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      Kamala Harris still needs to define herself – but she is the ultimate anti-Trump candidate | Arwa Mahdawi

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      A week has always been a long time in politics, but this might have been the longest week in Kamala Harris’s life. While Joe Biden is still technically the US president, he already feels irrelevant. All eyes are on Harris now. The speed with which she has gone from being one of the most unpopular vice-presidents in modern history to sitting at the top of the Democratic ticket, with an army of enthusiastic fans behind her, is astounding. Biden’s trajectory has been widely compared to a Shakespearean tragedy; Harris’s sudden reversal of fortune, meanwhile, is like something out of a fairytale.A quick recap: Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris on Sunday. The Democratic establishment then threw its weight behind her on Monday. So did hundreds of thousands of donors; Harris’s campaign raked in a record-breaking $81m in just 24 hours. By Tuesday, she had earned enough support from delegates to win the Democratic nomination for president next month. On Wednesday, Democrats approved rules meaning that any Democrat who wants to compete against Harris for the nomination only has days to do so. Then, on Friday, Barack Obama endorsed the vice-president. Her coronation is almost complete.Importantly, Harris doesn’t just have the consolidated support of party elites. She’s also got large swathes of social media cheering her on. The woman has undeniably mementum. “kamala IS brat,” the British pop star Charli xcx posted on X on Sunday. It may not be on the level of an Obama endorsement but Charli’s approval thrust Harris into the middle of the pop-cultural zeitgeist. Charli xcx’s new album, Brat, has undoubtedly been the meme of the summer – the album’s lime-green aesthetic plastered everywhere.In fact, soon after Charli’s approving tweet, @kamalahq changed its backdrop to brat green. Cue a lot of campaign staff trying to explain to high-ranking Democrats like Nancy Pelosi what on earth is going on. (“Well ma’am, Ms xcx, has defined a ‘brat’ as ‘just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it’. Yeah, I know that sounds confusing. But trust me when I say it’ll help us get out the youth vote.”)Harris’s campaign hasn’t just embraced the brats, it’s leaning hard into all the Kamala memes that have been flooding the internet over the past few weeks, including a lot of coconut-related content. That is not a racial slur, I should make clear to British readers, but rather a reference to a speech the vice-president gave in 2023.“My mother … would give us a hard time sometimes,” Harris said at a White House event about educational opportunity. “… and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” She then paused for profundity before continuing with the philosophical bit. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”The coconut quote – which circulated online long before last week – is quintessential Harris: a bewildering series of words that sound like someone typed “come up with a profound sentence” into an early version of ChatGPT. Lines like this have been a liability in the past, used by her detractors to suggest she’s unserious. The internet, however, is now turning Harris’s unique rhetorical style into an asset. The TikTok mashups and coconut memes have helped inject some much-needed joy and levity into what until now has been an extremely depressing election cycle.At the moment, Harris seems unstoppable. A new Axios/Generation Lab poll shows she’s got a big edge with young voters and another poll has found she’s narrowed Donald Trump’s lead significantly. Nevertheless, it can’t be emphasised enough that we are still very much in the Harris honeymoon phase. People were desperate not to have another Trump-Biden matchup and eager to embrace change of any kind. The question is: can the momentum around Harris be sustained?There is certainly precedent in US elections when it comes to a woman being rapidly built up, only to be swiftly knocked down. And Republicans are already doing their best to knock Harris down with racist and misogynistic attacks. They’ve also attacked her record as vice-president, calling her the “border tsar” and blaming her for the migration crisis.Then there’s the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The internet may have positioned Harris as a lovable goofball now but that image will be hard to sustain among young people if she becomes the face of Biden’s horrific Gaza policy – which has been deeply unpopular with young people and lost the Democrats a lot of support in the important swing state of Michigan, where there is a large Arab American population.So far, Harris has been walking a careful tightrope when it comes to Gaza; trying not to alienate progressives while also making sure she isn’t branded “anti-Israel”. On Wednesday, the vice-president skipped Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress and met him privately instead. On Thursday, she said it was time for a ceasefire deal to be done, but also pledged “unwavering” support for Israel. There’s only so long she can play both sides, however. She will either continue Biden’s policy of letting Israel kill as many Palestinians as it wants, with only meek protestations, or she won’t.Harris will also have to define herself as a candidate more broadly. This has never been one of her strengths and a lack of substance was the undoing of her 2019 attempt to be the Democratic nominee. “She has proved to be an uneven campaigner who changes her message and tactics to little effect and has a staff torn into factions,” the New York Times decreed in a November 2019 piece about how her campaign unravelled.That said, running against her fellow Democrats is very different from running against Trump. While Harris didn’t fully shine as the primary candidate or the vice-president, she has the potential to come into her own now. She is the ultimate anti-Trump. She’s the prosecutor, he’s the felon. He’s the old guy, she’s the relatively young woman. He represents the US’s past, she represents its future. Just a few weeks ago, I was resigned to a Trump win. Now I think the US has a fighting chance of seeing a Madam President.Then again, a week is a long time in politics. And there are still 14 to go before the election.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      The media is already failing in its duty to fairly cover Kamala Harris | Margaret Sullivan

