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      ‘He’s an insider’: Ramaswamy’s deep ties to rightwing kingpins revealed

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      Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing mega-donor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.The Roivant advisory board includes figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.Ramaswamy’s links to Leo – recently the recipient of a $1.6bn donation from the industrialist Barre Seid, believed to be the biggest ever such gift, but now reportedly the subject an investigation by the attorney general of Washington DC – are many.As reported by ProPublica and Documented, Ramaswamy has spoken at retreats staged by Teneo, a group Leo chairs and which aims to connect high-powered conservatives, to “crush liberal dominance” in American life.Other Teneo speakers have reportedly included Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor polling ahead of Ramaswamy in the Republican primary, and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who trails Ramaswamy and clashed with him on stage in Milwaukee.ProPublica also linked Thiel to the genesis of the Teneo group. According to a document seen by the Guardian, Ramaswamy became a Teneo member in 2021.Elsewhere, Ramaswamy is a board member of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a group with ties to Leo, and a member of the Federalist Society, the Leo-driven group which works to stock the courts with conservatives.Ramaswamy has also spoken to and received an award from the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a group of Republican state treasurers.In June, in South Carolina, the Post and Courier newspaper reported that last year, before launching his presidential bid, Ramaswamy attempted “to leverage his [Republican] connections to gain access [for Strive] to lucrative contracts to manage pension funds … [with] total assets of $39.6bn”.Similar pushes were mounted in Missouri and Indiana, the paper said. Curtis Loftis, the South Carolina state treasurer, told the Post and Courier there was “nothing improper” about such approaches.Asked about Ramaswamy’s claims to be an outsider in light of his links to rightwing donors, activists and establishment figures, a campaign spokesperson told the Guardian: “Vivek has lived the American dream and has had tremendous success in business.“There’s a colossal difference between someone who has friendships and business relationships with wealthy individuals and politicians who change their policies and positions to please their Super Pac donors,” they added.In the Wisconsin debate, Ramaswamy flourished in the absence of Donald Trump, the former US president who faces 91 criminal charges but nonetheless leads Republican polling by huge margins.Amid speculation that Ramaswamy might end up Trump’s running mate, Reed Galen, a Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called Ramaswamy “a classic 2020s America tech bro bullshit artist … Trump for the 21st century”.Ramaswamy’s claim to be an outsider, Galen said, was part of his “fundamental understanding … that Maga [the pro-Trump Republican base] wants him to show that the rest of these people [in the primary] are politicians. He’s willing to be the showman … the outsider. Anti-establishment. ‘If anything is there, I dislike it because it’s there.’ You know, ‘I’m going to have fun with this. I’m not going to take it seriously because you’re a bunch of hacks and goons.’”But in another sense, regarding Ramaswamy’s ties to the likes of Leo and Thiel, Galen said: “I think that he’s an insider.“He walks into a room with Leonard Leo and says, ‘What do you need me to do?’ … And they’re like, ‘Here’s what we want you to do. Here’s what we need you to do.’ Right?“Do I think [Ramaswamy] cares about [issues like restricting] abortion? No, not particularly. I don’t think he has a firmly held belief on it. But if he thinks that it will help him, and in exchange for that Leonard Leo will throw a little chicken feed of the $1.6bn that old man gave him, to help him? Sure, what the hell?“He didn’t ever think he’d get this far. So now he’s just gonna push it as far as he can.”Ramaswamy, Galen said, was closely tied to a world of donors and non-profits in which Leo is “certainly at the center. And this movement only moves in one direction, and it’s toward the darkness. It’s towards authoritarianism. And it’s because it finds people like Ramaswamy. And the more that all these other candidates will now attack him, they will drive him further and further into the arms of those people.” More

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      The winners and losers of the first GOP debate – podcast

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      Republican presidential candidates took to the stage this week to try to convince voters they should be the one to take on Joe Biden in 2024. There was one notable exception – but Donald Trump was still inescapable for his opponents.
      Joan E Greve speaks to the former GOP communications director Tara Setmayer about everyone’s performance on the night, and whether these debates even matter when the missing frontrunner is so far ahead in the polls

