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      Senate Republicans advance Trump bill to cancel $9bn in approved spending

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      Senate Republicans on Tuesday advanced Donald Trump’s request to cancel about $9bn in previously approved spending, overcoming concerns about what the rescissions could mean for impoverished people around the globe and for public radio and television stations in their home states.JD Vance broke the tie on the procedural vote, allowing the measure to advance, 51-50.A final vote in the Senate could occur as early as Wednesday. The bill would then return to the House for another vote before it would go to the US president’s desk for his signature before a Friday deadline.Republicans winnowed down the president’s request by taking out his proposed $400m cut to a program known as Pepfar. That change increased the prospects for the bill’s passage. The politically popular program is credited with saving millions of lives since its creation under then president George W Bush to combat HIV/Aids.Trump is also looking to claw back money for foreign aid programs targeted by his so-called “department of government efficiency” and for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.“When you’ve got a $36tn debt, we have to do something to get spending under control,” said Senate majority leader John Thune.Republicans met with Russ Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, during their weekly conference luncheon as the White House worked to address their concerns. He fielded about 20 questions from senators. There was some back and forth, but many of the concerns were focused on working toward a resolution, either through arrangements with the administration directly or via an amendment to the bill, said senator John Hoeven.The White House campaign to win over potential holdouts had some success. Senator Mike Rounds tweeted that he would vote to support the measure after working with the administration to “find Green New Deal money that could be reallocated to continue grants to tribal radio stations without interruption”.Some senators worried that the cuts to public media could decimate many of the 1,500 local radio and television stations around the country that rely on some federal funding to operate. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributes more than 70% of its funding to those stations.Maine senator Susan Collins, the Republican chair of the Senate appropriations committee, said the substitute package marked “progress”, but she still raised issues with it, particularly on a lack of specifics from the White House. She questioned how the package could still total $9 billion while also protecting programs that Republicans favor.Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she didn’t want the Senate to be going through numerous rounds of rescissions.“We are lawmakers. We should be legislating,” Murkowski said. “What we’re getting now is a direction from the White House and being told: ‘This is the priority and we want you to execute on it. We’ll be back with you with another round.’ I don’t accept that.”But the large majority of Republicans were supportive of Trump’s request.“This bill is a first step in a long but necessary fight to put our nation’s fiscal house in order,” said senator Eric Schmitt.Democrats oppose the package. They see Trump’s request as an effort to erode the Senate filibuster. They also warn it’s absurd to expect them to work with Republicans on bipartisan spending measures if Republicans turn around a few months later and use their majority to cut the parts they don’t like.“It shreds the appropriations process,” said senator Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats. “The appropriations committee, and indeed this body, becomes a rubber stamp for whatever the administration wants.”Democratic leader Chuck Schumer cautioned that tens of millions of Americans rely on local public radio and television stations for local news, weather alerts and educational programs. He warned that many could lose access to that information because of the rescissions.“And these cuts couldn’t come at a worse time,” Schumer said. “The floods in Texas remind us that speedy alerts and up-to-the-minute forecasts can mean the difference between life and death.”Democrats also scoffed at the GOP’s stated motivation for taking up the bill. The amount of savings pales compared to the $3.4trn in projected deficits over the next decade that Republicans put in motion in passing Trump’s big tax and spending cut bill two weeks ago.“Now, Republicans are pretending they are concerned about the debt,” said senator Patty Murray. “So concerned that they need to shut down local radio stations, so concerned they are going to cut off Sesame Street … The idea that that is about balancing the debt is laughable.”With Republicans providing enough votes to take up the bill, it sets up the potential for 10 hours of debate plus votes on scores of potentially thorny amendments in what is known as a vote-a-rama. The House has already shown its support for the president’s request with a mostly party line 214-212 vote, but since the Senate is amending the bill, it will have to go back to the House for another vote.Republicans who vote against the measure also face the prospect of incurring Trump’s wrath. He has issued a warning on his social media site directly aimed at individual Senate Republicans who may be considering voting against the rescissions package. He said it was important that all Republicans adhere to the bill and in particular defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.“Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement,” he said. More

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      US university leaders challenge campus antisemitism claims in House hearing