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      It’s going to be ugly, that much is already clear.In the few days since Kamala Harris began her 2024 campaign for president, the media has shown us where some of their coverage is headed: no place good.Both the rightwing and traditional media are making some predictable blunders. Add in the swill that circulates endlessly on the social media platforms, and you’ve got a mess.Take, for example, the recent coverage of a Republican congressman’s smear of Harris.“One hundred percent she is a DEI hire,” Tim Burchett of Tennessee said on CNN, using the acronym for “diversity, equity and inclusion” to claim that she was ascending because of her race, not on merit. “Her record is abysmal at best.”An NBC headline was one of many to hand a giant megaphone to this racist trope: “GOP Rep Tim Burchett calls Kamala Harris a ‘DEI vice-president’.” Plenty of others did the same – parroting and thus amplifying the slur.Some news organizations added a fig leaf to their coverage, like the Tampa TV station whose headline read: “GOP representative called Harris a ‘DEI hire’: what does this mean?”There was a more responsible way to go. USA Today, for one, brought helpful context in a piece headlined: “DEI candidate: what’s behind the GOP attacks on Kamala Harris.” It did a good job of explaining that this phrase is all part of the right’s anti-“woke” culture wars. “DEI has become GOP shorthand to impugn the qualifications of people of color who ascend to positions of power and influence.” The reporter quoted the author Mita Mallick noting that the DEI label is an attempt to “discredit, demoralize and disrespect leaders of color by labeling them ‘diversity hires’ – or otherwise misappropriating the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion as thinly veiled racist insults.” You come away with greater understanding.Some insults are even more transparently racist, as when the perpetual liar and propagandist Kellyanne Conway went on Fox News in order to trash Harris: “She does not speak well. She does not work hard. She should not be the standard bearer for the party.”These stereotypes, painting a woman of color as unintelligent and lazy, echo well-established white-grievance themes, causing the author Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who studies authoritarian movements, to warn: “Propagandists know that you should build on existing prejudices when introducing a new hate object or theme.”Some commentary wasn’t racist but just pointless – as when Katy Tur asked, on MSNBC, if Harris was the kind of person voters would want to have a beer with. The “likeability” question certainly seems to come up for women candidates more than men.It’s a familiar election-cycle cliche, but the former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob didn’t find it harmless. He posted his disgust: “I want a president who won’t turn our country into a fascist hellscape. I’m not auditioning barstool partners.”Then there was the head-spinning opportunism of two columns in the Wall Street Journal by the same writer, Jason Riley, separated by only two weeks but managing to wildly contradict each other. The first headline, on 9 July: “Kamala Harris would be the best Democratic choice.” The second, on 23 July: “Kamala Harris isn’t the change Democrats need.”Parker Molloy, in her newsletter The Present Age, called it “a textbook example of the intellectual dishonesty that plagues much of our political commentary”.This hollow punditry is all about being provocative; consistency be damned.So far, Harris and her allies seem to be capable of flipping some stereotypes on their head. When JD Vance’s description of Harris and other urban career women – “childless cat ladies” who are “miserable at their lives” – resurfaced after he was named Donald Trump’s running mate, his sexist diss went viral.So did the backlash. Jennifer Aniston shot back at Vance, cat-lady apparel was sold at high volume, and Ella Emhoff posted on Instagram about her stepmother, also name-checking her brother: “How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I?”Still, sexist and racist tropes take their toll. To be sure, Harris deserves fair scrutiny from the press. But she doesn’t deserve to be the target of smears and stereotypes amplified by journalists and pundits addicted to conflict-driven clicks.As the election draws nearer, the media should consider the words of someone who has ridden in this rodeo.Writing in the New York Times this week, Hillary Clinton predicted that Harris’s record and character “will be distorted and disparaged by a flood of disinformation and the kind of ugly prejudice we’re already hearing from Maga mouthpieces”.Everybody has a role to play to prevent the spread. The campaign must find a way to cut through the noise, and voters must be careful about what they believe and share, as she urged.And I would add that the media must avoid spreading hateful stereotypes. November’s election is far too consequential for that.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      New York prosecutors urge judge to uphold Trump hush-money conviction – live

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      Prosecutors have asked a judge to reject Donald Trump’s appeal of his conviction in New York on charges related to falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, the Associated Press reports.Lawyers for the former president earlier this month appealed his conviction, saying a recent supreme court decision shielding presidents from prosecution for official acts applies to his conviction in the case brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.In a response filed today, prosecutors said that was not the case. Here’s more, from the AP:
      The Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a court filing that the high court’s opinion “has no bearing” on the hush money case and does not support vacating the jury’s unanimous verdict or dismissing the case.
      Prosecutors said Trump’s lawyers failed to raise the immunity issue in a timely fashion and that, even so, the case involved unofficial acts — many pertaining to events prior to his election — that are not subject to immunity.
      Lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee are trying to get the verdict — and even the indictment — tossed out because of the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision. It gave presidents considerable protection from prosecution.
      The ruling came about a month after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to conceal a deal to pay off porn actor Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. At the time, she was considering going public with a story of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, who says no such thing happened. He has denied any wrongdoing.
      Here’s more on what the former president’s lawyers are arguing:Kamala Harris is now meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the vice president’s ceremonial office.Harris did not take questions from reporters ahead of their meeting, but told Netanyahu:
      I look forward to our conversation. We have a lot to talk about.
      “We do indeed,” Netanyahu replied.Family members of American hostages being held captive in Gaza said they held “productive and honest” discussions with Joe Biden and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the White House today.Relatives said they “came today with a sense of urgency” and emphasized the need to reach a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that could result in the release of their loved ones, AP reported. They said:
      We got absolute commitment from the Biden administration and from prime minister Netanyahu that they understand the urgency of this moment.
      They added that they were more optimistic about a deal than they have been in months.Nikki Haley, in the CNN interview, criticized Republicans who have referred to Kamala Harris as a “DEI” candidate. “It’s not helpful,” the former South Carolina governor said.
      There’s so many issues we can talk about when it comes to Kamala Harris that it doesn’t matter what she looks like. It matters what she’s said, what she’s fought for, and the lack of results that she’s had because of it.
      Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, offered no apologies for the “tough things” she said about Donald Trump during the Republican primary race, but said she did not doubt her decision to support the former president in the November election.Haley, in her first interview since endorsing Trump, told CNN that she was not surprised by Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race. “I didn’t take happiness in it,” Haley said.
      There is an issue we have in DC, where people will go into office and they won’t let go. And then their staffers and their family keep propping them up, and it’s a problem for the American people.
      She argued that the Democrats’ decision to put forward Kamala Harris as their nominee would give them “the weakest candidate they could put in”.Harris “is much more progressive than Joe Biden ever was”, Haley said, adding:
      The fact they put in Kamala Harris – kudos for putting in someone younger – the fact that you put in one of the most liberal politicians you probably could have put in, it’s going to be an issue.
      Elena Kagan, a member of the three-justice liberal minority on the supreme court, said she would support creating an enforcement mechanism for its recently adopted code of ethics, Bloomberg Law reports.The nation’s highest court last year adopted a code setting out “rules and principles that guide the conduct of members of the court” following media reports of connections between conservative justices and parties with cases before the judges. However, the code was criticized for having no enforcement mechanism, leaving the judges to essentially enforce it on themselves.According to Bloomberg Law, Kagan told a judicial conference in California that if chief justice John Roberts creates “some sort of committee of highly respected judges with a great deal of experience and a reputation for fairness” to enforce the code, she would approve.In the months since the code was adopted, conservative justice Samuel Alito was reported to have flown flags connected to rightwing causes at his property, sparking further uproar over the court’s impartiality.Here’s a look back at when the ethics code was originally created:Joe Biden greeted Benjamin Netanyahu this afternoon at the White House, the day after the Israeli prime minister addressed Congress in a speech boycotted and criticized by many of the president’s fellow Democrats:“We’ve known each other for 40 years, and you’ve known every Israeli prime minister for 50 years. So, from a proud Zionist Jew to a proud Zionist Irish American I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the State of Israel. I look forward to discussing with you today thank you,” Netanyahu told Biden in the Oval Office.He was the first foreign leader to meet the US president since he abandoned his bid for a second term.The two leaders then met in private with the families of Americans taken hostage by Hamas in the 7 October attack. Kamala Harris is scheduled to meet separately with Netanyahu this afternoon.In addition to catching up to Donald Trump in polls of voters nationwide, the Guardian’s Melissa Hellmann reports that Kamala Harris is much more trusted than the former president among African Americans:A vast majority of Black Americans trust Kamala Harris and distrust Donald Trump – 71% compared to 5% – according to the largest-known survey of Black Americans since the Reconstruction era. The survey of 211,219 Black people across all 50 states showed that the presumptive Democratic nominee may have a higher chance of winning over Black voters than the Republican candidate.At a virtual press conference on Thursday afternoon, the Black-led innovation thinktank Black Futures Lab, revealed findings from its 2023 Black Census, which was conducted with the help of 50 Black-led grassroots organizations and national partners across the country from February 2022 to October 2023. The latest survey garnered seven times the respondents from the first census in 2018, which received 30,000 responses. Two-thirds of the respondents were women, a majority were from the south, and nearly half were from 45 to 64 years old. Black Futures Lab believes that the census results will help inform voter mobilization efforts ahead of presidential and local elections.“For us to be powerful in politics, we must control the agenda,” said Black Futures Lab’s field director Natishia June at the press conference. “This is why the Black Census is crucial.”Prosecutors have asked a judge to reject Donald Trump’s appeal of his conviction in New York on charges related to falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, the Associated Press reports.Lawyers for the former president earlier this month appealed his conviction, saying a recent supreme court decision shielding presidents from prosecution for official acts applies to his conviction in the case brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.In a response filed today, prosecutors said that was not the case. Here’s more, from the AP:
      The Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a court filing that the high court’s opinion “has no bearing” on the hush money case and does not support vacating the jury’s unanimous verdict or dismissing the case.
