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      Biden’s name won’t appear on New Hampshire ballots – where does that leave Democrats?

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      While Donald Trump and Nikki Haley might draw focus, a shadow presidential primary is taking place in New Hampshire, where Joe Biden could stumble at the first hurdle of his bid to run for president again in 2024 following an internal Democratic party feud.As a consequence of the party scrap, Biden’s name will not even appear on the ballot in the Granite state on Tuesday. While the president remains the favorite to win his party’s overall nomination, his absence here has opened a window for Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, and Marianne Williamson, an author and self-help guru who ran for president in 2020, to mount longshot presidential bids.The pair have spent weeks campaigning in the state, pitching different visions for the future. Phillips, 55, has touted his reputation as a centrist; his record of working with Republicans to get things done; and the fact that he is 26 years younger than Biden.Williamson, who withdrew from the 2020 race before the Iowa caucuses, is selling more of a deviation from the current administration. A progressive, she would introduce free college tuition, declare a climate emergency and “Department of Peace” which would be tasked with avoiding war abroad and tackling white supremacy at home.So far it is Phillips who seems to be drawing the most attention from Granite staters, even if, as he told voters in Salem on Friday, challenging Biden has meant being “excommunicated” from the wider Democratic party.“I was a darling as of 90 days ago, and now I’m the devil somehow,” Phillips told the Guardian after the event.“But that’s how it works. I expected this because it is a nonsensical culture, of standing in line playing your role waiting your turn. We can’t do that if we hope to save this country.”Phillips, who ran his family’s hundred million dollar brewing company before winning a seat in the House of Representatives in 2018, only launched his campaign in October 2023, but he has established a large political operation in the state.At his events his volunteers scurry around gathering signatures from people in the crowd, and hand out T-shirts and buttons with the legend: “I like Dean” written on the front. Frequently the crowds are large.An event in Nashua on Saturday, a bitterly cold day with wispy snow falling from the sky, drew more than 200 people, who heard Phillips tout his record as “the second most bipartisan” Democrat in the House of Representatives.“We believe it is time to segregate the far-left and the far-right and give voice to the exhausted majority of America. Are you ready for that?” Phillips said, to applause.A man who clearly has a passion for language, Phillips then addressed a Democratic effort to write-in Biden’s name on the ballot on Tuesday by suggesting: “If he wrote you off, why would you write him in,” and claimed that Biden “took the granite state for gran-ted”.On the stump Phillips sometimes adds: “I did torpedo my career in Congress, so that this country will not be torpedoed by this nonsense.”New Hampshire polling shows Biden with a commanding lead over Phillips, and an even more commanding lead over Williamson. But given Biden’s name isn’t on the ballot, there’s a possibility Phillips could win.The unusual situation stems from the Democratic national committee’s decision to ditch decades of tradition this year in choosing South Carolina, a much more racially diverse state, to host the first presidential primary. When New Hampshire said it would host its primary first anyway – South Carolina will vote next week – the Democratic National Committee essentially said it would ignore the state’s results.It means that Phillips’s and Williamson’s efforts here won’t actually help them become a presidential candidate, but that doesn’t render the time they spend here completely redundant, said Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire.“New Hampshire historically has not been about delegates, because we have relatively few to offer in the big scheme of things,” Scala said.“It’s about the publicity that comes with a victory or even a better-than-expected performance in an early voting state in the nomination process, and I think they’ve been following that playbook.”Biden might be absent from the state, but a movement has emerged encouraging people to write his name on voting slips, and in a sign that the Biden campaign sees the potential for embarrassment, a series of high-profile Biden supporters have been dispatched to New Hampshire in recent weeks.Ro Khanna, a rising Democratic congressman from California, held an event for Biden on Saturday, while Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, is among a slew of Biden’s cabinet officials who have pitched up here since the start of December.Another problem for Phillips and Williamson is a liberal-led effort to get independent New Hampshirites to vote for Haley in the Republican primary, in an attempt to damage Trump’s chances in the state. PrimaryPivot, the organization running the campaign, has been a regular presence at Republican events.“There’s a difference between a regular conservative Republican and someone who is an autocrat,” said Robert Schwarz, co-founder of PrimaryPivot.“For the issues most important to our democracy, Nikki Haley and Donald Trump are night and day.”For Phillips and Williamson, the write-in Biden campaign, and a separate effort to write-in “ceasefire” on Democratic ballots to critique Biden’s handling of Israel’s actions in Gaza, is an unwanted distraction.“President Biden doesn’t really care about a write-in campaign. The president would care if a candidate, such as myself, who has called for a ceasefire from the very beginning, got a lot of votes,” Williamson said at a campaign event in Manchester on Saturday.“I find [the campaign] kind of self-indulgent, performative.”Williamson, who after dropping out of the 2020 race endorsed Bernie Sanders for president, has a much broader critique of the US than Phillips. Political elites, Williamson said, have a “business model” of “job elimination, and worker exploitation, and demonization of unions, and tax cuts for the very, very wealthy”.“A majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. The majority of Americans can’t even dream of homeownership at this point. A majority of Americans cannot afford to absorb a $500 unexpected expenditure. One in four Americans live with medical debt, 75 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured,” Williamson said.She has found some support among people like Lisa Swanson, a student at Quinnipiac university who voted for Sanders four years ago. Speaking after the Manchester event, Swanson said she found Williamson “very reasonable”.“She shares a lot of the beliefs that I’ve had for a very long time, as if she’s plucked them right out of my own brain. So that’s very refreshing,” Swanson said.But while the campaigns of Williamson and Phillips might be winning support, there is still a sense that this could all be for naught. Neither is expected to seriously challenge Biden in South Carolina primary, let alone in the states to follow.Like others who attended events for these rebel candidates, Swanson was angry at the Democratic party skipping their state.“I feel like it’s pretty anti-democratic, quite frankly. It is the opposite of democracy. We are supposed to vote as the people to show what we want, and the DNC doing that with Joe Biden, quite frankly, says that they don’t trust the people to make a decision,” Swanson said. More

