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      Democrats won Virginia on abortion. Can it also win them the White House?

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      Days before Josh Cole won his toss-up race, the Democratic candidate for Virginia’s house of delegates predicted that his party would perform well on election day, largely because the issue of abortion had motivated many voters to turn out at the polls.“There are people who are absolutely passionate about reproductive freedom and making sure that an abortion ban doesn’t come to Virginia,” Cole said.Four days later, Cole was proven right, defeating the Republican candidate Lee Peters to represent house district 65 in Richmond, the capital of Virginia. Cole’s victory reflected Virginia Democrats’ broader success on election day, as the party flipped control of the house of delegates and maintained their majority in the state senate.Democrats’ wins in Virginia may now offer some helpful lessons for the party heading into a crucial presidential election. A year and a half after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, abortion continues to weigh heavily on voters’ minds, helping to lift Democrats’ prospects at the polls. Even as Biden remains unpopular and voters express pessimism about the state of the economy, Republicans have struggled to translate that dissatisfaction into electoral success.House district 65 in particular represents a fascinating example of how Republicans failed to win the support of swing voters who helped elect Glenn Youngkin, the Virginia governor, two years earlier. The district, which was newly redrawn following the 2020 census, lies roughly halfway between Washington and Richmond and encompasses the small city of Fredericksburg, as well as parts of Stafford and Spotsylvania counties.The battleground district supported Biden by 11.7 points in 2020, according to the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. Just one year later, the district went for Youngkin by 2.8 points. Both parties had targeted the seat, with Youngkin himself appearing alongside Peters at a get out the vote rally in Fredericksburg the day before polls closed.Republicans had hoped Peters’ biography as a sheriff’s captain and a former marine would help him defeat Cole, a local pastor and former delegate who narrowly lost his re-election race in 2021. But Cole ultimately won the seat by 6 points.“This was in no way a predetermined result. It’s not a solid blue district at all. It was a winnable one [for Republicans],” said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “And probably among the house of delegates districts, it best represents what went wrong for the Republicans when it should have been a better year for them in the legislative races.”Democrats credit their success in the district and elsewhere to one issue: abortion. Democrats consistently reminded voters of Virginia’s status as the last remaining state in the US south without severe restrictions on the procedure, warning that Republicans would enact an abortion ban if they took full control of the legislature.Those warnings appeared to resonate with Virginians; according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted in October, 60% of voters in the state said abortion was a “very important” factor in their election decisions. More than half of Virginia voters, 51%, said they trusted Democrats more when it came to handling abortion policies, while 34% said the same of Republicans.In this year’s race, Cole kept relentless attention on the issue, citing his support for abortion rights in nearly all of his ads and mailers while attacking Peters over his “anti-choice extremism”.“It was very interesting because it seemed as if people were showing up on one issue,” Cole said after election day. “Of course, we did talk about kitchen-table issues when we’re on the doors and different things like that, but our message was simple. We need to trust women and we need to protect a woman’s right to choose and we need to make sure that the government doesn’t interfere with that.”Virginia Republicans were clearly aware that their stance on abortion could become a liability in the legislative races, particularly after the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterms. To address voters’ potential concerns over abortion, Youngkin chose to deploy a new and untested messaging tactic. He proposed a “reasonable 15-week limit” on the procedure, rejecting the label of an abortion “ban” and instead accusing Democrats of being out of step with voters on the issue.“Most people believe that abortion at the moment of birth is wrong, far beyond any reasonable limit. Not Virginia Democrats,” the narrator said in one Republican ad. “They fought to make late-term abortions the rule, not the exception.”Republicans also attempted to downplay the significance of abortion in the legislative races, insisting Virginia voters were more focused on other issues. Peters himself made this argument at a September debate, saying, “Everybody is not concerned or worried about women’s rights, even though there are many, many women who are. Some people worry about public safety. Some people worry about their schools.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut in the end, Virginia Republicans’ efforts to redefine and minimize the abortion debate were unsuccessful. Democrats maintained a majority of 21-19 in the Virginia senate while flipping control of the house of delegates with a majority of 51-49.“They tested some new messages around this issue – with the intention of getting to the same result, which was an abortion ban. And voters just outright rejected them,” said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “Republicans are still scratching their head on how to talk about an issue that voters don’t want.”Even fellow Republicans have acknowledged that abortion has become a persistent problem for the party’s electoral prospects. Bill Bolling, a Republican and the former lieutenant governor of Virginia, attributed the party’s losses to three factors: abortion, Donald Trump and a lack of a clear policy vision.“It really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to quickly analyze why Republicans did not perform better at the polls,” Bolling wrote last month. “Democrats successfully argued that Republicans wanted to ‘ban abortion’ in Virginia. While this argument was certainly not truthful, it was effective, especially with suburban women who have grown increasingly Democratic in their voting patterns in recent years.”In Cole’s view, his message to voters spread beyond abortion access to encompass other rights, allowing his campaign to embrace a central theme of safeguarding fundamental freedoms.“This election was about protecting rights, whether it’s the right to education, women’s rights, the right to live safely in the streets, or whatever have you. This race was about rights,” Cole said. “[Voters] understood that we definitely have to have people fighting for us on every level, who are looking out for us and our rights.”That theme was similarly present in the messaging of other Democratic candidates in Virginia, Williams said. She suggested that their success could offer a framework for candidates running next year, when Democrats will be fighting to hold the White House and the Senate and flip control of the House of Representatives.“The way that that [message] shows up in an individual community or state may look different. One community may gravitate much more towards having good safe schools and a planet to live on,” Williams said. “But that arc is still true – that fundamental freedoms matter and voters want to see their freedoms protected and not rolled back.”For Republicans, the results in Virginia present the latest in a series of warning signs about how the party is suffering because of its stance on abortion. Youngkin’s failure to take control of the legislature may signal that Republicans must find a way to shift the conversation away from abortion, although that strategy risks angering their rightwing base.“It seems to me that Republicans have just constantly squandered whatever advantage that they have by focusing on divisive social issues where the voters are not aligning with their position,” Rozell said. “So they need to find a way out of that trap that they’ve made for themselves. Otherwise, they’re going to keep losing winnable districts.” More

