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      Biden challenger Dean Phillips drops out of US presidential race

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      The Minnesota congressman running against Joe Biden in the Democratic primary dropped out of the race on Wednesday, ending a long-shot bid to stop the US president from winning the nomination. He endorsed the president.Dean Phillips, who represents a wealthier suburban area outside Minneapolis, entered the Democratic race seemingly against his will and against the advice of most of his Democratic colleagues. The congressman, who first took office in 2019, first tried to recruit more prominent Democrats to challenge Biden, publicly saying Biden needed to let the next generation lead the party.The announcement comes after he lost his home state of Minnesota, where he gave up a seat he flipped from Republicans in order to enter the presidential race.“I ran for Congress in 2018 to resist Donald Trump, I was trapped in the Capitol in 2021 because of Donald Trump, and I ran for President in 2024 to resist Donald Trump again – because Americans were demanding an alternative, and democracy demands options. But it is clear that alternative is not me,” he said on Twitter/X.“And it is clear that Joe Biden is OUR candidate and OUR opportunity to demonstrate what type of country America is and intends to be.”In his first election test, Phillips nabbed about 20% of the vote in New Hampshire, losing to Biden, whose name was not actually on the ballot.His campaign in New Hampshire was not without controversy: a former political consultant affiliated with Phillips’s campaign claimed responsibility for a now-infamous robocall in New Hampshire that urged voters not to show up to the polls; Phillips has denounced the robocall.Since then, Phillips’s momentum has fallen off, but he has stayed in the race – despite having no listed events and little, if any, campaigning happening in the field in any state. Even in his home state of Minnesota, there was no semblance of a campaign – no stops at local diners, no field office, no ground work.In Michigan, he lost to both an “uncommitted” vote that sought to protest against Biden’s inaction on a ceasefire in Gaza and to Marianne Williamson, the self-help author who had previously suspended her campaign. Williamson, buoyed by the results, made the unusual move to “un-suspend” her campaign.In mid-February, Phillips announced he had to lay off “a lot” of his staff because he had found it so hard to fundraise with an incumbent in the race. Phillips, the heir to a liquor empire, had previously given his campaign several million dollars to get up and running.“We can do it,” he said in a video announcing the layoffs. “We can do better. I love you all and thank you for keeping the faith. And join me, the Dean team, we can do it.”Phillips managed to strike both a self-deprecating earnestness about his own campaign while continually sounding an alarm that Biden cannot win and someone should do something about it – but maybe not him.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If you resent me for the audacity to challenge Joe Biden, at least you’ll appreciate how relatively strong I’m making him look among primary voters!” Phillips wrote on X, adding a biceps emoji.He shared an opinion piece endorsing him the headline of which said: Vote for whatshisname. He made a meme of a Dean shoe, a Technicolor joke poking at Trump’s new sneaker. He played the guitar.He floated the idea of a “unity ticket” with the Republican candidate Nikki Haley, who has stuck in the GOP race despite repeated losses to Trump. He is still trying to goad other Democrats into the race, specifically calling on Democratic governors such as Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer and JB Pritzker to run.And he has complimented Biden, in a strange way: when a New York Times poll showed Biden trailing Trump and losing support from people who previously voted for him, Phillips cast doubt on the poll.“When the NYT/Siena poll shows me at 12%, you better believe it is flawed,” he wrote on X. “Only 5% even know who I am.” More

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      Far-right candidates see Super Tuesday wins at traditional Republicans’ expense

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      Far-right candidates took notable wins in state elections on Super Tuesday, further confirming the Republican ascendancy of supporters of Donald Trump, the probable GOP nominee for president, at the expense of more traditional conservatives.The highest-profile victory went to Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina who will now run for governor.The Democratic candidate, Josh Stein, would be the first Jewish governor of North Carolina should he win in November.In opposition to Stein, Robinson is a Hitler-quoting anti-abortion extremist, a dedicated controversialist who once said the superhero movie Black Panther was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by [a] satanic marxist … to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets”.But the candidate may find recent remarks about his views on abortion harder to brush off, as Democrats seek to continue a string of wins in campaigns focused on rightwing attacks on reproductive rights.Robinson has supported total abortion bans, calling abortion “murder” and “genocide” and, as reported by CNN, calling the founders of the women’s health organisation Planned Parenthood satanists who practiced witchcraft.The spokesperson for Robinson also called Stein an extremist.Elsewhere in North Carolina, a 21-year-old college student affiliated with the extremist Turning Point USA youth group scored a notable victory when he defeated an 84-year-old state representative who has served for 20 years.Wyatt Gable beat George Cleveland in a close primary race. Earlier this year, the Jacksonville Daily News, a local paper, asked both men what experience they had to recommend themselves to voters.Cleveland said: “I have served as a budget writer since 2010 and have chaired various House committees over the past 14 years in veterans and homeland security, general government, marine resources, and aquaculture.”Gable said: “Currently in the university system and only a few years removed from the public education system, I have an up-close look at our education system …“I am also the Turning Point USA president at East Carolina. As president, I have stopped the school from changing the bathrooms to allow men in the women’s room and vice versa. I have also been able to sign up almost 1,000 new members.”Further west, in Texas, a Republican civil war between Trump-aligned hardliners and establishment figures saw hardliners gain the edge in elections on Tuesday.In a US House primary, Tony Gonzales, a