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      ‘This war is prophetically significant’: why US evangelical Christians support Israel

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      It didn’t take long for many evangelical Christian groups in America to show their support for Israel.Hours after Hamas attacked the country on 7 October, killing more than 1,400 people, Christians United for Israel, an evangelical lobbying group which claims to have more than 10 million members, posted a message to on X, formerly known as Twitter.“To the terrorists who have chosen this fight, hear this, what you do to Israel, god will do to you. Despite today’s weeping, joy will come because he [god] who watches over Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps,” CUFI, whose founder believes the presence of Jews in Israel is a precursor to Jesus Christ returning to Earth, wrote.Soon an “Evangelical statement in support of Israel” was issued by the ethics and religion liberty commission – an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, a denomination which has 45,000 churches in the US.In the statement, 2,000 evangelical leaders – not all were named – said they “fully support Israel’s right and duty to defend itself against further attack”. Little credence was given to the Palestinians who would soon find themselves under attack: more than 8,000 people in Gaza have now been killed by Israeli bombardments, according to Gaza’s health ministry .“While our theological perspectives on Israel and the Church may vary, we are unified in calling attacks against Jewish people especially troubling as they have been often targeted by their neighbors since God called them as His people in the days of Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3),” the evangelical statement said.“In keeping with Christian Just War tradition, we also affirm the legitimacy of Israel’s right to respond against those who have initiated these attacks as Romans 13 grants governments the power to bear the sword against those who commit such evil acts against innocent life.”The more than 90 named signatories – four were women, the rest men – included the current president, and eight former presidents, of the Southern Baptist Convention, among other influential evangelicals.For people not immersed in evangelicalism – a conservative strand of Christianity which emphasises adherence to the Bible – the overt biblical references may have seemed unusual to hear in a geopolitical context.Romans 13 – the 13th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament – is essentially a lengthy treatise on the importance of submitting to bureaucracy, which states:“Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason.”For those more familiar with the evangelical world, the vehemence of the support has not been a surprise, given the importance to evangelicals of an Israel inhabited by Jewish people. One main strand of evangelical theology holds that the return of Jews to the region starts the clock ticking on a seven-year armageddon, after which Jesus Christ will return.To that end, the issue of Israel and Palestine has dominated sermons at evangelical churches over the past two Sundays, said Daniel Hummel, a historian of American religion, and the author of Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and US-Israeli Relations.“The overwhelming theme has been: this war is prophetically significant, but no one is willing to really claim exactly how,” Hummel said.“And that’s been a long tradition of sort of hedging your bets and getting whatever you can in terms of sort of interest and eyeballs, by declaring that there’s something significant here, but once you start saying specific things and you’re sort of on the hook, it doesn’t turn out that way.”The rush to respond, and the statements in support of Israel, were not surprising to those aware of the deep feeling evangelicals have for Israel.Broadly speaking, some evangelicals believe that Jewish people returning to Israel following the 1917 ​​Balfour Declaration, a British statement which called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, was key to end times, when God will purge sinners and Jesus Christ will return.John Hagee, an evangelical pastor and influential founder of Christians United for Israel, explained the prophecy to TBN Networks in December 2022.“God is getting ready to defend Israel in such a supernatural way it’s going to take the breath out of the lungs of the dictators on planet Earth but we are living on the cusp of the greatest most supernatural series of events the world has ever seen ready or not.”Hagee said when Jewish people are present in Israel “the clock starts ticking” on the rapture.“What will come soon [is] the antichrist and his seven year empire that will be destroyed in the battle of armageddon. Then Jesus Christ will set up his throne in the city of Jerusalem. He will establish a kingdom that will never end,” Hagee said.Hagee, despite having a long history of antisemitism – he has suggested Jews brought persecution upon themselves by upsetting God and called Hitler a “half-breed Jew” – founded Christians United for Israel in 2006.Among other things, the group lobbied for the US embassy in Israel to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which Donald Trump did in 2018, and is “committed to Israel’s strength, security and sovereignty”.The support of evangelical Christians – in 2015 the Pew Research Center estimated there were about 62 million in the US – for Israel can be split into different groups, Hummel said.While there are plenty of evangelicals who, like Hagee, adhere to the Israel-is-key-to-Jesus’-return theology, there are also those who believe in “blessings theology”, a less outlandish, more transactional approach to support for Israel.The blessings theology is based on a literal reading of the book of Genesis, where God told Abraham – who Hummel described as “the patriarch of the Jewish people” – that he would “bless those who bless you” and “curse those who curse you”.“For the last couple of centuries this has been interpreted on individual terms. So you can accrue personal blessings by being good to the Jewish people, or by giving money, or touring Israel or things like that,” Hummel said.That also works on a national level, he said.“And so the crude way of doing this is a pastor will say something like: ‘Look at the Roman Empire and how they persecuted the Jews and Rome fell. Look at the British Empire and how the British didn’t treat the Jews well, and how they fell. Look at the Nazis and how they persecuted the Jews, and they fell.“And we, the Americans, don’t want to be the next Empire or the next great power to fall because we didn’t sufficiently bless the Jewish people.’”There are also those whose support is “more broadly American”, Hummel said: “There’s a deep cultural affinity that’s been built over decades and decades between the US and Israel all across the board.”Evangelicals make up an influential part of the Republican party base, and have a strong number in Congress. More than 100 members of the current Congress can be broadly identified as evangelical, and that was on display in recent days.Lee Fang, a journalist, recently asked congressmen and women whether their religion was important to their support for Israel, for the documentary “Praying for Armageddon”.“This entire matter is based upon the faith of our maker, our creator, but it’s also faith of a chosen people,” Pete Sessions, a Republican congressman from Texas and a Methodist, said.Fang asked Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, about evangelical support.“They’re following the scripture, and what the scripture says about Israel: ‘Those who bless Israel will be blessed,’ they take it literal, and I’m one of those people,” Burchett said.In terms of the influence evangelicals might wield as the Israel-Hamas conflict continues, Hummel said there had been a “mixed record” on evangelicals’ political sway.Still, Trump has specifically said he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem “for the evangelicals”, while Hagee served as an adviser to the twice-impeached president.In the 2020 election, evangelical or born-again Christians made up 28% of the overall electorate, CNN reported, and three-quarters voted for Trump. Given that support for the Republican party, under GOP leadership evangelicals would have plenty of influence.“When there’s a Republican president they have a seat at the table it doesn’t mean the president’s going to do exactly what they want, but they’re the ones that the president’s listening to more than other interested parties on Israel,” Hummel said.With a presidential election looming, and with few signs that the Israeli conflict will ebb away any time soon, evangelicals could find themselves in a position of significant power in the near future. More

