Joe Biden

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden warns against ‘surge of antisemitism’ at Holocaust event

      by

      Joe Biden warned against a “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America” at a Holocaust event Tuesday, as student protests against Israel’s military strikes on Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis continued to roil campuses across the US.Addressing a bipartisan Holocaust remembrance event at the US Capitol, the president reasserted his “ironclad” commitment to the “security of Israel and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state … even when we disagree”. Hatred towards Jews didn’t end with the Holocaust, he said – it was “brought to life on October 7 2023” when Hamas unleashed its attack on Israel killing 1,200 people.“Now here we are not 75 years later, but just seven-and-a-half months later, people are already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror … I have not forgotten, and we will not forget.”Biden’s forceful evocation of the shadows of the Holocaust and the scourge of antisemitism was made at a volatile moment when Israel’s retaliatory military operation in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and brought 2.3 million people to the edge of starvation. Demonstrations against the war and calls for a ceasefire has led to turmoil at scores of US universities and colleges – and opened fissures within Biden’s Democratic party that could imperil his re-election hopes in November.The president, who has generally avoided commenting on the campus protests since they erupted at Columbia University in New York three weeks earlier, acknowledged that his remembrance speech fell “on difficult times”. He also said that he understood that “people have strong beliefs and deep convictions”, adding that the US respected free speech.But he went on to decry antisemitic posters and “slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel” on college campuses. “Jewish students [have been] blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class,” Biden said.He concluded that there is “no place on any campus in America or any place in America for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind.“Violent attacks destroying property is not peaceful protest – it’s against the law,” he said.Student protesters strongly pushed back at the implication that hatred motivated the pro-Palestinian encampments. A group of more than 750 Jewish students from 140 campuses issued a joint letter on Tuesday calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and rejecting Biden’s equation of the protests with antisemitism.“As Jewish students, we wholeheartedly reject the claim that these encampments are antisemitic and that they are an inherent threat to Jewish student safety,” the letter said.Hours before the president delivered his speech, police in riot gear cleared a protest encampment at the University of Chicago. The action began at about 4.30am in the Quad where hundreds of students had been living in tents for more than a week.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe encampment was completely dismantled within about three hours, but about 400 protesters later reassembled outside the university’s administrative building. They chanted “Free, free, Palestine”, and they staged a standoff with police.In a statement, the university’s president, Paul Alivisatos, said that protesters had been given a chance to voluntarily dismantle the encampment, and he stressed there had been no arrests. But he said negotiations with encampment representatives had broken down because of the “intractable and inflexible aspects of their demands”.At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, protesters regained access to the encampment there after police had removed them and erected fencing around the area on Monday. Dozens of protesters remained at the site, the Associated Press reported, as they continued to press demands that MIT breaks its research ties to the Israeli military.Tensions are rising on campuses as institutions approach their traditional graduation ceremonies, with many school governments attempting to clear the encampments to make way for the celebrations. On Monday, Columbia University announced that it was cancelling its campus-wide commencement ceremony, following the example of the University of Southern California.At Harvard university, the interim president Alan Garber threatened those participating in the pro-Palestinian encampment with “involuntary leave”. He said such a move could jeopardize the students’ access to housing, campus buildings and exams. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      From the economy to the climate crisis: key issues in the 2024 US election

