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      Beware of this deadly mix: oligarchic economics and racist nationalist populism | Robert Reich

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      Beware of this deadly mix: oligarchic economics and racist, nationalist populismRobert ReichA treacherous alliance is growing that will undermine democratic institutions in the US and elsewhere The United States presents itself as the beacon of democracy in contrast to the autocracies of China and Russia. Yet American democracy is in danger of succumbing to the same sort of oligarchic economics and racist nationalism that thrive in both these powers.After all, it wasn’t long ago that Donald Trump – who openly admired Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin – encouraged racist nationalism in America while delivering much of the US government into the hands of America’s super-rich.Now state-level Republicans are busily suppressing votes of people of color and paving the way for a possible anti-democratic coup, while the national Republican party excuses the attack on the Capitol – calling it “legitimate political discourse” – and censors Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the only two congressional Republicans serving on the panel investigating that attack.America’s oligarchic wealth, meanwhile, has reached levels rivaling or exceeding those of Russia and China. During the pandemic, America’s 745 billionaires increased their holdings by 70%, adding $2.1tn to their wealth in just over a year.A portion of this wealth is going into politics. As early as 2012, more than 40% of all money spent in federal elections came from the wealthiest of the wealthiest – not the top 1% or even the top tenth of the 1%, but from the top 1% of the 1%.Now, some of this wealth is supporting Trumpism. Peter Thiel, a staunch Trump supporter whose net worth is estimated by Forbes to be $2.6bn, has become one of the Republican party’s largest donors.Last year, Thiel gave $10m each to the campaigns of two protégés – Blake Masters, who is running for the Senate from Arizona, and JD Vance, from Ohio. Thiel is also backing 12 House candidates, three of whom are running primary challenges to Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for the events of January 6.It’s not just Republicans. Last year, at least 13 billionaires who had previously donated to Trump lavished campaign donations on Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission records.The combination of oligarchic wealth and racist nationalism is treacherous for democratic institutions in the US and elsewhere. Capitalism is consistent with democracy only if democracy reduces the inequalities, insecurities, joblessness, and poverty that accompany unbridled profit-seeking.For the first three decades after the second world war, democracy did this. The US and war-ravaged western Europe built the largest middle classes the world had ever seen, and the most buoyant democracies.The arrangement was far from perfect, but with the addition of civil rights and voting rights, subsidized healthcare (in the US, Medicare and Medicaid), and a vast expansion of public education, democracy was on the way to making capitalism work for the vast majority.Then came a giant U-turn, courtesy of Ronald Reagan in America and Margaret Thatcher in Europe. Deregulation, privatization, globalization, and the unleashing of finance created the Full Monty: abandoned factories and communities, stagnant wages, widening inequality, a shrinking middle class, political corruption and shredded social support.The result has been widespread anger and cynicism. Even before the pandemic, most people were working harder than ever but couldn’t get ahead, and their children’s prospects weren’t any better. More than one out of every six American children was impoverished and the typical American family was living from paycheck to paycheck. At the same time, a record high share of national wealth was already surging to the top.Starting last July, America did an experiment that might have limited these extremes and reduced the lure of racist nationalism. That’s when 36 million American families began receiving pandemic payments of up to $3,000 per child ($3,600 for each child under six).Presto. Child poverty dropped by at least a third, and the typical family gained some breathing space.But this hugely successful experiment ended abruptly in December when Senator Joe Manchin joined 50 Republican senators in rejecting President Biden’s Build Back Better Act, which would have continued it.They cited concerns over the experiment’s cost – an estimated $100bn per year, or $1.6tn over 10 years. But that’s less than big corporations and the rich will have saved on taxes from the Trump Republican tax cut of 2018. Repeal it, and there would be enough money. The cost is also less than the increase in the wealth of America’s 745 billionaires during the pandemic. Why not a wealth tax?The experiment died because, put simply, the oligarchy didn’t want to pay for it.Oligarchic economics coupled with racist nationalism marks the ultimate failure of progressive politics. Beware. When the people are no longer defended against the powerful, they look elsewhere.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansUS economyDonald TrumpJoe BidencommentReuse this content More

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      Insurgency review: how Trump took over the Republican party

