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      The Guardian view on Biden’s green deal: leadership after Trump’s denialism | Editorial

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      The Guardian view on Biden’s green deal: leadership after Trump’s denialismEditorialThe first major climate law passed in the US comes not a moment too soon for a burning planet When the House of Representatives passed landmark climate legislation on Friday, Joe Biden chalked up one of the surprise successes of his presidency. Only last month his ambitious agenda appeared sunk after a conservative Democrat and coal baron, Joe Manchin, refused to back it. His vote is crucial in an evenly divided Senate. However, the climate proposals were largely resurrected in the form of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), co-authored by Mr Manchin, which Congress approved.The first major US climate law comes not a moment too soon. It is the country’s best and last opportunity to meet its goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and, with it, a world where net zero by mid-century is possible. After Donald Trump, Mr Biden can reclaim the mantle of global climate leadership for the US. But the act reveals the limits of his power.The Democrats’ initial $3.5tn plan was to expand education, fight poverty, lower healthcare costs and tackle climate change. That was whittled down to a $1.75tn bill that the House passed last year. But it got nowhere in the Senate. Mr Manchin refused to back the social security programmes and his centrist colleague Kyrsten Sinema refused to back the tax rises. What was left was $490bn in climate and healthcare investments.This deserves a small cheer from progressives. Mr Biden is pursuing a muscular policy of state intervention in the economy. The act for the first time gives the federal government the power to negotiate lower drug prices. Significantly for the climate, it represents a new US industrial policy that subsidises zero-carbon power production via tax credits. It also recognises that the US is falling behind China in green technology – spending $152bn less on renewable investments last year – and focuses on ways to encourage clean-energy manufacturing.Politics in the US is unfortunately far too influenced by the power of vested interests. The US remains addicted to fossil fuels, which generate 61% of its electricity. Its shale gas industry is looking to replace Russia as the major energy supplier to Europe. The upshot was that fossil fuel lobbyists won concessions in the climate legislation. The compromise means linking renewable development to new oil and gas extraction for which many communities will bear the disproportionate cost.Nevertheless, for every one tonne of emissions caused by the act’s fossil fuel provisions, the non-partisan Energy Innovation thinktank says 24 tonnes of emissions are avoided by its green provisions. This ought to help energise Mr Biden’s base ahead of the midterm elections. Despite Republican antagonism, climate action enjoys broad support in the US. A Pew Research Center poll suggests that 58% of voters think the federal government is doing too little to “reduce the effects of global climate change, compared with just 18% who say it is doing too much”.To be a truly transformative president, Mr Biden will need to remake society. What the act demonstrates is that he does not have the votes – yet – in his own party for such a programme. Mr Biden’s climate plans may fall short because he is relying on the carrot of spending rather than the stick of taxes to underpin an energy transition. Yet the wasteful consumption of the wealthy will have to be reduced with progressive taxation to make resources available for socially-useful spending. Ultimately the climate emergency needs a fundamental economic restructuring. Mr Biden’s new environmental law is a good start, but there’s a very long way to go.TopicsClimate crisisOpinionUS politicsJoe BidenNancy PelosiDemocratsRepublicanseditorialsReuse this content More

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      How a wild week in Washington changed the game for Biden and Trump

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      How a wild week in Washington changed the game for Biden and Trump As the midterms approach, Biden’s climate success and Trump’s legal troubles could offer Democrats unexpected hopeDeparting his small, unshowy home state of Delaware, Joe Biden roared into the sky aboard Air Force One, borne aloft by jet fuel and a dramatic uplift in his political fortunes.A thousand miles away, some unexpected guests had just arrived at the opulent Florida estate of the US president’s predecessor, Donald Trump, but not for its champagne, sumptuous buffet or two pound lobsters.At about 9am on Monday, FBI agents – said to number between 30 and 40, some wearing suits, most in T-shirts, casual trousers, masks and gloves – began a search of Mar-a-Lago for government secrets that should not have left the White House.It was a tale of two presidents: Biden at his zenith, gaining praise for a “hot streak” and earning comparisons with the master legislator Lyndon Johnson; Trump at his nadir, under criminal investigation for potential violations of the Espionage Act and earning comparisons with the 1920s gangster Al Capone.And yet, such is the upside down nature of American politics in 2022, determining who won and who lost the week was less clear cut. For Biden, to be sure, it was a much needed boost after months of Washington gridlock, miserable poll ratings and speculation that he could face a challenger from his own Democratic party in the 2024 presidential election.But Trump, perversely, also appeared to end the week stronger within his party than he began it. He had faced growing dissent over damaging revelations from the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. Yet his claim that his home had been “raided” by law enforcement prompted Republicans to unite behind him with renewed zeal.The upshot was that Biden, 79, and 76-year-old Trump had each received a political blood transfusion when they needed it most. If recent events proved anything, it was that they are still the most likely contenders for the White House in 2024. America’s gerontocracy is not done yet.For a president long called a carnival barker and reality TV star reveling in spectacle, the FBI search on Monday began innocuously enough, with neither Trump nor cameras present (his son, Eric, told Fox News that he had been the first to learn of it and informed his father).Democrats’ midterm prospects perk up as Biden finally hits his strideRead moreThe FBI agents had a search warrant as part of a justice department investigation into the discovery of classified White House records recovered from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year. They wore plain clothes and were given access by the Secret Service without drama.The agents reportedly seized 11 sets of classified information, some of which was marked “top secret”, along with binders, handwritten notes and information about the “President of France”. Trump denied a Washington Post article that said the search was for possible classified materials related to nuclear weapons.It ended at about 6.30pm on Monday and word broke on social media a few minutes later, quickly followed by confirmation from Trump himself. In a characteristically hyperbolic statement, he fumed that Mar-a-Lago was “currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before… They even broke into my safe!”Trump claimed the search was politically motivated and attempted to draw a contrast with his old foe Hillary Clinton, but perhaps the most important sentence asserted: “It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”Like a herd of wildebeest, Republicans stampeded thunderously as one. “Weaponization”, “banana republic” and “dictatorship” were the go-to words of the week along with a blitz of fundraising emails. Some in the party of law and order, which had castigated Democrats over the “defund the police” slogan, were now calling for the FBI to be defunded.Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, claimed that the government has gone the way of “the Gestapo”, the secret police in Nazi Germany. Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona tweeted: “We must destroy the FBI. We must save America. I stand with Donald J Trump.”Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, warned the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, to “preserve your documents and clear your calendar” because, if Republicans take control of the House in November’s midterm elections, they will hold oversight investigations into the justice department.So far, so Maga. Perhaps more tellingly, even Republicans who had previously distanced themselves from Trump felt compelled to toe the line. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell demanded a “thorough and immediate explanation” of what led to the search.The former vice-president Mike Pence, who fell out with the former president over January 6, said “the appearance of continued partisanship by the justice department must be addressed”. Other potential contenders for the Republican nomination in 2024, including Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, joined the chorus.Opinion polls confirmed that the FBI search had given Trump at least a modest boost among Republicans. A survey by Morning Consult found that 57% of Republican voters and Republican-leaning independents would vote for Trump if the 2024 primary were being held today, up from 53% in mid-July. DeSantis fell from 23% to 17% over the same period.This followed a run of victories for Trump-backed candidates in congressional primary elections. In the spring and early summer, his record had been uneven with notable setbacks in states such as Georgia. But this month, his slate of election-deniers beat establishment-backed candidates in Arizona.The businessman Tim Michels won the Republican primary for governor of Wisconsin with Trump’s backing. Most of the 10 Republican members of Congress who voted to impeach Trump have either retired or lost. Liz Cheney, the vice-chair of the January 6 committee, will be on the Wyoming ballot on Tuesday and is widely expected to lose her seat.A the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas, 69% of attendees said they wanted Trump as the Republican nominee in 2024, well ahead of DeSantis on 24%. Jim McLaughlin, who conducted the straw poll, said: “He’s more popular than ever.”Yet even as Trump tightens his grip on the Republican base, his new status as the first former US president to suffer the indignity of having his home searched by the FBI offers another reason why moderate and independent voters could slip through his fingers.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “There are two contrary effects. With Republicans, or at least the Republican base, this has caused them to rally around not the flag but Donald Trump. It has strengthened him within the party and discouraged people like DeSantis, whether he admits it or not, and the others aren’t even on the radar screen at this point.“But the contrary effect for not just Democrats but also independents is it makes Trump less electable in 2024. People look at him and even if they like him they say his time has passed and he’s too controversial, I’ve heard this a million times and I don’t think it’s exceptional.”Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, agrees that Republicans’ fast and furious defense of Trump should not necessarily be taken at face value as the midterms approach.An anxious American west sizes up historic climate bill: ‘We need every tool’Read moreShe said: “They’re squeezing all of this enthusiasm out of his base, promising them all sorts of things, just to make sure that they get out and vote on 8 November.”Schiller added: “They’re using Donald Trump to get to the promised land in November but, as soon as they get there, it’s not clear to me that they stay loyal to him particularly. They don’t have to. Once they get the Congress, particularly if they get the Senate, and if Ron DeSantis wins big in Florida for re-election, he doesn’t need Donald Trump to get the nomination or the presidency.”Whatever their motivations, Republicans’ rush of incendiary and reckless rhetoric also came with a dark and dangerous side. Pro-Trump online chatrooms filled with calls for violence and phrases such as “lock and load” while “civil war” trended on Twitter.On Thursday an armed man wearing body armor tried to breach a security screening area at an FBI field office in Ohio, then fled and was later killed after a standoff with law enforcement. The man is believed to have been in Washington in the days before the assault on the US Capitol and may have been there on the day it took place.Trump’s legal perils – federal and state, civil and criminal – continue to mount. In a separate case, he sat for a deposition on Wednesday as the New York attorney general, Letitia James, wraps up a civil investigation into allegations that his company misled lenders and tax authorities about asset values.Even as Trump invoked his fifth-amendment protection against self-incrimination more than 400 times, Biden was at the White House celebrating another victory. He signed bipartisan legislation to pour billions of dollars into care for military veterans exposed to toxic burn pits.It was one of several victories for a president who just last month was being written off as a likely one-term president with an approval rating below 40% – worse even than Trump’s – because of inflation, a stalled agenda and a desire for generational change. The Axios website started a list of Democratic officials’ positions on whether they want Biden to run again in 2024, noting that two gave firm “no”s and 19 dodged the question.But the narrative has shifted quickly in just a few weeks even as Biden battled a coronavirus infection and lingering cough. Congress, where Democrats have wafer-thin majorities, sent bipartisan bills addressing gun violence and boosting the nation’s high-tech manufacturing sector to his desk.On Friday, the president secured what he called the “final piece” of his economic agenda with passage of a $740bn climate and prescription drug deal once thought dead. In addition, petrol prices dipped below $4 a gallon for the first time since March, inflation appears to be stabilising and the economy added 528,000 jobs in July, bringing the unemployment rate to 3.5%, the lowest in half a century.And Biden successfully ordered the killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri in a US drone strike in Afghanistan, the most significant blow to the terrorist network since the death of Osama Bin Laden. Democrats and the White House hope the run of victories will revive their their political fortunes in time for the midterms.Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist, said: “When you combine what’s happened in the last month legislatively with the supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade [the constitutional right to abortion], you may have a very different situation for Democrats going into the midterms and for Biden in the second half of his term and a possible re-election.”Shrum, director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California Dornsife, does not buy the notion that Trump has been strengthened by his latest crisis. “He’s still the dominant force in the Republican party but he’s not as dominant as he was a year ago. He might be able to win a plurality nomination, but I actually think he’d be a very weak Republican nominee. He literally could get into a position where running would be a part time occupation and defending himself in court would be the full time occupation.”The 2024 election is an age away. Most commentators agree that, despite all the unknowables facing both men, including those related to being older than any other American presidents in history, a Biden v Trump rematch remains the most likely scenario.Michael Steele, a Trump critic and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “Let’s settle this once and for all. Let’s stomp Trump’s ass into the ground one more time. He lost by 8m votes last time; he’ll lose by 16m next time. You want to play? Let’s play. Democrats, with all their navel gazing, whining and bellyaching about Joe Biden’s age and this and that, shut the hell up!”Steele added: “The most likely outcome going into 2024 is that it will be a repeat of the 2020 election. All stakes remain the same, if not higher, and the American people are going to have to decide once and for all: are we down with autocracy or are we up with democracy?”TopicsUS politicsJoe BidenDonald TrumpDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Breaking History review: Jared Kushner’s dispiriting Trump book

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      Breaking History review: Jared Kushner’s dispiriting Trump book The former president’s son-in-law has written a predictably self-serving and selective memoir of his time in the White HouseThe House January 6 committee hearings depict Donald Trump as eager to storm the Capitol. He knew the rally held in his name included armed individuals. When rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence”, Jared Kushner’s father-in-law remarked: “He deserves it.”The Big Lie review: Jonathan Lemire laments what Trump hath wroughtRead moreIn response to a plea from Kevin McCarthy, the 45th president questioned the House Republican leader’s devotion. The mob invaded Congress. Trump sat back and watched.Kushner has not fared well either. In testimony to the panel, he has derided Pat Cipollone as a “whiner” and described deigning to exit the shower to take a call from a panicked McCarthy. On the screen, Kushner drips hauteur, empathy nonexistent. It’s not a good look.Then comes Breaking History, Kushner’s White House memoir. Its sits at the intersection of spin, absolution and self-aggrandizement.“What is clear to me is that no one at the White House expected violence that day,” Kushner writes of January 6. Cassidy Hutchinson says otherwise.Kushner adds: “I’m confident that if my colleagues or the president had anticipated violence, they would have prevented it from happening.” DC police tell a different story.Kushner rebuffed early entreaties from Marc Short, the vice-president’s chief of staff, to end Trump’s attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s win.“You know, I’m really focused on the Middle East right now,” Kushner replied. “I haven’t really been involved in the election stuff since Rudy Giuliani came in.”In the aftermath of January 6, White House morale was at a nadir, according to Kushner. A second impeachment loomed. Kushner told staff to stay the course.“You took an oath to the country,” he recalls. “This is a moment when we have to do what’s right, not what’s popular. If the country is better off with you here, then stay. If it doesn’t matter, then do what you want.”That sales pitch sounds canned. Those who had served in the military found the spiel stale and grating.In Kushner, Inc, the author Vicky Ward described Kushner’s earlier efforts to persuade Mark Corallo to join the White House staff. Corallo was once in the army and did a stint at the Department of Justice too.After he said no, Kushner asked: “Don’t you want to serve your country?”Corallo replied: “Young man, my three years at the butt end of an M-16 checked that box.”Trump dodged the draft for Vietnam. When his brother, Fred Jr, accepted a commission in the air national guard, he met with his family’s scorn. In contrast, Mike Pence’s son, the Biden boys, Steve Bannon: all wore a uniform.In Breaking History, Kushner selectively parcels out dirt. He seeks to absolve his father for recruiting a sex worker to film her tryst with William Schulder, Charlie Kushner’s brother-in-law. At the time, Schulder, his wife, Esther, (Charlie’s sister), and Charlie were locked in battle over control of the family real estate business.Kushner explains: “Billy’s infidelity was an open secret around the office, and to show his sister Esther what kind of man she had married, my father hired a prostitute who seduced Billy.”Schulder and Esther were also talking to the feds.The names of two Trump paramours, Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, and Karen McDougal, the Playboy model, do not appear in Kushner’s book. Then again, as Trump once said, “When you’re a star … you can do anything.” For Trump and Kushner, rules are meant for others.Breaking History comes with conflicting creation stories. In June, the New York Times reported that Kushner took an online MasterClass from the thriller writer James Patterson, then “batted out” 40,000 words of his own.The Guardian reported that Kushner received assistance from Ken Kurson, a former editor of the New York Observer who was pardoned by Trump on cyberstalking charges but then pleaded guilty after being charged with spying on his wife. Avi Berkowitz, a Kushner deputy who worked on the Abraham Accords, and Cassidy Luna, an aide married to Nick Luna, Trump’s White House “body man”, were also on board.Breaking History says nothing about Patterson but gives shout-outs to Kurson, Luna and Berkowitz: “From the inception of this endeavor, Ken’s brutally honest feedback and inventive suggestions have made this a better book.”Kushner rightly takes pride in the Abraham Accords, normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. In the process, he provides backstory for Trump’s frustration with Benjamin Netanyahu.Israel’s then-prime minister’s earned a “fuck him” after he hesitatingly embraced Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, seeking to extract maximum concession without grace or reciprocity. What Netanyahu craved but never received was American approval of Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Here, Breaking History adds color to Trump’s Peace by Barak Ravid.According to Ravid, David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, was close to Netanyahu. He sat in on Israeli government meetings until he was tossed out by cabinet members. Ravid also calls Friedman “flesh of the settlers’ flesh”.Trump’s Peace review: dysfunction and accord in US Israel policyRead moreEnter Kushner. “Friedman had assured Bibi that he would get the White House to support annexation more immediately,” he says. “He had not conveyed this to me or anyone on my team.”Things grew heated. “You haven’t spoken to a single person from a country outside of Israel,” Kushner said. “You don’t have to deal with the Brits, you don’t have to deal with the Moroccans, and you don’t have to deal with the Saudis or the Emiratis, who are all trusting my word and putting out statements. I have to deal with the fallout of this. You don’t.”One Trump veteran described Breaking History to the Guardian as “just 493 pages of pure boredom”. Not exactly. Kushner delivers a mixture of news and cringe. He does not extract Trump from his present morass. On Wednesday, Kushner’s father-in-law invoked the fifth amendment. Only Charlie Kushner got the pardon. A devoted child takes care of dad.
