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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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      US university presidents face firestorm over evasive answers on antisemitism

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      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

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      Biden infuriated by Ukraine impasse but Republicans refuse to bend over border

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      It is an astonishing bit of horse-trading over Ukraine that has left Democrats infuriated, even baffled. After Senate Republicans blocked a supplemental funding package on Wednesday to aid the country in its fight against the Russian invasion, demanding tough new southern border controls in exchange, the chamber’s leading Democrat took to the floor.Calling it “a sad night in the history of the Senate”, Chuck Schumer bemoaned the vote as a disappointing reflection on the country, a step away from letting Vladimir Putin “walk right through Ukraine and right through Europe”.“Republicans just blocked a very much needed proposal to send funding for Ukraine, funding for Israel, humanitarian aid for innocent civilians in Gaza, and funding for the Indo-Pacific,” Schumer said.“If there is a word for what we most need now, it is to be serious.”The 49-51 vote reflected a growing trend in Congress that has become a source of distress for the White House. When Russia first invaded Ukraine in February 2022, aiding Kyiv was a bipartisan project. In May of that year, a $40bn Ukraine aid package sailed through the House with a vote of 368-57, and the Senate with a vote of 86 -11.But as the war has stretched on, more Republican lawmakers have turned against aid to Ukraine, embracing Donald Trump’s “America first” approach to foreign policy. When the House voted in September on a bill to provide $300m to train and equip Ukrainian fighters, a majority of Republicans – 117 members – opposed it.Republicans also now have more power in Congress than they did when the war in Ukraine began. Although Democrats previously controlled both chambers, Republicans now hold a narrow majority in the House. That new strength has emboldened them to insist that any supplemental funding for Ukraine also include robust border security measures, many of which are unpalatable to Democrats.The standoff comes at a dangerous point in Ukraine’s fight against Russia. The White House has warned that the US is “out of money and nearly out of time” to assist Ukraine, suggesting the Russian military will soon gain ground in the war without another infusion of funding for Kyiv.Democrats and Republicans have been negotiating over a potential compromise on border measures to get the aid package across the finish line, but those talks stalled out over the weekend. On Wednesday Joe Biden accused Republicans of negotiating in bad faith.“Republicans think they can get everything they want without any bipartisan compromise. That’s not the answer,” Biden said. “And now they’re willing to literally kneecap Ukraine on the battlefield and damage our national security in the process.”Despite the stark rhetoric, Republicans have presented a united front in their demands for more severe changes to immigration policy. Even Republican lawmakers who remain strongly supportive of additional Ukraine aid, such as the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, have embraced this stance. On Wednesday, McConnell joined his 48 Republican colleagues in opposing the motion to advance the aid package, and he rejected Schumer’s exhortation to “get serious” about threats to democracy.“It is profoundly unserious to pretend that national security priorities don’t include securing our nation’s borders, to warn about borders in jeopardy and not start with the one that’s being overrun here at home,” McConnell said on Thursday. “I’m not in need of any lectures about on the gravity of the challenges facing national security today.”The gridlock has angered and at times perplexed Democrats. In their minds, sending financial aid to US allies such as Ukraine benefits the entire country and thus should be an area of common ground between the two parties. But the recent negotiations appear to have reframed Ukraine aid as a Democratic priority that can only be achieved through concessions to Republicans, specifically on the issue of immigration. That shifting dynamic has not escaped the notice of some frustrated Democrats on Capitol Hill.“I think I’m going to demand that we pass an assault weapons ban or I won’t fund Ukraine,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, told HuffPost. “I guess that’s how things get done around here.”Despite that frustration, Biden appeared open to continuing negotiations on Wednesday, saying he was willing to make “significant compromises on the border” to advance the aid package. McConnell similarly described Wednesday’s failed vote as “a new opportunity to make real progress on legislation that addresses urgent national security priorities”.Schumer also appeared prepared to reopen negotiations on Wednesday, even as he implored Republicans to “come up with something serious instead of the extreme policies they’ve presented thus far”.“This is a serious moment that will have lasting consequences for the 21st century. If Ukraine falls, Putin will not stop there. He will be emboldened,” Schumer said.“Western democracy will begin to enter an age of decline if we aren’t willing to defend it. This Senate – this Republican party – must get serious.” More

