US elections 2024

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Nikki Haley declines to say slavery was cause of US civil war

      by

      Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley declined to specify that slavery was a cause of the civil war on Wednesday, wading into an area of history that continues to reverberate and in some ways define US politics nearly 160 years after it concluded.Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, where the first shots of the north-south conflict were fired by Confederate soldiers in April 1861, was asked by a New Hampshire voter about the reason for the war but didn’t mention slavery in her response.Instead, Haley talked about the role of government, replying that it involved “basically how the government was going to run” and “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do”.The questioner said they were astonished she did not mention slavery.“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And we will always stand by the fact that I think the government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people,” said Hayley at a town hall event in Berlin, New Hampshire.“It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom.”The Republican presidential candidate, who served as US ambassador to the UN under the Trump administration, then turned the question back to the man who had asked it.The unnamed questioner replied that he was not the one running for president and wished instead to know her answer. Haley went into an expanded explanation about the role of government, individual freedom and capitalism.“In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery’,” the questioner responded, prompting a retort from Haley.“What do you want me to say about slavery?” she asked.On Thursday, amid wide reporting of her response and in apparent damage limitation mode, Haley said in a radio interview: “Of course the civil war was about slavery.”According to the Washington Post, Haley told The Pulse of NH radio show: “I want to nip it in the bud. Yes, we know the Civil War was about slavery. But more than that, what’s the lesson in all this?“That freedom matters. And individual rights and liberties matter for all people. That’s the blessing of America. That was a stain on America when we had slavery. But what we want is never relive it. Never let anyone take those freedoms away again.”Wednesday’s exchange comes less than a month before the New Hampshire primaries on 23 January. Recent polling has placed Haley in second place to Donald Trump among Republican voters in the state.The Biden campaign later posted a clip of the question on the X social media platform and text saying: “It was about slavery.”After Wednesday’s town hall meeting, Christale Spain – elected this year as the first Black woman to chair South Carolina’s Democratic party – said Haley’s response was “vile, but unsurprising”.“The same person who refused to take down the Confederate Flag until the tragedy in Charleston, and tried to justify a Confederate History Month,” Spain said in a post on X. “She’s just as MAGA as Trump,” Spain added, referring to Trump’s “Make America great again” slogan.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJaime Harrison, current chair of the Democratic National Committee and South Carolina’s party chair during part of Haley’s tenure as governor, said her response was “not stunning if you were a Black resident in SC when she was Governor”.“Same person who said the confederate flag was about tradition & heritage and as a minority woman she was the right person to defend keeping it on state house grounds,” Harrison posted Wednesday night on X. “Some may have forgotten but I haven’t. Time to take off the rose colored Nikki Haley glasses folks.”A poll last week placed Haley within four points of the former president, though the poll was conducted across a small number of people and its results have not been replicated in other surveys that give Trump a commanding lead.Haley has frequently said during her campaign that she would compete in the first three states before returning “to the sweet state of South Carolina, and we’ll finish it”.Haley’s campaign did not immediately return a message seeking comment on her response. The campaign of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, another of Haley‘s GOP foes, recirculated video of the exchange on social media, adding the comment: “Yikes.”Issues surrounding the origins of the civil war and its heritage are still much of the fabric of Haley’s home state, and she has been pressed on the war’s origins before.As she ran for governor in 2010, Haley, in an interview with a now-defunct activist group then known as the Palmetto Patriots, described the war as between two disparate sides fighting for “tradition” and “change” and said the Confederate flag was “not something that is racist”.During that same campaign, she dismissed the need for the flag to come down from the statehouse grounds, portraying her Democratic rival’s push for its removal as a desperate political stunt.Five years later, Haley urged lawmakers to remove the flag from its perch near a Confederate soldier monument after a mass shooting in which a white gunman killed eight Black church members who were attending Bible study. At the time, Haley said the flag had been “hijacked” by the shooter from those who saw it as symbolizing “sacrifice and heritage.”.South Carolina’s ordinance of secession – the 1860 proclamation by the state government outlining its reasons for seceding from the Union – mentions slavery in its opening sentence and points to the “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” as a reason for the state removing itself from the Union.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

    • 200 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Sitting on a powder keg’: US braces for a year, and an election, like no other

