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      Democrats say they were left in dark about plans for US strikes on Iran

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      Senior Democrats have claimed they were left in the dark about operation Midnight Hammer, the US’s highly coordinated strike on Saturday on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.Neither Mark Warner, a US senator of Virginia, nor Jim Himes, a representative of Connecticut, both top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence panels, were briefed before the attack, according to reports.But that came amid claims that Republican counterparts were given advance notice of the operation, which involved 125 aircraft – including seven B-2 bombers carrying 14 bunker busters weighing three tons – and 75 Tomahawk missiles launched from US submarines. Axios reported that the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, had been informed shortly before the attacks began at 6.40pm eastern time.Himes’s committee staff received notification about the strike from the Pentagon only after Donald Trump made the announcement on social media soon before 8pm, according to the outlet.The president’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, told a press conference early on Sunday that the strikes “took months and weeks of positioning and preparation so that we could be ready when the president called”.“It took misdirection and the highest of operational security,” Hegseth said, in part alluding to the US’s deployment of B-2 bombers to the Pacific island of Guam earlier on Saturday.The US attack of Iran came as most Democrats had left Washington for the Juneteenth holiday – but the apparent lack of forewarning to lawmakers on intelligence committees is striking. Top lawmakers are typically informed of military operations in advance.“Cost, duration, risk to our troops, strategy – the basics before we make a decision of this consequence,” said Chris Coons, a senior Democratic member of the Senate foreign relations committee, last week.Arizona senator Mark Kelly told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that the White House should have been “right up front” in coming to Congress “and asking for authorization to do this”.“That’s the constitutional approach to this,” Kelly said. “He could have talked to us about what the goal is and what the plan is ahead of time.”Tim Kaine, a Virginia senator who sits on the armed services as well as the foreign relations committees, said Congress needed to be informed ahead of time.“Congress needs to authorize a war against Iran,” he said. “This Trump war against Iran – we have not.” Senators are expected to receive a briefing on the strikes next week. But the signs that an attack was imminent were there to see: additional US military assets had been moved into the region, and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had postponed a briefing with the Senate intelligence committee last week.Moderate and progressive Democrats have been in conflict over the engagement of US forces in support of Israel. Trump’s use of force could now deepen the ideological schism.Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, told CNN on Sunday that “the destruction of these facilities is a positive in the sense that it will set back Iran’s program”. But he warned that Iran could now “sprint for a bomb”.He added that the strikes were “not constitutional” and Congress should be brought in “on an action this substantial that could lead to a major outbreak of war”. But Schiff refused to be drawn in on whether the world was safer following the strike. “We simply don’t know,” he said.Schiff maintained that in absence of a briefing “this is an order that should not have been given”.Prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations have been notably silent on the 10-day war between Israel and Iran. “They are sort of hedging their bets,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration.“The beasts of the Democratic party’s constituencies right now are so hostile to Israel’s war in Gaza that it’s really difficult to come out looking like one would corroborate an unauthorized war that supports Israel without blowback.”But some had spoken out. Ro Khanna, a California congressman, called the White House threats of an attack on Iran “a defining moment for our party”. That came as progressive and isolationist lawmakers on the right found themselves uncomfortably aligned.Khanna had introduced legislation with the Kentucky Republican US House member Thomas Massie that called on Trump to “terminate” the use of US armed forces against Iran unless “explicitly authorized” by a declaration of war from Congress.Following the strike, Khanna posted on X: “Trump struck Iran without any authorization of Congress.”Khanna said Congress needed to “immediately return” to Washington to vote on the measure he and Massie co-authored. Kaine said he would bring a similar resolution to the Senate in the coming days.Massie said in response to the strikes: “This is not Constitutional.”The independent US senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats, said supporting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin “Netanyahu’s war against Iran would be a catastrophic mistake”. He introduced legislation prohibiting the use of federal money for force against Iran.The New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on X that the decision to attack Iran’s nuclear sites was “disastrous”.“The President’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers. He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.Halie Soifer, the chief executive officer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a statement: “This is an incredibly difficult moment for the vast majority of American Jews, who are supportive of Israel, concerned about the security and safety of the Israeli people and Jews in the United States and around the world, and fearful that president Trump lacks a clear strategy about what happens next with Iran.”On NBC’s Meet the Press JD Vance, the US vice-president, maintained that it was untrue to say that Saturday’s strikes in Iran exceeded Trump’s presidential authority.Schiff, meanwhile, declined to support calls for impeachment proceedings against Trump, saying the failure to brief Democrats ahead of the strike was “another partisan exercise”. More

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      ‘Our era of violent populism’: the US has entered a new phase of political violence

