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    As a Palestinian-American, I can’t vote for Joe Biden any more. And I am not alone | Ahmed Moor

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    America is big, diverse and polarized. Yet, when it comes to the war in Gaza, opinions here are converging. A Gallup poll in March found 55% of respondents “disapprove of Israel’s actions”, up from 45% in November. Among registered Democrats, the figure is 75%. As the number of citizens voting “uncommitted” in Democratic primaries makes plain, President Biden’s unqualified support for Israel is a problem. Beyond the human carnage – 32,000 Palestinians, including over 14,000 children, have been killed by Israel in Gaza – Biden’s Israel policy could cost him the election.“We have given Biden and his administration and the party a gift,” said Layla Elabed, organizer of the Listen to Michigan campaign, where 100,000 voters marked the “uncommitted” box in February. The vote in Michigan, a battleground state where Biden beat Trump by a little more than 154,000 votes in 2020, has triggered a cascade of protest votes in primaries across the country. At least 25 uncommitted delegates will be sent to the Democratic national convention in August.Elabed explained to me that these protest votes in swing states are meant to warn Biden that it’s time to restrict US military aid to Israel and call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. “Listen to your constituency and take action now,” she said, “or you’re going to have trouble in November.” Notably, Elabed and the campaign she leads hope that the president may correct course and earn their vote, thereby preventing a second Trump term.Prominent Democrats, Governor Gretchen Whitmer among them, have failed to engage with the substance of the argument and with the campaign’s stated goals.“It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that any vote that’s not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term,” Whitmer announced ahead of the Michigan primary vote.Whitmer’s argument that critics of the president’s policy in Palestine, in effect, offer support to former president Trump seems designed to encourage voters to fall in line. Yet, as Judith Max Palmer, a Philadelphia voter and registered Democrat, said to me: “The Democrats think they can scare us into submission and people are tired of it.”The intraparty fight has taken Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan as its totem. As the only Palestinian American in Congress, she has used her sizable public platform to decry the “level of support for Netanyahu’s war crimes by the Biden administration” in commission of Israel’s “genocide in Gaza”. She also advised her constituents and others who are dismayed by the Biden policy to vote uncommitted in the primary. In doing so, she earned the opprobrium of other Democrats.Don Calloway, a Democratic strategist, railed against Tlaib.“When Jalen Rose Leadership Academy and Wayne State and Cass Tech don’t get the proper appropriations from the Democratic administration … remember it’s because your Democratic congresswoman told them to not vote for the Democratic president in the primary,” he said.Calloway’s argument, which seems to prize party discipline over individual choice, is basically at odds with the tenets of participatory democracy. Voters are not beholden to a party – rather, the candidate is charged with crafting policies that appeal to an electorate to win votes. If voters in Biden’s coalition are now advocating for a change in policy, that – as the protesters say – is what democracy looks like. The candidate, and not the voters, is to blame if he fails to win in November, a point the Democrats appear to have struggled to comprehend in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016.“The cruelty [of Israel’s campaign in Gaza] is beyond my worst imagination. It changes the calculus,” said Rabbi Alissa Wise, another Philadelphia voter and one of the founders of Rabbis for a Ceasefire. She admitted to me that she worries Donald Trump “would be even more horrific” as president, but she wants to concentrate on the value of a protest vote now: “My hope is that the uncommitted campaign could really scare [policymakers] into a conscience.”View image in fullscreenUnlike Elabed and others I interviewed for this story, I have a different perspective.I am a Palestinian American in Pennsylvania, a contested state. I plan to write in “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary on 23 April and in November, I will vote for a third-party candidate.Like many Democrats, I was underwhelmed by the prospect of another Biden term, but I was prepared to move past my concerns about the president’s age and cognitive fitness to support the broader agenda on climate, among other things. I reasoned that Biden is supported by a cadre of experts, and that his job is mostly to set priorities and enlist the best and brightest to fill in the gaps. Now I am no longer able to rationalize support for this administration; the president’s moral failure in Gaza has taken on historic proportions, like Lyndon Johnson’s in Vietnam before him.Nor am I alone. “There’s no way I can see myself supporting Biden in the next election,” Will Youmans, associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, told me. “Supporting a genocide is the reddest of lines,” he explained. In November, Youmans plans to vote for down-ballot Democrats, but he will write in a protest vote for president.For Palestinians, the prospect of a second Trump administration is distressing, even if Representative Debbie Dingell’s statement that Trump, were he president, might have “nuked Gaza” seems a little overheated. Jared Kushner, who advised Trump in his last administration, openly opined about “very valuable … waterfront property” in Gaza as he described a vision of ethnic cleansing in the Strip.Yet it’s not clear that Trump’s putative policies will be worse than Biden’s current policies are. In reality, if Benjamin Netanyahu decides to invite Kushner and others to develop Jewish settlements in Gaza, there is no reason to believe Biden will stop him from doing so. The president, after all, has only mouthed his discontent with Israel’s actions. That’s even as he has actively armed the Israelis, who seem able to do whatever they please. Actions – for better or worse – speak more loudly than words do.Nor is the question of who may be worse – measured against the lesser evil – sufficient to drive voter behavior on this issue. For many, myself included, a vote for Biden is simply impermissible – the extent of the moral calamity is so great as to render a vote for Biden a vote for complicity.Our values in this country – freedom of speech, enterprise, equality before the law – are unique among countries and are worth fighting for. In the best expression of America, our values are regarded as inviolable, and they provide a roadmap for our activism. This country is bigger than Trump or Biden and while elections matter, they only gain meaning as a way of expressing our values. We cannot be the source of arms that destroy the lives of millions of people. We cannot abet a famine.The uncommitted campaign – citizens banding together to petition democratically, in good faith, for a change in government policy – is the greatest expression of what it means to live in a democracy. Tlaib, Elabed, Wise and other engaged Americans who have worked to move the president to adopt a humane policy in Palestine embody our best values. As the president of the Center City mosque in Philadelphia, Mohammed Shariff, said to me: “My vote is the purest form of expression and speech.” President Biden ignores our voices at his own peril, and ours.
    Ahmed Moor is a writer, activist, and co-editor of After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine (Saqi Books 2024). More

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      Alabama chooses candidates for new Black congressional district

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      Shomari Figures, an attorney and Obama White House executive from a politically-prominent civil rights family, has won the Democratic nomination to run in Alabama’s redrawn second congressional district Tuesday night, defeating state representative Anthony Daniels.The runoff election has been closely watched because of its implications for control of Congress in November, and for the effect of supreme court orders requiring southern states to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act and eliminate racial gerrymandering.Republicans currently control Congress by a margin of 218 to 213, with four vacancies. A win by Figures in November represents one seat flipping control from Republicans to Democrats.Alabama legislators resisted complying with the order of the US supreme court last year, requiring the state’s congressional map to add an additional district that would be politically competitive for a Black candidate. The courts eventually appointed a special master to oversee redrawing district lines, creating a new second district in southern Alabama, stretching through the “Black Belt” of counties with large African American populations.Just under half of the residents are Black. The Cook Political Report rates Alabama’s second congressional district as “leans Democratic” with a +4 Democratic partisan advantage, which Republicans believe may still provide an opportunity to hold the seat.Tuesday night, Republicans chose Caroleene Dobson, a real estate attorney and political newcomer, to face Figures in November. Dobson, a Harvard graduate and Federalist Society member, ran as a more conservative candidate than her runoff opponent, former State Senator Dick Brewbaker, who served a Montgomery-area district for 10 years.The Republican runoff candidates had contributed about a million dollars to their campaigns by March election filing deadlines, a sign of how hard fought the contest will be in November.The campaigns of Figures, 38, and Daniels, 41, differed less by ideology than biography. Daniels is the youngest Black man to lead Democrats in the Alabama house of representatives. He grew up in a small Black Belt town south of Montgomery, but represents Huntsville, Alabama, a prospering north Alabama city from which he has built a statewide power base.Daniels developed a reputation as a political dealmaker while serving in the legislature, navigating a political environment that is hostile to Democrats to get legislation passed that eliminated state income taxes on overtime pay. But Daniels could not overcome Figures’ financial advantages in a runoff.Figures is the kind of Alabama political royalty whose engagement five years ago was announced in the New York Times. Figures’ father, Alabama state Senator Michael Figures was a crusading attorney who famously bankrupted the Alabama Ku Klux Klan in the ’80s. His mother, state Senator Vivian Davis Figures, won the seat held by her husband after his death in 1996 and has held it since.Figures resigned his job as the deputy chief of staff and counselor to Merrick Garland, the attorney general, to compete in the crowded March primary. His longstanding connections to national politics helped him draw nearly $2m in outside spending from groups like Protect Progress, a Washington-based political action committee. More