Republican congressman from San Antonio, was headed for a runoff election against Brandon Herrera, a social media personality and gun salesman.Last year, Gonzales was censured by his own state party, for voting in favour of same-sex marriage and gun safety reform (the latter after the massacre of 19 young children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas) and for being seen as soft on immigration and border policy.In the Texas state house, the speaker, Dade Phelan, will contest a runoff with David Covey, a challenger endorsed by Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor, and Trump himself.Phelan supported Paxton’s impeachment, a failed attempt to remove the attorney general over allegations of bribery, dereliction of duty and disregard for official duty.Paxton, who faces a securities fraud trial next month, also took aim on Tuesday at three judges on the highest criminal court in Texas. All Republicans, the three judges were part of a ruling that stopped Paxton fast-tracking cases of supposed voter fraud.All three judges were beaten by candidates Paxton endorsed. More

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      The not-so-Super Tuesday is over. America has two clear choices ahead | Cas Mudde

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      Not-so-Super Tuesday has made an end to two faux primaries, confirming what everyone has known for month: the presidential elections will be a repetition of those four years ago. Despite thousands of columns and hundreds of millions of campaign money, Donald Trump was unapproachable in the Republican primaries, while Joe Biden faced no real opponent and won without ever really campaigning. So, where does that leave the US?In many ways, the upcoming elections will be the same as most of the US presidential elections this century. The race will be between two unpopular candidates, who are mostly mobilizing an “anti-vote” based on a broadly shared narrative that this could be the last election to “save America”. But the situation is even worse than four years ago, because both the electoral context and political climate have worsened.US presidential elections have always been fundamentally undemocratic, because of the electoral college, an elitist safety-valve the Founding Fathers put in between the popular vote and the actual election of the president. Moreover, the voting process is extremely decentralized, which has facilitated voter intimidation and suppression, particularly targeting African Americans – but also, increasingly, Hispanics and college students.Ironically, given that one-third of Americans who believe Biden’s election was illegitimate, the 2020 presidential elections were the most “free and fair” in US history. While offering extensive new opportunities for absentee/mail voting, partly a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, experts declared the elections “the most secure in history”. Still, Republicans have weaponized their unfounded “stolen election” claim to limit the possibility to vote, mostly by passing restrictive voter ID and absentee/mail voting laws at the state level, and retake control of the election process.Today, more than 80% of Americans are worried about democracy in the US and about political violence in the future. In fact, this is one of the few things Democrats and Republicans (as well as independents) agree upon! Of course, they sharply disagree what is at stake and who is the main threat. Ironically, both are mostly right, largely because they stand for fundamentally contradictory Americas.The Republican claim that Democrats want to “destroy America” is based on Christian nationalism, which considers the US to be a “Christian nation”, based on the foundations of biblical values and the “traditional” (implicitly white) family. And it is true that most Democrats want to destroy this America, which might have been the reality of the country’s history, but is in clear opposition to its own (revered) constitution.In sharp contrast, most Democrats worry that another Trump presidency would mean the end of US liberal democracy, that is, the system enshrined in the constitution. And they are right too. Decades of radicalization have made the Republican party one of the most extreme far-right parties in the world, catering to an illiberal popular and media base that is largely in line with its paranoid and unhinged leader.It is too early to say which America will win in November. For now, ignore the polls, at least until October, as the key factor will be turnout, which will be largely determined by circumstances very close to election day. Like all but one presidential elections in the 21st century, the Democratic candidate will win the popular vote. But in an undemocratic regime like the US, this is no guarantee to also win the election. Given how close the results will probably be in several key states, we are in for a protracted legal battle should Trump lose, in which the increasingly partisan supreme court might have the final say.To prevent such an outcome, and ensure that US democracy prevails, at least for another four years, Democrats face a lot of challenges in the coming six months. While the Republican base is fired up, many (potential) Democrats are either “uncommitted” or weakly committed to Biden. At the same time, some liberal media, the New York Times in particular, seem determined to make the same mistake as with the “Clinton emails” in 2016, obsessing over Biden’s age and health.Let’s be clear, the age and health of both Biden and Trump are problematic for such a demanding and powerful position, but this is the choice the parties and primaries have given the US voter. Suggestions that the Democrats can still replace Biden and win against Trump are completely delusional. Not only are the Democratic electorate and politicians much more diverse and divided than the Republicans, but there is also no clear candidate who can unite them better than Biden or who has a name recognition that comes even close to that of Biden and Trump. Moreover, this new candidate would have to build their campaign and name in the shadow of a Democratic president, who has already won a significant number of delegates in the primaries.So, whether we like it or not, American voters have a choice between two very clear and different Americas, represented by two old and unpopular candidates. If Biden wins, not too much will change – except for an even more brazen insurgence from Republican-led states against the federal government. But should Trump return to the White House, the US will change fundamentally, and not for the better. Whatever (legitimate) issues potential Democratic voters have with Biden, let’s hope that they can get over them by 5 November. The fate of both the US and the world depends on it.
      Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today More

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      Biden and the Democrats are sleepwalking into a potential Trump win | Osita Nwanevu

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      Barring an act from a God, who has seemingly forsaken the American electorate, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will, again, be the Republican and Democratic candidates for president. Tuesday’s results all but assure that, and they can’t really have been a surprise to anyone who has paid close attention to the campaign thus far.In fairness, most Americans still haven’t tuned in, nor many Democrats, who have spent much of the last year hoping against hope that one or more verdicts against Trump in the courts might hand them the election ⁠– and perhaps even put Trump behind bars before November. That was always a risky bet, but now the supreme court has put the trial over his attempted coup in 2020 on hold, while the other cases against him have uncertain timelines.Meanwhile, Biden’s team and Democratic officials have been telling the press that Biden’s replacement on the ticket isn’t any likelier. The race, they insist, is already on.Who’s ahead? All but a handful of high-quality national polls taken since January say it’s Trump. A New York Times poll fairly representative of the rest that drew a significant amount of media attention over the weekend put Trump ahead by five points, 48-43%, among registered voters. That’s the largest lead Trump has held in a Times poll since he launched his first presidential campaign in 2015.Meanwhile, Biden, more unpopular than ever, sits at an approval rating of 38%. Ten per cent of those who voted for him in 2020 now say they will vote for Trump. And the demographic picture the poll paints is dire ⁠– not only for Biden but perhaps for the Democratic party as a whole.Biden led strongly with women in 2020 and is now evidently tied with Trump among them; Biden won an estimated 72% of minorities without college degrees last time around and now leads by a mere six points, 47-41%. And while making broad demographic pronouncements on the basis of one poll is unwise, these results are roughly in keeping with some other data.In Michigan for instance, where much of the focus last week was on the uncommitted vote against Biden in that state’s primary, Biden has generally been polling under 70% with that state’s crucial Black electorate, which he won with over 90% of the vote, according to exit polls, in 2020. Deficits like that with previously strong Democratic constituencies go some way towards explaining why Biden, at present, seems to be losing in every swing state given current polling.The Biden campaign’s response to these numbers has been simple: all of the polls are wrong. “Polling continues to be at odds with how Americans vote, and consistently overestimates Donald Trump while underestimating President Biden,” Biden’s communications director, Michael Tyler, said over the weekend in a statement. “Whether it’s in special elections or in the presidential primaries, actual voter behavior tells us a lot more than any poll does and it tells a very clear story: Joe Biden and Democrats continue to outperform while Donald Trump and the party he leads are weak, cash-strapped and deeply divided.”As Tyler and his colleagues surely know, though, the point about “actual voter behavior” is wrong. Primary election results are not very indicative of how strong candidates will be in a general election; if they were, Trump, who didn’t even win a majority of the Republican primary vote in 2016, never would have been president. And there’s basically zero relationship between results in special elections like the one Democrats just won in New York ⁠– which involve small, unrepresentative electorates in small, unrepresentative places ⁠– and presidential election results.As flawed as they might be, general election polls are our surest guide to how the general electorate is feeling about the general election. In fact, as the political scientist David Faris noted recently, the leader at this point of the year in Real Clear Politics’ average of polls has gone on to win the election in every race since 2004 other than 2004 itself, with only a few points worth of difference between the margin and the final result.In 2004, the exception, Kerry and Bush were virtually tied in early March, around 44-44%, while Bush went on to win the popular vote by just over two points. And even that exception is reflective of a trend that can’t be of much comfort to Democrats ⁠– in every race since 2004 save 2008’s post-crash election, the Democratic candidate has performed slightly worse in November than polls at this point in the year have suggested.All told, we have every reason to believe that the hole Biden is in is real, as unfair as it might seem to his supporters. As rosily as they might evaluate his record in office so far, it looks substantially more mixed now than it did six months ago. It’s true that the economy is roaring by all available macroeconomic metrics and that Democrats under Biden have managed to pass the most expansive domestic policy agenda of any president since at least Lyndon Johnson.But it’s also true that voters have been stung by high prices and interest rates, as well as the expiration of pandemic relief programs. Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was brave and laudable ⁠– both morally and strategically overdue. But he was hammered for it in the press and now faces a progressive insurrection over the US’s support for Israel’s inhumane offensive in Gaza so severe that the campaign is reportedly reducing large in-person events to avoid protesters.And on immigration, still at the front of mind for many voters, Biden has functionally conceded that Trump has been right about the state of the border; while immigrants are less prone to crime than the native-born population and substantially responsible for the economic boom we’re experiencing, Democrats are trying their best to outflank the right on border security and asylum, to little effect thus far, rather than countering the racist myths Trump has propagated directly and focusing on a positive immigration reform agenda.Most voters haven’t plugged into these policy debates; Biden wears his greatest liability to them on his face. According to the New York Times’ poll, 73% of registered voters, including 61% of