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      Into the Bright Sunshine: how Hubert Humphrey joined the civil rights fight

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      Seventy-five years ago this month, at a fractious Philadelphia convention, Hubert Humphrey delivered a famous challenge: “The time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadows of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”In a new book, Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights, Samuel G Freedman helps explain the influences and experiences that led Humphrey, then a 37-year-old midwestern mayor, to take on segregationists in his own party.Humphrey won passage of a bold civil rights platform, triggering southern delegates to nominate Strom Thurmond as a “Dixiecrat” candidate for president. The same year, Humphrey won a race for Senate from Minnesota, launching a national career that culminated in his nomination for president, and defeat by Richard Nixon, in 1968.Freedman describes how Humphrey, who was born in South Dakota, saw Jim Crow up close as a graduate student at Louisiana State University.“Given the deliberate and scrupulous erasure of Black people from LSU, it required not flagrant bigotry but mere passivity for a white student to accept segregation as something like natural law,” Freedman writes. “Humphrey’s eyes were already too open for such obliviousness.”A sociology professor and German émigré, Rudolf Heberle, had a particularly important role in shaping Humphrey’s outlook. As Freedman recounts: “The Nazis’ regime of murderous extremism came to power, in Heberle’s analysis, not by a coup from the armed fringe but thanks to ‘mass support … from middle layers of society’. Reasonable people were entirely capable of acting in morally unreasonable ways and rationalizing away their actions. Heberle had seen and heard it during his fieldwork.”Heberle was suggesting that “the Jew in Germany was the Black in America”.After LSU, Humphrey returned to Minneapolis, where two locals – one Jewish, one Black – helped stiffen his resolve: Sam Scheiner, an attorney who led the Minnesota Jewish Council, and Cecil Newman, founder of the Minneapolis Spokesman newspaper.“There were people from throughout [Humphrey’s] life who recognized something in him – skills, yes, but something larger, a kind of destiny – more than he recognized it in himself,” Freedman writes. “He was their vessel and their voice, the vessel in which to pour their passion for a more just America and the voice to amplify that passion insistently enough to affect a nation whose soul was very much at stake.”Minneapolis’s track record on race has been in the news again. Last month, the US justice department said the 2020 police murder of George Floyd was part of a “pattern or practice” of excessive force and unlawful discrimination against African Americans.Nearly 80 years earlier, Humphrey tried to combat racism and antisemitism in the city.Minneapolis was infamous for antisemitism. In the 1930s, Freedman points out, a homegrown fascist group, the Silver Legion of America, called for “returning American Blacks to slavery and disenfranchising, segregating and finally sterilizing American Jews”. In 1946, the editor of the Nation, Carey McWilliams, called the city “the capital of antisemites”.After running for mayor in 1943, Humphrey mounted another run in 1945. In the year American soldiers defeated Hitler’s forces in Europe, gangs attacked and robbed Jews in Minneapolis, sometimes yelling “Heil, Hitler!” Local leaders were ineffective. But Humphrey, Freedman writes, “plainly shared the Jewish community’s belief that the problem went way deeper than mere hoodlums. For the first time in Minneapolis’s decades-long history of racism and antisemitism, a political candidate was placing those issues at the center of a campaign.”Humphrey offered a five-point plan, including the creation of an organization to combat bigotry. He won. Two months into his term, he was confronted with the wrongful arrest of two Black women. Newman, the Black newspaper publisher, called Humphrey at home. The mayor ordered the women released and the charges dropped.Later, Humphrey won passage of an anti-discrimination law and established a council on human relations, to investigate discrimination against racial and religious minorities. For his efforts, he faced an assassination attempt and threats from Nazis. But Humphrey turned the city around.“Minneapolis stood as virtually the only city in America where a wronged job applicant could count on the government as an ally,” Freedman writes.Humphrey used such work as a springboard, championing civil rights for the nation.“My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late,” he said at the 1948 convention, adding: “This is the issue of the 20th century.”In a 2010 documentary, Hubert H Humphrey: The Art of the Possible, former president Jimmy Carter, who was 23 when Humphrey spoke in Philadelphia, called the speech “earth-shattering, expressing condemnation of the racial segregation that had been in existence ever since the end of the civil war. And he was the only one that was courageous enough to do so”.When Humphrey got to Washington, he found himself ostracized by southern Democrats who dominated the Senate. As he recalled, “After all, I had been the destroyer of the Democratic party, the enemy of the south. Hubert Humphrey, the [N-word] lover.’ … I never felt so lonesome and so unwanted in all my life as I did in those first few weeks and months.”But he continued to champion equal rights, an effort that culminated, as majority whip, with breaking a southern filibuster to help win passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.Humphrey became vice-president, to Lyndon Johnson, then ran for president himself. But “for the rest of his life,” Freedman writes, he “kept the tally sheet on which he had marked the senators’ vote on cloture, the procedure that ended the filibuster and brought the bill to its successful enactment.”
      Into the Bright Sunshine is published in the US by Oxford University Press
      Frederic J Frommer is the author of books including You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals More

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      White House rules out Joe Biden pardon for son Hunter