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

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      Trump’s jail spectacle is historic, but it won’t harm him politically

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      One by one this week, they’ve made their way to 901 Rice Street, the address of the notorious Fulton county jail. Lawyers, government officials, a former state party chair and others have all surrendered to authorities after being charged as part of an alleged criminal effort to overturn the 2020 election.On Thursday, the head of that enterprise, Donald Trump, himself surrendered, marking another historic moment for a president who has reshaped the rules of American politics. This is the closest that Trump has been to a jail cell to date and serves as a blunt reminder that no American or former president is above the law.Like nearly everything Trump does, his surrender was orchestrated to be a spectacle. He deliberately timed his surrender, 7.30pm, to maximize cable news coverage. Reporters camped outside the jail all day on Thursday as temperatures reached mid-90s F and Trump supporters gathered for a demonstration. There was wall-to-wall news coverage of Trump’s motorcade and arrival at the jail. While politicians typically try and shift attention away from their criminal legal troubles, Trump has embraced it, feeding into the circuit by advertising his surrender time.Despite Trump’s brashness, the gravity of the moment is underscored by the venue where Trump surrendered. In his other three cases, Trump has surrendered in courthouses and then quickly appeared in a courtroom for an arraignment. On Thursday, he’ll turn himself in at a jailhouse that has been so beset by horrific conditions that it’s under investigation from the Department of Justice. For the first time, he’ll have to post a cash bond – $200,000 – to guarantee his release.In the other three instances, Trump has avoided the indignity of a mugshot. On Thursday, he got one that will be released to the public. For a man who cares deeply about perception, the image released on Thursday by the Fulton county sheriff will be inescapable, forever establishing him as the only president to ever be criminally prosecuted with a mugshot. It is also likely to be one that is forever part of America’s story – a snapshot of the president and a movement who tried to bend American institutions and tested the contours of American governance and the rule of law at every opportunity.In a sense it marks the end of a two-year chapter of investigating Trump’s efforts to lead a coup to overturn the 2020 election results. It also marks the beginning of the next chapter – the trials to convict him.Still, it would be a mistake to assume that the mugshot and the spectacle of Trump’s surrender at jail on Thursday will harm Trump politically. Instead, it is only likely to more deeply entrench support from those who back Trump and believe he is being persecuted.As both a candidate and president, Trump has made the politics of grievance, the feeling of being persecuted and wronged, central to his political identity. Trump is already using his indictments to rally his supporters. When he surrendered in New York earlier this year, officials waived a mugshot. Trump’s campaign quickly released a fake one and began fundraising with it instead.The booking, and the indictment that came before it, is also the latest step in what is likely to be a sustained and nasty battle, both in the public domain and in court, between Trump and Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney. Trump has already attacked Willis, a Democrat and the first Black woman to hold her office, saying – of all things – that she is racist. Willis has not responded to those attacks, and urged those in her office to ignore them, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.“You may not comment in any way on the ad or any of the negativity that may be expressed against me, your colleagues, this office in the coming days, weeks or months,” she wrote in an email earlier this month. “We have no personal feelings against those we investigate or prosecute and we should not express any.”Trump allies, both in Georgia and in Washington DC, have already begun separate efforts to make Willis’s work as difficult as possible. But Willis, who has a reputation for being an aggressive prosecutor, hasn’t blinked. So far, she’s headed off last-ditch efforts by Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark, two of Trump’s co-defendants, to avoid surrendering.For all the fanfare of Trump’s surrender, the most significant developments may be what happens far away from Rice Street and the Fulton county courthouse. Trump wields a commanding lead in the polls for the Republican nomination for president.Asked during the first Republican debate on Wednesday if they would support Trump if he was the nominee, nearly all of the candidates said yes. More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy is America’s demagogue-in-waiting | Margaret Sullivan

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      He thinks the climate crisis is a hoax, supports Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and would gladly pardon Donald Trump on day 1 of his would-be presidency. A wealthy biotech entrepreneur, the 38-year-old has never before run for public office.Despite all of this (or maybe because of it), this week’s Republican debate became a national coming-out party for Vivek Ramaswamy.Suddenly, this inexperienced and dangerous showoff is almost a household name.Many in the Republican base ate up his showmanship and blatant fanboying of their hero, Donald Trump. In CNN’s post-debate focus group of Republican voters in Iowa, for example, Ramaswamy got the most favorable response.Trump publicly applauded him. And many in the mainstream media declared him victorious. The Washington Post put him up high in its “winners” column, trailing only behind Donald Trump, who notably wasn’t even there. (Choosing not to enter this particular clown car showed some uncharacteristic good sense on the former president’s part.)The New York Times analyzed the situation under a glowing headline “How Vivek Ramaswamy Broke Through: Big Swings With a Smile”, with emphasis on his style: “unchecked confidence and insults”.For this millennial tech bro, his performance on the Fox News stage in Milwaukee couldn’t have gone much better.As a glimpse of America’s future, it couldn’t have gone much worse.“If you have wondered what Trumpism after Trump looks like, ask no further,” suggested the magazine writer David Freedlander on the social media site formerly known as Twitter. His prediction accompanied a debate stage photo of Ramaswamy with clenched fist.Certainly, he has the essentials covered. No, not foreign policy chops or a background in public service, but a mocking aversion to social justice and equality.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, may talk a good anti-woke game but Ramaswamy wrote the book. His Woke, Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, published in 2021, takes aim at the nation’s “new secular religions like Covid-ism, climate-ism and gender ideology”.His night in the spotlight, and its aftermath, shows that neither Republican voters nor many in the mainstream media have learned much since Trump came down the elevator in 2015 and proceeded to wreak havoc on the country.In case there was any doubt, now we know: they will always fall for the attention-seeking, the policy-unencumbered, the candidate quickest with a demeaning insult. That’s a “winner”, apparently.And it’s all too familiar.“Ramaswamy is like Trump in the larva stage, molting toward the full Maga wingspan but not quite there yet,” wrote Frank Bruni in his New York Times newsletter. “His narcissism, though, is fully evolved.”If Ramaswamy’s real aim – other than to bask in his own glorious reflection – is to get Trump to choose him as his running mate, he made progress toward that end.The day before surrendering to Georgia officials on Thursday, the 91-times-indicted former president found time to praise the newcomer’s onstage statements. He was particularly pleased, of course, by Ramaswamy’s labeling Trump as “the best president of the 21st century”.Faint-praise alert: there have been only three others, and two – Barack Obama and Joe Biden – are Democrats. But no matter, since rapturous approval, especially in superlative form – “the hugest inaugural crowd”, etc – has always been the way to Trump’s heart, such as it is.“This answer gave Vivek Ramaswamy a big WIN in the debate because of a thing called TRUTH,” Trump gushed in a social media post.Not everyone in the media, of course, was buying it. Charlie Sykes, editor in chief of the right-leaning Bulwark, was blunt, calling Ramaswamy “facile, clownish, shallow, shameless, pandering”, but, then again, “exactly what GOP voters crave these days”.Given that the Republican party – still firmly in the grip of a twice-impeached con man – has lost its mind, this craving makes a certain amount of sense.But it makes the endless media normalization even more cringe-inducing. Shouldn’t mainstream journalists be able to step back a tiny bit, providing critical distance rather than the same old tricks?How can there be “winners” in yet another milestone on the way to fascism?Losers? That’s easier. I think we already know who they are: Americans who care about democracy.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Trump on his way to Georgia to surrender at Fulton county jail in election interference case – live

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      From 2h agoDonald Trump has left his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort for Georgia, where he is expected to be formally arrested this evening, CNN reports.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that a federal judge has set a September 18 hearing for former Donald Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark’s request to remove his case to federal court. Clark has been charged alongside Trump in a 41-count indictment over efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential elections in Georgia.Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie appeared on Morning Joe following Wednesday evening’s debate during which he refused to raise his hand when the presidential candidates were asked whether they would support Donald Trump if he becomes the GOP nominee.Christie spoke about the other candidates who raised their hands, saying: “I can only assume it’s because they’re auditioning for what they’re praying to be a future vice-president nomination or cabinet bid in a Trump administration.”
      The problem for them is that Donald Trump is never going to be president of the United States again … When someone says they’re willing to suspend the constitution, that they took an oath to preserve, protect and defend. That’s just wrong … It’s not a hard answer for them either, but they’re playing a political game.
      As Donald Trump makes his way to Atlanta, Georgia, his former vice-president and current Republican opponent Mike Pence has urged him to join the other candidates in the next GOP debate.Speaking to the Associated Press in a new interview after Wednesday night’s debate, Pence said:
      I believe that this country’s in a lot of trouble and every man and woman who aspires to carry the banner of the Republican party owes it to the American people to get on that stage to answer the tough questions and to articulate their vision for the future of the country and let the voters decide.
      The legal gears continue to grind forward for the other people indicted in Georgia alongside Donald Trump, including Jeff Clark, the former justice department official who has asked to move his trial to federal court.Politico reports that the judge handling his case will hold a hearing on 18 September on the matter:This was the scene as the motorcade of Donald Trump made its way from his resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, to the airport in Newark:Squint through the gloomy Newark, New Jersey weather in this Sky News footage and you can see the flashing lights of what appears to be Donald Trump’s motorcade arriving at the plane that will take him to Georgia:Donald Trump has arrived at the airport in Newark, New Jersey, where he will board his flight to face arrest in Atlanta, CNN reports.In his order to begin Kenneth Chesebro’s trial on 23 October, Judge Scott McAfee noted that the schedule does not apply to anyone else.“At this time, these deadlines do not apply to any co-defendant,” the judge wrote. That’s good news for the 18 other people indicted by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, including Donald Trump, whose lawyers are currently trying to get his case moved to federal court, which could delay it for months – potentially long enough for him to win his race for the White House.Kenneth Chesebro, another of Donald Trump’s attorneys who advised him on his plot to overturn his 2020 election loss, requested a speedy trial after being indicted in Georgia, and it appears his wish has been granted.The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the judge handling his case has said Chesebro’s trial will begin on 23 October – as Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis had proposed:When Donald Trump appears at the Rice Street jail in Atlanta this evening, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that he will be treated like any other defendant. That includes having his mugshot taken, and his height and weight recorded:Donald Trump was expected to surrender at the Fulton county jail on Thursday evening on racketeering and conspiracy charges over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, yielding to the criminal justice process in Georgia that will involve him being processed like any other defendant.The former president’s arrival in Georgia follows a presidential debate featuring his main rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination, a race in which Trump remains the overwhelmingly dominant frontrunner despite his many legal troubles.Trump had his legal team negotiate his booking to take place during the primetime viewing hours for the cable news networks, as he sought to discredit the charges and distract from the indignity of the surrender by turning it into a spectacle.But Trump was expected to be booked by authorities without the special privileges afforded to him in his other criminal cases, being subject to a mugshot that he had desperately sought to avoid, having his fingerprints taken, as well as having his height and weight recorded.Trump faced his fourth indictment since leaving office when he was charged in a 41-count indictment by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, last week, that described Trump and 18 allies as having engaged in a criminal enterprise to reverse his 2020 election defeat.Donald Trump has left his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort for Georgia, where he is expected to be formally arrested this evening, CNN reports.In a post on his Truth social account, Donald Trump said he expected to be arrested in Georgia at 7.30pm eastern time, and fired off his typical string of insults at Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis.Here it is, in full:
      231,000,000 Views, and still counting. The Biggest Video on Social Media, EVER, more than double the Super Bowl! But please excuse me, I have to start getting ready to head down to Atlanta, Georgia, where Murder and other Violent Crimes have reached levels never seen before, to get ARRESTED by a Radical Left, Lowlife District Attorney, Fani Willis, for A PERFECT PHONE CALL, and having the audacity to challenge a RIGGED & STOLEN ELECTION. THE EVIDENCE IS IRREFUTABLE! ARREST TIME: 7:30 P.M. More

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      The Guardian view on the US Republican debate: stumped by Trump | Editorial