      Breaking History: A White House Memoir is published in the US by HarperCollins
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      The Republican party has reason to fear the midterms | Lloyd Green

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      The Republican party has reason to fear the midtermsLloyd GreenThis fall, Trump will be on the ballot even if his name does not appear. There are growing signs the Republican party is in trouble Donald Trump’s week from hell has turned red hot. On Friday, reports emerged that he was under suspicion of having violated the Espionage Act, removing or destroying records and obstructing an investigation. Separate inventory receipts reflect that FBI agents hauled-off a trove of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach domicile and club. Specifically, agents found four sets of “top secret documents”, three sets of “secret documents” and three sets of “confidential documents”. Whether any of this pertains to US nuclear capabilities remains a mystery. On Thursday night, the Washington Post had reported that the FBI searched for “nuclear documents and other items, sources say even worse.” For his part, Trump denied the search related to nuclear weapons, and branded those allegations a “hoax”.Earlier on Thursday, Merrick Garland, the attorney general, told reporters that the buck stopped with him. At the same time, the Department of Justice also moved to unseal the search warrant and inventory list. “Absent objection” by Trump, the justice department asked the court to make public both the search warrant and the inventory. Late Thursday, the former president acceded to the department’s gambit. “Release the documents now!”, Trump announced on Truth Social. Armed FBI attacker shot dead by police believed to be enraged Trump supporterRead moreNukes and the pungent whiff of espionage possibly committed by the ex-president now waft through the air. Jay Bratt signed the Department of Justice filing. He heads the department’s counterintelligence and export control office. Once upon a time, Trump contemplated pardoning Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Both men were charged under the Espionage Act. In his book on the Trump presidency, Rage, Bob Woodward quoted Trump as saying: “We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before. There’s nobody – what we have is incredible.” As an act of deflection, Trump also attacked the 44th president: “I continue to ask, what happened to the 33mn pages of documents taken to Chicago by President Obama.” Earlier in the week, Trump declared that the FBI had defiled his safe-space. On cue, members of his family, the Republican party and right-wing media trashed the feds and the Biden administration. On Thursday night, they went momentarily silent. Until then, they did their best to paint the former guy as a victim. Senator Rand Paul raised the specter of planted evidence. Rudy Giuliani vowed that if Trump were re-elected, the feds would swoop down on the Bidens. One Trump-fundraising blast read: “Remember, they were never after President Trump. They have always been after YOU.” This is the same crowd that continued to demand – six years after the 2016 election –that Hillary Clinton be locked-up. Said differently, “law and order” means whatever they choose it to mean, like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland. “Neither more nor less”. On that score, the FBI field office in Cincinnati came under attack by Ricky Walter Shiffer just before Garland’s announcement. Law enforcement later confirmed that they had killed him. Shiffer was at the Capitol on January 6. In death, he had finally caught up with Ashli Babbitt. For the record, Shiffer and Babbitt were veterans.The blow-up over Mar-a-Lago has helped Trump regain his sway over the Republican party. With the notable exception of Sen Tim Scott of South Carolina, senior Republicans have again prostrated themselves: Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Mitch McConnell, Ron DeSantis, Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio. The band is back. Yet all this comes at a steep-cost to their ambitions. The anticipated red-wave in the upcoming midterms may have crested. The Republican party underperformed in Minnesota’s recent special congressional election. Now, the party stands to lose its natural advantage on national security issues. Beyond that, the latest Fox News poll reports that the Democrats have tied the Republican party on the generic House ballot, at 41% all. Just months ago, the Republicans held a seven-point lead. Meanwhile, the public disapproves of the supreme court overturning Roe v Wade by a greater than a three-two margin.White women without four-year degrees disapprove even more strongly (60-35) than those who are college graduates (54-44). Suburban women give the end of Roe a deep thumbs-down, 65-33. The raging culture war and Trump’s antics may even enable Nancy Pelosi to continue wielding the speaker’s gavel in January 2023. This fall Trump will be on the ballot even if his name does not appear. Whether he will be under indictment is the open question.
      Lloyd Green served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
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      Best of frenemies: Ron DeSantis stalks Trump with Republican primary tour

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      Best of frenemies: Ron DeSantis stalks Trump with Republican primary tour The Florida governor has been dubbed a ‘mini-Trump’ and was once boosted by the ex-president but a potential rivalry in 2024 has turned relations sourAs Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, packs his suitcase for a five-day trip to campaign for Trump-endorsed candidates, he might afford himself a dastardly chuckle.The trek, taking in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania is nominally aimed at boosting Republicans’ chances ahead of November’s crucial primaries. For DeSantis, however, there is surely a grander design. Each of the rising Republican star’s destinations is a swing state, key to winning the 2024 presidential election.As Trump’s star wanes, another rises: could Ron DeSantis be the new Maga bearer?Read moreThe Florida governor – who must walk the tightrope of being both ally and rival of Trump – is hotly tipped to run for president, and this outwardly benevolent campaigning trip will further swell his profile.There is a downside, however. DeSantis’s sojourn will put him on a collision course with the Republican party’s most sensitive, volatile and powerful figure: Donald Trump. With this tour, DeSantis’s tightrope is getting more and more rocky.Trump was key to getting DeSantis, who has been dubbed a “mini-Trump”, elected governor in 2018, but bad blood between the pair – particularly from Trump’s side – has been brewing for some time.As DeSantis has become a new darling of the right, fueled by his introduction of anti-gay and anti-trans laws in Florida and a populist crusade against coronavirus lockdowns and masking, Trump, muzzled by his Twitter ban and besieged by lawsuits and congressional investigations, has found himself under siege.The rise of DeSantis has not always gone down well with the twice-impeached former president who, according to one report, now “hates” his former protege.The apparent feud is a far cry from 2018, when Trump swooped into the Florida gubernatorial primary, endorsed DeSantis, and propelled the then relatively obscure congressman to the Florida governorship.DeSantis had been struggling in the 2018 governor primary. Most of the polls through 2017 and early 2018 had Adam Putnam, then the Florida agriculture commissioner, leading DeSantis. The few polls that didn’t have Putnam ahead showed the pair in an effective tie.Until late June, that is, when Trump endorsed DeSantis in a tweet that hailed the gubernatorial hopeful as “strong on Borders, tough on Crime & big on Cutting Taxes”. In the next poll following that endorsement DeSantis was 20 points ahead. Trump held a rally for DeSantis in Tampa in July 2018, and the Floridian won the Republican nomination and beat Andrew Gillum, his Democratic opponent, by about 32,000 votes in the election proper. A star was born.