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      Joe Biden and first lady ‘horrified’ by Vermont shooting of three Palestinian students – as it happened

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      Joe and Jill Biden as well as Vermont’s congressional delegation condemned the weekend shooting of three Palestinian students in the northeastern state’s most-populous city Burlington, while police announced an arrest was made in the case yesterday. It was an otherwise quiet day in Washington DC, but it won’t stay that way for long. The House will perhaps as soon as Wednesday vote on kicking admitted fabulist George Santos out of the chamber after a damning report from its ethics panel, while the Senate is gearing up to consider Biden’s request for more than $100b to fund border security and military assistance to Ukraine and Israel.Here’s what else happened today:
      Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, reportedly said he discussed “options” with Santos ahead of the expected expulsion vote.
      A rift is emerging among Democrats over Biden’s request for military assistance to Israel in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October terrorist attack.
      Merrick Garland said federal authorities are looking into whether the Vermont shooting was a hate crime.
      Donald Trump is making it very clear that a priority of his second presidential term will be retaliating against his enemies.
      The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said they believe the three students were targeted in Vermont because of their ethnicity.
      In a new statement, Joe Biden condemned the shooting of three Palestinian students, two of whom were US citizens, in Vermont this weekend, saying the White House would support the investigation into the attack:
      Jill and I were horrified to learn that three college students of Palestinian descent, two of whom are American citizens, were shot Saturday in Burlington, Vermont. They were simply spending Thanksgiving gathered with family and loved ones.
      We join Americans across the country in praying for their full recovery, and we send our deepest condolences to their families. While we are waiting for more facts, we know this: there is absolutely no place for violence or hate in America. Period. No person should worry about being shot at while going about their daily lives. And far too many Americans know a family member injured or killed as a result of gun violence. We cannot and we will not accept that.
      Earlier today, I spoke to Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger to offer my support. We are grateful to the Burlington Police Department – as well as the FBI, ATF, and other law enforcement partners – for their swift work identifying and arresting a suspect. Our Administration will provide any additional federal resources needed to assist in the investigation.
      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said that members of both political parties discussed government funding over the Thanksgiving break ahead of a January deadline to avoid a shutdown.From Politico’s Burgess Everett:Here’s more background on Biden’s use of the the Defense Production Act, from the Guardian’s Edward Helmore.
      …The Defense Production Act of 1950, which was passed to streamline production during the Korean war, was last used in early 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic to accelerate and expand the availability of ventilators and personal protective equipment.
      The supply chain council is set to address issues ranging from improved data sharing between government agencies, supplying renewable energy resources and freight logistics…
      Monday’s announcement arrived as the US economy appears to be doing well on paper. But the White House has acknowledged that improving economic picture is not shared by consumers, and the administration has explicitly tied the economy to the president by calling it Bidenomics.
      A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that only 39% of voters approve of Biden’s handling of jobs and the economy. And a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll puts the economy as the most important issue to Americans for the past two years.
      Even as the pace of inflation has slowed, consumers are shouldering an economic burden they had not experienced in years. Prices have risen as much in the past three years as they had in the previous decade, according to a report by Bloomberg, and it now costs almost $120 to buy the same goods and services a family could afford with $100 before the pandemic.
      Read the full article here.Biden is currently speaking in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building about strengthening US supply chains and his Bidenomics policy, as the burden of high inflation costs remain a priority for many US voters.During today’s event, Biden announced that he would be evoking the Defense Production Act to boost production of “essential medicine”.The 1950s law will allow Biden to strength the domestic manufacturing of medicines that is seen as crucial for national security, improving US supply chains that the Biden administration believes will address the higher price of goods and services.Biden also flagged falling inflation rates and that wages for families were increasing as wins for the US economy under his Bidenomics plan.Biden added that “costs went down” in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.“As a share of earnings, dinner was the fourth cheapest ever on record. I want you all to know that,” Biden said, referring to the cost to produce the Thanksgiving feast.From the Guardian’s David Smith:In an appearance in Florida, Republican House speaker Mike Johnson said he had talked to George Santos about “his options” as the chamber gears up to vote on an effort to expel the New York congressman for his lies and ethics breaches, Politico reports:The vote on the expulsion resolution proposed by ethics committee chair Michael Guest is expected to come as soon as Wednesday, but Johnson’s comment is an sign that he may be looking for another solution to Santos’s ethical lapses that does not involve voting him out of the chamber.Joe Biden is due to right about now hold an event at the White House on his administration’s actions to strengthen supply chains.That event is late in starting, perhaps due to the fact that he was on the phone with Miro Weinberger, the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, where three Palestinian students were shot over the weekend. Here’s what Weinberger had to say about the call:The police have not yet said if they consider the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont as a hate crime, but advocacy group the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said they believe it was:Joe and Jill Biden as well as Vermont’s congressional delegation have condemned the weekend shooting of three Palestinian students in the northeastern state’s most-populous city Burlington, while police announced an arrest was made in the case yesterday. It’s an otherwise quiet day in Washington DC, but it won’t stay that way for long. The House will perhaps as soon as Wednesday vote on kicking admitted fabulist George Santos out of the chamber after a damning report from its ethics panel, while the Senate is gearing up to consider Biden’s request for more than $100b to fund border security and military assistance to Ukraine and Israel.Here’s what else has happened today:
      A rift is emerging among Democrats over Biden’s request for military assistance to Israel in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October terrorist attack.
      Merrick Garland said federal authorities are looking into whether the Vermont shooting was a hate crime.
      Donald Trump is making it very clear that a priority of his second presidential term will be retaliating against his enemies.
      Also attending today’s White House press briefing was John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council.He offered details of the agreement reached for Hamas to release more of the hostages taken in the 7 October terrorist attack:Follow our live blog for the latest on the conflict between Israel and Hamas:At her briefing today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Joe and Jill Biden were “horrified” by the shootings of three Palestinian students in Vermont:Here’s footage of the arraignment of Jason Eaton, the suspect in the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont: More

