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      Party of the People review: Republican strength – and weakness – examined

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      On Tuesday, voters in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia stood up for individual autonomy, saying no to rolling back abortion access. Ohio, a conservative state, enshrined such rights in its constitution. In Virginia, a closely contested battleground, both houses went Democratic, a rebuff to the Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin. In Kentucky, Andy Beshear, a Democratic, pro-choice governor, handily won re-election.The personal is the political. The supreme court’s rejection of Roe v Wade and attendant abandonment of privacy as a constitutional mandate stand to haunt the Republican party. Next year’s presidential election is no longer just about the possible return of Donald Trump, with his two impeachments and smorgasbord of civil and criminal charges. A national referendum on values looms.Into this morass jumps Patrick Ruffini, a founder of Echelon Insights, a Republican polling firm. Party of the People is his look at the US’s shifting demographics. Turns out, it’s not all bad for the Republican cause. With good reason, Ruffini’s subtitle is “Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP”.“A historic realignment of working-class voters helped Trump defy the odds and win in 2016, and brought him to within a hair of re-election in 2020,” Ruffini writes. “Joe Biden is faltering among the core Democratic groups that were once the mainstay of ‘the party of the people’ – working-class voters of color.”Cultural re-sorting continues. Since the 2000 election, educational polarization has come to prominence. Before then, Ruffini observes, “class – defined in terms of income – was widely understood to be the main dividing line in our politics”. Now it is educational attainment: where you and your spouse went to school.Once the home of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal coalition, the Democratic party has emerged primarily as a haven for college graduates, identity politics and multiculturalism. In one extreme outcome, in 2020, it helped birth an idiotic and self-defeating slogan: “Defund the police.” On race, white liberals are generally more fervent than communities of color.The Republicans are their mirror image. Over six decades, the GOP has morphed into a magnet for evangelicals, church-goers, southern white voters and white Americans without a four-year degree. It incubated the forces unleashed on January 6 and on display in Charlottesville, Virginia, where neo-Nazis marched in 2017. Significantly, however, the GOP also shows the potential to attract working-class voters across lines of race and ethnicity – a point Ruffini repeatedly and rightly stresses.“Numerous polls have shown Trump reaching nearly 20% of the Black vote and drawing to within 10 points of Biden among Hispanic voters,” he states. If those numbers hold next November, Trump may well be measuring the Oval Office curtains again.Despite what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the progressive “squad” in Congress may say, crime and immigration resonate with voters of color. Open borders and wokeness? Less so. The expression “Latinx” is best kept in faculty lounges.One need look no further than New York. Immigration is no longer simply a Republican talking point. It is bringing the city to a boiling point. The mayor, Eric Adams, and the Biden administration are at loggerheads on the issue. Last Tuesday, residents of the Bronx, a borough made up mostly of people of color, put a Republican on the city council. On eastern Long Island, the GOP gained control of Suffolk county.Ruffini examines New York political history. He reminds us that in 1965, the conservative columnist William F Buckley ran for mayor. He finished at the back of the pack but gained marked support in white working- and middle-class enclaves. His embrace of the police and skepticism of welfare counted.Five years later, in spring 1970, lower Manhattan witnessed the “hard-hat riot”, aimed at anti-war protesters. Later that year, Buckley’s brother, James, won a US Senate seat with a plurality in a three-way race. In the presidential elections of 1972, 1980 and 1984, New York went Republican. Now, though it seems a Democratic sure thing, the state’s population is stagnating, its share of the electoral vote receding.Ruffini is not infallible. Wrongly, he downplays the salience of the Dobbs v Jackson supreme court decision, which gutted the right to abortion, and the subsequent emergence of abortion as a key election issue. He acknowledges that Dobbs provided a boost to Democrats in 2022 but does not spell out how it thwarted an anticipated red wave and hastened Kevin McCarthy’s downfall as Republican speaker.Party of the People contains multiple references to abortion but mentions Dobbs three times only. As for “privacy”, Ruffini never uses the word. “January 6” makes a single appearance – and only in passing. “Insurrection” is not seen. It is almost as if Ruffini is seeking to avoid offending the powers that be.“Trump redefined conservative populism in a secular direction, replacing issues like abortion with immigration and anti-PC rhetoric,” Ruffini tweeted on election night. “Many of his voters voted yes in Ohio.”Yes. But not that many.A little more than one in six Ohio Republicans backed the measure, according to exit polls. On the other hand, 83% of Black voters, 73% of Latinos, more than three-quarters of young voters and five out of eight college graduates identified as pro-choice.Though more conservative than white liberals, voters of color are generally pro-choice. Indeed, in Ohio, their support for abortion access outpaced that found in the general electorate. White voters backed the measure 53%-47%. It passed by 57%-43%.But Democrats should not gloat. The FDR coalition is dead. The party last won by a landslide in 1964. Inflation’s scars remain visible. Kitchen-table issues still count. Trump leads in the polls. Ruffini has a real and meaningful message.
