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      Melania Trump’s secret to getting through hard times? Love (actually)

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      Melania’s guide to getting through hard timesLet’s take a quick break from the increasingly dreadful news for a little check-in, shall we? So … how are you holding up right now? How are those stress levels?Mine aren’t great, to be honest. I’m pickling in my own cortisol as I write this. But I’m not here to moan. I am here to share some helpful advice, courtesy of our inspiring first lady Melania Trump, about how to get through these challenging times.Now, I know what you may be thinking: what on earth does Melania Trump know about adversity? The woman divides her time between a gold penthouse in Manhattan and a mansion in Florida, occasionally dropping into the White House to wave at commoners. She’s not exactly worrying about the price of eggs or the balance of her 401(k).But let’s not be too quick to judge. Money doesn’t insulate you from everything, and I’m sure Melania has her own problems. I mean, the poor woman is probably forced to regularly socialize with Elon Musk – which would drain the lifeblood from anyone. Then there’s the fact her husband has taken to using the stomach-turning nickname the “fertilization president”.Melania’s also not just lounging around in luxury: I am sure she is working extremely hard for the millions of dollars Amazon has thrown at her for the privilege of making a sycophantic documentary about her life. And then there’s all the annoying first lady admin; her office has just had to reschedule the White House spring garden tours – which Melania is not expected to actually attend – because of some pesky protesters.So how does our first lady navigate these very stressful challenges? While presenting the state department’s 19th International Women of Courage awards, which honored eight women from around the world, Melania shared her secret trick for getting through hard times. It’s … wait for it … love.“Throughout my life, I have harnessed the power of love as a source of strength during challenging times,” Melania said. “Love has inspired me to embrace forgiveness, nurture empathy and exhibit bravery in the face of unforeseen obstacles.”Melania noted that the award recipients – which included women from Yemen, South Sudan, Israel and the Philippines – “came from diverse backgrounds and regions, yet love transcends boundaries and territories”. She further added that she was inspired by “the women who are driven to speak out for justice, even though their voices are trembling”.The first lady deserves an award of her own for that speech because I have absolutely no idea how she managed to say all that with a straight face. I mean, seriously, is she trolling us? How can she talk about love while her husband’s hate-filled administration is deporting everyone they can? Having the wrong tattoo – or just a stroke of bad luck – can now get you sent to a prison in El Salvador. (The secretary of state Marco Rubio, by the way, who is presiding proudly over these deportations, also made a speech at the International Women of Courage awards.)How can Melania talk about justice when the Trump administration is currently doing their best to deport or imprison anyone who speaks out for justice for Palestinians? And how dare she talk about diversity and women’s rights, when the Trump administration is erasing women from government websites as part of their crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion.But, look, I