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      Quirky, kooky, a joke … but why is Marianne Williamson so popular with the young?

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      Marianne Williamson is taking over TikTokMarianne Williamson, the self-help author who is making her second bid for the presidency, has a history of saying things that can be characterized as either “deranged” or “quirky” depending on how charitable you’re feeling. Some of her greatest hits include: Tweeting that the “power of the mind” might have changed the course of Hurricane Dorian and stopped it from hitting the US in 2019. (She later deleted the tweet.) Publishing a book in 1992 called A Return to Love where she said that “cancer and Aids and other physical illnesses are physical manifestations of a psychic scream … sickness is an illusion and does not actually exist.” (She’s since said that she’s pro-medicine and pro-science.) Saying that she would “harness love” to defeat Donald Trump during her closing statement at the Democratic presidential debate in 2019. We all know how that one worked out.Unsurprisingly, Williamson’s presidential campaign isn’t being taken remotely seriously by the media or the White House. The Biden administration has laughed off any idea that she’s a proper contender – when the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, was asked about Williamson’s political aspirations in March she joked about not having “a crystal ball”.It’s certainly easy to make fun of Williamson but, while she’s said a lot of questionable things, it’s wrong to dismiss the author as a joke. When she’s not talking about the “power of the mind” Williamson has a lot to say about institutional inequality, the need for universal healthcare, the problems with capitalism, the importance of cancelling student debt, and the complacency of the Democratic establishment. And guess what? An awful lot of young people are listening. Williamson’s very left-leaning videos draw millions of views on TikTok and her speeches often go viral.“If engagement on TikTok is any indication, a Democratic presidential primary held today among people under 50 would result in a landslide for the bestselling author now making her second bid for the nomination,” the Intercept recently noted. And it’s not just TikTok where Williamson is popular: the Intercept further notes that “a recent poll found Williamson hovering above 20% with voters under 30”. Which is a lot better than she was doing in 2020 and is pretty impressive when you consider what a political outsider she is.Then again, of course, it’s the very fact that Williamson is a political outsider that makes her so popular among young people. Williamson has an energy and urgency that is severely lacking in the Democratic party. And she’s not shy about calling the Democrats out for their complacency.Even without a crystal ball, I think we all know that Williamson has zero chance of being in the White House – and I’m certainly not advocating that she should be. But wouldn’t it be nice if the White House adopted some of her energy and a few of her ideas about structural reform? Williamson’s popularity on TikTok isn’t some insignificant online phenomenon – it’s a sign of how disillusioned young people feel with the current system. Establishment Democrats have long preached incrementalism as the only way to move forwards but, when it comes to things like women’s rights, we only seem to be moving backwards. Marianne Williamson isn’t the answer to America’s woes but her TikTok popularity should have the Democrats asking a lot of questions.Half of women have dense breast tissue that doesn’t show up on mammograms“Dense breast tissue is simply tissue that is thicker and glandular, hasn’t turned into fat over time, and it puts women at an automatic four times higher risk of cancer,” Elizabeth L Silver writes. If you have dense breast tissue then a mammogram alone will have a hard time detecting cancer – you need additional screenings such as an ultrasound or MRI. “Yet the decision to supplement a mammogram with this additional screening is, shockingly, one of the largest controversies in women’s health,” Silver explains. “[T]he question has essentially been left to the patient, who knows little about it.”Trump lawyer asks E Jean Carroll why she didn’t scream for help during assault“Women who come forward, one of the reasons they don’t come forward is because they’re always asked, ‘why didn’t you scream?’” Carroll retorted. “He raped me whether I screamed or not.” As Amanda Marcotte writes, Trump’s entire defense in the E Jean Carroll rape trial seems to rest on shameless misogyny.Ghosted is not romantic – it’s a walking red flagChris Evans and Ana de Armas star in a new action-romance called Ghosted with some dire reviews and misogynistic tropes. “What’s sold as a love story, based on following your heart, presents us instead an entitled man who won’t take no for an answer,” Jess Bacon writes in the Guardian. “Sadly, this is nothing new.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNude landlord no excuse for holding back rent, rules German courtA Frankfurt court found “the usability of the rented property was not impaired by the plaintiff sunning himself naked in the courtyard”.At the CEO level, women finally outnumber men named JohnHowever, there are 60 James/Robert/John CEOs compared with 41 women, according to Bloomberg.Thai conservatives vow to legalise sex toys in bid to shake up electionIt is currently illegal to sell sex toys in Thailand although that obviously doesn’t stop it happening. Now the country’s Democratic party wants to change that, arguing that they’re missing out on lots of taxes. They also came up with some social benefits for legalization: “Sex toys are useful because they could lead to a decrease in prostitution as well as divorce due to a mismatch of sexual libido, and sex-related crimes.” Not sure that vibrators are going to stop sex-related crime, but it’s certainly a creative argument.Voluptuous mermaid statue causes outrage in southern Italy“It looks like a mermaid with two silicone breasts and, above all, a huge arse never seen before on a mermaid,” one critic complained. “At least not any I know.”The week in parrotarchyVideo phone calls are for the birds. Or, to be more specific: the parrots. A new study has found that parrots that are allowed to make video calls to other birds seem to become less lonely. Now we just need to get them on Twitter. More

