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      Harris is reaching Democrats where Biden isn’t – on abortion and Gaza

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      Standing on the arch of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Kamala Harris said she felt compelled to begin her remarks by addressing the deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act,” the vice-president said, then stated: “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire.” Loud, sustained applause followed, before she added, after a pause: “For at least six weeks.”The remarks, the White House was quick to note, echoed Joe Biden’s comments to a reporter days earlier and they reflected the administration’s current efforts to broker a temporary break in Israel’s offensive, to allow for the release of hostages and for desperately needed humanitarian aid to enter the besieged territory. Yet many Americans furious with Biden for his alliance with Israel heard from Harris what they felt has been lacking from the president.There was an urgency to her speech – delivered in the footsteps of civil rights marchers who were trampled, tear-gassed and beaten with whips and billy clubs as they attempted to cross the bridge – that resonated. The setting seemed to acknowledge the youth movement furious with the president that views Palestinian rights as an extension of the racial justice movement. She pointedly criticized Israel for restricting the flow of aid into Gaza and expressed compassion for the Palestinian civilians living amid the rubble on the brink of famine.As the 2024 general election contest begins, Harris has emerged as an emissary to the Democratic voters who have soured on Biden since propelling him to the White House in 2020. Over the last several months, she has embarked on a full-scale national tour to highlight the threats to reproductive rights posed by a second Donald Trump administration – an issue that Biden has been criticized for shying away from. Now, as Harris adopts a more forceful tone on Gaza, she is also becoming a leading voice on Middle East diplomacy.Both issues are poised to play a significant, if not decisive, role in the November general election. Polling shows an erosion of support among core Democratic constituencies amid widespread disillusionment with the economy, concern over Biden’s age and fury on the left at the administration’s handling of the war in Gaza.For Democrats, reminding voters about the threat Republicans still pose to abortion rights may be the best way to energize young people while winning over independents and suburban women. Outrage over Roe was credited with halting the promised “red wave” of Republican victories in the 2022 midterms; abortion-related ballot referendums have also repeatedly triumphed even in traditionally red states like Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio.But Harris has her work cut out for her. Like Biden, Harris has been viewed unfavorably throughout much of her tenure.Antonio Arellano, a spokesperson for NextGen, a national youth-focused nonpartisan voter registration and education program, called the 59-year-old Harris a “liaison” between the administration and the parts of the Democratic base that were critical to Biden’s 2020 victory but hold reservations about him now. With her college campus tour and her reproductive rights tour, he said, Harris has helped elevate issues that are top of mind for young progressives and multiracial voters.“She brings an energy of vigor and excitement to the election that I think young people can really gravitate to when perhaps enthusiasm lacks elsewhere,” Arellano said.Harris leapt into the US abortion wars within a day of the leak of the US supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade.At a May 2022 speech at a conference for Emilys List, which works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, Harris gave a fiery speech where she repeatedly asked: “How dare they?”“How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body?” Harris asked. “How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?”Harris had spent the first several months of her vice-presidency frustrated by headlines about her apparent lack of direction, staff departures and unforced errors. Allies and experts have long seen sexism and racism in the public scrutiny of Harris, who is the first woman and the first woman of color to hold nationally elected office. The criticism seemed particularly unfair, they said, given that vice-presidents are historically overlooked.“I’m not saying that there shouldn’t have been any attention paid to management, especially when you see high-profile kinds of departures and hires,” said Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory College. “But I think that there’s still also the question of whether or not people have paid more attention to her, and also whether or not the public has had a more visceral reaction to her because of her race and gender.”But when it came to the fight over reproductive rights, Harris’s gender, race and age and experience as a prosecutor combined to give her the edge of authenticity that Biden lacks on an issue that is increasingly critical to voters. Many of the 16 states that have enacted near-total post-Roe abortion bans do not have exceptions for rape or incest, a state of affairs that Harris has called “immoral”.