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      It has been a grim couple of weeks in the US, as multiple acts of politically motivated violence have dominated headlines and sparked fears that a worrying new normal has taken hold in America.Last Saturday, a man disguised as a police officer attacked two Democratic legislators at their homes in Minnesota, killing a state representative and her husband, and wounding another lawmaker and his wife. The alleged murderer was planning further attacks, police said, on local politicians and abortion rights advocates.The same day, during national “No Kings” demonstrations against the Trump administration, there was a spate of other violence or near-violence across the US. After a man with a rifle allegedly charged at protesters in Utah, an armed “safety volunteer” associated with the protest fired at the man, wounding him and killing a bystander. When protesters in California surrounded a car, the driver sped over a protester’s leg. And a man was arrested in Arizona after brandishing a handgun at protesters.Later in the week, a Jewish lawmaker in Ohio reported that he was “run off the road” by a man who waved a Palestinian flag at him. Police in New York also said they were investigating anti-Muslim threats to the mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.The political temperature is dangerously high – and shows few signs of cooling.View image in fullscreen“We are in a historically high period of American political violence,” Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, told the Guardian. “I call it our ‘era of violent populism’. It’s been about 50 years since we’ve seen something like this. And the situation is getting worse.”He said the US is in a years-long stretch of political violence that started around the time of Donald Trump’s first election, with perpetrators coming from both the right and the left.In 2017, the first year of Trump’s first presidency, a leftwing activist opened fire on a group of Republican politicians and lobbyists playing baseball, wounding four people. In 2021, pro-Trump rioters attacked the US Capitol. In 2022, a conspiracy theorist attacked then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer, and a man angry about the US supreme court’s rightward drift tried to assassinate justice Brett Kavanaugh. Trump survived two assassination attempts in 2024; the Pennsylvania gunman’s bullet missed Trump’s face by a few centimeters.The Israel-Gaza war has contributed to the tension. Last month a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington DC; the alleged perpetrator, an American-born leftwing radical, described the killings as an act of solidarity with Palestinians. A couple weeks later a man in Colorado attacked a group of pro-Israel demonstrators with molotov cocktails.Pape directs the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, which studies terrorism and conflict. He noted in a recent piece in the New York Times that his research has found rising support among both left- and right-leaning Americans for the “use of force” to achieve political means.The May survey was “the most worrisome yet”, he wrote. “About 40 percent of Democrats supported the use of force to remove Mr. Trump from the presidency, and about 25 percent of Republicans supported the use of the military to stop protests against Mr. Trump’s agenda. These numbers more than doubled since last fall, when we asked similar questions.”Americans are not only polarized, but forming into distinct and visible “mobilized blocs”, Pape says. He also notes that acts of political violence seem to be becoming “increasingly premeditated”.Quantifying political violence or “domestic terrorism” can be difficult, Pape said, because the FBI does not track it in a consistent manner. The best proxy, he said, is often prosecuted threats against members of Congress. Those “have gone up dramatically, especially since the first year of Trump’s first term”, he said, adding that the threats have been “essentially 50-50” against Democratic and Republican lawmakers.View image in fullscreenThe US Capitol police, which protects Congress, reported in April that the number of threat assessment cases it has investigated “has climbed for the second year in a row”.While both sides have committed violence, Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, thinks that Republican political leaders carry more culpability for the violent climate. “We haven’t seen the mainstream political left embrace political violence in the same way,” he said.He noted that while Luigi Mangione, the