming the first female speaker. Pelosi went on to lead the House of Representatives again from 2019 to the beginning of this year.Last November, Pelosi announced that she was stepping down as the leader of the Democratic party after Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives with a narrow 222-212 majority with one vacancy.Her announcement on Wednesday comes amid several politically delicate moments on Capitol Hill, particularly as Democrats prepare to take back control of the House of Representatives. Moreover, it comes as House Republicans entertain the idea of an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden amid a federal investigation into the business dealings of his son Hunter.It also comes as growing questions surround the mental competency of older Capitol Hill leaders including the 80-year-old president, 81-year-old Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, and 90-year-old California senator Dianne Feinstein.According to a source close to Pelosi who is familiar with her re-election decision, Pelosi believes that democracy hangs in the balance in the upcoming election as she prepares to help re-elect Biden and appoint House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries as the next House speaker, the Associated Press reported.Throughout Pelosi’s leadership, she helped lead the Democratic party through a series of legislative victories including the passage of the Affordable Care Act under then-president Barack Obama in 2010, as well as legislation surrounding gun violence prevention measures, minimum wage increases.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPelosi has also played a key role in international politics, including becoming the first highest-ranking US official to visit Taiwan in 25 years, as well as securing the votes needed to defeat Republicans’ efforts to disapprove of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. More

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      Take another look at Joe Biden. His is the presidency progressives have been waiting for | Jonathan Freedland

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      The tragedy of Joe Biden is that people see his age, his frailty and his ailing poll numbers and they miss the bigger story. Which is that his has been a truly consequential presidency, even a transformational one. In less than three years, he has built a record that should unify US progressives, including those on the radical left, and devised an economic model to inspire social democratic parties the world over, including here in Britain.Sadly for Biden, politics and government are different things: it takes more than a record of good governance to get reelected. For one thing, voters cast their ballots less as a verdict on the past than as an instruction (or hope) for the future. And the fear, shared by 76% of Americans, according to a poll this week, is that Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, is simply too old to lead them there. Put aside the fact that his near certain opponent in November 2024, Donald Trump, is only three years younger. Trump has a presence and vigour, an ability to project himself, that Biden does not. And that simple fact affects – distorts – the entire way the Biden administration is seen. As one observer puts it, “the vibes are off”.The challenge for Democrats is to use the 14 months between now and election day to get past that, to point out the malignancy of Trump and the danger a second Trump presidency would represent to the republic and the world – and also to make the positive case for what we might call Bidenism. Luckily, that is not a hard case to make.That’s because, though elected to be no more than a calm hand on the tiller, a stopgap, interim leader who might allow the country to steady itself after four years of Storm Donald, Biden has confounded that expectation. He has none of the stage presence of his old boss, Barack Obama – who never had any trouble with vibes – but he can already claim to have achieved much more.Top of the list is, characteristically, something that sounds boring but is of enormous significance: the Inflation Reduction Act, passed last year. That seemingly technocratic piece of legislation actually achieves two epochal goals. First, it hastens the day the US makes the break from fossil fuels – by making clean energy not only the morally superior option for both industry and consumers, but the financially superior one too.It does that through a massive raft of tax breaks, subsidies and incentives all designed to encourage the production of wind turbines, solar panels, ever improving battery technology, geothermal plants and the like, along with tax credits aimed at making electric cars irresistible even to those middle-American consumers more concerned about their wallets than the burning planet.The estimated cost of $386bn is huge, but that’s not a limit on how much Biden has committed to spend. On the contrary, if the demand is there for solar panels or electric vans, Biden’s law obliges the US government to keep spending. A calculation by Credit Suisse reckoned the figure could rise to $800bn, which will in turn unleash $1.7tn in private-sector spending on green technology. Small wonder that everyone from environmental activists to Goldman Sachs hailed the act as a “gamechanger” in the fight to tackle the climate emergency.But the second goal of the legislation is almost as significant. Biden insisted that this surge in green manufacturing would happen inside the US, thereby reviving industrial towns and cities in decline since the 1980s. It is US factories that are getting the subsidies to build all this clean tech – alongside an earlier, huge package of infrastructure spending – restoring jobs to workers who had long been written off.The Inflation Reduction Act is the centrepiece of Bidenomics, an approach that resurrects Democratic principles discarded in the Bill Clinton years, seemingly for ever: old-school industrial policy centred on an activist state making serious public investment in manufacturing; muscular regulation of corporations; and warm encouragement of unionised labour. (“When unions win, Americans across the board win,” says Biden.) Which is one reason why the AFL-CIO trade union, echoing Goldman Sachs, also hailed the act as a “gamechanger” for working people.The passage of the legislation – all the more remarkable given a Senate then split 50-50 between the parties – and its impact are set out in an outstanding new book on the Biden presidency, The Last Politician by Franklin Foer. He describes how Biden, whose hands were already full with the Covid pandemic and the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, was not content simply to be a caretaker manager, troubleshooting crises. Instead, “he set out to transform the country through some of the biggest spending bills that have ever been proposed”, Foer told me when we spoke this week.The result is that Biden has “redirected the paradigm” of US economic life in a way that will affect Americans “for a generation”. While Obama and Clinton were “deferential to markets”, says Foer, Biden has reversed “the neoliberal consensus” in place since the Ronald Reagan era. He doesn’t leave corporations alone; he gets stuck in, taking on de-facto monopolies, reviving “anti-trust” policies that had long been abandoned. (“Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism,” insists Biden. “It’s exploitation.”) “Like Reagan, Biden is resetting the economic trajectory of the nation,” adds Foer. “In fact, as a matter of substance, he is the most transformational president since Reagan.”Internationally, the change is not as dramatic, but Biden is credited with bringing stability after the chaos and dictator-coddling of the Trump years and, especially, for building and maintaining a western alliance in support of Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian imperialism. Others admire his handling of China: robust, without crossing the line where a cold war turns hot.There’s more to the Biden record than this, of course. Inflation is not at European levels, but Americans are feeling the cost of higher prices. And plenty had their confidence in the president shaken two summers ago, when they saw images of a scrambled, chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, to say nothing of the climate activists who cannot forgive his approval of an oil-drilling project in Alaska. His poll numbers point to a grim truth about politics: that it can be a cruel business. No matter how strong his record, Biden looks older and shakier than Trump and he is less entertaining. And those may be reasons enough for him to lose.For now, the Biden presidency is a reminder of why politics matters, why political skills matter, including the dark, sometimes ugly arts of getting legislation passed, often through painful compromise. It also suggests a possible, unexpected formula for success, one Labour might study closely: campaign in reassuring prose, but govern in radical poetry. Biden was no one’s idea of a fire-breathing leftist: that’s one reason why he was able to win. But once you’re in, you can dare to be bold. Once you have power, be sure to use it.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist. He will host a Guardian Live event with Gordon Brown on Tuesday 26 September at 7pm BST. The event will be live in London and livestreamed – book tickets here More