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    US says hold on weapons delivery won’t be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with Rafah city offensive – as it happened

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    US officials are making clear today that the hold put on a delivery of US-made bombs last week would not be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with an offensive on Rafah city but would be the start of a major pivot in the US-Israel relationship.Arms deliveries that have already been approved could be delayed, and shipments waiting for approval could also face obstacles.The Biden administration refuses to use the phrase “red line”, but it is making clear that the US president was serious when he told Benjamin Netanyahu in a call on 4 April that an attack on Rafah would lead to a major re-evaluation of the relationship.Although the paused shipment included huge 2000lb bombs, administration officials insist that they were not selected because of legal concerns about their use in a densely populated area (as Israel has done frequently over the course of this war) could constitute a war crime. This was a policy decision, they say, not a legal one.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
    The Republican House judiciary committee has referred Michael Cohen to the Department of Justice for prosecution. In a letter to Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, Jim Jordan and James Comer, chairs of the judiciary committee as well as the oversight and accountability committee, wrote: “Cohen’s testimony is now the basis for a politically motivated prosecution of a former president and current declared candidate for that office.”
    The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, has confirmed that the US has paused a shipment of weapons to Israel and is “reviewing others”. Miller, at briefing today, cited “the way Israel has conducted its operations in the past” as well as concerns about Israel’s actions in Rafah, Channel 4 News’s Siobhan Kennedy reported.
    US officials are making clear today that the hold put on a delivery of US-made bombs last week would not be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with an offensive on Rafah, but would be the start of a major pivot in the US-Israel relationship. Arms deliveries that have already been approved could be delayed, and shipments waiting for approval could also face obstacles.
    Following the Biden administration’s decision to pause a weapons shipment to Israel over its plans for a Rafah invasion, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said: “Given the unprecedented humanitarian disaster that Netanyahu’s war has created in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of children face starvation, President Biden is absolutely right to halt bomb delivery to this extreme, rightwing Israeli government. But this must be a first step.”
    Georgia’s state court of appeals has granted Donald Trump’s request to consider the disqualification of Fani Willis, the district attorney who brought the 2020 election interference charges against Trump. According to a notice, the court said that it had granted the appeal request and ordered Trump’s legal team to file a notice of appeal in the next 10 days, NBC reports.
    Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell refused to comment on Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal trial surrounding his hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, McConnell said: “I’m not going to be commenting on the presidential election … I’m going to concentrate on trying to turn this job over to the next majority leader of the Senate.”
    Robert F Kennedy Jr, the third-party presidential candidate, said a health problem he experienced in 2010 “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”, according to a report. In a divorce case deposition from 2012 the New York Times said it obtained, Kennedy said he experienced “memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumor”.
    That’s it as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and California’s Democratic representative Ro Khanna have revealed a bill aimed at cancelling all medical debt.The Guardian’s Joan Greve reports:The bill, introduced with Oregon senator Jeff Merkley and Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, would create a federal grant program to cancel all existing patient debt and amend the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to block creditors from collecting past medical bills.The legislation would also update billing requirements for medical providers and alter the Consumer Credit Reporting Act to prevent credit agencies from reporting information related to unpaid medical bills, alleviating the risk of such debt damaging patients’ credit histories.Sanders and Khanna described the legislation as vital for many families’ financial security, as millions of Americans struggle with the burden of medical debt. According to a 2022 investigation by NPR and KFF Health News, more than 100 million Americans, including 41% of adults, hold some kind of healthcare debt. A KFF analysis of the Census Bureau’s survey of income and program participation suggests that Americans owe at least $220bn in medical debt.Read the full story here:Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has refused to comment on Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal trial surrounding his hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.Speaking to reporters on Wednesday in response to whether Trump’s ongoing trial would give him pause over his support for Trump as president, McConnell said:
    I’m not going to be commenting on the presidential election … I’m going to concentrate on trying to turn this job over to the next majority leader of the Senate.”
