US elections 2024

Subterms

    More stories

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Alabama Democrat Marilyn Lands says voters ready for ‘change’ after surprise win – as it happened

      by

      In an interview with Huntsville, Alabama broadcaster WHNT, the Democrat Marilyn Lands predicted better days ahead for the beleaguered party:Lands yesterday was elected to Alabama’s state house in a special election to fill a vacant seat previously held by the GOP, in a rare instance of Democrats making inroads in one of the most thoroughly Republican states in the country.Democrats are cheering Marilyn Lands, who managed to seize a state house seat from Republicans in deep-red Alabama, fuelled by her promises to protect IVF access and repeal the state’s abortion ban. To be clear: the party does not have the numbers to make either of those promises happen in a state thoroughly dominated by the GOP, but it’s nonetheless the latest instance of Joe Biden’s allies using concerns about reproductive rights to win elections in hostile territory. Meanwhile, in Texas, a federal appeals court maintained the block on a Republican-backed law that would allow state police to arrest suspected illegal border crossers. The legislation will probably remain on hold until either appeals judges or the US supreme court rules on its merits.Here’s what else happened:
      Israel wants to reschedule a meeting with US officials that it called off after Washington allowed a UN security council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza to pass.
      Disney ended its feud with allies of Republican governor Ron DeSantis, which erupted after the entertainment giant criticized the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” law.
      Kansas Republicans moved to force abortion providers to ask patients the reason why they are seeking the procedure, and probably have the votes to get around an expected veto by the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly.
      Donald Trump is under a new gag order in his hush-money case. But it does not apply to the presiding judge Juan Merchan, so the former president attacked him on his social media network this morning.
      Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official indicted alongside Trump in Georgia for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election, pleaded the fifth at a hearing that could lead to him losing his law license in Washington DC.
      Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis says a settlement reached between Disney and his allies over who controls Walt Disney World’s governing district “vindicated” his administration’s policies:Here’s more on the end of the long-running squabble:Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department official who was indicted in Georgia alongside Donald Trump for allegedly trying to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory in the state, repeatedly declined to answer questions today at a hearing that could see him lose his law license in Washington DC, Politico reports.Clark repeatedly invoked the fifth amendment’s protecting against self incrimination in response to questions from DC Bar panel investigators, who rested their case after today’s hearing.Here’s more on that, from Politico:
      Clark’s decision to invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination underscores the criminal jeopardy he faces in other ongoing legal proceedings. In Atlanta, he’s charged alongside Trump in an alleged racketeering conspiracy to corrupt the 2020 election, and in Washington DC, federal prosecutors identified him – but have not charged him – as one of Trump’s alleged co-conspirators in a scheme to seize power.
      “I will invoke the Fifth,” Clark said in response to a question about when he first met Trump. Clark also said the question was covered by attorney-client, law enforcement and executive privileges. “A veritable phalanx of privileges,” Clark added wryly as the exercise wore on.
      The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution protects Americans from being forced to provide testimony that may incriminate themselves in legal proceedings. For Clark, that’s particularly important as he faces a potential criminal trial in Georgia. His attorneys worried that forcing Clark to take the stand simply to invoke his Fifth Amendment right would drive headlines or embarrass Clark, but the DC Bar panel presiding over the hearing permitted investigators to pose several dozen questions to Clark.
      Clark himself grew combative as the questioning wore on, accusing the lead investigator, Hamilton Fox, of seeking to humiliate him on the stand by forcing him to repeatedly invoke the Fifth Amendment. His bristling prompted Merrill Hirsh, the chair of the panel presiding over the hearing, to admonish Clark not to argue with Fox or risk potentially waiving the privileges he invoked.
      Democrats nationwide are taking heart from Marilyn Lands’s victory in Alabama, seeing it as a validation of their strategy to make concerns over reproductive care access a centerpiece of their pitch to voters.But Lands’s election does not change the fundamental balance of power in Alabama, where the Republican party firmly controls the levers of power. All elected officials are members of the GOP, which has supermajorities in the state house and senate.Republican lawmakers in Alabama have lately spent their time passing laws restricting diversity and inclusion programs from being established at public schools and state agencies, and barring trans people from using public bathrooms that align with their gender identity at colleges and universities.They also moved quickly to pass legislation allowing in vitro fertilization care to continue after the state supreme court issued a ruling that forced fertility clinics to cancel appointments. Democrats supported that effort:Marilyn Lands’s victory yesterday in the special election for Alabama’s state house is probably the most exciting thing to happen for Democrats in the state since Doug Jones won a Senate seat in 2018.His victory came after multiple women alleged sexual assault or other inappropriate behavior by the Republican candidate, Roy Moore. In an interview last night with CNN, Jones, who was ousted from the Senate by the Republican Tommy Tuberville in the 2020 elections, described Lands’s win as “a huge deal”:In an interview with Huntsville, Alabama broadcaster WHNT, the Democrat Marilyn Lands predicted better days ahead for the beleaguered party:Lands yesterday was elected to Alabama’s state house in a special election to fill a vacant seat previously held by the GOP, in a rare instance of Democrats making inroads in one of the most thoroughly Republican states in the country.The recovery operation in Baltimore continues amid reports that a truck has been found