US elections 2024

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Mitt Romney says his endorsement in 2024 race would be ‘kiss of death’

      by

      Utah senator Mitt Romney declined to rule out voting for Joe Biden next year and said he hasn’t offered an endorsement in the Republican race because his backing would probably be a “kiss of death”.“If I endorsed them, it would be the kiss of death – I’m not going to do that,” Romney said during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.The Republican joked that he should maybe endorse the candidate he likes the least, and he made it clear that he would not be supporting Donald Trump.Romney added that he thought former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley – rising in the polls but still significantly trailing Trump – is “the only one that has a shot at becoming the nominee” other than the former president.He also said New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who has aggressively taken on Trump during the campaign, has been “terrific”. That compliment is likely to intrigue many because Romney once called Christie “another bridge-and-tunnel loudmouth”, according to a biography released this year.Romney announced earlier this year he would not run for re-election in the Senate. The 2012 Republican presidential nominee has not shied away from criticizing Trump and twice voted to impeach him during the former president’s lone term.Trump has viciously attacked Romney in response.While Romney on Sunday said he would not rule out voting for Biden in 2024, he said there were other Democrats who would be a better nominee than the incumbent president. He said the candidate he would most like to support is the West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin.Manchin is leaving the Senate and has toyed with a bid for the presidency. But Romney said he didn’t think Manchin would run in the end.“I wish he’d be the Democratic nominee,” Romney said.“I’m not going to describe who I’ll rule out other than president Trump,” he added. “By the way, in my view, bad policy we can overcome – as a country, we have in the past. Bad character is something which is very difficult to overcome.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA recent Wall Street Journal poll found Trump was leading Biden by four points – 47% to 43%.Trump faces 91 criminal charges for 2020 election subversion, illegal retention of government secrets and hush-money payments to an adult film actor. He has also contended with assorted civil litigation.Meanwhile, the indictment of Biden’s son, Hunter, in California on nine criminal tax charges places obstacles in the president’s re-election efforts. More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      McCarthy endorses Trump for president: ‘We’re very honest with each other’

      by

      Former US House speaker Kevin McCarthy has endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 race for the Oval Office while also expressing interest in joining his administration should he win, even though loyalists of the ex-president drove the congressman into an early exit.While serving as a House leader, McCarthy did not formally endorse Trump’s campaign for a second presidency, though the California representative was generally supportive of his fellow Republican. But, four days after announcing in an opinion column in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal that he was leaving Congress at the end of December, McCarthy appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning and made clear that he backed Trump’s attempts to return to power.“I will support the president,” McCarthy told the show’s anchor Robert Costa on Sunday while discussing his post-congressional plans. “I will support president Trump.”After he confirmed those remarks were an endorsement of the former president, who is grappling with a multitude of pending criminal charges, McCarthy was asked by Costa if he would be “willing to serve in a Trump cabinet”.McCarthy replied, “In the right position. Look, if I’m the best person for the job – yes.”He went on to say that he worked together with Trump for the Republicans to seize what is now a four-seat majority in the House after a showing in the 2022 midterms that was widely considered to be underwhelming for their party.“Look, I worked with president Trump on a lot of policies,” McCarthy said. “But we also have a relationship where we’re very honest with each other.”McCarthy lost his hold on the House speaker’s gavel in October after he relied on Democratic support to keep the federal government funded and open. As retaliation, the far-right, pro-Trump faction in the House that helped make him speaker after enduring 15 votes for the role last year ensured he became the first ever ejected from the role by his own party.It was a bitter twist for McCarthy, who had taken the far-right position 146 other congressional Republicans did when they voted to object to Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.McCarthy and his GOP colleagues maintained that position after a mob of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol and breached its walls on 6 January 2021. Trump even received a visit at his Mar-a-Lago home from McCarthy shortly after the failure of the Capitol attack plunged the defeated president into an apparent depression, according to the Liz Cheney book Oath and Honor.McCarthy’s support at one point prompted Trump to affectionately refer to him as “My Kevin” at one point.After his ouster, McCarthy pledged that he would not resign from Congress, saying he had “a lot more work to do”. But months of behind-the-scenes tension, including an alleged physical attack on Tennessee Republican House member Tim Burchett, appeared to change his mind and convince him to step away in the coming weeks instead of when his term expires in early 2025.McCarthy on Sunday said “Trump needs to stop” campaigning on promises of exacting revenge against his political enemies if returned to the Oval Office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“America doesn’t want to see the idea of the retribution,” McCarthy said. “If it’s rebuild, restore and renew, then I think you’ll see that.”Despite Trump’s gloomy message, McCarthy predicted Trump would clinch the White House, help Republicans expand their numerical advantage in the House and retake a majority in the Senate if the Democrats nominate Biden for re-election.Much of McCarthy’s congressional agenda was blunted by Democratic control of the White House and the Senate, where the party has a 51-49 edge.Trump faces 91 criminal charges accusing him of election subversion, illegal retention of government secrets and hush-money payments to an adult film actor. He has also contended with civil litigation over his business affairs and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.Nonetheless, Trump has emerged as the clear frontrunner to be the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee, and a Wall Street Journal poll published Saturday showed Trump leading Biden 47% to 43%.“If Biden stays as the nominee for the Democrats, I believe Donald Trump will win,” McCarthy said. “I believe the Republicans will gain more seats in the House and the Republicans will win the Senate.” More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Oath and Honor review: Liz Cheney spells out the threat from Trump

