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      Giuliani defamation trial live: election worker testifies ex-Trump lawyer’s 2020 lies ruined her life and left her ‘in a dark place’

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      Shaye Moss just ended approximately two hours of haunting testimony detailing how her life has been ruined ever since Rudy Giuliani spread lies about her after the 2020 election.Her worst fear, she said, is that her teenage son will come home to find her and her mother hanging from a tree in front of their home. She still pulls over in her neighborhood because she feels like someone is following them. She doesn’t go out alone. She has panic attacks. She left the job that she worked hard to get because she had become a “pariah” in the office. When her son started getting harassing messages and failed all of his classes in the 9th grade, she felt responsible and like “the worst mom in the world”.“I feel like I’m in a dark place and the only thing that surrounds me are the conspiracy and the lies,” she said.She ended her direct testimony by talking about how she’s trapped in a cycle of eating, sleeping, and crying. “Sadly that’s my life.”Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer will cross-examine her when court resumes this afternoon at 2pm.
      It was a day of emotional testimony in a Washington courtroom, where Shaye Moss took the stand in the defamation trial against Rudy Giuliani. She recounted in devastating detail the ways the former New York City mayor’s lies and the ensuing harassment upended her life, destroyed her sense of security and self-worth and hurt her family.
      Under cross-examination, Moss pointedly noted that the harm caused by Giuliani continues to this day as the former mayor repeated his lies about her to reporters as recently as Monday. Giuliani’s comments to reporters drew a sharp rebuke from the judge.
      Beyond the trial, other big stories today:
      New York’s top court said the state must redraw its congressional maps, in a decision widely seen as a victory for Democrats in the battle to win control of the narrowly divided House of Representatives.
      The Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order that would have allowed Kate Cox to get an abortion for a fetus with a fatal condition. Cox went out of state for the procedure.
      Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University despite calls for her removal following testimony before a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus last week.
      US inflation ticked down again last month, with cheaper gas helping further lighten the weight of consumer price increases in the US.
      Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelenskiy failed to persuade congressional Republicans to rush aid to Ukraine as Russia’s war nears its third year. During a visit to Washington, Zelenskiy met with members of Congress and Joe Biden on Tuesday.
      Still to come: CNN will host a presidential town hall in Iowa with Republican White House hopeful Ron DeSantis.
      Sam reports that Shaye Moss has completed her testimony after taking the witness stand to answer questions from Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer and her own.Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley, sought to undercut the idea millions of dollars in damages were required to repair her reputation. He also sought to distance Giuliani from any harm Moss suffered.John Langford, one of Moss’s attorneys, asked her to further explain why she was not looking for work.“I definitely would have to start off again at the bottom and work my way up. I am wanting to do that but I am not mentally able to do that with things are the way are now,” Moss said. “Most days I pray that God does not wake me up and I just disappear.”She also explained that she does not go out alone, except for one instance in which she did it as homework for her therapist.“I did it so terrified. I felt extremely nauseous. But thankfully there was this guy at the bar,” she said. “He was a Jewish guy. He literally talked the entire time about this movie about this family that is in the pharmaceuticals. The guy was just talking. And I did it. I was very proud of myself. But unfortunately I have not been able to do that again. But I did do it once.”Plaintiffs are now playing a videotaped deposition from Bernard Kerik.Here’s some background on the situation in New York written by our in-house expert on redistricting, Sam Levine (yes, the same one in court covering the election case).Despite outperforming expectations on election night last year, Republicans made stunning gains across New York, one of the nation’s most liberal states. They won four toss-up races and picked off congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, the House Democratic campaign chairman charged with protecting his party’s hold on Congress.That was possible under the map that will now be redrawn.Breaking from the Giuliani trial to mark a new legal development out of New York, where a court has agreed to allow the state to redraw its congressional map in a decision widely seen as a victory for Democrats.In an opinion issued on Tuesday afternoon, the liberal-leaning New York State Court of Appeals ordered the state’s redistricting commission to draw new maps by February 28, 2024. The court is effectively tossing out the highly competitive electoral map that gave Republicans an edge in several key House races last cycle – just enough to win the majority.The commission is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, but the Democratic-controlled state legislature has final say over the redrawn map. Given the narrow divide in the US House, New York Democrats will be under pressure to reject any proposal that does not improve their electoral odds, particularly after Republicans aggressive gerrymanders in states like North Carolina.Giuliani’s lawyer is pressing Moss to disclose additional details about her medical health as a result of the former mayor’s lies.Here’s some more back-and-forth in what appears to be a somewhat combative round of questioning.More from our man on the ground:
      I personally cannot repair my reputation at the moment because your client is still lying on me and ruining my reputation further. How could I do that? How could you work in law everyone was saying you’re a horrible lawyer? Moss said under questioning.
      She added, per Sam: “We need to make a statement. We need to ensure that the election workers that are still there don’t have to go through this. Hopefully by hitting someone in their pockets, for someone whose whole career has been about their pockets, we will send a message.”Sam is back in the courtroom in the defamation trial in Washington DC, where Moss is being cross-examined.It’s unclear where exactly Sibley is going with his questions, Sam reports.A lot of his questions seem to be trying to get Moss to concede that there was confusion or uncertainty about what happened immediately after the 2020 election. The US district judge Beryl Howell has already found Giuliani liable for defamation, so whether or not Giuliani had grounds to make his outlandish claims is not really at issue in the trial.It cannot be easy to be the lawyer for the voluble former New York mayor. Moss is back on the stand for cross-examination from Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Sibley.While we await the return of the Giuliani trial in DC, we’re linking to our Israel-Hamas war blog, where Biden has said Israel is “starting to lose support” of international community over its bombardment of Gaza.Biden also said that Netanyahu needs to change his hardline government.Biden’s comments come as Netanyahu thanked the US for its support on Tuesday, but noted that the US and Israel have had disagreements about “the day after Hamas”, said Israel’s prime minister on X.It is 1.20pm in Washington DC. Here is a round-up of what’s happened today:
      Georgia election worker Shaye Moss took the stand in the defamation trial against Rudy Giuliani, giving a haunting testimony of the ways the former New York City mayor’s lies and the ensuing harassment ruined her life and affected her family.
      Moss told the court she was a “bubbly, outgoing, happy Shaye” before she first became aware of lies Giuliani was spreading about her – and that threats left her feeling scared for her life. She recalled how she started receiving racist text messages and threats. “I was afraid for my life. I literally felt like someone was going to come and attempt to hang me and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
      Moss also told the court how her life has been ruined and she often still feels like she is being followed. She doesn’t go out alone and has panic attacks. She had to leave her job because she says she became a “pariah” in the office. Moss told the court her ordeal has left her feeling “in a dark place”.
      Giuliani’s mental fitness was questioned by the judge after he again told lies about Moss and Ruby Freeman in response to media questions after court last night. His comments entered into the court case Tuesday when Moss brought up how he had never apologized and continued to lie about her.
      Moss will be back on the stand at 2pm in Washington for cross-examination from Giuliani’s attorney.
      Beyond the trial, other big stories today …
      The Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order that would have allowed Kate Cox to get an abortion for a fetus with a fatal condition. Cox went out of state for the procedure.
      Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University despite calls for her removal following testimony before a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus last week.
      Shaye Moss just ended approximately two hours of haunting testimony detailing how her life has been ruined ever since Rudy Giuliani spread lies about her after the 2020 election.Her worst fear, she said, is that her teenage son will come home to find her and her mother hanging from a tree in front of their home. She still pulls over in her neighborhood because she feels like someone is following them. She doesn’t go out alone. She has panic attacks. She left the job that she worked hard to get because she had become a “pariah” in the office. When her son started getting harassing messages and failed all of his classes in the 9th grade, she felt responsible and like “the worst mom in the world”.“I feel like I’m in a dark place and the only thing that surrounds me are the conspiracy and the lies,” she said.She ended her direct testimony by talking about how she’s trapped in a cycle of eating, sleeping, and crying. “Sadly that’s my life.”Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer will cross-examine her when court resumes this afternoon at 2pm.Though Giuliani has already been found liable for defaming Moss and Freeman, his comments last night to the media where he claimed his lies about them were true will likely factor into the trial.Already, the US district judge Beryl Howell asked about Giuliani’s mental fitness, given his comments: “everything I said about them is true.”And on the stand this afternoon, Moss brought up his remarks, saying he was still “spreading lies about us last night”. Politico’s Kyle Cheney wrote on X that the judge is permitting Moss to talk about these comments, despite an objection from Giuliani’s lawyer. More

