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      The nepo baby who made good: Rob Reiner on Trump, family – and his brilliant, beloved movies

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      Where to even start preparing for a Rob Reiner interview? You could rewatch his classic films, of course, namely that phenomenal eight-year streak that started with This Is Spinal Tap in 1984 and blazed through The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery and A Few Good Men. But even that is barely scratching the surface of a career that first got going in the late 1960s. What about his years as a household name in 70s sitcoms, or his famous comic actor father, Carl, or his unique childhood, in which Mel Brooks and other entertainment luminaries would be frequent guests in the house? And what about the political activism that saw him play important roles in overturning the same-sex marriage ban in California and funnelling higher taxes on cigarettes into programmes for young children and prenatal care?And, of course, what about the stuff he’s still making, because at 76 Reiner is showing no signs of slowing down. There’s a Spinal Tap sequel in the works, not to mention the reason he’s speaking to me today: a documentary about the rise of Christian nationalism in America. God and Country is chilling but vital viewing, dissecting a movement that has infiltrated American politics and the Republican party to such a degree that Reiner believes it could soon bring about the end of democracy in the US – and potentially the world. Does he really mean that?“Yes,” he says without a pause when we connect over a video link from New Orleans. “The question at this election is: do we want to continue 249 years of self-rule and American democracy? Or do we want to turn it over to somebody like Donald Trump who has said that he wants to destroy the constitution, go after his political enemies and turn America into an autocracy? We see autocracy making its move around the world. And so if we crumble, there’s a danger that democracy crumbles around the world.”View image in fullscreenGod and Country covers how the Christian nationalist movement began to gain traction in the 1970s when it latched on to abortion as a focal issue. Back then, evangelicals were not especially partisan about the supreme court’s landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, still largely believing in the separation of church and state enshrined within the US constitution. But through huge funding and smart organisation, abortion was successfully turned into a key religious issue, and the idea began to take shape that democracy itself was an obstacle to God’s plans. In the documentary we see the effects of this: churches turned into partisan political cells, preachers inciting hatred against Democrats, and even tales of pastors carrying guns to their sermons. This brewing violence reached its zenith on 6 January 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC.“And the foundation for it all was Christian nationalism,” says Reiner, “because finally they had found somebody like Donald Trump who they could funnel their ideas through.”The irony of all this, of course, is that Trump is the least Christian guy you could ever expect to meet. “I think he can probably spell the word ‘bible’,” agrees Reiner. “I don’t think he’s ever read it and I don’t think he has any idea what’s in it. But they excuse all that by saying God works in mysterious ways, and that he sent us this flawed vessel by which we can achieve the goals that we want to achieve.”Reiner was a keen Biden supporter in 2020, and despite the criticism around the incumbent president’s age – he will be weeks away from turning 82 when November swings around – this support hasn’t wavered.“Look, he’s old!” says Reiner, who despite his palpable anger still delivers his rants with comedic zeal, as if the world has gone mad and he’s the last sane person standing. “But you have one guy who stumbles around, whatever. And another guy who’s a criminal, basically lies every minute of his life, has been indicted 91 times!”View image in fullscreenReiner’s hatred of Trump was shared by his father, who had a burning desire to live long enough to see him defeated in 2020. As it happened, Carl died a few months before the election, aged 98. “The man he wanted ended up winning,” says Reiner. “What I don’t think he would have ever believed is that Trump would come back again. It’s like a zombie or a cockroach.”Liberal politics was always at the forefront of the Reiner household. In the 1950s, the FBI came to their house to ask Carl if he knew any members of the Communist party. “He said: ‘I probably do, but if I did I wouldn’t tell you.’” Meanwhile, his mum, the actor and singer Estelle Reiner (who died in 2008), was an organiser of Another Mother for Peace, a group opposed to the Vietnam war. “You know how people talk about remembering where they were when Kennedy died? Well, I remember where I was when [civil rights activist] Medgar Evers died [in June 1963], because my parents were very active in the civil rights movement.”Their influence on him is clear: Reiner went on to make 1996’s Ghosts of Mississippi, a movie about the trial of Evers’s killer. Of course, these days, with his gilded roots, Reiner would have faced accusations of being a “nepo baby”, which seems a funny thing to level at a 76-year-old man, but he takes it well.