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      The supreme court made a surprising ruling for Native American rights | Nick Estes

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      A white couple in Texas felt racially discriminated against when facing barriers to adopting a Navajo child. Backed by powerful corporate interests and other non-Native families, the Brackeens brought their grievance to the US supreme court and attempted to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA. The “rights” of individuals thereby stood against the collective rights of entire nations of people who were here first in a legal system not of their own making. The Brackeens argued that the law privileges Indians as a race over others, including white families, and is, therefore, unconstitutional. The argument reeked of “reverse racism”, a bogus notion that measures taken to protect marginalized people end up harming white people.The ICWA, however, was designed to reverse a sordid history of Native family separation that benefited white families seeking to adopt Native children. More importantly, the law guarantees that federally recognized tribes have a say in their children’s futures by keeping them with Native families. Those determinations are not based on race but on the political status of tribes and the rights of their members.Indian country blew a huge sigh of relief on Thursday when the rightwing-majority court ruled against the Brackeens and upheld the ICWA. A decision otherwise would have had dire consequences for tribes. Beyond removing protections for their children, it could have changed tribes’ status, which precedes the existence of the United States and its constitution, to that of racial minorities whose remaining lands, histories and identities would, without thought, be absorbed into the American melting pot.The 7-2 decision should be celebrated as a clear sign that not only is tribal sovereignty a constitutional reality, but it is also here to stay. Sadly, the supreme court, throughout its history, has more often done harm to Native sovereignty than protected it. “Often, Native American tribes have come to his court seeking justice only to leave with bowed heads and empty hands,” admitted Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, in his concurring majority opinion. His opinion offers a rich history of Indian child removal, examining the transition from federal Indian boarding schools to state welfare systems and adoption agencies that engaged in Native family separation.Gorsuch also writes of a 19th-century court that created the foundations of federal Indian law, upon which today’s justices draw. The court made those decisions during a time of great horror for Native people – often providing legal justification for Indigenous genocide and land seizures. In the 1823 case Johnson v M’Intosh, Chief Justice John Marshall argued that the United States inherited its right to Native lands from previous European powers. “Conquest gives a title which the courts of the conqueror cannot deny,” he wrote. The right to take lands from non-Christians and non-Europeans derived from 15th-century papal bulls known as the “doctrine of discovery”.That principle of racial and civilizational superiority hasn’t gone away and today infects the minds of jurists of all stripes. As recently as 2005, the supreme court invoked the doctrine in a ruling against a land claim by the Oneida Indian Nation. Writing against tribal sovereignty, the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned against “rekindling embers of (tribal) sovereignty that long ago grew cold”.Last March, after the tireless advocacy of Indigenous peoples, the Vatican “repudiat(ed) those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery’”. That rejection, however, didn’t undo the centuries of terror against Indigenous peoples and their children taken from them to be “civilized” according to Christian principles. It didn’t return the land or property the Catholic church stole from Indigenous peoples. And it didn’t overturn the fundamental premise upon which federal Indian law still rests – European conquest.In his concurring opinion in Haaland v Brackeen, Gorsuch makes a strong case defending tribal sovereignty against the overbroad powers of Congress to curtail tribal sovereignty and the overreach of states in his concurring opinion. Liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor joined Gorsuch in his opinion. But they didn’t concur with his assertion that the principle that Congress has “plenary power” to divest tribes of their sovereignty conflicts with the original understanding of the constitution. Gorsuch argues that the constitution doesn’t grant the authority to limit tribal sovereignty. Yet Congress has used its powers to terminate federally recognized tribes and divest tribes of criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians.Gorsuch’s concurring opinion shows he is the most serious about engaging federal Indian law and history. How far his call for aligning Indian law with original understandings of the constitution will go is anyone’s guess. His sympathies with tribal sovereignty also show that getting good legal outcomes for tribal nations is like rolling the dice with unelected judges who hold so much sway over the survival and existence of tribal nations.But the victory in keeping ICWA and upholding tribal sovereignty doesn’t lie with Gorsuch. Leading up to this decision, tribes and activists led an effective political campaign to teach the public. Since ICWA’s passage in 1978, 14 states passed their own state versions of the law. In anticipation of ICWA being overturned, several states (including several Republican-majority state governments) recently passed protections to uphold it.The popular sentiment is on the side of tribal sovereignty. It’s now a question of what actions must be taken to ensure the collective rights of tribes are guarded against the individual and corporate desires to lay claim to Native lands, identities and children.
      Nick Estes is a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and an assistant professer of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is a journalist, historian and the host of the Red Nation Podcast. He is the author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance More

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      Decades of Decadence review: Marco Rubio joins publishing’s motley Republican crew