amid the wreckage of the Francis Scott Key bridge.For more on the disaster, and the effort to get the economically vital port of Baltimore back up and running, follow our live blog:The White House media briefing is under way in the west wing now, with the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, just introducing the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, who’s appearing as the guest today to talk about the bridge disaster in Baltimore.Buttigieg paid tribute to the six workers who are missing and presumed dead after the bridge collapse, and the two workers who survived, one badly injured, who were all repairing the bridge’s road surface “while we all slept”, he said.Buttigieg said that the port will be reopened as soon as possible.The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the bridge’s collapse, with Buttigieg saying that the bridge, which was completed in the 1970s, was not build to withstand an impact from the size of container ship that operates these days and which hit the bridge strut in the early hours of Tuesday morning, leading to the entire bridge’s collapse, closing the port for all traffic.Guardian US has a dedicated live blog covering all the developments in the Baltimore bridge disaster and you can follow that news here.Israel has asked to reschedule a meeting with US officials to discuss its military plans in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, a US official said on Wednesday, days after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, abruptly scrapped the planned talks, Reuters reports.Netanyahu called off a planned visit to Washington by a senior Israeli delegation after the US allowed passage of a Gaza ceasefire resolution at the United Nations on Monday, in a move that appeared to reflect growing US frustration with the Israeli premier.US officials said the Biden administration was perplexed by the Israeli cancellation and considered it an overreaction to the security council resolution, insisting there had been no change in policy.On Wednesday, a US official said Netanyahu’s office “has said they’d like to reschedule the meeting dedicated to Rafah. We are now working with them to set a convenient date.”Netanyahu is considering sending a delegation for a White House meeting on Rafah as early as next week but the scheduling is still being worked out, an Israeli official in Washington told Reuters on condition of anonymity.There was no immediate comment from the Israeli prime minister’s office. The planned talks are expected to focus on Israel’s threatened offensive in Rafah, the last relatively safe haven for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.The White House said last week it intended to share with Israeli officials alternatives for eliminating the Palestinian militant group Hamas without a ground offensive in Rafah that Washington says would be a “disaster”.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will travel to France and Belgium next week, a state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Wednesday, Reuters reports.Blinken will meet with the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, and the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, while in Brussels for a Nato meeting, Miller said at a regular news briefing.Meanwhile, the state department does not think hostage talks with Israel and Hamas are over, Miller said, adding that Washington thinks there is an ability to continue to pursue the release of hostages.He also said “we do” when asked if the department believed a limited military campaign in Rafah, in the south of Gaza, can take out remaining commanders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.Hamas controls the territory and led the attack on southern Israel on 7 October last year in which more than 1,200 people were massacred and more than 240 people were taken hostage into Gaza, with more than 100 remaining captive at this time.Democrats are cheering Marilyn Lands, who managed to seize a state house seat from Republicans in deep-red Alabama, fueled by her promises to protect IVF access and repeal the state’s abortion ban. To be clear: the party does not have the numbers to make either of those promises happen in a state thoroughly dominated by the GOP, but it’s nonetheless the latest instance of Joe Biden’s allies using concerns about reproductive rights to win elections in hostile territory. Meanwhile, in Texas, a federal appeals court maintained the block on a Republican-backed law that would allow state police to arrest suspected illegal border crossers. The legislation will probably remain on hold until either appeals judges or the US supreme court rules on its merits.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Disney ended its feud with allies of Republican governor Ron DeSantis, which erupted after the entertainment giant criticized the state’s so-called “don’t say gay” law.
      Kansas Republicans moved to force abortion providers to ask patients the reason they are seeking the procedure, and probably have the votes to get around an expected veto by the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly.
      Donald Trump is under a new gag order in his hush-money case. But it does not apply to the presiding judge Juan Merchan, so the former president attacked him on his social media network this morning.
      Apparently in some kind of foul mood, Donald Trump also insulted his one-time ally Ronna McDaniel following her hiring from NBC yesterday, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:Donald Trump mocked the former Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ronna McDaniel, for her firing by NBC days after being hired as a political analyst.“Wow!” the former president and presumptive Republican nominee, who ejected McDaniel from the RNC in favour of his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, wrote on his Truth Social platform.“Ronna McDaniel got fired by Fake News NBC. She only lasted two days, and this after McDaniel went out of her way to say what they wanted to hear. It leaves her in a very strange place, it’s called NEVER NEVERLAND, and it’s not a place you want to be.”McDaniel’s hiring was announced by NBC last Friday. Interviewed on Meet the Press on Sunday, she disavowed Trump’s lie that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election but also claimed there were electoral “problems” in battleground states.Protests from on-air talent and an NBC union group also concerned McDaniel’s combative relations with the press in seven years as RNC chair, a period coinciding with Trump’s takeover of the Republican party. On Tuesday evening McDaniel was gone – giving her a four-day NBC career, not the two claimed by Trump. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      RNC asks job applicants if they believe 2020 election was stolen in ‘litmus test’

