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      Hunter Biden willing to testify before House committee if hearing is public

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      Hunter Biden’s lawyers have told a Republican-led congressional committee that he is prepared to be questioned at his father Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry next month – but the Democratic president’s son will only appear before lawmakers if the hearings are held in public.The conditional agreement to appear before the House oversight committee comes after committee chairman James Comer issued a subpoena to depose Hunter Biden, his former business associate Rob Walker, and the president’s brother James Biden earlier in the month.“We have seen you use closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public,” Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell wrote in a letter to Comer.Lowell added: “We therefore propose opening the door. If, as you claim, your efforts are important and involve issues that Americans should know about, then let the light shine on these proceedings.”The subpoenas demanding depositions from the three men come in addition to requests for transcribed interviews with Hunter Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen; his brother’s widow Hallie Biden and her sister; James Biden’s wife, Sara; Elizabeth Secundy, the older sister of Hallie Biden; and Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden.In the response to the committee’s subpoena, Lowell accused Comer of letting the investigation drag on. “Your empty investigation has gone on too long wasting too many better-used resources. It should come to an end,” Lowell wrote.“Consequently, Mr Biden will appear at such a public hearing on the date you noticed, [13 December], or any date in December that we can arrange.”Hunter Biden’s agreement to testify appears to mark a change in legal strategy. After deal to pleaded guilty to weapons and tax charges dramatically collapsed in July when a broad immunity deal was rejected by a Delaware judge, the president’s son has taken a tougher legal approach.In August, Aattorney General Merrick Garland appointed the same prosecutor who had made the collapsed Delaware immunity deal, David Weiss, as special counsel to bring charges against Hunter Biden.Weeks later, a federal grand jury indictment was brought against Hunter Biden on three gun-related charges, including illegally owning a firearm as a drug user and lying on a form when he allegedly bought the gun. If convicted, Biden could face up to 25 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. But such sentences and penalties are not typical.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMany Republicans felt that Weiss was giving Hunter Biden a pass on potential foreign lobbying and campaign finance violations and are now gambling that an ongoing justice department investigation into his affairs – coupled with their own House investigation into his business affairs, including serving on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company – will in turn squeeze his father going into the 2024 election.But Hunter Biden, with a new legal team, is hitting back. He has sued former New York mayor and Donald Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani for allegedly hacking and distributing data from Biden’s infamous laptop. He also sued the Internal Revenue Service for allegedly failing to keep his tax information from becoming public and sued a businessman for suggesting he had solicited a bribe from Iran.Earlier in November, Hunter Biden’s legal team went further – alleging that the gun charges against the first son may represent a “vindictive or selective prosecution”. And they are attempting to subpoena Trump, the Trump White House’s former attorney general Bill Barr and other justice officials to help expose – as his lawyers argue – a “sustained, almost-nonstop public pressure campaign” against him. More

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      Joe Biden and first lady ‘horrified’ by Vermont shooting of three Palestinian students – as it happened

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      Joe and Jill Biden as well as Vermont’s congressional delegation condemned the weekend shooting of three Palestinian students in the northeastern state’s most-populous city Burlington, while police announced an arrest was made in the case yesterday. It was an otherwise quiet day in Washington DC, but it won’t stay that way for long. The House will perhaps as soon as Wednesday vote on kicking admitted fabulist George Santos out of the chamber after a damning report from its ethics panel, while the Senate is gearing up to consider Biden’s request for more than $100b to fund border security and military assistance to Ukraine and Israel.Here’s what else happened today:
      Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, reportedly said he discussed “options” with Santos ahead of the expected expulsion vote.
      A rift is emerging among Democrats over Biden’s request for military assistance to Israel in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October terrorist attack.
      Merrick Garland said federal authorities are looking into whether the Vermont shooting was a hate crime.
      Donald Trump is making it very clear that a priority of his second presidential term will be retaliating against his enemies.
      The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said they believe the three students were targeted in Vermont because of their ethnicity.
      In a new statement, Joe Biden condemned the shooting of three Palestinian students, two of whom were US citizens, in Vermont this weekend, saying the White House would support the investigation into the attack:
      Jill and I were horrified to learn that three college students of Palestinian descent, two of whom are American citizens, were shot Saturday in Burlington, Vermont. They were simply spending Thanksgiving gathered with family and loved ones.
      We join Americans across the country in praying for their full recovery, and we send our deepest condolences to their families. While we are waiting for more facts, we know this: there is absolutely no place for violence or hate in America. Period. No person should worry about being shot at while going about their daily lives. And far too many Americans know a family member injured or killed as a result of gun violence. We cannot and we will not accept that.
      Earlier today, I spoke to Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger to offer my support. We are grateful to the Burlington Police Department – as well as the FBI, ATF, and other law enforcement partners – for their swift work identifying and arresting a suspect. Our Administration will provide any additional federal resources needed to assist in the investigation.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said that members of both political parties discussed government funding over the Thanksgiving break ahead of a January deadline to avoid a shutdown.From Politico’s Burgess Everett:Here’s more background on Biden’s use of the the Defense Production Act, from the Guardian’s Edward Helmore.
      …The Defense Production Act of 1950, which was passed to streamline production during the Korean war, was last used in early 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic to accelerate and expand the availability of ventilators and personal protective equipment.
      The supply chain council is set to address issues ranging from improved data sharing between government agencies, supplying renewable energy resources and freight logistics…
      Monday’s announcement arrived as the US economy appears to be doing well on paper. But the White House has acknowledged that improving economic picture is not shared by consumers, and the administration has explicitly tied the economy to the president by calling it Bidenomics.
      A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that only 39% of voters approve of Biden’s handling of jobs and the economy. And a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll puts the economy as the most important issue to Americans for the past two years.
      Even as the pace of inflation has slowed, consumers are shouldering an economic burden they had not experienced in years. Prices have risen as much in the past three years as they had in the previous decade, according to a report by Bloomberg, and it now costs almost $120 to buy the same goods and services a family could afford with $100 before the pandemic.