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      Marco Rubio should have picked a better title. With his new book, the three-term senator echoes a 1991 double-platinum album by none other than Mötley Crüe: Decade of Decadence. The vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee gives no credit to the bad boys of rock.Rubio is no Tommy Lee. As a presidential candidate, in 2016, the Florida senator preened … with an invisible kick-me sign pinned to his back.Donald Trump gleefully mocked the senator, his finances and personal tics. Rubio’s relationship with credit cards, Trump called a “disaster”. He also laced into his rival for sweating and gulping down water when rebutting Barack Obama’s State of the Union address in 2013.“I need water. Help me. I need water,” Trump sneered.It didn’t matter if Lil’ Marco had larger hands than him.In New Hampshire, Chris Christie fatally blistered Rubio for a robotic debate performance. “Memorized 25-second speech” – the words will forever haunt him. In that moment, Rubio’s grand ambitions went up in smoke.Also in 2015, McKay Coppins of the Atlantic caught Rubio pinching himself over his own good fortune, exclaiming to a friend: “It’s amazing … I can call up a lobbyist at four in the morning and he’ll meet me anywhere with a bag of $40,000 in cash.”So much for the yucks to be derived from Rubio’s title. As a text, Decades of Decadence delivers little. It lacks even the (skewed) intellectual curiosity of recent books by Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, hard-right senators of a generation just after Rubio. Instead, Rubio’s broadside reads like a laundry list of Republican orthodoxies delivered by a legislator scared Trump will upend his career still further. Less than two years ago, remember, the prospect of a primary challenge from Ivanka Trump had Rubio terrified.“I like Ivanka, and we worked very well together on issues, and she’s a US …” Rubio babbled. In the end, she punted. He was spared.But Rubio won’t (or can’t) leave well enough alone. In his new book, he compares himself to Donald Trump.“Watching the Trump campaign in action, I was reminded of my own first campaign for the US Senate in 2010,” he reminisces. “I did have an outsider spirit that allowed me to connect with voters who felt that the government wasn’t working for them.”Not in 2016, he didn’t. In his own state, Rubio lost the presidential primary to Trump by nearly 20 points.Elsewhere, Rubio compares himself to Roger Goodell.“I think of my role as a policymaker as very similar to the role of the commissioner of the National Football League,” he writes.OK. For what it’s worth, Rubio’s wife was once a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. His time as a college football player is a source of personal nostalgia.Dutifully, Rubio bashes the Bushes. He attacks the late George HW Bush and James Baker, his secretary of state, for being soft on China. He castigates Bush, who was ambassador to the United Nations and liaison to China, for referring to a Chinese leader as an “old friend”. He zings Baker as a “career public servant”.Bush served in the second world war. Baker was Bush’s “Velvet Hammer”. On their watch, the Berlin Wall fell and Kuwait was liberated. Rubio never wore a uniform and has spent most of his adult existence on the taxpayers’ dime. He is a career politician.Predictably, Rubio omits any mention of Trump prostrating himself before Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. The normally loquacious senator also stayed mum over Trump congratulating Kim on his country’s election to the board of the World Health Organization.On the page, Rubio also takes aim at the over-extension of the US military, financialism and woke corporations. He evidently suffers from amnesia. In a March 2015 interview with Fox News, Rubio rejected the contention the Iraq war was a mistake.“I don’t believe it was,” he said, adding: “The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn’t run Iraq.”Weeks later, he reversed his position.In the same spirit of expediency, Rubio now voices disgust for Wall Street and financialism, upbraids Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase for supporting Black Lives Matter, and zings Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Capital for boosting investment in China.In 2016, such forces drove Rubio’s presidential campaign. Politico blared: “Koch donors give Rubio early nod.” Other major donors included Paul Singer of Elliott Management and Ken Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund mogul and Harvard donor.“I’m really excited to be supporting Marco Rubio,” Griffin said. “He will be the next president.”Not quite. Seven years on, Griffin’s Citadel Securities is increasing its exposure in China. To Rubio, apparently, the role of business is to cough up campaign dollars – then shut up.“The best way to ensure our political system is less reliant on money is not to pass laws which infringe on fundamental rights, but rather to elect leaders who value policy and principles over politics and special interests,” the senator intones.In the race for the Republican nomination, he has not yet endorsed. That has not stopped him bemoaning Trump’s fate at the hands of the law. Last week, moments after news of the former president’s latest indictment, over his retention of classified records, Rubio delivered the following tweet:“There is no limit to what these people will do to protect their power and destroy those who threaten it, even if it means ripping our country apart and shredding public faith in the institutions that hold our republic together.”His disdain for Joe Biden is unvarnished. Trump? Less so – in public, at least.
      Decades of Decadence: How Our Spoiled Elites Blew America’s Inheritance of Liberty, Security, and Prosperity is published in the US by HarperCollins More

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      Biden begins re-relection campaign – does he have what it takes to win again?

