US elections 2024

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Project 2025 director to step down after ‘pressure from Trump campaign’

      by

      The leader of Project 2025 is stepping down from his role amid a power struggle over potential government staffing if Donald Trump wins in November.Paul Dans, the director of the project housed at the Heritage Foundation, “will be departing the team”, according to a statement to the Guardian from Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage Foundation.The departure could indicate the project’s work is ending or at least will not be taking such a public role in the lead-up to the November election, though the policy ideas outlined in its extensive conservative roadmap remain public. “Project 2025” has become a shorthand term for its manifesto of conservative policies, but the project includes multiple pillars designed to influence a conservative president.Dans is leaving “after pressure from Trump campaign leadership” and an “ongoing power rift over staffing control” for a second Trump administration, Roger Sollenberger, a reporter for the Daily Beast, wrote on Twitter/X.Dans, a Trump loyalist, worked in personnel-related roles in the first Trump administration, including as chief of staff at the office of personnel management.In an internal email obtained by Semafor, Dans said the work of the project “was due to wrap” after the political parties’ nominating conventions, which for Republicans was earlier this month.“Our work is presently winding down, and I plan later in August to leave Heritage,” he wrote. “Electoral season is upon us, and I want to direct all my efforts to winning, bigly!”Roberts claims the change was always intended and followed a set timeline.“When we began Project 2025 in April 2022, we set a timeline for the project to conclude its policy drafting after the two party conventions this year, and we are sticking to that timeline,” Roberts said in the statement. “Paul, who built the project from scratch and bravely led this endeavor over the past two years, will be departing the team and moving up to the front where the fight remains. We are extremely grateful for his and everyone’s work on Project 2025 and dedication to saving America. Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels – federal, state, and local – will continue.”It is not immediately clear what “winding down” its work entails, given that the policy playbook is already written and a personnel database already compiled.The departure underscores the unpopularity of Project 2025 for Trump, who has for weeks attempted to distance himself from it.Earlier this month, Trump claimed to “know nothing about Project 2025” and have “no idea who is behind it”. The disavowal from Trump came after Roberts said: “We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be.”At a recent rally in Michigan, Trump quipped about the project, “I don’t know what the hell it is” and “they’re seriously extreme.” But the project includes many former Trump administration officials and its aims often align with Trump’s policy ideas, albeit with far more detail.Democrats have seized on the project as a stand-in for what Trump could do if he wins a second term, bringing it up at events, in interviews and in billboard ads around the country. They have called out some of the project’s provisions, like further restrictions to abortion and an end to policies that protect LGBTQ+ rights and diversity.Kamala Harris’s campaign said in a statement: “Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country. Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real – in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding.”Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, Trump’s campaign leaders, have dinged the project publicly and noted how it doesn’t speak for Trump. LaCivita called the project “a pain in the ass”.“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” Wiles and LaCivita said in a statement on Tuesday. “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign – it will not end well for you.”Project 2025’s four pillars started with a lengthy roadmap. Alongside the document, the group is creating a database of potential personnel for an incoming Trump administration, as well as training them on how the government should work as part of a “Presidential Administration Academy”. The final step will be a presidential transition playbook that seeks to help the next president hit the ground running once he takes office.The personnel piece, in particular, has led to some infighting among Republicans, though so have policy ideas that are unpopular in a general election, like restricting abortions. Trump doesn’t want to be seen as outsourcing any element of his administration to an outside group. And the foundation’s bold, public move to do so may not have endeared the thinktank to Trumpworld.Hiring staff after winning the presidency is always a huge undertaking, but if Trump and Project 2025 get their way, it would be herculean. Both Trump and the project want to drastically expand the number of political appointees in the federal government, firing civil servants whose roles typically have remained nonpartisan regardless of who is in office. Doing so would require thousands, if not tens of thousands, more political hires who are beholden to the president. Despite the clash, it’s likely there’s some overlap between candidates the project has vetted and would recommend, and the Trump administration’s picks. Many of Trump’s allies, like Steve Bannon, have praised or supported the project.While the project skews Trumpian, its goals represent generational changes in policy and how the government works that would last far beyond the next presidency. Roberts said on Bannon’s show that the project was building “not just for 2025, but for the next century in the United States”. The project has the left so upset, he added, because “they’ve never seen the political right be this organized, this focused, this rational about taking power and actually using it appropriately, as the constitution says.”In a Guardian profile on Roberts earlier this month, sources noted his ability to grab attention for conservative causes – a skill that could lead to backlash. One critic of Heritage’s Trumpian turn warned: “It’s not at all clear to me that the bet that Kevin is making is going to pay off.”Dans has appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room show to boost the project and encourage War Room listeners to get involved as potential appointees in a second Trump administration. He called himself a “true-blooded deplorable” and explained how the project’s goal was about “infusing America First” in the conservative movement.“We need a new culture, we need this War Room audience to come to work in Washington,” he said in an appearance on the show last year.This week, he was back on the show, seeking to debunk the left’s narratives about the project and again imploring conservatives to help staff the government.“The swamp isn’t going to drain itself, we need outsiders coming in to do this,” he said, emphasizing that the project was not Trump’s, but had built a way to vet candidates for federal roles.In another video that resurfaced in recent weeks, Dans said that the project had a great relationship with Trump and that “Trump is very bought into this,” though emphasized that the project is intended to be “candidate-neutral”. More

