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      ‘I’m trying to make it’: Jimmy Carter’s goal is to vote for Kamala Harris

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      Nearing his 100th birthday and in hospice care since February 2023, the former president Jimmy Carter reportedly has one goal: voting for Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.“I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Carter told his son Chip this week, as his grandson Jason Carter recounted to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Harris, Carter’s fellow Democrat, will face the Republican Trump for the presidency on 5 November. Carter’s 100th birthday will fall on 1 October.A Democrat who was in the White House from 1977 to 1981, Carter is the oldest living president. In ill health for several years, his family announced that he entered hospice care on 18 February 2023. Many took that announcement to mean Carter was near the end of his life.And the next month, the current president, Joe Biden, said he had been asked to deliver Carter’s eulogy.Biden also said Carter’s doctors had “found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated because they found a breakthrough”.In October 2023, as the White House celebrated Carter’s 99th birthday, the former Democratic National Committee chairperson Donna Brazile said the former Georgia governor was “a towering, old southern oak … as good as they come and tough as they come”.The following month, Carter’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, died aged 96. The couple, who campaigned for human rights and mental health reform, were married for 77 years, through Jimmy Carter’s time in the US navy, in Georgia state politics, in the White House and in a post-presidency widely regarded as one of the most productive.In 2002, Carter was awarded the Nobel peace prize, “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.In 2021, he told the Associated Press the secret to a long life was “to marry the right person”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Saturday, the Journal-Constitution said Jason Carter said his grandfather had in recent days been “more alert and interested in politics and the war in Gaza”, the latter a tricky issue for Harris to navigate, not least as she nears a decision on her vice-presidential pick.Jason Carter said his grandfather a few days ago voiced his wish to vote for Harris, who has served as Biden’s vice-president. Jimmy Carter expressed his support for Harris when Chip Carter asked if he was trying to make it to 100.As the Journal-Constitution noted, early voting in Georgia begins on 15 October – two weeks past the former president’s centenarian birthday. More

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      ‘Soul-crushing’: US families of those left out of Russia prisoner swap dispirited

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      As many as 20 US citizens were left out of Thursday’s complex, multi-country prisoner swap with western American allies and Russia, leading those excluded from the deal and their families to express deep disappointment.Among those left behind are Marc Fogel, a US high school teacher from Pennsylvania convicted of smuggling 17 grams of marijuana into Russia and sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2022.Fogel’s name had been included in prisoner swap discussions but his family did not know if he was included by US state department officials. A call from Fogel himself informed them he was not a part of the deal.Being excluded, he told his family, was “soul crushing”, according to the Wall Street Journal.Pennsylvania US senator Bob Casey said that while the prisoner swap was good news for Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, “Marc Fogel is still sitting in a Russian prison”.Casey asked the Joe Biden White House to also prioritize Fogel’s release. “While Marc’s name may not be in the news every day, he is no less deserving of a reunion with his family,” the senator said. “This is a difficult day for Marc and his family.”The choices of who to prioritize in prisoner swap deals is uniquely sensitive, at times depending on a US-determined designation of “wrongfully detained”, which Fogel is not. At other times, a sometimes brutal – but often unstated – calculus about political value to the US becomes a factor.After Thursday’s releases, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, strode along the red carpet between two rows of rifle-toting honor guards to warmly greet intelligence operatives freed by the deal.“The Motherland hasn’t forgotten about you for a minute,” Putin said, embracing each of them after they walked down the steps of the jetliner that ferried them home, according to the Associated Press.In Washington, Biden and the vice-president Kamala Harris greeted the three freed US prisoners. To that point, the family of Paul Whelan has expressed disappointment that he had remained a Russian prisoner while Brittney Griner, the champion US basketball player, had returned home two years earlier in exchange for the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.A US state department spokesperson said that American diplomats were “not going to stop working” to free citizens “that continue to be wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world”.Those still held in Russia are believed to also include Andre Khachatoorian, arrested during a Moscow layover with a licensed, secured firearm in his checked luggage. Khachatoorian’s fiancée said she was “shocked” he was not freed.Ksenia Karelina – a dual US-Russian citizen who worked at a beauty spa in Los Angeles’ Beverly Hills – was arrested and charged with treason while visiting her family in February. Karelina had allegedly made a small financial donation to a humanitarian organization that Russian authorities say is connected to Ukraine’s military.Her boyfriend, Chris Van Heerden, told the Journal that he didn’t know if the 16-prisoner trade meant more exchanges would follow or “that her trial came too late and she was left behind”.Another US citizen, David Barnes, travelled to Moscow while in a custody battle with his Russian ex-wife. He was arrested in 2021 and sentenced to 21 years on allegations that he molested the couple’s children while the family lived in Texas.“I don’t really know what to tell him,” his sister Carol Barnes said to the Journal. “How do I explain that his government just left him behind?” More

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      Kyle Rittenhouse reverses course on not endorsing Trump after online pile-on

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      Acquitted killer Kyle Rittenhouse announced he would not be supporting Donald Trump’s attempt to return to the White House – but ultimately ended up politically endorsing him anyway after being inundated with vitriolic messages from the former president’s followers.The flip-flop by Rittenhouse – who has fashioned himself as a gun rights activist after shooting two people to death in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during racial justice protests there in 2020 – followed an initial pledge to write in former congressman Ron Paul as his choice on November’s presidential election ballot.In a video posted on the social media platform X, Rittenhouse argued that Trump had a “bad” record with respect to gun rights and explained he would instead back Paul.The 21-year-old then spent the next several hours grappling with ire directed at him by proponents of Trump’s “Make America great again” (Maga) movement, who embraced Rittenhouse as a hero after the shootings in Kenosha and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his successful criminal defense. Among other insults, they taunted him with prison rape jokes and accused him of betraying Trump less than three years after the Republican met with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort and declared Rittenhouse “really a nice young man”.One of the more typical comments responding to Rittenhouse’s temporary endorsement of Paul was from political commentator Joey Mannarino, who wrote on X: “If not for Maga, you would be rotting in a prison bending over for Bubba … Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!”Another X user added: “I wish they would’ve let you go to prison so you could be the bitch you actually are.”By Friday afternoon, Rittenhouse had gone back on X and wrote that he was “100% behind Donald Trump and [would] encourage every gun owner to join me in helping send him back to the White House”.“Over the past 12 hours, I’ve had a series of productive conversations with members of the Trump’s team, and I am confident he will be the strong ally gun owners need to defend our … rights,” Rittenhouse also said. “My comments made last night were ill-informed and unproductive.”Some commentators met the quick about-face with equally swift mockery.“You stand for absolutely nothing and have zero backbone,” read one reply. Another said: “This time try not to murder anyone while you’re backpedaling.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRittenhouse was 17 when he traveled 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois, as protests erupted after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, who is Black.Roaming Kenosha with other armed men claiming to be self-appointed security guards, Rittenhouse used a rifle to fatally shoot 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, then 26. He also injured Gage Grosskreutz, then 27, and was charged with five felonies, including first-degree intentional homicide.Rittenhouse contended to the jury which heard his case that he carried out the shootings in self-defense and had acted justifiably. At the end of a tumultuous trial, jurors found him not guilty of all charges against him, a verdict hailed by far-right politicians and pundits but decried by civil rights activists. More

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      Who is Tim Walz, the governor who could be Harris’s vice-presidential pick?