      by

      Donald Trump stands ready to knife US democracy. A year ago, he called for terminating the constitution. He has since announced that if re-elected, he wants to weaponize federal law enforcement against his political enemies. He has suggested that Gen Mark Milley, former chairman of the joint chiefs, be executed for fulfilling his duty.This is a man who reportedly kept a bound copy of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside, very nearly managed to overturn an election, and certainly basked in the mayhem of the January 6 insurrection. He said Mike Pence, his vice-president who ultimately stood against him, “deserved” to be hanged for so doing.This week, Trump said he would be a dictator “on day one” of a second term. All bets are off. Take him literally and seriously.The New York Times and the Atlantic report that Trump aims to make the executive branch his fiefdom, loyalty the primary if not only test. If he returns to power, the independence of the justice department and FBI will be things of the past. He is the “most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office”, Liz Cheney writes in her memoir.“This is the story of when American democracy began to unravel,” the former congresswoman adds. “It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize.”Cheney, formerly the No 3 House Republican, was vice-chair of the House January 6 committee. She has witnessed power wielded – not always wisely. Dick Cheney, her father, was George W Bush’s vice-president and pushed the Iraq war. Before that he was secretary of defense to Bush’s father and, like his daughter, represented Wyoming in the House.Liz Cheney delivers a frightening narrative. Her recollections are first-hand, her prose dry, terse and informed. On January 6, she witnessed Trump’s minions invade the Capitol first-hand.Subtitled “A Memoir and a Warning Oath”, her book is well-timed. The presidential primaries draw near. The Iowa caucus is next month. Trump laps the Republican pack. No one comes close. Ron DeSantis is in retrograde, his campaign encased in a dunghill of its own making. Nikki Haley has momentum of a sort but remains a long way behind.Cheney’s book will discomfit many. Mike Johnson, the new House speaker, is shown as a needy and servile fraud. Kevin McCarthy, his predecessor, is a bottomless pit of self-abasement. Jim Jordan, the hard-right judiciary chair from Ohio, is ham-handed and insincere.Johnson misled colleagues about the authorship of a legal brief filed in support of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, as well as its contents and his own credentials. He played a game of “bait and switch”, Cheney says. Johnson, she writes, was neither the author of the brief nor a “constitutional law expert”, despite advising colleagues that he was.In reality, Johnson was dean of Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, a small Baptist institution that never opened its doors. Constitutional scholar? Nope. Pro-Trump lawyers wrote the pro-Trump brief, not Johnson, Cheney says.At a recent gathering of Christian legislators, Johnson referred to himself as a modern-day Moses.McCarthy, meanwhile, is vividly portrayed in all his gutless glory. First taking a pass on Johnson’s amicus brief, he then predictably caved. Anything to sit at the cool kids’ table. His tenure as speaker, which followed, will be remembered for its brevity and desperation. His trip to see Trump in Florida, shortly after the election, left Cheney incredulous.“Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?”“They’re really worried,” McCarthy said. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.”Trump not eating. Let that claim sink in.This year, at his arraignment in Fulton county, Georgia, on charges relating to election subversion there, the former president self-reported as 6ft 3in and 215lb – almost 30lb lighter than at his last White House physical.OK.Turning to Jordan, Cheney recalls his performance on January 6. She rightly feared for her safety and remains unamused.“Jim Jordan approached me,” she recalls.“‘We need to get the ladies off the aisle,’ he said, and put out his hand. ‘Let me help you.’”“I swatted his hand away. ‘Get away from me. You fucking did this.’”Jordan’s spokesperson denies the incident.Cheney writes: “Most Republicans currently in Congress will do what Donald Trump asks, no matter what it is. I am very sad to say that America can no longer count on a body of elected Republicans to protect our republic.”Mitt Romney has announced his retirement as a senator from Utah. Patrick McHenry, the former acting House speaker from North Carolina, has also decided to quit. Both men voted to certify Joe Biden’s win in 2020. In a Trump-centric Republican party, that is a big problem. In plain English, Congress is a hellscape. The cold civil war grows hot.Cheney briefly mentions Kash Patel, a former staffer to Devin Nunes, a congressman now in charge of Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform. In the waning days of the Trump administration, Patel was chief of staff at the Pentagon. In a recent interview with Steve Bannon, Patel made clear that in a second Trump term, bureaucrats and the press will be targets.“We will find the conspirators in government … and the media,” Patel said. “Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media … we are putting you all on notice.”Trump is a would-be Commodus, a debauched emperor, enamored with power, grievance and his own reflection. Gladiator, Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning epic, remains a movie for our times.“As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term,” Cheney writes. “But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our constitution.” Promoting her book, she added that the US is “sleepwalking into dictatorship”.Trump leads Biden in the polls.
      Oath and Honor is published in the US by Hachette More