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      It became known as the “basement strategy”. As the coronavirus pandemic raged outside, presidential candidate Joe Biden addressed the nation from a makeshift studio under his Delaware home, avoiding off-the-cuff gaffes and allowing rival Donald Trump to self-destruct.But three years on, with lockdowns lifted and America mostly back to a new version of normal, Biden knows that speeches on glitchy Zoom calls or in empty auditoriums will not be enough. The president, who at 80 is the oldest in American history, is facing the final, most gruelling campaign of his life.On Saturday he kicks it off in earnest with the first rally of his 2024 re-election bid in Philadelphia, in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. Biden will address supporters in the trade union movement, a vital part of his coalition, and tout economic achievements, including a manufacturing revival and record jobs numbers.Speaking in the birthplace of American democracy, he can also make the case that he has been a human bulwark against the extremism of Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement while finding ways to do business with Republicans in Congress. But after the sheltered existence he enjoyed in the pandemic campaign of 2020, he will have to prove his fitness for office all over again.“The principal stumbling block to a second term for Joe Biden is the widespread perception that he is simply too old to serve effectively for a second term,” said Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton. “He has to run a vigorous campaign, and there’s no time like the present to be out and about, and to begin pushing back against the perception that he’s going to run another basement campaign because he doesn’t have the energy to do anything else.”Biden will have plenty of opportunity, and obligation, to meet voters on the campaign trail this time, generating spontaneous moments that can be both a blessing and a curse given his history of verbal blunders. In December 2019, when a man in Iowa suggested that he was too old and raised questions about his son’s overseas business dealings, Biden called him a “damned liar” and suggested a pushup contest.Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, added: “That goes with the territory and, all things considered, it’s a risk that the campaign has to take. Because if they keep him as guarded as they have up to now then he has no chance of rebutting the presumption that he’s too old. And that could prove fatal.”Biden was also at his weakest during in-person campaigning early in 2020. Despite joining the race as the perceived frontrunner, he lost the first three Democratic primary contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada and only clinched his party’s nomination after the pandemic took hold.During the presidential election against Trump, Biden did resume in-person campaigning via physically distanced circles, drive-in rallies and other small events in battleground states. But he almost always returned each night to sleep at home in Delaware.As president, he has travelled far and wide, delivered countless speeches and answered doubters with a pugnacious State of the Union address in which he verbally sparred with Republicans and came out on top. But he has given no national newspaper interviews and far fewer solo press conferences than his predecessors – fuelling a perception that his inner circle is trying to shield him from exposure.Saturday’s public rally will start to address one confounding disconnect. Biden has presided over the strongest post-pandemic recovery of any major economy, including the creation of 13m jobs – more than any president has created in an entire four-year term – and the lowest unemployment for half a century.Yet an Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research poll last month found that just 33% of American adults say they approve of his handling of the economy and only 24% say national economic conditions are in good shape. One explanation might be stubbornly high inflation driving rising prices for consumers. Another is that people are not yet feeling the benefits in their daily lives.Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, said: “The poll numbers may not reflect the work that’s being done because we’ve done the legislation, now we have to move to education and implementation. Part of politics these days are about emotions and, while we’ve accomplished a lot, some of the things that we’ve accomplished Americans may not necessarily feel just yet and that’ll take some time.“Part of that is telling them when it’s coming, how it’s coming, but also highlighting the alternative and what’s on the other side and how in one election all the things that have been accomplished can be taken away.”Biden’s re-election campaign, led by Julie Chávez Rodríguez, granddaughter of the Latino labour activist Cesar Chavez, is convinced that it has a good story to tell. He has spent his presidency combating Covid, rallying western allies against Russia and pushing through major bills such as a bipartisan infrastructure package and legislation to promote hi-tech manufacturing and climate measures. When he formally announced his re-election campaign in an April video, he asked voters for time to “finish this job”.He is also fond of telling critics, “Don’t judge me against the Almighty, judge me against the alternative” – which looks set to be a far-right Republican such as Trump or the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. Biden proved an effective campaigner for Democrats in last year’s midterm elections by picking his venues carefully and highlighting Maga extremism along with abortion rights.Chris Whipple, author of The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, said of the 2024 campaign: “He’ll probably take a page from the playbook of the 2022 midterms. At the time, Biden wanted to go everywhere and talk about everything. He wanted to brag about all of his accomplishments from the first two years and he had plenty to brag about.