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      A split among Democrats may threaten ‘the Squad’ – and help Trump – in 2024

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      A looming clash between the centre and left of the Democratic party could unseat members of the “the Squad” of progressives and hand a gift to Donald Trump’s Republicans in the 2024 elections.The war in Gaza has divided Democrats like no other issue and is likely to play a key role in party primaries that decide which candidates run for the House of Representatives.Squad members including Jamaal Bowman of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who accuse Israel of fuelling a humanitarian disaster, are facing potentially well-funded primary challengers. Some Democrats fear that the infighting could weaken the party’s campaign in November.“A lot of us have seen the headlines that Squad or Squad-adjacent members could be in trouble this cycle,” said Chris Scott, the co-founder and president of the Advance the Electorate political action committee (Ate Pac), which recruits and trains young progressives. “When I look at 2024, this is not the cycle where we need to be getting in a battle within our home faction.“There is a much greater threat to us all that we need to be focused on. If you’re having a progressive and centrist go against each other in an open seat, that’s one thing, but to start taking shots at your own is a dangerous precedent and I don’t think we need to fall into that trap this cycle.”The left have won some notable victories during Joe Biden’s presidency but continue to push him on issues such as climate, immigration, racial justice and Gaza, where many are dismayed by his unwavering support for Israel. On 7 October Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and took about 240 hostage; Israel has since bombed and invaded Gaza, killing about 20,000 people.Ideological tensions with moderates are set to spill into the open during a primary season that kicks off on 5 March with races in Alabama, Arkansas, California, North Carolina and Texas.Bowman faces a stiff challenge from George Latimer, a Westchester county executive who is an ardent supporter of Israel and could receive a financial boost from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). Bush has competition from Wesley Bell, a county prosecutor who described Bush’s initial response to the Hamas attack as not “appropriate”.Omar will be up against Don Samuels, a former Minneapolis city council member who came within two percentage points of her in a primary last year. The lawyer Sarah Gad and the air force veteran Tim Peterson have also filed to run against Omar in the primary.Centrists smell an opportunity to put progressives on the back foot over their voting records, not just on Israel but a host of issues.Matt Bennett, a co-founder and the executive vice-president for public affairs at Third Way, said: “The Squad for the most part has been problematic for Democrats generally because their voices are outsized and very loud and they have come to define what it means to be a Democrat in swing districts, and that can be very difficult.“We are not huge fans of primaries against incumbent Democrats – often those resources can be directed more forcefully elsewhere to try to beat Republicans – but Cori Bush has done and said a lot of things that are going to be weaponised against her Democratic colleagues and so we wouldn’t be heartbroken if she’s beaten by a more mainstream Democrat in a primary.”Squad members and their allies may also have to contend with pro-Israel Super Pacs and dark-money groups spending tens of millions of dollars on attack ads in a bid to unseat them. Critics say such ads often misrepresent progressives’ views to give the impression that they are cheerleading for Hamas.The Democratic Majority for Israel Pac (DMFI Pac) recently launched a six-figure ad campaign targeting the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the sole Palestinian American in the House and one of Biden’s most strident critics. Its narrator said: “Tell Rashida Tlaib she’s on the wrong side of history and humanity.”This week the DMFI Pac published its first round of endorsements for the 2024 election cycle, including 81 incumbent members of Congress. Its chair, Mark Mellman, said all the endorsees have demonstrated a deep commitment to the party’s values, “which include advancing and strengthening the US-Israel relationship”.The group added that, in the 2021-22 election cycle, DMFI Pac-endorsed candidates won more than 80% of their races, helping bring 21 new “pro-Israel Democrats” to Congress.Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “The well-organised, and those with resources including money, are looking at the primaries as a way to settle scores.“The Squad has a target on its back. The Israeli Zionist interest have concluded that they underinvested in the last election and that a bit more would have defeated some of the candidates, including Ilhan Omar, who won by only 2%. The amount of money going in looks to be substantially larger.”The House primary stakes have been raised by 23 Democrats and 12 Republicans retiring, seeking other office or getting expelled, leaving a record number of open seats up for grabs. In Oregon’s third congressional district, Susheela Jayapal – whose sister Pramila is chair of the Congressional Progressive caucus – is running for an open seat but facing blowback for not signing a resolution that condemned Hamas.As the war continues and the death toll mounts, the issue becomes ever more rancorous. Scott, the Ate Pac president, warned: “I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these primaries get nasty.