“As a woman on the ticket and the first woman VP and a woman of color, and then secondly, as an AG, she is strongest when her profile is fighting and prosecuting the case. People really like her in that mode,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic Party strategist and a lead pollster on the 2020 Biden campaign. “She’s so comfortable saying the word ‘abortion’. She’s so comfortable leaning in and speaking to the repercussions.”Emilys List, which first endorsed Harris 20 years ago when she was elected as San Francisco’s district attorney, has previously committed to spending more than $10m on bolstering Harris in the 2024 elections, according to reporting from Politico; Jessica Mackler, the new president of Emilys List, said that nothing about their plan to support Harris has changed. “Supporting the vice-president is a huge part of our electoral priorities,” Mackler said.Compared to his running mate, Biden’s recent record on abortion is far more spotty. A devout Catholic, Biden has said that he is “not big” on abortion and, in Thursday’s State of the Union address, spoke at length about the procedure without ever referring to it by name. Instead, he talked of the importance of “reproductive freedom” and promised to “restore Roe v Wade as the law of the land”.When it comes to the Israel-Gaza war, Harris has begun to take a more visible role, and it appears that here, too, she may be pushing just beyond Biden’s comfort zone. NBC News reported that the National Security Council toned down parts of Harris’s Selma speech that were “harsher” on Israel. The vice-president’s office denied that her speech had been watered down.On the Monday after her remarks, Harris met with Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet who had traveled to Washington against the wishes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As she walked into the meeting, Harris denied that there was any daylight between her and the president on the conflict.“The president and I have been aligned and consistent from the very beginning,” she said.Many anti-war activists said Harris’s remarks on Gaza were too little, too late. Yet others saw it as a sign of progress – that their pressure campaign was having an impact. Nearly 100,000 Democrats in Michigan voted uncommitted in the primary, which was held just days before her remarks.“They’re feeling the pressure, and we want them to feel that pressure,” said Khalid Omar, who organized on behalf of the “uncommitted” campaign in Minnesota. “We want them to know that this is unacceptable.”Biden and Harris’s first joint campaign event of 2024, a rally in Virginia, was meant to focus on reproductive rights – but it was instead derailed by anger over the conflict in Gaza. After Harris and a Texas woman who had been denied an abortion spoke about the importance of defending the procedure, Biden took the stage. He was almost immediately interrupted by a protester who yelled: “Genocide Joe, how many kids have you killed in Gaza? … Palestine is a feminist issue!”That protester was removed from the auditorium. Another soon cried out: “Israel kills two mothers every hour!”Observers of Harris’s vice-presidency say the recent attention is recognition of the work she has been doing for months – both on domestic and foreign policy issues.“To the extent that she has found her voice, it’s because people are finally listening,” said Donna Brazile, a Harris ally and veteran Democratic strategist who teaches women’s and gender studies at Georgetown University.Last month, Biden dispatched Harris again, this time to the Munich Security Conference, where her mission was to reassure American allies rattled by Trump’s attacks on Nato. There she met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and with Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, hours after news broke of her husband’s death in an arctic penal camp.Less than a week later, she was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a stop on her reproductive rights tour. While there, she made a surprise stop at the city’s first Black woman-owned vinyl record shop and purchased a Miles Davis album from the owner, who was thrilled by the visit.When the Tennessee legislature expelled two Black lawmakers, the White House sent Harris to Nashville, where she joined them in delivering an impassioned plea for gun control. In December, she traveled to Dubai for a UN climate summit, where she juggled wartime diplomacy – delivering at the time the sharpest commentary of any administration official on Israel’s war in Gaza – with climate policy.“Her vice-presidency has been significant both in terms of her spokesperson role and in terms of a number of significant and highly visible diplomatic assignments that President Biden has given her,” said Joel Goldstein, a historian of the US vice-presidency.There is, however, another reason why scrutiny of Harris may be intensifying: her running mate’s age.If he wins a second term, Biden would turn 86 before leaving office. A New York Times and Siena College survey found that 73% of registered voters believe Biden is “just too old” to be an effective president. The poll was conducted more than two weeks after a special counsel described him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties in advancing age.”“The age of both Biden and Trump will focus more attention on the vice-presidential candidates,” Goldstein said.Republicans have sought to leverage concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health against Harris, casting her as an unsteady lieutenant ill-prepared to assume the presidency. In the weeks before dropping out of the Republican presidential primary, Nikki Haley argued that if Trump were to win the party’s nomination, he would lose to Biden, who would be unable to finish a second term, leading to a Harris presidency. The prospect, Haley said, “should send a chill up everyone’s spine”.But Harris is leaning in to her leading role. After the State of the Union, she headed west to Arizona, the next stop on her reproductive rights tour. On Saturday she was scheduled to campaign with Latino organizers in battleground state Nevada.To those who doubt whether the vice-president could step into the presidency, she is blunt.“I’m ready, if necessary,” Harris told NBC News on Friday. “But it’s not going to be necessary.”Rachel Leingang contributed to this report from Minneapolis More