      by

      A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee and Donald Trump did not deny a Washington Post report that said prospective RNC employees are being asked if they believe the 2020 election was stolen, constituting a “litmus test” as the 2024 election approaches.“Candidates who worked on the frontline in battleground states or are currently in states where fraud allegations have been prevalent were asked about their work experience,” Danielle Alvarez, a spokesperson for the RNC and Trump, said in a statement.“We want experienced staff with meaningful views on how elections are won and lost and real experience-based opinions about what happens in the trenches.”Trump has pursued his stolen election lie through his conclusive defeat by Biden; his attempts to overturn results in key states; his incitement of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress; his resulting impeachment and acquittal; his attempts to delay or avoid trial on four federal and 10 state criminal charges concerning election subversion; and his surge to a third successive presidential nomination.He extended control over the RNC last month with the replacement of Ronna McDaniel by new co-chairs, his daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Michael Whatley, a loyalist from North Carolina.Lara Trump told NBC on Tuesday the RNC was “past” disputing the 2020 election, adding: “The past is the past and unfortunately we had to learn a couple of hard lessons in 2020.”But the Post said Trump aides were now asking election lie questions as they assess which former staffers will be rehired, as the presidential election grinds into gear.Other questions for prospective hires focused on “election integrity” in the 2024 contest, the Post said.Speaking to the Post, an unnamed prospective employee said two top Trump advisers posed the question directly, asking: “Was the 2020 election stolen?”Two unnamed sources said questions were left open-ended.“But if you say the election wasn’t stolen, do you really think you’re going to get hired?” a former RNC employee was quoted as saying.CNN said it confirmed the Post report, saying sources described the 2020 question “as unusual for a job interview” but saw it as a way of “questioning their loyalty to Donald Trump”. Alvarez repeated her non-denial to CNN.Doug Heye, a former RNC communications director, told the Post it was not unusual for staff to be expected to “back the candidate up and go along with the worldview”.But Bill Kristol, anti-Trump conservative commentator, said prospective hires would now have “no excuse for wanting to work [at the RNC] in 2024”, given its open embrace of Trump’s election lie. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Robert F Kennedy Jr names tech lawyer Nicole Shanahan as 2024 running mate

