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      Volodymyr Zelenskiy expected to urge jet transfer in address to US Congress

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      Volodymyr Zelenskiy expected to urge jet transfer in address to US CongressLeaders prepare to welcome Ukraine president before Wednesday speech amid divisions over question of planes

      Russia-Ukraine war – latest updates
      Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine, will address Congress on Wednesday in what could prove his most powerful plea yet for the west to take a tougher line against Vladimir Putin.Kremlin memos urged Russian media to use Tucker Carlson clips – reportRead moreZelenskiy is expected to use the virtual address to urge members of the House of Representatives and Senate to intensify pressure on Joe Biden to allow the transfer of MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a joint letter to members: “The Congress, our country and the world are in awe of the people of Ukraine, who have shown extraordinary courage, resilience and determination in the face of Russia’s unprovoked, vicious and illegal war.”They added: “The Congress remains unwavering in our commitment to supporting Ukraine as they face Putin’s cruel and diabolical aggression, and to passing legislation to cripple and isolate the Russian economy as well as deliver humanitarian, security and economic assistance to Ukraine.“We look forward to the privilege of welcoming President Zelenskiy’s address to the House and Senate and to convey our support to the people of Ukraine as they bravely defend democracy.”Zelenskiy, who will speak at 9am Washington time on Wednesday, has been seeking to drum up support with video briefings of foreign audiences. Last week he received a standing ovation from the British parliament and echoed William Shakespeare (“The question for us now is: ‘To be or not to be’”) and Winston Churchill (“We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets”).On Tuesday, the TV actor and comedian turned resistance leader, who has proved adept at communications under siege, is scheduled to address the Canadian parliament in Ottawa. He is also due to speak to Israel’s parliament at some stage.On 5 March, dressed in a military-green T-shirt and seated beside a Ukrainian flag, Zelenskiy spoke to more than 280 members of the House and Senate in a video call. He is said to have made a “desperate plea” for aircraft to fight Russian invaders.Most members of Congress back the White House’s refusal to attempt to impose a “no-fly zone” that could entail US pilots firing on Russians and trigger a wider conflict.Chris Murphy, chairman of the Senate appropriations homeland security subcommittee, told the Hill: “This is the most dangerous moment since the Cuban missile crisis. We have never been this close to direct conflict with Russia.“We made the right decision to openly support the Ukrainians but we just should understand the unprecedented moment that we’re living in today where we’re openly funding war against a nuclear power.”But there is a growing split over Poland’s offer to send Soviet-style MiG-29 fighter jets, which Ukrainian pilots are capable of flying, to Ukraine via a US airbase in Germany.The White House and Pentagon have rejected the proposal, wary that an increasingly reckless Putin could perceive it as escalatory and saying it raised “serious concerns” for the entire Nato alliance. Republicans and some Democrats say Zelenskiy’s request should be met.Mitt Romney, a Republican senator from Utah, said last week: “He has asked us for aircraft – specifically MiGs. We need to get him those MiGs. It is a bipartisan message.”Rob Portman, a Republican senator from Ohio visiting the Ukraine-Poland border, told CNN: “What we’ve heard directly from the Ukrainians is they want them badly. They want the ability to have better control over the skies in order to give them a fighting chance. I don’t understand why we’re not doing it.”The Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar, from Minnesota, was also on the visit. She said she had spoken to Biden “about 10 days ago” about the fighters, adding: “I’d like to see the planes over there.”The Democratic-controlled Congress approved $13.6bn in humanitarian and security aid to Ukraine last Thursday, as part of a $1.5tn spending bill that funds US government operations through 30 September.The US and allies have imposed broad sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. Biden has announced a US ban on Russian oil imports, seen as politically risky amid soaring gas prices.Last Friday the president took more steps to punish Russia economically, targeting trade and shutting down development funds while announcing a ban on imports of Russian seafood, vodka and diamonds. On Saturday he authorised $200m in additional military equipment for Ukraine.About 59% of Americans believe Biden has been making the right decisions when it comes to the situation in Ukraine, including more than one in three Republicans, according to Navigator Research. However, asked whether they approve of Biden’s handling of the issue, Americans are more polarised, with 49% disapproving and 43% approving.‘Cynical, craven’ Republicans out to bash Biden, not Putin, over gas pricesRead moreBiden’s predecessor as president, Donald Trump, again refused to condemn Putin at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday.“It happens to be a man that is just driven, he’s driven to put it together,” Trump said, while claiming the war would never have happened if he was still in the White House.On Monday a fourth round of talks between Ukraine and Russia were held via videoconference amid deadly air strikes in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. At the weekend, Russian airstrikes killed 35 people at a military base near Yavoriv, outside Lviv – perilously close to the frontier with Poland, a Nato member.In a video address, Zelenskiy warned: “If you do not close our sky, it is only a matter of time before Russian missiles fall on your territory, on Nato territory, on the homes of Nato citizens.”He urged Nato to impose a no-fly zone – a request he is likely to repeat to Congress on Wednesday.TopicsVolodymyr ZelenskiyUkraineRussiaUS CongressJoe BidenHouse of RepresentativesUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Would-be tyrant’: Republican targeted by Trump at rally hits back