man who allegedly murdered a healthcare insurance executive last year, could be considered leftwing, he was “more of an anti-system extremist” who also hated the Democratic party. In contrast, “when you look at the rhetoric and language being used in neo-Nazi mass shooter manifestos, it’s almost identical to Stephen Miller posts”, he added, referring to the White House aide.Quantifying violence is also tricky because it can be difficult to determine ideological motives or causal relations. People died during the 2020 George Floyd protests and riots, but it is not clear to what extent all of the deaths were directly related to the unrest. In 2023, a transgender shooter attacked a Christian private school in Tennessee, killing three children and three adults; while the attacker had railed against “little crackers” with “white privileges”, investigators concluded that the attack was most motivated by a desire for notoriety.This April, someone set the Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s mansion on fire while he and his family, who were unharmed, slept inside. Although Shapiro is Jewish and the alleged perpetrator made remarks condemning Israel, the suspect’s family members have said that he has a long history of mental health problems.In other cases, acts of violence are ideological but don’t fall on to conventional political lines. Earlier this year, a man bombed a fertility clinic in California; the suspect was an anti-natalist – or self-described “pro-mortalist” – who was philosophically opposed to human reproduction.Pape believes that the current wave of violence and tumult is only partly a reaction to Trump’s polarizing politics.“He’s as much a symptom as a cause,” he said. The more important factor is “a period of high social change … as the US moves from a white-majority country to a white-minority country. And that’s been going drip, drip, drip since the early 1970s, but around 10 years ago we started to go through the transition generation”, Pape said.The closest analogue is probably the US in the 1960s and 1970s, when the civil rights movement, the hippy counterculture, the Vietnam war, and Black and Latino nationalism were accompanied by a wave of political assassinations and other violence as white supremacist groups and others harassed and killed civil rights leaders.There was also a wave of leftwing violence. Domestic terror groups such as the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Weather Underground attacked judges, police officers and government offices. In 1972, according to Bryan Burrough’s 2015 book Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence, there were over 1,900 domestic bombings in the US, though most were not fatal.Later, the 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of the anti-government militia movement, which culminated in Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma federal building. That bombing killed 168 people, and is the most deadly domestic terror attack in US history.View image in fullscreenLewis thinks that violent rhetoric is now even more normalized – that there is increasing tolerance of the idea that “political violence, targeted hate, harassment, is OK if it’s your in-group … against the ‘other side’”.American political leaders need to condemn political violence, Pape said, ideally in a bipartisan way and in forms that show prominent Democratic and Republican figures physically side-by-side: “The absolute number one thing that should happen … is that president Trump and governor Newsom do a joint video condemning political violence.”After Melissa Hortman, the Democratic state legislator in Minnesota, was killed last weekend, Mike Lee, a Utah senator, published social media posts making light of her death and insinuating it was the fault of the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz. Lee later deleted the posts, but has not apologized.Walter Hudson, a Republican state representative in Minnesota who was acquainted with Hortman, said he has been thinking about the relationship between political rhetoric and violence since Hortman’s death.“I think it’s fair to say that nobody on either side of the aisle, no matter the language they’ve used, would have ever intended or imagined that something they said was going to prompt somebody to go and commit a vicious and heartless act like the one we saw over the weekend,” he said. He acknowledged that rhetoric can be a factor in violence, however.“I don’t know how we unwind this,” he said. “The optimistic side of me hopes that it’s going to translate into a different approach.” More