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      Kevin McCarthy, ousted House speaker, says he will leave Congress at end of the year – US politics live

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      In an address today, Joe Biden urged Congress to pass his national security supplemental request, including funding to support Ukraine.Speaking from the White House’s Roosevelt Room, the president said:
      Congress has to uphold the national security needs of the United States and, quite frankly, of our partners as well. This cannot wait. Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. It’s as simple as that.
      Biden also touched on border policies, saying:
      Extreme Republicans are playing chicken with our national security, holding Ukraine’s funding hostage to their extreme partisan border policies.
      Let me be clear: we need real solutions. I support real solutions at the border. I put forward a comprehensive plan the first day I came into office. I’ve made it clear that we need Congress to make changes to fix what is a broken immigration system, because we all know it’s broken. And I’m willing to do significantly more. But in terms of changes to policy and to provide resources that we need at the border, I’m willing to change policy as well.
      The Senate has begun a procedural vote on Joe Biden’s national security supplemental funding request. Sixty votes are required surrounding the $106bn Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan funding.So far, there are 30 yes’s and 29 no’s. The voting remains underway.In an address today, Joe Biden urged Congress to pass his national security supplemental request, including funding to support Ukraine.Speaking from the White House’s Roosevelt Room, the president said:
      Congress has to uphold the national security needs of the United States and, quite frankly, of our partners as well. This cannot wait. Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. It’s as simple as that.
      Biden also touched on border policies, saying:
      Extreme Republicans are playing chicken with our national security, holding Ukraine’s funding hostage to their extreme partisan border policies.
      Let me be clear: we need real solutions. I support real solutions at the border. I put forward a comprehensive plan the first day I came into office. I’ve made it clear that we need Congress to make changes to fix what is a broken immigration system, because we all know it’s broken. And I’m willing to do significantly more. But in terms of changes to policy and to provide resources that we need at the border, I’m willing to change policy as well.
      A new school board president in Pennsylvania was sworn in on Monday on a stack of frequently banned books.In a video posted by the Recount, Karen Smith, the new Central Bucks school board president can be seen saying her vows on a stack of six banned books.According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the books include Night by Elie Wiesel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Lily and Dunkin by Donna Gephart, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson, Flamer by Mike Curato, and Beyond Magenta by Susan Kukin.According to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF), between 1 January and 31 August, OIF reported 698 to censor library materials and services and documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles.The ban marks a 20% increase from the same reporting period in 2022, OIF said.Four Republican presidential candidates are set to meet onstage in Alabama tonight for the fourth Republican presidential debate.The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports:Four White House hopefuls will meet onstage in Alabama for the fourth Republican presidential primary debate, the smallest lineup yet as the window for denting Donald Trump’s lead narrows.Wednesday night’s debate, hosted by the cable network NewsNation at the Moody Music Hall at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, offers one of the last major opportunities for the candidates to make their case to Republican voters before the party’s nominating contest begins next month.The two-hour event will feature Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador, who are locked in an increasingly combative scrap to be the second-place alternative to Trump. They will be joined by Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, who both trail far behind.Read the full story here:Joe Biden has announced that his administration is approving another $4.8bn in student debt cancellation for 80,300 people.In a statement released on Wednesday, the president said that this brings the total debt cancellation that his administration has approved to $132bn for over 3.6 million Americans.Biden said:
      Today’s announcement comes on top of all we’ve been able to achieve for students and student loan borrowers in the past few years.
      This includes: achieving the largest increases in Pell Grants in over a decade to help families who earn less than roughly $60,000 a year; fixing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program so that borrowers who go into public service get the debt relief they’re entitled to under the law; and creating the most generous Income-Driven Repayment plan in history – the Save plan.