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      ‘Israel in his heart’: why Biden ignores growing anger over the Gaza offensive

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      Anyone attempting to understand why Joe Biden is so unswerving in support of Israel’s right to attack Gaza might look back four decades to a meeting between the then US senator and the Jewish state’s rightwing prime minister at the time, Menachem Begin.It was 1982, and Begin began an official visit to Washington days after Israel invaded Lebanon after cross-border attacks by the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The Tel Aviv newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that when Begin addressed the Senate foreign relations committee no one was more enthusiastic than Biden in support of the Israeli attack.“If attacks were launched from Canada into the US everyone here would have said, ‘Attack all the cities of Canada, and we don’t care if all the civilians get killed,’” Biden told the meeting, according to a quote uncovered by Jacobin magazine.Begin later expressed surprise at the vehemence of Biden’s support, particularly the senator’s attempts to justify the killing of women and children.“I disassociated myself from these remarks,” Begin told Israeli reporters. “I said to him: ‘No, sir, attention must be paid. According to our values, it is forbidden to hurt women and children, even in war’.”As president, Biden has been no less determined in his backing for the latest assault on Gaza in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel in which about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and hundreds of others abducted.Even as the number of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel in its retaliatory assault on Gaza rose into the thousands, the president justified the human cost.“I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” Biden said two weeks into the Israeli bombardment.The president added that Israel “should be incredibly careful” to target the armed groups responsible for the October 7 attack but he also questioned whether as many civilians were dying as the Palestinian health ministry claimed.On a visit to Israel a few days before, Biden warned Israel not to be “consumed” by rage in its response to the Hamas attack and to avoid the “mistakes” the US made in lashing out after 9/11. But the president also endorsed Israel’s right to hit back militarily as he proclaimed himself “a Zionist” and attended a meeting of Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet.One interpretation of the president’s actions is that he believes a very public embrace of Israel and backing for Netanyahu gives him greater leverage over the Israeli prime minister in private. If so, there is not much evidence it has worked.In his State of the Union address on Thursday, Biden reiterated that “Israel has a right to go after Hamas” while adding that it has “a fundamental responsibility” to protect innocent civilians in Gaza. The Israeli attack has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children.Biden then announced that the US will build a temporary pier in Gaza to deliver aid by sea and he warned Israel’s leaders that “humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip”.But building a pier and getting the aid flowing is likely to take weeks at best and, for some, the plan only emphasised Biden’s unwillingness to use his power to pressure Israel, including to immediately allow food and other necessities into Gaza on the scale required to combat widening malnutrition and starvation.More than half of Americans say Washington should halt weapons shipments to Israel until it stops the assault on Gaza, according to a YouGov poll this week, and many in the Democratic party want Biden to use some of the US’s considerable military aid to Israel as a lever.That would be out of character for a president who remains wedded to a view shaped by his first visit to Israel in 1973, just before its Arab neighbours attacked in the Yom Kippur war, of a plucky little country surrounded by enemies and fighting for its survival.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShortly after Biden won the 2020 election, the former Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, told the Times of Israel that the then president-elect “gets” his country. Oren often clashed with the Obama administration, when Biden was vice-president, over its policies on Iran and White House pressure on Israel to stop settlement construction. But he described Biden as having “a deep feeling for Israel”.“Biden is from a generation that remembers 1967 [the six-day war] and 1973,” he told the Times of Israel. “He has Israel in his heart. He actually gets it.”But the world has changed in the past half a century and that perspective is not shared by younger generations, who see a strong and oppressive Israel imposing a brutal occupation in the West Bank interspersed by periodic wars on Gaza in which thousands of Palestinians have been killed.Biden did once threaten to cut off US aid to Israel. Begin recalled that at the same meeting at which the senator offered his support for the invasion of Lebanon, Biden warned the Israeli prime minister that settlement construction was costing his country support in the US and even threatened to cut American financial assistance.But nothing came of it, and four years later Biden told the Senate that it was time for Israel’s supporters to stop apologising for sending billions of dollars a year to the Jewish state.“There’s no apology to be made. None. It is the best $3bn investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region,” he said.Four decades later, Biden’s core belief has not changed. He told the New Yorker this week that he doesn’t want to see more Palestinian civilians killed because “it’s contrary to what we believe as Americans”.But the president fell back on his old analogy as he said that Arab Americans and young Democratic voters angered by his unwillingness to use US power to rein in Netanyahu should ask themselves what they would do if their communities came under attack.“I think they have to give this just a little bit of time, understanding what would happen if they came into their state or their neighbourhood and saw what happened with Hamas,” he said. More

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      State of the Union address as it happened: Biden spars with Republicans and announces aid pier for Gaza