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      ‘Would-be tyrant’: Republican targeted by Trump at rally hits backTom Rice faces Trumpist challenger because of vote to impeach over the deadly Capitol attack A Republican congressman attacked by Donald Trump at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday called the former president a “would-be tyrant”.Republican Kinzinger: I should have voted to impeach Trump over UkraineRead moreTom Rice voted to impeach Trump over the deadly Capitol attack and will face a Trump-endorsed challenger later this year.In a statement, Rice said: “If you want a congressman who supports political violence in Ukraine or in the United States Capitol, who supports party over country, who supports a would-be tyrant over the constitution, and who makes decisions based solely on re-election, then Russell Fry is your candidate.”Trump has praised Vladimir Putin and avoided invitations to condemn him but he has called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “crime against humanity”.The attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 happened after Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” in service of his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud. Seven people died around the riot.Rice was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the attack. Trump was acquitted when only seven Senate Republicans voted to find him guilty.Like all House Republicans, Rice supported Trump when he was impeached a first time, for withholding military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to extract dirt on Biden.Trump has endorsed challengers to disloyal Republicans prominently including Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of two Republican members of the January 6 committee.At his rally in Florence, South Carolina, on Saturday, Trump attacked Rice and Nancy Mace, a congresswoman with her own challenger after voting to certify election results.The former president called both “atrocious Rinos”, Republicans in name only, and “bad people”. He called Rice a “disaster” and “a total fool … laughed at in Washington”.“Thankfully this June you have a chance to dump these grandstanding losers and replace them with two rock-solid America-first champions,” Trump said.Rice retorted: “Trump is here because, like no one else I’ve ever met, he is consumed by spite. I took one vote he didn’t like and now he’s chosen to support a yes man candidate who has and will bow to anything he says.”Rice’s South Carolina district is deep Republican red. In 2020, Trump won it by 18 points. Rice won by nearly 24.The Associated Press reported on how Rice and Mace are trying to convince voters to back them. Mace emphasised her support for Trump, the AP said, while Rice took a “lower key” approach.The AP described the congressman “quietly winding through rural stretches of his congressional district to remind voters of his work securing federal relief for frequent – often disastrous – flooding, and of his advocacy for agricultural improvements”.Of his vote to impeach Trump, he said: “I’ve had some people come to me and say, ‘I was disappointed in your vote’. But 10 times as many have said, ‘Thank you.’”TopicsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS midterm elections 2022US politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesSouth CarolinanewsReuse this content More

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      Clarence Thomas: supreme court could be ‘compromised’ by politics

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      Clarence Thomas: supreme court could be ‘compromised’ by politicsThe court is set to rule this year on divisive issues including abortion, gun control, the climate crisis and voting rights

      The Agenda: how the supreme court threatens US democracy
      The US supreme court could “at some point” become “compromised” by politics, said Clarence Thomas – one of six conservatives on the nine-member court after Republicans denied Barack Obama a nomination then rammed three new justices through during the hard-right presidency of Donald Trump.Who has more influence on supreme court: Clarence Thomas or his activist wife?Read more“You can cavalierly talk about packing or stacking the court,” said Thomas, whose wife, Ginni Thomas, has come under extensive scrutiny for work for rightwing groups including supporting Trump’s attempts to overturn an election.“You can cavalierly talk about doing this or doing that. At some point the institution is going to be compromised.”Thomas was speaking at a hotel in Salt Lake City on Friday.