      Prosecutors said Trump’s lawyers failed to raise the immunity issue in a timely fashion and that, even so, the case involved unofficial acts — many pertaining to events prior to his election — that are not subject to immunity.
      Lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee are trying to get the verdict — and even the indictment — tossed out because of the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision. It gave presidents considerable protection from prosecution.
      The ruling came about a month after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records to conceal a deal to pay off porn actor Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. At the time, she was considering going public with a story of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, who says no such thing happened. He has denied any wrongdoing.
      Here’s more on what the former president’s lawyers are arguing:In remarks to reporters as she deplaned after returning to Washington DC, Kamala Harris accused Donald Trump of trying to cancel the second presidential debate, which is scheduled for 10 September.“I’m ready to debate Donald Trump. I have agreed to the previously agreed upon September 10 debate. He agreed to that previously,” the vice-president said.“Now, here he is backpedaling and I’m ready and I think the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage. And so, I’m ready to go.”The polls published by the New York Times and Siena College over the past year have been among the most talked about surveys in US politics – perhaps because they have typically shown Joe Biden struggling to match Donald Trump’s support.In an analysis of their latest batch of data, which is the first with Kamala Harris as the Democratic contender, Nate Cohn, the Times’s chief political analyst, writes that this poll is much different than those that came before it. Here’s why:
      Mr. Trump hits a high in popularity. Overall, 48 percent of registered voters say they have a favorable view of him, up from 42 percent in our last poll (taken after the debate but before the convention and assassination attempt). It’s his highest favorable number in a Times/Siena poll, which previously always found his favorable ratings between 39 percent and 45 percent.
      Ms. Harris is surging. In fact, her ratings have increased even more than Mr. Trump’s. Overall, 46 percent of registered voters have a favorable view of her, up from 36 percent when we last asked about her in February. Only 49 percent have an unfavorable view, down from 54 percent in our last measure. As important, her favorable rating is higher than Mr. Biden’s. In fact, it’s higher than his standing in any Times/Siena poll since September 2022, which so happens to be the last time Mr. Biden led a Times/Siena national poll of registered voters.
      The national political environment is a little brighter. The share of voters who say the country is on the “right track” is up to 27 percent – hardly a bright and smiley public, but still the highest since the midterm elections in 2022. Mr. Biden’s approval and favorable ratings are up as well. The ranks of the double haters have dwindled: With both Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump riding high, the number of voters who dislike both candidates has plunged to 8 percent, down from 20 percent in Times/Siena polls so far this year.
      He concludes with:
      With all of these underlying changes in the attitudes about the candidates, there’s no reason to assume that this familiar Trump +1 result means that the race has simply returned to where it stood before the debate. For now, these developments have mostly canceled out, but whether that will still be true in a few weeks is much harder to say.
      New polling indicates Kamala Harris has re-engaged voters turned off by Joe Biden’s candidacy, and is vying closely against Donald Trump in crucial swing states.While it’s unclear if the vice-president has the overall advantage, the data is a reversal of fortune for the Democrats, who had grown nervous after months of polling had showed Biden at best tied, or at worst trailing, Trump nationally and in the states along the Great Lakes and in the southern Sun belt whose voters are set to decide the election.The closely watched New York Times/Siena College poll found that among likely voters nationwide, Trump has only a one-point lead. In their previous survey following the Trump-Biden debate, the former president led by six points:Emerson College found that Trump leads in most swing states, albeit narrowly and with Wisconsin tied:However, that data was far better than Biden’s numbers in those states the last time Emerson polled voters on his candidacy.“Harris has recovered a portion of the vote for the Democrats on the presidential ticket since the fallout after the June 27 debate,” said executive director of Emerson College Polling Spencer Kimball. “Harris’ numbers now reflect similar support levels to those of Biden back in March.”Some Democratic and labor leaders from battleground states joined the DNC press call today, and reported genuine and widespread enthusiasm for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.“There’s a lot of excitement on the ground,” said Yolanda Bejarano, chair of the Arizona Democratic party. “We are seeing just a lot of folks coming out, trying to find out what they can do to volunteer, to help get Vice-President Harris elected.”Ron Bieber, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, described the environment in the battleground state as “electric” and echoed Harris’s message that Americans “won’t go back” to a time of fewer rights.“Trump was devastating to the auto industry and auto workers here in Michigan. They are not going to go backwards. We’re moving forward,” Bieber said.“President Biden and Vice-President Harris have been the biggest supporters of union workers and the auto industry here in Michigan, and people are fired up. I’ve been doing this stuff a long time now, and I’ve never seen the energy and excitement as I am right now.”The Democratic national committee held a press call today to attack Donald Trump and JD Vance for their “anti-worker” agenda, after Republicans spent much of their convention pitching themselves as economic populists.“It’s more of that trickle-down economic fairytale that has never worked. It has gutted so much of our economy. It’s hurt working people; it’s hurt the labor movement,” said Congressman Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania.“It’s been great for big corporations and billionaires and Wall Street. It is fiscally irresponsible, and we can’t let it happen again.”Touting the legislative accomplishments of the Biden administration, Deluzio argued Kamala Harris would continue the president’s pro-labor record if she wins in November.“We’re going to take more strong action to bring home offshore jobs, to bring home more manufacturing, to defend the ability and the freedom for folks to form and join the union,” Deluzio said. “That’s the backbone of the union way of life.”Republican congressman and former White House doctor Ronny Jackson accused the FBI director, Christopher Wray, of making a “politically motived move” when he told Congress that it was not yet clear if the former president was hit by a bullet or shrapnel after a gunman opened fire at his rally in Pennsylvania.Following the assassination attempt, Jackson issued a memo offering some details of the wound Trump suffered. Before we get into what he said about the FBI director, it’s worth noting that Jackson denied that Trump had contracted Covid-19 back in 2020, before being refuted by an official in the then-president’s administration.Anyway, here’s the tweet: More

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      Netanyahu is presiding over a sharp decline in the US’s pro-Israel consensus

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      Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of the House and Senate may look like a political victory: the prime minister of a foreign country speaking before Congress, only interrupted by multiple standing ovations. But the political events serving as a backdrop for the speech reveal Netanyahu’s political career, and the bipartisan pro-Israel consensus in the US, in sharp decline.At home in Israel, it’s virtually unthinkable that Netanyahu could have found such a supportive audience. A staggering 72% of Israelis want him to resign over failures that permitted the 7 October attacks by Hamas to succeed.And 72% of Israelis also support a deal to release hostages over the destruction of Hamas. Despite saying he is doing everything he can to “bring all our hostages home”, Netanyahu appeared to outright reject a hostage deal in his speech to Congress, declaring Israel “must retain overriding security control [in Gaza] to prevent the resurgence of terror, to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel”, a war goal the Israeli military says is unachievable and terms to which Hamas will not agree.Indeed, blatant falsehoods were scattered throughout his speech. He claimed “practically no civilians were killed in Rafah” (daily reporting shows women and children dead from Israeli air strikes on Rafah and surrounding areas), downplayed the role of Israel in creating famine conditions for much of Gaza’s population, and claimed that Israel helps “keep American boots off the ground while protecting our shared interests in the Middle East”, conveniently omitting the 4,492 US service members who died in the Iraq war, a war Netanyahu lobbied Congress to undertake in 2002.While the speech was Netanyahu’s fourth address to Congress, the political landscape in Washington has shifted beneath his feet, creating a far less welcoming American public than the applause might suggest. Around half of House and Senate Democrats boycotted the speech while thousands of protesters demonstrated outside the Capitol building, revealing the steep drop in support for Israel’s war on Gaza over the past nine months.Before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, 38% of voters said they were less likely to vote for him due to his handling of the war on Gaza. “Many core constituencies – including independents, swing state likely voters, and Democratic party activists – are angry at Biden’s unqualified support for the Israeli assault on Gaza,” said a report from the Century Foundation, the thinktank that commissioned the poll.While sentiments towards Israel are warmer within the Republican party – Israeli flags were visible on the floor of the Republican convention last week and Republican members of Congress led many of the standing ovations for Netanyahu’s speech – that support has increasingly coincided with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to Republicans by the world’s richest Israeli, Israeli-US dual national Miriam Adelson, who alongside her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, topped the list of Republican donors since the late 2000s, raising questions about whether support for Israel is an issue of deep concern to the Republican base or simply a transaction required for campaign contributions.The election wins of Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky and Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from West Virginia (both Republican critics of US aid to Israel), suggest an appetite, or at least an acceptance, of a more balanced US-Israel relationship within Republican voters.Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, planned before Biden ended his campaign for re-election, is now set against the political uncertainty of how Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will approach the relationship with Israel. The administration of which she is still a part of bled dangerous levels of support from its own base, particularly in vital swing states like Michigan, where 100,000 Arab and Muslim voters expressed their dissatisfaction with Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza by submitting “uncommitted” ballots in their Democratic primary.Pressure is building on the vice-president to distance herself from Biden’s “bearhug” strategy of Netanyahu and utilize the leverage the US holds over Israel: threatening to turn off the spigot of munitions necessary for Israel’s war to drag on.The speech may have looked like a victory for an embattled Israeli prime minister but the real test of Netanyahu’s political gambit will only become clear as Harris sets the foreign policy agenda for her presidential campaign.If the boycott of the speech by Democrats, polling showing dissatisfaction with ongoing support for the war on Gaza, and protesters outside the Capitol were any sign of the political tides within the Democratic party, Harris may conclude that the time has come for greater daylight between the US and Netanyahu, distancing the US from the nearly 40,000 casualties suffered by Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military, and a conditioning of US military aid to Israel on an end to the war on Gaza and Israeli participation in a deal to release hostages held by Hamas. Such a move would cast Netanyahu’s speech as a symbolic, and highly visible, breaking point in the bipartisan US support he has enjoyed for his entire political career.