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      Los Angeles is not a hellscape – no matter how much Trump wishes for it | Dave Schilling

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      The Los Angeles Dodgers lost on Thursday, 5-3, to the San Diego Padres. A mostly unremarkable game livened up by a hit batsman that led to a near-brawl between the two teams. But the real action took place well before the first pitch. Federal agents were seen attempting to enter Dodger Stadium’s parking lot earlier in the day, according to several reports. When asked, the agents declared they were with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). After the Dodgers said they had turned Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents away, Ice denied being at the stadium at all, while DHS said Customs and Border Protection vehicles “were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement”. Yes, but what about, you know, the videos? The eyewitness accounts? All that evidence? Never mind that, I suppose.We’ve become quite immune to the confused realities of this administration. They could say the sky is purple, horses can carry on cocktail party conversation à la Mr Ed, and Justin Bieber is a recent Nobel laureate in physics and we’d respond: “Well, of course, carry on. Congrats to Justin, I suppose.” They’ve been doing it since Donald Trump’s first term, but really ratcheted up the bullshit during the immigration protests in Los Angeles. The administration’s party line is that Los Angeles was tipping into full-on, RoboCop-style anarchy and the only solution to that problem was a deployment of the national guard and the marines, against the wishes of the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom. This, despite the protests occurring within about 1 sq mile of a city that is, by my last count, absolutely enormous. Or, for those who don’t live here, 500 sq miles (1,300 sq km). To be exact.The protests have largely wrapped up, even as Ice has become more brazen in its activities – snatching people outside a Home Depot in Hollywood and dropping by our baseball stadium for unknown reasons. Despite the lack of conflagration, a federal appeals court recently affirmed Trump’s right to deploy the guard for this particular purpose, though going to the trouble of reminding the administration that such actions are not above judicial review. Of course, for the immigrant denizens of LA, this city does feel like a war zone, with the constant fear, anxiety and stress that comes with all of that. Public transit ridership is down significantly, businesses have to close to prevent their employees from being captured and stories of Ice raids trickle through communities like drips of poison. That’s our shared reality, but it’s not the one outsiders seem to care about. They’re more interested in the Waymos, I suppose.Despite the ongoing mischaracterization of the situation on the ground, Trump seems unable to manage to get the widespread clashes and chaos he so clearly desires. The military deployment in LA wasn’t much more remarkable than his birthday-party-cum-bring-your-army-to-work-day that nearly put Marco Rubio to sleep. Trump might have been asleep too, but his eyes have narrowed into such baggy slits that one can no longer make an accurate judgment. His eyelids now resemble two fluffy hamburger buns, with nothing but a layer of mayonnaise in between.Perhaps the president’s burger eyes are partially to blame for his lack of awareness of what is actually happening in Los Angeles. Our schools are in summer break, leaving the roads slightly less congested. A recent heatwave has me canoodling with my air conditioner, like two drunk celebrities in the back of the Met Gala dining room. Juneteenth celebrations in my area carried on as usual. Downtown, the site of the protest actions, is back to being a great place to urinate in an alley without being pelted by rubber bullets. I still can’t get my agent to call me back about that script. All is well here. And yet, the pretense of simmering violence is continuing to be used to justify a wholly unnecessary deployment of the armed forces.Speaking of armed forces, the Los Angeles police department totals nearly 9,000 officers, with tanks, riot gear and heavy weaponry. The LAPD is, in many ways, a little mini-army to patrol those aforementioned 500 sq miles of enormousness. When Bass said the LAPD could handle it, she meant it. This is another way in which perception taints the reality on the ground. LA has taken the place of countless other conservative boogeymen – San Francisco, Portland, New York City – as the pre-eminent scourge of so-called liberal lawlessness. Of course, LA, like those other cities, spends money on its police force like I do on The RealReal after one too many martinis. The most recent LAPD budget topped $2bn, which, while less than the purchase price of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, is still quite a lot. It’s a billion dollars more than is spent on homelessness programs by the entire state. A city politician can hardly get elected without at least some support from the police unions, like our new district attorney, Nathan Hochman, who trounced the incumbent by running on a law-and-order platform.But the American conservative media apparatus can and routinely does tell a different story of Los Angeles. That it’s a liberal hellscape where God has been given his two-weeks’ notice and everyone gives each other anal beads for Christmas. If only that were true. Maybe this would be a more exciting place to live. In reality, AKA that thing that happens when you go outside, this can be a terribly boring place to live, especially when your agent doesn’t call you back. To be honest, I quite like how boring it is. It’s a lot easier to complain about mundane things, like every good restaurant closing on Mondays. Can we spread that out? Maybe some of you close on Sundays, so I don’t have to subject myself to Sweetgreen when I’m too lazy to cook. Just try it out. I could complain about how the DMV kiosk that’s supposed to make it faster to renew your car registration is actually becoming just as long of a line as the normal window because the payment system is constantly going down. Or that the San Diego Padres are the dirtiest team in baseball and their entire franchise should be sold to the Saudi royal family for scrap and moved to Riyadh. You know, normal things to complain about. The only time it’s not boring to live in Los Angeles is when someone (you know who) decides to send the marines in to walk around in a circle for two months. If the federal government could promise to let Los Angeles be boring again, I’ll promise to stop handing out anal beads during the holidays. A deal’s a deal.

      Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist More

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      No matter what Trump says, the US has gone to war – and there will be profound and lasting consequences | Simon Tisdall

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      Bombing will not make Iran go away. US bombs will not destroy the knowhow needed to build a nuclear weapon or the will do so, if that is what Tehran wants. The huge attack ordered by Donald Trump will not halt ongoing open warfare between Israel and Iran. It will not bring lasting peace to the Middle East, end the slaughter in Gaza, deliver justice to the Palestinians, or end more than half a century of bitter enmity between Tehran and Washington.More likely, Trump’s rash, reckless gamble will inflame and exacerbate all these problems. Depending on how Iran and its allies and supporters react, the region could plunge into an uncontrolled conflagration. US bases in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the region, home to about 40,000 American troops, must now be considered potential targets for retaliation – and possibly British and allied forces, too.Trump says he has not declared war on Iran. He claims the attack is not an opening salvo in a campaign aimed at triggering regime change in Tehran. But that’s not how Iran’s politicians and people will see it. Trump’s premature bragging about “spectacular” success, and threats of more and bigger bombs, sound like the words of a ruthless conqueror intent on total, crushing victory.Trump, the isolationist president who vowed to avoid foreign wars, has walked slap bang into a trap prepared by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu – a trap his smarter predecessors avoided. Netanyahu has constantly exaggerated the immediacy of the Iranian nuclear threat. His alarmist speeches on this subject go back 30 years. Always, he claimed to know what UN nuclear inspectors, US and European intelligence agencies and even some of his own spy chiefs did not – namely, that Iran was on the verge of deploying a ready-to-use nuclear weapon aimed at Israel’s heart.This contention has never been proven. Iran has always denied seeking a nuclear bomb. Its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa banning any such programme. Netanyahu’s most recent claim that Iran was weaponising, made as he tried to justify last week’s unilateral, illegal Israeli attacks, was not supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or US intelligence experts. But weak-minded Trump chose to believe it. Reading from Netanyahu’s script, he said on Saturday night that eliminating this incontrovertible nuclear threat was vital – and the sole aim of the US air assault.So, once again, the US has gone to war in the Middle East on the back of a lie, on disputed, probably faulty intelligence purposefully distorted for political reasons. Once again, as in Iraq in 2003, the overall objectives of the war are unclear, uncertain and open to interpretation by friend and foe alike. Once again, there appears to be no “exit strategy”, no guardrails against escalation and no plan for what happens next. Demanding that Iran capitulate or face “national tragedy” is not a policy. It’s a deadly dead-end.Iran will not go away, whatever Trump and Netanyahu may imagine in their fevered dreams. It will remain a force in the region. It will remain a country to be reckoned with, a country of 90 million people, and one with powerful allies in China, Russia and the global south. It is already insisting it will continue with its civil nuclear programme.These events are a reminder of how profound is official US ignorance of Iran. Unlike the UK, Washington has had no diplomatic presence there since the revolution. It has had few direct political contacts, and its swingeing economic sanctions have created even greater distance, further diminishing mutual understanding. Trump’s decision to renege on the 2015 nuclear accord (negotiated by Barack Obama, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the EU) was a product of this ignorance. Ten years later, he is trying to do with bombs what was largely, peacefully achieved through diplomacy by his wiser, less impulsive, less easily led predecessors.View image in fullscreenPeace seems more elusive than ever – and Netanyahu is celebrating. The US cannot walk away now. It’s committed. And, as Netanyahu sees it, he and Israel cannot lose. Except, except … Iran cannot somehow be imagined away. It still has to be dealt with. And the reckoning that now looms, short- and long-term, may be more terrible than any of Netanyahu’s scare stories.Iran previously warned that if the US attacked, it would hit back at US bases. There are many to choose from, in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan and elsewhere. The Houthis in Yemen say they will resume attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. The strait of Hormuz, so important a transit point for global energy supplies, may be mined, as happened in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war. The result could be a global oil shock and markets meltdown. And Iran is still reportedly firing missiles into Israel, despite claims in Jerusalem that most of its ballistic missiles bases have been destroyed.Reacting to Trump’s attack, Iranian officials say no options are off the table in terms of retaliation. And they say they will not negotiate under fire, despite a call to do so from the British prime minister, Keir Starmer. Rejecting Trump’s unverified claims about the total destruction of all nuclear facilities, they also insist Iran will reconstitute and continue its nuclear programme. The big question now is whether that programme really will be weaponised.Two radical longer-term consequences may flow from this watershed moment. One is that Khamenei’s unpopular regime, notorious for corruption, military incompetence and economic mismanagement, and deprived of support from Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza, may crack under the strain of this disaster. So far there has been little sign of an uprising or a change in government. That’s not surprising, given that Tehran and other cities are under bombardment. But regime collapse cannot be ruled out.The other is that, rather than surrender the cherished right to uranium enrichment and submit to the Trump-Netanyahu ultimatum, Iran’s rulers, whoever they are, will decide to follow North Korea and try to acquire a bomb as quickly as possible, to fend off future humiliations. That could entail withdrawal from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and rejection of the UN inspections regime. After years of trying to play by western rules, Iran could really finally go rogue.The supposed need to acquire nukes for self-defence is a grim lesson other countries around the world may draw from these events. The proliferation of nuclear weapons is the biggest immediate danger to the future of the planet. What Trump just did in recklessly and violently trying to eliminate an unproven threat may ensure the proven danger of a nuclear-armed world grows ever-more real.

      Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator More

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      Israel is playing an outsized role in New York City’s mayoral race. Will it matter?