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      Biden v Trump: US is unenthused by likely rematch of two old white men

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      It is the envy of the world for its diversity and vitality. Yet America appears on a likely course for a presidential election between a white man in his 80s and a white man in his 70s. And yes, they’re the same guys as last time.Joe Biden, the 46th president and oldest in history, this week formally launched his campaign for a second term in a video announcement. The 80-year-old faces no serious challenge from within the Democratic party and told reporters: “They’re going to see a race, and they’re going to judge whether or not I have it or don’t have it.”Donald Trump, the 45th president and second oldest in history, is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. He holds a 46-point lead over Ron DeSantis in the latest Emerson College poll amid growing doubts over the Florida governor’s readiness for the world stage. Trump, 76, has chalked up far more endorsements from members of Congress.There is a very long way to go, and Trump faces myriad legal perils, but most pundits currently agree that a replay of the 2020 election is the most likely scenario next year – one that polls show voters have little appetite for.“I don’t think Americans want to see a sequel,” said Chris Scott, a 34-year-old Democratic strategist from Detroit, Michigan. “Americans are fed up with the Donald Trump saga, even though he still has a number of acolytes in the GOP. They’re just ready to be over that chapter and move on.“With Biden, there’s a lot of people that question: does he have the stamina to do another four years, even though there’s things in his record that have been effective and he’s gotten done? I don’t think anybody wants to see exactly the same rematch that we got four years ago.”Biden’s re-election bid was all but inevitable. This will be his fourth run for the presidency in four decades and, having finally achieved his ambition in 2020, he has little cause to walk away. He can point to arguably the most consequential legislative agenda since President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s and sealed the deal with a better-than-expected performance in last year’s midterm elections, where abortion rights were a pivotal issue.Furthermore, he has no obvious challenger with the Democratic party and benefits from the same conditions as 2020: the fear that Trump poses an existential threat to democracy and the calculation and Biden is best placed to beat him.The president duly promised this week to protect American liberties from “extremists” linked to Trump. A video released by his new campaign team opened with imagery from the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.Biden said: “When I ran for president four years ago, I said we’re in a battle for the soul of America, and we still are. This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for re-election … Let’s finish this job. I know we can.”To retain the White House, Biden will need to enthuse the coalition of young voters and Black voters – particularly women – along with blue-collar midwesterners, moderates and disaffected Republicans who helped him win in 2020.But while the leftwing senator Bernie Sanders and most Democratic elected officials are backing him, voters have doubts about a man who would be 86 by the end of a prospective second term, almost a decade older than the average American male’s life expectancy.Some 44% of Democratic voters say he is too old to run, according a Reuters/Ipsos poll, although it showed him with a lead of 43% to 38% over Trump nationally. Trump also faces concerns about his age, with 35% of Republicans saying he is too old.The Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that a majority of registered voters do not want either Biden or Trump to run again. But they may be stuck with it as both men are difficult to dislodge. Biden has the advantage of incumbency while Trump, as a former president with an iron-like grip on his party’s grassroots base, is a quasi-incumbent on the Republican side.Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “Until both parties put something different on the ballot, what’s America going to do? Now the challenge becomes how to keep the respective party bases animated, how to engage independent voters and young people to participate in an election that they’re not thrilled about.”He observed bleakly: “There’s nothing inspirational about American politics today.”Bill Galston, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, said: “I’ve believed for a long time we’re in for a rematch. There is not a lot of enthusiasm for the rematch but, in the end, people are going to choose sides very firmly and I do not expect it to be a low-turnout election.”America is diversifying culturally and racially but it is also ageing – since 2000, census records show, the national median age has increased by 3.4 years. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, added: “It is still the case that people above the age of 50 vote in much higher percentages than people below the age of 50 and especially below the age of 30.