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      Biden to nominate Elliott Abrams, who lied over Iran-Contra, to key panel

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      Joe Biden intends to nominate Elliott Abrams, a former Trump appointee on Venezuela and Iran who was famously convicted for lying to Congress over the Iran-Contra affair, to the bipartisan US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.The announcement came wrapped in a list of eight Republican picks for bipartisan boards and commissions released in a White House statement on Monday.“It’s definitely a way to reach out to neoconservatives, and to throw them a bone,” said the historian and journalist Eric Alterman, who has written about Abrams since the 1980s. “It’s a risky move on Biden’s part.”Abrams, 75, has held senior positions in three Republican administrations, rising to prominence during a controversial run as assistant secretary of state under Ronald Reagan.During Reagan’s second term, a congressional investigation found that senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to the Iranian government and used the money to support the Contras, a rightwing rebel group in Nicaragua – the Iran-Contra affair.Abrams, who was assistant secretary of inter-American affairs from 1985 to early 1989, later pleaded guilty to two charges of illegally withholding information from Congress – including his role in soliciting $10m from Brunei – during two October 1986 hearings, one before the Senate foreign relations committee and a second before the House intelligence committee.Biden, then a Delaware senator, was a member of the Senate foreign relations committee at the time.Abrams has drawn backlash for his support for the El Salvadoran government, whose army in 1981 massacred nearly 1,000 civilians in the village of El Mozote during its civil war against a coalition of Soviet-backed leftwing groups.A 1992 Human Rights Watch report said Abrams, as assistant secretary of state for human rights, “distorted” information to discredit public accounts of genocide. Abrams also backed US aid to the Guatemalan military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, who was later convicted for genocide and crimes against humanity, during the Guatemalan civil war.“We only have, really, this example of legally defined genocide where the United States was complicit – and Elliott Abrams was the person who made that policy,” said Alterman, referring to US support for the Guatemalan government under Ríos Montt.Congressional Republicans likely pushed Biden to tap Abrams to the commission, said Brett Bruen, the president of media company the Global Situation Room and a former US diplomat.“It would be seen as interference should Biden not accede to those recommendations,” he said.A White House official said: “It’s standard for Republican leadership to put nominees forward for these boards and commissions, along with President Biden’s own nominees.”.There are seven seats on the diplomacy panel, four of which were vacant as of March, according to a state department notice. It is housed within the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, a post that sat empty until Biden nominated Elizabeth Allen to lead the office in January. She began in June.Bruen said: “The vacancies on the commission underline a major missing piece in Biden’s early pledge to restore America’s image on the international stage.”Nick Cull, a public diplomacy professor at the University of Southern California, said Biden was not alone in neglecting key posts, citing a report by former executive director of the commission Matthew Armstrong that found the under-secretary job has been vacant for nearly half the time since it was created in 1999.Most recently, Abrams was appointed by Trump to serve as a special envoy for Venezuela as the state department ramped up its efforts to force out Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Trump also appointed Abrams as special envoy to Iran in 2020.Abrams was reportedly in the running to be Trump’s deputy secretary of state before being cut from the list of contenders over his criticism of Trump during the campaign trail.He also served in senior national security roles during George Bush’s administration, and is currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Washington-based thinktank Council on Foreign Relations.Once nominated, Biden’s appointees must be confirmed by the Senate. But recent picks have languished. A floor vote to confirm Julie Su, the acting secretary of Labor, to the official cabinet post has been delayed for months. More

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      Biden says sending cluster bombs to Ukraine was ‘difficult decision’ – live