      Read the full article here.Biden is currently speaking in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building about strengthening US supply chains and his Bidenomics policy, as the burden of high inflation costs remain a priority for many US voters.During today’s event, Biden announced that he would be evoking the Defense Production Act to boost production of “essential medicine”.The 1950s law will allow Biden to strength the domestic manufacturing of medicines that is seen as crucial for national security, improving US supply chains that the Biden administration believes will address the higher price of goods and services.Biden also flagged falling inflation rates and that wages for families were increasing as wins for the US economy under his Bidenomics plan.Biden added that “costs went down” in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.“As a share of earnings, dinner was the fourth cheapest ever on record. I want you all to know that,” Biden said, referring to the cost to produce the Thanksgiving feast.From the Guardian’s David Smith:In an appearance in Florida, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson said he had talked to George Santos about “his options” as the chamber gears up to vote on an effort to expel the New York congressman for his lies and ethics breaches, Politico reports:The vote on the expulsion resolution proposed by ethics committee chair Michael Guest is expected to come as soon as Wednesday, but Johnson’s comment is an sign that he may be looking for another solution to Santos’s ethical lapses that does not involve voting him out of the chamber.Joe Biden is due to right about now hold an event at the White House on his administration’s actions to strengthen supply chains.That event is late in starting, perhaps due to the fact that he was on the phone with Miro Weinberger, the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, where three Palestinian students were shot over the weekend. Here’s what Weinberger had to say about the call:The police have not yet said if they consider the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont as a hate crime, but advocacy group the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said they believe it was:Joe and Jill Biden as well as Vermont’s congressional delegation have condemned the weekend shooting of three Palestinian students in the northeastern state’s most-populous city Burlington, while police announced an arrest was made in the case yesterday. It’s an otherwise quiet day in Washington DC, but it won’t stay that way for long. The House will perhaps as soon as Wednesday vote on kicking admitted fabulist George Santos out of the chamber after a damning report from its ethics panel, while the Senate is gearing up to consider Biden’s request for more than $100b to fund border security and military assistance to Ukraine and Israel.Here’s what else has happened today:
      A rift is emerging among Democrats over Biden’s request for military assistance to Israel in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October terrorist attack.
      Merrick Garland said federal authorities are looking into whether the Vermont shooting was a hate crime.
      Donald Trump is making it very clear that a priority of his second presidential term will be retaliating against his enemies.
      Also attending today’s White House press briefing was John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council.He offered details of the agreement reached for Hamas to release more of the hostages taken in the 7 October terrorist attack:Follow our live blog for the latest on the conflict between Israel and Hamas:At her briefing today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Joe and Jill Biden were “horrified” by the shootings of three Palestinian students in Vermont:Here’s footage of the arraignment of Jason Eaton, the suspect in the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont: More

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      Biden plans to use cold-war era law in attempt to lower US prices

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      The White House has announced it plans to use a cold-war era law to ease supply chain issues that the administration argues are contributing to higher inflation – a key electoral challenge to Joe Biden’s re-election chances next year as polling consistently suggests voters are not buying his Bidenomics pitch.In a statement, the White House said Biden will use the Defense Production Act to improve the domestic manufacturing of medicines deemed crucial for national security and will convene the first meeting of the president’s supply chain resilience council to announce other measures tied to the production and shipment of goods.“We’re determined to keep working to bring down prices for American consumers and ensure the resilience of our supply chains for the future,” said Lael Brainard, director of the White House national economic council and a co-chair of the new supply chain council, in a separate statement.The Defense Production Act of 1950, which was passed to streamline production during the Korean war, was last used in early 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic to accelerate and expand the availability of ventilators and personal protective equipment.The supply chain council is set to address issues ranging from improved data sharing between government agencies, supplying renewable energy resources and freight logistics.Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, will be co-chair of the council, which includes the heads of cabinet departments, the administration’s council of economic advisers, the US director of national intelligence, the Office of Management and Budget, and other agencies.Monday’s announcement arrived as the US economy appears to be doing well on paper. But the White House has acknowledged that improving economic picture is not shared by consumers, and the administration has explicitly tied the economy to the president by calling it Bidenomics.A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that only 39% of voters approve of Biden’s handling of jobs and the economy. And a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll puts the economy as the most important issue to Americans for the past two years.Even as the pace of inflation has slowed, consumers are shouldering an economic burden they had not experienced in years. Prices have risen as much in the past three years as they had in the previous decade, according to a report by Bloomberg, and it now costs almost $120 to buy the same goods and services a family could afford with $100 before the pandemic.According to Bloomberg, groceries and electricity are up 25%, used car prices have climbed 35%, auto insurance 33% and rent roughly 20% since January 2020. Housing affordability is at its worst on record. Auto-loan rates and credit card interest rates are also at a peak.As a result, many Democrats say it is time for Biden to adjust the economic message ahead of the 2024 election.In a statement, the White House said that “robust supply chains are fundamental to a strong economy”.“When supply chains are smooth, prices fall for goods, food, and equipment, putting more money in the pockets of American families, workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs,” the statement added.“Supply chain stress has eased measurably over the past year and the Biden administration’s announcement is another step in the right direction,” the Moody’s economist Jesse Rogers said.Rogers added: “While unlikely to resolve some of the more complex issues plaguing supply chains in one go, measures targeting pharmaceuticals, climate infrastructure, data security and logistics will bolster resilience and get the ball rolling on smart infrastructure and global cooperation.”In addition to domestic production measures, the administration said it will work to strengthen global supply chains internationally, including by developing early warning systems with allies and partners to detect and respond to supply chain disruptions in critical areas.Those include measures “to improve the weather, water, and climate observing capabilities and data-sharing” with countries “needed to produce global climate information and minimize impacts upon infrastructure, water, health, and food security”. More

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      There’s a big reason Biden is losing younger voters: Israel-Palestine | Moira Donegan

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      The 2024 presidential contest should not be close. Joe Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump, is a bigot, a liar and a crook, with dozens of credible sexual assault allegations, a disastrous track record of enabling sadistic racism in both his policy and his rhetoric, a frank admission of his own authoritarian ambitions, and 92 pending felony charges.The Republican party that the former president leads has become beholden to a small but extremely powerful base of voters with wildly unpopular social views, particularly regarding abortion – views that have driven the Republicans to election losses in virtually all major contests since the summer of 2022. Voters hate them, and reject their vision for the US; few politicians have ever been so unpopular as Trump is, and few political platforms have ever seemed so determined to alienate and anger voters as the Republican party’s.Yet Joe Biden could lose. If the election were held today, it’s likely that he would. Much was made of a New York Times/Siena poll, published earlier this month, that showed the US president losing to Trump in five key swing states. The Biden campaign largely downplayed the numbers, shrugging that the election is far away.Now, a new NBC poll also shows Biden in dire straits, with his approval rating falling to the lowest it has ever been: 40%. The poll found that he was faring especially poorly with Democrats and young voters, large numbers of whom are dissatisfied with his handling of an issue that is exposing a growing divide within the party: Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attack.From nearly the first moments of Israel’s war, the Biden administration has staunchly supported its Middle East ally, and allowed little public daylight between their own official statements and those of Israel’s rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The aid and arms deals continue to flow to Israel unconditioned, even as Israeli bombings have