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      Trump’s scattershot attacks on justice system are causing real damage

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      Donald Trump’s verbal assaults on judges, prosecutors, witnesses, jurors and the broader US justice system, are undermining the rule of law and American democracy while fueling threats and potential violence against individuals involved with the legal cases against him and egging on his extremist allies, former federal prosecutors and judges say.In his campaign to win the presidency again, and in the midst of various criminal and civil trials, Trump has launched multiple attacks on the American legal system on his Truth Social platform to counter the 88 federal and state criminal charges he faces.Trump, the all but certain Republican presidential nominee for 2024, has accelerated glorifying the insurgents who attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021. He has called them “patriots” and “hostages”, while promising that if he wins, he will free those convicted of crimes as one of his “first acts” in office.Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the electoral system. He has refused to say he will accept the results of the 2024 elections, a ploy similar to what he did in 2020 before falsely claiming the election was rigged – a claim he still maintains.“If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results,” Trump told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”Darkly, Trump has also warned that if he loses the election there will be “bedlam” and a “bloodbath for the country”. These words referred, in part, to the fallout Trump predicted for the auto industry, but have distinct echoes of his false charges that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020 due to fraud.At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on 13 April, right before his first criminal trial in New York began, Trump repeated his bogus claims about his 2020 defeat: “The election was rigged. Pure and simple, 2020 was rigged. We could never let it happen again.”At the same rally he blasted Juan Merchan, the very judge who oversees his trial in Manhattan. In that case, Trump faces 34 counts for altering company records in 2016 to hide $130,000 in hush-money payments that his fixer Michael Cohen made to the porn star Stormy Daniels, who alleged an affair with him.“I have a crooked judge,” Trump raged at Merchan, adding that he was “fully gagged before a highly conflicted and corrupt judge, who suffers from TDS … Trump Derangement Syndrome”.Trump’s multiple attacks on witnesses and jurors, who he had been told were off limits and could spur a contempt citation, have prompted Merchan twice to fine Trump a total of $10,000 for violating a gag order against such attacks.“The court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders,” the judge has said, warning that Trump could face jail time if he made similar attacks.Trump insists without evidence that the more than seven dozen federal and state criminal charges he faces in four jurisdictions are “election interference”, and says he has done nothing illegal.Former prosecutors and judges say Trump’s incendiary rhetoric is catnip to his Maga allies and could spur violence in 2024.“At its core, the promise of pardons by Trump signals to anyone prone to insurrectionist behavior that they can expect a get out of jail card free,” said former federal judge John Jones, who is now president of Dickinson College.View image in fullscreen“My fear is that we will have civil unrest that will impede the election. My concern is that you can have vigilante groups under the guise of ‘stop the steal’, patrolling polling places and intimidating voters.”Jones stressed that “every one of the Jan 6 defendants has had appropriate due process”.“They have either been convicted or pled guilty to substantial federal crimes,” he said. “Promising them pardons in the face of that is against every principle in our system of justice.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRegarding Trump’s ongoing claims that the 2020 election was rigged and that the country will see a “bloodbath” if he loses again, Jones said: “The word ‘bloodbath’ is not ambiguous. The last time Trump fomented this kind of post-election destructiveness, people lost their lives.”Ex-federal prosecutors raise similar concerns.“To the extent President Trump is dangling pardons of the J6 defendants he is, in effect, trying to eliminate the deterrent effect of criminal prosecutions with the anticipated result of making violence on his own behalf more likely,” former prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig said.“From a legal perspective, deterrence is critical. The threats of violence in 2024 can only be mitigated by strong, consistent prosecution for violent acts in 2020.”Concerns about the potentially dangerous fallout from Trump’s attacks on the electoral and legal systems are underscored by a Brennan Center study in late April, which showed 38% of over 925 local election officials surveyed had experienced “threats, harassment or abuse”.The Brennan survey, conducted in February and March, also found that 54% of those surveyed were worried about the safety of fellow workers, and 62% were concerned about political leaders trying to interfere with how they do their jobs.On a related track, the DC judge Tanya Chutkan, who has handled a number of cases involving January 6 insurrectionists, has warned starkly about the dangers of more violence this year. Chutkan, who is slated to oversee Trump’s trial on charges by the special counsel Jack Smith that he sought to subvert the 2020 election, echoed Rosenzweig’s warning that more violence is less likely to happen if those convicted or who have pleaded guilty for the January 6 attack receive appropriate sentences.Last month, Chutkan issued a stiff sentence of 66 months for one insurgent who attacked the Capitol and has called the Jan 6 violent Capitol attack by Trump allies that led to injuries of 140 police officers “as serious a crisis as this nation has ever faced”.Notably, Chutkan has stressed that “extremism is alive and well in this country. Threats of violence continue unabated.”Ex-prosecutors also say that Trump’s attacks on the legal system are alarming.“Trump’s persistent denigration of the legal system is surely as divisive as everything else he does because he’s lying,” said the former justice department official Ty Cobb, who worked as a White House counsel for part of the Trump administration. “Trump’s lies in this area seem to have been embraced by his followers as truth.”Cobb stressed that “Trump has not been unfairly targeted by the justice department or the Biden administration, but charged only with serious crimes he has committed. The two state cases in which Trump stands criminally indicted have nothing to do with the Biden administration.” More