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      Rich Lyons, the chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, challenged US House Republicans on Tuesday as they questioned him and leaders of Georgetown University and the City University of New York in the latest hearing on antisemitism in higher education.The committee accused the schools of failing to respond adequately to allegations of bias or discrimination; however, the university leaders said that disciplinary action had been taken where appropriate and stressed the importance of protecting free speech.Lyons pushed back on the suggestion that antisemitism was more present on college campuses than anywhere else.“If somebody is expressing pro-Palestinian beliefs, that’s not necessarily antisemitic,” he said.Lyons, who has just completed his first year as chancellor, is also the first UC leader to face the House committee during the Trump presidency. In his opening remarks, he defended the campus’ commitment to free speech.“As a public institution, Berkeley has a solemn obligation to protect the quintessential American value of free speech,” Lyons said. “This obligation does not prevent us, let me repeat, does not prevent us from confronting harassment and discrimination in all its forms, including antisemitism.”The hearing was the ninth in a series Republicans have held to scrutinize university leadership over allegations of antisemitism on campuses after a wave of protests over Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, which has killed more than 60,000 people, in retaliation to Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. Widely criticized testimony before the committee by the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University in 2023 contributed to their resignations.At Tuesday’s hearing, Democrats blasted Republican committee members for their focus on antisemitism while not speaking on the dismantling of the education department, which is tasked with investigating antisemitism and other civil rights violations in schools.“They have turned this hearing room into a kangaroo court, where they spend our time litigating a predetermined outcome to do nothing, actually, to help Jewish students, just make public theater out of legitimate pain,” said the California representative Mark Takano.Republicans said university leaders have allowed campus antisemitism to run unchecked.“Universities can choose to hire antisemitic faculty, welcome students with a history of antisemitism, accept certain foreign funding, and let the behavior of antisemitic unions go unchecked,” Tim Walberg, a Michigan representative and committee chair, said in his opening statements. “But we will see today they do so at their own risk.”The hearing was periodically interrupted by protesters, who shouted pro-Palestinian slogans before being removed by Capitol police. Randy Fine, a Florida representative, berated the college presidents and said they were responsible because of the attitudes they had permitted on their campuses.Republicans pressed the three college leaders on whether they had disciplined or fired faculty and employees for behavior they said was antisemitic. Elise Stefanik, a Republican representative of New York, pressed the CUNY chancellor, Félix Matos Rodríguez, on the employment of a law professor who worked on the legal defense of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist the Trump administration attempted to deport over his role in protests at Columbia University.Stefanik pushed Matos Rodríguez to answer whether the professor should be fired. Without responding directly, Matos Rodríguez defended CUNY and said antisemitism had no place at the school. He said any student or employee who broke CUNY rules would be investigated.University leaders also emphasized the importance of free speech on campuses for students and faculty.Robert Groves, the interim president at Georgetown, said that as a Jesuit university, fostering interfaith dialogue and understanding was a key part of the school’s mission. He said the university has not experienced any encampments or physical violence since the Hamas attack in October 2023.“Given our Jesuit values, we expose students to different viewpoints on the Middle East,” Groves said. “In addition to speakers on Gaza, we’ve hosted IDF soldiers, families of Israelis and Palestinians who’ve lost their lives. US families of US hostages in Gaza. Georgetown is not perfect, and as events evolve, we’ve had to clarify rules of student behavior.”Lyons, as well, said his campus has “more work to do” to prevent antisemitism.“I am the first to say that we have more work to do. Berkeley, like our nation, has not been immune to the disturbing rise in antisemitism. And as a public university, we have a solemn obligation to protect our community from discrimination and harassment, while also upholding the first amendment right to free speech,” he said. More

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      ‘Political theatre’: key takeaways from US universities’ House antisemitism hearing

