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      Pope Francis and advocates add to pleas for Biden to clear federal death row

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      Pope Francis has called for commutations for people on death row in the US, as religious leaders, civil rights groups and current and former prosecutors urge Joe Biden to take executive action on capital punishment.In his Sunday prayer, Pope Francis, who has been a vocal death penalty opponent, said: “It comes to my heart to ask all of you to pray for the prisoners in the United States who are on death row. Let’s pray that their sentence would be commuted [or] changed.”On Monday, advocates fighting against capital punishment released letters from hundreds of leaders asking the president to clear federal death row before Donald Trump returns to office, with pleas from Black pastors, Catholic leaders, former prison officials, leading civil rights groups and mental health advocates.Biden has been facing intensifying pressure to grant clemency to people with death sentences after he recently announced that he was using his executive authority to pardon his own son.Advocates expect the incoming administration to be deadly if Biden doesn’t take action. In the final year of Trump’s first term, the US government executed 13 people in rapid succession, killing more people in the federal system than under the previous 10 presidents combined. The rushed process claimed the lives of people with intellectual disabilities, prevented defendants from presenting new evidence, and involved execution methods that lawyers said were torturous.Some of Trump’s first-term executions happened despite objections from prosecutors and victims, and took place after the US supreme court quickly overruled lower-court decisions halting the proceedings.The Catholic Mobilizing Network, which represents 30,000 advocates, including bishops and dioceses, urged Biden, who is Catholic, to commute every federal death row sentence, writing: “We know that the federal death row, just as in the states, is marred by significant arbitrariness, including racial bias and the imposition on vulnerable individuals such as those with intellectual disability, brain damage, and serious mental illness. There is also a risk that innocent people will be put to death.”Biden has previously opposed capital punishment and issued a moratorium on executions when he became president, but he has not yet indicated whether he will commute sentences.There are 40 men currently on federal death row, and 38% of them are Black, although Black people comprise 14% of the US population. Nearly one in four of the men were 21 or younger at the time of the crime. And 43% of them come from only three states – Missouri, Texas and Virginia.In another letter released on Monday, 38 current and former district attorneys, attorneys general and former US prosecutors and justice department officials laid out the flaws in capital punishment.“We know that we have not always executed the worst of the worst, but often instead put to death the unluckiest of the unlucky – the impoverished, the poorly represented, and the most broken,” they wrote. “Time and again, we have executed people with long histories of debilitating mental illness, childhoods marred by unspeakable physical and mental abuse, and intellectual disabilities that have prevented them from leading independent adult lives. We have also likely executed the innocent.” The group also pointed to studies demonstrating that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent to violence and does not reduce crime.A group of current prison officials, including some whom have overseen executions, pointed to the harms correctional staff face when carrying out capital punishment: “We have witnessed the depression, suicide, substance abuse, domestic turmoil, and other manifestations of trauma in our colleagues that study after study has documented among correctional staff who are impacted by executions, and on those close to them.”Families of murder victims also pleaded with Biden, writing that the death penalty “wastes many millions of dollars that could be better invested in programs that actually reduce crime and violence and that address the needs of families like ours”.Others now urging Biden to act include the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a coalition of Latino advocacy organizations and the Innocence Project.Trump intensified his pro-death penalty rhetoric during his campaign, calling for executions of “everyone who gets caught selling drugs”. And Trump allies, through the rightwing manifesto Project 2025, have called for the expansion of capital punishment and for the US to do “everything possible to obtain finality” for the 40 people on federal death row.In an interview before the election, Billie Allen, who is on federal death row and has long maintained his innocence, recounted to the Guardian what it was like to witness rapid executions under Trump’s first term: “I came in at 19. These are people I grew up with. I’m seeing them be carried out, never to return again, never to see them smile or hear them laughing.”He said he wished wished people recognized death row defendants were capable of change: “The majority of people here become better men for themselves, their family and friends and supporters.” More

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      RFK Jr to research unsupported link between vaccines and autism, Trump says

