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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorses Maya Wiley for New York mayor

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed Maya Wiley for mayor of New York, a dramatic intervention that could heighten the chances of the city electing a woman for the first time and only its second Black leader.Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive in Congress popularly known as AOC, shot to national fame in 2018 when she beat a longtime incumbent, Joe Crowley, for the Democratic nomination in a district in Queens and the Bronx.“If we don’t come together as a movement we will get a New York City built by and for billionaires, and we need a city by and for working people,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Saturday. “So we will vote for Maya No1.”Wiley is a lawyer and community organiser who was a counsel to the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, and has taught urban policy and social justice at the New School in Manhattan.“She will be a progressive in Gracie Mansion,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to the mayoral residence. “We can’t let New York become a playground for the wealthy where working people cannot afford to live.”Wiley lauded Ocasio-Cortez as a strong leader and promised to do the same for the city.“It’s time we have this kind of courage leading us at a historic crossroads,” Wiley said, according to New York Daily News, referring to the city’s prospects after the coronavirus pandemic. “We need the courage to bring every New Yorker back with us.”This week Wiley told the New Yorker: “There’s one progressive in this race who can win this race. And it’s me.”In April, she told the Guardian she wanted to change a history which has seen New York elect 109 mayors – 108 of them white men, the exception David Dinkins, who led the city for three years from 1990 and who died last November, aged 93.For long periods the New York race has been led by Andrew Yang, a centrist tech entrepreneur who achieved his own national fame with a surprisingly strong run in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.After failing to land a place in Joe Biden’s cabinet, Yang entered the race to succeed De Blasio in New York.Gaffes and missteps including choosing to live outside the city during the pandemic, not voting for mayor between 2001 and 2017 and supposedly misunderstanding the subway system did not stop him dominating early polls.Democrats will choose their candidate – and in all likelihood the next mayor, given the political leanings of the city – on 22 June. The primary will be conducted through ranked-choice voting, which lets voters pick up to five candidates in order of preference. Some early results in other contests might be known that evening but the nominees for mayor are unlikely to be known for weeks.Polls have tightened, with Yang, Wiley, Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams and former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia the top four in a crowded field.Garcia has been endorsed by the New York Times. Wiley will hope Ocasio-Cortez speaks to young New Yorkers as the Grey Lady does to the city’s establishment.Hit hard in the early stages of the pandemic, New Yorkers are only now beginning to return to normal life. In her interview with the Guardian, Wiley said Covid “laid bare once again – like all our crises that reveal racial inequity – our failure to invest in our people.“… You know, 88% of New Yorkers who have died from Covid are people of colour. We are not 80% of the New York City population. The highest rates of unemployment are in the same communities that had the highest rates of death due to Covid. And the highest infection rates, and are the same communities that are over-policed, and are the same communities that are struggling to get the vaccine.“If we want to recover from Covid we have to pay attention to all our people. And what we love about the city … is the fact that 800 languages are spoken here, and the fact that 40% of our people were born in another country, and the fact that we have descendants from North American slaves, and the fact that we have people who live in luxury housing and people who live in public housing, and that’s part of what makes us rich.”She was also asked how she would manage the notoriously difficult relationship between the mayor’s office and Andrew Cuomo, the powerful Democratic governor of New York state.“I would manage the relationship with the governor the way I manage all relationships,” she said. “Open communication, starting with principles and purpose that meets the needs of people.“We have a shared constituency. There are many partnerships, we need to get what we need from the state government. And if you want partnerships that focus on hard problems and real solutions, then pick a Black woman. Because that’s what we do every single day and in every single way.” More

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      I survived a school shooting. My kids shouldn’t have to face the same danger | Ashley Jordan