voters who backed Biden in 2020, say he’s too old to effectively serve as president.And as much as Democrats might want to blame the media for that perception in the wake of the Robert Hur report, this is a problem many of them foresaw themselves during the last campaign. “If Biden is elected he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection,” one campaign adviser told Politico’s Ryan Lizza flatly in 2019; according to Lizza, four sources close to Biden at the time told him that it was “virtually inconceivable” that he would mount another campaign.Yet here we are ⁠– sitting between a Super Tuesday that Biden swept and what could be the most consequential State of the Union address in some time, given the opportunity it presents for the president both to demonstrate his lucidity and to outline, at long last, an actual plan for his next term. Previews of the speech suggest it will feature now familiar language about protecting democracy and “making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share”, along with some proposals on the opioid epidemic and veteran care.But Biden will have to do substantially better than that to get his campaign right side up. Plainly, he’s become a symbol of our political system’s decrepitude ⁠– a stand-in for all the old men in Washington who voters believe, rightfully, can’t or won’t do much to dramatically improve their lives. He’ll have to prove to voters that he’s capable of both dreaming and doing ⁠– to sell an ambitious vision of further material progress over the next four years, not woolly rhetoric about ending polarization and bringing serenity back to politics that will leave him looking dishonest and even more ineffectual when the tenor of political life remains the same, as it surely will.Whether or not Democrats control Congress will naturally constrain whether Biden makes good on that policy agenda; but having a compelling agenda in the offing to begin with might lift the candidates he’ll depend upon in his next term to victory. All that aside, faith in Biden’s capacity to lead and accomplish will rest in some part on whether and when the situation in Gaza comes to a peaceable resolution ⁠– getting a handle on the situation and pressuring Netanyahu into ending the war would be a significant turning point in his presidency.There and elsewhere, Biden needs to find a new course. Otherwise, the election may be over before he realizes it.
      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump’s Super Tuesday victory speech: grim visions of an American apocalypse

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      If this is what he sounds like when he wins, imagine how he would react to defeat.Donald Trump swept to victory after victory on Super Tuesday, all but clinching the Republican presidential nomination, but you wouldn’t have known it from his joyless victory speech.For hours his fans had partied in the gilded ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, accompanied by Abba’s Dancing Queen, Elton John’s Rocket Man, Queen’s We Are the Champions and other golden oldies. Waiters glided between them serving pastries, prawns and sausage rolls. Each time Fox News – displayed on four giant TV screens – declared another state for Trump, they whooped and cheered and chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump! USA! USA! USA!”Then, after 10pm, into this gaudy pageant walked the Grim Reaper, raining on their parade with a 19-minute speech laden with doom and gloom about the state of the nation.This was Trump as Eeyore.No balloons, no confetti, no parade of family members on stage and no mention of opponent Nikki Haley. No fun.“Some people call it an experiment – I don’t call it an experiment,” Trump said of the United States. “I just say this is a magnificent place, a magnificent country, and it’s sad to see how far it’s come and gone … When you look at the depths where it’s gone, we can’t let that happen. We’re going to straighten it out. We’re going to close our borders. We’re going to drill baby drill.”As the unhappy warrior spoke, 10 guests headed for the exit, apparently worn down by the misery of it all.The strange thing about Trump’s subdued mood is that this should have been his “I told you so” speech, full of braggadocious crowing over the media and his vanquished foes. After all, when he used Mar-a-Lago in late 2022 to announce his third consecutive run for president, there had been widespread scepticism: Republicans had just flopped in the midterms and it was far from certain whether Trump could beat the coming man, Ron DeSantis.Who’s got the last laugh now? It should have been Trump on Tuesday night, revelling in the opulence of crystal chandeliers and gold leaf and Corinthian-style columns, after swatting aside a dozen challengers, leading Joe Biden in opinion polls and watching legal dominoes continue to fall his way.But it turns out he has upended and inverted yet another political convention: optimism. Not for him Ronald Reagan’s morning in America or Bill Clinton’s place called Hope or Barack Obama’s yes, we can. Instead only murder, mayhem and total darkness.If only he had still been running things, he lamented, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine, Israel would not have been attacked and Iran would be broke. Now inflation is “destroying the middle class, it’s destroying everything”. He added morosely that inflation is called the “country buster”.But wait, there is one bright spot: the stock market! It’s going gangbusters. According to Trump, this has nothing to do with Biden, “the worst president in the history of our country”, but the Republican frontrunner’s own healthy poll numbers indicating his return.Then it was back to the bad news of border security and immigration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Our cities are being overrun with migrant crime, and that’s Biden migrant crime,” Trump grimaced. “But it’s a new category and it’s violent, where they’ll stand in the middle of the street and have fistfights with police officers. And if they did that in their countries from where they came, they’d be killed instantly. They wouldn’t do that. So the world is laughing at us. The world is taking advantage of us.”The room of bejewelled, permatanned partygoers was silent. At this point Trump was like the dinner guest who insists on talking about how sausages are made and what dying animals sound like. And he still wasn’t done, riffing on energy independence and how you turn tar into oil. Boring as well as sad.Maybe his handlers had got to him. Donald, don’t set everyone’s hair on fire. We have to pivot to the general! So it was he did not dwell on his big lie about the 2020 election being stolen from him. But he did grumble about the “weaponisation” of government against a political opponent.