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      Biden faces calls not to seek re-election as shock poll rattles senior Democrats

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      Senior Democrats have sounded the alarm after an opinion poll showed Joe Biden trailing the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in five out of six battleground states exactly a year before the presidential election.Trump leads in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, with Biden ahead in Wisconsin, according to a survey published on Sunday by the New York Times and Siena College. Biden beat Trump in all six states in 2020 but the former president now leads by an average of 48% to 44% across these states in a hypothetical rematch.Additional findings released on Monday, however, showed that if Trump were to be convicted of criminal charges against him, some of his support in some swing states would erode by about 6%, which could be enough to tip the electoral college in Biden’s favour.Even so, the survey is in line with a series of recent polls that show the race too close for comfort for many Trump foes as voters express doubts about Biden’s age – the oldest US president in history turns 81 later this month – and handling of the economy, prompting renewed debate over whether he should step aside to make way for a younger nominee.“It’s very late to change horses; a lot will happen in the next year that no one can predict & Biden’s team says his resolve to run is firm,” David Axelrod, a former strategist for President Barack Obama, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “He’s defied CW [conventional wisdom] before but this will send tremors of doubt thru the party – not ‘bed-wetting,’ but legitimate concern.”Bill Kristol, director of the Defending Democracy Together advocacy organisation and a former Republican official, tweeted: “It’s time. President Biden has served our country well. I’m confident he’ll do so for the next year. But it’s time for an act of personal sacrifice and public spirit. It’s time to pass the torch to the next generation. It’s time for Biden to announce he won’t run in 2024.”Andrew Yang, who lost to Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary, added: “If Joe Biden were to step aside, he would go down in history as an accomplished statesman who beat Trump and achieved a great deal. If he decides to run again it may go down as one of the great overreaches of all time that delivers us to a disastrous Trump second term.”The New York Times and Siena poll suggests that Biden’s multiracial and multigenerational coalition, critical to his success in 2020, is decaying. Voters under age 30 favour the president by only a single percentage point, his lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Trump’s edge in rural regions.Black voters – a core Biden demographic – are now registering 22% support in these states for Trump, a level that the New York Times reported was unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times. The president’s staunch support for Israel in the current Middle East crisis has also prompted criticism from young and progressive voters.Survey respondents in swing states say they trust Trump over Biden on the economy by a 22-point margin. Some 71% say Biden is “too old”, including 54% of his own supporters. Just 39% felt the same about Trump, who is himself 77 years old.Electability was central to Biden’s argument for the nomination three years ago but the poll found a generic, unnamed Democrat doing much better with an eight-point lead over Trump. Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota has launched a long-shot campaign against Biden in the Democratic primary, contending that the president’s anaemic poll numbers are cause for a dramatic change of course.Next year’s election could be further complicated by independent runs from the environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr and the leftwing academic Cornel West.Trump is dominating the Republican presidential primary and plans to skip Wednesday’s third debate in Miami, Florida, in favour of holding a campaign rally. He spent Monday taking the witness stand in a New York civil fraud trial. He is also facing 91 criminal indictments in four jurisdictions.The Biden campaign played down the concerns, drawing a comparison with Democratic incumbent Obama’s 2012 victory over Republican Mitt Romney. Biden’s spokesperson, Kevin Munoz, said in a statement: “Predictions more than a year out tend to look a little different a year later. Don’t take our word for it: Gallup predicted an eight-point loss for President Obama only for him to win handedly a year later.”Munoz added that Biden’s campaign “is hard at work reaching and mobilizing our diverse, winning coalition of voters one year out on the choice between our winning, popular agenda and Maga [Make America great again] Republicans’ unpopular extremism. We’ll win in 2024 by putting our heads down and doing the work, not by fretting about a poll.”The margin of sampling error for each state in the Sunday poll is between 4.4 and 4.8 percentage points, which is greater than Trump’s reported advantage in Pennsylvania.Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast and a former conservative radio host, wrote on X: “Ultimately, 2024 is not about re-electing Joe Biden. It is about the urgent necessity of stopping the return of Donald J Trump to the presidency. The question is how.” More

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      Why are Republicans still supporting Donald Trump? – video

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      Despite facing multiple criminal charges, Donald Trump remains the frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. But in South Carolina, a traditionally conservative southern state, a split is opening up between Trump loyalists and more moderate Republicans who are fearful of what their party has become. The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone investigate More

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      Renegade review: Adam Kinzinger on why he left Republican ranks

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      Adam Kinzinger represented a reliably Republican district in the US House for six terms. He voted to impeach Donald Trump over the insurrection and with Liz Cheney was one of two Republicans on the January 6 committee. Like the former Wyoming congresswoman, he earned the ire of Trump and the GOP base.A lieutenant colonel and air force pilot, Kinzinger read the terrain and declined to run again. In his memoir, he looks back at his life, family and time in the US military. He also examines the transformation of the Republican party into a Trumpian vessel. With the assistance of Michael D’Antonio, biographer of Mike Pence, he delivers a steady and well-crafted read.Kinzinger finds the Republicans sliding toward authoritarianism, alienating him from a world he once knew. On 8 January 2021, two days after the Trump-inspired coup attempt, he received a letter signed by 11 members of his family, excoriating him for calling for the president to be removed.“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!’ the letter began. “We were once proud of your accomplishments! Instead, you go against your Christian principles and join ‘the Devil’s army’ (Democrats and the fake news media).”The word “disappointment was underlined three times”, Kinzinger counts. “God once.”Elected in 2010 with the backing of the Tea Party, once in office, Kinzinger distanced himself from the Republican fringe. The movement felt frenzied. Hyper-caffeinated. He cast his lot with Eric Cantor, House majority leader and congressman from Virginia. “Overtly ambitious”, in Kinzinger’s view, Cantor also presented himself as “serious, sober and cerebral”. Eventually, Cantor found himself out of step with the enraged core of the party. In 2014, he was defeated in a primary.Cantor was too swampy for modern Republican tastes. Out of office, he is a senior executive at an investment bank.Simply opposing Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act wasn’t enough. With America’s first Black president in the White House, performative politics and conspiracy theories took over.Kevin McCarthy, deposed as speaker last month, earns Kinzinger’s scorn – and rightly.“I was not surprised he was ousted,” Kinzinger told NPR. “And frankly, I think it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”On the page, Kinzinger paints McCarthy as weak, limitlessly self-abasing and a bully. He put himself at the mercy of Matt Gaetz, the Florida extremist, prostrated himself before Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia extremist, and endured 15 rounds of balloting on the House floor to be allowed the speaker’s gavel – an illusion of a win.McCarthy behaved like “an attention-seeking high school senior who readily picked on anyone who didn’t fall in line”, Kinzinger writes. The California congressman even tried, if feebly, to physically intimidate his fellow Republican.“Once, I was standing in the aisle that runs from the floor to the back of the [House] chamber,” Kinzinger remembers. “As [McCarthy] passed, with his security man and some of his boys, he veered towards me, hit me with his shoulder and then kept going.”Apparently, McCarthy forgot Kinzinger did stints in war zones.Kinzinger also takes McCarthy to task for his shabby treatment of Cheney, at the time the No 3 House Republican. On 1 January 2021, on a caucus call, she warned that 6 January would be a “dark day” if they “indulged in the fantasy” that they could overturn Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.McCarthy was having none of it. “I just want to be clear: Liz doesn’t speak for the conference,” he said. “She speaks for herself.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat, Kinzinger writes, was “unnecessary and disrespectful, and it infuriated me”.These days, McCarthy faces the prospect of a Trump-fueled primary challenge. But he is not alone in evoking Kinzinger’s anger. Kinzinger also has tart words for Mitch McConnell and his performance post-January 6. The Senate minority leader was more intent on retaining power than dealing with the havoc wrought by Trump and his minions, despite repeatedly sniping at him.When crunch time came, McConnell followed the pack. Kinzinger bemoans McConnell’s vote to acquit in the impeachment trial, ostensibly because Trump had left office, and then his decision to castigate Trump on the Senate floor when it no longer mattered.“It took a lot of cheek, nerve, chutzpah, gall and, dare I say it, balls for McConnell to talk this way,” Kinzinger bristles, “since he personally blocked the consideration of the case until Trump departed.”Kinzinger devotes considerable space to his own faith. An evangelical Protestant, he is highly critical of Christian nationalism as theology and as a driving force in the Republican party. He draws a direct line between religion and January 6. Proximity between the cross, a makeshift gallows and calls for Mike Pence to be hanged was not happenstance.“Had there not been some of these errant prophecies, this idea that God has ordained it to be Trump, I’m not sure January 6 would have happened like it did,” Kinzinger said last year. “You have people today that, literally, I think in their heart – they may not say it – but they equate Donald Trump with the person of Jesus Christ.”In his book, Kinzinger echoes Russell Moore, former head of public policy of the Southern Baptist Convention: “Moore’s view of Christianity was consistent with traditional theology, which does not have a place for religious nationalism. Nothing in the Bible said the world would be won over by American Christianity.”Looking at 2024, Kinzinger casts the election as “a simple question of democracy or no democracy … if it was Joe Biden and Donald Trump, I don’t think there’s any question I would vote for Joe Biden”.
      Renegade is published in the US by Penguin Random House More

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      Rashida Tlaib claims in video that Biden supports Palestinian genocide

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      Michigan Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, has released a video accusing Joe Biden of supporting the “genocide of the Palestinian people”.Tlaib has been a withering critic of Biden’s staunch backing of the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza and the White House refusal to listen to demands from some progressive Democrats to back calls for a ceasefire.The video represents by far her most blunt criticism of Biden and his administration and includes a warning that she believes his stance on the war will hurt his re-election chances in 2024, as Michigan has a significant Arab American population.“Mr President, the American people are not with you on this one,” Tlaib, who has called for an immediate ceasefire in the Israeli offensive on Gaza, said in the video on the platform X, warning: “We will remember in 2024.”The post continues with an overlay of lettering: “Joe Biden supported the genocide of the Palestinian people. The American people won’t forget. Biden, support a cease-fire now. Or don’t count on us in 2024.”This week Tlaib fought off an attempt in Congress led by extremist Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene to formally reprimand her for “antisemitic activity, sympathizing with terrorist organizations and leading an insurrection” after she participated in a pro-Palestinian protest in which she aired the accusation of an Israeli genocide of Palestinians.Tlaib has faced criticism from within her own party. Last week, a pro-Israel Democratic group began airing a TV ad in Detroit criticizing the congresswoman, one of two Muslim women in the legislative body, for voting against US funding of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and a resolution condemning the 7 October Hamas cross-border attack.Tlaib’s video post highlights a growing issue for Biden, one that often splits Democratic support down generational lines as well as political ones. Tlaib is among 18 Democrats from the mostly younger, progressive-leaning wing of the party co-sponsoring a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.Last week, a senior Democratic senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois, also called for a ceasefire – but only if Israeli hostages held by Hamas were released. “Whatever the rationale from the beginning has now reached an intolerable level. We need to have a resolution in the Middle East that gives some promise to the future,” Durbin told CNN.The video posted by Tlaib counter-posed comments by Biden on US support for Israel with film of bodies lying in the rubble of Gaza, children wounded by Israeli airstrikes and global protests against the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in response to the deadly 7 October Hamas cross-border attack.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOne clip features a demonstration in Michigan in which protesters chanted “from the river to the sea” – a chant that many Jews and Israelis view as calling for the eradication of Israel, though others say it can have a multitude of meanings.In a follow-up post on X, formerly Twitter, Tlaib stated: “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate.”Tlaib has become a lightning rod for divisions in the US with some of her own party and Republicans saying she has not condemned Hamas fervently enough and others saying she is a victim of Islamaphobia and hostility toward those who advocate for Palestinian civil rights. More

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      Nikki Haley’s unexpected rise from ‘scrappy’ underdog to Trump’s closest rival

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      On Monday, Nikki Haley returned to the building where her political career began to formally submit the paperwork to appear on the Republican presidential primary ballot in her home state of South Carolina. Haley held up her filing for the cameras. In loopy writing she had scrawled: “Let’s do this!”The exclamation punctuated Haley’s emergence as a viable alternative to Donald Trump. It comes nearly 20 years after Haley’s election to the South Carolina statehouse, having bested a 30-year Republican incumbent in a come-from-behind victory that stunned her party and began her unlikely ascent to the governor’s mansion and then to become Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.“I’ve always been the underdog,” Haley said in remarks at the statehouse on Monday. “I enjoy that. It’s what makes me scrappy.”In a Republican primary still thoroughly dominated by Trump, Haley is enjoying, for now, the next best thing: an unexpected rise to second place.For Republicans desperate to move on from Trump, the 51-year-old’s “adult-in-the-room” candidacy presents a compelling choice: a conservative leader with executive experience and a foreign policy hawk who pushed “America First” on a global stage. Her record, combined with her personal story as the daughter of Indian immigrants, would be hard to beat in a general election, her proponents argue, and would help broaden Republicans’ appeal among women, suburbanites and independents – groups that recoiled from the party during the Trump years.A pair of strong debate performances, a consolidating field and a sharp new focus on foreign policy following Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel have helped elevate Haley’s profile – and prospects – as she woos Republican voters and donors.In the early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, polls show Haley surging past Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor whose campaign has stalled ever since he entered the race as de facto runner-up to Trump. She is also gaining ground in Iowa, which launches the Republican nominating process.In a survey released on Monday by the Des Moines Register, Haley climbed 10 points to 16%, putting her even with DeSantis as he struggles to break through against Trump.But underscoring just how difficult it will be for any candidate not named Trump to win the nomination, the poll found that the twice-impeached former president now facing four criminal indictments maintained a 27-point lead in Iowa, less than three months before the state’s caucuses.“It is slow and steady wins the race,” Haley said, previewing her strategy at the capitol building on Monday. She predicted the once-sprawling Republican field would winnow considerably after Iowa and New Hampshire before the race turns to her “sweet state of South Carolina” where she vowed: “We’ll finish it.”“I’ve got one more felIa I’ve gotta catch up to,” Haley told the crowd, “and I am determined to do it.”Last month, Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence, ended his bid for the White House. Before that the former Republican congressman Will Hurd, suspended his campaign and endorsed Haley. In an op-ed, he argued that she has “the character and credentials to lead, the willingness to take on Mr. Trump, and the conservative record needed to beat Joe Biden”.That is the essence of Haley’s pitch to voters: that she is the most electable. To argue her case, she points to polling that shows her beating Biden in a hypothetical general election matchup.On the campaign trail, she likes to remind Republican voters that the party has lost the popular vote in the last seven out of eight presidential elections. “That’s nothing to be proud of,” she told the Daily Show guest host Charlamagne Tha God on Wednesday.Electability is the strongest argument Trump’s Republican rivals can make to voters, said Gunner Ramer, political director of the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Pac. But it’s almost certainly not enough to pry the nomination from him.There was a window after Republicans’ poor showing in the 2022 midterms when Trump appeared vulnerable to a primary challenge, he said. But his grip on the party has not only recovered since then, each indictment against him has seemed to harden the loyalty he inspires from his followers.“Her campaign is something out of 2015,” Ramer said. “It’s a reminder of what a competent Republican presidential campaign could look like if it were 2015. But we are in an era of a Donald Trump-led and inspired Republican party.”Strategists say Haley’s path to the nomination would probably require a strong performance in New Hampshire and an even better one – if not an upset – in South Carolina to send her into Super Tuesday as the clear Trump alternative.Despite growing calls for the Republican field to consolidate behind Haley, polls still show her trailing far behind Trump in both states. But longtime supporters say not to underestimate her, especially not in her home state, where she’s never lost an election.“In South Carolina, the same people who voted for Donald Trump for president twice have voted for Nikki Haley for governor twice,” said Katon Dawson, a former chair of the South Carolina Republican party who supports Haley. “It’s early yet.”While Trump has been holding his signature rallies between courtroom appearances and avoiding the debate stage, Haley has kept a frenetic campaign schedule, embracing the retail politics that she became known for in South Carolina. This week, she spoke to an overflow crowd at a diner in New Hampshire, where she was joined by the state’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, a prominent Trump critic whose endorsement is highly coveted.“Are you ready to endorse me?” she teased.“Getting closer every day,” he replied.The clearest sign of Haley’s momentum may be the attention she’s drawing from her former boss.“Donald Trump isn’t stupid. He knows a threat when he sees one,” said Preya Samsundar, a spokesperson for a pro-Haley Super Pac. “And the fact that he’s zeroing in on Nikki instead of DeSantis is very telling.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt a recent campaign rally in Iowa, Trump, who used to focus his ire almost exclusively on DeSantis, assailed Haley as a “highly overrated person”. Repeatedly referring to her by the derogatory nickname “Birdbrain”, Trump complained to the crowd that Haley had broken her promise to him that she would not run against him for the Republican nomination if he ran in 2024.Haley’s turn in the spotlight will inevitably invite more scrutiny. Ahead of next week’s Republican debate in Florida, Haley and DeSantis have ramped up their attacks on each other, tussling over who has a more hardline track record on immigration and foreign policy among other policy issues.In a spiky back-and-forth, DeSantis accused Haley of wanting to resettle refugees from Gaza in the United States, to which Haley is firmly opposed. She has assailed DeSantis for distorting her words.DeSantis’s team has waved off any suggestion that he and Haley’s campaigns are on opposite trajectories, arguing that the Florida governor remains Trump’s strongest challenger.“This is a two-man race, and Team Trump knows it,” Bryan Griffin, a press secretary for the DeSantis campaign, said in a statement. “That’s why they’re spending $1m to attack DeSantis in Iowa after proclaiming the primary was ‘over’.”Democrats are also weighing in against her. In recent weeks, they have sought to elevate Haley’s conservative record, particularly on abortion, which has been a damaging issue for Republicans since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year.Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee who is also from South Carolina, accused Haley of “trying to rewrite history” by softening her approach on abortion. As governor, he noted, Haley signed into law a 20-week abortion ban that did not include exceptions for rape or incest.“Nikki may be singing a different song now, but don’t be fooled,” Harrison wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “when it comes to the issues, she is just as extreme as the rest of the MAGA field.”Perhaps Haley’s biggest asset at the moment is the sudden salience of foreign policy, amid the deepening conflict in Gaza.In recent weeks, Haley has emphasized her staunch support of Israel. As Trump’s UN ambassador, she championed his administration’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and then relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv. She also pulled the US out of the UN human rights council after accusing it of displaying “unending hostility towards Israel”.Haley used a recent appearance at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual meeting in Las Vegas to issue some of her most scathing attacks on Trump to date, questioning his capacity to lead the country at such a precarious moment. With wars raging in the Middle East and Europe, and China posing new challenges, Haley said the stakes were too high for another “four years of chaos, vendettas and drama”.“America needs a captain who will steady the ship,” she said, “not capsize it.”As she plows ahead, Haley is also testing her party’s willingness to elect a woman of color to the nation’s highest office.In her campaign launch, she nodded to the possibility that her candidacy could make history. “I will simply say this: may the best woman win.” (In the same speech she also denounced “identity politics” and “glass ceilings”.)No woman has ever won a Republican presidential primary contest, let alone the party’s nomination. And to do so, she must wrest control of the party from the frontrunner, a former president with a long record of attacking women and people of color in demeaning and vulgar terms.“Top predictors of votes for Donald Trump are hostile sexism and racial resentment,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research and a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.“So how do you as a south Asian woman run against the person who has won on sentiments that also work against you as an individual?”Dawson, the former South Carolina party chair, said if any Republican can defy the odds and beat Trump, it will be Haley. He says he’s counting on the voters in South Carolina to their first female governor make history again by putting her on the path to becoming America’s first female president.“Indira Gandhi of India. Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain. Angela Merkel of Germany,” he said. “Next it’s Nikki Haley.” More

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      US courts hear efforts to remove Trump from 2024 ballot – will they work?

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      When Scott Gessler stepped up to the lectern in a Denver courtroom on Monday, he opened with a full-throated defense of American democracy.“When it comes to decide who should lead our nation, it’s the people of the United States of America who should make those decisions,” he said. “This court should not interfere with that fundamental value – that rule of democracy.”It wasn’t so much the argument that was significant as much as who Gessler was representing: Donald Trump. The same Donald Trump who fought doggedly to have courts, state legislators, his vice-president and members of Congress throw out valid electoral slates from several states and declare him the winner of the 2020 presidential election.Gessler is defending the former president in a novel case in Colorado seeking to block him from appearing on the state’s ballot – a case that centers around whether Trump is disqualified from running for president under section 3 of the 14th amendment. The Reconstruction-era provision disqualifies anyone from holding office if they have taken an oath to the United States and subsequently “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same” unless Congress votes to remove that disqualification by two-thirds vote.It is not the only one of its kind: the Minnesota supreme court heard a similar case this week and there is also a similar case already pending in Michigan, a key battleground state. States are tasked with ensuring that candidates for office meet the qualifications so the challenges to Trump’s candidacy are bubbling up through state court.The 14th amendment cases are part of a mosaic of legal efforts that seek to hold Trump and his allies accountable for overturning the 2020 election, but they are among the most important. While the cases are dry – steeped in legalese and historical understanding of constitutional text – they get at Trump in a way that none of the other suits can: blocking his return to political life.While the other cases could require Trump and his allies to face jail time, lose their law licenses, and pay damages for defamatory lies, none of them would block Trump from returning to the White House in 2024 (a criminal conviction does not disqualify someone from running or serving as president). If he wins the election, he could theoretically pardon himself in the federal cases against him or dismiss the prosecutions. And while no pardon would be available in the Georgia criminal case, it’s untested whether the constitution would allow a state to incarcerate a serving, elected president.Simply put, winning the election is widely seen as Trump’s best chance at escaping the criminal charges against him. Losing the 14th amendment cases would cut off that possibility.“Let me be clear. The purpose of our actions is to obtain rulings that Trump is disqualified from the ballot, not merely to have a political debate. Not at all to have a political debate. Not merely to air issues,” said Ron Fein, the legal director for Free Speech for People, a left-leaning group that filed the challenge in Minnesota.“The dangers of Trump ever being allowed back into public office are exactly those foreseen by the framers of section 3. Which is that they knew that if an oath-taking insurrectionist were allowed back into power they would do the same if not worse.”The 14th amendment measure was passed after the civil war and has never been used to block a presidential candidate from the ballot. It picked up steam this summer after a pair of conservative scholars authored a law review article saying that it applied to Trump.Trump’s lawyers have defended him by arguing that his conduct on January 6 did not amount to an insurrection, that Congress needs to pass a law to enforce the 14th amendment, and that its language does not apply to the president.But expert witnesses for the challengers in the Colorado case offered a wealth of historical and other evidence this week suggesting that what Trump did on January 6 was an insurrection as the framers of the 14th amendment would have understood it.Legal observers almost universally agree that the US supreme court, where Trump appointed three of the six members of the court’s conservative super-majority, will ultimately decide the issue and whether Trump is eligible to run for re-election. There is not a clear legal consensus and since the law is so untested, it’s not clear what the court will do.Outside of the courtroom, the biggest challenge may be getting a wide swath of Americans to accept the idea that someone they support may not be eligible to run for president. In a democracy, there is something viscerally distasteful about not being able to vote for the person we support, Ned Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University, noted earlier this year.It’s a question the supreme court justices in Minnesota seemed to be wrestling with as well, acknowledging the case was coming up on a line between politics and the law.“Let’s say we agree with you that section 3 is self-executing, and that we do have the authority under the relevant statute to keep Mr Trump’s name off the ballot. Should we – is the question that concerns me the most,” Natalie Hudson, the chief justice of Minnesota’s supreme court said on Thursday during oral argument.But the challengers in the cases, which are supported by left-leaning groups, argue that disqualifying Trump based on the 14th amendment is no different than disqualifying someone because they are under the age of 35, a naturalized citizen, or because they have served two terms as president.“In many ways, section 3 sets forth a qualification for president that is far more important than the other constitutional criteria,” Fein said. “Most Americans are not too worried about whatever dangers might have once been posed by somebody who was not a natural born US citizen.“But someone who broke an oath to the constitution and then engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the constitution poses a real danger if they’re ever allowed back into power.”Rachel Leingang contributed reporting from Minneapolis More

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      DeSantis plays at being president with his own Israel-Hamas foreign policy

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      His pathway to the presidency looks more forbidding than ever, but tanking poll numbers and a stalled campaign have not dissuaded Ron DeSantis from running foreign policy as if he was the incumbent in the White House.Florida’s Republican governor has raised eyebrows and hackles by using state resources for a series of actions and operations since the Israel-Hamas war began that come under the purview of the federal government.They include “evacuating” hundreds of US citizens from Israel on charter flights; exporting humanitarian aid and claiming to have procured weapons; as well as activating Florida’s militarized state guard “as needed, to respond” to an overseas conflict.Additionally, he has summoned Florida’s legislature for an emergency session next week that will, among other issues, seek to impose more state sanctions on Iran, a key ally of Hamas, replicating measures already in place at federal level for decades.Democrats in Florida, who have become used to their absentee governor campaigning in other states as he pursues his flailing White House run, say DeSantis has crossed a line.“President Biden is the commander in chief of our military, not Ron DeSantis,” Nikki Fried, chair of the state’s Democratic party, said in a statement to the Miami Herald, commenting on the governor’s claim that he helped source weapons, ammunition and other military equipment for Israel, an assertion that later unraveled.“This is a gross breach of norms and a potential violation of federal laws governing the shipment of weapons.”In a statement to the Guardian, a state department spokesperson confirmed it “did not collaborate with the state of Florida on humanitarian and evacuation flights to and from Israel [and] the department was not notified in advance of these flights”.Independent analysts see the behavior of DeSantis, a staunch supporter of Israel, as troublesome.“Any time a governor tries to push a foreign policy agenda, or an agenda related to international affairs, including immigration policy, on their own, it typically infringes on the powers of the executive of the federal government,” said Matthew Dallek, professor of political management at George Washington University.“We’ve seen this with [Governor Greg] Abbott in Texas. If the DeSantis flights to Israel were coordinated with the state department and US military, that’s one thing. If they were not, that’s much more problematic, much more of a line crossing.“He’s a guy who gets off on crossing boundaries, being pugnacious and in your face, and in that sense there’s kind of an ugly streak to him and Trump. They both enjoy, and their political identities are wrapped up in crossing boundaries.”DeSantis employed a familiar argument to justify Florida wading into the Middle East conflict, insisting that the administration of Joe Biden was “not doing what it takes to stand by Israel”. It echoed his citing of the president’s perceived “failures” over immigration to rationalize his sending of state law enforcement personnel to the US southern border, the preserve of the Department of Homeland Security.Contrary to DeSantis’s statement, the federal government has been heavily involved in humanitarian operations in Israel and has run a continuous charter flight operation to repatriate US citizens since the conflict began.The state department spokesperson said more than 6,700 seats on US government chartered transportation were made available to augment commercial flight capacity, and more than 13,500 US citizens had safely departed Israel and the West Bank.The state department flights, which ended on Tuesday through decreased demand, have also run more smoothly than the DeSantis operation, which left 23 Americans stranded in Cyprus for several days at the start of the war.Dallek sees some rationale for DeSantis’s stance.“By virtue of his position as governor he has been involved in some pretty weighty issues, issues that matter to a lot of voters and a lot of Republican primary voters, in particular immigration and the Middle East,” he said.“But this doesn’t seem like an argument that has legs for DeSantis. The many months of his campaign flailing is going to outweigh whatever he says on Israel, and most of the other GOP candidates are vying for that same space of being tough on terrorism, anti-Hamas, pro-Israel. I just don’t think there’s all that much oxygen left for him to take up on this issue.”Transparency advocates in Florida are also critical of DeSantis over the Israel flights, questioning how $50m of taxpayers’ money reportedly handed to a contractor for open-ended charter flights has been used.The recipient is the same contractor that ran the governor’s infamous migrant flights of mostly Venezuelan asylum seekers around the US last year, which led to a criminal investigation in Texas and was criticized by opponents as an inhumane political stunt.The DeSantis administration withheld public records about the migrant flights for months before a judge ordered it to hand them over. The state budgeted more than $1.5m in attorneys’ fees to defend the lawsuit and Bobby Block, executive director of the Florida First Amendment Foundation, fears a similar lack of transparency will cloak the Israel flights.“They talked about $50m, it’s not based on actual records from the state where we know exactly what’s playing out. It’s based on a budget item in emergency management,” he said.“We don’t have absolute clarity on it because of the secrecy of the DeSantis administration. There’s a lot of people, not just journalists, who want to know what it is costing taxpayers in Florida.”DeSantis’s press team and the Florida emergency management department point to a press release issued last week that said more than 700 Americans arrived in Florida on four flights from Israel and received resources from “several state agencies and volunteer organizations”.Block said there seemed to be little interest is ensuring value for taxpayer dollars, noting that uncoordinated state and federal government entities competing for the same limited resources, including chartered flights, tended to push up prices.“The way it’s being managed and promoted, it seems more political and geared towards the governor’s political aspirations than it does to a real emergency response with a state and governor working with the federal government,” he said. More