    • 200 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘It puts everyone in a really bad position’: Black journalists react to Trump joining NABJ panel

      by

      On Monday night, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) announced that Donald Trump will participate in a panel discussion at the organization’s annual convention in Chicago, which starts on Wednesday.The announcement, which said that the Q&A would “concentrate on the most pressing issues facing the Black community”, was met with swift online backlash from some Black journalists. They decried the decision to invite a presidential candidate who has lambasted Black journalists, led a movement to squash diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and who is responsible for increased anti-journalistic sentiment, including the popularization of the term “fake news” to describe factual, but potentially unflattering, reporting.Tiffany Walden, a co-founder and editor-in-chief of The TRiiBE, a digital platform that focuses on Black Chicago, told the Guardian that NABJ’s decision was “irresponsible”.“We’ve watched Trump threaten to send the feds here when he was in office,” Walden said. “We’ve watched him use Chicago as a dog whistle in all of his campaign’s materials during his first run for office. He talked about Chicago having top gang thugs. So this puts the city of Chicago and its residents in a very vulnerable position. It also puts Black journalists in a very vulnerable position at a convention that’s supposed to be a safe space for them.”Ameshia Cross, a political analyst, echoed this sentiment on X: “The same Trump that attacked Black journalists from the stump. The same Trump who is attacking DEI, can’t get ahead of his own racism and sexism. And the guy who wants to dissolve journalism as we know it, that’s who is speaking at #NABJ24 w/ record attendance. C’mon yall.”Another journalist, Carron J Phillips, called the move “the single dumbest and worst decision in NABJ history”.The outcry led to the NABJ president, Ken Lemon, and others defending the decision, saying that Black reporters should have the opportunity to question a political candidate.“Every year, every presidential election cycle, we invite the presidential candidates to come,” Lemon said to NABJ student journalists on Tuesday. “We extend that to anyone who is a nominee and in this case we have two presumptive nominees. We invited both of them … This is an important hour. We have people whose lives are depending on what happens in November … This is a great opportunity for us to vet the candidate right here on our ground.”Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak elsewhere on Wednesday, when Trump will be at NABJ, but her confirmation to attend this year’s convention, which lasts through Sunday, is “pending”, according to NABJ.Tia Mitchell, the chair of NABJ’s political journalism taskforce and a Washington correspondent at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote on X: “I helped make this call. And it’s in line with invitations NABJ has sent to every presidential candidate for decades. But continue to go off on your feed. I’ll continue to work to create opportunities for journalists to interview the potential next President.” (Mitchell, NABJ and NABJ’s Chicago chapter did not respond to requests for comment.)Wednesday’s panel will be moderated by Rachel Scott, a senior congressional correspondent for ABC News; Harris Faulkner, who anchors The Faulkner Focus and Outnumbered for Fox News; and Kadia Goba, a politics reporter for Semafor.“As journalists, we can never be afraid to tackle someone like Trump,” Jemele Hill, a contributing reporter for the Atlantic, wrote on X. “The reality is that he is running for president and needs to be treated as such. Being questioned by journalists is part of the job, and especially important in the company of Black journalists. Mainstream media keeps trying to convince us that he actually is gaining support among Black people. Let’s see if it’s true.”But the journalist Matthew Wright pushed back on the notion that there was anything productive in questioning Trump.“What does that serve?” Wright said to the Guardian. “We literally just watched him talk to Laura Ingraham [who] was trying to get him to answer different questions, but he practically played evasive of action even then. If a super conservative white woman can’t get straight answers out of him, what makes you think that three black women are going to get them?”In a statement about the NABJ appearance, Trump’s campaign wrote: “President Trump accomplished more for Black Americans than any other president in recent history.” Some journalists used this statement as evidence that NABJ’s decision to platform the former president was harmful, and would lead to further perpetuation of falsehoods.“This is the way 45 is touting his appearance before @nabj this week. Was this what you wanted [Tia Mitchell]? He is already lying and he isn’t even in Chicago yet. This is your legacy,” April Reign, a media strategist, wrote on X.The timing of the panel announcement – less than 48 hours before the convention’s start – also drew concern from NABJ members.Shamira Ibrahim, a culture writer, told the Guardian that she was shocked by the decision.“It puts everyone in a really bad position,” Ibrahim said. “You already paid your convention fees, you already paid for a hotel that’s likely not refundable at this point, flights are likely difficult to get replaced. Even if you have a moral opposition to it or an ethical opposition to it, you’re kind of already stuck in whatever plan you made.”NABJ’s annual convention has allowed Black journalists a space to fellowship and gather safely since the organization’s founding in 1975, with some reporters likening it to a family reunion. Inviting Trump, Ibrahim said, undermined that sense of community.“NABJ is primarily not just a place for journalists to get opportunities to interview politicians, but also a place for Black journalists to network, to have open conversations about things that are happening in the industry, to attend panels, and really get a sense of how to shift in a very, very volatile, fragile space,” she continued.“Inviting someone who, one, has made targeted attacks on Black journalists, two, has actively been responsible in defunding programs that help build Black journalists, and three, has publicly attacked the Black press flies in the face of any sort of fidelity convention.”On Tuesday afternoon, a coalition of organizations, including Chicago Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression and Anti-War Committee Chicago, announced plans to rally outside the convention to “tell Trump he’s not welcome in Chicago”. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Harris and Trump release dueling ads as candidates refine their messaging

