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      ‘Enough is enough’: the Muslim American officials who resigned over US’s Israel-Gaza policy

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      When Maryam Hassanein joined the US Department of Interior as a Biden administration appointee in January, she hoped that Israel’s war on Gaza would soon come to an end. But when the US authorized a $1bn arms shipment to Israel in the spring, Hassanein decided to use her voice to affect change. She was inspired by the resilience of students involved in the anti-war movement at nearby George Washington University, where she had attended pro-Palestinian rallies.“Seeing the strength of the students who led that movement across the country really made me think about what I should be doing,” Hassanein said, “and how I can advocate far more for an end to the carnage in Palestine.”So last month, Hassanein joined the ranks of at least a dozen officials who have resigned from the Biden administration due to the US’s support of Israel’s war on Gaza, where more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October, according to the Gaza health ministry. Hassanein said she saw “value in making your voice heard on a public level when it’s not being heard while working there”.View image in fullscreenIn a Zoom call hosted by the civil rights group Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) on Tuesday, Hassanein and Hala Rharrit, a former US state department diplomat who resigned in April, shared their experiences of witnessing the Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian animus that they say drives the Biden administration’s Middle East policies.Rharrit resigned after nearly two decades of working with the state department because she said she witnessed US officials continuously dehumanize Palestinians following Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel. Robust debate was once welcomed at the state department, Rharrit said, but that changed 10 months ago. “I never faced a situation personally where there was fear for retaliation, there was silencing, there was self censorship,” she said. “For me, personally, in the 18 years that I’ve served, this is the very first time.”When engaging with Arab media, Rharrit said she was directed to repeat a narrative that Israel had the right to defend itself. And when giving a presentation to other diplomats, she said that she was lambasted for wanting to include a picture of a Palestinian child dying of starvation. In a group chat where diplomats discussed Egyptian journalists, she said that one colleague expressed disbelief that the Egyptians had built the pyramids.“This is a failed policy,” Rharrit said about the US’s aid to Israel, “and we as Americans and as taxpayers that are sending these bombs and these weapons need to have a collective voice and say: enough is enough.”In her role at the interior department, Hassanein joined other staffers in signing letters, attending rallies and vigils, but soon recognized that her voice wasn’t being heard, she said. “What I realized is that I don’t want to just be a Muslim in a public service position for the sake of being a Muslim in a public service position,” she added. “I want my perspective and my background and the fact that I’m a representation for Muslim communities in the country to truly be considered.” She also disapproved of the Democratic national convention’s denial of a speaking slot for the Georgia state representative Ruwa Romman.Since her public resignation last month, Hassanein said that she has not received a response from her former employer. The interior department and state department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The Harris-Walz campaign is not doing enough to change course on Gaza policy, Hassanein said. She is undecided on whether she will vote for Harris in November and wants to see a marked shift in US’s Gaza policy before casting a ballot for her. In a call to action, Cair encouraged attenders to demand that the state department and the White House uphold US law by ending the transfer of weapons to Israel.“I hope that as horrific as all of this has been, that we eventually emerge from it with a sense of realization of the things that we need to do – the healing that we all need in order to treat each other with humanity, dignity and respect, regardless of background,” Rharrit said. More

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      Trump raising money by selling pieces of suit he wore in Biden debate

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      Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he is selling a new collection of digital trading cards, and that supporters who buy 15 or more cards will receive a physical card adorned with a piece of the suit he wore for the presidential debate against Joe Biden in June.The announcement was made on Tuesday in a video posted on Truth Social.The cards, named the America First collection, features 50 new images of Trump, including him dancing, holding bitcoins and more.The digital cards cost $99 each, he said, and supporters who purchase 15 or more (at a cost of $1,485 or more) will receive the physical card.“People are calling it the knock-out suit,” Trump said in the video, adding: “I don’t know about that but that’s what they’re calling it.”He continued: “We’ll cut up the knock-out suit, and you’re going to get a piece of it and we’ll be randomly autographing five of them, a true collector’s item, this is something to give your family, your kids, your grandchildren.”Supporters who buy 75 digital cards, at a cost $7,425, will get to attend a gala dinner with the former president at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, Trump said.“You know they call me the crypto-president,” Trump said. “I don’t know if that’s true or not but a lot of people are saying that, so don’t miss out, go to collecttrumpcards.com … and collect your piece of American history.”Perhaps unsurprisingly, the former president has released and sold digital trading cards in the past.In 2022, Trump introduced his first collection of digital trading cards, which included a picture of himself in a superhero costume. The cards sold out in less than a day, netting $4.5m (£3.39m) in sales.This is also not the first time Trump has sold parts of one of his suits. Last year, Trump began selling small cuts of the suit he wore when he was arrested and had his mugshot taken in an Atlanta jail. To receive a piece of that suit, supporters had to buy 47 digital trading cards, adding up to $4,653.The former Apprentice host also monetized the mugshot taken in the Atlanta jail last August, and sold it on coffee mugs, T-shirts and more items. More