“My worry is, do we get in a fight with the primaries and start trying to do all this spending going against Democrats because we don’t agree necessarily on the same issue and then we miss the mark and come up short in some of the open seats that we should be able to easily win?”He added: “I get the frustration, but if you’re talking about possibly actively spending money to primary somebody like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or even Rashida Tlaib, one, what type of message are we sending and then two, where are our priorities overall?”Scott argues that Democrats should instead focus efforts on candidates such as Mondaire Jones, who is aiming to win back his New York seat from Republicans, and Michelle Vallejo, who is running for the most competitive congressional seat in Texas. “As a party we have to be smart about how we play these and now is not the time to fall into that warring battle of ideologies,” he said.Others share the concern about losing sight of the bigger picture and the unique threat posed by Trump and far-right Republicans. Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of the progressive grassroots movement Indivisible, said: “High-profile, expensive primary fights this cycle that exacerbate fractures within the Democratic coalition are bad for Democrats’ chances in the general election – and thus bad for democracy.“As leaders of a grassroots movement dedicated to preventing Trump from returning to power, we’ve adopted a fairly simple test for all our strategic decisions over the next 12 months: will this move help or hurt our chances of beating Donald Trump and winning a Democratic trifecta in 2024? Aipac and DMFI’s latest moves clearly fail this test.”The argument over Gaza appears to have been shifting in progressives’ direction. In a recent opinion poll for the Wall Street Journal, 24% of Democrats said they were more sympathetic to the Palestinians, 17% sided with the Israelis and 48% said they sympathise with both equally.Biden, who often hovers in the ideological middle of the Democratic party, has gradually yielded to pressure to urge Israeli restraint and has warned that the country is losing international support because of “indiscriminate bombing”. But he has stopped short of calling for a permanent ceasefire.Norman Solomon, the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, said via email: “Scapegoating progressives is inevitable. That’s what corporate centrist Democrats and their allies routinely do. But primaries merely set the stage for the main event, which will be the showdown between the two parties for Congress and the White House.“Whatever the results of the congressional primaries, the momentous crossroads in the fall will determine whether the fascistic Republican party controls Congress for the next two years and the presidency for the next four. Progressives aren’t making such a calamity more likely. Biden is.” More

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      Underdog contender for Democratic nomination says Biden ‘cannot win’ against Trump

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      Democratic congressman Dean Phillips, who is challenging incumbent president Joe Biden, will keep running his long-shot bid for the White House through the summer after he’s had more time to introduce himself to voters across the US.Phillips initially planned to run in a few states for his party’s presidential nomination, focusing especially on the crucial early-voting state of New Hampshire, which was seen as a trial balloon for his candidacy. But now, Phillips told the Guardian in an interview, he is aiming for a much longer campaign.By the summer, Phillips wants to compare head-to-head polling between him and former President Donald Trump, and Trump and Biden. If Biden fares better in the matchup, Phillips would support him. If Phillips fares better, he believes Biden should throw his support toward the congressman.“Those are my intentions, and I think those should be the intentions of every Democrat. Let’s find the candidate best positioned and most likely to win,” Phillips said.Phillips’ bullishness about his odds – and his strong belief that Biden will not win against Trump again – have kept his campaign in motion. The congressman, buoyed up by a personal fortune from his family’s distilling company and a gelato brand, hasn’t been deterred by the Democratic machine backing Biden. So far, Phillips has been his own main supporter, injecting $4m into his own campaign.As the New Hampshire primary nears next month, Phillips is feeling good about his chances there. Biden isn’t on the ballot in the state because national Democrats altered their calendar to put more diverse states earlier in the primary process, though the president’s supporters will mount a write-in campaign. That gives Phillips a leg up.The state offers the “lowest cost, highest probability opportunity to surprise people and to demonstrate my campaign”, he said.Since Phillips launched his campaign in October, after months of trying to goad more prominent Democrats to challenge the sitting president, he’s been met with a chorus of simple questions about who he is and why he’s doing this.His answer is simple: “Because Joe Biden is going to lose to Donald Trump.”Phillips’ presence in the race doesn’t really change that fact at this point – polls in New Hampshire show him far behind Biden. Recent polls back up his assertion, though, that the Democratic president isn’t going into the election year strong. Neither Biden nor Trump are well liked by the electorate, despite the seeming inevitability of the repeat matchup.