    Here are further details on the US signaling to Israel potential future pauses in arms shipments over Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah:US officials have signalled to Israel that more arms shipments could be delayed if the Israeli military pushes ahead with an offensive in Rafah, Gaza, in what would mark the start of a major pivot in relations between the two countries.Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, confirmed on Wednesday that the Biden administration had paused the supply of thousands of large bombs to Israel, in opposition to apparent moves by the Israelis to invade the city.“We’ve been very clear … from the very beginning that Israel shouldn’t launch a major attack into Rafah without accounting for and protecting the civilians that are in that battle space,” Austin told a Senate hearing.“And again, as we have assessed the situation, we have paused one shipment of high payload munitions,” he said, adding: “We’ve not made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment.”Read the full story here:The Republican House judiciary committee has referred Michael Cohen to the Department of Justice for prosecution.In a letter to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, Jim Jordan and James Comer, chairs of the judiciary committee as well as the oversight and accountability committee, wrote:
    Cohen’s testimony is now the basis for a politically motivated prosecution of a former president and current declared candidate for that office.
    In light of the reliance on the testimony from this repeated liar, we reiterate our concerns and ask what the justice department has done to hold Cohen accountable for his false statements to Congress.
    The referral comes as Cohen, once a personal lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump, is expected to testify in the former president’s hush money criminal trial in New York as the prosecutors’ star witness.The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, has confirmed that the US has paused a shipment of weapons to Israel and is “reviewing others”.Miller, at briefing today, cited “the way Israel has conducted its operations in the past” as well as concerns about Israel’s actions in Rafah, Channel 4 News’ Siobhan Kennedy reported.Even though Israel has said the Rafah operation is limited in scope, “intent is one thing, results are another”, Miller told reporters, adding:
    The results have been far too many innocent civilians dying … That’s why we have such grave concerns.
    Miller also said the state department will not be delivering its report to Congress on whether Israel has violated international humanitarian law during its war in Gaza, CNN reported. He added:
    We expect to deliver it in the very near future, in the coming days.
    Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley won more than 20% of the votes in Indiana’s Republican presidential primary on Tuesday, months after she dropped out of the race.Haley announced she was suspending her presidential campaign in March after being soundly defeated by Donald Trump on Super Tuesday, but her continued support shows persistent discontent among GOP voters with the former president. Haley has not endorsed Trump.Haley’s support was largest in Indiana’s urban and suburban counties, AP reported. She won 35% of the vote in Indianapolis’s Marion county and more than one-third of the vote in suburban Hamilton county.Robert F Kennedy Jr, the third-party presidential candidate, said a health problem he experienced in 2010 “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”, according to a report.In a divorce case deposition from 2012 the New York Times said it obtained, Kennedy said he experienced “memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumour”.Neurologists who treated Kennedy’s uncle, the Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, before his death aged 77 from brain cancer in 2009, told the younger man he had a dark spot on his brain scans, and concluded he too had a tumor. But, Kennedy reportedly said, a doctor at New York-Presbyterian hospital posited another explanation: a parasite in Kennedy’s brain. In the 2012 deposition, Kennedy reportedly said:
    I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.
    In his recent interview, the Times said, Kennedy said he had recovered from such problems. The paper also said Kennedy’s spokesperson, Stefanie Spear, responded to a question about whether the candidate’s health problems could compromise his fitness to be president by saying:
    That is a hilarious suggestion, given the competition.
    A growing number of Republican lawmakers are pushing to require a citizenship question on the questionnaire for the census, and exclude non-US citizens from the results that determine each state’s share of House seats and electoral college votes.The GOP-led House is expected to vote today on the Equal Representation Act which calls for leaving out “individuals who are not citizens of the United States.” The bill is unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate and is opposed by the White House.The proposal has set off alarms among redistricting experts, civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers, and comes as Republicans make immigration a key campaign issue ahead of the November elections.“It’s taking it closer to reality than it has ever been,” a former census official told AP.
    This is part of a cohesive strategy in the GOP … of getting every single possible advantage when the country is so closely divided.