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      The US diplomatic strategy on Israel and Gaza is not working | Daniel Levy

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      The Biden administration remains in an intense phase of Middle East diplomatic activity working to avoid a regional war while optimistically spinning the prospects for a Gaza breakthrough deal.Following the latest round of provocative Israeli extrajudicial killings in Tehran and Beirut and the intensified exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend, the region appeared to lurch further in the direction of all-out war. Preventing that is a worthy cause in itself.With a US election looming and policy on Gaza, Israel and the Middle East unpopular with the Democrats’ own constituency and a potential ballot box liability in key states, there are also pressing political reasons for a Democratic administration to avoid more war and to pursue a diplomatic breakthrough. Countering domestic political criticism with hope for a deal was a useful device to deploy at the Democratic convention in Chicago and will be needed through to 5 November.Team Biden is attempting a difficult trifecta. First, the Biden administration is trying to deter the Iranian axis from further responses to Israel’s recent targeted killings in Tehran and Beirut. Joe Biden no doubt has wanted to hold out the prospect of a ceasefire, which Iran would prefer not to upend, while he simultaneously bought time for the US to beef up its military presence in the region as leverage and a threat against Iran.The US is also trying to help a key regional ally, Israel, reclaim its deterrence posture and freedom of military operation after the balance of forces shifted against it during the current conflict.Second, the Biden administration is trying to reach election day on a positive note, by bringing an end to a divisive conflict – or, as a fallback, to at least avoid further escalation and a potentially debilitating regional explosion into which Israel could pull the US. Third, and more speculatively, the Biden administration might want to bring an end to the brutal devastation and killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the humanitarian crisis there, and the hellish ordeal of the Israelis held in Gaza and their families. A ceasefire would also have the benefit of avoiding further damage to US interests and reputation as a consequence of Biden running political cover for and arming Israel throughout this war.Ordinarily, delivering on those first two goals – and merely scoring two out of three – might constitute an acceptable achievement. It is made more attainable by the Iranian-led axis of resistance not wanting to fall into the trap of all-out war. However, failure to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza risks everything else unravelling and keeps the region at boiling point. Regional de-escalation and domestic political quiet will be that much more difficult to sustain if the Gaza talks again collapse, especially against the backdrop of raised expectations.Sadly, that is the direction in which things are headed, exacerbated by the current US diplomatic push being exposed as clumsy or fraudulent or both.It should go without saying that putting an end to the unprecedented daily suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as bringing the Israelis who are held there home, is reason enough to throw everything at achieving a ceasefire. But the Biden administration has been singularly incapable of treating Palestinians as equals with the humanity and dignity accorded to Jewish Israelis – one of the reasons this has played so badly with the Democratic voting base.The staggering shortcomings in the Biden administration’s approach, exacerbated in secretary of state Antony Blinken’s latest mission, are highly consequential and worth unpacking. Alarm bells should have been set off when Blinken at his recent press conference in Jerusalem announced that Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted the US “bridging proposal” – when the Israeli prime minister himself declared no such thing. Within hours, it became clear that Israel’s chief negotiator, Nitzan Alon, would not participate in the talks as a way of protesting against Netanyahu’s undermining of the deal.That was followed by senior US and Israeli security officials anonymously briefing the press that Netanyahu was preventing a deal. Similar conclusions were also reached and made public by the main forums representing the Israeli hostage families. On his ninth visit to Israel since the 7 October attack, Blinken again failed – not just at mediating between Israel and Hamas, but even in closing the gaps between the competing camps inside the Israeli system. The US refusal to take seriously that there are Hamas negotiating positions which are legitimate, and which will need to be part of a deal (and with which the US ostensibly agrees to in substance – such as a full Israeli withdrawal and a sustainable ceasefire), has condemned US-led talks to repeated failure.Repackaging Israeli proposals and presenting them as a US position may have a retro feel to it, but that does not make it cool. And it won’t deliver progress (it can’t even sustain Israeli endorsement given Netanyahu’s constant shifting of the goalposts to avoid a deal). That the US has zero credibility as a mediator is a problem. That it has conspired to make its contributions not only ineffective but counterproductive is devastating. Even Itamar Eichner, a diplomatic correspondent for the Israeli Yedioth newspaper, describes Blinken’s visit as having displayed “naivete and amateurishness … effectively sabotaging the deal by aligning with Netanyahu”.This is a US government modus operandi with which Netanyahu is extremely familiar, and which falls very squarely inside his comfort zone. Netanyahu knows that he has won once the US mediator – whatever the actual facts – is willing to blame the Palestinian side (Arafat during Oslo, Hamas now). Despite having the US having changed its own proposal to accommodate Netanyahu, and Netanyahu still distancing himself from the terms and being called on it by his own defence establishment, Biden and senior US officials continue their public disinformation campaign of claiming that only Hamas is the problem and should be pressured.Even if US governments hold personal frustrations with Netanyahu, their policies serve to strengthen Bibi at home.From early in this war, Netanyahu’s bottom line has been that while internal pressures exist to secure a deal (and therefore get the hostages back and cease the military operation), the opposite side of that ledger is more foreboding: a deal would upend Netanyahu’s extremist governing coalition and bring an end to the most important shield Netanyahu has created for himself politically: his claimed mantle as Israel’s indispensable wartime leader.Netanyahu’s ideological preference is for displacing Palestinians and eviscerating their rights, alongside pulling the US more actively into a regional clash with Iran; his short-term political goal is to maintain an open-ended war which can accommodate varying degrees of intensity, but not a deal.So where might change ultimately come from? Given current tensions, something approximating an all-out regional war might yet unfold. Alongside the dangers and losses this would entail, a broader conflagration might belatedly produce a more serious external push for a comprehensive ceasefire.Israeli coalition politics could also throw a spanner in the works for Netanyahu, given tensions among his governing allies, and particularly with the ultra-Orthodox parties over the issue of military enlistment. But the surest way to de-escalate in the region and to bring the horrors of Gaza to an end continues to be via challenging the Israeli incentive structure in meaningful ways – through legal, political and economic pressure and sanctions, and especially by the withholding of weapons.Netanyahu is a loose cannon, which Kamala Harris should have no interest in reloading 10 weeks out from an election.