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      Lawmakers questioned the leaders of the University of California at Berkeley, Georgetown University and the City University of New York in the final antisemitism hearing the House of Representatives has held since the 7 October attacks and ensuing war in Gaza broke out in 2023.Georgetown University’s interim president Robert Groves, Cuny’s chancellor Félix V Matos Rodríguez and UC Berkeley’s chancellor Rich Lyons faced scrutiny from Republican representatives – who questioned the universities’ hiring practices, faculty unions, Middle East study centers, foreign funding and DEI initiatives.Congress’s preceding antisemitism hearings featured tense exchanges between Republican lawmakers such as representative Elise Stefanik, and precipitated the resignations of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and Columbia.While denouncing antisemitism, Democratic lawmakers spoke out against the focus of the hearing, calling it “political theatre” and criticizing the Trump administration’s gutting of the government agencies that enforce civil rights protections.“I’d be remiss if I did not point out that this is our ninth hearing on antisemitism in 18 months,” said ranking member Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia. “I’ll also note that since this committee’s first antisemitism hearing in December 2023 we have not held a single hearing addressing racism, xenophobia, sexism, Islamophobia or other challenges affecting other student groups on American college campuses.”1. Campus leaders denounced antisemitismIn their opening statements, each of the university leaders present at Tuesday’s hearings began their remarks by condemning antisemitism, and in many cases listing actions their campuses had undertaken to prevent future antisemitism.Georgetown was one of the first campuses to condemn the 7 October attacks, Groves said, adding: that “Antisemitism is incompatible with living our mission; the same applies to Islamophobia and racism.”“Berkeley unequivocally condemns antisemitism,” Lyons echoed. He added: “I am the first to say we have more work to do. Berkeley, like our nation, has not been immune to the disturbing rise in antisemitism.”Matos Rodríguez shared a similar remark: “Our university has not been immune, but let me be clear: antisemitism has no place at Cuny.” He added that the university now has a zero-tolerance policy toward encampments, like those students established at City College and Brooklyn College in 2024.2. Democrats criticized the Trump administration’s approachDemocratic lawmakers and witnesses noted that the Trump administration’s decision to shutter federal agencies tasked with enforcing civil rights protections will not protect Jewish students on college campuses.“Antisemitism in America and on campuses is real” but “this administration’s approach is contradictory and counterproductive,” said Matt Nosanchuck, a former deputy assistant secretary for the education department’s office for civil rights under the Obama administration. He urged that “Congress must fulfill its core responsibilites” to give agencies appropriate resources, not conduct political theatre.In his opening remarks, Scott criticized his fellow committee members for saying “nothing about the firings attacking the office of civil rights” or the supreme court decision allowing the Trump administration to dismantle the Department of Education. The Trump administration closed seven of the office of civil rights’ 12 regional offices in March.“If the majority wanted to fight antisemitism and protect Jewish students, they should condemn antisemitism in their own party and at the highest level of government,” said Democratic representative Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon. “They have failed to do so. Multiple White House officials have ties to antisemitic extremists.”3. Republicans questioned faculty hiring and union practicesTo begin the hearing, Walberg said that the committee would “be examining several factors that incite antisemitism on college campuses” including faculty unions and faculty membership in the group Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.He later questioned Matos-Rodríguez about a Hunter College faculty job posting looking for candidates who could “take a critical lense” to issues such as “settler colonialsm, genocide, human rights, apartheid” and others. Matos-Rodríguez called the listing “entirely inappropriate” and said he ordered it revised immediately upon learning about it.Representative Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina, focused her questioning on questions around faculty hiring and union practices. She questioned Matos-Rodríguez on the fact that the president of Cuny’s faculty union supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. She also questioned Lyons on Columbia’s hiring practices, which she said had allowed antisemitic faculty to join the staff.“We use academic standards to hire faculty. We don’t use ideological conditions to hire faculty,” Lyons said.4. Democrats called the hearings part of a greater move to defund higher education“I’m concerned by what I see happening here. Because instead of solving a problem, we’re watching some try to use antisemitism as a reason to go after higher education,” said representative Alma Adams, a Democrat from North Carolina.“Let’s not forget as we sit here today, the Department of Education is withholding more than $6bn in congressionally mandated funding from our K-12 schools,” she added.During her questioning Bonamici also questioned whether the antisemitism hearings were motivated by “plans to defund colleges and universities”.5. Tensions ran high between Republican and Democratic committee membersFollowing an exchange between representative Elise Stefanik of New York and Cuny chancellor Matos Rodríguez, California representative Mark DeSaulnier yielded his time so Matos Rodríguez could “respond to that outrageous attack by my colleague”.Stefanik had denounced the university for having on its staff an attorney also leading the legal defense fund for Mahmoud Khalil, who she called “chief pro-Hamas agitator that led to the anti-semitic encampments at Columbia”.Earlier in the hearing, California representative Mark Takano called the committee’s hearing “a kangaroo court”. More

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      Republicans may slash $9bn for public broadcasting and foreign aid in days