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      ‘Texas, we’ll see you in court’: migrant law sparks outcry and opposition

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      As a group of Texas and Hispanic Democrats demanded the US attorney general block what they called “the most extreme anti-immigrant state bill in the United States”, signed by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on Monday, the president of Mexico and the American Civil Liberties Union also vowed to fight the law.“Texas, we’ll see you in court,” the ACLU said.In a court filing in Austin, Texas, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU – El Paso county, Texas, and two immigrant rights groups, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and American Gateways – sued Steven McCraw, director of the state department of public safety, and Bill Hicks, district attorney for the 34th district.On social media, the ACLU said it aimed “to block Texas from enforcing the most extreme anti-immigrant law in the nation”, which it also said was unconstitutional.The law will allow Texas law enforcement agencies to arrest migrants deemed to have entered the US illegally and empower judges to order deportations. It is set to go into effect next year.On Monday, congressional Democrats led by Joaquin Castro, from San Antonio, and including 11 other Texas representatives, Nanette Diaz Barragán of California (chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus) and eight other Hispanic representatives, published a letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland.“This legislation authorises state law enforcement officers to arrest and detain people and state judges to order mass deportations,” the letter read.“This bill is set to be the most extreme anti-immigrant state bill in the United States,” the letter said. “It is clearly pre-empted by federal law and when it goes into effect will likely result in racial profiling, significant due process violations, and unlawful arrests of citizens, lawful permanent residents, and others.”The next day, the president of Mexico, Andres Manuel López Obrador, said his government was preparing to challenge the law, which he called “inhumane”.“The foreign ministry is already working on the process to challenge this law,” he said, adding that Abbott “wants to win popularity with these measures, but he’s not going to win anything, but he’ll lose favor, because in Texas there are so many Mexicans and migrants”.On social media, Castro linked passage of the law to extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric deployed on the campaign trail by Donald Trump, the 91-times criminally charged former president who dominates Republican primary polling.Castro said: “Forty-eight hours after Trump accused immigrants of ‘poisoning the blood of our country’, Governor Abbott is signing a dangerous new law targeting immigrants and everyone who looks like them.”Trump made the comments at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday, then complained of an “invasion” in Nevada on Sunday. Observers, opponents and historians were quick to point out the authoritarian roots of such rhetoric, which Trump has used before. Many made direct comparisons to Adolf Hitler, who used similar language about Jews in his autobiography and manifesto, Mein Kampf.On Monday night, a New York Republican congresswoman, Nicole Malliotakis, attempted to defend Trump on television.“When he said ‘they are poisoning’, I think he was talking about the Democratic policies,” Malliotakis claimed. “I think he was talking about the open border policy.“You know what’s actually poisoning America is the amount of fentanyl that’s coming over the open border. And so this is a serious issue, and I think that’s what he’s talking about.”Her host, Abby Phillip of CNN, said Trump “was saying that the immigrants who are coming in … they’re poisoning the blood of the nation”.Malliotakis insisted: “He never said ‘immigrants are poisoning,’ though … He didn’t say the word ‘immigrants’.”In Congress, immigration has once again become a political football, Senate Republicans holding up aid to Ukraine in search of concessions from Democrats.Abbott is among Republican governors who have forcibly transferred migrants to Democratic-run states. In Brownsville, Texas, on Monday, he signed the new bill and said: “[Joe] Biden’s deliberate inaction has left Texas to fend for itself.”In their letter to Garland, the Democrats led by Castro urged the attorney general to “assert your authority over federal immigration and foreign policy and pursue legal action, as appropriate, to stop this unconstitutional and dangerous legislation from going into effect”. More

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      Judge temporarily bars removal of Confederate memorial in Virginia

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      A Confederate memorial was blocked on Monday from being removed from Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia, with a court order setting back the push to remove symbols that commemorate the Confederacy from military-related facilities.A federal judge on Monday issued a temporary restraining order barring removal of a memorial to Confederate soldiers at the nation’s foremost military cemetery. A group called Defend Arlington, affiliated with a group called Save Southern Heritage Florida, filed a lawsuit Sunday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, seeking the restraining order. A hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday.The decision also follows a recent demand from more than 40 Republican congressmen that the Pentagon suspend efforts to dismantle and remove the monument from Arlington cemetery.Work to remove the memorial had begun Monday before the restraining order was issued, and the memorial remains in place on cemetery grounds.A cemetery spokesperson said Monday that Arlington is complying with the restraining order, but referred all other questions to the US justice department.Safety fencing has been installed around the memorial, and officials had expected to complete the removal by this upcoming Friday 22 December, the Arlington National Cemetery had previously said in an email.Virginia’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, had previously disagreed with the removal decision.In 2022, an independent commission recommended that the memorial be taken down as part of its final report to Congress on renaming of military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32ft pedestal, and was designed to represent the American south. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”The installation includes a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer as well as an enslaved man following his owner to war.In a recent letter to the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, more than 40 House Republicans had said the commission overstepped its authority when it recommended that the monument be removed. The congressmen contended that the monument “does not honor nor commemorate the Confederacy; the memorial commemorates reconciliation and national unity.“The Department of Defense must respect Congress’s clear legislative intentions regarding the naming commission’s legislative authority,” the letter said.Earlier this year, Fort Bragg shed its Confederate name to become Fort Liberty, part of the broad Department of Defense initiative, motivated by the 2020 George Floyd protests, to rename military installations that had been named after Confederate soldiers.The Black Lives Matter demonstrations that erupted nationwide after Floyd’s killing by a white police officer, coupled with ongoing efforts to remove Confederate monuments, turned the spotlight on the army installations. The naming commission created by Congress visited the bases and met with members of the surrounding communities for input.