      by

      As a Joe Biden v Donald Trump rematch looms, much is at stake. From the future of reproductive rights to the chances of meaningful action on climate change, from the strength of US support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, and Israel in its war with Hamas, to the fate of US democracy itself, existential issues are firmly to the fore.Here’s a look at why.Economy“It’s the economy, stupid.” So said the Democratic strategist James Carville, in 1992, as an adviser to Bill Clinton. Most Americans thought stewardship of the economy should change: Clinton beat George HW Bush.Under Biden, post-Covid recovery remains on track. Unemployment is low, stocks at all-time highs. That should bode well but the key question is whether Americans think Biden’s economy is strong, or think it is working for them, or think Trump was a safer pair of hands, forgetting the chaos of Covid. According to polling, many do prefer Trump. Cost-of-living concerns dominate. Inflation remains a worry. For Biden, Republican threats to social security and Medicare might offset such worries. For Trump, whose base skews older, such threats must be downplayed – though they are present in Republicans’ own transition planning.ImmigrationHouse Republicans impeached Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s secretary of homeland security. The Senate quashed that but at Trump’s direction, Republicans sank a bipartisan border and immigration deal. One day in February, Biden and Trump both went to the southern border. Biden highlighted Republican obstruction but called on Trump to work with him, aiming to show voters which party wants to work on the issue. Since then, Trump has focused on denunciations of Biden and claims of border chaos stoked by sinister forces. Expect such contrasts on loop.EqualityRon DeSantis made attacks on LGBTQ+ rights a hallmark of his attempt to “Make America Florida”. The governor’s failed campaign suggests how well that went down, but Republican efforts to demonize so-called “woke” ideology should not be discounted. States have introduced anti-trans legislation, book bans and restrictions on LGBTQ+ issues in education. The US supreme court weighed in by ending race-based affirmative action in college admissions.Struggles over immigration, and Republicans’ usual focus on crime, show race-inflected battles will play their usual role, particularly as Trump uses extremist “blood and soil” rhetoric. On the Democratic side, a worrying sign: Black and Hispanic support is less sure than it was.AbortionDemocrats are clear: they will focus on Republican attacks on abortion rights, from the Dobbs v Jackson supreme court ruling that struck down Roe v Wade to the mifepristone case, draconian bans and candidates’ support for such measures.It makes tactical sense: The threat to women’s reproductive rights is a rare issue on which Democrats poll very strongly, fueling electoral wins in conservative states. This year’s Alabama IVF ruling, which said embryos should be legally treated as people, showed the potency of such tactics again; from Trump down, Republicans scrambled to deny wanting to end treatment used by millions.Trump must balance boasting about ending Roe, by appointing three justices who voted to strike it down, with trying to avoid blame for attacks on reproductive rights even as his supporters call for, and implement, harsher abortion bans. Expect Biden and Democrats to hit and keep on hitting.Foreign policyFor Biden, the Israel-Gaza war presents a fiendish proposition: how to satisfy or merely mollify both the Israel lobby and large sections of his own party, particularly the left and the young – those more sympathetic to the Palestinians.Spiraling and ongoing campus protests against Israel’s pounding of Gaza show the danger of coming unglued from the base. So do protest votes against Biden in the Democratic primary. Republicans have no such worries: They are simply pro-Israel.Elsewhere, Biden continues to lead a global coalition in support of Ukraine in its fight against Russia, scoring a win at home in April as the Republican speaker of the US House, Mike Johnson, finally oversaw passage of a new aid bill despite fierce opposition from the right of his party. Throw in the lasting effects of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan (teed up by Trump, fumbled by Biden), questions about what happens if China attacks Taiwan, and the threat Trump poses to Nato, and heavy fire on foreign policy is guaranteed.DemocracyBiden is keen to stress the threat to democracy at home. After all, Trump refused to accept the result of the 2020 election, incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, is linked to plans to slash the federal government in a second term, and even says he wants to be a “dictator” on day one of re-election.Trump maintains the lie that his 2020 defeat was the result of electoral fraud even as his various criminal cases proceed: 14 of 88 charges concerning election subversion. The other 74 charges concern hush-money payments (34, now on trial in New York) and retention of classified information (40, going slowly in Florida).It should be easy to portray an 88-time indicted potential felon as a threat to constitutional order, particularly given Trump’s clear need to win power as a way of avoiding prison. Accordingly, the issue has been profitable for Biden at the polls. But some doubt its potency. David Axelrod, a close ally of Barack Obama, told the New Yorker: “I’m pretty certain in Scranton [Pennsylvania, Biden’s home town] they’re not sitting around their dinner table talking about democracy every night.”ClimateFrom forest fires to hurricanes and catastrophic floods, it is clear climate change is real. Polling reflects this belief: 70% of Americans – strikingly, 50% of Republicans included – want meaningful action. But that isn’t reflected in Republican campaigning. Trump says he doesn’t believe human activity contributes to climate change, nor that climate change is making extreme weather worse, and is opposed to efforts to boost clean energy. Biden’s record on climate may be criticized by campaigners but his record in office places him firmly and clearly against such dangerous views. More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats rally to Biden’s defense over response to pro-Palestinian student protests