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      House sends impeachment articles against Alejandro Mayorkas to Senate – as it happened

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      House Republicans have sent two articles of impeachment against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate, a move that will bring about a Senate trial.According to House Republicans, Mayorkas “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws, with House speaker Mike Johnson saying that Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer should “hold those who engineered this crisis to full account.”Johnson went on to add that Schumer is “the only impediment to delivering accountability for the American people.”“Pursuant to the constitution, the House demands a trial,” Johnson said.In response, Schumer said that he wants to “address this issue as expeditiously as possible,” adding, “Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement.”Following the latest move from the House, senators are expected to be sworn in as jurors on Wednesday. The chamber will then formally inform Mayorkas of the charges and request for a written response from him.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      House Republicans have sent two articles of impeachment against the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, to the Senate, a move that will bring about a Senate trial. According to House Republicans, Mayorkas “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws, with House speaker Mike Johnson saying that Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer should “hold those who engineered this crisis to full account.”
      A second House Republican has joined the effort to oust the speaker, Mike Johnson, escalating the risk of another leadership election just six months after the Louisiana congressman assumed the top job. Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican of Kentucky, announced on Tuesday that he would co-sponsor the motion to vacate resolution introduced last month by congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia.
      At a press conference on Tuesday, House speaker Mike Johnson remained defiant that he would not resign and accused his critics of undermining Republicans’ legislative priorities. “I am not resigning, and it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs,” Johnson said.
      The criminal trial of Donald Trump entered its second day as judge Juan Merchan continued to vet over 500 prospective jurors. At one point during the jury selection process, Merchan sternly rebuked Trump after his team found a video on a possible juror’s social media account over Trump’s 2020 presidential loss. “Your client was audible… I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom,” Merchan said.
      A potential juror caused Donald Trump to smile after he said that he read several of Trump’s books including the Art of the Deal. The juror, a resident of New York City’s Battery Park, said he is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union and is a board member of his synagogue.
      Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office have filed a motion for contempt against Donald Trump. In the motion, prosecutors argue that Trump “wilfully violated this court’s [gag] order by publishing several social media posts attacking two known witnesses – Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels.”
      That’s it as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.Alaska’s Republican senator Dan Sullivan has voiced his support for the House’s articles of impeachment against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.In a post on X, Sullivan wrote:
      “The articles of impeachment delivered by the House are thorough, compelling, and damning. The American people need to hear the evidence underlying these impeachment articles. Chuck Schumer has a constitutional duty to move forward with a Senate trial.”
      Georgia’s Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she delivered the impeachment articles against Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate. In a post on X accompanying a video of her walking towards the Senate, Greene wrote:
      “Mayorkas is derelict of his duty and must be removed from office. Chuck Schumer: HOLD THE TRIAL.”
      House Republicans have sent two articles of impeachment against homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate, a move that will bring about a Senate trial.According to House Republicans, Mayorkas “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce immigration laws, with House speaker Mike Johnson saying that Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer should “hold those who engineered this crisis to full account.”Johnson went on to add that Schumer is “the only impediment to delivering accountability for the American people.”“Pursuant to the constitution, the House demands a trial,” Johnson said.In response, Schumer said that he wants to “address this issue as expeditiously as possible,” adding, “Impeachment should never be used to settle a policy disagreement.”Following the latest move from the House, senators are expected to be sworn in as jurors on Wednesday. The chamber will then formally inform Mayorkas of the charges and request for a written response from him.Donald Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche and judge Juan Merchan discussed a misunderstanding over how potential jurors should be identified, including by number, according to a trial pool report.Attorneys also spoke with Merchan over social media posts, with Merchan saying that they can bring in prospective jurors and question them individually about concerning posts.Here are some images coming through the newswires:Donald Trump’s lawyers told the court before an early afternoon break that the former president no longer wished to exercise his right to be present for all one-on-one sidebar questioning of prospective jurors.Trump insisted on Monday that he wants to attend every conference, including side conferences during jury selection. No such questioning has taken place yet.Judge Merchan noted Trump had signed a form waiving his right to do so, saying:
      Mr. Trump, yesterday we discussed whether you wanted to be present at sidebars. You indicated you did. Your attorney indicated to me that you have changed your mind.
      At a press conference on Tuesday, House speaker Mike Johnson remained defiant that he would not resign and accused his critics of undermining Republicans’ legislative priorities.“I am not resigning, and it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs,” Johnson said.
      It is not helpful to the cause. It is not helpful to the country. It does not help the House Republicans advance our agenda.
      Congressman Thomas Massie’s announcement comes one day after Johnson unveiled a plan to advance a series of foreign aid bills through the House, following months of inaction on the issue. In February, the Senate passed a $95bn foreign aid package, which included funding for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian efforts.Johnson proposed splitting up the package into four separate bills with some notable changes, such as cutting the humanitarian aid included in the Senate proposal and sending money to Ukraine as a loan. The speaker plans to hold separate votes on the bills and then combine them into one package to simplify the voting process for the Senate, which will need to reapprove the proposal.The plan won some tepid praise from many members of the House Republican conference, but the plan to bundle the bills into one larger funding package sparked frustration among hard-right Republicans. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had already indicated she might force a vote on the motion to vacate over the issue of Ukraine funding, said she would not support Johnson’s plan and echoed Massie’s suggestion that the speaker should resign.A second House Republican has joined the effort to oust the speaker, Mike Johnson, escalating the risk of another leadership election just six months after the Louisiana congressman assumed the top job.Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican of Kentucky, announced on Tuesday that he would co-sponsor the motion to vacate resolution introduced last month by congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia.“[Johnson] should pre-announce his resignation (as Boehner did), so we can pick a new Speaker without ever being without a GOP Speaker,” Massie said on X, formerly known as Twitter.The former House speaker John Boehner resigned from Congress in 2015 after a fellow Republican, then congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina, filed a motion to vacate the chair. In October, Kevin McCarthy became the first speaker in history to ever be formally removed from his job via a motion to vacate vote.Speaking to reporters after a Republican conference meeting this morning, Massie predicted that Johnson would lose the vote on the motion and would become the second speaker to lose the gavel. Massie said:
      The motion is going to get called, and then [Johnson] is going to lose more votes than Kevin McCarthy.
      Trump attorney Todd Blanche has been conducting his own questioning of jurors, which boils down to: What is your opinion of Donald Trump?Some jurors seemed reticent about voicing an opinion while others didn’t seem all that perturbed by the former commander-in-chief’s antics. One juror said:
      I find him fascinating. He walks into a room and he sets people off. One way or another, and I find that really interesting. Really, this one guy could do all this?
      Blanche pressed:
      Well certainly, he makes things interesting. So, I follow because so may people are set off one way or another, and that is interesting to me.
      Blanche said, “uhm, alright,” and then thanked the man. One potential juror repeatedly tried to avoid answering the question.
      If we were sitting at a bar, I’d be happy to tell you, but in this room what I feel about President Trump is not important or inherent to either the case you’re presenting or you’re defending.
      After repeated prodding, he conceded: “Look: I’ll say I’m a Democrat, so there you go, that’s where it goes with me,” but, he insisted:
      I walk in here and he’s a defendant.
      One woman appreciated Trump’s brashness. “He speaks his mind. Come on: What else can you say about that?” At this moment, Trump smiled.
      He says what he wants to say. I want to say some things but my mother said, ‘be nice.’
      The court has taken a recess for lunch and will resume at 2.15pm ET.Just before the break, Donald Trump and his lawyers went to a nearby courtroom to begin deciding which prospective jurors they’d want to remove using peremptory challenges.When they returned to the courtroom a short time later, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche said they needed more time.Judge Merchan said they would have until after the lunch break to decide.Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche has been asking potential jurors for their opinions of the former president. Here are some of their responses, per pool.One potential juror said he found Trump “fascinating and mysterious”, adding:
      He walks into a room and he sets people off one way or another … I find that really interesting. Really, this one guy can do all of this. Wow, that’s what I think.
      Another potential juror said he was “a big fan of the Apprentice when I was in middle school” and that there are “some things I agreed with, some things I disagreed with” with regards to Trump’s presidency.One potential juror told Blanche that she isn’t really into politics but that “obviously I know about president Trump. I’m a female.” When asked what she meant by that, she replied:
      I know that there have been opinions on how he doesn’t treat females correctly. Stuff like that.
      Another potential juror largely refused to share his views on the former president, insisting that his views don’t matter. He said:
      I’ll say I’m a Democrat so there you go. But I walk in there and he’s a defendant and that’s all he is.
      No cameras are allowed inside the Manhattan courtroom where Donald Trump’s hush money trial is under way, but sketch artists have been capturing scenes:Here are some of the questions potential jurors have been asked to answer as part of the trial’s jury selection process:
      Are you a native New Yorker? If not, where did you live previously?
      What do you do for a living?
      Do you participate in any organizations or advocacy groups?
      Which of the following print publications, cable and/ or network programs, or online media such as websites, blogs, or social media platforms do you visit, read, or watch? (Choices are: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, Huffington Post, Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Newsmax, MSN, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Truth Social, X, Tik Tok, I do not follow the news, Other [name])
      Have you, a relative, or close friend had any experience or interaction with the criminal justice system, including a police officer or other type oflaw enforcement agent, which caused you to form an opinion, whether positive or negative, about the police or our criminal justice system?
      Have you, a relative, or a close friend ever worked or volunteered for a Trump presidential campaign, the Trump presidential administration, or any other political entity affiliated with Mr. Trump?
      Have you ever attended a rally or campaign event for Donald Trump?
      Have you ever considered yourself a supporter of or belonged to any of the following: the QAnon movement, Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, Three Percenters, Boogaloo Boys, Antifa?
      The defendant in this case has written a number of books. Have you read (or listened to audio) of any one or more of those books? If so, which ones?
      There are 18 jurors in the jury box, according to a trial pool report.Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked whether media reports surrounding the case have impacted the prospective jurors’ opinions.He also asked if they could set aside what has been reported in the media.Steinglass also said that it does not matter whether a juror has heard about the case, the pool report added.Prosecutor Josh Steinglass gestured to Donald Trump as he told prospective jurors that this criminal case is about “whether this man broke the law,” according to the trial reporter pool.Steinglass went on to acknowledge Trump as a former president and current presidential candidate.No jurors raised their hand when Steinglass asked whether anyone believed that prosecutors should have to prove more because of Trump’s position, the pool report added.In just five hours of jury selection, Donald Trump has seen dozens of New Yorkers say that they could not be fair and impartial.These prospective jurors have been excused from serving on the case, of course, but it still must smart a bit: This is Trump’s home town, after all, but he is so polarising that his compatriots want out.One juror did appear to make Trump’s morning, however. The prospect said “yes” to question 36 on the selection questionnaire, which was: “The defendant in this case has written a number of books. Have you read (or listened to audio) of any one or more of these books? If so, which ones?”The potential panelist revealed “I read the Art of the Deal, and I want to say How to be Rich, and Think Like a Champion – is that right?” The panelist hesitated, uncertain as to whether this was the title.Trump nodded his head and offered a smile.A potential juror caused Donald Trump to smile after he said that he read several of Trump’s books including the Art of the Deal, Politico reports.The juror, a resident of New York City’s Battery Park, said he is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union and is a board member of his synagogue.He added that he follows various news outlets including the New York Times, New York Post and NY1. More