      Daniel Levy is the president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator More

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      Tactical ad breaks and lies: rightwing coverage of DNC is exactly as expected

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      As the Democratic party enjoys the afterglow of an exuberant national convention, the rightwing media has settled on consistent counter-programming: complaining about “joy”, hyping up pro-Palestinian protests and expressing a newfound concern for the treatment of Joe Biden.The coverage, which has at times avoided the more pointed Democratic criticisms of Trump by cutting to ad breaks, has also including the criticism of women both for smiling too much and not smiling enough, and the coining of a new name for Barack Obama: “Barack-Stabber”.There has also been the bizarre revival of the racist Obama birther conspiracy theory by a Fox News host, as well as the straight-faced claim by a Republican-supporting news host that it is “all vengeance at this year’s DNC [Democratic national convention]”.In short, it’s been days of coverage that will be unfamiliar to anyone lucky enough to be outside the rightwing media bubble, and depressingly recognizable to those who dip into conservative coverage.“The words that we hear on the ground over and over is [sic]: ‘Trump, Trump, Trump’, and that Harris and Walz are full of joy,” Daniel Baldwin, a reporter on the hard-right OANN news channel, reported on Tuesday.Baldwin, who seemed quite upset, added: “Guess what: vibes and joy don’t put fool … food on the table. They don’t bring prices down, they don’t clean up the streets, they don’t do any of that.”Others in the rightwing media complained that the joy was insincere. Sean Hannity, a staunch Trump supporter and one of Fox News’s most celebrated hosts, told his audience on Tuesday: “The convention has been full of a lot of hate, instead of the politics of joy, which you’ve been promised.”Laura Ingraham, another Fox News stalwart, sang from the same hymn sheet as she claimed that Kamala Harris’s “joyful branding is a cover for something far more sinister”.“I like to call it socialism with a smile. It’s a seething disdain for tens of millions of Americans who still support Donald Trump,” Ingraham said, adding that the DNC is not about “love or optimism: it’s about hatred and retribution”.“There’s not much joy in this convention hall, certainly not compared to what we say at the RNC,” Ingraham added.Ingraham’s analysis was apparently unironic, but the idea that the Republican national convention was happy and joyful will come as a surprise to anyone who was there.The Republican event saw Ted Cruz, the Texas senator, claim that Americans were being “murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released”, while Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, warned that “millions of illegal aliens” should not be allowed to “harm our country”, as attendees waved signs reading: “Mass deportation now.”When it came to joy, at times it seemed like conservative media didn’t quite know what line of attack they were supposed to be using.“Hillary Clinton, she’s the most joyless person I think who has ever walked on this earth,” Matt Schlapp, a Republican political operative, told Newsmax on Monday.But minutes later, Schlapp performed an about turn on how much happiness women should express.“Kamala Harris came out on the stage … all the laughing, it’s like she got into the sherry or something,” Schlapp complained, in comments highlighted by Desi Lydic on The Daily Show.As well as questioning joyfulness and levity, the right wing has focused on protests rather than what was going on in the convention hall. That caused problems for the likes of Fox News and Newsmax at the start of the week, when a smaller than expected group of people congregated peacefully in Chicago. Fox News still tried valiantly to make the protests seem more of a thing, but the channel was outshone by One America News Network.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn OANN, the host Kara McKinney claimed: “DNC protests are spiraling out of control” over footage of pro-Palestinian activists calmly holding a flag and a crowd standing quietly behind a fence.Away from the protests, a common feature was anguish at Democrats’ treatment of Joe Biden – a man who rightwing media has spent years accusing of ill-defined crimes and senility.On Newsmax, one guest complained that Biden was mentioned “maybe twice”, “as they shoved him out in the dark of the night on the first night”, while an OANN host claimed Biden had been “buried at the end of the night”.Fox News’s The Five took a similar angle, portraying senior Democrats as nefarious plotters. A chyron on the show dubbed Obama “Barack-Stabber Obama”, as the host Jeanine Pirro lamented that Biden spoke on the first day of the convention and then “was exiled to California”.Michelle Obama didn’t escape unscathed either. A chyron under one discussion of the former first lady: “Michelle Obama snubs Biden in her DNC speech”, while Nancy Pelosi was also criticized, just for good measure.As the week wore on, it became clear that one tactic for news channels was just to ignore certain things happening at the convention. When a video was aired at the DNC about about the January 6 insurrection, Fox News cut to an advert for a landline telephone.When three women, including one who had been raped as a child, took the stage to discuss their experiences with pregnancies, miscarriages and abortions, Fox News skipped the segment entirely, Media Matters reported. Instead, the network had its male chief political analyst, Brit Hume, pontificate on the issue, and offer more faux Biden outrage, on air.“What does it say about the modern state of the Democratic party that it could not ask these abortion speakers to stand aside to make room for the president of the United States to speak at a reasonable hour tonight?” was Hume’s take.Among the critical analysis of the term “joy”, the wailing over Biden’s speaking spot and the ongoing female smiling debate, at least Fox News offered something more familiar to its viewers: the revival of the more-than-a-decade-old Obama birth certificate conspiracy theory. The idea, which Trump pushed even before he was a presidential candidate, posits that Obama was not born in the US, and therefore should not have been US president.Ignoring the fact that Obama has published his birth certificate, and that he has not been president for eight years, Jesse Watters, a primetime Fox News host, declared on the channel that he was going to send someone called Johnny to investigate.Obama is “definitely going to interfere in this election”, Watters said.“That’s why we’ll be sending Johnny to Hawaii to get the truth about the birth certificate – this time we will dig deep and find out what really happened.” More

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      Is Trump OK? Unhinged reaction to rise of Harris worries supporters