“By doing this,” he said, “you continue to chip away at the respect of the institutions that the next generation is going to need if they’re going to have civil society.”The court is set to rule this year on divisive issues including abortion, gun control, the climate crisis and voting rights. Conservative victories are expected. The conservative-dominated court has already ruled against the Biden administration on coronavirus mitigation and other matters.The US constitution does not mandate that the court consist of nine justices. Some progressives and Democratic politicians have therefore called to expand it, in order to reset its ideological balance. Democrats in Congress last year introduced a bill to add four justices and Joe Biden has created a commission to study expansion.Few analysts think expansion is likely to happen.Republican senators are currently attacking Biden for his campaign promise to nominate a first Black woman to the court, a promise he fulfilled by nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace the retiring Stephen Breyer.Republican presidents have nominated justices on grounds of identity, most recently when Trump said he would pick a woman to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the liberal lion who died in September 2020.Ignoring their own claims about the impropriety of confirmations in election years, made in denying Merrick Garland even a hearing to replace Antonin Scalia in 2016, Senate Republicans installed Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline Catholic conservative, as Ginsberg’s replacement.In Utah on Friday, Thomas also voiced a familiar conservative complaint about so-called “cancel culture”, the supposed silencing of voices or world views deemed unacceptable on political grounds.He was, he said, “afraid, particularly in this world of cancel culture attack, I don’t know where you’re going to learn to engage as we did when I grew up.“If you don’t learn at that level in high school, in grammar school, in your neighborhood, or in civic organizations, then how do you have it when you’re making decisions in government, in the legislature, or in the courts?”Thomas also attacked the media for, he said, cultivating inaccurate impressions about public figures including himself, his wife and Scalia.Ginni Thomas has faced scrutiny for her involvement in groups that file briefs about cases in front of the supreme court, as well as using Facebook to amplify partisan attacks.Thomas has claimed the supreme court is above politics – a claim made by justices on either side of the partisan divide.Congress is preparing for confirmation hearings for Jackson. She will be installed if all 50 Democratic senators back her, via the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Some Republicans have indicated they could support her too.In Utah, Thomas recalled his own confirmation in 1991 as a humiliating and embarrassing experience. Lawmakers including Biden grilled Thomas about sexual harassment allegations from Anita Hill, a former employee, leading him to call the experience a “high tech lynching”. Biden has also been criticised for his treatment of Hill.‘The Scheme’: a senator’s plan to highlight rightwing influence on the supreme courtRead moreOn Friday, Thomas said he held civility as one of his highest values. He said he learned to respect institutions and debate civilly with those who disagreed with him during his years in school.Based on conversations with students in recent years, he said, he does not believe colleges are now welcoming places for productive debate, particularly for students who support what he described as traditional families or oppose abortion.Thomas did not reference the future of Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion rights. The court on which he sits is scheduled to rule this year on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, concerning whether Mississippi can ban abortions at 15 weeks.The court is expected to overturn Roe. While the justices deliberate, conservative lawmakers in Florida, West Virginia and Kentucky are advancing similar legislation.
      The Associated Press contributed to this report
      TopicsClarence ThomasUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsRepublicansUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Congress steps up fight to get guns out of domestic abusers’ hands

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      Congress steps up fight to get guns out of domestic abusers’ handsThe reauthorization of the Violence Against Women act gives authorities new powers to crack down on domestic abusers with illegal guns Editor’s note: This story was produced by the non-profit newsroom Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Get email alerts on its investigations.State and local prosecutors and law enforcement across the US will have sweeping new powers to crack down on domestic abusers with illegal guns under a bipartisan deal approved by Congress.The measures, included in a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act – part of a $1.5tn spending bill passed Thursday night – come after an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting that was published in the Guardian and showed that domestic violence gun homicides leaped 58% over the last decade. Many of those victims were killed by abusers whose criminal histories prohibited them from possessing guns, Reveal found.A father used a ghost gun to kill his three daughters. It’s a sign of a growing crisisRead moreJoe Biden, who sponsored the first Violence Against Women Act almost 30 years ago, is expected to quickly sign the bill. The package includes domestic programs, military spending and $13.6bn in aid for Ukraine.Federal law bars felons and some people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence from possessing firearms. But state and local law enforcement authorities, who handle most domestic violence cases, can’t enforce those federal laws and federal prosecutors haven’t prioritized them, so even egregious violations of gun bans often go unpunished. In addition, because federal law and most state statutes don’t address how to retrieve weapons from people who aren’t legally permitted to have them, gun bans are largely enforced on an honor system that relies on abusers to disarm themselves.Advocates and gun policy experts said Reveal’s reporting spurred lawmakers to break a partisan logjam.