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      In his third, and potentially last, State of the Union address, Joe Biden eschewed tradition and delivered a barrage of attacks on Donald Trump – who he only referred to as “my predecessor”. It was a sign of how Biden believes Trump’s potential return to the White House poses an existential risk to American democracy, and perhaps also his awareness that he has a lot of support to rebuild to win a second term in November. While Democrats leapt to their feet for Biden’s promises to protect social security, cut child poverty and overhaul the country’s infrastructure, some found the president’s use of the word “illegal” objectionable. Meanwhile, Alabama’s Republican senator Katie Britt delivered the party’s rebuttal, asking: “Are you better off now than you were three years ago?”Here are the highlights:
      The 81-year-old president directly addressed his age, saying “I’ve been told I’m too old” while arguing he is still up for the job.
      Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rightwing nemesis, got unusually close to Biden, then heckled him during the speech over the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
      Six supreme court justices were present at the speech, only for Biden to criticize them directly for overturning Roe v Wade.
      Protesters upset over Biden’s support for Israel’s invasion of Gaza blocked a road leading to the Capitol ahead of the speech.
      George Santos was in the House chamber for the speech, reportedly to hang out with the people who removed him from office.
      Several Democratic House lawmakers have criticized Joe Biden for describing the undocumented migrant suspected of murdering Georgia nursing student Laken Riley as an “illegal”.Biden made the remark during his State of the Union address, while being heckled by rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, who blamed the president’s border security policies for Riley’s murder. Biden held up a pin with Riley’s name on it, and called her “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal”.Democrats took issue with that terminology, including Illinois’s Chuy Garcia:Ilhan Omar of Minnesota:And Delia Ramirez of Illinois:“Just ask yourself, are you better off now than you were three years ago?” Katie Britt asks in the Republican rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.Expect that to be a theme of GOP campaigns nationwide, including Donald Trump’s.More, from Britt:
      Look, we all recall when presidents faced national security threats with strength and resolve. That seems like ancient history right now. Our commander-in-chief is not in command. The free world deserves better than a doddering and diminished leader. America deserves leaders who recognize that secure borders, stable prices, safe streets and a strong defense are actually the cornerstones of a great nation.
      Alabama senator Katie Britt is delivering the Republican rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, and responded to his comments on Laken Riley.“Tonight, President Biden finally said her name, but he refused to take responsibility for his own actions,” said Britt.“Mr President, enough is enough. Innocent Americans are dying and you only have yourself to blame. Fulfill your oath of office, reverse your policies, end this crisis and stop the suffering.”One of the most striking moments of the night happened when Joe Biden addressed the topic of immigration – which polls show is a major weakness of his going into the November contest against Donald Trump.As he spoke, the president was heckled by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rightwing antagonist. Greene demanded he say the name of Laken Riley, who is suspected to have been murdered by an undocumented migrant.Biden, who usually wants nothing to do with Greene, took her up on the offer. Here’s what happened:During Joe Biden’s speech, there were several rowdy heckles from Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. Then came an unexpected yell from the public balcony, directly opposite from where I am sitting in the press gallery.A man wearing dark suit, blue shirt and yellow tie cupped his hands and shouted: “Remember Abbey Gate! United States Marines.” Abbey Gate, outside Kabul’s airport, is where 13 US service members were killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan two years ago.His point made, the man voluntarily left before security yanked him out. Biden did not seem thrown off by the interruption as he carried on speaking. But the episode was a reminder that his approval rating has never quite recovered from the chaos in Kabul.Joe Biden rarely discusses his age, but did so directly as he closed his State of the Union address.“I’ve been told I’m too old,” he said, continuing:
      Whether young or old … I’ve always known what endures. I’ve known our north star, the very idea of Americans, that we’re all created equal, deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea. We’ve never walked away from it either. And I won’t walk away from it now.
      “I know it may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while,” said the 81-year-old president, the oldest to ever hold the job.“You get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever,” Biden continued. “I know the American story. Again and again, I’ve seen the contrast between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation, between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future.”Biden appears to be wrapping up, in high spirits.“Let me close with this,” he said, to sardonic applause.“I know you don’t want to hear any more, Lindsey. But I gotta say a few more things,” Biden said. He was presumably talking to South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham.As Joe Biden discussed the war in Gaza, two progressive House Democrats sitting in the audience staged a minor protest.Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush remained sitting and held up signs that read: “Lasting ceasefire now.” More

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      Hamas negotiators under pressure to produce list of hostages to be released