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      Bernie Sanders to run for fourth term in US Senate

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      Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent senator and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, announced on Monday that he will run for a fourth six-year term – at the age of 82.In a video statement, Sanders thanked the people of Vermont “for giving me the opportunity to serve in the United States Senate”, which he said had been “the honor of my life.“Today I am announcing my intention to seek another term. And let me take a few minutes to tell you why.”In his signature clipped New York accent, Sanders did so.Citing his roles as chair of the Senate health, labor and pensions committee, part of Senate Democratic leadership, and as a member of committees on veterans affairs, the budget and the environment, Sanders said: “I have been, and will be if re-elected, in a strong position to provide the kind of help that Vermonters need in these difficult times.”Should Sanders win re-election and serve a full term, he will be 89 years old at the end of those six years. In a decidedly gerontocratic Senate, that would still be younger than the current oldest senator, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who will turn 91 in September. The Republican is due for re-election in 2028 – and has filed to run.Sanders was a mayor and sat in the US House for 16 years before entering the Senate in 2007.In 2016 he surged to worldwide prominence by mounting an unexpectedly strong challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, from the populist left. He ran strongly again in 2020 but lost out to Joe Biden.Announcing another election run, Sanders stressed the need to improve public healthcare, including by defending social security and Medicare and lowering prescription drug prices; to combat climate change that has seen Vermont hit by severe flooding; to properly care for veterans; and to protect abortion and reproductive rights.“We must codify Roe v Wade [which protected federal abortion rights until 2022] into national law and do everything possible to oppose the well-funded rightwing effort to roll back the gains that women have achieved after decades of struggle,” Sanders said. “No more second-class citizenship for the women of Vermont. Or America.”Addressing an issue which threatens to split Democrats in the year of a presidential election, Sanders said: “On October 7, 2023, Hamas, a terrorist organization, began the war in Gaza with a horrific attack on Israel that killed 1,200 innocent men, women and children and took more than 230 hostages, some of whom remain in captivity today. Israel had the absolute right to defend itself against this terrorist attack.”But Sanders, who is Jewish, also said Israel “did not and does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people, which was exactly what it is doing: 34,000 Palestinians have already been killed and 77,000 have been wounded, 70% of whom are women and children. According to humanitarian organizations, famine and starvation are now imminent.“In my view, US tax dollars should not be going to the extremist [Benjamin] Netanyahu government to continue its devastating war against the Palestinian people.”In conclusion, if without mentioning Donald Trump by name, Sanders called the 2024 election “the most consequential election in our lifetimes”.“Will the United States continue to even function as a democracy? Or will we move to an authoritarian form of government? Will we reverse the unprecedented level of income and wealth inequality that now exists? Or will we continue to see billionaires get richer while working families struggle to put food on the table? Can we create a government that works for all of us? Or will our political system continue to be dominated by wealthy campaign contributors?“These are just some of the questions that together we need to answer.” More

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      Noem book contains threat against Biden dog: ‘Commander, say hello to Cricket’

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      The White House condemned as “disturbing” and “absurd” comments in which Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota and a potential running mate for Donald Trump, threatened to harm or kill Joe Biden’s dog.“We find her comments from yesterday disturbing,” Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden’s press secretary, told a White House briefing. “We find them absurd. This is a country that loves dogs and you have a leader that talks about putting dogs down, killing them.”Noem’s bizarre threat is contained in No Going Back, a campaign book that generated unusual buzz after the Guardian revealed how Noem describes in detail the day she shot dead her dog, Cricket, which she deemed untrainable and dangerous, and an unnamed goat.The revelation sparked a political firestorm, widely held to have incinerated Noem’s chances of being named running mate to Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.But as the book neared publication on Tuesday, it became clear Noem was not done when she closed her chapter on killing Cricket, a 14-month-old female wirehaired pointer, and the unnamed male goat, which Noem says was smelly and aggressive and dangerous to her children.At the end of No Going Back, Noem asks: “What would I do if I was president on the first day in office in 2025?”Remarkably, she writes that “the first thing I’d do is make sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds. (‘Commander, say hello to Cricket for me.’)”Noem adds that her own dog, Foster, “would sure be welcome” at the White House.“He comes with me to the [state] capitol all the time and loves everyone,” she writes.Regardless, a governor widely held to have designs on the presidency in 2028 has at least implied, in print, that she would have a predecessor’s dog killed – whether by herself with a shotgun, like Cricket and the goat, or not.Noem has defended her description of killing Cricket and the goat as evidence of her willingness to do unpleasant but necessary things in farm life as well as in politics.Commander, a German shepherd owned by Joe and Jill Biden, was removed from the White House after biting Secret Service agents.On Monday, Jean-Pierre said: “Commander’s living with family members.”The day before, Noem doubled down.Her host on CBS’s Face the Nation, Margaret Brennan, quoted Noem’s apparent threat to kill Commander and asked: “Are you doing this to try to look tough? Do you still think that you have a shot at being a VP?”Noem said: “Well, number one, Joe Biden’s dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people. So, how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog and what to do with it?”Brennan said: “Well, he’s not living at the White House any more.”Noem said: “That’s a question that the president should be held accountable to.”Brennan said: “You’re saying he [Commander] should be shot?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNoem said: “That what’s the president should be accountable to.”Noem tried to move on, to talk about Covid in South Dakota. But she also said she was “so proud” of a book that contained “a lot of truthful stories”.Elsewhere, though, Noem’s publisher, Center Street, said that at Noem’s request it was removing from her book “a passage regarding Kim Jong-un … upon a reprint of the print edition and as soon as technically possible on the audio and ebook editions”.In her book, Noem writes: “I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. I’m sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all).”As first reported by the Dakota Scout, no such meeting occurred.Noem told CBS: “What bothers me the most about politicians is when they’re fake.”Brennan said: “But if you have to retract … parts of [the book] …”Noem, whose publisher said it would retract part of her book, said: “I’m not retracting anything.”Brennan said: “OK.”On Saturday, Noem attended a Trump Florida fundraiser featuring a host of vice-presidential contenders.Noem was “somebody I love”, NBC reported Trump as saying, adding: “She’s been with me, and a supporter, and I’ve been a supporter of hers for a long time.”But unlike other hopefuls, among them the South Carolina senator Tim Scott and the New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Noem was not called to the stage.She reportedly left early. More