      by

      Robert F Kennedy Jr selected Nicole Shanahan, a tech attorney and wealthy philanthropist, as his running mate in an independent campaign that could upset the 2024 race for the White House.Kennedy, an environmental attorney who gained notoriety as a vaccine sceptic and conspiracy theorist, announced his pick at a campaign event on Tuesday in Oakland, California, where Shanahan was born.In a nearly hour-long, winding speech, Kennedy cited Shanahan’s career in technology as an asset for the campaign, Kennedy said she had “deep inside knowledge of how big tech uses AI to manipulate” voters.Shanahan was the founder and CEO of the Palo Alto legal tech firm ClearAccessIP before selling the company in 2020. She was also a fellow at Stanford Law School’s center for legal informatics.“I managed to put a technologist at the forefront,” Kennedy said. “I found a vice-president who shares my indignation about the participation of big tech as a partner in the censorship, surveillance, and the information warfare that our government is currently waging against the American people.”Kennedy, 70, a scion of the US political dynasty that includes former president John F Kennedy, also presented Shanahan, 38, as a fresh and youthful voice in a presidential contest between 81-year-old Joe Biden and 77-year-old Donald Trump.“There’s a growing number of millennials and gen Z Americans who have lost faith in their future and lost their pride in our country,” he said.The announcement event took place in the Henry J Kaiser Center for the Arts, a historic building in Oakland that has been in disrepair for decades but is on the path to being reopened. Speaking at the event, rightwing author Angela Stanton-King said the venue had been opened to the campaign despite being partially under construction, and was chosen due to the historical events it had hosted – including a speech by Martin Luther King Jr in 1962.The event featured an introduction from the local Muwekma Ohlone tribe, whose battle for federal recognition has been supported by Kennedy, and musical renditions of This Land Is Your Land and America the Beautiful. Speakers included the Stanford professor and Covid-lockdown skeptic Jay Battacharya as well as Kelly Ryerson, a public health advocate who focuses on chronic illnesses she says are caused by toxins in our food supplies.More than two hours into the lengthy announcement event, after most cable news channels had cut away from the stream, the ex-NBA player Metta Sandiford-Artest, formerly known as Metta World Peace, welcomed Shanahan to the stage. The vice-presidential hopeful explained her political mission, citing her strong anti-war beliefs as aligning with Kennedy’s. She soon launched into an anti-pharmaceuticals screed, attributing her passion for “children’s health” to her child’s experience with autism.Democrats are especially concerned that Kennedy could pull votes away from Biden, spoiling the election. Recent polling from Quinnipiac projected Kennedy could receive as much as 15% of the vote in a race involving Biden and Trump, amid limited enthusiasm for the candidates from the two major parties.One such defector was Marilyn Chin, a volunteer for Kennedy’s campaign recruiting voters outside the event. Chin, who is 71, said she voted Democratic for most of her life but was now supporting Kennedy.“Get out of the duopoly,” she said. “Don’t vote Republican, don’t vote Democrat, start looking for something else.”Kennedy will face an expensive, and uphill battle to get on the ballot in all 50 states, which will involve gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures. He has made it on to the ballot in only one state so far, Utah. Still, the Democratic National Committee has called Kennedy a “stalking horse” and said third-party candidates may have tipped the 2016 election to Trump.In a statement following Kennedy’s announcement, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign called him a “radical leftist” and an “environmental whack job” before stating his campaign would not get very far. The Democratic National Committee called Kennedy’s run a “spoiler campaign” and said it was dangerous for Republican donors to be propping up Kennedy during such a high-stakes election.Earlier this year, the DNC filed a federal election complaint accusing Kennedy and a political action committee backing his third-party bid of illegally colluding to qualify for the ballot in swing states crucial to Biden’s re-election. Kennedy’s campaign has denied breaching financial barriers between candidates and outside groups, which is prohibited by federal campaign law.The Democrats have also said that a major donor to American Values 2024, the Super Pac backing Kennedy, is Tim Mellon, a businessman who has also backed Trump.Shanahan told the New York Times she has contributed $4m to American Values 2024.The Bay Area entrepreneur is known in tech circles as the founder of ClearAccessIP, a startup that uses software to help companies manage and distribute patents and patent rights. But she gained notoriety after her 2018 marriage to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the wealthiest people in the world. The couple’s divorce in 2022 drew extra scrutiny following a Wall Street Journal report that Shanahan had conducted an affair with the Tesla and X chief, Elon Musk. She has denied the allegations.In February, she helped finance a $5m campaign advertisement for Kennedy during the Super Bowl, which alluded to his uncle John F Kennedy’s successful 1960 White House run. The ad was denounced by Kennedy’s family, who have disavowed his campaign and his baseless theories on vaccines and the Covid pandemic, among other issues.Shanahan told the New York Times that she was not an anti-vaxxer, but has shared Kennedy’s discredited claims about the safety of vaccinations. At Tuesday’s event, she formally renounced any affiliation with the Democratic party, saying it had “lost its way”.“The Democratic party is supposed to be the party of compassion and peace, it is supposed to be the party of diplomacy and science,” she said. “While I know those ideals still abide within many Democrats, I want to point out that the party has lost its way. In its leadership, in its institutions, it has become interested in elitism, celebrity and winning at all costs, even if that means turning a blind eye on issues they all know to be true.”Kennedy’s anti-vaccination views drew protesters at Tuesday’s announcement, including Wendy Bloom, a registered nurse who has worked in pediatric cancer units for 37 years, who stood outside the Oakland convention center with pro-Biden and pro-vaccine signs.“Besides being anti-vaccines, he’s not pro-science, and anti-research,” she said. She also dismissed the choice of Shanahan as a running mate.“His choice of VP tells us everything we need to know,” Bloom said. “She has no experience. She’s just a wealthy individual who can help raise money. Voters deserve someone with experience.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Biden bump is real’: president gains on Trump in six battleground states

