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      Biden’s China investment ban: who’s targeted and what does it mean for the 2024 US election?

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      Joe Biden has moved to restrict US investment in Chinese technology, signing an executive order which focuses on a few, sensitive hi-tech sectors including semiconductors, quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI).It is the latest in a series of measures taken by the US to restrict China’s access to the most advanced technology and comes as the president has embarked on a multi-state tour of the south-west to tout his plans to revive American manufacturing after decades of decline.The restrictions are expected to take effect next year – and come at a sensitive time in the US-China relationship. The Biden administration has launched diplomatic overtures to Beijing in recent months, seeking to mend ties after a series of incidents, while still attempting to bolster its position against China on military, economic and technological fronts.What are the latest restrictions?As a result of previous Biden administration measures, the US already bans or restricts the export to China of many of the technologies covered in these new measures. The aim of Wednesday’s executive order is to prevent US funds from helping China build its own domestic capabilities, which could undermine the existing export controls.Under the executive order, the US Treasury has been directed to regulate certain US investments in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.China, Hong Kong and Macau are listed as the “countries of concern”, but a senior Biden official has told Reuters other countries could be added in the future.The rules are not retroactive and apply to to future investments, with officials saying the goal is to regulate investments in areas that could give China military and intelligence advantages.Britain and the European Union have signalled their intention to move along similar lines, and the Group of Seven advanced economies agreed in June that restrictions on outbound investments should be part of an overall toolkit.Biden’s plan has been criticised by Republicans, many of whom say it does not go far enough.Republican Senator Marco Rubio has called it “almost laughable”, adding that the plan is “riddled with loopholes … and fails to include industries China’s government deems critical”, he said.How has China reacted?A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said the White House had ignored “China’s repeated expression of deep concerns” about the plan.The embassy warned that it would affect more than 70,000 US companies that do business in China, hurting both Chinese and American businesses.The country’s commerce ministry said it reserved the right to take countermeasures and encouraged the US to respect the laws of market economy and the principle of fair competition.What part do these measures play in Biden’s re-election bid?As the executive order was made public, Biden was speaking in New Mexico, touting his government’s success in boosting manufacturing jobs in the renewable energy sector.“Where’s it written that America can’t lead the world again in manufacturing? Because we’re going to do just that,” Biden said at the groundbreaking of a new factory manufacturing wind turbine towers in the city of Belon.“Instead of exporting American jobs, we’re creating American jobs and we’re exporting American products,” he added.However, polling shows that for many, the perception of the president’s economic policies – “Bidenomics” as his communications team likes to call them – are at odds with a range of positive indicators. US inflation has dropped to the lowest levels since 2021 and the administration has repeatedly touted months of consistent jobs growth; despite this though multiple polls show that only a minority of Americans support Biden’s handling of the economy.The cornerstone of Biden’s refreshed bid to voters are two major bills he shepherded through Congress and signed into law a year ago: the Chips and Science Act – which pumps huge funding into semiconductor manufacturing, research and development – and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a law for megaprojects boosting green investment.The chips act aims to further freeze China’s semiconductor industry in place, while pouring billions of dollars in subsidies into the US chip industry.Both laws, along with the growing restrictions on Chinese industry, are positioned to win back portions of the working-class vote who felt left behind by globalisation and turned to Donald Trump at previous elections.What’s next?The ban is a step in a broad and ongoing push to undermine China’s efforts to achieve independence in a number of technological areas, in particular the development of advanced semiconductors.In recent months, the US government has signalled it still wants to close some loopholes Chinese businesses are using to get their hands on the most advanced semiconductors.In response to previous chip bans, Nvidia one of the world’s leading chip companies, has started offering a less advanced chip, the A800, to Chinese buyers. But new curbs being considered by Washington would restrict even those products.In possible anticipation of such a move China’s tech giants – including Baidu, TikTok-owner ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba – have made orders worth $1bn to acquire about 100,000 A800 processors from the Nvidia to be delivered this year, the Financial Times has reported.The Chinese groups had also bought a further $4bn worth of graphics processing units to be delivered in 2024, according to the report.Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report More

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      Data says Americans are becoming more conservative. What’s going on? | Jill Filipovic