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      Minnesota’s governor captured the internet’s attention and swayed Democrats’ messaging by succinctly summing up how he views Republicans: they’re weird.Clips of Tim Walz have spread widely, cementing him as a national voice for Kamala Harris’s campaign – and a potential pick to run alongside her as vice-president.It’s not just the “weird” of it all: he’s been able to run through a list of what Democrats want, and what he’s done as governor during a banner time for Democrats in his state, that articulates to voters what they would be voting for, not just the danger of what they’re voting against. He speaks plainly and pragmatically, showing the commonsense policies his party stands for.Walz, 60, was born and raised in small-town Nebraska. He became a teacher, first in China, then in Nebraska and finally in Mankato, Minnesota, where he taught geography and coached the high school football team. He was the faculty adviser for the school’s first gay-straight alliance chapter in 1999, long before Democrats nationally stood for gay rights. He also served in the army national guard for 24 years, enlisting at age 17, a role that took him around the country and on a deployment to Europe. And like JD Vance, Walz has a penchant for Diet Mountain Dew.He had a whole life before politics.“Frankly, a lot of politicians are just not normal people,” said David Hogg, a gun control advocate and a Walz fan. “They just don’t know how to talk to normal people.”He comes across as what he is: a straight-talking teacher, America’s youth football coach. He’s “right out of central casting as the way you think of Minnesota governor would be like,” said Michael Brodkorb, the former deputy chair of the Minnesota Republican party.Walz first ran for office in 2006 in a Republican-leaning congressional district, knocking off the incumbent in an upset. He kept the district until 2016, dispatching Republicans over and over. In 2018, he ran for governor and won, then defended the seat successfully in 2022.He’s now the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, a perch that has given him a national profile in the past year as he has stumped first for Biden and now Harris. His appearances in recent weeks have taken off, putting his name on the VP shortlist and his tone center stage for Democrats.In Minnesota, Democrats secured a narrow government trifecta in 2022, taking both chambers of the legislature and the governorship, and Walz and his colleagues in the legislature got to work, delivering a laundry-list of progressive policy wins such as free school meals, abortion protections, gun restrictions and legal marijuana.If Democrats want to see what their party governing would look like, Minnesota is the example. But maybe the policies would be too liberal for the national stage, one TV interviewer posed to Walz.“What a monster! Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn and women are making their own healthcare decisions,” Walz said jokingly.Hogg pointed to a speech Walz gave when Trump came to Minnesota last week, in which Walz was dressed down – like a midwestern dad – in a camo hat and a T-shirt, as an example of how he’s down-to-earth. The outfit caught attention online for not looking like a politician’s attempt to look like a regular person, but just like Walz’s regular clothes. “He might run for Vice President or he might clean the garage. It’s the weekend, anything can happen,” one tweet quipped.“Tim’s just a freaking down-home guy,” said Tim Ryan, a former Democratic US representative from Ohio who worked with Walz in Congress and worked out alongside him in the House gym.Ryan called to mind a recent clip in which Walz mentioned that Minnesota ranked in the top three for happiest states in the nation. “Isn’t that really the goal here? For some joy? When he mentioned that I was like, dang man, that’s really good. That’s really good, because it gets us out of the political space and into the human being space.”It’s part of a vibe shift Democrats are feeling since Biden announced he wouldn’t seek re-election. There’s less focus on the dire consequences of electing Trump again – though those consequences are certainly still part of the motivation – and more on detailing what Democrats want to do if they win.“Fear and anger is such a low vibration,” Ryan said. “It’s just a negative vibration. And I think what Tim talked about, like the hope of things to come, and the hope of what we’ve actually accomplished, and we can do more. That’s optimistic, that’s a high vibration.”Ryan is on text chains with former members who served with Walz and are excited to see him in the spotlight and are rooting for him to be tapped as vice-president, but will be proud of him either way. House Democrats are also reportedly advocating for him to be Harris’s pick.Former US senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota said Walz’s plainspokenness works because it’s real. Contrast that with Trump’s VP pick: “There’s an inauthenticity about JD Vance that is the antithesis of what Tim Walz is. Tim is the most authentically kind of normal person you’re going to meet, and he has a background that is uniquely situated in these times, especially for people in my part of the country.”Heitkamp and Walz got to know each other flying back and forth between DC and the upper midwest. She felt an instant recognition of the kind of person he was that she thinks translates throughout the midwest.“I met Tim Walz and I knew Tim Walz,” she said. “I didn’t have to say, what’s this guy all about and what’s his agenda? I knew his agenda, because I had high school teachers just like him, who cared about their students and cared about their community.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionProgressives in Minnesota, who have at times clashed with Walz on policy, are still rooting for him, too. Elianne Farhat, the executive director of TakeAction MN, said she and her organization had disagreed deeply with Walz over the years, but that he was a person who will move and change his position based on feedback. He evolves.She and others pointed to his position on guns. Walz is a gun owner and a hunter who previously received endorsements and donations from the National Rifle Association and had an A rating from the group. But he shifted: he gave donations from the group to charity after the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, and he supported an assault weapons ban after the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida. While governor, he has signed bills into law that restrict guns. He now has an F rating from the NRA.“We’re not electing our saviors. We’re not electing perfect people. We’re electing people who we can make hard decisions with, we can negotiate with, and who are serious about getting things done for people. And Governor Walz has shown that pretty strongly the last couple years as governor of Minnesota,” Farhat said.The biggest drawback for Walz – and a perk for other picks on the shortlist, such as the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro – is his geography. Minnesota is not a swing state, though Trump has said he thinks he can win it. Joe Biden being replaced on the top of the ticket probably takes the state out of contention, though.Republicans will also surely bring up the 2020 protests after George Floyd’s murder by police, tying Walz, who was governor at the time, to the aftermath.Still, his background as a teacher and a veteran from a congressional district that typically voted for Republicans helps make his case. “I mean, if you want the blue wall, Tim Walz is the blue wall,” Hogg said.And Walz can win. His electoral record shows his ability to bring in coalitions of voters, from progressives to moderate Republicans, Brodkorb said. Then after winning, he has shown he knows how to get results.“It is a part of his political DNA to be able to soften up his critics, win over people and win in Republican areas,” Brodkorb said.Regardless of whether Walz is on the ticket, his messaging shift will continue. “Weird” is sticking around. The Harris campaign has used it. “It’s really gotten under the Republicans’ skin, which is, I think, a sign as to how effective it is,” Brodkorb said.Trump himself responded to the charge. “Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not.”“No one called Trump weird until Tim Walz did,” Heitkamp said. “And it resonated for a reason, because he is weird. I mean, anyone who talks about Hannibal Lecter, that’s not normal behavior. I think that there’s been people who have tried to intellectualize Donald Trump, and Tim just cut through it all and said, ‘This guy’s not normal. This is weird.’”While Trump surrogates often spend their time “doing cleanup on aisle five”, Walz can be out talking to voters about what he’s accomplished in Minnesota and what Democrats envision for the country, Heitkamp said. It’s a message that resonates with the base, but also swing voters who struggle with childcare costs and tuition, two of the issues Walz has tackled in his state.“Being anti-Trump can’t be what the Democratic message is,” she said. “The Democratic message has to be about how we will govern differently from Republicans.”If Walz isn’t the VP pick, he’ll stay on the campaign trail boosting Harris. Ryan said they should put him on a bus from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee, crisscrossing the rust belt, talking to voters.“He’s a guy that I think we need to mimic, whether he’s the VP or not. He’s kind of the north star for us,” Ryan said. More

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      Pro-Israel groups have set sights on unseating this progressive lawmaker. Will they succeed?