      by

      Some Democrats rallied to the defense of Joe Biden on Sunday as the president came under increased criticism over his response to pro-Palestinian student protests and his handling of Israel’s war on Gaza.Republicans have seized on Biden’s response to the protests, which have seen more than2,000 people arrested around the country, accusing him of a weak response. But prominent Democrats, including Biden re-election campaign co-chairperson Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, claimed the president “has been very strong about this from the beginning”.Their support came as campus protests have seen an increasingly aggressive police response. An encampment at the University of Southern California was cleared by police in riot gear on Sunday morning, and a similar effort at the University of California, Los Angeles was shut down by police who reportedly used rubber bullets on Thursday. Scores of protesters were arrested at Columbia University on Tuesday night – a move which New York City’s mayor defended in an interview on Sunday.Asked on CNN’s State of the Union if Biden could have reacted differently to the protests, which have seen clashes between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters as well as dueling accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia, Landrieu said: “The president’s been very clear about this. He’s also been very strong about the need to stamp out antisemitism and Islamophobia. It’s a very difficult time, [there are] very passionate opinions on both sides of this issue.“The president has been handling it I think very, very well and I think he will continue to do so.”Thousands of young people have protested at university campuses across the country in recent weeks, criticizing the Biden administration’s continued support of Israel. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and 2 million displaced, since Israel attacked the enclosed strip in response to Hamas terrorist attacks which killed more than 1,100 Israelis.Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator, added his voice to Democrats who have voiced approval for police crackdowns on campus sit-ins, saying it is “appropriate for police to step in” when protests turn into “unlawful acts”.“When they cross a line and when they commit crimes, they should be arrested,” Kelly said.“That’s the appropriate thing to do.”Kelly said some of the university protests had “become very violent, and students – especially Jewish students – have the right to feel safe on a campus, and they’ve gotten out of control”.“Everybody has the right to protest peacefully. But when it turns into unlawful acts – and we’ve seen this in a number of colleges and universities including here in Arizona – it’s appropriate for the police to step in,” he said.Biden had mostly stayed silent on the unrest at university campuses until he addressed the issue on Thursday.“Dissent is essential for democracy,” Biden said in an address at the White House. “But dissent must never lead to disorder.”Biden said some protesters had used “violent” methods.“Violent protests are not protected. Peaceful protest is,” he said. “There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.”The president added: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campus, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation … none of this is a peaceful protest.”On Sunday, Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, defended how the police have handled protests in the city. About 280 people were arrested at Columbia University and the City University of New York last week.“When those protests reach the point of violence, we have to ensure that we use a minimum amount of force to terminate what is perceived to be a threat,” Adams told ABC News This Week.John Fetterman, the Democratic Pennsylvania US senator who is a vocal supporter of Israel, said the protests were “working against peace in the Middle East” and reiterated his backing for the US sending aid to the country.“I will never support any kind of conditions on Israel during this. And again, I would, I am going to continue to center – Hamas is responsible for all of that again, then,” Fetterman said.“And now if you’re going to protest on these campuses, or now what, they’re going all across America as well, too. I really want to, can’t forget, that the situation right now could end right now, if Hamas just surrendered.”Hours after calling in state troopers to break up a quiet, rain-soaked encampment of anti-war protesters, the University of Virginia president, Jim Ryan, issued a public statement calling the episode “upsetting, frightening and sad”.Ryan had been noticeably absent from the episode itself. His public statement Saturday evening, his first on the matter, came well after the encampment had been raided and the 25 demonstrators who had pitched tents on the patch of grass by the university’s chapel were arrested.Ryan called it unfortunate that a small group had chosen to break university rules after receiving repeated warnings.“I sincerely wish it were otherwise, but this repeated and intentional refusal to comply with reasonable rules intended to secure the safety, operations, and rights of the entire university community left us with no other choice than to uphold the neutral application and enforcement of those rules,” he wrote.Nonetheless, the arrests were criticized by Jamaal Bowman, the New York progressive Democratic congressman who has been critical of Israel.“I am outraged by the level of police presence called upon nonviolent student protestors on Columbia and CCNY’s campuses. As an educator who has first hand experience with the over-policing of our schools, this is personal to me,” Bowman wrote on X.“The militarization of college campuses, extensive police presence, and arrest of hundreds of students are in direct opposition to the role of education as a cornerstone of our democracy.” More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Clyburn hits out at Trump over Gestapo comment: ‘Incredible but not surprising’

      by

      Senior congressional Democrat James Clyburn has responded to remarks made by Donald Trump at a private event on Saturday in which he compared the Biden administration with the Gestapo secret police in fascist Germany, saying it was “incredible but it’s not surprising”.The 83-year-old South Carolina Democrat added that Trump “is given to hyperbole on every subject that he ever approaches … The country got off track after that 1876 election and we are approaching the same kinds of elements today.”The 1876 election between Republican Ohio governor Rutherford Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden was one of the most disputed ever, with widespread allegations of electoral fraud, violence and voter disenfranchisement.Clyburn accused Trump of having an “understanding of this country that I thought we left behind more than 100 years ago. But as I watch things happen in the country today, I’ve been harkening back for some time now, to the 1876 presidential election, and how this country got off track after the civil war.“The words are different. But the meanings are the same,” Clyburn added.On Saturday, the former president hosted a private lunch for Republican donors and party leaders at his Mar-a-Lago club. The fundraiser also included many of those presumed to be on his list for a running mate, including the South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, who has been politically damaged by an admission in her memoir that she shot a 14-month-old hunting dog two decades ago. She is reported to have left the event early.Others at the lunch included North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, Ohio senator JD Vance, New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, South Carolina senator Tim Scott, Florida senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Byron Donalds.According to CNN, Trump singled out Stefanik, who he described as “an amazing talent”, as well as Marco Rubio. NBC reported that Trump brought all the guests on stage – except Noem – including House speaker Mike Johnson.But during an address that lasted over an hour, Trump likened the Biden administration to Hitler’s feared secret police. “These people are running a Gestapo administration,” Trump said, according to NBC News. “It’s the only thing they have. And it’s the only way they’re going to win in their opinion.”The Republican governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, appearing Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, essentially confirmed Trump’s statement, but tried to diminish its importance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This was a short comment deep into the thing that wasn’t really central to what he was talking about,” said Burgum, who is among the contenders to be Trump’s running mate.Burgum affirmed that Trump drew the parallel as part of his accusation that Biden’s White House is behind his legal troubles. “A majority of Americans,” Burgum said, “feel like the trial that he’s in right now is politically motivated”.Trump is due back in a Manhattan courtroom on Monday where he is facing 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree in relation to hush-money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      It’s six months until the US election. Do pollsters know where their candidates are?