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      From 3h agoKahl says there are two primary reasons behind the decision to include cluster munitions in this latest weapons aid package to Ukraine.One is the “urgency of the moment”, he says. Ukraine is in the midst of its counteroffensive which has been difficult because the Russians had six months to dig into defensive belts in the east and the south.
      We want to make sure that the Ukrainians have sufficient artillery to keep them in the fight in the context of the current counter offensive, and because things are going a little slower than some had hoped.
      Here is the video of Pentagon official Colin Kahl speaking earlier today on the Biden administration’s decision to sent cluster bombs to Ukraine:Kahl told reporters that the “urgency of the moment” demanded it, but also said: “We want to make sure that the Ukrainians have sufficient artillery to keep them in the fight in the context of the current counteroffensive, and because things are going a little slower than some had hoped.”Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr has joined the growing list of lawmakers and human rights groups condemning the Biden administration for its decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine.
      “Cluster bombs are munitions so horrific for civilians that more than a hundred nations have signed an international treaty banning them. Now the Biden administration is preparing to send them to Ukraine,” Kennedy Jr tweeted on Friday.
      Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has hailed the new US defense package which includes cluster munitions.In a tweet on Friday, Zelenskiy said:
      “A timely, broad and much-needed defense aid package from the United States. We are grateful to the American people and President Joseph Biden @POTUS for decisive steps that bring Ukraine closer to victory over the enemy, and democracy to victory over dictatorship.
      The expansion of Ukraine’s defense capabilities will provide new tools for the de-occupation of our land and bringing peace closer.”
      In an interview with CNN host Fareed Zakaria on Friday, president Joe Biden said that his decision to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions was a “difficult decision.”
      “It was a very difficult decision on my part. And by the way, I discussed this with our allies, I discussed this with our friends up on the Hill,” Biden said, adding, “The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition.”
      “This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it and so, what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to – not permanently – but to allow for this transition period, while we get more 155 weapons, these shells, for the Ukrainians.”
      Despite over 100 countries having outlawed the munitions under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, the US and Ukraine are not signatories.
      “They’re trying to get through those trenches and stop those tanks from rolling. But it was not an easy decision,” Biden said, adding, “We’re not signatories to that agreement, but it took me a while to be convinced to do it.”
      “But the main thing is they either have the weapons to stop the Russians now – keep them from stopping the Ukrainian offensive through these areas – or they don’t. And I think they needed them.”
      Here is an animation on how cluster bombs work:As the Guardian’s Léonie Chao-Fung reports in her explainer piece on the weapon, “Cluster bombs, like landmines, pose a risk to civilians long after their use. Unexploded ordinance from cluster bombs can kill and maim people years or even decades after the munitions were fired.”For the full explainer, click here:Minnesota’s Democratic representative Ilhan Omar has issued a condemnation of the Biden administration’s decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine, saying, “Instead of dealing cluster munitions, we should be doing everything in our power to end their use.”The statement continued:
      “Cluster munitions are illegal under international law. A total of 123 countries have ratified the convention to ban their use under all circumstances—including nearly all our allies.
      “It’s not hard to understand why. Because cluster bombs scatter multiple small bombs over a large area, they kill civilians both during an attack and after. I was recently in Vietnam where I heard firsthand how innocent civilians continue to be killed by US cluster munitions a full fifty years after the conflict ended. Tens of thousands of explosives are found every year there.
      “We have to be clear: if the US is going to be a leader on international human rights, we must not participate in human rights abuses. We can support the people of Ukraine in their freedom struggle, while also opposing violations of international law. (In fact, the innocent victims of the cluster munitions will almost exclusively be Ukrainian civilians).”
      Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      The US will send cluster munitions to Ukraine as part of a new $800 military aid package, the Pentagon has confirmed. The package will include Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICMs), also known as cluster munitions, armored vehicles and air defense missiles. Ukraine has been asking for cluster munitions for months, but US officials have been hesitant as the weapons can kill indiscriminately over a wide area, threatening civilians.
      The White House said it had postponed the decision over whether to send the controversial weapons “for as long as we could” because of the risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance. National security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that American cluster munitions had a “dud” rate of below 2.5%, which he described as far below Russia’s cluster munition dud rate.
      Human rights groups have condemned Joe Biden’s approval to send cluster munitions to Ukraine. At least 149 civilians were killed or injured worldwide by the weapon in 2021, according to the Cluster Munition Monitor. Biden also faced a backlash from within his own Democratic party.
      Ukraine’s counteroffensive is “slower than we hoped”, the US undersecretary of defense for policy, Colin H Kahl, said. He said one of the primary reasons behind the decision to send cluster munitions was because of the “urgency of the moment”, adding that the weapons would be delivered “in a timeframe that is relevant for the counteroffensive”.
      The US added 209,000 new jobs in June as hiring slowed amid signs that the economy is cooling. The rise was the weakest gain since December 2020, but the increase was also the 30th consecutive month of jobs gains, and the unemployment rate ticked down to the historically low rate of 3.6%.
      Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has arrived in Beijing on a four-day trip that aims to tame spiralling tensions between the world’s two largest economies, particularly over trade and the hi-tech chip industry. She will meet senior Chinese officials including the premier, Li Qiang, and former vice-premier and economics tsar Liu He, who is seen as close to China’s president, Xi Jinping, in her first day of talks on Friday.
      The team led by special counsel Jack Smith has indicated a continued interest in a chaotic meeting that took place in the Oval Office in the final days of the Trump administration, according to a CNN report. Investigators have reportedly questioned several witnesses before the grand jury and during interviews about the meeting, which took place about six weeks after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.
      James Comer, chair of the house oversight committee, requested a Secret Service briefing after cocaine was found at the White House over the weekend. In a letter to Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle, the Kentucky Republican said his committee is “investigating the details surrounding the discovery of cocaine in the White House”.
      Florida governor Ron DeSantis said he plans to participate in the first Republican presidential debate in August, whether or not Donald Trump attends. “I’ll be there, regardless,” DeSantis said. Trump, who continues to be frontrunner in the GOP race, has not officially said whether he will skip the debate.
      The Biden administration’s approval of the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine has sparked concern from human rights groups and some congressional lawmakers over the weapon’s ability to harm civilians, especially children, long after their use.At least 38 human rights organizations have publicly opposed the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine, according to the Hill.Sarah Yager, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch, said cluster bombs were already “all over” Ukraine and it is “not a good enough excuse for the United States to be sending more”. She added:
      Legislators, policymakers and the Biden administration will probably think twice when the pictures start coming back of children who have been harmed by American-made cluster munitions.
      Eric Eikenberry, the government relations director at Win Without War, said the adminstration’s argument that cluster munitions could help Ukraine advance and stop the Russian bombings was “speculative”.He dismissed “the idea that these are going to be a huge boon, the counteroffensive is going to jet forward and we’re going to save lives in the aggregate because these are going to be the wonder weapons that flip the battlefield in our favor and takes Russian artillery out of commission.”Here’s a clip of Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, who laid out the case for providing cluster munitions to Ukraine ahead of the Pentagon’s announcement.Kahl says it is too early to judge how the Ukrainian counter offensive is going “because we are at the beginning of the middle”.The counteroffensive is “slower than we had hoped” but the Ukrainians have a lot of combat power left, Kahl says.He says the majority of the Ukrainian combat power “has not been brought to bear”.
      What you’re seeing across the east and the south is the Ukrainians deliberately probing for weak spots.
      The real test will be when they identify weak spots or create weak spots and generate a breach, how rapidly they’re able to exploit that with the combat power that they have in reserve, and how rapidly the Russians will be able to respond.
      He says he believes the Ukrainians are doing their best but that the Russians “were more successful in digging in more deeply that perhaps was fully appreciated”.Kahl does not specify how many rounds of cluster munitions that will be transferred to Ukraine.He says the US has “hundreds of thousands that are available at this dud rate”, and that it believes that it has the ability to flow them into Ukraine to “keep them in the current fight” and to “build this bridge”. Providing cluster munitions to Ukraine “gives them an extra arrow in their quiver”, Kahl says.He says it is important for the Ukrainians to have a mix of capabilities, and that there is no one silver bullet.On the subject of a timeline, he says he is going to be “a little circumspect” for operational security reasons, and that the US has been “pretty cautious about talking about specific timelines”. He adds:
      The one thing I will say is they will deliver in a timeframe that is relevant for the counter offensive.
      Secondly, Kahl says the US has substantially increased the production of 155m rounds, and that allies have also invested in their defense industrial base.But the reality is that “we’re going to need to build a bridge to the point at which that capacity is sufficient, on a month to month basis, to keep the Ukrainians in the artillery fight”, he says.He says he is “as concerned about the humanitarian circumstance” as anybody” but that the “worst thing for civilians and Ukraine is for Russia to win the war”.Kahl says there are two primary reasons behind the decision to include cluster munitions in this latest weapons aid package to Ukraine.One is the “urgency of the moment”, he says. Ukraine is in the midst of its counteroffensive which has been difficult because the Russians had six months to dig into defensive belts in the east and the south.
      We want to make sure that the Ukrainians have sufficient artillery to keep them in the fight in the context of the current counter offensive, and because things are going a little slower than some had hoped.
      The Ukrainian government has assured the US of the “responsible use” of DPICM, including that it will not use the rounds in civilian-populated urban environments, Kahl says.Ukraine has also committed to post-conflict mining “to mitigate any potential harm to civilians”, he says.He says Washington will work with Kyiv to “minimize the risks associated with the decision” to supply cluster munitions.Kahl says Russian forces have been using cluster munitions “indiscriminately” since the start of its war in Ukraine. By contrast, Ukraine is seeking DPICM rounds “in order to defend its own sovereign territory”.The US will be sending Ukraine its “most modern” dual-purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) cluster munitions with “dud” rates to be under 2.35%, Kahl says.He compares that to the cluster munitions used by Russia across Ukraine, which he says has dud rates of between 30% and 40%.The undersecretary of defense for policy, Colin H Kahl, is speaking at a press briefing at the Pentagon.The US will send a new weapons aid package worth about $800m, that will include 155m artillery rounds, including Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions, and 105mm artillery rounds.Also included in the new package are additional munitions for Patriot air defence systems and ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket systems, additional Stryker armoured personnel carriers, precision aerial munitions, demolition munitions and systems for obstacle clearing and various spare parts and operational sustainment equipment. More

