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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

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      President centers ‘Bidenomics’ as 2024 re-election campaign gathers pace

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      As Joe Biden launches his 2024 re-election campaign, the White House is hoping to revamp the messaging on the president’s economic performance with a series of speeches, memos and the term “Bidenomics”.On Wednesday, Biden delivered what was billed as a major speech focused on the economy as he told an audience in Chicago that the Republican policy of “trickle-down economics” had “failed America”. In its place, Biden vowed to create policies that would prioritize growing the middle class, touted post-pandemic economic recovery and announced “Bidenomics is working” – one of 15 times he used the word over the course of his speech.Earlier in the week, a White House memo from two of Biden’s top advisers was sent to reporters and laid out a range of talking points. It touted the president’s various accomplishments on post-Covid economic recovery and job creation, while reiterating the theme that “Bidenomics is working.”“In the weeks and months ahead, the president, members of his cabinet, and senior administration officials will continue fanning out across the country to take the case for Bidenomics and the President’s Investing in America agenda directly to the American people,” the memo announced.The administration’s campaign appears to take aim at one of the president’s key vulnerabilities for the election, with polling showing voters have a dim assessment of how he has handled the economy. A Pew Research Center survey from this month found that inflation is the top concern among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, while support for Democratic economic policies lags 12 points behind support for GOP policies. An AP/NORC poll from last month showed that only 33% of Americans supported Biden’s handling of the economy.The perceptions of Biden’s handling of the economy are at odds with a range of positive economic indicators that the White House is eager to highlight. Inflation has gone down to the lowest levels since 2021, while the administration has repeatedly touted months of consistent job growth and low unemployment. The US economy has generally outperformed economic experts’ forecasts, and for now has staved off a recession that seemed inevitable.But these gains have not appeared to resonate with voters, who have repeatedly given Biden poor marks on the economy as workers have struggled with rising prices that often outpaced growth in wages. Republicans have meanwhile been eager to capitalize on issues of inflation, labeling the spike “Bidenflation” and making it a frequent point of attack.Biden’s team attempted to defend the president’s economic achievements in the past, including dedicating a significant portion of his State of the Union address in February to highlight his record on job growth and unemployment. The White House even passed out small “palm cards” to Democratic lawmakers with a list of talking points about the economy. But as the presidential election begins to take shape it appears these efforts are intensifying, attempting to go on the offensive with a positive message about the administration’s economic agenda.Some Democratic politicians have embraced the talking points, earning them favorable positions as surrogates for the president. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, reportedly won praise from administration officials this month after an appearance on the Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show, in which Newsom forcefully challenged assertions that Biden’s economic plans were struggling and touted the president’s job creation.The “Bidenomics” memo sent to reporters earlier this week was the work of two longtime Biden advisers, Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon. Dunn is Biden’s most senior communications adviser and played a key role in turning around his 2020 presidential election bid. Donilon has worked with Biden for decades, and as his chief strategist during the 2020 election was key in shaping the campaign’s messaging.Biden initially joked about the “Bidenomics” term at a rally on 17 June hosted by union members in Philadelphia, where he said it was “time to end the trickle-down economics theory” that was commonly associated with former President Ronald Reagan’s plan of ‘Reaganomics’.“We decided to replace this theory with what the press has now called ‘Bidenomics’,” the president said. “I don’t know what the hell that is. But it’s working.” More

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      Biden says supreme court ‘misinterpreted the constitution’ as he announces new student debt relief plan – live

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      From 2h agoJoe Biden said he will announce a “new path” on student loan relief that will rely on a different law than the one that the supreme court today his administration could not use to relieve some $430bn in federal student debt.“I’m announcing today a new path consistent with today’s ruling to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible. We will ground this new approach in a different law than my original plan, the so-called Higher Education Act. That will allow (education secretary Miguel Cardona) … to compromise, waive, or release loans under certain circumstances,” the president said.Speaking from the White House briefing room, secretary of education Miguel Cardona said he “strongly disagreed” with the supreme court’s decision and vowed to “open up an alternative path to debt relief for as many borrowers as possible, as quickly as possible”.In ruling against the Biden administration’s landmark student debt forgiveness plan, the court had “ruled against more than 40 million working families”, Cardona said.
      We’re not talking about the millionaires who benefited from the billions in tax giveaway a few years ago. We’re talking about low and middle income families recovering from the worst pandemic in a century.
      He said it was “outrageous” that Republican members of Congress had “fought so hard against the program that would have helped millions of their own constituents”.Cardona added:
      Today, I want to assure our students, our borrowers and families across America – our fight is not over.
      Vice-president Kamala Harris has spoken out against the supreme court’s ruling today striking down a Colorado civil rights law which compels businesses and organizations to treat same-sex couples equally.The court’s decision “departs from decades of jurisprudence by creating an exception to protections against discrimination in public accommodations”, a statement from Harris reads.
      On the last day of Pride Month, the Supreme Court has paved the way for businesses across our nation to discriminate in the name of “free expression”—against the LGBTQI+ community, racial and religious minorities, the disability community, and women.