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      Egyptian and Qatari officials are putting pressure on Hamas negotiators in Cairo to produce a list of hostages to be released as the first step in a phased ceasefire agreement with Israel, according to officials familiar with the talks.Israel has not sent a delegation to the second day of talks in Cairo, demanding that Hamas present a list of 40 elderly, sick and female hostages who would be the first to be released as part of a truce that would initially last six weeks, beginning with the month of Ramadan, the officials say.Hamas is meanwhile demanding that large-scale humanitarian aid should be allowed into Gaza and that Palestinians displaced from their homes in the north of the coastal strip should be allowed to return.US officials have said that Israel had “more or less” accepted the six-week ceasefire deal, which White House national security spokesperson John Kirby confirmed would involve a six-week truce and begin with the release of sick, elderly and women hostages.Diplomatic sources in Washington said it was unclear what was stopping Hamas from producing a list identifying the first 40 hostages, noting that uncertainty about lists and identities had dogged the last successful hostage negotiations in November. They suggested it could reflect problems of communication between Hamas units inside and outside Gaza, that some hostages could be held by other groups including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or that elements of Hamas were withholding the information as a way of obstructing a deal.Washington does not believe the absence of an Israeli delegation was necessarily bad news for a ceasefire hopes, as Israeli negotiators could arrive within a couple of hours if agreement was reached on a list. Egypt and Qatar have assured Joe Biden’s administration that they were putting pressure on the Hamas representatives in Cairo to come up with the identities of the hostages involved.The US is also stepping up pressure on Israel to open new land routes, as well as new sea corridors, to allow a far greater flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza to prevent a famine that UN agencies have warned is imminent. The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said on Sunday that Israel must “significantly increase the flow of aid”. She added there were “no excuses” for the delay.Biden used similar language in a tweet on Monday, saying: “The aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough – and nowhere fast enough.” Unlike Harris, however, he did not name Israel as the responsible party.At the White House, Kirby said truck deliveries into Gaza had been slowed by opposition from some members of Israel’s cabinet.“Israel bears a responsibility here to do more,” Kirby said.View image in fullscreenIsrael meanwhile stepped up its allegations against the UN relief agency for Palestinians (Unrwa), saying that Unrwa in Gaza had employed over 450 “military operatives” from Hamas and other armed groups, and that Israel had shared this intelligence with the UN.“Over 450 Unrwa employees are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza,” Israeli military spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari said on Monday evening. “This is no mere coincidence. This is systematic.”“We sent the information that I am sharing now, as well as further intelligence, to our international partners, including the UN,” he said.A preliminary report by the UN office of internal oversight services (OIOS) into alleged Unrwa-Hamas links delivered to the secretary-general last week, said the investigators had received no evidence from Israel since the initial allegations in January that a dozen Unrwa employees had taken part in the 7 October Hamas attack. But the OIOS said it expected to receive information from Israel shortly.Pramila Patten, the UN special envoy on sexual violence in conflict reported on Monday that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape, “sexualised torture,” and other cruel and inhumane treatment of women during the 7 October attack. In her report, Patten, who visited Israel with a nine-person team in the first half of February, added there were also “reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.” As the talks were under way in Cairo, a top Israeli minister, Benny Gantz, arrived in Washington for talks with Harris, the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to the undisguised irritation of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu invited his longstanding political rival into a coalition government after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, but that has done little to improve the tense relations between the two men.US officials acknowledged that Gantz’s meetings in Washington, enhancing his own status as a would-be prime minister, was likely to inflame those tensions further. Netanyahu has yet to be invited to the White House since he returned to office at the end of 2022, at the head of the most rightwing coalition in Israeli history.Gantz is said to have asked for the visit to Washington, rather than having been invited, but US officials said they welcomed an opportunity to talk to a member of the five-man Israeli war cabinet.“We’re going to discuss a number of things in terms of the priorities that, certainly, we have, which includes getting a hostage deal done, getting aid in, and then getting that six-week ceasefire,” Harris told reporters before meeting Gantz.The Biden administration is pushing for more crossing points into Gaza to be opened for humanitarian relief, especially Erez in the north. US officials say that a sea route would take at least a week to arrange, if at all, so opening Erez and other access points to the north is seen by aid organisations as an urgent priority.“The disparity in conditions in the north and south [of Gaza] is clear evidence that aid restrictions in the north are costing lives,” warned Adele Khodr, the regional director of the UN children’s relief organisation, Unicef. Unicef says 16% of children in the north are acutely malnourished, compared with 5% in the south of the strip.The White House is seeking to help resolve rifts within the Israeli coalition, suggesting Netanyahu should seek a compromise over his coalition’s bitterly contested judicial overhaul, introduced early last year. After unprecedented street protests over the measures, in which demonstrators said they feared for Israel’s democratic future, the US president went even further, telling reporters in March 2023: “I hope he walks away from it.”Netanyahu has faced significant pressure to step down for nearly a decade over his ongoing trials for corruption charges, which he denies, as well as for instigating the judicial overhaul, which has been suspended since the outbreak of war.It is widely believed in Israel that Netanyahu is slow-walking ceasefire talks, as well as talking up threats of an Israeli offensive on Rafah and Lebanon, because he believes he stands a better chance of beating the charges if he remains in office, and elections are unlikely while Israel is still at war.Earlier this year, Israel’s centrist opposition leader, Yair Lapid, met the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris.Polling suggests Netanyahu’s coalition of far-right and religious parties would incur massive losses if an election was held now, and centrist and leftwing Israeli parties are looking for ways to force an early contest. Gantz’s party is currently likely to win the most votes.Lapid said in a post on X after last week’s local elections that the successful contests showed that holding national elections during the war would pose “no problem”. More

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      How Gaza activists in Minnesota are pushing the US wave of ‘uncommitted’ votes