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      Donald Trump has said Robert F Kennedy Jr, his nominee for health secretary, may investigate a supposed link between vaccines and autism – despite a consensus among the medical establishment debunking any such connection.In a wide-ranging interview with NBC, the US president-elect claimed an investigation was justified by the increasing prevalence of autism diagnoses among American children over the past 25 years.“When you look at what’s going on with disease and sickness in our country, something’s wrong,” Trump said after the interviewer, Kristen Welker, asked him if he wanted to see some vaccines eliminated – a position for which Kennedy has argued.“If you take a look at autism, go back 25 years, autism was almost nonexistent. It was, you know, one out of 100,000 and now it’s close to one out of 100.”According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one out of every 36 children in the US were diagnosed with autism in 2020, compared with one in 150 in 2000.Kennedy, a noted vaccine sceptic, has repeatedly peddled discredited theories that the conditions is caused by childhood vaccinations.“I do believe that autism does come from vaccines,” he said in a 2023 Fox News interview in which he called for more vaccine testing.“We should have the same kind of testing place or control trials that we have for other every other medication. Vaccines are exempt from pre-licensing control trials, so that there’s no way that anybody can tell the risk profile of those products, or even the relative benefits of those products before they’re mandated. We should have that kind of testing.”Trump – who has previously said Kennedy would be allowed to “go wild” on health – said his health secretary pick would not “reinvent the wheel totally”.“He’s not going to upset any system,” he said.But on autism, he added: “Somebody has to find out. If you go back 25 years ago, you had very little autism. Now you have it … When you talk about autism, because it was brought up, and you look at the amount we have today versus 20 or 25 years ago, it’s pretty scary.”Scientists have attributed the rise in autism diagnoses to improved screening methods while saying it is caused by a complex mix of factors, including genetics, environment and conditions during pregnancy and birth.The World Health Organization has definitely ruled out a connection between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine or other childhood inoculations.Research led by the British doctor Andrew Wakefield asserting a link between autism and the MMR jab was later discredited, with the Lancet, a medical journal, issuing a full retraction of a paper it had published based on it.Wakefield was later banned from practicing in Britain after being found by the country’s general medical council to have broken its rules on research and to have acted “dishonestly” and with a “callous disregard” for children’s health.The Guardian reported in 2018 that Wakefield had attended an inaugural ball marking the start of Trump’s first presidency the previous year at which he was quoted calling for a shakeup of the US medical establishment.“What we need now is a huge shakeup at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – a huge shakeup,” he said. “We need that to change dramatically.” More

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      Liz Cheney calls Trump threat to jail her an ‘assault on the rule of law’

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      The former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has described a threat by President-elect Donald Trump to imprison her alongside others involved in an investigation of his supporters’ 2021 US Capitol attack an “assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic”.Cheney was responding to comments made by Trump during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday in which he said members of the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack “should go to jail” – but said he would not direct the attorney general or FBI he appoints during his second presidency to pursue the matter.During that interview, Trump said: “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with [Bennie] Thompson and the people on the … committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps.“They deleted and destroyed all evidence”, Trump alleged without evidentiary support, adding that those responsible were Cheney and Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat. “For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”In a statement containing her response and obtained by the New York Times, Cheney said Trump had “lied about the Jan. 6 … committee” and that there was “no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis” to go after the panel’s members.“There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting – a Justice Department investigation of the work of a congressional committee – and any lawyer who attempts to pursue that course would quickly find themselves engaged in sanctionable conduct,” Cheney added.She added that Trump “attempted to overturn” the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Joe Biden so that he could remain in the Oval Office by mobilizing an “angry mob”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history,” said Cheney, the daughter of the former US vice-president Dick Cheney. “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”The exchange comes as Biden is reportedly considering offering sweeping pardons to those who could become targets of Trump’s promised “retribution” against his political enemies.Efforts to prosecute Trump over the Capitol attack have been abandoned after he defeated Vice-President Kamala Harris in the 5 November White House election. But Cheney – a former Harris campaign surrogate – said material collected by the special counsel Jack Smith should be preserved and “as much of that information as possible should be disclosed in the special counsel’s upcoming report”. More

