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      Liz Cheney urges US supreme court to rule quickly on Trump’s immunity claim

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      The former congresswoman and co-chair of the House January 6 committee Liz Cheney is urging the US supreme court to rule quickly on Donald Trump’s claim that he has immunity from prosecution for acts he committed while president – so that his 2020 election interference trial can begin before the 2024 election this November.“If delay prevents this Trump case from being tried this year, the public may never hear critical and historic evidence developed before the grand jury, and our system may never hold the man most responsible for January 6 to account,” Cheney wrote in an opinion article for the New York Times, published on Monday.Trump faces four federal election subversion charges, arising from his attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, fueled by his lie about electoral fraud and culminating in the deadly attack on Congress by extremist supporters, urged on by the then president, on 6 January 2021.Cheney warned: “I know how Mr Trump’s delay tactics work,” adding: “Mr Trump believes he can threaten and intimidate judges and their families, assert baseless legal defenses and thereby avoid accountability altogether.”The special counsel Jack Smith, prosecuting the case against Trump, has urged the court to reject Trump’s immunity claim as “an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government”.Cheney, a Republican and the daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney, was ousted from her congressional seat, representing Wyoming, after she became one of the strongest voices from the GOP demanding Trump be held accountable for inciting and failing to stop the January 6 insurrection.She has since said she would prefer Democrats to win in the 2024 elections over members of her own party as it has become more extreme, because she feared the US was “sleepwalking into dictatorship” and that another Trump White House presented a tangible “threat” to American democracy.Cheney said in her New York Times article: “The special counsel’s indictment lays out Mr Trump’s detailed plan to overturn the 2020 election … [and that] senior advisers in the White House, Justice Department and elsewhere repeatedly warned that Mr Trump’s claims of election fraud were false and that his plans for January 6 were illegal.”She added: “If Mr Trump’s tactics prevent his January 6 trial from proceeding in the ordinary course, he will also have succeeded in concealing critical evidence from the American people – evidence demonstrating his disregard for the rule of law, his cruelty on January 6 and the deep flaws in character that make him unfit to serve as president. The Supreme Court should understand this reality and conclude without delay that no immunity applies here.”The court’s nine-member bench leans very conservative, especially after Trump nominated three rightwing justices while he was president. The court hears oral arguments in the immunity case on Thursday.Trump and his team urged the court to find that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts they take in office and therefore dismiss the federal criminal case. More

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      The pro-Israel groups planning to spend millions in US elections

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      A handful of pro-Israel groups fund political campaigns in support of individual candidates in US elections, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), a powerful force in American politics. Before the 2024 election, Aipac plans to spend tens of millions of dollars against congressional candidates, primarily Democrats, whom it deems insufficiently supportive of Israel.Aipac and other pro-Israel lobby groups have recruited and supported challengers to a number of lawmakers and candidates – most notably members of the Squad, the group of progressive representatives who are particularly vocal in their criticism of Israel’s offensive in Gaza.The 2024 election will be bellwether of the enduring impact of these groups on US politics amid shifting US public opinion on Israel.What is Aipac?Aipac has its roots in the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs, which was founded by a lobbyist for the Israeli government in an attempt to manage the political fallout the Israeli army’s 1953 massacre of dozens of Palestinians, most of them children and women, in the West Bank village of Qibya.The organisation was renamed Aipac in 1959. It was not until financial support surged after the 1973 Yom Kippur war that it began to grow into the powerful Washington lobbyist group it is today.For many years, Aipac’s influence went largely unchallenged on Capitol Hill. The pressure group claimed to voice bipartisan support for Israel in Congress and worked to marginalise the relatively small number of critics there.Aipac’s annual conference typically involved a long rollcall of members of Congress who support the group. It has regularly galvanised almost every member of the US Senate to sign letters in support of Israeli policies, including several wars in Gaza.But the group’s once unchallenged influence in Washington has been diminished by its unwavering backing for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the past 15 years. It sided with him against President Barack Obama’s opposition to settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territories and his nuclear deal with Iran.The liberal Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz has described Aipac as “the pro-Netanyahu, anti-Israel lobby”.“Effectively, the organization has become an operational wing of Netanyahu’s far-right government, one that peddles a false image of a liberal Israel in the United States and sells illusions to members of Congress,” it said.What has changed?Aipac traditionally endorsed candidates sympathetic to Israel as a signal for others to fund their campaigns. But in December 2021, the group for the first time in its 70-year history moved into direct financial support for individual political campaigns by launching a super political action committee, the United Democracy Project (UDP). A Super Pac is permitted to spend without restriction for or against candidates but cannot make direct donations to their campaigns.The move was prompted by alarm at the erosion of longstanding bipartisan support for Israel in the US. Opinion polls show younger Democrats have grown more critical of the deepening oppression of the Palestinians, including Jewish Americans, a trend that has only strengthened with the present war in Gaza.Aipac has grown increasingly concerned that the election of candidates critical of Israel could open the door to the conditioning of the US’s considerable military aid, erosion of Washington’s diplomatic protection on the international stage, and political pressure to establish a Palestinian state.So the UDP is working to block Democratic candidates critical of Israel at the first hurdle – the primaries – in an effort to shore up the claim that there is unswerving support for the Jewish state across Congress. It is also targeting progressive Democratic members of Congress who have pressed for a ceasefire in Gaza.What about other lobby groups?A number of smaller groups are working to the same end, principally the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI). It was founded five years