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      “Somebody’s shooting on campus!”The words ripped my concentration away from my laptop screen. Our law school classroom fell silent. “What should we do?” I asked our professor. He said: “Well, if I were you, I’d run.” I paused to type “There’s a shooter” in a chat box to my husband Aaron before slamming my laptop shut.I took refuge between stacks in the law library until police said it was safe to leave, hours later. When I walked out of the law school, I heard loud rumbling above me and looked up to see news helicopters circling overhead against a cold, gray sky. Some kind of war had been waged on our campus, and the air was heavy with it. I was going home to my family, but the flashing lights of police cars and ambulances suggested others weren’t.Surviving a school shooting was an initiation of evil. The world didn’t look or feel the same afterward. Its colors were less vivid, and any sense of peace and security that once surrounded me was gone. I knew I’d never exist with quite the same ease again.The trauma of what’s since become known as the Northern Illinois University “Valentine’s Day Massacre” has never left me. More than a decade later, I can still recall the terror of that day with precise, photographic dread. But I’m no longer a 24-year-old student; I’m a 37-year-old mother of three. Despite 12 years and countless other mass shooting incidents across the country, not much has been done by our federal legislators to make anyone safer from gun violence anywhere – let alone at school.One hundred and ninety-four mass shootings occurred in the US this year, with at least 45 in April alone.I assumed the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary shooting would be the wake-up call our country needed to act on gun violence. Multiple school shootings had taken place since the one I experienced in 2008, yet Sandy Hook was the first to invade my consciousness as a mother.I clutched my eight-month-old son to my chest as the precious faces of young children murdered at school cycled across my television screen on the evening news. As tears streamed down my face, my mind tried to reconcile the fact that the victims in these manmade tragedies were no longer limited to teenagers and college students.Little kids were new casualties in our country’s ongoing struggle to define itself. Its endless argument over guns appeared to be a symptom of a national identity crisis between political polar opposites – two parties so ideologically opposed that even the needless deaths of tiny innocents couldn’t bridge the divide between them.What sickened me most, though, wasn’t our government’s failure to prioritize people over partisanship. It was knowing that there were parents who took their kids to school and returned home eternally empty-handed. My stomach churned over whether their children might have experienced some iteration or degree of what I remembered from the NIU shooting: the hell, helplessness and panic of staring at a doorway, wondering if a person on the other side was about to end my life.The only thing worse than knowing those feelings first-hand was wondering how many more children might one day know them, too.The human cost of school shootings extends beyond those who are injured or die, negatively affecting the mental health of survivorsSo far, hundreds of thousands of American students have been exposed to school shootings, and these incidents have increased in recent years. The human cost of school shootings extends beyond those who are injured or die, negatively affecting the mental health of survivors. According to a 2019 Stanford University study, “local exposure to fatal school shootings increased antidepressant use among youths”.Yet children are not the only ones suffering from this epidemic. Parents are also struggling.Survivors of school shootings like me are now raising kids of their own, worrying they will suffer similar fates. Although the psychological effects of school shootings on parents may not yet be fully known or understood, research suggests that those with loved ones who have been exposed to “assaultive violence” have a higher risk of mental health disorders. Another study found that parents of terrorist survivors were five times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress and three times more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression than the population at large. (Mass shootings can be classified as acts of terrorism in many cases.)Like spouses of military veterans, parents of school shooting survivors might also be more susceptible to secondary traumatic stress, especially if they experienced a school shooting themselves or have a history of past trauma. But school shootings may pose mental health risks to all parents, not just those whose children are victims or survivors. One study concluded that acts of terrorism can have detrimental emotional impacts on general populations.School shootings don’t just deprive children of their lives and innocence; they deprive parents of a sense of safety and security their parents and grandparents took for granted. The sanctity and sanctuary of school are long gone. This reality is a painful part of our collective consciousness. We send our kids to school, hoping the horror of gun violence won’t happen there, but knowing no child or school is immune.Carrying this mental load may be commonplace for modern parents, but it doesn’t have to be. Biden recently took executive action to address gun violence, and although Americans are divided on gun policy, strong bipartisan support exists for expanded background checks and preventing the mentally ill from obtaining guns. Measures like these, limiting who has access to firearms, have proven more effective in reducing gun-related deaths than limiting access to specific types of firearms.Precious time has been wasted on political finger-pointing and partisan talking points, particularly when leftists and conservatives have each historically supported and opposed gun control (albeit for morally divergent reasons). Both sides seem content to debate the second amendment and the founders’ intent until they run out of breath. But in the meantime, Congress must come together, in earnest, to find common ground and common-sense solutions to stop this bleeding. The consequences of inaction have become too high – and our kids are counting on them.
      Ashley Jordan is a writer and activist who has contributed to written for the Washington Post, Woman’s Day, Teen Vogue, HuffPost, Business Insider, the Independent and more More