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      ‘Currying favor with Trump’: Eric Adams’ rightward drift sparks speculation as prosecution looms

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      Eric Adams was elected New York mayor as a centrist-sounding Democrat. A Black former cop who talked tough-on-crime but fit fairly squarely in the overwhelmingly Democratic politics of the city.But Adams was also always famed for his eccentricities and foibles – scandals over the true extent of his veganism, whether or not he might actually live in New Jersey, and some of the tall tales he would recount from his past.But few New Yorkers might have expected the most recent twist in the Adams’ story: his firm drift rightward, especially in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory.In fact, Adams’ ever-closer relationship with Trump has sparked speculation as to exactly what the Democrat mayor of a famously liberal city – embroiled in deep legal troubles – might want from America’s soon-to-be Republican president.Recently, Adams did not dismiss switching to the Republican party, in which he had been a party member from 1995 through 2002, before turning Democrat. “I’m a part of the American party,” he said. “I love this country.”Last week alone Adams stunned observers with the depths of his rightward tilt on one of the key issues of the election: immigration. Adapting the language of extreme Republicans – who have fear-mongered over immigrant crime – Adams came out swinging for Trump, who plans a mass deportation of millions of immigrants as soon he gets back in the White House.“Well, cancel me because I’m going to protect the people of the city,” Adams said when asked if he plans to cooperate with Trump’s plan for federal deportation agents to remove migrants accused of felony crimes in the city.The comment came as Adams said he had requested a meeting with Trump’s incoming “border czar”, Tom Homan. Adams said he wanted “it clear that I’m not going to be warring with this administration”.He added: “I would love to sit down with the border czar and hear his thoughts on how we are going to address those who are harming our citizens. Find out what his plans are, where our common grounds are. We can work together.”Adams’ hard line adds a new wrinkle to how Democrat-led “sanctuary cities” such as New York, Los Angeles and Denver will adapt to the second Trump administration and raises the prospect that some top Democrat leaders may actively assist mass deportation.Adams is already looking to roll back sanctuary city laws approved by his predecessor, Bill de Blasio, that prohibit New York law enforcement – the NYPD and correction and probation departments – from cooperating with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents unless the cases involve suspected terrorists or serious public safety risks.View image in fullscreenSome moderate Democrats on the city’s usually progressive-leaning city council are supporting the move, with the councilmember Robert Holden calling in June for a repeal, saying: “Sanctuary city laws put all New Yorkers, both immigrants and longtime residents, in danger.”Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, said recently that while she supports legal immigrants, including asylum seekers, she will cooperate with the Trump administration to remove immigrants who break the law. “Someone breaks the law, I’ll be the first one to call up Ice and say: ‘Get them out of here,’” Hochul said.But some observers look at Adams’ tack towards Trump and see other factors at play, beyond playing to a segment of the electorate tired of Democrats’ traditional softer positions on immigrants.Adams is facing a multi-count federal complaint over alleged fundraising abuses involving Turkey brought by the outgoing local US district attorney Damian Williams, a Joe Biden nominee. Adams’ trial is set for the spring, just as his mayoral re-election campaign moves into high gear.Trump has nominated Jay Clayton to be Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor. Clayton is known for bringing white-collar corruption cases while serving as commissioner of the US Securities and Exchange Commission but has no experience litigating criminal law cases, raising the question as to whether Adams is cozying up to Trump in the hope that the complaint will be dropped.Adams is also now on the same page as Trump when it comes to unfounded claims of the political weaponization of the Department of Justice. In September, Adams defiantly suggested prosecutors had gone after him because he had criticized Biden’s immigration policies.“Despite our pleas, when the federal government did nothing as its broken immigration policies overloaded our shelter system with no relief, I put the people of New York before party and politics,” he said. “I always knew that if I stood my ground for all of you, that I would be a target – and a target I became.”But amid all the fresh posturing there is no doubt that immigration is a thorny political issue.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore than 200,000 people have come to New York over the past several years after entering the United States seeking asylum. The Adams administration has projected the cost of housing and support to New York taxpayers could hit $10bn by June next year, and Trump made pronounced inroads in the city in last month’s election, particularly among Asian voters and Hispanic voters.Yet Adams has struck a notably hard line and nationalistic language that echoes Trump. Last week, he floated the idea of deporting migrants who had been accused but not convicted of felony crimes.“If you come into this country and this city and think you are going to harm innocent New Yorkers, and innocent migrants and asylum seekers, this is not the mayor you want to be under,” Adams said last week. “I’m an American. Americans have certain rights. The constitution is for Americans. I’m not a person who snuck into this country.”That brought a pushback from civil rights groups.“Everyone residing in the United States regardless of their immigration status has specific inalienable rights under the constitution, including the right to due process,” said the New York Immigration Coalition.“Immigrant communities have been key to New York’s success, both past and present. The answer to the ongoing crisis in our city is not to turn our back on our values, but it’s to ensure fair treatment,” said Andrea Gordillo, a progressive Democrat candidate for the city council.It is possible that Adams’ recent sidling up to the incoming Trump administration is both a self-serving move and a pragmatic step in keeping with a shift in New York’s political coloring and a recognition of the reality of the next four years of Trump rule.“He’s currying favor with the Trump administration, and it’s smart for any New York mayor to have friends in Washington because the city always has problems,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic strategist.“By playing that card he’s also playing to the population of the city that have moved not insignificantly to the center and away from the left. New Yorkers are angry about the basic conditions of life here and tired of paying the cost of the nation’s problems. By doing so he’s setting himself for re-election.”There is also no doubt Adams is also dealing with a nasty criminal situation. At least seven top Adams officials have resigned or announced plans to resign as a result of the federal criminal investigation.“Making it go away would a boon to Adams’ re-election chances. Whether it is or it isn’t, everything in politics is conspiratorial by nature,” says Sheinkopf. “Any New York mayor who wants to make an enemy of the White House is nuts. New York mayors need the president no matter who they are.”By the end of last week Adams was even being asked whether he intended to stay in the Democratic party and join the Republicans. His answer was hardly a firm no.“The party that’s most important for me is the American party – I’m a part of the American party,” he said. More