      by

      The 60th US presidential election, which will unfold in 2024, will be quite unlike any that has gone before as the US, and the rest of the world, braces for a contest amid fears of eroding democracy and the looming threat of authoritarianism.It will be a fight marked by numerous unwanted firsts as the oldest president in the country’s history is likely to face the first former US president to stand trial on criminal charges. A once aspirational nation will continue its plunge into anxiety and divisions about crime, immigration, race, foreign wars and the cost of living.Democrat Joe Biden, 81, is preparing for the kind of gruelling campaign he was able to avoid during coronavirus lockdowns in 2020. Republican Donald Trump will spend some of his campaign in a courtroom and has vowed authoritarian-style retribution if he wins. For voters it is a time of stark choices, unique spectacles and simmering danger.“It feels to me as if America is sitting on a powder keg and the fuse has been lit,” said Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “The protective shield that all democracies and social orders rely on – legitimacy of the governing body, some level of elite responsibility, the willingness of citizens to view their neighbors in a civic way – is in an advanced stage of decline or collapse.“It’s quite possible that the powder keg that America’s sitting on will explode over the course of 2024.”US politics entered a new, turbulent era with Trump’s shocking victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. The businessman and reality TV star, tapping into populist rage against the establishment, was the first president with no prior political or military experience. His chaotic four-year presidency was scarred by the Covid-19 pandemic and ended with a bitter defeat by Biden in a 2020 election that was itself billed as an unprecedented stress test of democracy.Trump never accepted the result and his attempts to overturn it culminated in a deadly riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, and his second impeachment. He has spent three years plotting revenge and describes the 5 November election as “the final battle”. But he is running for president under the shadow of 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions, knowing that regaining the White House might be his best hope of avoiding prison – a calculus that could make him and his supporters more desperate and volatile than ever.Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, said: “This is the most astounding election I have ever seen.“We have never had an election where a likely major party nominee is indicted for major felony charges of the most serious nature; this is not shoplifting. He’s being charged with an attempt to destroy our democracy and subverting our national security. Both in terms of Trump’s personal morality and his incredibly serious crimes, we have never seen anything remotely like this.”First Trump must win the Republican primary against Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, putting the electoral and legal calendars on a collision course. On 16 January, a day after the Iowa caucuses kick off the Republican nomination process, Trump faces a defamation trial brought by the writer E Jean Carroll, who has already won a $5m judgment against him after a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.On 4 March, Trump is due in court in Washington in a federal case accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election result. The following day is Super Tuesday, when more than 15 states are scheduled to hold Republican primaries, the biggest delegate haul of the campaign.On 25 March, Trump also faces state charges in New York over hush-money payments to an adult film star, although the judge has acknowledged he may postpone that because of the federal trial. On 5 August, prosecutors have asked to start an election fraud trial in Georgia, less than three weeks after Trump is likely to have been nominated by the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Trump is hard at work to flip his legal troubles to his political advantage, contending that he is a victim of a Democratic deep state conspiracy. He frequently tells his supporters: “In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you – and I’m just standing in their way.” His Georgia mugshot has been slapped on T-shirts and other merchandise like a lucrative badge of honor.It seems to be working, at least according to a series of opinion polls that show Trump leading Biden in a hypothetical matchup. A survey in early December for the Wall Street Journal newspaper showed Trump ahead by four points, 47% to 43%. When five potential third-party and independent candidates were included, Trump’s lead over Biden expanded to six points, 37% to 31%.To Democrats, such figures are bewildering. Biden’s defenders point to his record, including the creation of 14m jobs, strong GDP growth and four major legislative victories on coronavirus relief, infrastructure, domestic production of computer chips and the biggest climate action in history. He has also led the western alliance against Russian aggression in Ukraine.Lichtman added: “He gets credit for nothing. It’s just amazing: I’ve never seen a president do so much and get so little mileage on it. He has more domestic accomplishments than any American president since the 1960s. He’s presided over an amazing economic recovery, a far better economy than was under Donald Trump even before the pandemic in terms of jobs, wages, GDP. Inflation has gone down by two-thirds.“It was Biden who single-handedly put together the coalition of the west that stopped [Vladimir] Putin from quickly overtaking Ukraine. He seems to get no credit for any of this whatsoever and that’s partly his own fault and the fault of the Democratic party. The Democratic party has been horrible for some time now – at least 15 years. Republicans are so much better at messaging.”The president’s approval rating has been stubbornly low since around the time of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. He is grappling with record numbers of migrants entering the country – an issue that increasingly aggravates states beyond the US-Mexico border. His refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza is costing him some support among progressives and young people.The latest Democratic messaging salvo – “Bidenomics” – appears to have been a flop at a moment when many voters blame him for rising prices and a cost-of-living crisis. For all the barrage of positive economic data, Americans are lacking the feelgood factor.Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, said: “People feel that Biden overpromised and underdelivered and ultimately what it came down to was he didn’t make me feel good while he did it and he didn’t make it look easy.”Biden still holds a potential ace in the hole. Democrats plan to make abortion central to the 2024 campaign, with opinion polls showing most Americans do not favor strict limits on reproductive rights. The party is hoping threats to those rights will encourage millions of women and independents to vote their way next year. It is also seeking to put measures enshrining access to abortion in state constitutions on as many ballots as possible.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe issue has flummoxed Republicans, with some concerned the party has gone too far with state-level restrictions since the supreme court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling last year, ending constitutional protection for abortion. Trump has taken notice and is conspicuously trying to be vague on the issue.The Wall Street Journal poll found Biden leading Trump on abortion and democracy by double digits. But it gave Trump a double-digit lead on the economy, inflation, crime, border security, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and physical and mental fitness for office. Biden still has time to reshape perceptions but even close allies concede that he is not an inspirational speechmaker like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. How can he turn it around?Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “My advice would be to be aggressive, go on offence and set the narrative. They must make the contrast between a Biden America and a Trump America and ask people which America do they want to live in.“A year out, most people are not paying attention so the polls are meaningless in that they are not predictive of what will happen in a year. Where they do have value is what the trend line shows, which is that the American people are not getting the messaging clearly enough now, so it’s time to get up off their asses and activate the campaign at level 10 right now.”Setmayer, a senior adviser to the anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project, added: “What Donald Trump is telegraphing, what he plans to do to this country, I don’t fully think most Americans understand.“Use the power of incumbency, of the bully pulpit, of their record. Biden is surrounded by people who are experienced campaign veterans and so is he. Use it.”Should Trump prevail, numerous critics have warned that his return would hollow out American democracy and presage a drift towards Hungarian-style authoritarianism. In a recent interview on Fox News, Trump was asked: “You are promising America tonight, you would never abuse this power as retribution against anybody?” He did not give an outright denial but replied airily: “Except for day one.”Should Biden serve a second term, he will be 86 when he leaves office. Dean Phillips, 54, a congressman from Minnesota, mounting a Democratic primary challenge, is calling for a new generation of leadership. Some Democrats privately wish that Biden had declared mission accomplished after the 2022 midterm elections and stepped down to make way for younger contenders such as Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer. It now appears too late.Frank Luntz, a prominent consultant and pollster, said: “Democrats should be apoplectic. Donald Trump has been indicted in felony after felony. The economy is relatively OK and yet Biden is sinking every week and it’s because of something that no soundbite and no messaging can fix: his age. If I were a Democratic strategist, I would have been arrested in front of the White House for begging him to accept four years and move on. You can’t fix age.”Biden’s potential for gaffes was limited during the pandemic election; this time he will be expected to travel far and wide, his every misstep amplified by rightwing media. The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, is now owned by Elon Musk and populated by extremists such as Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones. This has also been dubbed the first “AI election”, with deepfakes threatening to accelerate the spread of disinformation – a tempting target for foreign interference.It is unfolding in a febrile atmosphere of conspiracy theories, polarisation, gun violence and surging antisemitism and Islamophobia. Political opponents are increasingly framed as mortal enemies. Violence erupted on January 6 and again last year when a man broke into the home of the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and attacked her husband with a hammer.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “If you have something like the last couple of elections where it’s razor thin, and people who don’t understand the American electoral process see malfeasance and misfeasance where there is none, we have a very non-trivial chance of violence.“I wouldn’t even presume that we wouldn’t have an outbreak of sporadic violence before that. The fact is when people see each other as the enemy, and talk about each other as the enemy, people who are mentally unbalanced and have access to firearms will do mentally unbalanced things.”Luntz does not foresee violence.But nor is he optimistic about the future of a nation torn between hope and fear. “What I do expect is a fraying no longer at the edges but at the heart of American democracy,” he said. “I’m afraid that we are reaching the point of no return. In my conversations with senators and congressmen every day I’m on the Hill – it doesn’t matter which party – we all agree that it’s not coming, it’s here, and no one knows what to do about it.” More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Michigan supreme court rules that Trump will stay on state ballot