“You can’t win a national election with 33% approval numbers,” Phillips said, referring to a recent Pew Research Center survey on Biden’s job rating. “And I don’t understand why I’m the only one out of 250-some Democrats in Congress to simply say the quiet part out loud: he cannot win the next election.”On policy, the two Democrats don’t widely differ. Phillips’ campaign isn’t an insurgent progressive campaign designed to move the centrist president further left. The main difference is a visual one – Phillips is much younger than Biden and Trump. He’s called for a new generation to lead the country forward.In that sense, though, his campaign draws attention to one of Biden’s weakest points, though Phillips argues the age differences are “pretty obvious” and not something he’s actively pointed out. “Neither of us can change our ages or stages of life.”By running a campaign against Biden, some Democrats fear Phillips is emphasizing the president’s flaws during a vulnerable time, ultimately further hurting Democrats’ ability to beat Trump in 2024. Phillips finds this notion “absurd”, saying that his presence should help Biden if it gets the president to come out and campaign or debate, to show himself to the voters more.While Biden’s poor polling animated Phillips’ campaign, the congressman has worked to fill in some of the details about who he’d be as a president. His political career has been short: three terms in Congress after flipping a longtime GOP seat in suburban Minnesota. He’s keen on pragmatic, bipartisan politics.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs of now, the economy and affordability have risen as a primary focus for him, with plans to address the rising costs of healthcare, housing, education and daily expenses forthcoming, he said.He’s also changed his mind on one big issue after hearing “such horrifying, heartbreaking stories” from people since taking office: he now supports Medicare for All, as opposed to just a public option. He thinks it’s an issue on which Republicans and Democrats could work together.On the Israel-Hamas war, perhaps Biden’s weakest point within his own party at the moment, Phillips doesn’t track too far off from Biden. He is a “passionate supporter of the state of Israel” who believes the country has a right to defend itself and that the US and its allies should unify to support Israel. He also has an “equal affection for Palestinians” and believes they deserve self-determination and a state. He has argued for the release of hostages and a concurrent ceasefire.“I intend to be the first Jewish American president in our history,” he said. “And I want to be the one that signs documents that help found the Palestinian state for the first time because we cannot continue to allow this cycle of bloodshed and misery and destruction to occur any longer.”To get anywhere near the presidency, Phillips would need to overcome a Democratic party already working hard to re-elect its incumbent president. Some states, such as Florida and North Carolina, have already decided not to hold primaries for president.The structural odds bother Phillips, who sees them as anti-democratic. The political culture on both sides forces people to stay in line rather than challenge the status quo if they want to keep their careers in elected office, he said. He knows his congressional career is done because of his presidential run – he’s not running for his seat in Minnesota again. And if he loses, he presumes his political career is over too. It will be worth it to him to try to keep Trump out of the White House, he said.“We need more people willing to torpedo their careers in Congress like I did, to ensure that we do not torpedo the entire country,” he said.Given the president’s age, though, staying in the race longer could be a hedge in case something were to happen to Biden. In that instance, it’s still tough to see how Phillips would be the best man for the job, though he’d be the only mainstream Democrat who had the primary calendar on his side.Still, he hopes more Democrats will jump in the presidential race. “The water is warm. Come on in. That’s what I’ve been asking for for many, many months,” Phillips said. “It gets to a point where doing so gets harder and harder because of state ballot access. Already, I think 15 states are too late to get on the ballot. So yes, I wish that would have happened months ago.” More

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      Dukes of Hazzard’s actor John Schneider called for public hanging of Joe Biden