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      Trump’s ‘intolerance towards everyone’ encourages hate, Chris Christie says

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      Donald Trump’s “intolerance towards everyone” encourages antisemitism and Islamophobia in the US amid tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas, said Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.“When you show intolerance towards everyone – which is what he does – you give permission as a leader for others to have their intolerance come out,” Christie told CNN on Sunday.“Intolerance towards anyone encourages intolerance towards everyone. And that’s exactly what’s going on here.”Like the rest of the Republican field, Christie lags far behind Trump in national and key state polling.Christie endorsed Trump in 2016 and supported him throughout his subsequent presidency. The ex-New Jersey governor remained supportive of Trump even after Trump appeared to have given him Covid-19, sending him into intensive care.But Christie turned against the former president over his election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress.Now a rare candidate willing to attack Trump, particularly over his 91 criminal charges and assorted civil trials, Christie has nonetheless only really registered in polling in New Hampshire, the second state to vote – and then only to scrape third place, 30 points behind.Speaking on Sunday, Christie was asked about a recent New York Times piece in which he was quoted as saying he did not think “Trump’s an antisemite” – even though he has often used stereotypes most say qualify for that label.For instance, in a 1991 book, a former staffer wrote that Trump said: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”Trump denied saying that.To the New York Times, Christie said Trump’s “intolerance of everybody” had “contributed to” surging bigotry across the US.“He says what he says, without regard to the fact that he’s perceived as a leader and that his words matter,” Christie said. This, he said, meant bigots “think you’re giving them permission be a bigot and that’s even worse than them thinking you are one”.On Sunday, Christie also said Trump was now not the only leader giving followers an excuse to show bigoted behaviour, pointing to tensions over the Israel-Hamas war in US colleges.“University administrators and presidents … have been unwilling to stand up against antisemitism on their campuses,” Christie said.“There should be no campus in this country where a Jewish student is afraid to leave their dorm, a Jewish student is afraid to go to their classes, a Jewish student is afraid to go to even have a meal in the dining hall. I mean, that is outrageous, and it’s wrong.“And so in the end … I think that there have been a lot of people contributed to it. And I believe Donald Trump’s intolerant language and his intolerant conduct gives others permission to act the same way.” More

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      MTG review: far-right rabble rouser makes case to be Trump’s VP