“The new generation will become much more decisive when it begins to vote in numbers commensurate with its potential demographic clout. But not before.”Following Hillary Clinton v Trump in 2016, and Biden v Trump in 2020 (which saw the highest turnout in more than a century), a rematch between the two men would be the third consecutive election to foreground negative partisanship, with many voters animated by their dislike of other side’s candidate.John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “Republicans have been worked into a frenzy about Biden and Democrats view Trump as the devil incarnate.“Significant numbers of ‘antis’ really hate the other person. That in itself is a driver. That helps turnout for both sides. At this moment I’ve got to think advantage Democrat. But there’s a long way to go here. There is pressure on Biden. He can’t stumble physically, he can’t make a horrible gaffe, and that’s enormous pressure.”A Biden v Trump rematch would also leave America facing its 250th birthday in 2026 with no female presidents and only one Black president in its history. It fares poorly by comparison with Australia, Britain, Finland, Germany, New Zealand and numerous nations that have elected women as leaders.Trump could choose a female running mate, with potential candidates including Nikki Haley, a former US ambassador to the UN and one of his rivals for the Republican nomination. Biden will be joined in his 2024 bid by his vice-president, Kamala Harris, who features prominently in his campaign video.Bonnie Morris, a history lecturer at University of California, Berkeley, and author of books including The Feminist Revolution, said: “An interesting question is, given the concerns about Biden’s age or his possible frailty, it sets up the potential for a Black woman to take over should he be elected and fall ill.”The race is not a foregone conclusion, however. Some Republicans say they are weary of Trump’s grievance politics and boorish behaviour – and his repeated electoral defeats. DeSantis has not yet formally launched his campaign and Trump could also face competition from his former vice-president, Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott and others.Trump is uniquely vulnerable this time after becoming the first former president to face criminal charges and because of an array of investigations. In a jarring contrast to Biden’s campaign announcement, Trump was on trial in a civil lawsuit this week over writer E Jean Carroll’s accusation that he raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. He has denied raping Carroll.But if Trump does prevail, Democrats insist that they can overcome voter fatigue.Malcolm Kenyatta, 32, the first openly LGBTQ+ person of colour elected to the Pennsylvania general assembly, said: “This campaign is going to be the clearest contrast that maybe you’ve ever seen because I do believe Donald Trump is going to be the nominee. A lot of times you have somebody who’s never been president running against the incumbent and they’ve talking about what they want to do. You have two presidents who have actual records.“Under Trump, you saw the most job losses of any president in American history, an economic moment of turmoil coming out of Covid. I’m excited to get out there and be a part of telling the story of what the president’s real successes have been. You don’t have to sadly vote for President Biden. I’m going to be happily, vigorously excited to vote for him because he has accomplished so much and frankly I don’t give a damn how old he is. I give a damn about what it would mean for working families like mine.” More

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      in Elections

      Mike Pence interviewed by grand jury investigating Capitol attack – live

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      From 2h agoHere’s more from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell about Mike Pence’s interview with federal investigators, and why his testimony may be so important to any case against Donald Trump:Mike Pence testified before a federal grand jury on Thursday in Washington about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to a source familiar with the matter, a day after an appeals court rejected a last-ditch motion to block his appearance.The former vice-president’s testimony lasted for around seven hours and took place behind closed doors, meaning the details of what he told the prosecutors hearing evidence in the case remains uncertain.His appearance is a moment of constitutional consequence and potential legal peril for the former president. Pence is considered a major witness in the criminal investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith, since Trump pressured him to unlawfully reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden at the joint session of Congress, and was at the White House meeting with Republican lawmakers who discussed objections to Biden’s win.The Biden administration announced on Thursday a set of new initiatives to discourage immigrants from illegally crossing into the US via the US-Mexico border.The measures include harsher crackdowns on those who do come and new pathways that offer an alternative to the dangerous journey, the Associated Press reports.Such alternatives include setting up migration centers in other countries, increasing the amount of immigrants allowed in, and faster processing of migrants seeking asylum. Those not eligible for asylum who cross over will be penalized, AP further reports.The policies come as May 11 approaches, which will end the public health rule instituted amid the Covid-19 pandemic that allowed for many migrants to be quickly expelled.The Montana governor was lobbied by his non-binary child to reject several bills that would harm transgender people in the state, according to the Guardian’s Sam Levine.