don’t want to completely dismiss Melania’s advice. Perhaps she has a point. Perhaps, in these challenging times, we should all just channel Melania and reach for the power of love. So: if you happen to get into trouble with any US border guards because you’ve indulged in a little wrongthink online, just remind them of Melania’s words. Remind them that love transcends borders and territories. And then sit back, and enjoy your free trip to El Salvador.Katy Perry says she is ‘going to put the “ass” in astronaut’Please don’t, Katy. For more cringeworthy quotes on how “space is finally going to be glam”, read this feature in Elle. It profiles the all-women crew that has been chosen to joyride around space on Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket. They’re all going to be glammed up with lash extensions, folks! It’s gonna be one giant leap for womankind.Women in the US are dying preventable deaths because of abortion bansNew research details how three critically ill patients in the US could have survived if they’d been able to access abortions.How Taliban male-escort rules are killing mothers and babiesEven before the Taliban took power, Afghanistan had a maternal mortality rate three times higher than the global average. Now draconian policies, including guardianship rules that mean a woman can’t travel to hospital without being accompanied by a man, are contributing to an increase in maternal deaths in Afghanistan.House revolts over Republican bid to stop new parents from voting by proxyA small group of Republicans joined forces with Democrats to stop the GOP from blocking consideration of a measure that would allow new parents to temporarily designate someone else to vote in their place. “I think that today is a pretty historical day for the entire conference. It’s showing that the body has decided that parents deserve a voice in Washington,” the Republican Anna Paulina Luna said.The US woman with the world’s longest tongueImagine people screaming in shock every time you stick your tongue out. Such is the life of Chanel Tapper, a California woman who holds the Guinness World Record for woman with the globe’s longest tongue.US anti-abortion group expands campaign in UKA rightwing US group has been trying to export abortion extremism to the UK, lobbying heavily against the introduction of buffer zones around reproductive health clinics.Russell Brand charged with rape and sexual assault“Nation Could Have Sworn Russell Brand Was Already Convicted Sex Offender”, reads an Onion headline from 2023.At least 322 children killed since Israel’s new Gaza offensive, Unicef saysUnicef said “relentless and indiscriminate bombardments” had resulted in 100 children killed or maimed every day in the 10 days to 31 March.How Gina Rinehart is pushing the Maga message in AustraliaSome fascinating details in this Guardian series about Rinehart, who has been described as a “female Donald Trump” and is Australia’s richest person. Money clearly can’t buy taste because Rinehart is renovating her company headquarters to include a sculpture of Peanut the squirrel, Maga’s favourite rodent, and etchings of inspirational Elon Musk quotes.The week in pawtriarchyTrump’s tariffs are so far-reaching that they’ve even been imposed on the Heard and McDonald islands near Antarctica, inhabited only by penguins. (And a few seals.) I am sure the penguins, already suited up for an emergency meeting on the tariffs, are not too happy about this development – but the rest of us have been gifted some brrrrilliant memes. More