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      How do Democrats fight back against the US supreme court? – podcast

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      As the dust settled on last week’s judgments from the conservative-led bench, progressives voiced their anger at what they see as a lack of determination from the Biden administration to counteract the supreme court and its most extreme decisions.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan about what progressives want Joe Biden to do now

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      White House calls on Republicans to act on gun control after Fourth of July weekend killings – as it happened

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      From 2h agoWhite House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called on Republicans to support tighter gun restrictions after the Independence Day holiday weekend was marred by mass shootings across the United States.“As we have seen over the last few days, there’s a lot more … work to do to address the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing up our communities,” Jean-Pierre said, pointing to Joe Biden’s support for legislation approved by Democrats and some Republicans in Congress last year that included modest steps to prevent mass shootings.“He also knows that that is not enough. Which is why, on the heels of the tragedies we saw unfold across the last few days, the president continues to call on Republican lawmakers in Congress to come to the table and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to require safe storage of guns, to end gun manufacturers, immunity from liability and to enact universal background checks.”Jean-Pierre continued:
      Lives are at stake here, folks, lives are at stake … these are meaningful, common-sense reforms that the American people support, the majority of the American people support these reforms. And we need Congress to do something, we need Republicans in Congress to do something to protect our communities.
      Once again, America is dealing with the aftermath of mass shootings, both those that occurred over the just-concluded Independence Day holiday weekend, and others less recent. A man accused of killing five people in Philadelphia has been arraigned on charges that include murder, one of more than a dozen mass shootings that happened as Americans gathered to celebrate the country’s independence. But there were few festivities in Highland Park, Illinois, where a ceremony was held to memorialize the deaths of seven people and wounding of dozens more by a shooter last year. And in Texas, a gunman who killed 19 people at a Walmart in El Paso is expected to receive multiple life sentences today after pleading guilty to federal charges.Here’s a rundown of what happened today:
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the violent weekend is proof Republicans must support tighter restrictions on firearms.
      A gun violence researcher told the Guardian’s US politics live blog that widespread gun violence represents a “new normal” for the annual Independence Day celebrations.
      That was indeed cocaine discovered at the White House, testing confirms. The powder was reportedly found in an area where visitors lock up their cellphones, and the Secret Service is investigating.
      More details of the government’s reasoning for searching Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort could become public, after a judge ruled that portions of the search warrant affidavit should be unsealed.
      Global average temperatures on Monday and Tuesday broke records, data indicates.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also responded to a federal court ruling from Tuesday that curbed the ability of Biden administration officials to meet with social media firms over the content they allowed on their platforms.Here’s what Jean-Pierre had to say:The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington spoke to a top disinformation expert, who warned the ruling could undermine efforts to fight lies spread over social media ahead of next year’s presidential elections:
      Nina Jankowicz, a specialist in disinformation campaigns, told the Guardian that an injunction imposed by a federal judge on Tuesday against key federal agencies and officials blocking their communication with tech platforms could unleash false information in critical areas of public life. She said that election denialism and anti-vaccine propaganda could be the beneficiaries.
      “This is a weaponisation of the court system. It is an intentional and purposeful move to disrupt the work that needs to be done ahead of the 2024 election, and it’s really chilling,” she said.
      In Tuesday’s ruling, a federal judge from a US district in Louisiana imposed tough restrictions on federal agencies and officials liaising with social media companies over online content. The injunction comes amid mounting pressure from Republican leaders and rightwing groups claiming collusion between the Biden administration and social media platforms to censor conservative speech.
      The judge, Terry Doughty, sided with Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri who sued the Biden administration, claiming it violated the first amendment right to free speech. He ruled that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits in showing that the government “has used its power to silence the opposition”.
      He added that the Biden administration’s handling of social media content during the Covid pandemic resembled the “Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’”.
      If the allegations raised by the Republican officials were true, Doughty wrote, they would involve “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history”.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre didn’t have much to say about the cocaine found in the White House over the weekend.The Secret Service is investigating, she said, and noted that the substance was found in a “heavily traveled area”:Joe Biden, who was not at the White House this weekend, did not respond to a question from a reporter about the cocaine during his meeting with Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson.The wave of mass shootings that occurred over the Fourth of July weekend was fueled by factors including the easy access to firearms in America and higher temperatures, and shows no sign of stopping, a gun violence researcher warns.“Unfortunately, I think this is our new normal when you factor in numbers of guns on the street, a holiday weekend and soaring temperatures. Given the way the country is right now with our lax gun policies and rising rates of shootings, I believe this is the way things are and tragically not an aberration from the norm,” the Vanderbilt University sociology professor Jonathan Metzl told the Guardian’s US politics live blog.When it comes to stopping these tragedies, Metzl, who is also research director at The Safe Tennessee Project focused injuries from firearms, says local police and law enforcement agencies can only do so much.“I believe they are as prepared as they can possibly be given the frequency of these tragedies. However, it’s not simply a matter of training or preparedness, and there are quite simply many more guns and many more shootings than any safety department can manage by themselves. The key is prevention,” he said.“We need to rebuild community infrastructure and trust in communal governance – but that this is a much broader issue than a single gun policy or even a series of gun policies can address by themselves. Mass shootings are a symptom of much larger issues.”White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called on Republicans to support tighter gun restrictions after the Independence Day holiday weekend was marred by mass shootings across the United States.“As we have seen over the last few days, there’s a lot more … work to do to address the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing up our communities,” Jean-Pierre said, pointing to Joe Biden’s support for legislation approved by Democrats and some Republicans in Congress last year that included modest steps to prevent mass shootings.“He also knows that that is not enough. Which is why, on the heels of the tragedies we saw unfold across the last few days, the president continues to call on Republican lawmakers in Congress to come to the table and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to require safe storage of guns, to end gun manufacturers, immunity from liability and to enact universal background checks.”Jean-Pierre continued:
      Lives are at stake here, folks, lives are at stake … these are meaningful, common-sense reforms that the American people support, the majority of the American people support these reforms. And we need Congress to do something, we need Republicans in Congress to do something to protect our communities.
      The Philadelphia shooting is the 29th mass killing in the US of 2023. It means the country has witnessed the highest number on record of mass killings and deaths to this point in a single year.Here are some of the other mass killings that occurred this year, from the Associated Press, which maintains a database of these tragedies together with USA Today and Northeastern University:
      Here’s what happened in each US mass killing this year.
      KELLOGG, IDAHO: 18 June
      A 31-year-old man is accused of fatally shooting four members of a neighboring family in their apartment on Father’s Day. The man was upset that the neighbor’s 18-year-old son had reportedly exposed himself to the man’s children, a police document alleges.
      SEQUATCHIE, TENNESSEE: 15 June
      A 48-year-old man is thought to be responsible for killing himself and five others – including three children and his estranged wife – in a home where police responded to a shooting and arrived to find the residence ablaze, authorities said. A seventh person suffered gunshot wounds and was found alive at the home after firefighters extinguished the flames.
      MESA, ARIZONA: 26 May
      A 20-year-old man shot four men to death and wounded a woman in a 12-hour crime spree in metro Phoenix, authorities said. He told police that he met the victims at random that day at a range of places, including a park and a convenience store, and became angry when the subject of drugs came up.
      NASH, TEXAS: 23 May
      Authorities jailed an 18-year-old man in connection with the shootings of his parents, sister and brother inside a home. A victim’s co-worker who went to the home after one of the victims failed to show up for work told police that the man said “he had killed his family because they were cannibals, and they were going to eat him.”
      Away from the gun violence of the weekend, my colleague Ed Pilkington has spoken to a leading disinformation expert after a judge limited the Biden administration’s ability to work with social media companies on moderating content.Nina Jankowicz, who used to lead a government unit aimed at combatting online conspiracy theories, said the decision represented a “weaponisation of the court system” aimed at disrupting efforts to minimise disinformation ahead of the 2024 US elections.Jankowicz was initially named as a defendant in the Missouri case but removed from the suit on grounds that she no longer has a governmental role. In April 2022, she was appointed to lead a new Department of Homeland Security unit devoted to combating online conspiracy theories and false information.The board was shut down days later, after it came under a massive storm of rightwing criticism accusing it of censoring conservative speech.Speaking to the Guardian, Jankowicz said Tuesday’s injunction was the culmination of an ultra-rightwing campaign to crush efforts to constrain disinformation that started with the attack on her board.“They got a win in shutting us down, so why would they stop there? This is why the lawsuit continues – because they’ve won – and nobody knows how to deal with it.”“It’s a weaponisation of the court system that is purposeful in disrupting work that needs to be done ahead of the 2024 election,” she said.Once again, America is dealing with the aftermath of mass shootings, both those that occurred over the just-concluded Independence Day holiday weekend, and others less recent. A man accused of killing five people in Philadelphia has been arraigned on charges that include murder, one of more than a dozen mass shootings that happened as Americans gathered to celebrate the country’s independence. But there were few festivities in Highland Park, Illinois, where a ceremony was held to memorialize the deaths of seven people and wounding of dozens more by a shooter last year. And in Texas, a gunman who killed 19 people at a Walmart in El Paso is expected to receive multiple life sentences today after pleading guilty to federal charges.Here’s a rundown of the day’s events thus far:
      That was indeed cocaine discovered at the White House, testing confirms. The powder was reportedly found in an area where visitors lock up their cellphones.
      More details of the government’s reasoning for searching Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort could become public, after a judge ruled that portions of the search warrant affidavit should be unsealed.
      Global average temperatures on Monday and Tuesday broke records, data indicates.
      The Washington Post reports that the cocaine discovered at the White House was found on the ground floor in an area where visitors leave their cellphones.White House employees can give tours of the building, usually on evenings and weekends, and part of the security protocol involves having visitors leave their cellphones in a locked box. As the for the cocaine, the Post adds that “Authorities are trying to find the person who left it at the White House.”There’s a correlation between heat and homicides, and the Guardian’s Damien Gayle reports that across the world, average temperature records indicate Tuesday was the hottest day ever:World temperature records have been broken for a second day in a row, data suggests, as experts issued a warning that this year’s warmest days are still to come – and with them the warmest days ever recorded.The average global air temperature was 17.18C (62.9F) on Tuesday, according to data collated by the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), surpassing the record 17.01C reached on Monday.Until the start of this week, the hottest day on record was in 2016, during the last El Niño global weather event, when the global average temperature reached 16.92C.On Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization, the UN’s weather body, confirmed El Niño had returned. Experts predicted that, combined with the increased heat from anthropogenic global heating, it would lead to more record-breaking temperatures.The suspect in a mass shooting in Philadelphia on Monday evening that killed five people and wounded four has been arraigned, the Associated Press reports.Kimbrady Carriker, 40, will face charges of murder, among many others. Here’s more on the killings, which took place seemingly at random in a Philadelphia neighborhood, from the AP:
      A 40-year-old accused of killing a man in a house and then gunning down four others on the streets of a southwest Philadelphia neighborhood before surrendering to police officers has been arraigned on murder and other charges.
      Kimbrady Carriker was arraigned Wednesday on five counts of murder as well as charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault and weapons counts of possession without a license and carrying firearms in public, prosecutors said.
      A 2-year-old boy and a 13-year-old youth were also wounded by gunfire and another 2-year-old boy and a woman were hit by shattered glass in the Monday night rampage that made the working-class area of Kingsessing the site of the nation’s worst violence around the July Fourth holiday.
      Police called to the scene found gunshot victims and started to help them before hearing more shots. Some officers rushed victims to hospitals while others ran toward the gunfire and chased the firing suspect.
      Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, the homicide unit commander, said witness interviews and video indicated that the suspect went to several locations in a ski mask and body armor, carrying an AR-15-style rifle.
      “The suspect then began shooting aimlessly at occupied vehicles and individuals on the street as they walked,” he said. The vehicles included a mother driving her 2-year-old twins home — one of whom was wounded in the legs and the other who was hit in the eyes by shattered glass.
      Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said the “armed and armored individual” was firing “seemingly at random.”
      Cornered in an alley, the suspect surrendered and was found to have not only the rifle but also a pistol, extra magazines, a police scanner and a bulletproof vest, police said.
      Another community is today continuing to grapple with the aftermath of a mass shooting that occurred almost four years ago.Patrick Crusius killed 23 people at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in a 2019 attack targeting Hispanic shoppers, and will be sentenced today after pleading guilty to federal charges. He is expected to receive multiple life sentences, but has also been charged with murder in state court, and could face the death penalty.Here’s more on his case, from the Associated Press:
      A white Texas gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in 2019 returns to court Wednesday for sentencing in a mass shooting that targeted Hispanic shoppers in the border city of El Paso.
      Patrick Crusius, 24, is set to receive multiple life sentences after pleading guilty to federal hate crime and weapons charges in one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. Although the federal government did not seek the death penalty, Texas prosecutors have not taken lethal injection off the table under a separate case in state court.
      Investigators say the shooting was preceded by Crusius posting a racist screed online.
      The sentencing phase could last several days. It is the first time that relatives of the victims, who included citizens of Mexico, will have an opportunity to address Crusius face-to-face in court.
      The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that a federal magistrate judge has ordered additional portions of the affidavit used to justify the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last year be made public:The former president was indicted last month over the government secrets federal agents found during their search of the south Florida property. Media organizations last year argued successfully to unseal portions of the affidavit submitted by investigators to justify the search, but parts of it remained secret.NBC News confirms that the white substance discovered at the White House on Monday was indeed cocaine:Now for the question of who brought it in there, and how did they get it past the building’s strict security. There are no firm answers to that yet, but since the area where it was found is accessible to tour groups, one can assume that the list of suspects is long. Here’s more from the Guardian’s Edward Helmore on the initial discovery:
      A preliminary field test on a white substance found in the White House has reportedly come up positive for cocaine, law enforcement authorities said, and the US Secret Service was investigating on Tuesday how it came to be at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
      The presence of the substance – which has been sent out for further testing – came to light late on Monday when a firefighter with the Washington DC fire department’s hazardous materials team radioed: “We have a yellow bar saying cocaine hydrochloride,” the Washington Post first reported.
      A Secret Service spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, told the Post that the discovery led to an elevated security alert and a brief evacuation of the executive mansion after it was found during a routine inspection.
      On 4 July last year, a gunman opened fire at the annual Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, killing seven people and wounding more than 30. One year later, the Chicago suburb commemorated the massacre with a ceremony, as well as some Fourth of July celebration events free of fireworks, the New York Times reports:
      There were no marching bands this year. No floats. No church groups tossing snacks to spectators. No American flags lining the sidewalks.
      Instead, there were prayers. There were tears. And there was a somber stroll down Central Avenue, a collective effort to take back a parade route that was stolen in a storm of bullets.
      Over generations in Highland Park, Ill., a quaint parade through downtown became synonymous with the Fourth of July.
      But in less than a minute last Independence Day, a gunman firing from a rooftop killed seven people, wounded dozens and sent families scrambling for cover, leaving water bottles and red-white-and-blue lawn chairs scattered on the ground.
      As the first anniversary of the massacre approached, city leaders faced a seemingly impossible set of demands: Honor the people who died. Reclaim the parade’s path through downtown. Give people space to celebrate the country’s birthday. And support residents of the Chicago suburb still carrying devastating wounds, mental and physical, from last year.
      “When there are mass shootings in this country, a day or two later, people move on,” Mayor Nancy Rotering said. “But those communities that are directly impacted are carrying this pain and this trauma forevermore.”
      That this past Independence Day weekend was a violent one is not a surprise. As the Guardian reporter who is also writing this blog reports, the Fourth of July is the most mass-shooting prone day over the last four years, research indicates, with the day after it coming in as a close second: Gun violence is a daily reality across the US, but an emerging body of research indicates the most risky day for mass shootings in the nation is the Fourth of July, when Americans celebrate their independence from Britain.Using data from the Gun Violence Archive, James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, found that there have been 52 mass shootings on the Fourth of July over the past decade, averaging just over five a year, and more than on any other given day.His analysis, which he implemented for USA Today, underscores how, in a country where Republicans in many states have acted to loosen gun laws, it is routine that the barbecues, block parties and parades held to commemorate the US’s birthday become scenes of bloodshed.The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington crunched the numbers from the long Independence Day holiday weekend to report just how bad the period was for gun violence across the United States:From the nation’s capital to Fort Worth, Texas, from Florin, California, in the west to the Bronx, New York, in the east, the Fourth of July long weekend in the US was overshadowed by 16 mass shootings in which 15 people were killed and 94 injured.The Gun Violence Archive, an authoritative database on gun violence in America, calculated the grim tally using its definition of a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people excluding the shooter are killed or injured by firearms.The tragic bloodletting was recorded from 5pm on Friday until 5am on Wednesday across 13 states as well as Washington DC. Texas and Maryland both entered the register twice.Good morning, US politics blog readers. Yesterday was the Independence Day public holiday in the United States, and Americans gathered for their customary barbecues and fireworks displays – several of which were marred by gunfire. In Washington DC, nine people were shot and wounded on the evening of 4 July, two of which were minors, while in Tampa, Florida, a seven-year-old was shot and killed. Those shootings came a day after a gunman, firing seemingly at random, killed five people and wounded two in Philadelphia, while another shooting left three people dead and eight wounded in a parking lot in Fort Worth, Texas. The tragedies put Joe Biden in the familiar role of once again decrying gun violence across the United States, a phenomenon he has little control over.Here’s what else we are watching today:
      Biden will host Sweden’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson at the White House at 2pm eastern time.
      Senators and members of Congress are dispersed across the United States, because both the Senate and House of Representatives are still on recess.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will take questions from reporters at 2.15 pm.
      Was cocaine discovered at the White House? The secret service investigation continues.
      The White House is digesting a federal court ruling prohibiting some Biden administration from asking social media companies to moderate their content. More