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      Earlier this summer, Gallup published some surprising numbers: more Americans identified as “socially conservative” than at any time in about a decade. Thirty-eight per cent said they were “conservative” or “very conservative” when it came to social issues, as opposed to 29% who said they were “liberal” or “very liberal”. A year earlier, 33% were on the conservative side, and 30% liberal.What accounts for the rightward shift?While these numbers tell us something interesting about personal identification, they don’t actually tell us all that much about policy. “Social issues” wasn’t defined by the Gallup pollsters, leaving respondents to interpret the term for themselves. But the line between “social issues” and “economic issues” isn’t all that clear. Is income inequality a social issue, an economic issue, or both? What about abortion, which has long been defined as a social issue, but has huge economic impacts for women and their families?What primarily seems to be driving the change is the Biden era.The last time we saw a similar peak in self-described social conservatism was in 2009, the year Barack Obama took office. Social conservatism hit a low in 2021, when Biden was inaugurated after a horrific and deadly pro-Trump insurrection brought national shame to the country and to the Republican party in particular.But it has steadily ticked up since then. And the shift has been driven largely by Republicans, whose conservative/very conservative identification on social issues has grown by 14 points since 2021. Independents have shifted rightward on social issues by five points. Democrats have stayed steady.Republicans, in other words, have doubled down on conservative identity now that their party is out of the White House. And that makes sense: being in the political opposition is often more motivating than being in charge, and feeling like your policy preferences are being sidelined can make you dig in harder than when you feel like you’re winning.There’s also been an age-related shift. While most age groups, aside from those over 65 who stayed more or less even, shifted rightward, the biggest shift – 13 points – was among those aged 30 to 49 (50-to-64-year-olds shifted by 11 points, while adults under 30 moved to the right by six points). This, too, may not be all that surprising: one’s 30s and 40s are the years when many adults find themselves turning inwards, toward nuclear family and home life, which can be a conservatizing force (for women, marriage tends to create a shift to the right; having children, for both sexes, may do the same).There’s actually not much evidence that Americans are growing more conservative when you break it down issue by issue. Support for abortion rights is at record highs, with even many Republicans wanting the government out of women’s uteruses. And Americans aren’t just more pro-choice broadly; they are now more likely to support abortion without restriction.Support for LGBTQ rights is also widespread. Seventy-one per cent of Americans support same-sex marriage rights. Sixty-six per cent favor allowing trans people to serve in the military. And 93% say gay people and lesbians should have the same job opportunities and protections as straight people.When it comes to guns, most Americans want stricter laws. And most Americans also say that more needs to be done to make racial equality a reality.It’s clear that Americans are a more liberal bunch than can be captured by amorphous self-identity questions. One issue, though, is different: crime.According to Gallup data from last year, 56% of Americans said there was more crime in their area than in the previous year – the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 1972. And 78% said they believed crime was up nationwide. Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to believe crime was up, but 42% of Democrats believed crime in their area had risen. And most Democrats also believe that crime is up nationwide.Perception, of course, is not reality. “Crime” is also one of those amorphous terms – are we talking about murders or porch pirates or wage theft, or all of the above? The numbers generally show that, while there was a spike in violent crime during Covid, crime remains lower than it was at its peak in the 1990s. But crime statistics are notoriously poorly tracked, which leaves us with limited data. And “things aren’t as bad as they were at the height of violent crime in modern America” isn’t exactly comforting.People also tend to vote on perception, not data. If the general perception is that crime is rising, that can push voters to the right, as the Republican party has pretty firmly entrenched itself as the party of law and order. This is ironic, given that Republicans’ anything-goes stance on gun control fuels America’s endemic violence problem, but Republicans’ rhetoric on crime is much more aggressive than Democrats’. Republicans also tend to promote more policing and punitive measures in response to crime, while Democrats are more likely to push broader social investments, including in education and poverty alleviation.When many Americans think about rising crime, what they’re really considering is the general sense of things being safe and orderly or not. A big part of what’s driving the perception of rapidly rising crime, I suspect, is the reality of increasingly visible social dysfunction: homelessness, addiction and anti-social behavior.Since the pandemic, homelessness has surged, and there seems to be a higher number of visibly homeless people who are struggling with mental health disorders, substance abuse disorders or both. In New York City, there has been an 18% increase in the number of people who are sleeping on the streets and in the subways, and for the first time ever the city’s homeless population passed 100,000. The San Francisco Bay Area has seen a 35% rise in homelessness since 2019. Los Angeles has seen its homeless population increase by more than 40% since 2018. Maricopa county, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, has seen its homeless population increase by 72% since 2017.Large west coast cities are plagued by tent encampments, which are often sites of gang activity, illicit drug use and deadly overdoses, sexual violence and crime more broadly. The folks sleeping rough are not the majority of people who are unhoused on any given night, but they are a group that reads as homeless, erratic, potentially dangerous and reflective of broader social malaise. That read may not be kind or fair and accurate, but perceptions rarely are.Adding to the general sense of insecurity and instability are surging drug overdoses and the more amorphous sense – backed up with some data – that people are just acting erratically and badly in all kinds of new and disturbing ways. All of this may be combined into a general sense of “things are bad and seem to be coming apart at the seams” which can manifest as “crime is getting worse” – which in turn can drive people to the right if they don’t think Democrats and liberals are responsive to their concerns.And unfortunately, while mainstream Democrats do largely recognize that crime and concern for general order and stability is a problem, a lot of liberal pundits and people in media, and even some elected officials, deny and deflect. One way to drive people who share your values away from your party and your ideology is to deny what they can see with their own eyes.Luckily, there are a long list of issues that Democrats win on, and voters may be more inclined to vote for politicians who promise to protect the environment, reproductive rights and democracy itself than those who say they’ll “do something” about homelessness (especially if more voters understand that “something” has to be housing) or “get tough” on crime (especially if voters are exhausted by a system of brutal incarceration that doesn’t actually solve the problem).It is a problem for Democrats, though – and for progressive movement-building – if more Americans consider themselves socially conservative, whether their policy preferences perfectly line up with the Republican party or not. The latest numbers may just be a blip, spurred on by conservatives who feel victimized by a Democratic administration.But liberals are already at a disadvantage in a country where only a small minority – roughly one in five – has said for the last 20 years that they are liberal on economic issues, while 40% to 50% have consistently said they’re economically conservative. Republicans don’t represent a majority on policy, but conservatism seems to have a better brand than liberalism: while 40% of Americans say they’re conservative, just 26% say they’re liberal.That doesn’t necessary mean Democrats will always lose elections. But it is bad news for the majority of us who value liberal democracy and want to build a fairer, healthier, safer society.
      Jill Filipovic is the author of the The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness More