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      From the economy to the climate crisis: key issues in the 2024 US election

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      As a Joe Biden v Donald Trump rematch looms, much is at stake. From the future of reproductive rights to the chances of meaningful action on climate change, from the strength of US support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, and Israel in its war with Hamas, to the fate of US democracy itself, existential issues are firmly to the fore.Here’s a look at why.Economy“It’s the economy, stupid.” So said the Democratic strategist James Carville, in 1992, as an adviser to Bill Clinton. Most Americans thought stewardship of the economy should change: Clinton beat George HW Bush.Under Biden, post-Covid recovery remains on track. Unemployment is low, stocks at all-time highs. That should bode well but the key question is whether Americans think Biden’s economy is strong, or think it is working for them, or think Trump was a safer pair of hands, forgetting the chaos of Covid. According to polling, many do prefer Trump. Cost-of-living concerns dominate. Inflation remains a worry. For Biden, Republican threats to social security and Medicare might offset such worries. For Trump, whose base skews older, such threats must be downplayed – though they are present in Republicans’ own transition planning.ImmigrationHouse Republicans impeached Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s secretary of homeland security. The Senate quashed that but at Trump’s direction, Republicans sank a bipartisan border and immigration deal. One day in February, Biden and Trump both went to the southern border. Biden highlighted Republican obstruction but called on Trump to work with him, aiming to show voters which party wants to work on the issue. Since then, Trump has focused on denunciations of Biden and claims of border chaos stoked by sinister forces. Expect such contrasts on loop.EqualityRon DeSantis made attacks on LGBTQ+ rights a hallmark of his attempt to “Make America Florida”. The governor’s failed campaign suggests how well that went down, but Republican efforts to demonize so-called “woke” ideology should not be discounted. States have introduced anti-trans legislation, book bans and restrictions on LGBTQ+ issues in education. The US supreme court weighed in by ending race-based affirmative action in college admissions.Struggles over immigration, and Republicans’ usual focus on crime, show race-inflected battles will play their usual role, particularly as Trump uses extremist “blood and soil” rhetoric. On the Democratic side, a worrying sign: Black and Hispanic support is less sure than it was.AbortionDemocrats are clear: they will focus on Republican attacks on abortion rights, from the Dobbs v Jackson supreme court ruling that struck down Roe v Wade to the mifepristone case, draconian bans and candidates’ support for such measures.It makes tactical sense: The threat to women’s reproductive rights is a rare issue on which Democrats poll very strongly, fueling electoral wins in conservative states. This year’s Alabama IVF ruling, which said embryos should be legally treated as people, showed the potency of such tactics again; from Trump down, Republicans scrambled to deny wanting to end treatment used by millions.Trump must balance boasting about ending Roe, by appointing three justices who voted to strike it down, with trying to avoid blame for attacks on reproductive rights even as his supporters call for, and implement, harsher abortion bans. Expect Biden and Democrats to hit and keep on hitting.Foreign policyFor Biden, the Israel-Gaza war presents a fiendish proposition: how to satisfy or merely mollify both the Israel lobby and large sections of his own party, particularly the left and the young – those more sympathetic to the Palestinians.Spiraling and ongoing campus protests against Israel’s pounding of Gaza show the danger of coming unglued from the base. So do protest votes against Biden in the Democratic primary. Republicans have no such worries: They are simply pro-Israel.Elsewhere, Biden continues to lead a global coalition in support of Ukraine in its fight against Russia, scoring a win at home in April as the Republican speaker of the US House, Mike Johnson, finally oversaw passage of a new aid bill despite fierce opposition from the right of his party. Throw in the lasting effects of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan (teed up by Trump, fumbled by Biden), questions about what happens if China attacks Taiwan, and the threat Trump poses to Nato, and heavy fire on foreign policy is guaranteed.DemocracyBiden is keen to stress the threat to democracy at home. After all, Trump refused to accept the result of the 2020 election, incited the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, is linked to plans to slash the federal government in a second term, and even says he wants to be a “dictator” on day one of re-election.Trump maintains the lie that his 2020 defeat was the result of electoral fraud even as his various criminal cases proceed: 14 of 88 charges concerning election subversion. The other 74 charges concern hush-money payments (34, now on trial in New York) and retention of classified information (40, going slowly in Florida).It should be easy to portray an 88-time indicted potential felon as a threat to constitutional order, particularly given Trump’s clear need to win power as a way of avoiding prison. Accordingly, the issue has been profitable for Biden at the polls. But some doubt its potency. David Axelrod, a close ally of Barack Obama, told the New Yorker: “I’m pretty certain in Scranton [Pennsylvania, Biden’s home town] they’re not sitting around their dinner table talking about democracy every night.”ClimateFrom forest fires to hurricanes and catastrophic floods, it is clear climate change is real. Polling reflects this belief: 70% of Americans – strikingly, 50% of Republicans included – want meaningful action. But that isn’t reflected in Republican campaigning. Trump says he doesn’t believe human activity contributes to climate change, nor that climate change is making extreme weather worse, and is opposed to efforts to boost clean energy. Biden’s record on climate may be criticized by campaigners but his record in office places him firmly and clearly against such dangerous views. More