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      Pro-choice Catholics fight to seize the narrative from the religious right

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      Since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade a year ago, reproductive rights have become an even more contentious issue in an already polarized landscape. With more than 1,500 politicians – mostly men – helping ban abortions since Roe fell, Catholic and pro-choice organizations are increasingly trying to carve out space for themselves in the nationwide dialogue to center their own messaging: that being Catholic and pro-choice are not mutually exclusive.One organization trying to dismantle religious stigma surrounding abortions is Catholics For Choice, a Washington-DC based Catholic abortion rights advocacy group. For CFC, the belief in individual reproductive rights comes as a result of the Catholic faith, not in spite of.Speaking to the Guardian shortly after president Joe Biden – a Catholic – said at a recent fundraiser in Maryland that although he is “not big on abortion, he believes that Roe v Wade “got it right”, CFC president Jamie Manson said that despite Biden’s “good model of not imposing one’s religious beliefs on civil law”, his message echoed rightwing sentiments.“President Biden is playing into a narrative that says, in spite of my faith, I support this. It’s a rightwing narrative that we should not give any energy to. It also creates shame and stigma around abortion,” said Manson.In the US, 63% of Catholic adults say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a 2022 survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Additionally, 68% say that Roe v Wade should have been left as is. In a separate survey conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, 24% of abortion patients identified as Catholic.“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… Catholic women who participate richly in the life of the church are having abortions and they have to hear from an all-male hierarchy that when they choose abortion, they’re participating in homicide,” said Manson.“That message is profoundly spiritually violent,” she said, adding, “This is a real pastoral crisis in the church that Catholics don’t want to look at. Every time a high-profile Catholic says, ‘Even though in spite of my faith I support abortion,’ it reinforces that stigma… We need to dismantle this narrative.”To Manson, there are three important ideas deeply embedded in the Catholic tradition which help fuel her organization’s pro-choice beliefs.“The first one is this notion of individual conscience. The catechism says explicitly in all that we say and do, our individual conscience is what tells us what is just and right, not the church. So even if what our conscience tells us to be just and right conflicts with church teaching, we have to go with our conscience,” she said.The next idea is the tradition of social justice, said Manson, which contradicts with the profoundly negative impacts that abortion bans have on already marginalized communities.“Abortion bans and restrictions disproportionately harm people who are already suffering injustices like racism, poverty, immigration laws and domestic violence. The very people that we as Catholics are supposed to prioritize – the marginalized – are the ones who have their suffering exacerbated by abortion bans and restrictions. So there is a deep conflict with our social justice tradition,” Manson said.The third and perhaps the most oft-repeated idea to Manson and other pro-choice faith leaders is religious pluralism.“Catholic teaching supports and respects religious pluralism. And what rightwing Catholics are trying to do is have their theological ideas codified into civil law. By doing that, they’re infringing on the religious freedom of everyone else. Our religious freedom guarantees not only our right to practice our beliefs, but our right to be free of the beliefs of others and so abortion bans and restrictions take away religious freedom,” she said.With far-right Catholic lawmakers continuing to double down on their anti-abortion stances and conservative Christian legal nonprofits funding anti-abortion organizations, the communities that CFC tries to focus on are those that are silent about their support for abortion.“We focus on that population because the majority already are there with us. They’re just afraid to speak about it publicly and that’s because again, of the shame, stigma and punishment that comes from the church when you dare to question this teaching,” Manson explained.“We prefer to cater to that population and we give them information that they need to strengthen their own arguments from a place of faith,” she added.The other focus group of CFC is what Manson calls the “movable middle”, which consists of people who do not know how they feel about abortion and do not feel welcome in the two polarized populations within the abortion debate.“There’s a lot of disinformation that the right wing has put out about abortion over the last 50 years and so we provide them with actual facts. We give them a space to discern how they feel about abortion and make a safe place for people for whom it is a complex issue,” Manson said.Another challenge for organizations like CFC is dismantling certain narratives that automatically enmesh the Catholic faith with anti-abortion stances.“We have to have progressive pro-choice, faithful voices speaking back and centered in the movement now… We really need to counter religious narratives and people who can do that best are religious people. People have to bear in mind the five justices that struck down Roe last year were all Catholic,” said Manson. “We really are fighting a religious force so we have to center religious voices…and take back the narrative that we’ve ceded to this Christian right wing and say, ‘No, because of my faith, I support abortion’ and welcome people who feel conflicted about it rather than making them feel like they’re creating stigma.”Manson added that she doesn’t think the pro-choice movement has done this well “and really needs to if we’re going to transform hearts and minds around this issue”.“I think that they have to center faith voices [because] right now, faith voices are marginalized,” she said. “We need to widen our circle in the pro-choice movement and not create these absolutes and gate-keep each other on messaging.” More

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      US supreme court ‘creeping dangerously towards authoritarianism’, AOC says