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      Democrats decry reported dismissal of NSA director Tim Haugh

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      Top congressional Democrats are protesting against the firing of Gen Tim Haugh as director of the National Security Agency (NSA), with one lawmaker saying the decision “makes all of us less safe”.Haugh and his civilian deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble, have been dismissed from their roles, the Washington Post reported late on Thursday, with CNN reporting likewise, both outlets citing multiple unnamed officials and other senior sources close to the matter who had requested anonymity.US defense department spokesperson Sean Parnell on Friday thanked Haugh “for his decades of service to our nation, culminating as US cyber command commander and National Security Agency director”.“We wish him and his family well,” Parnell’s statement said, confirming Haugh’s departure without elaborating on why.The ousting had not been officially confirmed by the government or the individuals by Friday afternoon, but the NSA website had been updated with both Haugh and Noble no longer listed in their roles.Lt Gen William J Hartman is now listed there as acting director of the NSA and Sheila Thomas as his acting deputy.Haugh also headed US Cyber Command, which coordinates the Pentagon’s cybersecurity operations. Hartman has been appointed acting head of the command, according to its website.The NSA notified congressional leadership and top lawmakers of the national security committees of Haugh’s firing late on Wednesday but did not give reasons, the Associated Press reported, citing a source. Senior military leaders were only informed on Thursday, the news agency said.The NSA declined to comment and referred the Guardian to the Department of Defense, which said it would provide more information when it became available.Outrage from critics was fulsome. Senator Mark Warner, vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said in a statement: “General Haugh has served our country in uniform, with honor and distinction, for more than 30 years. At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyber threats … how does firing him make Americans any safer?”Representative Jim Himes, the ranking member on the House intelligence committee, said he was “deeply disturbed by the decision”.“I have known General Haugh to be an honest and forthright leader who followed the law and put national security first – I fear those are precisely the qualities that could lead to his firing in this administration,” Himes added. “The intelligence committee and the American people need an immediate explanation for this decision, which makes all of us less safe.”Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said Donald Trump “has given a priceless gift to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea by purging competence from our national security leadership”.“In addition to the other military leaders and national security officials Trump has fired, he is sending a chilling message throughout the ranks: don’t give your best military advice, or you may face consequences,” Reed added.Earlier on Thursday, Donald Trump said he had fired “some” White House National Security Council officials, a move that came a day after far-right activist Laura Loomer raised concerns directly to him about staff loyalty.Loomer, during her Oval Office conversation with Trump, urged the president to purge staffers she deemed insufficiently loyal to his “make America great again” agenda, according to several people familiar with the matter. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive personnel manner.Loomer posted on X in the first moments of Friday morning: “NSA Director Tim Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble have been disloyal to President Trump. That is why they have been fired.”She added a screed about how they were hired by Joe Biden during his presidency and were, she said, “hand picked” by Mark Milley, then chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the most senior uniformed officer in the military. Milley served Trump in his first term in the White House but has since turned fiercely critical, calling the president dangerous and “fascist to the core”, and was fired in the early days of Trump’s second term. The 47th US president then also revoked Milley’s security clearance. Biden, the 46th US president, had preemptively pardoned Milley in his final days in office, following threats from Trump that the veteran was treasonous and should face the death penalty.Loomer added Haugh was “referred for firing” and Noble was Haugh’s “Obama loving protégé” who was nominated by Biden and promoted diversity, equity and inclusion at the agency. Loomer noted: “This is called VETTING”.She also said Noble was a protege of James Clapper, director of national intelligence in Barack Obama’s presidency, and said Clapper should be in prison.Trump spoke to reporters on Air Force One on Thursday afternoon after the earlier firing of six national security agency staffers below the level of Haugh and Noble, based on recommendations from Loomer, a extremist cheerleader for Trump and a white supremacist with an incendiary social media presence who has no political experience outside of unsuccessfully running for US Congress in Florida twice.“Always we’re letting go of people,” Trump said. “People that we don’t like or people that we don’t think can do the job or people that may have loyalties to somebody else.”The firings come as Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz continues to fight calls for his ouster after using the publicly available encrypted Signal app to discuss planning for the sensitive 15 March military operation targeting Houthi militants in Yemen.Warner said on Thursday night: “It is astonishing, too, that President Trump would fire the nonpartisan, experienced leader of the National Security Agency while still failing to hold any member of his team accountable for leaking classified information on a commercial messaging app – even as he apparently takes staffing direction on national security from a discredited conspiracy theorist in the Oval Office.”Haugh met last month with Elon Musk, whose so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, has roiled the federal government by slashing personnel and budgets at dozens of agencies. In a statement, the NSA said the meeting was intended to ensure both organizations were “aligned” with the new administration’s priorities.Haugh had led both the NSA and Cyber Command since 2023. Both departments play leading roles in the nation’s cybersecurity. The NSA also supports the military and other national security agencies by collecting and analysing a vast amount of data and information globally.Cyber Command is known as America’s first line of defence in cyberspace and also plans offensive cyber-operations for potential use against adversaries. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth recently ordered the office to pause some offensive cyber-operations against Russia, in another sign of how Trump’s administration is transforming the work of the nation’s intelligence community.Renée Burton, a cybersecurity expert previously working for the NSA, told CNN the removal of the personnel was “alarming” and the disruption would “expose the country to new risk”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      North Carolina judges back Republican colleague in bid to toss votes and overturn election