“I’d like to thank our president,” DeSantis said in his victory speech, to cheers from the crowd, “for standing by me when it wasn’t necessarily the smart thing to do.”But even during that campaign there had been warning signs that the DeSantis-Trump relationship might not be entirely harmonious.In September 2018 Trump questioned, without evidence, the number of people who died when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico a year earlier. A study commissioned by the Puerto Rican government found that almost 3,000 people died as a result of the category 4 hurricane.There was outrage from many. From DeSantis, there was a more tepid, but still meaningful, disagreement.“He doesn’t believe any loss of life has been inflated,” DeSantis’s campaign said in a statement.That rebuttal, the New York Times reported, was enough to leave Trump “absolutely livid”.Vanity Fair reported in July 2021 that Trump and DeSantis were on a “collision course”. That June, DeSantis beat Trump in a conservative poll of candidates’ approval ratings, albeit by less than 3%. DeSantis’s popularity was soaring, and his one-time benefactor was upset.“Trump fucking hates DeSantis. He just resents his popularity,” a Trump confidant told Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman.At 43 years old, Ronald Dion DeSantis is more than three decades younger than Trump, who will be 78 on election day in 2024.Born in Jacksonville, Florida, DeSantis studied at Yale and at Harvard law school before becoming a prosecutor in the navy, where he received decorations for prosecuting cases involving fraud related to military medals, according to a Freedom of information request submitted by the Florida Phoenix. DeSantis was deployed to Iraq in 2007, where he served as a legal adviser, and was honorably discharged in 2010.In 2012 DeSantis ran for the US House of Representatives and won, and went on to co-found the House Freedom Caucus, a particularly rightwing group of congressmen, many of whom had emerged from the early Obama-era Tea Party.After a pretty unremarkable spell in Congress – the Miami Herald reported that none of the bills DeSantis introduced as the original sponsor became law – DeSantis found himself as governor of Florida, a position which propelled him into the national spotlight.He would become a regular contributor to Fox News, the conservative movement tastemaker, and in the year following the 2020 presidential election was asked to appear on the channel more than 110 times, according to the New Yorker, agreeing at least 34 times.So far in 2022, the trend has continued. DeSantis has been among the most interviewed Republicans on Fox News, while Trump, as of mid-August, had not been interviewed on the network for more than 115 days.DeSantis is seen by some conservatives as a more palatable, more electable, version of the original: still outspoken against the media or perceived foes when he wants to be, but less prone to explosions of temper, and with a less turbulent past. DeSantis has also not been impeached twice, and is not being investigated for inciting an insurrection, which could help win over wavering voters.But DeSantis is just as extreme – perhaps more extreme – than Trump. As governor he has targeted minority groups, introducing legislation that seems designed to thrill the rightwing Republican base.In March of this year DeSantis signed into law a “don’t say gay” bill, which prohibits discussion of sexuality and gender identity in schools, a move that advocates say could harm the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth. The governor’s administration has also moved to ban gender-affirming medical treatment for trans youths, an effort described as “transparently political” by the Human Rights Campaign.DeSantis suspended a Florida state prosecutor in early August after the latter said he would not enforce a 15-week abortion ban, while the state has also banned certain math textbooks, alleging references to critical race theory.That resentment continued to fester. In January 2022 a spate of stories emerged in the political press that Trump had become increasingly unhappy with DeSantis.Axios reported that behind the scenes, Trump would frequently criticize his former charge.“He says DeSantis has no personal charisma and has a dull personality,” a source told Axios. The news site reported that Trump’s irritation stemmed from the fact that DeSantis has not ruled himself out of the running for the 2024 presidential election, should Trump himself run.Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who also ran for president in 2016, Rick Scott, Florida’s former governor and current senator, and the rising antagonist congressman Josh Hawley have all done so, to varying degrees.Trump still dominates the Republican party. A slew of Trump-endorsed candidates – including the ones DeSantis will campaign for – won their primaries, and could be elected in November, cementing Trump’s reputation as a GOP kingmaker.But with Trump’s travails ongoing, there is an opening for others. A July poll, conducted as the congressional hearings into the January 6 insurrection drew to a close, found that one-third of Republicans think Trump should not run for president again in 2024.All this leaves DeSantis in a prime position to sweep up Republican voters, ahead of a 2024 primary.That process will start when the governor will be the main attraction at a rally in Phoenix for Blake Masters, a Senate candidate endorsed by Trump.The rightwing media are expected to cover the event closely. Also watching, no doubt, will be Donald Trump.TopicsRon DeSantisRepublicansUS politicsDonald TrumpUS midterm elections 2022featuresReuse this content More

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      Political Prisoner review: Paul Manafort stays loyal to Trump – but still spills a few beans

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      Political Prisoner review: Paul Manafort stays loyal to Trump – but still spills a few beans Aide jailed in Russia investigation and pardoned has written a memoir that is mostly – if not completely – forgettablePaul Manafort’s name appeared in reports issued by the special counsel and the Senate intelligence committee. A convicted felon pardoned by the 45th president, he is a free man haunted by the past.The Big Lie review: Jonathan Lemire laments what Trump hath wroughtRead moreHis memoir, Political Prisoner, is primarily an exercise in score-settling, pointing an accusatory finger at federal prosecutors and lashing out at enemies. With a pardon from Trump, Manafort is unencumbered by fear from further prosecution.In a recent interview with Business Insider, he admits he directed the Trump campaign to provide polling data and information to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Soviet-born political consultant with a Russian passport.On the page, Manafort denies that Kilimnik spied for Russia. In 2021, however, the US imposed sanctions against him, and accused him of being a “known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf”.As expected, Manafort also sings Donald Trump’s praises, an approach much in common with other forgettable Trump alumni narratives. Manafort saw plenty as Trump’s second campaign manager but he directs the spotlight elsewhere. One measure of which team he’s on comes early: talking about Trump’s racist attacks on Barack Obama, he puts the words “birther allegations” in scare-quotes.Manafort could have written a much more interesting book. He is a veteran Republican operative with a knack for the delegate selection process. He owned an apartment in Trump Tower and was closely aligned with Viktor Yanukovych, a former prime minister of Ukraine with powerful backing from the Kremlin. That factoid, of course, stood at the heart of Manafort’s problems.Manafort spent six months on Trump’s winning presidential campaign. In May 2016, he rose to campaign manager. Three months later, Trump sacked him.In summer 2018, in a case arising from the initial investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow, a federal jury convicted Manafort on a potpourri of conspiracy and tax charges. He reached a plea agreement that would be voided by his alleged lack of candor. Two federal judges sentenced him to a combined 90 months in prison.His bitterness is understandable. He denies wrongdoing in his links with Ukraine and Russians. Released from prison because of Covid, Manafort was relegated to life in a condominium, wearing an ankle bracelet. Right before Christmas 2020, he received a pardon. In his book he reproduces the document, a token of gratitude and pride.Political Prisoner glosses over key events. Manafort acknowledges his departure from the campaign but doesn’t mention the arrival of Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. Instead, he describes a pre-firing breakfast with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.