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      Zelenskiy struggles to get US Republicans to back $61bn Ukraine military aid package

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      Volodymyr Zelenskiy has struggled to persuade US Republicans to support a $61bn military aid package for Ukraine on a trip to Washington DC, with objectors insisting on White House concessions on border security as a condition for a deal.The Ukrainian president addressed members of the Senate in a closed 90-minute meeting on Tuesday morning, but afterwards key Republicans repeated that they wanted to see a crackdown on immigration between the US and Mexico in return for supporting the package.Speaking afterwards, Lindsey Graham, a senator for South Carolina, told reporters that he had told Zelenskiy that the problem was “nothing to do with you”. He added: “I said: ‘You’ve done everything anybody could ask of you. This is not your problem here.’”The senior Republican went on to accuse the White House of having failed to tackle the southern border issue and called for “the commander in chief” – Joe Biden – to become personally involved in the negotiations.Senate Republicans last week blocked an emergency aid package primarily for Ukraine and Israel after conservatives complained at the exclusion of immigration policy changes they had demanded as part of the package.Zelenskiy sought to reassure senators concerned about whether US military aid would be wasted because of corruption, Mike Rounds, a Republican, told CNN, and that Ukraine needed more air defence systems to support its counteroffensives.Senior Democrats, meanwhile, expressed frustration with the lack of progress. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, said “The one person happiest right now about the gridlock in Congress is Vladimir Putin. He is delighting in the fact that Donald Trump’s border policies are sabotaging military aid to Ukraine.”The Ukrainian president then moved on to a meeting with Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat House minority leader, and after that with the recently elected Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who has been relatively sceptical about further financial support for Ukraine.After their meeting, Johnson complained that the White House was asking Congress to approve the spending of billions of dollars “with no appropriate oversight, without a clear strategy to win”.Johnson added that “our first condition on any national security supplemental spending package is about our own national security first” but he also insisted that the US did stand with Zelenskiy “against Putin’s brutal invasion”.Zelenskiy posted a picture on X, formerly Twitter, of him addressing senators, saying he had had “a friendly and candid conversation”. He emphasised the importance of US military aid in his country’s fight against Russia.Moscow said it was watching developments closely. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said that “tens of billions of dollars” already provided by Washington had failed to turn the tide of war and more money would make little difference. Zelenskiy’s authority was being undermined by the failures, he added.Congress is due to break for the year on Friday and there appeared little prospect of a breakthrough that would allow a funding package to be passed before then – meaning that negotiations will have to pick up in the new year at a time when the amounts available to Ukraine are running short.Last week, Shalanda Young, the White House’s director of the office of management and budget, said that the Pentagon had used up 97% of the $62.3bn Ukraine allocations previously authorised by Congress, while the state department has none of its $4.7bn remaining.Zelenskiy is due to hold a private meeting with Biden and a joint press conference in the afternoon. The White House has previously signalled it is willing to make concessions on the Mexico border issue as it tries to get the funding package through.Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the White House national security council, said Russia believes that “a military deadlock through the winter will drain western support for Ukraine”, ultimately handing Moscow the advantage.Newly declassified US intelligence concluded that the war had cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, amounting to nearly 90% of the personnel it had before the war, started in February 2022.In Ukraine, the country’s biggest mobile phone network, Kyivstar, was badly hit on Tuesday by what appeared to be the largest cyber-attack of the war with Russia so far. Phone signals, the internet and some of Kyiv region’s air alert system were knocked out, in an attack that the company’s chief executive was “a result of” the war with Russia.Ukrainian sources indicated that the attack was not financially motivated, but destructive in nature, and it was unclear who precisely was responsible. The country’s SBU intelligence service said it was investigating whether the attack had been directed by one of Russia’s intelligence agencies. More

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      Stefanik criticized for support of Trump after push against campus antisemitism