      At a time when we celebrate hard-won advancements in LGBTQI+ rights, this decision threatens future progress.
      She added that she and President Joe Biden would “continue to rigorously enforce federal anti-discrimination protections and fight for the right of all people to participate equally in our society”.We have a clip from Joe Biden’s speech where he announced a “new path” on student loan relief that will rely on a different law than the one that the supreme court today said his administration could not use to relieve some $430bn in federal student debt.Once a person loses their right to vote in Mississippi it is essentially impossible to get it back.To do so, a disenfranchised person must get the legislature to approve an individualized bill on their behalf by a supermajority in both chambers and then have the governor approve the bill. There are no online instructions or applications and lawmakers can reject or deny an application for any reason.Hardly anyone successfully makes it through the process. Between 1997 and 2022, an average of seven people successfully made it through the process each year, according to Blake Feldman, a criminal justice researcher in Mississippi.The supreme court did not say on Friday why it was rejecting the case (it takes four votes on the court to grant review) and Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor were the only two justices who noted their dissent from the denial. Jackson wrote an opinion saying the fifth circuit had committed “two egregious analytical errors that ought to be corrected”.First, she wrote, even though Mississippi voters removed a crime in 1950 and added two more in 1968, the substance of many of the original crimes from 1890 remained intact. That means that the list is still discriminatory, she wrote in a dissent that was joined by Sotomayor.“The “remaining crimes” from [the list of crimes] pernicious origin still work the very harm the 1890 Convention intended – denying Black Mississippians the vote,” she wrote.The US supreme court turned away a case on Friday challenging Mississippi’s rules around voting rights for people with felony convictions, leaving intact a policy implemented more than a century ago with the explicit goal of preventing Black people from voting.Those convicted of any one of 23 specific felonies in Mississippi permanently lose the right to vote. The list is rooted in the state’s 1890 constitutional convention, where delegates chose disenfranchising crimes that they believed Black people were more likely to commit.“We came here to exclude the negro. Nothing short of this will answer,” the president of the convention said at the time. The crimes, which include bribery, theft, carjacking, bigamy and timber larceny, have remained largely the same since then; Mississippi voters amended it remove burglary in 1950 and added murder and rape in 1968.It continued to have a staggering effect in Mississippi. Sixteen percent of the Black voting-age population remains blocked from casting a ballot, as well as 10% of the overall voting age population, according to an estimate by The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice non-profit. The state is about 38% Black, but Black people make up more than half of Mississippi’s disenfranchised population.Read the full story by my colleague Sam Levine here.In his speech at the White House, Joe Biden repeated his criticism of the Republicans who led the successful effort to block his plan to cancel some federal student loan debt.Biden called out those Republican members who received “hundreds of thousands for themselves” in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans that were later forgiven, but who had strongly opposed his student debt plan.
      The hypocrisy is stunning.
      The new student debt relief plan will be implemented under the federal government’s rulemaking process, the White House said, and it seems like it will take months to get the program up and running.The education department today issued a notice announcing the plan, will hold a virtual public hearing on 18 July and “finalize the issues to be addressed through rulemaking and begin the negotiated rulemaking sessions this fall. The Department will complete this rulemaking as quickly as possible,” according to the White House.In addition, the White House said the education department will institute “a 12-month ‘on-ramp’ to repayment, running from 1 October 2023 to 30 September 2024, so that financially vulnerable borrowers who miss monthly payments during this period are not considered delinquent, reported to credit bureaus, placed in default, or referred to debt collection agencies.”Federal student loan payments have been paused since Covid-19 broke out in March 2020, and were set to restart this October. The Biden administration said the “on-ramp” is intended to provide relief to financially struggling borrowers who can’t afford to start making payments again right away.The Guardian’s Léonie Chao-Fong is taking the blog over now to keep you posted on this developing story.Joe Biden directed blame for the apparent demise of his student debt relief program both at the Republicans who sued over the plan, and at the supreme court justices who ruled against it.“I think the court misinterpreted the constitution,” Biden said. Asked whether he gave Americans “false hope” by promising $430bn in total debt relief only for it to be blocked in court, he replied, “I didn’t give any false hope. The question was whether or not I would do even more than was requested. What I did I felt was appropriate and was able to be done and would get done.”“But the Republican snatched away the hope that they were given,” Biden said.“This new path is legally sound,” Biden said in announcing his new attempt at student loan relief.“It’s going to take longer, but in my view it’s the best path that remains to providing for as many borrowers as possible. I’m directing my team to move as quickly as possible on law,” the president said.Joe Biden said he will announce a “new path” on student loan relief that will rely on a different law than the one that the supreme court today his administration could not use to relieve some $430bn in federal student debt.“I’m announcing today a new path consistent with today’s ruling to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible. We will ground this new approach in a different law than my original plan, the so-called Higher Education Act. That will allow (education secretary Miguel Cardona) … to compromise, waive, or release loans under certain circumstances,” the president said.Joe Biden has started his speech by criticizing the Republicans who successfully sued to block his student loan forgiveness program.“The money was literally about to go out the door, and then Republican elected officials and special interests stepped in. They said no, no, literally snatching from the hands of millions of Americans thousands of dollars of student debt relief that was about to change their lives,” the president said.“You know, these Republican officials just couldn’t bear the thought of providing relief for working-class, middle-class Americans. Republican state officials sued my administration, attempting to block relief, including to millions of their own constituents.” More

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      Biden condemns ruling against race-conscious admissions: ‘This is not a normal court’ – live

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      From 5h agoSpeaking at the White House, Joe Biden condemned the supreme court’s conservative justices for their decision released today against race-based admissions.“In case after case, including recently, just a few years ago in 2016, the court has affirmed and reaffirmed this view that colleges could use race, not as a determining factor for admission, but as one of the factors among many in deciding who to admit,” the president said, adding that “the court once again walked away from decades of precedent.”“The court has effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions and I strongly, strongly disagree with the court’s decision,” he said.There are “still a lot of really good Republicans” in the Senate, Joe Biden said during his interview on MSNBC.Biden said that six Republican senators have come to him since he was elected “to tell me, ‘Joe, I agree with you but if I’m seen doing it, I’ll lose a primary’”. He added:
      I’m an eternal optimist. I still think there’s going to come a moment when they’re going to be able to break.