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      Dozens of families turned up to a Minneapolis park on Sunday to hear why they should cast an “uncommitted” protest vote in Tuesday’s presidential primary and how that could affect the Israel-Gaza war.Kids played on the playground or made signs to support Palestine while their caregivers listened as organizers shared an “easy action”: show up at your local polling place on Tuesday, ask for a Democratic ballot and check the box that says “uncommitted”.Minnesota organizers, inspired by the strong turnout for an uncommitted vote in Michigan, quickly put together a coalition to get out the word that Minnesota voters should follow Michigan’s example.In Michigan, Democrats set a goal to get 10,000 uncommitted votes; more than 100,000 people instead voted uncommitted, a message to Joe Biden that Democratic voters demand his action on Palestine. The Israel-Gaza war serves as a key liability for the US president in his re-election bid, and his positions on the issue have turned some Democrats away from him during what is shaping up to be a close race with Donald Trump.After Michigan’s success, organizers in other progressive states that have uncommitted options on their ballots have started working on local efforts to keep the pressure on Biden for a ceasefire. Minnesota, a Super Tuesday state, has a few factors that give it potential for a good turnout for the uncommitted vote: high voter turnout overall, a progressive history, a large Muslim community. Minnesota’s campaign could further buoy the movement and boost the protest vote in other states, organizers hope.“We vote in Minnesota. Number one in the country for turnout,” said Jaylani Hussein, a co-chair of the Abandon Biden campaign in Minnesota. “And when it comes to minorities and immigrants, we also have historically high, record turnout.”At the Minneapolis park, Amanda Purcell of MN Families for Palestine led the audience in a chant: “Gaza kids! Our kids!” The organization has worked for months to reach out to elected officials to support a ceasefire by using small actions that people with kids can easily do.“We’re really starting to feel the momentum here,” Purcell said. “And we’re hoping that what we do here will just continue to push the wave of uncommitted across the United States.”Supporters passed out a flyer with a QR code where people could fill out a form to pledge to vote uncommitted, which calls on those pledging their support to also send the form to three other families to share the message.Over the past week, Minnesota activists have called and texted voters to push out the “uncommitted” message. They’ve gone to mosques around the state to share the idea, targeting Minnesota’s Muslim population. They’ve held rallies. They’ve reached out to college students, families, people who’ve attended protests in the past.Groups around Minnesota have protested and worked to move their local members of Congress on Palestine. They’ve shown up on Democratic governor Tim Walz’s lawn, calling on him to get the state to divest from Israel. The progressive state with a history of grassroots organizing saw existing groups work together to quickly stand up an uncommitted campaign.Some Democratic voters in the state had seen what happened in Michigan and already planned to vote uncommitted, said Asma Mohammed, one of the organizers behind Vote Uncommitted MN. To others, supporters explained the idea of “uncommitted” being a protest vote. Some voters had shared that they’d felt there was no reason to show up for the presidential primary because their voices weren’t being heard in a contest dominated by a sitting president; “uncommitted” gives them an option to send a message, Mohammed said.Mohammed is against a Trump presidency, as are, she says, the rest of the organizers. But there is real disapproval and discontent with Democrats and Biden among the communities who want to see a ceasefire. People are “really angry”, and she hopes the primary vote for uncommitted helps Biden understand that he and the party are losing longtime Democrats, perhaps permanently, because of this.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m hoping that President Biden listens, because I don’t want to have to organize my community out of becoming Republicans or just sitting at home,” Mohammed said. “And it’s not just my community.”Minnesota’s campaign doesn’t have a number goal like Michigan did. Instead, organizers want to keep Michigan’s first step going in Minnesota, then help people in other states stand up their own efforts. But, most importantly, they want Biden to act. And they believe the only way they can get him to listen now is through their votes.A win for the uncommitted campaign would be a permanent ceasefire, Mohammed said.“We don’t want any more empty claims,” she said. “Another win for us is that this will embolden some of our members of Congress and Senate to take action because there are a lot of them who have not been on the right side of this either, who have taken votes that have angered the community and have really been hurting their chances at re-election.”The Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor party (DFL), the state’s Democratic party, has said it expects Biden to easily win the state. (Another Minnesotan, congressman Dean Phillips, is running for president and on the state’s presidential primary ballots, though his campaign has been virtually non-existent in the state in the lead-up to Super Tuesday.) The party’s chair, Ken Martin, has sought to remind voters of the contrast between Biden and Trump.After Minnesota’s vote on Tuesday, organizers here plan to share what they learn from the rapid move for an uncommitted campaign with other states. Already, Washington state has an uncommitted campaign underway that received an endorsement from the state’s United Food and Commercial Workers, its largest labor union.“This is a national movement,” Mohammed said. “It doesn’t stop with Michigan. It doesn’t stop with Minnesota. All of us have to be all in to get the attention of the president.” More

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      Michigan Democrats have sent Biden a flashing warning sign about the election | Ben Davis