      by

      Joe Biden had some good news on Tuesday as polling showed him gaining on Donald Trump in six battleground states, seven months before the presidential election. In response, one leading Democratic strategist said the “Biden bump is real”.According to Bloomberg News and Morning Consult, Biden now leads Trump by a point in Wisconsin, having trailed by four last month, and is tied in Pennsylvania, where Trump had a six-point lead last month. The two candidates were also tied in Michigan.In other states likely to decide the presidential election in November, Trump was ahead in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. Only Georgia, however, showed an increased lead for the presumptive Republican nominee.Biden was due to campaign in North Carolina on Tuesday.Trailing Biden in fundraising, Trump had no campaign events scheduled.The former president did appear in public on Monday, in New York in connection with his criminal trial on 34 charges concerning hush-money payments to an adult film star and a civil fraud case in which he must post a $175m bond while appealing a $454m judgment.Trump also faces 14 criminal charges related to election subversion and 40 arising from his retention of classified information. He posted a $92m bond in a civil defamation suit arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.On Monday, a Biden campaign spokesperson called Trump “weak and desperate – both as a man and a candidate”, adding: “His campaign can’t raise money, he is uninterested in campaigning outside his country club, and every time he opens his mouth, he pushes moderate and suburban voters away with his dangerous agenda.”The Biden campaign did not comment on the Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll.Jason Miller, a Trump campaign spokesperson, pointed to Trump’s 47%-43% lead across the seven swing states, telling Bloomberg: “Polling continues to show that voters are sick of Joe Biden’s crushing inflation, porous southern border and his insane EV mandate that will kill the US auto industry.”For Biden, worrying signs also included a majority of voters with a positive view of Nikki Haley, Trump’s last Republican challenger who has not endorsed him, saying they would vote for Trump in November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEncouraging signs for the president included emerging positivity on economic conditions and many voters saying they had recently seen more positive news about Biden, particularly after his combative State of the Union address.Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist and commentator, said: “[The] election is clearly changing now, moving towards Biden: 10 recent national polls show Biden leading, he’s up one now in [the] Economist poll average, Harris this week finds Biden gaining four, this new Bloomberg/MC polling also finds significant movement towards Biden.“Biden bump is real.”In the Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll, around half of Biden voters said they were determined to stop Trump.Eli Yokley, US politics analyst for Morning Consult, told Bloomberg: “Negative energy motivates people. And the people who are supporting Joe Biden today are much more likely to express that negative energy that energised his 2020 campaign.” More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      US election officials face ‘new era’ of violent threats, taskforce chief warns