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      Pelosi faces pressure to seize reins in investigating US Capitol attack

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      Top Democrats are making a renewed effort to press ahead with establishing a sweeping, central investigation into the 6 January attack on the Capitol in what could be the final opportunity to hold former US president Donald Trump to account for inciting insurrection.The move reflects the resolve of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to pursue a comprehensive inquiry even without bipartisan support, after Senate Republicans, fearful of what a full accounting of the violence might uncover, last week voted down legislation for a 9/11-style commission to scrutinize the attack by a pro-Trump mob.Pelosi said on a Democratic caucus call on Tuesday that she was prepared to create a House select committee with subpoena power to replace the commission as the principal investigation by Congress into the assault, according to sources familiar with the matter.The select committee was one of several options raised on the call that included empowering one existing committee, such as the House homeland security committee, to take charge of the congressional investigation, the sources said.Also suggested on the call was the possibility of returning the bill to create a 9/11-style commission back to the Senate for a second vote, while Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic caucus chair, floated the idea of the Department of Justice appointing a special counsel.Pelosi did not endorse any particular proposal, but she did categorically rule out a presidential commission created by Joe Biden, in large part because such a panel would lack subpoena authority or funding without a statutory change.Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, was supportive of empowering the House homeland security committee to take charge, the sources said, while the House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, and the assistant speaker, Katherine Clark, were non-committal.It was not immediately clear how Pelosi might proceed. But rank-and-file House Democrats have agitated for weeks for Pelosi to seize the reins and adopt her longstanding fallback plan of empanelling a select committee.Select committees – among the top weapons for congressional oversight – have long been convened on issues relating to corruption and cover-up, from the investigation into presidential campaign activity during Watergate to the Benghazi terrorist attacks.The creation of a select committee could break the logjam that has persisted for months on Capitol Hill over disagreements between Democrats and Republicans over how to embark on a full accounting of the attack that left five dead and scores injured.Proponents of the select committee received a boost last week from Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, who seemingly extended his endorsement to the proposal saying it was “better to investigate with a select committee than not investigate”.Pelosi has previously suggested that a select committee would focus on lines of inquiry likely to have been explored by the commission.That kind of mandate would mean a forensic examination into the root causes of the attack, the former president’s conduct as his supporters stormed the Capitol and threatened to hang his own vice-president, as well as any potential ties between Trump and the rioters.But its work could still be stymied by Republicans, who have repeatedly resisted any comprehensive inquiry into the attack, afraid of being found complicit ahead of the 2022 midterm elections in inciting insurrection by amplifying Trump’s lies about voter fraud.The number of Republicans downplaying or even outright denying the reality of what transpired on 6 January, for instance, has only increased in recent months; Congressman Andrew Clyde described the deadly insurrection as a “normal tourist visit” to the Capitol.Likely opposition – especially from Republican leaders in Congress – could also make any new findings be viewed through a partisan lens and cause a substantial proportion of the country to reject any conclusions that cast Trump in a negative light.The last select committee convened by Congress to investigate Benghazi devolved into a partisan affair, even before the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, admitted it had been created to damage the 2016 election chances of the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.But House Democrats have remained largely undeterred. “If Republicans won’t join us to protect our democracy, we have an obligation to do it ourselves,” said Teresa Leger Fernández, a member of the House administration committee. More

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      Kerfuffle after drone carrying sex toy disrupts Albuquerque mayoral event