“We embraced and went our separate ways,” Manafort writes.Manafort faces the daunting task of fluffing Trump’s ego while placing himself in proximity to the action. He boasts that he emerged as a Sunday talk show surrogate, presenting an inside view of the campaign.“I would be talking about how [Trump] was going to win and why,” he writes. “He thought that was good idea and told me to do it.”Things didn’t work out as planned. Trump captured the nomination but Manafort’s gig lasted only a short time longer. There can only be one star in the Trump show. As throughout the book, Manafort omits crucial details. TV did him no favors.The Devil’s Bargain, a 2017 page-turner by Joshua Green of Bloomberg News, fills in some of the void. Green recalls a profanity-laced verbal beatdown Trump administered to Manafort, right before his dismissal.Distraught over a New York Times piece that portrayed the campaign as lost at sea, Trump humiliated Manafort in front of senior advisers. It was a tableau, Green writes, straight out of Goodfellas.Trump tore into Manafort, shouting: “You think you gotta go on TV to talk to me … You treat me like a baby! Am I like a baby to you … Am I a fucking baby, Paul?”Joe Pesci as commander-in-chief.These days, the Department of Justice has placed Trump under its microscope again. The FBI executed a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home. White House lawyers face grand jury subpoenas. Bannon awaits sentencing on a contempt conviction. Alex Jones’ text messages are in the hands of the January 6 committee. Roger Stone, a former Manafort partner and Trump confidant, may be in legal jeopardy.Trumpworld is a cross between an island of broken toys and Lord of the Flies.Manafort does drop a few choice nuggets. The Trump campaign was actually being spied on, in the author’s telling, by Michael Cohen. Cohen administered the campaign server, in a bid to maintain relevance. “He had access to everybody’s communications,” Manafort writes. “He had knowledge, and he would be sitting in his office, gaining knowledge by virtue of spying on the campaign.” Cohen denies it.Ted Cruz comes across badly. In Manafort’s eyes the Texas senator is an ingrate, a liar or both. The categories are porous.Trump claimed Cruz’s father was complicit the assassination of JFK and implied Cruz’s wife was ugly. According to Manafort, Trump offered Cruz an apology, only to be rebuffed.“On his own initiative, Trump did apologise for saying some of the things he said about Cruz, which was unusual for Trump,” Manafort observes.Cruz’s version differs. In September 2016, he said: “Neither [Trump] nor his campaign has ever taken back a word they said about my wife and my family.”Trump’s campaign nickname for Cruz? “Lyin’ Ted”.Manafort recalls Trump declaring “This is bullshit” as the senator avoided endorsing the nominee in his speech to the 2016 convention. In the end, though, Cruz slithered back to the fold. Trump reportedly asked Cruz if he would argue his 2020 election challenge before the supreme court. Cruz voted against certifying results.Manafort predicts Trump will run in 2024, and win. Don’t bet against it. Both Trump and Manafort have been there before.
      Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, But Not Silenced is published in the US by Skyhorse Publishing
      TopicsBooksPaul ManafortDonald TrumpUS elections 2016Trump-Russia investigationTrump administrationUS politicsreviewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Not enough Wyoming’? Liz Cheney fights for the votes of her disgruntled constituents

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      Liz Cheney fights for her House seat as Trumpists vow to ‘send her packing’Her leadership role on the January 6 panel makes her a martyr for democracy to some – and an apostate to others Darin Smith says he remembers January 6 very differently from Liz Cheney and her congressional colleagues investigating the US Capitol riot.“People were singing patriotic songs, the national anthem, hymns,” insists Smith, who was outside the Capitol that day to protest about Donald Trump’s election defeat. “There was a group of grey-haired ladies – the average age had to have been mid-70s – that were praying.”Nineteen months later, Smith is sitting in a cafe in his home city of Cheyenne in the western state of Wyoming. He condemns the violence that took place inside the Capitol but, despite a mountain of evidence, scoffs at the idea that Trump was responsible. And he is adamant that Cheney, his representative in Congress, should pay a price for her anti-Trump crusade.The three-term congresswoman may lose her seat in Tuesday’s Republican primary election in Wyoming, the most watched congressional primary of the year. Opinion polls show Cheney trailing Harriet Hageman, conservative lawyer and vehicle of Trump’s vengeance, and defeat for the clarion voice of the January 6 panel will, in many eyes, make her a martyr for American democracy.It will also signal a tectonic shift in Wyoming, the least populated state in America and one of the most devoutly Republican. Its most consequential political figure is Dick Cheney, vice-president under George W Bush and father of Liz. Last week, in cowboy hat, fleece and gruff tones, he recorded a campaign video for her, excoriating Trump as a “coward” and saying there has never been anyone who is a “greater threat to our republic”.Victory for Hageman would therefore be widely interpreted as a repudiation of Wyoming’s most venerable political dynasty, evidence that the state Republican party no longer belongs to the Cheneys but to Trump. That would reflect a final national pivot away from the Bush era establishment to the “Make America Great Again” movement – from old school conservatism to far-right populism.Smith, wearing a blue T-shirt that said “1776 Forever Free”, grey shorts and black flip-flops, is in no doubt which camp he belongs to. Last year he was a candidate in the Republican primary for Cheney’s House seat, raised $400,000 and made a pilgrimage to Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to seek the former president’s all-important endorsement.“It was like speed dating, my wife said,” the 48-year-old lawyer recalls. “I said, ‘I have a poll right here, sir, that shows that I could win today. Actually the polling that we took says that I could beat anybody in the state except for you, sir.’ He said, ‘Let me see that poll!’”The pitch was unsuccessful and Trump gave Hageman the nod instead; Smith abandoned his campaign within a day and insists that he is not bitter. He is “100% behind Harriet Hageman” and shares her doubts – repeatedly debunked – about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. “Liz Cheney, in our minds, betrayed the constitution, betrayed the nation, and we’re going to send her packing.”Smith argues that Cheney – one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection – is bitter about Trump’s criticism of her father as the mastermind of a neoconservatism that led to the torturing of suspects, opening of a prison at Guantánamo Bay and waging of an illegal war on Iraq.“It was a vendetta. She’s mad at Trump because Trump pointed out the truth of the Cheney foreign policy. Her dad is responsible for millions of deaths worldwide and trillions of dollars in spending from the US government. She’s pissed about it and she’s a narcissist and she saw her opportunity to go for Trump’s throat and she did.