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      US House passes $14.3bn aid package for Israel despite Democratic opposition

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      The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed a Republican plan to provide $14.3bn in aid to Israel as it fights Hamas, despite Democrats’ insistence it has no future in the Senate and the White House’s promise of a veto.The measure passed 226-196, largely along party lines, with most Republicans supporting the bill and most Democrats objecting.The bill’s introduction was the first major legislative action under the new Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson. President Joe Biden has threatened a veto, and Chuck Schumer, the majority leader of the Democrat-controlled Senate, said he would not bring it up for a vote.Biden has asked Congress to approve a broader $106bn emergency spending package including funding for Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine, as well as humanitarian aid. Schumer said the Senate would consider a bipartisan bill addressing the broader priorities.The House bill would provide billions for Israel’s military, including $4bn for Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling defense systems to be able to counter short-range rocket threats, as well as some transfers of equipment from US stocks.“This is the first step in the process and I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the bill so we can get funds to Israel as soon as possible,” said the representative Kay Granger, who chairs the House appropriations committee, during debate on the legislation.Republicans have a 221-212 majority in the House, but Biden’s fellow Democrats control the Senate 51-49. To become law, the bill would have to pass both the House and Senate and be signed by Biden.House Republican leaders said they would cover the cost of the aid to Israel by cutting some funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that Democrats included in Biden’s signature 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.Republicans objected to the increased IRS funding from the beginning, and said cutting the agency’s budget was essential to offset the cost of military aid to Israel, whose tanks and troops took on Hamas on the outskirts of Gaza City on Thursday.Democrats objected to cutting money for the IRS, calling it a politically motivated “poison pill” that would increase the country’s budget deficit by cutting back on tax collection. They also said it was essential to continue to support Ukraine as it fights against a Russian invasion that began in February 2022.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday said the IRS cuts and Israel aid in the standalone bill would add nearly $30bn to the US budget deficit, currently estimated at $1.7tn.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe representative Rosa DeLauro, the ranking Democratic on the appropriations committee, accused Republicans of delaying aid by backing a partisan bill that does not include Ukraine or humanitarian aid for civilians. “This bill abandons Ukraine. We will not abandon Israel and we will not abandon Ukraine. But their fortunes are linked,” she said.While Democrats and many Republicans still strongly support Ukraine, a small but vocal group of Republicans question sending more money to the government in Kyiv at a time of steep budget deficits.Johnson, who voted against Ukraine aid repeatedly before he became speaker last month, plans to introduce a bill combining assistance for Ukraine with money to increase security at the US border with Mexico.“Ukraine will come in short order. It will come next,” Johnson said at a news conference on Thursday. “We want to pair border security with Ukraine, because I think we can get bipartisan agreement on both of those matters.”Congress has approved $113bn for Ukraine since the invasion began. More