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      Trump picks hush-money defense attorney Alina Habba as counselor to the president

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      President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he is appointing one of his defense attorneys in the New York hush money case as counselor to the president.Alina Habba, 40, defended Trump earlier this year, also serving as his legal spokesperson. Habba has been spending time with the president-elect since the election at his Florida club Mar-a-Lago.“She has been unwavering in her loyalty and unmatched in her resolve – standing with me through numerous ‘trials’, battles and countless days in court,” Trump posted on his social network Truth Social. “Few understand the weaponization of the ‘injustice’ system better than Alina.”Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes when a New York jury in May found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush-money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.In Trump’s first term, the position of counselor was held by Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway. Habba has Iraqi ancestry and is Chaldean, which is Iraq’s largest Christian denomination and one of the Catholic church’s Eastern rites.Habba frequently accompanied Trump on the campaign trail and was one of the speakers at the late October rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.On Sunday, Trump also announced he is bringing back former staffer Michael Anton to serve as director of policy planning at the state department. Anton served as the national security council spokesperson from 2017 to 2018.Trump said he also will be appointing Michael Needham, a former chief of staff for Senator Marco Rubio, as counselor of the state department. The Florida senator was chosen by Trump to be his next secretary of state. More

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      Trump surgeon general pick involved in gun accident that killed her father at age 13