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      ‘The speaker has to move quickly’: White House urges Mike Johnson to pass aid for Ukraine and Israel – as it happened

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      The White House “will not accept” any bill put forward by Republicans in the US House that only provides additional funding to Israel, in the wake of Iran’s attack on Saturday, and does not include aid for Ukraine, the press secretary just said.The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, said on Sunday that he will aim to advance a bill for wartime aid to Israel this week but did not clarify whether Ukraine funding would be part of the package.The White House wants a bipartisan $95bn national security bill that is languishing in the House to be passed, which includes fresh funding for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and other allies.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the media briefing in the west wing moments ago that “the Speaker has to move quickly” to “get this on the floor” of the chamber for a vote.If Republicans put forward a bill that only offers extra funding for Israel, the White House will not support it (although such a bill would be unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate anyway).“We would not accept a standalone,” Jean-Pierre said.Hello again, it’s been a lively day in US politics with news coming from the White House, the Supreme Court and Capitol Hill. We’re closing this blog now. We still have live coverage of the first day of the first ever criminal trial of a former US president as Donald Trump attends court in New York, where jury selection is underway in the hush money case involving Stormy Daniels. You can read that blog here.We’ll be back on Tuesday. All in the one blog this time we’ll plan to have action from Day 2 of the Trump trial, oral arguments at the Supreme Court over alleged insurrectionists accused of obstruction of an official proceeding when they tried to stop the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory, on January 6, 2021, and now-President Biden’s trip to his hometown of Scranton on the first visit of a three-day campaign swing through the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania.Here’s what happened today:
      The White House “will not accept” any bill put forward by Republicans in the US House that only provides additional funding to Israel and not also Ukraine, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “The Speaker has to move quickly” to put the a bipartisan bill already passed by the Senate onto the floor of the House for a vote, she said.
      “We do not want a war with Iran,” national security spokesman John Kirby said at the White House press briefing. He said the US is not involved with any Israeli decision now about how to respond after Iran sent drones and missiles hurtling towards Israel on Saturday, with almost all of them shot down.
      Supreme court justice Clarence Thomas was absent from the court in Washington DC on Monday – with no explanation, as the court issued a ruling and heard oral arguments. This is highly unusual. Thomas, 75, also was not participating remotely in arguments, as justices sometimes do when they are ill or otherwise can’t be there in person.
      The US supreme court on Monday allowed a Black Lives Matter activist to be sued by a Louisiana police officer injured during a protest in 2016 in a case that could make it riskier to engage in public demonstrations, a hallmark of American democracy. In declining to hear DeRay Mckesson’s appeal, the justices left in place a lower court’s decision reviving a lawsuit by the Baton Rouge police officer, John Ford, who accused him of negligence after being struck by a rock during a protest sparked by the fatal police shooting of a Black man, Alton Sterling, by white officers.
      Joe Biden is preparing for a three-day election campaign swing through Pennsylvania from Tuesday, after Donald Trump campaigned there on Saturday, two days before his criminal trial was due to begin in New York.
      Czech prime minister Petr Fiala has now arrived in the Oval Office.Before his departure from Prague on Sunday, Fiala told reporters that during his visit to the US he will focus on security cooperation, the Middle East, and aid to Ukraine, the White House pool reports.Fiala said he would address the issue of further support for Ukraine in any talks he has with US officials. The White House today is urging the US House to bring a stalled bill to the floor for a vote that provides fresh aid to Ukraine and Israel.
      I will try to convince our American friends that this help and support is absolutely necessary,” Fiala said of more aid for Ukraine in its desperate fight back against Russia more than two years after the much larger neighbor invaded.
      Other topics will include economic relations and nuclear energy. Although the American firm Westinghouse has dropped out of the bid for the completion of a Czech power plant, the Czech Republic would still like to cooperate with the US on the supply of nuclear fuel for Czech power plants, and development of small modular reactors.Announcing Fiala’s travel to the US, the Czech Government Office pointed to a symbolic significance of his visit, as the Czech Republic commemorates the 25th anniversary of its accession to NATO.The arrival of the prime minister of the Czech Republic, Petr Fiala, at the White House has been delayed, as it was due to be happening by now.The White House pool report notes that Fiala began his visit to Washington today with an unannounced meeting with the director of the CIA, William Burns.“At the beginning of my working visit, I am heading for a meeting with the director of the CIA,” Fiala himself revealed on X. The heads of the Czech intelligence services, including the head of the Czech civilian counterintelligence service, the Security Information Service (BIS) Michal Koudelka and Military Intelligence Service commander Jan Beroun are accompanying Fiala in Washington.Last month Fiala announced that BIS discovered a Kremlin-financed network that spread Russian propaganda and wielded influence across Europe, including in the European Parliament.At the center of the network was a Voice of Europe news site based in Prague, which tried to discourage Europeans from sending more aid to Ukraine. Some European politicians cooperating with the news site were apparently paid by Russians. Fiala and Biden met in Warsaw in February 2023.Top House Democrat and New York Democratic congressman Hakeem Jeffries is also urging Speaker Johnson to bring the bipartisan aid bill that covers Ukraine and Israel to the floor for a vote.It was passed by the Senate in February and since then has been stalled as Johnson battles hard right Republican colleagues who oppose more aid to Ukraine.Jeffries’ wish posted yesterday has not been granted:But earlier on Monday Jeffries sent a letter to his caucus spelling out the need to support Ukraine as well as Israel, Reuters reports.
      The gravely serious events of this past weekend in the Middle East and Eastern Europe underscore the need for Congress to act immediately. We must take up the bipartisan and comprehensive national security bill passed by the Senate forthwith,” Jeffries wrote.
      Ukraine appealed again to allies on Monday for “extraordinary and bold steps” to supply air defenses to help defend against waves of Russian airstrikes that have targeted its energy system in recent weeks.But underscoring the deep party divide in Washington, a letter released on Monday urging an immediate vote on the Senate bill was signed by 90 House Democrats and just one Republican.House Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to decide this week on how he will handle Joe Biden’s long-delayed request for billions of dollars in security assistance for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific, Reuters reports.More than two months after it passed the Senate, the push for the $95bn aid package, which includes $14 billion for Israel as well as $60 billion for Ukraine, gained new urgency after Iran’s weekend missile and drone attack on Israel despite fierce opposition in the deeply divided Congress.Johnson has declined to allow the Republican-controlled House to vote on the measure that the Senate passed with 70% bipartisan support in February.Backers insist it would receive similar support in the House, but Johnson has given a variety of reasons not to allow a vote, among them the need to focus taxpayer dollars on domestic issues and reluctance to take up a Senate measure without more information.Republican House aides said on Monday Johnson had not yet indicated his plans for security assistance, after discussing it with national security committee leaders late on Sunday and planning more talks with members on Monday.The White House “will not accept” any bill put forward by Republicans in the US House that only provides additional funding to Israel, in the wake of Iran’s attack on Saturday, and does not include aid for Ukraine, the press secretary just said.The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, said on Sunday that he will aim to advance a bill for wartime aid to Israel this week but did not clarify whether Ukraine funding would be part of the package.The White House wants a bipartisan $95bn national security bill that is languishing in the House to be passed, which includes fresh funding for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and other allies.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the media briefing in the west wing moments ago that “the Speaker has to move quickly” to “get this on the floor” of the chamber for a vote.If Republicans put forward a bill that only offers extra funding for Israel, the White House will not support it (although such a bill would be unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate anyway).“We would not accept a standalone,” Jean-Pierre said.Joe Biden said a little earlier on Monday that he wants to prevent the conflict in the Middle East, where Israel is waging war in Gaza and fending off Iranian attacks, from spreading more widely, Agence France-Presse reports.