ago by Mark Mellman, a Democratic political consultant. The DMFI’s board of directors includes Archie Gottesman, who also co-founded JewBelong, a group that has posted pink billboards in US cities in support of Israel including one that declared: ‘Trust Me. If Israel Wanted to Commit Genocide in Gaza, It Could’.Notably, the UDP has so far not waded into the campaign against Summer Lee in this year’s primary, despite spending more than $3m to defeat her in 2022. Instead the Republican mega-donor Jeffrey Yass has stepped up as the largest funder of a Pac called Moderate Pac to support Lee’s primary opponent, Bhavini Patel. It is running ads saying that Lee’s criticisms of Biden amount to support for Donald Trump even though Yass himself is a Trump supporter.A more moderate pro-Israel group, J Street, was founded in 2007 to counter Aipac’s unflinching support for rightwing governments. J Street established a Pac to support candidates who back a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. But it has raised only about $4m so far this election cycle.Who are they targeting and how?Aipac plans to spend $100m this year against congressional candidates, primarily Democrats, and members of Congress critical of Israel. So far the UDP has raised more than $49m, according to its most recent Federal Election Commission filings.The bulk of that money has yet to be spent but the UDP has already thrown millions of dollars into political advertising targeted against candidates critical of Israel, but which focuses on other issues and fails to make clear that it is funded by a pro-Israel group. Critics have accused Aipac of attempting to intimidate candidates into avoiding criticism of Israel by implicitly threatening to fund campaigns against them.Among those expected to be targeted by pro-Israel groups are members of the the Squad, including Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, who are thought to be vulnerable to political attacks over issues unrelated to their criticisms of the war in Gaza.Who is funding these campaigns?The leading donors to the UDP are Republicans seeking to influence Democratic primaries.The single largest donor is the conservative Ukrainian American billionaire co-founder of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, who gave $5m. Koum also donated to the Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s Super Pac.Other donors include the financier, Jonathan Jacobson, who gave $2.5m to the UDP toward the end of last year although for many years his political donations were directed to the Republican National Committee and the party’s US Senate campaigns. The Israeli-born entrepreneur David Zalik gave the UDP $2m. He has also donated to Republican campaigns in Georgia.The Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus, who was one of the largest donors to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and who continues to back him financially, gave $1m to the UDP, as did the hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who has given millions of dollars to Republican political causes over the years.Donations to the UDP are separate from tens of millions of dollars in pledges made directly to Aipac in the wake of the 7 October attacks by Hamas as the public relations battle intensified over Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza and a surging number of Palestinian civilian deaths.Top donors to the DMFI include Deborah Simon, the daughter of the billionaire businessman and movie producer Mel Simon, who gave $1m. She regularly donates to Democratic causes and Jewish organisations such as the Anti-Defamation League.Sam Bankman-Fried, the former cryptocurrency billionaire who is serving 25 years for fraud, gave $250,000 to DMFI during the 2022 midterm elections. The group has been forced to return the money.Other major DMFI donors are closely tied to Aipac such as Stacy Schusterman, who has given more than $1m, and the venture capitalist Gary Lauder.How has the present war in Gaza changed the equation?The conflict has strengthened the hand of Israel’s critics within the Democratic party as polls show rising sympathy for the Palestinians. That in turn has made Aipac’s financial backing a potential liability for some Israel-supporting Democratic candidates.Aipac was already on the defensive after endorsing the 2022 campaigns of dozens of Republican members of Congress who tried to block President Biden’s presidential victory.Aipac defended the move by claiming that backing for the Jewish state overrides other issues and that it was “no moment for the pro-Israel movement to become selective about its friends”.“When we launched our political action committee last year, we decided that we would base decisions about political contributions on only one thing: whether a political candidate supports the US-Israel relationship,” it said. More

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      A progressive congresswoman made history in 2022. Can a billionaire stop her re-election?

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      The US representative Summer Lee greeted a cheering crowd of a couple of hundred supporters at the Pittsburgh teachers’ union headquarters on Sunday, with two days left until her Democratic primary.Lee, who made history in 2022 when she became the first Black woman elected to Congress from Pennsylvania, predicted that voters would send a resounding message on Tuesday about the resilience of the progressive movement. To underscore that point, Lee was joined at the rally by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, another member of the progressive “Squad” in the House.“Everybody in the country is waiting to see whether or not we can have a reflective democracy,” Lee said. “So we are going to fight in western Pennsylvania, and on Tuesday, we’re going send a message to every dark-money billionaire, whoever they are: that your influence is no longer welcome in our democracy.”The boisterous rally marked an impressive show of support for a politician who eked out the narrowest of primary victories two years ago, after facing an onslaught of negative advertising from pro-Israel groups. This time around, many progressives expected the same groups to target Lee again, given her consistent and vocal support for a ceasefire in Gaza.But those groups have chosen to stay out of Lee’s primary this year, a decision that the congresswoman’s allies credit to her popularity with constituents and the government funding she has brought to her western Pennsylvania district.Despite the pro-Israel lobby’s absence, at least one Super Pac, financially backed by the Republican mega-donor Jeffrey Yass, has gotten involved in Lee’s primary to support her opponent, the local council member Bhavini Patel. If Lee is successful on Tuesday, her victory could provide a roadmap for other progressive candidates who are bracing for a wave of pro-Israel money in their own primaries this cycle due to their criticism of the Israeli government and their outrage over the rising death toll in Gaza.