      During his interview on MSNBC, Joe Biden admitted he knew his polling numbers “are not good” but argued that “they were the same way when I ran and won”.Biden said he had “great faith” in the American people and that it was “important that they know that my value set is very different than the new Maga Republican party”.He added:
      Everybody thought I was gonna get clobbered in the primary. I got 80 million votes in the last election.
      Here’s the clip:Joe Biden refused to say whether he knew ahead of time about Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to march on Moscow.“Every president is amazed that America is the lead in the world”, he told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.He said he had focused on holding Nato together and on expanding the alliance to make sure that “the most significant invasion since world war two does not succeed”.In an interview on MSNBC, Joe Biden was asked about a report that said senior officials at the justice department resisted investigating the possible involvement of Donald Trump and his associates in the January 6 Capitol attack.Biden said he had made a commitment that he would “not in any way interfere” with the justice department, adding that he had “not spoken one single time with the attorney general on any specific case”.He said he had “faith that the justice department will move in a direction that is consistent with the law”.Joe Biden has said the supreme court has “gone out of its way” to “unravel basic rights” following its ruling on Thursday to strike down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard.In an interview on MSNBC, Biden was asked what he meant at a press conference earlier today when he said the supreme court was “not a normal court”. He said:
      What I meant by that is it has done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history.
      He said he found this court “so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people”.
      Across the board, the vast majority of American people don’t agree with a lot of the decisions this court has made.
      Biden said that although he believes the conservative majority on the court “may do too much harm”, he opposes expanding the court because it will “politicize the court forever in a way that is not healthy”.Biden says he knows his polling numbers “are not good”, but argues that “they were the same way when I ran”.
      Everybody thought I was going to get clobbered in a primary.
      Biden says he’s “not spoken one single time” with the attorney general “on any specific case”.Biden says he thinks if we start the process of trying to expand the court “we’re going to politicize it in a way that’s not healthy”.Biden says he thinks it’s a “mistake” to expand the court. He says:
      What I’ve done is I have appointed 136 judges, and … I picked people who are from various backgrounds.
      We’ve appointed more women to the appellate courts, Black women to the appellate courts, than every other president in American history.