      The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Clarence Thomas’s salary complaints sparked rightwing fears he would resign

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      Clarence Thomas told a Republican congressman that US supreme court justices should get a pay raise or “one or more” would quit, prompting “a flurry of activity” among rightwingers because his “importance as a conservative was paramount”, ProPublica said in its latest hard-hitting report on questionable ethics at the high court.Cliff Stearns, the Florida Republican Thomas spoke to in 2000, told the non-profit newsroom: “We wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly.”At the time, a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, would have nominated a replacement if any justice had resigned. Republicans held the Senate, which would have conducted the confirmation.ProPublica said Thomas spoke to Stearns on a flight after giving a speech at Awakening, a “‘conservative thought weekend’ featuring golf, shooting lessons and aromatherapy along with panel discussions with businessmen and elected officials”, held in Sea Island, Georgia, in January 2000.Thomas’s trip was paid for by event organisers, ProPublica said, adding that the justice’s reported 11 free trips on his annual disclosure form that year but not the trip to Awakening, “an apparent violation of federal disclosure law”.Thomas’s finances have come under the spotlight this year, with ProPublica publishing a series of in-depth reports, stirring an ethics scandal.He took and largely failed to declare gifts from Republican donors including luxury travel and resort stays, school fees and a property purchase.An arch-conservative on a panel dominated 6-3 by the right, Thomas has been in place since a 1991 confirmation dominated by allegations of sexual harassment.Responding to reports by ProPublica and other outlets, he has denied wrongdoing and pledged to conform to disclosure rules. Progressives have called for him to resign or be impeached and removed – vanishingly unlikely outcomes with the court in conservative hands and Republicans holding the House and contesting the Senate.ProPublica said the justice was struggling financially at the time of his conversation with Stearns. The site published a letter dated 11 January 2000 in which the congressman told the justice: “Just a note to let you know how much I enjoyed visiting with you on the flight back from Jacksonville to Dulles.“I intend to look into a bill to raise the salaries of members of the supreme court. As we agreed, it is worth a lot to Americans to have the constitution properly interpreted. We must have the proper incentives here, too.”Stearns quoted the philosopher Immanuel Kant, telling Thomas to “have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived”.On Monday, responses to the ProPublica story included the former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann calling Thomas a “loyal judicial prostitute”.Stearns sought help from a lobbying firm and spoke in the House. Thomas’s suggestion that resignations might be imminent reached judicial administrators. The then chief justice, William Rehnquist, said in his annual report: “The most pressing issue facing the judiciary: the need to increase judicial salaries”.Mitch McConnell, a Republican senator from Kentucky (now minority leader), proposed removing a ban on paid speeches by justices. That effort failed, and supreme court salaries have not changed, bar keeping up with inflation.But ProPublica also reported that “during his second decade on the court, Thomas’ financial situation appears to have markedly improved.” The justice received a $1.5m advance for his memoir and gifts from rich individuals.In a public appearance in June 2019, Thomas was asked about court salaries.“Oh goodness, I think it’s plenty,” Thomas said. “My wife [the rightwing activist Ginni Thomas] and I are doing fine. We don’t live extravagantly, but we are fine.”ProPublica said: “A few weeks later, Thomas boarded [the mega-donor Harlan] Crow’s private jet to head to Indonesia. He and his wife were off on vacation, an island cruise on Crow’s 162ft yacht.”In a statement, Caroline Ciccone, president of the watchdog Accountable.US, said the ProPublica report showed again how Thomas “has long seen his position on our nation’s highest court as a way to upgrade his own lifestyle”.Ciccone said: “When the court itself wasn’t providing him with the luxury perks he wanted, his billionaire benefactor social circle stepped in to make it happen.“Justice Thomas, Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo [of the Federalist Society, a key figure in rightwing activism around the US judiciary] and other key players in this corruption crisis may believe they exist above the law – but they don’t. With public trust at record lows, it’s far past time to restore credibility and integrity to our high court.” More

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      Black Georgian men helped Biden win the White House – are they losing faith?

