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      Nearly half of US wants Trump election subversion verdict before November, poll says

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      Nearly half of those in the US want to see Donald Trump’s 2020 election subversion case resolved before the former president runs for the White House again in November, according to a poll published on Monday.Meanwhile, a quarter of Americans do not think Trump will ever concede if he loses a second time to Joe Biden, said the survey, commissioned by CNN.The survey in question found that 48% of those polled believed it was “essential” for there to be a verdict before November’s election. Another 16% said that they would at least prefer to see one.CNN’s poll also showed that expectations Trump would concede if he loses have dropped from 37% to 25% since October – and more than three-quarters (78%) think the former president would try to pardon himself of federal charges stemming from his presidency if he wins another stint in the Oval Office.Trump has been performing strongly in polls as compared with Biden. A survey by NBC News released on Sunday found that Biden is beset by a deficit of 20 percentage points against Trump in his handling of the economy, despite signs that the US may have achieved an almost unique “soft-landing” after a government and consumer spending boom during the Covid-19 pandemic.The poll also found that fewer than three in 10 voters approve of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war. And Biden lags Trump by 16 points on the perception of competence and effectiveness, a reversal from 2020.But the question of Trump’s legal quagmire hangs over Biden’s unfavorable polling. The former president is facing more than 90 criminal charges accusing him of trying to illegally nullify his defeat by Biden, illicitly retaining government secrets after leaving the White House and making illegal hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has claimed an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump.If Trump is convicted of a felony, the poll found, a five-point lead for Trump flips to a two-point lead for Biden.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.On Friday, the US district judge Tanya Chutkan formally postponed the federal election interference case against Trump over which she is presiding. It was scheduled to begin in March, but that date has been pushed back while a Washington DC appeals court weighs arguments from the Trump legal team that he is immune from prosecution for actions taken while he was president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf the DC appeals court rejects Trump’s appeal, it will probably advance to the US supreme court, meaning further trial delays.Public desire for a resolution to that case before the November election comes as recent polling by Bloomberg found majorities of voters in seven key swing states would be unwilling to vote for Trump if he is convicted of a crime (53%) or sentenced to prison (55%) in one of the four cases against him overall.But, according to CNN, views of Trump’s efforts to stay in office despite his 2020 defeat in effect remain unchanged from the summer of 2022, with 45% of US adults saying he acted illegally, 32% unethically, and 23% that he did nothing wrong at all. More

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      Ilhan Omar speech proved to be mistranslated but outrage continues spread

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      A week after a mistranslated clip of Ilhan Omar sparked outrage online, some far-right House Republicans are still following through with calls for the progressive lawmaker to be censured. And the repercussions of the misinformation extend beyond the country.The Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, has gone furthest in her response to the clip, calling Omar a “foreign agent in our government”. Greene, a leading supporter of Donald Trump, who also attempted to censure the Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib in November, called Omar a “terrorist sympathizer” on X last week, adding: “Somalian first. Muslim second. She never mentions America.”Greene said she would introduce a censure bill which could see the Minnesota Democrat removed from the remaining committees she serves, a year after Omar was forced out of the foreign affairs committee by Republicans for her criticism of Israel. The bill was on the House agenda Monday, though it is unlikely to move past political stunt.Omar, a Somali American congresswoman, had been filmed delivering a speech at a hotel in Minneapolis on 27 January where she addressed members of her constituency on a recent agreement reached between the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland and Ethiopia in early January, which bypassed Somalia’s federal government in Mogadishu.The preliminary deal, termed a memorandum of understanding, would see Somaliland lease Ethiopia a naval base on the Gulf of Aden and grant it widened access to its Berbera port. In exchange, Somaliland officials claim, Ethiopia would become the first country to recognise its independence unilaterally from Somalia.In an interview with the Observer, an adviser to Somalia’s president warned that Somalia was ready for war with Ethiopia if it doesn’t reverse course on the deal.A video of the speech was circulated soon after on X by Rhoda Elmi, Somaliland’s deputy foreign minister. The video’s translation wrongly claimed Omar had said she was “Somalian first and Muslim second”.Mocking the faulty translation, Omar pointed out that the demonym for someone from Somalia is Somali, not Somalian. “If you are gonna talk about us, at least try to get our ethnicity right,” she posted on X.The video, which has been viewed at least 4.5m times, also misquoted Omar as saying she would “liberate” Somali territories, which