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      Black Georgian men helped Biden win the White House – are they losing faith?

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      Morehouse College, a 156-year-old Black men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, has produced graduates such as Martin Luther King and Spike Lee. It has been an essential campaign stop for Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama, John Lewis and, last September, Kamala Harris.But as another presidential election looms, Joe Biden can take nothing for granted here. “A resounding no,” was 28-year-old Ade Abney’s verdict on whether the US president has delivered on his promises to Black voters. “I voted for Biden in 2020 but next year I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. It probably will not be him.”Georgia is among half a dozen swing states that will decide the all-important electoral college next November. Despite its history as a bastion of conservatism in the south, Democrats have scored notable wins in presidential and Senate elections in recent years. African American voters have been fundamental to that success, with Biden securing 88% of the Black vote in 2020.But opinion polls suggest an erosion of support for the president. An October survey by the New York Times and Siena College found that, while 76% of Black voters in Georgia favour Biden, 19% prefer his likely rival Donald Trump – an unprecedented share for a Republican in modern times. It was enough to give Trump a six-point lead in the state overall.The current shift is particularly acute among Black men for reasons that include a perception that Trump would cut taxes and offer better economic opportunities. Abney, a Morehouse graduate who now works at the college, said: “I was in a barbershop and the barbershop conversation was how they like Trump.“The reason was at least when he was in office they felt as though they were able to make more money. A lot of people attribute that specifically to him. A lot of that conversation was pretty clear in terms of OK, well, I had more money when he was in office so I want him back.”Standing beside Abney at the tree-lined college entrance, Dejaun Wright, 23, offered even sharper criticism of Biden. “There’s a lot of broken promises, a lot of a lack of integrity,” the philosophy student said. “He campaigned on promises such as student loan forgiveness and every instance where he’s shown interest in that, he’s always applied a caveat: oh, well, I said student loan forgiveness, but I only forgive $10,000.“A lot of the things that he promised he’s offered either with a caveat or he just hasn’t offered at all. It’s a slap in the face. If you are going to build a campaign and then build a presidency off of lies, or at least not keeping your promises, then I don’t know if I can trust you again.”At liberal colleges such as Morehouse, there is also rising discontent over 81-year-old Biden’s staunch support for Israel, even as it unleashes an aerial and ground blitz against Hamas that is causing thousands of civilian deaths and a humanitarian disaster in Gaza.Wright added: “I’m not appreciative of how vocal he’s been in his blind support of Israel. No sense of criticism there whatsoever. He’s actively been ignoring all of us. We’ve all been saying we don’t support this war in Israel. We don’t like our tax money funding a genocide like this, especially considering the amount of debt we have.”Black men do still vote overwhelmingly Democrat, and it’s only a small segment who might be turning away. In 2020 87% of Black men supported Joe Biden, which although down slightly from the 95% who voted for Barack Obama in his first campaign was better than the 82% who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. (Black women support Democrats even more strongly: in 2016 and 2020, 94% and 95% voted for Biden.) Only 12% of Black men voted for Trump in 2020 and no Democrat has attracted less than 80% of Black voters since the civil rights era.Small numbers could nevertheless make a big difference. Like Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004, Georgia has become a closely fought battleground that could decide the presidency. In 2020 Biden won the state by a margin of just 11,779 votes, or 0.24%, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state in 28 years. Trump’s false claims and efforts to overturn the result led to criminal charges and a potential trial next year.Democrats’ gains continued two months later, when Raphael Warnock became the first African American from Georgia elected to the Senate and Jon Ossoff became the state’s first Jewish senator. Last year, Warnock won re-election in a runoff against the Republican Herschel Walker, an African American former football star who failed to make significant gains among Black voters.But Stacey Abrams, bidding to become America’s first Black female governor, was defeated by the Republican incumbent, Brian Kemp. In the House of Representatives, the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene cruised to re-election. The state remains so finely balanced that even a fraction of Black voters switching to Trump, voting third party or simply staying at home on election day could make all the difference.Cliff Albright, a co-founder and executive director of the Black Lives Matter Fund, does not believe there is more of an enthusiasm gap now than at the same stage in 2019, when Black voters were unexcited about Biden. “People confuse electability for enthusiasm,” he said. “We weren’t that enthusiastic and we’re still not that enthusiastic. But that’s not news.“It’s just showing up differently because we’re a year out from the election. My prediction is that as we get closer, that pragmatism will set back in and people will start to realise more that this is not a referendum about Biden. This is a choice between this person and the one that we know is anti-us or somebody else who’s equally as bad.”Albright does not believe polls that say Trump will improve on his share of the Black vote next time. But he acknowledges that Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza could hurt him among young Black voters, especially with independent candidates such as Cornel West offering a clear alternative by demanding a ceasefire.“A lot of Black folks see ourselves in the Palestinian struggle,” he said. “A lot of us view that as a David and Goliath situation, a colonial situation. We see ourselves in what’s happening. When we see armed military using teargas and rockets and all that, we also see the George Floyd protests and ourselves going up against tanks and police forces.“There’s some very strong feelings about what many have called a genocide that is taking place in front of our eyes. Not only are you supporting the Israeli government’s ability to carry out this war but you are literally transferring more and more money so that they can do so. It’s not just political cover. It is actual financial and military support.He continued: “You get the Black folks, especially younger Black folks, that are like, ‘you keep saying you don’t have money for us but you’ve got money to go over here to kill some other folks that actually look like us.’ People can say, ‘oh, Trump would be worse,’ but that doesn’t change that what these folks are seeing right now is not Trump doing it. They’re seeing President Biden do it and so that is going to impact.