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      Morehouse College, a 156-year-old Black men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, has produced graduates such as Martin Luther King and Spike Lee. It has been an essential campaign stop for Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama, John Lewis and, last September, Kamala Harris.But as another presidential election looms, Joe Biden can take nothing for granted here. “A resounding no,” was 28-year-old Ade Abney’s verdict on whether the US president has delivered on his promises to Black voters. “I voted for Biden in 2020 but next year I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. It probably will not be him.”Georgia is among half a dozen swing states that will decide the all-important electoral college next November. Despite its history as a bastion of conservatism in the south, Democrats have scored notable wins in presidential and Senate elections in recent years. African American voters have been fundamental to that success, with Biden securing 88% of the Black vote in 2020.But opinion polls suggest an erosion of support for the president. An October survey by the New York Times and Siena College found that, while 76% of Black voters in Georgia favour Biden, 19% prefer his likely rival Donald Trump – an unprecedented share for a Republican in modern times. It was enough to give Trump a six-point lead in the state overall.The current shift is particularly acute among Black men for reasons that include a perception that Trump would cut taxes and offer better economic opportunities. Abney, a Morehouse graduate who now works at the college, said: “I was in a barbershop and the barbershop conversation was how they like Trump.“The reason was at least when he was in office they felt as though they were able to make more money. A lot of people attribute that specifically to him. A lot of that conversation was pretty clear in terms of OK, well, I had more money when he was in office so I want him back.”Standing beside Abney at the tree-lined college entrance, Dejaun Wright, 23, offered even sharper criticism of Biden. “There’s a lot of broken promises, a lot of a lack of integrity,” the philosophy student said. “He campaigned on promises such as student loan forgiveness and every instance where he’s shown interest in that, he’s always applied a caveat: oh, well, I said student loan forgiveness, but I only forgive $10,000.“A lot of the things that he promised he’s offered either with a caveat or he just hasn’t offered at all. It’s a slap in the face. If you are going to build a campaign and then build a presidency off of lies, or at least not keeping your promises, then I don’t know if I can trust you again.”At liberal colleges such as Morehouse, there is also rising discontent over 81-year-old Biden’s staunch support for Israel, even as it unleashes an aerial and ground blitz against Hamas that is causing thousands of civilian deaths and a humanitarian disaster in Gaza.Wright added: “I’m not appreciative of how vocal he’s been in his blind support of Israel. No sense of criticism there whatsoever. He’s actively been ignoring all of us. We’ve all been saying we don’t support this war in Israel. We don’t like our tax money funding a genocide like this, especially considering the amount of debt we have.”Black men do still vote overwhelmingly Democrat, and it’s only a small segment who might be turning away. In 2020 87% of Black men supported Joe Biden, which although down slightly from the 95% who voted for Barack Obama in his first campaign was better than the 82% who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. (Black women support Democrats even more strongly: in 2016 and 2020, 94% and 95% voted for Biden.) Only 12% of Black men voted for Trump in 2020 and no Democrat has attracted less than 80% of Black voters since the civil rights era.Small numbers could nevertheless make a big difference. Like Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004, Georgia has become a closely fought battleground that could decide the presidency. In 2020 Biden won the state by a margin of just 11,779 votes, or 0.24%, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state in 28 years. Trump’s false claims and efforts to overturn the result led to criminal charges and a potential trial next year.Democrats’ gains continued two months later, when Raphael Warnock became the first African American from Georgia elected to the Senate and Jon Ossoff became the state’s first Jewish senator. Last year, Warnock won re-election in a runoff against the Republican Herschel Walker, an African American former football star who failed to make significant gains among Black voters.But Stacey Abrams, bidding to become America’s first Black female governor, was defeated by the Republican incumbent, Brian Kemp. In the House of Representatives, the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene cruised to re-election. The state remains so finely balanced that even a fraction of Black voters switching to Trump, voting third party or simply staying at home on election day could make all the difference.Cliff Albright, a co-founder and executive director of the Black Lives Matter Fund, does not believe there is more of an enthusiasm gap now than at the same stage in 2019, when Black voters were unexcited about Biden. “People confuse electability for enthusiasm,” he said. “We weren’t that enthusiastic and we’re still not that enthusiastic. But that’s not news.“It’s just showing up differently because we’re a year out from the election. My prediction is that as we get closer, that pragmatism will set back in and people will start to realise more that this is not a referendum about Biden. This is a choice between this person and the one that we know is anti-us or somebody else who’s equally as bad.”Albright does not believe polls that say Trump will improve on his share of the Black vote next time. But he acknowledges that Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza could hurt him among young Black voters, especially with independent candidates such as Cornel West offering a clear alternative by demanding a ceasefire.“A lot of Black folks see ourselves in the Palestinian struggle,” he said. “A lot of us view that as a David and Goliath situation, a colonial situation. We see ourselves in what’s happening. When we see armed military using teargas and rockets and all that, we also see the George Floyd protests and ourselves going up against tanks and police forces.“There’s some very strong feelings about what many have called a genocide that is taking place in front of our eyes. Not only are you supporting the Israeli government’s ability to carry out this war but you are literally transferring more and more money so that they can do so. It’s not just political cover. It is actual financial and military support.He continued: “You get the Black folks, especially younger Black folks, that are like, ‘you keep saying you don’t have money for us but you’ve got money to go over here to kill some other folks that actually look like us.’ People can say, ‘oh, Trump would be worse,’ but that doesn’t change that what these folks are seeing right now is not Trump doing it. They’re seeing President Biden do it and so that is going to impact.