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      Joe Biden links Grand Canyon national monument to fight against climate change – as it happened

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      From 4h agoJoe Biden is spending today in Arizona, where at 2pm eastern time he will announce that he is designating about one million acres around the Grand Canyon as a national monument, which will also protect it from uranium mining.The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh and Mary Yang have more:
      Joe Biden will designate a “nearly 1m acres” expanse around the Grand Canyon as a new national monument, protecting the region from future uranium mining.
      The designation, which Biden is expected to announce on Tuesday comes after years-long lobbying by tribal leaders and local environmentalists to block mining projects that they say would damage the Colorado River watershed and important cultural sites.
      The new Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon national monument encompasses the headwaters of the Colorado River, as well as the habitat of the endangered California condor. It is also the homeland of several tribes. Baaj Nwaavjo means “where tribes roam” for the Havasupai tribe and I’tah Kukveni means “our footprints” for the Hopi tribe.
      “Establishing the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument honors our solemn promise to Tribal Nations to respect sovereignty, preserves America’s iconic landscapes for future generations, and advances my commitment to protect and conserve at least 30% of our nation’s land and waters by 2030,” Biden said in a statement.
      In 2012, the Obama administration had blocked new mining on federal land in the area – but the protections are due to expire by 2023. The new designation would protect the area in perpetuity. Mining industry officials have said they will attempt to challenge the decision.
      Congress has been exploring new laws to boost national uranium production and enrichment, in an effort to reduce the US’s dependence on Russian imports.
      Democrats and Republicans are closely watching a special election in Ohio that could indicate if voters, even in red states, are willing to protect abortion access. Buckeye state residents are considering Issue 1, a GOP-backed measure that would make it more difficult to change the state constitution, which reproductives rights advocates are asking voters to do in November to ensure abortion remains legal. Today’s election is viewed as a test of whether the issue, which so animated voters in last year’s midterm elections and was seen as one reason why Democrats nationwide performed better than expected, remains as potent as it once was. Polls close in Ohio at 7.30pm eastern time.Here’s what else happened today:
      Joe Biden established a new national monument around the Grand Canyon, linking the decision to his fight against climate change.
      If Issue 1 is approved in Ohio, election-day turnout will likely be crucial, a top political analyst says.
      Ron DeSantis is replacing his campaign manager in an effort to jump-start his floundering presidential bid.
      The Washington DC grand jury that last week indicted Donald Trump is continuing its work, for reasons that remain unknown.
      Addressing a rally in New Hampshire, Trump made light of the multiple criminal indictments filed against him, saying they helped him in the polls.
      Below is a map of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which Joe Biden established today.The new areas are around the national park situated in northern Arizona, and outlined in green:Meanwhile in Ohio, voting is ongoing in the special election over Issue 1, which would raise the bar to amend the state’s constitution through the ballot box, as abortion rights advocates hope voters will do later this year.It may only be one state of 50, but nonetheless expect today’s election to be viewed as a litmus test for how important the issue of reproductive rights is to Americans, more than a year after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade.A CNN poll released today indicates that voters nationwide do indeed remain fired up by the court’s decision, which overturned nearly 50 years of precedent and allowed states to ban abortion completely. The share of those surveyed disapproving of the decision was 64%, the same as it was a year ago, CNN says.After a draft of the court’s decision was leaked in May 2022, the network’s pollsters found that 26% of respondents would only vote for a candidate who shared their view on abortion. That number is now up to 29% in the latest survey, according to CNN.Donald Trump is in New Hampshire, an early voting state in the Republican primaries, where he is basking in his status as the frontrunner for the nomination.The former president is an avid poll watcher, and is clearly relishing the noticeable uptick in his public support ever since the first criminal indictments again him became public earlier this year:Among those who joined Joe Biden for his speech at the Grand Canyon was Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona senator who last year left the Democratic party to be an independent:Sinema has had a tortured relationship with Biden and many Democrats, particularly progressives. When Democrats controlled the Senate in 2021 and 2022 by just a single vote, Sinema acted to block proposals that would have increased taxes on the wealthy, voted against raising the minimum wage and protected the filibuster, which requires most legislation to pass with at least 60 votes.She is up for re-election next year, though she has not said if she will stand for another term. Today, Emerson College released polling showing that if Sinema is on the ballot, she will probably pull support from the Republican candidate – not whoever the Democrats nominate. If that trend holds, it will be good news for Biden’s allies, who are defending several Senate seats in red or swing states next year, and can only afford to lose one and maintain their majority in the chamber.As he announced a new million-acre national monument around the Grand Canyon, Joe Biden connected the move to his fights against climate change and rightwing culture war policies.“I made a commitment as president to prioritize respect for the tribal sovereignty and self determination, to honor the solemn promises the United States made to tribal nations, to fulfill federal trust and treaty obligations,” Biden said.“At a time when some seek to ban books and bury history, we’re making it clear that we can’t just choose to learn only what we want to know. We should learn everything that’s good or bad, the truth about who we are as a nation. That’s what great nations do.”The new Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon national monument is the homeland for several tribes, and includes the headwaters of the drought-stricken Colorado river.“Preserving these lands is good not only for Arizona but for the planet. It’s good for the economy, it’s good for the soul of the nation, and I believe … to my core it’s the right thing to do. But there’s more work ahead to combat the existential threat of climate change,” Biden said.Joe Biden, who is lagging his predecessors when it comes to giving news conferences and interviews to reporters, has sat for a one-on-0ne with the Weather Channel.The network said its interview airs tomorrow, and will concern climate change:Expect the president to talk about the Inflation Reduction Act, both in that interview and in his speech today at the Grand Canyon. Signed about a year ago, the measure is the first piece of federal legislation intended to address climate change.Few places in America are more beautiful than the Grand Canyon, which those aboard Air Force One got a good view of when Joe Biden arrived yesterday:According to the White House, the president will in a few minutes speak from the Red Butte Airfield, an abandoned facility that local broadcaster KPNX calls “one of Arizona’s hidden gems”.Joe Biden is spending today in Arizona, where at 2pm eastern time he will announce that he is designating about one million acres around the Grand Canyon as a national monument, which will also protect it from uranium mining.The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh and Mary Yang have more:
      Joe Biden will designate a “nearly 1m acres” expanse around the Grand Canyon as a new national monument, protecting the region from future uranium mining.
      The designation, which Biden is expected to announce on Tuesday comes after years-long lobbying by tribal leaders and local environmentalists to block mining projects that they say would damage the Colorado River watershed and important cultural sites.