“And many of these young folks, once they turn you off, you’re done. He could come back next month and increase the student debt cancellation. He could come up with some new gun legislation. He could go even further on some of the climate change issues. But many of these folks that right now are furious about what’s going on in Gaza, none of that would change their minds. They’re that mad.”Israel is not the only foreign policy issue weighing on Black voters. While his unwavering support for Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression – Congress has already allocated $111bn in assistance – has earned global plaudits, it appears to be playing differently in some African American communities.Kendra Cotton, chief executive of the New Georgia Project (NGP), a non-partisan organisation that works to empower voters of colour, said she didn’t think much of Ukraine until she “saw all of the African immigrants getting kicked off those trains. Then my eyes glassed over and I was like, this ain’t my problem and I didn’t want anything to do with it.“While I empathise with what’s going on in Ukraine, what I know is, if my Black behind was over there, they’d have kicked me off the trains too, so good luck to you.”She added: “We have people under these overpasses right here living in tents … People are trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents.“So, when you’re talking about billions in aid leaving the country, people don’t know how to qualify that in their minds: OK, but what are you doing domestically? Because when you talk about domestic issues, all you hear is we ain’t got it, there’s no money for that.”The NGP has registered almost 50,000 voters this year as it continues to fight voter purges in the state. In a September survey it found approval of Biden’s job performance down to just 61% among Black Georgia voters, and only 45% of Black 18 to 24-year-olds. Keron Blair, chief of field and organising for the NGP, argues that the White House has less of a policy problem than a communication one.He said: “I talk to people who’ve had thousands of dollars in student loans forgiven. We hear from people who got money directly into their pockets because of IRA [Inflation Reduction Act]. We hear from communities that have received resources for infrastructure. We see the broadband initiative.“That has not been communicated in a serious and strategic way to voters and so people are always going to ask, I voted last time, what happened? If they don’t know the things they are seeing and experienced are the result of choices made by the administration, they’re going to feel like not much has shifted.”Indeed, the gap between positive economic data and a sense of malaise on the ground is evident among Black voters. Gregory Williams, 37, a health coach, said: “The economy doesn’t feel like it’s strong. Everything feels out of whack. Inflation is crazy. Cities that are far out are expensive. Everything is just up right now. It’s hard to even get a loan for a house. Atlanta has the most evictions it’s ever had in its history.”Williams does not rule out voting for Trump. “It depends if he makes sense. He might not be saying what people want him to say but there’s a lot of things that he does and it seems like it helps. It gets a visual effect. People see things happening.”Jasper Preston, 35, a programme director at a homelessness non-profit, added: “Biden’s presidency has been an absolute nightmare for me personally. All the progress I made becoming more financially secure has been completely undone. I find myself worse off than during the Obama years and that has caused quite a setback. I have four children so it’s been very unpleasant trying to make ends meet.”Preston is a longtime Trump supporter who was ridiculed for it by his siblings living on the South Side of Chicago. But not any more, he said. “One privately gave me a call to very secretly admit that she is no longer a Democrat and will be voting for Trump in this upcoming election. She can’t tell anybody around South Side Chicago because, well, it’s South Side Chicago.“The same for my other siblings in Chicago as well as in here in Georgia. People are realising, ‘Oh, my wallet has definitely been drastically affected by this new administration, and all the promises they made based on skin colour turned out to be lies, and apparently promises about skin colour don’t make for a good president.’”In his victory speech after winning the 2020 election, Biden acknowledged that when his campaign was at its lowest ebb, African American voters stood up for him. “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,” he promised. In his inaugural address two months later, he named racial justice as one of four national crises that would take priority during his administration.While Biden has poured money into historically Black colleges and universities and appointed record numbers of people of colour as judges, efforts at police reform or to protect voting rights have stalled in Congress. When the president travelled to Atlanta last year to make his most aggressive case yet for reform of the Senate filibuster rule, some campaigners boycotted the event.Shelley Wynter, a conservative radio host and member of the Georgia Black Republican Council, said: “A Biden partisan person will tell you all these things that he’s done, but none of it was specifically for Black people. If Ukraine gets attacked and you can find billions and billions of dollars to send to Ukraine, you could have sent money into inner-city urban areas to say, ‘Hey, let’s do this.’”He continued: “If I vote for you and I’ve continuously voted for you and I’m the strongest, most loyal base of voters that you have, and you’ve still got nothing specifically for this group yet you can do stuff for other people, that’s why people are shifting, particularly Black men.“I equate what’s going on to what happens in a Black church. If you go to an average Black church, you’re going to see 90% women, a sprinkling of men. Most of those men are going to be older guys. Men are raised in a church and they see the ministers driving a Rolls-Royce while they are still in a hooptie struggling, and they start to get turned off and they stop going.“But their wives continue to go. That’s what the Democratic party is becoming: a party of Black women and a sprinkling of Black men, because Black men are going to Trump, they’re not going to the Republican party – and it’s a big difference.”Wynter argues that many have come view to Trump’s racism as a myth, empathise with his legal troubles and dismiss dire warnings that he would behave like a dictator in a second term. “It’s like, ‘I’m already living in a dictatorship, I’m already oppressed as a Black man, so all those things that they’re saying about Trump don’t resonate because I’m already there.“‘So now let me pay attention to the things that I really care about, which is my money, and this guy allows me to keep my money in my pocket. Tax cuts, less regulations for the entrepreneurial-spirited guy.’ That’s what they see. It’s a real tangible thing. ‘In 2019, I had X amount of money after I got paid every two weeks. Now I have less. It’s very tangible. I can see it, I can feel it. You telling me he’s evil? I can’t see or feel that. But I can see more money in my pocket.’”Democrats acknowledge the work that must be done to rebuild Biden’s 2020 coalition. Earlier this month his election campaign released a new ad, “List”, making the case that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act are helping people in African American communities. Despite worrying polls and signs of donor fatigue, the party is on a winning streak in recent elections and ballot measures on issues such as abortion rights.Back at Morehouse, there are still plenty of students keeping faith with the president. Damarion King, 18, studying political science, said: “I believe Joe Biden is doing a fantastic job, passing so many bipartisan bills. I don’t think his age is a factor in this election, at least for me. He’s doing the job. He’s doing his work for the people of America and I strongly support him.”King is sceptical that Black men who voted for Biden in 2020 will defect to Trump next year, not least because of the former president’s 91 criminal charges. “Anybody in the Black working class who’s saying that Trump is a better businessman is wrong. He’s gone bankrupt multiple times. He can’t be that great of a businessman.” More