      by

      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump released dueling campaign ads on Tuesday, as the reshaped US presidential election began to grind into gear with 98 days to go.The US vice-president’s ad, Fearless, was her first since she became the de facto Democratic nominee, after Joe Biden halted his re-election campaign and endorsed her.“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” Harris said. “To give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act. But we are not going back.”The former president’s ad, I Don’t Understand, used a snippet of Harris answering a question about immigration policy to bolster a hardline message about drugs, crime, terrorism and the southern border.Showing footage of her dancing, Trump’s ad called Harris “failed, weak, dangerously liberal”.Harris’s campaign hit back against Trump, pointing to the Republican’s role in directing congressional Republicans to reject bipartisan border reform.“After killing the toughest border deal in decades, Donald Trump is running on his trademark lies because his own record and ‘plans’ are extreme and unpopular,” Ammar Moussa, a Harris campaign spokesperson, told reporters.Harris has been the presumptive Democratic nominee for little more than a week – but she has made an extremely strong start, reeling in more than $200m and appearing to make up ground in the polls.She is still considering her own vice-presidential pick. But on Monday, Trump’s Republican running mate, the hardline Ohio senator JD Vance, was revealed to have made a telling admission about the strength of Harris’s start.In remarks at a fundraiser in Minnesota last weekend, reported by the Washington Post and referring to Biden’s decision to give in to those who said he was too old for a second term, Vance said: “All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch.“The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.”Biden is 81, and Harris is 59. Trump is 78, making him the oldest presidential nominee of all time. The language of Harris’s new ad pointed to Democratic determination to target Trump’s age – and to portray him as backward-looking and a thing of the past, now that their own old man is out of the campaign picture.The Harris campaign is also keen to point to its fundraising efforts, which as the new ad was released saw a “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call featuring celebrities including the actor Jeff Bridges, who famously played Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski. The campaign said it raised $4m.Five years before Bridges made The Big Lebowski, he played the lead role in Fearless, a 1993 movie about a man whose behaviour is changed after he survives a plane crash.In a statement accompanying the Fearless ad, the Harris campaign chairperson, Jen O’Malley Dillon, saluted Democrats’ own dramatic shift in fortunes, from plummeting polls under Biden to soaring hopes under Harris.“Kamala Harris has always stood up to bullies, criminals and special interests on behalf of the American people – and she’s beaten them,” O’Malley Dillon said, echoing the ad’s citation of Harris’s work as attorney general of California, as well as her time as a US senator and vice-president.“This $50m paid media campaign, bolstered by our record-setting fundraising haul and a groundswell of grassroots enthusiasm, is one crucial way we will reach and make our case to the voters who will decide this election.”The Harris campaign plans to air its ad prominently over three weeks, including amid coverage of the Olympic Games in Paris.The Trump campaign is also reportedly focusing on Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan – the key battleground states. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Celebrity-studded ‘White Dudes for Harris’ call raises $4m for vice-president