“Pittsburgh is the first one up. Tuesday is the first of the rest of these races. So, Pittsburgh, what you’re doing on Tuesday is sending a message to the country,” Ocasio-Cortez said. Addressing mega-donors like Yass, she added: “Your money isn’t good here any more.”A notable absenceWhen Lee first ran for Congress in 2022, her record as a two-term state legislator did little to assuage the concerns of establishment Democrats. A number of local groups, including the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, lined up behind Lee’s opponent, the Pittsburgh attorney Steve Irwin.Most consequentially, United Democracy Project, a Super Pac affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), entered the race to boost Irwin’s campaign. According to OpenSecrets, UDP spent a total of $3.3m against Lee and another $660,000 in support of Irwin, flooding the airwaves with ads accusing Lee of threatening Joe Biden’s policy agenda.Lee won her race by less than 1,000 votes, or 0.9 points, and her victory provided a shot in the arm for progressives’ fight against Aipac and its affiliates, which spent nearly $50m across the entire 2022 cycle to boost pro-Israel candidates.View image in fullscreenThis year, Aipac and its affiliates reportedly plan to spend twice as much money, $100m, across the election cycle. Progressive leaders expected that Lee’s primary would serve as an early test of messaging strategies for “Squad” members facing primary challenges and targeted by Aipac.Surprisingly, UDP and the group Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), both of which spent heavily in Lee’s 2022 primary, appear to have opted out. According to reporting by the Intercept, Aipac contacted two prominent Pittsburgh Democrats to inquire if they would consider running against Lee. Both of them declined. (UDP did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.) Mark Mellman, the founder of DMFI, recently told Semafor that the group had determined Lee simply wasn’t as vulnerable as other “Squad” members this year and thus wasn’t worth the investment.Lee’s allies credit her electoral strength to the work she has done in Congress. As Lee’s campaign frequently touts in ads, she has helped bring more than $1.2bn to her district in the form of infrastructure projects, clean water initiatives and housing grants.“Summer is a very popular politician. She represents this district incredibly well,” said Jodi Hirsh, a 48-year-old Lee campaign volunteer and longtime Pittsburgh resident. “People who may be not up to speed on all the other socially progressive, social justice-oriented things that many of us care about do know that she’s helped them fundamentally from a constituent services perspective.”That work appears to have paid dividends with fellow Democratic leaders as well. In February, the Allegheny County Democratic Committee endorsed Lee for the first time, and she has received the backing of prominent liberal groups like the League of Conservation Voters and Planned Parenthood Action Fund as well as an array of local labor unions.“That balance of being able to build a progressive vision while delivering every day for your constituents is the progressive movement through and through,” said Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats, a progressive Pac.Lee’s supporters argue that her work for constituents and her progressive views on issues like abortion access, the climate crisis and economic inequality have played a larger role in the primary race than the war in Gaza. But when voters do bring up the war, they often voice agreement with Lee’s calls for a ceasefire, allies say.Polling does indeed suggest widespread support for the ceasefire campaign. According to an Economist/YouGov survey conducted this month, 65% of US adults – including 80% of Democrats – support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.“This is a race where the president, the party have just continued to move towards [Lee] over time,” said Nicholas Gavio, mid-Atlantic communications director for the Working Families party. “All the polling shows that Summer’s position and the position of a lot of the [‘Squad’ members] is the position of Democratic party voters.”Despite polls consistently reflecting mounting criticism of Israel’s airstrike campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, Patel has continued to attack Lee over her views on the war. In a statement to the Guardian, Patel said Lee’s criticism of the Israeli government “hits at a deeper level” considering Pittsburgh’s dark history of antisemitic violence. In 2018, a gunman attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in the city’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, killing 11 people in the deadliest anti-Jewish attack in US history.“As fringe extremist Summer Lee has locked arms with people trying to weaken President Biden over the last few weeks, we have seen an outpouring of support from voters energized by the possibility of a pro-Biden Democrat representing them in Congress,” Patel said.Eva Borgwardt, a spokesperson for IfNotNow, traveled to Pittsburgh from New York to knock on doors for Lee’s campaign on Saturday. She firmly rejected Patel’s framing. (IfNotNow, a group of Jewish activists advocating for Palestinian rights, has also endorsed Lee.)“Summer’s vision of Jewish safety, I think, is the thing that we as a Jewish community need – especially right now,” Borgwardt said. “She’s resisting this false narrative of Palestinian and Jewish safety being pitted against each other.”That argument may be resonating with many Americans, but Patel has found at least one ardent proponent of her viewpoint: Jeffrey Yass.‘Kick some Yass’The ad opens with the ominous warning that “our rights are under attack”. The video then switches from images of the deadly January 6 insurrection to clips of Lee withholding applause during Biden’s State of the Union address last month.“We need a representative who will work with President Biden, and that’s Bhavini Patel,” the ad concludes. The narrator then notes that the group Moderate Pac is responsible for the ad.Moderate Pac’s stated aim is to “support Democratic policymakers who champion sensible fiscal and economic policies”, but recent FEC filings show its largest donor is Yass, who has given tens of millions to Republicans in recent years. According to OpenSecrets, Yass has already given more than $46m to conservative causes and candidates for 2024, making him the largest individual donor of this election cycle so far. (Previous reporting also suggested Yass was one of the major donors to a rightwing Israeli group that supported the proposal of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for judicial overhaul, but more recent accounts have cast doubt upon that connection.)View image in fullscreenYass has been named as a potential treasury secretary if Trump wins re-election, and the company that he co-founded was recently in the headlines for its involvement in a lucrative merger with the former president’s media company.“You couldn’t write it up in a movie to be more absurd than to have the man who bailed out Donald Trump’s social media company spending money to write ads about a Democratic member of Congress not being Democrat enough,” Andrabi said.Moderate Pac has now spent more than $600,000 on independent expenditures to promote Patel’s campaign, filings show.A constellation of progressive groups, including Justice Democrats and the Working Families party, have come to Lee’s assistance, pouring more than $700,000 into the race. And Lee herself has proven a much more successful fundraiser than Patel, as the incumbent has raised four times as much money as her challenger. According to FEC filings, Lee has raised $2.3m to Patel’s $602,000.Lee has even leaned into Yass’s involvement in the primary to motivate her donors. The subject line of one recent fundraising email read, “Are YOU ready to kick some YASS?” Hirsh said that Yass’s financial assistance had become a liability for Patel with Democratic primary voters.