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      in US Politics

      ‘He’s dog-whistling’: Trump denounced over anti-immigrant comment

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      Donald Trump is facing a backlash for repeating a remark at a political rally on Saturday where he said undocumented immigrants to the United States are “poisoning the blood of our country”.The former US president’s comments were the latest example of his campaign rhetoric that seemed to go beyond the lies and exaggerations that are a trademark of his stump speeches and instead go into territory of outright extremism or racism. In November he was widely condemned for calling his opponents “vermin”, language that echoed that used historically by dictators and authoritarians.Trump, who is the overwhelming favorite to be the Republican nominee for the 2024 race for the White House, made the comments at a rally in Durham, New Hampshire, attended by several thousand supporters. He added that immigrants were coming to the US from Asia and Africa in addition to South America. “All over the world they are pouring into our country,” he said.The White House hit back, saying that Joe Biden believes “our leaders have a responsibility to bring the country together around our shared values.”“Echoing the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and violent white supremacists and threatening to oppress those who disagree with the government are dangerous attacks on the dignity and rights of all Americans, on our democracy, and on public safety,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement.Trump’s comments come days after he warned that if he is re-elected next year he would act on immigration like a “dictator” – but only on the first day of his term. He has since floated the idea of sending potentially “hundreds of thousands” of US troops to secure the US-Mexico border, build a network of immigrant detention camps, and “begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”.“He’s disgusting,” former New Jersey governor and Republican presidential contender Chris Christie told CNN Sunday. “He’s dog-whistling to Americans who feel under stress and strain from the economy and conflicts around the world,” Christie said. “He’s dog-whistling to blame it on people from areas that don’t look like us.”Christie, who has emerged as Trump’s most outspoken counter-puncher on the Republican side, accused Republican politicians of being “robot true-believers” to Trump’s messaging, describing him as a “poison on our political system” who, predicted, would be convicted of crimes “worthy of jail this spring and that’s why he’s getting crazier every day”.On CNN Christie accused leading Republican nomination rival Nikki Haley of “enabling” Trump by saying he is fit to be president. “She’s part of the problem because she’s enabling him, but I’m saying it’s not okay to be saying these things.”Former Republican speaker of the house Paul Ryan called Trump an “authoritarian narcissist”.Denunciation of Trump’s comments come as the Biden administration attempts to secure increased military aid for Ukraine and Israel – packages that are now hooked to a political compromise on immigration controls. Progressives have warned that they will not support additional aid packages if the issues are linked.Trump’s comments also come as he is expected to easily win in Iowa’s vital first in the nation caucus next month, according to NBC News. But the latest CBS polls suggests he may face stronger opposition in New Hampshire in February, where he is running at 44% to Haley’s 29% among Republican voters.In a slew of recent polls Trump has also been ahead of Joe Biden nationally and in many key battleground states. That has led to widespread concern that Trump could return to the Oval Office and speculation that he would deeply erode or dismantle US democracy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAgainst the backdrop of Trump’s “poison” comments, the White House issued a statement Sunday on the 80th anniversary of the repeal of the 1882 Chinese Eexclusion Act which had imposed a 10-year immigration ban on Chinese laborers.That law, Biden said, had “weaponized our immigration system to discriminate against an entire ethnic group” and had been followed by further discrimination against Europeans and Asian groups.Biden noted that despite progress, “hate never goes away. It only hides”, adding pointedly: “Today, there are those who still demonize immigrants and fan the flames of intolerance. It’s wrong.”Asked for comment by Reuters on Saturday, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, did not directly address the candidate’s inflammatory rhetoric which had not reportedly been included in Trump’s scripted remarks.Cheung, who has previously dismissed criticism of Trump’s language as “nonsensical”, turned instead to the controversy over how US colleges are managing campus protests, and accused the media and academia had given “safe haven for dangerous antisemitic and pro-Hamas rhetoric that is both dangerous and alarming”. More