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      Insurgency review: how Trump took over the Republican party From 2016 to the Capitol riot, Jeremy Peters of the New York Times delivers a meticulously reported and extremely worrying tale of how and why the US came to thisAfter the Iraq war and the Great Recession, public trust in government plummeted while the flashpoints of race, religion and education moved to the fore. Barack Obama’s mantra of hope and change left many unsatisfied, if not seething. On election day 2016, Donald Trump lit a match. But the kindling was already there, decades in the making.Bannon compared Trump escalator ride to Leni Riefenstahl Nazi film, book saysRead moreStaring at the mess is Jeremy Peters of the New York Times, with Insurgency, his first book. A seasoned national political reporter and MSNBC talking head, Peters chronicles how the party of Lincoln and Reagan morphed into Trump’s own fiefdom. He writes with a keen eye and sharp pen. Beyond that, he listens.He captures the grievance of the Republican base, its devotion to the 45th president and its varied voices. He repeatedly delivers quotable quotes, painstakingly sourced. This is highly readable reporting.At the outset, Peters acknowledges Trump’s grasp of human nature, the media and resentment. Messaging and visuals matter to Trump, as does cementing a bond with his crowds. Fittingly, one chapter is titled “Give Them What They Want …”For many, Trump did so. As president, he kept campaign-trail promises. He reshaped the supreme court, moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and battled Isis.Most of all, he stuck a barbed middle finger at political correctness. His jagged edges thrilled his core as they elicited revulsion elsewhere – just as he wanted. His persona was Melania’s problem, not theirs.Trump rode into the White House on enmity to immigration, the sleeper issue of our times, over which Democrats continue to stumble. Chants of “build that wall” delivered far more votes than “defund the police”.Trump’s mien mattered too, as Peters notes. He was relatable to working Americans. He knew where wokeness was grating, that what passes as orthodoxy in the halls of academe is not applauded by kitchen table or barstool America.“Trump’s Latino Support Was More Widespread Than Thought, Report Finds,” a Times headline announced. It was Bernie Sanders, not Joe Biden, who led among those voters in the Democratic primaries of 2020. Right now, polls show Trump ahead of Biden in that bloc. Biden’s standing has also slipped among younger Black voters.From Peters’ vantage point, Trump’s description of himself as a “popularist” – an unintended malapropism – comes close to the mark. Trump can size up an audience, meet expectations and receive their adulation. For all concerned, it’s a win-win proposition.Peters gets people on the record. Per usual, Steve Bannon is there on the page, where he rates his former boss among the worst presidents with James Buchanan and Millard Filmore. Those two failed to halt the march to civil war.Bannon also likens Trump’s history-making escalator ride to Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda film. “That’s Hitler, Bannon thought”, as Trump descended to a bank of cameras and microphones. Peters memorializes those italicized words as another chapter title.Elsewhere, Bannon posits that for Trump it’s all about himself, and he would be pleased to see a Republican successor fail.“Trump doesn’t give a shit,” Bannon says. “He’s not looking to nurture. He’s fucking Donald Trump, the only guy who could do it.As for Trump, he talks to Peters and his observations are frequently dead-on. Most of all, he internalized that Republican success hinged on the white working-class base, a reality to which most other GOP politicians paid lip service.Offering tax cuts to the rich while plundering entitlements didn’t quite cut it. Sure, race and culture were part of Trump’s equation. But so was preserving social security and Medicare. Voters could not be expected to support candidates who took away things they had earned.The priorities of the Republican donor class did not align with those of the swing voters who seized on Trump. In the heartland, corporations definitely aren’t considered “people” – a lesson Mitt Romney failed to learn in 2012.A country club candidate who looked and sounded like a country club candidate might win the nomination but stood to lose in November. George HW Bush, remember, eked out a single term after eight years as vice-president to Ronald Reagan.Peters relates that Trump pushed back hard when Paul Ryan, the former House speaker and Romney’s running mate, suggested curbing government-funded retirement spending.“You tried that four years ago,” Trump told him. “How’d that work out?”For good measure, Trump snapped: “No thank you.”Insurgency also documents the capitulation of those Republicans who stood ready to take on the mob as it swarmed the Capitol on January 6 but then, hours later, voted against certifying the election.Peters tells of Ronny Jackson, a retired navy rear admiral who was White House physician to Trump and Barack Obama. When the glass started to shatter, Jackson removed his tie – so it would be that much more difficult to strangle him. But Jackson’s loyalty to Trump remained. He voted to discount the results, despite all he saw. Now, Jackson demands Biden’s mental fitness be tested.Trump stokes the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. No matter, in Republican ranks at least. Fidelity to Trump and his false claims are “musts” for the foreseeable future. Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell, at odds with Trump this week, are at some political risk.Pence refused to defy his legal mandate and reject electoral college results. He sticks by his decision. Of January 6, deemed “legitimate political discourse” by the Republican National Committee, McConnell bluntly says: “It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent a peaceful transfer of power.”Peters sees the dark clouds. His book is chilling.
      Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted is published in the US by Crown
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      ‘She paved the way for Trump’: will Sarah Palin stay in the Republican spotlight?

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      ‘She paved the way for Trump’: will Sarah Palin stay in the Republican spotlight? Palin’s return to the headlines – for her defamation trial and flouting Covid rules – is a reminder to many that her ascent in 2008 was a pivotal moment in US politics Removing a white face mask as she took the witness stand behind a Plexiglass shield, Sarah Palin likened herself to the biblical David taking on the mighty Goliath of American media, the New York Times newspaper.The 58-year-old’s appearance in a Manhattan courtroom this week was a far cry from her heyday on the campaign trail, whipping up crowds with incendiary rhetoric as a US vice-presidential candidate in 2008.‘Trump is not my God’: how the former president’s only vaccine victory turned sourRead moreBut in making her pitch to a jury – the only nine voters who matter this time – Palin still had a star power, and reflex for bashing the media, that served as a reminder of how she paved the populist way for Donald Trump.And when the former governor of Alaska was asked whether she might run for office again, she teased a back-to-the-future scenario for the Republican party and America. “The door’s always open,” she told the court.Anyone wondering, “Whatever happened to Sarah Palin?” has not been paying attention to headlines of late. She declared that she would get the coronavirus vaccine “over my dead body”, duly tested positive for Covid-19 and went dining out in New York anyway, flouting public health guidelines.The infection did cause a delay in her defamation trial against the New York Times, which published a 2017 editorial that incorrectly linked Palin to a mass shooting six years earlier (it corrected the editorial the following day but she contends that the correction did not go far enough).Once the trial got under way, Palin told jurors she was “mortified” by the mistake and called the Times “the be-all, end-all, the loud voice in American media”. She said: “It was devastating to read a false accusation that I had anything to do with murder. I felt powerless – that I was up against Goliath. The people were David. I was David.”But she faces an uphill battle against a paper that has not lost a defamation case in more than half a century. She must convince jurors that the Times acted with “actual malice”, meaning that it knew the editorial was false or had reckless disregard for the truth.The court has heard Palin – she and husband Todd divorced in 2020 after 31 years – describe herself as a single mother and grandmother who “holds down the fort” for her family in Alaska when not advising candidates about “the good, bad and ugly” of politics. She also recalled the surprise over her eruption on the national political stage in 2008, saying: “I don’t think they were prepared for me.”That is an understatement. Palin was a wildly improbable choice back then as running mate for Republican John McCain in the contest with Democrat Barack Obama, bidding to become the first Black president, and his running mate, Joe Biden.The ascent of Palin – going outside what had been deemed an acceptable talent pool in terms of experience and judgment – is now seen as a pivotal moment in American political history, opening a Pandora’s box of divisive, nativist, anti-intellectual, celebrity-driven smash-mouth politics.Steve Schmidt, then a senior adviser to the McCain campaign, was the first to float the idea of Palin as running mate. In an interview with the Guardian, Schmidt said his exact words were: “We should take a look at Sarah Palin. I don’t know a lot about her other than she’s the most popular governor in the country with an 87% approval level.”So it was that in August 2008 McCain invited Palin to his ranch in Sedona, Arizona, to consider the bold move. Schmidt recalled: “Mark Salter [another adviser] and I are there with McCain, and McCain says, ‘Come on, boys, let’s go talk to her.’“I said to him, ‘It’s completely inappropriate for us to be in this meeting. This is a presidential-level decision. Only you can make the determination she’s prepared to take the 35-word oath and become president.’”So Schmidt and Salter did not attend. “The singularly greatest regret of my life,” Schmidt acknowledged this week. “It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”He is convinced that, had they been in the room, they would have immediately realized how unprepared and unqualified Palin was and done everything in their power to talk McCain out of it.