      Biden says the vast majority of American people don’t agree with the supreme court’s ruling.He says it “finds it so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people”.Biden is asked what he meant when he said earlier today that the supreme court is “not a normal court”.Biden says the court has “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court”, pointing to its ruling last year to overturn Roe v Wade.Joe Biden will in a few minutes appear from MSNBC’s New York City studios for a live interview with anchor Nicolle Wallace.While Biden often responds to questions from reporters as he comes and goes from the White House or at the tail end of his speeches, he has done few press conferences compared with his recent predecessors, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Follow along here as the Guardian’s Léonie Chao-Fong covers the interview live. More

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      Biden has reminded us yet again that he’s a weak and lukewarm ally of abortion rights | Moira Donegan

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      A closed-door fundraiser for the very wealthy is a place where a lot of politicians really shine. Among their fellow elites, surrounded by people like them who like them – and are giving them money – Democrats and Republicans alike often become their truest selves. They drop the flesh-pressing affectations, the focused-group soundbites, the stiff smiles. They become something they’re usually not: honest.Honest is what Biden was at a similar fundraiser in tony Chevy Chase, Maryland, this past Tuesday, when he told a crowd of his wealthy supporters that he was personally ambivalent about abortion rights. “I’m a practicing Catholic. I’m not big on abortion,” the president said. Nevertheless, he claimed that the compromise Roe v Wade decision on abortion “got it right”.Biden’s reassertion of his own discomfort with abortion came just three days after the first anniversary of the US supreme court’s Dobbs decision, which eliminated the abortion right. In the year since women lost the constitutional right that the president says he is not “big on”, the bans that snapped into effect have had life-changing – life-ruining – effects for thousands.Women have been forced to carry for months babies that cannot live outside the womb, which they have had to watch die after agonizing moments or hours of life. Women and girls have been forced to flee their home states to get abortions after being impregnated through rape. Women have lost their organs to abortion bans, needing emergency hysterectomies to save their lives after incomplete miscarriages or cesarean scar pregnancies. Others have been drafted into exercises in morbid futility, forced to carry fetuses that lack major organs, such as heads, in a new reality that has been likened to torture. Other women have been forced to become sicker and sicker – suffering, risking their lives, and incurring permanent damage to their bodies in order to be made ill enough that abortion might become legally permissible.Many more women have been stripped of control over their lives – denied healthcare, denied the ability to plan their families, denied the freedom to choose the course of their own lives, for the sake of retrograde, bigoted and punitive conceptions of gender and sexuality held by others. And all American women, along with many trans people, have been degraded and humiliated by abortion bans, relegated to a lesser class of adult citizenship, informed that they are not permitted to control their own fates.The abortion data project WeCount suggests that there were 25,640 fewer legal abortions in America in the year following Dobbs. That number does not account for the number of women – the unlucky ones – who received care only after their pregnancies sickened them to the brink of death. And it doesn’t account for the women – the lucky ones, as these things go – who were able to flee their home states and subject themselves to the indignity and burden of traveling for care. So the number is conservative. But still, it represents a staggering injustice: 25,640 violations of human rights; 25,640 people who deserved better.Throughout the past year, members of the Biden administration, and President Biden in particular, have been largely absent from this unfolding catastrophe. They have not taken on an expansive view of executive authority in attempts to restore abortion rights; they have not pressed allies in Congress to advance pro-choice legislation; they have not been willing to challenge, even tentatively, an anti-choice federal judiciary that is wildly expanding its interpretations of its own power.They are not even willing to do the one thing that the president has the unquestioned authority to do: use the bully pulpit to express solidarity with American women, to grieve for their lost health, futures and dignity, and to rally Americans to the increasingly popular pro-choice cause. Joe Biden has abdicated leadership on abortion, the loss of which is causing untold suffering, and which will define life prospects for a generation of women. Because he finds it distasteful. Because he’s not “big on” it.Lest this seem like an ungenerous reading of a well-intended gaffe, it should be noted that an unwillingness to advocate for abortion rights has been a recurring theme of his career. Abortion is a test that Joe Biden has failed every single time that history has called him to it. His paeans to his Catholic faith as cover for his unwillingness to champion abortion also ring false: most American Catholics support abortion rights. And as Jamie Manson, the president of Catholics for Choice, pointed out, the church also fiercely opposes marriage equality, which the president has long championed. It is not Catholicism that makes Joe Biden unwilling to issue a full-throated support of abortion rights. It is sexism.Until it became a political liability for him in the 2020 midterm cycle, Biden was among one of the last leading Democrats to support the Hyde Amendment, a 1976 provision that forbade federal funding for abortions, and which, because of its ban on Medicaid coverage of the procedure, made Roe’s protection of the abortion right largely moot for poor women almost as soon as it was achieved. Biden’s assertion that “Roe got it right,” is both disingenuous to this long-held position, which curtailed Roe’s protections, and also a sign of how indifferent and uninterested he has been in the insights of pro-choice activists, who have long argued that Roe was insufficient in its protections for abortion, inadequate in its argument for the right on privacy, rather than liberty and equality, grounds, and too diminished by subsequent attacks on abortion access that were pursued by rabidly anti-choice Republicans and allowed by cowardly “pro-choice” Democrats who never had the courage of their campaign promises.But an indifference to abortion rights activists from Biden is no surprise: after the Dobbs decision, while his administration fumbled and tried to change the subject from their own incompetence and lack of preparation, it was not those who had conspired and schemed for decades against Roe who the Biden administration blamed, and it was not those who had snatched women’s rights away that they demonized. It was pro-choice activists.“Joe Biden’s goal in responding to Dobbs is not to satisfy some activists who have consistently been out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic party,” his then-communications director, Kate Bedingfield, sneered.Mission accomplished: pro-choice activists are not satisfied with Joe Biden. But abortion is a salient issue, one that is only growing more popular, and more electorally persuasive, every day. In light of the post-Dobbs political reality, Joe Biden’s unwillingness to give unqualified support to abortion rights is not just morally cowardly; it’s also politically irresponsible. Republicans are running from the issue, and the Biden campaign is declining to attack them on it. Voters are rallying around abortion rights, and the Biden campaign is declining to lead them.The time for apologetic, defensive, partial non-defenses of abortion rights is over, and America’s newly mobilized pro-choice majority knows it. It’s not the activists who are out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic party. It’s Joe Biden.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in Elections

      Top Georgia official to meet special counsel investigators over Trump’s 2020 election plot – live

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      From 2h agoDonald Trump has now been indicted twice, first by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for allegedly falsifying business documents, and the second time by special prosecutor Jack Smith over the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. While the former president has said he will not relent from his latest campaign for the White House even if convicted, a guilty verdict on any of those charges would nonetheless be a huge development.Yet it’s possible neither trial is resolved before the November 2024 general election, where Trump could appear on ballots nationwide, assuming he wins the Republican nominating contest.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that his trial in federal court over the Mar-a-Lago documents may be delayed until next spring:
      Federal prosecutors in the classified documents case against Donald Trump have asked for a tentative trial date in December, but the complex nature of the US government’s own rules for using such secrets in court, and expected legal challenges, could delay the trial until at least the spring of 2024.