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      Congresswoman Elise Stefanik celebrated the resignation of the president of the University of Pennsylvania in a storm over campus antisemitism, but faced criticism regarding her support for Donald Trump, who associates with antisemites himself.Referring to Liz Magill, who quit after a stormy congressional hearing last week, and the presidents of Harvard and MIT, who by Monday had not stepped down, Stefanik – the House Republican caucus chairperson – tweeted: “One down. Two to go.”In response, the Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin asked on MSNBC: “Where does Elise Stefanik get off lecturing anybody about antisemitism when she’s the hugest supporter of Donald Trump, who traffics in antisemitism all the time?“She didn’t utter a peep of protest when he had Kanye West and Nick Fuentes over for dinner,” said Raskin, who is Jewish, about a controversial event at the former US president’s Mar-a-Lago property last November.“Nick Fuentes, who doubts whether 7 October [the Hamas attacks which killed about 1,200 people in Israel] even took place because he thinks it was some kind of suspicious propaganda move by the Israelis.“The Republican party is filled with people who are entangled with antisemitism like that and yet somehow [Stefanik] gets on [her] high horse and lectures a Jewish college president from MIT.”The hearing concerned official responses to claims of rising campus antisemitism, surrounding protests against Israeli tactics in response to 7 October and student calls for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war. During the war, more than 18,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed by airstrikes in Gaza.Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT, and Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, were also grilled. MIT expressed support for Kornbluth. Gay apologised for her testimony, saying: “Words matter”, as nearly 600 professors backed her in a public petition.Magill resigned as president of Penn on Saturday. Stefanik, who led Republicans’ questioning, then tweeted: “One down. Two to go.“This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most ‘prestigious’ higher education institutions in America. This forced resignation of the president of Penn is the bare minimum of what is required.”Promising a “robust and comprehensive congressional investigation of all facets of their institutions[’] negligent perpetration of antisemitism including administrative, faculty, funding, and overall leadership and governance”, Stefanik called on Harvard and MIT to “do the right thing”.Stefanik, a Harvard graduate, began her congressional career widely seen as a moderate New York Republican. But she adopted increasingly extreme Trumpist rhetoric as she rose to become House Republican caucus chair.Raskin is a prominent Democrat who led impeachment efforts against Trump over the January 6 attacks, then sat on the committee that investigated the attack his supporters aimed at Congress. He told MSNBC he was “thinking about” the issue of campus antisemitism “as a father, as a parent”, concerned for students’ safety.Raskin said: “I want to know that if somebody is actually calling for the genocide of the Jews or anybody else on campus, that we’ve got a college president who will say: ‘Quickly get campus police over there, that person could be a danger to other people around them.’“Especially in the age of the AR-15 [assault rifle], when we’ve had, you know, genocidal-style language being used but also massacres taking place like at the Tree of Life synagogue, in Pittsburgh [in 2018], or at the Buffalo supermarket [in 2022].skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Those are rightwing antisemites who talk about the great replacement theory. We [also] had a guy at Cornell who was making death threats towards Jews, and we had three Palestinian college kids who were shot in Burlington, Vermont, of all places.”The great replacement theory holds that Democrats encourage immigration and multiculturalism in order to bolster their political chances.Last year, after a white gunman killed 10 people in an attack on a supermarket in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo, New York, Stefanik came under scrutiny for campaign ads which, in the words of the New York Times, “play[ed] on themes of the white supremacist ‘great replacement’ theory”.Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman turned anti-Trump Republican, said then that Stefanik and other Republicans had “enabled white nationalism, white supremacy and antisemitism”.Last week, after the campus antisemitism hearing, the Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin praised Stefanik’s questioning of the college presidents – but also noted her use of great replacement theory.Stefanik’s “ability … to sustain a rational argument about antisemitism at elite universities makes her [Make America great again] rhetoric that much worse”, Rubin wrote.“She knows better.” More

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      A Republic of Scoundrels: America’s original white men behaving badly

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      On 15 February 1798, a fight erupted on the floor of Congress. The previous month, Matthew Lyon of Vermont spat in the face of a fellow congressman, Roger Griswold of Connecticut. Now they came to blows. Griswold wielded a hickory walking stick. Lyon used fireplace tongs. The melee devolved into a wrestling match. Griswold won, but it was just the start of Lyon’s downfall. Defending his seat that fall, he fell foul of a law against sedition by campaigning against an undeclared war with France and was sentenced to four months in jail.Improbably, Lyon had the last laugh. While incarcerated, he won re-election. When an electoral college tie sent the 1800 presidential election into the House, Lyon was among those who voted for the winner, Thomas Jefferson.“The Spitting Lyon” is one of 14 controversial members of the founding generation profiled in a new book, A Republic of Scoundrels: the Schemers, Intriguers & Adventurers Who Created a New American Nation, edited by David Head of the University of Central Florida and Timothy C Hemmis of Texas A&M University – Central Texas.“One of the things the whole project does is cast a look at the founding generation – not just the founding fathers,” Hemmis says. “The founding fathers were American saints, so to speak. This is kind of a more complicated picture of that founding generation. These men did not hold up the ideals … we’ve been taught about or told about.”Two names are infamous: Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr.Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton dramatized Burr’s killing of Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. Head and Hemmis explore a less familiar development.“What the musical does not do,” Hemmis says, “is talk about Burr’s activities after he shot Hamilton. He goes out west and is starting to recruit these frontiersmen as audiences for entirely different plans and schemes, like carving out an empire in the west on a separate basis from the US, or going to invade Spanish Mexico.”Captured in Alabama in 1807, brought to trial for treason, Burr won acquittal and survived subsequent hearings. Arnold actually committed treason, defecting to the British in the revolutionary war. Yet the chapter on Arnold adds nuance, James Kirby Martin of the University of Houston noting how Arnold felt under-appreciated as a patriot and plagued by rivals despite his considerable achievements on the battlefield.Other subjects may be less familiar, including James Wilkinson, a high-ranking general who spied for Spain.“[Wilkinson] was just an amazing general in the US army – and a paid agent of a foreign power,” Head says. “No one discovered this definitively until after he died. There were rumors and suspicions, but he managed to hide it.”Each protagonist receives a chapter by a separate author. Shira Lurie of Saint Mary’s University notes in her chapter on Lyon that he really was called a scoundrel by Griswold before the Connecticut congressman assaulted him. Some subjects appear in other chapters: Wilkinson gets star treatment in the chapter by Samuel Watson, of the United States Military Academy at West Point, then plays a supporting role in Hemmis’s chapter on Burr. Improbably, the spy for Spain did the US government a favor by alerting it to Burr’s alleged plot. As to why Wilkinson did so, the explanations are predictably murky.“Was he blowing the whistle on treason or telling on Burr to save himself?” Head asks. “Who was doing what to whom? One of the options was to say one guy was less good than the other, but the reality is, they were both bad.”Defining the term “scoundrel”, the book cites Samuel Johnson’s dictionary definition, including a “low petty villain”.“It’s not exactly helpful,” Head says, “but it gives you an idea of someone known for deceit, known for cunning, preying on people’s vulnerabilities … It’s the kind of thing people duel over, impugning their reputation for honor.”Hemmis says: “It’s also the idea that there’s a lot of unethical commercial interests and schemes going on that don’t fit nicely into the American narrative.”If we are to fully understand the founding generation and the early American republic, the authors argue, we need to understand such scoundrels and their impact. As they explain, the new nation was no longer under a monarchy and the Articles of Confederation weakened the central government at the expense of the states. Powerful rivals controlled the borders: England, Spain and Indigenous American peoples. In such an atmosphere, Americans could pursue self-interest.Consider William Blount, who swindled revolutionary war veterans out of land earned through service. Blount enlisted his brother in the scheme and wound up with millions of acres on the western frontier. He became one of the first senators from Tennessee – and the first senator to be impeached.As Head and Hemmis illustrate, self-interest could lead men to ally with another country, encourage secession from the US, or both. There was Burr’s bid for a breakaway section in the west and there was Wilkinson’s work with the Spanish, during which he criticized superiors such as the only general who outranked him, Anthony Wayne, and George Washington himself. Wilkinson’s chapter does note that the intelligence he passed on was essentially open-source material and that when it counted, he supported American interests over those of Spain.The editors remind readers of the many differences between that era and ours. Spain loomed uncomfortably close, sharing a boundary for 40 years. The biggest sectional rivalry was not north v south but east v west, with the frontier in Kentucky. Foreign agents interfered in American politics. William Bowles, a would-be British agent, became a trusted voice among some Indigenous peoples in Florida and tried to set up an independent state, Muskogee. Don Diego de Gardoqui, a Spanish diplomat, supported the patriot cause with arms from Spain but later worked for his government in an unsuccessful attempt to weaken American power.Do these scoundrels offer lessons to learn today, amid the rise of Donald Trump and deepening social divides? Discussing Lyon, the congressman who brawled on the House floor then was re-elected from prison, Head recalls an exchange with a friend.“He texted me back: ‘Are we still a republic of scoundrels?’ I said, ‘Yes, but remember, it’s a republic.’ It’s an important point. Whatever it is, the country is still a republic. It’s an important thing to think about in modern times … It’s still unusual, precious, [something] to be proud of.“Our constitution works. The political system works. We’ve been through a civil war, slavery, violence … In the 1790s, we didn’t know whether it could work.”Lurie, author of the chapter on Lyon, has her own reflections for today, focused on his rivals’ inability to oust him.“The attempt to weaken one’s distasteful political opponents through ridicule, mockery and expressions of outrage did not work then, and it does not work now,” she writes. “Too often, such tactics just enhance these individuals’ popularity. Instead of looking down on them and their supporters, we might do better to seriously and humbly contemplate the nature of their appeal. And so, confront the real America, scoundrels and all.”
      A Republic of Scoundrels is published in the US by Pegasus Books More