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      Mike Pence’s exit from White House bid is winnowing of crowded field, rivals say

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      Mike Pence’s surprise withdrawal from the Republican presidential nomination race on Saturday is part of natural winnowing of the crowded field, rivals of the former vice-president said Sunday – and one that could help their quest of candidates to wrestle the nomination from overwhelming frontrunner Donald Trump.“In the end, the race is narrowing, which everyone said it would,” said former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, one of Trump’s fiercest Republican critics and one of four who have qualified for a third TV debate next month in Miami that may not have included Pence, who, he told CNN’s State of the Union, had run “a tough race, a good race”.The former vice-president’s decision to make an early exit may also have been influenced by fundraising difficulties he was known to be having. Announcing his departure from the field saying it had “become clear” he did not have a path to victory, he vowed to help elect “principled Republican leaders”.Christie, who is at 3.1% support in primary polling, put his finger on Pence’s fundamental misalignment – accepting Trump’s hand as his running mate in 2016, resisting his boss on January 6th, then defending his administration record while simultaneously urging his party to turn away from Trump populism and back to conservative values.“There are people who want to have it both ways,” Christie continued his comments to CNN on Sunday. “They want to support him … on the other hand they want to go after him.”But Christie also carries that burden, having sought a cabinet appointment in the Trump administration in 2016.The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is widely presumed to be the main beneficiary of Pence’s exit. In a speech on Saturday, the former US ambassador to the UN praised Pence as a “good man of faith” who had “fought for America and he has fought for Israel”.Haley’s polling is rising amid endorsements from Republican politicians and pundits prepared to break with Trump. “She’s breaking through at the right moment,” Republican strategist Mike Murphy told Politico last week. “Everything else has been ridiculous preseason coverage … I think it all starts now.”According to FiveThirtyEight, Haley is polling in third place nationally at 8% among registered Republican voters behind Florida governor Ron DeSantis, at 14%. But support for DeSantis is falling. In the key early primary state of New Hampshire Haley beats DeSantis 19% to 10%, according to a recent survey.But both DeSantis and Haley, along with Vivek Ramaswamy and Christie, still hugely trail Trump at 58% support nationally – and the Maga king’s support only seems to grow with each criminal and civil indictment he is served.Governor DeSantis also rallied behind Pence, calling him “a principled man of faith who has worked tirelessly to advance the conservative cause” in a post on X.After Pence stepped aside, Trump called on him for his endorsement: “I don’t know about Mike Pence. He should endorse me. You know why? Because I had a great, successful presidency and he was the vice-president.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the former president also took a swipe at his Christian fundamentalist vice-president, who refused to help in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election and held the confirmation vote after the Capitol building had been cleared of January 6 protesters.“People in politics can be very disloyal,” Trump said at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, according to The Hill.Pence’s exit is also a stark reminder of Trump’s hold over the party: former vice-presidents are typically seen as a formidable primary challengers. But in recent years, that assumption has weakened.Neither Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, or now Pence, have automatically managed or sought to immediately trade in the vice-presidency for the presidency.But as ABC News political contributor Donna Brazile pointed out on Sunday, Pence did not resonate with voters – a former vice-president who was unable to get traction, raise money or distinguish himself. “He tried to change the dynamics of the Republican party but it’s not changing. It’s now behind Donald Trump come trial or tribulations.” More

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      You can’t fight the Republican party’s ‘big lie’ with facts alone | Peter Pomerantsev