      Trump was charged with retaining national defense information, including US nuclear secrets and plans for US retaliation in the event of an attack, which means his case will be tried under the rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.
      The statute was passed in the 1980s to protect the government against the “graymail” problem in national security cases, a tactic where the defense threatens to reveal classified information at trial, betting that the government would prefer to drop the charges rather than risk disclosure.
      That Joe Biden makes gaffes and misstatements when speaking in public is nothing new. But as he stands for a second term in office, Republicans are seizing on every mistake to press their case that the 80-year-old president is in no position to serve another four years.GOP-aligned Twitter accounts were quick to jump on Biden this morning after he incorrectly said Iraq when referring to Ukraine in remarks to reporters. So, too, were some Republican lawmakers, like Missouri’s senator Josh Hawley:Bloomberg News reports this isn’t the first time he’s made that particular mistake:As he left the White House for Chicago, Joe Biden shared his views on how the weekend rebellion against President Vladimir Putin in Russia has affected his grip on the country – and also made yet another gaffe:So just what is “Bidenomics”?According to the White House, “It’s an economic vision centered around three key pillars”, specifically “Making smart public investments in America, empowering and educating workers to grow the middle class [and] promoting competition to lower costs and help entrepreneurs and small businesses thrive.”“While our work isn’t finished, Bidenomics is already delivering for the American people. Our economy has added more than 13 million jobs – including nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs – and we’ve unleashed a manufacturing and clean energy boom,” the White House said in a fact sheet distributed today, also noting the drop in inflation and rise in small business activity.The president is scheduled to make a speech outlining these accomplishments at 1pm Eastern Time in Chicago, setting the stage for them to be a key part of his re-election campaign.Despite all that, Biden struck a curious tone when taking questions from reporters at the White House this morning when asked about the term – which isn’t all that different from the “Reaganomics” moniker used to refer to former Republican president Ronald Reagan’s policies.Here’s the exchange, as captured by the Hill:Joe Biden may be planning to campaign on his economic record, but polls indicate that argument may not work for many Americans.Biden’s approval rating has been underwater for almost two years, but Americans are particularly distrustful of his handling of the economy. Consider this survey from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released last month.Its data shows the president’s approval at a typically low 40% – but when it comes to his handling of the economy, it’s even worse, with only 33% of American adults approving of what he’s done so far.Joe Biden is on his way to Chicago right now from Washington DC to make what his administration is billing as a major speech on his economic accomplishments, but as he left the White House, the president took time to call out a conservative Republican senator.The target was Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville, who tweeted this morning about how happy he was that his state would receive money to expand broadband access from a $42bn federal government program:But that program is paid for by the national infrastructure overhaul Congress approved with a bipartisan vote in 2021 – which Tuberville did not vote for.That fact clearly did not escape Biden’s social media team, who invited the lawmaker to attend a public event with the president:While Donald Trump could still face charges over the January 6 attack, Reuters reported yesterday on a newly released report that shows US security agencies failed to see the insurrection coming:A new report detailing intelligence failures leading up to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol said government agencies responsible for anticipating trouble downplayed the threat even as the building was being stormed, in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.The 105-page report, issued by Democrats on the Senate homeland security committee, said intelligence personnel at the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies ignored warnings of violence in December 2020.Such officials then blamed each other for failing to prevent the attack that ensued, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths.Donald Trump has now been indicted twice, first by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for allegedly falsifying business documents, and the second time by special prosecutor Jack Smith over the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. While the former president has said he will not relent from his latest campaign for the White House even if convicted, a guilty verdict on any of those charges would nonetheless be a huge development.Yet it’s possible neither trial is resolved before the November 2024 general election, where Trump could appear on ballots nationwide, assuming he wins the Republican nominating contest.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that his trial in federal court over the Mar-a-Lago documents may be delayed until next spring:
      Federal prosecutors in the classified documents case against Donald Trump have asked for a tentative trial date in December, but the complex nature of the US government’s own rules for using such secrets in court, and expected legal challenges, could delay the trial until at least the spring of 2024.
      Trump was charged with retaining national defense information, including US nuclear secrets and plans for US retaliation in the event of an attack, which means his case will be tried under the rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.