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      The Squad review: AOC, the rise of the left and the fight against dark money

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      Ryan Grim’s sprawling new book is called The Squad, but it is about much more than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her progressive allies in the US House. It does provide mini-biographies of AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, but it should have been called The Squad and Its Enemies, given the amount of space it devotes to their adversaries.Grim also gives a blow-by-blow replay of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, and extremely detailed accounts of how Joe Biden’s infrastructure and domestic spending bills finally made it through Congress.The book seems to have been written at great speed without much time for editing. At times that makes it a little hard to follow. For example, on page 30, we learn that Justice Democrats, an organization founded in 2017 to elect “a new type of Democratic majority in Congress”, suddenly pulled out of AOC’s first race because she wasn’t raising enough money herself.“She was crushed and considered dropping out,” Grim writes. But then, two pages later, we learn that Justice Democrats “just went all in and just diverted it all” to AOC. “We stopped raising money for anybody else,” an organizer explains.There are small, easily checkable errors. The Rayburn House Office Building, we’re told, was “built in the 1950s during the postwar boom”. Actually its cornerstone was laid in 1962 and the building opened in 1965.Grim is a big fan of hard-left, hard-edged judgments against middle-of-the-road Democrats. On the very first page, we are told of the “rubble of the Obama administration’s pivot to austerity in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis”. Nine pages later, Obama is accused of encouraging more home foreclosures “to keep the bailed-out banks alive”.According to Grim, the present House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, has a “visceral hatred toward the radical left”; gets “roughly half” of his campaign money from corporate political action committees; and has the additional sins of being a “vocal supporter of charter schools”, an ally of the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and a supporter of Hillary Clinton.Grim is on more solid ground when he attacks the Problem Solvers, a group that “claimed it would solve problems by bringing together moderate Democrats and reasonable Republicans for common sense solutions” but whose primary goal is to block “tax increases on private equity moguls and hedge fund executives” who funded dark money groups linked to No Labels, the “centrist” group threatening to run a third-party candidate for president, potentially hurting Joe Biden and helping Donald Trump.Grim offers very long sections about the debilitating effects of dark money on the entire political system, and the negative effects of the extremely large amounts spent by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and the rest of the lobby for Israel. He is at his best when he describes Washington alliances that are mostly invisible to casual students of the Capitol scene. There is a long narrative about Josh Gottheimer, a former Clinton intern and speechwriter turned New Jersey congressman elected with the support of Aipac, a Problem Solvers founder .Gottheimer’s most important ally is Mark Penn, a key Hillary Clinton strategist and the former head of the PR powerhouse Burson-Marsteller. Gottheimer, a congressional champion of Israel, was paradoxically aided by Penn’s longtime work for Saudi Arabia. The Saudis and the United Arab Emirates “built an alliance with the Israeli lobbying operation in Washington”, Grim explains. “Israel won Arab cred from the two autocracies even as its settlements in occupied Palestinian territory were rapidly expanding. And the autocracies were helped by association with one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies.”“Israel and the Arabs standing together is the ultimate ace in the hole,” an Israeli embassy official tells the author.Because of this unholy alliance, Gottheimer became one of the “top recipients of cash” from lobbyists and lawyers working for Saudi Arabia in his first re-election cycle.We also learn in detail how the mere threat of opposition by Aipac in his Florida congressional primary transformed Maxwell Frost’s position on the Middle East. The young Democrat had signed a pledge to “heed the call of Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) and called for “an end to US political, military and economic support to Israel, and to all military security and policing collaborations”. But after Richie Torres, a New York Democrat, befriended Frost, the Floridian ended up “a candidate who wanted no strings attached to military aid to Israel” and who considered BDS “extremely problematic and a risk to the chances of peace and a two-state solution”.Stories like this lend credence to the judgment of Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, who survived her own “near-death experience” at the hands of the Israel lobby. She tells Grim she knows people deterred from running for office “because this is a topic that they know will bury them. There’s absolutely a chilling effect”.Lee continues: “It’s very hard to survive as a progressive Black, working-class-background candidate when you are facing millions and millions of dollars.” This also “deters other people from ever wanting to get into it. So then it has the effect of ensuring that the Black community broadly, the other marginalized communities are just no longer centered in our politics”.As Grim demonstrates convincingly, that is one of the many big costs the US pays thanks to the gigantic role of dark money in its politics.
      The Squad is published in the US by Henry Holt & Co More

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      Federal appeals court mostly upholds Trump’s gag order in 2020 election subversion case – live