      Iran launched an unprecedented aerial attack against Israel, and we launched an unprecedented military effort to defend it. Together with our partners, we defended that attack.
      The United States is committed to Israel’s security. We’re committed to a ceasefire that will bring the hostages home and prevent the conflict from spreading beyond what it already has,” Biden said as he met Iraq’s visiting prime minister.
      Biden was referring to those kidnapped by Hamas militants in their deadly October 7 attack on Israel.Biden has promised “ironclad” support for Israel but also urged it to “think carefully and strategically” before launching a response against Iran that could trigger a wider war.The US president said he was “also committed to the security of our personnel and partners in the region, including Iraq.”Iraq’s prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani was visiting the White House for talks on the presence of US troops in Iraq as part of an anti-jihadist coalition.National security spokesman John Kirby, at the White House press briefing, is reluctant to expand on Joe Biden’s advice to Israel at the weekend to “be careful” in its approach to any response to Iran’s attack on Saturday night.But there is an air that the US believes Israel’s broadly successful defense against the unprecedented Iranian assault at the weekend, where hundreds of missiles and drones were intercepted by the Jewish state and allies, is a satisfactory outcome in itself.“We do not want a war with Iran,” Kirby said. He said the US is not involved with any Israeli decision now about how to respond.However he talked in graphic terms about the US activities in shooting down incoming Iranian missiles and drones on Saturday as they approached Israel, both with US fighter jets in the air and from US destroyer ships at sea.“We will do what we have to do to defend Israel,” he said, adding that the US “does not want a wider conflict.”Israel has said it will respond, but without any details yet. Western leaders are urging restraint. Iran’s attack was retaliation for an Israeli attack on Iranian targets in Syria earlier this month.A little earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also said Washington did not want any escalation, but would continue to defend key ally Israel.The White House press briefing is underway. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has just greeted the media in the west wing and now national security spokesman John Kirby is speaking on international affairs.Kirby is speaking now about Iran’s attack on Israel on Saturday night and he’s pushing back on any idea that Iran knew it wouldn’t hit home with any of the drone weapons or cruise missiles that it launched and that it designed the assault to fail.He said the attack “was defeated thanks to our preparations…and Israel’s remarkable defense system.”Kirby said the extent of the US’s intervention in Israel’s defense was unprecedented, and that Iran had fired so many weapons at Israel because it knew many would be repelled but hoped a maximum number would get through.He’s now talking up the wide defensive coalition and said “Iran failed.”Fifteen prominent historians filed an amicus brief with the US supreme court earlier this month, rejecting Donald Trump’s claim in his federal election subversion case that he is immune to criminal prosecution for acts committed as president.Authorities cited in the document include the founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Adams, in addition to the historians’ own work.Trump, the historians said, “asserts that a doctrine of permanent immunity from criminal liability for a president’s official acts, while not expressly provided by the constitution, must be inferred. To justify this radical assertion, he contends that the original meaning of the constitution demands it. But no plausible historical case supports his claim.”Trump faces four federal election subversion charges.The supreme court will hear arguments on Trump’s immunity claim, despite widespread legal and historical opinion that the claim is groundless. Fuller report from my colleague, Martin Pengelly here.Donald Trump’s federal criminal trial for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results had been due to take place in Washington, DC, in March and the government, prosecuting, had asked for it to begin in January of this year.But here we are in April, with the New York criminal trial going ahead (being blogged here) and no dates for any of the other three cases in which Trump is a defendant.This as the US Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments from the former president that he is immune from prosecution.Trump pleaded not guilty last August to charges filed in federal district court in Washington that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructed an official proceeding and engaged in a conspiracy against rights.My colleague Hugo Lowell writes that the supreme court’s eventual ruling in Fischer v United States, in which it’s hearing oral arguments tomorrow, will indicate whether the obstruction charge under section 1512 of title 18 of the US criminal code can be used against Trump, and could undercut the other general conspiracy charges brought against the former president by the special counsel, Jack Smith.The court could also end up by extension invalidating many convictions against rioters involved in the January 6 Capitol attack. The obstruction statute has been the justice department’s primary weapon to hold accountable those involved in the violence of that day.With Clarence Thomas absent from court today, observers will be watching keenly to see if he joins the bench on Tuesday for Fischer.Clarence Thomas is the oldest of the justices on the bench of the US supreme court, at age 75.The staunch conservative has had previous absences for health reasons, but no reasons have been given for his not being present today during the session in the marbled edifice in Washington DC.Oral arguments were being heard today and a ruling was made. Chief Justice John Roberts announced that Thomas wasn’t present.He has been embroiled in controversies in relation to accusations of unethical conduct and unfair partisan political links.NBC News reports:“Often when a justice is not present for oral arguments, the court will give a reason, including instances when there is a health issue.In February of last year, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch was not present for an argument, and the court said he was feeling “under the weather.”When Thomas himself was hospitalized in 2022, the court disclosed that he had an infection and was being treated with antibiotics.”The US supreme court on April 25 will hear arguments in the unprecedented claim by Donald Trump that he has absolute immunity from prosecution in the federal criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.Progressive advocacy group MoveOn is petitioning for the conservative supreme court associate justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from that case.The group argues that: “It’s clear that the supreme court will play a central role in this year’s presidential election at a time when the public holds the historically lowest opinion of the court’s integrity. For the supreme court to consider these cases with any impartiality, it’s critical that justices with conflicts of interest recuse themselves. That applies first and foremost to Justice Clarence Thomas, whose own wife played a role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 elections.”The group goes on to argue that: “Thomas has a longstanding history of conflicts of interest. It’s crucial that we raise the pressure now and demand that Justice Thomas recuse himself from this case immediately!”With Trump on trial from today in Manhattan on the New York hush money case (being live blogged here), in the federal case on 2020 election interference we don’t yet have a date for trial. The case is basically on hold until the supreme court rules on the matter of immunity, putting in grave jeopardy the prospect of that trial starting before the next election in November.The US supreme court is due to hear arguments in an important case on Tuesday that involves defendants charged with crimes in relation to the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington – and has implications for Donald Trump.Associate justice Clarence Thomas’s absence from court today now has people wondering what will happen tomorrow.Oral arguments will be presented in the case of Fischer v United States. Former police officer Joseph Fischer has been charged in connection with the January 6 invasion of congress by a mob of Trump supporters, accused of assaulting a serving police officer, disorderly conduct and, crucially, obstruction of a congressional proceeding.This allegedly happened when rioters, who had been egged on by Trump at a rally near the White House just before they breached the US Capitol, aimed to stop the official certification by a joint session of congress of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump. Amid the violence, the certification was delayed but took place in the early hours of the following day after the Capitol had been cleared.Fischer, as the learned Scotusblog explains, has asked the supreme court to throw out the charge that he obstructed an official proceeding, arguing that the law that he was charged with violating was only intended to apply to evidence tampering.More than 300 other January 6 defendants have been charged with violating the law and also features in federal criminal charges brought against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith for the former Republican president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, who is seeking re-election to a second term as the Democratic nominee this November. More