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      Senate Republicans may as soon as Tuesday move to pass legislation slashing up to $9bn in funds Congress had earlier approved for foreign aid programs and public broadcasting, as part of Donald Trump’s campaign of dramatic government spending cuts.The GOP is racing to meet a Friday deadline mandated by law for the bill, known as a rescissions package, to pass Congress, otherwise the Trump administration will be forced to spend the money. The House of Representatives approved the legislation last month by a narrow majority.The package will cancel $1.1bn budgeted for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, and about $8bn meant for foreign assistance programs. But some Republicans have blanched at those cuts, and the Senate majority leader, John Thune, said he had agreed with demands to preserve $400m in funding for Pepfar, a program credited with saving millions of people from infection or death from HIV that was created under the Republican president George W Bush in 2003.“There was a lot of interest among our members in doing something on the Pepfar issue,” Thune told reporters. He added that he hoped for procedural votes on the bill to begin on Tuesday and “we’ll see how those come out”.Changing the bill will require it to again be voted on by the House, and earlier in the day, the speaker, Mike Johnson, urged Senate Republicans to pass the version his lawmakers sent them.“We’re encouraging our Senate partners over there to get the job done and to pass it as is,” he said at a press conference.Thune has described the rescissions package as “commonsense legislation” that will target “waste, fraud and abuse” in government spending, a term Republicans have deployed repeatedly since Trump took office to criticize programs they seek to cut. Some cuts, he said, were recommended by the so-called “department of government efficiency” downsizing initiative that was previously led by Elon Musk.“My Democrat colleagues may not want to acknowledge it, but we have a serious spending problem in this country,” Thune said during a floor speech on Tuesday. “And the very least we can do in response is to target some of the egregious misuses of taxpayer dollars that we are addressing today in this bill.”While Democrats can use the Senate’s filibuster to stop the chamber from considering most legislation they oppose, a rescissions package can be passed with a simple majority. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, has warned that the bill is the beginning of a push by the Trump administration to reshape government services.“This package, as bad as it is, is a piece of a larger puzzle for Republicans. Their goal is to use rescissions, impoundment and pocket rescissions to eradicate any bit of bipartisanship out of appropriations, and that will pave the way for deeper and more serious spending cuts on things like healthcare, food assistance, energy and so many other areas,” he said.It remains unclear if the bill has the support it needs among Republican senators. Susan Collins, who represents blue state Maine and is expected to face a fierce re-election challenge next year, has criticized the package for slashing funds for important programs, rather than those identified as wasteful by the Trump administration.“This rescissions package, for the most part, has nothing to do with the lengthy list of questionable activities identified by the administration that were paid for with prior year funds,” she said late last month, as she chaired a Senate appropriations committee hearing into the request.In addition to opposing cuts to Pepfar, she signaled wariness to defunding public broadcasters.While Collins said she agreed with her fellow Republicans that programing on PBS and NPR had had “a discernibly partisan bent”, she believed there were “more targeted approaches to addressing that bias at NPR than rescinding all of the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting”.Other Republicans from rural states, including Lisa Murkowski, a moderate representing Alaska, have expressed skepticism over targeting public broadcasters, arguing they provide an important source of information in the countryside. On Tuesday, Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota announced his support for the bill after assurances that broadcasters in Indian reservations would continue receiving funds.“We wanted to make sure tribal broadcast services in South Dakota continued to operate which provide potentially lifesaving emergency alerts. We worked with the Trump administration to find Green New Deal money that could be reallocated to continue grants to tribal radio stations without interruption,” he wrote on social media.Butall four Democrats in North Carolina’s congressional delegation have signed a letter to Senate leaders warning of the consequences of cutting public broadcasting, which they said provides “trusted, accessible, and crucial communication tools during natural disasters” such as last year’s Hurricane Helene. More

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      Democrats demand Pam Bondi and Kash Patel be summoned for Epstein hearing

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      Democratic members of the House judiciary committee on Thursday demanded that Republicans summon the attorney general, Pam Bondi, the FBI director, Kash Patel, and their deputies for a hearing into the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s death and the sex-trafficking case against him.The letter from all 19 Democratic members on the committee to its Republican chair, Jim Jordan, comes amid a rift between Donald Trump and some of his supporters over the justice department’s conclusion, announced last week, that Epstein’s death in federal custody six years ago was a suicide, and that there is no secret list of his clients to be made public.The US president, who knew Epstein personally, has long claimed that there is more to be made public about his death and involvement in running a sex-trafficking ring for global elites. Last week’s report, together with the justice department’s announcement that nothing further about his case would be made public, has sparked rare criticism of Trump among the rightwing influencers and commentators who are usually among his most ardent defenders.In their letter, Democrats argued that the matter can only be settled if Bondi and her deputy, Todd Blanche, along with Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, appear before the judiciary committee.“The Trump DOJ and FBI’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein matter, and president Trump’s suddenly shifting positions, have not restored anyone’s trust in the government but have rather raised profound new questions about their own conduct while increasing public paranoia related to the investigation,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote.“Only a bipartisan public hearing at which administration officials answer direct questions from elected representatives before the eyes of the American people can restore public trust on the matter.”A spokesperson for Jordan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Democrats have sought to capitalize on the questions raised by the justice department’s announcement, and earlier on Tuesday, House Republicans blocked an attempt by the minority to force release of documents related to the Epstein case.Last week, most Democrats on the judiciary committee signed a letter to Bondi that accused her of withholding some files related to the financier to protect Trump from any damaging disclosures. It went on to call for the release of any documents in the Epstein files that mention Trump, as well as the second volume of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified materials.In this week’s letter, Democrats argued that only a congressional hearing would resolve whether there is indeed a cover-up over Epstein’s death, or if Trump was just promoting conspiracy theories as he sought an advantage on the campaign trail.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We must submit to public scrutiny President Trump’s and MAGA’s longstanding claims about the ‘Epstein files,’ new questions as to whether President Trump himself has something to hide, whether he is keeping damaging information secret to protect other individuals or to maintain future blackmail leverage over public and private actors,” the lawmakers wrote, “or, perhaps the simplest explanation, whether President Trump and his Administration magnified and disseminated groundless Epstein conspiracy theories for purposes of political gain which they are now desperately trying to disavow and dispel.”The reignited turmoil over the Epstein case has sparked reports that Bongino, a former podcaster who has long promoted conspiracies about his death, clashed with Bondi and is considering resigning his position at the FBI.Over the weekend, Trump defended Bondi in a post on Truth Social and pleaded with his supporters. “One year ago our Country was DEAD, now it’s the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World. Let’s keep it that way, and not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about,” he wrote. More