      by

      Election officials across the US are facing an onslaught of unfounded hostility for “dutifully and reliably doing their jobs”, the head of a federal taskforce set up to protect the election community from violent threats said on Monday.John Keller, who leads the day-to-day efforts of the election threats taskforce, based in Washington, told reporters that the wave of violent threats – unleashed by Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen – amounted to an attack “on the very foundation of our democracy – our elections”.He said that the US had entered a “new era” in which the election community “is scapegoated, targeted and attacked”.On Monday, the taskforce, founded in June 2021, secured its 10th sentence of a perpetrator of violent threats against an election official.Speaking in Phoenix, Arizona, after the sentencing, Keller said robust public scrutiny of government authority and officials was “desirable and necessary”. But he added: “Death threats are not debate; death threats are not first-amendment protected speech. Death threats are condemnable criminal acts that will be met with the full force of the Department of Justice.”Monday’s sentencing at a federal district court in Phoenix saw Joshua Russell of Bucyrus, Ohio, given 30 months in prison. He had pleaded guilty to one count of making a threatening communication across state lines.According to court documents, between August and November 2022 Russell recorded three threatening voicemails on the phone of Katie Hobbs, the current Democratic governor of Arizona. At the time she was Arizona’s secretary of state, its top election administrator.In his voicemails, Russell accused Hobbs of committing election fraud in Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election which Joe Biden won in Arizona by about 10,000 votes. He called her a communist, a traitor, and “an enemy of the United States”.“You better put your [expletive] affairs in order, ‘cos your days are extremely numbered. America’s coming for you, and you will pay with your life.”In a November voicemail, Russell said: “A war is coming for you. The entire nation is coming for you. And we will stop, at no end, until you are in the ground.”Russell was the second sentenced this month for threatening Hobbs when she was Arizona’s secretary of state. Earlier this month, James Clark from Massachusetts was sentenced to three and half years in prison for threatening to detonate explosives he claimed to have planted in her personal space.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKeller, who is the principal deputy chief of the public integrity section of the DoJ’s criminal division, said the taskforce was working with state and local law enforcement to stop the onslaught as Arizona and the country approaches November’s presidential election. He said: “This behavior is insidious, with potentially grave consequences for individual victims and for the institution of election administration as a whole.”Arizona, which has been a critical battleground state in recent presidential contests, has become the ground zero of threats against election officials in the US. Seven of the 16 cases that have been prosecuted nationally under the election threats taskforce were targeted on the state, especially on Maricopa county, the largest constituency, which covers Phoenix.In the wake of the attacks, there has been a severe shortage of election officials who have quit after they and, in some cases, their families have been violently threatened. Twelve out of the 15 counties in the state have lost at least one of their two top election administrators since Trump launched his attack on democracy in 2020.Gary Restaino, US attorney for Arizona, said the common denominator of the cases handled by the taskforce was “election denialists announcing an intent to violently punish those who they believe have wronged them”.He said: “There’s no constitutional right to vigilantism. Let these cases be a lesson not to take the rule of law into one’s own hands.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Man changes name to Literally Anybody Else and announces US presidential run

      by

      A Texas man has legally changed his name to Literally Anybody Else and announced he is running for US president in the 2024 election.Formerly known as Dustin Ebey, the 35-year-old is a US army veteran and seventh-grade math teacher in the suburbs of Dallas, and now has a Texas driver’s license to prove his name change.He said he wanted to change his name because he was unsatisfied with this year’s presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump.“Three hundred million people can do better,” he said in reference to the two frontrunners for the nation’s highest office. “There really should be some outlet for people like me who are just so fed up with this constant power grab between the two parties that just has no benefit to the common person.“It’s not necessarily about me as a person, but it’s about literally anybody else as an idea,” he told news outlet WFAA88.He needs 113,000 signatures from non-primary voters in the state of Texas by May to get his new name on ballots. Since that is unlikely, he is campaigning to get people to write in his name.“We don’t have a ‘neither’ option on the ballot, and this kind of fills that role,” he said.The candidate’s website says: “Literally Anybody Else isn’t a person, it’s a rally cry.“For too long have Americans been a victim of its political parties putting party loyalty over governance. Together let’s send the message to Washington and say, ‘You will represent or be replaced.’“America should not be stuck choosing between the “King of Debt” (his self-declaration) and an 81-year old.” More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Quite the accomplishment’: Joe Biden pokes fun at Trump’s alleged golf wins