      The son of the Republican governor of Montana, Greg Gianforte, met their father in his office to lobby him to reject several bills that would harm transgender people in the state, the Montana Free Press reported.
      David Gianforte told the paper they identify as non-binary and use he/they pronouns – the first time they disclosed their gender identity publicly. They told the outlet they felt an obligation to use their relationship with their father to stand up for LGBTQ+ people in the state.
      “There are a lot of important issues passing through the legislature right now,” they said in a statement. “For my own sake I’ve chosen to focus primarily on transgender rights, as that would significantly directly affect a number of my friends … I would like to make the argument that these bills are immoral, unjust, and frankly a violation of human rights.”
      Read the full article here.A Tennesee lawmaker who was previously outsted for calling for gun control after a Nashville mass shooting has spoken about Zephyr being silenced.In an interview with Democracy Now, Tennessee representative Justin Jones spoke with Zephyr about the need for continued solidarity.“An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” said Zephyr, after Jones said that several communities stood with Zephyr amid attempts to silence her.Earlier this week, Republicans in Montana barred the state’s sole transgender lawmaker, Democrat Zooey Zephyr, from the floor of the state House of Representatives.Their justification? That Zephyr’s interaction with protesters who were demonstrating against her earlier silencing by the House’s Republican majority amounted to “encouraging an insurrection.” The Associated Press reports that such claims have become increasingly common in recent months in state legislatures where Republicans rule. Case in point, the rhetoric used by GOP lawmakers to briefly expel two Democrats from the Tennessee state House of Representatives earlier this month.Here’s more from the AP:
      Silenced by her Republican colleagues, Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr looked up from the House floor to supporters in the gallery shouting “Let her speak!” and thrust her microphone into the air — amplifying the sentiment the Democratic transgender lawmaker was forbidden from expressing.
      While seven people were arrested for trespassing, the boisterous demonstration was free of violence or damage. Yet later that day, a group of Republican lawmakers described it in darker tones, saying Zephyr’s actions were responsible for “encouraging an insurrection.”
      It’s the third time in the last five weeks — and one of at least four times this year — that Republicans have attempted to compare disruptive but nonviolent protests at state capitols to insurrections.
      The tactic follows a pattern set over the past two years when the term has been misused to describe public demonstrations and even the 2020 election that put Democrat Joe Biden in the White House. It’s a move experts say dismisses legitimate speech and downplays the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Shortly after, the U.S. House voted to impeach him for “incitement of insurrection.”
      Ever since, many Republicans have attempted to turn the phrase on Democrats.
      “They want to ring alarm bells and they want to compare this to Jan. 6,” said Andy Nelson, the Democratic Party chair in Missoula County, which includes Zephyr’s district. “There’s absolutely no way you can compare what happened on Monday with the Jan. 6 insurrection. Violence occurred that day. No violence occurred in the gallery of the Montana House.”
      This week’s events in the Montana Legislature drew comparisons to a similar demonstration in Tennessee. Republican legislative leaders there used “insurrection” to describe a protest on the House floor by three Democratic lawmakers who were calling for gun control legislation in the aftermath of a Nashville school shooting that killed three students and three staff. Two of them chanted “Power to the people” through a megaphone and were expelled before local commissions reinstated them.