“No one will ever know what the discussion was,” continued Schmidt, a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “There were two people in the room: him and her. I’m fairly certain if there was a substantive conversation that I was party to I would’ve chained myself to the back of the bumper to stop her from being announced.“I’ve never encountered a person and I’ve never experienced in my political career someone so abjectly dishonest. You could not get a straight answer on a question on the most basic informational level, which was my initial warning sign about her in the hours after McCain picked her.”McCain’s impulsive and fateful decision – for which he later expressed regret – is chronicled in a new book, Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted, by Jeremy Peters. He writes: “McCain turned to his wife, Cindy. ‘John, it’s a gamble,’ she said.“This made McCain’s face light up. ‘Well, I wish you hadn’t said that,’ he said. McCain, an avid craps player, balled up his fist and blew on it, then shook it like he was about to roll a pair of dice. ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’”The gamble backfired as McCain still lost the election and, in the eyes of critics, tainted his legacy by accelerating the Trumpification of the Republican party. During the campaign Palin’s ignorance became clear as she stumbled over basic questions such as what newspapers and magazines she read.She accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists” and used the term “shuck and jive” to portray him as evasive and dishonest. (She later wrote on Facebook: “For the record, there was nothing remotely racist in my use of the phrase ‘shuck and jive’.”)Peters, a journalist at the New York Times, said in an interview: “She is the tip of the spear for Donald Trump and everything he unleashed in American politics. Like Trump, her appeal to her supporters was as much about who her perceived enemies were and as it was about her herself.“She also had a really intuitive sense of how to go into combat with those enemies, especially the media. She was the canary in the coalmine when it came to doing lasting damage to the reputation of the mainstream media, which had already been taking a beating but had never been made into a real political enemy to the extent it would be under under Trump.”Palin’s loose talk of the media “making things up” and claims that it should “quit lying” foreshadowed Trump’s popularisation of phrases such as “‘enemy of the people” and “fake news”.Peters added: “She also had a real sense for social media and using that to basically say whatever she wanted and get attention that wouldn’t require her to go to the mainstream media, because the mainstream media would then just cover whatever she said on Facebook.”Palin went on to campaign for the Tea Party, a conservative revolt fuelled by rage against elites, distrust in government and racial hostility to Obama. It was another harbinger of the “Make America Great Again” white grievance movement.Palin had a five-year stint as a contributor to the conservative Fox News channel on a reported $1m contract, endorsed Trump for president and, emulating his past career as a reality TV star, made a surprise appearance on The Masked Singer, rapping and dancing in a pink bear costume.Now, should she pull off an unlikely legal victory over his old foe the New York Times – a judgment that could have a chilling effect on freedom of the press – Trump would probably be the first to congratulate her. What he may never grasp is the political debt he owes her.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Would there be a Donald Trump without Sarah Palin? It’s hard to imagine Trump coming out of nowhere. Sarah Palin paved the way for Donald Trump.”Last year Palin hinted at an Alaska Senate run against Republican moderate Lisa Murkowski. If Trump regains the White House in 2024, she might find another comeback path. Jacobs admitted: “I find it impossible to make predictions about a Republican party that has veered so far to the extreme, so far towards irresponsibility.“This is a party without a measure of itself. It’s a chaotic party that no longer has core principles so yes, I could see Palin ending up in the cabinet if she were able to rehabilitate herself and find a way to become relevant again.”TopicsSarah PalinThe ObserverRepublicansUS politicsNew York TimesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      America faces greater division as parties draw safe seats for congressional districts

