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    Joe Biden receiving radiation therapy for prostate cancer

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    Joe Biden is receiving radiation therapy for his prostate cancer that was diagnosed in May, a spokesperson for the former US president said on Saturday morning.“As part of a treatment plan for prostate cancer, President Biden is currently undergoing radiation therapy and hormone treatment, the spokesperson said. The news was first reported by NBC.The new round of treatment was expected to be spread over a five-week period, the spokesperson for Biden said to NBC, and marks a new point in the former president’s care. He had already been taking hormone medication in pill form, as he had previously mentioned in public when questioned in the spring about his illness.Biden was diagnosed in May with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones, his personal office had announced. The Democrat had left the White House in January after Republican Donald Trump became the 47th president of the United States, following his 2024 election victory.Biden first spoke out in public about his diagnosis later in May, saying he was optimistic about his prognosis and that “the expectation is we are going to be able to beat this”.The president returned to his home in Delaware after his single term in office concluded, and he turns 83 next month.In September he underwent a procedure known as Mohs surgery to remove cancerous cells from his skin.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Kamala Harris’s election memoir shows just how deluded the Democrats still are | Nesrine Malik

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      Watching the Kamala Harris presidential campaign unfold last year, I remember thinking, and writing, about how striking it was that she had been rehabilitated almost overnight into a political titan. Authoritative accounts of her before that moment portrayed a lo-fi vice-president, who, even according to people who had worked to get her there, had “not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country”. Another striking feature of her campaign was how it leaned into vibes and spectacle rather than substance, or building faith in Harris as a clean break from an unpopular and visibly deteriorating Joe Biden. Her new book, 107 Days, a memoir of the exact number of days she had to win the presidency, goes a long way in explaining why that was. In short, Harris – and those around her, including supportive media parties – got high on their own supply.This was not the intention, but 107 Days is a hilarious book. The kind of “you have to laugh or else you’ll cry” type of hilarity. As the second Trump administration unfolds in ever-more disastrous ways, Harris and the other timeline that was possible had she won take on a calamitous, mythical quality. Here she comes, alerting us to the fact that her defeat was no fateful tragedy, but a farce. There was no hidden, better version of Harris that was muzzled and limited by circumstance. There was only a woman with a formidable lack of self-awareness and a propensity to self-valorise.The book reveals a politician who is all about the machinery of politics, rather than one with conviction spurred by a sense of duty, or a coherent and specific set of values that differentiate her. The “not a thing that comes to mind” answer she gave when asked during the campaign if there was anything she would have done differently to Biden was not caution, but the truth. There is no sign here that she would have liked to meaningfully diverge on Gaza, for example, other than to introduce more parity in the rhetoric of compassion. Or any indication that she would have liked to grasp the nettle on economic policy and make more of her accusation that Donald Trump’s economic agenda “works best if it works for those who own the big skyscrapers”.This dearth of a unique Harris agenda explains why she often seemed so vague, skittish and rambling. How does she receive the news she will be the candidate? By reminding herself (and us) that she had the best “contact book” and “name recognition”, as well as the “strongest case”. She tries to cloak her ambition, saying “knew she could” be president, but only because she “wanted to do the work. I have always been a protector.” It’s fine to have ambition to be the president of the United States! Every cardinal dreams of becoming pope, as Cardinal Bellini of Conclave said. Even he did himself, to his shame, when he lamented upon the discovery of his ambition: “To be this age and still not know yourself.”My abiding feeling reading was: oh God, this was all just as bad as it looked. The celebrity-packed campaign roster was not, in fact, panicked desperation, but the preference of the candidate and her team. They thought that such a range of characters would show that Harris was “welcoming everyone into the campaign” – as if the power of celebrity could do the unifying work of coalition-building, rather than her own programme and politicking. The immersion in the filmic, the celluloid of US politics is so complete that there is a line about Jon Bon Jovi performing for her and it being a good omen, because he performed for a candidate who won in The West Wing. The media loved her. “And behold,” Harris quotes a Washington Post writer, praising her approach to Gaza, “she had her boat through the impossible strait.” Jon Favreau said Harris was “a sight to behold” at the Democratic convention.I lost count of the number of descriptions of crowds exploding, roaring, on fire. The audience applause to Harris’s Saturday Night Live appearance was some of the loudest ever heard. She replays her greatest hits, revealing a politician captured by the reverie of rapturous self-selecting crowds and buzzy studios, fatally unable to connect to the voters outside the bubble, who had soured on the Democrats and were checking out, or voting for Trump.View image in fullscreenBiden pops up often, a self-involved and petty figure, snapping at her heels and distracting her. But she is loyal, she tells us – often. So loyal that she couldn’t disparage him in the way that people needed her to (“People hate Joe Biden!” she is told by a senior adviser). But not so loyal that she doesn’t more artfully disguise that she wants you to know the man was a real drag who mentioned her too late in his speeches, and then called her before her big debate with Trump to unsubtly threaten her if she bad-mouthed him. But what is most telling, and alarming, is what she reveals about the Democratic establishment, and therefore what hope there is of an awakening among its ranks. One that could pose a meaningful challenge to Trump now, and Trumpism in the future. The 107 days were short, but they were a concentration of a process in which the party and its candidate had to dig deep quickly to unearth the most compelling and defining vision for the American people. The result was to take no risks, offer continuity and scold dissenters as Trump enablers, but with style. It wasn’t enough, and will never be.The answer to the question “what went wrong” isn’t “we didn’t have enough time” to establish Harris. It was that Harris, even now, with all the time to reflect and be honest with herself, is a politician who invests too much in presentation, and entirely exculpates herself of failures because she was dealt a bad political hand. What can you say besides, “to be this age and still not know yourself”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump hangs autopen photo instead of Biden portrait in new presidential gallery