      The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports on the latest steps in Florida authorities’ march to tighten down on voting access, as the state’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis edges closer to announcing a presidential campaign:Florida Republicans are on the verge of passing new restrictions on groups that register voters, a move voting rights groups and experts say will make it harder for non-white Floridians to get on the rolls.The restrictions are part of a sweeping 96-page election bill the legislature is likely to send to Governor Ron DeSantis’s desk soon. The measure increases fines for third-party voter registration groups. It also shortens the amount of time the groups have to turn in any voter registration applications they collect from 14 days to 10. The bill makes it illegal for non-citizens and people convicted of certain felonies to “collect or handle” voter registration applications on behalf of third-party groups. Groups would also have to give each voter they register a receipt and be required to register themselves with the state ahead of each general election cycle. Under current law, they only have to register once and their registration remains effective indefinitely.Stephanie Kirchgaessner reports that a 2018 investigation that played a role in Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the supreme court was less thorough than it appeared. If you read one Guardian story today, make it this one:A 2018 Senate investigation that found there was “no evidence” to substantiate any of the claims of sexual assault against the US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh contained serious omissions, according to new information obtained by the Guardian.The 28-page report was released by the Republican senator Chuck Grassley, the then chairman of the Senate judiciary committee. It prominently included an unfounded and unverified claim that one of Kavanaugh’s accusers – a fellow Yale graduate named Deborah Ramirez – was “likely” mistaken when she alleged that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a dormitory party because another Yale student was allegedly known for such acts.Here’s more from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell about Mike Pence’s interview with federal investigators, and why his testimony may be so important to any case against Donald Trump:Mike Pence testified before a federal grand jury on Thursday in Washington about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to a source familiar with the matter, a day after an appeals court rejected a last-ditch motion to block his appearance.The former vice-president’s testimony lasted for around seven hours and took place behind closed doors, meaning the details of what he told the prosecutors hearing evidence in the case remains uncertain.His appearance is a moment of constitutional consequence and potential legal peril for the former president. Pence is considered a major witness in the criminal investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith, since Trump pressured him to unlawfully reject electoral college votes for Joe Biden at the joint session of Congress, and was at the White House meeting with Republican lawmakers who discussed objections to Biden’s win.Good morning, US politics blog readers. On Thursday, former vice-president Mike Pence appeared before the grand jury empaneled by special counsel Jack Smith to consider charges against Donald Trump over the January 6 insurrection. The possibility that Trump could face a federal indictment over the attack, as well as his involvement in plots to stop Joe Biden from taking office and the classified materials found at Mar-a-Lago, is a major unknown in the presidential race, particularly since polls show Trump as the most popular Republican candidate. There’s no saying when Smith could make his charging recommendation, but Pence’s testimony is a reminder that the investigation remains a real threat to the former president.Here’s what’s going on today:
      House Democratic leadership will hold their weekly press conference at 10.30am eastern time. Expect plenty of railing against the debt limit proposal Republicans passed earlier this week.
      Joe Biden is keeping it low key, presenting the Commander-in-Chief’s trophy to the Air Force Falcons, champions of last year’s Armed Forces Bowl, at 2.30pm, then heading to a Democratic fundraiser in the evening.
      Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat representing deep-red West Virginia, yesterday afternoon again called on Biden to negotiate with Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy on an agreement to raise the debt limit. The president has thus far refused to do so. More

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      US House passes debt ceiling bill in tactical victory for Kevin McCarthy

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      House Republicans narrowly passed sweeping legislation on Wednesday that would raise the government’s legal debt ceiling by $1.5tn in exchange for steep spending restrictions, a tactical victory for the House speaker Kevin McCarthy as he challenges Joe Biden to negotiate and prevent a catastrophic federal default this summer.Biden has threatened to veto the Republican package, which has almost no chance of passing the Senate in the meantime, where Democrats hold a slim majority.The president has so far refused to negotiate over the debt ceiling which the White House insists must be lifted with no strings to ensure America pays its bills.But McCarthy’s ability to swiftly unite his slim majority in the House and bring the measure to passage over opposition from Democrats and even holdouts in his own party gives currency to the Republican speaker’s strategy to use the vote as an opening bid forcing Biden into talks. The two men could hardly be further apart on how to resolve the issue.The bill passed by a razor-thin 217-215 margin.“We’ve done our job,” McCarthy said after the vote.“The president can no longer ignore” the issue of federal spending limits, he said. “Now he should sit down and negotiate.”As the House debated the measure, Biden indicated he was willing to open the door to talks with McCarthy, but not on preventing a first-ever US default that would shake America’s economy and beyond.“Happy to meet with McCarthy, but not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended,” Biden said. “That’s not negotiable.”Passage of the sprawling 320-page package in the House is only the start of what is expected to become a weeks-long political slog as the president and Congress try to work out a compromise that would allow the nation’s debt, now at $31tn, to be lifted to allow further borrowing and stave off a fiscal crisis.The nation has never defaulted on its debt, and the House Republican majority hopes to maneuver Biden into a corner with its plan to roll back federal spending to fiscal 2022 levels and cap future spending increases at 1% over the next decade, among other changes.In exchange for raising the debt limit by $1.5 trillion into 2024, the bill would roll back overall federal spending and:
      Claw back unspent Covid-19 funds.