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      Cori Bush was knocking on doors along Arsenal Street in southern St Louis where voters were not shy of asking hard questions of Missouri’s first Black female member of Congress. But none of them raised the one issue that looms over her re-election race like a spectre.Bush might have been expected to cruise to victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for Missouri’s first congressional district in St Louis as she did two years ago. But her path to re-election veered into rough territory after she characterised Israel’s assault on Gaza, following the 7 October Hamas attack, as a “collective punishment” of Palestinians and called for a ceasefire.“I strongly condemn Hamas & their appalling violations of human rights,” she wrote, “but violations of human rights don’t justify more human rights violations in retaliation.”Some Jewish and pro-Israel groups said Bush was denying Israel the right to defend itself and siding with terrorists. A coalition of St Louis Jewish organisations accused her of “intentionally fuelling antisemitism”.View image in fullscreenBush introduced a resolution calling for a ceasefire on 16 October. Within days, the St Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell announced he was dropping out of a race against a Republican for one of Missouri’s seats in the US Senate to challenge Bush for the Democratic nomination in the St Louis congressional district. It was swiftly apparent that Bell, who has firmly supported Israel’s actions, had the support of the US’s major pro-Israel groups which have now poured millions of dollars into trying to make him the Democratic candidate in one of the party’s safest congressional seats.Leading the way is the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). Its campaign funding arm, the United Democracy Project (UDP), has so far spent $8.5m to defeat Bush, accounting for more than 55% of all spending on the race outside of the campaigns themselves. Much of the UDP’s money comes from billionaires who fund Republicans in other races, including some who have given to Donald Trump’s campaign.In total, outside groups have spent more than $12m to support Bell as opposed to $3m for Bush.The UDP has committed more money in only one other primary contest so far this year: to defeat the New York congressman Jamaal Bowman, another member of the Squad of leftwing Democrats and outspoken critic of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which has claimed nearly 40,000 Palestinian lives, mostly civilians.UDP advertising has flooded St Louis airwaves and mailboxes but, as in other congressional races targeted by pro-Israel groups, almost none of it mentions the Gaza war or Bush’s call for a ceasefire, which is supported by a majority of Americans. Instead, the ads go after her on unrelated issues. They may be working.‘It’s very fishy’When Peggy Hoelting answered her door on Arsenal street, she recognised Bush and greeted her warmly. But Hoelting swiftly said she had some questions, and began regurgitating criticisms of the congresswoman’s voting record that have been the target of UDP ads that paint Bush as too leftwing, and claim she is voting against the interests of her constituents.Hoelting asked about Bush’s vote against Joe Biden’s trillion-dollar infrastructure bill in 2021, a focus of the UDP messaging blitz. Bush explained that it was a parliamentary manoeuvre to protect parallel legislation, the Build Back Better Act, that included help for families, expanded public healthcare and green energy jobs. She said she knew the infrastructure act was going to pass anyway but the vote has come back to haunt her.After Bush moved up the street, Hoelting told the Guardian her questions were prompted by UDP advertising landing at her door.“We get probably five or six ads in the mail every day. I sit down and look at them all. A lot of them are talking about her voting against Biden’s infrastructure bill. I don’t understand that so I wanted to hear what she had to say,” she said.Hoelting said she wasn’t wholly persuaded by Bush’s explanation but was keeping an open mind. She was unaware of Bush’s position on Gaza but, when it was explained to her, said that would be a reason to vote for her.“Absolutely I want a ceasefire in Gaza,” said Hoelting.View image in fullscreenBush has also been the target of ads for supporting the “defund the police” campaign. The representative said she wants to see money now spent on militarised vehicles and equipment which belong in war zones instead used to fund social workers and other services that would assist the police in dealing with people with mental health and addiction issues.Bush acknowledged that the UDP ads were having an impact.“The one thing that people ask me questions about is the infrastructure vote. There’s a lot of people who say, ‘tell me about the infrastructure bill, I just want to understand what happened’. So then I explain why I voted the way I voted,” she said.Bush said that most voters accept her reasoning but it leaves some undecided. In contrast, she said her position on Gaza almost never gets brought up on the doorstep.“The only time it has come up is when people have said to me, ‘thank you’,” she said.This leaves Bush all the more frustrated by the influence on the campaign of pro-Israel lobby money, much of which comes from billionaires who also donate to Republicans.The UDP’s single largest donor for the 2024 elections so far is Jan Koum, the billionaire founder of WhatsApp who has given $5m. Koum is also a major funder of a group that supports Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and rightwing Zionist organisations.Other major funding has come from a long list of Republican donors including the billionaire hedge fund founders Jonathon Jacobson, Paul Singer and Bernard Marcus, the founder of Home Depot, all of whom are outspoken supporters of Israel.Bush accused the UDP of deceit because none of its advertising makes clear Aipac’s involvement or reference to Israel. She said Wesley Bell, her challenger, was complicit because, although legally his campaign cannot coordinate with the UDP or other outside groups, he has adopted their messaging.“It is confusing people. They’re wondering why Wesley Bell is allowing himself to be bankrolled by Republicans? People are asking, ‘is he a really Democrat?’ Some feel betrayed because he is allowing for Republicans to decide who is going to be their next representative. That benefits Republicans and that is shameful,” she said.Bush has called Bell “a faux-progressive, former Republican campaign operative” because he managed the 2006 congressional campaign of Mark Byrne, a Republican running for the seat Bush now holds. Bell put Byrne’s opposition to abortion to the fore of that ultimately unsuccessful campaign. Bell has played down the association by saying he was helping out a longtime friend.Bell has also denied being a stalking horse for pro-Israel groups. He claimed to have abandoned the race to unseat Missouri’s firebrand Republican Senator, Josh Hawley, because he kept hearing from Democrats that they were unhappy with Bush and wanted him in the US House of Representatives speaking for St Louis.Still, the timing of his switch has fuelled suspicions.Earlier this week, the St Louis television station KDSK revealed a recording of a phone conversation made a year ago between the now-rival candidates in which Bell assured Bush he would not challenge her.View image in fullscreen“I’m telling you on my word, I am not running against you. That is not happening,” he said.But days after the Hamas attack on Israel, Bell dropped out of the race against Hawley and announced he would run against Bush instead.Bell’s campaign manager, Jordan Sanders, told KDSK that when he made the statement, “Bell had no intentions to run against Cori Bush.”“He switched races and decided to run against her after being encouraged by stakeholders at the local, statewide and national level,” he aid.In downtown St Louis, Ernest Bradley, a former student development counsellor at a regional university, said he was not aware of Bush’s position on Gaza or the involvement of hardline pro-Israel groups in the election. But he was unhappy to see one Black candidate challenge another.“I respect Wesley but I think it’s bullshit. I think some money came his way and said to go this other way. I truly do. So when I hear that he’s getting money from the Republicans I wonder what’s really going on,” said Bradley.“I’m going to vote for Bush because it’s very fishy.”With Bush looking vulnerable, others have weighed in. The second largest spender in support of Bell after UDP is Fairshake, a group funded in good part by rightwing billionaires who also back Trump, such as Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and the Winklevoss twins. Fairshake has spent more than $1m to defeat Bush.View image in fullscreenBush has also come under scrutiny for employing her husband to do security work, which she has defended as legal and not funded by her congressional office. The justice department said it was looking into the issue but a congressional ethics investigation concluded that the payments were legitimate.Bush’s largest backer is Justice Democrats which has spent more than $1.8m in support of her campaign with messages telling voters that Bell is backed by Aipac and Republican money, and accusing him of misusing public funds.Bush also has some important endorsements, including that of the father of Michael Brown, whose death at 18 at the hands of a Ferguson police officer 10 years ago fired up the Black Lives Matter movement.Ferguson is part of the first congressional district, and Bush emerged as an organiser of social justice campaigns there after Brown’s death. Bell was voted on to Ferguson city council on the back of the protests. Later he was elected county prosecutor on a pledge to put the white officer responsible for Brown’s death on trial.But that never happened. Now, Brown’s father, Michael Sr, is appearing in a campaign ad for Bush claiming that Bell failed the family.“I feel like he lied to us. He never brought charges against the killer. He never walked the streets of Ferguson with me. He failed to reform the office. He used my family for power and now, he’s trying to sell out St Louis. He doesn’t care about us,” Brown said in the ad.‘More than half of American Jews support a ceasefire’What little opinion polling there is no clear sign of who will win, but Bush acknowledges she has a fight on her hands – one that is also dividing St Louis’s Jewish population.In early July, a group of St Louis rabbis and cantors wrote to a local newspaper, the STL Jewish Light, describing Bush as “one of Israel’s most unashamed enemies”. The letter called on Jewish voters to turn out in support of Bell and pointed to Bowman’s defeat in New York as the “tested roadmap to follow”. It said that the turnout of Jewish voters, who account for about 3% of the population in the district, but is probably a higher proportion of those who vote, could decide the race.View image in fullscreen“The national pro-Israel community is engaged in this race, but they aren’t casting ballots on August 6. Only our community can do that,” the letter said.A new ostensibly non-partisan group, St Louis Votes, is working to get out the Jewish vote. Although its charitable status precludes it from backing a candidate, its organisers include people who worked to unseat Bowman. The group’s website urges Jews to vote because “antisemitism is on the ballot”.A group called Progressive Jews for St Louis has pushed back against the rabbis’ letter by accusing them of misrepresenting Bush’s record.“What bothers these rabbis is that Cori Bush’s concern extends to Palestinians also. She called for a ceasefire early because she wants to save lives,” the group said in response.Hannah Rosenthal, a member of Progressive Jews for St Louis, has been canvassing for Bush in Jewish neighbourhoods.“The institutional Jewish community, mainstream institutions, are trying to create this message that Cori’s antisemitic because of her calls for a ceasefire. But we’re finding that when you have conversations with people about what Cori actually stands for, her principled moral leadership, then people are swaying more from their undecided positions,” she said.View image in fullscreen“More than half of American Jews support a ceasefire at this time and they understand that criticising the policies and practices of the [Israeli] state are not antisemitic.”Bush said she was perplexed by accusations of antisemitism, given that she has spent her political career speaking up about racism.“I can’t understand why I am wrong for wanting Palestinians to live and have their own self-determination. I want Israelis to live, to be safe, have their freedom. I want the exact same thing for Palestinians. What about that makes me antisemitic?” she said.“What that says to me, though, is there is hatred and it’s not coming from me. There is hatred for people like me for loving Palestinians the same way that I love Israelis and Jewish people in this country. If that is a problem, then they need to check their own heart, they need to check their own issues not mine.”Nonetheless, speaking up on Gaza has exacted a political price. Is it one worth paying?“It’s been challenging and puts me in a place where I have to do a lot more to be able to win. But that does not take precedence. The price has been paid by the 40,000 [Palestinians] that lost their lives, the tens of thousands who are injured. So if I have to piss off some people politically to be able to help save lives, then that’s how it is,“ she said. More