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      A New Mexico sheriff who is running for mayor of Albuquerque was interrupted at a campaign event by a flying drone with a sex toy attached to it and a man who called him a “tyrant” while swinging his fist.The campaign group for the Bernalillo county sheriff, Manuel Gonzales, said the Democrat was unharmed and “will not be intimidated”.A video posted on Facebook shows Gonzales answering questions from the audience while standing on a stage at an events centre, when the drone bearing the sex toy starts buzzing near the stage.A sheriff’s office report said the owner of the event centre grabbed the device and that a 20-year-old, Kaelan Ashby Dreyer, also tried to grab it.The report said Dreyer then turned his attention to Gonzales, swinging his fist and calling him a tyrant. A deputy wrote that Dreyer punched Gonzales’ hands and was then removed from the event.Gonzales said at a news conference on Wednesday he believed Dreyer was with several companions and spotted someone standing on the other side of a fence who he believes was flying the drone. “It became so distracting from the sound and everything I couldn’t really get my point across,” Gonzales said.Dreyer has been charged with petty misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor resisting, evading or obstructing an officer. According to a deputy in the report, Dreyer said he did not intend to hit Gonzales but was upset at the way the sheriff answered a question and intended to swing his fist through the air.Gonzales suggested on Wednesday that the stunt with the drone might have been sent by the rival campaign of the incumbent mayor, Tim Keller, also a Democrat.Keller’s campaign condemned the stunt as “disruptive, rude and immature” and denied any involvement. “To suggest we were behind it is pathetic and the kind of desperation that has marked Manny’s troubled campaign,” Keller’s campaign manager, Neri Holguin, said.Dreyer denied he was working for Keller’s campaign and said he was not a fan of the incumbent either, the Albuquerque Journal reported. He declined to comment further. More

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      ‘This was not a riot, this was a massacre’: Biden honors victims of 1921 violence – live

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      Key events

      Show

      5.01pm EDT
      17:01

      Today so far

      4.40pm EDT
      16:40

      ‘This was not a riot, this was a massacre,’ Biden says in Tulsa

      4.29pm EDT
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      Biden tells Tulsa race massacre survivors: ‘Now your story will be known in full view’

      4.23pm EDT
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      Biden delivers remarks in Tulsa to commemorate race massacre anniversary

      2.38pm EDT
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      Biden arrives in Tulsa to meet with race massacre survivors and deliver remarks

      2.04pm EDT
      14:04

      Biden issues proclamation to mark LGBTQ+ Pride Month

      1.41pm EDT
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      “Tragic and devastating” – WH spox

      Live feed

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      5.22pm EDT
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      The Biden administration has suspended oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that were issued in the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
      Just two weeks before Biden was inaugurated, the Trump administration had actioned the right to drill in the expansive, delicate tundra that is home to migrating waterfowl, denning polar bears and herds of Porcupine caribou. The move drew fierce opposition from Alaska Native activists and environmental groups – who lobbied Biden to quickly claw back the 1.5m acre of the refuge that has been opened up to fossil fuel production.
      Here’s more background on the Trump administration’s move:

      5.01pm EDT
      17:01

      Today so far

      Joe Biden’s speech in Tulsa has now concluded, and that’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:

      Biden delivered remarks in Tulsa to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the city’s race massacre. The president emphasized the importance of acknowledging the lives and livelihoods lost in the massacre, which resulted in the death of at least 300 African Americans and the destruction of 35 blocks of Black real estate. “For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness,” Biden said. “My fellow Americans, this was not a riot, this was a massacre.”
      Biden met with the three living survivors of the massacre before delivering his speech. All three survivors – Viola “Mother” Fletcher, Hughes “Uncle Red” Van Ellis and Lessie “Mother Randle” Benningfield Randle – are over 100 years old. Biden acknowledged them in his remarks, saying, “Now your story will be known in full view.”
      Ahead of the trip, the Biden administration announced a series of initiatives aimed at narrowing the country’s racial wealth gap. The administration pledged to take action to address racial housing discrimination and use its purchasing power to direct an additional $100bn to small disadvantaged business owners.
      Biden will meet tomorrow with Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito to discuss a potential compromise on infrastructure. The meeting comes a week after Republicans outlined their latest offer, which called for spending $928bn on infrastructure over the next eight years, far less than what Biden has proposed.
      Biden issued a proclamation to mark the start of LGBTQ+ Pride Month. “This Pride Month, we recognize the valuable contributions of LGBTQ+ individuals across America, and we reaffirm our commitment to standing in solidarity with LGBTQ+ Americans in their ongoing struggle against discrimination and injustice,” the president said in his proclamation.

      Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      Updated
      at 5.09pm EDT

      4.55pm EDT
      16:55

      Joe Biden has just announced that he will tap Kamala Harris to lead the administration’s efforts to strengthen national voting rights.
      Biden described the recent Republican efforts in dozens of states to limit access to the ballot box as “un-American”.
      The president pledged he would “fight like heck with every tool at my disposal” to pass the For the People Act, Democrats’ expansive election reform bill, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
      Biden also appeared to criticize two moderate Senate Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, referencing “two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends”. Manchin has said he opposes the For the People Act.

      4.40pm EDT
      16:40

      ‘This was not a riot, this was a massacre,’ Biden says in Tulsa

      Joe Biden underscored the importance of recognizing the devastating impact that the Tulsa race massacre had on Black lives and livelihoods.
      At least 300 African Americans were killed in the 1921 massacre, and about 35 blocks of Black real estate in the Greenwood neighborhood were destroyed.
      “For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness,” Biden said. “But just because history is silent it doesn’t mean that it did not take place. While darkness can hide much, it erases nothing.”
      The president added, “My fellow Americans, this was not a riot, this was a massacre.”

      Updated
      at 4.47pm EDT

      4.29pm EDT
      16:29

      Biden tells Tulsa race massacre survivors: ‘Now your story will be known in full view’

      Joe Biden noted that he is the first US president to ever visit Tulsa to commemorate the anniversary of the 1921 race massacre that killed at least three hundred African Americans.
      “The events we speak of today took place 100 years ago – and yet I’m the first president in 100 years ever to come to Tulsa,” Biden said, emphasizing the need to “acknowledge the truth of what took place here”.

      CBS News
      (@CBSNews)
      President Biden addresses three survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre: “You are the three known remaining survivors of a story seen in the mirror dimly. But no longer. Now, your story will be known in full view.” https://t.co/0kXzNfudf0 pic.twitter.com/ESpeEFGbel

      June 1, 2021

      The president specifically acknowledged the three living massacre survivors with whom he met today – Viola “Mother” Fletcher, Hughes “Uncle Red” Van Ellis and Lessie “Mother Randle” Benningfield Randle.
      “You are the three known remaining survivors of a story seen in the mirror dimly – but no longer,” Biden said. “Now your story will be known in full view.”

      Updated
      at 4.49pm EDT

      4.23pm EDT
      16:23

      Biden delivers remarks in Tulsa to commemorate race massacre anniversary

      Joe Biden is now delivering remarks on the 100th anniversary of the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
      Before launching into his prepared remarks, the president walked into the audience to speak to two young girls sitting toward the front of the crowd.
      Returning to the mic, Biden explained, “I just had to make sure the two girls got ice cream when this is over.”

      ABC News
      (@ABC)
      Ahead of remarks in Tulsa, Pres. Biden leaves the stage to talk to two young girls in the audience: “I just had to make sure the two girls got ice cream when this is over.” https://t.co/8tsvN79IHC pic.twitter.com/TmCPLPRMf5

      June 1, 2021

      4.03pm EDT
      16:03

      Joe Biden will soon deliver remarks at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the city’s race massacre.
      According to a White House pool report, there are about 200 people in attendance for Biden’s speech, including civil rights leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
      The speech comes immediately after Biden met with the three living survivors of the massacre – Viola “Mother” Fletcher, Hughes “Uncle Red” Van Ellis and Lessie “Mother Randle” Benningfield Randle – all of whom are over 100 years old.