      Party of the People is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      Trump legal team expresses hope classified documents trial will not start in May – as it happened

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      The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that Donald Trump’s legal team is expressing confidence his trial on charges related to keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort will not start in May, when it is currently scheduled.Earlier today, federal judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by the former president, turned down a request to delay the trial’s start date, but also moved back some deadlines related to the classified evidence that will be used in the trial, increasing the likelihood the trial will eventually be postponed.Here’s what Turmp’s lawyers had to say about that:A spending battle brews once again on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are nervously eyeing 17 November, the day when the federal government’s funding expires. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson will reportedly propose over the weekend a bill to keep the government open, with the money running out at differing dates. There are reasons to think both Democrats and at least some Republicans will oppose this idea, and by this time next week, the government may likely be on the brink of another shutdown. Expect this to be a big developing story over the coming days.Here’s what else happened today:
      The FBI seized electronic devices belonging to New York City’s Democratic mayor Eric Adams as part of their investigation into his campaign finances, the New York Times reports.
      Donald Trump mulled in an interview using the FBI and justice department to retaliate against his enemies, if he is elected next year.
      Federal judge Aileen Cannon declined a request from Trump to delay his trial over the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, but his lawyers signaled that they are hopeful she will eventually push its start date back.
      Moderate Republicans reportedly don’t think impeaching Joe Biden is worth it, because the president is already unpopular.
      Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke issued strong criticisms of Biden’s handling of the southern border and immigration policy.
      The New York Times reports that FBI agents seized two phones and an iPad belonging to New York mayor Eric Adams as part of their investigation into the Democrat’s campaign’s finances.Here’s more from the Times:
      F.B.I. agents seized Mayor Eric Adams’s electronic devices early this week in what appeared to be a dramatic escalation of a federal corruption investigation into whether his 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
      The agents approached the mayor on the street and asked his security detail to step away, one of the people said. They climbed into his S.U.V. with him and, pursuant to a court-authorized warrant, took his devices, the person said. The devices — at least two cellphones and an iPad — were returned to the mayor within a matter of days, the people said. Law enforcement investigators with a search warrant can make copies of the data on devices after they seize them.
      It was not immediately clear whether the agents referred to the fund-raising investigation when they took the mayor’s devices.
      The surprise seizure of Mr. Adams’s devices was an extraordinary development and appeared to be the first direct instance of the campaign contribution investigation touching the mayor. Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, said on Wednesday that he is so strident in urging his staff to “follow the law” that he can be almost “annoying.” He laughed at the notion that he had any potential criminal exposure.
      In an interview with Spanish-language network Univision yesterday, Donald Trump signaled he would be willing to use the FBI and justice department to go after his political rivals in a second presidential term, without getting into specifics.But behind the scenes, the former president has named the names of those he would like to go after, the Washington Post reported earlier this week:
      In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.
      In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.
      To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.
      “It would resemble a banana republic if people came into office and started going after their opponents willy-nilly,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia who studies executive power. “It’s hardly something we should aspire to.”
      Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.
      The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed. In the final year of his presidency, some of Trump’s supporters urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down unrest after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but he never did it. Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force and said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.
      Here’s more from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell about what federal judge Aileen Cannon’s decision today in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case tells us about when it may ultimately go to trial:The federal judge overseeing the criminal case charging Donald Trump with retaining classified documents pushed back on Friday several major deadlines for the former president to file pre-trial motions, a move that could have the consequential effect of delaying the start of the trial in Florida.The judge put off until March making the fraught decision about whether to actually delay the trial – currently scheduled for next May – but the new timetable she laid out in a nine-page written order gave little scope for the pre-trial process to finish in time.The order from US district judge Aileen Cannon was positive for Trump, who has made no secret that his overarching legal strategy is to delay beyond the 2024 election in the hopes that winning re-election would allow him to pardon himself or direct the justice department to drop the charges.Trump was indicted this summer with violating the espionage act when he illegally retained classified documents after he left office and conspiring to obstruct the government’s efforts to retrieve them from his Mar-a-Lago club, including defying a grand jury subpoena.But the fact that Trump was charged with retaining national defense information means his case will be tried under the complex rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa, which governs how those documents can be used in court.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that Donald Trump’s legal team is expressing confidence his trial on charges related to keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort will not start in May, when it is currently scheduled.Earlier today, federal judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by the former president, turned down a request to delay the trial’s start date, but also moved back some deadlines related to the classified evidence that will be used in the trial, increasing the likelihood the trial will eventually be postponed.Here’s what Turmp’s lawyers had to say about that:Florida’s Republican state representative Michelle Salzman is facing increasing censure calls and outrage after she said “All of them” in response to her Democratic colleague saying, “How many [dead Palestinians] will be enough?”The Guardian’s Erum Salam reports:The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair-Florida), the US’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said in a statement that Salzman’s remarks were a “chilling call for genocide” and a “direct result of decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by advocates of Israeli apartheid and their eager enablers in government and the media”.The news comes on the heels of the censure of the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in the US Congress, after Tlaib echoed a popular rallying cry for Palestine that some have called antisemitic but others say is a call for Palestinian civil rights.The censure resolution, which was supported by 22 Democrats, punishes Tlaib for allegedly “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel” and “promoting false narratives” about the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.In Florida, calls for Salzman to be censured are being made by those opposed to her comments.“Salzman’s words are incredibly dangerous and dehumanizing to Palestinians here at home and under the Israeli occupation,” the Cair-Florida executive director, Imam Abdullah Jaber, said. “She must face her party’s censure and a public repudiation from all Florida legislators.”For further details, click here:Former president George W Bush said to “stay positive” in response to a question on what advice he would give to the world on Veterans Day.