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      Why do seemingly serious people repeat crazy political lies? This was the question the American anthropologist and political scientist Lisa Wedeen explored when she studied the Syrian dictatorship in the 1990s.She was struck by how people who were usually rational in private would repeat the utterly absurd slogans of the regime, such as claiming that the dictator Hafez al-Assad was the greatest chemist in the world.“From the moment you leave your house, you ask: what does the regime want?,” a Syrian explained to her. “The struggle becomes who can praise the government more.” The bigger the lie you uttered, the more loyal you were.“The regime’s power resides in its ability to impose national fictions and to make people say and do what they otherwise would not,” Wedeen concluded. “This obedience makes people complicit; it entangles them in self-enforcing relations of domination, thereby making it hard for participants to see themselves simply as victims of the state’s caprices.”I was reminded of Wedeen’s research when the US Congress finally selected a speaker after weeks of chaos. Their choice, Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana, is best known for ardently supporting ex-president Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Jo Biden, was rigged. Johnson was the head of the committee to question the integrity of the election. He constructed spurious legal arguments that tried to discredit the vote, though his proposals were thrown out by the US supreme court. He raised the unfounded theory that the voting machines used in the election were tampered with.This claim is so groundless that Fox, the network that supported the allegation, had to pay nearly a billion dollars in a settlement with Dominion, the company that makes the machines.Many of the Republican representatives who supported Johnson’s candidacy have admitted both publicly and privately that the elections were, in fact, not falsified. Yet when journalists faced a gaggle of Republican congressmen and questioned Johnson’s record on this blatant lie, his colleagues jeered and he mockingly said: “Next question” – as if the facts were irrelevant here.And in a sense, they are. Agreeing to Trump’s claims about the rigged election is the absurdity you have to pledge allegiance to in order to show you belong to the tribe. It ensures your fealty by making you complicit. For anyone who has lived in authoritarian regimes, it’s a familiar sight.Along with Wedeen’s Syrian example, I’m reminded of the Czech dissident and playwright Václav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless, where he tells the story of a greengrocer in communist-era Prague who puts up pro-regime posters in his shop window. The greengrocer doesn’t believe the communist slogans; the people who make the slogans don’t believe in them; and the people who read them don’t believe in them.But as long as everyone plays along, the system continues. It’s the act of not believing and yet pretending, rather than of fervently believing, which is the power of such systems. Your will is corroded: you are made into moral mincemeat that can be shaped any which way by the leader.Havel nobly suggested that in order to fight such a system, what was needed was to “live in truth”, start being honest. Republican politicians face none of the danger communist-era Czechoslovaks or Syrians under the Assads have, but living in truth seems beyond them.Contradicting Trump’s absurdities risks falling out of favour with the leader and his supporters.Altogether, about 40% of Americans think the 2020 vote was illegitimate, and about 60% of Republicans (the figures fluctuate). A democracy will struggle to survive, let alone flourish, when such huge swathes of its population see it as their badge of loyalty not to trust its most fundamental processes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut if the “rigged” election claim is more about identity than evidence, it also means it will be hard to fact check our way out of this situation. The issue can’t simply be resolved by “trusted” sources, even those on the far right, who can communicate the truth about the election to Trump supporters. Instead, sources only become trusted if they agree to the lie.Pledging loyalty to the “big lie” is more about identity than knowledge – and to fight it entails understanding the need for belonging and meaning it fulfils. Authoritarian propaganda can give the illusion of status and at its extremes a sense of supremacy to compensate for the lack of real agency.Self-styled “populists” can flourish in what sociologists call “civic deserts”: frequently rural areas where the old institutions that bonded communities, the local clubs and town halls have disappeared and where civic engagement is particularly low.But such communities can start to be regenerated for a digital age with, for example, online as well as offline town halls; reinvigorated local news that responds to people’s priorities; and online municipal budget making and other innovations that help people feel part of a community and have ownership over local politics.Historical lessons from understanding and fighting propaganda can be useful here too. When he investigated the psychology of German soldiers in the second world war, the British psychiatrist Henry Dicks thought that counterpropaganda needed to stress the bonds people had that went beyond belonging to the Nazi Volk: the emotional bonds they felt with loved ones and relatives, for example.The competition with the big lie is not just, or even primarily, about fact checking. It’s a competition between different models of belonging: can we build alternative communities that are more benign and yet fulfilling than the ones offered by the conspiracy theorists? More

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      Romney: A Reckoning review: must-read on Mitt and the rise of Trump

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      McKay Coppins joined BuzzFeed in 2012, as its Mitt Romney reporter. The former Massachusetts governor won the Republican presidential nomination but lost the election to Barack Obama. Coppins wrote a postmortem, A Mormon Reporter on the Romney Bus. Its subtitle: How America Got Used to His Religion, and Mine.“I quickly found that my expertise in Romney’s religion posed a distinct advantage – not in access or sourcing, necessarily, but in understanding the elusive candidate as an actual person,” Coppins wrote.These days, Romney represents Utah in the US Senate. He has less than 14 months until he retires. His disdain for Donald Trump is legend. In February 2020, he sought to hold Trump accountable for abusing his power and strong-arming Ukraine, becoming the first senator ever to vote to convict a president of his own party in an impeachment trial. He voted to convict Trump again at his second trial, for inciting the January 6 insurrection.Coppins is now at the Atlantic. His new book is a must-read for anyone interested in how the Republican party morphed from the party of Lincoln into a Trumpian mess, picking up where Coppins left off in The Wilderness, his earlier look at the GOP.The 1960s set off a realignment in US politics. Over the past 60 years, resentment and tribalism have come to dominate, social issues come to the fore. In a Republican party once synonymous with the Union army and high-end suburbs, the south and evangelical protestantism now wield major influence.In the 1968 presidential race, the religion of George Romney – the Republican governor of Michigan and Mitt’s father – was a non-issue. His aspirations finally came undone after he said he had been “brainwashed” over the war in Vietnam.Mitt Romney first ran for the Republican nomination 40 years later, in 2008. Times and the party had changed. Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister as well as governor of Arkansas, went gunning for his rival’s religion.“Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?” Huckabee asked.Coppins offers an engaging read, the product of 30 interviews with Romney, interviews with aides and friends, and the senator’s emails and diaries. Chock-full of direct quotes, Romney: A Reckoning offers a window into the world of a private man who has darted in and out of the public eye.The book is also a scorching critique, singeing many. Coppins captures Romney strafing a heap of A-list Republicans. Trump and Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, Mike Pence and Chris Christie. All take direct hits. Coppins portrays their peevishness, pettiness and gutlessness – or worse – in Technicolor. Gingrich is a “smug know-it-all, smarmy, and too pleased with himself”. Cruz is “frightening”, “scary” and a “demagogue”.As for Ron DeSantis, in Romney’s estimation, the Florida governor is “much smarter than Trump”. But Romney also asks: “Do you want an authoritarian who’s smart or one who’s not smart?” Months before the primary, the party faithful have rendered their verdict. In poll after poll, Trump clobbers DeSantis.Onwards, to Pence: “No one had been more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God’s will to things that were ungodly.”Romney also recalls how Jared Kushner tried to convince him Trump’s erratic behavior was actually a manifestation of strategic savvy. Romney wasn’t buying. “I think he’s not smart,” he said. “I mean, really not smart.”Nonetheless, in 2012, Romney sought Trump’s endorsement. Beaten by Obama, Romney conceded on election night. Trump, though, unfurled his lie that the election was rigged. We had seen the future.To George Romney and his son, race relations mattered. The younger Romney parted with Trump after he was slow to disavow backing from David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Here, Coppins quotes Romney’s journal: “It is nearly certain that he will be the nominee. I am not tempted in the slightest to retreat. I will fight him on the beaches. I will fight him in the air.” Fine words – that didn’t alter the outcome.Romney then entertained the prospect of serving Trump as secretary of state, only to be publicly humiliated. He ascribes the failed gambit to “a mix of noble motivations and self-centered ones”. Said differently, he wanted the prize but refused to pay the price. “You need to say that you’ve come to the conclusion that I’m terrific,” Trump reportedly demanded. “That I’ll be a great president … We need to clear this up.”Romney would not bend the knee. But he admits: “I like being involved and being in the middle of things, and having something important to do. It’s like, you know, I wanted to be president. If you can’t be president, being secretary of state’s not a bad spot to come thereafter.”George W Bush tells Coppins Romney dodged a bullet. Now, he has little to lose. His time in the Senate ticks down. He has a fortune to enjoy. Published estimates peg him as the third-richest member of Congress, net worth hitting $300m. Yet he is not content. Washington crumbles from within. Violence and menace are coins of the realm. January 6 cemented a new political era.Jim Jordan’s run for House speaker, from the extreme right, triggered a barrage of threats for Republicans who refused to go along. Being primaried by the right is no longer the worst that could happen. On January 6, as the Capitol lay besieged, Ann Romney, Mitt’s wife, cried: “This is our country … This is our country.”
      Romney: A Reckoning is published in the US by Scribner More