      by

      Donald Trump will remain on Michigan’s state ballot after a ruling from the Michigan supreme court on Wednesday, which upheld a lower court order.The move sets the stage for the former president to participate in the Michigan primary despite accusations that he led an insurrection against the United States.The court’s decision not to move forward with a case against Trump sets the court in sharp contrast to the Colorado supreme court, which recently ruled to strip Trump from its state primary ballot because of his role in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.In Michigan, as in Colorado, the challengers have invoked section 3 of the US constitution’s 14th amendment, which broadly blocks people from holding government office if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US government. Legal experts are divided on whether this provision, written against the backdrop of the US civil war, applies to the office of the president. There are also questions as to whether Trump’s actions around January 6 legally constitute “insurrection or rebellion”.Colorado’s decision is currently paused on appeal. Special counsel Jack Smith has asked the US supreme court to fast-track the decision, but the nation’s highest court – which is dominated 6-3 by conservatives – has declined. However, the court will likely weigh in soon.The Michigan supreme court justices did not give a reasoning for their Wednesday decision.“We are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court,” the justices wrote in an unsigned, one-paragraph order.However, in a dissent where she largely agreed with the court’s order, Justice Elizabeth Welch said that procedural differences may make the difference in Colorado and Michigan’s election laws. The challengers in the case, she added, may “renew their legal efforts as to the Michigan general election later in 2024 should Trump become the Republican nominee for President of the United States or seek such office as an independent candidate”.Free Speech for the People, the group that brought the lawsuit, stressed that the Michigan supreme court’s decision was made on procedural grounds.“We are disappointed by the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision,” said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech For People, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement. But, Fein added: “The decision isn’t binding on any court outside Michigan and we continue our current and planned legal actions in other states to enforce Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment against Donald Trump.”Michigan is expected to be a battleground state in the 2024 US presidential election. Its primary is set for 27 February 2024. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Vivek Ramaswamy stops spending on TV ads weeks before key contests

      by

      Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican presidential nomination contender and biotech billionaire, has stopped spending on TV ads, it was reported on Wednesday.According to his campaign and analysis from an ad-tracking firm obtained by NBC News, the candidate spent just $6,000 on TV ads last week compared with $200,000 in the first week of December.Still, Ramaswamy’s campaign maintains it is still spending money on ads less than a month before the 15 January Iowa caucuses and the 23 January New Hampshire primary – just not on TV, which is the largest beneficiary of political advertising by medium with as much as $5.1bn estimated for the current US election cycle.In a post on X, Ramaswamy said “presidential TV ad spending is idiotic, low-ROI [return on investment] & a trick that political consultants use to bamboozle candidates who suffer from low IQ”.Tricia McLaughlin, the campaign’s press secretary, told the network that the campaign was “focused on bringing out the voters we’ve identified – best way to reach them is using addressable advertising, mail, text, live calls and doors to communicate with our voters on Vivek’s vision for America, making their plan to caucus and turning them out”.McLaughlin acknowledged that the strategy “isn’t what most campaigns look like” and it was “intentionally structured this way so that we have the ability to be nimble and hypertargeted in our ad spending”.Former president Donald Trump, who built his 2016 campaign using social media and text, reacted to his rival’s change of strategy on Truth Social, writing: “He will, I am sure, Endorse me. But Vivek is a good man, and is not done yet!”Trump has treated the young political neophyte as something of standard bearer, despite being a trailing rival, and has lauded him as winner of Republican TV debates.“Vivek WINS because he thinks I’m great,” Trump remarked after the most recent Republican nomination TV showdown in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, this month. The former president took a swipe at his closest polling rival, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the UN, saying: “Birdbrain looked different & lost, but I give her second place.”On X, Ramaswamy indicated that his campaign’s change in strategy was planned.“We’re doing it differently. Spending $$ in a way that follows data … apparently a crazy idea in US politics. Big surprise coming Jan 15,” he said. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘You better pray’: Christian nationalist groups are mobilizing before the 2024 elections