“But [then chief of staff] Ron Klain and some of his advisers sat him down and said, Mr President, look, you’re going to go to the places where we think you can make a positive difference and you’re going to talk about women’s reproductive rights and the threat to democracy represented by Maga. He followed that script and the rest is history.”Whipple added: “They defied the expectations in the midterms. I suspect he’s getting very similar advice right now: that’s a winning formula. In the 2022 midterms, normal beat crazy, and crazy is even crazier as we speak, given the latest indictment of Trump and the craven obedience of the GOP [Grand Old Party] to Trump.”Despite Trump facing federal criminal charges over his mishandling of classified documents, no one in the Biden campaign is taking victory for granted. Presidential elections are decided by a few percentage points in a few swing states. There are warning signs that Biden will find 2024 tougher going than 2020.The Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that only 26% of Americans – and only about half of Democrats – said they wanted to see Biden run again. Among Black adults, only 41% said they want him to run and 55% said they were likely to support him in the general election.The sagging enthusiasm has been thrown into sharp relief by two fringe candidates making inroads into his support among Democrats. A Quinnipiac University poll released this week found that 70% of Democratic-leaning voters support Biden in a 2024 primary but environment lawyer Robert F Kennedy Jr is drawing 17% and self-help author Marianne Williamson has 8%.Biden has struggled to fulfill key promises to Black voters, perhaps the most loyal group in his political base. While he tapped Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the first Black woman on the supreme court, he has been unable to follow through on pledges to protect voting rights against a wave of Republican-backed restrictions or enact policing reform to help stop violence against people of colour at the hands of law enforcement.Although the Inflation Reduction Act made historic climate investments, critics point to Biden’s recent backsliding on the issue: this year he approved Willow, an $8bn oil drilling project on pristine federal land in Alaska, and agreed to fast-track the $6.6bn Mountain Valley pipeline (MVP) in West Virginia.Michele Weindling, electoral director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth climate advocacy group, criticised Biden for his recent “negative choices” and said: “It is the president’s duty to ensure that he is constantly grappling with the crisis at hand and I don’t think that he’s taking the crisis seriously when he negotiates around fossil fuels and continues to pass drilling permits even after promising not to.”Pushing climate to the margins could damage Biden’s re-election chances, Weindling warned. “There’s a risk of it making our jobs a lot harder in terms of mobilising young people to get out to vote. The proof is in the past two elections where young people turned out in record numbers to elect Democrats who were running on bold progressive platforms, on popular agendas.”Meanwhile, Biden’s toughest critics are calling for him to drop out of the race and make way for another Democrat. Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction.org, sponsor of the Step Aside Joe! campaign, argues that, whereas Trump was on the defensive in 2020, this time Biden will represent the status quo.“There are many reasons to believe that this Biden campaign is on a collision course with disaster. Nobody knows for sure but there are so many signs from the polling, from his public appearances, from the footage that is catnip for the Fox News world that, literally and figuratively, Biden is stumbling.“Instead of being in denial and being like the crowd in the story The Emperor’s New Clothes, Democrats, including members of Congress and movers and shakers at the Democratic National Committee, still have an opportunity to step up. But instead, with very few exceptions, they’re simply fawning at the president.”If there is one hallmark of the Biden presidency, however, it is that he is constantly underestimated. Ronald Reagan, then the oldest president in US history, had an approval rating of just 35% in early 1983 but went on to win re-election in a landslide the following year.Bob Shrum, a consultant on several Democratic presidential campaigns, said: “Lots of factors matter here. Does the economy continue to stay healthy and to get healthier? What happens overseas? All of those things are contingencies that you have to take into account but, looking at it right now, I not only think Biden wins, I think Republicans are going to get more and more uncomfortable with Trump.” More