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      Inside the Maga mind: Trump’s most dedicated fans explain their fervor

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      They are the Maga masses – ordinary people for whom Donald Trump represents hope, not fear, and whose lives have been changed by the Trump era.Some drive thousands of miles, seeing parts of the US they might never otherwise see, to attend the former US president’s campaign rallies, often camping outside for days to ensure they get a front-row seat. The rallies provide music, politics and a sense of belonging unlike anything else that society offers them.Others sell “Make America great again” merchandise. An entire cottage industry has grown up around quirky, witty or insulting bobbleheads, hats, mugs, T-shirts and other paraphernalia. Within hours of Trump surviving an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the indelible image of him standing defiant, face bloodied and fist raised, was available on T-shirts.For these fans, Trump transcends politics: they are in love with his brand of television-induced celebrity, charismatic leadership and willingness to take on perceived elites. That Trump could survive a shooting now elevates him to a near divine status – a figure of destiny to whom their devotion is complete.He resents the same things they do. He is their hammer.Here are six of them in their own words. These interviews contain unfounded claims about voter fraud, the 6 January 2021 insurrection, immigration and the criminal cases against Trump.Antwon Williams, 42, owns mobile phone repair shops and lives in Columbia, South Carolina. His father is a bishop and school principal. A van he bought three years ago to sell merchandise at Trump rallies has now clocked 260,000 miles.View image in fullscreenWhat people have to understand is that Blacks are raised to learn about survival. We don’t know much about politics and that’s why I was so late to this game. I didn’t know anything about politics until [Barack] Obama. Obama gave us a reason to get out and care with the whole change message – it was beautiful. Until I found out what he stood for – and that’s a whole ’nother story.I was selling merch for the Obama campaign for a long time. Then I was doing Hillary merch but Hillary – I don’t know, for whatever reason – got hurt and stopped campaigning for a while so I ended up working Trump forever. My first Trump rally was back in 2015. I remember him saying at the end of his speech, to my Black community, “What do you have to lose? Give me a chance.” And dude, here I am. Yes, sir. I gave him a chance, man.Over the years, God has blessed us. The good thing is we get to employ about 10 people and we all go around the country and it’s beautiful, man. You’re not making millions but, hell, you’re making a living. The first piece of merch I sold was a Maga hat for $25. Now they are $30 each. The Maga hat will never be outsold.Everything comes from my brain; I make T-shirts on the fly now. What’s going to always be up next is when the Democratic side run their mouth and start calling us names and trying to bully us. They called us “ultra Maga” so we made the Ultra Maga thing and it became a symbol. Then they wanted to call us deplorables and then guess what? Proud deplorables was born.The more they talk, the more we’re going to keep creating things, so we love it. I mean, hell, they went in and gave him a mugshot and now it’s a symbol of America. It’s a symbol of the Black community. [He points to a T-shirt with Trump’s mugshot.] “Never surrender.” He’s definitely wanted – only for president.’View image in fullscreenIn the beginning it was purely business, but now it’s fully fledged. This is what I believe in and stand for. I think he gives a damn. He simply cares. Everyone wants to make him out to be a racist but man, the biggest thing I ask people is: show me one racist thing he’s done to us Blacks besides help us.I know that sounds very ignorant, but at the same time the guy helps us in every way he can, man. I mean, he brought jobs back to the Black community. Growing up, all my family was landscapers and painters and stuff like that. The Mexicans came in and took all the jobs away. The Black community couldn’t understand and see where he was helping us, but by removing just the illegals away it gave us an even playing field and that’s how he was able to get this economy back booming.I’ve met President Trump twice now. He’s freaking amazing and that’s why it’s so crazy for me to ever find out that he’s this “racist” guy that everyone wants to make him out. He put his hand out to shake my hand immediately. He told me thank you for what I do. It made chills run through me. It made me feel like he cares. It was important to me. It’s beautiful. He’s beautiful.A lot of politicians – 99% of the politicians – are going to blow smoke up your ass and lie to you to tell you whatever they want to tell you but this guy, he’s going to tell it exactly where it is. That’s why I call him the Blackest president we ever had.I am seeing more Black people attend the rallies. Especially with them bullying him through the streets these days with giving him all these fake charges. Trump gets to see how Black men live out here and now, right before every American eye, where they used to say that Black people are crying wolf, now they get to see exactly how the justice system does us as Blacks. They’re bullying him literally right before everyone’s eyes and it’s not fair.That’s why I call him the Blackest president ever alive.View image in fullscreenI go through racism every day, but where people misunderstand it is the racism that I go through is not from Blacks getting mad at me because I’m out here doing this; it’s from whites. They are always looking at me saying, “Black lives matter,” and I’m like, yes, my Black life matters but that doesn’t mean that I have to stand behind the things that they stand behind.They call me Uncle Tom, sellout, the whole nine, but I’m used to it, I’m used to the language, I’m used to the rhetoric. One thing it’s not going to do is turn me away from what I believe in at this point. It’s that simple.The 2020 election was stolen. I travelled this country day in, day out, rally to rally. I saw the tens of thousands of people in every county, and he would do two counties over and still 20 and 30,000 people would show up. I saw the numbers and there’s no way you going to tell me that loss. I saw it with my own eyes, so therefore we didn’t lose anything. It was taken away from us. It was stolen. The White House was definitely stolen.My prediction is that we’re going to have a landslide victory in November. They’re going to try and make a move but what I say to that is: just try it, buddy. Trump tried to warn us the first time but now the world is watching, so yeah, let ’em just try it.I’m into politics now. It’s not something I can turn a blind eye to. To watch the way he sacrificed everything just for us, the American people – people hate when I say this – it’s kind of like the way Jesus sacrificed everything for us, his children, as well. He’s literally sacrificing everything for us as American people.Sharon Anderson, 68, is retired from jobs in schools and law enforcement and lives in Etowah, Tennessee. She owns the Awesome Ass Acres farm and has five mules and a donkey. She has attended 53 Trump campaign rallies and is one of the “front row Joes”.View image in fullscreenI don’t want to sound corny but the night Donald Trump came down the escalator, it was almost a surreal feeling that came over me. My husband, Larry, was there watching it on TV and said, “Donald Trump’s running for president?” I said, “You know what, he’s my president, that’s my president.” I’ve never swayed, I’ve never wavered, not a breath, not a hair.Larry and I have been married 40 years. I’ve been divorced twice. If he wasn’t a Trump supporter, number three would have been through the process now.My first Trump rally was in North Carolina – it was 2015 or 16. It was kind of low-key. He didn’t have a lot of security with him. The crowd was real big. It was inside a coliseum and it was packed.I always get to the rallies several days in advance. I have something called a cot tent. It’s as wide as a camping tent, folds up about the size of a cart, but the tent is actually attached to the cot and you’re enclosed in there. I’ve got a little Trailblazer, a little SUV, I don’t even know what year model. It’s just big enough that if I sleep catty-corner I can sleep in the back if I don’t have my cot tent with me.Usually a person’s first question is of hygiene: where do you take your showers? Various ones of us have memberships at Planet Fitness and so you can find a Planet Fitness in every town just about. We’ll go there and take showers. Usually, if I get there five days ahead of time, I’m there three days at least by myself and I’ll stay on my phone, I’ll read a book, I’ll take a nap, I’ll just hang out.On March 2, 2020, right before Covid hit, I went to a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. I had gone and stayed five days before the rally. I slept on the sidewalk for five days. The night of the rally, I was right in the front of the rail, Lara and Eric Trump came out and spoke and when [Eric] finished he said, “My dad’ll be out here in about 45 minutes.”But he said, “We’re going to do something tonight that we’ve only done once before since my dad’s been in office,” and he said the Secret Service hates it – he said: “We’re going to recognise somebody in the audience.” I thought, Oh great, who’s that going to be? He looked at his hand and he said, where’s Jenny Anderson? My name’s not Jenny. I looked around, I thought, What Anderson’s here? I don’t know.Then he said, “Wait a minute, I’ve got the name wrong. Where’s Sharon Anderson?” He had me come up on stage and speak to 20,000 people. That was the last rally before the Covid shutdown. That particular video actually went viral. It was a special rally for me.A Trump rally is almost like a reunion. You’re in a crowd that varies from thousands to – well, the number in Wildwood, New Jersey, was listed as 107,000. You’re at a gathering of people that’s like-minded. They’re all there because they’re looking to make this country great again. They are sick of the current situation. They are sick of their budget not covering groceries every week, not covering their medical supplies, their prescriptions.