      by

      “You know what I hate?” Donald Trump asked in Freeland, Michigan, on Wednesday night. “When these guys get on television, they say – pundits, you know, the great pundits that never did a thing in their whole lives – ‘You know, we have two very unpopular candidates. We have Biden or we have Trump. These are very unpopular.’”Watched by a crowd of adoring fans in Make America Great Again (Maga) regalia, against the backdrop of a plane marked “Trump” in giant gold letters, the former US president protested a little too much: “I’m not unpopular!”Opinion polls disagree, showing Trump with a low approval rating thanks to voter concerns over his stance on abortion, his four criminal cases and the threat he poses to constitutional democracy. Fortunately for the Republican presidential nominee, Biden has job performance troubles of his own centred on inflation, immigration and his handling of the war in Gaza.Call it the resistible force against the movable object. Six months out from one of the most consequential elections in American history, only a fool would bet with confidence on the outcome of the first presidential rematch in nearly 70 years.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “It’s almost impossible to imagine Biden winning when you start stacking up the case against him. The economy appears to be in decline with high inflation. You’ve got signs of the Democratic coalition fraying, including the extraordinary protests and arrests of youth on college campuses, the backlash among Arab Americans with regards to Gaza.“You put that together and it’s like, how could Biden win? And then you turn to Trump and it’s, how could a candidate who’s openly running on defying the will of voters win? It’s just an incomprehensible set of choices.”Typically, an election involves two new candidates or an incumbent versus a challenger, creating plenty of scope for fresh discoveries. But Biden, 81, and 77-year-old Trump are already the two oldest men ever to occupy the White House, the subjects of countless books, newspaper articles and TV documentaries. Most voters have already made up their minds about them, or think they have.However, a static election is playing out in an unstable landscape: British prime minister Harold Macmillan’s aphorism “Events, dear boy, events” on steroids. There are the aftershocks of a global pandemic that killed more than a million Americans. The January 6 attack on the US Capitol and the supreme court decision to end the constitutional right to abortion still reverberate. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have provided an acid test of Biden’s foreign policy expertise.Frank Luntz, a political consultant and pollster, said: “There’s not going to be an October surprise; every week is an October surprise. We have to get used to the predictability of the unpredictability and so it’s very dangerous to prognosticate in this environment because things are changing so quickly.”In the average of national polls, Trump leads Biden by about 1.5 percentage points, a decline for Biden of about six points from the day of the 2020 election, and Trump holds the edge in the swing states that will decide the all-important electoral college. Worryingly for the president, surveys indicate that a significant minority of Black, Latino and Asian American voters are slipping away from him.Luntz said: “Strategically, Trump is being helped by the three groups that have moved towards him in the last three years: young African Americans in Georgia and North Carolina; Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada; union voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.“Biden is weaker, but Trump has the capability to sabotage his own campaign and he won’t even know that he’s doing it. That’s not something Joe Biden will do. That’s why it’s so dangerous to say that Trump has the advantage because, in a single day, he can ruin it for himself.”Polls suggest the economy remains the No 1 issue for voters. The perennial question “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” could win the day. While the US escaped a widely predicted recession and is growing faster than economists expected, inflation and the cost of essentials such as bread, eggs and petrol are weighing on voters.Biden pushed through massive economic stimulus and infrastructure spending packages to boost industrial output but has received little credit from voters so far. Polls suggest that voters believe they were better off during Trump’s presidency even though data says otherwise.Donna Brazile, a former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: “The United States is the only leading western country to come out of Covid with an economy that is not going to recession, where jobs are being created and consumer confidence is slightly rising.“But unfortunately because of the supply chain issues that are still apparent and many other factors, including greedflation, many voters are very tired of the rising costs of everyday staples, whether that’s buying lumber or buying food on the table. It’s unpredictable. You go to the grocery store now, you don’t know if you need $100 or $10.”Lodged deep in the national psyche, inflation could prove costly for Biden. Pamela Pugh, president of the Michigan state board of education and a candidate for the US Congress, has detected signs of African American voters shifting to Trump. “I am a Democrat but I do definitely have concern with what I do here on the ground – and there is disconnect,” the 53-year-old said during an interview in Saginaw.“We cannot force people to feel what they don’t feel and to say what they don’t feel. They’re not carrying the daily Democratic talking points. They’re speaking what they’re actually feeling.