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      President Donald Trump has added a “Presidential Walk of Fame” to the exterior of the White House, featuring portraits of each of the previous commanders-in-chief – except for one.Instead of a headshot of Joe Biden, the Republican incumbent instead placed a photo of an autopen signing the Democrat’s name – a reference to Trump’s frequent allegation that the former president was addled by the end of his term in office and not really the one making decisions.The snub is the latest attempt by Trump to delegitimise a predecessor he routinely belittles, including in front of more than 100 world leaders on Tuesday at the UN general assembly gathering. Trump has never acknowledged his own defeat to Biden in the 2020 election, instead falsely chalking up the outcome to voter fraud.Trump had previously signalled he would represent Biden with an autopen on the walkway. Trump has alleged without evidence that Biden administration officials may have forged their boss’s signature by using the autopen and taken broad actions he was not aware of.He has also cast doubt on the validity of pardons and other documents that Biden signed with an autopen, even though other presidents before him have also relied on the device to sign key papers. A Republican-led House committee is investigating the Biden administration’s autopen use.White House staff sent out a burst of social media posts on Wednesday afternoon gleefully promoting the finished project. The media may get its first in-person glimpse of the display when Trump hosts a dinner on Wednesday night on the new Rose Garden patio that sits adjacent to the West Wing Colonnade on which the portraits hang.The addition is the latest in a series of design changes he has made at the White House since resuming office. The president also added gold flourishes to the Oval Office walls, installed massive new flagpoles on both lawns, replaced the grass in the Rose Garden with patio stone and started construction on a large new ballroom. More

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      Donald Trump says Charlie Kirk has died after being shot at university event – latest updates

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      Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally and rightwing activist, has been shot and killed at an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Wednesday. Here’s what we know so far:

      Kirk, 31, died after being shot during a presentation on campus. Donald Trump first announced the death in a Truth Social post.

      Donald Trump wrote: “The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!”

      Campus police are investigating the incident. The university said the suspect is not in custody. A person arrested earlier has been released and is no longer a suspect.

      Kirk, the executive director of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was shot at about 12.10pm local time while appearing at an event. In video posts circulating on social media, Kirk can be seen getting struck while speaking and sitting beneath a tent. Kirk was there as part of the American Comeback tour, which is hosted by the TPUSA chapter at Utah Valley. Video footage shows students on campus running away from the sound of gunshots.

      Kirk was about 20 minutes into a presentation when a shot was fired from a nearby building, the university told CNBC. The university has said a “single shot” was fired towards Kirk.

      Political leaders in the US immediately condemned the attack. Joe Biden, the former US president, tweeted: “There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.”

      Senior Democrats and Republicans also condemned the shooting. Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Chuck Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were among Democrats who condemned the attack. JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth paid tribute to Kirk and asked the public to pray for him.

      The House speaker, Mike Johnson, told reporters in the Capitol: “Political violence has become all too common in American society. This is not who we are. It violates the core principles of our country.”

      In an internal email to staff members that was posted online on Wednesday, the Turning Point USA COO, Justin Streiff, said: “It is with a heavy heart that we, the Turning Point USA leadership team, write to notify you that earlier this afternoon Charlie went to his eternal reward with Jesus Christ in Heaven … However, in the meantime, Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action will be closed for business until Monday, the 15th – likely longer.”