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      Joe Biden will not pardon his son Hunter on tax- and gun-related charges, the White House said on Thursday.At a briefing, the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, was asked: “From a presidential perspective, is there any possibility that the president would end up pardoning his son?”“No,” Jean-Pierre replied.Pressed, she said: “I just said no. I answered.”In court in Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday, Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to two tax charges, both misdemeanours. He had been expected to plead guilty as part of a deal with federal prosecutors also including a pre-trial diversion program on the guns charge, a felony.In the event, a question from the judge about the scope of the deal led to its delay.Republicans claim Hunter Biden’s business affairs, and personal problems including public struggles with addiction, show Joe Biden to be corrupt and worthy of impeachment.Rightwingers have long cried foul over the younger Biden’s treatment by federal authorities.The pardon power is established in article 2 of the US constitution, which says the president “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment”.The use of the pardon power has become increasingly controversial, presidents including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump having bestowed pardons and acts of clemency on donors and supporters.Trump was widely reported to have considered whether he could pardon himself, on issues including alleged collusion with Russian interference in the 2016 election.Trump also reportedly explored the idea of giving pre-emptive pardons to family members, another step he did not ultimately take.Now, Trump faces 71 criminal indictments and the prospect of more. As he seeks the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, most observers expect his lawyers to seek to draw out such legal battles in the hope he or another Republican in the White House will seize the pardon power.State-level indictments, however, are not subject to presidential pardons. In New York, Trump faces 34 criminal charges over hush-money payments to a porn star during the 2016 election. In Georgia, he is expected to be indicted over his election subversion in 2020.On Wednesday, Jean-Pierre told reporters Hunter Biden was “a private citizen”, and called his legal problems “a personal matter for him”.“As we have said, the president [and] the first lady, they love their son, and they support him as he continues to rebuild his life. This case was handled independently, as all of you know, by the justice department under the leadership of a prosecutor appointed by the former president.”Biden has used the pardon power sparingly, focusing largely on convictions for offenses relating to drugs.In four years in office, Trump issued 143 pardons and 94 commutations. Many were highly controversial, including pardons for his advisers Steve Bannon, Roger Stone and Paul Manafort.The Pew Research Center, however, points out that an analysis of justice department data shows Trump “used his executive clemency power less frequently than nearly every other president since the turn of the 20th century”. More

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      Hunter Biden pleads not guilty to tax and gun charges amid uncertainty over previous plea agreement – as it happened

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      From 4h agoThe president’s son had been expected to formally agree with federal prosecutors on a resolution to two tax charges and one gun charge brought against him. Instead, he pleaded not guilty to the counts, after a judge raised issues with the deal.Here’s the New York Times with an explanation of the surprise turn of events:
      Judge Maryellen Noreika has delayed a decision on whether to accept the plea agreement between federal prosecutors and Hunter Biden — demanding that the two sides make changes in the deal clarifying her role and insert language that limits the broad immunity from prosecution offered to Biden on his business dealings. Biden’s lawyers estimated it would take about two weeks.
      After a grueling three-hour hearing, Hunter Biden entered a plea of not guilty on the tax charges, which he will reverse if the two sides redo their agreement to the judge’s satisfaction.
      This blog has closed. Read more about the Hunter Biden story here:Hunter Biden went to a federal courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware to formally accept an agreement with prosecutors, which was expected to resolve the long-running investigations into his conduct. But in a surprise move, the presiding judge turned down the deal and ordered the two parties to make changes, delaying the resolution of the case. It was also revealed that federal investigators are continuing a separate inquiry into his business activities – a fact welcomed by the GOP, which has been looking to prove that Joe Biden and his son are corrupt. Back in Washington DC, Republican lawmakers aggressively questioned homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who may soon be the target of impeachment, while elsewhere, lawmakers tried to determine if the US government has found evidence of aliens.Here’s what else happened today:
      Mayorkas defended his handling of the southern border from criticism by the GOP, saying his security strategy “is working”.
      The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates to their highest level in 22 years in their ongoing campaign to stop inflation.
      Rudy Giuliani admitted that statements he made about two Georgia election workers alleging they perpetrated fraud in the 2020 election were false.
      At the last minute, a top House Republican tried to derail the plea agreement federal prosecutors reached with Hunter Biden.
      Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, briefly appeared unable to speak at a press conference. He had suffered a concussion in April.
      As chair of the House oversight committee, James Comer has led the campaign of investigations into Joe Biden’s administration, and particularly his son Hunter Biden.In a statement released after the surprise in today’s court hearing, which resulted in a federal judge rejecting, for now, a plea deal between Hunter and federal prosecutors, Comer said the agreement should be taken off the table for good:
      Today District Judge Noreika did the right thing by refusing to rubberstamp Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal. But let’s be clear: Hunter’s sweetheart plea deal belongs in the trash. Last week we heard from two credible IRS whistleblowers about the Department of Justice’s politicization and misconduct in the Biden criminal investigation. Today, the Department of Justice revealed Hunter Biden is under investigation for being a foreign agent.
      The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly has more on today’s developments in Hunter Biden’s long-running legal troubles:Reporters on the scene shared more details about the health scare involving Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican.CNN says an aide to the leader downplayed the difficulty he suddenly experienced in speaking to the press earlier today, nothing he later took their questions:Senate Republican conference chair John Barrasso later said he was “concerned” about McConnell, but did not think his health was deteriorating:We have just passed hour five of homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s appearance before the House judiciary committee, where, as the Guardian’s Mary Yang and Joan E Greve report, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly made clear they believe he is failing at his job and should be impeached. Here is their rundown of the hearing so far:Republican lawmakers grilled Alejandro Mayorkas, the embattled US secretary of homeland security, during a House judiciary committee oversight hearing on Wednesday.Mayorkas, who has been the target of a GOP-led congressional investigation over his handling of the US-Mexico border, faced a series of tough questions regarding his tenure as head of the department, which broadly oversees US immigration and border policies. The hearing came as some House Republicans have threatened to impeach Mayorkas, the first Latino and immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security, over his alleged mismanagement of the border.Mayorkas offered a pre-emptive rebuttal to Republicans’ attacks in his opening statement, noting that unlawful crossings at the southern border have decreased by more than half compared with the peak before the end of the pandemic-era policy known as Title 42.The health of senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is back under scrutiny after an alarming moment during a Republican press conference this afternoon in which he abruptly stopped speaking and had to be led away.Video of the incident was posted to Twitter by NBC congressional reporter Frank Thorp, who said the Kentucky senator, 81, “appeared to be unable to restart talking”.McConnell was hospitalized in April after suffering concussion when he tripped and fell during a private dinner at a hotel in Washington DC. In 2019, he tripped and fell at his home in Kentucky, suffering a shoulder fracture.Thorp said that McConnell was led off by his friend and colleague John Barrasso, Republican senator for Wyoming, and later returned to watch the conclusion of the press conference.Asked what had happened, McConnell reportedly said: “I’m fine”.The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates to a 22-year high on Wednesday as it continued its fight against rising inflation, my colleague Dominic Rushe writes.The decision to increase rates by a quarter-percentage point to a range of 5.25% to 5.5% comes after the Fed paused its rate-rising cycle last month.US inflation has now declined for 12 straight months and is currently running at an annual rate of 3%, down from over 9% in June last year. The Fed has raised rates from near zero in an attempt to cool the economy and bring prices down.The US economy has remained robust despite the 11 rate rises the Fed has now implemented – its most aggressive rate-rising cycle in 40 years. Hiring has slowed but remains strong and the unemployment rate is still close to a record low.Read the full report here:Republicans are very pleased that a federal judge rejected Hunter Biden’s plea deal today.Here’s the view from an attorney for the GOP-controlled House committee that made a last-minute attempt to disrupt the deal:The Biden administration has generally avoided the topic of Hunter Biden, and at her ongoing briefing to reporters, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre preempted all questions about the president’s son:The president’s son had been expected to formally agree with federal prosecutors on a resolution to two tax charges and one gun charge brought against him. Instead, he pleaded not guilty to the counts, after a judge raised issues with the deal.Here’s the New York Times with an explanation of the surprise turn of events:
      Judge Maryellen Noreika has delayed a decision on whether to accept the plea agreement between federal prosecutors and Hunter Biden — demanding that the two sides make changes in the deal clarifying her role and insert language that limits the broad immunity from prosecution offered to Biden on his business dealings. Biden’s lawyers estimated it would take about two weeks.
      After a grueling three-hour hearing, Hunter Biden entered a plea of not guilty on the tax charges, which he will reverse if the two sides redo their agreement to the judge’s satisfaction.
      Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to federal tax and gun charges, after a plea deal that was intended to resolve the allegations fell apart in court, Reuters reports.The plea came after the federal judge presiding over the hearing in Wilmington, Delaware said she needed more time to evaluate the deal reached by the president’s son with prosecutors. Prior to the hearing, Biden had agreed to admit guilt to the tax charges, and avoid the gun charge as long as he satisfied certain conditions as part of the deal with the government. More