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      Even some of Donald Trump’s supporters are now asking the question that was the undoing of Joe Biden: is the former president fit for office?But while Biden’s run for re-election was largely sunk by a single disastrous televised debate before a national audience, Trump is ramping up doubts with each chaotic, disjointed speech as he campaigns around the country.While rambling discourse and outrageously disprovable claims, interspersed with spite and vitriol, may seem nothing new to many of Trump’s supporters and critics alike, the former president appears to have been driven to new depths by suddenly finding himself running against Kamala Harris a month ago.Trump has only grown more infuriated as his poll lead over Biden evaporated, with Harris opening up a clear, if narrow, lead. The vice-president’s tactic of mocking Trump more than arguing with him appears to have incensed him further.Since Harris assumed the mantle of the presumptive Democratic candidate, Trump has claimed to be better-looking than the vice-president, questioned whether she is really Black and attacked her laugh as that of “a lunatic”.The former president has also characterised Harris as both a communist and a fascist, and described Harris as “dumb” but then told CBS he didn’t mean it as an insult because it was “just a fact”.“I don’t think she’s a very bright person. I do feel that. I mean, I think that’s right. I think I am a very bright person, and a lot of people say that,” he said.Trump seems particularly obsessed with the size of the crowds at Harris’s rallies, drawing derision for falsely claiming she used artificial intelligence to fake the turnout.When he’s not worried about size, Trump is vexed by Harris’s looks. After the vice-president appeared on the cover of Time magazine, Trump compared her appearance to Sophia Loren and his wife, Melania, before drawing a comparison with his own features.“I’m a better-looking person than Kamala,” he declared to an audience of thousands who were more amused than convinced.Melania’s reaction to her husband’s implicit claim that he is better-looking than his wife is not known.Trump has sought to court Black voters in recent months as he attempts to win enough of their support to swing key states such as Michigan. But he will have done his own cause no good by questioning whether Harris, whose mother was born in India and father in Jamaica, is really Black – all while giving an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists, and to the astonishment of just about everyone in the room.View image in fullscreen“She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” he said. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black.”Trump also claimed to “have been the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln”.In a similar vein, the former president sometimes veers off the written script to have an open debate with himself about how to pronounce names, whether Kamala or the first name of the CNN presenter Dana Bash at a recent rally.At a rally in Pennsylvania a week ago, Trump went as far as rambling on about rambling.“I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy, you know, really smart. I don’t ramble. But the other day, anytime I hit too hard, they say he was rambling, rambling,” he told the crowd.Even some of Trump’s most loyal fans were disturbed by that performance. Joan Long travelled from New York with her husband, Billy, to see the former president speak.“I honestly can’t say I know why he starts talking about how to pronounce names. What does that have to do with the election?” she said. “And I wish he would stop talking about Kamala’s looks.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLeading Republicans are similarly disturbed. Senator Lindsey Graham pleaded with Trump to stay focused on the issues that play best for the former president, such as the economy.“His policies are good for America, and if you have a policy debate for president, he wins. Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election,” Graham told NBC’s Meet the Press.Nikki Haley, the Republican former presidential candidate who denounced Trump as unfit for office before supporting him, said he “is not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is” or by calling her “dumb”. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican former speaker of the US House of Representatives, told Fox News that Trump should stop making the race about personalities and “stop questioning the size of her crowds”.View image in fullscreenTrump, to no one’s surprise, has ploughed on regardless. He told reporters that he was “very angry” at Harris for calling him weird and was “entitled to personal attacks”.Harris also appears to have hit a nerve with Trump by comparing her history as a prosecutor with his recent status as a convicted criminal. “Some people say, ‘Oh, why don’t you be nice?’ But they’re not nice to me – they want me to be in prison,” Trump told reporters.All of this is a notable contrast to the weeks following Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June. Trump apparently listened to his advisers for once, as he took a step back from the relentless personal attacks and largely let the press and public opinion lead the questioning of the 81-year-old president’s fitness for office.The former president briefly looked as dignified as he was ever likely to. The attempt to assassinate Trump in Pennsylvania in July did no harm to his standing. Polls put Trump on the front foot, and his campaign advisers openly gloated about the prospect of a landslide win in November. But the energy unleashed by Harris’s entry into the presidential race drew out the old Trump again.View image in fullscreenWhen the focus was on Biden’s mental acuity, Trump said every presidential candidate should be required to take a cognitive test. Pressed this week by CBS News on whether he has done so himself, Trump claimed to have recently had a “perfect score” on two cognitive tests.“I got everything right. And one of the doctors said, ‘I’ve never seen that before, where you get everything right,’” he said.Many Americans are not so convinced. Earlier this week, a JL Partners poll for the Daily Mail showed the number of American voters who have confidence that Trump is able to fully digest national security briefings, maintain attention in meetings and remember the names of world leaders he is talking to – and who have confidence that he will still be alive in four years – has dropped sharply since March.In just a few months, concern about fitness for office has shifted from Biden to Trump, who is now the oldest US presidential candidate in history. More

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      Environmental activists urge Kamala Harris to go big on climate: ‘She’s got to seize the moment’