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      Donald Trump stayed away from Wednesday’s Republican candidates’ debate in Milwaukee. Yet he remained the evening’s dominant presence. The former president’s poll lead among Republican supporters for the 2024 US presidential contest is so strong that he could afford to do this. His absence deliberately belittled both the televised event, as he simultaneously gave an imperiously misleading social media interview to Tucker Carlson, and his eight challengers, who were left vying to impress in a fantasy “What if?” contest over the choice for a party not in fact dominated by Mr Trump.Absence also allowed Mr Trump, on the eve of his latest court appearance in Atlanta and now facing 91 felony counts in four separate criminal cases, to avoid offering himself as a target to his eight rivals. Not that he need have worried about that. Most of them went out of their way all evening to pay him repeated homage. No one did this more shamelessly than the Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who told the audience both that Mr Trump was the best Republican president of the 21st century and that, if elected, Mr Ramaswamy would instantly pardon him for whatever he may have been convicted of in the meantime.By identifying deliberately with Mr Trump’s outsider status, Mr Ramaswamy did two things. He made a bid to be Mr Trump’s running-mate next year and he also separated himself from the platform’s professional politicians. These seven all see themselves, with varying degrees of credibility, as the alternative candidate to Mr Trump. Their shared problem is that the party shows little sign of being interested in such a person. Certainly not in the former vice-president Mike Pence, whose certification of Joe Biden’s victory in January 2021 was supported by most of his fellow candidates but remains heretical to Trump supporters. And probably not in the Florida governor Ron DeSantis either, who entered the debate as the nominal chief rival to Mr Trump but who once again did relatively little to cement that claim.There were, nevertheless, clashes and revealing evasions. Mostly, however, they were over the degree of ferocity that the candidates would bring to promoting the party’s priorities rather than over whether the priorities were desirable in themselves. One bidding war of this kind focused on militarising the US’s southern border. Another on rolling back the Biden administration’s climate crisis agenda. A third came over entrenching an abortion ban at federal level, a pledge from which the sole woman in the debate, Nikki Haley, demurred. One striking divergence came on Ukraine, whose defence, for Republicans like Mr Ramaswamy, runs counter to the isolationism that Mr Trump has made integral to America First rhetoric, but which for older politicians like Chris Christie and Mr Pence remains a geopolitical commitment that must be honoured.In the past, candidates’ debates have sometimes had dynamic political consequences. Not this time. The Republican party is too far gone for that. It is too dominated by Mr Trump. It is too obsessed with talking to its own echo chamber. It is too fanatical about its agenda. It is too dependent on electoral dark arts. The net result is that it has won the popular vote in US presidential contests only once since 1988. This week’s debate was a mealy-mouthed and discreditable event that changes nothing. The Republican party needs the courage to call out Mr Trump and his lies and take a new path. But there was no inkling of that in Milwaukee. More

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      The Republican debate was a spectacle of sadism and self-regarding piousness | Moira Donegan