“Do I think that Trump would do any better for us? No. But are people looking for leadership that is going to not fight timidly, that is not going to fight scared but is going to listen to them and fight for them? That is what people are looking for.”Biden’s handling of immigration has also been criticised by both Republicans and Democrats as crossings at the US-Mexico border hit record highs. Luntz added: “Joe Biden has failed badly at that and it’s so obvious and you can’t get away from it. We see people coming across the border. We hear about the crimes that are committed. It’s been a shit show and arguably Trump had success with immigration; Joe Biden has not.”Biden has led the response of western governments to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, persuading allies to punish Russia and support Kyiv. He has provided military aid to Israel in its conflict with Hamas in Gaza while pushing for more humanitarian assistance, but has faced sharp criticism from some Democrats for not pushing harder for a ceasefire or matching his tougher rhetoric on Israel with action.Intensifying student protests over the war in Gaza also could hurt his re-election bid as Republicans and rightwing media seek to portray the mostly peaceful demonstrations as violent and antisemitic, hoping to drive division among Democrats and promotes a sense of national chaos. Meanwhile, third-party candidates Robert Kennedy Jr, Cornel West and Jill Stein could shave off further crucial votes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump, more radical and extreme than in 2016 or 2020, has cast his third consecutive bid for the White House in part as retribution against perceived political enemies. He describes supporters jailed for the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol as “hostages” and campaigns using increasingly dystopian rhetoric, refusing to rule out possible violence around the 2024 election.He faces 88 charges in four criminal cases over efforts to subvert the 2020 election as well as unlawfully keeping classified national security documents and falsifying business records. His first trial began in New York last month, forcing him to shuttle between courtroom appearances and campaign rallies.Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, said: “He is far more extreme and dangerous than he was in 2020. His performance on the stump is significantly degraded and disturbing and he’s going to be on trial for many months, which is going to further erode his strongman image and his standing with the public.“He doesn’t have any way to make positive news. Donald Trump’s central way that he’s making positive news is by staying out of jail. I don’t think that’s going to be very effective for the six months.”In New York, Trump has railed against the judge, violated a gag order and called the criminal charges a Democratic conspiracy designed to keep him from winning, with some of his legal challenges reaching the supreme court. The justice department denies any political interference.If elected to another four-year term, Trump has vowed revenge on his political enemies and said he would not be a dictator except “on day one”, later calling that “a joke”. He also wants the power to replace federal civil service workers with loyalists.He earned opprobrium from western leaders for saying the US would not defend Nato members that failed to spend enough on defence and that he would encourage Russia to attack them. He also pressed congressional Republicans to stall military aid for Ukraine before reversing course.Trump has made immigration his top domestic campaign issue, declaring he would carry out mass deportations, create holding camps, utilise the national guard and possibly federal troops, end birthright citizenship and expand a travel ban on people from certain countries. He has referred to migrants as “animals” and has not ruled out building detention camps on US soil.At this week’s rally in Michigan, Karen Mantyla, 65, was wearing a T-shirt that said “I’m still a Trump girl – I make no apologies”. She insisted: “He’s not a dictator, he’s just doing what’s right. There’s people here that need help and they’re letting all these illegals in and giving them everything and our poor people are suffering. They’re being killed by terrorists coming through. It’s ridiculous.”Trump claims credit for the supreme court ruling overturning Roe v Wade and said abortion should remain a state issue. While he has criticised some Republican-led state actions such as Florida’s six-week abortion ban and Arizona’s revived civil war-era ban, he said he would allow Republican-led states to track women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate their state bans.Democrats are hammering Trump over the issue and warning of the threat of a national ban. But Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, warned: “Some Democrats are putting too many of their eggs in the abortion basket. It’s a lot more encouraging psychologically than focusing on weaknesses in areas like the economy and immigration, so I can understand why it’s happening, and I hope they turn out to be right but I’m not confident that it will.”Trump has yet to announce a vice-presidential running mate, but several possibilities have been floated. Mike Pence, who ran alongside Trump in 2016 and 2020 but was targeted by Trump and his supporters amid the January 6 attack, refused to endorse him in November’s contest. But the former president’s base of support remains stubbornly loyal.Bob Horny, 70, a retired builder, said: “He’s a leader. I look at all the things going on in the world that probably wouldn’t be happening right now if Trump was president – for example, Ukraine, Israel, $2 gas we have. Everything is unbelievable right now. People don’t like Trump’s personality but we’re not voting for the pope. We’re voting for a leader.”Some Democrats remain optimistic, noting the party’s overperformance in the midterms and other recent elections, as well as Biden’s huge fundraising advantage. Rosenberg said: “It’s a close, competitive election, but I would much rather be us than them.“Over time, as voters check in and start paying more attention, the basic contrast between Biden being a successful president leading the country through challenging times and a guy who’s a real threat to many of the things we all hold dear will work in our favour and we’ll win. But we have a lot of work to do and a long way to go in this election. A lot is going to happen and a lot is going to change.” More