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      Donald Trump’s nominee for US surgeon general – Dr Janette Nesheiwat – accidentally knocked over a gun when she was 13 years old, causing it to fire and fatally shoot her father in the head.The death of Nesheiwat’s father occurred in February 1990 at her family home in Umatilla, Florida, as reported on Friday by the New York Times.“I was in Father’s bedroom at about 7.15am getting some scissors” out of a fishing tackle box on a shelf above her dad’s bed, she said, according to a police report reviewed by the New York Times. “I opened the … box and the whole thing tipped over”, causing a handgun to fall from inside, discharge and strike her father in the head as he slept in the bed.Nesheiwat’s father, who immigrated from Jordan, died in a hospital the following day.While avoiding discussing her role in the case, she has said her father’s death inspired her to become a doctor. Nesheiwat has spent the past 15 years as an urgent care doctor for CityMD, a for-profit chain of clinics around New York City.At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, she began appearing regularly on Fox News as a medical contributor.Nesheiwat would replace Dr Vivek Murthy if her nomination is confirmed after Trump begins his second presidency.Murthy was the first US surgeon general to declare gun violence as a public health crisis. In an advisory, he cited that firearms are now the leading cause of death in the US among children and adolescents.A graphic accompanying the advisory explained how many of those deaths were unintentional, resulting from firearms that were stored loaded as well as unlocked.To address the crisis, Murthy called on the US to ban automatic rifles, introduce universal background checks for purchasing guns, regulate the industry, pass laws that would restrict use in public spaces and penalize individuals who fail to safely store their weapons.Republicans have opposed efforts to treat gun violence as a public health issue, with House Republicans voting in 2023 to ban the Center for Disease Control from researching gun violence. Republicans have also pushed to prevent public health agencies from citing public health emergencies to pass gun control measures and has attempted to defund programs aimed at gun violence reduction.Murthy was dismissed from his role as US surgeon general by Trump during his first presidency in 2017 before outgoing Joe Biden appointed him to the position again in 2021.The New York Times reported that a Nesheiwat memoir being published later in December mentions her father’s death in the first sentence.“When I was 13 years old, I helplessly watched my dear father dying from an accident as blood was spurting everywhere,” she writes in Beyond the Stethoscope: Miracles in Medicine. “I couldn’t save his life.“This was the start of my personal journey in life to become a physician and enter the world of healing arts.”But, according to the New York Times, nowhere in the next 260 pages of the book does she detail how her father died or say that he was shot.The Orlando Sentinel provided more detail in 1990, describing in a news item how a bullet hit Ziad “Ben” Nesheiwat in the head and killed him after his 13-year-old daughter knocked over a tackle box, causing a gun to fall out and fire.“As she says in her book, she became a physician because of her dad’s tragic accidental death,” a spokesman for Trump’s transition team, Brian Hughes, said in a statement to the New York Times after Nesheiwat did not respond for comment. “She became a physician to save lives, and that dedication to the lives of her fellow Americans is why president Trump nominated Dr Nesheiwat to be our next surgeon general.“She and her family miss their father, and hope he’s proud of them.” More

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      Donald Trump promises to pardon January 6 rioters on ‘day one’