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      Unrepentant Robert Kennedy Jr attempts to revive campaign after antisemitism accusations

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      Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr has said that he should have been “more careful” in making his recent false remarks about the “ethnic targeting” of the Covid pandemic.At a campaign debate in New York on Tuesday night, Kennedy sought to put the accusation of antisemitism that has engulfed his campaign behind him. But he stopped short of retracting his false claim that coronavirus had been targeted to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people from the impact of the disease.“I should have been more careful about what I said because I know anything I say will be distorted and weaponised against me,” he said.Speaking at a presidential campaign event hosted by the celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Kennedy said the charge of antisemitism had hurt him personally. “I have a thick skin, but the charge of antisemitism is one that cuts me, it hurts me. I haven’t said an antisemitic word in my life.”Kennedy’s bid for the White House has been contentious from the outset, given his embrace of virulent conspiracy theories that promote vaccine hesitancy. A political watchdog, the Congressional Integrity Project, recently released a report that set the candidate’s disputed views on Covid against years of antisemitic, racist and xenophobic remarks which it called “horrific” and “beyond the pale”. The report said that his promotion of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories had “deadly real world consequences”.On Tuesday, Kennedy insisted that the barrage of criticism that he has faced in the past week was itself an attempt to silence his long-shot bid for the White House. He portrayed himself as the target of what he called an “infrastructure” that was set on destroying his campaign.“There’s a way to censor people through targeted character assassination – you use vile accusations to marginalise them, and that is the kind of censorship I’m now dealing with,” he said.Kennedy is the nephew of the assassinated president John F Kennedy, and son and namesake of Robert F Kennedy who was also assassinated, while he was running for the presidency in 1968. He is challenging Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination next year.Until the antisemitism furore erupted, Kennedy had been gaining more traction than many observers had expected. In some polls he was attracting up to 20% among Democratic voters.His campaign stumbled after Kennedy told reporters at a press dinner this month that Covid had been “ethnically targeted” at Caucasians and Black people, while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people had greater immunity. The false claim was enthusiastically embraced by neo-Nazi groups, while being condemned by scientists and Jewish organizations.Critics pointed out that his remarks echoed antisemitic tropes that circulated widely during the pandemic which portrayed coronavirus as a global Jewish plot.Members of Kennedy’s own family denounced him for his “deplorable and untruthful” comments. Jack Schlossberg, a grandson of President Kennedy, posted an online video in which he called his cousin’s campaign “an embarrassment”, and Kennedy’s sister Kerry Kennedy and brother Joseph Kennedy II also unleashed harsh criticism.In trying to counter the charges of antisemitism on Tuesday night, Kennedy merely succeeded in doubling down on the false suggestion that China orchestrated the epidemic. He said there was no evidence the virus had been engineered, “and in any case it would not have been engineered by Jews – most of the experiments were in China, in Wuhan”.Hours before Kennedy appeared on stage with Boteach, the candidate was forced to find a new venue for the debate after the original host, the New York Society for Ethical Culture, cancelled the booking. Kennedy accused the society of bowing to pressure from Biden, which he said amounted to “political censorship”.The society responded with a tart statement that said Kennedy’s event had been “inconsistent” with its values, adding that no outside party had influenced the decision.Kennedy went on to make a lengthy speech in which he expressed his support for the state of Israel against claims that it was practising apartheid against the Palestinian people. “A major piece of my campaign will be explaining to Americans why that is wrong and making the case for Israel.”Since the antisemitism controversy exploded, Boteach has rallied to Kennedy’s side. The rabbi said he disagreed with the candidate’s views on vaccines – he has had four Covid vaccinations, he said – but dismissed the charge of antisemitism against him as a “disgusting, offensive lie”. More