now killed more than 14,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 5,000 children and displaced upwards of a million people.The hawkish support for Israel’s war has been intense, with rhetoric from the White House often appearing indifferent or outright hostile to concerns about the deaths of Palestinian civilians. On 10 October, Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described calls for a ceasefire as “wrong”, “repugnant” and “disgraceful”. “There are not two sides here,” Jean-Pierre said, signaling that the White House would not brook any concern for Palestinian lives.In an especially disturbing moment, Biden himself cast doubt on the official death toll from the Gaza health ministry – saying on 27 October that he had “no confidence in the number the Palestinians are using” – even though figures from this agency have been previously deemed reliable by the United Nations and international human rights agencies. The implication seemed to be that the Palestinians were cynically overstating the number of their dead, and that the real number was some smaller, supposedly more acceptable figure.Since he made that comment, the Palestinian casualties in Gaza are said to have nearly doubled. It’s unclear whether Biden believes it.As the corpses pile up and Gaza’s buildings tumble down, the Biden administration has seemed to hedge on this unqualified pro-Israel, pro-war stance, at least at the margins. People identified as “administration officials” have given off-the-record quotes expressing “frustration” and “concern” with the Israelis’ determination to press forward with a Gaza invasion without any long-term plan for the region. Asked if the Israelis were making any real effort to minimize civilian casualties, the US national security council spokesman, John Kirby, said: “We have seen some indications that there are efforts being applied in certain situations to try to minimize, but I don’t want to overstate that.”Alon Pinkas of Haaretz interpreted those remarks as a signal of a growing distaste for the Israeli operation within the Biden US security state. This is what amounts to distancing from the Biden administration when it comes to Israel’s operation in Gaza: hedged off-the-record statements about long-term strategy, and a single response to a question of whether Israel is acting as if it cares about preserving innocent Palestinian lives that amounts to a coded and heavily euphemistic “no”.That’s the official line. But there are growing indications that the Democratic party is heading for a revolt over the issue. Young voters are not the only ones who are angry. Arab and Muslim American voters are voicing outrage at Biden’s stance, endangering his re-election prospects nationwide but especially in the crucial battleground state of Michigan, which is home to a large Muslim American voting bloc.Even within the party bureaucracy itself, there are signs of trouble. The state department has fielded an unusual number of internal complaint memos about US policy over the issue; large numbers of Democratic congressional staffers joined a Washington DC protest calling for a ceasefire.The House voted to censure representative Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, the only Palestinian American in Congress, over her calls for Palestinian liberation – particularly her use of the phrase “from the river to the sea”, which Tlaib explained was a call for peace, freedom, dignity and equality for all in the region, but which her detractors alleged was an antisemitic call for Jewish elimination. (Such has been the nature of much of the debate around the conflict in the halls of US power: arguments over rhetoric have frequently distracted from substantive issues of policy.)But that did not stop a growing number of her fellow Democratic members of Congress from joining her in calls for a ceasefire. The White House may be calling them “repugnant”, but the pro-ceasefire camp in Congress looks more and more like the future of the Democratic party: it is younger, it is further to the left, and it is majority non-white.Handwringing about Biden’s age and its relevance is overstated. But few issues have done more to highlight the problem of gerontocracy within the Democratic party, and of the growing generational gap in US politics, than this internal dispute over Israel-Palestine. In a way, the divide between Biden and his loyalists on the one hand, and the pro-ceasefire left and Democratic base on the other, might be a matter of historical references.Biden comes from a generation that came of age much closer in time to the Holocaust; he is in that sense perhaps more acutely aware of Jewish vulnerability – and certainly more convinced that Zionism’s nationalist project can mitigate it – than younger people are. The younger staffers, state department functionaries, members of Congress, and voters, meanwhile, are not thinking of the second world War, but of the war on terror; of September 11, and the disastrous, brutal and ultimately futile wars of revenge that the US fought in its aftermath.Each side is proceeding from what they feel are the definitive lessons of their era – the 20th century for Biden, and the 21st century for the pro-ceasefire camp. The results of the next election may well depend on whether they can find each other in time.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      A lasting peace in Gaza is now within reach – here’s how it can be achieved | Roee Kibrik

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      With a deal on the release of hostages and a pause in the fighting, the war in Gaza is entering a new stage. This four-day truce will see the handing over of dozens of hostages, but the pause also gives the international community an opportunity to promote stable and sustainable peace in Israel and the Palestinian territories. We are at a crossroads – and before us lies either a continuation of the conflict, or the impetus to find a permanent resolution.Hamas’s murderous attack on 7 October shattered many longstanding convictions. It brought the Palestinian issue back to centre stage; challenged the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be managed at a low cost; and undermined the belief that Israel could pursue integration in the Middle East while ignoring Palestinian demands. In its place, there is now a commonly held view across Israeli society that “managing the conflict” hasn’t worked, and that there instead must be a permanent resolution.At the same time, there are reasons why management of the conflict, rather than a protracted attempt at a resolution, would suit some of the main players. The US and UK governments both face elections in 2024, and are preoccupied with the war in Ukraine due to the need for stability and lower energy prices. Meanwhile, Arab leaderships are dealing with a range of internal challenges, and relative calm in the Palestinian arena may be enough to appease them. Hamas would be happy to continue to struggle with Israel without facing a diplomatic process that could provide legitimacy to the Palestinian Authority, strengthen moderate politicians and ultimately undermine its power.Netanyahu would also be content with managing the conflict, as any attempt to solve it would threaten the stability of his coalition and the continuation of his rule. His coalition, and consequently his leadership, relies on the support of the extremist settler movement. This faction adamantly opposes any compromises with the Palestinians and viewed Hamas as an “asset”, because its existence hinders the possibility of a peace process.It is therefore easy to imagine both sides sliding back into managing a low-intensity conflict. Under this scenario, the IDF would remain in Gaza for an extended period, continuing the fight against Hamas. The conflict would be confined to the Gaza Strip. The public would adjust to it. It would no longer be news, and the world would move its attention elsewhere – until the next eruption occurs in Gaza, the West Bank or in Lebanon.Alternatively, absent the will or the ability of the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to bring about meaningful change, the international community, led by the US, could push toward a resolution of the conflict. To achieve that, the international community needs to promote several key steps.First and foremost, it must define the ultimate goal – which should be to commit to the implementation of the two-state solution and an embrace of the Arab Peace Initiative – and a timeline within which to achieve it. This can be done by via a resolution of the UN security council (UNSC). To overcome the tension between the US and Russia, it may require a representative of the Arab world such as the UAE to champion the proposal in the UNSC. If this path is blocked, a regional peace summit convened by the US would be a satisfactory alternative.Secondly, and of utmost importance, it is vital that Joe Biden leads the recognition of a Palestinian state by the US and other major countries, as part of a comprehensive diplomatic process. Such a step will ensure that there is no turning back. It will change the dynamic in Gaza and in the West Bank, making it difficult for Israel to continue its creeping annexation, and strengthen the Palestinian Authority against Hamas. Furthermore, such a move could boost Biden electorally, helping him to potentially regain support that he lost when backing Israel’s operation in Gaza.Knowing that the creation of a Palestinian state is the endgame will enable the third critical step to be taken by the international community: the formulation of an interim international-Palestinian regime. With a clear and recognised goal of achieving the two-state solution, an international force drawn from Arab and western countries could then be recruited to gradually replace the IDF in Gaza and take responsibility for security and development efforts. If the path to a two-state solution is defined, European and Arab countries will agree to invest in building the physical and institutional infrastructure of what Biden called a “revitalised Palestinian Authority”, leading the way to a Palestinian state. No one wants to continue pouring money into Gaza if the strategy of managing the conflict continues and its infrastructure needs to be rebuilt every few years after another round of war.The absence of worthy leadership in Israel and the Palestinian territories means that securing peace falls on the shoulders of Biden and the international community. He must step up and deliver.