      by

      A Zoom call meant to rally “white dudes” in support of Kamala Harris’s run for the White House raised more than $4m from about 190,000 participants, including several Hollywood stars, in the latest success for her nascent bid for president.The fundraiser added to a series of positives for the Harris campaign on Tuesday, including the release of a new ad, an endorsement from the Republican mayor of a large city in in Arizona, and an admission from the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, that Harris posed more of a threat to the Trump campaign than Joe Biden did.Guests on the “White Dudes for Harris” call on Monday evening not only included contenders for Harris’s vice-presidential running mate – the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz; the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker; and the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg– but also the actors Jeff Bridges (famous for portraying the Dude in The Big Lebowski) and Mark Hamill, who secured a $50,000 donation during the call by delivering his renowned Star Wars line: “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.”A news release from the organizers said the virtual gathering “shattered expectations”.“Over the course of the evening, speakers heard governors, senators, congressmen, actors and singers all speaking directly to white men around the need to organize and support Kamala Harris for president,” the press release said. “Speakers spoke truthfully and honestly about the path ahead, the importance for us to connect with one another and the important role we can play in getting other white men to turn their backs on the dangerous, dark path Donald Trump is trying to march us down.”Harris, a former California attorney general and US senator who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, became the first woman to be elected vice-president when Joe Biden won the White House in 2020. She is now likely to become the first woman of color to lead a major-party presidential ticket after Biden halted his re-election run on 21 July and endorsed her.Democrats responded to Harris’s ascension with enthusiasm, illustrated by 170,000 people signing up to volunteer for her campaign as well as donating $200m for her political war chest in just the first week.But Trump – Biden’s presidential predecessor – and his Republican supporters, many of them white, have greeted her rise by disparaging her as a hire resulting from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.“Honestly, their dark vision for our future is just holding all of us back,” Brad Bauman, a Democratic party communications consultant who helped organize Monday’s call, told NBC News. “That’s why we decided to start White Dudes for Harris.”Other celebrities on Monday’s call were Mark Ruffalo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Paul Scheer, Josh Gad, Sean Astin, JJ Abrams and Bradley Whitford. The call lasted over three hours.The Zoom fundraising call came in the wake of similar, well-attended gatherings for Black women, Black men and white women supporting Harris.There is also a “cat ladies for Harris” Zoom call being planned in response to comments from Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, in which he insulted the vice-president as a “childless cat” lady. And there is a similar call in the works titled “Latino Men for Kamala”. The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, is hosting a Labor for Harris Zoom call with labor leaders and members around the US on 31 July.The white women for Harris call last Thursday raised nearly $8.5m for the vice-president and had more than 160,000 attenders.The Black women for Harris Zoom call attracted about 90,000 participants. And the Black men for Harris streaming event, moderated by the journalist Roland Martin, saw more than 53,000 people register.Those events also included appearances by numerous celebrities and Democratic officials.The calls come as Harris and Trump are polling closely to each other in crucial battleground states likely to determine the election. After Biden’s withdrawal from the race, the Republican-friendly Fox News poll conducted in three of the key states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – showed Trump and Harris were even.Trump had previously been enjoying relatively comfortable leads.The successful fundraising calls for Harris were anchored by news of an important endorsement in the battleground state of Arizona, as the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona’s third largest city, crossed party lines to endorse Harris.The Harris campaign also released its first video television advertisement, which describes the presumptive Democratic nominee as “fearless” and touts her bona fides as a prosecutor. The one-minute ad is the first of a $50m advertising campaign ahead of the Democratic national convention in Chicago on 19 August.Adding to her campaign’s sense of momentum since Biden declared last Sunday that he was stepping aside from the presidential race was an audio recording leaked to the Washington Post on Monday of Vance telling Republican donors that Harris taking over from Biden was a “sucker punch”.“All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch,” said Vance in the recording. “The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.” More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Washington insiders simulated a second Trump presidency. Can a role-play save democracy?