      Eli Clifton is a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and investigative journalist at large at Responsible Statecraft More

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      Israel and Hamas closer than ever to ceasefire deal, White House says

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      White House officials said Israel and Hamas were “closer now than we’ve been before” to reaching a ceasefire deal as Benjamin Netanyahu met Joe Biden on Thursday to discuss an end to the nine-month conflict in Gaza.The talks at the White House came amid unprecedented political turmoil in the US and domestic pressure on the Israeli prime minster to rescue the dozens of hostages still being held captive after Hamas’s 7 October attack. Netanyahu was also expected to meet the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, who is likely to replace Biden as the Democratic candidate for November’s election.“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” Biden said when he welcomed Netanyahu to the Oval Office. “From a proud Jewish Zionist to a proud Irish-American Zionist, I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the state of Israel,” Netanyahu told Biden at the start of their meeting.The president thanked Netanyahu and noted that his first meeting with an Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, was in 1973, soon after he was elected to the Senate.Biden was expected to put pressure on Netanyahu to commit to at least the first stage of a three-part deal that would see some hostages released in exchange for a temporary ceasefire. A senior administration official said that a framework for the deal had been agreed upon but that “serious implementation issues … still had to be resolved.“I don’t expect the meeting to be a yes or no,” the official said. “It’s a kind of like, ‘How do we close these final gaps?’”At a press conference while the two leaders were meeting, the White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said gaps in the ceasefire deal could be overcome. “We need to get there soon,” he said. “We are closer now than we’ve been before. Both sides have to make compromises.”The State Department spokesperson, Matt Miller, said: “I think the message from the American side in that meeting will be that we need to get this deal over the line.”More than 39,000 Palestinian civilians have been killed in the conflict, and the international criminal court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The US does not recognise the court’s jurisdiction.Harris was expected to meet Netanyahu separately as she began her late campaign to challenge Donald Trump in November’s presidential vote. The vice-president must prove her mettle as a negotiator in one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.She has spoken forcefully about the need for a ceasefire and about the plight of Palestinian civilians in the conflict, and there is a possibility that she could win back some Democratic voters who believe that the Biden administration has done too little to end the conflict or limit sales of arms to Israel.Harris – the presiding officer of the Senate – did not attend Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday but released a careful statement saying that her absence should not be interpreted as a boycott of the event.A senior administration official told the Associated Press there was “no daylight between the president and vice-president” on Israel.On Thursday, Harris issued a statement forcefully condemning pro-Palestine protesters who had demonstrated against Netanyahu’s speech in Washington.She said: “Yesterday, at Union Station in Washington DC we saw despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fuelled rhetoric.“I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organisation Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the state of Israel and kill Jews. Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent and we must not tolerate it in our nation.”The vice-president added: “I condemn the burning of the American flag. That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America. It should never be desecrated in that way.“I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: antisemitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation.”Netanyahu is also scheduled to meet Trump on Friday at his residence in Mar-a-Lago. The two men have had a strained relationship since Netanyahu congratulated Biden on his victory in the 2020 elections, a vote that, Trump has claimed without evidence, was manipulated.Netanyahu promised “total victory” in the Gaza war in a raucous speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, saying that there were “intensive” efforts to bring the hostages home but giving little detail about how that would be achieved.About 40 Democratic lawmakers – including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi – boycotted the speech, and only half of congressional Democrats attended.“Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentation in the House Chamber today was by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States,” Pelosi wrote on X.Thousands protested on the streets of the capital, with both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups saying Netanyahu was using the conflict as cover for his own political problems at home.He did not mention the word “ceasefire” or the negotiations with Hamas once during the speech, instead he called for expedited deliveries of US arms to “help us finish the job faster”.“I will not rest until all their loved ones are home,” said Netanyahu during the speech. “All of them. As we speak, we’re actively engaged in intensive efforts to secure their release, and I’m confident that these efforts can succeed. Some of them are taking place right now. I want to thank President Biden for his tireless efforts on behalf of the hostages and for his efforts to the hostage families as well.”It is unclear whether Biden’s recent decision to end his presidential campaign will allow him to use greater leverage to convince Netanyahu to sign on to a deal.“The framework of the deal is basically there,” said a senior administration official. “There are some very serious implementation issues that still have to be resolved, and I don’t want to discount the difficulty of those … There are some things we need from Hamas, and there are some things we need from the Israeli side, and I think you’ll see that play out here over the course of the coming week.” More

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      Amid chaos of US politics, Netanyahu finally gets attention he craves in Washington