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      Speaking from a Jerusalem bomb shelter last week as Iran and Israel exchanged fire, a New York state senator posted a video message to New York City voters: “There is a mayoral primary coming up this week where one of the candidates does not believe the Jewish state has a right to exist,” said Sam Sutton, the senator from Brooklyn. “We don’t want to be in a situation like this in America.”Sutton called on New Yorkers to elect a “great friend of the Jewish people”: Andrew Cuomo, New York’s former governor.The appeal was a stark illustration of the outsized role a foreign country and its conflicts have come to play in local elections. While Tuesday’s vote is just the primary, the winner of the Democratic contest historically has gone on to win the mayoral contest in November – though this year could be different.“This election has turned into a two-person contest between Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mandani, two candidates with very stark views on this matter,” said Jacob Kornbluh, a senior politics reporter with the Forward Jewish newspaper.With New York City’s nearly one million Jews making up the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, mayors of the past have always claimed support for the country with little pushback. But the war in Gaza has fundamentally changed the dynamic. Mamdani’s outspoken support for Palestinians might have previously tanked his candidacy, but his insurgent campaign has galvanised voters. Cuomo has responded by portraying Mamdani as “dangerous” and himself as uniquely positioned to fight antisemitism, a growing source of anxiety among Jewish voters.Cuomo’s campaign – flush with millions from pro-Israel billionaires like Bill Ackman – has ramped up attacks against Mamdani as he surged in the polls, including by distributing mailers condemned as racist. The former governor has stated unequivocally that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism”.It’s not just Cuomo appealing to the fears of Jewish voters. Eric Adams – the current mayor, who is running as an independent given his plummeting popularity – recently adopted a contentious definition of antisemitism and floated running on an “EndAntisemitism” party line.Mamdani grew emotional last week while discussing the personal toll of the attacks, including multiple death threats, and has invoked his experience as a Muslim New Yorker to say he understands the pain of the Jewish communities that he pledges to protect.“The attacks on Zohran are textbook post 9/11 Islamophobia,” said Sumaya Awad, a Palestinian New Yorker and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, one of the first groups to back his candidacy. She praised Mamdani for not “backing down”.Mamdani co-founded his college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, and as a state assembly member, introduced legislation to stop the funding of illegal Israeli settlements. He has built an enthusiastic coalition of young, progressive, and unabashedly pro-Palestinain New Yorkers, as well as immigrants and many of the city’s roughly 800,000 Muslims.View image in fullscreenCity comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander, who is Jewish and has cross-endorsed Mamdani, has sought to find a middle ground and accused Cuomo and Adams of “using Jews as pawns”, he told the Guardian in an interview – “not with the intention of making Jews any safer, but with the intention of gaining political advantage for themselves”.“Thankfully it’s not the job of the mayor to find mutual recognition and peace and safety for Israelis and Palestinians,” he said. “It is incumbent on the next mayor, whatever their position is, to find ways to reach across the divide.”As some candidates stoke fears, anxiety around the election is palpable among many Jewish voters.Alex Kaufman, a leader of LGBTQ Zionists of NYC, which endorsed Cuomo, said he had always prioritized issues like housing affordability, sustainability, and racial inclusion. “But this year, my number one issue is antisemitism,” he said. “I’ve never felt this unsafe.”With election day around the corner, the race has turned into an Israel-Palestine proxy war of sorts, even as voters on both sides wish the focus remained on local issues. Candidates have been asked in mayoral debates about their support for Israel and whether they would visit – with Mamdani’s answers that he supports Israel’s right to exist as a state “with equal rights” and that as mayor he would stay in the city rather than travel to a foreign country drawing both praise and condemnation (including some from the left, who criticised him for recognising Israel at all). In recent days, Cuomo has seized on Mamdani’s position on the words “globalize the intifada”, saying they fuel “hate” and “murder”.Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace’s advocacy arm, which has been canvassing for Mamdani, said that his success challenges the long-held wisdom that a New York mayor must support the Israeli government. “If you believe in safety, freedom, dignity, and justice for people here at home, you can’t have a Palestine exception to that,” she said.‘The status quo is being bent’New York’s Jews are a diverse constituency – ranging from some anti-Zionists and others variously critical of Israel to orthodox communities traditionally voting as a unified bloc for more conservative candidates. A recent poll of the city’s Jewish Democrats showed 31% supporting Cuomo, 20% backing Mamdani, and 18% behind Lander.In the middle are New York Jews who consistently vote Democratic and espouse a host of liberal and even progressive causes. Many are still reeling from the 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel, are uneasy about the tone of US protests against the war in Gaza, and are increasingly worried about Jewish safety, pointing to recent violent attacks in Washington DC, and Colorado, and defacing of Jewish businesses and synagogues in the city.View image in fullscreen
      Kaufman, of LGBTQ Zionists, said he wished there were “better options” but that many of his acquaintances were coalescing around Cuomo even as they have reservations about his past conduct, including the sexual assault allegations that ended his governorship. Others gravitated toward Lander, but were troubled by his endorsement of Mamdani. Some said they were “terrified” of the latter, pointing to his refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and his presence at protests where Houthi flags were on display.Cuomo has promised to run as an independent if Mamdani wins on Tuesday. Because Adams is running as an independent, and Mamdani is also expected to remain on the ballot as the Working Families Party candidate, the contest is far from over.But to some, the fact that an openly pro-Palestinian candidate has made it this far is a sign of a profound shift in the city’s politics.“The status quo is being bent,” said Awad. She said she cried when filling in her ballot early. “Hope is such a rare thing to feel these days.” More

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      I study the history of Nazi resistance. Here’s what the US left can learn from it | Luke Berryman