    The 14th amendment says the “whole number of persons in each state” should be counted during the apportionment process. Besides helping allocate congressional seats and electoral college votes, census figures guide the distribution of $2.8tn in federal money.US officials are making clear today that the hold put on a delivery of US-made bombs last week would not be a one-off if Israel presses ahead with an offensive on Rafah city but would be the start of a major pivot in the US-Israel relationship.Arms deliveries that have already been approved could be delayed, and shipments waiting for approval could also face obstacles.The Biden administration refuses to use the phrase “red line”, but it is making clear that the US president was serious when he told Benjamin Netanyahu in a call on 4 April that an attack on Rafah would lead to a major re-evaluation of the relationship.Although the paused shipment included huge 2000lb bombs, administration officials insist that they were not selected because of legal concerns about their use in a densely populated area (as Israel has done frequently over the course of this war) could constitute a war crime. This was a policy decision, they say, not a legal one. More

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      Republican candidate loses US House primary in victory for pro-Israel lobbyists

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      Republican John Hostettler has lost his House primary in Indiana, delivering a victory to pro-Israel groups who sought to block the former congressman from returning to Washington. The groups attacked Hostettler as insufficiently supportive of Israel at a time when criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has hit new highs because of the war in Gaza.When the Associated Press called the eighth district primary race at 7.49pm ET, less than an hour after the last polls closed in Indiana, Mark Messmer led his opponents with 40% of the vote. Messmer, the Indiana state senate majority leader, will advance to the general election in November, which he is heavily favored to win because of the district’s Republican leanings. The victor will replace Republican congressman Larry Bucshon, who announced his retirement earlier this year.The primary concludes a contentious race in which pro-Israel groups poured millions of dollars into the district to attack Hostettler, who served in the House from 1995 to 2007. The groups specifically criticized Hostettler’s past voting record on Israel and some comments he made that were deemed antisemitic.In a book that he self-published in 2008 after leaving Congress, Hostettler blamed some of George W Bush’s advisers “with Jewish backgrounds” for pushing the country into the war in Iraq, arguing they were distracted by their interest in protecting Israel.Those comments, combined with Hostettler’s vote opposing a resolution expressing solidarity with Israel in 2000, after the start of the second intifada, outraged groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and United Democracy Project (UDP), a Super Pac affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.According to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission, UDP spent $1.2m opposing Hostettler while the RJC Victory Fund invested $950,000 in supporting Messmer.One UDP ad attacked Hostettler as “one of the most anti-Israel politicians in America”, citing his vote against the resolution in 2000. The CEO of RJC, Matt Brooks, previously lambasted Hostettler for having “consistently opposed vital aid to Israel [and] trafficked antisemitic conspiracy theories”.But the groups’ interest in a Republican primary is a notable departure from their other recent forays into congressional races. So far this election cycle, UDP has largely used its massive war chest to target progressive candidates in Democratic primaries. UDP spent $4.6m opposing the Democratic candidate Dave Min, who ultimately advanced to the general election, and the group has also dedicated $2.4m to supporting Democrat Sarah Elfreth in Maryland, which will hold its primaries next week.Aipac and its affiliates reportedly plan to spend $100m across this election cycle, so UDP may still get involved in other Republican congressional primaries. However, the groups will likely remain largely focused on Democrats, as Republican lawmakers and voters have generally indicated higher levels of support for Israel since the start of the war in Gaza.A Guardian review of the statements of members of Congress after the start of the war found that every Republican in Congress was supportive of Israel. Even as criticism of Israel’s airstrike campaign in Gaza has mounted, one Gallup poll conducted in March found that 64% of Republicans approve of Israel’s military actions, compared with 18% of Democrats and 29% of independents who said the same.Other polls have shown that most Americans support calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, and hopes for a pause in the war did briefly rise this week. Hamas leaders on Monday announced they would accept a ceasefire deal, but Israel soon dashed hopes of peace by launching an operation to take control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. More

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      Biden warns against ‘surge of antisemitism’ at Holocaust event