      by

      On a cold night in November, a man named Jefferson Davis addressed a crowd of conservative activists gathered in an American Legion hall 20 miles north of Milwaukee. In his left hand, Davis brandished an unusual prop.“In this diaper box are all the receipts for the illegal absentee ballots that were put into the Mark Zuckerberg drop boxes all over the state of Wisconsin,” said Davis.Behind him, a long table stacked with papers, binders and a small pile of doorknobs stretched across the hall. They were for theatrical effect: the doorknobs were a tortured analogy for the multiple conspiracy theories Davis had floated, and the diaper box was a visual stand-in for the ballot drop boxes Wisconsin voters used across the state in 2020. The paperwork, Davis insisted, contained the evidence of an enormous plot to steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump in Wisconsin. His audience of more than 70 people, including local and state-level elected officials, sat rapt.Davis was speaking at an event organized by Patriots of Ozaukee County, a rightwing group that vows to “combat the forces that threaten our safety, prosperity and freedoms” and compares itself to the musket-toting Minutemen of the revolutionary war.The organization is one of more than 30 such “patriot” groups in Wisconsin identified by the Guardian which claim that the last presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. Many, including the Ozaukee county organization, openly embrace Christian nationalist rhetoric and ideology, arguing that the laws of the US government should reflect conservative Christian beliefs about issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.Their religious interpretation of the US’s founding has propelled these groups not only into fights over elections administration but also against vaccine requirements and protections for transgender people.Now, with the 2024 presidential election less than a year away, Wisconsin’s patriot movement and its allies are fighting for legislation that they believe will protect the state’s electoral process from fraud, and mobilizing supporters to work the polls, observe polling places and spread the word about their concerns – pushing the GOP further to the right and threatening more challenges to the voting process come election day.Patriots of Ozaukee County was created in March 2021 by local activists who were “upset about the election”, said Scott Rishel, who founded the group. He felt there was nowhere he could speak freely about the 2020 election, or things like Covid-19 vaccines and masks. Plus, he said: “We were tired of the GOP, because they’re not really an activist organization.”At the urging of a friend, he convened the group’s first meeting.“With the 2020 election and Covid tyranny, that all opened my eyes,” he told the crowd of mostly older couples at the November event. “The silent majority was killing us. It was killing our country, killing our community. And we needed to learn how to no longer be silent.”By “we”, Rishel meant conservative Christians. “Jesus Christ is my savior, my lord. It’s amazing how some people didn’t have the courage to say that – they think it’ll make people uncomfortable.”Their movement of biblically motivated patriots has since roared to life, winning some powerful allies along the way.In attendance at the Ozaukee county meeting was the state senator Duey Stroebel, the vice-chair of the state’s powerful joint committee on finance. Stroebel, who has refrained from actually endorsing Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, has nonetheless backed numerous bills to restrict voting access, invoking the heightened anxiety on the right about election security to justify their passage.Nearly two hours into the meeting, Stroebel interjected. “One thing you might want to comment on is ranked-choice voting,” he said, voicing his opposition to a bipartisan effort in the legislature to adopt the voting method used in states including Maine and Alaska that allows voters to rank their preference on multiple candidates. The method ensures the winning candidate wins a majority rather than a plurality of the vote and essentially eliminates the risk of third-party candidates spoiling an election result.“Senator Stroebel is referring to what’s called ranked-choice voting,” Davis told the crowd. “What I call it is ‘guarantee that Democrats win’.”To members of this movement, this proposal is just the latest suspicious attempt to change the voting system to steal elections.Hardline conservatives have grown increasingly convinced that the election system is rigged against them, largely because Trump has pushed those claims hard since the 2020 election. And in spite of the fact that there was no evidence of significant voter fraud in recent American elections, it has also mobilized local groups into action across the US.Amy Cooter, a Middlebury College professor whose research focuses on militias and local rightwing groups, described the rise of patriot groups across the country as “a backlash movement”. After 2020, said Cooter, local rightwing groups have been motivated largely by “the last presidential election and thoughts that it was stolen – plus concerns that future elections might similarly be”.The patriot movement in Wisconsin appears to be growing. Attendees at November’s meeting were unsurprised by the packed house: closer to 200 had attended the Ozaukee group’s last event in October, which featured a long lineup of speakers including Davis.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPatriot groups in Wisconsin have found an awkward alliance with Republican officials and prominent activists in the state. A July gathering hosted by the Barron county Republican party, located across the state in north-west Wisconsin, drew closer to 500. That event, which included free beer and a gun raffle and was promoted by patriot groups, illustrated the common cause the movement’s activists have found with the grassroots of the GOP.The Brown county Republican party – also in the north-west of the state – has hosted Constitution Alive! events, which patriot organizations advertised broadly. (A spokesperson said the local GOP is formally unaffiliated with patriot groups.)“As you know, I travel the whole state,” Davis told me in December. “And everywhere I go, I’m either asked to speak by patriot freedom groups, or Republican party chapters. And most of the time both groups show up.”Many patriot groups in the state are animated by the Christian nationalist viewpoint.Patriots of Ozaukee County declares on its website that it views as fundamental “truths” that “God is our creator” and “Jesus is our savior”. The Ozaukee county group has also hosted Constitution Alive! events touting the claim that the US constitution is a Christian document – led by the Patriot Academy organization, a Christian nationalist group that also offers weapons courses.They’re not alone. Patriots United, a group in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, exemplifies the typical rhetoric of the Christian right, describing its membership as “constitutional conservative Christians who seek to glorify and honor God” with the explicit aim of increasing “Christian influence” in local government.Another Wisconsin patriot group called North of 29 has begun to put into action the work that Davis advocates. With the help of groups affiliated with Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and conspiracy theorist, the group has begun canvassing neighborhoods for voter fraud, using data that they refuse to share publicly to identify instances of suspicious activity. (A similar group in Colorado has been sued in federal court for allegedly going “door-to-door around Colorado to intimidate voters”, a practice the suit argues violates the Ku Klux Klan Act.)Most prominent elected Wisconsin Republicans have refused to outright endorse Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen. But they have invoked the fears of election fraud to justify passing restrictive voting legislation that election-denying activists have clamored for.One bill, passed by the legislature and vetoed by the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, in 2022, would have made it harder for people to qualify as “indefinitely confined”, a status disabled voters can claim to receive an absentee ballot. During the 2020 election, during the peak of the Covid pandemic, the number of people who described themselves as indefinitely confined so they could vote from home increased dramatically – a fact that became a central point in conspiracy theories about the election. They’ve also tried to ban the use of private grants to help fund elections, keying off another conspiracy theory driven by money donated by Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation to local offices for election administration; Evers vetoed a bill to ban such money, but the legislature has now advanced the ban as a constitutional amendment which will be considered by voters this spring.Republicans in the legislature also unsuccessfully tried to force out Meagan Wolfe, the state’s nonpartisan top elections official who became the target of conspiracy theorists and election deniers after 2020.During his November presentation in Grafton, Davis handed out a pamphlet listing 53 issues that voters concerned about election security should focus on in Wisconsin. The priorities, which Davis and other election-denying groups across in the state have embraced, range from abolishing the bipartisan Wisconsin elections commission to requiring ballots cast in state and local elections to be counted by hand.Davis’s recommendations might prescribe technical changes to elections administration. But he cast their importance in starkly biblical terms.“I don’t know where you are with the Lord, and I mean this sincerely: you better pray,” said Davis. If the 2024 election wasn’t conducted “the correct way”, he warned, “there’s going to be you-know-what to pay.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Nikki Haley surges in poll to within four points of Republican leader Trump