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      “Marjorie Taylor Greene has been one of the most fierce warriors in Congress for America First and all it stands for,” Donald Trump announces, before the reader reaches the table of contents for the far-right Georgia congresswoman’s book. Over more than 275 pages, the tome duly reads like an audition for the No 2 slot on the 2024 Republican presidential ticket.The idea of being Trump’s vice-presidential pick is “talked about frequently and I know my name is on a list but really my biggest focus right now is serving the district that elected me”, Greene told the Guardian in August. “But, of course, that’s up to [Trump]. But I would be honored and consider it … I’ll help him do whatever in any way I can.”Venom, score-settling, fiction, self-absolution, self-aggrandizement. Greene’s book, MTG, has it all. It is published by Winning Team, the publishing firm Donald Trump Jr co-founded. In an unforced error, the book was printed in Canada. So much for America First.On the page, Greene repeatedly reminds us that she is a mother and a Christian. As for her divorce in 2022 from her long-suffering husband and business partner? Barely a word. As for its alleged surrounding circumstances, affairs, “tantric sex guru” and all? Nada.Greene lies about January 6. She claims Democrats abandoned the House chamber to the rioters and exited without resistance, in contrast to brave, gun-toting Republicans. Not so. Jason Crow, a former army ranger from Colorado, was among Democrats who stood their ground and helped members of Congress escape.“Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t exist in the same reality as the rest of us,” Crow previously told the Guardian. “For those of us who were there on January 6 and actually defended the chamber from violent insurrectionists, her view is patently false. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”Greene offered no rebuttal. Like Trump, she embraces the insurrectionists who attacked Congress. She writes about visiting them in lock-up, calls the DC jail a gulag.“The events of January 6 have been mischaracterized by the Democrats … and these people cruelly mistreated,” Greene writes. “They will not be forgotten. I will never forget.”She recently tweeted: “[Christopher] Wray’s FBI targets innocent conservatives and MAGA grandmas who peacefully walked through the Capitol on January 6 instead of real threats. We cannot trust them to keep us safe.”In her book, she also offers a meandering defense of her famous comment about so-called Jewish space lasers, insisting she is not antisemitic. Instead, Green advises, she has “donated to the Temple Institute in Israel, a fund that helps rebuild the Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Israel”.The mission of the group, Machon HaMikdash, is to rebuild the temple on the site of the Dome of the Rock – one of Islam’s holiest places – and to the reinstate the sacrificial rite. Against a backdrop of Hamas terror and Israel’s response, with Jerusalem on edge, this may not be the most opportune time to trumpet such an audacious endeavor. Lots could go wrong, quickly.When Greene was a congressional newbie, the then Democratic House majority and 11 Republicans stripped her of committee assignments, after it came to light that she had “liked” a January 2019 Facebook post that called for “a bullet to the head” of Nancy Pelosi, then the Democratic speaker.Greene also branded Pelosi a traitor, accused her treason and demanded the death penalty. Sooner than most, she had realized Republican politics had become a mixture of performance art, menace and violence.Professional wrestling comes to mind. In 2018, after Greg Gianforte body-slammed Ben Jacobs, then a Guardian reporter, Trump called the Montana Republican “my guy”.“Greg is smart. And by the way, never wrestle him,” Trump warned. “You understand. Never.” The base had to be fed and flattered. Gianforte is governor now.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGreene also posted to social media a photo in which she held a gun alongside images of the Democratic congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. The caption: “Squad’s worst nightmare.”“I urge my colleagues to look at that image and tell me what message you think it sends,” Steny Hoyer, the then House majority leader said, pointing to the inflammatory post. “Here she is armed with a deadly assault rifle pointed toward three Democratic members.”In her book, Greene does not address such escapades directly. Instead, she dumps on the Squad and revels in her liberation from committee work, which led to her repeated demands for roll call votes bringing the House to a crawl.“With all my free time, I stayed on the floor for every bill I could and asked for recorded votes,” she recalls. “It became kind of my thing, shocking representatives on both sides!”These days, after getting close to Kevin McCarthy while he was speaker, Greene sits on the House oversight and homeland security committees. At a recent hearing, she mistakenly suggested to Wray, the FBI director and a Trump appointee, that he works for the Department of Homeland Security. “I’m not part of the Department of Homeland Security,” he responded, evenly. Greene remained unmoved, viewing him as an ally of Joe Biden.In MTG, Greene proudly admits calling Lauren Boebert, a Colorado congresswoman and rival rightwing rabble rouser, a “little bitch”. Greene has also reportedly referred to Boebert as a “whore”. Lesson: some people never leave middle school.Purportedly, Boebert stole Greene’s thunder by plagiarizing and introducing as her own an article of impeachment Greene had already filed against Biden. In her book, Greene also accuses Boebert of being the driving force behind her expulsion from the rightwing House Freedom caucus.Under Trump, retribution and vengeance are Republicans’ fuel. Greene wants to sit at his right hand.
      MTG is published in the US by Winning Team Publishing More

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      ‘It doesn’t look good’: George Santos expects to be expelled from Congress

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      Republican George Santos has said he expects to be expelled from Congress following a scathing report by the House ethics committee that found substantial evidence of lawbreaking by the lying New York representative.In a defiant speech Friday sprinkled with taunts and obscenities aimed at his congressional colleagues, Santos insisted he was “not going anywhere”. But he acknowledged that his time as a member of Congress may soon be coming to an end.“I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” he said Friday night during a conversation on X Spaces. “I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good.”The comments came one week after the Republican chair of the House ethics committee, Michael Guest, introduced a resolution to expel Santos once the body returns from Thanksgiving break.While Santos has survived two expulsion votes, many of his colleagues who formerly opposed the effort now say they support it, citing the findings of the committee’s months-long investigation into a wide range of alleged misconduct committed by Santos.The report found Santos used campaign funds for personal purposes, such as purchases at luxury retailers and adult content websites, then caused the campaign to file false or incomplete reports.“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” investigators wrote. They noted that he did not cooperate with the report and repeatedly “evaded” straightforward requests for information.On Friday, Santos said he did not want to address the specifics of the report, which he claimed were “slanderous” and “designed to force me out of my seat”. Any defense of his conduct, he said, could be used against him in the ongoing criminal case brought by federal prosecutors.Instead, Santos struck a contemplative tone during the three-hour livestream, tracing his trajectory from Republican “It girl” to “the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress”. He lashed out at his congressional colleagues, accusing them of misconduct – such as voting while drunk – that he said was far worse than anything he’d done.“They all act like they’re in ivory towers with white pointy hats and they’re untouchable,” he said. “Within the ranks of United States Congress, there’s felons galore, there’s people with all sorts of shystie backgrounds.”His decision not to seek re-election, he said, was not because of external pressure, but due to his frustration with the “sheer arrogance” of his colleagues.“These people need to understand it’s done when I say it’s done, when I want it to be done, not when they want it to be done,” he added. “That’s kind of where we are there.” More