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      America faces greater division as parties draw safe seats for congressional districtsThe US is poised to have a staggeringly low number of competitive House seats, an alarming trend that makes it harder to govern and exacerbates political polarizationWhen millions of American voters head to the polls this autumn to vote for congressional candidates, the vast majority of their votes won’t matter at all. It’s an idea that’s anathema to the very idea of US government – that politicians are accountable to the people. But America is poised to have a staggeringly low number of competitive seats in the US House, an alarming trend that makes it harder to govern and exacerbates political polarization. States havenow redrawn 327 of the US House’s 435 districts so far as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process and the number of competitive districts is dropping, according to FiveThirtyEight. Just 26 of those districts are considered to be highly competitive, meaning either party has less than a five-point advantage in them.When redistricting is complete, there could be between 30 and 35 competitive seats, predicted Dave Wasserman, a redistricting expert for the non-partisan Cook Political Report. That could leave as much as 94% of the US House running in relatively safe seats.As the number of competitive seats falls, the number of super-safe seats is also rising. As of mid-January, the number of seats Donald Trump carried in 2020 by at least 15 points increased from 54 to 70, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The number of districts Biden carried by at least 15 points had increased from 20 to 23.Competition in the US House has been falling for decades. Some of the decline can be attributed to the natural geographic sorting of likeminded voters choosing to live together. In 2012, after the last round of redistricting, there were 66 districts that were competitive, Wasserman said. By 2020, 51 districts were considered competitive. But politicians are also using their power to draw district lines to exacerbate the lack of competition.“Competitive seats are the grease that make the machinery of the House function. And we’ve seen an annihilation of competitive seats in the last several decades,” Wasserman said.“Redistricting is accelerating that decline and removing many of the incentives for parties to recruit candidates with broad appeal. The House is becoming less biased in favor of Republicans, but it’s also becoming more ossified because there will be more safe seats than ever – and the battlefield will be narrower,” he added.It’s a trend that will probably profoundly affect American politics. Instead of worrying about appealing to voters during a general election, candidates are pushed to the extremes of their parties, becoming more focused on fending off primary challengers. It also discourages compromise and bipartisanship, instead incentivizing politicians to brandish their ideological bonafides.“I’m very concerned about what’s happened,” said Richard Pildes, a law professor at New York University who has written about the dangers of non-competitive congressional elections. “The more members are in safe seats, the more they’re capable of acting as these kind of independent free agent politicians … it could make the House even more ungovernable.” The 116th Congress, which was in session from 2019 to 2021, was one of the least productive in US history.The lack of competition, Pildes noted, also makes the US House less responsive to changes in voters’ preferences. “You can have a three-point swing in voters’ preferences, and it’s not going to affect who’s going to be elected,” he said. No state has seen a bigger drop in competition during the redistricting cycle than Texas. Recognizing Democratic gains in the state in recent years, Republicans used their redistricting power to reconfigure district lines to shore up vulnerable seats. They reduced the number of competitive districts in the state from 12 to just one. They increased the number of solidly safe Republican seats – ones Trump would have carried by at least 15 points – from 11 to 21. They also increased the number of solidly Democratic seats from eight to 12.One of the best examples of this approach is the way that Republicans redrew the state’s 24th congressional district, which is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The district is represented by Beth Van Duyne, a Republican, who narrowly won the general election in 2020. Republicans reconfigured the district to make it one that Trump would have easily carried by 12 points in 2020. The Democrats excised from the district were packed into a neighboring district represented by Colin Allred, a Democrat. The packing transformed the district from one that was competitive to one that was much more reliably blue. 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      Sledgehammer review: David Friedman comes out swinging on Trump and Israel