“The reporting definitely lit a fire for members of Congress to act on this issue,” said Marissa Edmund, senior policy analyst for gun violence prevention at the Center for American Progress.The investigation, which chronicled scores of people killed in domestic violence-related gun homicides in recent years, showed lawmakers “that these are lives that are lost and the pain of that loss extends to their families and communities and knowing that it was preventable. This is a huge win for survivors and advocates to close loopholes that allow some domestic abusers to access firearms.”“We’re closing gaps that exist between state and local and federal law enforcement,” Edmund added. “There will be more coordination on the state and federal level so abusers won’t have access to those firearms. It will save hundreds of lives.”The Violence Against Women Act has been reauthorized several times since it was first enacted in 1994, but the most recent update had been stalled in Congress since 2019. The new bill includes the highest funding level ever to support programs for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. It also includes broad provisions that address some of the law enforcement failures that Reveal highlighted in its reporting.One new provision empowers the US Department of Justice to appoint state, local, territorial and tribal prosecutors to serve as special assistant US attorneys to prosecute violations of federal firearms laws. Another aims to expand the reach of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the chief federal agency charged with enforcing the nation’s gun laws, by allowing the attorney general to deputize local and state law enforcement officers to act as ATF agents to investigate abusers who break federal firearms laws.To determine where those special prosecutors and law enforcement officers should focus, the legislation directs the justice department to identify at least 75 jurisdictions across the country where gun-related domestic violence is soaring and local authorities lack the resources to respond. The justice department will also establish contacts in every US attorney’s office and ATF field office to handle requests for assistance from state and local police about intimate partner violence cases involving suspects believed to have guns illegally.The updated act also instructs federal authorities to notify local law enforcement when felons and domestic abusers attempt to buy a gun illegally.The federal government doesn’t track the number of abusers who kill their intimate partners with illegal guns. As part of its investigation, Reveal tracked down at least 110 people across the US who were shot to death from 2017 through 2020 by abusers barred from possessing firearms, providing an unprecedented accounting of such killings. The pandemic has been an especially lethal period for abuse victims. Gun homicides involving intimate partners rose a stunning 25% in 2020 compared with the previous year, to the highest level in almost three decades.TopicsUS gun controlGuns and liesDomestic violenceGun crimeWomenBiden administrationUS CongressUS politicsReuse this content More

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      Clash between Poland and US over MiG-29s reveals tensions in escalating war

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      Clash between Poland and US over MiG-29s reveals tensions in escalating warAnalysis: the public spat over planes is a setback and the upshot of this mini-debacle is that Russia retains air superiority

      Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates
      The buck-passing between Poland and the US over the possible use of elderly MiG-29s to hit Russian forces inside Ukraine is one of the west’s few diplomatic failures of the past month. It also raises questions about how far European countries are prepared to escalate militarily before they believe they will touch a dangerous Russian tripwire.The US and Europe have worked hard to keep their differences over sanctions and oil embargos to a public minimum, and tried to accommodate each other’s national interests. So it was striking on Tuesday when first the Pentagon described a Polish offer to send planes to the US airbase in Ramstein as “untenable”, and then the deputy US secretary of state said the US had not been consulted about the plan.Part of the problem was that the Polish proposal was subtly but critically different to a scheme that had previously been discussed in private. Against the backdrop of highly charged diplomatic tensions, presentation matters.In essence, Poland said it would cooperate in strengthening the Ukrainian air force so long as this would be seen in Moscow as a US, Nato or EU scheme but not a Polish one.In its original, US-conceived iteration, the proposal was a trilateral deal whereby Poland would hand over the MiGs to Ukrainian pilots to fly into their homeland, and the US would then provide some substitute planes. Boris Johnson, an enthusiast, described the plan as “rent a MiG”.That proposal, arguably, was not qualitatively different to Nato members providing Ukraine with Javelin anti-tank missiles. In return, Poland would eventually fill the hole in its air force with 28 F-16s being provided by the US.But under private pressure from the US, Poland felt the plan unduly exposed its citizens to Putin’s ire. So instead, in a game of diplomatic pass the parcel, Poland tweaked the proposals so the planes would be sent free of charge to the US airbase in Ramstein, Germany, rather than being flown out of Poland into Ukraine. The move would literally take Poland out of the line of Russia’s