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      Actor John Schneider called for the executions of Joe Biden as well as the president’s son, Hunter, in a now-deleted social media post that drew ridicule and questions about whether he should be criminally charged.Schneider, perhaps best known for his role as Bo Duke on the TV series Dukes of Hazzard as well his recent runner-up finish on the Masked Singer, fired off the post on X at 2am local time Thursday.“Mr President, I believe you are guilty of treason and should be publicly hung,” Schneider wrote to Biden. “Your son too.”The comment was a reply to a post from Biden which said Donald Trump – who is facing more than 90 criminal charges as he seeks a second presidency in 2024 – “poses many threats to our country”.“But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy,” Biden’s X post continued, in part. “If we lose that, we lose everything.”Schneider’s response to Biden’s post drew thousands of replies before it was deleted.As Newsweek first noted, among those to reply was investigative journalist Victoria Brownworth, who wrote: “Just here for the ratio and to let you know that it’s ‘hanged,’ not ‘hung’.” Brownworth added: “There’s zero evidence of ‘treason.’ Step out of the Fox News bubble.”Another user added: “Wow! You’re calling for the execution of a sitting president. May the secret service show up at your door with a reply.”Other commenters maintained Schneider’s remark fell short of constituting a death threat. Under federal law, threatening “to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States” could carry a fine and up to five years in prison.Schneider’s comment came as conservatives and media outlets who are friendly to them – including Fox News – support Republican efforts to hold a formal vote to launch an impeachment inquiry into Biden.Republicans have spent months investigating business dealings by Biden and his son, Hunter, in hopes of finding improprieties that could form a basis for an impeachment. But some Republicans have been vocal about their worries that investigators have not found misconduct by the president, whose son is facing federal tax charges.Schneider was on the Dukes of Hazzard from 1979 to 1985. In 2015, the television channel TV Land announced it would pull reruns of the action-comedy series because the car which the main characters drove around displayed the Confederate battle flag, a symbol adopted by white supremacist hate groups.The fictional car itself was also named after Robert E Lee, the Confederate general who inherited the ownership of enslaved people upon the death of his mother.Schneider – whose character’s full first name, Beauregard, is identical to the surname of a famous general in the Confederate army – protested TV Land’s decision by remarking “the whole politically correct generation has gotten way out of hand”, as Today.com reported.A second-place finish in Wednesday’s season finale of the Masked Singer had earned Schneider – also a country musician – some favorable celebrity media coverage. So had a new interview with Fox News in which he described how difficult he expected this Christmas to be after his wife, producer and actor Alicia Allain Schneider, died from breast cancer in February.“It’s going to be rough,” Schneider had said in that interview. “Grief will never go away.” More

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      With immigration tied to Ukraine, Biden will upset one set of Democrats in 2024

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      Joe Biden has been left with only bad and worse options in his flagging campaign to send more aid to Ukraine amid its war with Russia and has now found that its fate is tied to one of the thorniest issues in US politics: immigration.In addition to the implications for Ukraine’s fate in its fight against invasion, it could be a serious hit for Biden in a crucial election year. Biden’s progressive base is already in uproar over his unwavering support for Israel in its war in Gaza, and if he is forced to adopt a hardline immigration policy, then that faction will probably be even more angered.Yet, despite the White House’s warnings that the US is “out of money and nearly out of time” to assist Kyiv, Congress failed to approve another aid package before the end of the year as Republicans tied approving any deal to immigration policy changes.Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, kept the chamber in session for another week to try to reach a deal with Republicans on a supplemental funding bill, but he acknowledged on Tuesday that the negotiations would stretch into 2024.“As negotiators work through remaining issues, it is our hope that their efforts will allow the Senate to take swift action on the national security supplemental early in the new year,” Schumer said in a joint statement with the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.But the negotiations hinge on Republicans’ efforts to substantially overhaul the US immigration system. Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, say they will not approve more funding for Ukraine without significant concessions on border security.Specifically, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has insisted that a supplemental funding bill must reflect the policies outlined in HR2, the Secure the Border Act. That bill, which passed the House with only Republican votes in May, called for severely restricting asylum eligibility, restarting construction of Donald Trump’s border wall and limiting migrants’ parole options.The bill is a non-starter for many Democrats, and Biden has made clear that Republicans should not expect to have all of their demands met.