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      How the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files became a vehicle for QAnon

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      The release of the “Epstein client list” has long been the holy grail for the Maga movement. Supposedly, this list, once released, would incriminate a veritable who’s who of liberal elites complicit in Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking operation and expose the moral rot at the heart of the Democratic establishment.The mystery surrounding the Epstein files also became a vehicle for QAnon conspiracy theorists to push their ideas about a “deep state” cover-up of a network of global pedophiles into the broader tent of the Maga movement.During his campaign, Donald Trump promised on several occasions to declassify the Epstein files, which would include the “list”. Before they joined the government, Trump’s FBI chief, Kash Patel, and deputy FBI chief, Dan Bongino, spent years on podcasts and TV appearances winking at QAnon and Epstein conspiracy theorists and demanding the files’ release, even suggesting that the Biden administration was withholding them to protect its own.Then, on the heels of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, the justice department quietly dropped a bombshell in the form of a memo. A “systematic review” of the Epstein files by justice department officials “revealed no incriminating ‘client list’,” the memo stated, nor did they find evidence that Epstein blackmailed powerful figures. The memo also affirmed that Epstein died by suicide in his Brooklyn jail cell while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019.Since the memo’s release, Maga has been in turmoil – and some of Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers have been in open revolt against his administration, accusing it of now being part of a cover-up and calling for the resignation of the attorney general, Pam Bondi, over her handling of the Epstein files.On Truth Social, Trump offered a stern rebuke to his detractors, claiming that the Epstein files were actually a hoax, because they were written by “Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration”.But not everyone’s buying it.“This is the worst response I’ve ever seen from President Trump,” said the rightwing commentator Benny Johnson. The disgraced former general Michael Flynn, considered a hero by the QAnon movement, wrote: “@realdonaldtrump please understand the EPSTEIN AFFAIR IS NOT GOING AWAY.” The rightwing commentator Matt Walsh called Trump’s statement “extremely obtuse”, adding: “We don’t accept obvious bullshit from our political leaders.”Maga’s obsession with the Epstein files is an indication of how the core ideas associated with the fringe QAnon conspiracy – that a shadowy cabal of government elites is working to cover up a global child sex-trafficking operation – have taken root in the broader pro-Trump movement.QAnon took a long tradition of antisemitic, “deep state” and “satanic panic” conspiracy theories, put them on steroids with a pro-Trump flavor, and assigned the enigmatic Q, supposedly a government official with top secret clearance and a penchant for posting on 8chan, at the helm of the movement.“The unique thing about QAnon is that you had an anonymous poster on an anonymous chatroom putting out clues for people to try to solve,” said Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami specializing in the study of conspiracy theories.When QAnon emerged in 2017, allegations against Epstein had been swirling for over a decade.Epstein’s arrest in 2019 on federal charges was a boon for QAnon. The movement quickly sought to incorporate information about the case into their propaganda. The case also surfaced a trove of digital media that QAnon sleuths could pore over looking for “clues” – such as photographs of Epstein with various public figures (including many with Trump), Epstein’s flight logs and aerial images of his private island.“Epstein engaged in crimes, but I think there’s a whole fantasy lore surrounding it that goes far beyond any available evidence,” said Uscinski.Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s program on extremism, told the Guardian that as “QAnon and Maga have become increasingly intertwined in recent years, we have seen the embrace of increasingly fringe conspiracies and extremist narratives like ‘Pizzagate’ and ‘Save the Children’ by mainstream political figures.”These narratives turned out to be useful for Trump and his allies, who harnessed simmering suspicion of establishment figures and cast the former reality star as the only person brave enough to take on “the deep state”.“As Trump and other prominent Republican figures amplified QAnon content and used it as a political cudgel against Democratic politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, they were providing legitimacy and approval to the very same conspiracy theorists who are now decrying Pam Bondi and the justice department,” said Lewis.Tensions over the Epstein files have been building since February, when Bondi went on Fox News and said Epstein’s client list was sitting on her desk “right now for review.” A week later, at a press event at the White House, Bondi handed out binders that she promised contained “declassified” Epstein records to two dozen Maga influencers. The influencers quickly realized there was basically no new information in them. In response to the ensuing backlash, Bondi said that the FBI had failed to disclose a tranche of Epstein files, and that she had ordered Patel to compile them.Months later, in June, Elon Musk – amid the dramatic feud with his former friend Trump – claimed without evidence that the reason the Epstein files hadn’t been released in full was because the president was implicated in them. (Musk has since deleted the post.)The scale of the current Maga meltdown “certainly shows the significance of Epstein conspiracies within the broader QAnon pantheon”, said Lewis, and “should lay bare just how deeply the disease of the QAnon movement has seeped into a Republican party which has welcomed its most conspiratorial, antisemitic, reactionary fringe into Congress and the executive branch with open arms”.The backlash Trump is facing is a leopards-eating-faces moment for the administration.“This was a conspiracy that Donald Trump, Pam Bondi and these Maga extremists have been fanning the flames of for the last several years, and now the chickens are coming home to roost,” the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, told reporters Monday.Uscinski noted that’s “the interesting thing that happens when you use conspiracy theories to get into power”.“Because conspiracy theories should be aimed at the people in power, right? They accuse powerful people of doing something wicked behind the scenes,” he added.In Trump’s case, he “spent the last 10 years building a coalition of largely conspiracy-minded people in the US”, said Uscinski. “So in order for him to keep these people engaged and donating and going to his speeches, and voting for him and voting for Republicans, he has to keep pressing the conspiracy theories.”But experts are skeptical that this current Maga meltdown will have any lasting impact.Trump’s overall approval rating hasn’t fluctuated dramatically over the past week. In fact, it’s almost at exactly the same place it was at the same point in his first administration.“[Trump’s supporters] are disgruntled, they’re upset and they’re going to express that on social media. But they’re not going to abandon him, because he’s the only game in town for them,” said Uscinski.He compared the current moment to the backlash Trump faced back in 2021. After courting favor from anti-vaxxers, Trump was booed when he announced during a live Bill O’Reilly interview that he had received his Covid-19 booster shot and urged Americans to get theirs.Despite the importance of the Epstein files to the Maga and QAnon movements, Lewis thinks that “it’s unlikely this outrage will last”.“The culture war will move on to its next target … and the rage machine will follow with conspiracies and vitriol,” said Lewis. “It’s much easier to be angry at an immigrant than to wonder whether you’ve been lied to for the last eight years.” More

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      Blood and bravado: the Trump shooting upended an election and shook the US