were “occupied” by neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia, a polarising issue among Somalis, some of whom weren’t satisfied with the post-colonial settlement when the Horn of Africa was partitioned by Italy, France and the UK.Elmi, Somaliland’s deputy foreign minister, took umbrage at the Minnesota lawmaker’s purported remarks about her position on the memorandum and Somalia’s relations with its neighbours, accusing her of “ethno-racist rhetoric”.Omar defended her comments in the days that followed, saying the subtitles in the video were “not only slanted but completely off”, expressing her support for the government of Somalia, where she was born, as it finds itself embroiled in standoff with Ethiopia.Omar vowed to thwart the deal, which the US has also expressed concerns over, telling people at the gathering in Minneapolis: “For as long as I am in Congress, no one will take over the seas belonging to the nation of Somalia and the United States will not support others who seek to steal from us.”Several Somalis also posted on X about the errors in the subtitles, including the translator and author Aziz Mahdi, who objected to Omar’s remarks but said: “The translation offered fails to accurately convey the essence of her talk, leading to a distorted understanding of her message. So don’t cite it.”The Minnesota Reformer, a Minnesota-based news outlet, worked with two independent Somali translators who recorded Omar as saying: “We are people who know that they are Somali and Muslim”, not that she was “Somalians first” as the video suggested.Abdirashid Hashi, a former Somali government minister, called on Elmi to retract the video and issue an apology.Despite attempts to clarify Omar’s message, several Republicans and rightwing figures seized upon the video without verifying the misleading translation, to launch a fresh attack on Omar, including Elon Musk, whose own ties with third countries were questioned by Joe Biden. On his X account, Musk posted: “The United States or another country. Pick one.”Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, called for Omar’s denaturalization and deportation, while Tom Emmer, the House majority whip, decried her comments as a “slap in the face” to her constituents and called for an ethics investigation into her remarks.The Greene censure bill could be a further thorn in the congresswoman’s side, but Omar shrugged it off on Thursday. “I truly do not care about what that insane woman does,” she said, according to Politico.And her party is standing behind her. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, criticised the move as a “frivolous censure resolution, designed to inflame and castigate and further divide us”. More

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      Republican congressmen are now talking about throwing migrants from helicopters | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      Three years ago, the Intercept published an illuminating article about the rise of the “Hoppean snake” among far-right extremists, a meme which the Intercept labelled especially “disturbing for its frightening historical reference”. For the uninitiated, the Hoppean Snake in its various forms usually depicts a serpent wearing the military hat of the American-backed Chilean dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet in the foreground while figures are dropping out of helicopters to their death in the background.The meme specifically refers to Pinochet’s known strategy of kidnapping, torturing, killing, and – here’s the point – throwing his political opponents out of helicopters and into the ocean to dispose of them. The Intercept noted that many groups and individuals on the far right, such as the “Boogaloo Bois, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, armed Trumpists, and the like wear T-shirts that offer ‘free helicopter rides’.” and when they do so, “they are referencing a program of extermination.”It’s alarming to see such rhetoric from the far-right fringes; imagine seeing this kind of political violence being advocated by a sitting politician or someone seeking the highest office in the land.Well, you don’t have to imagine it any more. Last week, the Republican congressman Mike Collins of Georgia did just that. On Twitter/X,, Collins commented on a widely circulated picture of Jhoan Boada, a man who was recently arrested for allegedly assaulting two police officers in New York City outside a migrant shelter.Boada was one of seven men arrested, and multiple reports refer to him as a “migrant”. After leaving court, Boada was photographed raising his two middle fingers to reporters as he walked away. The picture prompted Republican congressman Anthony D’Esposito of New York to offer the racist riposte: “We feel the same way about you. Holla at the cartels and have them escort you back.”Collins then joined in. “Or we could buy him a ticket on Pinochet Air for a free helicopter ride back,” he wrote.As HuffPost’s Christopher Mathias, who covers the far right, put it on X: “So we have a congressman joking or not joking about extrajudicially executing a migrant arrested for a crime (allegedly assaulting a cop) that tons of non-migrant citizens get arrested for too.” Mathias also notes that the “free helicopter ride” meme has been popular with white supremacists and neo-fascists for about the last seven years.That such rhetoric is dangerous to human life and damaging to our political culture is hardly difficult to fathom. Collins was even briefly suspended from X for violating its rules against violent speech, which considering the bevy of white supremacists and neofascists on that site is quite an accomplishment. (“Never delete. Never surrender,” he posted, after his account was reinstated.) But Collins was hardly the only American political figure recently promoting political assassination.Lawyers for Donald Trump told a