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      Arizona Democrat says enshrining abortion rights in constitution best remedy to 1864 ban

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      Repealing the 1864 near-total abortion ban that Arizona’s state supreme court recently ruled was enforceable would have little effect because “the damage is done”, the Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego said on Sunday.“Any initiative they pass right now wouldn’t even take effect for quite a while,” the US House member and Senate hopeful told NBC News on Sunday, referring to the 90-day delay such a maneuver would undergo before taking effect. He also said a repeal would be vulnerable to being neutralized by future iterations of the state legislature, remarking: “It could just get overturned later by another state house or state senate.”Gallego instead maintained that codifying abortion rights in Arizona’s constitution through a public referendum was the best countermeasure available for the state supreme court decision clearing the way for authorities to enforce a ban with exceptions for medical emergencies – but not for rape or incest.“The only protection we really, really have is to codify this and put this on the ballot and enshrine” the abortion rights once granted federally by the US supreme court’s landmark Roe v Wade decision in 1973, Gallego added. “Protect abortion rights.”His comments came five days after the rightwing court’s ruling allowing enforcement of a ban that pre-dates Arizona’s statehood by nearly five decades.The law has not immediately taken effect but is bound to supersede a separate 15-week abortion ban that the state passed separately.An Arizona state lawmaker quickly moved to repeal the 1864 ban but has so far been blocked from advancing his proposal by fellow Republicans.The ruling in question was made possible thanks to the removal of abortion rights at the federal level in 2022 by a US supreme court counting on three conservative justices appointed during Donald Trump’s presidency.The elimination of federal abortion rights have driven Democratic victories in elections ever since. And confronted with the reality that most in the US support at least some level of abortion access, Republicans who cheered the reversal of Roe v Wade scrambled to distance themselves from the Arizona supreme court’s 9 April ruling.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat includes Kari Lake, the Republican who in the fall plans to run for the Arizona US Senate seat held at the moment by the independent Kyrsten Sinema.“This total ban on abortion the Arizona supreme court just ruled on is out of line with where the people of this state are,” Lake – who is endorsed by Trump – said in a video on Thursday. “This is such a personal and private issue.”Lake had previously expressed her approval of Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban after the US supreme court eliminated Roe v Wade – and before she lost the state’s 2022 gubernatorial election to her Democratic rival, Katie Hobbs.And Gallego has seized on that change of position, telling MSNBC recently: “Arizonans aren’t dumb. They know that Kari Lake is lying and is willing to say anything she can to win and to hold power, and they will not trust her with this.”Gallego’s campaign has helped a coalition of reproductive rights groups collect signatures aiming to put a referendum on Arizona’s ballot for the November elections proposing to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution.The proposed constitutional amendment would establish a fundamental right to abortions up to about the 24th week of pregnancy, with exceptions to protect lives and physical or mental health of pregnant people.Ballot initiative campaign organizers say they have about 120,000 more signatures than needed to get the issue before voters in November. But that cushion is necessary because those opposed to the campaign have the right to scrutinize and challenge the validity of those signatures.An Iraq war veteran who served with the US marines, Gallego’s first term in the House began in 2015 and he has been representing his current district since early 2023.Both he and Lake are heavily favored to advance out of their respective parties’ Senate primaries in July to run in November for a seat being left vacant by Sinema, who chose to not seek re-election. More

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      Biden’s renewed embrace of Israel threatens to deepen Democratic divide

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      “Ironclad,” said Joe Biden. “Ironclad,” said Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary. “Ironclad,” said the Senate leader Chuck Schumer, the House leader Hakeem Jeffries and the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer.In the wake of Saturday’s attack by Iran, Democrats united around a single word in expressing their commitment to Israel’s security. It was a sentiment that papered over, at least for now, cracks in the party over Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.But Biden’s renewed embrace of Israel could deepen further a row over US support for Israel’s war in Gaza that has engulfed the Democratic party and pitted the White House against its progressive wing – a split that could sap Biden’s support in November’s crucial presidential election.These have been trying weeks for the US president. As Gaza’s death toll climbs and famine looms, criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war has been growing from the left and even the centre, with some calling for an end to US arms supplies.Tens of thousands of people registered “uncommitted” protest votes against Biden in the Democratic primary election, including in swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, a grim portent ahead of the presidential election against Donald Trump in November.This pressure, and the recent deaths of World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza, seemed to finally prompt a shift in Biden’s tone. Last week he branded Israel’s handling of the war a “mistake”. Even then he remained passive-aggressive, declining to impose any tangible consequences.Then, on Saturday, Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel on Saturday night in response to a suspected Israel attack on Iran’s Syria consulate on 1 April. Biden, cutting short a weekend stay at his Delaware beach house to meet with his national security team at the White House, was back in his instinctive comfort zone. His entire political career has been shaped by the view of Israel as a vulnerable ally in a hostile neighborhood that needs unequivocal US support.In an instant, the atmospherics in Washington changed. Schumer, who surprised many last month by calling for new elections in Israel, issued a statement that said “we stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Israel” and made no mention of Gaza.The Democratic senator John Fetterman, no friend of pro-Palestinian protesters, told CNN’s State of the Union: “It really demonstrates how it’s astonishing that we are not standing firmly with Israel and there should never be any kinds of conditions on all of that. When a nation can launch hundreds of drones towards Israel, I’m not going to be talking about conditions, ever.”And on NBC’s flagship Meet the Press, John Kirby, the White House National Security Council spokesperson, gushed over “an incredible military achievement by Israel and quite frankly the United States and other partners that helped Israel defend itself against more than three hundred drones and missiles”.He added: “And I think Israel also demonstrated that it has friends, that it’s not standing alone, that it’s not isolated on the world stage.”Republicans seized on the attack to accuse Biden of weak leadership, claiming that only Trump could restore peace and stability to the world. Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee called for “aggressive retaliatory strikes on Iran”.If they succeed in shifting the terms of the debate, it will be even harder for the president to signal a break from Netanyahu. Amid the drumbeat for rallying against a common foe, Democrats who call for military aid to be conditioned will be accused of tone deaf appeasement.On Sunday, the Washington news agenda was dominated by speculation over Biden can dissuade Netanyahu from striking back – “Take the win,” he reportedly said – and prevent a wider regional war, and whether Congress might now pass military aid for both Israel and Ukraine.Gaza – where Israel’s offensive has killed at least 33,729 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry – was no longer uppermost in the thoughts of politicians or the journalists who interview them.Progressives and protesters had come a long way in forcing Biden to question his most deeply held convictions and warn Netanyahu that enough is enough. The events of Saturday night shook the kaleidoscope yet again and may give the US president a different political and electoral calculus, an excuse to return to his default position. Yet people in Gaza are still dying, and many would-be Biden supporters are still angry about it. More