“This has to be a negotiation,” Biden said in a speech earlier this month. “Republicans think they can get everything they want without any bipartisan compromise. That’s not the answer.”But Biden also noted that he was willing and ready to make “significant compromises on the border” to get a funding package through Congress, and his secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has been actively engaged in the Senate negotiations this month.“I support real solutions at the border,” Biden said in his speech. “I’ve made it clear that we need Congress to make changes to fix what is a broken immigration system.”That language has alarmed immigrant rights groups, who fear that the president they helped get elected may choose to “sacrifice vulnerable people” for the sake of continuing aid to Ukraine.“We call on congressional champions to stand up and do the right thing,” Kica Matos, the president of the National Immigration Law Center, said earlier this month. “Senate Democrats must reject these extreme anti-immigrant proposals, and instead work toward sensible solutions that live up to our legal and moral commitments to welcome those seeking safety.”Many Democrats on Capitol Hill are listening to that message. Last week, Senator Alex Padilla, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety, and congresswoman Nanette Barragán, the Democratic chair of the Congressional Hispanic caucus, issued a joint statement expressing alarm over Republicans’ proposals.“We are deeply concerned that the President would consider advancing Trump-era immigration policies that Democrats fought so hard against – and that he himself campaigned against – in exchange for aid to our allies that Republicans already support,” the two lawmakers said. “Caving to demands for these permanent damaging policy changes as a ‘price to be paid’ for an unrelated one-time spending package would set a dangerous precedent.”Speaking to the NPR affiliate KQED on Wednesday, Barragán went as far as to suggest she would vote against any supplemental funding bill that reflects Republicans’ immigration agenda.“Will I have to vote against a package that has Ukraine dollars because of these draconian immigration policy changes? Yes,” Barragán said. “But again, this is why we shouldn’t be linking them together. I completely support Ukraine aid.”Meanwhile, Biden is also facing pressure from the more conservative wing of his party to pursue a more severe approach to managing the southern border, as a record-setting number of people attempt to enter the US. Americans are taking note of the situation at the border; a Pew Research Center poll conducted in June found that 47% of Americans consider illegal immigration to be a very big problem in the country, up from 38% last year.“We are facing a turning point in history – a sold-out southern border that is facing an unprecedented number of migrants flowing through every day and two of our most important allies are fighting for their lives to protect their democracies,” Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat, said on Wednesday. “The reality is that we need major, structural reforms to dramatically limit the number of illegal crossings at our southern border and regain operational control.”Whatever strategy Biden chooses to pursue in the immigration negotiations appears destined to alienate at least one wing of his party. It’s shaping up to be a rather dour January for the president. More

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      Biden says it’s ‘self-evident’ that Trump is an insurrectionist

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      Joe Biden has said it is “self-evident” that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist in his first public comments since Colorado’s supreme court removed the former president from the state’s 2024 ballot.The president was speaking before boarding Air Force One to an afternoon engagement in Milwaukee, and said he would not comment on the legal premise cited by the Colorado panel for its majority decision, or the likely intervention of the US supreme court.“Whether the 14th amendment applies or not, we’ll let the court make that decision,” the president said.But he was more forthright when asked directly if he thought Trump was an insurrectionist.“I think it’s self-evident … he certainly supported an insurrection. There’s no question about it. None. Zero. And he seems to be doubling down on it, about everything,” he said.Biden has mostly remained silent about the legal troubles that Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, is facing.The president has long been critical of Trump’s conduct surrounding the events of 6 January 2021, when the outgoing president incited a mob of his supporters to overrun the US Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory.Trump was, Biden said at the time, “singularly responsible” for the violence of the deadly riot, in which several people lost their lives, including law enforcement officers and protestors.Among Trump’s legal cases is one in Washington DC, in which he has pleaded not guilty to four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. The supreme court is poised to soon hear an appeal that could affect the trial.Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, backed Biden’s comments during a lunchtime appearance on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The big picture, no matter if Donald Trump ends up being on the ballot or off the ballot, is the extent of how dangerous he is to American democracy,” she said.“He tried to steal the presidency from the American people. He incited an insurrection with folks ramming into the US Capitol, some of whom had plans to hang the vice-president, and then he did not stop there. He spent months trying to undermine the peaceful process, the peaceful transfer of the presidency.” More