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      On his third day in Washington, Benjamin Netanyahu finally got the attention he so desperately wanted in the US capital.Republicans and their guests in the House chamber stamped their feet and whistled as a joint session was gaveled into order, while the Democrat lawmakers who chose not to boycott someone whom colleagues had called a “war criminal” looked on in sullen silence. In a 56-minute speech punctuated with 50 rounds of applause, the Israeli prime minister dashed hopes of a quick end to the war in Gaza and dispensed red meat to the Republican faithful, blasting anti-war protest culture and vowing to fight until “total victory”.For two days, Netanyahu had mostly been ignored at the Watergate hotel, passed over for the spectacle of a US political cycle averaging a West Wing season finale a week. Joe Biden had dropped out of the presidential race amid rumours of his cognitive decline, endorsing the vice-president, Kamala Harris, weeks before the convention and reinvigorating the Democratic party overnight. A bullet had grazed Donald Trump’s ear in an assassination attempt just 11 days ago, sparking comparisons to the resurrection of Lazarus and Jesus Christ. America has been living decades in just weeks; was there even room on the cable TV schedule for Netanyahu to deliver another incendiary speech?But the House speaker, Mike Johnson, a Republican, had put Netanyahu on the schedule on 24 July and neither the US political tumult nor Biden’s bout of Covid-19, nor a requested international criminal court warrant accusing him of “crimes against humanity” would deter Israel’s prime minister from coming to Washington to make his case before Congress for a record fourth time (once more than Winston Churchill).So when he had his moment, Netanyahu stood up to give a speech filled with verve but absolutely devoid of details: when and how Israel’s war in Gaza would come to an end and the 120 remaining hostages kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October would be brought home.There was a vague reference to a “civilian administration run by Palestinians who do not seek to destroy Israel” after his “total victory”, a “vision for Gaza” that said the strip of land would be “demilitarised and deradicalised”. But Netanyahu gave no vision of how to get there, besides more of the same, which has already left an estimated 39,000 Palestinians dead on top of the 1,200 Israelis killed by Hamas on 7 October.This was not a speech declaring a ceasefire, a word that was not uttered once by Netanyahu, despite weeks of negotiations with Hamas and the Biden administration’s insistence that a “framework” had already been agreed. Shortly after the speech, a senior administration official conceded there may still be some “very serious implementation issues that still have to be resolved”.On the streets outside the Capitol, police deployed teargas and pepper spray as protests descended into melees so confused that anti-Netanyahu protesters from different factions ended up clashing angrily with one another.Despite the violence, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters voiced frustration with the Israeli prime minister and a war that had killed thousands with no resolution in sight.View image in fullscreenJessica Pliska, a pro-Palestinian protester who carried a sign calling Netanyahu “Satanyahu”, said she drove 11 hours from Michigan to demonstrate against his address. “I feel disappointed in our government. The fact that the person perpetrating these war crimes is invited to our Congress is insidious.“I think it’s wonderful that people are boycotting,” she said. “I think it shows a moral imperative among the masses to come out and protest, not only here in the streets but in Congress as well.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSeveral blocks away, Brad Young, a dual US-Israeli citizen from North Carolina, said he was “very much in favour of the Israeli right to exist but [I] believe that the government in place right now is corrupt and not acting in the best interests of Israel or of anyone in the region. It’s outrageous that Bibi [Netanyahu] is here and speaking to Congress when he should be focused on sealing the deal and bringing the hostages home.”When he finally took the rostrum on Thursday, Netanyahu quickly waded knee-deep into the American culture wars that have divided the US ahead of the presidential elections. At times it can feel that US politics has become the world’s politics, particularly when foreign leaders curry favour with Donald Trump and parrot his politics before the vote.Netanyahu used his hour to lambast woke culture and the pro-Palestinian protest movement, echoing the Republican talking points of the moment. Somewhere between calling protesters “Iran’s useful idiots” and saying those holding signs reading “gays for Gaza” might as well call themselves “chickens for KFC”, the Israeli prime minister brought up the North Carolina frat boys who surrounded the US flag during a pro-Palestinian protest at the campus of Chapel Hill UNC.“USA! USA! USA!” his backers in the hall chanted, their shouts echoing off the walls. Netanyahu would be at home at a football match or a stump speech, but his remarks in Congress on Wednesday gave little sign that this war is any closer to coming to an end. More

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      House to form taskforce to investigate Trump assassination attempt

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      The House voted on Wednesday to form a taskforce to investigate the security failures surrounding the assassination attempt against Donald Trump earlier this month.The vote underscores the bipartisan outrage over the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump came within inches of losing his life. One rally-goer was killed and two others severely injured. Lawmakers have responded quickly with hearings and widespread calls for accountability.The legislation passed by a vote of 416-0.The taskforce will be composed of 13 members and is expected to include seven Republicans and six Democrats. It will be tasked with determining what went wrong on the day of the attempted assassination and will make recommendations to prevent future security lapses. It will issue a final report before 13 December and has the authority to issue subpoenas.The bill is sponsored by Republican congressman Mike Kelly, whose home town of Butler was the site of the shooting. Kelly was at the rally with his wife and other family members.“I can tell you that my community is grieving,” Kelly said. “They are shocked by what happened in our backyard. The people of Butler and the people of the United States deserve answers.”He said he was concerned when the site of the rally was picked because he thought it would be “a difficult place to have a rally of that size.” He called the taskforce a chance to build trust with Americans that lawmakers can work together to tackle a crisis.House committees have already held three hearings focusing on the shooting. The Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday, one day after she appeared before a congressional committee and was berated for hours by Democrats and Republicans for the security failures.She called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades, but she angered lawmakers by failing to answer specific questions about the investigation.Democrats also voiced support for the taskforce, saying what happened in Butler was a despicable attack that never should have happened.“We need to know what happened. We need to get to the truth. We need to prevent this from ever, ever happening again,” said Congressman Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat. More