federal appeals court last month that a president would basically be immune from prosecution if the president ordered “Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival”, as a judge asked. Trump’s legal team argued that the president “would have to be impeached and convicted” before any prosecution could proceed. The New York Times called the argument “jaw-dropping”. The New Yorker wrote that we should all be worried, not because of Trump but because of how unsettled the law actually is.Rightwing disdain for everyone but themselves fuels this authoritarian thinking, and it is readily found in the writing of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, the German American academic to whom the Hoppean snake refers. (When contacted by the Intercept in 2021 about the meme, Hoppe said: “What do I know? There are lots of crazy people out there!”) In his 2001 book Democracy: The God That Failed, the libertarian Hoppe writes that: “there can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society.”Expulsion is also necessary, Hoppe argues, for “the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism”.Meanwhile, far-right groups assembled this past weekend in a convoy for a “Take Back Our Border” rally in Eagle Pass, Texas. Near this border town is the standoff between the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and the federal government, after Abbott installed razor wire along the border and denied federal border patrol agents access to the area. Three people, a woman and two children, drowned after the razor wire was installed, and the supreme court ruled recently that the federal government could remove the razor wire. After the ruling was issued, Representative Mike Collins introduced legislation banning the government from removing the wire.Appearing at the “Take Back Our Border” rally was the rightwing journalist Michael Yon, who offered a tirade about how the US border has become insecure because of the funders of immigration to the United States. Among his targets was HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which he described as “Jewish, right?” He continued: “This is quite interesting because [HIAS] are actually funding the people who are going to come to places like Fort Lauderdale, synagogues, and they’re going to scream ‘Allahu Akbar’ and they’re going to shoot the shit out of them. Right? And they’re coming across the border, and it’s being funded with Jewish money.”In reality, HIAS’s work aiding immigrant Muslims and Latinos so terrified the white supremacist Robert Bowers that he – not a Muslim yelling Allahu Akbar – subsequently shot and killed 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the deadliest attack on Jewish people in US history. But why let facts get in the way of a good racist screed?Jews, Muslims, immigrants – everything is a threat. Violence is the solution. Opponents should be assassinated. Fascists are role models. Welcome to the Republican party in the year 2024.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      US Senate releases draft bill to toughen border measures while securing aid to Ukraine and Israel

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      US senators on Sunday evening released the details of a highly anticipated $118bn package that pairs federal enforcement policy on the US-Mexico border with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and others, launching a long-shot effort to push the bill past sceptical, hard right House Republicans – whom Democrats accuse of politicizing immigration while being in thrall to Donald Trump.The proposal is the best chance for Joe Biden to bolster dwindling US wartime aid for Ukraine – a major foreign policy goal that is shared by both the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, and top Republican, Mitch McConnell. The Senate was expected this week to hold a key test vote on the legislation, but it faces a wall of opposition from conservatives.Joe Biden urged the US Congress to pass the legislation, for the sake of immigration reform and aid for US allies.The bill “includes the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades,” he said in a statement issued by the White House.He added: “Now, House Republicans have to decide. Do they want to solve the problem? Or do they want to keep playing politics with the border? I’ve made my decision. I’m ready to solve the problem.”Crucially, with Congress stalled on approving $60bn in Ukraine aid, the US has halted shipments of ammunition and missiles to Kyiv, leaving Ukrainian soldiers outgunned as they try to come out on top of a grinding stalemate with Russian troops.“The United States and our allies are facing multiple, complex and, in places, coordinated challenges from adversaries who seek to disrupt democracy and expand authoritarian influence around the globe,” Schumer said in a statement.In a bid to overcome opposition from House Republicans, McConnell had insisted last year that border policy changes be included in the national security funding package.The bill would overhaul the asylum system at the border with faster and tougher enforcement, as well as give presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities deemed themselves overwhelmed with the number of undocumented people requesting asylum at the international boundary.The tough new measures discussed among select senators for months include a new federal requirement to “shut down” the US-Mexico border if more than 5,000 undocumented people cross into the US daily and plans to swiftly throw out economic migrants.Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who broke from the Democratic party in 2022 to become an independent, told CBS’s Face the Nation earlier on Sunday some of what she and other Senate negotiators have been working on.When the number of migrants crossing without an appointment with the US authorities approaches 4,000 people a day, the US government would be granted the power to voluntarily turn away all people presenting at border stations, to give time for the asylum application processing to catch up, she said.At other times, migrants would be taken into short-term detention as their claims for asylum were rapidly assessed. Anyone failing to meet the standards for a claim would be “swiftly returned to their home country”, Sinema said.“We believe that by quickly implementing this system, individuals who come for economic reasons will learn very quickly that this is not a path to enter our country and will not take the sometimes dangerous or treacherous trek to our border,” she told the Sunday morning TV show.Alongside the faster deportation provisions, the draft bill would also speed up the time needed to process successful asylum applications. “Folks who do qualify for asylum will be on a rapid path, six months or less, to start a new life in America,” Sinema said.The draft Senate bill meets several of the demands that have been raised by Republicans who have accused the Biden administration of failing to secure the US border. In particular, it proposes an end to the system of allowing people to remain in the US while their asylum applications are processed – a procedure Republicans dismissively call “catch and release”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs many as 10,000 migrants a day have been encountered crossing the US-Mexico border without necessary immigration papers or an appointment with the US authorities.But the Senate bill is likely to be blocked by Republican leaders in the US House who are following Donald Trump’s lead and opposing the deal. The former president, who is running for re-election, has made it clear that he does not want to see Biden presented with a legislative win on the border crisis.Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has said the Senate bill would be “dead on arrival” were it to reach his chamber. On Saturday he also made a pre-emptive move that could further imperil the chances of the Senate bill ever becoming law by announcing that he would bring to a vote on the House floor a separate $17.6bn military aid package for Israel.Johnson was asked by NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday whether his aid for Israel plan was a ruse to kill the Senate compromise deal on the border. He was also asked whether he was merely doing Trump’s bidding, with Trump “calling the shots”.“Of course not,” the speaker said. “He’s not calling the shots, I am calling the shots for the House – that’s our responsibility.”Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader in the House, derided House Republicans, in interview on the ABC US network’s This Week Sunday show, as “wholly owned subsidiaries of Donald Trump”.With the numbers of migrants turning up at the border remaining high, and with the presidential election year getting under way, immigration is set to continue to cause ructions on both sides of the political aisle.On Sunday Nikki Haley, Trump’s only remaining rival in the race to secure the Republican nomination, accused Trump in a CNN interview of “playing politics” with the border with his attempt to scupper the Senate deal.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Nikki Haley: Trump spends more time ‘ranting’ than fighting for American people

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      Nikki Haley pressed her case on Sunday to become the Republican presidential nominee by launching a sharp attack on her rival Donald Trump as a candidate who is set to spend more time in court than on the campaign trail this year and is intent on ranting about his own supposed victimhood rather than fighting for the American people.With less than three weeks to go before the Republican primary in her home state of South Carolina, which many observers see as the former governor and UN ambassador’s last stand, Haley attacked Trump for being more concerned with himself than with the future of the country. She told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning TV show that his multiple court cases, in which he faces 91 charges across four criminal cases, amounted to a “real issue”.Turning Trump’s own words against him, Haley said that the former president is “going to be spending more time in a courtroom than he’s going to be spending on the campaign trail”. At a time when the US is “in disarray and the world is on fire, we need a president that’s going to give us eight years of focus and discipline, not one that’s going to be sitting there ranting about how he’s a victim.”.She added that Trump, in recent days, “hasn’t once talked about the American people. And that’s a problem.”She went on to accuse him of having a “temper tantrum” after she garnered 43% of the vote in New Hampshire last month. “Why? Because he wasn’t controlling the situation.”Haley’s caustic attack on Trump came as he continues to command a seemingly unassailable lead in the Republican nomination contest. He comfortably won elections in Iowa and New Hampshire, and is now showing a double digit lead in opinion polls in South Carolina, where the Republican primary contest is on 24 February.In the latest Washington Post-Monmouth University poll of potential Republican primary voters in South Carolina, Trump was 26 points ahead on 58% to Haley’s 32%.As part of her increasingly direct assault on the standing and reputation of Trump, Haley has also taken to comparing him to Joe Biden. She pointedly predicted that if Trump became the Republican nominee, there would be a woman in the White House.In that circumstance, “Joe Biden will win and Kamala Harris will become president,” she said.She said that America deserved better than either Trump or Biden as leader. “Why are we doing this? We are allowing ourselves to have two 80-year-olds, who can’t serve eight years, who are both diminished whether it’s in their character or in their mental capacity.”For his part, Biden surprised no one by taking more than 95% of the primary vote in South Carolina on Saturday. His two competitors, Dean Phillips, a congressman from Minnesota, and self-help author Marianne Williamson, lagged far behind.South Carolina has been promoted by the Democratic party as its first official primary election, partly out of recognition that it was the state in which African American voters gifted Biden a huge win in 2020 that lifted him to the Democratic nomination. Jim Clyburn, the Democratic congressman from South Carolina who was seminal in turning that vote to Biden, was asked by CNN whether was retaining the support of Black voters in this election cycle.