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      The Michigan Democratic primary was the first test of the electoral strength of the movement for a ceasefire in Gaza. It exhibited strength beyond what any observer expected, showing the size and enthusiasm of the peace movement and the danger to President Biden of continuing his current policy of full support for Israel. Organizers of the Listen to Michigan campaign to vote uncommitted in the Michigan primary set the bar at 10,000 votes – the margin of victory in Michigan’s 2016 general election. “Uncommitted” had blown past that number before even 10% of the vote had been counted. Biden needs to heed this flashing warning sign and drastically change course: call for a ceasefire, halt arms shipments to Israel and exert maximal diplomatic pressure now. The call for a ceasefire now can no longer be written off as a demand of only leftwing activists or Arab and Muslim communities. A large swathe of the Democratic base demands it.Biden can win uncommitted voters in the general election. These are consistent Democratic voters who turn out to Democratic primaries and powered Biden’s win in the swing state in 2020. The uncommitted vote showed strength far beyond what both organizers and the Biden campaign expected. “Uncommitted” won outright on college campuses like the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University, dominating predominantly Arab east Dearborn with over 80% of the vote. But the strength wasn’t limited to progressive and Arab areas. “Uncommitted” captured 10% or more of the vote across the state, from affluent suburban areas to rural areas, and did even better in the working-class Black-majority core of the Michigan Democratic electorate of Detroit, winning 23% of the election day votes in the city.The results are clear: the movement for a ceasefire and the dissatisfaction with Biden’s policies among the Democratic base have real electoral strength and can’t be dismissed. Massive supermajorities of Democratic voters support a ceasefire, and the results in Michigan show this isn’t just a passive policy preference but a deeply felt moral stance among the core voters Biden needs to win the election. Rather than stay home, huge numbers of voters took time out of their day to cast a vote for no one just to register their protest and hopefully do their part to stop the killing. There were no other statewide elections on the ballot to drive turnout and no viable candidate against Biden. Yet enthusiasm for “uncommitted” was so high that precincts in Dearborn ran out of their usual allotment of registration sign-up sheets trying to keep up with demand.This campaign was announced only three weeks ago, a disadvantage in a state where most Democrats vote by mail well before the election. It was powered through organizing through Muslim and Arab community groups, on-the-ground voter contact from organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, and remarkable enthusiasm from volunteers. With almost no money, the message caught on like wildfire because it spoke to the deeply held feelings of Michigan Democrats, winning the endorsement of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and a handful of members of the state legislature and local elected officials. By election day, there was “panic” in the White House.Michigan Democratic politicians have warned of the strength of the ceasefire movement for months and been ignored by the White House. While Michigan Democratic politicians, even moderate ones, have felt the anger and disappointment on the ground and try to use empathic language to communicate with young, progressive, Arab and Muslim voters, the White House and the national Democratic party have been aloof and haranguing. The message that Donald Trump is worse and expressing concern or registering disapproval helps him does not work and is actively alienating voters. What would bring people back into the fold is, first, actually listening and expressing empathy and, second and most importantly, actually taking action to halt the bloodshed and stand up for Palestinian lives. This isn’t a niche issue. All people of conscience feel it.Biden can still win this election, but not with discontent with his base in crucial swing states. If morality will not push him to take action to halt Israel’s war crimes, perhaps politics will. The numbers don’t lie. We need a ceasefire now. More

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      ‘Biden needs to be pro-peace’: Michigan anti-war campaign hails huge vote tally

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      A last-minute push by anti-war activists to reject President Joe Biden over his unwavering support for Israel far exceeded expectations in the Michigan Democratic party primary on Tuesday night.Leaders from the grassroots campaign, called Listen to Michigan, said ahead of the primary that they would count 10,000 “uncommitted” votes – roughly Trump’s winning margin in Michigan eight years ago – as a victory.Instead they surpassed that goal by an order of magnitude, earning the support of more than 100,000 Democrats who checked the “uncommitted” box, and 13% of votes overall. That should weigh heavily on Democrats, who could lose the pivotal state – and even the presidency – in November if these sentiments persist. Biden won Michigan by about 150,000 votes in 2020 – less than 3% of the overall vote.It remains to be seen how many of the Michigan voters who withheld their support from Biden during the primary will abandon the president in the general election, where he will most likely face former president Donald Trump, whose brash Islamophobia and policies targeting Muslims defined his 2016 campaign and early presidency.“This is a victory of American democracy,” said former US congressman Andy Levin, addressing a crowd of Listen to Michigan supporters as the results trickled in last night. “There is no time to waste – we need a permanent ceasefire right now.” In 2022 Levin, a progressive Jewish politician, faced a primary opponent in a new district and lost. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) spent more than $4m to support his opponent.Michigan is home to one of the largest concentrations of Arab and Muslim Americans in the US, many of them living in the greater Detroit area. Those voters formed an important part of the Democratic coalition in 2020, but their support for Biden has plummeted as the president continues to support Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of nearly 30,000 Palestinians in just five months.According to exit polling by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), 94% of Muslim voters who cast their ballots in Michigan’s Democratic primary on Tuesday voted “uncommitted”. There are about 200,000 registered Muslim voters in Michigan.The “uncommitted” campaign formed quickly in early February with just weeks to spare ahead of the primary. Spurred by younger and Arab organizers, it was also supported by labor activists and progressive Jewish voters. Dozens of elected officials in the Detroit area and several national Democrats also registered their support. In a video posted to social media, Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian American congresswoman representing Dearborn and Detroit, explained why she voted “uncommitted”.“President Biden is not hearing us,” said Tlaib, noting that according to recent polling, about 74% of Michigan Democrats support a ceasefire in Gaza. “This is the way we can use our democracy to say ‘listen – listen to Michigan.’”In a New York Times opinion column that ran a week before the primary, the mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, who also backed the “uncommitted” campaign, described the “visceral sense of betrayal” his constituents feel toward the Biden administration. “President Biden,” Hammoud wrote, “is proving many of our worst fears about our government true: that regardless of how loud your voice may be, how many calls to government officials you may make, how many peaceful protests you organize and attend, nothing will change.”But it isn’t only Muslim and Arab American voters who the president stands to lose in the November general election. Biden’s support among younger voters and Black voters, who formed key blocs in 2020, also threatens to collapse as the Israel-Hamas war, which has decimated Gaza, wears on.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSo far, the Biden campaign has barely registered a response to the high turnout for the “uncommitted” campaign vote, and made no mention of it in a more than 300-word statement issued on Tuesday night – instead focusing on his record on infrastructure, healthcare, labor and the threat of a second Trump term.“It’s astounding how many words that statement used to describe and distract from the reality that over 100,000 Democratic presidential primary voters in Michigan showed up to vote for peace and against war,” Abbas Alawieh, a spokesperson for the Listen to Michigan campaign, told the Guardian. “My advice to President Biden and his team would be not to ignore this movement but to engage productively with us.”The formal demands of the Listen to Michigan campaign are for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to unconditional US military aid to Israel.“President Biden needs to emerge as a pro-peace president if he’s going to earn our vote,” said Alawieh. More