      The new Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon national monument encompasses the headwaters of the Colorado River, as well as the habitat of the endangered California condor. It is also the homeland of several tribes. Baaj Nwaavjo means “where tribes roam” for the Havasupai tribe and I’tah Kukveni means “our footprints” for the Hopi tribe.
      “Establishing the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument honors our solemn promise to Tribal Nations to respect sovereignty, preserves America’s iconic landscapes for future generations, and advances my commitment to protect and conserve at least 30% of our nation’s land and waters by 2030,” Biden said in a statement.
      In 2012, the Obama administration had blocked new mining on federal land in the area – but the protections are due to expire by 2023. The new designation would protect the area in perpetuity. Mining industry officials have said they will attempt to challenge the decision.
      Congress has been exploring new laws to boost national uranium production and enrichment, in an effort to reduce the US’s dependence on Russian imports.
      The supreme court’s grant of a Biden administration request to reinstate its regulations on ghost guns while a legal challenge continues came about after a split among the six-member conservative majority.Conservatives Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, while Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts joined with the court’s three liberals in allowing the regulations to remains in place, at least for now, Bloomberg News reports.Expect further litigating over the rules, which Bloomberg reports were put in place by the Biden administration to stop gun violence, only to be challenged in court:
      The ATF rule subjects gun kits to the same federal requirements as fully assembled firearms, meaning dealers must include serial numbers, conduct background checks and keep records of transactions.
      “It isn’t extreme. It’s just basic common sense,” Biden said when he announced the rule at a White House event last year.
      US District Judge Reed O’Connor tossed out the regulation, and a three-judge panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals had left the core of his ruling in force while it considers the administration’s appeal on an expedited basis. All four lower court judges are Republican appointees.
      Alito last week temporarily blocked O’Connor’s order while the high court decided how to handle the case.
      The key legal issue is whether gun kits can be classified as “firearms” under a 1968 law that imposes requirements on dealers. The administration contends that kits qualify as firearms because the law covers items that can “readily be converted” into functional weapons. The disputed weapons can be assembled by almost anyone in as little as 20 minutes, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said in court papers.
      The rule is being challenged by a collection of manufacturers, dealers, individuals and gun-rights groups. They say the administration is trying to change a 50-year-old understanding of the 1968 Gun Control Act.
      The US Supreme Court has just granted a request by Joe Biden’s administration to reinstate – at least for now – a federal regulation aimed at reining in privately made firearms called “ghost guns” that are difficult for law enforcement to trace, Reuters reports.The news agency further writes:
      The justices put on hold a July 5 decision by US District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas that had blocked the 2022 rule nationwide pending the administration’s appeal.
      O’Connor found that the administration exceeded its authority under a 1968 federal law called the Gun Control Act in implementing the rule relating to ghost guns, firearms that are privately assembled and lack the usual serial numbers required by the federal government.
      The rule, issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in 2022 to target the rapid proliferation of the homemade weapons, bans “buy build shoot” kits without serial numbers that individuals can get online or at a store without a background check. The kits can be quickly assembled into a working firearm.
      The rule clarified that ghost guns qualify as “firearms” under the federal Gun Control Act, expanding the definition of a firearm to include parts and kits that may be readily turned into a gun. It required serial numbers and that manufacturers and sellers be licensed. Sellers under the rule also must run background checks on purchasers prior to a sale.
      Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who handles emergency matters arising from a group of states including Texas, on July 28 temporarily blocked O’Connor’s decision to give the justices time to decide how to proceed.
      The administration on July 27 asked the justices to halt O’Connor’s ruling that invalidated a Justice Department restriction on the sale of ghost gun kits while it appeals to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.The administration said that allowing the O’Connor’s ruling to stand would enable an “irreversible flow of large numbers of untraceable ghost guns into our nation’s communities.”
      Who is James Uthmeier, Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s newly-designated campaign manager for the Republican’s presidential bid?Another youthful face now at the head of extremist DeSantis’s campaign, Uthmeier was gubernatorial chief of staff after being DeSantis’s general counsel, but he’s also a former senior adviser to Wilbur Ross, a controversial commerce secretary in the Trump administration.Reuters further reports that:
      It is unclear what direction Uthmeier will take the DeSantis campaign as its new manager. He has relatively little experience with campaigns or electoral politics in general.
      The latest shakeup fits into a historical pattern for DeSantis, said Whit Ayres, a Republican operative who was DeSantis’ pollster when he ran for Florida governor in 2018. “This is par for the course for DeSantis’ campaigns. He’s run for Congress three times, and for governor twice. He had different campaign staff for all five campaigns. It is very difficult to run for president the first time if you have nobody around you who has presidential experience,” he added.
      Florida governor Ron DeSantis has replaced the campaign manager of his bid to win the 2024 Republican nomination for US president, Generra Peck, four days after Robert Bigelow, the biggest individual donor to a group supporting the DeSantis candidacy, told Reuters he would not donate more money unless the governor changes his approach because “extremism isn’t going to get you elected,” the news agency reports. The new campaign manager will be close adviser James Uthmeier.Reuters further reports:
      Bigelow said he had told Peck, who he called “a very good campaign manager,” that DeSantis needed to be more moderate to have a chance.Asked how Peck reacted, Bigelow said, laughing: “There was a long period of silence where I thought maybe she had passed out. But I think she took it all in.”DeSantis is running second in the race for the Republican nomination to face Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 2024 election, but has been sinking in opinion polls for months. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll put his national support at just 13%, far behind former President Trump, at 47%.“James Uthmeier has been one of Governor DeSantis’ top advisors for years and he is needed where it matters most: working hand in hand with Generra Peck and the rest of the team to put the governor in the best possible position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden,” Romeo, the communications director, said in a statement.
      DeSantis had been facing increasing pressure from donors to change tack in recent months as he continued to drop in the polls and he burned through cash at a faster-than-expected rate.Dan Eberhart, a prominent Republican donor, suggested that the move was still too tepid.
      DeSantis faces a crucial moment on August 23 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the first Republican debate of the 2024 campaign. Donald Trump has said he plans to skip the debate, which would make DeSantis the focus of attacks from other candidates.
      Democrats and Republicans are closely watching a special election in Ohio that could indicate if voters, even in red states, are willing to protect abortion access. Buckeye state residents are considering Issue 1, a GOP-backed measure that would make it more difficult to change the state constitution, which reproductives rights advocates are asking voters to do in November to ensure abortion remains legal. Today’s election is viewed as a test of whether the issue, which so animated voters in last year’s midterm elections and was seen as one reason why Democrats nationwide performed better than expected, remains as potent as it once was. Polls close in Ohio at 7.30pm eastern time.Here’s what else is going on today: More