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      Barring some dramatic reversal, none of the people on the Republican primary debate stage on Wednesday night are going to be president in 2025. The eight candidates who made their confused cases to the Republican primary electorate are all flailing in the race, trailing the absent frontrunner, Donald Trump, and fighting among themselves for who gets to lose to him. When Bret Baier, one of the two moderators, told the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, that “Trump is beating you by 30, 40 points” in recent polls, the live studio audience behind him erupted into cheers. On stage, DeSantis kept a rigid smile.Trump skipped the debate, declining to subject himself to an exercise that would suggest he was not already the party’s anointed leader. He is scheduled to surrender to authorities in Fulton county, Georgia, on Thursday, an event that will generate a mugshot: almost certainly, that image will proliferate across Fox News broadcasts and Facebook news feeds as soon as it is released, eclipsing the debate in the minds of Republican voters.The other candidates, then, appeared on stage for two hours, delivering pointed and occasionally personal barbs at one another, competing alternately in gestures of masculine sadism and self-regarding piousness, all for the sake of a spectacle that no one will remember by the end of this week, and maybe a third-place finish in Iowa.Nevertheless, the debate offered a look at the Republican party in miniature: vexed; divided; driven by their base to unpopular extremes, glorying in fantasies of revenge and social purification; increasingly creepy and weird. The star of the night was Vivek Ramaswamy, the businessman and political novice who made a fortune with Roivant Sciences, a biotech firm. He has since pivoted to politics and began a second career as an anti-woke crusader.Ramaswamy is polling behind DeSantis, but has enjoyed a bump in recent weeks as his coverage increases across Murdoch media properties. Like DeSantis, he aims to outflank Trump from the right, taking on the former president’s agenda of “America First” isolationism and social grievance. Unlike DeSantis, Ramaswamy was a confident and commanding speaker, exhibiting a willingness to cut off his fellow candidates, opine on issues he was ignorant on, and issue barbed attacks on other candidates’ incentives, integrity and age that were reminiscent of Trump’s past treatments of the presidential debates as crude exercises in displaying domination.Ramaswamy was also perhaps the weirdest one there – no small feat. He proudly represents the Republican party’s conspiracist-isolationist turn: he argues against military aid to Ukraine, wants to raise the voting age to 25, claimed on stage that climate change was “a hoax”, and has recently gone to great lengths to clarify what he does and does not believe about the “official” story of September 11.Ramaswamy is aggressive, charmless, overbearingly pompous and dangerously out of touch with reality – in other words, the kind of guy who has been winning a lot of Republican primaries lately, in the model of Blake Masters, Kari Lake or Doug Mastriano. All of these are figures who have proved irresistible to the Republican party base – and abhorrent to general election voters. Of the eight candidates on stage, Ramaswamy was Trump’s best imitator.The Cassandra making the case against this kind of politics was Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Trump administration ambassador to the UN. The only woman running in the Republican field, Haley seems to have assigned herself the role of the voice of reason, imploring her party to come back from the edge and adopt more realistic – and electable – positions. It was her role to explain that American support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion was a part of a broader geopolitical strategy necessary to avert a third world war. It was also her role to explain, with an honesty almost unheard of in Republican politics, that Donald Trump likely cannot win in a general election.“We have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America,” Haley said. “We can’t win a general election that way.” The crowd erupted in boos.Throughout the night, there were signs of a Republican party trying to move on from Trump – and failing to. The Fox News moderators seemed determined to act as if the debate was taking place in a world where Trump did not exist – save for one question, about whether the candidates believed that Mike Pence did the right thing when he certified the results of the 2020 election, there was little mention of the former president, his various scandals or the four indictments against him, except when the candidates themselves brought him up – either to feel out ways for possible attack, or to try to recast his legacy as their own.Haley noted that Trump’s administration added significantly to the national debt, a line that seemed designed less to appeal to Republican voters – who have little remaining interest in limiting the debt or federal spending – than to court the donors she needs to keep up her frantic and so far fruitless campaign schedule. Ramaswamy called Trump “the greatest president of the 21st century”, which raised the question of why he himself was running. Pence, meanwhile, said he was proud of the accomplishments of what he called the “Trump-Pence administration”, which presumably did not include the incitement of rioters who tried to hang him.Trump was a constant presence in the debate, his absence and the studious attempts of moderators to avoid him only making his shadow draw longer over the proceedings. But the other sword of Damocles hanging over Republicans’ 2024 electoral prospects was discussed head-on: abortion. The eight people on stage all represent a movement that worked to overturn Roe v Wade, tirelessly and inventively, for decades. But the Dobbs decision was brought up in the debate less like a triumph than like a frightening diagnosis: the moderator Martha MacCallum noted that abortion rights measures have succeeded every time they have been put to the ballot since the decision.Haley was the moderate on this, as far as the standards of the Republican party go: she generously offered that birth control should remain legal, and that women who have abortions should not be subject to the death penalty. But aside from that bit of magnanimity from the former ambassador, all the candidates seemed determined to double down on the unpopular anti-choice cause.With the exception of Haley and the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, none would rule out a nationwide ban. Ron DeSantis, a stiff and largely irrelevant presence on the debate stage, refused to answer when asked whether he would institute a national six-week abortion ban as president like the one he signed into law in Florida. Pence, the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and the South Carolina senator Tim Scott all called for a national 15-week ban, and emphasized that states would have the ability to restrict abortion further.Gender issues were clearly at the top of mind for the candidates, as they so often are for Republicans now. All eight seemed united on the supposedly urgent need to keep trans schoolchildren from playing sports. Ramaswamy took on his role as the party’s id by launching an attack on single mothers, countering that two-parent families were necessary for national health. “The nuclear family is the greatest form of government known to mankind,” he said.It’s the kind of line that would not be out of place in a radical feminist tract, exposing the ways that law and custom transform women into property, extract their labor, and subject them to sexual and reproductive servitude. But when Ramaswamy said it, he meant it as a good thing.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Republican hopefuls shrug when asked about climate crisis during debate