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      As Donald Trump accuses Kamala Harris of waging “war on American energy”, some advocates are pressing the vice-president to embrace a bold climate message at the Democratic national convention this week.Harris will have a major opportunity to lay out her key platform as she accepts the Democratic party’s presidential nomination on Thursday evening. Some are hoping climate features heavily in her speech.“There’s a moment here and we think she’s got to seize it,” said Saul Levin, legislative and political director of the progressive advocacy group Green New Deal Network.Harris’s candidacy has excited much of the climate movement, with scores of green groups, including Levin’s, endorsing her presidential run. At a Wednesday meeting, influential climate hawks such as Ed Markey, the Massachusetts senator; Gina McCarthy, the former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator; and Robert Bullard, the esteemed environmental justice scholar and advocate encouraged climate voters to stand behind Harris.But Harris has yet to release an official plan to take on the climate crisis. Unlike Joe Biden, who placed climate at the heart of his 2020 presidential run, Harris has so far only mentioned the issue in passing on the campaign trail. And though the issue has been woven into Democratic national convention events, it has not yet been a central focus of the convention.“It’s a bit of a bummer that it hasn’t gotten more time,” said Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay Campaign, which focuses on climate accountability.Harris may find it difficult to make bold climate promises amid Trump’s attacks. At a campaign stop in Pennsylvania this week, the former president called Harris a “non-fracker”, though she has distanced herself from past support for a fracking ban, disappointing climate advocates.Trump has also repeatedly claimed Harris wants to ban red meat and “get rid of all cows”. In response, she said she enjoys eating the occasional cheeseburger but added that Americans should be incentivized to eat a lower-carbon, healthier diet.Amid this pressure from the right, some climate advocates have said they will stand behind Harris no matter how much she mentions climate.“Regardless of whether this issue is in the speech or not tomorrow night, we know Vice-President Harris is an environmental champion,” said Michelle Deatrick, who chairs the Democratic National Committee’ Council on the Environment and Climate Crisis. She said Harris’s record speaks for itself.Recent polling from progressive group Data for Progress and environmental organization Climate Power shows that a strong majority of US voters prefer Harris’s approach to climate.It’s an indicator that focusing on climate is “good politics”, said Stevie O’Hanlon, spokesperson for the youth-led environmental justice group the Sunrise Movement.“Climate is one of the issues where voters trust Harris the most over Trump,” she said. “To capitalize on that, she needs to talk about it.”An ‘existential threat’The 2024 Democratic party platform approved on Monday refers to the climate crisis as an “existential threat” and “a consequence of delay and destruction by people like Donald Trump and his friends in Big Oil”.It also includes a commitment to “making polluters pay”. It’s something DiPaola said she was “stoked” to see, though she added that she’d eventually like to see “less vague language about how they’re going to make climate accountability real”.Additionally, the platform underlines the creation of hundreds of thousands of clean-energy jobs and highlights the historic green investments spurred by the 2021 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).But Levin says he hopes Harris lays out plans to go beyond the IRA and increase investments in green jobs, public transit and renewable power. Though the bill constitutes the largest downpayment on climate policy in US history with hundreds of billions of dollars in green funding, experts say that is a fraction of what the US must ultimately spend.“We can’t just say, oh, we did the IRA, so we did climate and now let’s move to another issue,” said Levin. “The IRA made tremendous progress, but it was just a start.”He said some aspects of the platform, including pledges to double funding for public transit and cut down public subsidies for oil companies, inspired hope that a bolder climate platform will emerge.That platform and Harris’ rhetoric, said DiPaola, should lean “populist,” said DiPaola.“Voters are frustrated with corporate power and influence,” she said. “She can ultimately appeal to both climate-motivated voters as well as economically motivated voters … by highlighting the need to clamp down on big oil’s greed.”‘Big oil’s hold on our economy’Though the Democratic party platform rails against “big oil’s hold on our economy”, the Democratic convention itself has not been unfriendly to the industry. The American Petroleum Institute, the country’s largest fossil fuel lobby group, participated in several events this week.Oil major ExxonMobil sponsored two Wednesday panel discussions hosted by Punchbowl News on the sidelines of the convention, one of which featured the firm’s senior director of climate strategy and technology and a representative from gas lobby group the American Gas Association.Activists with environmental non-profits including Friends of the Earth, Oil Change International, and Climate Hawks Vote disrupted the event.“I am here because Exxon lied and people died,” chanted RL Miller, the Climate Hawks Vote founder and a former Democratic National Committee member, before being escorted from the room.Federal data shows Exxon has poured $111,500 into Republican congressional campaign committees. Collin Rees of Oil Change International, who took part in the protest, said if the party is looking to take on big oil, the company “should have no platform at the DNC”.War in GazaGaza solidarity protesters interrupted a meeting of the environment and climate crisis council at the convention on Wednesday, chanting “free, free Palestine”.“If you want to show some political courage, go and interrupt one of Donald Trump’s rallies,” responded Jamie Raskin, the Maryland representative, who had been speaking. “Anybody who interferes with that is objectively helping Donald Trump … so cut it out.”Some climate groups, however, are pushing for the Harris campaign to stop supporting Israel’s deadly war in Gaza by issuing an arms embargo. Among them is the Sunrise Movement.“Young people want a livable world for our generation and generations. We want everyone to have clean air and water and safe homes,” said O’Hanlon. “Everyone must have those rights and freedoms, including Palestinians.” More