“Joe Biden has not lost any support among African Americans. You can go out and talk to 10 people, purposely find one who maybe gives off a different thought, but he has not lost any support among African Americans,” Clyburn said.Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic party leader in the House of Representatives, hinted at better things to come for Biden as he struggles to best Trump in many opinion polls.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It was a tremendous victory in South Carolina, a decisive one and I think it demonstrates that as we enter into the campaign season that the American people are beginning to focus on President Biden’s incredible track record of results,” he said.Jeffries cited economic and health measures executed by the Biden administration as the US worked its way out from the Covid-19 pandemic, “allowing the American economy to emerge as the most advanced in the world”.He added: “Yes, more needs to be done in addressing affordability and the inflationary pressures and President Biden has a vision to do that.”Biden was scheduled to travel to Las Vegas on Sunday for a campaign event in the Historic Westside neighborhood ahead of Nevada’s Democratic primary on Tuesday.Nevada is a key swing state for Biden to win again this year. He beat Trump by less than three points there in 2020, relying heavily on support from Hispanic and working class union member voters in the Las Vegas area.Biden needs a good showing in the Democratic primary, while the nominating race for the Republicans in Nevada is a confusing and messy one with two contests two days apart and Trump having a clear advantage over Haley.Meanwhile, Haley made a cameo appearance on the US comedy staple Saturday Night Live. More

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      A once or future king? Floridians ask if DeSantis is looking forward or back

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      Two weeks have passed since Ron DeSantis crashed out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but many in Florida are questioning if the rightwing governor is still auditioning.On his return to Tallahassee following his national humiliation there was no period of quiet contemplation, or pause to refocus on his day job. Instead, DeSantis got straight down to business, little of it having immediate consequence to Florida or its voters.This week, insisting that the US looked to Florida for “leadership”, he called for constitutional reforms in Washington, including term limits for elected officials. Days later, he announced he was sending the Florida state guard to Texas to “fortify” its battle with the Biden administration over border security.And anybody in his home state figuring DeSantis was ready to move on from his obsession with the culture war issues that helped bring down his White House run was quickly disabused. One month into the year, Florida Republicans’ priorities have included banning Pride flags and stopping transgender drivers from changing their sex on licenses.Prominent questions circulating in the state are, now he is back to serve his final three years as governor: what are DeSantis’s intentions? And what is his ultimate goal?There is no shortage of theories. Some suggest he is ostensibly still in the race for the 2024 nomination, running a shadow campaign that would leave him ready to step in if legal troubles or other factors force Donald Trump out of contention.Others think he’s plotting further ahead. “He’s still running for president, just changed the timeline from 2024 to 2028,” Bob Jarvis, a constitutional law professor at Nova University, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.Another possibility is gaining traction among those who have studied DeSantis since he evolved from a nondescript and aloof US congressman to the helm of the third largest state: that he simply wants to be remembered for something when he’s termed out of office in January 2027.Such a hypothesis has plausibility if, as some observers believe, his future political career was mortally wounded by the implosion of a profligate presidential campaign that blew through $160m to garner barely 23,000 votes in Iowa, the only state he competed in.“My personal opinion is that he’s finished, that he’s going to go the way of Rick Perry in Texas, Tim Pawlenty in Minnesota, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, all of these great governors who were going to be president, who were like shooting stars and then disappeared into the darkness,” said the political analyst Mac Stipanovich, a former Republican strategist.“If he were to resign today, he would have a legacy in Florida unlike almost any governor in my lifetime. It would be a legacy of anger, outrage and highly centralized top-down vitriol.