      by

      The former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has pulled within four percentage points of frontrunner Donald Trump in New Hampshire’s 2024 Republican presidential primary, a contest which could prove closer than expected for the ex-president, according to a new poll.In an American Research Group Inc poll released on Thursday which had asked voters whom they preferred in the New Hampshire primary scheduled for 23 January, Haley earned 29% support to Trump’s 33%. That meant the gap between Haley and Trump was within the survey’s 4% margin of error after the former president had long held dominating polling leads in the race for the 2024 Republican White House nomination.Haley’s strong showing in the American Research Group Inc survey came a day after a poll from the Saint Anselm College New Hampshire Institute of Politics found she had doubled her support in the state since September, seemingly cementing her as a clear alternate choice to Trump for conservative voters. The Saint Anselm survey’s findings were more favorable to Trump, however, showing him with a 44% to 30% lead over Haley.But while Haley still has ground to gain to take the lead in the state, Trump coming in at less than 50% support “shows he has serious competition in the party”, the University of New Hampshire survey center director, Andrew Smith, has previously told USA Today.Haley’s strong poll showings appear to have drawn a mixed reaction from Trump, who is separately contending with more than 90 criminal charges as he seeks a second presidency.On one hand, he went on his Truth Social site on Friday and insulted Haley with his preferred nickname for her, writing: “Fake New Hampshire poll was released on Birdbrain. Just another scam!” He additionally spoke with rightwing radio show host Hugh Hewitt on Friday and dismissed the polls showing Haley performing well against him as “fake” and insisted he was untroubled by her as a potential primary contender.Yet citing two sources familiar with the conversations, CBS News reported on Friday that Trump had also simultaneously been asking his team about tapping Haley to serve as a vice-presidential candidate if he eventually wins the Republican primary to be the 2024 Oval Office nominee, which if accurate would be a sign that he covets capitalizing on her support. CBS said its sources had indicated the far-right reaction to a Trump-Haley ticket has been negative, however.Haley for now has been touting her recent polling performances.“Donald Trump has started to attack me,” Haley said at a campaign town hall on Wednesday in Iowa, where the caucuses that customarily kick off presidential election years are scheduled for 15 January. “He said, ‘I don’t know what this Nikki Haley surge is all about.’ Do you want me to tell you what it’s about? … We’re surging.”Haley was the US ambassador to the United Nations after Trump won the presidency in 2016, but she resigned in 2018. Prior to that, she was governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017.One of her more prominent acts as South Carolina governor was signing into law a ban on abortion which contained no exceptions for rape or incest. That ban took effect, along with similar ones in other states, after the US supreme court last year eliminated the federal right to abortion which had been established by the landmark Roe v Wade decision.Trump, for his part, faces 91 criminal charges accusing him of trying to forcibly reverse his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, illegally retaining government secrets after he left the Oval Office and illicit hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels.He has also grappled with civil litigation over his business practices and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump more recently has been on the defensive against resurfaced claims that he kept writings by Adolf Hitler – the Nazi leader who orchestrated the murders of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust – by his bed.Academics, commentators and political opponents have been quick to link Trump’s recent remarks that certain immigrants were “poisoning the blood of” the US to rhetoric used historically by Hitler, Benito Mussolini and other authoritarian world rulers.“I know nothing about Hitler,” Trump said to Hewitt on Friday. “I’m not a student of Hitler.”He then implied having at least some familiarity with Hitler’s sayings in regards to purity of blood.“They say he said something about blood,” Trump told Hewitt. “He didn’t say it the way I said it, either, by the way. It’s a very different kind of statement.” More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Underdog contender for Democratic nomination says Biden ‘cannot win’ against Trump