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      US news organizations urge Biden and Trump to agree to TV election debates

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      Twelve US news organizations are urging Joe Biden and Donald Trump to agree to TV debates ahead of the November presidential vote, a typical feature of an election year and one that can sometimes play a crucial role.“If there is one thing Americans can agree on during this polarized time, it is that the stakes of this election are exceptionally high,” the organizations including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, PBS, NBC, NPR and the Associated Press said in a statement.“Amidst that backdrop, there is simply no substitute for the candidates debating with each other, and before the American people, their visions for the future of our nation,” they added.But the two major candidates have so far resisted debating rival candidates from their own parties, with Trump refusing to participate against the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and others, and Biden resisting calls to set foot on a TV stage with rival Democratic candidates, who have since abandoned their electoral efforts to challenge him in the party.The news organizations said it was not too early for each campaign to say publicly that it will participate in the three presidential and one vice-presidential TV showdowns set by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.In 2020, Biden and Trump debated twice, with a third debate canceled after then-president Trump tested positive for Covid-19.Last week, the Trump campaign called for presidential debates to be held earlier and more frequently so voters “have a full chance” to see the candidates in action. Trump campaign managers have argued that by the time of the first scheduled debate, on 16 September, more than 1 million Americans will likely have already voted, with more than 8.7 million voting by the third debate, penciled in for 9 October.Trump has said he is willing to go head-to-head with Biden “anytime, anyplace and anywhere”, starting “now”. But Biden has been uncommitted to any debate so far, saying last month: “it depends on [Trump’s] behavior.” More

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      Arizona abortion ruling is a win Kari Lake didn’t need in key Senate race