“But it’s bigger than that. She wants to be the first woman president. We all know that. We’re not stupid. She’s going to ‘educate’ us in the constitution and how ‘we’re wrong and she’s right.’ Well, she’s got news and she’s got something coming for her on Tuesday of next week. She’s gonna find out if she educated us or not.”The accusation that Cheney, 56, is driven by personal ambition in Washington, rather than by the needs of her constituents in Wyoming, is common among her critics here.They complain that she has devoted more time to the televised hearings of the January 6 committee, where she serves as vice-chair, than to retail politics in her home state. Her campaign ads emphasise her role on the national stage as a defender of the constitution.James King, a political science professor at the University of Wyoming, said Cheney’s opponent has seized on the theme that “she is too much Washington and not enough Wyoming”.He added: “Certainly her participation in the committee and its public hearings have done nothing to change that view; if anything, it would be reinforcing it. It’s not just a support or not support Trump; it’s also, they will argue, too much the national and not enough the state: ‘She’s not of Wyoming any longer.’ It’s easy to say this is about Donald Trump but from the state angle it’s: ‘You’re not paying attention to us.’”Indeed, Cheney has raised more than $13m largely thanks to donations from outside Wyoming, a vast sum for a congressional primary and far ahead of Hageman, who has travelled the state extensively to court voters. This, too, is seen as evidence that the incumbent is beholden to outside interests.In Cheyenne, the state capital, Dianna Burchett, 62, a nurse who has voted for Cheney in the past, said: “She was put in office to do what the people of Wyoming wanted her to do and she went against the people of the state. She needs to keep her views to herself but she’s on a witch-hunt or blood hunt. It’s inexcusable.”Laura Harnish, 53, an administrator who used to sit on an election committee for Dick Cheney, added: “I wouldn’t vote for Liz Cheney if she was the last person on the ballot. The January 6 committee was very badly done. She wasn’t representing Wyoming at that point. I vote for you. That’s who you represent: Wyoming. If you’re not going to do that then you don’t need to be in office. You need to find something else to do.”In Wyoming, home to just 581,348 people, voters expect a certain level of intimacy with politicians. Mike Sullivan, the state’s former governor, described it as “a small town with unusually long streets”, and locals say that anyone who suffers a flat tyre never has to wait long for a helping hand.In Cheyenne, the “Magic City of the Plains”, members of the public can wander freely about the state capitol building with a lack of security restrictions that evokes an earlier time. The house of representatives chamber nods to the state’s origins with paintings representing “cattlemen”, “homesteaders”, “stage coach” and “trappers”.Wyoming has long had a way-out-west independent streak: in 1869 it became the first territory or state to grant women the right to vote and, in 1925, elected America’s first female governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross. Known as both the “Equality State” and “Cowboy State”, in the 1990s it welcomed visitors with signs that proclaimed: “Like no place on earth.”Even today it can feel remote from national trends. It has no major professional sports team and, since 1983, no scheduled passenger rail service. The state museum in Cheyenne notes that “for centuries, Wyoming was a place to journey through rather than a destination … the ‘Highway of the West’.”But in 2020 this was the state where Trump scored his biggest margin of victory, 43 percentage points. In downtown Cheyenne, the Republican party office window displays a prominent sign: “Election integrity”. Inside, in uneasy coexistence, the wall features portraits of former presidents Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Trump as well as a commemorative photo of Bush and Cheney’s inauguration in 2001.Loyalty to the Cheneys still runs deep in some quarters. On Tuesday afternoon, Richard Gage, 67, a lawyer, was hosing bushes outside his office. The lifelong Republican reflected: “She’s done a great job and she’s one of the few people with the courage to stand up to Donald Trump. He’s trying to destroy my democracy. He’s trying to overturn an election that he lost and that’s a direct threat to democracy itself.”Gage has a Cheney sign displayed prominently and said it has resulted in rubbish being thrown on his lawn, a glimpse of how this campaign has taken on a menacing tone. Cheney herself has faced death threats and been forced to abandon traditional campaign stops and public rallies in favour of small-scale private events.Joseph McGinley, a Republican county state committeeman who praises Cheney for “leadership in action” and believes she “would make a great president”, said: “There have been people that are supporting Hageman that have been stealing Cheney signs and vandalising Cheney signs.“I was away for the weekend and came back and half the Cheney signs were gone, even in our neighbourhood, not in a very public area. The stealing of Cheney signs is a real thing and that’s unfortunate. It shows the people that are supporting Hageman are willing to do anything and they’re afraid Cheney is going to win.”McGinley, 47, a doctor and entrepreneur based in Casper, said the battle for the soul of the state party can be traced back to the conservative Tea Party movement during the Barack Obama era. “They truly put in a ground game and it was many years and, if you were in the party, you could actually see it occurring.”This made for a party shifting under the Cheneys’ feet. Dick is deep in retirement but Liz has effectively been excommunicated by the state party, which voted last year to censure her before deciding to stop recognising her as a Republican altogether. Local party offices offer yard signs for Hageman and many other Republicans on the ballot but not Cheney.The congresswoman has therefore turned to an unlikely group for help: Democrats. Her campaign website features a link to a form allowing voters to change their party affiliation to Republican to take part in the Republican primary. This unusual move is based on an appeal to pragmatism in what is effectively a one-party state; Wyoming has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1968.It appears to be working. In January, according to the secretary of state’s office, there were 196,179 registered Republicans in the state and 45,822 registered Democrats. As of 1 August, this had shifted to 207,674 registered Republicans and 39,753 registered Democrats.David Martin, communications director of the Wyoming Democratic party, said: “I know a few people personally who have already switched over. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what one of them told me and she put it bluntly: ‘I’m voting to keep the crazies out.’”No “crossover” voter is more prominent than Sullivan, the former governor, who after six decades as a registered Democrat recently switched to Republican so he could vote for Cheney. The 82-year-old retired lawyer explained by phone from Casper: “There are times when politics takes a backseat. Her work has been extraordinary and it’s reflective of both her intellect and her leadership.”Sullivan, who served as governor from 1987 to 1995, said he was aware of Cheney yard signs being defaced or torn down in his neighborhood. “The nature of Liz’s opposition is more mean-spirited than when I was in office. You can attribute that to a lot of things but certainly President Trump opened the door to make that more mainstream than it has otherwise been.”Cheney has not ruled out a 2024 presidential run as a Republican or an independent. Asked if he would consider supporting her, Sullivan replied: “I’d have to make that decision at the time. Now, whether I can picture her running for president under the circumstances in which she finds herself, I don’t know. I’m convinced she’s going to come out with a very powerful legacy: the profile in courage sort of legacy that is going to put her in good stead.”Like her father, who under President Gerald Ford was the youngest chief of staff in White House history, Cheney plays a decades-long game. At one of the January 6 hearings, she reminded fellow Republicans that there will come a day when Trump is gone. Defeat on Tuesday might be the end of one career but the launchpad for another with even greater ambitions.Not all Democrats, however, are ready to embrace a conservative who used to appear regularly on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and, according to the FiveThirtyEight website, voted in line with Trump’s position 93% of the time during his presidency.Ted Hanlon, 63, running a long-shot campaign for the state senate, said: “I’ve been in Wyoming all my life. I knew her and I knew her dad and I have no evidence yet that a Cheney did something that was not self-serving.