      by

      Democratic congressman Dean Phillips, who is challenging incumbent president Joe Biden, will keep running his long-shot bid for the White House through the summer after he’s had more time to introduce himself to voters across the US.Phillips initially planned to run in a few states for his party’s presidential nomination, focusing especially on the crucial early-voting state of New Hampshire, which was seen as a trial balloon for his candidacy. But now, Phillips told the Guardian in an interview, he is aiming for a much longer campaign.By the summer, Phillips wants to compare head-to-head polling between him and former President Donald Trump, and Trump and Biden. If Biden fares better in the matchup, Phillips would support him. If Phillips fares better, he believes Biden should throw his support toward the congressman.“Those are my intentions, and I think those should be the intentions of every Democrat. Let’s find the candidate best positioned and most likely to win,” Phillips said.Phillips’ bullishness about his odds – and his strong belief that Biden will not win against Trump again – have kept his campaign in motion. The congressman, buoyed up by a personal fortune from his family’s distilling company and a gelato brand, hasn’t been deterred by the Democratic machine backing Biden. So far, Phillips has been his own main supporter, injecting $4m into his own campaign.As the New Hampshire primary nears next month, Phillips is feeling good about his chances there. Biden isn’t on the ballot in the state because national Democrats altered their calendar to put more diverse states earlier in the primary process, though the president’s supporters will mount a write-in campaign. That gives Phillips a leg up.The state offers the “lowest cost, highest probability opportunity to surprise people and to demonstrate my campaign”, he said.Since Phillips launched his campaign in October, after months of trying to goad more prominent Democrats to challenge the sitting president, he’s been met with a chorus of simple questions about who he is and why he’s doing this.His answer is simple: “Because Joe Biden is going to lose to Donald Trump.”Phillips’ presence in the race doesn’t really change that fact at this point – polls in New Hampshire show him far behind Biden. Recent polls back up his assertion, though, that the Democratic president isn’t going into the election year strong. Neither Biden nor Trump are well liked by the electorate, despite the seeming inevitability of the repeat matchup.“You can’t win a national election with 33% approval numbers,” Phillips said, referring to a recent Pew Research Center survey on Biden’s job rating. “And I don’t understand why I’m the only one out of 250-some Democrats in Congress to simply say the quiet part out loud: he cannot win the next election.”On policy, the two Democrats don’t widely differ. Phillips’ campaign isn’t an insurgent progressive campaign designed to move the centrist president further left. The main difference is a visual one – Phillips is much younger than Biden and Trump. He’s called for a new generation to lead the country forward.In that sense, though, his campaign draws attention to one of Biden’s weakest points, though Phillips argues the age differences are “pretty obvious” and not something he’s actively pointed out. “Neither of us can change our ages or stages of life.”By running a campaign against Biden, some Democrats fear Phillips is emphasizing the president’s flaws during a vulnerable time, ultimately further hurting Democrats’ ability to beat Trump in 2024. Phillips finds this notion “absurd”, saying that his presence should help Biden if it gets the president to come out and campaign or debate, to show himself to the voters more.While Biden’s poor polling animated Phillips’ campaign, the congressman has worked to fill in some of the details about who he’d be as a president. His political career has been short: three terms in Congress after flipping a longtime GOP seat in suburban Minnesota. He’s keen on pragmatic, bipartisan politics.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs of now, the economy and affordability have risen as a primary focus for him, with plans to address the rising costs of healthcare, housing, education and daily expenses forthcoming, he said.He’s also changed his mind on one big issue after hearing “such horrifying, heartbreaking stories” from people since taking office: he now supports Medicare for All, as opposed to just a public option. He thinks it’s an issue on which Republicans and Democrats could work together.On the Israel-Hamas war, perhaps Biden’s weakest point within his own party at the moment, Phillips doesn’t track too far off from Biden. He is a “passionate supporter of the state of Israel” who believes the country has a right to defend itself and that the US and its allies should unify to support Israel. He also has an “equal affection for Palestinians” and believes they deserve self-determination and a state. He has argued for the release of hostages and a concurrent ceasefire.“I intend to be the first Jewish American president in our history,” he said. “And I want to be the one that signs documents that help found the Palestinian state for the first time because we cannot continue to allow this cycle of bloodshed and misery and destruction to occur any longer.”To get anywhere near the presidency, Phillips would need to overcome a Democratic party already working hard to re-elect its incumbent president. Some states, such as Florida and North Carolina, have already decided not to hold primaries for president.The structural odds bother Phillips, who sees them as anti-democratic. The political culture on both sides forces people to stay in line rather than challenge the status quo if they want to keep their careers in elected office, he said. He knows his congressional career is done because of his presidential run – he’s not running for his seat in Minnesota again. And if he loses, he presumes his political career is over too. It will be worth it to him to try to keep Trump out of the White House, he said.“We need more people willing to torpedo their careers in Congress like I did, to ensure that we do not torpedo the entire country,” he said.Given the president’s age, though, staying in the race longer could be a hedge in case something were to happen to Biden. In that instance, it’s still tough to see how Phillips would be the best man for the job, though he’d be the only mainstream Democrat who had the primary calendar on his side.Still, he hopes more Democrats will jump in the presidential race. “The water is warm. Come on in. That’s what I’ve been asking for for many, many months,” Phillips said. “It gets to a point where doing so gets harder and harder because of state ballot access. Already, I think 15 states are too late to get on the ballot. So yes, I wish that would have happened months ago.” More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Anti-democracy playbook has new threats in store for the US in 2024