      The White House lowered its flag to half-staff in Kirk’s honor.
      Former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and the former vice-president Kamala Harris, have all condemned the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk in posts on social media.While the motive of the person who shot Kirk remains unknown, as police hunt for a suspect, all three Democrats argued that political violence must be condemned.“We don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy,” Obama wrote. “Michelle and I will be praying for Charlie’s family tonight, especially his wife Erika and their two young children.”“There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now,” Biden wrote on social media. “Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones.”“I am deeply disturbed by the shooting in Utah”, Harris wrote before news of Kirkj’s death was announced by Donald Trump. “Doug and I send our prayers to Charlie Kirk and his family. Let me be clear: Political violence has no place in America. I condemn this act, and we all must work together to ensure this does not lead to more violence.”The newly installed flag on the north lawn of the White House was lowered to half-staff on Tuesday afternoon, after Donald Trump announced the death of Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot while debating students at Utah Valley University on Tuesday.Trump wrote on social media that he was ordering all American flags to be lowered across the country until Sunday evening.A spokesperson for Utah Valley University, Ellen Treanor, tells the Guardian: “A suspect was in custody, but they are no longer a suspect.”In a statement, Treanor added:
      It is with the tremendous sadness and shock that Charlie Kirk, who was invited by the student group TPUSA, was shot at about 12:20 when he began speaking at his planned event on the Utah Valley University Orem Campus. Kirk was immediately transported by his security team to a local hospital.
      Campus was immediately evacuated. Campus is closed and classes have been canceled until further notice. We are asking those still on campus to secure in place until police officers can safely escort them off campus.
      The incident is currently being investigated by four agencies: Orem Police, UVU Police, FBI, and Utah Department of Public Safety.
      Among those coming to terms with the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday is the progressive streamer, Hasan Piker, who was scheduled to debate Kirk at Dartmouth College in two weeks.On his Twitch live stream, Piker expressed horror at the shooting, and urged his followers not to celebrate it, but told viewers to stop writing in to tell him to wear a bulletproof vest or hire security for his public appearances.“I don’t have any security,” Piker told his viewers. “It shouldn’t be like this.” He went on to argue that only gun control could prevent mass shootings.“In a moment like this, a reasonable government would say: ‘Alright, enough is enough,’” Piker said. “If we had a responsible government and not a bunch of fucking psychopaths running the show,” he added, the US would already have had serious gun control following the massacre at at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.“I need to really reconsider the way I do everything outside, for the forseeable future,” Piker said.“Before people say: ‘Wear a bulletproof vest,’ again, he got shot in the neck,” Piker said. “A bulletproof vest would not have saved Charlie Kirk.”“The only thing that could have potentially saved Charlie Kirk,” he added, “was if our administrations, prior to this one and this one as well, actually had reasonable gun control as a policy position, in the aftermath of, I don’t know, a hundred other school shootings.”The House speaker, Mike Johnson, told reporters in the Capitol a few minutes ago: “Political violence has become all too common in American society. This is not who we are. It violates the core principles of our country.”Writing on his social network, Donald Trump just announced the death of Charlie Kirk.Trump wrote:
      The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!
      A White House correspondent for the New York Post reports that she just spoke with Donald Trump on the phone about Charlie Kirk.“He’s not doing well,” Trump told Diana Nerozzi. “It looks very bad.”She then asked Trump how he was feeling. He replied: “Not good. He was a very, very good friend of mine and he was a tremendous person.”Videos circulating on social media showed an attender at the student event on Wednesday asking Charlie Kirk: “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?”In response, Kirk said: “Too many,” as the crowd clapped.In a follow-up question, the attender asked: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”Kirk replied: “Counting or not counting gang violence?”Seconds later, Kirk could be seen struck in the neck as he falls back in his chair.A spokesperson for Utah Valley University has retracted an earlier claim that a suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, is in custody.In a statement provided to Deseret News in Utah, university spokesperson Scott Trotter said: “We can confirm that Mr Kirk was shot, but we don’t know his condition. The suspect is not in custody. Police are still investigating Campus is closed for the rest of the day.”Trotter told the New York Times that police had taken someone into custody earlier but have determined that he was not the gunman.Kirk’s event in Utah today was the first of a 15-stop tour at universities across the country. Titled “The American Comeback”, the 31-year-old activist was due to speak at Colorado State University on 18 September.