      Roee Kibrik is director of research at Mitvim – the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, and a lecturer at Yezreel Valley College
      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Kamala Harris: abortion bans passed by ‘extremist’ people causing ‘chaos, confusion and fear’ – as it happened

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      Vice-president Kamala Harris has released a statement condemning abortion bans, saying that they are passed by “extremist so-called leaders” who continue to “cause chaos, confusion and fear”.She added:
      The women of America deserve better. Congress must pass a bill that restores the protections of Roe v Wade – and when they do, President Joe Biden will sign it into federal law.
      We’ve launched a standalone blog following the latest developments after a vehicle explosion at the US-Canada border.Join us here to follow the latest news and reaction:The politics blog will pause for now.Dramatic images and clips are coming through on the vehicle explosion at the international bridge near the Niagara Falls, but it’s a very fluid situation in terms of official information emerging at this point.The FBI is investigating and, according to CNN, also the US Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) federal agency.Reports so far suggest that a car that was entering the US from Canada, where there are toll booths and officials, exploded. There are no reports yet of any victims but this is all unfolding.A border crossing between the US and Canada has been closed after a vehicle exploded at a checkpoint on a bridge near Niagara Falls, the Associated Press reports.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s field office in Buffalo, in upstate New York, said in a statement that it was investigating the explosion on the so-called Rainbow Bridge, which connects the two countries across the Niagara River.Photos and video taken by news organizations and posted on social media showed a security booth that had been singed by flames.Further information wasn’t immediately available.New York governor, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said she had been briefed on the incident and was “closely monitoring the situation”.Images and clips are emerging on social media.The FBI and other law enforcement are investigating a vehicle explosion at the international bridge that connects the US and Canada at the Niagara Falls.The cause of the explosion is not yet clear but there are some dramatic images and reports by the Associated Press citing the FBI that the border has been closed.There is talk of a vehicle bomb or an electric vehicle battery combusting, we will bring you details as they unfold.Here is Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer explaining the Reproductive Health Act which sends a “poweful message – [that] Michigan is a place that fights for people’s right to make decisions about their own bodies”: Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed a package of bills known as the Reproductive Health Act into law on Tuesday.In a series of tweets announcing the signing, Whitmer said that the RHA repeals the state’s TRAP laws which are “medically unnecessary restrictions on hallway width, ceiling heights, HVAC systems, and janitor’s closets” that have “nothing to do with providing healthcare.”The RHA also repeals another “extreme law on the books from 1931 that would have criminalized nurses and doctors for prescribing medication abortion including mifepristone”, said Whitmer.The RHA also ensures that students at the state’s public universities have access to information about their reproductive health options.The American Civil Liberties Union has issued several guides on how to talk about abortion access over the holidays.In a guide by ACLU Alabama, the organization wrote:
      “Alabama has one of the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality in the nation. Restricting abortion access only worsens this issue.”
      Meanwhile, a guide issued by ACLU Indiana said:
      “Having deeper, nonjudgmental conversations in which you share personal, values-based stories has been shown to move the needle – even for people who start with opposite views. It isn’t magic, and it doesn’t work every time or even immediately, but these conversations can change the way Hoosiers think and talk about abortion.”
      Washington’s Democratic senator Patty Murray has also voiced her support for abortion rights, urging the restoration of Roe v Wade, which the US supreme court overturned last year.Murray tweeted:
      “RT if you agree: we need to restore Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion for all women, no matter where they live.”
      Last September, Murray led 29 senators in urging the Joe Biden administration to strengthen privacy protections for women seeking reproductive healthcare under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act.Catholics for Choice, a Catholic abortion rights advocacy group, has tweeted support for advocates of abortion access who may have different political views from to those around them ahead of Thanksgiving, saying:
      “We know the Thanksgiving table might feel isolating if you have different political views. Catholics who support abortion access are in the pews, teaching Sunday school, & even around your dinner table.
      You are not alone.”
      In an interview earlier this year with the Guardian about pro-choice Catholics fighting to seize the abortion narrative from the religious right, CFC’s president, Jamie Manson said:
      “Catholics overwhelmingly support abortion is because their faith taught them the values of social justice, of the power of individual conscience and of religious freedom.”
      Alabama’s Republican senator Tommy Tuberville has falsely claimed that Democrats support reproductive policies that would allow abortions “after” a baby is born.In an interview last week with Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of former president Donald Trump’s son Donald Jr, Tuberville, who is blocking a handful of military promotions due to his opposition of the defense department reimbursing service members for abortion-related travels, said:
      “We’re going to pay for that by taxpayers’ money. They can’t tell us about the policy in terms of the abortion itself. You know, it’s been rape, incest or health of the mom but we asked in one of our hearings what month are you going to go by for the abortion. They couldn’t tell us if it was abortion after birth.”
      In response to Tuberville’s misleading claims about Democrats’ support for abortion after birth, Minnesota’s Democratic senator Tina Smith said:
      Did Kimberly attempt to acquaint Senator Tuberville with the criminal code? Because this is utter nonsense. But harmful nonsense. Senator Tuberville blocking these promotions is hurting our military.
      Vice-president Kamala Harris has released a statement condemning abortion bans, saying that they are passed by “extremist so-called leaders” who continue to “cause chaos, confusion and fear”.She added:
      The women of America deserve better. Congress must pass a bill that restores the protections of Roe v Wade – and when they do, President Joe Biden will sign it into federal law.
      Democrats in Virginia this week proposed amending the state constitution to enshrine abortion rights.The proposal follows Democrats’ win in the state earlier this month in which they gained control of the state legislature, signifying a blow to Republicans’ plans that included curtailing abortion access.The amendment seeks to establish that “every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom” in the state constitution.In a statement on Monday, the majority leader, Charniele Herring, said:
      Throughout the campaign cycle we told Virginians that a Democratic majority meant that abortion access would be protected in the commonwealth.