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      A federal appeals court has upheld most of a gag order against Donald Trump imposed by the judge handling his trial on charges related to attempting the overthrow of the 2020 election.Washington DC-based judge Tanya Chutkan imposed the order in October that prevented the former president from making inflammatory statements and social media posts attacking prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff in the case. Trump appealed the order, arguing it unconstitutionally infringed on his first amendment rights and hindered his political speech amid his campaign for a second term in the White House.The order was put on hold as appeals judges considered his challenge. In its ruling, the court generally upheld Chutkan’s order, but said Trump was now also allowed to assail the special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the criminal case against the former president.A federal appeals court upheld most of the gag order judge Tanya Chutkan imposed on Donald Trump following incendiary comments he made about people involved in his trial on charges related to overturning the 2020 election. The former president is barred from attacking court staff, prosecutorial staff and potential trial witnesses, but the appeals judges did allow him to criticize Chutkan, the justice department, the Biden administration and the case itself as politically motivated. Elsewhere, Hunter Biden’s legal trouble deepened after prosecutors filed new tax charges against him, and in an interview with the musician Moby, the president’s son said the GOP is “trying to kill me” to undermine Joe Biden’s presidency.Here’s what else happened today:
      Hunter Biden’s attorney said the latest charges against his client were the result of “Republican pressure”.
      Trump’s campaign discouraged speculation over who might be hired to staff his administration, if he wins next year’s presidential election.
      The rightwing House Freedom Caucus demanded Congress approve hardline immigration policies that Democrats oppose in exchange for more Ukraine aid.
      Joe Biden’s approval ratings have hit a record low, poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight reports.
      A protest against a Philadelphia Jewish restaurant by demonstrators calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was more complicated than it initially appeared.
      The Trump campaign has also released a statement regarding speculation in the media over who might staff his administration, assuming he wins next year’s election.“Let us be very specific here: unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official,” write Trump aides Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.“Let us be even more specific, and blunt: People publicly discussing potential administration jobs for themselves or their friends are, in fact, hurting President Trump … and themselves. These are an unwelcomed distraction. Second term policy priorities and staffing decisions will not – in no uncertain terms – be led by anonymous or thinly sourced speculation in mainstream media news stories.”For more on the speculation surrounding Trump’s staff in his second term, here’s the Guardian’s Peter Stone:Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Donald Trump, has released a statement that attempts to reframe today’s federal appeals court decision upholding the gag order against the former president:
      Today, the D.C. Circuit Court panel, with each judge appointed by a Democrat President, determined that a huge part of Judge Chutkan’s extraordinarily overbroad gag order was unconstitutional. President Trump will continue to fight for the First Amendment rights of tens of millions of Americans to hear from the leading Presidential candidate at the height of his campaign. The Biden-led witch hunts against President Trump and the American people will fail.
      While the court did strike down parts of the order, it upheld the aspects banning Trump from attacking the prosecutors, witnesses and court staff.In their ruling upholding most of federal judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag order against Donald Trump, the US court of appeals for the district of Columbia circuit found his statements could threaten his trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election.“We agree with the district court that some aspects of Mr. Trump’s public statements pose a significant and imminent threat to the fair and orderly adjudication of the ongoing criminal proceeding, warranting a speech-constraining protective order,” judge Patricia A Millett wrote for the court.Among the statements cited was one Trump posted on social media the day after his initial appearance in the case: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” The appeals court also noted that he attacked Chutkan as a “fraud dressed up as a judge” and “a radical Obama hack”, and that a supporter responded with a threat to kill the judge that used what appears to be a racial slur.“We do not allow such an order lightly,” federal appeals court judge Patricia A Millett wrote as she concluded the court’s decision allowing the gag order against Donald Trump.She continued:
      Mr. Trump is a former President and current candidate for the presidency, and there is a strong public interest in what he has to say. But Mr. Trump is also an indicted criminal defendant, and he must stand trial in a courtroom under the same procedures that govern all other criminal defendants. That is what the rule of law means.
      As the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported last month, an appeals court appeared inclined to uphold judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag order against Donald Trump, and indeed they have:A federal appeals court appeared inclined at a hearing on Monday to keep some form of a gag order against Donald Trump preventing him from assailing potential trial witnesses and others in the criminal case related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The court expressed concern, however, that the order was too broad and left open the possibility of restricting its scope – including allowing the former US president to criticize the prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith who brought the charges.The trial judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case in federal district court in Washington, entered the order in October that prohibited Trump from making inflammatory statements and social media posts attacking prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff in the case.It allowed Trump only to criticize the case in general terms – such as broadly attacking Joe Biden, the Biden administration or the justice department as bringing politically motivated charges against him – and to criticize the judge herself.Trump appealed to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit, arguing the order unconstitutionally infringed on his first amendment rights and protected core political speech as he campaigns to be re-elected to the presidency next year. The order was paused while he appealed.A federal appeals court has upheld most of a gag order against Donald Trump imposed by the judge handling his trial on charges related to attempting the overthrow of the 2020 election.Washington DC-based judge Tanya Chutkan imposed the order in October that prevented the former president from making inflammatory statements and social media posts attacking prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff in the case. Trump appealed the order, arguing it unconstitutionally infringed on his first amendment rights and hindered his political speech amid his campaign for a second term in the White House.The order was put on hold as appeals judges considered his challenge. In its ruling, the court generally upheld Chutkan’s order, but said Trump was now also allowed to assail the special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the criminal case against the former president.Here’s the moment from Hunter Biden’s interview with Moby where he says Republicans are trying to “kill me” to bring down his father’s presidency:Earlier this week, Democratic and Republican politicians from the White House on down condemned the targeting of a Philadelphia Jewish restaurant by protesters calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip as antisemitic. But the Guardian’s Wilfred Chan reports that the story is more complex than that:The 21-second clip went viral almost as soon as it was posted early on Sunday evening. It showed hundreds of protesters, some with Palestinian flags, united in a rhyming chant: “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”They were protesting outside Goldie, a vegan falafel restaurant owned by Michael Solomonov, the Israel-born celebrity chef best known for Zahav, an Israeli-themed restaurant widely considered one