      Charlie Kirk, a Trump ally and rightwing activist, has been shot at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

      The university said in a statement that Kirk was taken away by his security. Law enforcement have told the AP he is in hospital and in a critical condition.

      Campus police are investigating the incident. There are some conflicting reports about the detainment status of the suspect.

      Donald Trump has asked for prayers for Kirk. Trump wrote on Truth Social: “We must all pray for Charlie Kirk, who has been shot. A great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!”

      Kirk, the executive director of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), was shot at about 12.10pm local time while hosting an event. In video posts circulating on social media, Kirk can be seen getting struck while speaking and sitting beneath a tent. Kirk was there as part of The American Comeback Tour, which is hosted by the TPUSA chapter at Utah Valley. There is also video footage of students on campus running away from the sound of gunshots.

      Kirk was about 20 minutes into a presentation when shots were fired from a nearby building, the university told CNBC. The university has said a “single shot” was fired towards Kirk.

      FBI director Kash Patel has said that his agency is “closely monitoring” the situation.

      The shooting sparked immediate condemnation from Republicans and Democrats. Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro and Chuck Schumer condemned the attack. JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth paid tribute to Kirk and asked the public to pray for him.

      Spencer Cox, Utah’s governor, said that he has been “briefed by law enforcement following the violence directed at Charlie Kirk during his visit to Utah Valley University today.” Cox added that “those responsible will be held fully accountable,” and uged “Americans of every political persuasion” to condemn the shooting. He offered his prayers to Kirk, his family and all those affected.

      Shortly before shots rang out, Kirk tweeted: “WE. ARE. SO. BACK. Utah Valley University is FIRED UP and READY for the first stop back on the American Comeback Tour.”
      Charlie Kirk is in critical condition at a hospital, after being shot at a speaking event at Utah Valley University, a law enforcement official tells the Associated Press.The university said earlier that a suspect was in custody, and the college campus has closed, and classes have been cancelled.Eva Terry, another Deseret News reporter who was also at the event, described the direction of the shot, saying: “It looks like it came from the middle to the right side of the audience.Describing the suspect, Terry said: “It looks like he was an older gentleman, probably in his late 50s to 60s, wearing what looks like a worker’s uniform.”Kirk was being asked a question about mass shootings when he was shot in the neck, according to eyewitnesses.Speaking to the Guardian, Deseret News reporter Emma Pitts who was at the event said: “He was on the second question and it was regarding mass shootings and the person he was debating had asked about if he knew how many mass shootings had involved a transgender shooter to which Kirk responded. Then he asked how many mass shootings had been in total in the last couple of years, I believe.“And then before he could even answer, we heard a gunshot and we just saw Charlie Kirk’s neck turn to the side and it appeared that he had been shot in the neck. There was blood, immediately a lot of blood,” Pitts added.“After the shots were fired, everyone immediately took to the ground … we were just trying to stay hidden. I don’t know how quickly it was, probably within a minute, everyone started running away … Since then the university has been completely evacuated,” said Pitts.Utah Valley University, based in Orem about 40 miles south of Salt Lake City, has closed its campus and is cancelling classes “until further notice”, according to statement.“Police are investigating. Leave campus immediately,” the university added.We’re also hearing from several leading Democrats across the country, condemning the shooting at Utah Valley University.Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said in a post on X that “the attack on Charlie Kirk is horrifying and this growing type of unconscionable violence cannot be allowed in our society.” Shapiro added that “Political violence has no place in our country.”Similarly, California governor Gavin Newsom described the shooting as “disgusting, vile, and reprehensible.”On Capitol Hill, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said that he was “praying” for Kirk and his family, while echoing statements denouncing political violence.Alongside the president, several members of his cabinet have offered their prayers to Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and Turning Point founder, who was shot during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University.Vice-president JD Vance asked his followers to “say a prayer for Charlie Kirk, a genuinely good guy and a young father”, and attorney general Pam Bondi wrote that “FBI and ATF agents are on the scene. PRAY FOR CHARLIE.”Meanwhile, Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department for Homeland Security, said that she and her husband “are lifting up Charlie, Erika, and their family in our prayers right now”.Defense secretary Pete Hegseth added that Kirk was “an incredible Christian, American, and human being”. More

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      Joe Biden to begin fundraising to build presidential library in Delaware