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      What we learned from our Florida voting rights investigation

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      Since taking office in 2019, Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republicans who control the Florida legislature have led one of the most aggressive efforts to restrict voting – particularly in Black communities – in the United States.It’s an attack that has unfolded on many fronts. The state has prosecuted people confused about their eligibility to vote. DeSantis’s administration has levied significant fines against voter registration groups, in some cases for minor errors. Republicans have rewritten Florida’s election laws to create new voting barriers, weakened Black political power in the state, and used a new state agency to intimidate voters.The Guardian has been investigating Ron DeSantis’s attack on voting rights. Here are a few of the most consequential actions DeSantis, who is running for president, has taken to restrict voting.1He created an agency to crack down on voter fraud with troublesome resultsVoter fraud is exceedingly rare, both in Florida and across the United States. But in 2022, DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature created a new agency, the Office of Election Crimes and Security, to crack down on it. The agency was one of the first of its kind in the country. DeSantis initially proposed funding it with $6m and filling it with 52 staffers. The proposal prompted outrage, with some noting it would have more manpower than some local law enforcement agencies have to investigate murder. The legislature eventually funded it with $1.1m in 2022 for 15 positions and increased the budget to $1.4m this year. Voting rights advocates saw the move as a thinly veiled effort to intimidate people into not voting.2He’s prosecuted people confused about their eligibility to voteIn August 2022, DeSantis held a press conference flanked by uniformed law enforcement officers announcing he was arresting 20 people and charging them with illegally registering and voting. They were the first charges filed under the Office of Election Crimes and Security and each charge carried a maximum of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Fourteen of those charged were Black, and at least two of the men were arrested by armed officers.It quickly emerged that all of those charged were confused about whether they could vote, partly because of a new state law. All 20 had prior criminal convictions that made them ineligible to vote, but said they had not been told that. All of them had received voter registration cards in the mail. Voting advocates said the prosecutions were thinly veiled efforts to discourage people with felony convictions from trying to vote after Florida changed the rules around their eligibility with bipartisan support.Judges have dismissed several of the cases so far, noting that statewide prosecutors exceeded their jurisdiction in bringing them. The state is appealing those dismissals.3He’s intimidated groups trying to register votersSince 2021, DeSantis and the Florida legislature have consistently made it harder for third-party groups to try to register voters in Florida. Voters of color are about five times more likely to register with such groups in the state.The legislature has changed the law so that groups now have to turn in forms in the county where the voter lives (previously they could return them anywhere in the state). It imposed steep fines for errors: $500 for each form that was turned in to the wrong place. The state has raised the maximum a group could be fined from $1,000 to $250,000.As of mid-July, at least 26 groups had racked up more than $100,000 in fines for registration errors. In some cases, the voter lived at the county border, just hundreds of feet away from the county line, and had listed the wrong address on their own registration form.4He’s directly weakened the influence of Black votersWhen it came time to redraw Florida’s congressional districts in 2022, Republicans in the legislature proposed a map that gave them a hold on 18 of the state’s 28 congressional seats. One of the districts they left in Democratic hands was a north Florida district that stretched from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee. The district was 46% Black and the only one represented by a Democrat in that part of the state.DeSantis went out of his way to dismantle it. He objected to the legislature’s plan, saying he believed the district unconstitutionally benefited Black voters. When the legislature drew an alternative one that kept Jacksonville in one district and split up the rest, DeSantis objected to that too. Instead, he drew a map that chopped up the district into four where Republicans were heavily favored. Indeed, they won all four districts last fall.In a court case DeSantis conceded his map diminished the power of Black voters in northern Florida, but is challenging the state measure that outlaws that kind of reduction as unconstitutional. In September, a Leon county judge sided with the challengers in the case and ordered the state to redraw its congressional districts. The state is appealing to the Florida supreme court, which is likely to ultimately decide the case. More