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Federal appeals court mostly upholds Trump’s gag order in 2020 election subversion case – live

      by

      A federal appeals court has upheld most of a gag order against Donald Trump imposed by the judge handling his trial on charges related to attempting the overthrow of the 2020 election.Washington DC-based judge Tanya Chutkan imposed the order in October that prevented the former president from making inflammatory statements and social media posts attacking prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff in the case. Trump appealed the order, arguing it unconstitutionally infringed on his first amendment rights and hindered his political speech amid his campaign for a second term in the White House.The order was put on hold as appeals judges considered his challenge. In its ruling, the court generally upheld Chutkan’s order, but said Trump was now also allowed to assail the special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the criminal case against the former president.A federal appeals court upheld most of the gag order judge Tanya Chutkan imposed on Donald Trump following incendiary comments he made about people involved in his trial on charges related to overturning the 2020 election. The former president is barred from attacking court staff, prosecutorial staff and potential trial witnesses, but the appeals judges did allow him to criticize Chutkan, the justice department, the Biden administration and the case itself as politically motivated. Elsewhere, Hunter Biden’s legal trouble deepened after prosecutors filed new tax charges against him, and in an interview with the musician Moby, the president’s son said the GOP is “trying to kill me” to undermine Joe Biden’s presidency.Here’s what else happened today:
      Hunter Biden’s attorney said the latest charges against his client were the result of “Republican pressure”.
      Trump’s campaign discouraged speculation over who might be hired to staff his administration, if he wins next year’s presidential election.
      The rightwing House Freedom Caucus demanded Congress approve hardline immigration policies that Democrats oppose in exchange for more Ukraine aid.
      Joe Biden’s approval ratings have hit a record low, poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight reports.
      A protest against a Philadelphia Jewish restaurant by demonstrators calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was more complicated than it initially appeared.
      The Trump campaign has also released a statement regarding speculation in the media over who might staff his administration, assuming he wins next year’s election.“Let us be very specific here: unless a message is coming directly from President Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official,” write Trump aides Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita.“Let us be even more specific, and blunt: People publicly discussing potential administration jobs for themselves or their friends are, in fact, hurting President Trump … and themselves. These are an unwelcomed distraction. Second term policy priorities and staffing decisions will not – in no uncertain terms – be led by anonymous or thinly sourced speculation in mainstream media news stories.”For more on the speculation surrounding Trump’s staff in his second term, here’s the Guardian’s Peter Stone:Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Donald Trump, has released a statement that attempts to reframe today’s federal appeals court decision upholding the gag order against the former president:
      Today, the D.C. Circuit Court panel, with each judge appointed by a Democrat President, determined that a huge part of Judge Chutkan’s extraordinarily overbroad gag order was unconstitutional. President Trump will continue to fight for the First Amendment rights of tens of millions of Americans to hear from the leading Presidential candidate at the height of his campaign. The Biden-led witch hunts against President Trump and the American people will fail.
      While the court did strike down parts of the order, it upheld the aspects banning Trump from attacking the prosecutors, witnesses and court staff.In their ruling upholding most of federal judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag order against Donald Trump, the US court of appeals for the district of Columbia circuit found his statements could threaten his trial on charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 election.“We agree with the district court that some aspects of Mr. Trump’s public statements pose a significant and imminent threat to the fair and orderly adjudication of the ongoing criminal proceeding, warranting a speech-constraining protective order,” judge Patricia A Millett wrote for the court.Among the statements cited was one Trump posted on social media the day after his initial appearance in the case: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” The appeals court also noted that he attacked Chutkan as a “fraud dressed up as a judge” and “a radical Obama hack”, and that a supporter responded with a threat to kill the judge that used what appears to be a racial slur.“We do not allow such an order lightly,” federal appeals court judge Patricia A Millett wrote as she concluded the court’s decision allowing the gag order against Donald Trump.She continued:
      Mr. Trump is a former President and current candidate for the presidency, and there is a strong public interest in what he has to say. But Mr. Trump is also an indicted criminal defendant, and he must stand trial in a courtroom under the same procedures that govern all other criminal defendants. That is what the rule of law means.