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      Texas governor Greg Abbott rejects demand to remove floating barriers targeting migrants – as it happened

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      From 5h agoA battle is brewing in Texas between its Republican governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration, which has demanded the state remove floating barriers placed in the Rio Grande to prevent people from crossing from Mexico.Today, Abbott vowed to defy the request from the justice department, potentially setting up a legal fight with the Democratic administration:As the Guardian’s Maya Yang reported last week, the deployment of the floating barriers comes amid reports that Texas authorities are mistreating migrants who cross into the state from Mexico:
      Two pregnant migrant women who were trying to turn themselves in to US immigration authorities have alleged that Texas national guard soldiers refused to provide them with water.
      Speaking to CNN at a shelter in Eagle Pass, Texas, the two women, identified as Carmen from Honduras and María from El Salvador, recounted their experiences at the border amid recent reports of “inhumane” behavior by American border authorities.
      “They told us it was a crime to cross into the US and that we should return to Mexico,” Carmen, who said she is six months pregnant, told CNN. She added that she and her husband had initially tried to cross the Rio Grande on 12 July but were stopped by Texas national guard soldiers.
      Election day 2024 is still a long way off, but we’re getting closer to 23 August, when Republican presidential candidates will have their first debate. Most of the big names have qualified, but Donald Trump says he might not attend, while his former vice-president, Mike Pence, is struggling to qualify, as are Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson. We’ll see if these candidates can turn it around in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, the White House expressed alarm at the latest news from Israel, where the far-right government has won passage of a key part its judicial overhaul. Opponents of the move say it could threaten the country’s democracy.Here’s what else happened today:
      Texas’s Republican governor has rejected a justice department demand that the state remove floating barriers intended to stop migrants entering from Mexico.
      Mitt Romney says donors should cut off support to Republican presidential contenders who have no hope of winning the nomination, in an effort to winnow the race to two candidates and defeat Trump.
      House Republicans may decide to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt.
      Special counsel Jack Smith has obtained documents from Bernie Kerik, who advised the Trump campaign’s attempt to prove fraud in the 2020 election.
      Alabama Republicans are resisting a supreme court order to draw a second majority Black congressional district.
      Mitt Romney, the Utah senator who was the Republican nominee for president in 2012 but lost to Barack Obama, has proposed a strategy to unite the current crop of GOP contenders for the White House against Donald Trump.Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Romney, one of Trump’s most outspoken opponents in Congress, calls on donors backing Republican presidential candidates to withdraw their support once it becomes clear that their choice can’t win. The goal is to winnow the field to a two-person race, in hopes the other candidate can keep Trump from returning to office.Here’s more of what he has to say:
      Despite Donald Trump’s apparent inevitability, a baker’s dozen Republicans are hoping to become the party’s 2024 nominee for president. That is possible for any of them if the field narrows to a two-person race before Mr. Trump has the nomination sewn up. For that to happen, Republican megadonors and influencers – large and small – are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed. That decision day should be no later than, say, Feb 26, the Monday following the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
      There are incentives for no-hope candidates to overstay their prospects. Coming in behind first place may grease another run in four years or have market value of its own: Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum got paying gigs. And as former New Hampshire Gov John H Sununu has observed, ‘It is fun running for president if you know you cannot win.’
      Left to their own inclinations, expect several of the contenders to stay in the race for a long time. They will split the non-Trump vote, giving him the prize. A plurality is all that is needed for winner-take-all primaries.
      …
      Our party and our country need a nominee with character, driven by something greater than revenge and ego, preferably from the next generation. Family, friends and campaign donors are the only people who can get a lost-cause candidate to exit the race. After Feb 26, they should start doing just that.
      CNN has reported new details of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2022 election loss, including that Bernie Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner who worked with the Trump campaign to uncover fraud, has turned over a trove of documents to the prosecutor.The materials include research and witness statements produced by the team, which was led by Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani. CNN reports that Kerik will meet with Smith’s prosecutors next month for an interview.Here’s more from CNN’s story:
      Former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik was part of the team led by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani trying to uncover fraud that would swing the election in favor of Trump.
      For months, Kerik had tried to shield some of the documents from investigators, citing privilege.
      But in recent weeks, Kerik gave the documents to the Trump’s 2024 campaign to review. After that review, the campaign declined to assert privilege, according to Kerik’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, who turned over the documents to Smith’s office on Sunday.
      “I have shared all of these documents, approximately 600MB, mostly pdfs, with the Special Counsel and look forward to sitting down with them in about 2 weeks to discuss.” Parlatore said.
      Kerik is scheduled to sit down for an interview with the special counsel’s office next month, CNN has learned.
      Among the materials now in Smith’s possession are witness statements, research and other documents produced by Giuliani’s team.
      When the January 6 congressional committee subpoenaed Kerik for documents, he provided a log of his communications that he said he was withholding due to privilege. Those communications have never been disclosed publicly, as the committee did not challenge Kerik’s privilege claims in court.