      The Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison has released the following statement on Kevin McCarthy’s resignation announcement in which he said the US will be “better off without Kevin in office”:
      In his short time as speaker, Kevin McCarthy managed to plunge the People’s House into chaos in the name of serving one person and one person alone: Donald Trump. At every turn, Kevin sought to give his puppet master a lifeline, even after the horrific events of January 6, and spent his embarrassing speakership bending the knee to the most extreme factions of the MAGA base. This anticlimactic end to Kevin’s political career is in line with the rest of his time on Capitol Hill – plagued by cowardice, incompetence, and fecklessness. Our country will be better off without Kevin in office, but his failed tenure in the House should serve as a stark warning to the country about the future of the GOP – no matter how much he kowtowed to the extreme right, no matter how much he kissed the ring, none of it was MAGA enough for the de facto leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump.
      Wisconsin’s Democratic governor Tony Evers has vetoed a Republican bill that would have banned gender-affirming care including surgeries and hormone treatments for minors in the state.In a statement released on Wednesday, Evers said:
      I promised I would veto any bill that makes Wisconsin a less safe, less inclusive, and less welcoming place for LGBTQ folks and kids—and I keep my promises.
      George Santos, the expelled Republican representative from New York, is reportedly making six figures by selling Cameo videos.The Guardian’s Gloria Oladipo reports:The disgraced lawmaker George Santos is reportedly making six figures by selling videos on the platform Cameo, generating more income than his previous salary as a US congressman, Semafor first reported.Santos, a former Republican representative from New York state, was expelled from Congress last Friday following a blistering ethics report that detailed his misuse of campaign funds.Since his removal, Santos has been publishing videos on Cameo, a website that allows users to purchase personalized videos from celebrities. The disgraced congressman has drastically increased the price of his videos, now selling them for $400 a pop from his initial $75-per-video price point.Read the full story here:Here is a video Kevin McCarthy released surrounding his resignation announcement:In the video, McCarthy said:
      Traveling the country and serving with all of you, I have encountered far more people that want to build something than those who want to tear it down. I have faith in this country because America is more than a country, America is an idea.
      Today, I am driven by the same purpose that I felt when I arrived in Congress but now it is time to pursue my passion in a different arena.
      Joe Biden has responded to a question on whether he thinks there are any Democrats who could beat Donald Trump other than himself.”Probably 50 of them,” replied Biden.He then went on to say, “I’m not the only one who can beat him, but I will beat him.”In response to Kevin McCarthy’s resignation announcement, California’s Democratic representative Adam Schiff said:
      “My dad asked me recently what I thought of Kevin McCarthy. In light of his retirement, I figured I’d share …”
      He went on to post a video in which he spoke about McCarthy, saying, “I think he’s a bad egg.”South Carolina’s Republican senator Lindsey Graham has released the following statement on Kevin McCarthy’s resignation announcement:
      I wish Kevin McCarthy well in his future endeavors to help the conservative cause. Kevin has much to be proud of, rising through the ranks to Minority Leader and Speaker of the House. He navigated the Republican Party through some of the most turbulent periods in recent history, getting results in difficult circumstances.
      “He will be missed, but I am sure his contributions to the future of the Republican Party will be enormous.”
      California’s Democratic representative Eric Swalwell, who predicted earlier this week that McCarthy would leave Congress, has responded to McCarthy’s resignation with a check mark emoji.Earlier this week, Swalwell tweeted:
      “With Santos gone, you’re hearing it here first: the next GOP member to leave Congress will be@SpeakerMcCarthy. No way he stays. A guy who kidney punches his colleagues from behind is too afraid to serve out a full term with them. I bet he’s gone by end of year. What say you?”
      In an odd and fairly threatening post, Georgia’s Republican representative Majorie Taylor Greene responded to the news of Kevin McCarthy resigning, saying:
      “Well..
      Now in 2024, we will have a 1 seat majority in the House of Representatives.
      Congratulations Freedom Caucus for one and 105 Rep who expel our own for the other.
      I can assure you Republican voters didn’t give us the majority to crash the ship.
      Hopefully no one dies.”
      Kevin McCarthy’s resignation will come before the special elections which are expected to take place either next February or March to fill the vacancy left by George Santos who was expelled from the House last Friday.With McCarthy gone, there will be two Republican vacancies in the House. More