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      ‘The odds are against us’: Democrats in once-blue West Virginia survey loss

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      Nibbling appetizers off American-flag printed paper plates in a city hall basement, the group of Democrat voters had been listening to a party official’s appeals to get active in politics when Terri Rodebaugh stood up to air a grievance.“One thing I want to say is I’m tired of being called a baby killer, which I am not,” said Rodebaugh, her shirt pink and her hair, like most others in the room, gray. Yet having such epithets hurled at them is what it has come to for party faithful and pro-choice West Virginians like Rodebaugh in Nicholas county.For much of the 20th century, voters in Nicholas county and much of the rest of West Virginia were reliably Democratic, backing the party even in its worst years. That changed in 2000, when George W Bush won the state’s electoral votes, and by 2020, nearly 78% of Nicholas county voters had cast ballots for Donald Trump. West Virginians overall gave him the second-highest share of support of any state in the nation.A few weeks before that year’s election, the then president’s adherents paraded through the county seat Summersville, and the Democrats held a counterprotest. Trump supporters then turned up outside the party’s offices in their pickup trucks, burning out their tires and kicking up gravel. The landlords called not long after and told the Democrats to leave, and ever since, the party has been itinerant, meeting in churches, restaurants and, most recently, Summersville’s city hall.“I never dreamed Nicholas county would ever go Republican,” said 81-year-old John Jarrell, who has served on the local party committee for decades. “And I never dreamed West Virginia would ever go Republican.”The Democratic party’s power in the state now seems on the brink of reaching its nadir.Even as the GOP was consolidating its hold on the state’s politics, voters kept electing one Democrat: Joe Manchin, a two-term governor who won a Senate seat in 2010 and just over a decade later became one of the most controversial politicians in the country for refusing to support proposals by Joe Biden to fight the climate crisis, poverty and a host of other social ills.Manchin was scheduled to face voters again in 2024, and whether he could win a third full term representing his ruby red state was a subject of fierce debate. Now, West Virginians will never learn the answer – earlier this month, Manchin announced he would not run again for the Senate, and is openly mulling a third-party run for the presidency.Few politics watchers believe any other Democrat can win Manchin’s seat, and by the start of 2025, the party may hold none of West Virginia’s statewide elected offices for the first time since 1931.“We’re going to be underrepresented,” Pam Tucker-Cline, the chair of the Nicholas county Democratic party, said of Manchin’s exit as the 27 supporters who turned up for the meeting filtered out into the Summersville evening. “I don’t think people realize what he’s done for the state.”Party leaders refuse to give up, but acknowledge they’re not quite sure what the path back to power is in a state that lacks so much of what makes Democrats successful elsewhere.“We don’t plan to give up on any seat, and we know that the odds are against us, but we feel that West Virginians are worth fighting for,” said Mike Pushkin, the state Democratic party chair and a lawmaker in the state house of delegates.“It’s been extremely hard for anybody with a D after their name in rural America, as of late, but we feel that things are definitely never static in politics, things are always changing.”In the first two years of Biden’s administration, Manchin became the rare kind of lawmaker who goes from state-level star to national fixation for the way he used his power to manipulate the president’s agenda.While Democrats had an effective majority in the Senate, it was only by a single vote, giving any member the power to derail legislation that did not attract Republican support.Manchin made his objections known after the president proposed Build Back Better, a huge plan to fight the climate crisis and poverty, offer universal paid parental leave and make childcare more affordable. The White House spent months negotiating with Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona senator who was the other holdout to the plan and last year left the Democratic party to become an independent.Kayla Young, a Democratic member of West Virginia’s house of delegates, remembers advocacy organizations from around the country descending on the capital, Charleston, seeking ways to get Manchin to drop his blockade. “I worked with some of those groups. We literally were all Manchin whisperers for a year, because everybody just wanted to come and figure him out,” Young recalls.As 2021 drew to a close, Manchin said he wouldn’t vote for the plan, citing its estimated $2tn cost and rising inflation, and Young remembers the organizations that had been so keen to hear from West Virginians swiftly departed.“Seeing all those groups that I align with still come in and use us was not good. That did not feel good to just be used,” Young said.In the years before Biden took office, the GOP used a similar sense of abandonment among West Virginians to dismantle what had been decades of Democratic dominance.Democrats had controlled the governor’s mansion, the entire congressional delegation and the legislature with supermajorities simultaneously, and West Virginia Democrats see it as a point of pride that John F Kennedy, a Catholic, bagged the party’s presidential nomination in 1960 by triumphing in the mostly Protestant state.That consensus ended in 2000 with Bush’s victory, and after Barack Obama won the White House eight years later, the GOP adopted an argument against his administration that proved especially potent: the Democrat was waging a “war on coal”. The industry has historically undergirded both the Appalachian state’s economy and cultural identity, but employment had been declining for decades as more mines automate extraction and power stations shift to cheaper forms of energy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“West Virginia was ripe for flipping,” said Mike Plante, a Democratic strategist based in Charleston, describing a belief among the state’s residents that outsiders were intent on both harming its economy and disrespecting its culture. “There’s a feeling that we’ve kind of been taken advantage of for years and years and years, and I think that plays into the the Maga message of score-settling.”In 2015, the GOP took control of both houses of the legislature for the first time in decades, and in the presidential election the following year, West Virginia voters gave Trump his largest share of support of any state.Four years later, Biden ousted Trump from office by rallying voters in suburbs and cities nationwide as well as racial minorities – all of which West Virginia lacks. The state is 91% white, and the population of Charleston, its largest city, is just over 47,000, while the rest of its 1.8 million residents are spread out in a handful of small cities, towns and villages dotting its landscape of rolling hills and narrow valleys.Even strategies Democrats have used elsewhere to win elections in red states barely work in West Virginia. The GOP now holds supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, and after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, they quickly moved to ban abortion. Young represents one of the most competitive districts in the state, and says she successfully used her Republican opponent’s support for the ban to win a second term – but only by a razor-thin margin of 58 votes.“In West Virginia, we thought that in 2022 … we would pick up more seats, and we lost them. So, it helped me. I don’t think it helped anybody else,” she said. The party today has three lawmakers in the 34-seat senate, and 11 in the 100-member house of delegates.Last year, the Democrats did not field candidates for several legislative seats across the state, something Young, who serves as minority leader pro tempore in the legislature’s lower chamber, hopes the party will change. She also has her own re-election to worry about in 2024, a task she expects to be even more difficult now that Manchin has exited.“Having him on the top of the ticket on the ballot was really good for all Democrats in the state, whether you agree with him or not, and sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t,” she said.There’s no telling if Manchin would have won another term, but Sam Workman, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Public Affairs at West Virginia University, said even an unsuccessful run would have forced the GOP to allocate resources to the state that they are now free to spend elsewhere – probably in Ohio and Montana, both red states with Democratic senators whose re-election campaigns will be crucial if the party is to keep control of Congress’s upper chamber.At the state level, the Democrats are on the defensive, their elected positions confined to a handful of mayor’s offices and legislative districts in more populated areas.But Workman said the party had an opportunity to champion West Virginia’s economic transition away from extractive industries like coal and towards tourism and renewable energy – areas where Manchin’s mark will be felt long after he leaves the Capitol.After months of deadlock, the senator last year reached a compromise with Biden to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which lowers prescription drug prices and will subsidize the country’s transition to clean energy. He’s also been a champion of the New River Gorge, a recreation area popular with whitewater rafters, hikers and rock climbers, where he helped establish a national park in 2020.“Whatever the Democratic party is going to be going forward, it has to come to grips with these transitions and have coherent messaging around those transitions, and I just don’t think we’re there yet,” Workman said.The long odds for Democrats have not dampened Tucker-Cline’s enthusiasm to find the party a new office in the center of Summersville in time for next November’s vote. She’s been looking all over town for a storefront to hang campaign signs and welcome volunteers, while trying to coax many of the county’s younger voters into supporting the party openly.“The ones that really want to put signs in their yard are the old Democrats. You have to really work on these young Democrats to make them feel like they’re not going to hurt themselves or hurt their businesses,” Tucker-Cline said.She’s got a lead on one property right in the middle of Summersville, but it’s on the second floor, and their most active volunteers are elderly – she worries they’ll struggle with the stairs, but insists on the party headquarters being right where Nicholas county residents can see it.“If we have to go upstairs in the building in downtown we’ll do that,” Tucker-Cline said. “We want to be in the red country.” More