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      Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower, dies aged 92

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      Daniel Ellsberg, a US government analyst who became one of the most famous whistleblowers in world politics when he leaked the Pentagon Papers, exposing US government knowledge of the futility of the Vietnam war, has died. He was 92. His death was confirmed by his family on Friday.In March, Ellsberg announced that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Saying he had been given three to six months to live, he said he had chosen not to undergo chemotherapy and had been assured of hospice care.“I am not in any physical pain,” he wrote, adding: “My cardiologist has given me license to abandon my salt-free diet of the last six years. This has improved my life dramatically: the pleasure of eating my favourite foods!”On Friday, the family said Ellsberg “was not in pain” when he died. He spent his final months eating “hot chocolate, croissants, cake, poppyseed bagels and lox” and enjoying “several viewings of his all-time favourite [movie], Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, the family statement added.“In his final days, surrounded by so much love from so many people, Daniel joked, ‘If I had known dying would be like this, I would have done it sooner …’“Thank you, everyone, for your outpouring of love, appreciation and well-wishes. It all warmed his heart at the end of his life.”Tributes were swift and many.Alan Rusbridger, the former editor-in-chief of the Guardian, said Ellsberg “was widely, and rightly, acclaimed as a great and significant figure. But not by Richard Nixon, who wanted him locked up. He’s why the national interest should never be confused with the interest of whoever’s in power.”The Pulitzer-winning journalist Wesley Lowery wrote: “It was an honor knowing Daniel … I’ll remain inspired by his commitment to a mission bigger than himself.”The writer and political commentator Molly Jong-Fast said: “One of the few really brave people on this earth has left it.”The MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan said: “Huge loss for this country. An inspiring, brave, and patriotic American. Rest in power, Dan, rest in power.”The Pentagon Papers covered US policy in Vietnam between 1945 and 1967 and showed that successive administrations were aware the US could not win.By the end of the war in 1975, more than 58,000 Americans were dead and 304,000 were wounded. Nearly 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed, as were about 1 million North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong guerillas and more than 2 million civilians in North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.The Pentagon Papers caused a sensation in 1971, when they were published – first by the New York Times and then by the Washington Post and other papers – after the supreme court overruled the Nixon administration on whether publication threatened national security.In 2017, the story was retold in The Post, an Oscar-nominated film directed by Steven Spielberg in which Ellsberg was played by the British actor Matthew Rhys.Ellsberg served in the US Marine Corps in the 1950s but went to Vietnam in the mid-60s as a civilian analyst for the defense department, conducting a study of counter-insurgency tactics. When he leaked the Pentagon Papers, he was working for the Rand Corporation.In 2021, a half-century after he blew the whistle, he told the Guardian: “By two years in Vietnam, I was reporting very strongly that there was no prospect of progress of any kind so the war should not be continued. And that came to be the majority view of the American people before the Pentagon Papers came out.“By ’68 with the Tet offensive, by ’69, most Americans already thought it was immoral to continue but that had no effect on Nixon. He thought he was going to try to win it and they would be happy once he’d won it, however long it took.”In 1973, Ellsberg was put on trial. Charges of espionage, conspiracy and stealing government property adding up to a possible 115-year sentence were dismissed due to gross governmental misconduct, including a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, part of the gathering scandal which led to Nixon’s resignation in 1974.Born in Chicago on 7 April 1931, Ellsberg was educated at Harvard and Cambridge, completing his PhD after serving as a marine. He was married twice and had two sons and a daughter.After the end of the Vietnam war he became by his own description “a lecturer, scholar, writer and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful US interventions and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing”.Ellsberg contributed to publications including the Guardian and published four books, among them an autobiography, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, and most recently The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.In recent years, he publicly supported Chelsea Manning, the US soldier who leaked records of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, who published Manning’s leaks, and Edward Snowden, who leaked records concerning surveillance by the National Security Agency.On Friday, the journalist Glenn Greenwald, one of the Guardian team which published the Snowden leaks in 2013, winning a Pulitzer prize, called Ellsberg “a true American hero” and “the most vocal defender” of Assange, Snowden, Manning and “others who followed in his brave footsteps”.Steven Donziger, an attorney who represented Indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest against the oil giant Chevron, a case that led to his own house arrest, said: “Today the world lost a singularly brave voice who spoke truth about the US military machine in Vietnam and risked his life in the process. I drew deep inspiration from the courage of Daniel Ellsberg and was deeply honored to have his support.”In 2018, in a joint Guardian interview with Snowden, Ellsberg paid tribute to those who refused to be drafted to fight in Vietnam.“I would not have thought of doing what I did,” he said, “which I knew would risk prison for life, without the public example of young Americans going to prison to make a strong statement that the Vietnam war was wrong and they would not participate, even at the cost of their own freedom.“Without them, there would have been no Pentagon Papers. Courage is contagious.”Three years later, in an interview to mark 50 years since the publication of the Pentagon Papers, he said he “never regretted for a moment” his decision to leak.His one regret, he said, was “that I didn’t release those documents much earlier when I think they would have been much more effective.“I’ve often said to whistleblowers, ‘Don’t do what I did, don’t wait years till the bombs are falling and people have been dying.’” More