      The statute was passed in the 1980s to protect the government against the “graymail” problem in national security cases, a tactic where the defense threatens to reveal classified information at trial, betting that the government would prefer to drop the charges rather than risk disclosure.
      Good morning, US politics blog readers. Special counsel Jack Smith has already brought federal charges against Donald Trump over his involvement in hiding documents at Mar-a-Lago, but his investigation of the former president is far from over. Smith was tasked by attorney general Merrick Garland to also look into Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection and the wider effort to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and new details have emerged of the direction of those inquiries.Smith’s investigators will be interviewing Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger today in Atlanta, the Washington Post reports, while Rudy Giuliani has already spoken to them, according to the Associated Press. The two men played starkly different roles in the legal maneuvers Trump attempted in the weeks after his election loss, with Raffensperger resisting entreaties from the president to stop the certification of Biden’s victory in Georgia, and Giuliani acting as a proxy for the president in his pressure campaign. We’ll be keeping our eyes open to see if more details of the investigation emerged today.Here’s what else is going on:
      Biden is heading to Chicago for a speech at 1pm Eastern Time on “Bidenomics” – the accomplishments in employment and wages he intends to campaign on as he seeks another term in the White House.
      A judge appeared disinclined to move to federal court the case brought against Trump by the Manhattan district attorney for allegedly falsifying business records, denying the former president another opportunity to have the charges dismissed.
      White House spokeswoman Olivia Dalton will take questions from reporters sometime after 9.30am. More

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      McCarthy says Trump ‘stronger today than in 2016’ after doubting his ability to win earlier – live

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      From 6h agoThe impacts of the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper extend to redistricting, and beyond.Its most immediate effect is to preserve longstanding norms over state courts’ ability to weigh in on legislatures’ actions when it comes to federal elections, as the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:
      The 6-3 decision in Moore v Harper is a blow to North Carolina Republicans who had asked the court to embrace the so-called independent state legislature theory – the idea that the US constitution does not allow state courts to limit the power of state legislatures when it comes to federal elections. Such a decision in the case would have been a major win for Republicans, who control more state legislatures than Democrats do. Some of the conservative justices on the court had urged the bench to embrace the idea.
      “We will have to resolve this question sooner or later, and the sooner we do so, the better,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a dissent at an earlier stage in the case that was joined by Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. “If the language of the elections clause is taken seriously, there must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections.”
      The court’s decision means that state courts can continue to weigh in on disputes over federal election rules. State courts have become increasingly popular forums for hearing those disputes, especially after the US supreme court said in 2019 that federal courts could not address partisan gerrymandering.
      But Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political science professor focusing on American elections, sees broader implications in the justices’ rejection of the fringe independent state legislature (ISL) theory, which Republican lawmakers from North Carolina has asked them to endorse in the case:Here’s more from Sam on the case:A New York appeals court has ordered that Ivanka Trump be dismissed from a civil fraud case filed by New York attorney general Letitia James against Donald Trump, the Trump Organization and three of his adult children.James’ lawsuit, filed last September, accused Trump of lying from 2011 to 2021 about the value of his properties, including his Mar-a-Lago estate and Trump Tower penthouse, as well as his own net worth, to receive favorable loans. The lawsuit alleged that Trump’s children were involved in a conspiracy to commit the crimes.The lawsuit seeks at least $250m in damages from the former president, his sons Donald Jr and Eric, his daughter Ivanka, the Trump Organization and to stop the Trumps from running businesses in New York.The appellate division in Manhattan, in today’s unanimous ruling, dismissed the claims brought against Ivanka Trump by James, noting that those claims were barred by New York’s statute of limitation. It said:
      The allegations against defendant Ivanka Trump do not support any claims that accrued after February 6, 2016. Thus, all claims against her should have been dismissed as untimely.
      The appeals court has returned the case to the state supreme court judge presiding over the case to determine whether the claims against the other defendants should be limited.A trial is scheduled to begin 2 October.Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has said “what’s happening with the Uyghurs is disgusting” after her rival, Francis Suarez, appeared not to have heard of the persecuted Chinese minority group.Haley, during a foreign policy speech about China in Washington, said:
      We promised never again to look away from genocide, and it’s happening right now in China. And no one is saying anything because they’re too scared of China.
      Part of American foreign policy should always be that we fight for human rights for all people. And what’s happening with the Uyghurs is disgusting. And the fact that the whole world is ignoring it is shameful.
      Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy has insisted that Donald Trump is “stronger today than he was in 2016”, hours after he appeared to question whether the former president was the strongest GOP nominee to win the 2024 election.McCarthy, in an interview with Breitbart News, said:
      As usual, the media is attempting to drive a wedge between President Trump and House Republicans as our committees are holding Biden’s DoJ accountable for their two-tiered levels of justice.
      He pointed to a Morning Poll published today that showed Trump with a three-point lead over Joe Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head match. McCarthy said:
      Just look at the numbers this morning – Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016.
      It comes after he was asked, in an interview earlier today with CNBC, whether Trump could win an election despite all his legal troubles. McCarthy replied:
      Yeah he can … the question is, is he strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer.