[Trump’s] unusual. He’s a wonderful public speaker and I love him as a comedian too, because he’s very funny. I got to meet him two years ago. He is extremely personable. Even as a billionaire, I feel like I could invite him to my little meagre existence here in east Tennessee and I wouldn’t be nervous about it.View image in fullscreenTrump won the election in 2020. No one will ever convince me otherwise. I’m not a scholar. I’m not a political analyst. I’m not an attorney. I’m not anywhere even close to an expert. But when at three o’clock everybody goes to bed, you’re winning by landslide, and then it takes a week – first time in history – for the votes to be counted, something’s not right. Trump won the 2020 election.As for the Trump criminal trial and his conviction in New York, are we surprised? Was I wishing for a different outcome? Yes. Did I pray for a different outcome? Absolutely. But I’m not surprised because the district attorney was compromised. The jury from demographics alone was compromised and the judge was compromised. The entire case is built on false accusations and legal actions that had holes in them.The January 6 prosecutions is one of the biggest travesties in this country’s history. If there’s somebody that was guilty of violence and destruction, that’s one thing, but there are people being held in warlike conditions.I can’t say that I wouldn’t have walked in [to the US Capitol building]. Now, would I have gone in with violence and destruction on my mind? No, absolutely not, because I wasn’t there for that. But if people had opened doors – there’s videos of officials opening doors and having people come in – had I been there at the moment, I probably would have walked in and I’m a 68-year-old grandma. I could be in prison right now. Who knows, the FBI may come tomorrow.Trump gives me and millions of others hope and encouragement for the future of our country. I’m 68 years old and, if nature takes its course, I hope to have some future left. But my future is not as long as my grandchildren’s future. We’ve got to have hope. We have to have something to look forward to and Donald Trump gives that.Mike Boatman, 56, is an independent contractor living in Evansville, Indiana. This year he won election as a delegate and precinct committeeman for the state Republican convention.View image in fullscreenI voted Republican ever since I was 18. I never went to any kind of rally, any kind of political meeting or event, until Donald Trump.My first Trump rally was in Evansville in April 2016. I was a supporter of Trump before then because of his policies and everything he was saying he would do if he became president. Everything he was saying was what I was for. I voted Republican my whole life but the candidates wasn’t 100% what I believed in.I have been to 90 rallies and 15 other events that Trump spoke at. I’m part of the group of “front row Joes”. I’ve been to a couple of rallies six days early but now I’m more like I get there 24 hours early. I don’t have to be the first one in line because I know if I get there a day early I’ll still get a good seat and possibly the front row.A Trump rally is fun. There’s no violence. You’re there with like-minded people. It’s hard to explain unless you’ve been to one.I enjoy his speeches. A lot of things he’ll repeat because he’s given the same speech to different people in different states and towns. When he goes to a new city there’s a lot a first-timers – people who have never been to a rally. So he does give the same speech a lot, but he changes it up depending on what’s in the news cycle.I believe in Donald Trump’s policies and I believe that he is sincere and wants to help this country as much as he can. He’s proven himself when he was president for four years. Everything that he said he was going to do he did – or he tried to do. Some of it he got backlash [for] and some of it the Congress held him up from getting things done, especially the [border] wall.He almost had it completed and I believe when he gets back in he’ll finish the wall and we’ll get that border fixed. Are we going to fix it where not one person will illegally cross over? No, we’re still going to have illegals make it over. But it’s the amount of people. Right now so many people are crossing over we don’t know who’s crossing over. I have nothing against legal immigration but our country can’t sustain everybody that wants to come over.In my opinion, it’s the media and the liberal Democrats that were saying Republicans are not for Black people or poor people. Saying Donald Trump was a racist when he came down that escalator in 2015 was the biggest lie that was ever told.I knew who Donald Trump was back in the 80s. I knew he was this big real estate guy and I knew he owned casinos back then and owned the New Jersey Generals and he got Herschel Walker to play for him. But I never knew him being a racist.View image in fullscreenHe didn’t have to run for president. Everything he’s gone through in eight years, I don’t see how he does it. They’re coming after him left and right because they didn’t want him. They didn’t want him in 2016. I don’t know why.I sat there and watched the whole 2020 election. I didn’t go to sleep for 48 hours. Trump was winning so big and then it seemed like around 11 o’clock my time, central time, everybody shut down. I’ve never seen that before. Every presidential election I’ve watched, whether it was Obama, Bill Clinton or George Bush, I’ve never seen this. You knew who won that night.Eventually it’ll come out. Everything eventually comes out, just like when they accused Donald Trump of colluding with Russia. Adam Schiff said he’ll present all this evidence and we found out it was a big old lie.With the New York convictions, I’m still trying to figure out what Trump did wrong. Where’s the crime? You could tell the judge was biased. I believe most people can see what’s going on. It’s political persecution. If people believed that Donald Trump commits all these crimes at this time, he would resign because his poll numbers would drop.Every time they indicted him, he had more support. After 34 convictions he’s raised so much money. Most people see that it’s a witch-hunt, that they’re just trying to stop him any way they can from going back to the White House. It’s going to fail. Trump’s going to win in November.Donna Fitzsimons, 64, lives in Gladwin, Michigan. She spent years at home caring for her mother in her final years. She has since travelled the country with her sister Lori Levi selling Maga merchandise.View image in fullscreenIn 2020, when they cancelled the rallies, my sister called me and said, “If I buy a trailer, will you go on the road with me?” I had nothing holding me and I said yeah. We jumped in that trailer in May 2020 and we’ve been on the road pretty much ever since.We have gone everywhere. Two women in a trailer – they called us “the Trump girls”. We’re the Trump girls of Michigan. They call for “the trailer with the Trump girls”. It’s kind of funny: up in [Michigan’s Upper Peninsula], there was a bar and you walk in and they applaud you just for being out there spreading the word of Trump.All I have to do is grab my suitcase because I packed everything in it that I need. Oh my God, America is just so beautiful. It’s jaw-dropping. The best place was Alaska. I found out what the word “majesty” meant. That’s exactly how I felt.We carry American-made things. I’m not sure if anybody else does. I know we were the first to carry American-made hats because those are hard to get. We do American-made shirts. We do have to go to vendors just to compete because that’s the way the world is made up. You have to compete. We do USA shirts and things like that. We try to pull as much USA things as we possibly can, or homemade things. We try to use smaller printing shops to help – something to just get them on their way and help them on their feet.We never changed our prices because we know it’s hard for everybody out there. I know it hits us too but we still have to be fair with the people. We have a couple of items like “F*** Biden” but we keep that on the back shelf. That has to be personally asked for. We don’t think it’s something that should be down where the children will see.Finding the right area to put our trailer can sometimes be a little bit exhausting and getting permission from people can sometimes be tiring. You have to understand business people: there are some that don’t care and they’ll say, “Yes, set up,” because we’re Trump [supporters], and then there’s others. We find that auto part stores, muffler shops, are usually good about letting us set up. But then you go to the mom and pop stores and they’re like, “No, I don’t think so.”One time we were at a store way out by the water and a guy said, “You guys have to go! You have to go! Somebody said they are going to come by and shoot at you.” We’re not afraid. Everywhere we go, we take that chance. When the campaign takes over they use any trailer as first line of sight, so we’re always taking that chance. People don’t realise just being a vendor out there how dangerous that is just for us to be there and promote.If you look at pictures or speeches where he’s got people behind him that aren’t wearing any of his hats or anything that says “Trump”, it just doesn’t look right – it looks more like Biden. Biden’s never has anything. You look over where Trump’s got everybody with hats and shirts, it looks totally different. It brings up a whole different feeling in you when you take a look at the two side by side.View image in fullscreenA Trump rally is always exciting. When you get a group of like-minded people together you can feel it in the air, the energy that he’s bringing. People are happy. I’ve seen people stand in the rain all day long. I’ve seen them stand in snow and cold all day long just to see him. Cold that I couldn’t even stand in – I had to get in the car, I was freezing to death.They don’t care. They just have faith in him. They want to see him. He speaks clearly, he speaks firmly and he gives a sense of safety, like leadership, like everything’s going to be OK. Everybody’s just looking to hear that voice to calm that inner self, like everything’s OK. They get that when he speaks.I have never seen anybody have any problem. The only time they’ve ever stopped is when a Democrat slipped through. That’s when you get the anger and hatred: they start going crazy.Blake Marnell, 59, known as “Brick Suit”, lives in San Diego, California, and has attended many Trump campaign events, including the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on 13 July where the former president narrowly survived an assassination attempt.View image in fullscreenIt did not start with Donald Trump. I voted for Ronald Reagan for president in 1984 and then I never participated in any election at the state, local or federal level until 2020. Even when Donald Trump was running