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      ‘More extreme, more violent’: experts’ warning over khaki-clad Patriot Front

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      For years, there has been an element of the ridiculous to Patriot Front and their rallies, which can look like a sort of cosplay version of a white nationalist movement.At a Patriot Front demonstration in Washington in May, more than a hundred Patriot Front members marched along the National Mall wearing matching outfits of beige or brown chinos and blue button-up shirts.The ensemble was topped off with the sort of affected accessorizing that parents subject children to at weddings: each man was required to wear sand-colored suspenders, with matching hats and sewn-on arm patches.In their hands, the Patriot Front members carried shields that were a derivative version of Captain America’s defense system, and they had tight white fabric wrapped around their faces. The goal of their activity – Patriot Front aims to create a white ethno-state, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center – is serious, but they found themselves ripe for ridicule.“You wear Walmart khakis!” one bystander heckled. “You are sloppy! You are not even matching! You all have different types of pants on! Cargo pants are out! Reclaim your virginity!”In the years following Patriot Front’s 2017 inception, however, they have slowly grown in influence and threat, experts say. In 2023, those who monitor hate groups say Patriot Front is increasingly moving towards public displays and violence.“If you asked me about Patriot Front in 2017 or 2018, I’d say they’re looking for attention. They’re putting up some stickers, and doing some banner drops here and there, and it’s all about just getting in the news. But now it’s gone well beyond that,” said Stephen Piggott, a researcher at Western States Center who focuses on white nationalist, paramilitary and anti-democracy groups.“I think the group is morphing from a solely propaganda-based outfit to a much more violent one, based on what we’ve seen over the past couple of years. They’re trending to much more violence, more in-person direct actions, versus putting up stickers under the cover of night.”Patriot Front formed in 2017, having splintered from the white nationalist group Vanguard America in the wake of the deadly Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Led by Thomas Rousseau, Patriot Front initially focused on clandestine propaganda efforts: dropping racist literature in neighborhoods and posting stickers in public places.According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Patriot Front was responsible for the vast majority of “hateful propaganda” in the US in 2019, 2020 and 2021. In the past couple of years, the group has begun to venture more into the daylight, and held more rallies and demonstrations.The leadership has stayed the same, under Thomas Rousseau, a Texas-based extremist. But Patriot Front has changed.“I think it’s indicative of the movement. The white nationalist movement more broadly is getting more extreme, more hardcore, more violent,” Piggott said.That violence has been seen across the US. In May, Joe Biden described white supremacy as “the most dangerous terrorist threat” to the country. This week, a University of Chicago poll found that 12 million American adults, or 4.4% of the adult population, believe violence is justified to restore Donald Trump to the White House.Antisemitic incidents, meanwhile, rose in the US in 2022; there was an increase in anti-Asian American hate crimes over the past two years; and a recent FBI report found that hate crimes as a whole rose by nearly 12% from 2020 to 2021.“There’s a backlash to gains made by marginalized communities: I think marginalized communities are more represented, and have become more a political force as well. The white nationalist movement also sees what’s going on in terms of demographics, and are not happy with the diminishing white majority of the country,” Piggott said.“And then also really since the election of Donald Trump, we’ve seen white nationalist discourse being much more mainstream. That’s provided a bump for these groups in terms of they’re very happy to see when elected officials and others are kind of speaking their language, using their rhetoric.“I think it’s almost like a green light for them to conduct the activities that they’re engaged in.”For Patriot Front, those activities have meant scenes like those in June last year in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Police arrested 31 members of the group after they were found packed into the back of a rental truck with riot gear. The men, who an eyewitness told police “looked like a little army”, were charged with conspiracy to riot.A month later Charles Murrell, a Black artist, was attacked during a Patriot Front march in Boston, Massachusetts. The group has since held marches in Indianapolis and a rally in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This year, a group of about 25 Patriot Front members protested against a drag brunch in Nashville and conducted their Washington march.“Patriot Front worries me a lot more than other groups because of the amount of public activism that they commit to,” said Jeff Tischauser, a senior research analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.“Any time you get these volatile, unhinged people coming into close contact with the public, situations can escalate. That’s what I worry about, because they’re in public space more than any other group.“And you’re gonna have courageous people like Charles Murrell stand up and say, ‘We don’t want you here.’ That’s going to be a combustible situation with the people that they have within the organization.”There has been a rise in white nationalism and far-right politics in countries around the world in recent years. In Germany, the far-right, anti-immigrant ​​Alternative for Germany has surged in recent polling, while last year Giorgia Meloni, whose radical-right Brothers of Italy party has neo-fascist roots, was elected prime minister of Italy.In the US, though, there is an extra threat. About four in 10 adult Americans live in a household with a firearm, and mass shootings are commonplace. A year on from Patriot Front’s march in Coeur d’Alene, the targeting of LGBTQ communities is a continuing risk, Tischauser said.“We’re worried about Pride Month. We’re worried about teachers. There are groups that are out in public, that are showing up at LGBTQ-inclusive events, harassing and intimidating participants, which include children,” Tischauser said.“And I’m worried about the high concentration of guns that we have in this country, and this contentious movement that’s becoming more hostile and more aggressive, it seems, by the day. And Patriot Front is right in the middle of that.” More

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      Nusrat Jahan Choudhury confirmed as first Muslim woman to be federal judge

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      The US Senate has confirmed the former American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Nusrat Jahan Choudhury as the first Muslim woman to serve as a federal judge on Thursday.Choudhury, 46, is also the first Bangladeshi American to serve in this lifetime position. She will serve as a judge on the US court for the eastern district of New York.All federal judges must be approved by the Senate, which confirmed her appointment in a narrow 50-49 decision.The conservative Democrat Joe Manchin voted against her confirmation because he said he believed some of her past comments made her biased against law enforcement.“As a staunch supporter of our men and women in uniform, I opposed Ms Choudhury’s nomination,” Manchin said in a statement.Manchin also opposed the confirmation of two other Biden-nominated federal judges: Dale Ho, a judge on the southern district of New York, and Nancy Abudu, a judge on the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit. They were confirmed without his support.Once the deputy director of ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, Choudhury has a track record for fighting racial profiling and unequal treatment of the poor.Her bio on the ACLU’s website says: “Nusrat helped secure the first federal court ruling striking down the US government’s no-fly list procedures for violating due process.“She filed litigation to challenge the NYPD’s unjustified and discriminatory profiling of Muslims for surveillance, which resulted in a court-ordered settlement agreement, and to secure public records about the FBI’s racial and ethnic mapping program.”In a virtual ACLU event in March 2021, Choudhury said: “As a Muslim young girl of color here in the Chicago area, race was a part of my reality. It led to police stops that shouldn’t have ever happened; it led to family members facing problems at airports; and led to what I saw around me, which was dramatic residential segregation and different opportunities for people of color than for white people in the city of Chicago.”The US’s first Muslim federal judge ever appointed was Zahid Quraishi in 2021. More

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      A silent and sullen Trump goes before judge in Miami – amid din outside