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      in US Politics

      A house divided: 2023 in US politics books, before Trump v Biden part II

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      The US is a house divided. The presidential election is set to be a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. But as 2023 draws to a close it leaves a legacy in print, in books about the US political scene that help explain the crises that engulf us.February brought The Lincoln Miracle, Edward Achorn’s in-depth examination of the 16th president’s quest for the Republican nomination in 1860. Beautifully written, Achorn’s book reminds us that outcomes are not preordained and that elections bring consequences. Achorn also shows that the battle between red and blue America is now more than 160 years old.The party of Lincoln, however, is no more. Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, had two books on Trump behind him before Tired of Winning. Well-paced, meticulously sourced and amply footnoted, Karl’s latest shines another light on how the Republican party has been recast by a man now under multiple felony indictments.Steve Bannon, Trump’s brain and muse, a leading voice of the far right, talked on the record. He stressed that as long as Trump lives, the party belongs to him. Confronted by a grandee who suggested Trump play less of a role in the run-up to the 2022 midterms, Bannon unloaded: “Have you lost your fucking mind?” If Trump defeats Biden, Bannon may well return to the West Wing.Loyalty to Trump has emerged as a cardinal tenet of Republican life. In Enough, Cassidy Hutchinson, the White House aide who became the lead January 6 witness, offers a persuasive, dispiriting tale of political degradation. Hutchinson “isn’t crazy”, a Trump White House veteran confided before her first public appearance in front of the January 6 committee. But she is a “time bomb”. True on both counts.McKay Coppins’s Romney: A Reckoning is a must-read for anyone interested in how the Republican party became a Trumpian mess. Picking up where he left off in The Wilderness, his earlier look at the GOP, Coppins, a veteran Romney-watcher now at the Atlantic, offers an engaging read, the product of 30 interviews with the 2012 presidential nominee, access to aides and friends and also the senator’s emails and diaries. Coppins offers a scorching critique, capturing Romney strafing Trump and Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz and Mike Pence.Adam Kinzinger represented a Republican Illinois district in the US House for six terms. He voted to impeach Trump for the January 6 insurrection, and with Liz Cheney was one of two Republicans on the investigating committee. Like Cheney, from Wyoming, Kinzinger earned the ire of Trump and the GOP base. Both are no longer in Congress. Renegade, Kinzinger’s memoir, written with Michael D’Antonio, biographer of Pence, is a steady, well-crafted read.In the year of the Republican shadow primary, before voting begins next month, presidential aspirants past and present gave their spin too. Mike Pompeo, ex-congressman, CIA director and secretary of state, wrote Never Give an Inch. Tart and tight, filled with barbs, bile and little regret, it was an unexpectedly interesting read. Pompeo did give an inch to reality, though, accepting there was no point mounting a run.On the other side of the aisle, with The Last Politician, Franklin Foer provides a well-sourced look at Biden. A staff writer at the Atlantic and former New Republic editor, Foer captures successes and cock-ups. The 46th president is caught wondering why John F Kennedy was not so tightly handled by his aides – or “babied”. Less than a year from election day, Biden trails Trump at the polls.Chris Whipple’s The Fight of His Life is a flattering portrait of Biden. Ron Klain, his first chief of staff, hails “the most successful first year of any president ever”, adding: “We passed more legislation than any president in his first year.” Many remain unimpressed. Inflation scars remain visible. The retribution impeachment looms. Hunter Biden is under felony indictment.With Filthy Rich Politicians, Matt Lewis skewers both sides of the aisle. A senior columnist at the Daily Beast, Lewis performs a valued public service, shining a searing light on the gap between the elites of both parties and the citizenry in whose name they claim to govern. The book is breezy and readable. The Bidens and Clintons, the Trumps and Kushners, right and left – all are savaged.Michael Waldman ran the speechwriting shop in Bill Clinton’s White House and now heads the Brennan Center at NYU. The Supermajority, his book about the conservative bloc that dominates the supreme court, is written with great verve. He takes the Citizens United decision to task for allowing unlimited political spending. He also argues that the court has become a serious threat to American democracy.Religion in politics garnered its share of attention this year, particularly evangelical Protestants. Sunday attendance is down but the movement retains political clout. In Losing Our Religion, the Rev Russell Moore, conservative but a Trump critic, laments the growing interchangeability between cross and flag, and the paganization of Christianity. “The step before replacing Jesus with Thor is to turn Jesus into Thor,” he writes. Like the caesars of old, Trump is deified by his minions.In The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, Tim Alberta poignantly and painfully captures the metamorphosis of US evangelism. A writer at the Atlantic and the son of a Presbyterian minister, Alberta lays bare his hurt over how Christianity has grown ever more synonymous with those who fervently wave the stars and stripes. He takes us back to summer 2019. The Rev Richard Alberta died suddenly. At his funeral, a church elder delivered to Alberta a one-page screed expressing his disapproval of the author for not embracing Trump. Alberta also delivers a deep-dive on the disgraced Jerry Falwell Jr and Liberty University.The media and the Murdochs remained in the spotlight too. In Network of Lies, Brian Stelter, the former CNN host, captured the Murdochs’ struggle to make money, keep their audience happy and avoid liability. It wasn’t easy: Fox News coverage of the 2020 election led to a $787.5m settlement of a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems. Other litigations remain.Stelter had competition. In The Fall, Michael Wolff gave the Murdochs and Fox the treatment he gave Trump, memorably with Fire and Fury and two sequels. Wolff says he may be “the journalist not in his employ who knows [Murdoch] best”. Quotation marks abound – whether the author was an actual witness is another matter. But The Fall is full of digestible dish.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionElsewhere in the media, Marty Baron led the Washington Post as executive editor for eight years, retiring in 2021. Newsrooms he led won 17 Pulitzer prizes, 10 at the Post. Baron has stories to tell. The actor Liev Schreiber even played him in Spotlight, winner of the best picture Oscar in 2016. Collision of Power, Baron’s first book, carried a tantalizing subtitle: “Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post”.“Trump and his team would go after the Post and everyone else in the media who didn’t bend to his wishes,” Baron writes. From the beginning, as Baron saw close up, Trump “had the makings of an autocrat”.In finance, with Going Infinite, Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball, The Big Short and other bestsellers, wrote about Sam Bankman-Fried, crypto and the scandal that saw the one-time billionaire convicted on seven counts of fraud. To politicians, as well as to profilers, Bankman-Fried had allure. Exactly why he continues to puzzle. Money doesn’t explain everything, but it does shed light on plenty.Foreign policy impinged on domestic politics too, of course. Last spring, Israel marked its 75th anniversary, roiled by internal divisions. On 7 October, Hamas mounted a barbaric binge of rape, murder, plunder and hostage-taking. Israel’s response continues.In May, Isabel Kershner of the New York Times painted a masterly and poignant portrait with The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Battle for Its Inner Soul. Attempting to make sense of a “national unraveling”, she spoke with members of competing and clashing tribes. Wisely, she offered no sense of immediate resolution. None is on the horizon.Back home, Trump stands ready to plunge a knife into US democracy. A year ago, he called for terminating the constitution. More recently, he said he would be a dictator “on day one” of a second term. He is the “most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office”, Liz Cheney writes in Oath and Honor, her own memoir.The former congresswoman, a member of the Republican establishment, adds: “This is the story of when American democracy began to unravel. It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize.”The book is well-timed. Iowa and New Hampshire vote next month.“We cannot survive a president willing to terminate our constitution,” Cheney adds. Promoting her book, she warned that the US was “sleepwalking into dictatorship”. In 11 months, we will find out how fast. More