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      ‘Uncommitted’ vote in Michigan a warning shot over Biden’s support of Israel

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      Standing before shimmering gold curtains on Tuesday evening, the mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, spoke with pride about his city.“We had the audacity to choose people over political party,” he said. “We had the damn audacity to put people over president.”For many gathered at this sprawling banquet hall in the heart of America’s most concentrated Muslim population, the outcome of last night’s Democratic primary in Michigan was beyond even the boldest of predictions.Although Joe Biden took the state, it was the hastily organized but committed grassroots campaign against the president’s support for the Israeli government’s war with Gaza that took the night. Organizers with Listen to Michigan, a group that urged voters to withdraw support for Biden and instead vote uncommitted, had hoped for a showing of 10,000 votes. They returned more than 100,000 – a clear demonstration of the growing fractures among the diverse coalition that brought Biden to power in 2020.It is a warning shot to the Democratic party, and shows more signs of expanding than diminishing as the primary season wears on.In just four weeks, the uncommitted campaign mobilized a cohort of progressives concentrated in the suburbs of Detroit, a region that saw a significant rise in Democratic turnout four years ago.“This is a humanitarian vote,” said the campaign’s manager, Layla Elabed, a 34-year-old lifelong Democrat, as she sipped coffee at a Yemeni cafe on a frigid Sunday morning, two days before the vote. “Right now, Joe Biden sits in a place of power where he can actually change course and save lives.”Elabed, the sister of the US representative Rashida Tlaib – the first Palestinian American to serve in Congress – met Biden last year at the White House during Eid celebrations. The president has heard personal stories of their grandmother’s struggles living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, she said. “But it feels a lot like it’s falling on deaf ears.”Her next stop was a rally in the city of Hamtramck, where those assembled underlined not only the movement’s diverse collective of ages and race, but also the divergent outlooks on how the campaign could or should affect the general election in November.“I’m very focused on the moment,” said Dima Hassan, a Palestinian American who would be voting in her first presidential election in 2024. “What is happening right now is an active genocide so thinking about November honestly feels silly.”Yet Tuesday’s result should send alarm bells ringing for that vote, given the thin margin of Trump’s victory in 2016, which saw him swing the state red by just more than 10,000 votes. Organizers say the group is also representative of the large Democratic disapproval ratings of Biden’s handling of the war, the death toll in which is likely to surpass 30,000 in Gaza by this week.Although hastily convened, Listen to Michigan is well organized, with an effective phone banking operation making more than 500,000 calls in just a matter of weeks, according to the campaign. But with no official headquarters, meetings are held in cafes and living rooms. Elabed’s car is laden with boxes of flyers that she hauls alone, darting between locations.Although Biden sent campaign representatives to meet with members of the Arab-American community here earlier this month and on Monday expressed hope of a ceasefire, recent comments from the state’s Democratic governor that equated an uncommitted vote to effective support for Donald Trump were met with scorn.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMuslim communities in Dearborn and elsewhere endured rising rates of hate crimes during the Trump presidency, following a campaign laced with Islamophobia. Trump implemented a travel ban for several Muslim majority countries, which he has pledged to reinstate if he wins in 2024.With just a few hours left to vote on Tuesday afternoon, polling stations in Dearborn were still welcoming a steady flow of primary voters. At an intersection by the McDonald elementary school, Linda Sarsour, the New York-based organizer, was handing out flyers to those who trickled through. Most had already decided to cast their ballot uncommitted.Sarsour, who co-chaired the Women’s March in 2017 and became a prominent activist during the Trump era, expressed contempt at those within the party making the Trump equation.“Shame on them for gaslighting this community,” she said. “This is a presidential primary, this is democracy and people should be able to vote for whoever they want. Donald Trump is not part of the Democratic primary.”She continued: “But also the ball is in Joe Biden’s court. Why start pointing fingers at the voters when they should be pointing fingers at Joe Biden. They should be demanding that Joe Biden do better in order to keep these voters within the Democratic party.”Sarsour was one of a handful of volunteers from outside Michigan who had come to support the campaign on Tuesday. Others had arrived from Florida, Illinois and Washington, as the grassroots effort looks to expand beyond Michigan.Efforts are already under way for an uncommitted vote in Minnesota and also in Washington, while other states that do not offer an uncommitted ballot option may see new write-in campaigns.“This is becoming an opportunity to translate protest in the street to protest at the ballot,” Sarsour said. More