“If you’re a nepo baby, doors will open,” he says. “But you have to deliver. If you don’t deliver, the door will close just as fast as it opened.”View image in fullscreenReiner says his kids are dealing with it now. “My son is 32 and my daughter’s 26. They both want careers, they’re both talented. Should I lean into it? Should I back away from it? They’re confused. I said, once they find their own path, it won’t matter. I was very conscious when I was carrying out my career that I didn’t rely on [my dad]. I didn’t ask him for money, and if you know in your heart that what you’re doing is true, you can block out all that stuff.”Reiner often speaks warmly about his relationship with his dad, but although it was always loving, it wasn’t always easy. I remark on how central characters in Reiner’s films often wrestle with such relationships – Tom Cruise’s Lt Daniel Kaffee in A Few Good Men was tormented by the powerful reputation of his father; Stand By Me’s Gordie felt ignored and misunderstood by his. He nods. “I loved my father and he loved me,” he says, “but as a kid growing up, I don’t think he understood me. I was odd to him and I don’t think he quite got me. And so that comes out in those films, particularly in Stand By Me.”When Reiner was eight, the late family friend and legendary sitcom writer Norman Lear told Carl how funny his son was, to which Carl apparently replied: “That kid? I don’t know. He’s a sullen child.” Another actor, Martin Landau, told Rob that Carl had once confided in him: “Robbie wants to be an actor, and I just don’t know if he can do it.” Carl must have meant what he said because when Rob went for the lead role in his father’s semi-autobiographical 1967 film Enter Laughing, Carl cast someone else. “He turned me down. I was 19 at that time, it was a tough road.”It was only after seeing a 19-year-old Rob direct Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist play No Exit that Carl realised his son was on the right path. “The next day he told me in the back yard, ‘I’m not worried about you.’ So clearly, before that, he was worried!”View image in fullscreenJust like his father, it seems unlikely Reiner will stop working anytime soon. The reason he’s in New Orleans today is because he’s about to start filming the Spinal Tap sequel. Forty years on from volumes that go up to 11, none-more-black albums and that minuscule Stonehenge, the new movie intends to capture the band as they reform to play a farewell concert at New Orleans’ Lakefront Arena – that is, if they can get over the fact that they are no longer on speaking terms.Reiner was an unknown entity as a director when the original came out – audiences didn’t always spot the satire at first and wondered why he’d made a full-length movie about a terrible band with no fans – but this time will be different, with Paul McCartney, Elton John and Garth Brooks among the knowing guest stars signed up to appear. Following up a cult classic is a risky business and Reiner admits that everyone is feeling the pressure.“It’s nerve-racking,” he says. “People would always come up to us and say, come on, you should do another one. We never wanted to do it, but we came up with an idea we think works. Hopefully, it’ll be funny. Because, boy, is it a high bar.”View image in fullscreenAs with the original, the dialogue will all be improvised – but surely he’s not going to throw Sir Paul into the lion’s den of improv?“Yes I am!” he beams. “I told him, just don’t worry about it, you just talk and, whatever happens, we go on for ever. I’m not going to use the whole thing, just whatever the thing is that works.”Tap’s influence is all over pop culture these days. Reiner recalls a fundraising party in which Elon Musk drove in with his first electric car, invited him to sit inside and turned the radio’s volume switch up to its maximum level – which was 11. “That was a good thing he did,” smiles Reiner. “He’s done some other things I’m not so thrilled about.”Despite the many years he’s spent working on other projects, Reiner has no problem sharing anecdotes about the films he made decades ago. Like how the unbearable tension of Misery was even worse on the actual set. “You have Jimmy Caan, who is a very physical guy – a baseball player, he rode in the rodeo – and he had to be in bed all the time! And there was Kathy Bates playing Annie Wilkes, a stage-trained actor who wanted more and more rehearsals, while Jimmy wanted to do no rehearsals! When we filmed the scene where he unlocks the door with the hairpin and moves with his wheelchair into the hallway … well, even though we had moved just a few feet, it was like kids being let out on recess.”He’s delighted by how many people love his movies, but he says he doesn’t take the praise or criticism too seriously. At a cocktail party once, the former supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy once came up to him and said: “All courtroom dramas are terrible, awful … apart from A Few Good Men … and [1992 Joe Pesci comedy] My Cousin Vinny!’” He laughs at this. “He says that then lumps it in with My Cousin Vinny, so it doesn’t matter what other people think!”View image in fullscreenReiner can’t pinpoint any reason why his films have stood the test of time. But he especially loves the reactions he gets to The Princess Bride, his revisionist fairytale from 1987. “People come up and say: ‘I saw it when I was six, and now I show it to my kid.’ That makes me feel good.”Like Spinal Tap, that film was another slow burner, but Reiner is hoping that God and Country will make a more immediate impact. “We need to reach as many people as we can before the election,” he says. But even if he can, does he really think evangelicals are likely to engage with it?“It’s not for the hardcore,” Reiner accepts. “But we’re hoping to reach other Christians who might have been drawn into this unwittingly. That’s why we talk to some very conservative Christian thinkers in the documentary [such as the preacher and theologian Russell D Moore], very devout people, who are asking: are these really the teachings of Jesus? A lot of them see Christian nationalism as a threat to Christianity.”All Reiner wants is for those watching to think of the none-more-Christian phrase – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you – and ask themselves if they’re truly living up to it? “Because, as my father used to say: follow that, and you don’t even need the Ten Commandments. That covers everything.” More

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      Trump to appeal ruling barring him from Illinois primary ballot over January 6 role