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      John Lewis review: superb first biography of a civil rights hero

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      John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community chronicles one man’s quest for a more perfect union. An adventure of recent times, it is made exceptional by the way the narrative intersects with current events. It is the perfect book, at the right time.Raymond Arsenault also offers the first full-length biography of the Georgia congressman and stalwart freedom-fighter. The book illuminates Lewis’s time as a planner and participant of protests, his service in Congress and his time as an American elder statesman.Exemplary of Malcom X’s observation, “of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research,” Arsenault’s life of Lewis also brings to mind William Faulkner’s take on American life: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”John Robert Lewis was born into a poor family of sharecroppers in Alabama. Sharecropping amounted to slavery in all but name. White people owned the land and equipment. At the company store, seed and other supplies, from cornmeal to calico, were available on credit. The prices set for all this, and for the cotton harvest, were calculated to keep Black people in debt.Recalling his childhood, Lewis was not referring to material wealth when he wrote: “The world I knew as a little boy was a rich, happy one … It was a small world … filled with family and friends.”His school books made him aware of the unfairness of Jim Crow: “I knew names written in the front of our raggedy secondhand textbooks were white children’s names, and that these books had been new when they belonged to them.”His parents and nine siblings’ initial indifference to learning proved frustrating. They viewed his emergent strength, which would help him withstand a career punctuated by arrests and beatings, as a means to help increase a meager income. First sent into the cotton fields at six, Lewis was frequently compelled to miss class through high school.His political mission grew out of a religious calling. His was a gospel of justice and liberation. As a child he practiced preaching to a congregation of the chickens. In time, like Martin Luther King Jr, he was ordained a Baptist minister.Inspired by Gandhi and Bayard Rustin as well as by King, Lewis also embraced non-violence in emulation of Jesus. He took to heart Christ’s call to turn the other cheek: love your enemy and love one another. He called his modeling of Christ’s confrontation with injustice “getting into good trouble”.Education offered opportunities. In college, Lewis met and befriended likeminded young people. Helping form and lead the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he attracted others eager to take action, as Freedom Riders or whatever else gaining equal treatment might take.Lewis’s willingness to suffer attack while defending his beliefs gave him credibility like no other. The most remembered blow produced a skull fracture in Selma, Alabama. That barbaric 1965 assault against peaceful protesters came from authorities headed by George Wallace, the governor who said: “Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!” A move to maintain white supremacy, the atrocity became known as “Bloody Sunday”.Time after time, Lewis found unity among colleagues elusive. In 1963, at the March on Washington, four higher-ups insisted on softening his speech. Even so, his radicalized passion shone through.Collaborating with Jack and Robert Kennedy, their self-satisfied delusion masquerading as optimism, was also problematic. Time and again, political expedience tempered the president and the attorney general in their commitment to civil rights. Sixty years on, among lessons Lewis attempted teaching was the inevitability of backlash following progress. If Barack Obama represented propulsion forward, the improbable installment of Donald Trump was like a race backward. Angering some, this was why, looking past Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, Lewis endorsed for president the less exciting but more electable Joe Biden.Lewis’s ability to forgive indicates something of his greatness. Of George Wallace’s plea for forgiveness, in 1986, he said: “It was almost like someone confessing to a priest.”Rather like a priest, Lewis was admired across the House chamber. His moral compass was the “conscience of Congress”. Near the end of his life, in 2020, employing all his measured and collaborative demeanor, he exerted this standing in an attempt to restore the Voting Rights Act, gutted by a rightwing supreme court. Exhibiting what seemed to be endless resolve, he nearly succeeded.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionI met Lewis in 1993, in Miami, at the conference of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The event’s theme, “cultural diversity”, got more dubious by the day. Only Black people attended excellent Black history workshops. Only rich white people toured Palm Beach houses.There were subsidized airfares, conference fees and accommodation for people of color. But I asked the Trust’s new president, Richard Moe, if it wouldn’t be good for the Trust to acquire Villa Lewaro, a house at Irvington, New York, once the residence of Madam CJ Walker, a Black business pioneer. Moe answered: “I intend to take the Trust out of the business of acquiring the houses of the rich.”I hoped Lewis’s keynote address would deem preservation a civil right. It didn’t. Instead, Lewis lamented how high costs made preserving landmarks in poor Black neighborhoods an unaffordable luxury. Moe heartily concurred. I stood to protest.Moe cut me off: “Mr Adams, you are making a statement, not asking a question. You are out of order!”“No,” Lewis said. “The young man did ask a question! He asked: ‘Why in places like Harlem, with abatements and grants, taxpayers subsidize destruction, instead of preserving Black heritage?’ I never thought of it that way. And he’s right.”In that moment, John Lewis became my hero. As a preservationist, I share his mission to obtain that Beloved Community. It is a place where inclusion is a right and where welcome is a given.
      John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community is published in the US by Yale University Press
      Michael Henry Adams is an architectural-cultural historian and historic preservation activist More