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      in Elections

      Multimillion-dollar ruling against Giuliani shows cost of spreading election lies

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      The judge had already decided Rudy Giuliani defamed the two former Georgia election workers, the question was just how much that cycle of lies and ensuing harassment should cost him.A jury declared on Friday that it was worth an eye-popping $148m, far beyond expectations and a major blow to the former New York mayor and key Donald Trump ally.The case was one of a handful of ways pro-democracy groups are seeking consequences for election subversion ahead of the next presidential election. The plaintiffs hope the high-dollar decision will show to Giuliani and others that there’s a financial and human cost to spreading lies. The stakes are high with the 2024 presidential election quickly approaching and Trump probably on the ballot once again.This week’s case was a test for accountability for purveyors of election lies from the everyday people who get caught in their web through no fault of their own. The test worked: Giuliani will have to pay up. Whether it matters to serial liars remains to be seen, but it serves as a strong deterrent to those considering spreading unfounded election conspiracies.Beyond the money, however, this was an avenue for Freeman and her daughter, Moss, to speak directly to one of the people responsible for tearing their lives apart. A public figure such as Giuliani expects and accepts a level of intrusion into their privacy. Everyday people working elections, as Freeman and Moss were, shouldn’t have to.They took the stand this week to detail the onslaught of threats and harassment that came after Giuliani, an attorney for Trump, and Trump’s team put them at the center of an election conspiracy.Imagine this happened to you, their testimony called to mind. Imagine you were working your regular job, one you loved and found important. Imagine, then, that strangers saw surveillance video of you doing your job and twisted it into a narrative, saying that you had passed a USB drive to alter vote-counts, when in reality you passed a piece of candy. That you packed suitcases with fake votes to steal an election.Imagine some of the most powerful people in the country, with the most ardent followers, sent those lies ping-ponging around the internet to the point that your name online is attached to them forever, bringing a wave of hateful, racist, threatening messages to your inbox.It would dismantle your life. It dismantled theirs, they told the jury.Trump and his allies needed someone to scapegoat to try to overturn Georgia’s results, and they found it in these two women, said Michael Gottlieb, Freeman and Moss’s attorney.When she testified, Freeman wore a shirt with her name on it when she worked the elections in December 2020. She was proud of who she was. That’s how she was identified, she said. She no longer wears her name proudly – she had to move homes, hiring a lawyer for her new place to ensure her name wasn’t connected to it. Moss watched her son struggle in school, believing the whole ordeal was her fault. She doesn’t leave her house any more. She feels ostracized, anxious, afraid.Their testimony drove home the human cost of election lies, a harrowing tale for Americans watching democracy falter over the past few years. It was a warning sign to voters: this is the state of our politics today, that two unwitting public servants have their lives upended for political games and gain.Giuliani did not testify in the case himself, despite expectations that he would, later saying he was concerned the judge would deem any missteps as contempt of court. His lack of testimony came after his lawyer declined to cross-examine Freeman. Joe Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, said he did not take the stand or question Freeman because the women had been through enough.But Sibley also acknowledged in his closing remarks that Giuliani “hasn’t exactly helped himself with some of the things that have happened in the last few days”.The case shifted, with Giuliani’s team no longer attempting to defend his actions but instead deflect blame. Sibley pointed to another defamation case by Freeman and Moss against the rightwing media outlet Gateway Pundit, saying the outlet probably identified the women first and ignited the flood of harassment.The testimony – even the damages themselves – may not deter Giuliani and his associates. He plans to appeal and tie up any payouts as long as possible, and it’s unclear whether he has money to cover the damages. (That’s a limit of defamation law visible in the defamation verdicts against Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who owes Sandy Hook shooting families millions but largely has not yet paid them.)And after the verdict was announced, Giuliani sounded just as obstinate as ever. He called the number “absurd” and claimed it would be “reversed so quickly it will make your head spin”.The lack of reconciling with the effect of his actions tracks with the continued election denialism ever-present in Trumpworld, even as penalties slowly mount. As he tries to regain the White House, the former president himself hasn’t accepted he lost it fairly in the first place. Now, he and his team are working to sow election distrust at all levels still in 2024, despite the legal repercussions from 2020.But a verdict of this size will still resonate, if not for the loudest voices, then at least for those with lesser platforms. It sends the clear message the plaintiffs hoped for.“Today’s a good day. A jury stood witness to what Rudy Giuliani did to me and my daughter and held him accountable, and for that I’m thankful,” said Freeman, speaking at the court after the verdict. “Today is not the end of the road, we still have work to do. Rudy Giuliani was not the only one who spread lies about us, and others must be held accountable too. But that is tomorrow’s work. More

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      in US Politics

      Binder of classified material on Russia reportedly went missing in final Trump days