fire since the plan could be labelled as that of the US, Nato or the EU.US dismisses Polish plan to provide fighter jets to be sent to UkraineRead morePoland also suggested other frontline Nato countries with MiG planes should match its plan, a proposal directed at Slovakia and Romania. If executed it would mean Ukraine had 70 extra planes at its disposal.The Pentagon’s response – “it is simply not clear to us that there is a tangible justification for this” – was swift. Passing the parcel back, it said any decision to hand over planes ultimately rested with the Polish government, although it did not kill off the proposal altogether.It is possible that Poland’s nationalist government launched its plan with the aim of relieving pressure from the US Congress and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, knowing full well it would be rejected.Either way the public spat is a setback. Over the weekend the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had said a plan involving planes was under active consideration.The upshot after this mini-debacle is Russia retains air superiority. Ukrainian pilots who were being trained in Poland to fly the planes are now grounded with no machines with which to defend their country. An opportunity has been squandered.The episode may have lessons for both sides. The possibility of making the MiG-29s available first appeared publicly on 27 February, when the EU made the unprecedented decision to provide military aid to a country outside the bloc. The first tranche of equipment for Ukraine is expected to amount to €500m (£417m), but up to €5bn is to be spent under the European Peace Initiative.It was then that the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said that aid for Kyiv would also include offensive weapons, including planes. At that point it became clear that the planes would only be MIG-29 and Su-25, because Ukrainian pilots only have experience with these machines. Poland, it would seem, did not appreciate the issue being disclosed. However, the country has emerged strengthened in another way from the past 24 hours. The US has provided Poland with two Patriot defence missiles. Each battery consists of two firing platoons with two launchers. This means there will be 16 launchers in Poland. They can have either four or six missiles. The latest Pac-3 MSE missiles are capable of shooting down the Russian Iskander ballistic and manoeuvring missiles.Unfortunately, they are also the anti-aircraft defence that Ukraine lacks. Nato, as its constitution requires, looks after its own.TopicsUkrainePolandUS politicsUS CongressRussiaEuropeUS foreign policyanalysisReuse this content More

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      US Senate unanimously passes bill to make lynching a federal hate crime

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      US Senate unanimously passes bill to make lynching a federal hate crimeAn earlier version of the bill, which was blocked in the Senate, was passed by the House in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder The US Senate has unanimously passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime. Such efforts had failed for more than a century.Bobby Rush, the Illinois Democrat who introduced the measure in the House, said: “Despite more than 200 attempts to outlaw this heinous form of racial terror at the federal level, it has never before been done. Today, we corrected that historic injustice. Next stop: [Joe Biden’s] desk.”Lynching Postcards: a harrowing documentary about confronting historyRead moreThe New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, Senate co-sponsor with Tim Scott of South Carolina, a Republican, said: “The time is past due to reckon with this dark chapter in our history and I’m proud of the bipartisan support to pass this important piece of legislation.”Subject to Biden’s signature, the bill will make lynching a hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison.According to the Equal Justice Initiative, about 4,400 African Americans were lynched in the US between the end of Reconstruction, in the 1870s, and the years of the second world war. Some killings were watched by crowds. postcards and souvenirs were sometimes sold.The bill heading for Biden’s desk is named for Emmett Till, who was 14 when he was tortured and murdered in Mississippi in August 1955. Two white men were tried but acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury, then confessed. The killing helped spark the civil rights movement.The House passed Rush’s anti-lynching measure 422-3. Three Republicans voted no: Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Chip Roy of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia.In 2020, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis and amid national protests for racial justice, the chamber passed an earlier version of the bill with a similar bipartisan vote.Then, the measure was blocked in the Senate. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said he did so because “the bill as written would allow altercations resulting in a cut, abrasion, bruise or any other injury no matter how temporary to be subject to a 10-year penalty”.Paul also called lynchings a “horror” and said he supported the bill but for its too-broad language.Kamala Harris, then a senator from California, now vice-president, called Paul’s stance “insulting”.Late last year, in another high-profile case, three white men were convicted in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black man who went jogging in a Georgia neighbourhood.Will justice finally be done for Emmett Till? Family hope a 65-year wait may soon be overRead moreIn an interview published on Tuesday, Christine Turner, director of the Oscar-nominated short Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day, referred to the Arbery murder when she told the Guardian: “There are many what people refer to as modern-day lynchings that may cause some people to take our history of lynching more seriously.”On Monday, in a further statement, Rush said lynching was “a longstanding and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain the white hierarchy.