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      Joe Biden warned against a “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America” at a Holocaust event Tuesday, as student protests against Israel’s military strikes on Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis continued to roil campuses across the US.Addressing a bipartisan Holocaust remembrance event at the US Capitol, the president reasserted his “ironclad” commitment to the “security of Israel and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state … even when we disagree”. Hatred towards Jews didn’t end with the Holocaust, he said – it was “brought to life on October 7 2023” when Hamas unleashed its attack on Israel killing 1,200 people.“Now here we are not 75 years later, but just seven-and-a-half months later, people are already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror … I have not forgotten, and we will not forget.”Biden’s forceful evocation of the shadows of the Holocaust and the scourge of antisemitism was made at a volatile moment when Israel’s retaliatory military operation in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and brought 2.3 million people to the edge of starvation. Demonstrations against the war and calls for a ceasefire has led to turmoil at scores of US universities and colleges – and opened fissures within Biden’s Democratic party that could imperil his re-election hopes in November.The president, who has generally avoided commenting on the campus protests since they erupted at Columbia University in New York three weeks earlier, acknowledged that his remembrance speech fell “on difficult times”. He also said that he understood that “people have strong beliefs and deep convictions”, adding that the US respected free speech.But he went on to decry antisemitic posters and “slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel” on college campuses. “Jewish students [have been] blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class,” Biden said.He concluded that there is “no place on any campus in America or any place in America for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind.“Violent attacks destroying property is not peaceful protest – it’s against the law,” he said.Student protesters strongly pushed back at the implication that hatred motivated the pro-Palestinian encampments. A group of more than 750 Jewish students from 140 campuses issued a joint letter on Tuesday calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and rejecting Biden’s equation of the protests with antisemitism.“As Jewish students, we wholeheartedly reject the claim that these encampments are antisemitic and that they are an inherent threat to Jewish student safety,” the letter said.Hours before the president delivered his speech, police in riot gear cleared a protest encampment at the University of Chicago. The action began at about 4.30am in the Quad where hundreds of students had been living in tents for more than a week.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe encampment was completely dismantled within about three hours, but about 400 protesters later reassembled outside the university’s administrative building. They chanted “Free, free, Palestine”, and they staged a standoff with police.In a statement, the university’s president, Paul Alivisatos, said that protesters had been given a chance to voluntarily dismantle the encampment, and he stressed there had been no arrests. But he said negotiations with encampment representatives had broken down because of the “intractable and inflexible aspects of their demands”.At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, protesters regained access to the encampment there after police had removed them and erected fencing around the area on Monday. Dozens of protesters remained at the site, the Associated Press reported, as they continued to press demands that MIT breaks its research ties to the Israeli military.Tensions are rising on campuses as institutions approach their traditional graduation ceremonies, with many school governments attempting to clear the encampments to make way for the celebrations. On Monday, Columbia University announced that it was cancelling its campus-wide commencement ceremony, following the example of the University of Southern California.At Harvard university, the interim president Alan Garber threatened those participating in the pro-Palestinian encampment with “involuntary leave”. He said such a move could jeopardize the students’ access to housing, campus buildings and exams. More

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      The Democrats lost the White House in 1968 amid anti-war protests. What will 2024 bring?

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      When student Lauren Brown first heard the commotion, including firecrackers, she assumed the sounds were coming from nearby frat houses. Then, at about four in the morning, she heard helicopters. Later, she awoke to news and footage of a violent attack by pro-Israeli protesters on an encampment set up to oppose the war in Gaza.