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      in US Politics

      Supreme court reinstates Biden’s ‘ghost gun’ restrictions for now

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      The US supreme court on Tuesday granted a request by President Joe Biden’s administration to reinstate – at least for now – a federal regulation aimed at reining in privately made firearms called “ghost guns” that are difficult for law enforcement to trace.The justices put on hold a 5 July decision by US district judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas, that had blocked the 2022 rule nationwide pending the administration’s appeal. O’Connor found that the administration exceeded its authority under a 1968 federal law called the Gun Control Act in implementing the rule relating to ghost guns, firearms that are privately assembled and lack the usual serial numbers required by the federal government.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore details soon… More

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      in Elections

      Trump claims protective order against him would infringe his free speech rights – live

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      From 19m agoAhead of an afternoon deadline for his lawyers to respond to a request from special counsel Jack Smith for a protective order in the January 6 case, Donald Trump said such a ruling would infringe on his free speech rights.From his Truth social account:
      No, I shouldn’t have a protective order placed on me because it would impinge upon my right to FREE SPEECH. Deranged Jack Smith and the Department of Injustice should, however, because they are illegally “leaking” all over the place!
      The former president’s attorneys have until 5pm eastern time to respond to the request from Smith, who asked for the protective order after Trump on Friday wrote, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” on Truth.Smith wants Trump’s attorneys barred from publicly sharing “sensitive” materials including grand jury transcripts obtained during the January 6 case’s pre-trial motions.Aileen Cannon, the federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s trial on charges related to keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, appeared to disclose an ongoing grand jury investigation in a court filing today, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:Cannon was appointed to the bench by Trump, and faced scrutiny last year for a decision in an earlier stage of the Mar-a-Lago case that some legal experts viewed as favorable to the former president, and which was later overturned by an appeals court.Cannon’s is presiding over Trump’s trial in Florida on charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith, who alleges the former president illegally stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and conspired to hide them from government officials sent to retrieve them.In response to the charges filed against him over January 6, Donald Trump’s lawyers have argued the former president did not know that he indeed lost the 2020 election. But as the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, that defense may not be enough to stop prosecutors from winning a conviction:Included in the indictment last week against Donald Trump for his efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election was a count of obstructing an official proceeding – the attempt to stop the vote certification in Congress on the day his supporters mounted the January 6 Capitol attack.The count is notable, because – based on a review of previous judicial rulings in other cases where the charge has been brought – it may be one where prosecutors will not need to prove Trump knew he lost the election, as the former president’s legal team has repeatedly claimed.The obstruction of an official proceeding statute has four parts, but in Trump’s case what is at issue is the final element: whether the defendant acted corruptly.The definition of “corruptly” is currently under review by the US court of appeals for the DC circuit in the case titled United States v Robertson. Yet previous rulings by district court judges and a different three-judge panel in the DC circuit in an earlier case suggest how it will apply to Trump.In short: even with the most conservative interpretation, prosecutors at trial may not need to show that Trump knew his lies about 2020 election fraud to be false, or that the ex-president knew he had lost to Joe Biden.“There’s no need to prove that Trump knew he lost the election to establish corrupt intent,” said Norman Eisen, special counsel to the House judiciary committee in the first Trump impeachment.“The benefit under the statute is the presidency itself – and Trump clearly knew that without his unlawful actions, Congress was going to certify Biden as the winner of the election. That’s all the corrupt intent you need,” Eisen said.Donald Trump’s team has clearly been paying attention to Ron DeSantis’s NBC News interview, with a spokeswoman attacking the Florida governor for his comments dismissing the ex-president’s false claims about his 2020 election loss:Speaking of Republican presidential candidates, NBC News scored a sit-down interview with Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and got him to again say that his chief rival Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.DeSantis, whose campaign for the White House is in troubled waters, had been vague on the issue until last week, when he started saying publicly that he did not believe the former president’s false claims about his election loss.Here he is saying it again, on NBC:In his final days as vice-president, Mike Pence faced pressure from Donald Trump to go along with his plan to disrupt Joe Biden’s election victory. Pence refused his then-boss’s request, and the two running mates are now foes, but could Pence potentially be a witness in the trial on the federal charges brought against Trump over the election subversion plot?In an interview with CBS News broadcast over the weekend, Pence, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, said he has “no plans to testify”, but added “people can be confident we’ll obey the law. We’ll respond to the call of the law, if it comes and we’ll just tell the truth.”Far from being worried about what Trump’s former deputy might have to say about him, the former president’s attorney John Lauro said his legal team would welcome Pence’s testimony.“The vice-president will be our best witness,” Lauro said in a Sunday appearance on CBS, though he didn’t exactly say why he felt that way. “There was a constitutional disagreement between the vice-president [Pence] and president Trump, but the bottom line is never, never in our country’s history, as those kinds of disagreements have been prosecuted criminally. It’s unheard of.”Good morning, US politics blog readers. Mere days have passed since special counsel Jack Smith indicted Donald Trump for his failed effort to reverse his 2020 election loss, but the two sides are already battling over what the former president can say and do. On Friday, Trump wrote “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”, prompting Smith’s prosecutors to request a protective order that would restrict what the former president’s legal team can share publicly, saying it is necessary to guard people involved in the case against retaliation.Trump’s lawyers have until 5pm eastern time today to respond. It’s an early salvo in what is expected to be the lengthy process Smith’s case is expected to take, and which will undoubtedly hang over the 2024 election, where Trump is currently the frontrunner. Either way, the former president has not been shy about sharing his thoughts regarding the unprecedented criminal charges leveled against him, and do not be surprised if today is no different.Here’s what else is happening:
      Voters in Ohio are gearing up to decide on Tuesday whether to approve a Republican-backed proposal that will raise the bar for changing the state’s constitution. What this is really about is a ballot initiative scheduled to be put to a vote in November that would enshrine abortion protections in the state’s laws, but which would face a much more difficult road to passage if tomorrow’s vote succeeds.
      Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor whose presidential campaign appears to be floundering, just sat down for an interview with NBC News, where, among other things, he reiterated that he believed Trump lost the 2020 election.
      Joe Biden is hosting World Series winners the Houston Astros at the White House today, before heading to the Grand Canyon. More

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      ‘These people are diehard’: Iowa Trump supporters shrug off indictments