of the United States’ finest eateries. It was one brief stop along a march traversing Philadelphia that lasted about three hours.Many of the protesters hadn’t even returned home from the march when the condemnations began to pour in. The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, posted on X: “Tonight in Philly, we saw a blatant act of antisemitism – not a peaceful protest. A restaurant was targeted and mobbed because its owner is Jewish and Israeli. This hate and bigotry is reminiscent of a dark time in history.”Even the White House piled on: it was “antisemitic and completely unjustifiable to target restaurants that serve Israeli food over disagreements with Israeli policy”, said the deputy press secretary, Andrew Bates. Douglas Emhoff, husband of Vice-President Kamala Harris, wrote on X that he had spoken with Solomonov and “told him @POTUS, @VP, and the entire Biden-Harris Administration will continue to have his back”.It was the apex of a saga that has resulted in at least three workers fired from Solomonov’s restaurants over, as they see it, their pro-Palestine activism coming into conflict with their bosses’ views and policies, and at least one other worker who has resigned in protest – thrusting the renowned Israeli eateries into the thick of bitter US disagreements over the Israel-Hamas war.The street protest against Goldie has sparked heated debate. As the war on Gaza rages on, with over 17,000 people killed in Gaza since 7 October – 70% of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry – are Israel-linked businesses in the US implicated? Was Solomonov, a chef who has credited Palestinian influences in his cooking, an appropriate target?The 2024 election is months away, but Donald Trump and his allies are already planning on who they might hire for White House jobs, assuming he wins. The Guardian’s Peter Stone takes a look at what we know so far about Trump’s hiring plans:As Donald Trump and his allies start plotting another presidency, an emerging priority is to find hard-right lawyers who display total fealty to Trump, as a way to enhance his power and seek “retribution” against political foes.Stocking a future administration with more ideological lawyers loyal to Trump in key posts at the justice department, other agencies and the White House is alarming to former DoJ officials and analysts who say such plans endanger the rule of law.Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller, president of the Maga-allied legal group America First Legal, is playing a key role in seeking lawyers fully in sync with Trump’s radical agenda to expand his power and curb some major agencies. His search is for those with unswerving loyalty to Trump, who could back Trump’s increasingly authoritarian talk about plans to “weaponize” the DoJ against critics, including some he has labeled as “vermin”.Miller is well known in Maga circles for his loyalty to Trump and the hard-line anti-immigration policies he helped craft for Trump’s presidency. Notably, Trump has vowed to make those policies even more draconian if he is the GOP nominee and wins again.Such an advisory role for Miller squares with Trump’s desire for a tougher brand of lawyer who will not try to obstruct him, as some top administration lawyers did in late 2020 over his false claims about election fraud.As Joe Biden centers his presidential campaign around major pieces of legislation enacted on his watch, like the bipartisan infrastructure act, Reuters reports Donald Trump and the GOP are expected to make channeling public funds to private and religious schools a key part of their pitch to voters:Beyond the tumult surrounding Donald Trump’s presidential bid and his threats to seek revenge against his political enemies should he win, the Republican frontrunner has seized on an issue that even some Democrats say could attract new voters in 2024.Trump is backing “school choice” programs that use taxpayer dollars to send students to private and religious schools. It is a stance with wide appeal as parents have become increasingly fed up with the state of US public education.Polls show that about 70% of parents favor greater education options. The issue resonates strongly enough with some voters that Trump’s support could make a difference in the presidential election as well as help Republicans in state and congressional races.“It’s popular among the Republican base, it’s popular among independents and even popular among the Democratic base – in particular African Americans and Hispanics,” said Jason Bedrick, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.Hunter Biden’s legal trouble deepened after prosecutors filed new tax charges against him. In an interview with the musician Moby, the president’s son said the GOP is “trying to kill me” to undermine Joe Biden’s presidency, while James Comer, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee, claimed his panel’s work led to the new charges. The president, meanwhile, had nothing to say about the latest developments in the prosecution, instead cheering better-than-expected employment data and announcing new investments in high-speed rail.Here’s what else is going on:
      Hunter Biden’s attorney said the latest charges against his client were the result of “Republican pressure”.
      The rightwing House Freedom Caucus demanded Congress approve hardline immigration policies that Democrats oppose in exchange for more Ukraine aid.
      Joe Biden’s approval ratings have hit a record low, poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight reports.
      The infrastructure act was passed in 2021 with a combination of Democratic and Republican votes, during a period when Congress was a much more functional place than it is today.Things sure have changed, particularly after the GOP took control of the House in last year’s midterm elections. The Republicans made clear they would not go along with the Biden administration’s plans, and though they have spent a substantial time fighting amongst themselves, they are currently fairly united in opposing an attempt by Joe Biden to win approval of a security package for Israel and Ukraine’s military, and the southern border with Mexico.The GOP instead wants Democrats to agree to enact hardline policies that they oppose, like restarting construction of Donald Trump’s border wall, and measures to keep asylum seekers out of the country. There is enough agreement among both parties over the importance of getting aid to Israel and Ukraine that they are still talking about a compromise, but the rightwing House Freedom Caucus just issued a statement saying, in part, that they will not support any bill that does not include the hardline immigration policies:If any compromise passes the House, there’s a good chance it will do so with some Democratic votes, and the Freedom Caucus’s opposition may not matter. Perhaps the person who should be most concerned about their statement is speaker Mike Johnson, considering several of the caucus’s members led the charge to remove his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, from the leadership post over his willingness to work with Democrats.Joe Biden’s trip to Las Vegas today will see him specifically focus on how the 2021 infrastructure law will revamp railway and build new high-speed lines between major metropolitan areas.High-speed rail has long been an elusive goal for transportation planners in the United States, which, unlike many of its peers among developed countries, has only one line that falls under that classification: Amtrak’s Acela service running between Washington DC and Boston.The White House today announced $8.2b in funding from the infrastructure law will go towards high-speed rail development, including new projects connecting California and Nevada. Here’s more from the Biden administration’s press release:
      Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing $8.2 billion in new funding for 10 major passenger rail projects across the country, including the first world-class high-speed rail projects in our country’s history. Key selected projects include: building a new high-speed rail system between California and Nevada, which will serve more than 11 million passengers annually; creating a high-speed rail line through California’s Central Valley to ultimately link Los Angeles and San Francisco, supporting travel with speeds up to 220 mph; delivering significant upgrades to frequently-traveled rail corridors in Virginia, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia; and upgrading and expanding capacity at Chicago Union Station in Illinois, one of the nation’s busiest rail hubs. These historic projects will create tens of thousands of good-paying, union jobs, unlock economic opportunity for communities across the country, and open up safe, comfortable, and climate-friendly travel options to get people to their destinations in a fraction of the time it takes to drive. More