“It was hard to watch,” said Brown, 19, a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose dorm was near the encampment. “And I wondered where the police were. I saw posts from people talking about them being teargassed and maced and campus security was just watching.”Eventually, a large police contingent did arrive and forcibly cleared the sprawling encampment early on Thursday morning. Flash-bangs were launched to disperse crowds gathered outside and more than 200 people were arrested. Afterward, campus facility workers could be seen picking up flattened tents and pieces of spray-painted plywood, and throwing them into grey dumpsters.Similar scenes of tumult have played out this week at about 40 universities and colleges in America, resulting in clashes with police, mass arrests and a directive from Joe Biden to restore order. The unrest has unfolded from coast to coast on a scale not seen since the Vietnam war protests of the 1960s and 1970s.The president has cause for concern as the issue threatens his youth vote, divides his Democratic party and gives Donald Trump’s Republicans an opening to push allegations of antisemitism and depict Biden’s America as spiralling out of control.There are inescapable parallels with 1968, a tumultuous year of assassinations and anti-war demonstrations that led to chaos at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Democrats lost the White House to Republican “law and order” candidate Richard Nixon.Now, there are fears that history will repeat itself as anti-war protests again convulse university campuses, and the Democratic National Convention again heads to Chicago. Biden faces Republican “law and order” candidate Donald Trump in November’s presidential election.Bernie Sanders, an independent US senator from Vermont, told CNN this week: “I am thinking back and other people are making this reference that this may be Biden’s Vietnam.”Drawing parallels with President Lyndon Johnson, whose considerable domestic achievements were overshadowed by the Vietnam war and who did not seek reelection in 1968, Sanders added: “I worry very much that President Biden is putting himself in a position where he has alienated not just young people but a lot of the Democratic base, in terms of his views on Israel and this war.”The Gaza war started when Hamas militants attacked Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 34,600 people in Gaza, mostly women and children.The ferocity of that response, and America’s “ironclad” support for Israel, ignited protests by students at Columbia University in New York that rapidly spread to other campuses across the country. Students built encampments in solidarity with Gaza, demanding a ceasefire and that universities divest from Israel. The demonstrations have been mostly peaceful, although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks and violent threats.University administrators, who have tried to balance the right to protest and complaints of violence and hate speech, have increasingly called on police to clear out the demonstrators before year-end exams and graduation ceremonies. More than 2,300 arrests have been made in the past two weeks, some during violent confrontations with police, giving rise to accusations of use of excessive force.View image in fullscreenBiden, who has faced pressure from all political sides over the conflict in Gaza, attempted to thread the needle on Thursday, saying: “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent. But neither are we a lawless country. We’re a civil society, and order must prevail.”The president faces opposition in his own party for his strong support for Israel’s military offensive. Hundreds of thousands of people registered versions of “uncommitted” protest votes against him in the Democratic presidential primary.Yaya Anantanang, a student organiser at George Washington University in Washington, told the Politico website: “My message is that we do not support Biden. We do not capitulate to the liberal electoral politics, because, quite frankly, the liberation of Palestinians will not come through a Democratic president but by organizing and ensuring that there is full divestment within all of these institutions.”Such views ring alarm bells for those who fear that even a small dip in support from Biden’s coalition could make all the difference in a tight election.Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F Kennedy, who was gunned down while running for president in 1968, urged the protesters to support Biden despite their misgivings. “We need their votes now,” she said. “They might not love Joe Biden’s policies but the choice is not between Joe Biden and their ideal. The choice is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who’s going to institute the Muslim ban on day one.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublicans, meanwhile, are seeking to exploit the unrest for political gain. They have accused Biden of being soft on what they say is antisemitic sentiment among the protesters and Democrats of indulging “wokeness” in America’s education system.Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, said: “The crisis you’re seeing on college campuses is a result of the colleges themselves not having and pushing the right education, the right discussion in the classrooms, in the right way. They play this woke game where they don’t want to touch an issue.“They create a vacuum of information. The students get bad information and propaganda. They’re effectively being used by terrorist organisations overseas to push an anti-American, anti-Israeli message, which is just awful. It’s not a difference of opinion. It’s complete misinformation.”Images of disarray on campus have played endlessly on Fox News and in other rightwing media, feeding a narrative of instability and lawlessness under Biden while conveniently sucking political oxygen away from Trump’s own negatives.On Tuesday, for example, the Republican nominee was in court for his hush-money trial; Time magazine published an interview in which Trump set out an extremist vision of an imperial presidency; and Florida introduced a six-week abortion ban after Trump helped overturn Roe v Wade. But TV screens were dominated by the protests.Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive movement Indivisible, said: “All of those stories – any individual one would have been possibly disqualifying for a presidential candidate in a previous election – received a fraction of the coverage of the protests against [the Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s massacre of Gazans.View image in fullscreen“That’s problematic for those of us who want to see Joe Biden re-elected and want to see Democrats win because every day that we spend talking about this immoral war that US tax dollars are supporting is a day we’re not talking about the dangerous, creeping fascism presented by the Republican party.”Still, Democrats hope that, with the academic year soon drawing to a close, students will head home for the summer and the energy will disperse. Donna Brazile, a former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, doubts that the issue will be decisive in November.“We’re going to have an October surprise every month, and we cannot predict which of the many surprises will actually drive the election.” she said. “A month ago, it was abortion was going drive the election. Now it’s the campus protesters. Next month it’ll be something else.”Brazile also defended the students’ right to protest as past generations have against the Vietnam war, South African apartheid, the Iraq war and, during the most recent election campaign, police brutality. “I’ve been on several college campuses and the majority of them are quite peaceful,” she said.“These are students who are using their first amendment right to advocate for change in the Middle East, and everyone has to be clear that there are rules. Just a handful have gotten out of control because if you violate the rules or break the law, you you have no right to do that. That is forbidden.” More

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      I remember the 1960s crackdowns against war protesters. This is a repeat | Robert Reich

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      I’ve been spending the last several weeks trying to find out what’s really going on with the campus protests.I’ve met with students at Berkeley, where I teach. I’ve visited with faculty at Columbia University. I’ve spoken by phone with young people and professors at many other universities.My conclusion: while protest movements are often ignited by many different things and attract an assortment of people with a range of motives, this one is centered on one thing: moral outrage at the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people – most of them women and children – in Gaza.To interpret these protests as anything else – as antisemitic or anti-Zionist or anti-American or pro-Palestinian – is to miss the essence of what’s going on and why.Most of the students and faculty I’ve spoken with found Hamas’s attack on October 7 odious. They also find Israel’s current government morally bankrupt, in that its response to Hamas’s attack has been disproportionate.Some protesters focus their anger on Israel, some on the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, some on Joe Biden for failing to stand up to Netanyahu, for giving Israel additional armaments, and for what they perceive as Biden’s patronizing response to the protests.Like any protest movement, the actions have attracted a few on the fringe. I’ve heard scattered reports of antisemitism, although I haven’t witnessed or heard anything that might be interpreted as antisemitic. In fact, a significant number of the protesters are Jewish.To describe the protesters as “pro-Palestinian” is also inaccurate. Most do not support Palestine as such; they do not know enough about the history of Israel and Palestine to pass moral judgment.But they have a deep and abiding sense that what is happening in Gaza is morally wrong, and that the United States is complicit in that immorality.Many tell me they are planning not to vote this coming November – a clear danger to Biden’s re-election campaign, which in turn increases the odds of a Trump presidency.When I tell them that a failure to vote for Biden is in effect a vote for Trump, they say they cannot in good conscience vote for either candidate.Quite a number tell me that “the lesser of two evils is still evil”. I tell them Trump would be far worse for the world – truly evil. Many remain unconvinced.I have sharp memories of the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, in which I participated some 55 years ago.I remember being appalled at the unnecessary carnage in Vietnam. I was incensed that the first world, white and rich, was randomly killing people in the third world, mostly non-white and poor. As an American, I felt morally complicit.I was angry at college administrators who summoned police to clear protesters – using teargas, stun guns and mass arrests. The response only added fuel to the flames.The anti-Vietnam war movement became fodder for rightwing politicians like Richard Nixon, demanding “law and order”. The spectacle also appalled many non-college, working-class people who viewed the students as pampered, selfish, anti-American, unpatriotic.I vividly recall the anti war demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, and the brutality of the Chicago police and Illinois national guard – later described by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence as a “police riot”.As the anti-war protesters chanted “The whole world is watching”, network television conveyed the riotous scene to what seemed like the whole world.I had spent months working for the anti-war presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. The convention nominated Hubert Humphrey. That November, the nation voted in Richard Nixon as president.History, as it is said, doesn’t repeat itself. It only rhymes.The mistakes made at one point in time have an eerie way of re-emerging two generations later, as memories fade.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Student encampments have the potential to strengthen US democracy | Jan-Werner Müller