      by

      Two Republican officials in Arizona got charged for delaying approval of 2022 election results – and GOP state lawmakers vowed to retaliate against the Democratic attorney general who filed the charges.Rudy Giuliani faces millions in damages for defaming two Georgia election workers in 2020 – and continued to defame them outside the courtroom.Donald Trump himself is on trial in four jurisdictions, in part because of election subversion – and and gives public speeches on how he intends to take down his political enemies if he wins again.Such is the dichotomy of American democracy at this moment: attempts to hold election deniers accountable for their actions are met with doubling down and more intense election denial.Ahead of the 2020 elections, Trump foreshadowed his plan to claim the election was stolen if he lost, which his supporters often explained away as campaign trail bluster. But he and his followers took their election lies farther than many feared, culminating in an attack on the US Capitol. Biden only made it to the White House because of a handful of steadfast Republicans in key states who refused to bow to Trump’s attempts to overthrow Biden’s victory in the vote.These day, rather than subsiding after a series of bruising losses, adherence to election denialism is now a major flank of the mainstream Republican party. Trump’s most ardent supporters, some of whom now hold public office, have even sought to reclaim the term: they agree they are in fact election deniers, and proud of it. Their continued attempts to undermine elections since, combined with vulnerabilities that haven’t been addressed, mean the US could be in for even worse this time around.That is, if Trump loses. If he wins, he’s vowed to use the Department of Justice to pursue vengeance against those who tried to hold him accountable. He’s called his political opponents “vermin”, using the language of authoritarian dictators.And if the urgent threat to American democracy extends from the most local levels of government to the courts and up to the presidency, it also comes at a time of fractured views of reality, with rampant rumor-spreading on social media.The potential for harassment, threats and violence has only grown since 2020. What was ad-hoc then is now well-worn: overturning an election in 2024 depends on more believers, especially those in powerful positions, using tactics that are well documented because they have been happening across the country for several years. The playbook is, in essence, already public.Threats from inside the governmentWhile just a few Republicans kept democracy intact in 2020, in 2024 a few could also dismantle it.Some prominent election deniers, like Kari Lake in Arizona and Tim Michels in Wisconsin, lost races that would have given them oversight of elections. But others won. One report by States United Democracy Center estimates that election deniers in 17 states are in top positions – like governor, attorney general or secretary of state – that oversee elections in some way.That means some who falsely claimed the 2020 election was rigged will help finalize results in 2024, making it much more possible for a presidential election to be overturned. If nothing else, they will almost certainly push delays in certifying election results (once a perfunctory process).At lower, more direct levels of government, where it’s also easier for the far right to find a friendly ear in elected office, election deniers could refuse to send results to their states – putting local votes in jeopardy and threatening the accuracy of election results. In 2022, local Republicans officials wouldn’t certify results in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Mexico. In Colorado in late 2023, the state Republican party told local boards not to sign off on statewide elections from November because the system was “rigged” and the process “disastrous”.A key tool of election denialism is the idea of hand counts. Grassroots groups have traveled the country since 2020 to spread word about pushing for full hand counts of ballots, finding allies like Mike Lindell, the pillow salesman, and Patrick Byrne, the former Overstock executive.Most counties do hand count a small percentage of ballots to audit machine results, but very few do it all by hand. Some officials who tried to hand count against state law in a rural Arizona county were recently charged with felonies. In California, far-right officials in Shasta county instigated a hand count, but pulled back because of a state law banning it.Despite these failures, Telegram channels push for hand counts remain active. People show up monthly at the Cochise county board meetings in Arizona, still calling for a hand count next year. Georgia saw more hand recounts in its 2023 elections despite a lack of problems with machine counting.Other election denial tactics tie up the government through excessive public records requests. One small county in Georgia recently shared that it’s struggling to keep up with the huge increase in records requests, filed by rightwing groups purportedly to try to prove fraud.And there will undoubtedly be more frivolous lawsuits. In his effort to overturn his loss in 2020, Trump filed 62 lawsuits across state and federal courts – all but one of which failed. Some groups will probably file mass voter challenges claiming a broad swath of voters aren’t eligible to cast ballots, like True the Vote did in 2020.Some Republican-led states also now have “election integrity units” that investigate claims of fraud. These units have not found evidence of mass voter fraud; instead, they mostly dig up routine instances of one-off frauds, like voting for a dead person or in multiple places. Nonetheless, the units could be weaponized in 2024 to take on broader investigations at the behest of election-denying politicians.Beyond the elections themselves, judges could further hinder anti-discrimination laws. A federal appeals court issued a shocking ruling that would hobble civil rights groups’ ability to sue over violations to voting rights laws – removing the way voting rights laws get enforced in the courts, and putting responsibility solely on the government to bring these lawsuits instead. Another Republican-led appellate court, meanwhile, is considering a threat to the Voting Rights Act itself – the landmark achievement of the civil rights movement that makes racial discrimination in voting illegal.Rampant misinformation leads to harassment and threatsWith a proliferation of social media platforms, and the increasing politicization of fact-checking, it’ll be harder to slow down viral rumors that can affect elections – with the potential for real-world harassment or even violence at the polls.Take the example of drop boxes. An effort to “watch” them in 2020 saw people camping out at polling stations in Arizona, sometimes holding guns, and intimidating voters. A judge eventually barred drop-box watchers from taking photos or videos of voters and from bringing weapons.