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      Trump’s DEA pick Chad Chronister withdraws from consideration

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      Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Chad Chronister, said on Tuesday that he was withdrawing from consideration.“Over the past several days, as the gravity of this very important responsibility set in, I’ve concluded that I must respectfully withdraw from consideration,” Chronister, a Florida sheriff, said in a social media post.Trump announced his intention to pick Chronister, the current sheriff of Hillsborough county, Florida, to lead the DEA on Sunday, saying he would focus on stemming the flow of fentanyl across the US border with Mexico. The agency is part of the justice department and responsible for enforcing US drug laws.Chronister did not offer further details on his decision on social media and the Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Chronister follows former Republican representative Matt Gaetz, Trump’s first pick to serve as attorney general, in withdrawing his name for a post in the administration. Gaetz withdrew following scrutiny over a federal sex-trafficking investigation that cast doubt on his ability to be confirmed as the country’s chief federal law enforcement officer.Trump’s pick of Chronister for the DEA job drew backlash from conservatives, who raised concerns over his actions during the Covid-19 pandemic and him saying that his office “does not engage in federal immigration enforcement activities”.In March 2020, Chronister arrested the pastor of a megachurch who held services with hundreds of people and violated a safer-at-home order in place aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus.“Shame on this pastor, their legal staff and the leaders of this staff for forcing us to do our job. That’s not what we wanted to do during a declared state of emergency,” Chronister said at the time. “We are hopeful that this will be a wake-up call.”US representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky was among those airing public complaints, saying Chronister should be “disqualified” for the arrest.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s transition team said it had reached an agreement on Tuesday with the justice department that would allow it to submit names for background checks and security clearances, needed for access to classified information. More

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      Donald Trump’s legal team pushes for hush-money case to be dismissed – US politics live