“Here’s someone parading around as a ‘good Democrat’, ‘a centrist Democrat’, ‘a moderate Democrat’, who is almost entirely funded by a Maga [“Make America great again”] Republican who supported an insurrection, who’s destroying our public schools, who does not believe in the right to abortion,” Hirsh said. “All of the things that we want our Democratic representatives to support, this person is opposed to. That does not belong in our Democratic primary.”For that reason, Andrabi believes that other progressive candidates can still learn many lessons from Lee’s campaign.“Aipac and DMFI aren’t in Summer’s race. But you know, choose your Super Pac funded by Republican billionaires. It’s the same model across the country,” he said. “What we’re seeing is Republican billionaires using Super Pacs as vehicles to spend in Democratic primaries against mostly Black and brown progressives.”If Lee wins on Tuesday, her ability to mobilize progressive voters in Pennsylvania could prove crucial in November, as Biden tries to win the battleground state against Trump.Andrabi said: “There’s no one who is a greater threat to Donald Trump and far-right extremism than a Black woman who not only stands up for progressive values but also expands the electorate and ensures that all marginalized people have a voice in a state like Pennsylvania.” More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene renews attacks on speaker as House passes Ukraine aid

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      Republican infighting over the US House finally approving $61bn in military aid for Ukraine continued to roil the party on Sunday as the far-right representative Marjorie Taylor Greene renewed attacks on the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson.Johnson had betrayed his party and was working for the Democrats, and his speakership was “over”, the Georgia representative said, although it was not clear if and when Greene would file a motion to try to remove him, which she has threatened to do in recent weeks.The fresh criticism from Greene came after Johnson ended months of stalling on the aid package for Ukraine’s desperate defence against Russia – as well as billions for allies including Israel and Taiwan – and finally forced a vote on it in the House of Representatives on Saturday, defying the far right of his party.In a bipartisan vote, 210 Democrats and 101 Republicans joined to support Ukraine, with 112 Republicans – a majority of the GOP members – voting against.“He is absolutely working for the Democrats. He’s passing the Biden administration’s agenda,” Greene said of Johnson on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo. “Mike Johnson’s speakership is over. He needs to do the right thing to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process.“If he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated.”Johnson escalated the most recent turmoil among his GOP colleagues last week after agreeing to the floor vote on the $95bn foreign aid package. The package, green-lighted by the Senate in February, includes $61bn for Ukraine, $14bn for Israel, and lesser sums for Taiwan and other allies in the Pacific.The Senate is expected to start weighing this House bill on Tuesday and it is expected to pass this coming week, which would enable Joe Biden to sign it into law.The speaker’s decision heightened the split in his party, with the right insisting any support for foreign aid had to include concessions to their domestic priorities, including border security. The same ultra-conservatives had orchestrated Johnson’s ascent to speaker in October by ousting his predecessor, the Republican Kevin McCarthy.View image in fullscreenThis group of Republicans have increasingly expressed public antipathy toward helping Ukraine, in keeping with their political leader, Donald Trump, who has long shown admiration toward the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.Johnson on Saturday stood by his decision, saying that the provision of military aid was “critically important”, as well as “the right thing”, even in the face of political risks from his party’s far right.“I really believe the intel and the briefings that we’ve gotten,” Johnson stated. “I believe that Xi and Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil. I think they are in coordination on this. I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe.“I am going to allow an opportunity for every single member of the House to vote their conscience and their will,” Johnson also said. “I’m willing to take a personal risk for that, because we have to do the right thing. And history will judge us.”In order to even get the floor vote, Johnson had to work with Democrats, whom he earlier needed to advance other legislation, such as a significant government funding bill.The fissure in the party widened in March, when Greene revealed a motion to oust Johnson from the role of speaker. She has not yet tried to force a vote on that issue, but the House Republicans Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and Paul Gosar, of Arizona, are now co-sponsors.Greene has not filed that motion, however, and any next steps seem vague. Immediately after the House vote on Saturday, Greene said that she wouldn’t take any formal steps to boot Johnson from speaker but, like her colleagues, wanted to hear from constituents first, the Washington Post reported. “I’m looking forward to them hearing from the folks back at home,” Greene said, “but this is a sellout of America today.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Sunday, Fox News’s Bartiromo pushed Greene on the seeming vagaries, saying on the talkshow: “Well, with respect, you didn’t give me a plan for the speaker’s role and again, does this mean you are going to file that motion at some point?”“It’s coming, regardless of what Mike Johnson decides to do,” Greene said. “We have three more Republicans joining us for a special election coming up very soon, so people need to know this can happen.”Not all Republicans are worried about Johnson’s future as House speaker, however.“He will survive,” Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican representative, said on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “Look, the House is a rough and rowdy place, but Mike Johnson is going to be just fine.”For Gonzales, Johnson’s ushering of this aid package is positive for Congress overall.“I think Mike Johnson is going to avoid the cannibals in his own party here. He stood up to them this weekend and the adults, we took control of the US Congress,” he said. “I think people got sick and tired – he’s one of them – of Marjorie Taylor Greene being in charge of their life and they just finally said ‘no’.”The GOP division on Ukraine is also playing out in the Senate, with pro-aid Republican senator Linsdey Graham slamming Ohio senator JD Vance’s seeming belief that the country can’t win.In a New York Times op-ed last week, Vance wrote: “Ukraine’s challenge is not the GOP; it’s math. Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field. And it needs more materiel than the United States can provide.”“That is garbage,” Graham said on Fox News Sunday, in response to Vance’s claim about manpower, per the Hill.“Go … I just got back, I was there two weeks ago. They changed their conscription laws. They have all the manpower they need. They need the weapons,” Graham said. “It’s one thing to talk about Ukraine over here; it’s another thing to go.” More

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      Approval of $61bn aid from US shows Ukraine will not be abandoned, says Zelenskiy

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      Ukraine’s president has said the vote by the US House of Representatives to pass a long-delayed $61bn (£49bn) military aid package demonstrated that his country would not be abandoned by the west in its effort to fight the Russian invasion.Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview with US television that Saturday’s vote showed Ukraine would not be “a second Afghanistan”, whose pro-western government collapsed during an US-led pullout in the summer of 2021.The Ukrainian president urged the US Senate to ratify the aid package rapidly and warned that his country was preparing its defences, fearing there could be a large Russian offensive before the fresh supplies reach the frontline.“We really need to get this to the final point. We need to get it approved by the Senate … so that we get some tangible assistance for the soldiers on the frontline as soon as possible, not in another six months,” he said.The Senate is expected to come out of recess on Tuesday to hold its first vote on the package – similar to one it had already voted for in February – with the Joe Biden promising to sign it into law swiftly after it passes Congress.That would end months of wrangling in which House Republicans aligned with Donald Trump had refused to allow Ukraine aid, which was part of a larger package with money for Israel and Taiwan, to be debated in the lower chamber.The US has only been able to commit to $300m of military aid to Ukraine this year, after the budget previously authorised by Congress was spent. This has coincided with a deterioration of the frontline position and the loss of Avdiivka in the eastern Donbas, with a shortage of artillery and other munitions blamed.However, the opposition of Republicans faded after Iran’s drone and missile attack on Israel more than a week ago that used similar tactics to Russian attacks on Ukraine. It also underlined – among some rightwing politicians – the need to provide Israel and Ukraine with further support.US officials have signalled that some weapons were in European warehouses, ready to be moved into Ukraine at short notice once Biden decides exactly what to supply in the first round after the overall funding has been approved.Zelenskiy said his immediate priorities were air-defence systems such as the US-made Patriots and long-range missiles such as Atacms, which can travel up to 186 miles (300km) and which the House has called on the Pentagon to provide promptly.“We need long-range weapons to not lose people on the frontline because we have – we have casualties because we cannot reach that far. Our weapons are not that long-range. We need [that] and air defence. Those are our priorities right now,” Zelenskiy said in an interview with NBC News.Ukraine is thought to have only two Patriot anti-missile systems, one of which it uses to defend Kyiv, while the other has been deployed closer to the frontline, in effect leaving large parts of the country exposed.Russia has knocked out several power stations by targeting them with numerous missiles, causing electricity shortages in some parts of Ukraine, including the second city of Kharkiv, home to 1.3 million people. A power station south of Kyiv was destroyed in one night a little more than a week ago in a similar assault.On Sunday, Moscow accused the US of sacrificing Ukrainian lives by forcing the country into a long war that would end in a defeat for both countries.Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry, said the US wanted Ukraine “to fight to the last Ukrainian” as well as making direct attacks into Russian territory. “Washington’s deeper and deeper immersion in the hybrid war against Russia will turn into a loud and humiliating fiasco for United States such as Vietnam and Afghanistan,” she added.Bohdan Krotevych, the chief of staff to Ukraine’s Azov brigade, said he was pleasantly surprised by the result of the House vote and praised the efforts of Zelenskiy in lobbying the US and other countries for military support. But Krotevych warned of a possible response from Moscow in the war. “This doesn’t mean that Russia will not start countermeasures as a reaction,” he said.One expert said he believed the immediate significance of the vote was political, not military. Ben Hodges, a former commanding general of the US army in Europe, said: “The strategic effect will be felt immediately in the Kremlin, where they now realise their plan to wait for us to quit has failed.”Russia might have hoped that Ukraine could be forced to sue for peace, with no US aid forthcoming before November’s presidential election at least. Now the aid should allow Ukraine to “stabilise the front, buy time to grow and rebuild their army and build up their own defence industrial capacity”, Hodges said.Ukrainians out and about on a rainy spring day in Kyiv said they were delighted at the outcome. Pavlo, 44, an IT specialist, said he was very grateful. He said: “The politicians have made the right choice and this shows that the US takes the lead role in world scene; I hope that the aid is already somewhere waiting at the border, ready to be on its way.”Chess-playing Serhii Ivanovich, a retired army colonel, 72, said Ukraine was a peaceful country forced into fighting a war against its larger neighbour. “We have been waiting for this for a very long time. We don’t have enough, we need help. We have the courage, we have the strength but we don’t have the equipment.” More

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      Who will Trump pick as his 2024 running mate? A VP shortlist

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      Donald Trump has secured the necessary delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination for a third consecutive election. That result was never in much doubt, but the contest to be Trump’s running mate is harder to predict. Once again, the Republican primaries demonstrated his strength among white men in rural areas, leading to speculation that he will choose a woman or person of colour to broaden his appeal in November.Here are some factors to consider and a look at the likely contenders.Why does Trump need a new running mate?Former vice-president Mike Pence was a useful ally during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, a Christian conservative who shored up support among Republicans suspicious of the thrice-married reality TV star. But Pence’s refusal to comply with his boss’s demand to overturn the 2020 election led to a falling out and made Pence a perceived traitor and target of the January 6 insurrectionists. After a failed bid for president in 2024, Pence recently said in an interview that he will not be endorsing Trump.What is Trump looking for in a 2024 VP?He may decide he needs a female running mate to make himself less toxic to suburban women, especially with abortion rights looming large as an election issue. But history suggests that he will have three priorities: a person who displays loyalty; a person who looks like they are from “central casting”; a person who knows their place and will not outshine him on the campaign trail.Will Trump’s VP pick matter in the 2024 election?Probably not a lot. There is little evidence that a woman on the ticket draws more female voters or that a running mate’s home state will necessarily back them. Dan Pfeiffer, a White House communications director under President Barack Obama, told the New York Times: “The vice-presidential pick is something that generates a massive amount of press coverage but has the most minimal of impacts on the election.”But perhaps a bad pick can do damage: Republican nominee John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin in 2008 probably didn’t help. This year, however, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are, again, the two oldest candidates in history, giving new meaning to their VP picks being only “a heartbeat away from the presidency”.How many VPs have gone on to become president?Fifteen. Eight of these succeeded to the office on the death of a president, including Lyndon Johnson, who was sworn in onboard Air Force One after the assassination of John F Kennedy. Gerald Ford was the only unelected vice-president and president following the resignations of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon. Biden served as vice-president under Barack Obama, who was succeeded by Trump, who was then defeated by Biden for the presidency.What to know about the Republicans on Trump’s vice-president shortlistView image in fullscreenGreg AbbottAge: 66Occupation: Governor of TexasThe Texas politician is a Trump loyalist and hardliner on border security who has fought a series of legal battles with the Biden White House. Trump said he “would very much consider Abbott” for vice-president during a joint Fox News interview in February. Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, said he was “committed to governing Texas” and to his own re-election campaign.View image in fullscreenTucker CarlsonAge: 54Occupation: Conservative political commentator and writerThe former Fox News host is a strong ideological match. Like Trump, he relishes offending liberals, praising autocrats such as Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orbán of Hungary (he conducted fawning interviews with both) and pushing the far-right “great replacement” theory that western elites are importing immigrant voters to supplant white people. Although Carlson once wrote of Trump in a text message, “I hate him passionately”, more recently he has praised him as “sensible and wise”.View image in fullscreenBen CarsonAge: 72Occupation: Retired neurosurgeonBorn in Detroit to a single mother with a third- grade education who worked multiple jobs to support her family, Carson rose to become a leading neurosurgeon – a life story that the Trump campaign could promote as it seeks to win over aspirational Black votes. As housing secretary, Carson was among Trump’s longest-serving cabinet members. He remained loyal to the outgoing president after the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol and campaigned with him in Iowa before the caucuses.View image in fullscreenRon DeSantisAge: 45Occupation: Governor of FloridaDeSantis tried and failed to dethrone Trump as king of the Republican party, flaming out during the primary season. He once made a campaign ad in which he read Trump’s book about getting rich, The Art of the Deal, to one of his children and encouraged them to “build the wall” along the US-Mexico border by stacking toy bricks. But when he ran for president, Trump branded him “Ron DeSanctimonious” and seems unlikely to forgive the perceived disloyalty.View image in fullscreenByron DonaldsAge: 45Occupation: US representative for Florida’s 19th congressional districtThe Freedom Caucus Republican is one of Trump’s most prominent African American supporters and backed him against state governor Ron DeSantis in the primary election. He is short on experience, having only started in Congress in 2021. At an event hosted by Axios, Donalds suggested that he would be willing to decline to certify the 2028 election results if he were vice-president.View image in fullscreenTulsi GabbardAge: 42Occupation: Rightwing media personality.The former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate has rebranded herself as a rightwing media personality. She campaigned for election-denier Kari Lake and other Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections. Her provocative critiques of the western foreign policy establishment, and her overtures to dictators such as Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, are likely to resonate with Trump. Asked in March by Fox News if she would consider a vice-presidential slot, Gabbard replied: “I would be open to that.”View image in fullscreenMarjorie Taylor GreeneAge: 49Occupation: Republican congresswomanThe far-right flamethrower from Georgia personifies the age of Trumpism with her pugnacious style, bizarre conspiracy theories, indications of support for political violence, and racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic statements. She once suggested that, if she had led the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, the mob would have been armed and victorious in its efforts to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory (she later claimed this was “sarcasm”).View image in fullscreenNikki HaleyAge: 52Occupation: Politician.The former South Carolina governor was Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations and, as the daughter of Sikh immigrants from India, could help neutralise charges of sexism and racism against him. But her persistence as his most durable opponent during the Republican primary, in which she questioned his age and mental acuity, would be hard for Trump – who called her “Birdbrain” – and the Maga base to forgive. They are also at odds on aid to Ukraine.View image in fullscreenKari LakeAge: 54Occupation: Candidate for US Senate in Arizona.The firebrand former TV anchor was the breakout Republican star of the midterm elections but lost the race for governor of Arizona, a result she has never accepted. She was endorsed by Trump and continued to repeat his election lies while campaigning as a surrogate for him during the Republican primary. But she may be seen as more valuable running for Senate because she could help Republicans take control of that chamber if she wins.View image in fullscreenKristi NoemAge: 52Occupation: Governor of South Dakota.The former pageant queen and congresswoman is serving her second term as South Dakota’s governor after a landslide re-election victory in 2022. She gained national attention after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic. She quashed speculation about her own presidential ambitions by endorsing Trump early. But her conservative stance on abortion – and media reports of an affair with the former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski – could be an electoral liability.View image in fullscreenVivek RamaswamyAge: 38Occupation: Business executive.The former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination is a political neophyte who shook up the Republican primary debates, acting as unofficial Trump surrogate and earning the scorn of Haley. Trump condemned Ramaswamy as “not Maga” when he gained traction in the opinion polls but has since praised the biotech entrepreneur, who dropped out and threw his weight behind the former president. Ramaswamy is a young person of colour, although his views on the climate crisis are out of step with young voters.View image in fullscreenSarah SandersAge: 41Occupation: Governor of Arkansas.She was a devoted White House press secretary, tirelessly promoting Trump’s agenda and insisting that he was neither racist nor sexist. Last year she was inaugurated