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      Trump called Iowa evangelicals ‘so-called Christians’ and ‘pieces of shit’, book says

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      In the heat of the Republican primary of 2016, Donald Trump called evangelical supporters of his rival Ted Cruz “so-called Christians” and “real pieces of shit”, a new book says.The news lands as the 2024 Republican primary heats up, two months out from the Iowa caucus and a day after Trump’s closest rival this time, the hard-right Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, was endorsed by Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical leader in Iowa.The new book, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, by Tim Alberta, an influential reporter and staff writer for the Atlantic, will be published on 5 December. The Guardian obtained a copy.Early in the book, Alberta describes fallout from an event at Liberty University, the evangelical college in Virginia, shortly before the Iowa vote in January 2016.As candidates jockeyed for support from evangelicals, a powerful bloc in any Republican election, Trump was asked to name his favourite Bible verse.Attempting to follow the advice of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, the thrice-married, not noticeably church-going New York billionaire and reality TV star introduced it as “Two Corinthians”, rather than “Second Corinthians”, as would have been correct.“The laughter and ridicule were embarrassing enough for Trump,” Alberta writes. “But the news of Perkins endorsing Ted Cruz, just a few days later, sent him into a spiral. He began to speculate that there was a conspiracy among powerful evangelicals to deny him the GOP nomination.“When Cruz’s allies began using the ‘Two Corinthians’ line to attack him in the final days before the Iowa caucuses, Trump told one Iowa Republican official, ‘You know, these so-called Christians hanging around with Ted are some real pieces of shit.’”Alberta adds that “in private over the coming years”, Trump “would use even more colourful language to describe the evangelical community”.Cruz won Iowa but Trump took the second primary contest, in New Hampshire, and won the nomination with ease. After beating Hillary Clinton and spending four chaotic years in the White House, he was beaten by Joe Biden in 2020.Pursuing the lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud, Trump refused to concede defeat. He has continued to dominate Republican politics, now as the clear frontrunner to be the nominee again.Trump has maintained that status despite having been impeached twice (the second for inciting the deadly January 6 attack on Congress) and despite facing 91 criminal charges (34 for hush-money payments to a porn star) and civil threats including a case arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Evangelicals remain the dominant bloc in Iowa, 55% of respondents to an NBC News/Des Moines Register poll in August identifying as “devoutly religious”. But despite his lengthy rap sheet, Trump’s hold on such voters appears to remain strong.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn October, the Register put him at 43% support overall in Iowa, with DeSantis and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley 27 points behind. The same poll said 44% of evangelicals planned to make Trump their first choice, with DeSantis at 22% and Haley seven points back.Evangelicals have also stayed with Trump nationwide. According to exit polls, in the 2020 presidential election he was supported by 76% of white evangelical voters.DeSantis and Haley must attempt to catch Trump in Iowa. Vander Plaats’ endorsement was thus a sought-after prize, if one Trump did not pursue, declining to attend a Thanksgiving Family Forum Vander Plaats hosted in Des Moines last week.On Monday, announcing his decision to endorse DeSantis, the president of the Family Leader, which seeks to “inspire the church to engage government for the advance of God’s kingdom and the strengthening of family”, pointed to the conclusion he hoped his followers would reach.Speaking to Fox News, Vander Plaats said: “I don’t think America is going to elect [Trump] president again. I think America would be well served to have a choice, and I really believe Ron DeSantis should be that guy. And I think Iowa is tailor-made for him to win this.”Trump’s rivals may yet take encouragement from Register polling, should evangelicals begin to doubt Trump. In the October poll, 76% of Iowa evangelicals said they had a positive view of DeSantis, while 62% said they liked Haley. More

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      Kamala Harris: abortion bans passed by ‘extremist’ people causing ‘chaos, confusion and fear’ – as it happened

