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      Civil rights groups condemn senator’s questioning of Arab American witness

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      A congressional hearing on hate crimes drew charges of the bigotry it was meant to address after a Republican senator told the female Muslim head of a thinktank to “hide your head in a bag” and accused her of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.John Kennedy, the GOP senator for Louisiana, drew condemnation from Democrats as well as Muslim, Jewish and civil liberties groups for the remark, aimed at Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, at a hearing staged by the Senate judiciary committee.The proceedings witnessed further disruption when Ted Cruz, the Republican senator for Texas, was interrupted by a spectator protesting the number of Palestinians killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza. “You talk about the fucking Jews and the Israelis. Talk about the 40,000. Talk about all these people. Why is it about antisemitism?” the protester shouted, before being ejected from the chamber.Cruz responded: “We now have a demonstration of antisemitism. We have a demonstration of the hate.”Republicans criticised the theme of Tuesday’s hearing – set by the committee’s Democratic chair, Dick Durbin – for conflating antisemitism with bigotry against Muslims, Arabs and other groups.“The goal was to have a hearing about why it’s so hard to go to school if you’re Jewish,” said Lindsey Graham, the Republican ranking member of the committee and the senator for South Carolina. “If you’re Jewish, you’re being knocked down. You’re being spat on. It is just completely out of control. This is not the hearing we’re getting, so we’ll work with what we’ve got.”A Republican-led subcommittee in the House of Representatives has already staged a series of highly charged hearings focused on the rise of antisemitism on university campuses following Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel last October, which saw around 1,200 people killed and 250 taken hostage, and which triggered a devastating ongoing Israeli military retaliation.The House hearings prompted the resignations of two university heads after they gave responses to questions about their institutions’ policies on calls for genocide against Jews that were deemed insufficiently condemnatory.Graham tried to enter similar territory when he asked Berry whether she believed that it was goal of Hamas, the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah or Iran to destroy the only Jewish state. Berry answered that “these are complicated questions”.That eventually led to Berry’s hostile exchange with Kennedy, who asked her: “You support Hamas, do you not?”“Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support,” Berry replied. “But you asking the executive director of the Arab American Institute that question very much puts the focus on the issue of hate in our country.”When Kennedy followed up by asking whether she supported Hezbollah or Iran, Berry answered: “Again, I find this line of questioning extraordinarily disappointing.”Finishing his interrogation by expressing “disappointment” at Berry’s unwillingness to declare outright opposition to the three named entities, Kennedy declared: “You should hide your head in a bag.”Invited by Durbin to respond to the outburst, Berry said: “It’s regrettable that I, as I sit here, have experienced the very issue that we’re attempting to deal with today. This has been, regrettably, a real disappointment, but very much an indication of the danger to our democratic institutions that we’re in now. And I deeply regret that.”The judiciary committee – with Durbin’s approval – later endorsed Berry’s response by posting it on X, with accompanying commentary reading: “A Senate Republican told an Arab American civil rights leader that ‘you should hide your head in a bag.’ We will not amplify that horrible clip. But we WILL amplify the witness’s powerful response calling it out.”The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) accused Kennedy and other Republicans of treating Berry with hostility.“Maya Berry went before the committee to discuss hate crimes. Both Ms. Berry and the topic should have been treated with the respect and seriousness they deserve,” said Robert McCaw, Cair’s government affairs director. “Instead, Sen Kennedy and others chose to be an example of the bigotry Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims have faced in recent months and years.”Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned what he called a “discriminatory and vitriolic attack” on Kennedy.“To use a hearing about the disturbing rise in anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and antisemitic hate crimes to launch personal and discriminatory attacks on an expert witness they’ve invited to testify is both outrageous and inappropriate,” he said.Sheila Katz, chief executive officer of the National Council of Jewish Women, called Berry’s treatment “heartbreaking”.“[T]he only Muslim witness faced biased questions about supporting Hamas & Hezbollah despite her clear condemnations,” she wrote on X. “This hearing should combat hate, not perpetuate it. The Senate must do better.” More

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      US House will vote on funding bill as shutdown deadline nears