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      Left revolts over Biden’s staunch support of Israel amid Gaza crisis

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      On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of liberal Jewish American activists staged sit-ins in the Capitol Hill offices of top Democrats, including in the senate office of progressive champion Bernie Sanders, to demand a ceasefire in the escalating war between Israel and Hamas.As they sang in Hebrew and prayed for peace, the House floor resumed legislative activity for the first time in weeks after the election of a new Republican speaker, congressman Mike Johnson.In his first act, Johnson brought to the floor a resolution declaring US solidarity with Israel after Hamas rampaged through Israeli cities, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages, Americans among them. Nearly all House Democrats voted to approve the measure, save for a resolute minority who dissented, citing its failure to address the thousands of Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign of Gaza.The discontent on display in Washington was a testament to the rising anger among the party’s left over the response from Biden and Democratic leaders to Israel’s war in Gaza. But as many progressives split from the White House over the US’s staunchly pro-Israel stance, there were also splits within the left itself – a sign of the raw emotions stirred by the conflict.Nor were the scenes in the House the only signs of discontent as US politics – and civil society as a whole – becomes increasingly roiled by Israel’s response to the 7 October Hamas attack.That same afternoon, Joe Biden was asked about the rising Palestinian death toll during a news conference at the White House. Biden replied that he had “no confidence” in the death count provided by the Gaza health ministry, which says nearly 7,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began.“I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” Biden said, in comments the Council on American-Islamic Relations described as “shocking and dehumanizing.”Online, many progressives seethed, accusing Biden of further enabling violence against Palestinians and predicting that he would pay an electoral price next year with Muslim and Arab American voters, who have emerged as an important Democratic constituency in recent elections.“The White House and many in the US government are clear as they should be that 1,000 Israelis killed is too many,” said Eva Borgwardt, the political director of IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish group leading many of the demonstrations in Washington, including the one at the Capitol on Wednesday. “Our question for them is: How many Palestinian deaths are too many?”As Israel intensifies its bombardment of Gaza, Biden is facing extraordinary and growing resistance from his party’s left flank, especially from young voters and voters of color, over his steadfast support for Israel. They have staged demonstrations, penned open letters and even tendered resignations in protest of the Biden administration’s handling of a war they say is threatening the president’s standing at home and possibly his chances of winning re-election next year.A Gallup poll released on Thursday found that Biden’s approval rating among Democrats plummeted 11 percentage points in one month, to a record low of 75%. According to the survey, the drop was fueled by dismay among Democratic voters over Biden’s support for Israel.Meanwhile, a poll released last week by the progressive firm Data for Progress found that 66% of likely US voters strongly or somewhat agree that the US should call for a ceasefire.Still, the White House has firmly rejected calls for a ceasefire, which Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, initially described as “repugnant” and “disgraceful” in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack. The administration’s rhetoric has since evolved, with White House spokesperson John Kirby arguing this week that a ceasefire at this stage “only benefits Hamas”. Asked earlier this week whether the US would support a ceasefire, Biden said: “We should have those hostages released and then we can talk.”Pressure is building in Congress, where 18 House Democrats – all progressive lawmakers of color – joined a resolution calling for the White House to support “an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine”.On Capitol Hill, a group of Jewish and Muslim staffers wrote an anonymous open letter to their bosses similarly calling for an “immediate ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas. Urging congressional leaders to act swiftly, they cited the rising death toll in Gaza and the rise of antisemitism, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian sentiments in the United States.Meanwhile, hundreds of former campaign and congressional staffers to progressive senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have penned open letters urging them to call for a ceasefire.So far no senator has backed a ceasefire. Warren, Sanders and several other Democratic senators have urged a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid, food and medical supplies to flow into Gaza after Israel ordered a “complete siege” of the territory. It echoes the position of the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who said earlier this week that it “must be considered” to protect civilian life.Sanders’ resistance to back a ceasefire has disappointed some of even his most loyal followers, in a sign of how emotionally fraught the debate over Israel has become on the left.Though the 2024 presidential election is a year away, many progressives, and especially younger activists, have threatened to withhold support for Biden, while Arab and Muslim Americans have expressed deep alarm over the president’s actions and rhetoric.Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian American in Congress, has accused Biden of abetting the deadly war. “We will remember where you stood,” she wrote in a social media post tagging the president.At his press conference on Wednesday, Biden also cautioned Israel to be “incredibly careful to ensure they’re going after the folks propagating this war”. For many on the left, the warning was buried behind his comments casting doubt on the scale of war deaths in Gaza.“Like many progressive Democrats, I have applauded and been pleasantly surprised by President Biden’s actions on climate and the economy,” Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist tracking the administration’s response to the war, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “But he’s crossed a moral line with nearly every Muslim, Arab and anti-war young voter I know.”The White House said on Thursday the Biden administration did not dispute that thousands of Palestinians had been killed and emphasized that the health ministry was run by Hamas.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven a slight erosion in support could spell danger for Biden, who was already struggling with low enthusiasm, particularly among young voters.In polling conducted after the Hamas attack, a Quinnipiac survey found that slightly more than half of voters under 35 say they disapprove of the United States sending weapons and military support to Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack. By contrast, nearly six in 10 voters between the ages of 35 and 49 support sending weapons to Israel, with older age groups offering even stronger approval.Biden’s allies have largely downplayed the disagreements among the party’s grassroots. They note that most Democrats, including the party’s congressional leaders, the senator Chuck Schumer and the congressman Hakeem Jeffries, are strong supporters of Israel and fully back the president’s handling of the conflict. In the coming weeks, their caucuses are expected to overwhelmingly support a White House request to send $14.3bn in security aid to Israel.A letter to Biden, signed by ​a majority of House Democrats, including every Jewish​ member ​of their caucus and several liberal members, praises his ​”strong leadership during a tragic and dangerous moment in the Middle East​.​”It further commends Biden for displaying​ “steadfast support for our ally Israel in a moment of need and horror” while ​also making “clear statements regarding the fundamental importance of ensuring that the humanitarian needs of the civilian population of Gaza are met.”Deep, abiding support for Israel among Democrats on Capitol Hill obscures a shift among the party’s voters, and especially among those who came of age in a post-9/11 US. A Gallup poll conducted in March found for the first time that a greater number of Democrats say they sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis.Republicans have sought to exploit those divisions in an attempt to cast the Democratic party as anti-Israel, a narrative progressives say media coverage has unfairly promoted.Many liberal Democrats, including the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have forcefully denounced pro-Hamas or antisemitic sentiments expressed by the party’s activist fringe. At the same time, they contend that there is a double standard in the way elected officials speak about Palestinians.They point to comments from Republicans like the senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who described the conflict as a “religious war” and said Israelis should “do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.”Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, made a similar remark, saying in an interview: “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza.”“I have long found the ignoring and sidelining of Palestinians in the US House of Representatives, the humanity of Palestinian populations, in the five years I have been in Congress, quite shocking,” Ocasio-Cortez said recently on MSNBC.With expectations that a large-scale Israeli invasion of the besieged territory is imminent, demands for an immediate ceasefire have grown louder and more urgent.In a statement on Friday, amid intensifying bombing and a communications blackout in Gaza, Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of the progressive group Justice Democrats, implored the president to act now to prevent a ground invasion that would “ensure thousands more civilian casualties, bring us closer to an all-out regional conflict in the Middle East, and thrust the United States into another endless war”.Looking to the future, progressives say the administration must be prepared to dramatically reshape Washington’s decades-long approach to Israel and Palestine.“If we want to take a consistent policy towards human rights, we cannot always be focused on supporting the rights and security of one side here,” said Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sanders.“The status quo,” he said, “is clearly unsustainable.” More