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      On a recent Tuesday morning, at a retirement community on the western edge of Phoenix’s sprawling desert metropolis, Kari Lake beamed at the graying crowd and introduced her guest, the Montana senator Steve Daines, the Republican charged with winning back the party’s Senate majority in Washington.His presence sent the message that establishment Republicans were fully behind Lake, a former TV news anchor in Phoenix whose embrace of election denialism and fealty to Donald Trump made her a darling of his Maga movement but probably cost her the 2022 race for Arizona governor, a loss she has never formally conceded.Now, as the likely Republican nominee for an open Senate seat in Arizona, Lake, 54, is attempting something of a rebrand, vowing to be less “divisive” as she strains to win back the very voters she alienated with her scorched-earth campaign for governor two years ago.“Let me be clear, we win Arizona, we win the United States Senate,” Daines told attendees, a mix of local Republican officials and sun-seeking transplants. “It’s as simple as that.”The race, however, is not simple at all. The contest to replace Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic party last year to become an independent before deciding not to seek re-election, is expected to be one of the most competitive – and expensive – of the election cycle.Lake’s likely opponent, the Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego, is also courting voters in the political center, softening the combative approach that made him popular with the constituents of his liberal Phoenix district. With just under seven months until election day, most surveys show Gallego, 44, with a narrow lead over Lake.The Senate race was roiled this week by the Arizona supreme court’s decision to uphold a territorial-era law that bans nearly all abortions in the state, all-but ensuring the issue will dominate the political debate in an electoral battleground with a strong libertarian bent.A court-the-center playbook has powered sweeping statewide victories for Democrats in the years since Trump won the 2016 election. Joe Biden won Arizona’s 11 electoral votes in 2020 while the state sent two Democrats to the Senate and elected a Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, who defeated Lake in 2022.View image in fullscreenEven knowing the risks of running to the right in a purple state, Lake has not sought to distance herself from Trump – she has promised, as her first act in the Senate, to introduce legislation to “build the wall”. But she has attempted to move her message beyond her baseless claims of election fraud, despite ongoing litigation related to her effort to overturn her defeat in 2022. She has also sought to walk back her position on abortion, which she once called the “ultimate sin”.Meanwhile, Gallego, speaking to a crowd of retirees in the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear last week, is hoping his efforts to work across the aisle in Congress and a yet-to-be-unveiled roster of Republican and independent endorsements will end in a decisive victory.“We don’t have to explain to them who Kari Lake is,” Gallego said. “We have to explain to them who I am.”Democrats hope to harness outrage over the decision to allow enforcement of the pre-statehood abortion ban.On Friday Gallego appeared alongside Vice-President Kamala Harris at an event in Tucson to hammer Republicans for their anti-abortion record.The ruling was so seismic even staunchly anti-abortion Republicans like Lake raced to distance themselves. Meanwhile, fury over the 160-year-old law, which has not yet taken effect, amplified signature-gathering efforts to put abortion rights on the ballot this year, a move Democrats hope will mobilize young and otherwise disengaged liberal voters.Gallego, meanwhile, has made abortion rights a centerpiece of his Senate campaign since its onset. At the Goodyear event, the Democrat vowed as senator to abolish the Senate filibuster to codify Roe v Wade, which the supreme court overturned in 2022, eliminating the federal right to abortion.“If we believe it’s right, then we need to do everything we can to enshrine that right,” he said.Strategists in the state believe Lake will probably have a harder time than Gallego appealing to Arizona’s coveted slice of independent voters and moderates.“Congressman Gallego has to introduce himself to voters and talk about his legacy of service,” said Stacy Pearson, an Arizona-based Democratic strategist. “[Lake] has to convince voters that she was just kidding 12 months ago, and isn’t really supportive of a ban that predates light bulbs.“It’s hard for a candidate to shake off the stench of death after a statewide loss,” she added, “much less when that candidate was supporting the very abortion ban that has women’s hair on fire in Phoenix today.”View image in fullscreenLake, like Trump, has spent the days since the decision trying to find safe political ground on the abortion issue. She quickly denounced the 1864 law as “out of line” with the people of Arizona and called on the legislature to “come up” with a solution.But Democrats are unwilling to let voters forget Lake’s words from 2022, when she told a conservative podcast host: “I’m incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that’s already on the books” and referred to the civil war-era ban by its number in Arizona state code.With a spotlight on her retreat, Lake on Thursday released a five-and-a-half-minute video. “The issue is less about banning abortion and more about saving babies,” she said, as she emphasized her support for policies that would support mothers and reduce taxes on families.On her website, Lake says she opposes a federal abortion ban.Lake’s spectacular jump from the anchor desk into the heart of Trumpworld politics shocked many viewers – and voters. And it is part of her pitch. In Sun City West, the ex-journalist told attendees they were being “lied to” by an “unAmerican” press corps. Instead, she asked them to trust her. After years of reporting across Arizona, Lake said she was uniquely qualified to represent the state.“I understand the people of Arizona probably better than anybody in politics right now in this state because I’ve had the opportunity to be invited into your homes to cover the big issues,” she said.Attendee Donna Burrell, 70, of Sun City Grand, said she was torn over who to support in the state’s Republican primary in July. Burrell had been leaning toward Lake’s main primary opponent, a conservative county sheriff, Mark Lamb, but Lake impressed her.“She didn’t seem so angry and in-your-face,” Burrell said. “When I came here today, I really liked her.”The Republican base is firmly behind Lake, who leads Lamb by a wide margin. But Mike Noble, a Phoenix-based pollster who is tracking public opinion on the race, predicted Lake would struggle to broaden her appeal, especially with independent voters, a significant share of whom, he said, place stolen election claims in the same category as the “earth is flat” conspiracy.Earlier this month, Lake chose not to defend her claims of a stolen election, asking an Arizona court to move directly to the damages phase of a defamation lawsuit. The case was brought by Maricopa county’s top election official, Stephen Richer, a Republican whom Lake accused of allowing fraud to taint the results of the 2022 gubernatorial election she lost, claims he said unleashed a barrage of threats against him and his family.Richer said Lake’s decision amounted to an admission that her “lies were just that: lies”. Lake said she conceded nothing and compared herself to Trump, casting them as twin victims of a legal system that will “ stop at nothing to destroy us”.On the campaign trail, Gallego presents himself to voters as a results-driven veteran committed to the defense of America’s democratic institutions.In Goodyear, he recalled being on the House floor when a mob of Trump supporters breached the US Capitol. He said his combat instincts kicked in and he began instructing lawmakers how to put gas masks on and prepare to fight if it came to that. Lake, he warned, was only fueling those forces.“You’re not a leader, if you’re exploiting people’s fear,” Gallego said. “That’s what she’s doing right now.”Meanwhile, Lake’s attempts to reconcile with Republicans she attacked during her 2022 race have been mixed. Outreach to Meghan McCain, the daughter of Senator John McCain, the popular Arizona Republican senator who died in 2018, was met with the response “no peace bitch”. At a campaign rally during her run for governor, she told the late senator’s supporters to “get the hell out”, a comment Lake later said was made “in jest”.And at the end of the event in Sun City West, a woman waved a piece of paper which she claimed provided evidence of ballot-rigging in the 2020 election. “I need your help,” she shouted as Lake and Daines quickly left the stage.At Gallego’s town hall, held earlier this month in a traditionally Republican part of Phoenix’s West Valley that has experienced soaring growth in the past decade, Democrats scrounged for extra seating to accommodate the crowd.“I was pleasantly, pleasantly surprised that we could get this big of a turnout in a very red part of the county,” said Barbara Valencia, a member of the local Democratic party who has known Gallego since the early days of his political career. She was confident Arizonans would gravitate toward Gallego the more they learned about his story – a Harvard-educated combat veteran raised by a single mother from Colombia.“He’s very grassroots, from the ground up,” she said.Since launching his campaign more than a year ago, Gallego has made his goal to visit every corner of the state, including each of Arizona’s nearly two dozen federally recognized tribal nations, to reach voters outside of the Phoenix metropolitan area. Before the West Valley event, Gallego visited leaders of the Kaibab Paiute Indian Tribe in northern Arizona, which required flying into southern Utah and driving two hours south.View image in fullscreenYet despite recent Democratic successes, Gallego must also contend with stormy presidential-year politics. Biden, who will be at the top of the ballot, is unpopular in Arizona, trailing Trump in several swing state surveys. Inflation has proven an intractable problem for the president, while his handling of record migration at the US-Mexico border has drawn bipartisan criticism.Some Democrats in the state are worried about the party’s outreach to Latino voters, a critical part of their electoral coalition that has shifted toward Trump in recent years.“We need to mobilize the Hispanic vote,” said Judy Phillips, a Democrat who attended Gallego’s town hall in Goodyear and is Hispanic. “If they don’t hear the good things from the candidates, they’re going to get sucked in by the lies.”But early indicators are on his side. A poll conducted by Noble’s firm in February, before Sinema bowed out of the race, found that Gallego led Lake by double digits with suburbanites, independents and Hispanic voters. Sinema has not made an endorsement in the Senate race.Arizona Republicans, Noble quipped, choose to nominate unpopular candidates who cannot win general elections “not because it is easy, but because it is hard”.At her event, Lake sought to scare off moderate Republicans from defecting with a warning about her opponent. Gallego, she said, was trying to “trick the people of Arizona” into believing he was a consensus-building, “middle-of-the-road” Democrat.“It couldn’t be further from the truth,” she said, citing his past criticism of Trump’s border wall. Daines, the Montana senator, chimed: “She’s not running against an astronaut, Mark Kelly. She’s not running against Kyrsten Sinema. She’s running against a true radical far-left activist.”Defining Gallego while also trying to change her own reputation in the state will require considerable resources, analysts say.“Lake’s miniscule war chest isn’t enough to really let that sink into voters,” said Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based Republican consultant. “She will need the help of national groups to really paint Ruben as a liberal lion.”Gallego’s campaign is already running biographical ads on local and cable TV, including one focused on his deployment to Iraq with a Marine Corps unit that sustained some of the highest casualties of the war. With his record, the Democrat is targeting the state’s large veteran population.It is an open question whether her support from Republicans in Washington will translate into a significant financial investment. But her core supporters are giving. Last week, Lake’s campaign announced that she raised what it claimed was a record $1m at a fundraising event at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort.View image in fullscreenIt is yet another sign, Marson said, that Lake and Trump “will live or die together” in Arizona this November.Gallego, meanwhile, announced that his campaign raised $7.5m in the first three months of 2024, a notable haul that leaves him with $9.6m cash on hand. Lake has yet to announce her first-quarter fundraising numbers, but the stakes are high. She began the year with much less money than Gallego and it remains unclear what, if any, damages she will have to pay in the defamation suit.Much can – and almost certainly will – change before election day. But as the contours of the high-profile Senate race come into focus, political observers now believe abortion will be a defining issue of the Arizona election. And here, they say, Gallego has the advantage.“We’ve got those crossover voters that will never register as Democrats but who are also not Maga,” said Pearson, the Democratic strategist, referring to Trump’s rightwing movement. “And this is an issue that takes those voters – Arizona’s defiant, libertarian, Republican voting bloc – and pulls them right over to the Democrats.” More

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      ‘Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause’: Tim Kaine’s journey to healing