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      The conservative supreme court is “creeping dangerously towards authoritarianism”, the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Sunday, raising again the unlikely scenario of impeaching justices for recent actions.Her comments came just days after the nation’s highest court released a batch of incendiary and far-reaching rulings striking down affirmative action in colleges, LBGTQ+ rights and Joe Biden’s student loan relief program.“These are the types of rulings that signal a dangerous creep towards authoritarianism and centralization of power in the court,” she told CNN’s State of the Union.“In fact, we have members of the court themselves, with justice Elena Kagan, saying that the court is beginning to assume the power of a legislature right now.“They are expanding their role into acting as though they are Congress itself. And that, I believe, is an expansion of power that we really must be focusing on, the danger of this court and the abuse of power.”Referring to ethics scandals that have involved two of the conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, Ocasio-Cortez repeated previous calls for Congress to look at removing them, a proposal that would be dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled House.Senate Democrats and independents who caucus with them, meanwhile, hold only a slim majority.Alito is accused of not disclosing gifts from a rightwing billionaire who lobbied for the court to end Biden’s loan relief program. Thomas is also alleged to have taken undeclared gifts, among other alleged transgressions, prompting an ethics watchdog last month to urge him to resign.“We must pass much more binding and stringent ethics guidelines, where we see members of the supreme court potentially breaking the law,” she said.“There also must be impeachment on the table. We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach and abuse of power in the supreme court [that] has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy.“And in the process, they themselves have been destroying the legitimacy of the court, which is profoundly dangerous for our entire democracy.”Ocasio-Cortez also called on Biden to expand the court to 13 justices, something the president has said he is unwilling to attempt.Her comments reflect a wave of Democratic outrage at the decisions, which came after Donald Trump’s appointments of justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett gave conservatives a 6-3 majority on the supreme court.Ocasio-Cortez’s fellow progressive Ayanna Pressley, Democratic congresswoman for Massachusetts, was equally scathing on MSNBC’s Katie Phang show, calling the conservative majority “far-right extremists”.“They continue to overturn the will of the majority of the people and to make history for all the wrong reasons, legislating from the bench and being political from the bench,” she said.The panel’s most controversial ruling last year, written by Alito, reversed its 1973 decision on Roe v Wade and ended almost half a century of federal abortion protections in the US.As Biden put it after an address at the White House on Friday: “This is not a normal court.”A poll released Sunday by ABC’s This Week showed that 52% of Americans believed that justices ruled “mainly on the basis of their partisan political view rather than on the basis of the law”, a significant rise from January 2022 when only 38% felt that way.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe poll, however, did show that a majority, 52%, approved of the decision ending affirmative action in colleges.Condemning the ruling that allowed a Colorado website designer to refuse business from a same-sex couple, transport secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is openly gay, noted the court addressed a situation “that may have never happened in the first place”.“We’re seeing more of these cases, of these circumstances that are designed to get people spun up and [are] designed to chip away at rights,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.“You look at the supreme court taking away a woman’s right to choose, Friday’s decision diminishing … same sex couples’ [quality of life], you look at a number of the decisions, they pose the question, ‘Did we just live to see the high-water mark of freedoms and rights in this country before they were gradually taken away?’“Because up until now, not uniformly, but overall, each generation was able to say they enjoyed greater inclusion, greater equality, and more rights and freedoms than the generation before.”In other interviews on Sunday, two prominent Republican presidential candidates said they supported the supreme court’s recent rulings, with one, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, accusing Democrats of hypocrisy.“For decades the Democratic party cheered a supreme court that went outside the constitution and made extra-constitutional decisions, in my opinion, because the decisions went in a philosophical direction that they liked,” Christie said on State of the Union.“Now, when the court makes decisions they don’t like, all of a sudden the court is ‘not normal’. This is a results-oriented type of judgment. Instead, what they should look at, is the way they analyze the law.”Former vice-president Mike Pence, speaking on CBS, praised the website ruling. He said: “I’m a Bible believing Christian, I believe marriage is between one man and one woman, and I believe every American is entitled to live, to work, to worship, according to the dictates of their conscience.“The supreme court drew a clear line and said yes to religious liberty.” More

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      ‘Bidenomics’ is a business opportunity. But who can cash in?

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      This past week Joe Biden gave a speech in which he touted his economic policies and, rather than deflecting, he leaned into what many of his opponents called “Bidenomics”.Bidenomics is the opposite of “trickle-down” theory, which holds that tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporations ultimately find their way to the rest of the population through more spending and investment. For the president and his supporters, Bidenomics means government spending and investment in infrastructure and services that create jobs and growth.“I didn’t come up with the name, I really didn’t,” he said in his remarks. “I now claim it.”If you’re a small business owner or an entrepreneur a president’s economic policies – assuming they can get congressional support – really do matter. This is not to claim that Biden’s economic agenda will be any more or less successful than his predecessors’: for many the trickle-down v spending debate will never be resolved. But when a president sets an agenda it reveals where money will be spent. And my smartest, most experienced clients are watching closely. Why? Because regardless of where they stand politically, what’s best for their business is always, always, always to follow the money.They know that when you own a business your job is to create value and build an organization that provides a livelihood for all the people that rely on you. This includes your customers, your suppliers, your partners and of course your employee and their families, as well as your family. Which means that you put politics aside (until it’s time to cast your vote) and instead you follow the money. Get it?So where is the Bidenomics money going?For starters, there’s almost $300bn going towards building chip manufacturing plants under the 2022 Chips Act. There’s also another $391bn that’s being spent on companies that are improving their energy efficiency and making greener products under the Inflation Reduction Act. A trillion dollars is being expended on roads, buildings and other infrastructure projects thanks to the 2021 Infrastructure Act. That’s about $1.7tn, which is a lot of money. The president is also telling us that more will be spent on affordable healthcare, social services and education.That’s where the money’s going over the next few years and even more will be spent if he wins re-election in 2024. When it comes to your business, it doesn’t matter whether you agree with these policies. What matters is that you take advantage of them for the benefit of your business. So how are my clients doing this?If you want to sell products and services to the chip manufacturers and other players in the industry (and the most active ones – like Intel, Samsung, GlobalFoundries and Skywater Technologies – are already in line for the funding) then target these companies and their projects and consider what products and services of yours can be sold to them. Or you can do your research, identify opportunities and start filling out applications at places like the Department of Commerce’s Chips.gov, or at Chips Act which is a private organization that provides support for businesses looking for help writing grants and submitting proposals. Or you can go directly to the Semiconductor Industry Association or read the excellent guidance provided by Semi, an organization that supports companies in the electronic manufacturing and supply chain industries.If you want to get funding for energy-efficient projects or to help develop energy efficient products you should start with the White House Inflation Reduction Act Guidebook which lists dozens of government agencies that are doling out money to organizations of all sizes for just that purpose. The Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains has $6bn available for projects and, wow, you can’t get any more government-sounding than that, right? Or if you merely want to maximize your use of the expanded tax credits under the legislation visit the IRS’s Inflation Reduction Act web area.Maybe you want to get in on the $1tn infrastructure spending? The White House, Federal Highway Administration, Department of Energy and Department of Commerce all have funding opportunities related to the 2021 legislation.Follow the money. Start at any of the places I’ve mentioned above and get ready to go down the Federal Rabbit Hole.Finding this money, let alone applying, isn’t easy. Which is why many of my clients don’t do this. They’re lazy. My best clients – and I have a handful – have already hired summer interns whose jobs are to peruse the maze of government bureaucracy, identify opportunities and start filling out forms. Doing this takes time, effort, tenacity. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.Even if you’re not in the construction industry you can still leverage Bidenomics. That’s because all of the companies that are getting funding will need your products or services. Chip manufacturing plants will have employees that eat pizza. Highways have buildings that need to be cleaned. “Green” products need to be transported. People in these industries getting all that money will need accountants, lawyers, architects, marketing professionals and workplace consultants.Bidenomics. Obamacare. Supply side. Trickle down. These are just words. Political phrases to create headlines and catch the attention of voters. Smart business owners know this. They don’t get distracted by these terms. And they don’t let their politics muddle their strategies. What they do is follow the money. And my best clients have taught me that whether you’re a fan of Biden’s – or any president’s economic policies – there’s always plenty of money and opportunities to pursue if you just follow the money. More