      As the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported last month, an appeals court appeared inclined to uphold judge Tanya Chutkan’s gag order against Donald Trump, and indeed they have:A federal appeals court appeared inclined at a hearing on Monday to keep some form of a gag order against Donald Trump preventing him from assailing potential trial witnesses and others in the criminal case related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The court expressed concern, however, that the order was too broad and left open the possibility of restricting its scope – including allowing the former US president to criticize the prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith who brought the charges.The trial judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case in federal district court in Washington, entered the order in October that prohibited Trump from making inflammatory statements and social media posts attacking prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff in the case.It allowed Trump only to criticize the case in general terms – such as broadly attacking Joe Biden, the Biden administration or the justice department as bringing politically motivated charges against him – and to criticize the judge herself.Trump appealed to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit, arguing the order unconstitutionally infringed on his first amendment rights and protected core political speech as he campaigns to be re-elected to the presidency next year. The order was paused while he appealed.A federal appeals court has upheld most of a gag order against Donald Trump imposed by the judge handling his trial on charges related to attempting the overthrow of the 2020 election.Washington DC-based judge Tanya Chutkan imposed the order in October that prevented the former president from making inflammatory statements and social media posts attacking prosecutors, potential witnesses and court staff in the case. Trump appealed the order, arguing it unconstitutionally infringed on his first amendment rights and hindered his political speech amid his campaign for a second term in the White House.The order was put on hold as appeals judges considered his challenge. In its ruling, the court generally upheld Chutkan’s order, but said Trump was now also allowed to assail the special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the criminal case against the former president.Here’s the moment from Hunter Biden’s interview with Moby where he says Republicans are trying to “kill me” to bring down his father’s presidency:Earlier this week, Democratic and Republican politicians from the White House on down condemned the targeting of a Philadelphia Jewish restaurant by protesters calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip as antisemitic. But the Guardian’s Wilfred Chan reports that the story is more complex than that:The 21-second clip went viral almost as soon as it was posted early on Sunday evening. It showed hundreds of protesters, some with Palestinian flags, united in a rhyming chant: “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”They were protesting outside Goldie, a vegan falafel restaurant owned by Michael Solomonov, the Israel-born celebrity chef best known for Zahav, an Israeli-themed restaurant widely considered one of the United States’ finest eateries. It was one brief stop along a march traversing Philadelphia that lasted about three hours.Many of the protesters hadn’t even returned home from the march when the condemnations began to pour in. The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, posted on X: “Tonight in Philly, we saw a blatant act of antisemitism – not a peaceful protest. A restaurant was targeted and mobbed because its owner is Jewish and Israeli. This hate and bigotry is reminiscent of a dark time in history.”Even the White House piled on: it was “antisemitic and completely unjustifiable to target restaurants that serve Israeli food over disagreements with Israeli policy”, said the deputy press secretary, Andrew Bates. Douglas Emhoff, husband of Vice-President Kamala Harris, wrote on X that he had spoken with Solomonov and “told him @POTUS, @VP, and the entire Biden-Harris Administration will continue to have his back”.It was the apex of a saga that has resulted in at least three workers fired from Solomonov’s restaurants over, as they see it, their pro-Palestine activism coming into conflict with their bosses’ views and policies, and at least one other worker who has resigned in protest – thrusting the renowned Israeli eateries into the thick of bitter US disagreements over the Israel-Hamas war.The street protest against Goldie has sparked heated debate. As the war on Gaza rages on, with over 17,000 people killed in Gaza since 7 October – 70% of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry – are Israel-linked businesses in the US implicated? Was Solomonov, a chef who has credited Palestinian influences in his cooking, an appropriate target?The 2024 election is months away, but Donald Trump and his allies are already planning on who they might hire for White House jobs, assuming he wins. The Guardian’s Peter Stone takes a look at what we know so far about Trump’s hiring plans:As Donald Trump and his allies start plotting another presidency, an emerging priority is to find hard-right lawyers who display total fealty to Trump, as a way to enhance his power and seek “retribution” against political foes.Stocking a future administration with more ideological lawyers loyal to Trump in key posts at the justice department, other agencies and the White House is alarming to former DoJ officials and analysts who say such plans endanger the rule of law.Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller, president of the Maga-allied legal group America First Legal, is playing a key role in seeking lawyers fully in sync with Trump’s radical agenda to expand his power and curb some major agencies. His search is for those with unswerving loyalty to Trump, who could back Trump’s increasingly authoritarian talk about plans to “weaponize” the DoJ against critics, including some he has labeled as “vermin”.Miller is well known in Maga circles for his loyalty to Trump and the hard-line anti-immigration policies he helped craft for Trump’s presidency. Notably, Trump has vowed to make those policies even more draconian if he is the GOP nominee and wins again.Such an advisory role for Miller squares with Trump’s desire for a tougher brand of lawyer who will not try to obstruct him, as some top administration lawyers did in late 2020 over his false claims about election fraud.As Joe Biden centers his presidential campaign around major pieces of legislation enacted on his watch, like the bipartisan infrastructure act, Reuters reports Donald Trump and the GOP are expected to make channeling public funds to private and religious schools a key part of their pitch to voters:Beyond the tumult surrounding Donald Trump’s presidential bid and his threats to seek revenge against his political enemies should he win, the Republican frontrunner has seized on an issue that even some Democrats say could attract new voters in 2024.Trump is backing “school choice” programs that use taxpayer dollars to send students to private and religious schools. It is a stance with wide appeal as parents have become increasingly fed up with the state of US public education.Polls show that about 70% of parents favor greater education options. The issue resonates strongly enough with some voters that Trump’s support could make a difference in the presidential election as well as help Republicans in state and congressional races.“It’s popular among the Republican base, it’s popular among independents and even popular among the Democratic base – in particular African Americans and Hispanics,” said Jason Bedrick, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.Hunter Biden’s legal trouble deepened after prosecutors filed new tax charges against him. In an interview with the musician Moby, the president’s son said the GOP is “trying to kill me” to undermine Joe Biden’s presidency, while James Comer, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee, claimed his panel’s work led to the new charges. The president, meanwhile, had nothing to say about the latest developments in the prosecution, instead cheering better-than-expected employment data and announcing new investments in high-speed rail.Here’s what else is going on:
      Hunter Biden’s attorney said the latest charges against his client were the result of “Republican pressure”.
      The rightwing House Freedom Caucus demanded Congress approve hardline immigration policies that Democrats oppose in exchange for more Ukraine aid.
      Joe Biden’s approval ratings have hit a record low, poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight reports.
      The infrastructure act was passed in 2021 with a combination of Democratic and Republican votes, during a period when Congress was a much more functional place than it is today.Things sure have changed, particularly after the GOP took control of the House in last year’s midterm elections. The Republicans made clear they would not go along with the Biden administration’s plans, and though they have spent a substantial time fighting amongst themselves, they are currently fairly united in opposing an attempt by Joe Biden to win approval of a security package for Israel and Ukraine’s military, and the southern border with Mexico.The GOP instead wants Democrats to agree to enact hardline policies that they oppose, like restarting construction of Donald Trump’s border wall, and measures to keep asylum seekers out of the country. There is enough agreement among both parties over the importance of getting aid to Israel and Ukraine that they are still talking about a compromise, but the rightwing House Freedom Caucus just issued a statement saying, in part, that they will not support any bill that does not include the hardline immigration policies:If any compromise passes the House, there’s a good chance it will do so with some Democratic votes, and the Freedom Caucus’s opposition may not matter. Perhaps the person who should be most concerned about their statement is speaker Mike Johnson, considering several of the caucus’s members led the charge to remove his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, from the leadership post over his willingness to work with Democrats.Joe Biden’s trip to Las Vegas today will see him specifically focus on how the 2021 infrastructure law will revamp railway and build new high-speed lines between major metropolitan areas.High-speed rail has long been an elusive goal for transportation planners in the United States, which, unlike many of its peers among developed countries, has only one line that falls under that classification: Amtrak’s Acela service running between Washington DC and Boston.The White House today announced $8.2b in funding from the infrastructure law will go towards high-speed rail development, including new projects connecting California and Nevada. Here’s more from the Biden administration’s press release:
      Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing $8.2 billion in new funding for 10 major passenger rail projects across the country, including the first world-class high-speed rail projects in our country’s history. Key selected projects include: building a new high-speed rail system between California and Nevada, which will serve more than 11 million passengers annually; creating a high-speed rail line through California’s Central Valley to ultimately link Los Angeles and San Francisco, supporting travel with speeds up to 220 mph; delivering significant upgrades to frequently-traveled rail corridors in Virginia, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia; and upgrading and expanding capacity at Chicago Union Station in Illinois, one of the nation’s busiest rail hubs. These historic projects will create tens of thousands of good-paying, union jobs, unlock economic opportunity for communities across the country, and open up safe, comfortable, and climate-friendly travel options to get people to their destinations in a fraction of the time it takes to drive. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Record $15.9bn in US political ad spending expected for 2024