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      Former US president Joe Biden has decided to build his presidential library in Delaware and has tapped a group of former aides, friends and political allies to begin the heavy lift of fundraising and finding a site for the museum and archive.The Joe and Jill Biden Foundation this past week approved a 13-person governance board that is charged with steering the project. The board includes former secretary of state Antony Blinken, longtime adviser Steve Ricchetti, prolific Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford and others with deep ties to the one-term president and his wife.Biden’s library team has the daunting task of raising money for the 46th president’s legacy project at a moment when his party has become fragmented about the way ahead and many big Democratic donors have stopped writing checks.It also remains to be seen whether corporations and institutional donors that have historically donated to presidential library projects – regardless of the party of the former president – will be more hesitant to contribute, with Donald Trump in the White House for a second term, maligning Biden on a daily basis and savaging groups he deems left-leaning.“There’s certainly folks – folks who may have been not thinking about those kinds of issues who are starting to think about them,” Gifford, who was named chair of the library board, told the Associated Press. “That being said … we’re not going to create a budget, we’re not going to set a goal for ourselves that we don’t believe we can hit.”The George HW Bush library’s construction cost was about $43m when it opened in 1997. Bill Clinton’s cost about $165m. George W Bush’s team met its $500m fundraising goal before the library was dedicated.The Obama Foundation has set a whopping $1.6bn fundraising goal for construction, sustaining global programming and seeding an endowment for the Chicago presidential center that is slated to open next year.Biden’s library team is still in the early stages of planning.Construction and support for programming for the libraries are paid for with private funds donated to the non-profit organizations established by the former presidents. More

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      Donald Trump could stop Gaza’s famine. Instead he’s following Biden’s lead | Mohamad Bazzi

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      A global hunger-monitoring group declared last week that Gaza’s largest city and its surrounding area were suffering from an “entirely man-made” famine, mostly caused by Israel’s deliberate starvation strategy and continued siege of the territory. This news won’t surprise anyone who has paid even scant attention to the images and videos of emaciated children and desperate parents that have been coming out of Gaza for months.But the first confirmation of famine by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which includes the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization and other aid agencies, is an important institutional marker. Years from now, it will serve as a reminder of how Israel used starvation as a weapon of war while western powers did nothing. And it will be a source of shame for all those who will inevitably claim that they didn’t realize the extent of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, despite dozens of Palestinian journalists being killed for conveying that reality to the world.Donald Trump can stop this famine – the US is Israel’s largest weapons supplier and most important political supporter. But he has chosen not to. Instead, Trump is backing the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his latest plan to sow more death and destruction by invading Gaza City and displacing 1 million Palestinians. Last month, the US president said children in Gaza “look very hungry”, adding that scenes of suffering showed “real starvation”. Trump contradicted the Israeli government’s spurious claim that warnings about impending famine were fake news.Yet the Trump administration stayed silent after the IPC issued its latest report last week, confirming that Gaza City and its environs are in the midst of a full-blown famine. In order to declare a famine, the IPC requires that an area must cross three critical thresholds: at least 20% of households face an extreme shortage of food; at least 30% of children suffer from acute malnutrition; and at least two adults or four children out of every 10,000 people die each day due to starvation, or disease and malnutrition. Since the IPC was founded in 2004 to warn of global food shortages, it had confirmed only three previous famines: in Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and Sudan last year.By the time a famine is declared, it’s often too late to stop an exponential rise in deaths due to starvation and malnutrition. When a drought-driven