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      Roger Stone should be prosecuted, says Democrat he allegedly threatened to kill

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      The California Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell has called for the rightwing activist and Trump ally Roger Stone to be prosecuted over an alleged death threat he also made against Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York.Asked by Scripps News if he wanted Stone to be prosecuted, Swalwell said: “Yes, I absolutely do. I know [the] aim [of the threat] is to not just threaten and in this case take a specific action, but its aim is to silence Donald Trump’s critics.”Stone, 71, is a longtime Republican operative and self-proclaimed dirty trickster, long close to Trump and involved in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Last week, Mediaite said it had obtained a recording from shortly before the election in which Stone told an associate, then a New York police officer: “It’s time to do it.“Let’s go find Swalwell. It’s time to do it. Then we’ll see how brave the rest of them are. It’s time to do it. It’s either Nadler or Swalwell has to die before the election. They need to get the message. Let’s go find Swalwell and get this over with. I’m just not putting up with this shit any more.”Swalwell and Nadler were prominent Trump opponents during his time in office. In 2020, as chair of the House judiciary committee, Nadler said he would investigate Trump’s commutation of a jail sentence handed to Stone for obstructing the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.This week, Nadler said he had been in communication with US Capitol police and the FBI about Stone’s alleged remark.On Thursday, Swalwell told Scripps: “The message I send to Roger Stone is: ‘I’m not going away.’ We’re not going to be intimidated. We must be a country where we settle our scores not with violence, but with voting.”Stone says the recording is a fake, while his associate, Sal Greco, has dismissed it as “political fodder”.Stone’s lawyer, David Schoen – who defended Trump in his second impeachment trial, for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress – told Scripps Stone had had “two experts look at” the recording.“It’s a 92% chance or higher that it’s AI-generated,” Schoen said. “I’m sure that if he said it, that he didn’t mean literally those words. He doesn’t speak that way. He’s got zero history of violence, ever. I know him pretty well, and I think it’s an absolutely crazy charge.” More

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      Former Republican candidate Tim Scott to endorse Donald Trump ahead of New Hampshire primary, reports say – as it happened