initially in 2016, I didn’t know he was going to be as effective as he turned out to be so I was not initially a supporter. I did not vote for him in 2016.Then when he got into office and one of the very first things he did was get the United States out of the Paris climate accord and cancel the Trans-Pacific partnership – two things that I thought would never happen – I started paying attention and so then I was following him.The first rally I went to was in 2018 in Las Vegas. I got there four hours before it was scheduled to start and ended up being very far back from the front row. It was a great time and I enjoyed talking with people in line. At the time it was kind of dicey to express support for conservatives – we were taking a bit of flak in the real world.They had already started taking people off the internet like Alex Jones and a lot of big profile accounts were being taken off of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. My reaction was, OK, if we can’t have first amendment rights online, because those are all private companies who had their own policies, my feeling was at least I can have it in real life.I started wearing a “Make America great again” hat in public and got many more positive reactions than negative ones. That emboldened me: there are a lot of people out there who support President Trump but for some reason are unwilling to generally acknowledge it in public in the way that I can by wearing a hat.Knowing that I was going to Washington DC, I was picking out a suit and thinking about which topic. You can’t wear something that’s like a tax cut – no one’s going to get it. So I latched on to my next favourite thing about President Trump’s policies at the time, which was border security. I said, what about a wall suit?I found the suit online. It is called a stag suit: essentially it is a costume suit for gentleman in England to buy so they can get into the good clubs and have a dress code for a suit while at the same time being able to enjoy the night in any way. If they actually destroy the suit in the process or rip the fabric, they don’t have to worry about it too much because it’s just a costume.I never thought the border issue would become as powerful as it is now. It shouldn’t have been. The border issue was taken care of as far as I thought. It was put to bed. Illegal immigration was under control. Unfortunately under Biden, who I think vindictively and spitefully has disabled all of President Trump’s beneficial border policies, it has become such a huge issue.President Trump announced a rally in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, in May 2019. I had the whole suit and knew what time to get there to be in the front and, sure enough, I was third in line and got a seat right in the front. Then he ended up calling me up on stage at the rally.At that time I didn’t have any conventional social media. I had a conundrum: do I just put the suit back in the closet and never wear it again? I decided to basically become a meme for the campaign in real life. What am I going call myself – Wall Man? Well, that’s not what I want to be. Why not just Brick Suit? Simple.View image in fullscreenThe reason I picked that is it helps people remember that moment when the president of the United States picked someone at random out of the crowd at a rally and brought them up on stage, and that is not something that you would see typically in any other western democracy. You’re not going to see Macron do that. You’re not going to see anybody in England do that. It’s not going to happen in Germany. It’s not going to happen in Italy. It speaks immensely to President Trump and the connection he has with his supporters, that he has that level of trust in them, that he would do something like that.You’re with a group of people that you know share similar politics to you and, for many people, it’s one of the few spaces that they can actually discuss their politics without fear of censure.I look at it as being a uniquely American crowd: the people who are there support the idea of America. The phrase “America first” is often used. Especially lately, there’s been a lot of coverage about President Trump’s increasing polling support in the Hispanic and Black community. I look at those and I toss those labels out the window and I say, for myself, that translates as President Trump’s increasing support among American voters because that’s all they are. I’m not looking at it in terms of demographics.I find him to be charismatic speaker. In contrast to other politicians, he is willing to call a spade a spade, to say it like it is and to not be afraid.Let’s face it: he’s funny. He has a sense of humour. He knows how to employ it. He can employ it surgically or broadly or in many different ways but there’s no denying that he has a sense of humour that Americans relate to.I have worn the brick suit in San Diego and I intend to wear it again. San Diego is not quite as liberal as some other California cities. But I can tell you this, as someone who’s been wearing a brick suit and a simple Trump hat since 2018, my perception is the level of animosity towards overt expression of support for President Trump is significantly lower now in 2024 than it was in the 2020 election.Ronald Solomon, 65, an investment banker, was born in New Rochelle, New York, and is now based in Palm Beach, Florida. In 2016 he founded the Maga Mall, “your one-stop shopping experience for Maga and patriotic products”.View image in fullscreenI’m an active Republican. Back in 2016 I was actually backing Ted Cruz, and when Trump won the Indiana primary the writing was on the wall. When I went from one campaign to the other, the first thing I did was order hats for my volunteers. It was a given in my mind.I had a whole crew of people who were knocking on doors. I needed 50 “Make America great again” hats for them. The hats out there were either very expensive or total crap – most hats are made out of acrylic and polyester.I had 144 hats made. The finest quality at that time that was ever made. It was made of premium cotton twill like all my hats are on the website; I don’t make acrylic or polyester hats. The hats back then had little letters; my letters were big in times roman with the finest embroidery and thread there was.A couple of months after making those hats, I gave 50 away and then I had them left and started selling them. Then before you know it people wanted white ones and blue ones and black ones and I started tons of those and then doing shirts and all this stuff. It just took off.I realised early on when he won that election the hat was a symbol that there were other people that thought like they did. I’m sure a lot of those people were apathetic. At the time I lived in Nevada and I was a precinct captain and I was at the caucuses. I would say about 30% to 40% of the Trump voters were either crossovers from Democrats and independents or had never voted in their lives.Think about that. If everyone’s wearing the hats and people see “they think like me”, in close races like in Michigan and in Pennsylvania in Wisconsin, those hats made a difference. If it was not for the hats, he maybe even wouldn’t have become president.The Maga Mall is a very successful business and I don’t even count the money. My main objective in this company is to make sure I have the products; when a person calls and places the order they get it. That’s a whole world in itself. And going around the country and showing the product line.Our hats are unbelievable. We destroy the competition. There’s no comparison. I’m on the cutting edge. I’m always making new designs and then one, two, three, four months down the road you see they’re knocked off.View image in fullscreenNinety-nine per cent of the stuff I sell is mostly positive while if you look at the left they’re walking down these marches with the most hideous signs and the most hideous outfits, doing things like throwing blood on effigies. The left is much more negative at marches while I would say at the Trump rally everyone will be positive.It’s a lot of camaraderie and diversity of people from all walks of life. It’s also family-oriented. You don’t see that on the left. A lot of it is very spiritual, religious and patriotic as far as the flag is concerned, “God bless America”. As a matter of fact, I had a whole line of patriotic hats: “God bless America”, “In God we trust”, “We the people 1776”, “America First” – and people love that. Those are big sellers.Trump has got charisma. He’s got guts. He says what he’s gonna do and he delivers. This guy, I’ve never seen anything like it. This sitting in courtrooms with these kangaroo courts and facing jail terms and I see him personally – I go to Mar-a-Lago – and you see the guy and you’d think he doesn’t have a care in the world.Even in the dark days after January 6 – that nonsense trying to make it look like it was some massive planned insurrection, a bunch of crap – I knew this guy would never stop. Two days after that whole action I put in an order to make 50,000 2024 hats and related hats, right then and there. People thought I was nuts.I know this man: he is never stopping and I believe, like he believes, that election was stolen. You see these people with these mail-out ballots, who knows who got them? Anybody who truly believes there wasn’t massive fraud there, it’s nuts, and these voting machines, it’s crazy.Let’s cut to the chase. [Trump’s enemies] are trying to do everything and anything – they use taxpayers’ money to do it; I believe these people are totally corrupt.This group of people, whoever they are, ensured this man will become the next president of the United States. If they think they’re going to put him in a prison, well, they’ll create a Nelson Mandela.Trump knows who I am. I know who he is. Have we ever had a palsy-walsy get-together? Not really, but it’s pretty cool. Actually the last time I had lunch with him was like – my goodness gracious – 30 years ago. It was at Mar-A-Lago on the terrace; there was like 10 people at the table and he was a great guy, a regular guy. We had a good time.Editorial note: the Guardian does not endorse the views expressed in this article. The false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen due to widespread voter fraud was rejected in more than 60 lawsuits and by Trump’s own attorney general. More than 1,230 people have been charged with federal crimes in the January 6 US Capitol riot, ranging from misdemeanor offences such as trespassing to felonies such as assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy. There is no evidence that the criminal prosecution of Trump in New York was politically motivated. More