      Investigators from special counsel Jack Smith’s office are set to interview Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in Atlanta, as part of the federal investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his advisers to overturn the 2020 election results.Raffensperger’s interview, first reported by the Washington Post, will be his first with US justice department investigators.Smith’s office subpoenaed Raffensperger back in December, but NBC News reports that the move was for documents and not for him to appear or testify in person.In a phone call after the 2020 election, Trump demanded Raffensperger “find” the votes needed for him to win Georgia – a state Joe Biden won by nearly 12,000 votes.Trump told Raffensperger:
      All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.
      A new federal law that requires employers to provide accommodations to pregnant and postpartum employees took effect on Tuesday, providing protections to millions of eligible people.The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act requires that employers with more than 15 workers provide “reasonable accommodations” to people who are pregnant, postpartum or have a related medical condition, NBC News reported.The legislation covers accommodations for a myriad of pregnancy-related conditions including morning sickness, pregnancy loss and postpartum depression.Examples of possible accommodations include being able to sit and drink water, having flexible hours and having uniforms that fit properly, according to information from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.Accommodations could also include time off for childbirth recovery and time to access an abortion, the 19th News reported.Under the act, a pregnant employee can request accommodations from their employer, with both parties having a discussion on if the accommodation can be granted.Read the full story here.Kamala Harris is out with a statement cheering the supreme court’s decision in the Moore v Harper case out of North Carolina, but acknowledging that more must be done to safeguard voting rights across the United States.Here are the vice-president’s thoughts:
      Voting is the bedrock of our democracy. Today’s decision preserves state courts’ critical role in safeguarding elections and protecting the voice and the will of the American people. We know that more work must to (sic) be done to protect the fundamental right to vote and to draw fair maps that reflect the diversity of our communities and our nation. The President and I will keep fighting to secure access to the ballot box, but we cannot do this alone. We continue to call on Congress to do their part to protect voters and our democracy and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.
      If the supreme court had ruled in favor of Republicans in a major election law case decided today, it would have represented a “truly horrible” blow to American democracy, a congressman from North Carolina, the state at the heart of the decision, said in an interview.Speaking to the Guardian’s US politics live blog, Wiley Nickel, a first-term Democratic House representative from the Raleigh area, said that while the decision handed down might represent a victory in the battle against partisan gerrymandering, he still expects Republicans who control North Carolina’s state legislature to proceed with redrawing congressional maps to their advantage.“We had something truly horrible that didn’t happen and it would have been the beginning of the end of democracy in America if the court had sided with Tim Moore in the Moore v Harper case,” Nickel said, referring to the Republican speaker of the state’s House of Representatives whose name was on the supreme court case.But because the US supreme court has now ruled against North Carolina’s Republicans and declined to endorse a fringe theory that could have prevented state courts from weighing in on federal election rules, “It’ll mean that we have a check with the courts and with our constitution … it just moves us on to the next stage of the fight to make sure that we get fair maps in this next election.”Nickel was elected last year after North Carolina’s supreme court struck down a GOP-drawn congressional map and replaced it with one that produced a 7-7 split between Republicans and Democrats in the state’s delegation following the midterm election. While Democrats still lost control of the US House, that ruling was one of many factors that helped the party’s lawmakers across the country perform better than expected.In North Carolina, the GOP has since taken the majority on its top court, which, together with the party’s control of the House and Senate, will allow it to move forward with a partisan gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts.Nickel expects that the boundaries of his district, which leans slightly Republican, will remain pretty much the same, but other Democratic congressional representatives may be at risk.“It goes back to our state legislature and they’re going to draw maps and it’s going to be, I think, bad overall for Democrats,” he said. How bad it is will be yet another factor determining whether Joe Biden’s allies are able to retake control of the House in the next election, set for November 2024.In the long run, Nickel supports federal legislation to end partisan gerrymandering, but acknowledges that among the current crop of Republicans in the House, “The majority of them right now, if anything, they’re going in the opposite direction.”He takes some solace from another supreme court ruling released earlier this month that maintains parts of the Voting Rights Act and could help Democrats hang onto some districts in North Carolina and elsewhere in the south. Nickel also noted that if the Tar Heel State’s Republicans push too hard to make maps that disadvantage Democrats, it raises the chances a legal challenge against them will succeed.“Every single time we talk about maps in North Carolina, the real question is, how greedy are they going to get? And if they get too greedy, the state courts, federal courts are going to get involved,” he said.The third “Florida Man” in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Miami’s mayor Francis Suarez, suffered an embarrassment during an interview with a conservative radio host when he was asked about the plight of the oppressed Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in China.“The what?” Suarez replied when asked by the presenter Hugh Hewitt if he would be talking about them during his campaign, reported by the Miami Herald.“The Uyghurs,” Hewitt repeated.“What’s a Uyghur?” Suarez asked.“OK, we’ll come back to that. You gotta get smart on that,” Hewitt said.“What did you call it, a Weeble?” Suarez asked at the conclusion of the 15-minute conversation.In a later tweet, Hewitt called Suarez’s interview “pretty good for a first conversation”, apart from the “huge blind spot” on the Uyghurs.In a statement, Suarez claimed he had merely misheard. “Of course, I am well aware of the suffering of the Uyghurs in China,” he claimed.“China has a deplorable record on human rights and all people of faith suffer there. I didn’t recognize the pronunciation my friend Hugh Hewitt used. That’s on me.”You can listen to the interview here.Speaking of Donald Trump and 2024, Kevin McCarthy made a curious comment this morning in an interview with CNBC.Asked if he thought Trump could win an election despite all his legal troubles, the Republican House speaker replied, “Yeah he can … the question is, is he strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer. But can … anybody beat Biden? Yeah, anybody can beat Biden. Can Biden beat other people? Yes, Biden can beat them.”Make of that what you will. Here’s the full clip:During his campaign swing through New Hampshire, Ron DeSantis was asked about his views on the January 6 insurrection.Donald Trump has repeatedly insulted DeSantis, who is his closest rival for the Republican presidential nomination next year, but that apparently isn’t enough to earn the Florida’s governor’s condemnation of the former president’s involvement in the attack on the Capitol:Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, has also praised the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper.Posting to Twitter, Pelosi said:
      Today, the Supreme Court rejected a fringe, far-right assault on a sacred pillar of American Democracy: the right to vote.