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      An Illinois state judge on Wednesday barred Donald Trump from appearing on the Illinois Republican presidential primary ballot because of his role in the attack at the US Capitol on January 6, but she delayed her ruling from taking effect in light of an expected appeal by the former US president.The Cook county circuit judge Tracie Porter sided with Illinois voters who argued that the former president should be disqualified from the state’s March 19 primary ballot and its 5 November general election ballot for violating the anti-insurrection clause of the US constitution’s 14th amendment.Illinois joins Colorado and Maine in attempts to disqualify Trump from running for president because of his role in the 6 January insurrection, in which Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to try to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.Trump is currently appealing those decisions to the supreme court, which is seen as likely to reject the states’ attempts to remove the former president from their ballots.The Colorado and Maine decisions are on hold while Trump appeals. Porter said she was also staying her decision because she expected Trump’s appeal to Illinois’ appellate courts, and a potential ruling from the supreme court.The advocacy group Free Speech for People, which spearheaded the Illinois disqualification effort, praised the ruling as a “historic victory”.A campaign spokesperson for Trump, the national frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, said in a statement that this “is an unconstitutional ruling that we will quickly appeal”.In oral arguments on 8 February, the US supreme court appeared skeptical of arguments for removing Trump from Colorado’s primary ballot, and analysts suggested the court was poised to allow Trump to remain on the ballot.The court’s chief justice, John Roberts, suggested that if the supreme court allowed Colorado to take Trump off the ballot, then the “big, plain consequences” of the decision would be a scenario in which states regularly disqualified candidates from parties they opposed.“I would expect that a goodly number of states will say whoever the Democratic candidate is, you’re off the ballot, and others, for the Republican candidate, you’re off the ballot. It will come down to just a handful of states that are going to decide the presidential election. That’s a pretty daunting consequence,” Robert said.“What’s a state doing deciding who other citizens get to vote for for president?” the liberal justice Elena Kagan said.The justices focused more on the potential consequences of their decision than on whether or not Trump engaged in insurrection on 6 January and thus should be barred from holding office.Colorado and Maine earlier removed Trump from their state ballots after determining he is disqualified under section 3 of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which was created in the wake of the US civil war.Section 3 bars from public office anyone who took an oath to support the US constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”.In her opinion, Porter wrote that she had considered Colorado’s ruling in her decision, and noted that the court “did not reach its conclusions lightly” and that it “realized the magnitude of this decision”.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      in Elections

      Supreme court to hear Trump immunity claim in election interference case

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      The US supreme court agreed on Wednesday to take up the unprecedented claim that Donald Trump has absolute immunity from prosecution in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, throwing into jeopardy whether it goes to trial before the 2024 election.The justices set oral arguments for the week of 22 April to consider a recent ruling by a three-judge panel at the US court of appeals for the DC circuit, which categorically rejected Trump’s immunity claim in a decision earlier this month.Trump’s criminal case will remain on hold until the supreme court ultimately rules on the matter, inserting it into the politically charged position of potentially influencing whether Trump will go to trial before the presidential election in November.The unsigned order said the court intended to address at oral arguments “whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office”.In the federal 2020 election case, Trump faces a four-count indictment in Washington DC brought by the special counsel, Jack Smith, that charges him with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct the congressional certification of the election results, and violating rights.Trump sought to have the charges dismissed last year, arguing in a 52-page filing that the conduct he was charged with fell under the so-called “outer perimeter” of his official duties, which meant he could not be prosecuted because of the broad protections afforded to the presidency.The motion to dismiss contended that all of Trump’s attempts to reverse his 2020 election defeat detailed in the indictment, from pressuring his vice-president, Mike Pence, to stop the congressional certification of Biden’s victory to organizing fake slates of electors, were in his capacity as president and therefore protected.At the heart of the Trump legal team’s filing was the extraordinary contention that not only was Trump entitled to absolute presidential immunity, but that the immunity applied regardless of Trump’s intent in engaging in the conduct described in the indictment.The arguments were rejected by the presiding US district judge Tanya Chutkan, and subsequently by the three-judge panel at the DC circuit, which wrote in an unsigned but unanimous decision that they could not endorse such an interpretation of executive power.“At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches,” the opinion said. “We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”Trump’s lawyers settled on advancing the immunity claim last October in large part because it is what is known as an interlocutory appeal – an appeal that can be litigated pre-trial – and one that crucially put the case on hold while it was resolved.