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      From his corner of rural Iowa, Neil Shaffer did more than his fair share to put Donald Trump in the White House and to try to keep him there.Shaffer oversaw the biggest swing of any county in the US from Barack Obama to Trump in 2016, and increased the then president’s share of the vote four years later. But the chair of the Howard county Republican party is not enthusiastic at the prospect of yet another Trump presidential campaign, and he blames the Democrats for driving it.“Honestly, the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot with these prosecutions,” he said. “Why is Trump doing so well? Because people feel like they are piling on him. If this is the Democrats’ effort to make him look bad, it hasn’t. It’s probably going to make him the [Republican] nominee and, honestly, he may win the general election again. And then whose fault would it be?”After pleading not guilty on Thursday to federal charges over his attempts to steal the 2020 presidential election, Trump denounced the indictment as “a persecution of a political opponent”.“If you can’t beat him, you persecute him or you prosecute him,” he said.There are plenty who buy that line in Iowa and the rest of Trump-sympathetic America.With Trump likely to spend a good part of the next year in one courtroom or another, after being indicted in New York, Florida and Washington on an array of charges and with more expected in Georgia before long, his supporters are more than willing to believe it is a plot to keep their man out of the White House.One of them is Tom Schatz, a Howard county farmer on Iowa’s border with Minnesota.“They’re bringing the charges against Trump so he can’t run against Biden. Biden is so damn crooked. We’ve never had this kind of shit in this United States, ever,” he said. “Democrats are gonna keep riding [Trump’s] ass and bringing shit up against him. They don’t quit. They just don’t like him because he’s draining the swamp, and they don’t like that.”Schatz, like many Trump supporters, sees the prosecutions as part of a pattern of establishment attacks, from Congress twice impeaching the then president to the FBI’s investigation into alleged ties between Russia and his 2016 campaign. The same message is hammered home on rightwing talk radio stations that are often the background to the working day in rural America.On the day of Trump’s arraignment, Buck Sexton, a former CIA analyst on AM 600 WMT in Iowa, was energetically telling his listeners, without irony, that the prosecutions undermined confidence in the electoral system.“We are up against something we have never dealt with before,” he said. “They don’t care how reckless this is, the Democrats. It doesn’t bother them the disruption that they are doing to faith in the judicial system, faith in our elections, something that he’s talked about all the time. How can you have a fair election when one candidate has soon to be four criminal trials against him? Specifically timed to happen during the election.”Shaffer, who works for the state as a river conservationist as well as running a family farm, has watched Trump’s support rise, fall and then bounce back.Some support drained away to the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, after several prominent candidates backed by the former president lost in the midterm elections last November. For a while, polls put DeSantis ahead of Trump in a primary matchup. Shaffer said his county party was split, although at the time he still thought Trump would win because his supporters had more energy and commitment.“Now I think it’s even more so. When I speak up for DeSantis at our Republican monthly meeting, these people wearing their Trump hats don’t want to hear it. It’s such a foregone conclusion. Trump is going to get the nomination easily, whether he’s in a jail cell or in the courtroom. These people are that diehard,” he said.Shaffer sensed the renewed vigor in Trump’s campaign when he met the former president days before the latest indictment, at the Iowa Republican party’s annual fundraising Lincoln Dinner. Trump was among 13 candidates there to argue their case before meeting party activists one on one. So was his former vice-president, Mike Pence.“I feel bad for Pence because there were 500 people in line to see Trump and there were literally five people in the room for Pence,” said Shaffer. “Trump has that connection. Most of our group was there just to meet him.”Shaffer said the line to see DeSantis was longer than for Pence but nothing like the one for Trump, which he took as further evidence that the rightwing Florida governor’s moment had passed and that the the prosecutions helped revive Trump’s candidacy.