      Impose tougher work requirements for recipients of food stamps and other government aid.
      Halt Biden’s plans to forgive up to $20,000 in student loans.
      End many of the landmark renewable energy tax breaks Biden signed into law last year. It would tack on a sweeping Republican bill to boost oil, gas and coal production.
      Democrats derided the Republican plan as a “ransom note”, a “shakedown” and “an unserious bill” that was courting financial danger.It’s a first big test for the president and the Republican speaker, coming at a time of increased political anxiety about the ability of Washington to solve big problems amid the need to raise the federal debt limit in a matter of weeks.The treasury department is taking “extraordinary measures” to pay the bills, but funding is expected to run out this summer. Economists warn that even the serious threat of a federal debt default would send shockwaves through the economy.A nonpartisan congressional budget office analysis estimated the Republican plan would reduce federal deficits by $4.8tn over the decade if the proposed changes were enacted into law.In the Senate, leaders were watching and waiting.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said House passage of the legislation would be a “wasted effort” and that McCarthy should come to the table with Democrats to pass a straightforward debt-limit bill without GOP priorities and avoid default.Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who stepped aside to give McCarthy the lead, said the speaker has been able to unite the House Republicans.Now, he said, Biden and McCarthy must come to agreement. Otherwise, he said, “We’ll be at a standoff. And we shouldn’t do that to the country.” More

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      Joe Biden formally announces 2024 White House run

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      Joe Biden has formally announced his campaign for re-election in 2024, asking Americans for four years to “finish this job”, possibly setting up an extraordinary rematch with Donald Trump.In a three-minute video opening with images of the US Capitol attack, Biden warned that the US remains under threat from the anti-democratic forces unleashed by his predecessor, who he beat in 2020.Biden said: “When I ran for president four years ago, I said we were in a battle for the soul of America – and we still are.”The president launched his re-election campaign on the fourth anniversary of his return to politics in 2019, when he declared his third presidential run. Since then, the political landscape has changed.The US is still grappling with the scars of a pandemic that killed more than 1.1 million and with inflation that has eased from historic highs but remains painful. Americans remain deeply divided, convulsed by the loss of federal abortion rights, near-weekly mass shootings and worsening climate disasters.Already the oldest president, Biden would be 86 before the end of a second term, nearly a decade older than Ronald Reagan was when he left the White House in 1989. Trump is 76.In his video, Biden warned that “Maga extremists” – Trump’s slogan is “Make America Great Again” – were working to strip away “bedrock freedoms”.“Cutting social security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy,” Biden said. “Dictating what healthcare decisions women can make, banning books and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”The president and his wife, Jill Biden, had made his intentions known. But Biden felt little need to rush after a better-than-expected Democratic performance in the midterm elections tamped down calls for a serious primary challenge.Ultimately, the president chose to wait until after his tour of Ireland, a three-day trip he said restored his “sense of optimism”. Returning home, he told reporters he planned to “run again”.The vice-president, Kamala Harris, the highest-ranking woman and person of color in US politics, will be Biden’s running mate again.Biden is dogged by low approval ratings and concerns about his age. Only a quarter of Americans want him to run, according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Among Democrats, that figure is 50%. Should Biden win the nomination, as expected, most Democrats will support him.On Tuesday, Biden was due to welcome the president of South Korea. Next month, he will travel to the G7 summit in Japan. His team will begin to formalize a campaign expected to be headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware.Julie Chávez Rodríguez, a senior White House adviser and granddaughter of the celebrated labor leader César Chávez, will be campaign manager. Her principal deputy will be Quentin Fulks, a strategist who ran Raphael Warnock’s Senate re-election campaign in Georgia, a battleground state Biden won in 2020. The announcement begins a fundraising sprint. Donors have been summoned to Washington.Hours after making his candidacy official, during remarks to union workers at a conference in Washington, Biden was greeted by chants of “four more years”.