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      Judge orders Ivanka Trump to testify in family’s civil fraud trial – as it happened

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      Amid all the jockeying in next year’s presidential race, frontrunner for the Republican nomination Donald Trump has been busy in a New York City courtroom, where a judge is presiding over his family’s civil fraud trial – and just ruled that his daughter can appear as a witness.Law360 reports that judge Arthur Engoron decided Ivanka Trump can be called to testify in the trial, where he is deciding what penalties to impose against the Trumps after finding they committed financial fraud:However, the soonest Ivanka could appear on the witness stand is next week, Engoron ruled:A New York City judge ruled that Ivanka Trump may appear on the witness stand in the civil fraud trial of her father Donald Trump and other family members as soon as next week. In Long Island, the Republican congressman and prolific liar George Santos pleaded guilty to a slate of new federal charges against him, and learned he would stand trial beginning on 9 September of next year. That’s about two months before the presidential election, and it appears Joe Biden will have a challenger for the Democratic nomination: Dean Phillips, a relatively inexperienced Minnesota congressman who declared his candidacy today.Here’s what else happened:
      Biden was briefed on the manhunt for the perpetrator of a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine that killed 18 people on Wednesday.
      A new Gallup poll shows the president’s approval rating slipping among Democrats, potentially due to his pro-Israel stance in its boiling conflict with Gaza.
      Some of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election subversion case are being offered plea deals, while others are not.
      Mike Johnson signaled he would be willing to continue the impeachment inquiry into Biden, in the Republican’s first interview since being elected House speaker.
      Democrats hope an upcoming Wisconsin supreme court case could turn the balance of power in the crucial swing state back in their favor.
      The mass shooting in Lewiston has prompted one of Maine’s two House representatives, Jared Golden, to reverse his opposition to an assault weapons ban, the Guardian’s Erum Salam reports. There could be political implications to this, as Golden is one of five Democrats nationwide whose districts voted for Republican Donald Trump in 2020:US house representative Jared Golden, of Maine’s second district, has made a stunning reversal of his opposition to efforts to ban assault rifles – in the wake of the mass shooting in a bowling alley and restaurant in Lewiston in the state on Wednesday night, which killed 18.In 2022, Golden was among the few Democrats to vote against a bill in Congress that would have banned the sale of assault weapons to the American public for the first time since 2004. Joe Biden has repeatedly sought such a ban and, on Thursday, a day after the worst such massacre in his state’s history, Golden joined the US president’s calls.The bill would have blocked the sale, manufacture, transfer, or possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition devices and Golden also voted against a bill that would have raised the age limit for purchasing a semiautomatic rifle and banned the sale of high-capacity magazines.Golden is now receiving praise from many of his constituents and colleagues for his change of position.The White House just announced that Joe Biden has received an update on the search for the gunman behind a mass shooting Lewiston, Maine on Wednesday that left 18 people dead.From their statement:
      This afternoon the president was updated by his senior staff on the latest information about the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine. He also spoke with FBI director Christopher Wray, who described the more than 200 FBI personnel who are in Maine to support the investigation – including the ongoing manhunt – and provide assistance to the victims. The president expressed appreciation for the courageous work of all the federal, state and local law enforcement personnel.
      We have a live blog covering the latest on the manhunt, and you can read it here:In Wisconsin, a crucial swing state for any presidential candidate, the Guardian’s Alice Herman and Sam Levine report a supreme court decision could unravel gerrymandered maps that Republicans have used to their advantage for more than a decade, potentially boosting Democratic candidates:Lynn Carey, a retired nurse with a double lung transplant, has spent years trying to get Wisconsin lawmakers to improve healthcare. Carey organized voters in support of the Affordable Care Act back in 2009. Since its passage, she has pushed to get her Republican representatives in the state legislature to expand Medicaid coverage to its poorest residents.The idea has been overwhelmingly popular in Wisconsin: a 2019 poll showed 70% of voters in the state supported it. But Medicaid expansion hasn’t gone anywhere – even after Democrats won back Wisconsin’s governorship in 2018.Republicans still hold near-supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature, and have shown no sign of compromise on this issue or many others popular with most Wisconsinites. Their legislative majorities are virtually impenetrable, cemented by Republican-drawn district lines that have guaranteed Republicans control of the legislature even in years where Democrats received more votes statewide. “We don’t have competitive districts where people have to listen to their constituents,” Carey said.That could change soon.Differing opinions over the conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted in the House yesterday, when the rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a resolution to censure Rashida Tlaib.The progressive Democrat from Michigan is one of two Muslim lawmakers in the chamber, and has been calling for a ceasefire in the worsening conflict. Tlaib responded to Greene’s allegations of antisemitism by calling her Islamophobic in a statement:Later in the day, the Democratic congresswoman Becca Balint introduced a separate resolution to censure Greene for allegations of racism and dishonoring people who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Here’s her reading the proposal on the House floor:And the Republican Anthony D’Esposito also spoke to introduce a resolution expelling his fellow New Yorker George Santos from the chamber, citing his many lies and federal criminal charges:Thus, the first full day of work for the House since Kevin McCarthy’s removal as speaker and eventual replacement by the conservative Republican Mike Johnson ended with two censure resolutions and one expulsion petition pending before it. The chamber is in recess today.Speaking of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, the president has thrown his support firmly behind Israel in the wake of the 7 October terror attack and its threat to invade the Gaza Strip to defeat Hamas. As the Guardian’s Tom Perkins and Erum Salam report, it’s a stance that could have consequences for his ability to win electoral votes in Michigan, a swing state with a large Arab American population:Leading up to the 2020 election, Arab American organizers in south-east Michigan like Terry Ahwal worked to convince their community to go to the polls for Joe Biden. The message was simple: Donald Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric and policies such as the Middle East travel ban were a threat to Arab Americans. Voters mobilized to help push Biden over the top in this critical swing state.Several years on, amid Biden’s full-throated support of Israel in the current war and an unfolding humanitarian crisis that has claimed thousand of lives in Gaza, Ahwal feels deep regret: “I have to say “I’m sorry’ to my friends.’”Ahwal is among hundreds of thousands of Arab Americans in Michigan, many of whom are watching with horror as the US supports Israel as it carries out its bombing campaign. After the community backed Biden by a wide margin in November 2020, the feeling goes “beyond betrayal”, about a dozen Arab Americans in Michigan said.