      by

      With little more than a month to go before the US presidential election season kicks off in Iowa, a new projection of political spending says a record $15.9bn will be spent on advertising, up more than 30% up on the 2019-2020 election cycle.The assessment, by GroupM, one of the world’s largest paid advertising agencies, suggests total political ad revenue could add a billion more to reach a total of $17.1bn, if including direct mail pitches.Despite voters already knowing the likely two nominees – Joe Biden and Donald Trump – depriving the two main parties of traditional meet-our-candidate introduction spending, the extraordinary spend on political advertising next year is now so large that it will be the 10th largest singular ad market in the world – larger than all of Australia’s.The projected ad spending totals in the presidential election year will also be five times higher than the $3.6bn spent on political and issue ads during the last midterm elections. By the 2028 presidential election, the group said, political ad spending could reach $20bn.According to the GroupM survey, obtained by Axios, a majority of political advertising spend in the US goes to local broadcast TV. But an increasing amount goes to digital platforms.Other novelties of the year ahead in political advertising, the outlet said, are the use of AI to place ads. In August, the Federal Election Commission opened a public debate on how to address the malicious use of AI in campaign ads. The window for comments closed in October.The GroupM projection is higher by $6bn than similar political ad spending forecasts. AdImpact projects the 2023-2024 election cycle will be the most expensive of all time, totaling $10.2bn in political expenditures across all media and a 13% increase over the 2019-2020 election cycle.The survey projected that $2.7bn would be spent directly on presidential candidates, $2.1bn on Senate candidate spending, and $1.7bn on house candidates. The area projected to see the most spending on political advertising is “down ballot” – political spending not related to presidential, House, Senate or governor races, at $3.3bn. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans tout ‘school choice’ as issue to attract parents across party divide