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      Banned in Colorado? Bring it on – in the twisted logic of Donald Trump, disqualification is no bad thing at all | Emma Brockes

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      Ten days out from the end of the year, and who could have foreseen the latest Trump plot twist? On Wednesday morning, Americans woke to absorb the fallout from the previous day’s news that Colorado – of all places – had ruled via its supreme court to ban Donald Trump from the ballot in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. There are many sober things to say about this, but in the first instance let’s give way to an unseemly squeal. How completely thrilling!Colorado leans Democrat – both its senators are blue – but it’s a western state with large conservative enclaves that is not exactly Massachusetts or Vermont. The decision by the state’s top justices is unprecedented in US electoral history. According to their ruling, Trump is in breach of section 3 of the 14th amendment, the so-called “insurrectionist ban”, in light of his behaviour during the 6 January storming of the Capitol.“President Trump did not merely incite the insurrection,” the judges said in a statement. “Even when the siege on the Capitol was fully under way, he continued to support it by repeatedly demanding that Vice-President [Mike] Pence refuse to perform his constitutional duty and by calling senators to persuade them to stop the counting of electoral votes. These actions constituted overt, voluntary, and direct participation in the insurrection.”Well, it could hardly be less ambiguous. The 14th amendment, adopted in the wake of the civil war to obstruct Confederate lawmakers from returning to Congress, has never been implemented in a presidential race and, of course, Trump’s lawyers immediately challenged it. The ban will swiftly go up to the US supreme court for judgment, until which time Trump’s candidacy in Colorado will remain legitimate.Given the conservative super-majority of the US’s highest court, we have to assume that Colorado’s challenge will be unsuccessful. It might also be assumed that, catching on, other states will follow Colorado’s lead and vote similarly to exclude Trump from the primaries. Apart from childish delight, what, then, might this week’s events achieve?The wider backdrop isn’t encouraging, and glancing at the polls this week is a quick way to shunt the smirk from your face. In a survey commissioned by the New York Times on Tuesday, US voters were found to be largely unhappy with President Biden’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which he scored a 57% disapproval rating. Given how divided Democrats are over fighting in the Middle East, that figure isn’t surprising. What, to use the technical term, blows your mind is that in the same poll, 46% of voters expressed the opinion that Trump would be making a better job of it than Biden, with only 38% more inclined to trust the president. Overall, Trump leads Biden by two points in the election race, a slender margin but, given the 91 felony counts currently pending against Trump, a hugely depressing one.Trump doesn’t need Colorado to win. In the 2020 election, he lost the state by 13 percentage points. And there is a good chance that, following the Alice in Wonderland logic that seems to determine Trump’s fortunes, the ruling in Colorado might actually help him. The narrative Trump has crafted for himself of being a Zorro-type outsider pursued by deep state special interests is as absurd as it is apparently compelling to large numbers of his supporters. At a rally in Waterloo, Iowa, on Tuesday night, Trump avoided the subject of Colorado’s decision, which came in just before he stepped out on stage. That won’t hold. By the end of the evening, an email sent out by his campaign team had already referred to the ban as a “tyrannical ruling”.And so we find ourselves in the perfect catch-22. The greater Trump’s transgressions and the more severe the censure from his detractors, the more entrenched his popularity with Republican voters appears to grow. It may not win him the presidency next November – there are too many variables around undecided voters in the middle – but it seems increasingly likely that it will ensure he beats his Republican rivals to get on the ballot.A four-count indictment for election interference, brought by special counsel Jack Smith and covering Trump’s actions in the run-up to 6 January, is set to be heard in the District of Columbia in March. Countless other civil and criminal suits work their way through the system. And now his viability as a candidate will probably go before the supreme court. It’s like a grim parlour game, with the same question going round and round: what will it take to make any of this stick?