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      Vice-president Kamala Harris has released a statement condemning abortion bans, saying that they are passed by “extremist so-called leaders” who continue to “cause chaos, confusion and fear”.She added:
      The women of America deserve better. Congress must pass a bill that restores the protections of Roe v Wade – and when they do, President Joe Biden will sign it into federal law.
      We’ve launched a standalone blog following the latest developments after a vehicle explosion at the US-Canada border.Join us here to follow the latest news and reaction:The politics blog will pause for now.Dramatic images and clips are coming through on the vehicle explosion at the international bridge near the Niagara Falls, but it’s a very fluid situation in terms of official information emerging at this point.The FBI is investigating and, according to CNN, also the US Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) federal agency.Reports so far suggest that a car that was entering the US from Canada, where there are toll booths and officials, exploded. There are no reports yet of any victims but this is all unfolding.A border crossing between the US and Canada has been closed after a vehicle exploded at a checkpoint on a bridge near Niagara Falls, the Associated Press reports.The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s field office in Buffalo, in upstate New York, said in a statement that it was investigating the explosion on the so-called Rainbow Bridge, which connects the two countries across the Niagara River.Photos and video taken by news organizations and posted on social media showed a security booth that had been singed by flames.Further information wasn’t immediately available.New York governor, Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said she had been briefed on the incident and was “closely monitoring the situation”.Images and clips are emerging on social media.The FBI and other law enforcement are investigating a vehicle explosion at the international bridge that connects the US and Canada at the Niagara Falls.The cause of the explosion is not yet clear but there are some dramatic images and reports by the Associated Press citing the FBI that the border has been closed.There is talk of a vehicle bomb or an electric vehicle battery combusting, we will bring you details as they unfold.Here is Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer explaining the Reproductive Health Act which sends a “poweful message – [that] Michigan is a place that fights for people’s right to make decisions about their own bodies”: Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed a package of bills known as the Reproductive Health Act into law on Tuesday.In a series of tweets announcing the signing, Whitmer said that the RHA repeals the state’s TRAP laws which are “medically unnecessary restrictions on hallway width, ceiling heights, HVAC systems, and janitor’s closets” that have “nothing to do with providing healthcare.”The RHA also repeals another “extreme law on the books from 1931 that would have criminalized nurses and doctors for prescribing medication abortion including mifepristone”, said Whitmer.The RHA also ensures that students at the state’s public universities have access to information about their reproductive health options.The American Civil Liberties Union has issued several guides on how to talk about abortion access over the holidays.In a guide by ACLU Alabama, the organization wrote:
      “Alabama has one of the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality in the nation. Restricting abortion access only worsens this issue.”
      Meanwhile, a guide issued by ACLU Indiana said:
      “Having deeper, nonjudgmental conversations in which you share personal, values-based stories has been shown to move the needle – even for people who start with opposite views. It isn’t magic, and it doesn’t work every time or even immediately, but these conversations can change the way Hoosiers think and talk about abortion.”
      Washington’s Democratic senator Patty Murray has also voiced her support for abortion rights, urging the restoration of Roe v Wade, which the US supreme court overturned last year.Murray tweeted:
      “RT if you agree: we need to restore Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion for all women, no matter where they live.”
      Last September, Murray led 29 senators in urging the Joe Biden administration to strengthen privacy protections for women seeking reproductive healthcare under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act.Catholics for Choice, a Catholic abortion rights advocacy group, has tweeted support for advocates of abortion access who may have different political views from to those around them ahead of Thanksgiving, saying:
      “We know the Thanksgiving table might feel isolating if you have different political views. Catholics who support abortion access are in the pews, teaching Sunday school, & even around your dinner table.
      You are not alone.”
      In an interview earlier this year with the Guardian about pro-choice Catholics fighting to seize the abortion narrative from the religious right, CFC’s president, Jamie Manson said:
      “Catholics overwhelmingly support abortion is because their faith taught them the values of social justice, of the power of individual conscience and of religious freedom.”
      Alabama’s Republican senator Tommy Tuberville has falsely claimed that Democrats support reproductive policies that would allow abortions “after” a baby is born.In an interview last week with Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of former president Donald Trump’s son Donald Jr, Tuberville, who is blocking a handful of military promotions due to his opposition of the defense department reimbursing service members for abortion-related travels, said:
      “We’re going to pay for that by taxpayers’ money. They can’t tell us about the policy in terms of the abortion itself. You know, it’s been rape, incest or health of the mom but we asked in one of our hearings what month are you going to go by for the abortion. They couldn’t tell us if it was abortion after birth.”