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPutting the case on hold was important because Trump’s overarching strategy has been to seek delay, ideally even beyond the election, in the hopes that winning a second presidency could enable him to pardon himself or allow him to install a loyal attorney general who would drop the charges.The involvement of the supreme court now means the case continues to remain frozen until the justices issue a ruling. And even if the court rules against Trump, the case may not be ready for trial until late into the summer or beyond.The reason that Trump will not go to trial as soon as the supreme court rules is because Trump is technically entitled to the “defense preparation time” that he had remaining when he filed his first appeal to the DC circuit on 8 December 2023, which triggered the stay.Trump has 87 days remaining from that period, calculated by finding the difference between the original 4 March trial date and 8 December. The earliest that Trump could go to trial in Washington, as a result, is by adding 87 days to the date of the supreme court’s final decision.With oral arguments set for April, a ruling might not be handed down until May. Alternatively, in the worst case scenario for the special counsel, the supreme court could wait until the end of its current term in July, which could mean the trial might be delayed until late September at the earliest. More

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      If we the Black voters ‘get loud’, neither the Tories nor Donald Trump will survive | Al Sharpton

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      Donald Trump’s racist mentality has long been an open secret. In the 1970s, a federal lawsuit was brought against him for alleged racial discrimination on one of his housing developments in New York. He led the campaign calling for the death penalty against the Central Park Five, who were accused of a brutal rape but later vindicated. Even after that exoneration, he continued to suggest they were guilty.So are Black Americans flocking to support Trump? Reports are mixed. Trump himself would tell you he has a unique affinity with the Black community, but personally, I don’t buy it. Polling in 2020 estimated Trump would take 20% of the black vote. The real number was closer to 8%.After all, let’s remember what he says about us. Just this weekend, he said that Black Americans identified with him because he had faced criminal charges and we embraced his criminal mugshot. That was outright racist and insulting. For him to say that during Black History Month in the US is the epitome of an insult.And the irony is that he is the one being prosecuted – and by Black professionals at that. The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, brought the financially ruinous civil financial fraud case against Trump. Fani Willis, Fulton county district attorney, was responsible for challenging Trump’s alleged election interference in Georgia.I spend a lot of time speaking with Black voters. I host a US radio show six days a week – and from what I hear, I’m not alone in thinking that claims that he has growing support among our community are grossly exaggerated. But I do think it is fair to say that Black citizens are asking questions of the Democrats.Joe Biden has simply not done a good enough job on messaging. He needs to be more aggressive in speaking to Black voters – laying out his record, such as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act (which Trump opposed) and his support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (which almost every Republican voted down). Biden should not assume people know what they haven’t been reminded of.US liberals must understand that if you take the high road and are not making noise about it, no one knows that you’re taking any road. They have to be more vocal, they have to challenge more, and not run away from the issue of race.That goes for the left in the UK, too. Arriving yesterday, I was disgusted to hear racist, Islamophobic language being used by members of the Conservative party. The Tories seem to be alarmingly Trump-like in their language. And that should be a mobilising cry to millions of Black British voters to register to vote.It shocks me that the wider British public doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of the threat to Black voting in the UK. The UK’s new photo ID legislation disproportionately disadvantages Black and minority voters. We know – similar legislation was used against us in the US. But Black people mobilised against it, and in 2021 helped to elect Raphael Warnock as Georgia’s first Black US senator. It shows the importance of fighting back.That’s why I came here: to tell leaders to use our playbook to challenge laws that suppress the Black vote – and to impress on Black communities the importance of turning out. It is imperative to democracy that we awaken the black vote in the UK and bring it alive. And we must do it simultaneously in the US.Biden has an opportunity to expose Trump’s lies and get disenfranchised communities back on side. To do that, he must be candid: he must openly call out Trump’s blatant racism for what it is. He must tell Black voters how Trump stacked the courts in a way that is detrimental to them, and that he will aggressively fight that. The Democrats still have time to recapture those whom they think they are losing. If they do that, Trump will have no recourse. He can’t undo things he has already said and done.You have to turn people on before you can turn them out. And if you turn them on to what is being done to us – what has already been said about us – you can turn people out. Liberal movements in the US and the UK have been blindly hoping that people will turn out on their own. But leaders must understand they won’t mobilise without a reason. It’s not enough to be proud in silence – we need to get loud again.