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      in US Politics

      US-Israeli soldier posted videos showing detonation of Gaza homes and mosque

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      An American-Israeli man deployed in Gaza with a combat engineering unit of Israel’s armed forces posted videos online that show indiscriminate fire at a destroyed building and the detonation of homes and a mosque.One video posted by the man, Bram Settenbrino, and filmed from the shooter’s viewpoint, shows dozens of rounds being fired into the ruins of a building. Another video shows what appears to be an armored vehicle’s fire-control system trained on a mosque before it is razed to the ground. Others depict the detonation of several homes as soldiers cheer.It is not clear whether Settenbrino personally filmed the videos or was involved in the acts depicted in them, but the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Settenbrino did not dispute the videos’ authenticity. The videos recently went viral on X, drawing accusations that they showed “war crimes”. Settenbrino wrote in a message to the Guardian that the videos were “taken out of context” but declined to elaborate. “I have not committed any war crimes whatsoever,” he added.After the Guardian reached out to Settenbrino and his family, his father published a response attributed to his son through Arutz Sheva, a news site associated with the settler right. “The machine gun fire video in question was suppressive fire in an area cleared of civilians after my team was attacked by Hamas terrorists from that area. The mosque that was blown up was being used to house armed terrorists and weapons stockpiles and used as a base to attack IDF soldiers.”The soldier’s father said his son had “sent a congratulatory video dedicating a detonation to honor a friend’s new marriage”, and that the family business had received threats since the videos began circulating.Israeli soldiers have shared scores of videos during the 10-month war showing themselves mocking Palestinians in Gaza and destroying Palestinian property. Some have been used as evidence in the genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ). Israeli forces have killed more than 39,000 Palestinians since the beginning of the war, displaced most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents and destroyed more than half of the strip’s structures.With thousands of Americans serving in the IDF, potential misconduct documented by soldiers themselves raises uncomfortable questions for US officials about their willingness to enforce federal law against citizens acting in an overseas war the US government funds and supports.The extensive destruction of property, when “not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly” is a violation of international law regulating conflict and a war crime under US law.The US has an obligation to ensure respect for the Geneva conventions, a series of international treaties regulating armed conflict, said Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser for the US Department of State. “If US citizens are violating the Geneva conventions or committing war crimes in Israel and Palestine, that implicates the US’s obligations,” he said, adding that under the federal War Crimes Act, the US has the authority to prosecute perpetrators of war crimes when either the victim or perpetrator are US citizens, or when perpetrators of any nationality are on US soil.The IDF did not answer questions about why the mosque and homes in Settenbrino’s videos were targeted but has regularly claimed buildings it destroyed were used by Hamas fighters. Combat engineering corps usually plant explosives inside buildings they identify as targets and detonate them remotely, a more controlled demolition than bombing them from the air or from a tank.View image in fullscreenThe video showing the destruction of the mosque is dated 10 December, approximately when Settenbrino’s unit was deployed in the north of the strip. Israeli forces partially or fully destroyed more than 500 mosques in the strip since 7 October, Palestinian officials said in March.Rights groups have called on the Biden administration to investigate crimes committed in Gaza as potential violations of US law. Ahead of the trip to the US last week of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Center for Constitutional Rights urged the US Department of Justice to investigate him and others responsible for serious crimes being committed in Gaza, “including potentially US and US-dual citizens”.Brad Parker, CCR’s associate director of policy said: “Federal criminal statutes prohibit and criminalize genocide, war crimes, and torture, among other serious international crimes.“US officials, government employees approving or facilitating continued weapons transfers to Israel, and individual US citizens currently serving active-duty roles in the Israeli military should definitely be concerned about their own individual criminal responsibility.”Since the start of the war in Gaza, US efforts to crack down on violence against Palestinians have focused on the West Bank, where officials sanctioned a handful of settlers, freezing assets they may hold in the US and blocking American individuals and institutions from doing business with them. While the sanctions also include a ban on travel to the US, this would not extend to Americans. “But there are other tools available to the US government,” said Finucane, noting that citizens committing crimes abroad could be prosecuted in US courts.An estimated 60,000 US citizens live in settlements in the West Bank. Many are deeply ideological, inspired by extremist figures like Brooklyn-born Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994, and Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose party was designated a terror group in both the US and Israel. The justice department did not answer questions about whether it is considering any action against settlers who are US citizens.Americans in the IDFAn estimated 23,380 US citizens serve in Israel’s armed forces, according to the Washington Post – a figure the IDF did not confirm but probably includes both Americans traveling to Israel for the purpose of service and Israeli-raised soldiers holding dual citizenship.A spokesperson for the US state department did not answer questions about Settenbrino and referred questions about US obligations regarding its citizens’ actions in Gaza to the justice department. “We do continue to emphasize that the IDF must abide by international humanitarian law,” the spokesperson wrote. The justice department did not respond to repeated requests for comment.A spokesperson for the IDF declined to comment on Settenbrino specifically, citing privacy concerns, but said in a statement that “the IDF examines events of this kind as well as reports of videos uploaded to social networks and handles them with command and disciplinary measures”. The spokesperson declined to say whether the IDF regulates soldiers’ use of social media but said that it refers cases of suspected criminality to the military police for investigation.The state department spokesperson was not able to confirm the number of Americans serving in the IDF, as citizens are not required to register their service with the US government.Settenbrino has been deployed in Gaza since the beginning of the war with the Handasah Kravit, the IDF’s engineering corps. An Eagle scout raised in New Jersey, he moved to Israel as a teenager, becoming one of an estimated 600,000 US citizens who live there. He first joined the Israel dog unit, a civilian group that trains and deploys search-and-rescue dogs, and later enlisted in the IDF.Last year, he received an “Outstanding Soldier of the Year” award from his division, according to his father, Randy Settenbrino, who has written about his son in op-eds for Israeli and Jewish publications.‘Destroying homes is a day-to-day activity’Settenbrino’s videos were first circulated in July by a prominent X account under the name Younis Tirawi that regularly surfaces videos posted by soldiers. Israeli soldiers have also shared videos of themselves playing with children’s toys and women’s underwear, the burning of Palestinian food supplies and rounding up and blindfolding civilians. Another video recently shared by Tirawi and originally posted by a member of Settenbrino’s unit showed the deliberate destruction of a water facility in Rafah.One video by an IDF soldier, depicting a huge explosion in Gaza City as the soldier says “Shuja’iyya neighborhood gone … peace to Shuja’iyya” was screened in January before the ICJ as part of the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel and others were cited during the proceedings.“There is now a trend among the soldiers to film themselves committing atrocities against civilians in Gaza, in a form of ‘snuff’ video,” the South African lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi said in court. He cited examples of soldiers recording themselves destroying houses and declaring their intent to “erase Gaza” or “destroy Khan Younis” – potential evidence of genocidal intent.Such videos have rarely led to consequences. The IDF spokesperson said that when military investigations determine that “the expression or behavior of the soldiers in the footage is inappropriate […] it is handled accordingly”, but did not offer examples.“The vast number of such videos online demonstrates that the military leadership isn’t even trying to discipline the rank and file,” said Joel Carmel, a member of the Israeli veterans group Breaking the Silence.He added: “More importantly, the issue is less about the videos themselves and more about what it says about the way we fight in Gaza. Destroying homes and places of worship is a day-to-day activity for soldiers in Gaza – it is the opposite of the ‘surgical’ strikes on carefully chosen targets that we are told about by the IDF.”Whether the US would ever prosecute American citizens fighting for Israel is as much a political question as a legal one.“The US government could prosecute these US citizens if they participate in war crimes,” Oona Hathaway, director of the Center for Global Legal Challenges at Yale Law School, told the Guardian. “Politically, however, that’s unlikely, for all the obvious reasons.” More