      by

      It is the afternoon of 20 January 2025 and Donald Trump is in his White House dining room, glued to the same TV where he sat transfixed as the January 6 attack on the US Capitol unfolded four years ago. This morning, he completed one of the most spectacular political comebacks in US history, reciting the oath of office at the inauguration ceremony that returned him to the most powerful job on Earth.His political resurrection has caused turmoil in the transition period, and massive anti-Trump demonstrations have erupted in several big cities. In his inaugural address, the 47th president makes clear his intention to deal with his detractors: “They are rioting in the streets. We are not safe. Make our cities safe again!” he commands.The peaceful marches are portrayed on Fox News, the channel he is watching, as anarchic disorder. Trump grows increasingly incensed, and that evening calls his top team into the situation room with one purpose in mind: to end the demonstrations by any means necessary.“I need to make sure that our streets are safe from those who are running amok trying to overthrow our administration,” he tells the group of top law enforcement, national security and military officials. A flicker of alarm ripples through the room as the president cites the Insurrection Act, saying it allows him to call up the national guard in key states to suppress what he calls the “rebellion”.Discerning the concern among his top officials, Trump gives them an ultimatum. He is in no mood to compromise or stand down – he did that in his first term in the face of “deep state” opposition. “I have been charged by the American people to make this country great again,” he states, “and I need to know right now that everybody in this room is on board.”The scenario was imaginary, but the discussion around it was very real. Dozens of men and women in a Washington DC-area hotel conference center were seated at tables arranged to resemble the White House situation room, wearing name tags denoting their part in the role-play. Prominent people from both parties were in character as the president of the United States, AKA Trump; the joint chiefs of staff; Republican and Democratic governors; Congress members; federal prosecutors; religious and business leaders; and community organizers.About 175 people participated in five exercises, bringing to the process an extraordinary wealth of bipartisan institutional knowledge. Among the lineup were senior officials from successive administrations of both parties, including the Trump administration.They came with a mission: to wargame Trump acting out the most extreme authoritarian elements of his agenda and explore what could be done, should he win in November, to protect democracy in the face of possible abuses of power. What they discovered could be used to inform public debate and sound the alarm about what most participants agreed was a woeful lack of preparation.View image in fullscreenThe event was being held as part of the Democracy Futures Project, an ambitious series of nonpartisan tabletop exercises. Spearheaded by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute, the role-playing games were staged in May and June amid tight security. A similar set of wargaming exercises, conducted under different leadership in 2020, pinpointed with uncanny precision Trump’s efforts to subvert that year’s presidential election.This year, the games included that imaginary scenario in which Trump, newly ensconced in the Oval Office, invokes the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces into American cities to fight supposed anarchy and crime.A second game looked at Trump’s threat to politicise federal agencies, including the justice department, and weaponise them against his political enemies. A third probed his immigration plans, which include dark warnings of mass roundups of undocumented immigrants and large-scale deportations.The Guardian attended two of the five exercises in the role of observers.The vocabulary of the exercises was that of the playground or sports field: the simulations were “games” revolving around “role-play”, with participants acting in the characters of Trump, his cabinet, military, law enforcement and congressional leaders, split into Trump’s “red” team and an oppositional “blue” team. Despite the linguistic levity, the purpose of the enactments could not have been more grave.“This is a pivotal moment for our democracy,” said Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey and former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, who took part in the Insurrection Act simulation. “I believe very strongly that, should Trump be elected, we’re going to see a vast change and our democracy will not be what it looks like today.”The sense of urgency surrounding the gatherings has intensified dramatically as a result of recent events. Since the war games were staged, Trump has been emboldened by the attempt on his life at a Pennsylvania rally, Joe Biden has stepped out of the race, and Kamala Harris has shot up to become the presumptive Democratic candidate. The course of the election – and its outcome – is now deeply uncertain.Participants attended under the so-called Chatham House rule, meaning that what was said in the simulations could be reported publicly but not who said it. Some individuals agreed to be named, including Michael Steele, former chair of the Republican National Committee; Elizabeth Neumann, deputy chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; and Richard Danzig, the navy secretary under Bill Clinton.That so many prominent public figures were prepared to set aside entire days to delve deeply into a hypothetical was in itself a sign of these troubled and profoundly anxious times. “A lot of people are getting worried,” Whitman said, “and trying to figure out what guardrails are going to be left should Trump get in.”The danger with any attempt to role-play possible future scenarios is that it could sound paranoid or preposterous. Trump may say extreme things, but destroy democracy? Really? The co-founders of the project, who include Barton Gellman, the Brennan Center’s senior adviser and a former Atlantic journalist, and Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor, can point to two powerful arguments in support of the project. The first is the accuracy of the 2020 wargaming.The Transition Integrity Project imagined the then far-fetched idea that Trump might refuse to concede defeat, and, by claiming widespread fraud in mail-in ballots, unleash dark forces culminating in violence. Every implausible detail of the simulations came to pass in the lead-up to the US Capitol attack on 6 January 2021.The second ballast for the Brennan Center’s exercises was provided by Trump himself. All of this year’s scenarios were based on explicit statements from Trump and his closest allies, laying out his intended executive actions during a second term.Take the scenario that Trump might invoke the Insurrection Act to go against street protests. The 1807 law gives presidents the power to deploy the US military to suppress insurrections and quell civil unrest. Trump already considered this in 2020, when White House aides drafted a proclamation order invoking the act in preparation for suppressing Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. According to the Washington Post, similar drafts have been drawn up recently by Trump associates. .