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      Around the end of 2022, I had an idea for a book about the history of resistance to Nazism. I wanted to show that Nazism has faced nonconformity, refusal and protest ever since it was born in 1920. I also wanted to explore beyond a handful of famous heroes and cast a spotlight on people who changed history without entering popular memory. When I began my research, Donald Trump had just announced his candidacy for the Republican ticket in 2024. When I gave the manuscript to the publisher a little over two years later, he was president-elect.His comeback, the darker version of Maga that came with him, and the Democratic party’s collapse gave fresh relevance to the stories of resistance to far-right extremism that I was finding. Even as I was piecing them together, they began to intrude on the present. It was a haunting transformation – and it helped me to understand why the resistance to Trump has been flawed from the moment he stepped on to the political stage.We’ve never been shy about broadcasting our opinions. We’ve worn pussy hats, put up lawn signs, and trolled Trump and his supporters, both online and off. But while such acts may get attention, their capacity to create change is less certain.This can even be true for mass protests. Americans have sometimes underestimated the effectiveness of protest – recent demonstrations in Los Angeles and across the country are an important part of resistance. In the era of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, though, protests can risk becoming a spectacle. And when the government is given a chance to portray them as violent, their effectiveness is extinguished – because they end up benefiting the forces they mean to challenge. The resisters that I researched, by contrast, were laser-focused on creating change. Whether they were satirists drawing anti-Nazi cartoons in 1920s Germany or former neo-Nazis becoming peace advocates in the 21st-century US, they sought to improve life for themselves and others in the here and now, in any way that they could, no matter how small.The German activist Emmi Bonhoeffer is a powerful example. She built a support group for the Holocaust survivors who testified in the 1960s Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, where Nazis were tried for their roles at the death camp. In doing so, Bonhoeffer resisted the Nazis’ desire for both their crimes and their victims to be forgotten. Her group – most of them homemakers – ultimately helped nearly 200 people as they took the stand. They inspired similar groups to form around other war crimes trials in Germany, too. But they didn’t advertise. They didn’t have a slogan or an outfit or a flag. They didn’t even bother to give their group a name. Their first and only concern was to clear a path toward justice for at least some of the Nazis’ victims. For Bonhoeffer, resistance wasn’t about getting attention. It was about creating change.What’s more, the resistance to Trump has always been stained by a judgmental streak. Whether we’re denouncing them as a “basket of deplorables” or mocking them on social media, we invariably devote too much energy to belittling his supporters. This has convinced us of our own moral rectitude. In turn, this has made us complacent, and complacency only deepens our inaction.The resisters that I learned about pulled no punches when it came to judging Adolf Hitler and his inner circle. But they spent more time judging themselves than his supporters. Consider the German émigré Sebastian Haffner. In the late 1930s, he wrote an extraordinary autobiographical book about his life as a so-called “Aryan” in Hitler’s Germany. It was only published in 2000, posthumously, after his son discovered it hidden in a desk drawer. For Haffner, publication didn’t really matter. The book was, first and foremost, an imaginative space in which he subjected his own behavior and thinking and privilege to relentless scrutiny. Through this process of self-scrutiny, he grew into one of the Nazis’ most effective critics in exile.The judgmental streak has also given some of our attempts to resist Trump a holier-than-thou quality that diminishes our capacity for empathy. We’re too quick to believe that 77 million Americans voted for Trump out of stupidity, not desperation or disenfranchisement. By contrast, I was always struck by the sense of shared humanity among the resisters that I discovered – like the lower-level British intelligence officials who persuaded members of the German public to help them smoke out Nazi war criminals after 1945; or Leon Bass, the Black American soldier who drew on his own experiences of segregation to deepen his understanding of the suffering of the Jewish people he liberated from Buchenwald.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLike every far-right leader in history, Donald Trump has intoxicated his supporters with nostalgia for a past that never existed in order to push a corrupt and hateful agenda of his own. Eventually, many will realize that he’s lied to them. Perhaps they’ll lose their jobs because of his economic policies, or see law-abiding friends and family deported because of his immigration policies. Perhaps their children will suffer from measles because of his health policies. Whatever the case, when their moment of realization comes, we must be ready to embrace them, and to weep with them for what they’ve lost. If there’s one thing that I learned while writing my book, it’s that effective resistance to the far right is never just about defeating the enemy. It’s about creating a better future for everyone.What’s giving me hope nowTeachers and librarians are championing the written word as a tool of resistance. Colleagues in the field of Holocaust education are collaborating on free and innovative events to inform the public about the collapse of democracy in early 20th-century Europe – and to establish what we can learn from it today. And, as I argue in my book, the arts can connect us to our own humanity, and to the humanity in others. Supporting your local art museum, attending a concert or joining a book club should all be cause for hope – because in a divided, partisan society, such acts constitute resistance.

      Luke Berryman, PhD, is an educator and author of the forthcoming book Resisting Nazism, to be published by Bloomsbury in 2026 More