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      The Big Break: Ben Terris on his portrait of Washington after Trump

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      If you were a pollster, would you ever bet on elections? How about your clients’ elections? How about betting your clients would lose? For Sean McElwee, the wunderkind behind the liberal polling group Data for Progress, the answer was all the above.McElwee had clients including the 2022 Senate campaign of John Fetterman, in Pennsylvania. McElwee placed multiple bets on the midterms, including that Fetterman would lose. Fetterman’s organization became displeased. Following its victory, it severed ties with McElwee. It was just the beginning of a dramatic downfall heightened by the pollster’s connections to the pandemic-prevention advocate Gabe Bankman-Fried, whose billionaire brother Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire collapsed in scandal around election day.The rise and fall of Sean McElwee is one of many storylines in a new book The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses its Mind. For the author, the Washington Post reporter Ben Terris, the individuals he profiles tell a collective story about DC processing the fallout from the Trump years.“Nobody knew what the world was going to be like post-Trump,” Terris says, adding: “If there is a post-Trump.”To explore that world, he turned to Democratic and Republican circles: Leah Hunt-Hendrix, an oil heiress turned funder of progressive causes, whose conservative grandfather HL Hunt was reportedly the world’s wealthiest man; Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, a Republican power couple whose fortunes crested after Matt decided to stick with Trump in 2016; Ian Walters, Matt’s protege until political and personal differences ruptured the friendship; Robert Stryk, a cowboy-hatted lobbyist who parlayed Trump connections into a lucrative career representing sometimes questionable clients; and Jamarcus Purley, a Black staffer for the Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein who lamented the impact of George Floyd’s murder and the pandemic on Black Americans including his own father, who died. Disenchanted with his boss, Purley lost his job in disputed circumstances and launched an unconventional protest in Feinstein’s Capitol office, after hours.Terris is a reporter for the Post’s Style section, which he characterizes as strong on features and profiles. He can turn a phrase, likening Fetterman to “a Tolkien character in Carhartt”, and has an ear for the telling quote. Once, while Terris was covering the Democratic senator Jon Tester, from Montana, in, of all places, an organic pea field, nature called. A staffer asked: “Can the senator’s penis please be off the record?” Terris quips that he’s saving this for a title if he ever writes a memoir.His current book is “sort of a travelog, not a memoir”, Terris says. “I tried to keep myself out of the book as much as I could. I wanted the reader to feel like they knew Washington, knew the weirdos, the odd scenes … the backrooms, poker games, parties.”Hunt-Hendrix’s Christmas party is among the opening scenes. Attendees include her aunt Swanee Hunt, a former ambassador to Austria. Hunt-Hendrix aimed to make her own mark, through her organization Way to Win.“She’s very progressive,” Terris says, “trying to unwind a lot of projects, in a way, that her grandfather was all about. To me, it was fascinating, the family dynamics at play.”Just as fascinating was her “figuring out how to push the [Democratic] party in the direction she believed it should go in – a more progressive direction than some Democrats pushed for. It told the story of Democratic party tensions – money and politics, the idea of being idealistic and also super-wealthy … All of these things made for a very heady brew.”On the Republican side, Stryk went from running a vineyard to savoring fine wine in a foreign embassy, thanks to his connection to Trump. Stryk joined the campaign in 2016. When Trump won, Stryk celebrated on a patio of the Four Seasons hotel in DC. A dog sniffed his crotch. When its owner apologized, Stryk found she worked for the New Zealand embassy, which was having difficulty reaching Trump. It was Stryk’s lucky break.“He was in a position to connect New Zealand to Trump,” Terris says. “He got a phone number and was off to the races, a sideshow guy making major deals … $5m with the Saudis, that kind of thing.”When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, Stryk was in Belarus, exploring a potential relationship with that country’s government. He had to make his way home via the Baltics.“One of the themes of the book is that the Donald Trump era allowed a bunch of sideshow characters to get out on the main stage,” Terris says. “Stryk is a great example of that.”Others distanced themselves – eventually. Terris sees the rupture between Matt Schlapp and Ian Walters as illustrative. As head of the American Conservative Union, Schlapp presided over CPAC, the annual conservative conference, with Walters his communications director. As Schlapp welcomed fringe elements to CPAC – from Trump to Matt Gaetz to Marjorie Taylor Greene – Walters felt increasingly repelled.“It’s an interesting tale of a broken friendship,” Terris says. “It also helps the reader understand how did the Republican party get to where it is now – where are the fault lines, why one way over another.”The 2020 election was the point of no return. Schlapp stayed all-in on Trump, supporting his claim of a stolen election even in a graveside speech at the funeral of Walters’s father, the legendary conservative journalist Ralph Hallow.“We have to take confidence that he would want us, more than anything else, to get beyond this period of mourning and to fight,” Schlapp is quoted as saying. Walters and his wife, Carin, resigned from the ACU. Ian remained a Republican but marveled at the bravery of the whistleblower Cassidy Hutchinson in the January 6 hearings.As for Schlapp, he faced scandal late last year. Assisting with the Senate campaign of the ex-football star Herschel Walker, when Schlapp arrived in Georgia, he allegedly groped a male campaign staffer.“I had to go back into my reporting and ask, were there signs of this?” recalls Terris. “Could I run through all of this [with] the alleged victim over the phone? I did. I ran a bunch of questions by Matt – he never answered.”There was another last-minute controversy. McElwee’s polls proved inaccurate. Another red flag was his ties to Gabe Bankman-Fried, whose brother was arrested in December. Reports of McElwee’s gambling made clients wonder where their money was going. Senior staff threatened to resign. McElwee stepped down.“All of a sudden, it was national news in a way I was not prepared for,” Terris says.Can anyone be prepared for what comes next in Washington?“Donald Trump proved you can win by acting like Donald Trump,” Terris says. “There are a lot of people that learned from him – mostly in the Republican party, but [also] the Democratic party – how to comport yourself in Washington, what you can get away with. People’s confidence is broken, politics is broken, relationships.”Can it all be restored?“Nobody knows yet how to do it. It’s not the same thing as normal. Maybe that’s fine. Maybe normal led to Donald Trump.”
      The Big Break is published in the US by Twelve More