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      Harris to face biggest test of her political life with Democratic convention speech

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      Kamala Harris will tonight face the biggest test of her political life so far when she addresses the Democratic national convention in Chicago in a bid to persuade American voters to defeat Donald Trump in November’s presidential election and put her in the White House.The vice-president’s rocket-fueled campaign is still barely a month old following Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from seeking re-election in the face of a disastrous debate performance and questions over his age and mental acuity.Harris, and her vice-presidential pick Minnesota governor Tim Walz, have quickly overturned the election’s narrative, turning a solid Trump lead in the polls over Biden into a slight – but clear – advantage over the former Republican president.In addressing the Democratic convention on Thursday night – and by proxy the wider US electorate watching in their millions on television – Harris will be making a direct pitch to voters to back her vision for the United States.Harris’s campaign has sought to portray a more optimistic, future-focused view of the country than her rival, and perhaps also than that of the president, who based much of his pitch on dark warnings of Trump’s autocratic sympathies.Over the course of the week at the convention, the audience has heard from the Democratic party’s most powerful players, who threw their support unequivocally behind Harris. Biden, Barack and Michelle Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi all gave primetime speeches, as did some of the party’s rising stars, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Now it is expected that Harris’s speech will seek to lay out her personal story as she bids to become a historic president: the first woman president and the first woman of color due to her south Asian and Black background. Her speech is likely to focus on her work as a prosecutor, defending victims of crime.But her speech will also lay out a sharp contrast between her positive view of the country’s future prospects and Trump’s almost wholly grim warnings about the state of the nation and his focus on immigration and crime.Across three days so far, speaker after speaker has already hailed Harris as a change-agent who would not only defeat Trump but lift the country higher, ushering in a new chapter of possibility and seek to return US politics to some semblance of normality since Trump came onto the political stage eight years ago.The Harris campaign – and especially the outspoken Walz – has also displayed sharp elbows and an ability to insult and poke fun at Trump.The switch in the polls and newfound edge has impressed many observers. “She has had a very good month not just because of a honeymoon, but because of the way she’s presented herself, the way her campaign has positioned her,” David Axelrod, a former top aide to Barack Obama, told the Guardian.Certainly it seems to have unsettled Trump and his campaign. Trump has adopted a policy of directly insulting Harris and inventing a series of nicknames for her while trying to paint her as a leftwing extremist and questioning her racial identity. But the jibes have had little effect and even drawn criticism from some senior Republicans.They have not blunted her lead. Harris consistently tops Trump by three or four points in recent head-to-head surveys and has also improved her standing in the handful of key states that are crucial to victory. While the electoral contest remains impossibly close, she has widened the battleground once more from the Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to once again include Sun belt states like North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.Throughout the convention so far, Democratic speakers have tried to make Trump seem small and diminished. They have sought to keep him on the backfoot and in a reactive mode, responding to attacks and being kept off-balance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, compared Trump to an “old boyfriend” who has spent the last four years spinning the block, trying to get back into a relationship with the American people.“Bro, we broke up with you for a reason,” Jeffries said.“Kamala Harris has always understood the assignment,” said Laphonza Butler, a California senator and friend of Harris’s.“Kamala, your mom would be so proud of you,” said Doris Baptiste, a family friend who was close to Harris’s mother.On Wednesday night, Walz offered a full-throated attack on Trump, a defense of his record running Minnesota and a passionate advocacy for Harris. After criticizing the Trump campaign, he led the crowd of cheering delegates in a chant of: “We’re not going back! We’re not going back!”Turning to the theme of freedom – which was the focus of the night’s convention programming – Walz said: “That’s what this is all about, the responsibility we have to our kids, to each other and to the future that we’re building together, in which everyone is free to build the kind of life they want. But not everyone has that same sense of responsibility. Some folks just don’t understand what it takes to be a good neighbor. Take Donald Trump and JD Vance.”Walz said Trump and his running mate had an agenda to only benefit the “richest and most extreme” people in the US. Walz added: “It’s an agenda nobody asked for. It’s an agenda that does nothing for our neighbors in need. Is it weird? Absolutely, absolutely. But it’s also wrong. And it’s dangerous.” More