as the first woman to serve as governor of Arkansas and she is currently the youngest governor in the country. Her father, former governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, is the creator of The Kids Guide to President Trump and an ex-pastor who might help shore up the Christian evangelical vote.View image in fullscreenTim ScottAge: 58Occupation: Senator for South Carolina.The Black evangelical Christian made his own bid for the presidency but dropped out two months before the Iowa caucuses, endorsing Trump and telling him: “I just love you.” The senator might be seen as a way to build on Trump’s recent progress among male African American voters. Asked about potential running mates during a Fox News town hall in February, Trump pointed to Scott and said: “A lot of people are talking about that gentleman right over there.” Scott is single but, with impeccable timing, recently presented his girlfriend with an engagement ring.View image in fullscreenElise StefanikAge: 39Occupation: US representative for New York’s 21st congressional districtThe New York politician is the highest-ranking woman in the Republican conference in the House of Representatives and one of the first members of Congress to endorse Trump. Once a moderate, she gained national prominence last year after embarrassing the heads of three top universities about antisemitism on their campuses during a congressional hearing, which prompted two of them to later resign. She has also parroted Trump’s use of the term “hostages” to describe those convicted of crimes on January 6.View image in fullscreenJD VanceAge: 39Occupation: US senator for OhioThe venture capitalist rose to prominence with his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. A one-time Trump critic, he is now an ardent supporter and claims to be fighting for the working class by taking on liberals who “populate the upper echelons of American government, business, media, entertainment and academia”. He echoes the former president’s populist views on immigration and an “America First” foreign policy on Ukraine. Donald Trump Jr told Newsmax in January: “I’d love to see a JD Vance. People who are principally in alignment as well as aggressive.” More

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      Flojaune Cofer: surprise progressive star in California capital’s mayoral race

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      In an election year in which California’s races have the potential to be among the most consequential in the US, one of the most fascinating contests is shaping up somewhere unexpected: Sacramento.The leading candidate to replace the city’s mayor is a progressive public health expert running for elected office for the first time. Flojaune Cofer has pledged to reject corporate donations, cut police budgets in favor of workers trained to deal with issues such as mental health and tackle the city’s spiraling homelessness crisis.Cofer, a 41-year-old epidemiologist who would be the first Black woman elected as Sacramento mayor, won the most votes of any candidate in last month’s primary with an almost 8% lead over her closest competitor.Her rise comes as political commentators have argued Californians, disheartened by crime, are growing frustrated with progressive policies. In March, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the city’s status as a longtime liberal bastion is no more after voters approved a controversial measure that will require welfare recipients to be screened for drugs.Sacramento has struggled with many of the same issues as San Francisco and Los Angeles from a growing unhoused population and unaffordable housing to downtowns that have struggled to rebound after the pandemic. Cofer’s vision for the city, which she hopes will one day serve as a model for dealing with the most pressing problems of the era, has appealed to voters, particularly those in lower-income neighborhoods.“I just feel we are so close to being able to do something powerful,” she said in a recent interview. “We don’t have to live in a city where people don’t have their basic needs met. This can be a city that’s affordable, prosperous, innovative, that’s connected.”Cofer, originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, moved to Sacramento 20 years ago for a public health fellowship and decided to make her home in the city after finding a deep-rooted sense of community. “It reminded me a lot of Pittsburgh, with the tight neighborhoods and rivers flowing through it and being a midsize city in a state with larger cities that often get more of the attention,” she said.She worked for the state’s public health department before becoming a senior public policy director for a public health non-profit. In recent years, Cofer served on several city committees and was a visible presence in Sacramento politics before she decided to run for office.She faced a crowded field with well-known and high-profile candidates, including two former state lawmakers, vying for the role and arguing they were best equipped to address the problems ailing the city.Sacramento has changed considerably in recent years with the redevelopment of its downtown, growing population and a seemingly ever worsening housing shortage.Homelessness has been the defining issue in city politics in recent years. The capital is in the midst of a growing emergency as the number of unhoused residents climbed almost 70% from 2019 to 2022.At least 9,278 people in the county are estimated to be without a home, the majority of whom sleep outdoors or in vehicles. Encampments have developed on levees, near schools and next to busy roads, while advocates have said the city has failed to create meaningful solutions to match the scale of the massive problem.“I think one of the things that we’re already in agreement on is that what we’re doing right now is not working,” she said. The crisis is affecting everyone in the community, she said, from unhoused people who say they are being harassed and targeted without receiving the support they need to business owners who say people don’t want to go downtown.The city can create change “if we do right by the people who are experiencing homelessness, and we actually make sure people have a place to go, instead of just moving them block to block without a clear destination, and we make sure that they have the facilities and things that they need, like showers and bathrooms”, she said.“There’s data to show us that these things can work. Instead, it seems like we are insistent upon trying to do things expediently that don’t work and that make the problem worse.”Cofer has backed greater protections for renters as well as managed encampments. She has also advocated cutting $70m from the police budget and redirecting that funding to hire trained workers who can respond to calls about mental health and homelessness while police prioritize violent crime.She wants to invest in programs from non-profits and community groups that have a track record of reducing violence in the city – pointing to the city’s investment in similar initiatives that led to a two-year period with zero youth homicides before that funding was cut.“That’s the kind of thing that you can feel in a community when you’re not worried about being shot, when your young people aren’t worried about it, when nobody is in the active stage of grieving and hanging up RIP banners on their high schools,” she said.