“He can’t turn on a dime and sprint left because that would make him seem even more inauthentic than he normally does. But if he’s patient, if he takes time, he can move to the center and become, I shouldn’t say more likable, but likable at all since he has been a black hole of anti-charisma.”The “legacy” theory resonates with Susan MacManus, distinguished professor emeritus of political science at the University of Florida. “He’s still got a good while in office, and right now he’s carrying on with points he was making on the campaign trail, but this happens with governors that run and come back home after having not done well, governors are always thinking about their legacy,” she said.“Some want to be known as the education governor, the tax relief or tax reform governor, the environmental governor. There’s that possibility, but if he’s going to take that direction it is probably best to just get through this legislative session being consistent with what you’ve been on the campaign trail.“Maybe he’s comfortable with his legacy being the ‘anti-wokeism’ governor, we will see. Some Republicans say they see the environment as a possibility for him, making inroads and having a good legacy because he’s been fairly proactive spending a lot of money on water issues and so forth, but it looks right now there’s been no break in his commitment to anti-wokeism.”To that end, on Wednesday, DeSantis celebrated a ruling by a Trump-appointed district court judge dismissing Disney’s lawsuit against the state for “political retaliation”, the stripping of powers from Florida’s largest private employer for opposing his “don’t say gay” law banning classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation.His backing of the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, by sending state and national guard personnel, and law enforcement officers paid by Florida taxpayers, to bolster his fellow Republican’s fight with federal authorities over immigration is to critics another example of DeSantis placing his political agenda above the needs of his own state.There’s also growing evidence it could backfire. A survey by Mi Vecino, a grassroots voter registration and advocacy group, found 58% of Republican respondents rated as “very poor”, and an additional 18% as “poor”, the effectiveness of Florida’s political leaders to handle issues that mattered most to them: in order, the cost of living, healthcare and gun violence.“People are feeling the squeeze. They are struggling with real world issues, and they feel like the governor and the legislature are spending their time on manufactured outrage, and not legislating or improving their lives in any tangible way,” said Alex Berrios, the group’s co-founder.“Ron DeSantis has created an engaged segment of the Republican party that will vote, is involved, and is also incredibly unhappy with him and the Republican legislature. They have become exhausted by this firehose of outrage and legislation and policy.” More

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      An ex-congressman or a publicity-shy Republican: who will replace George Santos?

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      George Santos, an overcoat draped around his shoulders like a villain’s cape, finally left Washington in December, expelled from Congress as he faced more than 20 fraud charges, and after his almost entirely fabricated backstory fell apart.“To hell with this place,” Santos declared as he exited.But while the Republican may be done with Washington, plenty of other people were soon desperate to fill his seat representing New York’s third congressional district.In Long Island, New York, the former congressman Tom Suozzi emerged as the Democratic candidate hoping to replace Santos. Quickly, Suozzi set about distancing himself from the left of his party. He has promised to “battle” the “Squad”, a group of progressive Democratic members of Congress and has discussed the “border crisis”.Mazi Pilip, a relatively unknown local politician, was chosen by a local Republican party desperate to move on from the embarrassment that Santos – whose claims that he was a successful businessman and investor, a graduate of a top New York university and a whiz on the volleyball court had all fallen apart under scrutiny – had brought.While the looming presence of Santos, who has pleaded not guilty to charges including stealing donors’ identities, has piqued national interest, the Suozzi-Pilip match-up could also provide an early insight into what the US can expect in what’s likely to be a second presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in November.With early and absentee voting due to start in the special election on Saturday – election day is 13 February – so far it seems that immigration is top of the agenda, for Republicans at least.“Joe Biden and Tom Suozzi created the migrant crisis by opening our borders and funding sanctuary cities,” Pilip said recently on X, in a post that seemed to overestimate the achievements and influence of Suozzi, who spent six fairly uneventful years in Congress before stepping down last year.Pilip has run a strange campaign that has seen her duck interviews and largely avoid the press. She has repeatedly sought to tie Suozzi, who represented the district before Santos’s disastrous tenure, to the unpopular Biden. In her telling, Suozzi is also responsible for “runaway inflation”, while Pilip has also attempted to link Suozzi to antisemitism.In a district which the Jewish Democratic Council of America estimates has one of the largest Jewish populations of anywhere in the country, US funding to Israel has proved a key issue so far. Both Pilip, an Orthodox Jew who was born in Ethiopia before moving to Israel and who served in the Israel Defense Forces before coming to the US, and Suozzi are fervent supporters of continued aid.As a largely suburban, purple area, which voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election before, fatefully, electing Santos in 2022, the race is being closely watched, said Lawrence Levy, former chief political columnist for Newsday and executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University.