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      The Democrats lost the White House in 1968 amid anti-war protests. What will 2024 bring?

      by

      When student Lauren Brown first heard the commotion, including firecrackers, she assumed the sounds were coming from nearby frat houses. Then, at about four in the morning, she heard helicopters. Later, she awoke to news and footage of a violent attack by pro-Israeli protesters on an encampment set up to oppose the war in Gaza.“It was hard to watch,” said Brown, 19, a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose dorm was near the encampment. “And I wondered where the police were. I saw posts from people talking about them being teargassed and maced and campus security was just watching.”Eventually, a large police contingent did arrive and forcibly cleared the sprawling encampment early on Thursday morning. Flash-bangs were launched to disperse crowds gathered outside and more than 200 people were arrested. Afterward, campus facility workers could be seen picking up flattened tents and pieces of spray-painted plywood, and throwing them into grey dumpsters.Similar scenes of tumult have played out this week at about 40 universities and colleges in America, resulting in clashes with police, mass arrests and a directive from Joe Biden to restore order. The unrest has unfolded from coast to coast on a scale not seen since the Vietnam war protests of the 1960s and 1970s.The president has cause for concern as the issue threatens his youth vote, divides his Democratic party and gives Donald Trump’s Republicans an opening to push allegations of antisemitism and depict Biden’s America as spiralling out of control.There are inescapable parallels with 1968, a tumultuous year of assassinations and anti-war demonstrations that led to chaos at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Democrats lost the White House to Republican “law and order” candidate Richard Nixon.Now, there are fears that history will repeat itself as anti-war protests again convulse university campuses, and the Democratic National Convention again heads to Chicago. Biden faces Republican “law and order” candidate Donald Trump in November’s presidential election.Bernie Sanders, an independent US senator from Vermont, told CNN this week: “I am thinking back and other people are making this reference that this may be Biden’s Vietnam.”Drawing parallels with President Lyndon Johnson, whose considerable domestic achievements were overshadowed by the Vietnam war and who did not seek reelection in 1968, Sanders added: “I worry very much that President Biden is putting himself in a position where he has alienated not just young people but a lot of the Democratic base, in terms of his views on Israel and this war.”The Gaza war started when Hamas militants attacked Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 34,600 people in Gaza, mostly women and children.The ferocity of that response, and America’s “ironclad” support for Israel, ignited protests by students at Columbia University in New York that rapidly spread to other campuses across the country. Students built encampments in solidarity with Gaza, demanding a ceasefire and that universities divest from Israel. The demonstrations have been mostly peaceful, although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks and violent threats.University administrators, who have tried to balance the right to protest and complaints of violence and hate speech, have increasingly called on police to clear out the demonstrators before year-end exams and graduation ceremonies. More than 2,300 arrests have been made in the past two weeks, some during violent confrontations with police, giving rise to accusations of use of excessive force.View image in fullscreenBiden, who has faced pressure from all political sides over the conflict in Gaza, attempted to thread the needle on Thursday, saying: “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent. But neither are we a lawless country. We’re a civil society, and order must prevail.”The president faces opposition in his own party for his strong support for Israel’s military offensive. Hundreds of thousands of people registered versions of “uncommitted” protest votes against him in the Democratic presidential primary.Yaya Anantanang, a student organiser at George Washington University in Washington, told the Politico website: “My message is that we do not support Biden. We do not capitulate to the liberal electoral politics, because, quite frankly, the liberation of Palestinians will not come through a Democratic president but by organizing and ensuring that there is full divestment within all of these institutions.”Such views ring alarm bells for those who fear that even a small dip in support from Biden’s coalition could make all the difference in a tight election.Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F Kennedy, who was gunned down while running for president in 1968, urged the protesters to support Biden despite their misgivings. “We need their votes now,” she said. “They might not love Joe Biden’s policies but the choice is not between Joe Biden and their ideal. The choice is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who’s going to institute the Muslim ban on day one.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublicans, meanwhile, are seeking to exploit the unrest for political gain. They have accused Biden of being soft on what they say is antisemitic sentiment among the protesters and Democrats of indulging “wokeness” in America’s education system.Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, said: “The crisis you’re seeing on college campuses is a result of the colleges themselves not having and pushing the right education, the right discussion in the classrooms, in the right way. They play this woke game where they don’t want to touch an issue.“They create a vacuum of information. The students get bad information and propaganda. They’re effectively being used by terrorist organisations overseas to push an anti-American, anti-Israeli message, which is just awful. It’s not a difference of opinion. It’s complete misinformation.”Images of disarray on campus have played endlessly on Fox News and in other rightwing media, feeding a narrative of instability and lawlessness under Biden while conveniently sucking political oxygen away from Trump’s own negatives.On Tuesday, for example, the Republican nominee was in court for his hush-money trial; Time magazine published an interview in which Trump set out an extremist vision of an imperial presidency; and Florida introduced a six-week abortion ban after Trump helped overturn Roe v Wade. But TV screens were dominated by the protests.Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive movement Indivisible, said: “All of those stories – any individual one would have been possibly disqualifying for a presidential candidate in a previous election – received a fraction of the coverage of the protests against [the Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s massacre of Gazans.View image in fullscreen“That’s problematic for those of us who want to see Joe Biden re-elected and want to see Democrats win because every day that we spend talking about this immoral war that US tax dollars are supporting is a day we’re not talking about the dangerous, creeping fascism presented by the Republican party.”Still, Democrats hope that, with the academic year soon drawing to a close, students will head home for the summer and the energy will disperse. Donna Brazile, a former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, doubts that the issue will be decisive in November.“We’re going to have an October surprise every month, and we cannot predict which of the many surprises will actually drive the election.” she said. “A month ago, it was abortion was going drive the election. Now it’s the campus protesters. Next month it’ll be something else.”Brazile also defended the students’ right to protest as past generations have against the Vietnam war, South African apartheid, the Iraq war and, during the most recent election campaign, police brutality. “I’ve been on several college campuses and the majority of them are quite peaceful,” she said.“These are students who are using their first amendment right to advocate for change in the Middle East, and everyone has to be clear that there are rules. Just a handful have gotten out of control because if you violate the rules or break the law, you you have no right to do that. That is forbidden.” More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Wilmington: how a once-red district is a window on North Carolina politics