“I think DeSantis is awesome. I think he’ll make a great president someday. But as long as Trump is running, there’s no way he’s gonna get the nomination,” he said.The polls back Shaffer’s view. But among some Howard county voters, support for Trump is more ambivalent.Tom Schatz’s son, Aaron, was a reluctant Trump voter in 2016. He voted for Obama but didn’t like Hillary Clinton. He was much more enthusiastic about Trump four years later but has cooled on him since.For all that, Schatz believes the former president is the victim of a political conspiracy.The dairy and corn farmer said he was more concerned about inflation, rising interest rates and falling prices for his milk than the details of the 45-page indictment laying out Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. He preferred to see the charges as evidence of a double standard in which the Washington establishment failed to properly investigate Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden for alleged crimes.Asked about Trump’s part in the January 6 storming of the Capitol, Schatz brushed it off as a bad thing but not very different from what he said were Democratic politicians encouraging the protests and riots that followed the killing of George Floyd three years ago.“They burned down Minneapolis. Were they prosecuted for that?“ he asked. “Trump acted poorly when he lost, I’ll give them that. But they’re just out to get anything they can on him. Part of me thinks that all they’re going to do is unite the Trump followers. I think they’re doing more harm than good.”Shaffer, too, is not persuaded by the detail of the indictment.“I still don’t like a lot of what Trump was doing, a lot of what he was saying. People know he didn’t handle himself very well from election day through January 6. But does it rise to the level where he should go to jail because he said something in a phone call? I think we’re more adult than that,” he said.Suspicions about the barrage of indictments even extends to the chair of Howard county’s Democratic party, Laura Hubka, a US navy veteran and ultrasound technologist at the city’s hospital who has no like of Trump.“I think that they’re going after him because he’s running,” she said. “Did he break laws and is he a bad guy? Yeah. But I think if he just went into the sunset, and blathered on Truth Social, maybe they would just have left him alone. But once he ran again, people thought he’s popular enough to win again and we need to do something to stop him. They had to do something, I guess.”The impact of Trump’s coming trials, and the evidence they lay bare, remains to be seen. But it might be expected that while diehard supporters will remain loyal through it all, those who voted for him once but then swung to Biden four years later have little reason to switch back.Trump was defeated by 7m popular votes and 74 electoral college ballots in 2020, and some Democrats are calculating that he will struggle to overcome that deficit with the additional baggage of indictments, trials and possibly even prison time.Yet the polls show the US’s two most recent presidents tied, including in key swing states such as Michigan.“Every time they indict him, he goes up in the polls,” said Shaffer. “I think the Democrats are so arrogant. Some of the liberals believe that, just like they did in 2016, he’ll never be elected, he’ll never get in again. Don’t be too sure about that.”For her part, Hubka cannot believe that the polls are that close even if the election is more than a year away.“I feel like he could be running from prison and it’ll still be a tight race with Joe Biden. That’s what scares me,” she said.Which raises a question about why the Democrats are not doing better in a former stronghold like Howard county.Shaffer says Howard county is doing well in many ways, and thanks to Biden. He said the presidents’s Inflation Reduction Act has pumped money into the county, paying to renew infrastructure, including bridges and roads. Shaffer’s conservation work for the state is well funded thanks to the federal government, and that brings financial benefits to farmers. In addition, the push for green energy has resulted in a proliferation of very profitable windmills.“We’ve got a lot of windmills around here and it’s a huge benefit. Each one of those is valued at a million dollars and we’re able to tax them and it puts money in our budget so we can build bridges and roads and have money for the schools,” said Shaffer.“I’ve got one of my farmers has four windmills and all the roads and lines. He gets $185,000 a year from it. He built a new home. He’s got new tractors. The whole northwest part of the county used to be a more depressed area. The windmills pumped in a lot of money “Shaffer is surprised that, with so many Republicans denouncing renewable energy, the Democratic party isn’t making more of an effort to claim credit for the benefits in Howard county.Hubka blames the Democratic national leadership, which has been accused of overly focusing on parts of the country where a majority of the residents have a college education, unlike rural Iowa.“They need to get some balls, be more bold. I also feel like they just are writing off the rural counties,” she said.But Hubka is still there, campaigning and waiting to see what happens if Trump goes to prison. She bought a gun before the last election because of so many threats from Trump supporters.“I was really very scared that I was going to get shot or hurt. It’s calmed down a bit in that sense. But who knows what happens if he gets thrown in jail,” she said.Around the corner from her hospital, a flag hanging outside a house might be read as a warning: “Trump 2024. The rules have changed.” More