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      Unlike in recent election cycles, most Republican presidential hopefuls this time around didn’t flat out deny that the climate crisis is real. But on the Fox News debate stage, they made clear that they’re not interested in dwelling on the issues – or doing much about it.On Tuesday night, the eight candidates were asked to raise their hands if they believed in the reality of human-caused global heating. They all punted.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, immediately derailed efforts to elicit a clear yes or no response. “Let’s have this debate,” he said, before proceeding not to have it at all, instead criticising Joe Biden’s response to the fires in Maui.Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur, was notably the only candidate to full-throatedly deny climate science, making the unsubstantiated claim that “more people are dying due to bad climate change policies than they are due to actual climate change”.There’s no discernible trend of deaths linked to policies encouraging renewable energy. However, extreme heat – fueled by the climate crisis – killed about 1,500 people last year, according to Centers for Disease Control records. Researchers estimate that the true figure is closer to 10,000 people every year.Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, on the other hand, said “climate change is real” but then pushed off all responsibility to take care of it on India and China. Both those countries have lower per-capita carbon emissions than the US. And as of the latest figures, from 2021, no country had emitted more carbon dioxide since 1850 than the US.The South Carolina senator Tim Scott didn’t offer much in terms of solutions earlier, pointing a finger at the continent of Africa, as well as India and China. Africa accounts for one-fifth of the world’s population and produces about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the International Energy Association, while disproportionately experiencing the consequences of climate chaos. The US is responsible for about 14% of global emissions.Nobody meaningfully addressed the question posed by Alexander Diaz of the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative youth organisation: “How will you as both president of the United States and leader of the Republican party calm their fears that the Republican party doesn’t care about climate change?”In a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll, 35% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they think climate change is a major factor in the extreme heat that the US has experienced recently, compared with 85% of those who lean Democratic. Overall, nearly two-thirds of Americans who experienced extremely hot days said climate change was a major factor.Young Republican voters, however, seem increasingly concerned about the climate crisis. A 2022 Pew poll found that 73% of Republicans aged 18-39 thought climate change was an extremely/very or somewhat serious issue.Meanwhile, the rightwing groups have been working to boost the fossil fuel industry while undermining the energy transition. Project 2025, a $22m endeavor by the climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, has developed a presidential proposal that lays out how a Republican president could dismantle US climate policy within their first 180 days in office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe GOP candidates who have held public office have already given voters a glimpse of how they might approach the climate crisis. Governor DeSantis has supported projects to build seawalls and improve drainage systems as Florida faces increasingly powerful hurricanes and storm surges, as well as threats from sea level rise. But he has refused to acknowledge the role of global heating on these disasters, scoffing at the “politicization of the weather” and pushing bills banning Florida cities from adopting 100% clean energy goals. He also barred the state’s pension fund from considering the climate crisis when making investment decisions.Donald Trump, who did not attend the debate, has done even more to impede climate action. As president, he rolled back nearly 100 climate regulations, according a New York Times tally.Among the candidates who do support doing anything about the climate crisis, most think that thing should be carbon capture. Haley, who as US ambassador to the United Nations helped orchestrate the US withdrawal from the Paris agreement, has presented carbon capture technologies and tree planting as a way to keep burning fossil fuels while slowing the climate crisis.The consensus among climate scientists is that while such technologies could be a tool in fighting global heating, an overreliance on them could cause the world to surpass climate tipping points. More