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      The Trump transition team said it has entered a memorandum of understanding with the US Department of Justice.“This is the next step in the ongoing preparation of senior administration officials for the purpose of serving in President Trump’s administration,” the statement said. “This allows the transition team to submit names for background checks and security clearances.”The brief statement didn’t make clear whether the transition has given up on delaying or privatizing background checks for its cabinet nominees.Earlier, those familiar with the tram’s plans had indicated that Trump’s appointees would skirt full FBI vetting and delay receiving classified briefings until after Trump was sworn in.Trump’s lawyers had noted that the US justice department was poised to abandon Trump’s federal cases and referred to a departmental memo that bars prosecution of sitting presidents.“As in those cases, dismissal is necessary here,” their filing argued. “Just as a sitting president is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as president-elect.”Special counsel prosecutors who were pursuing the federal cases against Trump indeed filed paperwork on 25 November asking for their dismissal – citing justice department policy that his team has repeatedly invoked.“It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting president,” wrote Molly Gaston, the top deputy for special counsel Jack Smith.“That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the government stands fully behind.”Manhattan prosecutors have argued against dismissal in prior court papers and have suggested a solution that would obviate any concerns about interrupting his presidency – including “deferral of all remaining criminal proceedings until after the end of defendant’s upcoming presidential term”.The dismissal pitch came after Judge Juan Merchan’s decision on 22 November to indefinitely postpone the president-elect’s sentencing so lawyers on both sides can argue over its future, given Trump’s victory in the recent presidential election.While Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly pushed for dismissal to no avail, his impending return to the presidency has presented an opportunity for them to make their case once again.Merchan said in his postponement decision that Trump’s lawyers had a 2 December deadline to file their argument for dismissal. Prosecutors had a week to submit their response.Trump’s lawyers have been calling on Merchan to toss the case outright after he defeated Kamala Harris on 5 November. In previous papers seeking permission to file a formal dismissal request, Trump’s attorneys said that dismissal was required “in order to facilitate the orderly transition of executive power”.Todd Blanche, Trump’s main attorney and selection for deputy US attorney general, as well as Emil Bove, his choice for principal associate deputy attorney general, said that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office “appears to not yet be ready to dismiss this politically motivated and fatally flawed case, which is what is mandated by the law and will happen as justice takes its course”.Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked a New York state judge to dismiss the criminal case against him, in which he was convicted of 34 felony counts involving hush money.Trump’s lawyers have argued that sentencing in the case would cause “unconstitutional impediments” to Trump’s ability to govern.The lawyers also cited Joe Biden’s sweeping pardon of his son Hunter Biden in their argument. The filing reads:
      Yesterday, in issuing a 10-year pardon to Hunter Biden that covers any and all crimes whether charged or uncharged, President Biden asserted that his son was ‘selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted,’ and ‘treated differently.’
      President Biden argued that ‘raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.’ These comments amounted to an extraordinary condemnation of President Biden’s own DOJ.
      Already, Judge Juan Merchan has indefinitely postponed Trump’s sentencing.The Trump transition team said it has entered a memorandum of understanding with the US Department of Justice.“This is the next step in the ongoing preparation of senior administration officials for the purpose of serving in President Trump’s administration,” the statement said. “This allows the transition team to submit names for background checks and security clearances.”The brief statement didn’t make clear whether the transition has given up on delaying or privatizing background checks for its cabinet nominees.Earlier, those familiar with the tram’s plans had indicated that Trump’s appointees would skirt full FBI vetting and delay receiving classified briefings until after Trump was sworn in.Pete Hegseth, whom Donald Trump named as his pick to lead the defense department, had multiple affairs while married to his first wife, Vanity Fair reports.Such behavior could have violated military rules governing Hegseth, who served in the army national guard, and also strike another blow to his reputation as Republican senators consider whether he should lead the Pentagon. Other media outlets in recent days have reported on an accusation of sexual assault against Hegseth, which he denies, as well as claims that he abuses alcohol, mismanaged finances at two charities he was involved in and created a hostile environment for women.Here’s more, from Vanity Fair’s story:
      Hegseth and Schwarz’s young marriage was short-lived. In December 2008, Schwarz filed for divorce after Hegseth admitted that he cheated on her, according to four sources close to the couple. (APM Reports previously revealed that the infidelity was listed as grounds in the couple’s divorce proceedings.) The sources told me that Hegseth’s infidelity left Schwarz emotionally and psychologically scarred. ‘She was gaslighted by him heavily throughout their relationship,’ one of the sources told me. ‘As far as everyone else was concerned, they were viewed by many as this all-American power couple that were making big things for themselves.’ (Schwarz declined to comment. Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this story, and instead provided a statement that impugned my record as a reporter.)
      At the time Schwarz filed for divorce, Hegseth was dating Samantha Deering, whom he met while working in Washington, DC, at Vets for Freedom, a group that lobbied to maintain the military’s “counterinsurgency” strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, Hegseth married Deering, with whom he has three kids. In 2017, Deering filed for divorce after Hegseth fathered a child with his Fox News producer Jennifer Rauchet. Hegseth and Rauchet married in 2019 at Trump’s golf course in Colts Neck, New Jersey.
      Speaking of Kamala Harris, the Atlantic published a lengthy interview with four top players in the vice-president’s failed campaign for the White House, in which they discuss what went wrong.The general conclusion of the piece is that it would have been difficult for any Democrat to win, given how unhappy much of the United States was with Joe Biden’s leadership. But the president’s decision to end his bid for a second term just over three months before election day made it unlikely that Harris would be able to turn the situation around – and indeed, she was not able to.It also underscores that Democrats have work to do to win back voting blocs that once supported the party but appear to be defecting in increasing numbers to the GOP.From the piece:
      In a race shaped so profoundly by fundamental forces of disaffection with the country’s direction, could anything have changed the outcome? As the Democratic strategist Mike Podhorzer has argued, more voters might have ranked their hesitations about Trump higher if the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court had not blocked any chance that the former president would face a criminal trial before this election on the charges that he tried to subvert the previous one. Plouffe pointed to another what-if potentially big enough to have changed the result: Biden’s withdrawal from the race much earlier rather than only after his disastrous debate performance in June. If Biden had dropped out last winter, Plouffe argued to me, Democrats could have held a full-fledged primary that would have either produced a nominee more distant from his administration or strengthened Harris by requiring her to establish her independence. Looking back at what contributed to Trump’s victory, Plouffe said pointedly, Biden’s choice not to step aside sooner was ‘the cardinal sin.’
      Even so, Plouffe acknowledged, ‘I’m not sure, given the headwinds, any Democrat could have won.’ For all the difficulties that the atmosphere created for Harris, the election unquestionably raised warning signs for Democrats that extend beyond dissatisfaction with current conditions. It continued an erosion that is ominous for the party in its support among working-class nonwhite voters, particularly Latino men. And as Flaherty, the deputy campaign manager, told me, the Republican Party’s win powerfully demonstrated that it – or at least Trump himself – has built more effective mechanisms for communicating with infrequent voters, especially young men who don’t consume much conventional political news.
      Something Donald Trump might do once he takes office is pardon people convicted over the January 6 insurrection.Despite that, the justice department is continuing those prosecutions, and just announced that Matthew Brent Carver of Kentucky had pleaded guilty to a charge of “felony offense of obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder” in the attack that occurred nearly four years ago. Here’s what the department says Carver did:
      Around approximately 2:45 pm, law enforcement officers, including members of the U.S. Capitol Police and D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD)—who were performing their official duties at the Capitol on January 6—gathered and formed a police line towards the southern end of the Upper West Terrace. Several minutes later, around 2:47 pm, these officers moved in tandem towards the northern end of the Upper West Terrace in an effort to clear and secure the Upper West Terrace.
      As the officers advanced, they ordered protesters to “Move Back! Move Back!” while they attempted to secure the Upper West Terrace. Around 2:48 pm, as the police line approached the northern end of the Upper West Terrace, Carver emerged from the crowd, assumed an aggressive stance towards the approaching officers, and yelled, “Come on! Bring it!”
      Seconds later, Carver approached an MPD officer, grabbed the officer’s baton, and attempted to pull the baton away from the officer and, in doing so, also pulled the officer out of the police line and into the crowd of rioters. Carver was then pulled back into the crowd. Shortly afterward, the police line reformed and continued to push the protesters out of the Upper West Terrace, and Carver eventually made his way out of restricted permitter.