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      ‘Dark Brandon’ meme boosts Biden’s campaign merchandise sales

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      Joe Biden’s re-election team has apparently discovered a fundraising boon by subverting a foul-mouthed rightwing chant.Axios reported that “Dark Brandon” items, including mugs and T-shirts, are responsible for more than half of the Biden campaign’s merchandising sales.The Dark Brandon meme, which typically shows the president with red, laserlike eyes, emerged as a reaction to the Republican term: “Let’s go Brandon” – a phrase which is widely interpreted as code for “Fuck Joe Biden”.The image of Biden, which first gained ground in 2022, has “been fashioned into a boast, depicting Biden playing five-dimensional chess, a master of the political dark arts”, Politico reported.Biden’s campaign has seized upon the Dark Brandon concept, and the image of a smiling, crimson-eyed Biden has been slapped on all manner of campaign merchandise.Visitors to the Biden-Harris official store can purchase Dark Brandon baseball caps, tote bags, and other paraphernalia, and according to Axios the “Dark” items are responsible for 54% of the store’s revenue.The surge in revenue comes at a good time for the Biden campaign, which has been struggling to raise money from small donors, defined as people who donate $200 or less.The New York Times reported that the Biden campaign and the Biden Victory Fund, a joint committee of the campaign, raised $10.2m from small donors across April-May, less than half the amount Barack Obama raised during the same period in 2011.Let’s Go Brandon entered common parlance in 2021, following an incident at a Nascar race in Alabama.After the race, some members of the crowd chanted “Fuck Joe Biden” while Brandon Brown, a driver, was being interviewed. The interviewer suggested the crowd were actually chanting “Let’s go Brandon”, and the subverted version became popular among Republicans, including some members of Congress. More

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      The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s new indictment: America needs this trial | Editorial

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      The indictment served on Donald Trump on Monday marks the beginning of a legal reckoning that is desperately required, if American democracy is to properly free itself from his malign, insidious influence. Mr Trump already faces multiple criminal charges relating to the retention of classified national security documents and the payment of hush money to a porn star. But the gravity of the four counts outlined by the special counsel, Jack Smith, is of a different order of magnitude.Mr Trump stands accused of conspiring, in office, to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election. Following Joe Biden’s victory, the indictment states, Mr Trump “knowingly” used false claims of electoral fraud in an attempt “to subvert the legitimate election results”. A bipartisan congressional committee report last year came to similar conclusions and provides much of the basis for the charges. But this represents the first major legal attempt to hold Mr Trump accountable for events leading up to and including the storming of the Capitol by a violent mob on 6 January 2021.The stakes could hardly be set higher. Democratic elections and the peaceful transfer of power are the cornerstones of the American republic. The testimony given to Congress indicates that Mr Trump used his authority to try to bully federal and state officials into supporting his claims that the election had been “stolen” from him. Repeatedly told that his assertions were baseless, he then mobilised a hostile crowd on 6 January to intimidate lawmakers charged with ratifying Mr Biden’s victory.It is inconceivable that Mr Trump should not be made to answer for actions that imperilled the constitutional and democratic functioning of the United States. The prosecutors’ case will hinge on their ability to prove that he knew his claims of a stolen election were bogus. But beyond the trial itself, it would be foolish to underestimate Mr Trump’s ability to turn even this situation to his own political advantage.The legal fronts on which Mr Trump is now engaged will drain his financial resources. But a narrative of victimhood and persecution has become, and will remain, the galvanising theme of his campaign. Two previous criminal indictments saw his poll ratings lift, helping him to establish a huge lead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination for 2024. Whatever the evidence to the contrary, a sizable proportion of American voters will continue to back Mr Trump’s self-serving version of reality.One of the most dangerously polarising elections in US history thus looms as, over the next 15 months, Mr Trump uses political cunning to evade the legal net that is closing around him. Through his lawyers, he will do all he can to delay matters, hoping eventually to dictate the course of events from the White House. For his part, Mr Smith said on Monday that the justice department will seek “a speedy trial”.It is in the interests of American democracy, to which Mr Trump represents a clear and present danger, that the justice department gets its wish. A healthy body politic cannot allow its founding values and core principles to be trashed with apparent impunity. Prosecutors will need to proceed with care and be alert to the complex political dynamics. But this climactic reckoning in court needs to take place before Mr Trump gets the chance to besmirch the country’s highest office all over again. More