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      In his first sit-down television news interview since winning a second presidency in November’s election, Donald Trump renewed promises to pardon his supporters involved in the attack on the US Capitol in early 2021.He also doubled down on promises of mass deportations and tariffs in the conversation with NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker – the latter of which he acknowledged could cause Americans to pay more after riding voters’ complaints about higher prices back to the White House at the expense of Vice-President Kamala Harris.“I’m going to be acting very quickly. First day,” Trump said in the interview, claiming convicted Capitol attackers had been put through a “very nasty system”.“I know the system,” said Trump, himself convicted in May by New York state prosecutors of criminally falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. “The system’s a very corrupt system.”Trump said there may be some exceptions to his pardons over an attack on the Capitol that was meant to keep him in the Oval Office after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden – and which was linked to multiple deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers. He referenced previously debunked claims of anti-Trump law enforcement infiltrating his supporters’ ranks and agitating the attack.When Trump was asked about Capitol attackers who assaulted police officers he said that “they had no choice”. He also claimed individuals were pressured into accepting guilty pleas.“Their whole lives have been destroyed,” said Trump, who criticized the outgoing president’s recent pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, on convictions of lying on gun ownership application forms as well as tax evasion. “They’ve been destroyed.”Trump denied he would direct his second administration’s appointees to arrest elected officials involved in the investigation of the attack on the US Capitol, which led to federal criminal charges against him that have been dismissed. But he made it a point to tell Welker: “Honestly, they should go to jail.”More than 1,250 people have been convicted or pleaded guilty in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. And at least 645 people have been sentenced to serve some time in prison, ranging from a few days to 22 years.During his sentencing Friday, Philip Sean Grillo of New York City, one of the Capitol attackers, tauntingly told the federal judge presiding over his case, “Trump’s gonna pardon me anyways.” Grillo received a one-year prison sentenced and was ordered to be taken into custody immediately.Another of the convicted attackers, Edward Kelley of Tennessee, was found guilty at trial in November of conspiracy to murder federal employees. Jurors determined he had developed a list of officials he wanted to kill for investigating him in connection with the Capitol attack.In other parts of Sunday’s interview, Trump reaffirmed his plans to enact tariffs on imports from some of the US’s biggest trading partners. He said he could not guarantee US families would not pay more as a result of his plan.He also doubled down on refusing to admit Biden fairly defeated him in the 2020 election, claiming he won in November against Harris because the race “was too big to rig”.On his plans of mass deportations, Welker asked Trump about families with mixed immigration statuses. Trump suggested immigrants living in the US legally were at risk if they had family members living in the country without permission.“I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” Trump said.He did claim to have some support for working with Democrats to protect Dreamers, or people who have lived in the US for years after being brought to the country as undocumented children. But, as he has done before, he promised to work to end birthright citizenship and said he would consider pushing to amend the US constitution to do so.“We have to end it,” Trump said.Welker also asked Trump if he had fully developed a plan to overhaul healthcare after saying he had “concepts” of one during his lone debate with Harris.“We have concepts of a plan that would be better,” Trump replied, in part. More

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      Arab Americans become prominent voices in US politics – via Trump