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      Kristi Noem defends killing dog: ‘I’m tired of politicians pretending to be what they’re not’

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      The South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential hopeful Kristi Noem asked the American public to consider having to “make a choice between your children or a dangerous animal”, as she again defended her killing of a 14-month-old dog.“I would ask everybody in the country to put themselves in that situation,” Noem told CBS’s Face the Nation about her decision to shoot the dog, named Cricket, after the animal ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbor’s chickens.“Because that’s what I faced, and I talked about it because what I’m tired of in this country is politicians who pretend to be something that they’re not.”Asked why she did not surrender Cricket to an animal shelter before killing the dog, about 20 years ago, Noem repeated her prior claims that the creature was simply untrainable, had tried to bite her, and might have bitten others.“I had put months and months of training into this dog – the dog had gone to other trainers as well,” Noem said. “When you put someone in a position where … they want to protect their family and protect children and other people from getting attacked, … that’s the choice I made.“And … I didn’t ask anybody to take that responsibility for me.”Noem’s latest justification for fatally shooting Cricket at her farm – an act chronicled in her upcoming memoir No Going Back and first reported by the Guardian – comes as fellow Republicans have all but written off her chances of being chosen as Donald Trump’s running mate in November’s presidential election.A Guardian review of South Dakota state law found Noem may have committed misdemeanors by failing to control Cricket and by killing the animal on her own property. A spokesperson has not responded to inquiries on that point, which many advocates against animal cruelty have also raised.Remarkably, Cricket was only one of two animals Noem says she shot on the same day. On Sunday, the CBS host Margaret Brennan asked Noem to address her admission that, after Cricket, she also shot dead an un-castrated goat, which “smelled” and chased children around Noem’s farm. In No Going Back, the chapter that recounts the episode is entitled “Bad Day to be a Goat”.Brennan noted that Noem’s book also contains the phrase, “Commander, say hello to Cricket” – a reference to Joe Biden’s dog, who was removed from the White House after biting or otherwise assailing Secret Service agents.“How do you justify that?” Brennan said to Noem of her decision to kill the goat. “How was the goat a threat? And I’m asking you this because it seems like you’re celebrating the killing of the animals?”Noem replied that political opponents know the story of the goat’s killing well and have tried to leverage it against her, so she simply wanted “the truth to be out there”.“These animals were attacking,” Noem said. “We live on a farm and a ranch and … tough decisions are made many times, and it is – it is to protect people.”Noem obliquely acknowledged that – ahead of her book’s release Tuesday – she had to retract an anecdote about meeting the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un because the encounter never happened.In her book, Noem claims she was “underestimated” by Kim, but trumpets her experience of “staring down little tyrants”, from her work as a religious pastor ministering to children.The Dakota Scout newspaper reported how Noem’s account of meeting Kim was unlikely, and her spokesperson subsequently told journalists a correction was forthcoming. On Sunday, Noem said “this anecdote shouldn’t have been in the book, and as soon as it was brought to my attention, I made sure that that was adjusted”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“When the book is released, we’ll do all that we can to see that – that that is reflected,” Noem said.Pressed on the retraction, Noem suggested that she could no longer hear the host.“Hello? I’m sorry, I … ” the former congresswoman said, as Brennan asked why she had not caught the error as she recorded the audio book of the memoir.Yet Noem answered seamlessly when Brennan finished the question, saying: “As soon as it was brought to my attention, I took action to make sure that it was reflected.”Noem insisted: “I’ve met with many, many world leaders – I’ve traveled around the world.”But she also said she was no longer interested in delving into details about such audiences.“I’m not going to talk to you about those personal meetings,” Noem said. “OK? I’m just not going to have that conversation.”Sunday’s interview occurred after Trump called some of those on his VP shortlist to the stage at a private donor retreat in Florida over the weekend, NBC reported. Noem left early and was not included.Edward Helmore contributed reporting More

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      It’s six months until the US election. Do pollsters know where their candidates are?