“I’m glad she’s doing the January 6 hearings. If any other Republicans had been on the January 6 committee it would not have gone as well as it has and would not have come as close to the truth as it has. So I’m grateful that she’s there. It does not cause me to admire her in any way though.”TopicsWyomingUS politicsRepublicansJanuary 6 hearingsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      US House passes Democrats’ landmark healthcare and climate bill

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      US House passes Democrats’ landmark healthcare and climate billBiden is expected to quickly sign the legislation, which delivers a much-needed political victory for the party ahead of the midterms The House passed Democrats’ healthcare and climate spending package on Friday, sending the landmark piece of legislation to Joe Biden’s desk and delivering a much-needed political victory for the party ahead of the midterm elections this November.The bill passed the House in a party-line vote of 220 to 207, and Democratic members broke into raucous applause as the proposal crossed the finish line.“Today is really a glorious day for us. We send to the president’s desk a monumental bill that will be truly for the people,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said before the final vote. “If you are sitting at your kitchen table and wonder how you’re going to pay the bills – your healthcare bills, your prescription drug bills – this bill is for you.”Joe Biden is expected to quickly sign the legislation, which he has celebrated as a significant step toward combatting the climate crisis and reducing Americans’ healthcare costs.The final House vote capped off a lively debate among members in the chamber, as Republicans attacked the bill as a reckless spending spree that would fail to address Americans’ financial needs. A number of Republicans sharply criticized the bill’s provision to increase funding for the Internal Revenue Service, which far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert compared to “armed robbery on the taxpayers”.That comment prompted a rebuke from John Yarmuth, the Democratic chairman of the House budget committee. “I would implore my Republican colleagues to cut out the scare tactics, quit making things up and debate the substance of this bill,” Yarmuth said.The House’s passage of the bill came five days after the Senate approved the package in a vote of 51 to 50, following a marathon session that lasted overnight and stretched into Sunday afternoon.The bill, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, is the culmination of more than a year of negotiations among Democratic lawmakers. The proposal was negotiated behind closed doors by the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and centrist Democratic senator Joe Manchin, who single-handedly quashed the bill’s predecessor, the Build Back Better Act, last year.House progressives complained that the new bill is much narrower in scope than the Build Back Better Act, but they ultimately supported the spending package, largely because of its climate provisions. The legislation includes $369bn in funds aimed at expanding renewable energy sources and lowering planet-heating emissions. Experts have estimated the bill could reduce America’s emissions by about 40% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.“This landmark legislation marks the largest ever federal investment in climate action,” Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on Friday. She added: “We think we crafted the best bill in the world with Build Back Better … So as soon as we get a couple more Democrats, we’ve made the case for the rest of the bill.”The bill also fell short of expectations for some of the centrist members of the House Democratic caucus. Lawmakers from high-tax states like New Jersey and California had pushed for changes to the limit on federal deductions for state and local taxes (Salt), but they failed to get that policy added to the spending package.Instead, the bill includes a number of tax changes to cover the cost of the rest of the proposal. Those policies, including a new corporate minimum tax and a 1% excise tax on stock buybacks, are expected to bring in more than $700bn in revenue for the government.Despite their reservations, centrist Democrats supported the bill, while emphasizing that they would continue their efforts to reform the Salt deduction.“I will also remain steadfast in my commitment to ensuring that any discussion of reforms to the 2017 tax law begins with addressing Salt,” Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat of New Jersey, said on Sunday. “Because this legislation does not raise taxes on families in my district, but in fact significantly lowers their costs, I will be voting for it.”The bill previously attracted criticism from the progressive senator Bernie Sanders, who said the spending package did little to help working Americans who are struggling under the weight of record-high inflation. Sanders attempted to expand the healthcare and financial assistance provisions in the bill during the Senate’s 16-hour vote-a-rama session last weekend, but those efforts were unsuccessful.Sanders has taken particular issue with the bill’s provisions aimed at lowering the cost of prescription drugs, which he has said are too limited. The bill will allow Medicare to start negotiating the price of certain expensive drugs and will cap Medicare recipients’ out-of-pocket prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year, but key provisions meant to help Americans who receive health insurance coverage through the private market were stripped out of the legislation.“It’s a very modest step forward,” Sanders told MSNBC on Sunday. “Bottom line is, I’m going to support the bill because given the crisis of climate change, the environmental community says this is a step forward. It doesn’t go anywhere near as far as it should. It is a step forward.”Democratic leaders have downplayed criticism of the bill, instead championing the legislation as America’s most significant effort yet to address the climate crisis.“As I say to members, you cannot judge a bill for what it does not do. You respect it for what it does do. And what this bill does do is quite remarkable,” Pelosi told MSNBC on Tuesday. “Do we want more? Of course. Will we continue to work for more? Of course.”Democrats hope the passage of the bill could help the party’s prospects in the midterm elections, which have appeared grim so far. Republicans are heavily favored to regain control of the House of Representatives, although Democrats have inched ahead in polling since the supreme court’s reversal of Roe v Wade, which ended the federal right to abortion access. Party leaders have voiced optimism that the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act will show the country how Democrats are delivering for their constituents and convince voters to support them in November.“Yes, I do. It’s going to immediately help,” Biden said on Monday when asked whether he believed the bill will bolster Democrats’ midterm prospects. “It changes people’s lives.”TopicsHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsUS CongressJoe BidenDemocratsRepublicansUS SenatenewsReuse this content More