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      Nancy Pelosi thanks Biden at convention and says Harris will ‘take us to new heights’

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      Democrats rose to their feet when Nancy Pelosi walked on stage at the United Center in Chicago for the Democratic national convention. They applauded, and then applauded louder. Pelosi waved before quieting the room.The former House speaker began by expressing her gratitude to Joe Biden, calling his term “one of the most successful presidencies of modern times”. even though she had pushed subtly but forcefully for the president to step aside.“Thank you, Joe,” she said, before turning to Kamala Harris, a fellow California Democrat who Pelosi proclaimed was “ready to take us to new heights”.Pelosi may have retired as House Democratic leader, but the convention has proven – if proof were needed – that the veteran congresswoman remains one of the most consequentially and uniquely influential power brokers in the party who can make – or break – a US president.Earlier on Wednesday, Pelosi, now House speaker emerita, was reluctant to reveal details of her conversation with Biden just over a month ago, during the deeply agonizing period before he decided to abandon his re-election bid and endorse Harris.Speaking at the University Club of Chicago, in a room paneled with stained glass, Pelosi insisted that the monumental decision was Biden’s alone to make. But pressed by Democratic strategist David Axelrod, she conceded that she believed it “essential” Democrats deny Donald Trump a second term. The cost was denying Biden one, too.“I wanted very much to protect his legacy,” she said. But her highest priority was to win the election – and not just the White House, but the House and the Senate.“A great sacrifice was made here,” said Pelosi, who will seek another term – her 20th – in November’s elections.The former speaker appeared uncomfortable with the insinuation that she was a central figure in pushing Biden to end his re-election campaign, a decision that has transformed the presidential race. Harris’s ascent has electrified Democrats and unified the party behind the new presidential ticket, which includes her running mate, Tim Walz, a former Minnesota congressman who Pelosi had also advocated for.“You have to make the decision to win, and you have to make every decision in favor of winning,” she said.Biden has denied that any one person had pushed him out of the race. Speaking to reporters on Monday, after delivering what amounted to a farewell speech at the Democratic convention, he said: “No one influenced my decision. No one knew it was coming.”Pelosi and Biden, devout Catholics who have known each other for decades, have not spoken since he ended his campaign. The rupture has weighed on Pelosi, she said. “I’ve cried over this. I’m sad about this,” she said.During his remarks in Chicago, Biden said: “All this talk about how I’m angry at all those people who said I should step down, it’s not true.”Pelosi, the daughter of a longtime Baltimore mayor and student of the city’s brass knuckle politics, shared anecdotes from her new book, The Art of Power, about her extraordinary career arc that she described as: “housewife, House member, House Speaker.”She was the first – and so far only – female speaker of the House, and was the highest ranking woman in US politics until Harris was elected to serve as the nation’s first female vice-president.“You have to be able to take a punch, you have to be able to throw a punch … for the children,” she said, a Pelosi-ism that drew laughs from the packed audience.Asked by Axelrod whether Harris should emphasize the history-making possibility of her candidacy, Pelosi said breaking what Hillary Clinton once called the “highest hardest” glass ceiling in US politics was important, but not a political message.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe prospect of Harris becoming the first woman president “brings tears to my eyes” Pelosi said, but it doesn’t necessarily bring “votes to the ballot box”.“It’s icing on the cake,” she said. “But it ain’t the cake.”Now considered one of the most powerful House speakers in modern political history, Pelosi said it wasn’t her ambition to become a member of the party leadership when she first arrived in Washington.“I became interested in running because we kept losing the elections, 94, 96, 98 and then it was 2000 I thought: ‘I’m so tired of losing,” she said.Soon after, when she made her decision to run known, Pelosi said she was met with incredulity by male colleagues, who admonished her to wait her turn.“Who said she could run?” Pelosi recalled them saying. She was told there was a “pecking order” and she wasn’t in it.“They said: ‘These people have been waiting a long time,” Pelosi recounted. “So I said: ‘Was it over 200 years?’”Democratic convention highlights:

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      Oprah Winfrey takes swipe at Vance’s ‘childless cat lady’ comment in surprise appearance

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      What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz More