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      Revealed: House speaker did little to fight toxic ‘burn pit’ his father campaigned against

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      Mike Johnson was a few months away from assuming elected office in late 2014 when he was confronted with an impassioned appeal by the man he would later pay tribute to in his first speech as House speaker: his father Patrick.The elder Johnson, a former firefighter in the Louisiana city of Shreveport, had survived a near fatal industrial explosion when Mike was 12 years old, a defining event in both men’s lives. He had just joined a local community environmental group, working to fight against US government plans to burn – in the open air – over 15m pounds of toxic munitions. It had thrust Patrick and his future wife Janis Gabriel on to the frontlines of Louisiana environmental advocacy.As authorities were on the verge of approving the “open burn”, which would have sent vast quantities of known carcinogens into the air, Patrick and Janis turned to the most influential person they knew.Then an ambitious, rightwing constitutional lawyer, Mike Johnson would in a matter of weeks fill the vacancy for Louisiana’s eighth state legislative district – whose borders are just 20 miles from Camp Minden, a military base where the illegal munitions dump – the largest in US history – was located. A small amount of the munitions had spontaneously exploded two years before, causing a 4-mile blast radius.The pair drove to Mike Johnson’s legal offices in the late morning, Gabriel recalled, and Patrick Johnson explained to his son the immediate environmental and health dangers the toxic dump posed, not only to residents in the immediate vicinity but to members of the Johnson family living in the region.“His father and I went to him and said: ‘Mike you need to get involved in this, this is really important. Your family really lives at ground zero,’” Gabriel said in an interview with the Guardian. “We basically begged him to say something, to someone, somewhere.”A terse back and forth followed, she said.“He just wasn’t interested,” Gabriel said. “He had other things to do. He was never interested in environmental things.”The couple left deeply disappointed.“It just blew my mind that he wouldn’t give five minutes of his time to the effort,” she said. “He basically shut us down.”A spokesperson for Johnson said he “disputes this characterization as described” but did not respond to an invitation to elaborate further.Gabriel, 72, has thought about this failed appeal to Johnson repeatedly in recent months, ever since he was thrust from relative obscurity to the US House speakership in October.A denier of climate science, Mike Johnson has spoken about how his evangelical faith has shaped his political worldview. According to a broad examination of his past statements, Johnson’s anti-climate advocacy often bears the hallmarks of a Christian fundamentalism linked to creationism.Louisiana’s fourth congressional district, which includes Camp Minden, has long voted staunchly Republican, but many residents still hold deep concerns about pollution and the climate crisis. In a year the district experienced record heat and a number of climate-related disasters, some say their representative in Washington, who is now second in line to the presidency, is fundamentally failing them.Mike Johnson’s views on climate change became publicly apparent in 2017, just five months into his first term in the US Congress. Asked how he felt about the climate crisis by a constituent at a rowdy town hall meeting in Shreveport, Johnson launched into a critique of climate change data, saying he had also seen “the data on the other side”.“The climate is changing, but the question is: is the climate changing because of the natural cycles of the atmosphere over the span of history, or is it changing because we drive SUVs?“I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.”Some attendees booed.Two years later, Johnson – who has received almost $350,000 in political donations from the oil and gas industry since his election in 2016 – led the Republican Study Committee as it lobbied against progressive Democratic efforts to implement a Green New Deal. Johnson denounced the sweeping federal blueprint for climate action as a “guise to usher in the principles of socialism” and create a system of “full government control”.In Louisiana, which is economically dependent on the oil and gas industry, the remarks were consistent with the Republican party’s support for fossil fuels.But to experts who study the Christian fundamentalist movement of creationism, the comments revealed a worldview that falls far outside traditional Republican pro-industry norms. They see the remarks, and Johnson’s rejection of climate science, as evidence of Johnson’s adherence to young-Earth creationist beliefs, including the presumption that the Earth is just 6,000 years old.Johnson has been closely associated with the creationist movement since 2014 – before his entry into politics – when he became a vocal supporter and lawyer for Answers in Genesis (AiG), a global fundamentalist Christian organization that built a gigantic Noah’s Ark replica and amusement park in Kentucky. Following a headline-grabbing legal battle, Johnson ultimately helped the group secure taxpayer incentives for the project.“Creationists can just wave away all of the geologic evidence of climate change because they are convinced that all rock layers were laid down in a global flood about 4,400 years ago,” said David MacMillan, a former Christian fundamentalist who has left the movement.MacMillan grew up attending creationist conferences, had posts published on AiG’s website, and helped raise money for the establishment of AiG’s first creationist museum near Cincinnati, earning him a spot on a donor wall and a lifetime pass to attend. Now – having left his fundamentalist views behind – he is speaking out about the dangers of science denial.“They will tell you that hundreds of thousands of annual ice core layers are just a bunch of snow that formed while the Earth was cooling off after Noah’s flood. They believe climate scientists are sifting through meaningless noise to try and find patterns that will get them noticed and promote narratives that please the global elite who want to control us.”What’s more, MacMillan added, most fundamentalists argue that even if the climate is changing, it should make no difference because they also expect the imminent, apocalyptic, final judgment of the world.Johnson forged a close relationship with the AiG founder Ken Ham, an Australian Christian fundamentalist who has argued that humans “don’t need to fear that man will destroy the planet, as God wouldn’t let that happen anyway”.MacMillan, who knows Ham, said the AiG founder pioneered a technique of trying to sow doubts about science by presenting scientific consensus as merely a belief system, much like religion.In a video interview with the Canadian psychologist and alt-right provocateur Jordan Peterson in November last year, Johnson drew directly from this creationist strategy when asked why Democrats pursue policies to address the climate crisis.“They regard the climate agenda as part of their religion,” Johnson said. “I don’t know any other way to explain it. They pursue it with religious zeal. And they care not what type of pain these policies inflict upon the people that they are supposed to be serving because they’re not serving the people, they’re serving the planet.”While many media reports have highlighted Johnson’s controversial relationship with Ham, MacMillan said Johnson’s close association with the group – his bio appears on its website, he has written blogposts for the group, and spoken at an AiG event in Kentucky – means Johnson would probably have had to agree to the group’s statement of faith, which includes the assertion that the Bible is “factually true” and that its authority is not limited to spiritual or redemptive themes, but also history and science.According to the group’s website: “All persons employed by the AiG ministry in any capacity, or who serve as volunteers, should abide by and agree to our Statement of Faith and conduct themselves accordingly.”An AiG editorial review board regularly reviews all articles, books and other materials produced or distributed by the group to make sure they are in line with AiG values and that there “is not mission drift”.In a speech delivered at Ham’s Ark Encounter conference center last year, Johnson raised the apocalypse and Christ’s second coming.“We are hopeful people because we know how the book ends … God wins,” he said in an address that was met with a standing ovation. “The charge is for us, it’s not yet determined. We’re going to be here until the Lord tarries, when the Lord comes back. And maybe that’s soon, because we’re seeing a lot of signs.”Mike Johnson and his wife are due to speak at an AiG conference event in April next year, entitled: “Reclaim: overcoming the war on women for the glory of God.”“There is no doubt that Mike Johnson demonstrated to AiG’s satisfaction that he agrees with every aspect of that statement of faith,” MacMillan said.A short biography of Johnson is included on AiG’s contributors page. A review of the 267 biographies on the AiG site indicates he is one of only two elected officials to post on the fundamentalist group’s website. The other is Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana state representative and the current president of the Family Research Council, a far-right evangelical lobby group. Perkins, one of Johnson’s political mentors, once said he believed floods were sent by God to punish homosexuality and regularly cites the Bible to deny solutions to the climate crisis.When asked by the Guardian if Johnson had ever endorsed the AiG statement of faith, or if he shared Ham’s views on climate or if he believed the Earth was 6,000 years old, a spokesperson said: “The speaker is not responsible for the views of others” and did not respond to an invitation to elaborate.AiG did not respond to specific questions about Johnson and the group’s statement of faith and instead commented on his legal work for the organization. “Mr Johnson served the ministry very effectively and professionally in the matter and Answers in Genesis was very pleased and grateful for his services,” said a spokesman, A Larry Ross.Janis Gabriel pointed to Mike Johnson’s hardline faith and political pragmatism when explaining her interpretation of why he had brushed aside his father’s appeals to help with the air pollution crisis at Camp Minden.“It speaks to those religious beliefs,” said Gabriel. “‘Don’t take care of the environment because we have a finite amount of time here and God will take care of you.’ It’s crazy.”Gabriel, who was discussing her relationship with the House speaker for the first time publicly, said she was disclosing details of private conversations because Johnson now holds a position of immense power. She wanted to further public understanding of “what and who he is and how that will affect the job he’s doing for us.”“That is the important conversation,” she said.In his 2022 interview with Peterson, Mike Johnson couched his critique of those seeking climate solutions around conversations he was having with residents in his district.“When I’m in Louisiana I try to explain to our folks, listen: ‘They have effectively replaced Father God with Mother Earth … They believe we owe fealty to Mother Earth.”Even as the speaker rejects concerns about the climate crisis, Louisiana’s fourth congressional district is already experiencing new extremes tied to global heating.In a year almost certain to become the hottest on record, the city of Shreveport endured back-to-back days of record heat in August as temperatures soared to 110F (43C).Louisiana, too, endured months of devastating drought, which contributed to a water crisis in the south-east, and hundreds of wildfires in America’s wettest state. The largest wildfire in Louisiana’s history occurred this year in Johnson’s district, scorching a staggering 33,000 acres and decimating the local economy. The heat and drought combined cost Louisiana’s agriculture industry $1.69bn alone this year.The state also logged a record number of heat-related deaths over the summer, according to a spokesman for the Louisiana health department (LDH), with 69 people dying between June and September this year. This was almost double the death toll of any in the past six years, according to data released to the Guardian by LDH.A report published this year, which examined all occupational heat-related illnesses between 2010 and 2020, found that the highest rates of illness occurred in Louisiana’s north-west, which has some of the highest rates of poverty in the state and is entirely covered by Johnson’s district.“Heat exposure is intensifying as the frequency, severity, and duration of extreme heat events increases due to climate change,” the government report acknowledges.In Shreveport, six people died from extreme heat this year alone – a record year, according to Todd Thoma, who has served as coroner in the Shreveport area for 16 years. “This was an exceptional year to me,” Dr Thoma said, as he combed through each case file in his office, pointing to a combination of prolonged extreme heat, high poverty rates and power outages that contributed to the increased risks for the city’s most vulnerable residents.A 62-year-old woman who died in June after a tornado knocked out power to her home, leaving her with no air conditioning. A 49-year-old man, found collapsed on the sidewalk just four days later. And, on 13 July, 34-year-old Ted Boykin, a father of one who was found dead inside a trailer home, with no air conditioning, that was used by Shreveport’s unhoused community.The ambient air temperature inside was 98F, according to the coroner’s report. Boykin’s internal temperature was 107.9F.In an interview Boykin’s sister, Sandy Boykin-Hays, said she considered her brother a victim of the climate crisis and chastised her congressman and others for a failure to accept science.“He was let down by the system,” said Boykin-Hays. “And to them [in Washington], I’m sure they wouldn’t believe, even if it [climate change] was staring them in the face, because they’re rich. They have money. They don’t have to worry about air conditioning or where your next meal is coming from.”Boykin-Hays, who works as a food delivery driver and volunteers with homeless outreach, was forced to take out a $3,000 loan to pay for her brother’s funeral.“They’re ignoring the true issue because it doesn’t affect them,” she said.In Washington, where Johnson now holds the power to bring legislation to the House floor, the speaker has not yet expressed a position on a bill introduced by the California Democrat Judy Chu, to protect workers from excessive heat, despite it receiving some bipartisan support in committee.“The denial of the climate crisis by Maga extremists like the speaker isn’t just a danger to the health of his constituents during summer months,” said Chu. “It’s a danger to the long-term wellbeing of future generations in America and around the world.”Both Janis Gabriel and Patrick Johnson became board members of the Citizens Advisory Group set up to engage with the EPA over community concerns at Camp Minden, according to meeting minutes reviewed by the Guardian and interviews with two other board members.Johnson even co-wrote, recorded and performed an original song to help the “stop the burn” efforts, which eventually helped force the EPA into a course change by approving use of a cleaner alternative to dispose of the waste throughout 2016 and 2017.“Take a stand against the poison, protect our future children’s lives,” Patrick Johnson sings.The former firefighter had become a national advocate for hazardous material safety after surviving a fiery explosion caused by leaking ammonia at a cold storage facility. Another firefighter died in the 1984 accident. The near-death experience, said Gabriel, changed his spiritual outlook. The couple met in 2013 when Johnson attended Gabriel’s Daoist center as a student in Shreveport to practice tai chi and qigong martial arts. The pair married in October 2016, shortly before Johnson’s death from cancer in December that year.The elder Johnson, said Gabriel, clearly accepted climate science and was “acutely aware of the environment”. While he “certainly didn’t agree” with Mike Johnson’s “extremist stance” on Christianity, he accepted it. The pair disagreed over support for Donald Trump, Gabriel said.Mike Johnson has described his father’s survival in the 1984 explosion as an “actual miracle” that “made me a person of very deep faith”. His campaign literature still references the accident and, in his first speech as speaker, Johnson described how his father’s near death “changed all of our life trajectories”.But from January 2015, when he formally entered politics, Johnson appeared to display little interest in the Camp Minden issue that his father was campaigning on. It was a period described by three organizers as the start of heightened advocacy.He was given invitations to attend citizens’ meetings as local campaigning ramped up, according to the board’s chairman, Ron Hagar, but did not attend.“He stayed as far away from it as possible,” said Hagar, a close friend of Patrick Johnson’s. “He had no sense of responsibility to stand up for the people he’s representing.”A search of public records did not indicate Mike Johnson had spoken on the issue at the time although he was listed as a co-sponsor of a minor 2015 state house resolution to stop the facility from accepting further waste explosives. Photographs show Johnson was also present at a December 2015 press conference at the site, but according to a senior organizer in attendance, Johnson did not speak and the state representative is not quoted in local media.The issue was championed by a Democratic state representative for the 10th district, which includes Minden, named Gene Reynolds. Reynolds, who is now retired, did not return multiple calls for comment.A spokesperson for Johnson pointed to public activity cited by the Guardian and “other activities” to dispute claims he had not been involved in the matter.Johnson’s short tenure in the state legislature was spent focused on far-right policy initiatives tied to his biblical worldview, including introducing legislation to push back against same-sex marriage, and a continued focus on his non-profit law practice, including work with Ham’s Ark Encounter.Following her husband’s death, Gabriel moved out of state. She began to lose touch with Johnson, although the pair exchanged occasional cordial text messages.In one May 2019 exchange, seen by the Guardian, Johnson contacted Gabriel to wish her a happy Mother’s Day. Gabriel told him she had left Shreveport permanently and moved to a different state.“Don’t blame you one bit for staying there! Shreveport is really going downhill now and it’s sad to watch,” Johnson replied.Gabriel then explained that her decision to leave had come on Patrick’s advice, partly due to his prediction of “worsening environmental problems”. She also told Johnson that his father would be proud of his “love and devotion and support” of his own children.“Dad was right about the environmental problems in Shreveport. Those and other issues are mounting,” Johnson replied. But in the same message, he moved quickly to update her on his rapid rise in Congress: “I’ve been advanced in leadership in record time (currently the 10th ranked Republican!), and God continues to affirm that we are doing what He has called us to do, so that keeps us encouraged.” More

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      in Elections

      Biden: Putin ‘banking’ on the US failing to deliver for Ukraine – video

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      Speaking after a White House meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, US president Joe Biden said the US will support Ukraine in its war with Russia ‘as long as we can’. ‘Putin is banking on the United States failing to deliver for Ukraine. We must, we must, we must prove him wrong,’ Biden said. The US president continued, highlighting praise for Republicans by a Russian TV host and said: ‘If you’re being celebrated by Russian propagandists, it might be time to rethink what you’re doing. History … will judge harshly’ More

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      in US Politics

      Giuliani defamation trial live: election worker testifies ex-Trump lawyer’s 2020 lies ruined her life and left her ‘in a dark place’

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      Shaye Moss just ended approximately two hours of haunting testimony detailing how her life has been ruined ever since Rudy Giuliani spread lies about her after the 2020 election.Her worst fear, she said, is that her teenage son will come home to find her and her mother hanging from a tree in front of their home. She still pulls over in her neighborhood because she feels like someone is following them. She doesn’t go out alone. She has panic attacks. She left the job that she worked hard to get because she had become a “pariah” in the office. When her son started getting harassing messages and failed all of his classes in the 9th grade, she felt responsible and like “the worst mom in the world”.“I feel like I’m in a dark place and the only thing that surrounds me are the conspiracy and the lies,” she said.She ended her direct testimony by talking about how she’s trapped in a cycle of eating, sleeping, and crying. “Sadly that’s my life.”Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer will cross-examine her when court resumes this afternoon at 2pm.
      It was a day of emotional testimony in a Washington courtroom, where Shaye Moss took the stand in the defamation trial against Rudy Giuliani. She recounted in devastating detail the ways the former New York City mayor’s lies and the ensuing harassment upended her life, destroyed her sense of security and self-worth and hurt her family.
      Under cross-examination, Moss pointedly noted that the harm caused by Giuliani continues to this day as the former mayor repeated his lies about her to reporters as recently as Monday. Giuliani’s comments to reporters drew a sharp rebuke from the judge.
      Beyond the trial, other big stories today:
      New York’s top court said the state must redraw its congressional maps, in a decision widely seen as a victory for Democrats in the battle to win control of the narrowly divided House of Representatives.
      The Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order that would have allowed Kate Cox to get an abortion for a fetus with a fatal condition. Cox went out of state for the procedure.
      Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University despite calls for her removal following testimony before a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus last week.
      US inflation ticked down again last month, with cheaper gas helping further lighten the weight of consumer price increases in the US.
      Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelenskiy failed to persuade congressional Republicans to rush aid to Ukraine as Russia’s war nears its third year. During a visit to Washington, Zelenskiy met with members of Congress and Joe Biden on Tuesday.
      Still to come: CNN will host a presidential town hall in Iowa with Republican White House hopeful Ron DeSantis.
      Sam reports that Shaye Moss has completed her testimony after taking the witness stand to answer questions from Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer and her own.Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley, sought to undercut the idea millions of dollars in damages were required to repair her reputation. He also sought to distance Giuliani from any harm Moss suffered.John Langford, one of Moss’s attorneys, asked her to further explain why she was not looking for work.“I definitely would have to start off again at the bottom and work my way up. I am wanting to do that but I am not mentally able to do that with things are the way are now,” Moss said. “Most days I pray that God does not wake me up and I just disappear.”She also explained that she does not go out alone, except for one instance in which she did it as homework for her therapist.“I did it so terrified. I felt extremely nauseous. But thankfully there was this guy at the bar,” she said. “He was a Jewish guy. He literally talked the entire time about this movie about this family that is in the pharmaceuticals. The guy was just talking. And I did it. I was very proud of myself. But unfortunately I have not been able to do that again. But I did do it once.”Plaintiffs are now playing a videotaped deposition from Bernard Kerik.Here’s some background on the situation in New York written by our in-house expert on redistricting, Sam Levine (yes, the same one in court covering the election case).Despite outperforming expectations on election night last year, Republicans made stunning gains across New York, one of the nation’s most liberal states. They won four toss-up races and picked off congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, the House Democratic campaign chairman charged with protecting his party’s hold on Congress.That was possible under the map that will now be redrawn.Breaking from the Giuliani trial to mark a new legal development out of New York, where a court has agreed to allow the state to redraw its congressional map in a decision widely seen as a victory for Democrats.In an opinion issued on Tuesday afternoon, the liberal-leaning New York State Court of Appeals ordered the state’s redistricting commission to draw new maps by February 28, 2024. The court is effectively tossing out the highly competitive electoral map that gave Republicans an edge in several key House races last cycle – just enough to win the majority.The commission is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, but the Democratic-controlled state legislature has final say over the redrawn map. Given the narrow divide in the US House, New York Democrats will be under pressure to reject any proposal that does not improve their electoral odds, particularly after Republicans aggressive gerrymanders in states like North Carolina.Giuliani’s lawyer is pressing Moss to disclose additional details about her medical health as a result of the former mayor’s lies.Here’s some more back-and-forth in what appears to be a somewhat combative round of questioning.More from our man on the ground:
      I personally cannot repair my reputation at the moment because your client is still lying on me and ruining my reputation further. How could I do that? How could you work in law everyone was saying you’re a horrible lawyer? Moss said under questioning.
      She added, per Sam: “We need to make a statement. We need to ensure that the election workers that are still there don’t have to go through this. Hopefully by hitting someone in their pockets, for someone whose whole career has been about their pockets, we will send a message.”Sam is back in the courtroom in the defamation trial in Washington DC, where Moss is being cross-examined.It’s unclear where exactly Sibley is going with his questions, Sam reports.A lot of his questions seem to be trying to get Moss to concede that there was confusion or uncertainty about what happened immediately after the 2020 election. The US district judge Beryl Howell has already found Giuliani liable for defamation, so whether or not Giuliani had grounds to make his outlandish claims is not really at issue in the trial.It cannot be easy to be the lawyer for the voluble former New York mayor. Moss is back on the stand for cross-examination from Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Sibley.While we await the return of the Giuliani trial in DC, we’re linking to our Israel-Hamas war blog, where Biden has said Israel is “starting to lose support” of international community over its bombardment of Gaza.Biden also said that Netanyahu needs to change his hardline government.Biden’s comments come as Netanyahu thanked the US for its support on Tuesday, but noted that the US and Israel have had disagreements about “the day after Hamas”, said Israel’s prime minister on X.It is 1.20pm in Washington DC. Here is a round-up of what’s happened today:
      Georgia election worker Shaye Moss took the stand in the defamation trial against Rudy Giuliani, giving a haunting testimony of the ways the former New York City mayor’s lies and the ensuing harassment ruined her life and affected her family.
      Moss told the court she was a “bubbly, outgoing, happy Shaye” before she first became aware of lies Giuliani was spreading about her – and that threats left her feeling scared for her life. She recalled how she started receiving racist text messages and threats. “I was afraid for my life. I literally felt like someone was going to come and attempt to hang me and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
      Moss also told the court how her life has been ruined and she often still feels like she is being followed. She doesn’t go out alone and has panic attacks. She had to leave her job because she says she became a “pariah” in the office. Moss told the court her ordeal has left her feeling “in a dark place”.
      Giuliani’s mental fitness was questioned by the judge after he again told lies about Moss and Ruby Freeman in response to media questions after court last night. His comments entered into the court case Tuesday when Moss brought up how he had never apologized and continued to lie about her.
      Moss will be back on the stand at 2pm in Washington for cross-examination from Giuliani’s attorney.
      Beyond the trial, other big stories today …
      The Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order that would have allowed Kate Cox to get an abortion for a fetus with a fatal condition. Cox went out of state for the procedure.
      Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University despite calls for her removal following testimony before a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus last week.
      Shaye Moss just ended approximately two hours of haunting testimony detailing how her life has been ruined ever since Rudy Giuliani spread lies about her after the 2020 election.Her worst fear, she said, is that her teenage son will come home to find her and her mother hanging from a tree in front of their home. She still pulls over in her neighborhood because she feels like someone is following them. She doesn’t go out alone. She has panic attacks. She left the job that she worked hard to get because she had become a “pariah” in the office. When her son started getting harassing messages and failed all of his classes in the 9th grade, she felt responsible and like “the worst mom in the world”.“I feel like I’m in a dark place and the only thing that surrounds me are the conspiracy and the lies,” she said.She ended her direct testimony by talking about how she’s trapped in a cycle of eating, sleeping, and crying. “Sadly that’s my life.”Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer will cross-examine her when court resumes this afternoon at 2pm.Though Giuliani has already been found liable for defaming Moss and Freeman, his comments last night to the media where he claimed his lies about them were true will likely factor into the trial.Already, the US district judge Beryl Howell asked about Giuliani’s mental fitness, given his comments: “everything I said about them is true.”And on the stand this afternoon, Moss brought up his remarks, saying he was still “spreading lies about us last night”. Politico’s Kyle Cheney wrote on X that the judge is permitting Moss to talk about these comments, despite an objection from Giuliani’s lawyer. More

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      in US Politics

      Zelenskiy struggles to get US Republicans to back $61bn Ukraine military aid package

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      Volodymyr Zelenskiy has struggled to persuade US Republicans to support a $61bn military aid package for Ukraine on a trip to Washington DC, with objectors insisting on White House concessions on border security as a condition for a deal.The Ukrainian president addressed members of the Senate in a closed 90-minute meeting on Tuesday morning, but afterwards key Republicans repeated that they wanted to see a crackdown on immigration between the US and Mexico in return for supporting the package.Speaking afterwards, Lindsey Graham, a senator for South Carolina, told reporters that he had told Zelenskiy that the problem was “nothing to do with you”. He added: “I said: ‘You’ve done everything anybody could ask of you. This is not your problem here.’”The senior Republican went on to accuse the White House of having failed to tackle the southern border issue and called for “the commander in chief” – Joe Biden – to become personally involved in the negotiations.Senate Republicans last week blocked an emergency aid package primarily for Ukraine and Israel after conservatives complained at the exclusion of immigration policy changes they had demanded as part of the package.Zelenskiy sought to reassure senators concerned about whether US military aid would be wasted because of corruption, Mike Rounds, a Republican, told CNN, and that Ukraine needed more air defence systems to support its counteroffensives.Senior Democrats, meanwhile, expressed frustration with the lack of progress. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, said “The one person happiest right now about the gridlock in Congress is Vladimir Putin. He is delighting in the fact that Donald Trump’s border policies are sabotaging military aid to Ukraine.”The Ukrainian president then moved on to a meeting with Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat House minority leader, and after that with the recently elected Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who has been relatively sceptical about further financial support for Ukraine.After their meeting, Johnson complained that the White House was asking Congress to approve the spending of billions of dollars “with no appropriate oversight, without a clear strategy to win”.Johnson added that “our first condition on any national security supplemental spending package is about our own national security first” but he also insisted that the US did stand with Zelenskiy “against Putin’s brutal invasion”.Zelenskiy posted a picture on X, formerly Twitter, of him addressing senators, saying he had had “a friendly and candid conversation”. He emphasised the importance of US military aid in his country’s fight against Russia.Moscow said it was watching developments closely. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said that “tens of billions of dollars” already provided by Washington had failed to turn the tide of war and more money would make little difference. Zelenskiy’s authority was being undermined by the failures, he added.Congress is due to break for the year on Friday and there appeared little prospect of a breakthrough that would allow a funding package to be passed before then – meaning that negotiations will have to pick up in the new year at a time when the amounts available to Ukraine are running short.Last week, Shalanda Young, the White House’s director of the office of management and budget, said that the Pentagon had used up 97% of the $62.3bn Ukraine allocations previously authorised by Congress, while the state department has none of its $4.7bn remaining.Zelenskiy is due to hold a private meeting with Biden and a joint press conference in the afternoon. The White House has previously signalled it is willing to make concessions on the Mexico border issue as it tries to get the funding package through.Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the White House national security council, said Russia believes that “a military deadlock through the winter will drain western support for Ukraine”, ultimately handing Moscow the advantage.Newly declassified US intelligence concluded that the war had cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, amounting to nearly 90% of the personnel it had before the war, started in February 2022.In Ukraine, the country’s biggest mobile phone network, Kyivstar, was badly hit on Tuesday by what appeared to be the largest cyber-attack of the war with Russia so far. Phone signals, the internet and some of Kyiv region’s air alert system were knocked out, in an attack that the company’s chief executive was “a result of” the war with Russia.Ukrainian sources indicated that the attack was not financially motivated, but destructive in nature, and it was unclear who precisely was responsible. The country’s SBU intelligence service said it was investigating whether the attack had been directed by one of Russia’s intelligence agencies. More

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      in US Politics

      Stefanik criticized for support of Trump after push against campus antisemitism

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      Congresswoman Elise Stefanik celebrated the resignation of the president of the University of Pennsylvania in a storm over campus antisemitism, but faced criticism regarding her support for Donald Trump, who associates with antisemites himself.Referring to Liz Magill, who quit after a stormy congressional hearing last week, and the presidents of Harvard and MIT, who by Monday had not stepped down, Stefanik – the House Republican caucus chairperson – tweeted: “One down. Two to go.”In response, the Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin asked on MSNBC: “Where does Elise Stefanik get off lecturing anybody about antisemitism when she’s the hugest supporter of Donald Trump, who traffics in antisemitism all the time?“She didn’t utter a peep of protest when he had Kanye West and Nick Fuentes over for dinner,” said Raskin, who is Jewish, about a controversial event at the former US president’s Mar-a-Lago property last November.“Nick Fuentes, who doubts whether 7 October [the Hamas attacks which killed about 1,200 people in Israel] even took place because he thinks it was some kind of suspicious propaganda move by the Israelis.“The Republican party is filled with people who are entangled with antisemitism like that and yet somehow [Stefanik] gets on [her] high horse and lectures a Jewish college president from MIT.”The hearing concerned official responses to claims of rising campus antisemitism, surrounding protests against Israeli tactics in response to 7 October and student calls for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war. During the war, more than 18,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed by airstrikes in Gaza.Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT, and Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, were also grilled. MIT expressed support for Kornbluth. Gay apologised for her testimony, saying: “Words matter”, as nearly 600 professors backed her in a public petition.Magill resigned as president of Penn on Saturday. Stefanik, who led Republicans’ questioning, then tweeted: “One down. Two to go.“This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America. This forced resignation of the president of Penn is the bare minimum of what is required.”Promising a “robust and comprehensive congressional investigation of all facets of their institutions[’] negligent perpetration of antisemitism including administrative, faculty, funding, and overall leadership and governance”, Stefanik called on Harvard and MIT to “do the right thing”.Stefanik, a Harvard graduate, began her congressional career widely seen as a moderate New York Republican. But she adopted increasingly extreme Trumpist rhetoric as she rose to become House Republican caucus chair.Raskin is a prominent Democrat who led impeachment efforts against Trump over the January 6 attacks, then sat on the committee that investigated the attack his supporters aimed at Congress. He told MSNBC he was “thinking about” the issue of campus antisemitism “as a father, as a parent”, concerned for students’ safety.Raskin said: “I want to know that if somebody is actually calling for the genocide of the Jews or anybody else on campus, that we’ve got a college president who will say: ‘Quickly get campus police over there, that person could be a danger to other people around them.’“Especially in the age of the AR-15 [assault rifle], when we’ve had, you know, genocidal-style language being used but also massacres taking place like at the Tree of Life synagogue, in Pittsburgh [in 2018], or at the Buffalo supermarket [in 2022].skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Those are rightwing antisemites who talk about the great replacement theory. We [also] had a guy at Cornell who was making death threats towards Jews, and we had three Palestinian college kids who were shot in Burlington, Vermont, of all places.”The great replacement theory holds that Democrats encourage immigration and multiculturalism in order to bolster their political chances.Last year, after a white gunman killed 10 people in an attack on a supermarket in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo, New York, Stefanik came under scrutiny for campaign ads which, in the words of the New York Times, “play[ed] on themes of the white supremacist ‘great replacement’ theory”.Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman turned anti-Trump Republican, said then that Stefanik and other Republicans had “enabled white nationalism, white supremacy and antisemitism”.Last week, after the campus antisemitism hearing, the Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin praised Stefanik’s questioning of the college presidents – but also noted her use of great replacement theory.Stefanik’s “ability … to sustain a rational argument about antisemitism at elite universities makes her [Make America great again] rhetoric that much worse”, Rubin wrote.“She knows better.” More

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      Trump expands ‘commanding’ lead in Iowa a month before caucus, poll shows

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      A little over a month before the Iowa caucus kicks off the Republican presidential primary, Donald Trump has expanded his “commanding” lead in the first-to-vote state, a new Des Moines Register/NBC News poll found.The 77-year-old former president faces 91 criminal charges including 17 for attempting to overturn his 2020 election defeat, and civil suits including a defamation trial arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”. Warnings of the authoritarian threat he poses have been rising in volume.Nonetheless, he received 51% support in the Iowa poll.His closest challenger, the hard-right Florida governor Ron DeSantis, took 19%. The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley took 16%, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy 5%, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie 4% and Asa Hutchinson, formerly governor of Arkansas, 1%.That meant Trump’s lead was the largest ever recorded in the influential poll so close to a competitive caucus day.J Ann Selzer, the highly regarded Iowa pollster who conducted the survey, told NBC: “The field may have shrunk, but it may have made Donald Trump even stronger. I would call his lead commanding at this point.”Selzer also pointed out that caucus winners have come from behind, notably including Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, in 2012.Santorum was backed by white evangelicals, a powerful bloc in any Iowa vote. Last month, it was revealed that in 2016, Trump called evangelicals who backed a rival “so-called Christians” and “real pieces of shit”.Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Iowa evangelical leader, endorsed DeSantis and attacked Trump. Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor, also endorsed DeSantis.But despite such moves, and a general perception that Haley has performed well in debates Trump has skipped, the former president has only strengthened his position in Iowa.On Monday, the fivethirtyeight.com average for Iowa put Trump at 45.9%, ahead of DeSantis on 19.7% and Haley on 17.5%.Steve Kornacki, NBC’s national political correspondent, pointed to Trump’s momentum in the NBC/Register poll.“We last polled Iowa in October,” Kornacki said, “and look at this: Trump is up eight points since that last poll, DeSantis only three.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You think about the month DeSantis has had in Iowa. He got the governor’s endorsement. He got a key evangelical endorsement and he was in the debate, he had the debate with Gavin Newsom [the governor of California, on Fox News], and it has not turned into measurable momentum.”Haley, Kornacki said, scored better with political independents and anti-Trump Republicans but that was nowhere near enough to significantly close the gap.Kornacki also pointed to what happened when voters were asked if their minds were made up.“Seven out of 10 Trump supporters say their mind’s made up, they’re locked in. [For DeSantis and Haley], their locked-in vote is not even half of what Trump’s is. Huge enthusiasm gap.”Despite his attempt to overturn the last election, including inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, Trump also performs strongly in national and key-state polling when placed against the Democratic incumbent, Joe Biden.Also on Monday, a CNN/SSRS poll put Trump ahead in two battleground states: 10 points clear in Michigan and five points up in Georgia. More

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      Man charged with threatening to kill Vivek Ramaswamy at campaign event

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      A man from Dover, New Hampshire, faces a federal criminal charge after threatening the Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and attendees at a campaign event.The US attorney’s office for New Hampshire said Tyler Anderson, 30, “received a text message from the victim’s campaign notifying him of a political event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.“Anderson responded to the text message on 8 December 2023, stating: ‘Great, another opportunity for me to blow his brains out!’ and ‘I’m going to kill everyone who attends and then fuck their corpses.’”The federal release did not name the candidate or say when the event was but charging documents identified a breakfast meeting on Monday, a time when only Ramaswamy was scheduled to stage such an event in the state.A spokesperson for the biotech entrepreneur told NBC Boston: “Unfortunately it is true. We are grateful to law enforcement for their swiftness and professionalism in handling this matter and pray for the safety of all Americans.”Anderson is charged with transmitting in interstate commerce a threat to injure the person of another, an offense that can lead to a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of up to $250,000.He was due in court in Concord, New Hampshire, on Monday afternoon.As cited by NBC, charging documents said federal agents searched Anderson’s residence on Saturday, finding guns as well as the phone used to send the texts regarding Ramaswamy.Agents also found threats to another candidate, NBC said, including a promise to “blow that bastard’s head off” and the message: “Thanks, I’ll see you there. Hope you have the stamina for a mass shooting!”Anderson reportedly admitted sending messages to “multiple” campaigns.New Hampshire will hold the second event of the Republican presidential primary, with voting on Tuesday 23 January.The website fivethirtyeight.com gives the former president Donald Trump a comfortable New Hampshire lead over the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, 44.7% to 18.9%.Ramaswamy shone early in the primary campaign but has fallen back, amid a series of abrasive debate performances. According to fivethirtyeight.com, he now sits fifth in New Hampshire, on 6.7% support, with only the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson below him. More