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Joe Biden hails Sandra Day O’Connor as ‘American pioneer’ in eulogy

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      Joe Biden hailed Sandra Day O’Connor as an “American pioneer” who embodied principle over politics in his eulogy at the Washington funeral of the US supreme court’s first female justice.The president praised O’Connor for breaking down barriers in the legal and political worlds, transcending political divisions and weighing ordinary people in her decision-making in pointed remarks that contrasted sharply with his words about the current supreme court.“She was especially conscious of the law’s real impact on people’s lives,” he said. “One need not agree with all her decisions in order to recognize that her principles were deeply held and of the highest order and that her desire for civility was genuine.“O’Connor knew that “no person is an island” and that Americans – “rugged individualists, adventurers and entrepreneurs” – were inextricably linked, he said at the service in Washington National Cathedral.“And for America to thrive, Americans must see themselves not as enemies, but as partners in the great work of deciding our collective destiny,” Biden said.Tributes to O’Connor, who died on 1 December aged 93, were also delivered by chief justice John Roberts and O’Connor’s son Jay O’Connor.Sandra Day O’Connor died in Phoenix, Arizona, of complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness.A centrist on the court who was appointed by Republican president Ronald Reagan in 1981, O’Connor served until her retirement in 2006.She created a critical alliance in 1992 to affirm the central holding in Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal nationwide. She also was a crucial vote in 2003 to uphold campus affirmative action policies that were used to increase the number of underrepresented minority students at American colleges.The supreme court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority, overturned the Roe ruling in 2022 and in June struck down race-conscious admissions programs in higher education, effectively prohibiting affirmative action.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden has said the current supreme court has done more to “unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history” but has rejected calls to expand it.Chief justice Roberts called her a “strong, influential and iconic jurist”.Jay O’Connor spoke of his mother as an indefatigable woman with “unearthly energy” who kept working long after she hung up her judicial robes.“We thank you, we love you, we will never, ever forget you.” More

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      Biden officials decry Trump’s anti-migrant xenophobia – yet quietly copy his stance| Moustafa Bayoumi

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      At a campaign rally in New Hampshire last Saturday, the former president Donald Trump repeated a claim he made back in September: immigrants coming to the United States, he said, are “poisoning the blood of our country”. The phrase is particularly disturbing as it evokes Nazi language about blood and nation.The last time Trump uttered this “poisoning the blood of our country” phrase, criticism from historians and civil libertarians was swift. This time, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign saw an opportunity and pounced. “Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler,” a Biden-Harris 2024 spokesperson wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, adding that “Trump is not shying away from his promise to lock up millions of people in detention camps.”Yes, that’s true, but while Trump’s rhetoric and promises are odious and must be rejected, the Biden campaign is also talking out of both sides of its mouth.First, to Trump. By now, only a visitor from another planet (who would certainly be locked up by Trump for illegal entry) would be surprised by the ex-president’s rhetoric. Trump’s jingoistic ability to sow fear of foreigners and hatred of others is a large part of his rightwing populist appeal. Over the weekend, Trump also claimed that “drugs, criminals, gang members and terrorists are pouring into our country”. He said the United States was facing something “like a military invasion” from would-be immigrants and asylum seekers and promised to implement “the largest deportation operation in American history”.Even the cadence of his speech is reminiscent of a reel highlighting the Greatest Worst Things Trump Ever Said. Remember what he said about Mexico in 2015? “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”Today, even the “good people” are gone. Now, Trump describes those crossing the border