      The Rev Al Sharpton is a civil rights leader, activist and founder and president of National Action Network (Nan). As told to Lucy Pasha-Robinson.

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      Trump scores another convincing win against Haley in Michigan primary

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      Donald Trump has won Michigan’s Republican primary election, the latest in a string of convincing primary victories as he closes in on the GOP presidential nomination.The Associated Press called the race for Trump over the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley at 9pm ET.The former president has repeatedly trounced Haley in the primaries, but she has hung on with a campaign that continues to highlight areas of weakness for Trump and offers Republicans uneasy about Trump a protest vote of their own. Haley has pledged to stay in the primaries at least through next Tuesday, 5 March, when 15 states will vote and Trump could all but sew up the Republican nomination.With almost 99% of the vote counted, Trump had received 68.2% to Haley’s 26.5%.Trump did not travel to the state Tuesday night. He instead called into a Michigan GOP election night watch party in Grand Rapids, where he stressed the importance of the state in the general election and said the results Tuesday evening were “far greater than anticipated.”“We have a very simple task: We have to win on Nov. 5 and we’re going to win big,” Trump said, according to a campaign transcript. “We win Michigan, we win the whole thing.”But there are some warning signs for Trump in his easy victory in Michigan.Early reporting out of Kent county, which flipped to Biden in the 2020 presidential election, showed Trump with a slimmer margin of victory. That part of the state is significant to the conservative movement and home to the conservative mega-donors the DeVoses.Haley’s strongest performance Tuesday night came in areas with college towns like Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, and suburbs around Detroit and Grand Rapids.Speaking at a press conference in Grand Rapids ahead of the primary, Haley argued that the bloc of Republicans who have continued to turn out for her despite Trump’s dominance in the primaries signaled trouble for Trump in November.“You can’t win a general election if you don’t acknowledge the 40% of Republicans who are saying we don’t want Donald Trump,” said Haley, referring to the share of Republican voters in South Carolina who voted for her.Her comments reflected the fact that even rightwing Republicans like Haley, who came up in the Tea Party movement, could find themselves alienated from today’s Republican party for refraining from supporting Trump.On Tuesday night, as the primary results trickled in, Haley told CNN she was continuing to campaign in preparation for the 15 primaries a week from today, and she criticised Trump. “He cannot win a general election,” said Haley.It is unclear where Haley’s campaign goes from here. Until now, she has powered through the losses, fuelled in part by Americans for Prosperity Action, a powerful funding arm affiliated with the Koch network. But AFP Action abandoned the Haley campaign after she lost in South Carolina, her home state. In a letter obtained by Politico, the Americans for Prosperity CEO, Emily Seidel, commended Haley as a “special leader with conviction, resolve, and steel in her spine”, but wrote that the group would instead focus on Senate and House races in the 2024 election cycle.The Michigan GOP, meanwhile has embraced Trump. This primary only decided about 30% of Republican delegates from Michigan – because of a scheduling change, to stay in compliance with Republican National Committee rules, most delegates will be assigned during the state’s Republican convention and caucus on Saturday, where Trump is strongly favoured.Even a factional crisis that has rocked the state Republican party has not dented Trump’s support among its leadership. “We’ve got our nominee,” the Michigan Republican party chairman, Pete Hoekstra, former US ambassador to the Netherlands under the Trump administration, told the Detroit News on Tuesday night as the results came in.Trump’s dominance of the early states is unparalleled since 1976, when Iowa and New Hampshire began their tradition of holding the first nominating contests. He has won resounding support from most pockets of the Republican voting base, including evangelical voters, conservatives and those who live in rural areas. But Trump has struggled with college-educated voters, losing that bloc in South Carolina to Haley last weekend. More

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      Michigan primary a test for Biden as key voters turn away over Gaza war