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      The Harvard and UPenn presidents walked into a trap in Congress | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      Last week in Congress, Representative Elise Stefanik proved how well she can throw a dead cat.Let me explain. During an hours-long hearing on 5 December, members of Congress grilled university presidents from Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, some of the country’s most elite institutions of higher learning, about antisemitism on their campuses. But it was Stefanik’s questioning that grabbed the spotlight. She repeatedly asked the presidents essentially the same question: does calling for the genocide of Jews on your campus constitute harassment, yes or no?The question is a trap, of course, and for several reasons. The first and most important reason is that there’s no evidence anyone since 7 October, or even in recent history, has called for the genocide of Jews on any American campus, public or private. Stefanik’s question implies that such calls are commonplace, but she offered no proof.The second reason this is a trap is that the question can’t be answered with just “yes” or “no”. Public universities, as state actors, are bound by the first amendment, as are private universities which receive federal funding. And the vast majority of private universities guarantee freedom of speech and academic freedom as part of their core mission. The American university is, by tradition and design, precisely where abhorrent ideas can be uttered. So, if someone had called for the genocide of Jews, which they haven’t, that would be extremely disturbing but still protected speech.The utterance alone does not constitute harassment. In fact, the utterance should be an opportunity to debate and debunk – and not silence – the worst ideas of our day. To rise to harassment, such conduct must be targeted at an individual and, as a 2019 supreme court case decided, be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim’s access to an educational opportunity or benefit”. Context makes the difference, or as this 2011 article, published by the American Bar Association, says: “It is the context that matters, and the context helps to make the determination about whether conduct is actionable under school policy or protected by the First Amendment.”The third reason the question is trap is that the situation is complicated by the overarching codes of conduct many universities have adopted, codes that I believe do often (wrongly) cross over into limiting speech. But here, too, Stefanik seems confused. Writing in the Wall Street Journal after the hearing, Stefanik ridiculed Harvard for requiring incoming undergraduates to take an online training session to help them identify language and behavior that could be considered hateful to others. But, while mocking Harvard’s approach, Stefanik – a rising Maga Republican – is at the same time demanding to be included in it. So, which is it?To recap: all three presidents were asked how they would hypothetically punish hypothetical students for uttering hypothetical thoughts. They answered, albeit with lawyerly detachment. Yet their responses were deemed by many, from the White House on down, as callous and insufficiently protective of Jewish students. Following the hearing, all the presidents attempted damage control, but the University of Pennsylvania president has since resigned.Meanwhile, not a word was spoken about the threats that Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim students and faculty (and their supporters) are facing. Billboard trucks drive around Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City and Washington, broadcasting the names and faces of Palestinian supporters and libelously labeling them “antisemites”. University leaders suspend campus groups such Students for Justice in Palestine in moves the ACLU has said “harken back to America’s mistakes during the McCarthy era, and in the months and years after 9/11”. Three Palestinian college students, speaking a mixture of Arabic and English, were shot in Vermont over Thanksgiving break in what was “absolutely was a hateful act”, the Burlington police chief told CNN. On 29 November, dozens of students and some faculty members at Trinity College, where one of the students is enrolled, walked out of a vigil for the injured student because they say the campus administration is downplaying their insecurity on campus.But there is something even more ominous in Stefanik’s questions. “You understand that the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for … the genocide of Jews,” she asked the Harvard president, Claudine Gay. I’m not aware if Stefanik is an Arabic speaker, but I suspect she’s not since she’s wrong again. The term “intifada” literally means “shaking off”. It’s often translated as “uprising”, and there have been non-violent and violent periods of Palestinian uprisings against a brutal Israeli occupation. At no point, however, has the word ever stood as a call for the genocide of Jews. What a gross misrepresentation.But Stefanik’s questions are aimed at backhandedly discrediting words like “intifada” and patrolling the language we use to describe the Palestinian struggle. (We see the same thing with the phrase “from the river to the sea”, a version of which incidentally forms part of the founding charter of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.) Needless to say, demonizing the Arabic language works to demonize Palestinians, Arabs and the world’s Muslims. And handing over the definitions of our political terms to partisan politicians would spell the death of free inquiry in this country.Which brings us back to Stefanik’s dead cat. In politics, a “dead cat strategy” is used to divert attention away from one issue and on to another by metaphorically throwing a dead cat onto a dining room table in the middle of a dinner party. “People will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted,” is how Boris Johnson once described the strategy. “That is true, but irrelevant,” he continued. “The key point … is that everyone will shout, ‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!’ In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”What Congress is not talking about is that the Israeli assault on Gaza has killed at least 17,000 people, over 7,000 of them children, and injured over 49,000. Israel has cut off regular supplies of food, water, fuel, electricity and medical supplies. Around 1.8 million Palestinians of Gaza’s 2.2 million have been displaced. More than 60% of the housing has been destroyed. Half the population is officially starving. Hospitals, historic mosques, essential libraries and the entire foundation of a society have been bombed into rubble. Meanwhile, the US was again the sole UN security council veto for a ceasefire, and the state department invoked an emergency measure to expedite weaponry to Israel that will almost certainly kill civilians. On 9 December, a group of esteemed scholars of genocide and Holocaust studies warned in a public letter “of the danger of genocide in Israel’s attack on Gaza”.Elise Stefanik would have us believe that that we should be more worried about non-existent calls for genocide on American college campuses than with what many experts are warning is an actual genocide in Gaza, funded and supported by US bombs and political cover. So, all credit where credit is due. She really knows how to throw a dead cat.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More