      Updated
      at 4.08pm EDT

      3.35pm EDT
      15:35

      Joe Biden is now meeting with the three living survivors of the Tulsa race massacre, according to the latest White House pool report.
      Those survivors are Viola “Mother” Fletcher, Hughes “Uncle Red” Van Ellis and Lessie “Mother Randle” Benningfield Randle. They are all between the ages of 101 and 107.
      The three survivors testified two weeks ago at a House subcommittee hearing on the need to financially compensate massacre survivors and their descendants.
      “I will never forget the violence of the white mob when we left our home,” Fletcher told House members. “I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre every day.”

      3.30pm EDT
      15:30

      Ed Pilkington

      It is one of the extraordinary elements of the 1921 catastrophe that survivors are still alive. Three individuals are active today who as children experienced the horror of white sadism perpetrated on that day.
      The oldest of the trio, Mother Viola Fletcher, just turned 107. At a recent event in Tulsa, she walked unassisted to the podium and recalled what happened to her as a seven-year-old girl.
      “I still remember all the shooting and running,” she said. “People being killed. Crawling and seeing smoke. Seeing airplanes flying, and a messenger going through the neighbourhood telling all the Black people to leave town.”
      Then Fletcher stopped speaking. Even after 100 years, the memories of that day still have the power to overwhelm her.

      3.13pm EDT
      15:13

      Joe Biden is now touring an exhibit on the 1921 race massacre at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

      Karine Jean-Pierre
      (@KJP46)
      .@POTUS touring the Tulsa Race Massacre Exhibit at Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. pic.twitter.com/bKlD5XlJRQ

      June 1, 2021

      The president will soon deliver remarks at the center to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the massacre, which killed at least 300 African Americans. More

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      Biden ‘finishing the job’ my administration started, Obama says

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      Joe Biden is “finishing the job” begun by Barack Obama, the former president told the New York Times in an interview released on Tuesday.“I think that what we’re seeing now, is Joe and the administration are essentially finishing the job,” Obama said. “And I think it’ll be an interesting test.“Ninety per cent of the folks who were there in my administration, they are continuing and building on the policies we talked about, whether it’s the Affordable Care Act or our climate change agenda and the Paris [climate deal], and figuring out how do we improve the ladders to mobility through things like community colleges.”Obama also considered why in 2016, after his eight years in power, so many voters plumped for a hard-right successor in Donald Trump.“It’s hard to just underscore how much the bank bailouts just angered everyone, including me,” Obama said, of the remedy for the 2008 financial crisis he helped lead.“And then you have this long, slow recovery. Although the economy recovers technically quickly, it’s another five years before we’re really back to people feeling like, ‘OK, the economy is moving and working for me.’“… Let’s say a Democrat, a Joe Biden, or Hillary Clinton had immediately succeeded me, and the economy suddenly has 3% unemployment, I think we would have consolidated the sense that, ‘Oh, actually these policies that Obama put in place worked.’“The fact that Trump interrupts essentially the continuation of our policies, but still benefits from the economic stability and growth that we had initiated, means people aren’t sure. Well, gosh, unemployment’s 3.5% under Donald Trump.”Obama also mused about Biden’s much-discussed ability to reach voters, particularly in post-industrial midwestern states, who voted Obama then switched to Trump.“By virtue of biography and generationally,” Obama said, his vice-president, who is 78 and was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, “can still reach some of those folks”.“People knew I was left on issues like race, or gender equality, and LGBTQ issues and so forth,” Obama said. “But I think maybe the reason I was successful campaigning in downstate Illinois, or Iowa, or places like that is they never felt as if I was condemning them for not having gotten to the politically correct answer quick enough, or that somehow they were morally suspect because they had grown up with and believed more traditional values.”In fact Obama famously stirred controversy in 2008 when he said such voters “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”.The New York Times interviewer Ezra Klein did not raise those remarks.Obama continued: “I could go to the fish fry, or the [Veterans of Foreign Wars] hall, or all these other venues, and just talk to people. And they didn’t have any preconceptions about what I believed. They could just take me at face value.”The former president noted the drastic effects on such states of the collapse of local newspapers and the proliferation of misinformation via rightwing and social media.“If I went into those same places now,” Obama said, “or if any Democrat who’s campaigning goes in those places now, almost all news is from either Fox News, Sinclair news stations, talk radio, or some Facebook page. And trying to penetrate that is really difficult.“It’s not that the people in these communities have changed. It’s that if that’s what you are being fed, day in and day out, then you’re going to come to every conversation with a certain set of predispositions that are really hard to break through. And that is one of the biggest challenges I think we face.”According to recent polling, 53% of Republicans – and 25% of Americans – accept Trump’s lie that his defeat by Biden was the result of electoral fraud, while 15% of Americans believe the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that a cabal of child-murdering cannibals controls the US government.“If you have a conversation with folks,” Obama said, “you can usually assuage those fears. But they have to be able to hear you. You have to be able to get into the room. And I still could do that back in 2007, 2008. I think Joe, by virtue of biography and generationally, I think he can still reach some of those folks. But it starts getting harder, particularly for newcomers who are coming up.”Obama also said a successful Biden administration “will have an impact” on a deeply polarised political landscape in which Republican states are restricting voting among communities of color and making it easier to overturn results, while Republicans in Congress block a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack on the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters.“Does [success for Biden] override that sort of identity politics that has come to dominate Twitter, and the media, and that has seeped into how people think about politics?” Obama asked. “Probably not completely. But at the margins, if you’re changing 5% of the electorate, that makes a difference.” More