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      Polls began to close in Michigan on Tuesday, in a presidential primary that tested how much Joe Biden and Donald Trump should be worried about winning key groups of voters in the general election in the critical swing state.Though both were on track to win their races, Biden and Trump faced challenges within their respective parties. After underperforming in the polls and struggling with suburban and college-educated Republican voters in earlier primaries, Trump’s campaign in Michigan is dealing with a state Republican party whose local leaders have been embroiled in an ugly factional dispute, while Biden faces a campaign by anti-war activists to abandon him over the president’s continued support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.In an interview with the Guardian, Layla Elabed, sister of the congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and campaign director for Listen to Michigan, said organizers were hoping for a showing of between 10,000 and 15,000 “uncommitted” votes, a mirror of the margin by which Hillary Clinton lost the state to Donald Trump in 2016. They passed 14,000 “uncommitted” votes by 8.30pm, according to an Associated Press count, which could be a significant rebuke of Biden.As the sun began to set on Tuesday evening, a steady stream of voters made their way to polling stations in Dearborn, where the “uncommitted” campaign has concentrated much of its resources on election day.Volunteers sat at intersections and outside the doors of the McDonald elementary school handing out campaign literature, but many of those arriving to vote had already decided to cast an uncommitted ballot.“This is to send a message to the president,” said 41-year-old Khalifah Mahdi, a local business owner who said he was voting for the first time in a primary election. “He has lost a lot of strength and respect in this first term and he needs to win that back.”Maria Ibarra, a volunteer with the Listen to Michigan campaign, said that one Dearborn precinct ran out of voter-registration applications around 7pm Eastern standard time. The voters waiting in line, Ibarra said, “want to make sure that there’s a clear message, that they want a permanent ceasefire”. By 8pm the precinct had obtained more applications.The push by Democratic voters to vote “uncommitted” in today’s primary picked up steam since organizers launched it in early February, with dozens of local elected officials in greater Detroit publicly endorsing the push.That effort has the support of the Dearborn mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, whose Detroit suburb has the largest percentage of Arab Americans of any city in the US. He wrote in a February op-ed in the New York Times that his constituents were “haunted by the images, videos and stories streaming out of Gaza” and felt “a visceral sense of betrayal” by Biden’s support for Israel.The campaign also has support from the representative Tlaib, a Palestinian American who represents Dearborn in Congress. In a video posted on social media today, Tlaib announced that she “was proud today” to vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary. “President Biden is not hearing us,” she said, citing a recent poll that showed about 74% of Democrats in Michigan support a ceasefire in Gaza. “This is the way we can use our democracy to say ‘listen – listen to Michigan.’”The campaign also earned the backing of the former congressman Andy Levin, who is Jewish and close to organized labor in the state, and the former 2020 presidential candidate and representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas.“We can use uncommitted to send a clear and powerful message to Joe Biden if we get enough uncommitted votes for a margin of victory,” Elabed, who voted for Biden in 2020, said. “If we’re able to replicate those numbers we can really send a message that he’s at risk of losing Michigan in the general election come November.” The Listen to Michigan campaign on Tuesday evening said they believed they would win at least one delegate at the Democratic national convention. Delegates can be awarded to candidates who earn at least 15% of the vote in a congressional district.Recent history offers some points of comparison for the ongoing “uncommitted” push in Michigan.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2008, when voters in Michigan, frustrated at Barack Obama’s absence from the Democratic primary ballot, launched a similar campaign, nearly 40% who cast their ballot did so for the “uncommitted” option. When Obama ran in 2012 – the last time a Democrat entered the Michigan primary as an incumbent – more than 10% of voters in the primary chose “uncommitted”.On the Republican side, Trump was expected to win comfortably against the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley – but weaknesses in his coalition that emerged in earlier primaries in South Carolina and New Hampshire could show up again in the key swing state.If Trump struggles in Kent county in western Michigan, a former Republican bastion that includes Grand Rapids and which flipped to Biden in 2020, and in Oakland county, a more upscale area in suburban Detroit where voters have also shifted away from Trump, that could be particularly telling. Haley made campaign stops in both places in the days ahead of the primary, where she argued that Trump, who won the South Carolina primary by 60% to Haley’s 40%, would struggle to pick up support from those voters.“He’s not gonna get the 40% if he’s going and calling out my supporters and saying they’re barred permanently from Maga,” Haley told a Michigan audience this weekend. “And why should the 40% have to cave to him?”But Tuesday’s vote won’t be the end of things.The Michigan GOP, to comply with national party rules on the timing of the primary, will only award 30% of its delegates to the national convention based on Tuesday’s vote. The rest will be awarded at a Saturday convention. The convention itself has been caught up in a chaotic power struggle over who the real Michigan GOP chair is – but the delegates are expected to be heavily pro-Trump. More