      The FBI arrested Carver on Jan. 30, 2024, in Kentucky.
      And a look at how many people have faced charges over the attack:
      In the 46 months since Jan. 6, 2021, more than 1,561 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including more than 590 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, a felony. The investigation remains ongoing.
      Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and other top Democrats spent the past four years arguing to voters, unsuccessfully, that Donald Trump represents a unique threat to democracy and must never be put in power again.Speaking to Newsmax, Trump adviser Jason Miller turned their rhetoric on its head, by arguing that the incoming president will be good for democracy worldwide:
      Democracy is going to be in such better standing around the world, because you have to have a strong American presidency if you want to have strong democracy around the world, where you see peace in the Middle East, where you get the Russia-Ukraine conflict resolved. And finally, we’re going to get back to where we have peace and prosperity … for everybody.
      Speaking to the conservative Newsmax network, top Donald Trump adviser Jason Miller said that the incoming president will take aggressive actions over his first 100 days in office, including cracking down on migrants and spurring more oil and gas drilling.“President Trump is … moving really fast here. I mean, even by Thanksgiving, he had his entire cabinet picked,” Miller said. He said several top advisers including incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and “border czar” Tom Homan “are putting together the executive orders and the policies. As President Trump said, we’re going to drill, baby, drill and secure the border – those will be day one priorities.”Miller continued:
      This first 100 days is going to be nonstop. There’s so many things that he’s ready to do. Because, again, we’ve never had a second-term president step in that is ready to go. In fact, we’ve never had a first-term president, never had president in history who’s so ready to go on day one, who knows exactly what they want to do. So, if you voted for President Trump, [you] should be pretty enthused that we’re gonna have the country back on track.
      As he wrapped up his speech on the outskirts of Angola’s capital, Luanda, a reporter asked Joe Biden for his comment on the declaration of martial law in South Korea.“I’m just getting briefed on it,” Biden replied.A spokesperson for the national security council said earlier that they were “seriously concerned” by the declaration, but Biden has not yet commented.As South Korea’s surprise martial law announcement sends shock waves across the country and beyond, another war abroad is also commanding the US’s attention, the Guardian’s Andrew Roth reports. Joe Biden is scrambling to “put Ukrainian forces in the strongest possible position” before Donald Trump, who has threatened to cut off all aid to Ukraine, assumes the highest level of office in the nation.The Biden administration is rushing military equipment to Ukraine in a last-ditch effort to shore up the country’s defenses against the Russian invasion before Donald Trump assumes the US presidency in January.The newly announced $725m in assistance will include Stinger anti-air missiles, anti-drone weapons, artillery shells and long-range Himars rocket munitions, and anti-armour missiles, as well as spare parts and other assistance to repair damaged equipment from US stocks, the state department said.The new shipments of weapons come as Ukraine is desperately seeking to stabilise its frontlines in both the east of the country, where Russia has made grinding progress toward the crucial logistics town of Pokrovsk, as well in the Kursk region of Russia, where Ukrainian forces are bracing themselves for an assault by Russian and North Korean troops.South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, declared martial law today, and accused the country’s main opposition party of being anti-state, North Korea sympathizers.A spokesperson for the US national security council told CNN that the US was not given a warning from the South Korean president before he declared martial law.“We are seriously concerned by the developments we are seeing on the ground in the ROK [Republic of Korea].”The US state department’s principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said in a press conference today: “We are watching the recent developments in the ROK with grave concern. We are seeking to engage with our Republic of Korea counterparts at every level … This is an incredibly fluid situation.”You can read more about this development on our South Korea blog here.Donald Trump has reportedly offered the job of deputy secretary of defense to a billionaire investor whose firm has taken stakes in companies that do business with the Pentagon. Should Stephen Feinberg accept the nomination, it will be the latest to stir controversy, particularly among Democrats concerned that his nominees lack experience, have conflicts of interest or will pursue dangerous policies. Meanwhile, the fallout from Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden continues. A Delaware federal judge cited the pardon in ending Hunter Biden’s prosecution on charges related to lying to buy a gun, while a top Trump adviser refused to say if the incoming president would opt to pardon himself of recently dismissed charges over allegedly hiding classified documents and plotting to overturn the 2020 election.Here’s what else has happened today:

      Chuck Schumer will continue to lead Democrats in the Senate after a close-door election by his colleagues. He will be the minority leader starting next year, when Republicans take control of the chamber.

      Traveling in Angola, Biden was asked about his decision to pardon his son. He refused to answer, and has not said anything else about the decision since making it public on Sunday evening.

      Democrats who might seek the presidency in 2028 did not want to share with Politico their views on Hunter Biden’s pardon. Party officials seeking to lead the Democratic National Committee were more talkative.
      Donald Trump has offered the post of deputy secretary of defense to Stephen Feinberg, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of investment firm Cerberus Capital Management, which has stakes in companies that do business with the military, the Washington Post reports.It is not clear if Feinberg accepted the job, the Post reports, and Trump has not yet publicly announced the nomination.Cerberus this year disclosed an investment in M1 Support Services, which provides military aircraft training and maintenance services. In 2018, Cerberus took a majority stake in Navistar Defense, which manufactures military vehicles.Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth will be back on Capitol Hill today, meeting with Republican senators who will consider his appointment.Politico reports that he is scheduled to meet Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Ted Budd of North Carolina and James Risch of Idaho. Hegseth will also probably run into plenty of reporters who will be asking about his drinking, treatment of women and financial management of two veterans non-profits he reportedly was forced out of.A judge has ordered an end to Hunter Biden’s prosecution on charges of lying about his drug use when buying a gun, after Joe Biden pardoned him on Sunday.Delaware federal judge Maryellen Noreika terminated the case against Hunter Biden in a decision issued today, after a jury found him guilty of three gun-related charges earlier this year. Biden was also pardoned of tax fraud charges leveled against him in California, which he pleaded guilty to. He was awaiting sentencing in both cases before the controversial presidential pardon.Here’s more about the gun case: More

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      Trump lawyers file papers to request dismissal of hush-money case