“And many of these young folks, once they turn you off, you’re done. He could come back next month and increase the student debt cancellation. He could come up with some new gun legislation. He could go even further on some of the climate change issues. But many of these folks that right now are furious about what’s going on in Gaza, none of that would change their minds. They’re that mad.”Israel is not the only foreign policy issue weighing on Black voters. While his unwavering support for Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression – Congress has already allocated $111bn in assistance – has earned global plaudits, it appears to be playing differently in some African American communities.Kendra Cotton, chief executive of the New Georgia Project (NGP), a non-partisan organisation that works to empower voters of colour, said she didn’t think much of Ukraine until she “saw all of the African immigrants getting kicked off those trains. Then my eyes glassed over and I was like, this ain’t my problem and I didn’t want anything to do with it.“While I empathise with what’s going on in Ukraine, what I know is, if my Black behind was over there, they’d have kicked me off the trains too, so good luck to you.”She added: “We have people under these overpasses right here living in tents … People are trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents.“So, when you’re talking about billions in aid leaving the country, people don’t know how to qualify that in their minds: OK, but what are you doing domestically? Because when you talk about domestic issues, all you hear is we ain’t got it, there’s no money for that.”The NGP has registered almost 50,000 voters this year as it continues to fight voter purges in the state. In a September survey it found approval of Biden’s job performance down to just 61% among Black Georgia voters, and only 45% of Black 18 to 24-year-olds. Keron Blair, chief of field and organising for the NGP, argues that the White House has less of a policy problem than a communication one.He said: “I talk to people who’ve had thousands of dollars in student loans forgiven. We hear from people who got money directly into their pockets because of IRA [Inflation Reduction Act]. We hear from communities that have received resources for infrastructure. We see the broadband initiative.“That has not been communicated in a serious and strategic way to voters and so people are always going to ask, I voted last time, what happened? If they don’t know the things they are seeing and experienced are the result of choices made by the administration, they’re going to feel like not much has shifted.”Indeed, the gap between positive economic data and a sense of malaise on the ground is evident among Black voters. Gregory Williams, 37, a health coach, said: “The economy doesn’t feel like it’s strong. Everything feels out of whack. Inflation is crazy. Cities that are far out are expensive. Everything is just up right now. It’s hard to even get a loan for a house. Atlanta has the most evictions it’s ever had in its history.”Williams does not rule out voting for Trump. “It depends if he makes sense. He might not be saying what people want him to say but there’s a lot of things that he does and it seems like it helps. It gets a visual effect. People see things happening.”Jasper Preston, 35, a programme director at a homelessness non-profit, added: “Biden’s presidency has been an absolute nightmare for me personally. All the progress I made becoming more financially secure has been completely undone. I find myself worse off than during the Obama years and that has caused quite a setback. I have four children so it’s been very unpleasant trying to make ends meet.”Preston is a longtime Trump supporter who was ridiculed for it by his siblings living on the South Side of Chicago. But not any more, he said. “One privately gave me a call to very secretly admit that she is no longer a Democrat and will be voting for Trump in this upcoming election. She can’t tell anybody around South Side Chicago because, well, it’s South Side Chicago.“The same for my other siblings in Chicago as well as in here in Georgia. People are realising, ‘Oh, my wallet has definitely been drastically affected by this new administration, and all the promises they made based on skin colour turned out to be lies, and apparently promises about skin colour don’t make for a good president.’”In his victory speech after winning the 2020 election, Biden acknowledged that when his campaign was at its lowest ebb, African American voters stood up for him. “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,” he promised. In his inaugural address two months later, he named racial justice as one of four national crises that would take priority during his administration.While Biden has poured money into historically Black colleges and universities and appointed record numbers of people of colour as judges, efforts at police reform or to protect voting rights have stalled in Congress. When the president travelled to Atlanta last year to make his most aggressive case yet for reform of the Senate filibuster rule, some campaigners boycotted the event.Shelley Wynter, a conservative radio host and member of the Georgia Black Republican Council, said: “A Biden partisan person will tell you all these things that he’s done, but none of it was specifically for Black people. If Ukraine gets attacked and you can find billions and billions of dollars to send to Ukraine, you could have sent money into inner-city urban areas to say, ‘Hey, let’s do this.’”He continued: “If I vote for you and I’ve continuously voted for you and I’m the strongest, most loyal base of voters that you have, and you’ve still got nothing specifically for this group yet you can do stuff for other people, that’s why people are shifting, particularly Black men.“I equate what’s going on to what happens in a Black church. If you go to an average Black church, you’re going to see 90% women, a sprinkling of men. Most of those men are going to be older guys. Men are raised in a church and they see the ministers driving a Rolls-Royce while they are still in a hooptie struggling, and they start to get turned off and they stop going.“But their wives continue to go. That’s what the Democratic party is becoming: a party of Black women and a sprinkling of Black men, because Black men are going to Trump, they’re not going to the Republican party – and it’s a big difference.”Wynter argues that many have come view to Trump’s racism as a myth, empathise with his legal troubles and dismiss dire warnings that he would behave like a dictator in a second term. “It’s like, ‘I’m already living in a dictatorship, I’m already oppressed as a Black man, so all those things that they’re saying about Trump don’t resonate because I’m already there.“‘So now let me pay attention to the things that I really care about, which is my money, and this guy allows me to keep my money in my pocket. Tax cuts, less regulations for the entrepreneurial-spirited guy.’ That’s what they see. It’s a real tangible thing. ‘In 2019, I had X amount of money after I got paid every two weeks. Now I have less. It’s very tangible. I can see it, I can feel it. You telling me he’s evil? I can’t see or feel that. But I can see more money in my pocket.’”Democrats acknowledge the work that must be done to rebuild Biden’s 2020 coalition. Earlier this month his election campaign released a new ad, “List”, making the case that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act are helping people in African American communities. Despite worrying polls and signs of donor fatigue, the party is on a winning streak in recent elections and ballot measures on issues such as abortion rights.Back at Morehouse, there are still plenty of students keeping faith with the president. Damarion King, 18, studying political science, said: “I believe Joe Biden is doing a fantastic job, passing so many bipartisan bills. I don’t think his age is a factor in this election, at least for me. He’s doing the job. He’s doing his work for the people of America and I strongly support him.”King is sceptical that Black men who voted for Biden in 2020 will defect to Trump next year, not least because of the former president’s 91 criminal charges. “Anybody in the Black working class who’s saying that Trump is a better businessman is wrong. He’s gone bankrupt multiple times. He can’t be that great of a businessman.” More

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      Florida Republican party chair suspended amid rape accusation

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      The Republican party of Florida suspended chairman Christian Ziegler and demanded his resignation during an emergency meeting Sunday, adding to calls by governor Ron DeSantis and other top officials for him to step down as police investigate a rape accusation against him.Ziegler is accused of raping a woman with whom he and his wife, Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, had a prior consensual sexual relationship, according to police records.“Christian Ziegler has engaged in conduct that renders him unfit for the office,” the party’s motion to censure Ziegler said, according to a document posted on the social media platform Twitter/X by Lee county GOP chairman Michael Thomason.Ziegler tried to defend himself during the closed-door meeting, but the party board quickly took the action against him, Thompson said.“Ziegler on soap box trying to defend himself, not working,” Thompson posted before confirming the votes.The party’s executive committee will hold another vote in the future on whether to remove Ziegler.The Sarasota police department is investigating the woman’s accusation that Ziegler raped her at her apartment in October. Police documents say the Zieglers and the woman had planned a sexual threesome that day, but Bridget Ziegler was unable to make it. The accuser says Christian Ziegler arrived anyway and assaulted her.Christian Ziegler has not been charged with a crime and says he is innocent, contending the encounter was consensual.The accusation also has caused turmoil for Bridget Ziegler, an elected member of the Sarasota school board, though she is not accused of any crime. On Tuesday the board voted to ask her to resign. She refused.The couple have been outspoken opponents of LGBTQ+ rights, and their relationship with another woman has sparked criticism and accusations of hypocrisy.In addition to DeSantis, Republican senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, US representative Matt Gaetz and Florida’s Republican House and senate leaders have all called for Christian Ziegler’s resignation. More

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      Republican royalty to liberal heroine: Liz Cheney finds an anti-Trump niche

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      It was a moment that a visitor from the year 2010 might have found impossible to comprehend. As Liz Cheney, arch-conservative and daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, walked on stage in deeply liberal Washington, the audience applauded and cheered for a full 45 seconds.“They’re standing, Liz, wow!” exclaimed moderator Mark Leibovich, a journalist and author. “You could probably be elected to Congress from the District of Columbia if they had representation.”Cheney, 57, who as a Republican congresswoman voted against granting statehood to the District of Columbia, even though her home state of Wyoming has a smaller population, laughed at the comment. Leibovich added wryly: “Don’t answer that.”Wednesday night’s event at the historic synagogue Sixth & I, organised by the local bookshop Politics & Prose, which is run by a Hillary Clinton alumnus and former Washington Post journalist, was the latest stop on Cheney’s book tour. Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning is a scathing account of Donald Trump’s assault on democracy and urgent plea for America to avoid a repeat.The book debuted at No 1 on the New York Times’s bestseller list. It is also shining a light on the Trump era’s habit of scrambling old alliances and creating strange bedfellows.Cheney is unapologetically conservative. She remains close to her father, an architect of the Iraq war, and used to appear regularly on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News network. She voted in line with Trump’s position 93% of the time during his presidency, according to the FiveThirtyEight website.James King, a professor emeritus at the University of Wyoming, said: “Clearly she does not disagree with most of Trump’s policies. It’s just his adequacy to be president she’s made something of a crusade over the last two years.”Cheney was one of only 10 Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted to impeach Trump in the wake of the January 6 insurrection and one of only two who served on the House select committee that investigated the deadly riot. Her decision to put democracy before party has made her an unlikely heroine in the eyes of many liberals.At the Sixth & I event, Cheney acknowledged: “I have a lot more Democratic friends now than I used to have.”She was warmly received by the audience in one of America’s most liberal cities. During a question-and-answer session, one said: “I have to tell you that my family and I disagree with you on 90% of your policy positions but my sister and I are overwhelmed with gratitude and privilege and honour to tell you personally that you are our ‘shero’, you’re an American treasure and we thank you and your wonderful family for your courage, your strength, your integrity.”Cheney was visibly moved but a smiling Leibovich asked mischievously: “All right, show of hands, how many people voted for Dick Cheney for vice-president in 2004?” A couple of hands went up – from people related to Cheney.Dick Cheney was vice-president under George W Bush from 2001 to 2009. He was the mastermind of a neoconservative “war on terror” that spiralled into the torturing of suspects, establishment of a prison at Guantánamo Bay and an illegal war in Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction. He shares his daughter’s view of Trump as a threat to democracy and the constitution.Liz Cheney served in Congress for three terms but her opposition to Trump came with a political price. She was ousted from Republican leadership in the House and last year defeated in a primary election in Wyoming by Harriet Hageman, a conservative lawyer and Trump ally. Cheney subsequently accepted an appointment as a professor of practice with the University of Virginia Center for Politics in Charlottesville.Larry Sabato, the centre’s director, recalled: “When I first announced that appointment, oh my God, you would have thought that I had converted to Satanism. The emails! It was just incredible. ‘How could you do that? This is the most terrible thing. Oh, she did just one good thing. Oh, great, it’s like having Dick Cheney on the faculty.’ Nobody’s admitted it but they were completely wrong.”Sabato has noted some changes in Cheney’s politics during her interactions with students. “We’ve had easily 20-plus classes here so I’ve picked up on nuances where she has shifted her position even on something like abortion. She’s not as conservative as she once was. There have been changes which I think she muted because she was representing Wyoming and they’re coming to the fore.”Cheney has not ruled out a 2024 presidential run as an independent but her main priority is to thwart Trump’s candidacy. Her book has given her a platform to take the message to a wide audience. Since its publication on 5 December, she has done about 30 interviews on networks such as ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and PBS, newspapers including the Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Post and USA Today, and a host of podcasts and radio broadcasts.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAmong the most notable was her conversation with Rachel Maddow, the first openly gay host of a US primetime news programme and a media star among progressives. The host offered this memorable introduction: “I disagree with Liz Cheney about everything. My whole adult life on everything in politics, I would not just say that Liz Cheney and I were on different proverbial teams, I would say we are from different proverbial planets. And they are planets that are mostly at war with each other.”Maddow continued: “It’s important because that tells you how serious and big something has to be to put us, to put me and Liz Cheney, together on the same side of something in American life. I’m sure Noah had a hard time convincing the mice that they should get on the same boat with the snakes … but needs must.“Normal combat, normal willingness to chomp on each other or run or defend ourselves from each other, yields to the imperative of the world-destroying flood, where all land animals face the same fate and all the old fears and rules have to be put on hold, because now we’re either all going down or we’re all in the same boat.”Stephen Colbert, a late-night comedian who has savaged Cheney’s father and Trump over the years, interviewed her on his show in the Democratic stronghold of Manhattan, New York. Colbert said: “I didn’t expect to interview you ever, really … What is this moment like, to be embraced by people who vilified you and your family for so long?” She admitted: “I think it’s weird.”It is also a sign of the times. Trump has united small “d” democrats like no one else. Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “What’s interesting about seeing Liz Cheney on programmes like that and in venues that would not have normally been part of her book tour circuit or her media circuit is that it shows you how how much bigger her message is. It transcends party lines.“The threat that Donald Trump and Trumpism poses to our country as a whole has created interesting bedfellows. Seeing Liz Cheney sitting down with Rachel Maddow and being simpatico on an issue as important as our democracy should give everyone hope that it’s not too late to turn this around.”Trump is the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 despite 91 criminal charges in four cases hanging over him. The House speaker, Mike Johnson, and his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, have endorsed the former president, But those who have broken with the party over its cult-like devotion to Trump praise Cheney for issuing a clear warning about the danger he poses.Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, added: “Liz Cheney should be the template for every Republican in the party. Unfortunately, she is an anomaly.“It’s rather remarkable as I watch her evolution from being Republican royalty to an apostate simply because she has spoken the truth about who and what Donald Trump is, what he has done to the Republican party and ultimately what he has done to our country, based off of Republican principles that she thought were unmovable. But apparently they are for many Republicans and she’s exposed that hypocrisy.”Cheney is not the only liberal bete noire to undergo a rehabilitation of sorts in the age of Trump. Two polls in 2017 found that more Democrats view Bush favourably than unfavourably. Republicans such as Jeff Sessions, Robert Mueller, Bill Barr and Mike Pence have earned praise for defying Trump. The recent death of Henry Kissinger at 100 prompted a lengthy tribute from the secretary of state, Antony Blinken.Some on the left are uneasy with such role reversals, warning that shifting the goalposts serves only to mainstream and normalise figures whose actions were beyond the pale. Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, said: “It’s very dangerous to fall into the groove of the enemy of my enemy is my friend.“The fact that she has done one admirable thing in her life politically, and that is stand up against Donald Trump, does not change the fact that she voted with him an overwhelming amount of the time. On virtually every other issue even a mainstream Democrat would find her votes abhorrent. In the House she was one of the most prominent, outspoken militarists eager to go to war. The apple’s not far from the tree in that way.” More

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      ‘The venom of our age’: James Carville on the danger of Mike Johnson’s Christian nationalism

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      As hard-right movements rattle or control European governments, the words of George Steiner animate James Carville.“Nationalism is the venom of our age,” Steiner wrote in his 1965 essay on the Holocaust, A Kind of Survivor. “It has brought Europe to the edge of ruin.”Those words prompted Carville, the centrist Democratic political consultant who guided Bill Clinton to the presidency, to say: “The greatest distinction in the world is between patriotism, which is positive – a piece of ground as an idea – and nationalism, which is tribal, exclusionary and, yeah, poisonous.”Carville zeroed in on the US variant: white Christian nationalism, particularly as embodied by Mike Johnson, his fellow Louisianan and the US House speaker.“Johnson has no skill, no background, no majority to speak of,” the so-called Ragin’ Cajun declaimed on Saturday, hours before he watched the Louisiana State Univeristy quarterback Jayden Daniels win the coveted Heisman award.Football is as dear to Carville as politics and his Roman Catholic faith. A graduate of LSU and its law school, he wears the Tigers’ gold and purple shirts in many of his TV appearances, accentuating his flamboyant presence.