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      Even by Florida’s already unorthodox standards, the arraignment of Donald J Trump, the ultimate carnival barker, in Miami on Tuesday afternoon was something of a circus.The concept of a former leader of the free world appearing before a federal judge to deny he stole and retained some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets – keeping some in a bathroom – was surreal enough.But the historic act of the twice impeached, twice indicted ex-president actually doing so, while remaining the runaway favorite to win the Republican party’s nomination for next year’s general election, was extraordinary.Lending to the theater of the absurd outside downtown Miami’s Wilkie D Ferguson courthouse, named for a late, respected early Black judge of the southern judicial district of Florida, was a resident flock of roosters strutting around crowing, a top-hatted elderly gentleman in a red long-tailed coat waving a Trump-DeSantis 2024 flag, and a couple of dozen “Blacks for Trump” protesters insisting that “Trumpsters [sic] are not racist”.But it was the proceedings inside courtroom 13-3 that held the attention. The 45th president of the United States sat silently, sullenly, between his lawyers throughout an arraignment hearing that lasted little more than 45 minutes, folding his arms and clenching his fingers, and occasionally grimacing in his navy blue suit and trademark red tie.It was his lawyer, Todd Blanche, who did the talking for the usually loquacious Trump. “[We] most certainly enter a plea of not guilty,” Blanche said of the 37-count indictment that, thankfully, was not read out loud.And: “We so demand [a jury trial], yes, your honor.”There followed a robust discussion with magistrate judge Jonathan Goodman over conditions of bond. Trump will not have to surrender his passport, will not be barred from traveling domestically nor internationally, and will not have to put up any dollar amount for bail.Yet he will be banned from talking about any aspect of the case with any “witness or victim”, which includes a range of characters from his Secret Service agents to his personal valet Waltine Nauda, his co-defendant who sat alongside him looking bewildered.Watching on from the front row of the public gallery was Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith, Trump’s latest bete noire, who brought this indictment from a Miami grand jury.But Trump had to remain silent here, after launching torrents of disparaging rhetoric against Smith, Joe Biden and the president’s “weaponized” justice department in recent days in television interviews and his Truth Social network.At the conclusion of the hearing, Trump turned and appeared to acknowledge the nine members of the public allowed in to watch, including one supporter in a red Make America Great Again cap, a Trump T-shirt and an eye patch.Then he chatted briefly with his legal team, and made his way to the exit.According to the US Marshals Service, Trump’s short booking process before the hearing was identical to that of any other defendant, although no mugshot was taken today, and no booking image will be released. Marshals indicated that enough photographs of Trump already existed for identification not to be an issue. Nor is he considered a flight risk.Trump’s fingerprints, however, were taken, digitally, “so he won’t be rolling in ink”, a court official said. Also checked were his address, social security number, date of birth and “recent history”.As for the mass protests promised by Trump’s supporters, and feared by Miami’s mayor, Francis Suarez, at a press conference on Monday, the searing south Florida heat appeared to have had its say.Thousands looked to have gathered, and were noisy enough. Yet the 94F temperatures and energy-sapping humidity of late spring in Miami are a world away from the comparatively calm conditions of early January in Washington. Faced with a heavy courthouse presence of Miami police and federal officers in tactical gear and rifles, anyone intent on similar violence to that set upon the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 was unlikely to achieve a similar result.By late morning Tuesday, only pockets of Trump loyalists, some on bicycles with oversized flags, others in Maga caps, and adorned in Stars and Stripes attire, had shown up in the media encampment on the courthouse plaza.By lunchtime, their numbers had swelled, as had those who welcomed the arraignment. One man holding a celebratory cardboard trophy bearing the words “Trump Indictment Tour 2023” was in animated discussion with a couple wrapped in yellow Don’t Tread on Me flags beloved by the Maga faithful.Circling the perimeter, a pickup truck pulled a box trailer painted, with no hint of irony, to resemble a jail cell, with Biden and other Democrats peering from behind bars. “We are taking America back,” an accompanying message stated.At the hearing’s commencement, Trump’s supporters were four to five deep at the police tape, watched by police on bicycles but making no moves to pass it. By its conclusion many had retreated to the shadows of the tall railway station on the west side of the courthouse building, close to where the Trump motorcade was waiting.The convoy had made the short journey from the Trump resort in Doral, west of downtown, where he spent the night, and accessed the courthouse complex underground. Trump entered the courthouse by a tunnel, escorted by Secret Service agents, and took an escalator to Goodman’s 13th floor courtroom.He left the same way en route to the airport, and his flight back to New Jersey.Back on the plaza, supporters who hadn’t even caught a glimpse of their champion continued to chant for him.“I don’t know if he broke the law, but really, does it matter?” Felix Castillo, a 44-year-old Cuban American from Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood said.“Whatever he did has been exaggerated by Biden, and that’s the real crime here. Biden had documents too, why isn’t he here?”Trump, meanwhile, moves on, free to continue airing his grievances at Bedminster, on Truth Social or wherever, as he focuses on the next hearing in this case, an upcoming trial in New York on charges related to a hush money payment to an adult movie star, and possible future indictments for the 6 January insurrection and election interference in Georgia.In Miami, the circus tent is down, for now at least, and Trump’s traveling show has left town. In the wings, its lead and only performer, is preparing for his next turn. More

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      Donald Trump leaves court after pleading not guilty to federal criminal charges at Miami indictment hearing – live