“Perpetrators of lynching got away with murder time and time again – in most cases, they were never even brought to trial … Today, we correct this historic and abhorrent injustice.”He also cited a great civil rights leader: “I am reminded of Dr King’s famous words: ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’”TopicsRaceUS crimeUS CongressUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Wave of House Democratic retirements stokes fears for party’s election prospects

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      Wave of House Democratic retirements stokes fears for party’s election prospectsThirty-one Democrats, a modern record, are stepping down as the party risks bleak midterms. But leaders say hope remains For the Michigan congresswoman Brenda Lawrence, it was a question from her husband: “When is our time?” For the North Carolina congressman David Price, it was the judgment that “the time has come” to step down.Some retiring Democrats have blamed the gridlock and dysfunction on Capitol Hill while others point to the redrawing of congressional maps. Still, others cite the rise of political extremism and the deteriorating relations between members of Congress, particularly in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. Announcing his decision to retire last year, the Wisconsin congressman, Ron Kind, was frank: “The truth is, I’ve run out of gas.” The decision not to seek re-election is both deeply personal and political. But as the party braces for a grueling midterm election in November, a rising number of House Democrats are opting not to return to Congress next year.On Monday, the Florida congressman Ted Deutch announced that he would not seek re-election, bringing the total number of Democratic departures from the House so far this cycle to 31.Biden bids to talk up ailing agenda after State of the Union draws mixed reviewsRead moreAmong them, eight Democrats are seeking other offices next year, like Tim Ryan of Ohio, who is running for the Senate, and Karen Bass of California, who is running to be the mayor of Los Angeles. Some retiring members are powerful veterans,such as Kentucky’s John Yarmuth, chair of the budget committee and Oregon’s Peter DeFazio, chair of the transportation and infrastructure committee. Others represent politically competitive districts, like Stephanie Murphy of Florida and Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona.It’s a worrying trend for Democrats. Congressional retirements are often an early sign of a wave election – for the other party. In 2018, dozens of House Republicans did not seek re-election, including the then House majority leader, Paul Ryan. The party lost 41 seats that year, and Democrats gained control of the chamber, in an election cycle widely viewed as a referendum on Donald Trump.This year, the political winds are reversed. Republicans are trumpeting each retirement as a sign that Democrats’ hopes of keeping their majority are fading. “Their majority is doomed,” the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spokesman, Mike Berg, said recently. “Retire or lose.”Though many vacancies are in safely Democratic districts, the rush of retirements come as the party faces significant historical headwinds. The president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterm elections. And in the House, Democrats can only afford to lose a handful of seats before surrendering control. With Biden’s sagging approval ratings, Democrats’ agenda stalled, public discontent over the economy and inflation, and Republicans’ strong performance in a series of off-cycle elections, the political landscape looks grim for the party in power. Adding to the uncertainty is the once-a-decade redistricting process when a state’s congressional and legislative districts are redrawn.The House is often a reflection of the national American mood, which public opinion polls show is pessimistic. Voters are frustrated with their political leaders and the party is bracing for a backlash. In polling that asks voters which party they would support on an election day – as opposed to which congressional candidate – Republicans repeatedly hold the edge.In an interview, Price, 81, said his decision leave Congress after three decades was “mainly personal” and not circumstantial. During the Trump years, he said many long-serving Democrats postponed the decision to retire because they believed their experience was needed on Capitol Hill. Now they feel the time is right.Price’s new district is rated safely Democratic, and after a long redistricting battle, the North Carolina state supreme court recently approved congressional maps that are favorable to the party.“I would suggest they don’t bring out the champagne quite yet,” he said of Republicans. “This redistricting in our state and a lot of states is turning out not to be quite the windfall for them that they thought.”Though Democrats have fared far better than expected in the redistricting process, it was still a factor in some decisions to retire or seek another office.“The number of retirements is naturally higher in years that end in ‘two’ because those are redistricting cycles,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.It’s been a brutal experience for some. Congressman Jim Cooper witnessed his reliably Democratic Nashville seat being carved up into three different districts that Trump would have easily won in 2020. He decried the move as “raw politics” and an effort to dilute the electoral power of Black voters.A day after the Tennessee legislature approved the map, Cooper announced his retirement from Congress, where he had served for more than three decades.