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      A 10in-thick binder containing nearly 3,000 pages of highly classified material related to the investigation of Russian election interference as well as links between Moscow and Donald Trump went missing in the final days of his presidency, CNN and the New York Times reported.CNN said the disappearance raised alarms in the American intelligence community because “some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed”.The Times said national security officials were “vexed” by the disappearance of the “Crossfire Hurricane binder”, which was “the name given to the investigation by the FBI”.The issue was so concerning, the Times added, the Senate intelligence committee was briefed.Now the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump faces 91 criminal charges arising from his conduct since entering politics in 2015. Forty charges, brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, concern the retention of classified information after leaving office.In August 2022, FBI agents searched Trump’s Florida home. They did not find material related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the Times said.The investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election won by Trump ended in April 2019. At that time, a report by the special counsel Robert Mueller laid out evidence of Russian interference and links between Trump and Moscow and occasions on which Trump may have tried to obstruct justice.But Mueller did not establish collusion between Trump and Russia. Aided by his second attorney general, William Barr, Trump claimed exoneration.On Friday, reports about the missing binder – which the Times said ran to 2,700 pages – brought the Russia investigation back to the headlines.According to the Times, the binder contained “a hodgepodge of materials related to the origins and early stages of the Russia investigation that were collected by Trump administration officials”.That “hodgepodge”, the paper said, “included copies of botched FBI applications for national security surveillance warrants to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser as well as text messages between two FBI officials … expressing animus toward Mr Trump”.The paper said the “substance” of the material was not particularly sensitive and was posted online, with redactions, by the FBI. Official concerns centered on what the binder could reveal about sources and methods, the Times said, while noting that the online version runs to 585 pages – more than 2,000 fewer than the missing binder.“Among other murky details,” the paper said, “it is not known how many copies were made at the White House or how the government knows one set is missing.”CNN said “multiple copies” of the binder were created in the last hours of the Trump administration, “with plans to distribute them … to Republicans in Congress and rightwing journalists”.Trumped ordered declassification but that has not happened in full. Reportedly “deeply focused” on the binder, Trump offered to let the author of a book about him have a look inside.“I would let you look at them if you wanted,” Trump said in April 2021, according to the Times. “It’s a treasure trove … it would be a sort of cool book for you to look at.”Maggie Haberman, one of the reporters on Friday’s piece, wrote a book about Trump which was published last year.Trump indicated that his last White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had the binder. A lawyer for Meadows told the Times his client “never took any copy of that binder home at any time”.Presented with the CNN report, one former Trump national security aide simply said, in a message viewed by the Guardian: “Holy cow.” More

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      Rudy Giuliani ordered to pay $148.1m in damages for lies about election workers

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      A Washington DC jury has ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay $148.1m to two Atlanta election workers after he spread lies about them, one of the most significant verdicts to date seeking accountability for those who attempted to overturn the 2020 election.The verdict follows a four-day trial in which Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, her daughter, gave haunting details about the harassment and threats they faced after Giuliani falsely accused them of trying to steal the election in Georgia. The women, who are Black, described how they fled, are afraid to give their names in public, and still suffer severe emotional distress today. Their lawyers asked the jury to award them each at least $24m in damages.“Most days I pray that God does not wake me up and I just disappear,” Shaye Moss said on Tuesday in testimony that frequently turned tearful.In her testimony on Wednesday, Freeman said she had been “terrorized”.“I don’t have a name any more,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t know who I am.”Their lawyers had asked the eight-person jury to award them at least $48m in compensatory damages and to use their discretion to grant additional punitive damages.The case is the latest in a series of cases in which plaintiffs have used defamation law to push back on lies spread about them since the 2020 election. The voting equipment vendor Dominion settled with Fox for $787m earlier this year in a defamation case. Freeman and Moss also have a pending lawsuit against the Gateway Pundit, a far-right news outlet. Last year, they also settled with One America News, another far-right outlet. Civil rights groups are turning to defamation law as a new tool to ward off misinformation.The lies about both women were a cornerstone of efforts by Giuliani and Trump to try to overturn the election results in Georgia. On 3 December 2020, Giuliani tweeted a selectively edited video that he claimed showed Freeman and Moss wheeling suitcases full of ballots out from under a table after counting had concluded for the night. The accusation was quickly debunked by Georgia officials, but Giuliani continued to spread the lie. He also accused them of “passing around USB ports as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine”, when Freeman was passing Moss a ginger mint.Almost immediately, Freeman and Moss started to receive death threats through the mail, email, social media and voicemail. Many of those racist messages were displayed and played in court this week.Giuliani refused to turn over documents as part of the case and conceded earlier this year that he made false statements about the women. US district judge Beryl Howell found him liable of defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy. The only question for the jury to decide was how much in damages Giuliani should pay.Joseph Sibley, Giuliani’s attorney, conceded to jurors in his opening statement that his client had done something wrong by making false statements. But over the course of the week, he sought to distance Giuliani from the threats and harassment that resulted from the false statements. He also argued that the tens of millions of dollars they requested were not proportional to the harm they had suffered.Giuliani did not do himself any favors when it came to his defense. After proceedings concluded on Monday, he spoke to reporters on the courthouse steps, where he insisted that what he had said about Freeman and Moss was true. Sibley said earlier this week that Giuliani intended to take the witness stand in his own defense, but he reversed on Thursday and decided not to.From the outset, lawyers for Freeman and Moss made it clear that the case was about repairing the reputations of their clients and sending a message to other powerful figures that they could not make similar false claims without consequences.“Send a message. Send it to Mr Giuliani and to any other powerful figure who is considering taking this chance,” Michael Gottlieb, one of the attorneys for Moss and Freeman, said in closing arguments.It was a message Moss herself emphasized in her testimony on Tuesday.“We need to make a statement. We need to ensure that the election workers that are still there don’t have to go through this. Hopefully by hitting someone in their pockets, for someone whose whole career has been about their pockets, we will send a message,” she said. More

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      Senate eyes vote on Ukraine aid and border security as House adjourns – as it happened