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      in US Politics

      What a difference a week makes: Trump falls into the Netanyahu trap

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      When he was elected, Donald Trump suggested he could hammer out a new relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who was used to getting his way with the White House. But after just over 150 days in office, it appears Trump has fallen into the same trap as his predecessors – and launched the most consequential strike on Iran in generations.From early suggestions that the Trump administration would rein in Netanyahu’s military ambitions, it now appears that the Israeli PM has manoeuvred the US into striking Iranian uranium enrichment sites directly after a series of military attacks that Washington was unable to deter the Israeli PM from. And the US is now bracing for a retaliation that could easily bring it into a full-scale war.Days before Trump’s inauguration, his envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, barrelled into Israel with a demand to meet Netanyahu on Shabbat in order to strongarm him into negotiating a ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza.Senior officials at the time chalked that up to the “Trump factor” – a reference to the unpredictability and dealmaking prowess of the US president – which could provide a decisive edge in dealing with the forceful Israeli PM.While Netanyahu had been able to manoeuvre previous administrations into supporting his military adventures in the region, some critics of Israel began to laud Trump for his ability to resist Netanyahu’s pull.But after the events of Saturday – when US B-2 bombers pounded targets in Iran for the first time since Israel began to launch strikes last week – it was clear that Trump’s intuition had changed. Members of his inner entourage also shifted from a Maga isolationist approach to foreign policy to a more hawkish stance.Trump’s public aversion to war and his promises as a candidate not to embroil the US in further conflicts abroad was evaporating less than 200 days after he re-entered office.When he appeared in public, Trump sought to put rumours of a troubled relationship with Netanyahu to rest. And he tried to show that US policy was in lockstep with Israel, rejecting suggestions that Israel had blindsided the US by pursuing an aggressive bombing campaign against Iran.“I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu,” Trump said. “We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel.”It was a far cry from the initial US reaction to Israeli bombing raids on targets in Iran, when the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, called the strikes “unilateral” and said the US was “not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region”.What a difference a week makes. The US now appears to have fully endorsed the Israeli strikes and joined the attack, potentially setting the stage for a series of escalations that could lead to a new war in the Middle East.What does this mean for the future? Trump has claimed in public and private that the US strikes on the Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan enrichment sites were one-off missions and could be contained. US forces in the Middle East have been warned of the potential for Iranian retaliation attacks, and Trump has told Tehran that the US is ready to carry out further strikes if it is targeted directly.Yet Trump’s own administration officials, including the vice-president, JD Vance, have warned of the potential for a limited strike to creep into a longer-term mission in Iran if Tehran retaliates.For now, Trump continues to try to tread a middle ground, launching strikes but suggesting that he can prevent an escalation leading to a protracted war.Yet the key US ally in the Middle East appears only emboldened by Trump’s raid.“Congratulations, President Trump, your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: President praises attacks on Iran as lawmakers divided on US involvement

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      Washington was in a flurry late on Saturday as Donald Trump announced that the US had completed strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran, directly joining Israel’s effort to destroy the country’s nuclear program.American politicians reacted to the news of the US bombing of nuclear targets in Iran with a mix of cheering support and instant condemnation, reflecting deep divisions in the country, as Washington grapples with yet another military intervention overseas.The strikes hit uranium enrichment sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, Trump said. He warned Iran away from retaliating against US targets in the region, promising that further US strikes would be even more deadly.Here are the key stories at a glance:Donald Trump says the US has bombed and destroyed three nuclear sites in IranThe US directly joined Israel’s effort to destroy the country’s nuclear program in a risky gambit to weaken a longtime foe amid Tehran’s threat of reprisals that could spark a wider regional conflict.The strikes hit uranium enrichment sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, Trump said.Later, Iran’s atomic agency said that the country will carry on with its nuclear activities despite the US attacks on key facilities.Read the full storyUS lawmakers respond to attack with cheers and condemnation American politicians displayed a mixed reaction to the news of the US bombing of nuclear targets in Iran. Many democrat denounced the decision, while most Republicans praised the action.US Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York, demanded of Senate majority leader and South Dakota Republican John Thune that he should immediately call a vote on the matter.Schumer said the US Congress must enforce the War Powers Act – intended as a check on the US president’s power to devote the United States to armed conflict without the consent of the US Congress.Read the full storyMahmoud Khalil reunites with family after more than 100 days in Ice detentionMahmoud Khalil – the Palestinian rights activist, Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident of the US who had been held by federal immigration authorities for more than three months – has been reunited with his wife and infant son.Read the full storySuspect in Minnesota killings accused of being ‘prepper’ preparing ‘for warThe man charged in connection with the recent shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses was a doomsday “prepper” who instructed his family to “prepare for war” as he tried to evade capture, according to new court filings.Read the full storyThousands of Afghans face expulsion from US as Trump removes protectionsThousands of Afghans who fled to the US as the Taliban grabbed power again in Afghanistan are in mortal dread of being deported back to danger in the coming weeks amid the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Texas will require all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments under a new law that will make the state the nation’s largest to attempt to impose such a mandate.

      Pakistan nominated Donald Trump for Nobel peace prize, for his work in helping to resolve the recent conflict between India and Pakistan.

      Federal health officials are seeking to launch a “bold, edgy” public service campaign to warn Americans of the dangers of ultra-processed foods in social media, transit ads, billboards and even text messages. And they potentially stand to profit off the results.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 20 June 2025 More