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      Ex-Senate majority leader Harry Reid on UFOs: ‘We’re at the infancy of it’

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      Former US Senate majority leader Harry Reid may be retired from Congress, but he still has ideas on how lawmakers should study unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.A report detailing US military encounters with UFOs requested by the Senate intelligence committee is due to be released in June, (although it may be delayed). However, the findings should not be seen as the end of the current investigations into UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), he said.“Congress should make this an ongoing program. I don’t think the report is going to tell us too much. I think they need to study it more and not just have one shot at it,” Reid told the Guardian.The former Democratic senator from Nevada has long been fascinated by UFOs and has been increasingly more vocal on the subject since his retirement in 2017.In 2007, Reid joined his colleagues Senators Ted Stevens, a Republican from Alaska, and Daniel Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii, to invest $22m in a clandestine Pentagon operation that would be called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The program investigated military reports of UFOs and other inexplicable aerial objects. It was shut down in 2012.“They had many sightings, hundreds and hundreds of these sightings. I didn’t know if it would be 20 or 40 – I was stunned – it was hundreds of them,” Reid said.AATIP was the predecessor to the current Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, which is expected to release its findings shortly.The US is enjoying an exponential surge in interest – and rapid shedding of taboos – regarding taking UFOs seriously. With scientists and high-profile politicians weighing in on the conversation – including former President Barack Obama, Reid’s efforts are now more fully appreciated. He compares the current era with that of the Wright Brothers and the beginnings of modern air travel.“I believe it’s just as if we were starting airplanes. Airplanes were not understood very quickly. There’s so much to learn. Technologically, everything today is happening quickly. UFOs fascinate people who are pilots, physicists, because they can’t understand how these UFOS have no vapor trail, no lights on them, yet they can go so fast, so quickly. If it was under the technology we have today it would kill the pilots. We’re at the infancy of it,” he said.When asked about the role of private sector companies and space travel, he expressed admiration for entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, who the former senator said he has met “several times”.“We’ve not talked about UFOs because the last time I met with him we weren’t even talking about UFOs and now we are,” Reid said, leaving the door open for that conversation with the tech mogul.“The work that Musk has done is really breathtaking and how it has influenced the public forum today … people are fascinated by what he’s doing. We have these spaceships going up and coming back, he fixes them up … sends them back up,” he said referring to SpaceX’s successful launches of reusable rockets.Reid also expressed optimism that there are people alive now who may live to see much more commonly available space travel in their lifetimes.“There’s every indication that there’s going to be a lot more space travel, they’ll have colonies on the moon and we’ll have room beyond that,” he said. More