      Today, that reigns true. Our resolution will begin the process of amending our constitution to protect reproductive rights in Virginia, building on the work that I and congresswoman Jennifer McClellan started many years ago.
      It has become all too clear that without constitutional protection, access to reproductive healthcare is at risk for the commonwealth.”
      Lawyers from the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, as well as Cooper & Kirk have asked the US supreme court on behalf of Idaho’s attorney general to strip prosecution protections for ER doctors who perform abortions in the state. Bloomberg Law reports:Idaho requested the US supreme court let it enforce a near-total abortion ban, pending appeal of a decision that found the ban makes it impossible for hospitals in the state to comply with a federal emergency care law.Attorney general Raúl Labrador Monday filed an emergency application to stay an injunction that prevents the state from imposing penalties on physicians who perform abortions in emergency situations, except when necessary to save the pregnant person’s life.The US didn’t show that it’s likely to succeed on a claim that the abortion law conflicts with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, Labrador said. It’s not impossible to comply with both laws because the emergency care law doesn’t require anything that Idaho law prohibits, he said.In a 2022 audio clip aired by CNN on Tuesday, the House’s newest speaker, Mike Johnson, said that allowing people to get abortions is “truly an American holocaust”.During a radio interview in 2022, Johnson also said:
      “I mean, the reality is that Planned Parenthood and all these – big abortion – they set up their clinics in inner cities. They regard these people as easy prey … That is what’s happening across the country now.”
      Johnson also criticized what he called “activist courts”, saying:
      “There’s been some really bad law made. They’ve made a mess of our jurisprudence in this country for the last several decades. And maybe some of that needs to be cleaned up.”
      The Missouri supreme court has refused an appeal surrounding the wording of a ballot question on abortion rights in the state.On Monday, the state supreme court declined to hear an argument from Republican secretary of state Jay Ashcroft who proposed asking voters whether they are in favor of allowing “dangerous and unregulated abortions until live birth”.In October, a state appeals court ruled against Ashcroft, calling his ballot summaries “replete with politically partisan language”.Ashcroft, who is running for governor in 2024, appealed the court’s decision but was turned away on Monday by the state’s supreme court.In response to the state’s supreme court rejection, a spokesperson from ACLU Missouri told Springfield News-Leader:
      “The courts’ repeated rejection of the secretary of state’s arguments verify that his case has no legal bearing but, instead, shows he will sacrifice Missourians’ constitutional rights to gain the support and funding of special interest organizations to advance his political career.”
      Good morning,Activists across the country are racing to get abortion rights on the ballot in 2024.The multi-state efforts follow a series of Democratic wins earlier this month in several states including Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky where voters rejected Republican attempts to limit or ban the procedure.Abortion rights groups in Missouri – where abortion is completely banned with very limited exceptions – have proposed 11 different amendments that seek to expand abortion rights in the state, NBC reports.In Nebraska, abortion rights groups launched a ballot measure last week that seeks to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The measure proposes a constitutional amendment that would protect legal abortion care until “fetal viability”.Meanwhile, Democrats in Minnesota and abortion rights groups are divided on how exactly to put forth the question of abortion rights to voters. According to Axios, the state’s house speaker Melissa Hortman said that the idea is “in the mix when we talk about 2024”, but said that they “haven’t heard clearly from voters or from the caucuses here at the state capitol that [an amendment] is the next thing that we should do”.Meanwhile, in an aired audio clip on Tuesday from 2022, Mike Johnson, the House’s newest speaker, said that allowing people to receive abortions is causing “an American Holocaust”.Here are other developments in US politics:
      Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo is considering a potential run for New York City mayor, Politico reports.
      Jill Stein has launched her 2024 White House bid as a Green party candidate. More

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      Jill Stein formally launches 2024 White House bid as Green party candidate

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      A new front opened in the growing threats to Joe Biden’s presidency on Tuesday when the left-wing environmentalist Jill Stein formally launched her third presidential bid in an online conversation with two fellow progressive activists.Stein, 73, who is bidding to become the US Green party’s nominee, is the latest in a series of mostly leftist figures to announce candidacies with the potential to erode Biden’s core support in an expected re-match against Donald Trump in next year’s poll.Having previously announced her candidacy with a video posted on X, formerly Twitter, she gave added substance to her campaign in a live Zoom conversation with Chris Smalls, a US trade union organiser for Amazon workers, and Miko Peled, an Israeli-born pro-Palestinian activist.“This is all about our community rising up for our higher values,” Stein said. “This is a totally unprecedented political moment.”The choice of protagonists appeared designed to signal key themes in Stein’s candidacy – workers’ rights, high living costs, and US support for Israel, all issues where Biden is showing vulnerability among his voter base.“On all these issues, we’re in the target hairs,” Stein said. “We need to start building an America that works for all of us and that includes a living working wage … a Green New Deal … an economic bill of rights. We can end endless wars which don’t solve anything.”Stein’s entry into the race has special resonance because of her supposedly decisive role in tipping battleground states to Trump in his 2016 presidential election victory over Hillary Clinton.While winning just 1.4m votes nationwide, Stein won more votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan than Trump’s narrow victory margins, prompting many analysts to conclude that her presence on the ballot was decisive in drawing progressive voters away from Clinton.Stein also stood as the Green’s candidate in the 2012 election, when she won just over 400,000 votes nationally and was not thought to have played a decisive role in President Barack Obama’s victory over the Republican, Mitt Romney.Her attempt to earn the Green’s nomination in 2024 follows the decision last month by the party’s original likely nominee, Cornel West, to leave the party and run as an independent.Both figures join a growing field of purported third party or independent candidates amid growing signs of voter dissatisfaction at the prospect of a repeat of the 2020 presidential race between Biden and Trump.With the exception of Robert F Kennedy Jr – son of the late attorney general, whose anti-vaccine stance is thought to be attractive to voters on the right – most non-mainstream candidates are thought to pose a greater threat to Biden than Trump, who is far ahead of other candidates to win the Republican nomination.Biden, who turned 81 this week, faces growing concerns over his age – even though he is just four years older than Trump – and rumbling economic discontent. A recent poll showed Biden trailing his predecessor in five out of six battleground states that he won in 2020.The president’s path to re-election could become more complicated still if Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator for West Virginia, decides to run as an independent centrist candidate after announcing last week that he would not seek re-election to the Senate.Manchin has fueled speculation about a presidential run after announcing plans to travel the country to explore the possibility of “creating a movement to mobilise the middle”.Biden also faces a primary challenge from within his own party in the shape of the Democratic congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who has announced that he will run against the president.Stein, who is Jewish, has attacked Biden’s unstinting support for Israel in its response to the 7 October attacks by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 people. She has called for a ceasefire to the Israeli military offensive in Gaza, a stance that could potentially gain her support in Michigan, a battleground state containing many ethnic Arab voters who have become disenchanted with Biden’s pro-Israel posture.In an interview with Newsweek, she warned that Biden’s support for Israel risked nuclear war. She also called Israel an “apartheid state” and said it was committing “genocide” in Gaza, where more than 13,000 Palestinians have been killed since the country launched its military assault in retaliation for Hamas’s attack.In her campaign video, launched on 9 November, Stein, a medical doctor, called both the Democratic and Republican parties “a threat to our democracy”.“People are tired of being thrown under the bus by wealthy elites and their bought politicians,” she said. “The political system is broken. We need a party that serves the people. I’m running for president to offer that choice for the people.” More

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      Trump return to White House would be perilous for democracy, conservative lawyers say – as it happened

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      We’re closing the US politics blog now, thanks for joining us today. Here’s what we covered:
      The Wisconsin supreme court appeared poised to strike down gerrymandered Republican-drawn state legislative maps that have maintained the party’s domination for decades. In a hearing Tuesday, the panel’s new liberal majority appeared sympathetic to arguments from lawyers for Democratic governor Tony Evers and others that the majority of districts breached strict rules.