famine hit Somalia between 2010 and 2012, about half of the 250,000 people killed had already died by the time the IPC found that the country had crossed famine thresholds.During past famines, the IPC’s declaration helped drive global attention and prompted international donors to rush aid to affected regions. But the world’s attention is already focused on Gaza, and the UN and other aid groups say they have enough food near Gaza’s borders to feed its entire population of 2.1 million for nearly three months. Israel simply refuses to allow much of that aid into the besieged territory – a deliberate starvation campaign supported by the Trump administration.As Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian aid chief, put it last week: “Food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel.” He added that the Gaza famine was “caused by cruelty, justified by revenge, enabled by indifference and sustained by complicity”. Fletcher then appealed to world leaders to pressure Netanyahu to lift the siege.That plea was ultimately intended for Trump, the only leader who can force Netanyahu to end Gaza’s suffering. But the Israeli prime minister and his government continue to defy global outrage, largely because they have Trump’s unwavering support.Since early 2024, the UN and international relief groups have been sounding alarms about the potential for widespread starvation in Gaza because of the Israeli military blockade that started within days of the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. As I wrote recently, Joe Biden ignored these warnings while his administration tried to undermine criticism of its unconditional weapons shipments to Israel. Throughout 2024, when parts of Gaza reached the brink of starvation, Israel would ease its siege allowing some food and supplies to reach desperate Palestinians – and averting a descent into full-blow famine.But Netanyahu abandoned that strategy in early March, when he imposed a new siege on Gaza, with Trump’s tacit approval, depriving Palestinians of food, medicine and other basic needs. Netanyahu, who worried that his extremist government coalition would collapse if he agreed to a permanent truce with Hamas, quickly resumed Israel’s war, breaking a ceasefire that was in place for two months. Since then, Israel has inflicted a more severe siege and starvation campaign on Gaza.On 18 August, Hamas announced that it had accepted a ceasefire deal that is virtually identical to one that Israel and the US had proposed a few weeks earlier. But as he has done for nearly two years, Netanyahu is dragging his feet and making new demands to obstruct negotiations and torpedo any potential deal. Ultimately, Netanyahu wants to prolong the war and stay in power.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt seems Trump has been seduced by Netanyahu’s promise of a decisive victory with his latest plan to conquer Gaza City and other parts of the territory that are not yet occupied by the Israeli military. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump said the Gaza war would reach “a conclusive ending” in the next two or three weeks.Netanyahu has been promising – and failing to deliver – a “total victory” over Hamas for more than a year. “Total victory over Hamas will not take years,” he said confidently in a speech in February 2024. “It will take months.” Since then, Netanyahu expressed lofty ambitions to reshape the entire Middle East, but he continued to defy international and domestic pressure to specify Israel’s postwar plans for Gaza or how the war could end short of his amorphous goal of “total victory”. And that was a deliberate tactic: from the beginning, Netanyahu’s allies wanted a protracted war that would end with Israel occupying Gaza and ethnically cleansing its Palestinian inhabitants.Last week, a top Biden administration official confirmed in an interview aired by an Israeli TV channel that, soon after the October 2023 Hamas attack, Netanyahu was preparing for a grinding guerrilla war in Gaza which could last “for decades”. Matthew Miller, the former state department spokesperson who often defended the administration’s unconditional support for Israel, also said that Netanyahu had repeatedly sabotaged US-brokered ceasefire negotiations. (An Israeli TV report found the prime minister nixed deals or near-agreements seven times.) But the Biden administration consistently blamed Hamas for refusing to accept a ceasefire, and rarely called out Netanyahu for his obstinacy, thinking it would harden Hamas’s position.For 15 months, Biden provided the Israeli premier with political cover and billions of dollars in US arms, becoming more deeply complicit in Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon and other war crimes. Today, Trump is repeating the same ineffective and immoral strategy, enticed by Netanyahu’s empty promise of victory while famine spreads in Gaza.

      Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University More

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      With Trump wreaking havoc, a question for the US Democrats: when will you ever learn? | Timothy Garton Ash

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      Nothing is more insufferable than someone saying “I told you so”; so please forgive me for being insufferable. On 29 September 2023, after a couple of months spent in the US, I published a column that was well summarised in its Guardian headline: “Unless Joe Biden stands aside, the world must prepare for President Trump 2.0”. We can never definitely say “what would have happened if …?”, but there’s a very good chance that had Biden cleared the way for a Democratic primary in autumn 2023 the strongest candidate could have defeated Trump. The entire world would have been spared the disaster now unfolding.“No use crying over spilt milk,” you may say. Yes, but it’s always worth learning lessons for the future. I’m back in the US now, and a recent poll for the Wall Street Journal found that 63% of voters hold an unfavourable view of the Democratic party. To put it mildly, the Democrats have a way to go.So what, given all that is happening and everything we now know, are the right lessons? The point of mentioning my old column is not to boast of some special insider insight into Washington high politics; the point is precisely that I had none. It was just obviously crazy to put up a visibly old and frail candidate who would be 86 years old by the end of his second term. For comparison, the leaders of the Soviet Union who we think of as the epitome of decrepit gerontocracy were, at their respective moments of unlamented demise, 75 (Leonid Brezhnev), 69 (Yuri Andropov) and 73 (Konstantin Chernenko).It required no special knowledge to see this and most Americans already did. By the time I wrote my column, an opinion poll had found that 77% of Americans thought Biden was too old to be president for another four years. It was only the political insiders, the liberal commentariat, the Democratic establishment, who went on agreeing with the president, his family and what was (you couldn’t make this up) actually known informally as the “politburo” of his closest advisers that he was the only man for the job.In their recent, much noticed book, Original Sin, two leading Washington journalists, CNN’s Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios, argue that there was, as their subtitle suggests, a cover up. Biden’s family and the politburo tried to hide his precipitate cognitive decline, confining most of his meetings to between 10am and 4pm. Even cabinet members did not see him up close for many months and in-depth media interviews were as rare as a Pride parade in the Vatican.The authors generously apportion blame to the president, his wife, other family members and his closest advisers, but there’s one set of people they curiously spare: themselves and their fellow Washington insider journalists. Now, I haven’t gone back over all their reporting on CNN and Axios, and there are certainly some pieces that should be cited to defend their journalistic record. But there is no doubt that American political journalists in general, and the liberal commentariat in particular, were slow and late to say what most “ordinary” Americans had long since seen.Why? The New York Times writer Ezra Klein digs into this in an episode of his excellent podcast. Frankly acknowledging that his own February 2024 call for Biden to stand aside was “late”, Klein explores in conversation with Tapper why most others were even later. The answer seems to be a mix of ingredients: journalistic fear of losing access; the vindictive tribalism of the Democratic establishment; deference to an imperial presidency; fear of Donald Trump; worry about Kamala Harris as the presumptive alternative candidate.Fear of losing access is a professional disease of journalism. “You felt like you were destroying all of your relationships with the White House all at once,” says Klein, recalling his February 2024 demarche. “Yes, not just with the White House but the Democratic party,” adds Tapper. My own September 2023 notebook sums up a private conversation with a Washington-based columnist: “Yes, Biden should stand aside. He [the columnist] can’t say it.” (My note continues: “Jill Biden could, but she likes it.”)I know, also from other sources, just how threatening the Democratic establishment could be when trying to close down any questioning of Biden’s fitness to serve a second term. Even in the critical articles that did appear in US media there was a kind of residual deference to the presidency, almost as though they were asking a king to abdicate rather than just another politician to stand aside. Partly this stems from the 237-year-old US constitutional device of rolling your prime minister and monarch into one. In Britain, we confine our residual deference to the monarch while the prime minister gets roasted every Wednesday at prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons. Someone in Biden’s 2023 state of dotage wouldn’t have survived two weeks in Westminster.Then there’s the fact that people were already panicking about Trump and it was somehow thought, especially after Democratic successes in the 2022 midterm elections, that Biden was the only guy to beat him. The more so since the presumptive alternative was Harris, who was seen as a relatively weak candidate. And so, for fear of getting Harris and then Trump, they got Harris and then Trump.Some lessons, then, are clear. Tapper and Thompson open their book with a quotation from George Orwell: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” But Orwell also calls on us always to say what we do see, even if – no, especially if – it’s uncomfortable for our own side. There’s the double test for journalists: see it and say it.For the Democratic establishment: don’t try to intimidate the media into self-censorship with the argument that they are giving succour to the enemy. You would have been better served by journalists just doing their job, in the spirit of Orwell. Then: change out your old guard. Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democratic caucus in the Senate, is older than Chernenko and rapidly catching up on Brezhnev. Oh yes, and simply listen to the people you’re meant to represent.The tragedy of this whole story is that the Democrats have a profusion of talent in younger generations – from Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom to New York’s new star, Zohran Mamdani. They don’t yet have the shared platform that could win a presidential election, but thinkers such as Klein and Derek Thompson, co-authors of Abundance, the other book of the moment, are already working up some good ideas. The Democrats can probably swing the House of Representatives in the midterm elections next year with a few fresh faces – and by focusing on the already visible negative consequences of Trump for working- and middle-class Americans. But by 2027, in the run-up to the next presidential election, they will need everything they so spectacularly failed to produce in 2023.

      Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist More

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      The US is complicit in genocide. Let’s stop pretending otherwise | Mehdi Hasan