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      “You know what I hate?” Donald Trump asked in Freeland, Michigan, on Wednesday night. “When these guys get on television, they say – pundits, you know, the great pundits that never did a thing in their whole lives – ‘You know, we have two very unpopular candidates. We have Biden or we have Trump. These are very unpopular.’”Watched by a crowd of adoring fans in Make America Great Again (Maga) regalia, against the backdrop of a plane marked “Trump” in giant gold letters, the former US president protested a little too much: “I’m not unpopular!”Opinion polls disagree, showing Trump with a low approval rating thanks to voter concerns over his stance on abortion, his four criminal cases and the threat he poses to constitutional democracy. Fortunately for the Republican presidential nominee, Biden has job performance troubles of his own centred on inflation, immigration and his handling of the war in Gaza.Call it the resistible force against the movable object. Six months out from one of the most consequential elections in American history, only a fool would bet with confidence on the outcome of the first presidential rematch in nearly 70 years.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “It’s almost impossible to imagine Biden winning when you start stacking up the case against him. The economy appears to be in decline with high inflation. You’ve got signs of the Democratic coalition fraying, including the extraordinary protests and arrests of youth on college campuses, the backlash among Arab Americans with regards to Gaza.“You put that together and it’s like, how could Biden win? And then you turn to Trump and it’s, how could a candidate who’s openly running on defying the will of voters win? It’s just an incomprehensible set of choices.”Typically, an election involves two new candidates or an incumbent versus a challenger, creating plenty of scope for fresh discoveries. But Biden, 81, and 77-year-old Trump are already the two oldest men ever to occupy the White House, the subjects of countless books, newspaper articles and TV documentaries. Most voters have already made up their minds about them, or think they have.However, a static election is playing out in an unstable landscape: British prime minister Harold Macmillan’s aphorism “Events, dear boy, events” on steroids. There are the aftershocks of a global pandemic that killed more than a million Americans. The January 6 attack on the US Capitol and the supreme court decision to end the constitutional right to abortion still reverberate. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have provided an acid test of Biden’s foreign policy expertise.Frank Luntz, a political consultant and pollster, said: “There’s not going to be an October surprise; every week is an October surprise. We have to get used to the predictability of the unpredictability and so it’s very dangerous to prognosticate in this environment because things are changing so quickly.”In the average of national polls, Trump leads Biden by about 1.5 percentage points, a decline for Biden of about six points from the day of the 2020 election, and Trump holds the edge in the swing states that will decide the all-important electoral college. Worryingly for the president, surveys indicate that a significant minority of Black, Latino and Asian American voters are slipping away from him.Luntz said: “Strategically, Trump is being helped by the three groups that have moved towards him in the last three years: young African Americans in Georgia and North Carolina; Latino voters in Arizona and Nevada; union voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.“Biden is weaker, but Trump has the capability to sabotage his own campaign and he won’t even know that he’s doing it. That’s not something Joe Biden will do. That’s why it’s so dangerous to say that Trump has the advantage because, in a single day, he can ruin it for himself.”Polls suggest the economy remains the No 1 issue for voters. The perennial question “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” could win the day. While the US escaped a widely predicted recession and is growing faster than economists expected, inflation and the cost of essentials such as bread, eggs and petrol are weighing on voters.Biden pushed through massive economic stimulus and infrastructure spending packages to boost industrial output but has received little credit from voters so far. Polls suggest that voters believe they were better off during Trump’s presidency even though data says otherwise.Donna Brazile, a former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: “The United States is the only leading western country to come out of Covid with an economy that is not going to recession, where jobs are being created and consumer confidence is slightly rising.“But unfortunately because of the supply chain issues that are still apparent and many other factors, including greedflation, many voters are very tired of the rising costs of everyday staples, whether that’s buying lumber or buying food on the table. It’s unpredictable. You go to the grocery store now, you don’t know if you need $100 or $10.”Lodged deep in the national psyche, inflation could prove costly for Biden. Pamela Pugh, president of the Michigan state board of education and a candidate for the US Congress, has detected signs of African American voters shifting to Trump. “I am a Democrat but I do definitely have concern with what I do here on the ground – and there is disconnect,” the 53-year-old said during an interview in Saginaw.“We cannot force people to feel what they don’t feel and to say what they don’t feel. They’re not carrying the daily Democratic talking points. They’re speaking what they’re actually feeling.