“This wasn’t a fanciful or unrealistic scenario,” said Peter Keisler, former acting US attorney general under George W Bush, who participated in the simulation. “We know people associated with Trump have been looking into how to use the Insurrection Act to deploy military force domestically against protests.”Keisler said that taking part in the exercise brought home to him how hard it would be to stop such a move: “It confirmed for me that for an authoritarian-minded president, deploying the military domestically could be one of the easiest and fastest levers of power that could be pulled, given how vaguely written the statute is.”View image in fullscreenIn the course of the Insurrection Act tabletop exercise, the person role-playing Trump initially met resistance from senior military figures who tried to cling to the Posse Comitatus Act barring federal troops from engaging in civilian law enforcement. As the scenario unfolded, Trump grew impatient and ended up firing the joint chiefs of staff, replacing them with military officers who would do his bidding and federalise the national guard.The way the exercise played out jibed with the fears of another of its participants, Paul Eaton, a former major general in the US army. “I’m not sure we can count on the military in a Trump world,” he said.Eaton pointed to a letter from May 2021 signed by 124 retired generals and admirals that propagated the lie that Biden stole the 2020 election from Trump. He added that studies had shown that almost one in seven of those prosecuted for storming the Capitol on January 6 had a military background.“When you have an armed force of 2 million-plus men and women who get a steady diet of lies from Fox News and social media, then you risk ending up with a military that’s going to question what is really true,” Eaton said.The second war game observed by the Guardian involved the scenario in which Trump, on day one, sets out to drain the swamp, free the January 6 “patriots”, and lock up his political enemies. “Let’s be an intelligent authoritarian,” the participant playing Trump told his red team allies, telling them to push the boundaries of what a president can do.Over the next few hours, the president sat on his phone firing off social media posts, while his cabinet executed his agenda. The justice department announced the investigation of Biden and others in his circle, and instructed the FBI to be very aggressive, to the extent of looking for even minor crimes.By the end of the day, they had arrested three of Biden’s grandchildren and, for good measure, Mike Pence’s daughter, “just to make sure Pence keeps his mouth shut”. They also withdrew all pending criminal charges against Trump.Trump’s team also prioritised schedule F: an effort to purge the civil service of people disloyal to the president. And they instructed the treasury department to look at tools at its disposal to withhold federal funding from top US universities under the guise that they were “harboring antisemitism”In response, the blue oppositional team called congressional hearings, tried to mobilize people across the country to protest against the president’s actions, staged acts of civil disobedience, and threatened lawsuits.At the end of the simulation, the consensus among many policy experts was that the blue team’s response felt weak and inadequate, with little agreement over message. “Blue has a catch-22 because they’re forces of normality, but all of this is not normal,” one participant said.Meanwhile, the red team’s efforts may have been alarming, but they didn’t get to even a fraction of what Trump has said he wants to accomplish in his first 90 days. “That is just the tip of the iceberg,” another participant said.As the Brennan Center has highlighted in its initial findings from the war games, participants came away from the simulations sobered by the experience. Above all, they discovered that there were far fewer effective restraints at their disposal than they had expected.Asked to identify the biggest lesson she had learned, Whitman said: “How little there is we can do.”Many of the attendees concluded that this time around, the courts cannot be relied upon as the primary means of staving off Trump’s attacks. In the thick of his 2020 “stop the steal” conspiracy to overturn the election results, courts did play a critical role, rejecting Trump’s claims of illegal voting in almost all cases.Trump’s many appointments to the federal judicial bench during his term, including his game-changing three appointments to the supreme court, have dented the hope that the judiciary will be a bastion against an authoritarian president.Participants also came away rattled by the thought that Trump and his associates are now much more experienced and adept at working the federal apparatus. As one of the Trump role-players put it: “This time around, they’re going to know where the door handles are.”Such apprehensions are disturbing. Yet the intention of the exercises was not to stun pro-democracy activists into depressed paralysis.Rather, it was, as Brennan put it, to show that “time is short, and the work of preparation demands more ambition and more hands on deck”.The exercises pointed to some positive guardrails that might still hold. State governors have their own reserves of independent authority, which, if combined with the capabilities of state attorneys general, could block, or at least slow down, federal abuses.Federal officials, who are in Trump’s sights as he threatens to politicise the top of the civil service in his attack on the “deep state”, also have the ability to safeguard the workings of democratic government. It may be easier said than done in the face of mass firings, but the Brennan Center is calling for a “well-resourced campaign” to persuade civil servants to stay the course and not resign, and provide them with legal support in case of retaliation.The last resort when all else fails, many participants suggested, would probably be the power of public protest. “Public opinion, mobilized by a powerful communications strategy, can help set boundaries on authoritarian behavior,” Brennan said in its initial findings.Keisler, the former acting US attorney general, said that the war game he attended shook him more than he had expected: “Do I think there’s a genuine jeopardy to our democracy? Absolutely. Do I think the country is ready for it? No. Do I think it’s guaranteed to end well? No.”He added: “And this was just a game. Then there’s real life, and that’s ahead of us.” More