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      Stop fantasizing and deal with reality: it’s going to be Biden against Trump | Margaret Sullivan

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      Get Margaret Sullivan’s latest columns delivered straight to your inbox.It can be diverting – even fun – to fantasize about who might become the next president of the United States.Wouldn’t it be cool if, say, the dynamic, 52-year-old Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer were to be elected, with perhaps a forward-thinking congressman such as Jamie Raskin of Maryland or Hakeem Jeffries of New York as her vice-president?Wouldn’t it be quite an improvement over our previous disastrous president if, for example, former congresswoman Liz Cheney – or someone else who hews to facts and conscience – were the Republican nominee?It’s easy to understand this kind of speculation. Pundits must fill airtime and column inches, and regular people need something to talk about in the wake of football season. Also, next fall’s election is a compelling subject because it’s extremely consequential; it matters even more than Taylor Swift’s romance with Travis Kelce.But the fantasy window – if not slammed and locked – has closed. The passage of time, the raising of campaign funds, and the results of the primaries have made that clear.On the Republican side, former governor Nikki Haley’s loss in her home state of South Carolina was predictable but nonetheless dealt her campaign a death blow. That the only Trump challenger left standing hasn’t dropped out doesn’t change a thing.On the Democratic side, there’s no reason to think Biden won’t be the nominee. For one thing, his campaign has a whopping $56m in cash. (Trump, by contrast, according to the Washington Post, has less than $31m.) Nor has Biden been substantially challenged in the primary season, which is what the primaries are for.Weird things do happen in American politics, but unless something very weird happens, we are looking at this reality: there will be a Joe Biden v Donald Trump rematch in November.Some members of the commentariat aren’t ready for that. Ezra Klein set off another round of chatter earlier this month when he published a long New York Times essay suggesting a brokered convention in Chicago to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee.This notion was taken seriously on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and in other places where left-leaners meet to chew the fat, but that doesn’t make it any more likely.So this is an excellent moment to take a deep breath, acknowledge the obvious and act accordingly. That goes for the media and for citizens alike.Journalists should focus on our non-partisan, public-service mission. It’s not to elect a particular candidate or support anybody’s campaign, but to do our core job of informing citizens of the stakes of this election.An example of not doing that came from NBC News this week with its credulous, six-byline story headlined: “Fewer grievances, more policy: Trump aides and allies push for a post-South Carolina ‘pivot’.”Talk about fantasy! As the NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen posted: “Any reason to think [Trump] is capable of – or newly interested in – a reduction in personal invective?” If yes, where does the reporting say that? If not, “why are six NBC journalists helping to broadcast the pained wishes of his campaign staff?”No, what’s needed is relentless, well-sourced, realistic reporting on the actual candidates, their actual records and their actual plans. The aim should be that no one in America who pays attention should be in doubt about what is at stake.That should not include obsessing about Joe Biden’s advanced age, which everyone is well aware of. It’s already priced in.As Joan Walsh argued this week, Biden supporters are not immune to concerns about his age or about Kamala Harris’s unpopularity. Rather, she wrote in the Nation, they “have added up the various risks and benefits of Biden-Harris 2024 and concluded that it’s less risky to run the incumbent”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDonald Trump is also old. He’s also a would-be authoritarian. He’s the target of 91 indictments in multiple states and his allies are ready to spring into anti-democratic action on inauguration day 2025. Do most Americans understand that as well as they understand that Biden is old? I doubt it.As for citizens, there are (at least) three jobs. First, be well informed about the consequences of this election. Think about what kind of country you want to live in.Second, be actively engaged in the democratic process. For example, get people in your community – including friends and family – registered to vote. Or donate to a candidate you support. Or volunteer to be a poll worker.And finally, most importantly, vote. Don’t plan to stay home because perfection is not on the ballot, or because you disagree on a specific issue, or because you think you’re somehow registering a moral protest.The real world isn’t as pretty or as pure as the fantasy world. But it’s what we’ve got.