“I explored every possible way, including lawsuits, to stop the gerrymandering and to win one of the three new congressional districts that now divide Nashville,” he said. “There’s no way, at least for me in this election cycle, but there may be a path for other worthy candidates.”John Rogers, a Republican pollster who was the executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee during the 2018 midterm elections cycle, says the retirements of powerful and long-serving Democrats is a strong sign that the party is bracing for defeat in November.“There are too many committee chairs retiring for this to be just about redistricting,” he said, adding that the prospect of losing a gavel or ending a lengthy career in the minoritywas unattractive to some politicians.Retirements deprive a party of the advantages that come with incumbency: fundraising, name recognition and a deep understanding of their constituency, factors that are especially critical in competitive seats.“Incumbency is not as valuable as it used to be,” said Kondik, author of The Long Red Thread: How Democratic Dominance Gave Way to Republican Advantage in US House Elections. “But open seats are generally harder to defend, particularly in a wave-style environment.”Clyburn: supreme court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘beyond politics’Read moreNot since 1992 have so many House Democrats opted not to seek re-election. And with states still finalizing their congressional maps and candidate filing deadlines approaching, there might be more retirements to come.“However bad it is to serve in Congress, it’s worse to serve in the minority,” Kondik said, “particularly in the House.” Notably bucking the trend, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has announced her decision to run again, extinguishing speculation that she would retire at the end of the term. Pelosi was re-elected as speaker after agreeing to step down from the role by the end of 2022.The Republican retirements, though far fewer, are also telling.As of this week, 15 House Republicans have said they won’t run for re-election, with seven running for another office. Among them are more moderate members including Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and John Katko of New York, who have faced conservative backlash for voting to impeach Trump.Democrats argue that much could change before the November elections.The Covid-19 pandemic appears to be in retreat, and the economy remains strong, despite inflation. Biden has started to ramp up his travel around the country touting his legislative accomplishments. He has received rare bipartisan praise for his handling of the crisis in Ukraine and Democratic voters are excited about his nominee for the supreme court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is poised to become the first Black woman to serve on the bench after her confirmation hearings later this month. And Republicans, they say, will have to answer for Trump’s enduring control over their party and the fallout from the congressional investigation into the events of January 6, as well as for their efforts to restrict access to abortion and the ballot, issues Democrats believe will rally voters to their side this cycle.“Most midterms by their nature are referenda on a party of power,” said Ian Russell, a Democratic strategist and former national political director with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But he said that by embracing Trump’s lies about election fraud and refusing to sanction their most extreme members, Republicans are helping frame the election as a choice between “two parties with very different priorities, one of which is going to wind up in charge”.Last month, Lawrence, the Michigan congresswoman, surprised some of her colleagues when she announced that she would retire at the end of the term, after more than three decades in public service.“After four years of Donald Trump’s administration, Covid, January 6, it was a death by a million cuts,” she said in an interview.Lawrence, who represents a heavily Democratic district and is the only Black member of Michigan’s congressional delegation, said she “feels good” about her legacy and would continue to be active in her community in other ways: “I’m not going home to plant flowers.”She hopes her departure will make room for a new generation of Black lawmakers, who will bring fresh urgency to the battles over women’s reproductive rights, voting protections and police reform.“I came into Congress when we were in the minority,” she said. “But I came in with the intent to make a difference, and I hope that that continues to motivate American citizens to step up into public service – because there is work to do.”TopicsDemocratsUS CongressUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Take Up Space review: the irresistible rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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      Take Up Space review: the irresistible rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez The New York congresswoman is the subject of an admiring biographical portrait. Love her or not, her story is impressiveThis book should have been titled Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez But Were Afraid to Ask.William Barr’s Trump book: self-serving narratives and tricky truths ignoredRead moreWhether you love her or loathe her, the former Sandy Ocasio has an irresistible story, told here in a brisk four-chapter narrative