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      Donald Trump’s lawyers have filed paperwork pushing for dismissal of his Manhattan criminal hush-money case.The dismissal pitch came after Judge Juan Merchan’s decision on 22 November to indefinitely postpone the president-elect’s sentencing so lawyers on both sides can argue over its future, given Trump’s victory in the recent presidential election.While Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly pushed for dismissal to no avail, his impending return to the presidency has presented an opportunity for them to make their case once again.Merchan said in his postponement decision that Trump’s lawyers had a 2 December deadline to file their argument for dismissal. Prosecutors had a week to submit their response.Trump’s lawyers have been calling on Merchan to toss the case outright after he defeated Kamala Harris on 5 November. In previous papers seeking permission to file a formal dismissal request, Trump’s attorneys said that dismissal was required “in order to facilitate the orderly transition of executive power”.Todd Blanche, Trump’s main attorney and selection for deputy US attorney general, as well as Emil Bove, his choice for principal associate deputy attorney general, said that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office “appears to not yet be ready to dismiss this politically motivated and fatally flawed case, which is what is mandated by the law and will happen as justice takes its course”.They had noted that the US justice department was poised to abandon Trump’s federal cases and referred to a departmental memo that bars prosecution of sitting presidents.“As in those cases, dismissal is necessary here,” their filing argued. “Just as a sitting president is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as president-elect.”Special counsel prosecutors who were pursuing the federal cases against Trump indeed filed paperwork on 25 November asking for their dismissal – citing justice department policy that his team has repeatedly invoked.“It has long been the position of the Department of Justice that the United States constitution forbids the federal indictment and subsequent criminal prosecution of a sitting president,” wrote Molly Gaston, the top deputy for special counsel Jack Smith.“That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the government stands fully behind.”Manhattan prosecutors have argued against dismissal in prior court papers and have suggested a solution that would obviate any concerns about interrupting his presidency – including “deferral of all remaining criminal proceedings until after the end of defendant’s upcoming presidential term”. More

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      Donald Trump didn’t win by a historic landslide. It’s time to nip that lie in the bud | Mehdi Hasan

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      Remember the “big lie”? In 2020, Donald Trump lost the presidential election so Republicans just brazenly lied and insisted he won.In 2024, we have a new post-election lie from the Republican party. Trump didn’t just win, they say, but he won big. He won a landslide. He won an historic mandate for his “Maga” agenda.And it was Trump himself, of course, on election night, who was the first to push this grandiose and self-serving falsehood, calling his win “a political victory that our country has never seen before” and claiming “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate”.Republican politicians, masters of message discipline, quickly followed suit. The representative Elise Stefanik called his win a “historic landslide” while the senator John Barrasso called Trump’s a “huge landslide”. “On November 5 voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it,” wrote the “Doge” co-heads Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in the Wall Street Journal on 20 November.None of this is true. Yes, Trump won the popular vote and the electoral college. Yes, Republicans won the Senate and the House. But, contrary to both Republican talking points and breathless headlines and hot takes from leading media outlets (“resounding”, “rout”, “runaway win”), there was really nothing at all historic or huge about the margin of victory.Repeat after me: there was no “landslide”. There was no “blowout”. There was no “sweeping” mandate given to Trump by the electorate. The numbers don’t lie.First, consider the popular vote. Yes, Trump became the first Republican for two decades to win the popular vote. However, per results from CNN, the Cook Political Report, and the New York Times, he did not win a majority of the vote. Barack Obama did in both 2008 and 2012. Joe Biden did in 2020. But Donald Trump failed to do so in 2024.And the former president’s margin of victory over Harris is a miniscule 1.6 percentage points, “smaller than that of every winning president since 1888 other than two: John F Kennedy in 1960 and Richard M. Nixon in 1968”, as an analysis in the New York Times noted last month. In fact, in the 55 presidential elections in which the popular vote winner became president, 49 of them were won with a margin bigger than Trump’s in 2024.We actually know what a landslide in the popular vote looks like: the Democrat Lyndon Johnson defeated the Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 by an enormous margin of 22.6 percentage points!Second, consider the electoral college. Trump won 307 votes, which is 37 more than is needed to secure victory in the electoral college. But it’s still far fewer than Bill Clinton won in 1992 (370) and 1996 (379) and far fewer than Barack Obama won in 2008 (365) and 2012 (332). And it is pretty similar to what Trump himself won in 2016 (304) and what Biden won in 2020 (306). Trump’s margin of victory in the electoral college ranks 44 out of the 60 presidential elections in American history.We actually know what a landslide win in the electoral college looks like: the Republican Ronald Reagan won re-election with a whopping 525 electoral college votes in 1984!By the way, did you know that Trump won the crucial blue wall states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – by 231,000 votes? So if just 116,000 voters across those three swing states – or 0.7% of the total – had switched from Trump to Harris, it is the vice-president who would have won the electoral college … and the presidency!Third, consider the so-called “coattails” effect, where a presidential candidate’s massive margin of victory also boosts their party’s numbers in Congress. In 2024, Republicans flipped the Senate and held onto the House but Trump still ended up having “limited coattails”, to quote from the New York Times analysis. Of the five battleground states (Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania) which held Senate races in November, the Republican candidate triumphed in only one of them (David McCormick in Pennsylvania, by a narrow 16,000 votes). Democrats held on to the other four.So where were the Trump coattails in the Senate?Meanwhile, over in the House of Representatives, Republicans held onto control of the chamber with the aid of an extremely partisan and anti-democratic gerrymander in North Carolina, signed off by a conservative-majority state supreme court. They are on course for what the CNN election analyst Harry Enten is calling a “record small majority”.So where were the Trump coattails in the House?And yet, the president-elect and his army of Republican sycophants cannot stop bragging about the landslide that wasn’t. You almost have to admire their chutzpah.But there is also method to their megalomania. As the political scientist Julia Azari has observed, when a president and a party claim a sweeping mandate it has “historically been connected to unprecedented expansions of presidential power” and can become a way “to give an unchecked executive the veneer of following the popular will”.Trump, the 49.9% president, doesn’t represent the popular will. Yes, he won the election fair and square, and won the popular vote for the first time, but if we are to prevent him from expanding his power in the Oval Office we must resist this new Republican election lie. We must not allow him to pretend that he has some sort of special “mandate” for controversial policies and personnel.Repeat after me: there was nothing unique or unprecedented about the election result last month. Republicans may feel they won a huge victory over the Democrats. And Trump may feel his election win was historic. But, to borrow a line from the right, the facts don’t care about their feelings.