      The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax authority today announced it would end the practice of sending its employees on unannounced visits of the homes of people who owed taxes.The IRS received a major infusion of funds to modernize its systems under last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, but wound up in the crosshairs of Republicans, who claimed, without evidence, that the money would pay for armed agents.In a statement, IRS commissioner Danny Werfel said the decision to end the decades-old practice of dispatching unnamed agents to homes and businesses was part of its modernization plan.“We are taking a fresh look at how the IRS operates to better serve taxpayers and the nation, and making this change is a common-sense step. Changing this long-standing procedure will increase confidence in our tax administration work and improve overall safety for taxpayers and IRS employees,” Werfel said. The IRS added that the change in policy was supported by its employee union.In an interview with CNN, a top official with the NAACP civil rights group explains the problems with Alabama’s new congressional maps: Nonetheless, the GOP-led state has gone ahead with maps that appear to violate a supreme court ruling ordering lawmakers to draw a second majority African-American congressional district.Israel’s far-right government today won a battle in their case to reform the judiciary, but as the Guardian’s Chris McGreal reports, American Jews opposed to the government’s policies against Palestinians say they are feeling optimistic about changing minds in the United States:Mike Levinson has been pushing back for 40 years and finally thinks he might be getting somewhere.“There’s a change and the politicians see it. I think it scares them,” said Levinson, holding a sign demanding “Stop Israeli settler violence” as he marched through New York on Thursday.“There’s a tremendous change going on in the American Jewish community. There are a lot of Jews, especially young people, who are not so quick to automatically and unconditionally support everything that Israel does. People are accepting the fact that it’s OK to be Jewish and criticise Israel.”Levinson, a Jewish New Yorker, began protesting against Israeli government policies during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. It’s been a long and often lonely road since then as he has sought to get his fellow Americans to pay attention to decades of Israeli occupation, military assaults on the West Bank and Gaza, and the unrelenting expansion of Jewish settlements.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was seen joining striking writers and actors on a picket line outside Netflix’s Manhattan offices today.An overwhelming majority of voters in Ohio support a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee access to abortion in the state, according to a new poll. A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll showed 58% of Ohio voters backed the amendment enshrining abortion rights. Among those who backed the amendment included a third of Republicans and 85% of independent women.The proposed amendment states that:
      Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.
      Under this proposal, abortion could still be banned after “fetal viability”, or whether it can live outside the womb.Republican congressman of Florida Matt Gaetz has been defending his decision to introduce legislation to defund investigations into Donald Trump led by special counsel Jack Smith.Gaetz made the announcement last week, just hours after the former president said he had received a letter identifying him as a target of the justice department’s investigation into the January 6 insurrection, led by Smith.In an interview with Newsmax, Gaetz said he didn’t “need Jack Smith to tell me what happened on January 6”. He said:
      I was there. I saw President Trump encourage people to peacefully and patriotically go into places where permits had been reserved with city government for lawful protest activity.
      A key group of Senate Democrats have urged the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to pressure Senator Tommy Tuberville to end his “reckless, dangerous” hold on military nominations.The letter, led by armed services committee member Senator Mazie Hirono and obtained by NBC, calls on McConnell to “exercise your leadership to protect the readiness of our military”.Tuberville, who for months has been blocking military nominations in protest of the Pentagon’s policy to reimburse travel expenses for those seeking reproductive care, including abortions, across state lines, has been “threatening our national security”, the letter says. It continues:
      We know you share our concerns about the consequences of this hold on our Armed Services, and as the leader of your conference, we urge you to take stronger action to resolve this situation.
      The Democratic signatories to the letter all serve on the Senate armed services committee with Tuberville.Election day 2024 is still a long way off, but we’re getting closer to 23 August, when Republican presidential candidates will have their first debate. Most of the big names have qualified, but Donald Trump says he might not attend, while his former vice-president Mike Pence is struggling to qualify, as are Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson. We’ll see if these candidates can turn it around in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, the White House has expressed alarm at the latest news from Israel, where the far-right government has won passage of a key part its judicial overhaul. Opponents of the move say it could threaten the country’s democracy.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Texas’s Republican governor has rejected a justice department demand that it remove floating barriers intended to stop migrants entering from Mexico.
      House Republicans may decide to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt.
      Alabama Republicans are resisting a supreme court order to draw a second majority Black congressional district.
      Republicans have hammered Joe Biden over migration at the southern border ever since he took office, but over the weekend, one GOP lawmaker said he believed both state and federal authorities had mishandled the crisis, the Guardian’s Maya Yang reports:A Texas Republican representative, Tony Gonzales, has called the current tactics used to deter migrants at the US-Mexico border “not acceptable” and urged the Biden administration and Congress to focus more heavily on legal immigration.In an interview with CBS’s Face The Nation on Sunday, Gonzales, whose 23rd district in Texas includes 800 miles of the US-Mexico border, said that the border crisis “has been anything but humane” and called recent reports of Texas troopers allegedly pushing small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande “not acceptable”.“It’s not acceptable and it hasn’t been acceptable for two years … Everything that is happening along the border is just adding fuel to the fire,” Gonzales said. He went on to say that Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who has come under fire from human rights groups over his controversial Operation Lone Star border security program, “is doing everything he can to secure the border”.A battle is brewing in Texas between its Republican governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration, which has demanded the state remove floating barriers placed in the Rio Grande to prevent people from crossing from Mexico.Today, Abbott vowed to defy the request from the justice department, potentially setting up a legal fight with the Democratic administration:As the Guardian’s Maya Yang reported last week, the deployment of the floating barriers comes amid reports that Texas authorities are mistreating migrants who cross into the state from Mexico:
      Two pregnant migrant women who were trying to turn themselves in to US immigration authorities have alleged that Texas national guard soldiers refused to provide them with water.
      Speaking to CNN at a shelter in Eagle Pass, Texas, the two women, identified as Carmen from Honduras and María from El Salvador, recounted their experiences at the border amid recent reports of “inhumane” behavior by American border authorities.
      “They told us it was a crime to cross into the US and that we should return to Mexico,” Carmen, who said she is six months pregnant, told CNN. She added that she and her husband had initially tried to cross the Rio Grande on 12 July but were stopped by Texas national guard soldiers. More