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      The US House will vote Wednesday on a government funding bill that appears doomed to fail, with less than two weeks left to prevent a partial shutdown starting 1 October.The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, announced Tuesday that the chamber would move forward with the vote, despite vocal opposition from members of his own conference. The announcement came one week after that opposition forced Johnson to delay a planned vote on his bill, and the speaker has only faced more resistance in the days since.Donald Trump has increased pressure on Johnson to reject any funding measure unless it includes “election security” provisions, a stance that the former president doubled down on hours before the vote.Johnson’s proposed bill combines a six-month stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, a controversial proposal that would require people to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote.“It’s very, very serious stuff, and that’s why we’re going to do the right thing,” Johnson said Wednesday. “We’re going to responsibly fund the government and we’re going to stop non-citizens voting in elections.”Critics of the Save Act note that it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and they fear such a law would hinder legitimate voters’ efforts to cast their ballots. House Democrats remain overwhelmingly opposed to the proposal, and only a few of them are expected to support Johnson’s bill on Wednesday.“Speaker Johnson must reject the most extreme voices in his party and quick move toward a four corners agreement so we can avoid a costly Republican-led shutdown,” said Pete Aguilar, the House Democratic caucus chair, on Wednesday. “The American people want to see an end to the chaos and division.”Given Republicans’ narrow House majority and Democrats’ widespread opposition to the bill, Johnson can only afford a handful of defections within his conference on Wednesday. But a number of hard-right Republicans have already indicated they will vote against the bill, as many of them have rejected any kind of continuing resolution amid demands for more budget cuts.Hard-right Republicans worry that, once the vote fails on Wednesday, Johnson will turn his attention to passing a more straightforward continuing resolution without the Save Act attached, although the speaker has dismissed those concerns. Asked on Wednesday about his next steps if the bill failed, Johnson deflected.“Let’s see what happens with the bill,” Johnson told reporters. “We’re on the field in the middle of the game. The quarterback is calling the play. We’re going to run the play.”Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Republican congresswoman from Georgia, attacked Johnson’s strategy as a “classic bait and switch that will enrage the base.“Johnson is leading a fake fight that he has no intention of actually fighting,” Greene said Tuesday on X. “I refuse to lie to anyone that this plan will work and it’s already [dead on arrival] this week. Speaker Johnson needs to go to the Democrats, who he has worked with the entire time, to get the votes he needs to do what he is already planning to do.”Trump, who has championed baseless claims of widespread non-citizen voting, has has similarly insisted that the SAVE Act must be congressional Republicans’ top priority before election day.He said Wednesday on his social media platform, Truth Social: “If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form.”But even if Johnson could get his bill across the finish line in the House, the Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has made clear that the proposal faces no chance of passage in the upper chamber. In a floor speech delivered Wednesday, Schumer reiterated that only “bipartisan, bicameral cooperation” would prevent a shutdown next month.“For the last two weeks, Speaker Johnson and House Republican leaders have wasted precious time on a proposal that everyone knows can’t become law. His own Republican Conference cannot unite around his proposal,” Schumer said. “I hope that, once the speaker’s [continuing resolution] fails, he moves on to a strategy that will actually work: bipartisan cooperation. It’s the only thing that has kept the government open every time we have faced a funding deadline.”At a press conference on Tuesday, McConnell issued a severe warning to House Republicans that a shutdown so close to election day could jeopardize the party’s standing with voters and thus cost them seats in Congress.“The one thing you cannot have is a government shutdown,” McConnell said. “It would be, politically, beyond stupid for us to do that.” More

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      Teamsters decline to endorse election candidate – but claim majority backs Trump

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      The Teamsters International, which represents over 1.3 million workers, declined to endorse a candidate ahead of November’s presidential election – but released data suggesting most of its members backed Donald Trump over Kamala Harris.The union’s decision to not make an election endorsement, for the first time in almost three decades, comes in the wake of scrutiny of its president, Sean O’Brien, becoming the first Teamsters leader to address the the Republican national convention in July. John Palmer, vice-president at large at the Teamsters, called the decision to appear at the convention, “unconscionable” given Trump’s record opposing labor unions.Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, met with the Teamsters this week for a roundtable discussion prior to the decision. Trump and Joe Biden attended roundtable with the union earlier this year.“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before big business,” O’Brien said in a statement on Wednesday. “We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries – and to honor our members’ right to strike – but were unable to secure those pledges.”Polling data released by the union ahead of the announcement showed that its members supported Biden over Trump, though more recent surveys conduct by the union revealed membership supported Trump over Harris.The Teamsters National Black Caucus endorsed Harris last month.In response to the non-endorsement, Teamsters against Trump, a grassroots group of Teamster members and retirees, announced they will expand campaigning efforts to elect Vice President Kamala Harris.The California Teamsters also came out on 18 September to endorse Harris in response to the Teamsters International’s lack of endorsement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“When it comes to my vote for President, as a proud Teamster there’s no contest. Donald Trump doesn’t give a damn about the working class. As President, Trump didn’t lift a finger to help Teamsters whose pensions were in danger. Instead, he installed his billionaire friends in the White House and did everything he could to stop workers from organizing into unions,” said James Larkin, a member of Teamsters Local 299 in Detroit, Michigan and member of the group, in a statement. More