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      Can we finally stop pretending that what we have been witnessing in Gaza over the past 22 months is a “war,” a “conflict,” or even a “humanitarian crisis”? Many of the world’s leading human rights and humanitarian groups – including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Doctors Without Borders – agreed months ago that what is being livestreamed to our phones on a daily basis is indeed a genocide.This week, Israel’s own leading human rights group announced that it had reached “the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip”. In other words, said B’Tselem, “Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.The debate over whether or not Gaza is a genocide is, effectively, over. So can we now also stop pretending that we are mere bystanders to this genocide? That our sin is one only of omission rather than commission? Because the inconvenient truth is that the US has not just looked the other way, as tens of thousands of Palestinians have been besieged and bombed, starved and slaughtered, but helped Israel pull the trigger. We have been complicit in this genocide, which is itself a crime under article III of the Genocide convention.As retired Israeli Maj Gen Yitzhak Brick acknowledged in November 2023: “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”In fact, given Brick’s assessment, I would argue that what we have witnessed in Gaza from the US government is worse than complicity. It is active participation in an ongoing genocide.Donald Trump has given Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his far-right government not only the green light to “clean out” Gaza and “finish the job”, but also the arms, intel and funds to do so. When Netanyahu launched his blockade of all food and aid going into Gaza in March, he emphasized it was done “in full coordination with President Trump and his people”. “Over the past six months,” Axios reported in late July, “Trump has given Netanyahu an almost free hand to do whatever he wants in Gaza.” An Israeli official told the site: “In most calls and meetings Trump told Bibi: ‘Do what you have to do in Gaza.’”Trump’s Republican allies in the House and Senate are even more gung-ho. Forget complicity; Congress is filled with GOP cheerleaders for genocide, from Senators Tom “bounce the rubble in Gaza” Cotton to Lindsey “level the place” Graham. The newest member of the House, Randy Fine, a Republican representative of Florida, has called for the nuking of Gaza and said just days ago that Palestinians in Gaza should “starve away” until the Israeli hostages are all released. (A reminder that incitement to genocide is also a crime under Article III of the Genocide convention.)But we cannot let Democrats off the hook either. The first 16 months of this mass slaughter unfolded on a Democratic president’s watch. From the get-go, Joe Biden gave Netanyahu and his cabinet of génocidaires everything they needed – 2,000-lb bombs to drop on refugee camps filled with Palestinian children? Check. UN security council vetoes to prevent the passage of resolutions calling for a permanent ceasefire? Check. The burial of internal US government reports warning of war crimes and famine in Gaza? Check.It wasn’t just Biden. The vast majority of Democrats in Congress spent much of 2024 casting vote after vote to keep arming, funding and whitewashing the mass killing of Palestinian civilians. Even now, in the summer of 2025, seven high-profile Democratic senators were happy to take a smiling photo with Netanyahu, including the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who claims talk of genocide is antisemitic and says his job “is to keep the left pro-Israel”.Then there is the US media’s complicity in this genocide. It isn’t just the Radio Rwanda wannabes over at Fox, where the morning host Brian Kilmeade has said it was hard “to separate the Palestinians from Hamas” and the primetime host Jesse Watters has said “no one wants” Palestinian refugees and “demographically [Palestinians] are a threat”.There are also genocide enablers in the liberal media. Those who repeatedly insist Israelis have a right to defend themselves while never asking whether Palestinians do. Those who parrot Israeli government talking points while sanitizing the violence inflicted on Gaza. Palestinians, remember, are not killed by Israeli bombs or bullets; they just “die.”US newsrooms have bent over backwards to present “both sides,” even when one side has been deemed genocidal by some of the world’s leading scholars on genocide. The New York Times, per an internal memo obtained by the Intercept, instructed journalists covering Gaza to limit the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when referring to the West Bank and Gaza.One study of media coverage, also published by the Intercept, found that “highly emotive terms for the killing of civilians like ‘slaughter’, ‘massacre’, and ‘horrific’ were reserved almost exclusively for Israelis who were killed by Palestinians, rather than the other way around”. Another study, published in the Nation, found that “with one exception the Sunday shows covered and debated [Gaza] for 12 months without speaking to a single Palestinian or Palestinian American”.Go beyond the media. Elite US institutions are also disgracefully complicit in the annihilation of Gaza, from the Ivy League universities that punished anti-genocide protesters on campus; to the white-shoe law firms that disqualified anti-genocide applicants for jobs; to the big tech companies accused by a UN special rapporteur of profiting from the genocide.Most Americans, of course, don’t want to believe that our country is helping commit one of the 21st century’s worst atrocities. But, again, we must stop pretending. Our complicity and collusion are clear. As my Zeteo colleague Spencer Ackerman has written: “This is an American genocide as much as it is an Israeli one.”The US supplied and then resupplied the bombs and bullets used to kill tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians; the US facilitated the destruction of homes and hospitals; the US signed off on the starvation of children. These are the undeniable facts.And so to the Biden and Trump administrations, to Democrats and Republicans in Congress, to the US media, I say this: history will judge you. For the bombs you sent, the votes you cast, the lies you told. This will be your shameful legacy when the dust finally settles in Gaza, when all of the bodies have been pulled from the rubble. Not defending your ally or fighting terrorism, but non-stop complicity in a genocide; aiding and abetting the crime of crimes.

      Mehdi Hasan is the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of the media company Zeteo. More