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      Blake Marnell was standing in the front row, about 10 yards from Donald Trump, when the shots rang out. He watched the Secret Service pile on the former US president. “I was able to see him standing and I could see the blood on his ear,” Marnell recalls. “When he put his fist up, I remember yelling, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’”Sunday marks one year since the assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and a week that changed US politics. Eight days later then-president Joe Biden, 81, dropped out of the election race amid concerns over his mental and physical decline.The twin shocks to the system of July 2024 continue to echo. Trump’s supporters hailed his survival as proof of divine intervention. He declared in his inaugural address in January: “I was saved by God to make America great again.” He has governed with a zealous self-belief that earns comparisons with authoritarians from history.Democrats, meanwhile, continue to wrestle the fallout of Biden’s late withdrawal. Some argue that he could have pushed on and won; most believe that he left the race too late and paved the way for Trump’s return to the White House. Younger voters accuse the party establishment of betrayal and beat the drum of generational change.What few dispute is that the shooting of Trump was indicative of a culture of political violence that has taken hold over the past decade, with recent examples including the murder of a Minnesota politician and her husband. It also set in motion a news cycle that has barely drawn breath over the past year as the most unconventional president of modern times dominates the national consciousness.View image in fullscreenFor Marnell, who lives in San Diego, California, that hot summer’s day in Butler began like dozens of the other Trump rallies he has been to before and since. He was wearing a “brick suit” that symbolises the president’s border wall and looked up at a giant screen that displayed a chart detailing US-Mexico border crossings.Trump had his head turned to the right to review the graphic when the gunfire began and nicked his right ear. “I didn’t even recognise them as gunshots,” 60-year-old Marnell said in a phone interview. “I thought they might be firecrackers.”For several long seconds there was pandemonium. Firefighter Corey Comperatore was killed while David Dutch and James Copenhaver were both hospitalised with injuries. Secret Service agents killed the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, whose motives remain a mystery, and rushed on top of Trump, whose fate was initially uncertain.“There was every range of emotion in the crowd. There was anger. There were people who turned around and were yelling at the TV cameras. There were people who were in prayer. There were people crying. There were people who were in disbelief. It was just an incredible gamut and range of reactions.”But what happened next became the stuff of political legend. Trump rose, pumped his fist and beseeched his followers to “Fight! Fight! Fight” even as blood streaked his face. The resulting image flashed around the world and is still displayed in the West Wing and worn on T-shirts by his “Make America great again” (Maga) acolytes.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “He showed courage and determination when you’d think the first thing somebody wants to do is slink away and save themselves. His response was to be the medieval chieftain who was rallying his troops round the banner and showing that he was undeterred to fight, to use his word. It was incredibly moving.”Biden was quick to call Trump and express sympathy. On 17 July, Biden tested positive for Covid-19. On 19 July, Trump, wearing a patch on his ear, delivered a 90-minute address at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, where some delegates wore ear patches in solidarity.Then, on 21 July, Biden suddenly announced that he was stepping aside and would not be the Democratic nominee for president. The writing had been on the wall since his disastrous debate performance against Trump the previous month. Party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer had urged him to withdraw. Finally, he yielded.View image in fullscreenEven by the standards of the Trump era, it had been a jaw-dropping eight days. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “There have been dramatic weeks and months but, in an election campaign, there’s just nothing like it in all of American history.”Journalist Chris Whipple was working on a different project when he heard the news of Biden’s exit, “realised this was the political story of the century”, and pivoted to writing a book that would become Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History.