      by

      The area around Wilmington, North Carolina, was once rock-ribbed Republican red. No longer. It’s contested territory in what may be the most contested state in the country this year.Donald Trump had planned a rally in Wilmington earlier this month but was rained out at the last moment. Trump promised to return with a bigger and better rally later. Joe Biden visited Wilmington on Thursday, after a detour to Charlotte to meet with the families of four law enforcement officers killed on Monday while serving an arrest warrant. It was his second visit to North Carolina this year and is unlikely to be his last.“I want to get Joe Biden to Wilmington,” the state senator Natalie Murdock of Durham said last week, before Biden announced the trip. Murdock is helping coordinate the Biden-Harris campaign in North Carolina. She noted that Biden won New Hanover county in 2020 after Hillary Clinton lost it four years earlier. “We’re going to have a field office out there,” she added, explaining plans for “boots on the ground” to get out the vote.The outsized political attention on Wilmington reflects a granular effort to win voters in the persuadable places, the swing districts in swing states. Trump won North Carolina in 2020 by a margin of 1.3%, his narrowest state victory. The most recent Emerson College poll shows Biden running behind Trump by five points, with 10% undecided.But North Carolina’s political map is a pointillist portrait of post-pandemic population change, with cities such as Charlotte, Durham and Wilmington booming from domestic migration while other communities bleed residents to places with economic vibrancy. Two-thirds of North Carolina’s population growth between 2010 and 2020 was non-white. About 400,000 people have moved to North Carolina since 2020. Trump’s margin in 2020 was less than 75,000 votes.Growth is the story of Wilmington. The beach town vacation spot has expanded beyond Saturday farmers’ markets and upscale restaurants on the river for tourists, attracting pharmaceutical research, banking and logistics today.“I moved to Wilmington 22 years ago. And when I moved here, I didn’t even realize you were allowed to live here all year,” said David Hill, a pediatrician and the Democratic nominee for the North Carolina state senate. “I can say that if you drive down the street, you will see acres and acres of what was forest when we moved here just five years ago, that is now in part sand and in part foundations and newly built homes.”Many census tracts around Wilmington in Pender, Brunswick and New Hanover counties doubled in population between 2010 and 2020. During the pandemic, growth accelerated, with both Pender and Brunswick county’s population increasing by 15% since 2020.The seventh district is held by Michael Lee, a real estate attorney and a relative moderate in the Republican-led senate. The district, covering most of New Hanover county, has been targeted by national campaigners as one of North Carolina’s few legislative seats that can be flipped, despite a ruthless redistricting that moved much of downtown Wilmington into a neighboring district last year.“One of those precincts was the highest-turnout precinct for Black voters, and it has now been put into deep-red Brunswick county,” Murdock said. “It is one of those races that was still going to be competitive, but they did not do us any favors with that map. I mean, it is one of the most gerrymandered of this cycle.”Republicans have a 30 to 20 advantage over Democrats in the state senate and a 72 to 48 advantage in the state house; precisely the 60% margin needed in each chamber to override a veto by North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. Cooper has blocked legislation restricting abortion access and expanding gun rights, but Republican lawmakers have overridden dozens of vetoes, from bills banning transgender hormone therapy for minors to changes in election laws.Cooper is term-limited and will be out of office in January. Republicans cannot afford to lose one seat in either chamber if they also lose the governor’s race, and the fate of the gubernatorial race is an open question given North Carolina’s history of ticket splitting and the nomination of the lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, who has a record of extreme, racist and homophobic comments and faces unpleasant revelations about his financial and business history.National Democratic campaigners are hoping that a backlash against restrictive abortion laws will fuel turnout statewide. But local contenders in closely divided districts have largely avoided the culture war rancor and are focusing on community concerns.Lee, for example, published a column this week taking issue with the New Hanover school system’s $20m shortfall, describing it as evidence of poor financial decisions made with short-term pandemic funding. Though the population around Wilmington has been exploding, public school enrollment has not: the local system has fewer students now than before the pandemic.Lee chairs the senate’s education committee, and has been leading the state senate’s efforts to expand North Carolina’s private school voucher program. The committee approved a bill on Wednesday to add $248m to the program next school year, on top of the $191m the program received this year. Applications for the vouchers, worth up to $7,468, outstripped funding after a surge of interest. (Lee did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.)Newcomers chasing Wilmington’s burgeoning film industry or simply looking for a better climate while working from home are wrestling with crowded roads, rising housing costs, access to healthcare and the other downsides of rapid growth, Hill said. Their interests do not easily map on to a highly partisan political framework.“Characterizing North Carolina in the same sentence as some of the more extremist states in the south fails to give the population of the state credit for really being quite centrist,” Hill said. “I think when you look at what our rightwing extremist supermajority has done, it would be easy to lump our state and with some states that are more extremist, but I don’t feel – and I think we have good evidence to tell us – that they don’t really represent the state as a whole.” More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Star Wars’ Mark Hamill hails ‘Joe-B-Wan Kenobi’ after White House meeting