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      Democrats call on GOP to end senator’s ‘reckless’ military promotions block

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      The Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville’s block on senior US military promotions in protest of Pentagon policy on abortion is “reckless and dangerous”, eight Democratic senators told Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, in a letter published on Monday.“It falls to you to act now, for the safety and security of our nation,” the Democrats wrote to McConnell, of Kentucky. “We urge you to exercise your leadership and prevail on senator Tuberville to end his reckless hold.”The protest by the former football coach and Donald Trump ally has stretched for months, leaving the US Marine Corps without a permanent leader for the first time since before the civil war and even threatening leadership of the joint chiefs of staff.Tuberville is seeking to bring down a Department of Defense policy that allows service members based in states which restrict abortion rights to travel to ones where such healthcare remains available.The secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, has defended the policy. He has also said nearly 650 senior posts requiring Senate confirmation could be unfilled by the end of the year.Tuberville wants a Senate vote on the policy. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said last week Democrats “would not object to” a vote but added: “The bottom line is it’s up to the Republican leadership. They are risking our security, and it’s up to them to fix it.”In their Monday letter, the eight Democratic senators – led by Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and including Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Tammy Duckworth (Illinois) and Jacky Rosen (Nevada) – expressed “deep concern for the stability of our armed services and national security and call on [McConnell] to exercise your leadership to protect the readiness of our military”.Tuberville’s block was “threatening our national security”, the senators said, adding: “We know you share our concerns … and as the leader of your conference, we urge you to take stronger action to resolve this situation”.McConnell has said he does not support Tuberville’s protest but has not moved to end it.The senators added: “Although there are numerous ways to legislatively change this policy, senator Tuberville has failed to convince a majority of the Senate to agree with his position.“He continues to try to force his personal beliefs on the women and men who volunteer to serve our country, creating unnecessary havoc and punishing service members for a policy they had no part in writing.”Describing the effects on service members denied promotions, the senators said: “Families who were ordered to move are now living in temporary family housing, children aren’t able to ready themselves for new schools, and spouses are missing vital employment opportunities.”Also on Monday, Tuberville took delivery of a petition from the Secure Families Initiative, an advocacy group for military families.It said: “No matter your political beliefs, we must agree that service members and military families will not be used as political leverage. It’s time to end this political showmanship and recommit to respect the service and sacrifice of those who pledge to defend this nation.”The petition was also sent to Schumer and McConnell. In his own petition last week, Tuberville claimed support from more than 5,000 military veterans.The eight Democrats who wrote to McConnell also said the Kentuckian, as Republican leader, should hold “colleagues accountable when they recklessly cross boundaries and upend senatorial order.“Senator Tuberville’s continuation of this stalemate is reckless, dangerous, and must end.” More

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      Summer of discontent: will US strikes spell trouble for ‘union guy’ Biden?