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      Sledgehammer review: David Friedman comes out swinging on Trump and IsraelThe former US ambassador has written a predictably unsubtle memoir, aimed squarely at the 2024 Republican primary David Friedman was Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel. But that job title alone fails to adequately convey his proximity to the 45th president and his impact on US policy. Their time together marked a repudiation of Barack Obama’s vision for the Middle East. Sledgehammer, Friedman’s memoir, reminds the reader of all of this as insistently as its title suggests.Trump risked disaster with Abbas praise in key Israel meeting, ambassador saysRead moreWith Friedman’s assistance, the US helped forge the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab countries. The US also moved its embassy to Jerusalem and left the Iran nuclear deal. As for the Palestinians, put it this way: they no longer occupy rent-free space in the Republican conscience.Unlike other Trump appointees, Friedman was often in the room when it happened. To all intents and purposes, he was not subordinate to Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state. And as an enthusiastic backer of Israeli settlements in occupied territories, he had little interest in preserving the status quo.More than a half-century had elapsed since 1967 and the six-day war. Israel’s hold on the West Bank had grown organic. The Oslo Accords gave way to the second intifada and Gaza continued to smolder, despite Israel’s withdrawal more than a decade before. Godot had failed to arrive. Friedman’s book with its unsubtle title has a subtitle too: “How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East”.Obviously, he overstates. The Palestinians are not, of course, content. War rages in Yemen. Drones and missiles hit the Emirates. Things between Israel and Iran can get worse and probably will.Friedman was Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer. When Trump announced his presidential campaign, Friedman was doubtful. Both men venerated their fathers but, as Friedman acknowledges, they had little else in common. The author is still married to his first wife. Religion is central to his life. He is an Orthodox Jew, the son of a rabbi. While ambassador, his daughter made aliyah. That is, she moved to Israel and became a citizen.Friedman quotes a senior but unidentified state department aide as telling him: “Don’t be so Jewish. You represent the United States of America … Just a free word of advice.” Suffice to say, Friedman was not amused. Although he held a presidential appointment, he was not part of the club.Sledgehammer is also about ethnic grievance and expectations of Jewish solidarity – perhaps misplaced. Before joining the Trump administration, Friedman branded Obama antisemitic and trashed J Street, a liberal Jewish group, as “worse than kapos” – Jewish prisoners who worked as guards in Nazi concentration camps. Such intemperate comments came with a political cost. The Senate confirmed him by the narrowest of margins, 52-46.On the page, Friedman says those were sincere expressions. He used the term “kapos”, he says, because he felt “J Street had betrayed the Jewish people”. Elsewhere, he admonishes American Jews against criticizing the Israeli government. He laments a growing schism among US Jews, even while describing his own testy relationship with the Reform movement.In 2020, American Jews went for Joe Biden by nearly 40 points but Trump was the clear favorite in Orthodox enclaves. In Israel, Trump is lionized. “Loved” is Friedman’s word.He likes wielding his sledgehammer at the left. The right, not so much.He castigates Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, progressive Democratic congresswomen, for hostility to Israel. As ambassador, he was fine with an attempt to stop them entering Israel as part of a congressional delegation.On the other hand, he has nothing to say about Charlottesville in August 2017, its tiki torches and cries of “Jews will not replace us” and Trump’s view that there were “very fine people” on the neo-Nazi side on that day of violence and shame.Friedman’s outrage appears selective.He is also silent on Trump delivering a tart “fuck him” to Benjamin Netanyahu – Israel’s former prime minister and a Friedman friend – in an interview memorialized in Barak Ravid’s book, Trump’s Peace.Instead, Friedman swings repeatedly at Mahmoud Abbas, challenging the Palestinian leader’s desire to reach an agreement with Israel.Once again, Trump might well disagree. Trump told Ravid he believed Netanyahu “did not want to make peace. Never did.” As for Abbas, “We spent a lot of time together, talking about many things. And it was almost like a father. I mean, he was so nice, couldn’t have been nicer.”Friedman was particularly close to Netanyahu, so much so that lines could blur. According to Ravid, Friedman sat in on Israeli government meetings until he was tossed out by cabinet members. Friedman’s memoir does nothing to dispel that report.He describes his efforts to help Netanyahu cobble together a government. He zings Avigdor Lieberman, former Netanyahu confidant and current Israeli finance minister, for refusing to come to the struggling prime minister’s rescue. The fact Netanyahu was then under a legal cloud and now stands on trial for corruption escapes real mention.