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      The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said yesterday that negotiators had made “good progress” in their talks regarding a supplemental funding package aimed at providing aid to Ukraine and reforming immigration policy.“The plan is for the Senate to act as soon as we are ready to move forward on the supplemental,” Schumer said yesterday.“We hope to come to an agreement. But no matter what, members should be aware that we will vote on a supplemental proposal next week.”The timeline will force senators to delay their planned holiday recess, although Schumer did not provide a specific schedule for next week.Even if the Senate can get a funding bill passed, it would still need to pass the House, which adjourned yesterday for its own holiday recess and is not expected to return to session until the new year.Despite the apparent progress in the Senate, the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, has indicated he will not call members back from their recess even if a supplemental funding bill passes the upper chamber.Johnson said yesterday, “While that work should continue, the House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”Here’s what else is happening today:
      Hungary blocked the EU from approving a €50bn aid package to Ukraine. The move came hours after EU leaders agreed to open membership talks with Ukraine.
      Republicans named Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip as their nominee to replace George Santos in the House. The special election has been scheduled for 13 February.
      A federal appeals court will consider a request from Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, to move his case from state to federal court. Meadows has been charged by Fulton county prosecutors over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
      That’s it from me today. Here’s what happened in US politics on this relatively sleepy Friday:
      The Senate is continuing to negotiate over a supplemental funding package to provide aid to Ukraine and money for border security. The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, met with senators on Capitol Hill today as the talks continue. However, the House has already adjourned for its holiday recess, so it is unclear how a spending package could pass both chambers of Congress before the end of the year.
      Negotiators are reportedly hoping to reach a deal on the package as early as Sunday, but it will likely take more time to draft text of a bill. That text will then be closely scrutinized by lawmakers of both parties as well as immigrant rights groups.
      The jury in Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial resumed its deliberations today, but jurors have not yet reached a decision on what damages the former Trump lawyer should pay to the former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. Freeman and Moss’s lawyer argued that Giuliani substantially damaged their reputations by spreading lies about them related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
      The New York Times reported that the supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to sign off on Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v Wade in 2022. The Times reports: “Justice Alito appeared to have pregamed it among some of the conservative justices, out of view from other colleagues, to safeguard a coalition more fragile than it looked.”
      The blog will be back on Monday for more updates from Washington.Following a 90-minute meeting with the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, this morning, one of the Democratic negotiators in the immigration talks, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, expressed optimism about the direction of the negotiations.“It’s a very aggressive goal to get this on the floor next week, but there’s a lot of good faith in that room,” Murphy said, per Punchbowl News. “There are still disagreements. We continue to work at it.”Meetings are expected to continue this afternoon and into the weekend, as the Senate hopes to hold a vote next week on a supplemental funding package.Congress has taken steps to restrict public access to records related to UFOs, the Guardian’s Richard Liscombe reports:If the truth about UFOs is out there, the American government doesn’t want you to see it yet.Just months after US space agency Nasa appointed a research director of unidentified anomalous phenomena, and promised more transparency about what it knows, the US Congress has acted to throttle the flow of information that ultimately reaches the public.Measures to create a presidential commission to review UFO records, and to order the Department of Defense to declassify certain “records relating to publicly known sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)”, were stripped from the sweeping defense policy bill that passed Congress on Thursday with bipartisan support.What was left were provisions ordering the National Archives to collect reports of “unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin and nonhuman intelligence”, but giving various government departments broad authority to keep the records secret.Read the Guardian’s full report:While many hard-right Republicans remain staunchly opposed to sending more money to Ukraine, one prominent Democrat warned that their rhetoric risked empowering dictators.In response to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Washington earlier this week, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Republican of Georgia, accused the Ukrainian president of “begging for your money”.“How much money will Washington spend to slaughter an entire generation of young Ukrainian men as Washington fights it’s proxy war with Russia?” Greene said Tuesday. “Shame!”Congressman Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland and the former House majority leader, responded to the comment today, attacking Greene for promoting the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin.“No sweeter Christmas gift to Vladimir Putin than statements like this,” Hoyer said. “Our inaction warms the heart of dictators and despots across the globe.”Joe Biden will “have an LBJ moment” and decide not to run for re-election next year, the leftwing academic and independent presidential candidate Cornel West has predicted.“I’m not even sure whether I’ll be running against Biden,” West told Politico. “Biden – I think he’s going to have an LBJ moment [and] pull back.”West was referring to the moment on 31 March 1968 when Lyndon B Johnson, in office since the assassination of John F Kennedy in November 1963, announced that he would not seek re-election.Already the oldest president ever sworn in, Biden is 81 and would be 86 at the end of a second term. In polling, clear majorities say he is too old.Read the Guardian’s full report:In a moment of levity before the holidays, comedian Conan O’Brien visited the White House press briefing room and chatted with reporters.“They won’t let me take questions,” O’Brien joked. “But, boy, I have the answers to everything.”O’Brien explained that he was visiting the White House because he is a “huge history buff slash nerd” who has toured the building a number of times.Watch the full clip:A Senate deal to overhaul border policies could be unveiled as early as Sunday, sources told Semafor. But it remains unclear how quickly senators can compile the text of a bill, which will be closely scrutinized by immigration groups.One of the chief negotiators, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, told reporters that they were “making progress” in their talks and would hold more meetings this afternoon and over the weekend.The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, has already indicated he wants to hold a vote on a supplemental funding package next week, and he has delayed the chamber’s holiday recess to accommodate a potential vote.Congressman Steny Hoyer, a Democrat of Maryland and the former House majority leader, is imploring the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, to call the chamber back to session if the Senate passes a supplemental funding package.In a letter sent to Johnson today, Hoyer argued the House must act swiftly if the Senate reaches a deal on Ukraine aid and border policy changes.“As Members return to their districts for the holidays and the people of Ukraine and Israel continue to wait anxiously for supplemental aid, I write to urge you to call the House back within 72 hours of the Senate passing legislation to provide additional assistance to our allies,” Hoyer wrote.“We ought to have secured these vital resources for our allies months ago. There is no cause that demands the attention of this Congress more than the preservation of democracy, freedom, and our national defense.”So far, Johnson has shown little interest in calling members back from their holiday recess, saying yesterday: “The House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”The US supreme court has refused to overturn an Illinois ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, Michael Sainato reports:The court rejected the request, made by a gun shop and a national gun rights group in an appeal of a lower court’s decision not to allow a preliminary injunction to block the law.A previous injunction request was also denied by the supreme court in May 2023. As is customary, the justices did not comment on their denial of the injunction.The latest request came from a firearms retailer owned by Robert Bevis in Naperville and the National Association for Gun Rights.In November 2023, a US appeals court upheld the Illinois assault weapons ban, rejecting appeals that challenged the law by claiming it violated the second amendment of the US constitution.Read the Guardian’s full report:Here’s where the day stands so far:
      The Senate is continuing to negotiate over a supplemental funding package to provide aid to Ukraine and money for border security. The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, was spotted on Capitol Hill today as the talks continue. However, the House has already adjourned for its holiday recess, so it is unclear how a spending package could pass both chambers of Congress before the end of the year.
      The jury in Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial resumed its deliberations today, as jurors weigh what damages the former Trump lawyer should pay to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. Freeman and Moss’ lawyer argued that Giuliani substantially damaged their reputations by spreading lies about them related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
      The New York Times reported that supreme court Justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to sign off on Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v Wade in 2022. The Times reports: “Justice Alito appeared to have pregamed it among some of the conservative justices, out of view from other colleagues, to safeguard a coalition more fragile than it looked.”
      The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, was seen leaving Capitol Hill after meeting with senators to continue talks over a potential deal on border policy changes.The cabinet secretary did not answer reporters’ questions as he left the Capitol, per Punchbowl News, so it is unclear what (if any) progress was made in the negotiations.The conservative supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch took just 10 minutes to approve without changes a 98-page draft of the opinion that would remove the federal right to abortion that had been guaranteed for nearly 50 years, the New York Times reported.According to the paper, Samuel Alito, the author of the opinion in Dobbs v Jackson, the case that struck down Roe v Wade, from 1973, circulated his draft at 11.16am on 10 February 2022.Citing two people who saw communications between the justices, the Times said: “After a justice shares an opinion inside the court, other members scrutinise it. Those in the majority can request revisions, sometimes as the price of their votes, sweating sentences or even words.“But this time, despite the document’s length, Justice Neil M Gorsuch wrote back just 10 minutes later to say that he would sign on to the opinion and had no changes.”Three other conservatives – Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh – signed on in the following days.Read the Guardian’s full report: More