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut an ongoing misinformation campaign culminated in the movie 2000 Mules, which inaccurately attempted to use cellphone location data to show people allegedly visiting non-profits then dropping off ballots – claiming, with zero proof, that there was some kind of massive ballot-trafficking scheme happening. That, too, ensnared real people and cast them as criminals: one man in Georgia sued after the movie claimed he was a ballot “mule” based on footage of him dropping off ballots entirely legally.In perhaps the highest-profile case of abusing election workers, the Trump ally and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was just found liable for $148.1m for lies about two former election workers in Georgia, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who testified their lives were torn apart after Giuliani and others falsely cast them at the center of a voter fraud conspiracy theory. Freeman had to move and no longer feels comfortable even using her name; Moss is too anxious to leave the house.Despite the lawsuit victory, many elections workers still feel the heat. Some have been harassed out of their jobs, or had their lives threatened – as of August, 14 people had been charged with such death threats. During the 2022 midterms, elections staff in Arizona’s Maricopa county saw messages that they would “swing for treason” and wishing them to “get cancer”. This year, elections offices in several states were sent letters containing fentanyl. Many have had to train workers to prepare for harassment.The onslaught has caused more elections workers to leave their jobs, creating high turnover that means more potential for mistakes by inexperienced people – such as in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne county, where turnover played a role in several election incidents caused by human error. These mistakes can provide further ammunition for election deniers. But at the most basic level, people may be hesitant to work as poll workers or other election helpers – critical posts for the conduct of successful elections.Social media landscape makes lies harder to stopThat same fractured social media landscape has given the far right – including big personalities such as Trump, Lindell and Steve Bannon – platforms like Telegram, Rumble and Truth Social to post content that might be flagged on more established media platforms. This creates an information ecosystem that’s outside the mainstream and difficult to track, and where heated election claims run wild. Podcasts, too – especially Bannon’s – have huge audiences and serve as a launching pad for organizing the movement and sharing plans for elections. Lindell, the pillow salesman, goes on Bannon’s podcast to share “the plan”, his step-by-step manifesto to “prevent” the stealing of elections, and to hawk his pillows.Larger platforms, particularly X (formerly Twitter), have become less interested in monitoring and stopping election misinformation, creating more potential for it to spread during a contentious election year. Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022, decimated its workforce, including factcheckers, leaving the site vulnerable to increasing misinformation. He also allowed people previously banned from the platform, including conservative operatives such as Project Veritas and the disgraced conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, to have their accounts back. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, now will allow political ads to claim the 2020 election was rigged or stolen; YouTube has reversed itself and now won’t take down content that makes false claims of fraud.In previous election cycles, researchers would flag misinformation and platforms would sometimes respond: for example, by amending fact-check notices to untrue statements. Government employees would sometimes flag these kinds of posts to tech companies as well – a practice that has come under intense scrutiny by conservatives in Congress, with the Republican Jim Jordan subpoenaing researchers about their work on misinformation. Courts have also restricted how the government can interact with social media companies in this way.Combined, it has a chilling effect – hindering researchers’ work on misinformation, the government’s ability to respond and social media companies’ incentives to intervene. Joan Donovan, a disinformation researcher, claims Harvard fired her because she was critical of Facebook.What comes next is already happeningOn the right, the narrative of 2020 as a stolen election never ended. Some of those who lost still haven’t conceded, and the contest for US House speaker swirled around who was far-right enough, with “election integrity” and allegiance to Trump considered key criteria.There have, however, been attempts to hold election subversion accountable.Trump faces four court cases, both criminal and civil, in several states and at the federal level.States are investigating or have charged a number of Republicans, including some lawmakers and party officials, in the “fake elector” scheme, where people sent false electoral votes to Congress naming Trump not Biden as the winner. Defamation lawsuits proliferate. Lawyers who continually file lawsuits devoid of facts have been sanctioned across the country and face investigations by their state bar organizations.The most ardent believers in election fraud won’t see criminal charges or big defamation damages decisions as evidence the narrative was wrong – just as further proof of a conspiracy. Nor have all the lies seemed to help the one party that didn’t attempt to steal the election, the Democrats: polls show Biden trailing Trump and his approval rating tanking over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.A plague of voter apathy could deliver Trump back to the White House. If he wins, his campaign of retribution will begin, weaponizing the federal government for his personal aims. If he loses, the plan to overturn the results kicks off again – and this time, it could work. More