‘Apartheid state’: Israel’s fears over image in US are coming to passRead moreElsewhere, Friedman criticizes Benny Gantz, Israel’s defense minister and Netanyahu’s jilted coalition partner. Although Gantz had been chief of staff of Israel’s military, says Friedman, he was not the politician Netanyahu was. Then again, Friedman also expresses his gratitude for his relationship with Gantz, who he describes as “6ft 4in and ruggedly handsome, an unusual look for an Israeli politician”. Trump too has praised Gantz, albeit at Netanyahu’s expense.What Friedman does next will be interesting. Like Trump, he has left New York for Florida. His book jacket posts a blurb from Nikki Haley, formerly governor of South Carolina and a potential candidate for the Republican nomination if Trump does not seek it. Friedman has also described Ron DeSantis, of Florida, as Israel’s greatest friend among all 50 current governors.Friedman is far from finished. Sledgehammer is not just a memoir. It is a well-written audition for 2024 and beyond.
      Sledgehammer: How Breaking With the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, is published in the US by Broadside Books
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      ‘Disgusting’: Republican Senate hopeful condemned over ‘showdown’ TV ad

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      ‘Disgusting’: Republican Senate hopeful condemned over ‘showdown’ TV adJim Lamon’s ad depicts ‘shootout’ with Democrats including Mark Kelly, senator whose wife Gabby Giffords was shot in deadly attack A Republican Senate primary candidate in Arizona has been condemned for a “disgusting” campaign ad in which he shoots at lookalike actors portraying Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the incumbent Arizona senator Mark Kelly.Biden says Americans in Ukraine ‘should leave now’ as diplomatic talks falter – liveRead moreJim Lamon, an energy executive, shared the ad on Twitter, saying it would be aired at this year’s Super Bowl.Lamon would face Kelly in a general election in the autumn should he secure the Republican nomination.Kelly is the husband of the former Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was shot in the head in 2011 while greeting constituents outside of a local grocery store.In Lamon’s ad, styled as a western, figures identified as the “DC gang” enter a town wearing cowboy boots and carrying firearms, their faces half-covered by bandannas. Onlookers are upset by their presence, with one declaring: “We’re tired of being pushed around!”Lamon enters, along with Mark Lamb, a real-life local sheriff, and Brandon Judd, the current president of the National Border Patrol Council. Lamon addresses the three actors playing Biden, Kelly and Pelosi, saying: “The good people of Arizona have had enough of you.”“It’s time for a showdown,” Lamon adds.When the Democrats draw their firearms, Lamon fires his own gun, shooting the weapons out of their hands as the rest of the town cheers. The three Democrats run away.Criticism towards the ad has been swift, with many people pointing out other recent instances of violent imagery used by members of the Republican party. Last November, Paul Gosar, Republican representative for Arizona, was officially censured by the House after sharing an animated video depicting him killing the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Biden.Shannon Watts, founder of the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, called Lamon’s ad “disgusting”.A spokesperson for the Lamon campaign refused to respond to the Washington Post about criticism of the ad, but said it “shows the DC gang drawing on Lamon and he merely shoots the weapons out of their hands”.“Unlike Kelly, Jim Lamon will shoot straight with Arizonans and take the fight to Biden – and he damn sure won’t let the left bully him into backing down,” the spokesperson said.TopicsRepublicansArizonaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Why Ohio is a state to watch in 2022: Politics Weekly Extra – podcast

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      Jonathan Freedland speaks to local Ohioan politics reporter, Andrew Tobias, about why the Senate and gubernatorial midterm races are shaping up to be a litmus test for the influence of Trumpism in Republican success

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      Archive: CNN, ABC News Subscribe to the Guardian’s brand new Weekend podcast, which will launch on Saturday. Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com. Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts. More

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      Trump ally vows to block ‘the left’ from overseeing key Georgia elections