    • 225 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Like a diary – only far more masculine’: what JD Vance’s blogs reveal about him | Arwa Mahdawi

      by

      Like many an elder millennial, JD Vance once had a blog. Two, actually. The lawyer turned writer turned senator turned venture capitalist turned Donald Trump’s running mate launched his first blog during his 2005 deployment to Iraq. It was called The Ruminations of JD Hamel, because that was the name he was ruminating under at the time. Vance has gone by a few names. He has also gone through a hell of a lot of political opinions.His second blog, called The Hillbilly Elite, was launched in 2010, when he was a 26-year-old at Yale Law School. It was meant to help him parse his feelings about being an “Appalachian white boy … training at the world’s premier center for elites”. When I say “feelings”, I don’t mean silly little girly feelings. This was serious stuff. “So it’s like a diary,” his first entry explained, “only far more masculine.”Vance may soon become one of the most powerful people in the world, so there is widespread interest in figuring out exactly who he is and what, if anything, he truly believes. His handful of blog posts have been picked through for clues. Do they tell us anything? Well, they certainly suggest that the man who has gone viral for railing against “childless cat ladies” has always had weird views about gender. In a 2005 post about leaving his family to go to Iraq, for example, Vance wrote the following: “Yesterday was incredibly emotional for me. I honestly can say that I felt more like a female than I think I ever have or will.” Females, eh? They are always so darn emotional!Despite him being so tough and masculine, you have to wonder if Vance may be feeling a tad emotional at the moment. Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, has called the senator a weirdo and a bunch of his party colleagues have gleefully followed suit. His debut as Trump’s running mate has been a disaster and polls suggest nobody really likes him. His own party is second-guessing him and there have even been rumours Trump might dump Vance in favour of Nikki Haley. If politics is a bust, perhaps he can start blogging again. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Kamala Harris is the worst nightmare of America’s far right | Robert Reich