“Our economic plan is working,” he said in a speech rife with references to his working-class upbringing in Scranton, Pennsylvania.“Let’s finish the job,” he said.Biden has made clear he plans to run on accomplishments in the first half of his presidency, when Democrats had majorities in Congress.Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, delivering financial assistance to those hit hard by Covid. He also approved a $1tn infrastructure bill; signed the first major federal gun safety bill in nearly 30 years; pursued initiatives to both treat veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and boost the semiconductor industry; and made Ketanji Brown Jackson the first Black woman on the supreme court.Perhaps his most significant legislative achievement to date is the Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant US response to the climate crisis.But while Biden’s policies are broadly popular, he has struggled to earn credit. He has spent the last few months attempting to sell his economic policies and rally Americans before a showdown with Republicans over the federal debt limit.On the world stage, Biden has rallied a global coalition behind Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion while seeking to strengthen US defenses against China. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, however, was among the lowest points of Biden’s presidency, even as he fulfilled a promise to end America’s longest war.Republicans greeted Biden’s announcement by assailing his handling of immigration and the economy.“Biden is so out-of-touch that after creating crisis after crisis, he thinks he deserves another four years,” said Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee. “If voters let Biden ‘finish the job’, inflation will continue to skyrocket, crime rates will rise, more fentanyl will cross our open borders, children will continue to be left behind, and American families will be worse off.”Biden must negotiate with a divided Congress, Republicans holding the House. Biden plans to use a showdown over raising the federal borrowing limit to draw a contrast with Republican economic priorities, which he argues are aligned with big business and special interests.In his campaign video, Biden warned that individual freedoms are under attack by far-right Republicans who have trampled reproductive, voting and LGBTQ+ rights.“This is not a time to be complacent,” he said. “I know America. I know we’re good and decent people.”After nearly a half-century in public life including 36 years as a senator from Delaware and eight years as the vice-president to Barack Obama, Biden called himself a “bridge” to the next generation of Democrats. But only two fringe candidates have challenged him for the nomination: the self-help author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr.The Republican field is growing. Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, has entered the race. The South Carolina senator Tim Scott has taken steps to run. The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is widely expected to announce. Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, is also weighing a run.Trump announced his candidacy after the midterms in November. He and Biden both face federal investigations over their handling of classified information. In Biden’s case, documents were discovered at his office and home. His lawyers have stressed they are cooperating.Trump resisted efforts to retrieve materials he took to his Florida estate. But that is just one of many legal challenges he faces. Earlier this month, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal charges related to hush money payments to a porn star. He also faces investigations into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, trial over a rape accusation, and a civil suit over his business affairs.Ahead of Biden’s announcement, Trump lashed out, saying the “five worst presidents in American history” combined had not inflicted the “damage Joe Biden has done”.In his video, Biden said: “Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they’ve had to defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedoms. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights.”