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      Netanyahu tells Congress Israel’s ‘fight is your fight’ amid boycotts and protests

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      Benjamin Netanyahu lauded US support for Israel’s war in Gaza but offered few details on ceasefire negotiations with Hamas as he addressed a raucous joint session of US Congress that was boycotted by dozens of Democratic lawmakers and protested against by thousands on the streets outside the US Capitol.In a fiery speech in the House chamber, Netanyahu called for “total victory” in the nine-month-old war, dashing hopes among some that he would announce progress toward a ceasefire and the return of Israeli hostages before his meetings with Joe Biden at the White House on Thursday.“We’re not only protecting ourselves. We’re protecting you … Our enemies are your enemy, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory,” Netanyahu shouted, as House and Senate Republicans rose to their feet to applaud the Israeli prime minister.Dozens of Democratic members of Congress – including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi – said they would boycott the speech over humanitarian concerns about how Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza, which has left an estimated 39,000 Palestinian civilians dead.Pelosi, in remarks to Politico before the speech, said it was “inappropriate” for Netanyahu to be invited and that she had “no sense of Netanyahu’s interest in peace”.Bernie Sanders, who also boycotted the speech, said that “it will be the first time in American history that a war criminal has been given that honor.” The international criminal court, which the United States does not recognise, is considering its prosecutor’s request for an arrest warrant for Netanyahu (as well as other Israeli officials and senior Hamas leaders) for war crimes and crimes against humanity.Netanyahu brushed asidehumanitarian concerns for the civilian population of Gaza aside, calling for “total victory” and issuing an appeal for the US to fast-track military aid to Israel: “Give us the tools and we’ll get the job done faster.” He thanked Biden for his “heartfelt support for Israel”.Netanyahu did not offer new insight on negotiations about a ceasefire with Hamas, saying only that “we’re actively engaged in intensive efforts” to secure the hostages’ release, adding that “some of those efforts are ongoing right now.”He also denied that Israel would seek to “resettle” Gaza when the conflict ended, but demanded the”demilitarization and deradicalization” of the territory, calling it his “vision for Gaza”.Police officers inside the Capitol arrested several members of the audience wearing shirts that read “Seal the deal NOW!” During the speech, Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, held up a black-and-white sign that read “war criminal” and “guilty of genocide”.Outside the Capitol, police used pepper spray against protestors who chanted “Netanyahu, you can’t hide. You’re committing genocide,”.Netanyahu attacked the protesters directly, saying that they were “Iran’s useful idiots”.“Many anti-Israel protesters choose to stand with evil,” said Netanyahu. “Many stand with Hamas.”The address was Netanyahu’s first to the Congress since the 7 October attack by Hamas that left more than 1,200 Israelis dead and took more than 250 hostages, of which 120 are thought to remain in captivity.In meetings with families of hostages this week, Netanyahu indicated that a ceasefire deal could be taking shape, but also said that he would maintain pressure on Hamas and hold out for the best terms possible.A number of the families of hostages have demanded that he conclude a deal as quickly as possible. “I have to say that the urgency of the matter did not seem to resonate with him,” Daniel Neutra, whose brother Omer is one of eight American citizens in captivity, told a House panel. Inside the House chamber on Wednesday, some members in the audience wore bright yellow T-shirts that read: “Seal the deal NOW!”The US political turmoil has largely overshadowed Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week. Biden on Sunday announced that he would not seek re-election, endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris as the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump at the polls in November.Harris was absent from the House rostrum on Wednesday, saying that she had a prior engagement. She later released a statement denying that she had boycotted the speech.Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right Israeli national security minister, openly endorsed Donald Trump in the elections on Wednesday, saying that “a cabinet minister is supposed to maintain neutrality, but that’s impossible to do after Biden”.In an interview with Bloomberg published hours before Netanyahu was due to speak, Ben Gvir said that Biden had been restraining Israel in fighting against regional enemies, including Iran.“I believe that with Trump, Israel will receive the backing to act against Iran,” Ben Gvir said. “With Trump it will be clearer that enemies must be defeated.“The US has always stood behind Israel in terms of armaments and weapons, yet this time the sense was that we were being reckoned with – that we were trying to be prevented from winning,” Ben Gvir added. “That happened on Biden’s watch and fed Hamas with lots of energy.”Netanyahu is set to meet with Biden at the White House on Thursday. He is also expected to meet with Harris, the presumptive Democratic candidate, on Thursday, and then with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday. Harris would normally have sat directly behind Netanyahu, but said that she had a prior speaking engagement at a sorority in Indianapolis. More