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      Appeals court skeptical of Meadows’ bid to move Georgia election case

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      A federal appeals court on Friday appeared skeptical of former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ attempt to transfer his 2020 election interference case in Georgia to federal court, expressing doubt that he was acting as a federal official in trying to reverse Donald Trump’s defeat.The court also questioned, in a particularly ominous development for Meadows, whether he was even entitled to remove his case from state to federal court given he was no longer a federal official.Meadows was charged with violating the state racketeering statute alongside Trump and other co-defendants by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, over their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.The indictment also included a charge against Meadows for his role in setting up Trump’s infamous recorded phone call on 2 January 2021 asking the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” 11,780 votes so he could win the battleground state.Meadows filed to transfer his case to federal court – a move that would allow him to seek dismissal of the charges on federal immunity grounds – but had the motion rejected by the US district judge Steve Jones. Meadows then appealed to the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit.The issue for Meadows has long been whether his involvement in the call or his involvement in the so-called fake electors scheme were within the scope of his official duties as a White House chief of staff, as he argued, or whether he was engaged in campaign activity, as prosecutors have argued.At a roughly 50-minute hearing before circuit judges William Pryor, Robin Rosenbaum and Nancy Abudu – George W Bush, Obama and Biden appointees, respectively – the court expressed deep skepticism that Meadows could declare all of his actions as White House chief of staff were related to his official duties.“That just cannot be right,” Rosenbaum said at one stage, saying “electioneering on behalf of a specific political candidate” or becoming involved in “an alleged effort to unlawfully change the outcome of the election” might be examples of actions not covered by a federal official’s job.The skepticism of Meadows’ sweeping position that there were no limits to the scope of his duties was joined by Abudu, who noted that other federal laws like the Hatch Act prohibits government officials from engaging in political activity as part of their federal duties.Meadows’ lawyer George Terwilliger responded that Meadows only needed, under the federal officer removal statute, to “establish a nexus” to the duties of his federal job. It would make “no sense”, Terwilliger said, to have a state judge decide at trial matters relating to federal laws.The hearing took a negative turn for Meadows when Pryor, the chief judge known to be a staunch conservative, suggested he did not think Meadows was entitled to have his case moved to federal court at all because Meadows was no longer a federal official.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPryor suggested it might be reasonable to infer that Congress intended the removal statute to apply only to current federal officials to make sure that state charges did not interfere with “ongoing operations of the federal government”.Still, the three-judge panel also expressed concern to Donald Wakeford, a prosecutor in the Fulton county district attorney’s office, about the “chilling effect” on federal officials to enact policy if they felt they could be indicted by state authorities once they left the government.That opening was seized upon by Terwilliger, who claimed he would have done his job differently when he was deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration.Wakeford responded that it might be a good thing if some federal officials felt chilled from engaging in certain conduct – a reference to an opinion in a recent ruling by the US district judge Tanya Chutkan rejecting Trump’s attempt to dismiss his federal election interference case in Washington. More