“It created that devastating split screen between the strengths of Trump and the weakness of Biden,” Whipple said. “The image of Trump rising off that stage with blood on his cheeks and his fist in the air mouthing ‘fight, fight, fight’ was devastating in comparison to the image of Biden shortly thereafter climbing off Air Force One with Covid headed to his bunker in Rehoboth Beach, standing on those steps, looking lost and gripping the handrail.”In their new book 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf write how Trump’s future chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told him after the assassination attempt: “You do know this is God.” At first Trump was silent, they write, but by the next day he was telling everyone: “If anyone ever doubted there was a God, that proved there was.”Numerous speakers at the Republican convention insisted that Trump had been spared by God so that he could pursue his mission. The Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell refers to it as a “millimetre miracle”.Whipple added: “To this day the true believers think this was God’s plan and maybe – without playing armchair psychologist – it’s contributed to a kind of fearlessness in Trump that I’m not sure we saw in the first term. Some might say recklessness. It changed Trump. It changed the country.”Conversely, the Democrats have still not recovered from the debacle of Biden’s late departure. His anointed successor, Kamala Harris, had only 107 days to campaign and ignited a burst of Democratic enthusiasm, notably at the party convention and when she debated Trump. But it was too little too late and she lost both the electoral college and the national popular vote.Whipple commented: “It was a seismic political event and the reverberations continue to this day. His 11th-hour abdication, leaving Kamala Harris with too short a runway to mount a winning campaign, obviously is historic and there is to this day a lot of anger among Democrats about the fact that Biden should have stepped away a year earlier or more.View image in fullscreen“That has real political ramifications. We’re seeing it in the popularity of ZohranMamdani in New York and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. It’s not just their message which is appealing to so many but also the fact that they’re anti-establishment. Biden and his gang have come to represent the corrupt Democratic establishment because of his last-minute abdication. You’re seeing an anti-establishment revolt.”Biden’s determination to cling on has been the subject of Democratic hand-wringing – and several books – though he insists he has no regrets. Many in the party wish he had stepped aside after the 2022 midterm elections so it could have held an open primary contest to find an heir apparent. Now Democrats find themselves leaderless and, according to a March poll, at a record low approval rating of 29%.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist and political commentator, said: “The real fallout was the lack of a clear successor to President Biden.“Had there been a real primary process that would have been able to unfold over the course of a year and a half, it would have weeded out the contenders and pretenders and would have put forward a ticket that, even if they ended up losing, could still have been very much part of the conversation heading into 2028. Instead, we’re starting 2028 already behind.”How elections are won and lost is always complex. With inflation and immigration looming large, there is no guarantee that another Democratic candidate would have beaten Trump. Nor will it ever be known how determinative his made-for-TV response to the assassination attempt was. But it did have some important consequences.Within minutes of the shooting, Elon Musk, the tech billionaire, announced his endorsement of the former president. Musk would go on to spend a record of about $280m in backing Trump and Republican candidates, then lead the president’s assault on the federal bureaucracy until their spectacular falling-out.The Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, also praised Trump’s reaction, calling his raised fist “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life”. Zuckerberg went on to attend Trump’s inauguration and make changes to Meta such as ending third-party fact-checking, removing restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender identity and bringing political content back to users’ feeds.The events of one year ago may also have shaped Trump’s psychology, fuelling an impatient, seize-the-day approach to the presidency that sets the news agenda at breakneck speed, knocks opponents back on their heels and brooks no compromise.Olsen said: “Trump dialed it up to 11 on his inauguration. A lot of that is the indirect influence of his survival of the assassination attempt. This is a man who is going with his instincts and going to do what he’s going to do and not going to prioritise – he’s going to push everything everywhere all at once.”Trump has survived legal troubles and taken on the elites and won, at least in his own mind, Olsen added. “I don’t think he thinks he’s invincible but he feels vindicated. Coupled with a sense of vulnerability means this is a guy who knows that everything could end tomorrow and believes he’s been proven right, so he’s darn well going to use the time that he has left to him to move forward to do even more that he believes is right.” More