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      More than 100 ex-Republican officials call Trump ‘unfit to serve’ and endorse Harris

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      More than 100 Republican former national security and foreign policy officials on Wednesday endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a joint letter, calling Donald Trump “unfit to serve” another term in the White House.Former officials from the presidential administrations of Republicans Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush, George W Bush and Donald Trump, as well as Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama voiced their support for Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in this November’s election. They were joined by some former GOP members of Congress.The letter said: “We believe that the president of the United States must be a principled, serious, and steady leader.”It went on: “We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as president and Donald Trump does not. We therefore support her election to be president.”Among the signees were former defense secretaries William Cohen and Chuck Hagel, who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, respectively. Others include William Webster, a former CIA and FBI director under the Reagan and first Bush administrations, as well as Michael Hayden, a former CIA and NSA director under the younger Bush and the Obama administrations.“We firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump. As president, he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country’s founding document,” the letter added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPointing to Trump’s involvement in the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, his “susceptibility to flattery and manipulation” by authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China, and “chaotic national security decision-making”, the former officials called Trump unfit to serve again as president or in “any office of public trust”.The former officials also pointed to Harris’s support for Nato and Israel, as well as her commitment to signing the bipartisan border security package that Republicans blocked, and her pledge to appoint a Republican to her administration as reasons for their endorsement.Several former Trump officials who signed the letter include Mark Harvey, a former special assistant to the president, and Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security.In recent weeks, a handful of Republicans have crossed party lines to endorse Harris, including the former Virginia representative Barbara Comstock. In an interview with CNN, Comstock explained her decision, saying: “After January 6, after Donald Trump has refused for four years to acknowledge that he lost [the 2020 election], and his threats against democracy, I think it’s important to turn the page.”Other Republicans who have endorsed Harris include Alberto Gonzales, a Republican attorney general who served under the W Bush administration, the former Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger, as well as Trump’s former press secretary Stephanie Grisham and communications director Anthony Scaramucci. More

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      Suspicious packages sent to election offices in 16 US states as threats mount

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      An investigation has been launched after suspicious packages, some containing white powder, were sent to election officials in 16 states, intensifying fears of disruption to the forthcoming US presidential election.Election offices in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Georgia, Missouri, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Indiana, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado and Connecticut all confirmed receiving suspect mail, triggering a joint investigation by the FBI and the US Postal Service (USPS).In one case, a package from a sender purporting to be “the United States Elimination Army” and marked with a return address in Maryland was sent to officials in the Nebraska elections division, according to the Washington Post.In a joint statement issued with the USPS, the FBI said it was collecting packages from what the agencies called “a series of suspicious mailings sent to election officials in several states.“We are also working with our partners to determine how many letters were sent, the individual or individuals responsible for the letters, and the motive behind the letters,” the statement said.The substance in some cases turned out, on inspection by local authorities, to be flour.Dispatch of the packages was disclosed two days after a suspected second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, in two months. It comes amid a febrile and increasingly toxic political atmosphere, punctuated by violence and threats and reports from several fronts of the specter of Russian interference, as well as rising fears among election officials and others that the outcome of the 5 November election could be subject to multiple challenges from committed partisans unwilling to accept the result and ready to intimidate election workers.The National Association of Secretaries of State, a nonpartisan body of public officials responsible for administering elections and voting procedures, said the packages were part of “a disturbing trend”.“With less than 50 days until the … [election] we are seeing a disturbing trend continue – the second assassination attempt of a presidential candidate, and threatening and intimidating actions towards election officials,” the association said. “This must stop, period. Our democracy has no place for political violence, threats or intimidation of any kind.”It is the second time in the past year that suspicious mail has been sent to election officials in multiple states. The latest episode came to light after postal voting – which has been labelled as corrupt by Trump and his supporters, who disparaged the practice to bolster their false accusations that the 2020 election was stolen – has already begun in several states.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe development comes after Microsoft published a report citing evidence of increased evidence of attempted Russian interference in November’s poll. It identified attempts to denigrate the character of Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, with fake videos.In one instance, researchers found that a Russian covert disinformation operation created a video featuring a paid actor who falsely claimed that Harris had inflicted injuries on her in a 2011 hit-and-run incident.The fictitious claim was disseminated by a fake website for a nonexistent San Francisco news outlet named KBSF-TV. The Russian group responsible, which Microsoft called Storm-1516, is described as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm. More