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      Three things are certain: antisemitism is on the rise; hatred of Muslims is increasing; and everyone – but especially those at universities with time to reflect – should be very, very troubled by this. Without taking account of the hate waves, it is impossible to understand why the seemingly mundane act of pitching a tent on campus has become so high stakes: is it announcing a desire to annihilate Israel, or is it a perfectly legitimate way to protest against particular US (and university) policies?University administrations are not supposed to take a stance on the content of student activism, but many have declared encampments as such to be unsafe. If anything, though, student (and professor) safety seems to have been endangered by police brutally coming after peaceful protesters.To be sure, today’s encampments are not hippie festivals; people might show up with guitars, but next to the guitar is a Hezbollah flag. To understand that camps do not pose a peril as such – and in fact can enable democratic action – we need to recall the 2010s: squares from Cairo’s Tahrir to Madrid’s Puerta del Sol saw encampments that were peaceful, self-policing and pluralistic; inside them, very different citizens could develop solidarity, but also engage each other across divisions.Protesters coming together need to show what the sociologist Charles Tilly memorably called “WUNC”: worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment. These might be achieved with demonstrating, once described by Eric Hobsbawm as “next to sex, the activity combining bodily experience and intense emotion to the highest degree”. Encampments create further possibilities: they might foster community, and they mark a site where those with particular beliefs can be found and engaged. They also serve as laboratories of how people want to live together; as progressive philosophers put it, they “prefigure” a different future.The anthropologist David Graeber, one of the organizers of Occupy, always insisted that the point of what happened in Zuccotti Park had been to show the world how supposedly naive anarchist ideals of free cooperation among equals could be realized.One might find free libraries, improvised kitchens, drums, chants and all the other communitarian kitsch. But the encampments of the 2010s proved not only remarkably resilient; they also served, for protesters on Kyiv’s Maidan, as sites where a new social contract could be negotiated. The gatherings in Tahrir Square – where devout and secular citizens camped together peacefully – also held out this promise. Open and diverse camps markedly contrasted with the fortress-style constructions anti-globalization activists created at the time of World Trade Organization and G8 meetings: they were not located in city centers, remained closed even to journalists, and essentially provided staging grounds for confrontations with the police.The campus camps have largely followed the example of the “movements of the squares”. Anyone who has bothered to look will have seen that Columbia’s camp is not a site of “mob rule”; there are strict guidelines, including ones about alcohol and littering. Of course, no rules can entirely prevent bad actors appearing (by that logic, no demonstration should ever happen, since what Mike Johnson called “lawless agitators” might join). The question is whether organizers will insist on something like the Hezbollah flag disappearing right away (apparently they did) and use the moment to school young progressives that Iran, Hezbollah’s backer, might not be the greatest ally for anyone who cares about women, life and liberty. All the self-policing in the world, however, will not change the fact that a campus is different from a public square; universities have the right to keep outsiders out and to prohibit conduct that specifically endangers their educational mission.Ideally, an encampment – or multiple encampments – would allow for unexpected, productive encounters and have an educative effect (or even produce empathy). To be sure, such encounters may well feel unsafe at first; but being serious about addressing conflicts together means being willing to take such risks. By contrast, the more encamping appears like claiming exclusive territory, the more it will be experienced as coercion. The “community guideline” at Columbia that tells people not to engage with “Zionist counter-protesters” is problematic: if you simply want to show how many you are, march; but if you’re sitting in a place, the advantage is precisely that people can find you and try to engage you.Many university administrations’ responses have been heavy-handed; they have also not lived up to a basic feature of the rule of law: clear and consistent messages about what is allowed and what is not. Yet, no matter how harshly universities act, Republicans bent on instrumentalizing the antisemitism charge will never be satisfied even by presidents sending in cops in ostentatious riot gear (except that it produces TV images of “chaos” that work for the opposition in an election year). Centrists, instead of defending rights to protest, are performing seemingly reasonable even-handedness in condemning Trumpists while also delegitimizing students. One does not have to agree with the encampments’ agendas (I differ on crucial points), to see that the former are a threat to democracy, while the latter have the potential to strengthen it.
      Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist More

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      Biden defends right to protest but says ‘order must prevail’ amid college unrest

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      Joe Biden on Thursday defended the right to protest but insisted that “order must prevail” as college campuses across the US continued to face unrest amid pro-Palestine demonstrations against the war in Gaza and universities’ investments in companies that support Israel’s government.The US president has stayed mostly quiet about the current phase of intensified protests at dozens of colleges coast to coast, from the Ivy League to small public institutions in the last two weeks, which has prompted the use of outside police on some campuses in controversial crackdowns.“Dissent is essential for democracy,” Biden said at the White House. “But dissent must never lead to disorder.”Biden said he did not support calls to send in national guard troops, which prominent Republican lawmakers have demanded he do.He also said that the protests had not prompted him to reconsider his approach to the Israeli military offensive in Gaza aimed that followed the attack led by Hamas on southern Israel last 7 October but, since, has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians. The Democratic president has occasionally criticized Israel’s conduct but continued to supply it with weapons.Biden admonished protesters using what he termed “violent” methods, which included a broad sweep.“Violent protests are not protected. Peaceful protest is,” he said, adding: “There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.”And he said: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campus, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation … none of this is a peaceful protest.”He added, however, that the right to free speech must be protected in the US.“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people and squash dissent … but neither are we a lawless country,” he said.Biden’s previous public comment on the protests came more than a week ago, when he condemned “antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians”. Some dismayed at America’s vigorous support for Israel have warned they may not vote for Biden and experts also warned that many younger voters could sour on the Democrats, a little more than six months out from the presidential election.On 19 May Biden is scheduled to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse University in Atlanta, a historically Black college where the president’s imminent visit is causing controversy.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      US House votes to pass antisemitism bill in response to campus protests

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      The US House of Representatives has voted to pass an antisemitism awareness bill, a controversial measure sponsored by a New York Republican amid controversy over pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses in Manhattan and across the US, as Israel’s war with Hamas drags on.The bill passed 320-91 with some bipartisan support.Mike Lawler’s bill will “provide for the consideration of a definition of antisemitism set forth by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance for the enforcement of federal anti-discrimination laws concerning education programs or activities, and for other purposes”.Democrats opposed it as a messaging bill meant simply to boost Republicans on a hot-button issue and trap Democrats into taking politically awkward votes.The American Civil Liberties Union opposed the bill, telling members: “Federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment by federally funded entities.“[The bill] is therefore not needed to protect against antisemitic discrimination; instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism.”The Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP), which “works to ensure a just, secure and peaceful future for Palestinians and Israelis”, has defined the shifting meaning of “antisemitism” in US political discourse.“Traditionally,” the FMEP says, “‘antisemitism’ has meant hostility and prejudice toward Jews because they are Jews – a scourge that has imperiled Jews throughout history, and is a source of resurgent threats to Jews today.“In recent years there has been an energetic effort to redefine the term to mean something else. This new definition – known today as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s ‘working definition of antisemitism’, is explicitly politicised, refocusing the term to encompass not only hatred of Jews, but also hostility toward and criticism of the modern state of Israel.”In the House on Tuesday morning, the Illinois Republican Mary E Miller acted as speaker pro tempore to oversee debate on the Republican antisemitism awareness bill.As a choice, it was not without irony. Miller made headlines in 2021, when as a newly elected member of Congress she was forced to apologise after saying in a speech at the Capitol: “Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.’ Our children are being propagandised.”Representatives for Miller did not respond to a Guardian request for comment.Introducing the bill with Lawler sitting beside her, Michelle Fischbach, a Minnesota Republican, said: “Jewish college students have faced increasing antisemitism. And since 7 October there has been an over 300% increase in incidents on campuses.”More than 1,100 people were killed on 7 October, when Hamas attacked Israel. More than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the subsequent Israeli offensive.Fischbach continued: “Students are supposed to be protected from harassment. But it has been made abundantly clear that the leaders of these institutions are not going to do anything to stop it. Instead, they are allowing large-scale harassment to reign, forcing Jewish students to stay home. Since these institutions refuse to protect their students, it is time for Congress to take action.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTeresa Leger Fernandez, a Democrat from New Mexico, spoke in answer to Fischbach. She quoted Thomas Massie, a rightwing Republican from Kentucky, as saying the bill was “a political trap … designed to split the Democrat [sic] party and get them stuck” on an issue over which the party is divided.Leger Fernandez also said a different bill should be considered, to “designate a senior official at the [US] Department of Education to combat antisemitism on college campuses”.In his own remarks, Lawler listed alleged outrages on college campuses and said: “We must give the Department of Education the tools to identify and prosecute any antisemitic hate crimes committed and hold college administrators accountable for refusing to address antisemitism on their campuses.”Democrats, he said, were “tripping over themselves because of electoral politics” in states with large Muslim populations which traditionally vote Democratic.Debate then descended into back-and-forth over whether the bill was necessary to defend Jewish students, as Republicans claimed, or an illegitimate attack on free speech, however abhorrent that speech might be, as some Democrats said.In closing, Leger Fernandez said: “We need to remind everybody we all condemn 7 October. We all have condemned Hamas as a terrorist organisation.“We have taken up these resolutions over and over again. And once again, our Republican colleague [Massie] has spoken the truth when he has said that these are sticky resolutions simply intended to divide the Democrats.“Let’s not work on division. Let’s come together in love, and in belief, and [use] our individual strength to push back against the hatred that we see, and to do it in a manner that is not partisan.” More