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      Jamaal Bowman on his censure: ‘This Republican House is unserious and unproductive’ – as it happened

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      New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman has issued a statement in response to his censure by House Republicans, saying: “This Republican House is unserious and unproductive.”In his statement, Bowman said:
      I want to thank Democratic leadership and my countless other colleagues for standing up for me last night during the debate. Your words were so kind and I am always grateful to have you all by my side.
      I have expressed deep regret, apologized for my mistake, and taken accountability for my actions. I also went through the proper investigative processes with the Republican controlled House Committee on Ethics, which decided not to open a formal investigation.
      I had hoped that we could devote our time and resources to doing our jobs and addressing the issues Americans care about. Americans desperately need us to act with urgency to address the high costs of healthcare, prevent gun violence, invest in education, and so much more, but my colleagues have made it explicitly clear that they would rather relitigate already settled matters than do what we were sent here to do and legislate.
      This Republican House is unserious and unproductive, and I know that their efforts to target me are a testament to the importance of my voice in pushing back against their disingenuous rhetoric and harmful policies. I look forward to continuing to serve the people of New York’s 16th district and the country.
      It is 4pm in Washington DC. Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      The GOP-led House voted to censure New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman with 214 yeas and 191 nays. There were also five votes of present and three Democrats out of party lines against Bowman, who pleaded guilty to setting off a fire alarm in a House office building in September.
      Jamaal Bowman issued a statement in response to his censure saying: “This Republican House is unserious and unproductive.” He added: “I know that their efforts to target me are a testament to the importance of my voice in pushing back against their disingenuous rhetoric and harmful policies.”
      In response to the House’s vote to censure Jamaal Bowman, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said that Maga Republicans “have nothing to show for their narrow, fading and decreasing majority”. “Extreme Maga Republicans continue to utilize tactics such as censuring Democratic members of Congress, burying their heads in the sand with respect to unlawful or unacceptable conduct by their own members,” he added.
      Michigan’s Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib criticized House Republicans following the vote to censure Jamaal Bowman. In an impassioned address, she said: “You all [are] so desperate to distract from the fact that you all have nothing, nothing to improve the lives of the American people or end the ongoing genocide [in Gaza]. So now you’re trying to shift the focus by baselessly attacking Rep Bowman to score cheap political points.”
      Massachusetts’s Democratic representative Ayanna Pressley also condemned the censure of Jamaal Bowman. Pressley called the censure “just the latest in this chamber’s shameful history of telling Black and brown folks they don’t belong in Congress”.
      The Joe Biden administration has announced new actions to promote competition in healthcare and support lowering prescription drug costs for Americans. A statement released by the White House on Thursday revealed that the actions include the promotion of equitable access to lower-price taxpayer-funded drugs, as well as the launch of a cross-government public inquiry into corporate greed in healthcare.
      The White House has pushed back against House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. In a statement released on Thursday, Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations said: “This baseless stunt is not rooted in facts or reality but in extreme House Republicans’ shameless desire to abuse their power to smear president Biden.”
      CNN has announced that it will host two Republican presidential primary debates next month in Iowa and New Hampshire. The first debate will take place on 10 January at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The second debate is scheduled for 21 January at St Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire.
      That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.Jahana Hayes, one of the three Democrats who voted to censure Jamaal Bowman, has released a statement explaining her vote:
      Today, I voted YEA on a resolution to censure representative Jamaal Bowman for pulling a fire alarm in the Cannon House office building on September 30th, 2023.
      While I disagree with the decision of the Republican majority to put the resolution on the House floor, and the watering down of the censure process, I believe what representative Bowman did was wrong and as members of Congress we should be held to a higher standard.
      The other two Democrats who voted to censure Bowman are New Hampshire’s Chris Pappas and Washington’s Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.George Santos, the former New York Republican representative who was expelled from the House last weekend, has also weighed in on the censure of Jamaal Bowman.Tweeting on Thursday, Santos said:
      Republicans in the house just showed they don’t have the testicular fortitude to expel a convicted criminal from the house of reps.
      Bowman got a slap on the wrist from the RINO [Republicans In Name Only] establishment and they now all feel like they accomplished something!
      New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman has issued a statement in response to his censure by House Republicans, saying: “This Republican House is unserious and unproductive.”In his statement, Bowman said:
      I want to thank Democratic leadership and my countless other colleagues for standing up for me last night during the debate. Your words were so kind and I am always grateful to have you all by my side.
      I have expressed deep regret, apologized for my mistake, and taken accountability for my actions. I also went through the proper investigative processes with the Republican controlled House Committee on Ethics, which decided not to open a formal investigation.
      I had hoped that we could devote our time and resources to doing our jobs and addressing the issues Americans care about. Americans desperately need us to act with urgency to address the high costs of healthcare, prevent gun violence, invest in education, and so much more, but my colleagues have made it explicitly clear that they would rather relitigate already settled matters than do what we were sent here to do and legislate.
      This Republican House is unserious and unproductive, and I know that their efforts to target me are a testament to the importance of my voice in pushing back against their disingenuous rhetoric and harmful policies. I look forward to continuing to serve the people of New York’s 16th district and the country.
      Georgia’s state Republican lawmakers have finalized new district maps to comply with a federal judge’s order.The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports:Republican state lawmakers in Georgia have finalized new district maps to comply with a federal judge’s order, though Democrats and advocacy groups say the new maps create one majority-Black district at the expense of another diverse district.US district judge Steve Jones ordered Georgia lawmakers to redo their redistricted maps in October after a lawsuit claimed they violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Black people.He gave lawmakers until 8 December to redraw maps to create “an additional majority-Black district” in west metro Atlanta. He warned “the state cannot remedy the section 2 violations found herein by eliminating minority opportunity districts elsewhere in the plans”.Georgia lawmakers did not appear to heed that instruction. They created the additional majority-Black district in west Atlanta, but dismantled another district where Black voters had been joining with other racial minorities to elect the candidate of their choosing. The dismantled district is now represented by Lucy McBath, a Democrat. The plan ensures that Republicans are able to maintain a 9-5 advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.Read the full story here:The Joe Biden administration has announced new actions to promote competition in healthcare and support lowering prescription drug costs for Americans.A statement released by the White House on Thursday revealed that the actions include the promotion of equitable access to lower-price taxpayer-funded drugs, as well as the launch of a cross-government public inquiry into corporate greed in healthcare.Other actions include increasing ownership transparency, as well as Medicare Advantage transparency.In a tweet on Thursday, Biden said:
      “My administration is proposing that if a drug made using taxpayer funds is not reasonably available to Americans, the government reserves the right to “march in” and license that drug to another manufacturer who could sell it for less.”
      The White House has pushed back against House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, the “baseless stunt is not rooted in facts or reality”.In a statement released on Thursday, Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations said:
      This baseless stunt is not rooted in facts or reality but in extreme House Republicans’ shameless desire to abuse their power to smear President Biden. Fox News already reported that the only reason they’re having this vote is to ‘put a GOP win on the table for the base’, which is sad, pathetic, and a waste of everyone’s time.”
      Instead of doing anything to actually help people before leaving Washington for a month, these extreme House Republicans are hoping to distract from their own failed ability to govern by trying to score cheap political points in an effort to mollify Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is in open war with her own party’s Speaker. The American people are yet again going to see a clear contrast in priorities: President Biden who is focused on solving the challenges facing America and the world, and extreme House Republicans who only focus on stupid stunts to get attention for themselves.
      CNN has announced that it will host two Republican presidential primary debates next month in Iowa and New Hampshire.The first debate will take place on 10 January at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The second debate is scheduled for 21 January at St Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has criticized Republicans over their decision to block supplemental funding for Ukraine and Israel, saying that they need to “get serious and stand up for democracy”.In a tweet following the Senate’s vote on Wednesday to block the funding, Schumer wrote:
      The GOP blocked funding for Ukraine, Israel, humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza, the Indo-Pacific
      We offered a golden opportunity for a border amendment vote of their choosing if it can get 60 votes – they rejected it
      Republicans need to get serious and stand up for democracy
      Massachusetts’s Democratic representative Ayanna Pressley has condemned the censure of New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman.Following the vote, Pressley addressed the House and called the censure “just the latest in this chamber’s shameful history of telling Black and brown folks they don’t belong in Congress”.She added:
      Congressman Bowman has taken accountability for his mistake and even Republicans on the [House] ethics committee agree that this is a waste of time. We’ve got 99 problems but a functional government of a Republican majority is not one of them.
      Republicans are disconnected, dysfunctional, discriminating and a disappointment to the American people.
      New Hampshire’s Democratic representative Chris Pappas, who voted to censure New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman, told Axios:
      I voted to table this resolution because we have far more pressing issues to tackle for the country.
      But at the end of the day, representative Bowman broke the law when he pulled the fire alarm during House proceedings and has since pled guilty. The resolution was a straightforward condemnation of his actions, and I voted yes.
      Florida’s Democratic representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost has also hit back at Republicans following their vote to censure New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman, calling it “pathetic”.In an tweet on Thursday, Frost wrote:
      House Republicans just spent time and taxpayer money to censure one of the people’s champions, Jamaal Bowman.
      They did this while they have members who aided and abetted the January 6th insurrection.
      Pathetic.
      In response to the House’s vote to censure New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said that Maga Republicans “have nothing to show for their narrow, fading and decreasing majority”.He said:
      Extreme Maga Republicans continue to utilize tactics such as censuring Democratic members of Congress, burying their heads in the sand with respect to unlawful or unacceptable conduct by their own members including but not limited to Marjorie Taylor Greene, and engaging in efforts to irresponsibly and illegitimately target president Joe Biden and his family.
      Why are extreme Maga Republicans wasting so much time on these efforts to target Democratic members of Congress, target president Biden?… It’s because the extreme Maga Republicans have nothing to show for their narrow, fading and decreasing majority.
      Rashida Tlaib has criticized House Republicans following the vote to censure New York’s Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman.In an impassioned address, she said:
      “So desperate. You all [are] so desperate to distract from the fact that you all have nothing, nothing to improve the lives of the American people or end the ongoing genocide [in Gaza]. So now you’re trying to shift the focus by baselessly attacking Rep. Bowman to score cheap political points, comparing him to the white supremacists on January 6th, who were smashing windows in the Capitol, you all, and screaming ‘Hang Mike Pence!’
      Your inability to govern is so obvious to the American people. You all can’t even find enough Republicans to vote to pass a budget or keep a speaker. This is yet another attempt to silence a person of color in this chamber.”
      Last month, the Republican-majority House voted to censure Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, over her condemnation of Israel’s war in Gaza which has killed over 21,700 Palestinians in the last two months. More