“I’m looking at what will save us money, what will save us lives, and will allow us all to be able to experience safety, not just the performance of safety.”Despite the so-called backlash against progressive policies in other parts of the state, Cofer’s message appears to have won over voters across the city. Her campaign knocked on 30,000 doors, she said, and she engages directly with voters on Twitter, even those who are frequently critical of her.She saw support from all income levels, but particularly in the lowest-income neighborhoods in the city, according to an analysis from the Sacramento Bee.“Our message resonates,” Cofer said. “We’re talking about people who have largely not felt seen, heard and represented. When we change the narrative, invite people into the conversation, they see things differently and they’re hopeful in a different way and they’re reaching out in a different way.”She was endorsed by the Sacramento Bee’s editorial board, which described her agenda as “[in] some ways fiscally conservative and in other ways socially and economically progressive”.“She has the most potential to dramatically transform the Sacramento political landscape in the next four years, and that landscape desperately needs transformation,” the board wrote.In November, Sacramento voters will choose between Cofer and Kevin McCarty, a Democratic state lawmaker. Some political analysts have argued Cofer faces long odds with votes no longer divided among multiple candidates, but Cofer remains hopeful about her candidacy and the progressive movement in the city.“Sacramento is in a different position than some of the other places where we haven’t actually had an opportunity to try these progressive ideas out here,” she said. “We have the benefit of having watched what did and did not work in places in the Bay Area and southern California and to really learn from that.” More

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      New Cold Wars review: China, Russia and Biden’s daunting task

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      Russia bombards Ukraine. Israel and Hamas are locked in a danse macabre. The threat of outright war between Jerusalem and Tehran grows daily. Beijing and Washington snarl. In a moment like this, David Sanger’s latest book, subtitled China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West, is a must-read. Painstakingly researched, New Cold Wars brims with on-record interviews and observations by thinly veiled sources.Officials closest to the president talk with an eye on posterity. The words of the CIA director, Bill Burns, repeatedly appear on the page. Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, surface throughout the book. Sanger, White House and national security correspondent for the New York Times, fuses access, authority and curiosity to deliver an alarming message: US dominance is no longer axiomatic.In the third decade of the 21st century, China and Russia defy Washington, endeavoring to shatter the status quo while reaching for past glories. Vladimir Putin sees himself as the second coming of Peter the Great, “a dictator … consumed by restoring the old Russian empire and addressing old grievances”, in Sanger’s words.The possibility of nuclear war is no longer purely theoretical. “In 2021 Biden, [Gen Mark] Milley, and the new White House national security team discovered that America’s nuclear holiday was over,” Sanger writes. “They were plunging into a new era that was far more complicated than the cold war had ever been.”As Russia’s war on Ukraine faltered, Putin and the Kremlin raised the specter of nuclear deployment against Kyiv.“The threat that Russia might use a nuclear weapon against its non-nuclear-armed foe surfaced and resurfaced every few months,” Sanger recalls.The world was no longer “flat”. Rather, “the other side began to look more like a security threat and less like a lucrative market”. Unfettered free trade and interdependence had yielded prosperity and growth for some but birthed anger and displacement among many. Nafta – the North American Free Trade Agreement – became a figurative four-letter word. In the US, counties that lost jobs to China and Mexico went for Trump in 2016.Biden and the Democrats realized China never was and never would be America’s friend. “‘I think it’s fair to say that just about every assumption across different administrations was wrong,” one of Biden’s “closest advisers” tells Sanger.“‘The internet would bring political liberty. Trade would liberalize the regime’ while creating high-skill jobs for Americans. The list went on. A lot of it was just wishful thinking.”Sanger also captures the despondency that surrounded the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan. A suicide bombing at the Kabul airport left 13 US soldiers and 170 civilians dead. The event still haunts.“The president came into the room shortly thereafter, and at that point Gen [Kenneth] McKenzie informed him of the attack and also the fact that there had been at least several American military casualties, fatalities in the attack,” Burns recalls. “I remember the president just paused for at least 30 seconds or so and put his head down because he was absorbing the sadness of the moment and the sense of loss as well.”Almost three years later, Biden’s political standing has not recovered. “The bitter American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq seemed to underscore the dangers of imperial overreach,” Sanger writes. With Iran on the front burner and the Middle East mired in turmoil, what comes next is unclear.A coda: a recent supplemental review conducted by the Pentagon determined that a sole Isis member carried out the Kabul bombing. The review also found that the attack was tactically unpreventable.Sanger also summarizes a tense exchange between Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, over the Gaza war.“Hadn’t the US firebombed Tokyo during world war two? Netanyahu demanded. “Hadn’t it unleashed two atom bombs? What about the thousands who died in Mosul, as the US sought to wipe out Isis?”On Thursday, the US vetoed a resolution to confer full UN membership on the “State of Palestine”. Hours later, Standard & Poor’s downgraded Israel’s credit rating and Israel retaliated against Iran.New Cold Wars does contain lighter notes. For example, Sanger catches Donald Trump whining to Randall Stephenson, then CEO of AT&T, about his (self-inflicted) problems with women. The 45th president invited Stephenson to the Oval Office, to discuss China and telecommunications. Things did not quite work out that way.“Trump burned up the first 45 minutes of the meeting by riffing on how men got into trouble,” Sanger writes. “It was all about women. Then he went into a long diatribe about Stormy Daniels.”Stephenson later recalled: “It was ‘all part of the same stand-up comedy act’ … and ‘we were left with 15 minutes to talk about Chinese infrastructure’.”Trump wasn’t interested. Stephenson “could see that the president’s mind was elsewhere. ‘This is really boring,’ Trump finally said.”On Thursday, in Trump’s hush-money case in New York, the parties picked a jury. Daniels is slated to be a prosecution witness.Sanger ends his book on a note of nostalgia – and trepidation.“For all the present risks, it is worth remembering that one of the most remarkable and little-discussed accomplishments of the old cold war was that the great powers never escalated their differences into a direct conflict. That is an eight-decade-long streak we cannot afford to break.”
      New Cold Wars is published in the US by Penguin Random House More