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      While many appearing on stage during president-elect Donald Trump’s victory speech in the early hours of 6 November were familiar faces, one man, standing next to Tiffany Trump, was not.Michael Boulos, the son of Lebanese billionaire and Trump’s new senior adviser on Middle Eastern affairs, Massad Boulos, and the husband of Trump’s youngest daughter, stood cautiously to the president-elect’s right as America looked on.While Boulos’ presence – part of Trump’s successful coalition-building effort – may have gone largely unnoticed by many viewers, for Arab Americans such as Yahya Basha, a Syrian American doctor who runs several medical facilities in Detroit, it served as a breakthrough moment.In September, Basha met Trump and Boulos during one of the president-elect’s many campaign trips to Michigan.“I felt that they were serious and wanted to do business and communicate and partner on the issues,” says Basha of his engagement with Trump and Boulos. “If you are out, you don’t count. You have to stay in the battle.”Twenty years after the spike in animosity and prejudice in the aftermath of 9/11, Arab Americans are now finding themselves incorporated into US politics like never before and – ironically given his nationalism – the process is getting a boost from Trump.On 22 November, Trump nominated Janette Nesheiwat, the daughter of Jordanian Christian immigrants and a Fox News contributor, to the post of US surgeon general, and Marty Makary, a British American doctor with Lebanese heritage who also contributes to Fox News, to commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration.Alina Habba, Trump’s Iraqi American lawyer and adviser, is another prominent face in Trump’s entourage. During his previous administration Mark Esper and Alex Azar, both who have Lebanese heritage, served in senior positions.View image in fullscreenMany Arab Americans, particularly older generations who fled dictatorships in the Middle East, feel this is the first time that such prominent voices have been heard in a political context – despite Trump’s threats and a track record that has seen him ban travel from a host of Muslim-majority countries during his previous administration.While many Arab Americans say they are forced to look past Trump’s previous actions given the failure of the Biden administration to stop Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon, others believe the president-elect’s overtures to figures in their community is genuine.While the Democrats declined to allow a Palestinian American speaker at their August convention, a month earlier, at the Republican’s equivalent event, Habba was strategically given a place in the coveted Thursday night session, where she spoke of being a “proud first-generation Arab American woman”.Part of Trump’s outreach to Arab Americans has focused on connecting with Christian elements within the wider community, rather than Muslim ones.Boulos, Habba, Azar and Esper are either Maronite, Chaldean or Greek Orthodox Christians.“[The Arab American and Chaldean communities] needed one of their own – someone that is of their own and is in politics,” says Casey Askar, a Chaldean businessman who was recruited by Trump as far back as July 2023 to engage with Chaldeans in Michigan. Askar believes 80% of the Chaldean voters in Michigan – many of whom don’t identify as ethnically Arab but celebrate their own distinct heritage within the Arab world – backed Trump in last month’s election.“Because Chaldeans didn’t come from a democratic world or have opportunities for democracy or freedom of speech, they didn’t engage in politics,” he says.“But in 2016, Chaldeans really came out to vote. And they generally voted for Trump and Republican candidates.” He says that since a majority of Chaldean households in south-east Michigan, where the community is thought to number almost 200,000 people, own or run their own businesses, there’s an attraction to Trump and the Republicans.After a fall off in 2020, he says the Chaldean vote helped Trump win Michigan last month, where he beat Kamala Harris by 80,000 votes.“Historically, the Democratic party was the party of immigrants and minorities. I know that because when my family came, I believe they were more Democrat-leaning. If you look at the Catholic vote as a whole, it was predominantly Democrat,” he says.“But the party has changed. There’s so much hypocrisy. They pushed too far with wokeness, and that alienated a lot of people.”It’s a view shared by Basha, who is not Christian and who donated to Democrats’ election campaigns including Joe Biden, the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, and others running against Israel lobby-backed candidates.“I had an excellent relationship with [Democrats]; I went to the White House many times,” he says.But last year, he says he felt slighted during a call with Michigan donors hosted by the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I wasn’t allowed to speak during the call. I raised my hand but wasn’t given the floor to speak when others were,” he says. “The Democrats became so complacent. I think the Arab-Americans were treated in the Democratic party as insignificant partners, from the Obama administration onward.”Though he donated thousands of dollars to Trump’s first opponent, Hillary Clinton, in 2016, he says that this time around when Harris’ campaign approached him for a donation, he refused.“I told them: I’m committed to Trump.”Trump’s efforts to build a coalition from within elements of the Arab American community has in part prompted many to run – and win as Republicans – at various political levels across the US.Amer Ghalib, the Democratic Yemeni American mayor of the Muslim-majority city of Hamtramck in Michigan, attracted headlines by endorsing and campaigning with Trump in October.Nor is the move to the Republican party confined to Michigan.Last month, Abe Hamadeh, a 33-year-old lawyer and former army reservist with little political experience, was elected to Arizona’s eighth congressional district, defeating a Democrat in an open race. Endorsed by Trump and Arizona firebrand Kari Lake, and the son of Syrian immigrants, Hamadeh’s campaign website photos see him leaning into his military and Middle Eastern background.For many Arab Americans, the messages espoused by Republicans resonate.Samra’a Luqman, a Yemeni American from Dearborn, Michigan, campaigned on behalf of and voted for Trump because “you cannot reward genocide with a second term”, referring to the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza, where more than 44,000 people have been killed.But a second reason for abandoning the Democratic party related to her and others more conservative social values.Luqman, who still considers herself a Democrat, was among parents who railed against sexually-explicate content in schoolbooks in Dearborn in 2022.“The story of this election does not start with 7 October [when Hamas attacked Israel]. It started in 2022, and the community felt betrayed by their own [Democratic] party,” she says.“It’s unfortunate, but the minute the [Arab American] community disagreed with the policies espoused by the Democratic party, they became ostracized and painted in a negative light. That betrayal started the shift to the Republican party.”Basha says he is fully aware of the dangers the second Trump administration may incur on the Arab world, not least to Palestinians suffering horrendous conditions as Israel continues to attack Gaza. Trump – and many of his cabinet picks – are vociferous supporters of Israel and its army’s actions. Trump has also promised to bring back travel bans on Muslim-majority countries which he says is “definitely a concern”.“It’s better to be at the table than outside the door,” he says.“I want to see what we can be a part of and establish a positive view of [Arab Americans] and negotiate on local, national and international issues.” More