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      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill.On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.In separate report released by Vanity Fair on Friday, multiple sources said that Trump has been calling Scott in attempts to win his endorsement ahead of next month’s primary in South Carolina, which is also the home state of Trump’s opponent Nikki Haley, who was previously the state’s governor.The report of Scott’s endorsement of Trump comes as the ex-president prepares to rally in New Hampshire this weekend ahead of the state’s primary next week.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      Anti-abortion activists gathered in Washington DC on Friday as part of the March for Life campaign. The rally comes ahead of the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, which brought national reproductive rights to the country, and ahead of the two-year anniversary of the supreme court’s decision to strike it down.
      Donald Trump has renewed his mistrial request in E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him. In a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said that Carroll’s actions “severely prejudices the president Trump’s defense [sic] since he has been deprived of critical information relating to critical evidence which plaintiff has described to the jury”.
      In response to whether the White House would publicly support a testimony from the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, before the House Armed Services Committee over his recent hospitalization, White House spokesperson John Kirby said: “That’ll be a decision for the secretary of defense and he has to make that decision … I’m not going to get into personal and private discussions that the secretary has had with the president of the United States.”
      Joe Biden has signed a stopgap government funding bill. The bipartisan legislation narrowly avoided a government shutdown at the 11th hour.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill. On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.
      Joe Biden has approved the debt cancellation for another 74,000 student loan borrowers across the country. The latest announcement brings the total number of people who have had their debt cancelled under the Biden administration to 3.7 million.
      Former 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang has endorsed the presidential bid of Minnesota’s Democratic representative Dean Phillips. Calling himself a former “campaign surrogate for Joe [Biden]” at a campaign event on Thursday, Yang said: “Dean Phillips is the only one with the courage, the character and conviction to go against the grain, to go against the legion of followers in Washington DC.”
      Donald Trump is trying to convince allies of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis that the Republican race for a presidential nominee is over, according to a new report by Vanity Fair. As Trump continues to face mounting legal troubles, the ex-president is reported to have been pressuring Haley and DeSantis to drop out of the race.
      Maryland’s Democratic representative Jamie Raskin has pushed back against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal for a Palestinian state, writing in a statement on X:
      Ideological extremism is destroying prospects for peace. Most Americans will support a pragmatic peace strategy to free the hostages, provide aid to the population of Gaza, launch the two-state solution and put Hamas terror & right-wing fanaticism behind us.
      The Guardian’s Carter Sherman is at the March for Life rally in Washington DC where anti-abortion activists are protesting ahead of the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade.Here are some of her dispatches:Donald Trump has renewed his mistrial request in E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him.In a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said that Carroll’s actions “severely prejudices the president Trump’s defense [sic] since he has been deprived of critical information relating to critical evidence which plaintiff has described to the jury”.Earlier this week, Trump complained loudly in the Manhattan courthouse during Carroll’s testimony, making comments including “It is a witch-hunt” and “It really is a con job” to his lawyers.In turn, Kaplan threatened to remove Trump from the courtroom, to which Trump replied: “I would love it, I would love it.”While speaking at a briefing, White House spokesperson John Kirby answered a question on whether the White House would publicly support a testimony from defense secretary Lloyd Austin before the House Armed Services Committee over his recent hospitalization.Kirby said:
      That’ll be a decision for the secretary of defense and he has to make that decision … I’m not going to get into personal and private discussions that the secretary has had with the president of the United States. They have spoken as recently as late last week. As you have heard the president say himself, he has full trust and confidence in Secretary Austin and his leadership at the Pentagon and that will continue.
      In a letter to Austin on Thursday, Mike Rogers, a Republican representative from Alabama who chairs the committee, said that he is “alarmed” over Austin’s recent hospitalization.He added: “I expect your full honesty and cooperation in this matter. Anything shot of that is completely unacceptable.”Here is where the day stands:
      Joe Biden has signed a stopgap government funding bill. The bipartisan legislation narrowly avoided a government shutdown at the 11th hour.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill. On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.
      Joe Biden has approved the debt cancellation for another 74,000 student loan borrowers across the country. The latest announcement brings the total number of people who have had their debt cancelled under the Biden administration to 3.7 million.
      Former 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang has endorsed the presidential bid of Minnesota’s Democratic representative Dean Phillips. Calling himself a former “campaign surrogate for Joe [Biden]” at a campaign event on Thursday, Yang said: “Dean Phillips is the only one with the courage, the character and conviction to go against the grain, to go against the legion of followers in Washington DC.”
      Donald Trump is trying to convince allies of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis that the Republican race for a presidential nominee is over, according to a new report by Vanity Fair. As Trump continues to face mounting legal troubles, the ex-president is reported to have been pressuring Haley and DeSantis to drop out of the race.
      Anti-abortion activists are gathering in Washington DC today for the annual March for Life campaign.This time the event takes place ahead of the 51st anniversary, on Monday, of the supreme court’s ruling in Roe v Wade in 1973 that brought in the national right to an abortion in the US, and ahead of the two-year anniversary of the current, right-leaning supreme court striking down Roe in 2022.Joe Biden and Kamala Harris plan to highlight the depletion of reproductive rights, which is proving a vote-loser for Republicans, on the 2024 campaign trail next week, amid high Democratic party spending on related ads, Axios reports.The Guardian’s Carter Sherman is in the cold and snowy capital and will be sending a dispatch. Meanwhile, she’s on X/Twitter with vignettes.The move follows the House of Representatives passing the short-term spending bill late on Thursday, sending the legislation to the president’s desk with just two days left before government funding was to run out, in the latest nail-biter.The bipartisan legislation averted a government shutdown that would have begun at one minute past midnight tonight.The bill, which represents the third stopgap spending measure of this fiscal year, will extend government funding at current levels until 1 March for some government agencies and until 8 March for others.The House vote came hours after the Senate approved the bill in a vote of 77 to 18, following bipartisan negotiations that stretched into late Wednesday evening. The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, praised the bill as a vital measure that would allow lawmakers more time to negotiate over full-year appropriations bills.“Avoiding a shutdown is very good news for the country, for our veterans, for parents and children, and for farmers and small businesses – all of whom would have felt the sting had the government shut down,” Schumer said in a floor speech. “And this is what the American people want to see: both sides working together and governing responsibly. No chaos. No spectacle. No shutdown.”You can read more on the passage of the legislation last night, from my colleague Joanie Greve, here.The Associated Press is also now reporting that Tim Scott of South Carolina is expected to endorse Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for president ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. It would be a blow to Scott’s fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s pick for ambassador to the United Nations during his presidency.The New York Times was first to report the story today, noting it would “spur more talk” of Scott’s prospects as Trump’s vice-presidential pick.The AP news agency also further reports:
      A person familiar with Scott’s plans confirmed Friday to The Associated Press that Scott would travel from Florida to New Hampshire with the GOP front-runner.
      The person spoke on the condition of anonymity due to not being allowed to discuss the plans publicly.
      Scott launched his own bid to challenge Trump last May before shuttering his effort about six months later. Trump has been appearing on the campaign trail with several other former rivals who have endorsed him, including North Dakota governor Doug Burgum and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
      Scott’s endorsement was sought by the remaining major contenders in the Republican primary, particularly ahead of South Carolina’s February 24 primary, which has historically been influential in determining the eventual nominee.
      Haley appointed Scott to the Senate in 2012.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill.On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.In separate report released by Vanity Fair on Friday, multiple sources said that Trump has been calling Scott in attempts to win his endorsement ahead of next month’s primary in South Carolina, which is also the home state of Trump’s opponent Nikki Haley, who was previously the state’s governor.The report of Scott’s endorsement of Trump comes as the ex-president prepares to rally in New Hampshire this weekend ahead of the state’s primary next week. More