      by

      Joe Biden clapped back at Donald Trump after Trump posted a typically bizarre boast about his self-proclaimed golfing prowess.“Congratulations, Donald,” the president told his Republican rival. “Quite the accomplishment.”Sarcasm is hard to type but it surely suffused Biden’s words, which were posted to the platform formerly known as Twitter as part of what appears to be a broader strategy from the Biden campaign of taunting and ridiculing Trump over his legal and financial problems.Trump made his typically capitals-splattered boast about a supposed great golfing victory on Truth Social, the platform he started when Twitter banned him for inciting the January 6 attack on Congress.“It is my great honour,” the former president wrote, “to be at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach tonight, AWARDS NIGHT, to receive THE CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY & THE SENIOR CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY. I WON BOTH!“A large and golfing talented membership, a GREAT and difficult course, made the play very exciting. The qualifying and match play was amazing … Very exciting, thank you!!!”Biden’s tweet followed. Many other social media users quoted Rick Reilly, a former Sports Illustrated columnist and author of Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.Reilly, who has played with the former president, has described how Trump “cheats like a mafia accountant”, including “kick[ing] the ball out of the rough so many times, the caddies call him Pele”, taking endless free shots and falsifying scores.On Sunday, Reilly told Trump: “Call us if you ever win one on a course you DON’T own and operate.”Trump’s dubious claims to honours and titles at his own courses are well documented. Notably, his West Palm Beach club was revealed in 2017 to list him as its 1999 champion. It opened in 2000.Away from the fairways, Trump secured the Republican nomination to face Biden again this year despite facing 88 criminal charges, multimillion-dollar civil penalties and attempts to remove him from the ballot.On Monday, Trump faces a hearing in his New York criminal case over hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels – who he met at a celebrity golf event in Nevada – and a deadline to pay a $454m bond in a civil fraud suit, also in New York.Golf courses are among Trump assets the Democratic attorney general of New York, Letitia James, could try to seize if Trump does not pay up.Biden’s campaign has seized on Trump’s financial troubles, taunting him as “Broke Don”. The weekend saw a social media surge for the nickname “Don Poorleone”, a play on Trump’s mob-like approach to politics and Don Corleone, the name of the mafia boss played by Marlon Brando in the Godfather saga.On Monday, meanwhile, Edward-Isaac Dovere, author of Battle for the Soul, a book on Biden’s victory in 2020, noted an interesting point.So far in the 2024 campaign, Dovere wrote, Trump “has taken more time for golf tournaments than campaign events. Last night, Trump bragged about winning at golf – while still no campaign events booked.”Most users, however, focused on mocking Trump’s golf-based braggadocio, many raising amusing parallels with another former world leader.“According to North Korean media Kim Jong Il scored 11 holes-in-one on his very first round of golf,” said Gideon Rachman, author of The Age of the Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy Around the World.“So Trump has a way to go.”
      Biden v Trump: What’s in store for the US and the world?
      On Thursday 2 May, 8-9.15pm GMT, join Tania Branigan, David Smith, Mehdi Hasan and Tara Setmayer for the inside track on the people, the ideas and the events that might shape the US election campaign.Book tickets here or at theguardian.live More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Headache for campaign team as Trump gets the band back together