“It’s almost become a cliche to say that this [district] is a bellwether, but it really is in terms of national elections,” he said. “Competitive suburbs all over the country are the places that for years now have determined who gets the gavels in Congress, and the keys to the White House.”More than 60% of registered voters in New York state believe that the influx of migrants into the state is a “very serious problem”, according to a poll by Siena College in January. The border has come to dominate the election, and the lines of attack are beginning to serve as a preview for November.“What political operatives, and candidates, and donors are looking at around the country is how the strategies and tactics and messaging, in particular, play,” Levy said.“And what that will mean for how they approach their own races, whether it’s Orange county, California; Montgomery and Bucks county [in] Pennsylvania; Oakland county, Michigan: these are our swing suburban areas that are themselves bellwethers in the national elections.”The election has certainly brought in plenty of money. Suozzi has raised $4.5m since he entered the race, Politico reported, with Pilip bringing in $1.3m. Much of the money seems to have gone to local TV channels, with New Yorkers bombarded by attack adverts from both sides.Some of Pilip’s attacks have followed the familiar path of tying her opponent to an unsuccessful incumbent. Although Pilip’s repeated claims about a “Biden-Suozzi immigration crisis” seem something of a stretch given Suozzi’s fairly modest significance in the House of Representatives, where he served on the ways and means committee and was known for his bipartisanship.In some ways, Pilip has already cleared the very low bar set by Santos. A local CBS news channel said it had verified documents showing that Pilip did, as she claimed, study at Haifa and Tel Aviv universities, and serve in the IDF, which suggests she has not invented her history in the way Santos did. (In an email, the IDF said “we cannot comment on the personal details of past or present IDF soldiers” when the Guardian asked to confirm Pilip’s service.)Pilip has run a very quiet campaign. Her largest event so far, which saw several Republican members of Congress trek to Long Island to champion their candidate, was most noticeable for Pilip not being there: she said she was observing the sabbath.There have been complaints from local journalists, including from the New York Times and NPR, that Pilip has left them off invitations to press conferences. During the opening weeks of the campaign she conducted few interviews – one notable effort was an odd video interview with the conservative new outlet the New York Sun, during which Pilip stared into the middle distance as she answered questions.Her campaign did not respond to requests for comment or requests to be added to the press mailing list. The Guardian signed up for supporter emails, and did not receive a single one in the space of five days.It’s a far cry from the attention-pursuing Santos, who recently turned up to a Trump party during the New Hampshire primary, despite not being invited; has been hawking video messages on the app Cameo; and recently insisted in an interview: “People still want to hear what I have to say.”Whatever happens in the special election between Pilip and Suozzi, there will be plenty of people interested in what it might say about the state of US politics – and what we might expect this November. More

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      Nevada: rival primary and caucuses ensure confusion … and a Trump win

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      When Nevada Republicans started receiving their mail-in ballots for the state’s 6 February primary, Nikki Haley’s name was on them, but a key person was missing: Donald Trump. It’s not an accident.Instead of appearing on the primary ballot in the key swing state, Trump is participating in the separate Republican caucuses to take place two days after the primary, on 8 February. Haley isn’t participating in those caucuses. The bizarre set-up means that Nevada Republicans will be asked to vote in a primary on 6 February and then in caucuses two days later to choose their party’s nominee. Only the caucuses will determine how Nevada’s 26 delegates are awarded at the Republican national convention.The Nevada Republican party created the chaotic scheme, changing its nomination rules last year, in what many say is a thinly veiled effort to benefit Trump. The changes have made Nevada’s GOP nomination in the primary essentially irrelevant and left voters confused.“What it’s probably doing is a) creating a lot of confusion and b) gonna reduce turnout and participation, which totally undermines the purpose of the caucuses, which is for party building,” said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.Michael McDonald, the head of the Nevada Republican party, was one of six fake Trump electors indicted by Nevada’s attorney general, Aaron Ford. Jesse Law, the chair of the Clark county Republican party who also served in the Trump administration, and Jim DeGraffenreid, a Nevada Republican National Committee member, were also charged.