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      David Gergen, ex-adviser to Republican and Democratic presidents, dies aged 83

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      David Gergen, a veteran of Washington politics and an adviser to four presidents, Republican and Democrat, in a career spanning decades in government, academia and media, has died. He was 83.Gergen was perhaps best known for a line he summoned for then presidential candidate Ronald Reagan for a TV debate with Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”The question hit a nerve in a nation wracked by inflation and a hostage crisis in Iran. The answer came back no, and Reagan won the White House.Gergen later reflected that “rhetorical questions have great power. It’s one of those things that you sometimes strike gold. When you’re out there panhandling in the river, occasionally you get a gold nugget.”Gergen served in the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Reagan and Bill Clinton, racking up stints as speechwriter, communications director and counselor to the president, among other roles.He entered politics after serving in the US navy in the 1960s, taking a job as a speechwriting assistant for Nixon in 1971 and rising rapidly to become director of speechwriting two years later. He later served as director of communications for both Ford and Reagan, and as a senior adviser to Clinton and secretary of state Warren Christopher.Between stints in government, he managed a successful media career, working variously as an editor at US News & World Report, on the PBS show the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and with CNN and CBS.In 2000, he published Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership: Nixon to Clinton, a memoir of his time in government. Reflecting on his time in the White House, he wrote of several essential elements a leader should possess.They included inner mastery; a central, compelling purpose rooted in moral values; a capacity to persuade; an ability to work within the system; a sure, quick start; strong, prudent advisers; and a passion that inspires others to carry on the mission.In a second book, Hearts Touched With Fire: How Great Leaders are Made, published two years later, he wrote: “Our greatest leaders have emerged from both good times and, more often, challenging ones. … The very finest among them make the difficult calls, that can ultimately alter the course of history.”Gergen, a North Carolina native, was a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School, and returned there after his political career to establish the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. He received 27 honorary degrees over the course of his career.After his passing was announced late Friday, former colleagues remarked on his capacity for bipartisanship and collaboration.Al Gore, who served as Clinton’s vice-president, posted on X: “Of the countless ways that David Gergen contributed to our great country, what I will remember him for most was his kindness to everyone he worked with, his sound judgment, and his devotion to doing good in the world.”Dean Jeremy Weinstein of the Harvard Kennedy School, said Gergen “devoted decades of his life to serving those who sought to serve”.Gergen reportedly told his daughter Katherine Gergen Barnett after the November 2024 election that “we are going through a period of fear. We have been tested, we are being tested now, but we must recognize that politics in our country is like a pendulum,” CNN said.A month later, when Gergen’s dementia diagnosis was disclosed, she penned his thoughts in a column for the Boston Globe.“‘As awful as life is currently in the public sphere, there is still reason to believe in our country and its leadership and to go into service,’” she quoted Gergen as saying. “‘Americans can endure any crisis, but they need to continue to take a sense of responsibility for their country.’” More