      In response to Tuberville’s misleading claims about Democrats’ support for abortion after birth, Minnesota’s Democratic senator Tina Smith said:
      Did Kimberly attempt to acquaint Senator Tuberville with the criminal code? Because this is utter nonsense. But harmful nonsense. Senator Tuberville blocking these promotions is hurting our military.
      Vice-president Kamala Harris has released a statement condemning abortion bans, saying that they are passed by “extremist so-called leaders” who continue to “cause chaos, confusion and fear”.She added:
      The women of America deserve better. Congress must pass a bill that restores the protections of Roe v Wade – and when they do, President Joe Biden will sign it into federal law.
      Democrats in Virginia this week proposed amending the state constitution to enshrine abortion rights.The proposal follows Democrats’ win in the state earlier this month in which they gained control of the state legislature, signifying a blow to Republicans’ plans that included curtailing abortion access.The amendment seeks to establish that “every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom” in the state constitution.In a statement on Monday, the majority leader, Charniele Herring, said:
      Throughout the campaign cycle we told Virginians that a Democratic majority meant that abortion access would be protected in the commonwealth.
      Today, that reigns true. Our resolution will begin the process of amending our constitution to protect reproductive rights in Virginia, building on the work that I and congresswoman Jennifer McClellan started many years ago.
      It has become all too clear that without constitutional protection, access to reproductive healthcare is at risk for the commonwealth.”
      Lawyers from the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, as well as Cooper & Kirk have asked the US supreme court on behalf of Idaho’s attorney general to strip prosecution protections for ER doctors who perform abortions in the state. Bloomberg Law reports:Idaho requested the US supreme court let it enforce a near-total abortion ban, pending appeal of a decision that found the ban makes it impossible for hospitals in the state to comply with a federal emergency care law.Attorney general Raúl Labrador Monday filed an emergency application to stay an injunction that prevents the state from imposing penalties on physicians who perform abortions in emergency situations, except when necessary to save the pregnant person’s life.The US didn’t show that it’s likely to succeed on a claim that the abortion law conflicts with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, Labrador said. It’s not impossible to comply with both laws because the emergency care law doesn’t require anything that Idaho law prohibits, he said.In a 2022 audio clip aired by CNN on Tuesday, the House’s newest speaker, Mike Johnson, said that allowing people to get abortions is “truly an American holocaust”.During a radio interview in 2022, Johnson also said:
      “I mean, the reality is that Planned Parenthood and all these – big abortion – they set up their clinics in inner cities. They regard these people as easy prey … That is what’s happening across the country now.”
      Johnson also criticized what he called “activist courts”, saying:
      “There’s been some really bad law made. They’ve made a mess of our jurisprudence in this country for the last several decades. And maybe some of that needs to be cleaned up.”
      The Missouri supreme court has refused an appeal surrounding the wording of a ballot question on abortion rights in the state.On Monday, the state supreme court declined to hear an argument from Republican secretary of state Jay Ashcroft who proposed asking voters whether they are in favor of allowing “dangerous and unregulated abortions until live birth”.In October, a state appeals court ruled against Ashcroft, calling his ballot summaries “replete with politically partisan language”.Ashcroft, who is running for governor in 2024, appealed the court’s decision but was turned away on Monday by the state’s supreme court.In response to the state’s supreme court rejection, a spokesperson from ACLU Missouri told Springfield News-Leader:
      “The courts’ repeated rejection of the secretary of state’s arguments verify that his case has no legal bearing but, instead, shows he will sacrifice Missourians’ constitutional rights to gain the support and funding of special interest organizations to advance his political career.”
      Good morning,Activists across the country are racing to get abortion rights on the ballot in 2024.The multi-state efforts follow a series of Democratic wins earlier this month in several states including Ohio, Virginia and Kentucky where voters rejected Republican attempts to limit or ban the procedure.Abortion rights groups in Missouri – where abortion is completely banned with very limited exceptions – have proposed 11 different amendments that seek to expand abortion rights in the state, NBC reports.In Nebraska, abortion rights groups launched a ballot measure last week that seeks to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The measure proposes a constitutional amendment that would protect legal abortion care until “fetal viability”.Meanwhile, Democrats in Minnesota and abortion rights groups are divided on how exactly to put forth the question of abortion rights to voters. According to Axios, the state’s house speaker Melissa Hortman said that the idea is “in the mix when we talk about 2024”, but said that they “haven’t heard clearly from voters or from the caucuses here at the state capitol that [an amendment] is the next thing that we should do”.Meanwhile, in an aired audio clip on Tuesday from 2022, Mike Johnson, the House’s newest speaker, said that allowing people to receive abortions is causing “an American Holocaust”.Here are other developments in US politics:
      Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo is considering a potential run for New York City mayor, Politico reports.
      Jill Stein has launched her 2024 White House bid as a Green party candidate. More