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      ‘Racism is embedded in our society’: how attacks on immigrants in Ohio highlight US disinformation crisis

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      In recent weeks, racist conspiracy theories about immigrants have dominated the election cycle. High-ranking Republicans have doubled down on unsubstantiated rumors about Black and brown migrants, tapping into anxieties that immigrants are responsible for increased crime in US cities.During last week’s presidential debate, Donald Trump echoed a baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” the Republican nominee said.And in response to a question about high costs of living, Trump alluded to viral rumors that members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were taking over a Colorado apartment complex. “You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently.”Both claims are completely untrue.Experts argue that the spread of such disinformation amplifies existing xenophobic beliefs within the American psyche as a means of political gain. “It’s so dangerous when people with a platform are repeating these very fabricated rumors,” said Gladis Ibarra, co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. “These are very much part of a large coordinated strategy to continue to demonize our immigrant neighbors. It’s undermining the values of our nation and historically what people have said this nation stands for.”Misinformation (inaccurate information that is spread unknowingly) and disinformation (false information that is meant to mislead) are widely shared via social media platforms, despite a push for fact checking and accuracy since the 2016 presidential election. The phenomenon of inaccurate news still occurs at alarming rates as people’s online algorithms are largely driven by their political biases, according to Jeffrey Layne Blevins, a journalism professor at the University of Cincinnati.“[The algorithm] is merely designed to keep users engaged,” Blevins said, referring to metrics such as how long a person looks at content or shares it in their feed. “And what tends to engage most people? Things that outrage them or piss them off.”Blevins added that rightwing figures share disinformation in hopes of “outraging people on the political right”, especially during an election cycle. Such content is accepted as truth by those online who already share rightwing beliefs themselves. “It creates an echo chamber of sorts,” he said. “When public figures who share your political beliefs post content like this – people are more likely to accept it at face value.”Republicans at all levels of government have linked immigrants to instances of violent crime, including drug smuggling and assault. During his campaign for the 2016 presidential election, Trump claimed Mexicans crossing the US southern border were “rapists”, “bringing drugs, bringing crime”. He began the construction of a wall along the border – among other anti-immigrant policies – to deter “large sacks of drugs [from being thrown] over”. During this election cycle, Trump has said that undocumented people are “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”, despite immigrants being significantly less likely to commit crimes than US-born citizens.The demonization of immigrants is a repeated move by lawmakers to secure votes, said Germán Cadenas, an associate professor at Rutgers University who specializes in the psychology of immigration. “Immigration is really not as divisive as some politicians are trying to make it out to be,” he said, as 64% of Americans believe immigration is beneficial for the country. “It’s a tactic that has been used historically to mobilize voters who feel threatened.”For centuries, Cadenas said, politicians built policy around the stereotype that immigrants are a “threat” to US identity and safety. Anti-immigration laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the 1924 Immigration Act were among the first to curtail US immigration based on nationality. The Chinese Exclusion Act came largely after high-ranking union members warned of a “Chinese invasion” that would steal white, American jobs. Similarly, US senators advised their fellow legislators to “shut the door” on immigrants as a migrating population would “encroach upon the reserve and virgin resources” of the US, before the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act.Fast forward to the early 2000s, as states such as Arizona passed laws allowing local law enforcement to target anyone they believed was in the country without documentation. Arizona Republicans called arriving undocumented people an “invasion that must be stopped” and a “national security threat”, a political tactic to encourage support of the controversial bill.Politicians also attempt to etch out a voting bloc by passing anti-immigrant policies. “Historically, these stereotypes, these falsehoods, have [then] been used to mobilize voters to elect policymakers who are going to make anti-immigrant laws and policies.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven as most Americans have a positive view of immigration, Cadenas said: “Racism and xenophobia are deeply embedded in our society and our psychology.” A study by Cadenas and Elizabeth Kiehne found that white US adults are most susceptible to the core stereotype of Latino immigrants being a threat.“The anti-immigrant rhetoric is less about convincing than about amplifying and strengthening beliefs that are already held,” Cadenas said. “It takes large efforts to unlearn these problematic beliefs and biases.”Disinformation about immigrants has consequences, Cadenas and Ibarra said. “Across the nation, a number of states have an ‘anti-immigrant policy climate’,” Cadenas said, meaning those states pass laws that make the lives of immigrants harder.“A small minority of folks who are threatened by immigration are electing policymakers who are crafting policies that are negative towards immigrants,” he added “These policies trickle down to housing. They trickle down to the way that authorities deal with immigration at the local level. These policies trickle down to healthcare and the kinds of access to health and mental health that immigrants have.”In Aurora, Venezuelan residents of the aforementioned apartment complex have said they feel unsafe after the rumors of a gang takeover and they fear being stereotyped as criminals.Springfield has received more than 33 bomb threats since Trump’s statements at the debate. Its city hall was evacuated, along with some local schools. Springfield hospitals are also on alert, and Haitian immigrants say they have received several threats. “People that are hardworking, contributing to our communities, are not the danger, Ibarra said. “The danger is all of these violent ideologies that are being fueled by the people that repeat these lies, by the people that go on social media and on TV and continue to repeat them.” More