      by

      Donald Trump’s getting the band back together. But this time they come with political baggage, conspiracy theories and, in some instances, criminal convictions.The former US president’s old acolytes are returning to the fold, eager to exert influence on his bid for the White House and have their say in a potential second administration. That poses a headache for his election campaign team, whose efforts to run a disciplined operation can be upended at any moment by the mercurial Trump.“Trump always wants to feel comfortable about the people who surround him and what better way to do that than to get the band back together?” said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington DC. “We could look forward to the greatest hits ad nauseam.”If a man is judged by the company he keeps, Trump’s speaks volumes. There was uproar in 2022 when when the rapper Kanye West brought the white supremacist Nick Fuentes to dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.Trump’s inner circle includes the far-right representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat turned rightwing media personality and outspoken critic of aid to Ukraine; and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who has pushed the “great replacement” theory and claimed that the 6 January 2021 insurrection was an inside job.Since Trump secured the Republican nomination for president earlier this month, several “Make America great again” (Maga) alumni have sought to regain his patronage or rejoin his team. It is a cast of characters with a chequered history.Paul Manafort, a veteran political consultant, could return as a campaign adviser later this year, according to the Washington Post newspaper. The job discussions have largely centred around the Republican national convention in Milwaukee in July and could include Manafort playing a role in fundraising for Trump’s campaign, the report said.Trump pardoned Manafort in 2020, seven months after he was released to home confinement, sparing the Republican operative from serving the bulk of his seven-and-a-half-year prison term for federal tax evasion and bank fraud.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile the New York Times reported that Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s first campaign manager in 2016, could also play a role at the convention. Lewandowski was ousted from a pro-Trump political action committee in 2021 after a major donor’s wife accused him of inappropriate behaviour.Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the MSNBC network: “Manafort coming back in is to set up control of the convention so that there are no slippages. You’ve got Lewandowski and others who are keen political operatives for Trump that will be out and about enforcing a strategy that will take no prisoners.“I don’t think people appreciate exactly what we’re going to be in for. This campaign is going to be very difficult on the country because these folks are all about one thing and one thing only: Donald Trump’s absolute return to power.”Meanwhile Roger Stone, a self-proclaimed dirty trickster who has been a friend and ally of Trump for 30 years, still speaks to him occasionally and was spotted at the Super Tuesday victory party at Mar-a-Lago. Stone was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign and sentenced to 40 months in prison before the then president commuted the sentence.The rapper Kurt Jantz, professionally known as Forgiato Blow, was also at the Super Tuesday event. His Maga songs have been criticised for homophobia and glorifying violence and he has suffered social media bans. Blow said: “He’s the American dream. I supported Trump since 2015. I was one of the people early about it. At first it was just about Trump being a boss but he’s a rapper’s dream: beautiful wife, amazing mansion that we’re in right now. At the end of the day, that’s what everybody wants.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenThe rush of would-be influencers eager to whisper unsolicited advice into Trump’s ear is making life difficult for his otherwise unexpectedly professional campaign led by the longtime political operatives Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, who find themselves attempting to play gatekeeper.Christina Bobb, a lawyer and former One America News Network (OAN) host who amplified Trump’s false claims of election fraud, faced questions over her competence at the campaign. She has been diverted to the RNC as senior counsel for “election integrity”.Trump reportedly wanted to hire the far-right activist Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist, Islamophobe and former Republican candidate for Congress, but Wiles managed to block the move, according to the Axios website.Charlie Sykes, a conservative columnist and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, said: “In a normal world, a presidential candidate would not get within a zip code of Laura Loomer. Now she’s showing up at Mar-a-Lago. And, of course, they can be relied upon to attack any other conservative that does not engage in the kind of rhetoric that Trump engages in.”But Trump continues to speak by phone to some without the knowledge of his campaign. Their indulgence is seen by critics as an ominous indicator that, should he return to the White House, Trump would make appointments based only on loyalty and Maga credentials, a break from his first term when figures such as the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, and defence secretary, Jim Mattis, sought to rein him in.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: Trump has made it clear that he was disappointed and fed up with the Washington establishment, as he calls it, and so he’s got a group of henchmen and women who will do his bidding, who don’t feel bound by the law or being liked and respected outside their core.“These are the foot soldiers in Trump’s authoritarian army. They will do whatever it takes to win and we’ve seen it; this is not speculation. They put out the playbook in 2020 and we’d be foolish not to expect that playbook to be used in 2024.” More