“It happens in third world countries,” he said. “And in some ways, we’re a third world country. We live in a third world country with no borders … We need a fair and free press. The press has not been fair nor has it been free … The press used to police our country. Now nobody has confidence in them.”The grim list kept coming: the deadly coronavirus pandemic, the loss of American soldiers in Afghanistan. And Trump naturally could not resist circling back for another bite at the border – no matter that he was the one who ordered Republicans to torpedo bipartisan legislation that might have begun to fix the crisis.“We have millions of people invading our country,” he asserted. “This is an invasion. This is the worst invasion probably.” For good measure, he tossed out an uncheckable fact. “The number today could be 15 million people. And they’re coming from rough places and dangerous places.”There were polite ripples of applause but not much chanting from a crowd that included men in leather Bikers for Trump vests; a young man sporting a Maga hat and dark suit, white shirt and red bow tie; a woman with an eye patch and Moms 4 Liberty T-shirt; a young boy in a suit with a Stars and Stripes tie; and a tattooed white rapper with a Mayor of Magaville cap and thick golden chain with a giant medallion resembling Trump’s head.Two days from now, the audience will be somewhat different for Biden’s State of the Union address in Washington. Trump delivered his own version on Tuesday night: the state of the union is bleak. Perhaps that was fitting for a nation digesting the reality that it really will have to do Biden v Trump all over again. More

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      Haley wins surprise Vermont victory as Biden and Trump dominate Super Tuesday

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump largely cruised to easy victories on Super Tuesday. In early results, Biden and Trump captured wins in their respective primaries in California, Virginia, North Carolina, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Colorado and Minnesota. Biden also won the Democratic caucus in Iowa and Vermont, but lost American Samoa, while Nikki Haley won the Republican primary in Vermont – her second victory of 2024.The United States has not witnessed a primary campaign season with so little competitive tension since political primaries began to dominate the nomination process in the 1970s. Neither the current president nor the former president secured the nomination of their respective parties, but both are likely to do so within the next two weeks.Both candidates took shots at each other in statements and speeches on Tuesday evening. Biden said Trump was focused on “revenge and retribution” and “determined to destroy democracy”.“Tonight’s results leave the American people with a clear choice: are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?” Biden said.In a victory speech at Mar-a-Lago, Trump praised his wins, stating that “never been anything like this” and again attacked migrants, falsely claiming that US cities are “being overrun by migrant crime”. The former president has frequently derided migrants and made baseless and racist comments that they are dangerous.Biden sweeps, but with warning signsBiden requires 1,968 delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. Going into Super Tuesday, he held 206. Primaries and caucuses today offered another 1,420. Assuming Biden continues to sweep through primary contests, the earliest he could secure the nomination on the first ballot would be 19 March with results from Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio.Democratic candidates can win delegates with 15% or more of the vote in a congressional district. California’s 424 Democratic delegates were the richest haul of the evening.View image in fullscreenVotes for write-in candidates typically take days to tabulate, but observers have been acutely watching for “uncommitted” or “none of the above” protest votes to register displeasure with the Biden administration’s policy on the Israel-Hamas war. The campaign has gained more ground after a strong showing in Michigan last week.William Galvin, secretary of state for Massachusetts, told reporters today that if enough voters selected “no preference”, a delegate may be assigned to that option.Trump marches on, but party rifts visibleTrump entered Super Tuesday with 273 delegates, requiring 1,215 needed to win the nomination outright at the Republican National Convention. Super Tuesday offered 865 delegates, but Nikki Haley’s continued campaign has prevented Trump from claiming all of them. With tonight’s results, the earliest Trump could secure the nomination is also 19 March with Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio.View image in fullscreenTrump gained a late-game reprieve in Colorado when the US supreme court unanimously ruled on Monday that states cannot unilaterally kick a presidential candidate off the ballot using the 14th amendment and was expected to win Colorado.Haley won the District of Columbia primary on Sunday, becoming the first woman to win a Republican presidential primary in history. Only about 2,000 people voted in the primary but she did score her first state win on Tuesday with Vermont.Notable state races hold more upsetsCalifornia voters have been focused on the state’s highly-contested down ballot race to fill the seat held by Dianne Feinstein, the late US senator. California places the top two candidates from the primary in a runoff.Adam Schiff, the centrist Democratic congressman and longtime Trump antagonist, was declared the first place winner. He will face off with Republican Steve Garvey, a former professional baseball player, in November.But voters in California were unenthusiastic and analysts projected the state could see its lowest voter turnout in history.“I’m not excited about any of the issues, I just needed to take a walk today so I decided to drop off my ballot,” said Daniel, a 50-year-old voter who declined to share his last name.Texas held state and federal legislative primaries Tuesday, presenting Texan voters with a Republican grudge match over state politics. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has been on a revenge tour to punish legislators who voted for his impeachment on corruption allegations last year, issuing a long list of endorsed challengers to incumbents.About half of a slate of endorsed challengers have either claimed victory or are taking incumbents to a runoff, including a challenger to the powerful Texas speaker of the house, Dade Phelan. Late returns suggested Phelan will face Trump-backed challenger David Covey.Four claimed open seats and seven challengers won primaries outright, while seven others will go on to runoffs. One of those runoffs will feature Katrina Pearson, Trump’s former spokeswoman, who is neck-and-neck with Justin Holland, a state representative, in the suburban Dallas district.View image in fullscreenTed Cruz, the US senator, secured the Republican nomination with no major GOP competitors. Democratic representative Colin Allred beat out Roland Gutierrez, who has emerged as a national gun control advocate following the Uvalde shooting, to face Cruz in November.Alabama voters in a newly-redrawn second congressional district pushed Democrats Anthony Daniels and Shomari Figures to a runoff while Republicans Dick Brewbaker and Caroleene Dobson also face a runoff. The US supreme court forced Alabama to redraw its congressional map last year, declaring it a racial gerrymander that illegally diminished the political power of Black voters. As a result, two white Republican congressmen – Jerry Carl and Barry Moore – faced each other for a single seat after their districts were redrawn. Moore beat out incumbent Carl in the first district.More than 6,000 voters in the second district received postcards with incorrect voting information ahead of the primary, which a county official attributed to a software error.Notably Tom Parker, chief justice of Alabama’s supreme court, who issued a religiously-inflected ruling on the personhood of frozen embryos last month, was not on the ballot tonight. Alabama bars judges over the age of 70 from running for re-election; his term ends in 2025. The winner of the Republican nomination to succeed Parker is Sarah Stewart, an associate justice on the Alabama supreme court who was part of the court’s majority ruling on the embryo case.In North Carolina, the Republican state legislature redrew congressional maps last year after winning a majority on the state supreme court. As a result, the current delegation of 14 congresspeople will likely change from a 7-7 split to a 10-4 Republican majority and the most competitive seats have attracted sharp primary contests, particularly the 13th district.North Carolina’s first congressional district in the state’s coastal north-east has historically held a Democratic, mostly-Black majority. Lawmakers redrew it to be much more competitive for a Republican candidate. Representative Don Davis beat the 2022 Republican nominee, businesswoman and perennial candidate Sandy Smith, by four points. Smith this year lost the Republican primary to challenger Laurie Buckhout. .Meanwhile Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor, has won the Republican nomination for governor, to succeed North Carolina’s term-limited Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. Robinson, North Carolina’s first Black lieutenant governor, has a history of sexist and inflammatory comments, particularly about Jews.Robinson’s opponent in November will be Democrat Josh Stein, the North Carolina attorney general who would be the state’s first Jewish governor. More

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      Super Tuesday key takeaways: protest vote, low turnout and far-right machinations

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      The sleepy US presidential primary continued on, with more than a dozen states turning out to cast ballots on Super Tuesday.President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump dominated yet again, all but ending the primary season, though some states still have to go to the polls. Voters have stayed home or tuned out, waiting until later in the year to show their enthusiasm.Biden faced his biggest challenge so far from an ongoing protest vote against his stance on the Israel-Gaza war. Trump lost one state to Republican challenger Nikki Haley, whose campaign is on its last legs.Across the states, far-right candidates won in key primaries, setting up a race in North Carolina between a man who has made repeated antisemitic comments and a man who could be the state’s first Jewish governor.Here’s what we learned from Super Tuesday.The protest vote continuesPerhaps the biggest threat to Biden in the Democratic primary is coming from no one – or, rather, from a concerted effort by anti-war Democrats to issue a protest by urging voters to cast ballots for uncommitted or no preference options.The ad hoc organizing came after Michigan’s uncommitted campaign pulled in more than 100,000 votes, a message to Biden that his base in the swing state was at risk. Since then, the Vice-President Kamala Harris called for an immediate, temporary ceasefire, which organizers say needs to be permanent, but is a sign the tactic is working.“They’re feeling the pressure, and we want them to feel that pressure. We want them to know that this is unacceptable,” said Khalid Omar, a Minneapolis uncommitted voter who helped organize the movement there.Several states saw sizable showings for uncommitted: at the time of writing late on Tuesday evening, in Minnesota, about 20% of voters chose “uncommitted”. Massachusetts saw about 9% of votes go to a “no preference” options. In North Carolina, about 12% of voters picked “no preference”.Imam Hassan Jama, a Minneapolis community leader, voted for, campaigned for and endorsed Biden in 2020, but didn’t vote for him on Tuesday because he is disappointed at Biden’s inaction on a ceasefire in Gaza. He instead voted “uncommitted” and worked to get others to do the same.