      Two senior aides to Ron DeSantis’s cratering campaign for the Republican presidential nomination almost got into a fist fight during a heated argument, it was reported. The altercation came last week as the Florida governor’s Never Back Down political action committee discussed how to counter a rise in popularity of rival Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor.
      Donald Trump appealed a ruling in which a Colorado judge said he could not be disqualified from the presidential ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, even though he engaged in insurrection by inciting the deadly January 6 attack.
      Joe Biden called on Congress to pass his $106bn supplementary budget request that he said includes funding to “step up” the fight against a flow of deadly fentanyl entering the US. The president, speaking at the White House before leaving for a Thanksgiving break in Massachusetts, said the fentanyl crisis was hurting families in every state and curbing it was “something every American needs to get behind”.
      A trio of prominent conservative lawyers said in a scathing New York Times oped that a second term in office for former president Donald Trump would imperil democracy. George Conway, J Michael Luttig and Barbara Comstock, who have formed a new group to “speak out against Trump’s falsehoods”, say Trump has surrounded himself with “grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution” and that “our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis”.
      A reminder that you can follow the latest developments in the Israel-Hamas war, including the reported imminent deal for the release of some of the hostages held in Gaza, in the Guardian’s liveblog here.Two senior team members of Ron DeSantis’s flailing presidential campaign almost came to blows during a meeting last week to discuss how to counter Nikki Haley’s rise in the polls, NBC News is reporting.According to the network, Jeff Roe, chief consultant for DeSantis’s Never Back Down political action committee, got into “a heated argument” with longtime DeSantis associate and PAC board member Scott Wagner, the two being stopped just short of a physical altercation.“You have a stick up your ass, Scott,” Roe allegedly fumed at Wagner during the meeting in Tallahassee last Tuesday.“Why don’t you come over here and get it?” Wagner responded, rising from his chair, according to NBC. Wagner was “quickly restrained by two fellow board members”, the network’s report said, adding its information came from sources in the room.Florida governor DeSantis, once seen as a viable rival to runaway leader Donald Trump in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has been tanking in numerous opinion polls, even in his own state.He appears to be an an opposite trajectory to former South Carolina governor Haley, whose “surging poll numbers and newfound affection from megadonors pose an existential threat to the Florida governor’s campaign,” NBC said.DeSantis campaign insiders have indicated that the candidate and his wife Casey DeSantis, a former television news presenter who has assumed an increasingly prominent role in his political career, are growing unhappy at the performance of the Never Back Down PAC leadership.Both DeSantis and Haley, however, still trail Trump by a substantial margin.The unseemly scenes in DeSantis’s campaign meeting mirror those of last week’s Senate labor committee meeting when Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin rose from his seat and challenged a Teamsters union official to a fight.We’ve been bringing you updates for much of the day from Wisconsin’s supreme court, where arguments have tilted back and forth over the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps.According to the Guardian’s Sam Levine, and Alice Herman in the courtroom in Madison, the panel’s liberal majority appears poised to strike down the existing Republican-drawn maps and end the party’s stranglehold on both legislative chambers of government.But it’s unclear what that would mean for a redraw of the maps, or if special elections would be needed to fill legislative seats next year.Here’s our latest report on today’s developments, and a look at what might come next:A newly-elected Florida Republican state congressman has filed legislation that would effectively ban any LGBTQ group in the state from receiving taxpayer funding.A House bill by Ryan Chamberlin would bar any non-profit from using “sexual orientation or gender identity” as a factor in any application for state contracts or grants, Florida Politics reports.The proposal was immediately criticized by Democrats, who see the bill as an extension of the Republican-dominated legislature’s well-documented assault on LGBTQ+ rights, including the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill and other restrictions championed by hard right governor Ron DeSantis.The bill is “bigoted, unnecessary and highly unconstitutional”, Democratic state representative Anna Eskamani said on X, adding that groups such as Equality Florida would essentially be banned from existing.Chamberlin captured his central Florida seat in May with 79% of a special election vote, promising at the time: “There’s work to be done. I’m excited to help with that.”Missouri’s supreme court won’t hear an appeal by Republican secretary of state Jay Ashcroft over the wording of ballot question on access to abortion, a win for advocates attempting to enshrine protections for the procedure.A state appeals court ruled last month that wording asking voters if they were in favor of “dangerous and unregulated abortions until live birth” was politically partisan.On Tuesday, the state supreme court declined to hear Ashcroft’s appeal of that ruling. Missouri’s Republican controlled legislature banned abortion except in cases of medical emergency after the US supreme court last year overturned the Roe v Wade ruling and ended 50 years of federal protections.In all seven states where abortion has been on the ballot since, voters have either supported protecting abortion rights or rejected attempts to erode them.Here’s our state-by-state guide to where abortion laws stand:A judge in Atlanta is hearing arguments on a request to revoke the bond of Harrison Floyd, one of former president Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia case related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis filed a motion last week telling superior court judge Scott McAfee that Floyd attempted to intimidate and contact likely witnesses and his co-defendants in violation of the terms of his release, the Associated Press reports.Floyd’s attorneys wrote in a court filing that Willis’ allegations are without merit and that the motion is a “retaliatory measure” against their client. Floyd “neither threatened or intimidated anyone and certainly did not communicate with a witness or co-defendant directly or indirectly,” they wrote.Willis was in court Tuesday to present the prosecution’s case. She planned to call three witnesses, including Gabriel Sterling, a top election official in Georgia who strenuously defended the legitimacy of the state’s 2020 vote count against Trump’s false claims that the election was fraudulent.The charges against Floyd relate to allegations of harassment toward Ruby Freeman, a Fulton county election worker who had been falsely accused of election fraud by Trump and his supporters. Floyd took part in a 4 January 2021 conversation in which Freeman was told she “needed protection” and was pressured to lie and say she had participated in election fraud, the indictment says.Four of the original 19 defendants agreed plea deals that include a promise to testify in any trials in the case. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.No trial date has been set, but Willis last week asked McAfee to set it for August next year, and warned the case could stretch into 2025.Donald Trump appealed a ruling in which a Colorado judge said he could not be disqualified from the presidential ballot under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, even though he engaged in insurrection by inciting the deadly January 6 attack.The former president took issue with the finding that he participated in insurrection in connection with the attack on the Capitol staged by his supporters.“The district court ruled that section three [of the 14th amendment] did not apply to the presidency, because that position is not an ‘officer of the United States’,” lawyers for Trump said in a court filing, responding to the ruling last week.“The district court nonetheless applied section three to President Trump, finding that he ‘engaged’ in an ‘insurrection’. Should these findings be vacated because the district court self-admittedly lacked jurisdiction to apply section three to President Trump?”The group that filed the suit on behalf of six state petitioners, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), also lodged an appeal.It argued: “Section three of the 14th amendment, passed after the civil war, excludes from federal or state office those who engaged in insurrection against the constitution after previously taking an oath to support it.“Because the district court found that Trump engaged in insurrection after taking the presidential oath of office, it should have concluded that he is disqualified from office and ordered the secretary of state to exclude him from the Colorado presidential primary ballot.”Read Martin Pengelly’s full story here:John Dean, former White House counsel to Richard Nixon, is scathing about Donald Trump’s efforts to persuade an appeals court that he should not have a gag order in his federal election interference case because he is running for president.Dean has weighed in on what appears to be a court leaning towards, narrowing the gag order that bans Trump from making inflammatory statements and social media posts attacking prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff.Dean posted on X/Twitter, saying: “Donald Trump has turned the rule of law in the United States upside down, and it is stunning that federal circuit court judges are buying into his remarkable con!” He said the hearing yesterday in Washington, DC, “bordered on pure farce.”Dean, who ultimately helped bring down Nixon despite being involved in the-then president’s cover-up of corrupt and illegal presidential conduct known as Watergate, must be experiencing deja vu right now. He told the Guardian’s David Smith in June 2022, of now-GOP frontrunner Trump: “I was never worried about the country and the government during Watergate but from the day Trump was nominated, I had a knot in my stomach…he just discovered late in his presidency the enormous powers he does have as president…he knows he can hurt his enemies and help his friends.”On X last night his new post on Trump concluded: “For heaven sakes, hold this man responsible for his aberrant and bullying behavior before he further destroys our country. Enough is enough is enough!”Joe Biden says negotiators are “very close” to securing the release of potentially dozens of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.The US president was speaking at the White House and said: “We’re now very close, very close – we can bring some of these hostages home very soon, but don’t want to get into the details of things.”He added: “Nothing is done until it’s done and when we have more to say we will, but things are looking good at the moment.”We are closely covering all the news in the Israel-Gaza crisis via our global live blog and you can find the details here.It’s lunchtime on a quiet day so far in US politics, and time for a recap of what we’ve looked at so far:
      Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass his $106bn supplementary budget request that he said includes funding to “step up” the fight against a flow of deadly fentanyl entering the US. The president, speaking at the White House before leaving for a Thanksgiving break in Massachusetts, said the fentanyl crisis was hurting families in every state and curbing it was “something every American needs to get behind”.
      Wisconsin’s supreme court justices have been grilling attorneys for both the respondents and plaintiffs in a much-watched gerrymandering case that could end in a complete redraw of the state’s legislative districts. Lawyers for Democratic governor Tony Evers say the current maps favoring Republicans breach a law that says they must be “contiguous”; a conservative justice says the plaintiffs want to upend 50 years of precedent.
      A trio of prominent conservative lawyers said in a scathing New York Times oped that a second term in office for former president Donald Trump would imperil democracy. George Conway, J Michael Luttig and Barbara Comstock say Trump has surrounded himself with “grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution” and that “our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis”.
      Back in Wisconsin’s supreme court, lawyers for Republicans defending gerrymandered state legislative maps are getting a grilling from the judges, as the Guardian’s Alice Herman reports from the courtroom:An attorney representing the Republican-controlled state legislature, the respondent in the redistricting case, argued that petitioners asking for legislative districts to be redrawn before the 2024 elections have not allotted sufficient time to redraw the maps, and disputed their definition of “contiguous districts”.Taylor Meehan argued that the existence of districts with literal water-bound islands invalidate the plaintiffs’ argument that the legislative maps should avoid non-contiguous districts and said that the court should adopt a looser definition of “contiguous”.“You’re telling us to use one definition because it will help your argument and I’m pretty sure the rule is we’re supposed to look at the definition to figure out what the law is,” said justice Jill Karofsky, who, along with bench colleague Ann Bradley, repeatedly questioned Dallet’s definition of “contiguity.”Meehan questioned the right of plaintiffs in non-contiguous districts across the state to bring forward the case, comparing their complaint to an Illinois voter challenging Wisconsin maps.“I don’t see how a petitioner who lives in Beloit” can ask for a statewide redraw, Meehan said.Joe Biden has called on Congress to join him to “step up the fight” against the flow of fentanyl coming into the US.The president was speaking at the White House in his final official engagement before he and first lady Jill Biden head to Nantucket later for their Thanksgiving break.Before a cabinet meeting that’s now gone into private session, Biden said he was heartbroken for families who will have an empty seat at their Thanksgiving table because they had lost a loved one to the drug:
      Fentanyl is likely the number one killer of Americans at this point. It’s an issue that’s hurting families in every state across the nation. Curbing this crisis is something that every American needs to get behind, Democrat and Republican.
      How can we accelerate our efforts and make sure that we’re delivering real results? Congress also has to step up in this fight. It can start by passing my supplemental budget request for national security, including significant resources to help stop the flow of fentanyl in our country, as well as funds to strengthen and support services for people struggling with fentanyl impacts.
      I also urge Congress to permanently make fentanyl and related substances Schedule One drugs. Too many people are dying.