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      From 3h agoDonald Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges related to allegedly hoarding government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort and frustrating efforts by the federal government to retrieve them at his ongoing arraignment in Miami, Reuters reports.Donald Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr took to social media as their father pleaded not guilty in the courthouse.Eric retweeted a post by the Republican congressman Jim Jordan that said there were different standards of justice for the Trump and Biden families.While Donald Trump Jr praised Ohio senator, JD Vance, for saying he wouldblock all nominees to the Department of Justice over the indictment against the former president.Ohio senator, JD Vance, who was endorsed by Donald Trump in his 2022 race, has said he would block all nominees to the Department of Justice “until Merrick Garland stops using his agency to harass Joe Biden’s political opponents”.In a statement posted to Twitter, Vance called the former president “merely the latest victim of a Department of Justice that cares more about politics than law enforcement” and said he would “grind [Garland’s] department to a halt” in protest of “the unprecedented political prosecution” of Trump.Vance said:
      Starting today, I will hold all Department of Justice nominations. If Merrick Garland wants to use these officials to harass Joe Biden’s political opponents, we will grind his department to a halt.
      Vance’s hold will just slow down the confirmation process for DoJ nominees, who will now all need to go through a procedural vote and a confirmation vote.As Punchbowl News’ John Bresnahan points out, the Ohio senator’s announcement doesn’t really change anything.As we reported earlier, Donald Trump’s personal valet Walt Nauta was not arraigned today as his lawyer was not admitted to practice in the southern district of Florida.Nauta is now scheduled to be arraigned on 27 June.A navy veteran from Guam, Nauta worked as a White House valet during the Trump administration and moved to Florida following the 2020 election to become Trump’s personal aide.Prosecutors allege that Nauta was a point person for Trump whenever he wanted to access or hide the boxes of classified documents.The indictment states that Trump directed Nauta to transport various documents to Trump’s personal residence and that Nauta helped Trump try to conceal the boxes of top secret information from the FBI. Nauta also texted two Trump employees about the documents, in one case sending a photo of a tipped-over box and classified documents spilled out on the floor of a storage room.Nauta faces several charges including conspiracy and making false statements, such as telling investigators that he didn’t know where the boxes of classified documents were being stored. He is the only person other than Trump charged in the case.Here’s a guide to the most important people involved in the indictment against Trump:Donald Trump has boarded his private plane in Miami, and is heading to his luxury golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.He is expected to make a statement on today’s criminal proceedings at a fundraising event later today.A judge has said E Jean Carroll, the writer who won a $5m jury verdict against Donald Trump last month, can pursue a separate defamation lawsuit against the former president.The writer and former Elle magazine columnist had sought to amend her original defamation lawsuit filed in 2019 so she could try to seek additional punitive damages after Trump repeated statements a federal jury found to be defamatory.A New York jury last month found Trump had sexually assaulted Carroll in a New York department store in 1996. The jury found that the former president “sexually abused” Carroll, defined as subjecting her to sexual contact without consent by use of force, and for the purpose of sexual gratification. But the jury did not find that Trump raped her. Trump was ordered to pay Carroll $2m for battery and $3m for defamation.Carroll then sought to amend her separate defamation lawsuit over a similar denial by Trump in June, in which he told a White House reporter that the rape never happened and that Carroll was not his “type”. The revision also sought to incorporate Trump’s comments made in a CNN town hall, where he called Carroll’s account “fake” and labeled her a “whack job”.Here’s a clip of Donald Trump arriving at the Miami courthouse earlier this afternoon for his formal arraignment, where he pleaded not guilty to all counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents.Donald Trump’s visit to the famous downtown Miami restaurant Versailles, where he was greeted by supporters, was pre-planned and part of his team’s attempt to control his image, HuffPost’s SV Dáte writes.As the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman points out, Trump is determined to fight the battle in the court of public opinion for as long as possible, including by having his co-defendant Walt Nauta close by him today.After he left court, Fox News showed Trump visiting a cafe in Miami and being greeted like a wronged hero.Supporters gathered around him and prayed for him. Someone shouted: “Jesus loves you!”Trump smiled and waved to the crowd and declared: “Food for everyone!” The crowd erupted in applause and cheers. One yelled: “Keep fighting, sir!”Then, ahead of Trump’s 77th birthday tomorrow, the patrons broke out in a chorus of “Happy birthday dear Donald, happy birthday to you!”The former president remarked:
      Some birthday! We’ve got a government that’s out of control.
      He then made brief comments about “a rigged deal”, suggesting that “we have a country that is in decline like never before,” and promising to speak more in Bedminster, New Jersey tonight.Someone shouted: “God bless Donald Trump!” as he departed and returned to his motorcade.Donald Trump has stopped by the Miami restaurant, Versailles, after the conclusion of his court hearing, where he told customers that he would pay “for food for everyone”.A group of people appeared to pray as he entered the cafe, while a crowd sang happy birthday to the former president, who turns 77 tomorrow.Trump’s co-defendant Walt Nauta was also seen in the restaurant.Earlier we reported that a protester was seen running in front of Donald Trump’s motorcade as it departed the courthouse in Miami.Here’s the clip of the man being tackled by security services, as shared by MSNBC’s Manny Fidel: More