“Hopefully we’ll send a strong message from Minnesota to White House,” he said. “And if they don’t listen, November is coming.”While Biden, his allies and Democratic parties have sought to make the election solely about Trump v Biden, the Biden campaign acknowledged the movement on Tuesday, with campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt telling the New York Times that “the president hears the voters participating in the uncommitted campaigns. He shares their goal for an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace – and he’s working tirelessly to that end.”Other states still waiting to vote are now organizing around uncommitted options, like Washington state, where the largest labor union endorsed the concept. Some states don’t have an uncommitted option or the ability to write in or leave blank.The anti-war movement isn’t going away; the uncommitted drumbeat, as it morphs and grows, keeps the calls for a ceasefire in the headlines, forcing Biden to contend with his biggest liability among Democrats.Biden and Trump is inevitableDespite the hopes of many voters this election year, it’s going to be Trump and Biden redux in November – unless something non-electoral happens, like a prison sentence or health crisis.The insurgent campaign to hold Biden accountable for Gaza is the only hurdle left for the president this primary season: the candidates who tried to oust the incumbent have not gained enough ground to credibly stay in the race.View image in fullscreenTrump and Biden have been acting like it’s the general election already for months, aiming their campaigns at each other mostly rather than on primary contenders. And the contrasts between the two men feel much the same as 2020.In his victory speech at Mar-a-Lago, Trump leaned into nativist comments again, calling the US-Mexico border “the worst invasion” and saying that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country”.Biden, meanwhile, said Trump is “driven by grievance and grift, focused on his own revenge and retribution, not the American people” and is “determined to destroy our democracy, rip away fundamental freedoms like the ability for women to make their own healthcare decisions, and pass another round of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy.”What will last candidates standing doSome Super Tuesday states had a couple handfuls of random names on their ballots, despite the lack of competition in both parties’ primaries. Those also-ran candidates with national campaigns need to decide soon whether they’ll stay in the running.Marianne Williamson, the self-help author, previously suspended her campaign, then un-suspended it after a better-than-expected showing in Michigan, but has garnered usually low single digits.Dean Phillips, the Minnesota congressman, lost his home state not only to Biden, but to the uncommitted campaign. Phillips has alluded to a forthcoming exit from the race, pointing out all the people he’s lost to on the campaign trail so far and saying people asking him to drop out could be nicer about it.In the past month, Phillips had to lay off much of his staff after he wasn’t able to fundraise much because he is challenging a sitting president, he said on X in February. He did, however, win his first county, the rural Oklahoma panhandle’s Cimarron county, winning 11 votes out of 21 on Tuesday.On the right, Nikki Haley is the last non-Trump Republican standing. She won Vermont on Super Tuesday, Trump’s only loss that day and Haley’s second victory, after Washington DC. She previously lost her home state of South Carolina. She doesn’t have a path to the nomination anymore, but hasn’t dropped out yet. She may after Tuesday’s results sink in.Haley said many times that she’s not interested in a third-party bid, though Phillips once floated the idea of running with Haley as a “unity ticket”.Dropout announcements could come in the next few days from either side of the ticket.Low turnoutBecause of the lack of competition and lagging enthusiasm for Trump and Biden, voters don’t seem excited to head to the polls this primary season.Turnout has fallen below past races, though in some states, uncommitted campaigns newly energized those voters who might have stayed home.Minnesota secretary of state Steve Simon told reporters on Tuesday that a few factors affect turnout.“One is candidates that inspire strong feelings, and the other is perceptions of competitiveness,” he said. “I think it’s safe to say, I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground here, that we have a lot of number one, and not so much of number two.”In California, officials were concerned about low turnout, with few voters saying they believed their vote would be important in this primary.Only about 8% of California’s 22 million voters had returned their mail-in ballots a week before voting day, Politico reported. The numbers fall even more for younger voters between the ages of 18 and 34, a subset that typically boosts progressive candidates and priorities. Only 2% in that age group had turned in their ballots during that same time period.View image in fullscreenBut the lower turnout in the presidential primaries doesn’t tell us anything about what could happen in November’s general election. Presidential general elections bring the highest turnout of any US elections.“Over the last many years, there has been virtually no connection, virtually none, between early in the year primary turnout and general election turnout,” Simon said.Far-right machinations in the statesAn explosive ruling by Alabama’s supreme court last month set off a chain of political reactions across the country, as Republicans fearing a backlash quickly uttered delicately-worded statements praising the virtues of in vitro fertilization while attempting to defend their pro-life political credentials. Lawmakers in several states – including Alabama – began crafting legislation to protect IVF.But Alabama’s Republican voters chose not to closely challenge the abortion politics of their state’s highest jurists on Tuesday. Their chosen successor to Tom Parker, Alabama’s retiring chief justice, is Sarah Stewart, an associate state supreme court justice who voted with the majority in its ruling last month declaring frozen embryos as “children” for purposes of legal protection.In North Carolina, Lt. Gov Mark Robinson captured about two-thirds of the Republican primary vote on Tuesday to win the nomination for governor. If elected, he would be North Carolina’s first Black governor. But Robinson has made a litany of inflammatory public comments about race, gender, sexual orientation and religion, with repeated and particular attacks on Jews. He described the movie Black Panther as “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists” that was “only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets”.He has compared gay people to “maggots” and – as of Tuesday evening – still has a 2014 Facebook post up quoting Hitler’s comments about having “pride in one’s own race”. His commentary elicits comparisons to EW Jackson in Virginia and more recently Herschel Walker in Georgia, notable as Black conservatives courting the far right with political extremism.Robinson’s opponent in November will be Josh Stein, the North Carolina attorney general. The Democratic nominee would be North Carolina’s first Jewish governor. More