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      If Trump wins, he’ll be a vessel for the most regressive figures in US politics | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      Fifty years ago, then governor Ronald Reagan headlined the inaugural Conservative Political Action Conference. He spoke of the US as a city on a hill, an example of human virtue and excellence, a divinely inspired nation whose best days were ahead.The speakers at last week’s conference were decidedly less inspiring. A lineup of extremists, insurrectionists and conspiracy theorists gathered for panels like “Cat Fight? Michelle v Kamala” and “Putting Our Heads in the Gas Stove”. At CPAC, you can drink “Woke Tears Water”, buy rhinestone-studded firearms and play a January 6-themed pinball machine.But it would be wrong to dismiss CPAC as a crackpot convention. It is also a harbinger of what a second Donald Trump presidency would bring, influenced by a consortium of self-proclaimed Christian nationalists and reactionary dark money groups like the Heritage Foundation who see Trump as their return ticket to relevancy.The Heritage Foundation has poured $22m into Project 2025, their plan to gut the “deep state” and radically reshape the government with a souped-up version of the unitary executive theory, which contends that the president should be allowed to enact his agenda without pesky checks and balances. To paraphrase one speaker at CPAC: “Welcome to the end of democracy.”The Heritage Foundation’s policy agenda is disturbingly radical, even by the standards of the modern Republican party. They want to dismantle the administrative state, ban abortion completely at the state and federal level, and, as always, cut taxes for the rich. They would put religious liberties over civil ones, and Christian rights over the rights of women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and really anyone who does not look and think exactly like they do.As Trump himself said in an alarmingly theocratic speech last week: “No one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration, I swear to you.” And we have no reason to doubt him. Russell Vought, a radical involved with Project 2025 who speaks with Trump at least twice a month, is a candidate to be the next White House chief of staff.Vought works closely with the Christian nationalist William Wolfe, a former Trump administration official who has advocated for ending surrogacy, no-fault divorce, sex education in schools and policies that “subsidize single motherhood”. The Heritage Foundation has even called for “ending recreational sex”.Media coverage of Trump tends to focus on his mounting legal woes (nearly half a billion in damages and counting) and increasingly bizarre rants (magnets don’t work underwater). But such an approach misses the point. We can’t risk focusing on spectacle at the expense of strategy, and he has made his strategy perfectly clear.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe has said he will be a dictator on “day one” and “go after” and indict those who challenge him. He’s running on a 10-point “Plan to Protect Children from Leftwing Gender Insanity”. He’s promised to send federal troops into Democratic-run “crime dens”, by which he means New York City and Chicago.He will have advantages in the courts this time around, too. Groups such as the Article III Project – an advocacy group for “constitutionalist” judges – are making sure of it. A3P is led by Mike Davis, a Trump loyalist lawyer who has been floated for attorney general. (You know, the role that Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr weren’t extreme enough for?) He has promised: “President Trump’s next generation of judges will be even more bold and tough.” And in the meantime, his organization has taken out TV ads attacking the judges and prosecutors in Trump’s criminal trials as “activists” who have “destroyed the rule of law”.If the Article III Project gets what they want, judges hearing challenges to Trump’s proposals will be judges he appointed. Not only will his policies be more dangerous and dogmatic, they’ll be better designed to withstand judicial scrutiny, especially in a friendly court.Look no further than the Alabama supreme court, which ruled last week that frozen embryos are children, imperiling the legality of IVF and foreshadowing far worse. Trump, clearly panicking, has distanced himself from this decision, but as long as he continues to nominate radical activist judges – and he will – it is nothing more than posturing.As was the case during his first term, Trump will serve as a vessel for some of the most regressive figures in American politics. And unlike last time – when he was incentivized to get re-elected legitimately – he will be unencumbered by any notion that he should abide by democratic norms or heed moderating voices. January 6 was a purity test, and he’s since cleared his ranks of people who’ve even whispered disapprovingly.Despite all of this, Trump is leading Biden in many polls. Most projections put the race at 50/50 at best. If Trump and his extremist cronies prevail in 2024, Project 2025 will be under way this time next year, stripping millions of Americans of our freedoms. The end of democracy, indeed.
      Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation and serves on the Council on Foreign Relations More