“​​They did it because they are controlled by Trump people, and Trump wouldn’t like it if anything were left to chance,” said Jon Ralston, a well-respected Nevada political commentator who is CEO of the Nevada Independent. “He would almost surely have won the primary, too, but with universal mail ballots and a much larger universe, it would not have been as big a margin, probably.”In 2021, Nevada lawmakers approved a measure requiring the state to hold a primary election for the presidential preference contest. But last year, the state Republican party decided it wanted to hold caucuses instead. The party said it would award all of its delegates to the winner of the caucus. It also barred anyone who participated in the primary from also participating in the caucuses. It imposed a $55,000 fee to participate and prohibited Super Pacs from intervening in the caucuses – widely seen as an attack on Ron DeSantis, who relied heavily on his Super Pac throughout his campaign before dropping out in January.Under Nevada law, all voters are automatically mailed a ballot for the primary unless they opt out. There is also in-person early voting that began on 27 January, and voters can register to vote at the polls. The caucuses, by contrast, will take place from 5pm to 7.30pm, and voters have to appear in person and show ID to participate. Unlike a primary, in which votes are cast by ballot over the course of an early voting period and entire election days, voters in a caucus must show up in person at a designated place with their neighbors, where they are then given a ballot, after which they submit it and can stay and watch it get counted.Publicly, Nevada Republicans have said the caucuses are needed to ensure the integrity of the vote, even though voter fraud is exceedingly rare. “The caucus, until we get voter ID, and we get the mail-in ballot situation under control – the only pure way to have this is through a caucus,” McDonald, the Nevada Republican chair, said in an October interview with the Nevada newsmakers podcast.McDonald, who said in 2015 he favored primaries because they increased participation, did not respond to a request for an interview.View image in fullscreenJoe Lombardo, Nevada’s Republican governor, has said he will caucus for Trump but has criticized the dual primary and caucus system as confusing and said it would disenfranchise voters.Ralston said the party’s election integrity concerns were nonsense. “They want only the base to turn out, and the smaller the turnout, the better Trump is likely to do, especially now with only [Ryan] Binkley against him and no ‘none of the above’ to choose,” he said, referring to the long-shot candidate.Haley, along with Mike Pence and Tim Scott, chose to participate in the primary last year. Trump, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Chris Christie all chose to participate in the caucuses. Because Haley is the only candidate left in the primary, she is guaranteed to win. Trump, similarly, is the only remaining major candidate in the caucuses and is guaranteed to win that contest.Haley has said she’s not participating in the caucuses because it was rigged for Trump. “I mean, talk to the people in Nevada. They will tell you the caucuses have been sealed off, bought and paid for for a long time. And so that’s why we got into the primary,” Haley told reporters during a campaign stop in Epping, New Hampshire, last month.And Trump’s campaign has gloated over its guaranteed win in the caucuses.“On February 8th, Nikki Haley will be handed her third straight loss – in Nevada. She inexplicably signed up to be included on the state Primary ballot despite the fact that she could not earn delegates in the Primary,” Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, who both lead Trump’s campaign, wrote in a memo on Monday.Still, Trump allies have spread misinformation falsely suggesting the primary is unauthorized and Trump was wrongfully excluded from it. The presidential primary is required by state law – but Trump chose not to participate in the primary so he could be a candidate in the caucuses.Voters are confused about the process and why Trump isn’t on the primary ballot, said Cisco Aguilar, Nevada’s secretary of state.“Voters ask that question all the time,” he said in an interview. “It’s interesting because we did talk about it, we did address it, we tried to do as much mitigation as we could prior to the ballots being received. However, it’s human nature that the voter is only going to pay attention to what’s right in front of them at that moment in time.”The confusion is exacerbated by the fact that the primary is run by state officials and the caucuses are run entirely by the state GOP.Kerry Durmick, the Nevada state director for All Voting Is Local, a non-partisan group focused on expanding voting access, said she went to observe one of the first days of early voting and saw confusion.“I did see a lot of voters say, ‘Oh, I thought today was the caucus. Oh, I thought we were voting in February. Can I vote today or do I need to vote then?’” she said. “Legally the parties can handle the process however they want to. Where I’m frustrated, where All Voting Is Local is frustrated, is the lack of outreach that was done by this particular party around this particular process because this was the choice that they made.”Republicans are also reportedly still seeking volunteers to staff the caucus sites, which the party was still finalising less than a month ahead of the event, according to the Las Vegas Sun.There could be even more confusion if the dual contest system results in both candidates claiming victory in Nevada. After 6 February, Haley could claim she won the Nevada primary. Two days later, Trump will claim he won the caucuses.“To the degree that there’s any sort of media attention of the Tuesday results, it’s gonna be ‘Nikki Haley wins the Nevada primary. Oh, but Donald Trump wasn’t on the ballot.’ That’s a more complicated soundbite but she can certainly spin that,” said Damore.During a rally in Las Vegas last weekend, Trump reminded his supporters to turn out, even though he’s guaranteed to win the contest. “We do want to get a good vote. We’re not going to have a lot of competition, I think. But it doesn’t matter. We want to get a great, beautiful mandate,” he said.“It’s very important for you to help educate all of our supporters that we’re not talking about the government-run, universal mail-in ballots. We don’t want mail-in ballot,” he added. “Do the caucus, not the primary. The primary is meaningless. I don’t know, maybe they’ll try and use it for public relations purposes.”Lauren Gambino contributed reporting More