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      Trump ally vows to block ‘the left’ from overseeing key Georgia electionsFormer senator David Perdue, now running for Georgia governor, repeats false election fraud claims on campaign trail A Republican candidate for governor in Georgia has said he would not let “any of the left” run elections in his state, adding repeatedly that it would happen “over my dead body” and underscoring the violent tone that has come to shape discourse around democracy in America.Former Senator David Perdue railed against his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, in a video of a speech given on 4 February in Fayette county. Abrams, a voting rights activist, would be the first Black governor in the state’s history if elected. Perdue, who has been endorsed by Donald Trump, told his supporters: “My vision for Georgia is this: over my dead body would I ever, ever turn an election process over to Stacey Abrams or any of that woke mob ever again.”At another campaign event in Alpharetta, Georgia, Perdue repeated the “over my dead body” line,saying: “Over my dead body will we ever turn over an election to any of the left that we saw happening in 2020.”The Purdue campaign did not respond to a Guardian request for comment.The Georgia governor’s race is among the most closely-watched elections this year and a likely key battleground in the upcoming 2024 election. It played a vital role in president Joe Biden’s 2020 victory as he flipped the state, and it was also crucial to winning Democratic control of the senate when the party won two run-off elections there.That outsized role has seen Georgia become a ground zero for the national fight over voting rights and for Republicans’ baseless claims that the state’s election process was somehow fraudulent. It has also sparked a fierce fight for the office of the secretary of state, which helps run Georgia’s elections. The seat is currently held by Republican Brad Raffensperger. Perdue is one of 51 election deniers running for governor in 24 states, according to tracking by the States United Action , a non-partisan organization that monitors elections.Perdue lost his Senate seat in a runoff to Democrat John Ossoff last January. Now Perdue is running in the Republican primary against the incumbent Republican governor, Brian Kemp, who earned Trump’s ire after certifying Georgia’s election results, a process he was legally bound to uphold as governor.Perdue has earned Trump’s endorsement by expressing fierce loyalty and echoing the former president’s baseless claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election. In December Perdue went further and told Axios he wouldn’t have certified the state’s 2020 election results if he had been governor at the time.The same month, Perdue joined a lawsuit in Fulton county, Georgia, reviving unfounded allegations of voter fraud and seeking to review absentee ballots that he claimed would prove Trump won the 2020 election.Several recounts of the presidential vote affirmed Biden’s victory in Georgia. Raffensperger had also resisted pressure by Trump in an hour-long phone call in 2020 to “find” enough votes to overturn the election. Trump has now endorsed Raffensperger’s Republican opponent for secretary of state.Perdue is promising voters that if elected he will create “an election law enforcement division of the Georgia bureau of investigation”, the state’s criminal investigation agency, to ensure that only legal votes are counted.Trump falsely claimed 5,000 dead people voted in 2020 in Georgia, but a state review found only four cases of dead people voting. Perdue is already outlining how he would change the way elections are certified if he was elected. “I believe that before you can certify an election, whether it’s a president or a US senator, or a statewide basis, you have to have an outside third-party entity audit the results. Not the secretary of state,” Perdue told voters in Fayette, adding that he believed allowing the secretary of state to certify and audit elections was “sort of like you grading your own homework”.Perdue’s use of violent rhetoric comes on the heels of an unprecedented campaign of intimidation against election officials. A Reuters investigation found more 100 threats of death or violence to US election workers.It also comes as the Republican party increasingly embraces Trump’s “big lie” of a fraudulent election. In a recent poll only 21% of Republicans said they believed Joe Biden’s election was “legitimate”.Last week the RNC voted to declare the January 6 attack “legitimate political discourse’ and censured the Republican representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in the House’s investigation into the attack.TopicsUS politicsRepublicansStacey AbramsGeorgianewsReuse this content More