      With its ruling in Moore v. Harper, the Court refused the MAGA Republicans’ radical theory and reaffirmed our Founders’ vision of checks and balances.
      The White House has responded to the supreme court’s ruling in Moore v Harper, calling it a “critical” move for voting rights.White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton said the “extreme” legal theory would have let politicians undermine the will of the people.Florida governor Ron DeSantis, at a campaign event in Hollis, New Hampshire, also vowed to tear down Washington’s traditional political power centers, AP reports.Asked about people who had voted twice for Donald Trump because of promises to “drain the swamp” in the nation’s capital, DeSantis replied:
      He didn’t drain it. It’s worse today than it’s ever been.
      He said he would take power out of Washington by instructing cabinet agencies to halve the number of employees there, adding:
      I want to break the swamp.
      Florida governor Ron DeSantis has vowed to succeed where Donald Trump failed and to “actually” build the wall between the US and Mexico, as the two held dueling campaign events in New Hampshire.DeSantis, at a town hall in Hollis, spoke about his new immigration policy proposal which includes calling for ending birthright citizenship, finishing the border wall and sending US forces into Mexico to combat drug cartels, AP reports.He said:
      We’re actually going to build the wall. A lot of politicians chirp. They make grandiose promises and then fail to deliver the actual results. The time for excuses is over. Now is the time to deliver results and finally get the job done. More

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      US intelligence ignored warnings of violence ahead of Capitol attack

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      A new report detailing intelligence failures leading up to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol said government agencies responsible for anticipating trouble downplayed the threat even as the building was being stormed, in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.The 105-page report, issued by Democrats on the Senate homeland security committee, said intelligence personnel at the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies ignored warnings of violence in December 2020.Such officials then blamed each other for failing to prevent the attack that ensued, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths.The US government has won hundreds of convictions against the rioters, with some getting long prison sentences.“These agencies failed to sound the alarm and share critical intelligence information that could have helped law enforcement better prepare for the events” of January 6, said Gary Peters of Michigan, the Democratic chair of the committee issuing the report, titled Planned in Plain Sight, A Review of the Intelligence Failures in Advance of 6 January 2021.Republicans on the committee did not respond to requests for comment.Last summer, a House of Representatives select committee held hearings, following a long investigation, that concluded the then president, Donald Trump, repeatedly ignored top aides’ findings that there was no significant fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost.Trump continues to falsely insist he won that contest and was the victim of election fraud. Hours before the riot, Trump delivered a fiery speech to supporters, urging them to march to the Capitol as the House and Senate met to certify Biden’s win.Trump is now the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination. He and some Republican rivals have pledged to grant or consider granting pardons to rioters.The Senate committee found that in December 2020, the FBI received information that the far-right Proud Boys extremist group planned to be in Washington “to literally kill people”.On 3-4 January 2021, the report says, intelligence agencies knew of multiple postings on social media calling for armed violence and storming the Capitol. Yet “as late as 8.57am on January 6 a senior watch officer at the DHS National Operations Center wrote “there is no indication of civil disobedience”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBy 2.58pm, the report noted, with a riot declared and the Capitol in formal lockdown, the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis noted online “chatter” calling for more violence but said “at this time no credible information to pass on has been established”.In summer 2020, demonstrations were staged in several US cities after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer. The Senate report notes that the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis was criticized then for “over-collecting intelligence on American citizens”, resulting “in a ‘pendulum swing’ after which analysts were hesitant to report open-source intelligence they were seeing in the lead-up to January 6”.The report concluded there was a “clear need … for a re-evaluation of the federal government’s domestic intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination processes”. More