      “Stay positive because if you study world history or US history, we go through cycles of being down and yet Americans ought to realize how blessed we are to live in this country… The images are grim and, yes, there’s violence, but ultimately love overcomes hate,” he told Fox News.
      Following reports of letters containing fentanyl being mailed to multiple state election offices, Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensberger said that he has been informed that there is another suspicious letter in transit.Speaking to CNN, Raffensberger said:
      “We have been informed by the postal officials that there is a letter in transit so that’s a three to five day transit through their system. Obviously they will try to intercept that when it comes through the Atlanta processing facility but it hasn’t arrived to Georgia yet so we don’t know if it will be intercepted. And that’s why we’ve prepared staff at the Fulton county election office if it does actually make it through the system and it arrives.”
      He added that officials are going to make sure that there is Narcan, the overdose reversal drug, available in all election offices that do receive incoming mail and that staff will be trained on how to administer Narcan.Authorities across the country are currently investigation letters sent to several states’ election offices that contained fentanyl.The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:Law enforcement officials in the US are searching for the people responsible for sending letters with suspicious substances sent to election offices in at least five states, acts some election officials described as “terrorism”.Election offices in Georgia, Nevada, California, Oregon and Washington state all were sent the letters, four of which contained the deadly drug fentanyl, the Associated Press reported. Some of the letters were intercepted before they arrived. The FBI and United States Postal Service are investigating.In Washington, election offices in four counties – Skagit, Spokane, Pierce and King, which includes Seattle – were evacuated as workers counted ballots from Tuesday’s election. Two of the letters tested positive for fentanyl. Steve Hobbs, Washington’s Democratic secretary of state, said the letters were “acts of terrorism to threaten our elections.”For further details, click here:Anti-abortion members of the Ohio General Assembly have responded to the state’s passage of Issue 1 during Tuesday’s election.Condemning the language of the proposal which enshrines abortion rights into the state’s constitution, several dozen anti-abortion state representatives said:
      “Unlike the language of this proposal, we want to be very clear. The vague, intentionally deceptive language of Issue 1 does not clarify the issues of life, parental consent, informed consent, or viability including Partial Birth Abortion, but rather introduces more confusion.
      This initiative failed to mention a single, specific law. We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed based upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state, and we will continue that work.
      A spending battle brews once again on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are nervously eyeing 17 November, the day when the federal government’s funding expires. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson will reportedly propose over the weekend a bill to keep the government open, with the money running out at differing dates. There are reasons to think both Democrats and at least some Republicans will oppose this idea, and by this time next week, the government may likely be on the brink of another shutdown. Expect this to be a big developing story in the coming days.Here’s what else is going on today:
      Donald Trump mulled in an interview using the FBI and justice department to retaliate against his enemies, if elected next year.
      Moderate Republicans reportedly don’t think impeaching Joe Biden is worth it, because the president is already unpopular.
      Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke issued strong criticisms of Biden’s handling of the southern border and immigration policy.
      Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is expected to release his short-term government funding proposal over the weekend, setting the chamber up for a vote next week, NBC News reports:The bill’s prospects remain highly uncertain. House Democrats have rejected the “laddered” approach Johnson is reportedly mulling, which would see government funding expire at different times, and the proposal is unlikely to get far in the Senate, where they hold a majority. Meanwhile, conservative Republicans in the House want to use any funding measure as an opportunity to force the government to cut spending, but that may alienate more moderate Republicans and cost the bill support it needs to pass.Nonetheless, expect this to be a big developing story over the weekend and next week, as the 17 November deadline to fund the government draws nearer. More

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      Outrage grows after ‘chilling call for genocide’ by Florida Republican

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      Outrage continues to grow over a public comment made by a Florida state Republican lawmaker calling for all Palestinians to die.The remarks came during a debate in the state legislature about calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which has so far killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, many of whom are children. The assault came after Hamas fighters attacked Israel from Gaza, killing at least 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostage.In the speech in support of the ceasefire resolution, the Democratic Florida state representative Angie Nixon said: “We are at 10,000 dead Palestinians. How many will be enough?”“All of them,” Michelle Salzman called in reply.Nixon acknowledged the interruption and said: “One of my colleagues just said, ‘All of them.’ Wow.”The Florida state house later voted 104-2 to reject Nixon’s resolution.Salzman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair-Florida), the US’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said in a statement that Salzman’s remarks were a “chilling call for genocide” and a “direct result of decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by advocates of Israeli apartheid and their eager enablers in government and the media”.The news comes on the heels of the censure of the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in the US Congress, after Tlaib echoed a popular rallying cry for Palestine that some have called antisemitic but others say is a call for Palestinian civil rights.The censure resolution, which was supported by 22 Democrats, punishes Tlaib for allegedly “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel” and “promoting false narratives” about the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.In Florida, calls for Salzman to be censured are being made by those opposed to her comments.“Salzman’s words are incredibly dangerous and dehumanizing to Palestinians here at home and under the Israeli occupation,” the Cair-Florida executive director, Imam Abdullah Jaber, said. “She must face her party’s censure and a public repudiation from all Florida legislators.”Hours before Nixon’s speech, Israel agreed to daily four-hour humanitarian pauses. But Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, reportedly rejected a deal for a five-day ceasefire with Palestinian militant groups in Gaza in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages.On Thursday, Joe Biden said there was “no possibility” of a ceasefire. More

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marjorie Taylor Greene unite in push to free Julian Assange

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      Maga Republican and fierce Trump supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene and leftwing Democratic firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have found common ground in freeing Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.The pair are among 16 members of the US Congress who have written directly to president Joe Biden urging the United States to drop its extradition attempts against Assange and halt any prosecutorial proceedings immediately.The group warns continuing the pursuit of Assange risks America’s bilateral relationship with Australia.“It is the duty of journalists to seek out sources, including documentary evidence, in order to report to the public on the activities of the government,” the letter to Biden, first reported by Nine newspapers, states.“The United States must not pursue an unnecessary prosecution that risks criminalising common journalistic practices and thus chilling the work of the free press. We urge you to ensure that this case be brought to a close in as timely a manner as possible.”Assange remains in Belmarsh prison in London as he fights a US attempt to extradite him to face charges – including under the Espionage Act. The charges are in connection with the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, as well as diplomatic cables, in 2010 and 2011.
      Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup
      In September, a cross-party delegation of Australian MPs, which included former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, teal independent Monique Ryan, Greens senators David Shoebridge and Peter Whish-Wilson, conservative Alex Antic and Labor’s Tony Zappia, travelled to America to meet with US representatives over Assange’s case.The group hoped to gain support from American lawmakers in their bid to have the pursuit of Assange dropped ahead of Anthony Albanese’s official visit to Washington.Since coming to power, the Albanese government has been more forward than its predecessors in pushing for Assange’s freedom, but so far the Biden government has rebuffed the calls.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlbanese confirmed he raised Assange’s case again during his meeting with Biden at the White House last month, but Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, urged the Australian government to increase the pressure.Shipton told Guardian Australia: “If this government can get back Cheng Lei from China, why is he so impotent when it comes to Julian and the USA?”With Assange’s avenues for legal appeal against the US extradition diminishing, his supporters fear for his life. More

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      West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin will not seek re-election in 2024 – US politics live

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      West Virginia’s Democratic senator Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek re-election in the Senate.In a statement released on Thursday, Manchin, who has held his Senate seat since 2010, said:
      “After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.
      To the West Virginians who have put their trust in me and fought side by side to make our state better – it has been an honor of my life to serve you. Thank you.
      Every incentive in Washington is designed to make our politics extreme. The growing divide between Democrats and Republicans is paralyzing Congress and worsening our nation’s problems. The majority of Americans are just plain worn out…
      Public service has and continues to drive me every day. That is the vow that I made to my father 40 years ago, and I intend to keep that vow until my dying day.”
      In the statement announcing he would end his Senate career, Joe Manchin said “I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”That line stoked speculation he could launch a third-party presidential run next year, perhaps with the help of centrist group No Labels. Democrats have been fretting over that possibility for months, as a Manchin candidacy could swing voters away from Joe Biden, whose re-election campaign has been dogged by worrying poll numbers.At the Capitol, Politico says some of Manchin’s counterparts don’t believe he has presidential ambitions:There are two main Republicans vying for West Virginia’s Senate seat, which Democrat Joe Manchin just said he would not stand for again.The first is governor Jim Justice, who in 2017 left the Democratic party and joined the GOP at a rally for Donald Trump. “Senator Joe Manchin and I have not always agreed on policy and politics, but we’re both lifelong West Virginians who love this state beyond belief, and I respect and thank him for his many years of public service,” Justice said in a statement after Manchin’s announcement.The second is Alex Mooney, a fifth term House lawmaker representing the northern half of the state. He is what he had to say about Manchin’s departure:The state’s primary elections are scheduled for 14 May of next year.Minutes after Joe Manchin announced he would not run for re-election, Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown made a veiled reference to the West Virginia senator’s decision:Brown represents Ohio, which has supported Republican candidates in the past two presidential elections, albeit by a much smaller percentage than West Virginia. With Manchin gone and almost certain to be replaced by a Republican, Brown’s victory next year is essential if the party has any chance of staying in the majority in the Senate.Following Joe Manchin’s decision not to seek re-election, the Cook Political Report has changed its rating of the race to “solid Republican”.That’s the same rating given to Senate races in other deep-red states like Nebraska, Tennessee and Wyoming:In the 2020 election, West Virginia voted more than 68% for Donald Trump, his second biggest-margin of victory after Wyoming.Joe Manchin first arrived in the Senate in 2010 after a stint as West Virginia’s governor, but the peak of his political power came in the first two years of the Biden administration.Democrats held a 50-seat majority in the Senate those two years, meaning the party had to vote unanimously on legislation that Republicans would not support. While Manchin backed most of Joe Biden’s agenda, he flexed his muscles in the negotiations over Build Back Better, an expansive plan to fight climate change and invest in a host of social programs that the president wanted approved.Manchin opposed several of its measure, including continuing the expanded child tax credit that was credited with cutting child poverty in half in 2021. Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, then a member of the Democratic party, also rejected tax changes to offset some of the bill’s costs. Negotiations over the legislation dragged all through 2021 and into 2022, and appeared to have stalled completely by that summer.Then, suddenly, Manchin and the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer announced they had reached an agreement on a different bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, which included some measures to fight climate change and lower prescription drug costs, but lacked some of Build Back Better’s most expansive proposals.For climate activists who blamed the West Virginia senator and coal businessman for defanging attempts to lower America’s carbon emissions, it was a surprising change in course. Here’s more from the Guardian’s Oliver Milman’s piece from last year analyzing Manchin’s role in the agreement:
      Climate advocates reacted with surprise and delight to Joe Manchin’s decision to back a sweeping bill to combat the climate crisis, with analysts predicting the legislation will bring the US close to its target of slashing planet-heating emissions.
      The West Virginia senator, who has made millions from his ownership of a coal-trading company, had seemingly thwarted Joe Biden’s hopes of passing meaningful climate legislation – only to reveal on Wednesday his support for a $369bn package to support renewable energy and electric vehicle rollout.
      The move by the centrist Democrat shocked many of Manchin’s colleagues, who despaired after more than 18 months of seemingly fruitless negotiations with the lawmaker, a crucial vote in an evenly divided Senate.
      “Holy shit,” tweeted Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota. “Stunned, but in a good way.”
      Should the bill pass both chambers of Congress and be signed by Biden, it will be the biggest and arguably first piece of climate legislation ever enacted by the US. The world’s largest historical carbon polluter has repeatedly failed to act on the climate crisis due to missed opportunities, staunch Republican opposition and the machinations of the fossil fuel lobby.
      The climate spending, part of a broader bill called the Inflation Reduction Act, “has the potential to be a historic turning point” said Al Gore, the former vice-president.
      Joe Manchin’s decision not to seek re-election makes Democrats’ quest to preserve their majority in the Senate even more difficult.Manchin was one of three Democratic senators representing red states who are facing voters next year, and the party is not viewed as having a strong replacement candidate in West Virginia, a deeply Republican state.The focus now shifts to Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, both of whom have said they will stand again, but face difficult paths to victory. There is also the question of whether Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, will stand again in purple state Arizona, or if she will be replaced by a Democrat. The GOP may also launch offensives against incumbent Democratic senators in swing states Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and try to win the open Senate seat in Michigan.Even if Democrats fail in West Virginia but win all the other races, they could still lose their Senate majority. That best-case scenario would give the party only 50 seats, one short of a majority, and control of the chamber would come down to whether Joe Biden wins re-election, or is replaced by a Republican.Israel’s decision to allow hours-long pauses to its bombing campaign in Gaza is “heartless” and falls far short of what is necessary to protect civilian life in the territory, said Congresswoman Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat who is the lead sponsor of a ceasefire resolution.The White House said on Thursday that Israel has agreed to four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in its bombardment of northern Gaza, part of a negotiated deal to allow aid and assistance to flow to the enclave’s increasingly desperate population of 2.3 million.“How dare we treat humans in that way,” Bush said, her voice rising with anger. “How dare we be so careless and so inhumane and heartless to decide that four hours is enough time to get you some stuff so that you can live a little bit longer until the bombs hit. How dare we? How dare we treat humans as if we don’t understand what it’s like to be human.”“That’s not the way,” Bush added. “We don’t want four hours. We don’t want 16 hours. We don’t want 22 hours. We want a ceasefire now.”The Israeli military has said it has not agreed to a ceasefire but that it will continue to allow “tactical, local pauses” to let in humanitarian aid. It comes as Biden administration officials push Israel to agree for a longer stoppage in the fighting as part of an effort to free the hostages held by the militant group.Asked about the prospect of a formal ceasefire on Thursday, Biden said that there was “no possibility” at the moment.His response angered a group of veterans gathered with Bush on Capitol Hill to call for an end to the hostilities. Drawing on their own recollections of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, they said peace and security could only be won through diplomacy.Shaking with anger, Brittany Ramos DeBarros, a combat veteran and former army captain, addressed Biden directly.“Mr President, you are the commander in chief of one of the most powerful militaries on the face of this planet in the history of the world,” she said. “How can you be so powerful and so weak as to say that you are incapable of negotiating peace?”Bush was also joined by congresswomen Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Delia Ramirez of Illinois, who are among the 18 Democratic sponsors of the ceasefire legislation.Bush vowed to keep up the pressure on the White House to advocate for a ceasefire.“If that is his position today, there is also a this afternoon and a tonight. There is a tomorrow. There is a Saturday and a Sunday,” she said. “I expect that there will be change. There will be change because … the people that elected this president are screaming out saying we want a ceasefire now.”In response to the announcement from West Virginia’s Joe Manchin that he will not seek Senate re-election in 2024, the National Republican Senatorial Committee said:
      “We like our odds in West Virginia.”
      West Virginia’s Democratic senator Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek re-election in the Senate.In a statement released on Thursday, Manchin, who has held his Senate seat since 2010, said:
      “After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate, but what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.
      To the West Virginians who have put their trust in me and fought side by side to make our state better – it has been an honor of my life to serve you. Thank you.
      Every incentive in Washington is designed to make our politics extreme. The growing divide between Democrats and Republicans is paralyzing Congress and worsening our nation’s problems. The majority of Americans are just plain worn out…
      Public service has and continues to drive me every day. That is the vow that I made to my father 40 years ago, and I intend to keep that vow until my dying day.”
      Iowa’s Republican governor Kim Reynolds said that “it feels good to get in the game” after endorsing Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis for president. The Associated Press reports:After seven months of hosting Republican presidential candidates in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds said it “feels good to get in the game” with her endorsement of of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But the popular Iowa governor declined to say whether other candidates should concede and throw their support behind him as well, even as she acknowledged that a wider field could advantage former President Donald Trump. “At some point, if we don’t narrow the field, it’s going to be hard to … maybe, you know, that helps Trump,” Reynolds said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But I think that is for them to decide.”In making the endorsement earlier this week, Reynolds broke with a longstanding tradition of Iowa governors staying neutral in their party’s presidential contests, the first in the GOP nomination calendar…Still, Reynolds said DeSantis is best poised for victory in the general election, a race she doesn’t think Trump can win without attracting voters beyond his base. DeSantis “won in demographics that Republicans have never really won in Florida,” she said. More

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      Man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi absorbed conspiracy theories, trial hears

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      The trial of a man accused of breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and bludgeoning her husband with a hammer has begun, with a defense attorney arguing that her client, David DePape, was caught up in conspiracy theories.Paul Pelosi, who was 82 at the time, was attacked by DePape in the early hours of 28 October last year and hospitalized with a skull fracture and injuries to his right arm and hands. The encounter, which was captured by police body-cam footage, sent shockwaves through the political world just days before last year’s midterm elections.“There’s too much violence … political violence. Too much hatred, too much vitriol,” Joe Biden said shortly after the attack. “Enough is enough is enough.”The defense attorney Jodi Linker said on Thursday in opening statements in court in San Francisco that she would not dispute that DePape attacked the former House speaker’s husband. Instead, she will argue that DePape believed “with every ounce of his body” he was taking action to stop corruption and the abuse of children by politicians and actors.“This is not a whodunit. But what the government fails to acknowledge is the ‘whydunit’ – and the ‘why’ matters in this case,” Linker said.DePape pleaded not guilty to attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official with intent to retaliate against the official for performance of their duties. Paul Pelosi is expected to testify next week.The federal prosecutor Laura Vartain Horn told the jurors that DePape started planning the attack in August, and that the evidence and FBI testimony will show he researched his targets online, collecting phone numbers and addresses, even paying for a public records service to find information about Nancy Pelosi and others.During her opening statement, Vartain Horn showed a photo of Paul Pelosi lying in a pool of blood. She also played a call DePape made to a television station repeating conspiracy theories.“The evidence in this case is going show that when the defendant used this hammer to break into the Pelosi’s home he intended to kidnap Nancy Pelosi,” Vartain Horn said, holding a hammer inside a plastic evidence bag.DePape is known to have a history of spreading far-right conspiracy theories, posting rants on a blog and an online forum about aliens, communists, religious minorities and global elites. He questioned the results of the 2020 election and echoed the baseless rightwing QAnon conspiracy theory that claims the US government is run by a cabal of devil-worshipping pedophiles. The websites were taken down shortly after his arrest.If convicted, DePape faces life in prison. He was also charged in state court with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, residential burglary and other felonies. He pleaded not guilty to those charges. A state trial has not been scheduled.In the courtroom on Thursday were Christine Pelosi, one of the Pelosis’ daughters, as well as Gypsy Taub, DePape’s ex-girlfriend, and Taub and DePape’s two teenage sons. Taub called DePape’s name softly and blew a kiss, and he smiled and waved in return.A Canadian citizen, DePape moved to the United States more than 20 years ago after falling in love with Taub, a Berkeley pro-nudity activist well-known in the Bay Area, his stepfather, Gene DePape said. In recent years, David DePape had been homeless and struggling with drug abuse and mental illness, Taub told local media.Federal prosecutors say DePape smashed his shoulder through a glass panel on a door in the back of the Pelosis’ Pacific Heights mansion and confronted a sleeping Paul Pelosi, who was wearing boxer shorts and a pajama top.“Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” DePape asked, standing over Paul Pelosi at about 2am holding a hammer and zip ties, according to court records. Nancy Pelosi was in Washington and under the protection of her security detail, which does not extend to family members.Paul Pelosi called 911 and two police officers showed up and witnessed DePape strike Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer, knocking him unconscious, court records showed.After his arrest, DePape, 43, allegedly told a San Francisco detective he wanted to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage. He said that if she told him the truth, he would let her go, and if she lied, he was going to “break her kneecaps” to show other members of Congress there were “consequences to actions”, according to prosecutors.DePape, who lived in a garage in the Bay Area city of Richmond and had been doing odd carpentry jobs to support himself, allegedly told authorities he had other targets, including a women’s and queer studies professor, the California governor Gavin Newsom, the actor Tom Hanks and Joe Biden’s son Hunter. More

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      US Democratic senator Joe Manchin will not seek re-election in 2024

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      West Virginia’s controversial Democratic US senator Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek re-election in 2024 and will instead “fight to unite the middle”.The 76-year-old senator, who for years has held an outsized degree of power within the Democratic party and often defied its leadership, appeared in July at an event held by a political group exploring a third-party presidential bid.Manchin’s appearance with the centrist No Labels group fueled speculation that he was considering a run for the presidency, a scenario that alarmed Democrats as it could weaken Joe Biden’s candidacy for another term in the White House.On Thursday afternoon, Manchin put out a statement saying: “After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate.”He added: “But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”No Labels sees Manchin as a potential candidate for its centrist platform. Although No Labels, which has been around since 2010, mostly behind the scenes, has stated it will not field a candidate if their platform does not gain traction or if it appears it would swing the vote in favor of one party, the group has been actively fundraising and is seeking to get on ballots across the country.Maryanne Martini, a spokesperson for No Labels, released a statement praising Manchin as “a longtime ally” but declining to comment on his potential to run for president.“Regarding our No Labels unity presidential ticket, we are gathering input from our members across the country to understand the kind of leaders they would like to see in the White House,” she said. “As we have said from the beginning, we will make a decision by early 2024 about whether we will nominate a unity presidential ticket and who will be on it.”Opinion polls show dissatisfaction with the current leading White House candidates, both the incumbent Biden and the Republican frontrunner Trump.Manchin’s decision to step down will also jeopardise Democrats’ narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate. Republicans hold the governor’s office and the rest of the congressional delegation in a state that Trump won by a wide margin over Biden in 2020. Manchin won his last election with just 49.6% of the vote, 0.3 percentage points ahead of his Republican rival, in 2018.The US senator Steve Daines, the head of Republican senators’ campaign arm, said in a brief statement: “We like our odds in West Virginia.”The state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, has already launched a campaign for his party’s nomination for Senate. Justice was a Democrat when he was first elected governor in 2016, but a year into office he switched parties and went on to cruise to re-election, winning 65% of the vote in 2020. Trump has endorsed Justice.Justice said on Thursday: “Senator Joe Manchin and I have not always agreed on policy and politics, but we’re both lifelong West Virginians who love this state beyond belief, and I respect and thank him for his many years of public service.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionManchin’s departure will raise the stakes for Democrats in several other Senate races including in Republican-leaning Montana and Ohio and highly competitive Pennsylvania and Arizona.Manchin, who took office in 2010, has been a key vote on every major piece of legislation of Biden’s tenure as a moderate representing an increasingly conservative state. His support was critical to the passage of Biden’s sweeping $1tn infrastructure law, one of the president’s key domestic accomplishments.Together with the Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, who switched her registration to independent from Democrat in December, Manchin has secured major concessions and the scaling back of his party’s legislative goals, winning him applause from conservatives and condemnations from many fellow Democrats.The pair stood together in protecting the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires that 60 of the chamber’s 100 members agree on most legislation, in the face of intense opposition from their own party.Manchin’s defence of the filibuster helped block Democrats’ hopes of passing bills to protect abortion rights after the supreme court last year overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had established the right nationwide.Republican senators praised Manchin’s commitment to bipartisanship.The Utah senator Mitt Romney, who is also not seeking re-election, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “I will miss this American patriot in the Senate. But our friendship and our commitment to American values will not end.” More

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      The Republican presidential debate was a televised temper tantrum | Moira Donegan

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      Because I did something terrible in a past life and have to be punished for it in this one, on Wednesday night I watched the Republican presidential debate. It was the third in a series of televised temper tantrums by a dwindling field of eligible candidates, all pretending that there is a meaningful contest for the Republican presidential nomination and that any of them have the slightest chance of winning it.In the past, these events have ranged from the chaotic to the deranged, as characters like Tim Scott put a smiling, chipper, aw-shucks sheen on a lurid vision of enforced male supremacy, Ron DeSantis publicly indulges wild fantasies about sending American soldiers to conduct summary executions of Mexican drug cartel leaders on the soil of a sovereign foreign nation, and Chris Christie puts on a poor imitation of someone who believes in his own relevance.And like the past debates, there was plenty of rancor and personal barbs on Wednesday night, plenty of morbid daydreaming about future regimes of social control, and plenty of fact-free declarations about the supposed causes of America’s plights. There was yelling, and there were insults. Somehow, the whole thing still managed to be incredibly tedious.Donald Trump, the man who will be the Republican nominee unless he dies before next November, was not on stage. The candidates did their usual dance of trying not to attack Trump or alienate his base – which meant, in effect, that none of them could make much of a case for themselves. Nikki Haley, once a member of Trump’s cabinet, somewhat weakly suggested that Trump was not the right candidate “for now”. Even Chris Christie, whose candidacy is largely seen as a kamikaze mission meant to hurt Trump rather than a serious bid for office, could barely manage to point out that the frontrunner’s legal problems – he faces 91 felony charges – would probably distract him from the duties of office.For all of the five contenders on stage – Haley, Christie, DeSantis, Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy – their very candidacy suggests a discomfort with Trump: if they really thought he was the best guy for the job, they wouldn’t be running. But a taboo on criticizing Trump remains the one constant that unites the fractious, dysfunctional and internally chaotic Republican party, the one thing that all of them know it would end their political careers to do. They couldn’t go after Trump. So they went after each other.It would be wrong to say that the candidates’ attacks on one another were exactly ideologically driven. As they gave rambling, euphemism-laden, largely dishonest answers to a series of policy questions, it was hard to discern anything like a coherent policy orientation from any of them – save for Haley, who as in every debate emphasized her foreign policy credentials and seemed interested in reviving some early-century neoconservative positions about the efficacy and usefulness of American foreign intervention.Others wandered and waffled in their policy prescriptions: when they were asked a question that confused or frustrated them, as happened frequently, both the Florida governor DeSantis and South Carolina senator Tim Scott would pivot to bizarre non-sequiturs about closing the southern border. Ramaswamy pushed an isolationist, “America-first” approach, but nevertheless echoed calls by DeSantis to use the military to discipline southern border immigration. (Ramaswamy, it should be noted, did distinguish himself by also cautioning about crime and immigration at the Canadian border. “Build both walls,” he said.)Tim Scott, a Christian conservative pitching his candidacy as a return to traditional social hierarchies, “faith-based morals” and compassion, called for a military strike on Iran. They decried protests in support of Palestinian human rights as “pro-Hamas” and vowed to deport foreign students who participated, and to cut off the funding for any college or university that did not sufficiently suppress pro-Palestinian speech. They seemed united in encouraging Israel to take a genocidal, eliminationist approach to Palestinians in Gaza, with DeSantis telling Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job”, Haley instructing him to “finish them”, and Ramaswamy offering a disturbing fantasy about severed Palestinian heads being displayed on spikes. The candidates also largely agreed, as it happened, that they would cut Medicare and social security benefits. They set about arguing with each other about how much.The biggest rivalry of the night was between a pair who are emerging as recurring antagonists in these debates: Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. The pair have opposing visions of foreign policy, with Haley calling for greater engagement and intervention abroad and Ramaswamy serving as a conduit for the Republican party’s post-2016 return to nativist isolationism. But they also represent two distinct career paths for Republican politicians. Haley’s rabid, sadistic conservatism is the result of an old-fashioned kind of political vetting – a long career of political ascent, coupled with an affect of credentialed competence. Ramaswamy, by contrast, is a public buffoon, someone with no political experience who has gained his spot on the debate stage with provocative, hateful, algorithmically boosted social media content of outlandish public quackery.Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that the two had their most pointed clash over TikTok. The pair had been fighting all night: Ramaswamy made a misogynist remark calling Haley “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels”. Haley shot back that her shoes were five-inch heels, and quipped, somewhat nonsensically, that she wore them “for ammunition”. But they fought most bitterly when moderators asked the candidates if they would ban TikTok, the social media app that has become a bete noire on the right. Ramaswamy jumped in to point out that Haley had criticized him for campaigning on TikTok, even though her adult daughter also used the app – he suggested that Haley was not exercising adequate control over her family. Haley told him to leave her daughter out of it, and called him scum.It was a mistake, and it was also, perhaps, one of the more relatable moments for Nikki Haley, a politician so stuffy and rehearsed that one wonders if she has ever had a thought that does not occur to her in a pollster’s voice. Ramaswamy is scum: he’s self-interested and cynical, indifferent to truth, with a black hole of ambition in the place where other people might have a soul. She was right to be angry. But public expressions of anger rarely serve women.But what might have been most conspicuous about the debate was what was largely absent from it: for more than an hour and a half, the moderators did not ask about abortion, even though the issue has dominated American electoral politics up and down the ballot for nearly a year and a half. Anger over the overturning of Roe v Wade has become an abiding motivator for voters, with the issue persisting in relevance long after most pundits thought it would fade from national attention, and it is driving unlikely wins for Democratic candidates and their priorities. Abortion had delivered electoral wins for Democrats just on Tuesday, when the issue drove voters to the polls nationwide. Abortion proved to be a decisive issue not only in Ohio, where an abortion rights amendment to the state constitution was ratified by a wide margin, but also played a pivotal role in races in Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.When the moderators finally asked about “the way forward” on abortion, in their last question of the night, the candidates mostly hemmed and hawed. Some backtracked or hedged their anti-choice stances; others doubled down. They could not deliver a real answer for the same reasons they could not attack Donald Trump: neither stating their real positions against abortion or admitting that the issue has become a political albatross for the Republican party would be viable paths for their continued careers. They’re not ready to make a real argument on the issue to the American people. Luckily for them, I suppose, none of them will have to.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More