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      House speaker Mike Johnson likened abortion to ‘American holocaust’

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      Before he became speaker of the US House of Representatives, the Louisiana Republican congressman Mike Johnson likened abortion to “an American holocaust”.“The reality is that Planned Parenthood and all these … big abortion … they set up their clinics in inner cities,” Johnson told a radio show in May 2022, in comments aired by CNN on Tuesday. “They regard these people as easy prey.”But while these remarks may sound stunning, anti-abortion activists often refer to abortion in the United States as a “holocaust”. This isn’t even the only time that Johnson has made the comparison.“During business hours today, 4,500 innocent American children will be killed,” Johnson wrote in a 2005 op-ed for the Shreveport Times, which was recently resurfaced by CBS News. “It is a holocaust that has been repeated every day for 32 years, since 1973’s Roe v Wade.”In that op-ed, Johnson also said the judicial philosophy that undergirded Roe – and allowed for the removal of the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo, a womanwith severe brain damage who became a cause célèbre among anti-abortion activists – to be “no different than Hitler’s”.Johnson went on to add that abortion had led to a dearth of “able workers” and a crisis for social security, a claim he would repeat at a House hearing years later.Comparisons between US abortion and the Holocaust date back decades, with anti-abortion advocates writing books in the 1980s with titles such as The Abortion Holocaust: Today’s Final Solution. Although the mainstream United States may have grown less tolerant of the comparison, it has never disappeared from anti-abortion circles, which are predominantly Christian.In fact, it’s sometimes used as a recruitment tool. One prominent anti-abortion group even claims anyone born after the supreme court decided Roe in 1973 is a “survivor of the American abortion holocaust” and invites young people to become “boots on the ground” in recognition of their aborted peers. In 2019, Texas Right to Life – a powerful anti-abortion group in Texas – held a training for young anti-abortion activists where leaders screened documentaries about the Nazi Holocaust and urged the activists to “write down three similarities between the Holocaust and abortion”.These kinds of comparisons have even made their way into law. In a 2019 abortion case, the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion claiming that abortion was on the verge of becoming “a tool of modern-day eugenics”. Alabama’s near-total abortion ban, which was first passed in 2019 and took effect after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year, suggested abortion was worse than famous 20th-century atrocities.“More than 50 million babies have been aborted in the United States since the Roe decision in 1973,” the ban reads, “more than three times the number who were killed in German death camps, Chinese purges, Stalin’s gulags, Cambodian killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined.” More