      Mehdi Hasan is the CEO and editor-in-chief of the new media company Zeteo More

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      What does it actually mean when we talk about the American ‘working class’? | Rebecca Solnit

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      In the aftermath of the election, the working class was constantly invoked and rarely defined – invoked as a badge of authenticity, as the people who really matter, as the salt of the earth, the ones politicians should woo or be chastised for failing to woo sufficiently. Who exactly is in this category? I asked around, and the definitions didn’t just vary – they wobbled, clashed and blurred.The more nebulous something is, the more it can mean anything useful to the speaker or writer. I thought of Alice Through the Looking Glass:
      ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
      ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
      When a word means whatever you choose it to mean, it becomes a cudgel for your cause, while it fails to do what I want words to do, which is to describe the world in ways that make things more clear and coherent.So what is the working class? Is it income levels or education, when some who work in the trades earn splendid annual incomes and some white-collar work mires people in poverty? Is it the kind of work or the status of being an employee, when the person who works for a construction company may go on to become a contractor herself?A Marxist told me it’s about whether or not you own the means of production, but this theoretical contractor, like many a construction worker, owns a F250 pickup truck and a lot of tools and maybe a garage workshop, just as many farmers own or inherit land.Someone else said it meant being paid by the hour, rather than salaried, but lawyers and legal experts bill (lavishly) by the hour. And more and more people work in the gig economy or are otherwise casual labor seen as self-employed or as subcontractors, not employees. Someone else insisted it’s about whether or not you have unearned income, but many a union person or employee of a big firm has a stake in a pension fund invested in the stock market.Another criterion was education levels, though quite a few people’s time in college netted them little but debt to be paid off via pink- or blue-collar work. In California, our public universities claim a lot of first-generation students, but the community college system defines that as people whose parents did not go to college at all, while the University of California system defines it as anyone whose parents didn’t graduate from college. The California State University system, meanwhile, has wobbly definitions: “In one scenario, 31% of CSU students are considered first generation; according to another definition, 52% are.”What’s clear about first-generation students is that some who grow up in blue-collar families become white-collar professionals and thereby have a foot in both worlds and sometimes an identity in tension with their current status. A lot of us worked entry-level jobs before entering a profession – before I was 21 I supported myself as a salesperson, a dishwasher, a data processor and a waitress. Upward economic mobility is central to the American dream and the draw for immigrants; downward mobility, debt peonage and destitution have been at the heart of the American nightmare set up by Reaganomics and the other forces creating a super-elite and a desperate underclass.One thing that’s been dismally obvious since 2016 is that by working class some speakers really mean white men, and imagine that group in nostalgic terms, as hardhat wearers and factory workers or as red-blooded rural Americans, even though much of the lower-income population is not white or male or rural. It’s janitors and nail salon workers and hotel maids, casual labor and delivery people and home healthcare aides.I’m not arguing that the working class doesn’t exist, and there are a lot of workers we would probably all agree belong to this class – but the borders and thereby the definitions are blurry, and the frame is too often invoked for other agendas.The idea that the working class is white men too readily becomes a justification for politics that pander to white male prejudices and entitlements, since white men are the single most right-leaning demographic. Framed that way, it often seems to mean: shut up about rights for women and non-white people. Meanwhile about 92% of Black women, a great many of whom meet most of these definitions of working class, voted for Kamala Harris, which is a reminder that talking about class without talking about gender and race flattens out a complex terrain (the same goes, of course, for talking about gender or race without the other two).Harris mostly spoke about the middle class, which many identify with whether or not they fit some of these criteria for the working class; I don’t think her rival used the term “working class” at all but pandered to white racism, misogyny and transphobia, each of which can fracture solidarity and even the perception of common ground, including economic common ground.In the end, all that’s clear is that we had an election in which the party that was supposed to be elitist was not the party whose candidate was a billionaire, the one put back in office in no small part through the machinations of the richest man in the world because they agreed on an economic agenda of cutting taxes for the rich and further impoverishing the poor.“Elite” is another nebulous word that pretends that somehow human rights are an upscale product like designer handbags or that the majority of us in this country – if you add up women, Bipoc, queer and trans people, immigrants, etc – are a special interest group. In this framework, the 26% or so that is white and male is imagined as the majority, perhaps because they once owned and ran nearly everything.White male grievance is a powerful force that cuts across class, as exemplified by the habitual whining of the billionaires. Those billionaires also own too many of the means of information production, from Twitter and Facebook to the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. Those and other means encouraged people to perceive themselves by many criteria that don’t include class or economics, but do include a lot of kinds of resentment.This was part of a package deal, of a whole lot of people getting a lot of misinformation about the sources of their problems and the potential solutions, which encouraged many of them to vote against their own and their economic peers’ self-interest. The lack of clarity about what the working class is is only one part of the ongoing problem of misinformation and missing information.

      Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility More

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      Trump picks Republican mega-donor Warren Stephens as ambassador to UK

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      Donald Trump announced on Monday he has picked investment banker and Republican mega-donor Warren Stephens to serve as ambassador to the UK.“Warren has always dreamed of serving the United States full time,” wrote Trump in a social media post. “I am thrilled that he will now have that opportunity as the top Diplomat, representing the U.S.A. to one of America’s most cherished and beloved Allies.”Stephens is chairman, president and CEO of Stephens Inc, a privately owned financial services firm headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, according to the firm’s website.The businessman has donated regularly to conservative causes, although not always in support of Trump. Stephens initially poured money into efforts to oppose Trump’s 2016 run, but he later supported Trump’s 2020 presidential run. In 2023, Stephens donated in support of Asa Hutchinson’s presidential run. In 2024, according to Federal Election Commission filings, he donated at least $2m to Make America Great Again Inc, a pro-Trump Super Pac.In his announcement, Trump called Stephens’s company a “wonderful financial services firm” and praised Stephens for “selflessly giving back to his community as a philanthropist”.A 2017 report by the Guardian revealed that Stephens held a 40% stake in a payday loan company, Integrity Advance, that the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) took action against in 2015 for allegedly employing predatory lending practices. The revelation was produced through the Paradise Papers reporting project, which investigated multinational companies’ use of tax havens to shelter their money.According to the 2015 CFPB report, Integrity Advance allegedly misled loan recipients by obscuring the total cost of the loans and requiring borrowers to pay back loans through pre-authorized electronic transfers.

      Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Joe Biden issues pardon for son Hunter as Trump rails against ‘miscarriage of justice’ – US politics live

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      President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to pardon those convicted after storming the US Capitol in Washington on January 2021 and took the opportunity to raise the issue.“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?“Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social social media platform.A loving act of mercy by a father who has already known much sorrow? Or a hypocritical political manoeuvre reminiscent of his great foe? Maybe both can be true.Joe Biden’s announcement on Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter, who is facing sentencing in two criminal cases, is likely to have been the product of a Shakespearean struggle between head and heart.On the one hand, Biden is one of the last great institutionalists in Washington. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making,” he said in an unusually direct and personal statement on Sunday. To undermine the separation of powers goes against every fibre of his political being.On the other hand, Biden is nothing without family. His speeches are peppered with references to his parents. As a senator, he once took a train from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware, so he could blow out the candles on a birthday cake for his eight-year-old daughter, Ashley, at the station, then cross the platform and take the next train back to work.Biden was profoundly shaped by the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and 13-month-old daughter Naomi in a car accident and, much later, the death of his son Beau from brain cancer. In that context, Hunter’s status as the first child of a sitting president to face criminal charges will have pained his father in what Ernest Hemingway called “the broken places”.Read my full analysis below
      Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted. Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.
      The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room – with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.
      No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.
      For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.
      Hunter Biden issued a statement following his father’s announcement“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” Hunter Biden said in a statement on Sunday, adding he had remained sober for more than five years.“In the throes of addiction, I squandered many opportunities and advantages … I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”Hello and welcome to our live coverage of US politics.On Sunday night, before boarding a plane to Angola, US president Joe Biden issued a pardon to his son Hunter – something he had repeatedly said he would not do.Biden said he hoped the American people would understand his decision to issue the pardons over convictions on federal gun and tax charges.“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he said.Hunter Biden was scheduled to be sentenced for his conviction on federal gun charges on 12 December.He was scheduled to be sentenced in the tax case four days later. Joe Biden is just weeks away from leaving office. More

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      Wisconsin’s Ben Wikler joins race for Democratic National Committee chair

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      Wisconsin Democratic leader Ben Wikler joined the race to lead the Democratic National Committee on Sunday, promising “to take on Trump, Republican extremists, and move our country forward”, as the party looks to rebuild from its losses in the November election.In a video posted on social networks, Wikler, 43, touted his state party’s success in organizing to flip 14 state legislative seats and send Senator Tammy Baldwin back to Washington DC in November, and in previously campaigns to win control of the state supreme court and re-elect governor Tony Evers. Wikler, a former podcaster, Air America radio producer and headline writer for The Onion, also stressed his new media expertise.Wikler who has been involved in Democratic party politics since age 11, previously served as a producer on comedian-turned-politician Al Franken’s radio show and as Washington director for the progressive action group MoveOn, where he played a role in the successful battle to save the Affordable Care Act.“Our values – the core belief that our economy should work for working people, and that every person has inherent dignity and deserves freedom and respect – are American values,” Willer wrote on Bluesky. “But they’re not MAGA values. The richest and most powerful people want to divide us and enrich themselves.”“We’ve got to make sure that we are reaching people with the message that we are on their side and fighting for them,” Wikler told Reuters in a telephone interview.Wikler, who has served as chair of the Democratic party of Wisconsin since 2019, is among several candidates looking to replace Jaime Harrison, the current chair who is not seeking re-election when the party votes early next year.Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, Minnesota Democratic chief Ken Martin and New York state senator James Skoufis also are vying to become the new Democratic chair.Democrats are trying to chart the way forward after losing the White House and control of the Senate, as well as failing to retake the House of Representatives.Wikler said the national party could learn from organizing efforts he has overseen in Wisconsin, even though Kamala Harris narrowly lost the state to Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWikler said Democrats also need to focus on the president-elect’s economic agenda, which he claimed will favor wealthy Americans rather than working families.“For Democrats, this is a critical time to unite and fight back against Trump’s plans,” Wikler said.Wikler’s entry into the race was welcomed by the teachers union leader Randi Weingarten, who wrote that he “understands how to organize and communicate”, and journalist Connie Schultz, who knows Wikler from his time as spokesperson for her husband, Senator Sherrod Brown. More