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      US Senate passes stopgap bill to avert government shutdown

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      The Senate voted on Thursday to extend current federal spending and keep the government open, sending a short-term measure to the House that would avoid a shutdown and push off a final budget package until early March.The House is scheduled to vote on the measure and send it to Joe Biden later in the day.The stopgap bill, passed by the Senate on a 77-18 vote, comes after a bipartisan spending deal between the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, this month and a subsequent agreement to extend current spending so the two chambers have enough time to pass individual spending bills.The temporary measure will run to 1 March for some federal agencies whose approved funds were set to run out on Friday and extend the remainder of government operations to 8 March.Johnson has been under pressure from his right flank to scrap the budget agreement with Schumer, and the bill to keep the government running will need Democratic support to pass the Republican-majority House. Johnson has insisted he will stick with the deal as moderates in the party have urged him not to back out.It would be the third time Congress has extended current spending as House Republicans have bitterly disagreed over budget levels and some on the right have demanded steeper cuts. The former House speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted by his caucus in October after striking an agreement with Democrats to extend current spending the first time. Johnson has also come under criticism as he has wrestled with how to appease his members and avoid a government shutdown in an election year.“We just needed a little more time on the calendar to do it and now that’s where we are,” Johnson said on Tuesday about the decision to extend federal funding yet again. “We’re not going to get everything we want.”Most House Republicans have so far refrained from saying that Johnson’s job is in danger. But a revolt of even a handful of Republicans could endanger his position in the narrowly divided House.The Virginia representative Bob Good, one of eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy, has been pushing Johnson to reconsider the deal with Schumer.“If your opponent in negotiation knows that you fear the consequence of not reaching an agreement more than they fear the consequence of not reaching an agreement, you will lose every time,” Good said this week.Other Republicans acknowledge Johnson is in a tough spot. “The speaker was dealt with the hand he was dealt,” said the Kentucky congressman Andy Barr. “We can only lose one vote on the majority side. I think it’s going to have to be bipartisan.”The short-term measure comes amid negotiations on a separate spending package that would provide wartime dollars to Ukraine and Israel and strengthen security at the US-Mexico border. Johnson is also under pressure from the right not to accept a deal that is any weaker than a House-passed border measure that has no Democratic support.Johnson, Schumer and other congressional leaders and committee heads visited the White House on Wednesday to discuss that spending legislation. Johnson used the meeting to push for stronger border security measures while Biden and Democrats detailed Ukraine’s security needs as it continues to fight Russia.Biden has requested a $110bn package for the wartime spending and border security. More

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      US third-party centrists file formal complaint over election ‘conspiracy’

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      The centrist group No Labels has filed a formal complaint with the justice department, asking it to investigate an “alleged unlawful conspiracy” to shut down its effort to secure ballot access for the 2024 presidential election.No Labels has not yet decided whether it will run a third party against Joe Biden and the Republican nominee, widely expected to be Donald Trump, in November’s presidential election. Critics say the effort would have the unintended consequence of hurting Biden and helping Trump.Last week No Labels sent an eight-page letter to the justice department’s Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, and Nicole Argentieri, acting assistant attorney general for the criminal division, accusing its opponents of violating federal law including racketeering and a number of criminal civil rights provisions.“There is a group of activists and operatives and party officials who are participating in alleged illegal conspiracy to use intimidation, harassment and fear against representatives of No Labels, its donors and its potential candidates,” Dan Webb, a No Labels leader who has served as the US attorney in Chicago, told a press conference in Washington DC on Thursday.The letter cites examples including a recent Semafor report on an 80-minute call organised by Matt Bennett, co-founder of the thinktank Third Way. One attendee explained on the call how they would dissuade candidates from running on a No Labels unity ticket: “Through every channel we have, to their donors, their friends, the press, everyone – everyone – should send the message: if you have one fingernail clipping of a skeleton in your closet, we will find it.”In another case, Holly Page, a co-founder of No Labels, was allegedly approached by a representative of the Lincoln Project and told to walk away from the group. She was allegedly warned: “You have no idea of the forces aligned against you. You will never be able to work in Democratic politics again.”The letter also notes that Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, posted a tweet last year of a video in which he said No Labels and its leaders “need to be burned to the fucking ground politically”.At Thursday’s press conference, Pat McCrory, a national co-chair and former governor of North Carolina, responded: “Who do they think they are, Tony Soprano? I hope not.”Benjamin Chavis Jr, a No Labels national co-chair and a leader and veteran civil rights activist, said: “The alleged conspiracy to stop No Labels is a brazen voter suppression effort.“Based on the evidence that we have submitted to the United States Department of Justice, if individuals were working to frighten and harass an organisation seeking to register disenfranchised voters, the country would be outraged and those individuals would likely be prosecuted. That is what is happening today and needs to be exposed for what it is.”Joe Lieberman, a No Labels National founding chair and former senator, added: “It’s a matter of giving voice to millions of Americans who feel abandoned by the Democratic and Republican political establishments. They’re angry at the two major parties. Who can blame them?“And they’re profoundly disappointed that they’re going to be forced to choose once again between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. They want a third choice. There’s a lot of talk lately about democracy being on the ballot in 2024 and in many ways it is. But I think it’s really important to understand what we mean by the word democracy.”Demand for a third-party presidential candidate has reached record highs amid deep voter dissatisfaction with 81-year-old Biden and Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges across four cases. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in December showed six in 10 respondents were unhappy with the two-party system and wanted a third choice.Founded in 2009, No Labels is now on the ballot in 14 states and say it will decide in March whether to offer its ballot line to a unity presidential ticket. If it does, the Unity ticket presidential campaign will be responsible for securing ballot access in the final 18 states plus the District of Columbia.On Tuesday a federal judge blocked the Arizona secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, from recognizing candidates wanting to run for office under the No Labels banner aside from the party’s yet-to-be-chosen ticket for president and vice-president. Lieberman acknowledged that, should Nikki Haley drop out of the Republican primary race and express an interest in joining a No Labels ticket, she would “deserve serious consideration”.The Lincoln Project rejected No Labels’ legal complaint, saying in statement: “No Labels is a dark money group that is so consumed with its own quest for power and relevancy that it is willing to risk electing Trump, despite their own acknowledgment that he is a dangerous ideologue.“And like Trump, they want to weaponize the DoJ to get to attack their opponents for protected political speech. This is a desperate attempt to salvage their failing campaign and keep their fleeing supporters who have finally seen through their facade.” More