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      It became known as the winter of discontent. After the Labour government tried to freeze wages to stem inflation, Britain was convulsed by labour strikes and disruptions in public services. Rubbish piled in the streets, bodies went unburied – and a fierce political backlash swept Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives into power.Forty-five years later a summer of strikes is roiling industries from coast to coast in America.Unions have launched or are threatening stoppages that could affect everything from airline travel and parcel deliveries to car manufacturing and film and TV production. They could also disrupt the economic growth that Joe Biden wants to campaign on in 2024.“It takes him off message because strikes are visual, strikes are hot video, and they’re a focal point for media,” said John Zogby, an author and pollster. “It becomes lame trying to explain, ‘But the numbers are good, but the numbers are good, but the numbers are getting better,’ when the video just doesn’t appear to show it.”The coronavirus pandemic had many aftershocks and labour turmoil may be among them. Hollywood production is shut down as the Writers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild are striking, partially over concerns about streaming revenues as well as artificial intelligence taking away jobs from creative workers. The action has put films and TV shows in limbo and could cost the economy an estimated $3bn.There is also the prospect of a United Auto Workers strike as contract talks get under way and the industry wrestles with a transition toward electric vehicles. The Teamsters union said its drivers might walk off the job as they struggle to reach a new contract with UPS (United Parcel Service). And more than 26,000 flight attendants at American Airlines are set to hold a strike vote over the coming weeks.Among other examples mushrooming across the country, thousands of hotel workers in Los Angeles have also been striking this month while healthcare workers at a major Chicago hospital are planning to do likewise in a dispute over wages and lack of staffing.And last month there were localised walkouts at Amazon, McDonald’s and Starbucks, while hundreds of journalists across eight states went on strike to demand an end to painful cost-cutting measures and a change of leadership at Gannett, the country’s biggest newspaper chain.Drexel Heard, a public affairs strategist based in Los Angeles, said: “This is what I believe is the start of a trend that was inevitable post-pandemic: workers knowing and understanding that things cannot go back to normal. We all work hybrid now, for the most part.“People are understanding that their need for healthcare is something that’s critical. Their need for better pay and better work hours is essential, especially when we have things that happen like a pandemic, and people want to feel safe. The only people who are fighting for workers’ rights are unions.”Scenes of industrial strife heading into winter would provide fodder for rightwing media who already accuse Biden of embracing the leftwing ideas of Senator Bernie Sanders. It might also create a headache for a president who is focusing much of his re-election campaign on the strength of the economy.On Thursday he was at the Philadelphia Shipyard in Pennsylvania to promote “Bidenomics”, a recently adopted slogan. The president said: “We have a plan that’s turning things around pretty quickly. ‘Bidenomics’ is just another way of saying ‘Restore the American Dream’.”But that message is still struggling to break through with voters. In a CNBC All-America Economic Survey released this week, 37% approve of Biden’s handling of the economy and 58% disapprove. In a Monmouth University poll, only three in 10 Americans feel the country is doing a better job recovering economically than the rest of the world since the pandemic.There is a baffling disconnect between these opinions and data that shows America defying predictions of recession and curbing price rises faster than other major economies. Inflation has fallen from 9% to 3% and is now at its lowest point in more than two years.Indeed, Biden may have helped create the very conditions that make strikes more likely. White House officials say that unions are empowered to press for more benefits and better pay because of the strong job market. Unemployment is just 3.6% and job openings are relatively high.This is one reason why Robert Reich, a former labour secretary under President Bill Clinton, does not believe that the current wave of strikes and potential strikes will overwhelm Biden’s effort to highlight economic growth.He explained in an email: “(1) the strikes and potential strikes still represent a tiny segment of the American workforce, (2) overall job gains and wage gains continue to roar, (3) a big reason workers feel able to strike is that the labor market continues to be tight, which is another good sign for Biden.”Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and a Guardian US columnist, added: “The potential problem for Biden isn’t the wave of strikes and potential strikes but the seeming determination of the Fed to continue to raise interest rates, thereby risking a recession before Election Day.”Widespread industrial action would pose a fresh test for Biden, a self-proclaimed “union guy” born in blue-collar Scranton, Pennsylvania. Past attempts to intervene in such disputes have not always gone smoothly.Last year his administration helped forge a tentative agreement between rail companies and their unionised workers to avoid a strike that could have rocked the economy before the midterm elections. The tentative deal prevented a strike but failed to appease workers, and Congress ultimately had to intervene by imposing an agreement.Biden, who is pushing the Senate to confirm Julie Su as his new labour secretary, has already expressed support for the striking Hollywood actors and writers, insisting that all workers deserve fair pay and benefits. Such an approach could work to his advantage against Republicans seeking to rebrand themselves as the party of the working class.Faiz Shakir, chief political adviser to Sanders, who met with Biden and young labour organisers at the White House this week, said: “When you think about some of the working-class people who are in the swing voter category, they tend to carry an anger and frustration about an economy that hasn’t been working for them.“It would be wrong to go back to them and tell them, ‘Hey, everything is much better since I was president.’ I think you want to say, ‘I’m fighting for you and I’m improving the situation for you. However, there’s way more work to do and the people who are standing in the way are these corporate bosses, and I’m taking them on from you.’In the UPS dispute, Shakir argues, Biden should make clear he stands with the workers. “Stand boldly with those workers. Say, ‘I stand with you. You want to go on strike? That’s fine. Yes, there will be costs to consumers, yes, there will be some challenges in the economy, but your work is essential and important and you deserve your fair share.’“What I think will end up happening is you usually get some criticism from the business elite who are going to say, why is the president of the United States siding with these workers and making it even harder for these people to reach a negotiated outcome? To that, I say that is good for politics, because when working people see that you’re sticking your neck out for them, they will reward you. They see you taking arrows for them.”Shakir also believes that the dispute will be resolved in a few weeks with a positive outcome for labour, and that Biden will be able to justifiably claim that he helped improve the lot of hundreds of thousands of workers.In his remarks in Philadelphia on Thursday, Biden was again careful to align himself with workers and unions against Wall Street and companies that made record-high profits during the pandemic. If a disruptive wave of strikes comes to pass, this is likely to be the least risky strategy.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank, said: “It’s my distinct impression that support for labour unions has gone up significantly so we’re not talking about [British miners’ leader] Arthur Scargill in the 1970s. We’re talking about an extended period during which a lot of Americans believe that workers have got the short end of the stick.“They’re much less worried about ‘big labour’ than they used to be, in part because labour isn’t as big as used to be, especially in the private sector where labour unions have weakened enormously. There’s a basic sense of fair play operating to increase support for not just working people but organised labour, so I don’t think this is a bad time to strike and I don’t think that will necessarily redound to Joe Biden’s discredit.” More