“Do I think that Trump would do any better for us? No. But are people looking for leadership that is going to not fight timidly, that is not going to fight scared but is going to listen to them and fight for them? That is what people are looking for.”Biden’s handling of immigration has also been criticised by both Republicans and Democrats as crossings at the US-Mexico border hit record highs. Luntz added: “Joe Biden has failed badly at that and it’s so obvious and you can’t get away from it. We see people coming across the border. We hear about the crimes that are committed. It’s been a shit show and arguably Trump had success with immigration; Joe Biden has not.”Biden has led the response of western governments to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, persuading allies to punish Russia and support Kyiv. He has provided military aid to Israel in its conflict with Hamas in Gaza while pushing for more humanitarian assistance, but has faced sharp criticism from some Democrats for not pushing harder for a ceasefire or matching his tougher rhetoric on Israel with action.Intensifying student protests over the war in Gaza also could hurt his re-election bid as Republicans and rightwing media seek to portray the mostly peaceful demonstrations as violent and antisemitic, hoping to drive division among Democrats and promotes a sense of national chaos. Meanwhile, third-party candidates Robert Kennedy Jr, Cornel West and Jill Stein could shave off further crucial votes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump, more radical and extreme than in 2016 or 2020, has cast his third consecutive bid for the White House in part as retribution against perceived political enemies. He describes supporters jailed for the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol as “hostages” and campaigns using increasingly dystopian rhetoric, refusing to rule out possible violence around the 2024 election.He faces 88 charges in four criminal cases over efforts to subvert the 2020 election as well as unlawfully keeping classified national security documents and falsifying business records. His first trial began in New York last month, forcing him to shuttle between courtroom appearances and campaign rallies.Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, said: “He is far more extreme and dangerous than he was in 2020. His performance on the stump is significantly degraded and disturbing and he’s going to be on trial for many months, which is going to further erode his strongman image and his standing with the public.“He doesn’t have any way to make positive news. Donald Trump’s central way that he’s making positive news is by staying out of jail. I don’t think that’s going to be very effective for the six months.”In New York, Trump has railed against the judge, violated a gag order and called the criminal charges a Democratic conspiracy designed to keep him from winning, with some of his legal challenges reaching the supreme court. The justice department denies any political interference.If elected to another four-year term, Trump has vowed revenge on his political enemies and said he would not be a dictator except “on day one”, later calling that “a joke”. He also wants the power to replace federal civil service workers with loyalists.He earned opprobrium from western leaders for saying the US would not defend Nato members that failed to spend enough on defence and that he would encourage Russia to attack them. He also pressed congressional Republicans to stall military aid for Ukraine before reversing course.Trump has made immigration his top domestic campaign issue, declaring he would carry out mass deportations, create holding camps, utilise the national guard and possibly federal troops, end birthright citizenship and expand a travel ban on people from certain countries. He has referred to migrants as “animals” and has not ruled out building detention camps on US soil.At this week’s rally in Michigan, Karen Mantyla, 65, was wearing a T-shirt that said “I’m still a Trump girl – I make no apologies”. She insisted: “He’s not a dictator, he’s just doing what’s right. There’s people here that need help and they’re letting all these illegals in and giving them everything and our poor people are suffering. They’re being killed by terrorists coming through. It’s ridiculous.”Trump claims credit for the supreme court ruling overturning Roe v Wade and said abortion should remain a state issue. While he has criticised some Republican-led state actions such as Florida’s six-week abortion ban and Arizona’s revived civil war-era ban, he said he would allow Republican-led states to track women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate their state bans.Democrats are hammering Trump over the issue and warning of the threat of a national ban. But Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, warned: “Some Democrats are putting too many of their eggs in the abortion basket. It’s a lot more encouraging psychologically than focusing on weaknesses in areas like the economy and immigration, so I can understand why it’s happening, and I hope they turn out to be right but I’m not confident that it will.”Trump has yet to announce a vice-presidential running mate, but several possibilities have been floated. Mike Pence, who ran alongside Trump in 2016 and 2020 but was targeted by Trump and his supporters amid the January 6 attack, refused to endorse him in November’s contest. But the former president’s base of support remains stubbornly loyal.Bob Horny, 70, a retired builder, said: “He’s a leader. I look at all the things going on in the world that probably wouldn’t be happening right now if Trump was president – for example, Ukraine, Israel, $2 gas we have. Everything is unbelievable right now. People don’t like Trump’s personality but we’re not voting for the pope. We’re voting for a leader.”Some Democrats remain optimistic, noting the party’s overperformance in the midterms and other recent elections, as well as Biden’s huge fundraising advantage. Rosenberg said: “It’s a close, competitive election, but I would much rather be us than them.“Over time, as voters check in and start paying more attention, the basic contrast between Biden being a successful president leading the country through challenging times and a guy who’s a real threat to many of the things we all hold dear will work in our favour and we’ll win. But we have a lot of work to do and a long way to go in this election. A lot is going to happen and a lot is going to change.” More

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      The Democrats lost the White House in 1968 amid anti-war protests. What will 2024 bring?

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      When student Lauren Brown first heard the commotion, including firecrackers, she assumed the sounds were coming from nearby frat houses. Then, at about four in the morning, she heard helicopters. Later, she awoke to news and footage of a violent attack by pro-Israeli protesters on an encampment set up to oppose the war in Gaza.“It was hard to watch,” said Brown, 19, a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose dorm was near the encampment. “And I wondered where the police were. I saw posts from people talking about them being teargassed and maced and campus security was just watching.”Eventually, a large police contingent did arrive and forcibly cleared the sprawling encampment early on Thursday morning. Flash-bangs were launched to disperse crowds gathered outside and more than 200 people were arrested. Afterward, campus facility workers could be seen picking up flattened tents and pieces of spray-painted plywood, and throwing them into grey dumpsters.Similar scenes of tumult have played out this week at about 40 universities and colleges in America, resulting in clashes with police, mass arrests and a directive from Joe Biden to restore order. The unrest has unfolded from coast to coast on a scale not seen since the Vietnam war protests of the 1960s and 1970s.The president has cause for concern as the issue threatens his youth vote, divides his Democratic party and gives Donald Trump’s Republicans an opening to push allegations of antisemitism and depict Biden’s America as spiralling out of control.There are inescapable parallels with 1968, a tumultuous year of assassinations and anti-war demonstrations that led to chaos at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Democrats lost the White House to Republican “law and order” candidate Richard Nixon.Now, there are fears that history will repeat itself as anti-war protests again convulse university campuses, and the Democratic National Convention again heads to Chicago. Biden faces Republican “law and order” candidate Donald Trump in November’s presidential election.Bernie Sanders, an independent US senator from Vermont, told CNN this week: “I am thinking back and other people are making this reference that this may be Biden’s Vietnam.”Drawing parallels with President Lyndon Johnson, whose considerable domestic achievements were overshadowed by the Vietnam war and who did not seek reelection in 1968, Sanders added: “I worry very much that President Biden is putting himself in a position where he has alienated not just young people but a lot of the Democratic base, in terms of his views on Israel and this war.”The Gaza war started when Hamas militants attacked Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 34,600 people in Gaza, mostly women and children.The ferocity of that response, and America’s “ironclad” support for Israel, ignited protests by students at Columbia University in New York that rapidly spread to other campuses across the country. Students built encampments in solidarity with Gaza, demanding a ceasefire and that universities divest from Israel. The demonstrations have been mostly peaceful, although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks and violent threats.University administrators, who have tried to balance the right to protest and complaints of violence and hate speech, have increasingly called on police to clear out the demonstrators before year-end exams and graduation ceremonies. More than 2,300 arrests have been made in the past two weeks, some during violent confrontations with police, giving rise to accusations of use of excessive force.View image in fullscreenBiden, who has faced pressure from all political sides over the conflict in Gaza, attempted to thread the needle on Thursday, saying: “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent. But neither are we a lawless country. We’re a civil society, and order must prevail.”The president faces opposition in his own party for his strong support for Israel’s military offensive. Hundreds of thousands of people registered versions of “uncommitted” protest votes against him in the Democratic presidential primary.Yaya Anantanang, a student organiser at George Washington University in Washington, told the Politico website: “My message is that we do not support Biden. We do not capitulate to the liberal electoral politics, because, quite frankly, the liberation of Palestinians will not come through a Democratic president but by organizing and ensuring that there is full divestment within all of these institutions.”Such views ring alarm bells for those who fear that even a small dip in support from Biden’s coalition could make all the difference in a tight election.Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F Kennedy, who was gunned down while running for president in 1968, urged the protesters to support Biden despite their misgivings. “We need their votes now,” she said. “They might not love Joe Biden’s policies but the choice is not between Joe Biden and their ideal. The choice is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who’s going to institute the Muslim ban on day one.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublicans, meanwhile, are seeking to exploit the unrest for political gain. They have accused Biden of being soft on what they say is antisemitic sentiment among the protesters and Democrats of indulging “wokeness” in America’s education system.Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, said: “The crisis you’re seeing on college campuses is a result of the colleges themselves not having and pushing the right education, the right discussion in the classrooms, in the right way. They play this woke game where they don’t want to touch an issue.“They create a vacuum of information. The students get bad information and propaganda. They’re effectively being used by terrorist organisations overseas to push an anti-American, anti-Israeli message, which is just awful. It’s not a difference of opinion. It’s complete misinformation.”Images of disarray on campus have played endlessly on Fox News and in other rightwing media, feeding a narrative of instability and lawlessness under Biden while conveniently sucking political oxygen away from Trump’s own negatives.On Tuesday, for example, the Republican nominee was in court for his hush-money trial; Time magazine published an interview in which Trump set out an extremist vision of an imperial presidency; and Florida introduced a six-week abortion ban after Trump helped overturn Roe v Wade. But TV screens were dominated by the protests.Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive movement Indivisible, said: “All of those stories – any individual one would have been possibly disqualifying for a presidential candidate in a previous election – received a fraction of the coverage of the protests against [the Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s massacre of Gazans.View image in fullscreen“That’s problematic for those of us who want to see Joe Biden re-elected and want to see Democrats win because every day that we spend talking about this immoral war that US tax dollars are supporting is a day we’re not talking about the dangerous, creeping fascism presented by the Republican party.”Still, Democrats hope that, with the academic year soon drawing to a close, students will head home for the summer and the energy will disperse. Donna Brazile, a former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, doubts that the issue will be decisive in November.“We’re going to have an October surprise every month, and we cannot predict which of the many surprises will actually drive the election.” she said. “A month ago, it was abortion was going drive the election. Now it’s the campus protesters. Next month it’ll be something else.”Brazile also defended the students’ right to protest as past generations have against the Vietnam war, South African apartheid, the Iraq war and, during the most recent election campaign, police brutality. “I’ve been on several college campuses and the majority of them are quite peaceful,” she said.“These are students who are using their first amendment right to advocate for change in the Middle East, and everyone has to be clear that there are rules. Just a handful have gotten out of control because if you violate the rules or break the law, you you have no right to do that. That is forbidden.” More

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      Wilmington: how a once-red district is a window on North Carolina politics

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      The area around Wilmington, North Carolina, was once rock-ribbed Republican red. No longer. It’s contested territory in what may be the most contested state in the country this year.Donald Trump had planned a rally in Wilmington earlier this month but was rained out at the last moment. Trump promised to return with a bigger and better rally later. Joe Biden visited Wilmington on Thursday, after a detour to Charlotte to meet with the families of four law enforcement officers killed on Monday while serving an arrest warrant. It was his second visit to North Carolina this year and is unlikely to be his last.“I want to get Joe Biden to Wilmington,” the state senator Natalie Murdock of Durham said last week, before Biden announced the trip. Murdock is helping coordinate the Biden-Harris campaign in North Carolina. She noted that Biden won New Hanover county in 2020 after Hillary Clinton lost it four years earlier. “We’re going to have a field office out there,” she added, explaining plans for “boots on the ground” to get out the vote.The outsized political attention on Wilmington reflects a granular effort to win voters in the persuadable places, the swing districts in swing states. Trump won North Carolina in 2020 by a margin of 1.3%, his narrowest state victory. The most recent Emerson College poll shows Biden running behind Trump by five points, with 10% undecided.But North Carolina’s political map is a pointillist portrait of post-pandemic population change, with cities such as Charlotte, Durham and Wilmington booming from domestic migration while other communities bleed residents to places with economic vibrancy. Two-thirds of North Carolina’s population growth between 2010 and 2020 was non-white. About 400,000 people have moved to North Carolina since 2020. Trump’s margin in 2020 was less than 75,000 votes.Growth is the story of Wilmington. The beach town vacation spot has expanded beyond Saturday farmers’ markets and upscale restaurants on the river for tourists, attracting pharmaceutical research, banking and logistics today.“I moved to Wilmington 22 years ago. And when I moved here, I didn’t even realize you were allowed to live here all year,” said David Hill, a pediatrician and the Democratic nominee for the North Carolina state senate. “I can say that if you drive down the street, you will see acres and acres of what was forest when we moved here just five years ago, that is now in part sand and in part foundations and newly built homes.”Many census tracts around Wilmington in Pender, Brunswick and New Hanover counties doubled in population between 2010 and 2020. During the pandemic, growth accelerated, with both Pender and Brunswick county’s population increasing by 15% since 2020.The seventh district is held by Michael Lee, a real estate attorney and a relative moderate in the Republican-led senate. The district, covering most of New Hanover county, has been targeted by national campaigners as one of North Carolina’s few legislative seats that can be flipped, despite a ruthless redistricting that moved much of downtown Wilmington into a neighboring district last year.“One of those precincts was the highest-turnout precinct for Black voters, and it has now been put into deep-red Brunswick county,” Murdock said. “It is one of those races that was still going to be competitive, but they did not do us any favors with that map. I mean, it is one of the most gerrymandered of this cycle.”Republicans have a 30 to 20 advantage over Democrats in the state senate and a 72 to 48 advantage in the state house; precisely the 60% margin needed in each chamber to override a veto by North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. Cooper has blocked legislation restricting abortion access and expanding gun rights, but Republican lawmakers have overridden dozens of vetoes, from bills banning transgender hormone therapy for minors to changes in election laws.Cooper is term-limited and will be out of office in January. Republicans cannot afford to lose one seat in either chamber if they also lose the governor’s race, and the fate of the gubernatorial race is an open question given North Carolina’s history of ticket splitting and the nomination of the lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, who has a record of extreme, racist and homophobic comments and faces unpleasant revelations about his financial and business history.National Democratic campaigners are hoping that a backlash against restrictive abortion laws will fuel turnout statewide. But local contenders in closely divided districts have largely avoided the culture war rancor and are focusing on community concerns.Lee, for example, published a column this week taking issue with the New Hanover school system’s $20m shortfall, describing it as evidence of poor financial decisions made with short-term pandemic funding. Though the population around Wilmington has been exploding, public school enrollment has not: the local system has fewer students now than before the pandemic.Lee chairs the senate’s education committee, and has been leading the state senate’s efforts to expand North Carolina’s private school voucher program. The committee approved a bill on Wednesday to add $248m to the program next school year, on top of the $191m the program received this year. Applications for the vouchers, worth up to $7,468, outstripped funding after a surge of interest. (Lee did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.)Newcomers chasing Wilmington’s burgeoning film industry or simply looking for a better climate while working from home are wrestling with crowded roads, rising housing costs, access to healthcare and the other downsides of rapid growth, Hill said. Their interests do not easily map on to a highly partisan political framework.“Characterizing North Carolina in the same sentence as some of the more extremist states in the south fails to give the population of the state credit for really being quite centrist,” Hill said. “I think when you look at what our rightwing extremist supermajority has done, it would be easy to lump our state and with some states that are more extremist, but I don’t feel – and I think we have good evidence to tell us – that they don’t really represent the state as a whole.” More