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      Democrats condemn ‘cruel’ abortion bans ahead of 51st anniversary of Roe

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      Senate Democrats underscored their commitment to abortion rights in a press conference on Wednesday, ahead of the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade. The now-overturned supreme court case provided American women with a constitutional right to abortion for nearly 50 years.Experts at the briefing described Republican-backed abortion bans across the country as “cruel”, “extreme” and causing untold “suffering” for American women, thousands of whom are forced to travel across state lines for abortions or be forced to remain pregnant.“Senate Democrats will not let anyone turn away from the devastation Republicans have caused,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat. “And we will not stop pushing to restore the federal right to abortion.”The briefing comes at the start of the 2024 presidential election cycle, in which abortion rights are expected to be a defining issue. Former president Donald Trump, called the “most pro-life president” by anti-abortion activists and national organizations alike, has already won the Iowa Republican caucuses handily, and is widely expected to become the Republican party’s nominee.Trump nominated and the Senate confirmed three right-leaning supreme court justices, all of whom voted to overturn Roe v Wade in the case that now governs federal abortion rights – Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Even so, anti-abortion laws have become a politically poisonous issue for Republicans. Abortion rights have won at the ballot box again and again, as in Michigan and Kansas. Polls show more Americans than ever support abortion rights. Even Republicans in the House, where caucus members have repeatedly signed on to federal legislation that would amount to a total abortion ban, are now backing away from anti-abortion messaging bills.“The anniversary of Roe v Wade should be a joyous day for our country, a day when the supreme court decided to value a woman’s right to privacy and autonomy,” said the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer. “In 2022, tragically, alarmingly and outrageously they succeeded when a hard-right majority voted to overturn Roe v Wade,” he said.In addition to the anniversary of Roe, the briefing also comes ahead of the March for Life, the largest gathering of anti-abortion activists of the year. Before the Dobbs decision, anti-abortion activists marched in protest of Roe v Wade. Today, activists strategize about further abortion bans – including a federal 15-week ban on abortion.Dr Austin Dennard is an obstetrician and gynecologist who said she was forced to “flee” her state for an abortion after her fetus was diagnosed with anencephaly, a severe and fatal condition where a fetus develops without parts of the brain or skull.“We have to flee the state,” she said. “My state” – she is a sixth-generation Texan – “where I practice medicine, where I’m raising my family,” said Dennard. “Then my doctor gave me a hug. ‘I’m so sorry,’ was all she was able to say.”Dennard was forced to travel east, but said she was afraid to use credit cards or tell people where she was going for fear she would be criminally prosecuted under Texas’s anti-abortion laws.“It was absolutely humiliating and I felt physically and emotionally broken,” said Dennard.Dr Serina Floyd, an OB-GYN in Washington DC and the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood, said only last week she provided an abortion for a woman, who she referred to under the pseudonym “Nina”.Nina traveled by bus from North Carolina, where a 12-week abortion ban recently went into effect. She missed her first bus, was able to board a second but arrived too late for her scheduled appointment. Nina was rescheduled for the next day. When Floyd asked Nina where she would stay the night, Nina said she had found a homeless shelter 15 minutes from the clinic.“Nina had no money – not for a hotel, not for food, not for nothing. All she had was a bus ticket home,” said Floyd.Another expert, feminist and columnist Jessica Valenti, said she regularly documented “suffering”, and received more messages from women than she could ever respond to.“When Republicans feign surprise or compassion over post-Roe horror stories – they are lying,” said Valenti. She said she has documented a “quiet campaign” by national abortion groups to undermine prenatal testing that reveals fetal abnormalities and to sow doubt about the accuracy of maternal mortality numbers (the US has among the worst in the developed world).“The question I get asked most often is, ‘Why?’” said Valenti. Republicans, she said, are trying to enforce, “a world view that it is women’s job to be pregnant and stay pregnant – no matter the cost or consequence”. More