“This is a complete loss of humanity, it is the active support of a genocide, and I don’t think it gets any worse than that,” said Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian American activist and attorney. “I’ve gotten a few comments, ‘Well, the GOP is going to be worse,’ and my question is: ‘How can you get worse than active support of a genocide?’”Polls show that Americans have generally been supportive of Israel and its response to the 7 October attack, though Morning Consult data released this week also shows the number of people who sympathize equally with Israelis and Palestinians is on the rise. That poll also showed support for Biden’s response is growing.But Arab Americans who spoke with the Guardian said they did not know of anyone in their community who would vote for Biden in 2024. That could have profound consequences in a state in which Trump won by 10,000 votes in 2016, and a tight rematch is taking shape.Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, the Democratic congressman Dean Phillips launched his bid to oust Joe Biden atop the party’s presidential ticket next year.In remarks after he began his campaign, he eluded both to Biden’s dire poll numbers and his advanced age as reasons for running:Phillips also responded to a question about a reported 2019 campaign donation from Harlan Crow, the billionaire Republican donor who also lavished gifts on conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas:Now that all three of Donald Trump’s adult children are due to testify at the civil fraud trial of the family business, in addition to the former president himself, the scene is set for a great reunion in New York.Ivanka Trump has been relatively absent from mainstream media headlines since her father lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden and the clan packed their boxes and departed the White House, where Ivanka had acted as an aide to her father as president.She testified briefly but devastatingly to the congressional bipartisan committee investigating the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol encouraged by the then president.She admitted to the panel in July 2022 that she did not believe Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him because of widespread voting fraud. She hadn’t stood up and made statements to that effect when all the malarkey was going down with Trump’s failed legal campaign to reverse the result and then the deadly attack on the Capitol.She accepted that Biden had won after Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr essentially told her he had, something Barr also told Donald Trump and had acknowledged publicly in 2020.So Ivanka, Donald Jr and Eric can now be expected on the witness stand in the trial of the Trump Organization. She stepped down from the family business empire in 2017. Ivanka had her own fashion business that was also based in New York before her father won the White House. That ended in 2018.Her lawyer told the court on Friday that she hadn’t personally done business in the Big Apple since 2017.Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner and their children live in Florida and have appeared to distance themselves from presidential politics.Ivanka Trump may appear on the witness stand in the civil fraud trial of her father Donald Trump and other family members as soon as next week, thanks to a judge’s ruling. Elsewhere in New York state, Republican congressman and liar George Santos pleaded guilty to a slate of new federal charges against him, and learned he would stand trial beginning on 9 September of next year. That’s about two months before the presidential election, and it appears Joe Biden will have a challenger for the Democratic nomination: Dean Phillips, a relatively inexperienced Minnesota congressman who declared his candidacy today.Here’s what else has happened:
      A new Gallup poll shows Biden’s approval rating slipping among Democrats, potentially due to his pro-Israel stance in its boiling conflict with Gaza.
      Some of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election subversion case are being offered plea deals, while others are not.
      Mike Johnson signaled he would be willing to continue the impeachment inquiry into Biden in the Republican’s first interview since being elected House speaker.
      Donald Trump’s legal troubles extend far and wide, including to Georgia, where the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports some of his co-defendants in his election meddling case are not being offered plea deals by prosecutors – while others are:Donald Trump’s top co-defendants charged with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia have not been offered plea deals since they were indicted, people close to the matter said on Wednesday, raising tensions among some in that group as they prepare to recalibrate their legal strategies.The co-defendants without offers include the former US president himself, former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and former Trump lawyers John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, the people said – individuals who played leading roles in the alleged conspiracies.The lack of offers from the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, in contrast to those deals agreed with the other Trump election lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, has caused some of Trump’s top co-defendants to reconsider their legal strategy and weigh options such as seeking an expedited trial or trying to sever their cases.Trump and his original 19 co-defendants pleaded not guilty in August to charges that they violated the Rico statute in Georgia in trying to reverse his election defeat. But the pressure on Trump’s closest allies has increased in recent weeks after four co-defendants accepted plea agreements.Shifting back to Donald Trump and his family’s civil fraud trial in New York City, NBC News reports that it is unclear what Ivanka Trump may say on the witness stand, but prosecutors have waged a hard-fought campaign to get her to testify.Her lawyers could also still appeal the ruling that will see her take the stand after 1 November. Here’s more from NBC’s report:
      Trump’s attorneys had challenged New York Attorney General Letitia James’ subpoena to Ivanka Trump, noting an appeals court had ruled earlier this year that she should be dropped as a defendant in the case over statute of limitations issues.
      They contended the AG’s office was trying “to continue to harass and burden President Trump’s daughter long after” the appeals court “mandated she be dismissed from the case.”
      They also argued that the AG waited too long to subpoena her, and argued the office doesn’t have jurisdiction over her because she no longer lives in the state.
      The AG’s office countered that Ivanka Trump, a former White House official, still has information important to their case.
      “While no longer a Defendant in this action, she indisputably has personal knowledge of facts relevant to the claims against the remaining individual and entity Defendants. But even beyond that, Ms. Trump remains financially and professionally intertwined with the Trump Organization and other Defendants and can be called as a person still under their control,” the AG contended in a court filing.
      The office said it wanted to ask her questions about Trump’s former Washington, D.C. hotel, and noted she profited from the sale.
      “Ms. Trump remains under the control of the Trump Organization, including through her ongoing and substantial business ties to the organization,” the AG argued, adding that she “does not seem to be averse to her involvement in the family business when it comes to owning and collecting proceeds from the OPO (hotel) sale, the Trump Organization purchasing insurance for her and her companies, managing her household staff and credit card bills, renting her apartment or even paying her legal fees in this action. It is only when she is tasked with answering for that involvement that she disclaims any connection.” More