      Biden prefaced his remarks with an update on progress towards a deal to free hostages held in Gaza by Hamas since the 7 October attacks on Israel. He said an agreement was “very close”.You can follow that and other developments in the Israel-Hamas war in our dedicated blog here:Here’s more from Alice Herman covering the gerrymandering case in Wisconsin’s supreme court:Anthony Russomanno, an attorney representing Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers, argued that the state’s legislative maps, and the process for drawing them, violates the separation of powers – privileging the legislature, which is responsible for drafting the maps, over the executive branch.Tamara Packard, representing five Democratic lawmakers, also argued the mapmaking process violated the separation of powers.Conservative justices hammered Russomanno and Packard with questions of propriety regarding the timing of the litigation, and justice Rebecca Bradley accused attorneys of attempting to illegally overhaul the makeup of the state legislature.“You are ultimately asking that this court unseat every assemblyman that was elected last year,” said Bradley, comparing the plaintiffs’ request to implement a new map before the 2024 elections, and hold early special elections for representatives not up for election in 2024, to Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Packard said her clients, Democratic lawmakers who would face special elections if the court were to side with the plaintiffs, were “ready, willing, and able” to face re-election and that other legislators should be willing as wellA conservative judge on Wisconsin’s supreme court questioned the timing of a lawsuit challenging the state’s legislative districts as oral arguments got under way Tuesday in a much-watched case over gerrymandering.The Guardian’s Alice Herman, who is in the courtroom, reports that Mark Gaber, an attorney representing Campaign Legal Center, laid out one of the plaintiff’s central arguments: that non-contiguous districts in the state are unconstitutional.Almost immediately, conservative judge Rebecca Bradley interrupted Gaber to question the plaintiffs’ timing in bringing the case forward.“Where were your clients two years ago?” she asked, pointing to the fact that the ideological sway of the court flipped when Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal judge, was elected this year. “You’re seeking to overturn 50 years of precedent.”Gaber disputedthe case was brought in a partisan manner, arguing that the state constitution requires contiguous districts – a non-partisan requirement. The argument that 75 of the state’s 132 districts are non-contiguous is at the heart of the plaintiffs’ case against the gerrymandered maps.House speaker Mike Johnson took a trip to visit Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday night, CNN is reporting, a pilgrimage similar to the one that exposed predecessor Kevin McCarthy to criticism.“Maga Mike”, as some have branded the Louisiana Republican for his unswerving loyalty to the former president, has endorsed Trump’s campaign for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, so a “kiss the ring” visit to Mar-a-Lago was not entirely unexpected.It is not known what the pair discussed, CNN says. But the trip has echoes of former speaker and then minority leader McCarthy’s “groveling” visit to see Trump in January 2021, days after condemning him for sparking the deadly 6 January Capitol riot.With his endorsement of Trump, Johnson, who voted against certifying the 2020 election results, has gone even further than McCarthy did in backing the twice-impeached ex-president, who is currently facing dozens of charges in multiple cases against him around the country.“I’m all in for President Trump,” Johnson told CNBC, adding he was “one of the closest allies that President Trump had in Congress”.The Guardian’s Sam Levine and Alice Herman are following oral arguments this morning at the Wisconsin supreme court, where the seven justices will adjudicate one of the most closely-watched gerrymandering cases this year.The case is a challenge to the maps for Wisconsin’s state legislature, which are so heavily distorted in favor of Republicans that it is all but impossible for Democrats to win a majority.Republicans took over the legislature in 2010, and drew maps that have cemented their majority ever since. Democrats won statewide elections in the state in 2018, 2020, and 2022, but Republicans have never had fewer than 60 seats in the state assembly. State senate districts must be comprised of three assembly districts in Wisconsin, so any gerrymandering in the assembly carries over to the senate.The challengers want the court to strike down the maps and order new elections in all 132 of the state’s legislative districts in 2024.They note that 75 of Wisconsin’s 132 legislative districts are non-contiguous, a clear violation of a state constitutional requirement that says all districts need to be contiguous. The districts, Republicans argue, are contiguous because even with “islands” they still keep municipalities whole.The challengers also argue that the process by which the supreme court picked the current maps violated the separation of powers because the panel chose one the Democratic governor had vetoed.Oral arguments have just begun. We’ll bring you updates as we get them.Read more here:“Grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency.”That’s how a group of prominent conservative lawyers sees the legal team Donald Trump has surrounded himself with as the former president plots a return to the White House next year.Warning of an unprecedented threat to democracy from a Trump second term, and the worsening of a “legal emergency” set in motion by his unprecedented efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, they have founded a group called the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, which they say is needed “to bring sanity back to conservative lawyering and jurisprudence”.A trio of lawyers form the new group’s board. They are George Conway, ex-husband to Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway; J Michael Luttig, formerly a US appeals court judge; and Republican former Virginia congresswoman Barbara Comstock.They set out their case Tuesday in a hard-hitting editorial in the New York Times:
      American democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law are the righteous causes of our times, and the nation’s legal profession is obligated to support them. But with the acquiescence of the larger conservative legal movement, these pillars of our system of governance are increasingly in peril. The dangers will only grow should Donald Trump be returned to the White House next November.
      Recent reporting about plans for a second Trump presidency are frightening. He would stock his administration with partisan loyalists committed to fast-tracking his agenda and sidestepping – if not circumventing altogether – existing laws and long-established legal norms.
      They cite Trump’s already publicized plans to appoint public officials investigate and exact retribution against his political opponents; remove federal public servants at will; and invoke special powers to seize control of First Amendment-protected activities, criminal justice, elections, immigration and more.The “guest essay” continues with praise for the few lawyers in the first Trump administration who stood up to his excesses, and a warning that legal checks and balances would be largely absent from his second:
      Alarming is the growing crowd of grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency.
      The actions of these conservative Republican lawyers are increasingly becoming the new normal. Any legal movement that could foment such a constitutional abdication and attract a sufficient number of lawyers willing to advocate its unlawful causes is ripe for a major reckoning.
      Our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis.
      Good morning US politics blog readers! A group of prominent conservative lawyers is warning that democracy would be placed in unprecedented peril if Donald Trump returns to the White House next year, and that legal checks and balances on his conduct would be largely absent if he wins a second term.The dire predictions come in a hard-hitting opinion piece Tuesday in the New York Times.Trump, the former president and runaway leader for the Republican 2024 nomination, has surrounded himself with “growing crowd of grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency,” they say, creating an unprecedented “legal emergency” worsened by their support of his unsuccessful efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.The authors, who include George Conway, ex-husband to Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, have formed an attorneys’ group called the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, which they say is needed “to bring sanity back to conservative lawyering and jurisprudence”.We’ll have a closer look at that coming up.Here’s what else we’re watching today on a quiet pre-Thanksgiving Tuesday in Washington DC:
      Joe Biden will host a White House meeting over efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl into the US this morning, before he and first lady Jill Biden head for their Thanksgiving break in Nantucket.
      There’s no action in Congress, but an election in Utah’s 2nd congressional district Tuesday will restore the House to its full complement of 435 members since Democrat David Cicilline of Rhode Island resigned in May. Republican Celeste Maloy is expected to handily beat Democratic state senator Kathleen Riebe.
      Wisconsin’s supreme court will hear oral argument in a high-stakes lawsuit seeking to strike down the maps for the state’s legislature. The result could bring an end to what may be the most gerrymandered districts in the US. Read more about that here. More