this way: “They come from prisons. They come from mental institutions and insane asylums. Many are terrorists.” (It’s a 2024 remix!) He also makes a point to say: “They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Africa, from Asia,” as if we should be afraid of Latinos, Africans and Asians, leaving me to wonder whom we shouldn’t be afraid of. I’m not really wondering. The answer is as plain as vanilla.But far more troubling than Trump’s putrid but predictable xenophobia is hearing the Biden campaign trumpet how morally opposed it is to Trump’s border policies at precisely the same time that the White House is negotiating with Republicans to adopt immigration policies that look suspiciously and horribly Trump-like. There is a word for such a stance: hypocrisy.The reason for the negotiations is no secret. The Biden administration has been seeking to send US military assistance to both Ukraine and Israel, but the funding bills have stalled in Congress. To vote for the money, Republicans are demanding the administration overhaul its immigration policy to align more closely with theirs, and – disturbingly – the Democrats seem poised to do so.Put another way, the Democrats are ready sell out immigration for foreign policy, even though the impact on immigration could be substantial and long-lasting, while Democratic foreign policy goals are both unclear and increasingly unpopular.Joe Biden entered office with an immigration reform agenda, one that sought to reverse many of the inhuman positions of his predecessor, such as the family separation policy that the Trump administration cruelly deployed. Biden didn’t always succeed, but the aspiration was clear. Early on in his term, he proposed the US Citizenship Act of 2021, which would have offered a path to citizenship for undocumented people, brought Dreamers – undocumented people brought to the United States as children – immigration relief, set up refugee processing centers in Central America and funded more immigration judges, among other things.It never passed.Instead of convincing the other side of the aisle of the need for immigration reform, the Biden administration has slowly given up on reform over the years. It’s been happening piecemeal for a while now (such as Biden funding the construction of 20 miles of Trump’s border wall), but reports of the latest negotiations read like a major capitulation to the Republican worldview.The Biden administration is reportedly discussing rolling back its historical commitments to asylum seekers in exchange for aid to Ukraine and Israel and inducting a new system to apprehend undocumented immigrants already in the country. Being discussed is expanding “expedited removal” of migrants at the border without a hearing, significantly raising the criteria for asylum, making permanent pandemic-era border restrictions (like the public health provision known as Title 42) and mandating immigration detention for some immigrants who are awaiting a court date.“A return to Trump-era policies is not the fix,” is how Alex Padilla, a Democratic senator from California, has responded. Padilla is the first Latino chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety. “In fact, it will make the problem worse,” he said. “Mass detention, gutting our asylum system, Title 42 on steroids. It is unconscionable.”Trump’s racist comments about “poisoning the blood of the nation” are typical of Trump’s bigotry, but Biden’s immigration approach reads more like a betrayal. Biden’s willingness to trade away American traditions of asylum protection and meaningful immigration reform for an Israeli military campaign on Gaza that is widely acknowledged – even by Biden himself – as unacceptably dangerous to civilian life, having killed upwards of 20,000 people, makes Biden’s calculation here seem not only cynical but disastrous, both for Gaza’s civilians and for Biden’s prospects for re-election. (Meanwhile, why wouldn’t Israel’s leaders continue to ignore Biden’s pleas to limit their military assault? Ignoring Biden makes him look weak, as they too would almost certainly prefer a Trump presidency.)The Biden administration wants to have it both ways. Biden officials want to believe they can criticize Trump’s positions but adopt positions close to Trump’s when it’s expedient. To answer this fundamental contradiction, they seem to be throwing their weight behind the appeal of a “lesser of two evils” argument for Democratic voters.What they don’t seem to realize, or want to acknowledge, is that every time someone asks you to choose between a lesser of two evils, they’re still asking you to choose evil. And that’s a choice some voters simply aren’t willing to make.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More