“What Johnson does represent is a level of breathtaking hypocrisy,” Carville said. “His anti-homosexuality and young earthism are hypocrisy on steroids.”In a 2004 Shreveport Times op-ed on gay marriage, Johnson wrote: “If we change marriage for this tiny minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists and pedophiles will be next in line to claim equal protection.”“Young earthism” signals Johnson’s belief that the planet is 6,000 years old, a literal interpretation of Genesis. In a 2021 interview celebrating the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, which lies 40 miles from Ark Encounter, Johnson said: “The Ark Encounter is one way to bring people to this recognition of the truth that what we read in the Bible are actual historical events.”Johnson, his role as lawyer, helped the gigantic ark attraction secure significant funding from the state tourism budget, Reuters reports.Itching for a fight, Carville is challenging the speaker to a debate at Louisiana Christian University, a small Southern Baptist campus in the town of Pineville.Carville calls LCU “the epicenter of Christian nationalism”.“The debate I want begins: ‘Resolved, Christian nationalism is a greater threat to America than al-Qaida,’” Carville said. “I want students to see real debate and make up their own minds about what kind of America we want.”Before his election to Congress, Johnson was founding dean of a campus law school to be named for Paul Pressler, 93, a retired Texas judge, legislator and Southern Baptist potentate. In 2018, the Houston Chronicle reported Pressler paid $450,000 to settle a lawsuit by a man who alleged that Pressler sexually assaulted him as a high school student in Bible study. The law school never materialized.Carville, 79, and Johnson, 51, stand a generation apart, their lives mirroring the state’s divided history. Once a Democratic party stronghold of the Gulf south, Louisiana has gone deep red: Republicans hold the major state offices and a heavy legislative majority. The attorney general and governor-elect, Jeff Landry, boasted of the former president Donald Trump’s endorsement as Landry coasted to an outright, multiparty primary victory.Carville lives in New Orleans with the Republican political operative Mary Matalin, his wife. But he grew up 16 miles south of Baton Rouge along the Mississippi River in the town of St Gabriel, in the Carville neighborhood, named for his grandfather.The oldest of eight children, he attended mass in a church built in the late 18th century, taking comfort in the gospels as he does today. The 1960 election of John F Kennedy, a Catholic, was like a magnet pulling Carville into politics.Johnson is a firefighter’s son from Shreveport – far upstate, an area more culturally akin to Alabama or Mississippi. He came of age as Pentecostal Christianity became a political force. He won election to the House in 2016, telling the Louisiana Baptist Message newspaper: “I am a Christian, a husband, a father, a lifelong conservative, constitutional law attorney and a small business owner in that order.”He claimed the speaker’s gavel after it was wrested from the retiring congressman Kevin McCarthy, emerging from the subsequent Republican infighting.For all of his spitfire attacks on Johnson and “the blood and soil” Make America great again (Maga) agenda pushed by Trump, Carville draws on a wellspring of faith. He says he has “a Catholic construct of the world” – and that attending mass daily at 8am calms and comforts him.“I like the predictability of the gospel readings,” Carville said. “So much of my life is unpredictable.”The church’s ongoing clergy sex abuse crisis eats at him, in part because one of his cousins is an ordained priest who holds the elevated title of monsignor. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve thought about that,” Carville said. “Like most people, I struggle.”Although Pope Francis is a widely admired global figure, the American church is as deeply torn as the US’s red v blue political split. Carville draws a careful distinction between the power structure of bishops and the people in churches with priests they like.“I’ve seen how [bishops] try to repress people while they were allowing predators, covering up, lying to people and hiding behind their lawyers,” Carville said. “I hold the Roman Catholic church to a higher standard than I would Ford Motor Company.”The hard-right network of Catholic organizations such as the Napa Institute, Church Militant and Eternal Word Television Network offend Carville for similar reasons that send him into attack mode against Trumpism and Johnson.“The essence of Trumpism is that politics has run over you,” Carville said. “I understand why people feel that – the idea of loss, what people once had. In the church, we’re seeing a real defense of power in reaction to the hypocrisy and rottenness that’s been exposed. So the right wing doubles down.”Carville was delighted when Francis sacked the American cardinal Raymond Burke from his Vatican apartment and salary. Burke, a former archbishop of St Louis, is known for his lavish, regal attire and attacks on the pope’s agenda of “radical mercy” – reaching out to migrants and people on the margins, seeking to make the church more welcoming to LGBTQ+ believers, divorced Catholics and women.“The Cardinal Burkes of the world are telling you that you have to protect power at all costs,” Carville said. “That branch of the church has never really liked democracy, an open society or anything approaching bodily autonomy.”Like most liberal Catholics, Carville finds a bulwark in faith in the form of the big tent, the messy, sprawling people of God packed into sacred spaces that unite them on Sunday to hear the gospel, take the host and go back to their different lives.That sensibility, quaint though it may seem to myriad of others aghast at the church scandals, nevertheless holds a ray of hope for the likes of Carville. Down in the mud pit of politics, he is worried about more than just Christian nationalism.“I have all kinds of people tell me: ‘James, this is not the country we grew up in,’” Carville said.And they’re right, he says – but probably not in the way they mean.Carville said: “I actually hear [white people] say: ‘People knew their place.’ Well, I graduated from LSU law school with one Black and three females in the class. You go to any law school today and half the class are women. That’s a profound change in my lifetime. You can’t show someone a Norman Rockwell painting, say this used to be America, and expect the world to change.”Carville’s greatest concern about the 2024 election is Joe Biden. He points to a recent Wall Street Journal poll that had the president at 31%.“I don’t think he should run,” Carville said. “I like President Biden. I like people who get scarred politically and come back and survive – he’s that kind of guy.“But he’s too old. It’s that simple. The Democratic party has breathtaking talent, but no energy. We’re keeping it bottled up. If you ask the average person in Terre Haute, Indiana, what do you think of the Democratic party, they’d say two things: ‘They’re for the cities and they’re too old.’ We need to change that image.” More