      by

      Beyond the tumult surrounding Donald Trump’s presidential bid and his threats to seek revenge against his political enemies should he win, the Republican frontrunner has seized on an issue that even some Democrats say could attract new voters in 2024.Trump is backing “school choice” programs that use taxpayer dollars to send students to private and religious schools. It is a stance with wide appeal as parents have become increasingly fed up with the state of US public education.Polls show that about 70% of parents favor greater education options. The issue resonates strongly enough with some voters that Trump’s support could make a difference in the presidential election as well as help Republicans in state and congressional races.“It’s popular among the Republican base, it’s popular among independents and even popular among the Democratic base – in particular African Americans and Hispanics,” said Jason Bedrick, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.In a banner year for the school-choice movement, 10 states, all governed by Republicans, enacted or expanded programs in 2023 that allow varying uses of public tax dollars for private education assistance, from tuition to tutoring and therapy.For reform advocates, the momentum is a natural outgrowth of the conservative “parents’ rights” movement born of the Covid-19 pandemic, when concerns about safety mushroomed into screaming matches at school board meetings over curriculum, learning loss and diversity initiatives.Many Democrats, backed by powerful teachers’ unions, continue to view such programs with suspicion, however, saying they are attempts by Republicans to weaken public education while further enriching wealthy families.But some Democrats warn that their candidates must embrace education options or risk ceding their historic edge over Republicans on the issue.“If we don’t offer an alternative to private school choice, we are going to lose more voters on this issue,” said Jorge Elorza, CEO of Democrats for Education Reform, which favors school-choice options such as charter schools. “We’re going to lose close elections on this issue.”Polling by Elorza’s group in four 2024 battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina – showed Republicans held a three-point advantage on the question of which party people trust most on education.Elorza said he was concerned particularly about Black voters in states like Georgia, where a slight shift in the 2020 elections would have tilted the state toward Trump.After Republicans in Arizona enacted a sweeping state-funded voucher plan last year, enrollment in the program exceeded budget projections, prompting the Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, to argue that it clashes with other state priorities.In Florida, about 123,000 students joined a similar program after it was expanded in March with the backing of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, another presidential candidate who regularly touts it on the campaign trail and in debates.The majority of those students were already attending private schools – a statistic jumped on by critics who argued the program mainly benefits wealthy parents.According to Step Up for Students, the non-profit that administers the Florida program, of the close to 227,000 total students who now receive assistance, about 108,000 are from families who qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches.The makeup of the program reflects a broad cross-section of demographic groups: 36% of the students are Hispanic and 20% are Black.Shemeika Williams, a Black mother of three who works in a south Florida hospital, said she would not be able to afford the private Christian academy her 17-year-old daughter attends if the state did not cover transportation and tuition costs.Williams, 41, calls herself an independent and said the legislation will make it more likely she will back Republican candidates in the future.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I will support anyone who will benefit me and my family,” she said. “They are helping people who don’t have the resources.”School choice has long been championed by conservatives, including Betsy DeVos, who served as Trump’s education secretary.Trump supports a bill pending in the US House of Representatives that would provide tax relief to corporations and individuals who provide scholarships to allow students to attend private and religious schools.He has also called for more federal support of home schooling, the fastest-growing form of K-12 education in the nation, by providing tax incentives.A Trump campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said Trump seeks to “liberate students from failing schools and raise the quality of education across the board”.School choice, Cheung said, “is an issue that should unify voters of all backgrounds”.Public policy thinktanks such as the Brookings Institution have conducted studies that show vouchers and other choice programs do not produce gains in academic performance and education attainment, largely because the quality of schools that receive private money vary wildly.Conservative advocacy groups argue otherwise, saying there is a measurable improvement in student performance without a corresponding negative effect on public schools.Some Democratic-leaning groups say recent elections showed voters were rejecting the Republican message on education.In a memo last month, the National Education Association, a teachers’ union, noted that voters re-elected the Democratic governor in Kentucky in November in a race in which the Republican candidate’s support for a voucher plan became a top campaign issue.Education was a central issue in races across the country this year. But frequently, Republican candidates who favored private school-choice programs were portrayed by Democrats as supporting efforts to ban controversial education materials and diversity efforts, making it difficult to measure the viability of the issue on its own. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Grifters and sycophants’: the radicals who would fill key posts if Trump is re-elected