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      JD Vance’s obsession with cats is bizarre. He needs to stop spreading fake mews | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Want to know the secret to winning elections and influencing people? Cat memes. This is according to JD Vance, who, you might have noticed, has a bizarre fixation with felines. Donald Trump’s running mate – a man who might soon become one of the most powerful people in the world – has been widely ridiculed and condemned for his comments about “childless cat ladies”. But instead of trying to move the news cycle on from cat-related matters, he seems to have doubled down on them. Vance is now in the headlines for spreading outrageous, and wildly racist, false rumours about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Trump amplified those rumours during his debate with Kamala Harris last week.These accusations, which partly stemmed from a Facebook post some random woman wrote (and has now apologised for) about a friend of a neighbour losing a cat, have wreaked havoc in Springfield. There have been bomb threats against local hospitals and Haitian community members are reportedly terrified. We all know Trump doesn’t have a conscience – but is Vance even the slightest bit contrite?Of course not. Vance isn’t just standing by the debunked claims – he is defending them while also seemingly admitting to lying. During an interview on CNN on Sunday, he claimed he has evidence to back up the accusations and insisted he is doing people a public service. “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” Vance said. He added: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”I’m all for Vance creating stories – just not while running for high office. Please, JD, quit politics and go back to writing! You clearly have a knack for fiction. Or, since you are so obsessed with children, why not spend more time with your own kids and tell them a bedtime story or two? Just, you know, try to stick to unicorns and mermaids rather than people eating cats. And please, for the love of dogs, stop spreading fake mews. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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      AOC calls the US Green party ‘not serious’ – can it be more than a ‘spoiler’ in the election?