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      Why Maryland became a haven for abortion care after Roe’s fall

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      When the US supreme court upended the federal right to abortion enshrined in Roe v Wade, the immediate task before Democrats seemed simple: keep abortion legal in as many states as possible.But over a year since Roe’s demise, some leaders in the reproductive rights movements worry that Democrats have tunnel vision, focusing their messaging and resources entirely on the legal tug-of-war over abortion bans in the midwest and south.“Voters want to understand: what are you going to do to make things better? They don’t want to just hear, oh, we’re not going to ban abortion. That’s important, but that’s not good enough,” said Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, which supports abortion rights.Miller said the fight to keep abortion legal is just one frontier in the larger battle for reproductive healthcare. She spent the past year pushing blue states to pass legislation that makes abortion easily accessible, affordable and without stigma for patients and providers.In recent months, Maryland has emerged as an example of how Democratic lawmakers can take proactive steps to bolster abortion access, even in states where the procedure is and will likely remain legal.Maryland is one of just eight states that require private insurers to cover abortion care with no cost-sharing.In April 2022, in anticipation of the supreme court ruling on abortion, Maryland Democrats passed a bill that allows nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and other medical health professionals to supervise abortions.“Before, we would only allow doctors to do it, even though nurse practitioners, midwives, all these other medical professionals are able to handle the similar things like miscarriages and deliveries,” said Maryland House Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk, one of the bill’s sponsors.The law also directs the state to invest $3.5m a year for abortion-care training.If Roe fell, Maryland’s solidly Democratic legislature could ward off any attempts at criminalizing abortion patients or providers. But keeping abortion legal was not good enough. Peña-Melnyk and her colleagues wanted to ensure that Maryland’s abortion clinics would have the capacity to deal with an inevitable surge of out-of-state patients.“This case ending Roe didn’t come out of nowhere, we saw it coming, so when the legislative session started in 2022, we started preparing,” Peña-Melnyk said.She said Maryland’s investment in reproductive healthcare helped prepare the state for the coming months, when West Virginia, Ohio and other neighbors enacted a dizzying web of abortion restrictions.The push to bolster abortion resources in Maryland is part of what attracted Dr Anne Banfield to the state.Dr Banfield spent over a decade of her career as an OB-GYN at a rural hospital in West Virginia. She relocated to Maryland in spring 2022, just after a leaked draft opinion revealed that the supreme court was poised to upend abortion rights.“When I was in West Virginia, there was this constant hum in the background of, oh, what are the politicians going to do next,” she said. “You don’t realize how much that negatively impacts your overall outlook until the pressure is gone.”One year after Banfield moved, Maryland governor Wes Moore signed a new set of protections for abortion providers and patients, including a measure that shields the state’s doctors from legal liability if they provide an abortion to out-of-state patients.“Listen, we are a rural hospital, it is a place that typically has challenges recruiting providers,” Banfield said.But in the past few months, Banfield said she has been able to hire recent graduates from top residency programs.“I can look at these candidates and say, this is a place where you can come and practice full-spectrum reproductive healthcare,” she said. “Here is a place where you will be protected.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStates without affirmative protections for patients and providers could see increased “brain drain”, with doctors like Banfield relocating to places like Maryland. Reproductive health workers are increasingly wary of states that do not proactively push to make abortion more affordable and freely accessible, beyond basic questions about legality.Hanan Jabril, a full-spectrum doula and abortion rights organizer in Wisconsin, is preparing to apply to medical school in hopes of becoming an OB-GYN.“Where I’m applying, where I want to end up, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for years, and the political climate of different states is a huge part of that decision,” said Jabril. “States like Wisconsin are just hemorrhaging residents in OB-GYN especially, because the work is being criminalized by these bans.”When Roe was overturned last year, an 1849 law banning abortion went back into effect in Wisconsin. The 19th century ban is currently facing a legal challenge that is expected to land before the Wisconsin supreme court.Jabril was part of a coalition of progressive organizers that helped elect a liberal justice to the state supreme court in April. With a liberal majority on the court, Wisconsin is poised to overturn the state’s 1849 law.But Jabril said that overturning the ban on abortion isn’t good enough.“It’s important, but I think people forget that this fight didn’t start last year,” they said.Jabril said there are cost barriers to accessing abortion that have long predated the overturn of Roe. Because of the Hyde amendment, passed in 1977, states are banned from using federal Medicaid dollars to pay for abortions, with very narrow exceptions.Of the 32 states following the Hyde amendment, just four states help pay for abortion in cases where a pregnancy could cause long-lasting damage to a patient’s physical health.Jabril wants to train and practice medicine in a state like Maryland or Illinois, which has voluntarily opted to use state dollars to cover all or most medically necessary abortion.“People don’t realize how much more there is to abortion access than just, the law says it’s OK,” said Jabril. “If you can’t pay for it, or if there’s no provider within driving distance, then abortion is still not accessible.” More