      by

      When Joe Biden stepped down in support of Kamala Harris, he didn’t just pass the torch to another generation. He passed it from old white men to America’s future.Consider that women now compose a remarkable 60% of college undergraduates. And that by 2050, it’s estimated that America will consist mostly of people of color – 30% more Black people than today, 60% more Latinos and twice the number of Asian Americans.The power shift has already started.Many of the people who have demanded accountability from Trump constitute a Trump nightmare of strong and able women, including several of color – Letitia James and Fani Willis – along with E Jean Carroll and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi.And now, Kamala Harris.In naming JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate, Trump feinted a torch pass – but backwards. Vance’s white male belongs in the early 20th century.During Vance’s bid for the Senate in Ohio in 2021, he called Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies”, offering as examples Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.“How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Vance asked, suggesting the only way to have a “direct stake” is by giving birth.Even before Vance said this, Harris was stepmother to two teenagers. Soon after, Buttigieg and his husband adopted infant twins.By this logic, no American male – including Vance and Trump – can have a “direct stake” in America.Trump himself – dog-whistling racist; alleged groper, fondler, and sexual harasser; and adjudicated rapist – is hardly respectful of women, especially women of color.Of Harris, he claimed: “They’re saying she isn’t qualified because she wasn’t born in this country.” (Harris was born in California.)Of Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, he charged – also without evidence – that “she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member”.Trump has repeatedly denigrated women of color as “angry” or “nasty”.And he views female human beings as almost alien creatures. “There’s nothing I love more than women,” he has said, “but they’re really a lot different than portrayed. They are far worse than men, far more aggressive, and boy, can they be smart!” And, of course, his infamous: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”Trump misogyny has infected the entire Maga Republican party, whose recent convention was a celebration of testosterone – featuring the wrestling champ Hulk Hogan shouting: “Let me tell you something, brother … Trump is the toughest of them all, a gladiator!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTo remind you, Hogan was the protagonist in a sex-tape video scandal. Hogan’s lawsuit over the circulation of the video, which put Gawker Media out of business, was underwritten by the tech billionaire Peter Thiel – the same man who gave JD Vance a lucrative venture-capital job, funded Vance’s senatorial campaign and introduced Vance to Trump.Other pop cultural “tough guy” icons at the Republican convention similarly attested to Trump’s virility. The conservative rocker/rapper Kid Rock performed his song American Badass.Instead of being introduced by his spouse, as have most candidates accepting their party’s nomination, Trump was introduced by Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship – known for its machismo culture and sanctioned violence.Trump, Vance, and their Maga allies are misogynists who want to control women by preventing them from controlling their own bodies – forcing them to have children. Vance is against abortion even in cases of rape or incest.Trump’s Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” chillingly recommends that the Department of Health and Human Services “ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method”.What’s the underlying goal here? The same as in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale – authoritarian fascism organized around male dominance.In this worldview, anything that challenges the traditional male roles of protector, provider and controller of the family threatens the social order. Strong women and LGBTQ+ people also weaken the heroic male warrior. Brutality, force and violence strengthen him.In their eyes, Kamala Harris could not pose more of a threat.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Harris’s VP list: Gretchen Whitmer and Roy Cooper say they’re not in running

      by

      Two lawmakers seen as strong contenders in the race to become Kamala Harris’s running mate have announced that they are not in the running. On Monday, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and North Carolina governor Roy Cooper both said that while they support the vice-president, they will be staying in their posts in their respective states.“This just wasn’t the right time for North Carolina and for me to potentially be on a national ticket,” Cooper said in a statement posted to Twitter/X on Monday. “As I’ve said from the beginning, she has an outstanding list of people from which to choose, and we’ll all work to make sure she wins.”In an interview with CBS, Whitmer said that she has not been vetted by Harris’s office and expects Harris’s to announce her pick within the week, which would confirm the Democratic ticket at least two weeks before the Democratic national convention begins on 19 August in Chicago.“I have communicated with everyone, including the people of Michigan, that I’m going to stay as governor until the end of my term at the end of 2026,” Whitmer said.Others rumored to be potential running mates are all white men who govern in swing states that can decide the 2024 election. They include: Kentucky governor Andy Beshear; Minnesota governor Tim Walz; Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro; and Mark Kelly, a US Senator in Arizona.While all four have been asked about their willingness to serve as Harris’s running mate if tapped, all have signaled that they would step up if asked but none have hinted at their engagements with her campaign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This is not about me. But I’ve always, always said when I’ve had the chance to serve, I think that’s very important to do,” Kelly told reporters on 25 July.“Being mentioned is certainly an honor … I trust Vice-President Harris’s judgement, she’ll make the best choice she’s going to,” Walz told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. “But one way or another, she’s going to win in November and that’s gonna benefit everyone … Either way it’s gonna be a win.”During a campaign stop for Harris in Pittsburgh, Shapiro said: “It’s a decision she needs to make who she wants to govern with, who she wants to campaign with, and who can be there to serve alongside her.”And Beshear, who has also been stumping for Harris in red and purple jurisdictions, told the Des Moines Register newspaper: “I’m honored to be considered and, regardless of what happens, I’m going to work every day between now and Election Day to make sure that Kamala Harris is the next president of the United States.” More