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      American politics often has wild deviations from the norms of other major democracies and one of the most striking differences is set to be on display in this year’s election – the performance of its domestic Green party.There are elected Greens at the national level in the UK, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany and Australia, sometimes helping form governments, and yet the US Green party has only ever had a handful of state-level representatives (it currently has none) and has never had a federal election winner.Of about 500,000 elected positions in the US, from school boards and township supervisors to the presidency, the Green party holds just 149. There’s little indication there will be an influx of left-leaning Greens in November’s elections, which will include local and state polls, as well as the headline presidential race in which Jill Stein is the party’s nominee for a third time.“It’s been a story of complete failure,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia who argued the most consequential Green party impact has been as “spoilers” helping Republicans in close elections, such as Ralph Nader’s campaign in 2000 and Stein’s in 2016. There’s a small chance such a scenario could play out again in this year’s tight contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. One poll this month had Stein leading Harris among Muslim-American voters in three key swing states of Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin, Middle East Eye reported.“Normally the Greens aren’t important but they were in 2016, they cost Hillary Clinton a couple of blue wall states, and they were in 2000,” Sabato said. “Why vote for them when Democrats are also concerned about climate change? All you’re doing is helping Republicans. Without them we might not have had the Iraq invasion, we might not have had Donald Trump.”Others are more sympathetic, pointing to the winner-takes-all nature of US politics and the well-funded machinery of the two-party system that makes it hard for third parties, including the Green party and the Libertarian party, to break through. Notably, however, the UK’s Green party did win four seats in first-past-the-post Westminster elections in July.“It is difficult for small parties to make way in the United States because of the undemocratic electoral system,” said Christine Milne, former leader of the Australian Greens, which was in coalition with the ruling center-left Labor party between 2010 and 2013.“Proportional representation systems provide opportunities for small parties to be elected which has been key to the growth of the Greens around the world.”Under Stein, the US Green party has complained of a duopoly but aimed most of its attacks at Democrats, accusing the party of supporting a genocide in Gaza and holding rallies with signs reading “Abandon Harris”.“The simple fact is there is very little policy daylight between these two candidates,” Stein said following last week’s debate between Trump and Harris. Stein added that Harris “chooses the softer approach to fascism of capitulating to endless war and corporate rule in exchange for half a billion in campaign contributions.“What we saw on Tuesday [last week] were two candidates striving to outbid the other’s promises to push us towards a new world war and accelerate the climate emergency.”Such a stance has dismayed some who sought to build the Green party as an alternative to the two major parties. “To me this election is the choice between fascism and keeping democracy alive so it’s almost unfathomable to me that people can think the parties are the same,” said Ted Glick, a progressive activist who was a long-standing Green party member and ran as a Senate candidate for the party in New Jersey.“It’s scary to see so many people support Donald Trump and it’s hard to understand how someone as smart as Jill Stein can think this guy is the same as Kamala Harris.”Glick said he left the Green party in 2017 after becoming convinced the party needed to grow its base between presidential elections by focusing on states that are ‘safe’ for either of the two major parties, rather than battleground states. He said he was “shocked” when Stein said those who sought alliances with other progressives and independents, such as Bernie Sanders, were “sheepdogs for the duopoly”.“Bernie Sanders’s campaign more than anything else points the way to how we get strong, progressive alternatives in the US,” Glick said.“But the Green party became very narrow and rigid, a tiny party of true believers focused on ideological purity above all else. Back in 2004 there were 225 Green party members in elected office, now it’s 143 (the Green party has said it is 149). It’s a pretty dismal record for 20 years of existence.”Rather than ally with the Democratic left wing, Stein has instead been involved in a recent battle with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive Democratic congresswoman from New York. “All you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you’re just showing up once every four years to do that, you’re not serious,” Ocasio-Cortez posted on Instagram last month. “To me, it does not read as authentic. It reads as predatory.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStein has responded by accusing Ocasio-Cortez of supporting genocide in Gaza and for “taking” a Green party policy in the Green New Deal, a resolution supported by some Democrats, formerly including Harris, for a massive investment in clean energy, jobs and healthcare. “Maybe it’s time to watch these parties die,” Stein, a doctor who has run for president in 2012, 2016 and now 2024, posted on X.This approach, as well as a comparative lack of focus on environmental issues – the US Green party has attacked the Inflation Reduction Act, a huge climate bill with elements of the Green New Deal that was passed by Democrats in 2022, as “relatively small” and a “tradeoff” with fossil fuel interests – and opposition to Nato is unusual among overseas counterparts.“The US Green party is attempting to go after the subset of voters on the left who don’t like the Democrats,” said Carl Roberts, a spokesperson at the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, affiliated with a German Green party that has been in the German federal parliament consistently since 1983 and currently supplies the country’s vice-chancellor and foreign minister.“I think this is quite out of step with other Green parties, who always center environmental concerns in their messaging and campaigns as one of their highest priorities,” Roberts said, adding, however, that “systemic” issues with the US political landscape are largely the cause of this difference.A US Green party spokesperson said the party had been “dismayed” by European Green parties’ “silence and complicity” over Israel and Gaza and that these parties have “relied too much on US corporate news media and seem to have swallowed falsehoods like the belief that Republicans are right and Democrats are left”.Democrats and Republicans do differ on climate, he said, but the Biden administration has taken “modest and inadequate measures” to deal with the crisis and it is “reckless and irresponsible to allow an expansion of drilling in the midst of a worsening global climate emergency”.“When Greens get elected to Congress some day, they’ll work with progressives like AOC and others on shared legislative agenda,” the spokesperson said. “The Green party didn’t pick an election-year fight with AOC, the reverse is what happened.”He added the solution to “spoiler” allegations would be ranked-choice voting, which has been mostly opposed by the main two parties.So, will Stein prove a factor in this November’s election? The Green party candidate, running with Butch Ware, is not on the ballot in around a dozen states and is polling at around 1% of the vote, a small but potentially significant total should certain swing states have razor-thin margins.“I doubt they will have an impact but nobody expected Jill Stein to do what she did in 2016, or for Trump to win,” said Sabato. “It was a perfect storm, and the storm is still raging.”Glick hopes his former party isn’t decisive in November. “Hopefully there will be a major drop off in their support when it comes to pulling the lever and preventing Trump getting back into office,” he said. “I hope they see the error of their ways. We need progressive alternative to the Democrats and Republicans, but this isn’t the way you do it.” More