followed by brief sections on everything from a make-up video she made for Vogue to her evisceration of Mark Zuckerberg at a congressional hearing.The woman now known everywhere as AOC was born in the Bronx and lived there until her Puerto Rican-American parents moved her to Westchester to make sure she attended a decent public high school. A science nerd whose first ambition was to be a doctor, she dropped her pre-med major at Boston University and majored in economics and international relations. Like Pete Buttigieg, she did a brief stint as an intern for Ted Kennedy, but she didn’t enjoy it as much as he did.She spent her junior year in the African nation of Niger, where she had an unusual reaction to poverty. She decided Niger’s struggling citizens had “a level of enjoyment” that “just does not exist in American life”.In college she met Riley Roberts, a tall, smart, red-haired finance and sociology major who went from coffee house debating partner to boyfriend. Today he is a web developer and still her boyfriend, someone who tiptoes “through the public sphere, leaving little evidence of his presence”, according to the four-page section of Take Up Space which is devoted to him.AOC’s father, an architect, died of cancer while she was in college, leaving her mother struggling to hold on to their house. So after college her daughter came to New York and became a restaurant worker to make money and to be close to her mother.The striking-looking bartender who came out of nowhere to be elected to Congress three weeks after her 29th birthday was launched into politics by her brother Gabriel, who heard a group called Brand New Congress formed by Bernie Sanders supporters was looking for people to nominate anyone they thought should run in 2018.Pulled over to the side of the road in a rainstorm, Gabriel phoned his sister and asked if she wanted to run. Her reaction: “Eff it. Sure. Whatever.” So her brother, still sitting in his car, filled out the web form and hit “send”.Brand New Congress morphed into “Justice Democrats”, who had 10,000 nominations for candidates. Gradually, AOC became their favorite, not only because she was extremely smart but also because she was “really pretty”. That, Corbin Trent explained, is “like 20%, 50% of being on TV”. Trent became her communications director.The rigid leftwing ideology of Lisa Miller, who wrote the longest section of this book, sometimes leads her into statements directly contradicted by AOC’s success. Miller writes that the “facts of Ocasio-Cortez’s life” made her both an “impossible candidate” and “the kind of American whose hopes for any social mobility had been crushed by a rigged system perpetuated by officials elected to represent the people’s interests”.In real life, the facts of AOC’s Cinderella story made her the perfect candidate to take on Joseph Crowley, the Democratic boss who held the House seat she was going after – and AOC turned out to be the least “crushed” person in America.As she learned at a political boot camp organized by Justice Democrats, nothing was more important than “telling an authentic believable personal story”– and no one was better at doing that than she was.As a Black Lives Matter activist, Kim Balderas, noticed in 2017, AOC spoke like an organizer. That made Balderas realize “she’s not coming to play. She is coming to fight”. Outspent in the primary by Crowley, $4.5m to $550,000, AOC still managed to crush him with 57% of the vote.One secret to her success was Twitter. The month she won the primary she had 30,000 followers. Four weeks later she had 500,000. The number now hovers closer to 13 million. A 10-page section of the book describes her “art of the dunk”, including diagrams of her most successful exchanges, including one in which Laura Ingraham accused her of wearing $14,000 worth of clothes for a Vanity Fair photo shoot.“I don’t know if you’ve been in a photo shoot Laura,” AOC replied, “but you don’t keep the clothes.”She added: “The whole ‘she wore clothes in a magazine’, let’s pretend they’re hers’ gimmick is the classic Republican strategy of ‘let’s willfully act stupid, and if the public doesn’t take our performance stupidity seriously then we’ll claim bias’.”But her very best exchange is also the strongest evidence that the now 31-year old two term congresswoman has grown into a national treasure – and an interlocutor who almost always manages to have the last word.In “The Zuckerberg Grilling” section of the book, she interrogates the Facebook founder at a congressional hearing shortly after his company announced it would not fact-check political ads.She asked: “Would I be able to run advertisements on Facebook targeting Republicans in primaries saying they voted for the Green New Deal? … I’m just trying to understand the bounds here, what’s fair game.”“I don’t know the answer to that off the top of my head,” said the flustered Zuckerberg. “I think probably …”AOC calls Tucker Carlson ‘trash’ for saying she is not a woman of colourRead moreAOC: “So you don’t know if I’ll be able to do that.”Zuckerberg: “I think probably.”AOC followed up by asking how Facebook had chosen the Daily Caller, “a publication well documented with ties to white supremacists”, as an “official fact-checker for Facebook”.Zuckerberg said the Daily Caller had been chosen by “an independent organization called the Independent Fact-Checking Network”.AOC: “So you would say that white-supremacist-tied publications meet a rigorous standard for fact-checking? Thank you.”
      Take Up Space: the Unprecedented AOC is published in the US by Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster
      TopicsBooksAlexandria Ocasio-CortezUS politicsPolitics booksDemocratsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesreviewsReuse this content More