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      New House speaker Mike Johnson praised ‘18th-century values’ in speech

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      Before entering elected office, Mike Johnson, the new Republican speaker of the US House, praised “18th-century values” and told an audience that Americans should live by them when it came to morality and religion.In video footage of a forum hosted in 2013 by Louisiana Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, Johnson, a devout Baptist and then an attorney for rightwing groups and causes, is asked about the “condition of conscience” in Europe and Canada regarding abortion policy.Saying he has just given “a seminar … to a bunch of high school kids in Shreveport”, Johnson quotes George Washington and John Adams, saying the first two presidents and other founders “told us that if we didn’t maintain those 18th-century values, that the republic would not stand, and this is the condition we find ourselves in today”.Johnson, 51, became speaker on Wednesday, as Republicans’ fourth candidate for the job since Kevin McCarthy was ejected by the far right of the party.Having maintained a low profile since entering Congress in 2016 (a year after he became a state representative in Louisiana), his arrival on the national stage has led to widespread examination of his political record and views.As well as his work in support of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, his work against abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights has been widely noted.In the aftermath of the mass shooting in Maine on Wednesday night, in which 18 people were killed and 13 wounded, a clip circulated of Johnson blaming mass shootings on 20th-century American reforms. Listing “no fault divorce laws”, “the sexual revolution”, “radical feminism” and “government-sanctioned killing of the unborn”, he said had liberals had created “a completely amoral society” in which young Americans were “taught there is no right and wrong”.He covered similar ground in his 2013 comments to Louisiana Right to Life, claiming religious motivations for those who declared independence in 1776 and wrote the constitution thereafter – regardless of their care to erect, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, the third president, “a wall of separation between church and state”.Johnson said: “Washington said in his famous farewell address: ‘Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.’ And Adams said: ‘Our constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.’”He added: “The founders warned us. They said if you … do not maintain religion and morality, the right of conscience being the most fundamental bedrock principle of them all, then the republic is not going to stand. This will not work.”Johnson’s own predictions of American decline have been widely noted. In 2004, he called same-sex marriage a “dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic”.In his 2013 remarks, Johnson said the US was “still an experiment on the world stage. We’re only 237 years old, youngest form of government known to man. It’s a great model. The founders were divinely inspired … They set it up in accordance with biblical principles.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“… But the point is that the religion and morality had to be maintained and now we’re being led from the White House on down to reject and marginalise religious values … to just erase all of our moral codes and look down upon those who would try to stand up and say, ‘No, we have to maintain those.’”Barack Obama was then president. To Johnson, America under Obama had become a “post-modern culture … defined by the absence of truth”.“That makes the claims of the Bible inherently intolerant,” he said. “You know, truth has been replaced as the greatest virtue in society by tolerance. Well, we’re the inherently intolerant ones who say, ‘Wait a minute, life is sacred because we’re endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.’ We have to stand up for those.”Assuming the voice of an opponent, he said: ‘Oh, you bigot. Can’t you be a little more open-minded? Come on, that’s so like 18th-century, you know?’“Well, [the founders] told us that if we didn’t maintain those 18th-century values, that the republic would not stand, and this is the condition we find ourselves in today.” More