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      Jack Kemp. Joe Lieberman. John Edwards. Sarah Palin. Paul Ryan. All ran for vice-president of the United States and fell short. All had to confront the question: what next? The same fate befell Tim Kaine, whose turn as running mate to Hillary Clinton in 2016 ended in a catastrophic defeat by Donald Trump and Mike Pence. The US has not recovered, as polarisation, rancour and looming criminal trials testify. But Kaine has.At 7.30am on the Monday after the 2016 election, the Virginia senator was back at work in his office. With Trump in the White House, the work of the Senate proved critical, including preserving Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law. But as time wore on, Kaine found ways to nourish his soul – not on the campaign trail but the nature trail.To mark his 60th birthday and 25th year in public office, he invented his own triathlon in Virginia. On weekends and in Senate recess weeks, Kaine hiked (mostly solo) the 559 miles (900km) of the Appalachian Trail, biked 321 miles (517km) along the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains and canoed all 348 miles (560km) of the James River. He kept a 100-word-a-day diary on his phone, raw material for his first book, Walk, Ride, Paddle.The hike was the toughest, he recalls, averaging about 14 miles (22km) a day with a 30lb (14kg) backpack, mostly in the heat of August.“I’d have two litre bottles and I’d be getting down to no water and I’ve got to get to this next stream and I’d get there and it’d be bone dry and then oh, man, talk about depressing!” the 66-year-old tells the Guardian.“The physical challenge of the hike was very difficult. It wasn’t probably till I got to mile 300 that I quit thinking about ‘I don’t need to do this whole thing. Why be so type-A about it?’ But when I passed mile 300 and I only had 260 left, it’s like, I’m going to finish this but I don’t have to rush.”A former teacher and civil rights lawyer, Kaine is one of only 30 people in US history to have been a mayor, governor and senator. In person, in a conference room on Capitol Hill, he lives up to adjectives that often tail him: affable, genial, nice. Only in politics does that count as an insult.In 2016, the New Republic ran a headline: “Tim Kaine Is Too Boring to Be Clinton’s Running Mate.” The Washington Post wondered: “What’s a nice guy like Senator Tim Kaine doing in a campaign like this?” Kaine himself quipped on NBC: “I am boring. Boring is the fastest-growing demographic in this country.”True to form, no one should look to Walk, Ride, Paddle for tales of Teddy Roosevelt-esque derring-do. Like other vice-presidential near misses, Kaine never quite became a celebrity. To those who encountered him in the great outdoors, he was just another guy in baseball cap and hiking shorts.He recalls: “I would say maybe a quarter recognised me and of that quarter, half didn’t say they recognised me. You’re out on the trail to relax and they get that. I learned there’s a beautiful Emily Dickinson poem about once being famous:
      Fame is a bee.
      It has a song—
      It has a sting—
      Ah, too, it has a wing.
      “People would see me and if you see somebody and they’re not dressed the way you normally see them, you’re like, ‘I think I kind of know you, but I’m not sure.’ Sometimes people would know me. Most often they wouldn’t. And then sometimes they were, ‘I think I know you. What do you do?’ ‘I work in Washington.’ ‘What do you do in Washington?’ ‘I do some stuff in politics’. ‘What?’ ‘I’m a United States senator.’”The journey took about 30 months, from May 2019 to October 2021, a jaw-dropping period of American history that spanned two impeachment trials, a global pandemic, racial justice protests, a presidential election and the January 6 attack on the Capitol. When the Senate was in session, Kaine had a key part to play. When in nature, he could tune out the noise and contemplate his faith in friendship, God (he grew up in an Irish Catholic household) and America.View image in fullscreenHe likens the experience to a camper who wakes up, stuffs everything into their backpack and gets going.“I realised in the course of the hike that’s how I dealt with 2016. I showed up right back to work. I started working. I said, ‘I’ll sort it all out later.’“The hike was primarily by myself. That extended time, both the solitude but also the appreciation of nature and your humility in the grand scheme of things, was helpful in taking the stuff out of the pack that needed to be washed and folded and put away the right way.”His epiphany came not around how Trump won, or relitigating what mistakes the Clinton-Kaine campaign might have made, but reckoning with a deeper question: why is America going through this dark chapter? Early one morning, Kaine was hiking alone in fog and rain and nearing Mount Rogers, the highest peak in Virginia, when he thought about the biblical Book of Job.A faithful man who has it all, Job starts to lose his family, his business, his money and his health, compelling him to ask if the universe is pointless and neighbours to assume he is suffering divine retribution.Kaine says: “There’s two explanations of why people or maybe nations suffer: because you did something wrong or maybe it’s just all pointless and random. The reader of the story knows that neither is the case: Job’s being tested. The end of the story is, as mad as he is at God, he still is true to his principles and then what was lost to him is restored.”Kaine was just days away from Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial.“I’d never been on a jury ever in my life, even on a traffic case. I’m just like, I’m 61 years old and I thought I understood this country. What’s going on here?“It’s not necessarily punishment and it’s not necessarily random, but it could be a test. So we stay true to our principles. Belief in religious equality – are we going to kick Muslims around? Our belief in free press – are we going to expose journalists to intimidation, rule of law? No person should be above the law.“I started to think about the virtues that we claim about ourselves, some of which are truer than others, none of which we can perfectly attain. But maybe this is one of these moments to see whether we’re going to stay true to principle or abandon principle, and if we stay true to principle, maybe we’ll end up sadder but wiser but we’ll turn a corner and feel like we’ve passed. I think we’re surviving the test but I don’t think we passed it yet.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNo test was more severe than January 6, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s win. Having become less addicted to his phone during his communions with nature, Kaine forgot to take it into the Senate chamber.“It was hours after the beginning of the attack, when we were finally over in a committee room and they turned on TV monitors, that I realised, ‘Oh, man, this is what my parents are seeing, this what my kids are seeing, this is what my wife was seeing.’ So, ‘[Senator] Martin Heinrich [of New Mexico], give me your phone, I got to call people quick!’“It was a day that I never would have imagined, never will forget and hope is never repeated. It was very powerful and my overwhelming emotion was anger. There was a moment when we were in the committee room that CNN called the Georgia Senate race for Jon Ossoff, which meant that the Dems now had the Senate, and it was very much like, in the middle of this attack, the American public are saying, ‘OK, we’ve seen enough here, you guys take the wheel for a while.’ They handed the keys to us.”View image in fullscreenKaine went up to the Republican senator Lindsey Graham and told him Democrats would not have taken the majority but for Trump’s lies. Graham did not disagree. Kaine said the same thing to the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and saw a level of anger in his eyes he had never witnessed before.“The other thing that happened about three hours after we were in the room, the Virginia state police cruisers arrive to help the Capitol police. I went over to [fellow Virginia senator] Mark Warner and said the last time there was an insurrection against the United States, Virginia was leading it. Now here there’s an insurrection that’s being inspired by the president of the United States and Virginia is coming to the rescue of the union. We were both very emotional as we thought about that.”In his book, Kaine, a senator since 2013, acknowledges painful lessons about a country he thought he understood. While he has always been an optimist, he writes, Trump is “a symptom of a national sickness”. Trump is energising and galvanising for Democrats but also brings “a level of dread and tension” to everyday life.Kaine explains: “I was a missionary in Honduras when I was a young man and it was a military dictatorship and it made me be less naive: this authoritarian thing is still real, a lot of people live that way. But even then, when I came back, I still was naive because I thought that would never be something we would see in the United States, the authoritarian impulse.“But it’s Donald Trump and it’s [Nayib] Bukele [of El Salvador] and [Viktor] Orbán [of Hungary] and [Vladimir] Putin [of Russia]. You just go place to place, continent to continent, you’re going to see examples of this. The struggle between the authoritarianism and the democratic impulses is very live right now here and everywhere. That’s the global sickness that I’m talking about. Donald Trump is a symptom. He’s not the cause.”Kaine is one of a small group to have run on a US presidential ticket. His advice to Biden and Kamala Harris: continue to emphasise democracy and freedom, which connect January 6, Russia’s war on Ukraine and rightwing threats to reproductive rights. He also believes they have accomplishments to sell, including the best post-Covid recovery of any major economy.“People aren’t feeling the vibe yet,” Kaine admits, attributing this to a Covid “hangover”.“As I travel around Virginia, this is such a common phrase: ‘I’m doing pretty well but I’m not so sure about three months from now.’ They acknowledge first that economically things are OK but, just around the corner, ‘I’m sure what I’m going to see.’ The Biden-Harris ticket – and I’m on the ticket too because I’m running in 2024 – we just have to sell, sell, sell. The good news is we have a lot to sell.”The alternative, a replay of 2016, putting Trump back in the White House, is too much to bear.“I don’t want to contemplate it. We’re coming up on celebrating our 250th birthday in 2026. I want there to be a vigorous democracy for our kids and grandkids to inherit. And by vigorous, that doesn’t mean just do it the way we did it. Each generation has to decide how to renew these traditions and make them better.“But I don’t view Donald Trump as a guy who’s committed to institutions: one man one vote, free press, independent judiciary, professionalised civil service, civilian control of the military. Donald Trump is committed to himself but he’s not committed to democratic institutions and virtues. He’s done enormous harm to them.“We can wake up from that and, like Job, stick to our principles, become sadder and wiser but still pass the test that is before us. But he will do enormous damage to this nation and to others in the world with a second term.”
      Walk, Ride, Paddle: A Life Outside is published in the US by Harper Horizon More