      Joan E Greve contributed reporting. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden isn’t going into 2024 very strong. But Republicans are very weak | Moira Donegan

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      It’s not surprising, but now it’s official: Joe Biden is running for re-election. In a video on Tuesday launching his bid for a second term, Biden cast his administration as standing for personal freedom, democracy and pluralism in contrast to what he called “Maga extremists”. The video emphasized abortion rights and contrasted Biden and the Democrats with unsettling images of the Capitol insurrectionists. Echoing a repeated line from his most recent State of the Union address, the president implored Americans: “Let’s finish the job.”There will be no primary. True, Biden has disaffected some members of the Democratic party’s precariously large coalition, and he has failed to capture the hearts and imaginations of Americans the way that, say, Barack Obama did. In 2020, a basketball team’s worth of Democrats entered the presidential primary – partly out of perceptions of then president Trump’s weakness, but also partly because Biden seemed like such a poor fit to be the party’s standard-bearer.He’s an old white man in a party that is predominantly female, increasingly non-white and very young. He is a moderate in a party with a resurgent left. And he is a bone-deep believer in the merits of compromise and bipartisanship, in an era where the Republican party has become anathema to cooperation, hostile to Democratic governance and committed to racial and gender hierarchies that are not worth compromising with. He seemed like a man out of time, responding to the political conditions of a different era; it was unclear, then, that he could see the country as it really was, unclear that he could confront the true threat.As he announces his re-election campaign, four years after he threw his hat into the ring for 2020, Biden has quieted these fears, if not disproved them. The left, leaderless after Bernie Sanders’s defeat in the 2020 primary, has not formed a cohesive bloc, and their pressures on the Biden administration have been noble but sporadic. Congressional Republicans hamstrung most of Biden’s agenda, causing him to abandon, in particular, promises he made to help Americans get affordable childcare; but he still managed to pass a large infrastructure bill, as well as Covid relief.The pandemic has largely receded, and both deaths and new infections are down. Inflation is slowing, and jobs numbers are encouraging. The economy, while not perfect, seems to be benefiting from the stability of Democratic leadership, with stock prices no longer beholden to wild fluctuations in the aftermath of an errant comment or impulsive tweet from Trump.When Russia invaded Ukraine, unleashing horrific humanitarian catastrophes on the people there and endangering other European allies, a trap was laid that could have easily drawn the United States into war. Biden and his administration have deftly kept us out of it. The president who once seemed like an out-of-touch old man has been successfully rebranded as an affable grandfather whose gaffes are thoughtless but aggressively well-meaning.Even major missteps do not seem to have meaningfully injured Biden. The administration was shockingly tone-deaf and ill-prepared following the US supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, having little in the way of policy proposals to reduce the humanitarian and dignity harms imposed on American women – and at one point, trying to appoint an anti-choice judge to a lifetime seat, before withdrawing the nomination under pressure.Despite the primacy Tuesday’s campaign announcement gave abortion rights, Biden has generally seemed uncomfortable and incompetent on the issue, even as women face degradation and medical emergencies inflicted at the hands of conservative states; he has largely shied away from directly addressing abortion, and shunted it off to his unpopular, largely powerless vice-president, Kamala Harris – whose own marginalization within the administration is a signal of how little he values the issue.Even since Dobbs, Biden has been entirely unwilling to confront the federal judiciary – a captured and unaccountable extremist rightwing body that will foil his whole agenda, and gradually eliminate both pluralist society and representative democracy, if it is not reformed. Yet the Republicans’ virulent misogyny and bald sadism on abortion seems poised to be a boon to Democrats anyway: it was mostly abortion that drove voters to give a worse-than-expected showing to Republicans in the 2022 midterms, and to allow Democrats to keep control of the Senate.In that sense, the political fallout of the Dobbs decision may serve as a good model for the Democrats’ emerging 2024 strategy: they don’t need to be especially good, because the Republicans are so cruelly and chaotically worse. The Republican party is in shambles – internally divided; married to gruesome and unpopular policies, particularly on gender, that alienate voters; branded as violent, antisocial and creepy. There’s still a long way to go, but the Republican party seems only slightly less eager to anoint Trump as their nominee than the Democrats have been to appoint Biden.It very well may wind up being a rematch of the 2020 election – only now, Trump is even weaker, even more marginal, even more disliked, linked forever the memory of the January 6 violence and devoid of what was once his novelty and comedy and reduced to a rambling catalogue of personal grievances. With an opponent like that, it might not matter much if all that Biden has to offer is a series of charming anachronisms, or grinning photo ops in his aviators.All the Republicans have to offer is sex obsession and cheesy fraud, parading a series of candidates for state and federal office who talk like a collection of snake-oil salesmen and gun fetishists. Biden isn’t going into 2024 particularly strong. But right now, the Republicans are particularly weak.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More