      by

      As Donald Trump and his allies start plotting another presidency, an emerging priority is to find hard-right lawyers who display total fealty to Trump, as a way to enhance his power and seek “retribution” against political foes.Stocking a future administration with more ideological lawyers loyal to Trump in key posts at the justice department, other agencies and the White House is alarming to former DoJ officials and analysts who say such plans endanger the rule of law.Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller, president of the Maga-allied legal group America First Legal, is playing a key role in seeking lawyers fully in sync with Trump’s radical agenda to expand his power and curb some major agencies. His search is for those with unswerving loyalty to Trump, who could back Trump’s increasingly authoritarian talk about plans to “weaponize” the DoJ against critics, including some he has labeled as “vermin”.Miller is well known in Maga circles for his loyalty to Trump and the hard-line anti-immigration policies he helped craft for Trump’s presidency. Notably, Trump has vowed to make those policies even more draconian if he is the GOP nominee and wins again.Such an advisory role for Miller squares with Trump’s desire for a tougher brand of lawyer who will not try to obstruct him, as some top administration lawyers did in late 2020 over his false claims about election fraud.“They’re looking for lawyers who worship Trump and will do his bidding,” Ty Cobb, a former White House lawyer during the Trump years and former justice department official, said. “Trump is looking to Miller to pick people who will be more loyal to Trump than the rule of law.”Cobb added that “Trump trusts Miller greatly”, although Miller is not a lawyer.“Trump doesn’t care about the rule of law or the quality of the criminal justice system,” Cobb said. “He only cares about fealty to him.”Miller’s legal group, which raked in a hefty $44m dollars in 2022, also has a board seat with Project 2025, a sprawling effort led by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other conservative groups to map policy plans for a second Trump term – or another GOP presidency if Trump is not the nominee.Project 2025 includes schemes to curb the justice department, the FBI and other agencies, giving Trump more power to seek revenge – as he has pledged to do in campaign speeches and Truth Social posts – against critics in both parties, which could benefit from conservative lawyers’ sign-offs, but which justice department veterans warn would undermine the legal system.“It seems that they are looking for lawyers who will do whatever Trump wants them to do, and that is the antithesis of implementing the rule of law,” Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general under George HW Bush, said.“When you consider the number of lawyers who became Trump’s severe critics after joining the first Trump administration and participating in a lot of questionable actions, selection for a new administration will have to exclude pretty much anyone who has any inclination to defend our legal system or question the president asserting absolute authority.”Ayer’s analysis is underscored by Trump’s 2020 anger at top lawyers such as the then attorney general William Barr, the then White House counsel Pat Cipollone and others, who pushed back on Trump for his false claims that he lost to Biden due to fraud.Trump has cited Barr – one of several former top lawyers and officials who later became critics – as someone he would press the justice department to launch inquiries against, according to the Washington Post.The former president, who faces 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions including 17 involving his aggressive efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, has also threatened to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family.Trump has attacked the prosecutions against him as political witch-hunts, arguing they give him the right if he wins the presidency again to use the justice department and FBI as tools to attack his opponents.Trump’s retribution agenda was partly revealed on Tuesday at a Fox News town hall, when he slyly said if he was elected again he would not be a dictator “except for day one”.To help facilitate Trump’s agenda, Miller plus the former Trump aide John McEntee, who started as Trump’s personal aide and then became a key adviser in 2020, have reportedly been working with others at Project 2025 to identify tougher pro-Trump lawyers.Besides Miller’s group, numerous conservative groups have board seats on Project 2025 including the Center for Renewing America, a thinktank run by the former Trump budget director Russ Vought. The center employs Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official who pushed false information about voting fraud in 2020 as part of Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss. Clark has written a paper that Vought’s center published titled The US Justice Department Is Not Independent.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHowever, Clark and several other former Trump lawyers are now facing major legal headaches after aiding Trump’s efforts to block Biden’s victory, which could complicate Miller’s hunt for new diehard Trump lawyers.Clark and other key conservative lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman have been charged by the Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney, Fani Willis, in a sprawling racketeering case against Trump and 18 others for seeking to thwart Biden’s Georgia victory. Other Trump legal advisers who were charged, including Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, have struck plea deals with Willis.Some experts foresee real dangers to democracy in Miller’s search for lawyers who would back Trump’s emerging far-right agenda.“This is a search for people with situational ethics,” Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, said.“They’re trying to screen out people who have higher loyalties to the US constitution. It’s likely they’re looking for people whose higher loyalty is to Donald Trump,” he said. “They’re trying to find lawyers who believe in dictatorship. You have to wonder what kind of people in good conscience could sign up for a Trump revenge tour. This appears to be a casting call for an American political horror movie.”If Trump wins, some of the lawyers who may be candidates for key posts according to the New York Times include a few who work at either Miller’s group or have worked for Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, a close Trump and Miller ally who has faced several ethics and criminal inquiries.Miller and his legal center did not respond to a request for comment for this story.Miller’s lawyer search could benefit from his group’s contacts in Maga circles and rapid growth. When America First Legal was launched in 2021, it soon garnered $1.3m from the Maga-allied Conservative Partnership Institute, where Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows is a senior official. Meadows and Vought have both served on the board of Miller’s group.America First Legal’s deep pockets have helped fund an array of lawsuits against the Biden administration, states targeting immigration policies and what Miller has labeled “the equity cult”. Just last month, America First Legal filed a brief opposing the limited gag order placed on Trump by a federal judge overseeing special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count criminal indictment of Trump for election subversion.More broadly, the mission statement of Miller’s America First Legal reveals its ideological compatibility with Trump’s authoritarian-leaning agenda, of which hard-right lawyers would be assets in implementing should Trump get another term.“Our security, our liberty, our sovereignty, and our most fundamental rights and values are being systematically dismantled by an unholy alliance of corrupt special interests, big tech titans, the fake news media, and liberal Washington politicians,” the mission statement reads.Given Miller’s strong ties to Trump, some GOP congressional veterans are alarmed by his search for more ideological lawyers who would not question Trump’s emerging authoritarian agenda.“They’re looking for grifters and sycophants like Jeffrey Clark and Ken Paxton,” said the former House member Charlie Dent.In Dent’s eyes, these kinds of lawyers would “do whatever they’re told. This is absolutely dangerous.” More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Why are third party candidates a threat to Biden in 2024? – podcast

      by

      This week, Joe Biden admitted that he probably would not be running for re-election if Donald Trump was not likely to be the Republican candidate. The thoughts of a rehashed presidential race in 2024 has many Americans dreading next year, and some are looking to third-party or independent candidates as potential alternatives.
      So why hasn’t an outsider been more successful in the past? Is running independently of the Democrat and Republican parties a legitimate offer to voters, or nothing more than an election spoiler? And if the answer is the latter, why should the president be the one to worry?
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Nitish Pahwa of Slate about why Democrats are worried that Biden could suffer the same fate as Hilary Clinton in 2016

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More