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      Senate votes against Sanders resolution to force human rights scrutiny over Israel aid

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      US senators have defeated a measure, introduced by Bernie Sanders, that would have made military aid to Israel conditional on whether the Israeli government is violating human rights and international accords in its devastating war in Gaza.A majority of senators struck down the proposal on Tuesday evening, with 72 voting to kill the measure, and 11 supporting it. Although Sanders’ effort was easily defeated, it was a notable test that reflected growing unease among Democrats over US support for Israel.The measure was a first-of-its-kind tapping into a decades-old law that would require the US state department to, within 30 days, produce a report on whether the Israeli war effort in Gaza is violating human rights and international accords. If the administration failed to do so, US military aid to Israel, long assured without question, could be quickly halted.It is one of several that progressives have proposed to raise concerns over Israel’s attacks on Gaza, where the Palestinian death toll has surpassed 24,000 and Israel’s bombardment since Hamas launched attacks on it on 7 October has displaced most of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents.“We must ensure that US aid is being used in accordance with human rights and our own laws,” Sanders said in a speech before the vote urging support for the resolution, lamenting what he described as the Senate’s failure to consider any measure looking at the war’s effect on civilians.The White House had said it opposed the resolution. The US gives Israel $3.8bn in security assistance each year, ranging from fighter jets to powerful bombs that could destroy Hamas tunnels. Biden has asked Congress to approve an additional $14bn.The measure that Sanders proposed uses a mechanism in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which Congress to provide oversight of US military assistance, that must be used in accordance with international human rights agreements.The measure faced an uphill battle. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress oppose any conditions on aid to Israel, and Joe Biden has staunchly stood by Israel throughout its campaign in Gaza, leaving Sanders with an uphill battle. But by forcing senators to vote on the record about whether they were willing to condition aid to Israel, Sanders and others lawmakers sparked debate on the matter.The 11 senators who supported Sanders in the procedural vote were mostly Democrats from across the party’s spectrum.Some lawmakers have increasingly pushed to place conditions on aid to Israel, which has drawn international criticism for its offensive in Gaza.“To my mind, Israel has the absolute right to defend itself from Hamas’s barbaric terrorist attack on October 7, no question about that,” Sanders told the Associated Press in an interview ahead of the vote.“But what Israel does not have a right to do – using military assistance from the United States – does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people,” said Sanders. “And in my view, that’s what has been happening.”Amid anti-war protests across the US, progressive representatives including Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Barbara Lee and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called for a ceasefire. In a letter to the US president, many of these lawmakers stressed that thousands of children had been killed in the Israeli bombings.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking from the Republican side before the measure was introduced on Tuesday evening, South Carolina senator Lindsay Graham said that Hamas, the Islamist group, has “militarized” schools and hospitals in the territory by operating amongst them.Israel has blamed Hamas for using hospitals as cover for military purposes, but has not provided definitive proof backing its claims that Hamas kept a “command center” under Gaza’s main al-Shifa hospital, which the Israeli Defense Forces raided in November.Two thirds of Gaza’s hospitals have been closed amidst what Biden has characterized as “indiscriminate bombings”, during a time of acute need, where United Nations agencies are warning of famine and disease as Gaza is besieged by Israel.Despite the defeat, organizations that had supported Sanders’ effort saw it as something of a victory.“The status quo in the Senate for decades has been 100% support for Israel’s military, 100% of the time from 100% of the Senate,” said Andrew O’Neill, the legislative director of Indivisible, one of the groups that backed the measure. “The fact that Sanders introduced this bill was already historic. That ten colleagues joined him is frankly remarkable.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More