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      Assassination again shows Netanyahu’s disregard for US-Israel relations

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      Standing alongside Donald Trump in Florida a week ago, Benjamin Netanyahu was vague on the latest prospect of a ceasefire in the war in Gaza.“I hope we are going to have a deal. Time will tell,” the Israeli prime minister said, two days after his controversial address to a joint session of the US Congress.Throughout his three-day visit to the US, Netanyahu was careful to avoid making any commitment to the deal Biden unveiled on 31 May. While the US insisted publicly that the onus was on Hamas to accept the plan, the administration knew it also needed to pin down Netanyahu personally over his reluctance to commit to a permanent ceasefire.Yet, according to US reports, it now appears that at the very time Netanyahu was publicly speculating about a deal, a remote-controlled bomb had already been smuggled into a guesthouse in Tehran, awaiting its intended target: Ismail Haniyeh, the senior Hamas leader who was assassinated on Wednesday night.Haniyeh, reported the New York Times and CNN, was killed by an explosive device placed in the guesthouse, where he was known to stay while visiting Iran and was under the protection of the powerful Revolutionary Guards. Iran and Hamas have blamed Israel for the attack, which Israel has neither confirmed nor denied. It fits a pattern of previous Israeli targeted killings on Iranian soil.If the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is to be believed, Netanyahu never divulged any such plan to his American allies. The first Blinken knew of the assassination was when he was told in Singapore, after the event. Later that day he insisted he had been left blind-sided, almost as badly as Iranian intelligence.In Netanyahu’s defence, Israel has not confirmed the US media accounts, nor has it ever made any secret of its intention to kill the senior Hamas leadership as a reprisal for the 7 October attacks. And even as he spoke to Congress, the prime minister could not have known that the reported plan would work so well, or have such a devastating impact.However, the potential consequences of such an assassination were clear to all. It took the frustrated Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, to accuse Netanyahu of sabotage. “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” he asked.In Washington, the national security council spokesperson John Kirby put on a brave face, claiming the ceasefire process had not been “completely torpedoed”, and insisting: “We still believe the deal on the table is worth pursuing”.The assassination underlines how the US is often left looking like the junior partner in the relationship with Israel, observers say. Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, said: “It is another case of Netanyahu putting up two fingers to Biden. There has been month after month after month of these just repeated affronts and humiliations from Netanyahu, culminating in this ridiculous moment last week, where he came and spoke in front of the Congress yet again, to undermine Biden’s ceasefire proposal. Yet Biden, who sets such store by personal relations, refuses to change course.”Duss has said that by refusing to control the supply of US weapons as a means of leverage with Israel, Biden has left Netanyahu free to pursue the war. Biden was left to ring Netanyahu two days after the assassination, and to promise to defend Israel from any threats from Iran and its proxy groups. If there was any private admonition or disapproval, the public read-out of the call concealed it.Biden later expressed his frustration, telling reporters: “We have the basis for a ceasefire. They should move on it now.” Asked if Haniyeh’s death had ruined the prospect of a deal, the president said: “It has not helped.”The killing is a further indicator of how the Biden administration cannot capitalise on a security relationship with a politician whose methods and objectives it does not share, and who it suspects wants its political rival to triumph in November’s US election. Moreover, both Trump and Netanyahu share a common goal – having political power to stave off criminal proceedings against themselves.At issue, too, is the effectiveness of Israel’s long-term military strategy for dismantling Hamas, including the use of assassinations on foreign soil.Haniyeh is the third prominent member of Iran-backed military groups to be killed in recent weeks, after the killing last month of the Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif in Gaza and the strike on the Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, in turn a response to the killing of 12 children and teenagers in the Druze village of Majdal Shams.In total, according to ACLED, a US-based NGO, Israel has mounted 34 attacks that have led to the death of at least 39 commanders and senior members of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran in the past 10 months.Hugh Lovatt, a Middle East specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations, describes the killings as a tactical victory, but a strategic defeat. “Haniyeh was a proponent of Palestinian reconciliation, and of a ceasefire. So taking him out of the equation has an impact on the internal power dynamics within the group by strengthening the hardliners, at least in the current term,” he said.Netanyahu, Lovatt added, was undermining Haniyeh “by going back on agreed positions and by being very vocal in saying as soon as the hostages were released we recommence fighting Hamas”.Nicholas Hopton, a former UK ambassador to Tehran, said he feared the assassination was part of a deliberate attempt to sabotage the hopes of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, to rebuild relations with the west.“You can overstate what a reformer means in Iran – he went to the parliament wearing an IRGC uniform – but he was going to give relations with the west a go,” Hopton said. “I think the supreme leader is deeply sceptical it will lead anywhere but thought it was worth an attempt. Pezeshkian may now be stymied right away, and I think that’s what the Israeli assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran was partly designed to do.”Inside Iran, Mohammad Salari, the secretary general of the Islamic Solidarity party, said the killing should be seen as more than the removal of one political figure. The hidden purpose was to overshadow the new government’s policy of engagement and de-escalation, he said.“Netanyahu will use all his efforts to lay stones in the path of realising Iran’s balanced foreign policy, improving relations with European countries, and managing tension with the United States, just like during the nuclear negotiations.”So when the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah,threatened an open battle on all fronts, he probably meant, according to Lovatt, a multi-pronged response designed not to trigger a regional war, but to go further than the retaliation mounted by Iran alone in April. It was notable that Nasrallah added a plea to the White House: “If anybody in the world genuinely wants to prevent a more serious regional war, they must pressure Israel to stop its aggression on Gaza.”At the moment that plea lies unanswered. More