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      California Senate race: Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey advance to November election

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      Adam Schiff, the centrist Democratic congressman, is poised to be the next US senator from California after securing enough votes to advance to the November election. He will face off with Republican Steve Garvey, a former professional baseball player, who also performed well in the nonpartisan primary on Tuesday.Schiff, a pro-Israel Democrat, was quickly called a winner by the Associated Press, and Garvey secured his spot in the general election about an hour after polls closed. The two progressive Democratic candidates were trailing far behind, with the Orange county congresswoman Katie Porter in third place and the Bay Area congresswoman Barbara Lee in the fourth spot. The rankings could continue to change as more votes are counted, but the AP said Schiff and Garvey were certain to advance.Garvey stands little chance of winning in the general election; the last time a Republican won a statewide seat in California was in 2006. Facing off in the runoff with an inexperienced Republican candidate in a majority-Democratic state would likely see Schiff cruise to victory in November.View image in fullscreenThe primary broke records as the most expensive senate race in California. Schiff’s campaign is widely seen as having engineered Garvey’s strong primary performance by spending millions of dollars to air ads attacking Garvey, the former first baseman for the LA Dodgers and an inexperienced Republican candidate, thus elevating his name recognition among Republican voters in a way the Garvey campaign itself was not able to afford.Schiff’s strategy appeared to be effective at boxing out his two Democratic progressive competitors. Neither Porter nor Lee are expected to return to Congress next year, after choosing to compete in the Senate race rather than run for re-election in their house districts.Lee, a longtime progressive, had called for a ceasefire in Gaza in October 2023. Porter broke with the Biden administration in December to call for a “bilateral ceasefire”.Schiff, in contrast, has shown continuing support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and has refused to call for a ceasefire, a position that has sparked protests by some young progressive California Democrats.Polls showed Porter, a nationally prominent consumer advocate known for grilling CEOs with the help of her trademark whiteboard, would have been a strong competitor against Schiff in a two-Democrat race.View image in fullscreenIn early polls, Porter had been coming in second after Schiff, with Lee trailing behind, until growing support for Garvey pushed Porter into third place.Porter denounced the Schiff campaign’s ads targeting Garvey in early February, writing Schiff was “playing cynical, anti-democratic political games to avoid a competitive election in November” and that “voters deserve better”.Garvey has done minimal campaigning for his seat and gave a lackluster performance in campaign debates. He has struggled to answer policy questions from journalists. When asked about homelessness and his lack of specific ideas, he said: “Once we get through the primary, I’ll start a deeper dive into the [issues].” In addition to his baseball career, he also starred in weight-loss infomercials and is reportedly estranged from several of his adult children.Schiff was the Senate frontrunner throughout the California senate primary, thanks to his fundraising prowess, and a public profile burnished by his prominent roles in the first impeachment of Donald Trump and the investigation of the January 6 insurrection.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn all, at least $65.3m was spent on advertisements in the Senate primary battle, a record-breaking amount more than the last three senate races combined, Politico reported, citing data from AdImpact, a political ad-tracking service.Porter’s campaign was also targeted in the race’s last month by $10m in attack ads from a Super Pac funded by the cryptocurrency industry. The Pac celebrated Porter’s defeat in a statement on Tuesday night.In a statement after polls closed, Lee quoted her “mentor and friend” Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman in Congress, who said: “You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”She added: “Our campaign has always been about giving a voice to people who don’t feel heard in Washington – and I’m exceptionally proud of the grassroots, multi-ethnic, cross-generational coalition this campaign built across California.”The California Senate seat became available after Dianne Feinstein, the longest-serving woman in the US Senate, died in September. Laphonza Butler, a Democratic strategist and former labor leader, was appointed her replacement, but did not run for a full term.By November, California won’t have a female senator for the first time in 30 years.In early results, California voters also appeared to be backing Proposition 1, a mental health funding ballot measure proposed by Governor Gavin Newsom to “prioritise getting people off the streets, out of tents and into treatment”. The measure, which earned 53% of votes with a third of votes counted, is opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union and disability rights advocates who argue it would fund locked-door psychiatric institutions and involuntary treatment and take money from community programs.Criminal justice reform advocates were also closely watching the crowded Los Angeles district attorney’s race. George Gascón, the incumbent who has pushed progressive policies to reduce mass incarceration, was in the lead with 37% of votes counted, with Nathan Hochman, a former GOP attorney general candidate and federal prosecutor, in second place. Many of Gascón’s 11 challengers, including Hochman, have pledged to undo his reform agenda. More