      by

      “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” But enough about Washington. The Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who once saw off gangsters at a fictional spaceport, came to the US capital on Friday for a meeting with Joe Biden.Quite why he was in the Oval Office, and what was talked about, remained something of a mystery. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Biden was riding high in the opinion polls but now, perhaps, he is in need of added star power.The surprise appearance by the man who played Luke Skywalker thrilled Star Wars geeks among the White House press corps while leaving non-fans somewhat bemused or baffled.“How many of you had ‘Mark Hamill will lead the press briefing’ on your bingo card – hands?” the actor, wearing dark suit, blue tie and sunglasses, asked reporters at the start of a media briefing. “Yeah, me neither. I just got to meet the president and he gave me these aviator glasses.”Hamill, 72, then put the glasses in his pocket, quipping: “I love the merch.”Hamill, who has more than 5 million followers on X, where he is a trenchant critic of Biden’s election rival Donald Trump, said he was “honoured” to be invited to meet “the most legislatively successful president in my lifetime”, and reeled off a list of Biden’s accomplishments.The actor told reporters that “it just shows you that just one person can be so influential and so positive in our lives” and said he would take questions, “although no Star Wars questions, please”.Asked about the Oval Office meeting, Hamill said: “I only expected to be there for five minutes. He showed us all his photographs.“It was really amazing to me because I was invited to the Carter White House and I came. And then I came to the Obama White House but I never was invited into the Oval Office, and it was a large gathering. So this one was really extra special.”In the original blockbuster Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), Hamill played farm boy Luke learning Jedi mind tricks from Obi-Wan Kenobi, an elderly Jedi master who has seen better days. On Friday, it seems, he again took the role of young apprentice to the 81-year-old Biden.“I called him ‘Mr President’. He said, ‘You can call me Joe.’ I said, ‘Can I call you Joe-B-Wan Kenobi?’ He liked that.”Hamill left the podium to whoops and applause from a few starstruck reporters. The first question to the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, began: “May the Force be with you.” She replied: “May the Force be with you or, tomorrow, the 4th be with you, however you want to look at it.”A journalist said: “Let’s hope we’ve killed off the Star Wars jokes for the rest of the briefing.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJean-Pierre: “I doubt it. I feel like there’s more coming.”And later she was challenged as to why Hamill, who has never held elected office, was in the Oval Office at all. Weijia Jiang of CBS News asked pointedly: “What was Mark Hamill doing here today?”Laughing, Jean-Pierre replied: “Did you not like having him here? … Mark Hamill was in town. They met. I think it was important as someone – you all know Mark Hamill. He is someone who is very much invested in our country, very much invested in the direction of this country.”As Jiang confessed a lack of familiarity with the films, Jean-Pierre wondered: “Do you not like Star Wars? You’ve not seen Star Wars?”Jiang promised “I will now!” as some in the room groaned.Hamill is one of numerous Hollywood stars that the Biden campaign may seek to deploy ahead of a presidential election now six months away. On Thursday, the actor and director Robert De Niro spoke out against Trump, urging Biden to “keep up the fight” against him and “go at him hard”.Interviewed by Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, De Niro warned: “The guy’s a monster. He is beyond wrong. It’s almost like he wants to do the most horrible things that he can think of in order to get a rise out of us. I don’t know what it is but he’s been doing it and doing it, and it’s fucking scary.” More