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      More than 65,000 people in North Carolina who believed they were eligible to vote could have their ballots thrown out nearly five months after election day, flipping the results of a supreme court election, a state appeals court ruled on Friday.The 2-1 ruling from the North Carolina court of appeals came in response to Republicans’ months-long effort to overturn the results of the state supreme court election in November. The Democrat Allison Riggs, who currently sits on the court, defeated appellate judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican, by 734 votes. After the election, Griffin filed a protest seeking to get around 60,000 votes thrown out.Griffin currently sits on the North Carolina court of appeals – the body that issued Friday’s ruling. A panel of three of his colleagues heard the case.“To permit unlawful votes to be counted along with lawful ballots in contested elections effectively ‘disenfranchises’ those voters who cast legal ballots, at least where the counting of unlawful votes determines an election’s outcome,” Judges John Tyson and Fred Gore wrote for the majority.In a statement, Riggs said: “We will be promptly appealing this deeply misinformed decision that threatens to disenfranchise more than 65,000 lawful voters and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing disappointed politicians to thwart the will of the people.”The election is the only 2024 race still undecided.The state board of elections previously rejected Griffin’s request and a superior court judge upheld their decision. Friday’s ruling from the court of appeals overturned that ruling and ordered the state board to give challenged voters 15 days to prove their eligibility.When the case reaches the seven-member North Carolina supreme court, Riggs will be recused from hearing it. Without her, Republicans will have a 5-1 majority. If the court were to deadlock, the ruling from the court of appeals would stand.More than 60,000 of the voters challenged failed to provide either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number on their voter registration forms. Another 5,500 challenged ballots came from overseas voters who had failed to provide ID.Republicans had filed a lawsuit making similar arguments ahead of election day last year and had it rejected. North Carolina has required the identifying information since 2004 to register to vote, but the state did not update its voter registration form until 2023.The ruling also said that voters who had never lived in the state, grew up overseas, and cast a ballot in the state were ineligible to vote and their votes should not count. That category of people typically includes children of North Carolinians who moved abroad before they turned 18.In a lengthy dissenting opinion, judge Toby Hampson noted that Griffin had not identified a single voter who cast a ballot who should not have been able to. Instead, he said, he was trying to change the rules around eligibility after the election.“The diligent actions these voters undertook to exercise their sacred fundamental right to vote was, indeed, the same as every other similarly situated voter exercising their voting right in the very same election,” he wrote.“Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the constitution.”Hampson said he was doubtful that many voters would respond to a notice to prove their eligibility.“The proposition that a significant portion of these 61,682 voters will receive notice and timely take curative measures is a fiction that does not disguise the act of mass disenfranchisement the majority’s decision represents,” he wrote.Bob Phillips, the executive director of the North Carolina chapter of Common Cause, a watchdog group, called the ruling a “disgrace” that “could disenfranchise tens of thousands of lawful voters and invite similar challenges nationwide”.Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, said the decision had “no legal basis and is an all-out assault on our democracy and the basic premise that voters decide who wins their elections, not the courts”. More

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      She’s a waitress raised on a farm – can Rebecca Cooke win a key Wisconsin seat?

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      Wisconsin’s third congressional district has voted for Donald Trump every time he’s been on the ballot, but the moderate Democrat Rebecca Cooke, a waitress who grew up on a dairy farm, thinks she can flip the state’s most competitive seat next year.Last year, Cooke outperformed other Democrats when she tried to unseat incumbent Derrick Van Orden, a retired US Navy Seal who attended the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally at the Capitol and shouted “lies” during Joe Biden’s 2024 state of the union address. She lost the race by less than three points.She’s trying again. She launched her 2026 campaign in March, amid constituent anger at Van Orden for refusing to face questions at in-person town halls. She is doubling down on the campaigning that worked for in November, hitting the pavement across the western Wisconsin district.In the soul-searching among Democrats over the future of their party, Cooke aligns with the moderate Blue Dog coalition led by Washington state representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who told Mother Jones that after she endorsed Cooke, Van Orden “shoulder-checked me on the floor”.But Cooke rejects a label within the party, calling them “somewhat harmful” and polarizing in her district. She tells voters that she thinks lawmakers in DC are either too far left or too far right, and that there need to be more regular folks willing to work across the aisle to get things done. The idea resonates with people, who tell her they’re over the polarization and chaos. She needs votes from people across the political spectrum to win in the moderately right-leaning district.Cooke’s resumé is the kind often cobbled together in small towns across the US: she works as a waitress, she ran a retail business and an Airbnb business, she worked on Democratic campaigns, and she started a non-profit to support female entrepreneurs. She first ran for the congressional seat in 2022, losing in the Democratic primary, then again in 2024, beating out two other Democrats to take on Van Orden.She has been waitressing since she was a teenager, she said. “I love that work. I love the hospitality industry. I think there’s so much dignity in hospitality work, and it’s something that allows me being able to work at night, to be able to campaign all day.”She said her “more working-class” background aligns with the district but upsets her opponents, who have brought up her work on Democratic campaigns. The National Republican Congressional Committee has repeatedly called her a “sleazy political activist” and said she is lying about her background.“I’d love them to see the car that I drive around, and the place that I live,” she said. “Anybody that knows me knows that I’m not rolling in dough by any means.”Cooke grew up on a dairy farm, but her family had to sell their cows because of how competition affected the price of milk. Losing the farm wasn’t just losing a business, she said. “It’s just very much a part of our way of life, and we’ve lost thousands of dairy farms in Wisconsin.”In June, farmers around the state will host breakfasts to promote dairy farming. She said she’ll be at every dairy breakfast she can get to in the district, shaking hands and introducing herself.“I don’t know what people’s political background is, but when I’m shaking their hand, I’ll say: ‘I’m Rebecca Cooke, I grew up on a dairy farm,’ and I tell them a little bit about my background,” she said. “By the end of the conversation, they go: ‘So, what party are you from?’ And I would rather that question if they’re agreeing with me on similar values.”Cooke said she thinks Democrats need to bring people back into a big tent through pragmatism and detailing how their agenda would help Americans afford their housing and groceries.The party needs to create its own “prosperity gospel instead of just demonizing the right”, she said. “What are we going to do better? And how are we going to help people find their path to the middle class?” Democrats need to be bold, fresh and and willing to be “more uninhibited”.“I really think the change that we want to see has to come from the inside out and not from the outside in,” she said. “We need to look to our communities to solve these gaps and this vacuum and work to recruit people to be those strong voices and to run for office.“It shouldn’t be like, this is coming from the national party, and this is what you should think or do. It should be, this is what’s coming from our communities, and this is what we want the party to do.” More

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      Democratic attorneys general sue Trump over ‘illegal’ voting order

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      A coalition of 19 Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday, arguing that a recent executive order signed by the president that seeks to overhaul the nation’s elections was “unconstitutional, anti-democratic, and un-American”.The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, challenges several provisions of the far-reaching executive order issued last week, including the proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration and new rules requiring all mail ballots be received by election day.The attorneys general accuse the president of overstepping his authority and allege that the order “usurps the states’ constitutional power and seeks to amend election law by fiat”.Among the defendants named in the lawsuit are Trump, the attorney general Pam Bondi and the United States Election Assistance Commission, an independent agency charged with helping to improve election administration and ensuring voting accessibility and security.The state attorneys general say they are asking a judge to declare the provisions “unconstitutional and void”.“The president’s executive order has no legal justification and far exceeds the scope of his constitutional authority,” the California attorney general Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said during a press conference on Thursday afternoon.“Let me be clear: Trump is acting like he’s above the law. He isn’t. He’s violating the US constitution. He can’t, which is why we’re taking action.”The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In the lawsuit, the attorneys general repeatedly cite the elections clause of the constitution, which says that states set the “times, places and manner” of elections. The clause allows Congress to pass federal voting laws, which House Republicans are racing to do, but “nowhere does the constitution provide the president, or the executive branch, with any independent power to modify the states’ procedures for conducting federal elections”, the attorneys general assert in the complaint.California was joined by the Democratic attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.Aaron Ford, the Democratic attorney general of Nevada, said Trump’s executive order was not only unconstitutional but “unnecessary”. He said that all US states had a “vested interest” in ensuring a fair election process.“To insinuate otherwise and to seek to impose restrictions based on these insinuations, is political gamesmanship. Frankly, it’s illegal political gamesmanship,” Ford said during the press conference with Bonta.“Blackmailing states with the removal of election security funding unless we comply with the order is a far more damaging and harmful threat than any perceived dangers the president is peddling falsehoods over.”Trump’s elections order, described by White House staff secretary Will Scharf as “the farthest-reaching executive action taken” in the nation’s history, also faces legal challenges brought by the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, and Senate and House Democratic leaders, as well as a separate lawsuit filed by two nonprofit organizations, the Campaign Legal Center and the State Democracy Defenders Fund.These lawsuits were filed in the US district court for the District of Columbia.Trump, a prolific spreader of election falsehoods who sought to overturn his 2020 defeat on the baseless claim of a stolen election, has said the order is necessary to protect US elections against illegal non-citizen voting. Instances of noncitizens casting ballots in federal elections – a felony crime – are exceedingly rare. Yet Trump and Republicans have continued to amplify the myth.Trump’s order stated that the US had failed “to enforce basic and necessary election protection”, despite reports by elections officials that the recent elections have been among the most secure in US history.“The president seemingly had no qualms with the result of the last election and happily took office for a second term,” Bonta said. “That’s because our elections are secure.” More

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      Democrats’ deference to Biden was a disaster. They still haven’t learned their lesson | Norman Solomon

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      Joe Biden’s insistence on running for re-election was certainly disastrous. It kept credible contenders out of the Democratic presidential primaries and prevented the selection of a nominee who had gained momentum in the winnowing process. Even after his stunningly feeble debate performance on 27 June last year, Biden took several weeks before finally opting out of the race. That left Kamala Harris a mere 107 days between the launch of her campaign and election day.Ample evidence shows that the Biden team was riddled with obstinate denial and misrepresentation aimed at the public. But tales of tragic egomania in high places can take us only so far. What’s essential is to scrutinize how – and why – the Democratic party, its leaders and its prominent supporters enabled Biden and his inner circle to get away with such momentous stonewalling for so long.Democrats in Congress, with few exceptions, refused to jump off the Biden 2024 bandwagon until the debate disaster. Similar enabling also came from state party chairs and Democratic governors. Likewise, a wide range of party-allied organizations toed the Biden party line. Meanwhile, many activists took on the role of spectators, if not cheerleaders for another Biden campaign, in an unfolding tragedy of vast proportions.A common denominator was fear. Fear of being accused of disloyalty to the Democratic president. Fear of being ostracized by fellow Democrats or denounced by anti-Trump commentators. Fear of being accused of weakening the party by pointing out Biden’s evident frailty. Fear of damaging personal ambitions or future access to halls of power. And on and on.The silence and compliance helped Biden to coast toward renomination. Yet by midway through his term, polling numbers and increasingly shaky public behavior were clear signals that he would be a weak candidate. Support from working-class voters, the young, and people of color drastically eroded.Notably, leading progressives in Congress assisted Biden in fending off a serious primary challenge. Representative Pramila Jayapal, then chair of the congressional Progressive caucus, made a very early endorsement. “I never thought I would say this, but I believe he should run for another term and finish this agenda we laid out,” she said in November 2022. Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Biden in April 2023. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed him three months later.Polls routinely showed that most Democratic voters did not want Biden to run again. But party leaders were on autopilot, choosing discretion over valor, benefitting their relations with the White House but undermining the party’s prospects of retaining it – as is now painfully and undeniably clear.A few weeks ago, speaking at a Harvard Kennedy School forum, Jayapal said: “I do think had the president just served one term, he would have gone out a hero, he would have passed the torch, he would have been celebrated for his accomplishments, we would have had a really strong Democratic primary with a lot of good candidates, and then we would have had the full election season to fight it out and to actually get somebody who could win.”Now, an open question is whether crucial lessons have been learned and will be heeded. At stake is the capacity of the Democratic party to defeat Trumpist forces in the midterm elections next year and in 2028.The outlook is not good. A grim reality is that the Democratic party and its loyalists have developed an enduring corrosive culture – which had everything to do with the insistence on continuing to fuel the faulty Biden 2024 locomotive as it dragged the party toward a calamitous defeat.I am not writing from a vantage point of hindsight alone. In November 2022, days after the midterm elections, my colleagues and I at the progressive non-profit RootsAction launched the Don’t Run Joe campaign (renamed Step Aside Joe when Biden announced his candidacy the following spring). During the next 20 months, not one other sizable national organization was willing to push for Biden to forego a re-election bid.We began in New Hampshire, the longtime first-in-the-country presidential primary state. (Biden had finished fifth with only 8.4% of the vote in the 2020 Democratic primary there. For 2024, he demoted New Hampshire to make South Carolina first.) On 9 November 2022, our kickoff digital ads reached Democrats across New Hampshire. Within days, upwards of 2,000 Democratic voters in the state had signed a Don’t Run Joe petition, conveying this message: “We cannot risk losing in 2024. We shouldn’t gamble on Joe Biden’s low approval rating.”That was the gist of our messaging that continued for more than a year and a half via online advertising, email blasts, social media, news releases, media interviews, mass texting to Democratic voters, leafleting at state party conventions and TV ads in several key states and Washington DC. A mobile Don’t Run Joe billboard circled the Capitol and White House as well as the site of a Democratic National Committee meeting.Don’t Run Joe placed full-page print advertisements in the Hill, aimed at congressional Democrats. One ad included a picture of men in suits with their heads in the sand. Presented as An Open Letter to Democrats in the House and Senate, the ad declared that “evasion is no solution” and concluded: “Conformity and fear of a White House rebuke have never served Democrats or the nation well. It is time to stop muffling genuine concerns and start being honest about the pivotal downsides of a prospective Biden ’24 candidacy. The future of the Democratic Party – and the country – is at stake.”Today, conformity and fear are still contagions afflicting the Democratic party, now impairing its capacity to roll back Donald Trump’s autocratic rule and effectively fight for a progressive agenda. The rebellion against Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, while encouraging, has not shaken the party’s underlying power structure. And habitual deference to uninspiring party leadership does not bode well.The day after the president’s recent demagogic speech to Congress, the new Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, were the featured speakers for “a virtual National Update and Call to Action”. The next morning, I received a text from a progressive Democratic party activist, who summarized the event as “sad and weak,” adding: “Jeffries and Martin’s delivery was anemic, content essentially pablum.” The activist signed off with the words “Really frightened”.I asked if it would be OK to use the activist’s name while quoting from the text in an article. The reply was both understandable and symptomatic of how fear prevents the kind of open debate that the Democratic party desperately needs: “No, I am working inside the party … ”

      Norman Solomon is the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book is War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine More

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      Republicans join Democrats in Senate vote to rescind Trump Canada tariffs

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      Several Republican senators joined Democrats to pass a resolution that would block Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, a rare rebuke of the president’s trade policy just hours after he announced plans for sweeping import taxes on some of the country’s largest trading partners.In a 51-48 vote, four Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and both Kentucky senators, the former majority leader Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul – defied Trump’s pressure campaign and supported the measure. Democrats used a procedural maneuver to force a vote on the resolution, which would terminate the national emergency on fentanyl Trump is using to justify tariffs on Canada.While Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, introduced in a White House Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday, did not include additional levies on Canada, the Senate vote amounted to a significant bipartisan condemnation of the president’s escalating global trade war with allies and enemies alike.“Tariffs will hurt our families. Canada is not an enemy,” the Democratic senator Tim Kaine, the bill’s sponsor, said in a floor speech on Wednesday. “Let’s not label an ally as an enemy. Let’s not impose punishing costs on American families at a time they can’t afford it. Let’s not hurt American small businesses. Let’s not make our national security investments in ships and subs more expensive.”Republicans have expressed varying degrees of unease over Trump’s clampdown on free trade – once a pillar of conservative orthodoxy – but few were willing to cross him, and many GOP leaders and supporters, including the House speaker Mike Johnson, were in the Rose Garden on Wednesday – a day dubbed “liberation day” by the president – as a way of championing the historic barrage of tariffs on goods from overseas he believes will boost American manufacturing.The Senate’s legislation has practically no chance of passing the Republican-controlled House and being signed by Trump, but it showed the limits of Republican support for Trump’s vision of remaking the US economy by restricting free trade. Many economists are warning that the plan could cause an economic contraction, and GOP senators are already watching with unease as Trump upends the United States’ relationship with the rest of the world.Before the vote, the Senate majority leader John Thune of South Dakota urged Republicans to oppose the resolution, arguing that the tariffs were needed to “ensure that President Trump has the tools to combat the flow of fentanyl from all directions”.In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, sent just before 1am ET on Wednesday, Trump assailed the four GOP senators who had expressed opposition to his tariffs, imploring them to “get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl”.He vowed not to sign the measure if it reached his desk.Defending her vote, Collins said that the tariffs would hurt working families in her state of Maine, which shares a long border with Canada.“The price hikes that will happen for Maine families, every time they go to the grocery store, they fill their gas tank, they fill their heating oil tank, if these tariffs go into effect, will be so harmful,” she said in a Wednesday floor speech. “And as price hikes always do, they will hurt those the most who can afford them the least.”She also argued that fentanyl from Canada was not a major threat to the US, as Trump’s national emergency claims. “The fact is the vast majority of fentanyl in America comes from the southern border,” she said.Democrats argued that Americans were turning against Trump’s agenda, pointing to a string of strong performances by their party in recent special elections that included a consequential victory in a Wisconsin state supreme court race on Tuesday night.“The American people are seeing how bad Trump is,” the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a floor speech. “Tariffs is a good part of it. And they are not supporting people like Elon Musk and those who support Donald Trump.”Earlier on Wednesday, the representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, said he would also force a similar vote in the House on the tariffs.“Republicans can’t keep ducking this – it’s time they show whether they support the economic pain Trump is inflicting on their constituents,” he wrote on X. More

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      Michigan lawmaker Mallory McMorrow joins competitive 2026 US Senate race

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      Mallory McMorrow, a state senator from Michigan and rising star in the Democratic party, has announced her bid for the US Senate in what is expected to be one of 2026’s most competitive and high-profile contests.McMorrow, 38, launched her campaign on Wednesday to succeed Michigan’s retiring Democratic senator Gary Peters with a video that showed the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of federal workers, plans to cut Medicaid and Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”.“There are moments that will break you,” McMorrow said. “This is not that moment. This moment will challenge us, test us. And if it all feels like too much? That’s their plan.“They want to make you feel powerless, but you are not so powerless. We’ve been here before,” she continued, noting her 2018 state senate win over an incumbent Republican.The video also shows a clip from a fierce, impassioned speech in 2022 in which she denounced a Republican lawmaker who attacked her over her support for LGBTQ+ rights and falsely accused her of wanting to “groom” and “sexualize” young children.In the speech, which went viral on social media, McMorrow said she was “a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom” who wants “every child in this state to feel seen, heard, and supported, not marginalized and targeted because they are not straight, white and Christian”.Democrats are desperate to hold onto the Michigan seat, a battleground state that voted for Donald Trump in November.Kristen McDonald Rivet and Haley Stevens, both members of Congress, as well as Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel, are all thought to be considering running for the Democratic ticket.Pete Buttigieg, the former US transportation secretary, announced last month that he would not be seeking the Michigan senate seat, fueling speculation that he could be looking ahead to a 2028 presidential run. More