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      in US Politics

      US university presidents face firestorm over evasive answers on antisemitism

      by

      The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after they appeared to evade questions during a congressional hearing about whether calls by students for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.In a contentious, hours-long debate on Tuesday, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sought to address the steps they were taking to combat rising antisemitism on campus since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. But it was their careful, indirect response to a question posed by the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York that drew scathing criticism.In an exchange that has now gone viral, Stefanik, a graduate of Harvard, pressed Elizabeth Magill, the president of UPenn, on Tuesday to say whether students calling for the genocide of Jews would be disciplined under the university’s code of conduct. In her line of questioning, Stefanik appeared to be conflating chants calling for “intifada” – a word that in Arabic means uprising, and has been used in reference to both peaceful and violent Palestinian protest – with hypothetical calls for genocide.“If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” Magill replied, in a reference to distinctions in first amendment law. “It is a context-dependent decision.” Stefanik pushed her to answer “yes” or “no”, which Magill did not.The backlash was swift and bipartisan.“It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson. “Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting – and we should all stand firmly against them, on the side of human dignity and the most basic values that unite us as Americans.”The White House was joined by several Jewish officials and leaders in condemning the university presidents’ testimony before the US House committee on education and the workforce, at a hearing called by Republicans titled Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, said the simple response was “yes, that violates our policy.” Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Shapiro urged UPenn’s board to meet soon, as a petition calling for Magill’s resignation garnered thousands of signatures. According to CNN, Penn’s board of trustees held an “emergency meeting” on Thursday.The liberal Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe noted that he rarely agreed with Stefanik, a far-right Trump ally, but wrote: “I’m with her here.”The Harvard president Claudine Gay’s “hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends”. Tribe added.Republican presidential candidates also seized on the episode, folding it into their broader criticism of the US’s elite institutions as too “woke” and liberal.In an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday, Ron DeSantis, who has led the rightwing crackdown on higher education as Florida’s governor, said the college presidents’ lack of moral clarity was a reflection of the liberal orthodoxy permeating higher education.“I think what this has revealed is the rot and the sickness that’s been festering inside higher education for a long time,” said DeSantis, a graduate of Harvard Law School who is running for president. He continued: “They should not be these hotbeds of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. But that’s what they’ve become.”Amid a surge in youth activism around the conflict, university leaders have struggled to balance the free speech of some pro-Palestinian activists with the fears of Jewish students who say the rhetoric crosses a line into antisemitism. In a number of cases, schools have responded by banning campus groups supportive of Palestinian rights.During their appearances, Magill, Gay and Sally Kornbluth of MIT all expressed alarm at the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia on college campuses, some of which have triggered federal investigations by the Department of Education. In response, the presidents said they had taken steps to increase security measures and reporting tools while expanding mental health and counseling services. They also said it was their responsibility to ensure college campuses remain a place of free expression and free thought.In a new statement on Wednesday, Gay stated: “There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students. Let me be clear: calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”Magill also sought to clarify her remarks to the committee in a video statement, in which she said her response to Stefanik’s question was an attempt to parse the university policies stating that speech alone is not punishable. But in doing so she said she failed to acknowledge the “irrefutable fact” that such speech represents a “call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetuate.“I want to be clear, a call for genocide of Jewish people is threatening – deeply so,” she said, adding: “In my view, it would be harassment or intimidation.”In the video, posted to X, Magill said the university’s policies “need to be clarified and evaluated” and committed to immediately convening a process to do so.Some free speech advocates expressed alarm at the possibility that universities may respond to the backlash by adopting speech-restrictive policies that depart from the protections of the first amendment, which governs government actors including public schools. But the universities at issue in Tuesday’s hearing are all private. Fire, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, called Magill’s comments on re-evaluating Penn’s policies a “deeply troubling, profoundly counterproductive response” to the anger.“Were Penn to retreat from the robust protection of expressive rights, university administrators would make inevitably political decisions about who may speak and what may be said on campus,” it said in a statement. The result of placing new limits on speech, it said, would mean “dissenting and unpopular speech – whether pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian, conservative or liberal – will be silenced”. More